by Nick Stamoulis

One of the most common mistakes I see website owners and marketers make when launching their first SEO campaign is that they let search volume dictate which keywords they should target. I can completely understand the rationale behind their thinking--if more people are searching for keyword X that means more visitors for my site which means more money for my company. Unfortunately SEO is not that cut and dry. The higher of a search volume a keyword has the more competition there is for it, which means it's going to be much harder and take a lot longer to rank well in the search engines for. It's also important to remember that just because a particular keyword has a high search volume that doesn't mean it's the right keyword for you.

For instance, "IT services" is a wildly popular keyword with over 45 million searches each month. However, "IT services" is also an incredibly broad keyword and might not be the most accurate keyword for your website. What kind of IT services does your business offer? Do you cater to small businesses or global enterprises? Do you offer IT consulting services or maybe you specialize in certain software platforms? Are you local service provider or do you have clients all over the country? More specific keywords like "managed IT services" (which still gets over 60k searches each month) might send less traffic to your site, but they will also drive a more targeted visitor. The more targeted the visitor the better chance you have of converting them.

Broad keywords with large search volumes are typically used at the beginning of someone's buy cycle when they are just beginning to research their options. They want to cast as wide a net as possible and will subsequently narrow it down the more they learn. Someone who searches for "IT services" at the beginning of their buy cycle might end up looking for "small business IT service providers in New York" by the time they are ready to buy. While targeting "IT services" might drive more traffic to your site, you're not driving the quality traffic you need to grow your online business.

Think about it like this--let's say that after thorough keyword research you added 20 new long tail keywords to your website. Even if each of those keywords only drives 5 unique visitors to your site each month that's 100 more highly-qualified visitors that have never heard of your brand or been to your website before. Those 100 visitors are much more likely to convert because they found your site through a very specific search phrase. On the flip side, a visitor that found your site through a broader keyword (even though they can still convert) might not be the kind of visitor you are looking for. For instance, an SEO client of mine had visitors finding their site by searching for "software." While it's great that they were getting any traffic from such a broad and competitive keyword, "software" could really mean just about anything. The majority of the visitors that came to their site from "software" weren't good leads for their company and clogged up the sales funnel.

Many site owners think that keyword research is a one-and-done process, but that's not the case! No one is required to get their keyword selection right the first time (it took me years to really hone in the right keywords for my site and my audience!) but you shouldn't assume that the keyword with the highest search volume is automatically the best one for your site.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter

Pete and Repete were walking on a bridge. Pete fell off. Who's left?

Repete? Ok, Pete and Repete were walking on a bridge. Pete fell off. Who's left?

Repete? How about we just move on...

In marketing, when something works it gets repeated and repeated again and again. Never letting a good campaign go to waste, imitators will jump on board and drive it into the ground until it's no longer effective.

We've seen this with the Got Milk? campaigns. It wasn't long before we started seeing imitators touting got sand, got rice, got mold, got Jesus and even got poop! (Like, who doesn't?)

The same thing happens with TV and movies. Someone breaks an "edginess" barrier and it's soon a race to see how soon it can be topped without losing advertisers or getting crushed by the FCC. It's hard to believe there was once a time when it was taboo to say "damn" in a theatrical movie, or that depicting a married couple in the same bed was just not something you did on TV!

It's inevitable that yesterday's "big thing" is today's normal thing.

What's new is old again

Online marketing runs on the same principles. While solid SEO and link-building concepts remain universal, there are a number of strategies of years past that no longer work today. Why? Because they have been done to death, rendering them almost completely ineffective.

Remember reciprocal link pages? Mass article submissions? Mass directory submissions? Comment spamming? Link wheels? These are all but virtually dead, dying or soon to be declining link-building strategies that have been used, abused and discarded in the cyber junkpile of once successful SEO strategies.

All this shows the danger of jumping on any single "trick" when pursuing the holy grail of SEO: search engine rankings. These tricks often turn into nothing more than short-term gimmicks, and sites fall down just as quickly as they rose up in the search results.

In online marketing, there are many paths to the same goal. Many will work for most, some may work for all, and others only work for a period of time. Many business owners find one strategy that works and they stick to it, even long past its usefulness. Not every marketing strategy works 100% the time. Those that put all their marketing eggs into a single basket find themselves with egg on their faces when that one strategy comes crashing to the ground with the changing tide of online marketing strategies.

But I get it. We do what we are comfortable with and venturing outside of that is the unknown. The unknown means taking risks and possibly experiencing losses. But it also means possible rewards, and that's what businesses need to be looking at.

Developing long-term strategies that get results

In any kind of marketing, its good to have multiple strategies at play at any given time. Putting aside the whole concept of marketing to specific customer personas, it's not a good idea to put all of your time, money or effort into a single marketing approach. I can easily make an argument for investing not only in SEO and link building, but also in social media, PPC, content, analytics, etc.

Focusing all your marketing efforts onto a single avenue of growth can be effective for a time. However, marketing diversification gives you more opportunity to be even more effective.

If you're limiting your marketing efforts to one or even two avenues, it might be time to branch out. Look at other successful marketing avenues and see how you can venture out a bit. Look at specific tactics and campaigns and see what makes sense for both short and long-term success.

Sometimes it takes trial and error to find strategies that work. Your first attempt isn't always the best attempt, and it should never be your final attempt. You can always piggyback on what others are doing, just don't mimic exactly. Use others' success to build successful campaigns unique to you.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Todd Bailey

Have you lost sight of a well-loved service or product? People are creatures of repetition. Usually we commit when we find a service or product we enjoy using. Recently, Ryan Buddenhagen wrote a post on brand ability to bring back old services and products.

The notion is not very novel. Blockbuster movies enjoy reviving old heroes and comics. Food producers sometimes reintroduce a retired food or beverage. The Eagles once did a "Hell Freezes Over" tour... Speaking of music, you may catch sight of modern-day hipsters wearing vintage CBGB shirts. The East Village club, opened from 1973 to 2006, was a bastion of punk-rock music.

Investors now plan to reinvent the club, starting with a music festival, then plan on finding a new NY location for the old club at a downtown locale. "We're going to recreate a moment in time," admits one investor. The four-day festival is planned to start on July 5 and host over 300 bands. The spread of the festival is vast, spanning more than 30 locations.

I'm looking forward to tracing how the reinvention of the CBGB sentiment and club fares. The story and Ryan's post introduce interesting points. Why not bring back coveted services and products of old?

It could be a great branding and marketing operation; or, it could fall flat on its face. Here are a few things to consider if interested in internal re-introductions:

Why Retire?
What was the reason for retiring the service/product? Was it due to consumer disinterest or a new internal direction? The latter choice may have been a mistake. It's okay. All businesses make them. Sometimes businesses make decisions and then find more intelligence is elucidated after the fact. Think about revisiting former decisions.

Re-sample
Most run tests before fully introducing a service/product to the market. Don't concentrate on how a former product/service fared then. Think about if something can work well into your business model now. The decision could be a good idea; but, you don't want to reengage with full force.

Ask Them
There's never been an easier time to ask consumers questions and get feedback in real time. You may think a former product/service reintroduction; yet, when asking consumers, none of them agree. It's about them; never forget that. A brand can simply write a Facebook post, blog post, or tweet to consumers, asking their opinion on a reintroduction. Even if they don't like the idea, they'll appreciate your brand thought enough to ask them.

Updates
To steer the concept in another direction; don't dismiss profits which can come from a presently popular service or product. Think about Apple's iPad; it's on its third iteration. Apple continues to make upgrades and improve its product. As referenced, people are creatures of habit. Sometimes an upgrade to an existing product/service is better than an entirely new entity; because, consumers may already have emotional connections to the original. There's no reason to interrupt that connection.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Mike Fleming

I wouldn't call the "average position" metric pointless, but it's definitely lying to you.  Most people approach this metric with a natural misunderstanding. It's natural to think, "This is the average position that my organic listing or paid ad shows up at in a search for this keyword."  Sorry, but no.  How could a tool just flat out lie to you?  Well, the tool isn't lying to you.  It's your understanding of what that metric is communicating that is lying to you.  In a recent article titled, "<a title="The big lie of AdWords average position" href="http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/9402-the-lie-of-adwords-average-position" target="_blank" data-mce-href="http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/9402-the-lie-of-adwords-average-position">The big lie of AdWords average position," light is shed upon this subject.  But, this goes beyond AdWords to organic search and many other applications in life as well.

The temptation to use averages goes along with the fact that we really like to have one number that will represent overall performance.  It's easier.  The problem is that averages don't really tell you anything about what's going on.  There are a few reasons for this...
<img class="mceWPmore mceItemNoResize" title="More..." src="http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif" alt="" data-mce-src="http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif" />

1. We use mean averages - These averages take a total and divide it by the number of participants.  The reason this is suboptimal is that you could get an average position of 3, but you don't know if you showed up in position 3 every time or split equally between positions 1 and 5 or any other combination of possibilities.
2. Only impressions are calculated - Let's say there are 3 searches on your keyword.  In the results, your listing shows in positions 1, 5 and 15 respectively.  What's your average position? 1+5+15 = 21/3 = 7.  Your average position is 7.  But, this isn't the number that you see.  You see an average position of 3.  Why?  Only impressions count in the calculation.  In the third search in our example, the searcher never went to the 2nd page.  So, even though you earned a position of 15, it wasn't included in the calculation.  To get a true average position, your impression share would have to be 100%.  If it's not, then all the times your listing or ad came up in search results but was not seen by the searcher are not figured in.
3. All listings are counted, not just your top listing - If there's one search, and the searcher views your ad or organic listing on the first page and then clicks through to the 2nd page and sees a different ad and/or a different organic listing on that page also, that's one search with multiple impressions.  If you were in position 1 and then position 11, your average position would be 6.  This is why you might see that number in Google Webmaster Tools or AdWords for a keyword, even though when you do an organic search you see your listing in position 1.  Of course, it's never that way because, much of the time, only your #1 listing is seen and not your #11.

<span style="color: #0000ff;" data-mce-style="color: #0000ff;">The Solution

Instead of looking at averages, look at distributions.  This is where the insights are found.  Let's take a look at organic listings in this post and then we'll review how we find the solution for this for paid ads in the next post.

If you're looking at the keywords your site has shown in Google Webmaster Tools, you'll see something like this...

<p style="text-align: left;" data-mce-style="text-align: left;">For the search term "<a title="SEO Marketing Company Providing Search Engine Marketing Services" href="http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/" target="_blank" data-mce-href="http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/">pole position," our average position is 14, but if you click on the term, it takes you to this page...

<p style="text-align: left;" data-mce-style="text-align: left;">What you see here is a distribution of your impressions by page and by position in search results for organic listings.  Even better would be if they let you click through the page and gave you a distribution for each specific page as well, but of course you can assume that your top page for impressions is the one ranking the highest in results.  So, you can see in my example that, even though my average position for the term "pole position" says 14, my true rank for most impressions is 6 to 10.  That's a big difference; especially when we're talking about the difference between being on the 1st or 2nd page of results.

<p style="text-align: left;" data-mce-style="text-align: left;">In fact, we've got a client right now who's average position for their top keyword says 4.3.  But, this is deceptive.  They're actually #1 for this keyword, but other pages also show up in the rankings as searchers go through them.  So, instead of spending our time and energy trying to reach the #1 position, we've moved on to other priorities.

<p style="text-align: left;" data-mce-style="text-align: left;">Now that you know what's truly going on, you can better strategize for improvement.  By taking a look at exactly which pages are ranking where and who's right above you in results that you need to overtake, you can look at comparative metrics of your closest competitors and set goals accordingly.

<p style="text-align: left;" data-mce-style="text-align: left;">Next time, we'll look at how to get the true story about your paid ads when it comes to positioning.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Stoney deGeyter

The number one key to your business growth is crafting a message that speaks to your audience. Having the right message builds up your strengths and helps you overcome any deficiencies you might have.

McDonald's doesn't make the best hamburgers in the world, but they do have a great bit of messaging that speaks to their target audience. It's that message, not the hamburgers, that makes Micky D's the number one fast food restaurant in America.

While substance is important in order to have a great message, the message itself helps establish the perception of your substance. Much to my chagrin, my kids would rather go to McDonald's over Burger King or Wendy's. They don't love the food as much as the box the food comes in, and not even close to as much as that toy inside the box.

McDonald's has the right message for my kids. But I'm the wrong audience for that message, though I'm a sucker at giving my kids a fast-food treat of their choice! So, McDonald's has a different message for me. Primarily, it's a message to give my kids a fast-food treat of their choice!

The audience matters as much as the message

If you are putting the "right" message in front of the wrong audience, you're still going to fail. Each audience needs a "right" message of its very own.

Several years ago, I wrote a letter to my U.S. Senator expressing my disapproval with his position on a particular issue. About a week later, I received a letter thanking me for expressing my support for him on this issue. Huh?!

The letter went on to list out all the reasons why "we" were right about the issue. The problem is, I didn't think "we" were right. I was, he wasn't!

If you own or market a business, you may feel you have the right message. And maybe you do. But that may be the wrong message for someone else who is, say, skeptical about doing business with you.

My Senator may have been able to convince me I was wrong, but because he gave me the wrong message, it fell on deaf ears. If his message was right, he went about it all wrong for the audience of me.

The right message for me would have been to acknowledge my viewpoint, sympathize with it, find areas of common ground and only then make the case for the merits of the issue. That message would have had a higher chance of persuading me.

How to craft the right message for any audience

Not everyone is convinced you are the right company to do business with. The message you use for your current customers is not the same message for customers who have yet to do business with you. You must craft a distance message for each audience.

How, when and where you communicate your message plays a significant role in your company's success. Web businesses have a number of unique communication opportunities to get their message out: website, telephone, emails, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc. Each can play a significant role in your company's success.

When you communicate to your customers, potential customers or even skeptics, you can easily craft the right message, only to find that it's the wrong message for that particular segment of your audience. Current customers need to be addressed differently from prospective customers. Interested parties should be addressed differently from those who are not interested, but can still be convinced.

Each marketing forum provides a unique opportunity to get your message out to a different audience. Whichever forum(s) you use, target different segments of your audience with language that reaches them specifically. In business communications, the one-size-fits-all approach just doesn't work. I'm sure you've got THE right message, but in reality, you need the right message for each target audience.

Follow me+ at @StoneyD, and @PolePositionMkg.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Nick Stamoulis

I think we can all agree that content marketing is an indispensable component of SEO and Internet marketing in general. Great content gets shared, which in turn creates inbound links to your website, which helps your site do better in the search engines, which drive more traffic to your site and so forth and so on. But too often site owners are just looking at content as a link building tactic. In reality, the content you are creating for your SEO, content marketing and social media marketing campaigns can serve a much greater purpose---it can turn your brand into a thought leader.

Here are 4 tips to becoming a thought leader in your industry:

1. Start producing more content.
If you are only writing one blog post a week, while a good place to start for many site owners, your solitary piece of content is not even a drop in the bucket when you compare it to how much information is being churned out online every day. Even in a relatively small niche, your content has to compete with blog posts, articles, white papers, videos, podcasts and more. One piece of content is probably not going to make your brand stand out for long, even if you are able to write a piece of content that captures the attention of your audience. You need to give your target audience a reason to remember you, check out your blog a couple times a week, subscribe to your newsletter, follow your social profiles and so forth---and that means you need to product more content. If you want to become a thought leader, you have to consistently produce great content proving you deserve to be recognized.

2. Don't be afraid of giving away too much free information.
In my opinion, one of the worst things a company could do for their SEO is write a bunch of great, juicy, quality content and then lock it behind a login. I know that many companies are concerned about giving away too much information for free (why buy the cow, right?) but the truth is you have to prove to your audience that you are an expert---and this means providing them with relevant, useful information. Don't expect your reputation to mean much to an organic visitor that has never heard of your brand before. You have to prove yourself to them and your content is the best way to do that.

I'm not saying you can't put some of your content behind a login (or a lead form), but the majority of the content you produce needs to be openly published so both the search engines AND your customers can find and use it. Think about it--who are the thought leaders in your industry? Chances are most of them have blogs where they talk about the latest industry trends, best practice tips and so forth. They are willingly sharing expert advice, which helps further establish themselves as industry thought leaders!

3. Specialize in something.
Too often most people (especially marketers) feel the need to become jack-of-all-trades. I can understand wanting to know how different factions play into your niche, especially when they influence each other in some way (like how social media or content marketing works with SEO), but in order to become a true thought leader you need to be exceptionally good at one thing and know that industry inside and out. In order to provide people with valuable insights and not just general advice, you need to understand the subtleties of your niche; seen it all, heard it all, done it all. Thought leaders are, amazingly enough, leaders in their fields mainly because they know it better than anyone else.

4. Never stop learning.
A thought leader has to have their finger on the pulse of their industry; what's coming down the pipeline, how are customer behaviors changing, what industry trends are shifting and so forth. In order to stay ahead of the curve (or at least keep pace with the pack) you need to know what is going on! Read other industry blogs, attend conferences, follow other experts on social networking sites--just keep yourself immersed in the way things are and where they are going. Getting stuck on the way things used to be means you'll soon be an expert of old knowledge and no longer a thought leader.

Your content is worth so much more in the long run than a few inbound links! Make sure you are working it to it's full potential.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Todd Bailey

Recently, the entire Web community has been abuzz about Pinterest.  Although the upstart social network is still in the open beta testing phase, it has overtaken LinkedIn as America's third largest social site, according to Experian Hitwise.  At present, Pinterest is reaching millions of worldwide users per month and since January, has held the distinction of being the site to break ten million unique hits in the shortest timeframe.  Pinterest is a social networking phenomenon that shows no signs of diminishing, but is there long-term viability within the Pinterest brand?

Pinterest does provide a unique approach to image sharing and could potentially give businesses a forum to display their products.  Thus far, some companies have already attempted to utilize the site for this purpose, but some are still skeptical about investing much time or money into Pinterest-specific marketing efforts.  As a marketing tool, Pinterest could prove useful on a long-term basis if the company is willing to embrace the concept. 

Some users are concerned that advertisements within Pinterest's aesthetically pleasing design may interfere with the layout, which is one of the site's strengths.  However, as with Facebook and Twitter, the implementation of "sponsored pins" could generate substantial revenue for Pinterest, while giving companies more incentive to advertise on the site without compromising its design.

Only time will tell if Pinterest has considered advertising and marketing offerings as part of their five year plan.  The network is likely to evolve, similar to its competitors.  Perhaps Pinterest's greatest asset is the "organic" feel of the site.  Browsing through the online pinboard is enjoyable for its users.  It also creates a "sticky" environment, which keeps users on the site for longer periods of time.  Sticky pages are desirable for online marketers and advertisers, as they typically ensure greater ad visibility.  Pinterest could definitely become a great long-term investment for Internet marketers, if the company is willing to utilize them and the profitability they will offer.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Nick Stamoulis

Every six months or so, it's important for site owners to revisit their onsite SEO. While many may think that onsite SEO is a set-it-and-forget-it process, the truth is that even "static" websites aren't 100% fixed. Even if you didn't undergo a major website overhaul in the last 6 months, chances are you tweaked a page of content here and there, added a few more links, tested new call-to-actions and so forth. Revisiting your onsite SEO will help ensure these small changes are all in working order and your site is up-to-date.

Check for broken links and missing pages.
Nothing kills the user experience faster than broken links and missing pages. You don't want to give a visitor any reason to abandon your site, so it's imperative that your site is easy to navigate. Did you delete any pages of content since the last time you looked at your onsite SEO? Were any links (both internal and inbound) properly 301 redirected? Remember that a 301 redirect tells the search engines that it was a permanent move and all link juice is to be passed to the new page; a 302 redirect is only temporary and doesn't help your SEO.

Take a good look at your keywords.
No one says that you have to get keyword research right the first time. While you're revisiting your onsite SEO, take a look at what keywords are driving traffic to your site. Which keywords are doing a great job and which ones are under performing? Are there any new keywords that your visitors are using to find your site that you aren't actively targeting? Those keywords might reflect a change in user's search behavior and it could be worth incorporating them into your site's content and the rest of your content marketing efforts. You should also decide if there have been any changes to your industry, and subsequently new jargon, since the last time you optimized your site that mean you need to target a new set of keywords.

Looking at what keywords are driving traffic to your site is also a good way to measure the success of your SEO campaign. If you see more non-branded keywords are driving visitors (even if it's only 5 people a month), that's a sign that your SEO is working. While an uptick in branded searches means the rest of your online marketing efforts are doing their job (since people are searching for your company by name), an increase in non-branded keywords means that people who have never heard of your brand are finding your site in the search engines. These non-branded keywords are most likely variations of the keywords you are purposefully targeting on your, although every now and then a keyword out of left field can drive traffic as well.

Update content.
Has your company launched new products since the last time you did your onsite SEO? Are those new pages properly optimized with Meta descriptions, title tags, image tags, optimized content and so forth? Can you merge two thin pages of content together into one really strong page? Are you still promoting a Christmas special somewhere on your site? When you revisit your onsite SEO, one of the most important things you can do is make sure you content is in tip-top form. At the end of the day, the content on your site is what is going to convince someone to do business with your company. You want to make sure your content is written for a human reader, incorporates relevant call-to-actions, and targets both decision makers and influencers.

Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. Is your content designed to solve their problems? Does it show them the value of your products/services or is it just a lot of marketing mumbo-jumbo. Great content shows visitors not only what you can do for them, but how what you do is going to make their lives/business better. Make sure it's easy for someone to find the information they're looking for quickly with headings, subheadings, bullet point lists and more.

Develop a stronger internal linking structure.
You want to make it easy for someone to delve deeper and deeper into your site. Link between related pages (including blog posts!) and help keep visitors engaged for longer. You don't want to force someone to go all the way back to your homepage in order to navigate your site and an internal linking structure makes it much easier for visitors to find information. Remember, each page of your site has the potential to be a landing page for a visitor, and you don't want to lead them to a dead-end. A strong internal linking structure also helps with your SEO. Linking from one page of your site to another helps spread link juice throughout your site and helps deeper pages with less inbound links perform better in the search engines.

While you don't have to completely redo you onsite SEO every six months, but you should take a look under the hood of your site from time to time to make sure that everything is working properly and make any small adjustments as needed.

Be sure and visit our small business news site.

by Mike Fleming

For many businesses, a major benefit of outsourcing their web marketing strategy to a company like ours is the fact that they get the knowledge and skill of a whole Web marketing team for what most of the time amounts to the cost of one (maybe two) employees.  Depending on the nature of the business, that can be hard to beat. But, along with it comes a challenge - communication. We fought with this hard for a while. We sat in meetings and brainstormed realistic ways to communicate better with clients while balancing the hours we spend doing this with formulating and implementing strategies to get results.

<img class="mceWPmore mceItemNoResize" title="More..." src="http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif" alt="" data-mce-src="http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/wp-includes/js/tinymce/plugins/wordpress/img/trans.gif" />
<span style="color: #0000ff" data-mce-style="color: #0000ff;">Proactive Communication From Agencies

Like a lot of client-agency relationships, clients pay for a certain number of hours, and we use those hours to try to maximize their results. Clients, as many of you know, don't always have a sense of how the amount of time they purchase is used because they're not tracking it. But, of course, we do because we're accountable to use that time wisely enough to ensure fair results for their investment.  With this kind of pressure and time being limited, the temptation exists to spend all available time on strategy and recommendations while leaving out time to closely communicate about the relationship, condition of the client's company, insights into results, clarification on recommendations, etc. 

Our experience has been that simply feeding recommendations without having discussions is sub-optimal for getting results. First, because companies don't fully understand many recommendations (which is why we're here, right?), they fail to grasp the importance of implementing them. When we email or add this to a spreadsheet - "You need to get rid of duplicate content on your site here, here and here" - they don't take the implementation quite as seriously as when you talk to them about it and stress why it should be done and the consequences of not doing it (especially if you can communicate in dollars lost). For example, we had a client roll out a brand new site and ignore all the recommendations we gave them. And they paid us for those recommendations! Needless to say, their results suffered.

Second, without regular communication, companies get distracted by lower priority items. We make critical recommendations to their search marketing strategy, and nothing happens. So, regular communication has helped us provide not only strategy, but also accountability. Our discussions allow us to regularly update them on their implementation progress. Regular communication seems to encourage action.

<span style="color: #0000ff" data-mce-style="color: #0000ff;">Communication Helps Get Results

What we've seen from this is a huge uptick in client activity for their campaigns, and results have improved. The point? With the time we have, we were worried about taking away from analysis, strategy and recommendations in favor of communicating more. But, it seems that the overall ROI has been there. Our recent experiences have communicated to me that communication is almost -if not just as - important as analyzing, formulating and implementing strategy for results.

<span style="color: #0000ff" data-mce-style="color: #0000ff;">Proactive Communication From Clients

On the flip side, if financially more advantageous to your company to outsource your Web marketing campaigns, you need to know that there's ROI for you to also be proactive in your communication. Your agency is analyzing, strategizing and making recommendations based upon what they know about your business. If they aren't on site daily, naturally their knowledge is going to be limited. While it is their job to learn about you, there are many things they just may not think of to ask. Also, what about changes in the life of your business as time rolls on? I'll give you an example.

I run PPC campaigns for a client, and I was starting a new ad test. One of the most important factors in buying this client's product is the speed at which the customer will receive the product if they order online. So, my new ad's headline said, "Product - Fast." About a week after I started the ad test, it comes to my attention through a co-worker that they were out of the product! The thing is, we initiated the conversation. If we wouldn't have, we likely would not have known about the situation. I had sent the information about the test to the client with the new headline but never heard back from them about their situation with the product. Needless to say, customers weren't exactly going to get the product fast.

So as business owners/executives, you must remember to communicate the goings-on of your business with your outside team. You're paying them. If you don't communicate, you are just wasting a portion of your own money.

<span style="color: #0000ff" data-mce-style="color: #0000ff;">Communication is an Investment

Bottom line: communication is important in ALL our relationships in life, personal and professional. The #1 cause of conflict in relationships is misunderstanding. It causes unnecessary fractures in relationships that don't need to be fractured. Don't think of communication as an inconvenience that slows things down, but rather as an investment in getting good results.

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by Todd Bailey

If you were a small startup, suddenly becoming hugely popular, would you align with a bigger brand or keep the startup momentum churning?  It's somewhat akin to the decision some high school or in-college athletes face when approached by major-league teams.  Do you carry on with your innocent talent or do you join the ranks of the bigger and better experienced, hoping to maintain that initial spark?

The Instagram duo played impressively, to the point the performance made Zuckerberg desire Instagram on his 'team.'  Was it a good idea?  Strictly thinking in monetary terms, with the deal culminating at $ 1 billion (30 percent cash, 70 in stock), it's a no-brainer question.  However, there are some looming considerations.

"I hope they didn't agree to this deal because of Facebook's valuation on the secondary markets.  It's still unclear whether there's a strong correlation between pricing on the secondary markets and the public market," says a former Google exec.

Facebook, expected to open its financial doors to the public next month, is estimated to value the IPO at $104 billion.  The New York Times observes this number is aligned with what Facebook is trading for on the secondary market (shares are selling as high as $40).

It's understood the secondary market 'helped' Instagram execs wrap their head around the Instagram/Facebook deal.  If the IPO goes as expected or better, the Instagram team could enjoy some extra benefits.  If the IPO is less than grand, the proceeding sentence does an about face.

This is just another story of anxiety.  There's no way to know for sure how it will all go until it all happens.  What will happen with the Instagram duo?  Surely, both young men could retire due to the fruits of their limited labor.  Was that their original intention?  Were they playing for the love of the game or for the love of the spoils of the game?

Mark Zuckerberg seems to be a player.  I'm wondering when Facebook does go public, how he will act; I'm growing bored of speculation.  There's no doubt a bit of 'freedom' and 'independence' is lost once a player enters bigger leagues.  Zuckerberg explains the Instagram deal is more about improving the quality of Facebook than the quantity of its revenue.  "We don't plan on doing many more of these, if any at all.  But providing the best photo-sharing experience is one reason why so many people love Facebook, and we knew it would be worth bringing these two companies together."

Hopefully the exchange of funds goes well for all parties involved.  More so, I hope all parties involved in acquisitions and IPOs, are well compensated in intrinsic value, being satisfied with their decisions.

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