Class Dates:

• Tuesday, January 24: 9am – 12pm (Twitter)
• Tuesday, February 7: 9am- 12pm (LinkedIn)
  
• Tuesday, February 21: 9am – 12pm (Facebook) NOTE: This date was originally set for January 10th and has now been changed to February 21st.

You will walk away knowing how to:

• Speak the lingo of the top three social media tools
• Choose and use those tools to help you grow or sustain your business
• Set measurable and reasonable goals for social media usage
• Establish healthy habits for making progress toward these goals
• Learn in a fun and collegial small group atmosphere where you won’t feel stupid asking questions!
• Following through on your plan with practice, practice, practice!!

Register now!

Pinterest is a website where users can create virtual bulletin boards, filled with pins of their interests: recipes, quotes, fashions, anything their social media loving heart desires. In an arena where positive pin etiquette is encouraged, Pinterest is an upbeat social media site where the users are encouraged to credit their sources, avoid self-promotion, report objectionable content, and are simply nice to one another. With its immediate fame and estimated 3.3 million unique visitors in the month of October alone, Pinterest has the potential to become one of the major players in social media in the upcoming years. 

Pinterest allows you to add a "Pin It" button to your toolbar, which makes pinning quick and simple.

Pinterest is not just a site for cutesy clothing and home-goods interests as some would claim, and has been underestimated in the professional sphere. While Pinterest is now female dominated, there is potential to attract more men to this site with different content that is more male-driven.

Pinterest can be used to promote your business and connect with clients, by creating an online community that ties your company brand to a lifestyle by relating common interests. The visual links that are displayed take you to another page where you can go to the domain where the link came from, therefore driving traffic to the hosting webpage. Pinterest also offers the ability to present your brand or company as you want your customers to view it. In addition, there is an opportunity for Search Engine Optimization (which we Whole Brainers love!) where you can embed your website link into the image, comments, or descriptions below the pin.

It is important to know who your target audience is, and whether this group can be reached through Pinterest at this time or whether you need to wait until the audience has been adopted by a broader audience. Another thing to consider is whether you can portray your company through images, or if you will have to adjust your current digital marketing campaign to include more images so that you can take advantage of all that Pinterest has to offer.

Easily add a "Follow Button" button to your webiste with this Pinterest provided tool.

Not convinced to try Pinterest yet?  Pinterest doesn’t limit you to pin images and products, but includes blogs as well!  Pinterest is a visual website, which makes it fast, easy, and simple to use; without using much time at all a user can look at multiple products, blogs and websites of interest. When you pin a blog that strikes someones interest, they can quickly click to your website, increasing pageviews.

As always, we keep an eye out for the best ways to use social media for our clients, so stay tuned for more information about new social media platforms.

What’s great is you won’t have to figure out the new re-design across the various devices.

The new menu and features are consistent across the desktop, iPhone, and Android devices.‘Home’ now offers more social info with each tweet that shows up in your Twitter Stream. News and updates from those you follow now include more social information, enhancing your social interactions.

Your profile section now has a more sleek and simple appeal. The layout is simple, yet clearly a substantial upgrade in design.

The newly added ‘Discover’ feature is a customized mash-up of news and social information, which has been acquired from your interests and trends. A compilation of news stories, follow suggestions, and hashtag trends will appear here.

‘Connect’ allows you to easily view your social interactions, including new follows, re-tweets, and @ mentions. Twitter is one of the most popular social hangouts; therefore providing all of your social interactions in one place seems like a long over-due addition.

The new redesign is being rolled out to users over time. When you get access to the new design spend some time getting acquainted with the new features. Android and iPhone applications have been upgraded as well – so don’t forget to update!

The Whole Brain Group offers social media workshops, including one just for Twitter! We’d be happy to introduce you to the wonderful world of social media!

[Images courtesy of Twitter]

1. Visibility on Google Search & ‘Direct Connect’Your Google+ business page will be featured organically in Google Search results, which is where we all want to be. If a new customer is searching for your brand, your Google+ business page is likely to appear on Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) – offering brand relevancy, and a higher likelihood of click-through’s to your page and website.

Google has also rolled out a feature called ‘Direct Connect’ (offered only to a handful of brands at the moment, but will become available to all business pages in the near future). Direct Connect works when people search for your business by typing a ‘+’, following your business name into Google Search. With Direct Connect, your business will be shown on the SERP, highlighting your Google+ business page first, with your logo & description. This allows for quick access to your business page, and encourages potential customers to interact with your brand.

2. Local Businesses Are Uniquely Showcased

Not all Google+ business pages are created equal. If you are a local business you can develop your business page to reflect this, with features that allow customers to connect with you more easily. Local business pages can include a local map, phone number, hours of operation, etc., so customers can more easily connect with the physical location.

3. Number of Interactions on Google+ is Growing

Google+ entered the social media arena, and it’s become clear that the social platform is here to stay. Since the social networks public debut, there are approximately 40 million users – a number which continues to grow.

A large number of users will have access to your business page, which will offer the ‘Add to my circles’ option, as well as a ‘+1’ button – each serving separate functions. ‘Adding to my circles’ will include your shared items in your followers news feeds. The +1 button is a value added option that allows for customers to show their stamp of approval (in the next few weeks, the +1 ticker will show all of the +1’s your website has received, in conjunction with Google+ page +1’s). Both options are great for your business, as well as your ‘Google juice’.

Having a presence on Google+ is equally as important as your presence on other social networks – indicating relevancy, and allowing for customer interaction and sharing. In the age where everything is becoming social, making your business or brand available in this space is increasingly more important. As your customers adopt new hangouts, it’s important to be there as well.

It’s quick and easy to set up your own Google+ business page, if you haven’t done so already. You can get started today by visiting plus.google.com/pages/create.

So how can I create positive links? While you can’t control what others say about you, you can control what you put online about yourself.

1. Take a look at your existing social media profiles, and ask yourself if you would be okay with how they appear to potential contacts.
2. If you are not happy with what they would see, take a few moments and do a clean sweep of your profiles, or consider making them private for friends and family. Private pages are most often seen with Facebook, and even Twitter.
3. Create a personal splash page to serve as an online business card. About.me and Flavors.me are the two of the most popular options. From this page, you can link to other online profiles, creating a one-stop shop for information about you – and controlled by you.
4. Create a Google+ account. Google has an 85% search engine market share, and as a Google property, the posts you create through this profile should show up near the top of the search results.
5. Create a LinkedIn profile, and link with reputable contacts and businesses.

Now, don’t be overwhelmed by this list. Most of us don’t have to worry about pushing down negative listings, and can get away with just monitoring the search of our name once a month. In general, you should be aware that anytime you write something online, it will always exist. So be thoughtful when posting.

As a business owner, you should also be aware of the brand your employees are presenting online. The Whole Brain Group can guide your company through this branding minefield, including, but not limited to, drafting a social media policy for your business, as well as its implementation.

Have you ever had to deal with negative posts written about you online? How did you deal with them?

There are many reasons for businesses to embrace social media – to increase sales, customer service, branding, and reputation management, to name just a few. This is a service that is very important to us at the Whole Brain Group. We regularly work with businesses to brand themselves – whether through blogging, social media, website design, etc.But how often do you think about the personal brands of yourself and employees? In this case, when we say personal brand, we are talking about a merging of two concepts – branding and reputation management. For many of us, branding isn’t something that we think about in terms of individuals, unless we are applying for a job. However, in today’s world, everyone should spend a little time monitoring their personal brand.

So, why you should care about your brand?

• 91% of employers search for applicants on social media sites
• Some business sectors are seeing over 60% of their leads coming from LinkedIn alone
• College admission offices search for student applicants on social media
• Your next date could be checking you out online

Now, are you ready to find out where you stand?

Start by doing an Internet search for your name. You should make it a practice to do this once a month. Make sure to search your first name and last name with quotes, and without quotes. For example:

Search 1: John Doe

Search 2: “John Doe”

You may also want to search for your name in conjunction with your location, or business.

“John Doe+Acme Company”

John Doe+Acme Company

Protip: Consider setting up a Google Alert with these parameters. The emails will be sent directly to your email inbox, and you won’t have to try to remember to do the search each month.

If you have a very common name, or share the name of a celebrity, consider it a mixed blessing. While you will likely never show up in the top search results for anything great that you do, it is less likely that you will show up if something negative is written about you. For those of us who have unique names, it is very important to be aware of what is being written about us.

Now, look through the first couple pages of results. You may find that your name is mentioned in a news article, on a petition you signed 5 years ago, or you may find nothing at all. The important thing to remember is that you want to know what is there, the good and the bad, so that you can react accordingly. If you see something negative about you, it will be very difficult to remove it from the search results. But what you can do is create more links that are positive and try to push negative listings down the search results page where it is less likely to be seen when a search is done of your name.

Next week: So, how do I create positive links?

The Leadership Series event takes place November 17, 2011. Spend the morning with the editors of Inc. magazine, and the business leaders of the Small Giants community for an informative and inspirational program. In addition to the Choices & Challenges panel, enjoy breakfast and coffee, 2 keynote sessions, and roundtable networking. Click here to register!

Here are 5 factors that can lead to search marketing success:

Appropriate Location Targeting:

A noteworthy feature when advertising with Google is their precise location targeting options. Applying Google’s default location settings can easily be overlooked. Whether you want to advertise globally, nationally, or by city, Google provides the option to advertise to a specific region, and can be different for each campaign. Adjusting location settings appropriately will help you avoid unwanted impressions and clicks, while ensuring that your budget is being spent in the right areas.

Linking Google Analytics to AdWords:

Google Analytics is a powerful tool that illustrates user behavior while on your website, which ultimately leads to a variety of action items that can be used to enhance your website’s content and maximize conversions. Google Analytics can reveal if your marketing efforts are working for you, where users spend their time, and dozens of other metrics.

If Google AdWords campaigns are functioning with a high Click Through Rate (CTR) and low Cost Per Click (CPC), but yet you’re not seeing any conversions, Google Analytics can help provide an answer to this problem. Analytics can reveal user behavior while both on and off your landing page, and provide the data you need to make informed decisions regarding content alterations.

Keyword Relevancy:

Keyword relevancy can be the key to keeping your costs low, and your visitors relevant. Populating ad groups with dozens of keywords can seem like an attractive choice when starting your first AdWords campaign, but in this instance, quality is more important than quantity. Keywords that are relevant to your business, correspond directly to your ads, and match landing page content, are pertinent to your conversion rate and to your success using PPC advertising.

Monitoring:

Google AdWords is not something that you can set and forget. To ensure that your advertising dollars are being spent effectively, monitoring your account’s performance is vital. If your website content changes frequently, monitoring campaigns will become even more important. If your content is consistent, monitoring is still important and will require the most attention in the beginning stages of the account. Account performance monitoring through Google AdWords’ metrics, in conjunction with Google Analytics monitoring will provide the most advantageous insight.

Landing Page Relevancy & Quality:

This is the most important factor if you want PPC advertising to work for you. Landing page quality plays into the Quality Score that Google assigns your ads & keywords. Quality Score is important to your ad positioning, frequency, and the amount paid per click. Striving for a high quality score is important, and having a relevant, strong landing page for your ads will help you get there.

Aside from Quality Score, landing page relevancy and quality is what will pull your visitors in and encourage them to convert, making landing page content extra important to consider. Landing pages should reflect exactly what is promised in the ad – if not, visitors are likely to exit on the basis that they did not immediately find what was promised. Limited text, no more than one page full of information, and an obvious call to action will help encourage conversions. Google also offers a tool called Website Optimizer, where you can easily test landing page variations to be sure your applying the best alternative.

Find out more about Pay Per Click Advertising and Google AdWords

Megan Cough joins the Whole Brain Group team in the role of Digital Marketing Specialist, managing integrated digital marketing campaigns, including social media, content development & blogging, search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search. Megan’s experience includes working in the Events Marketing Department for Borders Group, Inc., where she introduced the department to Twitter, and pushed the company into the world of social media for the first time. Since then, she moved from the brand side to the agency world, where she worked on social media and Pay Per Click (PPC) for clients such as MEDC Travel (Pure Michigan), Blio, National Association of REALTORS®, hiredMYway, and the Detroit Metro CVB.

Angelina Vergari joins the Whole Brain Group team as an Online Advertising Campaign Analyst, specializing in Search-Engine Marketing strategy and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. Through Pay-Per-Click account management & optimization, Angelina’s role is to increase web visibility for businesses, while improving their web traffic, and maximizing their ROI. Angelina has successfully developed & optimized PPC campaigns for a wide variety of local and national clientele, which has led to increased conversion rates, fresh leads, and increased sales for their businesses. Angelina has also worked for Eastern Michigan University, developing Google AdWords accounts for students and non-profit organizations participating in Eastern Michigan University’s hands-on search marketing courses.

“I’m really excited about adding these two great women to our team,” stated Marisa Smith, Founder of The Whole Brain Group, “Their skills and expertise have enabled us to offer more services that will drive even more business to our growing clients. Our right brains are energized by the results our clients are seeing from taking an integrated approach to their marketing efforts, while our left brains love seeing the numbers on their reports climb every month!”

About The Whole Brain Group

The Whole Brain Group takes a holistic approach to online marketing strategy, offering a variety of solutions to stay well positioned in the ever developing digital age. Our team of experts are committed to helping growing businesses develop and execute digital marketing strategies that complement company visions and turn them into sales results. We create websites that are mobile & search engine friendly, integrated with social media, and built with WordPress™ — so clients can control their own websites and quickly publish fresh content. We also provide consulting in social media, search engine optimization, and PPC advertising to maximize our clients’ website investment.