Most Common Business Mistake 2009

In 2009 the common theme we saw was Businesses not getting the right advise to manage their Online Marketing. This included upto date information on Twitter, Facebook, Keywords, Adwords, Google rankings etc...

Getting the right advise from the outset is essential - Would you get your builder to sell your house? Much better to ask a Real Estate Agent.

The same goes for online marketing, ask a marketing expert with the knowledge to achieve results. Our mission in 2010 is to help Businesses in New Zealand be more informed on how the online space can grow their business.

As competition increases on the web, Online Marketing becomes much more competitive and attention must be given to planning and getting the foundations right, a huge part of your business planning for 2010 needs to include this.

Ask an expert.

Tomorrow we will start our series of latest trends, pitfalls and predictions for 2010 - Online Marketing, Google, SEO, Adwords, Twitter, Facebook, You Tube.....

Optymise Has A Fling And Some Sex In The City

Lucy From Optymise recently stumbled upon some great marketing that did not quite make it. When people run competitions they always think through the offline marketing, then fall short when it comes to marketing online.

I watched my sister slowly turn red with frustration as she tried to enter the code from her fling chocolate bar and win a trip to New York which was positioned around the sex in the city movie.
2 minutes, 5 minutes, 20 minutes went by and she still had not found the website after typing in several combinations. In the end she had to guess the domain name... Most people would have given up by then.

This made me realize how little attention people pay to Search engine optimisation. All it would have taken to get this website into the search engines is the right keyword research, a little code on the website, and some backlinks... or an even easier solution would have been an online press release optimised for the search engines as well as main stream media (Optymise Specialises in These).

Watch my video and hear what I had to say.

Seo Web Design

Web Design is more then making something pretty with a few buttons, it needs to be built using form and function... But what does that mean... In short you need to think about how people are going to use and find your website.


There are so many people out there in a number of industries who do not get the most out of their website, they commission a designer or developer to design the site and put it up, then they add the URL to there business cards and advertisements... but they forget... search engines!

People are searching every day, every week, every year using certain keywords, they search 24/7 for solutions to help make their life easier... they could be looking for your service... but they can not find you in any of the major search engines google, msn, yahoo.

If you are not ranking for keywords related to your business and region on the first 2 pages of Google (the top 20) then you are missing out on hundreds of potential leads.

Solutions To Your Lead Generation Problems

So how do you make sure you market your website online and offline? Build a website that works, make sure you commission a search engine optimised website, if you already have one and you can not find yourself in Google, then employee the skills of an online marketer. Optymise Specializes in Keyword Research, Search Engine Optimisation, and Search Engine Marketing... We decode the acronyms so that you do not have to and much sure your customers and future customers can find you!

Contact Us Today For More

Ecommerce on the Rise in New Zealand

Hi all,

It's hard to believe we've reached February already, but it's already turning into a great year for online businesses. Ecommerce is on the rise in New Zealand, and we also offer some Social Media Success tips for 2008.

Happy reading!

Until next month,
Robyn.


Ecommerce on the rise in New Zealand

If you're in the business of selling, you'll be interested to hear murmurs of massive growth in online shopping within the New Zealand marketplace.
In the year to April 2007, over 1.2 million New Zealanders shopped in online stores, to the tune of NZ$1.5 billion dollars. Of these, more than 400,000 Kiwis regularly visit online shops, making six or more purchases over the twelve month period. This is an increase of 700% over the last five years.

And what do we buy online? Most of our online dollars go on airline tickets ($508 million), travel service ($233 million) and computer hardware ($233 million). The fashion industry has shown the greatest growth, with clothing and footwear sales online increasing by 886% within five years, to reach a total of NZ$149 million.

Whether your business provides goods or services, you can harness the power of ecommerce and the trend towards online shopping.

Source: NZS

10 Steps to Social Media Success in 2008

#1 - Connect. Add 2 contacts per week on either LinkedIn or Facebook. It's a great way to connect with people and get opportunities flowing. If you simply add 2 people per week that will be 102 new people per year that are in your network and who you can possibly work with.
Time Spent: 1 hour per week.

#2 - Master a Forum. Find one active forum (check to see how often people are posting) in your niche and create a real profile there. Introduce yourself and get involved - use the private messaging features to introduce yourself to other influential members (DON'T sell). Once you have made contributions, then feel free to share your products or services with the other members of the forum.
Time Spent: 2 hours per week.

#3 - Cut Down & Move Up. Get rid of most of the blogs in your feed reader. Unless you are running a site that relies on that latest news, you probably don't need to read hundreds of blogs each day. Instead, focus on a handful in your industry that are viewed as highly influential. Comment at least once per week on each of those. After a month, email the author to let them know how much you enjoy their blog. When you have something good that you are looking to build links to, email them. It's no longer a "cold-call" now.
Time Spent: 5 hours per month. Time Saved: 10 hours per month not reading everything.

#4 - Meet a Digger a Day. Spend 15 minutes per day (during the week) contacting a new person from Digg via instant message and forging a bond. You can usually locate this information right on their profile page and add them to your IM program. This simple task will do more for your chances of success at Digg than anything else you can ever do. Most of the active diggers also have profiles on a lot of the other social networks, so you are killing many birds with one stone.
Time spent: 15 minutes per day.

#5 - Get Universal. Take advantage of Google Universal with video optimization. Create 1 video for your business and put it on YouTube. Build links to it. Hey, if a chiropractor can do it, so can you.
Time Spent: 5 hours to create the video and 5 hours to get links to it.

#6 - Think Globally. For each submission that you make to Digg or reddit - use the same exact title and description and translate it to Spanish and submit to meneame (a "Spanish digg") and Scoopeo (a "French digg"). You'll be surprised at how much traffic and links they can generate (and you don't even have to translate your content). Use a quick translator to make this super easy.
Time Spent: 10 Minutes Per Submission.

#7 - Focus. Stay away from the over-hyped, all-purpose social networks that don't drive traffic or influence people. They are out there and they want to suck your time up. Don't let them. If they can't get you decent traffic or links, don't waste your time. This is why it's so important to track your work closely and make sure you see where results are coming from.
Time Saved: Countless Hours.

#8 - Answer. Answer 5 questions per day in your niche on Yahoo! Answers. Link drop to one of your sites every 5th answer. Time Spent: 15 Minutes per day.
#9 - Join the Conversation. Once per day, use a tool such as Google Blog Search or Serph to search for your name and your company. See where people are talking about you and join in on the conversation.
Time Spent: Varies on your company, but should be less than 20 minutes.

#10 - Year in Reviews. If you own a business or work for a client that does, there's a good shot that user generated reviews can play a big part in your life. Find out all of the places that are featuring your company and create a review there. Whether it's Amazon, Epinions, Yelp, CitySearch or Google Local, they should all have reviews of your company from the people who know it best.
Time Spent: 15 minutes per review + 5 minutes per day asking customers and contacts for reviews.

By embracing this holistic approach to social media marketing, you can accomplish so much for your business and spend less than five hours per week doing it. By sticking to core basics like this you will have a strong blueprint for social media success in 2008!

Source: Search Engine Land