The Future Of Publishing Is On The Tablet, More Opt-In Forms, You’re Weird

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Welcome to The New Social SEO Podcast. I’m your host Robert Dempsey, the CEO & Founder of Dempsey Marketing. If you’re not familiar this show it’s a weekly update on what’s new and working in the worlds of direct response marketing, social media and search engine optimization.

And speaking of search engine optimization, before I get into the news I want to extend a free offer to you. If you want to know where you rank for your #1 keyword, the one most important to your business, and see your ranking in relation to your competition, head on over to YourFreeSEOReport.com and get your free SEO report.

As always I’ll provide links to everything I mention on TheNewSocialSEO.com. I welcome your comments on the episode posts as well, and expect them. Please join in!

So without further ado let’s get started.

The World Is Your Oyster But You Only Want The Pearl

Seth Godin recently published his newest book, “We Are All Weird” and let me tell you it could not be more spot on in terms of putting into clear terms the massive global cultural shift that we are in. I’ve mentioned it in previous podcasts and will continue to annoy you talking about it because it is the most significant event of our time and we’re only in the beginning.

In “We Are All Weird” Seth talks about the failure of the currently entrenched factory system and mass marketing. Why the fall? Choice and connectivity. People today demand choice – they want something that fits their unique style or that of their tribe. They want it how they want it, when they want it, and where they want it. And they are connected with many others that feel the exact same way.

Tribes are more connected than ever before. If I’m fanatical about a specific gadget, hand lotion or bird watching I can seek out and find others like me. And once we meet we don’t want mass marketed crap, we want stuff that’s just for us.

And so does everyone else.

I’m 75% done with the book but so far the two most pertinent points Godin has made are from these direct quotes:

The first is this:

“Many enjoy the social dimensions of involvement, but what they really want is to have impact. Most have felt proud of a group they belong to in the past year and just under half say they accomplished something they couldn’t have on their own.”

And the second is:

“As the market gets increasingly addressable and non-anonymous though, the efficiency gained more than makes up for the small size of the market. Instead of reaching 5 percent of the geeks in your segment, the combination of permission marketing and the connections of tribes might permit you to reach 20 percent. The market might be far more specialized (and thus smaller), but your share is bigger.”

He also mentions mobile playing a large part, but not in the format we currently see where if you stroll by a Starbucks you’ll get a coupon texted to you – that’s far too mass. No my friend it’s time to go seriously niche and work it hard.

Trying to go after everyone is a losing proposition for every business owner. And while it may seem like you’re going to lose out the reality is quite the opposite.

This is the advice Seth gives and the advice I’ve been giving to our clients for years.

And speaking of our clients, let’s talk about what’s working at Dempsey Marketing this week.

What’s Working From Dempsey Marketing

I received a very excited email from a client who’s site we recently launched. Within a single day they received two leads – one from the website and one from a phone call. For a business that launched their new site less than two weeks ago this is awesome. Very fast results. Now what you can learn from this.

One of the biggest issues I find with many business websites is that they completely lack a method of capturing leads. And I’m not talking about having a contact form. A single contact form is about as effective as a single can of mace in a zombie apocalypse – it’s pointless to even have it and it’s just going to piss people off.

The lesson is this – have many lead capture forms on your site. When I say “many” what I mean is that just about every page of your website should have a contact form on it. And if it doesn’t, it had better link to a page that does.

The more the better.

This significantly increases the chances of you capturing a new lead.

So if you don’t have a lot of forms on your site, and can know exactly which one a lead filled out to get in touch get on that, like right now.

Alright, that’s the big lesson this week, and it’s getting extremely fast results. Let’s talk about mobile marketing.

Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is becoming my new favorite thing. I’m seriously tempted to get an iPad 2 but I’ll wait until the 3 comes out with all the fancy cameras and whatever the hell else it has in it. Until then I’ll share my wife’s iPad 1. It works.

Now here’s why I’m so excited about mobile today.

I constantly tweak our website. But something about the experience of using the site just seems lacking. And after watching a free webinar on digital publishing from Noble Desktop I figured it out – digital magazines.

I don’t know if you’ve seen these things but they are re-inventing the magazine experience. Imagine a magazine on your tablet that has video, audio, picture slideshows and more. And for advertisers the potential is huge! True multimedia ads, something only possible on the television, is now possible on tablet computers. I’ve seen 4 page ads that incorporate video and audio. They are much more fun than the standard crap we’re served, and the impression lingers. According to Martha Stewart Living, advertisers in their digital edition have noticed a 40% increase in brand recognition. That’s huge. And with that I have an announcement.

I’m happy to announce that beginning in October we’ll be publishing the Dempsey Marketing Magazine. This will be a paid digital magazine that will take what you read on the Dempsey Marketing blog to the next level. You’ll get things like marketing and sales tips, specifics on how to implement many of the things we do for our clients in terms of analytics, lead generation and lead nurturing, and much more.  As an example, in the beginning of this podcast I talked about opt-in forms. What I didn’t tell you was what words are getting people to sign up, layouts of lead generation pages or button text. It’s that kind of hard core information that will be available in the magazine.

We’ll have text, video and audio. It’s going to be freaking awesome. And it won’t be free. Just an FYI.

So look for that October 2011.

Now here’s the data behind why we’re adding a digital magazine to the mix and you should too:

Earlier this month the International Data Corporation released a report that said by 2015 there will be more U.S. Internet users accessing the Internet through mobile devices than through their computers or other wired devices. 2015 isn’t that far away. This follows increased smart phone and tablet sales, and the estimated 40% growth of the mobile market for each of the next 5 years we talked about before.

And speaking of tablet computers, Amazon this week released the Kindle Fire. This $199 device has a touch screen, wi-fi connectivity, and it’s own web browser. Jeff Bullas wrote a great post about the implications of this device for Google as well as Apple. Apple has been dominant for years with iTunes, but Amazon sells a lot of stuff and has been getting into music and more. This device positions Amazon to directly compete with not the iPad but iTunes – the Apple distribution system.

Gizmodo had a different kind of post about the Kindle Fire, suggesting that the rumor mill is saying the Fire is only a “stopgap” before they release the real one.

Well we’ll see about that. Either way it’s getting even more interesting and competitive folks, which is good for we consumers and businesses.

But make no mistake, this isn’t just a consumer thing here, this is serious business.

EMarketer reports that B2B buyers research purchases on multiple devices. It breaks down like this:

• 59% use a smart phone to access email and the web
• 46% regularly follow discussion forums linked to their industry
• 35% use LinkedIn
• 31% regularly follow blogs linked to their industry
• 24% listen to podcasts
• 13% use Facebook

That means if you want to connect with your buyers you need to have a mobile optimized website, be active in discussion forums and LinkedIn, blog on a regular basis, publish a podcast, and to an extent be on Facebook.

How many of those things are you doing? If you need help with it drop me an email at robert at dempseymarketing dot com and we can talk about it.

Now speaking of social media…

Social Media

The last two weeks Facebook has gotten a lot of press over their latest update. Some people love it, some hate it and left for Google+. There is no doubt that automatic sharing is a HUGE FAIL and not good for privacy. That alone makes me want to leave if I didn’t have clients using Facebook. But perhaps it doesn’t matter what I think.

Business Insider reported this week that the time spent on Facebook is through the roof. According to the post, U.S. Citizens spend roughly 16% of their total time online on the site. So let’s put that in perspective. If you’re the average Internet user I think reports say you spend around 15-20 hours per week online. Let’s be conservative and say 14, that would be 2 hours per day. That means that if you’re one of these Facebook people you’re spending 2.24 hours of your week on Facebook.

Now that I think about it that doesn’t sound like that much, compared to how much time I spend. I don’t know.

Hey if you’re a Facebook user send me an email at robert at dempseymarketing dot com and let me know how much time you spend on Facebook. I promise not to tell anyone your name.

In other social media news Google+ now allows you to share your circles with other people. Circles are the way you group people on Google+, and there are a million ways you can do it. That means there’s no best practice, just do what feels right and makes it easy for you. I link to a TechCrunch article that has a video on how to share your circles if you’re into that kind of thing.

Alright that’s it for social media this week let’s talk SEO and direct response.

SEO

Every Friday SEOMoz posts a Whiteboard Friday video. This past Friday the video was an SEO checklist for new websites. I’m getting long with this episode so if you’re listening to this in iTunes or on your computer head over to TheNewSocialSEO.com where I link to the video. It’s well worth the 15 minutes it takes to watch it.

Direct Response Marketing

The HubSpot blog had a post this week with 9 A/B tests mere mortals can use to increase leads. The 9 they mention are:

That’s more than a few scratches at the testing surface there and a great place to start. Remember when using A/B testing, otherwise known as split testing, that you don’t change too many elements at once, otherwise you might now know what really made the difference.

And with that story that is it for this week’s show.

Remember to head over to YourFreeSEOReport.com for your free SEO report. Also please do leave thoughts and feedback on the post at TheNewSocialSEO.com site and let me know if you have any questions I can answer on a future podcast.

I’m Robert Dempsey of Dempsey Marketing, and I will see you next time. Thanks for yours.

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