Using Blogs and YouTube as Social Media Channels

Inappropriate use of Social Media channels can be a waste of time

One of the best media to use to gain visibility and visitors to your website is to engage in Blogs and You Tube.  But its not appropriate for every product or audience. The value in using social media channels lies in the effectiveness and delivery of marketing message or narrative via the right channel.  Using inappropriate channels for your message with only cost you time and resources for no appreciable result.

Most marketers focus upon two major concerns; HOW do they make money for their organisation and WHY do some marketing channels make more money that others.

When social media channels were first introduced every marketer adopted this new marketing concept and exploited the possibilities to solve their HOW and WHY concerns.  Some notable organisations claimed spectacular results.  However, engaging in Social Media marketing is a challenge particularly in integrating it into a companies existing marketing plan and to meet company expectations on profitability, and it’s not for everyone.

Most marketers do not understand the dynamics that social media may not be the appropriate medium to engage for the promotion of their product or service.  There are characteristics and special audience requirements to consider for each social media channel that will be discussed in this article for blogs and social media.

Most large organisations in the market place, activity engage in Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn but, in most cases, the promotion only accounts for less than 1%-2% of total revenues.  Good Marketing Agencies warn Website owners should be aware and avoid being tempted by assertions that claim immediate and extraordinary success. 

Is Social Media Right for Your Organisation?

 There are some pre-requisites required before you engage in social media:

1.know thyself – know your enemy as well as yourself

2. Know your goals – have clear, achievable and measureable metrics 3. Know your limits – set parameters and do not exceed them.

 Once your organisation has answered these questions, then all organisations should ask themselves and develop four fundamental questions.

•  Is engagement in social medium right for my organisation?
•  What is the appropriate match of social medium to my marketing message?
• Develop a four step social media strategy appropriate to the product/message?
• Develop appropriate metrics for measurable and growth.

Companies and organisations should adopt a reality check and not get drawn into the latest and greatest money earning fade pushed out by so called experts that cite how Dell Computers made $6.5m using Twitter which when compared to a turnover of $61b is 0.01% of revenue – not very significant as incremental revenue. Perform a reality check and ask yourselves is this right for me. Decide what time, labour and budget will be allocated and do a “reality check” on the benefits.

The Intent of Social Media Channels 

Social media channels like Face Book, Twitter and LinkedIn were never intended to be a marketing channel – they were created for like-minded people to share like-minded experiences and referrals and not for marketing campaigns – although some recommendations from friends, fans and followers do originate from social media  that convert into sales but they are in small and insignificant numbers. 

Although these incremental sales might be useful but do come at an expense in time and resources.  LinkedIn was conceived as a professional job seeking channel, Twitter was conceived as a immediate sharing experience focused on the immediacy factor.  The exception is Google.  Google + (Plus) was created as a marketing tool and is having a hard time establishing itself in the marketing place because of that. Punters in the social sphere are not yet ready they want to give advice, recommend to friends, fans and followers and share superior knowledge. Likes are not sales.

Top Social Media Challenges

A survey was conducted by SEO Synovation the web marketing agency during July 2012 and asked 250 clients what was their top social media challenge? Survey results show consistent campaigns and integrating them into existing marketing strategy.

 When organisations activate their marketing messages to social medium campaigns they share four common characteristics:

1. Clear and consistent marketing messaging and what they offer the community

2. Progressive, gradual and timely development of a clear pathway to deliver the marketing message to the channel selected.
3. Ability to interact with their audience
4. Successfully planning the campaign distinguishes you from the crowd

Clear and Consistent Marketing Message

 

The marketing message is sometimes referred to as the internal narrative of the organisation. The board speak, the messaging of its representatives and the publicity language of its advertising departments and representatives that ll determine the marketing message. Examples of marketing messages or narratives are:

Nokia – the Finnish multinational communication and information technology giant has a simple, clear yet persuasive narrative: Connecting People.

Sony – the Japanese electronics group has a message that unifies all of its products into one innovative, clear and persuasive narrative: Make Believe.

Aston Martin – the British exotic sports car maker’s narrative sums up its product philosophy: Power Beauty and Soul.

The narrative used by Aston Martin is totally diverse to that of Sony and Nokia. The narrative is directed at an audience with totally different needs. Aston Martin focuses on the visual image whilst Nokia and Sony follow a features lead campaign to gain and master market share. This behaviour accentuates one important point: Social Media channels need reviewing in the different ways. Not all social media channels are equal as each carry inherent differences in communicating information.

The essence of social media is which channel will communicate who you are most effectively. Treating all social media channels equally to carry your message will just drain all your efforts, resources and budgets. So its best to identify first which medium will deliver the best results in communicating your message.

Blogs versus Websites as Social Medium Channels

Blogs are one of the best ways to communicate information and attract organic or natural search visitors. Websites do not change that often but blogs do or they should do. Blogs are more active and casual in presenting information and people tend to link to blogs as the information is usually current and up to date. Studies have shown that Blogs get more visitors than websites, get more links that websites, get more pages viewed and overall convert more that websites. From an SEO viewpoint blogs are fantastic for search engines to discover, crawl, index and return results to users’ queries.

Blogs Maximise Interaction

Blogs gain greater visibility than websites and as a consequence there is more interaction with your audience. Now here’s the conundrum. Which social medium do I choose to get the best possible results? The answer to that question lies in the type of interaction you wish to have with your intended audience.

The messaging and interaction could be one:

• To solicit support

• Announce research material

• To promote education

• To network with like minded people

• To present the latest news

You would use Blogs when you want to:

 Increase search visibility

 To build links for long tailed search terms

 To educate the market space and community within it

 Communicate high trust content

 To build lists for emailing and promotional purposes for higher conversions and reach

 To create brand value and equity

The way internet users begin to search the web for branded products also emphasis that Blogs are the best social medium to use. Studies (Emarketer May 2012) show that:

 57% use search

 20% via Brand Website

 18% via Retailer

 3% via Facebook

 2% via Twitter

Searchers Behaviour

A study by ComScore in late2010 discovered a prolonged buying pattern and buying intent from internet users than previous thought. The buying pattern of intent users has extended as users become more aware of what they want to buy, how to search for it on the web, and the specification of the product. The survey showed only:

 25% of searches are successful at the first attempt

 42% of all search queries need refining

 44% of all search queries postpone their intent to buy for more that a day, week or month

Email marketing has enjoyed a dramatic increase in usage as a result of using blogs to increase visibility. Blogs have been designed to capture email addresses due to the targeted, useful and pertinent content of the blog. There has been a dramatic increase of 28% (ExactMarketing 2010) and that‘s been dominated by mobile users at 41%.

The number one task a marketer, a sale person or an executive does every morning is checking his inbox. So that must be the best time to grab his or her attention. Get you promotion material to inboxes just before coffee time.

A study showed 58% of users check email while having their first cup of coffee, 20% checks their portal or search engine and 11% check Face Book. The study (ExactTarget 2010) went further and said:

 93% of internet users subscribe to an email or newsletter

 38% of face Book users subscribe to Brands

 5% of Twitter users subscribes to brands

Email is an incredibly strong medium when compared to other social medium channels and should not be overlooked in your overall strategy.

YouTube as a Social Media Channel

Although Google does not term YouTube as a search channel, preferring to call it a video search channel, it is nevertheless:

 The third largest website in the world

 The second most popular search engine in the world

 Gets four billion views every day

 Gets sixty hours of video uploaded every 60 seconds

 Three billion hours of video watched every month.

When do you Use YouTube as a Social Media Channel

There are enormous traffic flows into YouTube but when do you use it:

 To see it to believe it – good to demo new products and lastest gadgets

 To get highly visible traffic – good humorous videos get thousands of viws

 Portable video – copy and paste code to embed video onto websites, Face Book and other media

 Re-publishable – can present different layers of the same topic (repurposing). It may be easier for the video to rank instead of the website

 Influences search results by Google

 Presents content in different methods

 Extended reach – will reach out to multiple sections of the market place.

 Extended media content

When you combine YouTube as a social media channel with Google search your video and website will automatically gain greater visibility. Other benfits are”

 Increased rankings in search engine results

 Important additional channels for rankings and visibility

 Influences search results – captures attention

Is Social Media Right For Your Business?

Remembering that social media interaction although great for exposure and awareness brings little conversions and profits. Studies show around 2% of revenues is generated by social media channels. However it’s difficult to measure the impact that social media channels have on websites due to timing of a recommendation to visitors actually visiting the website as your analytics will show a direct brand query rather than from a social media referral. It has a place in your arsenal. It will bring results if used wisely and by directing your messaging via the most effective channel to maximise the greatest responses.

About the author

Vincent Sandford works for SEO Synovation a European web marketing agency helping small to medium sized organisation gain greater visibility in their market space. His passions are Search Engine Optimisation, Online Reputation Management and Internet Marketing, He writes for numerous blogs on Italian wine and food, and Real Estate.  

Improve Your Value Proposition

Your Value Proposition

By Vincent Sandford, Francesca Marchetti and Minke Oving of Seo Synovation 22 October 2012

If you had just ten words with which to describe why people should buy your company’s products or service, what would you say? Crafting a value proposition will improve your SEO and conversions.  Read on ....

In a recent Google video Maile Ohye in Five Common Mistakes in SEO said that a clearly stated value proposition will help you optimise your website. What is your value proposition? This critical question is challenging to answer, but doing so strengthens your marketing efforts.

Your value proposition whether spoken or written is one of the key indicators of your business that must be articulated simply, clearly, and very briefly.
But what is a value proposition?  
Why is it important to your business?
How can you find the right one for your business?

And can an existing company find a new value proposition?

Value propositions tell your prospective client or referral source in a clear and concise way what value you will deliver—how they will be better off after going through your "black box."

Your value proposition must articulate clearly, simply and forcefully key elements of exclusivity, appeal and credibility and minimise the negative impact of material cost.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of those marketing professional services cannot succinctly describe the value their service provides. They can describe what they do but not what the essential value is of their services. Most professionals will tell you they know what value they bring, but when asked to articulate its worth they need three paragraphs to describe it. By then, however, the listener has long lost interest.

Not only does a strong statement help you capture the attention of prospective buyers, but it also goes a long way toward differentiating you from your competition. The advantage will be yours if you can clearly communicate how the client will be better off because of you, as opposed to simply describing a transaction. In this post I will share with you my personal thoughts on what I believe are the essential elements of a value proposition.

What is Internet Marketing?

The essence of marketing is the message, and the essence of the message is the value proposition. Unless you understand how to form a clear and forceful value proposition you will be shouting nonsense in a crowded marketplace in order to achieve some semblance of an objective.

Your Value Proposition

The articulation of the value proposition emphasises the elements that most motivates your audience and emphasises with quantifiable data what matters most to your audience. These are critical issues designed to touch what matters to your audience. The value you give to your audience must be laden with specifics. The value proposition is about getting people to say YES, in reality it’s a series of micro YESes, to whatever you offer and the key to that is the force of value proposition.

I cannot address or give answers to specific audiences: there are too many. What I can share with you are the common denominators that increase conversions through a forceful value proposition and, more importantly how to weigh the value proposition more forcefully.

Stress the Values and Lessen the Costs

An essential factor in creasing conversions is to “stand in the mind” of your customers. That’s an important issue, and it can be expressed in this manner: you will increase conversions if the perceived value of your offer outweighs the perceive cost. In other words there must be more advantages, benefits and value in the offer that there are associated costs. When you meet your prospects expectations when landing on your website, when reading an email or browsing through an article, you will without doubt get a positive response.

The essential elements of value are: appeal, exclusivity and credibility.  The elements of cost are: the mental factor of motivation and the materiality of the offer.

Meeting your prospects expectations must be done within seven seconds of landing on your page. The first phase of one to two seconds is a moment of disorientation. The prospects lands on a page and scans it to find what he/she is looking for and its vital here to visually connect with the prospect immediately with a compelling headline and sub headline. This does two important things: 1. Halts unsupervised thinking and 2. It will grab your prospects attention. The second phase of two to three seconds involves moments of conversation. The prospect reads your headline and or sub headline and is interested to read on. You must further engage the prospect with a compelling opening paragraph that emphasises how you solve issues and the benefits you provide. This leads to the third and final phase of two or three seconds called exchange of value. In the content that follows in this phases you must emphasis the elements of value: appeal, exclusivity and credibility.

Each piece of content, whether it’s an email, a web page or a printed advertisement, must answer these questions:

i. Where am I?

ii. What should I do here?

iii. Why should I do?

Value propositions are fundamental to success. When constructing a value proposition you must first find the understanding of this question:

If I am your ideal customer why should I buy from you  rather your competitor?

This is fundamental because using the first person “I” puts you in the minds of your prospects and gets you to think about your prospects solutions. Using the word “why” is always followed by a “what”. This promotes expressions of value that must be stated clearly and simply.

Your company or product cannot be all things to all solutions. A true value proposition is cognitive and accepting of trade offs. You can’t serve everyone and you can’t be the best solution to everyone. In fact choosing your customer set by market or customer segmentation is the surest way to develop your best solution.

A value proposition must be framed within the challenge of a competitive environment. If you are not unique in one dimension of value (appeal, exclusivity and credibility) then you don’t have the potential to be the best solution as the internet has positioned itself for many of us to be one click away into cyber space never to be found again.

About the Authors.

The Staff at SEO Synovation's office in Italy




Francesca Marchetti, Minke Oving and Vincent Sandford are Search Engine, Search Marketing, Link Building and Online reputation Experts at SEO Synovation a European based web marketing Agency based in The Netherlands, the UK and Italy.

SEO Synovation helps small and medium sized organisations drive more traffic to their websites to increase their conversions. They can be contacted by telephone +31 592 269 804 or +31 6 428 73 480 or +39 334 990 3867. Or email thebest web marketing agency in Europe







Website Optimisation After SEO

It seems a little strange to optimise your website after a search engine optimisation project but you must remember that is a never ending process.  If you have completed your SEO, engaged in inbound marketing in all its elements and haven’t achieved your goals now you should  concentrate on Conversion Optimisation.

Off Page Search Engine Optimisation Part Two

This post is the first in three separate posts explaining more on website optimisation after you have completed a SEO. In a previous post called "Off Page Search Engine Optimisation" I described how Google ranks website, how search engines return search queries and gave a few tips on inbound marketing tactics.

Now is the phase in the project to explore what happens next continuing along this never ending journey of website optimisation. The most important topics now to focus upon after you’ve completed your SEO project and engage in communicating with your customers are:

• Conversion Optimisation
• Revenue Generation
• Engaging with Customers.

 Conversion Optimisation

 The rest of the post is concerned with Conversion Optimisation. I take a different standpoint when I look at conversion optimisation. I focus upon a holistic view of the process path. A taditional approarch might be this:

While the traditional approach may centre upon analysis of the sales funnel and the leaks that exist from the moment a prospect enters the funnel and then drops out at various stages in the cycle, I focus upon four tactics when I review a conversion optimisation and these are:

 

Tactic 1 - Craft your marketing messages around your value proposition.

Tactic 2 – Maintain cognitive momentum in every step of your sales process.

Tactic 3 – Never underestimate the power of a value based headline.

Tactic 4 – Use testing as a means to developing your customer profile.

 Tactic 1 Craft your marketing messages around your value proposition.

The essence of marketing is the message. The essence of the message is the value proposition. And unless you’re able to articulate your value proposition clearly, concisely and forcefully you’re lost in the crowded market place. The goal of a message on a website or in an email is to get a click to a sign-up form, to the buying process or to a newsletter and in so doing you need to stress value in the click.

How do you craft a forceful value proposition?

Scientifically, a value proposition can be expressed in a formula that simply says the net force of a value proposition is the perceived gross force of the perceived value less the gross force of the perceived cost.

pNf = pNv - pNc

 

It is in the mind of the prospect his/her perception of value exceeds the perceived cost.

pNv > pNc

There are subsets of this to consider. We are dealing here with perceptions, human nature and individuals with different attitudes and values. However there are common attributions that we, as humans, share about perceptions of value.  These common attributes are:

• appeal
• exclusivity
• clarity
• credibility 

If the value is appealing and exclusive, and it has been expressed with clarity with credible language, as humans we will probably convert and buy. If you then combine these factors with incentives and high motivational factors but lessen the anxiety and or frictional factors in the buying process then you have a winner strategy. Not easy but can be applied to your marketing message.

Tactic 2 – Maintain cognitive momentum in every step of your sales process.

Conversion optimisation must be looked at as a holistic process from the moment the prospect visits your website to the moment he leaves it after buying or not. The process steps of a visit to your website may be defined as:

• Clicking on a paid ad or entering the site
• Reading the landing page or the Home page
• Clicking on the buy button or call to action
• Completing the buy form
• Processing the purchase procedure

 Your value proposition must be re-said, re-emphasised, and repeated at every steps of the process to confirm the buying decision. That is what I call emphasising the derivative level values of the central value proposition, the perceived value of the prospect, the product level proposition and the process level proposition.

In each and every step of the buying process there's a series of micro Yes’s that lead through the buying process to the ultimate YES of paying for the product or service or sign-up form or whatever the goal was. These series of micro Yes’s occur at different levels in the process, for example, on entering the site (central value proposition must be expressed), on clinking to move forward in the site (prospect level perceptions of value and incentive are working here), on clicking to purchase (product meets perception and anxiety is reduced) and at the buy stage (process levels are easy and friction is reduced). The value proposition must be stated at each level and this is to maintain the cognitive momentum.

Tactic 3 – Never underestimate the power of a value based headline.

There are two principles that every marketer must be aware of.

1. For every action you desire a prospect to make (a click or sign up) there must be an immediate promise of value that outweighs the perceived cost of that action.
2. Like the central value proposition, the derivative value propositions can be measured by its: appeal (desirability), exclusivity (availability), credibility (believability) and its clarity (understand ability).

 Webmaster should optimise websites for thought sequences of the visitors that manifests itself in appeal, exclusivity, creditability and clarity of the value proposition.

When crafting a headline there are two principles to remember:

1. All marketing messages must be centred primarily on the interests of the customer. Therefore when it comes to crafting headlinesemphasise what the prospects gets rather than what he must do.
2. The goal of an headline is similar to the opening scene of a film and thai is to arrest the attention and get them into the first paragraph. There utilise a point first structure that means place the value at the front of the headline.

Tactic 4 – Use testing as a means to developing your customer profile.

 

 

The internet is the biggest laboratory there is. It has billions of users to test all plausible scenarios.  However there are key principles to testing on the internet.
Key principle #1 – the goal of a test is not to get a lift but to get learning.
Key principle #2 – to achieve the maximum of learning your test should be designed around two key elements;

• A research question (always starts with “which” – e.g. which ad gets most clicks).
• A theory question (what does this test tell me around the behaviour of the prospect).

To assist you to formulate a good test it helps to remember the value proposition question: If I am your ideal customer why should I buy from you and not from one of your competitors? 

 Conclusion

Employing these four tactics will assist you in reaching a greater understanding of why you’re getting a series of micro Yes’s along your optimisation path of greater conversions. The process begins with a value proposition that should state what you do, what the benefits are and how you do it to enhance your prospects goals.

About the Author

Vincent Sandford is an SEO expert at SEO Synovation a web marketing agency for small and medium sized businesses in European markets. he may be contacted by email:  info@seosynovation.com.

 

 

 

 

 

Off Page Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be misunderstood but there is a methodology, even some would say, a science but it is, most of all, a process . You need to understand that an SEO project should include efforts in the two primary areas that contribute to a site’s search rankings by search engine algorithms:

1. On-Page SEO Factors: What search engine crawlers can discern from the content and structure of your site.
2. Off-Page SEO Factors: What search engines can determine about the linking structure of other sites, and the sites inter-related to those sites, in relation to your site.

On Page factors include optimising your site with original content, placing keywords related to your page in the Meta tags and good internal structure. SEO for off page factors have a wider definition but can be grouped together under one word: linking.

Google Ranking factors for Off Page Search Engine Optimisation.

Before I discussed some of the off page SEO tactics, you must first understand the factors that Google thinks is necessary to rank your website.

1. Number and quality of backlinks is very important. Google show you only a limited number of link (use this command link:www.yourwebsite.com to find competitor links). MSN show you more and Yahoo show you the most links of all the search engines.
2. Speed of acquiring links. Too fast seems artificial so to it slowly or you might get penalised.
3. Anchor text of the backlink must be relevant to the page linked to.
4. The age of the backlink is very critical; an older link shows stability of the website. However frequently changing the anchor text can damage your ranking.
5. Backlinks from directories like DMOZ, YAHOO, LOOK SMART can boost you rankings and provide good link juice.

The above are some of the most important factors Google tracks for ranking your website.

Off-Page Search Engine Optimisation

But where can you get good links from that Google will recognize. Here are some examples:

1. Social Networking Sites

Social Networking means getting involved with social media sites and is the fundamental step with which you begin to advertise your product or service, market awareness of your brand and build your online reputation within your niche. You need to sign up to the most popular social networking sites, such as; Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, etc., and create yourself a profile of your own.

2. Blogging

Blogging is one of the best ways to promote your website. Most blogs will give you a follow link that transfer link value as opposed to a no-follow link that doesn’t give you any link value. By writing a blog for your website, you give a reason for visitors to keep returning to your site and keep up to date with your latest posts. It also helps search engines to crawl your site more frequently, as they have to update your latest blog post entries, which ultimately helps you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). You need to produce and include lots of unique content for your blog, such as; Infographics, Top Lists, How To…Tutorials, and Viral Videos.

3. Blog Marketing

Post comments on other blogs within the same niche as yours, which allow you to add a link in the comments section. These links can then be crawled by search engines, helping to point them towards your site. These blogs are commonly referred to as “Do-Follow” Blogs (Just like ours, where you can comment below!).

4. Forum Marketing

Find forums online that are related to your sites niche and get involved within that community. Reply to threads, answer peoples questions, offer advice, etc. This all helps to build up your reputation as someone who is an expert within that niche. Try to use “Do-Follow” Forums so that you can include a link to your site within your signature, which helps search engines crawl your site.

5. Search Engine Submission

Search engines will eventually find your site online, but that can take a while. To speed everything up, you should submit your website to the most popular search engines like Google. Use Google Webmasters Tools and the functionality under the Heath section as “Fetch as GoogleBot.

6. Directory Submission

You should submit to general directories like DMOZ and Yahoo, but for maximum effect, you are better off submitting to niche directories as well. The results take longer to appear but they do appear eventually.

7. Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is another great way of promoting your website. Submit your latest blog posts and pages to the most popular bookmarking sites, like StumbleUpon, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, etc. Search engines really like these types of sites because the content on these sites is updated very frequently.

8. Link Baiting

Link baiting is another popular way of promoting your site. If you produce a really popular unique post for your site, then other people may want to link to it. If you have post the article on your website then that article will draw traffic.

9. Photo Sharing

If you have used any of your own photos or images on your site, then you can share them on many of the major photo sharing websites like Flickr, Picasa, and Photo Bucket. Other people will be able to see them and comment on them, hopefully following a link to your site.

10. Video Marketing

Just like photo sharing, if you have any videos that you have used on your site, then you can submit them to sites like; YouTube, Vimeo, etc. allowing people to find your content in other ways.

11. Business Reviews

Write reviews about others businesses or ask your friends/clients to write a review of your business in major business review sites like RateitAll, Shvoong, Kaboodle, and Stylefeeder.

12. Local Listings

Depending on your site’s niche, you might find that listing in local directories may be useful. You may have a website promoting your local business, therefore instead of going global and facing huge competition, listing your website locally, so that search engines can easily view your website and fetch the content, will be much better. This will help you to reach a targeted audience. Submit your website to sites like; Google Local, Maps, Yahoo Local, telephone Advertising Directories.

13. Article Submission

If you write your articles yourself, then you can submit them to popular article directory sites like; Ezine Articles, Go Articles, Now Public, etc. This can help drive traffic to your site, whilst you can also gain some links to your site from other people (though it’s usually a slower process).

Want To Learn More About SEO?

Then watch the video to grasp the essentials of search engine optimisation.  Alternately you can email me Minke Oving SEO and Online Reputation Manager at SEO Synovation.

We at SEO Synovation have a passion to help small and medium sized organisations reach their goals. Call us now.

Deliverables of Online Reputation Management?

Managing your reputation online is critical to business.  It takes many good deeds to build your reputation and only a slight indiscretion to destroy it. The services of SEO Synovation are typically geared for all types of businesses from the self employed one man operation to the multi-national company with packages to suite all budgets.  Read here the deliverables of an Online Reputation Management Project.

What are the deliverables of Online Reputation Management?

 Wikipedia describes online reputation management as:

“Reputation management is the practice of monitoring the reputation of an individual or brand, addressing contents which are damaging to it, and using customer feedback to gain insight or get early warning signals to reputation problems. Most of reputation management is focused on pushing down negative search results. Reputation management may attempt to bridge the gap between how a company perceives itself and how others view it.”

SEO Synovation helps clients identify the keywords or keyword phrases that are returning negative comments to search engine result pages. We freeze the search engine results at a date in order to focus our attention on the results to hide.

Requirements from Clients

To initiate and complete the project successfully SEO Synovation experts need the following data:
Keyword List - Keyword or keyword phrases that highlight negative comments
Company List - Company or organisation of related companies that may be affected by negative comments
Organisation Chart - List of all members, officers and employees of the company or organisation
Website List - Up to date of all websites related to the company or organisation that may or may not be affected by negative comment
Social Media List - Update to date list of social media profiles across all proforms
Content Marketing List - List of press releases or articles publish on the web
Directory List - List of directories carrying the company or organisations name.

Typical Online Reputation Timetable

Our Experience in Online Reputation

SEO Synovation experience in SEO, search engine optimisation, search engine marketing, Social Media, experts and Pay Per Click (PPC SEM) campaigns experts, creators of websites and defenders of reputations online, in five European countries (Italy, England, Holland, France and Germany make us a truly full service agency.

Usual project Objectives are to hide/push down (only method used) negative comments on the major search engines (Google, YouTube, Bing, Yahoo)for the determined keword or keyword phrases.

What Do You Get? Our Deliverables

Seo Synovation will deliver the following:

• Analysis of results in search engine result pages for the chosen keywords.
• Produce a detailed analysis of your situation and a strategy to overcme it. This is a document handout handed to the client for euro 750 plus tax
• Monitoring the results of search engines weekly basis, for each keyword phrase and search engine.
• Optimise existing websites and create other websites to rank above offending websites carrying negatives.
• Creation of blogs, Press Releases and Article to promote positive comments to rank above negative ranking comments.
• Engage in blogging, link building and video marketing to promote brand, company and products

Reputation Management Costs

Each project is unique and deserves the proper, full and expert analysis. It is important to tailor the costs to the gravity, extent and importance of the negativity. Our services are at three levels and costs vary.

1. We will submit a Strategic and Tactical Analysis.
2. We will execute the Strategic and Tactical Analysis.
3. We will maintain your online reputation in positive terms.

Our Reputation Management Approach

 Keyword rich organic seo development - As part of the project SEO Synovation will create relevant keyword rich websites, for example as:

www.yourcompanyname.com  or dot NL, DE, IT etc or whichever domain name can be applied
www.yourcompanyname.net
www.yourcompanyname.org
www.yourcompanynameblog.com
www.yourcompanynamenews.com
www.yourcompanynamereviews.com

Create 100% Original Content for All your keyword rich sites for improved ranking

 Seosynovation.com copywriters will create relevant content about your company and industry and then optimize your content to create relevancy and linking schemes for the best performance.

Seosynovation.com will deliver your newly created original content writing daily, weekly or monthly to your websites or blogs, depending on the package you select! Google loves new content so the more the better!

Press Release Distribution - Press Release Syndication
Seosynovation.com will use PR Powerblast press release distribution to keep your brand in the news all the time! There are many high ranking news sites and we make it easy for you to get exposure on all the top PR networks that can help with your reputation management program.

Online Reputation Management through social network marketing
Social networking sites especially the highly popular Facebook and the so-called micro-blogging platform Twitter form a significant part in a typical online reputation management plan. Both small and medium scale enterprises and large multinational companies are now reaping the benefits of effective social networking.

Link Building - Link Baiting - Directory Submissions - Local Profile Placements

Online reputation management can also be done through gathering feedback directly to consumers, suppliers, clients and even employees. Some of the best tools in gathering feedback include online survey forms, live web conferences and email contact forms.

Proactive Reviews Development

Improve Your Star Ratings on Google Places, Citysearch, Superpages, Yellowpages, Local Yahoo and many more! Building buyer confidence for your products and services are directly related to a health online reputation management program. We also provide Reviews Monitoring so you can know what consumers are saying about you or your company.

For further information contact SEO Synovation the Web Marketing and Online Reputation Management Company.

Brand Image

Brand Image is an essential ingredient in managing your business profitably. It’s not only manifested online but also in products and in the opinions of other market leaders. There is a very close relationship between the Search Engine Optimisation, SEO in other words, and building a brand image to enhance your online reputation. The techniques and the tactics adopted in SEO can be and are applied in defending and repairing your online reputation.

Premess

Say you are an ecommerce merchant or a multi national conglomerate with an angry customer. The customer is so angry; he posts bad, negative reviews on the Internet about your company that are not true. Your online reputation is damaged. Your brand image is dented. What can you do? How can you combat it? What would we do about it? When your online reputation is damaged there are four actions:

 Do nothing 

 Defend it 

 Repair it 

 Monitor it 

First you employ a specialist agency like ours. Secondly we will defend, repair and monitor your online reputation. Thirdly on your behalf we will create a strategy to repair your online reputation and lastly in the following paragraphs we will show you how we do it that and how that links to search engine optimisation projects. 

Our professionals at SEO Synovation can suppress those negative listings or reviews and push them back in the search engines, where no one is ever going to see them. Statistics show that 85 percent of online searches never go past the first page. We create positive, truthful and legal online messages so that harmful listings are never seen on page 1. This is often very effective. 

Personal Approach. 

Research shows that only 85% of internet users go beyond the first pages of search engine results. Our strategy and goals are to decrease the number of negative comments that appear on the first three pages of a search engine results page. We do this by attacking negative comments of three fronts:

Existing and future websites 

Engaging in Social networks 

Promoting the brand and product 

This is the same approach adopted by SEO Synovation for a search engine optimisation project. Our team of fifteen professionals based in five countries and operating in eleven markets have the accumulated experience of more than one hundred and fifty years in marketing, internet marketing and online reputation management. 

Our Principles 

Our activity is founded on four overriding principles that guide us through every project namely:

Legality – we respect the letter and the morality of laws in Europe and published Google guidelines. 

Honesty – we tell the truth and nothing but the truth and avoid ambiguity.

Transparency – we show clients what we do and what the consequences of actions are.

Privacy - what we learn about your company, patents, and forthcoming projects is never made public, is never discussed, and never mentioned in general terms unless expressly approved in writing. We will sign a confidentiality agreement to that effect. 

Tactics of Search Engine Optimisation and Online Reputation Management -typical tactics we employ to suppress negative comments: 

1. We will optimise existing websites. 

2. We will create additional, promotional and positive websites to increase visibility of product and brand. 

3. We will create blogs to positively promote the brand. 

4. We will proactively engage in social networks to positively promote the brand and respond to negative comments. 

5. We will create videos to promote on influential video marketing sites. 

6. We will create presentations to promote the product on sharing platforms. 

7. We will create photographs to promote the product on photo sharing platforms.  

8. We will re-write and re-promote articles detailing the performance of the product. 

9. We will create linking strategy and obtain links to increase visibility of product and brand. 

10. We will engage with News Contributors and post contributions about the products/service. 

11. We will create press releases to increase visibility of product and brand and decrease the effects of negative comments. 

12. We will engage bloggers to engage in opinion sites to express an alternative view to negative comments. 

13. We will publish and provide clients a monthly status report of activities performed and the status of negative comments for the keywords agreed for the projects.

When your online reputation is damaged there are four actions: 

a. Do nothing 

b. Defend it 

c. Repair it 

d. Monitor it 

Our professionals can suppress those negative listings or reviews and push them back in the search engines, where no one is ever going to see them. Statistics show that 85 percent of online searches never go past the first page. We create positive, truthful and legal online messages so that harmful listings are never seen on page 1. This is often very effective.

Personal Approach To Projects 

What separates SEO Synovation is the personal approach to removing negative comments. There is no standard approach. Each Project is unique. Each campaign has its own set of peculiarities, such as the gravity and structure of the comments, the authoritativeness of the sites from which negative listings are coming from, and the depth of negative listings in search engine results pages.  

Creation of New Content. 

We create and launch new websites with content often with competing content. There are many components in these campaigns and are just limited to creating new websites. SEO Synovation copywriters create compelling content, relevant to the industry and to the company itself. We work with businesses in all sorts of different industries and we know what the search engines are going to view as compelling and relevant.  

After consultation with the client, about the marketing message that they want to portray and the branding efforts they want to disseminate we write the content for them, and then we promote is on the through the different sources, as quickly as possible and in a way that is not going to be flagged by any of the search engine’s spam teams. Then we create a linking strategy to the content created to effectively strengthen their presence. 

Is Every Company Defended? 

We are not lawyers that neither defend reputations in court nor judge the legal consequences of acts. We take the situation as it presented to us and appraise it on two fronts:

A. Is the potential client performing an illegal act?

B. Is the situation repairable?At SEO Synovation we have a strict code of ethics that we work with That code of ethics basically states that if what we do is going to perpetuate a crime or what we view to be unrealizable in any way, shape or form, we will not take on the campaign.

Opinion Websites 

There are many consumer complaints sites, where individuals can post complaints about a company. Anyone can post a complaint on those consumer complaint sites, and they are often untruthful, libellous and unverified. Their sources are often an unscrupulous competitor, a disgruntled ex-employee or just an unreasonable client.  

These comments get exposure, often on page 1 of search engines result pages due to the fact that within the search engines ranking algorithms, the websites are relevant and high ranking, and provide users with a useful, pertinent and valuable experience. 

When these negatives comments are posted online there’s no way for the business owner to protect himself, unless they contact a company like ours, to give them control, and give them the ability to formulate the correct message about their business.

How much does the service cost? 

The cost of campaigns depends upon the gravity of the situation. Our lowest priced campaign starts out at €950 per month. Contact SEO Synovation to learn more or receive a no obligation and free check of your online reputation.

About Vincent Sandford and SEO Synovation 

SEO Synovation is an agency specialising in Search Optimisation,  Online Reputation Management and Web Marketing. We help businesses and individuals fortify their web  marketing and personal or brand names online. What we do is we give people control of their online reputation. We train them in techniques to monitor their own reputation and web marketing, become aware of what’s out there. We show them how to create an effective marketing message to accurately portray their image and use it to increase search engine rankings. 

SEO Synovation was founded in 1993 originally as Synergy Innovation, marketing and IT consulting group. Since 2001 it has expanded into web marketing sphere as DukCon, the search engine optimisation SEO market as MarcheRustico and in 2010 as SEO Synovation with special focus on defending online reputations to serve the expanding markets of Europe. We are headquartered in Assen, The Netherlands and have representations in The Netherlands, Italy and England. At present we are a group of 15 professionals providing Online Reputation Management, Web Marketing and Search Optimisation.