One of the benefits of running an SEO / PPC Management firm, is the access and insight we gain from managing our client campaigns. We get to test A LOT of campaigns. Whether it be within Adwords, Yahoo, Bing, AdBrite, Miva, 7Search or LinkedIn and Facebook. We test ‘everything’, on all networks.

To add, we consider ourselves pretty well versed when it comes to running PPC / Paid Placement campaigns. I mean, that’s what we do right? Given the experience our collective team has, and the number of campaigns we manage on a daily basis, you would think that an experienced, hard working team could make a campaign work on the largest social network on the planet. Unfortunately, not so.

The truth is : Facebook Ads, and the cost of paid social traffic, has such a low conversion rate that regardless of what we or any of the partner agencies we work with have tried, the overall CPA (Cost per Acquisition) is abysmal at best.

On average (across over 400 campaigns), we have found that an advertiser needs at least 10x as many clicks, to acquire a lead or sale. The problem however is that the click costs are not 10x less expensive.

Here are some of the reasons why we think this may be the case:

Targeting is So off target

If you have ever visited the LoveClients website, you will notice that our entire conversion funnel is focused on “chatting” with customers prior to signup. Given that the agency is open 24×7-365, there is always someone here to man the chat.

Now, if you have ever used live chat software, you will note that they almost always incorporate live visitor monitoring, allowing the operator to track precisely which geographic location, the visitor was referred from, here is what we see when using our live chat application (Blurred client names for privacy reasons):

So, when placing Facebook ADS, with the following targeting, why do we seem to attract visitors from Sweden, Italy, Japan and Australia:

• - who live in one of the countries: United States, Canada or United Kingdom
• - age exactly 23 and older
• - who like advertising, advertising executive, business owner, entrepreneur, entrepreneurship, independent business owner, lawyer, marketing, marketing manager, marketing sales, sales, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo, small business, website design, website developer or women owned business
• - who speak English (UK) or English (US)

Screenshot from within Facebook Ads:

Facebook Ads are Interruptive

With a search campaign, if you target your audience, keywords and Ad Creative correctly, then there is a very high chance, that the visitor is specifically seeking information about the product or service the advertiser offers. Though with a Facebook AD campaign, the only real targeting is by demographics, it is interruptive advertising.

Search Marketing is a solution finder, Facebook Marketing is not.

ADS really do not belong in a social environment

In the real world, nobody likes to be sold to. Especially not from your friends, or in the middle of a social activity. By its very nature, Facebook has become a virtual social outlet, what we like to refer to as the ‘procrastinator’. Admit it, we all spend A LOT of time looking up our ex girlfriends/boyfriends on ‘The Book’. The issue however, is whether you are really in the mindset to buy a new phone, book a trip, or order flowers in the middle of perusing through photos of what your work colleague just had for lunch.

Regional Targeting is all wrong

Working in a global agency like LoveClients, I travel between 4 continents on a quarterly basis, rarely do I spend more than 30 days in one place, and seldom do I get the chance to get back home to visit friends and family. Home, being Australia.

To add, I haven’t lived in Australia for over 6 years, though that is where I set up my Facebook account. My country and city are set to the UK in the settings, though I continue to see ads like the one on the left. Why am I exposed to Hyundai Australia ads? I do not live in Australia, nothing on my settings states I live in Australia, so why would I be seeing Australian ADs constantly? Surely the ad planners at Hyundai couldn’t be that silly to target an AU based campaign to a global audience. This adds fuel to the point I made above, we attract visitors from the wrong regions even when we explicitly specify them in the Facebook AD panel.

What my friends/family like, isn’t really what I like?

Most of the people on my facebook are old friends from back home, the occasional acquaintance I meet in my perpetual travels, and an ex boyfriend or two.

The only thing we really have in common now days is the location where I grew up, but not much else. I mean, do we really still have things in common with a kid you shared lunch with in the 3rd grade?

As adults we inevitably grow apart, partake in activities and interests that are more suited to our individual likes and dislikes. So just because my friend Harold whom I haven’t spoken to since 1991 likes Dear Pringles, I cannot fit my hand inside your tube of deliciousness, I’m not sure that really translates so much to me wanting to purchase pringles anytime soon. (Am I the only one who despises the smell of pringles?).

Facebook needs to completely up their game if they intend to compete with the likes of Google or Microsoft for share of local Ad Spend. SEO Agencies like LoveClients are the gatekeepers for a lot of their potential clients, but if the relationship-gatekeepers can’t make campaigns profitable; we can’t continue to recommend that our clients spend on the platform.

Of course this isn’t web or blog content, but rather just business or personal emails we send back and forth. But can we ever use any of it as content for our sites?

Indeed we can.

The Value of Author’s Letters.

I’ve been reading Norman Mailer’s letters recently, and it occured to me that he made dozens of great points, observations, and arguments while writing to friends and editors. This is normal–we often say great stuff in our emails, too (probably not as great as his, but hey).

But it’s not really publishable, per se—it’s generally only great authors who get that privledge, and thank god, because reading through people’s random emails would be an atrocious task.

But what about the few times we do write something truly memorable in an email? An anecdote, a product review, a recounted experience—we send a lot of these things to each other. I tell various stories in a ton of different contexts: flickr captions, google reader shared item comments, my photoblog, and in emails, too.

Many of the best things I’ve ever written are likely buried somewhere inside emails. If I were running a business, surely I’d have sent many good thoughts and observations on my business out to various friends and associates. Keep that part in mind while I tell you a story.

My Friend and his Duplicate Emails (He’s Proud of Them).

I’ve got a friend who admitted to a strange practice: when he tells an anecdote that takes more than a few lines in an email, he’ll often copy and paste the whole thing into other emails when someone asks about it.

After a few seconds of personalization, that second (or third, or fourth) recipient gets the great anecdote too.

Why not just make it into a blog, you might ask? Well, a blog changes things: it’s automatically more public, and it has a frontend that requires more work than just firing off an email. This is changing, of course, but updating a blog still isn’t really as easy—for most of us—as sending an email.

How to Keep Track of Your Finest Email Moments.

So let’s say we want to keep track of our greatest e-mails, those moments of prosodic excellence where we’ve written something truly great and might want to see it again in the future, or perhaps even use it. Is there a way we can keep track of this stuff, and quickly and easily turn it into published content?

Tracking isn’t much of an issue with something like GMail: just create a tag called “content” or whatever you’d like, and any time you notice you’ve written something that might be useful elsewhere, give it that tag. Every once in a while, go through your ‘content’ tag and see what you can find.

Getting All That Good Writing Online, Somehow.

So how do we get it online? Obviously we could just copy and paste it to our blog, but there’s a new service that makes this even better: it’s called Posterous. It’s been catching on recently among a few high-profile bloggers, and its mission statement is simple: blogging through e-mail.

It’s microblogging, much like tumblr offers (they too offer e-mail postings), but with a real focus on posting from your inbox as the primary way of getting content online.

A Practical Way to Make This Work for You.

Let’s pretend you’re running a blog and company website that promotes your independent printing shop.

Every once in a while, you write a great email to a friend, extolling the glories of letterpress, or talking about a new printer you just brought in, or talking about what a pleasure it was to finish a particular job.

As you know, getting interesting content (you don’t send deadly-boring emails, do you?) like that online is invaluable for several reasons:

• it keeps potential customers on your site,
• makes your business far easier to optimize for search engines,
• and increases the chances that other people around the web might enjoy something you write and link to it, thereby greatly increasing your traffic—and potential sales.

So try this out: setup a quick blog on Posterous. They’ve just taken the extra step of not requiring even a sign-up in order to create an account—you can just email their post@posterous.com address directly and within a few seconds you’ll have a subdomain and an account.

Then, every time you write something good in an email, take a few extra seconds to forward that to the posterous email address. You’ll already be in your e-mail client, so there won’t be much of a time commitment to speak of.

Then, just feed the posterous RSS into your main blog (you can do this through posterous or—likely—through your blogging platform too), and you’ve instantly got another way to add content to your site directly from your inbox.

If this Posterous Idea Makes Things Too Complicated, Not to Worry.

I didn’t want this article to sound like an ad for Posterous—we’re not affiliated in any way. But I like the site.

And I was just using it as an example of how simplified blogging tools are getting. What’s really important to take away from this article is this: if you are at all a writer, if your emails occasionally contain great bits of information about your business, life, or anything that might serve you well if published online, take advantage of it! Don’t just let that content be for one person—edit it a bit and put it to work for you.

Obviously these questions matter for anyone trying to make money using different forms of content distribution, whether it be advertising in a local newspaper or taking out new ad space on YouTube. But what matters even more is how these new forms will actually affect the content itself. Let’s look at a few recent ideas and see what they can tell us.

Marshall McLuhan Is Still Pretty Damn Important.

Now, if you remember nothing else from this pioneering Canadian media theorist, just take his most famous aphorism: “the medium is the message“. It’s since been tweaked and refuted and played with so many times as to lose some of its original meaning, but in general, you can take it to mean form affects (or is) content.

Look at the Kindle, for example. The world’s biggest online bookseller has now entered the hardware game, creating a device that is designed to replace the very book form itself. And of course Amazon, being a huge seller of books, is hoping to control and monetize as much of the distribution method as possible. It’s very much along the lines of Apple’s iTunes store: create a device that a lot of people buy, then offer an elegant solution to sell content for that device.

Why Comparisons With the Music Industry Aren’t Always Perfect.

But comparisons with the music industry don’t work after a certain point: formats have changed quite frequently in the last several years, from vinyl->tape->CD->digital. Books have been the same for hundreds of years. So any time we get over-excited about the death of print, we need to step back and look at the longer view, like Dave Eggers suggests:

Eggers has a point. But there are some very convincing arguments to the contrary, and as Apple has proven, if a device good and useable enough comes out, enough people will buy one that it can change an entire industry in the course of a few years. But we do need to remember: completely ignoring print and assuming that a declining readership means a non-existent readership just isn’t a good idea.

A Microcosm For Us All: Intellectuals and Published Content.

A recent argument has also been floating around about Masters and PhD dissertations, and how the cost of publishing them is nearly always prohibitive. The argument usually continues that the ‘book’ form for academic argument is not always ideal; it has created the expectation that if a professor has something good to say on a subject, it must come in a minimum of 220 pages. While this might seem like a small corner of the publishing market, it’s actually a perfect microcosm of some bigger changes we might see in the future.

A long, read-by-no one dissertation is an antiquated notion. Don’t get me wrong—I’m sure it will continue for some time, but any progressive university is probably realizing that the whole ‘university publishing’ business will have to change radically over the next several years.

The Delivery Method Starts Changing the Stuff Inside.

Here is where the dozens of options available for content publishing (the form, or medium) will begin to change the content itself. Once the necessary existential debates on the role of the academy and the importance of intellectual discourse are hashed out, we are going to be looking at a very different landscape, one where serious academic thought is not walled up in quarterly journals but actively distributed across a whole range of channels.

Many of these channels will not be conducive to a 220-page dissertation. Some will support, say, a 15-page essay, others might be wonderful for a short book (say 100 pages) on a particular subject, others only a brief article. But all of these options, and the various ways in which content creators, editors, and distributors will try and monetize this process is definitely going to change the content itself.

And Just Why Does This Matter to Us?

Simple: if you get too focused on creating quality content along a single model, the speed of innovation might take you for a loop. Things don’t change so fast that all your hard work will disappear in a moment, but if you are trying to improve your website’s SEO, build a brand online, or market your product through any kind of content creation, you need to pay attention to how the mediums are changing.

Just because Twitter has become insanely popular in the last 3 years doesn’t mean you need to scrap your print advertising budget and start tweeting incessantly. That would be quite useless. But it does mean you need to be conscious when something like a Twitter pops up, and suddenly a new 140-character format for content exists. Remember not to get too comfortable and you’ll stay on the right track.

(photos by flickr users peagreengirl and cogdogblog. Used under a creative commons license.)

To get good SEO resulsts, your website needs to have quality content. That’s not all it needs, but when you have a quality SEO company like LoveClients at your back, a lot of the heavy lifting gets done for you.

You don’t need to mess around with complicated optimization and keyword research—that’s what great SEO does for you. But you do need content on your site. That’s right: precise, good writing is very important online.

Whether you need to explain your product, write a catchy “About Your Company” page, or talk about a new offering you’re rolling out, your SEO will always be better when your website contains fresh, interesting information.

Not Everyone is a Writer.

And therein lies the problem. Not everyone can write. It’s just not possible for everyone to be great.

We all write emails every day, and probably do some level of reading, but when it comes to writing in a clear, precise way, many of us are at a loss. It simply takes too much work, too much editing, too much knowledge of those obscure rules of grammar and style to churn out good, readable prose.

Writing is a Skill, Like Many Others.

So if we aren’t farming the writing out to wordier relatives, or hiring overpriced ad agencies to write about our products, what are we doing? Trying to write the stuff ourselves, that’s what.

Writing really is a skill that can be developed and improved, no matter how subtle and frustrating it may seem. There is a wealth of knowledge on how to write well, a lot of it contradictory. Writers are famous for making definitive-sounding declarations on what ‘good’ writing is, only to have another critic come and disagree immediately.

Why Do Authors From Hundreds of Years Ago Have the Best Advice on Good Writing?

So I’ve found some advice for you, narrowing our focus down to four writers—all of whom died before the year 1900. Why go back so far? It’s simple, really:

These pieces of advice were expressly designed to simplify a very complicated beast. Have you ever tried to read literature from 200-300 years ago? Direct, clear, pared-down style did not exist.

Remember, Hemingway and Orwell were centuries away, words were longer, more obscure, and the culture was simply very different. Reading was undertaken with long, sustained concentration, and writing was dense and difficult.

So the writers desperately urging precision and clarity were doing so because these qualities were in very short supply. Their advice is relevant and to the point, no matter how old it is.

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.
—Matthew Arnold

I can’t offer much commentary on something so simply expressed. If there’s one word to keep in your mind while writing, you could do far worse than clarity.

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press.
Murder your darlings.
—Arthur Quiller-Couch

Rightly famous. Get all your bad, puffed-up writing out in the first draft, and then delete it all. Look, he didn’t even say erase or cancel it, he said delete! A man ahead of his time.

You write with ease to show your breeding, But easy writing ’s curst hard reading.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Maybe you’re like me, and read that second line as something to do with ‘crust’. I believe we would use the word ‘cursed’ nowadays. ‘Don’t show off, because it’ll make your writing hard to read‘ has never been expressed so lightly.

The virtue of books is to be readable.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’m sure there are many other virtues, too, but hey—he said it. Write with an audience in mind: your customers.

(Photo by flickr user faeryboots, used under a creative commons license.)

Lots of people are busy extracting their own little lessons out of Iceland, so I’m going to go ahead and do the same, and tell you that Iceland can teach us three fundamental lessons about SEO. And they’re good, interesting lessons to boot.

#1: Don’t Use Non-Experts.

The first thing Iceland did wrong was use non-experts. The people who were responsible for running their banks were simply not smart or trained enough to engage with the insane complications of international financial engineering. And yet they went ahead and did it anyway.

If guys from a tiny island that’s only existed as a country for the last 50 years suddenly felt confident enough to start purchasing football teams and foreign banks, can you imagine the number of shifty-but-overconfident SEO companies out there, thinking they can make a quick buck in this still-wild-west world of the internet?

So beware. If an entire country can succumb to a kind of collective hysteria driven by people who really don’t know what they’re doing, what’s to stop any number of incompetent amateurs from getting into the make-money-from-nothing SEO game?

#2: You Can’t Make Money From Nothing.

Speaking of which, that brings us to our next crucial part: Iceland was making money from nothing. The lack of serious oversight and the complexity of the financial transactions meant that Iceland was constantly borrowing against its own currency, inflating it, and then reaping the profits.

But there was a big problem with all of this: most of these riches were coming from nothing. They were the ultimate bubble. So when the crisis hit and Iceland’s currency was suddenly devalued, they were left with huge foreign debt and no real way to pay it off.

The same goes for ‘black hat’ SEO companies. We all know what happened to those Icelandic profits—they disappeared in a few weeks. Pay an SEO that sets up an artificial traffic network that Google suddenly cuts off with a simple change to its code, and your ‘profits’ and ‘traffic’ have disappeared overnight, too.

#3: Not Everyone Can Do Everything.

Finally, there’ s the fact that most of Iceland’s banker kings were former fishermen. Pure old school. Nothing wrong with being a fisherman, except that it sometimes means you aren’t the best person for a new, difficult job.

Same goes for SEO: that old-school ad agency desperately trying to re-brand themselves an SEO company might not be the best company for the job. You might like and trust them, but do they really know the new market? Have they done the research, and can they give you the analysis down to the last detail?

Don’t Force Yourself to Ask for a Bailout.

There’s nothing like a huge financial crisis to bring into sharp relief some fundamentally unsound practices that we should all avoid, no matter what context we’re working in.

Online marketing is growing and expanding at a rapid pace. But it doesn’t mean you need to throw your ethics to the wind and jump on-board, whatever the consequences. You might gain some short term cash (or notoriety) at the beginning, but take Iceland’s lesson to heart: there is no substitute for real, hard work. Don’t wake up one morning and realize this painful lesson is still ahead of you: use Iceland as an example, don’t get ahead of yourself, and stick with integrity.

(photos from flickr users traitlinburke, gudmunda, and de-ve. Used under a creative commons license.)

In the end a small businesses with a good leader can swim nimbly through any situation whether it be economic, strategic, demand/supply related or anything else. So without further ado, here are the top reasons why the small fish rules the ocean.

ONE: Small Businesses Are for Everyone!
With low start up rates and your choice of business platforms, ideas, inventions, services and products the internet business world is for anyone and everyone with an idea. Innovative and ambitious folks as young as six and as old as… well, I guess as long as you’re not dead you can start a business. Website tools are designed for beginner and intermediate designers alike making website set up easier than ever. All you really need is a computer, internet and a little extra time on your hands.

Computer Economics Inc. of Carlsbad, CA, calculates that approximately 8% of all teenagers in the USA, or about 1.6 million are making at least some kind of income on the internet.

Young Michael Furdyk was only 10 when he started M&S enterprises with his friend, Sean to teach people in their neighborhood how to use their computers. At 16 he sold his first website, MyDesktop.com, for over $1 Million in 1998. Now 26, he is the founder of TakingITGlobal.org which is run by 15 core staff with the help of 50 contractors and “coordinators”. He also consults for several Fortune 500 companies including Microsoft and advocates heavily for Youth IT and Technology Education. Because Furdyk was able to think big, and go big without actually growing big, he was able to dictate where he put his efforts and resources. He was also able to remain flexible and make a quick profit on the turn around of his smaller, less meaningful projects.

TWO: Inexpensive Start up and Maintenance.
If you’re considering putting your business online, don’t think that it needs to be as big or profitable as Furdyk’s. Many online stores have an even less expensive start up and make their owners a reasonable annual living either as a part-time or full time venture.

Take for instance Jessica Jollota of Biddeford, Maine. She started MySilverCrown.net as a place to exhibit and sell her handmade jewelry and gifts. The website startup/maintenance cost is about $15 per month and the sales it generates act as a nice second income.

Worried about the cost of goods, or that wholesale distributers won’t sell to you because your order isn’t big enough? Even wholesalers who would prefer large orders from big retail names, have to recognize when shelf space is getting tighter as more products fill the market. The internet broadens their customer base instantly so it only makes sense to give small, online retailers a good deal on smaller orders.

THREE: Find your niche.
Big businesses need to diversify in order to keep up with business expenses and sustain their profit margins. Small business owners on the other hand, are able to do one thing really well and make a good living for themselves and then some. There’s always holes in the market that are too small for the large companies to deal with in a cost efficient way. Those small holes can mean big profits for a small business owner who is willing to pick it up

One such example is Jibbitz, those little decorative buttons for the popular Croc Shoes. They started out as a fun arts and crafts project for Sheri Schmeizer and her three kids and were soon in demand all over the neighborhood. They knew they had found a unique niche in the Croc market, so the Schmeizers officially launched Jibbitz and in one year they had sold over eight million of them. Since then, Crocs, Inc. has acquired Jibbitz and Mr. and Mrs. Schmeizer operates the wholly owned subsidiary of Crocs Inc. as the President and CEO.

FOUR: Less Stress in Hard Economic Times.
That’s not to say that an economic downturn isn’t stressful or even possibly catastrophic to small businesses. But, thanks to that maneuverability we talked about earlier, small internet businesses or businesses that at least have an internet presence are more likely to come out of those situations intact at least.

When the economy hits a downward spiral, big companies start downsizing and put most of their effort into saving money. Smaller businesses typically have cost effective strategies implemented no matter what the economy is like. The difference is that many small businesses have less overhead to worry about and therefore are running on a wider profit margin than those big corporations. While the big sharks are worrying about their next meal, the little fish is focusing on developing a new niche or territory.

FIVE: Self-Sustaining and Self-Generating Growth.
The amount of revenue a small business brings in determines the level of strategic growth it will undergo or the amount of cutbacks it will have to make. This “bootstrap” strategy (named for the old saying: “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.”) applies to staffing, outsourcing, physical growth as well as the acquisitions and sales of other businesses.

Most successful small e-businesses only have 1-5 employees along with (possibly) some contract workers. (Wikipedia was a prime example of this for a long time.) When your company starts taking on new projects and revenue then increasing staff to accommodate customer/company demands is reasonable. When times are tough it’s much easier (and ethical) for small businesses to let go of one or two employees if necessary, than it is for large corporations to let go of hundreds or thousands of employees.

This theory also applies to internet marketing, SEO and SEM tactics. Pay-Per-Clicks, keywords and other SEO/M tactics are not only inexpensive, but can easily be adjusted according to which keywords, PPC’s or tactics are bringing in the most visit-to-sale conversions. Although it’s always a bad idea to skimp on marketing, having a revenue-centered plan is always a smart idea so that you never go above your budget line.

SIX: The Anti-Growth Strategy
You’re small, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be picky. Sure, some folks think that they should take on every client that comes their way because “every little bit helps” right?”

Wrong! Customers who aren’t making you a lot of money, don’t pay on time or are taking time away from better paying clients aren’t worth your effort! They can actually take away from your bottom line and make it tough for you to operate a successful business.

This is sage advice for many small business: Don’t grow too fast. Make staying small your growth strategy.

CNNMoney.com did a report in October on a small company called “Incredible Foods” run by Jim Christy. About ten years ago Christy landed Starbucks as one of his new accounts.

“They were opening new stores in northeast Ohio and Pennsylvania in 1998 and wanted me to distribute a single product, a crumb cake.” Christy stated.

I think we all remember how fast Starbucks grew over the last ten years. Christy had to hire two employees just to cover all the paperwork and reports for his Starbucks account. Not to mention the fact that he had to dedicate five trucks for delivery to their multiple locations nationwide, pay for gas, insurance, employee benefits, workers comp and still turn out products for his other clients. Starbucks was generating about 48% of his annual sales. However, Christy was uncomfortable with putting 48% of his eggs in one basket. He felt that by cutting the chord with Starbucks, reducing his staff size from 13 to 6, working out of just one office instead of two and focusing on local markets he would be able to run a stronger company.

It was a risk to give up almost half of his revenue, but he was right for doing it. Last year his company made $2.2 million and he expects a 22% increase in revenue for 2009. Incredible Foods is another great example of a company that had the flexibility to take a risk, stay in control and become stronger by staying small.

SEVEN: More Freedom to Form Strategic Partnerships
Recently Yahoo and Google called it quits on their strategic advertising agreement since it may have possibly brought up some antitrust law issues. Even if corporations can steer around any legal issues that arise with forming a partnership, they still are faced with lengthy approval procedures.

Small businesses don’t have that problem since they aren’t big enough to be a threat to anyone. (At least that’s what we want them to believe, right?) Forming partnerships, whether it be for SEO and advertising purposes or just working on a common project or goal together, can be beneficial for everyone involved. Sometimes all it takes is exchanging a short write up and a links to increase each other’s traffic. Want to make a stir with your partnership? Put it in a press release. You can do it because small businesses have the freedom to create strategic partnerships with whomever (and however) they choose.

April O’Keefe, owner of AOK Herbals in Kittery, Maine, started up her small business for just $5000. Her ability to create strategic partnerships with other locally owned companies is one of her primary marketing and advertising resources – her second being word of mouth referrals from clients. Online, O’Keefe benefits from link exchanges and cross-selling of products and services. Offline, they reap the same benefits in addition to being able to work together as strategic partners with the common goal of educating and empowering their clients and the community they serve.

Because this group of local small businesses is able to stick together and form relationships without government regulation, they are stronger as individual businesses. It is a luxury that big businesses are not always able to enjoy.

EIGHT: A More Personal Approach.
This one is obvious. Small businesses often mean more personal service. Although buying from big businesses can have its advantages, most people are getting increasingly tired of becoming just another sale or number. They want to shop in a place (even online, believe it or not) where they can call or email someone with a question and get a “live” person on the other end. They want quick and reliable service from someone, not some company. You, the business owner, are able to deal with difficult situations and questions directly and immediately. Customers appreciate this and show it with loyalty and referrals.

In the last 5-10 years there has been an increasing awareness of the importance of local economy and small business support. This is why putting an emphasis on your local area in SEO/M efforts is so important. Customers feel that they are contributing to their country or local economy somehow when they know their purchase is from a local or a small business owner. Put your face on the website. Let your clients know who you are and thank them for supporting your local/small business.

NINE: Adapt and Overcome!
There’s obviously an overarching theme here that large businesses lack the flexibility and control that small business owners have. Part of that is the ability to completely change the direction of your business at the drop of a hat. What you’re selling now, may not turn a profit tomorrow.

Today you may be selling friendship bracelets, tomorrow you could be selling ketchup. It’s that easy because you have the flexibility to flow with the market, and enough control over your company to make key decisions quickly without having to consult with anyone else. How, when and why you decide to go from bracelets to ketchup is completely up to you.

TEN: Strategic Marketing
I don’t know if you’ve ever been witness to a corporation who is either

a) Trying to rebrand itself
b) Trying to change their current online marketing strategy, or…
c) Trying to adopt an online marketing strategy… period.

It takes a team of marketing professionals to come up with an idea that has to be approved by some executive or board. Then of course some website designer, copywriter, consultant, board member or manager will always have an objection so in an effort to please as many people as possible they’ll make adjustments. It can take up to 18 months and it’s relatively painful to watch.

What does your small business strategic online marketing plan involve? You and your consultant. That’s it. Your consultant advises you and you make the final decision. The whole thing will take anywhere from 1-30 days to devise and implement. By the time that big corporation implements their strategic online marketing strategy you would have been reaping the benefits of your new online marketing plan for months.

Yahoo! President, Sue Decker stated that “Yahoo! continues to believe in the benefits of the agreement and we are disappointed that Google has elected to withdraw… rather than defend it in court.”

The agreement was an essential step in strengthening Yahoo! Corporation. It would have allowed Yahoo! to step up their investment, growth and general business strategies. Decker stated in a memo to her employees that although the Google deal would have helped to accelerate their strategy for growth, Yahoo! still has other deals and efforts in the works. She also went on to say that this fall-through does not change “Yahoo!’s commitment to innovation and growth in search.”

She cited the improvements that Yahoo! has undergone including “monetization and driving query growth.” Decker also noted that just in 2008, Yahoo! has added and developed new ranking models, index updates and expansion and fine-tuned their overall performance. “Not surprisingly, we are seeing results, with the company benefitting from strong RPS gains, as discussed in our Q3 earnings call. Further, we are adding search and contextual ad functionalities on a regular basis.”

At a 2.0 conference in San Francisco, there were questions about whether Yahoo! would allow Microsoft to purchase it under the current circumstances. Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang replied, “There’s no new news.” But he also stated that buying Yahoo! at the right price would be the best thing Microsoft could possibly do right now. When asked about a possible purchase of AOL, Yang said that he couldn’t talk about it.

Yang did however talk about his commitment to Yahoo!. “I don’t take my position lightly. It’s a very serious obligation… There has been a lot of change, a lot of people coming and leaving, but the plans we’ve tried to execute against have been done and I’m extremely proud…”

Despite their disappointment, execs at Yahoo! seem to be incredibly optimistic and seem to plan on moving forward aggressively. According to Decker’s memo, Yahoo! is stepping up the “efforts to create a more open, efficient and effective marketplace…” This will mean new tools designed for easier interaction between users, advertisers and publishers. Yahoo! also has plans to lead the way in cutting edge technology advances in order to provide better products, services and platforms for customers. As consumers, business owners, marketing professionals and developers we’ll just have to wait and see where Yahoo! really decides to go from here.

Back in September news started leaking out that Google may throw out its deal with Yahoo!. The two companies combined currently handle 80% of internet searches all over the world. It’s understandable then why the US Justice Department was bringing up issues of possible antitrust violations.

Although the US Justice Department had already hired an antitrust litigator, Yahoo! was steadfast in calling the deal lawful, stating that “We have been informed that the Justice Department… is seeking advice from an outside consultant, but we should read nothing into that fact. We remain confident that the deal is lawful.”

Google may have seemed hopeful at first too. However, early this morning Google’s Senior VP and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond announced that Google would not move forward on the deal.

“…after four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it’s clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners.” Stated Drummond in his blog.

Drummond also expressed his regret for having to pull out of the deal since the company felt that I would have been a win-win situation not only for Google and Yahoo!, but for publishers, advertisers and users as well.

Yahoo! had no comment on their Search Blog as of this posting. I’m sure there’s more to come though.

Sounds great, and it was. Unfortunately Google failed to get permission from the authors and publishers before scanning and posting their work. As a result, Google.com was sued (almost exactly three years ago to the day) in 2005 by the Author’s Guild, The Association of American Publishers and several other copyright holders for profiting from their work without properly compensating them for it.

Well on Tuesday, the two sides finally reached a settlement.

So what does this mean for Google, readers, publishers and authors? David Drummond, Google’s Chief Legal Officer stated in his Official Google Blog on Tuesday that

“This agreement is truly groundbreaking in three ways. First, it will give readers digital access to millions of in-copyright books; second, it will create a new market for authors and publishers to sell their works; and third, it will further the efforts of our library partners to preserve and maintain their collections while making books more accessible to students, readers and academic researchers.”

David Drummond, Google

Not only was Drummond pleased, but Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin expressed their excitement over the deal as well. All in all it was a very fair and beneficial ruling. Let’s do a more detailed breakdown of the settlement to see what Google, the copyright Holders and Readers can expect to happen next…

GOOGLE
The internet giant will be allowed to scan books that have a valid copyright which are also out of print. They can sell online access to individual books within digests and volumes, offer subscriptions to university databases. In the near future they should be allowed to let subscribers print the books that they search for and find on Google.com.

Google is also expected to fund and help to establish a new Book Rights Registry which will be managed by copyright holders. The purpose of this new registry is to “address the orphan works problem” by locating and representing copyright holders, make old and out of copy books more available to the public, and to distribute all royalties that Google pays out.

Of course there’s always the matter of money. Under the settlement Google will be paying out a total f $125 million as an upfront payment and an additional $34.5 million to fund the new registry.

Google Hands Over $125+ million in Settlement

PUBLISHERS AND AUTHORS
Obviously the new Book Rights Registry will be beneficial to all copyright holders since it allows them to be paid fairly for the use of their work. Aside from cashing in on 63% of Google’s book search profits, publishers and authors are getting about $45 million up front – or about sixty bucks per book.

Copyright holders will be able to have more control of how their work will be used. Google will be allowed to give non-subscribers a look at about 20% of the content in each out of print book. Subscribers will have full access to Google’s scanned out of print tomes. In order to offer the same access to in print books, Google will need permission from copyright holders.

Drummond notes in his blog that although the settlement only covers United States users and copyright holders, Google will do it’s best to respect everyone. International authors and publisher will be able to register themselves in the new Book Rights Registry so they can be paid fairly. International users will be able to search and view the full content of out of print texts, “but will not be able to preview or purchase access to books online unless these services are authorized by the rights-holder of a book.”

READERS
Under the agreement, readers will need to subscribe to services in order to view the full text of these books. They will also have greater access to more texts that they wouldn’t have other wise, which was Google’s and the copyright holders’ ultimate goal.

Thanks to a part of the agreement that allows Google and participating libraries to develop new technology and services, users and subscribers with disabilities will also have full access to these books.

For more information on the deal, you can go to Google’s press release.

You are a part of one or have seen heaps of buzz about them. Social networks are here to stay and are only going to get bigger.

From an advertiser’s perspective it’s pretty hard to grab someone’s attention and keep them focused on your adverts. So many times have I seen companies pour millions of dollars down the drain on social network advertising, in the hope that people will buy their products or services?

So why doesn’t advertising work on social networks?

All the online marketing gurus say it’s about building brand awareness, and it is to some extent. But if you have been in the business long enough, you’ll know that measuring brand effectiveness can be very expensive and time consuming. There are a lot of companies out there that provide these services such as Nielson Buzz Metrics, but be warned – only if you’re willing to spend the big bucks.
Don’t get me wrong, BRAND is important, but like any sales or marketing person will say “Show me the money!”

So how can we leverage off social networks and actually take some ROI?

I have a theory and as cliché as it might sound, it’s about getting personal and understanding the “4 core elements” of personality groups and targeting them based on their characteristics.

If you are a marketer or not, most companies target their databases into areas that are functional, beneficial and emotionally appealing – which is mostly known as the value proposition. But before that is concluded they break their databases down into segments which are usually based on primary and secondary research.

Online segmentation is however measured differently as other elements come into play such as time spent, bounce rates, etc. This can be very difficult to do and is also extremely time consuming.
But what if there were another way to segment and target a core set of consumers online based on your value proposition? I believe you can – through social networks.

I strongly believe that the future of online targeting will be based on a person’s characteristics.

Here are some advantages:

• Personalised communication strategies for campaigns
• Greater understanding of behavioural patterns
• Making each experience relevant, personal and engaging

Now here comes the cliché part, based on astrology (I know, for all you men out here banging your heads against the wall, there is some logic behind this) you can “assume” all people share common characteristics based on their element sign.

These are broken down into 4 elements:

• Fire = Leo, Aries & Sagittarius
Are known to be; irresponsible, impatient, boastful, positive, extraverted, active, creative, ingenious, dynamic, highly energetic, outspoken, fiery temper, passionate, emotionally intense

• Water = Scorpio, Cancer, Pisces
Are known to be; deeply intuitive, imaginative, emotional, reserved, not gregarious, exceedingly passionate, self pity, sensitive, pessimistic, overly vague, secretive

• Earth = Capricorn, Virgo, Taurus
As known to be; stable, practical, realistic, cautious, hard-working, dependable, highly materialistic, inhibited, introverted, down to earth, calm

• Air = Gemini, Libra, Aquarius
Are known to be; free spirited, philosophical, intellectual, open minded, idealistic, adventurous, restless, unpredictable, interactive, extraverted, emotionally aloof, opinionated

Even if you don’t believe in astrology – it’s about finding the right set of ‘people characteristics’ for your product or service. Understanding the personality that wants or needs your products or services is important and knowing how to leverage on that.

Because at the end of the day, they will be your distribution channel when it comes to word of mouth or recommending your product or service to other people online and offline.

So having the right personality representing your brand will be just as important as the way you communicate across all channels.