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Top Rank's highly respected Online Marketing Blog recently conducted a survey to determine which online marketing channels and tactics business leaders are planning to emphasize in 2011. The winner? Out of 44 marketing tactic options to choose from, Search Engine Optimization won. Facebook and LinkedIn came in second, blogging third, and email marketing fourth.
Interestingly, video marketing came in seventh despite the fact that YouTube is the third largest search venue - after second-place Google and first-place Facebook.
There are a few tactical ideas that you can take away from these results:
First, it only makes sense that SEO is the most important tactic in attracting visitors to your website. Any time someone gets online and looks for something, searching is what they're doing. So it stands to reason that Search Engine Optimization is key - to everything! Leaders in business are totally attuned to this fact, and are planning to devote major attention and energy to improving theirs. You should be doing the same thing. If you don't know much about SEO and can't afford to hire a specialist, learn as much as you can on your own - there are lots of things you can do to improve SEO without having to become a super tecchie expert in the field.
Second, Facebook, blogging, and email campaigns are simply givens in business. Make sure you have a strategy in place to engage in all three regularly, and that you're doing it well. If you're not a great writer, designer, or copy writer, consider outsourcing, or at least get an expert to evaluate what you're doing, give you some training if needed, and advise you on how to best use your time in these activities.
Third, jump on the intel that business leaders are lagging in their plans to use video. This is good news for you! Take advantage of their relative inactivity, and get your content out where your competition is not as active as it should be. Invest in an inexpensive camera, create vlogs out of your blogs, and put those videos up on your website and on YouTube. You'll be a step ahead of many of your competitors.
Special note: Many of you know that my firm has launched a subscription SEO Lesson-A-Week service called SEO-JO. I'll be happy to email any Savor member 4 of the lessons we've sent to our subscribers, so you can make 4 improvements to your own site's SEO right now. I promise not to add you to any mailing list, by the way. Just send me an email requesting the 4 lessons and I'll email them back to you in a single email.
Ann Baker is CEO of Publicity Pros, and creator of the small-business publicity building services PR-123, SocialMedia-123, and WebTraffic-123. She is a Savor Mastermind Leader for Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, and Costa Mesa in Southern California. She can be reached at Ann@PublicityPros.net.
Read Ann's other blog entries >
SEO Is The Most Important Digital Marketing Tactic
