You get the idea.  We watch our weight, measure our success, and compare ourselves to others (just to name a few ways) by numbers.

In start-up business, we drown in numbers related to expenses, start-up costs, sales conversions, hours in the day, and on and on.

Another main area of number obsession (for me and maybe just maybe others) is both our website and social media related to the influence we are having as a start-up.  In other words, the Analytics.  You know what I am talking about - pageviews, unique visitors, goals, Twitter Followers, Facebook Fans, Klout Scores, Peer Indexes, Alexa Rankings, rewteets………Recently, I was helping someone who is trying to build their blog, and she stated “I am stalking my stats.”

Last week, I was fascinated by the story of the Crock Pot Girls who quickly became an internet sensation and gained over a million Facebook Fans in 2 weeks.  Most moms in business, like me, were both curious and envious how the Crock Pot Girls did it.  I don’t know, and I am not trying to figure it out anymore.

After a few days passed, I started to think about all these numbers and analytics related to our web influence and began to have the age old debate with myself - Quantity v. Quality.  When it comes to start-up business and our growing brands and presence, which is better?  Quantity or Quality?

I really do not know the exact answer, so my guess is that it lies somewhere in the grey area - an undetermined fine line between Quantity and Quality.  When I look at my numbers (and, even when I am trying to not look at my numbers), I can think of two areas where the Quantity is important.

Content - If you are writing a blog (which we already know you should be), and you evaluate the numbers….Look at which posts are getting the most views.  What are you writing about in these posts?  What is the content?  Are you more or less personal in these posts?  Whatever you are writing or how you are presenting yourself in these posts - do MORE!

Connections - When you look at your Twitter Followers, Facebook Fans, Blog Readers & Subscribers, how many of them are you actually connecting with?  You may have a million peeps, but how many are you actually engaged with?  The number of people actually connected with your business no matter what platform it is on is what counts!  Ask these people for feedback….What makes them feel engaged with your business so you can do MORE!

Do notice that in both of these areas, the Quantity intersects with Quality.  The Quantity matters when it is related to Top Quality.  That is my take….what is yours?

Want to Connect MORE - leave a comment on my blog http://backngroovemom.com so we can engage….

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If your site traffic is low (check your Google analytics to find out), it’s time to take a closer look at your site.

The good news is, you can make a few, free changes that result in drastic improvements. To start, ask yourself these questions:

1. Do you answer visitors’ questions immediately?

When people visit your site, they are looking for solutions. Give them the information they need right away so they don’t go elsewhere.

It’s important to be succinct and focus on the benefits your business offers. It’s all about your customers.

2. Is your site user-friendly?

When visitors arrive at your site, do they know where to get the data they need, or is your site a confusing mess of graphics, videos, links, audio, and more?

Keep things simple, and make it easy for your site visitors to know what you have to offer in just a few seconds. Provide the most important information at the top of your screen so people don’t need to scroll down your page to get it.

And don’t forget to put ample space between headlines, paragraphs and graphics. You want your site to be easy to navigate and read.

3. Are you stuck in the past tense?

Take a quick look at your content. Do you talk about things in the past? If so, change all of your verbs to the present tense.

For example, replace copy like this:

“Our customers saved over $2,500.00 when they used our Widget.”

with:

“Our customers save an average of $2,500.00 per month when they use our Widget.”

You’ll add a boost of action to your online copy by changing your verbs to the present tense.

Small Edits Can Lead to More Traffic.

These are three, small things you can do to improve your Website right away. Take some time to make these updates, and then check the results.

• Are site visitors spending more time on your site?
• What links are they clicking on most?
• Are you making a better, first impression?

You may be surprised at what a few, small changes can make!

Having a good site doesn’t need to be difficult.

When it comes right down to it, customers want solutions to their problems.
Provide value and an easy way for them to find answers, and you’ll significantly improve the overall results of your Website… without spending a lot of money.

Do you need help boosting sales, awareness and credibility with SEO copywriting and publicity? Please write to me here or check out the free information at www.rembrandtwrites.com.

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Matt Cutts of Google posted this video to help explain the importance of their new Google Social Search…

So what does this mean for small business?

If you haven’t jumped in on the social media bandwagon yet, now is the time.  Customers and clients are using their blogs, tweets, facebook status updates, and more to talk about your brand.  (Don’t believe me? Watch this.) With the birth of social search, these conversations will now be mainstream for all of Google to see.  In other words, your customers will directly effect your Google search rankings.

Will Twitter be more business friendly in 2010?

Absolutely. Their real-time search collaboration is a big step in the right direction and Twitter isn’t stopping there. It has also launched a “Contributors” function (invitation only for now) which allows companies to have several authors send tweets under the same company profile. It is rumored that this may be one of the many new features in a “business class” Twitter account. These accounts would be part of an anticipated paid model launch in 2010. Also highly anticipated is the new emphasis on GeoAPI which will allow tweets to be seen with geo-location information. (Click here to read more.)

So what should you do?

Take advantage of this new opportunity to leverage social media in your favor by developing a listening strategy (read my post here for a how to), ensuring that your current web collateral can easily be shared socially (use AddThis or ShareThis buttons), and abandon spamming your marketing messages via your social networks in favor of developing mutually beneficial online relationships with key influencers in your industry.

Share your thoughts below in the comments! Are you using Twitter for Business?

Need help with your social media campaign? Contact me directly here!

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First off, it’s been a banner year for us. By December 31, 2009, we will have served over 9,800,000 pages of content in the year gone by. That’s leaps and bounds above anything we’ve ever achieved before. Incredibly exciting and trending very positively, by the way. 

We achieved this as a result of great efforts on the part of team members Brian, Tom, Joel and Oleg with contributions from various additional contractors.

Here are 10 strategies that worked (plus a bonus strategy):

1. Using best practices in site usability design, such as our global navigation (also called, “persistant navigation”), which is available on any page and quickly gets users from one place in the site to another.
2. Search engine optimizing the site so Google loves us and gives us first page results in many small business-related searches.
3. Keeping the content constantly refreshed at the site, many times offering content that’s part of a series, not just stand-alone, and offering insights from really smart bloggers.
4. Running and publishing highly engaging contests (like our Home-Based 100 and Leading Moms in Business rankings) and offering voting widgets to contestants for them to use in their marketing.
5. Developing ever more extensive relationships with publishing partners who carry our best content (like Yahoo Small Business and MSN).
6. Using Twitter to announce the latest and greatest epiphanies, resources and events here at StartupNation.
7. Issuing press releases with strong, topical news-oriented angles instead of simply announcing a new product or service or feature set that is just part of the “noise” media deal with daily.
8. Parlaying every media opportunity (whether TV, print, radio, online or at events) into a bigger idea, a next appearance, a series of appearances, or entirely new opportunities.
9. Giving our active members introductions to our media contacts to make StartupNation ever more useful in our members’ efforts to build successful businesses, which in turn stirred up lots of great new visitors via positive word of mouth.
10. Launching Groups that can be public or private and allow people to convene around themes, interests, geographic locations, etc.
11. (BONUS) Using email marketing on a permission basis enabled us to “stay in front” of our community and remind them to utilize our great resources and offers. (If you aren’t signed up for our newsletters, use this link to sign up.)

During this year, Facebook loomed large, accounting for 10.44% of our traffic - the single largest referring site (other than the search engine, Google).

StumbleUpon accounted for  6.4% of our traffic.

Twitter accounted for 2.82% of our traffic.

These might seem like smaller percentages, but our traffic comes from a very “long tail” (a great book, by the way), meaning lots of smaller sites contributing smaller amounts of visitors. At the time of authoring this post, according to Yahoo Site Explorer, 112,313 is the number of in-bound links to our site from various sites, each one driving a little traffic our way and adding up to our banner year. 

Next year we hope to serve significantly more pages of content, providing ever more value to people who want to pursue a dream, start and grow their business, and live a more fulfilling life being their own boss and controlling their own income.

Again, we are very appreciative of your activity at our site and we hope you spread the word so millions more pages of helpful content can be transformational to people near and far.

We wish you success and a warm, refreshing holiday!

Rich (and StartupNation team)

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“As three women in a male-dominated industry, we took a risk by starting a company together. My partner Rae is a single mom of three children (one severely handicapped) and I have a speech disorder that makes it difficult for me to communicate, statistics say we probably should have kept day jobs.” — Lisa Barone

Starting a business during a recession is a risky thing to do, but also the optimal time for new ideas, better services and plucky folks to connect. Top of mind for this crew is empowering others to take smart risks. “We did it and we want others to know they can do that too.”

Behind The Scenes

Rae Hoffman	Rhea Drysdale	Lisa Barone
Rae Hoffman is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Outspoken Media, Inc. In 1997 Rae started a small website about her son and his medical condition that became one of the first international support groups on the topic. It earned national media coverage and helped further medical research in the field… More about Rae Hoffman	Rhea Drysdale is Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Outspoken Media, Inc. Since 2004 Rhea has grown her understanding of on-page optimization, online reputation management and social media with both in-house and agency positions. Rhea loves working with clients… More about Rhea Drysdale	Lisa Barone is Co-Founder and Chief Branding Officer of Outspoken Media, Inc. Lisa has been involved in the SEO community since 2006 and is widely known for her honest industry observations, her inability to not say exactly what she’s thinking, and her excessive on-the-clock Twittering… More about Lisa Barone

OutspokenMedia works with clients to develop marketing strategies that encourage them to do great things and to care about their niche communities. The Outspoken blog was developed to prompt action in the community as well as teach. Outspoken presents How Tos to small business owners helping them market their own businesses and get more from online.  The recession has given entrepreneurs an even larger opportunity to go out on their own and succeed. It hasn’t taken it away.

Here is a bit from my interview with Lisa from OutspokenMedia.com…

When did the idea for starting your business come to you?
Having my own business was never something I was aspiring to. I was very much content in the stability of being an employee and receiving a steady paycheck. However, in January I was three months into a new job (a job I had moved from CA to NY to take) and came to a point where I knew in my heart it wasn’t going to work out. So the decision was to stay in a job I wasn’t comfortable in to keep a paycheck or venture out on my own in a bad economy.  It may seem crazy to some but, I chose the latter option.

Luckily, it didn’t take more than a few chats with my then-friends, now business partners, Rae Hoffman and Rhea Drysdale to be confident that we could do something together. So really just like that, we formed Outspoken Media, a new kind of Internet marketing company.  Deciding to start the company was probably one of the hardest decisions I’ve had to make. Committing to myself to something that huge was an enormous undertaking for me. But I’m very glad I did it.

What do you do?
My official role at Outspoken is that of Chief Branding Officer, which to me means that I’m responsible for starting conversations. Whether that’s for us or for clients, through the blog or on Twitter, or through any other medium, my job really is to build brands and conversation through communities on the Web.  I help people their evangelists and build bridges.

What’s the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome to start your business?
Learning how to wear so many hats.  Before I’ve always had very specific job descriptions. When the business is your own, you find yourself taking on tasks you never imagined.  There’s a constant learning curve.

What’s the most satisfying thing about running your business?
The freedom to do what I feel is right.  I’m a blogger and a bit mouthy, so working for someone else always meant that I had to temper that. I had to watch what I wrote, watch what I said, pick my battles, etc.  Now I get to blog as me and for me, which I think makes my blogging more genuine and more engaging for readers. It probably doesn’t sound like that big of a change, but to me it’s been night and day and something I’m incredibly grateful for.  I can’t always say what I want to in real life due to my speech difficulties, so having total freedom of my written voice means everything to me.  It’s empowered me.

Has running your business been what you expected it would be? How?
There’s a lot more to it than I ever thought. I knew that it would be long hours and that it’d grueling at times…I just thought at some point that would stop and that I’d have a day to catch my breath. That day hasn’t hit yet. My biggest lesson has been that it just never stops. There’s always something to do, something more than needs tweaking, an email to respond to, a blog post to write, someone to reach out to, etc.  I’ve learned that running your own business really is a 247 job. I love it. It’s been great and incredibly rewarding, but there’s so much more to it than I ever knew.  Every so often a crisis will break out and I’ll turn to one of my partners and say, “someone should really take care of that!”, and then I remember that I’m that person. If I want something done, I’m the person to do it.

How did you fund your business in the beginning?
I think that’s the beauty of the Internet, you can start a business with very low capital.  Because we’re a service-based company, the only initial costs we had were those involved with skinning the Web site. The domain was already bought, we had hosting, etc. From there the “cost” really is time. It’s been working to build the brand, getting our name out, letting people know we exist, and taking on clients.

What is your passion?
Using my voice in a way that helps others.  I love that the blog allows me to share advice, concerns, issues, etc, with people and to have an impact on their day or to touch them in some way. There’s no greater feeling than that.

What makes you get up in the morning?
My business partners and knowing that we’re capable of doing great things for clients, in a style that’s true to us.  It’s nice believing in what you do and the way you do it.

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A website’s “Bounce Rate” represents the percentage of visits in which the visitor lands on only one page within your website and then leaves instantly. In other words, the visitor arrives on your site, finds no reason to click anywhere or visit any other part of your site, and then leaves to go to another site.

As Google’s Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik describes it:

…rather than I came, I saw, I conquered, the action is I came, I saw, Yuck, I am out of here.

How many people are bouncing from your website? Do you know?

Although the Bounce Rate is going to vary based on the type of site and the type of web page, the higher the rate the worse it is for your business. Typically a Bounce Rate over 50% is something to be seriously concerned about, as it would mean that the majority of your site visitors are not compelled to spend more time with your brand. Worse yet, it could potentially mean that your website is completely turning them off.

You can easily find the Bounce Rate for your site in your web analytics package. The Bounce Rate can be filtered to represent the percentage of visits to your entire website, to your website from specific sources (e.g., Google organic search, online ads, partner sites) and even to specific pages within your site regardless of source.

Examining your site’s Bounce Rates can be illuminating. The Bounce Rate can reveal poor performing online marketing campaigns, just as it can reveal site content that does not resonate with your target audience.

When you see high Bounce Rates, try testing alternatives. Perhaps you need to test a new page header, or new Calls-to-Action on your web page, or different imagery, or the length of text on the web page, or the addition of contextually relevant links, or…you get the idea. Or perhaps there are web pages that you need to eliminate altogether.

So dig into your web analytics, leverage your Bounce Rate, and take corrective action to improve your website and online marketing ROI.

These are just a few tips to help you improve your website. If you need additional help, let me know below or at www.WebsiteMarketingNOW.com. Thanks!

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A good example of this was mentioned by Danny Brown of Press Release PR, in a recent blog post.  In short, Danny discusses his disgust after reading a press release issued by an internet jeweler stating, “Hollywood actor Owen Wilson was contemplating suicide until he realized that the quality of his own life must be good because of the quality of his Rolex watch.” Rolex has not issued a public response, but I am sure they would not have approved of such an unethical and desperate sales pitch.  The press release has since been removed, but you know the saying, “Google never forgets.”  A solid brand monitoring strategy could have alerted Rolex immediately that their brand was being misrepresented in such a creepy and “non-luxurious” way.  Timing is important, as prompt attention is necessary to minimize any negative effects to your brand’s reputation.

Brand monitoring is free and easy and there is a wide array on services available on the internet that can help.  It’s a simple as defining the words you want to monitor, signing up for the services, and reading your email reports.  I’ve put together a list of tools worth visiting as you put together your brand monitoring strategy.

Web:

Google Alerts: Google’s brand monitoring tool that allows you to do a “comprehensive” search of your keywords.  You can be notified daily via email or RSS feeds of any relevant alerts.  If Google knows about it, so will you.

Yahoo! Pipes: If you’re more of the techie type, you’ll like the power, versatility, and customization of Yahoo! Pipes.  It’s a robust system, but may be too complicated for some.

Blogs:

Technorati: Indexes about 1.5 million blogs from the blogosphere and indexes them all in real time.  Allows you to search by tag or keyword and ranks the blogs according to their popularity rank.

Blog Pulse: A product of Neilson Buzzmetrics that allows you to chart trend searches, track conversations, and read blogger profiles.  This is a great resource for identifying trends in the blogosphere.

Comments:

Backtype: Tool that allows you to find, follow, and share comments on the web.  The search tool allows you to track your keyword in comments posted anywhere on the web.  Also includes a function for attributing comments to you so you can track your comment posts.

coComment:  Helps track comments on any webpage by using their “CoSearch” function to find conversations using your keywords.  It has a Mozilla Firefox plug-in and can also give you information regarding the site owner and where the conversation originated.

Social Media:

Serph: Serph searches for your keywords in blog search engines, social media websites, social news websites and social bookmarking websites.  The results are real-time and sorted according to the source and date.

Techrigy:  Searches all social media sites for keywords and is customizable for in depth metrics and measurement.  This is also a great tool for measuring the success of your social media campaigns.  You can see information such as the age, gender, and location of the people using your keywords.

Tweetbeep:  The service is a lot like Google Alerts, however it only searches the Twitter stream.  With 2 million users on Twitter, the tool is essential for keeping track of your keywords on the micro-blog site.  It can track mentions of your company website even when a url shortener is used.

Some other favorites:

Addictomatic:  Great visual interface that allows you to “instantly create a custom page with the latest buzz on any topic.”  This tool is great for allowing you to see the “big picture” of your online buzz all at once.  You can also select which sources you want it to search for keywords.

Boardtracker: This tool allows you to monitor forums and discussion boards.  Not all boards are included, so its usefulness will depend on which keywords you are searching.  It is a search engine for boards and forums only and all other information on the website is removed from the search results.

For brand monitoring beginners, I would suggest using a couple of the free websites listed above on a weekly, if not daily, basis.  Utilizing the email and RSS subscription features should keep your time investment to a minimum.  I also encourage you to use your reports for more than just policing your brand.  These tools are also powerful market research resources. As always, be sure to keep an eye out for new opportunities for your business.

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2008 vs. 2007, and % change

    1) Number of Visits: 2,292,027 vs. 1,663,118, an increase of 37.82%

    2) Number of Unique Visitors: 1,680,513 vs. 1,160,765, an increase of 44.78%

    3) Pages Viewed: 8,557,397 vs. 6,959,779, an increase of 22.96%

and some interesting additional observations…

    4) Traffic from Google: 989,505 vs. 496,381, an increase of 33%

    5) Visitors using Mac browser: 209,973 vs. 125,217, an increase of 40.23%

    6) Fastest growing non-U.S. audience: India, 36,312 vs. 23,955, an increase of 51.38%

We’re proud to have achieved this performance by practicing what we preach as indicated in our StartupNation advice on grassroots marketing, word-of-mouth marketing, and search engine optimization. Not a SINGLE advertising dollar was spent in 2008.

By any measure, it was an extraordinary year for StartupNation. We can’t thank you enough for being a part of our growth. The contributions you’ve made in our community and in spreading the word about StartupNation have been instrumental in our success an in the site’s value to each user.

We’ve always assessed the merit of our efforts by the breadth of our impact. To see the user base grow so significantly is incredibly gratifying as we seek to empower you to pursue your dreams, to foster entrepreneurship generally in America and to help the U.S. to continuously earn the brand, “land of opportunity.”

Having said all this, we’re certainly not sitting back on last year’s laurels. StartupNation will completely renew itself in 2009, and is determined to make the achievements of the past pale in comparison to those we envision in the year and years ahead.

With gratitude, promise and a bottomless reservoir of ambition,

    - the StartupNation Team

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However, now that your messages have been sent, you may feel like you are no longer in control of your campaign as you may have several important questions about how well your message performed. Did your subscribers actually read your message, or did they simply open it and delete it? Did they click on any links within the email? Was your message forwarded by one of your current subscribers to someone new?

A critical component of your marketing efforts is measuring and comparing the results of every campaign. Time is money and if your email marketing campaign is not working you must have the ability to act quickly to identify the problems and take the best action to improve your efforts. By using advanced message tracking techniques, you can take the guesswork out of online marketing.

Several email marketing services provide you with tracking analytics for your email newsletters. When evaluating the analytics of a email marketing software provider, be sure they can track the number of bounces, opens, clicks and the number of s ubscribers who forwarded your message to a friend. iContact’s detailed analytics allow you to quickly assess what is - and is not - working with your email marketing campaigns.

Obtaining instant tracking results means that you can act quickly to modify those messages that are less effective, saving your company time and money while maximizing Return On Investment. Thank you for reading, and I’ll be back at the end of the week with more email marketing tips.

Cheers,

Ryan Allis

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