With the New Year basically here, it's important that we stay on top of what the trends are in the New Year.

The trends listed at Level Ten Designs include:

• Social fatigue
• Social shakedown
• Emphasis on ROI and metrics
• Mobile Boom
• Hyperlocal
•  … and more.

The trends listed at Entrpereneur.com include:

• Potential new standards in SEO
• Lower priced pay per click (PPC)
• Email marketing (still!)
• Social network marketing
• Content nesting (it's an interesting concept, be sure to read it)
• … and more

The trends listed at A B Strategic include:

• Growing prevalence of Bing
• Video marketing
• Mobile marketing
• … and more

Check out each list and figure out what is relevant and applicable to you. If you're already a social media rockstar then you should continue on that path and you'll do just fine in the upcoming shakedown predicted by LevelTen.com. If you're focused on global business but not on local, consider making changes to offer hyperlocal services. If you've avoided pay per click in the past because it wasn't a cost effective way to generate business, maybe Entrepreneur's blog will encourage you to rethink it for this year. If you haven't been doing any video marketing, perhaps A B Strategic's highlight of its growing predominance should encourage you to think about it for this year.

The bottom line? There was lots of "keep expecting a refinement on many of the things we've come to trust (like SEO, blogs, video) but we also saw 3 key trends in our research:

1. Bing. Bing is apparently going to grow. Could this be a breakthrough year for them?

2. Mobile. This shouldn't come as a surprise, it's been growing through 2009.

3. Social media shakedown. Now that Facebook and Twitter's honeymoon period is over, we can expect a shakedown and cleanout of people who have claimed to be social media experts but weren't!

Brought to you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

In the last post, we talked bout SEO. We mentioned, in passing, the Google Adwords program. Google has become a household name. Suddenly, over the last decade, when you need information about something, you “Google” it. People are googling everything. Potential clients are googling when they need to find a resource, service or tool. It’s so easy to take advantage of all the traffic that Google is getting these days. There are many methods in which to direct this traffic toward you. One is to create an adwords account for your business. To do this, go to the Adwords site, and sign up. Signing up is free, however, ad clicks will cost you. The Adwords program allows you to select and analyze potential keywords to maximize the traffic your website will get. The system will suggest keywords for you, and you can even view the number of times people have searched for that keyword over the last 30 days along with the average number of monthly searches. Then, you will write your ad. You’ll have 3 lines of text available, so be sure to read the information Google offers on creating an effective ad. You’ll want to be savvy and get people’s interest. Next, you will have to decide where your ad will appear. Do you want it to appear just when a person searches for a keyword, or would you also like it to appear on other websites that are related to your site. These two options are called “search” and “content,” respectively. You will then have the option to select a budget. You can choose either a monthly or daily budget. Also, you will need to choose a maximum cost per click (CPC) that you are willing to pay. For some keywords, a small amount will be fine, but for others, with a great deal of competition, you may have to pay more per click to get your ad seen. As long as you’re new to Adwords, you can get a few free dollars for your account which is nice to do a little test run but it usually isn’t much so if you only use the free money, your free test may not tell you much but you can get a feel for it this way. (Monitor it closely because once that free money is gone, the costs are charged to your account.) Just do a search for "free adwords coupon", "free adwords voucher" and/or similar keywords to find a coupon. You can edit your ad, keywords, and budget as often as you like. And you can check on the number of clicks your ad is receiving per day. The information is almost real-time, with a delay of about 3 hours. The downside? Yes, there is potentially a downside. Be very careful to monitor your account while you’re new to Adwords. Remember, each time your ad is clicked, you incur costs but this doesn’t necessarily mean you will profit from these clicks. Monitor your account closely to determine if you’re actually making a profit from your ad as opposed to just putting out money with no real return. This does happen. You have to weigh it against your goals. Most people’s goal includes driving the traffic to their site in order to make a profit on their product or services. If you find that you’re incurring costs that don’t bring you any real profit, reevaluate. It could be that your site needs a revamp; it is often the content that sells the product or service. So, while it won’t necessarily be the fault of Adwords if you’re not making enough of a profit to be willing to continue the paid campaign, it may not be a good suit for you, at least at the current time. Many beginning marketers simply do not have a ton of money to pour into this type of advertising and that’s PERFECTLY okay. On top of it, most beginning marketers need to feel their way around different avenues, possibly sharpen up their copy, and figure out what works best for them. When I got started in internet marketing, I read some ‘get cash fast online’ type of deal and it said ’slap up an Adwords ad and you’ll make some quick money’. Literally, that’s what it said. And said it quite enthusiastically. Ummm, it didn’t quite work out that way! I actually ended up spending more money on my campaign than I profited. But, that was very likely related to my inexperienced copy and technique. Some beginners do well with this marketing method, others do not. Many more-advanced marketers do quite well with Adwords. If you have a widely utilized business, service or product, you may also do very well with this method. Bottom line, it can certainly be a good avenue to pursue but you need to monitor it very closely, particularly in the beginning, to ensure that it’s working for you and not just costing you. The costs can add up quickly if you’re not careful – which is a great thing if you’re making decent money with the ads, but it’s not such a great thing if you really aren’t seeing your money come back to you. Lisa and Karen J. on behalf of Contemporary VA

1. Look on your own web site. Choose words that are used on your site to describe your product or service. 2. Think like a customer. Find words that customers might use when trying to find you. Be sure to include words from all buying stages. For example, someone beginning to research navigational units might search on “GPS”. As they learn more, their search will include specific brand names like “Garmin GPS”. Once they narrow in on what they want to buy, their search will become even more specific to include a make or model reference such as “Garmin Forerunner 101 GPS”. 3. Use a keyword suggestion tool. When your creative juices run low, utilize a keyword suggestion tool. Google and Yahoo offer these tools as part of their pay-per-click programs. You can also look to keyword programs like WordTracker, Nichebot, or Good Keywords for suggestions. 

Cathy Yerges

Partnering in Your Marketing Success