The first step in getting your product or service found in search engines is to choose powerful and relevant keywords in your website’s URL. But if you haven’t noticed by now, all the good keywords are taken for domain names. Fortunately, with the proper use of social media, that doesn’t have to doom you to SEO failure. The solution to this dilemma is a certain social media platform called “Facebook”, which allows you to get tremendous SEO benefits with a simple Fanpage that anyone can create for free.

Google is now indexing Facebook Fan Pages and Twitter posts in their search engine results. You hear many social media experts reinforce that fact over and over again, but for whatever reason they can never show concrete proof of results – until now, of course because you’ve come to the right place to learn about tying in social media with mobile marketing to blow away your competition.

Step one is to identify the keywords that best describe your business products or services. Then, go to your Facebook account and create a page and name the page with those keywords. Fill out all the required information, make an attractive cover page and profile graphic and create a few posts to make the page look active.

Now comes the tricky part, which is also the absolute essential part as well. You’ll need to get 30 or more people to “like” your page before Facebook allows you to create a custom URL for your newly created page. The custom URL is the trick – because although all the strong keywords are taken in domain name URLs, you can still get some pretty good ones on Facebook. Thirty “likes” seems easy, but it’s not as simple as it looks. Get friends, family, etc. to do you a favor, because once you get 30, you’re ready to blastoff.

Once you get those “likes”, Facebook allows you to select a custom URL for your page. From your Facebook Fan Page info page, select “edit page > update info” to find the link that allows you to do this. Select a keyword-rich username for your fanpage URL which will display to search engines as follows: www.Facebook.com/KeywordRichUsername

All you have to do now is consistently update this page with new and relevant content and you’ll start seeing some amazing SEO results over the long run. Here’s an excellent case story example. If you were to target the “medical office” industry with a listing/referral service, what are the odds of quickly developing a website and having it appear organically on Page 1 of Google? Realistically? Zero. We all know this, so stop listening to these fly-by-night SEO “gurus”. Instead, for one of our clients we created the page “Medical Office Leasing” on Facebook, got the required amount of “likes” for a custom URL and called the URL “https://www.facebook.com/medicaloffices”. (note the use of strong and relevant keywords) In just a few short months, the page has hundreds of likes and appears organically on first page Google under the amazingly strong (and generic) search term “medical office leasing“- which generated over 7.7 million results! – for FREE, with no paid advertising whatsoever!

Now you must be certain to link your Facebook Fan Page to your regular website domain and you get magic. People are finding your page through search, and visiting your website from the many posts you create on that fanpage. Add your mobile marketing campaigns here for even more opt-in exposure! As you can tell, it’s really a simple process, but the good news is this: no one does it! And the reason is it requires consistent dedicated work to keep an updated Fan Page that Google likes enough to index highly. Are you willing to do the work to see the results? If not, hire an agency that is.

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Now your targeted prospects can become a fan of your branded Fan Page via a simple text message. In other words, you can ask people to text the word “FAN” followed by the name of your facebook fan page (as in www.facebook.com/YOURFANPAGENAME) to Facebook’s 32665 shortcode (FBOOK) and they’ll instantly “like” your page! This is an unbelievably powerful means of promoting your Facebook fan pages with SMS text message marketing campaigning, yet I haven’t seen anyone marketing their pages in this manner yet.

Try it for yourself: text “fan offmarket” to 32665 and see the power of combining Facebook with mobile marketing.

There are two things that need to happen to enable Facebook fan page “liking” by text message: 1) The person doing the texting needs to setup their mobile phone settings to receive texts from Facebook (which is a simple setting on their “Settings” facebook page) and 2) Your fanpage needs to have a unique URL (which is obtainable after your page receives its first 25 likes)

The applications here are limitless and if employed in the correct manner can drive a Facebook fanpage from nothing to literally thousands of people liking your brand. Imagine asking an entire crowd of thousands to “like” your fanpage just by sending a simple text? How much money does that cost you? Answer: NOTHING!  And now for secret #2: Twitter allows you to do the same thing by texting “follow <username>” to 40404.

Are you using sms text message marketing in this manner in your mobile marketing efforts? Probably not, but that’s okay. You learned 2 secrets today. Now all you have to do is implement some creative ideas to bring your brand to the forefront utilizing these techniques.

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By now, everyone should understand that a good sms text message marketing campaign needs a solid social media component for your marketing efforts to work together to bring you the best response and conversion rates. This obviously includes the creation and promotion of your own custom-branded Facebook Fan Page.

You can not skimp around this and it won’t cost you much if you’re serious about being successful in today’s social media environment. Remember, people do make first impressions – make sure they are good ones.!!!

A fully-loaded sms text message marketing account which will allow you to brand your own mobile keywords and create mobile opt-in subscriber databases will cost you less than $25/month and the software you’ll need to create tabs within your Fanpage will be in the $50/month range. Plus, a email marketing and lead capture system is absolutely essential as well ($20/month from AWeber – first month $1). That’s about $100/month total to do monster marketing. If you don’t have it or don’t want to spend it, you may as well stop reading the rest of this post because you’re probably not taking your business seriously anyway.

Once you create your Facebook fan page and start promoting it with a variety of unique ideas, you’ll eventually start to get “fans”. As a result of your “fan count”, Facebook displays an interesting metric that no one really seems to understand fully which is the “People are talking about” statistic. To give you an really basic overview, the stat tells you how virally active your page is. If you have 30 people “liking” your page and only 1 person talking about it, you need to get moving on developing a better two-way conversation with your target audience.

Adding Sweepstakes, video, contests, or providing engaging content on your fanpage wall will generally get that number higher.  Take a look at the “We Build Your Social Media” fanpage and note the number of “likes’ to that page. In addition to their approximately 8,100 likes, at the time of this writing, that Fanpage has “93 people talking about this”, meaning 93 people are sharing links, posting comments, and interacting with that page in some form of social media. Likewise, the “I Love Beer Show”, currently has 94 people “liking” the show, and “51 people talking about this” – that’s more than half the likes, meaning there’s some serious buzz going on at that page where better than 50% of people are sharing its content in some manner.

How’d they do it? Could it be the mobile content where subscribers are sent text reminders of showtimes when they text “BEER” to 69302 so they never miss a show? Or perhaps their use of lead capture and forms? Or maybe its providing the opportunity to be automatically entered into Sweepstakes and giveaways? Or the fact that people can order a “Beer of the Month” subscription which monetizes the fanpage? Or maybe people just like to watch the show either on Facebook or at the customized website the Beer Show created just for that purpose?

You get the point. The “People are talking about” metric provides you with some valuable data and insights on how well your campaigns are engaging your prospects. Here’s a great article on Demystifying Facebook’s “People Are Talking About This” Metric that makes for interesting reading as well.

Get moving with this. Mobile marketing and social media are here to stay. Can we say the same for your business marketing strategies? And if you can’t do it yourself, hire us and our parent company W Technologies to do it all for you. But DO IT!!!

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Here’s something website developers don’t want you to hear: The social web 2.0 has made it so you don’t even need a website to be successful (and dominant) online anymore. Facebook has transformed the need for a website with all the bells and whistles to the simple creation of a Fan page, if you have the knowledge and foresight to promote it properly.

Remember the days when you paid a website developer and graphic designer $5,000 to develop a Flash-based website with all those cool graphics and the navigation bar of “About Us, Our Services, Contact Us, etc.”? BORING… and totally unnecessary these days thanks to social media and mobile marketing. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, these days, it’s all about lead capture and instantaneous contact. The money’s in the list.

Virtual Social Media Agencies can now create “tabs” within your Facebook Fan Page that do everything your old website did, and they can do it on a system where most of your customers are already on. You’ve heard the story about “what good is your website if no one knows about it”? Well, that’s true – so it stands to reason you should be on a platform that everyone knows about first. How many people know you? How many people know Facebook? I think you get my point.

If your online presence is not collecting leads, you’re wasting your time. In today’s time, you just need 4 things to be successful in marketing your company online: 1) A Facebook Fan Page (Twitter and YouTube accounts are highly recommended but not necessary); 2) A lead capture management service; 3) A mobile marketing solution; 4) A blog to tie it all together – and that’s it! Seriously (and you can probably get by without the blog too if need be).

The best news of all is that everything listed above will probably cost you less than $50/month to maintain. If you don’t have $50/month to spend on marketing your business, then let’s face it, you have no business. Commit to taking action with this and stop listening to those high-end design firms telling you how great they are. Less is more right now, and content is king.

The first thing you need to do is go to GoDaddy or a similar domain name registrant and buy a URL. Then forward/mask the domain name or just point it to your newly created Facebook Fan Page. Your job at this point is to promote your fanpage and URL to get people to visit and “like” the page. But “liking” isn’t enough – you need to capture their information, and that’s where a lead capture and email marketing service such as Aweber comes into play.

The “I Love Beer” Facebook fan page is a great example of a demo page combining the forces of social media, mobile marketing, and lead capture. When you arrive at this page, it forces the user into a “like” in order for the content to be displayed. When the page is “liked”, the user is immediately taken to a lead capture form (which in this case, is already integrated with Facebook for easy lead conversion). It sounds crazy, but the goal of Facebook marketing is to get people to your Fanpage, then immediately get them off and into your marketing database.

Note on this Fanpage, that there are navigation tabs to “Suggest A Venue”, “Suggest a Beer”, “Contact Us”, all with their own separate lead capture forms, which should remind you of – that’s right: a website! In addition, you can even add a video component to your marketing efforts with Facebook fan pages, as demonstrated on  the “Watch Live” tab on the “I Love Beer” fanpage. You can even monetize your fanpage with Google Adsense or with any banner advertising you desire via the use of tabs and simple HTML coding.

So let me ask you: Where do you have a better chance of succeeding? … Creating your own website on the web and literally spending thousands of dollars to drive traffic to it, or creating a presence for free on a platform of 800 million users who are already there and maybe searching for keywords that relate to your fanpage?

But since we all agree everything is going to the cell phone these days, it is essential that you find a way to promote your new Fan Page (URL) via mobile marketing. On your mobile device, text the word “BEER” to 69302 to see how “I Love Beer” is using sms text message marketing to promote their fanpage. You need to be doing something similar to create yet another targeted opt-in list of prospects that you can market to in the future over and over again.

By using mobile marketing and lead capture with your social media, you’re combining the most powerful forms of marketing the world has ever known! And you’re doing it all without the use of that traditional “website” that every website developer tells you that you need. You can do this all yourself, or you can hire a professional social mobile company to do it all for you. Either way, you need to get on this, because I can guarantee you that many companies are transforming their URLs into powerful Facebook fan pages right now that are generating tons of revenue to their bottom lines in ways they never could have dreamed about using their old-fashioned websites.

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Awhile back, we talked about how social media and mobile marketing are essentially one and the same. But even if you dive full steam ahead into a social media campaign, you still must consider how developing a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy can create a significant impact on your campaigns. SEO for your current website or blog is essential for a well rounded marketing campaign and can drive the traffic you need to get people to opt into your offers. The question becomes: how to do it.

Let’s use the newly published Must See Business Showcase as an example. With the state of the economy and with so many businesses looking for out-of-the-box means of advertising, the concept of the website was to develop a portal for businesses of all kinds to show off exactly what they do and what makes them special – in other words, a “must see” business. The goal was to have anyone searching the major search engines for “must see businesses” to have the website come up on page one and piggy back those search results to their member listings. With help from SoMo Technologies, the site was developed with those keywords in mind and the search engine results speak for themselves. (first page Google for over 1.4 BILLION results)

Owners of “Must See” businesses can add their business to the Must See Business Showcase for free to have it displayed for the entire community to see. Besides the video exposure, each video contains a text link back to the “Must See” business’ website or blog, increasing back links and mutually benefiting both entities. All the business has to do in return is to “like” the Must See Facebook Fan page, “tweet” their listing on Twitter, and promise to link back to the MustSee.biz website.

By setting up a $24.95/month SMS Text message marketing account at G2GText.com, the MustSee.biz website incorporates certified mobile marketing into the mix by texting REFRESH to 69302 to be reminded when MustSee.biz does their weekly LIVE broadcasts highlighting the newest businesses on the website. Plus the website is QR enabled where users can scan the code to have the page content delivered directly to their smart phones and mobile devices (yes, even video!).

People can do a Google search, find the website, and discover valuable content that makes them want to opt in to the mobile marketing offer. MustSee.biz then generates a powerful text message marketing database as a result where they can send offers and deals to their subscriber base at strategic times, all via search engine marketing and advanced search engine optimization techniques. And all being accomplished by providing a service that is absolutely free! The website is monetized using Google Adsense and a donation option was added for those who found particular value in what the project offers.

We all know that the secret to marketing success is to develop a certain niche and capitalize on your dominance within that niche. The Must See Business Showcase allows businesses to do just that as well. If someone had a NEW business specializing in real estate short sales and they wanted to be found on Google, what would be the odds of that actually happening? Zero to none – we all know that. But what if that short sale business was featured on the Must See Business Showcase under “short sales” and someone searched Google for such a term? Here’s what you’ll get: http://tinyurl.com/42kadfr – In fact, not only can the Must See Business Showcase website help businesses with their search engine optimization, but many times the resultant search link when clicked sends the user directly to the specific Must See business video! (as in the above link). Type in “must see (your niche business) business” into Google and you’ll see what we mean about “niche” marketing results.

Combine the various aspects of social media and Facebook fan page development and you’ll eventually see tremendous results from all your efforts – search engine optimization must be part of your strategy as shown in the MustSee.biz example. But you have to “niche it out”, go mobile, get SEO’ed, and most of all, PROVIDE VALUE if you want people to buy into your project.

Are you starting to see how powerful Search Engine Optimization can really be and how the proper use of SEO techniques can skyrocket traffic to your website? Not successful with your mobile marketing? Many times it’s because no one can find your offer.  Traffic equals opt-ins and opt-ins equal conversions which equal money in your bank account. It’s rare when a free resource can provide so many benefits, so take a moment to visit the Must See Business Showcase and add your business to the listings.

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Little by little, companies of all sizes are starting to “get it” when it comes to mobile marketing by setting up their own versions of mobile loyalty rewards programs and mobile loyalty rewards applications. Companies such as SoMo Technologies and W Technologies, Inc. are taking the forefront in the development of these mobile rewards programs where merchants are rewarding their loyal customers with points that can be accumulated and redeemed for perks, products, and services, all via the mobile device.

Creativity is the key, as there are unlimited possibilities for rewarding points, such as FourSquare “checking in”, Facebook Fan Page “liking”, or interaction on various social networks in a variety of custom contests or promotional activity. What makes these mobile loyalty rewards programs so engaging is the viral nature of the mobile experience where friends tell their friends, and so on. The goal of course, is to increase repeat purchases and repeat visits to the merchant’s store by providing incentives for users doing “social things”, which really can include just about any social media application or idea to get something going viral.

When a customer is rewarded for making a purchase or doing something that helps the retailer, the possibilities are endless, which is why those merchants developing mobile loyalty rewards programs are in the driver’s seat compared to their competition. You just have to market and advertise it correctly.

What’s a good mobile rewards program for YOUR business? Contact a certified mobile marketer and brainstorm some ideas. Scavenger hunts, points for pictures, and referral contests are all good ideas. Or piggy back on mobile reward aggregators such as Chatterfly and place your offers in their already existing network. Companies such as Baskin Robbins, Hola’s Mexican Restaurant, Max Muscle, and Arthur Murray Dance Studios are using mobile rewards programs in this manner.

Either way, the right rewards program can show great results to your bottom line, many times without the hassle of coupon redemption or paying outrageous back-end fees to generate “one-off” clients that don’t come back and harm your brand. Savvy mobile marketers know mobile rewards programs are much more effective than what these “daily deal” sites can deliver in the long run.

W Tech’s custom designed mobile loyalty rewards program will be available shortly for merchants of all sizes. Look for the press release or contact us and we’ll keep you informed on the product launch.

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To say that mobile optimized offers should be designed to be displayed on mobile optimized squeeze pages and mobile optimized landing pages seems like an obvious statement. But many mobile marketers who are creating mobile affiliate marketing campaigns are making this very mistake, and then wondering why their conversion rates are low.

The secret to higher conversion rates for mobile offers is to make sure the landing page that you are directing your potential customers to is a mobile optimized squeeze page.

You need a page that is immediately displayed on a user’s mobile device in the exact orientation that they see it – immediately, without any scrolling or resizing. Many mobile marketers claim they know how to create something as simple as a mobile optimized landing page, yet most produce pages that are hard to read with almost all requiring resizing of some sort to view their message. Surely, this will not work in favor of conversions.

And even if you DO create a masterpiece of a mobile optimized landing page, you need to give some thought about what the user will see next AFTER they enter whatever information you’re looking to capture. For example, most campaigns ask for just an email alone and upon submit, are redirected to the actual product being sold. Make sure this redirect landing page is mobile optimized, because if it’s not, it will not convert and you will spend an inordinate amount of money promoting your offer without results. And it’s amazing how many “expert” mobile marketers make this mistake. We see it over and over again.

Here’s an example of a mobile optimized landing page designed to promote a social media Facebook fan page offer we created under W Technologies. If you’re accessing the link from a regular computer, what you see may look a little strange, but be assured that from a mobile device such as an iPhone or Android based smart phone, you’ll see a completely formatted offer with clear direction as to what to do next – the goal being to get the prospect’s email and take them to the next step with the end game being the actual product sale. If you opt into their offer, you’ll see that each and every page in the process is displayed as a mobile optimized web page and provides clear direction.

Mobile marketing can be extremely lucrative if done in this manner. Would you pay $250 for a certified mobile marketer to create such a campaign for you knowing you have a professional and effective vehicle to constantly convert and sell your products day in and out? Of course you would! (You’d probably even pay more…)

Those having trouble or not seeing results with mobile marketing are missing the very REQUIREMENT to create mobile optimized web pages for product offerings. Those who are using professionally created mobile optimized squeeze pages are seeing higher conversion rates which are transforming their affiliate marketing campaigns into profitable ones. Which would you rather be?

Request a complimentary consultation with us and we’ll show you how to utilize effective mobile optimized web pages that will skyrocket your conversion rates.

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Many people use the terms “mobile marketing” and “social media” to describe two totally different subjects. However, when you get right down to it in today’s world, you really have to understand that mobile marketing IS social media and vice versa. Missing this point is a large reason why most marketing campaigns fail.

Mobile marketing needs to incorporate social media. Social media needs to incorporate mobile marketing. You MUST have both for your brand to reap the viral rewards attributed to successful campaigns created by certified mobile marketers and creative campaign managers.

Mobile marketing has come a long way from the simple “text KEYWORD to SHORTCODE”. Are you blogging? Does your blog have opt in forms and if so, is your blog (and landing pages) mobile optimized? Do you have a professionally designed Facebook fan page? Does your page advertise your mobile offer(s)? Can a prospect opt into your mobile and email marketing campaigns directly from a form on your site, blog, or Facebook page? … from their smart phones and mobile devices? Is that page custom branded with your logo and company look/feel? Are you promoting your brand on Twitter? Does your YouTube account contain videos specifically designed to promote your mobile marketing campaigns where your entire social media presence gets updated whenever posts, news, or texts are sent out?

Obviously those are just some of MANY questions you need to address for EVERY campaign you create and promote. The problem with most marketers is that they fail to understand the complimentary nature of mobile marketing and social media. They treat them as two different subjects. We’re here to tell you that will not result in a successful marketing effort which invariably leads many to the false conclusion that social media marketing doesn’t work – or that text message mobile marketing doesn’t work.

It does work, but you need to hire mobile marketers who understand how powerful the combination of mobile marketing and social media can be. The issue with most companies and brands is the amount of time necessary to complete the Mobile Marketing – Social Media circle.

SoMo Technologies is the prime subsidiary of W Technologies, Inc, a publicly traded mobile marketing development company specializing in “Social Media that Works“.  They know that mobile marketing is most definitely the same as social media. You can’t have one without the other.

If you’ve experienced any form of failure in mobile marketing/social media, or if you’d like to take your campaigns to a higher level, you need to fill out the form here for a confidential, no obligation consultation on how to make the latest technologies work for you.

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Study after study continues to suggest that those who “like” brands from their Facebook Fan pages are more likely to buy from and be loyal to the brand. Every brand these days is looking to incorporate a loyalty rewards program into their offerings, yet many still ignore Facebook, one of the most powerful (and free) forms of marketing today.

In fact, a survey by eMarketer reports that in just last year alone, 32% of US social network users told the research firm they were at least somewhat more loyal to brands they were fans of on Facebook. So far in 2011, that percentage ticked up slightly, to 34%. In addition, 40% of respondents in 2010 said they were more loyal to brands they followed on Twitter, rising to 46% this year. As a result, more and more companies are ear-marketing their marketing dollars into mobile marketing, specifically on how to create their Facebook fan pages and Twitter presences significantly.

Customer loyalty issues aside, there’s so many more reasons to stake your claim to social media for your brand, not the least of which is better SEO for your current website, which MUST be mobile optimized to take advantage to the staggering number of people who are now accessing the web via their mobile devices.

Remember, when people “Like” you on Facebook and “follow” you on Twitter, they’re more likely to talk about your company and your products and services. That starts a conversation which many times can go viral. However, it can go good-viral, or bad-viral. Either way, your Facebook fan page and your Twitter accounts are excellent vehicles to combat bad press or interact positively with your customers. This is so important – it’s amazing how many brands are ignoring these points.

Create a Facebook Fan page for your brand. Devise a mobile marketing campaign to drive people to your Facebook Fan page and entice the visitor to “like” your page. Then create a Twitter account for your account as well and cross-market them both into your mobile marketing and social media marketing strategy and mobile marketing campaigns. Create a mobile keyword for your brand and incorporate that into your facebook fan page (in addition to lead capture on that Facebook fan page as well) and you’ll start developing a customer loyalty program without even knowing it!

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