Archive for June, 2008

Tornado Marketing via Wordle

Wordle is in one word: Fantastic! It doesn’t have any social media capabilities, it doesn’t connect you to a bunch of people and it doesn’t make it easy to read all your blogs. But, it does allow you to bring out your creative side, share it with the world, and as an added benefit, it’s search engine optimized!

How does it work?
In a nutshell, you go to www.wordle.net, enter a block of text, and wordle spits out a word cloud with the words in your text in different sizes, depending on how often each one is used. It gets rid of the non-important words (at, the, an, a, and, etc) and leaves you with an easy to read word cloud of your text. You can then change the font, layout and color and then save it to the gallery for the world to see.

I created a wordle based on the Tornado Marketing homepage text, and not only does it look really cool (what? can’t something be used just because it looks cool?), the 3 days after I created it, it showed up in the google search for “Tornado Marketing” as #3. Now, I am in the process of developing a wordle based on some of the pages of our new Tornado Tools website for 3 reasons:

1. Each one can be customized with different fonts and colors, and sometimes you need to do something fun to boost your creative juices!

2. It is a double check that the words I want to be prominent on the page are prominent.

3. They’ll be search engine optimized and will help to promote our new website! www.tornado-tools.com

To see the one that I already created, click here

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Long-term business strategy

What kind of mission, philosophy and culture would you have to develop to keep a company going for 46 generations?   How do you keep going through wars, sicknesses, economic turns?  

http://blog.longnow.org/2008/06/13/the-100-oldest-companies/ 

I have to admit that I have never considered that a business could be around for over 1000 years. Never once has this cross my mind as a possibility, but I suppose that has to do with being an American.  The oldest homes in our area were only built 30 years ago.  Us Americans are all very focused on the NEW.   Like children who can’t imagine that their parents were ever kids, we struggle to imagine a world before the USA. 

So many people right now are stuck at thinking about the bad economy, wondering ”Will their business survive?”  I’d advise them to stop looking at the road right in front of you and take a longer-term view.  Think about how you need to adapt. 

The world’s oldest business has been around 1290 years.  Surely you can find a way to change your strategy to survive the next few months or years.  And after this downturn, you’re be smarter.  You’ll save and plan.  And if you are truly stuck, now is the BEST time to hire a coach to improve your business strategy.  Don’t wait until you are living on crumbs.  Make changes while there is still time to turn things around.  

What can you do TODAY to make your business better?  How can you harness your power?

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Farewell, Bill Gates!

Let me be the first (ha ha) to say, ”Congratulations, Bill.  Happy Retirement!”  

As a small business owner, I am so grateful to have my laptop, loaded with Windows Vista, Microsoft Office 2007 and all those great products that help my business run smoothly.  Thanks to Bill Gates’s vision and drive, I can work from anywhere in the world. 

Today, the news will be filled with stories about Bill’s next projects, but have you seen “Bill Gates’s Last Day in the Office” video? It’s worth watching twice for sure!   Enjoy this Friday laugh!!! 

http://tornadomktg.com/blog/bill-gates-retirement-video

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Simple, Yet Sophisticated Small Business Marketing

Customers are overwhelmed with options.  In the end. it seems like some of them just throw up their hands and pick a provider at random.   But there is a way to stand out from the crowd.  You can create brilliant small business marketing - that’s affordable too!

I picked a roofer once because (1) he was the only Mission Viejo, CA roofer I could find on the web at the time, and (2) he instilled confidence in me in a very unique, low cost way.  

How?  He took a digital camera up to the roof, and photographed the “trouble spots.”  He then came down, plugged the camera into his laptop, explained to me how much it would cost to repair the water damage that would soon be inevitable, and gave me a reasonable quote to fix the problem.   I signed on the spot.  He then photographed the “after shot” and as I wrote his check, he asked for referrals and a reference.  You bet!  It’s three years later and I’m still raving about his simple, sophisticated and AFFORDABLE approach to small business marketing. 

How about you?  Have you been wowed by any simple, affordable, and effective small business marketing?  I’d love to hear your great ideas!

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Keys to Keywords with PPC Advertising

In August, we here at Tornado Marketing are planning to do some co-marketing training sessions with Steve Wiideman of ElaborateSEM. So this week I sat in on one of his pay-per-click training sessions to see how we could build on each other’s expertise.  With Steve’s permission, we thought we’d share one of the most important take-aways of the day - focus on the keywords.  Identifying the right keywords is the first and most important step for any pay-per-click (PPC) or search engine optimization (SEO) campaign.

Anyone who has ever looked at a Google Adwords campaign knows that great keywords are essential. What you may not know is how to find your best keywords.  Here are a few suggestions on where to begin:

Find keywords from your website or other guesses of how people search:   

• www.Wordtracker.com
• www.Keyworddiscovery.com
• www.Goodkeywords.com

Find terms your competitors use:

• www.Spyfu.com
• www.Keywordspy.com

Determine what keywords to use:

• Long Tail search terms have less searches but better conversions. Long Tail search terms are terms that contain more than 1 word and are an action term.  EXAMPLE: ”buy new sunglasses”
• Competitive terms are usually single words and are more expensive and require larger budgets, but if you can afford them, are going to get searched for more often.  EXAMPLE: ”sunglasses” 
• Branded search terms – Always use at least one branded campaign.  EXAMPLE: ”Oakley sunglasses” It will help if people have heard your name before. 

Organize your campaign:

• Once you have narrowed down all the keywords that you can possibly use (make sure to use broad, exact and phrase match), put them all in a spreadsheet.
• In the column next to each term, give it a category. Make sure that the categories are very specifically defined by the keywords. For example, some categories for sunglasses might be ‘womens’, ‘polarized’, and ‘tortoise shell’. In each of the categories, the keywords should all be basically the same (under polarized, every keyword should have the word polarized in it).
• Each category that you have will become a separate ad group.
• Ad groups should have very few, very tightly organized keywords.

Focus on quality keywords!

• You should only keep words that convert.  Make sure that you have conversion tracking so that you can measure what is converting!

This is just the very tiny tip of the iceberg of everything that Steve covered. If you want more information about pay-per-click, you can check out his website, ElaborateSEM.com

Do you have any PPC or keyword tips to share?

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Directory of Web 2.0 Sites

Wow!  This directory is packed with over 250 pages of Web 2.0 and Social Media sites that small businesses, entrepreneurs and individuals can use to connect and share information. 

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A lighthearted look at marketing

Every once in a while, I think we all need to take a step back from the day to day, and have a laugh. Marketing is one of the most powerful tools we have in our business, which is why it is so easy to make jokes about!

 I found this joke on JibJab.com, with thanks to the submitter, ZenoPA 
*And please remember, this is all in lighthearted fun, I don’t mean to offend anyone of the Catholic faith*

Jim Perdue, CEO of Perdue Farms, is famous for promoting Chicken as a meal choice. Recently he took a trip to Rome for an audience with the Pope.

“Your holiness”, Mr. Perdue started, “I was wondering if you could do me a favor?”

“And what would that be my son?”, asked the Pope.

“If I was to donate $10 million to the Catholic Church, would you be able to do something for me?”, Mr. Perdue replied.

“Exactly what would you like me to do?”, asked the Pope.

“Well you know the Lord’s prayer, where it says ‘give us our daily bread’, could you change the prayer so it says ‘give us our daily chicken’ “?, asked Mr. Perdue.

The Pope looked agast, “Why Mr. Perdue, that prayer has been a tradition of the Church for centuries. It would be very difficult to change the prayer and remain credible with our congregation around the world.”

“What if I donated $100 million to the church?”, replied Mr. Perdue.

“Hmmm, that’s very generous”, said the Pope, “Let me think about that. I’ll bring it up to the ecumenical council which meets in a couple of weeks. I’ll let you know what we decide.”

Two weeks later, during the meeting of the ecumenical council, the Pope rose to address the audience. “I have good news”, he began. “Mr. Perdue has generously agreed to donate $100 million to the church!”. The news was met with a great deal of applause. The Pope continued, “The bad news, if we take the money, we will lose the Wonder Bread account.”

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Orange County Blogging Presentation

Thank you to MCAI for hosting the Blogging event. We enjoyed presenting and meeting everyone at the event. Also, a big thank you to Kyra Reed for presenting with us, you definitely know your stuff!

For those of you who attended last night, a copy of the PowerPoint is available by emailing us at Tornado@TornadoMktg.com. Also, if you have any questions about our presentation or are interested in more information about the 7 Steps to Blogging Success, we recommend checking out ‘Blog Lightning’.

In addition, Tornado Marketing will be putting together 2 more blogging events in the next couple months. We will be putting together an hour long video webinar and a half day workshop on blogging. The video webinar will be recorded so if you can’t make it, you can still see the video feed and PowerPoint later on. During the half day event, we will help the attendees set up their blog and get it ready for action. We will also work to brainstorm ideas to get those first posts up and running. If you are interested in attending either event, please sign up to be on our events mailing list. We will email you once the date, time and location (for the live event) have been decided on.

Lastly, we would love your feedback on the presentation! Leave us a comment here or send us an email at tornado@tornadomktg.com

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Come meet the Tornado Marketing Team

Tonight and tomorrow Adrianne Machina and Kirsten Wright from Tornado Marketing will be presenting at two Small Business Meetups in the Orange County / Irvine area. For the last week we have been prepping our material, planning our presentations and getting very excited! After the meetings, our presentations will be available to request on our Tornado Tools site. In addition, we will be turning our presentations into full length interactive webinars for anyone who wants to learn more. 

But of course, we would love to meet some of our readers so join us if you can!

Tonight (June 18th @ 6:30pm) you can see us in Irvine as we talk about Blogging: Why and How.

Tomorrow night (June 19th @ 6:30pm) we will be in Santa Ana talking about the Do’s and don’t of successful advertising.

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Appreciation goes further when it’s unexpected

After a holiday like Father’s Day, I can’t help but talk about appreciation. I honestly believe that a holiday that is created just so you have a day to tell your father ‘thank you’ is rather silly. Now don’t get me wrong, I get my dad (and father in law) a card and a gift every year. We do dinner, and I tell him how much I love and appreciate him. But, even he has admitted that he likes it more when I say thank you or that I appreciate him on any other day. It’s not that I mean it any more or any less, it’s just more meaningful on a day that you aren’t supposed to say it.

So, here is your Monday business thought about appreciation:

Appreciation is always appreciated, but that doesn’t mean it is always appreciated the same. Think about the last time someone at work said ‘Thank you’ or ‘Great Job’. Did they say it because they felt like they had to, or because they sincerely meant it? Isn’t it always better when you get a ‘Thank you’ card, or the random email/note that says ‘just wanted to let you know you’re doing a great job’ rather than the one you were expecting?

Remember, your colleagues and your clients all deserve to be appreciated - and you’ll be surpised how much they appreciate you if you surprise them with a thank you! (and appreciated clients are always more willing to offer up referrals!)

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