When building your online presence, you should make sure you set up analytics tools at the outset to see what works, find opportunities you’re missing, and fine-tune your website, SEO, and e-mails.

Setting up analytics on your website can be as easy as adding a free Google Analytics code to the pages of your website. And most e-mail service providers generate data and reports for each mailing that you send. The key is to get these analytics programs in place as early as you can so that you can use the data they generate to continually improve your online communications.

Fine-tune your website and SEO

Google Analytics is a free suite of analysis tools that’s widely used to capture and display information about how visitors are using your site. Using analytics, you can find out what’s appealing to your audience, pull them into your site, and get them to click.

From the Google Analytics dashboard, you can get a great overview of how your site is performing over time. Detailed reports let you drill down for more detailed information about every aspect of your site’s performance. And you can have Google Analytics e-mail you reports on a regular basis so you don’t forget.

Google Analytics will give you as much information as you want, or you can stick to the high-level analytics. To see more details on any report, just click the “view full report” link.

Reports that you should monitor regularly are the following:

• Dashboard – See whether the number of visits is going up or down, see a map of where your visitors come from, and see which pages are most popular.
• Visitors overview – See how many visitors you have and how much time they’re spending on your site, and see which browsers and connection speeds your visitors have to make sure your site is optimized for all your audiences.
• Traffic sources overview – See whether your visitors arrived at your site from searches, directly, or from links on other websites.
• Keywords – See which words visitors used on search engines to find your site, plus what they did once they landed on your site.
• Top content –  See which pages get the most traffic on your site.

Depending on your business, you may want to run additional Google Analytics reports. For example, you might want to know what country your visitors come from or what time they are visiting your site. Perhaps you’d want a visual representation of exactly where users are clicking on your web pages.

Improve your e-mail campaigns

After you send an e-mail blast, you should plan on analyzing the results using the analytics that most e-mail services provide to learn how your audience is responding to the communications you’ve sent.  You can see how many people opened your e-mail, and who they are.  You also can check which links generate the most interest, and which campaigns are most effective.

For each e-mail campaign, you should analyze the following:

• How many e-mails were sent, received, and bounced due to bad e-mail addresses
• How many people opened the e-mail, clicked on a link, forwarded your e-mail, and opted out or signed up
• Which links and graphics received clicks
• A comparison of this campaign and past campaigns to identify differences and the reasons for them

Taking a close look at e-mail analytics lets you spot trends that help you refine and improve your e-mail marketing plans. If you get too many unsubscribes, you might be sending your e-mails too often. If none of your graphics are getting clicked, many of your subscribers might have their images turned off and you should design your e-mails to rely less on images and more on text links. If your response rate for a particular e-mail was particularly good, you should see how it differs from less successful campaigns.

Test and refine

One of the great things about having a robust analytics solution in place is that you can test the results you get by updating your content or making multiple versions of your content. For example, you could take a look at which words are leading visitors to your site and create more content that concerns those keywords, and see whether that improves site traffic. You can create multiple versions of a single e-mail campaign and see which gets the most click-throughs. Or reorganize your site to remove pages that are rarely visited, or create stronger links to those pages.

The key is to take a look at analytics at least once a month, plus after every major website change or e-mail campaign.

Online business today is a two-way conversation, and you can’t participate unless you know what discussions are going on online. If you’ve built an online presence for your company, you should plan on keeping tabs on what’s being said about you and your industry on the web. By monitoring keywords, companies, and people, you can find out how your company is doing compared to your competition, monitor what people are saying about your brand, and research trends and experts in your industry.

There are some great free tools to monitor your online presence. Most of these require a few minutes to set up and then a few minutes per day to monitor. There are some that you can use once a month to track how your online brand is over time.

Setup an RSS reader

An RSS reader aggregates web content such as news, blogs, and online searches in a single location for easy viewing. A reader helps you view new information from all the sites and searches you choose on one page. Google Reader is very easy to set up and use.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts let you monitor the web for new content. Just enter the search terms you’re interested in following and how often you want updates and you can monitor any word or phrase. You should set up Google Alerts on your company, your brands, keywords, your competitors’ companies, your key employees, and influencers in your industry. You can get updates via e-mail or add the RSS feed of your Google Alerts to your RSS reader.

Twitter Searches

Twitter searches are feeds of search results of keywords, brands, companies, people, and #hashtags on Twitter. Be sure to search for @mentions of your company Twitter accounts. The results are almost instantaneous and allow for time-critical monitoring.

LinkedIn Answers

LinkedIn Answers lets you ask and answer industry-specific questions. You can subscribe in an RSS reader to all the questions in a category relevant to your company and your customers. You can keep track of the kinds of problems your customers have, answer questions to show your expertise, and follow discussions in your industry.

Check your social media pages

LinkedIn

Visit your LinkedIn home page to see who has visited your profile, read status updates from your connections, and answer any messages you’ve received. Visit groups you’ve joined to see what kinds of discussions are going on.

Facebook

Look at your company’s Facebook page stats and activity using the View Insights link on the pages you manage. Scan your fans and page views count. Visit your Facebook company page (or personal profile if you use it for business) and answer any questions or address comments that visitors have made on your page. If you are a member of a group, check to see if any interesting new discussions are going on.

The ongoing buzz about your company

Sites such as Social Mention and  Addict-o-matic show you the buzz on your company across a wide selection of social networks. Topsy lets you search terms on Twitter over the past 6 months (Twitter’s search only goes back about a week).

Assess the quality of your online presence

There are a range of free tools that can analyze the quality of your online brand. Use Twitter Grader, Facebook Grader, and Website Grader to get a free analysis of how your pages rank compared to others. You can run these analyses once a month to see how changes you make to your site, pages, and online conversations improve your ranking.

Monitor in real time

Use software such as TweetDeck to monitor online conversations in real time. Set up custom columns that monitor @mentions of your accounts, searches on keywords and names, and activity by your Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections.

Use the information you find

Keeping track of your company online can give you the ability to spot issues before they become problems, find opportunities in your marketplace to grow your business, and build a reputation as an expert in your industry. Responding to people that mention you or your competition can help you win new customers and build relationships in your industry.

Six Revisions has a comprehensive list of monitoring options in ”12 Social Media Monitoring Tools Reviewed.”

Link to your site from social networks

Be sure to complete all the information in your social network profiles, including URLs of your site and/or landing pages. Be sure to include links to your relevant website content on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other appropriate networks.

Add yourself to online directories

Scott Design received four Communicator Awards in a competition honoring creative excellence among professionals worldwide.

An Award of Excellence recognized Scott Design’s work on the website for CTW, which provides resources for church leaders. The website, created in WordPress blogging software, won in the Cultural Blog category.

Scott Design received an Award of Distinction in the Financial Services category for its work on the website for New York-based venture capital firm Braemar Energy Ventures. The website features an interactive timeline and pop-up portfolio.

Two additional Awards of Distinction recognized Scott Design’s Augmented Reality Snowstorm, an online application featured in the firm’s own 2009 holiday greeting. This Flash application, which lets users put themselves in an imaginary snowstorm using a computer webcam, won in the Motion Graphics category.

With thousands of entries received from throughout the United States and around the world, the Communicator Awards is the largest and most competitive awards program honoring the creative excellence of communications professionals. The Communicator Awards is an annual competition honoring the best in advertising, corporate communications, public relations and identity work for print, video, interactive and audio. Please visit www.communicatorawards.com for more information.

For the latest information on recent awards, visit the Design Awards page.

At last week’s Northern California Business Marketing Association marketing strategy roundtable, Lorie Loe, President of Eccolo Media, shared best practices for optimizing your marketing strategy, based on insights from the Eccolo Media 2009 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report. Her company surveyed B2B tech buyers on which content buyers use most often and are most influential, how they like to receive the information, and how decision makers differ from influencers.

A few highlights from the report that you can put to work today:

1. Create a variety of content in a variety of formats.

White papers were a highly used collateral type, were considered the most influential in the buying process, and were the most frequently shared type of content. Product brochures and case studies were next in line in use, with case studies being more influential than brochures. Video and podcasts trailed, but video consumption is definitely trending up and should be a part of your content strategy whenever possible. Most important is to provide a variety of formats to capture all types of customers.

2. Write copy of the highest quality.

Technology purchasers find high-quality writing to be very important for all types of content, even more important than content written by an analyst, which can often be a huge expense. Well-written copy created in-house or by a qualified vendor is more influential even than third-party sources. Content is most heavily used during the pre-sales cycle, long before anyone contacts your firm, so make sure your collateral puts you on the customer’s vendor shortlist.

3. Provide all of your content on your website, where it’s most often used.

Be sure that it’s easy to locate, access, and download your content. And since content forwarded by a personal contact is the most influential channel for technology purchasers, make sure everything on your website is easily shared by keeping file sizes small and including automatic sharing technologies whenever possible. Also, be sure to include e-mail marketing and social media as outlets for your content as those channels continue to grow.

Bottom line?

You should provide high-quality information about your company, your products and services, and what it’s like to work with your organization in a variety of formats to help your B2B technology customers connect with you in the way that works best for them. This means creating white papers, case studies, podcasts, videos, brochures, and other pieces that are easily shared via e-mail, are available on your website, are part of e-mail marketing campaigns, and are posted on your social media sites and blog.

I had the opportunity to attend a presentation by Stu Carty at Constant Contact last week and he did a great job of laying out the best practices in e-mail marketing. Stu first defined the basic goal of e-mail marketing: Deliver professional e-mail communications, to an interested audience, containing information they find relevant, timely, and valuable, and that conform to best practices and anti-spam laws.

Following is a summary of all the great information Stu shared, which you can read all about in his full presentation.

1. Connect: Build good, permission-based e-mail lists

In order for you to legally use an e-mail list, it must be filled with customers with whom you already have a relationship. There are some great ways to build your contact list:

• collect e-mail addresses at events, meetings, trade shows
• get sign ups on your website and social networks
• ask for e-mail addresses in person or on the phone
• ask customers to sign up at a retail location
• add e-mail addresses of your colleagues and business associates
• include all of your past and current customers

Although you can legally buy or sell a list of e-mail addresses, it is illegal to use it to send e-mails! If you want to reach out to new customers that you’ve never met, you can use direct mail, advertising, web marketing, telemarketing, and event marketing—not e-mail marketing.

2. Inform: Create and send targeted e-mail campaigns

You should create a master calendar with all the e-mails you plan on sending. There are three main types of e-mails you should consider adding to your e-mail marketing calendar:

• Newsletters—monthly or quarterly e-mails featuring educational content
• Promotions—bi-weekly or monthly e-mails featuring promotional content, offers, coupons
• Announcements—periodical e-mails, depending on content, which usually includes targeted messages about invitations, new products, or special events

When building your e-mails, consider everything that will help your e-mail get past spam filters, get opened by the recipient, and cause them to click on your links:

• Design or select a clean, well-designed template that represents your company and brand
• Use a real person’s name in the “from” line
• Write an honest, straightforward, simple “subject” line
• Catch the reader’s attention in the first lines of the body of the message
• Keep it short and simple—include 2 to 3 newsworthy topics only

For more information on creating e-mails that work, read Getting your HTML e-mails delivered, Getting your HTML e-mails opened, and Getting your HTML e-mails read, Two little words: Subject Lines, and Watch your language in your e-mails!

3. Grow: Evaluate results and refine the process

Creating a robust e-mail marketing program is an ongoing process. You should be sure to analyze every e-mail you send out to find out what works with your audience, and what doesn’t.

Most e-mail service providers offer analytics on each of your campaigns, including information on who did and didn’t receive your e-mail, who opened the e-mail, which links they clicked, and more. You should use this information to find out which types of information are most interesting to your readers.

If your readers are divided on what they like, consider splitting your list into two or more lists, each with e-mails targeted to that list. Remember, your goal is to deliver information your recipients find relevant, timely, and valuable.

A few e-mail stats (be sure to test for your particular situation):

• Average open rates = 15-20% (For large companies, this number falls to 10%)
• Expect 1 person to click on “spam” for every 1,000 e-mails you send
• Include 3 or fewer links in one e-mail
• Use 5 or fewer graphics in one e-mail
• Best days to send e-mails: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
• Best time to send e-mails: 10 am to 3 pm

Do you have any best practices you’d add to this list? Let me know in the comments section.

You don’t need to be a brain surgeon to put together a social media marketing plan. But you do need to make sure you’ve got the right stuff to make it work. Creating a successful online marketing plan takes bright ideas, good hearing, a big heart, fast hands, a funny bone, and stamina.

Bright ideas
Before you get started online, you should develop objectives, goals, and strategies for your marketing efforts.

Good hearing
Don’t make a move until you listen and monitor what’s happening online in your market, including following all mentions of your company or brand, your competition, and industry keywords.

Big heart
You should plan on sharing your passions and company culture as part of your online outreach. And be as helpful as possible by sharing your expertise and knowledge with others.

Fast hands
Be prepared to put your writing skills to the test by creating plenty of valuable online content.

Funny bone
Make sure what you share is interesting and funny—and be prepared to take a ribbing for your ideas once you join in online conversations.

Stamina
Any social media marketing program takes a long time to bear fruit, so be prepared to keep the energy up in the long run.

For more information on planning a social media program, check out “5 steps in a social media marketing plan” and read how to get started with Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Whether you’re working on the corporate website, e-mail programs, social media, advertising, collateral, or other marketing activities, there are some things that are typically better done in-house, and some that are better done by an outside agency.

Reasons to use an agency might include any or all of the following: Your staff doesn’t have enough time; you don’t have the right expertise to implement all the pieces of your marketing strategy; you want to get a new perspective or tap a unique thought process attainable only by working with a creative team outside of your company.

Also, partnering with an agency for at least a portion of your marketing can lead to cost savings and improved quality in your marketing. Finally, you should especially look to an outside agency for development of creative work, since that’s its expertise.

But are there marketing activities that you shouldn’t leave to an outside agency? There are no set rules about what you should do in-house and what should go to an outside agency—that depends on your own resources and budgets—but below are some suggestions.

Keep decision-making, legal procedures, and marketing analysis in-house. Here’s an expanded list of activities best kept in-house:

• Draft content development
• Design direction based on branding guidelines
• High-level strategy and goal-setting
• Ongoing updates to websites and profiles
• Real-time reaction to important issues
• Brand monitoring
• Analysis of reports
• Legal oversight

Have an agency do creative work, copywriting, SEO, and setup of systems. Here are activities well-suited to an outside agency:

• Visual design
• Information architecture
• Development of web templates, social network profiles
• Creation and optimization of visual assets for integrating campaigns across media
• Programming (databases, landing pages with registration forms, apps)
• Copywriting for high-level messaging and ad copy
• Copyediting and proofreading
• SEO
• Implementation of analytics, measurement, and real-time monitoring systems
• Creation of guidelines for look, style, tone of all communications

Maintain close communication with the outside agency

Good communication is key to successfully working with an agency. You should keep the agency up-to-date on new products, initiatives, and goals through ongoing communication. You should make sure the agency understands your company, industry, products, services, customers, and competitors. The agency must understand your marketing goals and be able to create assets that further those goals.

And keep the agency informed about what you are doing in-house, so it can coordinate with you per schedule, and so both firms can keep their people on the same page concerning your marketing campaigns.

The outside agency should keep you apprised of new technology and marketing and design trends. The agency should make sure you are aware of all deadlines and the status of ongoing projects. And the agency should update all branding and style guidelines as needed, including considerations for all new media.

With a good distribution of responsibilities and strong communication, the partnership with the outside agency can help you create strong and successful marketing programs.

In Hollywood, having a good stylist is as important as having a good publicist. Many celebrities rely on their stylists not just for style advice, but also to create an entire public image for them. Stars need help creating a positive, cohesive look in interviews, at special events, and whenever they’re out in public. As soon as they leave the house each morning, celebrities project an image to the world.

You are responsible for “the celebrity styling” of your company—whether it’s managed by one person or many. You should make sure your company has a strong, cohesive brand no matter where your company appears: your website, e-mails, landing pages, social media sites, online communities, trade show presentations, news releases, sales presentations, and corporate collateral. Every piece of your marketing must be coordinated to make sure you present your company’s best face to the world.

As a celebrity doesn’t leave the house without having that perfect look, all of your company’s marketing pieces should be on brand, presenting the same positive face to the world. Don’t allow rogue producers of off-brand materials. For example, you may have designers at an agency who want to show off their design styles, without regard for your brand. Just like a fashion designer who’s eager to get his or her latest styles on the runway, a designer might not say, “This look just might not be right for you.” Similarly, different departments in your company may create pieces that reflect someone’s personal style more than that of the company.

Celebrity stylists assemble a wardrobe of clothing and accessories for each star to wear on all occasions. That way, when stars have to get dressed without their stylists, they have everything they need to put together a great-looking outfit. You can help everyone—marketing team members, sales reps, design firms, and resellers in the channel—create marketing pieces that are great-looking while staying on brand by providing the following:
- A comprehensive set of style guidelines
- A library of imagery and approved copy assets available
- Ongoing, hands-on feedback on all marketing communications pieces created for your company.
Make sure everyone who creates marketing materials knows the e-mail address of the brand director, so if they have any style questions, they know whom to contact.

With defined style guidelines and a designated brand director, you can assure that your company will look great wherever it appears in public.

Here’s a quick rundown of the who, what, where, when, why, and how of using social networks to help kick-start your social media plan.

Who

You should use social media if you have a business and want to do any of the following:

• Reach new customers
• Build relationships with existing customers
• Create awareness of your products or services through PR and marketing
• Decrease customer support costs
• Drive traffic to your website
• Find new employees
• Improve teamwork at your company

What

Social networks are now used by millions of people every day:

• Social networks are web-based, online communities of people with shared interests who communicate with one another and share information.
• Social networks allow you to connect with friends, family, colleagues, and customers online.
• Social media marketing is the use of social networks to promote your company’s products or services.

Where

You should create a presence on the following websites:

• LinkedIn: Set up profiles for key employees. See “Getting Started with LinkedIn.”
• Facebook: Create a Facebook Fan Page for your business. See “Getting Started with Facebook.”
• Twitter: Set up a Twitter profile for your company or brand. See “Getting Started with Twitter.”
• Local Search: Set up listings for your business on Google Local Business Center, Yahoo! Local, Best of the Web Local, and Bing Local Listing Center, by visiting GetListed.org.
• Reviews: Set up a listing for your business on Yelp.

When

• Today: Set up profiles on the major sites. It takes about a day.
• Every day: Keep up with what’s happening in your industry or marketplace.
• Every week: Spend a few hours participating in conversations with people in your networks.
• As needed: Post news about your company.
  

Why

There are five main reasons companies should do social media marketing:

• It is now considered a best practice.
• It drives traffic to your website.
• It improves your search engine rankings.
• It lets you join the conversation.
• It amplifies your marketing messages.

For details, see “5 reasons companies should do social media marketing.”

How

It’s easy to get started with social media:

• Sign up for LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, local search engines, and Yelp.
• Fill out the basic information (you can add more later).
• Join groups of peers and/or customers.
• Listen and get a feel for discussion etiquette.
• Get social by joining into conversations with your peers and customers. See “Connecting with customers through LinkedIn,” “Connecting with customers through Facebook,” and “Connecting with customers through Twitter.“

More information

• For more in-depth information about using social media marketing, take a look at “5 Steps in a Social Media Marketing Plan“  and “Promote your business using social media.”
• For an overview of the components in an online marketing strategy, check out the Marketing Treasure Map video.
• For details on the most popular social networking websites, check out the slideshare presentation called “Free Online Tools to Create Conversations.”