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When you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there.

Social media marketing is a lot like that. You have a website and Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts. Now what? How do you develop and carry out a plan for marketing your business online?

EduCyber's July seminar will help you create a roadmap to fulfilling your social media marketing goals.

In an information-packed 90 minutes you will learn:

• How to set realistic marketing goals for your business
• How to define objectives for specific activities, such as blogging, in order to determine how much time and what resources you should spend on it
• How to know what you don't know -- resources for those " what do I do next?" moments
• The five biggest mistakes businesses make in their social media campaigns
• How to measure your return on investment

Who whould attend this seminar? Any busines owner who has spent an entire morning on Twitter or Facebook and wondered if that's considered marketing.

Location: 4251 Kipling St.
(2nd Floor Conference Room)
Time: 8:30 am - 10:00 pm
Cost: $19.95 (includes a light breakfast)

Pay Online To Reserve Your Spot Today!

by Lisa McLaughlin, Marketing & Business Development

I've spent a lot of time networking with people in an array of businesses across several industry sectors. These are the decision-makers. The purse-holders. And these are the business owners shaken to their roots by the economy.

The conversation begins with the usual exchange of what-do-you-do questions and answers. Since it's my passion and it also happens to be my business, I eventually lead the conversation to the topic of online marketing in business. Often, the CEO says, "I like my website. It's pretty good. We had it updated last year, and I really don't think we need to make any changes."

"Great!" I say. "Your conversion rate must be terrific. Do you mind me asking you what your numbers look like?"

"Conversion rate?" he asks casually.

"When people find you online -- in this case, your website -- what amount of that traffic is actually prompted to follow your call to action on the website? Do you get calls to your office, or do your visitors make a purchase on the website?" I ask.

"I'm not sure. I leave all that to our IT people. But, it must be good enough -- we're still in business," he states.

I can't argue with that. But, I can make an argument with "good enough." It's just not acceptable in business these days to have a website that does nothing more than conduct a one-way conversation with people online. Your website is not a brochure, although many owners think of it that way. It is vastly more powerful, if set up correctly.

When is "good enough" harming your business? When it's not bringing you the results you need. Here's what isn't good enough -- traffic to your site that leads to a dead end. No calls, no sales, no business. People aren't visiting your website to see beautiful graphics and Flash content, unless that's what your business specializes in. They visit your site to learn, to interact, to move in your direction, if you get them pointed that way. They begin to form a relationship with you online; they begin to make an emotional connection that leads to action in favor of your business' bottom line. That's a call to action. That's moving toward "better" instead of "good enough."

It's rough out there. Marketing dollars need to be invested more prudently than ever before. The competition for attention online, let alone business, is ferocious. You have to make sure that your website is working for you -- not just getting by on "good enough."

Think about the call to action on your own business website. This is NOT the phone number or contact us page. Your call to action acts as a green light -- a traffic signal -- to "DO THIS NOW." It's an imperative -- couched in a friendly little button or link that tells your visitor to take a left or a right turn, straight to you. When your website helps your visitors, it's helping your bottom line. That's good enough.

by Mary Walewski, project manager for EduCyber

Most of the new websites we build these days include blogs. We love blogs because search engines love blogs. Adding a blog to their website is the single easiest way for a business to get more visitors. Plus, it gives the business owner a real-time way to communicate with their customers. Hit publish and your message is out there! Very cool.

Except, I see a lot of new blog owners experience the dreaded "blogger's block." We've all experienced it. It's also known as I've-got-this-new-blog-now-what-the-hell-do-I do-now syndrome.

Here's my list of 8 Ways to Defeat The Evil Blogger's Block

1. Feel the fear of the blank post page. Embrace the fear. Then, write anyway. (What? You thought I had some magic way to overcome this? Silly you.) Seriously, you have to practice doing it even when you're not feeling especially motivated. Kind of like flossing your teeth.

2. Keep a file of stuff to steal, er, borrow from. You don't think Shakespeare made up all of his plots, did you? (He didn't.) Neither should you. If a topic is trending online that relates to your field, do your take on it. But strive for a bit of originality.

3. Keep up with what is trending in your field. Create a Google reader account and subscribe to blogs and news feeds about your field.

4. Answer customers' questions in your blog. Tired of answering that same question over and over? Create a category in your blog to answer them.

5. Review books written about your field. For bonus points, post that review on Amazon.com.

6. Got a meaty topic that you can stretch over several posts? Write a series over a week or two.

7. Repurpose your old content. Have you already written white papers, presentations, even a book? Chop 'em up into blog posts. (And don't worry they'll detract from your book sales. If people like your blog, they'll still buy your book.)

8. Post photos and video of sales, events, presentations, and seminars you're giving. Where is it written that your posts have to be, well, written?

Perhaps you’ve already heard a new term in web site design: conversion optimization. No, this doesn’t have anything to do with search engine optimization, it is a completely different service. The purpose of SEO and other internet marketing strategies is to drive traffic to your website. The purpose of CO (conversion optimization), on the other hand, is to handle the traffic once it gets to your site.

Basically CO is getting the visitor to follow your call to action and removing any barriers that might be stopping the visitor from accomplishing your call to action. Say you have 500 visitors to your site each week. Your call to action is to fill out a form asking for a free quote. Of those 500 visitors, typically 3 fill it out each week. CO would help you raise that conversion rate so that instead of 3, you could get 6, or 15 or 30. So you still have the same amount of web traffic (your costs haven’t risen) but now you’re getting a much higher return on your investment because you’re getting a much higher conversion rate.

Sound like something you’d like to have done on your site? Give us a call at 303 268-2245 to see how we can help you with CO.