Get Found Online: Search Engines

Consumers most frequently go to the search engines to research and purchase products and services. Is your website getting found by consumers looking for you?

There are two kinds of search results: paid results and organic (or natural) results.
Paid results are those listings that require a fee for the search engines to list their link for particular keywords. The most widely used form of paid listing is Pay Per Click (PPC), where you pay each time someone clicks on the link in your advertisement. The price increases with the competitiveness of the keyword.

Organic results are gathered by search engines’ web crawlers and ranked according to relevance to search terms. This relevance is calculated by criteria such as extent of keyword match and number of links into that website. Ranking in the organic search results is better because not only is it FREE, but research shows that people click on the organic results 75% of the time and paid results only 25% of the time.

Is your company or services being found? If not, Lotus Interactive can help!

How Does Google Decide?

Google and the other search engines rank websites in search engine results pages according to relevance to the search terms. This relevance is calculated by looking at both on-page factors such as the content on your site and off-page factors in the form of inbound links to your website. Off-page factors are the biggest influencers in your website’s ranking in search engine results.

Not sure how to get the results you’re looking for or how implement SEO (search engine optimization) tactics? Lotus Interactive can help!

Outbound vs. Inbound Marketing

The Internet has changed the dynamics of the business world. For the past decades, marketers have used “outbound” marketing techniques such as trade shows and print advertising, where marketers push out a message far and wide hoping that it resonates with a few individuals. These outbound marketing methods are becoming less and less effective for two reasons:

People are getting better at blocking out interruption-based marketing messages.
The average person is inundated with thousands of outbound marketing interruptions per day and is figuring out more creative ways to block them out, including caller ID, spam filtering, and on-demand TV and radio.

The Internet presents quick and easy ways for consumers to learn and shop.
Instead of flying to a trade show across the country, for example, a consumer can go the Internet to research and purchase products or services.

Today, consumers are going to the Internet to start their purchasing process. In order to remain competitive, businesses need to utilize “inbound” marketing techniques to “get found” by the consumers searching for their products and services online.

Let Lotus Interactive help you get noticed.

Social Marketing – what the heck is it anyway?

Social marketing is the planning and implementation of programs designed to bring about social change using concepts from commercial marketing.

Among the important marketing concepts are:

Getting to know Twitter

What is it?

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages. People write short updates, often called “tweets” of 140 characters or fewer. These messages are posted to your profile or your blog, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search.

Twitter – Fun Stuff: friends, favorites, and stats!

There’s more to Twitter than OFF and ON! Use the commands below to send private messages, mark updates as favorites, or even remind someone to update their Twitter page if you’re wondering what they’re doing!

@username + message
directs a twitter at another person, and causes your twitter to save in their “replies” tab.
Example: @meangrape I love that song too!

D username + message
sends a person a private message that goes to their device, and saves in their web archive.
Example: d krissy want to pick a Jamba Juice for me while you’re there?

WHOIS username
retrieves the profile information for any public user on Twitter.
Example: whois jack

GET username
retrieves the latest Twitter update posted by the person.
Example: get goldman

NUDGE username
reminds a friend to update by asking what they’re doing on your behalf.
Example: nudge biz

FAV username
marks a person’s last twitter as a favorite. (hint: reply to any update with FAV to mark it as a favorite if you’re receiving it in real time)
Example: fav al3x

STATS
this command returns your number of followers, how many people you’re following, and which words you’re tracking.

INVITE phone number
will send an SMS invite to a friend’s mobile phone.
Example: Invite 415 555 1212

Building Social Marketing Into Your Program

First-time social marketers often feel overwhelmed by the rigorous market research processes they see in other large-scale programs. They may hesitate to incorporate social marketing activities into their own programs, unsure whether they have the resources and expertise to undertake such a project. The following ten tips are designed to help those new to the field to understand the basic principles of social marketing, with practical suggestions on how to implement these concepts in any type of program.

Lotus Interactive Welcomes You…

Lotus Interactive is a professional interactive agency focused on the promise of provided unmatched, world class solutions for its clients.

The Lotus, often used as an example of divine beauty, is described as “eye-opening” or the “awaking of mind”. With the rise of the sun each morning, its unfolding petals suggest the expansion of the soul and represents purity of the mind as it rises above the muddy waters below. One could suggest the Lotus is the perfect icon of “promise” in today’s clouded landscape of uncertainty. In keeping with those ideas, Lotus Interactive represents new ideas with the promise of success for its clients in this dynamic, fast changing marketplace.