This makes perfect sense from a user experience perspective. Google is in the business of making each one of us happy by making it easy to find what we want online. So when I type in a keyword, find an ad with that keyword, click on it, arrive at a landing page with a clear call to action to purchase that item or learn more, I’m a happy camper and Google has done its job. Hence, the Google Quality Score.

Sometimes this can be a bit more confusing from an advertiser perspective. We have worked with many clients who have called us in after seeing their ad placements sink due to low quality scores. Google has been known to even stop placing the ads altogether in some cases.

Here at ThinkResults, we are all for experimentation and testing (I’m a scientist by training), but your Google AdWords account must be done well and monitored closely.

As background info, check out this fun infographic to get a brief overview of how Google AdWords campaigns work:

Infographic by Pulpmedia Online Marketing

Next week, we’ll be back with our top tips for optimizing your Google AdWords campaigns, based on this information about your Quality Score.

In the meantime, if you have Google questions, post ‘em below and our online marketing experts will answer them for you!

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/7-new-facebook-changes-impacting-businesses/

I particularly like Tip #4 about the new application display format and how to convert them from their default into a compelling call to action. See the “Win a Million” call to action (custom image and text on an app) on the Macy’s page. Nice! Check it out. (btw, check out the full Macy’s timeline – EXCELLENT example of a nicely optimized new Facebook Timeline page).

With now one out of every seven minutes online being spent on Facebook,it’s where the “eyeballs” are, so definitely worth watching from a marketing perspective. Let me know what you’re planning to change for the new Timeline format. Curious to hear!

The biggest change of course is the cover photo. Much wider than typical photos, these are essentially online billboards, so it’s important that you think carefully about what image you want to portray here. Literally.

Here are some free tools for making interesting Facebook Timeline images.

Of course, you can always contact us and we can create a custom graphic that will suit your brand beautifully and fit perfectly in the space.

There are also several things to know about the new Facebook Timeline format. Beyond a great cover image, two of the most important to take care of right away are the timeline feature itself and a solid strategy for “pinning” posts.

Plan Your Timeline

The timeline itself allows the brand to feature relevant milestones from the company history, thereby giving the user more information. It makes the experience richer and deeper than in the prior era.

Here you can feature product launches (with photos/video whenever possible) and other major events.  This can be a very useful tool and is the most basic change of the new format. It’s more structured, less of a free-for-all format of the prior era.

Action item: Think about what the major milestones are for your company and add that information to your page, with some great photo or video assets.

Pinning Comes to Facebook – Almost  ;->

I think one of the most interesting new features is “pinning”. Pinning allows you pin a post to the very top of timeline for a specific period of time (up to 7 days), essentially enabling you to feature a piece of interesting news. This way, it remains “top of mind” literally for up to a week. An awesome tool for marketers! You can identify pinned content by the small orange flag on the upper right corner of the item, as you can see on this Today Show post.

Action item: Plan for a regular series of items to “pin” to the top of your timeline. Your latest product launch, news release, blog post, kudos from a customer, etc. Each item can be up there for up to a week, so you can highlight 4 or more items a month.

So yeah, we are total geeks here and are loving some of the new changes on the Timeline format. Would love to hear what’s working for you and what’s not? Are you ready to make the switch? Or are you holding back – and why?

Then consider our fixed-scope, fixed-fee quick start launch program, Ready, Set, Launch! We can have you up and running in a matter of weeks, or even days, if need be. No, I am not kidding. The PurThread site, for example, took only a few weeks to build.

Why We Created Ready, Set, Launch!

Over the last several years, a number of smaller companies came to us wanting the same kind of launches we provide for larger corporate clients, on a smaller, fixed budget.

At first we were stumped. How could we take that scale of launch and scale it down to work with small startups and small to medium-sized companies, and still provide that kind of high quality, on-time, on-budget work for which we are known?

Never a team to back down from a challenge (in fact, we love them!), we thought about this problem. A lot. Then last spring, we came up with an idea for a fixed-scope, fixed-fee launch program, based on a very fast and successful “mini-launch” for a client. Then, for several months, we have been quietly perfecting this program with other clients. Check out our Portfolio to see some examples.

Now, we are ready to offer it to everyone. Call us for a free consultation from the launch experts on how Ready, Set, Launch! can catapult your company, starting on Day 1. To your success!

Pinterest is definitely a place of love. And I expect that will continue for some time as we are highly visual creatures. It’s in our nature. (BTW, I think, as an evolutionary biologist by training, this is one of the main reasons why Facebook is much more successful than Twitter and LinkedIn.)

If you haven’t heard of this new social media channel, you soon will. Pinterest is an invitation-only site that allows users to create virtual pinboards of the things they love, whether it’s products they are selling/want to buy, recipes to share, ideas for a dream house, or design project ideas.

Here are some facts about Pinterest:

• It’s driving more traffic for some online retailers than Google+
• It had more than 7M users in December 2011, up from 1.68M in September – a 329% increase in just a few months

Given those facts, it’s definitely worth checking out to see if it’s right for your brand.

Here’s a great review of whether Pinterest is right for your business.  Hint: If your brand is or could be highly visual (photographers, wedding planners, etc. all the way through to “lifestyle” brands), this is a brilliant way to show off your stuff.

Would you use Pinterest for your business?

When we’re working with clients through a launch process, we are fully prepared for emotional reactions, for them to take longer to move through the plan than they expect, and for there to be roadblocks and diversions distracting them from this critical task. Everyone on the ThinkResults team is very adept at accommodating our clients and coaching them through this difficult birthing process we call “launch and repositioning”.

I just figured since we were all such pros at this, with a rich intellectual understanding of what needs to happen and what the normal reactions are, that the process would be easy for us. Simply put, I was cocky.

I was wholly unprepared for my own reactions to the launch process as the founder of ThinkResults Marketing.

Having now been through this with our crackerjack launch team, I truly understand what it means to be a founder and go through a launch (or this case a repositioning). What it means to have someone on your team tell you what THEY think the brand (i.e., your baby) means. To have heated, passionate arguments about what we stand for. To have terse discussions about what kinds of clients we are meant to serve, and which kinds we are not (hint: non-payers top the pile!). To get totally conflicting opinions about logo design and direction. Wow. I cannot express how weird it was to be drinking our own medicine.

I can say, though, that I am incredibly, unbelievably proud of the depth of critical thinking that we poured into this repositioning. Of the attention to detail that we are famous for. Of the creative ideas that were sparked as the team worked alongside each other, each bringing their own unique expertise to complete the overall puzzle.

I am also pleased at how it all turned out and am clear that I could never have done it on my own. This new site and the entire repositioning process has finally fleshed out a vision I created over nine years ago. We have the good fortune of having truly inspiring clients and I wanted the site to really show off their results and their stories. Because we believe that there is no success for us unless our clients achieve the results they wanted.

We wanted a brand that showed off our expanded capabilities and showcased the cool stuff our clients are doing. I think this site achieved that objective.

The ThinkResults team totally rocks. Thank you for making this happen.

Let us know what you think of our new brand. We promise we won’t be crushed if you have criticisms!

I think it’s also true that 2012 will be the year that B2B gets on board with social media as part of their marketing strategy (for those that haven’t already, of course).

Before the holidays, I attended a talk on social media in a healthcare setting that introduced me to the fascinating Forrester Social Technograhics® ladder:

This ladder groups consumers into seven categories, based on how they use social media. Clearly, people can fall into many different categories on this ladder. The only exclusive one is the “Inactives”. And that’s getting to be a smaller and smaller pool every day.

The only thing we can’t figure out here at ThinkResults Marketing is where are the Broadcasters? A general trend we’ve noted in our social media work is that people tend to post tweets to Twitter but very few actually engage in conversations on Twitter. We see that some on Facebook and LinkedIn but it’s most common on Twitter. Something about the interface, I suspect.

So we think Forrester needs to add a “Broadcaster” rung between the “Critics” and the “Conversationalists”.

What kind of user are you? What kind of users are in your target market? If you don’t know, we can help you find the answers.

If you’re ready to get on the social media bandwagon and not sure how to get started, talk to us about developing your 2012 social media strategy.

This video is a result of that challenging assignment. It tells the story of how Best Decision can be used and gives a clear path through the app to engage users to download and use this new app.

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