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New Blogging Clients – the Writer Makes All the Difference

We’ve added some new blogging clients recently and wanted to share some great writing with you as well as some old favorites. With seven talented writers, we may just be the perfect match for your blog needs as well. Find out more information about our blog writing services.

Lindbergh Aircraft Tug Company

This blog is owned by DJ Products. We write for the main corporate blog and this is their second blog with us. They sell aircraft tugs that pull small aircraft out of hangers to the runway. The blog is interesting even though you might consider it a fairly complicated topic. The same writer has worked on the DJ Products blog for easily over a year and has developed a wonderful understanding of their product line.

PehnecGems’  The Lab Gem Supplier Blog

We have just started this blog on Wednesday September 2nd. I think as you review previous posts and then the post from Wednesday on this blog you will agree that a quality writer makes all the difference in the world. This is a new blog for us and we are still learning about the topic so stay tuned to see what we do with it. You can also follow PehnecGems on Twitter and review the tweets that we supply there as this client is also using our Twitter Executive Program.

Marks Psychiatry

Although this is not a new client for us, we have been writing for Dr. Marks for several months, the writing and information we provide on this blog provides tremendous value to the client’s website visitors. Even the Dr. has been favorably impressed with the quality and authority of the content on topics in her area of expertise.

Permanently Beautiful

We have been writing for this blog since it’s start up in October 2008. We have had a few different approaches taken on content and I think the new direction we have recommended to the client is “spot on”. Check out the last week’s posts that focus on celebrities and a younger market and then scroll back a few posts to see what you think. Sometimes on your own blog you have to try new things to see what works best for your readership. This is our real value to you, we recommend new approaches and direct our writers to try new topics when we feel that the writing is turning stale. We work hard to provide you with the great content you want and need, but with a very smart audience-centric approach.

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Google AdWords Trends From August 2009

There are several marked trends that we have seen across many business sectors in Google AdWords this past month. One has been an increase in advertising start up and the other has been a marked increase in conversion activity. Both trends bode well for a change in our economy and for increased business for the fourth quarter of 2009.

First, many clients who have moved out of AdWords due to budget restraints and the economy are moving back into AdWords this past month. We’ve had several new account set up and several paused clients re-start programs. What is interesting to me is that with this flow back into AdWords, typically we see a rise in the cost per click as more competition drives the click cost up on AdWords, but we have not seen this activity yet. Possibly we will this next month, but not so far.

Second, we’ve seen a real jump in conversions across nearly every market sector. Conversion activity has been particularly strong in August with many clients having their best month ever or for the best month in the past six months. Now not all conversions are sales in “AdWords language”. For some accounts a conversion does mean a true online purchase, but for other clients a conversion actually means a lead. A conversion lead really should called a micro-conversion, but AdWords calls it a conversion in their tracking and control panel. Whatever you call it, increased leads and increased sales is good news for our economy and our own personal clients.

So based on these trends should you be moving back into AdWords or should you wait out the economy a bit longer? The decision may be in part based on what you sell. Most of the activity we are seeing is still for products under $1,000 or so and not the big ticket purchases of $2,000 and more, but based on the activity we are seeing, the prospects for a strong economy for the fall are looking pretty good.

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Twitter – Best Practices

How can you effectively use Twitter, how often should you tweet, what should you tweet about, when should you tweet? These are just a few questions that I get asked frequently. In this post I will share with you my best practices and recommendations for effective Twitter use.

First Twitter is a very conversational and casual medium. Consider it like a “big” instant message to the world. Each tweet can only be 140 characters including spaces so you have to be concise and yet persuasive in each tweet to build your following. Here are some of my top tips to consider.

  1. You do not need to necessarily use proper punctuation in order to stay in character count. You can drop your period and move to one space at the end of a sentence.
  2.  Consider using common abbreviations such as mgmt. instead of management or gGr8 instead of great. However don’t get too cryptic, most people will know LOL (laughing out loud) but may not know LMAO (laughing my arse off). You get the drift, only abbreviate when you need to and when it will be understandable.
  3. I recommend, for people really wanting to build a following, that they do between 5 to 10 tweets a day.
  4. Space out your tweets. Don’t send out all ten tweets one after another, space them out using a system like TweetLater (now weirdly called SocialOomph). I usually do one tweet the first thing in the morning and then program my tweets out for the rest of the day separating them by at least one hour.
  5. Make your tweets be valuable to readers. When you don’t offer interesting information you will not grow your following. I focus on interesting links, cool tidbits, interesting information you may not have known in the field I am tweeting on, and sometimes (but not in every tweet) a link back to my website to a specific page, feature or service. Make sure that tweets you do are more than self promotion. I have found that I really grow my following quickly when I take this focus. Additionally when you take this approach more followers will promote you to a special category where they hang on your tweets versus just being a tweet in the crowd. You will leverage your Twitter power with this approach, I know from experience.

Don’t feel like you have the hang of Twitter? We can start you out, just check out our Twitter services.

Do you have another tip you want to share here? Love to hear what you recommend, just click comments below and leave me yours.

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PayPal Seriously Screws With AdWords Conversions

If you use PayPal to process credit card transactions and you are using Google AdWords to push sales on these products, a recent change PayPal has made will be seriously screwing with your ability to record conversions in Google AdWords.

I’ve just spent over one hour on this and was very discouraged about the change. Here is my letter to PayPal that I am posting on my blog as well detailing the problem.

*****

Sent to PayPal using their online Feedback interface

PayPal has recently made a change in the order confirmation page. It used to be at the end of the transaction the buyer (if the PayPal account owner had set this up) was automatically sent to the desired thank you page on the selling website.

Now PayPal has globally, for all customers, defeated this. Instead of being automatically returned to the selling site, a new screen is shown within PayPal with an order confirmation number and an orange button that says return to merchant name’s site.

In my case (I manage many AdWords clients) this means that if and only if the client clicks the orange return to website button will a Google AdWords conversion will be recorded.

If the buyer chooses to just close that tab and surf elsewhere, no Google AdWords conversion is recorded.  This is a very big problem for any client who is using PayPal and then marketing these services on Google AdWords.

As a Professional Account Google AdWords Account Manager I will not be recommending that clients use PayPal if they are promoting their items on AdWords. The recording of conversions is one of our biggest tools to understand if spending on AdWords is an investment or an expense.

I will hope that PayPal will reverse this action. You can contact me, Nancy McCord at 301-705-7303 or nancy@mccordweb.com

Please pass my comments up the chain as PayPal may not have considered this when they have made this very important change.