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	<title>B2B Marketing and Lead Generation &#124; Optify</title>
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		<title>Social Media Tips for the Poor Marketer: Open Thread</title>
		<link>http://www.optify.net/social-media/social-media-tips-for-the-poor-marketer/</link>
		<comments>http://www.optify.net/social-media/social-media-tips-for-the-poor-marketer/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:29:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Uri Bar-Joseph</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.optify.net/?p=3529</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>How to generate business leads from social media with no budget
</p><p><b>Social media</b> has yet to become a line item on the marketing budget for most companies, and even in </p>
<div><a class="screenshot" href="#piggy-bank-picture" target="_blank"></a></div>
<div id="piggy-bank-picture" style="display:none;"></div>
<p>enterprises&#8230;</p><p><a href="http://www.optify.net/social-media/social-media-tips-for-the-poor-marketer/">Social Media Tips for the Poor Marketer: Open Thread</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><H2>How to generate business leads from social media with no budget</h2>
<p><b>Social media</b> has yet to become a line item on the marketing budget for most companies, and even in </p>
<div><a class="screenshot" href="#piggy-bank-picture" target="_blank"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1029" title="social media leads with no budget" src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/social-media-leads-with-no-budget.jpg" alt="social media leads with no budget" width="222" height="149" /></a></div>
<div id="piggy-bank-picture" style="display:none;"><img src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/social-media-leads-with-no-budget.jpg" alt="social media leads with no budget" /></div>
<p>enterprises with robust marketing budgets, a dedicated social media budget is still part of overall online marketing budgets. But a good marketer should not ignore this channel just because it doesn’t have a budget, and as social media rise in importance, expectations to <i>generate business leads from social media</i> are increasing as well. With no resources other than time, and imagination, the social media marketer should use basic innovative thinking and the resources that today’s web offers. </p>
<div class="clear"></div>
<p><b>We listed a few tips we think are important for the “poor” social media marketer in his or her mission to take over the social web.</b></p>
<p>1. Monitor the web for conversations about your industry, product and brand. Do so via RSS feeds, Twitter, Google alerts, and other social media tools. Comment when appropriate and include your brand name and a link if possible.</p>
<p>2. Join in to the conversation–don’t be promotional, be helpful—and earn trust.</p>
<p>3. Show you are a contributing member of a group and not just a transient guest.</p>
<p>4. Make a personal connection–become a face not just name. Use the same name (use it always), post a good picture, be as transparent as possible, and always be honest.</p>
<p>5. Offer help.</p>
<p>6. Expand your network, and this includes fans, followers, and network, subscribers. Make it easy for people to find you and to join your network.</p>
<p>7. Create relevant and targeted content. Create the right content based on what you are hearing, and be generous with your content and links.</p>
<p>8. Be patient!</p>
<p>Do you have other tips, tricks, or comments? Share them with us in this open thread. You can also check our discussion on <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&#038;gid=66325&#038;discussionID=15338090&#038;sik=1268263417345&#038;trk=ug_qa_q&#038;goback=.and_66325_15338090_*2_*2.ana_66325_1268263417345_3_1/">LinkedIn</a>, and our latest post <a href="http://www.optify.net/blog/social-media/social-media-marketing-generating-business-leads/">Social Media marketing: Generating Business Leads</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.optify.net/social-media/social-media-tips-for-the-poor-marketer/">Social Media Tips for the Poor Marketer: Open Thread</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Social Media Marketing: Generating Business Leads</title>
		<link>http://www.optify.net/social-media/social-media-marketing-generating-business-leads/</link>
		<comments>http://www.optify.net/social-media/social-media-marketing-generating-business-leads/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Mar 2010 23:28:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Uri Bar-Joseph</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.optify.net/?p=3520</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>In a previous post, <a href="http://www.optify.net/social-media/social-media-for-business/">Social Media for Businesses: Six Tips</a>, we said that in order to <b>generate business leads from social media</b> you need to win over the influencers, they, in&#8230;</p><p><a href="http://www.optify.net/social-media/social-media-marketing-generating-business-leads/">Social Media Marketing: Generating Business Leads</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>In a previous post, <a href="http://www.optify.net/social-media/social-media-for-business/">Social Media for Businesses: Six Tips</a>, we said that in order to <b>generate business leads from social media</b> you need to win over the influencers, they, in return, &#8220;will pitch your company and products online on your behalf in subtle and not so subtle ways. With their blessing, qualified leads will start to come your way.&#8221; But generating business leads from social media is not as easy as it sounds. In this post we outline the challenges in generating business leads from social media and why social media leads are different.</p>
<h2>Social media is different from traditional media</h2>
<div><a class="screenshot" href="#social-media-leads" target="_blank"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1029" title="social media leads" src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Human-network.JGP.jpg" alt="social media leads" width="230" height="173" /></a></div>
<div id="social-media-leads" style="display:none;"><img src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Human-network.JGP.jpg" alt="social media lunch" /></div>
<p>Social media is media (words, photos, videos, etc.) that is spread through social interaction, person to person, and chiefly using individual communication networks. Popular web-based social media technologies are <a title="Optify Facebook Page" href="http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/optify" target="_blank">Facebook</a>, <a title="Optify Twitter page" href="http://www.twitter.com/optify" target="_blank">Twitter</a>, and <a title="Optify LinkedIn page" href="http://www.linkedin.com/companies/468949" target="_blank">LinkedIn</a>.</p>
<p>Unlike the traditional advertising paradigm that spreads information from one source to many, social media promotes peer-to-peer communication and an active role of individuals to opt in, or out, of virtual conversations. With social media, consumers of media turn into producers of media—this can be through photo and video sharing, blog posting, and many other content forms.</p>
<h2>Social media (can) generate better business leads</h2>
<p>Importantly, social media is a strong tool you can use in an overall strategy to <em>generate organic business leads</em>; social media helps you connect with people in the places where relevant conversations are happening. Social media used correctly will create awareness and strengthen your brand, drive people to your website, and generate high quality leads. Social media inverts traditionally impersonal marketing so that marketers can build networks by becoming trusted resources and members of groups.</p>
<p>Social media business lead generation is based on network theory. Growth of leads is exponential, not linear, due to the effect of a growing network and related referrals. (One person might tell three people, and those three tell three more people.) Social media allows you to reach more people directly through your social network, and get third and fourth degree connections engaged in your activity.</p>
<p>Leads from social media can be better because people are more open to messages from people they know or are connected to through intermediaries. Social media sites like LinkedIn expose otherwise distant connections and allow your message to be shared through your network and for you to be introduced to an expanding number of contacts.</p>
<p>Social media is a good lead generation funnel because it is largely permission based and the leads are people who you know already show an interest in your offering. With social media, targeted and trusted leads make sale cycles shorter, and as sharing is an acceptable practice and an incentive for the social media practitioner, your message can reach more targeted people faster and for no cost. Well, for almost no cost.</p>
<h2>Generating business leads is up to you</h2>
<p>Although leads from social media are generally high quality, generating those leads requires work. For companies with no extensive marketing budget, or dedicated personnel, generating social media leads means investing time in social media activities.</p>
<p><strong>The first step to generating business leads from participants in social media is to listen</strong> to the conversation and then participate by offering a valuable contribution to that conversation. This might take the form of a helpful answer on Yelp, an on-topic link to an interesting site (not your site necessarily), or a business case that illustrates a solution. Monitor the blogosphere for topics and issues related to your business and respond to posts, comments, and questions.</p>
<p>These days, because most businesspeople are on Linkedin and/or Facebook you should regularly search for existing customers on these sites and expand your network by connecting to them. Follow customers on Twitter and most will follow you in response. Your company should have a fan page on Facebook and an information page on LinkedIn. Make sure that these pages and groups are well maintained. Create a strong social media presence for your company and post links back to your website whenever possible. Customers may use your brand name or website URL in a tweet and provide exposure. If you post to Twitter and someone retweets your message, their followers will be introduced to your company.</p>
<p>Remember, social media can be a fast and inexpensive way to direct traffic and awareness to your website–but it’s usually not so simple. It takes time and deliberate effort to create a social media presence, and generating business leads in a continual way requires strategy and resources. Social media might be cheap in terms of dollars expended, but it’s not free in terms of time necessary to achieve results.</p>
<p>Join our conversation on <a href="http://www.optify.net/social-media/Social-Media-Tips-for-the-Poor-Marketer/">How to generate business leads from social media with no budget.</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.optify.net/social-media/social-media-marketing-generating-business-leads/">Social Media Marketing: Generating Business Leads</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>Search Engine Ranking: A Step-By-Step Guide</title>
		<link>http://www.optify.net/internet-marketing/search-engine-ranking/</link>
		<comments>http://www.optify.net/internet-marketing/search-engine-ranking/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:22:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Scott Fasser</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Internet Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.optify.net/?p=3439</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>This game plan is built for B2B companies who want to attain a high <em><strong>search engine ranking </strong></em>for specific keyword terms that fit their business niche and customer need. This&#8230;</p><p><a href="http://www.optify.net/internet-marketing/search-engine-ranking/">Search Engine Ranking: A Step-By-Step Guide</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>This game plan is built for B2B companies who want to attain a high <em><strong>search engine ranking </strong></em>for specific keyword terms that fit their business niche and customer need. This approach is not suited for dynamic sites, e-commerce plays or highly competitive generic terms like music, beer and ipods.</p>
<div><a class="screenshot" href="#Search-Engine-Ranking" target="_blank"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1029" title="Search Engine Ranking" src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/iStock_000011867175XSmall.jpg" alt="Search Engine Ranking" width="225" height="192" /></a></div>
<div id="Search-Engine-Ranking" style="display:none;"><img src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/iStock_000011867175XSmall.jpg" alt="Search Engine Ranking" /></div>
<h2>Search Engine Ranking Game Plan:</h2>
<ul>
<li>Select a target keyword phrase</li>
<li>Determine what content to build for it</li>
<li>Create the content and optimize the page</li>
<li>Update internal links and sitemaps</li>
<li>Syndicate content to friendly sources for early links</li>
<li>Determine high relevance sites for link acquisition</li>
<li>Monitor rank, visits and leads from keyword phrase over time</li>
</ul>
<div class="clear"></div>
<h2></h2>
<h2>Step One – Select the Target Keyword Phrase (s)</h2>
<p>Keyword selection is based on business relevance, volume, competitiveness and ability to create content to support the ranking and linking necessary. We&#8217;ve provided some tips on selecting keywords in our post titled &#8220;<a title="Keyword List" href="http://www.optify.net/internet-marketing/keyword-list/" target="_self">7 steps to build your keyword list</a>&#8220;.</p>
<p>The keyword application in Optify gives you the power to research keyword variations, volume, competitiveness and rank. Use the keyword application to save the focus keyword phrase (s) to your keyword tracking list.</p>
<h2>Step Two – Determine What Content to Build for the Keyword</h2>
<p>You have three main objectives in building the content to support your keywords:</p>
<ul>
<li>Create content that will meet the expectations of someone searching on that keyword term. The question to ask yourself is, would someone searching for this keyword term be looking for the content I’m posting? If the answer is no, you likely will have a harder time attaining and maintaining your keyword position as you’ll have a higher bounce rate.</li>
<li>Create content that is a compelling spin on your business so that when a new visitor finds this page, it moves them towards contacting you for a business relationship.</li>
<li>Create content that search engines will understand and index with strong ranking signals.</li>
<li>Create content that other sites will find useful and want to syndicate and link back to your page.</li>
</ul>
<p>Examples of excellent content to build:</p>
<ul>
<li>A whitepaper on Best Practices. Whitepapers are bigger and more in-depth and can serve as both search engine content as well as a carrot for filling out a contact form.</li>
<li>A how to article on the topic that explains how using your products/services solves a problem related to the target keyword.</li>
<li>A comparison of products related to the target keyword. End users are always searching for reviews, comparisons and brand vs. brand information. Building a page that positively highlights your product/service against core competitors enables you to both position yourself well and gain search traffic from the target keyword.</li>
<li>A list. 10 steps to success, 5 factors to consider, etc. are excellent ways to build content, are highly consumable and easier to syndicate through newsletters and blog posts.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Step Three – Create the Content and Optimize the Page</h2>
<p>Determine first where the content will reside on your site. This decision impacts several elements including:</p>
<ul>
<li>Page URL</li>
<li>Top level, footer and site map navigation and linking</li>
<li>Who is involved in publishing the content (if different sections of your site are managed by different content platforms and/or teams)</li>
<li>How users access the content</li>
<li>How search engines find and consume the content</li>
</ul>
<p>Once the content is created, build the page with the keyword phrase in the following areas:</p>
<ul>
<li>URL</li>
<li>Title Tag</li>
<li>&lt;H1&gt; Headline</li>
<li>&lt;H2&gt; Headline at least once</li>
<li>In the body content at least twice</li>
<li>Alt text for images</li>
</ul>
<h2>Step Four- Update Internal Links and Sitemaps</h2>
<p>Now that you have built your excellent content into a highly optimized page, it is time to build the internal links to that content from important parts of the site. A couple of considerations:</p>
<ul>
<li>Use the target keyword in the anchor text for the link wherever possible – “Click Here” works well for conversion encouragement, but doesn’t tell the engines anything about the link. &#8220;Learn more about &lt;keyword phrase&gt;” Is always a good link structure if you have space as is just the &lt;keyword phrase&gt; itself.</li>
<li>Try and build the link into a summary piece of content like a description of the article in addition to the site footer or navigation.</li>
<li>Use a title tag in the link. This is an element that shows up as a tool tip when you rollover the link so it adds context and accessibility to the link – especially if you can’t bring yourself to put the keywords in the anchor text. The link with a title tag looks something like this for the keyword &lt;Python&gt;: &lt;a title=&#8221;Free Python book for experienced programmers&#8221; href=&#8221;http://diveintopython.org/&#8221;&gt;Dive Into Python&lt;/a&gt;</li>
</ul>
<p>For core pieces of content, consider putting the link to the content into your top or second level navigation, sitemap.html, sitemap.xml and footer. These are normally elements that are on all pages of your site so it quickly generates many links into this piece of content.</p>
<h2>Step Five &#8211; Syndicate Content to Friendly Sources</h2>
<p>Now that your content is built, pages set-up and internal links established, it’s time to promote the content externally through syndication.  The goal is to start building inbound links that go directly to the new piece of content (instead of linking into homepage of site).</p>
<p>The very first steps are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Promote the content through your newsletter to your customers</li>
<li>Post a blog entry about the content and link to it</li>
<li>Announce the content through Twitter using the keyword in the tweet</li>
<li>Announce the content through Facebook and LinkedIn to your networks. Also, have everyone on your team do the same through their networks</li>
<li>Post a note in personal blogs and point back to the content</li>
<li>Reach out to your partners and friends with the idea of getting links into the site. If someone is interested, give them the code for the link itself (with keywords, title and link back URL)</li>
<li>Create a press release about the content. Publish the press release to your site and push the release out to PRWire or some other service that offers an SEO level</li>
<li>Use the press release as an entre’ to follow-up with editors, writers and bloggers who are following your space</li>
<li>Tweak the content to be in the form of an article and publish to an article database like <a href="http://www.ezinearticles.com/">www.ezinearticles.com</a> or <a href="http://www.docstoc.com/">www.docstoc.com</a>.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Step Six – Determine High Relevancy Sites for Link Acquisition</h2>
<p>Once you have exhausted the friendly sources of links, it’s time to go after links that are outside of your current portfolio that are keyword phrase and/or content specific. Here’s an easy way to find those sites:</p>
<ul>
<li>Go to <a href="http://www.google.com/">www.google.com</a></li>
<li>Type in your keyword phrase</li>
<li>See who shows up for it – don’t be afraid to go deep</li>
<li>Look for non-competitors who have written an article about the subject and approach them with your service, product, story.</li>
</ul>
<p>See where your competitors are getting links. Here’s how:</p>
<ul>
<li>Go to <a href="http://www.yahoo.com/">www.yahoo.com</a></li>
<li>Type in “site:www.&lt;your competitor&gt;.com”</li>
<li>Click on the inlinks button</li>
<li>On the show InLinks dropdown, select Except from this Domain</li>
<li>This gives you a list of inbound links to that domain that you can peruse for relevant sites to engage for links</li>
</ul>
<h2>Step Seven – Tracking Search Engine Rank, Visits and Leads over Time</h2>
<p>Optify provides the tracking for your search engine ranking, visits and leads within the software. Just make sure that your focus keyword is in the Keyword Application list to capture your ranking vs your competitors as well as visits and leads against the term.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.optify.net/internet-marketing/search-engine-ranking/">Search Engine Ranking: A Step-By-Step Guide</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
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		<title>Steal Search Engine Traffic and Leads From Your Competition</title>
		<link>http://www.optify.net/internet-marketing/search-engine-traffic/</link>
		<comments>http://www.optify.net/internet-marketing/search-engine-traffic/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Feb 2010 22:37:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Chris Rodde</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Internet Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lead Generation]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.optify.net/?p=3423</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>Imagine if anytime somebody searched on your competitor’s brand name, your website showed in the search results, giving you a chance to catch a potential customer that might have never&#8230;</p><p><a href="http://www.optify.net/internet-marketing/search-engine-traffic/">Steal Search Engine Traffic and Leads From Your Competition</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Imagine if anytime somebody searched on your competitor’s brand name, your website showed in the search results, giving you a chance to catch a potential customer that might have never looked beyond your competitor. Follow the steps below to <em><strong>gain search engine traffic and leads</strong></em> from your competitors by creating and optimizing a few pages on your website to target your competitor’s brand names. We’ll also show you below how to attract web searchers who type in comparison searches such as “Windows vs. Apple”.</p>
<h2><strong><strong><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-3424" title="Catch Search Engine Traffic and Leads" src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/iStock_000002875870XSmall.jpg" alt="Catch Search Engine Traffic and Leads" width="210" height="280" /></strong></strong></h2>
<h2><strong>Serve Comparison Shoppers</strong></h2>
<p>In order to rank in the search engines when someone does a “Windows vs. Apple” type search, create a web page that compares your brand and/or product offering to those of your competitors—let’s call this a “product matrix” page. This page should compare the features and benefits of your company or products to those of your competitors. Not only will this content be beneficial to prospective customers who would like to know how your offering stacks up, but this will also serve as great SEO content. Create at least one product matrix page that includes at least three to five of your competitors in the title tag, url and page headline (or &lt;H1&gt; tags).</p>
<h2><strong>Attract Your Competitor’s Search Engine Traffic and Leads</strong></h2>
<p>To rank on one of your competitors brand or product names, create a single competitor matrix page for each competitor or product name. Then link to this page from appropriate pages on your website using the competitor’s brand name as the anchor text on the link. From this page, you should also link back to your main product matrix page. These single competitor or single product comparison pages should attract traffic searching on your competitor’s brand or product name(s).</p>
<p>In addition to the more permanent product matrix pages above, you can include competitive terms legitimately in blog posts that discuss the benefits of your product over your competitors. Again, whenever you mention your competitor’s brand or product names, link to your matrix page. Also include your matrix pages in .html and .xml sitemaps.</p>
<h2><strong>Some Words of Caution… </strong></h2>
<p>When it comes to including competitive brand terms on your website as part of your overall SEO strategy, be sure not to hide any of this information. When site designers include competitive brand terms in meta tags without visible context, this is dangerous because doing so can be perceived by search engines to be site spam. When discovered, the search engines will penalize you and eliminate you from search results.</p>
<h2><strong>Off-site SEO Strategies to Boost Your Search Rank Further</strong></h2>
<p>To improve your rank on your competitor’s names, you should ensure that your product matrix pages are linked to from other sites on the web besides your own. The easiest way to build links from other sites is to post your product matrix content on sites such as Docstoc and SlideShare&#8211;just upload your content to these sites and link back to your website.</p>
<p>Turn to social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn to evaluate your competitors and make comparisons. Find a competitor’s site on Wikipedia and link that entry to your competitive matrix. Or simply ask webmasters and bloggers that are friendly to your company to link to your matrix pages with the appropriate anchor text. None of these last strategies have a tremendous amount of “link juice,” that is strong link power, but all of them will open your site up to a wider audience.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.optify.net/internet-marketing/search-engine-traffic/">Steal Search Engine Traffic and Leads From Your Competition</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
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		<title>7 Steps to Build Your Keyword List</title>
		<link>http://www.optify.net/internet-marketing/keyword-list/</link>
		<comments>http://www.optify.net/internet-marketing/keyword-list/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:35:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Chris Rodde</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Internet Marketing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SEO]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.optify.net/?p=3263</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>Search engine optimization, or SEO, begins with creating a <em><strong>keyword list</strong></em> of phrase terms that people are actually using to search for your product or service. You should think of your&#8230;</p><p><a href="http://www.optify.net/internet-marketing/keyword-list/">7 Steps to Build Your Keyword List</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Search engine optimization, or SEO, begins with creating a <em><strong>keyword list</strong></em> of phrase terms that people are actually using to search for your product or service. You should think of your keyword list as a portfolio of terms with some diversity.</p>
<p><img class="size-full wp-image-3291 alignright" title="keyword list" src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/iStock_000000833996XSmall.jpg" alt="keyword list" width="340" height="226" /></p>
<p>All of the keywords should be relevant to your business so that the quality of visitors coming to your site from that search term is good&#8211;the more relevant a keyword is to your business and product offering, the more qualified leads you&#8217;ll get from this traffic. The diversity in your list is achieved by having terms that vary from weaker to strongest along a spectrum of competitiveness and varying volumes (from low/long tail to high/head terms). Diversity also comes from having a range of keywords and categories of keywords themselves.</p>
<h2>The Difference Between SEO and SEM Keyword Research</h2>
<p>Keyword research for search engine optimization (organic or free search) and search engine marketing (paid search efforts) should be different. SEM keyword lists tend to be much larger with specific emphasis around the creation of the campaign structure in bidding systems like Google Adwords.</p>
<p>SEO terms, on the other hand, must be more focused because each phrase needs to be supported with content on the site as well as links (inbound and on-site). To target a keyword in SEM, you simply need to start bidding on it. To target a keyword in SEO, the effort is generally greater, so your target keyword list is likely to be smaller.</p>
<h2>7 Steps to Build Your Keyword List</h2>
<ol>
<li><strong>Look first at your own site: </strong>To get started,think about the current content of your site and what search terms this content will support, through organic search. Optify makes this easy by allowing you to simply enter the URL of your website into our keyword suggestion tool and we&#8217;ll produce a list of relevant keywords based on the content we find on your website.  Remember to include all of your brand terms—and don’t forget to include the major misspellings of your brand names.</li>
<li><strong>Look at the keywords your competitors target.</strong> Your competitor&#8217;s websites will contain other content and keyword terms that you might not think of. Again, Optify makes this simple&#8230; enter your competitor&#8217;s URL into our keyword suggestion tool, and voila, you&#8217;ll have more keywords.</li>
<li><strong>Look at your current organic search visitors.</strong> How are people finding you today? The keywords that people are using to find your website today may give you a sense of which types of keywords are working for you and can help focus your thinking.</li>
<li><strong>Brainstorm</strong>: Get a few of your employees in front of a whiteboard and brainstorm keywords that you think are relevant to your business.</li>
<li><strong>Expand. </strong>Aggregate the list you have thus far and then expand it by creating derivatives of those phrases. For example for the keyword term &#8220;banner advertisements&#8221; you can add “optimizing banner advertisements”, “designing banner advertisements” and “building great banner advertisements”.</li>
<li><strong>Refine</strong>. Cull keywords from the list that are not relevant to your business. To decide what to cut, ask yourself the question, &#8220;would someone searching on this keyword term be looking for what our company has to offer?&#8221; If the answer is no, then cut the keyword, and focus your efforts elsewhere.</li>
<li><strong>Enter your keyword list into Optify.</strong> Entering your keyword list into Optify is simple&#8211;just import it. (Or if you&#8217;ve used our keyword suggestion tool, just add the words with one click that we suggest.) If you enter your keyword list in Optify, we&#8217;ll tell you where you rank in the search engines on each keyword term and where stand vs. your competition.  We&#8217;ll also give you suggestion on how to optimize your pages to get more traffic from the keyword terms you&#8217;ve selected.</li>
</ol>
<p><a href="http://www.optify.net/internet-marketing/keyword-list/">7 Steps to Build Your Keyword List</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
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		<title>Lead Scores: How To Qualify Leads Automatically</title>
		<link>http://www.optify.net/lead-generation/lead-scoring-qualify-leads-automatically/</link>
		<comments>http://www.optify.net/lead-generation/lead-scoring-qualify-leads-automatically/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:10:38 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Scott Fasser</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Lead Generation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lead Scoring]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.optify.net/?p=3166</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p><b>Update:</b><br />
We are hosting a Lead Scoring webinar on Friday, March 5th. Feel free to join.<br />
<a href="http://www.optify.net/optify-best-practices-lead-scoring/ ">Optify Best Practices: Lead Scoring</a><br />
<hr />
<div><a class="screenshot" href="#Lead-Scoring" target="_blank"></a></div>
<div id="Lead-Scoring" style="display:none;"></div>
</p><p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>Many sales organizations have in place a means to judge and value&#8230;</p><p><a href="http://www.optify.net/lead-generation/lead-scoring-qualify-leads-automatically/">Lead Scores: How To Qualify Leads Automatically</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><b>Update:</b><br />
We are hosting a Lead Scoring webinar on Friday, March 5th. Feel free to join.<br />
<a href="http://www.optify.net/optify-best-practices-lead-scoring/ ">Optify Best Practices: Lead Scoring</a><br />
<hr />
<div><a class="screenshot" href="#Lead-Scoring" target="_blank"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1029" title="Lead Scoring" src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/iStock_000009605742XSmall.jpg" alt="Lead Scoring" width="250" height="155" /></a></div>
<div id="Lead-Scoring" style="display:none;"><img src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/iStock_000009605742XSmall.jpg" alt="Lead Scoring" /></div>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>Many sales organizations have in place a means to judge and value their website visitors and business leads. But often much of the <a title="Lead Scoring" href="http://www.optify.net/lead-scoring/" target="_self">lead scoring</a><em><strong> </strong></em>criteria boils down to simply identifying these visitors and leads as “hot,” “warm,” or “cold” prospects. These days you can do better than that; there are many offerings in the marketplace today, including Optify, which provide you with <em><strong>lead scores </strong></em>that are much more direct, less vague, and ultimately more helpful.</p>
<div class="clear"></div>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<h2>Finding Common Ground Through Lead Scores</h2>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>A key aspect of lead scoring is that scores give marketing and sales a way to gain common ground when discussing the quality of leads. Instead of discussing these things in vague terms, you can focus on real numbers linked to specific lead attributes important to your business.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<h2>Purpose of Scoring Visitors and Leads</h2>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>When leads are effectively prioritized, sales teams have an effective way to decide on what leads to pursue. On the marketing end, lead scoring gives marketing a great way to quantify the value of leads from paid campaigns. Lead scoring helps to segment visitors and leads geographically, by level of interest, and by identifying what content areas on websites interests particular groups.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<h2>Optimize Your Sales Efforts by Scoring Leads AND Visitors</h2>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>Lead scoring is particularly useful in those instances when a site has a high volume of visitors and leads. Use lead scoring to prioritize call activities for sales teams. With Optify you can easily segment leads into those who your sales group should contact directly and others who should be nurtured as ongoing prospects.</p>
<p>In cases with low lead volumes, scoring visitors (as opposed to leads) can enlarge your lead pool by identifying site visitors who are keenly interested in your product or service. In other cases, with large sales teams and large lead pools, lead scoring does wonders to effectively segment visitors and leads by the vertical industry they represent, geography, or product line they are interested in.<strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<h2>Lead Scoring: Recommendations from the Trenches</h2>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>Lead scoring represents a new way for sales and marketing teams to use leads and we recommend that sales and marketing teams work together to best use this data. With a large enough organization we recommend assigning an individual to track ideas and update scores to account for criteria like site visitors who look at more than one page on your website or visit more than once. We also recommend incorporating target companies into the scores as well as geographically relevant leads, if you are geographically focused. We advise our clients to only update or add scores when there is clarity and agreement across departments as to goals. Lead scoring is a great way to start drilling down and examining high quality visitors and leads to see behavior patterns that will help to tune lead scores and ultimately improve the quality of leads pursued.</p>
<h2>Optify Lead Scoring</h2>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><a title="Lead Scoring" href="http://www.optify.net/b2b-marketing/lead-scoring/" target="_self">Optify lead scoring</a> is a key element of our online marketing platform. To <b>create lead scores</b>, we start by examining website behavior: where have visitors come from, how long do they spend on the site, and what specific areas of the site they visit? With a database of past behavior we incorporate information on past visits.</p>
<p>We also utilize research into which company a visitor represents and what city and state they are based in (based on their IP address). Beyond this critical information, our robust database also shows what size a company the visitor works for and what vertical industry they are a part of. When visitors enter information in an online website form, lead scoring tools also parse this visitor-supplied information. A visitor may enter his or her name, title, and company as well as contact information. Lead scoring can select from this data and assign related scores. A sales organization might, for example, assign a lower score to those contacts who have Hotmail or Gmail accounts and all this feeds into lead scores.</p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.optify.net/lead-generation/lead-scoring-qualify-leads-automatically/">Lead Scores: How To Qualify Leads Automatically</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
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		<title>What&#8217;s New: Dashboard Alerts, Sizzling Lead Details</title>
		<link>http://www.optify.net/optify-news/optify-alerts-lead-details/</link>
		<comments>http://www.optify.net/optify-news/optify-alerts-lead-details/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:33:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Uri Bar-Joseph</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Optify News]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.optify.net/?p=3088</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>&#160;<br />
We&#8217;re super excited to announce new features to <strong>delight you and generate leads!</strong> Here are the highlights:<br />
&#160;</p>
<div><a class="screenshot" href="#Dashboard-Alerts" target="_blank"><span></span></a></div>
<div id="Dashboard-Alerts" style="display:none"></div>
Alerts on your Dashboard
<p>We&#8217;ve added an Alerts section on the Dashboard. When you set&#8230;</p><p><a href="http://www.optify.net/optify-news/optify-alerts-lead-details/">What&#8217;s New: Dashboard Alerts, Sizzling Lead Details</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>&nbsp;<br />
We&#8217;re super excited to announce new features to <strong>delight you and generate leads!</strong> Here are the highlights:<br />
&nbsp;</p>
<div><a class="screenshot" href="#Dashboard-Alerts" target="_blank"><span></span><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1030" title="Alerts on the Dashboard" src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/new-dashboard-alert-and-company-detail-thumb.png" alt="Alerts on Dashboard" width="260" height="162" /></a></div>
<div id="Dashboard-Alerts" style="display:none"><img src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/alerts-on-dashboard-screenshot.png" alt="Alerts on Dashboard" /></div>
<h2 style="font-size:18px;">Alerts on your Dashboard</h2>
<p>We&#8217;ve added an Alerts section on the Dashboard. When you set up a custom Alert using the Alerts application, you&#8217;ll see Alerts on the Dashboard. You can also have your Alerts delivered by email, and change your options at any time. Click the Alerts application to customize your Alerts and delivery settings.</p>
<div class="clear"></div>
<h2 style="font-size:18px;">Company Detail to Close More Deals</h2>
<p>The Lead Detail page is where your customers are: you can see the data we&#8217;ve collected for you about the Leads and Visitors to your website. We&#8217;ve made major enhancements to Lead Detail with a new widget containing Company Information. We&#8217;ve also added an Overview pane at the top of the page to you can get your information at a glance. </p>
<p>The Overview pane displays the Optify score for the Lead. You can also see the Lead&#8217;s visits to your website. Some of this information was displayed in the Traffic pane in earlier versions. The Company pane lists valuable information about the company associated with the lead of visitor, so you can act on it.</p>
<p>In some cases we don&#8217;t know the Company information for a Lead, so we&#8217;ll show you a screen with our best guesses for the company&#8217;s website and a box where you can enter the URL. Once you&#8217;ve entered this information, it will be used for all future visits from this company, and it will also be available to other users of your Optify account.<br />
</br><br />
</br></p>
<div><a class="screenshot" href="#New-Keyword-Alerts" target="_blank"><span></span><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1030" title="Keyword Alerts" src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/New-Alerts-Thumb.png" alt="Keyword Alerts" width="260" height="162" /></a></div>
<div id="New-Keyword-Alerts" style="display:none"><img src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/New-Alerts-screenshot.png" alt="Keyword Alerts" /></div>
<h2 style="font-size:18px;">Targeted Keyword Alerts</h2>
<p>Earlier this year we announced the release of our new Alerts application.  We&#8217;ve now added even more functionality including <strong>Keyword Alerts!</strong> The Keyword tab in Alerts lets you create custom Alerts that will notify you of important changes to your keyword rankings. For example, you can create an Alert that will tell you if your ranking has improved or if it has overtaken the ranking of one of your competitors. As with previous Alerts, you can specify that the Alerts be sent to your Dashboard or sent directly to you in email. </p>
<p>Alerts are in addition to the Daily Email, your personalized summary of Visitors and Leads on your website. You can customize Daily Email from the Settings page.<br />
</br></p>
<h2 style="font-size:18px;">Feedback</h2>
<p>We love your feedback! If you have anything to suggest or want to talk to us, please contact us via email on <a href="mailto:support@optify.net">support@optify.net</a><br />
&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="http://www.optify.net/optify-news/optify-alerts-lead-details/">What&#8217;s New: Dashboard Alerts, Sizzling Lead Details</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
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		<title>LinkedIn Networking for Lead Generation: 5 tips</title>
		<link>http://www.optify.net/social-media/linkedin-networking/</link>
		<comments>http://www.optify.net/social-media/linkedin-networking/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:29:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Scott Fasser</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.optify.net/?p=1883</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>After you&#8217;ve optimized your LinkedIn profile, it&#8217;s time to make the most of the Linkedin networking. The next few tips will help you maximize your <strong>LinkedIn network</strong> for lead generation.</p>
1. Find&#8230;<p><a href="http://www.optify.net/social-media/linkedin-networking/">LinkedIn Networking for Lead Generation: 5 tips</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>After you&#8217;ve optimized your LinkedIn profile, it&#8217;s time to make the most of the Linkedin networking. The next few tips will help you maximize your <strong>LinkedIn network</strong> for lead generation.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:12px;">1. Find your clients and add them to your LinkedIn network</h2>
<p>This gives your client another method of contacting you, leaving with them the option of contacting you in a way that&#8217;s convenient for them. Additionally, the larger your network is, the more likely you&#8217;ll be able to gain introductions to potential clients. Plus, should a contact leave and work for another company, you&#8217;ll be able to better track them and possibly sell your business to them at their new organization.<img class="size-full wp-image-3029 alignright" title="LinkedIn Networking" src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/iStock_000010734695XSmall.jpg" alt="Linkedin Networking" width="365" height="329" /></p>
<h2 style="font-size:12px;">2. Begin cold calling with an introduction using your LinkedIn profile</h2>
<p>Use your LinkedIn network to try and gain introductions to potential customers. They can look at your LinkedIn profile to learn more about your company than they might during a cold call. When they see you in the context of your network, it will make you seem more personable instead of just a random salesperson.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:12px;">3. Join groups related to your industry and actively participate</h2>
<p>Think of groups on LinkedIn like you might an industry association. You can establish new contacts, expand your network and gain new clients.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:12px;">4. Answer questions in the Q&amp;A section to establish yourself as expert and enhance your brand</h2>
<p>People are increasingly using social networks to find answers to their questions. By answering questions in LinkedIn&#8217;s Q&amp;A section on a consistent basis, you can establish yourself as an expert that people rely on. This helps build trust and ultimately, businesses are looking for partners they can rely on. When you answer a question, people can click on the link to your LinkedIn profile, learn more about you and your company, and request a connection with you.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:12px;">5. Use the new Twitter integration to update your status</h2>
<p>Instead of trying to update your status separately at various social networks, you can now streamline your updates on Twitter and LinkedIn. Once you connect your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, updating Twitter automatically updates your LinkedIn profile. Keeping up your status helps contacts know that you&#8217;re active and relevant in your industry, further providing validity to your credentials.</p>
<p>As you can see, spending time on LinkedIn can have a powerful impact on your brand and lead generation efforts. Don&#8217;t get overwhelmed by this list. By spending just 5-10 minutes a day on the social network, you can really boost your LinkedIn profile, which in turn can boost your sales.</p>
<p>Be sure to check out <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.linkedin.com/companies/optify-inc.">Optify&#8217;s company profile on LinkedIn</a> and connect with our staff&#8217;s profiles!</p>
<p><em>Any other tips on how to maximize your LinkedIn network? Share them with us.</em></p>
<p><a href="http://www.optify.net/social-media/linkedin-networking/">LinkedIn Networking for Lead Generation: 5 tips</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
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		<title>Social Business Networking: Optimize LinkedIn for your Company</title>
		<link>http://www.optify.net/social-media/social-business-networking/</link>
		<comments>http://www.optify.net/social-media/social-business-networking/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:45:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Scott Fasser</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.optify.net/?p=1874</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<p>For online B2B marketers, LinkedIn is one of the most valuable tools on the web. You should think of your Company&#8217;s LinkedIn Profile as having just as much importance as&#8230;</p><p><a href="http://www.optify.net/social-media/social-business-networking/">Social Business Networking: Optimize LinkedIn for your Company</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>For online B2B marketers, LinkedIn is one of the most valuable tools on the web. You should think of your Company&#8217;s LinkedIn Profile as having just as much importance as a page on your website and is the key to <em><strong>social business networking</strong></em>. You can leverage the authority of the Linkedin site to capture additional web traffic &amp; leads that you otherwise wouldn&#8217;t reach. Here&#8217;s a comprehensive set of tasks you&#8217;ll want to complete in order to maximize LinkedIn for your company.<img class="alignright size-full wp-image-3032" title="social business networking" src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/iStock_000010635155XSmall.jpg" alt="social business networking" width="425" height="282" /></p>
<h2 style="font-size:12px;">1. Encourage Your Employees to Join LinkedIn and To Link To Each Other</h2>
<p style="font-size:12px;">The key to building out your company&#8217;s LinkedIn network is to ensure that everyone is participating. By getting your employees to join and link to each other, you&#8217;ll grow your company&#8217;s network exponentially. This will give your salespeople greater leverage when they search LinkedIn for contact points to key customer targets.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:12px;">2. Create a LinkedIn company profile</h2>
<p style="font-size:12px;">If you haven&#8217;t created a company profile on LinkedIn, do so. Having a LinkedIn profile for your company will allow prospective customers to see who they might know at your company when they are investigating whether they want to work with you or not&#8211;giving them visibility into who they can connect with might help close sales faster.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:12px;">3. Include targeted keywords in your company&#8217;s profile</h2>
<p>Because LinkedIn is an established and authoritative site, profiles on the site can often rank well quickly for searches. Adding keywords connected to the industry you work in can help your LinkedIn profile be established with those keyword landscapes on the search engines.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:12px;">4. Personalize your LinkedIn Profile URL</h2>
<p>Since you can decide what your URL looks like for your LinkedIn company profile, be sure to choose one that reflects your name or company name. Make sure your url in LinkedIn is personalized to your name or business name for both SEO and branding benefits.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:12px;">5. Set your public profile to full view</h2>
<p>When you sign into LinkedIn, you see a dashboard for your experience on LinkedIn. This is different from the public profile people see when they view your LinkedIn profile. You can control how much is displayed on your public profile. Choose &#8220;Full View&#8221; to display more content. The more unique content you choose to display, the less duplicate content you share with other profiles on LinkedIn. There&#8217;s also more content for the search engines to index and place in their rankings.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:12px;">6. Link to your profile</h2>
<p>Show the search engines how important your LinkedIn profile is by linking to it. This will help ensure that your LinkedIn profile will show up in the search engines when someone searched on your company name and other important keywords. Make sure you link to it from sites that don&#8217;t put the &#8220;nofollow&#8221; tag on outbound links. This means that simply linking from other social networks, which often employ the tag, won&#8217;t work. Instead, link from your site, your personal page, article sites, and any directories that allow you to place multiple links.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:12px;">7. Using Wordpress? Install the Wordpress app for LinkedIn</h2>
<p>This application pulls in posts from your <a rel="nofollow" href="http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2008/10/29/the-wordpress-app-for-linkedin/">Wordpress blog</a>. This really adds value to your LinkedIn profile by providing even more content that distinguishes it from other profiles on the network. And while anyone can put keywords on their profile and make claims about their knowledge and experience, providing blog content that shows off your knowledge is proof that your profile is true.</p>
<h2 style="font-size:12px;">8. Create unique anchor text for links</h2>
<p>When you add links to your profile, you see a menu to classify the link. Choose &#8220;Other.&#8221; It gives you the option to add your own anchor text. These links are &#8220;nofollow,&#8221; meaning they won&#8217;t influence the sites they point to. However, by creating your own anchor text, it differentiates your LinkedIn profile from all the others &#8211; especially all the ones not using unique anchor text.</p>
<p>After you&#8217;ve optimized your profile, it&#8217;s time to make the most of the social networking aspects of LinkedIn. See our next post  Linkedin Networking for tips on how to do that.</p>
<p><em>Any other ideas on how to maximize your LinkedIn profile? Share them with us.</em></p>
<p><a href="http://www.optify.net/social-media/social-business-networking/">Social Business Networking: Optimize LinkedIn for your Company</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
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		<item>
		<title>Respond in Real Time To Web Leads</title>
		<link>http://www.optify.net/lead-generation/real-time-leads/</link>
		<comments>http://www.optify.net/lead-generation/real-time-leads/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 25 Jan 2010 20:52:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Chris Rodde</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Lead Generation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Real-Time Marketing]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.optify.net/?p=3019</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Real-Time Leads From Real-Time Marketing
<p>In the online world, the last year has been all about the buzz of Twitter. The essence of Twitter is a tool for the acceleration&#8230;</p><p><a href="http://www.optify.net/lead-generation/real-time-leads/">Respond in Real Time To Web Leads</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>Real-Time Leads From Real-Time Marketing</h2>
<p>In the online world, the last year has been all about the buzz of Twitter. The essence of Twitter is a tool for the acceleration of information transfer—direct sharing, in real time, of information from one person or company to followers who have chosen to receive it.</p>
<p>There is a reason Twitter has been so popular: People want information in real time and Twitter and related tools provide a direct way to access it. Marketers have taken notice of the new rush of data; real-time marketing and real-time leads have arrived and are based upon using the most current information about customers and prospects and the most current events. Our platform here at Optify allows you to take information generated in real time, monitor it in helpful ways, and respond to it with unprecedented speed.</p>
<p><img class="size-full wp-image-3021 alignright" title="Real-time marketing" src="http://www.optify.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/iStock_000010892550XSmall.jpg" alt="Real time leads" width="347" height="346" /></p>
<h2>Search Engines Working in Real Time</h2>
<p>Last year, in response to the growth of Twitter and other real-time information feeds, search engines finally began to give us easy, searchable access to the new burst of fresh information. Google, Yahoo, and Bing now all provide search results that show information created in real time. In late 2009 Google, for one, <a title="Google real time search" href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/relevance-meets-real-time-web.html" target="_blank">announced new features to bring search results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web</a>.</p>
<p>The emergence of real time information and tools to access it has enabled people to gain new insights that they previously could not. And marketers are now using real time information in business-altering means such as using new insight to respond to website visitors and real time leads.</p>
<h2>Managing Real-Time Marketing Efforts</h2>
<p>Real-time marketing means promoting your company and content using real-time communication channels and responding to prospects and customers when appropriate—when they are thinking about your company. In this new world, Optify is a key element in your real-time marketing arsenal, giving you the tools you need to reach customers using the latest, effective means.</p>
<h2>The Optify Dashboard</h2>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>The Optify Dashboard is your central control station to monitor incoming traffic and it allows you to see just who is on your site. Optify’s Dashboard provides a real-time feed of your website&#8217;s visitors and leads. You can use this to gain insights into who is on your website and to follow up rapidly with important visitors. The Dashboard Website Feed tool shows you the company name of visitors, how they arrived at your website, a lead score, and how recently they were on your site. <strong> </strong></p>
<h2>Expand Your Lead Pool by 10x Using Lead Intelligence</h2>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>You&#8217;ve done the work to create a compelling reason for people to fill out your contact us form by offering whitepapers, free demos, etc. But what about the 95% of the web visitors who don&#8217;t fill out your form? Who are these people and how do you reach them? We show you exactly who’s on your website in real-time. You can see what companies are on your site, where they’re located and how often they visit. We also show you when your customers, partners, or competitors visit so you can respond at the right time, with the right message.</p>
<p><strong><em> </em></strong></p>
<h2>Optify Alerts To the Rescue</h2>
<p><strong> </strong></p>
<p>Optify Alerts provide sales teams with real-time information about who to call next. Alerts let you create and save customized notifications for tracking visitors and leads. With Optify you can set up an Alert to notify you when leads or visitors to your website meet certain custom criteria. You can use our simple rules-based system to notify you when a particular prospect or member of a group of target companies visits your site, when someone visits a certain number of pages, or returns to your site multiple times. Real-time alerts help you respond to customers and prospects at the right time–when your product or service is on the top of their mind.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.optify.net/lead-generation/real-time-leads/">Respond in Real Time To Web Leads</a> is a post from: <a href="http://www.optify.net">B2B Marketing and Lead Generation | Optify</a></p>
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