It struck me while I was climbing Castle Peak (14,279 ft) that there is a great deal of commonality between hiking 14ers and solid internet marketing:

1. Go With A Trusted Team

When you’re in the backcountry and in some pretty precarious positions, you want to make sure that you’ve surrounded yourself with the right people in case something goes wrong.  Likewise, you want to make sure that the internet marketing team you go with possesses the right expertise and the appropriate level of professionalism.  It’s always wiser to jump into the fray with a company that has a proven record of success and the right professional certifications, such as being a Google Analytics Certified Partner and Google Adwords Qualified Company, than go with a bargain basement company that probably won’t answer your calls or even exist in a year.

2. Slow And Steady Wins The Race

The trail up Castle Peak is fairly well traveled and we encountered quite a few other people along the way.  One group flew by us about halfway up the mountain but ran out of steam before the final push along the final stretch of ridgeline leading to the summit.  After we had reached the summit, taken some pictures and snacked on some beef jerky, we looked down and saw that the group who left us in the dust still hadn’t moved an inch from their spot on the ridge.  A solid SEO strategy works exactly the same way; you can’t just invest 20 hours one month and hope to remain on the first page of Google forever.  You have to take a methodical, sustainable approach with your long-term goals serving as the foundation of your strategy.

3. Plan Your Strategy Carefully & Measure Your Progress

We saw another group venture off route and have to retreat, needlessly wasting time and energy. To avoid wasting time, energy and your precious marketing dollars, you need to carefully plan your internet marketing strategy, and closely monitor your progress along the way.  Leverage Google Analytics like you would use the cairns on a trail to ensure you aren’t veering off course.

4. Glissading (& Social Media) Requires A Healthy Dose Of Caution

After conquering Castle Peak, we enjoyed some spirited glissading down the remaining summer snowfields.  While this is surely a fun way to descend, glissading certainly calls for a healthy dose of caution.  There’s no way to tell what’s lurking under the snow, and the rocks that fill the scree fields are sharp and nasty.  If you hit them going too fast they’ll certainly cause you some pain and could even result in getting your name in the local newspaper. Similarly, social media is a fun and effective marketing tool, but just like the snow – you don’t know what’s lurking under the surface.  Keep it to what you’d want everyone to know; inside jokes, questionable photos or a poorly worded tweet can cost you.  Just ask any politician, celebrity or journalist who’s had a run-in with Twitter.

5. Follow SOPs

Our group got started bright and early.  As a result, we were warm and dry in the car by the time the typical afternoon thunderstorm rolled in.  The same holds for web marketing; be smart, abide by the best practices, but also don’t be afraid to take some calculated risks.

I’m staring down the barrel of my last week here at Blue Tent and my first year of law school.  Working here has been a great learning experience.  Much love and a huge thank you goes out to the entire Blue Tent crew! I’ll miss you guys.

- Chapin Lewis
Assistant Marketing Assistant

What better way to combine email marketing and social media than to add an email opt-in form to your company’s Facebook page? It’s an easy and effective way to grow your email list by allowing your fans to join your email list directly through Facebook. This allows you to capture the email addresses of key prospects that have already shown interest in your company or brand.

We’ve recently added it to our own Facebook page, so check it out. If you don’t already receive the Blue Tent eBulletin, please take a moment to subscribe, and while you’re there, be sure to “like” us!

Before you get started I recommend creating a separate mailing list to store only Facebook opt-ins. This allows you to track any conversions obtained through your Facebook page, and will also allow you to communicate with your Facebook subscribers apart from your main list. You’ll also need your HTML form code, so create your opt-in form beforehand.

1. The first step is to install the Static FBML application to your Facebook Account. On the left side of the Static FBML page, click “Add to my Page”.

From the popup window, choose the page you would like to add the form to and click “Add to Page”.

2. Now go back to your Facebook page and click on the “Edit Page” link. Then scroll down to find the FBML application. Click the “Edit” link.

You should see a box pop up that lets you set a title and enter FBML. Enter your title – Email Updates, Newsletter Sign Up or something similar. The FBML box is actually where you paste your HTML form code. Try not to use the <html> <body> and <head> tags, so you can format tables, paragraphs, etc – but avoid those few tags. Once this is done hit “Save Changes”.

3. Almost done! Now go back into the edit menu and select the option “Application Settings”. Here you can set up your widget either as a box or a tab on your Facebook page. To add it as a tab, just click “Add”.

And that’s all there is to it. Check your Facebook homepage to view the active tab. Now any visitor can become a subscriber to your email campaign.

Don’t forget to create a custom thank you page so the user is redirected after they sign up. You should also include an auto-triggered welcome message thanking your new subscriber for joining and providing any additional details about your email program. To read more about why having a welcome program is so important, check out our previous blog post Email Marketing: First Impressions Matter.

If this is something you may be interested in please contact your Email Project Manager directly or contact us.

- Mehri Movassaghpour
Email Project Manager

This week Facebook has announced a powerful set of tools to extend the reach of social media beyond their own domain and across the entire web.  You may have already noticed the ubiquitous “Like” button appearing in new places.  This allows users to contribute to their Facebook profile without ever leaving the page they are experiencing.  When users stumble across content they enjoy and click “Like” it will both publish a link to the content on their Facebook profile and publish their name and link to their profile on the external page.

As a Facebook user, its up to you if you want to participate and you can customize how interactive/intrusive your social network experience is outside of Facebook by changing your privacy settings.  But as a marketer there is no reason not to give your clients another tool to promote your website.  The new widgets can be added to just about every type of content:  blog posts (WordPress and Drupal), real estate listings, vacation rentals, events, products and specials can all be promoted by your visitors to their friends without any interruption to their browsing experience.

Even cooler, the data obtained by all this liking is captured by Facebook and shared via API.  Pretty soon we may see the search button become obsolete on many sites.  Why force your clients to search when you already know what they like?  Let’s say you’re a vacation rental manager and your website is visited by someone who has been taking annual Hawaiian vacations and been staying in 4 bedroom beachfront homes, why not serve some suggestions of properties that fit their profile?  Pretty soon your entire web experience may be centered around your own interests and likes without you having to spell it out.

Anyone doubting that it will catch on?  Facebook estimated that over 1 BILLION “Like” buttons had been added within 24 hours of the announcement.

Contact us today to learn about custom Facebook widget implementation options.  Oh, and if you enjoyed this post, you know what to do.

- Braeden Flaherty
Director of Customer Service

Good Morning Vacation Rental Managers!

Listen to a very informative interview with Blue Tent President Peter Scott on Scott Colson’s VacationRentalTraffic.org Podcast.

VacationRentalTraffic.org is dedicated to bringing Vacation Rental Managers today’s best online strategies, tools and techniques to drive floods of traffic to their websites and maximize their bookings.

In this wide ranging interview Pete discusses some SEO challenges often faced by Vacation Rental Managers, some emerging threats, the importance of having solid content and clean code, various SEO strategies, and backing up your efforts with a Google Analytics set up.

By now I’m sure you have heard all about Twitter. Twitter is the social media phenomenon that has swept the world and allows an individual to have a voice that can be so powerful that the President of the United States will listen. This gives us all the opportunity to speak what we want, when we want, to whomever we want. And the fact is that people are listening. For a business, this can be a very powerful tool to connect with customers and potentially generate new business.

Many of our clients are starting to use Twitter and Facebook to Leverage the Persuasive Power of the Social Web. With that in mind we thought it would be good to give you ten Twitter tips to help you get the most out of every tweet.

1. When you’re initially setting up your account try to keep in mind all of the keywords that you are targeting on your website and include those into your bio. This gives your company the opportunity for more exposure and will help connect you with the right audience. Also try to theme your twitter page with the same graphics as your website.
2. Make sure you monitor your brand name and keywords that are related to your business. This gives you the opportunity to respond to people that are obviously interested in what your company is about.
3. While you are monitoring your brand name be sure to respond with in the day. Keep a watchful eye of everything that is being said positive or negative and respond accordingly.
4. When you use twitter to respond to tweets or comment on other tweets be sure to keep a casual tone.
5. Be sure to respond to everyone that addresses you. It shows that you are intone with your business and your in touch with your cliental.
6. When your posting tweets be sure that your not trying to sell something every time. Try to post articles related to your industry, blog posts, behind the scenes at your business, and things of interest to you.
7. If you see an post that you like retweet it. This shows that your not just on here to post, but that your actually reading other tweets. A retweet or RT is the ultimate Twitter compliment.
8. When you do offer deals or promos try to offer a couple of Twitter exclusive promos.
9. Tag your links with URL shortening services such as bit.ly to track the amount of traffic your site is receiving. Also consider tagging your links with web analytics tracking code such as Google Analytics.
10. One last thing: Have fun and be social – it’s all about interacting with others and sharing information openly – albeit 140 characters at a time!

Let us know your thoughts on how you’re using Twitter to connect with your customers and colleagues.

– Tim Hampton
SEM Account Manager

This year’s “Give a Little, Win a Lot” holiday campaign has confirmed our suspicions: We really do work with some of the most amazing companies as well as some pretty remarkable people. We’re so excited to see how our clients and prospects have resolved to contribute to the greater the good this holiday season. Here’s a sneak peek at just a few of the “contribution responses” we’ve received so far in response to our holiday campaign:

From The Lachicotte Company:

We have continued to participate in Toys for Tots and turned in donations from our company agents and staff to children who will enjoy toys for Christmas this year due to these gifts given in love. Also, our Christmas cards to vendors and business associates let them know about donations in their honor given to two local community ministries of which our staff and agents are a part in helping throughout the year: Father Pat’s Lunch Kitchen and Pawleys Island Presbyterian Bread of Life Ministries. We are glad to give back to our area throughout the year and take this time to say Merry Christmas to all!

From Baby Decorator:

Baby Decorator exists to guide new parents to create warm and nurturing nurseries for their newborn babies. However, for the babies that aren’t so fortunate as to be well and healthy, we support the March of Dimes “Fight for Preemies”. Their mission is to enlighten women and to teach through health and prenatal care how to have a healthy, full term baby. November was Fight for Preemies month and on our website we linked to their efforts. We also offered a free nursery design tot he winner of the best blog as chosen by “Bloggers Unite”. We are trying to help the new little ones who need our help.

From Real Estate of Winter Park:

One of our missions as a company is to give back to the great community in which we live so it may continue to be great. We contribute many dollars each year to the Grand Foundation which is an umbrella for giving to most all non-profits in our area. We focus a lot of our contributions toward children’s causes (Grand Kids, the Learning Center, CASA) and we are a sponsor of the Grand County Blues society which funds Blues in the Schools and delivers instruments and music to children around the country. As for other artistic vertures, we give to the Grand Arts Council and again, the Blues Society. We also like to contribute to Mtn Family centers which provides a food bank and clothing to families in our area. We host a food drive each year and have also coordinated the school supply/backpack drive each year.

From East West Resorts – Beaver Creek/Vail:

We have “adopted-a-family” through the Salvation Army. Employees are all contributing gifts and cash to the family. The gifts and a City Market gift card will be delivered to the family on Christmas Eve to help make their holiday happy. EWR emplyees also manned one full day of “bell ringing” outside of Walmart in Avon for the Salvation Army.

From Ranches West Inc.:

I have about a 1/2 dozen charities that I make donations to annually – from St. Judes, Childrens Hospital-Denver, Montana Food Bank,American Cancer Society including a small rural school and my local church. Your propgram to foster philanthropy is great!! Thank you for spreading the word and helping us all realze we all have something to be greatful about! Merry Christmas to you!

These are just a few of the inspiring contribution stories we’ve received so far in response to our holiday campaign. We’re honored to work with such an amazing group of people! Stay tuned to see who the lucky winner will be on New Year’s Day …

Happy Holidays!

– The Blue Tent Team

Πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει

"Nothing endures but change." – Heraclitus, Greek Philosoper (535 BC – 475 BC)

This is one of my favorite aphorisms of all time. We easily observe and experience the truth of this statement in our daily lives – it’s as easy as looking out the window. We detect changes in the weather, in the position of the sun, and the movement of the clouds in the sky. As humans we’ve evolved to become keen observers of change – ultimately so that our perceptions may positively influence our actions.

Web analytics guru, Avinash Kaushik, has a great old post titled "Making Web Analytics Actionable: Focus On What’s Changed." In it, he lets out the "dirty little secret" of web analytics that in most cases, it’s doubful that the "top 25" of anything (referrers, keywords, etc.) changes much at all. The point is that there are changes in traffic, in engagement, in referral sources occuring within your web analtyics data. Which raises the following questions:

Are you able to detect these changes?

What actions do you take as a result of these insights?

Most likely, the answer to the first question is no. Lucky for you, the team over at Juice Analytics has released an updated version of their Firefox Google Analytics Plugin that allows GA users to easily access some key change metrics within their standard GA reporting dashboard. Specifically, the plugin allows analysts to regularly access change report metrics in the Keyword and Referring Site Reports. This is a very meaningful report that gives you insight into how your internet marketing efforts are actively affecting your overall performance. You’ll quickly be able to see new referring sites within the past three days, as well as keywords with greater than 50% increase in referral traffic. This is data that once was buried and difficult to access, and is now literally at your fingertips, for free, with the click of your mouse! Thanks Juice Analytics!

Of course, the question remains: Now that you have visibility into this data, what will you do with it? How will these insights into these constant change metrics influence your ad spend, your PPC budget, your marketing strategy? As always, we’re here to help …

– Josh Lewis
VP Marketing

Today, all it takes is an angry person with thumbs and a Twitter account to start trashing your business online. Recently, a lead came into us that clearly displayed this newfound phenomenon and the persuasive power of the social web:

Please Describe Your Needs: Please help with a few negative comments about our business consisting of 14,000 patients and over 30,000 implants placed to date. Less than 5 negative google comments are destroying 8 years of a business I have spent everyday building 16 hours a day.

Ouch! Less than 5 negative comments posted on Google are destroying 8 years put into building a successful business. The weight of that statement is astounding! This prospect (from the dental industry) is prepared to spend upwards of $10,000 per month to address these negative comments that were posted on the “social web” and are adversely affecting his business in a very severe way.

There are good and bad effects of this evolution of the web into the social sphere. On the good side, consumers have more control, more information, and more voice to affect purchasing decisions. On the bad side, the reputation of a great business, established over many years of hard work, can now be tarnished almost instantly by a few dissatisfied customers.

Which raises the question: How is your business leveraging the power of positive feedback online?

This is perhaps one of the most important questions for a business of any size to be mindful of when evaluating the importantance of social media to their business. The answer is obvious: It’s critically important. It simply doesn’t matter what type of business you’re running. Whether you’re in lodging and vacation rentals, dentistry, dermatology, the ski rental or restaurant business, the end result is the same – it matters what people say about your business online.

I recently returned from a trip to the Victoria House in Ambergris Caye, Belize (it was amazing, albeit a bit pricey, but don’t take my word, see what others have to say). As I was checking out I noticed a beautiful guest book (pictured at right), full of glowing reviews from past guests. The only problem was that these glowing guest comments weren’t reaching the right audience. That’s where we come in.

We create programs that reach out to your most satisfied customers, and turn them into your most enthusiastic online brand advocates – thus leveraging the power of the positive.

Anyone that’s ever read the letters to the editor in their local newspaper realizes that many of the letters are people complaining about something. The social web has made it even easier for people to make their complaints heard. The trick is combat and overwhelm those negative experiences with positive ones. However, expecting these positive reviews to appear on their own is a dubious approach indeed.

This is where the strategic approach to social media comes into play. You’ve got to find ways to first identify who your most satisfied clients are, and then make it easy for them to share their experiences online with the right audience – whether it be on Google, TripAdvisor, Yelp or elsewhere. Think of this type of expense as reputation maintenance. And we all know that it’s easier and less expensive to maintain your vehicle on a regular basis than it is to neglect it and be faced with expensive and inconvenient repairs when they inevitably occur.

Click here for more information about how we can help your company or organization leverage and maintain its positive reputation online.

– Josh Lewis
VP Marketing
@Blue_Tent

We just returned from our first annual pilgrimage to the GooglePlex for the Google Partners Summit – a weeklong event for Google Analytics Authorized Consultants (GAACs) and Website Optimizer Authorized Consultants (WOACs). The highlight of day one, was the keynote entitled “Crime Against Humanity” by renowned Google web analytics guru Avinash Kaushik.

Much of his presentation centered around the concept that web analytics as we know it is undergoing fundamental, rapid change. He highlighted the limitations of Javascript based analytics tracking in the increasingly fragmented ecosystem of online information consumption.

“The website is no longer the center of the universe,” he said. “In this new world, javascript tracking does not work … Current metrics for web analytics lose their value everyday.”

Marketing & Influencing People is Fundamentally Changing

By example, Avinash pointed to some of the most popular and widely consumed sources for information and online purchasing: Twitter and Amazon.com.

In regards to a book listed for sale on Amazon: How do you measure the value of content publishing on Amazon? At what point is the value of that page maximized? How may reviews are needed before the tipping point is reached upon which many new sales are generated? How do negative reviews affect the value of this page? How will we identify and integrate such influences into our web analytics ecosystem?

And how to measure success on Twitter? Avinash stressed the importance of viewing Twitter as a brand channel. Think the number of followers you have matters – nonsense! One important smart metric that we’re all aware of is the all-important “re-tweet” or RT. Check out Retweetist.com to measure the viral value of your tweets. Then divide the number of RTs per 1K followers to arrive at your RT metric. This metric shows your capacity to influence people!

“Influence not because I did it, but because you did it – that is marketing,” said Avinash.

In regards to your blog, focus on your number of subscribers – what Avinash described as the “future of permission marketing, the future of email marketing.” Another engagement metric is to analyze the number of words in posts versus the number of words in comments.

You’ll notice that many of these metrics aren’t readily available in Google Analytics. For the time being, you’ll need to “automagically pull, scrape, integrate, invent, correlate and compute” to arrive at meaningful behavioral metrics that lead to actionable outcomes. Then set long term goals and continue measure and refine your approach.

The “A” Stands for Agile

It’s clear that web analytics is evolving at lightning speed. Avinash stressed that the smaller shops, not the giants (or elephants in his words) are the ones leading the charge into this brave new world of web analytics. Take a look at companies like statsit.com, percentmobile.com, and brizzly.com for a glimpse of the what the future holds for web analytics.

Cheers to Avinash for a thought-provoking, entertaining and insightful keynote. We can’t wait to dig into his new book, “Web Analytics 2.0” – how about you?

- Josh Lewis
VP Marketing

With the emergence of social applications there has been much debate as to which marketing channel is more efficient, Email or Social Media. Although new technologies such as Twitter and Facebook can be very effective when used correctly, they are more of a way to spread news in 140 characters or less than a marketing channel. These social applications don’t replace the need for relevant, well-executed Email Marketing.

The truth is that people still use email to communicate more than any social application, but that doesn’t mean we can’t combine the two to create an even deadlier email program! 15% of your email list will read your emails and research on Facebook or Twitter to see if others are chatting about the message before taking action. Solid evidence there is room for both Email and Social Media.

About 6 months ago Blue Tent started using a Share With Your Network (SWYN) application called AddThis (which is free) that allows recipients of an email message to post the online version of the email to any social application. Through AddThis you can track which message was sent and to what social media applications it was sent to. AddThis allows you to post to any social application but from our experience Facebook has hands down been the most popular with 172 posts in the last 6 months (pictured).

Using this application allows the audience of those who view your latest email a lot larger and increases the chances of your email marketing campaigns to "go viral". With 300 million Facebook users and the average person having 120 friends, you can see how tying in social media to your email program can create fast, efficient results. By adding in an email subscribe option to the posted online version allows the postee’s friends or followers to sign up for future emails. By allowing these folks to sign up through the posted eNewsletter is key since it also further adds to your premission based list!

The facts speak for themselves. There is still a demand for properly executed email marketing while the advantages of combining your email marketing efforts with your social campaigns are simply too good to pass up. Use the benefits of social media to create more exposure, increase ROI, and increase the list size of your email campaign.

Eric Taylor
Email Project Manager