Below is the video recording from today’s webinar that walks you through the social media webinar and the POST Method.

With over 600,000,000 people on Facebook, over 100,000,000 professionals on LinkedIn and 50,000,000 active monthly users on Twitter is clear that social media is not just a fad. It is changing the world around us faster than anything ever has in our history. It is bring people together, it is starting revolutions around the globe and it is new channel for businesses to reach out to their customers. With all this buzz about social media it is easy for companies to say they need to get on track with the rest of the world and create a fan page on Facebook and a Twitter account. If only it were that simple. 1000’s of companies are making this mistake everyday. They are creating social media accounts in hopes that a plethora of people start engaging with their brand and buying their products/services, but this is not happening. What is actually happening is these companies just push their message or sales on to anyone or they just stay stagnant with no fresh content. Doing this is actually worse than not having a social media presence. The reason why companies are making this mistake is because they lack a cohesive strategy that engages the right target audience, with the right mediums, and with the right objectives.

So what does this mean to you as an office furniture dealer?

It means that you need to have a strategy and if you don’t have one do not even bother with having a social media presence until you do.

In this webinar we are going to educate you on what it takes to plan the right social media strategy for an office furniture dealer and provide actionable steps to start using LinkedIn as a means to expand your network. We are going to uncover all of the myths of social media and how it relates to the office furniture industry.

In this webinar you will:

- Learn the biggest mistakes dealers make with social media
- Understand the right way to develop an effective social media strategy
- Receive actionable steps to develop your strategy
- Be shown how to establish a credible LinkedIn presence
- Learn how to broaden your network and engage your audience within LinkedIn

This webinar will be co-hosted by Jason Kirby, Director of the Office Furniture Marketing Program at eBoost Consulting and Wayne Breitbarth, author of The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success and Owner of M&M Office Interiors.

This will be taking place on April 21, 2011 at 11:00am PST. Register and reserve a spot today!

Webinar on Using Social Media for Dealers

I was recently published in the OF Dealer ezine that is organized by the Office Furniture Dealer Alliance. This is my third publication in the OF Dealer and I am excited for future opportunities. The article was titled: Why You Need Google Analytics. It discusses the various aspects of Google Analytics interface and defines the various terms. It is a great prelude to the webinar below. To read the article visit here http://ofdealer.com/pdf/ofd_feb11.pdf and scroll down to page 20. Here is the first part of it:

Why spend all that time and money on creating a fancy new web site if you can’t even tell if people will visit it, much less convert into a customer?

Your web site is not a black hole nor is it a static environment; the time and money you put into your site are the platform for finding and targeting and obtaining your ideal customers.
Customers rarely mention problems they encounter while on your web site. The only way to know what kind of online experience you are providing visitors is to review and interpret your web site’s data.

Welcome to Google Analytics, a free tool available to all specifically designed to:

- Track how many people are coming to your web site and
how they found your web site.

- Track what product or service pages visitors spend their
time on to eliminate ineffective pages and promote your best
pages (those that result in a customer).

Read more>

This is the recording from the webinar on Your Quickstart Guide to Google Analytics that occurred on March 3, 2011.

Your Quickstart Guide to Google Analytics – For Office Furniture Dealers from jason kirby on Vimeo.

Please refer to the slides below from: Quickstart Guide to Google Analytics webinar on March 3, 2011

Your Quick Start Guide to Leveraging Google Analytics: For Office Furniture Dealers

Why spend all that time and money on creating a fancy new website if you can’t even tell if people will visit it, much less convert into a customer? Your website is not a black hole nor is it a static environment; the time and money you put into your site are the platform for finding and targeting and obtaining your ideal customers.

Welcome Google Analytics, a free tool available to all specifically designed to:

• Track how many people are coming to your website and how they found your website.
• Track what product or service pages visitors spend their time on to eliminate ineffective pages and promote your best pages (those that result in a customer).
• Instantly review reports on your highest performing marketing initiatives; over time, refine your strategy to increase efficiency (save time and money) and visitor conversion (when a website visitor becomes a customer).

This webinar will walk you through the Google Analytics platform to inform you of the various benefits it can provide your organization and how you can make better business decisions from the data.

After attending this webinar you will:

1. Learn how to setup an account.
2. Become comfortable with navigating through the different sections.
3. Be given the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that apply to office furniture dealers and how to interpret them to make decisions.
4. See how to setup and use advanced conversion tracking to measure the performance of your marketing campaigns.
5. Be introduced to benchmarks set by other office furniture dealers to compare your website’s performance too.

This webinar specifically addresses the needs of the office furniture industry. Make sure to register for this webinar ASAP or forward it on to your marketing team. You will not want to miss out.

This webinar takes place on March 3, 2011 @ 11:00am PST. Register Here

Register Here for the Webinar

We have put together a standard Pay-Per-Click checklist for you to review and understand where your PPC campaigns stand. Please go through this checklist and make the necessary changes to your PPC campaigns. If you have questions please feel free to contact Jason jason@eboostconsulting.com

 Keyword Research (Use Google’s Keyword Tool to estimate the search volume you can expect for related keywords to your business. Download the keywords into a .CSV file).
 Setup a free Google Adwords account.
 Set your daily budget maximum (calculate this based on how much you are willing to spend per month then divide by 30).
 Create Regional and National Campaigns (Keywords without geographic modifiers go in the regionally targeted campaign. Keywords with geographic modifiers go in the nationally targeted campaigns).
 Separate content from search into separate campaigns or turn off content entirely.
 Group together relevant and similar keywords into separate ad groups (There should be a separate ad group for “cubicle” related keywords and another group for “systems furniture” keywords).
 Write your unique selling proposition in your ad copy to differentiate your ads from your competitors.
 Introduce negative keywords into your campaigns because you don’t want to show up for keywords like home office furniture or cheap furniture, etc.
 Integrate Google Analytics with Google Adwords conversion tracking.
 Let campaigns run for 1-2 months and then review analytics and make regular optimizations to improve campaign performance.

Below is a checklist of different items that you need to make sure your website has in order to consider it Search Engine Optimized. If you are not familiar with these terms or don’t know how to make the necessary changes to your website then please forward this on to your web developer.

 SEO Friendly URL structure with keywords in the URL
 Unique page titles for every single page
 Unique and Relevant meta descriptions to increase click through rates in SERP’s.
 Navigation is in HTML has good theming and is user-friendly.
 250+ words per page with strategic use of keywords.
 Custom 404 page with the main site template with regular navigation and error message.
 Canonical URL that allows for one default version of the homepage URL.
 Main headers are in H1 tags with Sub-heads in H2, H3 and include keywords.
 Images all contain alt text and have descriptive files names that contain keywords.
 HTML and XML sitemaps that have been submitted to the major search engines.
 100% of pages are indexed by major search engines.
 The number of external links pointing to your site is greater than your competitors.
 
If you have any questions please email Jason at Jason@eboostconsulting.com

The office furniture industry is headed in a more positive direction in 2011 and it is important to take advantage of this by preparing for a successful year. With the wave of technology taking over how the world communicates (social media) and how people gather information (Google) it is important to not be left behind. Six office furniture dealers in the last month realized the value of getting in front of people looking for office furniture solutions and have signed up for our exclusive marketing program.

These dealers are seeking growth and an increase in profitability in 2011. It is with this statement that I would like to leave you this question before you venture into the New Year: What are your goals for 2011 and what are the milestones that lead to succeeding those goals?

If you can answer this question with confidence and have your team’s buy-in then you are on the right path for a prosperous 2011. If you don’t have the answer, do not stress, there is still time. However, you need to take the time and really iron out what it is going to take to accomplish your goals.

I want to wish everyone Happy Holidays and a profitable New Year.
-Jason