The Silicon Beach Young Professionals will be hosting their Launch Party Mixer at
Busby’s West

Calling the Best of the Silicon Beach…

Silicon Beach YP is a Brand New Organization dedicated to uniting the Young Professionals of the greater LA area in the Tech and Start Up community.

Silicon Beach is the epicenter for the Digital Elite and a hotbed for tech start ups. Most importantly it is taking place in our backyard. We are here to connect LA’s brightest and most innovative young minds.

Please join us at Busby’s West

Located in the heart of Silicon Beach

3110 Santa Monica Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA

No Cover | Drink & Appetizer Specials | Amazing Company

Don’t miss out on great drinks, great company and a chance to meet some of the Silicon Beach’s most influential professionals.

Connecting the South Bay Community - Silicon Beach is a major hub for young, inspired professionals looking to better themselves and more importantly it is our home and the community we do business in. This is an opportunity to define Silicon Beach by the young business leaders it is comprised of.

S|B|Y|P Please join, share and collaborate with us to build this community and create something great.

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See you there!

Despite its copious digital data, social media is pretty much the same. That said, there are a few dead simple ways to track ROI that don’t require a mixed media modeling program or a staff of math nerds.

1. Coupons and Offers
If you offer a coupon solely on Facebook, then you know with 100% accuracy that every coupon that customers cash came from Facebook. Facebook introduced a more formal version of coupons in September called Offers. So far more than 42 million customers have redeemed an Offer. Creating an Offer is fairly straightforward and can be tracked via a barcode for in-store Offers or an online redemption code for online offers. “That allows online and offline stores to quickly see where the traffic is coming from,” says David Baser, Facebook’s product manager for Facebook’s Page Insights.
SweetFrog, a frozen yogurt chain in Morganville, W.V., posted an Offer on its Facebook Page in November for $4, which covered “all you can fit in a 12 oz. cup.” Though more than 9,200 people claimed the offer on their desktops, just 144 people redeemed it in store. In mobile, the ratio was better: 3,747 people claimed it on their mobile devices and 382 — about 10% — claimed them in store.

2. Call Tracking Phone Numbers
Relatedly, another idea is to provide unique call tracking phone numbers on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to learn which channel drives the most leads and conversions.

3. Conversion Measurement
Another new Facebook tool for measuring ROI is Conversion Measurement. Conversion Measurement lets advertisers track the behavior of people who click through an ad. If a customer clicks and then goes on your site to register, then you have proof that the ad was at least effective for that. Of course, the ideal scenario is when a customer clicks through an ad and then buys something on your site.
Baser says adding Conversion Measurement to your ads and webpages is as simple as cut and pasting a few lines of code. “Anybody who runs a website should be able to do it,” he says.
In theory, when used in conjunction with OptimizedCPM, another Facebook tool, you can use the conversion data to get a better idea of whom to target. For instance, Fab used that combo to cut its cost per new customer acquisition by 39%.

4. Google Analytics
This won’t tell you what people are buying, but at least you can see if traffic is coming from Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest to your website. If you run an ad and see a bump in traffic, then you have a good idea that it’s working.

5. Look at Overall Results and Then Work Backwards
Perhaps the simplest way to calculate ROI is to look at your overall sales and then attribute a boost at least in part to your social media advertising or activity. Sam’s Chowder House, for example, ran a status update on its Facebook Page about a special and doubled their business that day compared to the same day in 2011. “The only thing they did differently was a status update,” says Baser. Terry Walsh, owner of Sterling Goss, a Chicago butcher shop, said he realized that his Facebook program was working when sales of turkeys doubled over Thanksgiving. “Turkeys are a measurable event,” he says.
Of course, that’s a fairly blunt instrument. There are various factors including the weather, the day of the week and the economy that might have an effect as well.
In fact the above methods will only give you a limited snapshot of how well your social media advertising is working. Sid Shah, Adobe’s director of business analytics, says marketers often give up on social media advertising because they don’t see much measurable activity. “As a company, we’ve always believed that you shouldn’t look at social as its own channel,” he says. “A search marketer will say social doesn’t work because [customers] don’t click and buy stuff, but there’s brand value there. You build a relationship.”
Ben Pavlovic, founding partner of VineSprout, says that social media often defies ROI measurements. “Some will disagree, but social media shouldn’t always be tied to a metric,” he says. “And like any other marketing activity, ROI will not always be immediate. First and foremost, social media is a communication tool, just as the telephone and email function as a way to have conversations with current and potential customers.”
Image courtesy of Flickr, liewcf
Syndicated from Mashable
Post by: Todd Wasserman

2. Create a killer Title tag. HTML title tags are critical because they’re given a lot of weight with all of the search engines.
You must put your keywords into this tag and not waste space with extra words. Do not use the Title tag to display your company name or to say “Home Page.” Think of it more as a “Title Keyword Tag” and create it accordingly. Add your company name to the end of this tag, if you must use it.

3. Write at least 200 – 250 words of visible text copy based on your chosen keywords.
This is a crucial component to high rankings and a successful Web site. The search engines need to “read” keyword rich copy on your pages so they can successfully classify your site. Use each keyword phrase numerous times within your copy for best results.

4. Create Heavy Meta tags.
Meta tags can be valuable, but they are not a magic bullet.
Create a Meta Description tag that uses your keywords and also describes your site. The information in this tag often appears under your Title in the search engine results pages. The Meta Keyword tag isn’t quite as important as the Meta Description tag. Contrary to popular belief, what you place in the keyword tag will have very little bearing on what keywords your site is actually found under, and it’s not given any consideration whatsoever by Google. Use this tag, but do not obsess over.

5. Use extra “goodies” to boost rankings.
Things like headlines, image alt tags, header tags, etc.), links from other pages, keywords in file names, and keywords in hyperlinks can cumulatively boost search engine rankings. Use any or all of these where they make sense for your site.

6. Be careful when submitting to directories such as Yahoo and the Open Directory Project (DMOZ).
Having directory listings are a key component to getting your site spidered and listed by Google. Making mistakes in the submission process could cost you dearly as directory listings are difficult to change later in the game. Therefore, it’s important to read Yahoo’s How to Suggest Your Site and How to add a site to the Open Directory before submitting.

7. Don’t expect quick results. Getting high rankings takes time; there’s no getting around that fact.
Once your site is added to a search engine or directory, its ranking may start out low and then slowly work its way up the ladder. Some search engines measure “click-through popularity,” i.e., the more people that click on a particular site, the higher its ranking will go. Be patient and give your site time to mature.

8. Don’t constantly “tweak” your site for better results.
It’s best not to make changes to your optimization for at least three-to-six months after submission. It often takes the engines at least that long to add your optimized pages to their databases. Submit it, and then forget about it for a while!

If you’ve followed these tips and still can’t find your site in the engines, the first place to “tweak” would be your page copy. If you added less than 250 words of visible text on your pages, this is probably your culprit. Also, double check your keyword density, and make sure that you only targeted two or three phrases per page. Eventually, you’ll see the fruits of your labor with many top ten rankings in Google and the rest of the search engines!