The most difficult part of this series of blog posts I’m beginning today is where to begin. With more than 50 responses to my HARO query, I’ve been inundated with case studies, stats, stories and more. So let me begin with a giant “thank you!” to everyone who responded to my query. I hope these posts will, in some small way, help spread some valuable knowledge around so that everyone benefits.

Today, I begin with a case study that is chock full of tactics and stats. Welcome to the world of Ventureneer, a company that describes themselves this way:

Ventureneer provides small business advice and education, and nonprofit training and insights using a new approach to learning: a blend of traditional, formal instruction with informal, peer learning using Web 2.0 technology to capture and share knowledge. Ventureneer’s customized blogs, virtual classes, peer-to-peer learning, coaching, web events and articles help entrepreneurs make faster, better decisions for their enterprises.

My thanks to Geri Stengel, President of Ventureneer and of strategic planning and marketing firm Stengel Solutions, for her generosity in sharing the following information:

In tight communities such as the nonprofit world, word-of-mouth is the main way news gets out about products/services. The social-impact community is even tighter and more approachable than other industries. Hence the rapid spread of Kiva. Ventureneer is emphasizing the use of social media because of its low cost and viral capability. We use other low-cost marketing vehicles including:

• LinkedIn: About nine months in before the launch of Ventureneer, Geri Stengel started aggressively building her LinkedIn contacts.
• Ventureneer blog: Vistas, written by Geri Stengel, began about six weeks before the launch of Ventureneer.com’s free webinars for small business and nonprofit leaders. We did this to continue building our database and because blogs help with search engine ranking. The blog is available through email, an RSS feed on LinkedIn and JustMeans (LinkedIn for the socially conscious).
• Commenting on other blogs: When appropriate, we participate in other blogs geared toward socially conscious businesses and entrepreneurs.
• Twitter: Ventureneer began tweeting almost immediately after the launch of Vistas. Tweets are a mix of links to news, blog posts, and conversations with followers. Our process for building followers, choosing what to tweet, and writing tweets is manual. We want quality and not quantity. @Ventureneer has nearly 1,900 followers and has been as high as #7 on topfollowfriday.com #FollowFriday list. @Ventureneer is honored to be included in Socialedge’s Top 100 Social Entrepreneurship Tweeps.
• Press releases: Press releases target the media. Ventureneer subscribes to Vocus, a web-based service for public relations management that maintains a list of media segmented by subject or keyword, distributes the press releases, and monitors the placement.
• News releases: News releases, which for the most part are the same as Ventureneer’s press releases, target the consumer and are distributed to and indexed by search engines like Google, sent to top news sites like Yahoo! News, and placed into RSS feeds with more than 250,000 subscribers, including those of bloggers, journalists and consumers. News releases help build backlinks (websites that link back to the main site) and inbound links from other premium sites, which are important assets when building your website’s credibility in search engines. All of this helps drive traffic by enabling more people to easily find you online and click through to your website. We submit our releases to PRWeb, dBusiness News, Free Press Release Center and Press Release Point.
• Surveys for insight and publicity: We conduct periodic surveys to establish Ventureneer as an expert on issues related to small business owners and nonprofit leaders. The first survey, conducted in July and August, was reported on in September. It addressed the use and value of resources.
• Viral video: Ventureneer developed a playful video and contest to name the video to drive awareness of the importance of support and the different kinds of support available to entrepreneurs and nonprofit executives.
• Search engine optimization (SEO): Leverage SEO best practices to ensure a high rank in organic / natural search results for appropriate keywords. Seventy-five percent of traffic is from organic, not paid, links. Ventureneer has recently hired Digital Brand Expressions to optimize our website for keywords and to help with backlinks.
• Linking: E-newsletter: send a monthly permission-based e-newsletter that links subscribers to the site beginning in 2010.

Results

In just over five months, the website Ventureneer.com has been visited nearly 10,000 times by nearly 6,000 people, viewing nearly 50,000 pages. More than one third (37%) are returning visitors. Seventeen percent of visitors are from outside the U.S. Nearly 1,000 have signed up for Ventureneer’s 24 webinars. Several webinar had more than 100 sign-ups.

• 30% of traffic is coming directly to Ventureneer.com.
• Press releases and news releases generate 20% to 30% of traffic.
• Google generates 15% of traffic.
• LinkedIn generates 11% of Ventureneer’s traffic.
• Publicity about taking the survey generated 5% of traffic and close to 500 names for the database as well as several articles, including in the New Haven Register and Black Enterprise.
• Twitter is responsible for about 4% of traffic to Ventureneer. More importantly, it is positioning the company as a credible source of news and information for small business owners and nonprofit leaders.
• Instructors generate about 2% of traffic.
• In just two weeks, the video / contest has generated nearly 1,200 views, a 4 ½ out of 5 star rating from 36 people, and 10 comments.
• The landing page is the web page where people go when they click  a link in an email, natural search listing or online advertisement. An analysis of landing pages finds that even though our webinars were launched two months after the blog, they drive the highest number of click-throughs: 26% – 30%. The blog generates 16% – 20%.
• Webinar sign-ups are generated from a variety of sources including:
• 44%* from Ventureneer
• 31%* from LinkedIn
• 12%* word of mouth

*Participants could give more than one response.

Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest, and Peter Shankman has taken a simple idea — facilitating conversations between journalists and sources — and turned it into the amazing resource known as HARO.

Everyone is talking about social media these days, and marketers are trying to figure out how to use social media to drive business. I’ve done successful social media campaigns for some big brands — Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, Thomas the Tank Engine, Cirque do Soleil — but I wanted to know more about social media and smaller businesses. So I turned to HARO.

Last week, I submitted the following query to HARO: “Seeking small and medium-sized businesses (local and regional) who are using social media tactics in a way that’s delivering real return on their time invested. What tactics are you using — and what return are you getting?”

It was published to the HARO mailing list on Thursday evening. Within 45 minutes, I had 20 responses. Within a day, I had more than 50.

So tomorrow starts a four-part series of LOHAD posts: social media, small business and real returns. I’m going to shut up and get out of the way and let some of my new HARO friends generously share their experiences.

If you have any interest in social media whatsoever, stick around. This will be as good as it gets.

My two biggest pet peeve’s with regard to “sloppy grammar” are misused apostrophe’s (especially when used to indicate a plural) and “air quotes” in print. If you share my “disgust” for the latter, you’re gonna love this piece over on HuffPo.

“The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.”
—Thomas Carlyle

The pace of business — and life — is so swift these days, we don’t often get the chance to take the time to step back from the details and the marketing plans and the tweeting and the rest to think about some big-picture basics.

So today, let’s think about some big-picture basics. In no particular order, here are a dozen questions you ought to be asking yourself about your online presence:

1. Do the pages on your Web site provide easy-to-understand visual cues indicating where in the site the user is at any given time?

2. Does the home page provide a comprehensive overview of the overall site contents?

3. Are your graphics, icons and symbols easily understood by your intended site audience?

4. Is the language used on your site easily understood by your intended site audience?

5. Is text legible on the screen and are your pages legible when printed?

6. Does your site have any grammar or spelling errors?

7. Do your page layouts utilize “above the fold” space effectively? In other words: Can your users access the most important content on the page without having to scroll?

8. If you’re capturing personal data, are you crystal-clear about how that data is used, stored and protected?

9. If your site utilizes search, are the search results clear, comprehensive and useful?

10. Does your site provide clear privacy and security policies?

11. Is your essential site content no more than two clicks deep from the home page?

12. Is customer service, including timely email communications where appropriate, a fundamental component of your online presence?

There are many others, of course, but these are a good start. It’s amazing how often a company fails to address one or more of these basics.

Takeaway for marketers: How well do you address the basics?