Tag: Internet marketing

via youtube.com

I don’t comment on politics often here, but here’s a politician who gets YouTube! Ex-reality tv star cum DA Sean Duffy is a former client of mine who looks like he’ll have a new zip code in January — although he’s no technologist himself, at least he understands the value of social media in getting his ‘awesome’ out. Comment, call or use the contact form to discuss how this applies to your business…

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I’d like to call your attention to a new webinar being offered by Dana VanDen Heuvel of Green Bay. In a couple of weeks, Dana will be speaking on the topic of business blogging for thought leadership and few people know this topic better than him. Dana says…

“Blogging is one of the most important aspects of a thought leadership or social media presence, yet so many organizations struggle with blogging or decide to dismiss it altogether because of the content publishing demands of blogging. Blogging doesn’t have to be hard, take a lot of time or take an entire staff to publish.

The Blogging for Thought Leadership webinar will take you through the steps from developing your thought leadership position to creating a realistic publishing plan that any organization can manage.
Some of the highlights that we’ll cover in the webinar:

  • Developing your thought leadership and blog point of view
  • How to use insurgent marketing to claim a thought leadership position in a crowded market
  • The social media thought leader’s equation
  • The weblog publishing roadmap
  • 20 types of blog posts to take your blog to the next level
  • How to create your own efficient blogging process
  • How to create the ideal social media publishing calendar
  • Getting the most from your chosen blog platform
  • How to connect your blog to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
  • Case studies of organizations with highly successful thought leadership blogs”

Source: [New Webinar] Blogging for Thought Leadership

You can go to the source to sign up. Whether you can attend in real time or no, you’ll still get the content to view later…

This humble blog is one of the highest ranked websites in the US thanks to business blogging…

…and many of the concepts Dana will be presenting are ones we both consider to be ‘common sense‘ in this space — I wholeheartedly endorse his content and recommend it to you without reservation. Understanding the connection between business blogging and thought leadership could propel your online presence to new heights and there are few people better suited to explain it than Green Bay’s own Dana VanDen Heuvel. Be there when he lights it up…

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…on the Top 10 Tactics and Tools for Social Media. Here’s my mindmap. What’s missing? You can grab the map and move it around or make it full screen if that helps by using the menu bar at the bottom of the map…

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Aliza Sherman has a great post over at Web Worker Daily…

“How many times are you hearing the question, “Why should I engage in social media?” during your work week? I’m hearing it often, and it’s reminding me of 1995 and 1996, when clients — and colleagues — were asking “Why should I have a web site?” And who remembers when the question was “Why should I have email/a cellphone/a computer/a typewriter/a telephone?” OK, maybe none of you remember the old telephone question, but I heard that when the telephone was first introduced as a consumer product, most families were appalled with the concept of putting a phone into their homes and saw it as an invasion of their privacy. Yes, the telephone.

Here is how I try to explain to people who may not be convinced that they — or their company — should be using social media for business. Hopefully, this proves helpful to those of you in the position of reaching the decision makers who are ignoring social media outright and consider it a fad.” Source: Why Should I Engage in Social Media?

The diagram she refers to is a useful, thought provoking tool…

Personally, I’ve benefited a great deal from applying social media to my internet marketing strategy and I’m happy to share my ‘home bases and outposts’ strategy with my clients. When a customer’s needs are greater than what I can handle myself, I include my virtual team members Dana VanDen Heuvel, the thought leadership guru at MarketingSavant.com and the brilliant folks at Envano led by David Sauter. Whether your needs are great our small, one of us can help you figure it out…

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AGCO
Image via Wikipedia

…but I have been bloody busy with the Agritechnica trade show in Hannover. I set up a social media dashboard in the menubar so you can track the work I’m doing with AGCO in Germany. So sorry, but with doing social media 12 hours a day, I just haven’t been able to maintain my normal editorial schedule for my business. Needless to say, there won’t be a ‘top tactics and tools’ post today — next Tuesday, I hope I’m recovered from jet lag enough to write on ‘tactics and tools’ #5 – Shareaholic!

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Hmmm. Looks like everything you need to know about social media you may have learned in kindergarten. Not quite, but this confirms some of my preconceived notions…

“There are hundreds of ways to exploit social media to help your business or to build your personal brand but one that should stand head and shoulders above any other is the simplest of them all and has been around for as long as we have been on the planet….help other people. It sounds really really easy and you probably don’t even think it warrants you reading the rest of this post but if you stop and think about it for a second do you really help others? Do you consistently go out of your way to help others and put their needs above yours?

Let me let you in on a little social media secret: helping others is the key and any work you put in to help others will come back to help you in the long run 10 times over. The beauty in this day and age is that it is so easy to help others through social media now. You just have to want to.

It’s not going to happen in a week or even a month (although it can) but if you make it your mission to help people online in whatever way you possibly can it will always come back and make your day when you least expect it. I am not just talking about re-tweeting somebody or linking to them in your blog but actually going properly out of your way and helping somebody else to achieve their goals. Not your goals, their goals.” Source: Why you should help others to help yourself in social media

btw, few people do this better than my buddy Dana VanDen Heuvel of MarketingSavant. Go to the source and read the rest of the article, but check out Dana’s site too if you haven’t done so — it’s one of the best you’ll ever find on the topic of thought leadership and internet marketing…

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It’s a well known secret in real estate that the three most important aspects of a property are ‘location, location, location’. In social media, there’s a similar mantra. It’s called ‘share, share, share’…

“If you step back and take a look how information moves in Social Media, it’s quite different than “Traditional Media.” Back in the day, most people got their information from newspapers or magazines. The direction of information is from the few (the writer or publisher) down to the many. We’ve all seen this in action in our daily lives, maybe to the point of not even noticing it anymore. Got a favorite newspaper columnist or TV show host? One single person communicating to possibly millions of people with little interaction between the communicator and the listeners.

As we step into the Social Media arena, the direction and flow of information is between the readers and the writers. The interaction (thanks to the internet) tends to be instant and the ripple effect from this sharing of information can spread far and wide. With the users of Social Media able to contribute news and information to anyone willing to listen, we now have a conversation. Just like the conversations you are already having at the local coffeeshop or at work.

The recent buzzing and tittering by the media about Twitter and Social Media in general, it’s no wonder business owners may feel forced into using these internet-based communication tools, or perhaps miss sales opportunities their competition is getting instead of them. Not being familiar with the landscape, many make that sometimes fatal error of confusing Social Media with traditional advertising.” Source: The Secret to Social Media – Business Networking – Biznik

This isn’t something to be afraid of — it’s something to be embraced and leveraged. Using the right set of tools, sharing is easy…

As the internet marketing gurus at Hubspot say ““Each thoughtful post on your blog is a public demonstration of your thought leadership, personal integrity, humor, and professional insights. You don’t have to refute one of Einstein’s theories to get respect.” To that I would add each thoughtful ‘share’. In my seminars I ask people how many of them have ever forwarded a link to their friends or saved a bookmark. Of course EVERYONE has done that. What differs is the efficacy or efficiency of their tools.

Shareaholic

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYefcEknS2Y

Shareaholic is my personal favorite and one of the first Firefox add-ons I install whenever I move to a new computer. I also recommend ShareThis, another Firefox add-on as well…

ShareThis

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMSCJeagRAE

In closing, I’ll share with you one of my most important tactics. I’m always on the lookout for something good to share — it helps establish my thought leadership position. If something is really good, however, I’ll do a blog post FIRST and THEN share that post with others. Yes, it’s important to share but it’s ok to be a little selfish in the process by sharing something from an internet property that you own so that it drives traffic to your homebase, wherever that may be. Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page to reach me…

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Image representing Alltop as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

As a father of 6, parental analogies are always close at hand for me. It’s why I sometimes say that clients are like children in that when you see them take the things you teach them and they make it their own and excel, you can’t help but burst with pride. Recently, the AGCO blog was included in the agriculture feed at Alltop, the internet’s best source for news aggregation, becoming the only Farm Equipment manufacturer to do so…

AGCO’s success should rightly be credited to Jamy Johnson, a budding online community manager and social media practitioner who took the time to embrace the ‘e1evation workflow’ and make it her own. Last month, their blog had over 10,000 visits and it’s rapidly becoming a key factor in lifting the corporate website to new heights in search and traffic rankings as well…

Kudos to Jamy’s manager Sue Otten who had the courage to embrace social media in the ag space before ag social media was cool! If Jamy and Sue can rise to the top using “good, fast, and cheap” social media tools for agriculture, imagine what you can do in your industry!

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via thingstodoingreenbay.com

There are few people I know that have leveraged the internet more effectively to build their personal brand than ‘Green Bay Greg‘ Dallaire. The video is one that he shot for a client of mine, Tailwind Flight Center, and it demonstrates the quality of the work he’s doing at ‘365 Things to do in Green Bay’ along with Tony Rouse from MindSeed Labs. If you want to know how to use the internet and social media to build your brand you don’t need to look much farther than Greg Dallaire…

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Tamar Weinberg and Garrett Camp
Image by Tamar Weinberg via Flickr

Every year, I spend hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours reading articles on Internet Marketing for my annual Best Internet Marketing Posts blog post. The effort to find these posts, read them thoroughly, identify whether they meet certain criteria, and categorize them takes an incredibly huge toll on me, but at the end of the day, I’ve been proud to provide regular content to my readers. Over the last five years, hundreds of URLs have been carefully collected and selected for inclusion in this post.

The posts for the last five years are:

Each year, this post has gotten bigger and better, and for my 30th birthday, I offered 300 great links that can most certainly act as the only internet marketing schooling you’ll ever need.

via techipedia.com

If Tamar says this is the best, I’m all in!

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Social Media Landscape
Image by fredcavazza via Flickr

Business owners around the globe are asking themselves whether or not they need a social media manager. However, more and more of them are noticing the popularity of social media, but don’t know how, where, when, or why they should jump on the bandwagon themselves.  They notice their colleagues, peers, friends, children & family have jumped on board, on a more personal level. But, what so many of them fail to see, is that their present and future customers have jumped on for a ride too!

Right now, as you read this, your customers are flying down the road going mach 5 with no end in sight. They’re enjoying themselves too while reading/writing reviews, articles, comments & opinions on your business. They’re chatting amongst themselves (and to the rest of the internet world) about their latest visit, what their experience was, and even how it bugs them that Sally the cashier always seems “nice”, but never says thank you when they are leaving.

Wouldn’t you love the opportunity to be in that cart flying down the road too? Do you want to know what your customers are saying about you? Do you want to be able to effectively converse back with them? Wouldn’t you love to hear, first hand, about their experiences? Wouldn’t it be great to know how they felt about Sally so you could enforce stronger cashier policies?

Go to the source if you’d like to get the 5 reasons: socialmediatoday.com. h/t @tommytrc.
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Reflecting on 2010 – The Year the Customer Became King

Gaius Julius Caesar, Art History Museum, Vienn...
Image via Wikipedia

“I came. I saw. I conquered.”

Were Julius Caesar a B2B online marketer in 2010, his words may have more appropriately been:

“I created. I shared. I conversed.”

Even five years ago, the concept of engaging the customer in dialogue, let alone allowing the customer to drive the conversation, would have been both foreign and frightening.

Today, marketers that are actively engaging their customers and their communities through social media and sharing relevant, meaningful content with them are leading the charge toward a new era of online marketing – an era in which the customer, not the brand, is King.

And, no longer is a solid brand message and well articulated value proposition enough for our King. When it comes to learning more about our brands and products, our customers don’t just want a message, they want a conversation.

via blogs.business.com
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7+ Tools for Turning the Tide

I had the honor yesterday of team teaching a social media ‘bootcamp’ with super smart social media guy Dana VanDen Heuvel [I know! Why was I team teaching with him?!]. Apparently Dana finds some value in my ‘practical, tactical’ approach to social media implementation so he asked me to share it with the class…

Me? I think people who believe that social media marketing could be valuable for their business are immediately faced with the question of ‘how do I add social media to my overflowing plate and still get home for supper?’. If that’s true then we need a simple toolbox to help us go from being overwhelmed by data to effectively managing and producing it. This is my current thinking about the ‘7+ Tools for Turning the Tide’ [the plus is for retail destinations that would also benefit from location-based social media]…

http://www.mindmeister.com/maps/public_map_shell/71029957/7-top-tools-for-turning-the-infotide?width=550&height=400&zoom=1&live_update=1

Before you tweet back that this is way oversimplified, remember where most aspiring thought leaders are at! That’s why I use three maxims to guide my choice of tools:

  • “Things must be made as simple as possible but no simpler.” Albert Einstein
  • “Never use two tools where one will do.” Paraphrase of Thomas Jefferson
  • “The tools must be ‘good, fast and cheap’, completely cross platform, and available anywhere/anytime [which means they are web and mobile based].” Todd Lohenry

This mindmap is a revision of my now ‘world famous’ series ‘The Top 10 Tools for Tightening your Tribe‘ — the missing technology toolkit for Seth Godin’s book ‘Tribes‘. You’ll see that some of the tools have changed [I’ve moved to Chrome from Firefox, for example] but the principles are enduring and many tools have stood the test of time over the past year — a lifetime in the social media space…

Questions? Feedback? Comment, call or use the contact form to connect so we can talk about how this applies to your business…

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Turn Your Expertise Into Dollars Online

Posterous Logo
Image via Wikipedia

Small business owners possess a wealth of knowledge about their industry or sector, and when they share this knowledge with Internet (Internet) searchers, it lends credibility to their business and attracts new customers. Blogging is a key medium for sharing your expertise. The most recent Merchant Confidence Index, a survey of 10,000 small business owners conducted by my company found that nearly 30% are blogging and 35% plan to blog in the next three months. Those who are blogging have found that creating impactful content that people can find online is one of the best marketing tools available — and it’s free. According to data published by Internet marketing firm HubSpot, companies that blogged realized 55% more visitors to their site, 97% more inbound links and 434% more indexed pages.

Michele Gorham, owner of the Andover, Mass.-based Cookie Central bakery, is one small business owner who has turned her expertise into dollars online. She has created hundreds of blog entries about how to build a business, run a bakery, and other helpful topics; and she continuously answers customers’ direct questions through various social media platforms, including Facebook (Facebook), Twitter (Twitter) and Yelp (Yelp). Because of Gorham’s rich content contributions, her listings on various sites are highly trafficked and regularly found by search engines — generating more sales for her business.

via mashable.com

If you’re as interested in thought leadership marketing, you’ll want to follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article…

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What companies need to ask when hiring a social-media consultant

Letting an outsider influence your brand’s social-media presence can be a scary thing. You’re giving a consultant or an agency an enormous amount of power over your brand — and probably paying them a pretty penny. You know you need help to make your social-media efforts bear fruit. But how can you be sure you’re bringing in the right person?

At the 2010 BlogWorld Expo, panelists shared their takes on the social-media hiring process. As the panelists — each of whom is no stranger to the process — talked, they returned again and again to three fundamental questions that companies need to have answers to before confidently bringing a consultant or an agency on board.

via smartblogs.com

You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article…

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Social Media Marketing Bootcamp – Green Bay, December 3

I’m really excited that Dana VanDen Heuvel of MarketingSavant has asked me to join him in team teaching this Social Media Marketing Bootcamp in December. Dana’s brilliant when it comes to social media strategy and I’m not so bad at practical, tactical social media tools…

Nearly every local business can benefit from social media in their marketing, but most courses and books only tell you why and don’t show you “how to.” The Social Media Boot Camp for Local Business will teach you the why, the how-to and the practical, tactical things you can do to make social media work for your business. You’ll complete the course with complete command of the latest social media marketing tools and know how to deploy them in your business.

Folks who attend will get alot in a very condensed timeframe and if I weren’t presenting, I’d be the first to sign up…

via gbsmbootcamp.eventbrite.com
You can follow the via link to sign up via EventBrite. Here’s the outline for the course…

Social Media Bootcamp – Workshop Agenda http://d1.scribdassets.com/ScribdViewer.swf

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6 Easy Ways to Get More Visitors to Your Blog

Image representing HubSpot as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

A blog is an important asset to any business. It allows you to gain visibility as a thought leader, engages your audience in conversation, and acts as link bait. But you can only reap these benefits if you can actually get visitors to your blog. By now, we all know that content is king and that creating remarkable content on a regular basis will pay off sooner or later. But here are some simple strategies you can apply to each of your blog posts that will make your blog traffic soar quickly.

Click here to go to the source of the quote: blog.hubspot.com

Good stuff from HubSpot — one of my favorite internet marketing resources. Go the source if you’re interested in discovering the ‘6 ways’…

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From Side Project to Sustainable Business Using Social Media

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

Over the last 18 months I’ve built two profitable businesses with the help of social media. One business was a sure thing; the other was a side project. My side project was a blog: womeninbusiness.com.au. All of the important numbers (subscribers, page views and profits) are growing monthly and I’ve never paid a cent to promote it.

When I decided to drop out of corporate life, my first move was to open a consultancy. I had been working online since 2001 and by 2008 was confident I’d accumulated enough skills and experience that finding work wouldn’t be a problem.

Around about this time, Twitter was the next big thing. I realized if I wanted to offer my clients the best service I could, I’d better get to know what Twitter was, and work out it was going to be any good for business.

Little did I know that the answer would be a resounding ‘yes’—and that it would help me take my side project from an idea to a sustainable business in less than two years.

via problogger.net

You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’d like to know more…

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Answered: 10 Questions About Website Redesign

Image representing Mike Volpe as depicted in C...
Image by mikevolpe.com via CrunchBase

Website redesign can be lethal or liberating for your business. Know what you are getting into before you sign the contract.

Most recently, we covered the website redesign topic in a webinar with HubSpot’s VP of Marketing, Mike Volpe. We received nearly 400 questions during the live session and wanted to address the most frequent ones here, offering a platform for discussion.

via blog.hubspot.com

If you’re interested in redesigning your site, you’ll want to follow the ‘via’ link and read these 10 answers. HubSpot is also offering a free guide if you’ll provide your info. Comment, call or use the contact form to connect so we can talk about how these 10 answers apply to your business…

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7 Effective Facebook Pages YOU Can Create Right Now

via marketingsavant.com

Cool! Thanks for the <3, Dana! We’re proud of the work that e1evation and Envano have done for AGCO! If you want to see the other 6 Facebook pages that Dana VanDen Heuvel thinks are effective, you can follow the ‘via’ link…

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Social Media for Farmers…

Bringing in the Harvest
Image by barockschloss via Flickr

Social media is not just for the kids, the young, hip and aware. It’s also for ag producers. I’m David Sparks and I’ll be right back to tell you why. My kids can’t wait to get on Facebook to tell everybody, that has committed to being their “friend”, everything they want them to know. It’s like a cyber self-promotion. Now all of a sudden, this phenomenon is catching on big time in the ag world. Why not? Doesn’t it make sense to promote good ideas, like cost savings, new technology, communicating with the public, otherwise known as the consumer? So social media is definitely catching on in the agriculture industry. AGCO Corporation started its social media initiative at the 2009 Farm Progress Show. Today – nearly 18-thousand Facebook users like the AGCO page and about a thousand more are following AGCO on Twitter. The company also blogs several times each week.

Sue Otten is Director of Corporate Marketing and Brand Communications Worldwide for AGCO and heads up the company’s social media efforts. “It’s a nice blend between our own original content and talking about our products and technologies which is something our audiences are interested in as well as interesting ag news from around the world. It’s good for farmers in one part of the world to know what’s going on in other parts of the world. Ag is getting a bad rap these days and this is a way for the farming community to tell their story.

Click here to go to the source and get the podcast; aginfo.net

AGCO rocks! Nice work, Sue…

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