WordPress. Where would I be without it? Most likely living a life of quiet obscurity in Algoma, WI. Thanks to WordPress, however, I have a global platform and people can find me in Google. Does it work? Well? You’re reading this, aren’t you?
Things we’ve been tracking in the past 24 hours…
- How to Add a Gallery in WordPress with a Lightbox Effect June 28, 2011
- How to Add Multiple Galleries in WordPress Posts and Pages June 27, 2011
- Twenty Eleven Post Formats – What Are They and Why Should I Care? June 27, 2011
- Ron Paul loves America and WordPress too June 27, 2011
- Turning your social media efforts into a word-of-mouth machine via @SmartBrief June 27, 2011
- Battle of the superphones [infographic] June 27, 2011
- Keepin’ It Real on Social Media June 28, 2011
- The Most Overrated Piece of Blogging Advice I’ve Ever Heard June 28, 2011
- 7 New Ways to Improve Your Google Rankings June 28, 2011
- What Do You Love: Google’s Ultimate Mashup June 28, 2011
- Why Social Networking ‘Utopia’ Isn’t Coming June 28, 2011
- This Morning’s Top Headlines June 27, 2011
- Note to media: We are all brands now, so get used to it June 27, 2011
- PayPal Hits 100 Million Active Users June 27, 2011
- Does Social Media Have A Return On Investment? June 27, 2011
- Why Internet Marketers Must Always Be Testing June 28, 2011
- How To Use Facebook And Blogging Together For Your Business June 27, 2011
- HOW TO: Claim Your Business On Facebook Places June 27, 2011
- How to Beat the 3 Types of Writer’s Block June 27, 2011
- 7 New Ways to Improve Your Google Rankings June 27, 2011
Things we’ve been tracking in the past 24 hours…
- ‘Why I Love and Hate Having a Smartphone’ :-) June 16, 2011
- Google Adds Reputation Management to Dashboard June 16, 2011
- 3 Simple Ways to Empower Your Customers to Sell For You June 16, 2011
- How to Get Affiliate Code from E-Junkie to Promote our Ebooks June 16, 2011
- How I Increased Traffic by 90,000 Hits per Month in 25 Days June 16, 2011
- 21 Simple Ways to Live an Exceptional Life June 16, 2011
- Social Networking Sites by Daily Engagement June 16, 2011
- A Comprehensive Post on SEO June 16, 2011
- How To Get The Conversation Started On Facebook June 16, 2011
- A Philosophy Of Tenacity June 17, 2011
- Insert a Little Pareto Into Your Day June 17, 2011
- Six Mobile Marketing Case Studies June 17, 2011
- Who pays for the news media? June 17, 2011
- Image via CrunchBase
Sweta of GlobalThoughtz has an interesting blog post on the topic of corporate blogs…
“How do you follow your favorite company? How do you come to know about their latest launch or what’s cooking in their labs? My answer to this would be their ‘Corporate Blogs’. Not only does it give me a constant update about the company I like but also makes me feel connected to them. It gives me the feeling that they are listening to me.
Today as a consumer, I have several products to choose from for each of my need and certainly my choice is driven by my affinity to a particular brand. Just like Internet presence had become crucial a few years back, corporate blogs are absolute necessity now. After all we live in the world of Social Media.
Its not just web companies that need to engage their consumers with their blogs. Few of the most loved companies in the world also house must read blogs. One of the best example of corporate blog is Official Google Blog, not only does it provide an insight into the company but also provides useful information to its readers. Corporate blogs such as McDonald’s Corporate Social Responsibility by McDonald’s, Check Out by Walmart and Fast Lane by GM have made these most loved companies even closer to their consumers. The Social networking sites Facebook and Twitter constantly update their users with their blogs The Facebook Blog and Twitter Blog.” Source: Why a company must have a blog.
Here’s the real payback, however, and the real reason why these corporations do it: HubSpot says that companies that blog get 55% more visitors, have 97% more inbound links, and 434% more indexed pages [which are valuable from a search perspective]. Better yet, customers who are engaged by a corporate blog and social media spend 30% more than their disconnected counterparts, according to MarketingSavant Dana VanDen Heuvel…
I guess you don’t really HAVE to have a blog, but at a time when many companies are fighting for their economic survival, I think it’s good to know there’s a good, fast and cheap tool that delivers these kinds of results. Question? Feedback? Leave a comment or use the contact page…
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- Business Promotion through Social Media (slideshare.net)
- 5 Ways to Make Your Business More Transparent (mashable.com)
- 25 Tips to Choosing a Social Media Consultant (kylelacy.com)
All the topics that interest US in the past 24 hours…
- Google’s Schmidt: ‘I Screwed Up’ on Social Networking | Epicenter | Wired.com June 1, 2011
- How five influential journalists use social media June 1, 2011
Related articles
- Google’s Schmidt Says He ‘Screwed Up’ in Social Networking (businessweek.com)
- Google’s Eric Schmidt Says He ‘Screwed Up’ on Social Networking (wired.com)
- Facebook Rejects Google’s Partnership Offer (techie-buzz.com)
- Google’s Schmidt Takes Subtle Shots At Microsoft, Apple, Facebook (mashable.com)
- Eric Schmidt Says He “Screwed Up” Social Networking at Google [Block Quote] (gizmodo.com)
Jay Baer says…
Social media is growing up fast. No longer a niche plaything of the digerati, social media is firmly entrenched as a societal game changer of historical importance. For many, social media and social networking are so ubiquitous and pervasive that we presume we have it figured out, that we have a finger firmly on the pulse. But we don’t. Data about how social media really works, who uses it and how, continues to surprise.
This point was driven home in The Social Habit II, a new report from Edison Research and Arbitron that follows up on their landmark study in 2010 (and their 19th study about the Internet overall).
My friend and the architect of the study, Tom Webster, was kind enough to give me a preview of the report (I also very much recommend Tom’s blog BrandSavant), and here are my personal highlights – the pages that made me say “hmmmm”.
I encourage you to peruse the entire report, which you can access for free in a day or so. Tweet me or Tom (@webby2001) to get the URL. It’s a 50+ page orgy of data based on 2,020 telephone interviews of Americans ages 12 and up, conducted in February, 2011.
You can follow the ‘via’ link above to if you’re interested in obtaining the 9 facts…
Time to revisit LinkedIn? The time might be right to reconsider its importance in your social media strategy…
So you heard that a company called LinkedIn just went public, and want to find out just what the hype is all about and how you can use it? TNW is here to get you up and running on LinkedIn before this very day is over.
LinkedIn is a social network, research tool, and job platform for professionals, although the site’s draw has been bringing in a more diverse group of users in recent months, including many still in university.
The site was founded in late 2002, launched in early 2003, and now claims more than 100 million members to its name in over 200 countries. In short, for the educated working person, LinkedIn is a website in which having a profile is quickly becoming mandatory.
More to the point, as use of the site has grown, and as the willingness of its users to upload increasing amounts of personal information has risen, a person’s profile on LinkedIn is slowly morphing into a living resume of their work that is, for the most part, generally accessible.
Let’s hop into the fun, but before we get you into the site we need to talk about how you are going to use LinkedIn.
via thenextweb.com
LinkedIn is the oldest, and in many ways, the least popular of the ‘Holy Trinity’ of social media [Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn]. You can follow the ‘via’ link above to start rocking LinkedIn if you’ve been left behind…
Related articles
- Write Your LinkedIn Profile for Your Future (e1evation.com)
- Start Sharing on LinkedIn (e1evation.com)
- Getting Started With LinkedIn (thenextweb.com)
…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…
“Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that can be accessed through your account on their website, on your desktop, by instant messaging and mobile phones. Hundreds of thousands of people and companies, including several presidential candidates, reportedly, are users, although the firm won’t release that information.
What is known about Twitter is that its traffic is increasing rapidly, although it’s still considered a niche site. According to data from Web analytics firm Hitwise, visits to Twitter have more than doubled in the past 3 months and were up 60% in April. Twitter ranked #439 among Social Networks and Forums in late April, but its size is difficult to measure because it has so many ways for access, primarily cell phones.” Click here to read more…
Just in case you missed Dan Zarella’s awesome webinar yesterday, you can hear the recorded content here…
- Image via Wikipedia
A recent study by Business.com said that 83% of respondents said that Facebook is their favorite social media tool for reaching customers and no wonder — when Facebook recently passed 350 million members after gaining 250 million members since August 2008 [yes, that’s right — the Facebook ‘nation’ is larger than the United States and growing at an incredible rate] it became clear that if someone was online, you’d probably find them in Facebook…
Yet, as a social media consultant I see so much confusion around the topic of personal profiles, groups, and [fan]pages that I thought it might be time to share THE single best post I’ve found on the topic and share some of the practical experience I’ve gained over the past year working extensively with people and brands in Facebook. I agree with internet marketing expert Dan Zarella when he says “If I could give you only one piece of Facebook marketing advice, it would be: People have profiles. Brands have pages.” He goes on to say…
Social networking profiles represent people. From your Facebook profile, you declare personal relationships, grow your network by manually accepting friend requests, and discover other people in your network to add as friends. Your Facebook profile includes facts about you including your favorite movies, what schools you went to, and your favorite quotes.
Your brand isn’t a person. It doesn’t have a favorite quote or book. You can’t friend a brand, and it certainly can’t friend you back. Brands don’t have friends. Brands have fans. Fans have discussions about your brands, share news about them, and share information about your brands with others.” Source: On Facebook, People Have Profiles, Brands Have Pages.
Here’s the part where it really gets good…
“Profiles are for People. At this point in Facebook’s community’s development, you do not want to keep a profile if you are a brand. Keeping a brand profile is a surefire way to come across as totally out-of-touch. And worse, even if you were to pull off a successful corporate profile, Facebook has been known to suspend profiles for “too much marketing activity.”
Groups are for People. Groups really aren’t suitable for a serious marketing effort. They originally were created as a place for like-minded people to communicate outside of their immediate network and never were intended for brand use. There is very little time and energy required to make one and consequently, users do not value them as much as pages. How many I-lost-my-cellphone-so-I-need-all-your-numbers-again groups have you been invited to?
Pages are for Brands. After setting up a page for your brand on Facebook, use applications to pull in content from your blog and Twitter account (you do have those too right?) to keep your page full of fresh, frequently updated information. Resist the urge to turn your page into a watered-down version of your website. Include some offers, media or conversation on Facebook that does not appear anywhere else. Retail brands like Victoria’s Secret are especially talented at this. I recommend viewing their Victoria’s Secret Pink Facebook page and see how their brand interacts with fans.” Source: On Facebook, People Have Profiles, Brands Have Pages.
Hopefully, that clears everything up from a strategy perspective. Now, a few of my favorite tactics for those who have read this far…
The phrase ‘fan page’ is a misnomer and needs to be addressed. Facebook calls them PAGES, plain and simple, but people refer to them as ‘fan pages’ because they have to ‘become a fan’ to interact with the brand — the correct terminology, however, is ‘page‘. Frequently, when working with someone who wants to become a thought leader, I’ll get a statement like “Well, I’m just a _______ [business owner, politician, teacher, etc. – insert thought leadership role here] — I don’t have any fans. My advice to you? Get over it! Why? Because if you are attempting to create any kind of thought leadership position that evokes a response from people, you have become a brand and brands have fans. When Facebook gives you the ability to build a page [which is really a free mini-website] in the middle of the biggest social media group in the universe, they’re doing you a huge favor!
I recently spoke to a LinkedIn group in Green Bay on the topic of “Facebook for Fun and Profit”. At the time, I advocated using a Facebook primarily as an outpost for your website in order to draw people in. Good strategy, yes, but here’s the part I missed: a Facebook page may be all the website an entrepreneur or organization needs in the beginning! Why? Try these reasons…
- Facebook pages are indexed by Google so the content is searchable; group pages are also searchable, but many Facebook application such as Social RSS only work with Pages, not groups — groups are not good tools for BRANDS
- Facebook pages are visible to non-Facebook members [they just can’t become fans or interact with the brand or other fans if they are not a member]
- You can assign your own url to a Facebook page; see http://e1evation.org
- Facebook page urls can be modified to something more manageable and referenceable to the outside world; see http://facebook.com/skittles. You cannot do this with groups.
- Facebook pages are highly customizable; see http://facebook.com/victoriassecret. You cannot do this with groups.
As I read back over the five bullet points, it occurs to me that the primary value of groups is for INTERNAL communications within an organization while pages are EXTERNAL. I think that about sums it up but if you’re still confused, leave a comment or contact me and we’ll get you straightened out!
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Facebook Ads for Your Church
Pound for pound, this may be the most effective advertising a church can buy. Because of the demographics, it beats the snot out of the Yellow Pages and other traditional forms of marketing. You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source and read the rest of the article if you’d like to dig a little deeper…
Related articles
- N.J. Anti-Facebook Pastor to Return to Work (foxnews.com)
- Anti-Facebook Pastor To Resume Job In 90 Days (newyork.cbslocal.com)
- Pastor Bans Facebook to Stop Adultery (e1evation.com)
- Anti-Facebook pastor to return after hiatus (nj.com)
- Facebook critic will return to the pulpit (philly.com)
Ummm. Tell me again why I want to use social media to market my brand?
- Image via CrunchBase
What’s this?
“Nielsen recently released a new report that officially documents what many of us already know, just never substantiated through data. According to a study published at the end of January 2010, Nielsen observed the online social activity of consumers around the world and discovered an 82% increase in time spent on social networking sites in December 2009. On average, users spent more than five and a half hours on popular networks such as Facebook and Twitter in December 2009. In December 2008, users clocked just over three hours on social networking sites.” Source: Time Spent on Social Networks up 82% Around the World
Uh oh! If I leverage social media outposts to expand my brand into social media I may actually generate some leads…
;-)
The top 5 ways to promote your business using LinkedIn
I think author Lewis Howes is a little over the top here in his praise for LinkedIn, but I still think he’s worth quoting…
“LinkedIn is the most powerful social networking site to help you grow your business. It makes Twitter, Facebook and YouTube seem like social networking sites for kids.If you want to hang with the big players—a place where connections are made, leads are generated, and deals go down—then you need to spend more of your time on LinkedIn.
Although other sites have their purpose in the business world and many people utilize multiple social networking sites, LinkedIn is still the number-one place to market your business.” Source: Top 5 Ways to Market Your Business With LinkedIn | Social Media Examiner
His recommendations?
- Use LinkedIn groups to generate leads
- Ask questions and build credibility
- Create events
- Search in your target market
- Send personal messages
Me personally? I think that Facebook has stolen LinkedIn’s lunch money. What I mean by that is that 5 years ago, LinkedIn was the serious tool for business social networkers and Facebook was the place where you spied on your kids. LinkedIn lost its popularity to Facebook which continues to gain momentum in the business space. I consider LinkedIn to still be one of the ‘big 3′ social media tools, but it’s a distant 3rd to Facebook and Twitter. Exception? LinkedIn continues to succeed in some business communities like Northeast Wisconsin where we are traditionally slow to adopt and slow to let go so it cannot be overlooked as part of a comprehensive social media campaign. If you want to get started with LinkedIn, you can’t go wrong by following Lewis Howes’ advice. If you can’t figure out what he’s talking about, contact me…
Some straightforward thoughts on social media…
…from Wisconsin social media guru [no, that’s not an oxymoron!] Dana VanDen Heuvel…
“Social media is an umbrella term for online technologies that connect people through networking, according to Dana VanDen Heuvel, founder and president of the Marketing Savant Group, Green Bay.” Source: Social media connects organizations, customers | greenbaypressgazette.com | Green Bay Press-Gazette
He goes on to say…
“”The value of social media is that it connects customers to us or to each other. It’s not just a list of Web sites or things to download,” VanDen Heuvel said. “It’s about meeting people in their medium. That is really what social media is designed to help you do.”
Businesses should care about social media, because it has changed people’s expectations of what organizations do online as compared with five years ago, he said. Also, three out of four Americans use some form of social technology: blogging, micro-blogging (Twitter), social networking (Facebook), sharing videos and others.” Source: Social media connects organizations, customers | greenbaypressgazette.com | Green Bay Press-Gazette
He goes on to talk about offering unique value through your social media outposts and such practical things as how often your should update Facebook pages, etc. Follow the link to read the rest of article — it’s really good stuff…
btw, Dana’s a great speaker and I owe a lot to him in terms of my growth and development in social media over the past year. Do take the opportunity to see him speak if you ever get the chance — you can see his schedule here. When you want to talk tactics and tools for IMPLEMENTING Dana’s strategies, however, comment, call or contact me! I’ll help you put Dana’s strategies into practice…
;-)
Teens break up with blogging…
- Image via CrunchBase
…and start flirting with Twitter!
“A new study published today by Pew Internet finds that teens and young adults are blogging less and using social networking sites more, with the prominent exception of Twitter.
Pew’s Report surveyed 2,253 American adults and 800 U.S. teens to get a reading of how they use the internet, which gadgets they own, and which social media tools they use the most.” Source: Teens Just Don’t Blog or Tweet [STATS]
Go to the source for the rest of the article. Some of the data will surprise you…
7 tools for the mobile journalist
The e1evation/Envano team has done a great deal of work over the past six months on building the ‘near perfect’ toolkit for the mobile journalist. It comes from our award-winning work covering trade shows for AGCO. Here’s an interesting post on tools for the mobile journalist. Read the author’s take and then you can have my list of tools…
“The multi-function playground that is the smartphone has shrunk the capabilities of a van-sized 1970’s news team into the pocket of a single reporter. Today, front-page news can stream from any individual with a cell phone camera and a Twitter account, as it did during Iran’s election protests last summer. Today, major news outlets, such as CNN, have crowdsourced parts of their newsroom to locally-savvy citizen journalists, often armed with little more than a camcorder.
In addition to the standard smartphone equipment, such as a camera and social networking applications, we’ve compiled a list of five additional tools that can help a single journalist rival a fully-functional news team. With these tools, a mobile journalist can record data, edit clips, and broadcast polished stories as events unfold.” Source: 5 Essential Tools for the Mobile Journalist
Personally? I must be cranky today because I think this list is lame! My list?
- Apple iPhone [too bad the ATT network sucks so bad! We need a Sprint MyFi as backup…]
- Kodax Zi8 HD Video camera
- Posterous
- uStream
- Picasa
- A notebook computer
- And a Humvee Combat Vest to put all the equipment in!
Our key to mobile journalism is to assign the right duties to the right assets, be they people or products. Comment, call or contact me to discuss how this applies to your business…
Tactic #9: Leverage the ‘homebases and outposts’ strategy
It has been awhile since I wrote about tactic #8; using branded mail…
Today I’m going to talk about the third pillar of the e1evation system; promoting your online brand and reputation through the leveraging of homebases and outposts. Pillars 1 and 2 are ‘finding your passion’ and ‘publishing’. Once you’re publishing and you’ve found your voice, it’s time to promote your content through the use of social media outposts. Chris Brogan starts us off here…
“Social networks are great places to meet new people, to build new business relationships, and to learn about information from non-traditional sources. But another great way to use social networking sites is as an outpost. What do I mean by this? It turns out that people getting to know you on social networks might also find your content for the first time, and/or something you post to those networks might bring you an opportunity that wouldn’t immediately come to you in other ways. ” Source: Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy
I first noticed the power of leveraging social media outposts during my ‘reign’ as one of the top political bloggers in Wisconsin. I noticed during that time that if I would cross-post to Facebook or some other social media tool, that the post would get more traffic. Although this idea seemed original to me, I found that other great minds like Chris Brogan and Darren Rowse were already heading down this path… Continue reading “Tactic #9: Leverage the ‘homebases and outposts’ strategy”
Moms and smartphones…
They’re not just for CEO’s anymore…
“Smartphones may have started as productivity tools for top executives, but they’re quickly finding their way into the hands and purses of “power moms,” a.k.a. the CEO of the household.
As smartphones become easier to use and in many ways more useful, more women, including busy moms, are buying them to leverage all kinds of digital applications to stay organized and to connect with their families, friends, and social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter. They’re also using these Internet-enabled devices to get things done like paying the bills, ordering groceries, downloading coupons, and hunting for ideas for the next family vacation.
And like their corporate counterparts, these women are hooked.” Source: Modern power moms flock to smartphones | Wireless – CNET News
Go to the source to read the rest of the article…
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“If I started today”…
- Image by petermello via Flickr
…is an insanely great post by Chris Brogan on the topic of where I would start today if I wanted to use the internet and social media to promote my thought leadership position — NOW I understand why people like Darren Rowse of ProBlogger rave about him!
I came across it looking for the killer article for a prospective client that I really want to land and I couldn’t have picked a better one to help him make the right decision…
“Okay, so you’ve heard from someone that this social media and social networking stuff is great and you should get involved, and it’s really going to help you out. Maybe it will help you in the economic downturn. Maybe you have heard how you can use Twitter for business. But there’s a lot to it all.
Where would you start? What would come first? How might you think about getting out there and joining in on the experience?” Source: If I Started Today
You’ll have to go to the source to get the answers but it’s well worth the trip — and let’s hope that client ‘gets it’ whatever it is… ;-)
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Welcome…
…to all my new friends from the Green Bay Chamber of Commerce ‘How to be a social media rockstar’ event — it was great to meet you all at St. Norbert yesterday! Your heads are probably all swimming from all the content I crammed into the preso yesterday. Is there anything you’d like me to document? Comment on this post and I’ll do a quick screencast to answer your question if I can…
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- A definition of social media (martinspalette.blogspot.com)
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Bright, shiny objects! 
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