Tag: Technology

Media_httpwwwpopscico_bghkv
via popsci.com

You can follow the ‘via’ link above to go to the source if you want the scoop!

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Image representing Alexa as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

I have a lot of preconceived notions about blogging and one of them is that blogs drive traffic to your site, especially if you update them on a regular basis. Along comes HubSpot — one of the best social media sites on the internet — with a great blog post about websites and blogs and what a blog adds to your business. The HubSpot content was difficult to bring into this post in a way that made sense so I encourage you to go to the site and read the whole article — it only takes a minute or two — but it demonstrates in a graphic way why blogging is good for business…

I’ve seen this happen in a very graphic way in my own political blog. By using tools that update search engines and drive content into social media, my blog continues to rise in the rankings. Last week for example I was ranked 7th most influential in the State of Wisconsin and my one week Alexa ranking average was 1,077,607 in the world — not bad for a little political blog!

What’s my secret? I use WordPress to custom design websites that have blogs and use blogging combined with a well thought out strategy using search engine optimization and social media. You can check out some of my projects here. If you’ve got a point that you’d like to get across, I’d love to show you how you can do the same things I do easily and economically!

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…from the social media rock star event…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYHLZzXDe9c&feature=player_embedded
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Cover of "ProBlogger: Secrets for Bloggin...
Cover via Amazon

…Darren Rowse of ProBlogger has some suggestions for getting back into blogging after a vacation…

“Yesterday was my first day back at blogging after a 10 day vacation with my family and on Twitter I commented that I was finding it a little hard to get my brain back into blogging mode. @Mikeachim responded by suggesting I write a post on the daily rituals that I use to get my mind into gear. 

I thought I’d take his suggestion and jot down a few notes – both as a way of getting my head back into blogging but also because looking at the tweets I received this morning it’s a problem many bloggers face.” Source: 13 Ways I Get Back into Blogging after a Vacation

While technically I wasn’t on vacation in Europe [I was managing the ACGO online community from Agritechnica] I was so busy coordinating social media for my client that it probably LOOKED like I was on vacation based on the number of posts to the site…

Lesson learned? Tending a blog is like tending a farm or raising animals — it requires constant care and feeding! I was in Europe 11 days starting on the 6th — even though I posted a couple of times and my blog automatically recycles old posts using ‘Old Post Promoter’ my traffic suffered a pretty good hit…

That’s why I say blogging is not something that you do, it’s something you are. It’s more of a lifestyle than anything else and requires a little bit of attention every day…

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httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiCn6y6JU8o
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via gizmodo.com

Woot! I can’t imagine what would have happened if Apple would have picked a competent partner like Sprint…

Posted via web from e1evation, llc

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A cynical look at today’s new coverage. Is this why the mainstream media is dying? [Warning: language]

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGSXMuWMR4&feature=player_embedded

What opportunities does this present for bloggers? Comment, call or contact me to discuss how this applies to your business…

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Isn’t blogging for 40 year old political malcontents living in their parent’s basement? Not at all. Smart companies are using blogging as the glue to bring their internet content together and drive their social media outposts. Late last year, I wrote…

“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…” Source: Why a company must have a blog… | e1evation, llc

For those who are skeptical, read on…

“With tens of millions of blogs online today, major corporations have started to recognize the value of a corporate blog for communicating with customers. However, corporate blogging is far different than the more traditional blogging that most of us encounter on a daily basis. Corporate blogging brings its own unique set of challenges and opportunities that must be considered and addressed by the company in order for its users to have a positive experience.

…Probably the most significant reason for companies to manage a corporate blog is the communication benefits it can provide. As a higher percentage of the population uses the Internet for researching and buying products and services, companies can often benefit from having a more direct line of communication with customers and potential customers.” Source: Corporate Blog Design: Trends And Examples – Smashing Magazine

According to the source, the five reasons why companies should blog are:

  • Communication with customers and the public
  • Demonstration of corporate responsibility
  • Reputation management
  • Promotion of products and services
  • Provide executives and/or employees the chance to communicate openly

To this I would also add…

  • Search engine optimization
  • Public promotion

If you want to read more, go to the source. In the meantime, I’m going to post a couple of examples of great corporate blogs to illustrate these points. Here they are in no particular order…

GM…

“The GM Fastlane Blog is a great example of corporate blogging because GM has clearly realized that regurgitating press releases is not what blogs are made for. GM talks a lot on their blog about their cars and trucks and the design choices they make while creating them, but they also throw in interesting treatises on current hot-button issues, such as alternative energy.” Source: 15 Companies That Really Get Corporate Blogging

Social media maven Dell…

“Though Dell’s corporate blog rarely strays from Dell-centric news, the company posts with a great conversational voice, often breaks news on their blog (which keeps people coming back), and listens and responds to customers. Dell also posts regularly (1-2 posts per day at least) which keeps content fresh and encourages repeat visits.” Source: 15 Companies That Really Get Corporate Blogging

Lenovo

“The great collection of blogs from computer maker Lenovo demonstrate that the company really understands blogging. Lenovo intersperses posts about its product line with musings about business, design, life, and technology. Definitely don’t miss the Design Matters blog, which should be a must-read for any designer.” Source: 15 Companies That Really Get Corporate Blogging

Amazon Web Services…

“What could be more dreary than commoditized data processing and storage services? While that might sound boring, the AWS Blog does a great job of highlighting cool things that are done on top of Amazon Web Services. Lately they’ve put up posts about how AWS are being used by the New York Times to provide online access to 150 years of archives and by the little ShareThis widget that you’ve probably seen on hundreds of thousands of blogs around the web. Lots of charts, graphs and other fun stuff for nerds on this blog.” Source: Nine Company Blogs That Are Fun For Anyone to Read

And the list goes on. imho, smart companies will use this tool as part of what I call a ‘Perry Como’ approach to PR [you know “accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on the affirmative, and don’t mess with Mr. Inbetween]. Looking for more? I suggest the Alltop list of corporate blogs…

Questions? Feedback? Leave a comment, call or contact me so we can discuss how this applies to your business…

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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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Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. Why? Mostly because it remains unencumbered by gift-giving or expectations of anything besides a good meal and a good time with family. We don’t have to travel anywhere or do anything except be thankful and be together!

This year, I’m most thankful for the people who will be sitting around my table [CJ and all me boyos] and the beautiful view I have when I step out my back door… [click on the photos to enlarge]

Business-wise, I’m grateful that for 8 days out of this year, this was the view from my hotel window! Every day in Germany is a gift from God…

It has been a great year for e1evation, llc and I’m grateful for all the people that have helped make it so: Bill and Sara, Sue, David, Dana, Heather, and Green Bay Greg, to name a few. As it says in Proverbs 27:17 “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” — you all have made me ‘sharper’. I’m grateful for Facebook and the power that it has to reunite old friends — some of whom even become clients like Shawn and Tara — and make new friends — like the two Swedish girls from Viktor Rydberg Gymnasium that have made the Esther’s Hope ministry their senior project. The power of social media continues to amaze me, but at the end of the day, it’s really all about ‘people power’ and the ability of technology to support it…

From Panos

In parting, here’s some obligatory multimedia for the day…

Have a great day tomorrow, however you decide to spend it. I’m checking out for the holiday — see you on the flipside!

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When it comes to blogging, executives have a unique problem. It has to do with the fact that the risk and cost of failure for executives are greater than they are for other employees.

Blogging is a personal affair. The learning curve requires the blogger to open up to the world, create content, build relationships, develop readership, get feedback, make modifications, and repeat.

That can be a lot of risk for anyone. But for the corporate executive, the pressure to “nail it” right out of the gate is more extreme…

via jasonseiden.com

Follow the ‘via’ link to go to the source if you’d like to read ‘the rest of the story’…

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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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“I’ve had a few conversations with IT executives from Fortune 500 companies in the past several weeks, and I’ve been surprised by how often a new enterprise-software company kept getting mentioned. The company?

Google.

Google has the problem of putting finish on a lot of its products, leaving things in eternal beta, but the price point for Google Apps is forcing even the biggest of companies to seriously consider Google instead of a Microsoft Office 2007 upgrade. (Google Apps: It’s not just small customers anymore.)

We may be getting to the point where Google’s ‘cloud’ allows them to provision users so much cheaper than any given enterprise can that it will become the provider of choice.”

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What the heck? It’s Friday…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmzxULoN1wM

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John Jantsch
Image via Wikipedia

John Jantsch recently wrote on the topic of “Profiting from other people’s content”. He says…

“Don’t be alarmed by that title — I’m not talking about stealing content for gain, I’m talking about adding the filtering and aggregating of content to your content consumption, creation and sharing routine.

Pretty much everyone has bought into the idea that they need to produce lots of valuable content in order to build the trust and search engine eyes of today’s online prospect. One way to supplement your content strategy while still providing lots of value, is to get good at finding and filtering other people’s content that your prospects and customers will find useful as well. (Done right, the other people will thank you for giving a wider audience to their content).

It should go without saying that giving credit to the original source and full attribution to the author when appropriate is a must.” Source: Profiting From Other People’s Content | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

John talks about his “consumption, creation and sharing routine” — my mantra is ‘listen, publish, promote’ which is a little more elegant in my book but we’re both trying to say the same thing and use an alliteration in the process. If I were John, I might go for ‘consume, create, communicate‘ — in fact, I might start using that instead. Either way, the point is that gathering good content effectively and commenting on it is a great way to build your personal brand. I’ve been using this strategy for years — most recently, I amped it up by using Posterous [another tool that John advocates] and saving more content directly to my blog instead of shared bookmarks as I used to do. Here are the results:

I think the results are really quite good for an ‘army of one’, don’t you? I do all my ‘creation and communication’ as a result of my daily ‘consumption’ — because my system is easy to implement and use, I work it frequently. I call quoting other sites ‘curation’ and my rare original thoughts ‘creation’. The curation works to draw people to my creation. Does it work? You betcha [you’re reading this, aren’t you?]. The average person drawn into my blog through effective communication reads 3.3 pages and spends 2:52 minutes on the site, while only 4.75% ‘bounce’ to another site. Over 71% are new visitors…

Jantsch goes on to give three tactical implementations of his ‘profiting from content’ suggestion. They are…

“Make yourself a better resource

Creating a habit of filtering content related to your industry, products, competitors and customers will make you better at what you do, allow you to keep up with trends and give you data to help you build deeper relationships with customers.

Share content to draw attention

Pointing out useful resources and good finds is a great way to build your social media and blog followings. Consistently sharing relevant links and sharing them on Twitter is a strategy that many find helps them be seen as follow worthy. Creating a once a week blog post roundup of good stuff is a great way to add content and keep readers engaged.

Filter personalized content

A more advanced strategy is to use your filter skills to create your own industry research briefs. If you specialize in several market niches you can create laser specific new pages and email newsletter roundups that feature the best of what you find each week. You can even use RSS technology to deliver dynamically changing web content password protected for your best clients.” Source: Profiting From Other People’s Content | Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Clearly, John and I share a lot of the same ‘common sense’. He goes on to list 10 different resources [you can follow the link] you can use as tools to find other people’s content. One of them — Kurrently — is one I’ll have to add to my toolkit. For me, however, this is where we part ways. My paradigm is “Google Reader is the answer. Now what is the question?“.

I use Google Reader like a tactical nuke. It’s the one tool I use to manage the ‘rest of the internet’ and I use it like a virtual newspaper or better yet, news bureau, where I manage hundreds of little newsbots that do my news aggregation for me. I have 5 great ways to get relevant content into Google Reader and they include most of John’s 10 tools — it’s just that in my book, Google Reader is the one tool that rules them all. It really is the driver in my ‘e1evation workflow’ outlined below. Either you get it and you can use it or I can help you implement it but the point is that if you have a brand and you want to build it online, we can help…

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Yesterday, I passed the 400 post mark. 400 posts over 18 months. Wow! Roughly a post a day for a year and a half. Is that a lot? Is that too little? I really don’t know. What I do know is this — when I use my ‘pass or play’ methodology, traffic to my site increases and my ‘pipeline’ fills…

My good friend [and brother in law] Jim Gilligan has a blog that he’s starting for his life coaching business at EffectiveLiving, LLC. Jim asked me how many posts he should create before he goes ‘live’. I told him a dozen or so is enough to get started but recently I did an experiment and I believe the number at which you start to see good results is closer to 100 over a 3 month period. Here’s a real world case study… Continue reading “400 posts” →

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

“Last week, I promised to discuss another source of advantage in decay. We’re going to zoom out instead, in response to a flurry of announcements from Apple, Google, and would-be competitors – to have a richer discussion in the weeks going forward.

It’s funny how flatfooted – how almost inept – everyone else in media, marketing, consumer electronics, mobile, a long and dangerously growing list of industries, seems compared to Apple and Google.

What gives? Why is that everyone that Google and Apple decide to take to the cleaners, well, gets taken to the cleaners?” Click here to read more…

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This list from author Matthew Shofoluwe is a good start…

“Business, like any organism, has to adapt to it’s environment. While the underlying principles for conducting businesses may remain unchanged, some areas are almost always in need of new and better ways of doing the same things. An example of such area is in communication. These includes presentations. Business has to promote itself. Passers by become visitors, who may become customers. A unique tool of these promotions is the internet, and the website in general.” Source: Business Website – 10 Reasons Why Your Business Should Have One

…but I think he didn’t hit the biggest issue hard enough, namely, the ability to publish whatever you want about yourself without having to worry about the cost of printing, etc. One of my favorite cartoons says ‘On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog…‘. I have always taken this to mean that any company can look as good as any other company on the internet regardless of their size…

If you’re looking for a low cost internet presence powered by social media, contact me using the form above or by calling (920) 486-4798. You can also find me lurking on the internet in these places…

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…but don’t want to use an rss reader? Personally, I think that’s going in the wrong direction, but  that would be your choice. ‘Feed my Inbox’ is a website that will allow you to track websites with newsfeeds and send an update to your inbox with new postings every day. By the way, if you agree that news readers are the ‘inbox for the rest of the internet’ and want to learn how to use Google Reader, click here for my free 30 minute training session on Reader…

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via googlemobile.blogspot.com

Woot! More great reasons to use Google Apps for Business and Android…

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Facebook, Inc.
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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