Many companies think that they don’t have time for social media or simply don’t want to invest any time or money in that direction.  This is a huge mistake.  It doesn’t take a lot of time or money to have a social media presence online and to keep it updated.  Those that think it takes a lot are simply not aware of the way social media works.

Recently, when talking with a broker of a real estate firm she stated that she simply didn’t have time to learn one more program or one more way to do things.  She was already busier than she had ever imagined – even with the economy in a slump.  What she doesn’t realize is that she doesn’t have to learn to do anything more.  She could Tweet via text message (which she already knows how to do) or she could update a business Facebook page with her phone while waiting for a client.  These simple changes would make her more accessible to her clients and would create leads.  She even has employees who know how to use different social media platforms – she just didn’t know how to utilize them properly.

Here are a few tips that may help your company, no matter how large it is:

1.  Use what you have – Surely you have a computer or cell phone and you have people who work for you.  Chances are your employees have Facebook pages, blogs, or a Twitter account among other social media accounts.  Have a meeting and see who knows how and ask them if they could take the few minutes it takes to create a business account to represent your company.  Be clear that it has to be professional.  Why outsource something you already have access to in the way of knowledge and skills?

2.  Be decisive and quick – Many companies get large and tend to over think things.  By the time they run an idea (like for a social media campaign) through the whole chain of command, the moment is gone and the idea is not fresh.  You need the people working on such things to have momentum and to be excited, it will come through in your social media and be great for customers.  So, make decisions quickly and let someone get to it.  Your company will benefit.  My broker friend, that I mentioned above, admitted that part of her problem was indecisiveness.  She would think too long and hard and then give up.  Momentum would be lost because she didn’t simply act on what she knew was possible.

3.  Learn all that you can and share it – There are many tutorials online to help make the process of using different resources.  These are great tools and are all free.  Make sure that the people working for you know about these tools and use them!  You may want to make a clear policy on what is acceptable and what isn’t and what your online goals are so that everyone is on the same page.

4.  Hire smart – When you have done what you can internally with your staff and you hit a wall or need to put some oomph into your social media – be sure to hire wisely.  There are many companies who will claim to create hype about your company but you need to look at their client list and get good references.  You also want to make sure you are not being over charged.  Should you need this kind of help with your social media accounts please let us help you!  We would be happy to talk to you about ideas and options and give you a great quote in a timely manner.

We have talked a lot about what improves your search engine rankings and how to help your website succeed.  But, there are a few things you should be aware of that can cause problems. 

1.  Link Farms – Be careful to not use these.  Get your own links the “old fashioned” way: request a link directly.  Link farming is seen as a negative because it is considered as a type of spam.  You want unique links that are from sites similar to yours – not just links that don’t have any relevance to your site.  Link farms are generally automated – avoid these.  Search engines like Google know what you are up to and it is not a good thing.  Resist the urge.

2.  Keyword Stuffing – There is a happy place in keyword usage where you walk the line between “stuffing” and under usage.  You need to find this happy place.  Most of the time, this is where someone who specializes in search engine optimization can help you.  While you want great content, you also want to make sure you get the keywords in your articles so that the search engines find you.  Using too much of the same wording is frowned upon in the search engine world.  The “spiders” that analyze sites will know what you have done and you will lose credibility.  This makes perfect sense because we have all seen those sites that just list the same words over and over thinking they are doing themselves a favor when we can’t wait to click out of their site. 

3.  Article Spinning – This is where content can get you into trouble if you don’t know what you are doing.  You need fresh and unique content that is well written but that is relevant and informative.  You don’t want a bunch of nonsense on your site just to get some wording in there.  This is just a case of doing good business.  If you wouldn’t want to find it and read it – don’t put it on your website.  We all truly appreciate well written articles that do not waste our time.  The bottom line is that when you are writing you need to keep your customers in mind.  Yes, search engine optimization is great but there is no use in being on top of the search engine list if your visitors can’t stand to be on your website.  It will be a waste of everyone’s time.

The bottom line is that you can get great search engine placement and good Page Rank by looking out for your customers as far as your content goes.  You also need those backlinks but do the work and get them yourself, not through an automated system.  And beware of companies that charge you for these links – back links should not have to cost you.

In prior articles, we have discussed how important fresh, new and unique content is to your search engine optimization.  What sometimes get overlooked is how important backlinks are for your search engine optimization success. 

This is where the internet turns into a sort of popularity contest.  You don’t want just anyone linking to you.  You want quality links.  This means that you want great sites with a good Google Page Rank to link to your site.  When search engines analyze your site they are looking for quality backlinks as well as updated content and keywords.

By quality, we don’t just mean those with high page rank all the time.  You need to keep the backlinks relevent.  You don’t want to have a real estate site and have people linking to you who talk about saving whales.  Sure, this would be great if it were just one link but for the most part you want to be linked to by people who have something to do with your topic or industry in some way.

Because of certain webmasters and their tactics, it has gotten very tough to please the search engines and to get better placement.  This does not need to scare you but rather, it should motivate you.  If you are getting true backlinks from great sites then you have nothing to worry about.  And no, you cannot have too many backlinks!

On top of building your Google Page Rank and increasing your search engine optimization, these backlinks will increase your traffic and visibility.  That is always a good thing!  While you may think that offering a backlink to another site is a good way to “negotiate” getting a backlink to you – be careful.  The search engines can find this as a red flag.  While it is impossible to stay away from all reciprocal backlinking you may want to keep it minimal.

If you are serious about increasing traffic and search engine optimization on the web then you need to make backlinks a major priority.  Put some time and effort into it and you won’t be sorry.

If you ever watch television, read a magazine or listen to the radio then you have probably heard about people using Twitter or “tweeting”.   Twitter is a very popular “micro blogging” social network.  It is similar to Facebook, MySpace and other platforms in that you can post an update on what you are doing.  The difference with Twitter is that it gives you 140 characters to give your followers your information.  You can add links to sites you would like share and you can even upload photos. 

For those of us that follow users on Twitter, we appreciate the fact that the users have to keep the updates short and to the point.  Like many people, I don’t have time to read 50 blogs a day but I can get the general idea of what is going on with those people and companies that I care about by following them on Twitter and just reading one or two sentences as they update.

In business, there are few social media tools as powerful as Twitter.  Twitter has around 200 million users that do over 800,000 searches per day.  This platform is easy for all users to access.  You can update using your phone just by texting and smartphones all have an application to use for Twitter.  It is the easiest to set up and easy to maintain because it really doesn’t require much.

If you are using Twitter to promote a product or business it is a good idea to make sure you update often.  Customers and clients love to feel like they are “in the know” when it comes to information.  Update Twitter if you add a new web page, a blog post, a new product, etc.  Be sure to add links to drive traffic to your site.  This will even help your page rank in the long run. 

We all know that you can’t be awake 24/7 to update your Twitter account but there are people you can hire to make sure that your Twitter account is always updating or you can use services available online that let you schedule updates.  Just never underestimate the power of frequent updates.  But as you do, remember also that your timeline on Twitter can be annoying if one user floods it with constant updates so be sure to be consistent but not annoying.  One update per hour is a good idea to start until you get a feel of what your followers would like. 

One last tip:  if you are using Twitter for business, keep it professional.  If you have an online sports equipment store it really isn’t a good idea to use your stores Twitter page to announce that you are eating ice cream at Baskin Robbins.  Save those tidbits for your personal page.  Clients love to know that you are all about their business when they follow your commercial Twitter account.

Just like in all things, there is more than one right way to run a social media campaign.  However, there are a few traits that most successful social media campaigns have.  In this post we will go over just a few of them and hopefully you will find ideas to help you and your company.

1.  Simplicity – Keep your campaign message short, sweet and to the point.  Do not try to use fancy wording or complex ideas, just stick with the basics.  None of us want to sit through more than a minute or two (even less is better) of what seems like an advertisement.  So, keep your audience in mind and speak to them simply whether it is in words or a video or whatever else you do.

2.  Earn trust – You have a very small window in a social media campaign and it is imperative that you earn the trust of your audience.  No matter what is said, written or shown with multi-media, you need to make sure that it really shows your company as you want it to be known.

3.  Just get the lead – Social media campaigns do not magically turn into sales.  This is more of a lead generator. Just get the attention of your prospective customer or client and sell them on your ideas at a later time.  Knowing this beforehand will help you to keep your campaign as simple as possible.  Naturally, the more “viral” your campaign goes, the better for you!

4.  Get some feedback – You won’t really know how your campaign is working if you don’t listen to the people that want to give you feedback.  If you do not have time to manage your campaign you need to find someone competent that will manage your emails and messages from other sources and get the ideas to you.  Then you will know what to change or you will know how to better meet the needs of your audience.  Always make sure that your social media pages have contact information or a comments section for feedback.

5.  Organization – You have got to have a strategy and be very detailed.  If your campaign is not organized how can you measure it’s success?  How will you know who you are reaching and when?  It is imperative that if you do not have the skills yourself, you get someone on board that can help you organize your social media campaign.

These are just a few thoughts.  If you need help with a social media campaign please contact us today.  We would be more than happy to help you succeed.

In past posts we have talked about the importance of using media in your blog posts and websites.  For many the first thing that comes to mind is to make and upload a YouTube video to be used on your page.  While this is still an excellent idea, there are other ways to get the same result.  YouTube is great and it has a wide user base but it can’t do everything.   There are some services available that have other options for you.

If you are considering making a series of videos then you may want to consider Blip.tv.  Blip.tv is a high quality “television network” online.  You can upload content often and you have access to a good amount (1GB) of storage and if that isn’t enough you can upgrade your account for a certain fee.  What we love about Blip.tv is that it has built in analytics to help you in your efforts.

Many of you have probably seen videos on a platform called Vimeo.  Vimeo provides some help in how to create better videos so you get better quality overall.  This will be fun for those of you who are very creative.  There are different types of accounts with Vimeo and it is a great place to use if you are looking for a very creative home for your videos.

For some of us, if we think about Flickr, we think of photo storage and sharing.  However, Flickr has become much more.  There is a time limit on the videos you upload and that is 90 seconds.  While this may not seem like much, you may want to consider that sometimes the best points are made in small doses.  A lot can be done in 90 seconds.  A big added benefit of Flickr is the large community of users.  Who doesn’t want a large audience?

For those that like the idea of getting their videos up on social media quickly (mainly Twitter) you may want to choose yFrog.  They are already well known for sharing photos on Twitter.  The perks on yFrog are limited and so is video length but if you want to get it onto your Twitter account fast, this is the way to spread the word.

These are just a few of the options out there.  Some are very powerful and can provide long term solutions for those looking to make videos a regular part of their website, blog or social media campaigns.  If you have questions as to how videos can be made to help your business please contact us.

Guerrilla marketing is a term coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his book called Guerrila Marketing.  The general concept is to use fun and different marketing ideas that rely more on creativity than on dollars.  The greatest thing about this kind of marketing is how inexpensive it is. 

The foundation of guerrilla marketing is to come up with unique ideas that will engage your demographic in  unexpected and fun ways.  The whole idea is to get the word out about your product or service.  Naturally, with technology as we know it now, if something is a hit it goes “viral” on the internet.  This is the goal with guerrilla marketing.  You don’t pay to spread the word, the public does it for you. 

Part of why guerrilla marketing can be successful is because the method encourages people to use all of their associations in life to their benefit.  Levinson gives some great ideas for marketing in his book but the basis is to be creative and start with the people you associate with.

What will be challenging for some that use this method is to realize that it isn’t about sales right off the bat.  You want your customers to have an experience with your brand.  You want them to be engaged and give them an experience to remember.  This will pay off in the long run and spread the word.  That is why it is so ideal for small businesses.  It takes very little money to get very creative and use technology to your advantage!

Need to share information?

Start to interact with your target audience. Contact us to learn more about our custom Facebook fan pages and how to take advantage of  the marketing potential of Facebook.

See below some of our clients.

For those Facebook users that use their “Insights” tools there are great new improvements.  Facebook has now given us a plugin that will help you track how your website content is performing on Facebook.  Ultimately this means that you will be able to improve your content and optimize it for Facebook users.   A great feature of this tool is that you can get results in realtime. 

Facebook makes the use of these results easy, they give them to you in an easy to read graph.  For website publishers this will mean that if you have a post or article that is getting a lot of Facebook attention you can see what is happening and possibly increase the visibility or prominence of the content. 

These analytics allow you to see where your traffic is coming from.  You can tell where your visitors are being referred from and how many clicks you are getting.  This is key in knowing your demographic.  You can even see who “Likes” a post or how much traffic your site is getting from Facebook.

The new plugin allows users to see who their audience is.  You can tell gender, age or country your traffic is in.  It is important for users who want to make this plugin work for them to really learn how to read the results of the analytics.  These are powerful tools for increasing your traffic as well as pleasing your target customers.

Today Apple made an announcement on the West Coast that they had sold 100 million iPhones! 

The iPhone debuted in 2007 and has had a phenomenal response.  There was initial speculation as to the longevity of the product and what may happen in the future.  I guess we now know the answers.  After four years, the iPhone is going strong.  This is proven by their continual growth (for example, they are now on Verizon Wireless).

So, what can we learn from this in our own companies?  If there is a way to have an “app” for your product, it may be wise to invest in having one created.  This could be product updates, or other usable features for your clients.  That’s a basic lesson we know to be true.  If there are millions of iPhone users around the globe, this gives you quite the audience if you know how to be “visible” on an iPhone.

Another lesson we can learn from the iPhone is to stay relevant and fresh.  They are always adding features, new applications for the phone, new ideas.  They keep it fresh and hip.  This keeps iPhone users coming back for more.  Wouldn’t we all love that?  Whether your business is real estate, retail goods, wholesale, or anything else, we all could use repeat customers.

We also know that most celebrities have or have had an iPhone.  So many brag about using their iPhone.  You can bet that Apple gave away their fair share of iPhones to get the word out to people the public would trust.  Whatever your demographic, it may be useful to give some of your items or product away just for the sake of advertising.  Get some videos up on your website via YouTube and show what can be done, what is possible.  Increase your visibility.  At the very least blog about your product as much as you can!

And finally, don’t let the skeptics scare you away from an idea you believe in.  If you know that you have a product that will be good for your customers for years to come and you know that you can keep serving them well through time, do not let anyone make you doubt yourself!

Congratulations to Apple!