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A Few Cool Social Media Website Tools

Tom Sullivan | August 24, 2010 | View Comments Comments |

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If your business has started to see the potential with social media you might be looking for some cool social media tools to utilize on your website. In this article I’ll break down a few of the many tools that could potentially benefit your website:

1) Facebook Like Button- Now that you no longer become a “Fan” of a business, make sure you include the “like” button in all of your blog articles. You may even want to add it to every page of your website.

2) Facebook Activity Feed- The Activity Feed is a plugin displays Facebook profile pictures of your Friends who “like” the website you’re visiting. This a neat tool to use because it can persuade visitors to your website to “like” your business on Facebook, since they can see that their Friends already do.

3) ‘Tweet This’ button- Just like the Facebook “like” button, this Twitter button will allow you to tweet out a blog article or a page of a website with one click of your mouse. WordPress has a plug known as TweetMeMe that allows you to easily add this to any page of your website.

4) Wibiya Social Toolbar- This is a website enhancer that adds a little bar across the bottom of your website or blog. This toolbar encourages people to stay on your website will interacting with others. It also fully integrates with many different social networking websites, including Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz and YouTube.

These are just a few of the many social networking tools that your business can use on it’s website. Remember, it’s all about encouraging interaction. The more your audience engages the more information you can get from them, and the more quality information you can provide them. All this leads to more business down the road.

If you have any tools you’d like to add to this list please do so. We’d love to hear about it.

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Creating a mobile website

Tom Sullivan | August 19, 2010 | View Comments Comments |

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Is your website mobile compatible?

Did you know that 86% of Americans own a mobile phone? Now, more than ever, people are relying on their mobile phone for things like checking email, surfing the web, shopping, and much more.

As a result many larger companies are creating smart phone apps that allow for quick and easy access to information. They are also creating mobile versions of their website to make it easier for visitors to navigate the content of their site on a cell phone. If you don’t have a mobile compatible website, take a look at how it looks when you try to view it from your smart phone. Does the navigation and text look small? Is it difficult to jump from one link to another without having to enlarge? What you’ll find is that most websites that aren’t mobile compatible are frustrating to browse. And frustrated visitors lead to people leaving the your website.

So how do you make your website compatible for people looking you up on their smart phone? That depends on the platform your website is built on. If you have a WordPress website you’ll want to download an ithemes plugin and edit the CSS to match the design of your website. You’ll also want to design a header for your mobile site. Of course, you’ll have to purchase the license for the theme before you can do any of this.

If you need help creating a mobile compatible website then contact Turbo Social Media today. We can recreate the look and feel of your website in a cell phone compatible format that will make it much easier for your prospects and your clients to browse your website. Call 877-673-7096 x2 for more details.

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What should your business tweet about?

Tom Sullivan | August 17, 2010 | View Comments Comments |

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I’ve encountered a common question when consulting with my clients: what the heck do I tweet about? If you’re relatively new to social media you’ve probably asked yourself this very question. You can even apply this same questioning to Facebook wall posts.

Assuming you have the audience, or are growing the audience (of Fans and Followers), then the key is putting out the right messages. Here are some basic ideas for “stuff to Tweet about“:

1) Blog posts: If you have a consistent blogging strategy then take advantage of that and set up a feed for your blog posts to your Twitter and Facebook accounts. This can be done through Feedburner, Social Oomph, Twitter Feed or Hootesuite, to name a few. You can also re-purpose old blog posts and link to them from Twitter and Facebook.

2) Tips: Consider tweeting out a tip of the day to your Followers. Tweet about tips, tools, strategies and advice that you know as an expert in your field, but your Followers may not know. They will begin to see you as more of an authority figure in your industry.

3) Questions: Consider discussing a struggle or challenge that you or your Followers have had, and then pose an open-ended question as to what solutions or conclusions your Followers have discovered about this issue. This is a great way to gather feedback from your target market and really learn more about what they want to know and what they are struggling with.

4) Quotes: Famous quotes can be refreshing and inspiring. It’s never a bad idea to tweet out a famous quote now and again.

5) Mentions or Retweets: If you have a new client or a colleague who does something special for you consider giving them a mention. A thank you goes a long way, especially on Twitter. Retweets are also nice to utilize, as you can not only repeat a tweet that you like, but you can also give credit to the person who originally tweeted it.

As you can see, there are plenty of things to tweet about. Remember, unless you’re a famous athlete or celebrity, no one cares what you ate for lunch or where you went shopping. You cannot monetize the power of Twitter if this is your strategy. You need to take the time to learn about your Followers (and Fans) and use Twitter to establish your credibility, increase your visibility, and build relationships.

If you know of other popular things to tweet about feel free to leave us a comment.

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How to Not Waste Time on Facebook

Tom Sullivan | August 10, 2010 | View Comments Comments |

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Despite what some old-school marketers and internet bloggers think, Facebook is not a complete waste of time (but it can be). As social media becomes more intertwined with internet marketing every business needs to consistently evaluate the return they are getting on each piece of the internet marketing puzzle. This includes Facebook.

Ideally, you should be spending no more than 15 minutes a day on Facebook (and probably a lot less). When I say “you” I’m referring to your business, so if you want to play around on your personal page after work that’s fine. However, if you want to get the most out of your time on your business’ Fan page then you’ll want to follow these steps:

1) Time yourself: The best way to get in a habit of spending 15 minutes or less on Facebook is to keep track of the time every time you log on.

2) Set up a blog feed: This is an easy way to continuously add quality content to your Fan page (directly from your blog). Simply select ‘edit page’ on your Fan page and then click ‘notes’. Then you’ll want to edit the import settings.

3) Suggest your Friends become Fans: Since you have a personal page associated with your Fan page I would suggest asking these Friends to “like” your business every month or so, depending on how often you Friends’ list grows.

4) Ask your Fans for feedback: At least a couple times a month you should pose questions to your Fans in order to get their feedback. Their responses can help you improve your services, understand your target market better, spark new ideas within product development, and much more.

5) Respond to Fans’ comments: This should take the bulk of your time. The less questions and comments from Fans the less time you should be spending on Facebook. These Fans should be considered potential clients, and for many of them, Facebook and social media is their preferred choice of communication. Do not lose out on a new client by not responding to their questions, concerns or comments on your Fan page.

I know that it can be very tempting to spend countless hours on Facebook, but for your business’ sake, limit it to 15 minutes or less per day, and focus on the Fan interaction. Feel free to add any of your own tips for managing your time on Facebook. We’d love to hear them.

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Social Media and Mobile Marketing

Tom Sullivan | August 5, 2010 | View Comments Comments |

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Did you know that 86% of Americans own a mobile phone? And that there were 1.56 trillion texts sent last year, of which 97% were opened! Text messaging is more popular then ever, and because of that there is a new form of advertising that is on the rise: mobile marketing.

To be fair, mobile marketing is not a new phenomenon. It has existed for several years, but we have only seen it’s presence scratch the surface of possibilities. One reason for this is that there has yet to be any major players in this field. The providers essentially purchase a short code, the equivalent of a mobile domain name, such as 45107 or 99143, and allow their clients (or business owners) to purchase keywords from them which they can use for marketing campaigns. For example, the San Francisco Giants tell fans to text “GIANTS” to 56418.

The key to mobile marketing is that the consumer must opt in to the service. Most mobile providers demand a double opt in from the consumer and all require the ability for the consumer to opt out of the service at any time.

Who could benefit from mobile marketing?

Restaurants

Bars

Casinos

Ski Resorts

Golf Courses

Spas and Resorts

Concert Venues

Doctors/Dentists

Real Estate Professionals

And much, much more…

Any business that is trying to reach their target market with promotions, discounts, specials, giveaways and events could benefit from mobile marketing.

How does it work?
Business need to give incentives to get poeple to opt in to their mobile marketing. You can think of the opt in as a sort of VIP club that receives special deals that are not openly advertised. Your business will want to choose a keyword that is either your business name or a product that you offer for people to remember you by. This is what customers will be texting to the short code. For example, if you have a night club called ‘The Lounge’ then you’d want the keyword “lounge.” Otherwise consider the keywords such as “cocktail” or “beer.”

Here are some steps for executing a successful mobile marketing campaign:
1) Brainstorm discounts and deals: This where you get creative. If you are a bar owner, consider offering $1 beer and well drinks night, a buy one get one free beer night, or a $2 you-call-it shot night. If you’re the owner of a deli consider a free bag of chips with any sandwich purchase, a 1/2 off specialty sandwich, or a free upgrade in sandwich size.

2) Create a persuasive offer: This is a crucial step because you need to make sure that your signs and banners (and social media promotions) clearly indicate the value added for the customer for opting into your service. Make sure your signs indicate that there are “freebies” or “giveaways.” Simply indicating that you have specials may not be enough for people to opt-in. The only thing that customers like more than discounts is giveaways or freebies. The difference between a successful campaign and an unsuccessful one can simply be the way you promote your mobile marketing.

3) Promote your VIP club: This is a no-brainer, but can also be the difference in a lot of opt-ins versus a few. First, create signs that bright and colorful, that also match your branding, and place them throughout your place of business. Place them at the door, near the cash register, in the windows, in the bathrooms, everywhere! Then use social media to also get the word out.

It’s as easy as 1-2-3! Mobile marketing can benefit a variety of businesses. All you need to do is to create a carefully crafted offer in order to get people to opt-in. Then you alert your customers of this offer and monitor the success. Remember, you might check your email or Facebook periodically throughout the day, but the one way you can reach your customers at nearly any time of the day is through their mobile phone.

Turbo Social Media has partnered with iZigg, owner of arguably the most universal short code available, 90210, to provide mobile marketing services. If you’d like more information about how mobile marketing could benefit your overall social media marketing strategy then contact Turbo Social Media today or give us a call at 877-673-7096.

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5 Tips for Writing Quality Blog Posts

Tom Sullivan | August 3, 2010 | View Comments Comments |

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Does it ever take you hours to write one blog article? Do you constantly dread thinking about writing blog posts because of the time it’ll take? Fear no more. This article will take you through 5 tips to write your blog articles in about 15 minutes.

1) Do keyword research: Check on the analytics of your website (if possible) to see which keywords are bringing people to your website. Also do some research on the number of hits certain keywords are getting per month, then analyze where you website ranks for these terms. From there you’ll have an idea of which keywords you’ll want to incorporate into your articles.

2) Plan out your topics: Every month or week you need to come up with ideas for blog posts. These topics will help you organize your thoughts and produce an article. Consider coming up with a title for each article, a question related to that title, a solution, examples and a call to action, all before you ever sit down to write the article.

3) Break up the text: Breaking up the article is crucial to keeping your readers’ attention throughout. Consider including images, video, and breaking up the text into bullet points or numbers. Also, remember to keep your paragraphs short.

4) Let the facts speak for themselves: In order to be effective with your time you’ll want to write clear, concise sentences. That being said, don’t get too bogged down in writing overly compelling paragraphs with unnecessary esoteric overtones. You’re not writing a novel, you’re providing solutions with facts.

5) Write a series: Often times you can’t quite say everything about a topic in one article. No worries. Simply create a series with the same title; just add “(part 1)” or “(part 2)” after the title for clarification. This is a great strategy if you’re really trying to publish a lot of content about a specific keyword (an excellent SEO strategy, by the way).

Consistently updating your website with blog articles is crucial for maintaining and growing your search engine rankings. However, it shouldn’t take you more than 15 minutes. Follow these key steps and start to time yourself.

Also, remember to have a strong call to action at the end of your articles. Drive people to your Facebook page, your Twitter page, your contact page, list your phone number (877-673-7096), or simply encourage comments.

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What is Social Media Optimization?

Tom Sullivan | July 29, 2010 | View Comments Comments |

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According to Wikipedia, social media optimization is “is the methodization of social media activity with the intent of attracting unique visitors to website content. SMO is one of two online methods of website optimization; the other method is search engine optimization or SEO.” At Turbo Social Media we believe that social media optimization (SMO) is a strategy that focuses on vial, word of mouth marketing through social bookmarking, social networking, video and blogs (RSS). Content is spread through these channels to increase the visibility, credibility and branding of your company.

Search engine expert Danny Sullivan claims that Rohit Bhargava was the originator of the word “social media optimization.” Bhargava claims there are 5 rules for conducting social media optimization:
1. Increase your linkability
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content travel
5. Encourage the mashup

I’ll take a moment to elaborate on two of the rules that I believe are the most important. Increasing your linkability (#1) is extremely important because you’re not only growing the number of outlets people have to finding your website or social media sites, you’re also helping to improve the search engine rankings of your website or social media site. Google, and other search engines, value inbound links. The more inbound links that you have the more popular your website is considered; thus, you rank higher.

You also need to make your content travel (#4). In contrast to SEO, SMO is not just about what goes on within your website. Back in the day (10 years ago) simply keyword stuffing your meta tags could help you achieve high search engine rankings. This worked for many people, and it was a sufficient strategy. Fast forward to 2010, search engines have evolved, and they placing more and more value on non website-related files (video, images, audio, pdfs, etc.). Not only should your business be utilizing these newer forms of media, your business should be “blasting this media out” in order to help their content travel. When I say “blast this media out” I mean submitting your videos to You Tube, Vimeo and more. If you have a portfolio on your website then consider submitting your images to Photobucket, Flickr and more. This is not just limited to new media though. Blog articles should also be submitted to social bookmarking and social networking websites.

Social media optimization has proven to be valuable not only as a marketing and brand building tool, but also as a tool for businesses to learn more about their clients, potential clients and employees, in order to improve customer satisfaction, product/service development and recruiting. That being said, social media optimization, like search engine optimization, is about generating leads and increasing revenue. So far, it has done just that.

If you need help implementing an optimized social media strategy, consider contacting Turbo Social Media today to learn more, or call 877-673-7096 x2.

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Best metrics for analyzing SEO and social media

Tom Sullivan | July 27, 2010 | View Comments Comments |

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In a previous blog post I wrote about how to track ROI from social media. In the article I speak generally about being aware of the total value gained from utilizing social media, not just revenue earned. Things like customer feedback, testimonials, industry expertise and branding all provide value added for businesses investing in social media. So you know the value, but what are the best metrics for understanding this value?

There are quite a few different metrics which you need to be aware of, but let me start by saying the obvious. You need to have analytics installed on all pages of your website. Whether you’re investing in SEO or social media campaigns, you need metrics. Here are some of the best metrics for analyzing ROI:

1) Traffic: This metric is the basis for everything below. Without traffic none of the other metrics matter. If you’re generating traffic, and it’s increasing on a monthly basis, then you’re on the right track. The next step is analyzing this traffic.

2) Unique Visitors: While traffic is one of the first metrics people look at to judge the success of a website, unique traffic is arguably just as important. The reason is that unique visitors allow you to see if your reach is expanding. If your traffic is increasing, but your unique visitors is falling, then your marketing efforts need to be improved to expand beyond your existing network.

3) Referring urls: When analyzing social media, referring urls is one of the most important metrics to pay attention to. If your goal is to utilize social media to drive traffic to your website to capture leads, then you need to make sure that you are in fact getting traffic from these social media sites.

4) Average Time on site: Simply put, the longer people spend on your website the better. There’s no doubt you want to keep people interested, but you need to dig a little deeper. Analyze the average time on the site from each of the top referring sites. You might notice that the referring traffic from Twitter is spending an average of 2:45 minutes more on the site than referring traffic from StubleUpon or Digg. You need to understand which referring sites keep people interested the longest; these are the most valuable.

5) Conversions: My favorite metric. Conversions = leads, and typically warm leads. You can create conversions for many different actions on your website, not just a completed contact form or an opt-in. Consider adding other conversions, such as when a user spends more than 5 minutes on the site. Then you’ll be able to see the percentage of your traffic that spends 5 minutes or more on your website. Also keep track of RSS subscribers. These should also be considered conversions, albeit not quite as valuable as an opt-in, but valuable nonetheless.

Social media has proven to be a worthwhile investment for many businesses. If you are looking to invest in social media marketing make sure you do your research first, and then make sure you have the metrics in place to analyze your campaigns.

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What’s better, a blog within your website or a standalone blogsite?

Tom Sullivan | July 22, 2010 | View Comments Comments |

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Over the past 10 years blogging has grown tremendously in popularity. More and more businesses are investing in blogs to publish content, engage with prospects and customers, and generate leads. One question that I’ve encountered lately is whether or not a business should add a blog within their website or on a separate domain. This is a very good question that warrants further explanation, as there are advantages and drawbacks to both options.

Advantages to adding a blog within your website (yourwebsite.com/blog):
1) Creation of the blog: Adding a blog within your website is easy because you simply need to add a new page and copy the CSS from the rest of the site. The blog will then match your website’s look and feel.
2) Increased backlinks: If you optimize and syndicate your blog articles appropriately you will start to get backlinks from social networking, social bookmarking, and other external sites. These backlinks all point to an article within your website, thus increasing the total number of backlinks of your website. Over time, increased backlinks leads to higher search engine rankings.
3) Driving traffic to you website: Your website is likely the most expensive piece of real estate that you have online. If you have a well structured site with a good “call to action” then why wouldn’t you want to drive traffic to your site? Conversely, see #2 below…
4) Simplicity: Keeping a blog within your website means fewer things to keep track of on your part. You don’t need to buy a new domain or hosting for a separate blogsite, and you don’t have to worry about maintenance on multiple sites.

Advantages to creating a separate “blogsite” outside of your website (yourwebsiteblog.com):
1) Dominate for a specific keyword: If you’d like your business to dominate page 1 of Google for a specific keyword phrase you’ll need multiple websites. Sure, you can count on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn occupying 3 of the spots on page 1, but if you truly want to dominate you’ll need multiple websites. After your website (and your social networking accounts) you should create a separate blogsite.
2) Better for lead capture: The reason landing pages are so great for lead generation is that, if configured properly, they give the user 2 options: opt-in for the special offer or leave the page. If you’re driving traffic to your website you might lose people who get caught up in all the information on your website. However, if you create a standalone blog there there’s likely to be significantly fewer pages, making it less likely the potential customer gets lost in all the information and then leaves the site. This is not always the case, but studies have shown that less information is better for lead capture. Thus, people link to landing pages instead of websites when they set up paid advertisements online.
3) Dynamic home page: Creating a blogsite means that the home page serves as your blog. Therefore, the home page will constantly be updated as you add new posts. This is great for SEO because you are constantly adding new content to the home page, which is the first page search engines index.

As you can see both there are advantages to both options. Typically I would recommend adding a blog within your website because the fresh content will help with the site’s SEO and search engine rankings. Furthermore, having a blog within your website is simpler for both the business owner and visitor to the site. As a business owner it’s nice to keep all similar content together and not have to pay for additional domains and hosting. As a website visitor if I’m very interested in the business and I want to learn more, having a blog within the site provides me with a ton of more information; all within one click!

The only time I would recommend creating a standalone blog outside of your existing website is if you are either trying to dominate for a specific keyword (difficult to do unless the keyword is your business name) or if your blog focuses on a niche aspect of your business. If you really want to go all-out with your online presence then create a main blog within your website and then create additional blogsites that focus on niches of your main business. This way you’re reaping the rewards of all the benefits mentioned above.

If you have any questions about creating a blog contact Turbo Social Media to review your strategy and your options.

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