Social Media Advisors

We are Social Media Advisors, a Social Media Speaker, & Custom WordPress Site design.

Archives for 2011

Creating Memorable Impressions

Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors

Yesterday I was flipping through videos on YouTube and I came across one that I had not seen in a while.  It was a personal favorite that I used to share with people all the time.  As I sat there watching the video for probably the third time in a row, I realized that this simple, stupid video had made an impression on me and that I was spending wasting time watching it over & over.  Not only that, but that I was then visiting Mike Phirman’s site to see what other creations he had made.

I learned quickly that sometimes the simplest and dumbest of things can make impressions on people.  The impressions were formed by tugging on their emotions with humor.  Making someone laugh is one of the easiest ways to get someone to remember you.

What have you done today to make someone laugh?

P.S.  I leave you with the video that made me become an instant fan of Mike Phirman

Making Facebook Connections Personal

Facebook, Facebook For Business, Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors

Facebook Chat For BusinessWe all heard the big fuss this week about Facebook changing the layout on Business Pages.  I saw at least 10 different people write about it.  As usual, my first stop was over at my buddy Mike Mueller’s blog as he is my Facebook Guru whenever I want to know the real details.  However, this isn’t what I wanted to discuss in this post.  Instead I wanted to talk about one of my absolute favorite tools on Facebook.  This is a tool that allows you to connect on a one on one level with others and make your Facebook Friends a personal friend once again.

Facebook Chat For BusinessWho Cares? I’m All About Quantity

I understand that some of you are probably thinking to yourself right now, “who cares? I am trying to make as many connections as possible!” If that is your mindset, I get that.  I personally have over 1,400 friends on my Facebook profile and accept just about any & all friend requests.  (Unless I know it’s spam.) But here’s my question: What good is 1,400 friends if I never interact with them?

Now don’t get me wrong, there are ways to connect with people through leaving Happy Birthday wishes on their wall with 300 other people.  But to me that isn’t that personal.  In fact this last birthday of mine I looked and some that came by to wish me Happy Birthday. Several had not left a comment, or anything on my wall since my bday before.  So how does that make me want to be a consumer of their product or service? I could also try tagging them in photos that they aren’t in to help promote by business, but that doesn’t seem too personal but rather more like spam.  Instead, my favorite way of connecting with friends on Facebook is through Chat.

Facebook Chat For Personalization

When I start each day of work, one of the first things I do is sign onto Facebook and open up my chat.  I do this for several reasons.  The first is that I am connected to many of my previous and current clients.  They like using the service to ask me a quick question about their custom WordPress sites, or to schedule a coaching call.  It’s a fast easy way for them to get a response from me.  On my end, I like it because I can talk to multiple clients all at the same time.  It’s not uncommon for me to have at least four different Facebook chats running at the same time.  I also like the rest this gives my voice as I already talk anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 minutes a month on the phone.  Which is my second reason for using Facebook chat.  I can multitask phone calls, multiple chats and save my voice all at once.

The second reason I love using Facebook chat is that it is a great way to connect with past clients.  We all know that after a few months down the road your clients can start to forget who you are.  They don’t remember that while you helped them with one service, you also have a list of other things you offer.  Sometimes just the simplest conversation with them can drum up new business.  Over the past few months this has been one of my most productive ways of stirring up new business.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t start a conversation with “Hey do you need any of my services?” The art of the soft sell is definitely needed here in full force.  Instead I may ask how their family is doing, or how they like their new site, or share an article that might help increase their business.  By offering something of value, they are more likely to remember me in a positive light.

The third way I use the Facebook Chat is to answer questions of those I am connected to.  I regularly see friends of mine on Facebook asking for assistance with an issue on their wall.  I could send them a private message and wait for a response to see if I answered the question properly, but that can take a lot of valuable time.  Plus normally when you answer a question for someone there are three other questions you may have to get answered to get to the correct solution.  If they have their chat enabled, I simply send a message.  After a simple conversation and quick solution, I have instilled trust in them and that person will think of me the next time they might need to hire someone to handle a task related to my business.  As with any type of networking, the key is getting your brand and name in front of consumers as much as possible in a positive manner that they will remember you in the future.

This leads me to the last way I use Facebook Chat to personalize my connections and expand my business.  When time permits, I will start conversations with friends that I knew from many years ago and try to reconnect.  This may be old high school friends, people I grew up with, or college buddies.  Once again, I don’t necessarily start these conversations with the mindset that if I talk with them it will bring me business.  I genuinely am try to reconnect with past friends that I have slipped out of touch with.  If we don’t talk about what I do for a living at all, that is fine.  Why? Because now that we have talked about our kids, shared photos, and reminisced of times of old, I have now gone from just someone they knew in the past to an old friend that is back on their radar.  They are no more likely to pay attention to my status updates, photos & videos.  All of this means more opportunities for business.

I am sure there are many other ways to connect on a personal level with people on Facebook.  For me, I am a fan of the Facebook chat and will continue using it.  So, the next time you are logged on, find me and let’s start a conversation!

Mapping Your Consumers Actions

Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors

I must start this post by stating that I am a complete statistics junkie.  I love studying my Analytics in Google and trying to figure out the patterns of my visitors.  I can get lost for hours dissecting my data and enjoying every second of learning more about my consumers and what they want, what patterns they follow, etc.

I recently read through a presentation that Jay Thompson gave on “Conversion Optmization For Your WordPress Blog.”  In that post he shared a bunch of links to different ways to monitor how people are using your site.  There were a few that stood out to me, one of which was clicktest. It’s a simple setup where you can upload an image, and have people do a simple test on your site.  You can either make it a multiple question type test where people can view the image for 5 seconds and then answer questions on what they remember, or as I chose, I ran a test with a screenshot of my site and asked people to click where they would go next when visiting my website.

There is a paid and a free section to the site.  I signed up for the free version which gives you about 20 tests.  To get a few more clicks and test results for free, they allow you to share your test on Facebook & Twitter.  You can also participate in others tests to earn a few more clicks.  By doing this I was able to get a good mix of results to the test from random visitors along with current and potential clients who know me.  This means I had a good mix of new and returning visitors to my site.

So What Did I Learn?

The Clicktest
click to view full size

I was pleasantly surprised by the results that I received from my test. I have broken down the findings into the 5 main things I learned about consumers visiting my site:

1.  They Want To Know More About You- When I studied the notes for my site, the first thing I learned is that people do want to learn about you the person behind the business as well as what the business is about.  The hottest section on the heat map by far was my about page.  This made me realize quick that I need to go back through those pages of my site and make sure they are in the best condition possible delivering the most amount of quality information to consumers about what we do, who I am and yet still give them something of value to want to stay at our site.  In the past I always focused my time and effort on providing quality content in blog posts and I know my about section is lacking because of it.

2.  People Click Pictures– If you look the results for my site, you can see that people were clicking on my image in the blog post.  Normally when I write a blog post, I do not set the image to go anywhere with a target link.  So, when someone clicks on the image, it just shows the raw image file.  I learned though from these tests that people actually click on the image on a regular basis and that it is pretty important to have that image linking somewhere.  So, when you place an image on your blog posts, make sure that they deliver something of value.  Either link them over to a page inside your site that continues the conversation on the topic or to an external area that gives more information on the subject you are covering.

3.  People Like Search Options- This one didn’t catch me by surprise as being a popular area of the site.  I know when I visit a site I am not familiar with I like the ability  to find a search button and get directly where I want to be instead of surfing through the entire site.  I was however slightly surprised by how popular it actually was.  What I learned here is that it is imperative for a site to have search button in place in a clear visible position for consumers.  Remember, the easier the navigation is to get consumers where they want to go, the more productive your site will become.

4.  Call To Action Buttons- I wrote about the importance of a clearly defined sidebar before here on my site, but this test helped to confirm my point.  Having clear call to action buttons on your site above the fold is very important to consumers and they will click on them.  The fourth most popular place people clicked on my site was the call to action button for our Custom WordPress Site Design.  I knew already that this page was the most popular static page of our site from studying our analytics over the past few months, this test just confirmed that validity in having that button on my sidebar.

5. It’s OK to Have Products Front & Center- I’ve debated having the Products & Services tab at the top of my site.  My one thought was that maybe it was too in your face and turned away consumers that were coming to gather information from a blog post.  My other argument though was that if I moved it to an interior section of my site, it would make it almost impossible for consumers to find their way to that section.  And while it may turn off a few consumers by it being on the main screen, I came to the conclusion it is imperative to keep this here because if consumers cannot find my products or services then it will make it almost impossible for me to earn a living.  And while I really enjoy sharing good information with my sphere, I still need to be able to support the family.  I also think this is the other major contribution to our Custom WordPress Site page being so popular.  This is one of the very few pages on my site that you can get to by either using the main navigation at the top, or the sidebar button.  Clearly though, people want to know more about our products and services when visiting the page as that is the second most popular section of the site.

So do you know what consumers do when visiting your site? If not, it may be time to find out.

HD Video Options- What’s The Best Bang for Buck?

Social Media Advisors

I just finished reading a post by Judi Barrett asking what people thought about the Best HD video gear.  Well, I left a comment there explaining my choices, but I thought I’d share with everyone else in a little more details my thoughts and likes for video gear.  I think there are 2 categories on this that we need to discuss.

Kodak PlaytouchGood Quality with Great Price Tag

The first category is equipment that is going to deliver you some really good quality video without super high prices.  This is the equipment that you can get for well under $250.  In the past I have used my flip video camera which delivered decent quality, but not always the best.  My big complaint was always that the audio would not be the greatest because of no way of connecting an external mic to it.  Then, I have also used my digital camera before which takes amazing pictures and HD video.  The audio quality also seemed to be pretty darn good.  But, my issue here was that the file sizes were HUGE and couldn’t be transferred quick and easy.

So, I did some research the past few weeks and think I have found the newest winner.  I just purchased this past week a Kodak Playtouch.  This little guy will shoot 1080p HD video and has a 4x zoom.  It’s lightweight, has the ability to connect to a tripod too.  But, the thing I really like about this camera is that it can have an external microphone hooked to it.  So, I picked up one of those for $25.  The tests I saw made this a no brainer for improving the audio quality majorly.

Now, after reading many reviews and seeing the down sides to the Kodak Playtouch being the not perfect video quality in low light situations, I decided to buy a small bracket & 36 LED light attachment.  I should never have any issues now with the light being too low.  The other thing I purchased was to make sure I could get wide angles.  It was a Kodak Wide angle lens for under $20. Both of these accessories were purchased for under $40.  The last accessory I got was an extra battery.  Because I bought all the stuff from Amazon, I was able to get some really good proces and purchased the camera & all the accessories for under $300! Personally I think this is pretty good deal for all the equipment I ended up with.

Pro Grade with Pro Price

I know for some of you, you want to take it to the next level in your video and have the funds available to go buy pro quality stuff.  For this category I found something that really impressed me.  A few months back I was in Orlando for an event and got to use a friends Canon T2i DSLR camera.  WOW was i impressed with it!  It shot some amazing video and had the ability to add all the types of accessories I talked about above. These little beauties are going to run you probably double the price of the Kodak setup above.  Plus, you will need to then pick up a few lenses for it.  But, like I mentioned, for the person who wants pro grade video, you will get it for sure with this product.

To give you an idea, here’s a video that was shot by Mike on his Canon:

 

 

Also, to make it easier for everyone, instead of you needing to click on all the links above to see the different things I am referring to, I put them all together into one page inside Amazon that you can view here. So, what items are you using for video that I might have missed?

**links in this post are connected to an Amazon affiliate account.  Owner of this post may be compensated from any purchases made from links above.