Jeremy Blanton

Adding Social Into Your Traditional Marketing

Each week I get a YouTube newsletter delivered to my inbox of possible channels and videos I might find interesting. Today’s newsletter was titled “YouTube Built Your Own Man Cave” and I just had to click it open to see what types of videos it had inside. As usual, I found myself clicking on several of the videos to channels I’ve never seen before and wasting away a good 20 minutes laughing at some very funny videos that have gone viral.

However that’s not the point of my post today. As one of the last videos played from the newsletter, the usual video advertisement popup started to play beforehand. Now, I am accustomed to those coming up as a YouTube partner. In fact, I run them on several of my own videos to generate a little extra income. I’ll be honest, normally when those ads begin playing, I immediately start to look for the skip ad button and watch the 5 second countdown timer to click on the “skip ad” button and get to what I actually wanted to see.

However, this time as the ad began playing, I noticed the ad starred someone I’m very familiar watching on YouTube. In fact, we had him on our weekly podcast, Social Media Edge before. The video started and on came Chris Pirillo, a popular tech geek/ YouTube vlogger. I actually paused it to see if I had accidentally clicked on the wrong video. That’s when I realized it was actually an advertisement. The video started in his typical vlogging style with him holding the camera on himself talking with his wife Diana. He asks her “Hey Diana, you want to vacuum the bedroom? After she says no, he then goes to the sales pitch side by showing off the iRobot Roomba.

Now, he doesn’t go into this deep sales pitch listing off the specs of the product and price, features etc. Diana picks up one tool that she thinks was super cool to cut hair off the roller, but they then go in to showing it run in the bedroom. In his goofy style, he shows it under the bed, sits the camera on top to go back & forth, and much more. The ad runs for around 3 minutes in which I stayed engaged the whole time and watched to the end.

Here’s the video:

I think what makes this video so wonderful from a marketing perspective is that it takes someone well known in the marketing channel iRobot decided to market to (YouTube) and used them as the star of the advertisement. With almost 295,000 subscribers at the time of writing this post, he’s definitely got a following on YouTube. As of today the video is 11 days old and has over 458,000 views already.

Another reason I find this video so great is from the business expense standpoint. iRobot didn’t invest tons of money on writing a script, hiring a film crew, designing a studio, hiring actors, and more. They simply mailed the products to Chris and sent him a check. My guess is that they were able to cut expenses to under 10% of what they normally spend. Since Chris shot the video in his normal vlogging style that he does every day, I am also guessing that there was a ton of money saved on post editing too since Chris did it himself. Also, he probably did it in a few days versus weeks a studio would spend to do it.

So great job iRobot & Chris! You created a social advertisement that was ready for production faster than a usual advertisement, done for less money, and more effectively for the target audience. Hopefully this is just the beginning of a new trend of social media marketing/advertising. I feel this is a successful formula other brands should start implementing across social networks as the right way to market socially.

P.S. iRobot that new looj 330 looks awesome! I want one!

Ask A Social Media Advisor

Social Media Advisors

One of the most popular topics I talk about while traveling the country as a Social Media Speaker is blogging and how to do it on WordPress. During that presentation I normally get asked what topics to blog about. I normally try to think up some ideas that are specific to the group I am speaking to, but there are a few ways to come up with ideas that are universal across any industry.

When you are having trouble thinking of something to blog about, I suggest taking a look at your email inbox. If you are asked the same questions on a regular basis, how many hundreds of others out there looking for the answer to the same question? Begin writing those answers on your blog and become the source of information on that topic. You will gain traffic to your site, and give your readers information that they find useful.

All that being said, today I am starting a new series here on my site called “Ask a Social Media Advisor.” Most don’t realize that in addition to speaking I do a lot of social media coaching with individuals, small groups, and corporations each and every week which leads to many questions being asked each month. I decided it was time to practice what I preach and start answering those questions in blog posts instead of just email responses.

This series will mainly be a video series where I will answer questions directly asked by past and current clients, visitors to my site, and connections across various social networks. I’ve already shot the first 10 videos which I hope to launch over the next few weeks. Here’s just a few of the topics I’ve already done:

How to Find Facebook Friend requests you previously denied.
How To Get Ustream Broadcasts Onto YouTube
How To Tag Someone on Facebook With Just Their First Name
Where Should My Videos Placed Online For Best Results

Some of the questions might be pretty basic, others may be very technical, while some may have absolutely nothing to do at all with social media like the example below. My Friend David Marine had this pressing question he wanted answered, so I figured I’d use it to kick off the series with a little fun.

Who wins in a battle between Aquaman vs. Submariner?

Here’s your answer David:

I’m hoping to make it fun and also informative way to provide information. So, if you have a question you would like an answer to, feel free to ask below in the comments!

To make following this series easier to see all the questions, I will be using List.ly to connect all of these posts across the series:

Ask A Social Media Advisor

View more lists from Jeremy Blanton

Handling 151,000 Spam Comments On Your Custom WordPress Site

Custom WordPress Sites, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tutorials

When you build a Custom WordPress Site, one of your hopes is to make that site rank well in search engines and generate a good steady stream of traffic. As your site matures and the amount of content continues to grow, your visitor traffic should also see increase.

While you may be excited about this increase in traffic, one of the negative side effects that can happen is an increase in spam comments. Unfortunately popularity doesn’t just bring in potential business, but it can also bring along those annoying spammers.

Why do they bother with your site you may ask? Well, it’s pretty simple: Spammers comment on your site hoping to build quality backlinks to build up their own search engine optimization.

How To Recognize WordPress Spam Comments

Here are three easy ways to spot spam comments in WordPress:

Fake names- If your name really is Medicaid Doctors, I want to see your birth certificate. Since most WordPress comment systems use the name field in comments for anchor text on the backlink, a common practice by spammers is to make their name whatever their keyword is. So if you see something other than an actual name in the name field, it is more than likely spam.
Weird punctuation and typos- As you can see in my image above, another common practice used by spammers is strange punctuation and typos. It is not normal for someone to type “That’s the great article! I just pass ‘n read it, two thumbs up! ;)” Now this practice is a little sneakier than the other two spam signals because it looks like a normal person that just has some issues with spelling and grammar. The reason spammers use this practice is so that they can quickly and easily scan search engines and find where their comments have been accepted and indexed. They go to google and type in something like: That’s the great article! I just pass ‘n read. Because it is a unique phrasing and spelling, it is easily to find in search engines. Every link they find with those results then become an instant breeding ground for spam.
They realize either the owner of the WordPress site does not realize it is spam or they don’t really pay attention to their site anymore. Allow a few of these spam comments to index on your site and within no time you will get hit with thousands of spam comments.
Excessive links- Some of the less than honorable SEO companies out there realize the value in backlinks to a domain and will try to get as many as they can to their clients sites. So, they will come and drop 30+ links in one comment on your site. This should be a pretty obvious indication of spam on your site and should be marked as spam right away.

Blocking Spam Comments On Your WordPress Site

So now that you know how to recognize spam comments, what do you do to block the spam and stop the influx of spam comments? The first thing that everyone should do when setting up a new WordPress site is install Akismet and get it activated. This is the default spam plugin that WordPress installs whenever you start a new site. Unfortunately, because of it’s strange name, most people don’t know what it is and never activate the plugin.

Then after their site is live for a few months and the comments start coming in and they are receiving so many a day they contact me and beg for help. Take a look at one of my recent clients WordPress comment spam problem:

Yes, 151,000+ spam comments attacked his WordPress site in just a few months. He was averaging around 3,000 a day before I fixed his problem. Now after configuring Akismet that problem has been resolved.

Once you have Akismet installed and configured correctly, the next important thing to remember is that when a comment shows up on your blog that looks like it could be spam, don’t approve the comment. Also, don’t just hit the delete button. I know some clients that do this and they cannot figure out why they keep coming back. You must mark spam comments as spam instead of just deleting them. When you just delete comments the Akismet filter cannot learn who the spammers are. When you mark it as spam it notifies Akismet and you are doing your part to help the entire WordPress community against future spam comments from that person.

Another important step to stopping comment spam is to make sure your Akismet plugin is kept up to date. If you are running older versions of the plugin, you are leaving a door open for the spammers to get in. This is important to do with all plugins on your site for security, but especially important for fighting against comment spam.

An extra step that you can take to fight spam is to install one of the additional spam blockers in the WordPress plugin directory. I currently don’t run one, so I can’t give you any good suggestions on those. Instead I prefer to use the Disqus Comment System on my personal WordPress sites. When you use something like Disqus, Livefyre, Commentluv, or other comment systems it will also help to lower the amount of spam as they normally require a different type of login like a Facebook account, Twitter account, etc from the default name, website, comment fields. Spammers don’t like giving away their true identity and are usually too lazy to make another account, so they will just move on.

On a side note, one idea that has been asked to me by many of my WordPress clients is whether or not they should change their discussion settings so that they must approve all comments before they go live. To me, this is a very bad idea. Nothing is worse than a good conversation happening on a blog post and I want to jump in, so I write a thoughtful comment to be greeted by: Your Comment is awaiting moderation. That is like a punch to the gut and takes all the wind out of my sails. That being said, I wouldn’t use moderation.

Wrap-up

So, in closing here’s the steps to deal with WordPress spam:

Recognize spam comments and mark them as spam.
Make sure akismet is installed and configured properly.
Mark spam comments as spam and don’t just delete.
Install additional levels of spam filters if needed.

Hopefully after reading this post you have a better understanding on how to deal with WordPress spam comments. If spam comments on your custom WordPress site are out of control, and the things above do not seem to resolve your problems, feel free to contact me for help with a WordPress Site.

Bonus- Deleting 151,0oo Spam Comments In Under 30 Seconds

So I teased you in the title on how to handle your Custom WordPress site if spam comments get out of hand and reach 151,000+. I’ve had many clients that have several hundred spam comments in their WordPress site, but never one with over 150,000 till just a few weeks ago. When I saw this I figured it was time to make a quick video on how to delete spam comments in bulk from your site. You could go into the comments section and remove them manually, but that can become very time consuming when you have thousands to remove and can only do it 50 at a time.

So here’s a quick easy way to remove 151,000 comments at once:

The code that you need to enter is: DELETE FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_approved = 0

As you saw in my example, this removed over 151,000 WordPress spam comments in under thirty seconds. It is a quick easy way to clean up your spam box and save you hours of time.

Happy Spam Fighting!

Breaking The Silence

Social Media Advisors

It’s been almost three months since my last post here. I’m sure some that are subscribers to my blog thought that I may never write again. Some probably haven’t even realized that I have not added new content since March 8th, 2013 and that’s OK too. The truth is that since my last post, I’ve experienced some life changing moments in my life.

On March 22nd, I woke up and headed to my office just like I would any other normal day. I was a little extra tired this morning from driving back from Georgia less than 36 hours ago. I had gone to Columbus, GA for a social media speaker event where I was sharing on how to integrate video into real estate better. Since Columbus, GA is so close to Atlanta, my wife and the kids went along on this trip and visited her family while I went to the conference.

Back to Friday. As I had entered my office this morning to start working, my wife mentioned to me she was going to take the kids and go run some errands so that I would have a quiet house that morning to catch up on work. I had gone into my office and cranked up my music like I normally do to drown out the sounds of the kids in the house. After about 30 minutes into work, my daughter (almost 5) come barging into my office and screams: “Daddy, you MUST come right now! Jeremiah has fallen and is crying very badly”

I jumped from my chair and headed down the hallway to find my son (2.5 yrs old) standing in the kitchen screaming. As any normal parent would do, I quickly picked him up and did a full body scan looking for broken bones, bumps, bruises, or bleeding. I didn’t really see any and by this time I’m beginning to wonder where my wife is. It is not like her to let either of the kids cry without running to their rescue. At that moment my peripheral vision saw her laying on the floor leaned up against the door frame of the door to my garage coated in blood.

As she was getting ready to leave the house she noticed the suitcases sitting in the way in the garage and wanted to quickly put them away in the attic while the kids were inside playing. All of a sudden she heard our adventurous Jeremiah say: “Hi Mommy!” as he had climbed up the pull down stairs and was standing at the top. To try & keep him from falling, she went over and tried to pick him up (all 42lbs of him) and was going to start down the ladder first with arms around him for safety.

As she picked him up, she lost her balance from standing on rafters instead of plywood and both of them broke through the drywall and fell straight down approximately 9 feet onto the concrete garage floor. I took them both to the hospital, Jeremiah checked out fine (angels were definitely watching him). Katherine on the other hand wasn’t quite as lucky. She fractured her back in two places (t12 & L4). The L4 break they said would heal on it’s own, but the other fracture needed surgery. She also had a bad cut on her head which caused all the bleeding.

On Tuesday March 26th, she underwent two major surgeries. Because of the fracture of bone going forward, they had to first go in through her left side, deflate her lung and remove the piece of bone that was floating only millimeters from her spinal chord. Then, after that, they inflated the lung and inserted two chest tubes into her side. After this surgery was completed, they then made 4 incisions on her back and inserted a column implant to replace the missing bone in her spine. That is held in place by 4 titanium screws.

She spent the next several days in PCU (progressive care unit) recovering. During the first surgery she also got a corneal abrasion on her right eye. This caused her more discomfort than the incisions on her side and back. Every time she blinked, it caused extreme pain in her eye. Luckily this only last lasted about 36 hours, but those 36 hours felt like a lifetime.

She started healing, but it seemed to be going much slower than they imagined. They originally said surgery would happen beginning of the week and she would go home by the weekend. Well, after an additional week of being in there, they removed the second chest tube and we thought she would get to come home soon. All the doctors & nurses said that most patients go home within 24 hours of having the last chest tube removed.

However, when they ran some final bloodwork they found her white cell count up over 22,000. They said normally it’s between 5-10k for healthy people. Katherine had mentioned to me the night before this that she just felt like she had no energy and was fevered. As I left to go home that evening she started running a 103 temp. That fever continued all through the night.

The scans then started showing fluids building up in her lungs and chest cavity. So, on Saturday April 6th they did a thoracentesis to try & drain the fluids. Basically they took an extra long needle and stuck it in through her back above the shoulder blade into the lung and tried to drain out any excess fluid. Unfortunately this didn’t work. Her trauma surgeon then consulted with a cardiothoracic surgeon who said she would need more surgery to remove the fluid buildup immediately.

On Tuesday April 9th, early in the morning, Katherine headed back to the operating room. This time they made more incisions on her side, deflated the lung, went in and scraped out as much of the infection. What they found is that the buildup was more in her chest cavity than in her lung and all this buildup was making it almost impossible for her lung to fully inflate.

This time Katherine was given three chest tubes and spent the next several days in CVICU (cardio-vascular Intensive Care Unit.) This floor only handles heart and lung patients. It was kind of interesting because the nurses there say they rarely have patients under the age of 50. They also looked at me funny when I brought her Mc’Donalds milkshakes because her Dr said she needed to consume anywhere from 5,000-6,000 calories/day while her body was fighting the infection so that it would use the food for energy source instead of her tissue. After CVICU, it was another trip back to PCU.

Because of the amount of infection that was found in her body, she then was given her 5th Doctor. He was a Doctor of Infectious disease. After several days of cultures, they discovered the infection was a staph infection. He began aggressively treating it with some of the most powerful antibiotics known to man. At one point we thought she may have to stay in the hospital another several weeks to treat the infection, but luckily they were able to diagnose it and send her home with a PICC line. Finally, around 8:30PM on April 18th, she was discharged from the hospital. I then gave her daily an IV bag of antibiotics through her PICC line for another 12 days.

Monday April 22nd we took a trip to the suture clinic where they removed the rest of her staples from her side. Between all the surgeries she had well over 85 staples in her side (50+), back (35+) & head (2). May 1st was the first time in almost 6 weeks that she has no sort of needle in her arms or neck for an IV.

Even though she spent 27 days in the hospital, had 5 rather in depth procedures/surgeries, an ambulance ride, some of the strongest antibiotics known to man, probably over 100 x-rays/CT scans, 4 blood transfusions, 50-60 tubes of bloodwork taken, 5 chest tubes, and a giant black back brace that she’s been sporting, she is still smiling and bringing joy to the whole house. All her nurses commented on how sweet and pleasant she was and how much they enjoyed having her as a patient. It just goes to show that her little light of joy shines bright and touches more lives than she realizes.

The house is starting to get back to normal, the kids are adjusting, and I’m slowly getting back into a work groove. As her pain levels continue to decrease she has been able to slowly deal with discomfort with just Tylenol which has allowed her to begin driving again and become more mobile. Still she cannot bend, twist, turn, or lift anything over 10lbs. Hopefully in another few weeks she be able to take off the back brace and return to normal living.

Also, while Katherine was in the hospital, both children had been sick with Fifth disease, my mother-in-law who came and stayed for almost 8 weeks to help out had a major sinus infection, our dog ripped one of her claws completely off while in the back yard, and my grandfather was in ICU after having another heart attack. Needless to say the month of April was complete chaos around my home.

How Are Things Now?

With two children under the age of five, my time has been pretty well tied up the past few months with parenting, having to do extra work around the house that my wife would normally handle, and taking care of her more than normal. This continues to be the case, but I’ve began to learn better how to manage all of this. I’ve designated Saturdays as days off of work to spend on projects around the house.

Business on the other hand has been rather hectic lately. One of the main reasons I haven’t blogged in almost three months is that in addition to all that has happened in my personal life, I have been extremely busy building custom WordPress sites for clients to help cover the extra expenses. But, things are almost caught back up, so I am hoping that will allow me to get back to more of the things I love doing like blogging and spending time communicating on the social networks. Just this week I’ve booked two more speaking engagements and several new clients for sites.

Thank you to everyone who has offered help to my family during the past few months. The meals, monetary donations, lawn service, cleaning the house, child care, and prayers have been truly overwhelming to both my and my wife. You have all truly blessed our family greatly with the outpouring of love. We hope that one day we will be able to return the favor.

Now it’s time to break the silence and get things back to normal!