Jeremy Blanton – Page 59

Social Media Plugins- SexyBookmarks

Social Media Advisors, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tutorials

We are starting another series of posts today on the various plugins that are our personal favorites on our WordPress blog. Jason & I get asked often what are the best social media plugins for social media, so we thought this series might be helpful to many of you. The first plugin that is going to be discussed today is probably the one we get ask about the most often.

People are constantly using our chat with us function in our side bar to ask, “What is that social media plugin at the bottom of your posts? The one with all the little icons for various social media platforms.” The name of that plugin is SexyBookmarks by Shareaholic. The reason I really like this social media plugin is that it adds the slightest bit of animation to the bottom of each post. When you hover over any of the icons at the bottom of a post, they slide up and down making them stand out. Also, it has a great amount of customization.

With offering close to 90 different sharing services, you can enable just about any possible network sharing you wish. There are many that I have never even heard of! You can select all, the most popular, or customize to which services you want to show up to your audience. Some of my favorites other than your standard social networking sites include: Posterous, RSS, Google Reader, Gmail, FriendFeed, & Ping.fm.

Social Media Plugin- The technical side of installation SexyBookmarks

Like most of your plugins for WordPress, you can add this one onto your posts automatically by visiting the plugin library at WordPress and searching for SexyBookmarks. Or, if you prefer to install things via FTP, you can download SexyBookmarks here.

Once you install SexyBookmarks & activate the plugin, you will then need to visit your settings section of your dashboard and customize the plugin. This is where you choose which pages or posts you want SexyBookmarks to show up on, which services you want to activate, the title you want displayed, whether you want the links to be no followed, and if you want a specific URL shortener used for tracking.

In some instances you might be require to fix the “spritgen.” To do this, simply login to your site via FTP, locate the file within your plugin folder and then find the spritegen file. Right click on it and select to change permissions. Set them to 777 and save. Once you do this, your file will now be activated & ready to be used.

SexyBookmarks needs to fix:

The one thing that really annoys me when I am setting up this plugin for a client is that the most popular list is really not the most popular sites for here in the USA. The one that really blows my mind is that Facebook, the social media 800 LB gorilla is not chosen when you click most popular. I wish that they could at least add Facebook and a few others onto that list.

Summary of Social Media Plugin SexyBookmarks

There really isn’t anything else with the social media plugin that I would want to change. I think it is a great plugin that is powerful, looks great, and performs wonderfully. Now that I have shared with you how it works and what it does, feel free to go to the bottom of this post and test it out! Use any of the buttons below to share this post on your favorite social media platform. Of course, once you do, make sure you leave a comment telling us which one you used!

Embracing Change for the future of your business

Social Media Advisors, Social Media Training

I wrote this piece originally in December of 2009 but I think it warrants stating again. I will add a few more comments at the end of this post.

Technology is constantly changing the way businesses act and conduct business daily. How willing are you to adapt to the changes as they come along and incorporate them into your business plan? If you are not, you may want to re-think before your all your business has been captured by your competitors.

The video below started as a movie review of Transformers 2, but since I didn’t care for the movie that much, it turned more into a lesson on how to embrace change for your business. In fact, if you want, you can skip right to around 1:24. That way you don’t have to listen to my babbling about a movie that I felt was not that great. Hopefully the next Transformers will return to the awesomeness that the original possessed.

In the video, I reference Blockbuster Video and how they have not been able to embrace change as fast as competitors like Redbox which are now slowly putting Blockbuster out of business. You need to embrace change in your business and integrate social media into your plan if you have not yet. If you refuse to embrace change, you will end up just like Blockbuster in a few years….an empty building with a for lease sign in front of it. Please take a few moments to watch:

The Moral of the story? Technology is constantly changing the way we handle our day to day businesses. Be alert to these changes and be willing to embrace/implement them into your business plan. Even if you feel you do not like it, or feel it is a waste of time, you need to at least test out the new technology to see if it will help or hinder your business before you form an opinion on them. Assuming they won’t work because of something you hear from somewhere else could be fatal to your business. Plus, we all knows what can happen if we just assume….

Since writing this post originally:

Since writing this post in December a few things have happened: First, more and more Blockbuster Video stores have closed. Also, Redbox locations have grown at a very rapid rate. The other big news since the original posting is that Netflix has noticed the need for changes in there business model and has adjusted for the changes in technology. Now you can simply log onto your computer and download movies directly to your television, computer, or gaming console. By the addition of this technology, you can now watch great movies without the need to leave your home. Also, you have no late fees, or timelines on how long you can keep the video. So with these changes it will force the competitors to change their products more and develop newer strategies to compete. Netflix has been able to once again place itself as one of the leaders in their industry.

Nevertheless, the moral of this post remains the same:

Be willing to make changes to the ways you conduct business on a regular basis or you may end up out of business. Embrace technology and figure out ways to use it to enhance the way your consumers interact and use your services/products. If you decide to fight against the new technological trends and fail to change, your business will start to die off to your competitors who recognized the change and made it will thrive on your lacks.

So I leave you with this question, are you willing to embrace change?

What constitutes a Social Media Guru?

Social Media Advisors

So what constitutes someone receiving the title Social Media Guru?

Unfortunately many like to use the term social media guru or expert to describe themselves. They feel that they are expert because they are involved on a network and use it regularly. Since you may not yet be on the social media platform, they feel they are fully qualified to teach you how to do it. The only problem is that when they begin to teach you how, they share their bad habits with you. They teach you how to set up automated ways to gain 1,000 followers on Twitter which sounds great, but really will not help your business. I had a conversation on Twitter the other day with a well respected person in the social media realm. The statement @garyvee made was this: “If u are seeing this tweet I have one simple thing to say : THANK YOU, it stuns me that people care about the # of followers, if u have 1 :)”

Focusing on the one connection you have to make that single person feel like the most important person in the world can be more beneficial for your business than having 350 that you do not engage at all. Word of mouth referrals is always the most powerful way to build your business. Also, if you are automating everything to focus on getting more followers, those that do follow will instantly look at your content as an annoying spammer and probably either block you or place you in a hidden list that they ignore completely.

So how should you go about hiring someone for online consulting as your social media advisor?

Before hiring someone and paying them money you should first see what type of help they are offering. Is it just a CD series of what they did to get their big batch of connections or is it going to be training that will help teach you how to use social media platforms for your business to grow your business. Remember, you need to get information to teach you how to engage prospective clients and to convert them into raving fans, not just get more people connected to you. Use the Kevin Costner method, “if you build it, they will come.” Set it up properly and use the correct practices and you will gain the following you want.

The other night I had someone approach me and ask if I had ever heard of some guy that was on TV selling a CD series on how they were able to make thousands of dollars in less than 24 hours of time using the internet. After sharing with the gentleman that I had never heard of him, he said “well I was up late last night and this guy was on TV around 3 AM selling this series that he used to make all this money online. I bought the CD’s. Plus they have a money back guarantee, I just have to wait a year to get my money” I turned and said what I always tell clients: If it is such a good product & method that can make you so much money, why would the guy share the secrets with you instead of just making the money himself? Not to mention, you just gave this gentleman an interest free loan for a year!

Which brings me to my second point, There are no quick ways to make money with social media. The gurus who say you can do this and within 30 days it will start making you millions with only working 1 hour a week are sharing lies. Effective social media marketing takes time and hard work. It takes constant work of writing new blog content, engaging friends & followers on both Facebook & Twitter. If someone says you can do this a different way, RUN!

Thirdly, ask the “guru” for proof. Instead of just hiring them because they gave a good sales pitch, ask for them to show you their Facebook Page, Twitter Account, and Blog. See if they are actually using social media effectively in their business first. This is a huge indicator as to what they will be sharing with you. Also, do not be afraid to ask for testimonials from previous clients. They should be able to easily & quickly provide this as well as a portfolio of some of the work they have done for clients. If you do your homework before hiring them you will not end up spending thousands of dollars on a website that never gets produced. I learned this one the hard way.

I was helping a church get a website a few years back and went online did a little research and found a company that looked like a reputable site and asked them to create a website for the church. Since they only focused on church sites I thought this was a slam dunk winner. I looked at the portfolio of work & it looked nice so we went ahead and paid them to build the site. After $1,500 spent and no site they fell off the earth. We had the shell of the site built, but didn’t have access into it so we could not log in to remove the spam & PORN that was being plastered all over the forums of the church site.

Needless to say the church was not happy with the results and since then has not had an online presence. Luckily they trust me enough to build them another site which will hopefully go live in the next few weeks. This time however, I will be doing all the creating and building of the website myself, so it will hopefully go a lot smoother and end up with an even better result.

Lastly, before hiring the social media guru, take some time to research them on the internet. Go and Google their business name, their personal name, phone number, & address. People who are unhappy about someone are going to share about their displeasure of a company. Don’t just search the company name, but take it a step farther & search the person’s name & phone number. Whenever my phone rings with someone trying to sell me something I go straight to the search engines and enter the phone number in. Within seconds I can tell everything that people who have had experience with this company really think & feel. You will know quickly that this number will call to sell the world, but then disappears and is extremely difficult to get the automatic payments stopped. You will know if they promise to get you 10,000 visits to your site but after signing up you then realize that the package you purchased only gets you 200 and to get the larger numbers of traffic you need to spend another $300 per month. I can normally know before even hanging up the phone if I wish to do business with this vendor or not.

In closing, if you Invest a little time at the beginning of your journey into social media you will end up with better results. By not taking the time in the beginning, you could end up investing a lot more dollars to receive the same result in the long run.

Twitter Application- Review of Tweetdeck version 0.34.3

Social Media Advisors

As many know, I can be quite the twitter addict at times. I find myself on many mornings visiting twitter before even looking at my email. On occasion I have also had the tendency to get caught up in conversations and before realizing it, hours have passed by. That being said, when it comes to using twitter, I need a Twitter Application that will perform well for me and allow me to sort & categorize things to make sense of it all.

I have been a long time fan of Tweetdeck, ever since my list of friends started to go over 200 followers on twitter. I love the fact that it allows the setup of columns and filtering of my twitter feed. When you start having over 2,000 people you follow, that main timeline flies by and you miss so many good things. But, by being able to filter people into lists of those I want to really focus on I can manage my stream much better. Tweetdeck columns allows you to not only filter your stream but also allows you to add columns for specific terms you wish to track.

Tweetdeck is also one of the Twitter applications that will allow you to use more than one Twitter account at a time. Since I do some community building for a few companies, I use this regularly as I can add each Twitter account to Tweetdeck & do it all from one place.

What’s New in Tweetdeck 0.34.3?

With the release of Tweetdeck 0.34.3 there have been a few great additions to an already great Desktop Twitter Application. Here is a brief rundown:

Addition of Foursquare & Google Buzz- While I will admit I am not a huge fan of Google Buzz and do not really use it that often, the addition of Buzz & Foursquare added to a Twitter application is pretty cool. I really enjoy being able to follow where my friends are checking in. I also have found myself interacting with friends more often by paying attention to this column. In addition to more engagement, I also have used the Foursquare column to learn about some new great places in town, where the best gas prices are, and also what restaurants have specials at the moment.
Update of Facebook Pages- This feature another huge addition. One of my biggest complaints of previous versions was that I could always update my Facebook status on my profile from within, but there were times I wanted to send something to my Facebook business page and would have to then take the stuff from Tweetdeck, copy it, log into Facebook and then paste it there. Now I have the pages I manage loaded into my Tweetdeck account and can update from inside this application.
Scheduled Updates- Sometimes there are a few things that I might want to schedule to tweet out to my friends. The reason I would schedule these tweets is because I might be tied up all day with a client but want to remind my friends on Twitter of something important that is applicable to that particular day. For example, if I have a friend who has a birthday tomorrow and I want to send a special birthday wish, I can now find the funny video on youtube, write my special 140 character message and schedule it to send at midnight so it arrives right as their birthday starts. I no longer need to sit up waiting to accomplish this same thing. Not only can you schedule your Twitter updates but also your Facebook & Facebook pages, and all the other services that Tweetdeck supports.

In addition to these three great new updates, Tweetdeck still gives you the ability to update your LinkedIn & Myspace accounts as well. That means that now from one program that started as a Twitter Application you can now update statuses on 6 different social network platforms. Obviously as you can tell this is no longer just a standard Twitter application, but a powerful tool for managing your social media plan.

What is still missing from this Twitter Application?

The one major flaw of Tweetdeck that I was hoping this version would fix is the sync function. I have tried on multple times to sync the Tweetdeck account between the two computers that I use on a regular basis. I would love nothing more for the Tweetdeck application on my desktop & laptop to have the same filtered columns, searches, applications, and accounts. But for some reason this sync function which works so well on a few other twitter applications I use does not seem to want to perform properly in Tweetdeck. If it did, I would probably be more committed to Tweetdeck as my main application for Twitter & other social networks.

Other than this small issue, I think the new additions to Tweetdeck have helped to solidify it’s place as one of the frontrunners for desktop Twitter applications that people will use. If you have not yet tried version 0.34.3 of Twetdeck, I would suggest giving it a try today. Also, make sure to connect with me on Twitter, I am @jb140.