Social Media Advisors – Page 2 – We are Social Media Advisors, a Social Media Speaker, & Custom WordPress Site design.

Creating An Online Community To Market For You Without Asking

Social Media Advisors, Social Media Training

I think one of the biggest values to social media is the ability to connect with large online communities and form connections with little to no effort. As I’ve traveled the country over the past few years sharing as a social media speaker, I love sharing success stories that either my clients or myself have experienced. Anyone who has ever attended any of my sessions on WordPress or blogging has heard the example of the Brazilian steakhouse in town that I wrote a simple 15 minute blog post about our great experience and how it made amazing connections with this very popular restaurant in town.

Well, yesterday it happened again. As I shared a few months back, I’ve recently ventured back into selling homes in Myrtle Beach. Because of that, I’ve been trying to focus a bunch of time over the past few weeks on creating good video about the communities and the best things Myrtle Beach has to offer. As NAR shared, that’s the types of video that will get watched much more than video about how great I am as Myrtle Beach REALTOR® or a video of a property I have listed for sale.

So before I go on, let me share the video I created. It’s a time-lapse video of the SkyWheel in Myrtle Beach. It has quickly become the icon of the Myrtle Beach skyline.

Pretty cool video right? Well, here’s where it gets better. Before launching the video I teased out to my Facebook community a still image of the video sharing about how I was testing out doing a time-lapse and hope it turned out well. As I did that, I tagged the Myrtle Beach SkyWheel Facebook page which notified the administrator there that I had mentioned them.

Then, after the video was created and sent live I shared a link across social media driving people back to my blog post where I had embedded the video. I could have just shared the link to the video and drove everyone to YouTube or kept the conversation going on Facebook, but my ultimate goal is to drive my traffic to my website that I own and can control to convert the traffic into leads. Because I mentioned them again in this post with the link over to my site, the SkyWheel then shared this post to their 30,000+ fans on their facebook page:

Post by SkyWheel Myrtle Beach.

Instantly, the roles reversed and they became part of my marketing team by sharing my content with their fan base of over 30,000 on their Facbeook Page. I instantly watched the analytics on my site shoot up as traffic began to pour in from their fans.

As you can see, the boost of traffic above was more than even what I could accomplish across all of my personal social network connections earlier in the day and almost five times the average amount of traffic that visits my site throughout the day.

So If you are trying to figure out ways to connect with other local businesses and get their social connections to learn more about you, take the time to pay it forward and share great things about others. You never know, you might just go from being a person they never heard of to someone they are bragging about to their large fan base overnight without even having to ask.

How NOT To Increase SEO On Your Custom WordPress Site

Custom WordPress Sites, SEO, Social Media Speaker

We all realize by now the huge importance of having a good search engine presence for your Custom WordPress Site and the many benefits it can bring to your business by ranking well. Normally, when I take on a new client, I try to explain up front to them that there are no magic bullets to getting good rankings, but hard work, dedication to creating good unique content, and some time will bring them the results they want.

Unfortunately, not everyone in the world is willing to put in the effort, or give it the time that is needed for the results to come, so they look for shortcuts, quick fixes, and other ways to achieve good rankings without having to do the work.

As we all know, one of the major factors to good SEO is backlinks to your site. When someone links to your website, it is like their domain is giving your domain a vote of confidence. In the beginning, the easy shortcut was using link exchange directories. You would visit a domain that listed a few thousand links to everything from Myrtle Beach Real Estate to places to buy Thomas Kinkade paintings. In this process, you add the thousands of links to your site and in theory, they will add you back giving you thousands of backlinks or votes.

STOP KILLING YOUR SEO

These sites are not truly giving you SEO value anymore. Once Google caught on to these techniques, they started making changes to their algorithm to not give the credit anymore to reciprocal links where one site links to another just for a link back. So then the focus shifted more to using programs that will mass email hundreds to thousands of people at a time asking them for a link. While both of these strategies don’t necessarily hurt you, they also no longer help. If you don’t believe me, here’s a quote from Matt Cutts of Google regarding link exchange emails:

“The best links are not paid, or exchanged after out-of-the-blue emails–the best links are earned and given by choice.”

Unfortunately, this tactic is still being tried by people. Here’s an example I recently received (click to view full size):

As you can see in the email above, the text for mass link exchange might have changed, but the scheme and results are still the same. They just don’t work. So when you get these emails, probably the best thing you could do is simply hit the spam button in your inbox.

3 Ways TO Build Good Backlinks

Now that I’ve told you how bad an idea link exchanges are, I thought I should probably give you some tips on what should be done. Luckily Matt, already summed it up pretty well in once sentence. The best links are earned and given by choice. I believe what Matt was saying by this statement is that if you want to build links to your site, create good quality unique content that compels readers to want to share with their audience instead of trying to buy or trade with others.

Here are three simple tips I’ve used over the past several years that work well for me:

1. Pay It Forward- Whenever I’m out speaking to an audience about blogging and SEO, I share a story about a blog post I wrote on my favorite restaurant in Myrtle Beach. I wrote about why I love to go there and what makes it so awesome. That simple post which was all about them and nothing about me, brought me tons of traffic for my real estate business. When I finished writing the post, I emailed a link to the restaurant just letting them know how much we enjoyed our visit and share the link.

The restaurant then shared it all over social media, emailed it out to the other restaurants in their franchise, and the CEO even replied back saying how much he appreciated me writing that post and that he was constantly transferring management in and out of the area who would ask him who to go to for real estate needs in Myrtle Beach. He said he now knew to send them to me.

The simple post that took me 15 minutes to write brought tons of traffic to my site through them sharing and also some good SEO as they had shared on their site.

2. Provide Content People Want- If you are a restaurant, why not share some posts on how to make your signature dessert or your famous appetizer? Include a few yummy photos and people will share it everywhere. Don’t just spit out whatever thought you had that day that brings little to no value to your audience.

3. Become The Expert- If your specialty is small business planning, then write about it constantly, become the small business planning expert. Share expert advice with your readers and give them something more than the rest. Share easy ways to apply the information to their own personal lives that will benefit their own lives as well as others and before long you will be the expert that others reference in posts, on social media and the links will grow almost exponentially.

So if you are looking for ways to build strong backlinks, try using these three types of content and skip out on all the link exchange sites and link email systems.

Leaving A Life Legacy

Social Media Advisors

As many of you already know, just a few short weeks ago my father passed away. It was a very sudden event and definitely unexpected. Amazingly, our family seems to be doing very well coping with the loss. At his celebration service I spoke last and really struggled for a while with what to say. It’s hard to put into words what to say about someone you love, care about, and well without them you would never exist. Finally at around 3:30 AM the day of the service I was awakened from sleep and started to get the words.

Friends and family that we talked to the few days leading up to his service kept referring to the “legacy” that dad left behind. The more I kept hearing that it made me realize that he did leave a legacy behind that touched the lives thousands all around the world. He was one of the most intelligent, loving, and giving people you could ever meet. When he was a young teenager his musical talents helped him excel as he began to teach piano lessons for a local music company in PA. I still to this day have the image of someone in their mid 40’s coming into his room for their lesson and being greeted by this scrawny 13 year old. In college his musical abilities garnered him a brief stint traveling with the group Chicago.

So when it came time for me to share, I decided I was going to share the principles and things that he taught me growing up. These are the things that I feel led to the legacy that he has been left behind and how he touched the lives of so many people.

Here are the 9 things he instilled in me that I try to live my life by each and every day:

1. Be willing to help others- When you see a friend in need, reach out. The smallest acts of kindness can change someone’s life. No matter how busy he may have been, Dad would stop the world to help others at any time and at any cost.

2. Be a man of your word- If you say you are going to do it, you do it no matter what. This was his foundation to building trust. Everyone knew that if they asked Dad to do anything and he said yes, there was no reason to worry again. He would finish what he said he would do, even if that meant working on the task till 4 AM.

3. Build up others to be better than you. Dad was a constant mentor, teacher, trainer, and helper to all around him. He would always say he wanted to raise up those around him to surpass him one day and he meant it. In February 2013, he called me one morning all excited on the phone. As I answered the phone he said: “Jeremy guess what! Brittany Brewer just won rookie of the year!” I congratulated him and asked if he won any awards, to which he replied: “Yes, I got top sales, top listings, and top referrals, but BRITTANY WON!” He was so much prouder that he mentored her and she won than anything else.

4. Be a man that stands for what you believe. Everyone knew Dad was a man of faith and wouldn’t compromise it for anyone. In 2002 when our team broke a 30 year company sales record I remember our CEO asking Dad at an awards dinner what was the secret to our success. My father paused a moment, smiled large, and replied: “Well Don, that’s easy, it is prayer. We pray each and every day for our clients, their families, our business, and the things that are going on. We pray that our clients that need their home to sold that the right buyer comes so that they can move forward, and those that need to buy a house, that we can find them the right property.” Don looked at him, tilted his head and said “prayer hmmm, I like that Dennis.”

5. Love unconditionally and equally. It didn’t matter who you were, whether you were buying million dollar homes or 30,000 condos, you were given the same amount of attention & help. It didn’t matter if you drove a BMW or were homeless, dad loved everyone the same. As many I’ve heard say over the past few days, though Dad was one of the smartest people you would ever know, he never looked down upon others and treated everyone with the same. He didn’t care if you were a Doctor or a high school dropout, you all received the same level of love and attention.

6. Have Fun– While Dad really didn’t have a bunch of hobbies in life, he still would have his ways of fun. We all remember some of his 2/3rds of a Pun “P. U.” jokes that he would share with you. Things like:

His phone calls where he would act goofy and try to order a pizza from you when you answer the phone in his terrible Chinese accent. Or maybe you were lucky enough to experience the ever so popular answer he would use when asked “Is there anything you need?” He would respond “Got any large bags of hundred dollar bills?” My personal favorite was when you would ask him “How are you Dennis?” he would respond “Highly unpredictable, somewhat debatable, a little controversial, but other than that, just fine.”

7. Live a standard of excellence- The only choice for dad was the best. The cars always needed to be cleaned, the hair needed to be all in place. The pocket square had to be perfect. During the funeral home visitation our friend Jessica shared about how he spent an hour just last week to get his pocket square just right for his new professional pictures. He tried to always exceed the expectations of others with things he did.

8. Details, details, details– This is probably the biggest item that attributed to Dad’s legacy. For those of you who ever worked with him in real estate, he was a stickler for the details on a contract. I’ll never forget him saying there should NEVER be a blank spot on a contract Jeremy, at least put in “N/A”. He became infamous for his “sign here” & “initial here” stamps that were all over every single page of the paperwork. Plus, who could ever forget, We need to make a backup of the backup of the backup, “Just in case.” His attention to detail earned him the nickname AROC which stands for Anal Retentive Obsessive Compulsive. Paying attention to every detail in every aspect of life is what helped set him apart in his personal and professional life.

9. Put others first- He constantly put the needs of others well before his own. If he saw someone needing shoes, he’d walk up and hand them money to go shopping for new ones. Whenever he heard me mention about a slow month in business, or a deal falling apart, he would stop by with groceries and other essential supplies at our home just to help out. Most of the time he would go without so that he could do for others. If my mother would forget to bring her lunch to work, he would drive well out of his way just to bring her something to eat.

Now, these were the things that Dad taught me during his life, but in his passing he taught me one last key to living a life of legacy:

10. No matter what, we aren’t in control. The day after Dad passed I went by his office to pick up a few things and noticed a scripture taped to the front of his computer. It was Proverbs 16:9 which says The mind of man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. Many that I’ve talked to referred to Dad as one of the smartest people they ever knew. When he took his Doctoral exams he set new records for Doctoral exams at Temple University. He had things planned out and was always prepared. The picture above of him in his suit and tie was take just 3 days before he went to the hospital where within three days of being there he passed. No matter how smart & planned you may have things, life is one thing we don’t get to set the plan for. God directed his steps and decided it was time for him to go to heaven.

This has taught me to live each day with purpose and meaning. Live to love those around you. Cherish family and the time you have with them, you never know when that will be gone.

My dad was a special person. He definitely lived an amazing life and left a legacy behind. One of the proudest things that I think of to help keep his memory alive is that our church has created the Dennis Blanton Music Fund. They only thought it was fitting to name it in his honor as he was the first musician of the church. This fund has been created to help assist the church’s music program in raising funds for all of the campuses that we have around the world. We currently have 9 church plants which are in South Carolina, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico. Over the next few years that number will continue to grow. If you want to make a donation to The Dennis Blanton Music Fund, it would be awesome.

I love you Dad, you will be missed but not forgotten. Just like I told a friend who was sad realizing she would never see him again at church: Dad influenced so many people in his life, you will see his thumbprint every where you go and on all those around you. This is what it means to leave a legacy behind.

Using Max Buttons In Your Custom WordPress Site

Custom WordPress Sites

Call To Action Buttons for WordPress Each day I speak with potential new clients about their current websites and what can be done to increase the number of leads their sites generate. As we begin to discuss building their new custom WordPress site, I normally have to have a good thirty minute conversation with them around the importance of having call to actions on their home page, and above the fold. For example, if you are a real estate agent, the most important thing to have on your home page is the ability for a potential lead to search the current homes for sale in your area. Therefore, when I visit your site, I need to see an easy and clear way to search homes loading up immediately.

While the theory is easy to understand, generating these call to action buttons inside your custom WordPress site on your own can sometimes be a rather daunting task. To create visually appealing buttons you need a good knowledge of graphic design and also some basic coding skills to know how to install them into your WordPress site. You might end up having to spend several hundreds of dollars to purchase programs like Photoshop. Or, you can always hire a designer to build them for you, but that too could cost a few hundred bucks to get them made. While it used to seem either an expensive option, or one that involved technical know how, that is no longer the case. Now, by using a great plugin called Max Buttons (affiliate link) you can create and add call to action buttons almost anywhere throughout your site for under $30 if you purchase the pro version.

Here’s a quick demo of how I made some really basic call to action buttons for a client the other day using Max Buttons:

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What’s great is that you can quickly and easily change these buttons and insert them into any page, post, or text widget within your site. Also, with their copy functions, you can duplicate the designs of buttons very quickly and easily. This plugin is a great addition to any Custom WordPress Site to help increase the number of leads your site can generate.

When Social Media Becomes More Than Marketing #ryderthefighter

Social Media Advisors, Social Media Speaker

Today’s post is going to be very different than the normal how to type of post in which I share a strategy on how to improve your social media marketing strategy. In fact, I’m not even going to talk about strategies or processes at all.

Earlier this month I was asked to come to Jacksonville, FL as a social media speaker to participate in a conference with around 500 attendees from the real estate industry. The conference was amazing, very well organized, tons of great content shared, and a lot of fun seeing old while making new friends. While the conference and everything related to it was great, my personal highlight of my trip happened after the event was over.

At the end of the day I waited around after the event was over to meet one of my personal heros and an “online celebrity” to me, Ryder. As many of you know this past year was quite a wild one for me with things that happened in my personal life with my wife. Last year during one of the more trying times in my life, someone I met at the same conference in 2013 and kept in contact with across social media was about to endeavor down a journey that would also be a life changing experience.

In June 2013 Cristina went from being a happy 26 week pregnant woman to the mother of a preemie in a matter of hours. Just like we had experienced, her online communities of friends from across all the social networks began reaching out to lend a hand and support in her times of need. Even though Cristina was going through so much, she still kept up with things with Katherine just like how we kept a close eye on Ryder.

We felt the emotional roller coaster as he had his good days and bad days. The highs of being able to come home after 100 days in the hospital to the lows of having to be re-admitted back into the hospital. Meeting this tiny 1lb 8oz miracle taught me more about social media than other concept, strategy, trick, or technique I’ve known before.

What he taught me is that power of social media is in the people you connect with. This trip to Jacksonville was one of the very few conferences I’ve attended since my wife’s accident. I was completely blown away by the masses of people coming up to me before, during, and even after the event not to say how much they loved my presentations, or asking about my business, but the overwhelming first question was: “How’s Your Wife doing? I’ve been following along and praying for you guys.”

As I drove home the next day from Jacksonville I had plenty of time to ponder this recent event and reflect back. I realized quickly that over the past few years I’ve thought of the social networks I am on as mainly for business and not that much about how it allows you to have great friendships with people all around the world.

I realized quickly that friends of mine that are thousands of miles away, I talk to more on any given day than close friends of mine that live down the street. I noticed that I seemed to know more of what was happening in lives of people I recently met on social networks than people I grew up with my whole life. I quickly came to the conclusion that those connections on social media can have just as much of an impact on your life as those you meet in person or have grown up with your whole life.

They care about what is going on in your life, how your family is doing, and want to be there to support you just as much as your life long friends. Relationships that start in an online setting can become so much more. I know many people who met online on a social network that led to greater relationships, friendships, and even marriages.

Heck, when I started this company back in 2009 with my partner Jason Crouch, we had never even met in person. We had both been bloggers on a real estate network and began our communication there through comments on blog posts. As time continued on, we then had a few telephone discussions and chat sessions and realized we both had the same values towards business, had the same passions towards helping others, and wanted to simply help others. It wasn’t till the spring of 2010 that we actually met each other in person.

Meeting Ryder, the 1lb, 8oz miracle has definitely done a lot in changing the way I view the friendships I have made online. It makes me value them greater and cherish the friendships and connections I have made over the past few years.

How Are They now?

Well, Ryder and his mommy are both doing well these days. Each day he becomes a little stronger and is now 10lbs and just turned 7 months old. From what Cristina told me, Ryder still has the Oxygen tank to wear and also has all kinds of monitors that go off at all wild times of the night while they try to sleep. Hopefully though, those will go away before long too.

If you want to follow along and see more of their journey, I’d highly recommend checking out their Facebook page, Ryder The Fighter. Also, be on the lookout soon of a new site being launched!

Katherine? Well, she is doing really well. When someone asks me how is she I normally reply “if you didn’t know she had the accident & met her, you would never suspect anything is wrong.” There are very few times that she ever mentions any type of discomfort or limitations anymore.

They told her she wouldn’t be able to play with the kids anymore, but if you were in my house just about every morning you can hear the kids laughing and playing as they all dance around in the kitchen to songs playing from Pandora.

It truly is a miracle how she has recovered condition she was in. One of her Doctors described it as “30 hours of death,” and now we call it complete healing.

How Much Consideration Goes Into Your Status Updates?

Social Media Advisors

First, off, Happy New Year! I know, it’s been a while since I have written new content here. The past few months have been extremely busy for me with building new custom WordPress sites for clients, speaking engagements, holidays, and moving.

While I haven’t had that much time for generating new content, I have however spent a ton of time interacting with others and observing things from a distance across the social networks. One thing I started to notice over the past few weeks is the way some people share on social networks versus in real life. As I continued watch updates from people I know in both realms, I started to categorize them into different types of groups:

The Martha Stewart- We all know at least one of these. You know, the person who updates their Facebook status every five minutes with new recipes, soaps, & every DIY remedy possible from Pinterest. If you are lucky like me, you are friends with several of these types of people to where you can’t look at Facebook for more than three minutes without feeling hunger pains or end up with a laundry list of items to pick up at Hobby Lobby for the next project you are going to tackle. If only these projects turned out like the pictures.

The Oversharer- Some people just feel everyone needs to know every single thought they have. When something pops into their head they run to the social network of their choice and post a status update. They are sharing sometimes 30-40 things in a day. Things like: just got a coffee, the mail is here, my car is dirty, I just sniffled, I’m cold, I’m hot. Is everything you say really that interesting or important to say?

It’s All About Me- In 2013 the word selfie became one of the biggest buzz words. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are being filled with random self portraits daily. In fact, this craze has became so popular it now has it’s own selfie olympics that started today. Do your friends need a new profile photo of you every day? What I’ve found is that whenever I change my avatar, it takes my connections weeks to recognize the new one since they get used to seeing your 180 pixel face one way. If it is constantly changing, I can only imagine the confusion it causes your connections.

The Gamer- We all at times need something fun to do to blow off some steam. Some like to go for a hike, others prefer hobbies like golf, but then there are those who love to play some of the many games connected to Facebook. Now, don’t get me wrong, at times I enjoy playing a few levels of Candy Crush to relax and chill out. But, do my friends care that I just completed level 18? My guess is that they could care less. Even more, those who are not into video games become even more annoyed by the constant requests to play games they do not understand just so you get another life in Farmville for your sick chicken.

The Crusader- Everyday there is a new crusade to conquer or someone to save. One day might be saving penguins, the next is global warming, or gluten in food, but everyday there is a new crisis in this world to overcome. I’m a strong believer in standing up for things you believe in, but does it really change every 24 hours?

The Complainer- They just got cut off in traffic, it’s too hot outside, now it’s too cold out, the $1.99 iced coffee was too sweet today after being too bitter yesterday, the neighbors dog just peed on the front lawn. We all experience these types of traumas every day in life. But do we need to experience your pain all day every day? I have a few connections where when I examined their feed almost 85% of their updates done in a day were negative or a complaint of some nature.

While these are some of the most common types of status updates happening in social media, I don’t believe they always do the best job of representing people in real life. Most of my connections on social media are with people whom at some point in life I have had some sort of face to face interaction with outside an online network. The time spent with these people in person is a much different experience than what their online personas represent.

So, before you submit your next status update (which will hopefully be to share this post or comment below, hint, hint) take a moment to analyze what you are about to say and make sure it is a good representation of the true person you are and not something that could represent you in a wrong manner.