Social Media Advisors – Page 48 – We are Social Media Advisors, a Social Media Speaker, & Custom WordPress Site design.

Google Launches Instant Previews- What this Means For Your Website

Today search engine giant Google is releasing a new feature on their searches called Instant Previews. What this does is allows consumers to get a snapshot view of what a website looks like without having to visit the page. They believe that by giving a sample view of the site before you click into it will help consumers to to find what they are looking for quicker and easier than having to click through various links. Personally, I think that this new feature will help websites to lower bounce rate as consumers can get a good feel of what the site is about without ever having to click into it. If you wonder what it looks like, here is a screenshot:

So How Does This Effect My Site?

I am glad you asked! I think that Google Instant Previews is going to cause us all to do some minor adjustments to our sites. The first thing I think this is going to cause us all to do is look at the current website design/layout we have and determine if it is truly attractive enough to entice consumers to want to view. If your site is 7 years old and is plain and boring, it might be time to upgrade to a new custom WordPress site. If you site is more appealing than the others in the preview window, you have a better chance of the consumer clicking in to your page.

Secondly, I see the use of pictures on your posts and pages becoming even more critical. I talked about the importance of photos and labeling them properly before for SEO purposes, but this takes it all to a whole new level. Now not only are the pictures important for SEO, but they are also extremely important to the visual appeal of your site. I once heard that adding just 2 photos to a blog post can increase the time on your page by up to 300%! Now not only will this help keep the consumer there, but these photos will actually help to bring them in.

The final piece that I see Google Instant Previews changing is the effectiveness of Ads run on Google. If you notice in my screenshot above, the preview window basically covers the entire sidebar of ads. I think that this will really cut down on the number of clicks that the ads receive. Thus making CPC and CPM advertising not as effective as it has been in the past simply because the ads are being covered over by the giant preview window. This also means that having a good online presence in search engine rankings is becoming even more important. Getting to page 1 is crucial for your keywords.

What Do I Need To Do?

So in closing, what should you be doing to help your site with this new feature? First and foremost, look at the sites design and appeal. Does your site have very clear call to action buttons installed? If not, you need to get them there ASAP. As you can see from the screenshot to the right, The calls to action are very clear. People can see at a quick glance what the site offers and what they want you to do on it. Secondly, the site has a very clean and clear look to it. The images are bold and easy to see. Seeing something like this would make me want to click in and view.

Next, make sure you are using plenty of photos in everything you do on your site. It is not only important for SEO, but now more than ever is going to be important on bringing in consumers to view the content of your site. On the other hand, I know someone is thinking right now, “I’m gonna go put 27 photos all over my site because Jeremy said photos will make more people come.” STOP IT NOW! That is not what I am saying. All things are good in moderation. Add one to two photos per page and it will be appealing. Add 27 photos to a page and you have major chaos. Keep it simple and easy.

So, take some time look at your site and get things prepared for Google Instant Previews. If your site needs a facelift, let us know, we would be glad to design a custom WordPress site for you.

Using BridgeURL to Manage Multiple Links

Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors

Found a fun little tool today that I wanted to discuss in more detail as well as share a few applications that could be good uses of it. It is called BridgeURL. We have all heard of URL shorteners in the past like bit.ly and goo.gl. While BridgeURL was described to me as a URL shortener, I look at it more as a Link aggregation tool. It possesses a ton of opportunities to help organize your online links in a unique way to enhance client experiences.

BridgeURL allows you to share as many links as you wish in in one collaborative link. It will take all the links you place together into a slideshow of all the links you placed into it. So if you want to share links on a specific subject or topic and have 10- 12 links, you can put that all together in one link to tweet, share on Facebook, and put into a blog and everywhere else.

Applying BridgeURL Into Your Online Marketing

You may be thinking, is this just another fun toy out there for me to waste hours upon hours of time on? NO! Let me share with you a few applications that immediately came to mind for using this tool.

The first that comes to mind is using this inside your Newsletters. Instead of sending an E-Newsletter that is 7 pages long, why not send out one that fits all on one page? We all are busy and who do you honestly believe will sit and read something that is that long? You have a very short window to keep that clients interest. That’s why when I teach blogging I normally suggest keeping your blog posts under 700 words. Why? Anything longer and you lose the attention of your reader and they are off doing other things. I think this same principle should apply into your email marketing too.

As we are in the process of revamping our email marketing campaign here at 210, this is something we will definitely implement into the Monthly Newsletter. Instead of posting 5-7 blog posts, we can simply insert one link like this: “View our top blog posts of October 2010” Instantly our consumers are able to see a slideshow of the top posts and pick quickly which ones they want to read. The consumer can quickly scroll through all the links and pick which posts they want to read. Also, it is getting them over to our site faster and keeping them there longer. The longer you can keep consumers on your site, normally means more chances of increasing your sales.

How about on Twitter? Maybe you are participating in a great Twitter Chat like #blogchat and the topic for the evening is All things Google. You want to share about all the great posts you have with the group. You can can either send out a tweet for each individual blog post that you wrote and like or use BridgeURL combining them together. If we did that here at 210 Consulting, we would tweet well over 12-15 tweets about posts we wrote on just Google products alone. Instead, one single BridgeURL with our favorite links is going to be much more powerful It also has a much higher chance of being re-tweeted. Lastly, sharing our content this helps keep us from looking like spammers taking over the chat with constant tweets to blog posts of ours.

What about industry specific uses? Since Jason & I both came from real estate backgrounds, I started thinking about ways that this could be beneficial to those specifically in this industry. In real estate, you have links to all kinds of different things you set up specifically for a listing. You can have things like blog posts, individual property sites, virtual tours, links to home inspections, property detail reports, and the list goes on. How overwhelming do you think it is to send all this off to a potential client? If they receive fifteen links all at once they will not know what to do. Also, how difficult is it for you as the agent to remember them all. Especially when you are away from the office? With BridgeURL, you can load all those links once, have a nice shortened easy to remember link like bridgeurl.com/address and can share that from your mobile phone, through tweets, or anywhere else you need too. Or even better, why not set up a Bridge URL for a property and then purchase a single property domain to redirect? You could in essence create your own individual property sites for under $10 and have all the information available to potential clients.

This can be a huge time saver and convenient way to compartmentalize all your different properties and all of their documents, links, photos, etc. into one easy to remember place.

I think that BridgeURL can be a very useful tool that everyone should give some serious consideration to. The organizing of multiple links into specific folders can be a huge advantage to me. What other ways can you see BridgeURL being beneficial to your online business?

Photo Credit d’n’c

“I Hate Social Media”

Social Media Advisors

I heard the quote in the title above recently from a friend of mine over dinner, and it surprised me.

As someone who loves this stuff, I was intrigued by this statement, and I asked my friend, “Why is that?”

His answer was simple. He said that he didn’t care about keeping up with people from high school on Facebook, or about what’s going on in their lives. He mentioned that it seemed false to him.

This response made it abundantly clear that he didn’t understand what social media really encompasses. Sadly, this is a not uncommon reaction to this still-somewhat-fledgling method of marketing and promotion.

So, what is social media, anyway?

Is it Facebook? Twitter? Blogging? Posterous? YouTube?

Sure it is. It’s all of these platforms and many more.

Here’s a quick definition that I developed for my own use:

Social media means using online video, photo, and writing tools (most of which are free) to develop new relationships and strengthen existing ones. This can be used for purely social purposes, or to promote yourself or your brand. As a result, almost anything that you can do in the world of face-to-face networking can now be accomplished online. The operative word there is “almost”. 🙂

Every business can benefit from the proper use and implementation of social media tools. Yes, EVERY business. Even B2B sales are conducted by….people.

If you’re doing things right, you can give your prospects a 3-dimensional view of yourself and/or your business. What sets you apart? What stories can you share? I am amazed at which of my blog posts have brought me real-world dollars over the years. Sometimes, it’s a post about funny things my kids said. Once, it was a post about my church.

I’m not so naive that I assume that all consumers want to hear my life story, but those who are active in social media just might.

We’ve probably all heard this sage advice at some point: “Go where your customers are.” With over 500 million users on Facebook (1/2 of whom log on daily), and 300 million registered on Twitter now, clearly there are a few customers there, huh?

YouTube is the second most popular search engine after Google. You might have known that already, but did you know that more and more people are spending time online watching videos rather than watching actual television sets?

I think it’s easy to discount those things we don’t understand. Social media seems to fall into this category pretty often.

Traditional thinking would dictate that if a marketing method is free, it probably won’t work. Traditional thinking probably would have kept us from going to the moon in 1969, or from developing vaccines, or starting the internet in the first place. I promise you that you don’t want to be thinking like the crowd if you want to make an impact on the world.

The “you get what you pay for” maxim doesn’t apply here. However, you do need to invest your time to make it work.

I’m still exploring the world of social media, which is ever-changing. As a word of advice, don’t hate or disparage things that you don’t understand. No progress and few successes were ever accomplished as the result of having a closed mind.

I realize that if you’re reading this, you are likely already a “convert” to the social media realm. Either way, I thought this was a topic worth discussing.

What are you thoughts?

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/2191404675/

Destroying Your Social Capital for a Sale

Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors

We all know the importance of being liked in business by our consumers. One single tweet, blog post, YouTube video or Facebook message by one consumer can determine greatness or failure of your business. If you don’t believe me, go ask United Airlines or the band Barcelona.

Last night I was shocked by a specific sales call I received from one of the major real estate networks. I was on my way to church at the time so I did not answer the phone as I thought it might have been one of my new clients calling with questions and I did not want to be late because of being on the phone. After service, I grabbed my phone and began listening to my messages. The message though was not from a client, but from this company.

In the message they stated that they saw I was registered for an event in New Orleans this week and they were also having an event there the next day. They knew I had attended their conference the week before in Charlotte and thought I would want to come back again the next day. My wife looked at me as my face began to get fire red. It really bothered me that this company was using the RSVP list of another event to try and sell theirs. To me, that is a really bad move.

The reason this bothers me so much is that my name was on the #REBCNO list was because we were sponsors of the event. See, Jason & I are big fans of the barcamp movement and like the fact that they are unconference type events where you can learn great information for free. Because we believe in them, we gladly sponsor and help with many of them around the country.

When I got home I sent a tweet out about my displeasure of this network using this poor choice in judgment to try and sell their event by calling other events RSVP list. What shocked me even more was when the CEO replied back to me saying why not? I replied because I didn’t feel it was right to use other lists to try and sell your event.

I then sent out a tweet asking if others had received calls and was instantly met by several others who felt the same way. Some of those responses included:

I was pretty surprised to have gotten the same voicemail especially since I’m not really active on there! I didn’t either & its quite annoying! – Vickie Wyman

Wasn’t sure how they got my info… interesting, but doesn’t make me want to go!- StephanieSells

So for the CEO that asked why, this is the reason why not. People do not like being called for sales pitches for things they did not opt into. If #REBCNO had been partnered with your company and you said you were going to call all the RSVP list trying to sell, that might have been a different story. But since you didn’t have permission to use their list to sell your product I feel it was out of line and not cool.

In the social media world there is such a thing called social capital, or as the whuffie factor as Tara Hunt called it in her book. The reputation you have online is only as good as your last tweet, email, or blog post. Before you begin using poor judgment and calling those who you do not really have permission to call, it is important to weigh the consequences. Personally I think they were not weighed properly this time and the results I feel might be a little more negative than the few extra ticket sales that come about from it.

Next time please have permission to use a list before you begin using it.

Zappos “Delivering Happiness” Tour Hits Austin

Conferences, Social Media Advisors

So, I don’t normally get up early on Saturdays. In fact, I don’t typically get up that early any of the other days, either, if I’m being honest. I’m not really a morning person, I suppose. This is one of the benefits of homeschooling and being self-employed.

Today was an exception for me.

I was invited to attend a talk/event that made it worth getting up before the sun today. Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. was speaking as part of the “Delivering Happiness” bus tour across the country. It was organized by the Austin chapter of the American Marketing Association, and my friend Angela Brutsche invited me to come check it out. Big thanks to her for this!

After watching the Zappos crew’s introductory video “Happy Wrap” (which was actually a pretty catchy rap with an interesting hook that reminded me of the 80’s band Book of Love), it was clear that this was to be no ordinary networking event. We were given nametags and instructed to list “something weird that makes you happy”. I originally chose the scent of freshly cut grass, then I was informed that everyone enjoys that (i.e. not weird enough), so I changed mine to “seeing older couples kiss”. Whenever I see that, it gives me hope, and warms my heart. I saw my grandparents do this after being together for 64 years, and it made an impact on me.

But I digress….

After a brief introductory speech from Zappos’ chief happiness officer (Jenn), Tony took the stage. Well, there wasn’t really a stage, since it was at an Italian restaurant meeting room, but you get the picture.

I’ve seen a lot of business leaders speak, and I’ve learned something from all of them, but I rarely come away feeling inspired. One notable exception would be when I saw Gary Vaynerchuk in March. Today, I can add Tony Hsieh to this list. After listening to Tony discuss the evolution of their corporate culture, how they hire (and avoid hiring the wrong people), and the science of happiness, I felt excited to be able to implement some of the ideas I came up with for my own businesses.

The Zappos commitment to stellar customer service is well-documented and as solid as it gets, but it was great to hear some additional stories today from Tony. For example, if you’re headed to Vegas and you want to tour Zappos, just let them know ahead of time. They’ll pick you up at the airport, take you for a tour, and drop you off at your hotel ( this service is available Monday through Thursday). He also mentioned that they recently set a new record for longest Zappos phone call, clocking in at 8 hours and 3 minutes. He also mentioned that they field-tested one of their phone reps by having a friend who wanted pepperoni pizza call Zappos at 3am to see how they could help. Not surprisingly, the problem was solved. Clearly, they really just want to make people happy, and that has been the essence of their success to this point.

I picked up a copy of Tony’s new book while I was at the event as well. I’ll probably post a review after I have a chance to finish it.

I would, however, encourage you to check out the bus tour site to see if they’re making a stop in your city. If they’ve already been through your area, maybe you can catch them next time around, if they decide to do a 2011 tour. 🙂

If you want to learn more about what makes this terrific company tick, watch this:

Lastly, if you’d like an online resource that can help you to shape your company and its culture to be more like Zappos, visit http://zapposinsights.com.