Social Media Advisors – Page 50 – We are Social Media Advisors, a Social Media Speaker, & Custom WordPress Site design.

Social Media Winner of the Week: BlogTalkRadio!

Keeping our series on social media winners we come across, today I wanted to share about a great story that happened to me recently. As many of you know, I participate in an online radio show called Social Media Edge with Ken Cook, Jason Crouch, & Mike Mueller. The show airs every Tuesday at noon and we have been blessed with some really awesome guests in the past. I have been actively participating in the show now for well over a year. We broadcast online at BlogTalkRadio every week.

During our last broadcast, I had several people in the chatroom complaining about the ads that kept running on the screen. These ads would take over the sound of the broadcast and you would miss important parts on topics we were discussing. Since I normally call into the show instead of just listening online, I didn’t know what they were really talking about. Then later on that same day I was listening to a friend on a different broadcast on BlogTalkRadio.

The person being interviewed has a soft voice so I had to crank up the volume on my computer to hear. Now one thing that you must understand is this. Since I work in my home office all day long, I like to have music playing at louder than normal volumes. To accomplish this, I have connected my computer up to it’s own home theater. Might be a little overkill, but I love it. So I had the volume for this particular broadcast maxed out to be able to hear the guest.

All of a sudden music started blaring and almost made blood come out of my eardrums from the loudness as a commercial for Tide Detergent started playing. I immediately searched for a mute or pause button and after about 7 seconds I could quiet the ad. In my frustration, I sent out a tweet to @blogtalkradio saying the following:

Hey @blogtalkradio the auto player ads on the radio shows is really annoying. It interrupts the show! Please fix it!less than a minute ago via TweetDeckJeremy Blanton
jb140

To which the promptly replied:

@jb140 Hi Jeremy, Thanks for ur feedback. Would it be possible to have a quick convo with you about your experience? Can u DM us with a #?less than a minute ago via CoTweetblogtalkradio
blogtalkradio

I sent them my contact info and within minutes my phone rang. I had an awesome conversation with Amy and she apologized for the inconvenience as well as asked if she could help with anything else. She was beyond friendly and helpful. She even gave me her skype ID to contact her if we had any other issues in the future.

Paying attention to what consumers are saying about your business is vital. You need to constantly be monitoring what consumers are saying both positively and negatively. More importantly, you need to have someone handling the social media aspect of your company that can make you a winner and not a loser. In this example, BlogTalkRadio has done very well by having Amy handle their social media monitoring and because of that has won our Social Media Winner of the Week award!

Making your WordPress Site More Social

Social Media Advisors, Social Media Training, WordPress Plugins, WordPress Tutorials

We all hear the importance of social media and why you need to have a strong presence in it. We know that there are sites like Facebook, Twitter, & YouTube and other social networks. Many times though we want to see what type of results these social networks are sending in traffic to your sites.

As I mentioned recently in a post, we need to be more social and less media with our social media marketing efforts. But, for those of you looking for cold hard facts to prove that you are not in a giant vortex of time wasting I have some stats for you. Currently, our site is averaging around 30% of our traffic directly from social media platforms. We still are seeing a huge section from search engines and referring sites, but our number of clicks from various social platforms like Twitter and Facebook are increasing rapidly. Because of the increased success, I wanted to share a few things you can do to make your site more social and easy for readers to distribute your content out to social media platforms.

Since I have a fond love for WordPress Sites, here are a few plugins that can be used on your site to increase it’s socialness. (yes, I just made my own word up)

Facebook Share- This plugin has played a huge role in our content being shared. I purposefully placed this plugin at the top right of my posts to make it in eyesight the minute you visit a page. Several of our posts have received well over 40 shares. The average person on Facebook has well over 100 friends. That means that my simple post has just been given the opportunity of being viewed by over 4,000 people!
Twitter Retweet- There are several different buttons that can be used for Twitter sharing of your blog posts. I like the Tweetmeme button personally. Once again our posts are being tweeted well over 40-50 times. Recently, a post I wrote about Google Instant was tweeted by Chris Brogan. Currently he has over 158,000 followers on twitter. His one tweet placed my post in front of all those eyes. Not to mention that his tribe that read the post and liked it then tweeted it out too. This button gets placed at the top of my post right with the Facebook Share for optimum exposure.
Facebook Like- This plugin gets overlooked many times because it doesn’t place a fancy graphic on the person’s feed and a link. But what it does do is place a link that says the name of your post on their Facebook profile. If that is done by 70-80 people this will also drive traffic to your site. I place this plugin at the bottom of my posts to give everyone one more reminder to share stuff they enjoyed.
Sexy Bookmarks- This is a personal favorite of mine. This plugin simply rocks. I liked it so much I actually wrote about it before here. On a side note, they are also a company that uses social media well as they were recently named our Social Media Winner of the Week. The reason I enjoy this plugin is that it opens up endless possibilities for your content to be shared. With a simple click of a button at the bottom of a post your blog post can be shared with over 90 different social media platforms. Included in that list is Google Reader, Posterous, LinkedIn, Email, and so many others. Half of them I have never even heard of!

I have no doubts that the reason I have seen the recent increases in traffic from social media platforms is being caused by these four plugins above. The other major reason for an increase in traffic from these sources is the involvement of both myself and by business partner on the various platforms.

If these plugins are implemented along with the proper use of a social media marketing strategies, you will see a great increase in traffic to your site. The one point that cannot be overlooked in this entire blog post is the previous statement. You have to be using social media platforms like Twitter & Facebook in the ways they were intended and not just spamming others. Remember, installing the plugins is the easy part. Getting consumers to visit your site and use the social plugins willingly is the tough part.

photo credit-ahisgett

Gap is our “Social Media Winner of the Week”

Social Media Advisors

In case you missed it, over the past week or so, Gap decided to change their corporate logo, then got pressured (largely via social media channels) to change it back. My initial reaction on seeing this was to assume that they planned it this way from the beginning, but I don’t have any contacts in the “Gap circle of trust” to know for sure. Gap has been around a little longer on the earth than I have, and my cursory research didn’t reveal whether their iconic blue box logo had been around since they were founded in 1969, but I know that they’ve had the same logo at least since the 80’s, when I used to shop there during high school.

So, one of two things happened here, and I see them as mutually exclusive:

1. In a stroke of business branding genius, Gap knew that their new logo would fail miserably and cause a public outcry, at which point they could save the day by reverting back to the original, comfortable logo we’ve all known for years, OR…

2. Gap simply messed up, but they were paying attention and responded swiftly to the unhappy consumer audience.

Frankly, it doesn’t matter which of these comprises the truth. Either way, Gap wins.

Why is that, exactly?

Well, do you remember the last time you talked about Gap with your friends before this incident? Or the last time Gap made headline news? Yeah, me neither. In fact, this could be the first time in their 41-year history that they did something worth talking about. I applaud them for this move (and for the change back, because the new logo really did kinda stink), since they did something buzzworthy. How often do you see large corporations making bold moves? Every once in awhile, you might see a risque GoDaddy commercial, but, by and large, companies tend to play it safe.

The bottom line question: Will this sell more clothing for Gap? My guess is that it will, simply because they managed to get top-of-mind awareness this week, even among people who were mocking them. This much exposure can’t ever hurt a brand, and I bet Gap’s holiday earnings are better than expected.

So, whether it was accidental (a la New Coke) or intentional, congratulations to the Gap executives. I bet this is one risk that will pay off for them.

P.S. I considered posting the new logo, then thought better of it. It’s ugly, in my humble opinion.

Social Media Relationships is the ROI Overlooked By Many

Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors, Social Media Training

So many times when you discuss social media with someone they want to know what type of Return on Investment(ROI) they can expect from using social media in their marketing efforts. They want to know how business will increase from the time they spend in tweeting each day and Facebooking. They want to know how many blog posts have to be written before they will see results. But the one factor that gets passed over many times is the relationships that are formed through social media.

I was listening to a keynote today by Scott Stratten of Unmarketing and the one thing that rang so loud and clear to me was that we often overlook social for the media part of marketing. We are so busy trying to figure out how to grow our sphere, increase SEO and more that we forget about just interacting with others. Those interactions can be much more effective to your business than reaching 5,000 followers on twitter.

Shortly after finishing listening to Scott’s Keynote, I looked at the mail for the day to find a package there with my name on it. This envelope was rather large in size and had *as requested! written on the top. I saw the return address label said my good friend Mike Mueller. Mike and I met about two years ago through social media. He lives in California while I live in South Carolina. We had commented on each others blog numerous times and became friends on Facebook. Then, through my business partners connection we both became co-hosts on a radio show. We also connected on Twitter and had multiple conversations since.

To say we became friends would be an understatement. We now talk regularly about various things in business and are huge supporters of each other. Mike creates amazing custom Facebook pages. Our company helps businesses with their online social media presence through coaching and also builds affordable custom WordPress sites. Whenever a client of ours mentions the first thing about Facebook, we instantly send them over to Mike. He knows about the current and upcoming things with Facebook batter than anyone I know. He does amazing work and is better at it than anyone else I have ever seen. When it comes to custom Facebook Pages, there is none better. Because of our trust in Mike’s work, we have been able to send multiple clients his way and increase his revenue.

On the other hand, Mike has done the same for us. I have been able to help several of his clients that wanted to learn more about SEO, or how to write blog posts, and much more. Our social connection has become a win-win for both of our businesses. I’ve never once tried to sell Mike something nor has he tried to sell me his products. He doesn’t need to market to me. Why? We have formed a trust relationship that allows us to freely recommend each others services without hesitation. To give you an idea of how powerful social media can be for building trust, I only recently met Mike in person for the first time while in Orlando. We shared a hotel room at a conference we both were speaking at.

So you may be wondering, what sparked writing this post. Well, it was two things. The first was the speech by Scott that I listened to today. The second was to share a funny story about Mike. Last week Mike and I were chatting on Facebook and he said that he was heading out the door with his wife to pick up some things at Costco. I immediately said, “Hey while you are there can you get me some pizza?” Later that evening Mike sent me a message saying he had it, and that I needed to come and get it. I replied “don’t you deliver?” Which brings me back to the package in the mail today.

As I began to open it I was immediately greeted with wonderful smells of that pleasant pizza from Costco. Unfortunately, with it’s week delivery time thanks to postal carriers, it was already starting to grow things that most people are not fans of consuming. I guess it just goes to show that we should stick to social media for our jokes for quicker delivery. 🙂

In closing I leave you with this, take time each and every day to focus more on your social and less on your media. You never know when that person you are connecting with could be your next client, or send you 10 prospective clients. And lastly, don’t mail pizza across the country!