The Sun News wrote an article today regarding Foursquare. You can read the entire article here: http://www.thesunnews.com/2010/10/07/1737800/cover-story.html They wanted silly pictures of us for the article. I think I didn't disappoint!
Thanks @mikemueller and @uprinting for my new stickers!
My new stickers came in today from Uprinting.com. Thanks Mike Mueller for suggesting them!
Jeremy Blanton
210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors
Co-Founder
http://210consulting.com
Goo.gl Changes Link Shortening
Today I took some time to play with a new favorite of mine Goo.gl. This is a great product that the search engine giant created that simply rocks. What Goo.gl does is allows you to shorten links quickly and easily.This feature alone is nice, but it isn’t the reasons that fell in love with this new product. There are three major pieces that I simply love with Goo.gl. Here’s a short synopsis of it.
QR Codes
QR Codes are the newest & latest craze that is sweeping the digital community. Many think it is a way to make paper marketing once again effective. Personally, I don’t think things are quite there yet. I understand the concepts of QR codes and think they are cool, but unless consumers have a smart phone they cannot use QR code. I have seen many people starting to remove all their contact information and placing just a QR code there for people to scan. I am all for cutting edge technology but, I think that is a little more on the bleeding edge. Nevertheless, you can create them very quickly and easily by using Goo.gl. All you need to do is add .qr to the link. I simply copied the image and then linked to it and the QR code to the right was made. In the future as QR codes continue to grow in popularity, I see Goo.gl becoming a very important tool used to creating them.
Goo.gl Allows Easy Link Tracking
Wonder how many people are really clicking on the links you share on Facebook, Twitter, and more? If you shorten the links with Goo.gl, you can then track instantly how many times your links are clicked upon and also where your efforts are paying off. I ran a test earlier today with one of Jason Crouch’s posts on Using Social Media to increase Face to Face Meetings. I then shared the shortened link on Facebook and also on Twitter. You can see the results below. It shows you how many clicks, where they clicked in and also you can see the time where I posted it as well as when Jason did. At both times there was a quick spike in traffic.
The other things I enjoy is that Goo.gl shows me what browswers, what country and also what platforms the person was using when they clicked the link. I know, you may be thinking who cares about how many times something gets clicked and where they click from, but three situations where you may care.
1. Clients want to know what your online marketing efforts are doing for them. Ever have a client that wants to just see the numbers? This happens so many times when things may not be going perfect. You are doing your job, it is just taking a little more time to bring the results they expect. The next time you have someone ask you well what is going on with (insert so many things here) that you could respond with, let me see what type of clicks we are getting.
When the client sees that you have generated 28,000 clicks, they will be able to see that you are doing a good job and hopefully reduce the heat.
2. What network is my sweet spot? I share things on Facebook all the time but don’t really see a ton of interactions on my Facebook profile or our company Facebook Page in comments/likes. But when I started doing the test, I noticed quickly that on my first test link that Facebook connections clicked on the link a lot more than those on Twitter. While Google Analytics gives me some of this info, I am not crazy about the fact that it takes time for the analytics to update. With Goo.gl it updates instantly. I am a big fan of instant results. (not a Google Instant pun)
3. Effective Time Management. Ever wonder what time of day is best for you to be tweeting and sharing info? Well, with Goo.gl you can quickly and easily view when your links are getting more clicks and adjust your strategies accordingly. Test it out over few different days and times and you will learn quickly.
Collaborative Link Tracking
If you are like me, you work on projects from time to time with teams. Or maybe even with just your clients. One of the coolest features that Goo.gl does is allow you to create a shortened link, give to a group to share and then also let the entire group track the Results. In the first comment below you will see a link to track the clicks on this post. So if you want to share the Goo.gl shortened link for this post and see what type of traffic you generate you can. Anyone and everyone that you want to share the data with can by simply visiting a URL.
No longer will clients be contacting you wanting updates on numbers. They can simply follow along with you as you share with your online friends about their product or service.
Go give Goo.gl a try now! By the way, all the links in this post have been shortened, so when you click around, I am gonna know! 🙂
Using Social Media to Enhance Face-to-Face Meetings
For the past couple of years, I’ve been helping others to market effectively online, having done this for my own businesses since 1996. One of the interesting trends I’ve noted is the fact that some people (and companies) spend a lot of time and effort working on their online presence, at the expense of “real world” interaction.
Social media (or “new media”, if you prefer) tools and platforms aren’t intended to supplant face-to-face interaction and networking, but to ENHANCE them.
There are exceptions to this rule, of course. Perhaps you really don’t want to meet and engage in a personal manner. The only valid example I can think of is if you are a full-time eBay seller and you never meet customers or you happen to provide a product that doesn’t require much trust or a relationship to sell (not sure what that might be – perhaps paper clips or straws?).
However, for the rest of us, those of us who want to make an impact, or to have a wide network of friends and resources, you need to get out and press the flesh when you can. Sorry – I guess “press the flesh” sounds a little vulgar or old-fashioned these days. It’s best to make an effort to meet and speak with real, live people. Better?
I’ve been guilty of this myself in the past, especially since we have a large family and it’s not always easy to make time for travel and/or events. That being said, I thrive on working a crowd at an event, especially when I know a good number of people already. It energizes me.
My son thinks I’m already pretty famous. Of course, I don’t want to dispel this notion too much, but I am clearly not Ashton Kutcher or even Clint Howard (Google that one if you like). I once saw Chris Brogan speak to a crowd of about 300 people, and it put things in perspective for me when he asked, “How many people here know me personally?” There were a few hands that went up. Then he asked, “How many people here FEEL like you know me?” Almost every hand in the room went up. To me, this is a good way to gauge if you’re doing things right with your online efforts. It’s one thing to build a tremendous number of followers, but it’s quite another for them to actually care about you as a human being or about your company.
I joked a few days ago on Twitter that I think there should be an award given for “Most Followers with the Least Engaged Audience”. There are many hundreds of accounts vying for this title. I like to equate this type of “blind broadcast” to having the chance to speak at halftime during the Super Bowl while the entire audience puts on blindfolds and those fancy noise-cancellation headphones. What a waste! If you want to actually grow a business, or make valuable connections, or basically build any real influence at all, face-to-face goes a long way, especially when combined with an engaging online presence.
Can you build a solid audience without meeting everyone in person? Of course you can, but it will grow faster and bond more quickly when you’re out and about, shaking real hands and giving real hugs. Even politicians do that. You want to be more trusted than a politician, right?
Just some food for thought…
Image credit: Jerry (found on Flickr.com)
My New Stickers! What do You Think?
I won some free stickers from http://Uprinting.com and so I am finally claiming them today. I figured since I have such a great connection with Mtn Dew I just had to incorporate it into the design. What ya think?
7 Ways to Be Hated on Twitter
Today I am sharing part 2 of my series on Social Media Engagement vs. Sales. Last week I shared Six Steps to Converting Guests to Fans of Your Facebook Page. It covered several different issues that I have seen on various Facebook Pages over the past few months.
This post is today is going to venture into the world of Twitter. Twitter is another great resource for growing your business online. Nowhere else on the web can you engage people and have so many conversations at once. But what I have found is that many have turned Twitter into their spam grounds. They set up accounts and try to garner as many followers as they can in the quickest means possible. The concept is that if they get thousands of followers they will have a giant net to share their products to and will in essence sell more things. But what I have found is that this is not the case.
When you build a twitter profile where there is no engagement, it results in a very low return on your investment. I am somewhat an open networker. I will accept anyone as a friend and give them a chance to show me they don’t belong connected to me anymore. Yesterday I received an auto from a new follower from which I have been able to find 7 things that everyone should NOT do with their twitter account. The following points all came from one single account.
7 Ways to be Hated on Twitter.
1- The auto DM. When I first started on Twitter, I thought it was a good idea to send an Auto message to every new follower with information about me and a link to my site. In the beginning it was actually an effective tool to me as the first followers to my account were friends that I knew. But I learned quickly that spammers and others began to abuse this feature.
I quickly disabled it and have since really started to notice the annoyance of users that use those type of services. Over to the right you can see an automated message from the account I recently followed. Their message sent said: “Thanks for following! I HATE SPAM! You won’t get that from me. Maybe check out my blog of Twitter tips/tactics for marketers/networkers.” My next action was to unfollow and block their account.
2. Creating Good First Impressions- If your first impression is trying to convince me you hate spam and don’t do that through a spammed message, you have already lost me. A much more effective way to meet someone on Twitter is to listen to what they are saying and engage with them. Joining into a conversation is really easy to do on Twitter as people are constantly posting things wanting you to interact with them. When you see someone post something that you either have an interest in or a way of adding to the conversation, simply do that.
3. Stop Talking To Yourself! I try to spend more time listening & interacting with others on twitter than I do talking about myself or my business. I don’t use a specific formula for this, I just try to keep the conversations more about others instead of me. When everything is all about you and nothing about your friends/followers, they will listen and follow along for a short while, but after a few days of all you and nothing about them they will move on and ignore you.
4. Mentioning Others Make You Human- When I look at your Twitter stream do I see you interacting & talking to others? Or is it littered with you spewing junk all over the place? If all I see is you spitting info without any interaction, it is a pretty quick indicator to me that you are someone that will be spamming my stream and also add zero value to me. Remember, you are coming into my stream of Twitter, it needs to be beneficial to me not you. When your stream shows that you will connect with me and do something valuable to me, I will want to pay attention to you.
5. Share Your Website- This one blew my mind yesterday in the spammers DM to me. He mentions that I should visit his blog for tips to help. But when I visited his profile, there was no link to a site. If you want to be helpful and give me advice, then you need to give me an avenue to travel to it. Just saying visit my blog or website won’t cut it if there is no link to it. Your profile on Twitter is a powerful part of your Twitter Account. Adding that link takes only five seconds and helps you to look like less of a spammer.
6. What’s Your Ratio? When I look at your profile, do I see you following thousands of people with a lot less following you back? When I see a profile like this, it screams that this is someone just trying to get more followers and isn’t very interesting. If you share things that are relevant & engaging, people will want to follow you and you will have many more following you than who you are following. Because of spammers trying to capitalize on this by following more and more people, Twitter installed some guidelines. You can follow up to 2,000 people initially. Then you are only allowed to follow 10% more than those who are following you. So if you have 10,000 followers, you can only follow 11,000 at any time. As your number of followers grow, you can also follow more again.
7. Skip the Selling & Gimmicks- You have minimal characters on your profile to share what it is about. If you are taking that premium ad space to try and promote a gimmick or something you are selling, you will be turning people off. The profile yesterday started out fine by saying that they provide Twitter tips/tactics and Social Media marketing which can be helpful. But after that, they added a gimmick to try and get more exposure and followers by saying “I promote people w/10k+, RT for an add to daily RT list. I follow back!” When I saw this sentence I knew instantly that this person was someone I did not want to interact with anymore. Then, I visited their profile on Twitter.com to see what other junk I may find.
In their background image, they had added the following text:
The timeline and the blog linked above my bio have lots of information about how to turbo-charge Twitter and make money online through Twitter and social media in general. If you retweet my posts about my blog, I’ll follow you, add you to my RT list, and give you a solo shoutout with lots of hashtags in it. I also add any users with 10,000+ followers that RT me to my RT list.
These type of gimmicks do nothing but remind me of MLM schemes of days before. Also, I don’t believe there is any value that a spammer can add to me by spamming a tweet with my username and “lots of hashtags in it.” Engagement is what makes Twitter and other social media platforms successful for your business. A great quote from John Maxwell comes to mind: If you are leading, but nobody is following, then you are just out taking a walk.
So, to keep yourself from becoming a disliked person on Twitter, please ignore the 7 practices listed above. Instead follow the habits of successful people on twitter like @lizstrauss and @chrisbrogan and you will see rewards come your way. I promise!