Social Media Advisors – Page 56 – We are Social Media Advisors, a Social Media Speaker, & Custom WordPress Site design.

How to Use Twitter (Part 3) – The Johnny Carson Principle

This is the third post in a series about how to use Twitter to form relationships for business and personal connections (which could lead to business, too, right?).

One of the quickest ways for me to explain how to properly use this platform is to use a real-life analogy. Pretty much everything you can do in person while networking can be done online now, with the notable exception of a handshake or hug. Video conferencing even allows you to make eye contact with the person you’re getting to know.

If you’ve read Dale Carnegie’s classic “How to Win Friends and Influence People”, you may recall that the first of his “Six Ways to Make People Like You” is this one:

Be Genuinely Interested in Other People

In fact, if you spend your time asking questions of others at a networking event rather than talking about yourself, they will later describe you as one of the most interesting people they met that day. Simply put, being interested makes you more interesting.

When I’m working with real estate clients or interacting at a networking event, I have used a “talk show host” mindset for years. I ask questions and sincerely listen, in an effort to learn more about them and their needs. If you want to see a true master of this craft, watch Johnny Carson via DVD or online sometime. Here’s a link if you would like to see a good example of his skills in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu9cSMy-k4Q (interviewing a then-22-year-old Michelle Pfeiffer).

One of the other reasons Johnny Carson had such a long career was because he was a tireless promoter of others. His show provided a stage for comics who were virtual unknowns and he could instantly put them on the map. Over the years, he met pretty much everyone who was worth knowing in entertainment.

With that in mind, when you’re using Twitter or any social media platform, think about ways to help promote other people and their work. If you retweet interesting and entertaining stuff, those whom you’re helping will take notice. DON’T overdo it, however, because you want your efforts here to be authentic, not forced.

I tweet more than average. Okay, I tweet a lot more than average. I have over 29,000 tweets at this point. That being said, I ALWAYS notice when someone takes the time to retweet what I have shared. I try to remember to thank them each time, too, although I don’t always remember to do so. Consequently, I would be more willing to help someone that I already “know”. Become a known entity.

As I mentioned before, this is the type of thing that will come in handy for you and your business in general, not just online.

In a nutshell, if you take the time to help others get noticed for their work, blog, event, or cause, and you will be noticed, too. Don’t focus on the superstars exclusively – they have ample support. Don’t forget to help the people that seem worthy of attention who don’t have a huge following already. That being said, doing both will help in the long run.

Thanks for reading!

Here are the first two posts in this series if you’re interested:

How to Use Twitter – Tip #1 – Start or Join a Conversation

How to Use Twitter – Tip #2 – Panning for Gold Nuggets

How To Use Creative Commons Photos- For FREE!

How To Blog, Social Media Advisors

How to Use Creative Commons Photos- The Why

We all understand the importance of adding photos and labeling them properly into our blog posts. Adding just 2 images can increase the time someone stays at your blog by up to 300%! That means if the average time is around 30 seconds, we can get someone to stay up to 3 minutes by adding them. This is an important thing to note because not many people can read 500 word blog posts in under 30 seconds.

The reason this works is because consumers scan posts for the important points. If a photo is there, that consumer’s eyes are drawn to the photo and they will study it. If the photo is good enough to get their attention, they will read the content.

How to Use Creative Commons Photos- The What

There are several ways to get photos for your blog. Some are legal, and others are not. Let’s first address the not so legal ways. Many times when I ask a client where they found the photo for their blog, they say that they simply did a Google search and the photo appeared. They liked it, so they copied & pasted it into their post. Whatever you do, don’t copy & paste a photo from the a website without permission! When you copy & paste an image that you do not have permission to use, you are begging for a lawsuit to come your way. I have seen and heard countless horror stories of people who have been sued for several thousands of dollars for doing this.

The second is to take the photos yourself. We all now own some sort of digital camera or smartphone that has a camera built in. Use those to snap photos yourself and load them into your blog. You don’t have to be a professional photographer to get good pictures for your blog. But what do you do in instances when you don’t have a photo of your own? You can turn to photo sites where you can purchase the photos for a few dollars each, or if you are on a tight budget, you can use a creative commons licensed photo.

What are Creative Commons photos? To understand completely, visit their site here & read what is CC? Basically, they are pieces of content that someone else has agreed to allow others to use under a common agreement that you will give the credit for the piece to the originator through proper recognition as required. Giving proper credit normally means placing a link back to the photographer giving them credit for the original work.

Creative Commons Photos- The How To

So how exactly do you go about finding the photos and using them properly? Well instead of writing it out, I decided to do a short video which I have placed below. Simply follow the steps and you will be well on your way to finding great photographs to use in your blog posts.

I hope this helps you to find great photos for your upcoming works that are both functional & free. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me for more help.

Photo Credit by Trekkyandy

Social Media Contest Winners

Social Media Advisors

Last month our friends over at Uprinting gave us some special prized to give away in a contest. First off, I want to thank everyone who participated in this contest and shared some really good information on Social Media. We had stories about everything from why social media is a must for the future to your business, to posts stating how stupid they felt Facebook and Twitter were and how they are such a time waste.

After some serious deliberation done by myself & Jason, we were able to come to a conclusion of who are contest winners were. So, it is with great pleasure that I announce the winners of our contest! Each winner will receive 500 double sided business cards from Uprinting completely free!

Our first winner is (drumroll….)

Lisa Ludlow Archer! Lisa shared a great post about how she loves using twitter and other social media platforms to enhance her business. She also shared some great words about some of the people that have helped her to get to where she is now. The article was an enjoyable read. If you want to see what she said, you can read her post titled I Need New Business Cards!

Our second winner was Keith Lutz from Marvin, NC. Keith’s article titled “What Would You Do For a Klondike Bar” filled with patronizing us made us laugh hysterically. That combined with the solving of Jason Crouch’s infamous “thumbs up” photo mystery has left the internet in a state of pandemonium. Since Keith finally revealed the secret that Jason made me swear to secrecy, I guess I can now finally share why all the photos have a thumbs up.

When Jason was at training camp for the Dallas Cowboys, back several years ago, he was playing defense against Michael Irvin. When Michael went on a cross route, Jason tracked with great speed and was able to deflect the pass away. Unfortunately it was a 90MPH bullet from Troy Aikman that nearly took his thumb off. After hours of surgery, the doctor was able to at least fix his thumb to where it is today. So no matter what Jason tries to do with that hand, it always is giving you a “thumbs up.”

Thanks again to all that entered our contest and participated. Also congratulations to our winners! Be on the lookout for our next contest!

Increase Blog Traffic- Understanding Your Keywords

Social Media Advisors

Today we continue our series on how to blog and increase your blog traffic by discussing the subject of keywords. In case you missed my last post, you can read it here and pick up a few more good nuggets on how to increase your blog traffic.

Keywords are by far one of the most misunderstood components for any blogger. Usually they can pick out the few big keywords for a product/service, but have a very hard time finding the balance of terms that will rank well in the search engines as well as deliver a good amount of traffic to your site. While it may be easy to dominate the first page of Google for a term like: “best real estate agent in Myrtle Beach South Carolina,” if that term receives less than 10 visits per month, is it really helping your business to spend time writing on that term? Granted, the leads that come directly from that are going to be very solid, your number of them will be few & far between.

On the other end of the spectrum, if I am in real estate, do I really want to try & rank for terms like Myrtle Beach Homes or Myrtle Beach real estate? Those terms receive high amounts of traffic and and are going to be very difficult to garner page one results without a lot of work, content creation, and probably even hiring an SEO company. Not to mention the quality of your lead is not very good either. These broad general terms can generate lots of traffic, but very few transactions. I remember an agent once that ranked for the top of the SERPS for a major term and got hundreds of leads each month. He knew they were a waste of time, so he just handed them off to newbies in the industry and if they struck gold, collected a nice fat referral check.

So what should I be looking for in regards to keywords to increase blog traffic?

Take a look at this graph first to understand what section of keywords we are targeting:

We want to target the keywords in the green section to hopefully return the best results. This means the terms that are showing a few thousand searches per month but not those with hundreds of thousands of searches. They will deliver more traffic than those in the yellow with the quality of lead being better than terms in the red section. These terms are going to take a little bit of work to get to page one of Google, but will also send a few hundred hits to your site each month. The leads will be a higher quality than the red section of our graph. These people are not doing just general searches, they are doing searches that are more specific to a service or product and therefore are a little bit better quality. When you see your site taking over page one of Google on these types of terms, that is when your phone will start ringing and sales will begin to skyrocket.

Determine Top 5 Keywords to Increase Blog Traffic and build from there.

The other day I was having a coaching session with a client, and we were developing the best keywords for his business. He has invented a great piece of fitness equipment and hired me to assist him with his onlie presence. I asked him to give me his top 5 keywords and from that we began to develop an in depth spreadsheet of keywords. One of the keywords he gave me was “cheap workout equipment.” I entered this term into Google Adwords and began to review the results. The term “cheap workout equipment” is only being searched around 1,000 times per month, but a minor adjustment to “cheap exercise equipment” takes that number up to 8,100! So, before you write your next post, take a few moments to determine what types of keywords to use. A slight alteration can be the difference between 10 visits to your site and 1,000.

If you have any questions on how to increase your blog traffic through selecting the right keywords, feel free to ask in the comment section or contact me directly if you would like assistance determining the best keywords for your business.