The Evolving Internet Marketer

Social Media Maven, Dr. Sally Witt, is Going to Interview Me on BlogTalkRadio

I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Sally Witt, social media maven extraordinaire, at a Social Media Intensive sponsored by the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the National Speakers Association.

Dr. Sally is a true dynamo and just a fantastic resource for using the social web to promote yourself, your passions and your network globally.

I’m excited that Dr. Sally has asked me to be a guest on her popular BlogTalkRadio show so later today (January 30, 2009) we’ll be talking about resources and strategies for unlocking the power of social media for you. If you can’t catch the live show, you’ll be able to listen in later at the BTR archives.

The Power of the Tweet: Using Twitter to Powerfully Promote Yourself…

Social Media Maven, Dr. Sally Witt, gave me keys to her blog and let me have a go at guest blogging. Since she’s going to be interviewing me (on using social media) later today (January 30, 2008) on BlogTalkRadio, I thought it would be a good opportunity to fire off a post to get the ball rolling.

I actually think it’s one of my better efforts and, for now, I invite you to read The Power of The Tweet; Using Twitter to Powerfully Promote Yourself and Others at DrSallyWitt.com.

4 Simple Rules for Creating Effective Twitter Posts

Twitter is, in essence, a headline service and, like every other form of digital communication, it’s all about the power of that headline or subject line to compel you to take action. If it doesn’t compel it won’t get acted upon.

In reality Twitter is a continuous news feed where the new’s items are whatever the twitter poster thinks is valuable enough to throw on the feed. If you want to catch your follower’s attention and, in particular, if you want them to click through to something else (or @ or RT) then you need to consider if your post (a.k.a. the headline) provides a compelling enough call to action.

Here’s an example:

The first image is a Twitter post from a friend of mine and someone I follow. He recently left a tweet promoting his latest email newsletter (ezine).

He doesn’t say what his ezine is about and, unless I know him and even if I do, he probably hasn’t provided me enough information to compel me to click through to the link he’s provided.

The next image is how I changed his message when I retweeted (RT) it; in order to give it exposure to my network.

I’m not going to say that this is a brilliant Tweet but I looked at his email newsletter, captured the gist of his message and gave a reason for people who employ young workers to click through. As my friend speaks to companies that employ lots of young workers, that’s the audience he wants to reach.

Creating Effective Twitter Posts

Here are 4 simple rules for creating compelling Twitter posts:

1. Make your tweets compelling if you want to inspire action. Think of the tweets you reply to (@) or retweet (RT). They inspired you in some way to invest the time in reading and responding. You can use a tool like Twitter Grader to find out who the Twitter elite are in your area, or across the board, for inspiration by example. Apply that call-to-action mentality to constructing your twitter posts.
2. Offer more value than you receive. Sure, it’s perfectly fine to post, “Just had a great cup of coffee.” but it’s better to post, “Just had a great cup of joe at Joe’s Cafe in Columbus. If you’re in town, it’s worth the trip.” Add a picture you took at Joe’s and uploaded using Twitpic to make the post even more valuable AND compelling!
3. Ask for Retweets, nicely. The reach of any given post is limited to the number of followers you have accumulated times the number of followers you have who choose to RT you to their network of followers. You can increase the number of RTs, hence the reach of your post, by simply adding “Please Retweet” to any message that you’d like passed along. Now, seriously, only make the request on stuff you feel is valuable enough to RT.
4. It’s okay to Repost. If you have a question you really need answered or information that you strongly feel deserves the broadest possible audience then, by all means, repost it. Rule of thumb (I can’t remember whose rule or whose thumb says reposting every 8 hours is about right. After all, so many twitter posts stream by unseen or unread so chances are your twitter posts will be exposed to a new audience each time you repost.

If You Need Help

There are so many great resources on the web or contact me, I’m happy to help. tom.gray AT gemsolv DOT com. Oh, and please feel free to follow me on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/tomjgray!

Website Brilliance: How to Use Worst Practice Web Design to Generate Controversy, Conversation, Traffic & MONEY

*** WARNING! Click the Image at Your Own Risk! ***

Too many websites are like Muzak; kind of safe, kind of boring, kind of forgettable. None of these terms apply to Ling Valentine’s LingsCars.com. It’s busy, crowded, eye-achingly garish but, in a train-wreck sort of a way you can’t help but be drawn in by its break-every-rule-in-the-web-design book approach.

And with a reported 500+ links on the home page alone it’s impossible not to find something to click on.

Does it work? Apparently pretty darned well. Ling is reported to be one of the leading car dealers in all of Britain (where she’s located) and draws in over 70,000 unique visitors a month.

By the way, I was introduced to Ling and her crazy site by this post at Ninja-nerd.com: Website Atrocity – Things you Should NEVER do to your Web Site.

Three Things You Should Do

I recommend that you …

1. Take a trip to http://www.LingsCars.com. Don’t just pop-in, say ewww, and bounce out. Scroll around. Click a bit. Take a real tour.
2. Read the Website Atrocity post AND read all the (65 as of this writing) comments. You’ll see some real gems, most agreeing with Ninja-Nerd Daiv Russell’s view of ‘atrocity’ but a few contrarians (me included) who wish we were bold enough – and creative enough – to be as ‘bad’ as Ling. By the way Ling Valentine – in the digital flesh – posts a couple of must-read comments herself. Very cool.
3. Weigh in with your take. Come back here to comment or leave your views at Daiv’s place but make sure you add your voice to a very interesting debate.

Oh, and if you’re aware of any other sites that are successful despite their flaunting of accepted web design dogma, throw a shout out to them as well.

Surviving the Economic Storm: Advice from Team Double-Click

Good advice on surviving tough economic times from the virtual assistant folks at Team Double-Click® …

I do want to draw special attention to one thing …  We didn’t stop marketing or selling.  Let me say that again.  We DIDN’T STOP MARKETING.  In fact, one of the shifts we made was to take budgeting away from backend systems and move it over to sales and marketing.  I attribute our ability to continue to grow and thrive during this economic mess, not only to cutting back in some areas, but also to stepping up our marketing.

Now’s the Time to Market More

Marketing can be even more effective in these tough times as competitors cut back their budgets or fall by the wayside. Less noise in the channel. And companies that appear to be prospering (because they continue to market) provide a perception of success that’s all the more attractive in these doomy/gloomy economic hard times.

Now’s the Time to Market Smarter

But, be prudent. Negotiate everything. Look for performanced based models both online and off and be sure that whatever you invest in is trackable. No more advertising on the back of cash register receipts – it’s not trackable. Code all your advertising so that you know when people respond where that response originated. If you’re using PPC strategies or you’re driving people from offline media (print advertising, broadcast, direct mail) then be sure and drive prospects to a dedicated landing page, not your home page. Use Google Analytics to track the conversion rate of your Pay Per Click campaigns. If you’re using a YellowPages or magazine ad or using postcards be sure and have the responder mention the ad by rewarding them with a special discount or premium.

Look for opportunities to expand the reach of your message without spending a whole lot (or any) additional money. Investigate and invest in local search, use Craigslist, link up on LinkedIn, Twitter & claim your space on Yelp, start a tips or howto email newsletter with signups on you website if you’revirtual and your counter or tabletop if you’re not…

In other words, dollars are precious so don’t waste any of them and, if you don’t know whether your marketing/advertising is working or not, then you’re wasting your money!

How Are You Surviving in This Down Economy?

Leave a comment with your best ideas to survive a down economy.

Marketing Tactics to Use for Biggest B2C Payoff

High ROI B2C Marketing Tactics

• Paid Search,
• SEO
• Email Marketing

Aren’t all these tactics supposed to be dead?

Social Media Networking: The Formula for Success

I recently made a presentation on social media marketing where I presented the following as the formula for social media marketing success…

P⁴ + V = V^x

Where the components of the social networking equation equal:

P = passion, the passion for your field, expertise, life. If you lack passion it will show!

P = presence; you have to fully inhabit the social media space to fully benefit. It doesn’t mean that you have to stake your claim on every social network space available. But you do need to be on the ones that matter in your field and to the audience you seek to connect with.

P = participation; you can’t just lurk, you have to join the conversation and not just to say Hi! You need to add value. You need to say, “… great post/comment/tweet have you considered this/here’s 3 more items to add to the list/I totally disagree and here’s why…” Otherwise you’re just a ‘yes’ person and a waste of comment space.

P = persistence; you can’t tune in every now and again, post a few blogs, tweet a few posts, you need to be there on a regular and consistent basis or you’ll be ignored. The good news is that there are plenty of gadgets, tools, plug-ins and mashups available to help you in this task.

V = value; this is the key, the more value you add to the mix, the more value you’ll receive in return which is why the result of the formula is V^x where ^x is a variable that’s determined by the value you’ve contributed to the social media conversation. The more value you add, the more value you’ll get in return. It’s an exponential thing!

Need a Math Tutor!

I advise clients on social media networking and how to give in order to get. Contact me if you need a social media tutor. Contact with me at 303.882.8252. Email tom.gray[AT]gemsolv.com. Connect to me on LinkedIn or follow me at Twitter.

Comments Please

What’s your formula for social media networking success? Leave your 2 cents below!

Image Credit: Superbokehtheorie : Originally uploaded by eriwst

Build Site Traffic by Blogging

One of the best ways to build traffic to your web site continues to be with a consistently published, compelling blog. I was forced to lay off blogging for over a month due to circumstances I couldn’t control. The upshot, my site’s traffic tanked. After a couple of weeks back in the blogging saddle my traffic, over the previous, non-blogging period, increased by almost 1600%. Yeah, I know what your thinking, “he went from 1 to 4 readers, big deal.” Ha ha.

Blogging Builds Website Traffic – The Proof is in the Google Analytics Pudding

Okay, enough about me, the following chart illustrates the effect blogging is having in building website traffic for a client who I recently worked with to setup a Wordpress blog. She’s still working to find the right editorial mix and she’s not blogging enough but the proof is irrefutable that when she blogs, her traffic soars. You’ll notice that her traffic numbers aren’t huge but then again her site sat virtually stagnant for a number of years with little or no search engine optimization.

Is a 510% Increase in Website Traffic Significant? Doh!

The chart above compares the current month with the previous month just to more graphically illustrate the spike that posting to her blog had on daily traffic versus a ‘regular’, non-posting day. In general she saw a 380% increase in site visits on the days she blogged and a 359% increase in page views. When you subtract her blog posting days from the equation, the numbers are even more dramatic with her site traffic showing an increase in visits of 560% and 510% in page views!

Adding Social Media to the Mix

Our next step is to increase her overall social media marketing effectiveness by integrating her social networking presence on sites like LinkedIn and Twitter with the content she produces on these sites. By bringing her Twitter feed into her blog, for example, and feeding her blog content through her LinkedIn profile her traffic will increase that much more.

The Ripple Effect of Social Media

The beauty of an integrated social media marketing approach is that you can create these outgoing content ripples that expand well beyond your content’s original entry point.

The truth is that this site doesn’t have a lot of traffic … yet. But, it has about 3 times the amount it did before the site’s owner began blogging. As we integrate the website’s content with that generated throughout her social network and increase the frequency of publication, her traffic will increase at an exponential rate. The ripple effect will kick in and the same amount of effort will result in an ever-widening scope of distribution; and influence.

Lessons Learned

The web, like nature, abhors a vacuum. In the case of a website that vacuum translates to stale content and static websites. The easiest way to correct this is to establish and regularly contribute to a blog. And, while your at it, start posting to Twitter and claim your space on LinkedIn, MySpace, Naymz and other relevant social networking sites.

Need help? Call or email me. That’s what I do. 303.882.8252. tom.gray @ gemsolv.com.

What’s Your Experience?

Leave a comment about your success, or lack thereof, in the blogosphere or social media space. Don’t just stand there. Join the conversation!

Who’s the King of Social Networking Sites?

I recently posed the following question on LinkedIn:

There are literally thousands of social media and social networking sites available to the business community. I’m wondering what you feel are the 3-5 most valuable for developing business opportunities?

If you can respond with a link to the SM/N site and a very brief supporting reason, e.g., twitter.com – closed loop system that rewards the value you put out there with follows.

I’ve gotten a number of great responses and one, from Carson Poppenger, got me thinking about the popularity of Facebook vs. MySpace vs. LinkedIn vs. Twitter vs. ecademy (a site that Sally Witt turned me on to.).

The following charts shows the acceleration of Facebook’s growth vs. the apparent stagnation and decline of MySpace. The second chart, Average Stay, starkly highlights the more, in my view, alarming decline of MySpace over it’s other social networking neighbors. It’s lost over 59% in this key metric whereas everyone else has experienced growth from LinkedIn’s 11% to ecademy’s huge 121% increase in time on site.

And what about Twitter? Think it’s not for real with unique traffic growth approaching 753% and an increase in average stay of almost 43%.

Compete.com Social Network Unique Visitors Comparison

Compete.com Social Network Average Stay Comparison

Alexa Social Network Site Comparison

If a picture is better than a 1,000 words then this chart from Alexa tells quite the tale. King MySpace is dead (or, more accurately, deposed); Long Live King FaceBook!

These graphs certainly tell me where I need to concentrate my social network marketing efforts. FaceBook, which I’ve paid nominal attention to up until now, is going to see a bit more of me. You may wonder why I’ve ignored Facebook. It’s the perception, as the father of two active Facebooking children, that it’s more of a social site to discuss bands, boyfriends and other social minutiae. It’s the perception that if you want to do business then stick to the business focus of sites like LinkedIn, ecademy, Xing and the like. Truth is that Facebook’s 59,675,502 unique visitors in December, 2008 probably represent quite a few business opportunities. And, with traffic over 6 times the combined 9,620,409 (9,349,996 to LI) visitors to these 3 business sites, it just makes sense to get over my millenial bias and take the leap.

By the way, I’d mentioned Carson Poppenger’s inspiration earlier on. Here’s a link to his post on Social Media Traffic. Our posts are similar but he’s got a lot of great things to say on social media and marketing in general on his Marketing Crackerjack blog.

What’s in Your Social Networking/Media Toolkit?

I invite you to leave a comment listing your favorite social networking and media sites and, if you have specific success stories on business opportunities uncovered through your participation, we’d love to hear them!

I Won’t Be Ignored, Says Andy Wibbels. Yes You Will Be Says My Outlook.

Blogging guru and author of Blogwild!: A Guide for Small Business Blogging, Andy Wibbels was given his comeuppance today by my Outlook client.

In Andy’s defense, I am a subscriber, my Outlook felt he was being a bit pushy. (Cue Alanis Morissette.)