Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

Getting Started With Social Media: Twenty Tips

Friday, May 14th, 2010


If you are going to start using social media, you should at least have an understanding of what it’s about. Social media is not about the tools, the tools are only a facilitator.


Starting with the basics: Your Domain

1) Register your domain name, preferably a dot com extension. It’s also a good idea to register any variations and extensions of your domain name. Do it sooner rather than later, or you might be negotiating with a domain squatter, paying a premium in the future, rather than pennies in the present.

2) Find a good, reliable web host, and do your homework. Ask for referrals. If you are just starting out, it’s okay and economical to go with the cheap shared hosting plan, I.E Godaddy. Expect to upgrade to a mid level or higher hosting package within 90 days or less.

3) Install a blogging platform, preferably WordPress. Find and install the necessary plugins, themes and widgets. Installing a caching-system plugin is also a good idea. You need to optimize not only just for search engines, but also page loading time. Find a simple theme and build around it. KISS is always a good rule of thumb.

4) Customize  your permalink structure immediately. By default, WordPress uses web URLs which have question marks and lots of numbers in them. This will severely limit the amount of traffic you will see from search engines. Change your permalink formatting to the following markup: (day and name) yourblog.com/blog/2008/10/25/sample-post/

5) Create an about page. Tell people what your blog is about, and most importantly what you’re about. Put a nice head shot of yourself on the about or profile page. Make sure to include any awards or recognition that may be relevant about the author.  Give people an email address to email you, rather than an online form. Add your primary social networking badges and urls on your contact page. Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter should be a starting point. I would also create a blogroll. It can be on your sidebar, or a separate page, but it should exist somewhere on your blog.

6) Install analytic software, such as Google Analytics. It’s a good idea to have at least two stats packages installed and running. All analytic software is not created equal, they all have the same purpose, but vary in their reporting and tracking methods. Results will vary to an extent, comparison of multiple data sources is vital.

7) Give people the tools to promote your content.  Social promotional buttons make it easy for your visitors to Digg, StumbleUpon, and share your content. Bring the good word back to your blog. For instance, if you’re active on FriendFeed you should install the FriendFeed comments and likes plugin on your blog.

8 ) Establish a Feedburner account. Provide easy visibility for new RSS subscribers, use text links in addition to graphics to promote your RSS feed  You can also add an email subscription form on your site. People who do not use feed readers, will be emailed your latest postings.

9) Focus and be consistent with your blogging. Most professional bloggers get paid per post. Don’t be intimidated or feel forced to compete with them. Work at your own pace. Quality takes time, plain and simple.

10) Build as many social passports as possible. Passports are basically the profiles that you build on the various social platforms. These profiles all should be consistent, and most importantly point back to your blog or website. The goal is to create as much organic link juice as possible.  The core target is search engines. Consistently update these profiles, and use tools such as ping.fm to update them.

11) Leave thoughtful and constructive comments as much as possible on other blogs. Don’t stop there, post comments on Facebook walls, FriendFeed, and Twitter. This promotes good practices in social media, and it also gives you an opportunity for exposure and link placement. This can lead into  new networking opportunities and potential new friendships.

12) Establish and actively use your Google Reader account. This perhaps is the most powerful tool in any social media arsenal besides a blog or microblogging platform, such as Twitter. I will outline more in detail as we get further down the list.

13) Find the top 50 blogs in your space, and subscribe to their RSS feeds in Google Reader. Consistently be on the lookout for new blogs, and the voices behind them.

14) At this point you should already have a Twitter account. If not, establish one.  If your objective is personal branding, your Twitter username should be your name. Otherwise you could brand your twitter username the same name as your blog. Remember consistency with all your profiles is key.

15) Work smarter not harder. Use the tools to help you manage and stay ahead of the pack.

16) Listen to what’s being said about you.  Create Google alerts to monitor for positive or negative chatter.

17) Link out as often as possible when the circumstances permit it. If you are writing a post on a related subject, always look for a chance to reference a fellow bloggers work. This is not only good blogging etiquette, but will also put you on that persons radar in a positive way.

18) Build relationships with key influencers in all the communities and platforms that you participate on. Relationships take time to develop and grow in time.  One good example on how to do this, is listed above at #17.

19) The material that you create should be something that people want to share. For the most part, it should be relevant to your networks’ interests. Create newsworthy, thoughtful, intelligent content that has immediate usefulness.

20) Become an expert in your field.  Try to align and surround yourself with the best tools, and people to accomplish this. It’s all about networking, networking and networking. Take it offline when permitting. Organize local social media meetups and tweetups. Make it an effort to attend trade shows when possible.

Your Turn!

Image by mr.beaver under Creative Commons license.

Ten Tips for Generating Traffic to Your Blog

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

When it comes to just starting out with social media, there is no magic bullet for success. Nothing happens overnight, and if it does, it’s usually short-lived. Like anything else is in life, it requires consistency, patience and perseverance. This post touches upon ten general tips to help beginners generate inbound links and sustained long term traffic.

1) Ask for link exchanges:

It never hurts to ask first. This does not always work, but what do you have to lose? Most people are still courteous and do answer emails. Send an e-mail with a short personalized note asking for a link exchange. If you are just starting out, it’s good practice to link to others first, wait a little while, and then ask for reciprocation. Look at the site first, if they do not have a blogroll or links to other blogs, then don’t waste your time. If their not linking out to anyone else, then they probably wont link out to you, much less respond to your email.

2) Quality content is key:

You have heard this one a million times before, but there is a reason why. Your content defines you and the message you are trying to convey. Quality gets noticed above anything else. Create newsworthy, thoughtful, intelligent content that has immediate usefulness. Give people a reason to share and bookmark your site. Give people a reason to keep coming back for more. If your blog is informative, original or interesting, people will keep coming back. If your content is recycled or of poor quality, your fighting a downhill battle.

3) Separate personal from professional:

Maintaining a balance is very important. There is nothing wrong with straying off course every once in a while. If posts of a personal nature are imperative to you, and must be publicly published with some frequency, create a new blog for it. The occasional blog postings of baby pictures or a family outing is nice, they expose the human side of you, which everyone reading can in some way, shape or form, relate to. The same goes for bloggers who must auto-import bookmarks and tweets into their blogs, put it on a separate page, or minimize it to your sidebar.

4) Be a two-way blogger:

There are two types of bloggers. One way bloggers and two way bloggers. One way bloggers are basically just talking to their readers. While there is nothing wrong with that, the more experienced you get, the more you move up the food chain. By nature, this will lead to less interaction with readers. This is especially true when you are just starting out. It’s crucial that you be a two way blogger. Two way bloggers engage with their readership, rather than one way bloggers who just talk to their readers. This means if people leave comments, take the time to respond. Go a step further, if the readers who leave comments have blogs, visit them, find a topic worthy post and leave a thoughtful comment in return. Encourage your readers to follow you on Twitter, or FriendFeed, and be sure to reciprocate the following. See what we are doing here? We are taking an interest in the reader.

5) Encourage comments:

Interaction with your readers, by encouraging commenting, is very important if you are seeking sustained long term repeat traffic. Ask questions in your post. Ask the readers for additional tips or thoughts on the story subject. Do not require registration. Make commenting easy and not a chore. Shine the spotlight on your blog’s top commentators. Most third party commenting applications such as Disqus offer sidebar widgets that will allow you to do this. There areWordPress plugins available as well.

6) Empower your readers with the tools for promotion:

Let your readers promote your content by bookmarking and sharing your content. Add to your blog and postings promotional tools such as social sharing and bookmark services. I would recommend addthis.com, but there are plenty to choose from. Lets face it, people tend to be lazy, why not make it easier for them. Also make sure to clearly place RSS icons and text links on your blog. This makes it easy and also encourages people to subscribe to your blog.

7) Don’t forget SEO, at least the basics:

By default if you are blogging, you are somewhat ahead of the game in terms of optimizing your content for search engines. But regardless of what type of site you run, paying attention to the basics of SEO will generate more organic long term search engine traffic. You must ensure that your page titles, headlines, url formatting, and content, all contain the blog topic relevant keywords or phrases.

8) Establish and build power passports:

Just as you would need to establish your credentials in the form of a passport when flying to a foreign country, the same is true with the territories we embark on in social media. Passports are the social profiles that we create on other social networking sites and platforms. Other than a blog for the most part, these are our online credentials. Your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google profile are all passports. More importantly, they are all sources that generate search engine traffic. The sites mentioned above are all authoritative. As a result, links established on those services rank higher in the search results. Consistency is the name of the game. All of your online profiles should share the same information. Make sure to use the same usernames. If possible, use the same profile pictures, logos, and contact info. Always link back to your blog, and your other passports. Maintain a recognizable, uniform presence across all social networks, professional and personal.

9) Develop relationships with other bloggers:

Successful social media marketing/branding/self promotion or whatever you would like to call it, is always a two way street, never a one way. It’s actually about giving more then you get. When first starting out, it’s vital that you develop friends, a following and a network. This will take weeks to months, and that’s okay. As with life, offline relationships take time to form, grow and blossom, the same is true for online. Just because you decided to follow me on Twitter, or FriendFeed, does not mean we are instant friends. You have taken the first step, which is good because it shows that you have expressed interest in me or my content. The next step is staying on the blogger’s radar. Most likely some of the bloggers you decided to follow will already have an established and large active following. With that being said, sometimes you might need to stand out from the crowd to get noticed. The easiest way of doing this is by participating in the blogger’s circle. Leave thoughtful comments on their posts, retweet their content, and share their content. Fill the vacant slots on your blogrolls with links to their blogs. Lastly, show them some real link love. Write a blog post and positively link to them. Your network can make you or break you in some respect. Associate with the wrong people, and risk damaging your brand, and wasting your time in the process. Associate with like minded thinkers and doers, and propel yourself forward, it’s really that simple, I promise you. The name of the game is time. If you are willing to contribute and spare a lot of it, it will payoff in the end. These means do justify their ends.

10) Use your treasure chest wisely:

Learning about where your visitors come from and how they interact with your site is just as important as anything else. It starts with a good analytics package. The treasure, your traffic data, lies inside. Two points I will touch upon with this is the ability to track search engine traffic by keyword, and the ability to find anyone and everyone who has a link to your site. Establish relationships/linkbacks with the sites linking to you. You can also gauge, track and readjust any SEO marketing efforts. The driving point here is you need direct access to url referral tracking. Use widgets such as MyBlogLog to help build community on your site. However, it also serves another purpose, which is that it tracks and reports incoming urls to your site (how people got there) and what they clicked and viewed on your site. Be as informed about your traffic as you possibly can. Never be too afraid to step out of your comfort zone and experiment with new technologies.

15 Tips For Increasing Search Engine Traffic

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

1) Start with your domain name.

You have heard it before a million times, register a .com domain name. The domain spelling should be as equivalent to someone typing that word in a search engine. It should be relatively short and easy to spell as well. Try to avoid hyphens and or any unnecessary or unusual character variations. Most search engines still to this day give a lot more weight to .com extensions, as opposed to other TLDs. Keeping the domain name easy to spell and avoiding hyphens is more for branding purposes, than SEO. Search visibility can still be achieved with a confusing, long character riddled domain that makes no sense at all, but will someone be able to find it, and most importantly remember it without the assistance of a search engine?

2) Establish quality inbound and outbound links.

Search engines, more specifically Google, ranks your site based on the amount of inbound links it has from other sites. Spend time and get authoritative sites linking back to you. Inbound links from these sites are worth their weight in gold. Links from an authoritative site also influence ranking. More weight is given to these inbound links because these sites are considered a trusted and or leading source as they are considered the most influential on a particular subject matter, e.g.Wikipedia.org

3) Understand PageRank.

Websites that Google believes are important and influential receive higher PageRank. A Higher PageRank can influence better search results and rankings. Authoritative sites, for example, usually have a high PageRank. PageRank is worth taking note of, but should not be your main focal point. You can check a site’s PageRank by going here, or by installing the Google Toolbar.

4) Put relevant keywords on all of your Web addresses.

Make sure any content you publish on the web has the keywords of the subject or story headline formatted in the permalink/web URL. If your are writing a post, for example, about how FriendFeedwas just acquired by Google, you would format the URL similar to this, http://www.yoursite.com/friendfeed/google-acquires-friendfeed.html, or http://www.yoursite.com/google-acquires-friendfeed.html. Notice the sub-directory in bold has the keyword of the story subject. Take advantage of whatever you can to give as much URL mention of the target keyword as possible.

5) Headlines and page titles should always contain the target keywords.

In combination with having the relevant keywords in your URL, the same emphasis, if not more, needs to be placed on placement of keywords in your headlines and page titles. If you do no optimization at all, at the very least always practice these three guidelines. It’s also a good idea to put the relevant keywords of focus first in the headline and page title, and if possible somewhere in the start of your story content. Failure to practice these guidelines will leave your site buried pages deep in the search results, rendering it almost nonexistent, at least to the search engines.

6) Start a Blog.

Blogs are a major source and very relevant source of information for millions of people daily. Blogs are also influencing consumer’s decisions to buy products. Think about the last time you searched for something on Google. There is a high probability that you found your information on, or were referred from a blog. Search engines, specifically Google love blogs for the rapid amount of fresh and timely content they produce. Setting up a blog is very easy, and if tweaked correctly can be a powerful tool for search engine traffic generation. Configure your permalink structure immediately after installing your blog. Spend five minutes tweaking the basic admin settings. I would also recommend installing and using plugins such as the “All in One SEO Pack” available for WordPress. Now you can focus on producing the quality content that will get your site linked to and noticed. Give and get as much “link love” as possible. Become an expert in your field and let your content reflect that. Use the power of RSS to convert that search engine click into a return visitor.

7) Use keywords as anchor text when linking.

Anchor text is weighted highly in search engine algorithms and subsequent search results. Anchor text gives the user and search engines descriptive information about the content of a hyperlinks destination. Use Anchor text keywords, especially as often as possible when linking to pages. Avoid using “click here” at all costs, this will do nothing to increase or improve visibility.

8) Install Web Analytics software.

Flying blind is foolish. You need to first measure, and understand your traffic patterns and behaviors before you can seek to improve it. Installing Google Analytics should be your starting point.

9) Utilize Sitemaps.

Sitemaps, are basically a list of all the pages pertaining to a particular site. This protocol allows you to notify Google about URLs on your website that are available for crawling and indexing, that may otherwise have not been discoverable by Google’s normal crawling process. They also should help with getting your site crawled in a more timely fashion.

10) Use Google Webmaster Tools.

Google’s Webmaster Tools, allows you to see your website the way Googlebot sees it. The tools provide data on finding out which sites link to yours, finding search queries that list your site as a result and finding which of your site’s pages are indexed, and also showing you any errors Google encountered while crawling your site. Those are the core features, but there is more under the hood. The goal is to make your site as Google friendly as possible. The more data you are armed with and utilize, the better your chances are for higher visibility in search results.

11) Produce and publish quality content with some frequency.

Write quality content and publish on a regular basis. Sites that publish more frequently are seen as more reliable than sites that seldom do. This also helps for you to increase the amount of content on your site, which in turn yields more indexed pages, which then yields more visibility, increasing the quantity of search clicks to your pages.

12) Use Headline tags.

Headline tags (h1, h2, etc.) are a great place to use your targeted keywords, phrases and secondary keywords. Search engines recognize that headline tags are more important than the surrounding text, therefore they assign greater value to keywords found within them.

13) Don’t forget about the other engines.

Google, the gorilla, produces the biggest quantity of search traffic for the majority, but don’t forget about YahooBing. It’s at least worth the effort to stay current on both of their publishing guidelines. Yahoo has a resource for web publishers, as does Microsoft to help you better optimize your pages for their engines.

14) Consistency is the name of the game.

Focus on what works and run with it. There is not one single magic bullet for achieving better search results. It’s a combination of these practices and understanding what criteria the search engines look for when indexing your pages. Search is all about optimizing for the relevant keywords or phrase, master this practice and it will pay off. Don’t expect results instantly. It takes time to build up your content, establish inbound links, tweak and re-tweak.

15) It gets better by using social media.

Guess what? If you are active in social media, you are probably already ahead of the game. Social networking profiles such as FacebookLinkedIn, and Twitter all get favorably indexed, and always rank on the top of the search results. This is especially great if your goal is for personal branding. Being active and maintaining consistency, should easily allow you to own your name in Google. Social media is probably the most invaluable tool you could use for traffic generation, if executed correctly. User generated content and the applications that power them such as, blogs, wikis,video, social networking sites, bookmarking, microblogging, etc are the leading mechanisms for search engine traffic, and will only increase as time goes on.

Restaurants Need to Be Using Social Media

Monday, October 12th, 2009

Restaurants using social MediaVarious trades and industries are using social media for marketing, creating brand awareness, reputation monitoring and consumer engagement. The restaurant industry is no different. By definition restaurants are very social offline, but what about online? This got me thinking about how restaurants can utilize social media platforms for marketing, brand monitoring and beyond. In talking with a potential client, who is a major player in the restaurant industry, I outlined the following initiatives and talked about how they can and should be using social media.

Chances are that if you are a restaurant, especially a well known, recognized one, people are talking about you online. Make no mistake that there is chatter happening. The question is what type of chatter is it? Good, bad or in between, and how do you plan on dealing with it?

Note: Although this post is about how restaurants can use social media, the tactics and strategies I outline can be used for any industry.

Twitter Chatter

Look and listen first: who is talking about you and what is being said?

Talk is happening everywhere, forums, blogs, comments, review sites, Twitter and so forth. Starting with the basics, Google Alerts should be setup to track any keyword/brand mentions.

Google Alerts

The next step is monitoring Twitter. Twitter is the real time watering hole for all types of chatter. It is often the first place that a rant or rave will be mentioned, and from there it can quickly go viral in no time. Once something starts to spread on Twitter, it’s often hard to do the right damage control. It’s imperative that Twitter is monitored heavily and should be priority number one for brand monitoring.


Twitter Search


Automation is key, let the tools do the work. Set it and forget it.

Search Twitter for your brand’s relevant keywords and set up RSS feeds to track them in Google Reader. You should also utilize Tweet Beep, a free service that will automatically email you hourly updates when a specific keyword or URL is mentioned on Twitter. This is a tool I heavily rely on for brand monitoring, it works extremely well and allows me to bypass going to Twitter’s website to search.

Conversations are everywhere, that’s where BackType fits into the mix. BackType is a free service that indexes millions of conversations from blogs, social networks and other social media platforms. You can search the BackType website or set up email alerts, it’s not real time but it’s close enough.

BackType

These are at the very least the minimum amount of tools you should be using. There are plenty of other tools out there, but they all pretty much do the same thing. My personal preference is using Google Reader or NetVibes as my social media dashboard. The other route is paying for a reputation monitoring service. One that I use and highly recommended is Filtrbox.com. The service monitors a wide scope of the social media sphere, and sends me daily email reports with mentions of the brands that I’m tracking. They are reasonably priced compared to their competitors as well.

Additional platforms and services to be monitoring:

The services I mentioned above cover most of the social media landscape, but not everything. It’s also a good idea from time to time to scan the services mentioned below. The last three on the list monitor pretty much the same social media platforms. They are popular, their user interfaces are different, and they are definitely worth a notable mention.

Now that you have looked and listened, it’s time to learn:

So what about all this Twitter chatter?

Negative Brand Chatter

People who are talking about you on Twitter or any social media network are mainly two things, existing customers or potential customers. Follow back everyone who talks about your brand in a positive manner. After all, these are brand evangelists, it’s word of mouth marketing, and it’s not costing you a dime. Reciprocation shows that you as a brand have taken interest in your customer. Be responsive to this and when applicable engage them in a conversation, or at the very least send them a quick thank you note. You should also identify and develop relationships with your loyal brand endorsers because these people are essentially an extension of your online marketing dept. In addition to engaging these people, reward them with a gift card to your restaurant. Tokens of appreciation go far and are always remembered. If you think they are talking now, just wait until that gift card arrives in the mail. The positive stuff is pretty much a no brainer, but always remember social media is all about the conversations, unfiltered at that. Responding to negative chatter is equally important as well, use these social media tools wisely to handle crisis situations, and avoid a PR nightmare. In the online environment, word spreads at an alarming high frequency, and once it does, there will be very little that you can do no matter how much you try to correct the situation.

Twitter for the most part is a customer service tool as I outlined in the previous paragraph, but it can also be used for marketing.

  • Announce the new menu or drink specials of the day
  • Promote a happy-hour event or special restaurant event
  • Start a promotion called Twitter Tuesday (or tweet ups)
  • Solicit ideas for new menu items or specials of the day on Twitter.
  • Offer a special prize for people who follow you on Twitter by a specific time and date, to be entered to win a free bottle of wine or gift certificate.

Brand your restaurant’s menu and marketing material with your Twitter account url. Take it a step further and have your Twitter url printed on customer receipts. If you are a QSR (Quick service restaurant) brand your social profiles at your POP (Point of Purchase).

Start a company blog:

rss_icon_orange

A blog can be used for the same things as Twitter, only in much greater detail. Twitter has limitations where as a blog has none. Pictures and videos are just two examples. Use your restaurant blog to showcase customer testimonials, pictures from a specific event, menu items, food & drink recipes, employee bios and over all anything and everything that relates to your restaurant. The possibilities are endless on what you can use your blog for. A suggestion I give to clients in the industry is to start a weekly “Ask the expert” series on your blog. If my restaurant was a Sushi restaurant, I would encourage my customers to ask a Sushi related question and let our star Sushi chef answer them on the blog. The other purpose of a company blog is to generate new content, content that will get indexed in search engines and give potential new customers a way to find you on the web. Every blog post is a gateway into your website, so be sure to optimize your content with the correct keyword branding, post titles, tags and so on. Encourage your patrons to subscribe to your RSS feed and to share your blog’s content. Install ShareThis so that your patrons have an easy way of distributing your blog content.

Reviews, Reviews, Reviews!

Chances are your restaurant is already on review sites like Urbanspoon and Yelp. If it’s not, be sure to encourage your customers to post a fair review. Ask your brand endorsers on Twitter to leave a review, as well as customers in your restaurant. Remember nowadays everyone is a food critic. These online review sites are a big source of customer information and they are global reaching. There will be negative reviews, not everyone can be pleased, no matter the caliber of service you provide. If there is a negative review left, try to reach out to that customer and correct the situation if possible. The goal with a negative review or reviews is to get them buried on page 10. The only thing you can do for this is to provide good service atmosphere and food in the hopes of getting good reviews in front of it. Your brand endorsers will always leave a great review, encourage all of them to visit these sites and post a review as often as possible.

Food is visual, visual, visual!

Your restaurant should have a YouTube channel and photo sharing channel, ideally on a site like Flickr. These social media platforms have two important things, search, and passionate communities. You can use video to showcase restaurant events, provide a visual of your existing menu or new menu items. Do a biweekly show on some of the menu items you serve in the restaurant. Showcase your kitchen talent and break open the kitchen doors. The possibilities are endless, use your imagination. These videos can be embedded on your blog and shared throughout the social media landscape. The same goes for photos. Take pictures of your guests, let them share their experiences with images on your blog. Take pictures of your menu items, signature drinks, kitchen staff, and everything that represents your restaurant.

Embrace and prepare for mobile, it’s here and it’s not going anywhere:

With the advent of the iPhone and the mobile digital revolution, it’s essential that you pay attention to this. Starting with your website, make sure its optimized for mobile devices. We talked about review sites earlier, well guess what, they have iPhone applications, and they are very popular at that. That’s why it’s essential that your restaurant be on these sites. The bigger picture depending on the type of restaurant you operate would be to develop an iPhone application, one where people can easily view your menu options, contact information, and more specifically to place orders. Just look at how much success Pizza Hut is having with their newly released iPhone application, with over 100,000 downloads in the first month. The bottom line is embrace mobile every which way possible.

Get as much data as possible from your customers:

Online this mainly refers to email addresses. Your website should be collecting people’s email addresses. Encourage your existing customers and potential customers to sign up to be notified about any upcoming events at the restaurant. Send out a monthly newsletter informing customers about what’s happening at the restaurant, new menu items, special events, new store openings and so forth. Reward people for subscribing to the newsletter with a gift card or free glass of wine when they come in. Include quality information in your newsletter such as the recipe ingredients of an upcoming or existing menu item, maybe accompany that with a link to an online video or photographs of the dish. I have only touched upon the surface here, but I’m sure you get the picture by now.

In closing:

I could go on and on with this post but I will stop here. Restaurants have an advantage over a lot of other industries that use social media. Why you may ask? Social media is about story telling and visuals. Food is very visual, both physically and emotionally. Food evokes conversations, experiences, memories, and stories that people share. This is what social media is all about.