EBSI Main Blog

Why is using twitter such a necessity?

When people discuss twitter, there are different types of moods that float around the room. Some are negative, and some are positive. When asking those who don’t use twitter, their answer is along the lines of -“I don’t want to know when someone is eating pizza or going to the bathroom.” Whenever I hear that excuse for not using twitter, I have to chuckle. Anyone that actually knows what is going on in the current media, or that follows the trend that World Wide Web is naturally taking knows that this excuse is a crock. Twitter is starting to add some more speed and spin to the way the World Wide Web is currently moving. The question is, do you stand on a tin can and the let the wind knock you down, or do you run with the wind and see what natural beauties the world wide web/social media has to offer you?

The reason why I bring up twitter in the discussion of social media is because twitter is currently a rising and growing trend. Most people who don’t use twitter tend to discredit and write it off. Those who ignore it are living on the edge. Twitter has changed the basis of the communication industry in a very undeniable way. But as for one person, a business owner or employee, can twitter help you? The answer is of course yes!

From a business perspective, twitter has become a good and powerful customer support tool. Many big Fortune 500 companies are using it to help their customers and gain new ones. Besides it being a customer support tool, business’ can also use it to send out updates, new releases, links to products and to blogs. But what if you don’t have a big company, and you’re a small business owner, or have an Etsy page, can twitter still help and benefit you?

Twitter can help you, if you know how to use it right. If you have a small business, and your sending out updates about you eating pizza, then no, twitter cannot help you, and you’re a lost cause if you think people are interested in that. But what can one do to get followers, and to get traffic to their business page? The answer is TWEET TWEET TWEET! Send out lots of updates with valuable information with links to your blog or other sites. People need to see that you’re not a spammer, that you’re real and that you’re involved in your online community and industry. Use specific keywords that are relevant to your target audience. If you are in real estate, use the word real estate in your tweets, or the word housing market and so on and so forth. Having specific keywords makes your tweets easier to find, and then boom, you get followers and creditably.

Now this success is instant. It is not going to happen over night, or in two days. It will take time. Often people will discourage if they don’t see instant success, but Rome was not built in a day, and who ever believes it was is a liar. Building success takes time, building anything requires time and patience.

In the blogging world, there a list of unwritten laws. Nothing is a commandment, but there are rules for success and credibility. These helpful hints/rules/guidelines have been provided by David Risley (http://www.davidrisley.com/2008/11/28/50-rapid-fire-tips-for-power-blogging/)  

1. Use Wordpress. No other platform is as flexible with all the plug-ins, in my opinion.
2. Post often. I usually default to one post per day, when I’m asked. I try to do at least one per day on this blog, except for weekends.
3. Use catchy blog post titles. Put yourself in the shoes of a person who is casually surfing the Internet, seeing your post along with hundreds of others. Will your blog headline stand out? Copyblogger is an awesome source for information on writing.
4. Ask open ended questions. One of the best ways to invite commentary on your posts is to ask for it. Ask your readers questions and tell them to answer in the form of a comment.
5. Comment on other blogs – often. I actually maintain a separate folder in Google Reader for relevant blogs I want to follow more closely than others. And, on those blogs, I comment regularly whenever I have something to say.
6. Use Twitter. You’ve GOT to be out there, being social. Friendfeed, too.
7. Use Twitterfeed to pipe your latest posts into Twitter. But, don’t ONLY use Twitterfeed. You’ve got to be a real person on Twitter, first and foremost. Twitter should not replace RSS.
8. Make your RSS feed obvious, above the fold, and preferably use the orange RSS icon.
9. Provide an RSS-to-Email option so people can subscribe to your latest posts without being forced to use an RSS reader. Many people still don’t use RSS. Feedburner provides a free RSS-to-Email service.
10. Use images in your posts. Images communicate on aesthetic wavelengths words cannot.
11. Use header tags to separate sections in your blog posts, where applicable. H1, H2, and H3 tags. And use good search engine keywords wherever possible in those headers.
12. Structure your blog posts for easy scanning. Use header tags, lists, etc. Avoid long sentences and long paragraphs.
13. Avoid Myspace-style blog designs. What I mean by this is super BUSY designs with too much on screen, animated graphics, etc. These things make your blog truly suck and makes your content too hard to pay attention to.
14. If possible, use a custom Wordpress theme. It is getting to the point where people can recognize cookie-cutter themes. It is OK to use one, but at least modify it so that you have a unique header design.
15. Start your blog’s mailing list as early as possible. The sooner you start, the longer you have to grow your list and, trust me, that list can be used to make money later. Jeremy Shoemoney made this mistake. John Reese used to hound him about building a list. When he finally got around to it, he realized how important it was.
16. Research and choose your mailing list option correctly the first time. I recommend Aweber. What you choose is up to you, however moving a mailing list later can be a huge pain. I know from experience.
17. When choosing a topic to focus your blog on, two things should be considered: (1) Your interest in the topic, (2) How MARKETABLE your topic is.
18. Learn to SELL. The way to a full-time income by blogging is to learn how to MARKET and sell things using your blog. Yaro Starak does a good job of selling via his blog, for example.
19. Don’t discount Facebook. It is a powerful networking tool and you should take the time to build your network, just as you might on Twitter.
20. Create a Facebook page. On Facebook, create a page for your blog or yourself and invite your readers and Facebook friends to become fans. This page can be your blog’s outpost on Facebook. Be sure to import your blog posts as notes.
21. Don’t Be a Me-Too Blogger. You don’t want to become a copy-cat news blog, where you type news-style posts about what is happening in a saturated market. In technology, this is common. Offer something unique that cannot be found everywhere else in your market.
22. Learn to think about your blog as a business. The blog is a promotional and delivery mechanism to your ultimate product or service.
23. When writing your About Page, pay attention to what you write. Don’t just rattle off some dumb, cookie cutter facts. Your About Page should tell a story of who you are and why your blog is worth reading.
24. Do lots of videos. Use TubeMogul to publish them in as many places as you can. And make sure your blog URL is not only in the video, but in the text description that accompanies the video.
25. When making videos, be REAL and be personable. Your videos are an important component to your blog’s brand. Don’t waste the opportunity.
26. Link to other, related blog posts regularly in your own posts. Not only your OWN posts, but the posts of others.
27. Remember, blogging is a SOCIAL business. Be accessible to your readers and proactively get out there and talk with other people in your niche.
28. If you can afford it, travel to blogging conferences. Not only can you learn a lot, but socializing with successful people often breeds so much motivation and success in yourself that is simply beyond words.
29. Write an e-book, create some videos – whatever – but the idea is to create something which is of value to your readers on your subject, and have it available to SELL to them on your blog.
30. Get involved as an affiliate and start linking to products relevant to your posts using your affiliate links. You are providing relevant links to your readers (valuable) while potentially making some money.
31. Don’t Post Low Feedburner Counts. Do not show your RSS subscriber count unless you have a high enough number (at least a few hundred). A low number acts as social proof that your blog has no readers, and that’s not good.
32. Install Popularity Contest or some similar plug-in which ranks your posts based on popularity. Whether you display this information in public on your blog or not, knowing which of your posts are most popular tells you that that particular subject material works and you should probably do more of it.
33. Put relevant keywords into your blog’s title. Use All-In-One SEO to have more control over the titles across your blog.
34. Use a Photo Gallery. People dig photos, so a photo gallery can be a great component to your blog. If you use Flickr, check out the Flickr Photo Album plug-in for Wordpress.
35. Create an RSS widget for your blog on WidgetBox and make it available for your readers to embed on their own blogs if they so choose.
36. Spend some time creating some killer posts for your blog, the link to them somewhere so that new arrivals can quickly see your best work. It is your best stuff which is going to sell them into becoming a subscriber.
37. Make Sharing Easy. Put options on your blog for your readers to share your posts across social media. ShareThis is a great option for this.
38. Share and share alike. If you submit your own posts to sites like Digg or StumbleUpon, be sure to also submit other posts. I might even recommend a 10 to 1 ratio of other people’s posts to your own posts. You do not want to develop a reputation on these sites as somebody who only submits their own content.
39. When you write a post for your blog, aim to be helpful. You want your visitors to come away with a solution to the problem they arrived with. Chris Brogan does so well because his posts are truly helpful.
40. Read other blogs often. When starving for ideas to write about, go to your RSS reader and read related blogs. Often, your own post can be a response to a post on another blog. In fact, this is usually a good idea.
41. Train your readers to do what you want, if needed. If you’re in a market where the people will not know how to use social media, RSS and some of these other things that help promote your blog, TRAIN THEM. Write posts or do videos which show your visitors how to Digg a post, use StumbleUpon, how to use RSS, etc. Perhaps you can educate them and they’ll become part of your promotion army for your own blog.
42. When starting a blog, decide on it’s mission. Your posts should, for the most part, center around a specific theme if you want your blog to really take off. If you run a personal diary kind of blog, where you write about anything that comes to mind, your blog traffic will always be limited because your blog will never attract any particular segment of people. Stay on topic. If you have no specific topic, that’s fine, but realize your blog is going to be more a hobby than a business at that point.
43. Don’t overload your blog with javascript widgets. These things slow down the load speed of your site. In fact, just recently I had to get rid of the MyBlogLog widget on this blog because it was having some effects on page loading time.
44. Use Analytics. I personally use Google Analytics as well as the Wordpress.com Stats plug-in on this blog.
45. Use Windows Live Writer. It is the best blogging client program out there. Even though it is a Microsoft product and a Windows-only product, it is also better than any Mac blogging client I have tried. And it’s free.
46. Be yourself. I believe it is a good thing to show personality on your blog. Don’t be a fake. People can see right through it. Chris Pirillo draws people to his blog and Ustream feed almost solely on personality alone.
47. Don’t write like you’re writing for Britannica. You want your spelling and grammar to be correct, but be colloquial. Talk to people like you would normally talk to people, not as if you’re writing a PH.D. dissertation.
48. Link To Your Social Profiles On Your Blog. Link your various social media profiles right on your blog so that your readers can connect with you outside the confines of your blog.
49. Go where your readers are. Every market is different. When I blog about blogging, I know most of my readers are pretty adept online and probably hang out in the social media space frequently. If your readers are young, they might be on Myspace. If they’re Linux nerds, they may be in the Ubuntu forums. Regardless, you need to maintain a consistent presence in the spaces your readers congregate. Be an authority and be helpful, and traffic will be drawn over to your blog.
50. Equal time reading and writing. You should probably spend just as much time reading and learning as you do writing for your blog. This is how you expand your knowledge, become a better blogger, and get new ideas for your own site. Blogging isn’t all about you. Remember that.

Having a business card is a good way to give out your information for fast networking when having human contact. But what should we have on our business cards? What should they look like?


We know the basics, like Name, company, position, phone number, e-mail. But what about your twitter name? Or your own personal blog address?


These things are good to have on business cards because it allows people to stay connected to you in more than one way, and it also allows them to see that you are active in your in online community and industry.

(From David Meerem Scott’s Book The New Rules of Marketing and PR)

A lot of today’s companies and nonprofits have highly structured online media rooms with loads of information available in various formats. You must know that your buyers are prying around your organization by visiting the media pages on your Web site. Everyone, your current customers, partners, investors, suppliers, and employees all visit those pages.

When people want to know what exactly is going on with your organizion or company, they go to your online media room. Sometimes the news release section is the most visited page, but it depends on your company and product. The secret for having and making a successful online media room is…TO MAKE IT FOR YOUR BUYERS! They are what keep you going, and should be your main focus.

Having an online media room should be an obligation for your organization if you don’t have one already, and it is critical for developing media relations. If done right, an online media room will make the bored journalist who is snooping around your page into an interested writer who wants to know more, and will most likely write about you in their upcoming article. Most media rooms do not have very good content. And example of a good online media room is Intel. http://www.intel.com/pressroom/

A golden rule to know and remember is that you control your content. Not your IT guy, or the company nerd, but you are the one controlling the content. Start with your needs and the needs of your buyers and journalists, not the needs of the board or people who own the Web site. Start with a needs analysis. Take time to analyze how the site fits into your larger marketing, PR, and media relation’s strategy. Who are the potential users of the online media room and what content will be valuable to them? Carefully identify and define your target audiences and then make the material that will reach those groups of audiences that you are trying to reach.

Some of the best online media rooms are built by people who understand the value of being able to be found on a browser, using rich keyword copy. Browsability is so important. It makes it possible for people to stumble upon your page or information when they weren’t even looking for it. Sometimes people make their sites trendy or cool looking, and focus more on search engine optimization (SEO), but more so than not the forget to make it good for browsing too.

A good thing to have in your online media rooms is a press kit. A press kit is various information about your company that can help investors, customers and journalists. Company history and timeline, executive biographies, investor profiles, board of advisor’s or board of directors bios, product and service info, info about analysts who cover your company, and links to recent media coverage will help your media kit save journalists time and tedious effort.

“This is very important. Embrace bloggers. Bloggers who cover your company visit your online media room. Encourage them by responding to inquiries quickly, by including bloggers in your news release distribution e-mail list, and by granting them interviews with executives upon request.” – David Meerem Scott

Ch. 16 in the New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerem Scott talks about The new rules for reaching the media. For a while now, some PR people have been getting it wrong. Most journalists say that the PR profession is synonymous with spammers. The tradition, wicked tradition of PR people, is to blast out news releases and blindly pitch to hundreds and thousands of journalists at a time. That gets annoying guys.

The PR spam approach simply does not work anymore. In fact, it brands your organization as one of the annoying people, the bad dudes. No one wants to be known as that. Know that journalists want to find you. If you have great content on your Web site and your online media room, reporters will find you via search engines. Try to think about reaching journalists with ways that aren’t just one-way spam. Or you could even think about starting a real relationship with reporters by commenting on their blogs or sending them information that is not just a blatant pitch for your company.

But through all of this, don’t forget to pitch bloggers! A mention in a widely read blog by your buyers, reporters and editors read these blogs too for story ideas and try to understand early market trends.

Here are the new rules of media relations.

• Nontargeted, broadcast pitches are spam
• New releases sent to reporters in subject areas they do not cover are spam.
• Reporters who don’t know you yet are looking for organizations like yours and products like yours-make sure they will find you on sites such as Google.
• If you blog, reporters who cover the space will find you.
• Pitch bloggers, because being covered in important blogs will get you noticed by mainstream media.
• When was the last news release you sent? Make sure your organization is “busy”
• Journalists want a great online media room
• Personal relationships with reporters are important
• Don’t tell journalists what your product does. Tell them how you solve customer problems.
• Does the reporter have a blog? Read it. Comment on it.
• Before you pitch, read or listen to the publication you are pitching too

You need to treat bloggers like you would treat reporters. They are important. Send them information that will be useful to them, and they will hook it up. Pitching influential bloggers as you would pitch mainstream media is an important way to get noticed in the crowded market place of ideas.

How do we pitch? When your organization appears in a story, not only do you reach the publications audience directly, but you also can point your prospects to the piece later, using reprints or web links. We need to:

• Target one reporter at a time. Focus on them and their publication. Care about them.
• Help the journalist to understand the big picture.
• Explain how customers use your product or work with your organization.
• Don’t send e-mail attachments unless asked.
• Follow up promptly with potential contacts.
• Don’t forget, it’s a two-way street. Journalists need you to pitch to them.

                                                

The great Wendy over at Blue Lily Photo came to us looking for a new brand for her blooming and booming photography business and we were glad to oblige.

Check out her site here

1. Appeals to Target Audience

It is important that the colors, images and overall feel of a website appeal to the audience the customer is trying to target

2. Contrast

Contrast serves two important functions on a website. First, having contrast (in general) makes something easier on the eye and second, having contrast, particularly on a navigational and other “clickable” elements makes it easier for the end user to understand what to do when he/she visits the website (but tons should stand out, etc.) Its usually an issue.

 

3. Creative Design & Imagery

Good design, creativity and imagery is very important in creating the look and feel of the site but more importantly a well designed website will have a greater chance of attracting and retaining repeat customers.

 

4. Dynamic Content

Static websites (brochure sites) tend to be boring. Dynamic sites incorporate blog entries, rotating banners, etc. Dynamic content makes a site more appealing…which will ultimately attract repeat customers.

    

5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

A Beautifully designed website is worthless unless people are visiting the website. SEO is the product of optimizing a website so it becomes more search engine friendly.

 

6. Simple Easy-to-Use Navigation

Every website should have a purpose. More often then not, that purpose is to drive the customer to do something. Maybe you want the customer to purchase something. Maybe you want the customer to sign up for a newsletter. Having a clear navigation scheme is critical to having a user-friendly website.