Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Posted on August 25, 2010 - by Kwame

How To: Tips for Youtube Video SEO

Online video marketing is one part of content marketing that needs to be taken seriously if you really want to effectively communicate your brand online. The best advice most experts don’t give about online video marketing is, “learn to use SEO techniques in your online video marketing campaigns”. Video is getting big and some businesses have been able to go viral with videos shared around the web, especially on Youtube. We’re going to look at how to achieve a similar fate using video SEO techniques.

Even though we will be focusing on Youtube, the process can be applied on other popular video sharing sites.

Now, let’s begin.

The Best Video SEO Advice Ever : 

When you start uploading a video on Youtube, you’ll see something like this:

 

So basically, you’ll type in your title, in the “Title” column, your description in your “Description” column and your tags in your “Tags” column. These are the three most important areas as far as Youtube SEO is concerned.

When a user searches for a video, results are shown with the search’s keywords bolded in the “Title” and “Description” columns of the results. For example, in the screen capture image below, I performed a search using “flat abs” as my key phrase:

You can see that the search’s term (or keywords) was bolded in the “Title” and “Description” columns of the search. Youtube’s search system delivers results based on the relevancy of the titles and descriptions given to videos, in regard to the keywords or phrases used in the search. This is why it is very important to optimize these areas when uploading your videos.

Your titles, descriptions and tags should contain keywords that are both relevant to your content and also relevant for getting viewers via Youtube’s video search system. This will ensure that you reach lots of viewers to watch your videos whiles staying on topic. It’s a tricky thing to achieve. Don’t twist your titles or descriptions just so you could get lots of views for your videos whiles misleading people with a video that is not directly related to your title and description.

If you find this technique daunting, then the best thing for you to do is to do your keyword research. This will help you find the best keywords relevant to your niche, for your video marketing.

How to find the Best Keywords for your Video:

Let’s make some assumptions here. Let’s assume we’re going to promote a video about getting flat abs and see how we’ll go about doing the research for it. With that in mind, let’s begin.

1. We’ll start by listing keywords that relate to getting flat abs in a text editor. So we’ll have keywords like: flat abs, abs workout, six pack abs, sexy abs, abs fitness, workout abs … etc.

2. Open a tab or new window in your browser and go to Youtube.com

3. Open another tab and go to Youtube’s Ads Keywords Tool

4. Select one keyword or phrase (in our case, let’s start with “flat abs”), then, copy and paste it into the Youtube.com search bar and click on search like so:

5. Next, go to the tab where you opened the Ad Keywords Tool. You can change your country and language settings for more insight and if only you want to target a particular country or language. By default, the country is set to “United States”. Put in your keyword, and then click “Get keyword ideas”. This snapshot will help you understand further:

6. Since I didn’t change any of the settings, this is what I got after clicking on “Get keyword ideas”:

7. From the results, you can see that the search term (or keyword/phrase) is searched 6,200 times a month on average. Mind you, this is the search volume for searchers living in the United States.  6,200 is not a huge number but with the right optimization, you can reap great results from this. Now go to your search results from your search on Youtube.com

8. Analyze the competition by looking at the number of results returned (in the top right corner) for the search term and the number of video sharers using the search phrase in their titles and descriptions. Use this snapshot as your guide:

9. Our results show that there is less competition for the search term as only 5,240 results were generated. Some search terms return millions of results so 5,240 is pretty a good sign that there’s a chance to get many viewers. In the result above, we can see that all the videos have been viewed a great number of times in a short period. Also, we can see that not all the results have the exact search term, “flat abs” in their description and title. An example is the second video result which has just the keyword “flat” in its title and description. Considering all the factors mentioned, “flat abs” is a good keyword.

10.  Let’s move on to our next keyword, “abs workout”. A search for the term on the keyword tool gave the following results:

11.  The results show that 156,700 people in the United States alone search for “abs workout” videos every month. Now if we go to Youtube.com and search for “abs workout”, we will get this result:

12.  Notice the number of times each video has been viewed. Video number one has been viewed over 5 million times over 2 years. The other results are equally as massive. Here’s a snapshot of the competition for this search term:

13. The snapshot shows us that there are 303,000 videos competing for the search term “abs workout”. This is also good (but not great) considering that the term is searched 156,700 times every month in the US alone.

If you want to reduce the competition, and reach more viewers, combine keywords.

The Art of Combining Keywords in Your Video’s Title & Description:

Combining keywords in your titles and descriptions will go a long way to help you get more viewers for your videos. That’s just about how the first video result in our “abs workout” search got over 5 million views in two (2) years. Let’s look at it again and start decoding:

Glancing at the title and description, one will notice that the uploader, “passion4profession” has packed in some keyword combinations. Keywords used in this video’s title and description are: “abs” (US monthly search volume: 613,000. Competition: 422,000 videos), “fitness” (US monthly search volume: 246,800. Competition: 777,000 videos) and “workout” (US monthly search volume: 1,652,800.Competition: 439,000 videos).

Taking a further look at it, examples of keywords that will qualify for search phrase combinations are:

“abs fitness” (US monthly search volume: ? (not available). Competition: 263,000 videos) “six pack” (US monthly search volume: 240,000. Competition: 289,000 videos), “six pack abs” (US monthly search volume: 27,800. Competition:93,100 videos), “abs workout”(US monthly search volume: 156,700. Competition: 303,000 videos).

Now go to Youtube.com and let’s do a little more analysis. You’ll see that when we enter the keyword, “abs”, “passion4profession”’s video shows comes up as the third (3^rd) result.

Also, when we search for “fitness”, the video comes up as the first video result.

Search for the other keywords and you’ll see that the video shows up in the first 20 results. Most of the time, it is ranked number 1.

Having a combination of keywords like that helps spread the competition across different high volume search terms.

Final Thoughts:

• Skim through the suggested keywords to find other words that you forgot to add to your keywords list. You can also use the related search suggestions found right below the search results after you perform a search. Most of these suggestions will do good for your video campaign. 

• Apart from keyword combinations, keyword optimization also works best when you use basic copywriting techniques. This is because your titles and descriptions are just like classified ads and they should sound or look interesting to attract people to view its content.

• Share your website link in your video. Even better, divide the video into two parts: part 1 and 2. Then share part one on Youtube and share the link to part two at the end of your video. This will get people to check out your website, thereby increasing traffic.

• Ask your viewers to subscribe to your channel. This will ensure that you have people ready to view your new videos as you post them.

Conclusion:

Optimizing your video’s titles and descriptions = getting more viewers= getting more subscribers to your Youtube Channel= getting more targeted traffic.  I recommend you start experimenting with your own videos.

If you loved this post, share it and subscribe to our RSS feed.

I’ll love to hear your comments and questions in the comments box below.

Posted on July 26, 2010 - by Kwame

Understanding Social Media: The LIFE of Social Media Marketing

Do you have an easy means of reminding yourself of what social media is about? There are so many posts on this subject.

I’ve decided to summarize it so you can easily remember it for your business purposes.

Social media is about L.I.F.E. with your prospects on social sites.

Now, let’s define what L.I.F.E. means in social media. I’ll show you what each letter means; of course, starting with L and ending with E.

• ‘L’ is for Listening: Your prospects are out there. Are you listening to them? You can use these any of these social media listening tools: 10 tools for listening in social media.

• ‘I’ is for Innovating: What’s your unique feature? Have you blended that into your social media strategy? Innovation sparks interest. Here is a resource article for innovation: Using social media to drive business innovation: insights from Guy Kawasaki and Target’s Michael Axelin

• ‘F’ is for Friending: Friending means building relationships. You’ve earned some prospects (fans or followers) so the next thing to do is invest in them. Chris Brogan shared some tips on this: Deepen Your Networks.

• ‘E’ is for Engaging: Start conversations about your brand. Join conversations concerning your brand. Be present wherever your brand is being talked about. Kyle Lacy wrote a great article about how to engage: 20 Ways to Engage Contacts in Social Media.

In summary, social media is about Listening, Innovating, Friending and Engaging with your prospects.

Next time you want to remember what social media is all about, think, L.I.F.E. The meaning will let you draft a better social media strategy.

Posted on July 20, 2010 - by Kwame

10 Ways to Generate Leads With Social Media

How many leads do you generate every month with social media? If you’re not getting enough leads, today is your lucky day.

After reading this article, you’ll have 10 ideas you can use to increase your website traffic and leads. You may already know some of the ideas but trust me; there will be some you don’t know. So make sure to read through all the ideas and let me know if you’re already using any.

Let’s begin.

1. Create a digital product, write guest posts and offer your product for free in your byline. The product could be an eBook, infographic, themes or any other digital product. Make sure you have your website links in the document. You can also encourage people to share it and put a link back to your site. Tip: A little bird told me that Infographics spread like wildfire .

2. Search Twitter for discussions related to your niche. If there are any questions, answer them with an @ reply and provide a link back to your blog post or any relevant page on your site. This tip doesn’t necessarily grow your traffic but it sure will give you quality leads if done right.

3. Turn your blog posts into slide presentations and upload them to slideshare and scribd. Put your website and social media profile URLs in there so people who view your slides can pay you a visit. This is a cool way of repurposing your blog posts and regaining some value back.

4. Plan a series of Videos and use Tubemogul to post them to the various video sites. Make the videos as interesting as possible. By interesting, I mean enlightening, funny, … something people will remember. At the end of each video, ask people to go to your site and sign up for your newsletter in order to receive new video alerts and other updates from you.

5. Answer relevant questions on Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers, Yedda and Answers.com. Ask people to Google “your business name or any keyword you rank #1 for” and click on the first result. You can post your website URL straight away but do that less often so you’re not seen as a spammy contributor to these sites. One more thing, answer the latest, freshest questions if you want to see any relevant increase in traffic.

6. Post short useful articles on forum sites relevant to your niche and leave a link back to your site.

7. Create an eBook. Take a sample out and make a PDF out of it. Share it on Lulu and Docstoc. At the beginning and end of the sample, provide a link to a page where people can put in their email addresses to receive the full book/report. Encourage people to share it with their friends and colleagues.

8. If you want to rank high for any keyword or phrase, make that phrase your anchor text in your guest post bylines. For example, say you want to rank high for the key phrase, “brand communication”, you use that as your anchor text and put your website link there. The higher the PR of the blog you are posting on, the better your chances of ranking higher. Do this consistently for all guest posts you write and use the same key phrase until you are on page 1 of Google’s search. I am on page 2 of Google right now for the key phrase, “brand communication” and I only used that as my anchor text in just one guest post. When I use it again on a top PR (page rank) blog, I will rank even higher. Try it for yourself. By the way, this is a neat trick I learnt from Brian Clark’s “How to Create Compelling Content That Ranks Well in Search Engines”. Download a copy on this page: SEO Copywriting Made Simple.

9. Answer Questions on LinkedIn. Connect with other professionals. Ask your past customers for recommendations. Jason Falls wrote an article on how to make LinkedIn answers part of your routine so head towards his blog to read about it.

10. Run a survey on your blog, Twitter and Facebook and share the results with other people. Explain the methodology and findings of your survey and publish the results in PDF format and share it on your site and other sites. Send a message @ everybody who participated in the survey on Twitter with a link to the results. You can also contact bloggers in your niche and ask them to share your findings. Tamar Weinberg shows you how to pitch superstar bloggers here: How to Get an Influencer’s Attention.

Phew! That was a short ride . Okay, seriously, you should apply these tips. You don’t have to implement all at once. Bookmark this page, start with 2 or 3 strategies and come back later to try out the other ones. Some may work for you and some may not.

Remember, social media is a lead generation tool and newsletters are your lead collection and sales tools so have your newsletter signup boxes ready to collect email addresses. Prepare some bait for the stubborn ones .

What strategy do you use to build more leads, links and traffic?

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Posted on July 14, 2010 - by Kwame

25 Blog or Newsletter Topic Ideas For Company Bloggers

Do you get stuck when it comes to writing new blog posts or newsletters for your business? Everybody does at a point in time.

I have compiled a list of 25 topics you can use as a basis for writing your next 25 articles.

In this post, I have substituted “community” to replace “customers, clients and subscribers”. So when you see ‘community’, it may mean any of the three words.

Fasten your seat belt and let’s begin ;

1. What we did when customer ‘X’ …; Who is customer X and what did they do or say about your products? Where did they do or say it and why did they do or say it?

2. Product/service updates we’re working on. So your already awesome products are getting even more awesome features. Your community needs to know about this.

3. Why our competitors can’t compete with us. Show your customers your remarkable side. A truly remarkable company is almost like a monopoly. Do you agree?

4. What our customers complain most about and what we are doing about it. Your customers are not happy about … and what you’re doing to make it better.

5. What our customers praise us for and what we think about it. Your customers say you are the best at … Your products helped them to … And you say you …

6. What we wish our customers will help us achieve more of. In other words, you will be telling your customers that you need their help and they will be glad to help. At the end of your message, ask, “will you help us?”

7. About our product’s raw materials. What important roles does each of your raw materials play in your products? Educate your community on what they are using.

8. How our company is using social media. Social media is going to help you do what? Use the right words to build up your content. Instead of saying it will help you sell more, say; it will help you reach more customers. If you say ‘sell’ your message will sound self-centered. It’s cool to see more people will be taking the same actions your community took when they first met you.

9. What features we have on our Facebook fan page. So you have analytics, a cool video, cool design and a newsletter on your Facebook fan page. That’s so cool. Before saying “go and take a look at our fan page”, tell them the cool things you have put on there. Most will go and really take a look.

10. Videos we shared on our Youtube channel this day/week/month/quarter/year. Okay, so you’re on Youtube and you have a channel. Have you told your community about it? Many people don’t. Instead integrating, they disintegrate. Tell your community about your Youtube channel and the videos you share there.

11.What people say @ us on Twitter. Show your community that there are conversations going on with you on Twitter. Some will automatically follow you and say something @ you.

12.Our best selling items and why they sell so well. You have bragging rights. Use them. Want to sell more of your products, brag and sell more.

13. What lessons other businesses can learn from us. Flaunt your strengths and achievements to your community. Add that you couldn’t have done it without them.

14.What our last survey showed us about our customers. You surveyed your customers, now show them the results and let them know what you will be using the results for. As a customer, I hate it when I participate in a survey and don’t get to see the results. Don’t be mean. Please share .

15.Why and how we chose our brand ambassador. What are the responsibilities of your brand ambassador(s)? How did you choose them? Choose your brand ambassador from your own customers please.

16. Who our partners are and why we partnered with them. Tell your community why you need your partners and why it matters to them.

17. How we built our communities on social media and networking sites; Show them how you gathered all your following. Show them how you cheated or failed to cheat . Show them some stats to serve as social proof, if you numbers are high.

18. How and why we got featured in the news or a top blog. Show your community how likable you are. This will let them take you serious and they will see you as an authority in whatever you got in the news for. Link to the news source.

19. New businesses/ services we are building. What’s happening in production? Give just a little detail to build anticipation.

20. When our next contest will be hosted and what we will be giving away. Build anticipation and get your community coming back to see if there are any updates concerning the competition. WildfireApp can help you run a fancy, buzz filled contest campaign.

21. What your company’s customer traditions are; Maybe you give away a bundle of products for cheap during your birthday or you organize meetups during your birthday for your customers to meet each other or you … etc.

22. How to use ‘your product’s name’ to … Show your customers different ways they can use your products. If your products are customizable, show them how they can customize them.

23. How we celebrated our birthday in-house; What did your company’s employees do on your birthday? Share some multimedia will you .

24. How and why we choose our customers for our adverts; Show your customers the reason why you care about them.

25. Customer interview #1; yea, interview customers on your blog, ask them what they think about your products, how they use your products, what they will like to see in your products, etc. This will serve as testimonials and will add some humanness to your website/blog. Reward interviewed customers with a heavy discount or free stuff from your product line. They will send the word out and … you know what will happen . Don’t forget to change “#1″ to “#2″, “#3″ and so on as you interview more customers.

That was fun. Now you have 25 topics to write on. Get started today. Do you see yourself using these post ideas on your blog or newsletter? What do you normally struggle with when it comes to blogging or writing newsletters? Share your views.

Posted on July 12, 2010 - by Kwame

5 Misconceptions That Confuses Businesses About Social Media

Do you really understand social media? Understanding social media is not a difficult thing at all. However, some businesses still can’t figure it out. They can’t figure it out because misconceptions are spread all over the internet concerning social media.

Getting more involved in social media now is better than waiting until later because it will get to a time that it will seem more confusing and even more difficult for businesses.

If you hold any of the beliefs below, do away with it and jump on board before you miss the train.

• Misconception #1: Blogging is a tool: Blogging is a business strategy, not a tool. A blog is rather the tool used for blogging. A blog also helps you integrate your other strategies like social media marketing by linking to other strategy enhancing tools like social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Youtube. Yes, social media marketing too is strategy. All the strategies you use in your blogging and social media strategies are just sub-strategies of blogging and social media which are your main strategies for success in achieving this or that.

• Misconception #2: Social Media is about numbers: Is it of essence to build 40,000 Twitter followers and 20,000 Facebook fans who don’t buy from you? Social media is about relationship building and influence. Sorry, but having a large number of followers doesn’t mean you are influential. One-to-one relationships build influence. Good relationships later lead on to influence. If you have 200 Twitter followers who listen and engage with you, you stand a better chance to get a sale from them than from 40,000 people who don’t send you @ messages about anything of your business’ interest. It’s best to follow the people you want to talk or listen to (a.k.a. your target audience) than follow just anybody.

• Misconception #3: Automation Means Using Tools: No, measurement rather means using tools. Automation means your fans and followers will do your work for you. They will be your evangelists and will recruit more fans and followers for you. The number one quality required here is patience. If you rely on tools to build your fans and followers, you will most likely recruit web robots who also want you to buy something from them. Would you rather waste time gathering status update spectators or you want to utilize your time to build a more targeted following?

• Misconception #4: Be present everywhere: So you’ve been told to have a Twitter profile, a Facebook fan page, a Youtube channel, a LinkedIn group, Digg profile, etc. Well, are your customers gathered there? Do you have the resources to manage your business on every social media and networking site? Before you put your business on any social networking site, be sure of what you want to achieve with that profile; customer service, more leads or maybe sales. After setting your goal, stick to it. If at any point you find any trouble getting the results you want, perform a social media audit.

• Misconception #5: There is no ROI: If you are not getting any ROI, then you are either doing something wrong or you’re not measuring things right. Dell has been able to make over $6.5 million on Twitter alone. Avaya also made a $250,000 sale using Twitter. Small businesses are also using Twitter to bring in some ROI using social media. To make social media marketing work for you, you need to communicate your intentions well with your followers. Dell’s @delloutlet clearly tells everyone they will be selling. We all know what an outlet means. If all you are going to do with one of your Twitter accounts is to just give discount coupons, tell your customers about it. So anybody who follows you knows you’ll be tweeting coupons from time to time. Secondly, ROI is not just about money or profits. If your aim is to get leads or newsletter subscriptions, your ROI will be the number of leads you collect. Then your ROI on those leads will be the number of leads you convert to sales. Social media can be a channel for both lead collection and direct selling. You need to communicate it well. Plan your campaign well. Remember, the most important thing in marketing is communication so don’t forget to plan about what you want to communicate to your followers.

Now that we have gotten these wrong ideas taken care of, where are you headed to with your social media marketing campaign? In your experience, what other misconceptions have you found?

Posted on June 10, 2010 - by Kwame

How to Audit Your Blog: 20+ Questions to Ask Yourself

Blog auditing can be explained as an examination of all aspects of a blog to measure its effectiveness. It is a way of finding and fixing faults concerning your blog. It is an essential technique for general blog improvement.

You will need to take a pen and paper or open a word editor to take notes and answer the questions in this article.

I have divided each the audit questions into easy to adapt categories so that you will be able to understand the audit better. You should also divide your audits into these categories.

Now that we are all set, let’s start.

Design Audit

• Are my colors well blended? Ask yourself if your brand’s colors is well blended with your website colors. For example, if you have a brown website design and a pink logo, that is “yuck”.

• What can I cut out from my sidebar? So many people put unnecessary widgets on their blog’s sidebar that does nothing but to clutter the design of the blog. Remove the irrelevant widgets and leave only the relevant ones. I consider the calendar widget irrelevant. What widget do you find irrelevant? Remove it from your blog, fast.

• Do I have the essential pages set up? Basic pages you need for your blog aside your homepage are: “About” page and “Contact” page. You can have additional pages you find relevant. Examples are: “Resources” page, “Services” page, and a Customized 404 page. Michael Dunlop from IncomeDiary recently wrote about 20+ Blog Pages Every Blogger Needs To Have.

• Are comments and trackbacks separated? Comments+trackbacks in the same box= Clutter. Separate comments from track backs. Read Separate Trackbacks from Comments on Your WordPress Blog to help you do that if you don’t already have them separated.

• Do I have an author box? An author box gives your readers a brief description about the person who wrote the article they just read. When you have guest post writers, author boxes introduces them to your readers.

Subscriptions Audit

• Are my subscription boxes well placed? Make sure your subscription boxes are well placed. To increase the number of people who subscribe to your blog, place your subscription boxes in multiple areas. Very good places you can place your boxes are: directly after posts (before the comments box), in your sidebar, a “Subscriptions” or “Join Us” page.

• Do I have bait for my subscription boxes? By bait, I mean a freebie or any other valuable offer. Have a reward for people who subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on Twitter and “Like” you on Facebook. Common rewards people give out are eBooks, e-courses, website themes, et cetera.

• Do I have any social proof to show? Apart from baits, sometimes you will need to show visitors to your blog that other people read your content. You can do this by showing your subscription numbers; Facebook fan page subscribers, Twitter followers and RSS subscription numbers. If you don’t have large subscription numbers, don’t show it on your blog. Other ways of showing social proof are: Top commentators, number of times your articles have been read, recent visitors using Mybloglog or Amungus, et cetera. There are plugins that can help you display these info to people.

Content Audit

• Is my content easy to read and understand? Cut out jargon, write concisely and cut out big vocabulary. It turns people off. Make your content as easy to understand as possible. Images and graphics can also be added to make your content easy to digest.

• What calls to action can I use on each page? Make your blog like a book. When someone visits your homepage, where will be the next place you will want them to go to? Perhaps your “Subscribe” or “Join us” page or maybe straight to your pillar article pages. On your article pages, perhaps you will want to “call” people to subscribe by placing your subscription box in your article. Use the appropriate design and calls to action to move your visitor from page 1 to page n.

• How can I increase page views? You can increase page views by installing a “related posts” plugin or by linking to your older articles. Setting up a “resources” page has also been known to increase number of page views.

• Are my headlines catchy? Do your headlines have “read” appeal? Your headlines should grab the attention of the people you are writing the article for. If you are not able to grab their attention with your headline, they may never read your content.

• Do I have link bait content? Contents that have tremendous value are considered link bait. This is because they are more likely to be linked to by other bloggers. Examples of link bait content are “How to” articles and list posts.

• Is my content well formatted? You need to have a formatting style and stick to it. Consider colors you will use as sub-headings, headline tags you will use, your in-post thumbnail positions, et cetera. Once you’ve made your choices, stick to it.

Monetization Audit

• Is my current monetization method working? Do you have banner ads on your sidebar with affiliate links in them? Have you made any sales in the past month or 2? Do you have Adsense on your blog? Are you making enough from it? If your monetization methods are not working, change them, don’t quit your blog. I used to monetize my blog wrongly but now, I have found a better way to monetize it.

• What other monetization methods can I employ? You can choose any monetization you find suitable from the following list:

1) Making and selling digital goods such as eBooks, video tutorials, graphic design, web templates, et cetera.

2) Starting a membership site

3) Providing services like writing, coaching, setting up blogs, or any service related to the niche you blog about.

4) Selling ad spaces privately.

5) Selling other people’s products; a.k.a. affiliate marketing.

Before you start with any of the monetization methods, make sure you have some proof of success. Say,

1) When you are doing affiliate marketing or Adsense, you need to make sure you have enough traffic if you want to get real results.

2) Before you can sell banner ads, you have to be able to show advertisers that people read your site by showing them some stats.

3) Before you start a membership site on your topic, you should have had some success or experience that you can show and tell people about.

4) Before providing coaching services, you should have enough knowledge and experience about the service you are selling.

Marketing Audit

• Do I have guest posts out on other blogs? Guest posting is one cool way of getting your blog noticed. It also helps you get more inbound links and helps increase your page rank and search engine rankings if you optimize your byline.

• Do I have a well branded social media presence? Do your Social media profiles have your logo on them? What about your Fan page names, Youtube channel names and Twitter handles? Do they have your brand name in them? What about your Facebook fan page landing pages, Twitter backgrounds and Youtube backgrounds?

• Is my blog showing up in all the major search engines? You need to submit your blog to the major search engines. Make sure your site is showing up in the search engines. Check your analytics results to see if you are getting any visits from some search engines. Search for your blog in the major search engines. If your blog is not there, submit it.

• Do my comments on other blogs start conversations? Don’t just leave “Thank you” comments. They are boring and so common. Leave insightful comments that generate conversations. This can help you build new relationships with other bloggers.

Measurement Audit:

• Do I have analytics installed?  Are you tracking your blog’s visitors? If you are, that’s great. If you are not tracking, better start now. Set up your analytics system and track your visitors. If you can add heatmap tracking, it will give you more insight about what you visitors do on your blog.

• Do I have brand mention alerts set up? Set up alerts in Google Alerts and SocialMention so that you can get notified of any mentions of your brand online. You will get email notifications when someone mentions your brand on Twitter, on their blog, in forums, on Facebook, and any other online places you can think of.

• Which content of your post types get the most comments? Can you work on more post types like those ones? Which posts get the most search engine visits?

• What keywords do you rank high for? By high ranking, I mean page or 2 in Google. Can you improve that ranking? You can check your rankings out by setting up Google Webmaster Central to track that data for you if you don’t already have a system to check that.

Conclusion Au…(uh-um):

After performing the audit, develop a day to day plan to help you fix the stuff that you have not already worked on. You can develop a 10 day plan, 20 day plan or even 30 day plan to help you fix your blog.

What questions will you add to these when performing a blog audit?

Posted on June 3, 2010 - by Kwame

25 Characteristics of Highly Effective Social Media Campaigns

There is so much rock and roll going on involving businesses running social media campaigns. However, there are not many social media rockstars. Their guitars vary. Some rock hard and some… not so hard. Some even have broken guitar strings. We don’t notice the size of their guitars though. What we notice is the kind of music they produce.

There are certain characteristics that differentiate the effective social media campaigns from the boring ones. You need to learn these characteristics if you also want to be effective with your campaigns.

Don’t worry if your ‘strings’ are broken. You can fix it.

Here are 25 characteristics of highly effective social media campaigns (from the rockstars) and some tips to help you rock like them.

1) They spread like wildfire. Effective social media campaigns spread very fast. If your campaign is not spreading, it is not effective. Test the waters with micro campaigns. Learn to swim before attempting to ride the big waves.

2) They are not spammy. Don’t just promote your site links; share something insightful about your company or product. Don’t send out the same message to your community. It is spam…and it is very annoying to them. Even to you. Admit it.

3) They provide value. Value can come in the both physical and mental forms. Effective campaigns provide value in any or both of these regards.

4) They are well branded. Clothe your campaign from head to toe with your company’s identity. Use your logo, your USP or slogans, your colors, and any other thing that defines your business’s identity. Add your brand to every video you produce; don’t add just your website address.

5) They are measured. You need to track your social media marketing efforts. Whether you install Google Analytics on your Facebook fan page or you use Post rank to measure your effectiveness, make sure you work with the data.

6) They have excellent copy. Leave a positive impression in just a few words. Using big vocabulary is not the way to go; making sense is what matters.

7) They don’t ‘sell’. Instead of selling, you should work at generating leads with your social media campaign. Sell to those leads later on.

8 ) They build relationships. Don’t just broadcast. Interact. Building relationships  helps build even more relationships. It also increases the perception of value and builds loyalty.

9) They build trust. Be as honest in your campaign as possible. Trust is very hard to earn back once lost. Your campaign should build and maintain trust in your build.

10) They are innovative. Regular campaigns mostly go unnoticed. Innovation adds ‘flavor’ to your campaign. It is the aroma of your campaign and the one thing that will convince most people to take action.

11) They have ears. Your campaign will not be successful unless you listen for feedback. People may have something to say so listen and show appreciation or let them know you are working on it. Never delete a negative feedback.

12) They are well organized. Your campaign needs to be well planned. It should have a first step and an nth step (where n is the number of the last step). Follow through from step 1 through to step n. Don’t go from step one to step 3 to step 2. Plan your steps well so it is easy to follow through step 1 to the last step.

13) They are maintained by humans. Don’t rely on automation when it comes to marketing on the social web. It just won’t work. Besides, it destroys trust. Put a human being in front of, in-between and behind all your social media campaigns. I want to talk to a human being not a robot.

14) They are consistent. You need to be consistent with your update (or broadcast) schedules and interact with people who leave replies and comments. If you broadcast once a week and change to 5 times a day, people will begin to question your actions. Unless you give them good reason why you have changed your schedule.

15) They have bait. You need to have some sort of bait to convert visitors into leads. Try eBooks, free products, white papers, discount codes, samples, free vouchers, et cetera. Bait them to get them .

16) They use leverage. They leverage the subscriber bases of their communities and other people’s communities. They also leverage their company strengths.

17) They include a blog. I suggest you have a business blog before you start your campaign. Your blog should be the hub of your social media campaign efforts. Make you install social media sharing buttons to make it easier for others to share your blog’s content.

18) They engage other blogs. You can do this too. Apply as a guest writer for blogs in your target market. Read blogs in your niche and leave thoughtful comments (not just a “thank you”).

19) They are not everywhere. If you want your campaigns to be successful, don’t register for an account on every social media site. That will only burn you out and your campaigns will be fruitless.

20) They have humor. Adding humor to marketing is a cool way of saying “we are a friendly business”. It makes your marketing memorable. A priceless result.

21) They share company events. If your company is being bad mouthed, tell your customers about it. Tell them the truth in it and the lies. Don’t give them the chance to second guess your company. If your company is nominated for an award, tell your community about it. If your company wins the award, tell them. If you lose the award, tell them.

22) They integrate offline marketing. Print some T-Shirts, with your logo, Twitter handle, Facebook fan page URL and your slogan on it and give them out to your customers. Send out paper printed catalogs to your online leads. Add your Twitter and Facebook URLs to your contact address. Integrate offline with online.

23) They use the right networks. Even though Facebook supports videos, video campaigns will do better on Youtube than on Facebook.

24) They use photos and videos. Photos and videos leave a lasting impression on peoples’ minds. The best photo you can use is your logo. When you make a video, put your logo on it.

25) They have a call to action. What is the essence of a marketing campaign without having a call to action of some sort? I suggest you use your social marketing campaigns to generate leads before trying to sell anything. By the way, “signup below” and “call us now” are not the only call to action examples. “Click to view our portfolio” is an example of call to action. Your call to actions must follow a sequence; from your homepage to the last page.

Tanaa, tanaa, yay,yay, yay! Sorry, couldn’t help it.

Here are 3 other useful resources:

1. Is Your Social Media Clap-on, Clap-off?

2. Understanding Social Media Using Honey Bees As A Standard Model

3. How to Be in the Right 50% of Social Media Marketing Campaigns

There are lots of valuable tips in this article you could use. I suggest you print it out and use it as a reference when you are running your campaigns. I also encourage you to bookmark it online and share it with your friends and colleagues.

Let me know if you are a social media rockstar. Share any tips, questions or comments you have in the comments area.

Thumbnail photo by Silvertje.

Posted on May 27, 2010 - by Kwame

Understanding Social Media Using Honey Bees As A Standard Model

The honey bee is a social insect. By studying honey bees, humans have been able to solve problems in electronics and science in general. I know it is unbelievable but it is actually a fact. Some people have even asked us (humans) to use honey bees as a standard model for our social lives. Read this wiki if you need confirmation: Bee Colony Optimization.

What can the honey bee teach us when it comes to social media? Well, they can teach us a lot. In fact, a honey bee’s social life could be likened to that of a good social media marketer.

Before we delve into this topic more, let’s look at the picture below: It explains how honey bees communicate: Now let’s explain the picture.

There are certain worker bees whose primary work is to forage for food. They focus on gathering nectar and pollen.

If a foraging honey bee finds a source of high quality nectar and pollen, it returns to the hive to communicate it to other worker bees in the hive.

They perform a dance to communicate the location of the food to other worker bees. After performing the dance, a swarm of bees fly to the food source.

Honey bees are master communicators and they are very good at bringing a “buzz” to an orchard or source of food for them.

Now, let’s replace the honey bee’s story with our own human story in terms of bringing buzz to our business. Do you already see where this is going?

So let’s think of the honey bee as a regular internet surfer who has a social profile on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media site. Regular internet surfers visit many websites and blogs a day looking for different kinds of information.

They normally like to share websites with their friends but one thing is that, they normally share websites that offer a lot of quality information or has a lot of goodies.

So in order for you to grab a web surfer’s attention, first you will need a good website design (flower petals?).

Now they land on your page and start ‘foraging’ for information. Now, your content will be the pollen and the offer or value your website promises will be the nectar.

If the web surfer finds your design to be cool, your content (or pollen) to be awesome and your offer (or nectar) to be excellent, they will be tempted to share your sweet stuff with their friends in the hive (ie, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, et cetera) so that they too can come and enjoy the value you provide.

When their friends also land on your site and find it useful, they might also share it with their friends and that may lead to a lot of buzz (if they were honey bees, you’ll here a “buzzzzzzz” from their wings ) for your business and it will also lead to pollination (profits). This graphic below makes it easier to understand:

The differences between our social web lives and a bee’s social web life are:

1. Everyone of us forage for information on the web and then we share it. With bees, there are specific workers who do the foraging.
2. When we are in the position of people in stage number 4, we may do what’s stated in stage 2 or choose to share our own findings starting at stage 1.

I know some of you are saying, “ point number 3, we are humans and they are insects.” Well, that’s not the point we want to make .

Clarifications:

Your products need to be worthy to be shared to other members of the ‘hive’. You can establish a presence in the hive yourself and let the ‘worker bees’ do all the talking and recruiting for you.

You don’t need to hard sell to them inside the hive because if they become your fan or follower, they already know your value and are going to do the selling for you. Remember that they may have seen many other fine petals but came to you because your pollen and nectar (content and offer) was more valuable.

Inside the hive, you need to continue to produce blooming petals and provide nectar and pollen regularly.

When you dull out, there will be no use for you inside the hive and the people who follow you will start unfollowing you.

So how do you continue to bloom? Just make it easy for people to spread the word about your business by interacting with them.

• When it is Christmas, wish them a Merry Christmas,
• When there is a discount sale on your website, tell them there is a sale on your website.
• Create a Facebook fans only or Twitter followers only offer and let them have it.
• Give them ideas on how to use your product.
• Don’t spam. Spam is annoying and it makes you look desperate.
• Share your business’ life or activities with them like “we are removing ginger from our ingredients, do you think this is cool?”, “we made a donation to Oxfam. Buying from us made this possible”, “Which of our products do you want to see more of?”

Again, interact, don’t sell. Get their ideas, use it and they will feel attached to your business.

Coca Cola does an excellent job with their Facebook fan page. They once shared a status showing fans the best temperature to drink a coke.

How do you interact with your customers inside and outside the hives?

If you loved this article, share it with your friends, family and work colleagues. Thanks.