Social media is an important medium that every small business should be embracing to help develop new business, understand what others are saying about them and/or their competitors, engage with and increase the loyalty of their customers and fans, and potentially even provide another avenue for customer support over social channels. There are many choices of sites in which companies can invest money and time in building a presence on, with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube being the most popular. At the end of the day, however, one of your primary objectives for your small business in engaging in social …
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Business blogs are becoming an increasingly common way to expand a company’s online presence. Six months ago I asked does your business blog? According to Hubspot, the number of companies that blog has risen 17% in the last two years to represent 65% of all businesses surveyed. That increase is not at all surprising to me. After all, as well as improving search engine rankings, blogs can be one of the most cost-effective marketing tools available to businesses. With so much competition online, they have become a powerful channel for both developing brands and generating sales. While blogs continue to …
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Today’s blog post is from a guest and is about the importance of content, a topic that I have touched upon recently in posts such as the importance of everyone’s content on Twitter, and its value not only as part of your social media marketing, but also how it positively affects your relationship building as well as SEO efforts.
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Whenever I hear about a company who plan to “launch” their social media “efforts” with the help of social media interns, I always break out laughing. Well, not literally so. But I am amazed at how many companies think that college students who “speak” the language of social media are appropriate to represent their brand in the online world. Just as I pointed out in a previous blog post, I shouldn’t be doing other brand’s social media precisely for the same reasons that interns or external contractors shouldn’t be doing yours either: We don’t know you. Let me first point …
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As businesses embark on a social media strategy, I am finding that social strategy is being owned either by the Corporate Communications or Marketing Department. If you are one of the few companies that already have a Social Media Department, congratulations! If not, keep reading, because the advice is applicable to whoever is in charge of social at your company as well, regardless of department. Social media is only going to become more important for companies to engage in moving forward, but the question then becomes how is your company going to engage with the public on social websites? Sure, …
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There are many “best of” blog posts that have been written about WordPress plugins, so I wanted to cover a different angle with this post. I see WordPress and blogging like this: If your company has a social media strategy, chances are you have a corporate blog. Our friends at Hubspot released their analysis some time ago that blogging is good for SEO. And if you are blogging, chances are you are using WordPress, which is the most popular blogging platform among the biggest blogs. In this way, I see a natural relationship between blogging, WordPress, social media, and SEO. …
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I hope that the title to this blog post knocked you out of your comfort zone, because that was my intention in writing this guide. Don’t get me wrong: LinkedIn is still an essential part of your job search, and having an optimized LinkedIn profile and networking with others on that platform is still a prerequisite in helping you land your next job. But where LinkedIn may have been the ultimate differentiator for the job seeker two years ago, it no longer is. Instead, it’s time to start thinking about investing more time in utilizing Twitter for your job search. …
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O.K., I am going to admit that I first joined StumbleUpon as part of a strategy that the “SEO [Search Engine Optimization] Gurus” recommend to create backlinks to your blog content from social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit. The idea being that the more links you have from other sites, the higher your SEO will be. And, as anyone who has ever used StumbleUpon just for this reason will tell you, you quickly realize that you are just wasting your time because just by thumbing up your own blog posts you are not gaining any significant additional traffic to …
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LinkedIn Profile Tips. A lot of people tell you what you should be doing, but what about what you shouldn’t be doing? LinkedIn is the place to not only find others but also to be found. And that is why you need a profile that not only helps you get found but also will entice people to contact you once they view your profile. I see many people making fundamental mistakes that actually work against them in this aspect. If you’re going to spend time putting together a profile, I assume you want to maximize your chances of being contacted …
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Assuming that you understand what a LinkedIn Open Networker means from my “What is a LinkedIn LION?” post, and you want to use this terminology in your profile to increase your network as I mentioned in my “How Do I Grow My LinkedIn Network?” post, the next logical question you may have is “How Do I Become a LinkedIn LION?” Unfortunately, there is no official answer for this, as the history is that open networkers have always been frowned upon by the powers that be. Since that time, LIONS’ LAIR became the default place for open networkers to register, but …
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