Get E-ffective Web 2.0 Strategies

Got Limited Time and feel like saying “Twit this!”? - Hot Linkedin Tip

July 19, 2008 on 8:33 pm | In Niche Marketing, Online Marketing, Public Relations, Uncategorized, Web 2.0, social marketing | 2 Comments

Promoting technology is boring. Productive tips for “Linked in” is invigorating

Linkedin’s search feature wasn’t about finding contacts I knew, it was about finding contact I NEEDED to know.

For those new to Linkedin, the site will track the connections between you and every other member of the site and will tell you how many “degrees” apart you are from any one contact. 1st degree means you know them personally, 2nd degree means you know someone who knows them, 3rd degree means they’re a friend of a friend of a friend…and so on.)

Using Linkedin’s Search Feature to Expand Your Business

I’m using it to daisy chain my contacts and meet new people.

Here’s a quick example of what I mean.

Say I know “Company X”, and we’d been in touch with them for whatever reason. This time around, we’d stumbled across “Company Y”. Company Y offers up a very similar service, but with prices starting at under $5 a month, we knew they were perfectly targeted for the segment of demographics I needed to reach. Unfortunately, I didn’t know anyone at Company Y. We all know cold calls don’t tend to go over well, so I did what I now always do in these situations…I headed to Linkedin and ran a search.

A simple search for the word Company Y turned up a slew of Company Y employees.

As I scrolled through the list I quickly stumbled across the VP of Marketing for Company Y. The first thing I did was look to see how many degrees separated us. Unfortunately, it was three. That meant I didn’t have any direct contacts who knew the VP of Marketing. Now, I could have used the Linkedin network to ask my contacts to introduce me to his contacts, but I’m not really comfortable going that route. That said, at least we had a name to work with, which made it much easier to call Company Y and seek out contact information for him.

A few days later, I decided I wanted to try and get in touch with Kodak.com. Once again, I headed over to Linkedin, ran a search and was greeted with a list of possibilities.

There’s great value in those things. But for me, the real value of Linkedin is in using it to discover the hidden connections among my network and the rest of the world. You never know who you almost know. Why not find out?

Popularity: 2% [?]

The Power to be Found just got more Powerful using Firefox

July 4, 2008 on 2:01 pm | In Web 2.0, blog marketing, social marketing | 2 Comments

“97th floor” developed a very critical add on. Jack Humphrey, from the killer, Friday Traffic Report, said it well, “Nice to see someone “getting it” and building true traffic and fans through submitting and getting content to the front pages.” (content that is not their own!)

This isn’t just another distracting, where’s the value add on. Invest a few minutes, download this puppy and watch how much you can increase your “Power to be Found”

Popularity: 5% [?]

Create excitement and most importantly - hope

June 29, 2008 on 1:54 pm | In Corporate Blogs, Online Marketing, Web 2.0, social marketing | 4 Comments

In a ever changing world where “Social” is more common, some days I don’t feel very “Social” at all. I’m launching a 2.0 Social Media Marketer hub called “Power to be Found.com” Guess what? It’s all about getting “Social”

Some days I wonder why I don’t feel more mojo in my belly and a bit more “Social”. On these type of days I almost always move closer to the “Social Story” of what my customers are experiencing. Look around you…I’m seeing “Social” proof in ways I hadn’t seen before.

There’s evidence of social proof and other forms of proof all over Vegas. One casino has a “wall of winners” showing photos of all the normal everyday people who have struck it rich showing off their big checks. Some have even become new millionaires.

This is a classic technique that creates excitement and most importantly - hope. The whole idea of gambling is to purchase just a little potential for winning big with every bet. It’s this hope that creates the excitement that keeps people gambling away more money, despite fully understanding how bad the odds are in most situations.

Who are your “Wall of Winners” or simply “Customer Winners”?, who love to share a winning customer experience raving about your services and products. And, I don’t mean a 5 word testimonial on your website….do more by, posting on your blog, audio, video or transcribing an authentic phone conversation with your clients is effective.

Feeling Self-Doubt right about now?

If at this point in reading this post, you’re not feeling connected to me, this might be why.

It’s very tough to be convinced of success when you have yet to seriously experience it. In many ways, at this stage of your business career, faith and fake-it-till-you-make-it confidence in your plan has to carry you through the self doubt, the set-backs and the slow growth.

Nothing goes right all the time. Sometimes clients will ask for refunds, or they won’t be happy with what you provide or the universe creates a circumstance you had no way of predicting, which you just had to deal with.

For you beginners out there, one of the greatest challenges you face is your combat with self doubt. Others around you will poke fun at your attempt to buck the trend to start a business, your own outcome will come gradually and for a long time you will have to work every day for little return. Fortitude and willpower are essential at this stage.

If you don’t have tolerance for ambiguity, you better avoid the entrepreneur’s voyage

What Can You Create Today?

One of the things I did and still do whenever I feel less than passionate is to focus on production, rather than perfection or the external elements that bring me down. I might feel completely flattened, but I know if I generate something or take any productive action, I continue towards my goals.

The great thing about output is the power it has over your mood. Negative feelings breeds negative actions - lying in your bed or watching TV for example - or a lack of any action at all. If you focus on creating something and just take one little forward step, the physical effort you put forth effects your inner emotional state. Your ability to plow-on in the face of emotional conflict can carry you through the gloom and return you to a state of harmonious activity and thought.

If you truly want to realize an outcome and savor success, then you must complete the necessary steps to get there. Not some of them and not just during your best days. This needs to be congruent and forceful effort regardless of external conditions or internal turmoil.

Why not go take some action right now?

Popularity: 7% [?]

From Gucci to Grandma’s Cookies

June 20, 2008 on 6:02 pm | In Web 2.0, social marketing | 2 Comments

Got to have a cookie with that yummy Quizno’s sandwich.

I’ve seen eMail Coupons for those cookies and so much more…it is a common marketing tactic. Could you get better redemption rates if you added a Web 2.0 element into the mix and let your customers make their own discount offers?

Quizno’s stopped thinking this way, “We know what they want”

Instead started to think, “We need more insight into what motivates our consumers”

So they let customers create their own coupons requesting they select from several coupon combinations.

Total of 3 steps

1) Choose your Food Mood

a. Toasty Sub

b. Fresh Salad

c. Gourmet Breadbowl

d. Feeding a Group

2) Then pick one of these

a. $1 Off Small, $2 Off Large (by the way, this was selected most)

b. $6 Meal

c. Buy One, Get One Free w/2 Drinks

3) Print It Out! Bring It In!

Bottom line: “Clickthrough and download rate was best in months for Quizno’s” said Correy Honza, Internet Director.

My opinion: Brilliant move to morph their campaigns from “Hey, fill out this survey, so we can learn more about you” instead Quizno’s wanted user generated content“ YOU should be in control of YOUR appetite” so give us your user-generated content in a WILD COUPON WAY… so we can learn more about you.

Learning more about your visitors is always worth the investment.

The empowering the visitor Web 2.0ish’ element here is fun, interactive, and gets your visitors into participation and your site or blog is no exception.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Blog traffic from 71 Hot Directories

June 10, 2008 on 10:28 am | In Online Marketing, RSS, Web 2.0, blog marketing, blogs | 3 Comments

The short of it is…building your online business grows exponentially, like compound interest; hence, I recommend you manually submit your blog to blog directories. Manual submissions are better because they are higher quality and far more trusted by the engines than directories that accept software submissions

Tackle one a week - minimum

You will be stoked when you see the results of your labor, including RSS subscribers.

And, I’m going to get pushy. Can your visitors sign up via RSS or email to receive your posts every time you post? These bloggers walk the talk, are you?

I will keep nudging you until you get a lead generation plug-in installed. Consult with your webmaster.

www.feedblitz.com I pay $50 a month. Fee is based on the size of your database. The free version is also good and will send ads along with your post. I’m paying because spam filters can block my email with the ads embedded.

www.feedburner.com

Both great resources.

Have a great week and remember, “The only thing worst then being talked about, is not being talked about” - Oscar Wilde

Popularity: 11% [?]

Great places and ways to get backlinks

June 1, 2008 on 6:30 pm | In Corporate Blogs, Linkbaiting, Online Marketing, Web 2.0, blog marketing, blogs, social marketing | 1 Comment

We all have those “things” we have to do each day and getting a link pointed back to you from a site or blog with high page rank is important to remember when you’d rather choose to be a marketing flake. We all do some days and I push myself on those days to get at least two backlinks.

Couple ways to deal with this endless, daunting, but always fun task!

Go to these sites and get a link back to you from highly visited directories. I point them out because they get lots of traffic and have been around a while. You may need to send an email and convince an infrequent editor or submit to very stringent criteria (or pay), but this is to be expected. If the links were easy to earn, they would certainly be much less valuable.

Ways to find more sites with high page rank and backlink opportunities?: Use Fast Blog Finder.com Why do I love this tool? Try it and you’ll get it. In short, it shows me every blog relevant to my topic, “Social Media” and tells me which ones allow a backlink. Does that rock or what?

Never forget your “Google Alerts“…I get em everyday and it’s become the ketchup to my fries. Can’t go without it.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Choosing the most inspiring and effective tools for your blog or social network

May 28, 2008 on 10:31 am | In Corporate Blogs, Metrics, Uncategorized, Web 2.0, blogs, social marketing | No Comments

Web 2.0 is not an end in and of itself. Rather, it is part of the continuing evolution marketers are experiencing as the World Wide Web matures. Just as we are becoming comfortable with Web 2.0 and its technologies, one day soon we will be facing Web 3.0, 4.0 and beyond.

The one constant is that technology will evolve, consumers will become more sophisticated and more empowered, and it will become increasingly important to know your visitors and customers at an individual level, and to build long-term, deep relationships with them. Personalization and relationship marketing are becoming more of a reality.

To be successful, marketers need a robust behavioral analytics solution and a complete record of all visitor behavior—not a sampling of data, and certainly not simple statistics about click throughs and page hits. Only with a customer-centric data asset will marketers be able to harness the power of the Internet and provide their visitors with a truly personal experience that optimizes their business goals.

The biggest two questions I get with my enterprise clients is

“How do I know what tools to implement?”
“Where is the ROI in Web 2.0?”.

I ask: “Where is your game plan and what are you striving for”?

What are your objectives?
What are you trying to accomplish by launching that blog or social network?
What are you trying to do in connecting with customers?
- Is it to shorten the sales cycle?
- Reduce support costs by letting your customers self support each other?

If you’re trying to reduce support costs by letting your customers self support each other, you measure it. How many calls did not go into the call center because of the tool/technology?

How much information was put in there from customers?
How did they rate it or rank it?
What did they actually say?

Take very seriously building an Action Plan to knowing how to engage in Web 2.0 effectively

Post methodology is the framework or game plan for any company to jump into Social Networking

The target you are trying to reach
Objectives
Game Plan
What tools you pick
Note to self: Pick the tools last

You’re looking for the technoprofile of the demographic. What tools match that demo, and psychographic?

Biz opportunities will soar for firms that build community online. The people that participate with you make you smarter

Popularity: 14% [?]

Blog “About” page is one of the more frequently visited destinations on your site.

May 17, 2008 on 7:39 pm | In Corporate Blogs, blog marketing, blogs | No Comments

Bloggers who review their visitor activity logs usually discover that their “About” page is one of the more frequently visited destinations on their sites.

If people find your blog interesting, many will want to know more about you, your company and your blog. Link to it from your blog’s home page.

I highly recommend that you take advantage of using and leveraging this feature and make sure that the “ABOUT” link is visible. Have fun, be authentic, transparent and show your personality.

I updated mine http://www.blueprinttoemarketingblog.com/?page_id=2

Ben Goodger, lead engineer for Firefox presents a considerable amount of data about himself on his blog. His About Us page is similar to a resume, listing his history, interests, and hobbies.

Hart

Popularity: 14% [?]

Google installs plumbing for the other 99% of the web

May 12, 2008 on 6:24 pm | In Online Marketing, RSS, Web 2.0, social marketing | No Comments

What I mean is socially enabling any Web site or Web page. Think of what you have to do just to get your blog socially enabled beyond posting frequently which is why this will be a great social media help for small websites that don’t have the resources to hire a programmer.

Google just unveiled a preview of “Friend Connect”, a way to add social features to a Web site without programming.

Google’s director of engineering, David Glazer said, “It’s the right time to give people the ability to go anywhere on the Web and interact with any set of friends on any application”

Four major reasons to get excited about Friend Connect

Users can interact with any of their friends anywhere they go on Web and with any application
Friend Connect will bring a social dimension to the 99-plus percent of sites that aren’t socially enabled.
Eventually, most every site will be enabled to connect people to other people
Within weeks, you can enable “Friend Connect” on your site and allow visitors to view, invite, and interact with newfound friends or with existing friends from established social-networking sites, including Facebook, Google Talk, Hi5, orkut and Plaxo

Friend Connect provides a set of wizards for adding social features to Web sites without programming (Credit: Google)

“We are looking to get feedback from Web site owners about what kinds of sites and apps they want”, Glazer said. Currently only a few sample sites, including this one are enabled to view, invite and interact with newfound friends, or with existing friends.

Guacamole is a sample site created by Google for demonstrating Friend Connect features. (Credit:Google)

While it won’t be a full-blown social network, you could see other “Blueprint to eMarketing” readers and interact with them with one login. That’s the idea.

Again, To add social networking features to any web site, you can get code from Google (the site just started working last night) and pick which features you want to add. The code will allow people register on your site, invite other people, import friends lists, see who else is on the site, and post messages and reviews.

Sign up for more content regularly from Jerry Hart (email) or RSS,

Popularity: 15% [?]

First Female American Iraqi soldier loses her leg and reset the bar for “Hard Work”

April 30, 2008 on 9:19 pm | In Corporate Blogs, Web 2.0, blogs | 1 Comment

I was doing my typical “check out the news” after an invigorating day of internet marketing and viewed a real story that hit me right between the eyes, my legs, and my heart.

The story is about the first female Iraqi soldier to lose one leg and her attitude is absolutely ridiculous, in the greatest way. Her spirit is contagious, as was one thing she said that resonated, “I’ve done more with one leg then I ever did with two”. Can you imagine, losing a leg in war, and then winning in the Olympics? That’s what she plans to do then start another mission to rock climb.

She reinforced to me deeply that I can’t afford to complain and be a victim and that hard work is what most Americans aren’t willing to embrace and wonder why they don’t feel good, empty and lacking this thing we all seem to want, success and happiness. Notice how often you reach for short term gratification instead of persevering and completing the work with gratitude to get to your goals.

Have you been inspired by someone’s hard work and endless fight to thrive and never just survive?

How did the video hit you? Are you like me, and changing your view of being real about the hard work it takes to be successful and happy?

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/WoodruffReports/story?id=4683793&page=1

Popularity: 17% [?]

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