In high school and college, I was president of the Honor Society and graduated college Magna Cum-Laude. I wouldn’t attribute ALL of my academic success to smarts alone. What I consider myself good at was learning what each instructor WANTED to be done for an ‘A’ and I would do just that. Every test and piece of homework was meticulously planned to regurgitate the information that I felt the instructor wanted to hear.
So when it comes to your blog and all the conflicting information from experts how do you know what to grade your blog on? Here’s a few fundamental elements to consider:
- Is your blog generating awareness or your topic of interest?
- Are you getting repeat visitors?
- How is your search engine visibility? (what keywords or keyword combination do you show up on the first page of Google for?)
- How many inbound links do you have?
- How many comments do you have on your blog posts?
In the next post we’ll go through questions you can ask yourself to increase your success in each of the above fundamental elements.
I overheard a mother in the store the other day tell her daughter “God gave us 2 ears and 1 mouth because we’re supposed to listen more than we talk…so be quiet!” That made me think about social media and how many hundreds if not thousands of ways to “listen” there are. It also made me feel like a parent when I tell my clients to ‘listen more’ and ‘talk less’ in their own social media efforts.
One of the first mistakes I see newbies make over and over again is pushing out content, telling people all about themselves or their products and completely forgeting how to have conversations. One of the easiest ways to get more conversation going whether on Twitter or Facebook or your blog is to ask open-ended questions.
So my question for you today, to start the mental juices flowing…“How are you incorporating open-ended questions into your social media efforts?” Please feel free to ‘answer’ this question by leaving a comment below.
We all want to make sure that whatever comes up on the 1st page of Google when you Google your name is something flattering and possibly help to further build your business. Setting a Google Profile will create at least one more item that will show on the 1st page of Google that you control the content on. Other benefits to setting up a profile include:
- You can link to your blog, website, Twitter, Facebook or any other place you want to direct people to
- Your profile page can be your main page if you don’t have a website or if you own your own name.com but haven’t investing in building out a website you can redirect it to your Google profile.
If you haven’t set up a Google Profile for yourself then now is the time. Head over to Google Profile after reading this post and “get ‘er done”. Feel free to share your profile link in the comments below.
If you wanting to brand yourself in any way then its important to stay aware of what is being said or written about you. Google Alerts helps with this task. Here is a list of things you should set up alerts for:
- your name
- your twitter id
- your company name
- your blogs name
- your product names
- your employees or clients names
- your clients companies
- your competitors
- your competitors’ company name
- your competitors’ products
- industry news
- industry blogs
- industry keywords
When tracking industry keywords think about using this content for future blog posts, articles or newsletters. It helps to use advanced search operators to help you narrow your searches.
For example if you were a commercial Realtor in Miami then you might want to create an alert for [Commercial Real Estate+Miami] so that you got information only about Commercial Real Estate in Miami. You’ll have to play with this feature a bit but after a few tweaks it can prove to be VERY powerful information.
I’ve been recommending Google accounts to my clients for about 2 years now. There are so many reasons to use Google other than just to search for things. Here are 6 applications that you may not know about but should be using.
- With Google Alerts, I can be alerted every time my name, my company’s name or a competitors name shows up on a website or social network. In this way its the best kind of friend because I can even set clear boundaries as to when I want to ‘hear’ about the gossip. Sometimes I’m in for getting the gossip as it happens and some days I just need one fix.
- With Google Reader, I don’t have to visit all my favorite blogs or websites. It keeps track of all that information for me in one convenient place I can access online anytime.
- Google keeps track of who is visiting my website and helps me find better ways of serving my visitors. With Google Analytics I can track the visitors on all of my websites. I can find out where they came from, how long they stayed on my website, what pages they viewed and so much more.
- While you’ll never be able to completely stop me from buying book because I truly love their smell, I am a book junkie and Google lets me read thousands of books for free with Google Books. They’ve got self-help books, business, cooking, relationships, health & fitness, pets, philosophy, poetry…you name it they got it!
- Google helps me communicate with the people that are important to me . That’s where Gmail comes in. If you’re still using AOL then its definitely time you get yourself a new email address and get a Gmail account. You can also feed other email accounts into Gmail so that you can access all your emails in one account saving time and eliminating stress.
Gmail blocks the most spam, integrates with Google Docs, Reader and Calendar.
- What do people see when they Google you? You can control how you appear in Google by creating a personal profile with Google Profiles. You can create a personal page that links to your blog or other websites or social networking profiles. This is a must do for anyone wanting to brand themselves.
There are many more free resources that Google provides but those are my top six. In future posts I’ll explain in more detail how to get the most out of these resources. Which ones are you currently using? I’d love it if you left a comment below.
Oh and I almost forgot. If you have a Google account then any site that asks for an “Open ID” you can log into with your Google information. Pretty cool huh?!
In the past few blog posts, we’ve discussed the importance of forums and I hope by now you’ve taken the time to find some that are specific to your industry and start poking around in them. Once you’ve participated in a few forums and experienced the kind of connection and community that can be built you might be anxious to start your own. In our Web 2.0 world this is super simple to get started. Here are a few FREE applications that you can install (often with just one or two clicks from your hosting company)
- KickApps
- Yuku
- Ning
- Php.bb
With the exception of Yuku, I have set up and implemented all of the other types of forums for a variety of clients and I’ve found that the success of a community forum is in the strategy and implementation. If you want some guidance on this, please don’t hesitate to contact me for assistance.
Captcha stands for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. It is basically a program that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but that most computer programs cannot. Usually website visitors are asked to read distorted text and type that text into a box. For more information on Captcha you can visit www.captcha.net
So in the last post we discussed why it’s important to participate in industry forums and in this post we’ll discuss the components of a forum so that no matter what forum you visit you’ll be able to navigate with confidence.
1. Members or Contributors-anyone who participates in the conversation
2. Moderator- person who monitors the conversation to be sure that everyone adheres to the rules and regulations set up by the forum owner. Think of them like a referee. Moderators are often chosen or employed by the Forum Administrator.
3. Thread-the two-way conversation that happens between members. Usually only registered members of a forum are allowed to start a “thread” and then any forum member or the moderator can respond to the thread. Threads are usually visible to non-forum-members but only forum members can respond to and comment on the thread.
4. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)-this is a section where the rules and regulations are posted as well as where other guidelines for the forum are posted. Some forums do not allow members to post links until they have a certain number of posts. This type of restriction keeps the level of link spamming to a minimum.
5. Posts-text message or comment that is typed out and submitted. Often forums count the number of posts made by a member and display this number to show how active a member is in the community. Some forums even have levels of distinction based on the number of posts made by a member.
6. Forum Administrator-manages the technical requirements of the forum. They handle promoting and demoting members to and from positions as moderators and keeping the site running smoothly.
That should be the basics. If I forgot anything, please leave a comment below with your questions or additions.
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