Archive for the ‘Social Media Tools’ Category

Are you stuck when it comes to writing status updates,  publishing blog posts or shooting videos for youtube?

Creating good content (useful, valuable content) for social media (blogs, Facebook, twitter, Linked, Youtube) can be a daunting task.

A great exercise to get your content flowing is to identify the common questions that prospects ask about your industry, expertise, products or services.

Goals and Objectives.

Strategy.  Tactics.  Logisitics.

All of the above are essential for business growth.

Take a quick assessment:

• 1. Have you written your goals for 2012?
• 2. Developed your marketing strategy?
• 3. Defined the tactics?
• 4. Mapped the logistics?

If you answered no to any (or all) of the questions, don’t be discouraged.
You can start preparing for 2012 business growth right now.

Let’s keep it simple. The most common goal among professional service providers is this:

Increase my client base.

Is this one of your goals for 2012? If so, right or type it right now in a place that will be visible to you daily.
Your strategy will need to be unique but the tactics don’t have to be.

Here are 5 tactics you don’t want to leave out of your 2012 online marketing strategy:

1. Build and nurture your email list (client and prospect base) by providing timely answers to problems they face. Email has been around since the early 90’s but it is still the hub of business communications.

Daystar New Media Client Example: Last year, a decades old insurance provider entered the email marketing arena by compiling an email client list.  The second email newsletter they sent out to the list contained info on how to protect property with adequate flood insurance coverage.  They were careful to include a call to action: Buy a new flood policy or increase flood coverage. The results were immediate. They received 15 calls resulting in 7 new policies from a single email.  Have you emailed your clients lately?

2. Commit to blogging your expertise. Unlike PPC, print ads and in-person networking, the value of the blog investment grows exponentially over time.

Daystar New Media Client Example:  Two years ago, one of my clients, a law firm, committed to blogging for the purpose of building visibility and credibility with a very targeted commercial audience in the legal industry.  The pay off for the more than 200 posts, has been an increase in visits from 800+ in year 1 to 8000+ in year 2. Unique visitors are up from 300+ in year 1 to 5000+ in year 2. ROI has also come in the form of conversation and feedback about the blog from important stakeholders and industry leaders. You can’t buy that with ads. Have you increased your traffic and your credibility strategically?

3. Create short, passionate video messages that contain content to HELP your audience accomplish their goals and overcome their challenges.

Daystar New Media Client Example: A commercial real estate company plans to provide informational videos to introduce not only the unique client workspace available at his location but also become the resource about how to utilize commercial tax credits, a complicated but very valuable opportunity for businesses. What content could you offer in video format that would HELP your clients/prospects?

4. Communicate with your clients & followers regularly using status updates. Use this space to offer quick actionable content such as tips and best practices. Make it worth their time to read what you post.

Daystar New Media Client Example: A real estate company maintains statistics on local home price trends and publishes them on the company web site.  Using social media status updates, this info is streamed out across social networks increasing the company’s visibility and driving traffic back to the website.  What content is sitting on your web site that is under-utilized?

5. Create a core message that you deliver in person to quickly communicate the value you offer on your blog, email list and/or social media spaces.

Daystar New Media Client Example: A CPA Firm partner regularly attends networking events.  He plans and practices his 30-second introduction. In 2012, after clearly stating the firm name and website, he’ll invite small business owners to subscribe to the firm blog so they can learn how to increase their profits by earning and keeping more money.  Let the people you meet in person know what’s in it for them to subscribe your blog, visit your facebook page or follow you on twitter.

To learn how we can help with your 2012 online marketing plan, contact us at info@daystarnewmedia.com or call 504-210-7690.

About Michelle Cullison: Michelle is an acclaimed professional speaker, author, and the President of Daystar New Media, Inc.  Since 1993, she has helped hundreds of clients expand their businesses from web site to the web presence.   Michelle knows how to leverage the power of the social web with tools like WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.   Today, through her speaking, training and consulting services, she equips companies to expand from web site to web presence by developing and implementing effective social media strategies.

“They’re not responding to my emails!”

Believe it or not, the quote above is from a managing attorney of a successful law firm about his experience trying to reach recent law school graduates for recruitment. The potential candidates weren’t spurning him or the firm. The problem was simple. The candidates weren’t checking their email. They were oblivious to the opportunity. The hiring attorney assumed email was a primary communication tool for the new graduates because it is a primary hub in his firm and for business in general. In the end, the hiring attorney took the high road, adapted to his audience, established a facebook account and proceeded to successfully connect with the candidates.

Have you thought about your audience?

What communication channels do your prospects and clients use most? How about your colleagues? Do they regularly use text messaging, blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn Groups or Facebook Walls? Do they call or email regularly? What communication channels work best for them? Give it some thought. You may want to ask them in a variety of ways across multiple channels. You want to be sure they get the survey.

Since business success is dependent on successful communications, take time to identify who needs to receive your communications and which channel is best suited to them. As the number of options for reaching our audience continues to increase, this is no small task to assess. But, considering the cost of lost or incomplete communication to your business, it is worth the effort.

Invest time to identify which channel of communication will best serve each of your target audiences. They will appreciate getting information in a way that is convenient for them. And, you will be assured that information is reaching its intended audience positioning you to receive timely feedback and stay engaged throughout the sales cycle and into the on-going business relationship.

About the Author:
Michelle Cullison, consultant and professional speaker, equips businesses and organizations to expand from web site to web presence to achieve REAL business objectives. Learn more about her company at DaystarNewMedia.com. Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn.com/in/michellecullison or send an email to michelle@daystarnewmedia.com.

These word sets, saving time and social media, don’t often go together. Oh, but they do!!!

Let me tell you how.  You’ve probably heard of RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Perhaps, you’ve subscribed to a couple of blogs using this technology. But, you probably don’t know that this techie tool can save you loads of time.  Many of today’s web-based tools and social media sites support RSS technology, so you can simply post content once and stream it across the social web to multiple sites. Storing content once saves time on updates and reduces storage costs and expands the influence of each communication without expanding the workload.

So, how can businesses benefit from RSS technology? Here’s how: Businesses must keep the communication lines open with both clients and customers. Creating a communication piece (text, audio, video, print, web, etc.) takes a lot of time. Using a communication piece once (email news, single blog post, print letter) is beneficial but using it across multiple networks greatly increase the influence of that one article.   This system can be set up EASILY with a blog and the built in feature, RSS.

Getting started requires that you first have a blog such as the free blogs offered at WordPress.com. This will be the communication hub for your social web presence. The goal is that all content posted on the blog will automatically stream to the social web onto sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

To set up your own automated system, a system that feeds Facebook pages, LinkedIn Personal Profiles, LinkedIn Company profiles and Twitter profiles, do the following:

1.      Identify your blog sites RSS Feed address. If you are using wordpress, it is typically the URL of the website. (Example, my blog is http://socialmediaexplained.com .  Many of the RSS feed apps can use the plain URL, some may require the feed URL that looks something like this: http://www.socialmediaexplained.com/feed/rss/ (In your browser, find the subscribe to feed link or icon and you will find your feed URL.)

2.      To stream your blog posts automatically into your LinkedIn profile, set up the LinkedIn app, BlogLink on your personal profile. (This is found in the apps section of LinkedIn.)

3.      To stream your blog posts into your LinkedIn Company profile, edit the RSS Feed field in your company profile. (You must be the admin of the Company profile.)

4.      To add the feed to your Facebook page, use one of the RSS Facebook apps such as Social RSS, http://apps.facebook.com/social-rss/tabsettings.php.

5.      To add the feed to your Twitter profile, use one of the Twitter apps such as Twitterfeed.com.

6.      RSS feed management also be done with an account on Hootsuite.com. To use this tool, create a hootsuite account and then configure the RSS Feeds settings for each profile: LinkedIn Personal, Facebook Pages and Twitter Profiles. LinkedIn Companies must be configured on LinkedIn.

Please note that the above procedure doesn’t mention every single app available to feed RSS around the web. I’ve just shared with you some of the tools I’ve used on different projects in recent months to get the job done.

The set up I recommended should take approximately 15-30 minutes for 3 profiles. Once the set up is done, your business blog will extend across the web EVERY time you post a new article on it! If you have a staff, you can set up the feed to go into every staff member profile. RSS Feeds can extend your communications and save you time and money. Stay tuned for other ways to save time with social media! And, if you don’t want to do the set up yourself, hire Daystar New Media, Inc. to do it for you.

Michelle Cullison, consultant and professional speaker, equips businesses and organizations to expand from website to web presence to achieve REAL business objectives. Learn more about her company at DaystarNewMedia.com. Connect with Michelle on LinkedIn.com/in/michellecullison or send an email to michelle@daystarnewmedia.com.

I want a fancy, schmancy email signature.
How did you do that?

Since I recently updated my outlook signature file to include 5 social media icons (see image below), people keep saying,  ”I want one of those!” and asking, ”How did you do that?”

Today, I’ll show you how to make your email signature look like this:
 

Before heading over to Outlook to edit your signature, perform a search for social media icons. There are literally thousands of styles to choose from grunge to glowing neon to everything in-between.  Search for “Free social media icons” on a search site like google.com or bing.com.  

Or, you may want to check out this simple set of vector icons called buddycons located here: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/08/buddycons-vector-social-media-icons/.  Click the Download File button at the bottom of the page and unzip the images to a folder on your computer.

Next, make a list of the social profile or page URLs (web addresses) that you want to link to from the new icons.

Like this:
http://facebook.com/socialmediaexplained.com
http://LinkedIn.com/in/michellecullison
http://www.SocialMediaExplained.com
http://twitter.com/mcullison
http://youtube.com/mcullison
   and    

Now it is time to head over to Outlook and customize your signature.  Here’s how:

1. Open a New Mail Message.
2. Click the Signature icon and then select Signatures, the last menu option on drop-down menu.
3. Type in the signature text.
4. Then, click the Picture icon (the left icon highlighted in yellow below) and insert the icons.
5. Next, while the image file is selected, click the Hyperlink icon (the right icon highlighted in yellow below) and enter the URL/address of your social profile or page. You can copy and paste the URL/address from the list you made earlier.
6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you have added all desired images (in this case social media icons) and links.
7. Once the signature is complete, click OK to save it.

Enjoy your own FANCY, SCHMANCY email signature!  Now you have it!

 
If your social media profiles/pages aren’t helping you accomplish business objectives, contact Michelle Cullison for a phone consult today at 504-324-1058 or michelle@daystarnewmedia.com. 

Visit DaystarNewMedia.com to learn more about our programs and services.