Did you know Social Media is your Time Machine?

Looking for that Time Machine? Social media can give it to you.

I often write about business blogging and social media. I thought I would take a break and write about something a little more fun today.

Recently a team of Chinese scientists published a paper stating that time travel is not possible. The premise of the paper is time travel can not happen because a single photon can’t travel faster than the speed of light. Ok fine, but they are wrong!

See, if you want to travel back in time, it is real simple today. (What you talking about Willis?!)

Here is how it works. Let’s say I want to go back to 1974 and relive a day. It’s simple really:

1. Go to this website and find a setlist of 1974 Top 100 songs.

1. Go to Spotify or iTunes and create a playlist of the 1974 Top 100 songs
2. Drive around town in an old Camero SS and play your music

Get home from work and want to read the news?

This website has an archive of all the newspapers in the United States.

Go to the grocery store and buy your Swanson TV dinner of Salisbury Steak. Pull up your TV tray and catch a 1974 evening news report.

Yes, on Youtube, you can find old broadcasts of news for any year.

If you want to watch your favorite sitcom from 1974, turn on Netflix, Hulu or Youtube and chances are, you will find your favorite 1974 sitcom or police drama to relive the magic of 1974 television.

So with all due respect, I say the Chinese scientist are wrong. With the many social media tools available today, time travel is not only here today, it is here to stay.

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

3 Steps to Business Blogging Success on the Internet

Image via CrunchBase

Trying to attract sales on the Internet? Business blogging and social media is an effective way to make it happen. Step one is to know how to use it.  Simplicity is the key at first. There are 3 steps to effective Business blogging and social media.

Connect. Converse. Share. 

Connect

The first step with any social media strategy is going to be collecting and connecting. You want to start by attracting prospects, potential customers and contacts and essentially building that base. This one is pretty obvious. You can’t converse or share unless you have someone to converse and share with.

Here’s an example: I run a business and I have a lot of connections. Over the last 15 years, I’ve built up even more online. About a year ago, I connected with a fellow named Doug. I didn’t know him, he just found me on Twitter and started following me. I thought, “okay, Hi Doug,” followed him back and left it at that. We connected.

Converse

The second part is conversing and this is really going to depend on the medium. The tone of conversation on LinkedIn, for example, is drastically different than the tone on Twitter.

So, find a way to talk to this audience that’s both appropriate and engaging. And remember, the verb here is “converse,” not “speak.” Social media is a two-way street.

And what about Doug? Well, a week later, Doug replied to one of my posts with a great question. I retweeted it, responded and we started talking. It turns out that Doug’s a pretty cool guy. And so, we conversed.

Share

Doug was asking about blogging for business, so I referred him to an article on my blog. What do you know? I have some expertise to share.

Let’s say you’re a musician. What should you be doing with social media? Sharing your music. Now, let’s say you’re an accountant, what should you be doing? Sharing your accounting expertise. The point being, you don’t have to be a rock star to share your talents. If you have experience in a field, then start blogging about it and start sharing it. (As an added bonus, the more you share, the more you’ll learn, and the more of an expert you’ll become.)

Sharing is really linked into conversing and it’s also a great way to reach out and attract more connections. Why? Because those connections want your expertise or talent. In the end, this creates a nice feedback loop.

Today, Doug’s both a friend and a client. Not everyone you connect with, converse with or share with is going to become a customer, obviously. But Doug is one of several clients who “found” me this way. So, yes, lead generation and sales can be done online, but you need a strategy

And it doesn’t get much simpler than: Connect. Converse. Share.

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

Are blog services overrating Twitter

Image via CrunchBase

 

Twitter has become an important part of any blog services strategy. If you you are using a blog writing service, are they helping you grow and build your Twitter following?

Twitter isn’t in the Oxford English Dictionary yet, but more than 175 million people have added it to their vocabularies and use its 140 character posts to answer the question “What are you doing?”

Inventing new words may be part of the game with Twitter, as people have adopted a whole new language. Twitter people are Tweeple. A Twitter meetup is a Tweetup. And on and on.

InTwigued? To put Twitter’s 4 million users in perspective, when Facebook was getting similar attention, its ranks numbered 24 million. So is Twitter overrated or as valuable as its fans claim? And will it be around long enough to make it worth our time?

Time is one feature that Twitter boasts. It offers users real time connection, an instant, short glimpse into all the moments between emails and blog posts. Friends could find these momentary updates useful when we’re looking to join the party or running late for lunch, and businesses are beginning to employ Twitter marketing to announce short-term specials, like the deal of the day. Twitter even scooped more traditional media with first news and instant updates of recent earthquakes,rocket attacks, and plane crashes. We all hope catastrophes are few are far between. So do the many people or businesses who have news that’s noteworthy enough to fill the moments between blog posts and e-blasts.

For many, Twitter is truly like a micro-blog, like using only the status section of Facebook. Fans say this feature inspires conversation and connections. It can also provide the curious spark that drives “followers” to blog posts, Facebook pages, and more in-depth web presences. When Barack Obama used Twitter during his presidential campaign, some argued that his tweets got followers to visit more than just web sites. Either way, the voters visited the polls.

And while Twitter users may number just a fraction of other online social networks’ crowds, Facebook did float a $500 million stock offer to bring Twitter into its realm. That’s 500 million reasons that Facebook thinks Twitter will stay and grow.

Several Twitterers we know admit to feeling like they were in their own foggy Twitter bubble (Twubble?) when they first joined the network. John H. suggested new users should be warned with a disclaimer, something like, “Warning: During your first 30 days of using Twitter, you will have no idea what the heck is going on. Only after 30 days will you begin to understand its value.”

Several other users confessed to giving up within those first 30 days after tiring of the useless updates and the time wasted. It seems most of us are Twittering and following tweets to be part of the experiment, to learn to tailor the Twitterers we follow to accomplish our own information goals and to enjoy the simplicity of short, quick updates.

So is Twitter overrated? Our opinion is no, it’s got nowhere to go but up. But maybe you think differently. Is Twitter is an endangered species under the pressure of larger social networks? Leave your comments (even with more than 140 characters).

It matters what you say in business blogging and social media

Business blogging and social media are becoming an important part of marketing today. Blog writing services can help you navigate the dangerous waters of trouble with experience in online communication that helps your brand. Sometimes people make mistakes in social media and get in trouble for it.

It’s interesting how many people think that what they say in the big conversation either is or should be exempt from consideration when big decisions are being made – like the decision to hire you or contract your firm. Setting aside politics for a moment, simple emotional outbursts like this have great impact:

Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

To see what happened to this poor twitterer, there’s more to the story here:How to Tweet Your Way Out of a Job « I’m Not Actually a Geek

Or take what happened to this poor FedEx employee from Ketchum who decided to trash Memphis on Twitter when he got to town. This poor guy got crucified and he didn’t even say the word Memphis:

True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say “I would die if I had to live here!”

The result was everyone in this poor guy’s chain of command was told about the incident and how little they appreciated it. (there’s so much more to the story – Be Careful What You Post)

So, if people are that fickle about fairly harmless statements, what happens when you say something a little more emotionally charged?  Ask this 19-year-old resident of Athens Tennessee who found himself charged with inciting to riot for an emotional outburst on MySpace (Top Stories: MySpace.Com Death Threats – www.newschannel9.com).

The moral of the story is that you have to remember that no matter if it’s Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or a local Ning group that what you say is recorded forever and very public. That freedom of speech thing does not protect others from using what you say to make decisions, especially the ones that affect you personally the most.

 

Sexy social media - how is it done?

A Social Media Expert can be sexy?

Blow out the candle and turn off the Marvin Gaye. We’re not talking about that kind of sexy profile. Social media campaigns have gone far beyond e-dating. Now we’re e-networking: fishing (and casting) for jobs, getting (free) expert advice, and keeping track of who knows who we know (you know?). We’re all within six degrees of separation. These days, it’s more like six buddy lists. Business blogging can play an important part in your e-networking.

To make the most of this wide-spread web and the social network profiles that bind us, we have to represent our genuine selves attractively. The challenge is putting our best e-foot forward within the limitations of a social media profile with a tiny thumbnail of a profile pic.

First, take advantage of the old adage that a picture’s worth a thousand words. Company presidents, executives, and managers agree that profiles that include a picture lend more credibility to any words on the page. Yes, it’s tempting to use that hilarious lamp-shade-on-the-head photo from the last office party or maybe even Fido’s most adorable pose, but keep in mind that we’re looking to make a connection for ourselves, not our pet or our party skills. The folks who wield paychecks, contracts, and years of experience say a flattering head shot in a professional setting is more attractive than swiping a pic of our favorite celebrity.

Next, use your words. The completeness of a profile also gets the attention of big fish in this web pond. Fill in as many profile blanks as you can and keep the information accurate with regular updates. If you’re on multiple social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter, Digg, Facebook, etc.), make sure all your stats jive so that potential connections won’t get conflicting messages about your experience.

And remember, get creative but don’t brag. Social media profiles shouldn’t be e-resumes. Make your profile as interesting and dynamic as you are, but don’t oversell your talents. No one wants to sit next the guy who can’t stop talking about himself, and it’s just as much a turn off to visit a profile page that screams “It’s all about me, wonderful ME!” Let your personality shine through—maybe with a quote or tagline about an experience in your life—and think about representing more than just your professional career.

Social media networks are a relatively new aspect of how we communicate. But their influence is growing, and businesses are becoming more aware of the benefits social network profiles can bring. Posting our most compelling profiles now and developing them as these social media outlets grow is sure to keep our message the most attractive news we’ve heard on the grapevine. (And…cue the Marvin Gaye once more.)

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

Why are joining a social media network?

Is your social media expert helping you identify which networks to join?

Understanding the audience you are trying to reach is half the battle in social media marketing. If you are trying to reach soccer fans, chances are you are not going find many in the baseball forum. For that matter, if you want to discuss how great Ayn Rand is, you will not make much headway with readers of Micheal Moore.

There are three major types of social networks - business, personal and communication. Notice I didn't say "marketing?" Some may combine aspects of all three (Twitter) while others are more singular (LinkedIn).

And even though you may call yourself a social media marketing guru, that doesn't mean you can "market" your way across all three types in the same way. In fact, every network has a point or a purpose and if you're missing it, then you're missing out.

Business

Social networks that focus on business are your LinkedIn's, your Biznik's and all of those local listservs and forums that people participate in as part of their online business networking.

The purpose here is to do business, not to share pictures of your kitten or that fantastic dancing robot video you found on YouTube. It's also not the place for relentless marketing. In other words, don't spam people.

Personal

I would describe Facebook as an example of a personal network. Some people may use it for business networking, but that's not the point of it or the purpose.

Instead, it's private and most people create Facebook accounts as individuals, not businesses. Basically, it's your space to be yourself, talk to your friends and family and share those kitten photos. If you're using Facebook to bombard your "friends" with product announcements and sales pushes, you're going to find yourself very friendless, very fast.

Communication

This is where it's all about sharing what you know and your take on what you know and what other people you know know (have I lost you yet?). By definition, Twitter would fall into this category though the micro-blogging platform has evolved to embrace aspects of all three. Blogging would be another example.

Remember, the onus here is on the communication. So, if you don't have anything valuable to share or you waste your audience's screen time with pitches and spam, you'll lose them quickly. Go ahead, make a post about your new product, but also share that interesting industry-specific article you read last week.

Social networks weren’t designed for marketing. They were designed for networking and each designed for a specific type of networking. Approaching all of them with the same marketing strategy is like trying to build a house with a Leatherman – sure, all of the tools are there, but that doesn’t mean it can be done.

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

Stay on topic in your business blog

You have your business blog and are writing - STAY ON TOPIC!

If you are trying to attract new customers or position yourself as a thought leader in your industry, business blogging is about staying focused. Remember, web users are a selfish lot. They want content that is relevant to them. So, keep your business blogging on topic to stay focused.
I read a lot of small business blogs (and big business blogs) and one of the things I've been noticing recently is a massive influx of businesses getting online, starting to blog, and then failing to stay on topic. I think it boils down to people simply not understanding why they're blogging and what these blogs are actually supposed to do.
You'll see business blogs with personal posts covering everything from family finances to the game last Sunday. The thing is, if you're blogging on your business's website, it's critical that what you're telling the world (because you are telling it to the world) is in line with what your company does and the image you're trying to project.
The Conversation Should be With Your Market, Not Your Grandma
Why are you blogging? To engage your customers and attract new ones to your business. By that logic, you should be talking about your business, not your favorite Turducken recipe.
Of course, strip a blog of all its character and personality and you're left with a site drier than a saltine cracker.
The Golden Ratio
If you want to go off-topic, keep those personal posts to about 15-25% or no more than one in five posts. Oh, and make sure you try to keep those off topic, personal posts on topic.
In other words, you can talk about personal topics, but can you bring it back around to your business? Could an afternoon spent opening a first bank account for your daughter be parleyed into a personal, yet apt post for an accounting firm? Could the basketball game last night be turned into a sports analogy for your consulting strategy? Or could that Turducken become a metaphor for sales ladders? You get where I'm going with this.
Style vs Substance
There's one last catch, just because that other 75-85% of your posts need to be about your business, that doesn't mean they should be void of personality. It's OK to put a personal story in context if you can stay on topic and still have a sense of humor, yes, even if you're talking about carpet cleaning.
Write in the first person, keep it friendly, stay casual and you'll end up with posts that are professional, on-topic and still engaging.

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

Business blogging and Twitter - content first

 Social media campaigns should have business blogging as the hub of their activity. Often, we talk to prospects starting a B2B Social Media or B2C Social Media campaign with no content. Why? They don't have to the time to do it. Hire a ghost blog writer! Simply put, it is hard to participate on Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook with no content.

When I was in college, you could always tell the freshmen at a party because they'd be the ones hanging around the stairs talking about how cool the party was. Meanwhile, the upper-year students would be heading for the keg and, well, actually enjoying the party.

Twitter can be very similar. You've got a rush of new people hanging out, talking about how Twitter is such a great tool and sharing news stories on how many more millions have joined the feed. And then, over there in the back, there are a few people who are actually using it as a tool.

Unlike Diamonds, Twitter Isn't Forever
The thing is, Twitter won't be around forever. True, it may seem like everybody's on it and it's the place to be, but guess what? So was Friendster. Three years ago, Twitter didn't exist. Five years ago, Facebook was a burgeoning idea on a Harvard campus and six years ago, everybody had a MySpace. The point is, things move fast and tastes can change even faster.

Which is exactly why though Twitter can be a useful part of a comprehensive marketing plan, it's not the be all and end all.

So, What's Next?
If I knew, I'd be calling my broker. Seriously though, if you were to pin me to the mat, I'd have to say niche communities.

Sure there are big providers out there like Facebook and LinkedIn, but there are also a lot of smaller, more niche-focused social networks popping up. For example, Identi.ca, which is a Twitter clone. That particular community is made of predominantly open source software developers and fans and, as a result, has a distinctly technical feel to it along with a great tech sense of humor.

As messageboards and listservs grow up and enter the social realm, you'll see more niche-focused networks appearing. Then again, maybe not.

In the meantime, party with us on Twitter:

Paul Lorinczi
Erik Deckers

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

Has the slow economy pushed more people to social media?

Slow Economy and B2B Social Media

B2B social media and b2c social media are playing a big role in the slow economy. Like the Depression of the 1930s, misery loves company. Today, company is finding itself on business blogging sites, Facebook and Linkedin.

They say a man is rich who has friends. What about a company with fans?

There aren’t many internet users who remember seeing Charlie Chaplin’s movies when they debuted in theaters. Thanks to the internet, though, just about any user can watch Chaplin ham it up as the Tramp who faced many of the same challenges as his original audience.

During the Great Depression, poor folks watched the poor guy do his best to find a job (and keep it), fix up his house (err, shack), and woo the lady of his dreams. The audience had something in common with Chaplin’s characters, so they got the jokes, and the jokes brought them all together.

Of course, the Depression was no joke.

During these modern days we’re slogging through our own recession that doesn’t offer much to laugh about. A lot of Americans are facing those same struggles with work, housing, and even relationships. Just like Chaplin’s films portrayed the angst of those times, more and more people today are sharing the anxiety and worry of these modern times. Only we’re not doing it with slapstick and silent movies. We’re posting on blogs, sharing photos, and twittering.

.com-miserating
According to a recent trend report from Netpop Research LLC, online social networking has almost doubled since 2006 while the economy has only weakened since then. Netpop reports that about 3 out of 4 web users are personally sharing over the internet by contributing to blogs, rating products, uploading photos. etc.

Today about 29% of US broadband users communicate with each other specifically through social networking sites. Tough times do bring people together, and the results of this report point to even more online sharing as these recession days continue.

What This Means For Business
Commiserating with like-minded people can bring relief and comfort, but it can also impact our decisions. We aren’t sheep, blindly following anything willing to lead, but when every penny counts, it’s good to know how friends made similar choices.

While we’re updating microblogs and profile photos, we’re also rating products and declaring ourselves as fans of certain services. While we’re connecting through online chats, we’re also bidding at online auctions and sharing the scoop on great deals.

Netpop’s research revealed that social networkers currently spend more money online than “non-contributors,” and that they are likely to rely ever more heavily on the recommendations of their fellow networking media participants as this recession intensifies.

That’s why business owners need to get involved in social media. Reaching out to their existing customers who are already participating in venues like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.com will bring them into an ever-increasing network of contacts on the same wave length.

Just as Cate Riegner, VP of Research at Netpop Research, LLC, noted, “Brands that experiment in social advertising now will be in the best position to leverage these important media channels when the economy turns the corner.”

And, rest assured, this economy will indeed turn the corner, just like Chaplin always bounced back from that slapstick fall.

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

Business Blogging Mistakes

Blog Marketing mistakes made by business

Marketing should not be the motivation when blogging for business. Conversation with your customers should be the cornerstone of blogging for business. It is ok to talk about what you do with readers. It just has to be done in a way that speaks to them and their selfish needs, not yours.

Before you rush into business blogging there's something you should know:

Business blogging does not work in a vacuum

Every week someone calls us and asks if we can just ghost write blog articles for super cheap for their business blog. There's a name for these spammy business blogs, and it sounds like something that grows in that goo that accumulates in the drain pan under the fridge: splog.

Splogs are blogging's answer for the guy at the fair who yells “Hey you, with the face! Step right up...” So, after discovering that our future client has a splog, our first question is, well, if we are just writing, how is the blog being promoted? The answer from our prospective client is nearly always:

“We don't care about that. We just have the blog around to mop up on some keywords on Google. It needs lots of new content, but we don't really care what it says. We just want Google to index it.”

After we take a look at the prospects blog, we usually find three things are true about the aforementioned business blog:

1. It's written by fake people. Not real people with pen names, but fake as in department store mannequin with a bad wig and big sunglasses.

2. The content isn't personal (it's written in third person), usually isn't well written and isn't tracking in the search engines for keywords that actually get traffic. It's usually just more spammy content that will end up on page 8,500 in Google's search results for a fourth rate keyword.

3. The business blog is screaming fire in an empty theater at three in the morning on a Sunday after the popcorn ran out. It gets 20 clicks. Per month. Meaning a visitor is more likely to be a hacker's spider looking for unpatched scripts than a person, anyway.

Cheaply written business blogs which are put up for an audience consisting of a search engine spider and a ranking algorithm don't work very well if you are trying to actually market.  To engage, you have to actually communicate with people. Which raises the biggest mistake that people make when they start business blogging: failing to be genuine.

Blogs which are written by real people that can be called on the telephone are the most effective if you want good marketing.  That does not mean you have to write the article, but it does mean that every blog post needs to be your ideas, and said in a way that is personal and genuine.

Why? Because, people do business with people. It's that simple.

What are you going to do when someone calls and asks if Mr. Fake Person can speak at a trade show or come on a sales call? Hire an actor? Good luck with that.

Think about it.

People do business with people. People network with people. Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn connect people to people. It's called social media for a reason, and the blog is the foundation of it all.  Spammy business blogs are anti-social.

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

8 Social Bookmarking Services That Work in Any Niche + a Time Saving Tool

Blogging for Business? Social Bookmarking Can Help

An effective social media campaign uses social bookmarking to help drive traffic.  Blogging for business is most effective when you are getting your content distributed. Business blog marketing content needs to be shared. Social bookmarking can play an important role in this strategy.
Social bookmarking can help drive relevant and interested traffic to your website – in other words, social bookmarking doesn’t just put random and isolated single links out there, it puts out “targeted feelers”. Instead of casting a line, you’re now casting a carefully baited net. And not only are you pinning down your focus niche of potential readers or customers, you’re also getting some PageRank juice with the search engines.
Social bookmarking sites let users post links or bookmarks, make comments and invite other users to comment. These comments or votes will often increase a link’s value and its visibility. The more votes a page gets, the more perceived value it acquires and the higher it ranks on the search engines. The higher it ranks, the more people who see it and… well you see where I’m going with this…
So, if bookmarks are so great, where do you post them? Try my top 8 social bookmarking services that will work in any niche:

Blinklist
Users can ‘Blink’ their favorite sites and even create a personal ‘blinklist’. The site then allows users to sort, describe and tag their favorite blinks. The community has over 450,000 users who are extremely active.

Faves
Faves lets users save their favorite web pages, videos, news stories and music and then share it with the Faves’ community. Sign up and try the Active Topic Groups tool to see what subjects and links are generating a lot of heat.

Delicious
Del.icio.us was one of the first social bookmarking sites and still my personal favorite. As a result, it has a massive following and an extremely active community. Users can submit and share links with each other, but they can also categorize them across a wide range of interesting categories. Most sites see an improved search engine ranking and massive leaps in traffic after using Delicious with targeted tags and link descriptions.

Diigo
Diigo is like a highlighter in your browser that lets users highlight text online and even add sticky notes. The site is predominantly used for research and it’s a great way to promote web sites that are heavy with factual or research-worthy information.

Mister Wong
With over 4 million visitors every month and a site that serves 6 different languages, Mister Wong is a massive and global social bookmarking site. The site features a Spotlight section and advertises its top topics or tags.

Mixx
Mixx is a social bookmarking site for popular news stories and compelling videos. Users post their favorite videos and comment on popular political, business, entertainment and local news stories. If you’ve got a press release, this is the place to link it.

Multiply
Multiply lets users create personal web pages containing their favorite photos, links, music and videos. It’s extremely popular with families and has over 11 million members. Create a profile for your business or yourself and start adding links.

Netvouz
Netvouz lets its users set both public and private bookmarks using a standard formula of organizing links into folders or topics and tagging them with keywords.
Time Saving Tip for Social Marketing Pros
The core audience for each of these services is a bit different, both by industry and geographic location. So, as a social marketing pro, you’d better be submitting to all of them just to be sure you are sending “targeted feelers” into each nook and cranny of the Net.
Instead of logging into each one individually every time you want to promote a link, try a service like SocialMarker. Social Marker allows you to submit your link to dozens of different bookmarking services in less than five minutes.

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

Manage your Social Media Campaign

We have our networks, but now we need to manage our Social Media Campaign

Social media campaigns require some work and activity to make them successful.  We have found the b2b social media networks where our customers, prospects and peers enage. What tools are out there for effective social media management.

In the previous post we outlined a few things to consider when choosing social networks to participate in. Now that you've made your choices, it is time to manage them.

Step 2: Managing Your Social Networks

To start, you’ll have to manually add all of your profile information. You can begin with the basics and fill each of these out over a period of time. Ideally, you want to be updating all of your social profiles about once a month. As you get involved with each social network you will see what type of profile information is necessary to attract the best relationships.

Try making a spreadsheet of all your social networks. Your column headers should be the social network name and URL, your user name, password and finally, the last date of update. It will help you stay on track of all of your profiles.

TIP: Be sure your profiles are similar on each network you choose to participate in. People are leery of chameleons who have a different "facade" in each community. Also, I think it is important to get connected to services that essentially become "profile aggregators" like Disqus, Gravatar, BackType and coComment. These services collect your various presences, show how actively and intelligently your social participate is and are quickly becoming important as credibility tools.

Now, here are some tools you can use

B2B social media marketing and what to consider

B2B Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing has been around for a very long time.
What is to B2B social media is the largest demographic can only be found there. Traditional marketing outlets like newspapers, television and sometimes magazines are not the common place for Generation Y or millennials hang. Business blogging has to adapt to the way they now consume information. Challenge is figuring out what Social Media networks you should join.

There are literally thousands of social networks out there. You can’t join them all, nor would you want to.

So, which ones should you join?

When you spread yourself too thin over too many networks, you run the risk of being unable to properly maintain your presence on all these channels. You could also find yourself associated with a social network that has a lame image or that disappears as quickly as it appeared.

How do you prioritize? Easy…

Fish where the fish are. Go where the users are. Just like a blog with no comments or a message board with no posts, a social network with no users has little value. This seems obvious but is often ignored because many less experienced marketers decide to place all their chips on a little used "up and comer" hoping to be on top when the masses convert to that social network. Problem is, the conversion rarely happens.

Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter have millions of active users. While, many “gurus” might scoff at marketing on these well established social networks, don’t be persuaded. Usually, these guys are trying to point you away from the obvious in a clever attempt to sell you some unconventional “wisdom”. Go for the safe bets because people are there, actively participate in what is a massive marketing opportunity for your brand.

With that said, there are situation when some major players should be avoided and opportunities in the new or lesser known communities... if you know what to look for. And yes, choosing the right social networks to join goes way beyond user numbers – here are a number of other factors you’ll also want to consider…

Step One: Choosing Social Networks

Site Credibility and Reputation

If you’re a Fortune500 CEO you really have no place putting yourself on MySpace (unless you happen to run a company where the target market is teens). A site may have a million users, but if they’re not your market then it’s not worth going there.
For example, think about a marketing consultant. He’s going to get more contacts and worthwhile links from maintaining his LinkedIn, Facebook and even Twitter accounts. But, he probably won’t see any returns from investing hours of time into his MyDogSpace account (a social networking site for dog lovers).
However, if he can build a presence on StartUpNation, he could get tons of great small biz consulting work form a relatively small network.

Ask if it’s Relevant?
Of course, another type of consultant could be barking up the right tree setting up a profile on MyDogSpace.com if he happens to provide consulting service for dog breeders and trainers. Why? Because the other users on that site are relevant, they fit into his niche. Obviously, right! Then why don’t more folks find these social networks and engage?

The Site’s PageRank
Despite what some say, we feel that PageRank is still critical to improving and controlling your Google (and other) search engine rankings. That means, if possible, you want to sign up for and invest your time on social networks that have a high PageRank value with lots of visitors.
For example, try googling the names of some of your friends. You’ll often find that if they have a LinkedIn, Twitter or even Blogger account, these profiles will be on the first page of their Google results. That’s because these sites have significant PageRank (6 or higher).

The Site’s Staying Power
If you don’t think a social network has staying power or enough users to keep it running through this rough economic storm, don’t waste your time setting up a profile and building up a community.
Being an early adopter can pay dividends, but then again you may just be wasting your time. If you go with a new social network, do so only if your gut tells you it is unique or compelling enough to be around in a year.

Make a Social Network Checklist
Before you invest hours of time into developing an online profile for yourself or your business, run a potential social network through a personal checklist. Ask questions like does it fit my niche? Are my current contacts using this site? Are there groups the site that I could join? How many users does it have? What’s the PageRank? Will joining this site benefit or hinder my brand?

Think of Every Profile as an Introduction
First impressions are important, so you want to avoid spreading your brand too thin. Ideally, you want every social network profile that you or your business has to be up-to-date and functional. Nothing says “deadbeat” like a profile that hasn’t been updated since 2006 or at least deleted.
You should also think of every social profile as a potential first introduction, the first handshake with a new acquaintance. Is it limp or firm and steady?

Each profile may be a bit different, but you want them all to put forward the image and information that is congruent with your brand or blog.

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

Branded Social Media Networks

In an effort to control their social media participation, brand managers often consider creating their own social media platform for customers and prospects to join. Challenge with this approach is you have to change their behavior. The biggest challenge with humans is getting them to change their behavior. The only company that seems to successfully challenge human behavior is Apple. Not everyone can be Apple Computer.

One of the chief features of social media is the ability to participate in a larger community without needing to reinvent it. The idea with social media marketing is that your reach can be extended by publishing on existing social sites.

Post a question on your website, you get a few responses. Pose the same question to LinkedIn you get many, many more answers.

Which raises the question: Why do corporations and brand managers keep trying to make their own social networks? It really doesn't make sense, but

Using Linkedin in your Social Media Campaign

Linkedin is an underutilized social media tool.

Linkedin is one of the best social media tools out there to connect to your market. For business to business marketing, you will probably find the people are you looking for on Linkedin.  Before you do though, consider some of the Does and Don'ts of how to use it.

Don't: Use Your Work or Primary Home Email as Your Public Email
Get a Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail account, unless you really like spam with your email. LinkedIn provides some protection to your email address, but it does give your email to first degree connections and the owners of groups you join.

Do Understand How LinkedIn Search Works
LinkedIn has millions of users.  LinkedIn's search system is critical because it is what helps you find people and what powers the "people you may know" tool. The search tool is limited to:

• First level connections - your friends.
• Second level connections - your friend's friends.
• Third level connections - your friend's friends friends.
• People in groups with you
• A random sample of the rest of the database - and you do not get to see names.

In short: the more connections you have, the easier is to find people you are not connected to.

Do Have a Strategy
Quantity over Quality
The idea here is to connect with as many people as possible so you have access to as many LinkedIn users as possible. This generally means accepting connections from anyone who wants to connect with you.  If you are a marketer, serial networker or recruiter, then the quantity should trump quality.

Quality over Quantity
If you don't need max our your visibility of LinkedIn's database, then the best way to use LinkedIn is to focus on quality. Connect with people that you know or who have a reason (beyond being a prospect) to know you.  If you do purue quality, you should connect with a few "superconnectors" (people with thousands of connections) to gain access to more people in LinkedIn's database.  It will be very hard to find people you know if you only can see 23,000 people compared to 453,000 people.

Do: Join groups
Groups allow you to find people with simmilar interest quickly.  Joining in discussion is a great way to meet new people.

Don't Spam Groups
On LinkedIn there are two kinds of spam: blatant self promoting advertisements and blatant attempts to get more connections.  Take a minute to look at a discussion group before your post a message and make sure the group has posts like the one you want to make.

Do: State that you are open to connections if you are.
If you want to grow your network quickly, tell people that you are an "open networker," or even become a LION (LinkedIn Open Networker).

Don't break Outlook with your fabulous name.
LinkedIn allows people to download their freinds and their friend's email addresses.  If you make a fancy name like ">>>Bob "The NetworkGuru" Smith<<<" it will make a first impression.  But the second impression will be that you can't be found in outlook because your first name doesn't start with ">" it starts with "B."

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

Enter The Conversation in Social Media

I often make fun of buzzwords and will admit that social media is one of them. Social media is the new craze in our world. With mobile phones, tablets like the iPad, our personal entertainment options have increased it seems x10. It seems to be impacting all ages too, not just kids. I was visiting friends in Michigan and a 60 year old guy discovered Youtube. He watches it all the time. Now, he is using other tools to stay in contact with friends and family around the world. Social media is about conversation.

People's lifestyles are changing. Gone are the days of people mindlessly watching TV. Newspapers are dying. Radio no longer delivers the soundtrack of our lives. Somewhere along the way, people decided the remote control wasn't good enough.

What's left? The Internet. Portable Media Players. Video Games. Cell Phones. TiVo... Devices that give people back control of their life. Devices that people control the content on, and have firm control of the power switch.

What does that mean to your marketing? Opportunity. And it's not about branding. Or your image. Or even engagement. It's about starting a conversation. It's about helping people find what they are looking for. It's about taking what you do, what you make and letting people discover, desire, own and control it.

Take a hard look at your existing marketing and ask yourself a few questions:

What do you do that helps customers understand your brands, products and services?

What do you do that helps you understand your potential buyers?

Are you talking? Are you listening?

Or are you entering into a conversation?

Positive relationships rarely happen without conversation. Negative relationships happen easily and often without dialogue. The question is, do you have an ongoing conversation or are you just one more reason to turn off the tv, put down the newspaper, silence the radio and fire up the iPod?
Discussion:

What have you done lately to strike up a real conversation with your customers?

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

Social media and business blogging are not immune to the buzzword culture of the Internet

In the business blogging and social media world, buzzwords are king.

As I move into the Autumn of my life, I am amused at how business blogging and social media get caught up in the buzzword culture of the last 15 years. When I was younger, I got caught up in the game too. Those of us in the industry forget that the average person does not have the same passion and knowledge we do about the world in which we work. How often to you find yourself talking and the other person has no clue what you are talking about? It made me pause.

Everything that even smells of something new gets a buzzword. I have visions of smartly dressed people with stylish glasses and fancy haircuts going, "let's give it a name." Then come up with something like this:

3-6-3 Rule
A Ton Of Money
Accounting Noise
Acquisition Indigestion
Across The Board
Active Box
Activity Based Budgeting - ABB
Affluenza
After The Bell
Agency Cross
Agflation
Air Pocket Stock
Alligator Property
Alligator Spread
Alternative Energy ETF
Alternative Investment
And Interest
Angel Bond
Angelina Jolie Stock Index
Ankle Biter
Anonymous Trading
Antitrust
Arbitrageur
Aspirin Count Theory

Sourced from investopedia.com/buzzwords

What usually happens is a small segment of the population actually understands what it means. People in the know sound really smart because they can repeat the buzzword and sound really intelligent. The real genius' use lots of buzzwords in every sentence. (Wow, he's smart, he is buzzword compliant). And people buy it all the time. (I guess that's why they work).

I will be the first to admit that I loved buzzwords too. I used to sit around with my colleagues who dressed ever so nicely and play the buzzword game too. Yes, I was a buzzword expert with everyone, clients included.

No Buzzword For This
There is one constant in human evolution. Human interactions have not really changed. Despite all this technology introduced into our lives, we as a species still function pretty much the same way. While we may not feed each other to lions, we find new ways to be cruel just the same. And our fears and desires are pretty simple too. We can still be made to fear and sex still sells.

So, how does tie into the hype surrounding social media? What's all this new Internet marketing stuff about? Well, the reality is human evolution in buying has gone from the bazaar to the store, to the electronic store. Buying and selling is still done on emotions. Doing it on the Internet is no different. Now we have to either visually or through words impact people's emotional reaction to get them to buy from us. Just like we did when people stood in front of our table at the bazaar. There is no buzzword to describe this. Businesses just need to learn how to sell in this new market.

This is a absolute fact not lost on us or our social marketing efforts. Whether we are blogging for a business or promoting a post on Facebook, we seek to impact people's emotions.

In the end, humans have not changed. We are still creatures of habit. We still gravitate towards shared interest. The only difference is that we do it in a different environment today. So, if you peal off all the buzzwords and narrow down the basic human behavior we see today, success is simply watching how humans behave in their new environments. If you observe the Internet from this perspective, you will see that nothing has really changed, only the location where people congregate has.

Paul is the President of Professional Blog Service. PBS works with clients making strategic investments into business blogging, social media and search engine optimization.

 

Top Five Tag Myths

Quick Tech Primer
If you are going to write a business blog, it is important to understand that you are writing for a couple of audiences. The first audience to read a business blog is a reader. The content you write needs to be engaging and interesting to the reader so they stay and learn. But the other important audience for a blog is the search engines. You have to understand how the search engine works so you can properly tag your sites.

Before we learn how to do this, let's review Tag Myths versus the Tag Facts.

Tag Myths, Tag Facts

Myth: Tags are used for  making blogs easy to navigate.
Fact: Tags are single words (you can do more than one word, but most people don't because using quotes is a nuisance for Del.icio.us users) for providing hints for social bookmark sites. Tags are used to help users of sites like Del.icio.us or Technorati.com quickly categorize your website. Organizing your site by tag probably is a good way to make the site make little sense.

Myth: Tags and Keywords are the same thing.
Fact: Keywords are used to make your site easier to search. Tags are used as organization hints for social bookmark users. Sometimes your tags and keywords are the same thing. Most of the time, though, keywords tend to make more sense to humans and tags tend to be a collection of words. For example: your keyword is "SARBOX compliance software" your tags should be "software sarbox accounting sarbanes-oxley". Oh, and long tail tags don't really work that well.

Myth: You should select tags the same way you select keywords for your website.
Fact: Tags are used to categorize bookmarks on sites like Del.icio.us. People do not use tags the same way as keywords - they use them to indicate broad topics or emotions instead of specifics. Your tags should make it easy for someone to quickly categorize your article in their links, not as some kind of tool for telling Google what your site is about. Take a look at Del.icio.us and look what tags people are assigning to links there - you'll be amazed how broad the tags are.

Myth: Tags should be part of my search engine optimization strategy.
Fact: Using tags to game Google for higher search position is probably not going to work out for you. Most short single word keywords are incredibly difficult to optimize for and Google has been on to tag stuffing and other third rate SEO trickery for several years. On top of that, users of social bookmarking sites will simply create their own tags if they don't like yours.

Myth: Tags are a waste of time.
Fact: There are millions of users of sites like Digg.com, Del.icio.us and Technoriati.com. Users of these sites share bookmarks (read, their bookmark of your website) with their friends. And they can have 534,391 friends they share with. On top of that, Google and other search engines seem to smile on sites that come up often in social bookmark sites.

Blogging Tool Roundup

Social media analytics are a big concern right now. What tools are out there to measure the impact of your social media campaigns. Here is a fun way to measure the personality of your business blogging. Have you considered taking a look at what your online business blog personality is translating to be in Myers-Briggs vernacular? Well, I am not going to say this is totally accurate, but it is fun nonetheless. Go ahead and try it.

Personality Type Your Blog, Metrics and Terrorists

• What Meyers-Briggs personality type is your blog? Don't know? Try the Typealyzer. Then see if it matches with your actual Meyers-Briggs personality type with this quick test.
• Making blogs measurable is difficult. That's why this article on 20 Blog Analytics Tools is a must read.
• Over the last week Twitter delivered the best coverage of the Egypt Protesters. That's right, this Twitter. Why? Real time commentary from people who are where the action was. Hmm... sounds like a tagline.

What is a Conversion Point and why do you need them on your Blog?

Your boss wants to know, why should we have a business blog?

Blogging and social media can be a tough sell to your boss. After all, most corporations are afraid of really talking to their customers online. They could say something bad. Most initiatives can fail because they do not follow one simple rule, use conversion points.

Let’s talk about conversion points. These beauties are a feature built into all well structured business blogs that create immediate transactions, sales or leads. They can be as simple as a well-placed button that says, “Buy Now” or “Get the White Paper.”

One Step or Two
A great conversion point lets the customer make the transaction without leaving the page. This makes it simpler and faster for the consumer to buy—and what’s faster for the consumer is faster and potentially more profitable for the business owner.

A next-best option is for the conversion point to lead the customer to the shopping cart or form. While it takes more time and effort on the consumer’s part for the sale, it still results in a sale.

The Obvious

Before we get started with them, 78% of our own clients’ pages don’t have a conversion point. That means that 78% of these pages DON’T SELL. And if your page doesn’t sell, how do you make money?

Every page should have at least one conversion point. Better yet, let’s make a rule. Every page should have a minimum of one conversion point. Try to make the conversion point that lets the customer stay on the same page. If this is impossible, lead them directly to the shopping cart or form.

Make it as easy as possible for the consumer to purchase your product, and they will. You can't measure the success of your blog, if there is nothing being converted.

Twitter Tool to be release soon

Last Friday I tweeted: “I’m easily impressed. I’m not easily flabbergasted. @kabaim just flabbergasted me. Follow him and ask how he did it.”

Screenshot of my Twylah page. Click to see a bigger version.

@kabaim is Eric Kim, founder and CEO ofTwylah, the new Twitter tool that Eric says is going to change the way we use Twitter. Twylah (@Twylah)does all these amazing things. So many of them, in fact, that I’ve probably forgotten a few them here. http://ping.fm/64txc

Fresh Hot Content for Search Engine Optmization

Background Info: I have been in the search engine optimization business for over seven years.
More Background Info: I just left SEO land for good.  There is a better way.

First, I can tell you what isn’t working: traditional Search Engine Optimization. I could make up a lot of really impressive, buzzword rich, techno-spam to explain why. Instead I’m going to cut to the chase: search engines want fresh, hot content. Blogging is an excellent search engine optimization tool providing fresh hot content.

So the game has changed from old fashioned keyword rich, quality content with a million high page rank links to a model where the best, fastest content factory wins.

Search your name: you’ll find social networks and social news sites own it.

Search your product names: chances are you’ll run in to social media sites like dealstreamers (Fat Wallet type social deal sites), blogs and membership forums.

Search for your core products: Unless your product is described by uber competitive keywords, you’ll find blogs, forums, and news articles.

All of which have one thing in common.  The content is usually fresh, or at least surrounded by fresh content. And the funny part is that content is not difficult.  It takes some talent, some training, time and lots of discipline. Oh, and a maniacal dedication to getting more content. And more content. You can’t stop.  And that’s why most companies are struggling with dealing with the 2009 model of internet marketing.  They are stuck worrying about the wrong things like link structure, gaming Google (good luck with that), rich media and widgets, when the real issue should be having lots of fresh, hot content.

Making fresh, hot content is exactly what ProBlogService does best. And it’s why I get up in the morning. Somewhere, there’s a company that needs content.  We want to supply it.  Content is the new rocket fuel for your marketing program.

Paul Lorinczi is the CEO of ProBlogService.com, a full service blog and social media agency.  ProBlogService.com provides blog writing, management and promotion services for business.