business blogging Archives - One Social Media

5 Embeddable Resources You Could Be Using To Enhance Your Blog And Keep Visitors Coming Back For More

May 26, 2011 By Rob Wormley 1 Comment

For a lot of businesses, the idea of blogging can be scary. It’s easy for a CEO to decide that his or her company needs to have a blog. For most blogging platforms, the setup process is fairly simple. In fact it only takes a matter of seconds. The hard part, however, comes when the person who has been put in charge of running the company blog realizes they have no idea what to write about. So what’s the secret to running a successful, interesting, valuable blog that keeps people coming back for more? It all comes down to two things: strategy and creativity. That’s it.

Here’s the deal: Blogging isn’t hard. It just takes a little strategy, and a little creativity. Blogging is a must for all companies. Joe Soto, CEO of One Social Media, said it best at a recent social media luncheon that he spoke at following New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Gitomer’s sales seminar. When speaking on the topic of blogging, he said: “If you don’t have a blog, you’re not taking your business seriously.”

To help you come up with effective blog strategies, AND to help you boost your creativity, I’d like to share 5 embeddable resources that will help you enhance your blog and keep visitors coming back for more.

1. VYou
Site: http://vyou.com
What it is: The concept behind VYou is simple, yet ingenious: Ask a question about a topic—get a video response. Click here to learn more.
Strategy Tip: Set up a VYou account and start interacting with your clients. It provides a great opportunity for organizations and companies who want to start connecting with customers on an entirely new level. Invite people to interact with you on VYou by embedding your profile in a blog post.
Cost: Free
Example:

2. ISSUU
Site: http://issuu.com
What it is: ISSUU is the leading digital publishing platform on the web. It’s a site that allows you to upload and share publications.
Strategy Tip: Create a profile on ISSUU for your company and start uploading your brochures, reports, case studies, and any other marketing materials you have. Then embed your publications into a blog post on your company blog.
Cost: Free
Example:

3. Prezi
Site: http://prezi.com
What it is: A new way to present information. Prezi allows you to take your personal or corporate messages, meetings, and speeches to the next level by helping you create visually-stunning presentations.
Strategy Tip: Set up your account on Prezi, then spend some time learning how to use it. In the meantime, share other presentations that you come across by embedding them into your next blog post. Search for a topic that relates to your industry.
Cost: Free
Example:

Power of storytelling on Prezi

4. Twitter Search Feed
Site: http://twitter.com/about/resources/widgets
What it is: A Twitter widget that allows you to create a live stream of tweets based on a specific search term.
Strategy Tip: Search for a word(s) that relate to your industry. Help keep your clients and future customers informed by embedding a Twitter search widget into your next blog post.
Cost: Free
Example:

5. LiveShare by Cooliris
Site: http://www.cooliris.com/yoursite/express/builder
What it is: A new way to share YouTube videos, Flickr photostreams, Facebook photos, and more!
Strategy Tip: Use LiveShare by Cooliris to share your company’s YouTube channel with your clients. Embed the LiveShare app into your next blog post.
Example:

Hopefully these ideas will help get you started. At the least, they will help you drastically improve your next five blog posts. Just use one resource per blog post and share them across all your social media sites. You’ll be pleasantly surprised with the positive feedback you receive. The key to using your blog as an effective resource for future business is all about value, and in order to provide value on your blog, you need to invest in two things: strategy and creativity.

Still have questions? Ask me on Twitter. I’m @robwormley.

Rob Wormley
As a social media specialist, Rob thrives in situations that require constant creativity. On days when Rob isn’t working hard to create, maintain, and strengthen relationships online, you might find him spending time with family, browsing through his nearest bookstore, or sipping on a cup of coffee at his local Starbucks.
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Filed Under: blogging, Creativity, search engine optimization, Social Media, social media marketing, Social Media Trends Tagged With: blogging, Business, business blog, business blogging, business networking, des moines social media company, des moines social media firm, One social media, online marketing, social marketing blog, social media blog, social media company, social media des moines, social media iowa, social media trends, web trends

How To Improve Your Writing For Social Media (In 140 Characters Or Less)

May 14, 2011 By Rob Wormley Leave a Comment

To see the real-time stream of these tweets on Twitter, click here.

Rob Wormley

As a social media specialist, Rob thrives in situations that require constant creativity. On days when Rob isn’t working hard to create, maintain, and strengthen relationships online, you might find him spending time with family, browsing through his nearest bookstore, or sipping on a cup of coffee at his local Starbucks.

10 Reasons Why Your Competition Is Beating You On Social Media

April 29, 2011 By Rob Wormley 3 Comments

Although you might not want to admit it, I bet you’re paying attention to how your competition is doing on social media. Have you noticed lately that their social media profiles are growing a lot faster than your company’s social media profiles? It might be because of one of these ten reasons:

1. Your competition has a presence on multiple social media sites. While you’re spending all your time updating your company’s Facebook page, your competition is busy sending out tweets, uploading YouTube videos, connecting with potential leads on LinkedIn, creating a new album of photos on their Flickr photostream, and updating their blog. Your competition understands the importance and value of building an online brand presence through the use of multiple social media platforms.

Create a presence on all the popular social media sites

2. Your competition is updating their social media profiles consistently. Your competition’s social media profiles continue to grow because they continue to provide consistent, valuable content to their followers. They have maintained a loyal following thanks to the consistent updates they post on their social media profiles, and have even started attracting new followers.

3. Your competition is going out of their way to invite customers to connect with them on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Are you telling the customers who walk into your door about your social media presence? Is it in your brochures? Your quarterly newsletter? Your email signature? On the back of your restaurant menu? Your competition is going out of their way to invite customers and prospects to connect with them on their favorite social media sites.

4. Your competition is posting a variety of content. Your competition isn’t re-posting promotional text from their website. They are creating Facebook photo albums of their last corporate event. They’re finding interesting links that relate to their industry and sharing them with followers. They are uploading client testimonial videos and behind-the-scenes video tours to their YouTube channel. Your competition is posting content that they know their followers will like. They aren’t worried about leaving out the promotional text from their website, because they are attracting new customers by providing value.

Create a Flickr photo gallery and share it on Facebook

5. Your competition is cross-promoting. Your competition is telling their Twitter followers about their Facebook page. They are ending every YouTube video by inviting viewers to connect with them on their other social media sites. They are embedding their Facebook page feed into their blog. They understand that their LinkedIn connections might not ever realize they have a Flickr account unless they occasionally share links to their Flickr photostream on their LinkedIn profile.

6. Your competition isn’t afraid to answer the hard questions. If you’re afraid to answer the tough questions that people might post on your company’s Facebook page, don’t be. Your competition isn’t afraid. In fact, they encourage their followers to ask tough questions, because they see it as an opportunity to strengthen their online reputation. Instead of ignoring or deleting tough questions that show up on their Facebook page, they’re being proactive. They’re taking the time to come up with a helpful, thoughtful answer that will show people how much they care about their customers.

7. Your competition is customizing their profiles with recognizable brand designs. You might understand the importance of presenting a consistent brand design when promoting your business in the physical world (you have a standard design or logo that appears on your flyers, your company shirts, your store sign, and your press releases), but you’re not (successfully) incorporating your company’s consistent design into your social media profiles. Your competition has taken time to design visually-interesting, customized designs for all their social media profiles.

: Customize Your Social Media Sites

8. Your competition is taking time to listen to advice, suggestions, and other helpful comments. Your competition is not only improving their online reputation by listening to advice and comments made by their followers, but they’re also using these comments to improve their business in general. They value the interaction that is happening on their social media profiles, and they are using suggestions made by followers to evolve their business in the physical world.

9. Your competition is utilizing social media tools to become the expert in your industry. Where are your potential customers going to learn more about your industry? If you think it is your website (or your competition’s website), you are wrong. Your potential customers are learning about your industry on places like Facebook and Twitter because it’s easy for them. Your competition understands that. That’s why they are going out of their way to provide valuable content and information to people on their social media profiles. They are becoming the experts in your industry.

10. Your competition has support from employees, clients, and other businesses in the community. Your competition is succeeding on social media because they have support from every employee who works for the company. Every one of their employees is promoting the company’s social media profiles in email signatures, at meetings with potential clients, and everywhere else. Your competition also has support from clients. They even have support from other businesses in the community who are interested in building a relationship online with them.

: Interact with other businesses in the community

If you want to start seeing better numbers on your social media sites, implement some of the strategies that your competition is implementing. Use this list to beat your competition on social media. Become the expert in your industry. Invite your customers to connect with you on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and any other social media site you use. Listen to what your followers have to say. Update your profiles consistently, and provide value. It’s worth your effort and your time.

Still have questions? Ask me on Twitter. I’m @robwormley.

Rob Wormley

How Enchanting is Your Business?

March 15, 2011 By Joe Soto 2 Comments

Guy Kawasaki’s latest book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions, forces readers to reflect upon the ways they have created, maintained, and sometimes broken relationships with people throughout their lives. The former chief evangelist of Apple and author of the international best-seller The Art of the Start has written a book that will be known for transforming not just businesses but interpersonal relationships as well.

Enchantment on Amazon.com

Guy’s understanding of human relations makes this book stand out in a sea of other business books trying to teach you how to grow your business, while overlooking the human side of what makes relationships work, both offline and online.

Through his use of personal anecdotes, real-life case studies, bulleted lists, detailed diagrams, and interesting photos, Kawasaki has put together a truly inspirational book that can be used by anyone—from the local coffee shop barista, to the recent college graduate, and all the way up to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. If you are passionate about the work you do, this book is definitely for you. (Keep reading…we’ll show you how to apply the lessons in the book to your social media efforts!)

You will fill up a notepad with notes and ideas of how to make your own business more enchanting* using his proven enchantment tips that are sprinkled in each chapter throughout the book. From establishing goals, achieving likability by finding shared passions, and achieving trustworthiness to learning the differences between utilizing both push technology (e.g. Twitter) and pull technologies (e.g. Blogging, Facebook) to be more enchanting online.

We admire how Guy doesn’t just tell you what to do. He tells you how to do it. For example, he explains how to to tell a story, immerse people, and shares his idea of building an ecosystem which allows more people to help you because their success is intertwined with yours.

He ends the book with chapters on how to enchant your employees, and if you are an employee, how to enchant your boss.

Our advice is to not buy this book and read it. Buy the book here* and take notes. Write in it. Highlight it. Dog ear it. More importantly, use it as a guide to build a more enchanting business and be more enchanting to your clients.

So HOW DO YOU APPLY the principles taught in Enchantment to your social media efforts? Watch our archived video review and learn how we apply lessons from the book to real clients to get real results.

This is a slideshow of Guy’s recent Enchantment speech:

Enchantment v2.2

Guy’s enchanting infographic:

Reviewed by: Joe Soto & Rob Wormley

*Amazon affiliate link

Note: Guy sent me a free copy of the book to review, and I’ve since ordered the book for some of my clients. It’s well worth it.

Joe Soto

Husband, Father, Entrepreneur, Social Media Strategist, Speaker, and always learning.

New Social Media Platforms For Innovative Marketers

September 10, 2010 By Joe Soto 4 Comments

Have you noticed how big brands like Starbucks, Nike, Adidas and others are making their presence felt on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter? Every company today is adopting social media marketing as a prominent tool to reach out to its target customers, but some innovative marketers have gone a step beyond by experimenting with lesser known social media platforms to reach to their target audience. To know more about a couple of out-of-the-box social networking sites read on…

Aardvark

If you are looking for an alternative to the LinkedIn Answers, then Aardvark is probably the name you can count upon. Being recently acquired by Google Aardvark is a useful question-answer platform.

Gowalla

With 450,000 users it is a new location based application based in Austin, Texas. Gowalla is the latest favorite of innovative marketers, and brands like National Geographic, Red Bull and Levi’s are some of the popular names that are exploring this new platform for social media marketing.

To read the full article click here.

Joe Soto

Joe Soto is the CEO of One Social Media. A leading expert in social media marketing, Joe has over 16 years of experience in all aspects of sales, marketing, online lead generation, and Internet marketing.

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Filed Under: Social Media News Tagged With: 2010 trends, blogging, Business, business blogging, des moines social media company, facebook, One social media, online marketing, search engine marketing, small business social media, social media, social media des moines

How to make Your Business Blog More Popular

July 1, 2010 By Joe Soto Leave a Comment

High popularity rating is like oxygen to a business blog. A blog with little or no visitors is dead weight, just sitting there and wasting valuable storage space on the company server. In order to reap the benefits of the blog, you need to drive traffic to it on a regular basis. It is not an easy task, but with the right kind of planning and action, it can be done. Here are some quick pointers to help you with that:

Maintain proper length in posts: Do not make a 50 word blog post and expect a big impact. This is not Twitter you are dealing with. Make sure each post uploaded on your blog is at least 300-400 words in length. That will actually make the posts look good to visitors.
Go easy on ‘fluff’: True, you may have to introduce some filler material in blog posts made on topics, on which you do not have much data yet. However, make sure that there is enough data for visitors to be impressed. In a 300 word blog post, for instance, filler material should not cover more than 90-100 words.
Go easy on graphics and concentrate on putting in more text: Make sure that there is enough textual content for visitors to read. Do not just post a graph to show the industry trends for the last few years. Write a few paragraphs to express your views on the trends. Top it off with a few predictions about the coming quarters, to make it a little more appealing. It will be mostly conceptual, but readers will still like to go through it, simply because it expresses an independent point of view.
Beware of controversies: It is alright to flame the new government policy a little, but remember to tone down on the insults. Better still, do not insult anyone, but express your disagreement with a hint of satire. You will gain more followers because of controversial nature of the posts, and at the same time, will not be slapped with a lawsuit.

These 4 steps should raise the popularity bar for your blogs by at least a notch. Remember to keep your blog updated with fresh content on a regular basis in order to keep visitors returning, and also get more attention from major search engines.

Joe Soto

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Filed Under: blogging Tagged With: Blog, blogging, business blog, business blogging, One social media, social media, social media des moines, social media iowa, social media marketing, social media Philadelphia, Web search engine

Using Your Time Wisely on Social Networks

June 11, 2010 By Joe Soto Leave a Comment

People who are running an enterprise are always facing acute shortage of time. Especially, if they log into Facebook or Twitter, they get so engrossed that they lose track of time. The time that you spend on these social media networks should be spent in doing something constructive or else it is of no use.

Here are some tips that will help you to save time:

Change the setting in your social media accounts so that your blog posts are updated automatically. Updating your blogs manually everyday will lead to wastage of time. Your blog posts should lead back to your website which will help in increasing traffic.

This tip is exclusively for LinkedIn users. LinkedIn is one of the biggest social networks that are being used worldwide by small and big enterprises. You can share your thoughts and ideas with people and get feedback from them. This will help you to create quality content for blogs. You can also post your blog links in specialty groups.

Merely updating your blog is not enough. You have to post status updates and comments about your work in that particular field. Using the right keywords is important. For example, if you are using Twitter, you can set up keyword alerts that will list the tweet that includes keywords you want to follow.

These methods will surely help you to make good use of your time in a productive manner.

Joe Soto

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: business blogging, facebook, LinkedIn, small business social media, social media, social media marketing, social networking, twitter

Social Media Use Has Become a Regular Habit for Three Quarters of the Online Population

April 15, 2010 By Joe Soto Leave a Comment

Each week I get asked, “Do you know what percentage of those online are engaged and influenced by social media?”
Rarely do I have a really good answer for that. Until now.
A new article from Adweek was recently published revealing new research. Research that shows social media use has become a regular habit for three quarters of the online population.
One interesting part of the research study point out that “more than half of top ten daily media destinations are social media.” It’s where people are turning too.
With Facebook climbing to half a billion registered users and Twitter adding more than 300,000 new registered users daily, it’s time for small to medium businesses to jump on the train.
To read the complete article on Adweek.com, click here.
To read the research study, click here.

Joe Soto

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: blogging, business blogging, facebook marketing, search engine marketing, small business social media, small business social networking, social marketing, social marketing blog, social media, social media blog, social media marketing, social media trends, social media videos, twitter, web trends

Yahoo Mail to Integrate Facebook

April 1, 2010 By Joe Soto 1 Comment

Facebook added a huge feather in their cap this week. Yahoo, a leading provider of web-hosted email, has integrated Facebook into Yahoo Mail.

Yes, you’ll be able to see your friends Facebook profile photos directly from your Yahoo Mail and further interact with their Facebook buddies. While this news is not a revolutionary change, it does display Facebook’s dominance and other web properties’ desire to team up with them.

By integrating Facebook into Yahoo Mail, Yahoo will keep more people connected to their web property for conducting social networking activity. This overlap of social networking sites is a trend that will likely continue as other “Yahoo” like properties (i.e. AOL) try to figure out how to either compete or play on the same field with new players such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Buzz.

Articles to reference:

ABC News/Technology

Paidcontent.org

Joe Soto

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Filed Under: social media marketing Tagged With: 2010 trends, business blogging, facebook, facebook marketing, small business social media, small business social networking, social marketing, social marketing blog, social media, social media blog, social media marketing, social media trends, twitter

To blog, or not to blog? That is the no longer the question.

March 26, 2010 By Joe Soto 3 Comments

Last month we blogged about how the fastest way to increase search engine rankings is to consistently provide fresh content through blogging. We titled that post “Is Blogging the New SEO?”

Now we have some back up: Hubspot released research based on their actual customers on how a blog impacts their business.

The study is taken from a sample size of 1,531 of their customers which are primarily small and mid-sized businesses. Roughly half (795) blog and half don

Joe Soto

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 2010 trends, blogging, business blogging, search engine marketing, search engine optimizaton, seo, small business social media, small business social networking, social marketing, social media, social media marketing, social media trends, web trends

Rob Wormley

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