Archives For Social Media

The ROI of social media is survival

March 14, 2012 — 5 Comments

If you’re a huge brand, there are tools out there to help you measure the ROI of your social media efforts.  For smaller businesses, though, it can be much more difficult.  Perhaps it’s worth $700 per tweet, but it’s rarely that consistent. :)

More and more, the ROI of social media is simply that your business will continue to exist.  For example, if I asked you for the ROI on your business phone, your response would likely be “Who knows, but we obviously need to have a phone!”.  And you’re right!  The same goes for social tools; customers fully expect you to have a presence on social networks to help them find answers to their questions and hopefully to encourage them to come in for a visit.

Below are three example of businesses near me that have closed in the past year, and I feel that a lack of social media presence contributed to the demise of each of them.  A bad business will go under no matter how well they tweet, so perhaps these companies were doomed anyhow.  However, I think a bit of effort in the social world would have helped all three tremendously.

Bellacino’s

I loved Bellacino’s.  They featured “grinders” and pizza, and it was quite tasty.  They’d put coupons in some of those coupon packs that you get in the mail, but that was about as far as they went.  Their lack of social media simply meant that they were rarely in the front of our mind.  I had no real desire to “connect” with them necessarily, but if their coupons had been on Facebook I would have gladly hooked up with them on there.  If I had done so, perhaps they would have appeared in my feed from time and time and we probably would have gone in more often.

They went out of business around a year ago.

Stadium Bar & Grill

Stadium was simply made for social media, and they simply ignored it.  The restaurant did all kinds of fun activities, like trivia night and local music, but did a pitiful job of presenting it online.  For about 18 months their Facebook page had a total of one update that said something like “check back often for special events and coupons!”.  Great idea, but no execution.  They eventually started updating more often, but hadn’t built up a fan base of any kind and didn’t have enough time to build a presence.

I emailed a few of the owners to offer to help them out (for free, even), and never got a response.  They went out of business last month.

Rita’s Italian Ice

Rita’s was a place that served frozen ice, kind of like slushies.  It was really good!  Every day they’d have a different selection of flavors, which meant it was a perfect opportunity for social media.  Before I’d run out there to get treats for the family, my girls would always ask what flavors they had today.  Because of their lack of Facebook and Twitter updates, I’d have to call.  It was painful.  The poor girl answering the phone was typically trying to help a customer in the store at the time, while she’d be reading me a list of flavors that I’d be frantically writing down.  It was stupid.

With them, not only did I offer to help but I even took the time to set up a Twitter account for them, brand it, and show them how to use it.  Rather than updating daily with the flavors, they’d update it maybe once a month.  Useless.  I got tired of calling, so the only time we’d go is if the whole family was out together so that everyone could pick their own flavor.

They went out of business six months ago.

How do you do it right?

Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt

It’s not all bad news, though.  We have a local frozen yogurt shop called Menchie’s that is simply amazing on Facebook.  They’re just a little store in a strip mall and they have over 1200 fans on Facebook!  If you look at their page you’ll see why — tons of updates, coupons, interaction with every user, and just a great job of connecting with their customers.

It’s not rocket science; in fact, it’s quite simple.  The issue is that it takes time to do it right, and you need to commit to it.  I have no idea who runs the Menchie’s page (the owner, perhaps?), but they put the time into it to do it right.  As a result, they’re getting more customers through the door.

It’s no guarantee

I’m certainly not saying that this is a guarantee that your business will flourish.  Those other three stores still might have gone out of business, and Menchie’s might be gone in a year.  Ultimately, you still need to provide a great product at a great price and treat people right when they come in the door.

I can promise this, though: in all four cases above, social media was a distinct factor for bringing people into the business (or failing to), which is huge.

You’ll notice that all four examples are food related, and that was intentional — social media was seemingly made for restaurants, so if you’re still wondering if “that Twitter thing might catch on”, you need to get in gear now!  If you need help getting started, just get in touch with me and I’ll be happy to help.

In Companies, Facebook, Social Media , , , , ,
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Working toward A Brighter Web

January 24, 2012 — 3 Comments

A Brighter WebOver the years I’ve posted quite a few video tutorials on here and on other sites.  The problem is that they were scattered all over — many on here, quite a few on Google Earth Blog, various ones on my Google+ account, etc.  Recently I set out to get all of those organized, and the result seems to be pretty good.

With the help of Ali Green, we’ve put together a new site called A Brighter Web.  On the site we have over 60 video tutorials on topics such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and WordPress.  We’re adding a few new videos every day, and we’ll be expanding our range of topics over time.

With that in mind, what would you like to see on a site like that?  More social platforms, like FourSquare and LinkedIn?  Or perhaps software tutorials, like Photoshop?  Leave a comment and let us know what you’d like to see, and we’ll certainly take your ideas into consideration moving foward.

Thanks!

In Facebook, Social Media, Technology, Twitter, Videos, WordPress , , , , , ,
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It’s time to stop dabbling with social media

January 12, 2012 — 3 Comments

Last week I had the opportunity to meet with a few groups of United Methodist Church leaders near Washington, DC to discuss how the church can best use their websites and social media tools to reach people more effectively.

My social media presentation was largely focused on the fact that Twitter and Facebook are no longer tools for churches to be “playing with”; they’ve become legitimate communication tools.  While most churches are doing fairly well with Facebook, Twitter remains a problem.  I’m hoping the tools I shared with them will help get things rolling.

Google+

Even though the sessions were only a week ago, my thoughts on Google+ have changed.  At the time, I said something like “You need to focus hard on Facebook and Twitter, and start playing with Google+ because you’ll need to be active there later this year“.  As it turns out, “later this year” is now.  The reason for the sudden shift is Google’s release of “Search, plus Your World”, which adds heavy Google+ integration into the search results.  Here’s a quick video showing how that works:

That alone should be enough to encourage you to get your organization on Google+.  But it goes further.  Try searching for “music” or “cars” and you’ll get a result similar to the shot below.  Notice the area that I outlined in red.

Notice that the red box is for Google+ profiles only; no Twitter or Facebook found there.  That is seen by some as anti-competitive, and perhaps it is, but that’s simply how it works right now.  Britney Spears trails a variety of artists on Twitter (Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, etc), but none of them are on Google+ yet.  As a result, she’s suddenly getting a lot more free promotion when someone performs a search.

For now, that area doesn’t matter much for your business, but it will soon.  For local searches, Google will almost certainly start showing businesses in your area instead of just generic industry-related results.  If you wait until that happens before you join Google+, you’ll be way behind.  Suppose Katy Perry sees those results and joins Google+ to get back in the game.  While she may catch up to Spears eventually, she’s already behind by 1.3 million followers.  How far ahead do you want your competition to get before you join the game?

Faces in the main results

Not only is that side bar relevant, but the main search results (in both personal and non-personal mode) are already full of results from Google+.  In many cases, those results show the face of the author of the post even if the post was made on their own blog.  For example, the below search for “google earth imagery january” shows my face next to the second result, because it knows that I wrote that article and it connects to my Google+ profile; and this is the non-personal results!

Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket

As much as I love Google+, I’m certainly not advising you to bail on Facebook or Twitter.  As I said at the beginning, those are legit communications platforms and your organization needs to be active on both of them.  For now, at least, all three are very important to your organization.

If you want to dabble in social media, there are places to do that.  Play with Pinterest (connect with me), play with Path, or play with any of the other new services popping up.  Pinterest may become more serious this year, but for now you can just poke the tires a bit.

I don’t have time

I hear it a lot — “not another service to keep up with!”, but it’s all about your mind set.  Instead of worrying about how you’ll have time for three separate services, just look at it from the positive side.  Now you have another way to connect with your customers, and this one will help you show up more frequently in the search results too.  It’s a win-win!

Once you get things set up, simply take 10-15 minutes/day to post your latest thoughts and respond to people that are talking to you.  It doesn’t have to be a huge deal.  If it takes longer than that to respond to everything coming your way, then your business is likely doing well and you can afford to spend more time working with those people (or hire someone to help you out).

Do you think any other services are worthy of the full attention of your business right now?  I can see LinkedIn being one for a few organizations, but that’s about it.  Agree?

In Facebook, Google+, Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Twitter , , , , , , ,
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Marlow’s Tavern, meet Gary Vaynerchuk

December 10, 2011 — 4 Comments

Last week, I saw a speech that Gary Vaynerchuk gave to a bunch of RE/MAX realtors on the topic of social media engagement and it was quite awesome.  Here’s the video if you care to watch it:

Watching it inspired me to pick up Gary’s latest book, “The Thank You Economy“.  Awesome book, highly recommended. The folks at Marlow’s Tavern really need to read it.

As a general rule, we enjoy Marlow’s.  They have a few locations near us, good food, and solid service.  Tonight we took our babysitter out there for her birthday, but the evening had a few minor issues, and I think they could really benefit from having more of a “Thank You” approach to business.

No birthday desserts

We made sure to mention that today was our babysitter’s birthday, because we knew that Marlow’s did the little free cupcake dessert like most restaurants.  Nope, not anymore.  ”Some people lie about it being their birthday, so we can’t do that anymore.”  Uh-oh.  Really?  Did that surprise them?  Of course some people will lie about it — that’s why you give them a cheap cupcake and not a free steak. We had three adults and two kids, with a total bill of $78, and they’re concerned that they might give away a $3 dessert that isn’t legit?

While you certainly need to watch out for people taking advantage of you, this just seemed really shallow.  Companies that do customer service the right away (like Zappos) just focus on treating their customers like rock stars, and don’t worry so much about potentially giving up $3 every now and then.

My food was SLOW

It was remarkable.  The other four people in our party got their food fairly quickly, but I didn’t.  So I waited.  And waited.  And waited.  We’re guessing it was 10-12 minutes before my food arrived, which is crazy for a place like that, but things happen.  However, I still don’t know what happened.  I got a quick “sorry ’bout that” when they brought it, and that was it.  It was clear they didn’t care about the issue a single bit. A much better approach would have been like what Scott Stratten had happen at a hotel a few years ago; he had a very bad breakfast, but they apologized and explained the problem and he was much happier as a result.  Here’s his full write-up of that experience.

I decided not to press the the issue with them, just to see how they’d handle it.  Simply put, they didn’t.  No apology from anyone, no deduction on our bill.

(Speaking of the bill – $2.50 each for kid’s drinks?  Wow!)

Twitter

With those in mind, I did a little digging when I got home.  They’re pretty solid on Twitter (@MarlowsTavern), so I poked around for a while.  The content they push out is solid, but their conversation skills are weak.  They reply to some comments, but it appears to be at random.  Just in the past week:

  • Jennifer asked whether a dish at Marlow’s was gluten free.  A few days later, she got a reply from them — yes!  Excellent.  So she replied back asking if they had a gluten free menu, or how they should request gluten free products.  Crickets…
  • Robbie tweeted that he was taking his wife to Marlow’s for her birthday.  A quick “congrats” would have been nice, but they simply let it go without comment…
  • Another user tweeted to rave about their Sunday buffet.  Again, no reply.

Seriously, businesses need to build true fans to be successful and here are people actively telling their world about your restaurant — and you ignore them?

Google Place Pages

How about their Google Place pages?  They have a handful of locations, so I just checked out a few of them.  I found these two gems rather quickly:

The response from Marlow’s, as expected, was silence.

Google+

Needless to say, they’re not on Google+ yet.  Not that I can really fault them for that (it’s new, smaller than Facebook/Twitter, etc), but people are already talking about them on there…

Website

Since they’ll probably be reading this, I’ll toss in a few suggested website tweaks as a bonus.  Their website is really pretty solid (many restaurants have dreadfully awful sites), but it could use some adjustments:

  • On your front page, you have a link to your “to-go” menu.  Seems like people might often be in the car when they call for that.  And the menu is a PDF?
  • In the footer, “copyright 2007″.
  • Also in the footer is the “designed by” garbage.  Don’t leave that on there.
  • Your canonicalization is a bit messed up.
  • “Follow us on Facebook”.  Don’t you “follow” people on Twitter and “like” them on Facebook?  People get confused enough, so don’t switch them up for no good reason.  I’ve never liked the words “follow us” anyhow, because it implies that “you should follow us and we’ll send you a bunch of crap”.  I’m glad the Twitter widget (which you have on your site) says “Join the conversation” instead, as that sounds much better.
  • Your Entertainment page encourages people to visit you on MySpace, which you haven’t updated in about two years.  Can’t blame you for the lack of updates, but you should probably remove that link.

It just takes time

Social media can be difficult for some businesses.  If you sell toilet plungers, it’ll take some work to come up with a creative campaign.  For restaurants, though, it’s dead simple.  Just put in the effort, connect with your patrons, and prove that you really care about them.  I should also mention that their Facebook pages (like this one) seem to be managed quite well, so they’re not totally ignoring everyone.

At the end of the day, these weren’t killer problems for Marlow’s.  We certainly think less of them, no doubt, but we’ll be back eventually — they’ll just be a little bit lower on the list.

In Companies, Facebook, Google+, Marketing, Mobile, SEO, Social Media, Twitter, Videos , , , , , , ,
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Google+ Business Pages are now live; here’s how to get started

November 9, 2011 — Leave a comment

Google has finally launched their business pages feature, and it’s open for everyone to sign up.  You can read more about it on the Google Blog, or watch the video below for a quick overview of how it works.

Business pages work very similarly to personal profiles, with a few notes:

  • You cannot create an account for a business page; you create it via your personal profile (similar to Facebook).
  • You can create multiple pages from a single profile.
  • Each business page can only be managed by the profile that created it, so choose carefully the right person in your organization to create the page.  Support for multiple admins is “coming soon”.
  • Pages cannot add users to a circle unless the user adds them first.  This is an awesome anti-spam move by Google.
  • There aren’t any vanity URLs yet (like plus.google.com/pepsi), but those are presumably coming in the future.

Direct Connect

Tied to this release is a new feature called “Direct Connect”.  If you begin your Google search with a +, it’ll show brand pages that match the query in the auto-complete results, as shown here:

Over time, it’s possible that this could become a trendy thing to promote.  I can image someone like Pepsi having something like “Google +Pepsi” for more at the end of a TV ad.  If it does take off, it’ll be important to get your page listed there.  But how?

Badges

Today, Google released “badges” for business pages.  These allow you to add nifty widgets to your page, and people can add your brand to their circles directly from your website!  It’s pretty slick.

Even more important is the snippet of code that they have you put in the <head> section of your site.  This is there to prove that the page in question is really yours and will qualify you to show up as a Direct Connect option.  No word on how soon those will start appearing, but it’d be wise to get yours connected so you can show up in Direct Connect as soon as possible.  You can learn more about badges from this Google blog post.

Have you built a page yet?

Have you built a page for your company yet?  Leave a  link to it in the comments and show us your work!

In Companies, Google+, Marketing, Social Media , , ,
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Your competition isn’t always right

August 26, 2011 — 6 Comments

No matter what line of business you’re in, you can often get inspiration and ideas by checking out your competition.  You can see what kind of stuff they’re putting on their website, how they’re using social media, what new products they’re stocking, etc.  However, you ultimately need to trust yourself.  Here are a few examples.

Using music to set the tone

I was recently talking to a client about her site, and suggested we take the background music off.  After a brief discussion, she agreed.  When I asked why she put it up there in the first place, she said that a lot of her competition did that and she was trying to match them.  Being a brand-new business, emulating some of the established sites is certainly a great idea.  Now that she’s removed the music and they haven’t, she’s a step ahead!

Facebook “welcome tabs”

I have a lot of clients asking for “welcome tabs” on their Facebook Page.  While it’s certainly appropriate in a few situations, it seems that most people are doing it simply because everyone else is doing it, and no one is really thinking it through.  Most users come to your Facebook page for the content — information, specials, etc.  Why put an extra page in their way?

It feels a lot to me like the “splash pages” everyone had in the late 90′s — simply an unnecessary step between your user and the content they want.  We all eventually realized how stupid those were, so how are Facebook welcome tabs any different? (Honestly — leave a comment and convince me how they’re a good thing for everyone.  I’m certainly open to changing my mind if someone can supply a solid argument.)

Copying the church down the road

One church I worked at was obsessed with the other big church just down the road.  We’d often spend thousands of dollars copying activities that they did, even if we didn’t need them.  It was quite sad.  There were essentially two ways that our leadership viewed things:

  • If they’re doing x, and we’re not, we need to start.
  • If we’re doing x, and they’re not, we need to stop wasting time on it.

This was especially problematic during the rise of social media, because the “other church” was slow to adopt it.  Therefore, it was tough for us to convince our church leadership that it was worthwhile.  The “other church” is a wonderful place, but they have made some very poor technological choices over the past few years; very dumb things with their website, very little social media, etc.  Copying them in those areas would have been a foolish mistake.

Stylish restaurant websites

Have you ever tried to pull up a restaurant website on your phone?  It’s almost always brutal.  Slate recently had an article about this, and I agree completely.  Not only are they often unusable on a phone (especially an Apple device, with no hope of loading their cute Flash menus), but they’re equally frustrating from a normal browser.

My thought is that it’s the restaurant owners and their desire for a particular ambience that cause most of the issues.  While you certainly want the actual restaurant to have that feel, putting cheesy background music being a painfully “creative” navigation bar isn’t the way to do it on the website.

The University website

(via xkcd.  awesome site)

Part of this comes back to the problem of the University website.  Universities think that we want to read about the school’s philosophy and press releases, and that idea is validated by other universities posting the same junk on their home page.  This is very similar to churches that post a big link to their denomination’s website, rather than providing decent driving directions.

Check them out, but be smart

I’m certainly not saying you shouldn’t see what your competition is doing.  As I said at the beginning, you can often get some good ideas from them.  Just be smart, and always view things through the eyes of your customers.  Ask yourself, “if I was a customer, why would I visit the site and what would I be looking for?”  If the answer is “cheesy music and a mission statement”, find someone to help you think through it a bit further. :)

In Church, Companies, Facebook, Marketing, Mobile, Site Content, Social Media , , , , , , ,
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A week of Google+

July 11, 2011 — 5 Comments

It’s been a little over a week since I joined Google+, so I thought I’d share some of my thoughts about it.

Addictive – for now

Thus far, I’ve found it quite addictive.  The fact that 90% of the people I follow on Twitter are already over there means that my Twitter usage has dropped quite a lot.  However, only about 15% of my Facebook friends are on it, so it’s got some work to do in that regard.

That being said, I won’t be giving up Facebook or Twitter anytime soon…

Privacy is top notch

Google has had issues with privacy in the past, but they’ve certainly learned from their mistakes. The privacy settings in Google+ are easy to use, quite powerful, and default to “don’t share much”.  Kind of the opposite of Facebook.

“Hangouts” are amazing

Hangouts are the group video chat feature, for up to 10 people at once.  They work amazingly well, and I’ve met some really cool people through them.  In the future, I think they will be a great venue for business meetings, Bible studies, small groups, book clubs, etc.  Really, anything that typically has 5-10 people meeting in person could be done quite well via a Hangout.

“Circles” are simple, but potentially confusing

The idea of putting your friends into Circles is quite simple, and works very well.  Drag Steve in “friends”, drag Heather into “family”, etc.  The problem is that the content from circles come from people, not topics.  For example, I might add 20 Google Earth geeks to a “Google Earth” circle, but then I’ll see virtually all of their posts; relatively few of which are likely to be about Google Earth.

“Sparks” are weak

The idea behind Sparks is pretty cool — a quick way to follow a topic you love and share relevant news with your friends.  However, the items shown are kind of random and can be somewhat dated and spammy.  I expect to see some good updates from Google in here soon.

Google Chrome Plugins

If you use Google Chrome as your browser, there are a lot of great plug-ins to help make Google+ even better.  Here is a full list of them, but two of my favorites are:

  • Replies and more: lots of great tweaks, including a quick “reply” button while you’re in comments.
  • Comment Toggle: Hides all comments in the stream, but you can toggle them open/closed with one click.

Businesses

Right now, there is very little business use for it.  As a freelancer I can make some use of it, but no “non-human entities” are allowed on there yet.  No websites, no car dealers, nothing.  It’s kind of nice, but it’ll be changing soon.  Google has promised some great stuff when those features finally come out, so I hope they’re right.

It’ll be hard to avoid

Google has said that many of the Google+ features (Circles, etc) will be making their way into virtually every Google product.  This will make use of those sites more enjoyable for g+ users (quickly share a YouTube video to a specific circle), and it’ll make it harder to avoid the service for everyone else.

Plus, that silly notification icon already has me jumping to click it every time it lights up, and it’s on the top of almost every Google product.  I feel like Dug from “Up” every time it I see a number in that red box.

I hope for some customization to that in the near future (I don’t need a notification for every “+1″ on a post of mine), but it’s still quite handy.  Better yet, it creates a drop-down menu from wherever you are, so you can deal with it right there (answer the comment, etc) without ever having to visit the Google+ site.  That’s gold.

So…how’s it gonna do?

This is the big question, and I really don’t know.  I love it so far, but it’s early.  I think it’ll be a player in the social game, but it won’t be replacing Twitter or Facebook for at least a few years.  Given Google’s huge audience, vast integration with other Google products, and their willingness to spend money to make it right, Google+ isn’t going anywhere.

If you own a business, or otherwise need social media to help succeed, dive in now.  At some point, you’ll likely want to get your business involved with Google+, so get started today and start learning the ropes. Contact me if you need an invite, then connect with me on g+.

If you’re a social media butterfly, but have no real need for it, give it a shot.  It’s likely to keep growing, so now’s a good time to jump in, start making connections, organize your Circles, etc.

If you’re just a casual social media user, it’s up to you.  If you already use Google products like Gmail and Android, you’ll be amazed at how well it blends into your lifestyle.  If not, then just keep enjoying life on Facebook and keep your ears out for more on Google+.

What do you think?

Have you tried Google+ yet?  Think it has a chance to succeed?

In Google+, Social Media, Technology , ,
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Google’s not-too-secret social network finally launches: Google+

June 28, 2011 — 2 Comments

It’s been rumored for more than a year, and now it’s here — sort of.  You probably can’t get into it yet, but it’s out there for the world to see and they’ll be adding users to it very quickly.

So what is it?

It’s a lot of things all in one.  Google+ is named because it’s not intended to be a new social network; just lots of small social tools built on top of the Google infrastructure.  It has features that remind me of FriendFeed, and some that remind me of Google Wave, so they’ve got some cool stuff in there. Here is an overview video of how it works:

Circles

Think of Facebook Groups, and you’re off to a good start.  You can drag and drop your contacts (from Gmail or Google Contacts) into Circles in a very intuitive fashion, and it’s very easy to share content with the Circle thanks to the new (black) Google toolbar.

Here’s a quick video showing our Circles work:

Sparks

They’re calling Sparks their “sharing engine”, and it looks quite cool.  You tell it an interest that you have, and Google will find elements on the web related to that.  Find something you like, and you can quickly add it to your interest list (kind of like a bookmark).

Here’s a quick video that shows how Sparks works:

Huddle

This is a group messaging app that works across Android, iPhone and SMS to keep groups in touch with each other.  It’s similar to Beluga and other recent group messaging apps, but could become quite popular as part of the Google+ ecosystem.

Here’s a quick video showing how the mobile apps will work:

Hangouts

This is the part that reminds me of FriendFeed.  You can put up to 10 people in a “hangout” and do stuff together in real-time.  It looks like a really cool way to chat (video or text), and you can even share a piece of content (like a YouTube video) and everyone in the hangout can watch it together.  Perhaps it’ll be cheesy, but it has the potential to be pretty cool.

Here’s a video showing how Hangouts work:

Too much?

Of course, this is a lot to take in all at once.  Google’s plan is to unify it all with the new Google toolbar at the top of the screen, which apparently works quite well.  The level of tie-in to Android/iPhone will be quite important, too, so we’ll see how that works out.

When?

It’s rolling out today in very limited numbers.  As of right now, even people that have invitations to it can’t get in, so the rest of us could be waiting.  Google is intentionally rolling it out very slowly, so it could be a while.  In the meantime, head over the Google+ site and put your name on the list, and let me know if you get access to it.

In Social Media , , , , ,
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How to make it all come together

June 25, 2011 — 1 Comment

Over the years, I’ve discussed a lot of ideas to help your business flourish online and today I’m going to show you what it looks like when it all comes together.

The East Cobber is a free local magazine in Marietta, GA that was created back in 1993, and they’ve had an online presence for nearly a decade.  However, with the ongoing shift from print to digital, they realized the the site could do so much more.  Last year they enlisted the help of Green Mellen Media, and the results have been amazing.  Here is a chart showing their growth since the new site launched last fall.

The beginning of that chart is October, 2010, when they had 1,509 visitors.  Last month they had a total of 16,498.  For a year over year comparison, they had 1,691 visitors in May 2010, and then the 16,498 in May 2011 — an increase of 875% in a single year!  Even better, this wasn’t from a brand new site; this was a very well-established site from a popular magazine.  So what made the difference?  There were quite a few things, but here are some of the big ones.

WordPress

We moved the entire site over to WordPress, which helped with quite a few things.  It not only made it easier for them to publish articles, but WordPress has excellent Search Engine Optimization by design.  Using a StudioPress-powered theme helped even more, as they add some additional SEO tweaks to the mix.  Here is their incoming traffic from search engines over the past eight months:

Content

This is the big key.  Rather than posting a few articles each month when the new issue came out, they’re posting multiple stories every day to keep the community informed of local news and events.  They’ve published over 2,900 entries since the new site went live, making them a true hub in the community.

Social

I recently pointed out how you can’t fake your way to social media success, and they’re an example of social media done right.  Their Facebook page auto-posts some new items from the site, but they’re quick to respond to comments and often run contents to give away prizes from area businesses.  They’ve gone from just a few hundred likes on the page to well over 1,000 and it continues to grow quickly.

The key here is that they work hard at it.  People are always looking for shortcuts, but the East Cobber folks simply got to work and are engaging with the community daily.  We’ve given them some tools to help make it easier, but there is no substitute for actually diving in and connecting with people.

The Little Things

Little things can add up too:

  • We didn’t put our name in their footer in order to help them rank as well as possible in Google.  The results above speak for themselves.
  • They post a new photo of the day on their home page every day to keep things fresh.
  • They trusted us and we trusted them.  When we assured them that a feature or idea wouldn’t work, they believed us.  When they told us that their readers were interested in certain topics, we believed them.
  • We used most of my favorite WordPress plug-ins, plus a few others to help add additional functionality to the site.
  • We use Google Analytics (which generated the charts above) see what content people read the most, what needs to be improved, etc.

The magic solution

People are often looking for the magic solution to put their online business on autopilot, but things just don’t work that way.  A properly configured site, using a solid platform, with lots of hard work put into building content and the community, can lead to a very successful site.

Traffic is continuing to grow for them, and I expect it will for some time.  Congratulations to Cynthia and her team for such great success over the past year!

In Analytics, Marketing, SEO, Site Content, Social Media, WordPress , , , ,
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You can’t fake it on social media

June 21, 2011 — 3 Comments

While talking over a potential site redesign with a client, the subject turned to blogging.  We both agreed that they should have a blog for their site, as it would make perfect sense for their market and they have tons of great content to write about.  However, they are convinced they don’t have time for it and wouldn’t be able to be active enough on it.  I agreed that having no blog is better than having a dead blog, and I’m glad we made that decision.

However, I’m finding more and more companies that (apparently) don’t have time for social media so they decide to fake it instead.  A prime example would be the 18 car dealers that aren’t listening on Twitter.  Despite not listening and not actually doing much on Twitter, I’m sure they’re proud of how “hip” there are to be on there.

Fake Followers

Another local company that I’ve worked with in the past has nearly 10,000 followers on Twitter, but they were all purchased through shady means (buying Twitter followers isn’t difficult).  It’s rather amusing when they pose a question to their 10,000 “followers” and get zero responses.  It’s worthless.  Much better to have 100 real followers than 10,000 fake ones.

Fake Foursquare Deals

All of that said, what inspired this post was a “deal” that Great Clips offers on Foursquare.  Some restaurants offer fun specials on Foursquare (like free chips & salsa every time you check-in at Chili’s), though most businesses don’t.  Great Clips decided to try for the best of both worlds by posting a “special” that doesn’t require them to actually give anything away.  What is their special?  Every time you check-in, you unlock the following special:

Visit greatclips.com/foursquare and register to win FREE haircuts for a year! (link)

What?  That’s awful!  Every other deal I’ve seen has been legit — free chips, free drink, etc.  This doesn’t have anything to do with you visiting their location; they just want the orange button next to their listings. This seems to have been a corporate decision, because every Great Clips on Foursquare is running the same “deal”.  When questioned about it, the very personal “Customer Service” gave me a very carefully crafted generic response:

Thank you for your feedback. We will foward your comments on to the approrpiate people. Customer feedback is important to Great Clips as we diligently work to keep our promise of serving our customers with the highest level of quality. We apologize for any inconvenience that you were caused.

Sincerely,
Customer Service

Sincerely?

One last funny bit was the closing of their email.  First they say “sincerely” (meaning genuine, earnest, real) and then don’t even put their name.  At least write “Sincerely, Jill” or “Sincerely, Bob”.  At no point in the various interactions I had with them did they do anything to try to seem human.  Such a shame.

Social means social

Never forget the “social” in social media.  If you’re trying to fake it, or figure out a way to automate it like you did your radio commercials for years, you’re in the wrong game.  Be human, get to know your customers, and it’ll take you a long way.

In Marketing, Social Media ,
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