Dan Nedelko

Very cool – blogging is the new Facebook and Twitter. Now that I’m writing this from my iPhone and it’s simple using the Express App then maybe I’ll start blogging again

Neato Gang!

This is a very cool addition and definitely a big plus for WooThemes.

Danno out.

I know social media marketing is a hot topic these days and there are a lot of companies attempting to get their foot in the door with social networks. The appeal of these networks is incredible, mainly for the viral and exponential nature of the system.

My network is a connected graph with exponential growth possibilities. My 400+ friends all have approximately 350 friends (on average and informally) if any company can get their foot into the door and illicit a response from my friends and their friends then the brand spread and effectiveness of that “sharing” can be astounding.

Social Media Strategies

In addition to that it’s much more than the one way conversation that Television, Radio and even a Landing Page can provide. I get feedback, I gain key influencers, brand advocates and it’s the consumers doing the marketing for me. This dynamic is much more than a shift, it’s a paradigm shift in the way we consumer, promote and self market to each other.

So what does this mean for the average company and internet marketer?

Well to be quite honest it means that you’re not likely doing anything with your social media presence. The fact is that the vast majority of companies out there are not effectively utilizing their Facebook presence.

Having said that I have informally seen a great deal of excellent brand identities on Facebook. I’m also going to ignore some of the more popular examples here like Ford, Starbucks and Heinz.

I’m looking at smaller operations that have actionable changes you can make that will help you make more of your page, presence and ROI. Some of my personal favorites are:

Northern Edge Algonquin Park
Echo Valley Ranch and Spa

Looking at these three, and yes all of them come from my casual usage of Facebook rather than any in depth digging. These are quite simply excellent pages that keep me interested, returning, visiting and interacting. This is isn’t a massive empirical case study, this is me looking at things that just “work”.

Let’s break it down what do these people do that most people do not do on Facebook?

1. Mention users by name. They thank new members and reference them directly. This is a great way to start a 2 way conversation.
2. Utilize events. I’m always surprised at how few brands actually maintain the events on their page through the events application. It’s not only a great way to determine participation, it helps to organize the event as well.
3. Allow user submitted photographs. This is a key for the travel and tourism sector since it’s so applicable but it’s something that many brands can leverage. Think about it, lots of room here for innovative ideas.
4. Respond to comment threads without sounding impersonal. By actually naming the commentor and responding like a real live human being rather than a 2 dimensional drone then there is a ton of opportunity to interact directly with your users and build strong relationships.
5. Asking questions. This doesn’t have to be exactly polling per say. Just update the status and ask a question, you might be surprised at what comes out of it, like lots of comments and even more visitors and people interacting with your page which is the goal here.
6. Exclusive Facebook only Offers. I get alot of grief for ever bringing this up but it’s a key way to get new users. I know you have users on your main domain already, maybe they are members of your facebook presence, maybe not. But do not offer the same thing to both, welcome them to join you on Facebook to become eligible – exclusivity is important, plus joining you doesn’t cost a thing.
7. Nifty, groovy, neato Facebook applications. Now obviously if you have the budget creating an extremely useful custom Facebook application is preferable here since it makes you stand out from the crowd in a big way but for those on a shoestring budget consider adding even the most simple applications like Social RSS which will automatically post your content from your blog or news site onto your facebook page without human intervention. It’s simpe, it’s free and it keep your content flowing on Facebook. There is nothing worse than a stale page.
8. Add notes to your Facebook Page. This means unique Facebook only content. Yeah that’s right, only on Facebook. This increases the exclusivity of being a member, if you clone your current efforts then you will severely reduce the attraction and interaction on your page. What is the point after all of having members who do not interact? Nada, zip, zero.
9. Use videos. Not high production quality videos. I mean grass roots real live videos, simple, fun and engaging. Think about a walk through of your office, handheld videos from events. This is Facebook and Social Media Marketing is not the same as traditional marketing. You don’t need a fancy intro, a bit of camera jiggle is fine and non scripted videos make people like you more, you’re real. You are after all real, aren’t you?
10. Incite conversation. This means being controversial but not rude. We don’t want to get people angry (unless your goal is to rile people up into action) but you do want to get them talking on a controversial debate. Why not? Play the referee, being on either side of a debate will alienate people to you and we definitely do not want that.

That a pretty basic actionable breakdown of things you can work into your social media marketing strategy without breaking the bank or hiring a team of 10 people to manage. This stuff is easy, so get on out there and start optimizing your own Facebook presence, these actions have a huge ROI and lead to many many good things.

So I was going through my normal hundreds of morning emails and although I generally breeze through Seth Godin‘s posts (I’ve found them to be the equivalent of Tweets, short, uninformed, the internet equivalent of a sound bite without substance) this particular post made me pause:

Everyone gets paid on commission

Beyond the fact that it’s about 5 lines long I have a number of issues with what Seth is proposing here:

1. Being paid on commission implies that every function is customer facing. In any company there are support, infrastructure and secondary functions which make an organization actually work. How would you propose calculating their commission. Generally Seth, these are referred to as bonuses.
2. Not every post, article or piece of news media is directly measurable. Example: Sunday Morning Political Talk Shows, they have a very low directly measurable audience. However their influence through syndication, media discussion is substantial. Should these shows and their hosts be measured on commission?
3. Doing great work does not neccessarily mean that there is a definable B2C conversion rate attached to it. You often mention branding, customer loyalty and the like in your books and blog. Now you seem to contradict yourself by saying every action must have a measurable conversion to a sale.
4. In the world of journalism it isn’t always about appealing to public appetite. In fact it is about the media informing the public, in your world I would predict that many journalists would simply write what is convenient to increase rating (or traffic).

Those are a few of my reasons that Seth Godin is way off base here. Seth, take a couple of hours off and watch Glen Gary Glen Ross then think about your post, your position and the fairly shallow insight you provided. Is that thought leadership?

Unless of course you meant bonuses and incentives rather than commission.

Image via CrunchBase

Well I’ve never been a fan of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and she continues to stupify me with her ridiculous statements which she holds to so dearly.

As covered over at Search Engine Land Bartz was interviewed in the New York Times. She is stunningly moronic in some of her claims:

“Yahoo, according to Ms. Bartz, simply feeds search results for people who have grown curious while reading one of its news stories or watching a video. It doesn’t generally pop into peoples’ minds as the first place to go look for answers during the course of their day-to-day activities.”

How is that possibly the case? On so many levels I would argue the validity of this claim:

1. Yahoo was initially a search directory then a search engine then added portals.
2. If Yahoo doesn’t pop into mind as answering questions for users, then uh, what about Yahoo Answers? What’s the point of that then?
3. Bartz is singlehandedly dismantling Yahoo as a company with unique software technology and turning it into a portal and content company. Granted for many years they have had a content focus but Yahoo Search Marketing and Yahoo Search were always major components of their company.

“The biggest thing for Yahoo is increasing the number of pages people consume and slapping as many display ads as possible across those pages. “My fortunes are tied to my pages,” Ms. Bartz said.”

This is nonsenscial. I have an ad network. We are interested in content pages to serve advertising. Yahoo is a software technology company…er…it WAS a software technology company. How sad for Yahoo to have a such a short sighted myopic CEO.

“According to Ms. Bartz, the majority of Yahoo’s sites will go the way of Sports. In particular, Yahoo will throw investments behind its entertainment, finance and news operations. Ms. Bartz noted that there are plenty of unemployed journalists out there to pick up.”

Well Carol. Hey Carol. Umm Carol….those journalists are unemployed because the notion of traditional journalism and simply serving up that content and selling ads is not the same as it used to be. They are unemployed because many companies in this space are unprofitable.

Excuse me while I go bang my head against a brick wall.

“In addition, Ms. Bartz will remember that Terry Semel, a longtime Warner Brothers executive, was brought in before to turn Yahoo into more of a media company. Mr. Semel’s tenure was perhaps characterized more for losing to Google than anything else.”

Clearly Carol doesn’t believe the notion that if we are not aware of our history we are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. I think we can revise this though at this point, Yahoo isn’t in the “losing” position any longer. It has lost. Full Stop.

“Ms. Bartz has decided to correct past mistakes by getting all of the employees on the same page and presenting a more consistent look across Yahoo’s sites. In addition, she’s trying to boost morale and get the energy of the company up again –- a task hurt by the hit Yahoo’s shares took after the Microsoft deal was announced.

“I felt bad for the employees because they think it’s a report card,” Ms. Bartz said.”

Honestly, this woman is a CEO? Of any company? Your share price is a report card of sorts, it’s the market responding to the strategic decisions being made. Clearly this is perceived as being a bad decision. Which it is. It’s a horrible decision.

In fact it’s a series of horrible decisions, capped off by myopic thinking and topped off with a healthy dose of delusion.

Way to go Carol!

Update – Just ran into a fantastic quote from the New York Times Bits Blog:

I’ve got to wonder how much running a sales force that peddles expensive software to engineers and designers has to do with running a free Web site that attracts users through branding and products and makes money through advertising.

So here it is: Twitter.  It’s everywhere being hyped as the next great thing, but what can it do for your business?

Like any emerging technology the uses are somewhat open ended and there are still many questions.
A few things are absolutely certain:

1. Twitter offers you an opportunity to engage a large number of people who are comfortable online. Which means they will either purchase online or talk a lot online.
2. Twitter is growing dramatically. How long that growth will last is up for debate but the reality is that it is here now and barriers to entry are very low. It’s free and only requires and strategy which is embracing.
3. Twitter can benefit your company through customer service, product promotion, marketing and PR just to name a few.

I’ve put this guide together to get you started on your Twitter campaign and strategy. It is our hope that you find this guide useful. Please forward this to your friends, colleagues and relatives!

Also I’m looking forward to your comments, additions, thoughts, and general input on any of this.

50 TWITTER TIPS FOR CONVERSION

1. Engage your followers. Simply throwing promotional offers at people will only add to the white noise on Twitter and you will not stand out. Send @ replies, help out, discuss and be real.
2. Reference your site frequently. You don’t even need to always reference your newest content, reference your most useful content. With the stream of messages on Twitter. There is nothing wrong with referencing.
3. Create a custom Twitter landing page and direct users there. Use the KISS approach, one offer specifically for Twitter users, you’ll notice a huge difference.
4. Do not be afraid to unfollow people who are adding to your white noise. Like any list you want to target your audience, some affiliate marketers out there will only Tweet offers and junk. Lose them.
5. ReTweet valuable tweets from your followers. This is a huge thing and extremely complementary. I find on my lists that there are about 5% if the users that I ReTweet multiple times. Is that a new rule 95/5? 95% of your ReTweets come from 5% of your users.
6. Ask your users questions. There are two ways to do it. Informally by simply throwing it out there and asking for a response. Formally by using TwtPoll, which will track responses. Either way ask engaging questions of your users, something that will incite debate and opinion.
7. Exclusive offers. When I say exclusive I mean exclusive, don’t just regurgitate another offer, make it exclusive and time limited to Twitter users otherwise you risk being in the “white noise” category.
8. Incentives for followers. We effectively use $50 Cash Cards for the nth Twitter follower for doing nothing more than simply following. We do it every thousand followers but pick your metric and follow-up on it.
9. Monitor Twitter Search. You would be amazed at how many active discussions you can miss if you don’t watch the buzz. Get in there!
10. Join Twitter Business Directories. Two good examples are WeFollow.com and Twellow.com, add yourself to relevant categories and search out potential leads on a regular basis.
11. Engage a key individual in the Twitter dialog. A good strategy is joining your CEO’s profile to your corporate profile. Not only will you gain a wider following, you’ll have the ability to channel directly to your “go to guy (or girl)”.
12. Follow PR and News Sources. You’ll create a direct dialog to the people who can get your message out there.
13. Engage Anger. If you’re a business there is likely someone ready get annoyed with you. Don’t shy away from them, embrace and communicate them, you may have your next great advocate out there screaming good things about you.
14. Live Updates from Events or Conferences. This will create buzz and excitement from your user base. No one cares if “it’s a hot day here in Glendale Arizona” but they might care about “The boss just gave a great tip on our newest product release”.
15. Follow people. Alot. I can’t stress this enough. Some people think it is a badge of honor to have significantly more people following you than you follow. Not true. What you are really saying is I want a one way conversation, not very social at all.
16. Figure out “Social Engagement”. How do you engage social media? You be social and engage. Why many people don’t understand this I will never know.
17. Twitter about your competition. Why not? Even link to them, if you are confident in your product then you have an opportunity to show the world you have the superior product.
18. Complement your competition. When your competitors do something right then do not shy away from it. Give them a shout out. It shows strength and confidence.
19. Send useful links which may not be directly related to your business. It could be a news event or something you found useful. People appreciate tips and advice.
20. Create a custom background for your Twitter page with your contact information. You would be amazed at how many people will reach out to you directly. Check out the Honeypot Marketing Twitter page, nothing fancy but it works.
21. Add your Twitter profile to your email signature. Sounds basic enough but emails get passed around quite a bit.
22. Add TwitterCounter and Twitter badges to your site. Not rocket science but highly effective. Internet marketing is a two way street, go both ways.
23. Engage in polarizing discussion. Is @oprah adding nothing of value? Tell her, it will polarize but it will get you engaged.
24. Auto Follow people who follow you. I use Tweetlater.com to automate this process but it is (to me) a common courtesy and I just think it works well, saves a ton of time too. You can purge lists once a month or so to keep your list up to date.
25. Provide customer support. Whatever you do or sell, people will have a problem. Utilizing Twitter as a rapid response tool is incredibly effective and generally people only need a minor tip to get on track.
26. Create a daily digest of your tweets for your blog. This not only incites the search engines into ranking you quickly (more customers!) but it provides a history and a sense that your company has fully engaged the community. That’s a good thing right?
27. Twitter your knowledge. No matter who you are and what you know, your background and experience will help those and could position you as a thought leader. Cheesy term but true. You’ll become an expert and people will respect that and as such respect your company.
28. Stay on Target. You want to communicate with people and lead them to and end goal. Never lose sight of that. Sketch out your conversion path (whatever it might be) and make sure you are achieving that goal. You will be surprised at how quickly results will happen.
29. Don’t necessarily try to sell “stuff”. Selling “things” may or may not work for you on Twitter. Be realistic about your end goal, branding, customer service, lead generation. Generally using Twitter as a conduit makes it a great lead generator, not a closer.
30. Talk about how your product helped a customer. If they are on Twitter ask them to participate in the dialog and back you up. Bringing it full circle will provide you incredible benefits.
31. Create a Twitter Interview. I refuse to engage in the mangling of the English language for the purposes of branding Twitter. Some people call them Twinterviews – horrible. Set up a series of 10-15 questions and ask the your interviewee to @ reply them. You can even ask your followers to DM you specific open questions. Works like a charm.
32. Ask people to ReTweet but not everyday. Asking people to ReTweet directly on occasion will indicate that this is an important message. With a good following you’ll get help.
33. Don’t be afraid to go offline. Sometimes you can’t engage completely on Twitter so take it to phone, email or face to face (if possible). Only so much can be communicated in 140 characters.
34. Ask your followers what they think of your offers. It’s a form of Direct Market Research. Example: “Would you rather get 20% off or a free movie pass for two? Let us know!”.
35. Use TwitPic. Post pictures of your events, office, people in your office. Be human! No likes a marketing driod Twitter profile. You can *really* connect with people by being just like everyone else.
36. Tweet company events. Did Joy in Accounting just have her first child? Tell everyone about it and how happy you all are for her. Unless of course your company is a sweatshop, which I highly doubt it is.
37. Tweet the success of your customers. If you are B2B Congratulate your clients on a successful promo or campaign. Spread the love.
38. Don’t insult people. Unless this your personal account and you’ll do whatever you want then fine. But never insult a client or competitor, you’ll look bad for ages and you can damage your own future reputation. Trust me there can be an idiot factor on Twitter and it can be difficult sometimes. I know I’ve lashed out a few times on my personal account. Oopsie.
39. Conduct Website Testing. If you have a new promo or landing page ask your users which they like better. You are after all trying to appeal to them are you not?
40. Define your objectives. I have alluded to it earlier but make sure everyone in your company understands what you are trying to do. Maybe directly selling your product won’t be successful but selling your service will be.
41. Test, test, test. Twitter is an emerging technology; to be honest no one quite knows what to do with it just yet. That makes testing your message and conversion flow critical.
42. Don’t be afraid to change course. Things change and you should change with them, if you found a sweet spot for communication or sales try to move in that direction without being scared to do so.
43. Automate your blog and Twitter accounts in both directions. We love WordPress so it’s a no brainer for us. Every post gets an automatic tweet which will drive your customers to you. Simple.
44. Integrate Twitter into your online strategy. We are huge proponents of integrated marketing. That includes Traditional and Emerging Marketing with the same message. Tip: when going online don’t change the message just go a bit more grass roots style.
45. Tell people who exactly is Tweeting. You may have a corporate profile like http://twitter.com/honeypot_mkting but start out by saying “Morning All, @dannomatic is here this morning”. People like to know who you are and will be far more willing to engage you.
46. Create a corporate Twitter Meetup. Admittedly this is a bit nerdy but it doesn’t have to be. Have an open house meeting to invite your Twitter followers to the office, then Tweet about it. Buzz is amazing.
47. Create time limited promotions and update it on Twitter. Real and effective time limited promotions could include giving out a free whitepaper or case study for a limited time. Link via DM to a PDF but only keep access open for a few hours. When it’s over redirect the link to a thank you and registration for email download. Then you’ll capture the traffic, which is bound to happen after time has expired.
48. Create a Twitter only contest. Be creative but run it exclusively on Twitter and give away your product as prizing. It doesn’t need to be fancy, just fun.
49. Create a tone of helpful information. Example: “Did you know that the Magic Bullet can slice and dice? Check out the top features here…” and link to a blog post or information sheet – product knowledge is important and leads to the conversion or sale.
50. Deep link people into your website and blog. You’ve likely invested heavily in that glitzy shiny website. Point out useful company information, employee profiles, product information, review, and news. It surprises us to see Twitter being used to link to one page on a website. Deep linking encourages people to dig deep into your site, increasing the opportunity for the conversion.

Well it’s been a rough 2 weeks but Nicole and I are now the proud parents of Jaxson Daniel Nedelko. Nicole was in labor for 23 hours, then 2 hours in the OR giving birth then 2 hours in surgery after it was all said and done.

It looks like Nicole will be recovering for 4-6 weeks from the birth and surgery. Poor girl.

I’ll be posting pictures here from Flickr today.

Social Media Marketing and Twitter in particular is a great way for stars like Ashton Kutcher to generate buzz. In fact it’s great for anyone and any business (when done properly). Now I’m as open minded to all sorts of Internet Marketing techniques but this one strikes me as a bit desperate.

Ashton is basically buying paid advertising on another social network in order to increase his followers on a competing social network. Come on Ashton. As they would say on Twitter: srsly?

UPDATE:

Clearly  Ashton Kutcher using Twitter is not a negative thing. In fact I fully believe in the power of Social Network Marketing and provide channels for self promotion. However, As a business driven marketer and branding expert I’m still not 100% certain if Ashton Kutcher’s campaign on Twitter produced any definable results other than the fact that he got some dedicated airplay on CNN. For a hollywood actor like Kutcher, this is definitely a plus, getting airplay like that will do nothing but promote his own brand, his movies and his career (and positively affecting his bottom line).

I wonder what type of metrics were taken into account except for the number of followers? Was any tracking done on Click Through Rates? How did it affect his Online Reputation? More likely than not, it was purely a branding play. I still think the Ad reduces the legitimacy of his entire Twitter campaign.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Confirmed: CNN Acquires CNNBrk Twitter Account (techcrunch.com)
• Social Media Marketing Industry Report (incsub.org)
• Ted Turner May Endorse Kutcher In The Race For A Million Twitter Followers (techcrunch.com)
• Ashton Giving Away Guitar Hero? We’re Giving Away Chanel! Help Us Get to 1 MM Votes Before Ashton Reaches 1 MM on Twitter! (popsugar.com)

Link Building is always a topic of conversation for anyone in the world of Internet Marketing. People who push only organic SEO tend to be quite focused on the overall process of building masses of links with target anchor text on sites which may pass link juice.

Personally that’s a narrow minded point of view that really limits your overall link building goals. The reality of the situation is that links drive traffic, reputation, new visitors and potentially new customers. A well thought out online promotional program will assist you in your organic SEO link building efforts. But you need to have a holistic view of link building.

We build links to achieve a number of goals:

1. Promote the site. We produce great content and we want the world to know about it.
2. Highlight other sites we think are great. We do this by commenting on articles we love, participating in discussions.
3. We are promoting a contest or promotion based around a product. This could be considered link baiting but it’s also showing people how creative and fun we might. When I was Director of Internet Marketing for BetUS we had alot of fun with this great link bait program – it was flattering that Rand Fishkin from SEOMoz thought it was genius marketing. We had fun doing it and it was very successful.
4. We are building links to increase our search rankings. When I was at Bodog we built links for SEO specifically but tracked it with Clicktracks and optimized from there – times were very different but it was (and is) an effective tactic – it certainly worked there. Check out the case study on Lyris.
5. We are participating in a community such as StumbleUpon, Facebook and Twitter. This isn’t for the purpose of building links directly. It’s promoting our product, service or just talking to people. We generate content, talk to people and they shockingly enough they may link to us directly but that’s not the initial goal (we don’t whack people over the head).

I just finished watching Rand Fishkin’s Whiteboard Friday on the same subject. I strongly suggest you check it out:

What other link building tactics do you use now? Let me know what you think of my take on link building awesomeness. Have a great Friday the 13th!

Cheers,

Social Network Marketing is currently a hot topic in the world of Internet Marketing. Many people want to integrate a social media and social networking component to their marketing mix. The most common problem I see is Social Media Marketing thrown together in an ad hoc fashion and poorly executed.

The key risk from a marketing perspective is this: poorly executed SEO will result in no rankings, poorly executed PPC results in wasted budgets, poorly executed Social Media Marketing can result in a bad reputation, negative buzz and angry users.

You need to be very cautious when executing a Social Media Marketing campaign – do not just throw something together and start talking to an online community, the ramifications could be not only worse than you expected they could be difficult to undo.

Planning, education and execution are critical to a successful social media program. I would suggest that you consider the following points before launching a social media marketing program:

1. Which social media sites will you be targeting? Is your content appropriate for that network? For example: Digg is extremely popular among technology and design audiences. StumbleUpon is popular for humor, entertainment and gaming audiences. Newsvine is popular among politcal junkies (these are fairly simplistic examples but you get the point).
2. What voice do you want to project for your product to these audiences? Direct marketing doesn’t generally work well. Informational, educational and interesting content is needed with a subtle hint towards promoting your product.
3. What are you trying to say to the audience? Social Media Marketing is really about starting an ongoing dialogue with an audience, it’s about building trust relationships that are subtle. Formulating a message is extremely important, continuing the dialogue in a genuine way is critical. If you are not going to do that then you need to reconsider leveraging this medium.
4. Social Media Networks are composed of and run by real people. Remember that. This is not traditional advertising. You are developing a conversation with real people.
5. Be prepared to hear things you may not like. You may get no reaction. You may in fact get a negative reaction. Ensure that you know how to deal with a negative reaction and always remember that someone who gives you a reaction is someone who cares. Engage them and sort it out, it will be worth it!
6. Be prepared to engage the community as a community member. Participate in a very real way, if you do any less your programs will not succeed.

Although I’ve gone off on a tangent slightly, I am laying the ground work for this screencast and discussing one of my favorite sites: StumbleUpon. I’m not going to introduce Stumbleupon in this article, I do that in the screencast below. You can also learn about StumbleUpon right here.

So enjoy the screencast and I’m sure I’ve missed something in my overview so let me know by leaving a comment. Click Play and watch my screencast on Stumbleupon, you might find it useful!

[media id=4 width=600 height=480]

If you are already on StumbleUpon or ready to join and get into it, add me to your friend list or subscribe to my stumbles.

Happy Stumbling!