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Put Social Networks to Work for Your Business

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

You’ve signed up for LinkedIn, created a profile on Facebook, and joined Twitter. Now what?

Social networking is touted as the next big thing to help you grow your business. The act of networking and word-of-mouth marketing is not new. What’s new is the venue – the online social network. A social network is an online community where people meet others with common interests. Ideally, their common interest is your brand or your industry, so you want to be in front of them online.

To use a social network to your advantage you must do the following:

Find the network(s) where your audiences are spending their time.
Create a profile
Participate – get engaged with other users by writing comments, sending messages, posting blogs, etc.
Incorporate social networks into your existing marketing activities

The good news/bad news about finding the right networks is that there are a lot to choose from. Social networking is much more than Facebook and Twitter. Here are a few categories to consider:

Traditional Social Networks: Facebook, MySpace
Social Media Submission Sites — Digg
Social Bookmarking – StumbleUpon, Delicious
Microblogging – Twitter
Photo and Video Sharing – Flickr, YouTube
Review and rating sites – Amazon, Epionions, TripAdvisor, Yelp
Blogs

Every business that has customers online should consider a social network campaign to grow your business. The cost to entry is nominal, but it requires time and strategy. Don’t just jump in because you think everyone else is out there.

To learn how to use social networks to grow your business, join us on Thursday, July 23 for a free, one-hour webinar entitled Social Networking 101. Click here to register.

Tags: Internet Marketing Wilmington NC, Marketing, Social media, Social Networks
Posted in Internet Marketing | Comments

Things We Love 5/6

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

Debbie loves Cracker Barrel – I made my first pilgrimage to the Mecca of southern cooking last week. I was concerned it wouldn’t live up to the hype. But it actually surpassed it. The veggie platter was yummy and the service friendly. When they learned it was my first visit, they gave me a beautifully wrapped map detailing all 579 locations across the country. The map (and enclosed Chix Stix candy) kept the Talk team well entertained on the way back from a business meeting in Winston Salem. I got a great lesson on my state capitals. And a delicious reminder on how excellent customer service and smart marketing is the best way to bring your customers back for seconds.

Jennifer loves organization tips – Those who know me know I am an obsessive straightener and organizer. I continue to be fascinated by those who can live and work amongst clutter. So, I was delighted to come across an articled titled “10 Ways to Let Go of Your Stuff - Confessions of a Clutterer” in the March issue of Real Simple magazine. The author, Erin Rooney Doland, makes some wonderful points for those who are trying to recover from this condition. You can read more at Unclutterer.com or RealSimple.com.

Kirsty loves my Share This button – I installed this plugin on my FireFox browser to help me more easily share great content I come across online. With the click of a single green button, I can email, IM, Text or post what I read to more than 30 social networking and bookmarking sites. Now, I never have to worry about looking for a post’s sharing button, or fret if they don’t have a button for my favorite sites.

Nathan loves Twitback – I wrote about a number of elements that really make Twitter better for businesses a few weeks ago, and one of these elements was creating extended profiles, or what some call “twitter backgrounds”. These custom twitter backgrounds work great for branding your twitter profile more, or giving that little bit of extra information that the normal twitter profile just doesn’t provide. It used to be that in order to create this extended twitter profile, you had to have some photoshop skills, or access to someone who did. Well, Twitback handles all that for you!

Shawn loves Birds Of A Feather, Letterpressed Together – Yes, this is another letterpress blog. But this time with a twist. Color. And lots of it. Bright colors have really been catching my eye lately. Perhaps it’s because I am redesigning our Talk business cards and Web site with a fresh new palette, or maybe I’m just feeling it this spring. Whatever the reason, the letterpress experts over at Studio On Fire really hit the ball out of the park with a colorful peacock themed wedding invitation set.

Susan loves periodic table of typefaces – I’m a self-proclaimed font dork. I can spend hours looking through sites like dafont.com and myfonts.com checking out the latest and greatest fonts. And the periodic table of typefaces make finding classic fonts I like (and even ones I don’t) that much easier. Though it only shows one or two letters, that’s usually enough for me to know if the style fits what I’m working on.

Tags: Customer Service, Graphic Design, Internet Marketing Wilmington NC, Marketing, Social media, Things We Love, Typography
Posted in Branding, Graphic Design, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Professional Development, Public Relations | Comments

Things We Love 4/29

Wednesday, April 29th, 2009

Debbie loves great customer service – One positive outcome of the recession may be a return to southern hospitality and good, old fashioned customer service. In today’s economy, few have the luxury to take their job for granted. The result? Service providers seem to be trying a little harder to keep customers happy. So smile and remember the customer is always right, even when they aren’t.

Jennifer loves helpful news stories – I saw an interesting segment on Dateline the other night. The story was about people who had unclaimed money or property that was rightfully theirs. Their tearful joy prompted me to get online and find out if I might have money owed to me that I was unaware of. Unfortunately, nothing came up under my name. You can read about this and check out a few different search vehicles for yourself at msnbc.com.

Kirsty loves People’s Voice Webby Awards – Have your say about the very best of the Net by voting online.

Nathan loves Facebook – For all the hype that Twitter is receiving, and it is a great service, I still like Facebook more. The content and conversations that are shared there are of a much higher value than on Twitter. Not to mention Facebook Connect, like Kirsty mentioned last week. It’s only a matter of time until Facebook figures out how to open up some of its more “private” data (like mini-feeds and wall posts) to outside sources. That’s when Facebook will really become an invaluable asset to companies. Plus I always enjoy catching a good fish with some buddies using Fish Wrangler.

Shawn loves crayons – Where would I be if I hadn’t had Crayons as part of my childhood? I remember how excited I was when I finally got a 64 pack with the built in sharpener. Such a big responsibility. I took care of my crayons. Never breaking them. Carefully peeling the fuzzy labels away to prevent rough edges. Rotating them in my hand as I used them so I didn’t wear away one side more than the other. I didn’t just color inside the lines. I took crayons to a whole new level spending hours on just one page. Mixing layers and layers of colors with lots of shading. I would use a butter knife to scrape away unwanted color or use my little fingernail to chip away wax giving the illusion of highlights. As you can see I wasn’t your normal kid coloring with Crayons. Colour Lover’s post on “120 Crayon Names, Color Codes and Fun Facts” brought all those memories back to me with a little more. There are fun facts, photos, Crayon inspired color palettes, Hex values and RGB equivalents for all my favorite Crayola colors.
Susan loves 1-800-Flowers.com’s Mother’s Day contest – The flower giant’s latest promotion asks entrants to go to Spotlightamom.com and write a short personal story about a mother-figure who has touched their lives. Then people can go online, read the entries and easily share their favorite stories on various social networks. Now there’s a company that knows how to tug on the heartstrings and conquer the Internet at the same time.

Tags: Internet Marketing Wilmington NC, Marketing, media, Promotions, Social media, Things We Love
Posted in Internet Marketing, Marketing, Professional Development | Comments

11 Steps To Make You a Pro Twitter-er

Monday, April 27th, 2009

Twitter was built on the concept of simplicity, so that leaves a lot of flexibility and variation in just how you can use Twitter to promote your company, yourself, or just your personal life. We receive a lot of questions on using Twitter, so I thought I would outline the steps we take with Twitter for clients here at Talk, and have taken ourselves in many cases (though you may see some variations as we’re always experimenting with new methods to get the best results).

Step 1. Before you start tweeting, let’s focus on setting up your twitter profile. This means taking the time not only to upload an avatar, but to also create stronger branding on your Twitter profile page via creating an Extended Profile. You should also define your purpose for twittering. What are your objectives?

Step 2. The Twitter Landing Page (TLP) is a unique page you create on your website that greets those users who come specifically from Twitter. Once you’ve created your TLP, you can begin using it by pointing your Homepage URL on your twitter profile to your TLP.

How to build followers on Twitter

I think it’s very important to manage your Tweets (or have someone manage them), especially as you work on building followers. You want to make sure you’ve got a good reply to tweet ratio, meaning if someone were to look at your last 10 tweets that they’re going to see an @reply to someone in there. Think of your Last 10 (L10) the same as it is in sports. It’s your recent activity or track record. Your L10 shows you’re a human, and there to interact, not just add to all the noise that’s already on there.

Step 3. Seeding your new Twitter account is important. I use Twellow as it’s a well organized Twitter Directory. It works great in conjunction with Mr. Tweet if you Twellow users first, then run Mr. Tweet to help you find more followers based on your Twellow results. Twellow is one of my first steps in seeding a new twitter account. Seeding your account helps with social proofing.

Step 4. Finding more relevant followers. Use Mr. Tweet. This is one of my favorite tools, Mr. Tweet gives you suggestions on who you should be following based on your current followers and twitter habits. It also gives you a means of finding followers without past activity which helps for seeding new twitter accounts you can utilize .

Step 5. Relevant auto-following with Twollow. Twollow allows you to auto follow those that tweet a particular keyword you enter (For example: Your company name). This is another resource for building up followers on Twitter. This can be a great tool if you spend some time researching those keywords that most apply to your business or topic on Twitter. The more specific you can be with your keywords, the higher potential you have to make a connection with someone who is interested in what you have to say (which is really what you want).

Experimental Step 6. Pruning your twitter followers. Not all your followers are going to remain active, and Twitoria helps to define those that haven’t been. You can discover what followers haven’t tweeted within the time frame you specify. I say this is experimental because using Twitoria requires a fair deal of account micro-management. As it stands, and I could be wrong, the only reason I see using Twitoria is if there is a drop in the follower or follow-back percentage for people who are above a certain follower threshold (eg: more than 1,000 followers). If there isn’t (and if anyone has done some studies, please let me know!) then there’s not much point in pruning your followers besides personal reasons.

Let’s get tweeting.

Step 7. Scheduling tweets and more. A tool any good Twitterer should be using is TweetLater as it lets you send out messages while you’re away. TweetLater also has other functionality, such as Auto-DM (though I would encourage you to proceed in that area with great caution- we traditionally don’t set this up). TweetLater works well for planning promotional campaigns, or organizing messages across different social media properties.

Step 8. Short urls that count. There are a lot of URL shorteners, but the one that is by far the best is Bit.ly. It provides the proper redirects (301) for SEO, it provides tracking, it’s low on domain character usage (giving me more space to send messages), it doesn’t have a framebar, and it has venture capital funding so it’s unlikely it’s going anywhere. There’s a great article by Danny Sullivan that provides a detailed analysis of all the different URL shorteners and which one is best (Bit.ly).

Step 9. Twittering outside of your browser. The Twitter website is a good way to Twitter, but we like to do things in great ways at Talk, plus we’re not always in our browser, so we use Tweet Deck both to organize and send out our Tweets. Tweet Deck, in my opinion, is the best client for twitter, allowing you to group followers, search, and a lot more. They also recently added in support for Facebook Updates (very cool!).

Step 10. Tracking tweet conversations that matter to you. This is an important part of being part of the conversation and keeping up on trends, so much so that Yahoo! recently released a neat application that does tracking called Sideline. Sideline is like TweetDeck in that it runs off of Adobe’s AIR platform, so you aren’t constricted to your browser. It being new, we’re still integrating it into our process.

Step 11. Keeping on the up and up of Twitter trends with Twist. Twist is a great trend analysis tool that can be used in conjunction with sideline, or to help with the keyword research mentioned before that helps with using Twollow. An example on using it would be observing that “LOST” has a spike every Wednesday night (when the show airs). If you create a follow strategy to start a relationship with some of those individuals, you can create an opportunity to connect, and you also know the best time to market to them. Eg: Maybe you should time your Tweets for after LOST (similar to airing new TV shows after the prime time)?

If you have any tools you think should be a part of the list, let us know!

*For discloser, this is an adapted version of a similar post on my personal blog.

Tags: Internet Marketing Wilmington NC, Marketing, Social media, social media marketing, tools, twitter, twitter tools
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Things We Love 4/22

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009

Debbie loves Spring in Wilmington – This week is absolutely glorious and a wonderful reminder of why we choose to live in Wilmington. The simplest act of taking the dog out for a quick walk around our office building becomes a joyous event. The azaleas are blooming, the cherry trees are full of pink puffs and the grass and air smells heavenly. I have Spring Fever, which translates into bursts of creativity at Talk. Take time to smell the flowers everyone.

Jennifer loves e-Newsletters from the vet – Our vet shares a great e-Newsletter with helpful information to care better for our beloved pets. The “Pet Portal” also allows us to go online to see when our dogs and cat are due for vaccines, check-ups, or meds. You can also schedule appointments or ask questions via email. Very convenient for busy people!

Kirsty loves Facebook Connect – This feature for commenting systems on blogs like Mashable.com allows you to sign in with your Facebook information to contribute to online conversations. And when you do so, you can integrate the option with your Facebook account so your friends can read about what you’re saying online.

Nathan loves Google Reader – With at least 300 blogs in my reader, I’ve been addicted to getting a constant stream of information pulled to me, all in one location via RSS feeds so that I don’t have to visit 300 different sites to get the same content. On top of that, gReader lets you star the articles you like the most for future reference, allows you to search through all the articles in your reader, share the articles you choose with friends, and even make comments to have discussions going on them within your reader. Google Reader is an awesome tool for keeping up with whatever you choose, and if you use Firefox’s Grease Monkey plugin, it only makes greader cooler.

Susan loves Twibes – This group-oriented Twitter feature helps you find more people to follow who are interested in the same things as you. By joining a Twibe you can talk with other Twitterers about the things you love, share tips and get questions answered. And you can also expand your following through an instant list of people who may think you’re cool.

Tags: Internet Marketing Wilmington NC, Marketing, Social media, Things We Love
Posted in Internet Marketing, Marketing, Professional Development | Comments

Things We Love 4/15

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

Kirsty loves TravelPortland on Twitter: I’ve never been to Portland. But that’s precisely what piqued my interest in the Portland, Ore. Twisitor Center. The virtual visitors center allows you to post questions about your Portland visit and when you add the hashtag #inpdx, someone from Travel Portland will get back to you promptly with an answer. I think this promotion is so innovative and I’m sure it won’t be long before other travel and tourism entities explore similar ways of conversing with visitors through social mediums.

Nathan loves Wordpress – Wordpress is a great blogging platform that can double as a content management system, and it’s free for anyone to use! It’s a fantastic tool that allows individuals or companies to easily put their thoughts online and be heard, no matter the topic, through a blog. Not to mention it has all sorts of great plugins like All-In-One-SEO that helps improve Wordpress‘ already great SEO benefit. Then there’s all the awesome looking themes that are available for free. Wordpress has a fantastic community of designers, programmers, and creatives supporting it. We like it so much, we use it here at Talk, and I use it for my personal blog.

Shawn loves business card humor – I am in the middle of redesigning our own Talk business cards. So, when I stumbled upon this hilarious spoof video it gave me quite a chuckle. Its a $4 per piece business card that took 25 years to design. The owner claims its so good that “even if they don’t like you they won’t throw it out”.

Susan loves Save One Show – Each year I go through the internal debate whether to pick up a new show and risk losing it prematurely (RIP Pushing Daisies!) or simply turn off the Television and open a book. Watch With Kristen at E! online is determined to help out TV fans like me who want to save their favorite show from cancellation. Not only can fans tell the networks what shows they are passionate about, Save One Show offers a great way for advertisers to gauge what shows have a very loyal following, so if the shows come back for another season they may want to throw some advertising dollars that way.

Tags: Internet Marketing Wilmington NC, Marketing, Public Relations, Social media, Things We Love
Posted in Internet Marketing, Marketing, Professional Development | Comments

Things We Love 3/25/09

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

Debbie loves handwritten notes. As a young girl, I used to write letters to my grandmother all the time. Then came the love letters in junior high. Followed by the long distance hellos when I lived far away from friends and family. Today, email has taken the place of many letters. But there is no substitute for a handwritten note from a friend or business acquaintance. It only takes a few moments and 42 cents to make someone’s day - and make a great impression. So put away the keyboard and pick up the pen. It’s great PR for your personal brand.

Holly loves FirstGiving.com – Not only is this site a great way for non-profit organizations to create donation pages, but it is also super simple and easily personalized. Talk’s First Giving page for the Walk For Those Who Can’t features custom branding like our logo and a personal message. The site also helps non-profits by hosting free webinars about ways to promote and maximize your fundraising efforts. Show some love to First Giving and a great non-profit by donating to Talk’s Walk page!

Kelly loves “The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to the New Social Media” by Paul Gillin. Exploring how and why social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter and blogs have gained increasing popularity and credibility with consumers, this book is perfect for anyone looking to take their business to another level through social media. Gillin offers proven strategies for businesses and organizations to leverage new internet-based social media outlets as well as simple ways marketers can effectively benefit from these resources. If you want a better understanding of social media, but don’t know where to start, this book is perfect for you!

Shawn loves working with and for people who have a sense of humor. Bosses, clients, vendors, co-workers and even the occasional wrong number are all included. I’m a firm believer that you can do your job AND have a little fun. I would even argue that some lighthearted laughter here and there can make you a better employee. One of the great things about Twitter and other social media outlets is that you get to know someone’s personality or lack thereof. If you can make me laugh, you have got my attention. And keeping someone’s attention is one of the biggest hurdles. So lighten up and have a little fun.

Susan loves Evil Movie Megacorporation Rebranding – I’ve always wondered if logos created for movies were designed by a real designer or just one of the movie’s crew. Some logos are cool enough that I would want to be a customer, and others are so atrocious I wonder why the characters even trust the company. Now, the folks over at the blog SpaceSick have given facelifts to the brands of fictional evil corporations to make them more appealing. It’s amazing what a little creativity and color can do for a corporate image.

Tags: Graphic Design, Issues Management, Marketing, Project Pet Project, Social media
Posted in Graphic Design, Issues Management, Marketing | Comments

Ten ways to build your blog readership

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

So you’ve started a blog. Now what? Now the real work begins – you have to attract readers. Here are ten tips to help build your readership and turn your blog into a must-read.

• Write well and edit better. It’s no secret that good writing is key to getting readers. But you must also be able to edit your entries to make sure they are mistake-free and that make sense to the reader, not just to you.

• Back up your brand. Writing a blog does you no good if no one knows what company (or person) is blogging. Back up all your marketing and publicity efforts with a blog design that reflects your company’s brand – visual identity, core values, tone, etc.

• Content is King. Write content that your target audience will want to read. They must learn something to want to keep reading.

• Don’t Get Stale. If content is king, fresh content is queen. You have to produce fresh information to encourage readers to come back, and come back often. If you don’t care enough to update your blog, why should a reader care to read it?

• Keep Is Simple. Make it easy for readers to subscribe to your blog by including a RSS (Really Simple Syndication) subscription button. With one click they can get your content to come to them as soon as you update it.

• Be Direct. Don’t simply ask readers to subscribe, offer the RSS feed as e-mail so your posts go directly to their inbox. Use your email database to drive traffic to your blog, then use your RSS feed to capture additional emails to drive your e-marketing campaign.

• Harness the power of e-marketing. If you already have an e-newsletter, link those articles to your blog. If you don’t have an e-newsletter, start one! Then promote it on your blog and link the articles back to your blog.

• Tag You’re It. Use tags and categories to help boost your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The more relevant your tags are, the better chance your blog has of coming up on a Google search.

• Be vocal. It’s not enough to simply write your blog. You must interact with other bloggers in your industry and community. Become a reader and commenter on others’ blogs to build a reputation for being knowledgeable and social.

• Don’t be an island. Make your blog part of the online community. Link to blogs similar to yours in both your posts and through a blog roll on your site. If you promote other worthy sites hopefully they will link back to you, encouraging their readers to become your readers too.

Tags: blogging, Graphic Design, Marketing, Social media
Posted in Graphic Design, Marketing | Comments

Things We Love 3/18

Wednesday, March 18th, 2009

Debbie loves Groundswell, a book by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research – This is one of the best books I’ve read yet about social media and its impact on marketing communications. Li and Bernoff define social media and detail methodologies for incorporating it into your marketing mix. They also provide a series of case studies that articulate how companies across the country have employed these methodologies with great success. It’s well written and will change the way you think about social media.

Holly loves GoToWebinar – After hours of researching websites with webinar capabilities, GoToWebinar has come out on top. The site offers great branding options for a personalized webinar experience as well as detailed post-webinar reports, polling and survey options and a simple, but efficiently designed program. See for yourself when Talk puts GoToWebinar to work on April 23 for Talk Therapy - How the Online Conversation Can Grow Your Business.

Kelly loves TweetLater – As someone who is slowly, but surely, getting used to the multi-faceted world of social media, I find TweetLater highly effective in helping me keep my Twitter account up-to-date and fresh. Through TweetLater, I am able to schedule tweets, follow those who follow me, send welcome direct messages to new followers and track replies I might have missed, due to a heavy workload. Sign up today at www.tweetlater.com.

Kirsty loves Greater Wilmington Business Journal Power Breakfast Series – The Business Journal in Wilmington manages to consistently get more than 500 of the community’s business leaders in one room for its panel discussions once a quarter. The event is not only informative, but hands down one of the best networking opportunities in the city. Debbie served on the panel discuss for this quarter’s breakfast on the “Power of the Internet.” It was great to see her and other Internet marketing geniuses in our community weigh in on the powerful trend.

Shawn loves Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug - Who would have thought a book about Web navigation and usability could actually be a good read. This book is a common sense approach to the layout and messaging of a Web site. It is a very comprehensive analysis of what to do and, more importantly, what not to do. Simple little things that most would overlook are brought to the forefront, analyzed and corrected. Krug’s approach is all about the visitor and what they will be thinking while visiting a Web site. Where am I? Where should I begin? Where did they put xyz? A truly informative read for anybody that has a hand in the Web site design process.

Susan loves Magic Cubes – These interactive promotional items provide a great way to capture your audiences’ attention. Not only do magic cubes offer a cool platform to state your message, they give us fidget-prone people something to mess with while we work. (After receiving a sample pack to demonstrate a cube sales kit concept to a client, I can’t stop playing with the 6 samples on our conference room table.)

Tags: Book Review, Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Media in Wilmington N.C.
Posted in Marketing | Comments