I actually sent this to a new local Google advertising client of mine ( I subcontract to web designers) a moment ago and thought it prudent to repost here:
Here’s what needs to happen before we can start on your Local SEO:
We (the client and me/us) need to research what keyword phrase to target.
I can take suggestions from them (what do they *think* they want to rank for) THEN plug those into several keyword tools to garner our best guess (I know that’s not what you or the client wants to hear but big G does NOT reveal exact #’s on exact querys)
Then we pick from that research. I *could* just “Pick A Target” based on my experience
We need to make the client happy…
Here’s a potential problem: the client typically wants to rank for what THEY think people are searching for… often the client has no clue (not unlike a person who wants to sell their home but is asking for an unrealistic selling price)
OR… the client wants to rank for everything under the sun… not good
The way Google “passes out” Google trust is like this:
A) you gotta rank for SOMETHING before you can rank for anything
B) sell one thing… but sell it well
C) AFTER and only after you rank for the first “target” (which is what I call keywords, they’re targets to me), THEN we tackle what I call an “adjacent keyword phrase” and I’ll explain why:
It takes Googlebot roughly 6 weeks to index the entire planet/ every country, every language… that’s a baseline
It takes 6 MORE weeks to compare the baseline to the increase in inbound links/ social media mentions – likes- subscriptions – buzz created etc
This time frame is like a computer hard drive’s File Allocation Table: without a baseline to compare intervals from a starting point, there is no way to determine a position, If I handed you a map and said take 40 steps to your right… You’d have to first know where YOU are to figure out where 40 steps to your left is.
In plain English: one keyword phrase per 12 week cycle
perhaps not what the client wants to hear
… don’t shoot the messenger, it’s Google’s DoJo, I’m just telling you how the algorithm works.
Yes we are for hire and have a good, better, best plan for you to choose from
8hrs of 1 on 1 face time to teach you how to out perform your competitors on social media $700 in Frederick Maryland and Montgomery County Maryland. We can do joint web conference if you are not located in Frederick County or Montgomery County Md – remote log in where we can both move the mouse, we can hear each other on the phone, you can ask questions about what you see me do etc.
Client List Testimonials available upon request. Consulting includes creating profiles and optimizing them specifically to improve your company website’s ranking in Google.
NOTE: we do not accept everybody that requests our services, the first hour is free to determine if we want to accept you and if we can do anything for you. We do not accept a client if we don’t think we can do something for you.
Business Blog Creation: WordPress blog hosted on your domain and SEO optimized- $500 we hand the keys to you
Blogger Supporting Blog Creation: Feedburner set up, SEO optimized – $200 we hand the keys to you
Google Places ranking starting from $2400 annually to $12000 annually.
A website is a sales copy delivery system
… Ranking is the first step, We provide effective sales copy for Search Engine Marketing AFTER we get you the number one spot in Google for the keywords your customers are searching for.
After all… what you’re after is leads, you need the phone to ring! Frederick Web Promotions makes your phone ring.
Marketing Plans start from $3600 per year to $24,000 per year
Local Google Advertising from Frederick Web Promotions
240 397-9804
Google Places Ranking aka Google Local Business Listings
When a prospective customer Google’s for a product or service and they’re looking for it in a specific local area, a Google Maps box is most often displayed above the “regular” search results.
When searching from a smartphone, usually the local Google (Google Places) is the only search results returned.
Ranking high on Google Places these days is critical; more and more people are using smart phones and smart phones only show Google Places listings. But there are only 7 spots available! So how can you do it? Here are a few tips:
- Create a Google Places Profile if you haven’t already done so.
- Citations, citations, citations. Google Places has its own ranking algorithm, and this algorithm likes it when people are talking about you.
- If you can’t afford a full-service SEO, consider hiring one who offers a service just for increasing citations ( like Frederick Web Promotions for example)
- Increase citations by making sure you’re listed in every possible business directory.
- Increase citations by making sure your listing includes full contact information and full website information.
- Don’t forget to include some of all the types of citations out there: blog posts, social media profiles, reviews, links from other websites, etc.
- If you hire a full-service SEO, make sure they do all of the following:
1) Use the right keywords in titles, descriptions, and websites.
2) Make sure all names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses match and exist in full on all citations.
3) Make sure your website is listed with the appropriate categories.
4) Link your Google Places profile directly with your website, social media profiles, blogs, directories, and any review sites.
5) Be sure to include photos and an introduction video on your Google Places profile.
6) Businesses from select cities can pay to help optimize their ranking.
7) Keep up with the trends. It’s not just about Google anymore; Yahoo Local, Yelp, and Bing Local are all becoming critically important for SEO success.
8) We urge you to mention coupons, discounts, or special offers. When the economy is rough and competition is fierce, offering consumers lower prices or perks to shop with you is essential.
9) Don’t forget to include location keywords, MyMaps and GeoTagged Photos when appropriate.
10) Make sure your URL has a product or service keyword.
Working to put these tips onto practice can give your site the boost it needs. Just remember to keep working at it because the developments and rules are constantly changing!
by Joyce Kelly SEO Copywriter @ Marketing Agencies in Frederick Md
Google Places or Google Local Business Listing ranking
Our SEO battle testing is showing us that Google Places (aka Google local business listings) often are the ONLY search results that display on a smartphone! Not only that – some of our local SEO clients report earning more ROI per advertising $ invested from a Google Places ranking rather than an Organic Google ranking. We provide guaranteed ranking in Google places for our small business clients
Many small businesses come to us with excellent ranking in the organic listings (sometimes called the natural search results or the main body of search results) but they are NOT ranking in the 3 pack of Google Maps.
Increasingly people will start using their smart phone instead of a laptop, you need your company to rank in the top 3 or you will be virtually invisible.
Fee for top 3 ranking in Google Places and one listing in the top ten Google organic listings $2500 annually
Internet Advertising Agency in Frederick Md
by Frederick Web Promotions
785 Wembly Dr, Suite H Frederick Maryland 21701
240 644-7530
How To Leave A Google Places Review
10/24/2010
How to leave a glowing review of the quality services provided by Commercial Buildings Maintenance Inc on Google:
step one: you must have a gmail account AND a Google account. (it is possible to have one but not the other)
If you don’t already have a gmail account, please go here http://gmail.com and signup for one
it’s a good idea to list a secondary email that you use frequently to have the password sent to you should you forget it.
step two: once signed in to gmail, click on Google account in the upper right corner of the page
step three, please type in the following: commercial cleaning
that will take you here: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=commercial+cleaning
Local business results for commercial cleaning near Frederick, MD
At the bottom of this 3 pack (that’s what we call it in our industry jargon) there is this link:
| More results near Frederick, MD »
As of this post we’re currently #16 worldwide and on Page 2 of about 36,400,000 results |
Please click on “Write a review”
Thank you very much for taking the time to jump through all these hoops!
Note to any business owner reading this post: If you cheat, Google WILL FIND OUT. You aren’t the first person to attempt to leave fake reviews. Google knows how many pieces of toilet paper you used to wipe your butt… any fake reviews will be “lost” when the algorithm discovers that the email address used for the review is owned by the business owner or if said fake review was published from the business owners IP address… every possible way to cheat the system has already been attempted and Google engineers have rewritten the code that runs the algorithm to screen out false reviews.
What happens if you do cheat?
Purgatory
Your listing will be degraded (not rank high) until the spam filter determines if those reviews are real or not.
You have no idea how many business owners call me to get their ranking back because they were overzealous in attempting to boost thier own rankings. Frederick Web Promotions can pull your fat out of the fire with the Google Powers That Be for $1500.00
David Bruce Jr
Google Places Consultant Frederick Web Promotions
240 644-7530
7 DEADLY Internet Marketing Blunders Most Small Businesses Make
Inside this booklet is revealed…
The 7 DEADLY Internet Marketing Blunders Most Business Owners Make
By: David Bruce Jr
The 7 Deadly Internet Marketing Blunders Most Business Owners Make…
| Brought to you by http://www.FrederickWebPromotions.com |
An important note to all business owners…
The internet is a powerful marketing tool. We’re going to cover some of the most important aspects of marketing your business online in this report – but you must keep in mind that there is no guarantee of your success in these pages. While this report will give you invaluable information regarding how you should be marketing your business, there are far too many factors at play to make any such guarantee.
This document is copyrighted and protected by all applicable laws. Reproduction of this document is strictly forbidden unless permission is given by the author prior to reproduction.
© 2010 David Bruce Jr of Frederick Web Promotions
Deadly Mistake #1
Your Call To Action Stinks…
Most business owners just forget this piece completely, so if you even have a call to action on your website, you’re a step ahead of the competition.
But what is a call to action exactly?
Simple…
A call to action is simply a statement somewhere on your website telling the visitor what to do.
First you’re going to need to decide exactly what action you want a visitor to take. Do you want them to purchase from you right then, or should they contact you for a quote first?
Put this on your website somewhere. Here are some examples for getting visitors to fill out a quote form.
“Just fill out your information below to receive a comprehensive, no-strings-attached, completely free quote from one of our representatives.”
“Fill out the form to receive a free quote from our sales team. Your request will be processed within 24 hours and you will receive a call between the hours you specified in the form.”
Tell your visitor exactly what you want them to do. The more detail, the better.
Bonus Tip: Focus on the benefits your visitor will have if they purchase your product or service. What will change in the way they live their life? Will their coffee be better in the morning? Will they save more money on taxes? How will their life be better because you showed up?
Deadly Mistake #2
Not Collecting Email Addresses
I recently had a conversation with a business owner who we’ll call John. John wasn’t anything special… he had an average business with an average income. He worked about 60 hours a week and spent the weekend at home with his family.
His company was a service business and he provided a good service that helped his clients. He was good at what he did.
There was a problem though… he wasn’t getting enough clients. This is something most business owners can relate to. At times it’s hard to bring customers or clients through the door.
Much of John’s business came from his website. He did well getting his website into the search engines, but wasn’t doing so well with converting visitors into clients.
It wasn’t until he started collecting email addresses through a simple form on his website that he really saw an increase in clientele. Nowadays John’s practice is packed. His schedule is full and he’s been able to double the price he was charging. He was also able to cut back to about 30 hours a week, instead of 60.
By running a simple newsletter sharing valuable information with your customers, you’re going to keep buyers coming back and bringing new buyers through your doors.
Deadly Mistake #3
Failing To Optimize For Local Search Engine Ranking
Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing are the closest things to friends your website will ever have. So you have to make sure they play extra nicely together.
By following a few simple rules, you can have your website ranking well in the search results for popular terms in your local area.
Let’s say you wanted to rank well for the search term, “Orlando plumber”. You’d want to make sure that you have that term on your main web page at least three times.
The best places to put search terms are…
- The title tag
- The headline
- The first and last line of content
- The sidebar
- And in image ALT tags
Some of these may sound like Greek to you, so talk with your web developer about them and make sure that your website is up to date with terms you’d like to rank for.
Deadly Mistake #4
Failure To Track Statistics, Web Site Traffic Analysis
Yet another factor that is critical to any businesses online (or offline for that matter) success is tracking. You really need to keep track of where your leads and traffic come from so you can replicate and scale any success you have.
Google Analytics is a free website tracking program that will give you each and every statistic you could possibly need for tracking visitors on your website.
By watching closely what people do on your website, you’ll be able to craft an experience that gets visitors to act in exactly the manner you’d like them to.
Going back to Mistake #1, if you want somebody to fill out a contact form, you need to find a way to get them to your contact page. Watch how people interact with your website, then use that as a cue for where to add links to the pages you want visitors to visit the most.
Another stat you need to watch is where people are coming from. Do most of your visitors come from a link the newspaper printed about your business in their online edition? If so, keep trying to get published. If most of your traffic comes from searches, do some optimization and get higher rankings for more terms.
Deadly Mistake #5
Not Focusing on Longtail Keywords
Longtail keywords are a god-send to anybody who uses search engines for traffic. This goes for both paid traffic (See: PPC) and organic traffic.
A longtail keyword is a key term that’s more than three words long.
Examples would be…
- Orlando plumbing specialists
- Family doctor in Chicago
- Remodeling companies near Houston
Since you’re probably a localized business, focus on keywords that use your city name. This way you’re guaranteed to find people who are in your area looking for your services.
Use this tool to search for keywords that have a good number of searches every month.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
If you spot anything with more than 400 searches per month, you’d better be bidding on that keyword.
The reason to use these keywords is simple – most businesses aren’t. They still get a lot of traffic, but people just don’t know any better. They are extremely easy to optimize for, and they are much cheaper than the shorter terms if you’re using PPC.
Deadly Mistake #6
Not Focusing On Benefits
If you’re a software company, you know that features are important to buyers. That arena is the only one where that’s important though.
People generally don’t want to know the features of your product. New widgets don’t matter to a buyer unless it has a dramatic impact on the product’s performance.
If your product is 50% stronger than the leading option, focus on how much longer your product will last instead of the space age material it’s made of.
Tell readers just how your product will help their life and you’ll see an instant increase in sales.
Let’s take some features and turn them into benefits.
- Feature: Your software uses SQL databases to store a users information.
- Benefit: All information is encrypted and stored securely where hackers can never touch it – keeping your identity safe.
- Feature: The latest video uses new Blu-Ray technology.
Benefit: By using Blu-Ray, we’ve increased quality by 200%, making the instructions easier to see than ever. Now you’ll be able to see each cut in exquisite detail just like it was right in front of you.
- Feature: Now included with a one-touch speed dial marker.
Benefit: Never enter another number into speed dial again – simply hit the * key after a phone call, and the number will automatically be entered into your speed dial.
You can see just how powerful this will be for selling people on your products.
Deadly Mistake #7
Not Marketing Using Emotions
People buy on emotion and justify using logic. No matter the product or group you’re selling to this is true.
Even if you’re marketing to businesses you need to use emotion to sell. If, for example, you were selling to the accounting portion of fortune 500 companies, you should focus on what goes through the buyer’s mind.
Most of those buyers have bosses they must go through before the sale is made. He’d likely need to be reassured that this decision would be a good one for his career in order to buy.
You’re going to need to talk with potential buyers in order to find out what sort of emotions they go through when making a purchase. Most of the time they won’t give you an answer straight-away, so you’ll have to infer from his statements just what’s going on in his mind.
Once you get this right though, you may never have to write another ad again…
Using emotional selling is by-far the most important thing you can do for your advertising. This goes for both online and offline sales.
Move Your Reader To Action Using Command Copy!
From the ‘guru’marketers to multi-billion dollar Fortune 500 companies most of them have one thing in common – All Use Command Copy!
You see it on sales letters and on television: Act Now! – Order Now! – Pick Up The Phone And Call Now! – Do it Now! – Take Action Today!
Command copy creates impulses to act!
It has the power to make a reader actually pick up the phone and order when otherwise he would have put it off if the command had not been given.
I’m not saying you turned him into a robot that had to obey you and order. I’m saying that when you gave the command to: ‘Go Ahead And Order Now‘ ..you helped give him the impulse to act. You ‘opened’ his mind up to the thought of actually going ahead and picking up the phone to call. Tell your reader exactly what he should do and it will shock you when you discover he actually does it!
Is this hard to believe?
It has been proven through millions of dollars in testing sales letters and tv commercials both with and without command copy. The differences in responses are astounding!
The owner of a popular real estate package being sold on cable tv reported that when they put the words “Get up and call now – 1-800-xxx-xxxx” across the bottom of the screen and added a part at the end where he again gave the order to ‘get up and call now‘ the commercial immediately began making a profit whereas every time it was ran before it lost money!
Your reader or the TV viewer may be blown away by your product. He may sit hypnotized by the thoughts of all he could do with your product. But unless you tell him to order now and show him a clear and easy way to do it, he may just keep right on sitting there spaced out about your product but never actually making the move to order it.
Thank you for taking the time to read through this short report. I’d love to have a chance to talk with you for even just 10 minutes about your current marketing strategy to see if there is any way we can improve it by using the power of the internet.
It’s possible that by making a few small changes, you could see huge results. So please, give me a call at 240-644-7530 and we can set up a time to meet.
Thank you again for reading this report.
Yours in business,
David Bruce Jr
Frederick Web Promotions
50 Citizens Way
Suite 400
Frederick, Maryland, 21701
http://www.frederickwebpromotions.com
davidbrucejr@frederickwebpromotions.com
http://www.facebook.com/FrederickWebPromotions/
Google has a problem
“anything that can be abused… will be”
That being said, this logic prevails:
This was my response to a forum thread on Reddit, specifically a “sub reddit”, the SEO Reddit.
====
Google needed to illustrate to webmasters that “if you produce X quality content” you’ll be ranked at “par”, if you produce “better quality content” you’ll be ranked at “X above par”
To “train ” webmasters to produce better quality, they introduced the little green bar that shows up in the Google toolbar.
Ok fine, that worked… for a while.
THEN, some webmasters (who were ALSO astute marketers) began SELLING links from their high(er) page rank websites.
This altered the quality of the search results that Google was serving up, altered them for the worse, once this behavior began to threaten Google’s userbase (the general public began to be disillusioned with Google’s utility to them).
Google began to incorporate TWO sets of PUBLICLY STATED page rank.
End result?
The page rank being “displayed” in the tool bar is fiction. The REAL page rank Google is NOT SHOWING US.
So a page that has a PR0 or a PR1 might in reality be much higher, but Google has no vested interest in allowing that important bit of information to become public.
Yes we are for hire and have a good, better, best plan for you to choose from:
Fees For Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Optimization:
Social Media Optimization: 8 hours of one on one consultation, create social media profiles with SEO ranking specifically in mind. First Hour is exploratory, we may or may not choose to represent you, we will discover if we can realistically do something for your product or service in this first hour. Fee $100.00 per hour or $700 come into our shop at 1446 W Patrick St, Frederick Md or we can do remote log in where we can both move the mouse and I can answer questions over the phone live
Google Places or Google Local Business Listing ranking
Our SEO battle testing is showing us that Google Places (aka Google local business listings) often are the ONLY search results that display on a smartphone! Not only that – some of our local SEO clients report earning more ROI per advertising $ invested from a Google Places ranking rather than an Organic Google ranking.
We provide guaranteed ranking in Google places for our small business clients Many small businesses come to us with excellent ranking in the organic listings (sometimes called the natural search results or the main body of search results) but they are NOT ranking in the 3 pack of Google Maps.
Increasingly people will start using their smart phone instead of a laptop, you need your company to rank in the top 3 or you will be virtually invisible. Fee for top 3 ranking in Google Places and one listing in the top ten Google organic listings $2000 annually
We’re not talking about you showing up when your company name is Googled
Try this: IT Services Frederick Md (That’s our computer shop in Frederick Md)
Or this (our SEO client is divorce attorney Kelly Koch) Google Divorce Attorneys Corpus Christi
Or this (our client is Commercial Buildings Maintenance Inc) Google Commercial Cleaning Frederick Md (notice their company Facebook page is listed right below their top 2 listings?)
Keyword selection consultation: one on one consultation to select effective keywords $100.00 per hour Typically our clients have a long list of keywords they’d like to be found under, we counsel you should pick no more than 3 keyword phrases, sell one thing and sell it well.
You only have X amount of Google authority available to you at one time, attempting to spread a finite quantity of Google Juice over many keywords is counter productive in our experience. Every 6 weeks add 3 more keyword phrases to target, do NOT attempt all of them at once.
Managed Company Facebook Pages
Ghost write content for the supporting blogs we create, get each of them to rank in Google and create content for your company Facebook page and get the company Facebook Page we create and manage for your company to rank in Google:
$1000 upfront: between $500 month and $1000 month for retainer fee and content creation/management. Fee’s vary depending on the competitiveness of your target market. We can hit any target, some targets are harder to hit than others.
Typical Fee is $15000 annually ideally for criminal lawyers, divorce attorneys that want to dominate the local search pages for the geographical area they practice law in.
National SEO Rankings: fees vary depending on competitiveness of the selected keyword phrase. Fees range from $14,000 annually $2000 up front, $1000 month to as much as $25,000
Local Google Advertising Strategist David Bruce Jr of Frederick Web Promotions
240 644-7530
Free 1 Hour of SEO Consulting For Facebook Fans of IT Services Frederick Maryland
Local SEO For Small Businesses
06/21/2010
Why is your company website not showing up in Google Local Listings?
What’s the most valuable part of your website and blog?
The title and the opening line of text.
The first words out your mouth need to be what your prospect wants… NOT what you want to say about yourself.
No One Gives a Damn Who You Are
Nor do they really care if you “welcome them to your website”
The most common gross tactical error I see in company websites of all kinds is to open with:
“Welcome to our website”
Your prospects care about one thing and one thing only: What they’re searching for and are you local.
keywords + geographical area.
Give Google’s customer (it’s users, the people who use Google to search for anything and everything) what they want and Google will give you what you want.
The audience to please is, in this order: Make Google’s users happy, Give Google what it wants, then give your prospects what they want. You come in dead last in this pecking order.
Let’s analyze this: if your company isn’t in the top spot in Google, no one will ever see your website. A website’s sole purpose, it’s only reason for existance is to PERFORM in Google Search Results Pages (aka serps). It’s a waste of time, effort and money to craft a website if said website doesn’t show up in the top ten, the first page of search results.
To pull this off you have to give Google what it wants… and what Google wants is for it’s users to find what they want… and they way they do that is this and this alone:
keywords + geographical area
not keywords + geographical area, people search for X, then quickly discover Google returns search results for X in other states, not where they are. They clicked back and added the geographical area they are located in.
Another gross tactical marketing error on most company websites, real estate websites/ blogs included is:
keywords PLURAL, most business owners selfishly want people to think they are the sole supplier for X in a region. It’s human nature, your prospects on the other hand are NOT searching for ONE suppiler, they’re searching for the plural of a keyword.
Take lawyers for example, I have attorneys as local SEO clients, our competition is touting themselves as divorce laywer in X or criminal lawyer in X
The people searching for a lawyer are looking for lawyerS, attorneyS not one attorney.
So what text do you open with? How do you come up with a single line that sells the sizzle, not the steak?
Go to a blank Google page, begin to type, Google “suggest” searches before you finish typing, what you’re looking at is previous search querries, that tells you someone already has interest in that as a keyword phrase. You might want to use that exact phrase because many people are likely to simply scroll down and search for that.
If that tactic (use Google’s suggested searches) doesn’t prompt you with ideas for an opening line, you could use Google’s keyword tool for ideas.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
I’ll close this post with one last pet peeve… I guess I look kinda jaded, ya think? I keep getting local SEO clients that “think” they know what they want, I refuse to help someone commit Google Ranking Suicide. I have too many people on my waiting list to put up with a stubborn client. A consultants job is “horse led to water, drink or don’t drink”
Google adwords, I’m sure you know what they are. In adwords companies bid on keywords, the higest bidder gets the top spot… well not really
There is a quality score google uses, if your site’s quality score is higher you don’t have to be the highest bidder to get the highest rank. If you purport your site is about X and X isn’t prominently displayed on your site… your quality score goes down and the price you get charged per bidding goes up.
How do you get a better quality score? make the very first words out of your mouth be the keywords you’re shooting for.
The algorithm that determines googlemaps ranking (Google local business listings is Googlemaps) also uses the quality score algorithm,
David Bruce Jr Regional Search Engine Marketing based in Frederick Maryland serving the entire US
Facebook Pages Ghostwritten, Social Media Management, Local Internet Advertising and more.
Google Local Business Listing Ranking Improved $1500.00
240 644-7530 davidbrucejr@frederickwebpromotions.com
Local Google Advertising Strategiest David Bruce Jr of Frederick Web Promotions
Recap:
title tag (make it the keywords you’re wanting to be found under)
description tag (keywords first, geographical area second)
paragraph headings (make them bold and on their own line)
Use H2 Tags to Feature your Business Address
Use H1 Tags Feature your Phone Number
Social Media Link Spam Passing As SEO
01/24/2010
I know most of you are not aware that there is anything wrong with Link Spam. This post is non judgmental.
The reason you aren’t aware of Link Spam is because, like me, you were only interested in Getting Your Message Out… you used social media the way most newspapers are using it: as a one way medium.
You post, well that’s what you tell yourself you’re doing… what you are doing is ad blasting. You’re so proud of yourself… it’s working
(well it appears to be working)
Social Media is NOT a replacement for SEO (search engine optimization)
You signed up for dozens, if not hundreds of social networks, it was no easy feat (it certainly was time consuming) you EARNED it. You’re a “glass is half full kinda person, you reframed that time spent as time well invested (it was).
So now, with a little 140 character to 350 character blurb (complete with a target url) you can press one button and an entire chain reaction of social networks is blasting YOUR message all over God’s Creation.
It is… gotta couple of quick questions for you:
Is anyone actually reading your stuff?
Do you unfollow someone who pounds you over the head incessantly with an offer you know you aren’t interested in?
Do you stay subscribed to dozens, perhaps hundreds of “friends” and “followers” only to ignore almost all of them?
When’s the last time you actually replied to an incoming direct message? Or a blog comment? Or an email for that matter (OK, you did see that one)
Are you answering your twitter? (Did you even know you *could* answer it?)
Our local Frederick Maryland newspaper The Frederick News Post sends out twitter tweets… one way
Ditto for the Washington Post
They both have Direct Message turned off, Why?
Is YOUR direct message turned off?
I’m fully aware you didn’t set out to do this… no one “tries to be an a**hole”
Here’s how it happened:
You signed up for a social network… it was cool, your friends there said “hey come sign up for this one, and that one”, before you knew it you were signed up for a bunch of em. Then it occurs to you that you can monetize this, you always wanted to start a business, with social media the entrance level is MUCH easier to meet.
Social Media Levels The Playing Field
If you get good at this, you ARE an advertising agency/ marketing wizard wrapped up in one package.
Then… you learn about a social media Aggregator!
and Man is that some kinda cool!!! You post to ping.fm and it posts to over a dozen other networks. Then you discover there’s a bunch of those cross posting/ aggregators.
Well here’s what happened: it takes up so much of your time broadcasting you stopped reading, you were like a CB microphone with your thumb duct taped to the “send” button – Your “Mike is Keyed” all the time. You’re all into sending… to hell with receiving.
(it takes one to know one… this is my penance for past transgressions)
I discovered, on FriendFeed, a fantastic graphic illustrating what I’d been doing and doing well… I just didn’t know there was a name for it.
Graphic Courtesy Daniel W Crompton of FriendFeed Fun
Now I’ve got to admit I missed a very, very, important part of this graphic’s title: Social Media Syndication Network Flowchart
I was doing this… all of it, very successfully I might add, more successfully than most social media types because I “optimized” my posts (I’m an SEO expert, the “O” is for “optimize”)
sidebar: a social media guy posts and an SEO guy posts to the same places… mine out ranks yours, all the time. Why? cause I know what I’m doing. You make a blog post and I’ll make a blog post, you put a pic on flickr and we’ll see who’s flickr gets more page views
What I’d missed is the FLOWCHART part
It just hit me like a ton of bricks, I hooked up everything to each other that I was spamming the hell out of my personal Facebook Profile. Everything I posted showed up in triplicate!
http://www.facebook.com/localgoogleadvertising
Hell, I wouldn’t follow me!
Since this dawned on me (no wonder my sales were flat, I could call people but lost many when they saw the spam fest going on with my Facebook page), I’ve been steadily removing “applications”, unhooking twitter here and there… I still kept “posting in stereo”
What I’d missed is this: hook up all your social media, that’s fine
Don’t Hook Them Together
Set up a Flow Chart (Thank You Daniel W Crompton)
Participation is what makes a blog, a blog.
Participation is the sole reason Google favors blogs over static websites.
In case you are one of the people who don’t “get it” a blog will beat the living hell out of a static website in Google ranking everyday (assuming both are new sites). A static website has ZERO chance of outranking a blog.
What makes social media effective is the two way participation, that IS the reason Google favors them. No participation and you’ve turned a blog into a static website.
So I’m doing my penance. I’m unhooking my twitter from most of the networks illustrated in the graphic because my facebook profile scares me (you can imaging what my FB friends must think)
When I first started using Social Media I kept finding web 2.0 properties that allowed, even encouraged posting to my personal Facebook Profile, my wall. I learned that according to Facebook’s terms of service our personal profiles are not to be used for commercial purposes, that’s what a Company Facebook Page is for.
But I signed up for everything under the sun! When I post to one, I post to a half dozen or more.
End result?
My personal Facebook profile gets all my tweets in stereo or triplicate. Effectively making many friends ignore my posts (unless of course they have a vested interest in the services I offer: Local Search Ranking for brick n mortar small businesses)
So here is my effort to sin no more.
I want people to tweet me as if it were my telephone.
Tweet Me, I’ll respond
I want people to post to my Facebook Fan Page Wall.
