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3 Things to Tweet that Aren’t About Your Brand

September 17th, 2009

September 16, 2009

Last week, I was asked for ideas on ways brands can participate in social media circles despite the fact that they don’t have frequent new product announcements and company news.

It’s a good question that I think keeps some brands away from social media. They realize that ongoing, consistent participation in social media gives their brands the best shot at standing out and connecting with customers, but they don’t feel like they have enough new things to share.

Since social media is not best used solely as another way to distribute news releases, I highly recommend that you outline the types of content you’ll share in your social media efforts as you develop your strategy and identify the places where your brand will participate.

Here are a few ideas to jump start the discussion. Please share your ideas in the comments.

Loosely-related Valuable Stuff

What is the big picture, end benefit that your brand or product delivers that adds value to the lives of your customers? Relief? Joy? Knowledge? Confidence? Health? Bringing people together? Once you’ve identified your end benefit, share anything in your social spaces that also delivers that to the people you’re connected with, even if it’s momentarily.

For example, SunTrust Bank gives you tools and tips to make solid, confident financial decisions. The company is kicking off its social media participation and one thing it’s doing purposefully is starting discussions around everyday ways to Live Solid. If I worked with a baby products brand, I’d spend a little time every day scouring YouTube and other places to find short baby videos and stories that remind parents why they love being parents.

Industry News

Don’t just share your news. Share news related to your overall industry that your customers might find interesting. It’s a way to keep them informed without it being all about your company.

For example, if you’re in a regulated industry, share updates on proposed, pending and new regulations. If something is proposed that would have a negative impact on the ability of you and your competitors to run profitable businesses, share your concerns with your social media connections. If appropriate, try to inspire and mobilize them to share their thoughts with regulators.

Your Personal Side

People want to do business with people. Actually, they want to do business with people they like. Empower your social media community managers to be human and share tidbits about their daily lives. Ask questions and acknowledge and implement the answers from people who take the time to respond. This helps humanize your brand and create personal connections with current and potential customers.

What would you add? What other types of things can brands share in social media spaces to add value to the conversations?

Here is a link to the original article: http://www.davidwmullen.com/2009/09/16/3-things-to-tweet-that-arent-about-your-brand/

Tags: branding, Marketing
Posted in Social Media Marketing, Twitter | No Comments »

Business Websites Need Content To Succeed

September 14th, 2009

Content Is King For Business Websites

What a lot of businesses don’t know or won’t do is add content to their websites. This is a BIG killer of sales and leads, especially for service businesses.

At my site for U-Save Moving I have over 200 different articles on the moving business. I could be adding more and more everyday, but I have more than enough to generate between 50 and 100 unique pageviews every single day.

I have found that if I get more than that, then I get overwhelmed with business…horrible problem I know, but it is a problem. However, many of my competitors don’t even have a website, and the ones that do have little to no content on them. Big mistake.

As I consult with other businesses about using the internet to expand their businesses I find that many don’t even have the remotest clue. And unfortunately, a majority even refuse to add content to their sites. Such a shame.

In my town here we have an adorable theater that shows movies and such. Not a great theater but a nice one. For 2 bux you can see any movie showing at the time. Who can’t afford that. They have a website and it is good, except there is NO content. They have no movie trailers on their website. A simple YouTube code could be embedded on their site for nothing and they can have movie trailers of upcoming movies for nothing. How about movie reviews? Nope nothing. How about incentives for coming into the theater? Again, zilch. They have a great opportunity yet they do not utilize it. And with such great movie prices there is no reason they couldn’t have that theater filled to the gills every single night. All they need is content.

The content on my website sells my service for me 85% of the time. If I can just get people to my website there is little I have to do to “sell” my potential customer.

You see my website stands out. With over 200 articles and advices, and moving company reviews…and especially the testimonials, I look like an expert. A leader in my field. My website with all its content makes the others look like blathering idiot amateurs.

When I write an article I write from what I experience as a mover. I know the concerns and considerations of my potential customer and I write an article to allay their fears. I give good solid advice and I try to point my customers to the right choice: Hopefully my services. And trust me they appreciate it.

Now if you are not a great or even a good writer don’t fret. You can get great content from others. Go to the article directories and copy a paste articles from there, just ensure you give the author the proper credit. Or for about $5.00 you can have a writer write up an article for you based on the specific keywords popular for your business.

While I have a lot of content you don’t necessarily need that much. My business started doing well when I had about 20-50 different articles.

So the point here is: if you have a website for your business, especially a service business, then you need to have content on your website. It will give you authority and creditability over your competitors; then couple that will awesome customer service and your business will boom.

Tags: articles, business websites, content, content is king
Posted in Business Philosophy, SEO | 1 Comment »

Hello world!

August 11th, 2009

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Experiment Failed!

August 10th, 2009

A few weeks back I wrote about how I was going to test out a project. Well that experiment failed.

What was the experiment? Well…I was testing geo-targeted self-hosted websites for U-Save Moving.

I bought a really affordable Wordpress template that was supposed to be SEO friendly. I liked the template and still would like to use it, but for this next experiment I can’t use it.

These websites were geo-targeted for two of the major Mid-Michigan cities where I get a lot of traffic from. They were five pages and had my Twitter feeds on them as well as my RSS feed from my primary U-Save Moving website.

While these websites do trickle in traffic (1 or 2 hits per day) they just are not bringing the goods as I would have liked.

I did everything that I Supposed to do for SEO with them. I booked marked them on social bookmarking sites. I created Twitter accounts for each of them. I did backlinking for each of them, but I just was not getting SERP love for them, thus little to no traffic.

I still think this is a viable road to test so I have altered the test a little bit.

So instead of self-hosted Wordpress websites, I going to make 5 page Wordpress sites that hosted by Wordpress.

Wordpress gets a lot of SERP love and they tend to rank very high in the search engines for their targeted keywords. So I am going to target each major Mid-Michigan city with a Wordpress hosted geo-targeted 5 page website and see how they fare.

Wish me luck.

Tags: Backlinking, rss, SEO, serp, U-Save moving, wordpress
Posted in SEO | No Comments »

Man, Did I Screw Up Yesterday!

July 31st, 2009

Every now then when you are in business you are going to have an off day. Things are going to go bad. Nothing will work; and nothing ever goes as planned.

Yesterday was one of those days.

I promised you that I would keep you informed about the happenings in my company: U-Save Moving. And I promised that I would share the good with the bad. Today I have to share the bad.

First off let me tall you what I had scheduled. I had a move in East Lansing, Michigan. It was a 3br home with appliances. I had to move this lady from East Lansing to Canton, MI.

I scheduled a one-way 26′ truck with U-Haul and car dolly.

The move was suppose to begin at 7am.

So the day starts like it was suppose to and without any hitches, but it quickly downturns from there.

My employee doesn’t arrive one time and I am calling his phone number incessantly for an hour. Finally, I give up and drive to his house. I bang on his door for a good 15 minutes before he opens up.

Now we are an hour late.

Get to the U-Haul to pick up to the truck and they don’t have it. The general manager, James Brown jr, is rude as hell and basically has an “I don’t care” attitude and tries to make the screw up my fault. Apparently, they called and left a message for me…Never happened. So now, to get the truck we need, I have to drive to St. Johns to get it. A half hour drive.

All the while I calling this lady that I suppose to move and letting her know of everything that is happening. So far she is fine and no problems.

We get to the U-Haul in St. Johns and it closed. Truck is there and so is the car dolly, but no one to man the store. We waited for almost an hour before we decided to leave.

We asked several of the people that were working around this establishment where the people were at, and they all had said the same thing is that the manager arrives when he wants to arrive. Yet the sign on the door clearly states that they were to be open at 9 am. This place is locked up tighter than Ft. Knox.

I call the lady a give her the details. I can’t get the truck as there is no one around so I can’t do her move. I can’t do the move until Tuesday as well are smashed full of work this weekend. She has to be out before the end of the month so as to now pay any more rent on this place.

I refer her to another moving company that may be able to help her. It is the best I can do. I hope they took great care of her.

It was a total comedy of errors, and one I don’t wish to repeat.

I have to take responsibility here. Although much wasn’t my fault per se, it was my responsibility to make it happen and I failed. As result my company is a little tarnished.

I hate it!!!!

Of course I going to do what it takes to make sure that this lady that scheduled me in good faith is handle appropiately so that I can re-establish some goodwill. But her disappointment is well founded.

The test of anyone and any business, is how they handle set backs and bad days. Do you handle it with class, or do you just say “screw it” and move on? How one handles this situation shows the character of you and your business. I prefer to handle it with class.

How would you handle it?

Tags: bad days, business practices, U-Save moving
Posted in Business Philosophy | No Comments »

Good News Made Well Known

July 26th, 2009

One of the most important things a company can do is build a good reputation and making sure that reputation is spread like wildfire on a grass roots level. One the best tools for this is testimonials.

But lets be honest, how many local businesses actually collect testimonials let alone promote them? Very few. Yet you see all the major corporations getting and using testimonials from their customers. Why? Because it is effective marketing.

Internet marketers, especially the rich ones, thrive on getting and splashing success stories all over their sales pages. Books have endorsements from leaders in the world on the back cover. But so few business, and the majority of local businesses even refuse to collect them.

No joke. I went to Dible Builders here in my hometown to let them know of good techniques which may help them overcome this housing crisis. I was told by their 80yr old marketing director pointblank that they were NOT going to get or use testimonials, because this gentlemen stated “No one is going to want to have their name associated with us!”. Speaks volumes doesn’t it.

Well if you have a shitty product, then of course no one wants to put their name in association with yours, but if you have a great product and service and you do an awesome job, then why wouldn’t they be a reference for you.

If you belong to charities or groups and they say you are the greatest thing since sliced bread, why wouldn’t you want to scream that from the rooftops? Only an insane person wouldn’t want to promote that. It is only good for business.

The thing about social media is that now you can, to a degree, control what gets said about you and your business. You can influence other to spread your message far and wide.

I had another businessman, Ken Sudall from “Go Green Glass” express to me that there is no use for Facebook or Twitter in his business. What? Are you nuts? Of course there is. Facebook and Twitter is not about driving business to your business, it is about relationships. Driving business to your business is secondary.

However, you can get a lot of your Facebook and Twitter friends to spread tons of good news about you. And that, my friends, is effective marketing.

Good news made well known is the definition of good PR. Getting that message is object of marketing. Good marketing then is spreading good PR out to the big wide world.

Success stories, testimonials, or whatever you call it are good news, thus it is good PR. You must get that passed out by the boat loads. Social media is a tool to help with that.

But don’t forget the importance of testimonials. People believe what other people say about you more than what you say about you. Get tons of people saying good things about you and the battle is over, get them to say it a lot and the war is over.

Good News Made Well Known is your best strategy. Use it, and use it often.

Tags: Marketing, pr
Posted in FaceBook, Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Twitter | 4 Comments »

The World’s Most Followed Tweeter on Twitter

July 26th, 2009

Posted by Beth Kowitt, Reporter
July 26, 2009 8:59 AM

For Ashton Kutcher, winning the race to 1 million followers on Twitter before CNN was not about being victorious in a popularity contest.

Instead, it illustrated that “one individual could have as much influence on a social network as a media conglomerate,” he said at Fortune’s Brainstorm: Tech conference.

He also noted that it signifies a shift in turning media back over to consumers, who are now also content creators and editors. This dynamic “has and will forever change media,” Kutcher said.

Now more than three months after hitting the 1 million mark, followers of his Twitter handle “aplusk” come in at 2.9 million. He said he Tweets to stay close to his fans, to raise awareness about causes that interest him, and simply because it’s fun.

It also allows him to engage his fans even more directly by involving them in the creative process. During the making of “Five Killers” (due out next year), Kutcher was looking for a joke to tell during a scene. After Tweeting about it, hundreds came pouring in and one got plugged into the movie. “We’ll see if it makes the cut,” he said.

It’s a smart marketing tool as well. Kutcher said that movie studios spend half their budget for a film just trying to let a potential audience know it’s being released. “I can do it for free by pushing a button,” he said.

Responding to the notion that movie stars are becoming less important, Kutcher said, “I don’t have three million followers because I’m really good at putting up content.” He noted that he shuts down a website every day because he sends too much traffic to it from his Twitter feed.

But he did acknowledge that people in the entertainment business are going to have to start to embrace the web and leverage the platform or they won’t be able to demand the same fees.

Kutcher said that he’s starting to see the convergence of television and digital media, and his company, Katalyst Media, is trying to capitalize off of that by working across multiple platforms and finding the intersection between them.

“If we can have our foot in that arena and understand that space…we’ll have a leg up when convergence actually does take place,” he said.

While Kutcher is currently a Twitter devotee, he said that it’s likely that someone else might create a microblogging tool that has a better search and syndication function. But right now he’s happy to Tweet anywhere from zero to 20 times a day to lift the “curtain” between him and his fans.

He’s also not above poking some fun at himself. In the run up to the conference, Kutcher Tweeted: “Headed to the Fortune tech Brainstorm in Pasadena. Gonna do an onstage interview. Quick someone invent me [an intelligence] pill.”

But when it comes to Twitter, the world’s most popular Tweeter knows what he’s talking about.

Tags: aplusk, ashton kutcher, followers, tweeted
Posted in Twitter | 2 Comments »

How To Spread The Word About Your Business

July 24th, 2009

I have been working on a business strategy that may produce fantastic results.

I got this strategy from reading and absorbing material from the big guru internet marketers that sell all this crap about how to make “millions online” etc. Of course some (check that: most) is complete and utter junk, yet pearls of wisdom shine through. And this is what I try to latch on to.

If you have been reading this blog then you know that I have an offline moving business. This is whole blog here is to you understand how I market that business and make it a success. My website for that business is professional-moving.com. I normally get about 20-50 people everyday coming to that website. That is a lot of people coming to the website. And this is all free traffic.

I have over 150 different articles on that website. It is very informative and I have gotten a large amount of compliments because of that information that I just give away…and factually I get a lot of my moving jobs booked because of that content. So there is a pearl of wisdom for you.

But I have a tactic that I hope produces more traffic. More geo-specific traffic to that big website.

I am creating smaller 5 page websites that are geo-SEO’d.

For most of big cities where I get a majority of my business from I am creating these 5 page websites that geo targeted to get a lot of free organic traffic.

It is my goal to drive traffic to these satellite websites then drive traffic to my big website. I am hoping that this tactic will increase my overall traffic and business. So far I have three of these satellite websites up and running. And the oldest one is only about 5 days old so not much in the way of traffic.

I wanted to you all to know what I am doing so that you can follow along and see either the success or failure of this new strategy. If works, then you are invited to do the same for your offline businesses. If it fails then you can just ignore it.

I will try to keep you all abreast of the progress.

Thank you for reading and good luck.

Tags: business strategy, professional-moving.com, tactics
Posted in Business Philosophy | 2 Comments »

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Business Websites Need Content To Succeed

Content Is King For Business Websites

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