Mar
7
Top Search Engine Ranking Isn’t Everything
Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, Outside the Box, Search Engines, Web Marketing | 5 Comments
I obsess over my website search engine ranking and check my keyword search engine rankings more often than once a week. After all, who doesn’t want to achieve higher search engine rankings and get more web site traffic?
However, top search engine ranking isn’t everything. There is much more to search engine optimization than merely increasing a website’s search engine ranking.
Your website can have a top Google search engine ranking yet not receive its fair share of traffic or receive insufficiently targeted traffic, which is also bad.
As I pointed out in a comment on 5 Steps to Make Wordpress an SEO Beast, an excellent article on the StylyzedWeb blog, you can be at the top of the search engines, but if too few people click through to your website or the wrong people click through, you can’t say that your site is search engine optimized.
A page’s title and description in its header often determine exactly how that page will appear in the search engine results and how likely searchers will be to click through to it. Header tags need to be optimized not only with search engines in mind but with people in mind too.
Search engine marketers are keenly aware of this issue, and search engine optimizers need to be equally aware.
Furthermore, if ample targeted visitors do come to your website, but your site is ineffective because of its content or design, then all your efforts to attract search engine traffic or any other traffic have been for naught.
Optimizing your website’s keywords to obtain a top search engine ranking is important, but the appeal of both your search engine listing and your actual website to your target audience are at least as important and should not be neglected.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated as usual. 
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Feb
28
Life After Twitter Slap
Filed Under Networking and Marketing Strategy, SPAM, Search Engines, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Twitter | 15 Comments
Have you ever been slapped by Google or by one of the major business networking sites?
I have — more than once.
I recently received a Twitter slap, and I’m not embarrassed to admit it. If you’ve never received a slap yourself, perhaps your approach is overly cautious.
Clarification
Of course, one wouldn’t actively choose to be penalized by a major business site. Yet, with so many gray and fuzzy areas, this particular hazard is very difficult to skirt.
Fortunately, a slap isn’t as bad as a total ban. A ban can have major long-term consequences. However, even a slap by Google or by an ISP could cause considerable loss. Most slaps result from black hat SEO techniques or some other form of spam.
Twitter Slap
Outright spam on Twitter risks account cancellation. More subtle types of spam typically incur the exclusion of tweets from search results, thereby making one invisible to all except his or her followers.
Here are four situations that invite Twitter slap:
- Duplicate content - Repeatedly tweeting the same tweets or links
- Duplicate accounts - Creating multiple Twitter accounts with the same bio text or linking to the same site
- Aggressive use of #hashtags - Using #hashtags haphazardly or maliciously
- Following vs. follower ratio - For example, an account following 2,000 with only 10 followers.
In the past, I had several Twitter accounts linking to this blog and tended to append #hashtags to my tweets much too generously. I may also have tweeted some duplicate content. Now tweets from my main Twitter account are excluded from search results.
Sending lots of @ messages to non-followers is outright spam and ought to be reported using the “report for spam” link. I would never consider doing such a thing.
Coping with Twitter Slap
While not disastrous, Twitter slap is troublesome. My #hashtags do no good, unless a follower (in good standing with Twitter) retweets my posts with all my #hashtags intact.
The best way to work around this kind of Twitter slap is to create another account with different bio text and a different bio link. Then, that account can be used to retweet all the important tweets and those with #hashtags from a slapped account.
Have your own stories or comments? Please share them below.
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Feb
21
7 Tips for Utilizing Blog and Website Widgets
Filed Under Best Practices, Privacy Issues, Widgets | 6 Comments
Are you using website widgets effectively?
I listed 10 Types of Widgets for Your Blog or Website. Now, I discuss strategies for employing widgets on your site.
While using website widgets is not rocket science, here are some important concepts worth keeping in mind:
- Widgets Are Content - Recently, a Twitter connection told me he liked my content and use of widgets. I thanked him, but the truth is that website widgets are content, as is each other aspect of your web site’s design. When you select widgets for your site, realize that they are just as much a part of your site as the copy you write. When you select a widget, customize it to the extent possible to appear as you wish, including both its size and color scheme.
- Widget Privacy Issues - In Website Widgets and Ads Raise Security and Privacy Issues (recommended reading), I discussed security and privacy issues and concluded that, “You are responsible as a blogger or web site owner to protect the privacy of your visitors as best you can. Use web widgets from reputable sources and banner ads, too.”
- Space Considerations - One way you pay for the use of a widget is by giving it valuable space on your website. There are only a modest number of widgets you can reasonably host on your website without it becoming cluttered. Choose carefully and don’t clutter your web site with widgets (or anything else).
- Website Widget Placement - As I stated in 10 More Easy Ways to Improve Your Website, “If visitors need to scroll down to view vital content, you’ll most likely lose them. Similarly, if you have an important widget, such as a Facebook fan page widget, place it where it will be visible without scrolling down.” Place key widgets near the top of each page and prioritize the rest.
- Most Useful Website Widgets - Community building, subscription, tracking, and social networking widgets (see 10 Types of Widgets for Your Blog or Website mentioned above), can add important functionality to almost any website.
- Monitor Your Widgets - Periodically, monitor and reevaluate your website widgets. Don’t set them and forget them or fall in love with them. Your needs and priorities can change, and widgets can also stop working or become obsolete.
- Your Website Layout- If you plan on using many website widgets, I suggest picking a theme with two sidebars, rather than one, to better accommodate all your widgets.
When you surf the ‘Net and find sites you like, look to see which widgets they use and how they use them. That’s a good way to come up with new ideas.
Here we are, coming to an end of our time together. Don’t go yet. Please subscribe first and leave a comment.
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Feb
14
10 Types of Widgets for Your Blog or Website
Filed Under Blogging, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Widgets | 17 Comments
How much do you know about website widgets?
Last week, in Website Widgets and Ads Raise Security and Privacy Issues, I shared my concerns about security and privacy issues connected with the use of widgets on a blog or other website.
I concluded, “You are responsible as a blogger or website owner to protect the privacy of your visitors as best you can. Use widgets from reputable sources and banner ads, too.”
Today, I list 10 types of website widgets that can enhance your site:
- Community Building Widgets - I use both Google Friend Connect and Facebook fan page widgets here on Online Social Networking. They work on blogs, as well as other websites, and I like them very much. Make sure you enable and use the GFC newsletter feature.
- Subscription Widgets - I use RSS and NetworkedBlogs widgets, which are suitable for blogs, and I also use an email subscription widget that works with any website.
- Tracking Widgets - In addition to embedding Google Analytics internally on every page of this blog, I use Get Clicky, Alexa, Page Rank Checker, Website Grader and Flag Counter widgets to acquire a broad range of additional statistics.
- Social Networking Widgets - Social network widgets encourage visitors to connect with you on Twitter, Facebook, BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog and other key social bookmarking and social networking sites. An Entrecard widget enables me to network and expose my blog to thousands of bloggers.
- Polls and Survey Widgets - I use the interests and comments features of Google Friend Connect to obtain feedback and preferences from my GFC community.
- Content Sharing Widgets - The Add This widget at the end of each article makes it very easy (hint, hint) for you to share content with friends in your networks.
- Advertising Widgets - Ad widgets from Google Adwords, ad networks and retailers such as Amazon help you generate income from your blog or other website.
- Syndication Widgets - Display news, other information, YouTube videos and Flickr pics on your site.
- Widget Bars - Here’s an example of a page with a Digg toolbar widget (hint, hint again). Widget bars are becoming more and more common.
- Widget Gadgets - See Google Gadgets for everything else under the sun.
In a subsequent article, I’ll provide useful tips for using widgets.
However, one more thing before you leave. What types of widgets do you use? What are examples of each?
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Feb
11
Website Widgets and Ads Raise Security and Privacy Issues
Filed Under Alerts, Best Practices, Measurement and Tracking, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Privacy Issues, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Web Analytics, Widgets | 5 Comments
Website widgets are commonplace in the world of social media. They tend to make interacting, marketing and web site tracking easier and more fun. Many types of website widgets are currently used on this blog.
However, don’t you ever question how safe website widgets really are? The use of website widgets and banner ads raises online safety and privacy issues for you and your website visitors that are worthy of consideration.
Marketing Experiment Gone Wrong
I was experimenting with my website tracking software. I wanted to determine whether it would work on websites not belonging to me. I installed the required tracking code in a blog post on a Ning site and on my Ryze profile.
I very quickly uncovered a major obstacle. The JavaScript, a key element in the tracking code, had been stripped off by each of the social networking sites. All that remained was a link to a very tiny and invisible image hosted by my tracking service.
I decided to continue the test in order to see the outcome. I invited friends to visit the test pages and inspected the resulting traffic data. I saw the IP address, ISP, location, operating system and web browser for each person who had visited the test pages — and all it took was embedding an invisible one pixel by one pixel image on those pages.
Privacy and Security Implications
When you install a banner ad on your blog or other website, and that banner ad is hosted on the advertiser’s server, not yours, you give that advertiser identical information about your visitors as I was able to obtain about mine; your visitors don’t even need to click on the banner ad to make that happen.
Once an advertiser obtains an IP address, they may obtain more sensitive information as well. Some offline merchants sell data about their customers. Why not assume that some online merchants and social networking sites do the same?
They have some amount of personal information matched to an IP address, and may decide to monetize that private data. They might even state that in their privacy policy.
When you install a widget or ad on your site that contains script, the effects are more far reaching. The company that provided you with the widget code can obtain information about the source and actions of each visitor. Scripts can even be malicious, as in the case of poisoned banners. 
Your Due Diligence Can Help
You are responsible as a blogger or web site owner to protect the privacy of your visitors as best you can. Use web widgets from reputable sources and banner ads, too. If practical, host the image on your own server, as I myself generally do.
Hopefully, data that reputable third parties obtain from you and your visitors will be used for reasonable purposes, and their widget code will perform as specified. You need to take care that all third party widget code you embed in your site is from a reputable source.
Your turn for questions or comments. 
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Feb
7
10 More Easy Ways to Improve Your Website
Filed Under Best Practices, Blogging, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Search Engines, Web Marketing | 16 Comments
How well is your blog or website performing?
This past November, I wrote, “Some web sites clearly have it together. They have lots of traffic and appeal to visitors.
“Other sites aren’t bad. They have good potential. With a few tweaks here and there, they could enjoy much more traffic and appeal much more to their audience.”
I listed 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Blog or Website and indicated that there might be more suggestions to follow.
Here then are ten more tweaks (presented as problems and fixes), bringing the total to twenty. Hope they’ll keep you busy for a while.
- Key Content Hidden “Below the Fold” - You have seconds to capture a visitor’s attention. If visitors need to scroll down to view vital content, you’ll most likely lose them. Similarly, if you have an important widget, such as a Facebook fan page widget, place it where it will be visible without scrolling down.
- Long Flash Intro - I hate sitting through flash intros designed to impress. Don’t you? Why would you want to subject your visitors to long (or even short) flash intros? Flash intros are dead time. Why not instead impress visitors with your knowledge and the relevance of your content?
- Clutter - Some websites have too much going on; they look like patch quilts. Others have ads that fill every nook and cranny. What can I say? Such sites are overwhelming.
- No Call to Action - What do you want your visitors to do when they visit your site? To buy? To subscribe? To leave a blog comment? Let them know what you expect, and if your request is reasonable, they may very well comply. If you don’t ask, they may not know what to do, and they’ll leave, perhaps forever, without taking action.
- Distracting Ads - Pop-up ads, blinking ads, glaring banners, sexy ads, scripts that forward to advertisers’ sites after a few seconds, inappropriate auto-playing audio, etc. I dare say, these are “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” Make sure your ads don’t interfere with your content. If your ads are your content, then please disregard everything you’ve ever read on this blog.
- Images Not Labeled - Make your visitors and the search engines happy. Whenever possible, describe your images using alt and title parameters in your img tags. If all this is gibberish to you, worry not. Your web development or HTML guru will know what to do.
- Hard to Navigate Site - Don’t confuse your visitors. Keep your website simple and provide a site map if you can.
- Difficult to Understand - Write for your audience. Not everyone will have an advanced degree — unless of course such people are your target audience.
- Spelling and Grammar Mistakes - There ain’t no excuse for bad spellin and grammar.
- Stale Content - Fresh content is good for SEO and for attracting repeat visitors.
Implement as many of these ten website improvements (and the ones listed 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Blog or Website) as you’re able to.
How time flies! Already, we’ve come to the part of the blog post where people usually leave a well thought-out comment. 
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Feb
3
Neglected Stepchild of Social Media Marketing
Filed Under Best Practices, Blogging, Facebook, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Outside the Box, Twitter, Web Marketing | 11 Comments
You want to market on the web and take advantage of the vast potential of social media. You start your blog, create your Twitter account, launch your Facebook fan page, and you’re ready to go.
Or are you? Have you missed any crucial first steps?
Sandy Abrams, begins her new book, Your Idea, Inc., with words that have been attributed to Mark Twain:
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking down your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.”
This quotation presents three problems, which I believe ought to have troubled Samuel Clemens:
- Isn’t “breaking down your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks” itself a step in the process?
- Aren’t understanding your needs and clearly defining your objectives vital preparatory steps as well?
- How do we determine the optimal sequence in which to execute all the small manageable tasks?
These are three aspects of planning.
Planning is not popular, which explains the all too common lack of direction and focus in social media work.
Lack of direction and focus impedes progress and can cause frustration.
Your Social Media Plan
Before you jump into social media, devise your social media marketing and PR plan. Here are 16 key areas that might factor into your social media plan:
- Understand your business and objectives.
- Think about your products and services, what makes each special and their respective market segments.
- Develop positioning strategies for each market or program.
- Compile a list of your online competitors for each market.
- Identify suitable social media, such as social networking sites and social bookmarking sites, for both your vertical and horizontal campaigns.
- Identify desirable directories and other sites that might link to your content.
- Research and evaluate the extent and quality of industry-specific online content.
- Devise strategies and techniques for developing and promoting your content.
- Define a policy for governing your employees’ interactions with the public through social media.
- Study the online methodology of competitors and identify their search engine keywords.
- Analyze and critique your existing web presence.
- Gauge your competitors’ online success based upon their standing in search engines, the number and quality of links to their site, and estimated traffic.
- Identify opportunities to outmaneuver your competitors.
- Use a process called keyword discovery to develop a potentially useful vocabulary that will attract targeted search engine traffic to your content through SEO.
- Analyze keywords to determine which ones ought to be emphasized, based on the frequency of search and the amount of competition for each keyword phrase.
- Create a lexicon as an output of your keyword research and as an aid to your content development.
Action is Everything
You need not be concerned about every one of these areas. Use your judgment, since these are more suggestions than requirements. Certainly, do not use the length of my list as an excuse not to take action.
Action is everything. However, action begins with planning.
What are your thoughts?
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Feb
1
5 Top List Building Destinations
Filed Under Blogging, Facebook, List Building, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Ning Sites, Public Relations, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Twitter, Web Marketing | 12 Comments
I’ve written about list building extensively in connection with social media.
It’s time to revisit social media list building once again. In this article, however, I focus more on where to build lists than how to build them. In other words, I focus on social media list building destinations.
A few remarks are in order before I address the where-to of list building.
Importance of List Building
In List Building Using Twitter, I discuss the importance of list building in marketing. List building is equally important in PR, CRM and other types of communication.
Reach is the quantity of people your message reaches, while frequency is the average number of times each person is reached.
Frequency builds trust and drives your message home. Advertising without frequency is rarely effective. Marketers rely on list building to repeatedly reach their audience and achieve their target frequency levels.
New List Building Paradigm
In List Building Paradigm Shift, I discard the stereotype of list building as “a well-written lead capture page linked by a web form to an auto- responder” and redefine it as the process of acquiring and nurturing followers.
More precisely:
List building is the process of subscribing members of your target audience, in order to engage and nurture them and brand yourself and that which you represent.
This definition leaves plenty of room for creativity and customization of the list building process, yet it defines our objectives: engaging, nurturing and branding. Prescribing our objectives enables you to gauge the relative merits of each list building venue at your disposal.
List Building Destinations
These are my five favorite venues for list building. They are just as useful to owners of static websites as they are to bloggers.
I use all of them and let people choose for themselves which they prefer.
- Autoresponders - Reports of the death of email have been greatly exaggerated. Everybody receives email and knows how email works. Every website should provide email subscription. Emails sent to opt-in subscribers will have an open rate of about 30% and a click through rate of approximately 10%, which is excellent. The downside of email subscription in general is anonymity, lack of interactivity and changes of address. I use an autoresponder service to maintain my database and deliver my email. My service has a high delivery rate, many important features, good customer service, and it integrates with Google’s FeedBurner RSS if you have a blog.
- Ning Social Networks - You can connect with members of a Ning network, interact with them and broadcast messages to them as the site creator, as an administrator, as a group creator and as a friend. They all work. However, only as the site creator do you actually own their data. My primary Ning sites are Beyond Business Coaching and Let’s Follow Each Other. Subscription through Ning can be powerful, but it takes much more work to join a Ning site than to opt into an email list. A big problem with Ning is that if somebody joins more than one site or group of yours, they can receive duplicate mail from you. If you’re already established on Ning, incorporate it in your list building strategy. If not, to Ning or not to Ning will not be an easy question to answer.
- Facebook - A Facebook fan page widget lets Facebook members register for your page with one click. Based on my experience, response to posts runs at around 5%, about half the rate of email, which is good. The quality of traffic is superb with high average time spent on site. Your posts on Facebook can promote interaction and draw comments themselves from the members of your page, which helps you brand yourself. The potential also exists with Facebook pages to benefit from viral effects.
- Twitter - Posts on Twitter, or tweets as they’re called, can easily be retweeted and spread virally throughout the site. In a future post, I might list the reasons why, not withstanding the viral effect, I like Twitter much less than I like Facebook for list building. Nevertheless, I’m very happy to make Twitter subscription available, and I love all the traffic it brings me. (I’m @larrybrauner.)
- Google Friend Connect - This is Google’s attempt to add a social element to every website. I doubt that it’s very successful from a social perspective, but it’s from Google, so I’m in. If Google uses or will use GFC membership to assess the relevance of websites, I’m covered. One nice feature of GFC is its newsletters. Make sure you enable them and use them to email your GFC subscribers.
I also use RSS subscription for my blog, but it doesn’t support interaction, and I believe that the response rate from RSS is very low.
If you’re not yet a subscriber, please choose a destination and subscribe.
Your comments about list building or social media list building destinations are welcome.
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Jan
25
My Top 10+ Blog Traffic Sources
Filed Under Blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Ning Sites, Search Engines, Social Media and Social Networking Sites, Targeting, Twitter | 38 Comments
In 8 Simple Ways to Penetrate Social Media Clutter, I recommended that you leverage multiple traffic sources. In Looking for Traffic in All the Wrong Places, I gave you a partial list of the places I look to get more web site traffic.
Based upon Google Analytics data pertaining to my recent blog visits, bounce rates and average time on site, I present my top 10 blog traffic sources along with some notes on each:
- Search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and Bing - They account for 35% of my traffic. When my blog was new, I didn’t get any search engine traffic at all. Now, however, I get 5,000 visits from searches per month — including business people seeking precisely the types of services I offer. The credit goes to search engine optimization and to a growing reservoir of content.
- Entrecard, a traffic exchange for bloggers - Admittedly, Entrecard provides me with lots of worthless traffic. Fortunately, however, the site provides me with some great traffic too and an opportunity to build key relationships with other bloggers. One of my favorites at Entrecard is Gera from Uruguay, owner of the Sweets Foods blog. He and I are now also connected by email, Facebook and Twitter. As with all other traffic sources, to benefit from Entrecard you’ll need to make a long-term commitment to developing it.
- Twitter - I’ve written at length about Twitter. Read Twitter Stats Defy Measurement. I’m happy to have started with Twitter in 2008 when Twitter’s rules didn’t get in the way of building a large following. Today, different tactics are necessary to connect with your target audience. Start by encouraging your website visitors and friends on social networking sites to follow you on Twitter. Then gradually introduce new Twitter tools into your mix.
- Facebook - I turned my attention to Facebook in June 2009 and experimented with the NetworkedBlogs application, which may have introduced new readers to my blog, but proved to be a poor source of ongoing traffic. On the other hand, profiles, fan pages and events showed themselves to be excellent traffic sources. It seems to me, so far, that Facebook fan pages are very effective as a form of web site subscription.
- Ning social network - I’m sorry to report that Ning has morphed into a host of unrelated niche sites. If you have your own Ning site, or a group or lots of friends on someone else’s Ning site, you can use that site to move traffic. As with Twitter, getting started with Ning is harder than it used to be, and the marketing benefits are fewer. I belong to many Ning sites and have several of my own. My primary Ning site is Beyond Business Coaching.
- Business Exchange - Discovered this social bookmarking site recently and wrote about it in 12 Tips for Using Business Week’s Social Bookmarking Site. I’m hoping that Business Exchange will help me generate a lot of high quality traffic in the year to come.
- Blog Catalog - If you have a blog and decide to use BlogCatalog, start your own group there; make many friends on the site and invite them to join your group. Those who join are interested in you and your group’s theme.
- StumbleUpon - Planning to learn much more about StumbleUpon and use it much more this year. I’ll keep you posted.
- LinkedIn - While well connected on LinkedIn, I’m not using it much at present. Most of my LinkedIn traffic is coming as a result of the Twitter LinkedIn integration.
- Ryze - Here I first encountered online social networking back in 2003. I find Ryze very underwhelming in 2010. The traffic I get from Ryze comes from posting in groups, which are really forums.
I believe that Blogger is sending me visitors because of Google Friend Connect. Also, I heard a rumor that Yahoo! is dumping MyBlogLog. Will let you know about both of them.
You made it all the way down here. Why not scroll down a drop more and leave a comment?
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Jan
20
Critique of Social Media and Online Social Networking on Commercial Radio
Filed Under Announcements, Facebook, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 3 Comments
I spoke on December 9 with Rohn Robbins, Vail, Colorado attorney and the host of Community Focus on The Zephyr, True Local Radio, KZYR 97.7FM.
During the hour-long radio show, Rohn and I discussed social media, online social networking and the most popular social networking sites from social, cultural, political, security and privacy perspectives.
While I continue to analyze the sites posted on my Facebook page during our website promotion event and social media party, pour yourself a drink and listen to the podcast online or download it to your iPod or MP3 player for offline listening.
You can find additional interviews and press coverage on my Media Buzz page.
Please share your thoughts about the world of social media and social networking sites, using the handy comment space provided below for your convenience.
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Jan
18
8 Reasons Why You Might NOT Be Promoting Yourself Enough
Filed Under Announcements, Facebook, Networking and Marketing Strategy, Promoting Yourself, Public Relations | 27 Comments
Our website promotion event and social media party was an enormous success. Hundreds actively participated, introducing their web sites, engaging in dialog and making new connections.
Fortunately, the time frame for the networking phase of the event is open-ended, so drop by my Facebook page any time to meet some new people and check out what they’re up to. I’ll be busy working on the page for a few more days, reviewing web sites I haven’t yet visited.
Our four-day event was in part an experiment, as Tom Woolf pointed out. A key takeaway for me is that many people are promoting their products, services, companies interests and causes but not sufficiently promoting them- selves.
Keeping a low profile may occasionally be appropriate. However, in general, self-promotion is integral to social media marketing and public relations.
These are eight reasons why self-promotion and injecting yourself into your content are very important:
- You transcend your interests. No interest or group of interests, no matter how passionate you are about them, can fully define you as a person. Admittedly, this point is too existential, so…
- Your subject matter might lose relevance. For example, your product can be discontinued or your company can go out of business. Your content will become irrelevant with no residual benefit from the effort you put into creating and promoting it. However…
- You’re always relevant as a person. You have inherent value, and you’re completely portable from one venue to another.
- You and I are unique. People aren’t interchangeable, but products, services and organizations tend to be.
- You and I are memorable. People will come to remember us and our faces once they see us a few times.
- People prefer to do business with people they know, like and trust. It has always been that way, even before Al Gore allegedly invented the Internet. You and I can relate to people and build solid social capital.
- Synergy. Our diverse interests and content work to build a bigger and more insightful picture of us.
- Social media is uhh, social. You and I are social. Our jewelry and weight loss products merely facilitate social interaction. People relate to people, and their relationships are ongoing.
More about promoting yourself and personal branding in upcoming articles.
At this time, you can probably suggest additional reasons for keeping it social, and I expect that you will.
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Jan
10
Facebook Fan Page Event Going Viral and Attracting Hundreds Already
Filed Under Facebook, Networking and Marketing Strategy, News, Outside the Box, Public Relations, Social Media and Social Networking Sites | 17 Comments
A few days into 2010, I launched a major publicity event in connection with my upcoming 58th birthday. The event will take place right on my Facebook fan page.
This event’s premise is that each guest will post a link on my Facebook fan page, visible for all to see. They may link to a blog, a website or even a profile on one of the major social networking sites. I agreed to follow their link with the intention of commenting, sharing the link, or submitting it to social bookmarking sites.
When I undertook this unusual event, I was aware that I would be busy with it for weeks. I planned it very carefully with seven key objectives in mind:
- Win Win - I wanted each event participant to benefit, not only me.
- Interaction - I wanted to interact with each participant and start or nurture relationships. Community engagement is always a challenge.
- Meeting People - I wanted to expand my network and connect with new people.
- Collaboration - I wanted to share my expertise and influence. I believed that a good number of participants would want to do the same. Collaboration is a primary theme for me in 2010.
- Branding - I wanted to demonstrate that I could conceptualize and implement a creative and meaningful social media event as part of my overall walking the walk strategy.
- Leverage - In 2009 I reached out to many people. I wanted to do something that would include them and permit them to support me.
- Momentum - After a slow 2009 holiday season, I wanted to build new momentum. Last year’s momentum was sustained by the articles I wrote and the growth of my network. This year’s momentum will be sustained by community-oriented projects as well.
The initial reaction to my event on Facebook, Twitter and blogs has been very encouraging.
- Tom Woolf, author of The PRagmatist, was enthusiastic: “I want to give Larry Brauner a nod for trying a different kind of social media experiment.”
- W. James Wright in Tweet it Toronto lamented “This is one for the ‘Wish I Woulda Thoughta That File.’”
- Rachel McAlpine in Contented Blog said “How quickly the shiny- new Facebook became boring-boring same-old same-old. I’m happy to say that Larry’s virtual party has already seeded my brain with other social marketing ideas.”
As I prepare to publish this article, 260 people have indicated that they’re “Attending” and 165 that they’re “Maybe Attending.” Entries will be accepted until the end of the event on January 14. I cover the details in 4+ Day Blog and Website Promotion Event and Social Media Party. It would help greatly if you could tweet that article (using this pre-formatted link).
If you could Digg this article and share it with acquaintances in the media, you’d be doing me an enormous favor.
Before I go, I must not forget to mention that there will be door prizes. The prizes and the winners will be announced some time after the completion of the event. Also, in case you’re new here and wondering, subscribing and commenting are the accepted norms.
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