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Archive for October, 2009

Social Media Marketing Overview

Friday, October 30th, 2009

Prechnology is a social media marketing firm based in Scottsdale, Arizona. We specialize in directing targeted traffic through social media and are constantly staying on top of the latest trends. The purpose of this blog is to instruct you on how to make social media work to your advantage. All of the information is free, and we encourage you to use it! If you would like us to handle your social media campaign, please visit our contact page.

I’ve been writing posts on the Prechnology blog since May 2009. I’ve decided to provide readers with a social media marketing overview based on these blog posts.

Blog Marketing

Having a blog on your business website is essential. In order to drive traffic to your site, you will need fresh content. What kind of content is best for your business? Be an expert in your industry and write about what you know. Provide updates on your business, partnerships, and development plans. A corporate blog is the bridge between the consumer and the company. A corporate blog puts a face on the company. There is a personal quality to blogging. There is an interactive element. You want to engage your readers, answer their questions, and lead them in the right direction. Learn more about blog marketing here.

Twitter

After you set up your blog, create a Twitter account for your business. Twitter is becoming the biggest form of online communication since email. Think of your Twitter stream as a mini-blog. You provide the same updates about your business but in shorter form. One of the differences between Twitter and blogging is that Twitter has an even higher level of engagement among users. You will get to know your followers. You will build a community around your interests.

An environment of mutual promotion is a key element to the social web, and Twitter is where this happens the most. Everyone has their own company, website, or service; and they will support yours if you support theirs. The momentum that gets created between recommendations and suggestions creates an even larger community of followers. Learn more about Twitter here.

Facebook

Facebook has recently made some significant changes that can dramatically expose your products and services to new people. First, you will want to make sure you have a Facebook account. Next, consider making a Facebook fan page for your business. With a fan page, people can join your company page. Think of a Facebook fan page as a mini-site or hub page for your business. There are several ways to integrate Twitter and Facebook, so instead of having to post to both sites, you only have to post to one. Learn more about Facebook here.

Social Bookmarking

Get involved with sharing links and bookmarking links of interest to you. News is rapidly becoming more personalized in the Internet Era. Social media bookmarking sites like Reddit, Twine, Social Median, Digg, Delicious, and StumbleUpon allow you to find the information that matters most to you on the Web. Use these sites to save webpages and to promote your own site. Build an interest community on your favorite social bookmarking site. This involves “friending” people and joining groups.

Flickr

Flickr is the most popular image bookmarking site on the Web, but it’s also a place to upload photos of yourself, your family, or your business. Image search dominates a large portion of the social web, and therefore it’s good for traffic. You can tag your images with relevant keywords such as “POP Display”, depending on the products you sell. Always make sure that you place a link back to your website on any image you upload. This makes it easy for people to find your website. Flickr is also a place to join interest groups, and add other people’s images to your own collection. Dive in!

Article Marketing

In addition to creating blog posts, you may want to consider writing articles and submitting them to various article sites. Articles are meant to be informative. They tend to be niche-based as well. If you think you have some valuable information to offer about a given industry, submitting articles can drive traffic to your site. At the bottom of your article is a place to put your bio and information about your company. Learn more about article marketing here.

Link-building

Last but not least, link-building involves every topic I’ve just covered. Your blog will contain internal links back to your company pages. Your Twitter stream will have links to your blog or website. Similarly, you can posts links to your site on Facebook. And social bookmarking is all about bookmarking links to your latest blog posts. But remember not to overdo it. When people on Facebook or Twitter see that all your links go back to your own site, they might take you for a spammer. It’s best to provide a balance of links to other sites and your own.

You’ll also want to build links on other websites. Sometimes you can do this by asking to do a link-exchange, but more commonly it will be something you post on your blog that really grabs people’s attention. They may bookmark your post, subscribe to your RSS feed, or even better, they may put your site on their blogroll.

The social web revolves around mutual interests. People will want to link to your site if they share the same interests as you.  Learn more about link-building here.

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Finding Online Contract Work for Your Business

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

Business in the online world involves a spectrum of services that may require outsourcing. By outsourcing, I mean online contract work for specific projects rather than hiring on new people. Depending on your business, you may find a need for the following services:

  • programming/development
  • graphic design
  • article writing
  • SEO
  • Search Engine Marketing

Good business sense tells you to outsource these tasks for cheaper, rather than to hire someone outright. The reason for this is simple. In recent years, there has been an explosion in the online contract market. Thousand of people are willing to take on your project from every corner of the world. Now, how do you find them, and perhaps more important, how do you find someone reliable?

These are some of the top sites to look for freelancers on the Web:

A recent post on ReadWriteEnterprise notes that “Elance reports that they are seeing a 46% increase in hiring for contract work, compared to a year ago.” The recession has definitely contributed to a surge in the online marketplace.

I began my contract work on Elance several years ago. I’ve worked on both sides; hiring and being hired.

So, let’s say you want to hire, manage, and pay experts to do your work. Elance is the most reliable site for this. Before you post a job, you might want to search the category of work you are looking for.

In the “Find Experts” box, type in the online contract work you are looking for. Narrow it down by category. As an exercise, I entered “blogging” under the “Writing and Translation” service. Now I can see a full page of professionals who blog for pay. The professionals with the most earned income and the highest ratings will appear at the top of the page.

You can examine their profiles and portfolios on Elance. If you would like to hire them, you simply press “Get a Proposal”. You can also conduct an online interview with them.

But let’s say you want to post a job instead. Posting a job will get many more eyeballs to your project. Moreover, the bidding process involves professionals telling you their lowest rate for the job. The bidders cannot see each other’s quotes. You must enter in a ballpark figure for what you are willing to pay.

If you are looking for work, you post a description of your project and categorize it accordingly. Be descriptive in your job post–tell your potential bidders exactly what you are looking for. This includes the time length of the project, whether you will pay hourly or a fixed rate, and if there are more opportunities after this project is complete.

In the next step, professionals will make bids on your job. You may receive twenty-five bids on a project or more, so be prepared in the next couple days to comb through the bids.

The private message board allows you to ask questions to a potential bidder. This feature can help give you a better idea of the services the professional is able to offer you.

The public message board allows you to make announcements to your bidders about the overall project. Maybe you had to modify the job post or add some details; you can notify your potential bidders through the public message board. In addition, the bidders themselves can use the public message board.

Online contract work can be a huge benefit to your business. But it’s important to do your research on each service provider, and take your time in the process of hiring the right company for the job.

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How to Build More Traffic to your Blog

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

The first thing we suggest to companies that want to utilize social media is to create a blog. It is becoming common now for small and large companies to have a blog attached to their main website. The advantages of having a company blog are numerous. Blogs are dynamic, while websites are static. Blogs are engaging and conversational while website pages tend to be more formal and they do not typically engage the user.

With the explosion of other social media, blogging has become stronger, not weaker. Now you can connect your Facebook Fan Page to your Twitter account, and your blog to both. The interconnectedness of all social media around your blog and company website is the definite trend.

But simply setting up a blog and making the occasional post will not gain much traffic to your website. Through trial and error, bloggers have learned the most effective ways to build traffic. I will share some of these tips and tricks now.

1. The more posts you make on a weekly basis, the more traffic you will get.

This is the hard and fast rule of blogging. Nothing is more predictable. The more you post, the more traffic you will receive. Granted, if the quality of your posts are poor, you may be better off making fewer, high quality posts. But in general, a steady stream of useful and interesting information will gain traffic to your blog/website.

2. Read blogs that are similar to yours and comment on them.

This is another fairly predictable way to attract attention to your blog. If your company blogs about local coupons and discounts, then discover some other blogs in this niche. When you comment on a blog, you leave your name and website. Most people click on the links to learn more about who made the comment. Not only will your comments attract the blogger whose blog you commented on, but also the readers of that specific blog. If the information on your site is similar, people will also be interested in your blog/website.

If you frequently comment on a handful of blogs, you may get to know the bloggers who run the sites. This can lead to link exchanges and other cross-promotion opportunities.

Lastly, reading blogs in the same niche as your company helps you to get to know the community. This community will turn out to be much more important than you originally thought. Business on the Internet differs in some significant ways from business in the “real world”. One difference is the huge importance of community. To get traffic, you have to be connected to a community. You have to know people with similar interests. Later comes “fans” and “followers”.

3. Use Keywords

This may seem obvious, but keywords are often used in the wrong ways. For example, when I first started blogging I used too many keywords. After you create a blog post, review the content and pick out two or three words that summarize the topics you cover. If you make a blog post about wonderful travel locations for fly-fishing, then make sure you make “fly-fishing” one of your keywords. Also use the exact location names as keywords. Your keywords should be repeated only four or five times in your post body, depending on length. Don’t try to trick Google by stuffing your posts with keywords because it won’t work. Lastly, make sure one of your keywords appears in your post title.

4. Social bookmark your posts

After you make a post, it may go unread for two or three days. The best thing to speed up the process by which somebody sees your post on the day you make it is to use social bookmarking. We suggest you set up an account on Twine, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Reddit, and possibly Digg. Every time you make a post, share your post on three or four of these social bookmarking sites. A couple things to keep in mind: The category or tags of your post is important. Make sure you list the most accurate category for your post. Also join groups on social bookmarking sites. Without joining groups, you may not have much of an influence. Reddit, specifically, has sub-categories of smaller Reddits, such as SEO, Art, Photography, Travel, share your post to these smaller categories rather than the main Reddit. Twine, too, is an excellent way to get traffic. Join twines, make contacts, and submit your posts to the appropriate categories.

Like social bookmarking, Twitter is an excellent way to boost the traffic to your blog. Every time you make a post, you can tweet it on your account. If you are curious about Twitter and want to learn more, try “Twitter Etiquette: Ask the Experts“.

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