Conference Buddies

Facebook & Twitter Fortunes: How To Strategically Grow Your Business Using the Top Two Online Social Networks

Panelist(s): Mari Smith
@marismith

Facebook:

Facebook Mission: To help the world connect & communicate more effectively.

For social media, it is important to know the difference between a Facebook personal page and a Facebook fan page. Facebook personal pages have a limit of 5000 friends but fan pages do not have such a limitation. Fan pages are also fully indexed by Google. Personal pages do not have any requirements to get a shortened vanity Facebook URL. However, fan pages require at least 25 fans (initially it was 1000, then 100) in order to register for one.

Twitter

When it comes to Twitter, who you follow is as important as who follows you. One rule of thumb to go by is, follow people that have “passion”. Also, it is important to always thank people who retweet your content.

Social Media and What It’s About

It’s about people who are looking for connections. It’s not what you say, it’s the intent of what you say. An important aspect for companies is to remember is to let people be heard, seen, engaged (like Zappos, Comcast, and Virgin).

Changing Interactions

Social media has altered the way companies interact with customers and the community.

1. From : Controlling Our Image” to “being Ourselves”

Personal and Professional lines are blurring

2. From “Hard to Reach” to “Available Everywhere”

300M active members

Facebook = 2nd most trafficked website in the world
70% of FB users are ouside us
Average age of more than 35
50% more active on mobile

90% of social media is about showing up. Make content available to your fans and your fans will do all the rest.

Social Media Barriers

Even though social media has grown signficantly, there are still some barriers for marketing. Mainly, there is a lack of an easy method to measure ROI (from Marking Sherpa).If you can’t measure your Social Media results, you don’ have a proven strategy.

Mari’s Four-Part Formula

Quality NETWORK
High influencial in your industry
+
Quality CONTENT
Relevant, frequency, and focus
+
Consistency

Internet Marketing For Smart People

Speakers: Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, Chris Brogan
@problogger
@copyblogger
@chrisbrogan

Key Take Aways from this Session:

• Learn marketing from anyone, there are always things to learn from people
• Email was “THE” content deliverable (before RSS, etc.) – Spam killed email
• Deliver content that is related to what you sell.
• Community is a privilege not a right
• Find something worth selling, tap the needs of your customers
• Give your members as many places to connect as possible
• Goal is to convert readers to customers
• Treat people so well that they want to go with you
• Position yourself so unique that you don’t have any competitor, that’s where the battle is won
• Deliver exceptional value that makes people raise their hand and want to share
• From Chris Brogan: Selling is not getting more than you give.   It’s giving more than you get.  But not give, give, give, and not get.

Example 1: Darren Rowse, ProBlogger, got a sponsorship from  Canon for his photographer blog, based on his community / tribe getting together on their own and contacting Canon.

Example 2: Brian Clark, CopyBlogger does not take any advertising ($10K a month if he were to advertise), $3M in sales this year by having something to sell. 2 years of not making money to build the audience, first and foremost, now makes $3M/yr

Social Media ROI: What, How, Why

Panelist(s): Rob Hahn, Jim Marks, Sherry Chris, Mike Simonsen, Dan Green
@mikesimonsen
@BHGRE_Sherry
@jimmarks
@mortgagereports

What is an ROI?

Traditional ROI = Return on Investment
Social Media ROI = Return on Influence

ROI is a measure on traffic, clicks, and dollars. The basics of ROI is that, how much money you put in is how much you get in return. It can be summed up as such:

Time invested and sphere of influence put into Social Media => Return on Influence => Return on Investment

Time Spent on Social Media

To give a perspective on how social media works, Dan Green provided his background on his foray into social media. When he first started social media interactions, it took 18 months to get the first lead. Now he spends on average: 132 minutes per day or 13.5 hours per week on blog, twitter, facebook (essentially equating to about 1/4 of a week on social media). The pay off is that he’s closed over 100 real estate deals via social media contacts.

Another one of the panelists stated that it took 6 months of blogging before receiving his first lead, and now he’s gotten 4 real estate deals of $300K each.

The success isn’t to say that you make your conversions on social media. It’s a way to market yourself, gain access, garner contacts, and eventually close the deal. Traditional means such as a phone call or a face-to-face meeting are still necessary in closing the deal.

Structure Strategy, and Direction

Jim Marks states that for a successful social media effort, you need a structure, strategy, and direction. If you don’t know the direction you’re going in everyday, you have to change your strategy. Blogging works, since a byproduct of blogs results in traffic and conversions. Aim to bring online clients offline. Create relationships.

Corporate Blogging and Social Media

Sherry Chris says that getting approval for a Corporate Blog maybe difficult. However, the payoff could be substantial. For example: using BHGRealEstateBlog.com and through “tweeting”, it resulted in closing a $13M business deal.

Some tips for Twitter :

• When retweeting, use a teaser
• Give a reason to click on the link
• Lead them towards a means to close the deal

Social Media Success Stories – BlogWorld Expo 2009

Speakers:

Samantha Gammell (Oscar Mayer / Kraft), Justin Levy (Caminito Argentinean Steakhose), Brian Wiegand, Frank Eliason

This session explores Social Media case studies and success stories

Frank Eliason
Comcast Cares

• Twitter handle: @comcastcares
• Passionate not about products, passionate about customers
• Passion is important
• Look at Zappos, passionate about company culture, employees, brand, and passionate about customers!  or Gary V being passionate about wine.
• Tie results to purchases
• One Tweet Resolution = resolve problems quickly

Facebook = great place  to meet with people you already know

Facebook = not a great place to meet people you don’t already know (compared to Twitter)

Samantha Gammell
Oscar Mayer / Kraft

• Better engage consumers and expand customer interaction
• Weingermobile has been around for 22 years
• Using HotDoggerBlog.com as a microsite to engage customers
• 20,000 visitors a month
• 2600 followers on twitter (@HotDogger / @Wienermobile)
• Good traffic to their YouTube page too
• Great sentiment, people love the WeinerMobile!

Justin Levy
Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse

• Partner in a Steakhouse in Boston
• Initially losing 10% to 20% a month
• Justin’s Chef/partner spent 80% on marketing budget on small town newspaper
• Targeted Google = Up 20% in profits (actually up 40% to overcome 20% loss)
• Targeted Google SEO = Up 20% in profits

Brian Wiegand

JellyFish.com

• 18 months only, 100% social media, no paid advertising, sold to Microsoft

Alice.com

• Launched 15 weeks ago
• Sell Toilet Paper and everyday essentials online (You wouldn’t think but there is a lot of energy around these products, but there is!)
• Prices are the same as Walmart
• Always free shipping, combined with a Netflix feel
• Gather Social Data: i.e. She’s a great mother, what type of diapers she uses; She’s beautiful what type of make up does she uses
• Reach out to Mommy Bloggers

Panel Q&A:

• Be the first, the leader of an industry
• Comcast, Dell, Cirque = great examples
• Social Media = Humanize your brand
• Don’t just create corporate policies, but also provide tools, rules and methods for your employees to deal with Social Media
• My job isn’t to build Twitter – My job is to meet customers where they already are
• Go to where your community is already are

If you could do over:

Brian Wiegand:

Hire a little better, who already understand social media (more experience and knowledge – not everyone is a fit, don’t force it.)

Samantha Gammell:

Make sure you have the resources and people.  If you start, you can’t stop.  Make sure you have the time and money to staff it.

Justin Levy:

Wished we used Twitter, like KojiBBQ, tweet events, locations, drive customers

Frank  Eliason:

Frank’s only statement was to ask everyone to use  the #beatcancer hastag 6pm today to support the cause.
[Note: as a result of all the organizers, speakers, attendees and supporters of BlogWorld Expo, the hash tag #beatcancer not only raised money but also helped make this initiative reach a world record at #bwe09 for largest social media push in in a 24 hour period!]

Here is a list of websites to help the beginning blogger
 

Tips For Bloggers:
CopyBlogger.com
DOSHDOSH.com

Build Your Own Widgets / Widget Publishing:
WidgetBox.com  
Gigya.com

Some of the Recommended Social Tools:
Digg.com
StumbleUpon.com
Reddit.com
Facebook.com
Sphinn.com
Twitter.com

Ad Serving:  
Max Banner Ads 1.2.5           
http://www.maxblogpress.com/plugins/mba/
OpenAds.com

Contextual Ads:
Kontera.com
Hubpages.com (60% rev share)

Affiliate Ads:
Nooked.com
AdaptivBlue.com (Smart Links)
 

Affiliate Tools:
MaxBlogPress Ninja Affiliate 1.5 (Ads automatically ad links even for contributors)
http://www.mbpninjaaffiliate.com/

WordPress Affiliate Pro
http://www.wpaffiliatepro.com/

Identify, Manage and Track your best performing affiliate links.

 
Affiliate Networks:
CJ.com
Shareasale.com
LinkShare.com
Performix.com

Affiliate Tips:
Affiliatetip.com/affiliate-newbies/

Misc Affiliate and Revenue Tools:
ClickBank.com (10,000 publishers with over 100,000 available products)
Squidoo.com (content, links, revenue split)

SEO Keyword Tools:

Google Insights & Trends for Search:
Search volume and trends by keyword search
http://www.google.com/insights/search/
http://www.google.com/trends/

Google External Keyword Search Tool:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
 
Other Keyword Tools:
WordTracker.com
KeywordDiscovery.com
WordZe.com
WordPot.com
Quintura.com (search with tag clouds)
SpyFoo.com (hit or miss, not that accurate)
SEODigger.com

Misc SEO Tools:
www.iwebtool.com/tools/
www.seobrowser.com
www.dotsauce.com/2007/05/27/5-free-web-apps-for-seo/

Misc For  Big Companies:
Hitwise.com
Compete.com
Comscore.com 

Misc General Tools:

DISQUS.com
Commenting System to connect to your community 

MyBlogLog.com
Track and connect with visitors to your blog

AllTop.com
Top Ranked Sites

ContestGiveaway.com
Sweepstakes, sell tickets for raffle

10 Ways To Build Your Readership
Speaker: Nicole Simon (Crueltobekind.org)

friendfeed.com/nicolesimon
twitter.com/nicolesimon
slideshare.net/nicolesimon

Use a tool like stumbleupon.com to discover new sites in areas you are intersted in and subscribe to these.
nixande.stumbleupon.com

Help with Writing:
doshdosh.com
CopyBlogger.com

Be Topic Centric, setup up focused categories (Better for users and for search engines)

Be Consistent:
Quick tips of the morning, week or month (but be consistent)

Minimum 2 to 3 months (at very least, but at a pace people can expect)

Be a Resource:
Information for visiting the conference, the party guide
Overview of photos, articles, etc.

You first blog post can be an outreach for contributors and members (pass to friends “we are looking for…”)

Widgetizing Your Blog for Profit

Speakers:

Micah Balwin

Daniel Ha (web service for blog comments Disqus)

Robyn Tippins (BlogLog Widget -> Yahoo Developer Network)

Louis Moynihan (Feedo)

This session was all over the place and didn’t follow a solid organized structure.

Micah Balwin from Lejit  was shamelessly self promoting his product in detail, but the main take away is that you can monetize search results within your blog.   IMHO to make it generate enough revenue off course you’ll need 1000′s of useful articles or page content to really gain enough traffic to make it worth an internal search monetization engine. 

Most  Bloggers do not use an enhanced search, so this is one area that may expand.

One example used in this session for an internal search (by Lejit):  

Learntoduck.com

Components of a blog:

- Content, Comments on Content, Search Result in Blog, RSS Feed

Make sure to add Feedburner for feeds

Build Your Own Widgets / Widget Publishing:

- Use Widget Box (enter your embed 

- Gigya

- ClearStream

Affiliate Ads:

Nooked.com

AdaptivBlue.com (Smart Links)

Misc:

ContestGiveaway.com (Sweepstakes, sell tickets for raffle)

Q&A website from audience:  

SpiritGum.net

- Create a widget Use Widget Box (enter your embed code for your audio player) 

- Need analytics

- Their feed looks good

- Need to use  Feedo or Feedburner to monetize feeds

Bloggeries.com

 Blog Reviews (Paid and non paid listings)

 $27 = Review

Panel asked owner what the value is for his service.   

No discussion about “Widgets”

RedRoom.com

Authors, fans and inspiring writers to connect

10,000 signed up to blog, but only 50 active a day

Panel suggested the need Amazon widget to buy right on the pages

AskTheBoater.com

An information source for Boaters (cooking tips for boaters, boat maintenance, news, info, etc.)

They have amazon links but need additional ideas

Panel recommended to be an expert in a field.   Visit websites resources that your customers are going to:

BoatNerd.com, BoaterEd.com

Not much discussion about widgets in this discussion?

twitter.peoplebrowser.com

New online service to visually see your connections

Owner wanted to know how to monetize w/o being intrusive

Panel recommended a sponsorhip model   (companies sponsor a page)

i.e. viewdi.com = visual search engine (sponsor views i.e. conference page)

Women: The Ultimate…
Where They Are & How to Reach Them

Speakers:
Jennifer Openshaw
Spike Jones

Women are the most active groups within the Blogosphere accounting for 51% of all activity on the Internet.

Other stats:

36.2 million women participate in blogs weekly
15.1 million post content each week
21.1 million read and/or comment weekly

74% of “paying” gamers are women

What does she want:
To participate, to express herself, to be heard, to connect with others like her

Wants you to help her get excited about her life

Credibility:
Give then knowledge
Open the kimono (to share your faults, and to be up front and honest with them)
Content created by women (by women for women)
Create a Movement:
90%+ of communication with women are offline
You need to create a movement to drive your company’s message
People are a medium for your message

Driving Force/Emotion for your Movement:
Passion, Inspiration, Kindrid Spirits, Fans, Organic, Grass Roots, Spreading the word, Evangelists

Women want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves

Engage them:
Focus a headline, less journalistic v.s more conversational
Make them experts
Identify the top and make them evangelists for you

Example:
SparkPeople:
Top 3 in the health and wellness area online
Personalize recipes and connect with people

Example:
Nike’s runners website helps runners talk to each other (many of women runners connect with Nike’s help)

Example / Detailed Case Study:
Fiskars Scissors
150 year old company (orange handle scissors, very recognizable)
You need to reframe your conversation
In this case “crafters” were a big user group
Crafters were using Fiskars scissors as a conduit

Fiskars turn women crafters into “Brand Ambassadors”

Brand Ambassadors who are passionate about a category and evangelize for you, in this case, for free

In this case, these Brand Ambassadors were not online influencers to begin with.  They were regular women who were passionate about their hobby.   Fiskars brought them in and educated and provided them with guidelines about communicating online and representing the brand.

Fiskars also created a barrier to entry for people joining to ensure the current membership is active and to avoid a large list of non-participating sign ups.   Each sign-up would get an automated email which then asks for detail information about that person.   Once approved, they then are mailed a membership kit which includes a personalized Fiskar scissor with their ID#.   This was a unique product given just to their elite members.    So that when they go to craft shows or meet others in the community they will show off their personalized Fiskar scissor.   With 5000 active members promoting Fiskars brand, out of which 1000 are volunteers to train others in their community (including coming to retail stores).

MISC Notes:

Some of the top women portals include:
iVillage.com
Glam media
AOL Living

Other website mentioned:
Girlfriends.com (women community)

Facebook Fortunes
How to market your blog, brand, and business
Speaker: Shama Hyder (After the launch.com)

Mari Smith a Facebook expert, was brought in from the audience to also speak on the topic.

Kevin Nations (Big Ticket Mastermind), another Facebook expert was brought in from the audience to speak.

On Twitter:  @MariSmith @KevinNations @ShamaHyder
 

Shama mentioned not to use company name as profile (focus on people)

Use your people to advocate your company.    However, the audience had questioned that, and Shama reinforced it.   I had to then Tweet her a suggest that a corporate profile helps with branding.

Community:   Direct Connection

5000 Friends limit, but unlimited Fans (so have Fan page)

Twitter (Friend you on facebook)

Use feed of Facebook

Mari Smith:

Don’t just offer products or push marketing to people

Radical Strategic Visibility

Relationship building and marketing tool

Idea + Exciting + Need = Movement  

Create Movement on Facebook

Example:

HARO = Help a reporter out (PR guy started this)

Create group of experts and reports (questions to him then ask experts)

Get them offline, teleseminars, etc.   

30,000 people (started on facebook)

Kevin Nations – Big Ticket Mastermind: 

- Development interactive conversation  (write about passion, disagreement, etc.)

- Clean up your group (delete un-useful stuff, set up rules, etc.) 

- Tell them exactly what you want  (tell them how to invite their friends, viral approach)

Have a domain that will redirect to group!

Example:

FreeRice.com  = answer question, then gives rice to the needy, 64000 fans in facebook.

Think relationship marketing

Passion = community

Start with FB and Build Out

MISC:

Facebook Audience:

White collar = Facebook

Blue collar = MySpace

PingFM.com (post across sites)

Cross post  content and agregate it.

Search Engine Optimization, SEM & New Media
Lee Oden, Brian Clark, Stephan Spencer, Michael Gray (Gray Wolf)

OPENING COMMENTS:

Michael Gray:

Link Out is Good (to who makes sense to you.  It tells Google what you are about)

Ego stroke people to get people’s attention to get link back

Stephan Spencer:

Meta Tags won’t help your ranking move up.

But Meta Description doesn’t help you except for the click through by users

Alt Tag won’t really do much for you (except for Google’s image search)

No follow tag = no penalty, just paStephan Spenceres no link juice

Brian Clark:

He admits Not to be a ninja like others, but you don’t have to be.

Write for people not for search engines

Ultimately a person will click on your results  (win the battle, lost the war)

Stephan Spencer:

over optimization (don’t go over the top)

link bait, what content is compelling

WHAT BLOGGERS SHOULD DO:

Michael Gray:

Micropost (posting too many small posts just for SEO keywords)

Create a page for people

Brian Clark:

Write content for people

KEYWORD TOOLS:

Stephan Spencer:

Google Insights for Search

Word Tracker, Keyword Discovery

WordZe.com

WordPot.com

Michael Gray:

Quintura.com

SpyFoo.com (off and on)

Lee:

SEODigger.com

Misc (For  Big Companies):

Hitwise

Comscore Marketer

Compete

MISC TIPS (From Panel):

Make sure keywords in the title

SEO Title Tag (separate post title and browser title)

WRITE:

How Tos

Answer Questions

Solve Problems

TAG:

Sticky Post

Tag Conjunction Pages (Tag Pages, Tag Clouds) (Funny, Videos, Funny Videos)

Hardest Part = Getting Link

Stephan Spencer: WordpreStephan Spencer Rocks, it’s amazing

Michael Gray:

Do not use multiple category for search engines (chose 1 and block others, no follow, no follow old posts i.e. 2007)

How important is really good copywriting skills for SEO?

Link Building:

Michael Gray:

Have an opinion and piStephan Spencer someone off (controversial, turn off comments)

Stephan Spencer:

Blogging time, spend as much time with insightful comments, other half blogging (50/50).   Building relationships in the blogosphere.

Panel Q&A:

MidlifeBlogger.com
Database parameters in the URL
Custom 404  (200 code = ok, 300 = move)
Midlife, need to be 2 words: mid life

http://fourhourworkweek.com/blog/

Multiple links from the same page, only the first one counts
Image Replacement (for navigation)
11 gilder method (maybe too spamming out of margin)
MezzoBlue.com (image replacement technique articles)

Misc:

SEO-Browser.com used to review websites from a search engine robot perspective