Image via Google

Marketers and brands alike are excited because Google+ recently announced that businesses can now build pages. If you’re a nonprofit interested in using Google+, you’ve come to the right place.

A week or so ago, we covered how businesses can explore using Google+, and now, we’ve got some suggestions for our nonprofit friends on maximizing G+.

Whether you work for or with a for-profit organization or nonprofit one, there is a lot of great information that we encourage you to check out for an even more in-depth look at the G+ brand experience, and because the platform is still evolving, it pretty much changes weekly.

For now, however, I want to focus on how Google+ pages can seriously benefit nonprofit organizations.

Historically, Google has offered great guidance and assistance for nonprofits, but this past spring Google beefed up its offerings to help these resource- and budget-confined organizations. In addition to getting great support and resources from one of the biggest companies in the world, nonprofits should also be ecstatic about pages being available to them because:

• Google+ Circles allow you to tailor your communications to the various audiences you speak to,  and communicate more efficiently with them. There’s also the benefit of a focus-group like quality to G+ circles that allows you to communicate with, toss ideas out and potentially gather more information from an interested group of people than what you’d get if you were using a static survey or an email query.
• The Circles and Hangouts functions allow your organization to have more dynamic, quality interactions with followers, and also increase your visibility to your target audience. Hangouts can be recorded and accessed later (pssst, here are some free tools to use to start recording your Hangouts, because we know you’ll wanna).
• And, arguably the most important thing to be excited about, Google’s roll-out of Direct Connect seriously boosts your nonprofit’s Google juice.
• Actually, I’ll take that most important thing back. My favorite functionality of Google+ might just be Ripples because it creates an interactive graphic of any shares of any public post. That, my friends, is metrics. And data. Both of which make me swoon. 

How to Use Google+ For Your Nonprofit is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency

The Social Media Masters Conference made a stop in Kansas City last week and it was great to be a workshop presenter. The topic I tackled: Corporate Blogging: How to Use Blogging for Leads and Sales, is a perpetual favorite. I speak at conferences several times a month in cities all over the U.S., but it’s always a treat for me to be able to contribute to events taking place in Kansas City and the Social Media Masters Conference is one of my very favorite events.

For those of you unfamiliar with the conference, Social Media Masters is an advanced level workshop series designed for agency professionals or business owners, bringing advanced insights for enterprise level marketing and communications, with an emphasis on engagement and execution and with a view toward helping you deliver results.

Corporate Blogging: A Direct Route to Leads and Sales

I love talking about corporate blogging because it’s something all of us at V3 are passionate about – and something we not only work with our clients on daily, but something that we know, without question, works. The presentation is embedded in this post, but a few of the most important points follow.

Your corporate website (whether your company is large or small) should be the hub of all your business operations;

In today’s web-based world, people do one of two things when it comes to products or services they want to buy: they search the web or they ask their friends (and sometimes both!).

Feeding your website fresh, regular, content is a way to tell search engines who you are, what you do, what products and services you provide. And those search engines – they’re a bit like teenaged boys: they have a voracious appetite. The more content you “feed” search engines, the more often your site is indexed, the more links are created, and the more value your site has in the eyes of the search engine. It’s really that simple. More content really does equate to more leads.

And a corporate blog, with content that’s relevant, informative, educational, entertaining, establishes you and your company as experts in your field and which provides a resource for clients and prospective clients is one of the very best ways to integrate new content into your website.

Inbound Marketing vs. Outbound Marketing

All of this – it’s called Inbound Marketing. Traditional marketing – things like direct mail, display advertising, TV, radio, outdoor is great – and still a necessary component of an integrated marketing strategy. And by the way, those things are called Outbound Marketing – because they push your message out to your collective audiences.

But in a web-based world (that world where people rely on search engines and friends to lead them to things they want to buy), in order to be successful, businesses really need to understand the value of Inbound Marketing – and they need to be doing it.

Inbound Marketing includes things like blogging, podcasts, webinars, case studies, white papers and using social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, photo sharing sites like Flickr or Instagram or blogging sites like Tumblr and Posterous. When your marketing efforts include a mix of the traditional (Outbound Marketing ) and strategic doses of Inbound Marketing, you’ll be well positioned to succeed – and grow – your marketshare.

Blogging: It’s Really All About Sales

Oh, and the really cool thing about Inbound Marketing? If you care about things like cost per lead, inbound marketing costs less than outbound marketing. And, in today’s world, it’s generally more effective.

The thing about Inbound Marketing that really gets people’s attention – especially when it comes to corporate blogging – the more pages of your site that are indexed by Google, the more valuable it’s viewed in the search engine’s eyes. The more indexed pages you have, the more web traffic you have. The more web traffic you have, the more leads you get. Leads. You know, those knocks on the door that say “Hey, I need someone to do such and such … you look (and sound) like you know what you’re talking about.”

Inbound Marketing in general, and corporate blogging in particular, are like new business development on steroids.  And if you’re any good at what you do, leads lead to sales, and sales lead to more revenue. And more revenue, for just about any business out there, is a good thing. A really, really good thing.

If I’ve got your attention, that’s good. Because this isn’t something I think is true – it really is a fact. This is the basic premise behind good business practices today and if you’re trying to figure out your strategy and budget allocations for the coming year, turning your focus on Inbound Marketing makes good sense.

The presentation is below. The latter part of the presentation covers some of our favorite tools and things that help us not only deliver good value to our clients, but help us report progress along the way and measure growth and influence.

Watch for another post or two about some of the great presentations I got to see while at the Social Media Masters Conference and the next time the conference is in your area, make it a point to go.

For those of you unfamiliar with Social Media Masters, it’s the brainchild of the Social Media Club, the world’s largest organization of Social Media Professionals and Toronto-based Sensei Marketing. Kristie Wells, Chris Heuer of SMC and Sam Fiorella, Brandie McCallum from Sensi and all the other folks who make these events happen are terrific. And being a part of an event that they produce will not disappoint.

Kansas City Social Media Masters: Focus on Corporate Blogging is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency

I had the pleasure of presenting to the YMCA’s New Media/Marketing Conference held in Kansas City this past week on the topic of Nonprofits and Integrating Digital Marketing Strategies and Measuring ROI.

It was a special treat because I was asked to participate by a long time friend, Mary Mooney Burns, who’s not only just about one of the smartest PR/Marketing Communications pros on the planet, she also happens to be amazing at everything she does. And funny. I like that.

Mary and I started our careers at an agency that used to be called Barkley & Evergreen here in Kansas City, back in the day when the agency had about 70 employees and two names. Today, Barkley is one of the largest agencies in the city and nationally known for the work they do. And Mary and I wax nostalgic about those early days from time to time – they had a lot to do with where we both ended up in our careers today.

Mary asked me to present to her group of Chief Marketing Officers and Chief Technology Officers from YMCAs all across the United States, many of whom are wrestling with social media and the integration of other digital marketing strategies into their marketing efforts. She asked that I speak about digital marketing: what it is, how to integrate it into your marketing strategies and, equally as important, how to measure success.

Nonprofits are faced with many of the same challenges as for profit businesses, and those are some of the things we discussed. Those things included thinking of donor groups as clients, thinking about how to build community, how to engage with and reach donors and potential donors in the channels that they are and in the way they want to be reached, and how to use your analytics as a roadmap to help you figure out where you are, where you want to be and how to get there.

The presentation is below.

There are some resources at the end that we can’t recommend highly enough, especially if you’re a nonprofit or an association are mentioned in the presentation, but they are also linked here:

SocialFish and Maddie Grant.

SocialFish helps associations and nonprofits make the most out of social media. Also, check out Maddie’s book Open Community: The Little Book on Big Ideas For Associations Navigating the Social Web. And, once you’re properly hooked on the goodness that is Maddie Grant, preorder her newest book, Humanize: How People-Centric Organizations Succeed in a Social World which is FANTASTIC!

ThinkTank

ThinkTank, is a peer-to-peer learning hub and knowledge library for social media practitioners at associations and nonprofits (yet another product from Maddie and her team).

FrogLoop and Care2

FrogLoop is Care2’s Nonprofit Marketing Blog and run by the amazing Allyson Kapin of Rad Campaign. FrogLoop is a terrific resource and a must read for anyone in nonprofit marketing, communications, technology and fundraising.

Social Networking Calculator for Nonprofits

FrogLoop’s Justin Perkins developed the Social Networking Calculator for Nonprofits, a handy interactive tool for nonprofits that helps calculate your ROI when it comes to using social media for your fundraising and networking efforts. We love FrogLoop!

That’s it. Now, go forth and do good. Hopefully these resources will help. And, as always, if we can help, let us know! Thanks again to Mary, for inviting me to be a part of the YMCA and their event.

Nonprofits: Integrating Digital Marketing Strategies, Measuring ROI is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency

Local search plays an important role in business success today. If content is king, then search results are queen – or co-kings, perhaps?

Obviously, it’s important that your company’s website and/or corporate blog feature compelling content, yet if you don’t appear in search results, you’re losing out on a number of potential business opportunities – and, more simply, money.

Search engine optimization and search engine marketing are critical tools for any business today, and it’s a no-brainer that search is becoming increasingly important for a company’s viability. Don’t believe that – look at your own behavior. How do you find things you want to do or buy? If your answer is that you “Google it” you’re proving my point. The Web is pretty much our universal go-to resource for information on products and services, so for businesses, making sure their marketing efforts are taking SEO into consideration is, well, pretty critical.

And in recent search news? Local business searches – not just search in general – are emerging as key traffic drivers. No surprise, really, and one of the many reasons that Google recently announced a push to enter the local ad market as a top priority.

Consumer Behavior Reinforces Local Search Focus

Results of a Bright Local survey on consumer behavior do a good job of justifying Google’s local search focus. According to a summary of the survey published by Brafton News, nearly four in five consumers have used the Internet to find a local business in the last 12 months. I’ll bet you do that yourself – on probably a daily basis – I know I do! I mention my 73 year-old mother-in-law regularly (and mostly to wave her in the faces of all those people who think this stuff is for the young ‘uns), but even she uses search, pretty much daily, to lead her to products and services that she wants to buy.

My point: people using search to locate and research things they want to do, know more about and buy are everywhere, in every age group and just about every socioeconomic group.

What’s more, the study says that consumers will return to the Internet to find a business more frequently once they’ve conducted an initial search. They find you on the Internet, they come back to you on the Internet. Only makes sense, no? Think about your own behavior for a minute — you’ll probably be nodding your head in no time.

Local Business Search Presents a Myriad of Business Opportunities

Let’s recap:  four out of five consumers and a whopping 79 percent of U.S. consumers have conducted local business searches in the last year. I’d say that if you focus a little more of your marketing efforts on local search, your business likely has the opportunity to reach a sizable audience.

Maximizing Your Business’ Presence Via Local Search

Now that we agree on the importance of local search, here’s the million-dollar question: How do you ensure your company emerges in search results? Try these tips:

*Get listed. If you’re not already included on local business listing sites, now’s the time to submit your company information to sites like Yelp, Google Places, CitySearch, InsiderPages and MerchantCircle, among others.

*Stay updated. Make sure your business’ contact information and other pertinent details are up-to-date – and consistent – on all sites on which it appears. Don’t set it and forget it. Things change, check them every now and then and make sure those listings remain accurate.

*Rave reviews. Although you don’t want to force your customers to write reviews, sharing their experiences on sites like Yelp, Google Places and CitySearch are valuable tools when it comes to enticing others to patronize your business. Bright Local’s consumer behavior survey found that 71 percent of consumers consult reviews of local businesses, so you may want to consider asking a few long-time customers to share their experiences online.

As an aside, don’t be the person who leaves rave online reviews about your own business. That’s not only tacky, but pretty lame as well. And, in spite of what you might think, it doesn’t take much in the  “Internet savvy department” for a consumer to figure out that you’re leaving reviews about your own business – and that tacky behavior could come around and bite you in the you-know-what in no time. Just. Don’t. Do. It.

What about you? If you’re a business owner, have you spent more time and effort over the course of the last year focusing on local search? How’s your experience – and results – been so far? And if you’re reading this and have additional tips on becoming more visible in local search results, do share – we love it when our smart readers share what they’re doing and help make all of us smarter in the process.

Local Search: How It Impacts and How to Improve Results is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency

With the rate at which information travels in our digital age and with mobile data consumption on the rise, people are less patient than ever before when it comes to website load times — and mobile users demand speed.

We are obsessed with speed.

If browsers aren’t loading quickly enough, those of us who are mobile users waste no time looking for sites that will get us the information we want. Now.

Despite mobile browsing just now really gaining traction, it is pretty much universally expected that sites will load quickly for mobile users — which can be the difference between a sale–or a new customer–for you and your business.

Mobile Users Don’t Wait

Think I’m kidding? Mobile users will abandon a site after 3 seconds of wait time – which is consistent with the habits of desktop browsers.  According to the folks at Strangeloop, 74% of mobile users surveyed in 2011 will bounce after waiting 5 seconds for a mobile site to load, compared to 20% in 2009.
 

Time Is, Most Definitely, Money

Website load time can hugely impact the number of site visits you see and, if you’re selling goods online, it can absolutely have a negative impact on your revenue. A 1 second delay in load time can lead to 11% fewer page views and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction.

Here are some stats from Strangeloop (one of our new favorite resources) that are pretty convincing:

• Faster is better just about everywhere, not just in the tech domain.
• People have to concentrate 50% harder when using badly performing websites.
• The average person perceives website load time as being about 15% slower than what it is in reality (and we all know that perception is reality, right?).
• A 1 second load time gives the illusion of instantaneous load, while a 10 second load is so long that our attention can drift away – maybe forever.

What Does Website UX Mean To You?

So what does this mean to you? Pardon me while I get my soapbox…but optimizing your site is essential. Yes, we regularly harp about making sure your visitors have a great user experience but, seriously, it’s really important.

You can have a beautifully-designed site that’s visually appealing, has a great site structure and compelling content that draws in visitors. You can also spend boatloads of money on PPC campaigns designed to drive traffic to your site. But all of that doesn’t matter if your site is laden with design elements that kill your site load time.

Visitors won’t hang around to see your beautiful site and your killer content because they’re too annoyed by how long your website takes to load. Oh, and as an aside, if you have music or video that automagically plays the minute a user lands on your site (mobile or otherwise), know that most times users instantly want to hire an assassin and kill you. I know I do. It is so not cool.

As site owner, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you don’t review the usability, analytics and load time of your site – and your site on a mobile device – on a regular basis. Go do a pulse check on Google’s Page Speed tool and see what the feedback you receive. Go do it. Right now!

If some red flags come up here, it might be time to consider what the main goals for your site are and what updates are needed to help you focus on reaching those goals. Never forget – websites are for leads and sales. And if your site isn’t designed to maximize a user experience and create leads that you can convert to sales well, your site’s not doing what it needs to be doing.

And by the way, if you need help, building great websites – websites that work – is what we do. All day, every day. And we’re happy to help.

P.S. For those of you who are visual peeps, sometimes an infographic helps digest the enormity of stats like this. For just that reason, this infographic produced by Strangeloop is so stellar it’s included here. I’m also tossing it in just to torment my friend, Jon Aston, who loathes infographics. I do so love tormenting.

Mobile Users Demand Speed in Website Load Times is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency

Some bloggers may be a little intimidated by SEO thanks to the ever-changing nature of search giants like Google, which are frequently in the news because of new algorithms that change how content is found, and subsequently listed on results pages.

Gabriella Sannino of Level 343 wrote a fascinating piece on social search and how that impacts SEO, and closed with the line “It’s not Google’s game; it’s your business.” We couldn’t agree more – and as corporate blogging continues to be an integral part of marketing strategies, educating yourself not only on the importance of SEO, but on how social impacts SEO is just good business.

Don’t let the thought of SEO make your head spin.

If you keep a few SEO basics in mind, you’ll know enough to maximize the visibility of your content and help make your blog a success. One of my all-time favorite bloggers, Lisa Barone at Outspoken Media has compiled a fantastic SEO checklist for bloggers, and we thought we’d share a few of her tips that you should add to your must-do list before you hit “Publish.”

Target, Target, Target.

No, we’re not talking about the department store (although who can resist the allure of those red circles?) When you write a post, you want to make sure it’s targeted, especially if you’re blogging for business. Who’s reading it? Why are you publishing it? How does the post fit into your company blog, your site and the business itself?

Tempting Titles.

It’s no surprise that the title is one of the most important components of your post. You want to create a title that’s concise, appealing and that contains key words in order to be more easily found by search engines. Keep in mind that when you’re blogging, you have two opportunities to write titles: your post title and your page title, which will appear in your title tag. Most of the time, these titles will be the same. You may, however, find an instance when your page title is slightly modified to include more keywords or additional information that will help your post’s visibility.

Tailor Your URL.

If you’re blogging in WordPress, take a few minutes to go to “Settings–>Permalinks” and edit your URL display preferences. As Lisa writes, Outspoken Media opts for the “custom structure” option. This allows for the customization of post slugs, and allows you to work keywords into your URL. A tip? The shorter the URL, the better. This is not the place in which to cram a bunch of keywords at the risk of being perceived as overly complex–or worse yet, spammy.

Detail Your Description.

Don’t overlook the “page description” field before you publish your post. This short yet valuable space is where you sell the post. It’s a great place for keywords, but you also want to make the description enticing enough so that someone will click through.

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Results.

Really. It is. Forgive our modified analogy. And don’t overlook optimizing your images for SEO!

Helpful Headers.

Like these. Not only do header tags help break up your post for easier reading; they also boost SEO, too, since web readers skim through posts. Plus, as Barone writes, using heading tags will help search engines better understand the main points of your page, which will boost your search results and visibility.

Incorporate Old Posts.

You’ve probably noticed that we do this in every post at V3 and we teach our clients to do it, too. And why not? You’re putting your older content to work in a new context and helping archived posts maintain better visibility in search results. You’re most likely already incorporating external links into your posts (and if not, you need to), so why not not do the same with your own content?

We’d love to hear how you use these SEO tips to optimize your blog content. And if you have any additional SEO recommendations, we’d love to see your additions to our list.

Maximizing Your Blog’s Visibility With An SEO Checklist is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency

For those of us who are old hands at that, it seems like no big deal. But for a vast number of people, even ones who are somewhat familiar with the Internet, social mediums are very much an unknown and social media marketing can seem overwhelming and very unattractive.

One thing that we strive to do is make our clients’ forays into the world of social mediums fun. “Fun?” you say – “how’s that possible?”

It’s really not as difficult as you might think – and it’s almost always about the little things.

The Corporate Blog. Take corporate blogging for instance. We often work with clients and get them started on a corporate blog. In addition to developing the blog itself, we also help develop a content marketing strategy and an editorial calendar. We work with our clients and teach them how to write content that is not only informative, but also interesting, entertaining and a nice representation of their brand.

Finding Fun. In the process, kind of in stealth mode, and while they might not realize it, we’re showing people how fun it can be to not only have a corporate blog, but to participate — and contribute to it. In that respect, we’re all a lot like children, and our blog posts are our babies. Before long, we see people proudly sending their first posts, or their most popular posts to their moms (don’t laugh – I do!) – or significant others – or posting on Facebook walls and sharing with friends. See what I mean – it’s all about the little things.

The Fun Theory. And you know what, that’s the fun part. Changing behavior when it comes to social media often means making time in our day-to-day work activities for something new. Much like the Volkswagen Fun Theory and the amazing Piano stairs, before long, new is the new norm.

Every time I watch any of the videos of The Fun Theory campaign, they make me smile. And I marvel at the genius behind them. Fun. So simple. Are you smiling? If not, I’ll bet it’s because you’ve not yet watched that video.

Numbers Can Be Fun Too. Because I’m a geek, what’s even more fun for me is showing clients how to watch their web analytics and see the fruits of their corporate blogging labors blossom.

I remember when I first started blogging, I was delighted to have ten people read one of my blog posts. I’m no less delighted today, when I have hundreds read my posts. Having analytics on your blog and, even more importantly, looking at them regularly, can help you plot the road map to success.

Success. That can be a myriad of things. But, when it relates to social media and the corporate blog, if done correctly, it can mean more traffic to your website, more brand awareness, more prospective customers, more leads, more opportunities, more sales. And oh yes, those things are a whole lotta fun, too. I’ll leave you with some stats on corporate blogging that you might find interesting:

Still kicking around the idea of starting a corporate blog, or trying to get inspired to contribute regularly to the one you already have? Hopefully this post will help you get going. If not, call me, I have a degree in Professional Nagging.

*Source, State of Inbound Marketing Report, Hubspot

Image Credit: BalooCartoons.com

Want to Change Attitudes about Social Media? Make It Fun is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency

Shelly wrote a post about Social Bookmarking, What It Is And Why You Need It, and this piece is intended as a follow-up, and to give you kind of a step-by-step tutorial on using social bookmarking sites.

As mentioned in the earlier post, social bookmarking is really all about saving, discovering or sharing content online. It’s like a giant filing cabinet, filled with goodies.

From a business standpoint, social bookmarking can be an important part of your content marketing strategy.

Think of it like this: just because you write a blog post doesn’t necessarily mean someone will read it. So, once you write it, you’ve got to think about how you can share it in the online space so that others might find and see the content you produce – whether for yourselves or for your clients. It’s called “content marketing” for a reason.

That’s where social bookmarking comes in – and why it makes sense to make the time to develop profiles on various social bookmarking sites and not only use them to share your own content, but to discover other users on that platform, get to know them, share their content, find cool stuff to read, share, learn from, etc.

But in order for people to find the content you produce, you have to tag it appropriately, so that they will.

What the Heck Is a Tag And Why Do I Need To Use Them?

Tagging is like putting something in a file folder, but before you do that, you usually want to name the file folder. Online, tagging allows you to search by a particular tag and find all content associated with that particular tag. It’s a shortcut, if you will.

As mentioned, if you want to start using social bookmarking, you’ll need to learn to tag the things you bookmark. Each time you bookmark a post, you can typically chose tags or a category for the post. Use as many applicable tags as permitted to help increase exposure with different terms. This is true on all social bookmarking sites, and also true on sites like YouTube – but of course, only if you want your videos (or other content) to be found.

What is a tag? If we were going to explain tags to our “non computer literate” grandmother, we would probably explain it somewhat like this: “A tag is a one word, or possibly two word, description of what the post is about.” Bottom line – a tag tells the search engines what your post is about. It’s as simple as that.

Here is an example for you – if you were going to bookmark this particular blog post, you could use any (or all) of the following tags:

• “how to”
• “business marketing”
• “content marketing”
• “business”
• “social bookmarking”
• “social marketing”

Use any tag that makes sense to you (and your followers, if you are using social bookmarking as a “social” way to find and share content – much like the #hashtags used on Twitter). Some sites, such as Delicious, will show you suggested tags based on what their algorithms believe the content is about – feel free to use these, in addition to any other tags that you think are relevant to the content.

Some Basic Tips on Tagging

• Tag proper nouns
• Don’t abbreviate unless it’s an industry term (like “SEO”)
• Short and simple is always best
• Use nouns
• Develop a system and be consistent

Some sites, for example Digg, don’t use tags but instead use categories such as Business, Technology, Lifestyle, etc., In those instances, select the category that is most fitting to the content you are bookmarking (Note: Digg only allows one category).

Optimizing Your Social Bookmarking Profiles

Just about all of the various social bookmarking sites will allow you to complete a profile for yourself – and this is important. In fact, optimizing your social media profiles is as important as optimizing your blog or website. Take the few minutes that it will require and do that and include the keywords that describe your business.

We recommend using the same profile name on each site (which makes it easier for others to find you) and, most importantly, whether you like it or not, that’s a piece of what comprises your own online “brand” or “digital footprint” and it’s always good to be consistent.

A number of the sites will allow you to include your own website URL as part of the profile. Take advantage of any opportunity to personalize your profile information and fill in as much detail about you and your business as you want to share with potential “followers” and/or people who find and like the content you bookmark. Again, it’s called “optimizing” for a reason – and the more information you can provide about yourself and your business, the better results and/or traffic you’ll see.

Bonus Tip: If you are joining a social bookmarking site and have the ability to add multiple links within your profile, consider adding your other social networking links – e.g. add your LinkedIn profile URL to your StumbleUpon profile or your StumbleUpon profile URL to your Digg profile, etc. All of this helps create a cohesive footprint and will be beneficial in the long run.

What Are These Social Bookmarking Sites Called?

While there are many, many different social bookmarking sites out there here are some of the “more popular” ones:

• Digg
• StumbleUpon
• Delicious
• Diigo
• Twitter
• Reddit
• Mixx*

Digg and Mixx are two examples of sites that are vote-based. What this means is that the more votes or thumbs-up a URL receives, the more popular it is and, thus, the more likely it is to become featured and on the home page of the site. This can result in massive exposure for your content (and lots of web traffic for you or your clients). Note: Mixx was recently purchased and is on hiatus right now – hopefully, we’ll see it back, as it was a platform I shared and interacted on a lot and enjoyed.

What Does Social Bookmarking Do For Me?

While most posts will probably never make it to the home page of social bookmarking sites, there are still several reasons why a business owner may want to use social bookmarking sites:

• Content Curation for a niche/target market, Diigo and Delicious will allow you to pull an RSS feed for a specific tag. You could use these feeds in several ways – internal use for blog ideas, news mentions of your company that you want to feature on your website, or to easily share related content from various sources that creates a stream of fresh content for your website.
• Increased readership and distribution/sharing of the content you produce, whether for yourself or for your clients.
• Increased exposure for your business services or products to what are some very large online audiences.
• Potential for backlinks (though low, the potential is there).
• Meeting others with similar interests (networking).

Best Practices For Social Bookmarking

And, although it’s only common sense, as with anything social, you’ll want to keep the following in mind:

• Don’t promote just your own content. Surely you discover great content all over the web on a daily basis. When you do, share that on your social bookmarking sites. You’ll be amazed at how that can improve your credibility within those communities. When it comes to social bookmarking, what goes around most definitely comes around. And when you regularly share others’ content, they are more likely to regularly share yours, thus expanding your audience and bringing you fresh readers and/or friends and followers.
• Adding comments and reviews (where allowed) on the social bookmarking sites that you use can help potential visitors to those posts understand what you enjoy or found helpful. This also helps increase your credibility within those communities.
• Time. It always takes time. You’ll need to invest at least a little bit of time with your networks in order to truly grow and get exposure on the various things you submit. If you just use social bookmarking to blast your own content, the benefit you receive will probably not be as great as you might otherwise reap.

What social bookmarking sites do you use – and why? And if you have any questions about social bookmarking that aren’t explained here, please feel ask in the comments section – we’d love to help you get started effectively using social bookmarking to help in your online marketing efforts.

Social Bookmarking: How To Do It Correctly is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency

As if Toyota hasn’t already had enough bad press in the past year or so, there’s a storm brewing focused on a scheme that pretty much amounts to buying reviews from mommy bloggers. Crazy? You betcha.

Clarification – there appears to be a campaign afoot soliciting mom bloggers to write positive blog posts and reviews, share them widely in the social media space, and “thumbs up” a series of Toyota YouTube videos. And the reward dangled in front of these bloggers for their help (and putting their reputations on the line) – a $10 Amazon gift card.

This story comes to light courtesy of a well-regarded mom blogger, Crissy, at DearCrissy.com. More about Crissy in a minute.

The skinny: apparently there’s an organization called MommyNetworks, based in Tampa, Florida about which not a lot of information is available. Never a good sign. But I’m tenacious. Let the digging begin.

I like to start at the beginning. And your website really does speak volumes about you and your business — I always start there. A quick visit to the MommyNetworks website reveals no “About Us” page, no names, no faces, no connections to ‘real’ people. There’s really no brand story or explanation about what they do, who their clients are, what services they offer, who runs the company – and all those other little niggling details that go to credibility. I do so love a mystery.

Oh, because I couldn’t resist – and just for a giggle, here’s what “Get the Best Deals” section of the Mommy Networks website looks like. Muy impressivo!

Here’s what else I know. The domain MommyNetworks.org is 4 months old, their Whois.com information is protected and the website is, unquestionably, a horrible, embarrassing mess. There are a sum total of three blog posts on the site, the most recent published on December 21, 2010. Impressive! Especially to another blogger – or a brand considering hiring them to do any kind of marketing or PR work. But most importantly, who they are and what they do is really a complete and total mystery.

Can you say “WARNING, WARNING Will Robinson?”

Digging more. (I really should’ve been a PI). Hmmm. Website copyrighted by Care.com, a company that describes themselves this way:

Care.com provides a trusted place for families and care providers to easily connect, share caregiving experiences, and get advice. The company addresses the unique lifecycle of care needs that each family may go through — including child care, special needs care, tutoring, senior care, pet care, housekeeping and more. The service enables families to find and select the best care possible based on detailed profiles, background checks, and references for hundreds of thousands of mom-reviewed providers who are seeking to share their services.

How does all this fit in with MommyNetworks? Still a mystery.

Okay, enough digging. Back to Toyota.

Crissy received an email from Tiffany Lewis, at MommyNetworks, which I imagine is a blogging network that she belongs to – giving  her an opportunity to “work” and get a gift card in return. The email, from Tiffany Lewis, read like this:

Hello!

A new opportunity! Another chance to score a $10.00 Amazon gift card for the mommy bloggers who help out.

There was a big report released about Toyota, by the NHTSA and NASA, stating that there was no electronic flaw found, which was originally assumed to be the cause of all the recalls with the Priuses last year. It actually turned out to be pretty much “user error” that was causing the accelerator to stick.

It’s a big deal for Toyota since this has affected their reputation heavily and they had a lot of negative stigma around their brand as of late, and we’re helping to spread the positive news:

I need you to:
Write a post about the report & good news
In the post, link to a few of the articles or videos below
If possible, share on social networks or “thumbs up” the YouTube videos.

Tiffany Lewis
MommyNetworks.org

There’s a final note that asks:

Please meticulously track your efforts (If you tweet it out, the exact URL) You must do this to receive (sic) the giftcard!!! If you have any questions I will get back to you as soon as possible. Have a great day:)

Here’s the things about mom bloggers. Most of them (and I know many) are amazing people. And as much as some of them might like a good deal, a freebie or a fantastic opportunity, they are typically pretty smart cookies. They’re not going to do stupid things, just because someone asks them to. And they’re certainly not going to potentially damage the credibility they’ve managed to build as a result of their blogs, their Twitter or Facebook followings and with their clients, who are often PR firms and ad agencies, by jumping on board a sketchy opportunity like this.

Crissy did what any self-respecting blogger would – she got mad. Then she wrote a blog post about it. It’s a stellar post. Based on the 130+ comments that she’s received since the post was published this morning, there are no shortage of folks agreeing with Crissy’s shock and outrage.

But who’s to blame? Toyota? In fact, did Toyota have any idea this campaign was going on? If so, did they understand how it was being conducted and what was being asked by the blogger outreach team?

As the erudite Alli Worthington, a well-recognized name in social media and the lifestyle blogger community, and co-founder of Blissfully Domestic women’s magazine, one of the most trusted women’s destinations online, says when responding to Crissy’s post, chances are good the answer to those questions is a resounding ‘no.’

In fact, Alli’s response to the post is so good, I’ll share it for you here:

A friend sent me to read your story. Wow. Unfortunately nightmare stories of bad campaigns are not surprising anymore.

I wonder if Toyota even was aware this was taking place. Here’s my guess – Toyota has PR Firm XXX that is hired to help their image. PR Firm XXX hires multiple small boutique marketing companies to do a word of mouth marketing campaign geared at increasing positive regard for Toyota.

The above marketing group took the path of least resistance to achieve their goal of increasing positive regard for their client. I am not an attorney, but paying a (presumptively) bloggers to give positive news stories a thumbs up may be against the FTC guidelines.

The responsibility and bad PR falls ultimately in the lap of Toyota. However, my guess is this marketing group was some tertiary hire by the main PR company. Much of this comes down to a lack of oversight. I advise my clients to know exactly who their firm may be hiring out to do these word of mouth campaigns.

Such an embarrassment to everyone that should have been avoided with due diligence.

@AlliWorthington

My take – this isn’t something dreamed up by Toyota. It was an idea hatched by someone so eager to make a good impression with a client that they didn’t think it all the way through. They didn’t think about little things like ethics and the fact that you really can’t – and certainly shouldn’t – try to buy good reviews. And someone so absolutely ignorant about the mom blogger community as a whole that they tricked themselves into believing that moms – or bloggers anywhere – would be supportive of something so obviously wrong.

Due diligence. Understanding marketing and PR and ethical practices. Understanding the importance of full disclosure (not only a good idea, but required by the FTC) and, most importantly, realizing that whether you’re a brand, a PR firm, a marketing firm, consultant or blogger there can be major ramifications and potentially massive reputational damage done as the result of poorly conceived campaigns like this one.

And thanks to Crissy and the ethical thinking that led to her indignation and subsequent blogging about this issue, and to legions of other smart mommy bloggers, brands and agencies can learn some valuable lessons.

Know who you’re working with. Check them, and all of their resources out, very carefully. Ask for references and check them. Insist on being a part of all campaigns and approving content before it’s disseminated. Don’t be so anxious for results that you don’t first stop to determine how you define ‘good results’ – at least for purposes of your campaign and your goals. And also have a good handle on what you’re asking people to do.

And, for heaven’s sake, don’t think you can be unethical and pull the wool over the eyes of anyone – especially mom bloggers. They’re moms – they’ve probably already seen every trick in the book.

And mom bloggers, there’s a lesson here for you, too. Value yourself, above all else. Before associating yourself and your personal brand and credibility with an organization like MommyNetworks, do your own homework. Surely if you took the time to visit their website, you’d have some warning bells that things weren’t right. And if someone asks you do to something like MommyNetworks asked of Crissy and others, don’t hesitate to stand up and cry ‘foul’ … because that’s really the only right thing to do.

What did I miss?

Update:  Crissy just updated her original post with the following information from Samantha Snyer, owner of Mommy Networks.

UPDATE:

Samantha Snyder, owner of Mommy Networks, emailed me saying that she is in no way affiliated with Toyota. I don’t know how someone wakes up one day and decides to pay a bunch of mom bloggers to post good news about a brand out of their own pocket, but, that’s what Snyder says she was doing:

I am a toyota (sic) owner, that saw this come out last week and I thought that it would be a good case study. Honestly, look at my FB page. I really thought that I could bring up something as large as this recall and create a portfolio for MommyNetworks.org.

There was absolutely no mention of any of this in her original pitch, and I can only assume that the other bloggers involved were under the impression that there was some affiliation with Toyota, too. Might want to run this stuff by the brand, especially when you’re paying people.

And my final thoughts, as a marketer regularly helping brands protect and maintain their brand reputations, this is a perfect argument for the use of social media monitoring and business intelligence gathering tools as a critical component of business operations. People will do amazing things. And if you’re not listening, you might not have any idea.

UPDATE: 9:08pm, CST, The following was posted on MommyNetworks tonight, as an explanation and an apology:

To Crissy and Toyota, I am sorry

My dream has been to own my company since I was a little girl. I started MommyNetworks.org in August with the idea to help moms find work, and advertising.

Mommy Networks recently began some harmless outreach to other moms in order to build a portfolio, and increase our scope with Mom’s. I own a Toyota-Lexus and with the recent news that came out I wanted to base some outreach and case study development around this topic. I often have fun contests and give aways on Facebook.

I had a big #FAIL.

I went into a realm that was not my own. I am not a PR person, I have a background in HR, and want to help get Mommies jobs and help them find routes to advertise.

I #FAILed.

I truly apologize to everyone for this issue, and I am closing down MommyNetworks.org in order to reevaluate whether I am built for this kind of endeavor. Crissy was someone that said that she would be interested in future campaigns for advertising and reviews and this only reason I contacted her. I would never cold contact someone.

As for the Care.com issue, my designer and developer left that on my theme when I bought it.

I am responsible for going into this without experience and I am paying the price now.

I apologize to Crissy, Toyota, and everyone else. I messed up, and I hope everyone will leave this as a last comment from my side. I am open to answer questions, but hope everyone will respect my decision to simply fade away and deal with this huge #FAIL in my own way.

I had a discussion with Liz Polay-Wettengel about this this evening and she made a very good point. Bloggers – mommy bloggers in particular – must realize how important it is that they be more responsible about their content. Doing anything for a free gift card or some other perk gives an entire genre of bloggers a bad name – and that’s a bad rap.

To my way of thinking, reputation, integrity and credibility are always our most important assets (at least from a business/blogging standpoint) and if you will say or do anything for a gift card or an invitation to a party or for a free product, well then, what does that say about you?

I’m sorry that this blogger did something that she now regrets. And sorry that Toyota had to suffer some slings as a result. Once again, these are good lessons for us all. The Internet – it’s a very powerful thing.

Toyota Buying Mom Bloggers? is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency

SEO, SEO, SEO. Think of it as being sung to the tune of “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.” Okay, now that I’ve got you in the holiday mood, let’s cut the crap.

SEO. Like it or not, it matters. Search engine optimization. A mere 90 some percent of people head to the Internet to search for products or services they want, need and are ready to buy. If your business isn’t built and marketed to take full advantage of that, what are you doing? What are you waiting for? Holding out because you’re too busy? It might cost money? Or are you thinking that if you just wait it out, it’ll change. And people will head back to phone books and the daily newspaper to tell them where to find solutions to their problems.

Riiiiiight.

Erika Napoletano, your favorite Redheadwriting, and I are working with our friends at Thinking Bigger Business Media on a series of webinars for business. This month’s webinar series is all about SEO and at the ridiculously low price of $77, there’s no reason for you not to be there. Plus, you can take away the information from these seminars and immediately put it to use for your business – or for your clients – and what’s not to like about that?

Here’s what’s in store:

PART 1 – SEO for Business: A Crash Course
Tuesday, December 7, 2-3pm CST

Every question about SEO you were afraid or embarrassed to ask! You’ve heard why SEO is important and how other businesses are benefitting, but isn’t it time to put your business in a league WITH and then AHEAD of the rest? This introductory session will cover the basics of Search Engine Optimization, such as on and off page SEO tactics, how the search engines “see” web pages, an overview of local search and dispel myths. It is a primer to prepare you for the second webinar in the series, Local SEO: Cultivate Your Neighborhood, which covers the essentials for every business owner on local SEO and how to attract the attention of customers in your own backyard.

PART 2 – Local SEO: Cultivate Your Neighborhood
Thursday, December 9, 2-3pm CST

Whether you’re a business with a brick-and-mortar footprint or consultant/agency working with them, you can’t ignore local Search Engine Optimization and the value it brings to a business. No buzzwords – just actionable strategies you can IMMEDIATELY use to improve your relevance to the search engines for local search. Learn about which directories are worth your time, how your listings in them and your website are related and how your existing customers can help you improve your rankings.

PART 3 – SEO for Blogging
Tuesday, December 14, 2-3pm CST

If you’re going to blog, you might as well do it right. We hate to waste our time and we’ll never waste yours. This webinar will take elements from the previous two and expand on them to give you the tools for a powerful, search engine-relevant blog. Learn about WordPress plugins that essentially do the SEO work for you, how to have both a personality AND a SEO-rich blog and simple, actionable things you can do on your blog today that will improve how the search engines see each and every blog you post!

We’re joined by some awesome talent for these webinars:

Mike Belasco is President of seOverflow, headquartered in Denver, CO. He’s a big geek, which immediately endears him to us. For obvious reasons. In addition to the geekishness, he’s a sought after speaker at national industry events and conferences, including: Search Engine Strategies (SES), Search Marketing Expo (SMX), Search Engine Marketing Professionals of Portland (SEMpdx), and Business Marketing Association (BMA) events. Mike is also a member of Google’s Advisory Board, making their firm one of the decision makers and first to know of the latest changes in search.

Alysson Fergison, is the Founder of SEOAly, an SEO consulting firm that also does keyword research, audits and on-site SEO problem resolution, WordPress website and blog design and development for small business. Aly is the antithesis of the corporate bobblehead yes-man … er, woman, and that’s one of the reasons that Erika and I like her so much. She speaks our language. No BS, tells it like it is, and helps clients solve problems on a daily basis.

Both of these smarties also regularly help US deliver better results for our clients, so we couldn’t be more thrilled to have them participate in this webinar series. In short, we drink their Koolaid and like it. Oh yeah.

So don’t delay, click on over and give YOURSELF and your business a little early holiday present. Register for this webinar and start doing what you know you need to be doing – now. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll be able to do after you finish up with this series. Plus, it’s more quality bonding time with me and The Redhead – what’s not to like about that?

And for those of you who’ve not participated before, these sessions are audiotaped and available after the live broadcast, in case you want to review and/or missed one of the sessions, so there are no worries there. We’ll also be doing some cool giveaways for registered attendees before the webinar series, and if you want one head on over to Thinking Bigger Business Media’s Facebook page and “like” .. then leave a note, something pithy like “I was here. I’m coming to the webinar. Sign me up for something cool” and you never know what you’ll get in return.

See you there!

SEO Strategies Webinar With Me And The Redhead is a post from: V3 Kansas City Integrated Marketing and Social Media Agency