» social media optimization

@THE_REAL_SHAQ is Following Me on Twitter – SO WHAT?

Nate — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 05:13:07 +0000

Is this a valid question?

How would you respond to a question like this?

I was so excited about getting @THE_REAL_SHAQ (Shaquille O’Neal) to follow me on Twitter but as my wife recently asked, SO WHAT?

What about this series of questions, which I’ve also heard: “Who cares if you have 670+ followers on Twitter and are number 10 in the Utah Twitter Elite?”

As you may have noticed, especially since Blog World Expo, I’ve caught the Twitter Bug and have been using it a lot more lately. I know my wife has noticed some: I talk often about the connections I’m making and she see’s the time I’m investing in it.

So, what is the answer?

Is Twitter Really Worth the Time?

How do I benefit from Twitter, or do I?

Does a Follow from @THE_REAL_SHAQ, @garyvee (Gary Vaynerchuk), or @MCHammer really matter at all?

Here are 5 Reasons Why I Feel Twitter is Worth the Time

1. Connections with Big Names in my Industry

@problogger (Darren Rowse)
@guykawasaki (Guy Kawasaki)
@garyvee (Gary Vaynerchuk)
@msaleem (Muhammad Saleem)

Need I say more? If these marketing master-minds are investing their time on Twitter, why shouldn’t you and me? I realize that each of these industry experts has their own unique Twitter strategy but all of them use Twitter as a source for networking and communication.

2. Potential New Business

Five Telephone Contacts Via Twitter in the Last Week: Five new relevant contacts in my industries within the last 7 days may not be much to you, but if even ONE of those contacts turns in to something of value, I’ll continue to bless Twitter’s name!

I’m preparing a Tuesday Tutorial on How to Connect with the Right People on Twitter – Stay tune. One of the things I’ve liked most about TweetDeck, a Twitter Client you should check out, is that you can group people you follow. For example, say I’m looking for Twitter people that are cloggers – there may not be too many but go with me…Once I find them, I can add them all in to a group that I watch and stay up to date with. One of these people may propose the question, “Does anyone know where I can find used clogging shoes?” Pick me, Pick Me! I would immediately message them to check out www.ClogOn.com for a wide variety of new and used clogging shoes. Make sense? Good!

3. Brand Recognition and Placement

Twitter is helping me building my brand to thousands (if not millions) of people. Here are my current Twitter numbers:

These are mediocre numbers to some, but they continue to grow, even as I type this content. More importantly, here are some of the numbers of “big Tweeple” (Twitter People) that are following me:

That’s a total of 89,208 followers. The one thing I have to be aware of is that not all of those followers are interested in what I’m doing nor will they all follow me; however, after getting Shaq to follow me, I received over 100 new followers in 24 hours without adding a single to person to my list. Not bad for a days work (and a few of them have Direct Messaged me for more information on what I do).

4. Increased Direct Traffic

Currently over 7% of my direct traffic at MollerMarketing.com is coming from Twitter. This is probably actually a low number because some of the visitors may be using a Twitter client that won’t track where visitors are coming from.

Please keep in mind that traffic, in and of itself, is only as good as what you do with it, but “something is better than nothing”, right?

5. Ask a Question, Get a Response

More and more, when I have a technical question, want feedback on something, or whatever, my first impulse will be to go to Twitter for the answer. As I read other twitter posts and follow specific blogs about Twitter strategy, I’ve seen some of the big names use Twitter in this way too; here’s what Darren Rowse says about Twitter for research:

So, there you have it – my comeback to the wife’s question about -

Why Having People Like Shaq Follow You on Twitter is So Awesome!

Let us know who’s following you on Twitter and why it’s been so beneficial to you.

3 Time-Saving Reasons to Use Ping.fm

Nate — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:51:27 +0000

I’ve talked about StumbleUpon strategy lately – hope that helped you “get it”. Facebook is another great source for socializing online. Twitter is another great tool to get the low-down on what others are doing.

However, with ALL these tools out there, how can any normal person find the time to use the social media networks…?

I’ve found an answer!

Ping.fm is a simple service

that makes updating your

social networks a snap.

Here’s why:

All your social friends are now connected: one of the hardest things for me in dealing with all these social networking tools and social networking followers is that they all take tons – logging on to each site, updating your status, submitting new content and links, following your favorites – this can take forever. Since each community I’m a part of has different friends and people I follow, not all of them will see what I’m doing or know of updates unless I visit each website. Ping.fm aggregates all your status updates so you submit one time and all your friends in the different communities see what’s happening! This is such a time-saver!
Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, Mashable, and more are now all together: here’s my list of must use social networks that are available on Ping.fm:
- Moller Marketing on Twitter
- Moller Marketing on Plurk
- Moller Marketing on Facebook
- Nate Moller on Mashable
- Nate Moller on LinkedIn
- Moller Marketing on FriendFeed
- Moller Marketing on Delicious
- Moller Marketing on Pownce
- I do use others too, especially StumbleUpon, but it was not available with Ping.fm.
- Ping.fm also has other networks that I can add but I haven’t yet – any recommendations on ones I should add that I haven’t?
Functional with Google Chat and direct email: yet another great way to save time with Ping.fm. I currently tie all my instant messaging together with Meebo.com. That way I get all my direct messages in one easy place. With Ping.fm, you can send instant messages to a chat box and it will blast all the updates to the different networks! Email is also an option but I’ve only tested it! Chat is so easy!

If you need help getting all this set up, check out this tutorial on Ping.fm that was created by Trevor. Just beware, some of the “triggers” are things I haven’t really tested yet – I’m sure they’re cool too though!

Let me know what you thinkabout Ping.fm!

5 Must-Read Strategies to Maximize StumbleUpon

Nate — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 05:59:47 +0000

StumbleUpon.com just doesn’t get me any traffic. StumbleUpon.com is a waste of time.

If you’ve heard these complaints or have made them yourself, this article is definitely for you. I’ve been a “Member since Aug 06, 2007“and StumbleUpon.com (SU) has treated me really well. Here are a five specific keys to getting traffic with SU:

Make friends with SU users who aren’t new to the SU scene. Find top stumblers who like things you like and add them to your subscriber list. Don’t just add all the top stumblers – see what they have in their favorites, compare it to what you plan to favorite, and make sure it’s a fairly reasonable “good fit”.
Next Step: Get to know these people! How? – stumble posts they create, discover their stuff. BUT, don’t SPAM them. If I was a top stumbler and I got a ton of friend requests from newbies, I’d probably just ignore them until they got their feet wet a bit. StumbleUpon recently added this new function too, which makes it even easier to see how close you “match up” with other Stumblers:

Socialize! This is what SU and all the other “social networks” are all about – socializing! Once you add friends with common interests, don’t be afraid to chat with them, send them a message via the SU message box, (here’s a quick view of the “Send a message” box)

ask them to Thumb Up and review something, etc. You’ll get no’s, ignored, and once in a great while one of them will actually do something to help you. This will probably happen more than you expect if you’re persistent and personalize your message.
Don’t just book mark your own stuff! I know, to most of you this is a “no-brainer” but come on – if you just add your own stuff you will be tagged as a first class SPAMMER! Besides that, the “important” SUers will ignore everything you do and you may get banned from SU. To avoid this beginners mistake, find stuff you like that’s related to your website and add it to your favorites: become a part of your industries community! If you don’t know where to look, go to the SU search bar in the top right corner of the SU screen and type in one of the keywords that relates to your industry.

Don’t be too specific in your keyword search, and you’ll find other sites that will actually provide you with great stuff you can write about for your own blog.
“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail!” Yep, that’s right, if you don’t have a social media marketing plan of attack, you’ll waste a lot of time and, just as the complaints at the top of this post say, SU (or any other social media site) won’t do anything for you.

If, after you implement this advice, you are still echoing the same sentiments found at the top of this post, you probably haven’t put each step in to practice fully Happy Stumbling!

UPDATE!The Power of stumbleupon links. Out of curiosity, I decided to check on my placement for the keyword phrase “Stumbleupon strategies”. To my surprise, out of 1,430,000 websites, this article is number 7. Here’s the proof!

Stumble Upon Testing with Images

Nate — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:00:09 +0000

Does using images in StumbleUpon (and other social media tools) help you get more traffic to your site?

This is a question I want answers to. My “gut” says yes, of course images are going to help. But testing will be the only way I can really say for sure. You’re feedback will help too.

One test I recently did was with a new website I created for Utah Tourism and Business Reviews. Here’s the SU Review:

I made this post about Spanish Fork Utah massage the day after I opened up the website and then, by habit, reviewed it and included an image. These are the results I got within an hour:

71 visitors and 108 page views. Now to many, this may not be great traffic at all, but to me, it was awesome since it was all within an hours time. If my goal with the site is to get high numbers of traffic, this is a great step in that direction. Plus it helped me build links for that page which led to a quick cache by Google not long after opening day. I was out of the “sand box” quick and it’s only going to get better.

What have your experiences been with adding images to your social media marekting reviews?

Which SMO tools are the best for SEO and Sales Conversion?

Nate — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:10:57 +0000

My Stumbleupon friend Kate proposed an interesting question the other day: “How can Social Media sites be improved?”

As an eCommerce Consultant, one of my main focuses is sales conversion. The question I get all the time is “Which SMO tools are the best for SEO and Sales Conversion?” The first answer is this – “Are any of them really for SEO and Sales Conversion?” I would definitely say SMO and SEO go together, but I personally haven’t seen a drastic increase in Sales Convesion because of SMO tools, at least nothing I can track directly back to a SMO reference point.

One issue I do have is the ammount of SMO tools out there to keep track of. I’ve lost count of how many there actually are these days but, as I teach people how to use them in their online marketing strategy, clients ask – Which ones are the best to use?

Stumbleupon has proven to get me the most traffic but does that traffic ever convert? NO! (not that I’ve seen anyway) Digg brings in traffic but there are definitely “insider tips” on getting on the popular pages or even upcoming status. I did get some traffic from del.icio.us for one article a while back, but rarely see much from traffic; however, I still use it – the main reason being links. I’m reading more and more recently about the downfall of Facebook – which I have generated some business from via networking.

The problem is, the SMO list goes on and on: twitter.com, mybloglog.com, sphinn.com, newsvine.com, mashable.com, reddit.com, etc, etc, etc. Whatever happen to the “keep it simple stupid” acronym? The bottom line is SMO is great for link building, which in turn helps you get recognized more by search engines, which then helps you move up the SERPs. The networking can be a great in too as you use these tools consistently.

What are your thoughts about the oversaturation of SMO tools?

Here are some of the things I do like about the SMO tools:

Facebook for Networking
Why Use StumbleUpon
The Power of SMO