Posted by Jeffrey Blake on Saturday, February 6, 2010,
In :
Social Media
1. Create a mission statement -- What are your
top-level objectives for applying social media and Web 2.0? And how will
you achieve them? Ideally, this can be boiled down to one statement,
articulating both the vision and where you aim to focus in terms of
specific strategies. Don’t skip – or skimp on – this one; it’s
important.
2. Assign owners – Who will take the mission, build
the team, secure the budget, identify the tools needed? And who will own
each channel, like Li... Continue reading ...
Posted by Jeffrey Blake on Monday, January 18, 2010,
In :
Evangelism
An Evangelist is not a well known role but is experiencing a
resurgence in the age of Social Media. Guy Kawasaki was probably one
of the first to popularize the roll of the evangelist working for Apple
computer. I was recently re-reading his book on evangelism called
"Selling the Dream" It is still inspiring.
One of the jobs of a product evangelist is to consume, distill
and disseminate vast amounts of information. And like Guy says - an
evangelist must "eat like a hummingbird ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Jeffrey Blake on Thursday, January 14, 2010,
In :
Twitter
Its quite easy to provide a link that creates a twitter status
update for something you are promoting in your blog. Same for
Facebook. You dont want them to just go to Twitter but you want to
help them out by filling out their status promotion for them. Usually
in your blog software you can highlight some text and select the link
icon which will pop up a small window and allow you to insert a target
url. All the information is in the target URL.
In order to understand wha... Continue reading ...
Posted by Jeffrey Blake on Wednesday, January 6, 2010,
In :
SEO
URL shorteners are everywhere now. I cant keep up with them. Im
talking about url shorteners and redirectors as tinyurl.com and bit.ly
among many others. It doesnt take a lot of reflection to understand
that controlling links is a money making venture. I think there are
still opportunities in how the url shortener uses the links.
Some of the advantages of using one are:
- Short URLs - duh. With the rise of Twitter and the need to keep tweets under 140 characters h...
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Posted by Jeffrey Blake on Tuesday, January 5, 2010,
In :
Facebook
Many people wonder how to have your Twitter updates go to a
Facebook Fan page. Its pretty easy. The basic strategy is to add a
RSS feed to the Notes tab and let Facebook post naturally to your Page
Wall.
1) Go to your Twitter page and click on your Profile so that
you see only your updates. At the bottom of the right side you will
see an RSS icon and "RSS Feed of <YourID> Tweets". You can
right click and "Copy Link Location" or just click on it to view it and
then copy the url... Continue reading ...
Posted by Jeffrey Blake on Friday, January 1, 2010,
In :
Branding
I have been reflecting on how to be most effective on Twitter – and
to use Twitter to convey my brand. Since my primary trade is a software
architect – I immediately recognize what I think are best practices –
in fact are probably patterns for success on Twitter. So here they are:
- First start with an interesting design. You can customize the
Twitter page using what Twitter gives you. Or you can upload a custom
background. I uploaded a simple image of the ocean – an image large
enough...
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Posted by Jeffrey Blake on Friday, January 1, 2010,
In :
Branding
So what do you see when you google your name. Is it a listing for a
convicted felon or porn star? If you have an unusual name (like a well
differentiated keyword) you will rise to the top automatically. But if
you have an ordinary name you might not even show up. What you don’t
want to happen is to have a search result that doesn’t represent you.
- Your name is your brand so use it consistently. Don't dilute it by
using different variations – pick one version of your name and stick
with i...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jeffrey Blake on Sunday, December 20, 2009,
In :
Branding
Branding of your website is important because it contributes to the long term value of your business. It creates a sense of customer confidence. For a small business - your brand is the niche value you bring to the market. Its the expectation of value in the customers mind about your product. Part of building a brand is creating an impression in the market. There are a number of ways you can do that with your website.
- Memorable Logo - a logo is not a brand although it represents one...
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Posted by Jeffrey Blake on Tuesday, December 15, 2009,
In :
Small Business
Twitter is a powerful tool to help businesses. Now that tweets are being indexed at Google - Twitter is becoming a powerful search mechanism. Its no longer necessary to have a large following to get some reach.
- Its a great idea to twitter events that happen on your web site.
- Enable users to tweet almost every page.
- Make sure you use some good keywords or #hashtags to allow your tweets to be found.
- Use keywords that get retweeted - search around for these list - I have found that "fre...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jeffrey Blake on Thursday, December 3, 2009,
In :
Social Media
Posted by Jeffrey Blake on Friday, September 25, 2009,
In :
Branding
The best leaders look for opportunities to give other people credit. We all like to receive recognition. Too often we dont give it out. - If you are a manager or team leader dont blab out all the ideas yourself. Often times your team members have the same ideas but arent as adept in expressing it. If you let others come up with ideas then then they will take credit and will also take ownership of the idea.
- Dont forget to RT (Return Tweet) on Twitter if someone has a great idea that you noti...
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Posted by Jeffrey Blake on Tuesday, September 22, 2009,
In :
Branding
We all know that its important to control your image on Google. One of the best ways to get to the top of a Google SERP is to buy your own domain and populate it with good content. But there is a little known way to get on the first page in 5 minutes - that is by creating a Google Profile page. To start go to http://www.google.com/profiles If you dont already have a gmail account - then you should go ahead and create one. You can add: - A short Bio
- Photos
- Links to your online pages as F...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Jeffrey Blake on Friday, July 10, 2009,
In :
Promotion
- Write a Blog. Nothing is better for publicizing your site than writing some good content into a blog. Blog pages get entered quickly into Google index quite quickly. And good blog software knows how to maximize your number of indexed pages and also providing indexable pages for different tags. So dont forget to categorize and tag your blog posts well because this will enhance your finability
- Write For Others - Anytime you can spread your reputation and brand around the better. Offer to g...
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