November, 2010

  • Complimentary UC Irvine Webinar – Developing a Social Media Strategy

    Posted Nov 30th, 2010 By in Business, Social Media With | 1 Comment

    As many of you know, I’ve been instructing on social media at UC Irvine for the past year.  Due to my frantic travel schedule, most of the classes I teach will be online from now on.  This will also enable UCI to hopefully open the door to more students outside of Orange County.

    My next class, Developing a Social Media Strategy will be held online January 18 – March 15, 2011.  The sessions are scheduled weekly from 7 – 9 pm Pacific.

    To introduce the online class, we will be holding a complimentary webinar on December 15, 2010 at 11:30 am – 12:30 pm Pacific. I will be discussing the best practices that are covered in my 9-week class.

    A director from UC Irvine Extension will also provide you with options for financial assistance, career planning resources as well as supply detailed information on the content of the courses within the Social Media Specialized Studies program.

    To register for the complimentary webinar or learn more about other webinars, click here.

    To register for the 9-week class, click here.

    Hope to have some of you in my classes!

  • The State of Social Media for Business 2010

    Posted Nov 22nd, 2010 By in Business, Social Media With | 1 Comment

    SmartBrief, Inc. has released an extremely valuable tool to add to your social media collection — The State of Social Media for Business 2010. This report is the most comprehensive study I have seen on social media.  It is filled with goals, opportunities, threats, and tactics of social media. Approximately 6,500 executives shared everything about how their companies are adopting, integrating and utilizing social media in this benchmarking study.

    This excellent survey was designed to provide a benchmark of current trends and ways of tracking the following:

    • Who is using social media for business
    • What social-media tools and channels are being used
    • What goals are being pursued
    • What tactics are being deployed
    • What obstacles are standing in the way of adoption
    • How companies assess their own social-media strategies

    Some key insights from the report include:

    • 66.5% of businesses have adopted social media in the past 18 months.
    • Less than 15% of businesses are measuring the ROI of their social-media efforts.
    • Only 14.2% of businesses find their social-media strategies to be “very effective” — and only 7.3% consider them “very revenue generating.”

    The data also shows that despite some early innovators, most companies are in the burgeoning stages of social media adoption. The report shows areas that are underleveraged and still have enormous potential for expansion.  The following trends highlight how most companies are just scratching the surface of social media potential for business:

    1. Many companies are new to social media and have used the channel for a year or less.

    2. Companies rely heavily on five major social-media platforms.

    3. Awareness of other social-media platforms is low.

    4. It takes time for social media to become effective for companies.

    5. Most companies use social media to broadcast information to customers and prospective customers.

    6. Most companies have not yet cracked the code on how to create an engaging, creative or effective social-media strategy.

    7. Most companies do not have an expectation of social-media ROI, and social-media measurement is not yet the norm.

    8. There is a big opportunity for companies to distinguish themselves in this arena.

    You can download the key takeaways in a FREE topline or purchase the 145-page State of Social Media for Business report.  I highly recommend the latter.

  • How to Overcome Writer’s Block Using the Secrets Revealed By One of Today’s Most Influential Business Thinkers

    Posted Nov 17th, 2010 By in Article Marketing, Blogging, Content Marketing With | 3 Comments

    Are you coming to the point, where you say to yourself – “Oh sh%t, I have to write my article or blog post?” Does the though of writing drain you? And, even though you know you need to write articles to get more website traffic, build your list, nourish relationships and increase your profits – are you procrastinating writing your articles?

    Then this new article is for you.

    Learn from Marshall Goldsmith (the man who is ranked one of the most influential business thinkers in the world by The London Times and Forbes) and see how you can apply his secrets for getting unstuck to your own article writing and marketing efforts.

    Why You End Up in a Writing Rut!

    As Marshall says, “Our default reaction in life is to experience inertia. We all tend to go where we have been going, do what we have been doing and say what we have been saying.” If you say the same story time after time after time, and repeat the same advice – it gets boring! And, it’s not only boring for the reading, but it’s boring for you the writer.

    Marshall’s Solutions for Getting Unstuck

    1. You need to challenge yourself to create new content — content that is not found anywhere else online.

    2. Change your approach to article writing. You have to ask yourself, “If I have to spend this time writing articles, how can I make it more meaningful to my readers and myself? Part of the answer is to find your passion and let it shine through in your articles.

    3. Stop saying later. The time is now. How many times have you said this to yourself, “You know, I am incredibly busy right now. And, given the pressures of work and home, I feel too over-committed. I simply don’t have the time and energy. I’ll write my articles later in maybe 2 to 3 weeks when things calm down.” The reality is that there will not be two or three weeks. It is always going to be crazy.  If you are not taking the time to build your business now with articles, it’s never going to happen. As Marshall says, “To get unstuck, you have to look in the mirror day after day, and remind yourself of the actions that you will take today.” It requires discipline – but once you get writing and get out of this rut, you will get more profits and it will be worth it.

    4. Get a peer coach – In a SUCCESS magazine article, Marshall mentions that he has a peer coach which asks him every day – “On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy were you yesterday? On a scale of 1 to 10, how meaningful was yesterday? How many minutes did you write? How many push-ups did you do?” This peer coach holds Marshall accountable. How do you hold yourself accountable to make sure you write and submit articles online and do the other marketing activities that will build your business?

    Follow these tips and you’ll be writing articles on a daily basis – just like me “your article writing and marketing expert!” You see, I write articles on a daily basis for my ezine, blog, article submission and for my social media efforts.  And, I never get bored.

    Guest Author: Instant Article Writing Template Creator Eric Gruber helps internet marketers and small business owners overcome writer’s block and end their writing rut fast so they can get more publicity, prospects and profits. Now, you can get 3 of Eric’s article templates for free – so you can write your articles in 30 minutes or less. Get it now at http://www.TryMyFreeArticleTemplates.com

  • 6 Common Misconceptions Clients Have About SEO

    Posted Nov 10th, 2010 By in Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) With | 5 Comments

    Dealing with clients having very high expectations that are hard to meet is not an uncommon thing for search engine optimization (SEO) providers. Since SEO is an always changing industry, and techniques and methods get outdated very soon, lots of misconceptions take birth in the mind of potential clients which eventually gets transformed into unrealistic expectations. So, it becomes very important for every SEO provider to clear all kinds of misconceptions a client may have before taking on optimization projects.

    Here, we’ll cover the most common unrealistic SEO expectations clients usually have and how they should be addressed.

    1. Speed of ranking improvement – Normally clients have a misconception that the amount of time required to take a website from page 2 to page 1 is the same as the amount of time it takes to bring a website from page 3 to page 2 of search results. Ranking of a website depends on many factors (links, domain age, content, onsite factors, etc.,  and the amount of effort and time required increases exponentially when one has to compete with websites on page 1 as compared to time and effort required when competing with websites on page 3 and so on.
    2. You can’t rank for everything – The other unrealistic expectation clients usually have is the desire to rank for all the keywords in their niche.  Only the most relevant pages can rank at the top for a keyword, and one can’t make a website highly relevant to all important keywords. Also, since most SEO’s work on a fixed monthly budget, increasing the number of keywords will dilute the overall impact for each keyword. So either they have to increase their budgets or limit themselves to specific set of keywords. (more…)

  • How to Write Re-tweetable Tweets in 5 Minutes or Less

    Posted Nov 1st, 2010 By in Social Media, Social Networking, Twitter With | 4 Comments

    Twitter can be an amazing way to reach your ideal clients and build a relationship that makes them want to do business with you.  Twitter sends 13x more traffic with fewer followers than Facebook…If you do it right.

    But how do you know what to tweet?

    You DON’T want to end up with a Twitter account full of meaningless twatter no one cares about.  You know the tweets I’m talking about…

    “Meeting my girlfriends for a grilled cheese sandwich and fries.”  “Can this day get any worse?  I hate the rain.”

    Do your clients really want to read that stuff?  Probably not.

    What kind of tweets do you want to write?  The kind that make people click through to your website.  The kind that transition them from Twitter follower to paying client.  You want to write re-tweetable tweets.

    71% of tweets produce NO RESPONSE.  Only 23% get replies and a mere 6% get retweeted.

    But some Twitter superstars get re-tweeted all the time.  What’s their secret?

    The easiest way to write re-tweetable tweets if by letting other people do the hard work for you.

    Here’s what I mean…

    Thousands of people in your industry are blogging about topics your followers would love to know about.  All you have to do is locate those blogs and share them with your followers. (more…)

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