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Questions from 5 Key Ingredients of Social Media for Your Website

We had a lot of questions from yesterday’s 5 Key Ingredients of Social Media for Your Website webinar that I didn’t have time to answer so here we go.

Q: Are the social media components on “the knot” available via the Sitecore Developer Network?

A: You can use RSS which is available in Sitecore CMS to pull content into your website. Twitter has an RSS feed so you can display your Twitter stream on your website and LinkedIn has a public RSS feed so you can display LinkedIn updates and Answers on your website. Facebook turned off it’s RSS Feed last year so you can’t display your Facebook News on your website but you can install Simply RSS in your Facebook account and pull in your blog posts, LinkedIn updates and your Twitter stream. LinkedIn lets you pull in RSS feeds so you can display your blog and Twitter updates on your LinkedIn profile. This diversifies your traffic and automatically updates numerous social media properties.

Q: My biggest issue is, I have two kind of posts on our fb-fanpage. 1. I love the company, you’re the best or 2. This product is broken, damaged etc. and questions concerning customer support. I have trouble getting customer service involved with FB and don´t know how to handle those messages as an it proffesional. Any tips?

A: Since customer support doesn’t want to get involved with Facebook, you can create an Support tab on your Fan Page that contains ways to contact customer support. Search Facebook for play.com and you’ll see their extensive Customer Support list under the Info tab.

Q: how much impact do custom tabs (canvas tabs) have (programmed with Facebook Markup language). are they alot more effective than “normal” facebook sites

A: I’m seeing more Facebook pages using the Facebook Markup Language which allows you to create Fan Pages that look like your website. This extends your brand to Facebook and lets you add newsletter opt in forms and custom content.

Q: For your customers to develop content on your website, what are some recommended platforms to develop that? I have looked into Google Friend Connect as one way, but it doesn’t do everything.

A: There are solutions for any open source or .NET content management system. For example, Joomla has Community Builder which lets you build your own online community. If you’re running on .NET you can look at www.onesite.com. Another option is to use a hosted service like www.ning.com which is very customizable.

Q: Have you found a tool that aggregates the various social media metrics in a way for more easily created reporting?

A: Social media monitoring is an evolving market and there is a range of products for different price points. You can look at tools like www.trackur.com which is low cost but high in features and www.radian6.com on the higher end. Do a Google search for “social media monitoring” and you’ll see many products. MarketingProfs.com has some case studies that review social media monitoring products.

Q: Help me understand how to apply SN to a Local Service company doing Bathroom Renovations

A: You could create a Facebook Fan Page and upload before and after photos of your work. You can also upload those photos to www.flickr.com and to your website. People love to look at pictures and they love to share their photos. You could even do a Twitter campaign where you encourage people to Tweet a picture of their bathroom and the person with the ugliest bathroom would win a discount. Then you could feature them in a Before/After campaign on your website and Facebook Fan Page.

I’ll answer more questions in my next post.

Thanks for attending our webinar and here are links to the webinar recording, podcast and slides.

http://mediacontent.sitecore.net/5IngredientsSocialMedia/5IngredientsSocialMedia.html

http://mediacontent.sitecore.net/5IngredientsSocialMedia/5IngredientsSocialMedia.mp3

http://www.slideshare.net/sitecore/5-key-ingredients-of-social-media-for-your-website

Ted

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Blog, Canvas, Cms, Custom Tabs, Customer Service, Customer Support, Developer Network, Facebook, Fan Page, Fan Pages, Fb, Info Tab, Knot, Linkedin, Lot, Markup Language, Media Components, Media Properties, Profile, Sitecore, social media, Support Search, traffic, twitter

56 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Blog

By Ted 2 Comments

Click Here for More Customers Seth Godin made a great post over 2 years ago about driving traffic to your blog. Seth gave us 56 great ways to drive traffic to your blog. Did you even know what a blog was 2 years ago? I’m sure you weren’t concerned about driving traffic to your blog when he made this post.

The great news is that all 56 tips are still valid today. Technology has changed and everyone is buzzing about social media and Web 2.0 but driving traffic to your blog and website hasn’t changed. Provide high quality, interesting content and you will get traffic to your sites.

Here’s the link to Seth’s post made in June 2006.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/06/how_to_get_traf.html

To your online success.

Ted

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: 56 ways to drive traffic to your blog, Blog, blog traffic, drive traffic, Drive traffic to your blog, seth godin, seth godin blog, Seth Godin blog tips, traffic, web traffic

How To Build A Squidoo Page

By Ted Leave a Comment

Squidoo is a new social site with a twist. The benefit of creating a Squidoo lens is monetary in nature as they share the advertising revenue with you based on the traffic that your page and site generates. This is an added bonus to anyone who knows how to get some real traffic to their Squidoo Lens.

Before you can begin to build your Squidoo lens you will have to have an account with Squidoo. You can easily sign up for a free membership with a username and password associated with an email account. You are allowed to have 10 lens/pages per email account. You will receive a confirmation email and once confirmed your account will be activated and you will be able to create your own lens.

Before you start creating your own lens it would be a good idea to do some research on the topic that you would like to create. There are many different niches out there that you can target but not all niches are created equal. Some have much higher values for Pay Per Click and some have better values for affiliate programs or digital products. You will have to identify the niche that you would like to create your lens prior to its creation. This will help optimize the process as well as give you the maximum results.

Now that you have signed up for Squidoo you will want to log-in and go to make a lens. You will want to optimize it to your niche. You will have to find some of the top keyword search terms that are searched for by using a keyword tool. Use those terms in your lens title for example if you have chosen dog training as your niche you will want to include the phrase dog-training as the name of your lens.

Once you have created your URL you will need to select the category that best suits your niche. Next you will have to select the rating for your lens. Unless you have something that is x-rated or very adult you will most likely have G rated content. Next you will have to add your keywords to the lens. This will help the search engines identify what your page is about and possibly help you get ranked for that term. That is not a give in but it is a possibility. You should pick your best 3 terms and input them at this stage.

You should now be given the option to edit your Squidoo lens. Take a look at the content that you want to add. A good idea would be to take a look at other sites that are related to your niche to get some ideas as to the layout and the content. Another smart idea would be to add links to other related sites as well as to your sites as well. Make sure that they are related links though. Do not add a sports link to a dog training site. It would not be related and most likely you will not receive any good traffic from it.

Change the lens to reflect your own personality. After all this should reflect you and give it that personal touch. Don’t expect to become a millionaire off of one lens but if you create enough lens’s you can expect to receive a decent residual return over time.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: added bonus, advertising revenue, affiliate programs, benefit, confirmation, dog training, email account, free membership, keyword search terms, keyword tool, maximum results, niche, niches, page nbsp, pay per click, phrase, social media, social-bookmarking, social-networking, squidoo, squidoo lens, suits, traffic, web-2.0

How Much Time Do You Spend Being “Social” every week?

By Ted 1 Comment

I’ve been learning about web 2.0 and playing around with it for about 2 years now. It is a really effective tool for building relationships, attracting clients, and driving traffic to your blogs and websites. My business is booming and i have a steady stream of leads coming in daily. The downside, it can be a full time job being "social". If I spend 40 hours a week building relationships online, when do I have time to do the work for my clients? When do I have time for myself? I’m working at least 6 days a week right now and spending at least 12 hours each day in front of my computer. Although I love playing with technology and new sites on the internet, this isn’t the perfect lifestyle I wanted to create.

I found a great blog post today Chris Garrett’s blog at http://www.chrisg.com/need-digg-power-account/ that discusses the obsession with trying to dominate the social media pages. It’s very difficult and time consuming to get a post on the first page of Digg or del.icio.us. It’s even harder to stay at the top over time. Chris reitterates the fact the you shouldn’t worry about dominating the social media sites. Just focus on creating high quality content that helps your prospects and customers and the social media gurus will find you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Blog, blogs, building relationships, Chris Garrett, del.icio.us, digg, downside, full time job, high quality, lifestyle, media gurus, obsession, prospects, quality content, social media, social-networking, steady stream, time chris, traffic, web-2.0

Questions from 5 Key Ingredients of Social Media for Your Website

56 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Blog

How To Build A Squidoo Page

How Much Time Do You Spend Being “Social” every week?

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