Archive for October, 2009

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How Do Companies Know You’re Tweeting About Them?

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Trophy-or-trophies Dear Rich,

Good Webinar on Twitter last Thursday – I picked up some good tips.

After your presentation, a question came to mind that I wished I had asked, as it might have been helpful to others.

If I mention a company's name in a tweet, they often pick up on that and start following me. Is there  software that follows Twitter searching for a mention ? I am not speaking about using a hash tag or @ sign to directly get their attention.

For example, several months ago as a test, my wife tweeted "I can't wait until J. Crew launches their fall clothing line". Almost immediately J. Crew started following her.  How did they pick up on that? I would like to follow people who are tweeting about my industry — or more importantly, anyone who is mentioning my  company name — either good or bad. Is there a way to do this even if they are not just trending?

Thanks for your help.

–Tweeting in Trenton

Dear Tweeting,

That's a great question. There are a number of robust, sometimes expensive "listening platforms" for businesses who are curious about finding out what people are saying about them on the social webs. However, what you're looking for is free.

Just go to Search.Twitter.com and plug in your industry, company, competitor or the name of your favorite superhero to see what people are saying about them in real time.

If you need to find out what people in a specific part of the country or world are saying on Twitter be sure to check out my recent post on NearbyTweets.

Rich Brooks
Your Twitter Answer Guy

Posted in Social Media | 2 Comments »


Alaska Vacations with Goldbelt Tours

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Goldbelt-bear Flyte recently launched a Web site for Goldbelt Tours, an Alaskan tour company with a tram, hotel and marina.

Goldbelt Tours is a one-stop-shop for your next visit to Juneau, Alaska. Goldbelt, Inc. owns and operates the Goldbelt Hotel, the Mount Robert’s Tramway, and the Seadrome Marina. They also offer unforgettable adventures and excursions in both Juneau and Ketchikan.

Flyte designed and built the site on WordPress, allowing Goldbelt to update their site, upload images and embed video without needing to know any HTML.

Flyte is also working on the redesign and redevelopment of Goldbelt Corporate, offering shareholders and natives access to the latest news/information that Goldbelt offers. Stay tuned.

Lindsay Babayan
Project Manager

Posted in Web Site Launches | No Comments »


Find Local People on Twitter Using NearbyTweets

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Nearbytweets Despite the global nature of the Internet, many of us still do most of our business locally.

Restaurants, doctors, locksmiths, massage therapists, all get most of their business from their extended neighborhood. Even when you're able to do business anywhere, such as Web designers, business coaches, and super nannies, we still find that we get a large part of our business form the local economy.

Whether through desire or necessity, many of us search out local people to network with. If this sounds like you, there are plenty of Twitter applications that help you find local tweeps, including LocalTweeps or the search tool on Tweetie for the iPhone, my favorite desktop app is Nearby Tweets.

Unlike a lot of its competition, the layout of the site is slick and elegant. It will often recognize where you are in the world and pre-populate your location. If it's not right, or if you'd rather find tweeps in the city you'll be visiting next week, just change your location.

Next up you can filter the results by keyword. Although when I'm looking for new local folks to follow I generally leave this spot blank, you could find out who locally is "hungry" or cheering on the "Patriots" by using the keyword filter.

Last up you can vary the search radius to whatever size you want. The default is 100 miles, but feel free to shrink it to 10 or double it to 200. Once you hit search, Nearby Tweets will pull up all the recent tweets from the people who meet your criteria in the right hand column, and their avatars on the left. It's up to you to decide whether you want to follow them or not.

I generally right-click their profile pages into a new tab in Firefox, go through the list, and then check out their profiles one at a time.

This isn't a tool where you add yourself to a directory, nor does it ask you for any of your own Twitter information. (Thank God.) In fact, like Search.Twitter.com, you don't even need to be on Twitter to use it.

Very slick, very powerful, very free. Check it out .

Rich Brooks
Twittering from 04101

Posted in Entrepreneur & Small Business, Social Media | 2 Comments »


Yes, You Do Have Time to Blog!

Monday, October 26th, 2009

One of the common refrains I hear from people is that "I don't have time to blog."

On the surface, this seems believable. What small business owner isn't over-worked, whether it's with marketing, sales, bookkeeping, managing people, making the coffee, buying the computers, sending out proposals, answering the phones, taking out the garbage, and every other task that fills our days from the moment we hit the office (whether in or out of our house) to the moment we shut down the computer for the day?

And still, I call "B.S."

Because if you're a small business owner like I am, then blogging is something you can always fit into your day. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not octomom (dignity in check, thanks), but my wife and I do have kids, and a work/life balance is important to us.

You see, blogging isn't some self-indulgent activity; it's investing in the future of your business. Blogging increases your search engine visibility, establishes your credibility, and generates inbound leads. In my opinion, it's probably the best marketing tool you have at your disposal, and once you get it set up it's nearly free.

Unlike other required tasks (phone calls, meetings and making the coffee, for example), you can blog any time. In fact, I recommend doing it in the off hours so you can follow up on all the leads active blogging will deliver to you during your normal business day.

Here's how to get it done:

  • Write a blog post before the kids get up, or after you've put them to bed. (No kids? Then no excuse. Seriously, this is the time to be blogging like there's no tomorrow because feedings in the middle of the night can kill your creativity.) 
  • Give up one night of TV a week and pump out two or three blog posts, and deliver them Monday, Wednesday and Friday the following week. 
  • Review your Google alerts for your targeted keywords and write brief posts while eating at your desk two days a week.
  • Use a voice-to-text tool while on the treadmill and speak your next blog post (85% less weird if you have a home gym.)

Listen, this is your business. You're an entrepreneur. No one said this was going to be easy. A blog isn't some toy, it's a business tool that's going to deliver qualified leads to your Web site. If you'd rather watch American Idol that's fine; just hope your competition feels the same way you do.

Rich Brooks
Blogging Past Midnight

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Business Philosophy, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Web Marketing | 6 Comments »


Every Day Love: A New Approach to Commitment

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

FirefoxScreenSnapz001Earlier this week flyte designed and launched a blog for David Sanford's new project: Every Day Love.

David is an experienced couple's therapist located in Greater Portland, Maine. As he says on the site:

My experience as a couples therapist and relationship coach is that
far too many marriages and committed relationships fail because
partners are too intent on getting love and too disinterested in giving
it.

I want to use this blog as a vehicle for sharing what I know about
loving behavior and for exploring the many ways in which a committed
life with a partner can be an adventure – not just the burden that so
many people find it to be.

The blog is part of a bigger project. David also has a podcast for Every Day Love, and is writing a book on the same topic. 

If you're in a committed relationship, or just want to be ready when you are, be sure to check out the Every Day Love Blog, and follow David Sanford on Twitter.

Rich Brooks
Maine WordPress Development

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Social Media, Web Site Launches | No Comments »


How to Make Your Halloweeen Party Better Using the Interwebs

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

FirefoxScreenSnapz001 Another hard hitting segment I recorded for 207, Maine's premier evening news magazine. This one was on how to use the Internet to set the mood at your next Halloween party.

We talk about finding scary movies online, spook sound effects, creating a killer Halloween-themed party mix for free, and avoiding the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

Like I said, hard hitting.

Watch it below or check out the bigger version at the 207 Web site.

(more…)

Posted in flyte news | 4 Comments »


How to Use Twitter for Business – Webinar on 10/22/09

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Twitter is an incredibly powerful tool for businesses and non-profits. It's a great way to connect with prospects and clients, establish credibility, build trust and drive traffic to your Web site and blog.

However, lots of people jump in without understanding how Twitter works, angering the community and destroying any goodwill they might have created.

In this 90 minute Webinar, I'll show you how to:

  • setup your Twitter profile…the right way…for maximum impact
  • find and follow interesting people
  • build an audience
  • engage people for networking opportunities
  • use 3rd party applications that increase Twitter's power…and your reach
  • integrate Twitter with the rest of your marketing plan.

Plus, there will be 30 minutes of Q&A at the end of the Webinar so you can ask your own questions and get them answered. 4,600+ followers can't be wrong!*

There are limited "seats" for this Webinar, so please register now!

Date: Thursday, 10/22/09
Time: 12:00pm – 1:30pm ET
Place: Your computer (do you need directions?)
Cost: $25

Learn More or Register Now!

* Just kidding. It's not the quantity, it's the quality.

Rich Brooks
Twitter for Business

Posted in Social Media, Web Marketing | No Comments »


Questioning 6 Blogging “Truths”

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Attending BlogWorld this year generated a lot of questions in my mind about blogging and challenged some assumptions I’ve held dear for perhaps too long. I’m not saying that all of these items below are wrong, but just that they deserve closer inspection. And, as always, YMMV.

  1. The importance of your subscribers. Look, I love my subscribers, especially you. It’s great that people subscribe to our blog. However, the stats bear this out: search engines deliver over 73% of our traffic, and over 85% of our traffic comes from first time visitors. What we need to do now is capture these names by making them an offer they can’t refuse.
  2. The importance of comments. (Oh my God! He just shot a white elephant!) Look, I love seeing comments, just like I love seeing replies and RTs when I tweet something. It’s nice to see social proof that your posts are having an impact. However, comments aren’t clients. Quite honestly, I’d prefer to have people fill out our contact form on our Web site than leave a comment. (Interestingly, this blog feeds automatically into my Facebook profile, and I get more comments THERE than I do HERE.)
  3. The importance of categories. I’m not claiming that categories are not important, but as I look at my stats, the most popular category page for the last month was the Entrepreneur and Small Business category, which placed a less-than-stellar 52nd most popular page. It accounted for 38 page views out of 9,640 page views for the month. And although math makes my head hurt, that’s like just shy of .4%, right?

    And, of that small sliver, some percentage of those page views are coming from the category tags below each post, not the category navigation. So, it’s an even smaller percentage of visitors who are clicking on those links. Also, all those links are reducing the value of other, more important links on my blog.

    Maybe a better approach would be to de-emphasize or even completely remove categories and replace them with a search (which has a smaller footprint anyway.) I could use that space to link to “top” posts, whether by views or blogger decree. Alternatively, put a better call-to-action there, generating more email newsletter signups or traffic to our Web site for conversion.

  4. The importance of RSS. “Oh no you did-dn’t!” OK, I’m not giving up my RSS feed anytime soon. We get a lot of subscribers via RSS and I can see from my stats that some people are accessing the blog that way (although, anecdotally, a smaller percentage than before). However, it’s a dirty little secret among many of the people at BlogWorld that many of us rarely check our RSS feeds anymore. Instead, we get alerted of the best posts from people we trust on Twitter.
  5. The importance of blogrolls. I used to implore clients to include a blogroll. “A blog without a blogroll is like a dead end in the blogosphere. I don’t link to blogs that don’t share the love.” That was then, this is now. Personally, I rarely click on links from someone else’s blogroll anymore, and I don’t know what value there is for the blog owner. (However, I am much more likely to click on a link to another blog that’s appears within a blog post. Too many blogrolls are simply a collection of dust bunnies that the author no longer even reads.)
  6. The importance of pinging. Again, I’m not going to stop pinging (through services like Pingoat,) because it takes almost no time or energy to do so; however, I’m not seeing traffic from the Web sites I’m pinging. Maybe there are some secondary benefits, like PageRank, but I’m not sure.

Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment and let me know. (Said un-ironically.)

Rich Brooks
Business Blogger

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Web Marketing | 15 Comments »


Win $6,000 for Your Business

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Pitchlogo

As part of the New Business Stimulus Package offered by MaineBusiness.com, flyte new media will be offering 2 hours of social media and Web design consulting.

Some of the other prizes include:

In fact, there's $6,000 worth of business-oriented goodies, total, and there's not one, not two, but THREE lucky winners.

Caveats? Sure, we got caveats. The biggest two being that your business has to be a legal, Maine-based business and it had to be started in 2009 or will be started in 2010.

If you met these criteria, be sure to check out the details of the Pitch Your Business package.

If you don't meet these criteria…well, let's see, what can we give you? OK, I got it: how about 3 lucky winners will win one hour of one-on-one Web marketing/social media consulting from me, Rich Brooks?

To enter, you don't have to live in Maine, or even the US, for that matter, and I don't care how long you've been in business. (I know, what a guy, right?)

Just complete this short form by Friday, 10/23/2009 to be entered.

Rich Brooks
Giving the Milk Away for Free

Posted in Entrepreneur & Small Business, flyte news, Social Media, Web Marketing | No Comments »


The Web Takes No Prisoners: The Death of Gourmet Magazine

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

Gourmet You may have heard that Gourmet magazine will stop publication after the November issue. 

In a world where "gourmet" has been replaced with the more egalitarian "foodie", over-scheduled families prefer 30 minute meals, and search engines serve up (no pun intended) more than one million different recipes, it may have just been Gourmet's time. How can a print magazine compete against a search engine that will provide recipes based on what you have in your cupboard?

Gourmet is just one business that has been upended by the Internet. Travel agencies, newspapers, independent bookstores, realtors, the local video rental store…the list goes on. 

And yet, within each of these groups certain people and businesses survive. Instead of seeing the Internet as a threat, they adopt their business plans and leverage the new tools available.

Some newspapers have abandoned print entirely, others have leveraged local bloggers and added community elements to their online editions. Some realtors have created video walkthroughs of homes and posted them to YouTube. Some local bookstores have partnered with Amazon, or formed a co-operative to compete.

Unfortunately, for each of these nimble businesses, there's 10 or 50 or 100 other businesses that do everything they can to hold onto their outdated business models, squeezing out every last penny from the buggy whip business.

Many business block their employees from using social media while at work. They often do this in the name of security or productivity, although I feel there are holes in both these arguments.

Tweets and Facebook updates aren't the only ways to share proprietary information; it's easier to put something a thumb drive. Likewise, the very tools that employees often need to do their job better are the ones being blocked.

The bottom line is that the Web and social media are changing the way we communicate and how we work; no one's going to argue that anymore. If your customers are on social media, then you have to let down the castle gates and talk with them.

You must learn to engage with them the way they want, be it through blogs, podcasts, YouTube or social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. If you're not willing to meet with them half-way, they'll find someone who is.

If your customers suddenly start communicating through smoke signals, then you better light a fire.

The Web takes no prisoners; if you don't adopt, if you don't take risks, your next issue may be your last.

You can follow, engage and argue with Rich Brooks on Twitter.

Posted in Business Philosophy, Social Media | No Comments »

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