Improve your Twitter marketing and ROI by finding and removing people who have stopped tweeting.
Recently someone asked me how to find and identify people you follow on Twitter who are no longer tweeting.
There are plenty of websites and services that can help you manage your Twitter following…whether to grow your Twitter following or to improve it. The tool I use in the video below is called Formulists.
Formulists provides you tools to find new people, and also to sort people that you already follow. In this video I set up a filter to go through the people I follow and find ones who haven’t tweeted in 60 days.
Google Plus recently opened up its platform for businesses. Here’s how you can get started with your own page.
Yesterday I created a Google+ page for flyte. I turned on ScreenFlow, my favorite screen capture tool for the mac and created the following video.
Thanks to some fancy editing, some enhanced typing skills, and a trough full of Red Bull, I created this video that will show you in less than 3 minutes how to setup your own Google+ business page.
You know you need to create online video for increased visibility, but you have no idea what your video should be about.
Just like blogging before it, I’m a big proponent of using online video to increase your online visibility, drive more qualified traffic to your site and build your business.
And just like blogging before it, people are still not sure what they should be creating videos about.
The short answer is, that if you’re creating videos to generate online leads, you should be answering your prospects’ most pressing questions.
A few weeks ago I was on vacation at a lake house we rent. I had never been able to get up on water skis before (only tried a handful of times) but I was determined that this was the week. I went to YouTube, searched for “how to get up on water skis” and found a number of videos. After watching one particularly instructive one I took to the lake. Three attempts later I was up.
Keep in mind that YouTube is the #2 search engine in the world, AND its videos often appear on the first page of Google, the world’s most popular search engine. The right video, with the right title and description, addressing the issues that your prospects and customers face on a daily basis can greatly increase the number of inbound leads you can generate.
So what should my online videos be about?
That’s obviously going to be specific to your business and industry, but here’s a trick to finding out what people are looking for when it comes to videos. Go to YouTube and start typing in your industry or the type of questions customers usually ask you…YouTube’s auto-complete feature will provide suggestions based on previous searches and results. Here are a couple of examples:
And don’t forget that the same trick can work at the search engines:
Ever spent too much time searching a long web page looking for information? Here’s your keyboard shortcut.
Today I read an unbelievable statistic in the Atlantic: 90% of US Internet users didn’t know you could use CTRL-F (command-F for us Mac users) to find a word or phrase on a long web page or Word doc.
Now, I know the readers of this blog are part of that 10% whose palms are firmly planted on their collective foreheads right now. Personally, I must use the command-F 30 or 40 times a day easy. In fact, the command-F shortcut makes me so efficient that I had time to create a video on how to use command-F to save time. (Pretty meta, right?)
With this one video I’ve probably recovered all the worker productivity in this country lost to fantasy football.
So, let’s say during your time giving free tech support to friends, family and lovers you’ve watched them struggle to find some information on a long web page. You didn’t know how to explain to them that CTRL-F would set them free. Now you can just point them to this post (and accompanying video at YouTube).
Not sure how to share your best posts, photos and videos on Google+? Read this and be enlightened.
In the last post we looked at Sparks, Google+’s tool for collecting information around an area of interest. Today we’re going to talk about how to share that and other content, and how to determine who’s going to see that content.
Sharing content with friends, family and business associates on Google+ is easy.
At the top of your stream–similar to Facebook’s News Feed–is a box where you can choose to share an update, photos, video or a link.
Let’s say you want to share a video; go ahead and click on video. Then you’ll be given the choice to share video in three different ways:
upload from your computer,
grab something from YouTube or
upload a video from your phone.
Choose the appropriate selection and then you’ll either upload a video or find a video on YouTube.
In either case you’ll be able to add comments and then choose which circles and/or people you’d like to share the video with. Video of your most recent presentation? Share with business associates. Video of your daughter’s birthday? Share that with just friends and family.
Looking for something to share on Google+? Check out Sparks for ideas.
In the last post we looked at How to Setup a Hangout in Google+, so you could run your own group video chat. Today we’ll look at Sparks, which to be honest, not nearly as interesting. You’ve been warned.
Sparks are your “areas of interest” in Google+. In other words, they work a lot like Google Alerts, but are available through your G+ account.
You’ll find the Sparks link in your left hand column. By clicking on Sparks you’ll see a number of preset Sparks that Google has provided. Seeing how one of them is Cycling and the Tour de France is currently running, I’m guessing these will change over time.
You don’t need to let Google choose your Sparks, however. Just type in any area of interest in the Sparks field and Google will start retrieving news stories for you. While this isn’t as powerful as a regular or advanced Google search, or as thorough as Google Alerts, it is within your Google+ account, so there’s that.
Also, no one can see your Sparks, so go ahead and create a Spark for Captain & Tennille reunion tour…no one will know.
Google+ makes group video chat simple and easy with its Hangout feature.
In the last post we looked at circles, the way to organize the people in your life on Google+. Now we’re going to look at a very cool way to connect with those people.
One of the most intriguing new features of Google+ is the Hangout; simply put the group video chat feature.
To start a Hangout just look for the button in the right column of your Google+ page. Once clicked you’ll be able to open your Hangout to people in your circles.
I’ve found that if you’re in the middle of a chat with them G+ will automatically send them the invite via chat, but if not it may only appear in their stream.
The quality is comparable to Skype. I’ve had a few Hangouts, and sometimes the audio and video was good, other times there were echoes and the video was more like an 8-bit video game.
While pants are optional for a Hangout, I strongly recommend a shirt.
Google+ (Google Plus) Circles help you control what information you see, and who sees your content. Here’s how.
In the previous post we talked about how to manage your privacy in Google+ and how you could control and limit access to your information through Circles. Today we’re going to take a closer look at circles and how to use them.
One of the core concepts in Google+ is Circles. Circles are like Groups on Facebook or Twitter lists: they’re a way of organizing your G+ life.
Although Google+ gives you some preset circles, you can feel free to edit or delete them, or create your own. Since no one but you can see the names of your circles you can name the circles whatever you like, from Friends to Frenemies to Loudmouths. People won’t even know how many circles you’ve put them in.
As your organizing the people in your life into circles, there are two things you should keep in mind: who’s content you want to see, and what content you want to share with others. Let’s start with who you want to hear from.
The default view when you log into Google+ is the stream (similar, if not identical to Facebook’s News Feed). Anyone who you’ve added to a circle will appear here. Down the left hand side you’ll see all the circles you’ve created, so you can filter your stream by circle. For example, during the work day you may only want to see updates from “Business Associates” or “Networking Buddies” so you can choose that circle. After hours perhaps you want to see what your friends are up to, so you choose that circle. People can appear in as many circles as you want to put them in.
One nice feature of Google+ is your ability for you to selectively share your content. At the end of every update you can choose who you want to share that particular piece of content with…from a single person, to a circle, to your extended circles to the public at large. Personally, I put most of my stuff up to the public, but that’s only because my stuff is so good.
Nah, just kidding. I do it because with the exception of private stuff (my daughter’s 7th birthday party pictures for example) I don’t have much I need to keep private.
The definition of privacy has changed over time, accelerated by the popularity of online social networks. If Google’s stated goal is to index all of the world’s knowledge, Facebook’s seems to be to get everyone to share everything…except with Google.
As with most social networks, people are concerned with managing their privacy…in short, who gets to see what. We want the benefits of social networking–connecting with old friends, generating new business connections, seeing photos of family members from away–but we don’t want to find embarrassing photos of ourselves making the rounds on the Internet. (Google “naked wizard” if you need an example. NSFW.)
Google+ gives us some great, easy-to-understand tools so that we can manage our privacy settings while on the network. The core of these privacy settings is by using Circles, which we’ll go into in our next blog post and video.
By creating these circles, you can determine who gets to see what information. You create circles for friends, family and business associates (for example), then you can decide who sees your most recent blog posts and who gets access to pictures of your baby.
A very cool feature in Google+ is the ability to “see” your profile through the eyes of a specific person or group. Not sure if your mom can see those photos from the Delta Tau Chi kegger? You can put her name into the “view as” field and see your profile as she would.
Google Voice transcribes your voicemails to text. That means a free voice memo transcription for your best ideas.
For years I’ve been looking for a free way to transcribe my voice memos to text. I don’t get my best ideas in the shower–rather I get them while listening to audiobooks while mowing the lawn or driving in the car.
There are a number of programs, services and apps that offer voice to text transcriptions, but none of them were exactly what I was looking for.
Leaving messages for my future self on my company voicemail works, but I have to wait for the outbound message to play and there’s no transcription service. QuickVoice for the iPhone has transcription service, but only on messages less than :30.
Then I found out that Google Voice offers free transcription service (among many other features.) I visited http://www.google.com/voice and got my free phone number. (Sadly, nothing was available in the 207 area code.) The whole process took about 2 minutes.
I then added my new number to my speed dial and called myself, leaving a message. Thirty seconds later I had a full transcript of my email. It’s certainly not error-free, but as a way of leaving detailed messages and having them transcribed, this free service from Google is hard to beat.
What’s great is that the transcripts are automatically forwarded to your email. My current voicemail does email me a copy of all my voicemails, but just as a .wav attachment, which still means I have to transcribe last night’s brilliant idea to today’s to-do list or blog post.
Improve your Twitter marketing and ROI by finding and removing people who have stopped tweeting.
