To be able to vote for a co-worker’s dog as “cutest ever” or something like that, I had to give 1-800-FLOWERS an unhealthy amount of access to my Facebook account.

Not wanting to disappoint Joan (especially since she has access to a couple of my Twitter accounts and has embarrassing stories to tell about me) I went ahead, giving 1-800-FLOWERS access to everything short of a DNA sample. 

Immediately after voting, I decided to rescind those privileges by removing the app from my Facebook account. However, I couldn’t find how to do it.

After a little research I found out where it was. It wasn’t too difficult…go into your account settings, choose apps, then remove any apps you no longer use or wish to have access to your account.

Or, if you’re visual check out this nifty (short) video I created on How to Remove Apps from Facebook.

That’s it!

Rich Brooks
Like flyte on Facebook! 

I enjoy my segments as the “tech guru” or “tech expert” (depending on who’s interviewing me) on 207, but I don’t generally get to talk about technology as it pertains to small business marketing.

So, I was very excited when they suggested I do something that focused on small business. (95% of Mainers are employed by a small business, so it’s something that affects a lot of us.)

Of course, you can’t get too in depth in 5:27, especially for a topic that spawns multi-day conferences with multiple tracks. However, I did my best.

You can watch the video below or at the 207 site on a page entitled Tech Guru Rich Brooks on SEO.

If you’d to learn more, check out this week’s flyte school lunch & learn I’m doing (if you live within driving distance of Portland, Maine) or the Search Engine Optimization: Rank Higher, Sell More! webinar I’m putting on.

Below are my notes from the segment:

Overview:

Although most Maine businesses and non-profits have websites, many of those sites are difficult to find at the search engines. Today we’re going to take a look at some changes you can make to your own website to rank higher at the search engines, attract more traffic and generate more leads.

Q: What can Maine businesses & non-profits do to rank higher at the search engines?

A: To oversimplify SEO (search engine optimization) there are two parts: what you do on the page and how many quality incoming links you have.  
     
Q:  What can you do on the page?

A: Your page should address the biggest problems your ideal customer has, using their language.

Q: How do you know what words your customers use at Google?

A: Use tools like Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool, a free tool that shows you how many people are searching for that term as well as how many other websites compete for that term. You should look for opportunities where there are a lot of people searching for a phrase but it’s not highly competitive.

Q: Now that we know what words to use, what do we do next?

A: You should work your keywords into critical places on your page, like your title tags, headers, body copy and intrasite links…links from one page to another.

Q: You also said that getting incoming links is important. What is an incoming link and why is it so important?

A: An incoming link is a link from another website or blog to your website. Search engines see these incoming links as votes of confidence. The more quality incoming links you have, the more the search engines see your content as relevant and important, so they rank you higher.

Q: What else can businesses and non-profits do to improve their search engine optimization?

A: A blog, online videos (YouTube), and social media can help, too.

Rich Brooks
SEO for Small Business

People are always asking me how to get more followers on Twitter. I tell them that it’s not a numbers game, that there plenty of well known techniques to get more followers.

However, you’ll end up with a lot of followers who don’t pay any attention to you, as they’re in the same mad rush to increase their followers as well.

Then they roll their eyes and ask again.

Well, here’s a technique that will help you attract the right type of followers on Twitter, and all it takes is a free service called Paper.li.

For those of you who don’t know, paper.li is a service that helps you curate content from Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds and Google+ into an online newspaper.

For an example of how to use Paper.li, I’m going to use the Agents of Change Digital Marketing Conference that I recently announced. The conference is going to focus on how businesses can use search, social & mobile to grow. The conference will take place here in Maine, but there’s also an online virtual component that anyone can attend.

I’m looking to build awareness for the conference, so here’s what I did first did on Twitter.

I created an Agents of Change account called @agentconference. Because of the Maine connection, I followed a number of local people that I follow from my @therichbrooks account who are marketers or run businesses.

I then went over to paper.li and created a new account for Agents of Change, connected to the conference’s Twitter account.

Here’s how I did it:

1. Click on Start Your Paper at the top of the page.
2. Choose a title.
3. Add one or more “streams” that will feed your paper.

   Now, there are plenty of stream types. For the Agents of Change, I wanted to start by including everyone I follow under the @agentconference account.

   I also wanted to include people who tweet about the topics the conference is about: search, social and mobile.So I included some tags. This will include tweets from people I don’t necessarily follow but use specific hashtags or keywords.

   I chose the hashtags #seo, #socialmedia and #mobile.

4. Now hit publish.
5. Once the paper is created you can create an editor’s note with a call to action, including a clickable link. (Not sure if it’s no-follow or not.)

    

6. However, the most important thing is to click the megaphone. This tweets out your paper, including mentions of your top contributors.

Why is this so important? Because it lets people know that you’re following them, shows up in their mentions column, and increases your visibility.

This works for both people you’re already following, and new people who are tweeting out the hashtags or keywords you included!

Later, when I go back to my twitter feed and search for mentions of the daily paper, I can see that people are already retweeting the Agents of Change when they’re included in the paper, sharing that link with their network and extending our reach.

As I look at the people who have been featured, I see that most of them have begun following the Agents of Change account. Again, this increases our visibility and reach with people who care about the things we want to talk about: search, social & mobile.

If you liked this video, please give it a big thumbs up on YouTube (or wherever you’re watching it) and consider subscribing to flyte’s YouTube channel.

And, if you want to learn more about search, social or mobile, head on over to The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Conference to learn more about our conference, whether you’re planning on coming to Maine or watching online.

Rich Brooks
Paper.li Publisher

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.

Once I’ve identified those people I can choose to mass unfollow them, or nag them to start tweeting again. If you find some friends, family member or clients who you’re not ready to kick to the curb just yet, Forumlists allows you to remove them from this list so they won’t be cut loose if you mass unfollow everyone who has stopped tweeting.

You can watch the video below or check out How to Find and Remove People Who No Longer Tweet on Twitter on YouTube.

Formulists does a bunch more than just help you find people who are retired from Twitter. I use it to help me find other people in Maine, keep track of who just started following me (and who stopped), and more.

Definitely worth checking out if you’re a Twitter power user like myself.

And don’t forget to follow me (Rich Brooks) and flyte while you’re at it!

Rich Brooks
As Seen In That Video You Just Watched

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 can watch it below or check out How to Create a Google+ Business Page in Under 3 Minutes on YouTube.

In the video I show you:

• how to create your page
• how to upload photos
• how to upload videos
• how to share content on your page
• how to promote your page
• how to add people to your page’s circles

One thing I didn’t include is how to switch from your personal Google+ account to your business’s, so here’s where you do that:

More info coming soon, so make sure you check out flyte’s page on Google+ and please add us to your circles!

Rich Brooks
I Type Wicked Fast

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.

That week I also learned how to start the square stitch and a good workout for resistance bands, all from watching videos on YouTube.

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:

And notice how the 3rd organic result is a video!

Now, go out and make some videos!

Rich Brooks
The Water Skiing, Resistance-Banding Lanyard-Maker

No comments on how gross my keyboard is.

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).

You can check out my dad’s website on raising resilient children (and more) here.

Another favorite of mine: command-A then right arrow to get to the end of a long doc, left arrow to get to the beginning of it.

Rich Brooks
Bringing back the US’s AAA Rating One Keyboard Shortcut at a Time

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:

1. upload from your computer,
2. grab something from YouTube or
3. 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.

This may be easier understood by watching it in action. By chance, I’ve created a video called How to Share Video on Google+, which you can watch on YouTube or down below.

This is just one of a series of videos we did on Google+, and we’ve got plenty of other web marketing and social media videos at our YouTube channel. You should check it out. Really, you should.

Rich Brooks
Join Me On Google+

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.

If you’d like a walk through of How to Use Sparks on Google+ I made a video you can watch on YouTube if it doesn’t appear below.

Oh, and not to be a nag or anything, but have you subscribed to flyte’s YouTube channel? You know you want to!

Rich Brooks
Join Me On G+

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.

I’ve created a video called How to Start a Google+ Hangout that you can watch at YouTube if you can’t see it below.

Rich Brooks
Join Me On Google+