Visualizing Your Best Keywords with Wordle


Uncovering “long tail” search terms that drive traffic to your site with Wordle.

Keywords by Wordle

I recently discovered that Google Analytics has a tool where you can generate a keyword cloud to display the keyword phrases that drive traffic to your website. However, because it treats each keyword phrase uniquely rather than looking for specific words within the phrase, it doesn’t give you much more insight than just viewing your keywords as a list.

I was looking for a tool that would help me quickly uncover trends and themes within the keywords my prospects were using by amalgamating multiple long tail searches…those very specific terms that goal-driven searches may look for. 

So I took a list of the 500 keyword phrases that drove the most traffic to flyte.biz in the past month, exported them, and popped them into Wordle, a free tool that generates tag clouds like the one above.

Pretty cool, huh?

Two caveats: 

  • Wordle only looks at individual words, not phrases, so even “how to” is treated as two unique words. 
  • The way I ran the report doesn’t factor in how many times a specific search was performed , rather only by how many times a word appeared in total within the list. I.e., “facebook cover photo” might have driven 50 unique visitors to our site in the past month, but “facebook,” “cover,” and “photo” only get one vote each for that specific search. The terms “business” and “facebook” appear larger in the tag cloud because so many unique searches included those terms. I could have run a scenario where “facebook cover photo” was repeated 50 times before I entered the terms into Wordle to get a better idea of how popular a certain phrase was, but I was looking for trends, not exact numbers.

While this is far from scientific, it does help me get a sense of the biggest challenges our ideal customers suffer from. 

What does your tag cloud tell you?

Rich Brooks
Head in the Clouds 

Bookmark and Share

Blog Monetization: How Do You Make Money from Your Blog?


Action JacksonCan you make money from your blog?

Dear Rich,

I have a full time job, but I’m very passionate about staying healthy, eating right, and exercising, all on a limited budget.

I want to start a blog so I can share my story, provide tips and advice, and help others. 

I also want to make some money doing it!

Can I have a blog without a website? If so, how can I monetize my blog?

– Monetizing in Machais

Read the rest of this entry »

Should You Attend the Social Media Success Summit?


Social Media Success Summit 2012Can you really learn social media at a virtual event?

A few years ago I attended the first Social Media Success Summit (aff). It was a virtual event where you could “attend” from your desktop, watching social media experts talk about Twitter, Facebook and blogging.

As you can see from the video below, I had my doubts of what I could actually gain from a virtual event, but I took the chance and signed up.

It’s no exaggeration that the Social Media Success Summit changed the way I approached social media marketing, and thus the way I ran my business. 

It was the best $300 I ever spent.

So flash forward a few years, and now I’m presenting at SMSS2012. Why they let some guy from Maine speak on the same virtual stage as Mari Smith, Brian Solis, Mike Stelzner, Chris Brogan, Amy Porterfield, C.C. Chapman and like twenty other experts I’ll never know. 

Bottom line is that if you’ve been on the fence about attending the Social Media Success Summit, I can tell you from firsthand experience that it contains amazing content from some of the most knowledgeable people around. Just take a look at the full line up and topics.

If you’re running your own business, or you’re in marketing, or you’ve been recently given the title of social media manager there’s no better resource than SMSS. Take a peek at the video below and I hope to see you in May! 

Rich Brooks
It’s Not Called a Success Summit for Nothing!

Bookmark and Share

How to Remove Apps from Your Facebook Account


George In Bunny EarsHow many apps have access to your Facebook account? How can you delete them?

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! 

Bookmark and Share

Post to Your Facebook Business Page As You [Update]


A while back we wrote a blog about How to post to your Facebook Business Page as You. Ever since this post was created it’s been one of the most highly visited on the site. Now with the new Facebook changes I just wanted to make sure that you still knew how to post on a page as yourself.  So here are the new instructions of how to post on your Facebook business page as you with the new Timeline for Facebook Pages design.

Step 1. Go to the page that you admin.

Step 2. Click on the Manage Button and go to the edit page drop down.

Step 3. Go to “Your Settings”

Step 4. Make sure the check box next to “Always comment and post on your page as “Your Page Name“, even when using Facebook as “Yourself.” is UNCHECKED.

 

 

Step 5. Now you have the ability to switch back and forth on when posting on your page as yourself and the page.

Note: Now when you are signed into Facebook the default is for you to post as yourself. So, when you want to post an update on your page as your page you need to make sure that you switch users. See the steps below.

Step 6. Go to your page to make the update.

Step 7. From the admin panel go to the Manage Drop Down and Click on “Use page as ‘Your Page’”.


And, it’s as easy as that! To switch back to yourself all you have to do is follow step 5 through 7 and choose “Use Facebook as ‘Yourself’”.

Tip: To get conversation started on your page it’s always a good idea to post a question first as your page and then answer it as yourself. People are more likely to comment on an update/post that already has other responses.

 

Joan Woodbrey Crocker

Bookmark and Share

Facebook Interest Lists – What are Interest Lists and How Do I Use Them?


The best way to think of Facebook Interest Lists is a way of creating your own news feed. When you sign into Facebook your current News Feed is a compilation of your friends posts and updates from pages you’ve liked that Facebook deems important enough to show up using an algorithm called EdgeRank. However, sometimes we subscribe to others and follow pages because we want to keep up with all of the information. These groups are groups of interest. So, Facebook has created a way for us to create our own news feed by adding these particular individuals and pages into an interest list.

A few ideas of types of lists that you can create:

- Family
- Industry Experts
- Celebrities
- News/Journalists
- Sports Teams or pros

Once you’ve created these lists you can then click on the list to see all the news and updates for those added in one niche news feed.

Where do I find my interest lists? You can find your interest lists in the left column of your home page in Facebook. See them circled in red below…


Here’s how you create a list:

Step 1: Click “Add Interests” Under Interests in the Left Column of your home page on Facebook.

 

Step 2: Click Create List. Note that when you come to this page you will also have suggested interest lists that you can follow just by clicking subscribe. It’s always a good idea to see if there is another list that similar to what you are about to create that you can just subscribe to rather than recreating it.

Step 3. Once you’ve clicked “Create List” you will get a pop up window that has all the different subscriptions, pages, friends that you can choose from or you can type whatever you’d like into the search box. Once you’ve chosen all the folks you’d like to have in the particular interest list click “Next”.

 

Step 4. Once you’ve selected those that you want to add to the list a new window will show up asking you to name your new list. You will also notice it asks if you want the list to be seen publicly, friends only or only yourself. If you choose public this means that anyone on Facebook can subscribe to the list, if you choose Friends this means only your friends will be able to subscribe to the interest list you’ve created. And, if you choose just yourself it will be a private list just for yourself.  You will also notice that to the right you can see all the different subscriptions, pages and people you’ve added to the list. This is a quick check to make sure everything is good. If everything is all set, hit Done.

Step 5. Once you’ve hit done your interest list is finished. YOu will be brought immediately to the news feed of this particular list. See below…

Are you using interest lists yet? Do you find them helpful? Share your ideas with us on how to best use Facebook Interest Lists for marketing purposes.

 

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
Interested in Lists

 

 

Bookmark and Share

How to Like a Facebook Fan Page…as a Fan Page [Updated] for the Facebook Timeline design


One of our most popular blog posts at the Maine SEO blog is “How to Like a Facebook Fan Page…As a Fan Page.”  But now the set up of Facebook has changed a bit with the new Facebook Timeline for Pages design and so we need to update the instructions a bit. So below is an updated version of Nicki’s fantastic blog with some more recent screenshots! Hope this helps!

“That may sound a little confusing, but you can actually like a Facebook fan page as a fan page you administer. Instead of “liking”, Facebook calls this “adding to your page’s favorites”.

Why would you want to do this? You might want to call attention to a client or a favorite business of yours, or simply provide another resource/fan page you think your fans would be interested in.

Start by logging into the account you administer.

Then, go to the fan page you’d like to favorite. Click on the Drop Down button near the “Message” button.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then click “Add to My Page’s Favorites”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click this option and you’ll see a pop-up window, where you can choose from the pages you admin:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that’s all there is to it!

Update:

Once you’ve liked a page from your page it gives you the opportunity to talk about them on your page and link to them at the same time so you show up on their page wall as well. This is a great way of getting in front of fans of their page while promoting their business to yours as well. Note: Keep things non salesy. No one wants a bunch of spam on their Facebook wall and it’s the fastest way to get your update deleted from their page.

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
Maine Seo Blog

Bookmark and Share

Facebook Offers Competitive Research Tool with New “Likes” Tab


There are so many features of the new Timeline Facebook design that I like. But, one really cool one is the new insights that can be seen on the “Likes” Tab. Facebook has moved all of the custom pages and apps into one place and now you have up to 12 app icons to show below your cover. Photos is fixed and always has the top spot, but the rest you can move around at will. The “Likes” tab is provided by Facebook and also has a pretty cool function other than just telling you how many likes are on that particular page.

If you click on the “likes” tab, shown in the image above, you will notice that some interesting insights also pop up. (shown Below)

Here you can see how many folks are talking about your page, the total likes, and most importantly some page insights. However, you don’t just get this information when you click on the “Likes” tab on your page, you get it when you click on the Likes tab for every page. This is a great tool to dig in and do a little market research to see how your competitors are doing. Here are a couple things you can tell below:

1. What was the most popular week for the page? Look back at that week and see what your competitor was doing on their page that made it so popular. Was it a particular post? Was it a holiday? Were they offering a deal of some sort? What made that week so popular?

2. Where are their fans coming from? If it seems that most of their fans are local, than they are probably doing a great job spreading the word locally about their business and services. If they seem to be from a target city, maybe they are targeting that area with ads. If they are from India, and it’s a local business, then perhaps they purchased some of their likes – eek!

3. You can check out the demographic. Do they have the same target audience you’ve been targeting? If not, should you be targeting a different demographic?

4. Check ins – you can see when the business was most visited. Again, check to see what was going on then. Were they having a sale or an event of sorts? What made that week popular?

5. Now, this is where it gets really interesting. The People Talking About This/New Likes per Week Graph. This is a great way to get some insight into what types of posts they are creating that get shared/liked the most. Is there a spike on a particular day? What did they post about, or how did they word their post? Is this something you can duplicate and try out for yourself?

The “Likes” Tab may seem small and insignificant. But, with the recent changes it seems it could pack a lot of heat. Before we could go to our competitions page and scroll down the page and look for ourselves what posts were performing well. Now, we can still do that, but we have a little extra help in the market research department from a simple little button.

Have you tried this out yet? What do you think?

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
Likes Likes

 

Bookmark and Share

How to Run a QR Code Campaign


How can you use QR codes for marketing and lead generation? (Hint: throw in a leg of prosciutto.)

QR Code Marketing

That was the question that we pondered as we worked on a pilot program with Braden Buehler of Narrative Design for The Rogers Collection, a Maine-based importer of luxury foods. They wanted to promote Pio Tosini’s prosciutto in an engaging fashion, and build their email list at the same time. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Can You Still Do Like Gates on Facebook Timeline Pages?


Since the announcement of Facebook Timeline for Business pages I’ve heard the same question asked over and over again. What happens to our Facebook Landing pages/custom tabs? And, If you didn’t get a chance to read that post take a minute and go read it. But since then we’ve done a little thinking.

While you can’t set up a default landing page for those who’ve not liked your page yet, you can still create landing tabs that are “like gated” or “like baited”. You are just going to need to give your audience some incentive to click on that tab!

You pages have not gone anywhere, they are still there. And, now you actually have more space/width for your designed pages. (810 pixels) So, you can get even more creative. And, the tabs, which used to be small word links to the right column of your Facebook page, are now larger image links right below the Cover image. This also allows you to get a little more creative and enticing with your images and what you call the page.

For instance, you can create a page that offers coupons, call that tab “Coupons” or “Specials” or “Discounts” of “Deals”, people are always interested in getting a deal so this will entice them to click on your page.

Once on the landing page you can have it set up just as you did before, only with a slight bigger page design, and ask for the like. You will notice that there is still a like button above if the person hasn’t liked it already. Facebook was having an issue last week where the page wasn’t automatically refreshing after the Like button was clicked, but they have now fixed the problem. So, after someone clicks like, you can still have a reveal tab or welcome tab that has the printable coupons you are offering.

There are several other ways to drive traffic to your pages to get the likes other than making the tab itself enticing. It may not be as easy as the default, but using Facebook Ads is another great way to direct people to land on that page if they haven’t already liked the page.

So, you may have to get a little more creative. But, you can still drive people to your custom tabs, offer deals for people to like you and technically like gate your pages to reveal coupons etc.

Share your thoughts on new ways of gaining fans for the new Facebook Timeline with us here!

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
Get Creative!

Photo Credit: by JoshSemans

Bookmark and Share
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »