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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

What Do You Do When Social Media Doesn’t Work?

Wednesday, February 1st, 2012

What do you do if you’re active in social media but it’s not helping your small business?

Dear Rich,

I run a commercial cleaning business and I’ve been using social media for almost a year. I have been blogging three times a week, creating videos, and tweeting several times a day. We have a Facebook page that gets updated multiple times a day but has very few fans and only my employees and family members engage with it, and only when I threaten them! Even when we ran a contest with an iPad 2 as a prize we only got a handful of new likers.

We set up a Google+ page for our business, but almost no one has circled us, despite the fact that we’re putting out fresh content daily.

Most importantly, in looking at our traffic reports, almost no traffic comes from our social media activity, and none of our new clients mention social media when we ask how they found us.

What are we doing wrong? I feel like I’m banging my head against the wall.

–Confounded in Cornish

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Tags: blogging, Facebook, google plus, LinkedIn, small business, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube
Posted in Entrepreneur & Small Business, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media | 4 Comments »

Social-Local-Mobile & SEO Workshops in Portland, ME

Sunday, January 29th, 2012

Take your web marketing to the next level with these in-person workshops.

As part of flyte‘s commitment to education this year, we’ll be putting on monthly lunch & learn seminars we’re calling flyte school.

And as part of my commitment to not hog the spotlight all the time, I’m teaming up with some amazing marketing experts to help me out.

The first one is Tobin Slaven of Dream Local. He’s going to be presenting on The Perfect Storm: Social-Local-Mobile.

Last year social media was all the rage, but 2012 will mark the widening gap between businesses that are harnessing social and the power of word of mouth advertising versus those who are going to miss the boat. This presentation will focus on the new consumer and how their use of tools to tune out and filter away traditional forms of advertising, is creating a whole new opportunity for customer service marketing.

Key takeaways will include several free or low cost tools any small business owner can use to build and monitor their brand reputation on social media, local search, and mobile phones.

Sounds awesome, and I’ve seen Tobin present before a number of times. He’s got great material and an easy-to-follow style.

Once Tobin’s done I’ll be presenting on Search Engine Optimization: Rank Higher, Sell More!

You know that search engines can provide your business with loads of new prospects, but why aren’t you getting as much traffic as you’d like? Why are your competitors ranking higher than you? What can you do to increase your search engine visibility? In this seminar, you’ll learn how to improve your organic search engine ranking and drive more qualified leads to your Web site.

Attendees will learn:

How to uncover which keyword terms will drive qualified leads to your site
What on-page changes will increase your search engine visibility and how to make them
How to get more incoming links to improve your search engine ranking
The Do’s and Don’ts of search engine optimization

Lunch is included with your ticket.

Seating is limited, so act now! Early bird tickets are available only through January 31st.

Date: Thursday, 2/16/2012
Time: Noon – 2:30pm
Place: Rines Auditorium, Portland Public Library (directions)
Cost: $35 early bird, $50 angry bird

If you can’t make it to Portland, Maine, be sure to check out our web marketing webinars.

Online Ticketing for FLYTE SCHOOL: Social-Local-Mobile powered by Eventbrite

Rich Brooks
Maine SEO

Posted in Entrepreneur & Small Business, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing | 1 Comment »

Web Marketing Influence: Scarcity

Monday, January 16th, 2012

Things that are scarce are perceived as more valuable than things that are plentiful. How can you use this to improve your web marketing and social media?

In the final tenet of Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, he examines scarcity.

Like reciprocity, commitment & consistency, social proof, liking and authority before it, scarcity has an undue influence on us due to our desire for shortcuts.

We have been trained that things that are rarer have more value than things that are common. Therefore, to make things appear to have more value, marketers can promote or even fake the scarcity of an object or information.

Like many people, I subscribe to a number of daily deals, like LivingSocial. I know that if I don’t act now, I’ll miss out on 50% off a massage, food or snow tires. Interestingly, I’ve noticed I’m less compelled to buy a daily deal these days because I know that if I miss this half-off yoga class, there will be another one from a competing studio next week. The deal is still a good one, but the scarcity has been removed.

Scarcity also plays on our fear of loss. In one example from the book, homeowners who were told how much they would lose by not insulating their house bought at a much higher rate than another group that was told how much they would save.

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Tags: influence, robert cialdini, scarcity, Social Media, Web Marketing
Posted in Business Philosophy, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Social Media, Web Marketing | 5 Comments »

Web Marketing Influence: Authority

Friday, January 13th, 2012

People are trained to follow authority figures. How can you establish your authority in your web marketing and social media activity?

We’ve discussed the power of reciprocity, commitment, social proof and liking in Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, so far. Now it’s time to look at the power that authority holds over us.

Like social proof, authority gives us a short cut in dealing with the complexity of the modern world. We listen to our doctors about health care issues, professors about scholarly matters, and talking heads on TV for everything from child-rearing to national security issues.

Often, this is a good thing. People often become authorities after years of rigorous study. However, in a famous experiment by Stanley Milgram, average people were persuaded to shock another person to near death by a person wielding nothing more than a clipboard and a white lab jacket. (Thankfully, there was no electricity and the person being “shocked” was a confidant.)

Experiment after experiment showed that humans are completely unaware of the amount of autonomy they give over to others, just because of a title, clothing, or trappings.

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Tags: authority, influence, robert cialdini, Social Media, Web Marketing
Posted in Business Philosophy, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Social Media, Web Marketing | 1 Comment »

Web Marketing Influence: Liking

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

We like to do business with people we like. So, how does that impact your web marketing and social media activities?

You like me! You really, really like me!

In Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, he talks about the tenets of influence. So far we’ve seen reciprocity, commitment & consistency, and social proof in action, and now we move on to liking.

It’s no surprise that we’re influenced by people we like…what’s surprising is the degree to which we’re influenced by people we like, or even those who leverage the names of people or things we like. (This is why the Tupperware party is so powerful, and why organizations send our kids’ friends to sell us candles and popcorn buckets we don’t need.)

We can see this at work on some of our favorite social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, that “suggest” that we might like a number of other people on the network, thus strengthening the network and lessening the chances that we’ll leave. The social ads on Facebook are similar, when they show a product and let us know a friend “likes” it.

There’s a number of things that impact our liking of a person or brand:

(more…)

Tags: influence, likeability, liking, robert cialdini, Web Marketing
Posted in Business Philosophy, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Social Media, Web Marketing | 3 Comments »

Web Marketing Influence: Commitment and Consistency

Friday, January 6th, 2012

People are hard-wired to be consistent, especially when they’ve publicly committed to a belief. How does that impact your web marketing & social media?

In chapter 2 of Robert Cialdini’s masterful Influence: The Psychology of Persuation, we learned that people have a knee-jerk reaction to responding in kind (or better) to favors…a trait referred to as reciprocity. Now, in the next chapter, we learn that we also wish to be seen as consistent.

Cialdini has a wealth of examples of this in his chapter, but one example that stuck with me is the story of people who agreed to put a giant, ugly sign on their front lawn, in front of their gorgeous home, that said Drive Safely. Not surprisingly, only 17% agreed.

However, in another group, they got an astounding 76% to agree to the same ugly signs! What was the difference?

(more…)

Tags: commitment, consistency, influence, robert cialdini, Social Media, Web Marketing
Posted in Business Philosophy, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Social Media, Web Marketing | No Comments »

How to Build Your Blog Subscriber Base

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

Derek Halpern knows what makes people tick online. He’s here to share that insight with you.

Rich Brooks: I’m here today with Derek Halpern who is the brains behind socialtriggers.com and we’re going to be talking a lot about what Derek has done with his website and blog. Derek, thank you for talking with me today.

Derek Halpern: Thanks for having me; really happy to be doing this.

Rich Brooks: Excellent. I don’t remember how I found your blog but I remember when I got there that I was immediately struck by a number of things that you were doing that were different than what other people seem to be doing. It definitely had a different look and feel, and I’m talking beyond just the fact that you have a lot of white space going on, which is always a refreshing change for any blog.

One of the biggest differences that I immediately noticed is what you call your feature box, which is the big box at the top of the homepage on your blog. Can you tell me a little bit about what you’re trying to accomplish by using that feature box?

(more…)

Tags: blog marketing, blogs, business blogs, Derek Halpern, social proof, Social Triggers
Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing | 1 Comment »

Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

What do you do if you’re active in social media but it’s not helping your small business?

Take your web marketing to the next level with these in-person workshops.

Things that are scarce are perceived as more valuable than things that are plentiful. How can you use this to improve your web marketing and social media?

People are trained to follow authority figures. How can you establish your authority in your web marketing and social media activity?

We like to do business with people we like. So, how does that impact your web marketing and social media activities?

People are hard-wired to be consistent, especially when they’ve publicly committed to a belief. How does that impact your web marketing & social media?

Improve your Twitter marketing and ROI by finding and removing people who have stopped tweeting.

Derek Halpern knows what makes people tick online. He’s here to share that insight with you.

Your reputation is on the line when you outsource your web marketing.

Amy Porterfield shares how to grow and engage your Facebook fan base.

FREE REPORT

Subscribe

Search

Recent Posts

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