Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category


How to Find (and Remove) People on Twitter Who’ve Stopped Tweeting

Monday, December 12th, 2011

Done TweetingImprove 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.

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How to Build Your Blog Subscriber Base

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

Derek HalpernDerek 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?

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I Will Keep Share In Future

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

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

Today I got a comment on my blog post What Should I Title My Blog Posts for Maximum SEO? You’d think I’d be happy, right? Here’s the comment:

Inane Blog Comment

“The written skill is so good.” Well, sure, in comparison to your comment it absolutely is.

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Amy Porterfield Shows You How to Grow Your Facebook Audience

Monday, November 21st, 2011

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

Rich Brooks: Today we are here with Amy Porterfield. She is a social media strategist and co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies. Amy, thank you very much for being part of the interview today.

Amy Porterfield: Thanks for having me.

Rich Brooks: My pleasure. Now, I know you’re a Facebook expert and I know you love small businesses so let’s talk about small businesses on Facebook. In your experience, what are some of the top challenges that small businesses face on Facebook?

Amy Porterfield: When it comes to Facebook I continually hear two challenges from small businesses.  The first one is, “I need to grow my fan base but I don’t know how to attract quality fans.” The second one is, “I can’t get my fans to engage with me on my Page. I’m posting questions, interesting quotes and valuable information, but my fans are not responding to my posts.” So it usually comes down to wanting to grow a quality fan base and the struggle to get the conversation started on Facebook. (more…)


How to Setup Your Google+ Business Page in Under 3 Minutes

Thursday, November 10th, 2011

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

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Small Biz Success Summit: From Social to Sales

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

Discover how to quickly attract quality customers, build loyal fans and grow your revenue with social media.

One of my biggest pet peeves with a lot of social media advice is it seems to be targeting big corporations. It requires big budgets, expensive monitoring software, and dedicated staff that’s beyond the reach of most small businesses. And yet small businesses are the group that can benefit most from social media.

That’s why I was really excited when Mike Stelzer, the guy behind Social Media Examiner, told me he was putting on a new success summit that is 100% focused on social media strategies for small business.

This is the same guy who put on those fantastic Social Media Success Summits, Facebook Success Summits, and even a Blogging Success Summit. And now he wanted to put the spotlight on how small business owners and entrepreneurs could use social media to attract customers, build fans and generate revenue.

Tickets will be $597, but currently they’re only $297! I was never good at math, but that’s like 50% off!

I’ve attended every one of the Success Summits, and I always get some amazing takeaways. This isn’t fluff. This is very specific advice from small business experts who have succeeded using social media.

Here’s a short list of some of the 25 presenters at the Small Biz Success Summit:

  • John Jantsch, Duct Tape Marketing
  • Anita Campbell, Small Business Trends
  • Mari Smith, author of The New Relationship Marketing
  • Brian Clark, Copyblogger
  • Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing
  • Lewis Howes, author of LinkedWorking
  • Amy Porterfield & Andrea Vahl, co-authors of Facebook Marketing All-in-One For Dummies
  • James Wedmore, Video Traffic Academy
  • Rich Brooks, he’ll write a book one day.

Yes, that’s right! I’ll be one of your presenters! My presentation is Social to Sales: 4 Steps for Growing Your Small Business Revenue.

The Success Summits are perfect for small biz owners; here’s why

One of the best thing about the Small Biz Success Summit is that it’s a completely virtual event. Why is this good?

  • Attend in business casual, your pjs, or au naturel, it’s up to you. 
  • You can attend live and ask questions of the presenters at the end of each session
  • If you miss a session you can download the slides, audio and/or video after the fact
  • Download the audio to your iPod for travel time or watch the videos multiple times so you don’t miss a thing
  • No travel expenses
  • You’ll still have an opportunity to network! The Success Summits have vibrant, active, attendee-only discussion groups at LinkedIn where you can ask your questions, network, and engage with the presenters
  • You won’t miss any work (I know for some people that’s a negative, but we small business owners stress over any lost productivity!)

Two reasons why you should act now

  1. The Small Biz Success Summit runs from February 1st, 2012 – February 23, 2012, but the early bird discounts end soon! You can save 50% off the regular priced tickets if you order now! Save $300 by ordering today!
  2. Despite the fact this is a virtual event, seats are limited. The last Success Summit sold out! Don’t get left out…get your seats now.

If you’re a small business owner, or work for one, this is the event that will help you grow your business in 2012. See you there!

Rich Brooks
Small Business Owner

 


BrightBuilt: A Deep Energy Retrofit Spreads the Word on Facebook

Friday, October 21st, 2011

BrightBuilt on FacebookFacebook becomes a platform of sharing for this open-source collaborative of green building professionals rethinking sustainable building practices.

If you live in Maine you know that we have a lot of old buildings and a lot of cold winters. That doesn’t do much for our energy savings.

While new buildings tend to keep in the heat better, it’s not practical or sustainable to tear down all the old homes and buildings and replace them with new construction. Many non-profits make these old homes and buildings their operations, and the high heating costs cut into the services they can offer the community.

That’s the inspiration behind BrightBuilt, an open source collaborative of green building professionals designing sustainable solutions. To date, there have been two initiatives: BrightBuilt Barn and BrightBuilt Retrofit.

BrightBuilt Retrofit is a demonstration project with the goal of exploring the affordability and accessibility of deep energy retrofits in cold climates. Kaplan Thompson Architects of Portland, Maine is spearheading this effort to showcase innovation and sustainability at its best.

The target project is a 2,500 sf house owned by Community Partners, Inc. of Biddeford, ME. Project contractor, Warren Construction of Freeport, Maine will oversee the work which includes air sealing the building, adding insulated panels to the walls and roof and replacing and upgrading the existing windows.Taken together these efforts are project to reduce the energy consumption of the house by 80%.

flyte helped get the word out by redeveloping the Facebook presence, with a new landing page (seen above), and strategy around engaging the sustainable building community as well as other non-profits looking to bring down the high cost of heating oil in cold climates.

If you’re interested in sustainable building, deep energy retrofits, or non-profits, please head over to the BrightBuilt page on Facebook and give them a big thumbs up.

Rich Brooks
Baby, It’s Cold Outside


Should I Pay for Facebook Likes?

Thursday, September 29th, 2011

Facebook Likes for SaleIt’s not too hard to find companies that will pay people (or bots) to like your Facebook page. The question is: should you?

I was playing squash with my good friend Christopher today and in between games he told me there was one question he didn’t get answered at the Social Media FTW conference the other day: why wouldn’t you pay for Facebook likes?

It’s a valid question. Do a Google search or check out Fiverr and you’ll find plenty of companies and people willing to supply hundreds or thousands of likes to your page. If likes are the currency of Facebook, what’s the downside? How is it different than spending money on advertising to get people to like your page?

There are a number of reasons why I feel buying likes on Facebook is a bad idea.

  1. These likes have no ongoing value. The people who get paid to like your page are never going to be your customer. The fake accounts they use to like your account? Even less chance.
  2. Facebook looks at the fan to engagement ratio when evaluating your page. In short, imagine ABC Corp’s page has 500 fans and an average of 5 comments/update from fans. Meanwhile XYZ Co. has 1,000 fans, but it also has 5 comments for each update it posts. In this case, ABC looks like a more valuable, engaging page.
  3. Facebook is smarter than you. You don’t think it knows that people are paying for likes? I’m sure it’s got algorithms up the wazoo to look for suspicious liking. A sudden surge in likes, a lot of direct traffic to the page (as opposed to people clicking around Facebook and ending up on your page), and the same random group of people who like a hair salon in Topeka one moment and a pet store in Portland, Maine, the next. I wouldn’t be surprised if certain accounts have been tagged as “unlikes” because their liking is so spammy.
  4. It’s different than ad buys to direct people to your page. In the end, an ad can only entice people to visit your page, not to like it. You’re paying for the opportunity to grab their attention, not get a like.

What do you think? Would you buy likes?

Rich Brooks
We Get Likes The Old Fashion Way…We Beg for Them. (Like Us?)


YouTube Marketing Workshop Handouts

Monday, September 26th, 2011

YouTube Marketing HandoutsCouldn’t make it to the YouTube Marketing presentation at Social Media FTW? Here are the slides from that workshop.

YouTube and online video are powerful tools to increase your online visibility, drive more qualified traffic to your website, and convert that traffic into leads and business.

In the YouTube marketing presentation I gave at the Social Media FTW conference I talked about what types of videos businesses should make, how to make videos that get found, and some advanced YouTube tactics to get people to take action while watching your videos.

I showed how to make a CTA (call-to-action) overlay ad and how to use annotations to link one video to another video, playlist, channel and more.

Finally, we talked about how to go beyond YouTube and took a quick look at other video hosting platforms like Vimeo and Howcast, as well as how to use your videos on your blog, Facebook page, and email marketing.

Below you’ll find the slides to the presentation. Since I tend to use a lot of imagery and few words in my slides, not everything may be clear. If you’ve got any questions on the presentation or using video to help market your business, non-profit or cause, please post your question below or send us a message. Thanks!

Rich Brooks
As Seen on YouTube


Talking Social Media FTW on 207

Saturday, September 24th, 2011

Social media is a critical tool for most businesses and non-profits. Here in Maine we have the Social Media FTW conference each fall and this is a clip from 207 where we talk about who should go and what to expect.

Leading up to the 3rd annual Social Media FTW (For the Win) Fall Conference, I had an opportunity to put on my “tech guru” hat one more time and go on 207, the evening news program that runs on our local NBC affiliates here in Maine, and talk about the upcoming conference.

Kathleen Shannon interviewed me about the history of FTW, who was speaking, and who should go.

My big takeaways from the interview were, “that’s a really nice shirt,” and “I should shop at Marshall’s more often.” You can watch the interview at the WCSH 6 website or down below.

Rich Brooks
Social Media FTW