Your Marketing Gal

Create Your Social Media Marketing Plan

Is your "guilt" about now being online as much as you think you ought to be in order to market your business online getting making you feel bad? We all have the best intention of sticking to some type of social media marketing effort. As small business owners, it is hard to do it all. This past Saturday I taught a short class on creating a social media marketing plan for small businesses.

In summary, it's better to just pick a few things to do but do it consistently. If you haven't started, it's not too late. Think about what will work for you. What do you like to do? Just because Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook are big, is it the best place for you to be? Could there be a smaller social network that might work for you instead?

Here is the PowerPoint presentation. I also have an e-book you can download to start your plan.

Create Your Social Media Marketing Plan

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Beyond the Basics of LinkedIn: Advanced Business Marketing Denver Workshop

You've created a great LinkedIn profile. But just how does LinkedIn work for you? LinkedIn is the premier social media networking platform perfect for businesses. In this intermediate to advanced workshop, you'll learn how to market yourself or your business the "social media" way. Learn how to grow your network and add connections the easy way, find opportunities, target companies and be known as an expert in your field! Get networking tips and join the right groups to pump up your social media marketing efforts. Also learn how to find content to look like the expert you are in your business or field.

Class is at Colorado Free University, 7653 E. 1st Place, Denver, CO 80230 on Saturday, May 8th from 9 to 11am. Register at: http://bit.ly/LinkedInMay8 or call 303.399.0093. 

About me: Owner of www.YourMarketingGal.com, I'm a certified Inbound Marketing Consultant. I help small businesses grow by developing and implementing strategic internet marketing plans. My services include social media marketing, social networking, blog creation, blogging, keyword selection, local search, search engine optimization & video marketing. I believe in giving entrepreneurs the tools to empower their own marketing efforts. 

Is Facebook the New Twitter? How to Hide Twitter on Facebook

Do you have your Twitter account connected to your Facebook account? I had connected mine some time back. But my cousin, that is very active on Facebook with over 3,600 friends told me I was taking up her whole wall with all my tweets. Would I please remove them? I did. Today while surfing the status updates of my friends instead of the Live or News Feed, I noticed that most of my Facebook friends had updated via Twitter.

I am all for automating and making things easy. But all updates via Twitter to Facebook? What if you tweet 40 times a day? What if you tweet every few minutes?  Are you taking up most of your friend's wall? Do you like reading all the updates via Facebook? Will someone just hide you instead of having all your tweets on their page?

Or will they figure out that there is a way to hide all Twitter updates? And that is what I did. I can still remain friends with everyone and keep my Twitter separate from Facebook. I can't show you a screen shot because I accidentally found this. I did not find it in Facebook's help section either. But I was able to hide Twitter updates posted by my friends while clicking on one of my friend's update. You are given the choice to hide the person or hide Twitter. If you want to hide all Twitter updates, just click on "Hide Twitter". You've got your wall back without any Twitter updates. Yay.   

If you want to share some some tweets, use Selective Twitter. According to their fan page, you can "Update your Facebook Status from Twitter but only for the tweets you choose. End a tweet with #fb when you want to update your status - simple!" It also works with Fan Pages.

What do you prefer? Receiving all Twitter updates or do you have them hidden? Do you use Selective Twitter? Do you share your updates to Facebook?

LinkedIn Marketing Techniques for Small Business

Again, another great group of students at Colorado Free University. Here is the LinkedIn presentation summarized on this PowerPoint. Each received a detailed booklet on information to jump start their marketing and really figure out ways to strategically increase their online marketing and get results. Social networking is all about providing helpful information and not spamming your connections. 

LinkedIn Marketing Techniques for Small Business

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Twitter for Job Seekers

On December 17, I had the pleasure of speaking to a friendly group of job seekers in Boulder called Boldernet. The group is run by volunteers but has a nice, relaxed structure. Their website is http://www.bouldernetworking.net/ plus they have a Meetup as well. Here is the Twitter presentation:

Creating Video For Search Engines - Media Post Search Insider

If you're just getting into video marketing, as I am, the following article has great information.

My job has lately had me producing a lot of video content for the Web, and I suppose my timing couldn't be better. Google just decided to roll out auto-captioning, which will vastly improve the accessibility of video files to search engines. And while Web videos are hardly a novelty, they're starting to influence conversations more and more. Here, then, are a few observations about what (and what not) to do when producing video for the Web.

Videos Rank!

One of the biggest surprises I found after producing a few videos was how quickly they ranked on Google's Video Search. While everybody and his brother have spent years optimizing their pages for Google Web search, a far fewer number have deployed video assets. While it's an overstatement to say that Video Search is virgin terrain, there's clearly an opportunity here if you have something to say -- and a way to say it with video. Does the fact that we decided to host these videos on Google-owned YouTube influence their rankings? Well, it clearly doesn't hurt.

Short is Better

Numerous studies have shown that Web video watchers prefer short over long-form video content. So what do you do if you've shot a 30-minute interview? Cutting it into four or five topic-themed segments, from roughly four to five minutes in length, is labor-intensive, but it's worth your while to do so, because each segment can be titled with a unique topic name, which will boost your rankings. Once you've created the clips, you can easily organize them on YouTube using its playlist system, which lets you control the running sequence of each clip.

Traffic Spikes Are Great, But Plan For The "Slow Tail"

There's nothing better than having a video "go viral," but this doesn't happen often. However, over time, a video that starts out with a middling performance can rack up many thousands of views over a period of weeks or months. Keep this long time horizon in mind and make sure your videos are date-stamped. Somebody watching your video a year from now won't mind if it's old, as long as you forewarn them of the recording date. Your first Web video may not nail a prospect in its first month, but a year from now may land a big fish. Think of each video you make as another "hook" in the water that may be nibbled on next week, or many months in the future.

Inexpensive Productions Don't Have To Look Cheap

As someone with an extensive A/V background, I'm still amazed at how powerful today's NLE (Non-Linear Editing) systems are. Adobe Premiere is preferred by many digital video professionals, but has a fairly steep learning curve. Unless your production needs are particularly fancy, you can probably achieve equivalent results with less expensive software such as Sony Vegas. There are tons of great online video production resources on the Web that can help you set up temporary or permanent video production environments. In my view, the biggest mistakes that people make when doing Web videos is failing to light properly and to produce quality audio.

Steve Baldwin is editor-in-chief at Didit, an agency for search engine marketing and auctioned media management based in New York. You can reach Steve at steve.baldwin@didit.com.

See original article.

via www.mediapost.com

LinkedIn and Twitter Partnership: LinkedIn Just Became More Interactive

Linkedin is finally getting more interactive by pulling your Twitter posts. I receive a lot of hits on my blog from LinkedIn - great way to market your company. It's not just for job seekers although it is a great place to have a complete profile if you are. It's a great place to build yourself professionally , find power partners, etc. But it is not very interactive. Perhaps this will help. You will have to use two hashtags: #in and #li to post to your LinkedIn account. I went to connect my accounts and some how they already are. Great news!

Ian Paul, PC World

Nov 10, 2009 8:04 am

LinkedIn and Twitter announced a partnership on Monday allowing you to push your LinkedIn status updates out to your Twitter account or pull your tweets into your professional profile. Twitter co-founder Biz Stone called it "bringing the peanut butter and the chocolate together to make the perfect combination."

Twitter integration with LinkedIn makes sense, but don't forget these two services are very different from each other. Twitter is a very casual and fun network with its short burst messages, while LinkedIn is all about connecting with colleagues, other professionals and furthering your career. If you integrate your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, be prepared to make smart choices about what you share across these services, because what's perfectly acceptable on one network, may not work on the other.

The Basics

You have three options for integrating LinkedIn with Twitter: you can rebroadcast your LinkedIn status updates to Twitter, turn your tweets into your LinkedIn status or both. To start integrating your tweets, you need to edit your LinkedIn settings by adding Twitter from your profile page or by clicking the Twitter icon next to your status on the homepage. Twitter integration will be rolled out to all LinkedIn users over the next few days, so you may not see the new feature right away.

DO's and Don'ts

DO broadcast your LinkedIn status to Twitter. Chances are your updates on LinkedIn contain things you want to talk about with as many people as possible like what you're working on, what you need help with or just a general question. Broadcasting these updates to your Twitter followers will only add to your knowledge and help get the word out about what you're doing. To push your LinkedIn status out to Twitter, click the check box next to the Twitter icon on your LinkedIn homepage, enter your update and click "Share."

DO link multiple Twitter accounts to your LinkedIn profile. If you have more than one Twitter identity, you probably have one account for personal tweets and others related to your business or job. It's almost impossible to hide your personal Twitter account from the rest of the world, so why not integrate all your Twitter accounts with LinkedIn? Besides, if you send out a lot of work-related or topical items from your personal account, you may want your professional network to see these tweets. LinkedIn did not specify how many Twitter accounts you could add, or what kind of broadcasting controls it offers for integrating multiple accounts.

DON'T send all your tweets to LinkedIn. Twitter's not just a professional broadcast tool it's also a fun way to connect with others. Don't forget that. LinkedIn gives you the option to only send tweets to your profile marked with the '#in' or '#li' hashtags or to send all your tweets to LinkedIn. Make sure you choose the hashtag option so only the tweets you decide to share will get through to your LinkedIn account. Sharing an update about your recent promotion on LinkedIn via Twitter is a great idea, but all those drunken tweets you send out on Saturdays won't look so hot on your professional profile.

DON'T display your Twitter account on LinkedIn. LinkedIn gives you the option of installing a Twitter widget on your LinkedIn profile that will show your most recent tweets. You don't want to do this for the reasons given above, not to mention the fact that you're already sending your tweets to your LinkedIn status. Why the double exposure? There is such a thing as Twitter overkill.

DON'T forget about LinkedIn. Chances are you'll be in front of your Twitter account more often than your LinkedIn page, so remember your colleagues. There are many tweets you'll want to share with them, but if you took my previous advice you'll need to type '#in' or '#li' every time you want to send a tweet to LinkedIn. Don't forget this.

Check out the LinkedIn Learning Center to learn more about Twitter and LinkedIn.

Original post at: 

http://www.pcworld.com/article/181814/LinkedIn_and_Twitter_Partnership_Dos_and_Donts_for_Users.html?tk=rss_news

via www.pcworld.com

15 Minutes To Posting Events On Facebook & Growing Your Business

Found this on Facebook shared by friends and created by Chris Record. Yes, on my previous post I wrote about finding information on Facebook: What are Facebook friends for? Why Sharing Info, of course! And this tutoriaI attests to how much I can learn from friends. It's all about sharing, right?

I know 15 minutes is so much longer than our usual attention span for online videos, but this is so worth viewing - plus you won't notice that is it 15 minutes because of the great info you'll learn.

I've been posting and promoting events on Facebook but Chris gives you more hints on how to make your event more successful and better attended. Posting events is a great way to build your brand and be known online in a subtle manner, just like all inbound marketing techniques. I've posted events for other people when they've asked me. This way I help someone out and people see my name attached to the event.

If you're into Facebook and want to promote your or other people's events, this is a great how to tutorial. Yes, and you can grow your business and brand.

Used his techniques with my latest event: Networking for a Great Cause Happy Hour Fundraiser for Food Bank Rockies on November 18th. Plus I actually used this technique for posting my event on LinkedIn as well for sharing with others. Can't lose!

Twitter How to: 10 Tips to Tweet Your Way to Jobs

So what is the big deal about Twitter? There are so many headline stories about Twitter. Some say it will be gone tomorrow and don't waste your time. Yet it keeps growing dramatically and companies are using it to "tweet" their jobs. When I recently signed up to blog with Jobing.com in Denver, I found out they have two people devoted to social media which I know includes Twitter. So just how do you tweet your way to a job? Here are ten tips to use Twitter in your job search.

1. Just go to www.Twitter.com and choose your screen name of up to 15 characters. If you are "branding" yourself, you can choose your name if it is available. Or choose a title that describes what you do. You can always change your screen name.

2. Upload a professional looking head shot that you use in all your social networking sites. This also shows consistency in your brand and helps people recognize you.

3. Although this should be your lowest priority (but hey it's fun), you can choose a free background at http://www.twitterbackgrounds.com and you'll have a big choice. I chose one that matches the colors of my website. Remember to keep it professional.

4. Put your job pitch in your Twitter bio. You have 160 characters to write your elevator pitch. Make those characters count. Cut out unnecessary words.

5. You have one link so make it a good one. Use it to direct people to your LinkedIn profile or your resume. A good place to create your online resume is www.VisualCV.com. Plus you can download your LinkedIn profile right into Visual CV so you have a great start to your online resume. This used to be a free service but the last I heard, they were going to start charging users.

6. Tweet about your jobs, your aspirations, your interviews, etc. Keep it all positive - no one wants to read about your negative experiences. It's okay to occasionally tweet a link to your resume.

6. Which brings us to to the next topic of the Twitter dictionary: the @ which is a mention, RT (retweet) which is used to show that you are tweeting content that has been posted by another user and DM is a Direct Message. So if you see an @ before your Twitter screen name like @joguerra (my screen name), someone is mentioning me or sending me a message that everyone can see. DM is a direct message between me and another Twitter user and is actually D joguerra. So a D then space and the screen name. When people RT or retweet your posts, thank them. It's the social media thing to do.

7. Show you are an expert in your field by tweeting interesting comments, article links, blog links in your industry. Use Google alerts at http://www.google.com/alerts to look for interesting articles and "tweet" the link with a comment. Use keywords in your industry to set up and receive alerts via email or add it as a "feed" to your reader. If you don't understand the feed, don't worry. Just have an email sent.

8. Look at hashtags (#) in your industry. Hashtags are a powerful, simple tool for tracking topics, live events or breaking news. Go to http://hashtags.org/ and enter #jobs. You'll see a list come up with all type of jobs. This will give you an idea of how to search. When you click on the results, you will be taken to another page that shows all the jobs relating to the hashtag with links to the actual job.

9. Use Twitter search to find information on jobs. Go to http://search.twitter.com and enter keywords with your industry, zip, city, job titles, etc.

10. And lastly, you can get lost in cyberspace as you find interesting links to articles as well as a lot of unnecessary junk. So limit your time on Twitter. It is very helpful for finding a job, but can also be a big time bandit.

I could go on with pages of information as there is so much more to Twitter. If you have any tips, please post them.

What are Facebook Friends for? Why Sharing Information Of Course!

Love being on Facebook - it's one of my favorite social network. I did notice that I did not seem to be receiving as many posts. And I just found out from one of my Facebook friends that Facebook decided who my favorite 250 friends are. Yes, Facebook, as we've all heard, changed their design recently and decided to pick your top 250 friends unless you change your settings. You will only see the feeds for these 250 friends.

Want to change this? It's easy. Just click on your home page. You'll see two choices at the top with one highlighted to "Live Feed" and the other link is "View News Feed" that is not highlighted. Click on "View News Feed" and scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "edit options". "View News Feed" will not be highlighted but the screen will change just a little.

On the new screen you will see the number 250. Change it to the number of friends you'd like to see feeds for or 5,000 which is the maximum friends Facebook allows. I changed it to show all my Facebook friends. You can still hide them individually should you decide you don't want to see their feeds. Share this post with all your friends and let them know.

Update: Whenever you get back on Facebook, remember to toggle between the Live Feed and the News Feed.