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Internet a vital tool for farmers – BlueRidgeNow.com

BlogPostman — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 13:29:06 +0000

Internet a vital tool for farmers BlueRidgeNow.com Some of the most popular social networking Web sites are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn , MySpace, Flickr and Classmates.com. Social networking sites ... and more

To blog or not to blog – a case for social media marketing – Bizcommunity.com

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 07:27:23 +0000

To blog or not to blog - a case for social media marketing Bizcommunity.com Twitter, Flickr, blogs, Facebook, Youtube, Linkedin , Squidoo, Stumbleuponit, Digg, Delicious, Slideshare and a thousand other Internet based social media ... and more

Shutterstock Voted Best Royalty Free Stock Photos Site for Bloggers

BlogPostman — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:00:28 +0000

A great photo can really add a lot of flavor to a blog post and in our own analysis at Online Marketing Blog as well as with clients, including quality images with a blog post can boost traffic and referrals 30-50%. To make posts more personal, I try to use my own photos as much as possible and do use imags from Flickr under Creative Commons from time to time. This is an area of significant impact for blogs as effective communication and marketing tools, so last week we ran a Reader Poll on the best site for royalty free, stock photos for bloggers. We had the most comments from iStockphoto users and interestingly enough, the “Other” category came in second place with suggestions including: screenshots, stock.xchng, PhotoXpress.com and Creative Commons imagies from Flickr. The poll results are below, but as you can tell from the image, Shutterstock was the winner: Best Stock Photo Site for Bloggers . Shutterstock.com (38%, 83 Votes) iStockphoto.com (31%, 68 Votes) Other – Add to comments (9%, 19 Votes) dreamstime.com (8%, 17 Votes) fotolia.com (8%, 17 Votes) morguefile.com (2%, 5 Votes) stockvault.net (2%, 4 Votes) freedigitalphotos.net (1%, 3 Votes) everystockphoto.com (1%, 1 Votes) Online Marketing Blog has been using iStockphoto for the past 3-4 years but after seeing this poll, we’ll check out Shutterstock. In fact, I ran into the Shutterstock booth while at the SXSW Interactive conference and shared the good news in person. There was a photobooth within the exhibit booth (with props) that was very popular with conference attendees. Congratulations to Shutterstock on winning Online Marketing Blog’s Best Royalty Free Stock Photo Poll.

Social Media Marketing: An Overview – The Social Robot (blog)

BlogPostman — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:12:10 +0000

Social Media Marketing : An Overview The Social Robot (blog) Some common tools used to perform social media marketing are Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn , Flickr, Orkut and YouTube. The three main aspects of social media ... and more

Ford’s Focus on Social Media: Scott Monty Interview

BlogPostman — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:04:26 +0000

When you think of successful consumer brands in the social media space, names like Dell, Zappos and Pepsi come to mind. Another is Ford. Last year the Ford Fiesta movement generated tremendous amount of awareness (and pre-orders) for a vehicle that wasn’t available to the public yet. At the same time, it inspired a community to engage, create content and continue discussions about the Fiesta with over 7 million video views. While in Dearborn, Ford’s Head of Social Media, Scott Monty , extended to me an invitation to The Henry Ford Museum, The Rouge Factory and a visit to Ford’s World Headquarters where we did a short interview. In this interview, Scott talks about the place for social media with Ford’s new product lines, local social media work with Chapter 2 of the Fiesta movement and advice for companies on empowering communities. Being able to take a learn about the history of this 100+ year old company through experiences at The Henry Ford and Rouge factory tours was very informative. Then being able to sit down with Bob Kreipke, Ford’s full time historian and hear stories about Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, company history and evolution was priceless. Fast forward over 100 years and Ford is a very different company, as is the automotive industry. It’s not enough to be innovative but to be able to actually connect with customers in more meaningful ways. Based on my discussions with Scott, Ford is very committed to making those connections. Watch the interview below to get more insight on how Ford is approaching social media: Click here to view the embedded video. By leveraging technology and the social web, Ford is moving from being known from a truck and Mustang company to a car, utility and truck company. I think the decision to focus on local social media marketing is great evidence of understanding audience in a social strategy. So much of what companies are doing in the social space is more like a shotgun approach based on popular applications vs focusing on where actual customers spend their time. Check out the The Ford Story , a great example of a corporate social media aggregator not only of Ford social web participation, but of what others are saying about their brands. I can’t imaging any active brand online not launching a site like this. What are some great examples of consumer brands you think we should focus on in future posts? What kind of insights would you like to learn more of from those kinds of companies when it comes to the social web?

Poll: Best Royalty Free Stock Photo Sites for Bloggers

BlogPostman — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:54:49 +0000

As with many bloggers, we’ve been using royalty free images for many years. Many bloggers make use of images from Flickr and we have too but you can’t always find the right image there. I’ve even made a point to take more photos of people, places and things while traveling for later use in blog posts like the one to the right. The stock photo site we’ve been using for several years recently decided to essentially double their prices (no matter how they spin it, that’s what they did) and it prompted me to ask the excellent people I’m connected with on Twitter for their suggestions on royalty free photography and image web sites. Here is a collection of 9 such sites that were suggested via Twitter or researched by TopRank. Which leads us to our poll for the most “blogger friendly” royalty free stock photo site: Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll. For a list of over 100 free stock photo sites, visit this link .

My Top iPhone Apps for Social Media Marketing

BlogPostman — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:54:32 +0000

It’s a little ironic that I’m writing this post about iPhone apps using WordPress on a Motorola Droid (Devour actually), but it allows me a chance to experience how hard it is to blog, using a tiny tiny tactile keyboard and also finally get this post started. Ah, back to a full sized Logitech keyboard and mouse. Much better. Popularized by iPhones, there are apps for just about everything, including tools to help social media marketers on the go. In fact, there are over 100,000 iPhone applications to choose from. Many of those apps are extensions of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Others serve as productivity tools for more efficient social web participation or for content creation. As a content marketer that is also a big fan of social networking and sharing, here are a few of my favorites: Echofon – Twitter usage on iPhones must be out of this world and while there are many great apps for Twitter including Seesmic, Hootsuite, Tweetie and Tweetdeck, I like EchoFon the best. It’s amazingly easy to switch between multiple accounts, its fast and there’s an auto-complete feature when typing in Twitter handles that saves a lot of time. It works with lists very nicely but does not offer scheduled tweeting, which I don’t personally use much anyway. Facebook – I probably use Facebook more on the iPhone than through the web site. Personal social networking or networking as an individual on Facebook is pretty easy to do with the app. What I’ve pictured below is where I also get a lot of productivity, which is being able to manage our blog’s fan page. We’ve gone from about 80 to over 1,400 fans in about 3 months and the convenience of adding to discussions via the iPhone has a lot to do with that growth. Foursquare – You know those social media shiny objects that you’ve come to avoid but then they gain so much momentum and buzz that you have to try it out and then you end up liking them? That’s my Foursquare experience. It was the same with Twitter. Using Foursquare for marketing as an individual isn’t as obvious as what one might do with Foursquare location based advertising. However, it can be pretty handy at conferences and events for announcing/leaking certain kinds of information. As a retailer or other business with a brick and mortar presence, can you imagine how useful it would be to know who your most active consumers are that are also active on the social web? LinkedIn – While I’m not always by a computer (can you believe it?) I almost always have my phone with me and that makes accepting LinkedIn invitations (or not as you can see below) easy to do. Status updates are easy to do and can be seen by as large a social network as you care to develop. Thus the LinkedIn iPhone app makes it easy to feed that network. Quality trumps quantity here by far. UStream Live Broadcaster – Capturing live video and audio plus the ability to poll viewers and promote on Twitter seems like a fantasy app for a social media marketer. Especially when you’re at an event and you want to capture something and get it out immediately. It’s amazing how easy the UStream iPhone app (U Broadcaster) makes this process. Flickr – Capturing and sharing images is an essential part of digital asset marketing and social media marketing. The Flickr App makes it pretty easy to upload and manage images taken with your iPhone. Google Buzz – Privacy issues aside, there’s plenty of buzz about Google Buzz and the only way I’ll use it is on my iPhone. Let’s face it, with Google’s dominance and momentum, you can’t afford not to stay on top of their obvious efforts to become a social media powerhouse. It’s not exactly a standalone app though. However, Google makes it easy to add a bookmark to Buzz on your iPhone from Gmail so you can use it directly. Update via Mashable : Apparently there’s a new app called Buzzie for Google Buzz on the iPhone. AudioBoo – This is a handy tool for capturing and promoting on-the-move podcasts. It’s really a no-brainer except when you’re like me the first time I interviewed Vanessa Fox for a podcast and held the iPhone right side up, which for podcasting with an iPhone, is upside down since the microphone is on the bottom. Doh! AnalyticsApp.com – What good is marketing online if you’re not MEASURING? For those with Google Analytics implemented on their sites and blogs (who doesn’t?) this app gives you insight into all the details of web visitor data you’ve come to love with GA. Are these the bestest, newest and most awesome iPhone apps for Social Media Marketers? For this marketer, the apps I’ve listed above take care of 90% of my mobile social media needs. In fact, 4 or 5 would probably do the trick. I do wish there were more social media monitoring iPhone apps though. Especially those that offer Social CRM functionality with your contact list. I’m also keen on finding task management apps that work well with Outlook. What are your favorite iPhone apps for social media marketing?

How Journalists Use Search & Social Media

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:22:29 +0000

TopRank ran a survey of journalists, reporters and editors on their use of search and social media in 2008. We found 91% use search engines like Google to do their job. 64% use social networks. Published in Jan 2010 , a George Washington University and Cision survey of journalists reports 89% use blogs and 65% use social networks to research stories. As prep for a presentation I’m giving Thursday at Online Marketing Summit on the intersection of SEO, Social Media and PR , I reached out to a few local journalists and industry news contacts and asked for examples of how they used search engines or social media to do story research. Newsrooms are cutting staff and reporters and editors are hard pressed to do more with less. Tools like search engines and social media make available a tremendous amount of information in real-time. The news world is a world of deadlines and it would seem the use of search and social networks to source experts or people/companies that fit a story angle would be ideal. Even respected news organizations like the BBC are encouraging their journalists to embrace social media . This kind of insight is very helpful to understand how companies can make their news content more easily discovered via social web participation, content and optimization. Why is that important? According to TV News Reporter Jason DeRusha , “Private business does a horrible job cataloging their expertise in a manner that’s search engine friendly. This is a real opportunity, as journalists become much more crunched for time, and use search as quick way to identify local experts.” Here are a few examples of how journalists use search engines and social media tools to connect with story subjects. Not all of them are business situations, but are helpful as feedback on where to spend time creating, optimizing and socializing news content. I begin every day at search engine. It doesn’t matter what story I’m working on, it always starts with a search. I work on a segment called “Good Question,” so I often type my question directly into Google, and see what comes up. When searching for local experts, I’ll often take the subject matter, tack on the word “Minneapolis” and add the word “expert.” For example, last week I did a story on whether cursive handwriting was vanishing because of e-mail. I typed “Minneapolis handwriting expert” into Google, and found several local handwriting analysts. Next, I searched for private schools (because public schools are often challenging to get permission to shoot at) and found the school we used for our story . For my story on whether we get enough Vitamin D in Minnesota , I searched “Vitamin D” “Minneapolis” and “expert.” If a local company showed up very high with their own expertise in those results, I would have called that company. Jason DeRusha, WCCO (CBS) TV News Reporter Often times, the use of search engines and social media sites intersect. Here is an example provided in our initial survey: I was writing a column about the planned partnership between Google and Yahoo. I tracked down potential sources first using Google and LinkedIn, and came across a white paper prepared by a senior fellow at the American Antitrust Institute. While I could not easily find an e-mail address, I went to Facebook where I located him, then sent a message. He replied and we followed up with a phone interview. Marketing Industry Journalist In some cases, news publications also run real world events. Example: iMediaConnection has ad:tech, MediaPost has OMMA, Search Engine Watch has Search Engine Strategies. Here’s some great insight from MarketingProfs on how they’ve used social media tools for finding writers, case studies and speakers: We do use social networks extensively to find key writers or speakers for our events or publications. I also use it to monitor key issues to cover in our newsletters, seminars, research, and so on: Social networks are a great way to take the “pulse” of a topic. What are people talking about? Is this a hot-button issue or not? For events: Social media is integral to programming the agenda. We always distribute the proposal form for potential speakers via various social channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn). Same for our case study collections: We mine for good stories by asking Twitter/FB/LI. For example, “Who has a good story on social media ROI?” We always harvest an abundance from this “social Google,” open-ended approach. Once we have harvested leads from those channels, our seminar programmer or writers can follow up via email or DMs, whichever. LinkedIn is a great place to mine client-side folks. It’s especially valuable for us as we try to include a significant percentage of client-side speakers at our events, and often client-side folks are harder to uncover/book. And obviously, our case studies always feature client-side folks. We also use Idea Scale to crowdsource topic ideas for our event agenda. We use Flickr all the time to find creative common graphics for use on the blog (or for the contributed pieces I do for AMEX Open Forum); we use YouTube and Slideshare to see possible speakers or presenters in “action.” Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs Sometimes the information found isn’t what companies or individuals would want a reporter to find: I routinely track down potential interviews by sending out a Tweet. Most recently, we came across a number of Toyota car owners who fell under the recent recalls. It would have been very difficult to find those people in a short amount of time without this type of technology. Just today I was feeding and getting information through Twitter on the house explosion in Edina that helped our crews navigate around the situation and get better pictures of the breaking news. Also, I used YouTube to find video of a man who is being investigated by a Ponzi scheme by the Secret Service. It turns out he had many videos of himself giving sales pitches to potential customers. We used the video on the air where otherwise we would have never known what the man looked like. We often use Facebook to get photographs of crime suspects and or victims. And police investigators tell me Facebook is one of the first places they check when investigating someone involved in a crime. Chris O’Connell KSTP (ABC) TV News Anchor/Reporter Sometimes it’s not your content that gets discovered, but a connection to someone else that leads to being found: This fall I was working on a feature about ethnic weddings in the Twin Cities, for our Weddings magazine. I was looking for recently married couples of various cultural backgrounds. I posted a query on Facebook to my recently married or engaged friends. Their responses led me to three of the five couples interviewed (via email contacts). After initial email correspondence, I interviewed the couples by phone and in person. Senior Editor, Mpls.St.Paul magazine I think this quote from Chris O ‘Connell sums it up nicely: “social networking has changed the way we do business and how we are able to get news and sources faster when deadlines matter.” We’ll be conducting a new survey on Journalist Use of Search soon and will be posting more detailed data on how stories are sourced, tools used, preferences of types of information and more. If you are attending #OMS10 be sure to check out our session on Social Media, Search and Public Relations at 3:15 . It will be a very informative and engaging set of presentations from: David “dk” Klein, Dana Todd, Rand Fishkin, myself and moderator duties handled by Sally Falkow. Does your company incorporate news optimization as part of your online marketing and content strategy? Do you optimize and promote news content differently than marketing content? Do you track whether the media finds your content via search or social media?

SmartBrief on: Google Buzz

BlogPostman — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 19:33:32 +0000

Social media is a fast-paced field where keeping your edge means staying on top of the latest developments each day. If you blinked, you might have missed the debut of Google Buzz — Google’s latest foray into the social arena. It’s been a whirlwind of announcements, reactions and a whole new class of best practices. If you missed out on any of it, here’s a roundup of the Google Buzz stories that made it into our e-mail newsletter, SmartBrief on Social Media over the past two weeks. Google Buzz debuts with Twitter, Flickr connectivity Google is making a fresh attempt at social media with Buzz, a Gmail-based application that lets users keep tabs on their contacts while sharing updates, images and links. The company says the service will let users combine content from other sites, including Twitter and Flickr, while streamlining content for quick and easy reading. The service is hampered by a lack of connectivity with Facebook, Samuel Axon notes, especially as Facebook gears up to launch a webmail service of its own. Mashable (2/9), Ars Technica (2/9) Google modifies Buzz in response to privacy concerns Google is responding to privacy concerns about its Buzz social tool, saying it will no longer automatically connect users with their Gmail contacts or other network items, such as public Picasa albums and shared stories on Google Reader. Analysts say nixing the auto-follow feature was a major improvement to the service, which Google says was sampled by tens of millions of users in its first 48 hours. The New York Times (2/15) Making the most of Google Buzz Users of Google Buzz can get more out of the tool by adding text-marking language to their posts or transmitting a Buzz message via e-mail or mobile device, this article suggests. Using labels to improve organization can also be helpful, the author notes. PC World/Today @ PCWorld blog (2/12) Google Chrome Extension adds Facebook to Buzz A Google Chrome Extension devised by David Mulder allows Buzz users to add information from Facebook’s News Feed to their Gmail sidebars. Once installed, the extension lets users access their Facebook News Feed and post Facebook status updates from Google Buzz and their Gmail inbox. TechCrunch (2/16) Google exec: Buzz won’t kill Twitter or Facebook Google Buzz is intended to complement, not kill off, rival services like Facebook and Twitter, says Bradley Horowitz, Google’s vice president for product management. Google plans to make Buzz the most open social-media service on the market, Horowitz says, providing a hub from which users can access and update all their networks. “This is creating a new category of communication,” Horowitz says. “Philosophically we want this to be open in every way, both in and out,” he adds. eWeek.com (2/21) Signing up for SBoSM is a fast, free, easy way to make sure you’re never caught off guard concerning social-media news. Our exclusive summaries will help you digest the latest updates in a flash. Check out today’s issue and see what else you’ve been missing. Image credit, Zeffss1 , via iStock

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SmartBrief on: Google Buzz

Communicating With People Online – OfficialWire (press release)

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:13:08 +0000

Communicating With People Online OfficialWire (press release) Social interaction is what keeps Facebook, LinkedIn , Flickr and other social networks truly alive. Without the people using these networks to interact then ... Social Media As A Sales Tool Mediapost.com Most Journalists Use Social Media for Reporting MarketingProfs.com (subscription) Do Stress-Free Social Media Marketing OfficialWire (press release) OfficialWire (press release)