Everyone wants to get the word out, and for business blogging, this can be very important for getting traffic to your blog. Are you doing these things?

1. Make sure your blog posts can be shared. On many blogs, you will see buttons or links for “Subscribe” (or “RSS”), buttons for del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg and so on (see the “Share this” at the bottom of this post). People us these tools to subscribe to your posts (use a feed program like Feedreader or a web site like Bloglines to see your subscriptions).del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Digg and Reddit are “social bookmarking” sites; if people like your blog post, they will submit it to these services where other people can find your blog. These services can bring tremendous amounts of traffic to good blog postings.To install these tools, you can sign up for services at Feedburner.com for RSS subscription tools, and there are lots of plug-ins for syndication tools. I use a WordPress plug-in called “Share-this”, and the individual syndication sites have snippits of code you can put on your site to facilitate sharing.
2. Submit your own content to the syndication services. Once. Digging and Stumbling your own content is fair, but do it only once. Let others find your post, and if it is good, the traffic will come. The places I syndicate my content: Google Bookmarks, StumbleUpon, Digg, Technorati, Reddit and del.icio.us.
3. Comment on other people’s blogs. Most blog commenting tools have a place where you can enter a web site address (see below) - use this to create a link back to your own blog. Rule when commenting: don’t comment for the sake of commenting, make it good and relevant to the discussion. The links from other people’s blogs are very search engine friendly; Google likes blogs and links from blogs. Incorporate this strategy as part of a SEO strategy.
4. Write compelling, easily readable content. There are many reasons people read blogs, and there are a few formulas for writing popular postings. My rule, and the goal of this particular blog: give people some tips and advice on design and marketing they can use immediately and every day.Easy-to-read content is also key. Long blocks of text with no breaks is difficult to read; lists are very easy. Use bold and italics to highlight important points and provide places where people’s eyes are automatically attracted. Good web typography is important.

Any other ideas? Share your tips in the comments!

Share This

One of the core components of social media is the community web site. Flickr is a general photo community, Facebook et al is the ultimate digital society with many, many subgroups. There are also a lot of niche groups following a SM structure. And, as a designer, this is one I can’t live without.

COLOURlovers.com

There are many facets of this site that make it a great social media/community site, at least for those of us who love colour.

1. All content is user-generated. This is a hallmark of a Social Media site. User-generated media, or crowdsourcing, is a model followed by many sites, including Digg.com, YouTube.com, Wikipedia.org and iStockPhoto.com.
2. There are strong commenting, rating and bookmarking tools. The ability to engage with others on the site through commenting on palettes, making friends, rating people’s palettes and colours, and bookmarking and saving colours is very easy, and heavily encouraged through a points system. This generates a high degree of contact between the community members.
3. The site is based around people’s profiles. The profile - a page about you - is a core feature of social sites. It provides an anchor in the site, and a place where people can learn about you (like the small talk of any cocktail party), and you can learn about others. Facebook.com is a profile site; other sites use profiles to create the community aspect.
4. There is a strong and continual sense of branding on the site, but is not intrusive. Everybody on COLOURlovers.com is a “lover”. All of the text, down to the 404 page, revolvers around this theme. If you want to leave the site, they’ll understand because not all relationships work out, and they hope that we can still be friends. The consistency of this theme is incredible - rarely has this been executed so thoroughly and consistently.
5. The blog establishes the site’s expertise, and selected members of the community guest blog. The site has established itself as an expert in colour through sharp commentary in the blog, and selected experts within the community share their observations in the “official” blog.
6. The crowd contributes heavily to social bookmarking. The blog posts get Digged frequently by the community, and occasionally show up on Digg’s front page driving even more traffic to the site.
7. COLOURlovers.com maintains and encourages a Facebook group. Using other social media sites to promote your site’s community is a very basic SMM tactic.
8. The site’s founder - Darius - is front and center in the community. And the site’s not so big that you can’t get a personal email from him. That’s socialbility.

There are at least a dozen more ways that this site is a textbook example of a vibrant web community. It is very much a niche site, but the web site facilitates, not hinders, the community building.

Check out my palettes!

Share This

I’ve been working on a web site for a Vietnamese restaurant, and the owners want the full Vietnamese names on the menu. The Word document they sent doesn’t translate to the web; I need HTML entity codes for these characters.

The good news is that Vietnamese is basically a Latin alphabet, but with non-standard Latin diacritical marks. For example, typical characters might be:

ữ

ả

The first item is a “small letter u with a horn and a tilde above”. The a has a hook above.

The characters are a part of the Unicode specification, but finding the characters can be difficult. However, there is an excellent web site (not so easy to use, but information-rich): http://www.fileformat.info.

First, you need to declare your language encoding; the language set that your web browser will use to render the text. This is not mandatory, but it is good practice, even if you web site is in English.

For Unicode characters (good in this application - it is a wide set of characters):

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

For a basic English web site, you can use:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

Next, you need to use the HTML entity code for special character which looks like this:

{

The characters I used for the Vietnamese menu are in the Latin Extended Additional set of the Unicode specification; there are usually HTML Entity equivalents you can use. For example, the Unicode code for the small u with horn and tilde is U+1EEF; the equivalent HTML entity code is ữ.

The site is coming together nicely, and having the correct language, including the diacriticals, is the icing on the cake.

Share This

Have you seen the Wal-mart ghost on Facebook? Trying desperately to escape the cellophane package it’s trapped in?

(If not, see Rob Maguire’s post at The Dominion for picture and commentary).

There has been a lot of excellent commentary about Wal-mart’s venture into social media, but time and time again, they prove they just don’t get it. I’ve argued that social media is not just another channel for traditional marketing, and Wal-mart seems to prove this over and over with kludgy Facebook pages, failed social networks of their own, and a failure to address their criticism at a grassroots level.

What can Wal-mart do to revamp it’s strategy? It’s a long road, but here are a few ideas (no, even if approached, I wouldn’t consult for Wal-Mart - I’m not sucking up, just trying to illustrate a point. Oh. wait, the mortgage is coming due…  :)  )

1. Comment on the critical blogs.
   The social web is an excellent place to address criticism and make your side of the argument heard. But tread lightly.
   • Admit to mistakes (very, very hard to do, but you look humble and you open a dialogue instead of a diatribe).
   • Don’t get defensive or aggressive. Don’t allow your marketing people to write anything - it must come from the top levels of management; remember that this is a conversation with those who are in a position to make a difference.
   • Don’t let “spin” or “damage control” enter your mind. Be honest and open and genuine.
2. Revamp the Facebook strategy.
   Don’t promote - it’s too transparent. Treat us with a bit more dignity, please. If you *have* to use Facebook “to connect with your target audience” (markety-speak), make it social, make it interactive, make it fun. I’ll join becuase there’s something there for me, not to listen to you. Target is fun (with a bit of selling), Walmart is selling (with not much fun). There’s a reason Target has 14,000 members screaming that they love you and Walmart has 1200 members screaming that they hate you. Make something fun, like this from milk (I love this, have I mentioned that?).
3. Connect with your fans.
   Find the people that love you (not your staff), and get them talking about you. If enough fans talk about you loud enough, it’ll drown out the critics.
4. Don’t give people anything to criticize (well, that’s my own 2 cents).
   Honest and fair dealings. Quality for a good price. Be the company that everyone admires. Is goodwill more meaningful to you that good prices? Can you have both? I’m looking at you, Mountain Equipment Co-op…

Stop talking at me and start talking with me. There’s your SMM in a nutshell.

Share This

Social media seems to bring out statements like “let’s spread our brand virally” or “blogging will drive traffic to our web site”. I’ve talked with marketing people who see SMM as just another channel to promote their brand and are not treating it like a brand new communication channel that has its own set of rules. And they are missing the one and only thing they must know abour social media marketing:

Be genuine

1. Be genuine in your desire to talk to people.
   Social media is social. You need to start, join and participate in conversations. Marketing is about talking at people; social media is about talking with people. If you are unwilling to talk with your audience, good and bad, SMM is not for you.
2. Be genuine with your content.
   Blogs that pitch, pitch, pitch don’t get returning readers. While it is OK to occasionally pitch your company, readers quicky tire of advertising. Educate, amuse, inform or editorialize; this makes good content. Rohit Bhargava has an excellent presentation: The 25 Basic Styles of Blogging … And When To Use Each One
3. Be genuine in your reason for wanting to do social marketing.
   Why do you blog? To drive traffic to your web site or because you have something to say and share with people who will find it useful? Social media marketing is not about “campaigns”. It is not something that you can take or leave depending on market conditions. SMM is about a genuine desire to create and nurture genuine links between you and your audience. It take energy and commitment, and if you are not passionate about your audience, don’t try to fake it.
4. Be genuine in your interest in the social web.
   Read blogs, Digg stories, spruce up your Facebook profile, comment, get involved. The social web is a difficult place for dilettantes. Commit to understanding social media.

Share This

“Let’s make something viral”. A marketing colleague of mine gets this line from his clients. His reponse: “well, do something good, then”.

I also got a line recently: “how can we get some word of mouth marketing?”. Trust me, you don’t want word-of-mouth marketing, you want viral marketing. And here’s why.

Actually, I will cheat and summarize Seth Godin’s blog post today: Is viral marketing the same as word of mouth?

Word of mouth marketing decays. The message is repeated a few times and fades. A good meal, a bad flight (to use Seth’s examples). Unless the story is unique and memorable, the bad flight story sticks around long enough to be replaced by another bad flight story. The marketer usually needs to repeat the story over and over before there is any staying power.

Viral marketing takes off like a virus - grows, replicates and spreads without the marketer’s assistance. Something that is so good it cannot help but spread. The marketer is out of the loop after the initial seeding; the idea spreads on its own from person to person.

Which brings me to milk.

Or, more specifically, Get the Glass. First of all, milk (actually, the California Milk Processor Board) has done brilliant viral marketing - Got Milk? is a cultural meme.

But Get the Glass is a whole lot of fun. I got an email from a good friend of mine today insisting I had to look at this game. And I played it. And I was wowed. And I will pass it on to my friends.

‘Nuff said. Go look it up. And pass it on.

Share This

My current employer, Officejobs.com, is a strong supporter of the Calgary Drop-In and Rehab Centre, a local homeless shelter. Every year, we run a clothing drive, and this year, I will be creating a Facebook group to reach out to the community for help. I expect moderate success - I’d love to see 50 members in the first two weeks of the campaign, and lots of donations, of course. The second part of this is, of course, to raise the profile and awareness of Officejobs.com.

(Shameless promotion: I have a Facebook group of my own, “Calgary Cares About Its Homeless“, started as a personal thing. Please join and promote.)

Is it easier to rally people around a cause if there is no corporate name attached to it?

Should companies adopt a cause so they can use Facebook in this manner?

How can your company use the reach of Facebook to rally people around a cause?

Is it cynical or against unspoken Facebook etiquitte to use Facebook in this manner?

Discuss.

Share This

Today is the civic election in Calgary, and a lot of talk has been given to the curbside recycling issue, yet there are few good plans.

It’s just embarrassing that Calgary doesn’t have curbside recycling, and the plans that council have discussed are too expensive for average Calgarians. Even at $100/year ($8/month - the original plan was $21/month), this is still over 4x more expensive than Vancouver, which pays $22.46/year. Council: find the will to make curbside recycling happen for a price that all Calgarians can get behind.

Share This

Um, no… 

Give me a reason to click into your blog/video/article/whatever. If I think I am going to be bombarded by “markety-speak”, forget about it. Give me content - information, opinion, entertainment. Don’t give me the same old stuff you publish in those glossy brochures; I don’t care. If I do care, I will seek it out when I am ready, not before.

Engage me. Talk to me like you are a human and I am a human. What are you offering that I *have* to share with my friends (corporate spam I will send to my enemies)? You won’t start a conversation with me if you are screaming “LIMITED TIME OFFER”. If you teach me something new every week, I will tune in every week. And when I am ready for your company, you are front-of-mind.

If I want to be talked at, I’ll watch TV.

Share This

The last year has seen a pretty radical change in how web sites are getting traffic. Social media is changing the face of web traffic, and a business that is social media savvy is going to do a lot more, and better, business that companies that rely on Google searches.

 Not that Google is dead - far from it - but social media marketing is all about connecting with and engaging your customers and clients. Marketing departments have always paid lip service to this, but real SMM forces them to do it in a real way that ends up having real payoff. Afraid to talk with, not to, your customers? Maybe social media marketing isn’t for you. But if you want to create a genuine dialogue with people, you cannot avoid social media.

 Social Media Marketing uses tools like:

• blogging. Keeping a regular online journal about the things going on in your company and industry. Blogging allows you to:
  • keep people informed about things going on in your company - news, job postings, etc.
  • show your expertise; give people tips and tricks about your business or industry, discuss trends, etc.
  • inform your customers of sales, promotions, contests, etc. - helps drive sales
  • get feedback about your products or services
• social bookmarking. Said something interesting? Allow people to bookmark infomration to share with others on sites like Reddit, Digg, del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. Ask what “The Digg Effect” is…
• social networking. Connnect with your customers on sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. Some sites have strict rules against corporate spamming, but smart marketers can engage people voluntarily in ways that don’t break site rules or people’s goodwill.
• shared media. How can you use Flickr, YouTube, SlideShare and others to show your expertise?

The biggest difference between search traffic and social media traffic is the level of engagement from users arriving at your site.

Search engines usually drive traffic based on keyword searches. For example, someone might arrive at the Future Shop web site because of a search for LCD TV. Future Shop still needs to immediately convince the visitor to engage with the site right on the home page, and every other page of the site, since users may not come in the “front door”. It is a very difficult and expensive job to create trust, engagement, etc. quickly, and many companies fail this job completely.

However, if you can create this trust level elsewhere and people come to your site because you have established you cred elsewhere, most of the battle has been won long before people come to your site. For example, if Future Shop posts a “What you need to know about LCD TV” on YouTube (how-to videos is one of the biggest categories on YouTube), they have established trust and expertise through non-”markety” media, and the visitor arrives ready to engage. And they have arrived outside of the Google channel.

Google and search engine traffic isn’t dead, dying, on life support or even in need of medication. But there are better ways to bring qualified traffic to your web site.

Share This