Alert Blog Reviews

It’s hard to believe that 2009 is finally coming to an end. As is always a very popular practice the media likes to take us on a stroll down Memory Lane but make sure we take a brief turn onto Morbid Court. Why? Because it is important to recap what celebrities either died or train-wrecked their lives in the past year. I admit that I read these lists more often than I should and often have the “I didn’t know they died!” moments which do literally nothing to make life better. They just happen. So why not look at how advertisers may have or could have benefited from celebrity news that range from death to sordid trysts to you name it? Search Engine Watch has spoken to Blogads CEO Henry Copeland and came away with this The sudden death of actress Brittany Murphy this week tied a morbid bow on a big 2009 trend — that of celebrities dying and falling from grace. According to Blogads CEO Henry Copeland, the unfortunate events provided advertisers on his network, at times, with a considerable amount of additional exposure at no cost. At this point there are a million places to go with this one and most are not complimentary. I am going to stay on the purely business side of this one though which is sordid enough. Basically, there appears to be a little disappointment from CEO Copeland in the structure of the advertising world as agencies and red tape don’t allow for advertisers to fully take advantage of traffic spikes due to these ‘events’. Though Copeland explained that his company could get campaigns “up and running in a matter of hours,” he said that Blogads didn’t receive any calls from marketers during the celebrity events. “Most major brand campaigns are planned weeks or months…ahead of time. So we haven’t had any ‘drive-by’ advertisers hop on a hot story.” He continued, “We don’t anticipate this kind of demand going forward because of the way the ad agencies and their clients are structured… There’s just [too many] decision-makers and [too much] budgeting, time-lag, and iterative looping built into the process. A really agile and smart advertiser should jump into these stories; but the structure of the ad industry makes it almost impossible.” Well, this just seems too good of an idea to pass up! I have the solution to this and I sure hope that no one takes this one and runs with it. I am going to hang out my shingle for my new ad agency called “Advertising Ambulance Chasers”. I think I will add the tag line: “We Get You There Even Before the Lawyers”. I understand traffic is critical for advertisers but are we going to be heading down this road to make sure that we advertise around tragedy because its good business? I hope not. We can leave that to the cable news networks who don’t realize just how pathetic they look when they make all of their pretty graphics and pithy sayings around the major headlines of the day which are always about some form of pain and suffering. Maybe I am just being naive and it doesn’t really matter how you get the exposure just as long as you do. Imagine though, that people get used to your brand showing up around tragic events? Just seems odd to me. As an advertiser or just an Internet marketer in general, what are your thoughts on trying to be ‘agile enough’ to advertise where the trouble is? Is this how you would like to have your brand known? Is there any potential harm in trying to be a morbidly opportunistic marketer? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Celebrity Death and Misfortune May Help Advertisers

Twitter may have began as a simple communication platform for friends and family, but it quickly evolved into an amazingly powerful marketing tool. Arguably, becoming one of the most effective resources for marketing and business professionals alike. One of the really great aspects of Twitter for any professional is the ability to target large amounts of people based on their interests and location. It is this niche/geo targeting that enables “web savvy” real estate agents to reach much larger amounts of prospective clients than ever before. ** Traditional marketing serves as no challenge to a successful Twitter campaign. The Power of Twitter Friends To find success on Twitter you need friends, lots of them. The more people that befriend you the better as it extends your reach each and every time you post a new tweet. Building a substantial amount of friends often requires a physical attempt on your part, unless of course you also happen to be famous. Its important to remember that the more targeted your twitter friends are to real estate and/or your area, the more potential leads you will find. Here are a few tips for finding targeted prospects: Location Search: One of the best things you can do is find friends in and around your local area, after all they are likely the ones that will be buying houses there. For example, a search for Portland Oregon turns up a lot of people that live and work in the Portland area. Industry Search: Search for terms like “real estate,, “real estate agent”, “buying real estate”, you could come up with these for days. Many of these searches will return other real estate agents. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that befriending another real estate agent is a bad thing. Agents refer clients to other agents all of the time, don’t pass on that opportunity. Searching for Related Terms: Search for terms such as “need to move”, “house shopping”, “shopping for a new home”, etc. Admittedly, this type of search tends to be less targeted but can still provide additional exposure and possible clients considering a move to your area. Please note: While the Twitter search bar may not look like much at first glance, it harnesses a tremendous amount of power under the hood. The search tips above are designed to drill down into targeted areas of interest and reach more clients. Twitter Tools for Real Estate Agents There are a number of great tools out there that can increase the power of Twitter and decrease the amount of time and effort required to use Twitter successfully. Some that would be valuable to real estate agents are: Twitter Local : Twitter Local is a pretty neat Adobe Air application that allows you to filter tweets by location. This makes finding potential clients in your area extremely easy. Monitter : Monitter allows you to monitor specific terms and keywords as they are mentioned. This is very powerful to a Twitter marketer and can open up a lot of possible new relationships for real estate agents. Twellow : List your real estate business in Twellow a Yellow Pages type listing directory for Twitter accounts. This is also a great place to find other real estate agents in your area and across the country. TweetLister : TweetLister is a really unique service that makes adding your property listings to Twitter easy! This online service automatically converts your listings to tweets and posts them to Twitter. Pretty neat, huh. Twitter, Another Tool for Real Estate Agents Basically, what it boils down to is that Twitter is a unique platform with a lot of potential for maximizing exposure to your real estate business. As with any tool or service, you have to actually use it to make it work. Nothing happens on its own. The great folks behind Twitter have given you the people and the platform, now its your job to do the sorting and marketing. Have fun with it! © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . Twitter for Real Estate Agents – From Tweets to Clients

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Twitter for Real Estate Agents – From Tweets to Clients

When we first launched Trackur , my target audience was the person that had outgrown Google Alerts, but didn’t have the budget for the existing–expensive–online reputation monitoring tools. Well, fast forward 18 months–and almost 13,000 registered accounts–and it turns out that Trackur is extremely popular among PR and marketing firms. You see, if they want to manage dozens of client accounts, they don’t want to have to blow their budget in the process. That’s why we built the Trackur Agency plan . We’ve been quietly adding all kinds of great features: Unlimited client profiles Unlimited saved searches Direct client logins No contracts White-labeling The white-labeling is the one that we’ve worked hard on and now we make it even easier to put your brand in front of Trackur–instead of ours. When you sign-up for an Agency plan , we’ll register a domain name on your behalf, upload your logo, and give you your very own social media monitoring solution! You can keep close control over your client’s monitoring, or give each client their own unique monitoring dashboard. All for around $300 a month! Actually, $297 a month is the pricing we’re offering until the end of the year. So, if you want to offer monitoring of any kind of news media to your clients, now’s the time to get your Trackur Agency plan.

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Hey Agencies! Want Your Own Online Reputation Monitoring Service?

I’ve been a contributing analyst for the eConsultancy/ cScape Customer Engagement Survey over the past few years. The 2010 edition has just landed and I thought I would share with you the data that jumped out at me. Email Newsletters Fading? The 2nd Customer Engagement Survey saw businesses focusing their efforts on using email newsletters to improve customer engagement. An incredible 69% of companies stated that they had measured a tangible improvement through their e-newsletter campaigns so it was not a surprise that 59% planned to invest heavily in email marketing by the time we came to the third survey. By contrast, investment in social networks – such as Facebook – was down on the list of priorities with only 36% of companies planning to increase their investment in that area. Social Networks See Huge Investment So, what happened now we are on survey four and looking at 2010? Those that took a chance and invested in social networks saw a big return on investment. For companies, email newsletters still rated as the tactic offering the highest tangible improvement (67%) but a whopping 44% – almost double the percentage from 2009 – have discovered that social networks helped increase their online customer engagement. That return on investment has clearly caught the attention of both companies and their agencies. In 2010, the survey predicts that 61% of company executives will be increasing their focus on social networks , while agencies are even more bullish, expecting their clients to spend more on social networking (66%) than even email newsletters (41%). Twitter’s King of Engagement Perhaps the most stunning statistic is the percentage of companies that plan to invest in Twitter as a channel for customer engagement. In last year’s report, Twitter barely registered with survey participants with just 7% of companies realizing improved customer engagement from Twitter, hence only 13% planned to invest in Twitter in 2009. What a difference a year makes! Twitter has seen massive growth and companies are scrambling to make the micro-blogging channel a key part of their customer engagement efforts. In fact, with 35% of companies seeing an improvement in their customer engagement from Twitter in 2009, almost 44% of companies plan to increase their investment in Twitter in 2010. That’s a three-fold improvement over last year! Engagement = Conversations What conclusions can we draw from this? Well, it’s apparent that companies are realizing that customers expect engagement to be a two-way dialogue. Email newsletters are a great way to keep customers updated but they don’t really engage them. Instead, companies are seeing measurable benefits of actually having a conversation with their customers be it via Facebook, Twitter or whatever, making them willing to invest more of their marketing/PR budgets to reap the fruits of that engagement. Want to get your hands on all the data? Get your copy of the cScape/Econsultancy report!

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Customer Engagement Survey Shows Twitter is King of ROI

Blogs have now become an integral part of the internet. They compete very well with websites. A blog is a way of publishing information online. What is peculiar about blogs is that you can post direct and personal information on it. It is easily accessible and there are no difficult procedures to follow in order to put information on a blog. There are a lot of websites that provide you with the opportunity to have your own blogs. Major Websites come with their own blogs attached. Blogs should be well managed properly so that they can benefit the business. Here are a few things that go into blog management. Time Time is a very important factor in blog management. You must devote a specific amount of time for you blog. Depending on what the blog is intended for, there could be daily, weekly, monthly post in a blog. What is important is that you should keep to your schedules. If it becomes obvious that you can keep the rhythm, you are free to change. Content If your blog is for business purposes, the content of what you post in it should be directly related your business. You should run it as a support for your business. You should therefore post information that will be relevant to your customers. That is the place where you can provide detail and direct answers to frequently emerging problems. Because of that, the language of your post should be good. That is the only way your clients will find your blog useful. If the topic you want to talk about is very vast, you have to break it up into various subtopics. Each topic should be a post on itself. In that way you will not have post that are too long to read. The essence of a blog is to provide fast and relevant information. Use the tools There are many tools that are provided by the blog to enable you manage it properly. Most blogger don’t make use of such tools as RSS feeds. You must use them to make managing your blogs easier. Get assistance If you find out that you have more than you can handle, you must get assistance from others. You can hire a professional blogger who will see to your blog whiles you keep on seeing to your main business. There are many people who are ready to do this on contract basis. You will not have to keep them on your payroll. You pay them according to the number of posts, their length and quality. Choosing people to manage your blog on your behalf involve a few things. The first is that you should be sure you get the right person. You can get a lot of candidates online to make post on your behalf. You must do the necessary check before hiring. The next thing is that you must monitor the blog to find out whether things are being done well and professionally. If not you should feel free to fire and employ new persons.

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What goes into Blog Management

There’s no question that social media has reshaped the way we do business online. I’ve posted a couple of times about using Facebook with clients ; however, the real power of social media lies within Twitter. Used correctly, Twitter can become an integral part of your projects from client screening to web site integration to ongoing client education and interaction. In this post I will step through some ideas on integrating Twitter with your projects and clients before, during and after the project process. Before the Project Think of Twitter as a powerful set of ears. You can listen broadly to the chatter going on or you can hone in on specific conversations. This gives you insight into what prospects are talking about, and it enables you to interact with them in a resource capacity. Connect with potential clients How can you use Twitter to seek out new clients? The first thing you need to do is banish any thought of Twitter as a sales tool. It’s nothing of the sorts. Twitter is a resource tool. You help people, follow them and converse with them, and in return they interact with you. You can ignite this relationship with prospects by searching out keywords related to web design, your geographic area or even your competitors. Some people may be explicitly looking for web design services while others may just be a connection to an organization you want to do business with. You should also look up your offline prospects on Twitter to see if you can interact with them at a new level. The key is to be there as a resource. Talk to these people. Engage them. You may never do business with them, but Twitter is a public forum and the more actively involved you are, the more visible you become. Conduct due diligence Social media has ushered in a huge amount of transparency into the online world. Employers can see what their employees are up to on Facebook, your name is at the mercy of Google’s index and you can easily be tagged on photo sharing sites. Use this to your advantage. If you’re trying to complete a deal with a prospect that actually has a Twitter presence, see what they’re up to. Dig into their past tweets to see what they post about. It may help you to learn more about their needs or it may send warning flags up. Be prepared For prospects that are not on Twitter, it may be in their best interest to join. This is where your expertise comes into play and where you need to convince the prospect that Twitter should be incorporated into their online presence. Be prepared for negative reactions. These reactions are typically easy to foresee. For example, the biggest argument against Twitter I’ve seen is that it’s just a bunch of people talking about the nonsensical stuff they’re doing throughout the day. Granted that this is a part of Twitter, it’s not an important part. The important part is where people come together to act as a resource to each other or to respond to customer complaints (or praises). By excluding yourself from Twitter, you’re excluding yourself from the conversation. That’s just one counterargument. The most effective way to convince a prospect to get on Twitter is to prepare real life examples of Twitter in use for business purposes. I constantly find myself referring to ComcastCares , a tired but usable example. Go local Tweet-ups are excellent reasons to network. In a typical tweet-up, several local Twitter users will gather in a restaurant or coffee shop to get to know each other. You never know exactly who is going to show up which makes it a great way to network with new people outside your usual social circles. The cool thing is that there are many people on Twitter who have a number of connections. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point , would call them connectors, and one of them may just show up to the tweet-up. Make sure they know who you are. During the Project You have the client and now the fun begins. Twitter has taken on a very active role in web projects that can help your client to extend their presence even further online. Your job is to help them accomplish this. Introduce Twitter So you’ve convinced the prospect to give Twitter a shot. Don’t stop there. Keep educating them by introducing core concepts and functionalities of Twitter. You can show them desktop and iPhone applications such as TweetDeck , and explain the features of Twitter such as the newly unveiled retweet and list functions. Go from theory to hands-on Most clients can grasp the basics of Twitter but after that it becomes a blur. How exactly can they use Twitter for their web presence? You can’t just setup a Twitter account, show them a few things and then send them on their way. You have to show them hands-on how to use Twitter. Help the client form some initial ideas on what to tweet about. Chances are they’ll want to tweet about their newest sales promotion. Discourage them from posting this kind of content. The best way to get clients thinking is by helping them identify some people to follow. Once the client can see what other effective people post to Twitter, the ideas should start flowing more easily. Web site integration Integrating a client’s most recent tweets into their web presence is a piece of cake. You can use Twitter’s widget or you can deploy one of the countless third party tools that exist. Content management systems such as WordPress offer numerous Twitter plugins as well. You need to be careful when advising the client whether or not integrating Twitter with the web site is a good idea. Is the client using a personal Twitter account or is it a company branded account? If it’s personal and they’re posting questionable content, that’s when you need to think about either establishing a secondary account or excluding Twitter altogether from the web site. Status updates One unique way to think about Twitter for projects is on the status update side of things. If you establish a private account that only your client can access, you can share quick updates on the project progress. This might only work if the client already loves Twitter, but it may be worth giving a shot if you have a lot of little things you need to communicate in a timely fashion. Bare bones At the very least, if the client has an RSS feed for their blog, events, press releases or other timely content, setup a twitterfeed account . Twitterfeed will post each new RSS update as a new tweet. Even if the client isn’t interested in Twitter, then they’ll at least have somewhat of a presence. After the Project The project’s done, the site’s been launched and the client’s happy – congratulations – you’re not done. Twitter is one of those things that you need to constantly stick to in order to succeed with it. This can be hard on the client and where your expertise can continue to come into play. Continue the education Keep the client engaged with Twitter by sending them useful tips and notes on how to use it. Send them new people to follow, answer their questions and advise them on best practices. Even if you’re not being paid a consulting fee any longer, it’s still a great way to continue building a bond with a client without investing too much time. Interact You’re on Twitter and your client is on Twitter. The only natural thing to do is interact with them. Retweet or reply to anything interesting they post, and make sure you drop them a direct message every so often. Twitter is just another platform to help you communicate with clients in a new way. See how you’re doing Most small companies don’t need to worry about this, but make sure you always have a pulse on what people are saying about your organization on Twitter. Just search for your name or your company’s name. It’s not hard and you can unearth complaints, praises or other mentions worth reacting to. And if you work for a large organization, take the initiative to start engaging with clients. Maybe they’re complaining about something you never would have known about. Respond to their needs and repair the relationship. Get everyone in a room If you have multiple clients you’re educating about Twitter, take the opportunity to consider organizing a half-day seminar. You can use the seminar to cover Twitter basics, dip into advanced topics and field questions. I’ve done this before and it’s very effective. You can even charge for the seminar and turn it into a really worthwhile event. The best part is that you’re interacting with your clients in a face-to-face manner, which is very powerful. One final thought In closing this post, it’s worth mentioning one big Twitter no-no of mine. Never, ever post negative stuff about a client on Twitter. It doesn’t matter if you’re vague or careful, just don’t do it. It’s needlessly risky and unprofessional. What if the client stumbles onto your Twitter profile and sees the update? What if they figure out it’s them you’re throwing under the bus? This can lead to an awkward and precarious relationship with your client. My recommendation: Keep it safe and positive if you tweet about clients. And with that said, I’m always interested in learning about how other people use Twitter with clients and projects. Speak up! Leave a comment and share your insight. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . How to Use Twitter with Prospects and Clients Before, During and After Web Design Projects

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How to Use Twitter with Prospects and Clients Before, During and After Web Design Projects

You know what’s missing from your social business profile on LinkedIn? Your tweet from yesterday, “Just remembered how much I like pickles.” Twitter and LinkedIn have anticipated your whim—today they’re announcing a partnership . Okay, seriously, plenty of real business information is shared on Twitter. Depending on how you use the service, this really may be just what your profile needed—proof that you’re engaging with others in your industry, sharing helpful information, and have the know-how to do your job. On the other hand, Twitter has also become an easy way to promote yourself—both in touting your abilities and giving yourself an actual promotion, to “guru.” Not everyone tweeting, and not everything said on Twitter, can be taken as evidence of expertise/guruosity/genius. But don’t worry; if you’re tweeting so much to cover up the fact that you have nothing to say, you don’t have to add Twitter to LinkedIn. The New York Times reports : LinkedIn’s 51 million members will now be able to send status updates — such as the fact that they are looking for an analyst on a certain topic, or posting a job opening — to Twitter on a case-by-case basis, and vice versa. People will also be able to add a section to their LinkedIn profile that contains their most recent tweets and view other people’s tweets when searching LinkedIn. While this may get Twitter some more tweeting action and professional credibility, I think it’s probably an even smarter move for LinkedIn. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner “wants LinkedIn to be the hub for all professional conversation,” according to the Times—and this looks like just the way to do it. But remember, if your Twitter profile has more about your cat than your clients, it may not be a good idea to include that in your professional profile. What do you think? Is this a better deal for Twitter or LinkedIn? Will you use it? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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The Tweets Are Coming — To LinkedIn