The topic I presented on was called “Social Media Strategizin’” and covered the way I like to approach social media and used some illustrations and case studies from my experience working in social media for Wilsonart International. Here is the slide deck:

Karla Patterson took notes and provided a great summary of the presentation, which is posted on the Waco Social Media Breakfast blog.

One group I met were from Squeeky Wheel Marketing in Belton, TX. They’re the guys behind wacoboard.com. This is an interesting concept from some guys who were looking to fill the need of helping incoming freshmen to the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor and Baylor University find businesses in the area. It’s a also a fun way for businesses to connect with customers. I’m looking to interview these guys for an upcoming post … stay tuned for that.

Special thanks to Caryn Brown and CJ Jackson for organizing this event and inviting me,  the wacoboard.com guys for letting me us their 25′ VGA cable, and to Rudy’s in Waco for allowing us to meet there.

While I think it’s a great idea to get on this bandwagon now, I’m not so sure about putting a lot of effort into platform-specific applications. Even though the iPhone is the current market leader, does it make sense to develop an application which only runs on that device? From what I read, Android devices are coming up fast. And who knows what will happen with Windows phones, Blackberries and such. For many businesses, it doesn’t make sense from a cost perspective to put a lot of effort into creating applications which only work on one device.

This reminds me of the debate I used to hear about coding web pages so they would work properly on a Mac or in a browser other than Internet Explorer: Why would you purposely alienate a potentially large percentage of your audience because you choose not to take their browser or operating system quirks into account? I think a similar question holds here, only it relates to smart phone browser or operating systems quirks.

Enter The Web App
In my mind, a cross-platform application makes a lot more sense. And what could be more cross-platform than a web-based app which runs in a mobile web browser? While there are still design challenges involved in dealing with the various mobile browsers, the application  code remains the same. What works on the iPhone will, in all likelihood, work on an Android or Windows phone, too. While it is true that platform-specific apps have more potential for “bells and whistles,” a mobile web browser app can look good and be extremely useful.

Here are some advantages of mobile web apps over platform-specific ones:

• Cross-platform compatibility
• Web browser apps are easier to deploy, update and maintain.
• Because web browser apps predominately run on a central web server, there are no distribution issues like trying to get into the iPhone app store.
• Instead of having to train someone to code for a specific platform or outsource development, companies can use the in-house expertise they already have.
• If a framework such as .NET is used for web development, the same code that powers current web applications can be reused for the back end processes of a mobile browser application. This will cut development time and cost.

I’m not the only one thinking along these lines. While discussing the release of their iPhone app, the Jason’s Deli tweeter indicated they are going to follow up with a mobile browser-based app. The reason: it works on any phone.

What about you? What do you think about mobile web apps? Do you lean towards browser-based or platform-specific apps? Let us know in the comments.

photo credit: Symic

Here are the details:

Tuesday, August 31, 2010
7:30 – 9:00 am

Rudy’s Country Store and Bar-B-Q
2510 Circle Rd.
Waco, TX 76706

If you’re in the area, please stop by and say “hi.” Oh, and Rudy’s has some great breakfast tacos and coffee – that alone is worth coming.

Visit Eventbrite for more information and to get your complimentary ticket.

Thanks to Caryn Brown and CJ Jackson for organizing this event and inviting me.

See you there.

photo credit: Amy-N

As more people get involved in more and more social media settings, there is a temptation to try to automate posting as much as possible. There are services which will allow you to post in once place and the service will automatically send that post to the other selected services. Some services, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, have bots or applications which will grab your postings from other sites (mostly Twitter) and pull them into your stream on their service.

On the one hand, this seems like a handy way to be involved everywhere at once. But there are some downsides you need to be aware of:

1. I wrote about the downside of cross posting from Twitter to Facebook earlier this year. (This is one of my more popular recent articles, too.) In that piece, I point out that if you port tweets with links from Twitter, Facebook won’t pull the nice description and thumbnail into the link. I think the link with the thumbnail is much more eye-catching.
2. Something noted in the comments of the article about Facebook noted above is the use of hashtags (the “pound sign” as in “#subject”) which are commonly used on Twitter to help people track comments and conversations on the service. These aren’t used on other services and can cause confusion to those who are not into Twitter.
3. On Twitter, if you want to send a message to someone’s attention, you add “@” to the message, something like this: “@rehor this is a great topic.” Like hashtags, these are lost on other services. Although Facebook has adopted this, it’s really more of a Twitter thing.
4. Speaking of “@” messages: If you’re cross-posting your Twitter feed to other services, only the “@” messages from you in a Twitter conversation show up in your stream. Your followers on those other services will only see half of a conversation, which won’t make much sense to them.
5. As Tim pointed out in our conversation, sending all your tweets to LinkedIn does cause some clutter. This is especially true since LinkedIn combined all messages from and about contacts into one stream like Facebook’s wall.
6. I find that my followers on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are made up of quite different audiences. I only “friend” people on Facebook I actually know, and most of them aren’t interested in my comments on social media or web development. I recently set up a separate Facebook page for this blog so those who want can follow more business-related stuff from that page.
7. The 140 character limit to tweets does not apply on Facebook and LinkedIn. While the character limit does force Twitter users to be concise, sometimes to the point of confusion, why limit yourself if you don’t have to? I’m not advocating writing War and Peace in your Facebook or LinkedIn comments, but a little extra verbiage can sometimes be a good thing.

For a time last year, I did run my Twitter feed to my Facebook wall. I found I spent so much time answering questions about things which made no sense to my friends there that it wasn’t worth whatever benefit I might get from being more active. I do still port my Foursquare check ins to Facebook, though, mostly so folks there can know what I’m up to.

What about you? Do you automatically cross post your Twitter feed to other social media services? Why or why not? Please leave your thoughts in the comments.

You may be one of those reading this and thinking to yourself, “My web site is small, why do I need to bother analyzing my web traffic?” Read on. I think you’ll be convinced by the time you finish this article.

Even if your web site is a one page starter site, it’s a great idea to start tracking your web traffic now. Sometime in the future you will update your site. Establishing baseline data now can help show if your changes brought in more or less traffic.  If your site has more than one page, it would be great to see what your customers view – which parts of the web site are more or less popular. This knowledge can help you better understand what kind of information you might need to add, enhance or delete.

Another good set of information is what kind of browsing capabilities your customers have:

• Which web browsers are most popular among your users? If the majority of your customers are using Firefox and Chrome, you might want to avoid using ActiveX controls on your web site since that’s an Internet Explorer-only technology.
• Which operating systems are most prevalent with your customers? If you find that 75% of your customers are iPad users, you might want to avoid redoing your site in Adobe’s Flash since the iPad doesn’t support Flash.
• What kind of connection to the internet do your visitors have? If most of your customers are still languishing on dialup, you might want to avoid doing a lot of streaming video because that will slow the site down too much for them to be useful.

If you’re going to consider doing any kind of ads on the web (Adsense, banner ads you purchase on sites, etc.) it’s a great idea to track your web referrers (those sites which send you traffic) before you start. As your campaign goes on, you’ll be able to spot rather quickly if you’re getting a traffic bump from your advertising efforts. Later, if when you decide to have a presence on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, you’ll be able to easily track what kind of traffic you’re getting from those sites, too.

Every so often I see an email from a web site operator claiming they set up a test ad for a company and would like them to pay to keep the ad going. Invariably, there is a claim they sent hundreds of “qualified buyers” along with their request for payment. A quick check of web site stats will show whether those claims are true or not. (Not one has been true thus far, by the way.)

So, I hope you will set up analytics on your site today. Google Analytics is a good choice because it’s free, easy to implement, and has a lot of great information available in it’s built-in reports. Even if you’re not an analytics geek like some of us, set it up and check it out once a month or so. You’ll be surprised what you can learn.

Check out my Google Analytics Primer series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) for more information on this topic.

PubCon Vegas promises to be an excellent conference. There is a great slate of speakers lined up ready to fill your brain with lots of information about all things web marketing. For a taste of what’s in store, check out my summaries of previous PubCon events.

If you’re still on the fence about attending, perhaps I can help you make up your mind. I have a 10% discount code I can’t use which I’m going to give away to a reader of The Crossing in a random drawing. Here are the details …

To sign up:

• Use the “Contact Me” Form.
• Enter “PubCon Discount” in the subject box.
• Make sure you enter a valid email address in the Email Address box.
• Tell me a little about why you want to go to PubCon in the Message box.
• Entries must be received by 11:59 PM Tuesday, August 10, 2010.
• The winner will be notified by email and announced here.

Terms & Conditions:

• The discount is valid only for new registrations – if you already signed up for PubCon Vegas you can’t use it.
• If you win the drawing, you must register by 10-31-2010.
• The discount is 10% off the going rate at the time of registration. See the PubCon registration page for pricing information. The earlier you register, the better the price.
• Neither I nor the folks at PubCon are responsible for technical glitches or user error related to signing up.
• Only one entry per email address.
• The 10% discount is only good for the conference registration. The winner is responsible for all other expenses related to attending.
• Please don’t enter the drawing if you’re not going to sign up for PubCon.

Good luck to everyone who signs up.

Update (7/5/2010) – I just read on the PubCon blog there will be a special keynote session featuring Brian Clark, Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, Scott Stratten and Sarah Evans. This session alone will be worth attending.

Last week I took #3 son and two of his friends to Six Flags Fiesta Texas. Like the other times we’ve gone, we had a good time riding the rides and watching the shows.

Of course, being the web marketing geek I am, I did notice they are doing some interesting things in social media. It was a total social program. Here’s the rundown:

1. Foursquare: Not only does Six Flags have it’s own badge on Foursquare, they have a contest going that if you unlock the Six Flags Funatic Badge by checking into any Six Flags park ten times, you’ll be entered for a drawing to win an Ultimate Exit Pass for the entire 2011 season.
2. Facebook: Six Flags has another contest running on Facebook for chances to win two season passes.
3. YouTube: They’re using their YouTube channel to cross promote a new social game they’re getting ready to launch on Facebook. They also have other fun videos and their commercials running there.
4. Twitter: Just checking their last couple of days worth of tweets, there are only three or four tweets talking about themselves. The rest of the tweets are answering others’ tweets. I don’t think it’s a bot answering, the answers appear very genuine. They also run something like a scavenger hunt where they offer clues on Twitter and people look for something in one of Six Flags’ parks based on those clues. It’s like an interactive tweetup.
5. Blog: Here, Mike Scollins, Six Flags Social Media Agent (and probably “SixFlagsMike” on Twitter) writes about contests they’re running and promotes Six Flags’ coasters in voting on Facebook.
6. iPhone App: Unfortunately, I don’t have an iPhone. If I had one and went to Six Flags more often I would certainly download this app. It has a GPS piece which helps you navigate the park easier, listing of events, and even helps you keep track of the folks you’re spending the day with – or at least spending the day at the park at the same time.

All in all it looks like Six Flags is doing very well in social media engagement. They are worth taking a look at.

Here are some takeaways I got from the presentations. Because there was so much good information, I’ll only give the top ten or so points from each presentation.

Google Social Media Reputation Management – Andy Beal, CEO of Trackur and coauthor of Radically Transparent

• Don’t wait for a crisis before you start working reputation management. An ounce of prevention works well to head off problems before they begin.
• Use your .org domain to highlight your charity work, use .net for other info. Use branded domains and subdomains. All this helps generate positive web pages.
• Make sure you grab your branded URL on Facebook (need to have at least 25 people “like” it first).
• LinkedIn is good for individual reputation management. It’s great to get as many employees as you can to sign up and list themselves as employees to help the company’s profile.
• Twitter works well, but make sure you engage. Every so often retweet nice mentions others make for you.
• Use Flickr and YouTube to host images and videos. Fill out the profile pages, use good descriptions for media using keywords. Embed the videos in your site instead of hosting them yourself to get double juice for reputation building.
• Use Wetpaint.com to create your own wiki pages instead of trying to play in Wikipedia. You control the pages here, on Wikipedia anyone can edit the story of your brand.
• Set up an account on AssociatedContent.com and try to get some articles written. The profile alone can be worth the effort for reputation building.
• GetSatisfaction.com is a legitmate site to set up a help desk/question answering page which can help with good links, good indexing AND customer service.
• Consider asking customers/partners to set up profile pages on their sites. Ask for YourDomain.com/yourname and offer to provide the content.
• Consider sponsoring conferences and other events – especially those which have sponsor profile pages on their web sites. Speaker profiles help quite a bit, too.

Twitter & Facebook Optimization – Dan Zarrella

If you’re not familiar with Dan’s work, I highly recommend you follow his blog. He is doing some great research into how social media tools work and how people use them.

Twitter

• Put a bio in your Twitter profile. You will get more followers. Use the 160 characters to your advantage. Make sure you also add a link to your web site/blog and a picture.
• Don’t follow too many more people than follow you. Take your time building a network. (Remember: Crock pot vs. microwave)
• Statistics seem to show 22 tweets per day on average is the max before people might think it’s too much and unfollow you. Of course, quality is better than quantity.
• “We” or “us” tweeters show to have more followers than “I” or “me” tweeters.
• If you put a bit.ly link in your web browser address bar with the plus sign at the end, you can see the stats on that link. This is a nice, quick shortcut.
• “Link Fatigue” – if there are too many links going by in your Twitter stream, you won’t get as many clicks on your links. It’s best to avoid the crowd and tweet your links later in the week or on the weekends.
• About 20% of tweets have links in them. Over 50% of retweets have links in them.
• Bit.ly shortened URLs are retweeted far more often than other URL shortened links.
• Retweets contain “rarer” words. Don’t say the same thing that others are saying.
• News tends to get retweeted more often than “small talk.”

Facebook

• In order to learn how your customers use Facebook, ask them. Set up a survey, learn how they use it, and market to them that way.
• Use quantcast.com to get demographic data on your web site.
• If you can get more people to “like” something on facebook, you get more social proof that your content is good.
• Articles with “video” in them will get shared more in Facebook than on twitter.
• Positivity gets share more than negativity on Facebook.
• Simple and plain tend to be more sharable on Facebook.

Targeting Twitter Influentials – Brett Tabke, CEO of PubCon
This was an expanded version of the presentation Brett gave at the SEO Meetup I wrote about in “Location, Black Hats & PubCon” a couple weeks ago.

“Human beings have used every available method to communicate we have ever been offered.” – Unknown

• How PubCon Thrived Using Influential Tweeters:
  • Prior to 3008, they spent around $65k on PPC ads over four years with zero tracked sales.
  • In 2008 spent around $75k on traditional marketing in 2008 with moderate success.
  • During the traditional high signup time in 2008 there were no signups, and a small number of people were asking for refunds. This was due to all the bad economic news hitting right about then.
  • They did some surveys and found people sign up for conferences based on recommendations by trusted sources. In other words, word of mouth.
  • They looked to reach out to people to tweet and retweet to recommend the conference. Spent far less money and had better results
  • It’s an excellent case study on social media success.
• Promos work great for retweets. Discount codes and coupons are great retweet bait.
• Find out when your target is on Twitter and tweet then.
• Look for influential tweeters by checking Klout.com.
• Track your retweeters and thank them.
• Tweet other people’s stuff 15 times for every 1 about your stuff.

Social Media Conversion – Brian Massey, The Conversion Scientist

• Advertising was designed to simulate work of mouth, when when of mouth was very inefficient. It’s no longer inefficient.
• The Not Social Funnel (paid media):
  • Awareness
  • Consideration
  • Action
• Earned media (do something well and people will talk about it):
  • Use
  • Opinion
  • Talk
• Predictive Metrics, predicts what might happen. Definitive Metrics, Tells what happened. This is measurable
• Social networks give people the ability to talk to each other. This is easier to measure than the old-school word of mouth.
• Landing pages need to mimic the look of the ad which brought the customer there. Otherwise the people ending up on that page might feel a disconnect and not follow through.
• Social Landing Pages: Blogs.
  • Educate your readers to increase use.
  • Let comments influence opinion
  • Gives visitors a way to talk, to join the conversation
  • Help pages can be great landing pages for conversion. Think: public customer support
• Social is very measurable, but you may have to use a number of tools to measure the different media.
• Check out Austin, Texas-based Spredfast for social measuring. Also automates outgoing social traffic. Swix is a free alternative.
• Content-oriented social marketing
  • Create a piece of content
  • Devise a way to measure the effect on the bottom line
  • Market each content item as its own product
• He gets a high email subscription rate from the link on his SearchEngineLand profile page. This correlates with what Andy said this morning about boosting reputation management via profile page.

Site Clinic & Q&A
There was a lot of great information tossed around during the site clinic and Q&A at the end of the day. Three attendees offered their web sites for scrutiny and all of the speakers looked over their sites and offered some great constructive criticism and tips for improving their sites and social footprint. I was updating this blog as they were talking. Now I need to help Jen work on  her Just Keeping Busy site. One change I made was to the permalink structure, option to organize by category name instead month and year. This helps the site’s content age a little better.

More Training in November
There will be a Masters Group Training before the PubCon in Las Vegas on Monday, November 8th. The limited class size and in-depth training make it well worth attending. You can sign up using the banner on the left (Disclaimer: I am a PubCon Affiliate). But, if you’re going to sign up you better act soon because Brett let on that there aren’t many slots left for the Masters Group Training.

Rich is active on Facebook and is just starting to get into Twitter. He asked me how he should use those tools along with his blogs to communicate not only with those who have pledged their support to his effort, but to reach out to others who might be interested in helping with their cause.

During our talk we discussed how he might use Facebook and Twitter to help promote his blog, which is where he talks about his cause. We also went over not doing the “hard sell”‘ to people because it turns them off. At one point, I mentioned he might want to read the post I wrote about Rob Snell’s Keynote at Pubcon this past March which I titled “Be That Expert.” I told him about how Rob and Steve Snell increased sales from their web site because they showed Steve to be an expert in his field of work and this credibility helped their marketing efforts.

I wonder, though, if that point was lost on Rich because I feel I may not have explained it very well at the time. After all, as an aspiring missionary to a land not his own, he’s not looking to sell anything or make lots of money. Or is he?

Think about it: Rich is trying to raise money to support him and his family in a foreign land for at least a year. He knows roughly how much he needs and is working towards banking that amount of money. In order to do this, he is working a full time job and he’s “selling” his idea to others in the hope they will contribute money to help him reach his goal. Is that really so different from the person running a company trying to sell enough banana guacamole to support him and his family as well as the employees who help him in his efforts and their families? While Rich’s motivations are slightly different, the goal is basically the same.

Nonprofits and charities have a different set of rules to follow. I’m not just referring to governmental regulation. In the case of nonprofits, they are selling a service which the people doing the actual paying will not benefit directly or tangibly from (except for, perhaps, a tax deduction). In Rich’s case, here’s what he’s doing:

• Selling A Product – Rich is selling Bibles, though he’s not selling them to the people who will actually receive them. Also, these Bibles do not yet exist because they need to be translated into a language which, at this point, may not even have a working alphabet. Lots of background work needs to happen before any actual printing is done.
• Adding Value – Rich is looking to add value to someone’s life. In this case, he’s not adding value to the paying customers. He’s attempting to convince others that paying for someone else to get the value is important.

So, what does this have to do with hunting dogs and equipment?
Good question.  At the end of the post I linked to above, I listed three tips Rob gave during his talk which can help someone develop a strategic social media plan. I pointed out that these tips don’t just apply to ecommerce web sites, and in this case they apply to Rich and others like him, too:

1. That you are an expert in what you do.
   • Rich needs to show himself an expert on Papua New Guinea, her people, culture and issues.
   • He also needs to demonstrate the expertise he has which will be put into use while he’s over there. People may be more likely to help someone who’s a skilled pilot (as Rich is) rather than someone who’s just going over there to wash dishes.
   • In his blog posts he needs to communicate the passion he and his wife have which prompted them to uproot themselves and their four children to go to a land half-way around the world. Passion sells – whether it’s banana guacamole or ideals.
   • He needs to communicate in a tangible ways how the people of that land will benefit from him going over there to do the work Wycliffe has for him.
   • It might not be a bad idea to offer up a list of things they need in order to be successful. Not only does Rich need to be skilled in the actual work part of being there, he and his wife also need to be skilled in how to take care of their kids’ needs, too. What will life be like there? Showing the challenges facing them will certainly add to their story.
2. That you have a product (or your product) is what your customers need. - Again, in this case the product or service is not something the person helping foot the bill will ever see. Rich needs to convince them that the value added to the lives of the people over there is worth supporting his efforts.
3. That they should (please) buy from you. - By showing he knows what he’s are doing and that  he has a positive contribution to make to the effort, Rich can make the case that supporting him is worth the time and money of those inclined to contribute to his cause.

You can learn more about Rich, his family and their efforts on their blog Reid All About It.

How about you? Have you worked with nonprofits? Do you have some ideas, tips or thoughts to share? Please feel free to drop them in the comments.

It’s All About Location
Brett made a prediction that Foursquare is getting ready to tip into something big. The reason for this is the folks at Foursquare have managed to figure out how to match location (of potential customers) and advertisers. I’ve seen a lot of debate over recent weeks about Foursquare and other location-based services (LBS) (notably in Aaron Strout’s blog with this post entitled “Are FourSquare and Gowalla Just Shiny Objects?” I think there is a lot of potential for LBS and Foursquare in particular, especially for businesses in location clusters. If someone were to mash up an LBS with a rating site (like SocialSmack, for instance) I think it would skyrocket because it would be immensely useful.

(Update: Just after I finished this post I saw this tweet from Brett reiterating his prediction from past night.)

Social Versus Paid Advertising
Brett also talked about how they stopped paying for advertising to promote PubCon and switched to what he calls “All Twitter, All the Time.” In 2008 PubCon was faced with a lot of uncertainty with the economy going south. People were not going to conferences and it was looking bad for them. They reached out to some influential bloggers and started a social media campaign which was highly successful. In the end, the show was well-attended with an increase year over year – in a down year with lots of bad economic stuff going on. Not only did PubCon benefit, but the hotels who worked with the conference noted the positive value of social as the attendees tweeted and blogged about their good experiences. All in all, this is a great case study for the power of social – if it’s done right.

Black Hat Strategies
Brett also talked about some Black Hat SEO stuff. This was not presented in the usual way, which is: these are tricks you can use to game the system but don’t get caught or Google will ban your site. This talk was in the context of how to protect yourself if a competitor or someone with an ax to grind uses these tactics against you or tries to make it look like you’re using “black hat” techniques, in an attempt to ruin your reputation. This was quite an interesting addition to some of the reputation management stuff I’ve been reading, such as Andy Beal’s Radically Transparent.

Plugs
Disclaimer: I am an affiliate for PubCon. If you click on the banner ad to the left after my eloquent argument convinces you to attend PubCon I will get a cut of the sale. If you think this a conflict of interest, feel free to click on the link in the first paragraph and browse to the signup page.

Brett gave us just a small sample of what his PubCon conference offers for those who attend. To be sure, other conferences are good and offer lots of good information, but there’s something about PubCon I really enjoy. It seems to me a bit more laid back and informal compared to other conferences I’ve attended. The price is great, too. If you sign up before the end of August the cost is less than $1000. If you go, pay attention and learn some stuff you can go back to you job or business and make up more than that cost rather quickly. The next PubCon is in Vegas in November, then there will be one in a yet undisclosed “Tropical” location in in the Winter and then one in Texas in March.

Galaga!
One of my favorite games as a teenager was Galaga. Dave & Buster’s in Austin has an old Galaga machine. I’m not as skilled as I once was in my nimbled-fingered youth, but I do OK. It was a lot of fun to relive my miscreant days. Well, I wasn’t that much of a miscreant, but I did have long hair and liked to hang out at the arcade.