If you are anything like me, you are troubled by the amount of meetings one must attend in a given work week.  It’s not that we don’t want to be a part of the team or do the work, it’s that generally speaking, meetings tend to… well… not much gets accomplished, or if it does, it’s not documented and shared with the group in follow up.  And believe it or not, there is one thing worse than a wasted meeting…  A wasted meeting that starts 15 minutes late.

I was very pleased to learn that my employers has not allowed these habits to go unnoticed and yesterday we had a meeting to discuss meetings (which was NOT a waste of time) – but they started off with some tips (you may have heard these before) on how to waste time in meetings. So here are the 8 tips provided by Mike Rogers:

1.  Invite everyone. We all need to time to waste, and you wouldn’t want to hurt anyones feelings by not including them. However, be careful about inviting people who might try to accomplish something during the meeting. On the other hand, make sure you invite people who tell good jokes, like to goof around and are generally entertaining.

2.  Don’t start the meeting until everyone has arrived. Starting a meeting on time would be rude to those who are late. Plus starting a meeting late helps everyone feel more comfortable about being late next time, which almost assures you will start the meeting late everytime.

3. Never, never, never have an agenda. Agendas create structure that can stifle tangents.

4. Leaders should do most if not all of the talking. Since the leader knows best, it makes the most sense that he or she talk the most.

5. Only those with “good” ideas should provide them. Anybody who submits a “stupid” idea should be laughed at, mocked and generally spit upon.

6. Give people freedom to “multitask” during meetings. Let everyone know at the start of the meeting that if they need to do other things such as texting, reading email or answering calls to go right ahead. It will make the meeting all the more productive for everyone.

7. Never make assignments. Assignments mean work will need to be done.

8. Never end a meeting on time. Doing so means you didn’t apply items one through seven above!

I have to admit, I laughed out loud at the absurdity of several of these tips from Mike Rogers, but in reality – it’s quite sad when you realize how much of problem some of these really are, and sometime all of them may apply.  I will admit, I try hard to start my meetings on time and not allow folks to go down rabbit holes. I try to come prepared with agendas, and I do try to follow up with meetings notes.  I have particular project team that does show up on time every week now (which maybe is because the first several weeks I was vocal about the fact that we never seem to start on time)- Yeah team!  But I am not a perfect meeting facilitator either and am excited to learn ways to improve.

To address these things (at least in our company), we’ve kicked off a book club and our first read is “Death by Meeting” by Patrick Lencioni.   I am looking forward to reading this book, and working to improve my meeting skills.  Do you have any good meeting tips?

Know someone who loves photography, loves artichokes and needs an ego boost?  I’ve got just the thing for you!  The Artichoke Fan Page on Facebook is running a contest.  Page fans can submit photos they have taken of artichokes.  All photos will get posted together in one album and Fans of the page will have 2 weeks to vote on the top 12.

The 12 photos with the most votes will be features in a 2011 Artichoke Calender.  The winners (photographers of the selected photos), will be given full photo credits in the printed calendar, along with a FREE Calendar for themselves.  There are no cash prizes for this contest, just bragging right – but it seems there are plenty of artichoke lovers out there who want to show off their stuff and prove they are the biggest fan of them all!

Deadline for submissions is August 30th.  Get out there and take some photos!  The 2011 Artichoke Calendars will be available for sale upon completion of the contest, and my guess is they will sell for around $20 a piece.

My work mantra lately has been “content is king… content is king…” I repeat this to myself silently over an over as I continue to monitor traffic on my company’s blog Fifth Gear Analytics.  This blog has roughly 10 content authors who contribute articles on a fairly regular basis.    When I came on board at SIGMA in May of this year, it became evident that our blog has great potential as SIGMA Marketing Group employs several incredibly knowledgeable people in the area of marketing analytics, strategy and technology.

John Munsell, CEO of Bizzuka nailed it in 8 simple words… “If content is king, conversion is queen.” YES!  To better utilize our space on our blog, and improve our interaction with our readers/subscribers, it became clear we needed a well executed content strategy for our blog.

In my mind, it boils down to 2 questions you must answer in building a blog content strategy. Who is your audience? Why do you have a blog?

They may seem like simple questions, but you must truly consider both of these, and realize that there may be several answers to both questions.  Lets dig a bit deeper…  These two questions go hand-in-hand.  Ask yourself what you hope to accomplish by blogging.

• Do you hope to generate sales through a retail site?
• Do you believe you can generate leads, perhaps in a B2B environment?
• Are you looking to raise funds or capital?
• Is it just purely for fun or out of passion for a particular topic?
• What is YOUR reason for creating a blog?
• How do you want your readers to interact with your blog?  (What action will they take?)

Examine why you are creating a blog, then you can begin to look at who you hope to attract to your blog.  Keep in mind that depending why you are blogging, there may be several audiences to consider.  Look at your reasons for blogging and consider who you want reading/subscribing to your content.  Specifically in a business environment there are many elements to consider about your readers.

• Does my business apply to several vertical markets?
  • If yes, which vertical markets am I trying to reach?
• Does my business apply to only one reader type, or are there several?
  • Am I writing for C-Level readers?
  • Am I writing  for less  technically savvy readers?
  • Am I writing for students or teachers?
• Who will benefit from my content?
  • Is it purely educational?
  • Is there a service you provide?

Answering those questions is not enough. There are a few more key elements to consider in content strategy…  How will your content physically support the answers to the above questions? How will you track your results?

FIND YOUR KEYWORDS

Now that you know who your targeted readers are, and what you want to achieve, you can create a solid keyterm strategy that will support your content and optimize your site for search.  You’ll want to do some competitive research on the search terms you want to focus on.  Keep in mind the audiences and reader types.  You may have groups of search terms based on your audience(s).

Once you’ve figured out a keyword strategy to support your content, this can be your guide to generating content.  Create content around the keyterms you want to promote.  It’s not about spamming a page with a keyword over and over, it’s about building and linking relevant content that supports the keyterms you want to be found under in the search engines.

Set your metrics in motion, by creating actions to track your goals.  Using tools like Google Analytics you can create specific goals.

• Will you track a click through to a retail site?
  • Will you follow it through to the sale, or track where they exit your site?
• Will it be a click through to another site where a user completes a form that generates a business lead?
• Is your end goal an email-opt form completed to build an email list.
• How will you track your goals?

A good content strategy puts all these things in motion before the first post is published.  If you know how you are writing for, how those readers will search out your content, and what you hope those readers will do while on your site, you now begin writing!  You armed with information you need to write content that will convert!  You can apply this to your online store, by optimizing product pages, or any other content on a website.

One final note:  A content strategy should live, breath and grow.  They way people search for content continues to change – stay on top of that.  Keep up to date on your keyword research and modify your content strategy to support that.

By creating a solid content strategy – you can help your King find his Queen!

This is not any amazing original content – but on Mashable today there was a post about 5 cool Twitter Infographics – so I ran myself (@socialpmchick) through the tools and here were the outputs and my quick thoughts on the various tools.

TwitterSheep

I like this tool because it gives you a quick ‘at-a-glance’ view of who is following you and if your overall follower base is relevant.  It takes your follower’s profiles (not yours) and pulls the common profile words into a word cloud.  Below are two examples.  One is my account (SocialPMChick) and the other is an artichoke twitter account.  Both seem to be accurately followed by relevant and related Twitter users.

ISParade

This tool is not particularly useful – but I must admit, it’s fun.  I see my friends (IRL), who happen to follow me on Twitter skipping by as a puppy dog, or waving with their Twitter Avatar.   For business folks, you can search by keyword (or hashtag) and see a parade of Tweeters who follow that term.  You can click on the individuals in the parade to learn more about them, or see their parade of followers, and it also show recent tweets.  Here’s my parade:

Twitter Follower Parade for SocialPMChick

5K Twitter Browser

This one does not do as much for me – too much clicking to get deep.  It is supposed to show you social connections of yours who are connected to other your connections and so on.   Image on the left below shows my base circle.  Image on the right, I selected one of my connections and it expanded to show some mutual connections.

5K Twitter Browser Infographic for SocialPMChick

CrowdedInk

This one is not quite as useful, but for the collector, you can have a mug created with a collage of your Twitter connections for just $15 (or you can order them in bulk for $11).  It might be a cute gift idea for someone new to Twitter, or for some other reason.

The 5th one was called TweepsKey and I tried to run it several times, and each time it locked up my browser (both IE 8 and Chrome) – so I gave up on it.  Maybe you can check it out and let me know what you think!

My list of 7 things that you should think about as worst practices that can adversely affect your website’s success:

Myth 1: Repeating your content as many times as possible is a good way to gain ranking.

Truth: Duplicate Content is never a good idea – your site should be full of unique and keyterm rich content that will easily identify your products and/or services, and quickly assist your customer’s to make the purchase decision.  A well thought out SEO strategy is more important than a particular keyword showing 8 times one page. Know your audiences and how THEY would search.  Your content should reflect that.

Myth 2: Having as many links as humanly possible linking to your site is great for ranking – no matter where the links come from.

Truth: Avoid Link Farming: You need a relevant link strategy for your site – link farming is another form of spam that won’t get you anywhere. Volume of links is definitely important, but quality of links is equally if not more important. Read more about link farming.

Myth 3: If I put hidden keywords on my page 100 times repeatedly the search engines will find me.

Truth: Invisible Text is a No-No: It used to be that developers would fill up a page full of keywords by placing white text on white background making it basically invisible to the users – but not to the search engines – this practice will get you banned from sites like Google.

Myth 4: Once I build my site I don’t ever have to do anything with it… it will just be a magic selling machine!

Truth:  No!  Don’t just let your site sit stagnant: You can build the best web site in the world, but if you are not constantly working it – it will go nowhere. Think of new ways to beef up content – consider FAQs based on what your customers are asking, look for ways to improve usability and content – always be working it. Read: Define Your Website with Content – This is not the Field of Dreams People!

Myth 5: If I email my customer base every day I’ll get more business

Truth:  Please don’t spam your email subscribers: Now-a-days people are becoming more reluctant to opt-in to an email list because they are afraid of the spam they’ll get. If your users are providing their email to you – respect it and send emails that include relevant content at relevant intervals. Monthly newsletters are a great idea with featured promotions. In some situations, depending on the frequency of updates and changes to content – weekly newsletters may be a good idea – but don’t just send email because you can – send them because they offer value.  (Check out this post on email fatigue for some additional insight.)

Myth 6: My customers have all day to browse my site and eventually will find what they are looking for…

Truth: Don’t make your products hard to find: Users want to find what they are looking for as quickly as possible – it’s why they are on the internet doing their research. Use the “3 click” rule to allow your users to find what they are looking for in 3 clicks or less! If your site uses things like Flash and other interactive features – be sure it does not affect the ease at which users can find the products you sell. In fact, do your best to optimize your product pages so that they get direct ranking on search engines so your user lands directly on the product pages.

Myth 7: I have a niche product and my customers are not online

Truth: That’s a bunch of bologna! You may very well have a niche product that appeals to only one audience or has a very particular use – OR – you may sell a very large ticket item that generally speaking someone is not going to just drop on their credit card. But the odds are that the folks looking for these items ARE in fact researching them online – especially the more expensive items. In the case of niche items, users generally look for price and value online knowing they can search out the best deal for the best product, and get great recommendations. I guarantee – your customers are online – get with a solid internet marketer who will help develop a tactical plan to promote your site and your products to your niche audience.

There are many practices in internet marketing that can hurt your site traffic and success, but these are just my top 7. Small business owners – beware – get yourself aligned with a reputable internet marketing firm who can give you references to call on – ask the right questions to the references to ensure that the group you are hiring to market your small business website has the tools and knowledge to do it effectively and to follow the ever changing best practices!

This post was originally written during my employment at Cazbah as an Account Manager (view original post).

Over a year ago, Liberty Mutual came out with a TV spot that demonstrated the meaning of “Paying it Forward.”  I just loved it!   I shared that video on one of my first blog posts, and it now lives on it’s own tab (above).

Just this week, I saw a new Liberty Mutual TV spot – same great theme – invoked the same great feeling.  I give kudos to this insurance company for beautiful and meaningful TV ads.  In an era where sex sells all, this is so refreshing!  Every time it comes on, I do stop what I’m doing, even if just for that 30 seconds, and it makes me think about little things I can do for other people.

Here’s the new TV ad:

When you’re out and about, just be cognizant of your surroundings.  You may have the opportunity to pay-it-forward in some small way.  You never know when something little will have such a huge impact.

I just reviewed the webinar: “The Science of ReTweets” (Viral Content Sharing on Twitter) by Viral Marketing Specialist @DanZarrella of HubSpot.  It was an hour of charts and graphs of statistical information about ReTweets, and how to get more of them.  I found to be quite helpful (as I do most HubSpot content).

Here are 5 tips I took away from this helpful webinar (and at the end of this post an expirement using the thoughts shared in this webinar to try to generate some ReTweets).

Tip 1:   Don’t be boring.  Going to sleep? Nobody cares…

There are words to avoid in your tweets that typically don’t get ReTweeted often.  Words like:  tired, sleep, bored, gonna, watching…    If you are climbing into bed watching a show on tv and listening to a song on your iPod – you don’t need to tweet about it. Chances are it won’t get ReTweeted anyway.

Tip 2:  Keep your tweet under 100 characters.  Make it easy to RT.

Kraft your tweet in such a way that your followers don’t need to edit/shorten it to make it fit within the 140 character limits of Twitter.  This is a great rule of thumb to consider when writing blog post titles.  Write them in such a way they can be easily ReTweeted (espcially if you are using a tool such at TweetMe).

Note: When someone RTs, your longer tweets do get shortened via a link to the original tweet.  Just something to keep in mind.  Shorter is better.

Tip 3:  Don’t self promote (and do nothing else)

Clearly, we use Twitter for the purpose of self-promotion or promoting the companies we work for – however…  Twitter is about relationships – provide value, share information freely, and look for ways to mutually help people that you communicate on Twitter.  You may be awesome, but don’t repeatedly tell the world that.  They wont ReTweet that content, and in fact – will probably un-follow at some point.

Just BE awesome, without telling the world you are awesome.  They’ll figure it out on their own.

Tip 4:  Keep it clean people

Swearing in your tweets may get your point across and people may agree with you, but chances are you will not get ReTweeted.  I may agree with your sentiment, but I will not Tweet bad language to my followers out of respect for them.  Negative emotions can have a positive reaction – if presented in a diplomatic and effective way.

Tip 5:  People don’t read, they scan – choose your words wisely

People this is not rocket science.  Depending on your follower base and how many they follow, you have about a fraction of a second get someone’s attention via your tweet.  Make it short, concise and interesting.   Statistics show that certain words get ReTweeted more than others.  Some of these words include:  you, help,  how to, new, etc…

Kraft your tweet in such a way that stands out, and makes your point clearly without using big words.

And now for the “experiment“

The title of this blog adheres to the rules which I’ve outlined above.   I will Tweet it once the post is published   It is under 100 characters (and will fall around 120 once I drop in the bit.ly link to this post).  I’ve also used a combination of the most ReTweeted words according to the webinar.  So we’ll see how much it get’s ReTweeted!  (I’m also sending this out at around 3:15 PM EST which is one of the higher ReTweet times of the day)

In summary – the Webinar was well worth the hour of my time, and has made me put more thought into how I create my tweets and what they will say going forward – not only for me, but for the company I represent on Twitter.

Happy Tweeting (PLEASE ReTweet)!

If you are not currently displaying your Tweets on your LinkedIn profile – you should be…  There are two ways to do this…  You can set up a connection between the two to update your LinkedIn status with your last tweet, or you can add the Twitter App which displays your tweet stream on your profile.  I have both set.  The status updates are helpful because your network connections can then see and comment on what you are tweeting about right inside LinkedIn.

Here’s a quick run down on how to set this up.

Log into your LinkedIn and Twitter accounts in your browser (open more than one tab).  Once in your LinkedIn account, in the upper right corner, select settings (shown here).

This will open up all your settings for your LinkedIn account.  From this list, you’ll chose Twitter Settings (shown below):

Once you’ve clicked into your Twitter settings, you’ll see a link to “Add Twitter Account”.   When you click that option a new window will open from Twitter (because you are already logged in to your Twitter account), that will automatically detect your Twitter accounts.  This window is asking you to authorize the connection between LinkedIn and Twitter  (see below):

You are almost done!  Once you’ve added it, you’ll see the display below.  You will want to set your account to visible, and share your tweets in your status on LinkedIn.  You may add more than one Twitter Account, but must select a primary to display tweets to your LinkedIn profile.

Note that shown above you can select whether you want ALL tweets to show up in your LinkedIn status updates, or whether you want only tweets that include the #in hashtag to show up.  Personally, I recommend all.  If you select the latter, you’ll need to remember to include #in within every tweet you want to show in your profile.

Hopefully this is simple enough to get you started.  You can also connect your Twitter account and your LinkedIn account through tools like TweetDeck, which allows you to see a stream of status updates from your connections on LinkedIn, but that’s for another post.

This updated of the social revolution captures the impact of social media.  Check it out…  (and thank you to @equalman for providing such a great snapshot)

A simple concepts, and a bit of review…  Chances are, you’ve placed some content on your web site or blog and made it available for your users to download.  If that is the case, I’m guessing you believe your content to be useful to your audience (and it probably is).

Wouldn’t it be helpful to know exactly how many times your content is, in fact, downloaded?    Here is the simple code to install on your site (assuming you are using Google Analytics) to track the each download event of each file:

onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/downloads/_custom‘); ”

This code is placed inside the href tag and after the link file name.   The portion noted in red above ‘custom’ is your way of differentiating between types of content you may offer up on your site for more granular tracking.  (eg. white_papers, case_studies, etc.)

So a completed link might look like this:

<a href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com” onClick=”javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview(‘/downloads/white_paper’); “>

Things to think about if your download counts are low:

• Is the document download link strategically placed on the page or hidden within the content?
• Is the document link labeled appropriately (might consider a call-out)
• Is the actual landing page where the download is offered well structured and search optimized?
• Is the landing page buried several clicks deep on your site?

These are some areas for trial and error to improve visibility of your downloadable content.  Try to modify one of all of the above to improve exposure to your content.

Our web content should serve a purpose for our audience – that being said, we need to know how it’s performing.