If you are anything like me, you are constantly reading blogs and coming across great info you want to share with the world.   In these social times, it’s easy to do, right?  Forget the days of trying to print and fax something to your distribution list, or scan and email a document, only to find out the recipient has a different operating system and cannot even open the article.  Today with social media it has become simple to share to our favorite social networkings sites like Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn.

Many of the blogging platforms out there have made it pretty easy to publish content, with their easy to understand interface and wide variety of plug-ins.  When you decide you want to share something on Facebook it does all the work for you by pulling in the article’s title and a description with the link.

What do you do when you want to share something, and when it opens up the dialogue box for sharing — it only includes the URL — and no description? Well, unless the article was really really good, I typically just click “cancel” and go about my day.

It’s pointless to share something without telling anyone what it’s about.  Unless your followers and connections are so loyal to you, they will click on anything and everything you share, you’ll need to go back to the article and grab the title (or write one yourself), before you share the link.  Let’s face it… we are all in a hurry these days.  So I generally won’t bother.

But here’s the simple truth.  It’s all in the meta data.  Your Meta Title and Meta Description are the key to making your content well formatted for sharing, and potentially much more inviting to read than some nondescript shortened URL.  Blogging platforms provide the easy-to-use interface to create your Meta Title and Meta Description (most of them anyway), and this same rule of thumb applies to websites.  If your website or blog is designed to be shared (why wouldn’t it be?), make sure your meta data is in place, and makes your content inviting and easy to share.

Include descriptive keywords in your titles, and be clear as to what the content is about. Don’t mislead your readers by saying something that isn’t true just to draw them into your site.  Be transparent, and honest.

Most people won’t take the time to read the description, so the title should do most of the work for you.   The description, however, should not be ignored.  Meta Description is a critical element of search because when your site it listed in Google or any other search engine, that Meta Description could be the very thing that leads someone to click on your link over the others search results, if it’s well written.  Write a short, concise, first sentence that will display in the search engine below your link.

In this age of social sharing, there are enormous amounts of content out there being shared daily.  Chances are someone else is writing about the exact same things you or I write about, and that’s okay.  But, missing the mark on meta data could be the very thing that holds you back.  If you are taking the time to put your thought leadership into an article, take the extra few minutes to be sure your meta data is complete.

This article was originally posted on November 4, 2010 on Fifth Gear Analytics.

As a Social Media marketer with SIGMA Marketing Group, I am still amazed when I meet business savvy folks who have not yet adopted social media usage in any way, shape or form.  There are varying degrees of usage and unique formulas for different business types and vertical markets, but I don’t care who you are… Social Media is here to stay, and will continue to evolve rapidly.  I recently wrote an article on social media usage by industry, which focused primarily on B2B Social Media, but it provided some interesting insights about which industries have adopted social.

I also recently read the book Socialnomics, by Erik Qualman, which opened my eyes even further to the need to understand the social channels that are relevant to your own industry and how to best leverage them.  The book provides strong thought leadership on the importance of your social networks.  In just a few short years, the social media landscape has entirely changed.  We now have access to robust tools for social listening and sentiment analysis.  A smart business, whether it is a small business or enterprise-level organization – is aware of what’s going on in their industry in the social space.    The video below is one in a series titled Social Media Revolution, and its statistics are pulled directly from the book Socialnomics.  Fasten your seat belt and enjoy the ride:

“We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.”  Erik Qualman

I strongly encourage any business-minded person to pick up a copy of this book and read it.  It is full of scenarios, both good and bad, of how social media can impact your business.  Even the smallest niche business can use Social Media to build and nurture relationships, which in the long run can help grow your business.  Social Media is not just using Twitter or posting updates on Facebook.  It’s truly understanding how your brand, product or industry can provide value to its audience.  Some of the basic aspects might include:

• Integrating Social Media with your email marketing campaigns: Allowing your email subscribers to share your content can take a campaign with a limited email subscriber base viral, allowing not only your product or service offering more visibility, but potentially increasing your email subscriber base.
• Listening to the dialog in the social space about your brand, product or industry. Who is out there already doing what you should be doing?  Who is talking about your products, and what are they saying?  What is the sentiment about your brand or industry?  By taking some time to listen before jumping in, you can begin to piece together a strategy of how to leverage Social Media. You never know… you may beat your competitors to it if you start right now!
• Make your campaigns truly multi-channel by adding social elements. Still doing direct mail or email marketing campaigns only?  There’s nothing wrong with that.  But why not add a layer of Social Media touch-points to that same campaign to allow it to go viral beyond your mailing list?  By leveraging social networking sites with the same campaign offering, you can create additional components for your campaign that make it viral in nature.
• Understand what you can learn from Social Media. Once you start adding social to your marketing strategy, you need to understand how it’s performing and where you need to adjust or improve your efforts.  Combining social listening with your web analytics can provide valuable insights about where your customer relationships and brand evangelists are coming from.  To take that a step further, you should work to integrate your online customer data with your offline customer data.  This will allow you to better understand what your customers look like, where they are most like to interact with you, and what drives their buying decisions.

Your customers are evolving every day.  They no longer go searching for products and services-those products and services find them.  Consumers are armed with information at their fingertips, and want to make purchases and buying decisions based on trust and a relationship that provides value to them in the long run.  In this article, I’ve barely scratched the surface on how and why Social Media has transformed from a “bandwagon” to a “supersonic jet,” and how it will continue to change the way to communicate with our customers and prospects.

Have questions about Social Media and Web Analytics can provide valuable marketing insights to your organization? Contact SIGMA Marketing Group today to learn more.

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)

I recently attended a Social Media seminar hosted by a local Chamber of Commerce.  My goal for this first part in a 3 part series was to make sure I wasn’t missing the mark on any major social media networks I have been using.   By no means do I consider myself to be a ‘guru’ in social media, but what I found interesting was the number of business professionals who were not using what I consider the 3 major social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn).

It was a reminder to me that the small business owners I represent each day in my role as their eyes and ears on the internet is that most of them don’t have a clear understanding of what social media is or, or what it can mean to them.  I have to think of my clients as those of the 50 or so professional folks in that room who were not yet on Twitter and barely have a LinkedIn profile, let alone how those things will help them.

After the meeting I got talking with a few folks, two of which admitted they were on Twitter, but just not ‘tweeting’ yet out of fear of not having anything interesting to say.   Questions immediately started running through my head about how to pull out information from these folks about what was tweet-worthy info, or what their respective communities may be interested.  What would I want to know about if I were in their follower base?  Here were a few questions I had:

• what is your line of work
• who are your first line customers
• what questions are you frequently asked
• what problems or concerns do your customers or audience typically have
• what praises do your customers or audience typically have

So a municipality might tweet about leaf pickup, plowing policy and village or town events.  A manufacturer might tweet about supply and demand, industry news, or product innovations.  A politician might tweet about the issues that are pressing to his/her constituents.  A student might tweet about what’s going on in school or look for input on that thesis they’ve been working on.

As for a social media enthusiast like myself?  Well I just tweet about any and all of it.  I find watching what others are doing to be the most interesting.  I am intrigued by how much people value their relationships in the twitterverse and it’s evident in their tweets that they do.  (which I think is just about the coolest thing).

Twitter has also brought the world together during crisis – look at this past week with the earthquake in Chili and the predicted tsunami.  The waves turned out to be smaller than expected, but if you watched the Twitter stream in the hours prior, everyone was working together to get the word out – in concern for the well-being to those at risk.

Still not sure you have anything interesting to say?  Start spending a few minutes here or there watching your followers – as someone tweets something you find interesting – send a reply – open a dialog.  You might be surprised to see a new relationship unfold with the conversations that follow, and the folks that end up following along as a result.

Good luck and happy tweeting!

Having spent the time today at Cazbah teaching myself how to add an email opt-in form to a Facebook page from Vertical Response – I found myself getting a little frustrated.  Now that I’ve got it figured out – I’m going to save you tons of time in digging for the info (it’s not altogether straight forward for the basic user).

Assuming you have a business page on Facebook – AND – you are using Vertical Response for email marketing and list segmentation, you can create a tab on your Facebook page that will invite your page fans and visitors to sign up for (or opt-in to) emails from your company, group, etc…  My assumption is that other email marketing tools will work too, but I have only tested VR at this point.

So to start out – head on over to Vertical Response and create your new list.  I recommend creating a list that will store only the opt-ins from Facebook.   After all, we want to know what conversions (if any) are coming from our Facebook pages.

To add a new list – follow the steps under Lists and then “Add New List” in your Vertical Response account.  You then need to create an opt-in form just for that list.  Follow the instructions to create your opt-in form and copy and past that form script into a text editor like notepad – we’ll need that when we get our Facebook page tab ready to go.

Note: When creating that new list and opt-in form, I do recommend using a custom thank you page that can be added to your Google Analytics Goals.

Now here’s where I got hung up – you need to add a customizable tab to your Facebook page, so before you can do that, you have to install the Static FBML application to your Facebook Account.  (I am now a fan of this application since I know how to use it

To find Static FBML, click on the “Edit Page” link in your Facebook page and scroll down to Browse More Applications.  Click on the Static FBML link (shown at right here).

This will take you to the application page on Facebook.  You will need to add it to your Facebook page before you proceed.

The nice thing is, if you manage multiple Facebook pages you can add it to all of them at once.  Scroll through the list and select the page(s) you want to add it to and we’ll continue on.

Once you’ve done that, head back to your Facebook page and click on “Edit Page” – don’t worry we are almost done!  Once you are in your Edit screen you should scroll down and see the Static FBML link you’ll want to click on Edit.

Note:  Have your text editor open where you’ve saved your form code so you can copy it to Facebook.

Change your title and then simply copy in your form script and then add any additional content.  Note that FBML does not like <html> <body> and <head> tags, so you can format tables, paragraphs, etc – but avoid those few tags.

UPDATE (2-19-2010): Due to Facebook updates – you’ll need to add a “&” to the end of your FORM METHOD String to enable this feature to work.  I had to go back to the Vertical Response Lounge to get this resolved (which by the way is a great resource).

<form method=”post” action=”http://oi.vresp.com?fid=26230b1027&” target=…..>

In the completed example below I have included a basic table format with some additional content to let users know what they’ll be receiving once they opt-in:

There you go!  You have just learned (much quicker than I did), how to add email opt-in forms to your Facebook pages.   (See the live example of Cazbah customer Turnbull Manufacturing.)  This Static FBML application can do much more than just adding email opt-in forms.  My next experiment will be with promotional content and coupons – but the possibilities are limitless (within the confines of the application) as to how to utilize this application.

Here’s a quick an easy “how to” on adding Google Analytics tracking code to your blogger site.

First – if you have  a main web site for your business that your blog is supporting – hopefully you already have an Analytics account set up for tracking your site traffic.

Assuming that’s the case you will be adding a new profile to your already existing Analytics account so we can track your blog traffic.   We covered how to add profiles in our post about applying IP Filters to our analytical data (which you’ll want to do for your blog also).

Got your profile added?  Now grab your analytics tracking code from Google Analytics (copy it into Notepad or some text editor) – and run on over to Blogger.   Under “Layout” in your Blogger account select the Page Elements option (which should like the image shown below)

See that “Add A Gadget” field along the bottom of the image?  That represents your blog footer and is where you’ll want to input your Google Analytics Tracking Code.

Click on that “Add A Gadget” link and select “Html/JavaScript” (shown here)

Clicking on the blue “+” will open a window.  DO NOT enter a title in the Title field.  Simply copy your tracking code from NotePad and paste into this Content field of this pop-up window.  Click SAVE and then it should take you back to your layout screen and show now show an HTML/JavaScript item in your blog footer.

For good measure SAVE your changes on this screen as well and then go back to Analytics.  Lets verify that your tracking code is installed properly.  Click on “Edit” in your Google Analytics profile.  When the profile edit screen opens, look to the top right for a link that says “Check Status”  - once you click on that – Google Analytics will check the tracking code you just installed on your blog and will either deliver an error message, or tell you that your tracking code has been installed properly.

Those are the basics.  If you need help with setting up your blog in general, or are not quite sure how to get your Google Analytics Tracking Code – drop me an email.  I can answer any questions you may have about installing your tracking code, setting up your IP filters and so on.

Good luck and happy blogging!

Read more on IP Filtering through Google Analytics.

What a horrible image! Makes you think doesn't it?

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 I woke up and said to myself, “I don’t feel like smoking anymore!”  It wasn’t something I planned or thought much about in advance.  I have talked about quitting smoking but always told myself that I had other things to fix in my life before I gave up the tobacco.  Here was my list:

• Get my spending/bad money habits under control (working on this!)
• Lose 40-50 lbs (already did that)
• Wait for my significant other to be ready to quit (he’s just not ready)
• New Year’s (or this date or that date – like ‘after my birthday’)
• When I move into my new place (that didn’t happen)

Excuses, excuses – and sometimes the spontaneous things we do in life are the most effective.  So with Tuesday morning’s revelation, I just gave it to God and decided to run with it.  I should note, I’ve been on a spiritual recovery journey these last 2 years anyway, and have overcome a gambling addiction, and have vastly improved my unhealthy relationship with money.  The foundation for my recovery has come from Celebrate Recovery and the work I’m doing there has allowed me to gather up the tools I need to get my life in order.  This time around, the quitting smoking is entirely different for me because I’m viewing it as an act of worship that is pleasing to God.

Some days, this is how I feel.

So what brought this on?  I’m not 100% sure, but I know it’s a God thing.  This past weekend in church a very wise young pastor talked about the importance of community – he shared statistics that stated that a person who is totally healthy and totally lonely will typically not live as long as the person who smokes and drinks but is actively involved in community.  The by-line was something to the effect of – it’s better to eat a twinkie with friends than to eat an apple alone. (Remember this is all a paraphrase, but the message was profound).  So, since I am actively involved in community, I thought it would be even better to get healthy AND be in community – so I can live to be 120!  (I’m sure my kids will love that!)

So in line with that, I am leaning on my community to hold me accountable.  I currently co-lead a women’s 12-step study at my church to help others through their journey to let go of life’s hurts, habits and hang-ups, but I’m also realizing that I need far more than that small group to hold me accountable. That’s where Social Media comes in.

The rough math – in my real “in person” life, I probably have about 20 people who I would look to keep me in check and hold me accountable to not smoke – but knowing myself and my lack of will power I decided to take it to the masses.  If I add up my current online social networks – just including Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn, the numbers amount to about 3,300 connections.  To some that number may seems small in the world of social networking, but for me that’s over 3,000 that can hold me accountable to not smoke.

I hadn’t intended to use my online connections for this purpose, but one Tweet and one Facebook status update (both which fed to my LinkedIn status) amassed many many comments in just mere moments, and the comments and praise continue to come.

The kinds words from all of my Social Media “friends” and “tweeps” and “connections” are truly helping to keep me motivated.  The only one I’m truly accountable to is God, but the “You Go Girl!”, “You can do it!” (and my personal favorite) “Just think about how much money you will save!” are really helping me to stay motivated.  Here are my other 3 reasons for quitting:

So for those that don’t want to hear about it – sorry, but I will continue to tweet and post until I feel I’m free and clear – and to those who are taking the 30 seconds to leave an encouraging word – I AM TRULY GRATEFUL!

If you would like to join my accountability team and watch my progress, please send me a friend request, or catch up on Twitter!  Not only do I already feel better… but I smell better too!  :)

Please Re-Tweet this post! Maybe we can get just one more person the encouragement they need to quit smoking too!  We can do this!

A1-Webmarks…. if you are like me, you’ve never heard of it before and just think – jeesh!  another site to have to worry about. So let’s check it out.

At first glance I see that it was very recently added to Add-This (mid-late October of 2009).   They define as “Webmark” as follows:

A webmark marks a location on the web, just like a bookmark marks a location in a book. It’s a web page, whose address you want to remember for some reason. Webmarks are often called bookmarks or favorites, especially when the webmark itself is stored offline on your PC.

Furthermore… A1 stands for:  Anywhere, 1 Click Away. If that’s true, then in theory I already like this service because I feel I’ve got bookmarks on sites all over the darn place.  Here’s what they tell me they claim they offer:

• Hierarchical tagging of webmarks to assign them to a topic
• Instant access to your most often used webmarks (your favorites)
• Alphabetic indexing of your webmarks
• Personal evaluation of webmarks
• Private webmarks and private comments, visible only to you
• Webmarks to password-protected areas or to your local intranet or files
• Webmark search
• Periodic checks of your webmarks to let you know, which pages are no longer accessible
• Import and export of webmarks

And the social aspect of what they say they offer:

• Sophisticated evaluation of the community’s webmark evaluations to show you “more webmarks like that” for all of your topics
• Most popular webmarks amongst all A1-Webmarks users, separated by language
• Most popular tags and their corresponding most popular webmarks
• Access to the public webmarks and public comments of other A1-Webmarks users
• Publishing lists of interesting webmarks on some specific topic
• Rating of lists and list entries
• Making proposals for new list entries

At first glance it appears to be much like the other Social Bookmarking sites out there, but not as “pretty” or dolled-up.  The interface loads quickly, but it also includes banner ads.

I see the advantages of this site with the ratings and evaluations of links, rather than just ranking based on number of bookmarks.  I see the advantage of some of the organization and tagging methods behind the ‘webmarks’ and such.  It looks like it’s a good service that may be up-and-coming.

I have to say personally for me.  I probably, at most, will be a very basic user of A1-Webmarks for the time being – only because of the time factor, and the number of sites I already need to manage.  I may down the road decide to import and organize my bookmarks fully into this service, but for today I will pass.

As it rates/ranks and allows you to vote on webmarks and lists, it gives no point of reference on how those approval rating are calculated, the number of “members” or people voting.  So until I learn more – I have added a few basic ‘webmarks’ that will create incoming links to my favorite sites, and we’ll leave it that.

Know more about A-1 Webmarks than I do?  Please leave a comment and tell me why you like/dislike it.

I’ve not been great in recent weeks about getting blog posts up and writing about cool stuff.  Primarily because life is just so darn crazy between work, family and church – along with my recent to decision to get back into working out at the gym several times a week – my only free time seems to be after 10pm at night – at which time, I’m generally catching up on Food Network shows like Iron Chef America and The Next Iron Chef.

This week (today actually), I also begin co-leading a group of women through the 12-Step program, a year long commitment which I am soooo excited about – to help women overcome their personal hurts, habits and hang-ups.  This fills up another night of the week, and leaving little to no free-time.

This morning as I’m getting signed up for yet another Social Media Service, which I have no time for, I stumbled onto something that has given me inspiration for my next 100 posts or so – literally.  I created a Naymz profile, which I still don’t what I’m using it for and why – but like me, you probably always get invitations to this site or that site by your social media contacts.  Here’s what I’ve decided to do… I’m going to assess each one of the “services” listed on the AddThis list (see below).

My next 100 or so blog posts...

Some I know inside and out, and we’ll have some fun with those – others of these, honestly I’ve never heard of – so this should be a journey.  We are going to start with the top of the list and work our way down.

I hope you’ll join me on my “AddThis” adventure.  I think there is much to be learned!