The group started about three years ago with a focus on blogging but over time we’ve evolved to discussions on all types of social media and marketing.  This last month we all agreed to write a blog post about the five things we’ve learned from participating in the Akron Blogging Community:

My Five Learns from the ABC group:

1.  The ABC Group is the place to bring your questions – if the group doesn’t know the answer, someone knows who does. I was looking for a month to find a site to upload and sell digital goods and through the group I learned about e-junkie - perfect for single document e-book sales and affliliate programs.

2. Chris Brown, editor of Branding and Marketing, shared two great tips with us: the WordPress plug-in for Simple Pull Quotes and Link Within a wonderful widget (see below) that offers readers a selection of other postings within your blog they might be interested in reading. 

3.  When I was writing the Policy for Social Media manual, I brought the piece to the group for their thoughts and edits – they were a great sounding board. And Chris provided a detailed process for helping to increase awareness!

4.  I learned about the Google Wonder Wheel - a search tool that provides a mind map of additional key words terms.  Do a Google search and then look at the left side bar and click on the Wonder Wheel link to see how cool of a tool it is.

5.  The number of new links and resources that I’ve learned grows each month.  The SEO plug in for WordPress, Pretty Links, converting your blog to mobile with mobigalore.com or creating an online to-do list at Toodledo.com. 

I highly recommend stopping by at least once.  There’s no charge, except for a cup of coffee or tea, and the information is priceless! 

Maria Santoferraro has learned these five things. And Deborah Shapiro shared her list of five as well.

UPDATE – here are the five learns from Chris Brown

I’m even quoted on page 51!

Last year I wrote a marketing book for entrepreneurs and before I self published I wanted quotes on the back from people in the marketing industry. I didn’t have relationships with them and tried to figure out the best way to connect, ask them to read the book and have them provide a quote.  So I decided to use Twitter.  I sent six people a direct tweet about my book and asked if they would be willing to read and if they liked, to provide a quote. Within FOUR HOURS I’d heard from five saying – send me the book.  The next day I heard from the sixth also agreeing to read the book.  In the end five out of six provided a quote – far more glowing than I would have written for myself!

Check out Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn: Quick Guide for Entrepreneurs. You’ll find a sample of the book.  The book also contains several workbook pages to help you get started.

Click here to view more details

Create a Series of Messages with RedKid

RedKid offers business signs, airplanes, buses, cartoon characters and even a women wearing a t-shirt that “hearts” your company. Check it out. It is a fun way to add a little color and customization to your website content.  It works great for blog content as you can see here.  I spent way too many hours creating a series of different images and saving them to my computer for future blog posts.

Visit Redkid and click on Images. Then select “sign generator” and you’ll find the complete library of open source images you can customize for your business.  They work great for creating birthday cards or party invitations as well.  One business peer of mine used the Blackberry image above for all of her daily business tips.  She had to go in and create each one separately – tedious – but the end result is pretty clever!

Provided by McKinsey Quarterly

In the most recent McKinsey Quarterly, there is an article with updated statistics about the value of word of mouth advertising as seen in the photo above.

…word of mouth¹ is the primary factor behind 20 to 50 percent of all purchasing decisions. Its influence is greatest when consumers are buying a product for the first time or when products are relatively expensive, factors that tend to make people conduct more research, seek more opinions, and deliberate longer than they otherwise would. And its influence will probably grow: the digital revolution has amplified and accelerated its reach to the point where word of mouth is no longer an act of intimate, one-on-one communication. Today, it also operates on a one-to-many basis: product reviews are posted online and opinions disseminated through social networks. Some customers even create Web sites or blogs to praise or punish brands.

You can see from the statistics that social media is playing a large role in helping people decide what to buy.  It is also an important way for buyers to learn about new products, services, websites and companies.  People buy from those they like and trust and they trust the friends they follow on Twitter and Facebook.

Have you begun to embrace social media as part of your strategy to connect with potential customers? If so, you may want to consider having a policy for social media to establish the ground rules for corporate participation of your associates.

Need help determining how to get started and create a strategy? I can help.  Give me a call.  330-414-8792.

To read the entire article you will have to sign up for the free account but their articles are worth the time it takes to fill out the form.  Here is the link to the complete article called A New Way to Measure Word of Mouth advertising

But who has the time?

AllWrite Ink now has a retainer package available offering 5-, 10- or 15-hours of monthly content writing on your behalf.

Here is a sampling of some of the tactics that we can do for you:

• Update current website content
• Create and update a blog
• LinkedIn research of contacts and groups
• Create a series of videos for YouTube
• E-newsletters sent to email addresses
• Marketing letters sent to community
• Press releases
• Brochure/flyer content
• Sales letters to prospects
• Follow up emails or letters after a sales call
• Social media training for you or your staff
• Write how-to articles for the website
• Answer questions on LinkedIn
• Research networking events
• Create your one minute elevator speech as well as a shorter 140 character version for social media
• Register your business with online directories
• Call existing customers to obtain testimonials

Each month we’ll review your promotional needs and AllWrite Ink will do the work. Packages are priced to fit in your budget. The nice thing about a retainer is that you know exactly how much to budget each month for creating a brand awareness for your business. For the complete retainer package information click here: Retainer Package flyer

Now there is an employee how to guide that is in a colorful, easy to read format. The guide walks your employees through the steps of setting up their accounts and learning how to participate.  For just $9.95 you can download this easy to use guide for your employees.  It goes hand in hand with the Policy for Social Media manual.

Have you thought about some simple changes?

• Change a comma to a semi-colon
• Add a city name to your text (serving Northeast Ohio can now read serving Northeast Ohio including Cleveland and Akron)
• Change a paragraph of text to a bullet pointed list of items
• Change the caption on an image
• Add a caption! (I was making assumptions that you had captions, wasn’t I?)

Of course some of the more obvious changes involve adding new content: newsletters, press releases, images, new page of content.

Bottom line, when writing websites make sure you understand it is an ongoing commitment – not just a one time deal.

Social Media Leaps

To have an active, vibrant presence on the Internet, having a websites isn’t enough. You have to participate in social media.

As of February 2010 there were 36 million LinkedIn users, 300 million  Facebook users and 20 million unique visitors on Twitter a month.

Surely at least one percent of those users could be potential customers for your business.

Check out this site: Social Media Leaps for daily tasks to complete to help enhance your Internet presence. Sign up to learn the basics, learn how to listen and how to establish your brand image. Here is just an example with the 60 day checklist.

If you are just getting started or if you’ve been involved for a while but want to see if there is a step you’ve missed – I would suggest you check out this social media resource.

The list is extensive and exhausting. Most are industry specific and very few are all encompassing. In a recent article at Brand  Channel, author Sheila Shayon mentioned that most social media policies of businesses surveyed talk about marketing but not human resources or recruiting.

The Policy for Social Media includes 16 policies and procedures that encompass:

• The benefits of social media from the company, employee and customer perspectives
• The dos and don’ts of participating
• How employees can use social media to build their personal credibility
• How to establish a relationship with customers and promote 2-way conversation
• Using social media for research – customer’s opinions and company information for sales growth opportunities
• Specific unacceptable behavior and the consequences – when using social media on and off the job
• How to successfully include social media participation into your already busy day

Are there plenty of articles, samples of social media policies and blog posts to help you create your own policy or social media? Sure – but why spend the time when there is already one available to download today.

Check out the Policy for Social Media (which I wrote – offering full disclosure) and download your copy today for just $49.95.

Do you measure the visitors that land on your website or blog? There is quite a science attached to this strategy. You can learn what search terms brought them to your site, if they came from Explorer, Firefox or Safari, how long they stayed, what page they arrived on and what the last page was they visited before they left.

This information can be very valuable if you are striving to drive traffic to your site based on key word search rather than someone that knows you and knows your company name and intentially visits your site. I’m in the process of learning/understanding/utilizing this tool as I strive to drive traffic to my Policy for Social Media manual. You may already use Google Analytics but have you heard of Site Meter?

I was impressed with the level of detail the reports provide. I have added both services to my sites and look forward to comparing the results.

Link Within

Have you read a blog and at the end of the article, found several additional article titles with hyperlinks.  “If you liked this, you may also enjoy…”  Well, Link Within takes it one step further. Add the HTML code for Link within to the end of your post and it will generate additional articles titles from your blog archives, but rather than provide the list in words – you’ll see the blog recommendations in photo form. Check out the end of this post for an example.