Red Humpy

In my blog post about the Social Media Umbrella, I presented a visual to help make it easier to understand how your blog and other social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn work together to create the canopy of your online presence. Here’s my video explaining the concept. I’d love to hear your feedback!

Click the image for a printable PDF

At a recent social media consultation/lunch with two clients who both have existing websites, we discussed how social media can tie into their individual endeavors. 

Both of the clients I met with are artists with small businesses and have attended my social media educational workshop, ‘Remember to REACH‘. The lunch meeting was a follow-up to the workshop to offer some one-on-one consulting and help them hone in on the social media tools like a blog, Facebook and Twitter that they are just beginning to use.

One of the artists is a sculptor whose wind harp designs are as technical as they are beautiful. He had no problem understanding the concept of using social media to create ties to his website hub. His wife, however, is a painter and was having a difficult time with my explanation of having her blog hosted alongside of her website hub while using social media sites to connect the pieces. Having your blog hosted on the same domain as your existing website will ensure that search engines give you full credit for all of the pages at both locations.

I noted the look of frustration on the painter’s face and realized she still wasn’t getting how the social media pieces worked together. I took a deep breath and looked up to try and get a visual that I could explain to her, rather than the words that her left brain was hearing but her right brain wasn’t comprehending. It was a sunny day and we were under a canvas umbrella with a wooden post. I contemplated how I could have her visualize her website and pointed up to the pieces of the umbrella.

The umbrella, spokes and how they are connected created a visual that worked for both artists, as well as for the writer who I showed it to the next day. I  hope this Social Media Umbrella will help you see how your website is the main piece of your online presence, but your other social media tools are the pieces that help turn your website into a larger structure. And keep in mind that your blog and all of the articles it contains is an important part of the structure that will make a difference in whether you can be found online.

Click on the image in this post for a PDF that you can print and refer to. Here are the three main pieces to the umbrella structure as it pertains to social media:

1. Your website is not just a static brochure. It is the hub of your entire online presence, and the goal of using social media sites like Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. is  to direct people to your website hub where your call-to-action will occur.

2. A Blog is a powerful social media tool that has two main purposes. Each time someone links or refers to a post you create, it will act as an incoming link to your website, meaning a higher ranking in search results. But the same post is also another page in your website that is indexed by the search engines, which gives you more chances to be found online. For this reason, it is important to keep your Blog as a part of your own website, rather than hosted elsewhere.

3. Social Media sites are the edges of your online reach. These sites allow people to interact with you, to ask questions, to comment, and to really see who you are. Your goal with these sites is not to sell, but to allow people to know you, which will entice them to your website hub.

The beauty of the Social Media Umbrella is that each piece complements the other to create the overall structure, and each piece is linked together to create a cohesive online presence. Your Blog links to each of the social media sites, and they link back to your website, which links to your Blog.

I’d love to hear your feedback on the Social Media Umbrella!

Hiding from social media doesn't mean your business isn't already involved.

Businesses that choose not to use social media can’t help being a part of the online conversation. Even if you aren’t doing any promotion using tools like Facebook or Twitter, your customers are probably doing it for you.

According to a Social Media TV video, the Donut Drive-in is a historic business on Route 66 that gets enough traffic from their location and word of mouth that they haven’t felt the need to participate in any online social media sites like Facebook or Twitter. But the many customers who take pictures and post information and reviews about the business are insuring that the Donut Drive-in is part of the online world, whether the owners like it or not.

For those of you who aren’t using social media tools in your business yet, it is useful to do internet searches on your business name to see where it is appearing and what is being said about you. Millions of people around the world are using the internet to find and share information, so hiding from social media just doesn’t work. With so many people engaging with others about businesses that they have visited, it is a good idea to at least keep track of what the online community is saying about your business, even if you aren’t ready to join them.

By using searches to see where your business is getting mentioned, you can then determine what communities to be involved in when you decide to interact online. Keep in mind that just because you aren’t using social media tools, many of your customers are. Monitoring what they are saying and contributing to the conversation can help your business maintain the image that you have worked to create.

Although you might not want to use social media tools to promote your business, others can be promoting, or destructing, your business for you.  Social media isn’t a fad. It is a collection of internet tools that allow anyone in the world to communicate and interact online, and not being a part of the online community isn’t an option anymore.  As the Borg said in a Star Trek movie, “Resistance is futile.”

There is a woman in Pagosa Springs who has been trying to rent her house for over 6 months. She travels so often that she no longer needs a home base, which led to the decision to put her things in storage and make some income by renting it out.

For the last 6 months, she has renewed her Craig’s List ad every 30 days as it expires. This past weekend, she decided to post news of her rental to her 398 Facebook fans. Along with a photo of her house, the post read, “for rent , trade or sale my home in Pagosa Springs, it’s 3 bedroom and one and a half baths on a large treed lot at the end of a culdasac . there is also an oversized two garage with an apartment , office or artist retreat w a full bath and kitchenette .”

After spending 5 minutes posting on Facebook, she received more interest than she had after months of posting on Craig’s List. In addition, some of the people in her Facebook network are re-distributing the information to people in their own network, extending her reach even farther.

When I teach my social media educational workshop, I remind my audience that social media tools are not for selling, but rather for interaction and communication. Having a home to rent is part of that Pagosa Springs woman’s life, and as such, is relevant information to share with her online audience. If she was a realtor, on the other hand, then her sales pitches would belong on a business fan page and not on her personal page.

Social media tools allow you to communicate with a broad audience in a way that could not have been imagined just ten years ago. Just 5 minutes on Facebook and within hours, 5 good leads on a rental. Are you using your online network effectively?

As always, I would love to hear your comments!

So much content, so little time

I hosted my first social media presentation last night here in Pagosa Springs. My audience of 14 consisted of  small business owners, nonprofits, artists, a sculptor, writers, a marketing consultant, a lodge owner, a web developer and online news journalist, a musician/builder, and a gallery owner.

After spending 15 years as a web designer and computer technician, and the last eight months studying the progression of social media and attempting to get to the bottom of the ‘why’ behind it all, I used the information that I have learned as the foundation for the presentation. The problem was paring it down enough to be able to present it in two hours, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., at a time when people have worked all day and although were eager to learn, weren’t neccessarily ready to have so much content presented to them.

When I hear about a  luncheon that will educate people on why they should use social media, I am curious as to how someone could possibly explain the ‘why’ in a one hour presentation. The webinars and short presentations that I have sat through tend to show a lot of statistics about  how many businesses are beginning to use social media as part of their marketing plan and how rapidly it is growing.

But do statistics really help a business owner understand why they are using the social media tools? Will the  ‘everyone else is doing it so you should’  mentality help a business owner know how to create a plan, or choose what tools to use? The business owners that I help with websites and computer problems don’t seem any better off for having attended a workshop that tells them how great Facebook and Twitter are.

Understanding the big picture

The best one hour presentation on social media that I have seen is a HubSpot webinar by Mike Volpe. In addition to other things, his presentation covered the evolving world of search engine optimization and how Google ranks pages. It really helped me connect  the dots and understand the big picture about  the social media tools that are available. Understanding that helped me establish an intertwining thread that ran through my presentation, and it’s not something I can describe in one blog post or explain at a luncheon.

I advertised my social media workshop as ‘intensive’, and it was definintely that. I knew these business owners were busy and I had just two hours to teach them what I have been studying 20 hours a week for eight months. The first 45 minutes of my presentation covered the evolution of how search engines work, beginning with the alphabetical search results that I took advantage of when I built my first website in 1995. (Putting the letter ‘A’ at the beginning or your title put you at the top of the list!) The second half was a brief overview of nine of the most common social media tools, the best-practices for using them and mistakes people make.

Once my audience of 14 understood how search engines are becoming more personal by integrating social media into the equation, and how the goal of using the tools is not just to gain many fans and followers but to interact, communicate and be a part of a community, it helped them understand their goals for using the social media sites.

But according to my exit questionnaires, 12 of the 14 left feeling overwhelmed with information. 13 of my attendees rated my presentation a 5 out of 5 and felt it was well worth the money they spent to attend, and the 5 I have spoken to since said they have great ideas and definitely feel that they are ready to develop a plan and start a campaign. But a few people still don’t know where to even begin, or how to develop a plan. Is  that a failure of my presentation that I did not get them to that point, or is it natural that there will be people that need help with the most important part of social media: developing a good plan?

The challenge as a teacher

So my challenge now is to figure out how to turn my presentation into something that is not overwhelming to the audience and keep it in under two hours. A few have suggesetd I present it in two sessions of two hours each, one week apart with some research in between. Another idea was to do a three or four hour workshop with more hands-on discussion and audience interaction. Someone else said that I should offer a beginner class that just covers the basics, but the basics of my presentation don’t stand alone. The ‘why’ leads to the ‘how’ and I can’t figure out a way to have one without the other. 

My next workshop will be in Denver in June, which gives me time to  tune my presentation and attempt to avoid my audience  feeling  overwhelmed with information when they leave.  My goal is not to come across as a social media consultant who knows what they need to do, but to teach them what I have learned so they can use social media to its maximum potential. But social media is not a ‘here it is, go do it’ situation. It is an ongoing business lifestyle change. It’s a commitment, like going from having a boyfriend or girlfriend to getting married. And it is certainly not something I feel should be taken lightly and learned about in an hour.

I’m up for the challenge, though, and I have one month before my next workshop to make the learning experience for my audience better than the last one.  If you’re an educator that has had the same type of challenge, I’d love to hear from you!

I am the vice-president on the board of a wonderful nonprofit affordable housing organization that is based out of Pagosa Springs and serves four counties in southwest Colorado. One of our marketing goals this year is to increase our web presence and luckily, we have a staff member who can help us implement this plan.

The challenge is choosing what social media to invest our valuable resource of time into. A Facebook page is probably our best free resource because it can allow fans and visitors to see organizational updates and interact with us.

Melissa Jun Rowley has a great article posted on Mashable.com that shows some great examples of what other nonprofits are doing with their social media resources. For some, it is about getting more volunteers and reaching out to the community they serve. For others, success is measured by acquiring donations. But whatever the desired result, using tools like Facebook, Twitter and blogs is free except for the time someone on the staff has to put into it. Investing in these free resources, however, is a great way to extend your nonprofit’s message far beyond the reach of traditional networking.

Keep in mind that a Facebook page or another online resource is a commitment and doesn’t guarantee any kind of success, but the tools are there to use and when done properly, you can generate the kind of return you are looking for.

What do those icons at the end of posts mean?

To make the best use of social media opportunities, most bloggers have icons attached to each post that allow you to interact in many ways. If you like what you read, you are able to re-broadcast the content, follow a user on Twitter, become a fan of their Facebook page, subscribe to their RSS feed, check out their YouTube video channel, or view their Flickr photos.

Here is a list of the common icons you will see and what you can do with them:

Twitter

The Twitter icon will take you to that person’s Twitter site. You can view the user’s tweets and if you are a user yourself, you can choose to ‘follow’ them on Twitter. When you follow a user, their tweets will appear on your Twitter home page.

Facebook

When you click on a blogger’s Facebook icon, you are taken to their Facebook page, usually their business or fan page. From there, you can share the page with others, choose to ‘like’ the Facebook user, post something on their ‘wall’, or just browse the page to find out more about that person.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social networking site that functions much like Facebook, but LinkedIn is all business. Clicking on the LinkedIn icon will take you to that person’s profile. You can choose to create a connection with that user, but it must be reciprocated. LinkedIn users build their network by creating connections with people who have connections with other people. The site lets you analyze your connections to see who you can connect with that may have a connection to someone you don’t know but want to connect with. People use their connections to gain introductions to someone they don’t have a direct connection to, post a job opening to their connections to see who their connections can recommend, among other things. It’s all about business networking (and connections)!

Stumble Upon

This link is pretty cool. When you read an article that you would like to promote and you see this icon on the page, you can click it for submission to StumbleUpon for other people to find, or stumble upon! The site is basically a big blog post repository where users submit articles and rate them for other users. As a user, you can stumble upon recommended posts based on the posts you’ve already recommended. Other StumbleUpon users can rate posts they stumble upon with a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. When you find good content, support that blogger by stumbling their post for others to find.

Digg

You can Digg a page by clicking on this icon, which takes you to the Digg site that works much like StumbleUpon. When you submit a post to Digg, you are making it available for other Digg users to find and rate. The rating system on Digg is an up-vote (digging) or a down-vote (burying). Pages with high rankings are featured on the main page for exposure, but it’s hard to achieve a ranking high enough to make it to the main page. Digging posts that you like is another way of supporting a good blogger.

Delicious

Delicious is a social media bookmark site where you can add links to pages that can be accessed from any computer. Bookmarks stored on the site can be viewed by others unless they are marked as private, and the site uses the number of bookmarks a site has to rank the pages. Users can browse Delicious pages by category to find content that is relevant to their interests. By bookmarking a blog page on Delicious, you are promoting the page for the blogger, as well as making it easy for you to find and access no matter what computer (or smart phone) you are using.

RSS Feed

This symbol is, in my opinion, the most powerful. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication and the tool can be used in many ways. By clicking on a blogger’s RSS link, you are taken to the syndicated feed page for that post where you have the option of subscribing to the feed for that particular post. By using a feed reader, you can then view any updates to that post.

You can also subscribe to an RSS feed that covers the entire blog and view all of that blogger’s posts via your feed reader, such as Google Reader. A reader is an easy way to keep track of all of the great blogs you come across and read the content in one spot, kind of like creating a custom newspaper with only the content that you want to read.

Another handy way to use an RSS feed is within your own website. If you have a blog and your own website, you can use a customizable feed reader such as RSSinclude and have your blog post summaries appear on your web page! You can view an article on how to do that here.

You can also show RSS feeds from other bloggers in addition to yours to provide your site visitors with a variety of good content that is hand-chosen.

YouTube

If you see a YouTube icon on someone’s page, it will take you directly to their YouTube channel where you can see all of their posted videos. Many bloggers have great instructional videos that you can watch or re-post to your own site.

Flickr

With Flickr, users can upload photos that become their ‘photostream.’ The Flickr icon will take you to someone’s photostream. A Flickr photostream can also act like an RSS feed for photos and can be embedded on a website with a reader.

Promote others and you will be promoted in return.

Bloggers will appreciate you using these social media tools to help promote the pages you think are worthy of attention. And if you are a blogger yourself, you should provide links to these tools for your viewers to use.

Some blogs have no social media buttons, and some have these listed and many more, such as Reddit, MySpace, Technorati, WordPress and others, but the ones that I have listed are the most commonly used. Another common icon is an envelope that will allow you to send an email to someone to share the link with them.

Bloggers should provide links to the sites that they use and monitor, and blog readers should utilize the links to help them navigate the social media world and promote good content for others. I hope this list helps you understand what those little icons mean. I’d love to hear your feedback.

“But I already work full-time running my business!”

When I share my excitement about social media resources with my clients, most who are sole-proprietors or have only 1 or 2 employees, their initial reaction is one of stunned silence.

“I can barely get on the internet,” they say, or, “I don’t know how I could possibly find time for keeping up with all that stuff.”

In another post, I used Mr. Carpet as an example of how he managed to find time to learn all about an 80′s entertainer’s medical ailments, but thought he couldn’t take time out of his busy schedule to do anything with social media.

But with a little budgeting, planning and time assessment, any small business owner would be silly not to work in a half-hour a day to use free tools that can build your company, your reputation, and your customers.

Legitimate excuse for having no time?

For those who are truly booked non-stop during their business hours, there is always the evening. If you have an attitude that you don’t want to spend your home hours doing work, then you can stop reading and just accept that your competitors will find the time and you can continue on your current path.

Others who really do have no extra time can consider hiring outside help. By cutting back on your outbound marketing budget just a bit (mailings, advertisements, etc.) you can find a few hundred dollars a month to hire someone to create the content you will need to submit online. Hopefully, you’ve been reading my other blog posts and have started to understand that the key to online marketing with social media is providing good content that your customers will find and value.

If you spend two or three hours up front developing a good online marketing plan, you can hire a writer to create blog posts and Twitter tweets. There is software available that will allow you to create many tweets at once, then have them released on a schedule that you create. (Check out Tweet Later) For blog posts, you can have several pieces written and posted at once, or also use a service to post them on specific dates.

Stop making excuses for having no time!

Business owners who plan to grow, to extend their reach, to build their business to possibly sell it someday - you will benefit greatly from using free social media tools. You don’t need a big budget  as far as money goes, but you do need to be aware of how you budget your time.

Skip an episode of one of your weekly TV shows that may be wonderful but isn’t doing anything to help your business grow. Think of how much you could accomplish after you put the kids to bed or finished dinner and instead of turning on the TV, you turned on your computer to work on building your own business. The key to that, though, is wanting to do it. Hopefully you are in a business that you love and are passionate about. If not, finding time to do ‘work’ will probably be difficult.

If you  are lucky enough to be in a business that you enjoy and are passionate about, take a hard look at how you spend your time and designate at least half an hour a day to your social media plan. The great reward of social media is that the more you put in to it, the more you get out of it. You will love watching your followers grow, reading the comments on your blog posts, and gaining new clients and customers who flock to the content you created.

Find some time and give it a try. Involve your husband or wife, ask the kids for their perspective, invite a neighbor over and share a blog idea with them, jot down ideas over coffee… Soon you will realize that online social media is the same as the conversations you’ve been having all along, but you’re using the internet to involve a greater audience.

You’ve got a blog, you’ve got a Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn account, and you’re even using them all together. What other valuable resource can you access? Your staff or employees!

Many businesses have banned social media sites like Facebook and Twitter all together because of rampant misuse and loss of productivity. However, many savvy business owners are realizing that by educating your staff on the proper use of social media sites, they are a valuable resource and offer free publicity to your company.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Create a clear policy on how much time can be spent on these sites
• Maintain strict guidelines for proper content that should be posted using the company name
• Encourage employees to create their own  posts as guests on the company blog and monitor and respond to comments
• Don’t force social media on staff, but allow them to use it if they have something positive and valuable to say
• Remind your staff to be themselves

Although time is money, if you have available staff with even a half hour of free time each day, the time they spend on their social media sites will be time will spent. Creating posts, tweets or status updates that relay how wonderful it is to work for your company is free advertising with a broad reach. With a good plan in place, encouraging your staff to use social media on company time can be a huge benefit.

If you are confused by the many social media references and resources and unsure how it should all be used, you are not alone. In a recent survey conducted by a trio of social media and marketing leaders, almost 40% of respondents with no social media campaign indicated they “didn’t understand the concept.” The full story on PRWeb is here.

From conversations with small business owners and individuals in Pagosa Springs and Denver, I would think that the number could be even higher.

When I excitedly mention to my clients that they should consider implementing these great new tools that are free and can bring in customers in ways that outbound marketing techniques can’t touch, their eyes get glazed over, or roll back in their head as they recount their woes with social media experiments.

Some business owners say they wouldn’t even consider using social media because they can barely figure out how to use the internet or place an online order. Other clients say they don’t need to do any social media marketing because they’re doing just fine. A writer commented that he is about to retire so he didn’t feel a need to deal with blogging or Facebook.

But most of my clients who are small business owners or self-employed artists, builders, musicians or craftsmen express interest in social media but lack the knowledge to implement a good plan. Some are already using Facebook and blogging, but don’t understand how to link those tools to their website. And after spending the last 8 months intensively reading, listening and studying marketing and social media, it is apparent that with how much buzz is going on about the topic, real explanations are hard to come by.

I can find post after post of the same information about how important it is for businesses to start using social media sites. Statistics abound! There are hundreds of pages that explain how to set up your Facebook page, how to use Tweets, and how to share your blog posts. But the ‘why’ behind all of it has been very difficult to find and sift through. I am thankful that I discovered Vaynerchuk’s ‘Crush It’ and Shah and Halligan’s ‘Inbound Marketing’ books, and I have mentioned them so often on my blog that I don’t even have to pick up the books to check their name spelling anymore!

HubSpot.com is a great resource for social media information and updates, and they even host free webinars on the subject if you are interested in training. To share information that I have learned in the past 8 months, I will be hosting my first workshop in Pagosa Springs on May 12th! I am excited to educate people about social media and to help them understand the concepts that are missing from so many of the posts I am reading.

To that 40% (or more) of you that don’t use social media because it’s hard to understand, I say be patient just a little longer, seek out those who can offer you real advice, and eventually the dust will settle to reveal the inner workings of inbound marketing strategies. 

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to do what I can to shed light on those topics here.