I have accepted a new position at Orange County and instead of abandoning my blog have decided to alter its subject a little.
From now on I will be blogging about government-related topics– how to improve communication with citizens through social media, how to improve internal functions with technology, and more.
(In case you’d like to refer to them, all older posts will remain up.)
I look forward to continuing the communication that’s begun through this blog and I’m excited about new ventures!
So you’ve built a blog on WordPress. You see the Plugins section, but you have no idea what to do with them. Do you need them? Do they serve any purpose? What plugins are available?
There are plugins for almost everything you can think of, from linking your blog to Twitter to making it easier to insert photos in your sidebar.
There are a couple basics every blog should have, though; most related to either making your site easier for your customers to find (whether they know they are looking for you or not) or making your content easier to share. (NOTE: These plugins are available when you install the self-hosted version of WordPress–ie, your own URL– not with a blog hosted at WordPress.com)
First of all, when you install WordPress it comes with a plugin that helps block spam comments called Akismet. You will need to create a WordPress.com account and get an API key to activate it, but it’s well worth it because it will block 99% of spam comments in all but the most trafficked blogs. (If you find you need more help blocking spam comments, there are many additional plugins to accomplish this.)
If you have a Google Analytics account and plan to use it to track links and traffic to your blog (which I highly recommend), save yourself a lot of time and heartache by installing Google Analyticator, which automatically adds the necessary JavaScript to make that happen. You will have to enter a few things on the plugin Settings page to set it up initially, but after that it will do all the legwork for you!
Next you will want to install a few plugins to help make your blog easy for search engines to find and index.
The All in One SEO Pack is an excellent place to start; once activated it gives you a way to add keywords to the code of each blog post so posts will appear in relevant searches.
Google XML Sitemaps is another really helpful plugin. (It doesn’t just create and submit Google sitemaps; it will do it for all the major search engines.) Search engines don’t only search sites with sitemaps, but it makes the process easier and you can make recommendations for how often their bots come through. You can even make exceptions and keep the bots from scanning certain pages. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you would be well served by finding someone who knows a bit more about SEO, especially in the initial setup of your site.)
Finally, you’ll want to make your content as easy to share as possible.
A popular one-size-fits-all option is the Add to Any Share/Bookmark plugin, which adds a menu to the bottom of each post offering sharing options on many popular sites.
There is a Share on Facebook plugin to add that specific button, or you can use the code from Facebook’s own site to add their official button.
The TweetMeme Retweet Button plugin is very popular as it is an easy way to share the post on Twitter and also displays the number of times the post has been tweeted in a graphic in the post itself.
The Twitter on WordPress plugin creates a widget in your sidebar that will show all your tweets live.
This is just a start. There are hundreds of other plugins that do useful things like changing the way your blog archive appears or changing the “Next” “Previous” links at the bottom of the page. It’s worth searching anything you think of you might like to change; which you may have to change the code yourself to make some changes or add some functionality, the great developers who contribute to WordPress may well have already done the work for you! (And don’t forget to donate to those developers if you possibly can.)
You’ve heard a lot about social media. You know you should get involved. You’re just not sure you have time/not sure you know how/not sure you want to jump in just yet. That’s fine (for now). What do you do now, then? Ignore the conversation? Pretend no one is mentioning your brand because you’re not there? No way!
Whether you have profiles on every site, are waiting to jump in to social media or never plan to get involved, you should know what is being said about your company. Here’s how to do that.
Set up Google Alerts on terms you want to keep track of across the Web (your company name, your own name, brand names of your products or services, and– for best results– other terms related to your industry). Be sure to click Comprehensive! You can have these delivered to your email (in a daily or weekly digest, or as they occur) or to an RSS reader. (This step is really an absolute necessity. If you do nothing else, at least do this!)
While some tweets will eventually show up in your Google Alerts, for the most real-time results you should use Twitter Search. If you want to do this daily, you’re welcome to; but the easiest way will be to search the terms, then click Feed for this Query and subscribe in an RSS feeder.
In order to use Facebook Search, you’ll need a Facebook account. It’s worth signing up for, since anything within Facebook will not show up in your Google Alerts. If the mentions you see through Google are showing up in blogs, subscribe to search terms in the blog siteTechnorati. You might also search regularly through Alltop, a topic aggregator.
Once you have a good idea of the conversation happening about your brand (or related topics), you’ll have a chance to decide where you want to go from there. Do you want to set up profiles on existing networks, or try to start a community around your brand? Do you want to blog or just chat? Is there an educational gap surrounding your product? After listening for a while, you’ll know where the gaps are– and you can figure out (or get help figuring out) just how you want to fill them.
Without being active on the Web, you’ll have a hard time responding if you hear something about your brand getting out of hand, but at least you won’t be blindsided by something that arises “behind the scenes”. (Remember: Your customers have access to search engines and are usually on at least one social media site. It’s not behind the scenes for anyone but you.)
Provide top-notch customer service through Twitter, Facebook, or any number of forum or chat platforms.
Send a newsletter– use ConstantContact, Emma, or the bevy of other products available. (By permission only, please!)
Distribute informative literature by posting it on your website, Facebook fan page, or other platform.
Send invitations or spread the word about events– store openings, special sales, educational seminars, campaign rallies, whatever! Use MeetUp, Facebook, Evite, or a range of other options.
Distribute coupons, discount codes, or event tickets individually via email or generally to online fans/followers.
Organize volunteers to political events, community service opportunities, or other causes (MeetUp, Facebook, Evite, etc.).
Make announcements or distribute press releases. You can do this through regular communications on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, on a section of your website, or officially either through direct communication with reporters or by using a service like PitchEngine.)
With new small business clients I often get questions like
“Yeah, I know I should be on social media. But what would I use it for?”
“I don’t have a lot of time to devote to this, but I want to jump in. How can I start?”
“I’m not ready to set up a profile anywhere. Is there a way for me to dip a toe in another way?”
These questions, and others like them, will be answered over the next few weeks.
I’d love to get everyone’s input and look forward to further discussion.
Do you think you can create one ad campaign and run it on every medium? Think again.
While there may be some crossover, each medium is different and even if you’re always reaching the “same” audience, the truth is you’re most likely reaching very different segments of that audience– people who choose to receive their information in very different ways.
Some advertisers use their regular TV spots as the commercials in the ABC.com episode player. There’s a pause button on the ads (while the 30 seconds of show break continues to advance). Who watches these ads? No one. The smart advertisers, like NesQuik, put interactive ads in place–during one break you play a branded ConnectFour against the NesQuick bunny. This obviously takes longer than 30 seconds, and I’m willing to bet most people will finish the game before clicking to continue their show. The more time spent with your brand = the more the customer will remember.
On Hulu, the ad spots are also 30 seconds but you can’t pause them; and you don’t have to click to return to your movie (it happens automatically because the ads are in the same player). I watched several hours of Hulu shows and movies over the weekend. The only ad I remember? The one for FedEx, which is only 10 seconds long and shows a fast-forwarded version of their commercial while a voiceover says “Go ahead and get back to your movie; we know your time is valuable.” The FedEx logo is clearly visible on a package during most of the fast-forwarded part, and the logo appears by itself for about 2 seconds at the end. Then the show resumes, 20 seconds faster than it does on others’ ads. Excellent use of the medium. (If you’re really reaching your audience, they will remember you because of how little time they spent with your brand!)
TV advertising, especially if your audience is very broad (which it should be if you’re paying for TV ads), should take the network and the air time into account for commercials. It’s very doubtful you will have an effective campaign by showing the same ad on Spike and Lifetime, or on NBC at 12noon and 2am.
Think about the purpose of your advertising. Is advertising just ‘throwaway’ money? Then by all means create one commercial and paste it everywhere. If, however, you wish to see the highest ROI for each marketing dollar, you should invest a little more upfront in order to see real effectiveness.
Ted’s Montana Grill is Ted Turner’s eco-friendly restaurant chain most famous for their bison burgers. They currently have a solid online presence and a very vocal raving fanbase. Here’s how they’ve done it:
They knew raving fans existed and they wanted to leverage them to build more raving fans.
They started email marketing, gathering email addresses from an easy-to-use signup box on their homepage. Emails are generally about specials or special events, not at set intervals.
They started a Facebook Fan page, and began offering a few special deals just for Facebook fans.
Later they did a month-long trivia contest using the Fan Page Updates and the Wall where the first person to post the correct answers to three trivia questions each Friday won a gift certificate.
Finally they launched a huge contest where fans had to create content (art, sound or video) about what made them the biggest fan of Ted’s bison burgers. The winner would get a new Prius and free food at Ted’s for a year.
After a submission period (marketed by a few emails, but mostly on their Facebook page) Ted’s picked the top three submissions for the final round of the contest, and asked their fans to pick the fourth (out of ten selected entries). They have a YouTube channel for this purpose, as well as having the options easily accessible on their website (with voting highlighted on their homepage). Just a few hours after announcing this turn of events the contest had well over 6,000 votes.
The fans in these videos talk of flying to Ted’s locations (currently the chain is only in a few states) just to have a burger, taking their four burger-loving toddlers, going faithfully every week after church, knowing the names of every waiter at their local restaurant, the health benefits of bison over beef and the huge variety of burger toppings, among other things. Let me tell you, these fans are evangelists–and there are thousands of them.
Ted’s online marketing strategy is pretty simple. They started with a solid, easy-to-navigate website; added email, then Facebook. It is not an inordinately expensive campaign, nor do the Ted’s staff have much direct interaction with fans (such as Twitter or back-and-forth on Facebook). They’ve just set up a forum for people to share good things, and given away a few (in the long run, also fairly inexpensive) incentives along the way to get more people involved.
How can your business replicate their success? Where are you raving fans, and how can you reach them so they can reach others for you?
If you’re considering building an online community from scratch (rather than leveraging one of the thousands that already exist), you’ll need to either find a passionate, socially-inclined niche or create a forum for people to share what they can’t share elsewhere.
ClosetCouture.com has done the latter. They know how women deal with clothes in person– they go shopping together, talk about clothes over lunch, flip through each other’s closets, and come over before dates to scrutinize. The next step is to move this interaction online.
Each user on the site uploads a photo of each piece of her wardrobe against a white background. She can then put together and save outfits, which can be sent to friends for a rating of 1-5. Friends can also suggest outfits for each other, or users can pay professional stylists to put together outfits and suggest new pieces (with links to those suggestions on retail partners’ sites).
The site was recently featured in Vogue magazine, where Jane Herman demonstrates why this is a profitable concept:
Forget Facebook. Give me an interactive Web site that lets me post pictures of my clothes in a virtual closet that other style-minded users can access to create looks they think will look great on me. My idea of a useful social networking site is one that involves a continual dialogue about clothes.
Jane doesn’t just want to socialize. She wants to socialize about clothes, like she does when she’s physically with her friends. She’s certainly not alone; the site was growing by approximately 150 users a day before being featured in the publication that reaches more women passionate about clothes than any other medium. (To recap: these women are so passionate about fashion they didn’t balk at taking the time to individually photograph every item in their wardrobe.)
Girls have liked dolls, paper dolls and fashion plates for centuries; and now this concept has not only gone digital but become a way to connect with friends (both real-world and new online acquainstances). Partnerships with designers, stylists and retailers shows the site is having no trouble monetizing (a problem the non-niche Twitter, MySpace and even Facebook are having).
In short, the same advice applies to building an online community as it does to any marketing venture: know your audience, and give them what they want before they even know they’re looking for it.
This morning, thousands of people in Florida and Georgia awoke to “SOS Only” service on their AT&T cell phones. While only a minor annoyance for some, for others (like me) who use the phones to run their businesses and/or have gotten rid of their land lines, this constitutes a major problem.
I called AT&T and sat on hold for fifteen minutes. A customer service representative told me they were aware of the outage and it would be fixed within 24 hours. 24 hours?! That is a long time to be without cell service. I asked if this service interruption would be eflected in my bill. I was put on hold again, and then was told I would be given a 48-hour credit ($4.79). That’s good, but doesn’t really address the larger business problem I’m encountering by being without cell service!
I began searching Twitter to see whether others were having this problem. Many were. Soon local station Central Florida News 13 was talking about it on Twitter, getting lots of responses and starting a hashtag for the event: #attfail. The Orlando Sentinel picked up on the story too, and began live blogging the updates they received from AT&T’s spokeswoman.
Facebook isn’t searchable in the same way, but news about it has definitely been going around my newsfeed.
AT&T was nowhere to be found. As far as I can tell there was no acknowledgement of the problem on their website (although the system was so clogged I couldn’t log in to my account online), and no use was made of their Twitter account to respond to the growing number of people making this problem very public.
Etan Horowitz, an Orlando Sentinel technology journalist, wrote a blog that the outage had been confirmed by AT&T and began actively updating the blog entry and Twitter (even @-replying to each complainant he found via a Twitter search) to keep people informed of AT&T’s official response. In short, he was doing precisely what AT&T ought to have been doing!
If your company ever has a service crisis like this, how are you equipped to respond? Will you rely on a local newspaper reporter to assure your customers that something is being done? (Are you willing to trust the media to communicate as well as Etan did with your customers?)
If you are not active in social media (especially Twitter), you are not set up to control your own message through a crisis. That’s a dangerous place to be.
