Today is a very special day.  It is the day we get to celebrate the 40th birthday of my business partner, Jason Crouch.  I met Jason several years ago and I must admit I am very happy to have done so.   He is a father of four, a wonderful husband and someone I am proud to call a friend.

So, for his birthday today I tried to figure out what could I do to help make his birthday special.   After a long time of consideration & thought, I think I figured out a great solution.  Jason is someone who loves comments & stuff shared.  I remember him writing a post once titled: How to Get Over 100 Comments on Your Blog Posts - A Retrospective. The post became so popular that the network it was on had to shut it off after the post had over 3,000 comments.  It was something he was very proud of and also something he was very sad to see shut off. So for his birthday today, I thought to myself: "Why not try for something like that here?"

Our blog on 210 Consulting has been pretty popular in the past. It has had a few posts with several comments and a few that have been Re-Tweeted and shared on Facebook 50-75 times.  So I thought, how cool would it be if we could share this post across our social networks over 100 times today and get at least 100 comments on it for Jason.  I think it would be a fitting present for him.

In case you wanted something of value, here are a few other interesting things that happened on this day in history:

• Today is the 229th day of the year.
• Davey Crockett, Sean Penn, & Jim Courier were also born on August 17th.
• On this day in 1982 the first Compact Discs were released to the public in Germany
• In 2008 on this day Michael Phelps won 8 gold medals.
• Jason Crouch Born

So, I know those aren't really that interesting, but help make Jason's day a special and interesting one by visiting his birthday post here & commenting/sharing!

HAPPY 40TH JASON!

I admit it, I find myself being a Foursquare junkie at times.  Ok, all the time. Becoming a mayor is as addicting as chocolate to a pregnant woman.  Not to mention the badges that you can grab and how that will continue to feed my addiction.

Today I'm not getting into the ways to use Foursquare for business or why it is or is not a great place to increase your sphere of influence and grow a business.  Instead I just wanted to share a fun app I found that allows you to track your check-ins on a map.  I think this is a great way to help you promote to others places you feel are great places to visit.  Since I live in a resort area, I have people visiting all the time from out of town looking for a great place to go.  This map will be a great way to share quickly & easily the places I enjoy & frequent the most in my area.  That way they can check it out & see what I love to try out on their own.

In an area like Myrtle Beach, this can be really helpful for picking a restaurant.  Why you may ask?  Well, there are enough places to eat here that you could have 3 meals for a year and a half and never eat at the same restaurant twice. With all those choices, it is hard to know what is good and what may not be.  If someone sees I am a mayor of a local restaurant & have been there 5-10 times then they can easily recognize this must be a great place.  Check out my map below:

Jeremy Blanton's Foursquare by WeePlaces.com.

You may not be a fan of Foursquare, but at least I see how an application like this connected into my account could be a benefit to others.  Not to mention it gives me great conversations on both my Facebook & Twitter accounts with friends.

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

How to Use Creative Commons Photos- The Why

We all understand the importance of adding photos and labeling them properly into our blog posts.  Adding just 2 images can increase the time someone stays at your blog by up to 300%!  That means if the average time is around 30 seconds, we can get someone to stay up to 3 minutes by adding them.  This is an important thing to note because not many people can read 500 word blog posts in under 30 seconds.

The reason this works is because consumers scan posts for the important points.  If a photo is there, that consumer's eyes are drawn to the photo and they will study it.  If the photo is good enough to get their attention, they will read the content.

How to Use Creative Commons Photos- The What

There are several ways to get photos for your blog.  Some are legal, and others are not.  Let's first address the not so legal ways.  Many times when I ask a client where they found the photo for their blog, they say that they simply did a Google search and the photo appeared.  They liked it, so they copied & pasted it into their post.  Whatever you do, don't copy & paste a photo from the a website without permission! When you copy & paste an image that you do not have permission to use, you are begging for a lawsuit to come your way.  I have seen and heard countless horror stories of people who have been sued for several thousands of dollars for doing this.

The second is to take the photos yourself.  We all now own some sort of digital camera or smartphone that has a camera built in.  Use those to snap photos yourself and load them into your blog.  You don't have to be a professional photographer to get good pictures for your blog.  But what do you do in instances when you don't have a photo of your own? You can turn to photo sites where you can purchase the photos for a few dollars each, or if you are on a tight budget, you can use a creative commons licensed photo.

What are Creative Commons photos?  To understand completely, visit their site here & read what is CC?  Basically, they are pieces of content that someone else has agreed to allow others to use under a common agreement that you will give the credit for the piece to the originator through proper recognition as required.  Giving proper credit normally means placing a link back to the photographer giving them credit for the original work.

Creative Commons Photos- The How To

So how exactly do you go about finding the photos and using them properly?  Well instead of writing it out, I decided to do a short video which I have placed below.  Simply follow the steps and you will be well on your way to finding great photographs to use in your blog posts.

I hope this helps you to find great photos for your upcoming works that are both functional & free.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact me for more help.

Photo Credit by Trekkyandy

 

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

Today we continue our series on how to blog and increase your blog traffic by discussing the subject of keywords.  In case you missed my last post, you can read it here and pick up a few more good nuggets on how to increase your blog traffic.

Keywords are by far one of the most misunderstood components for any blogger.  Usually they can pick out the few big keywords for a product/service, but have a very hard time finding the balance of terms that will rank well in the search engines as well as deliver a good amount of traffic to your site.  While it may be easy to dominate the first page of Google for a term like: “best real estate agent in Myrtle Beach South Carolina,” if that term receives less than 10 visits per month, is it really helping your business to spend time writing on that term? Granted, the leads that come directly from that are going to be very solid, your number of them will be few & far between.

On the other end of the spectrum, if I am in real estate, do I really want to try & rank for terms like Myrtle Beach Homes or Myrtle Beach real estate?  Those terms receive high amounts of traffic and and are going to be very difficult to garner page one results without a lot of work, content creation, and probably even hiring an SEO company.  Not to mention the quality of your lead is not very good either.  These broad general terms can generate lots of traffic, but very few transactions.  I remember an agent once that ranked for the top of the SERPS for a major term and got hundreds of leads each month.  He knew they were a waste of time, so he just handed them off to newbies in the industry and if they struck gold, collected a nice fat referral check.

So what should I be looking for in regards to keywords to increase blog traffic?

Take a look at this graph first to understand what section of keywords we are targeting:

We want to target the keywords in the green section to hopefully return the best results.  This means the terms that are showing a few thousand searches per month but not those with hundreds of thousands of searches.  They will deliver more traffic than those in the yellow with the quality of lead being better than terms in the red section. These terms are going to take a little bit of work to get to page one of Google, but will also send a few hundred hits to your site each month.  The leads will be a higher quality than the red section of our graph.  These people are not doing just general searches, they are doing searches that are more specific to a service or product and therefore are a little bit better quality.  When you see your site taking over page one of Google on these types of terms, that is when your phone will start ringing and sales will begin to skyrocket.

Determine Top 5 Keywords to Increase Blog Traffic and build from there.

The other day I was having a coaching session with a client, and we were developing the best keywords for his business.  He has invented a great piece of fitness equipment and hired me to assist him with his onlie presence.  I asked him to give me his top 5 keywords and from that we began to develop an in depth spreadsheet of keywords.  One of the keywords he gave me was “cheap workout equipment.”  I entered this term into Google Adwords and began to review the results.  The term “cheap workout equipment” is only being searched around 1,000 times per month, but a minor adjustment to “cheap exercise equipment” takes that number up to 8,100!   So, before you write your next post, take a few moments to determine what types of keywords to use.  A slight alteration can be the difference between 10 visits to your site and 1,000.

If you have any questions on how to increase your blog traffic through selecting the right keywords, feel free to ask in the comment section or contact me directly if you would like assistance determining the best keywords for your business.

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

Increasing blog traffic through organic search engine results is one of our most popular classes that we teach here at 210 Consulting.  The reason this is subject is so popular is that many understand the importance of their blogs showing up well in the search engines, but are not exactly sure what it takes to accomplish this.  As I have shared in the past, businesses who blog receive 55% more online business than those who do not according to Hubspot.

I've also shared a few basic principles to increasing blog traffic like the importance of writing consistently, labeling your photos properly, and even how to optimize a blog on a budget.  These are some great starting points on how to increase the traffic to your blog, but in order to really optimize things, there are a few basic principles & concepts that need to be used each time you write a blog.  This webinar on August 9th, 2010 at 1PM will walk you through step by step on how to write the best possible posts for search engines.

In addition to teaching you how to optimize things, we will also teach you how to write posts that are appealing to consumers.  Many times people get focused on SEO that they forget about the importance of writing something that is of interest to a consumer who is visiting the blog.   You only have one chance to wow that potential reader and if what you write isn't interesting, then they will move on to find the information they need from somewhere else.

We will teach you how to make your posts visually appealing as well as share several ideas for writing that can help you generate virtually an unlimited number of blog posts.

At the end of this course you will know:

• How to write a successful blog post that consumers will read
• How to get your blog posts showing up well in the search engines
• How to garner traffic into your blog by sharing on other social networks.

This 2 hour session is a must for anyone who is new to blogging, or to anyone that feels they are not optimizing their efforts with their blog at this time. The cost for this course is $50.  In addition to the live webinar class, you will also receive a copy of the presentation after with a copy of a recording of this class for review whenever you need a refresher.  If you are interested in this class but are unable to attend, feel free to contact us to purchase a recording.

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

We are excited to be hosting our first official contest today! Our friends over at Uprinting, a printing company contacted us and gave us 2 sets of 500 business cards for us to give away to two of our fans. Watch the video below to learn all about the contest. More specific details are listed below:

So What Can I Win?

• 500 Premium Business Cards
• 2x 3.5", 2x2: (square card) or 1.74 x 3.5" (slim card)
• 14 pt gloss cardstock, 14 pt matte cardstock, or 13 pt recycled uncoated cardstock
• Full color both sides

How Do I Win?

• Must be 18 years or older and a US resident
• Write a blog post about why you love/hate social media, why you blog, why Jason Crouch always has his thumb up, etc...
• Post this link: http://210consulting.com/business-card-contest/ somewhere in your post for your friends to have a chance to win as well.
• Leave a link to your post on our Facebook Page by July 31st at Midnight EST.

We will pick a winner after July 31st and contact you directly if you are a winner to give you the details on how to claim your prize. We thank Uprinting for giving us this opportunity! Check out their business card printing page for an idea of what your cards could look like and get ready to win!

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

A Facebook Page, run by Jonathan Rivera was recently shut down by Facebook due to a complaint of the use of the vanity URL and the use of the trademarked term REALTOR®.  He had been made aware of the violation after selecting his vanity URL, but as Facebook’s guidelines state: “You will not be able to edit or transfer this username once you set it.” The irony of this story is that when Jonathan was made aware of the violation he tried to reach out & contact Facebook to correct it, but was unable to do so. He tried desperately to be in compliance with NAR rules & regulations.  Instead of Facebook allowing him to fix the username, they instead shut down the Real Estate Referral Page completely leaving a network of over 47,000 fans without a home.

This network was not only another fun page on Facebook, but also as he stated in the interview I recently heard, a good source of referrals having delivered over 1,400 referrals around the country to agents for free.

This is just once again another reason why it is important to know what laws & trademarks exist before picking a username, a web address or anything.  It will be interesting to see what happens with this as things move forward.  Jonathan has been working diligently to get the page reinstated, and from his interview with Techsavvy Agent, NAR was being agreeable in him keeping the page as long as the username gets changed.

Only time will tell what happens with this.  One thing I surely learned from this is that I will definitely think twice before selecting the next vanity URL for a Facebook Page.

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

I get asked from time to time by new bloggers how often they should be writing new content for their blog.  I usually try to answer the question by saying as often as possible!  The reason you want to write as many posts as you can for your blog is that you are giving the search engines more pages of content, creating new pieces of to be shared with your subscribers and also causing the search engines to revisit your page to index the newer content.  So if you are writing new content daily, you are hopefully seeing increases in traffic regularly.

If you are a new site without hundreds of pages of content being indexed by the search engines, you need to create your own buzz on your site by writing consistently & often.  The more often & consistent you write, the better the results will be.  Sharing your content onto other sites like Facebook, Twitter, & other social media platforms is also a great way to garner that traffic in the early stages.  But of all of these tactic, the thing that will bring more people to you is to continuously generate new quality content for your blog.

I recently did an analysis of a clients Google Analytics for their blog just to see how much more traffic her site received on the days she posted new content compared to those she did not.  The results really blew me away.  On the days that a new blog post was published, the site would receive anywhere from a 200%-500% increase in traffic over that 24 hour period.  Here is a screenshot of her analytics that she gave me permission to share:

This site has phenomenal other statistics as well.  Their bounce rate stays consistently under 30% and average time on the site hovers around 5-7 minutes with most consumers viewing at least 6 pages on each visit.  So, can you imagine what it would do for her business if she wrote a blog post each day instead of one every week?  Her site traffic would skyrocket as well as her client base!

So if you are not writing regularly, take time today to develop a writing schedule.  If you are someone like me, you have to literally schedule it into your daily routine or you will find your time filled in with other tasks & projects.  At the bare minimum, I feel you should be contributing at least 3 posts a week.  If your weekdays are too busy, then take the time on a Saturday afternoon while watching a movie to write your three posts for the week.  Place all into draft mode and then publish a post on Monday, Wednesday & Friday.  That way your site has a consistent flow of new content.  Developing a successful writing strategy can be the biggest factor between normal & extraordinary amounts of traffic to your site.

On the other hand, those who mention writing blogs in under 10 minutes time, I give a word of caution to developing this type of habit.  Very few people can do this successfully.  Till you brainstorm your thoughts, get them typed out with correctly labeled photos & links, you are probably looking at 30 minutes per blog post.  Remember while quantity is key, it should NEVER trump the quality of your work.

 

Jeremy Blanton to Jason show details Jun 15

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

So constitutes someone receiving the title Social Media Guru?

Unfortunately many like to use the term social media guru or expert to describe themselves. They feel that they are expert because they are involved on a network and use it regularly. Since you may not yet be on the social media platform, they feel they are fully qualified to teach you how to do it. The only problem is that when they begin to teach you how, they share their bad habits with you. They teach you how to set up automated ways to gain 1,000 followers on Twitter which sounds great, but really will not help your business. I had a conversation on Twitter the other day with a well respected person in the social media realm. The statement @garyvee made was this: "If u are seeing this tweet I have one simple thing to say : THANK YOU, it stuns me that people care about the # of followers, if u have 1 :)"

Focusing on the one connection you have to make that single person feel like the most important person in the world can be more beneficial for your business than having 350 that you do not engage at all. Word of mouth referrals is always the most powerful way to build your business. Also, if you are automating everything to focus on getting more followers, those that do follow will instantly look at your content as an annoying spammer and probably either block you or place you in a hidden list that they ignore completely.

So how should you go about hiring someone for online consulting as your social media advisor?

Before hiring someone and paying them money you should first see what type of help they are offering. Is it just a CD series of what they did to get their big batch of connections or is it going to be training that will help teach you how to use social media platforms for your business to grow your business. Remember, you need to get information to teach you how to engage prospective clients and to convert them into raving fans, not just get more people connected to you. Use the Kevin Costner method, "if you build it, they will come." Set it up properly and use the correct practices and you will gain the following you want.

The other night I had someone approach me and ask if I had ever heard of some guy that was on TV selling a CD series on how they were able to make thousands of dollars in less than 24 hours of time using the internet. After sharing with the gentleman that I had never heard of him, he said "well I was up late last night and this guy was on TV around 3 AM selling this series that he used to make all this money online. I bought the CD's. Plus they have a money back guarantee, I just have to wait a year to get my money" I turned and said what I always tell clients: If it is such a good product & method that can make you so much money, why would the guy share the secrets with you instead of just making the money himself? Not to mention, you just gave this gentleman an interest free loan for a year!

Which brings me to my second point, There are no quick ways to make money with social media. The gurus who say you can do this and within 30 days it will start making you millions with only working 1 hour a week are sharing lies. Effective social media marketing takes time and hard work. It takes constant work of writing new blog content, engaging friends & followers on both Facebook & Twitter. If someone says you can do this a different way, RUN!

Thirdly, ask the "guru" for proof. Instead of just hiring them because they gave a good sales pitch, ask for them to show you their Facebook Page, Twitter Account, and Blog. See if they are actually using social media effectively in their business first. This is a huge indicator as to what they will be sharing with you. Also, do not be afraid to ask for testimonials from previous clients. They should be able to easily & quickly provide this as well as a portfolio of some of the work they have done for clients. If you do your homework before hiring them you will not end up spending thousands of dollars on a website that never gets produced. I learned this one the hard way.

I was helping a church get a website a few years back and went online did a little research and found a company that looked like a reputable site and asked them to create a website for the church. Since they only focused on church sites I thought this was a slam dunk winner. I looked at the portfolio of work & it looked nice so we went ahead and paid them to build the site. After $1,500 spent and no site they fell off the earth. We had the shell of the site built, but didn't have access into it so we could not log in to remove the spam & PORN that was being plastered all over the forums of the church site.

Needless to say the church was not happy with the results and since then has not had an online presence. Luckily they trust me enough to build them another site which will hopefully go live in the next few weeks. This time however, I will be doing all the creating and building of the website myself, so it will hopefully go a lot smoother and end up with an even better result.

Lastly, before hiring the social media guru, take some time to research them on the internet. Go and Google their business name, their personal name, phone number, & address. People who are unhappy about someone are going to share about their displeasure of a company. Don't just search the company name, but take it a step farther & search the person's name & phone number. Whenever my phone rings with someone trying to sell me something I go straight to the search engines and enter the phone number in. Within seconds I can tell everything that people who have had experience with this company really think & feel. You will know quickly that this number will call to sell the world, but then disappears and is extremely difficult to get the automatic payments stopped. You will know if they promise to get you 10,000 visits to your site but after signing up you then realize that the package you purchased only gets you 200 and to get the larger numbers of traffic you need to spend another $300 per month. I can normally know before even hanging up the phone if I wish to do business with this vendor or not.

In closing, if you Invest a little time at the beginning of your journey into social media you will end up with better results. By not taking the time in the beginning, you could end up investing a lot more dollars to receive the same result in the long run.

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

As many know, I can be quite the twitter addict at times. I find myself on many mornings visiting twitter before even looking at my email. On occasion I have also had the tendency to get caught up in conversations and before realizing it, hours have passed by. That being said, when it comes to using twitter, I need a Twitter Application that will perform well for me and allow me to sort & categorize things to make sense of it all.

I have been a long time fan of Tweetdeck, ever since my list of friends started to go over 200 followers on twitter. I love the fact that it allows the setup of columns and filtering of my twitter feed. When you start having over 2,000 people you follow, that main timeline flies by and you miss so many good things. But, by being able to filter people into lists of those I want to really focus on I can manage my stream much better. Tweetdeck columns allows you to not only filter your stream but also allows you to add columns for specific terms you wish to track. Tweetdeck is also one of the Twitter applications that will allow you to use more than one Twitter account at a time. Since I do some community building for a few companies, I use this regularly as I can add each Twitter account to Tweetdeck & do it all from one place.

What's New in Tweetdeck 0.34.3?

With the release of Tweetdeck 0.34.3 there have been a few great additions to an already great Desktop Twitter Application. Here is a brief rundown:

1. Addition of Foursquare & Google Buzz- While I will admit I am not a huge fan of Google Buzz and do not really use it that often, the addition of Buzz & Foursquare added to a Twitter application is pretty cool. I really enjoy being able to follow where my friends are checking in. I also have found myself interacting with friends more often by paying attention to this column. In addition to more engagement, I also have used the Foursquare column to learn about some new great places in town, where the best gas prices are, and also what restaurants have specials at the moment.
2. Update of Facebook Pages- This feature another huge addition. One of my biggest complaints of previous versions was that I could always update my Facebook status on my profile from within, but there were times I wanted to send something to my Facebook business page and would have to then take the stuff from Tweetdeck, copy it, log into Facebook and then paste it there. Now I have the pages I manage loaded into my Tweetdeck account and can update from inside this application.
3. Scheduled Updates- Sometimes there are a few things that I might want to schedule to tweet out to my friends. The reason I would schedule these tweets is because I might be tied up all day with a client but want to remind my friends on Twitter of something important that is applicable to that particular day. For example, if I have a friend who has a birthday tomorrow and I want to send a special birthday wish, I can now find the funny video on youtube, write my special 140 character message and schedule it to send at midnight so it arrives right as their birthday starts. I no longer need to sit up waiting to accomplish this same thing. Not only can you schedule your Twitter updates but also your Facebook & Facebook pages, and all the other services that Tweetdeck supports.

In addition to these three great new updates, Tweetdeck still gives you the ability to update your LinkedIn & Myspace accounts as well. That means that now from one program that started as a Twitter Application you can now update statuses on 6 different social network platforms. Obviously as you can tell this is no longer just a standard Twitter application, but a powerful tool for managing your social media plan.

What is still missing from this Twitter Application?

The one major flaw of Tweetdeck that I was hoping this version would fix is the sync function. I have tried on multple times to sync the Tweetdeck account between the two computers that I use on a regular basis. I would love nothing more for the Tweetdeck application on my desktop & laptop to have the same filtered columns, searches, applications, and accounts. But for some reason this sync function which works so well on a few other twitter applications I use does not seem to want to perform properly in Tweetdeck. If it did, I would probably be more committed to Tweetdeck as my main application for Twitter & other social networks. Other than this small issue, I think the new additions to Tweetdeck have helped to solidify it's place as one of the frontrunners for desktop Twitter applications that people will use.

If you have not yet tried version 0.34.3 of Twetdeck, I would suggest giving it a try today. Also, make sure to connect with me on Twitter, I am @jb140.

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors