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What You Can Learn from Presidential Tweets

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

Today I stumbled across a great article from the NY Times about one of our great past presidents using Twitter.  Go ahead, read it, I’ll wait.

Pretty cool, huh?

Several things are going on here, which I think you can use for your business.

Niche it, Baby

I’ve never heard of the JQA diaries until today, and most likely neither have you.  Thanks to some graduate student for mentioning that it looked like a Twitter feed, another person for acting on that observation, a Historical Society with a look-forward approach  (and a NY Times writer), now you have.  As of today, this account now has over 6000 followers. This little niche of history buffs is just the audience that the Massachesetts Historical Society wants, and they’ve found a way to “promote their wares” via Twitter.

Lesson: Find a topic that interests people.  Provide updates on a consistent basis, and you’ve got an immediate audience.  People will tell others, and in no time you’ll have a nice following of warm leads.

The Old is New

While reading a 200 year old diary isn’t exactly exciting to everyone, it is to some.  And that “some” is very interested in what is said by the account holder.  Old news is in demand, and over 6000 people are eagerly awaiting the next tweet, whether it’s about rough seas or card playing.

Lesson: Take information in your industry that you think everyone knows, and post about it.  Or blog about it.  You’ll increase your followers, RSS subscriptions, and website traffic because no one else is doing it.

Be Afraid Aware, Very Aware

Every day we are exposed to mundane and boring things in our industry.  We see them all the time, and pay no attention or give no second thought to them.  But smart business owners are taking those simple things and writing about them.  They are showing the behind-the-scenes to their business, or posting updates to their ‘boring’ day and people are interested.

For instance, I have a customer that sells memory foam mattresses.  One day I was at Target returning an item.  In front of me was a lady who was returning one of those mattress-topper memory foam things.  You roll them out on your mattress and they supposedly make it more comfortable to sleep on.  Well, I listened to her go on about how lumpy it made her bed, how it didn’t help her sleep, etc. so I mentioned it to my client.  He wrote up a blog post about these toppers (and their problems), and today it is one of his most popular posts ever.

Lesson: Watch what’s going on around you daily.  What things do you take for granted that your audience might find really useful?  Do you do something to each of your products to make it unique? Do you meet interesting people in your industry that others may find interesting as well?

Integration

The JQA diary posts also integrate with maps, making it even more interesting.  Even though the voyage took place  200 years ago, you can follow along today as if it were happening in real time.  You can see where in the ocean JQA is, and experience just what he was.

Lance Armstrong is a great user of integration, often posting his ‘view from the office’ pictures on TwitPic.  Bicyclers, cancer survivors and just fans love these updates.  They are interesting to his readers, and it helps him increase and identify his brand.

Lesson: Use technology to show what you do and who you are.  Become a real face to an otherwise faceless business identity.

You can learn a lot from a president that sailed the seas 200 years ago.  And you can take those things, along with the actions of some smart people, and apply them to your business.  How are you using similar tactics and posts to increase your business?

Posted in Marketing, blogging, niches, social media, traffic | No Responses »
Tags: , , , , , ,

Quick Tip for Commenting on Blogs

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

Looking for blogs that you can probably leave keyword-targeted comments on?  Try searching for this

“just another wordpress” keyword

Since these bloggers haven’t modified the general description, chances are they aren’t real SEO savvy, and you could probably get in some nice one way links.  Just don’t outright spam them, at least leave a halfway interesting comment…

Posted in beginner sem, blogging, link building | No Responses »

How to Find Sploggers Who Have Stolen Your Work

Friday, September 19th, 2008

The readers who frequent this blog often know I’m a big fan of Google Alerts, and I use it often to build links and keep track of a few other things.  Google Alerts is a free service from Google that emails you whenever something new has shown up on the Internets with a search query you’ve specified.

Since I’m sitting on an SEO panel tonight covering blogging, splogging and SEO, I thought I’d post a quick little ditty that you can do to keep track of who’s stealing your content (without permission).

When you blog, there are certain things that you have control over, besides the ‘meat’ of the post.  For most blogging software, you can modify other things, such as posted-by, date formatting and tagging. Somewhere you need to find something that you can make unique to your blog – a phrase, a set of random numbers, or a weird tag.  For this example I’ll use a number/letter combo: 68wcrada72

Once you’ve decided on something, make sure you incorporate it into every post as you write (as I just did).
Then head over to Google Alerts and set up your trap.


(Click to see larger image)

Make sure you add the -domain.com or else you’ll get an alert every time you post.

Now when someone steals your content and posts it on their website, you’ll get an email showing you the link to the splog.  Take appropriate action – ask the author to take down your content.  If they don’t, or won’t answer, take further steps such as flagging inappropriate/spam posts on Blogger or reporting the splog to WHOIS (if appropriate).

People are out there to steal your content.  Since we can’t stop a copy/paste, at least we can still keep tabs on what’s happening.  Don’t let people use your content freely!

Posted in Google Alerts, blogging, business blogging, content | 1 Response »

Bloggers Need to (at least) Understand SEO

Friday, September 12th, 2008

Tonight I had the pleasure of speaking with Jaelithe Judy, the writer who will be moderating the upcoming SEO panel that I’ll be sitting on (along with Ellen Gooch) next week.  She has great charisma and I can tell this is going to be a fun session.  Since we are expecting a crowd of mostly personal, professional and corporate bloggers, the session will focus around that audience.  Without giving away all the topics we’ll discuss, here is a “10,000ft view” of what is to come.

  • How understanding SEO basics can increase your readership numbers
  • Why sploggers want to steal your content (and how it can affect your bottom line)
  • Why businesses are hiring full-time bloggers
  • What the long tail is (and how knowing what it is can increase your blogs revenue)
  • Some of the latest changes Google has made and how they can affect your rankings

Oh, we’ve got lots more, including a nice list of resources that will help our audience get more traffic, more effectively promote their blog, or make more money from their website.  And we’ll be taking questions from the audience!

The panel will be just one of many Interactive sessions to attend this week in St. Louis at the Play:StL festival. Some of the other sessions (some of which sound pretty cool to me) include Cyberbullying, Business and Social Media, and even one on the dreaded CSS (yukk!)

Get a wristband for the festival at a host of local places, and half your money will go to LiveFeed.  If you come the SEO panel, please take a moment to introduce yourself, I’d love to meet you!

Posted in SEO, St Louis, blogging, conferences, networking, seminars | No Responses »