5 Reasons Why TweetDeck is a Great Twitter Tool

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When I first started on Twitter back in 2008, I viewed all Tweets within the Twitter interface. Then, I got hooked on HootSuite, especially when I started managing multiple Twitter accounts. I’m still a paying subscriber to HootSuite and love using the cute little Hootlet add-on to easily share interesting URL’s on Twitter. But something just seemed to be missing.

Enter TweetDeck. This slick desktop application (I prefer the downloaded version, although you can access it online as well) is always running in the background and has become my favourite way to interact with users on Twitter.

Here’s 5 reasons why I like TweetDeck so much:

1. Visually attractive – let’s face it, looks matter. And TweetDeck just plain looks good. I love the black background, the well-sized Twitter profile pics, and the fact that you can always view thumbnail images of pics that people post on Twitter.

2. It still displays Instagram images – as you may have heard, Twitter and Instagram went through a big breakup at the end of 2012. Basically, the end result was that Instagram pictures no longer display within the Twitter interface; instead, you need to click on a link and be taken to another page to view the image. Not so with TweetDeck! You can still view thumbnail images of kids, half-eaten restaurant dishes and scenery shots and also view the full-sized images within TweetDeck.

Update November 2014: Instagram images are no longer displayed in TweetDeck; instead, you need to click on the link and view the image in your browser.

3. Easily view different streams – using TweetDeck’s columns feature, you can add a new column for whichever Twitter account, list, or search result you want. And then you can quickly flip back and forth between them, making it quick and simple to keep up-to-date on what’s going on in your version of the Twittersphere.

4. It makes noise – you can turn on or off sound alerts for each of your columns, so that you hear a ding every time someone messages you, mentions you, writes a Tweet that matches your search criteria, etc. (If you want to make my computer ding, just mention @jenhames on Twitter!)

5. It’s free – I already pay for lots of social media tools and services, so it’s great to find such a great tool that is free.

Do you use TweetDeck? Love it or hate it?
Then leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Stack of papers

Just do it… Start generating content

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I always tell my clients that the hardest part of posting content on the web is getting over your personal hurdles, no matter what they may be. Things like, “I want my first Tweet to be perfect” or “I want to write the most interesting blog post anyone has ever read”. The problem is, these desires to be great and wonderful and perfect can actually become roadblocks that prevent you from getting anything at all done. For me, lately, the hurdle has been, “I want to wait until I have time to sit down, clear my desk, and get into a writing mode”.

Well, that never happens. Right now, I’m writing this surrounded by unfiled papers, with three different browser windows open with who-knows-how-many-tabs open in each browser, and I realised there is never the perfect time. There is never the perfect post. There is never the most interesting content ever written waiting to spring forth from your brain.

The point is, sometimes you need to seize on the moments you have and make them work for you. Dash off a blog post between meetings. Post an interesting thought on your Facebook page while you’re waiting in line for your morning coffee. Just start writing content. Some of will be good, some of it will be bad, and some of it will even be great.

So what are you waiting for? Go do it!

Pinterest On the Brain

Pin This – 7 Great Articles About Pinterest

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Pinterest On the BrainYou may have noticed your Facebook and Twitter feeds got a little more cluttered the past few months with people sharing their most recent “Pins” – pictures of recipes they want to make, clothes they want to buy, and places they want to stay.

But Pinterest isn’t just for annoying your friends and followers – I’ve talked to several marketers whose clients are getting great traffic referral by sharing their website’s content on Pinterest. So here’s a collection of 7 great articles I’ve been reading the past few weeks that all address the newest kid on the social media block.

 

 

 

7 Pinterest Articles to Check Out

  1. The Ultimate Guide to Mastering Pinterest for Marketing – Some great info here from Hubspot.com about what Pinterest is, some suggested ettiquette, how to set up an account, and 13 creative ways to use Pinterest for marketing. I think the best tip is #10, “Use Hashtags”. You can integrate Pinterest into your existing social media strategy and use the same hashtags that you are currently using on Twitter and Google+.
  2. 13 ‘Pinteresting’ Facts About Pinterest Users – An infographic from Mashable.com that shows some interesting stats about the social network’s users. Namely that the majority are women (68%), the biggest age demographic is 25-34, and half have children.
  3. Why Pinterest Matters to Us Social Media Marketers – Chris Abraham admits that he didn’t get Pinterest at first. But he sure does now – check out his very good ideas of how to create influential visualizations that will capture the interest of your audience.
  4. Pin Your Way to Popularity: How to Generate Traffic with Pinterest – As much fun as it is to pin pretty pictures from all over the internet, as a small business owner, it needs to have a practical application as well. Carla Young writes about seven suggestions to use Pinterest to drive business and traffic.
  5. How Can Non-Visual Brands Harness Pinterest? – Because sometimes it’s just fun to watch video. So check out the first 2 1/2 minutes of this clip from PRDaily with the staff from ePrize at the NASDAQ studios in New York.
  6. 6 Ways to Drive More Pinterest Engagement – Once you’ve established a presence on Pinterest, you need to interact your new followers. Social Media Examiner brings you 6 ways to engage your fans. I especially like #2, which suggests adding one of your followers as a board contributor.
  7. The 10 Commandments of Using Pinterest for Business – A fun, super cute infographic about best practices. Number 10 is so important – ‘Research & Measure’! Remember to check your analytics for new traffic from your efforts.

So there you have it; my favourite Pinterest articles from the past few weeks. Have you been busy pinning all of your interests? Have you used Pinterest for business yet? Let me know your thoughts in the comments section.

Facebook left menu - Facebook Interest List

Organizing with Facebook Interest Lists

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A few months ago, Facebook introduced ‘Interest’ lists. If you know me, you’ll know that I love lists; I have them for everything from steps to achieve clients’ goals, to what to pack for a camping trip, to just plain keeping my entire life in order.

Facebook Interest lists are great for two reasons. First, they allow you to organize the pages that you already like into lists, so that you can quickly and easily browse through those pages’ updates. And second, you can follow lists that other people have created, which probably include pages that you’ve never heard of before.

Facebook left menu - Facebook Interest ListYou may have an Interests section on the lefthand menu of your Facebook homepage; if so, click on “Add Interests”.

 

If not, the easiest way to add the Interests section is to click in the white box at the top of the page that says “Search for people, places and things” and enter the name of a page that you would like to add to an interest list. Once you are on that Facebook page, click on the drop-down arrow beside “”Message” and select “Add to Interest Lists” (see below). Then click “+ New List…”

Later, once you’ve created Interest lists, this is one way that you can add additional pages to the list.

 

Facebook Interests

A box will pop up; click on “Pages” on the lefthand side. Then start scrolling through the list of pages that you like and click on each page that you want to add to the list – a check mark will appear on each page that you have selected. Click “Next”, then add a name for the list and select who can see the list (public, friends or just you). Click “Done” and you are finished!

Now go to your Facebook homepage (click the Facebook icon on the upper lefthand corner) and on the lefthand menu you will see “Interests” with your newly created list. Click on the list to view updates from only the pages within the list, instead of your entire newsfeed.

To add a new Interest list, click on “Add Interests” on the lefthand menu and then follow one of the suggested lists, search for a list by keyword, or create a new list of your own.

And there you have it – how to organize the Facebook pages you follow using the Interest list.

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Click here to add my “Marketing Pages to Follow” Interest list. And if you have your own Interest list, feel free to post it in the comments section.

Smiley Face Sticky Note

Why doesn’t your business have a computer?

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Smiley Face Sticky Note

Just because you live in a small town, it doesn’t mean that your business needs to be old-fashioned. There are upwards of 23 million Canadians online, who spend about 45 hours a month on the internet. And they don’t all live in cities. So why not go where your customers are?

A few months ago, I went to a hair salon in a small town in Nova Scotia to book an appointment for hair and makeup. Actually, it’s for my wedding in June, so I needed to book hair and makeup appointments for five girls. I asked if they could accommodate us, but the person at the desk wasn’t sure and wrote my information down on a scrap of paper. “Can you email me once you find out?” I asked. She just shrugged apologetically, pointed to the lack of computer at the reception desk and assured me that they’d call once everything was sorted out.

So I went about my day and ended up at another salon in the next town over. I went inside to check it out, and lo and behold, they had a computer. Within five minutes I had appointments booked for everyone. And within fifteen minutes, I had an email sitting in my inbox with the details of everyone’s schedule.

And the other salon? They left a voice message a week later. “We’re having trouble understanding the note left at the desk. Is Daphne in your wedding? Or do you want her to style your hair? Please call us back.”

Lesson? Get organized; get a computer (they don’t have to be expensive – help the environment & your pocket book by buying a refurbished one); buy a scheduling software package. You’ll be glad you did. And so will your customers. Especially the ones with email addresses.

Canyon - Crossing the Divide

Bridging the gap

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Canyon - Crossing the Divide

Some companies find that the people who interact with their brand online are not actively consuming their products and services. And other companies are unsure of how to engage their paying customers online, in order to keep them informed and increase sales. So how do you bridge the gap?

For those companies looking to encourage their online followers to purchase their products and services, here are some suggestions:

  • Share information about new products and services on your online channels, so that your followers are the first to know
  • Provide a coupon that is exclusive to your online audience
  • Consider using a coupon service such as Groupon
  • Use all of the analytics tools available to examine your online audience – perhaps you are posting the wrong content at the wrong times, and missing the opportunity to motivate your followers to purchase

And here are some ideas for companies looking how to engage customers online:

  • Make a sign asking people to follow the company on Twitter, FB, FourSquare, etc. and place it in a visible spot, such as at the cash register, in the store-front window, or on the reception desk
  • Either speak to or send an email at the end of each completed transaction requesting customers and clients to review your product or service on Yelp, TripAdvisor, their blog (with a backlink), LinkedIn, or to submit a testimonial for publishing on your website. You could even offer a small discount for the first time a person submits a review
  • Make sure that your business cards, invoices and receipts all have your company’s online channels (such as website, email, Facebook page, Twitter account, etc.) and use a branded URL (www.facebook.com/jenuinemarketing rather than www.facebook.com/pages/jenuinemarketing.com/329314030428208)
  • When people give you their business card, enter the email address into your email database so that your new contacts will receive your next e-newsletter (just make sure that your e-newsletter disclaimer clearly states why they are receiving the email)

Do you have any other suggestions?

Book cover - "Ogilvy on Advertising"

Four online marketing lessons from David Ogilvy

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Book cover - "Ogilvy on Advertising"

Somewhere along my path to becoming a marketing consultant, an advertising executive gave me his copy of David Ogilvy’s “Ogilvy on Advertising”. Originally published in 1983, it was written well before the boom of online marketing and social media; however, Ogilvy was one smart cookie and his advice still rings true.

The first chapter alone has so many good nuggets of advice:

1. Do your homework
I know, no one likes doing research. But as Ogilvy puts it, “You don’t stand a tinker’s chance of producing successful advertising unless you start by doing your homework“. And this means studying the product, determining what kind of advertising your competitors have been doing (and with what level of success), and finally researching the consumers to find out what they think about the product, what language they use when they talk about it, and what promise would be most likely to make them buy the brand that you are marketing.

Lucky for us, the internet makes research quick, easy and inexpensive:
[blockquote align=”right” cite=”David Ogilvy”]You don’t stand a tinker’s chance of producing successful advertising unless you start by doing your homework.[/blockquote]

  • You can easily study the product and industry by a quick Google search
  • Determine related keywords by using Google AdWords: Keyword Tool
  • Set up Google Alerts to monitor new stories and blog posts about keywords related to your product and industry
  • Visit competitor websites, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, blogs, etc. to learn about what your competitors are doing and how well they are engaging consumers
  • Use free services such as the “@ Connect” and search options on Twitter, the online application TweetDeck, or else a paid tool, of which there are many, to monitor conversations about your company and industry

2. Brand image
Ogilvy discusses the need to decide on an “image” for the brand your are marketing, and he defines image as “personality”. He tends to use a lot of cigarette and alcohol companies as examples (hey, it was the ’80’s), and talks about Jack Daniel’s whiskey to illustrate the idea of brand image/personality. As he puts it, most people don’t try different types of whiskey and then choose their favourite based on taste alone – they choose their favourite brand based on the image that most appeals to them.

So think about your favourite brands – what images do they project? Do Coke and Mountain Dew appeal to the same audience? What about Nike and lululemon?

Then decide what image should be associated with your  brand (or define it, if it already exists). And make sure that the brand’s personality is consistent across all channels, including print advertising, online advertising, social media marketing, email signatures, voice mail messages, etc.

3. The positively good
“If you and your competitors all make excellent products, don’t try to imply that your product is better. Just say what’s good about your product – and do a clearer, more honest, more informative job of it“. In today’s crowded marketplace, this is extremely sage advice. Since you already did your homework and know what your competitors are saying (see number 1), go out there and do a better job than they do.

4. The lessons of direct response
One lesson in particular stands out to me as being relevant to online marketing. Ogilvy points out that most advertisers like to broadcast their commercials during prime time, but direct response advertisers have learned that they make more sales at night. Take a quick poll amongst your friends (or look at the time of their Facebook updates) and you’ll discover that a lot of people are online late at night and on the weekends. That might be a good time to update your Facebook page or publish a new blog post. Or perhaps your target audience are businesses, in which case you may want to experiment with sending your e-newsletter early in the morning, mid-week. There are lots of online resources out there that show when people tend to be online, so do some research. And remember to experiment by changing the day and time that you share online messaging – you may discover a pattern that is unique to your own company or brand.

And there you have it, online marketing lessons from Ogilvy. For someone who was born in 1911 and died in 1999, it’s amazing how his insights are still applicable. I only wonder what he would have thought about today’s marketing landscape?

SEO Picture

3 quick SEO tips that you can do right now

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SEO PictureChances are, you’ve heard of SEO (search engine optimization) before. So here’s 3 quick tips that you can do today:

1. Make a sitemap (it should be something close to www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml) and submit it to the major search engines, which are Google, Bing and Ask.com. This post tells you how to do that (note that Yahoo is no longer applicable, as it has been fully replaced by Bing).

2. Use relevant words and phrases in your meta tags keywords and descriptions when creating new website pages and blog posts. Sure, it’s a pain in the behind, but it’s a great way to help search engine robots understand what your page is about and categorize and display it accordingly.

3. Write an alt description for images on your website. This way people who can’t view your images on their mobile device and search engine robots (who can’t really “see” anyways) will still have access to a text description of what your picture is about. In terms of SEO, that’s a great way to add some more keywords and substance to your site.

So there you have it, 3 quick and often ignored tips to help improve your SEO.

Photographer taking photo

The problem with quick and easy websites

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Photographer taking photo

The other day, I visited a client who runs her own photography business. She does amazing work and gets great referrals by word of mouth but is looking to increase her rankings for some very specific keywords.

So I took a look at her website and made up a few suggestions, based on two different options: stay with her current website or trash it and start again (my recommendation is to trash it, but probably not possible until after the busy wedding season is over).

The client is using photobiz, a company that offers quick and easy websites geared especially to photographers. Her website looks great, due in large part to her amazing photographs. But the problem with the website is that every page has the same URL address. I have seen this before with other website services such as wix.

The beauty of these programs is that someone who is not very knowledgeable about websites and HTML can create a great looking website in a very short amount of time, without having to pay lots of money to a website developer. The downside to quick websites is that these companies often charge an ongoing monthly fee, in addition to your hosting costs, and the websites are not set up in a very SEO-friendly manner.

After some digging, I discovered that my client is unable to create unique page URL’s or link to her blog (hosted by another company) or Facebook page from the home page. Both of these are really important to having a search engine-friendly page (in fact, the blog should actually use the same URL).

So before you take the quick and easy route, do some research. Type the name of the website you are considering into Google, followed by “review”, and read the positives AND negatives that people have said about the service. If you need a website right now, maybe it’s best to use a quick website set-up service. But if you have time, or if you’re considering changing your website, make a list of what’s important to you and then ask someone who specializes in SEO what would be important to them.