Facebook and your business….Can you really get personal?

As I pointed out in my latest SEO blog, the reality that it doesn’t take much to come across someone’s opinion, or fact, for that matter, about SEO as a whole. The same goes for Social Media, and it’s integration with your business.  Now, please don’t get me wrong.  Many of the opinions, blogs and sites have validity, and carry many fantastic points that everyone should follow. But I want to put a spin on it a bit:

Let’s take Facebook to begin with, if you will.  Well, today is different than a month ago. Facebook just changed their algorithm. You now have to take extra steps to have your content, your “posts” viewed, even by your specific friends. Whether it be a business page or a personal page.  Companies now have to pay the man. Yes, as it always is.. Facebook started charging money for your “posts” to reach more of your fan base, more of your friends. Which for a business greatly reduces the exposure one gets on this specific Social Media site.  Yes, it is annoying, but it makes us think outside the box. Find ways to reach your target market, reach your audience, publicly like we always have been on our personal sites.

Outside the box? Well maybe not too far…  Each of us, employees of said company, well most of us have personal Facebook accounts, in which you rightfully put on your profile that you are employed at “XYZ” Company.  For me…. Online Sales Manager at Turnkey Internet (and so proud of it). So you display that you work for an organization, why not use your personal account as an advantage in a way.  Say the company you work for has 3,000 Facebook likes.  Okay, well you personally have say… 500 friends, and with all of them, they have collectively 10,000 friends. You know what I mean.  It continues and continues.

You don’t SPAM your company account to the point to annoy people, so what’s the harm of using the “eyes” you have personally? If you used your personal Social Media also, think about the amount of people you can reach, in reality….. thousands upon thousands..   Of course, not all of your friends, or their friends will be interested at all, I agree.. However they will “share” or “retweet” your information, just because they are friends, just because they know you, because that’s what social media is all about… The aspect of instantaneous gratification via information.   Again, people will just share your content because they know you.  Their friends will share, due to being friends with them, and if I continued with this it could get confusing and monotonous.  =)

The more eyes you cross, the more “word of mouth via the information super highway” you get.  More, in this case, is never enough.

By the way.  Make sure you visit us and like us on during the social media challenge for your  chance to win a new iPad, and other great gifts!

visit us at the Social Media Challenge

Is Linkedin Really Social Media?

Most businesses that promote social media on their websites usually include links to their Facebook, Twitter and yes Linkedin pages. Many question if they should be used in the same context. Facebook and Twitter are used by people of all ages to keep up with and communicate what is going on in their daily lives, postings most of the time that you would never see on Linkedin. . Most postings on Facebook and Twitter are personal in nature where postings in linkedin are more pointed at promoting either a business or a person’s professional career. Yes there are business and professional pages on both Facebook and Linkedin that would be considered similar but that is where the similarities end.

If you were to make a study of the three social media sites I mentioned you will find that most business people and professionals that have a presence on all three mediums would never post some of the things they do on Facebook and Twitter to their Linkedin profile. Linkedin has always been and will continue to be more of a professional and business oriented site in comparison to the anything goes attitude of posts to most other social media platforms.

I think everyone would agree Linkedin is not viewed in the same vein as Twitter and Facebook but I say yes it is still a social media platform. If you understand how linkedin works and use it to your advantage it could be a much more powerful tool to promote your business than most of the other social media options now being used for the same purpose. The concept of social media is to connect with others you know or don’t know to share either personal or professional information. The difference with Linkedin is that postings are almost always business related versus personal.

If you are not presently using Linkedin I highly recommend you begin building a profile. Linkedin is actually very easy to get started with.  After you build a bit of a presence
with a full professional profile of your own personal career you would then reach out to those you know and make a connection. The more connections you have the more opportunity you will have to promote yourself and your business. Depending on the profession you are in join as many groups as you feel are pertinent to promote yourself and follow others to keep up on information relative to your interests.

Last but not least if this is your own personal business you should create a company page and link yourself to it along with some information to promote your company. If you are not self-employed your company should still have a page and of course you should have a connection to it as well. One of the search options to find people and companies is to search by the company name so it is important that you are visible in that manner.

Now that you have a profile page and have begun building your connections how can you take advantage of all this? Here is list of options now available to you through Linkedin.

• Post news and information about events in your business
• Post links to Blog articles you or someone in your company has written
• Post personal opinions about business that invoke credibility to you as a professional
• Join groups to post all of the above so others that don’t know you or your business take notice
• Use Linkedin as a directory to find prospects for business or information about what your competition is doing
• Promote your business with an ad campaign directed towards the industries of your choice
• Stay current by reading postings within the groups you join.
• Reach out to your connections for a warm introduction to someone that they are connected to

These are just a few of the ways Linkedin can assist you and your business. This platform will only be worth the effort by continually participating. The more connections you obtain, the more times you post articles and information the more credibility and recognition you will attain from others within the linkedin community. Also as a side bonus Linkedin pages are very highly ranked on Google and other search engines so you will also be found outside the Linkedin platform throughout the internet!

At TurnKey this summer, we’ve amped up our social media attention across the board through our new social media contest to help you learn to leverage social media to grow your online business presence.  We are giving away some great prizes, like an iPad 3, visa gift cards, and lots more daily contests too!  So be sure to check it out.

TurnKey in the past has focused a great deal in online marketing, online discussion forums, reputation building – and of course SEO based content.  But one area we had not focused our efforts as heavily into was the core social media arena of Facebook and Twitter until recently.

As we have focused a great deal of time to leading up to, and planning our summer social media campaign – we setup new social media tabs on our web pages, designed a central landing web page, mapped out a schedule of content to write and release, and organized a concept around a contests to help make things a bit more fun for everyone.  We have seen some great success with certain strategies we’ve used in the last month, especially with twitter.

Here are some great tips on how to grow your Twitter followers:

#1: Communication is a 2 way street!  Tie your followers in with back and forth communications.  If you offer a product or service, this is a great place to accept support requests, so others can follow the conversation and learn more about your company.  Perhaps people will find you because of the key words used in the conversation, or your potential clients who are checking you out before making a purchase will just see how great you are at customer service!

#2: Follow the leader!  It sounds funny, but the reality is twitter like most social network web sites operate on the concept of social circles.  If someone is interested in cupcakes, they may be among the 88,573 followers of Sprinkles on twitter – and chances are they are interested in something to do with cupcakes.  When you follow Sprinkles, with your business – then the 88,573 followers are going to have your business factored into their social circle in one way or another.  If your business happens to also sell cupcakes, or other tasty treats – then its very likely next time those 88,573 followers login to twitter they may be recommended to follow your twitter account!

#3: Become a Leader by Following the Followers: this sounds counter productive, but the reality is if you follow someone, then you show up on their dash board and are highghly considered for the social circle recomendations.  Lets use our Sprinkles cupcakes twitter account example above.  They have 88,573 followers – if you take the time to look through their followers, and follow 500 of them, on average you are going to see a chunk of them follow you back. within a week.  Stick to active twitter follower accounts, and you can rotate out the one’s who don’t follow you back, with new ones.  Twitter limits you to 1,000 people you can follow until you grow your own following past the 2,000 mark.  Using this tactic is a great way to gain followers who are intersted in a specific subject!  This is one of the big secret tips used by those expensive SEO and Social Media Firms – but its so basic you can do it yourself for free.

#4  Remember the 3 C’s – Content, Content, Content: Sure its a dime a dozen out there, not even a dime these days in the online world economy  to attract followers.  The secret is to offer content that potential followers will find intersting that relates to something you might be promoting or doing – then be sure to tweat and re-tweat about these subjects.   If you make cupcakes, and there is an online article about new gluten free cupcakes, tweat about it and link to it.  Your followers and social circles will locate you in regards to that content.  If you happen to be dealing in a subject matter that has high media awareness tweet about!  If you are the marketing/PR person for a law firm, and a big national legal court case is hot in the news – tweet about the case daily linking to intersting comments, or better yet write your own on your blog and link back via a tweet!.  You can find large numbers of followers in a very short period of time if you can tie in with big events when you offer something intersting to say.

#5: Re-tweeting 101 : Re-tweeting is the action of looking at other twitter feeds/accounts and re-posting their tweet on your twitter account.  It’s as simple as clicking the re-tweet button (hover your mouse pointer over the twitter post you want to retweet, and the link to re-tweet appears).  Re-tweet content that matches up with what you tweet and discuss, and you now further interconect your social circle with their followers, again leading more potential followers to now have relevant recomendations to consider following you!

So how do you double your twitter followers?  Hard work – yes, but Smart work is the key!  These tips above are a great way to get people to pay attention and follow your twitter feed.  With some time each day, you can double your following in 14 days or less!

Howdie do, Jeremy here and a thought just came across my mind, what role does word of mouth play on the great, internet. More specifically, how important is word of mouth advertising in increasing your web presence.

We should first start with the definition of Word of mouth advertising:

Word of mouth, or viva voce,^[1] is the passing of information from person to person by oral communication. Storytelling is the oldest form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others of something, whether a real event or something made up

Since most traffic on the net is text, lets change the definition to:

Word of mouth, or viva voce,^[1] is the passing of information from person to person by oral or text communication.

On the net, this would come in the form of customer testimonials, reviews from credible sources, forums, social media forums like facebook status updates or my personal favorite, StumbeUpon.

If you’ve never use StumbleUpon, you’re missing out. It allows users to select different interests and crawl the internet with websites being shown that match your interests. This may be one of the best forms of advertising around. Not only will users be driven to your site by selecting an interest directly related to your site, but if they “like” your site, other users, with similar interests will be too.

It’s actually quite ingenious. I’ve been an avid stumbler for years now and I can not begin to tell you the number of sites I’ve visited that I would of never seen any other way. One of the best things about StumbleUpon is the ability to share pages with friends via Facebook/Yahoo or you can directly share sites amongst your StumbleUpon buddies.

This is where the word of mouth plays the largest role. Let’s say one of your friends shares a site that he/she believes you would enjoy. I do not know the exact percentage, but I’m willing to bet that you would take an extra gander at the site versus some paid advertisement.

That is the secret and the beauty of word of mouth advertising.

Now get out there you crazy kids and spread the word about your web site – and promote!

As I mentioned in my previous blog, there is an immense amount of IPv6 IP’s hitting the Internet market as we speak. Where is the individuality anymore? What is going to make your business’s website better than your competitions?

Yes, we know there was a specific importance on putting a single website on and individual “c” class IP (IPv4 address that is). This has been the mindset or thought process for anybody that utilizes or is in the SEO industry, however as I said with the countless IPv6 IP’s, and the length of these IP’s, you’re going to be looking at, what…. “k” classes? If that even makes sense, but it’s true.

It is going to get ridiculous, so what can you do? Those fortunate enough to already be utilizing seo hosting via dedicated class-c ip’s, as part of their SEO campaigns are in a good position, but for the future when the final IPv4 space runs out, and people are on IPv6 what will happen when everyone has an IPv6 for every web site (unlike today, and in the past – when professionals could invest and give their web site an advantage with a unique dedicated IPv4 class-c ip address)?   Organizations are going to have to start really concentrating on the actual content on their specific sites. All of the search engines, for example Google, won’t be “searching” out the individual IP’s anymore, what they are going to look at is the validity of the material on your website, whether it be your blog or word-press site, social media circles, etc.  You are going to have to utilize keywords and social media circles like you have never used them before to get your web site the maximum placement on search engines.  The importance that is going to be placed on specific industry keywords is going to increase exponentially. In addition, the uniqueness of specific keywords, specific material is going to be paramount.

Another is the ability to follow the continuously changing rules and guidelines that are put out by the individual search engines.  As of the last 2-3 years most search engines have been coming up with new ways to separate a legitimate website from one that is considered “black hat”.  Black Hat SEO is normally the unethical techniques one would use to increase their page ranking, and for quite some time, it has been very prevalent. These Black hat SEO pages would be receiving the hits, and views and “spiders” that your legitimate website should be getting. So your website, which could very well be your lifeline, has to (had to) compete with websites that don’t mean anything, are pretty much “fake” and are only around for a short period, recycled, spammed from, and then they start all over again. Completely hindering your chance to have the web response that you should. So again the search engines, especially Google have come out with the Panda and the Penguin algorithms, that if your website does not follow their rules, they will no longer be indexed, crawled or ranked on the web, leaving the room for actual, meaningful websites, your business’s website.

The Internet and the way websites are handled are ever changing, almost daily it seems. It all comes at a cost, whether that cost is the time spent on revamping your site, learning the plethora of rules and regulations or the physical cost that is incurred to have a dedicated web admin to assist you with all of the above.  Either way, change is inevitable, whether it is good or bad is all in how you look at it.

Stay tuned this summar, as we expand with more articles on SEO, social media, and brand marketing!

It used to be the case that a company had to have its own website to be on the cutting edge of promoting their business online. You not only had to have a website you had to promote the site through paying for expensive SEO fees or participate in the many pay per click advertising platforms to drive traffic. The tide has once again turned and all of those expensive methods of promotion are no longer a necessity to succeed online.

Numerous companies and organizations are having great success online with or without a website by promoting their name, brand, products and services through various social media marketing campaigns. Each social media platform has its own method of participation and in many cases the audience you are trying to reach will work better on one platform then it will on another. Some companies will have separate campaigns on several social media sites while others concentrate on one particular platform. Regardless of how many and which sites you promote with, the key to success is having a strategic plan in place. Marketing your business through social media is no different than any other promotional campaign; you need to clearly spell out goals and objectives prior to spending any serious time, energy or funding.

Remember as I stated earlier by participating in a well planned social media marketing plan, you may no longer need to fund the traditional methods of driving traffic to your website. Social media campaigns run by most company’s can be handled internally with their own staff and resources, which will usually be less costly then out sourcing. Additionally as your campaign moves forward you will likely be spending less time and resources while achieving more success as your popularity grows.

Any company can have success with social media. If you don’t know where to get started look at what others are doing in your particular industry with social media and put together a campaign similar to theirs. Much company’s put a lot of effort into this type of promotion for a reason, because it works.

TurnKey Internet just recently launched an aggressive social media campaign to gain followers on several of the most popular social platforms. The campaign revolves around some fairly aggressive marketing tactics to attract visitors to their numerous websites . Once a new visitor lands on one of the Turnkey pages they are prompted by a popup offer to join one, any or all of the social media vehicles Turnkey uses to promote their business. The caveat is a discount offer tied to each social media outlet that will only be provided to the visitor when they become a follower of Turnkey on any of the social media platforms. This is a great example of a very in depth and well thought out strategy with clear goals and objectives in place.

There is no reason any company can’t take advantage of the FREE promotional opportunities that social media platforms offer. This is like anything else in life, your results will be dependent on the thought and effort you put forth.

If you were to type “Social Media and your business” into any search engine, you would most likely receive countless pages and numerous ideas, on how your company can benefit by the utilization of such tools.  Every link you can click on, each person’s different views on the subject, a different rendition however all the same points.

Yes, we all know Social Media can help your business in a multitude of ways.  So let’s be different, let’s take a minute or two to talk about what you’re going to see, upcoming on Turnkey’s social media.

As you know, we are currently running a summer long Social Media contest. Well, contests to be exact. This is your change to take part in daily, weekly and monthly contests, drawings and games. This is your chance to interact with the Turnkey Staff like never before.  Say, maybe games where you win a free month of hosting by contacting a certain staff member and revealing “the secret code”.  Who can get us the most likes on Facebook?  You just never know what that specific day can bring, however I can guarantee you, following us on our social media pages will be without a doubt, worth your while.

So be sure to like us on Facebook, friend us on Twitter, give us a quick + on Google and be sure to find us on Linkedin.

TurnKey Internet today announced a social media awareness promotion and contest to engage with the public.  The promotion is a no purchase necessary contest, that includes free prizes such as iPad’s, gift cards, and free cloud

services. The promotion includes access to SEO and Social Media related articles and tips that will be published by the company each week to help other businesses benefit from the utilization of social media.

Individuals and  businesses may enter the contest for free, up to 5 times by simply accessing the company’s social media pages and clicking ‘FaceBook like’, Google +1, or ‘Twitter follow’., LinkedIn Connect, or the company’s news letter service.  The promotion runs through August 31^st, 2012 and can be accessed at http://www.turnkeyinternet.net/social-media

This promotion follows the company’s recent nomination by American City Business Journals to participate in the Social Madness competition which measures companies’ social media growth and utilization.  The competition measures companies’ social media influence, including factors such as growth in fans on Facebook, growth in Twitter followers and growth in connections on LinkedIn corporate pages. TurnKey Internet is participating in the small business category, based out of Albany New York.

TurnKey Internet’s social media promotion includes exclusive discounts and coupons for its cloud based web hosting services, that are only available to those who view them on the company’s Facebook, twitter or linkedin pages – including a 33% off for life discount coupon good on any newly purchased services through August 31^st, 2012. Daily prizes, weekly trivia contests and individual challenges are being run via the company’s social media pages with giveaways – all geared to promoting social media awareness.

“We are pleased to have been nominated to participate in the Social Madness program.  With clients from across the globe, we hope to bring a unique international view of social media to the competition,“ said Adam Wills, CEO of TurnKey Internet, Inc.  “Our social media promotion is designed to help our clients learn some great tips to grow their social media presence as well as shed some light on an area that many companies don’t leverage in their current SEO and marketing efforts,” he continued.

TurnKey Internet is running the promotion through August 31^st, 2012 – for more details please visit http://www.turnkeyinternet.net/social-media

Social Media is the landscape upon which an interactive dialogue takes place over the Internet (and now the air waves of your favorite smart phone). Friends and family use it to keep in touch, businesses use it to communicate, and consumers use it as a way to learn and influence the businesses who want their attention. The popularity and growth of Social Media over the last 5 years is tremendous, and only continues to grow. So how do you take your business to the next level – and utilize Social Media to benefit your clients, and yourself?

#1: Content, Content, Content : Have something to say, and don’t make it boring.

Resonate with what your audience or potential clients want to engage about. If you are in the business of producing custom pencils with monograms, then you may want to discuss and write about subjects that tie back in some way. For instance discussing gifts for the holidays or how customized pencils branded can be used as souvenirs or keep sakes at the front desk of your business to give away to clients.   The idea is to have something of interest to say – not just be promoting yourself.  When you send out a tweet, or post something on your facebook page – its ok to lead them back to you for a potential sale, but you want your content and message to be helpful, and insightful and not just self promotional.

#2: Build your Soap Box – and speak loudly!

You can pick your soap box, maybe it’s twitter, your own blog, or facebook – or focusing on review sites – but you need to speak up and loudly.  This means you can’t just setup an account, and post something once a year.  Your followers will not stick around, and others wont stumble onto your message.   By broadcasting your content out to the internet (via twitter, facebook, your blog, etc) – people will find the content that means something to them.  Again if you were selling pencils, and talked about how its a good gift to present business clients.  Someone searching for gifts might stumble upon your message, and learn about your business – and in the end could lead to a sale.   What is even more important, is when someone finds your content and follows you – their friends who follow them, now get lead to you.  Meaning by attracting just 1 person to follow you on facebook, or twitter – its possible 100’s more may take notice, and that multiples further and further long term as more people take a look and find what you have to say valuable or interesting.

#3: Expand your Soap Box – automatically!

If you want to maximize your reach I’d suggest you utilize a wordpress blog and leverage its ability to use ‘plugin modules’ to auto post your blog content right to your facebook and twitter audience.  This way you are broadcasting in all channels at once!   I recommend the “Auto Tweet Plugin” and  “Wordbooker” plugins for wordpress to achieve this.  If you aren’t sure, or don’t have a blog- contact your web hosting company for assistance.  Most offer automated and built-in word-press blog for your web site and can assist you with this.

#4: Go where your clients go!

If you are in the restaurant business, you want to frequent discussion groups, forums, round-tables and review sites in your industry.  Yelp is the most popular for reviews on restaurants, but there are more open discussions elsewhere too.  Respond and interact in these forums yourself, soon you will be consider a member, or even an expert on the subject.  People will actually look to you for advice, and likely follow you on Twitter and Facebook if they find what you have to say interesting (further expanding your reach in the Social Media world).

Tune in next time, for more tips to Chop the Competition!