Websites used to be easy. Just get your site designed, developed, launched, and sit back and wait for visitors to enjoy—right? Well, things have changed quite a bit in the last couple years.

These days, our would-be website visitors have numerous avenues to find information. It’s now our job to make sure they find ours. That means getting your content out there where your visitors can find it. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy – especially if your website uses the WordPress platform.

The simplest way to get started is to connect to the major social media outlets: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Once you get comfortable with these, it’s easy to add additional outlets like YouTube and others.

WordPress makes this very easy with the use of plugins. Here are the plugins I use:

Follow Me – Offers hyperlinked social media icons that your users can click on to follow you.

FT FacePress II – Pushes new blog posts to your Facebook Fan page using Facebook’s mobile e-mail address.

Sociable – Provides a wide variety of social media buttons at the bottom of every post so that users can share your content with others.

Social Media Widget – Similar to Follow Me but let’s you put your social media links in your sidebar or footer so that users can easily connect with you.

TweetMeme Retweet Button – This places a retweet button next to your blog posts so that users can retweet your post.

Twitter Tools – This plugin will automatically push a link to your new blog post to your Twitter feed. It can also create a blog post of your most recent tweets – but I personally don’t use that feature.

Twitter Widget – This is a nice way to share your most recent tweets on your website. It helps users see what you’ve been up to, what you care about, and catch up on info they may  have missed.

RSS – This isn’t a plugin but a feature that comes with WordPress. Users can subscribe via RSS and have new posts pushed to their RSS reader.

LinkedIn – I don’t use a plugin but you can configure your LinkedIn account to accept your latest tweets and Facebook updates.

Subscribe2 – And, for those who still don’t get the whole social media thing but want to stay connected, you can offer to email them when you have new posts. They just have to sign up.

Now you have no excuse not to power your website with social media. It’s easy, quick, free, and will have a huge impact on the reach of your brand and content. If you’re still using a static HTML site, talk to me about converting to a WordPress platform where you will finally be able to truly manage your own site.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

If you know me, you know I’m a very visual person. I learn by watching, I enjoy pictures so much I do photography in my spare time, and, the data geek in me loves infographics. So, I started poking around looking for some cool infographics and found some in the social media space.

Facebook

Paul Butler, part of Facebook’s data infrastructure team, took just 2% of Facebook’s user data (10 million records) and compiled this beautiful image that shows how we connect within our countries and around the world. While it looks a lot like a map of airline routes, its’ really a map of our human relationships.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is also demonstrating their use of the massive amount of data they’ve collected with Linkedin Maps. Only this time, it the infographic created is about you. LinkedIn’s new Maps feature builds an infographic that shows all of your connections, grouped together by color, and their connection to you is sized by how many shared connections you have between you. The hard part though, is figuring out just how they grouped your connections by color. You have to deduce that yourself.

Here’s a quick video about the maps.

And, here is my LinkedIn Map:

You can get your own LinkedIn Map here.

Twitter

Finally, here is a fun Twitter infographic by Hubspot. Did you know you can grade your Twitter account? The average score is 66%. This map shows how each state’s average compares to the national average. How is your state doing? Get your own grade here. (not bragging, but mine is 95!)

More connections, better networking

So, what does all this mean? First, that social media has connected us in ways never before possible. It’s given us access to people and their ideas that would have been impossible just a decade ago. Now it’s easy to hook up with like-minded people, building our community of friends, expanding our possibilities for finding a life partner, or furthering our business or career.

Social data, better understanding

For the first time in history, social data about human activities is being collected and archived. Social scientists are drooling to get their hands on it to study global trends of all kinds, like health issues, economic changes, and lifestyle habits.

Social media has significantly changed my life for the better, giving me access to people that have helped make my business successful. Has it changed yours in any way?

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

I recently read an article on Fortune magazine titled, Oversharing: The Business of Share Buttons. The article captured something I’d been thinking about for quite a while: with so many means to share content, is content sharing becoming diluted?

There are two major players in the “share button” space – AddThis and ShareThis. AddThis offers 271 sharing services to its publishers and ShareThis offers 50 sharing services. 271 services? What the heck are all those share buttons at the bottom of blog posts? I recognize maybe a dozen. What is Kaboodle anyway?

The Fortune author calls these sharing services the long tail of sharing. Not the most popular means of sharing but certainly being used by some folks. As you might expect, Facebook and Twitter make up the bulk of the sharing venues. Even so, the sharing service business continues to grow.

Recently, Google has jumped into the mix with Google Buzz. Michael Calore at Webmonkey says, “Buzz is more than a little bit like Twitter — and a whole lot like Facebook and FriendFeed. Anything you post is automatically sent out to the people on your Google Contacts list you interact with the most. All updates are real-time, and anything you share is open for comments. You can also post privately to a select group of friends.”

As a marketer, I’m concerned about “link overload” causing my prospects and customers to tune out. Yes, I want my content to be seen by as many relevant eyes as possible. But the keyword is “relevant.” Not everyone in the world will need to see or even want to see the content I create. I need to make sure the information I share is targeted to the right audience, by sharing content where they’re most likely to see it. Is that with the Mister Wong button? I doubt it.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

I skipped last week’s post since I was at the TDWI conference for business intelligence last week. It was a successful conference on a number of levels. One huge AHA (more like duh) moment for me was the reaction I got when meeting my social network friends in person for the first time.

Let me set this up with a little background. As you know, I am a content marketer for high tech companies with a focus on BI. I attend conferences to stay current on technology and the software/hardware market. But I also attend for the opportunity to meet with vendors (who are my customers). Where else would you find so many of your customers in one place?

I’ve embraced social networking. I’ve been able to have conversations with so many people I would have never had the chance to meet otherwise. I’ve talked to industry analysts, BI experts, vendors, and peers. I’ve commented on their blog posts and they’ve commented on mine. We’ve retweeted links to great information and tweeted a mix of personal and business thoughts. We’ve connected on LinkedIn and some on Facebook.

But, what really seals the deal is getting to meet these great folks in person. Time after time I heard, “Oh, you’re @BIMarcom! Nice to finally meet you in person!”  I had lunches and dinners with these folks. I got to know them (and they me) on a more personal, intimate level.

An old, but still relevant article from Rider University on cyberspace vs. in-person relationships says:

The human face and body language are rich in meaning and emotion.

We get a lot from our cyber relationships, but we get so much more in person. The face gives off so many cues. Linking these cues to how the words are being said improves communication, even cyber communication. Having talked in person, I can better visualize how the person is reacting during our online conversation.

My relationships have taken a big step forward. Now when we tweet, comment, and post, we have faces for the names. Our communication is much richer and our relationships stronger. When a vendor has a need, chances have greatly increased that they will consider me.

What about you? Are you finding it too easy to hide behind your avatar? Or are you exploring all the ways to get in front of your customer in person?

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

Socialytics. I love this word – it perfectly captures what it is — analysis of social media. I’ve only heard it used a couple times but when Michael Fauscette of IDC wrote his post, Socialytics, I decided to investigate it further.

I wondered who plays in this space today. Though there aren’t many, there are more and more social media analysis vendors with solid offerings. In his e-book, The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008, author Phil Sheldrake details 16 of them that responded to his request for interviews.

I then wanted to know more about the types of analytics that might be looked at. I liked the way David Bakken broke down social media data in his post, Social Networking, As Seen by the Economist. He looks at these three dimensions as a way to stratify the levels:

Content: Just what is it that is being talked about. Could be brand or product mentions, could be sentiment. What are people saying?

Source: Who is generating the content? How does the content vary by characteristics of the source. He mentions the difficulty of knowing more about the “who” and suggests companies like Facebook might sell that information as a new source of revenue.

Connectivity: Who is talking to whom? This is probably most about influence and the value of networks — something that has proven very difficult to measure prior to social networking.

(…some time passed, and then…..)

I had this thought:  With many of the social networking companies looking for a viable way to make a sustainable income, why not sell socialytics from their platform to interested parties? They hold the valuable key – the data.

BI vendors would do well to partner with social media analysis companies and call on the likes of Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to provide this new service as a joint partnership. Not only will all these social conversations create a wealth of data to be managed, they will also require a powerful analysis tool and a presentation layer that is easy to use and understand — something BI vendors are masters at.

Note to BI vendors – socialytics is here. Are you ready?

P.S. As I finish this post I found one vendor already moving forward. Ron Swift from Teradata just put out a timely post, Social Media Marketers Should Get Ahead of the Curve, where he talks about Teradata’s partnership with social media analysis vendors and creating integrated web intelligence (IWI) that combines socialytics with data from the data warehouse creating extremely valuable insight.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

Social media is still fairly new and understanding how to connect the various social media tools is not easy. Yet, that’s where the power lies, especially when it comes to dynamic content like blog posts. I’m often asked how to get more exposure leveraging social media, so I thought I’d give you the “101” on connecting, specifically your blog with Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

First, this help assumes you have a hosted blog, particularly WordPress. You can get WordPress for free and install it on your own domain or site, as long as your site accepts PHP (hosted on unix or linux servers and not Microsoft servers) and you have the ability to create databases. It’s a little tricky to set up and configure unless you have a geek-streak like me. Let me know and I can help.

So, you have a hosted blog and you’re putting out regular posts. How do you let the universe know?

Twitter – Grab your Twitter handle and make sure you fill out your profile, adding your website URL. The rest involves plugins to WordPress, though Typepad probably has similar functionality.

            Post blog to Twitter – Grab and install the Twitter Tools plugin. It not only notifies Twitter when you add a new post, it can create a blogpost from your tweets. It comes with additional features such as Hashtag, Exclude, and bit.ly URL shortener. You’ll need to get a bit.ly API code so that the plugin will push out your shortened URL.

            Retweet this blogpost – Grab and install the Tweet Meme plugin. It lets readers retweet your posts and also keeps track of how many times your post has been retweeted.

            Show my tweets – If you are successful with the Twitter Tools plugin (above), you will also have a widget that shows your tweets in your sidebar.

            Follow my tweets – I like the Follow Me plugin, used on this site. Stays off to the side and isn’t too obtrusive.

LinkedIn – First create a company page for your business. As you are setting up your company profile, you’ll see “Company Blog” in the box on the left side. Make sure you add your blog’s RSS URL. Now check your personal profile. Be sure you have your company blog and Twitter handle listed there too. As WordPress notifies Twitter with a tweet announcing your post, that same tweet will show up in LinkedIn as a status update.

Facebook – First, create a personal profile. Then add the Twitter application and fill out the settings with your Twitter handle. Now all your tweets will show up in the live feed, including the tweets containing your blogpost announcements. To automatically post from WordPress to Facebook without going through Twitter, use the post-to-facebook plugin.

Facebook’s company fan pages are still coming along. For the life of me, I can’t find an automated way to push blogpost notifications. I still recommend you create a company fan page and for now, manually add blogpost notifications.

One last suggestion, add social links to your posts with the Sociable plugin. This gives your readers several options to share your posts for you.

Feel free to add your suggestions. Would love to know what’s working for you. If you’re struggling with this or have any questions, just ask. Together, we can figure it out.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

A few weeks ago, I told of my college daughter’s tale of woe. After 17 years of schooling, she’s about to be thrust into the real world and doesn’t feel ready. Since that post, she scored a marketing internship at a new pet insurance company called Trupanion.

As I try and help her learn more about online marketing, it occurred to me recently that we’re transitioning in a big way. We’re traveling through a wormhole, soon to be spit out on the other side—changed forever. Marketing as we know it is over and we are about to enter a whole new universe I call social media marketing.

Gone are the easy days of clever commercials, full-page printed ads, and one-way conversations. Gone are the days of addressing faceless, powerless customers from behind the creative desk. No more “build it and they will come” websites. Check your rearview mirror-these things fading fast.

As an aside, I find it interesting that there are so many other things changing at the same time. The way we manage our environment is changing, globalization has opened the doors for anyone to sell anywhere in the world, people are finding more and more ways to connect to each other, and our economy will force us to think and act differently. What I can say with relative certainty is that we will come through the wormhole soon and things will suddenly be a lot different. Are you ready?

Whereas my daughter and her generation are learning and experiencing this new world for the first time, most of us bring the baggage and resistance to change what used to work before. The “known” is so comfortable and the unknown is so scary. But, the trip through the wormhole is happening now and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, so get on board!

Social media marketing is still young and still only a small percentage of companies are giving it a try. Most are sitting back, waiting to see how it all shakes out. In these early days, there are prices to be paid but there are also dollars to be made.

There’s great payback for getting it right- Take Dell Computers. They understood that adding social media to their marketing was not as simple as it sounds. There are technologies to set up, branding to be done, and policies to put in place. But instead of dipping just one toe in the water, Dell put themselves “all in” creating a Dell community site, a number of blogs, multiple Twitter IDs, and an active Facebook account. They have been so successful that they’ve publicly claimed they’ve made $1M in revenue from social media marketing.

There can be consequences for getting it wrong – Let’s hope it’s not on the scale of Motrin and the “Motrin Moms” fiasco. In the fall of 2008, Motrin launched an ad that depicted baby slings as fashion accessories for moms. The surprising negative backlash instantly went viral on sites like YouTube, Twitter, and several blogs. That’s enough to cause full-body paralysis in any marketer. It took a few days, but eventually Motrin put up an apology on their website. To release you from your potential paralysis, just note that even “bad” buzz can be better than no buzz. Google and Twitter activity for Motrin increased significantly for a few weeks.

Social media marketing is so fluid, you can quickly right yourself – The beauty (and the beast) in the new marketing world is its dynamic nature. Mistakes can be addressed as quickly as they were made. The Ford Motor Company was able to quickly recover from a potential PR disaster where their legal department sent cease and desist letters to forum owners using Ford trademarks. As you can imagine, these forum owners were outraged and the story became even more twisted as the news spread.

Ford was able to use social media to find out what happened, who was impacted, tell the community what happened, and inform the community about the steps they took along the way to crafting a compromise.

Poking your head out of the wormhole can be frightening. The good news is many companies are in the same boat and the winners will be those who dare to step out into the brave new world.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

So much buzz about social media marketing (Facebook, Ning, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, LinkedIn), it’s almost tough to separate practical information from the hype.

In reading dozens of blogposts on the topic, I recently came across a post by Mac MacIntosh who writes the Sales Lead Insights blog that made me go “hmmm….” His post looked at the study done by Forrester that was in response to the question, Which of the following sources of information impact your decision making process?”

And here are the answers:

• Peers and colleagues – 84%
• Vendor, industry and trade Web sites – 69%
• Your direct vendor salesperson – 69%
• Technology or business magazines – 66%
• Consultants, VARs and SIs – 65%
• Industry trade shows or conferences (in person) – 59%
• Forums, online communities and social networks – 45%
• Industry analyst firms – 45%
• E-mail or electronic newsletters – 41%
• Web events or virtual trade shows – 40%
• Interactive media: podcasts, video, online demos – 30%
• Blogs – 24%

From that, he says a story in eWeek about this research states, “…while business buyers may be using social networks and other tools in their enterprise and personal lives, Web 2.0 social technology isn’t affecting their decisions when it comes to purchasing business solutions.”

Mac doesn’t offer his own conclusion, but instead asks if we agree, so here’s my take—

People do business with those they know, like, and trust. I know, it’s an old, overused statement, but it still holds true. I believe this is the major reason why social media for B2B (or even B2C) has so much value. It started with relationship selling and has now been expanded into “relationship marketing” through social media. And, given nearly half those asked said their decisions were impacted by social media, really the newest entrant on the list, how can that be ignored?

Using a B2C example, the Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, Twitters constantly about his customers, vendors, and employees.  One of his latest tweets said, “Busy busy day! Didn’t notice any @Zappos employees doing the robot dance at the office today – http://bit.ly/zrobot.” That got me curious, so I checked out the link. Pretty funny and I got to see some of the employees and their reactions. Looks like a fun place to work and fun to do business with.

For a B2B example, look to Lucidera, a software company specializing in business intelligence. They leverage LinkedIn, Ning, YouTube, and Twitter. Lucidera takes the opportunity to share information and product examples, and also maintains a BI community forum. Look these guys up and see how broadly they’ve used social media.

I’ll bet you’re seeing some good B2B examples as well. If the same survey is taken again in the next couple years, I think you’ll see social media rise, possibly to as high as second place. It’s hard to top those we already know, like, and trust!

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI