Myrtle Beach Real Estate

Increase Blog Traffic Through Organic Search Results Webinar~ August 9th, 2010

Jeremy Blanton (210 Consulting~ Social Media Advisors) — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:55:04 -0400

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.

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Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

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I am the Co-Founder of 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors. If you would like more information on any of the topics discussed in this blog, please contact me directly. Also, please visit my other online consulting blog for more social media tips, tricks and enhancements.

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Win 500 Business Cards for FREE! From 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

Jeremy Blanton (210 Consulting~ Social Media Advisors) — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 17:58:53 -0400

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

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3 Tips to Getting Your Website to the First Page of Google ~ Social Media Advisors

Jeremy Blanton (210 Consulting~ Social Media Advisors) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 23:57:13 -0500

The concept of getting your website to the first page of Google seems like an almost impossible task to many. People spend months writing more and more content for their site, getting backlinks, and editing things without ever getting your website to the first page of Google. You feel defeated when your site stays on page 17 and just won't budge. Then one day you get a call from a company who promises “if you give us $395.00 per month, we will put your site on the first page of Google.” The part that these telemarketers neglect to mention is that the moment you stop paying them, your website will drop faster than lead balloon. As a former real estate agent, I used to get these calls regularly.

So, how can you actually get your website to the first page of Google? Well, there are a couple of really basic principles that you’ll need to implement. The “basics” are just that – basic. Before I share these, first you need to learn to not over-complicate things. Here are 3 easy steps to getting your website to the first page of Google:

1. Good, solid, keyword-rich content. So what is quality keyword-rich content? Basically, it’s content that gives something of value to consumers and search engines. You need to have keyword-rich posts that answer the questions your consumers have. Do not just spit out some random words and call it a post. If you write just to write and do not really have purpose, you are basically wasting your time if you are trying to get business. Develop a gameplan for your content and stick to it.

Ten well-written, targeted, keyword dense posts will bring a greater result than 100 posts that are thrown together quickly, with topics all over the place, and which contain piles of typos, grammatical errors, and more. This is a prime example of the principle of quality over quantity for the greatest result possible.

2. Writing Consistently on Your Blog. Many times people start working on getting their website to the first page of Google and after the first month or so they simply give up. One of the key factors to getting your website on the first page of Google is to consistently offer fresh content on your site. The easiest way to do this, of course, is to integrate a blog into your page.

You don’t need to have a Masters degree in English to have an effective blog. You just need to publish 2-3 good, quality posts each week that offer valuable content to your readers that are also written with your primary keywords in mind. One of the biggest excuses that I hear is that a business does not have time to write. According to HubSpot, businesses who blog receive 55% more visitors than companies who do not.

Here’s a simple time management strategy: On the weekend or whenever you have a few spare hours, (watching a football game, relaxing by the fire, etc.), sit down and write 2 or 3 really good quality posts. Then, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday you can launch these pre-written posts. You can then take the rest of the week to respond to comments, etc. To the consumers and search engines, it appears as though you have written new content on three different days.

This practice is far healthier for your rankings than writing a bunch of content one day, then waiting 7-10 days to write more. Why? The search engines are constantly visiting your page to index more content. The freshness is important when it comes to Google’s indexing algorithm. Also, they see a constant stream of new stuff instead of a bunch on one day, then a week of dormancy until you get around to posting again. This is also helpful for your consumer audience of readers. If you publish 3-4 posts all at once, the likelihood of those posts bringing you good consumer traffic from those subscribed to your blog is minimal. Most consumers will read maybe one post, but will not have the time, attention span, or energy to read multiple posts.

3. Link, Link, Link! The more sites that are pointing links at your page (especially when titled with the keywords you are trying to achieve) will produce a great return. One easy way to get some great links pointing to your site is to make sure you have added your business site to your profiles on any and all networks you participate in. Links from higher ranking sites help the search engines realize that these sites recognize your website.

It is kind of like when Oprah endorsed KFC’s new grilled chicken promo. In no time, there were over 2 million coupons printed and many were left missing out on the promotion because of lack of supply. Links from reputable sites make your own site seem more reputable.

One thing for sure, you need to make positive that the links you insert places are actually working for you. Many networks block the search engines from following the links to prevent spam. (I will be writing more about this in the future.)

Another great way to get links, is to ask your friends and family members to place a link on their blogs, websites, etc. Two things with regards to linking: do not pay a link farm service. Search engines don’t value these links – I could go into great detail about why, but just rest assured that it’s a waste of time and money. The other tip is to not do a reciprocal link when possible. This means, if your brother links to your site, do not put a link back to his.

A detour. An easy alternative to reciprocal links is to have a link triangle. In this case, your brother links to your site, you link to your parents, and your parents link to your brother’s page. All links are one-way and none are going back and forth. The more links you can have pointed at your site, the better it will help in getting your website to the first page of Google. You can think of each link as a “vote” for your site.

If you implement just these three tips, it will help get your website onto the first page of Google. Obviously, there are plenty of other factors that contribute to this phenomenon. If you take these and not only integrate into your website, but also into your blog, the most vital part to your website, you will start seeing results in a rather quick fashion. These three items I discussed alone can make or break the effectiveness of a website.

If you have any questions, let me know. And by the way, 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors offers some really great personal coaching taught by myself and Jason Crouch on this subject.

Photo Credits: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mklingo/245562110/ & http://www.flickr.com/photos/spiderpop/2798740868/

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Facebook Shuts Down Page with over 47,000 Fans over NAR Trademark Violation in Vanity URL

Jeremy Blanton (210 Consulting~ Social Media Advisors) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:03:04 -0400

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

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Consistency- The importance of writing regularly to your blog

Jeremy Blanton (210 Consulting~ Social Media Advisors) — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:28:46 -0400

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

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What Constitutes a Social Media Guru

Jeremy Blanton (210 Consulting~ Social Media Advisors) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 14:40:48 -0400

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

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Twitter Application- Review of Tweetdeck 0.34.3

Jeremy Blanton (210 Consulting~ Social Media Advisors) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 14:50:02 -0400

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:

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.
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.
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

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How to Optimize Blogs on a Budget

Jeremy Blanton (210 Consulting~ Social Media Advisors) — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:02:30 -0400

Trying to optimize blogs can be a very difficult task. But trying to optimize a blog on a tight budget can be even more daunting a task. I often get asked by clients how to blog and how to write them to show up well in the search engines. This is known as search engine optimization, or SEO. With the current state of the economy many of the clients I help are not at liberty to spend bbuckets of money on advertising and PPC campaigns, so they are trying to optimize a blog on a small to non-existent budget.

So how do you optimize blogs with minimal money? Well, there are plenty of ways. The first step is to start with a small niche. The biggest mistake I normally see is that someone starts up their blog and begins writing with goals and aspirations of dominating search engines for these really broad & generic terms like car batteries, or wedding cakes. But if you go for more specific items like wedding cakes in Myrtle Beach, or a Duralast Gold 24-DLG car battery, then you will start to gain good rankings easier and quicker. The instant gratification will inspire you to continue on writing as well.

Secondly, know what people are searching for. Google Adwords is a great place to get an understanding of what type of terms are being searched and how often they are being searched. Sometimes just the slightest tweaks to your keyword focus can be the difference to getting to the top page of Google with your post. The biggest thing is to choose keywords that are attainable for great rankings. So be realistic in the terms you choose. I guarantee that if you take some time & focus on this before starting to write you will see results. A recent client of mine who has a very small budget and a completely brand new site was able to focus on a few good keywords and has been able to already start receiving clients directly from her blogsite. She also has several terms already ranking #1 in the search engines after only writing a handful of posts.

Thirdly, links can be a difference maker in how your site shows up in the search engines. Look for places you can link back to your blogsite. This can be a large time consumption, but if you can find things like your profiles on other networks, friends who are willing to link to you, it will increase your traffic to the site as well as the number of incoming links your site has. The one warning I would make is that this is where you could end up blowing your budget out of the water that you have set up for optimizing your blog. Companies will try to sell you links and charge you high prices for those links. This also can be the place that your site goes from ranking #1 to being blacklisted if done improperly, so please do some investigating before you start. While there are very reputable ways to do this, there are also several ways that the search engines frown heavily on.

The last way to optimize your blog and drive traffic to your site is to use your imagination and make your business different from everyone else’s online. When all the competition has the same type of advertising campaign you do, step outside the box and be creative. A company that recently did this that comes to mind is Pepsi. They stepped outside the normal box of advertising this year during the Superbowl. Instead of spending millions on 30 second commercials, they decided to use that income to build a giant online community of followers that would spread the word about their site & push traffic to them. Has it worked? Well, take a look at the stats according to compete. Year to date their web traffic is up 10% while their biggest competition, Coca-Cola is down 24%. Coincidence? I don’t believe so. I believe this is due to the change in their focus and doing something unique from the rest of the competition.

These four basic steps to optimize your blog can all be done for relatively no budget at all. It will just take a little bit of time, effort, and creativity to accomplish. Finally, I leave you with this video from the master of SEO, Matt Cutts from Google Webmaster. It seems we agree on this one 100%.

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

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You Don’t Order Steak at a Seafood Restaurant, So Why Buy a Website From Postcard Companies?

Jeremy Blanton (210 Consulting~ Social Media Advisors) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:04:34 -0400

One of the things that we at 210 Consulting love doing is helping new businesses get their online marketing started in the right direction. Unfortunately unless you are always working in the web development, SEO, and online marketing industry, it can be overwhelming to a new company. Also, since you are just starting your new business, money is usually very tight. So, when you go to purchase business cards, accounting software, or a domain name and they offer to get your site up in running in less than 10 minutes for under $100, you are ecstatic to do so because you can now say you are on the internet.

Usually within 10 minutes of a conversation with a new prospective client I can tell if they have one of these types of sites. Why because they have only 5 pages of content, on a standard layout with zero ability of customization, and the adding of plugins or a blog is impossible! When I ask them why they chose this as their website company, the response every time has been this: "Well, I didn't have a bunch of money to go buy a fancy site and didn't want to put that much money into something. Once this site makes me some money I will upgrade. Besides my new site looks pretty and will be fine for my online marketing strategy."

This is when I finally ask the client, Would you order a steak if you were eating at a superior seafood restaurant? No! Because they aren't known for their great steaks. They are known for serving some of the best fish on the planet. This same principle holds true when you purchase a website from an online postcard company or an accounting software company.

These types of websites are designed to be simple, easy to set up, quick to activate and are inexpensive. But the limitations they possess are huge. My sister-in-law set up a website the other day for her new business and was very excited when she emailed me a link to look at the site. I pulled it up and called her within 2 minutes to tell her to stop wasting her time and that we needed to do something different. We then made a call to one of my connections that was able to create a WordPress Blogsite for her in just under a weeks time, she hired me to do some graphic design work and for under $1,000 we had her an awesome and amazing new site up and running.

So what made her new site that much better & worth the expense? Here are just some of the big differences:

Unlimited Pages of Content versus only 5- The original page had a total of 5 pages of content available. She had maximized that in her first 10 minutes of setup. She could add more, but there was a fee each time she went to add more pages. On her new Wordpress.org blogsite, she can now add unlimited number of pages with pictures, videos, links and more. The reason the number of pages is so important is that it is a big factor in how search engines rank your content. More pages make you look more like an authority on a subject and thus the page goes up in the searches.
Power of Plugins- Plugins and widgets are awesome additions to any site. Unfortunately her template 5 page site did not offer any of this. She could not add simple things like a Facebook share button, or a ReTweet button. With a blogsite like WordPress she has the ability to do all these things and much more that not only make it easier for people to share her site with others, but some that also help her with her Search Engine Optimization.
Online Ordering- The template 5 page site also prohibited the addition of any types of online shopping carts or purchase online buttons. Which as her business continues to grow she wants to start offering these features to her clients so that they can purchase her items online and ship them around the world.
True Ownership of Her Content Forever- Unlike the other company, the information is now on her own site. She owns it and nobody else. She does not need to worry about if they decide to raise the price up. Or if they go out of business, or if they move servers and crash things for weeks at a time. The other nice thing is that she has a home base to direct customers to that only her content & products. The customers will not be finding her competition there. While online forums are great sources of online business, you do run the risk of your customer that found you there clicking a link to your competitor that is on the same platform and losing the business to someone else. The same holds true for those those that "have their website on their company site" which is nothing more than just a profile there that drives traffic to your organization and not you. All it takes is one accidental click on a company site and once again your co-worker is getting the sale instead of you.

These are just four of the many reasons why I said she needed to change her site before even really starting. Luckily, she listened to me & took my advice. We worked together with a web developer and built her an awesome looking & highly search engine optimized blogsite. She then did a few training sessions with me to develop her targeted audience and keywords to write about. Since then she has written a few blog posts, added some great content to her site & seen an explosion of traffic. Without this, she would not have known the first thing about what to write about or what types of things people are searching for. Remember, she wants to bake cakes, not become a online marketing expert.

So what are the results?

Well, take a look for yourself. This was an email conversation I had with her today:

Hey Jeremy, Just got 3 cake orders today for a word of mouth referral! So far since the website has been up I have actually collected about 450.00! Its quite a bit for cakes and chocolate covered yummies....

My response:

Awesome! So how many cakes have you sold in the first 2 weeks now? 5? 6?

Her Response:

8 actually

a gift basket

and 50 chocolate covered pretzels!

As you can see, she is well on her way to regaining the money she spent on building her website and the beauty is that she will continue to profit from the site for a long time thereafter too! So before you sign up for a website through one of these other companies, stop and ask yourself, Would you order steak at a seafood restaurant? Then why am I buying a website through a postcard company?

If your small business needs assistance getting started with your online marketing plan and would like to see this type of results, feel free to contact me to develop your online marketing gameplan. Also, if the picture above has you interested in some delicious chocolate covered pretzels, make sure you visit her site Vie Bakery.

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

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Real Estate Barcamp Charlotte 2010- A great day of learning #REBCCLT

Jeremy Blanton (210 Consulting~ Social Media Advisors) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:17:24 -0400

Originally Posted at: 210 Consulting- Social Media Advisors

Yesterday I attended Real Estate Barcamp Charlotte aka #REBCCLT. This year the event was held in Ballantyne Village which was a great venue. If you want to see what it is like just check out this quick video of #REBCCLT as people were checking in. There were four classrooms available for some wonderful times of learning. People from inside the real estate industry as well as several from outside gathered for this amazing event.

The highlights of #REBCCLT:

Here are just some of the things from REbarcamp Charlotte that I really enjoyed. First, I liked the fact that they had some great snacks of muffins etc for us to snack on for breakfast. They also had beverages there for us to grab throughout the day. Sometimes these events are so rush rush in the morning that there isn't any type of food. When this happens you get to around 10:30 and everyone is no longer thinking of learning, but instead thinking of what they can get for lunch. In fact, I have seen a few sneak out of sessions early just because they cannot make it any longer which is sad because they miss out on so much good content that they could learn for free.

I also liked the way that REbarcamp Charlotte gave the group the ability to pitch ideas to cover for the day to the entire group. The reason this was so cool is that you were then able to find out exactly what those in attendance wanted to learn about. Several didn't want to lead sessions but really wanted to learn, "How to do this, or what is..." so they were able to pitch the ideas & then the event found someone to lead the discussion. After all the ideas were pitched, then everyone there was able to go & vote and the classes with most demand were what was covered throughout the conference. This is what I would defintely call empowering the attendees with the way the conference runs. The one thing that I wish would have happened with the pitching aspect is that we could have done it a little bit faster. It seemed like we spent a lot of time on people voting that we could have almost added another round of sessions instead. Maybe next time just pitch the ideas & then do a show of hands type voting to speed things up.

The venue had 4 separate classrooms which were held on two different levels. The Superior School of Real Estate which was the main sponsor of the event opened their doors and allowed the use of their awesome space for two of the sessions. As usual though, the best part of a REbarcamp isn't so much the great sessions, but the small impromptu breakouts that happened all over the facility. In a true unconference style, I even did a small class on the fly for a few that were begging me to help them blog better. So, the 5 of us found a few comfy chairs, brought our laptops and we did the session right there. Throughout the day I saw many small groups scattered all over learning on a specific thing to help their business succeed online.

So, try & make it out to a Barcamp if there is one in your area. They can be loads of fun as extremely informative. Every time I leave an event like this, I leave learning several new things that will help take my business to the next level. My ultimate suggestion though is this: come with an open mind ready to learn, participate, and make new friends. If you do, you will definitely leave the event a changed person with tons of ideas on how to use different types of technology to increase your business. The best part of all is that these events are totally free to attend! Lastly, I loved that the people attending #REBCCLT were definitely tweeting heavily. When I finally stopped tracking the number of tweets, there were over 350 tweets made by 77 people in about a 12 hour period! In case you were wondering who all these people were, I put them all into a list so that you can follow everyone instantly. To follow all that tweeted with the hashtag click here for the list of people who tweeted about #rebcclt. All you will need to do is enter your twitter id & it will connect you with everyone else.

Finally, I will leave you with a few photos from the event. Check it out & enjoy!

A giant thank you to Lori, Sandy, Debe, Todd, Chad, Susan, and everyone else who helped make this an awesome event! The wordle above is courtesy of Jeff Turner, aka @respres

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125 Twitter Applications to Make Using Twitter Easier

Jeremy Blanton (210 Consulting~ Social Media Advisors) — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 00:33:12 -0400

*Twitter Applications- A massive list to make Twitter easier to use.

If you are anything like me, there was a time & place when your friends all said "Jeremy! Why are you not on Twitter? You need to use Twitter! It is an awesome new social network that is super effective for producing new business connections!" After several of your friends begged you to join, you finally visited Twitter.com and registered an account.

You finished your registration, added celebrities like @aplusk and your friends from in your database. You sent the infamous "Just trying out Twitter" as your first tweet and then set in complete confusion for the next 6 months trying to understand what to do next. Your friends & celebrities filled your wall with constant stream that was always moving and you had no way of making sense of how to use twitter. You answered your friend requests that filled your inbox and that was about it. After complete frustration set in, you gave upl & said that Twitter was not for you.

This is a very typical story of so many that have started on twitter. When you use the basic web version of twitter, it is very difficult to understand how it all works & how to optimize your account for business. All you see is constant chatter & movement of links from people you know & those you don't. This was my feelings on twitter for the first few months. Until I finally started using a few of these Twitter Applications listed below.

Whenever I am working with a client who does not understand or enjoy using Twitter, it is normally because they are not trying out any of the various Twitter applications that exist. After an hour of online coaching on these applications, it makes things much clearer. Because of this, I decided it was time to put together a mother lode list of Twitter Applications.

This list of Twitter Applications is by no way every single application that exists, so if I miss some, please share in the comments below what applications you love that I may have overlooked. These are however some of the most popular & best applications I have ever found. So without further ado, here is my mother lode list of Twitter Applications:

Twitter Applications- Desktop Versions

Twitter Applications for Photo Sharing

Web Browser Run Twitter Applications

Twitter Applications- Link Shorteners

Twitter Analytics Applications

Scheduled Tweets- Twitter Application

Mobile Twitter Applications

Account Management Twitter Applications

Miscellaneous Twitter Applications

Twitter Marketing Applications

So if you are unsure how to use twitter or have been completely frustrated with how to use it, try implementing some of these twitter applications into your online experience. I promise it will help clear up the confusions of using this social network as well as enhance your ability to gain business from it.

**Please note: I have not personally used each application listed below. I cannot verify their effectiveness or privacy function. Use at your own risk. **

Originally written here: Twitter Applications- 125 Tools to Make using Twitter Easier

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"How to Use Facebook for Business" - Upcoming Online Class

Jeremy Blanton (210 Consulting~ Social Media Advisors) — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 09:41:22 -0400

Using Facebook for Business is crucial to any companies online marketing plan. This is going to be an awesome class to learn the basics of how to use Facebook for business that you do not want to miss!

I have added the ticket order form directly to this re-blog to make reserving your space easier.

Event registration for How To Use Facebook In Your Online Marketing Strategy powered by Eventbrite

Via Jason Crouch, Broker - Austin Texas Real Estate (512-796-7653) (Austin Texas Homes, LLC):

A few short years ago, Facebook was primarily used as a college photo sharing site. Now, it's a giant social media marketing and networking platform. Have you ever wondered what you could do to leverage your presence there and grow your real estate or mortgage business?

On Monday, June 21th, at 1pm Eastern time (noon Central, 11am Mountain, 10am Pacific), Jeremy Blanton and I will be teaching a one-hour online class entitled "How to Use Facebook for Business". This is basically a beginners guide to using Facebook effectively to promote yourself and your business.

If you have any interest in using Facebook for this purpose, you will not want to miss this one!

The most recent statistics show that Facebook now has about 450 million users worldwide, and the average user spends roughly 55 minutes per day on the site. We can help you to gain more exposure on this platform, and help you achieve tangible sales results.

By the time you finish this 1 hour course with us, you will know:

The difference between Facebook Pages & Profiles

The basic elements to running a successful page

What to post

Choosing the right title for your page

How to get fans to your page and how to get them interacting on your page.

If you have been hesitant to use Facebook for your business or think it only about Farmville, throwing sheep and Mafia Wars then this is the class for you.

We are offering this class for ONLY $25! Here's the link (sorry, but we're not offering a discount code on this one - it's already inexpensive): http://budurl.com/101fb

Hope to "see" you there!
If you enjoyed this post, why not connect with me elsewhere?

If you're looking for a home in the Austin area, you can visit my primary Austin real estate website at www.austintexashomes.com. If you're interested in social media training, visit 210 Consulting. Thanks!

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If You Are Only Drinking Google Juice, It May Be Time To Re-Evaluate Your Online Marketing Plan

Jeremy Blanton (210 Consulting~ Social Media Advisors) — Mon, 24 May 2010 00:38:57 -0400

"If You Are Only Drinking Google Juice, It May Be Time to Re-Evaluate Your Online Marketing Plan" was a statement I made the other day while doing a coaching session with a client. I had had asked them why they were not using Facebook to optimize their online marketing and was given the typical responses: "I don't care about someone going on vacation, or that someone's dog just gave puppies," or my personal favorite, "all Facebook is good for is throwing sheep, building farmvilles, and joining mafia wars." While there are many that get sucked into the giant black hole of Mafia Wars, Farmville and the thousands of other meaningless things to do on Facebook, what most people do not realize is the absolute power that lies within the Facebook platform.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we see roughly 1/3 of our revenue right now come from connections on Facebook. This is a strong source of income for our online consulting business. While drinking Google Juice remains king, social network sites like Facebook, Twitter, & Youtube are gaining traction daily. In case you were wondering if Facebook is something you need to begin integrating into your online marketing plan. Take a look at these stats, it might be time to start mixing in another drink as well.

GENERAL FACEBOOK STATS

More than 400 million active users
50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day (200 million people!)
More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
More than 3.5 million events created each month (half of those invites come to me!)

FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGES

More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
More than 20 million people become fans of Facebook Pages each day
Facebook Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

USER STATS

Average user has 130 friends on the Facebook
Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook
Average user writes 25 comments on Facebook content each month
Average user becomes a fan of 4 Pages each month
Average user is invited to 3 events per month
Average user is a member of 13 groups

These are some very powerful statistics! While Facebook is an internal network that does not bring you the SEO value that you are used to your website or blog bringing, it is powerful. Think about it like this: In 2009 the population of the United States was just over 307 million according to Google. Facebook ads, show that right now there are 112, 291,180 people on Facebook that live in the US and are 18 years or older. In other words, about one out of every three Americans have a Facebook account, and that 1 out of every 6 is on it daily!

There are many other ways to use Facebook in your online marketing plan for your business. Hopefully by now you realize this is something you really need to start doing. If you need help getting started, feel free to ask me for assistance, I love helping clients get their Facebook Business Page set up & optimizing their efforts on Facebook.

So I leave you with this statement: "If You Are Only Drinking Google Juice, It May Be Time to Re-Evaluate Your Online Marketing Plan." Do you agree or disagree with me?

Photo Credit

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How To Garner 100,000 Pageviews In Under Two Years To Your Blog

Jeremy Blanton (210 Consulting~ Social Media Advisors) — Fri, 21 May 2010 18:08:21 -0400

As technology constantly evolves there are always new platforms that arise and newer ways to effectively market your business. Right now, some of the more popular networks that you are always hearing about are sites like Facebook, & Twitter. Both of these platforms continue to evolve into more powerful networks and opening more & more opportunities for business. Our Facebook page is our third largest source of income into our company.

The one thing that many overlook is the ability for your blogsite to become a hub of business. Whenever I am doing online consulting with a client, I make sure to always enforce the importance of a good blogsite that they own as the foundation to their marketing plan. As I have shared in previous posts, it is imperative to your business to have your own website where your content & brand is strongly displayed and that you can direct all your traffic back to. Having just a page on a company website, or on a platform other than your own, you always stay at the mercy of someone else.

Just under two years ago I set up an analytics tracker on one of my blogs to keep track of how many visitors I receive. Since then I have been amazed by the stats. There have been over 101,000 page views that have taken place during that time period. In addition, the blog has seen over 67,000 unique visitors. That is an average of 4,236 page views per month and almost 2,800 unique visitors per month.

These numbers are HUGE. There are multiple reasons why these numbers are as high as they are, but here are the top ways to get traffic to your blog:

1. Search Engine Optimization- When I was selling real estate & trying to gain the most exposure to my site, the best way to accomplish this was to write for the search engines. I did research on keywords that were going to be easily attainable for high rankings and traffic and then set out to write & land on the first page for those longtail keywords. Usually I could take the top spots within only a few blog posts on a term and keep it the top spots fairly easily. Search engines account for over 76% of the traffic that come into my blogsite. On the other hand, Twitter & Facebook only account for just over 1.5% of the traffic.

2. Establishing Yourself as an Authority- With the increasing amount of exposure the internet provides for businesses & their online marketing, there are more & more competitors that try to gain business via the internet. The one thing that will bring them back to your site & sharing it with their friends is if you give them more creidlble information on the subject they are interested in. While many fear that if they share too much information, they are giving it away. Businesses fear that the consumer will not contact them if they share too much. The reality of the situation is that being an authority builds a layer of trust with the client that makes them decide to work with you over your competition.

3. Sharing Your Experience- Sharing that knowledge gives you an increased level of credibility that will drive that consumer to work with you. Also, even though you have shared how to accomplish something in detail, consumers will still call on you for your professional experience. Remember, we are the professionals that work in the industry daily. That experience is invaluable to most consumers & will bring them in to work with you for that reason alone.

4. Consistency & Regular Updates- If consumers know that they can find your content on a regular basis, they will come back to read regularly because they are always met with new content. Writers like Chris Brogan have been able to gain over 38,000 subscribers because he writes daily new unique content. If you can write at least 3 times a week or more, solid high quality content, you will gain a readership that will return regularly to your page.

5. Relate to Consumers- One of the biggest mistakes I see people make in writing blog posts is that they do not try to connect with the consumer. They write using the terms of their industry or the way they would talk when trying to sell something. Readers of your blog do not like being sold to! Instead of trying to sell, try to connect, it will be much more profitable to your blog. If people feel it is nothing more than one GIANT ad, they will run for another source never to return to your blog.

If you apply these 5 simple steps into your blog, you will see an increase of traffic and subscribers like you could never imagine. Trust me when I say, it works! Once I applied these into my blog I saw my numbers grow exponentially to the place they are now! If you have any questions or would like some help in achieving these types of numbers for your blog, feel free to contact me directly to schedule some personal coaching. I'd love the opportunity to assist you in getting your blog the traffic it deserves!

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2 Billion Videos Viewed Daily, Are You Optimizing Video Online?

Jeremy Blanton (210 Consulting~ Social Media Advisors) — Tue, 18 May 2010 23:02:00 -0400

Yesterday I read an article on Mashable that YouTube recently passed 2 Billion views a day on their network. YouTube, a company that recently celebrated their 5th birthday has become quite the major component to any businesses online marketing strategy. Whenever I am doing online consulting with a client regarding their social media marketing strategy, I always try to encourage them to integrate video as a main component of the online marketing strategy.

Next to behemoth search enging Google, YouTube (which is actually owned by Google) is the second most used search engine in the world. Companies can gain instant notoriety by establishing a solid video online. Examples: Remember the Social Media Revolution? This video regarding some statistics on the power of social media gave a businesses YouTube channel an instant jolt of traffic. Or maybe you remember the infamous song of how United Breaks Guitars? The band Sons of Maxwell became overnight successes because of their catchy tune about how United Airlines broke a guitar and refused to pay for it. They created a quick video poking humor at the event & within no time the video had been viewed over 8 million times. Their success was so great they even created another video United Breaks Guitars Breaks My Career that basically says thanks for destroying our gear, you made us famous!

So how does someone optimize their efforts on YouTube & other video sites? Well, there are a few things that if done consistently will help you to get the best results.

1. Tagging & Title of Video. Just like when you write a blog, the title of the video is one of the most important parts. I had a client who had a video that was really good on something that people would want to see, but the title was done all wrong. In fact, it had just the basic random title that the video camera named it when they downloaded the video. When the client uploaded it to YouTube, they never took time to change it and could not understand why their video was not getting much traffic. So, we renamed the video to a term people would search for & the video started to take off almost instantly. Now, that video has over 1,100 views! The tags are also important on a video because they help to categorize your video properly to be searched. I find myself going to YouTube now for answers on a question rather than search engines.

2. Distribution of Video. The second thing most people is load their video to YouTube but nothing else. Nowadays we all have Facebook, Twitter, websites, blogs, Posterous accounts & more. YouTube has now made it really easy to distributet your videos out to other networks. When I take my reach of all these networks & add them together, it is well over 8,000 people. Why not share those videos with that audience? The more exposure you can give to a video, the more likely it is to be viewed by masses. Not to mention, those who watch the video & like it will then also share it on with others. Each person has a wide net of connections and you can see quickly how your video can then spread like wildfire!

3. Keeping it to the point. Have you ever clicked on a video to watch & as it starts you see it is 8:39 and you just do not want to sit there that long? Videos that drag on longer than 3-4 minutes normally have a lot higher viewing level than those that are 8-10 minutes.

In addition to these three tips on how to optimize the use of YouTube & other video services, here is a post I wrote a while back on how to create effective videos. This post shares with you 5 really basic tips on how to make videos that people will actually sit & watch without having to spend thousands of dollars to have the videos produced. It covers things like music, how to pan shots properly, and much more. It is a great beginners guide to starting on video.

In closing, if you are not yet using video in your marketing strategies, it is definitely time to start exploring this. One final piece of advice: You do not need to be a professional videographer to create good video. Most videos that go viral are ones shot with basic digital cameras, flip cams, and most of the times are not even edited. So do not allow things like that hold you back from getting started. Raw video can be just as beneficial for your business as one that is shot by the pros. If you want some assistance in getting started with this, feel free to contact me and I can help you. The biggest key however, is to just get started!

PHOTO CREDIT

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