Entries Tagged 'web 2.0' ↓

Well no matter what you call it the fancy Structured Systematic Plan or a simple Daily To-Do-List, if you want your business to get ahead you are going to need one. This is a list of items that need to be done daily to keep your business running.

Most of my lists, as with most people, are in my head. We know what needs to be done everyday and it just becomes ingrained as a repetitive activity that you do because it is what you do. Now what happens when you need to start a new component of your business or worse you need to add a step to your daily activities? How can you remember to do that step or activity? I prefer a list, a Structured Systematic Plan (SSP) - this helps me to stay focused, helps me to stay on task, and helps keep me organized (which all means I don’t forget to do what I need to do to keep my business running). I have several of these SSPs for several different aspects of my business, not only do they help me but lets say I hire an assistant - OH yes one of the best things to do for your business is to hire an assistant. You run the business and they RUN the business. Now the assistant can take your SSP and run that component of your business.

Here is my SSP for Social Media Marketing -

1. Check email - for comments on your blogs and emails from customers/clients/prospective clients
2. Check Twitter - Say hello/good morning and what ever is on the agenda today or on your mind, then respond to @’s and reTweet what is interesting to you
3. Check other people’s blogs that are in your niche for new posts - make comments and possibly tweet about them and if it is really good, give some social marketing love (Post all over the social websites)
4.Check Google Alerts for your keywords - quickly read what is interesting - make comments, tweet and if it is good give some social marketing love.
5. Check Digg, Stumble Upon, and YouTube for 5 min - popular and new stories/videos
6. Check Facebook and LinkedIn- quickly go through notifications and requests and make a status change
7. Go to the forums in your niche - answer questions and make comments.

This whole process should take only 30 minutes, if you spend more time than that you are wasting time not working your time. If you do it everyday, it will keep your social marketing aspect of your business healthy. I usually do this whole process twice a day with the exception of the Google Alerts as I have them set for once a day. I will waste time AFTER the process is complete, but I make sure the entire SSP is completed before going back and playing games and watching those hilarious popular videos on YouTube OR to stay on track the next step is to write blog posts SSP for blog posts coming soon!

The autofollow on Twitter is where a program automatically follows back anyone who follows you. Twitter used to have its own autofollow program limited to a few accounts on a trial basis but discontinued the program stating in an email to its users “We’re going to discontinue autofollow because this behavior sends the wrong message. Namely, it is unlikely that anyone can actually read tweets from thousands of accounts which makes this activity disingenuous.”

Basically what Twitter was stating was my approach to using the service. It is the same reason I use no automated programs to generate my tweets either. One exception may be that in the future I may use a WordPress plugin to tell my followers that I have written a new blog post, but I am contemplating even that as not a correct use of twitter. Twitter is about me and about you and about the connections that can be made between the two of us or in the case of several twitter users the thousands of us. It is personal connection.

Now of course look at the level of my followers, currently 237 followers, so who I am to say what should and shouldn’t be done on Twitter - what the hell do I know? Well I know who to follow and to listen to what they are tweeting. Some of the bigger names in internet marketing and social marketing that are on twitter are complaining about Direct Message (DM) spam and some have even started campaigns to unfollow people, Eric Farewell (@ericfarewell) comes to mind. Others have turned off their autofollow programs such as Scott Stratten (@unmarketing) and still others have never used an autofollow system, Ed Dale (@Ed_Dale). These guys are heavy hitters in the internet marketing world and are not using autofollow for a reason. I may be stretching here but it maybe because it is not personal and does not really represent what they are trying to accomplish with twitter and that is to make personal connections. From a marketing perspective it is the quality of the connections that you have not the quantity of connections. I would much rather have a following of 1000 people that I can send something to and they will act on it because they have trust and actual interest in what I am saying vs even 100,000 followers that ignore what I say and do not act. The way to do this is not to autofollow every Tom, Dick and Harry that follows you. Instead follow those that you have an interest in what they are actually saying. Now I realize some of you are getting over 20 followers a day (lucky you!) so then you should do what I do, follow only those that start to make connections with you. Anyone that @’s me and takes a real interest in what I am saying deserves to have their profile examined and usually gets a follow back. A person that takes action and joins in the conversation is someone I am interested in finding out what they are saying. These are the people that are the shakers and movers, the ones with opinions, the interesting people, the ones with actually something to say - the people I really want to follow. So if you are one of those people and you are following me and would like me to follow back just @ me, or respond to a tweet, or even retweet one of my tweets if you like it. Let me know you are alive and breathing and not some automated robot that just happened upon the keywords I put into a tweet.

I truly believe that I will be able to generate a lot more quality followers just by reply, respond and retweeting what others are saying. Joining in the conversation and saying something of interest is what gets more followers not autofollowing.

Hey I have a gift for you! I have been allowed to give you an inside look at Social Networking Directory for FREE!

Here is the promo for it and the link is right to the Thank You page!!!

I just wanted to tell you how excited I am about the Social Networking Directory! It has to be the biggest Web 2.0 resource out there. I mean I’m sitting here going through it and can’t believe how many social sites there are! Social Networking Directory - Thank You page

There are over 3,000 sites in the Social Networking Directory. The best thing though… is that they ALL have a description about what the site actually does! I mean I’ve seen the books where people just give you links… but the Social Networking Directory not only gives you the description of each site, it has the graphic, tags, and the link!

Social Networking Directory - Thank You page

I would like to recommend that you go and get it right now! It is FREE!!

Now look I get the most traffic to my sites through social sites, now I can add hundreds, even thousands of sites for backlinks!! Social Networking Directory - Thank You page

OK I find this new tool from Google called Knol (yes it is finally in public beta). It is like Squidoo or Wikipedia. I set up my first Knol - How to trade Credit Spreads Knol and of course I want the rest of the world to know about this cool thing I found! So I go to Digg and try and submit my Knol to their site and Digg doesn’t recognize the url!

I run through the submission process entering my url to submit and Digg comes back with a message stating - “This link does not appear to be a working link. Please check the URL and try again.”

Here’s the actual link - knol.google.com/k/daniel-beatty/how-to-trade-credit-spreads# Now I tried it with and without the # sign at the end and neither worked. Of course the url works in my browsers, so what gives? Any ideas?

I could be a conspiracy theorist and say that either Google does not like Digg or Digg does not like Google but …nah there must be some type of technical glitch. I hope they figure it out because I might think mine is cool but I am sure there will be other cool ones out there that will make mine pale in comparison - like instructions on how to get a date with a super model.

One of the tools that I use to promote my websites and others are the social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, etc, etc.

If you do not know what these are these are the core sites for the Web 2.0 craze. Here are a couple of my profiles that you contact me or friend me or follow me or digg me or whatever the web 2.0 site wants you to do to me…

Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=746243800

Twitter - http://twitter.com/danielbeatty

MySpace - http://profile.myspace.com/drdandvm 

ClipMarks - http://clipmarks.com/clipper/danielbeatty/

StumbleUpon - http://danielbeatty.stumbleupon.com/ 

Digg - http://digg.com/users/danielbeatty 

I could give you others but these are the ones I frequent most often. Look me up on one or all of them.

OK I really should not even post the results because I received such a pathetic amount of survey takers. However since I said I would post the results I will.

Favorite Submission Site - Propeller at 66% of the vote

Favorite Social Network - Facebook at an outstanding and impossible but it did happen 100%

Favorite Bookmarking Site - Stumble Upon at 62% of the vote

Now the reasons almost all had the same theme - easy to use and produced good traffic

Now for the site links - Also a pathetic amount submitted in fact one person even put my website in as a link…LOL

http://setourteachersfree.com

http://rescue4furbabies.com

http://lovejots.com

http://www.dotnetkicks.com/ - the only actual web 2.0 site submitted for the survey all the rest are personal sites, but all look like good quality sites even the one below…LOL

http://www.JustPissedOff.com

OK I am going on vacation and will be back around Christmas. In the meantime I would like to conduct a little Web 2.0 survey to find out which Web 2.0 sites are your favorite.

I will post the results on December 26th along with the small token of appreciation for taking the survey. You will find this gift as the last question of the survey.

So to take the survey click here—> Web 2.0 Survey