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Why I Follow… Gary Vaynerchuk

August 2, 2011 By Sam Beamond 1 Comment

I was introduced to Gary Vaynerchuck by a work colleague over a year ago and was instantly drawn in by his passion for social media and marketing online. Soon after I read his book “Crush it” in a few hours (and i’m not usually a book reader). As an online guy myself, I certainly had a “head start” on building my online brand. Gary’s enthusiasm easily rubs off on you and helps you get into gear and to establish yourself in your field.

Gary’s focus is wine, being founder of Wine Library TV and the Daily Grape, much of his efforts are focused on that. Gary doesn’t fail to keep up with the times though and report to his audience through video at garyvaynerchuck.com, which is where I find it interesting to learn his take on new technologies and platforms as they become available and progress online.

Much of what I have learned in social media and online brand building has stemmed from my initial following of Gary’s brands.

If you haven’t heard of Gary or looked more about what/who he is, I suggest checking him out today.

Following on Twitter @garyvee

Or his blog at garyvaynerchuck.com

Follow these links if you’re interested in reading “Crush It!“, or his latest book the “The Thank You Economy.

Thanks Gary!

What have you learned from Gary Vaynerchuck?

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What Can You Learn About Blogging From Mashable?

July 26, 2011 By Sam Beamond 2 Comments

I’ve been reading mashable.com for about 18 months now. In that time the blog has continually made minor updates and tweaks to improve performance, reader engagement and help SEO. Since Mashable is such a huge blog and has a large following, what better site to attempt to emulate in its build and functionality? Obviously this internet marketing blog is a much smaller scale, but there have been improvements made to Mashable that can be implemented on a much smaller scale. Below are a four features of Mashable, that I have incorporated into internetmarketingsource.net.

1. Article Linking

You’ll probably notice as you ready through posts on Mashable that the content links to other posts or categories with specific keywords. This is good practice for a few reasons, a. It helps readers navigate your site and learn about more topics relevant to the article they are reading, b. this in turn is good for SEO because it helps search engines find all pages on the site, and c. if these links are set as anchor links with relevant text used as the hyperlink, it further strengthens the SEO for the site since relative words are the actual link and terms like “click here” are not hyperlinked (which tells search engines nothing about the content that is linked to).

2. Share Button Usage

One piece I notice about Mashable is that they are constantly tweaking their share button organization and arrangement. They add the latest buttons that become available such and most recently, Google Plus. This provides readers with ample options for sharing content and thus encourages shares, regardless of which share platform the reader is familiar with.

3. Minimize Outbound Links

I’ve noticed that Mashable keeps outbound links to a minimum. Oftentimes, the site reviews an online service or website that requires linking to. They will usually only provide one link to this source within their content. This helps retain visitors on their actual site. With Mashable providing a lot of content and resources within its own platform, it is easy for them to link to their own content instead. It is important however, to make sure that you link up relative offsite resources too, you’ll be doing those external sites a favor and build rapport with these sites as well as your own readers. Sometimes I find that Mashable does not externally link enough. I have found it difficult to find the link to the new website or online product before.

4. Disqus Commenting

When I first installed my WordPress blog, I utilized the commenting system built in with the platform. While this works reasonably well, I found that it was susceptible to spam, which grew and grew and grew. I did install the captcha plugin, but that too began to be abused. In the past I had been reluctant to install something requiring registration to comment, through fear of losing engagement, but now the spam had made this a necessity. Mashable uses the Disqus platform and so do many other sites in my field. That said, I chose to use the same figuring that many of my audience will already have a Disqus account and would minimize the loss of engagement. Disqus also appeared to be a clean and robust platform. I was happy to find that by migrating to the Disqus commenting system, the plugin allowed for the transfer of all previous comments and reactions over to the new system #awesome.

There are many elements to a website these days, we’ve come along way from animated gifts and static html. I think we can all learn something from the successful websites out there, like mashable.com.

Which blogs or websites have you learned something from?

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How to Use HootSuite for iPhone

July 20, 2011 By Tony Stocco Leave a Comment

Here follows a guest post from chief blogger at Appleslut.com, Tony Stocco. I’ve come to believe that everything Apple runs through his veins, if you don’t believe me read his Apple Blog for a while. I’ve written about HootSuite before, but here Tony evaluates the technology on the mobile version. Without further ado, here’s his review of the HootSuite App for iPhone. Thanks Tony!

HootSuite is the best Twitter app for iPhone. Period. Even if HootSuite was just a Twitter app, it would still be the most used app on my iPhone. However, HootSuite for iPhone isn’t only a Twitter app – it’s a social media mobile command center.

Whether you’re a big brand with a major social media following or a teeny, tiny Apple Blog, HootSuite can easily manage your entire social media presence anywhere and anytime.

Twitter

HootSuite for iPhone shines as a Twitter app. It’s incredibly easy to use and even more important, the interface is clean and organized which makes it easy to quickly read your streams.

If you follow hundreds or thousands of people, you’re probably not going to read your main stream. No problem – HootSuite lets you choose between your main feed or just follow a couple of your most important Twitter lists.

Obviously, you can post updates to your own Twitter account. In addition to the most basic task, HootSuite for iPhone is full of additional tasks and info: Follow/unfollow people, see anyone’s timeline, lists and mentions, add tweets to your favorites and add people to any of your Twitter lists.

For marketers, you’ll be hooked on the ability to schedule future tweets (time and date), automatically shorten URLs with one tap and track how many clicks your short links have received.

FaceBook

What are your friends and family up to? Open your FaceBook news feed in HootSuite to find out. See your friend’s updates and ‘like’ them, write comments, and post your own status updates – from inside HootSuite.

The FaceBook control isn’t as feature rich as the official FaceBook app for iPhone, but marketers can definitely get a snapshot of activity and reply to customer questions.

You’re not limited to personal FaceBook profiles either. With HootSuite you can manage any FaceBook Business or Fan page as well.

FourSquare

FourSquare is integrated into the HootSuite app. View all of your friend’s latest checkins and you can search and checkin to nearby places.

The best part is; your HootSuite checkins still count towards your stats, badges, mayorships.

Can’t find the restaurant your friend checked into? Tap on her update to show a live Google Map with a pin drop in the place location. Tap the restaurant name to get the address, phone number and tips directly from the FourSquare website.

All of this happens within the HootSuite app, so you’re not constantly flipping between the Google Maps app, HootSuite, FourSquare.com in Safari, etc.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is now the second largest social network in the U.S. With an iPhone and the HootSuite app, you can monitor updates from your connections. Post your own messages, schedule update, shorten and track clicks on all of your links.

HootSuite for iPhone is Free!

EVERYTHING mentioned in this post is included with the basic, free HootSuite account. This includes up to 5 Social Media Profiles.

If you manage more than 5 separate social media accounts, you can upgrade to the Pro version for $5.99/month. The Pro version has Google Analytics and Facebook Insights integration and team members for delegating interaction.

Large companies with a team of social media people can check out the Enterprise Edition: Unlimited accounts, free reports, enhanced analytics, vanity URLs and more.

Get HootSuite for iPhone

HootSuite for iPhone is available for download in the iTunes App Store.

What’s been your experience with HootSuite? What would you add to this list of cool features?

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My 2 Cents on Google Plus

July 18, 2011 By Sam Beamond 8 Comments

You don’t have to spend much time online to know that the Google Plus phenomena is spreading across the inter webs like wildfire. I’ve heard mixed feedback from different audiences and I’m here to give you my 2 cents.

I like Google Plus slick interface and “fresh slate” approach to the platform. Several I know (and don’t know) have ditched FaceBook and gone Google Plus all the way already, with the concept of excluding the noise of their FaceBook “friends” who they don’t really know, to start over. This does seem like a logical move for that purpose, but it doesn’t speak to any of the features of Google Plus since the main reason for platform migration is to “ditch the noise” not because it has cool features.

That said, I think the circles concept is great. Right off the bat Google has taken the FaceBook groups feature and made it better. Personally, I have Circles for business, friends, family, twitter users and my place of work. I like that users can be added to multiple circles.

Another feature that i’ve tested briefly is “hangouts”. Although my test was only one on one, I can see great potential for group discussions both business and personal, and the opportunity for virtual employees ever more a reality. I’m anxious to get my family overseas on board and make the world smaller. It will be interesting to see how Skype responds with their new FaceBook collaboration and paid multi-video conference services.

I’m still getting used to a few things on Google Plus, I certainly haven’t explored it as much as I’d like, but I think it certainly warrants potential. I’d says Google’s best attempt at social media yet. I’m anxious to see how the platform progresses with the hope of some kind of “FaceBook page style” additions that can be used for businesses. The new social network has got off to a great start with 10 million subscribers in the first two weeks of going live (and that’s with restricted “invite-only” access).

Now i’ve given you my 2 cents, whats yours?

Connect with me on Google Plus here.

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How to Get Unfollowed on Twitter

July 15, 2011 By Sam Beamond 1 Comment

Everyone has their own process for using Twitter, they all have a plan or purpose and thus their own “Twitter etiquette”. I recently read a post (can’t find it again for the life of me), where the blogger wrote about their process. I thought it would make sense to write about mine.

My practice for using Twitter is pretty simple and I am in no way implying that my way is the right way, just purely my opinion and sharing a piece of my own work flow.

I began using Twitter about 7 months ago at a suggestion from a colleague @mattroyten who said I could use it to keep up with the tech world. I already followed several blogs and didn’t see the need. The problem is that blogs are more one-way in nature, yes you can comment, but you can’t realistically have a conversation with someone in the comments section. I decided to give Twitter a whirl.

My initial intent was to number one, follow some known experts in my space and two offer my own tips and advice in the internet marketing world. I planned for a tip per day. After a few months, I found this to be more work than I had the time for and saw it best to focus that energy on writing my own blog content. I could then reference that via Twitter.

I soon learned there is a lot of spam on Twitter. I was reluctant to follow people back at first, but saw my own follow count becoming stagnant at around 50ish followers. Generally this was made up from connections I had on LinkedIn and other connected  channels.

My strategy changed to follow back anyone that wasn’t obviously a spammer and were at least somewhat interesting to my field. Here’s a 3 step mental checklist I use. If I answer YES to these, I follow back, if NO, I do not follow:

  1. Have they tweeted a reasonable amount?
  2. Do they have a bio?
  3. Are they (even) loosely in my field?

If anyone that I follow proves to be either a spammer or I later learn that I have no interest in what they have to say, I choose to unfollow them. This practice provides me with a steady follower increase.

Look for a post soon on “Stuff I Tweet”.

What’s your Twitter etiquette?

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