Small Business Marketing Blog by Gudka Networks: Social Media

Showing posts with label Social Media. Show all posts

How to Get New Facebook Fans?

Facebook is a great way to connect with your customers, build relationships, promote sales, etc. But, if you don't have any fans, its difficult to do any of those things.

Just because you built it, does not mean they will come.

Facebook is not Google. People don't go on Facebook and say, "Hmm, let's see what business can I 'like' today?" That's just not how it works. You need to build awareness among your current and future customers. You need to tell them, "Hey, we have a Facebook page. Won't you come Like it?"

So, How do you Invite people to like your Facebook Page?

There are multiple ways to accomplish this task.

Invite your existing 'sphere of influence' - your friends and family.
Add a 'Like' box on your website.
Add a 'Like' box on your About Us page.
Add a 'Like' box on your 'Thank you' page.
Ask people to Like your Facebook page with videos
Ask your Twitter followers to Like your Facebook page.
Use Facebook Ads to Invite 'Targeted' audience to Like your Facebook page.

Invite your existing 'Sphere of Influence' - your friends and family

Your friends and family know you, like you and trust you. When you first start a Facebook page, send all of them an invitation through Facebook to Like your page. Some of them are bound to "LIKE" your page. This helps strangers like your page in future. How? It provides social-proof. We humans trust people more than we trust corporations. So, when a stranger stumbles upon your page, he will see you already have likes. His/Her mind thinks, "If these people like it, maybe I will too."

Add a 'Like' box on your website.

A 'Like' box allows visitors on your website to LIKE your Facebook page without leaving your website. This is fantastic. For years, people spent thousands of dollars on SEO. When Social Networking first became hot, companies started putting Facebook icon on their homepages and linked that icon to their Facebook page. In other words, Your customers found you through Google (read YOUR SEO efforts) and then you immediately sent them to Facebook (for FREE). No wonder Facebook grew so rapidly. Companies around the world financed it's SEO.

A 'Like' box lets you have all the advantages of Facebook and still keep your customers on your website. If your site is hosted on WordPress, it has plugins you can install and get this up and running in no time. If your site is NOT hosted on WordPress, you can go to https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like-box/

Oh, almost forgot ... When you add a Like box on your Facebook page, choose the option to display profile pictures of other people who have already liked your page. It provides social proof to new visitors.

Add a 'Like' box on your About Us page.

This one is a no-brainer. Think about it. If people are looking at your About Us page, they are obviously interested in your business and want to find out more about who you are. These are "Hot Leads". Why not take advantage of this and ask them to like your Facebook page as well?

Add a 'Like' box on your Thank You page.

If your audience on About Us page were "hot", the people on your Thank you page are "burning". Wait, what's a Thank You page? Do you have a mechanism to capture your visitor's email address through a form or a free offer? In almost all cases, when a user fills out a form on a website, they get redirected to a Thank You page.

Audience on your Thank you page have WILLINGLY given you their information. They already like you. Now, get them to like your Facebook page as well.

Ask People to Like your Facebook Page with Videos.

There are many individuals and companies who create videos to build and expand their business. Do you have a call to action at the end of your videos? I'd say, "Wonderful" if you answered the last question in affirmative. If not, this is another opportunity to ask your audience to Like your Facebook page. Let them know that doing so will allow them to keep up with the latest updates of your business or get exclusive discounts on your products and services.

Ask your Twitter followers to Like your Facebook page.

Again, these people are "burning" leads. If people are already following you on Twitter, why not ask them to follow you on Facebook as well? Many will oblige. Leverage different platforms to build communities on them.

Use Facebook Ads to Invite Targeted Audience to Like your Facebook page.

Until now, all the above strategies can be applied for FREE. This one costs money but could be more effective than any of the above if done correctly.

Facebook now allows you to target audience groups of your choice. For example, if you are a motorcycle repair shop, you can create a Ad of Facebook and target all people who "Like" Harley Davidson page AND live in your zip code. When people click on your Ad, it will bring them to your Facebook page and they can LIKE your page.

I hope these strategies help and you get a lot of Facebook Fans! You can Like my Facebook page at http://FB.com/MarketingBlog

Enjoy,
Mayur

Helping is the New Selling!

Jay Baer (Twitter: @JayBaer ) often says that the difference between helping and selling is just two letters. He's right, HP and SL. In today's world, these two letters make monumental difference when it comes to your sales figures and customer retention. When you are selling, you are pretty much yelling in your consumers' ears. It just doesn't work anymore. We have gotten really good at blocking all the unwanted noise (regardless of what form it is in ... banner ads, videos, posters, etc.). Helping is where the future lies.

Did you know that B2B consumers make up 70% of their mind whether to purchase a product or not before they call a salesperson? People don't need selling and convincing from a salesperson today. The Web and Social Media does that for them. They only need the salesperson to help them purchase the product and make the transaction as easy and painless as possible.

So, how do you find people to help?

Twitter is one of the best ways to find people to help. Twitter Search (www.Twitter.com/Search) is a fantastic for that. If you are a CPA, search for terms like "looking for an accountant", "need to do taxes", "tax software", etc. Put yourself in your clients shoes and think what would they tweet? Then use those phrases to begin your search with.

Gary Vaynerchuk (Twitter: @GaryVee) recently wrote an article titled, "13 Tweets a Real Estate Agent Should Have Answered, Not Me". In there, he shows you how to break through the noise and find people to help.

Hilton is another great example. Through their Twitter account (@HiltonHHonors), Hilton helps people with all kinds of things. If someone is looking for a job in a new city, they refer job sites to them. If someone is looking for a place to eat, they give out recommendations.

How does helping people help ME sell and make money?

Believe it or not, but psychology states that if you help people or make their life easier in someway, they look for ways to repay your kindness. Hilton's philosophy is that, everyone rents hotel rooms every now and then. If Hilton continues helping people, then one day when people are looking for a hotel to stay a night or two, Hilton will be the first thing that comes to their mind. In other words, Hilton is occupying a share of its customers' mind-space by helping them.

Jay Baer calls this YOUTILITY. In fact, he has written a whole NY-Times Bestseller about this - "YOUTILITY - Why Smart Marketing is about Help, not hype ". The idea is rather than customers hunting for "utilities" to solve their questions and problems, YOU become that "Youtility" for them. It's marketing turned upside-down. Rather than inviting customers to your business, take your business to your customers.

Youtility gives the brand that extra edge that allows it to ultimately sell more by "selling" less. - Jay Baer

Big brands have the ability to spend millions of dollars to get big results. It's a tad-bit difficult for Small business owners like you and me to shell out millions for a 30-second Superbowl Ad. So, we turn to the next big thing, social media. But, some business owners are having a difficult time figuring out how to generate new business with social media as well. Hopefully, not anymore. Find people to help and help them with their needs.

With all my heart, I believe it's the secret to winning in social media.

Now, a question for you

What do you think? Is helping really the new selling? Or is it just a hype that will die down until something new comes around? Post your answers in the comments below.

How to Fail and Succeed with Social Media?

There are two components that dictate our failure or success with pretty much anything in life - our thought process and our actions provided we have the ability to execute. Success happens when our thought process and actions align with our goals. Needless to say, failure happens when our thought process and actions do not align with our goals.

Success happens when our thought process and actions align with our goals.

In this blog post, we will explore what kind of thought process and actions result into failure or success when it comes to social media.

How to Fail in Social Media?

Thought process that leads to social media failure

Social media is something we do only because our boss asked us to.
Social media is something we do only because our customers asked us to.
I have so much to do already, how am I going to find time to create new content?
It's always better to get on new social networks, especially the ones gaining popularity.

Actions that lead to social media failure

Abandoning social media accounts
Not engaging in conversations
Creating new content once-in-a-blue-moon
Creating useless content
Every status update is a sales pitch
Not measuring metrics

Now that we know how to fail in social media, let's find out what we can do to succeed.

How to Succeed in Social Media?

Thought process that leads to social media success

I should leverage social media to get more out of my existing sales, marketing, customer service and business development strategies.
If I delegate some of my tasks, I will have time to create content.
Look at all the content I have from my brochures, seminars, articles and website. I can recycle it in different formats and feed it to my social networks.
I need to identify which social media network will let me share my story in a great way. This way, I can spend the majority of my "social media" time on it, growing my following.
Everyone is talking about this new social media network. I wonder how effectively can I tell my story on it? How can I test it's suitability to my goals quickly and inexpensively?
How can I measure my ROI effectively to figure out what works and what does not work?

Actions that lead to social media success

Regularly updating social media accounts with relevant, helpful content created by you and others.
Engaging into conversations.
Reaching out to other so you can create conversations with them.
Sending marketing messages only once in a while.
Tracking and measuring all social media efforts to learn where to improve.
Building a large following on a single social network and then leveraging it to build other networks.
Integrating social media on website / blog. (Read my post on 5 Levels of Social Media Integration for ideas)

Most importantly, you need to like social media to succeed at it. If you don't like it, you won't believe it in and it will become a chore that will be abandoned quickly.

Actions are always driven by thought process. If you find yourself thinking like the points listed in the "failure" section, I hope you get determined to change your thought-process. If you find yourself thinking like the points listed in the "success" section, Congratulations! I hope many great things come your way.

And lastly, what would you add to or remove from the lists above?

Have a great day,
Mayur

How to Legally use your Competitor’s Marketing Budget to meet your Online Goals

In this post, we will cover the following items:

Funniest joke you will hear today
How to observe your competitors?
How to analyze your findings?
Using best identified practices to grow your business

Funniest joke you will hear today

A young man is riding the subway in NYC. About two stops later, a young woman boards the subway and sits next to him. He looks at her, smiles and says, "You look a lot like my wife." The young woman gives him a stern look and then slaps him across the face real hard.

The young man holding his red cheek says, "Habits match too."

Hope you enjoyed that! Now to the meat and potatoes of this post. Shall we?

When I say using your competitor’s marketing budget, I don’t mean sending them invoices for the money you spend on your marketing. Far from it, actually! What I’m saying is observe their marketing efforts closely. Then use that learning to improve your marketing and generate better results for you. This is especially helpful if you have tried a bunch of things on your own without any successful results.

How to observe your competitors?

Identify your top 1-3 competitors and subscribe to their social media channels. Look at everything they post and take copious notes. Some things you want to look at are:

Blog Posts:

Blog titles. Are you compelled to open them when you first read it?
Length of their blog posts.
How good is their content? Do you want to read the entire post or close the browser half-way through?
What kind of content do they post? Text? Podcasts? Presentations? Infographics? Videos?
How do they begin and end their post?
How many comments do their posts get on average?
Do they post the links to their blog post on other social media channels?
If you want to really drill down, you can look at the relativity of the picture posted along with the post, font type face & font size (is it easy to read or a strain to your eye?), what keywords could be used find this post, how often do they use those keywords in the body of the post, etc.

Facebook:

Is their Facebook page branded? Do they have a profile picture and cover photo that match their website?
How is their description written?
How often do they post on Facebook?
What kind of content do they mostly post? Text, pictures, infographics or videos?
What is their content posed as? Questions, statements or links?
If links, are they from their site or other sites around the web?
Which posts get the most engagement (likes, comments & shares)?
Not all their posts will get good engagement. Look at why some of their posts get lot of engagement and some don’t?
Are they using Facebook applications? Which ones?
Are they encouraging people to follow them on Twitter and other social media channels?
How many people like their Facebook page?

Twitter:

Is their channel branded? Do they have a profile picture, header background and a custom page background?
What do they tweet about?
How often do they tweet?
Do they engage in a lot of conversations or a few?
What are some of the things they write in Twitter conversations?
Do they host Twitter chats?
How many followers do they have?

YouTube:

Is their channel branded?
What kind of videos do they post? Marketing messages type? Educational?
Are the videos interesting to watch?
What is the average length of the videos?
Have any of their videos received lot of views? Why do you think that is?
How many people have subscribed to their channel?

This is just the beginning. But, I’m sure you get the picture. Once you collect all your data, it’s time to analyze it.

How to analyze your findings?

Identify what is currently working for them.
Can you replicate these things in your business?
Can you improve upon these things?
If you were to do something differently, what would it be?
Identify what is not working for them?
Are they not working for any specific reason? Can you improve upon them and make them work for you?

Using best identified practices to grow your business

Done with your analysis? Let’s get into action and put everything you learnt into practice. You will definitely see a difference in your results much faster than you would have otherwise.
I understand this exercise requires a lot of work. But, it is also going to save you tremendous amount of time and money in the long run. Think about it. Companies like GE, Coke, Ford, etc. are spending millions of dollars, thousands of man-power hours and many other great resources to come up with a social media strategy that works for them. All you have to do is subscribe to their channels, find out what is working for them and implement it to grow your business. It’s a simple and effective way to legally use your competitors marketing budget to meet your online goals.

Social media has leveled the playing field where the small guy has just as much advantage as the big guy. Winning in marketing is not about budgets anymore. Companies with most user engagement will win regardless of budget size.

I know I missed writing on some other large platforms notably LinkedIn and Pinterest. But, that’s where you come in. IF YOU ARE ON LinkedIn and/or Pinterest, write how you are using those sites in the comment section of this post (see below). This way, we all can learn from each other.

Cheers,

Mayur

Mayur Gudka's 10 Ways to Effectively Use Twitter for Business

In this blog post, we will talk about the following things:

The 80/20 Rule
10 ways to effectively use Twitter for business

The 80/20 Rule

If you are familiar with this rule, feel free to skip to the next section.

The 80/20 rule is also known as the Pareto Principle. In mid-late 1800's an Italian economist named Vilfredo Pareto noticed that 80% of the wealth in the country was controlled by 20% of the population. At first he found it strange, so he researched to find it the concept held true for all other countries as well. His findings were consistent throughout Europe. In his research, he also found that the 80/20 rule held true for other things in life (besides wealth). 80% of work is performed by 20% of people in a company. 80% of results are generated by 20% of activities. 80% of movie awards are won by 20% of people. You get the point.

My intent in this blog is to identify the 20% of Twitter activities that will generate 80% of results for your business.

10 Ways to Effectively Use Twitter for Business

In order to understand the effective Twitter activities I believe it is important to know and understand the ineffective activities that generate the minimal results. The following are activities that are eating up 80% of your time and producing 20% of intended results.

Quest for a "perfect" Twitter profile.
You follow other people daily with the hopes of them following you back. If they don't reciprocate to your "follow", you un-follow them.
You post motivational quotes quite often
You have a link to your Twitter account tucked away in some corner of your website.
You tweets only include content from your website or content of interest to you.
You post like a corporation instead of a human. In other words, your tweets have a personality of a rock.

Now that we have established the list of activities you should not be spending your time on, let's see what activities you should be focusing on. The following list of activities (in no specific order) will help you generate far better results on Twitter:

Converse. Build relationships by posting meaningful comments on other people's tweets. If you don't think you can keep up with all your followers, create Twitter Lists and add it to the ones you really want to build great relationships with.
When people mention you or ask you a question on Twitter, reply back. It's not only good etiquette but it will create some fans for you. Most people with sizable following don't reply to others comments or questions. When you do, they will actually go, "Wow! S/He replied back. That's awesome!"
Share great content that is of interest to your audience and not necessarily just you. For example, if you own a framing company, share content from around the web that will help people build lasting memories. Your followers will appreciate that.
Let people know they can ask you any question about [your field of expertise].
Stop auto following or auto un-following on Twitter. That's SPAM.
Replace your profile picture from Twitter Egghead to a decent headshot of yourself.
Add a sharing mechanism on all your blog posts and newsletters.
Build custom pre-populated tweet buttons and spread them across your website. For example, if you have a special event or a news blurb you mention on a website, put a button next to it called "Tweet This". When people click on it, it should allow them to send a tweet about your event or news.
Implement Social Logins for protected content. Basically, people can use their Twitter login to access the password-protected section of your site.
Offer a Gift. When people follow you on Twitter, offer them some kind of a gift or a discount on your products and services.

Once completed, many of these activities don't have to be done again, and you will reap long term benefits from them. This allows you to spend more time in building great relationships. Implementing the above suggestions grow your Twitter following organically. Your tweets will be read, favorite and re-tweeted.

I hope the material in this post helps you get more out of Twitter and grow your following. If you loved this blog post, write a comment below and make sure to follow me on Twitter @mayurgudka. Who knows? You just might love my tweets. (Say that last line 3 times really fast).

Cheers,
Mayur

Why Businesses need to think like Media Companies?

Let me tell you why I'm writing this blog post. I was reading a Forbes article on Social Media and it said that 60% of small business owners say they haven't seen ANY return on investment from their engagement online. I wasn't sure I read it right, so I re-read it. The words apparently did not change. If everybody including yours truly is touting social media as a golden tool for finding new customers, reaching out to existing customers, building customer relationships and solving customer service problems then why are 60% of small business owners saying, "It's not working!" Something was not right. There had to be a major problem.

About eight years ago, I started a Network Marketing business for approximately $250. I failed miserably at that business. Why? I heard a speaker say this at a seminar I had attended a long time ago ... Most people fail at network marketing because it is very easy to start this business. It doesn't take much investment of time or money. Sadly, people operate it like a $250 business as well. Think about it. If you had invested $200,000 in opening a retail store, would you have worked your tail off to make sure you get your investment back and then some more? Of course you would! Then why would you not work a network marketing business with equal passion and enthusiasm? Because, it only took $250 to start the business. That's chump change for most people. The real problem here is not the start-up cost. It's the mindset. Both businesses have the potential to become million dollar businesses. But the secret lies in how you think about them. One took an investment of $200,000. For most people that's automatically a million dollar business. The other isn't. You know the reason why.

My apologies for beating this up so much, but I had to get the point across. The price of the tool is irrelevant. What matters is the future value that tool will provide for your business, and that depends on how effectively you use that tool.

As early as 10-15 years ago, if you wanted to get the word out about your new business or a new product or service, you would either go hire a media outlet to spread the word or you would write a press release and try to butter-up a journalist to get it printed in the newspaper. Good news is ... that was how things were done more than a decade ago (some companies still do that ... Ssshh!).

Today, with social media and search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing, businesses can pretty much reach a vast majority of their target audience without any significant investment or connections with media publicists. Businesses are well-aware of that. Despite that, 60% of business owners claim social media is worthless to them. Could it be that they are thinking about this in the wrong manner? It's possible. Just because social media sites allow accounts to be created for free, could businesses be discounting their real value? Again, it's quite possible. In my humble opinion, success rate will change when the mindset towards these tools will change.

Five years ago, social media was considered a novelty. People were not sure whether this would work or not. That's not the case today. It's proven that these tools work if you work the tools. If they have worked for other companies, why can't they work for you? Why can't you replicate their success? It just takes a different level of mindset and enthusiasm to make it work. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, your company blog, etc. have gone much farther ahead than just places where you post your daily happenings. These are massive global communities. They are broadcasting mediums and you need to use it in that manner. Build your own community within them. Engage with your community by educating them, entertaining them and empowering them with quality content. If you need social media tips, just Google it. There are more tips available than necessary.

Before you paid money to other media outlets to do advertising and marketing for you. Social media has now given you the power to do the same. Instead of money, it's asking for sweat equity. Will you give it? Your company is a media powerhouse. You simply need to realize it.

Until next time ...

- Mayur

Improving your Social Presence through Twitter Chats

Today's post is written by our Guest blogger Kushaan Shah. Naturally, you're asking who's Kushaan and why should I read this? In his own words ...

Kushaan Shah is a 20-year-old business student at the University of Maryland and an aspiring analyst, consultant and entrepreneur. He is a systems thinker, problem solver, and thrives off learning from new people every day. His interests lie primarily at the intersection of business, social impact, and education and he enjoys exploring these topics through virtual conversations and stories. In his free time, he enjoys playing and watching sports, taste testing new ethnic food, and freelance writing.

Written by Kushaan Shah

You have done the grunt work of establishing the vision of your business, now you have to spread the word and get people to know exactly who you are. Twitter, as of today, has more than 500 million users. It has become an ideal place for business marketing and in a few years will even become a standard for the brand of a business. For social media managers, this is intimidating and often overwhelming. How do you get to meet more like-minded people who will be interested in you on something as large as Twitter?

With the advent of the hash tag, you can now engage in innovative mode of conversation called a "Twitter Chat". Twitter Chats are scheduled chats where individuals gather around a particular subject and have a series of stimulating conversations. Let's say that you are a company interested in marketing education technology products. Your main market might be an enthusiastic, young teacher who is more than inclined to be an early adopter of innovative education technology. A quick Google search would lead you to find a schedule of education-related twitter chats, with education technology chats scheduled every Monday night at 8:00 pm. How do you participate in one? Simply search for "#edtechchat" at the aforementioned name and watch the conversation unfold. To contribute, simply sign all your tweets with "#edtechchat" so it can be found in the conversation.

Here are some reasons why participating in a Twitter chat would be helpful:

Find Influential Users: Networking is all about building relationships and finding people who can help you grow professionally. With a Twitter chat around educational technology, you will find the most influential names in the field as they dish out some advice and respond to critical questions pertaining to the topic. Twitter chats are a good way to find people to follow that won't disappoint!

Spread the Word About Yourself: If you participate constantly in a Twitter chat, others may find your ideas interesting and you will be treated with more followers. Now, when you tweet outside of a Twitter chat, your followers will see this as well. When people "retweet" your work, Twitter can be a domino effect of accessing untapped networks.

Learn: Like any experience in life, Twitter chats can be golden learning opportunities. How do people feel about X? Why do people believe in X? Twitter chats are often littered with personal stories, quotes and experiences that contribute to a better understanding of a subject. If you want to become abreast in any field, Twitter chats are a great way to engage in conversations that will be meaningful.

Essentially, Twitter chats are like extracurricular activities. They are not required for participation. If you are new or relatively unknown on Twitter however, they can be a successful initiative for you to connect, market and learn with others. Want to try it out? Check out the "Leadership Chat" this upcoming Tuesday at 8:00 pm (#LeadershipChat) or search on Google on your own!

To learn more about Kushaan Shah, visit his blog at http://www.kushaanshah.me.
You can also connect with him on Twitter @KushaanShah or simply send a note at kushaanshah@gmail.com.

Enjoyed this article but still have questions about Twitter Chats? Pick Kushaan's brain by posting your questions and comments below.

Breaking Content Myth: I have to be a writer

In this blog post, I will talk about the following:

You don't have to be a writer to produce content
Content options available to you
Use multiple content types as part of your online marketing strategy

You don't have to be a writer to produce content

For many years, small businesses were satisfied having a static website. A good designed site was bringing in steady flow of new customers. They would update their website every once in a while and keep the pages updated with fresh content. Then blogs and social networking sites came around. All of a sudden a panic ensued - What if I get left behind? I need to get started with this blogs and social media stuff.

Before you know it, blogs started popping everywhere. Idea was people will read our blog, find out how great the business is and come running through the door to buy our product or service. Sadly, that did not happen for many businesses. If I was to guess the reason, here's why:

Most blogs were abandoned shortly after they were started.

Do you know what's worse than not having a blog? An abandoned blog. Most blogs are abandoned because the owner either runs out of new content ideas, has no time to dedicate to the blog regularly or doesn't really like writing.

There's good news though! Words alone do not define content. The definition of content is much broader. It includes words, pictures, presentations, audio and video.

Content Options Available to You

There used to be time when search engines could not read through images, PDF's, presentations or videos. Thus, the power of the written word prevailed all other content types. Thankfully, that's not the case anymore. Today, you can create pretty much any type of content and search engines can read through it.

Here are some content types you might want to think incorporating in your marketing strategy:

Blog Posts
Twitter Updates
Facebook Posts
Audio Blog aka Podcasts
YouTube Videos
Pictures
SlideShare Presentations
E-books
White papers
Regular updates on any other social media site you might be using

Use multiple content types as part of your online marketing strategy

What is better for traffic to flow freely? One-lane highway or a four-lane highway? Four-lane highway, of course. It's common sense. If a car breaks on the one-lane highway, traffic is jammed for miles. On a four-lane highway, traffic will continue to flow.

It's the same thing with your business. You control how many content streams (read lanes on highway) flow directly to your website.

Hint: More content streams result in more traffic to your website.

Lastly, what content types are you using to bring traffic for your website? Your answer as a comment below will be highly appreciated.

- Mayur

Blogging for Business? This 1 idea can make your blog twice as valuable

If your blog does not have a mechanism to capture your visitor's contact details, you are leaving a ginormous list of your potential customers on the table.

Read that sentence again and let it sink in before you continue reading further.

What's the BIG idea?

Add a mechanism to "capture your visitor's contact details" on your blog.

***** Contact form on the blog does NOT count. *****
***** Comment section at the bottom of each post does NOT count either. *****

This needs to be a separate form placed strategically on your blog. It can be a single field form asking for an email address. But, it NEEDS to be on your blog to double the value of your blog.

Why should I ask for email address only?

If you ask for too much information, most people will never give it to you. Asking for an email address is very non-threatening. Anybody will give it to you. IMHO (In My Humble Opinion), an email address field alone should suffice the needs of most businesses.

But, this is purely your decision. Each business is different. If you feel your business needs more than a email address, feel free to add more fields to your form.

Where should I place this form?

It should be placed somewhere at the top of your blog. Either under the header section or on the side bar of the blog.

In addition to that, you should also add this form on your "About Us" page. Why?

A new visitor will almost always visit your "About Us" page.
Based on what they read there, they will decide whether to spend more time on your site or not.

How can I make sure most of my visitors leave me their contact details?

Create a offer they cannot refuse. Provide your visitors something of much larger value in return for their contact information.

I hope this posts help you think differently about your blog. A much more than a knowledge database. It can be your best marketing tool if you use it in a effective manner.

Thank You,
Mayur

What should your company blog about?

A company blog is an incredible marketing tool. A side benefit of having a blog is that it helps with SEO.

Did you know that 60% of all businesses in United States have a blog?
Did you also know that 65% of those blogs are abandoned shortly after they are started?
Only 35% of all business blogs are active.

(The above numbers come from "State of the Blogging World - 2012" info graphic on blogging.org)

That's good news and bad news. Why? When a competitor abandons their blog and you keep your blog current and active, you win. But, if you abandon your blog (and let me tell you, it's not that hard to abandon it if you have a wrong attitude about it), you lose. You are sending a "I don't really care." message to your online visitors.

Primarily, there are two reasons blogs get abandoned.

The blogger has a wrong attitude towards blogging. Instead of wanting to blog, the blogger thinks he/she HAS to blog.
The blogger does not know what to write about.

Attitude adjustment is easy. The mental switch needs to be flipped. Once the blogger truly understands the importance and benefits of a blog to their business, they will WANT to blog.

It's the second reason that stops most bloggers. I might be wrong in my analysis but I think it's because they either truly don't understand what their business is about or they have temporarily forgotten. Let me give you an example.

A photography studio might blog about "how to take different shots", "what kind of lightning and background to use", etc. They might get a few visitors, but most people are not interested in that kind of stuff (unless they have a deep interest in photography). People use a photography studio because they simply want a nice portrait of themselves and not a class on photography. It's almost like a restaurant explaining you how your meal was prepared with a step-by-step process before actually serving you the meal. It's not what we want. We go to a restaurant to enjoy the evening, not to get a cooking lesson.

Now imagine the same photography studio blogs about "creating and preserving memories". How many people want to create and preserve memories? All of us. In fact, that is the reason why most people use a photography studio. The blog can give their readers ideas of places to visit, how to prepare for a vacation, how to throw a successful graduation party, etc. So, even though the blog does not talk about nuances of what makes a great photograph, they are communicating directly to their audiences heart. I think this is a much more effective business strategy and also a lot more fun to blog about. What do you think?

Does your company have a blog? How to you keep it active and fresh? Share your answers in the comments below.

- Mayur

Twitter secret you didn't know!

Using twitter to resolve customer service issues is becoming very common these days. Customers tweet you @yourusername and ask you a question. So, how do you reply them?

If you were like me, you would simply reply them @theirusername with the answer.

That's good, but your reply will now only be seen by that particular customer. It won't automatically be posted on the walls of ALL your twitter followers. This is okay if that question is very specific to that particular follower and no one else will ever ask you that same question again.

But, what if the customer inquiry is about the price of a particular product, or about fixing a common software issue or date and time of a fundraising event you are hosting? Do you really want to reply to same inquiry from 100 different followers over and over again? I sure hope not. So, how can you reply to a question so that all your followers see your answer?

Use a [.]Period in front of @theirusername. You reply should look something like the following.

.@theirusername followed by your answer to their question.

When you use a period in front of a follower's twitter handle, the message is automatically broad casted on the walls of all your twitter followers. This will reduce the number of inquires you receive about the same question. And who knows, if the question pops up again the future, one of your other followers will answer it without you intervening at all.

Do you have any secret twitter tips that you are using? Feel free to post them in the comment section.

By the way, I know it's been a while since my last blog post. I will continue to update this blog more frequently. I have been working on a very exciting project. Unfortunately, it's too early to divulge any details about it. Will let you know more about it in the coming months.

- Mayur

5 Foolish Social Media Mistakes

Are you working your social media strategy at full speed but not seeing desirable results? It is most likely that you are making some or all of these 5 foolish (read amateurish) social media mistakes.

Mistake - Not take advantage of your existing circle of influence

Fact - 95% to 100% of your employees are on social media today.
Fact - Everybody knows about 250 other people.

So? When your company writes a new blog post or posts a social media message or promotion, are your employees sharing it with their circle of influence? If you have 10 employees in your company, that's 2500 new connections that you might not be tapping into. If all your employees shared your social media messages to their connections, some of those 2500 people could become your new customers.

Solution - Ask all your employees to become a part of your social networks and then share your social media content to their networks. You could also email your current customers and prospects and ask them to follow your social media profiles.

Mistake - Writing ineffective marketing messages and calls-to-action

When you are writing a marketing message, the content of the message needs to add value to the reader. If the reader deems the content is of no value to him/her, you actually lose credibility with the reader. It might also help to divide your email lists into different demographics and then target each list with customized, relevant content.

The call to action

should be easily visible (size matters ... the call to action button/text must be much larger than the rest of the content)
be the ONLY call to action (sometimes people have two or more calls to action ... what do you really want the prospect to do?)
should offer something of far greater value than the advertised price (sometimes the price could be as simple as prospects name and email address)

Solution - Start writing better marketing copies. Hire professional copywriters if you need to.

Mistake - Ignoring traditional marketing because Social Media Marketing is the in-thing

Yes, social media marketing is the in-thing these days.
Yes, social media marketing is much cheaper than traditional marketing.
Yes, social media marketing makes it much easier to broadcast messages.

But, all your prospects (read future customers) and current customers are not on social media. So, rather than abandoning all traditional marketing in favor of social media, do a little of both. That's what the best companies in the world do.

Solution - Spend time in channels where you currently get the most traction. If you don't have a large enough subscriber base on your social media channels, spend more time doing traditional marketing. At the same time, use traditional marketing channels to promote your social media channels. Eventually, as you see more traction on your social media channels, change the amount of time you spend doing traditional marketing.

Point is ... use commonsense and do what works best for your company now, while guiding people towards your future vision.

Mistake - Thinking social media is going to be easy

Social media is still in its infancy. Think of it as Internet and E-Commerce in 1996. It's evolving daily and much faster and any other form of media before. Unless you are aware of all the current tools and apps available, you should plan on spending twice as much time as before on learning social media.

Solution - Spend a lot of time learning and analyzing various tools and their reach. The trick is in identifying the right tools for your specific business objectives. Figure out what tools you should work with (2-5) and what tools you should not work with (50 - 200).

Social media is simple, can generate great profits for you and your company, but not easy.

Mistake - Mindset that says, "All social networks are same and I can post the same content everywhere".

If you or your marketing department does not understand the difference between the various social media networks, how they work, where your audience resides, what kind of content reigns supreme in what network, etc. etc. you are headed for a major social media disaster. Your investment will be a lot of time, money and energy and your ROI will be a lot of frustration and disappointments.

To put it simply, Facebook is different than Twitter and Twitter is different than LinkedIn. Pictures and Video posts get most traction on Facebook where as Content with Links work most effectively on Twitter.

Solution - Do some heavy duty research on each social network you plan to use.

Hopefully, you are not making any of these foolish social media mistakes and are seeing your ROI reach sky-high.

- Mayur Gudka

5 Levels of Social Media Integration

Every business has a website today.
Every business has multiple social media accounts.
Every business has connected their social media accounts to their website.

But, not every business sees an equal amount of ROI on their social media efforts. There are two reasons for this.

Reason # 1 - Content. Businesses either don't create new content on a regular basis on their social accounts or the content they create lacks quality.
Reason # 2 - Integration. They are connecting their website and social media accounts in the wrong manner.

Content is easy to fix. If that is your problem, you are most likely aware of it and are working to fix it. But, integration is a problem that is not easy to detect unless you have an in-depth knowledge of social media. Listed below are five levels of social media integration.

Level 1 - No Integration
There is no connection between your website and your social media accounts. They do not link to each other at all. One does not know the other exists. Thankfully, most businesses are past this stage today.

Level 2 - Linking
You are linking your website to your social media accounts. This is where most businesses are. This is a better strategy that level 1 strategy, but a very bad strategy when it comes to your ROI.

Think about it this way. Your social media accounts are nothing but a tool to BRING visitors to your website. If you are simply linking your social media accounts to your website, you are SENDING visitors away from your site. All the SEO and PPC campaigns you have done over the years are now benefiting Mark Zuckerberg and Reif Hoffman's businesses. You do not want to be here. There's a better way. Read further.

Level 3 - Sharing
Let people share the content you already have on your website. Allow them to Like it, Tweet It, E-mail it to their friends, etc. You can place these sharing tools on each page of your website, blog post, article, podcast and video.

When you do this, you are enabling your users to share the content on your website with their "friends and family". And, when their friends and family click on the "shared link", they come right back to your website. This strategy alone can bring massive amounts of traffic to your website if the content is of high quality.

An example of this is at the bottom of this post. You can share it with your Facebook friends, Twitter followers or Google+ circles.

Level 4 - Displaying Social Feeds directly on Website
Twitter, Facebook and Google+ will allow you to display the activity on your social media accounts right on your website. In other words, your website users do not have to leave your site to know what's happenning on your social media accounts. You can bring those activity feeds on your website and let them participate.

Level 5 - Social Media Sign-On
Social media sign-on can tell your website that a 30-year old professional male from Boston, MA of Indian origin is viewing the site. You website digests that information and then displays products that might be of interest to that individual.

Ever visit a website that asks you to sign-in with your Facebook or Twitter accounts? That's social media sign-on. Unless you have thousands of products and you serve worldwide customers, this level is not for you.

So, now that you know all the levels of integration, it's time to ask some hard questions.

What level is your business at?
Are you getting the desired results at that level?
Will your business benefit by moving on to the next level?

Remember, the most successful social media strategies combine levels 2,3,4 and 5 if applicable.

Feel free to email me at mayurgudka@gmail.com if you have any questions regarding social media integration.

Good Luck,
Mayur

48 Social Media Tactics

15 years ago, every company in the world (large or small) wanted a website. The mentality was if I have a website then my business will explode because that is the trend of the future. This did not happen for most companies because they forgot to tell their customers they had a web presence.

Today, something very similar is happenning. Every company in the world wants to be "social". And almost all are. Unfortunately, most of their customers don't know that. How many times have you made a purchase at a small business and they mentioned their Facebook page to you? My guess is not-too-often.

Many small businesses understand how social media can benefit their business but are actually struggling to use it effectively. But, not to worry! Listed below are 48 social media tactics to help you set-up, communicate, engage, fundraise and measure your social media efforts.

"Setting Up Social Media" Tactics

Brand your Facebook page
Create a custom Twitter background
Brand your YouTube channel
Create a branded FourSquare page
Add multiple admins to your Facebook page
Set and display rules for your Facebook community
Allow supporters to post content on your Facebook page
Use commenting tools (on blogs) that authenticate with social accounts
Add a Facebook LIKE button to your website or blog
Include the "Share This" sharing buttons
Add a Twitter Follow button to your site
Publish photos under a Creative Commons license

"Comunication" Tactics

Use collaboration tools to manage multiple Twitter accounts
Display names of staff contributing to Twitter and Facebook
Connect with the top Tweeters in your area.
Monitor local Twitter activity using Hashtags (#Boston #LosAngeles #London)
Make your Tweets Retweetable.
Start, Join, and Contribute to "your mission" related hashtags
Use TwitPic to share photos and videos
Display live Twitter content on your website or blog
Integrate other social channels with Facebook
Submit Content to social news and bookmarking sites
Make a Buzzworthy video

"Engage" Tactics

Create a Facebook welcome tab.
Encourage Action on Facebook with a Custom Tab
Launch a LIKE Campaign
Empower Supporters to take Social Action
Engage the blogging community
Organize a Tweetup
Add mission-related tips on FourSquare
Build stewardship through video
Hold a video response contest
Create a Flickr group to support your mission
Hold a Photo Contest
Organize a Petition on Twitter
Create your own online community

"Fundraising" Tactics

Encourage supporters to Make a Wish
Create a Facebook Donate tab
Launch a sponsored Tweet campaign
Organize a Fundraising Campaign through Twitter
Increase conversions with Video overlays
Use Video Annotations as Calls to Action
Launch a "Check-In For Charity" campaign

"Measuring" Tactics

Analyze Facebook activity with Insights
Track Referrals through social sites
Track link performance with short URLs
Measure the Reach of your Tweets
Create a Social Media Listening Dashboard

If you have any questions about how to setup or execute any of the above tactics, please feel free to email me at mayurgudka@gmail.com.

I hope the above list of social media tactics is not news to you and that you are already doing most of these things. If not, I would start doing them right away. The results will astound you.

Good Luck,
Mayur

Chasing Followers, Likes and Views is a BAD Social Media Strategy

What are you? Out of your mind? Isn't that the goal of Social Media? To get more likes, more followers, more re-tweets, more YouTube views? This is what a lot of people will think when they read the title of this post. I'm glad you're not thinking that way.

The goal of an effective social media strategy is not to get more Facebook Likes. It is to engage people into meaningful conversations that eventually result into sales. The goal of an effective social media strategy is not to get more YouTube views. It is to share information with people in a way that is easy-to-understand, thus helping your prospects make a better informed decision. The goal of an effective social media strategy is not to get more Twitter followers. It is to provide people with meaningful content that will improve their life and business.

So how do you develop a GOOD social media strategy? Okay, there is no one fixed formula for creating a good social media strategy. Every business is unique and should have a unique strategy that works for them. But, there are principles that should be kept in mind when formulating your strategy.

Chase conversations, not followers. When you engage into meaningful conversations and add quality thoughts to it, you will be noticed. People will automatically follow you without you having to follow them first. It is also helpful if you encourage others to participate.
Create valuable content. This is your #1 social media secret. There is lot of content out there and sadly (or luckily, depends how you see it) a lot of it is garbage. Ever wonder why some YouTube videos go viral and some get 10 views over a 10-month period? Think about this a little before you create your next piece of content. This can be a blog post, a YouTube video, or a article written by you. When you create content that helps your audience improve what they are doing, you will automatically create an "Expert" status for yourself.
Whatever you do, do it consistently. If you write one blog post a week, do that every week without fail. If you spend 10-15 minutes on Twitter daily, make sure to do it everyday. Being consistent builds predictability. It lets your audience know that they can depend upon you for their daily "tweet fix".

Social Media Strategy should not be about getting more likes and followers. It should be about creating awesome content through which your audience will gravitate towards your product / service offerings and consume them at a faster rate than at which you can deliver them. Now, that's a good problem to have.

Thank you for reading,
Mayur

How 7 People told 350,000,000 others about The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Ever wonder how you can spread the message virally using a very small marketing budget? The story below tells you how Universal Orlando Resort used Inbound Marketing to promote The Wizarding World of Harry Potter by telling just 7 selected people who in-turn told another 350 million.

The following is an excerpt from David Meerman Scott's "The New Rules of Viral Marketing" document available at http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/documents/Viral_Marketing.pdf.

Imagine you are the head of marketing at a theme park, and you're charged with announcing a major new attraction. What would you do?

Well, the old rules of marketing suggest that you pull out your wallet. You'd probably spend millions to buy your way into people's minds, interrupting them with TV spots, billboards by the side of the highway, and other 'creative' Madison Avenue advertising techniques. You'd also hire a big PR agency, who would beg the media to write about your attraction. The traditional PR approach requires a self-congratulatory press release replete with company muckety-mucks claiming that the new attraction will bring about world peace by bringing families closer together.

That's not what Cindy Gordon, vice President of new media and marketing partnerships at Universal Orlando Resort, did when she launched The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Other large entertainment companies would have spent millions of dollars to interrupt everyone in the country with old-rules approaches: Super Bowl TV ads, blimp, direct mail, and magazine ads. Instead, Gordon told just seven people about the new attraction.

And those seven people told tens of thousands.

Then mainstream media listened to those tens of thousands and wrote about the news in their newspaper and magazine articles, in TV and radio reports, and in blog posts. Gordon estimates that 350 million people around the world heard the news that Universal Orlando Resort was creating The Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park.

Recognizing that millions of fans around the world are passionate about all things Harry Potter, Gordon knew she could rely on word-of-mouse to spread her story. After all, Harry is a global phenomenon. ...

Gordon and her counterpart at Warner Bros. chose to launch The Wizarding World of Harry Potter by first telling the exciting news to a very small group of rabid fans. Seven people at the top Harry Potter fan sites such as Mugglenet, were hand selected by Gordon's team, with Warner Bros and Rowling herself providing input about the choices. These seven were invited to participate in a top-secret Webcast held at midnight on May 31, 2007.

The Webcast was hosted by Scott Trowbridge, vice president of Universal Creative, and featured Stuart Craig, the academy award-winning production designer for all the Harry Potter films. In the Webcast, live from the "Dumbledore's Office" set at Leavesden Studios, Craig dicsussed how his team of 20 designers is bringing together The Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park. ...

Soon after the Webcast, the team sent an e-announcement to their in-house, opt-in email list of park guests so they could hear the news directly too. Team members also sent the e-announcements to friends and family. During the secret Webcast, a Web micro-site went live to provide a place for bloggers and the media to link for information to the theme park, which is slated to open in late 2009 or early 2010. Visitors to the site learned that the park will feature immersive rides and interactive attractions, as well as experiemntal shops and restaurants that will enable guests to sample fare from the Wizarding world's best known establishments.

Because Gordon's team launched The Wizarding World of Harry Potter through social media - putting fans first - they were able to run the entire promotion in-house, with a very small marketing budget (covering the Webcast infrastructure and the micro-site production) and a tiny development team. They did not hire an agency, and they did no widespread outbound media relations, no marketing stunts, no CEO conference call, and no expensive advertising.

Of course, not all companies have Harry Potter on their team. But Gordon still accomplished a remarkable feat with an approach that most large organizations would not have taken. She just told seven people and the power of word-of-mouse led to 350 million people hearing the news.

The time to practice Outbound Marketing is gone. It's now time to focus on Inbound Marketing. It can save you time, money, energy and create stellar results for your company.

Thank you for Reading,
Mayur

Building an Online Community - (Last) Part 5

Hello! This is the last part in "Building an Online Community" series. Building an online community is not about doing the work once and then watching the community grow automatically. Majority of the work happens after the launch. You have to continuously monitor it's key metrics and refine your approach and methods to improve them.

An important question to answer at this stage is what defines your community's success? Is it number of unique visitors per month? Number of repeated visitors? Number of people signing up? Sales volume?

A few metrics that I believe most communities need to consider while measuring their growth are:

Number of visits / visitors / unique visitors
Bounce rate
Time on site
Current SEO rankings for important keywords
Domain authority
Number of new leads / form submissions
Total amount of sales generated

By the way, Google Analytics is a wonderful tool to use to measure these metrics. And so is HubSpot's Inbound Marketing System.

Number of visits / visitors / unique visitors

A growing community ensures that the number of visits to your blog or website are increasing on a regular basis. You might find that certain posts or certain sections are getting more visits than others. Find out why that is happenning and try to duplicate the results.

Bounce Rate

What is Bounce Rate? It is the percentage of people who come to your website, stay on the single page without browsing any other page and leave the site. They come and leave. They bounce back to somewhere else.

A high bounce rate is not good. It means people are not interested in exploring your community. Your goal should be keep this bounce rate as low as possible. In most cases, improving the content of the site will do the trick. In some cases, better navigation will help. It is also important to note that all links on your website are working. If the links are broken, the bounce rate can be very high.

Time on Site

If you operate a community like Facebook, it's important that people spend more time on your site. Higher the time people spend on your site, higher fees you can charge your advertisers. Increasing this metric will often times decrease your Bounce rate autmatically (unless your pages are really really long and visitors spend a lot of time on a single page).

Current SEO rankings for important keywords

Google has a keyword tool that will assist you with this metric. This tool will help you find out how hot a certain keyword is. For example, if your site is focused on "green tea" and it's health benefits, type in "green tea" or "health benefits of green tea" into the keyword tool and it will tell you how many people searched for those words in the last month.

If you are drafting a blog post, this is an important tool to use. Identify what keywords identify your post. Do a search in the keyword tool to check it's popularity. Then insert the most popular words in your blogpost a few times. Chances of your blogpost appearing in the search results for those particular keywords will be much higher.

Domain Authority

This is one of the factors search engines use to determine search results. When a user types in a search term in Google search engine, Google wants to provide him/her with the best search results and thus will display pages from authority websites first and non-authority websites later. In other words, Google checks the strength of your website and another website and then displays the results of stronger authority website first.

There are certain factors that affect the domain authority. Some are:

How long has your URL been registered? Longer the better.
How often is the content on your site updated?
How relevant is your content to your users?
How many pages does your site contain?
How many visitors do you get on a regular basis?

Getting some of the other metrics right can automatically increase your domain authority number.

Number of new leads / form submissions

If your goal is to have visitors ask for more information, sign-up a newsletter, get a RFP, fill out a contest form, etc. then you should be focusing on this metric. Find out what percentage of people visit your site AND fill out the form? Do you have a target number in mind? Are you meeting the target? If not, you have work to do. Find out its cause and then work to meet your goals.

Total amount of sales generated

This again is similar to number of new leads / form submissions. If you are selling products or services and intend to sell certain value of products/services per month, then check your sales figure. Are they meeting your goals? How can you increase the numbers?

A good strategy to building a community is "Fire, Aim, Adjust" approach. Launch the community. Set goals. Adjust your methods and approaches to meet those goals continually. The longer you wait to launch a perfect community, the higher the chances of your community not being launched, EVER.

Lastly, understand that building a large community is often a trial and error process. Lots of experimentation, time and patience are required to build a successful community. Hope this series helped you in your quest of building an online community.

Thank you for reading!

Like they say in Hawaiian,
Aloha

Building an Online Community - Part 4

Welcome back to "Building an Online Community" series. In Part 4, we will talk about what creates a wonderful blog entry that will be useful to your readers and search engines.

A blog post should serve one of these three purposes.

Education
Entertainment
Inspiration

In other words, any blog post you write, should either educate, entertain or inspire your readers. If it does not do that, you need to rethink your post.

An effective blog post will have a minimum of these things.

Well written header
Picture
Opening paragraph
Personal experience
Main body AKA message of the post.
Call of action

Well Written Header

The purpose of a header is to let the readers know the subject of the post. A well written header entices readers to click on it. It builds curiosity. My most popular post is titled Never let two days go by without ... . It was one of the first posts when I started this blog. That post currently has about 4-10 times more views than any of my "Building an Online Community" posts.

Picture

Some bloggers consider posting a picture in their post very important and some consider it optional. It is your personal choice really, but I would include it if possible. Especially, if you have a picture that is relevant to your content. A good picture is like a tie. Common belief is that a good tie makes an ugly looking man attractive. Similarly, a good picture makes your post look attractive.

Opening Paragraph

It's like writing a school paper. You have an intro paragraph, a body and a conclusion. A opening blog paragraph tells the reason the blogger decided to write about the particular topic. It answers the questions, "Why are your writing this blog post?"

Personal Experience

I call this blogger's weapon of increasing stickiness. We love to know about others. It's the inquisitive human nature, we can't help. A good blogger will make use of this ... weakness if you may, and personalize the post for the readers. The readers get to know a little about the blogger's life and will also feel that they know the blogger personally. This is important if you want to turn your visitors into "repeated" visitors.

Main Body AKA Message of the Post

This is where you deliver the main message of the blog post. Regardless of whether you are trying to inform, entertain or educate, it should happen in this part of the post. It is the core of your post and should be the longest than any other part. Be careful that your blog post doesn't become so long that readers lose interest.

Call of Action

What do you want your readers to do after reading your post? Commonly, the blogger asks his/her readers to post their thoughts on the article, share the post with their friends and family, share new ideas, contact the blogger, go to a specific site to buy a product or read the next post. Call of action should guide readers to take the next step.

Few things to consider while writing blog posts

Don't write endless posts. Size matters. Keep them short and straight to the point.
If the post is long, make it scannable by bolding the main points or adding bullet points where possible.
Use simple language. Your readers' vocabulary might not be the same as yours. Hence, simpler the language easier it is for everybody to understand.
Provide internal relevant links. This allows your readers to access other interesting material on your site. It also helps search engines give your site a higher rank since that is one of the deciding factors in page ranking.

Hope this helps. If you have a question or comment about this, please post them in the comment section below. I will reply to them at my earliest.

In the past weeks, we talked about what to do before you begin your efforts of building an online community, how to prepare for the launch of your community, how to market your community after you launch it. Today, we talked about how to create a successful blog post. Next week will be the last entry in this series where we will talk about measuring your results and analyzing them for continual improvements.

Thank you for reading!

Like they say in Spanish,
Hasta La Vista, Amigo!

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