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Friday, July 31st, 2009Building your Brand Online
Thursday, July 30th, 2009
Looking to gain more clients? With so much noise online, it’s crucial to standout. Here are a couple tips how to do this online:
1. Determine your purpose. Are you online to meet people, or tell everyone that you are an expert in making BLTs, or grow your business? Decide what your top goals are in using social media. Once you establish your focus, it will help you carve out a niche for yourself, and make social media the most effective for you. Your status updates/tweets, etc. will be recognizable, and people will start to come to you if they need to know how to make the perfect BLT.
2. Build your brand. Once you have your purpose figured out, you can start building your brand online. Say you wanted people to know how awesome your BLTs are and you want them to come to you for all their BLT needs.
- You should surround yourself with other BLT enthusiasts, and other knowledgeable foodies. These are the people that will promote you the best, and will be easy to make friends with- as you will have something to immediately talk about.
- If you are targeting a local area, find other people in the area that will appreciate your BLTs
- Focused updates/tweets. Try for about 75% of your tweets to be BLT related (or if you are an interior designer- focus on interior design for 75% of your tweets). The other 25% can be non related BLT, and will help you mix things up a little. Make it fun, make it interesting. Share different pointers and tips. If you share useful advice, people will be more likely to listen to what you have to say. Don’t try to sell your BLTs with every tweet. This is annoying, and people will not listen. We recommend about 1/10th of your tweets can be a sales pitch, but really the most effective tweeters are the once who are always giving.
Just remember when you are building your brand online, it’s not that much different than building it in person. Remember to ask how people are doing, what they’ve been up to before you dive in and promote yourself. Being polite will get you a long ways, and will build a lot more friendships throughout the years.
How do you go about building your brand online?
image here
Conference Tips
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009At Toolulu, we have been to our fair share of conferences, and have even spoken at them too. Conferences are a great way to expand your knowledge and meet new people (and reconnect with friends). Usually conferences will be full of trendsetters, educated and successful individuals so it’s always good to have your game face on. Here are a few tips we would like to pass along to you when attending a conference:
- 3 goals. Before you leave for your conference (or on the flight out), take time to write down or vocalize what your top 3 goals are in attending the conference. Do you want to be a sponge and soak up everything? Do you want to network? Do you want to find companies to interview for your niche blog? Do you want to raise awareness of your site/product? By having these top 3 goals, you will be more focused at the conference and more prepared when someone asks you what you do (as each goal will put a different spin on what you say).
- Take 2x the business cards. There’s nothing worse than running out of business cards at a conference. Take more business cards than you think you will ever need. In designing your cards, you may want to think about putting your picture on your card so people immediately remember you when they get home.
- Dress for success. I am a firm believer that when we dress great, we get better results. It’s something about the attitude change within us that happens when we feel great in what we wear. If it’s a large conference, consider wearing something that brands you (i.e. a t-shirt with your web address, etc.)
- Have fun. Conferences are always a mixture of parties and business. Be sure to let loose and have a good time.
We hope these tips help you with your next conference. If you have never been to a conference, consider it. They help spark your passion and you are guaranteed to meet a few friends along the way too.
Time Management & Productivity
Thursday, July 23rd, 2009Most people are busy. Really busy these days. Here are a couple things I’m working on to help my work day be more productive.
- Checking email- Check your email at set times throughout the day. (i.e. first thing in the morning, before lunch, and 4pm). This helps you control your day rather than responding to others to do list for you. I have fallen guilty to having my email open all day to make sure I’m accessible, but then I find that I hardly get anything done because I’m just responding to emails, or having people IM me all day.
- Sort your email. I sort my email into three different folders- immediate attention, follow up, or future interest. Immediate attention are things that I need to respond to ASAP, and they are usually quick emails, but I don’t have the time right then and there to answer them. Follow up is just that. I need to email them back, but it’s not as pressing as the immediate action folder. Future interest is something I want to follow up on in the future and work on. Having a system like this keeps me organized and allows me to prioritize my emails.
- Time yourself- Do get sucked into different tasks like updating twitter, or your Facebook? These are important tasks and great for networking and building your brand. Limit your time on these. I usually schedule 3-5 tweets via hootsuite on various accounts first thing in the morning. {I spread them out so it appears that I’m online throughout the day… tricky, huh?} Then I usually log on for 2 other 5-10 minute periods during the day — usually after lunch, and in the evening.
- Use Google Reader to subscribe to your favorite sites so you’re cutting back on surfing the net. If you subscribe to a lot of feeds, you can organize them into different folders so if you only have a few minutes to read them at a time, they are prioritized for you.
- Write it down. Have a central location (i.e. Tasks in Gmail, Notes, etc) where you can write things down while you’re out and about. This will save your brain power for the issues at hand, while also helping you remember things you need to do.
These are just a few tips to help you stay on task and make the most of your day. How do you structure your day for success?
Tasks added to Gmail
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
Tasks was available as an experiment via Gmail labs about 6 months ago. Now it has a spot on the main gmail page, located right under Contacts. When you click on it, it pulls up a small screen in the lower righthand corner of your screen. It’s easy to use, and it gets better. You can access this feature from you mobile platform, as you do with your google calendar.
Yea for condensing and trying for one program that can do it all!
Our Top 5 Free Social Media Listening Tools
Monday, July 20th, 2009Making noise on social media is easy. It’s the listening that takes a little finesse. I’ve gathered up some of our favorite FREE tools that make it easier to listen to what people are saying about your business online. These tools have had a little bit of staying power and while they might not provide you the most comprehensive information, they are a good start if you are just starting to monitor the conversations about your brand.
photo via flickr, copyright renrut
1. Trendrr This site offers a basic free service where you can track certain keywords and URLs using up to 10 different sites. You can upgrade to a paid service to get more options but this is a good way to get your feet wet. The graphs are visually appealing and you can also see the Trendrr made graphs featuring hot topics around the web.
2. Social Mention This one is my personal favorite. With a quick search, you can find out all the mentions of your selected keywords or URLs. They divide up the information in such a way that is very easy to decipher and use. It rates each mention as positive, neutral, or negative. Social Mention also measures passion, reach, and identifies the people that mention that keyword the most.
3. Technorati This is probably the most basic of listening tools. It doesn’t search some of the more popular social media sites but if you want to quickly see who has been linking to your site, this oldie but goodie does it well.
4. Board Reader Twitter and Facebook get a lot of hype these days but you can’t ignore what people are saying about you on message boards and forums. These are still very active social networks and can provide a wealth of information about what consumers really think about you or your product.
5. Google Alerts You can receive email alerts on any topic you wish to monitor. They pull information from all over the web. This isn’t the most sophisticated listening tool. You sometimes have to wade through a lot of irrelevant links but for the price (FREE!), and the ease of use (right to your inbox), it is definitely worth mentioning.
Last month I wrote a post talking about my experience with the Cornhusker Red Cross. It was called Using Twitter to Connect with Potential Customers. I thought for sure they would see that post and let me know about it. We have yet to hear from them. It’s possible they take their non-profit status seriously and don’t need to listen to their potential customers. Or maybe they need our help more than we thought.
Blog Ranking
Friday, July 17th, 2009Want to know how your blog ranks? I found out about Blog Grader (via Hubspot) recently and I really like all the stats and information it gives you.
It tells you about a variety of different things:
Traffic Rank- This is from Alexa and tells you how your site is rank among all the other blogs out there. You want to have a low number here.
Description & Title- Make sure you have these labeled on your site. it makes it easier for SEO efforts.
Google Page Rank- Google ranks each website based on “votes”- to decide how important a page is. The scale is from 0-10 - a higher number is better. For more infromation on Google Page Rank go here.
Inbound Links- Search engines rank pages based on content and inbound links. A higher number is wanted here.
This can give you some feedback about how your blog is doing- numbers wise. We realize this isn’t the only gauge of how your site is doing, but it’s a start and will surely help you in the light of advertisers.
Advertisers may also look at how engaged your readers are by how many comments you receive and how many subscribers you have to your RSS feed.
What numbers do you focus on when working on your blog ranking?
July's Social Media Club
Thursday, July 16th, 2009Wow! What an awesome time last night. We had a great turn out for our 2nd meeting for Social Media Club.
Since we are still a small group, everyone had a chance to introduce themselves. It was great to hear about the different companies that are “with it” in the Lincoln area. Some people were there just out of their pure passion for social media (can you say AWESOME!??)
We talked about the organization of the group and have just about ever position filled. We are still looking for a Partnership Director. This position would be responsible for building and maintaining relationships with local marketing and technology businesses and coordinating sponsorships. We are also looking for speakers and topics for future meetings. If you or someone you know would be perfect for these opportunities, let us know!
We had a great discussion about social media and using it to create your own brand online. Not only for your business, your employer, but for YOU! We talked about how important it is to have a mission laid out so everything you are communicating or projecting out into the world falls in line with your goals and mission. This doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. Because you can. Be yourself and do everything with a purpose! We know that when you are genuine and focused, you will have more success.
Were you at the meeting last night? Feel free to share your thoughts below, and your twitter handle so we can all find each other.
Our next meeting is August 12th for 7-9pm. Mark your calendar and stay tuned for the location.
P.S. If you are using twitter and referencing the Social Media Club in your tweet, use #smclnk as a reference.
Three Key Business Ingredients
Wednesday, July 15th, 2009We had a meeting with a client yesterday and she is working on getting an Etsy shop up and running. Our plans include a lot of specifics but when it all comes down to it, you need to have these three things working for you.
1. Style
Your photographs, banner, and avatars are all you have to give your customers a feel for your shop identity. Make them work for you, not against you.
2. Customer Service is Key
With any business you want to provide good customer service. In the competitive Etsy market, it helps to provide stellar customer service.
3. Be Your Best Marketer
Nobody can tell your story or sell your shop better than you! Use all the resources you can to get people to your shop because they won’t always find you by accident.
Toolulu will be presenting an online Beginning Etsy Seller Class in the fall. You will learn some basic photography skills, how to use the analytics, advertising information, some business organizational skills, and more. We’ll keep you posted!
