Social Media
New at Owen Greaves Consulting – DISQUS Comment System
Good Day!
I have decided to try the DISQUS Commenting System on my Blog, this is in effect immediately. As with most Blog systems you want to reach and provide the best service possible, commenting is a huge part of Blogging and shouldn’t be treated lightly. I hope this new commenting system works well for Owen Greaves Consulting, but more importantly it works well for you.
Thank you for reading my Blog and I hope this system will entice you to leave more comments.
Owen Greaves
Your Customers Are Dying To Talk To You!
Something is terribly wrong with the business world at large don’t you think? I mean, customer service is still failing and businesses and their owners don’t seem to care! Yes some get it and are doing something about it, but lets be honest here, have you seen a grand scale change of mind and heart on what customers really want from local businesses?
A while back a shared a couple stories with you, one where Black & Decker failed bigtime in my books, one where SAVE-ON FOODS went way out of their way to make my life easier, and then there was the BEST BUY stupidity. I was out with my oldest son this afternoon, he said hey let’s go to Best Buy! My response, why? He looked at me kind of funny and said what? I said these guys don’t get customer service and I won’t buy from them again. Of course he asked what happened and I shared with him, he said I understand. The stupid thing about this experience is that I got more attention from Best Buy USA online staffers and I never did hear from anyone in Canada at the time of my rant. I did get a Tweet from someone a wekk later but that was it, and that person solved nothing, did nothing and didn’t even ask for details. No nothing, no how can we make this right, sorry you had that problem….NOTHING! I won’t be back, That I can control.
Black & Decker made absolutely no effort to fix their website and or make my experience with them a positive one. SAVE-ON FOODS, they were amazing, well one staff person was (Lorna) , they get my business, that store ONLY gets my business unless I’m out of town.
The oxymoron of all businesses is, they ask for our input, how were we today, how can we be better, make a suggestion and so on. But are they really listening, and if they are, they must be using selective hearing. I rarely see improvement from those businesses that blow it and know about it. So why am I pissed? They don’t get it, and I’m not confident that they will anytime soon. They don’t understand that their clients, their customers want to talk to them, and want to be heard. Don’t they know that their customers want that relationship, want to trust that company, want to have a positive experience with their Brand. I don’t get it, why don’t they want to give us what we really want?
Don’t you know – Your Customers Are Dying To Talk To You!
We can all take a lesson from these experiences, I know you have your own stories to tell but somehow the message is getting lost in translation. Is Social Media that confusing they don’t understand what Social Media is all about, I think it is, orherwise we would see more movement for the better.
Am I over reacting? What do you think?
HELP! I Need Your Input Please
The past few months have been interesting to say the least, and in closing out 2009 I have been getting a variety of requests on my Blog, including speaking & consulting opportunities. When I started blogging I was hot and bothered about Nanotechnology, why people weren’t talking about it and how it may or may not impact our lives. That turned out to be a dead horse.
I then shifted energy to my other passion, I.T. Strategic Planning, that has developed some interest from a business perspective.
Lately, the biggest area of interest is Social Media, monetizing a blog, and how to get traffic to it. Go figure.
Anyway, My question for you is, is learning the ropes about blogging and or monetizing your blog important to you, do you want to know how and where I’m having success with it? Late 2009 and so far this year has proven profitable teaching and sharing on these items. Please do not take this as bragging, I’m merely sharing and want to know if you want to learn how I have done it. Or, is there something else you would like to see covered?
Thanks for your time, please let me know so I can discern where to invest my time serving you.
Please send me an e-mail with your input and or request: owen@owengreaves.com
Many Blessings,
Owen Greaves
http://blog.owengreaves.com
How To – 3 Core Traffic Drivers
After almost two years of blogging and learning the ropes so to speak, I have come down to three core traffic builders that have worked for me here on my Blog. Let me state up front, Blogging is not easy, getting traffic through free (not buying traffic) methods still costs you something in time. In fact, all three of these Core Traffic Drivers require planning and time.
Before I get into my big three, one thing you should do is study the traffic you already have, look for when they are coming to your Blog, time of day and which days of the week. That will help you determine a good posting schedule, which days to post and what time of day to do so. The busiest times on this blog are between 5PM – Midnight Pacific Time, so I post a few hours before 5 PM, I may do a late night post around 10 PM too. I can only share with you what I have done, I use WordPress with Headway Themes,(affiliate link) it has great SEO support within the theme, so I highly recommend it. The big 3 have sub-sets of things you will have to do as well, nothing is truly simple.
OK, let me share with you the 3 core traffic drivers that are working for me.
3 Core Traffic Drivers
1.) Social Media Networks – I have to tell you this is where most of my traffic comes from, not because I’m there, but because I’m always there and you will see me participating with a few people. Thats the hot tip with this Core Driver, openning up an account and then hoping it will just happen will fail you time & time again. Now I realize not all of you will have the same amount of time I invested in Social Media Networks so bare with me for a bit. When I started using these networks I learned alot about what not to do, I’m not going to get into those things in this post but may do so at a later time. In fact, I did write a post here on Owen Greaves Consulting called, ” 10 Days To a 1000 Followers ” , this tells of how I started with Twitter.
One of the key secrets to using these networks is to centralize, make your Blog your home base. Use plug-ins to send your blog posts to your out-posts. Out-posts are these networks, FriendFeed, FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace and so on, there are so many of them out there I won’t list how many I use.
The best way to use these networks is to promote other people, promote other peoples products 9 times out of ten, promote your site, products and services at a 1 in 10 or 1 in 12 ratio. Edify others always, help others always,and build powerful relationships with those who are likeminded with you and your blog. Share, Share and share information you find useful for others, things that are interesting and helpful, information that teaches and directs. You need to become a TRUST AGENT,(affiliate link) someone who connects with others and connects business with others, make a positive impact on society. Maximize Social Media Networks, it’s word of mouth that can put you on the map or take you off it.
2.) Consistant Blog Posting – There’s not much to say on this topic because it plain works, post regularly to your blog and the search engines go nuts! This means a couple things, I won’t go into detail but there are a couple of other things you need to pay attention to while here.
a) SEO – I’m not especially strong on this topic but I have learned how to make it work for me. There is a science here that baffles most people, it can be learned so expect to spend some time here. You may need to get help, so don’t feel bad if you don’t grasp it.
b) Study your sites traffic numbers for the purposes of scheduling your regular blog posting strategies.
I have found that posting to your blog regularly builds traffic better than anything, especially if your posts are teaching something of value. This post will be useful to many and should generate considerable traffic, why, because everyone, and I mean everyone is trying to find the silver bullet to getting traffic to their blog.
Again, I won’t go into details on SEO & traffic numbers but they are important. My secret weapon is Headway Themes. (affiliate link)
3.) Commenting on other Blogs /Forums – I fought this hard for along time, I just didn’t want to spend time on other blogs, it felt like I was wasting time. I was WRONG! I think this item is a true weapon for Bloggers, especially high profile blogs & forums that have large followings. I mentioned earlier that this traffic thing takes time, lots of time, and lots of your time.
So what do you do at these Blogs & forums? Answer questions, help those looking for answers, ask a question you need answered, promote someone else’s product or service, strongly disagree on a post, you will get noticed for sure. I can’t stress enough how good this works, I challenge you to spend some time on this and see what happens.
So there ya have it, 3 Core Traffic Drivers that I do and have been working for me, I have not paid for any traffic, I have paid for Affiliate products which you will find in this post and on my blog. Someday I’ll spend money for traffic, but I haven’t as of this writing.
I hope these help you, I’m here helping you make sense of Social Media, Blogging and I.T. Strategies, let me know how it goes for you, please leave comments and suggestions below, I really would love to hear what’s working for you.
Do You Know The Depth of Your Twitter Following?
Have you ever wondered how many people you actually reach through those who follow you? Have you wondered how many of those followers are online at the same time you are? Does the information even matter?
If you are selling a service or product you may want to know some of this data, it can help you target and schedule what time to do promotions. You could be doing research on another Twitter account or follower. At best you will be amuzed at the data, it makes me wonder whats happening in the Blogesphere. But make no mistake, if you’re in marketing the information can be a great asset to your marketing toolbox. It can validate or affirm whether what’s happening is real or has potential.
So why even bring this up, I was wondering about reach, I was wondering who at any given time might see what you were Tweeting when you were Tweeting it. Afterall, you want traffic to your blog right? You want traffic to see what you are about and what you do right?
I have to make a disclaimer here, I used just one site for this excerise, Twitter Analyzer, I’m also skeptical of these kinds of sites, why, accuracy, I have no way of proving how accurate the data actually is.
Anyway, let me share a couple things for you to do, you’ll get an idea of what’s happening when you’re not looking. Oh, and be sure to write the data down so you can look at it later.
TWITTER ANALYZER
Step 1
When you first put your name in the dialogue box you have to wait for a short bit, then you will be brought to a page with all the data it was able to extract from Twitter, the first stat is how many Tweets you made for the last week and the current day. It’s not an important number but interesting to see how active you are any given day.
Step 2
While on the User button click on the Popularity button just above it, you will see total mentions and total unique users monitoring. Click on any date on the graph for the details to posted below.
Step 3
Still on the User tab, click on the Reach button above, You can select a date but it will auto-select the current date for you. Three stats will be shown, Unique Readers Reach, Unique Users RTing and Total Update Messages RTed.
Step 4
Now lets click on the FRIENDS tab on the bottom, Click on On-Line Followers button. Here you will see who is online by the hour, it’s an eye opener if you have lots of followers. Even if you don’t it can be an interesting stat, it keeps you humble too : )
Step 5
The next one to look at is the Followers Density Map, this one shows where your followers live by country. Another very interesting stat depending on where you live, the majority of my followers are from the USA, no big surprise, #2 is, GB – Great Britan, and #3 EC – Ecuador! I didn’t see that one coming.
As you can see you can extract some interesting data, there’s alot more you can do at this site like how many followers your followers have by groups. For example, 32% of my followers have 1,000 – 2,000 followers. 11.27% of my followers have 10,000 – 20,000 followers. That appears to be the highest demographic as that’s all it shows me on the high end. The problem is, I happen to know that The Ellen Show is following me and has over 4 million followers, why doesn’t that get reflected in this section? I’m just say’in. Oh and by the way, Paul Rickett sent me this Tweet:
@paulrickett Notice on Twitter analyzer it doesn’t seem to know abt Canada in density reach? Appears to put all Cdns into US!
Have fun checking your stats and your friends stats, if you work for a corporation this information could be very useful. This site and many others can help you answer the question, do you know the depth of your Twitter following?