29August2010

10 Tips for Getting Traffic Through Social Media Sites

Posted by Jerry Kidd under: How to...; Social Media.

Web 2.0 sites and social media are already here (and have been for some time). Experts predict that this trend will only grow. That means if you don’t start using social media now – today – you’ll be left behind.

Here then are 10 tips for using social media to drive traffic to your sites…

1.  Complete your profile.

When you first open your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or other social media site account, fill out your profile (including a picture). Doing so makes it easier for people to get to know you and build relationships with you, which will make it more likely they’ll click through to your site.

2.  Interact.

Social sites are, by definition, social. They’re two way streets (not monologues). That’s why you shouldn’t just post content and move on. Instead, spend a few minutes each day interacting and getting to know people in your network.

3.  Include a link to your site on your profile page.

This tip is simple but effective: Give people a reason to click through from the social media site to your blog or web site. A promise of a free report usually makes for a good enticement.

4.  Ask your followers to “re-tweet” and repost.

If you create a “buzz worthy” post (such as a post on a hot or even controversial topic), as your Twitter followers to “re-tweet” it and ask your other social media networks to repost it.

5.  Spend time each day growing your network.

Commit to spending at least 10 minutes each day growing your network. You’ll see big results by the end of the month. And you’ll be amazed at the size of your network in six months or a year from now.

6.  Link your social site pages together.

Link your Twitter account to your Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media pages. And vice versa.

7.  Use your real name so that you’re easy to find.

People who want to do business with you won’t respond well to working with “TopAgent.” Instead, build trust by using your real name. Doing so also makes it easier for others to find you on Facebook and similar sites.

8.  Post good content.

Social media is not just about networking, it’s also about sharing information. If you share some of your best information with your network, you’ll get respect, trust… and more sales. Plus you’ll establish yourself as a niche expert.

9.  Optimize some of your content.

Some social sites (such as Yahoo! Answers and Squidoo) get crawled and indexed regularly by the search engines. As such, you may consider optimizing some of your content for the search engines by including relevant (longtail) keywords two or three times for every 100 words of content.

10.  Get the most benefit for your time.

Instead of trying to interact and build relationships with thousands of prospects, consider building a relationship with a handful of partners. That’s because just one good partner can send you lots of prospects and customers.

In summary: Social media is only expected to grow in the future – and now is the best time to get involved if you’d like to grow your business right along with it. You can start today by applying the ten traffic-generating, relationship-building tips you just discovered!

And don’t forget to “Like” this post and “Share” it with your network, too!

22August2010

Your first seven days in social networking

Posted by Jerry Kidd under: Social Media.

Let’s pretend that you have never heard of social networking until just now.  And from what you have heard, you are excited because you have learned that you can use it to stay in touch with past clients, meet new prospects and also use it to nurture those new relationships until they are ready to move from interaction to transaction.  And all for very little money!

But how do you get started?  That’s a great question because with so many choices available to you, deciding where and how to start is crucial to having the outcome that you want.  So, let’s look at this as a seven day process.  You don’t have to do all of this in seven consecutive days, you could do it all in one day, or you could spread it out over several weeks.  Each of these activities does build on the previous one, so for best results follow along as I present them.

Day One

Today we have to decide just what it is that we want to accomplish, and who we want to attract.  Start out with a clean sheet of paper and describe your ideal client.  Who are they?  Where do you find them? What do they need?  What do you have in the way of expertise or services that can give them what they need?  What is your USP (Universal Selling Proposition) or “elevator speech”?

Look to your past transactions to help you with this one.  Go over in your mind the characteristics of your most favorite past clients and see if you can find some common things that you can use as a gauge to measure future clients by…and do the same with the clients that you were glad to be rid of…as they will serve as examples of what happens when you work with the wrong people!

Don’t skip this step, and get a really good description written down because we will use this information as we go on.

Day Two

Much can be gained by knowing what people are saying about you, your brand, your competitor and about their own lives.  But, how can you listen without being in the way?  As it turns out, there are loads of free tools available to help you.  One of my favorites is the FREE Google Alerts.  Just go to http://alerts.google.com and set up a search on your name to start.  Be sure to put your name in quotes and set up several different variations of your name.  Set up alerts for your brand, your competitors and your clients.

The information that you gain this way will help you head off problems as they occur.  You will also gain market intelligence on your competitors and on your clients.  All of this is possible because Google will send you an email with a link to what ever it finds as soon as it finds it!  In other words, this tool lets you set up Google to search itself on your behalf all on autopilot!

Day Three

Now it’s time to set up a FREE Facebook personal profile.  Go to http://www.facebook.com and sign up for a new account.  Take the time to upload a personal picture and to fill in the information tab completely.  Facebook will ask you to upload your email address list from Outlook, Yahoo Mail, GMail and others.  This is a good idea as Facebook will tell you which of your contacts is already on Facebook, giving you the chance to send them a Friend Request.  You will also get a chance to send emails to your contacts who are not yet members of Facebook and ask them to join you.

Two caveats on this step.  When you send a friend request, be sure to check the option that allows you to add a personal message to the request.  This is where you can remind the person of who you are and why they know you.  The second caveat is to set up Lists as you go along.  Put all of your new friends into separate lists, such as REALTORS®, Past Clients, Family and so on.  This will be a huge help to you in making sure that the right people see the things you post.

Take the time to do this completely and you will soon see that you have grown a large group of friends.  Having a large group of friends is important to you because every time you post a status update, your friends will see it.  And if they should post a reply to your update, then their friends will see it and might decide to follow you too!

Day Four

Now that you have a Facebook Personal Profile, it’s time to build a FREE Facebook Business or Fan page.  Why would you need both?  Well, for starters, the Facebook terms of Service prohibit the use of a personal profile for commercial purposes.  But more importantly, your friends will soon get tired of your constant “Look at my new listing” or “come to my open house” pitches.  And if they tire of you, it’s way to easy to hide you or even worse, block you.

So, build a business page.  A business page is where you can “legally” promote your business to those who “Like” your business page. When you “Like” a business page, you are giving the owner of that page permission to market to you.

Click here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php to build a page.  Follow the directions to create a Local Business Page, choose Real Estate or Professional Services and give VERY careful thought to the name of the page as you will NOT be able to change it later.  Since Google indexes all of the Facebook Business Pages, you might want to choose a name that reflects what you do, such as “Walnut Creek Real Estate” or “San Francisco Luxury Homes”.

Use a different picture from the one that you used on your profile page so that people can tell which “voice” is speaking (When you “Like” your page, anything you post here will also show up on your home Wall.)

Fill in the profile completely, and for good measure, install the FREE Roost “Real Estate App”.  You can find it at: http://apps.facebook.com/marketview/ This can be installed on both your personal profile and your business page.

Day Five

Take the time now to post at least 10 updates to your Facebook business page.  The reason for this is that when you invite people to come and become fans of your page, you’d like them to see an active page…one with good and interesting content on it.  How do you know what to post?  Remember back on Day One that you identified who your ideal clients were?  Now is the time to post content that they would find useful and valuable!  You can find things to use at http://www.car.org and also at http://www.Realtor.org.

Both organizations have content that you can take and use on your page.  So take advantage of it!

Once you have a completed page with content and the Roost app in place, invite all of your personal profile friends to come to your page.  Be sure to remind them to “Like” your page.  As soon as 25 people have done that, Facebook will let you have a personalized url that contains your page name.  Get your unique URL at http://www.Facebook.com/username

For example, here’s mine: http://www.facebook.com/JerryKiddTrainingAndConsulting

Now, use this on your business cards, email signatures and so on.  Given that your target clients are probably on Facebook, it makes sense to direct them there instead of to any other URL.

Day Six

Facebook has it’s uses but it’s not the only social network that you need so don’t overlook LinkedIn.

Go to LinkedIn and complete your FREE profile.  This is actually harder than it sounds because a complete LinkedIn profile contains at least two past employers, some school information and three recommendations.

Take the time to do it right so that people from your past jobs and schools can find you and connect with you.  As with Facebook, you’ll be given the opportunity to upload your email address book from Outlook, Yahoo or Gmail.  I suggest that you do this as it really speeds the process of getting Connections along.

Day Seven (And every other day there after)

Just having a presence in these sites doesn’t guarantee that you will get any visitors, interactions or business!  You need to take an active roll in “working” them.  What I mean by that is that you have to listen to what your friends and connections are saying, and where appropriate, jump into the conversation and add something constructive.

One super easy way to do that is to sign up at http://www.nutshellmail.com This FREE service will send you digests of everything that your friends and connections say on Facebook and LinkedIn (and others) at times of your choosing.  Then you just skim through what they said and “like” or comment as necessary.  It really speeds up the process of interacting with people. They also offer a FREE email newsletter tab for your business page that will keep your fans up to date on the changes you make to your business page.

You can also join Facebook Groups and answer Facebook questions as a way to meet new potential clients, and guess what, you can do the same thing on LinkedIn too.

So that’s your social networking “week”.  The heavy work is all done in the first week.  After that it’s just setting aside 30 minutes to an hour a day for maintenance of your networks and posting new status updates.

You may have to re-arrange your day to get the time necessary to stay on top of your networks, but if you will do so, I am confident that you will reap the benefits many times over.

Be sure to go visit my Facebook Page and “Like” it so that you can stay current with my technology and real estate updates.  And don’t forget to invite me to “Like” your business page and to connect with you on LinkedIn!  I’d love to get to know you.

15August2010

Why I returned my iPad

Posted by Jerry Kidd under: Apple Information; Product Reviews.

According to a good friend, and fellow technology aficionado, I caused hell to freeze over a few weeks ago when I bought a 64 GB 3G iPad after publicly stating that I was going to sit this one out, (http://realtytechbytes.com/why-i-am-not-buying-a-ipad/).

There were a couple of really good reasons for doing this, not the least of which was that I was asked to teach a class on the iPhone and the iPad!  I have owned iPhones for the past 2 plus years and and know that platform inside and out.  But, my knowledge of the iPad was limited to what I had read on blogs, the mainstream press and from lurking on a real estate apple products user forum. In order to deliver a good presentation I figured that I really needed to get my hands on one.

I looked into renting one for two weeks and was quoted a price of $500.00!  Seriously?  I don’t think so.  Then I remembered that Apple has a 14 day return policy, subject to a 10% restocking fee.

So, I found myself at the Apple store at the Stoneridge Mall one day, and before I knew it, I was out the door with one!  I have to tell you that it is one sexy and seductive piece of technology!  I can see why people rave about it.  What I can’t see is why people put up with it’s considerable shortcomings.

The device is designed to “fit” into the space between laptop and smart phone.  And for some people there is a genuine need for such a device.  But, after using it for two weeks, I can honestly say that my iPhone 4 got more use and was able to handle more business situations than the iPad!

The iPad does have the gorgeous display going for it.  The size is nearly perfect for reading, viewing pictures and watching videos.  And, if you get the Flipboard App (If you have an iPad you REAL, REALLY want this app) you’ll spend hours staying up with your social graph using the astonishing magazine style interface.  The app is free in the App Store, just search for it by name. (Or click here to go to http://www.flipboard.com/)

But, here is the main gripe I have with it.  I wanted to use it to do presentations in a class environment.  I use an iMac or a MacBook Pro to create my classroom materials by running Keynote, Apples PowerPoint killer.  I bought the Keynote App for $9.99 from the App Store and figured that I could easily transfer my existing Keynote presentations to the iPad.  Not so fast!  You can transfer files via iTunes when the iPad is connected, or you can email them to yourself and then open with Mobile Keynote.  But, for some reason known only to Apple (Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field strikes again) the mobile version of Keynote and the Desktop version are not completely compatible!  Fonts, themes and more just don’t come across very well, unless your presentation uses the basic ones that are common to both platforms.

Another gripe is that Apple has locked down the platform so that I cannot take video out of the iPad (Even using the iPad video to VGA adaptor) and display it via a projector.  That was a real killer for me.  It turns out that the video to VGA adapter just shows videos or pictures, not the screen of the iPad.

Other small annoyances like no camera (my iPhone 4 has two), no ability to actually access the file system via USB, ties to AT&T and the fact it is too big to easily carry around (it won’t clip on my belt like my phone) just finalized the decision to return it.

My final conclusion, echoed by others, is that this game changing device is perfect for personal consumption of information, and not so good for content creation, unless you are willing and able to live within the narrow box that Apple has defined.

So, on Wednesday it went back to Stoneridge.  The blue shirted Apple minion at the door was astonished!  “What, you dare to break the reality distortion field?”   “Ummm, yes, I do.  Gimme my money back.”  And so it went.

You’ll be happy to know that all is well in Hell these days, the freeze is over.

But that Flipboard app keeps singing it’s siren song to me…and I hope that the wizards at Apple are listening to all the complaints and are building the v2 model as we speak.