NosalCentral

Defining a Social Media Policy

Posted: 29th June 2011 by jnosal in branding, Facebook, Google

I am regularly asked about what should be included in a Company Policy on Social Media and Blogging by its employees. While there are a bunch of information regarding this topic on the web, here are a few links that I found to be informative regarding the subject.

http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html

http://www.marketingtechblog.com/blogging/engage-brian-solis/

http://mashable.com/2009/06/02/social-media-policy-musts/

There are companies that are super strict with their policy and don’t allow their employees to mention them anywhere on the internet. Then there are others that encourage there employees to talk about the company. Which ever options you choose, companies should be actively managing their name, product names and brand constantly. One great way to do this is using Google Alerts. Take a look at my post on Internet Monitoring 101 for more info on Google Alerts.

Goodbye FBML, Hello iframe…

Posted: 23rd March 2011 by jnosal in branding, Facebook, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Social Media

On March 11, 2011 Facebook announced that they will be no longer be using FBML (Facebook Markup Language) to build custom fan pages. All new pages will now be using the iframe tag giving a greater flexibility with content on your Fan Page.

iframes allows you to embed a full HTML document including the HTML, HEAD and BODY tag contents. You can use CSS formatting, add Flash and YouTube content and do some great content development to drive traffic where you want it.

If you are just getting started with developing pages on Facebook, you will need to know that you are limited to a maximum of 492 pixels wide for images and any content that you are developing.

There are a number of great websites and Facebook Apps that can be used to develop your Fan page. Here are some of the sites and Apps that I have used:

PageModo – I really like this website due to it making it very easy to generate a page without the need to get your hands dirty with writing code. This site does have cost associated with the multiple tiers for the monthly service. They do have a free one (1) page option. The site is template driven and does have some limits as to what templates the free option can use.

iwi – This is my favorite Facebook App since it offers a lot of options and control for your content. You can work in code or the graphical user interface. The work flow is a little awkward with the need to go to multiple screens to work through the design and preview of the site. The app does allow you to have both a fan and non-fan pages allowing you to target the visitor.

Static HTML :iframe tab – This is another Facebook app that is not as user friendly as it has two fields for html code. The top section allows you to target the non-fan and the bottom allows you to target your fans. I have built a couple of pages using this and been pleased with the results and flexibility. You can install multiple instances of this app to allow for more tabs creating a broader selection of offerings to your visitor.

Once you have your new fan page created you may want to make it the default page for visitors to your presence. To do this you will need to edit your settings. Then under Manage Permissions option you will find a selection for “Default Landing Tab:”. Here you will be able to select the tab that you want to be default.

Tip: Keep in mind that you can do SEO with your fan page. While not all search engines are indexing Facebook content, most Facebook users search within Facebook and if you optimize the use of keywords relating to your product or service you will be in the top results.

If your company is needing help with developing your web presence on your website or Facebook, give us a call at NosalCentral for all internet marketing needs.

If no one searches for your keywords, are they still keywords?

Posted: 13th August 2010 by jnosal in Google, LinkedIn, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, SEO, Social Media

One of the biggest challenges for defining keywords is defining words that are actually searched for in the various search engines. Whether you are working on the content of your website, optimizing your profile on LinkedIn or generating Social Media content. Your keywords need to be relevant to your product or service and more importantly, actually searched for by potential customers.

First we need to have a paradigm shift in our thinking when defining keywords. We need to look at your keywords from the perspective of your audience. Many times we are too close to the subject and frequently define keywords that are what we want to be found by. All to often, these words are far from what our potential customers actually use to search for us.

Talk to your friends and family outside of your business, ask them what words or phrases they would use to describe your products or services. As you talk with them compile a list and look for commonality in what they are saying. You might even use tally marks to keep track of each mention of a word or phrase allowing you to see the hottest words.

Now that we have done a market study, we need to validate our findings. In other words, in the real world search results, how often are our keywords being searched? Google has a great tool to allow us to see just this.

Google has a lot of great tools for making your website much more effective as a marketing tool for your business. And the best part is that they are free. Using Google AdWords which you can access at adwords.google.com. Once logged into your account, select the Opportunities tab, then on the left you will see a link for Keyword Tool. (NOTE: These links may change, if you need help finding this, let me know)

In the top left corner of the Keyword Tool you can enter your keywords. Enter your words and see what the results are, did the results show hundreds or millions of hits? Look at the other results in the list and see if there are higher volume keywords that could increase your exposure.

While in the Keyword Tool, you can also have it scan a specific page on your site and show you results that in and by itself may be quite revealing.

Want to learn more about keywords and other SEO techniques? Stay tuned or give us a call, tweet, follow, like or connect with us.

Keyword Video…

Posted: 16th July 2010 by jnosal in Uncategorized
Tags: Keywords, LinkedIn, Resume, Website

I am preaching the importance of keywords every chance I get. They are critical to being found via search engines. While this is a info mercial for Google AdWords, the message is great for understanding how to define keywords.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TqVPoLg3sE

I love the statement about think from your customers perspective. What words would they search for to find you?

So if you are in marketing, the work search keywords are king. Your web site, LinkedIn Profile and Resumes all benefit from keywords.

Want to learn more, give us a call, tweet, follow, like or connect with us.

Boot Camp for Business

Posted: 6th July 2010 by jnosal in John J Nosal, networking

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a Boot Camp for Business put on by David and Carl over at InterviewToWinBootCamp.com. They recently increased the class to be a two day class with the first day starting at 6:00 PM. We got started with a networking exercise where we traded game cards with the other attendees to collect cards that best matched who we are as an employee. After doing the exercise we learned about the DISC-overy work/personality styles.

D – Dominance
I – Influence
S – Steadiness
C – Conscientious

It was a bit odd for me since I was evenly split between the styles, which made for an interesting conversation. Check out DiscoveryStyles.com if you want to learn more.

The second day, we started at 8:00 AM and started learning about what it takes to have a great personal branding statement. You may know these as an Elevator Pitch or a 30 Second Commercial. It was a great exercise for each of us to give our 30 second commercial and have it focused and precises. Then the fun came… it was time to expand the 30 Second and go for a full 2 minutes. Did I mention that we were doing this in front of a video camera?

As many know, I do regular presentations in front of crowds of up to 200 with only a small amount of anxiety. OK, it is really more excitement due the passion that I have for my topic. I mention this since I was having a real problem getting in front of the camera and talking about myself for 2 minutes. I have not been that nervous since I was giving a speech in front of 250 of my peers and their parents when I was 18 years old.

I made it through the video recording after about 4 takes. I was having a bit of a synchronization issues with my tongue and lips.

For me, the big issue was that we were to add a bit of personal information or specifically a “Wild Card” to our talk. Something that most people did not know about us, something that made us unique or stand out from the crowd.

It was neat to hear some of the others in the class as to what there special thing was. One Lady was the Dallas Public Speaker of the Year, another was an avid water skier. For me, I mentioned my being the 7th Texan to receive the Gold Congressional Award for Achievement, Initiative and Service.

My takeaway from the class was that I need to bring more personal information into my communications. Letting a bit of my personal side out is a good thing when communicating my message. Stories are king, when talking to people, tell a story and they will remember. I’m camera shy, probably due to my being behind them for most of my life.

Would I recommend the Boot Camp for Business to others? But of course! Carl and David have many years of experience in management and team building. They convey some great real world examples of success in implementing the training that we learned in the class.

Carl also provides one-on-one coaching which I am going to have the opportunity to do in the near future. I’ll try and give you some feed back on that once it happens. In the meantime, check out his site at www.concepts3inc.com.

Internet Monitoring 101

Posted: 24th June 2010 by jnosal in branding, Google, John J Nosal, NosalCentral, Twitter

With the ease at which social media and other sites make it to post comments and reviews of a company and their products and services, there is a greater need to be proactively monitoring the internet for mentions of you. Most large companies like AT&T, Dr Pepper/Snapple and Dell Computers all have teams of people that monitor the internet for any and all mentions of their products or services.

As a small business, it is a little cost prohibitive to hire a new head count to do this for you. So I am going to share with you one of my tools that I use to provide this service to my clients.

That tool is Google Alerts, a free product that they offer with an account. The basics of the product is that it is doing a Google Search that is constantly searching for the keyword that you are monitoring. Then each day, it sends you the results in the form of an e-mail with links and summaries of the findings.

I will mention that you are able to define as many of these alerts as you want. As of the time I am writing this blog, I have 22 alerts defined on a wide range of topics.

With my active clients I generally define 2 to 3 alerts associated to their business. First and foremost, I search for the companies name. Second the product or service that they offer. If you are an individual, I would setup an alert for your name, user names or other common id’s that you use online.

Another option that you may define as an alert is the name of your competition. After all, it would be great to see that they are making a new offer and would allow you to counter it with your own great offer. Or even better that they recently file chapter 11.

Once you have an alert defined, start proactively reviewing the e-mail results for any customer comments. When you find these comments actively engage them. Thank them if it is a positive comment. Offer to resolve a problem if there was a bad experience.

I had a positive experience with this last week as an AT&T customer. I was having issues with my DSL service at the house. I made a comment on Twitter about this and within about an hour I had an AT&T rep contacting me to see how they could help. My experience is that AT&T truly cares about the customer experience.

Another aspect of these alerts is to monitor the industry you are in. One of my clients is involved with LEGOs, yes the building block toys we all grew up playing with. I run a alert for simply the word LEGO. I get great information that I can share with him and his audience via Social Media and his website, ultimately adding more value to his potential customers.

We all know that a bad customer experience can kill a business. By using Google Alerts, we can actively monitor the internet for mentions of our businesses name, product or service. Then proactively engage these customers and provide them with a great customer experience.

If you have any comments or questions, please feel free to post a comment or contact us at NosalCentral.

There is a new Social Media site in town…

Posted: 17th June 2010 by jnosal in Facebook, networking, Social Media

This week a new flavor of a social media site has opened to the public in Dallas, San Fransisco and New York City. This new site is Bizzy.com and looks to be a new geo-location based service to connect businesses with customers/potential customers and allow them to have a conversation. At this point it looks to be in the same market as Yelp and FourSquare but a greater focus on the customer relationship.

Here is a quote from their site to help define their objectives with this site:

CONNECT: Build your Bizzy List by browsing the Directory or invite new businessses using “Find Businesses.”
COMMUNICATE: Read and reply to the latest Offers, Events, Tips and Buzzes in your Bizzy List.
DISCOVER: Browse other people’s Bizzy Lists to find new hidden gems that are right up your alley.

One thing that is setting Bizzy apart is that there is a more rigid process for adding businesses to the database. I tried to find a couple of local business that I do business with and found that I had to have a contact name and e-mail address to request that they are added to the system. After submitting a new business I was presented with a note that most business are added in about 24 to 48 hours.

I question how effective this registration process is going to be. Lets say I had a great meal at a restaurant and wanted to post a positive comment. Using the iPhone app, I do a search… Hold it, there is not a search feature to find a business. I grab the manager’s business card then back at the office login to bizzy.com on my laptop and send the request to add them. Now I have to wait several days to leave a comment. Moment lost. I must say that I am an active FourSuare user so I am a little biased to how easy it is to add and tag a new business.

As a business owner, I was able to register my business quickly through my personal account, and able to define my profile (address, slogan, overview and even add a couple of images). I was pleased to see that I was able to announce my business easily on Twitter and Facebook with the buttons provided. After all it’s good to spread the love.

I also wanted to see what it was like to get into the system as a business owner without a personal account first. My experience up to this point has been limited and not very rewarding. After 24 hours, I have not seen an e-mail or any other communication regarding setting up my business. As many are aware, the social media arena is fast paced. I am finding that the process of getting registered and all is a slow process and is taking a little of the hype out of the initial excitement of the release.

The parent company is ReachLocal an internet marketing service that helps SMB’s market their companies. I am interested to see if the registration process involves a sales call or just an e-mail saying go here… to set up your account.

Questions: Will there be an SEM (Search Engine Marketing) opportunity here? So, if I am looking for pizza, will I see an ad (Sponsored Link) or coupon offer from the shop down the street?

I tried out the iPhone app and it is at version 1.1 so there is a lot of room for growth. The UI (user interface) is a bit dull, and has a few areas that are a bit rough and need some cleaning up. Once you drill down into a company the experience is nice with images, specials, files and more. Over all it is an easy way to interface with your feed. I would like to see a way to admin my personal and business account settings if needed. As I mentioned earlier there is no way to search for a business and add it to your feed.

Overall I see this a new opportunity to get social with a business. This looks to be a much better way to engage your customers almost like a customer service portal where you can address issues and questions in the public eye. There is more than just advertising your weekly or daily specials and sharing photos of your latest events, it engaging the customer on a whole new level.

I am going to be keeping an eye on this new service and see where it evolves over next few months. I am going to test this with a few of my clients and see what successful results we can have. Stay tuned for any future updates that I may post regarding Bizzy.

SEO and the Job Hunt…

Posted: 20th May 2010 by jnosal in LinkedIn, SEO

On Tuesday, May 18th I had the opportunity to speak at the CareerConnection “Hire DFW First” Symposium at the Addison Conference Center. Below are a few notes from my presentation.

With the limited number of jobs and the high number of candidates, it is critical to have your Resume and LinkedIn profiles optimized for keywords which will increase the chances of being selected as a candidate.

As you may be aware when looking for a job you are now a sales and marketing professional. You are now the product you are selling and need to market yourself to be know. One of the task that we need to do in this role is to now our market and who our competition is.

First, we need to define a list of 10 keywords that help define what we do. My list is something like this:
SEO, Social Media, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, SEM, analytics

Once you have a list of your keywords, run a few searches on LinkedIn and identify the top 10 in your field. Review their profiles and look for terms that help in increasing your value.

While you are looking at the search results, see if you can find yourself. If you are not in the first couple of pages, you need to increase your keyword usage. Narrow your search to your local area. You can also change the relevance to keywords and have a broader result.

The quantity of keywords on your LinkedIn Profile and your resume is the key. You have to have one more instance of your keyword and you will be above the rest of your field.

For your LinkedIn profile, the Professional Headline, Summary, Specialties and all job titles are the key fields when search. Go through all these fields and add instances of your keywords. Don’t forget that you can use parentheses to add more value as a definition to the job title.

Keep tweaking your keyword count till you are at the top of your field. At that time you will see inquiries about your skills and request for interviews increase.

Keywords are king, the one with the most wins. Know your competition and you will be on top of your market.

QR Codes???

Posted: 21st April 2010 by jnosal in John J Nosal, LinkedIn, NosalCentral, QR Code

Ever wanted to have your own bar code to do things with? They are limited to a certain number of numerical digits and don’t do a lot more than inventory control. I have been hearing talk about QR Codes here lately and have been seeing some interesting uses for them.

What is a QR Code you may be asking? Well, here is one.

One of the uses of QR Codes is with smart phones and allow you to quickly point to a bit of information based on the code. It can be a phone number, SMS, or web address coded in the blob of squares.

There could be a lot of cool uses for this. Imagine having the code on a product package and have it take you to more information on the product or even suggested uses.

How about putting the code on the back of your business card and have it linked to your LinkedIn Profile, your website or portfolio.

Are you doing a trade show? How about putting on in your booth that take a visitor to your contact us page specifically setup for the show to capture date in to Sales Force?

Tomorrow, I have the opportunity to speak to a group about LinkedIn, I am going to put a small sign up that point to my contact page and see what happens. Or maybe I should do my LinkedIn profile.

Do you want to generate one? Check out Kaywa’s website and have fun…

Then load up your smart phone with one of the free apps to scan your new QR Code.

Leave us a comment, tell me how you are using a QR Code.

NosalCentral

Blog Search

Popular Tags

Post Archives