Social Media Business Results

Posted By Steve Ulrich on February 13, 2010

Have you been searching for a way to have your blog posts automatically feed to your Social Networks?

Today I found the answer – a service called Twitterfeed.

Twitterfeed allows you to use the RSS feed created by your Wordpress Blog, or the RSS feed tool you use for a different blogging platform, to update your Social Media places. The service is free and easy to implement.

Step by Step:

1. Sign up for the account at: www.twitterfeed.com.
   

2. You will be asked for your email address and a password you
   choose.
   

3. Enter the address of the feed of your blogpost that you want
   to have propagated throughout your Social Media world. For example, my feed is http://socialmediabizresults.com/feed.
   

4. Then test the feed URL to make sure it works, the system gives you the test results. If it works you’ll be able to advance to the next screens.
   

5. Click on the “Advanced Settings” to choose how often it looks for updates, a prefix you want to put in front of your posts (I use “New Post:”), and a few other parameters.
   

6. Continuing on the Step 2, you select which services you want to update with a message about your new post. Twitterfeed gives you the choice of Twitter, Facebook, Laconica, Ping, and Hellotxt. My thoughts are to update your Ping.fm platform, because you can update many more places by using Ping.
   

7. There is a dashboard to maintain your Twitterfeed account, and you can have multiple Twitterfeeds as part of your account, which can update other Twitter or Facebook accounts or Facebook fan pages.

That’s all it takes to use a proven method to get more visibility for your blog posts. I’ve signed up today (Feb 13) and if I’ve done everything correct, this should post to my Social Media places. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Please comment on Twitterfeed, let me know how it works for you!

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Posted By Steve Ulrich on October 7, 2009

It’s out in the open now, I’m admitting it, I am an information junkie.  I love information, always searching, always listening, bombarded by media, advertising, news, social media, new people, new ideas, it goes on and on.  I soak it up, share it, save it, reference it, one big storehouse of information.

About a year ago I discovered Google Alerts – http://www.google.com/alerts  This is one of the services provided by Google, and it’s free to use.  You don’t have to get the free gmail account to use as a Google-ID, but it’s worth doing, since that ID can be used for many of Google’s services.  By setting up an alert by name, topic, industry or other search term, Google keeps tabs on its information sources (Google Blogs, Google News, etc.) and returns entries to you about your search terms, what you want to be alerted about.  Google sends you an email by alert, or daily alerts, to let you know that something has been found.  Having that Google-ID helps, because you can keep a running list of which alerts you have, and the frequency that each alert get delivered to you.

Today I found out about Posterous – http://www.posterous.com  which is an aggregator service.  You can post to Posterous and propagate that post throughout the Social Media world, to other blogs and social networks. I’ve set up Google Alerts to follow several people in the Social Media Community which keeps me abreast of the latest trends, services, and observations,  My friend and Internet Marketing champion, Erin Blaskie – http://www.lifestreamincolor.com and owner of BSETC (Business Services, Etc.) – http://www.bsetc.ca is using Posterous to subscribe to several blogs and delivers those posts in a central way at her lifestreamincolor site. 

One important take-away for you to use is to set up a Google Alert on your name and your company’s name.  This way you can see how your name is “turning up” over the Internet, who’s talking about you, and who’s referencing your company.  Great for market research and seeing how your message is coming across to your community.

Some example alerts I have set up are people:  Michael Port, Mari Smith, MaryPat Kavanagh, Erin Blaskie in the Marketing and Social Media area.  Some of the topics I look for are: Think Big Revolution, Social Media, Social Media and Coaching, Marketing to Marketers, and Small Business Marketing.  I manage my alerts in one big list (having that Google-ID give me this), and have all the alerts scheduled once a day to cut down on email.  You can have a maximum of 100 Alerts set up this way.

My advice – start using Google Alerts as soon as possible to assist with your research, and have a Posterous – http://www.posterous.com day!

Posted via web from Steve Ulrich’s Posterous Collection

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Posted By Steve Ulrich on August 21, 2009

I just found out about a new service called Vyew. It allows you to share your desktop and show presentations like Go to Meeting, but it’s free. Check it out at www.view.com.

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Posted By Steve Ulrich on June 2, 2009

Twitter, the micro-blogging platform, is all about relationship building. Yes, you can promote the kind of doughnut that you’re eating (and ask everyone else which kind they like), share the movie you saw last night (without revealing the ending), or you can build (or add-to) communities by using “Hash Tags”

Hash Tags (characters or numbers preceded by the # sign – like #HSTG) are placed somewhere in you message, usually at the end, that literally tag that message among a group of similarly tagged messages. Guess what – you have a group, a tribe, or some common way of communicating among a group of people who know about the Hash Tag, and use it to mark that message to be read by the people who know the tag. I’ll get to how to use it in a teleconference in a bit.

Let’s say you’re part of a community – people who live in New York City (where I grew up). I found out that there is a Hash Tag in use named #NYC. People who are twittering on topics pertaining to New York City, and want their tweets to be seen by people who are following tweets about New York City (aside from their own followers), might say something like this: “If you’re traveling to NYC and want to really see the harbor, take the Staten Island Ferry #NYC” (95 characters total). If I was a follower of that person I would see the tweet in my list of tweets from those I follow. If I was not following that person I could do a twitter search (”search” option at the bottom of your Twitter screen, the same as going to http://search.twtter.com) and searching on “#NYC,” and that post would be a part of my search results, with many others with that Hash Tag.

Teleseminar Use: If hosting a teleseminar, you can define a Hash Tag that represents your seminar topic. For example Leesa Barnes of Marketing Fit, who hosted the 2009 Social Media Telesummit used the Hash Tag #SMT09 on all of her promotional posts, letters to presenters and teleseminar participants, and used the Hash Tag during the teleseminar calls. To do this make sure that you tell your participants the Hash Tag to use and those who want to be on Twitter during the call, can tweet with each other, guests and hosts, as long as the Hash Tag is part of the message. These posts can always be viewed later on by those who could not make the live call.

This gets better. There is an applicaton called TweetChat www.tweetchat.com which lets you filter out only the tweets which contain the Hash Tag for the call. Encourage your hosts and particpants to use TweetChat. Here’s a step-by-step method:

Posted By Steve Ulrich on May 25, 2009

I have recently experienced some differences in the way Twitter direct messaging works.

When I first started to use Twitter, all of the Twitter-ID’s for those that I followed and that followed me, appeared in the drop-down box which appears when you want to compose a direct message. I selected the ID and then composed the message.

Recently, I’ve noticed that many of the Twitter-ID’s that I’ve exchanged “follows” with, do not appear. I cannot send a direct message if the Twitter-ID is not in this listing. I found that I can go directly to the Twiter profile for the Twitter-ID I want to direct message, click on “message” for that Twitter-ID and then compose the message. When I do this, I get a pop-up message which alterts me that “if I wanted to open the message, there was no application that could open it, or did I want to save it to my PC.” I found that I didn’t have to save anything, the direct message went through anyway.

In researching information around this conditon, I stumbled upon a blog post by “TwilightFairy” which talked about an alternate method to direct message. I tried this, and it worked. You can try it with a Twitter-ID that you don’t “follow” or have “exchanged follows” with. [Not a guarantee this will work].

In your browser enter the following syntax:

http://twitter.com/direct_messages/create/Twitter-ID. The Twitter “Direct Message” box will become active for that ID and you can post the direct message and send it.

Try this out, and send a direct message to me. You can click right here see this in action:

http://twitter.com/direct_messages/create/steve_ulrich

Remember, if the pop-up box comes up asking you to save the file – click on cancel. The message was sent, you can check this in your Twitter profile in the “direct messages sent” section.

I urge you take advantage of this Twitter Tip soon.

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Tags: Twitter Tips

Posted By Steve Ulrich on May 15, 2009

I have just started using “Tweet This” to promote my blog posts or events. This is a wonderful tool that will help you formulate a Twitter post based on what you’re reading. Tweet This automatically creates a shortened URL for your post that will bring a Twitter recipient back to the post where you pointed them.

The code and instructions can be found at the following sites:

http://www.labnol.org/internet/twitter-links-for-wordpress-and-blogger/7995/

http://www.alteredadvice.com/cute-twitter-social-icons-and-tweet-this-code/

If you were to click on the Twitter bird at the bottom of this post, you would get the following

http://bit.ly/sXi0v Reading: Tweet This – Great Way to Promote

The title of the blog post will appear after “Reading:”

I urge you take advantage of this Twitter Tip soon.

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Posted By Steve Ulrich on April 18, 2009

I have a friend who is a Send Out Cards distributor. He has built a business sharing what he knows about keeping-in-touch and using Send Out Cards as the delivery platform. He found an old photograph from Public School, cleaned it up and fine-tuned it in Photoshop. He went into the Send Out Cards editor and created a new greeting card with the photo of his old classmates on the front of the card. He sent the card out to one of his oldest friends, who was also in the class knowing she would get a “lift” by seeing it.

Several days later he goes on to Facebook and what does he see, the photograph from his greeting card and he is one of the taggeed people. In fact his friend had scanned the photo off of the card, loaded it to Facebook, identified and tagged everyone in the photo and posted it.

I tell this story to demonstrate the power of Social Media. Although he didn’t tell me, I’m sure that the folks in the photo started to connect with one another. The simple act of tagging others in a photo guarantees a person will get notified of the action and hopefully view the tagged item. Everyone sees all of the tags next to the photo. Suddenly there is this “rush” of excitement, realizing you can reach out to any of the folks, or that they may be reaching out to you!

Trust the power of social media, and trust your own intuition. We have an electronic opportunity to connect with our past and with folks that once played a part in our life, but somehow drifted away for whatever reasons. If you’ve wanted to connect with folks you may not have been in contact with for a while, go and search for those people in Facebook, Twitter, My Space, Linkedin or Google Alerts. You never know who you will find, or who will find you. It’s amazing how the memories of that distant past suddenly come alive when you do connect and for some folks, the conversation just continues as if time stood still and you both never aged.

I’ve had that happen to me with a friend who had moved away during Junior High School and another who I lost touch with after college. With both of them, the conversation just picked up where we left off, what an awesome feeling and a chance to examine where you’ve been, how you’ve grown and what you have accomplished as you share that with an old friend.

Here’s an invitation for you. Look for people you used to know, if they have a Facebook profile, or Twitter ID. Look for the old photos you may have kept around and present them online for folks who are looking for you. Thomas Wolfe said “you can never go home again.” This is true, but he hasn’t been around for the Internet age and the growth of social media. Examine the possibilities for reconnecting with folks from the past. You never know who or what you’ll find (and what you’ve missed).

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Posted By Steve Ulrich on April 12, 2009

Summary
A poster on the wall at a GM/India Automobile Plant in Halol, India had a lasting impact on me. I want to share with you some insights worth remembering as you build life-long customers. (more…)

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Posted By Steve Ulrich on February 19, 2009

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Posted By Steve Ulrich on February 17, 2009

In the late 1980’s United Airlines produced an advert that spoke more to “business values” than it did for “air travel.” A company president laments the loss of his oldest customer, realizes that the familiar way of doing business has become so much more impersonal and electronic, rather than the old face-to-face, relationship based, handshake to seal the deal way of conducting business. Life-long customers were expected and they were built on “relationships.” He has a plan to set this right, and shares it with his team.

This advert was done prior to e-mail, the Internet, wireless phones, pda’s and the other electronic tools that have become standard in our work. It is as relevant today as it was 20 years ago, maybe more so. View the video below and see how the mesage resonates with you.

The overarching theme of the advert has stayed with me ever since I saw it for the first time. I’m so pleased that it can be viewed on YouTube today. Take a look and then share your comments!

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