A Rant: Why I May Ignore Your Social Media Invitation

Posted on February 4, 2012 by cheryl

Wanna be my peep? Tell me why.

Social media etiquette – introductions are requested

How often have you invited someone to Link, Follow or Friend without reminding the person how you are connected? There are some “rules” for social media etiquette that somehow don’t cover this topic and some that do.

Social media etiquette makes the Web a nicer place

LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and Twitter all have suggestion mechanisms to help you find and connect with those that may be your friends, former co-workers, colleagues, or even former flames. In the drive to “get the numbers up” many people click, click, click to add new peeps.

Twitter and Google+ both allow you to follow or circle people without their permission. So, understanding new connections’ motivations is not as much of a concern as it is with Facebook and LinkedIn. With these two social media platforms, the emphasis is on a personal connection. I like what Cision’s Yvette Pistorio wrote in her blog post:

Introduce yourself. When you follow/friend/engage with people who may not know you, introduce yourself. It helps break the ice and open the door to conversation. Let them know who you are, what you do (if connecting for business) and how you came across them…it might just make a great impression. Be transparent about what you are connecting with them for.

Now I don’t want to sound like a curmudgeon, but if you want to be my Facebook Friend isn’t it just polite to introduce yourself? And if you want to be Linked, shouldn’t I know that you’re not a ball and chain?

Tell me who you are

I’m delighted to get to know new people, after all, I do brand myself “The Connection Maven,” but if I don’t know you, I don’t always understand your motivation.  Do you want to sell me something? Do you want to become a client or do you just want to ask me out for a cup of coffee? Or maybe you want to find a new job? I’m not a mind reader and so I have no idea why you may want to become connected. So, just tell me and we’re cool.

I’ll be your Friend. LinkedIn posse member and I’ll re-tweet your Follow Friday tweets. Just give me some context for our pending friendship.

Thanks, and rant over.

Photo credit: flickr user Joelk75

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Optimizing Your Blog Posts

Posted on February 2, 2012 by cheryl
Google Trends shows WordPress to be most popular blog softare

WordPress is the most popular blogging software in the world. The green line indicates how many WordPress blogs there currently are. Click the image for more details from Google Trends.

Optimizing Blog Posts–How Tos

Ever think about optimizing your blog posts? Oh, you’re not writing any posts? By not writing posts, you’re missing the most awesome way to use the techniques of inbound marketing and boost your SEO. This article illustrates optimization by showing you all the relevant ways to use your keywords.

Blogging, despite multiple announcements of it’s death, is still the best way to develop inbound marketing content that can bring your prospective customers to you and get your company some serious cred–if you do it right. And it can also help you demonstrate your professional knowledge, experience and distinguish your company’s brand all at the same time. Blogging is a BOGO. And who don’t love BOGOs? Right?

The first requirement is that your website have a blog. Popular blog platforms include Blogger, WordPress.com, and Tumblr. These work well for you if you don’t have a website, however, to gain SEO goodness, your blog is best a component of your website. In our opinion, it is the only way to fly. We recommend WordPress in a self hosted install. WordPress is the framework that currently powers 70,952,490 websites and blogs.

Steps to optimize on page

  1. Choose to write, or post a photo or video that is a topic or idea related to your brand.
  2. Have a purpose for the content. For example if you are a pie shop and bakery, you’ll probably want to write and post photos, recipes and testimonials about your pies, always staying focused on your primary brand message as well as your secondary messages and your buyer personas.
  3. Know your company or brand’s keywords, (click the link on keywords to use the Google Keyword Tool.)
  4. Use your keywords in your blog post copy. The earlier in the content the better. Don’t overuse them. Overuse will not earn you SEO goodness.
  5. Use your H1, H2, H3, H4 tags appropriately. These are HTML tags that are defined in your website or blog’s CSS and which tell search engine spiders what is important.
  6. Use images.
  7. Use Alt tags on images.
  8. Make sure image file names are titled with keyword rich titles as well.
  9. Use interstitial links. Also called on page links, these are links within your text that provide on-page direction to your readers and to spiders to related and important anchor content on your website.
  10. Use “slugs” for optimization.
  11. Use page title for optimization.
  12. Emphasize important words with either bold or italics, but don’t go overboard!

This annotated screen capture below illustrates a few of the optimizations.

Optimizing Your Blog Posts

Below is an example of how the page title and the slug must both contain your keywords for the post.

Both your page title and slug must contain your keywords.

Be sure you use your keywords in your Alt Tags and Image Titles as displayed below.

Alt Tags Are another place for optimization

By developing good blogging optimization habits your content will help you earn your company website some high quality rankings and provide content that is helpful or persuasive to your potential customer.

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Charleston PR & Design’s Cheryl Smithem guest blogs for About.com

Posted on January 31, 2012 by cheryl

Food Social Media and The Food Entrepreneur

Food & Beverage channel publishes Smithem’s original content about marketing specialty food products

Cheryl Smithem, CEO of Charleston PR & Design, LLC, has been tapped to author posts for the About.com Food and Beverage category channel. The category channel provides advice and direction on the development, production, operation and marketing for specialty food companies and products. The channel is managed by Domenick Celentano, a former specialty food industry executive and professor of marketing. Smithem’s posts on marketing and social media for specialty food companies and entrepreneurs appear every few months. Smithem’s first post, “The Benefits of Twitter for Food Entrepreneurs, A Better Way to Get Your Product on the Consumers Plate,” was published in the final quarter of 2011.

Celentano selected Smithem to guest blog when he interviewed  Slather Brand Foods’ founder Robin Rhea. Smithem “pitched” Rhea to Celantano. Smithem is the public relations contact for Slather Brand Foods.

To be published in late February 2012, Smithem’s next article “Content marketing for Specialty Food Companies and Entrepreneurs” teaches specialty food companies how to use content marketing as a component of their public relations and marketing communications plan.

Charleston PR & Design, LLC is a provider of marketing communications consultation for diverse clients. The firm provides guidance to entrepreneurs and businesses just getting established or rebranding themselves. Charleston PR & Design, LLC formulates brand strategy and positioning; researches and develops marketing plans, content and collateral; plans and implements social media strategy; develops content-managed websites; and plans a company’s public relations.

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Website Homepage Design

Posted on January 25, 2012 by cheryl

NY-Times You're the Boss Logo

Website homepage design and branding discussion

The NY Times You’re the Boss Blog regularly offers panel critiques of websites. In a recent post, the author Gabriel Shaoolian shares observations about how Bi-Rite Market’s website can be improved. Many of the panel’s remarks are well-taken.

What especially caught our attention is this observation of what makes a good home page:

A good home page, I believe, should act as a gateway to all of the information on a site. It should offer a core business message — what makes you different from and better than your competition — and then provide easy navigation to pages that address specific interests or needs.

We also agree with the panel’s observations that the Bi-Rite video (currently referenced as a text link in the right column,) should be placed front and center on the home page–replacing the blog posts. The video offers a passionate view into the heart of the Bi-Rite brand. And in our opinion, what sets your business apart, and makes you different, should be highly evident from the first moment viewing your homepage.

Why don’t you go read the post and come back and share your observations with us on what you think makes a good home page? We’ll wait right here for your remarks.

via The Difference Between a Good Web Site and a Great Web Site – NYTimes.com.

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20 Reasons Rebuild Your Business Website on a Content Management System

Posted on January 22, 2012 by cheryl

iron filings attracted to magnet

Content management system and content marketing imperative

Old-fashioned press-release-only public relations are done. The days of episodic interruption advertising as the primary tactic of a small businesses marketing are gone. What’s replacing Yellow Pages, printed newspapers, television and radio advertising? It’s content marketing.

Content marketing explained

Content marketing is the ability to self-publish both information and original content that attracts, meets and satisfies your potential customers at every point in their pathway to purchase. While good advertising is still integral to mass marketed products, for small businesses, the most cost affordable and successful tactic is content marketing. Good content provides exactly the right resources to help your customers narrow their options. Content marketing well done funnels customers to your firm.

Engaging, distributed content key to marketing strategy

The strategic tactics of content marketing rely on insight into your customer’s needs and the ability to distribute your content, be that blog posts, infographics, images of your products, podcasts, vlogs, testimonials, or reviews across the Internet. Your content is distributed across the web, and anchored on your website. Different types of content may be used in varying ways to develop a relationship with your customer.

chart showing the most common types of content and their alignment within the traditional customer lifecycle of acquisition, conversion, and retention

Chart courtesy of Pelin Thorogood and Erik Bratt

Dynamic CMS required

Content marketing is nearly impossible to implement on an outdated Flash-only website or on static HTML pages. The home-base of your content marketing strategy must be a dynamic, website built on a content management system (CMS). We recommend and use WordPress in a self-hosted installation as the best option for most small business websites.

Moving to a content management framework will allow you to:

  1. Author blog posts within your own domain to demonstrate expertise, share insight, and solve customer’s problems
  2. Publish white papers and offer them to site visitors with a simple download and registration process.
  3. At will, easily add new pages or to modify content as needed, without having to go back to your web developer or graphic designer.
  4. Engage with your website’s visitors by offering live content from your social media networks
  5. Host your own video blog posts
  6. Host your own product related videos, or customer testimonials or interviews
  7. Serve podcasts to your customers and website visitors
  8. Provide commenting opportunities on your content
  9. Offer interactive sharing tools for your site’s visitors, including Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (as well has many, many more social web options.)
  10. Capture leads/registrations to your website.
  11. Easily provide RSS feeds of your site’s content.
  12. Automatically, deliver your new content to your subscription list by e-mail.
  13. Integrate your site with your e-mail marketing platform collecting both new subscriptions and displaying your prior newsletters.
  14. Host surveys and collect potential customer’s responses to help direct your company’s growth and direction.
  15. Easily provide up-to-date product and data sheets for customers
  16. Include dynamic search and capture data about what people are searching for as they visit your website.
  17. Offer seasonal specials, sales and flash-sales.
  18. Offer support forums with customer service staff.
  19. Increase your business’s inclusion in search engine results pages
  20. Share your latest earned media articles or press materials with journalists.

Of course not every one of these components will be used by every business, but many of them will be exactly what your business needs to be competitive.

Move your website to a CMS

This year, make it your goal to move your website to a CMS so you can create customer centered interactive, sharable, actionable, content that is compelling and helps distinguish your company from your competitors. Doing so will the the single most important spend of your marketing budget. Because if you’re not doing this, your competitors are and most likely they are going to leave you in their dust. And is that what you want?

To get started planning your new website, we offer this website survey for in-depth planning.

Photo credit: flickr creative commons user oskay

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