Posts from — January 2010

This is a list of words that YOU have used to describe me. These are words that as far as the Internet knows are what I’m associated with, what I’m known for, and what I’m all about… pretty neat huh? (if you want to see it in full sized glory just click on it, it’s much bigger than the thumbnail).

I created this by first going to my twitter lists and copying all the lists I’m on to a notepad file (360) and stripping everything from them except the list name (which won’t take much time at all thanks to Rick’s awesome excel walk through below).

Next I went to Wordle and dumped the list of words in and created the awesomeness you see above.

Besides being nice to look at what’s the point of doing something like this?

Online Reputation Management

What are you all about? How are people perceiving you? Ware you putting out the right vibe, talking about the right things, being known for what you want to be known for?

Lets say you did this little experiment and you wanted to be known for your charity work, or non profit work but when you looked at the list terms like comic books, art, or goofy came up more than your others. What would that mean to you?

It would suggest you’re not talking enough (or at all) about what you think / want to. It could mean that you’ve drawn the wrong followers for what you hope to achieve on Twitter. It could also mean nothing at all. You’d have to ultimately be the judge of that.

So here’s your homework. Take a few minutes and go make one of these, then come back and put the link to it in the comments below to share with everyone else.

OR share it via Twitter and use the tag #WordleShare

Can’t wait to see ‘em,
Josh “Shua” Peters

p.s. This wasn’t completely original idea, but I don’t know where it came from. I know I either read something, or heard someone talking about something similar to this so if you know who might have beat me to the punch on this please let me know so I can give credit.

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I just found out that on Feb 12th there is a major event set to happen in SLC with a major speaker and not only can I not compete with the event, I want to go to his event. It hasn’t been announced yet but after being contacted by the person coordinating the event it’s a great idea to change the day of the Social Media Strategy workshop.

Anyone who signed up will be refunded and I’ll get the new sate squared away ASAP. The event that’s happening on Feb 12th is going to be awesome and I’m sure when it’s announced you wouldn’t want to be a workshop that day either.

Thanks for reading
Josh “Shua” Peters

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On February 25th & 26th I’m doing a social media 101 workshop. The class only has 10 seats available, and I really want to sell out each seat, so here’s the deal. I will pay you (my local SLC network) to help me fill these classes.

If you refer one person who signs up I’ll give you a  signed copy of TwittFaced.

If you refer two people who sign up I’ll buy your way into the Chris Brogan / Mitch Joel event that will be happening here in SLC later this year.

If you refer three people who sign up I’ll give you a free pass to any one of my other training events (including the ones coming up in Feb).

So how does that sound to you?  Sound like something you want to help me out with?

Thanks for reading,
Josh ” Shua” Peters

p.s. If you’re not from SLC I’m sorry, but I’m working on doing more trainings in different states later in the year.

p.p.s The one on Feb 12th is getting moved for a good reason.

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Well in a word Cotweet. In multiple words it would be that there are several services available like Cotweet, TweetFunnel, Hootsuite, and Splitweet which can help you achieve the goal of multiple users, one account.

So that takes care of technology, but that’s always the easy part. The hard part is figuring out exactly how, who, when, and why.

The first thing you need to figure out is who is tweeting and why. If you have 2, 3, or more people who are going to be using the account it helps to look at why.

Are they tweeting because they absolutely need to? Is it going to enhance their job or make the task easier to manage? Are they tweeting just because they want to, but really have to business doing it?

Figure this out ahead of time to eliminate any potential problems with this down the road. It also helps to know who and why so that you can create a unified voice. You may have 3 people using the account, but you want it to feel like only one.

I’m not saying cover it up that there are multiples, in fact do the opposite and let people know multiple people use it (like Toyota does), but try to keep the voice of the account unified.

When it gets down to the how and when I see there being 2 basic ways to break this problem down.

Break it up by time slots – Figure out a schedule where everyone involved gets their turn. Maybe switch off days, or partial days. Look at the schedules of those involved and see what makes sense.

Break it up by duties – Instead of stating “you are in charge of it on Mon & Wed, you have Tues & wed, etc” figure out tasks those involved are best suited for. For instance have one person finding relevant content to tweet & schedule it, have one monitoring the brand mentions and handling those, have another handling @,dm, & general chatter.

When looking at it you need to find the method that makes the most sense for you, makes the best use of your resources, and helps  accomplish your goals.

Any tips, ideas, suggestions, or stories that have worked for you?

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

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Q: What’s bigger this year than last year?

A: Social media

It’s true. It’s growing like wild fire and catching on quickly. Marketing budgets are increasing in their spend on social media, jobs are opening up in social media and there is more and more innovation and growth in these areas daily.

There is literally a mountain of information out there about social media and theory, application, optimization, ROI, etc. Honestly, it can seem daunting at times and often you don’t know where to start. That’s why I put together these workshops.

Social Media Strategy Workshop Update – This one is getting moved
The first workshop, Social Media Strategy Workshop,  will take place on February 12, and it’s all about social media strategy. Building, creating, and utilizing a social media strategy, along with some different ways to look at some of the popular tools currently out there.

We’re going to start at the beginning and work through creating a social media strategy that you can take home and work on or implement once you leave. In the workshop we’re going to cover the social media GLAM that makes up a strategy

Goals: Learn how to identify your goals and make them work with your business instead of against.

Listening: How to setup listening posts and utilize the data in your strategy.

Actions: The tactics you employ and how they relate to the strategy is critical.

Measurement: What you measure will depend on your goals and enhance the strategy.

The goal of this workshop is to have you leave with a good frame work for your social media strategy

Social Media 101 Workshop
This workshop, Social Media 101 Workshop,  takes place 2 weeks later on February 25th & 26th and is perfect if you’re a beginner, novice, or just want to round out your knowledge a bit more when it comes to social media.

Here we’re going to cover the most popular tools, their application for business, and some of the theory, best practices, and more. If you want to see the whole itinerary visit the event page.

Testimonials & a discount code
Everyone talks up a storm about their own products, and rightfully so. If we didn’t believe in them we wouldn’t do them (usually), so here’s a few of my previous students telling you what they think in their own words. Discount located after the videos.

(Sorry that last one broke over the frame, something weird with the formatting)

So what do you think? Pumped and ready to come? I’m pumped and ready to teach it, so here’s the deal, I have a discount code for you and all I ask of you is to help spread the word, beg your boss, tell someone else who might be interested, or pawn your child to come (okay not really on the last one… that’s illegal).

Social Media Strategy Workshop – SmacShua – $50 off! - This one is getting moved, will update with new date ASAP

Social Media 101 Workshop (Feb 25 & 26) – SmacShua – $100 off!

Thank you for reading and I hope to see you there!
Josh “Shua” Peters

Image from the SMAC workshop & events Set

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PPC Strategy or Pay Per Click Strategy can be just as varied and complex as social media strategy, but just like social media strategy there are some basics that apply in most situations.

Just like any other strategy out there, when creating your PPC strategy you need to first set your goals. Do you want to raise the conversion rates of your current PPC ads? Do you want to get more sales? More clicks? What is it you’re trying to accomplish with your PPC campaign?

Much like social media PPC is just a way to get people to your site. The final conversion happens on your site so you need to have your site optimized. PPC and social media are actually much more related in their purpose and abilities than most people think, but that’s a topic for another post.

Whatever you’re strategy is will be defined by the goals. You will build your strategy based on them and your strategy will be supported by tactics. I’m going to use 2 sample goals here on established campaigns to briefly go over some possible strategies and tactics.
Increase conversion rate and lower bid cost

This is one of the most common goals that PPC strategy can stem from. It’s something that we all want when dealing with any kind of internet marketing, more people buying our stuff, signing up for the site, etc.

Goal:
Increase conversion rate by 15% in 3 months

Strategy:
Conversion rate stems from customers finding what they are looking for and led to from the ad. Bid rate is based on the relevancy of the ads to the landing page, and popularity of the keyword. Converstion rate and bid cost are symptoms of the landing page, ad wording, and target keywords. Each need to be optimized and tested to discover the best combination resulting in more customer purchases, signups, etc.

So here strategy = campaign optimization

Tactics:

Landing page optimization – Make sure all of your basics are covered and remove any unnecessary distractions from this page. The landing page from your PPC ad has one purpose and one purpose only. Make a conversion (how ever you’re defining that).

• A/B testing – This is where you test different versions of your creative to find which one works the best.
  • Check out Google Website Optimizer
• SEO – Make sure all of your SEO basics are taken care of so that when Google checks everything you get a good quality score on the site side of things.
• Ad copy testing – You should have multiple versions of your ads with slightly different wording to see which one catches peoples eyes the best.
• Optimization – Make sure the keywords you hit in your landing page are also covered in your ad copy. If they are vastly different Google will penalize you, however if it’s the same and Google see’s exactly what you tell them they will with the text of your ad it can help you get the lowest possible bid price.

Testing will help you determine what people are looking for and which ads catch their eyes the most. Structure and wording is everything

• Example: “Warning! Don’t buy  TotallyAwesomeProduct until you visit this site.”
• It’s an ok ad, that tries to get people’s attention and get them to your site to buy the TotallyAwesomeProduct. However it could be even better by changing the verbiage.
• New Example: “Don’t buy TotallyAwesomeProduct until you read this (hurry before it sells out again!)”
• “Don’t buy TotallyAwesomeProduct until” – Presupposes they are planning on buying TotallyAwesomeProduct (which they should be because they were searching for it)
• Hurry before it sells out – presupposes it will sell out, and with some products that is a concern (even if it’s an artificial scarcity)
• Again – presupposes it’s happened before so it’s likely to do it again.
• Even better example: “Before you buy TotallyAwesomeProduct read this! (hurry before it sells out again!)”
  • The reason is that starting the ad with “Don’t buy” can sometimes lead to people not buying.

Keyword optimization
Check your keyword density in the site copy to ensure the search engines are picking it up for the right words and that your ads have those keywords. Keyword density isn’t a huge deal in SEO, HOWEVER, it’s good to help you see other keyword opportunities and to understand how mush you’ve used your keywords on your landing pages.

• Optimization – Here we’re melding the optimization done in both the Landing Page and the Ad Copy. Do the keywords you’re focusing on make sense? Are they the right ones? Is everything worded properly?
• Tools – use online tools to help you determine what you should focus on and the optimization tactics will follow.
  • Google Trends
  • Google Insights
  • Google Adwords Keyword Tool
  • SEO Book Keyword tool
  • SEO Book Keyword Density Tool
  • KeyWordDiscovery
  • WordTracker
  • KeyWordDensity

This is just an intro to PPC Strategy and isn’t the end all be all. Your strategy will ALWAYS stem from your goals and not the other way around. It’s the same for social media, SEO, email marketing, banner ads, etc. The strategy you create will be a direct result of the goals you set.

Do you have any tips, tricks, or advice on PPC strategy? I’d love to hear it in the comments below.

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

image by nolifebeforecoffee

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What is #The5 and why is it showing up on some of my tweets? Well #The5 is a creation of the ever inspirational Christopher S Penn. Basically, it’s tagging the 5 best pieces of content you find in your day with that tag for others to find.

Much like Mr. Penn I read a TON, so tagging the 5 best pieces of content I come across is going to be a bit challenging because I only try to share what I consider to be the best content I have come across that day.

This is also why I schedule out my content sharing, so that I don’t release a tsunami of links when I’m reading and instead have it just trickle out through the day.

I think this is a great idea and I’m pretty excited to give it a try, follow the tag, and see what gets put out and how the tag grows. I also hope to see you joining in and sharing your top 5 pieces of found content each day.

Thanks for reading,
Josh “Shua” Peters

image by Zevotron

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Recently I did 4 posts about the 4 basic types of marketing campaigns and some advice for using social media in them. So far we’ve covered:

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