Another Blogging Tool for Your Toolbox
TweetMeme is huge, and bloggers know it. It is a wildly popular way to help people share the brilliant content that you have worked so hard to produce. You will find the TweetMeme button on many popular blogs. Another thing you will often see on blogs is a row of Sociable links. In case you are not familiar, Sociable is a WordPress plugin that makes it really easy to add social sharing links to a blog. I use both of these, and I like them. Kudos to Joost de Valk for creating Sociable and fav.or.it for creating TweetMeme.
Sociable is really cool, but the “Tweet This” button really left me with a need for more. By default, it did not shorten the URL, add a title, or include the “RT @murnahan” that I wanted. So, I thought it would be cool to add a TweetMeme button within my Sociable links rather than to have the extra bulk of both of them at the end of each of my articles. Including TweetMeme and Sociable together just made it look a bit nicer and it keeps all of those sharing links right there together in one place. Now it looks like the image below (see the bottom of this blog article for the real thing): TweetMeme Button Within Sociable
In your WordPress panel, go to “Plugins” where you will see a list of your active plugins. Find your “Sociable” plugin and click “edit”.
Don’t be intimidated if you are not a programmer. You are just looking for a little piece of code that looks like the image below. Simply search within the page for “sociable_tagline” and you should find it easily.
The part you will be working with is actually the very end of this, right after the closing “div” and immediately before the double quote (“) followed by a semicolon (;). This is the spot where you will add the snippet below to include your TweetMeme button. It will need to be formatted a tiny bit differently than you would use in other places. Below is a snippet for you to edit as necessary.
The code above will work, but you will probably not want to stop there. You may want to add things such as your Twitter username to retweet, which you may add by putting “&source=yourusername” right after the word “permalink”. If you want to add information such as a Bit.ly API key, that is easy, too. If so, just add it in the way you normally would, according to TweetMeme documentation, but be sure that you have a “\” slash before any double quotes (this is easy to overlook).
Of course, there may be slight variations in different versions of WordPress and Sociable, and if so, feel free to include your experience in the comments here. As with all programming, you work at your own risk and I will not be held responsible if you blow something up.
I am such a fan of this product that I want to tell you this right upfront: I have not been hired by Wibiya to market for them, and I do not have anything at stake here. My reason for blogging my review of Wibiya is nothing of the sort. It is just so cool that I was compelled to give my testimonial. Now, shouldn’t we all be so fortunate to have fans who feel like that?
Wibiya is kind of a funny name, and it may not just roll off the tongue the way Twitter, Facebook, or Squidoo does. All the same, I think this is a social media service you will see in use a lot more in the future.
Website Toolbars Are Not Created Equal
I have used toolbars on various websites before, and some were pretty cool. I have even scripted my own website toolbars from scratch and made them work really nicely with social sharing links, custom URL shortener, and all of the neat stuff you can pack into the little 50-80 pixel space you would expect from a toolbar. I am kind of geeky like that. I very often choose the hard way of programming, by doing it all myself from beginning to end. That way I get the exact result I am looking for, and not include all of the extra junk that most off-the-shelf programming code will include for meeting every possible scenario on every possible type of website. As you can see at the bottom of each page on my blog, I have chosen Wibiya on this website, and for some good reasons.
Here are just a few things I like about Wibiya:
Non-invasive and fast-loading (unlike some web toolbars).
Wibiya is highly customizable.
Simple site-search function located out of the way of other site elements.
Easy photo and video gallery implementation with multiple photo sites.
Nice RSS features.
Users can do more and see more without leaving the site.
Additional statistics reporting for Wibiya application usage.
Many available applications ready for use.
Social Media Interaction and Wibiya Toolbar
Social media interaction is clearly an important part of my job. I interact with blogs (mine and many others), Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a big list of other social networks. There is no better way to know if my work is useful than to share it with others and hear from others to gather their opinions. That is why most bloggers love comments on their work. It means people are paying attention.
Another way to know if people are paying attention is how long they are on your website and how many pages they visit. My blog has an average time on page of over four minutes, over two pages per visit, and a bounce rate around 20-25 percent. To me, that is about as awesome as bacon (I love bacon)! So, any way that I can improve these stats would be even more awesome … like cigarette and coffee flavored bacon.
One great way I have found is to not just let people see that little piece of you, but to see a bigger picture. This goes for big corporations and individuals alike. If you have something valuable to share, you should share it in whatever way people want to receive it. That can mean meeting them where they are, on their terms, and on their preferred networks. This is something Wibiya can help to improve.
Try it out and see what I mean. There is a Wibiya toolbar on the bottom of each page on my blog. Click a few things and find out why I like it. I will also include a couple websites by friends (and my wife) who chose to use Wibiya. Check them out and see how they used it.
If you decide you want one for yourself, you can get yours at Wibiya.com. There is a free version and multiple upgraded packages available to choose from.
If you are not going to eat that Digg fame, may I have a bite?
I was feeling a bit down about Twitter yesterday after remembering those days when Twitter was the next big Digg.com-like traffic-generating left-coast geek craze. If you were there, you would know it as the days when everybody who Kevin Rose (of Digg.com) had worked so hard to encourage to get their moment of Digg fame had become Twitter-stunned. It was back when anybody who had been kicked off Digg.com professed that tweets were the new diggs, and it was time to adapt to the new rules.
What The Heck is Digg?
For my readers unfamiliar with Digg, I will explain it in simple terms. Digg.com is a massively important … no, wait … monumental piece of Internet marketing history. It is a largely bullshitopotomus platform for zit-faced Star Wars fans to gain importance by stroking each other’s ego. The primary demographic are 17 year olds pretending to be 30, and 45 year olds still wearing Scooby Doo pajamas. Digg users can be largely summed up as semi-adult with $200 per hour talent getting paid $13 per hour to submit “diggable” stuff without looking like a “business digger”. They will carefully digg a squillion things per day while they sit in their mother’s basement passing time until she kicks them out on the street to get a real job and stop playing on that damn computer.
Typical Digg Users Need Jobs
A typical Digg user would be more inclined to plagiarize somebody’s good resume and hack their way into a real job, but there is a catch. They are hard-pressed to find time in between potentially popular photos of Lego sculptures and celebrity gossip to throw their Digg authority upon and earn another $0.43 per click for that advertisement which is cleverly placed between that badass Lego sculpture of The Empire State Building and Jennifer Aniston photoshopped making out with their buddy. When they have time to eat their bologna sandwich and chips (thanks mom), they sit there thinking “Damn those Lego statues and funny photos of the dude crashing his skateboard. I could have been somebody! … and Damn You Jennifer Aniston!
The Big Point About Digg
So the point of this article was actually this: I wrote something yesterday to tease Twitter users. I titled it “How To Become Popular on Twitter Without Actually Being Useful” and it was pretty well-received. Fame? No, not fame really, because I used to see many times as much attention to an article on Twitter … any article on Twitter. Heck, I could tweet about blowing my nose and see 100 retweets back when Digg was supposedly dead.
Damn it … those zit-faced kids went back to Digg, but I still found some people amused by my Twitter humor and snarky insight. What I have done here is to point out yet another typically popular thing to do. If you have something popular come out of your blog, it is often a good idea to follow it up with something of a similar nature that people can relate to. It really is an important practice, because your audience will tell you what they want, and you should be willing to deliver it.
I was going to blog about something totally different today. Blame the 40-something year old in the Scooby Doo pajamas and those knucklehead Twitter people who surprised me with their signs of a heartbeat yesterday.
By the way, I should add that those zit-faced fellas on Digg really don’t have a sense of humor. They just act like it for $0.43 per click. Sorry … this is one blog post the Digg fellas probably will not like very much, but you are welcome to Facebook it!
I recently returned home after an all-day meeting with a company in need of my SEO and social media marketing services. I wrote about them in my recent article titled “99 Percent of Marketing Fails, But Eleanor Can Fly!“. The company asked me to come to Chicago and meet with them at length about their needs, and get to know them. They don’t just want a consultant, they want me to share in their vision and help them to achieve some really big goals. They want my commitment to their long-term success.
We had a great time, and I learned a lot about things which make the company really great. The culture of the company is to do things with purpose. They do meaningful things and they do them for the right reasons. Their purpose is not all about the money, but the money is all because of the purpose. I suppose it is easier for them to come by their purpose, because they are a family-owned company in their fourth generation. The culture was passed down, and there is a strong sense of responsibility that comes along with that. I am still optimistic that a greater purpose can be developed in newer companies, too. They must first understand that greater rewards come from a bigger vision than themselves, and not just a clever business plan.
Tangent Thinking Creates Great SEO and Social Media
While I was meeting with these fine folks, we often spoke in tangents. We let our minds wander with our ideas. Thinking and sharing your tangent is often the best way to discover your greatest creativity. I told the guys that if I was there in the office each day, much of my best work would not be sitting at a desk and doing geeky stuff like reprogramming their websites, but rather pacing the sidewalk smoking cigarettes, and chugging coffee. I forgot to add the telephone. I need cigarettes, coffee, and a telephone so I can call for more inspiration and ideas from that perfect person in my giant network of creative and resourceful friends who can help me think through my latest flash of genius.
I explained that good SEO takes a lot of hard work, data analysis, and understanding of technologies, but that great SEO requires something a whole lot different. It requires creativity, passion, and doing something truly exceptional and showing people what makes your company amazing. Yes, SEO is a whole lot more than just picking some keywords and putting them on a perfectly crafted website. Really great SEO (search engine optimizers) know that asking for a link from other webmasters is a huge waste of time. They know that if you do something really out of the box that people love, more people will link to you because they are compelled to share the value you provided them. Yes, there I said it. I just gave you the single best tip in my SEO bag of goodies.
When the SEO Light Bulb Comes On
While I was on a tour of the company’s facility with the VP of Marketing, his right-hand man, a brilliant note-taking scribe who goes by the title of “Director of Innovation” came to re-join us on the tour. The three of us stood in the “bird cage” high atop a huge facility where employees were working hard to do their jobs. As we talked about them, it really began to feel like they were not just there to get the job done, but that the culture of this company allowed them to all be a part of a bigger picture. They worked side-by-side with family members, and I don’t just mean the strong family which is the company. They worked with people they had known since birth … you know, actual family members. Many of them had been there for a very long time. Sure, jobs are harder to find these days, but I don’t think these people came to work each day just because this was the only job out there for them. They understood the vision, and if any of them question their corporation’s intentions, they shouldn’t. I don’t. Hearing it from a guy with the founder’s same name, I can say that the higher-ups really have a whole lot of heart wrapped up in that staff. They really do care about the employees, and they feel a huge sense of responsibility to the thousands of people it can affect if they make bad decisions. It gave me goosebumps more than once.
While we stood there talking about these hard workers and sharing our visions for the company, the Director of Innovation had a moment which really came to seem like a light bulb turning on. He knew that what I do is more than just things he had read about SEO and Internet marketing, but had not put his finger on it just yet. In this light bulb moment, he really started seeing how the initial perceptions of SEO as a technical trade went a lot deeper. He noticed that it also has a lot greater than expected roots in people, talent, creativity, networking, and so many other branches of a marketing tree. It was in this conversation when he realized that there really is a lot more to the job description of search engine optimizer than he thought. It is not just about getting a bunch of website traffic. It also has a lot to do with being able to express the value of something, and doing it in a way that people can relate to. It has to do with building a brand and sharing that great culture of the company with other people who will appreciate it and benefit from it. It has to do with building consumer confidence, which often takes a lot more than just being the first search result when people search for what you offer.
Social Media Seeds SEO, But Here is How!
In our discussions, I mentioned that social media is like seeds of SEO. Actually, SEO is social media, and I will explain that briefly. If you consider that Google’s most important SEO ranking factor is quality links pointing to your website, you can see that it is all about the people’s opinion. People who have confidence in your brand, and see value in your message, will link to your work. Google is just a bigger tree in the social media forest. It reflects what the people like, and what the people want. It is largely based on the same principle of great things being popular.
Google is just a bigger tree in the social media forest. It reflects what the people like, and what the people want. It is largely based on the same principle of great things being popular.
There is a lot more to it, but it is the whole forest that I want you to see. Sure, you can swap a bunch of links and ask people to link to your website. If you think that works so great, consider how long it would take to get thousands of incoming links to your site by asking for them. Then consider how much more effective it would be for your business to do great things and provide great value, then present it in a way that people will love to share. Getting this wrong is why I say that most SEO fail at link building.
How Does a Good Business Become Great?
A wise man who knew about making a good business great described it as feeding the gorillas. You must give them what they want, and they want bananas. Give them bananas and they will be happy gorillas who will be loyal to you. I think there was a lot more wisdom in this than just the picture you have in your head right now of a silly man throwing bananas to a gorilla (you saw that guy in your mind, too … I know you did). It means giving people what they want in life and realizing that is the most effective path to getting what you want. This holds true, whether it is a link to your website, a purchase from a customer, love of another person, or becoming a massively successful brand. Feeding bananas to gorillas is what made the company I met with yesterday a great one. They have been giving people what they want for a long time, and the success is evident.
I really enjoyed my trip to Chicago and the day I spent getting to know these guys. I hope they see just how much similarity we share in our methods and motivations. I suspect as they read through the copies of my book, “Living in the Storm” that I left with them, they will see that I strongly believe in feeding the gorillas, too.
Mark’s Side-Note
This may seem a bit outside of the topic, but it does relate. I want to add that while I visited with my wife on my way back home, she sensed an emotional attraction that I have to this company. She said that from all I told her, I could not have dreamed up a more suitable and exciting opportunity to do the things I love than what this company has in mind for me. I was not looking for this, and I have been a CEO for two decades. The company found me, and has expressed an interest in making me an employee of their corporation. This is certainly not something I would normally even consider. At the same time, it really proves that if you do great things, with great purpose, and you present it in a way that people love, nearly any goal can become reality.
US Airways Consumer Scrutiny
I just read a blog article about a poor customer experience with US Airways. It got me to thinking about the ways we listen, and I think it could be described as two different types of ears.
Consumer Listening: Skeptical Ears
The first type of ears are those of a skeptical consumer. We have skeptical consumer listening skills which are pretty basic and instinctive. These are the ears we use to hear scandal and negativity. Most people have this set of ears cranked way up to hear anything they need to know as a consumer.
Consumer watchdogs are everywhere, and social media brings them out in a big way. In fact, it allows each and every one of us to be a consumer watchdog and to tell our story. Anybody with a bad experience can make a pretty loud sound using social media.
Consumer Listening: Marketing Ears
With a different set of ears we hear the marketing message of a company. We turn the sensitivity of those ears way down. These are the ears we use to hear all of the good things that a company does, and the reasons we should buy from them.
As a test of your ears, just consider it this way: Do you hear me better when I say that I want to provide you with my valuable SEO and social media marketing services (and I do), or when I warn you about ways you may be screwing up your SEO or social media marketing? You see! Your instinct is to hear what could hurt you, more than hearing things that can help you. This is why it takes so much more effort to spread a good marketing message than to spread a negative message about a company.
We have all heard that it takes many “rights” to correct a “wrong”, but what if you could turn the “wrong” into a “right” of sorts?
Turning Up the Marketing Ears
There are a lot of ways to turn up people’s marketing ears and help them to hear you. Ironically, it can sometimes come from whispering into their other set of ears … their skeptical ears. If you are running a business and somebody is talking about your brand, you should be listening to the negative and even using it to your advantage. I see it all the time that companies are either not paying attention, or they hear negativity about their brand but do not address it. They just hide their head in the sand like an ostrich and wait for things to blow over. What they often overlook is all the potential for benefit they may be missing. They see it only as damage, and often try to ignore it in hopes that it will go away. The truth is that it is not going away, and ignoring it only serves to cause a sense of passive aggression. It often makes people want to scream even louder about their distrust or discontentment.
US Airways Best and Worst Scenario
What if US Airways hears this message of discontent about their brand and ignores it? It means that they will further lose faith from this consumer, and also that of others he encounters … both online and offline. On the other hand, what if US Airways used it as an opportunity to regain his faith? What if they were able to improve his opinion of US Airways and even come to make him a fan of their company? Can you imagine the value of turning it completely around and showing a disgruntled consumer that you really do want to make them a happy customer?
I suspect that the disgruntled US Airways customer, Jeff Gibbard will soon have answers to whether US Airways is listening. In the meantime some skeptical consumer ears are perked, and just waiting for US Airways to whisper.
Update: 14 June at 7:30 p.m. USA Central TimeAmerica West is Listening
I would like to add thatĀ America West Airlines, which is the same company asĀ US Airways (they merged in 2005) has been here and did nothing! They gave no reply, and made no attempt toĀ apologizeĀ to Jeff Gibbard or even give an excuse.
Here is a screen capture from my visitor log which clearly shows that this article is visible, even to the noisy airline industry.
