Photo: carrotcreative on Flickr

Recently I have noticed more and more people playing the twitter follow game: a rude, strategy-driven ploy to gain thousands of twitter followers in a matter of days.

Here’s the thing: you’re not fooling anyone.

If you have thousands of followers and only a couple hundred tweets, you’re either playing the twitter follow game or you’re REALLY interesting. If you’re that interesting, you can stop reading now. Thanks for coming out; I’m honoured.

If you’re mostly normal, it will take you some time to build up an authentic, conversational twitter community.

Here’s the respectable way to gain twitter followers:

Either a) I see something you said or found something in your bio and think you’re interesting, so I follow you. You then choose to follow me back or not, or b) you see something I said and think I’m interesting and so you follow me; I may then choose to follow you back. The more you tweet, the more likely I am to find something you say interesting; the reverse is also true.

Over time, as we both tweet interesting things, we grow the number of people who follow us and the number of people we follow.

Here’s the obnoxious follow game I’m talking about:

You follow me, usually as part of a batch follow of hundreds or even thousands of people at once with very little regard to relevance. I get an email in my inbox saying you followed so I check out your profile. You are at least slightly interesting if still a little new to Twitter (you’re not fooling anyone – we can tell by the absence of thousands of tweets) so out of politeness I follow back.

Sounds the same as above, right? WRONG! Here’s the rest of it…

I then get ANOTHER email saying you’re following me.

Photo: wiselywoven on Flickr

The thing I didn’t know when I followed you back was that after following ME, YOU then unfollowed, so I would get the email notification but you wouldn’t actually have to count me as one of the (limited) people you follow… then you auto-follow-back only those who followed you back.

It’s EXHAUSTING just thinking about it, and I’m now taking a hard stand against it. If you follow me twice I will deem you totally uninteresting and unfollow whether we have anything in common or not.

Those who want to connect with thousands of irrelevant people just to look important and justify the Social Media Guru titles they are giving themselves are the same people who send auto-responses with craptastic click-my-junk messages that aren’t worth the email they’re sent on. (Thank you Amber Naslund for coining the phrase – very relevant here).

That is not interesting; and it’s not community.

If you really want to build an authentic Twitter community:

• Have a photo on your Twitter Profile.
• Include a bio on your Twitter Profile that actually says something about you – what you do, hobbies, interests.
• If you’re at all inclined with Photoshop or some other such graphic program, build yourself a Twitter background. If you’re not, upload a lifestyle-type photo as a repeating background shot so the rest of Twitter can get a sense of who you are.
• Be yourself; if you try and be someone else it will show. Besides, the coolest thing about Twitter is the fact that the guy who works in insurance, loves dogs and model trains. Passionate about space photography can find other people who share those very same interests or attributes… or at least one or two of them.
• Share things that are interesting to you; if they’re interesting to you, they’ll be interesting to the people who have opted to connect with you (remember you’re being yourself).
• Be choosy about linking to your own stuff. If you must link to each blog entry, please do it without a bot i.e. introduce it to your followers with a note of interest and then for heaven’s sake, don’t tweet it out again. If it is interesting enough, people will RT it for you.
• Reply and Re-Tweet. Please. If I look at your profile and it shows that all you’re doing is musing about life in an endless stream of deep thoughts worthy of SNL circa 1990 without ever responding to anything anyone else says or posts ever, I have zero incentive to follow you back. We all know people who are that self-involved in real life; there’s no need to look for more.
• Grow your network authentically. Watch for good #followfriday listings that share a reason to follow someone – these will usually be from your own network and, therefore, you’ve got a good chance of sharing something in common anyway. Use tools like Twellow or Twitter Grader and find interesting people who share commonalities with you.
• Don’t get hung up on the numbers – friendorfollow.com is evil and doesn’t even deserve a link. There will be people you’ll want to follow who just won’t want to follow you back and that’s okay. Keep following them – don’t let your pride rob you of that information they may be sharing if you want it. Alternatively, some people may want to follow you and you look at their profile and can’t find a single thing to relate to. It’s okay not to follow back. Don’t let your ego be bruised if others feel that way about you – you are most definitely an interesting and unique person and God loves you

I love Twitter. I use it a lot. It’s a very valuable source of information for me and I also use it from a corporate perspective (that’s another post for another day). I want to keep using it and I really do want to connect with other people who share my interests.

I want to connect with corporate marketers (not self-proclaimed social media gurus), moms, adventurous women, snowboarders, runners, Christians, musicians, people living with hemophilia or any combination thereof – the more the better… all these things are in my twitter profile.

If you really have no interest in any of those things, please don’t follow me – that’s what I tweet about.

Lastly, if you are reading this and you haven’t yet joined twitter… try it. Here are some things to consider when selecting a twitter username.

I wrote in November about a project I was working on regarding youth in the snow industry. Well I’ve just taken my favourite project – the Grouse Park Sessions Blog – and moved it to its own server. In the process, I’ve given it a whole new look – a  new theme, some new plugins and some extra Google juice.

The blog is written mostly by 6 great young guys, all under the age of 24, who have made me really proud. They love the parks, and the culture and are able to bring that to all the other young shredders out there in a way that is so full of passion and authenticity. There are two guys in particular that I know are giving this shot all they have to work their way into the industry… and no doubt they’ll do it too.

I got all excited when the blog launched at the end of November; it got 500 views in the first 24 hours. I couldn’t be more excited that in March the blog got over 10,000 views… and it’s still in its first winter season.

It’s funny how when you’re really passionate about something, you don’t mind spending your free time giving it your love and attention. This is certainly one of those things for me. If only I could spend as much time on the snow…

The theme for this blog is Thematic; Urban Shore uses Fusion. The plugins I have installed here are Akismet Spam Blocker, WordPress.com Stats, ShareThis, All In One SEO, Google XML Sitemap, Smart Tube, and Comment Luv. There are plugins for translations, events calendars, image galleries, 301 redirections, polls… basically if you can think it up, someone has created a plugin for it.

Moving your blog from WordPress.com’s free service to your own server has some tremendous benefits, but doing so can be scary for anyone who isn’t very technical, like me. So here is a how-to, in very specific steps, that will outline the exact process I used to get my blog on to its own server. Forgive me if it is a big boring list of steps… that’s kind of how it works; you know… if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…

Getting Started: Domain & Server

Buy your domain
I like NamesPro.ca for domain name purchases though BlueFur, my recommended hosting provider, offers domain name hosting as well. Depending on whether your domain is .ca or .com, .biz or .info or what have you, the price will vary slightly, but it’s not a lot of money.

Order the hosting
I’m going to recommend you use BlueFur Hosting’s Mini Unix Package for $6.95/mo to get started. If you use the code ‘intrinsic’ upon ordering, you’ll get 10% off – thank you, affiliate programs. Select ‘Unix’ from the options and look for the ‘Mini Unix’ option. The drop-down defaults to one full year of hosting to save you 15% (that’s before the additional 10% for using the code ‘intrinsic’); you can change that if you’d like to monthly, quarterly, half year, or two years to choose the option that works best for you.

If you followed step 1 and bought a domain name ahead of time, enter it in the field when asked. If you’d like BlueFur to sell you one, you can select the other option – I just don’t know how that process goes. Once you’ve gone through the purchase process (you can pay via credit card or PayPal), you’ll wait up to about 12-24 hours for BlueFur to set up your account. Once they have, you’ll receive an email with a bunch of information. All you really need to know is your login info, ftp info and name server info. NOTE: This is not the login info for the help forums.

LOGIN INFORMATION:
Control Panel: http://yourdomain.com/cpanel or http://xxx.xxx.xx.xxx:1234
Username: username
password: x1x2x3x4x5x6

FTP INFORMATION:
FTP: yourdomain.com or xxx.xxx.xx.xxx
Username: username
password: x1x2x3x4x5x6

NAMESERVER INFORMATION
ns1.bf-baal.com
ns2.bf-baal.com

Export your WordPress.com blog
Visit your existing WordPress.com admin area, select ‘Tools’ and ‘Export’ and then ‘Download Export File’. Remember where you put the download file; you’ll need it later to import into your new WordPress admin area.

Change your DNS
Go to your domain name service provider, select the domain name in question and choose ‘specify your own name servers’. Then enter the name server information as it appears on the email you received from BlueFur.

Once you enter the name server info, you can select ‘lookup’ and it will automatically find the associated IP address and populate that field for you.

Then you wait. It can take another 12 hours or so before the DNS is switched and your domain name will be pointing to your new server. While you’re waiting for this to happen, you can install the WordPress software on your server.

Installing the WordPress Software

The reason I recommend BlueFur, is they have a simple one-click ‘Fantastico’ install process. All you basically do is log in to your cpanel and click ‘Fantastico’ and BlueFur does the rest of the work for you. So if you’re doing this before your DNS change has taken effect, go to the link on the email they sent and click on the link that looks like an IP address with ‘:1234′ at the end of it. If you’re taking this step after your DNS change has taken effect you’ll visit http://yourdomain.com/cpanel.

Once inside, don’t panic. It looks scary. Scroll down… and look for this:

Then click on the ‘Fantastico De Luxe’ button. Once you’ve clicked it, you’ll see this:

Select ‘WordPress’ from the list on the left, and then the ‘New Installation’ link once it appears.

The next window you’ll see will be a form. This information will be specific to your WordPress installation, not your server. In the first drop-down, your domain name should appear. Leave the next space empty. In the ‘Admin Access Data’ area, you set any username and password you want to use to log in to WordPress in your browser. After that, the info is self-explanatory.

Set Up Your Blog

Login to WordPress
Once your DNS change takes effect and the WordPress software is installed on the server, you’ll be able to log in to your WordPress admin area by going to http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin/ and entering the username and password you used during the installation process. From there, it will look pretty much like the WordPress.com admin area you’ve become accustomed to.

Add Yourself As A User (Optional)
This step is unnecessary if you like the login name you gave your WordPress account. When you import your blog file, it will ask you what user you want to attribute everything to. If you only leave the original admin login set up, all your posts will be attributed to ‘username’ as you set it up in the last step. If that is ‘Admin’ that’s who will appear as the author of all your imported posts. If you would prefer they show up with your name, go to ‘Users’ and click ‘Add New’, then add your name as you want it to appear in your posts as a new username, give yourself a password you like to use, and then give your new user (you) the administrator role.

Import Your Blog Content
Go to ‘Tools’ on the left and click ‘Import’. Then choose ‘WordPress’ at the bottom of the list. You’ll then get a file select tool that you can use to go find the export file from your WordPress.com blog and import it. If you set up a new name account, be sure to select it from the list. You can also create it from there, but when I tried it I confused myself. It’s easier to do it as a separate step.

Choose and Apply Your Theme
Find a theme you like from the WordPress Theme Directory or a premium theme from a reputable developer. Download the .zip file. Extract the files to a single folder and place that folder within in the /public_html/wp-content/themes/ directory on your server. The easiest way to do that is an FTP client – I used FileZilla (it’s free). Just login using the FTP info supplied in the original email you received from BlueFur.

Once the folder is in the right place, the chosen theme will appear in your ‘Themes’ page in the ‘Appearance’ section of your WordPress admin area. You can then select the theme you want and continue with it as you did when you first set up your free theme on WordPress.com

You will need to set up your user settings, again, like how you want your permalinks structured, preferred comment moderation etc. but there isn’t much left to do at this point other than browse various plugins and install them right in the WordPress admin area.

So that’s it… in a nutshell. Happy blogging!

Choose your username wisely.

Your username on Twitter is your @. Mine is @seeking_balance. It’s not bad, but If I’d gotten on the wagon sooner I may have been able to secure @michelleevans or @imseekingbalance or even @seekingbalance (all of which were taken but the time I got there). I might have even thought long and hard and tried to get @isb or just simply @balance.

Here is what I want you to consider:

I think if you’re going to tweet personally, try and get your name; if you’re going to tweet for a company, use the company name. Those are ideals. Now that said, don’t use either of those options if the name is long; the shorter the better. Here’s why: When communicating via Twitter, you only have 140 characters to say what you want to say. When you tweet, your username isn’t part of that count BUT, when someone replies to you, your @username becomes part of the message. Or if you want someone to re-tweet what you tweet, they will include “RT @username” which then can make it really difficult to post your whole tweet, especially if it used up nearly the full 140 characters to begin with.

So choose wisely. Shorter is better. Your name is good. Your company name is good. ‘CandyAss427′ is NOT good. ‘QUuElz’ looks like spam and usually is. This is not the time to go with that handle you’ve been using for the last 15 years just because you use it for everything.

This is your brand online. Proceed with caution.

EDIT (Added April 14, 2009) – I just came across this really good post called Ten Things You Must Know Before Using Twitter. It’s useful… go there next.

For that matter, they’re not on Twitter, or LinkedIn, or MySpace either. They have absolutely no desire to get involved with online social networking whatsoever.

The image to the right – the Conversation Prism, created by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas – displays the myriad ways people can connect with one another online: Blogs, Social Neworks, Life Streaming, video, music and photo sharing, are just some of the activities that tie us together in cyberspace.

The subjects:

Woman #1 – Karen
Karen is a stay at home mom to two children and a wife to a hard working businessman. In her opinion, online social networking is for creepy people from her past – old high school acquaintances and old flames – to look her up and relive the glory days or outright stalk her. She barely has enough time to keep her kids stimulated, fed and cleaned and her house organized to throw in something so mundane as wall posts or super wall giggles.

Woman #2 – Laura
Laura is an elementary school teacher with a husband an a young son. Her biggest concern about online social networking is exposing her personal life to her students and their parents. School workplace politics are rough enough without one’s student’s parents knowing what events you may be attending or what you might be growing in your Li’l Green Patch.

Woman #3 – Sarah
Sarah is a businesswoman who owns a womens’ gym and is also married with one young son (yes, we all share some commonalities, hence, the hanging out together). She has no real desire to share anything of her personal life with the world via the internet; she’s perfectly happy to rely on interpersonal communication via either email or telephone, but prefers in-person connection.

Here’s where we disagree: While they each consider online social networking to be of very little value, I consider it to be a new and better way of communicating with people around me and a source of rich information and connection. Even the BBC says Social Networks ‘are new e-mail’.

Photo: Jason Nicholls on Flickr

Back in the 1990′s when email was making its way into mainstream business practice, there were still naysayers who suggested they didn’t need it. If they needed something from someone they could phone them up; if they needed a document signed they could fax it or mail the original. And before there was email there was the telephone. When it first became available, while there were a few who jumped on the bandwagon like the tech crowd to twitter, there were many who were reluctant to see its value, preferring instead to walk over to someone’s office to talk or wait for their regular meeting. Failing that, they could send a letter or a telegram. Seems a bit archaic now, no?

Technology changes. Today, we can sit on a plane traveling from Vancouver to London while accessing the internet on our iPhones using WiFi at 37,000′ to update our networks with a twitpic of the guy sitting next to us. Not because he’s interesting, but just because we can. If he’s drooling on your shoulder and you don’t know his first name, all the better.

Photo: Christopher Chan on Flickr

Times they are most certainly changing, and it’s time to embrace the power of the internet for each and every individual. What provides value to one person might not provide value to the next, but if you look in the right place, you will find an enriching experience. Online social networks are extremely valuable in today’s society and can help with everything from job search to business marketing and from connecting with a niche hobby group to finding a local mom’s group.

No matter how obscure your interests or how lofty your goals, you can use online social networking to connect to others who share your passions and can help you achieve your dreams.

Online social network examples:

To Karen:
Online social networking can help you to connect with other mothers who share your passion for a sparkly-clean house. You can find other wives of executives that can relate to the stresses you’re under trying to raise your children while maintaining peace in your home that doubles as an office. You can also save valuable time looking for the best place to get your nails done by asking the question within your network to see what they come back with. After all… the collective response is usually pretty bang on.

To Laura:
Online social networking can help you to connect with other teachers who share your expertise to provide synergies within your class preparations – the Second Grade Teacher’s Club on Ning, for instance. You can find a welcome distraction from grading papers or build a space to deliberately connect with your students’ parents. How enriching an experience for your students if they had their own social network that you used to keep your classroom connected to one another for homework help, carpooling or group assignments?

To Sarah:
Online social networking can help you connect to your gym’s members, to make them feel special, to engage them with you and with one another. It can help you to improve sales in a time and place where everyone is searching for some spare cash. It can help you to find other adoptive moms to connect with and learn from or network with other professionals from your religious community who may not be in the same city.

Photo: Graham Ballantyne on Flickr

You can avoid online social networks for a time, but imagine trying to live life without a telephone? It won’t last forever. You can’t fight the future, but you can make sure you’re getting the most enriching social networking experience possible.

Join Facebook. Connect with your friends. If people send you friend requests and you don’t want to invite them in, don’t. Life is too short to have to justify yourself. I don’t usually connect on Facebook with anyone I don’t know in real life and for the most part, there’s quite a close connection.

If you’re in business (or have ever had a professional job for that matter), join LinkedIn. Connect with your co-workers, former colleagues, former bosses, business contacts… You never know how you might be able to help someone out and you never know when you may need to lean on one of these relationships during a major life change like a move or a job loss.

If you have a hobby or are interested in some really interesting or obscure activity, check out Ning and see if there isn’t already a community for it. Knitting anyone? Model cars? Paddling?

Join Twitter. Just do it. I can’t tell you how much I love the connections I’ve made there. I’ve connected with business leaders in my field and moms from other countries. I’ve connected with other Vancouverites and other Ski Industry marketing professionals. If the conversation on Twitter isn’t any good for you, you’re not following the right people.

If you have friends who are not online, please help them. In the same way you wouldn’t let your best friend sport a mullet in 2009, don’t let them miss out on some of the best relationship building tools because they think it’s all going to be about awkward highschool moments they don’t want to relive.

Photo: Miguel Ramirez on Flickr

Guess I’m learning a valuable lesson in blogging: if you don’t write, there is no reason for people to visit.

Work has had me super busy lately. It’s the time of year when I’m focused on the biggest sales campaign of the year, plus I’m planning for the next year. Our fiscal year begins June 1st, so I have to have my plan and budget in place well in advance of that – drafted by the end of March, in fact. Add to that the fact that I’m starting to drift into launching our summer season (yes, I know we just received a foot of new snow) because it kicks off the May long weekend and we need all of our summer marketing materials in place by then.

So blogging has had to take a back seat.

I have a whole bunch of draft posts sitting waiting to be written. Concepts in my head that I want to share with all of you but somehow don’t have the time. As I sit here writing this it’s after 11pm, and I’m bagged because I got busy building a new wordpress.com site for a friend who never asked for one (though he can desperately use one). I did, however, find a new favourite free theme that offers some great customization without needing CSS – bonus! (one of those draft blogs I’d like to take the time to write properly).

This little hiatus from original thought has caused my subscriber and visitor counts to plummet… oops. Sorry.

To those of you who read regularly, please know I haven’t forgotten about you. I’m still reading your blogs though I haven’t had much opportunity to comment on the wonderful stuff I’m reading. In fact, just this morning I plowed through 200 or so outstanding items in my feed reader while cuddling my 3 year old with Elmo in the background haha… now there’s multitasking for you.

While I’m still searching for the ever-elusive work-life-balance that I believe is so important, the words of Gary Vaynerchuk and Seth Godin keep ringing in my ears: Go out and crush it! Now is the best time to go out and invest in yourself and your future. Learn all there is to learn. Build connections. Be great at what you love…

It all spurs me on. I want to build something really useful. I want to help people by sharing the knowledge that’s bottled up in my head with anyone who will listen.

In the meantime, I’ll settle for specific questions, comments or queries… is there anything you want to know that you think I can help with? I’m happy to give it my best shot.

I want to see you succeed too.

Photo: Spartan Soldier on Flickr

I just read a post by Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger that had my skin crawling and made me feel very uncomfortable. Darren put into words that which I have never had the nerve to say in either spoken word or type. He described me as he spoke of the early hours of Sunday morning:

“…you wander over to your computer, check your blog for comments, check your subscriber and traffic stats and maybe crank out a quick post or video. Then, you jump on twitter to check your timeline, follower numbers and reply to any @’s or dm’s.

A few minutes later, the kids wander out and your day really begins. Breakfast, then the day’s activities. It’s all great fun, yet, you still find yourself reveling in those random moments in the rest-room, where you linger a few extra seconds to check your e-mail, IM, twitter and stats once more on your trusty iPhone.” [Bloggers Without Boundaries]

Well. Ouch.

I find myself looking inwardly and feeling convinced of two things: 1) That I’m abiding in the gratification I get from engaging with a huge group of people on a regular basis and 2) that Darren might just have a hidden camera in my bathroom. Both are equal cause for concern.

The Sermon That Hit Home

This morning I was listening to a fantastic sermon that I am going to transcribe – as soon as I have enough time in the bathroom I guess – and put here. It was really impactful and it confirmed everything I’ve been thinking, fearing and worrying about: this imbalance and loss of boundary between work and play.

Today’s sermon was on The Secret of Soul Rest, based in Matthew 11:28-30

²⁸ Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” [ESV from bible.com]

… and John 15:5 (well, I’m adding verse 4 here too)

⁴ Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. ⁵I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
[ESV from bible.com]

The thing that my pastor kept nailing home for me was that if you’re not abiding in Jesus, you’re abiding in something else. There is no other way. You live somewhere. You benefit from something. You gain from something… what are you benefiting from? Where are you putting your focus? Your energy? Your love? And how’s that working for you?

We numb our fears, our discontentment, the unfulfilled parts of ourselves with addictions… “other lovers” as my pastor put it. True. The list of addictions is so long… drink, food, drugs, sex, sports, porn, perfectionism, money, status, position, blog subscribers or twitter followers, studying, church, ministry even. Getting our sense of wellbeing, no matter how temporary or false, from the wrong stuff. Getting our egos stroked somewhere… most of which is unhealthy and causes unnecessary anxiety or busy-ness in our lives. All things that do not glorify God.

It pains me to think I’ll lose blog subscribers for even writing this.

Photo: parl on Flickr

I think about all the plans I have regarding my blog, my writing, my ability to market myself as a consultant or contractor and my reasons for doing so… and the reason is good: by the time my son starts school, I want to be 100% self-employed and working only during school hours or after my son is asleep at night while earning enough money to support my family. But in the meantime, my drive for this is taking away from my relationships with my family… it’s taking away from my relationship with God.

I’ve been abiding in the wrong stuff.

I’m not sure what this means for the future of my blog. I’m not sure what this means for my pet project: Urban Shore. I’m not sure what this means for the other projects I’ve been offered ‘on the side’ because I’ve come to realise there is no ‘side’; there are only 24 hours to every day.

God is right now bringing me to a place where I have to accept that I’m not in control of any of it. I’m in a place where all I can do is get on my face and pray… because I have no idea what the future holds. I’m not sure how life may change in the days and weeks ahead and honestly, I’m really at a place where I’m open to anything…

What I do know, though, is wherever I end up, I want to abide in my faith. I want to abide in the Love of God. I want to abide in the Word. That’s where the soul rest is.

Everything else is noise.

He Googled “Canadian Tire” and this is what the results looked like:

Harmless enough right? Well, when he clicked the listing I circled, this is what he got:

It redirects you through http://canadiantireoffers.com/out/, presumably to fool Google AdWords to believing that the advertised URL is legitimate (Google checks to see where the ads are taking you, but it’s done by a bot so it doesn’t care where you go next), but then you end up on the above page (it’s linked to the actual page if you want the URL).

This page above is not an unusual looking landing page; I mean, it’s a bit cheezy for a retailer like Canadian Tire, but whatever… people test out stuff all the time or edit their landing pages for different promotions. Before even thinking about it, my husband tried his shot at winning a gift card and ended up with a paid text subscription to his cell phone. Here’s the fine print:

This is a subscription service. Costs of the Trivia Game are CDN $2.00 per question. Each week 4 questions will be sent to your mobile.

I know some people say they’ll click the PPC ad rather than the legitimate Google search result listing just to cost the company an extra few cents for the click (not sure I get the strategy), but you’re better off going with proper search results.

Besides, if you think about it critically, why would Canadian Tire buy the keyword ‘Canadian Tire’ to link to their home page? If I were buying AdWords for Canadian Tire, I’d only buy the domain level keywords in order to draw attention to a special promotion, offer, new service or whatever. But that’s me…

Photo: UrbanShore on Flickr

If you’re in business, you may have heard lately that you should be doing “Social Media”… “Web Two Point OH”. You should have a YouTube Channel. You should start a viral video. You should write a blog.

Um, why exactly?

I’m sure when you’re already working 14 or 16 hours a day on your day to day business operation, the last thing you want to do is sit down at the computer and add more to your task list. If your business is small or local – you own or manage a coffee shop or have a small fitness studio or an urban retail store – you’re already trying to do a lot with a little. Besides, the web is for big business right?

Wrong. It’s for everyone.

Here’s the thing: There is so much information online already, that you stand to gain a wealth of insight from it. And many of those people putting in their two cents are your customers… they may just not know it yet.

Here are a few super simple tactics that can help you use some of today’s web-based tools to tap into that information, streamline tasks and grow your business. I’ve broken them down into 3 categories: Listening, Building Relationships, and Home Base.

Listening

Google Alerts

Google Alerts allow you to track what’s happening in your industry by allowing you to conduct a search for keywords or phrases of your choosing and then sending you every article written about them in real time. You can search for your company name, your competitors’ names and industry keywords or prases. You can have the results sent to your email or to an RSS feed (more about these later).

Here’s the super simple way you set up a Google Alert:

1. Go to google.com/alerts
2. Enter your first search term (your company  name, likely) in the text field
3. Select “Comprehensive” – this will look for news, websites, blogs, video, and even some forums
4. Select how often you want to receive them (if you’re sending to your email, once a day may suffice)
5. Enter your email address and click “Create Alert”

It’s as simple as that. Google will send you an email with what looks like search results, only everything in the list will include the keywords or prases you requested.

If you want to receive alerts for multiple keywords or phrases, I recommend creating a Google account (you may even have one already if you have a Gmail account, Google Analytics account, Blogger account etc.) and creating a more comprehensive alerts system. But a simple email alert for your company name is a great start.

Twitter Search

You’ve probably heard the word Twitter. Twitter is all abuzz in the tech/marketing world but it has yet to reach the mainstream. Having said that, the people on Twitter are almost exclusively bloggers and influencers by the very nature of their extensive social networking.

Knowing what these influencers are talking about and finding a few in your industry or location is never a bad idea.

If you don’t want to sign up to Twitter, that’s fine. It can be a life suck anyway – if you joined Facebook you know how much time that can take up if you’re not careful. But you should use the Twitter Search function. And just like setting up a Google Alert, it’s super simple.

Go to search.twitter.com and enter a keyword. Now, keep in mind, people using Twitter only have 140 characters to talk to one another. The keywords will pick up exact words they are including in their ‘tweets’. What you’ll get in the results is a list of statements from people using Twitter to communicate. A quick browse will give you an idea of what people are saying about your business or industry.

Building Relationships

You need to make sure you have an ongoing relationship with your customers. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in, encouraging repeat business takes less effort than acquiring new business. Repeat customers are the ones who become your advocates. Repeat customers keep your business open. Sometimes all it takes is a friendly conversation… in person or online.

To build and grow that relationship, find a way to connect with your customers – either via email or mobile messages – and then offer them information that’s relevant to them in the way they want.

Side note: I believe marketing can help people to improve their lives via your product. I don’t believe in selling people something they don’t want. I don’t believe in shoving information down peoples’ throats. What I do believe in, is providing relevant information via relevant media that simply show people how they can benefit from a product or service.

Email Marketing

While email marketing in general seems to be on a decline because of the prevalence of other communication methods, it’s still the most comprehensive way to share information with people who want that information. Blogs with an RSS subscription present another way to share that in-depth type of information with your customers.

You can use a simple tool like Vertical Response to collect and store contact information. You can create different lists based on whatever attributes you like – types of purchases, gender, age category – and then send them updates that are relevant to them: new product lines, special events, sales. Vertical Response has a huge set of pre-made email templates to choose from, they send in both HTML (with pretty pictures and stuff) and text so no matter what type of email your customers receive, your message will be intact. And, you only have to pay for what you use – there’s no monthly fee. You can also use it to conduct surveys or, if you collect full contact information, you can even use it to send direct mail postcards.

The cost starts at just $0.015 per email you send e.g. if you have a list of 1000 addresses, the whole email will cost you only $15. If your list is larger, the cost per message goes down from there. Or, you can pay a monthly fee based on the size of your email list and send as often as you’d like – currently for up to 2,000 addresses in your list it would cost you $28/month.

Tagga Mobile Marketing

Tagga is a really innovative new tool that allows anyone to use SMS or Text Messaging for any reason they like. You could create a tagg (or an SMS message) that people can text in to receive. You change it whenever you’d like and let people know they can text KEYWORD (whatever you choose, provided it’s not already taken) to 82442 (TAGGA) and they receive your message to their mobile phone. Alternatively, you can set up a subscription where people text in the keyword to 82442 to subscribe. You then send out a message to your subscribers.

You can pay for service and use the full 120 character text message for yourself – the cost is about USD$0.20 per message – or you can opt to send your messages using only 80 characters and pay nothing; a sponsored message (using the remaining 60 characters) at the end of the text will cover the cost. Note: it is really hard to squeeze a message into 80 characters, but at only $0.20/message with no month to month cost, it’s a great way for a small company to get in on mobile marketing.

Where mobile is really effective is last second deals to improve upon low yield times/days.

You own a bakery? Blow out the end of day inventory at a discount – send a message at 4pm that says “Get 25% off today’s baked goods at XYZ Bakery before 5pm today” (that’s only 62 characters, incidentally). Empty coffee shop? Send a message saying “Large coffee for the price of a small at Tasty Coffee Company; today only.”

Your Home Base

WordPress.com

I know, I know… I said earlier you don’t need to blog. And you don’t. BUT, if you don’t have a web presence at all, WordPress.com is a quick and easy – and FREE – way to create one. Just sign up for an account at wordpress.com for free. Then, select from a number of visual themes, upgrade to a custom URL (it’s only $15), purchase your preferred URL from a domain name provider (I like Namespro.ca) and redirect your ‘site’ to your custom URL.

You can use wordpress.com as a free web content management system by using the ‘Pages’ functionality to create all the pages your website may need (see above where it says “About Michelle”? That’s a page – if I add more they’ll make a line across the top). You can then go into the settings and redirect your home page to one of the pages you’ve created and you don’t actually need to blog at all… unless you want to.

RSS Feed Reader

The last thing I want to mention is using RSS to keep track of everything. Almost everything is accessible with RSS nowadays. RSS allows you to take the content of blogs, media sites, twitter, google searches, and any RSS enabled website and aggregate that information in one place.

I use Google Reader. When you find an RSS link – like the one at the top of this page that says “Subscribe in a reader” – you can click the link and add it to your Google Reader (or another feed reader of your choosing). You can, incidentally, sign up to have your Google Alerts also go to your Google Reader. You can also sign up to an individual’s twitter stream, a twitter search stream, your favourite news site etc.

The benefit to doing this is you go to only one site to read all the information you want to see. I go to my Google Reader and get something that looks like this:

You can see I have 579 unread items that I can review by topic; I have categorized my subscriptions into Social Media, Tourism, Vancouver, Snowboarding and the ones at the bottom of the list are uncategorized at this point. If I open any one topic I get a number of sources and I can review by source, by topic, or the whole list.

This, incidentally, is my personal reading list; I also have another Google Account for my work and have another reader account with everything I read pertaining to my employment.

I know that may look overwhelming, but I usually access my reader by utilizing the web browsing on my mobile phone and read whenever I’m waiting for something or have a few moments to spare.

Clear as mud?

Hopefully I haven’t overwhelmed you. This is meant to highlight just a few very inexpensive ways you can get involved no matter what your business or your budget.

If you have any super simple solutions you think I’ve missed, please do leave them in the comments. Alternatively, if you are looking for help to develop a plan further, you can contact me at michelle [at] imseekingbalance [dot] com.

I had to contact my host – BlueFur – this evening to say that I couldn’t get in to my cPanel. Customer service was good and fast, and I’m really grateful. I did, however, end up feeling a little foolish:

This IP address was listed in the server’s firewall block list due to 10 repeated failed FTP logins. I have removed this block, and you should now be able to access the server without any issue. However, please ensure that you are entering the username and password correctly when entering the FTP service. If you have forgotten your password, please let us know so we can assist you with resetting it.

Yes, Michelle… well done. You’re a pro!

Anyway… it is time to take this next step. In addition to this blog, which is basically my test blog, I have 4 other wordpress.com blogs that I will be moving out of wordpress.com over the next little while once I’ve figured out the customization.

In the meantime, you get to look at the basic “Thematic” theme, which is currently bare bones off the shelf.

Enjoy!