Tag Archives: Social Media

Rising with the tide in Social Media

November 27, 2014 by 123outsource

Categories: Social Media | Tagged Social Media, Social Media Strategy | Leave a comment

Many of us are involved in social media. Some do it full time, others devote an hour or more per day, while others just do it for fun. If you use social media for your outsourcing or other type of business, there is a lot to consider.

It takes effort to grow
Social media offers the opportunity for anyone to grow their presence. A high school student could acquire a Twitter profile and accumulate a million followers in a few years with some hard work and good content. But, growth is hard. You either grow by using pay-per-click which is not always cost effective. Or you could grow by following lots of others, and unfollowing them if they don’t follow you back. The last growth method is really more for larger accounts which is growth simply by publishing really good content that people love to share! I suggest mastering all three growth methods because you never know which one will be the fastest or the most cost effective.

A fourth way to grow
One thing I noticed on social media is that even passive accounts grow. Some accounts or communities have several thousand followers. They don’t publish often, and don’t really do much of anything. The miracle is that on Google+ and Linked In, passive accounts can really grow. The key is to get your account large enough so that it will show up on search results for keywords. Then, people can join the group on their own without you doing any PPC, outreach, or even much posting. The trick is to figure out how to get big, and then ride the wave (or the tide)

Personally, I have grown my Google+ group to about 600 and my community is about 300. I think that one day my community might be 10,000 and then people will find me everywhere. By that stage the key will be doing a great job moderating the community so that we post the highest quality posts so that new people will want to follow us.

Rising with the tide is my long term social media strategy.
I want to get the majority of my followers passively just by being found. I want to get even more by posting good content which only takes minutes per day. Outreach takes more than an hour per day to do if you have multiple accounts. It is time consuming. I hope I get my accounts to the point where I get gain thousands of followers per month with almost no effort at all. Wish me luck, and consider this strategy for your own social media strategy! It could pay off if you take it seriously enough. But, in the beginning it is nothing but sweating away! So, good luck!

The plusses and minuses of Google+

September 11, 2014 by 123outsource

Categories: Analytics, Social Media | Tagged Google+, Internet Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Media | Leave a comment

I have just started doing a lot on Google+. Yes, it has its pros and cons as well as its pluses and minuses. Should you use Google+? Here is what I think.

(+) If you use Google+ a lot, it will do miracles for your analytics and site traffic. Something magical happens when you hit the 1000 mark on Google+. Your site traffic will spike according to what word on the street is.

(+) Google+’s feature of having circles is so much better than Twitter. You can arrange your followers by category, interest or industry. You can also segment your favorite accounts by creating a favorite or VIP circle. It is amazing the quality of the material in my VIP circle while my industry specific circles are filled with cyber trash. Oh well… At least I can separate them. On Twitter, you would have to create a separate account where you could follow your favorite accounts. On Twitter you can favorite a post, but not an account. At least not as of today — things could change!

(+) Google+ has great communities where you can post content. This feature is very similar to Linked In’s feature where you can have discussion groups or communities. Linked In often has much larger and better groups for business topics, but they tend to be a little too oriented towards self-promoting content and job search while Google+ gets better quality interactions in many cases.

(+) Google+ is a fast way to get clicks to your blog if you use communities and post interesting and relevant content. Twitter and Facebook do not make it easy to get clicks until you have a huge following. You don’t need to have a single follower on Google+ to get a ton of clicks, and those clicks will boost your SEO rankings for your site a lot if they are “quality” clicks.

(-) Google+ doesn’t have that many accounts compared to Twitter or Facebook. I’m not sure what the growth rate is, but Google is going to be promoting Google+ less from now on as well. Maybe they should find a new way to promote it instead of slowing down? Additionally, communities on Google+ tend to be very small except for a few photography and travel groups. In general, Google+ seems to be very much more geared towards visuals than Twitter or Facebook. Google+ allows taller photographs, while Twitter has a one size fits all on your profile page until someone clicks on it.

(-) Google+ makes has a multi-step process to see what your followers posted. If it is that difficult to see what they are publishing, it will be difficult for others to see what you are publishing too!

All in all, Google+ seems like one of the better social media sites out there. There are a few areas that they need improvement and over the next few years, they might make a few renovations and become #1 in the social media industry. We’ll have to wait and see.

The Lamborghini effect in Social Media marketing

September 6, 2014 by 123outsource

Categories: Popular on Google+, Semi-Popular, Social Media | Tagged Blog Entries, Popular Blog Entries, Social Media, Social Media Companies, Social Media Marketing | Leave a comment

I have been doing marketing for my entire life it seems. I remember as a kid, I marketed my lawn mowing business. I came up with sweat intensive methods for attracting clients in a heartbeat. I used to write an estimate on a flyer and leave it under their door mat if they were not home. I got hired by 10% of the people I left a flyer with. That is phenomenal. But, it is because I used a personal touch, and gave a quick and customized bid to everyone. Being fast at doing accurate estimates has its advantages.

As an adult, I have been running websites for more than a decade. It is hard to run a website, and the marketing keeps changing. Google is basically in charge, so whatever they like, you had better do!

The Lamborghini effect
It sounds like a movie. The Italian Job, The Bridge on the River Quai, The Lamborghini Effect — playing at 5pm, tickets sold at the door. Basically what I am talking about is having a marketing methodology so potent, that if you just tap the gas pedal, you will hear a huge “Voom” sound, and magic will happen. Today, I had a Lamborghini moment, if I may coin that phrase. I published a popular blog entry. But, I had also channeled some traffic to my outsourcing blog (the one you’re reading,) from my newer travel twitter which gets a lot of retweets. The result is that my traffic was more than double for a few days on my blog. Wow! All I did was tweet a few tweets and voom!

Followers are useless, you need results!
Lots of companies and individuals are in social media marketing, and claim to be good at it. You will see offers where they can get you 2000 followers overnight for a low fee, or maybe even 30,000 followers. Followers are useless. You need relevant, active, engaged followers, even if you only have a hundred. Most companies hire people who are not that experienced, and who will not get you amazing results. They will get you some new followers, maybe write a few tweets if they can even write well, and perhaps get you retweeted a few times. There is no focus on results, only on spinning the wheels. I don’t like this. I not only want results, I want to be blown out of the water. Real results are traffic to your site from clicks, and getting new customers — not new dormant followers who just sit there collecting cyber-dust.

My goal
My goal in social media is to learn how to get results so potent that I can help others to promote their social media campaigns. I want one or more twitter accounts, and blogs that get so much active traffic, that one tweet from me, and you won’t know what hit you! It amazes me that my older Twitter accounts have 4000, or 8000 followers, but only get retweeted two dozen times a month, while my newer travel twitter gets two dozen retweets per day, on a bad day. Wow! But, what if I can get my campaign to the point where I am getting hundreds of retweets per day? I think it is possible.

Blogging
As far as blogging is concerned, by blogging more and more, I learn what is popular and what is not. Writing a popular blog entry in a niche market can get you a few thousand clicks over the life of the blog entry. Some entries get a lot of clicks their first week, while others slowly get clicked on and attract search engine traffic over years. Some of my most popular blog entries were written in 2011 by the way! My goal is get better at identifying what people like, and to continue to write more popular blog entries. I want to get so good, that all of my blog entries are popular. We’ll see what happens, but it is going well so far.

Summary
Most social media companies will give you “a” Twitter account and “a” Facebook account and perhaps a blog that is “blahg.” Don’t settle for less. I like it when you get results that are so amazing that you say, “What happened?” That is the Lamborghini effect in Social Media Marketing. Once you’ve experienced it you’ll never forget it!

Twitter can help double your site traffic, here’s how!

September 3, 2014 by 123outsource

Categories: Semi-Popular, Social Media | Tagged Social Media, Social Media is good for your site traffic, Twitter Account, Twitter Behavior | Leave a comment

Everyone says that doing social media is good for your site traffic, SEO, and analytics. Get a Facebook, a Twitter, and a Blog. That is the secret. But, many people mishandle their Twitter accounts leading to less than desirable results.

Some people think you need a huge Twitter account to make a difference. Huge helps if those millions of followers are engaging you. However, you can do a lot of damage with a brand new account. Here is the secret.

Google has a relationship with Twitter. I’m not sure what the relationship is, but uncle Google is watching what goes on in everyone’s Twitter accounts. The site that is linked to your Twitter account is the site that will benefit from your activity on Twitter. But, what type of activity seems to do the trick?

Proper Twitter behavior that gets rewarded by Google.

(1) Find relevant people to follow
Just finding relevant people to follow, hopefully having them follow you back, and saying, “Thanks for following” can make a huge difference to your web stats. Some people over do it, and I don’t know what your results for overdoing things will be like. But, if you follow ten or twenty people per day, thank them for following, and nothing else, you will see a spike in your web traffic. There is a delayed reaction of about three weeks in your Twitter behavior and your Google results, so expect a 20 day delay in your reward. This procedure I recommended is a no-brainer, is easy, and you need no skill or experience to do this.

(2) Getting retweeted and clicked on.
If you have a blog, and your tweets about your blog entries are well written, you will get retweeted and clicked on which will bring a lot more traffic to your site and blog.

(3) Interacting — this is the best one
Interacting on Twitter is actually in my opinion harder, but more rewarding than the other things you can do. Most people interact in a very stupid way on Twitter. Google understands this. Many people will respond to a tweet by saying, “RT” and basically publish the tweet under their own account name which is not a horrible thing to do, but not creative. When I do this, I rewrite several variations of the title and use different tags to see if I can get a good result. Many people right dumb comments to other peoples tweets. This is not appreciated by anyone. But, what if you can write really interesting or funny commentary on other people’s tweets? Do you know what will happen? You will get favorited, retweeted, followed, and more. Google gives you some reward just for commenting on someone else’s post. But, you will get a much bigger optimization reward if the other person answers you back. It is hard to get people to answer back, and it is hard to write commentary good enough to be answered back. So, master this skill, and you might see your site stats go through the roof!

Other types of behavior that might not get rewarded.

(1) If you favorite every tweet that you like, it can get out of hand.
If you have 1000 favorites, then none of them are your favorites. Try to use Twitter’s tools the way they were meant to be used. Favorite only stuff you really want to see again. You don’t want your favorites feed pumped up with junk.

(2) Auto follow and auto unfollow
Having a machine get you followers is a great way to get quantity, and having that machine unfollow people who wouldn’t follow you back is a great way to get rid of people. But, you won’t get much if any rewards from the mere accumulation of followers. Google is more interested in seeing how many clicks, interactions and retweets you get, and not in how many dormant followers you get. However, if you get a million followers using these tools, chances are that you will get a fair amount of clicks as a result which is good!

(3) PPC for interactions and new followers
I used PPC for interactions and got very poor quality interactions. People would click on my links and then visit my pages for an average of six seconds. I want people who will read for at least two minute and visit at least two pages. Organic clicks from Twitter are actually some of the highest quality clicks I get in terms of number of pages they visit. However, the PPC was a disaster. You can’t cheat the game by paying. So, win the game with skill, instead of by throwing your money down the drain.

Choose a social network and focus on it

August 13, 2014 by 123outsource

Categories: Social Media | Tagged Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Network | Leave a comment

Many experts have been saying that you should not just jump on the bandwagon for every new social network that comes along. There is some truth to this reasoning, but you need to understand a few things about which network you jump onto.

(1) You won’t know until you try
If you just stick to Facebook because you are doing okay with Facebook, you might be missing the boat. First of all, every time you try a new social network, you evolve along your leaning curve, and expand your thinking. If you were doing well on Facebook before, you might start doing amazingly after you try one or two other networks just because your thought process could have improved. You won’t know if your business does well on Stumbleupon if you never try it. Also, if you try it early in your social media evolution, try it again when you have a little more experience. You might do better the second time around.

(2) Some social networks are better for your general industry
After looking around on many social media sites, I have come to the conclusion that there are many social networks that are good for talking about social media marketing, travel, news, and other topics of more general interest. The problem is that when you have a more specific specialty, many networks don’t have many individuals on the network. On a brighter note, sometimes small communities tend to be warmer. I am now using Google+ where there are very few Realtors. I post articles on Real Estate groups, and my articles get a lot of traffic despite how small the groups are. So, don’t judge a network by its size. Try it out and see what the results are like! I will say that in general, Facebook has the largest collection of active users worldwide, so if you have a specialty niche, Facebook might be a way to drive a lot of traffic to your site and blog, especially if you are smart how you use the PPC program!

(3) Some networks get you traffic right away while others don’t
Through years of trying different things and trying to figure out the mystery of social media, I have learned several things. There are certain networks where you can get tons of quality clicks really easily and other networks where you can’t get clicks unless you build up your following. I recommend starting on Google+ first, and post on lots of communities. This is a fast way to get thousands of quality clicks per month coming to your blog! Twitter is the easiest social media network to manage, but I would try it last as getting big results on Twitter only happens after a year or more of paying your dues building your network.

Twitter: Organic
To use Twitter effectively as a way to boost your blog traffic, you really need 20,000 followers minimum to make a significant dent in your traffic. Twitter is a great way to get long term traffic if you are willing to invest in building your network which requires daily work.

Twitter: PPC
Twitter’s PPC can get you lots of clicks. But, the quality of the blog clicks I got was really bad, averaging several seconds, while organic clicks averaged around two minutes. Google rewards me generously for “quality clicks,” but, doesn’t care one way or the other about quickie clicks. Twitter PPC was not a way for my business to expand quickly, although the bill was high. Organic Twitter has done nice things for my optimization, but takes time.

Facebook: Organic
Facebook also takes time to build your network. Your posts may not even be seen by your followers with the current algorithm. However, if you have a loyal following (I am lucky to have this,) you can get a healthy amount of clicks to your blog. We have about 5000 followers and get about 300 clicks a month to our blog which are quality clicks (duration averaging over two minutes.)

Facebook: PPC
Facebook PPC is also a great tool, but only works well with your most popular posts. Facebook PPC makes you pay based on your exposure, not your results. So, figure out what the top most popular 2% of your blog articles are and promote them regularly on Facebook PPC. You will get lots of clicks and get new followers!

Google+
I am frustrated at how time consuming it is to get followers on Google+. It takes me at least six times as long to get a follower on Google+ than it does on Twitter. I’m not even sure what the value of a Google+ follower is in terms of click traffic. However, I will say that as someone just starting out, I am getting about 50 clicks per day posting on Communities which is amazing. My total clicks from Twitter to my blog was 50 per month a few months ago, so 50 clicks a day is highly welcomed. I might be able to find a way to make that 200 clicks a day if I can grow a few more neurons in my head! I don’t know what the benefit of having a huge Google+ following is, but you can get tons of fast clicks posting on communities, so don’t overlook this network as it offers immediate results at no cost.

Linked In
Linked In’s performance is similar to Google+. You can get immediate clicks posting on their groups. Their groups in business oriented specialties tend to be larger than Google+, so post away, and watch your clicks come in. The quality of a Linked In click is excellent in my experience since the users are often serious business types.

(4) Some networks are growing in momentum while others are shrinking.
Social media networks are moving targets. You can’t assign a permanent judgement to any social media network. First of all their algorithms change over time. Next, their usership can grow or shrink as other social media networks become popular or get phased out. Additionally, your skill at using a particular network tends to grow over time if you are always trying to improve. So, when you take notes assigning scores to the various different networks, have an expiration date of a year after you assign the score. In a year, the playing field could be very different!

(5) Once you have mastered all of the bigger networks…
I am not sure if focusing and sticking to a single social media network is the right approach. But, here is my train of thought. If you have tried all of the networks, built a following in each, and have taken metrics as to how much effort is involved in getting quality clicks (clicks with a duration of more than a minute could be a definition of a quality click,) then it is time to make a decision.

You might find that on Facebook you can get a high volume of cost effective clicks using the PPC program. That has been my experience, but only on my most popular blog entries.

You might find that Twitter offers you the most time-efficient quality clicks, but only after your network has exceeded 30,000 which is not so easy to build.

You might find that Google+ offers you thousands of clicks your first week publishing on communities, but doesn’t match up to the time-efficiency that a mature Twitter community does.

Summary
Basically, you can’t make an informed decision of which social network is best until you have mastered them all, or at least tried them all. If you find that one network offers you overwhelmingly more clicks per hour or dollar spent than the others: then, and only then it might be time to disregard the other networks and focus on that one! If you find a way to get cheap, quality clicks, milk it for what its worth, and let me in on your secret!

If you think your outsourcing company should use social media, think again!

August 8, 2014 by 123outsource

Categories: Social Media | Tagged blogging, Broadcasting, Professionally managed Twitter account, Social Media | Leave a comment

Social media is the new rage. Large companies get about 30% of their new site traffic through social media. Social media is powerful if used effectively, but most providers either don’t know what they are doing. The ones who do know what they are doing are cost prohibitive.

Some people think they need “a” website. Sure, you need a website in business, but it won’t do much good unless you can get some traffic going it’s way.

Some people think they need “a” Twitter campaign. The same applies. Most people get a few hundred dormant followers on their Twitter. They don’t know what to tweet except for self-promoting boring material that they tweet over and over. Only boring people will follow such a campaign, and those boring folks won’t retweet you much either. To run a good Twitter campaign you need thousands of followers, and lots of active ones who will retweet you regularly. To hire someone who can get you to a critical mass on Twitter will cost you at least $50,000. Is it worth it? If you know how to get some SEO benefit from it, or are getting a few clients from it, it might be worth it.

Facebook is a difficult beast as well. Certain industries get great followers on Facebook. But, if you are in India, or the Philippines, the types of people who follow you are silent. They say nothing, and if they do, it will be in garbled, broken English or some foreign language that I can’t understand! Facebook is great if you can get a bunch of people together who interact a lot. You can post discussion topics, and they just interact. With our Notary Facebook we post great discussions and they just interact. With our Outsourcing Facebook, we post even more interesting discussion and they just don’t interact. Hmmm. I can’t force them to interact. Some people like to interact — if you can find them, then work with them. The others are not worth investing time in.

Blogging is considered social media because people can post comments. To me, blogging is semi-social media because very few people post comments. It is broadcasting. People want to read what you have to write. Once in a while they comment, but it is really about you, and your ideas. If people feel they can be entertained or benefit from your blog they will come back.

Getting a blog together costs less than $1000 plus hosting. This is much more affordable than a professionally managed Twitter campaign. Sure, you have to write the posts, or hire someone to do that, but that will cost hundreds not tens of thousands.

Write about experiences you have had in business, or experiences your clients have had with you. People will love to read about it and will be much more likely to hire you if you become a credible source for knowledge.

Even the experts these days are saying to stay away from jumping on the bandwagon for new social media sites. They say to stick to ones you can do well, and leave the others alone. I agree. But, if you have no experience with any social media, be careful, because it can suck you dry financially!

Good luck.

9 ways to assess the value of your Twitter account or service provider

August 1, 2014 by 123outsource

Categories: Analytics, Social Media | Tagged Active Followers, Site Analytics, Social Media, Total Number of Followers, Twitter, Twitter Account, Twitter Profile | Leave a comment

Have you ever hired someone to do social media for you? Have people offered to do social media for you? Yes, it’s important, and yes it can help your business, but only if you know what you are doing and hire someone who is good. Otherwise, it can be a complete waste of tens of thousands of dollars or lakhs!

Some people use social media to get new customers. Others use it for the SEO optimization benefits. I use it for both and calculate its value based on any type of benefit I get.

But, most people are not too sophisticated in their use of social media. It is a common conception that having lots of followers is a good thing. I heard one guy complain that his Facebook profile had 200,000 followers but that his messages were not getting heard. Only the Pay-per-click strings he posted got any play. The fact is that there are too many people following too many people, and your message will get lost in the shuffle unless people are really paying attention to you.

Here are how I asses a twitter account.
(1) Total number of followers.
I don’t attach too much weight to this number unless I know the approximate value of the average member

(2) Total number of relevant followers
Many people’s followers are not even human. They are robots. Many other followers are just dormant and don’t respond to anything. A follower in your industry has more value to you than someone who follows you for no apparent reason. If you are in the logging industry and someone follows you who is not in logging, and doesn’t purchase the services of loggers, they might not be so relevant. On the other hand, if you have a travel Twitter account, and someone called Osaka highlights follows you, they would be relevant even though they didn’t use the word “travel” in their profile introduction.

(3) Total number of active followers
A relevant follower is as useless as an irrelevant follower if they just sit there collecting cyber-dust. Google will give you better placement on your site if you are getting retweeted, and if people are responding to your posts and making dialogues with you. If your followers do nothing, then they have no value. On the other hand, if you have a handful of dream come true followers who retweet you regularly, favorite you, put you on lists, and interact with you, you are in business. I am luck because I have several accounts that are not even following me that retweet me multiple times per day!

(4) Total number of retweets
If you get retweeted, that is good, but how many times does it happen in a 30 day period? That is an analytic in my book.

(5) How many accounts retweeted you at least once
If you get retweeted, but it is always by the same people, that is not a bad thing, but it is more interesting to see how many individual accounts retweeted you.

(6) The reach of your retweets.
Reach is a marketing term used a lot in internet marketing. Your reach is how many humans your advertisement reached. If they saw, it (and ignored it,) you still reached them. If you document all of the retweets you got in one column, and then calculate how many followers each of those retweets reached, then you have another analytic. If Sam and Fiona retweeted you — Sam has 10 followers, but Fiona has 5000 followers, then the reach of your retweets was 5010 followers. Whether your reach was well targeted or not is yet another layer of the analytical onion, so to speak!

(7) Incoming interactions
It is easy to post on Twitter. Some post really profound and fascinating content while most people post pure rubbish, or “Twitter Litter.” Anyone can tweet, but how many people can get people to write comments to them. And, how many people can get people to write intelligent and/or funny comments? Not so many. A lot of your skill as a Twitterer is how well you write commentary on other people’s tweets. You have to first select what to comment on. I generally will comment on less than 2% of very targeted tweets. Then, I’ll try to come up with a philosophical twist or a satirical angle on what they said, to make life interesting!

(8) Do any of your clients say they found you on Twitter?

(9) Have your site analytics for your main site gone up after you had major activity on your Twitter account? My rule of cyber-thumb is that if your Twitter or blog has a peak of extra activity, that activity (assuming that it is quality activity) will show up on your site stats roughly 20 days later. I call it the 20 day rule.

There is more to Twitter to what I mentioned. But, if you talk to the people who manage your account, ask them about these metrics, ask them what hashtags they are using, and look at your Google analytics stats, you can learn a lot! You might learn that it is time to fire someone as well if you learn too much from these metrics!

Is it better to promote your Twitter account manually or with PPC?

July 11, 2014 by 123outsource

Categories: Social Media | Tagged Paying per interaction, Promoting Your Twitter Account, Social Media, Twitter, Twitter PPC | Leave a comment

Is it better to promote your Twitter account manually or with PPC?

Although there are benefits to any type of Twitter promotion, each type of promotion has its advantages.

Manual promotion has its advantages

(1) See who the players are in your industry
(2) See which articles & pics get retweeted more!
(3) Hand pick you want to follow!

Promoting your Twitter manually allows you to see who the players are in your industry. You get to see what they tweet about and how popular their tweets are relative to other tweets in their account and relative to others in the industry. You will quickly notice that certain topics generate more interest than others. It is complicated since some twitter accounts might have millions of followers and others have only hundreds, so judge them on the amount of interest they generate relative to their size.

The other advantage of manual Twitter growth is that you can pick and choose who you want to follow, and chances are, if they are relevant, many of them will follow you back. I like to choose followers who tweet:

(1) Interesting information relevant to my industry
(2) Who retweet others regularly
(3) Who interact with others

If you have lots of followers, but those followers are what I call, “dormant,” then those followers don’t do you any good. Google’s algorithm for promoting your site in search results gives rewards to those who get “incoming interactions” and retweets. Anyone can have a million robot followers, but can anyone get a dozen or more responses to most of their posts?

Don’t overlook PPC
If you get into pay-per-click promotion on Twitter, you might experience some fast growth, but here are some factors to think about.

Do you have a blog?
If you don’t have a blog, then you can’t promote your blog posts on PPC. Promoting a blog is a great way to get regular visitors to your site, and will earn you some huge optimization points on Google. If you don’t blog now, it’s time to start, and hopefully become an expert at the topic.

What is a follower worth to you?
You need to do a rough estimate as to what a single follower is worth to you. You need to see how having followers creates an increase in your client base somehow, or adds to your overall search engine traffic and ranking. Personally, I get very few new clients from Twitter, but it helps tremendously with Google which is why I invest thousands per month in my six Twitter accounts. For my main Twitter account which is a Notary Twitter, I estimate that a follower is worth about $4. So, when I use PPC, I pay significantly less than $4 for each new follower that I get.

The value of new followers can really vary
You never know if your new followers are going to stick around. Additionally, not all followers are worth the same amount. An active follower might be worth $1000 or more to you in the long run while dormant followers might be worth nothing to you.

Pay per follower or pay per interaction?
We use both programs on our Twitter promotions. I found that I get better mileage paying for each time someone clicks on my blog. It costs me only 55 cents, and for every several clicks, one of the people who clicks follows me on Twitter. I kill two birds with one stone! I get lots of blog traffic and lots of followers!

Promoting blogs on twitter
Keep in mind that merely tweeting your blog titles on twitter might not attract much traffic. I have a professional comedy writer work with me writing “Tweet titles” for popular blogs. We often will write over a dozen titles, test them all out, and see which ones are the most popular. You can get a much lower rate per click and many more clicks if you become an expert at how to write “Tweet titles.” I consider this the single most important skill that I have acquired in my two decades of doing business! Take it seriously, and become an expert!

Most BPO blogs use cheap looking pics

March 11, 2014 by 123outsource

Categories: Marketing, Semi-Popular | Tagged Online Marketing, Social Media | Leave a comment

I poke around the web regularly. I often read other people’s blogs to learn a thing or two about online marketing, social media, the world of outsourcing, and more! I noticed that people generally include some sort of photo or graphic on their blogs as a picture. What I noticed is that these pics are normally very cheap looking. They look like the $1 kind of graphics that you buy on some cheap graphics site.

The question we need to ask ourselves is, what is the value of a good photo? If your blog gets lots of traffic, it might be worth it to invest in better artwork. If your blog leads to measurable higher ROI for your business, you might invest in a little bit better artwork. If your home page on your website has cheap looking art work, that is really bad. Blogs come and go. Many people write several blog articles per week or even per day. It gets expensive when you spend $40 per photo day after day. But, for your home page, I think you should spend more than $2 for graphics, don’t you?

I did a little number crunching to see what the benefit of good photos was on blogs and on facebook. My research was not very conclusive since we were testing during the holiday season when stats go up and down depending on what day it is. But, you can get 20-80% more action on Facebook posts if you have a good picture. It really depends on your audience and your business, so it is worth trying it both ways and then counting the number of likes and responses to see if your expense in art was merited.

The bottom line of this article is:
If you are making money, or intend to be making money, lose the cheap looking art work buddy!

Tweets:
(1) If you are making money, or intend to be making money, lose the cheap looking art work buddy!
(2) People normally add a pic to their blog entries. But, these pics are normally cheap looking!
(3) Cheap looking pics on BPO Blogs are expensive in the long run. If they help you to lose business!
(4) If your blog gets lots of traffic, invest in better artwork.
If ur blog promotes cheap looking artwork, never mind.

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Twitter Stock — a good idea?

February 20, 2014 by 123outsource

Categories: Social Media | Tagged Social Media, Social Media Landscape, Twitter | Leave a comment

I love Twitter. I am a tweetaholic if there is such a thing. My new Twitter and social media manager’s name is Arielle. I joke that if your Facebook does well it goes viral, but if your Twitter account grows like crazy it goes Arielle! (Aerial). But, take a look at their stock. Twitter has been losing money, and yet their stock went from $41 to about $60 in the last few months since their stock went public. I’m not saying that you won’t make money with Twitter stock, but it is gambling when you purchase a stock that is losing money with the hopes that it will grow out of control and turn a profit.

I think it is likely that Twitter will continue to grow and perhaps make huge profits. But, social media is very unstable and new with very little track record. The social media landscape changes so quickly, it is hard to predict if the big guys will be able to adapt to market changes. The big question is whether or not Twitter can sell advertising to large companies. They are doing this now, but can they make it profitable in the long run? This is very unclear.

I think Twitter could make it big, but it could get into bad financial trouble too, and your stock has a high chance of becoming worthless as well. Buying stock in social media is a gamble in general. I think that oil companies are much more stable as an investment these days. Low p/e ratios, and very stable business models. Just close your eyes when you ponder what they are doing to the environment.

If I were a bird, I would like Twitter stock, but I’m a human who drives a gas powered cars. I’ll stick to oil stocks for now!

Tweets:
(1) I am a tweetaholic if there is such a thing, but should I buy Twitter stock?
(2) I think Twitter stock could make it big, but could get into financial trouble too.

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