How to Build Your Business in 60 Seconds: Sage Marketing Advice from Mel Pircheski

May 30, 2010

Here’s how to build your business – and advance your career – in 60 seconds: create an effective “elevator pitch”. You may already know what an elevator pitch is. It’s the short answer you give when you meet someone for the first time and they ask, “What do you do?”

Most of us underestimate the importance of a great elevator pitch. We think it’s just for salesmen. But it’s much more than that. You may have patented the most amazing invention since the electric light bulb, but if no one knows about it and sees its significance, your business will fail.

Just like every business has an online profile whether they create one themselves or not, every business has an elevator pitch. It’s called the value proposition. Stating it clearly, and in way that makes the listener want to learn more, is essential to success. In big organizations, this responsibility traditionally lies with the marketing department. But in the age of social media, articulation of the value prop can be carried out by every person in the organization – and by the media, customers, “fans” and “followers” – certainly not just the marketing department.

Today it’s all the more important to have a killer elevator pitch to capture the spirit and value of what your business offers. Perfect it, and it will practically spread by itself.

The successful elevator pitch is as close as you can get to a silver bullet for business success. It’s particularly useful for understanding what makes a good pay-per-click (e.g. Google AdWords) ad. These are the short ads that appear as “Sponsored links” next to search results on Google, Yahoo! and other search pages. A good AdWords ad grabs your attention without using hype. It offers to relieve an itch or a pain or a desire. It makes you want to learn more. It does so by speaking your language. It’s not necessarily the language of the company making the offer.

Invariably, this language includes keywords. Words that you type into a search engine to do a search. When you are looking for a product on the Internet, you don’t sit there and think, hmm, I wonder what words the manufacturer uses to talk about his products. You just type the first thing that comes to mind. That’s a keyword.

Keywords are often the hardest part of the search marketing process, in search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising like Google AdWords. To be successful, keywords have to capture the thinking of the site visitor or person doing a search. They are the essence of whatever it is that makes them want to learn more, to click. And they are the essence of whatever it is that makes that person want to share an idea – or product or brand – with friends and family.

The next stranger you meet might be in a position to change the course of your business or your career. They might be looking for an opportunity, or they might be ready to put you in touch with someone who will be your greatest investor or partner or boss. Why not be ready? As the saying goes, “Luck is the time when preparation and opportunity meet.”

Mel Pircheski is the master of the elevator pitch. Take a minute to read this short post that gives you the essence of a successful elevator pitch. Put his words into practice, and I guarantee you’ll see positive results.

How to Host Video with WordPress: Advantages of YouTube vs. Self-Hosted

May 17, 2010

I was talking with a client about Social Media Marketing and ways to host video on a WordPress site. If your WordPress website is self-hosted, you have plenty of options. I won’t even begin to go into the many video plugins for WordPress. That is a different topic. But when it comes to video hosting, there a lot of reasons to use YouTube rather than anything else. Visit the McBuzz YouTube Channel here.

Because uploading and inserting images is so easy with WordPress, you might think that video should be simple in the same way. But because you need a video player – which is complicated – and video files are typically quite large (unless they are converted to Flash and compressed), there are lots of factors that make handling video different than handling images.

[Click on the image above right for larger view. The screen shot shows Google search results for "introduction to wordpress dashboard". Google Universal Search Results feature video, images and other kinds of content along with the standard text listings for web pages. Here video thumbnails appear near the top of the results. The McBuzz Business Blogging 101 tutorial featuring the same video is at the bottom of the results page. Two listings for the price of one!
   Click on the image below right for larger view. Similar results for "wordpress static page". This time, video thumbnails are at the bottom of the page, and Business Blogging 101 is at the top.]

WordPress makes it super easy to embed a video when you use the URL from YouTube or a similar hosting service like Vimeo or VodPod. These other services are as easy to use as YouTube, but YouTube is the best easy solution for lots of other reasons. Unless, for some reason, you want complete control over your videos and you want to limit access to them or keep them out of the Google Index altogether, there are many good reasons to use YouTube or a similar service as a host for your video files. In terms of search engine visibility, these services – and especially YouTube – are far superior to hosting video on your own server.

Here are 10 reasons why YouTube is the best choice for WordPress video hosting:

1. YouTube is free.
2. YouTube works with many file formats and converts those files into several different sizes of Flash movie, including HD. If someone has HD capability on their computer or other device, they can watch in HD, otherwise they can watch at a lower resolution. Creating these options on your own would be time-consuming and require special software and skills.
3. You can add unique, keyword-rich titles and descriptions for every video you upload.
4. Your YouTube account itself is great for your personal visibility and for your business.
5. In many cases, YouTube searches exceed the number of Google searches as a source of viewer traffic for your videos. That traffic will, in turn, see your YouTube profile and you can do a lot on your profile and in the video descriptions to encourage visitors to go to your main website.
6. Google owns YouTube; they pay very close attention to content on YouTube.
7. As part of “Google Universal Search Results“, video thumbnails often appear on search results pages independent of other search results, this means you have a better chance of being found in Google results when you keep video on YouTube. It’s possible to get a standard search result listing along with a video thumbnail or image thumbnail listing, so you get multiple listings on the same search results page.
8. People will pick up and embed your videos in their own website or blog. This is great for inbound links and for increasing traffic to your site because you can include a URL in the video description as well as a URL that displays at the beginning or end of your videos. (Branding your videos is very important for this reason. Sometimes I do a good job at this, sometimes not. Here’s one example I’m happy with: Installing WordPress on BlueHost)
9. YouTube gives you fairly comprehensive stats (YouTube calls these viewer analytics “Insight”) over time regarding how many people watch your videos, how they found them (via YouTube search, a search engine, direct link, etc.), their demographics and so forth. You won’t get any of that if you host your own videos.
10. Many web hosts will charge you an additional fee for the increased bandwidth and server space demands you put on their servers when you host your own video. Whether or not they have fees, they may limit the bandwidth and space you are allowed for large files like video.

Free Social Media Marketing Tool: Press Release Grader

Mar 19, 2010

Free tools for social media marketing are popping up everywhere. For a huge list of free and paid social media monitoring tools, there is the Wiki of Social Media Monitoring Solutions. The Press Release Grader from Hubspot is a tool of a different sort, in fact, in addition to checking for basics like contact information, it’s more about search optimization than anything else.

Free Social Media Marketing Tool: Press Release Grader

Unlike monitoring tools, Press Release Grader is not about gathering information and figuring out what to do with it. It’s an instructive tool that runs your press release through a checklist, giving you feedback about things like the readability level (high school, college, graduate school), overused words and words used most often.

One of my favorite features is a link checker that inspects the number and quality of links you include in the body of the release. Since many press releases will wind up on the Web, links are especially important. You need to be sure to include good links: think about the pages you are linking to and whether you have included keywords in the links.

Press Release Grader is an instructive tool in another sense: it teaches the user how to optimize content. Many of the same principles apply to all Web-based publishing. It’s also likely that this tool will improve as Hubspot gets feedback from users. There are search engine optimization tools that do the same thing, Hubspot and Optify are two notable providers.

Press releases are not dead. They are still a valuable way to get the word out and build inbound links. So, as long as you are going to use them, you should take a few minutes to check them over with a tool like Press Release Grader.

Review of Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation

Sep 22, 2009

Over on the Social Media Club Seattle website, they have posted my review of Mitch Joel’s new book: Six Pixels of Separation.

Here’s a taste from the review:

Today building an online brand is something anyone can do. In fact, even if you are not online, your brand is being created for you by the search engines and by other people who are. The tools that social media superstar Chris Brogan has used to create one of the most successful online brands ever are available to everyone, and most of them are free. In this new media ecosystem, some business strategies that used to work will now lead to extinction. We can’t expect old business models – like pushing ads out to thousands of subscribers – to have the desired effect on new channels like mobile phones. [Read more...]

Joel speaks from experience and, imo, he is right on target. Would love your comments. Let me know what you think.

Mark McLaren and McBuzz on Seattle Social Media Profiles

Jul 22, 2009

Mark McLaren and McBuzz Communications are featured today in an interview with Seattle Social Media Profiles’ Kenji Onozawa. In addition to the video interview below, there’s an extended text interview with Mark McLaren on the Seattle Social Media Profiles website.

Along with Social Media Club Seattle, Kenji and crew are one more reason the social media scene in Seattle is gaining a lot of momentum. If you are in Seattle, definitely check out these websites and follow Kenji on Twitter.

Seattle Social Media Profiles Interview with Mark McLaren

Web 2.0 Seminar in Seattle: Introduction to Web 2.0

May 18, 2009

INTRODUCTION TO WEB 2.0: SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
AND YOUR BUSINESS

Our next Social Media Marketing Event will be on May 11, 2010: “Explode the WordPress Learning Curve: An Evening with the Experts”

I’m very excited to be part of this WordPress Seminar in Seattle line-up! You’ll get lots of vital information, distilled, organized and ready to be put to use. My 20-minute segment will focus on the five most important things you can do to optimize your WordPress website or blog for search engines.

Read more and get tickets for this upcoming evening of social media learning and networking: WordPress Social Media Seminar in Seattle (click for more information). Tuesday, May 11, 6 PM to 9 PM at Bellevue College, Bellevue (Seattle) Washington.

WordPress 2.7 is Now Available for Your Blog or Website

Dec 11, 2008

WordPress version 2.7 was installed on WordPress.com blogs a few weeks ago, and it is now available for download on WordPress.org for installation on 3rd-party hosted blogs and websites.

If you haven’t checked out WordPress yet, I encourage you to go to WordPress.com and create a free blog. It takes about 10 minutes, maybe less.

McBuzz offers a collection of free WordPress tutorials. The downside of all the recent upgrades of WordPress is that many of these tutorials are done using version 2.3 or 2.5. The new version’s interface is quite a bit different from either of these. Time for some new WordPress tutorials!

In January, partner Wayne Bishop and I will begin offering our Intro seminars on Social Media for business marketing, communications and collaboration again. We always manage to talk about WordPress as part of our introduction to blogging in our Introducing Web 2.0 seminar. Please let me know what other kinds of topics you would like to see covered.

I’m also planning to offer a seminar devoted exclusively to Blogging as part of Web 2.0 – based on the same material in my recent Blogging 101 presentation.

And, if you would like to check out a state-of-the-art social-networking-for-business website, I encourage you to look at – and join – Biznik. Basic membership is free. The founders rock, and the network is awesome.

Blogging 101 – Introduction to Blogs and Web 2.0

Dec 1, 2008

I recently gave a presentation called “Blogging 101 – An Introduction to Blogs and Web 2.0″ to a Seattle business organization called The Alternative Board. You can view the slide show below. The presentation addresses the following questions and topics:

What is a blog? Why are blogs so popular? How is a blog different from a website? Why businesses love blogs. How blogs are being used today. Why blogs are part of Web 2.0. Why a blog is a prime example of a Web 2.0 tool.

What is Web 2.0? What does Web 2.0 mean to your business? Blogs as marketing tools. In addition to blogs, what are the other parts of a successful online marketing strategy? What should you consider before investing your time and money in a blog?

Examples of a typical (WordPress) blog administration interface. Free blog hosts versus paid third-party blog hosting. Steps in successful blog implementation.

The length and content of the presentation can be tailored to the needs of any group. If you are interested in having me present, give me a call: (206) 962-9119 or email using the link under the address above.

Blog SEO Tip #1: Put Primary Keyword in Your Post Title

Nov 14, 2008

This is the first in a series of McBuzz Blog SEO tips. It includes a short video (below). The post and the video show how to use keywords in your blog so that people can find you in search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live Search. If you only have time to do a few things to optimize blog posts, do these first! (SEO, as you probably know, stands for “search engine optimization”.)

If you are new to this site and would like to learn more about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Services offered by McBuzz Communications, click here.

Before you can put keywords anywhere, you have to decide which ones to use. An essential part of the SEO process is choosing the best keywords. How to do that is a topic I will address in a separate post. For now, let’s think of it like this:

To choose a good keyword, answer two questions:
1. What is my post about?
2. How would someone search for this information? In other words, what would they put in the search box? That’s a keyword.

Here’s the catch: if people aren’t using the same words you use to talk about your products or services, they won’t find you. To some, this may sound like a no-brainer, but it’s not obvious, especially not to people who use particular terms to talk about their products or services.

One example: I’m working with a client whose website sells stylish, well-designed baby clothing that acts like a baby bib. She calls it “performance baby wear”. It’s a perfect characterization, because it brands the clothing as high-end so it can be sold at an appropriate price, which is more than one would pay for a standard baby bib. The problem: no one searches for “performance baby wear”. People search for “baby bibs”.

For now, let’s assume you have picked the best keyword, or at least a good one. I’m calling this the “primary” keyword. It’s the topic of your post. Here’s what to do with it.

I’ll use my own post as an example. The title is “Blog SEO Tip #1: Where to Put Keywords”. The keyword here is “blog seo“. I put it at the beginning of my title, and I put it in the first paragraph. And (bonus tip) I used “initial caps” in my title, that is, I captialized the first letter of each word.

Does the keyword have to go at the beginning of your title? No. But it’s a good idea for a number of reasons.

Here’s where the built-in SEO features of blogging software like WordPress come in. WordPress automatically does the following with your post title:
1. It creates the page title (one of the most important places search engines look to see what a web page is about), and
2. It creates the page URL (assuming you have the “permalinks” feature turned on*).
Both of these are vital to good SEO, especially the page title. A keyword is most effective when it’s at the beginning of a page title.

THE PAGE TITLE

THE PAGE URL

BLOG SEO HAS OTHER, NON-SEO BENEFITS
Here’s another reason to put the keyword at the beginning of your title: RSS feeds are used more and more to display blog post titles in desktop widgets and on web pages. See titles of recent blog posts at Alltop Social Media for one example. If your post title is long, it may be cut off.

By putting the keyword or keywords at the beginning of the title, you ensure that the main topic of the post will be seen. What if I had titled my post “Here’s something I really want to tell you about blog SEO”. How much would that tell you about the post if you weren’t able to see the word “SEO”! Not much at all, which means fewer clicks.

Same goes for putting the keyword in the first paragraph. By doing so, you make the topic of your post obvious. Lots of feed readers and widgets on computer desktops display previews of blog posts consisting of the title and first paragraph. If you don’t get to the point of your post until the second or third paragraph, no one will see it unless they click to read the whole post. If you want to find new readers, you need to grab their attention when you have the chance.

Start putting your keyword at, or near, the beginning of your blog post titles, and in the first paragraph, today. Your posts are sure to rank higher for your keyword than they would have otherwise.

*Permalinks or “pretty permalinks” are URLs in plain English, as opposed to URLs made of strings of incomprehensible letters, numbers and other characters.

http://mcbuzz.com/2008/blog-seo-tip-1-put-primary-keyword-in-your-post-title/

as opposed to

http://mcbuzz.com/2008/index.php?p=423

URLs in plain English that contain keywords are better for SEO.

BLOG SEO TIP #1: THE MOVIE!
This is my first run at putting a blog post into a video. There’s still plenty of room for improvement! Let me know what you think. (Better recording equipment coming soon – with better screen shots.)

Use Delicious Bookmarks for Social Media Marketing

Sep 10, 2008

Delicious bookmarks are an easy and effective way to promote your business. They’re a great example of a Web 2.0 social media tool that can be used to share valuable information and insight, while at the same time establishing yourself as a resource in your field and building your brand.

In our Twitter seminar in Seattle last night, Web 2.0 Media Group colleague Wayne Bishop and I talked about identifying tools that you can learn to use quickly, and that bring a good return on your investment of time and effort. Many social media tools are free or low cost, so obviously it’s the time and engergy required to get up to speed and put them to use that you have to weigh when deciding which ones to use.

We also stressed the importance of understanding the audience you want to reach before jumping on any Web 2.0 technology bandwagon. If your ideal customers don’t use Twitter, then it may not work for you as a marketing tool. But if the articles, blogs or reviews your ideal customers read online are written by Twitter users, Twitter may well be a good place to spend some time – at least to see what those influential writers are talking about.

Delicious is an example of a Web 2.0 technology that has value for you as you use it, and it has additional value for those you share it with. Setting up an account is fairly simple. http://delicious.com/ Send me a comment below if you need help.

Be sure to use an effective username, like your name as one word in lower case, or the name of your business.

Here are two accounts I’m using. Wayne Bishop and I share access to the second account, so we can both put bookmarks there, and we use these bookmarks for the seminars we offer:
http://delicious.com/mcbuzz

http://delicious.com/web20mediagroup

You can connect one account to another by adding a user to your Network. I have added web20mediagroup to the mcbuzz Network so that anytime I save a bookmark to the mcbuzz account, I can send it to the web20mediagroup account, as well.

Anyone can visit your bookmarks online unless you mark them as “Do not share”. To share your bookmarks, just send someone a link for your account like the links above. And, you can do all sorts of other cool stuff with your bookmarks, or a particular subset of your bookmarks. You create subsets of your bookmarks by assigning tags to them.

One example: put your Delicious bookmarks into a sidebar on your blog or website. In WordPress, this is really easy to do using a sidebar widget. To see how to use WordPress widgets, check out these Business Blogging 101 tutorials:

How to Use a Text Widget to Customize a WordPress Sidebar

How to Add Flickr Photo Widget to a WordPress Theme Sidebar

There is a WordPress widget for Delicious that you can use to put bookmarks into a sidebar just like you see here on the Web 2.0 Media Group website (in the right sidebar – scroll down a bit to see them).

Since you are probably already creating bookmarks for yourself, why not put them on Delicious where you can share them with others and show people the kind of reading you are doing and what you think is important. And when you want to bookmark that Shopping Channel Jewelry Specials page, just be sure to click the “Do not share” box!