Here are 5 default blog settings worth changing.

1. Remove extraneous links
By default most blogs automatically link to categories, tags, comments, post dates and authors. Sometimes these links can be helpful to readers but many times they’re unnecessary and can create duplicate content issues for search engines. Every link on your website should add value for the reader. If you have links that don’t add value, remove them. Your readers will appreciate it and search engines will reward you.

2. Optimize your call to action
It’s very important to consider your call to action (CTA). What action do you want readers to take when visiting your site? Do you want to increase the number of RSS subscribers, get readers to consume more content, sell a product or service? Depending on what your CTA is, you’ll want to ensure your blog promotes this effectively. Review your layout and make sure areas that receive focus are geared toward generating conversions.

3. Change default text
Blogging platforms (Wordpress especially) are used for so much more than just blogs that often the default text doesn’t accurately describe your site. If something doesn’t fit your site, change it. Buffalo Restaurants does a great job of using Wordpress as a local restaurant review site. Notice that any reference to ‘comments’ has been replaced with ‘reviews’ to better fit the site.

4. Customize plugins
Plugins are an easy way to add functionality to your blog and can save a ton of programming time. However, that doesn’t mean you need to accept their default design and functionality. The plugins you select, should blend in with the look and feel of your website, and act the way you want them to. If you’re not a designer or programmer you may need some assistance with this step but it’s well worth the investment.

5. Change your Gravatar
Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. They are a great way to make your site more approachable and increase interaction among readers. Therefore make sure the authors of your blog take the time to set a relevant image. I lean toward using a personal photo of the author but a logo or unique design will also work.

Do you have any additional suggestions for simple blog tweaks? Let us know in the comments.

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5 blog settings you need to change is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog

Before social media came along, advertising budgets often limited small business growth. Now, companies can reach thousands of potential customers for a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. With social media costing nothing to use, the best offerings would rise to the top and easily be found by consumers.

So has social media leveled the field?
The assumption behind the argument is that social media removes media spend from the equation. And without media spend, the field is leveled.

While the outlets for social media are free, the strategy, creation, execution and on-going relationship building all have real costs assigned to them. With small businesses having limited marketing dollars, outsourcing much, if any, of their social media marketing may not be possible.

Costs are shifted, not eliminated
So even when we remove media spend from the equation, marketing costs can remain high. Meaning that many small businesses may still be at a disadvantage to their larger competitors.

So what do you think? Has social media leveled the playing field for small business?

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Is social media the great leveler? is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog

I’m not trying to turn off anyone from launching a blog or spending time crafting great content. Quite the contrary – I believe the value you generate from developing great work is tremendous. But not everyone has time to develop their own content or publish a blog on a regular basis. How can these people get their message out?

1. Blog commenting
This is one of the best ways to get your voice heard. As a blogger myself, I can tell you that I personally read each and every comment I receive. I also read the comments people leave on other blog posts. Comments make the main piece more interesting, especially when there’s a disagreement among readers.

If you read an article you feel passionate about, let the author know. Leaving an insightful comment adds value to the discussion and will generate interest in your point of view. Also, since most blogs allow you to drop a link, readers have easy access to your home on the web.

2. Engaging in discussions
The beauty of starting discussions is that they can happen anywhere. Plus, you don’t even have to start the discussion; you can simply join others that are already talking about topics that interest you. Find questions you can answer and provide value to others on the network. LinkedIn, twitter and niche forums are all great places to start.

3. Discovery/Sharing content
What good is great content if no one can find it? Finding interesting content and sharing it with others is almost as good as creating it, especially if it’s on a small blog people don’t know about. It’s like being that guy that discovers great indie music no one has heard of. You’ll be considered “cutting edge” and “in-the-know” – two terms anyone would want associated with their name.

What do you think? Are there other alternatives to blogging that I missed? Let me know in the comments.

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Alternatives to blogging is a post from: Radium
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Because these tools are free, many companies treat them as such and make no real investment in them. They don’t bother putting together a strategy, mapping out goals or defining metrics and when things get too busy, they simply walk away from them altogether.

So what if more social media sites had a cost assigned to them? What if companies had to pay to create a facebook page or a twitter account? Would this ensure they stuck with it? Would it make the content more relevant to users? Would anything change?
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What if social media cost money? is a post from: Radium
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To answer that question I’ll tell you a short story.

Recently, I noticed my twitterfeed account wasn’t sending blog posts to twitter. I tried to troubleshoot the issue but ended up creating a support ticket on the company’s forum. An employee was quick to resolve the issue (2 days) and I thought I was all set, but now it seemed I had a different problem.

Twitterfeed was working too good. It was double posting every blog post. I went back to the support forum and tried a couple of the common fixes but nothing seemed to work. I was really frustrated but, at the time, I was too busy to look into the issue. So, I simply posted a tweet exclaiming my frustration. (Please disregard the typo.)

The goal of my tweet wasn’t to get help from twitterfeed. I was still planning on going the support route and resolving the issue at some point in the future. But then, something happened that changed everything.

I received the above tweet from the company dlvr.it – a self-proclaimed twitterfeed alternative. Hmm, should I continue to troubleshoot my problem with twitterfeed or take 5 minutes to tryout another tool? Well, you can probably guess what happened next. I created an account, setup the new feed and, low and behold, everything worked fine. Bye-bye twitterfeed.

What happened?
In the blink of an eye, a competitor stole away your customer for almost no cost to them. How could this happen.

1. The cost to switch was zero
For starters, these are both free services so monetary considerations are removed from the equation. Secondly, the entire process from account creation to feed creation takes about 5 minutes – much shorter than it would have taken me to complete a support ticket and wait for a solution. I was actually saving time by changing services.

2. It’s hard to love a utility
Nobody loves utility companies. You tolerate them because you like modern conveniences and there is little differentiation between operators. These web utilities are really no different. Frankly, I don’t care who takes my blog post and sends it over to twitter as long as it works.

Key learnings

• Listening isn’t the most glamorous aspect of social media but it’s one of the most important. If your aren’t monitoring the stream, you’ll miss opportunities. Opportunities your competitors will seize.
• You have to work hard to keep customers. Give them a reason to love your brand. It doesn’t have to be about your product; it could be anything. Your goal is to create something that makes them unable to live without you.
• Know how to respond before you need to. I recommend developing policies for common customer inquiries. This ensures quick and consistent replies to customers.

Are you listening? Tell us about it in the comments.

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Thumbnail image courtesy of Hryck

Your competitors are listening is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog

A recent survey of global CMO’s conducted by Bazzarvoice highlighted that “81% of respondents expect to link their annual revenues to their social media investment in 2010, up from just 44% of CMOs in 2009.”

The study also went on to show that “53% of respondents are unsure about their return on Twitter; 50% are unsure about the direct value of LinkedIn; and 50% are not sure how to measure the impact of industry blogs on business metrics.”

Social media grows up
As mentioned by Brian Solis, MarketingSherpa recently released their Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report and in it they state, “2010 is the year where social media marketers gain the experience required to advance from novice to competent practitioner capable of achieving social marketing objectives and proving ROI.”

The industry is growing up. Social media marketing is simply becoming marketing. Companies are starting to expect more from the agencies that serve them.

Do you have the right expertise?
According to B. L. Ochman at the end of 2009 there were 16,000 self-proclaimed social media experts listed on twitter, up from 4,487 just seven months earlier. The growth is astounding but we all know this number is probably grossly overstated – having 20k followers doesn’t make you an expert in social media. At best, it makes you popular; at worst, it makes you proficient on one website.

The future experts of social media
As companies get more comfortable with the day-to-day aspects of social media and content production, the expertise they’ll require isn’t going to be social media management. Instead, they’ll need help understanding conversion attribution and translating social media efforts into sales dollars.

In the coming year, the real heroes of social media will be web analysts that link social media efforts with financial returns.

What do you think? Is your team ready to link social media efforts with sales dollars? Are you already proving the ROI of social media within your organization? Tell us about it in the comments.

Thumbnail courtesy of AlanCleaver_2000

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In search of a better social media ROI is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog

This post will cover four of the more popular Retweet buttons; tweetmeme, Retweet, Topsy and the tweetcount widget by backtype.

The problem
A lot of people rely on retweets from others to find new twitter friends to follow, so when they see an insightful thought passed on from one of their followers (credibility) they’re more apt to check out that person’s profile. But if you have the default code installed, the retweets will say @tweetmeme and not @yourusername, which won’t do much to bolster your popularity.

Proper Tweetmeme button configuration
The following code is the default tweetmeme script with one small addition. The parameter ‘tweetmeme_source’ has been added which allows customization of the twitter user name. To add your user name to this script simply replace the text ‘yournamehere’ with your twitter user name.

Proper Retweet button configuration
The following code is the default Retweet script with the parameter ‘username’ added. Similar to tweetmeme this allows customization of the twitter user name. To add your twitter name to this script simply replace the text ‘yournamehere’ with your twitter user name.

Proper Topsy button configuration
The following code is the default Topsy script. In this case the parameter you need to change is ‘var topsy_nick’. To add your user name to this script simply replace the text ‘yournamehere’ with your twitter user name.

Proper tweetcount button configuration
And last but not least, the following code is the default tweetcount script with the parameter ‘tweetcount_src’ added. By now you probably now what to do with this but just in case, to add your twitter name to this script simply replace the text ‘yournamehere’ with your twitter user name.

Additional customization
All of the buttons above offer further customizations (configuring the look, changing the link shortening service, etc.) so check out their websites for more options.

And before I end this post I have to give credit to one of our friends who graciously pointed out we had overrode this setting when we redesigned our website. Thanks @mikecatlett for catching what we missed!

What are you waiting for? Retweet this post!

Thumbnail image by Le Petit Poulailler

Get credit for your Retweets is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog

Another popular form of this question is “who is going to do all this stuff?” While it may seem funny, it’s one of the most important questions to ask before diving into a new campaign. Unlike some other forms of marketing, social media requires a constant investment of time and effort.

How much time does social media take?
It’s less “Build it and they will come” and more “Build it, take care of it, staff it, ensure it has all of the proper resources and then they will come.” Building a successful social media presence is like establishing a friendship. It’s not going to happen over night and it’s going to take a lot of effort on your part to develop.

Forecasting your time investment
I don’t know if there is an absolute way to quantify the time requirement but the considerations below should help you estimate the level of time needed to properly manage your campaign.

1. Define your goals
Defining your goals will give you an idea of what it will take to accomplish them. Do you have lofty goals like becoming a thought leader around a specific topic? Maybe your goals are more tactical, such as simply listening to your customers and better understanding their needs. Depending on your choice, the time commitment will vary widely.

2. Determine the current level of conversation
Similar to forecasting search volume, you can get a gauge for how many conversations are already taking place about your company, category or offering. To obtain this data, you can perform relevant searches across social networks, utilize keyword research tools or use one of the many social media forecasting and listening tools available.

If  you operate within a smaller market or niche, you may find that the current level of chatter is very small or limited to specific websites and blogs. On the other hand, if you operate within a large competitive market, there may be thousands of conversations taking place across hundreds of websites. The greater the volume, the greater the time investment.

3. Determine your level and area of engagement
How do you plan on reaching people? Are you going to author a blog? How about a facebook company page? You could always join a relevant forum and become a top contributor.

The opportunities are really endless and the choice of engagement points should actually be the easiest of all questions to answer. By now, you’ve clearly defined your goals, you know where conversations are occurring and what people are talking about. How and where will you add value to the conversation?

It’s time to be honest with yourself. You know exactly what you need to do but can you do it?

Let’s make up an example for illustrative purposes. You’ve gone through the steps outlined above and determined that within your industry there isn’t a helpful portal for consumers and a lot of misinformation is floating around. Your competitors keep valuable information behind closed doors and don’t want consumers empowered in any way. You realize that freeing this information and making it publicly available will present you as an authority on the subject and create a ton of credibility for the organization. So you decide to write a blog.

Being an expert within your industry means you have the necessary knowledge and you know what topics are most relevant to consumers. However, the thought of writing anything longer than an email gives you the cold sweats…you image yourself starting blankly at a computer screen waiting for the right words to come. Plus, you barely have enough time to handle everything else on your plate let alone write an article for a blog. You realize you need help but where should it come from?

If you need help, what are your options?

Option 1: Don’t do it
You think I’m joking, but I’m not. Halfheartedly doing something just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t make a lot of sense. The decision to engage in social media should be handled just like any other decision in business – with careful consideration and analysis. You may find out that engaging in social media doesn’t make sense for your business or, more likely, it isn’t feasible at the current time given your resources.

Option 2: Share the responsibility
If the commitment is too much for one person or you want to ensure that the success doesn’t depend solely on a single individual, consider having multiple employees share the responsibility. In this day and age, every employee should be an advocate of your company and offering. I highly recommend that companies pursuing social media develop guidelines of conduct and then encourage participation within the organization. Just ensure that personal conversations aren’t lost from person to person.

Option 3: Hire someone
If you don’t currently have the resources in house, consider adding employees with the right skill set to focus on social media.

Option 4: Outsource
If you don’t want to hire someone internally, you can always outsource some of your efforts. We’ve talked about outsourcing social media on here before and my stance remains the same – transparency is necessary for this to work.

Make the most of your time
No matter who is handling your social media marketing, the recommendations below will help them make the most of their time.

• Invest in the right tools
  There’s absolutely no shortage of tools available. Some cost money, some are free. Utilizing the right tools is crucial for a successful campaign. Being able to hear the right conversations while ignoring the irrelevant will allow you to focus your attention and maximize efficiency.
• Organize your day
  Social media is always on but that doesn’t mean you can’t plan for it. Organize your day and set aside specific times for tasks. If you have the right tools, most of the listening will happen automatically ensuring interruptions are minimized.
• Prioritize
  Not every conversation requires an immediate response and some conversations are much more relevant than others. Develop a method of prioritizing events and conversations; respond to the most crucial events first and in the proper format.

We’d love to hear your thoughts – how much of your day do you spend on social media marketing?

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Image courtsey of Stevendepolo on Flickr

Do you have time for social media? is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog

I could fill an entire blog post with all of the available social media sites and tools that you can use to promote your business on the web. But the fact is, it’s not about the tools.

With all of the press these companies receive it’s easy to forget about this and focus on the delivery method.

Remember the vessel is less important than the destination. The tool is just that, a tool that can be used to accomplish a task. Define your task, set your goals, determine how to connect with your consumers and then and only then worry about picking up the right tool.

The tool you plan to use today is less important then the goal you plan to accomplish.

Image courtesy of Robert Donovan

It’s not about the tools is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog

Good work T. G. I. Friday’s. Now where’s my burger?

How to get 500k facebook fans! is a post from: Radium
Check out more articles on our Search and Social Media Blog