Syndicating Your Content
Show Notes: January 3, 2011

Do You Have a Social Media Hub? [ 14:11 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (231)

Building your business brand should be one of the main goals you have for your social media marketing plan. What this means is using syndication to place your content on the internet as an extension of your brand, and it’s message. So let’s talk about your social media hub.

The Center of Your Hub – Your Website or Blog

Of course, you know that I advocate your website actually be a WordPress blog, and I can put you into a fully functioning wordpress blog for only $10 a month….but I digress

Your website and blog are the center of your social media hub. This is where you sell your products or services on the web. It’s your online representation of you and your business. People visit your blog, you talk to them through your posts, and or content, and they decide to buy from you because you’ve established a rapport with them.

Your Hub’s Spokes

Think of these as spokes on a wheel, where your blog is the center of the wheel and the spokes are those places where you go and create a second presence, another place where people can find you. This is where social media comes in. Each social media network you join is another place for you to meet new people and connect with friends and clients. Each network is an opportunity for you to build a community. You’re probably using some of them now, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Plaxo, and others.

Once you’ve created your profiles at your social networking sites, here are some strategies to consider:

1. Build and nurture relationships. When you’re spending time on your social networks, think about ways in which you can build relationships. This can be furthering relationships you’ve already established or forming new. For instance, when I have a new friend on Facebook, I put them into a list so I can look for them frequently, and easily, to see what they are talking about. As often as possible I try to join a conversation they have started, by adding a comment or sharing their information. Don’t underestimate the power of sharing your friend’s links, comments, etc. It’s a tremendous goodwill builder.I use my personal Facebook profile as a way to nurture my existing relationships as well as build new ones. Think of it as expanding your reach.
2. Syndicate your content. Once you have a blog up and running, you’ll want import it into Facebook with the Networked Blogs app so that you can immediately send new blog posts to Facebook. This allows new friends on Facebook to see your post, and click over to your blog to find out more about you. It’s also a social community itself. You can find and follow blogs through Networked Blogs that extend your online community.
3. Make new friends. I add friends in Facebook who I have never met. I may see something they said to one of my friends, or pulled them up through a search that intrigued me, so I send a friend request. When you do invite them to be a friend, make sure to add a personal message letting them know why you’re sending them a friend request. Again, having a common interest or two really helps break the ice. To expand your community, you need to feel comfortable reaching out to new people. Remember that common interests help us form those online relationships a bit easier. You never know who your online friends know. It’s expanding your sphere of influence.
4. Show who you are. Transparency is key to your social media strategy. Keeping in mind that all you post on the internet, stays on the internet, show a little personality in your interactions with others online. Don’t be afraid to talk about your interests, the stories that illustrate your point in a blog post.
5. Share info you think your friends would be interested in. You shouldn’t be broadcasting your marketing message 24/7. Sharing is one of the most expedient ways to create solid relationships. Be seen as someone who thinks of others.

Those are some tips on creating a hub for your social media using your blog’s rss feed to deliver your blog posts to your social networking sites and how you can create and build profitable relationships online.

What do you think? Let me know by commenting!

Have you ever said the words “Here’s my website, but the information’s a little out of date” and blushed a little out of embarrassment to anyone who’s asked for your web address? Or do you Google your name, business name or keywords and your site doesn’t show up on the results?

You know, it doesn’t have to be that way anymore.

People expect you to have a relevant, up-to-date web site. Especially if you’re a small business. It’s as common as a handshake, and now it’s just about as simple as one too.

Enter WordPress.

WordPress is an open-source (read: free) content management system (aka CMS) that’s taken over the internet. Over 13 million websites (http://en.wordpress.com/stats/) are running on WordPress including People, The New York Times and Wired Magazine as well as Syndicating Your Content.

So what’s the fuss?

Isn’t WordPress just for blogs?

WordPress is for more than blogging. One look at The New York Times will tell you that it’s not just for telling everyone about your dog’s latest escapades anymore.

Over the past few years WordPress has grown from a simple blogging platform to a robust publishing system that can do just about anything you want it to, provided you have the coding skills.

And if you don’t have the coding skills, WordPress is perfect for getting your web presence set up in a matter of hours instead of weeks. And you don’t have to bug that recalcitrant web guy to change the copyright date on your web site.

So why should you use WordPress?

1. SEO: Google loves wordpress, and you can easily get on page 1 of google with strategic keyword placements in your blog posts.
2. Control: Once you have WordPress installed, you have control over all your content. You can edit your pages to your heart’s content, as easily as you can create a Word document.
3. Looks good out of the box. WordPress comes installed with a clean, professional-looking default theme that allows you to change the header image and background without touching a line of code.
4. Change when you want to. Since your content is completely separate from how the site actually looks, you can change the theme whenever you feel like it without touching your content.
5. You can blog. Or not. There is no rule that says you have to blog. Honestly. But if you want to, WordPress is built to handle this. Or you can just hide the feature if you don’t care for it. I would, however, keep some sort of regularly-updated something on the site. Make use of the blog for news, announcements, coupons, specials or sales instead.
6. Huge user base and support. There are millions of WordPress users. And you’ll be able to find the answers to your questions and problems pretty quickly out there on the web, or find someone to fix your problem for you. WordPress.org even has a pretty extensive knowledge base and well-monitored forums.
7. Inexpensive. There are thousands of free and inexpensive themes for you to install to change the look of your site. If you’re the DIY type, you can learn enough to be able to make WordPress look how you want for free. If you’re not the DIY type, there are more than enough people out there who can make your site look the way you want it for anywhere from $500-$3000.

Gone are the days where small business web sites are held captive by too-busy web guys. And gone are the days where a small business had to pony up a second mortgage to pay for a site that looks halfway decent only to never be able to change a thing.

WordPress puts control back into your hands, right where it should be.

I’ve been blogging since 2005. I started at Blogger and discovered WordPress in January 2007. I’ve had two self-hosted blogs and have been programming in WordPress exclusively since then.

North San Diego Business came out of a need to show the small business community, in 2006, what a blog looked like, and what it could do. To that end, the weekly North San Diego Business At Large podcast came into being.

When Facebook and Twitter came into the small business community you saw a plethora of “social media masters” come out of the woodwork. Their fees ran the gamete, but were usually pretty hefty. One firm was asking $500 a month for their services. It seemed to me that some were cashing in on the craze. More power to them!

However, some in the small business community were left in the dust. Dazed and confused, they left business sponsored social media events without a clue how to implement social media into their business.

So when I hear of yet another Social Media Mastery series I have to ask a few questions, especially when the series costs you an arm and a leg. Here are the questions I would ask.

• How long has the “social media master” been around?
• Does the “social media master” have a blog?
• Are they blogging regularly?
• Have they been blogging long?
• Is their blog at wordpress.com or blogger.com?
  (there are some exceptions to this question)
• Do they have a Facebook profile?
• How many friends do they have?
• Do they have a Facebook page?
• Do they have any custom pages on their Facebook page?
• How many fans do they have?
• How many connections on Linkedin?
• How many followers do they have on Twitter compared to how many Tweets they’ve sent out?
• Do they share information online or just promote themselves and their services/products?
• Do their course outlines tell you what you’ll be learning?
• Have you heard of them before?

Where can you get a lot of information about social media without shelling out a lot of your hard earned money?

Social Media Examiner
Mashable
Chris Brogan
CopyBlogger
HubSpot
Inside Facebook
Search Engine Guide
Search Engine Journal
Search Engine Watch
Daily Bloggr
Duct Tape Marketing
Social Media Coaching Center
Specky Boy
Square Martini Media
Tech Crunch
Social Time
Tripwire Magazine
WebPro News

Got a social media story to share? Feel free to comment!

Today I listened to an audio interview with an online marketer, branded as a platform specialist. During the interview it was mentioned that you really don’t need a website. The interviewer was taken aback and asked what the marketer meant. The marketer replied, “you can use a blog instead of a website.”

I’ve heard that so many times….”oh, it’s a blog.” While I can appreciate that at one time blogs really were not visually appealing, but baby, those times have changed. There are so many free and premium themes to choose from, and so many ways to customize the blog that the days of you seeing stacked posts are long gone.

One of my favorite themes is WP Remix. It has ten different homepage designs, fifteen plus interior pages, gallery pages, photo and product pages. It’s extremely flexible and doesn’t require programming knowledge to create new pages. It also has a blog page for all your posts.

WordPress has come a long way and is an ideal solution for a small business owner with a tight budget, but plenty of sweat equity. Additionally, the benefits of having a blog if you’re using social networking sites like Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and YouTube are tremendous. You can let the blog do all the heavy lifting by syndicating your content online.

If you want to give blogging a try, go to WordPress.com, which is the free blog site and open an account. If you really love blogging, you can easily export out all your content and bring it into a self-hosted blog, like Syndicating Your Content.

I just received my Amazon order. I invested in some new books so I can keep abreast of the changes in social media. I already own Social Media Marketing: An Hour A Day and Blog Marketing and wanted to purchase Mari Smith’s new book, Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day. It only made sense to pick up YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour A Day, and the newest book out…Success Secrets of the Social Media Marketing Superstars.

I’ll be reading this last book over the two next weeks and will give you a recap of each section. It covers strategies, principles, applications, and social media websites.

I highly recommend any of the above books as fabulous additions to your social media library. Let me know what you think? What’s your favorite social medial book?

On Wednesday, May 19, 2010 from 4pm to 6pm Pacific Time you can learn how to create, and use, a WordPress.com blog.

If you want to really start getting your message out to the world, blogging is the tool you need. It’s the beginning of leveraging your content, world wide! It also minimizes the time you need to invest in social media, helping you work more efficiently.

With a blog you can increase your online visibility and elevate your credibility. Now is the time to start blogging! Plus it drives search engine traffic to your website.

In this online webinar, you’ll work with me learning:

• What is a post
• What is a page
• What is the sidebar
• What is the content area

Dashboard Orientation

• What are the settings and what do they mean

How To Create and Manage A Post/Page

• Adding Images So your blog will also be visually appealing
• How to use the Timestamp
• Tags – what are they and how to use them
• Categories – what they are and how to use them
• Linking Strategies in Posts/Pages Linking keywords or phrases helps the search engine know what text is more important than other text
• Keyword Strategies

Managing Links, Categories and Comments

• Links – Creating them, managing them
• Managing Comments
• How to control them through the settings
• How you find out about comments on your blog
• How to determine whether you spam them or not
• What to do if you get a negative comment

Click Here To Register

Blogging has incited the curiosity of millions of people all over the world; it represents a great opportunity for those who create blogs and for those who use them. In the beginning blogging was seen as keeping personal diaries online, however, blogging is far more complex owing to the fact that every blog carries the touch of the owner’s imagination, interest and wit. The range of topics blogs deal with is incredibly wide: from politics and religion to sky diving and scuba diving. The next very important aspect after blog content is actually the interactive format of the pages that allows users to take action on the site by commenting. I liken it to “joining the conversation.”

In the early days of blogging around the mid-90s, people enjoyed the experience of belonging to the online community that went beyond all sorts of boundaries. This was the time when the very first combination of text, pictures and videos were included in a blog, as the most accurate way of reflecting one’s life. Sometimes, bloggers transmitted live images with the help of various portable devices, creating the so-called semi-automated blogging.

At that time, blogs were not individual pages, as they mainly functioned as components of larger websites; nevertheless, with the rapid development of technologies, it came into everyone’s power to create and support a personal independent blog. Successful blogging focuses on high quality content that makes any visitor return to the site and even take action on it.

Presently, you can find guides to creating successful blogs, since, many small business owners perceive the phenomenon as a great chance to promote products and services online. Blogs are presently part of the Internet marketing strategies anyone should use as included within online advertising campaigns; the great advantage of blogging is that it mainly targets potential customers, reducing the number of uninterested users. We could say that thanks to advertising and Internet marketing, blogging has actually become a very promising type of business.

So how do you get started? I’d suggest WordPress.com. It’s a free blogging site and you’ll quickly discover whether blogging is something you can use to leverage your business online. Sign up for access to Syndicating Your Content’s exclusive “members only” area (subscription box is to the right, at the top of the column) to view the WordPress.com video tutorial I created for you! Also, check out the Category section of Syndicating Your Content. There’s a lot of content on blogging on the site. Let me know what you think about blogging by commenting!

Blogging has incited the curiosity of millions of people all over the world; it represents a great opportunity for those who create blogs and for those who use them. In the beginning blogging was seen as keeping personal diaries online, however, blogging is far more complex owing to the fact that every blog carries the touch of the owner’s imagination, interest and wit. The range of topics blogs deal with is incredibly wide: from politics and religion to sky diving and scuba diving. The next very important aspect after blog content is actually the interactive format of the pages that allows users to take action on the site by commenting. I liken it to “joining the conversation.”

In the early days of blogging around the mid-90s, people enjoyed the experience of belonging to the online community that went beyond all sorts of boundaries. This was the time when the very first combination of text, pictures and videos were included in a blog, as the most accurate way of reflecting one’s life. Sometimes, bloggers transmitted live images with the help of various portable devices, creating the so-called semi-automated blogging.

At that time, blogs were not individual pages, as they mainly functioned as components of larger websites; nevertheless, with the rapid development of technologies, it came into everyone’s power to create and support a personal independent blog. Successful blogging focuses on high quality content that makes any visitor return to the site and even take action on it.

Presently, you can find guides to creating successful blogs, since, many small business owners perceive the phenomenon as a great chance to promote products and services online. Blogs are presently part of the Internet marketing strategies anyone should use as included within online advertising campaigns; the great advantage of blogging is that it mainly targets potential customers, reducing the number of uninterested users. We could say that thanks to advertising and Internet marketing, blogging has actually become a very promising type of business.

So how do you get started? I’d suggest WordPress.com. It’s a free blogging site and you’ll quickly discover whether blogging is something you can use to leverage your business online. Sign up for access to Syndicating Your Content’s exclusive “members only” area (subscription box is to the right, at the top of the column) to view the WordPress.com video tutorial I created for you! Also, check out the Category section of Syndicating Your Content. There’s a lot of content on blogging on the site. Let me know what you think about blogging by commenting!

Here is a video tutorial on WordPress’ Blogroll, how to add a link and how to manage a link.

Blogrolls typically link to the blogs you, as the blogger, read. However, depending upon what your goal is for your blog, you may want to rename it from blogroll to something else. This tutorial will show you how to rename your bogroll too.

If this was helpful, please feel free to leave a comment below. If you need a specific WordPress task documented, please let me know.