The Caffeinated Blog

Blurring the Line Between Personal and Professional

As I navigate through the many, many (many) social networking and media sites out there, I look at hundreds of profiles of people from all walks of life.  But how do I decide who to befriend, follow, or add to my network?  I look at two things:

1. The person's bio - profession, website, interests
2. The sites they bookmark and share

These are the two biggest elements of a social profile - they are what make you, well, you in the social networking world.  What comprises your social profiles is what visitors will use to determine if they want to befriend, follow, or network with you.

Now, many social networkers tend to go strictly professional or completely personal when building their social profiles.  Which way you go depends on your goals for joining social media sites or networks.  If you're all about connecting with friends and have no professional goals set for online socializing, then personal is the way to go.  However, if you're on social networks for more professional reasons, then you may want to consider a more middle-of-the-road approach.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Why You Should KISS Your Customers, the key in using social media for business is to engage your customers on a social and personal level.  So, to achieve this goal, wouldn't it be natural to mix a little bit of your personality and interests into your social networking and social media profiles?

Here are some tips for adding a personal aspect to your business social profiles:

• What are your customers interested in?  If you don't already know what interests your target market, then now's the time to find out.  This will help you to target the best social sites to join, as well as bookmark and share content that your network will want to read.
• Put a face on your profile (or at least a name).  Many businesses will use the company name and logo; but by using your own photo (or, at the very least, your name), you add a personal touch to your profile.  Use a good, possibly professionally-taken photo, and use a combination of your first name with your company name to make the association between the two.
• What are you interested in?  Add a few of your own (G-rated) personal interests to your profile, especially those that fit with those of your target audience.
• Custom-tailor to different sites.  It's OK to use the same avatar and name, but tailor your bio to fit the unique user profile of different social sites.  Take a look around at the profiles of other users on each site to get an idea for style, as well as anything you should avoid putting in your profile.
• It's not about the pitch.  It's about gauging interests and then engaging your prospects on a personal level.  Don't jump in and immediately start selling - it's a big turn off for social networkers.

Set your goals before setting out on a social marketing campaign.  If your goal is to target an audience of C-levels or accountant, then a strictly professional social profile is likely the way to go.  However, to target social media users on a more personal level in order to gain their business, adding a bit of your own personality to your profiles can make a huge difference.

The Yahoo Deal that Won't Die

I read this article today on Search Engine Land about the latest in the Microhoo deal (more appropriately, "ordeal").  I loved how Greg Sterling started out with the horror/suspense movie metaphor, comparing Microsoft to a monster or bad guy that the hero thought was dead, but pops back up at the most unexpected moment to scare the hell out of everyone.

But who's really the "thing that won't die" here - Yahoo or Microsoft?  Sure, Microsoft keeps coming back alive after every attempt to kill them is made; but Yahoo keeps doggedly refusing to die themselves.  Someone is gonna have to give up at some point, here.  I think we know which one.

My question to all of you is: should Yahoo keep holding out, either for themselves or a merger with AOL, or should they just give up to Microsoft?  Also, do you think that a Microhoo deal will improve the search platform landscape, both from a user perspective and a advertiser perspective?

Whole Lotta Link Love Friday, July 4th

Ah, the Fourth of July: picnics, parades, fireworks, and this year - a 3 day weekend!  Woo-hoo!

I live in the place where everyone wants to be for the Fourth - Washington DC.  It's the biggest Fourth of July celebration in the nation, and would I miss it?  Um, yeah, I would.  I think I'll forgo the crowds and sticky humid weather and celebrate the best way I know how: at home, with my family, sucking down BBQ and basking in the glow of the television (the view is so much better, I think).

So, my fellow Americans (and valued readers from around the globe), here is your Fourth of July edition of Whole Lotta Link Love:

1. What's more patriotic than completely eliminating your inbound traffic from Canada?  I'm kidding, of course (hi there Canadian readers...Happy Belated Canada Day!); but if you advertise on Yahoo, check your geo-targeting settings.  Search Marketing Sage tells you why.
2. Wanna build your own widget, but you aren't a developer?  Check out Sproutbuilder's easy interface for building and publishing all kinds of widgets, minisites, banners, and other rich media.
3. Everything is social these days.  Seed Keywords is like social keyword research.  Just create a "scenario" for your query, like "You're looking for a fireworks stand in Houston.  What do you search for?".  Then, Seed Keywords creates a special URL for your scenario that you can send to your contacts.  They type in the keywords they would use, and voila!  Instant keyword research, with a little help from your friends!
4. Google has announced it's going to crawl Flash files.  Andy Beal thinks it'll ruin the web; but what do think?  Good news or bad?
5. Darren Rowse at Problogger explores the differences between renting and buying social real estate, and tips to consider for both.
6. Lastly, here's one highly optimized news article.  Even if you're not a sports fan, you'll love it.

And that's the week in links.  Be careful out there with those fireworks...you don't want to end up like this guy:

Why You Should KISS Your Customers

We all know what KISS means...Keep It Simple, Silly (or Stupid, but I prefer Silly).  But when it comes to customer service and getting personal, especially online, it also means something else: Keep It Social, Silly.

Let me tell you about something that happened yesterday (which made me think about this topic):  We (my husband, my mother-in-law, and I) frequent a Starbucks in our neighborhood.  Of all the Starbucks near our houses, that's the only one we go to.  Why?  They know us, they know our drinks, and they treat us like friends whenever we come in.  Now, yesterday morning my mother-in-law went to our Starbucks, with her little rat terrier in tow.  In the past, they'd let her come in with her dog; but yesterday, she was told by an employee (who was new and didn't know her) that it was a health code violation and she had to leave.  My MIL was a bit tee'd off by this; but asked if she could at least finish purchasing her coffee beans.  She was refused.  Needless to say, we heard all about it when she got back home.

Later in the day, my husband and I went back to said Starbucks to buy the beans and some drinks.  We also had a chat with the manager, who knows us, my MIL, and her dog.  She apologized profusely, and we chatted for a little while.  She talked about how she thinks of everyone who comes to her Starbucks as a friend, and she tries to instill in her employees the value of personal customer service.  This, needless to say, made a huge impression on me - and it's the very reason we don't go to any other Starbucks in our neighborhood.

Now, I told that story to make a point.  If you have an online business, there's no actual "face time" involved with your customers.  Visitors come to your site, look around for what they need, transactions happen, and a product gets delivered in one fashion or another.  The personal aspect of walking into a business and interacting with actual people gets lost.  However, you can put some personality into your online business through the use of social media.

How, you ask?  With so many social media sites at your disposal, there are so many possibilities for you to connect on a social and personal level with your customers.  Here are some examples:

Blogs

This is probably the best way to stay connected with your customers.  You can blog about subjects your customers would be interested in and which are relevant to your products or industry, such as trends, current events, and new products.  You can use it as a platform to interact with your customers by soliciting questions and answering them.  Post specials and links to promotions or coupons.  The opportunities are endless, and it's the best starting point for you to build a larger social presence.

Take a look at Direct2Dell, the blog created by Dell to communicate with customers.

Twitter 

Twitter is a great way to have conversations, which is extremely important for engaging customers on a personal level.  Think of the Starbucks manager - she has a conversation with us every time we come to her store.  I'm not saying that you should have personal conversations with each and every one of your customers via Twitter every day; however, it can be used to communicate with them in a way that's less automated and more casual.  Launching a new product?  Offering a special discount?  New blog post?  Tweet it to your customers. 

Facebook

Using Facebook, you can create a branded profile about your business and engage customers within your own social community.  It's a great way to interact and put a face on your business, plus it gives your customers in your Facebook network a sense of belonging to your circle and that of your business.  You can create an unlimited number of groups and tailor them to different parts of your business or different products you sell (which is great for targeting offers and getting specific customer feedback).

YouTube

It's not just for videos showing skateboard faceplants and mascara-smeared Britney fans - you can use it (effectively) for your business.  Think about something you could demonstrate to your customers - like how to apply green eye makeup, or clothing tips for tall women - and make a video (or two, or three).  Not only could you post your video on YouTube and build a community of new potential customers (don't forget to use your logo and link to your website); but you can use the videos in other places - like your blog, your website, or linked from an email newsletter.  You're engaging your customers on a personal level by addressing an issue with which they may need help.

You don't need an actual brick and mortar store to get facetime with your customers.  There are so many ways to use social media to have conversations with them and put a face and personality on your business.   The key is not to push your message at them, but engage them on a social and personal level in order to make them feel like they're your friends - and not just another transaction.

5 More Business Social Media Sites You May Not Know About

A couple weeks ago I posted 5 niche social media sites for business - so where broader social sites may not have worked for you, these could in driving more targeted traffic to your site as well as helping to establish you as an authority and build your brand.

The post received a pretty good response, because my goal was to list sites that were not necessarily on other social site lists (and there are a lot of lists out there).  Sure, a few of the sites have been listed before, but I think they deserve more promotion than they've received.  Anyway, this prompted me to find some additional business-niche social and web 2.0 sites - and find them I did.

Here are 5 more business social sites you may not know about (or possibly overlooked):

1. SmallBusiness.com: Yes, wikis can be a great way to leverage web 2.0 technology for your business.  Not only is it a great source of small business information (with user-generated guides on everything from starting your business, financing, and marketing to e-commerce and blogging), but it's also a great place to promote your business.  You can create a profile, and if you have any small business knowledge not already covered, then you can contribute to any of the guides.  If you offer services for small businesses, then you can add a link to your site or blog to any of the small business directories listed.  Note: wikis are not for link spamming.  It's advised that you take a good look at the information available and contribute if you have something solid and useful to add, and add your links in only the most relevant directories.
2. Briz: Briz is a social networking site where consumers can interact with local businesses.  As a business, you can create a free profile, which includes a link to your website, your business address, your phone number, and even your logo (among a plethora of other things).  Consumers can search for businesses in their local areas, send messages to them, vote for them, and bookmark them.  This is a great way for small businesses of all types that serve a specific geographic area to promote themselves to and interact with their customer base.
3. Hubspot: Hubspot offers a variety of tools to help small businesses use the Internet to effectively market themselves (such as keyword research, link building, business blogs, lead intelligence, and a ton of other tools).  They also have a beta site, titled Social Content for Marketing Mavens, where you can find and post links to articles about online marketing and vote them up or down.  Plus, if you're a marketer and have a profile on LinkedIn, you can join the Hubspot Marketing Mavens group.
4. KillerStartups: Do you have a startup?  Is it killer?  Add it to KillerStartups!  They review each new business added to their system, then post them on the site so visitors can vote on "the next big thing".  It's a great way to gain insight into the popularity and viability of your startup idea.  You never know - a potential investor may just find your business and think it's "killer" enough to finance.
5. Upspring: Like Briz, Upspring allows all types of businesses to create a profile, which potential customers can find.  It works for both B2C and B2B businesses, and customers can search by business name, location, or category (which, for some strange reason, Upspring has hidden at the bottom of their pages).  Unlike Briz, you don't get all the bells and whistles for free - the free basic profile comes with your logo, a link to your website and email address, up to 1 mb of photos, and your business hours, while the Premium Listing (at a pretty inexpensive $19.98 a month) gets you the ability to add videos, coupons, and testimonials, as well as interact directly with customers and create groups.

Again, I'd like to know what you think.  Have you used these or any other niche social media sites?  What kind of results did you receive?

Whole Lotta Link Love Friday, June 27

Wow, it's Friday already?  Well, you know what that means...another rockin' edition of Whole Lotta Link Love!

It's been an interesting week of web discovery ("surfing" is sooo year 2000).  Here's what I found:

1. Humorous Blog of the Week: MikeDoe.net (get it, Doe-net...cue rim shot).  Anyway, Mike is a standup comedian based in DC.  I haven't seen any of his shows, but his blog is definitely cause enough for me to go to one.
2. Looking for an easy way to manage your personal vs. business online profiles?  How about family vs. friends?  Use Moli to create different online profiles under one account.  Great for personal reputation management, company communication, or anything you can think of.  And it's free too!
3. It's a social networking site.  No, it's a search engine.  Wait a minute - it's both.  Searchles has a social networking site for a heart, but a search engine for a brain.  Content shared through Searchles is indexed so users can easily search for and find it later.  Share, vote, and search.
4. I found this handy free tool for converting my documents into PDFs.
5. WebProNews just launched Twellow, a handy directory of Twitter users.  Users are categorized by their one-line bio, which means that you'll have to so some keyword-stuffing in 160 characters or less to get listed in the proper categories.
6. With gas prices as high as an elephant's eye, it really surprises the hell out of me that so many companies are afraid to jump on the telecommuting bandwagon.  If you're trying to convince your boss that working from home is the way to go, here are 10 good reasons you can use.
7. LinkedIn is an excellent business networking tool...if used correctly.  Here are some tips for getting the most from it.

TTFN, dear readers.  Until next time...I'm gonna have myself a real good time.

Twitter Debate: Innovative or Gimmicky?

I just jumped on the Twitter bandwagon yesterday.  I've been resisting it for a while, despite reading all the Twittervangelism out there.  I finally decided to give it a try, and so far it's been quite interesting.  It has potential for the obsessive-compulsive in me.

I've now become intrigued with the Obama-McCain Twitter debate.  I found out about it watching Attack of the Show on G4 yesterday, where they had a highly intellectual discussion about it with a panel of spotty teenage guys wearing cowboy hats and huge sunglasses in front of Stickcams.  Only on AOTS...but I digress.

The discussion, as short as it was for the attention span of a 16 year old guy, was actually quite interesting because they talked about whether the Twitter debate was actually an excellent way to use current Web 2.0 technology to reach out to young voters, or if it was just plain pandering.  The two guys that responded thought it was the latter.

I also read this blog post from Sean Maguire at Marketing Pilgrim, where he predicts that Obama will win the presidency because he's "most savvy in online politics" (i.e. social media, texting, email, etc.).  The comments that follow are quite lively and slightly more interesting than the post itself - not because the post wasn't at all interesting, but because the comments (naturally) degraded into a debate that completely missed the point of the original post.  Having subscribed to follow-up comments, I witnessed the whole thing, blow by blow.

I'd like to hear your opinions: is the Twitter debate going to win over the online community, or will they see it as pandering and gimmicky? Will Obama win because of his online political savviness?

Whole Lotta Link Love Friday, June 20

Happy Friday!

I love the summer blockbuster season...I've gone to see a new movie almost every weekend for the past month and a half.  They've ranged from the mind-blowingly awesome (Iron Man) to the mind-numbingly disappointing (You Don't Mess With the Zohan).  Today, I'm going to see Get Smart, and I'm expecting good things.

I'm serving up a whole lotta link love today, ranging from useful to friggin' funny - so dig in!

1. As a foodie, I love finding new places to find all kinds of really good food.  WhereInDC provides restaurant reviews and tips for DC-area foodies, as well as excellent recipes for everyone.  
2. Check out how much money you could be saving on gas if you either took public transportation, or started working from home.
3. Don't have a website yet?  Google Sites lets you build a free site that you can use as a temporary solution.  I'm building one to temporarily house my writing portfolio (look for the link soon here on The Caffeinated Blog).
4. Humorous Blog of the Week: TiggyBlog.  It's weird, it's wonderful...just check it out.
5. We all want to work from home; but those three words have become as shady and slimy as MLM.  The folks at I've Tried That lose money on all those WAH schemes...so you don't have to.
6. Yes, another social media site...Sproose is a social search site where you can vote on search results in order to "improve" them for other users.
7. From the mind of Aaron Wall: the Link Harvester link analysis tool.  Used to analyze Yahoo and MSN backlinks, Link Harvester returns a bounty of information about the sites that are linking to you, including IP addresses, C block addresses, those coveted .edu and .gov backlinks, and tons more.

Have a great weekend everyone!  Until next time - doobie do, bop bop-ah do whoa.

5 Business Social Media Sites You May Not Know About

Yeah, yeah...we all know about Stumbleupon, Digg, Del.icio.us, LinkedIn, etc. ad nauseum.  Social media marketing can be a hit or miss for many businesses, depending on the niche and how cunningly it's utilized.  But with the mainstreaming of social media comes a wealth of niche sites that could yield better results for businesses than their more general 2.0 cousins.

Here are 5 I found that you may not have heard of (and if you have, then maybe they deserve a second look):

1. Biznik:  This business networking site looks (and acts) a lot like LinkedIn; but it has quite a few additional features that can turn the volume on your promotion up to 11.  For instance, you can write and contribute articles, link your blog feed up to your profile, and find and post local business events.  You can post a profile with your photo and one link to your website; but the downside is that you have to pay a monthly fee to access other premium features (like uploading a business logo, adding more than one link, and adding the aforementioned blog feed).
2. Small Business Brief: This social networking site has been around since 2007 and has been getting its props lately on other lists social networking sites; but it's well worth a mention here.  The target audience, for the most part, are small business marketers (the most popular content is pretty much about online marketing).  It's a great place to find advice to help you market your business, or post good, relevant content of your own.  Downside: lots of spam postings that have nothing to do with small business advice.
3. Gooruze: This is a social networking site for online marketers (get it - "gurus" except with the g-o-o from Google and z-e at the end?  Meh.)  Here you can post links to "news" about online marketing, your own original articles, or questions for other online marketers to answer - all which can be rated and commented on by other members.  Best part - it's all free.  
4. Design Float:  A niche social networking site for graphic designers, this won't suit everyone; but there is a Business & Freelancing category that has some pretty good articles posted for small businesses.  If you're a designer or a freelancer, it's worth checking out.
5. FreeIQ:  This is like YouTube for business - you can watch instructional videos about small business marketing, ecommerce, sales, or post your own.  They bill themselves as "The Marketplace for Ideas", and there's definitely a lot of useful information here (especially if you're more of a visual learner).

If social media marketing hasn't worked very well for you on the bigger sites, then maybe you should dig a little deeper and check out some of these niche sites - you may be surprised at the fruits of your efforts.

Tell me about social media sites you've found that have worked for you.  If there are some diamonds in the rough, then I may be inclined to post them in another list. :-)

Whole Lotta Link Love Friday, June 13

I’ve decided to start a weekly post of sites I’ve stumbled on during my regular journeys down that rocky path known as the Internet.  These are all links that I’ve found interesting/humorous/valuable/cool, or otherwise notable enough to mention here, compiled in a handsomely-bound collection titled Whole Lotta Link Love Friday (and if you can’t tell from the title that I’m a Led Zeppelin fan, you will a little further down in the post).

So, here you are my kiddies…your first heapin’ helping of a whole lotta linky goodness.  Enjoy!

1. We all love free stuff, so if you need stock images, check out 123rf.com for free stock photos.
2. Pointless Banter is one of very few blogs that makes me laugh out loud.  Make sure to check out Kevin's Craigslist Creep of the Week.
3. Tech Suave is holding a contest for bloggers - enter to win awesome stuff like free Wordpress themes, free marketing, free web hosting, and even free traffic.
4. This story gives me new hope that I'll actually get to see Led Zeppelin in concert.
5. If you're a writer, MetaGlossary.com can be a very helpful tool.  It's a meta search engine where you can find definitions of terms, phrases, acronyms, and who knows what else.
6. Rebecca at Between My Peers was nice enough to write a blog post post, at my request, about what (ahem) "A-line types" should wear to flatter their figures.
7. And now, deep writing (about SEO content)...by Aaron Wall.

So, there you are.  Until next time...you need coolin', baby I'm not foolin'.  I'm gonna send ya back to schoolin'.