Category: Featured

Oct 08

Preventing a Cluster Around the Water Cooler: T-Mobile’s Twitter Nightmare

Oct. 9, 2009 UPDATE: #Tmobilestillsucks was a brief trending topic this morning on Twitter. Looks like people are still annoyed! icon smile Preventing a Cluster Around the Water Cooler: T Mobiles Twitter Nightmare
Earlier this week, the trending topic #Tmobilesucks (and other variations) became a huge hit on Twitter. That means that THOUSANDS of people were talking about how much T-Mobile “sucks” and what they don’t like about it.
How can T-Mobile even begin to fix this public relations nightmare?! There is no way that they can reach out to every person that is complaining about their service via social media (and literal word of mouth). People take information they find out from their friends or followers on facebook, digg, twitter, etc. and pass it on, just like gossip around the water cooler. Except in this case, the “water cooler” turns out to have a reach of thousands (or even millions) of people in a time span of a day to even a few hours.
For many businesses, bad press may be a given problem with any nationwide service. However, social media can take one person’s complaints and spread them faster than the bubonic plague. The epic proportions of social media make it impossible for any organization to be completely on top of what everyone is saying about them, all the time.
However, there are some proactive steps companies can take in order to stay up-to-date (as best they can) with what people are saying about them online.
Google Alerts- Set up a free Google Alert that sends an email every week, day, or as-it-happens to your email for each instance someone blogs or writes about your company online. Go to the News Section of the site, search for your company name, and then there will be an option to set-up an alert.
Social Mention- Social Mention is a free service that allows you to search for company names, topics, or individual’s names. It also has free analytics, like major keywords, if the “talk” is mostly positive or negative, etc. You can also subscribe to these terms, much like Google Alerts.
Twitter Mentions- Regularly looking at ‘@’ mentions on your Twitter account shows people who are talking to you, repeating what you say, and crediting (or criticizing) you for something.
Just staying proactive and top of what people are saying (not only about your company specifically) will help you maintain a positive image online.

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Posted in Business, Featured

Oct 04

Blog for Your Readers, Not For Google

A lot of Search Engine Marketing “Experts” will say that a blog is perfect for getting those much-needed keywords onto your website that will help you rank higher and better in search engine organic results. The problem with that is, search engines aren’t actually “reading” your content. They are simply scanning it. And eventually, when you have an actual real person that visits your website, they will read your “content” and realize what a hack you are. They will not pass your content on nor will they visit your website again. This means that all the effort and time you spent writing blog entires stuffed with keywords and anchor text that had nothing important to say may have gotten visitors to your website, but it didn’t keep them there. It didn’t help push people to spread what you have to say via Twitter, Facebook, or email.

When it comes down to it, writing thoughtful, well-written blog entries are the best way to attract steady, relevant users to your website. Sure, they may not have all the “desired” search terms or keywords that you’re hoping to rank for, but it WILL show visitors and potential customers your expertise and make them interested in what you have to say.

In many ways, it’s harder to write for the search engines than it is for real people. Trying to fit in the word “costume” when only “costumes” seems to make sense can be a real challenge and lead to awkward sentences that will repel readers. Writing out your natural thoughts about a subject and teaching others what you have to say seems to roll off the tongue (or off the fingers, in computer-speak) much easier than any well-structured search engine blog post ever could.

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Image courtesy of Caitlinator on Flickr.

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Posted in Et cetera, Featured, Search Engines

Sep 28

Privacy concerns in the age of social media

NYT 150x150 Privacy concerns in the age of social mediaWith Facebook making changes in privacy practices and the Federal Trade Commission considering adopting a more aggressive approach in policing online business practices, many business owners are taking action to protect the privacy of their customers as well.

In August, the New York Times posted a piece about the growing trend of bars, nightclubs, and other entertainment venues in adopting policies that prohibit tweeting or taking photos of other groups. “In an era … when shots of you in unflattering jeans become part of your permanent Google search results,” writes Allen Salkin, “there are signs that some are tired of living their lives on the Web.”

Far more unsettling than unflattering jeans are the findings from a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which discovered that medical students were in violation of doctor-patient confidentiality by tweeting or blogging about patient details.

Of 78 US medical schools studied, over half reported incidents of medical students posting sensitive or unprofessional material online. In some cases, even when patient names were not used, enough information was provided that patients could potentially be identified. One in ten postings was found to be in blatant violation of patient confidentiality. Profanity, discriminatory language, and sexually suggestive material were common.

Few of the schools had policies that dealt with social networking and blogging. Investigators involved in the study are recommending that professional use of social media become part of media school curricula.

Headline image from the New York Times

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Karen Eisenbraun is a freelance writer and marketing specialist based in Kansas City, Missouri. She enjoys yoga, rock climbing, an occasionally jumping out of airplanes.

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Posted in Et cetera, Featured

Sep 09

How to Use a YouTube Channel to Increase Web Traffic

As stated in my social media video that was in my previous post (Social Media: Why Should You Care?), YouTube is the 3rd most popular search engine IN THE WORLD. And since accounts are free, taking advantage of what YouTube has to offer is an easy way to promote your website and services.

These are just some of things you and your company or website can do on YouTube to customize your channel (aka your profile) and drive traffic and revenue to your site:

Integrate with Facebook and Twitter: This is so every time you do certain actions on YouTube, such as favorite a video, upload a video, or subscribe to someone, a notification is posted on Facebook and Twitter. This is an easy way to continuously drive users to your site, and it’s automatic, so you don’t even have to remember to do it!

Favorite Related Videos: When you “favorite” a video, it posts to your channel. Favoriting videos related to your company or website can provide users with a one-stop channel to get all their information related to your industry, rather than searching around YouTube for it. For example, if you are a bead making company, favoriting videos about how to make beaded jewelry or crafts is a great way to increase user traffic.

Embedding Videos: If you have a lot of videos on your website, uploading them to YouTube is a good way to let as many people as possible see it while also avoiding the server space the video takes up. Then, you can simply embed the video into your website, choosing from a variety of different sizes and colors. You can also embed any video on YouTube that hasn’t been deactivated from embedding by the user who uploaded it.

Custom Channels: YouTube allows you to edit the background and theme colors of your channel, truly making it your own. Use your logo as your profile picture and then have your site colors as the background, link, and text colors to maintain as sense of similarity between your YouTube channel and your website.

Google AdSense: Because Google owns YouTube, it’s possible to put Google AdSense on your uploaded videos. These are usually banners that run at the bottom of your video while a user is playing it. This is a great way to make some extra ad revenue, and it’s easy to set up if you already have an AdSense account.

Subscribe to Related Users: Subscribe to other users’ channels if they have similar interests as yours.  Much like Twitter, this will promote them in turn subscribing to you and many channels allow users to view who is subscribing to that channel, therefore increasing traffic to your channel if your channel profile picture pops up in the window of subscribers.

Promotion: Be sure to promote your growing YouTube channel on all available outlets- your website, social media profiles, and even in your store or on your business cards.

Like other social media websites, having a YouTube channel requires some maintenance and love, but is an easy way to build traffic, especially if you and your website was already posting videos.

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Posted in Business, Featured, Search Engines

Aug 27

How to Use Hashtags on Twitter To Increase Traffic and Followers

Hashtags are probably the single-most underused and undervalued aspect of Twitter. For those who have a few characters to spare in their tweet, adding an applicable hashtag may make a major difference to the amount of users who read your tweet and may increase your follower count.

For those reading who don’t know what hashtags are, they are a pound sign (#), following by a keyword that relates to the tweet. They are usually placed at the end of a tweet, but can also be integrated into the tweet itself.

  • Example 1: “New Blog Post About the Value of Internet Marketing at http://URL.com #marketing #internet

  • Example 2: “New Blog Post About the Value of #internet #marketing at http://URL.com

Hashtags are useful because the # sign makes them clickable, taking users to the search results for that keyword. Additionally, when users manually go to Twitter’s search page and type in a keyword (marketing), they will receive tweets that not only include the word marketing, but also any tweets that have #marketing as a hashtag.

Another important thing to note is the fact that a tweet doesn’t have to have the hashtag keyword in it to use that hashtag. (Example 3: “Learn how to increase your ROI at http://URL.com #marketing”) While this may be beneficial to include hashtags that offer a more generalized topic to categorize your tweet, it can also be abused by spammers who use the trending topics on Twitter (keywords and hashtags that many people have been tweeting about; celebrities and movie titles are hugely popular) to promote their spam messages. (Example 4: “Make money blogging TODAY! http://spam.com #Transformers2”) Make sure your hashtag relates to your post, or it may be caught by Twitter administrators as spam.

In a nutshell, hashtags increase followers because they make it easy for users to find your tweets when they search for an applicable keyword. This will lead them to either click on the URL you’ve provided (therefore increasing your website traffic) or to visit your personal Twitter page and begin to ‘follow’ your tweets. This is an easy thing to do that doesn’t take any extra time and may help you gain visibility on Twitter.

P.S. From a totally unscientific and unanalytical standpoint, every time the Social Robot twitter account uses applicable hashtags, we receive about 30% more traffic to the tweeted blog post and usually gain about 2-5 new followers.

How to Use Hashtags on Twitter To Increase Traffic and Followers


Hashtags are probably the single-most underused and undervalued aspect of Twitter. For those who have a few characters to spare in their tweet, adding an applicable hashtag may make a major difference to the amount of users who read your tweet and may increase your follower count.


For those reading who don’t know what hashtags are, they are a pound sign (#), following by a keyword that relates to the tweet. They are usually placed at the end of a tweet, but can also be integrated into the tweet itself.

  • Example 1: “New Blog Post About the Value of Internet Marketing at http://URL.com #marketing #internet

  • Example 2: “New Blog Post About the Value of #internet #marketing at http://URL.com


Hashtags are useful because the # sign makes them clickable, taking users to the search results for that keyword. Additionally, when users manually go to Twitter’s search page and type in a keyword (marketing), they will receive tweets that not only include the word marketing, but also any tweets that have #marketing as a hashtag.


Another important thing to note is the fact that a tweet doesn’t have to have the hashtag keyword in it to use that hashtag. (Example 3: “Learn how to increase your ROI at http://URL.com #marketing”) While this may be beneficial to include hashtags that offer a more generalized topic to categorize your tweet, it can also be abused by spammers who use the trending topics on Twitter (keywords and hashtags that many people have been tweeting about; celebrities and movie titles are hugely popular) to promote their spam messages. (Example 4: “Make money blogging TODAY! http://spam.com #Transformers2”) Make sure your hashtag relates to your post, or it may be caught by Twitter administrators as spam.


In a nutshell, hashtags increase followers because they make it easy for users to find your tweets when they search for an applicable keyword. This will lead them to either click on the URL you’ve provided (therefore increasing your website traffic) or to visit your personal Twitter page and begin to ‘follow’ your tweets. This is an easy thing to do that doesn’t take any extra time and may help you gain visibility on Twitter.


P.S. From a totally unscientific and unanalytical standpoint, every time the Social Robot twitter account (LINK) uses applicable hashtags, we receive about 30% more traffic to the tweeted blog post and usually gain about 2-5 new followers.

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Posted in Business, Featured

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