Getting Started

• We recommend having a website with a blog (posting weekly) before moving to social media
• Try out a tool like HootSuite (free) to post to all of your accounts at once
• Don’t just advertise – interact. Sales messages should be limited to about 20% of your posts
• Choose where to spend your time – better to use 1 social network well than to use 4 poorly.

Facebook (Our FB page)

• Create a Page (not just a personal profile): www.facebook.com/pages
• Link it to your blog: https://apps.facebook.com/social-rss
• Create a branded landing page using an app like www.pagemodo.com
• Run a contest using an app like www.offerpop.com to encourage Likes. See a contest we just launched for www.facebook.com/solofoods
• Try Facebook advertising to get some attention – it’s cheap! See our recent post about Facebook demographic targeting.

Twitter (My Twitter Profile)

• Create a branded profile background – logo, photo, website, brief call to action should all appear on the left portion of the image.
• Use relevant #hashtags and @usernames in your tweets. Example: “Hosting social media workshop for #TMBC at @mimis_cafe in #OP #KS this morning!” – Search Twitter for #TMBC or #Olathe to see how people track tags to stay on top of trends.
• Use Hootsuite and Twitter search to find people to follow, retweet, etc. – save a search for “need accountant”
• Follow people who follow your partners, clients, or competitors.
• More basic info about Twitter, including a list of KC-specific hashtags.

LinkedIn (My LinkedIn Profile)

• Studies show LinkedIn has best ROI for B2B professional service providers
• Join relevant groups. I’m in Greater Kansas City Connected, Linked to KC, Principal Connections KC, and “On Startups – The Community for Entrepreneurs.” Answer relevant questions and interact.
• From your profile, click “Ask for recommendations.”
• Look someone up every time you receive a business card. Invite them to connect.

Also check out Google+ and Pinterest – both fairly new, and growing in very different audiences. Google+ is fairly heavily male dominated, with a strong base of tech geeks, VC investors, and photographers. Pinterest is a female-dominated network that emphasizes creativity, fashion, crafts, and recipes.

Free Fullscreen WordPress Themes

The following four themes are completely free, highly customizable with a theme admin panel and very easy to use.

Photo Book

Pure Photography

Elegant Photography

Black and White

Premium Fullscreen WordPress Themes

High-quality free themes like the ones above are hard to come by. Here’s a list of premium themes that start around $30:

Graph Paper

Klix

Dk

Delight

Galaxy

Royal Travel

Genesis

Photorific

Specere

Zagetti

Teardrop

Village

Ecophoto

John Doe

James

Minimalist

Imaginem

Furniture

Core

Crea

Photoshot

Slash

Panorama

Adventure

Ecophoto 2

Xebax

Pluto

Contrast

Artboard

Meshable

Adam Smith

PhotoPharm

Architectos

Flashlike

Anan

Sideways

Milky Way

Basketball

Jacov

Help Children

Forbunde

Choice

The Basics

Want to add any themes to our list? Let us know!

Heart my Website

Heart v2

Heart Social Icons

Sweet Social

Chococons

Typical Kikay

St. Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Special

Valentine’s Candy Conversation Hearts

Twitter Purple Heart

Twitter Chocolate Heart

Twitter Red Heart

Pink Strip

You are free to use the candy heart social media icon set on your website or projects for free, with no restrictions. You can use the icon set for private and commercial projects, but the icon set may not be resold, sublicensed, rented, transferred or otherwise made available for use. Please link to this blog post to share the icons!

Download The Candy Heart Social Media Icon Set

Interested in learning more about Optima? Check out our full offering of web presence management services today!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Facebook advertising is an extremely cost-effective way to get your name in front of your target market.

Since you can narrow down your target audience by age, gender, location, and other demographic data, you can pick your audience pretty precisely. For instance, a Kansas City service company (HVAC, roofing, remodeling, etc.) may wish to target people who are likely to be homeowners, like the group shown on the right. Consider testing different market groups – in this case I narrowed the target market down to people who are both married and college-educated, as these are traits common to many homeowners.

Add filters by interest into the mix and you’ve got an even more powerful tool. If your company sells softball equipment, you could target young women whose interests (as listed on Facebook) include softball. Try setting up different ad campaigns targeting people currently in college, or target specific colleges and customize the image to appeal to specific schools. You may even try softball fans who are likely to have kids of softball-playing age.

There are even things you can do that seem borderline nefarious. As a sales rep attempting to reach execs at a specific company, why not target ads directly at those people for several weeks prior to calling on them? They will have been seeing your logo and name (even if they don’t realize it) dozens of times while going about their business on Facebook, and subliminally may be more willing to talk with you because the company seems oddly familiar. Take the example on the right – it’s not perfect, but it will definitely appear to company executives (and very few other people), assuming they are on Facebook and have listed where they work.

The best part about Facebook advertising is, if you set up your campaign as a Pay-Per-Click, you could potentially show your ad tens of thousands of times for $10 or less. Take the $50 free credit and experiment a bit. You might be surprised at the result.

According to one member of their team, some volunteers refuse to tell people they even have a website because they feel like it just isn’t capturing the essence of what they do. They also admitted that the young kids in the site’s photos had grown up and graduated since the pictures were taken, so there may be some need for fresh new content. Finally, they felt that their logo was beginning to show some age, and could use an overhaul.

With all the great work they’re doing with Kansas City’s youth, we want to give them a youthful, urban design that fits their personality as an organization. We want to make the site a tool their team and volunteers are happy to use and share, and hope it will help them reach more people and change more lives! So, stay tuned for the big reveal next month!

Comment on related blogs

If you’re reading this, you follow at least one blog. You probably even have a blog yourself, so you know how hard it can be to get people to interact. Take the first step! Pick a few blogs you particularly like, and make an effort to comment on their blog posts this year.  Pick blogs that are related but not competitors – industry associations or magazines, suppliers, or businesses that offer goods or services that are complimentary to your own.

If the blogs discuss related subjects, the interaction should be a win-win. You can link to similar posts you have written on your own blog, share your own experience, and hopefully get some visitors from those other sites. Those other bloggers may return the favor and start commenting on your blog as well. You may even make some new friends or find mutual business opportunities, just by leaving comments on blogs you’re already reading!

Write at least 1 more blog post per week

For many, this resolution could read “Write 1 blog post per week.” Others may already be writing 2-3 a week – great! See if you can make it 3-4 this year. Gather the people in your company who have a hand in sales, marketing or customer service. Ask them what questions they get from customers or prospects on a regular basis. Do you have an FAQ? Consider writing a post to address particularly important questions. Trust me, it’s nice when a customer asks a question and you can say “Actually, we wrote a blog post about that… Here’s the link.”

When it comes to blogging, more is always better. Unless the extra posts are crap, I suppose…

Start being more social

If you’re already active on Facebook and Twitter, you might want to see what Google+ has to offer. Google+ is particularly popular among photographers and people in the IT field.  If there is anything crafty, creative, cute or edible about your business, give Pinterest a try. If you work in the B2B realm or offer any sort of professional service, try joining groups on LinkedIn around your niche. Use the search box to look for Groups by topic:

As a company that provides SEO services, I decided to join groups like “Kansas City IT Professionals” and “On Startups – The Community For Entrepreneurs.” I follow the discussions and weigh in on topics related to my business, and occasionally start discussions of my own.

Be Reasonable

When you’re considering resolutions (or goals in general), make sure they are attainable. As a health coach, my wife tells clients that willpower and discipline are a lot like muscles – if you start slowly and gradually build them up, they’ll become stronger and you’ll be able to do more than you thought possible. On the other hand, if you try to move mountains on day 1, you’ll hurt yourself and end up disappointed and angry. So, if you’re not blogging yet, set a goal of posting on the first day of each month. If you’re not ready for that yet, pick a few blogs to subscribe to via email. Set goals you think you can achieve, and then challenge yourself with goals that are a bit more ambitious.

Snow Globe Social Media Icons

Ornaments Social Media Icons

Glossy Ornament Social Media Icons

Blue Ornaments Social Media Icons

Christmas Ornaments Social Media Icons

Christmas Ball Social Media Icons

Holiday RSS Social Media Icons

Wintery Social Media Icons

Ice Social Media Icons

Christmas Cap Social Media Icons

Santa Hats Social Media Icons

Santa Hats on Ornaments Social Media Icons

Santa Hats and Holly Social Media Icons

Christmas Stocking Social Media Icons

Holiday Twitter Bird Social Media Icons

As a company that specializes in Web Presence Management, we all love SEO but realize that sometimes optimization can get out of hand. A page title as simple as “About Us” can end up looking like the labyrinthine mess: “About ABC Widgets – Blue Widgets, Red Widgets, Yellow Widget …” for SEO purposes. It’s effective though (just look at any first page of Google results), so what if Google rules suddenly spread out into the real world?

Let’s analyze this week’s slate of movie releases as if their titles were their SEO title tags. In a theoretical vacuum, with no other marketing, would these movies get found on the search engines to have a big opening weekend?

New Year’s Eve

Let’s overlook the ridiculousness of a movie called “New Year’s Eve” coming out between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Strike that; let’s not overlook that ridiculousness because it plays a pretty big role in how to optimize this movie’s title. Especially with Google’s recent update to show up-to-the-minute results, knowing when to optimize is just as important as knowing what to optimize for. Historically “New Year’s Eve” doesn’t really begin to become a popular search until the third or fourth week of December, reaching its apex right at the end of the month:

Search volume for “New Year’s Eve” is nearly 15x higher during the last week of December than during the second. So while this title may help bring in viewers long-term (the movie 2012 is another good example of this), it certainly won’t have its maximum impact during opening weekend. When it is finally New Year’s Eve in three weeks, the movie will already be old news.

The Sitter

Broad terms are usually pretty good for SEO if they’re relevant to your site, in this case though the term is way too broad. Given the movie’s R-rated content, we’re going to want to be sure to tweak things a bit more to try and target people who aren’t moms. The best way to do this working within the movie’s story and search volumes for babysitters would be to seek people who aren’t looking for babysitters, but instead babysitter stories:

Babysitter Story | Babysitter Horror Stories | Sexy Babysitter Stories

Rolls right off the tongue, right?

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

The movie title may convey the movie’s whodunit atmosphere but it’s far too unfocused to work as a good SEO title. The alliteration in placing “Tinker” in front doesn’t help us either. For SEO, we need the highest volume terms first to better target them and to remove the excess. Titles aren’t meant for words that aren’t searched for.

Mix the words around a bit to match search volumes; add some panache, synonyms and some dividers, and you have yourself a nice title tag:

Soldiers | Spies | Tailors | Blacksmiths | Murder

Luckily, we still live in a world where SEO is relegated to the internet and we don’t have to see long, keyword filled titles just yet.

• First, Acura invites you to “over-save,” rather than over-spend, at their “Season of Reason” sales event. Because when I think of over-saving, I immediately think of the $47,000 Acura RL.
• Target, and many other retailers, have made Thanksgiving into Black Friday Eve. Their ad campaign shows a shopper training hard for Black Friday shopping. They also required all store employees to report to work at 11:00PM Thanksgiving night.
• This Black Friday, a woman pepper-sprayed a dozen shoppers to reach the Xbox 360s before they sold out.
• Let’s not forget the Walmart employee who was trampled to death by crazed shoppers who shattered the front doors at 4:55AM in 2008

Giving better just feels better

Because of events like this, we’d like to suggest an alternative this year. Why not give something that reminds us of what the holidays are all about? Consider giving your employees, colleagues, family and friends charitable giving cards this season.

Wouldn’t you rather give something that gives the message of “peace on earth and goodwill towards men” than a gift that says “I maced a crowd to get this for you!”? This year, spread a little Christmas spirit by giving back, not just giving more!