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The (not-so) secret Google tool you should use

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Of course there are no real secret Google tools. And if there are, I’m not running with the crowd who knows about them.

But over the last few weeks I’ve talked to  a number of site owners – speakers, recruiters, SEO folks – and I’ve been really surprised by how few of them know anything about Feedburner.

Now Google’s wall-splattered with spaghetti approach to product launches makes it too easy for some of the great tools they have to fly under the radar.

Feedburner is one of them. If you are a site owner with a blog or podcast, stop reading this post right now and sign up for Feedburner.

What it does is take your raw feed – generally looking like this – and turn it into this.

Pretty slick.

But it does more than this. It will also create forms so folks can subscribe to receive your new blog posts via email, provide a metric showing how many folks are subscribed – along with their emails. Go ahead and subscribe to my feed using the form on this page.

It will also generate simple code for you to display your blog posts on virtually any page on any site you run.

It will also notify different services when your blog is updated – helping your SEO. And of course it will also automatically update your Twitter account.

With a couple of Facebook tweaks you can even connect your Feedburner feed to automatically send your new posts to your Facebook Fan Page.

So what are you waiting for. It’s a free service.

In order for Linkedin to work, you have to participate

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In order for social media to work, you have to participate

Over and over again, I hear it from clients and prospective clients. “I don’t see the value in Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter etc.”

“I’m on all of them and I’ve never got any business from them.”

Here’s the thing. The big difference between social media and advertising is that you have to be social and add value to the conversations if you want to build relationships and make some sales.

It’s not enough to build a Linkedin profile, create a Facebook Fan page or start a Twitter account. This isn’t a field of dreams. just because you build it doesn’t mean folks are going to beat down your door.

It requires a bit of work – not a lot – but some.

So if you only use Linkedin and all these other great tools to broadcast announcements about your amazing products or services, even the crickets will soon tune you out.

So here is a simple Linkedin strategy.

Set your account to get a daily digest from each of your groups where prospective clients hang out. And then each morning, browse the topics. If something is interesting or you can help someone out – do it.

The trick is to establish credibility and not come across like you’re always trying to sell something.

If you have something worth buying, and folks recognize that you can add some value to their business, then LinkedIn can actually become one of your biggest lead generators.

The best part is you can do this in as little as 5 minutes each day.

Quick Tweets from the CAPS Conference

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This past weekend I was at the annual CAPS Conference (Canadian Association of Professional Speakers). This year it was in Toronto – which would be awesome if I didn’t live in Toronto.

I love travelling to NSA and CAPS events. And when I have to go home at the end of the day, I know I’m missing a huge part of the experience.

As an exhibitor, it was a great opportunity to put faces to names and meet some really interesting characters.

But there was also a lot of time, when I was left at my booth for hours at a time.

My options were to see how many levels of Angry Birds I could conquer or engage with folks as they participated in sessions.

I chose the latter. And I did so with a series of tweets that I sent out over two days. Some of these I’ve talked about before. But some of them are new.

So without any further delay, here are some useful tips, doled out 164 characters at a time:

  • Turn your book into an ebook for iPad & kindle. Check out Smashwords.com #caps11
  • Try using feedburner.com to push out your blog to the world. #caps11
  • Get your book distributed internationally as POD. Look into lightningsource.com #caps11
  • Grow your Facebook fan page by exporting your contacts from LinkedIn. #caps11
  • Don’t be afraid to outsource your web development. Look into scriptlance.com #caps11
  • Connect your YouTube account to automatically update your Facebook fan page. #caps11
  • My mom doesn’t care how good of a speaker you are so I’m not going to Like your site. The most important share button for business is LinkedIn. #caps11
  • Google+ might be a pain in the ass, but it actually counts for SEO. Just build the business page and complain like the rest of us #caps11
  • If you’re using a personal Facebook page for business, you’re missing a lot of opportunities to connect with clients. Move them to a business page. #caps11
  • How does your site measure up? Get a quick and dirty snapshot @ websitegrader.com #caps11
  • Sign up for a Google Webmasters account and submit your site map. #caps11
  • Chop up all those videos you’ve got in a box beside your desk and create a YouTube channel.

Quick tips to improve your marketing

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Back in December, I was an exhibitor at the CAPS Conference  in Montreal and as part of my follow-up, and as a thank you to everyone who attended, I’ve been reviewing sites and passing along recommendations to help folks improve their online marketing efforts in 2011.

I’ve noticed a lot of speaker sites need exactly the same things and so I’m putting this out there to help everyone in the group kick-start their marketing in 2011.

The first thing I’ll tell you is that I’m not recommending anything you can’t do yourself. I’m even including links to help you access the tools I’m talking about.

Obviously. I’m hoping you’re far too busy and you’ll hire me to do the work. But if not, at least you’ll have a pretty extensive to-do list .

The first thing I noticed is folks aren’t maximizing all the free Facebook integration tools.

There are 500 million folks on Facebook and it is one of your best opportunities to find more clients.

To do this you can:

  • add a Facebook “Like” button to every page on your site. This allows folks to share your site with their friends.
  • create a Facebook Fan Page that integrates your Linkedin profile, Twitter feed, blog and e-newsletter feeds, and display that fan page box on your homepage.
  • replace the default comments on your WordPress blog with Facebook Comments. This will eliminate spam and comments will appear in visitor’s status, so all their friends will see a link back to you site.

If you’re currently you’re using a profile instead of a Fan Page –  it’s a mistake I’m seeing over and over again as I do these reviews. There is a key distinction. With a profile page, you never know who is going to see your updates, but with a Fan Page everyone gets a notification.

Here is a link to grab the Facebook code:

http://developers.facebook.com/

Your books and audios

I recommend setting up an account with LightningSource.com and moving them to Print on Demand. Lightning Source is owned by Ingram, so your books will be available around the world through their catalogue as well as Amazon.com – USA, Canada, UK, EU.

Why POD? Very simple. If you are taking care of fulfilment yourself, Amazon is probably only taking 5 or 10 copies at a time. This means your books are probably showing as “Usually ships with 3-4 weeks.” With Lightning Source your books are always “Ships within 24hrs.” And that’s in Canada, US, UK and EU!

PDF e-books are great – or at least they were 3 years ago. Have you thought about offering your books as e-books for the iPad, Kindle and other readers? All you need to do is set up an account at Smashwords.com. Did I mention it’s a free service? In addition to being able to sell your books on your own site, your ebooks will also be available on the iTunes store, Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

As for your audios, if you sell cds, why not create downloadable MP3 versions? Are you selling them on iTunes? Why not??

Videos/podcasting

As a speaker, you probably have boxes of videos you aren’t using. Why not chop them up and create a custom YouTube channel? Or use them for a Podcast distributed through iTunes. All you need is an xml file and some content!

Quick onsite changes:

Have a look at this tool and see what keywords you should be using in your copy to get more visits: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Set up a Google Webmaster (www.google.com/webmasters)  account and submit your xml site map. –

There’s obviously loads more, but if you just get the Facebook stuff done, you should see some real benefits.

Send me a note if you want a more personalized free consultation.

Pages

The internet is global. Is your business?

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The internet is changing the way the world does business.

As a marketing consultant, headquartered in North America, I see sites from all over the world.

And I’m always surprised to see how poorly a lot of businesses manage their online presence.

If you want more business from the US and EU, keep reading.

It doesn’t take much to transform your site into a lead generator. All you have to do is make sure it looks professional, and can match up against your competitors in North America or Europe.

It doesn’t matter if you’re in oil or sales. You can make your site into a lead generating tool.

Here’s how:

  • Create a Facebook Fan page, LinkedIn business page and Twitter account
  • Use an RSS feed to update all these social media sites (products, services, blogs)
  • Create compelling online tools that are good reasons for visitors to stick around
  • Add some forms to capture email addresses.
  • Use all the Google tools (Analytics, Feedburner, Webmasters) to make your site more search engine friendly
  • Add social media share buttons so visitors can easily share your content with friends and colleagues

Take a look at thesalesfoundry.com as an example of how it’s done right.

Before you go any further, submit your site using the form on the right column, and I’ll have a look at it for free.

When I’m finished, we can set up a Skype chat to go over the results. If you want me to implement the changes, great. If you have someone on your team to do them, that’s okay too.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Aidan Crawford
President
Short Circuit Media