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Using Posterous as a Social Time Saver

July 26, 2009 By Christine 2 Comments

Posterous is a super-simple blogging platform that’s been around about a year now. With social media’s popularity at an all time high, I thought it would be helpful to look at how Posterous can allow you to better manage your social networking activities.

They bill themselves as “the dead simple place to post everything” and they’re not kidding. You don’t even have to create an account to use it–you simply email your content to post@posterous.com. You can include attachments like videos, photos, files and MP3s.

Not quite a tweet and not quite a full blog post

Now, I happen to love WordPress and use it for the blog you are reading now. But sometimes you want something even more convenient—not to mention that many people don’t care to run a full-on blog, but still want an easy way to get their content out there (and in more than 140 characters on Twitter.)

But the coolest thing about Posterous is its implications for those of you who know social media is something you should be using regularly—but still can’t see past what you see it as being: a ginormous time-suck.

You may have heard of sites like Ping.fm which allow you to update multiple social networks simultaneously from one place. This service is great as well, and appears to do many of the same things that Posterous does.

I asked the co-founder of Posterous, Sachin Agarwal, on Twitter what he saw as the main advantages of his service as compared to others. He replied:

“Posterous is not only a way to broadcast out. We are your presence on the web with all your media, hosted, and your domain. There’s no limit to what you can post to us, we handle all rich media perfectly, by email and twitter clients. And it’s yours.”

Anytime, anywhere, anything

The main reason I think Posterous is so cool is that it is a way to have a blog and update that blog from anywhere with anything. It can be your home on the web for posting content and a tool for updating all of your social sites—all of which you can do from email.

For example, say I find a video I want to share. I would email the video URL along with any text or commentary to post@posterous.com. If I have my Posterous account set up to update Facebook and Twitter, my status updates there will post a link to the video as well. The link will then take people to the video on my Posterous blog.

Another cool feature is if I just wanted to send the video to Twitter and nowhere else, I would just send the email to twitter@posterous.com. Want to send a picture to just your main blog and Flickr? Email blog+flickr@posterous.com.

See how this could save you serious time? With one quick email you could autopost and update all of your social networking sites without having to go to each one separately. Plus, you’ve got a nice little repository of all of your shared content in one place on your own Posterous blog.

There’s also the feature that allows you to use it as a private site where you grant access to someone else or as a group site for multiple people. Because you can do all of this by email, you can even update Posterous from your mobile phone or text message very easily. Cool stuff.

Are you still trying to figure out how to handle the social media time suck—i.e., finding time to post to a blog, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc. and run a business and have a life? Have you checked out Posterous yourself? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Blogging, Social Media, Time Management

7 Reasons You Aren't Being Followed Back on Twitter

July 25, 2009 By Christine 14 Comments

As of May 2009, Twitter received more than 20 million unique monthly visitors, surpassing many big media sites such as NYTimes.com. Although the exact number is not known, Twitter is now reported to have an estimated 9 million users.

Abandoning ship

There is speculation that a lot of those Twitter accounts have been opened and then abandoned by people who never quite got the point of it. It’s understandable because for something that appears so simple on the surface, it can actually be quite complex.

Personally, I hear lots of different objections on a regular basis. Just the other day someone bemoaned that they were done with Twitter because “No one is following me except spammers.”

The offenders

It’s actually not difficult to build up a good-sized following (of non-spammers) on Twitter. But here are some reasons why you may be popular with spammy types—and not many others:

1. You protect your updates
2. Your twitter stream doesn’t show any RTs or @ replies
3. You follow a lot more people than follow you
4. Conversely, a lot more people follow you than you follow (This is common with celebrities…yes, obviously a lot of people are still choosing to follow, but the imbalance does discourage some folks.)
5. You have no or very few updates
6. You promote too much
7. Every tweet contains a link but you’re not showing any of your personality

For myself, when I am checking out someone’s Twitter page and deciding whether to follow, these are some of the things that I notice.

What to do?

So, if you are still wondering how to get more people to follow you, concentrate on a few things:

First, post interesting links and information that is likely to get re-tweeted—this exposes you to the people that follow your followers whom you aren’t connected to yet. Re-tweet others, put your Twitter username in your email signature, list your Twitter account as a website on your Facebook profile, list yourself on sites like Twellow and WeFollow, and use keywords that best describe your business and interests because lots of people search by keyword when they are looking for new people to follow.

Oh, and don’t let your fear that you have nothing interesting to say stop you from tweeting. Just let us know what has your attention, as Chris Brogan put it. People want transparency and authenticity. They want to connect with real people.

You probably have a lot more interesting things to say than you give yourself credit for.

So what else would you add to this list?

Photo credit: 7son75

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Twitter

Online Video – 4 Simple Steps to Getting Started

July 20, 2009 By Christine 9 Comments

Video is one of the hottest things right now on the web. How hot? In March 2009, web information provider comScore released their data regarding the consumption of online video. Their report showed that Internet users in the U.S. watched 14.5 billion online videos during the month–an increase of 11% over February’s numbers. Their report also indicated for March that 78% of the U.S. web audience viewed video online, averaging 97 videos per viewer during the month.

With these staggering numbers many more people are exploring how they can add online video to their marketing mix. Why use video for marketing? Because it’s the next best thing to communicating face to face with potential clients and customers and building up trust. It’s also fantastic for driving traffic and can be done for virtually no cost. Here are a few tips to get you started:

1. Get a Flip camcorder. A Flip is a pocket-size digital video recorder that’s both easy to use and very affordable. You simply point, record and then upload the video right to your computer via USB. If you are just looking to get going with video, this is a great way to do it. They even have HD versions of their cameras and the ability to personalize them with colors and designs.

2. Check out free screencasting software. Not ready to put yourself in front of the camera yet? You can still create videos starring your voice and your computer screen with these free services online. Two I recommend and use are Screentoaster and Jing. These are perfect for creating short tutorials for e-learning purposes that you can then upload to your blog or video sharing sites. All you need is a microphone–I use the headset I have for Skype.

3. Get an account on YouTube, Viddler or Vimeo. These are video services where you can upload, enhance and share your videos for free. YouTube is nice for creating your own channel on a page you design yourself. Just grab the code they supply to embed video on your own webpage. Vimeo has a really attractive and streamlined player, and Viddler offers in-video tagging and commenting. There are many other choices for video hosting, including Facebook. Check out the different options and decide which one works best for you.

4. Direct viewers to your site. Don’t forget to mention your website in the actual video at the beginning and end or add text displaying the URL. You will also want to add your website in your profile as well as any place you are able to type in a description of the particular video.

Video can be a very extensive topic as well as intimidating for a lot of people. I’m only recently beginning to experiment with it beyond the basics myself. Start with these steps and don’t think you need to create lengthy or fancy clips. In fact, short, content-rich videos are your best bet.

To start out, aim for 90 seconds to two minutes in length where you offer a few tips or teach people how to do something. Minimize any background noise and make sure you have sufficient lighting in the room and you’ll be ready to go!

Have you experimented with online video yet? What has been your experience with it?

Photo credit: Envisiongood

Filed Under: Small Business Marketing Tagged With: Video

Relationship Marketing…So Easy a Kid Can Do It!

July 12, 2009 By Christine 6 Comments

One of my blog readers just related a cute story from her young son and I asked her if I could share it here with all of you. I also posted it on Facebook.

GREAT example of relationship marketing in action!

I just returned from picking my 14 year-old-son up from a travel baseball fundraiser event. He always returns with the best stories. Story of the day: Mom, I asked this one lady if she wanted to donate for our little league. She said, “NO”, that she had already donated for another team. I talked with her for awhile, anyways. I found out that her grandson plays ball and I asked her how his team was doing. We talked for awhile about a couple of other things, like pitching and stuff…and then she gave me $5.00 before she left! WOW! Relationship marketing at its finest. Even after he was told “NO”…he did not discount the person or the relationship. He socially engaged the person, without any thoughts about what he could “get” out of it. Don’t know about you, but I think that’s Relationship Marketing in a nutshell! Hope the story made you smile like it did for me!

–Wendy Young, LMSW, BCD

http://www.kidlutions.com

Love that!

Filed Under: Small Business Marketing Tagged With: Relationship Building

Are You Connecting—Or Just Broadcasting?

July 5, 2009 By Christine 4 Comments

Social media may be the buzz term right now—it will be something else next year. It’s all just a synonym for connections and relationships.

I hear from a lot of people that they are on social media sites, but are not sure what to do beyond signing up. Or, they are on them, and say they feel they are connecting, but upon further discussion it’s revealed that they really aren’t.

It’s more than just collecting friends and followers.

People say they have thousands of contacts, friends or followers as if it’s a marketing strategy! It’s a start—but it’s conversations with those connections that lead to results.

For example, I have gotten almost all of my clients through social media in the past 6 months, had over 375 people register for my last teleseminar, grew the number of people who Like my Facebook Page by 350 people in less than a week and just recently increased my blog subscribers to nearly 1400 people.

I tell you this not to toot my own horn, but to impress upon you that these results are because of the fact that I actively participate in social media. Just as you can’t expect to throw up a website and see sales just come rolling in, you can’t just collect friends and expect miracles. You need to engage people in conversation.

The key is not to expect immediate results nor feel you need to spend a ton of time on social media in order to make any progress. Choosing a handful of strategies where you are actually connecting with people and implementing them on a regular basis won’t take a ton of time or energy.

What it will do is build momentum gradually but steadily. This is what leads to relationships, word of mouth, traffic, subscribers and ultimately, more sales.

So next time you participate in social media, ask yourself: Am I really connecting? Or just broadcasting? The difference can be HUGE.

Photo credit: julianrod

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Conversation, Relationship Building, Social Media