More popular than Jesus?
In a recent article, the Burlington Free Press implored Vermont Realtors to embrace social media. When a mainstream Gannett newspaper tells you to do something, you know it must be widely accepted. But just how popular is social media?
There was a day when calling yourself “more popular than Jesus” could get you into big trouble. There was also a day when the Fab Four could threaten our morals and corrupt the minds of young people.
But now that the Vatican forgives John his brashness (they said they liked the beautiful music after all) and the Pope asks Bloggers to give the Internet a Soul, I think it’s safe to speculate that social media may very well be more popular than the Word Made Flesh.
You’ve heard the buzz about blogs by now, and perhaps you have an understanding of their business value. If not, you may want to check out our recent post about the HubSpot study that found that blogging businesses experience significant benefits in terms of lead growth, page visits, and search engine optimization, for their website.
We recommend that our customers blog regularly and frequently for maximum benefit. (Once a week seems to be a realistic goal for most people.) This tends to bring up a couple of common concerns: “What am I supposed to write about?” and “Where do I find the time?” If you’re wondering the same, read on…
Every day millions of people use the Internet to seek out businesses that meet specific product and service needs. Blogs are an excellent opportunity to present your business as an authority and show both potential and returning customers that you offer real value in the form of knowledge. Pick a topic that allows you to demonstrate your expertise and dive in.
Chances are, there are at least a couple of questions that you hear on a regular basis from your customers. A time-saving idea for you: Craft a response to a frequently asked question and post it on your blog. The next time someone asks you the question, you can point them to your blog post.
Andy Vota, vice president of Union Street Media
In case any of you missed it, our very own Andy Vota was interviewed on WPTZ channel 5 here at Union Street Media. Burlington Vermont has recently begun the application process to Google’s fiber network pilot program. This network would be ultra high speed, providing bandwidth of up to 1GB/second to homes and businesses.
Andy is quoted as saying “We want to be on the cutting edge of technology in Burlington, and this would be a great opportunity to do that. We want to be associated with a great brand like Google that’s known worldwide as a leader in technology.”
Watch the segment and Andy’s interview here
The appeal of social media is strong. According to Econsultancy, social media and blogs are the 4th most popular online activities, even beating out email. The mystery of social media is almost as great as it’s appeal, however.
There are a lot of social media terms thrown around these days, and sorting through all of the jargon can be tough. First, let’s differentiate between the “big three” social networks.
Facebook logo
Facebook is a social network site that connects friends, family, and businesses. People can share updated statuses, pictures, personal information, links, and more. With more than 250 million users in the world, 120 million of which log on daily, there is a large market to reach here.
As mentioned in my previous post, this past week was CollegeXTRA.com, Inc.’s 10th birthday. CollegeXTRA.com, Inc. is the corporate name of Union Street Media. As a celebration of this milestone, I’d like to share with you a few of the things I’ve learned over the past ten years.
Running a business of twenty people requires a lot of cash and none of it comes easily. Each month our sales team is responsible for generating well over a hundred thousand dollars. To earn that money, our web development team needs to produce the work, which requires our product development team to create a scalable architecture for the sites. Our internet marketing team needs get the sites up in the search engines so that our clients get the traffic to generate a return on their invest. Our support team needs to keep the sites live, handle incoming phone calls and help clients with updates. Our office manager extrodinaire needs to invoice for all of this work and then made sure we actually get paid for it. This is fun, challenging and inspiring, but not easy.
However, there are free lunches. I know because I used to buy them for people and now, on occasion, people buy them for me. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs requires that we eat. Every day. Often three times. I have used lunch as a way to get an hour with really smart people. Our awesome attorney, Peter Kunin, helped set us on the right course over many-a-$10-sandwich, which is less then his normal billable rate. I have had the opportunity to learn from successful entrepreneurs about the lessons from their businesses over a lunch, and applied those lessons to USM. After a trip to the Google Campus in 2008, I discovered that 110% of Google employees eat free lunch at Google every day (I really appreciated the free lunch even if the shareholders might not). So now we have office lunch too at Union Street Media every Tuesday. We get together as a group, share stories, ideas and hang out. It’s awesome.
Jim Shattuck, the Director of Career Services at my senior year at Middlebury College, had a simple manta: “Network, network, network.” Although I didn’t know it at the time, I actually honed this skill at Middlebury. Freshman year I found out pretty quickly that if I knew the person behind the bar at a campus party, I got my luke warm Natty Light faster. Today, I’m the most public facing employee at Union Street Media. I spend about 10% of my time attending business events in the community and volunteering on boards of other organizations. However, you can’t just take from your network. You have to give back to it. One of the things I like to do the most is connect people in the community with each other, whether it’s for business purposes or friendship. When people move to Burlington, I invite them to the office and share my knowledge of the area. They leave with a sticky pad full of names, emails and phone numbers from contacts at a company where they might find a job to the best guys fix-it-guy (Chris Labelle, 802-343-0269) and mechanic in town (Daren Smith, 802-660-3111).
On the 11th of February at 11am Spencer Taylor, will be giving a talk at the CEDO Winter Business Fair on how to effectively utilize social media for small businesses. The talk will be focused more on strategy then on the actual functionality of various social media outlets. Taylor will focus on how to use Facebook, Twitter and Blogging in concert to gain visibility in the online marketplace and new customers. He will also touch on other business-specific social media platforms such as Yelp and Urban Spoon as well as the hyper-local Front Porch Forum service. Participants will be encouraged to ask questions and interact to discuss their experiences for the group to draw on. We hope to see you there!
Search Engine Optimization
