Production Blog Reviews » Web Marketing

Adding the Facebook Like Button To Your Site

cgseo — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:10:08 +0000

Adding the Facebook Like Button To Your Site This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Some pretty big changes are brewing over at Facebook and I’m working on a full coverage type of piece, but for today I wanted to jump in and cover one little change that makes some sense for you to consider right now. Facebook has changed the idea of becoming a fan to something a little less committed – Like. Now you can like or recommend a fan page to your friends. The net effect is the same as your choice to like something is noted on your wall. The big change is that Facebook wants you to start sharing your likes from anywhere on the web. Look for web publishers to start installing the FB like button on web sites, blog posts and in reference to individual items and products. The video below gives an overview of the Like button installation process. You can use the FB tool easily get started or, if you know a little HTML and FBML you can do a fair amount of integration. I’ve installed both the Like Box (over in the right sidebar) and the Like Button (in each post) The code that is generated from the FB like tool gives you some flexibility but will only link to the page you give it. If you want to add a button as I have in each post you need to edit the code URL to include the WordPress < ?php the_permalink() ?> code for each individual post. You can control some of what’s shown on a person’s wall when they click the like button by adding meta data to your page headers. Facebook is using the emerging Open Graph protocol to help this along. The image below is another implementation of the Like button related to a specific product. In this case the format include pictures and details about who likes the product. Image credit: Mark Zuckerberg – World Economic Forum Related Posts: Google Adds Wonderwheel Search Results Option Platforms Change, Marketing is the Same TweetDeck Adds Lists and LinkedIn How to Target GMail Users with Highly Relevant Ads Some Video Thoughts on Social Media Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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Adding the Facebook Like Button To Your Site

7 Insanely Useful Ways to Search Twitter for Marketing

cgseo — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:49:44 +0000

Share 7 Insanely Useful Ways to Search Twitter for Marketing This content from: Duct Tape Marketing This article originally appeared on American Express OPEN Forum and is one of the most retweeted articles I’ve ever written so I thought I would share it with you here. As a marketing tool Twitter gets much more interesting and useful when you can filter out 99% of the junk that doesn’t apply to your objectives and focus on the stuff that matters. The basic search.twitter.com functionality is fine for searching things that are being said about your search terms. The advanced search function offers more ways to slice and dice the stream, but still leaves some room for improvement as it only searches what’s being said and where. From a marketing standpoint who is saying it might be more useful. Now that the search engines are all pretty geeked up over real time search you can create some very powerful searches and alerts combining Google and Twitter. 1) Target by occupation Let’s say you have a business that sells an awesome service to attorneys. A simple search on Twitter will turn up thousands of mentions of the word attorney, but many of them will be from people talking about this or that attorney or the need to hire or not hire one. That’s probably not very helpful for your purposes. However, if you cruise over to Google and use a handful of operators from the Google shortcut library (more on that here) you can create a search that plows through Twitter and gives you a list of all the users that have the word “attorney” in their title (username and/or real name) – Click on this search phrase and see what happens – intitle:”attorney * on twitter” site:twitter.com – what you’ll find is a handy list of attorneys of one sort or another on Twitter. Without getting too technical, this search basically asks Google to look in the title attribute of profile pages on Twitter – obviously you can use any word to replicate this. The * tells Google to find the words “attorney on Twitter” without regard to order or other words – “on Twitter” appears in the title of every profile page so we need that term to make sure we search profile pages only. 2) Target by bio In some cases searching through the optional biographical information can be more helpful than the username or real name fields. Maybe you’re looking for a very specific term or some of the folks you are targeting only reference their profession in their bio. Google search to the rescue here again. This time add the intext attribute, the word bio and our key phrase to search bios – So a search for web designers would look like this – intext:”bio * web designer” site:twitter.com . When you look at this list you might notice that none of the people on the list would have been found by searching in their title, as in the first tip, for web designer. Try it both ways to test for best results. 3) Target by location Location search by itself is simple using the Twitter advanced search tool – if you want a list of people in Austin you would use this in Twitter – near:”Austin, TX” within:25mi and Twitter would use the location field to show you Austin Tweeters. But . . . let’s say you wanted to target salons in Austin or maybe the whole of Texas – it’s back to Google to mix and match – (intitle:”salon * on twitter” OR intext:”bio * salon”) intext:”location * TX” site:twitter.com – we search the title, bio and location to get a very targeted list of Salons in Texas on Twitter. Note the OR function for multiple queries. 4) New sign ups Another handy thing about using any of the searches above is that you can also use the exact operators to create Google Alerts . By going to Google and putting in your search string as described above you’ll get everything they have now, but by setting up an alert you’ll get an email or RSS alert when a new attorney (or whatever you’re targeting) joins Twitter – I can think of some powerful ways to reach out to that new person just trying to find some new friends! 5) Keep up on your industry Some of the best information shared on Twitter comes in the form of shared links. In other words people tweet out good stuff they find and point people to it using a link. I love to use a filtered Twitter search to further wade through research on entire industries, but reduce the noise by only following tweets that have links in them and eliminating retweets that are essentially duplicates – “small business” OR entrepreneur OR “start up” filter:links – this gets that job done and produces an RSS feed if I want to send it to Google Reader. Don’t forget the “quotation marks” around two or more word phrases or you will get every mention of small and business. 6) Competitive eavesdropping Lots of people set up basic searches to listen to what their competitors are saying and what others are saying about the competition. I would suggest you take it one step further and create and follow a search that also includes what the conversation they are having with the folks they communicate with – not just what people are saying about them, but to them and vice versa – from:comcastcares OR to:comcastcares . 7) Trending photos Photos have become very big on Twitter and the real time nature of the tool means photos show up there before they show up most anywhere. If you want to find an image related to a hot trend, or anything for that matter, simply put the search phase you have in mind follow by one of the more well known Twitter image uploading services such as TwitPic and you’ll get nothing but images. So, your search on Twitter might be – olympics twitpic OR ow.ly (You can add more photosharing sites to expand the search). There, Twitter just go way more interesting didn’t it? Related Posts: Mining Twitter with Google Turns Up Some Interesting Stuff A Practical Use for Twitter Twitter People Search is Back Adding search to your site Google Alerts Hack Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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7 Insanely Useful Ways to Search Twitter for Marketing

5 Ways to Use Social Media for Things You Are Already Doing

cgseo — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:36:33 +0000

5 Ways to Use Social Media for Things You Are Already Doing This content from: Duct Tape Marketing One of the biggest road blocks facing small businesses when addressing social media is the question of return on investment. With so little time devote to what’s crying out to be done, adding something else or something new like social media can feel like a real burden. Sometimes the only way to rationalize and prioritize something new is to understand the benefits in relation to everything else your doing and take a new view based on that understanding. So much of what’s written on social media amounts to lists of things you should do, get on twitter, blog, create a Facebook fan page, and not enough on why you might consider doing it. While all those tactics may indeed be wise, I would like suggest a number of ways to use those actions to do a better or more efficient job doing things you’re already (or should be) doing. Start to think in terms of doing more with less effort, not simply doing more. If I can let small business owners get a glimpse of social media through this lens, they might just decide to go a little deeper. Here are five ways to look at it. 1) Follow up with prospects I love using social media tools as a way to follow-up with prospects you might meet out there in the real world. So you go to a Chamber event and meet someone that has asked you to follow-up. Traditionally, you might send an email a week later or call them up and leave a voice mail. What if instead you found them on LinkedIn, asked to be connected and then shared an information rich article that contained tips about the very thing you chatted about at the Chamber mixer. Then you offered to show them how to create a custom RSS feed to get tons of information about their industry and their competitors. Do you think that next meeting might get started a little quicker towards your objectives? I sure do. 2) Stay top of mind with customers Once someone becomes a customer it’s easy to ignore them, assuming they will call next time they need something or, worse yet, assuming they understand the full depth and breadth of your offerings and will chime in when they have other needs. Staying in front of your customers and continuing to educate and upsell them is a key ingredient to building marketing momentum and few businesses do it well. This is an area where a host of social media tools can excel. A blog is a great place to put out a steady stream of useful information and success stories. Encouraging your customers to subscribe and comment can lead to further engagement. Recording video stories from customers and uploading them to YouTube to embed on your site can create great marketing content and remind your customer why they do business with you. Facebook Fan pages can be used as a way to implement a client community and offer education and networking opportunities online. 3) Keep up on your industry Keeping up with what’s happening in any industry is a task that is essential these days. With unparalleled access to information many clients can learn as much or more about the products and solutions offered by a company as those charged with suggesting those products and solutions. You better keep up or you risk becoming irrelevant. Of course I could extend this to keeping up with what your customers, competitors, and key industry journalists are doing as well. Here again, new monitoring services and tools steeped in social media and real time reporting make this an easier task. Subscribing to blogs written by industry leaders, competitors and journalists and viewing new content by way of a tool such as Google Reader allows you to scan the day’s content in one place. Setting up Google Alerts and custom Twitter Searches ( see more about how to do this ) or checking out paid monitoring services such as Radian6 or Trackur allows you to receive daily email reports on the important mentions of industry terms and people so you are up to the minute in the know. (Of course, once you do this you can teach your customers how to do it and make yourself even more valuable to them – no matter what you sell.) 4) Provide a better customer experience It’s probably impossible to provide too much customer service, too much of a great experience, but you can go nuts trying. Using the new breed of online tools you can plug some of the gaps you might have in providing customer service and, combined with your offline touches, create an experience that no competitor can match. While some might not lump this tool into social media, I certainly think any tool that allows you to collaborate with and serve your customers qualifies. Using an online project management tool such as Central Desktop allows you to create an entire customer education, orientation, and handbook kind of training experience one time and then roll it out to each new customer in a high tech client portal kind of way. This approach can easily set you apart from anyone else in your industry and provide the kind of experience that gets customers talking. 5) Network with potential partners Building a strong network of strategic marketing partners is probably the best defense against any kind of economic downturn. One of the surest ways to attract potential partners is to build relationships through networking. Of course you know that, but you might not be viewing this kind of networking as a social media function. If you identify a potential strategic partner, find out if they have a blog and start reading and commenting. Few things will get you noticed faster than smart, genuine blog comments. Once you establish this relationship it might make sense to offer a guest blog post. If your use a CRM tool (and you should) you’ve probably noticed that most are moving to add social media information to contact records, add your potential partners social media information and you will learn what’s important to them pretty quickly. If you know how to set up a blog already, offer to create a blog of network partners so each of you can write about your area of expertise and create some great local SEO for the group. So, you see, you don’t have to bite into the entire social media pie all at once. Find a tool, a technique, a tactic that makes your life easier today and provides more value for partners, prospects and customers and you’ll be on the path to getting some real ROI on your social media investment. What social media tactics have you discovered that allow you to do more of something you’re already doing? Related Posts: Small Businesses Will Simply Become More Naturally Social 7 Simple Truths of Social Media Marketing 5 Tips for Getting More From Your Blog 5 Ways to Share Content to Create Referrals Create a Journalist Listening Station Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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5 Ways to Use Social Media for Things You Are Already Doing

Google’s Forecast for Business Apps Is Mostly Cloudy

cgseo — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 12:31:00 +0000

Google’s Forecast for Business Apps Is Mostly Cloudy This content from: Duct Tape Marketing At the end of last year I wrote a prediction piece for AMEX OPENForum suggesting that 2010 would be the year that small businesses move more computing power online or, using the more trendy term, to the cloud. Google and Microsoft are both working very hard to create adoption of online versions of the most commonly used software tools such as spreadsheets, word processors and databases. In my mind Google just took a giant leap forward with the launch of the Google Apps Marketplace . The Apps Marketplace functions much like the iPhone or Android applications marketplaces, but all of the apps found here integrate in one way of another with the existing Google Apps suite of tools. With the additional functionality that can come with integration of tools to do just about anything look for Google Apps to take a giant leap in adoption from both enterprise and small business. Combine Google Apps and the souped up functionality available in the Apps Marketplace with GMail and Google Calendar and you now have the ability easily run you entire company with software and services in the cloud. Setting up your domain with Google Apps for domains , at $50 per year per user, allows you to create custom white label versions of the Google Apps for a seamless branded experience. Below are few examples of the types of applications found in the Apps Marketplace. Time Bridge – makes scheduling of meetings with various staff or even outside vendors much easier. Expensify – Easy expense tracking and reporting Survey Monkey – popular survey tool integrates into Google Apps Cordys Process Factory – helps users of Google Apps to create workflows, automate business processes TripIt – Share travel details such as hotels and flights with staff You’ll also find offerings from familiar names such as Intuit, FreshBooks, Vertical Response, MailChimp and Zoho. The online application space is getting very interesting and it still has a long way to go, but the near future have just been defined. Related Posts: Google Apps for Your Domain In Search of the Softwareless Office Get Your Google Alerts via RSS The Perfect Small Business Collaboration Tool Original iPhone Users Feel the Love Too Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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Google’s Forecast for Business Apps Is Mostly Cloudy

Is Google Local Search For Sale?

cgseo — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:42:52 +0000

Share Is Google Local Search For Sale? This content from: Duct Tape Marketing I’ve always assumed that Google Maps (and other local search directories) would build up the free local directory, drive other for pay players out, get us hooked on their service, and then start charging to be listed in the prime spot. In this case the prime spot for local search is the Google Seven box shown below for a search for “Attorney Houston, Tx” Click to enlarge Something else you might notice is that while optimizing your web site to appear in the lucky seven box is a great idea, the majority of these results are sponsored. That’s right, Google is playing with selling enhanced listings in several cities and looks to be headed towards paid listings in local search. At first this may not seem like such a bad thing to those on the outside looking in, but it may price some folks out of yet another organic search option. Related Posts: Google Adds Local Search to Mobile Phones Google Local Finally Adds Ability To List Your Local Business Google Maps expands local view Yahoo Adds Local Featured Listings Where In The World Is Local Search? Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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Is Google Local Search For Sale?

Making Your Google Alerts Smarter

cgseo — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 14:23:59 +0000

Share Making Your Google Alerts Smarter This content from: Duct Tape Marketing If you follow my writing you know that I’m a big fan of setting up routines that let you listen in on what’s being said about your brands, products, people, industry and competitors using free tools like Google Alerts . Google Alerts let you set-up custom searches and then have any mention of that search term sent to your RSS Reader (like Google Reader) or email in box as they happen or at the end of the day. This is a great way to keep tabs on things that matter without needing to scour the web universe for this kind of intel. You can set up very specific searches such as your name or broad searches so you know who is talking about a concept like referral marketing. Alert Rank detail – click to enlarge Recently I came across a tool call Alert Rank that works hand in hand with Google Alerts to make them smarter. You see, Google picks up everything, including the very low value content scraper sights that simply republish other people’s stuff. One of the main ideas behind keeping tabs on what’s being said is it allows you to jump in and join the conversation. Few things make a blogger happier than when someone they mention in a post shows up and adds a comment. Alert Rank looks at the mentions of your alert terms and gives you solid information about the quality of the mention. Now quality is a loaded term, but what Alert Rank does is measure things like numerous inbound links to the site, PageRank, no follow, comments allowed, and delicious tags to come up with a quality score about the link. You still get the alerts in your inbox, but you can quickly use the quality score to decide if you need to jump right in. You can also click through to get lots of information about the site that mentions your term. This is simply a much better way to manage alerts and find networking opportunities. Alert Rank report – click to enlarge Alert Rank also offer reporting tools that make it easy for anyone that monitors alerts for clients to set-up custom reports in excel of PDF format. The one thing I need to tell you though is that if you already have alerts created you will need to set-up a new Google account and create your alerts again using your custom Alert Rank email as that’s how the alerts get routed through the Alert Rank system. It’s not a big deal, but may not be readily apparent when you first read the set-up instructions. All in all it took me about five minutes to get it going and it works wonderfully. Related Posts: Google Alerts Hack Google Alerts to Twitter Get Your Google Alerts via RSS Weekend Favs February Six Use Yahoo and Google Alert as Sales Tools Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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Local Review Success Hits Speed Bump

cgseo — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:42:42 +0000

Share Local Review Success Hits Speed Bump This content from: Duct Tape Marketing You know I’m a supporter of the local review sites like Yelp! and City Search , but some small business owners have issues with the format. Here’s the dilemma, consumers do seem to like them because they offer an easy way to get some input on a business. Business owners take issue because they sometimes get bad reviews and feel they have little or no control over what’s said about them. I’m not going sit here and say these sites are perfect, but I for one think they provide a necessary service and should be looked upon as a business building tool. Too often the only real problem with these sites is they publish the truth and that’s hard to hear. This past week several attorneys filed class action suits against Yelp! claiming that the service is attempting to sell advertising to businesses as a way to help them erase bad reviews. Here’s some coverage on the filed lawsuit and more in the Wall Street Journal The lawsuit was brought by a vet clinic in the San Fran area called Cats & Dogs Animal Hospital – one look at the reviews on the Cats & Dogs Yelp page and you kind of get the feeling this business has some issues. There are some very good reviews and some very bad reviews. I’ve found these review sites to be very accurately indicative of the health of a business. I suppose this is a good time to remind business owners to be proactive in getting their loyal fans to start the good review trend! Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman had this to say about what he’s called the conspiracy theory . I did some further searching and found one attorney who thinks the Yelp! suit will get tossed quickly . Or consider this from industry analyst Greg Sterling “The allegations above must be proven with evidence. As I’ve said before I’m skeptical that there was any “quid pro quo” or pattern accordingly. But the depositions in this case — and there will have to be many — will start to establish whether there is any meat to these claims or whether it’s just frustration boiling over together with some opportunistic attorneys who may have solicited the action after reading the negative press coverage and wondering if there was a viable lawsuit in the making.” I have no idea whether any of these allegations have merit, but I’ve witnessed how much effort Yelp puts into giving business owners a voice on Yelp and I for one think this shows how authentic their attempt to put out a balanced and necessary offering is. Related Posts: Yelp! Changing the Local Game Some More Your Pizza Sucks And . . . 5 Ways to Rock Customer Review Sites Google Wants to be the Local Place Social Search Gaining Steam Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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Local Review Success Hits Speed Bump

Web Marketing – Do You Need It?

BlogPostman — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:58:05 +0000

So, you’ve been in business for a few months now, and you’ve seen your customer base grow from just a few friends and family members to enough local action to keep you busy on a daily basis. You’re probably thinking that you’re doing alright without any web marketing campaigns, but that’s where you’re wrong.

Too many people think that because they’ve managed to generate interest about their products or services through word of mouth tactics, or simply print and television advertising in their particular region, they are doing all they can to build a brand awareness about their company. However, without web marketing, you are leaving out a very important piece of the puzzle.

If you’re just now starting your web based business, you have to understand that web marketing is even more important for you than it is for traditional brick and mortar businesses. This is because the internet is your lifeline to your customer base. If you’re not making use of it, you can be sure that your competition is.

If you’re trying to decide whether or not you really need to invest in web marketing, you have to ask yourself how big you eventually want to grow. If you want a big tomato bush, with lots of fruit on it, you can’t keep it in a tiny container on your kitchen counter forever. Internet marketing gives you access to the biggest audience of all: the millions of people who are searching the internet right now.

Neglecting the need for web marketing just puts your business at risk for complete obscurity, meaning that you might have a great product or service that many people would be interested in, but because you don’t show up in the relevant search results, they have no idea you exist.

If you’re interested in utilizing web marketing to help grow your business, but aren’t really sure the best way to get started, you should know that there are many qualified internet marketing firms that can provide you with comprehensive packages that will work for you.

When choosing a web marketing firm for the first time, make sure that they offer a wide variety of services for you to pick from. This means that you should have your choice of website linking, email advertising, and social bookmarking, as well as banner ads.

If you’re scared that you might not be doing enough to connect with your online audiences, web marketing could be the tool that you’ve been looking for. Click here for more information on services that could propel you to success.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Social Media Marketing

cgseo — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:09:14 +0000

Share The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Social Media Marketing This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Back in high school I had a great English teacher (I may not have left him with that impression at the time) that was very into science fiction. He made us read Robert A. Heinlein and all 1200 pages of Atlas Shrugged , but I also discovered Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (A series of books now known as a “trilogy in five parts.” If fact, if you’re feeling particularly smug some day go ask a bookseller for the fifth book in the Hitchhiker Trilogy and see if they flinch.) There’s an underground of H2G2 followers that can frame any argument or challenge with a bit of advice from the series. The other night I was reading – The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time . It is a posthumous collection of previously unpublished material by Adams and consists largely of essays about technology and life experiences. I stumbled across this bit of wisdom and thought to myself this is the perfect way to frame the reluctance some small business owners feel when it comes to new technology and, in particular, social media. In the words of Adams: “Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.” — Douglas Adams I don’t know what to do with this so much as to accept its reality, don’t panic, and be mindful of it as I continue to marvel and the brave new world we live in. Image credit: jonathanjoni Related Posts: Want to write better - read better It's A Little Like Childbirth, I Suspect Il est collante (It is sticky) What would the perfect business day look like? Read Any Good Research Papers Lately? Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Social Media Marketing

7 Steps to Powerful Online Seminars

cgseo — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:42:32 +0000

Share 7 Steps to Powerful Online Seminars This content from: Duct Tape Marketing For many businesses, particularly service oriented businesses, getting up in front of a group of prospects with the opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise is one of the best lead conversion opportunities going. Holding workshops and seminars live and in person has long been an effective tool. The web makes this tool even more powerful and more affordable as it allow you to conduct online versions of seminars that don’t require you to rent a room or your prospects to leave their homes and offices. Online seminars are a marketing tool every business should consider adding to the mix. Below are seven steps to consider to make your online seminars pay. 1) Get sponsored Before you go too far down the seminar path consider getting sponsors to join you. This doesn’t have to be some big name corporate deal, give strategic partners the opportunity to join you in promoting your educational sessions for the right to call themselves a sponsor. Round-up prizes from related businesses that want the exposure their prize garners in your promotion. Free stuff drives enrollment! 2) Educate, don’t sell Make certain that your “free” session is packed with content so good people would pay for it. That’s the expectation these days. If you create seminars that are basically veiled sales presentations, you won’t reap the benefits of this expertise play and people won’t come back or tell friends about your great seminars. There’s a time and place for the sales pitch, but only after you’ve established trust through sharing valuable information. People are OK with a “here’s the sales pitch” at the end of a presentation that was time well spent. Consider creating a series of events and promoting them together. This can help build momentum and allow you to build a loyal following. 3) Pick your platform There are dozens of online platforms for hosting your web seminars but choose your platform with some considerations in mind. Free may not be the best option if you are using this tactic to demonstrate how professional your business is. Look for a tool that offers some interaction tools such as polling, questions, chat, even video Make sure your chosen tool can handle the numbers you plan to enroll Be certain you can easily record your sessions for future marketing use Look for ease of use and follow-up reminder email automation GoToWebinar (a sponsor of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast), Acrobat Connect and WebEx all offer the features above 4) Cause interaction Use the functionality of your online webinar tool to get the audience involved. Polls are a great way to take the temperature of your audience and the results can make for both interesting discussion during your session and follow-up discussion in another form of content such as a blog post. With small groups you may want to allow video or audio chat, but it’s always a good idea to take questions from the attendees. Most platforms also allow you to conduct a survey at some point in your presentation. This is a nice way to end a presentation to get feedback from the audience and even let them vote on other topics they would like to hear in the future. 5) Create a backchannel Lots of people attend webinars these days and share information they hear with their followers on Twitter. It’s become common practice to create a hashtag for your events so people who attend or those that don’t have an easy way to collect all of the comments made by listeners. Some presenters go as far as having an assistant monitor and tweet during the presentation to keep the conversation lively and accurate. This free PowerPoint Twitter Tool allows you to create tweets and have them posted automatically during your presentation. 6) Have bonus content Because there is so much free information out there online the expectations for what you provide as free package have grown. In addition to the event itself consider creating a PDF workbook or collection of blog posts from yourself, related bloggers or strategic partners and delivering that document along with your follow-up. This gives you another reason to reach out and remind your attendees about the great content and gently about the products and services you offer. 7) Promote the archive Use your chosen platform to record your presentation. Upload your recorded session to a video host such as Vimeo or YouTube and embed the video in a web page surrounded by additional resources and further reading links related to the topic. This is a great way to use the session for future marketing efforts and create the kind of page and content that search engines love. Consider using a service like CastingWords to transcribe the session, combine three or four session with video, transcript, resources and your collection of blog post PDF and you’ve just created a product that you can sell! Handling all the moving parts of setting up, promoting, running and archiving live events can seem a bit overwhelming at first, but the long term payoff in terms of expertise, content, and trust building is worth every bit of it. Image credit: hildgrim Related Posts: The Telephone Doesn't Use Any Gas 5 Tips for Getting More Leads from Speaking 5 Ways to Share Content to Create Referrals Extending Your Presentations Through the Backchannel Great Small Business Video Collection Powered by Contextual Related Posts Like this post? Share it with others

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7 Steps to Powerful Online Seminars