It’s about networking.

It’s not who you know, but who your contacts know. Most of the time, a 1st-level connection may never be a customer of yours but they may very well connect you with someone who might.

It’s also not about you, but about what you can do for a potential employer or client.

LinkedIn Don’ts

1. Never ask for an endorsement from someone who doesn’t know you or your work.
2. Don’t connect with someone you don’t know or with whom you have absolutely nothing in common.
3. Don’t put someone down if they are not interested in your product or service. That will hurt you even more.
4. Don’t SPAM people

LinkedIn Dos

1. Connect with people you meet at networking events
2. Respect their wishes to not be contacted
3. Send them 1 announcement email only. If they are interested, they’ll respond.
4. Request endorsements or a recommendation from people who know you or your work. If you need more of those types of connections, volunteer, then ask for the endorsement. A happy client, former co-worker, boss or a friend should be happy to recommend you.

To learn more about all that LinkedIn offers, attend one of the following online classes. There are several sessions scheduled:

LinkedIn for Jobseekers and LinkedIn for Small Businesses

Get on and get connected!

Giselle Aguiar
AZ Social Media Wiz 

@AZSocialNetWiz

What do I mean?

Search engine spiders can hit a brick wall when going to index your site if your site is not properly optimized

You built a beautiful website or you hired someone you thought was an expert to build it. You’re not getting the results you expected.

It’s because in building the site to be eye-pleasing, it was not optimized for the search engines.

The search engines are knocking at your door, but it’s locked or there’s a barrier blocking it.

You can have the coolest site in the world, but if potential customers can’t find it, it’s absolutely NO GOOD. 

It’s like a billboard out in the middle of the ocean or a store with a huge wall surrounding it with no windows or doors. Just a very pretty sign.

What are those barriers?

1. Flash videos – they may make your site look cool, but it’s does nothing to help people find you.
2. Images – graphics, like flash videos are pretty, but search engines don’t see them.
3. Scripts – fancy scripts like Javascripts, again make the site look cool, but totally block the search engine spiders.
4. Frames – frames were popular in the early turn of the century (2000), but they literally stop the search engine spider cold.

“If I Google the name of my business it comes up.”

Sure. You have the name in the <title> tag. That works if the people searching know the name of your business (AND spell it correctly!)! (Read: “Home Page” is not the name of your business)

But let’s say they’re looking for “day spa phoenix.” If that particular phrase is not found anywhere in your site, or it’s being blocked by one of the above barriers, your site won’t come up in the searches.

If you’re not in the FIRST PAGE of the search results (especially Google who still has 65% of search usage), your site basically doesn’t exist.

Don’t feel bad. There are a lot of small businesses in your same boat. It’s not your fault that you didn’t know how to recognize a good web designer, worth their salt, who knows what they’re doing and are not out to rip you off!

It’s not too late to fix it.The best thing to do is to learn how to do it properly so you know when to recognize if a web designer is being honest with you and has your company’s best interest at heart or they want to sell you their service and that’s it.

Avoid having your site banned by Google for using black hat SEO tactics

Black hat vs white hat

There’s a right and a wrong way to do it.  Basically there are folks out there that use unsavory tactics and then there are the ones that do it the right way. Google changed the way their search engines work to eliminate the “black hat” tactics. If your designer used “black hat” tactics, it will affect your ranking on Google.

What’s the answer?  Check out SEOTrainingSW.com. They offer free SEO how-to videos so you can see the right way to do it.

Get found, get leads, get sales.

Giselle Aguiar
AZ Social Media Wiz
Online Social Media Marketing Classes! 

Related reading:
The prettiest site is no good if people can’t contact you
It’s all about text

I asked a new client, “How did you get over 900 Twitter followers with only 12 tweets?”

“We bought them.”

I looked at who they were. For a local business who caters to the upper class, the followers they bought didn’t look a bit like potential or “happy camper” clients. They were from all over, and some looked a little “raunchy” not at all their target market. They were absolutely no good and a waste of money. It doesn’t work, it doesn’t help and it doesn’t look good.

The only way to fix the problem is to delete the profile and start from scratch with a different Twitter handle.

This problem is not so bad on Facebook, because people can’t see who likes a Facebook page. People can see when one of their friends likes a page, but once you like a page, you’re anonymous to the public, but not the administrators of the page.

Not so on Twitter. Anyone can click on your followers and see who they are.

I grew my following on @giselleaguiar from 180 in mid May to over 1680 as of this posting. I doubled my followers in the last 6 months. Yes, it took a while, but they are following me because they like what I post. They are natural, organic followers.

The only way to get followers naturally is

• To follow people who would be interested in your content
• RT (retweet) content that they’d be interested in
• Tweet original content that people want to read
• Don’t SPAM them
• Over sell them

Also:

• Be relevant
• Be nice
• Build relationships
• Don’t use foul language
• Follow people back whose content you find interesting
• Block and report SPAMMERS
• Don’t use robots
• Don’t automate DMs (direct messages)

Phoenix area Social Media Marketing Workshop

Giselle Aguiar
The AZ Social Media Wiz 
Connect with the Wiz on Google+
Subscribe to The Social Media Strategist for daily Social Media news, articles and tips. 

1. Not Tweeting – Ya gotta tweet! How do you expect to get followers if you don’t share anything? When I get a new follower, I thank them and go check out their profile and what they tweet about. If they don’t tweet, I don’t follow. Simple.
2. Eggs – Are you a real person? They upload a picture. If you’re a business, upload a logo. There are way too many eggs on Twitter!
3. No Bios – Who are you? What do you tweet about? Twitter gives you 160 characters to describe yourself. You don’t your life story, just who you are & why you’re there.
4. Over-Tweeting – just as bad as not tweeting is over-tweeting or automating everything. Seeing more than 3 tweets in a row from someone makes me wonder about them. Use the scheduling tool in TweetDeck or Hootsuite to schedule your tweets to post with enough time in between them. Twitter is on 24/7 and that way your tweets can be on when you’re not.
5. Not leaving Re-Tweet (RT) room – I will RT when I agree with a statement, but I don’t want to spend time editing the tweet so it will fit in 140 characters. Getting your tweets ReTweeted is a good way to grow your following and improve your social media brand, but you have to leave at least 15 characters open so that RT @username will fit in the beginning of the RT.
6. Foul Language – I will unfollow someone in 2 clicks the moment I see foul language.
7. Insulting folks who unfollow you – just like you don’t like everyone you meet and everyone you meet won’t like you, not everyone will like what you tweet. It’s not a crime to unfollow someone.
8. Bragging about how many followers you have – followers don’t equal sales. Unless you have the proper marketing, follow-up & sales channels set-up your “followers” will fall into the black hole. Using social media to attract people to your site, product or service is just part of the marketing mix.
9. Ignoring new followers – A simple “welcome new followers” tweet is a sign that you want to start a relationship with your followers. That’s what it’s all about. Don’t Direct Message (DM) them – especially automated DMs. You’re a person, they’re a person – relationship happen between people not robots.
10. Tweeting only about your product or service – It’s not about you, it’s not about your product or service. It’s about what you have to offer your followers. Share information, stories, advice and it doesn’t always have to sell something.

Once you have your Twitter account set up, your picture uploaded, your smashing 160 character bio written, your Twitter page designed, your website linked, your first tweets tweeted, now you’re trying to figure out when in your busy day are you going to find time to tweet and monitor Twitter.

You also have your blog set up with a few posts that show off your expertise in whatever field you specialize in, but you want to build up your readership and subscribers. Seriously, what good is a blog if no one reads it?

Twitter is up and running 24/7 and there are hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter. They are on at different times of the day in different time zones. When is the best time to Tweet? The answer – all the time. Are you up 24/7? I don’t think so. So how do you get the person that’s on in the middle of the night or after business hours?

Here are my favorite Twitter tools to help you promote your blog and save lots of time with a little bit of automation and organization.

Tweet Old Posts – This is my favorite WordPress Plug-in. It automates tweeting your archived blog posts at any given interval. You can set it to tweet every 4 hours or so, but I only recommend this if you’ve got enough blog posts so it’s not tweeting the same thing over and over again. You can set it to use your categories or tags as #hastags, but limit it to 3.  The only downfall to this plug-in is that it’s only available for WordPress.org hosted blogs – not the free WordPress.com blogs or Blogger.

I moved my 4 blogs to GoDaddy who offers free WordPress with their hosting packages and set up Tweet Old Posts. I’ve seen an increase in visits, visibility, subscribers and sharing in the short time it’s been operating.

TweetDeck – You got to post on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Then you’ve got your business Facebook page, your business Twitter account and you like to monitor certain search keywords (#hastags). TweetDeck makes it easy to view each account, feed, list or search in customizable columns. You can set it to automatically shorten URLs with bit.ly (if you set up a bit.ly account you can monitor click-thrus).

Another cool feature is you can set it to post tweets in the future so you’re not bombarding followers with tons of tweets. It also remembers #hastags you use often so you don’t have to retype them.

You can monitor and post to several Twitter accounts, your Facebook profile and pages, LinkedIn, MySpace (does anyone still use MySpace?) and Foursquare.

You can also set a column to show your new followers and tweet them a TY (thank you) for following! tweet.

TweetDeck is a downloadable desktop application or if you use Google Chrome, you can get the Tweetdeck extension. Personally, I prefer the desktop version.  Hootsuite is a similar tool that is web-based.

TwitterFeed - This is to automatically Tweet and share your new blog posts as soon as you publish them. You first need to have a your blog feed set up with Feedburner. Once you have that link, then you can go to TwitterFeed and set it to tweet and share automatically. You can link not just your Twitter account, but your Facebook and LinkedIn ones, too.

Twitter Lists – I mentioned lists above in TweetDeck because you can set up lists and use TweetDeck to monitor them in columns. Lists are how you organize the “Tweeple” (Twitter People) who you follow. I personally follow over 1500 people. Yeah. So I classify them in a variety of lists.

Paper.li – I discovered Paper.li recently and it’s cool. I started The Social Media Strategist Daily and each afternoon it collects Twitter posts from the folks in my social media expert list and all other #socialmedia posts. Anyone can set up a Paper on any subject.

Experts recommend that you blog 2-3 times a week and Tweet several times a day. These time-saving tools will definitely help you manage your social media marketing.

Happy Tweeting!
Giselle Aguiar
AZ Social Media Wiz

Myth #1: Social media is a total waste of time.

Not true! Social media is a partial waste of time. Of course you can lose track of your time while using social media, but there are many other ways you can use these networks to connect with people with your same interests and/or potential customers.

The benefit in building relationships and strengthening your connections with friends, colleagues, customers, potential customers and the people in your community is worth the investment. Also it’s a free medium to show off your expertise. You establish a following. Besides that, what’s wrong with a little diversion in your day anyway? Just budget your time, try to spend no more than 30 minutes a day. Most people check their networks in the morning, again around lunchtime, and then at night while they are watching “Wipe Out.” Speaking of a waste of time!

Myth #2: The relationships on social media are too shallow.

Maybe the interaction on social media isn’t the deepest stuff, people don’t always show their real selves and, then again, you don’t want to know some of the information a few people post. Like who needs constant updates about what ice cream place you’ve checked into. But, marketing guru Jay Conrad Levinson says 68% of customers are ignored after the sale in business. How does that translate into people visiting your website, your blog or your business? Social media provides an easy-to-use channel for keeping in touch with the people you want to reach most, like those potential customers or those who are willing to give a valuable referral. It’s the new word-of-mouth!

It’s the fastest, most efficient way to share information. You find an article, blog post, or website that would interest your friends or followers and you’re a couple of clicks away from sharing something that may benefit them greatly.

Another benefit is the support you’ll get as you build relationships. Ask a question and you’ll get an answer – probably more than one. Ask for an opinion and boy, you’ll get tons. Ask for help and you’ll get that, too.

Myth #3: People who use social media are vain because they think that people really care about the minutest details of their lives.

They say people don’t care to hear about what you are eating. But people do care about what other people do and even what they eat. There are entire TV networks dedicated to food. For example, in France people can sit around for hours talking about food, books, and what’s the best way to insult tourists. Critics make it sound like you should only post about really important things and never talk about the trivial. But on social media, you are not expected to only post the important things you are doing. Talking about your day is just how you participate in these networks. It makes you sound human. You are human aren’t you?

Myth #4: I don’t have time for social media, I have more important things to do.

Really? What are you doing that is more important than staying connected with the other human beings in your life? What are you doing that’s taking all of your time and making you so antisocial? Please tell me it doesn’t involve hiding ammo underground! Don’t you have 10-20 minutes a day you could use to share with other people? Do you really have zippo spare time?

Myth #5: Social Media is too overwhelming and hard to learn.

Or could it be you don’t want to dedicate the time it takes to learn to use social media? I imagine when the phone was invented and first placed in offices, some people didn’t think they had time for it either. Someone probably said, “I don’t have time to pick up this contraption and talk into it every time it rings…I am too busy…I write with a feather pen for crying out loud!” You have time to add another vital form of communication to your work if it means more effective communications, don’t you? You have time if it means increasing sales, right?

Giselle Aguiar is a social media specialist and an Award-Winning Christian writer who’s been doing Internet Marketing since 1995.

Follow Giselle on Twitter

Adapted from 4 Myths People Want to Believe about Social Media from Pastor.com

• Show off your writing skills & style
• Show off your expertise
• Promote yourself & your books
• Build a platform & a following
• Share opinions
• Promote your website & your brand

SEO: Search Engine Optimization
Search Engines Don’t see

• Pictures
• Flash & Videos
• Fancy scripts like Javascripts
• Frames

Search Engines Do see, pick up and follow:

• Text
• Links
• Meta Tags
• Tags & Keywords

The Best Thing About Blogs

• Blogs are text!
• Blogs are FREE!

Blogging Tools

• Blogger http://www.blogger.com
• Free WordPress http://www.wordpress.com
• Paid WordPress http://www.wordpress.org
• RSS Feeds http://feedburner.google.com/

Finding Time to Blog

• KISS: Keep It Short & Sweet
• Up to 500 words
• Blog at least once a week

Twitter http://www.twitter.com

• The New Word of Mouth
• What CB radios were back in the day
• A way to communicate with many people in real time
• July 4 Twitter surpassed 200 million tweets per day by 200 million users!
• Started 5 years ago, now gets 460,000 new sign-ups daily
• Tweet: 140 characters
• You grow a following by following people
• You can search for people or topics
• # – the hashtag
• What’s Trending

Jargon:

• Tweet and tweeting
• ReTweet (RT)
• Direct Message (DM)
• Mention @
• #FF – Follow Friday
• Tweet several times a day
• People log on to Twitter at different times during the day
• If you’re national, don’t forget time zones
• Monitor your Mentions
• Block Users that you don’t like
• Report SPAMMERS
• Most who Read Tweets also Write them (eMarketing article)

Promoting Your Blog

• Twitter
• Facebook http://www.facebook.com/

1. Profile page – your personal info
2. Fan page – promoting your book
3. Groups – book club

• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/ – professionals, groups
• MySpace http://www.myspace.com
• Google+ https://plus.google.com

1. Need a Gmail account
2. Set up Gmail profile

YouTube

• video – book trailer
• friends
• follow/subscribe to channels / comment

Managing It All

• TweetDeck http://www.tweetdeck.com
• HootSuite http://www.hootsuite.com
• Google Alerts http://www.google.com/alerts
• Nutshell Mail http://www.nutshellmail.com
• Klout http://www.klout.com

Wrap-Up

• Do Focus on Content
• Be the Expert
• It’s not about you, it’s about what you know
• Trade useful info
• Goal is to get folks to share it with their followers & grow your following

Happy blogging and tweeting!
Giselle
www.giselleaguiar.com

In trying to build my Twitter following (I was at around 180 followers in mid-May), I started searching for some of the Christian heavy hitters. (The main target market for my new novel is Christian Women.)

I also got the idea, since I’m on a non-existant budget for book promotion, to contact all the female radio personalities on the Christian radio stations. I searched for them on Twitter and started following all that I could find – including the male ones.

Well, the evening DJ on K-Love messaged me back through Twitter asking how he could get a copy of my book!

BTW, as of this posting, less than a month later, I’m at 334 Twitter followers, the majority of them are Christian and several have over 10 thousand followers themselves. When I announce the availability of my novel (very soon), I hope they will “retweet” (RT) it to all their followers. That’s worldwide marketing in 140 characters. Oh, and did I mention – it’s free!

The trick is to search for the keywords pertaining to whatever you’re marketing and find folks with similar interests. Posts should stick with that interest so folks will RT to their followers.

Social Media is the new “word of mouth” – gotta do it.

Happy Tweeting!
Giselle Aguiar
Check out her new novel, Deo Volente  

I would never use the service of someone who contacts me in that format just like I would not buy something from a telemarketer who calls me at home.

Unfortunately, there’s no “do not contact” list. Your forms are there for the world to use. You can’t hit the SPAM button because it’s coming from your form. It’s the lowest of the low.

Defend-Expert – you are a SPAMMER. Stop doing it.

Proper Internet Marketing is “inbound marketing”. If someone wants your service or product, they will search for it. If you have your blogs and website done correctly, they will find it.

The latest culprit to this despicable act is  www. postingpositivereviews.com “Reputation Service”.

It’s hysterically ironic that a “reputation service” would stoop so low. Here’s to your new reputation as a SPAMMER – we don’t want you to SPAM our forms! Stay away!

And they never put their email address so you can’t return the message. I called their non-toll-free number just to leave a voice mail message requesting them to stop.

Don’t ever do this! Use the “white hat” methods of Internet Marketing. Follow the rules of SEO. Go to Google Webmaster Tools for guidelines. Follow companies like HubSpot or eMarkerter for tips on proper ways to use social networking to market.

Giselle Aguiar
Award-Winning Christian Author
www.giselleaguiar.com
Soli Deo Gloria!