It can feel like you’re the last person asked to dance or to be chosen for the team. You’ve put yourself out there and no one seems to want to engage with you.

Here are my top 7 tips to increase comments to your site and how to use them to drive traffic.

1. Don’t take it personally even though you will. Consider this an opportunity for change.

2. End each post with an Open Ended Question: Be creative. Don’t just say, “What’s Your thinking?” Ask your readers to share their experience or expertise.

3. Be opinionated in your content. Sometimes it’s better not to straddle the fence. State how you feel and your readers can voice their approval or disapproval.

4. Respond to comments. When people do comment be sure you acknowledge each one personally in the thread. That way they know you’re listening and you’ll distinguish yourself and your brand.

5. Comment on other sites. Leave an interesting comment on another site, preferably one of high profile. If you’re not sure how popular a site may be, download SEO for Firefox to see their traffic. Try to be one of the early comments on a post to get more attention.

6.  Put together a list of sites to test and to follow (preferably in an RSS reader).  That will help make it easy to find related posts on which to comment.

7.  Comment by way of links to your own content.  This drives readers further into your valuable content and deepens their interest in your site.  Do this (a) in the body of your posts, (b) in comments you subsequently write on your posts, and (c) on other sites, in order to derive maximum value.

What’s your biggest issue with comments?

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According to the study:

• 45% believe that social media will pay off financially within the next 12 months.
• 75% have a company page on a social network site
• 61% use social media to attract new customers

If you’ve run out of hours in your day to incorporate Social Media, step back and decide what’s most important. Follow my three tips and in just over an hour a day, you’ll be able to bring your business into Social Media.

1. Consider a blog as your Social Media home base.

Time Commitment: 4 hours weekly once it’s set up.

There are many platforms to choose from with Posterouus.com being the simplest to Wordpress.org being the most customizable. Posting three times a week will dramatically increase your credibility and Internet visibility. Your business will rank higher in a Google search.

2. Become active on Facebook.

Time Commitment: 2 hours weekly.

Post a status update daily to engage your friends/readers. Join the discussion and add your comments. Consider a Fan Page for your business.  Become a fan of other pages you like personally, as well as competitors and others in your industry and see how its done.

3. Get to know Twitter.

Time Commitment: 2 hours weekly.

While not seemingly as directly or as engaging, or as community/friend focused as Facebook, it has many valuable uses in your small business Social Media relationship toolkit. For example, it’s a great way to post deals or special offerings to customers.

Bottom Line: Save your time; don’t waste your resources in the wrong direction.

If you need help, just call us and we’ll talk Social Media with you.

*Survey is from the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, December 2009.

Search together with Social Media are the two key places your brand, and your business are found.

Google gives you the opportunity to control what’s in your listing, both for accuracy and to provide additional valuable content for your customers.  It also gives you information about how well your listing is working, and how many people have seen and clicked on it.

Claim and enhance your free listing.

1.  Visit Google’s Local Business Center.  It’s easy and provides  a way to have an online presence even if you don’t yet have a website.

2.  Validate your listing.  This is how you confirm to Google that it is really your business.  It is done either by phone or a mailed postcard.  You’ll need a free Google account, which you likely have already.

3.  Enhance your listing.  Add quality photos and videos, together with highlighting content that makes you unique.

4.  Continue to improve your listing.  You can visit your listing and check its performance as well as keep it current seasonally, or with other new information and visual content.

Paid listings coming soon.

Another potentially valuable feature is $25/month premium listings.  They are currently being tested in various markets and will likely soon be released on a wide scale basis.  Here’s how these work:

1.  Further highlight what you have to offer.  Enhance your search results listing to include direct links to photos, videos, websites, coupons, directions, menus or reservations sign up.

2.  Whenever your listing appears in a Google or Google Maps search result, the premium information will appear alongside it. This does do not, however, affect the ranking of listings, and Google indicates which parts of the search results are sponsored.

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Types of communication and a strategy:

Criticism. See adversity as an opportunity to demonstrate customer service, industry leadership and willingness to take responsive action. It’s the best time to head off a crisis before it happens. Don’t act abruptly and stay calm. If your blood pressure is rising, count to ten first. Keep perspective.  If the criticism isn’t warranted or is a personal attack, giving space to your other readers to come to your defense can be an excellent posture.

Kudos. Compliments can come in the form of an individual post, Tweet or Facebook update. Positive word-of-mouth is the best way to gain future business from new or existing customers.  Keep Kudos on file and reuse them in appropriate ways and venues with the writer’s permission. Be sure to thank any employee mentioned for outstanding service.

Questions. Respond timely to demonstrate expertise and industry leadership. This participation is wanted and needed, and is irreplaceable in terms of credibility.

Industry talk. Find people writing about your industry and engage with them. It’s an excellent way to keep abreast of what’s new with competitors and products, changes of employment, satisfaction or dissatisfaction with competitors, and what customers want, like and dislike.  You may find new ideas and get valuable input. Listening to industry talk often affords me a critical time advantage to knowing what is happening and what is about to happen. Talking within my industry also buildings reputation and trust.

Final Tip: Start Engaging

Be unique, establish trustworthiness, and look for ways to add value to the conversation. It always feels like less is more when it comes to selling, especially at the outset.

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What used to be said between two people at the water fountain is now shared, sometimes virally, in Social Media, for the world to see forever.

As an example, recently I complemented three employees of a company who are also friends on Facebook.  That message, including the link to their business, was immediately seen by my friends and theirs. That’s well over 500 people and even more if their friends shared my message.

Where I look for conversations:

Conversations that begin on a blog or elsewhere, now often end up on Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Google Buzz or in a forum.  For that reason I try to think comprehensively as I devise my plan to follow conversations throughout the Social Media sphere.

Six free and easy places to start finding conversations happening now:

1. Google Alerts.  My favorite starting point.  Set up, subscribe to, and monitor alerts that track mentions of you, your company, your competitors and your industry.
2. Monitter.  A Twitter listening tool for conversations taking place about topics, companies, and industries of interest.  You can just view or subscribe to results.
3. Twitter search is another simple tool for finding and subscribing to Twitter conversations.
4. Twitter Times.  An easy to follow, useful digest derived from people you follow on Twitter and their links. It’s a good place to see who else, in your sphere and outside of it, has commented on a Tweet.  That helps find useful places to participate in conversations, and when to comment or re-Tweet.
5. Google Reader.  A perennial all around favorite tool of mine.  I use it to subscribe to updates from around the Web on subjects, people and websites of interest and importance.  Even if a site does not have an inherent feed, Reader now creates one for you.
6. Boardtracker.  When conversations of interest take place within on-line forums, this tool finds them and gets you the information.

Next post on listening will delve into what to do with the information you find. It’s all about the flow of communication.

Palaver: from the Portuguese word “palavra,” speech, parley, discussion, persuasive talk.

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To understand its business application you must first understand the game. Here’s a look at Foursquare.

Eighty percent of users have installed the free app on their iPhone, with the remainder on other mobile devices. When a consumer visits a business and does a check-in on the Foursquare app, he/she begins to accumulate points.

As the user continues to check in from various locations, it gets more interesting.  Frequent participation in Foursquare is rewarded not only with virtual money (points), but also with titles/badges like Newbie, Explorer, Mayor (most frequent) and others. The user competes with their friends and within the greater circle of people in their area. Each Monday the game resets and everyone starts fresh.

Tips, reviews and more.

Users can include venue information such as how they like or don’t like a place, what’s best there, when and what deals they offer, hours, etc. It’s also a great way to find nearby venues that may be of interest, together with first hand information thereon.

What Business Needs to Know About Foursquare.

1.  Foursquare contains within it the seeds of useful information, business incentive, human competition, plus virtual and monetary recognition and rewards.  Foursquare is like Twitter only better.

2.  Reputation and customer service have never been so important or so immediately known. When you check-in you tell the world the importance of that location and you open the possibility of dialog with others about it. If you like it you or if you don’t, the Social world knows immediately.

3.  Marketing opportunities using Foursquare and the other location-based services have never looked better.

The keys for business.

Businesses know who is checking in, when and with what frequency. This provides the opportunity to incent and reward frequent visitors with offers, promotions, discounts and awards.

The Foursquare Specials program already in place with 500 businesses, is designed to help companies with additional information about their visitors in order to to better understand and reward them. It also promotes member businesses with offers and promotions to Foursquare users who are nearby. And that’s just the beginning.

What’s next?

• Foursquare just signed a deal with Bravo TV, in which Foursquare players win badges, special prizes, and the chance to participate in sweepstakes, initially at 500 Bravo locations. I expect to see major national chains sign on in the near future. Imagine the impact, for example, if Starbucks were to participate.
• Soon, check-in will likely be automated. Click a setting and users can check in wherever they go throughout the day. Offers will flow to their mobile device together with potentially valuable information from other users and offers from participating businesses.
• Lastly, check-ins are about to find themselves indexed in the search engines, the way Facebook and Twitter content now is, thereby further increasing the importance of the information.

Suggestion.

At the very least, get to know Foursquare.  Location aware applications are about to be huge and you’ll want to know how to take part both from a business and a consumer perspective.

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Fans are choosing to hide fan pages because their news feeds are being inundated.  There is a plethora of content from profiles and pages. This is a serious and fast-growing problem for fan page owners, and current analytic data available to page administrators does not let you know how many of your subscribers are hiding your content.

Here are my tips to keep fans coming back for more.

1.  Create a custom landing page that will be presented only to new visitors before they become fans.

• Create clear, compelling reasons to become a fan.
• Lay out what fans can expect from your fan page.

2.  Reinvent. Provide ongoing reasons to remain an active fan. This can include promotions, exclusive previews, coupons, etc.

3.  Keep it engaging.  Rehashing what you post elsewhere won’t cut it. Add videos, photos, encourage fan participation through contests, polls, surveys.

5.  Integrate your fan page with other platforms including blog, website, twitter, etc. Advertise and promote your fan page to get it found

6.  Make it a useful ongoing resource that fans won’t want to miss. A place to ask questions and do things they can’t do elsewhere.

7.  Write fresh regular quality content. Set your schedule and keep with it. Many fan pages just get forgotten.

8.  Review Facebook’s Insights (analytics) to help see if your page success is waxing or waning. Insights is getting better and will likely get a much needed major makeover soon.

9.  Use Facebook events. Whether in person or online events, it’s a great way to keep your page relevant and promote its distribution by your fans throughout their network.

10.  Look at other fan pages and see what you like and don’t. Look within and outside of your industry.  What makes you hide others’ fan pages?

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Here are my 9 ways to be competitive and stay ahead of the Social Media curve.

1. Readiness: Make time for honest self-evaluation.

How well can or have you integrated the less formal and controlled Social Media communication within your culture?  Look at each campaign and how the use of Social Media can produce desired outcomes. Decide if you need to outsource for help or if people in your organization have the skill set to succeed on their own.

2. Social Media road map.

Devise a clear plan for how to reach your goals, as well as ways you’ll measure your progress en route. Be realistic when considering what Social Media can and cannot do for your business. Look within and beyond your industry at the larger Social Media world to see what others have demonstrated.

3. Use Social Media for marketing and beyond.

There are so many areas in which you can derive tangible benefits from Social Media.  Look for opportunities complementary to leads and sales, such as support, customer service, product development and evaluation, brand reputation and awareness. Reengage existing clients and customers in addition to attracting new ones.

4. Improve your company’s word of mouth.

Simply give people more reasons and places to talk about your business.

5. Listening.

A plan to monitor Social Media is essential.  Use free or paid tools or tool sets to find and engage in dialogue regarding your brand and industry.  If you’re not there yet, start with basics like Google Alerts and build on that.

6. Social Media quality.

Be authentic, unique, and don’t oversell to build authority within your industry.

7. Consistency.

Keep your content both relevant and updated on a regular basis. Lay out a schedule and stick with it.  Don’t be a Social Media dropout. You’d be surprised how many companies large and small have little or no follow through, stopping far short of success.

8. Analyze, revise, re-analyze.

Much like driving a car, keep adjusting the  steering wheel.  Implement, analyze and improve your social business. Don’t forget basics like SEO and Google page rank still matter too.

9. Innovate.

Find new opportunities. If you’re already as successful as you’d like to be on Twitter and Facebook, check out Foursquare, or try changing your blog.

What’s happening at your business? Do you plan to invest more money this year in technology than last year?

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• It aggregates content and reviews from around the web about your company and will be a big draw for those interested in you and your business.
• Local and global source content is all included.
• Inclusion of real-time updates from business owners, a powerful new feature.
• Favorite Places.  Over 100,000 business have window decals that can be scanned from cell phones to read or (soon) add reviews, remember a business, and more.
• “Near me now” feature. Consumers can find your business when they are nearby, including your content and reviews.

Google has been moving into the consumer generated content social space for some time. They tried unsuccessfully to buy Yelp as recently as last month, which would have been a key component of their small business marketing portal.

Google now appears to be going it alone without Yelp, and without Yelp’s community of avid enthusiasts. Not withstanding the more sterile feel of Google Places, I prefer it simply based on its breadth of information even at this early stage. As an aside, Yelp still has its share of problems, including a tarnished image as a result of trying to coerce businesses to advertise. Yelp also does not permit Google to index its reviews.

Here’s what I suggest you do:

• Don’t ignore sites that talk about you. Even those you might consider as minor and unimportant may now have their content appear in Google Places and thus attain far more prominence.

• Claim your business on Google Places though the Google local business center. This gives your presence added credibility plus the opportunity to include your own content (like business hours and contact information).Most importantly, business owners can now add real-time updates or posts. These can include offers, promotions, coupons, announcements and more.

What’s next?

• Incorporation on Google Places of additional, important real-time content including Twitter and Facebook updates.
• Better features for parsing results.
• RSS and email feeds from Google Places pages so that you can subscribe to updates about those places that are of interest.

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RSS vs. Twitter.  Each works better with the other.  And both are fast-changing.

Twitter is great at bringing you the latest topical information.  But there’s a lot of noise to filter through, and it is sometimes too fast-moving.

RSS feeds on the other hand, limit content to items you’ve subscribed to.  Feeds can also be a challenge to organize and filter through to reach items most important to you.  The order of feeds by date and time doesn’t account for other factors that contribute to the relevance of information, such as its popularity.

RSS along with Twitter continues to gain consumer and business momentum.

Twitter is an unquestionably great tool for real-time communication.  Yet, as I’ve said before, RSS is not dead by any means. In fact it is still evolving. Further, while RSS has been around for a over a decade, we are still ahead of its greatest adoption and usage traction.  Thus it remains critical to use RSS in its multiple applications, and to add its power for your business advantage.

Here are other places where RSS is headed:

• Location, preference and recommendation based RSS.  In the near future, RSS subscriptions will be available based on user preferences, behavior (what other sites you subscribe to or visit), as well as yours or others’ location .  This has the greatest potential to expand distribution of and bring more relevancy to RSS feeds.
• Beyond subscriptions.  Currently RSS is limited by its subscription basis, where you must either know what you are looking for or find it in an RSS recommendation.  Google Reader, the most widely used tool for consuming RSS feeds, already offers suggestions for content you may want to see based on the sites you visit and subscribe to.  Recommendations like this can expand your business’ web content distribution while helping you find information from sources you’re not already familiar with.
• Greater RSS distribution from non-blog websites.  While virtually all blogs continue to distribute their content via RSS, corporate and other traditional sites have been slow to recognize its value.  RSS allows business to quickly and effectively distribute marketing and other information to subscribers who have already expressed interest.  The corporate IT side has been slow to recognize and implement this tremendous opportunity.
• RSS advertising.  Ads in RSS feeds are still relatively new and growing.  This opportunity, however, is just beginning to see its potential.
• Mobile RSS.  Another area that is gaining momentum, with improved apps for iPhones and others.

In conclusion, RSS remains an Internet content distribution workhorse with great future potential.  Don’t get lost in Twitter to RSS’ exclusion, and don’t wait to exploit its capabilities and the power it offers.

(This is the last of my three part series on the direction I see RSS heading in business. Be sure to read my other posts, Your Business Site Needs an RSS Feed and RSS Isn’t Dead, So Better Organize Your Feed Reader).

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