Facebook | Letters From Dan

Coffee with Jason Elkins

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: 100 cups of coffee in 100 days, customer service, facebook, facebook marketing, facebook marketing strategy, jason elkins, networking
Posted in The Social Media Phenomenon

This week I had coffee with a friend, Jason Elkins. He’s doing a program he calls 100 cups of coffee in 100 days”. While his program is a relationship building program, it makes a great marketing program, too.

He and I spoke at length about our client’s, what we’re doing for them and how that’s working. Fortunately, though we’re both internet marketers, we do entirely different stuff – so it was a great learning experience. (If you’re interested in the ‘notes’ for that meeting, subscribe at the end of this post).

One thing that is clear is that no two clients deserve the same strategy, or should I say no two clients could be successful using the same strategy. And I’d be willing to pen even for similar companies in the same strip mall. The company’s goals, strengths and weaknesses change that strategy completely.

I was amazed at the vast array of things you can do on a Facebook Fan Page these days. Jason’s team have really come up with some great ideas and new functionality. I’ve been reluctant to suggest a Facebook Fan Page to my clients, but am now rethinking that.

My reluctance comes from seeing the great number of companies that have fan pages but no real reason to do so. Without a really good purpose, and one that brings people back to the site, they could become a liability without constant posting and social interaction.

I’ll put together my notes from our meeting expressing what we learned and how you doing these things for your business. No matter what you do, the goal has to be improvement to the bottom line. No questions about that. Whether the activity is exposure, branding, networking, relationship building, sales, customer service or technical help – make sure that you’re activity is supporting the ultimate goal.

What’s the goal of your business? And can you see the little things you do supporting that ultimate goal – no matter how minute.

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Don’t join the “follow us on Twitter” heat wave.

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: 5k marketing, facebook, facebook strategy, follow us on Facebook, follow us on twitter, Local Search Marketing, My Twitter Clinics, social media strategy, twitter strategy
Posted in The Social Media Phenomenon

Arghh. . . Don’t just follow us on Twitter. . .

I got a 5K flyer in the mail yesterday, and the Twitter/Facebook logo duo caught my eye immediately. That’s probably strange to you, but I see them everywhere – and most of the time I take pictures of them or clip them out and put them in my ‘workshops example folder’.

So the entire flyer was about a 5K race coming up. Great imagery, cool logo and art. Then they had the date, race starting times and the “Register at Active.com” statement. And then to finish up the flyer, the footer including the host organization’s mission statement and the Twitter/Facebook duo.

I didn’t include an image of the flyer itself. It’s a local event for charity and I really just thought they didn’t need to hear this at this point. But I’ll tell you this is a perfect lesson in Marketing that I think all small businesses should heed.

To be blunt “Nobody wants to follow you”. Or me. Or anyone else for that matter. We want information. We want discourse, tips, strategies, etc. . . We just don’t want to follow you on Twitter for the hell of it. That’s no incentive whatsoever. And I have “liked” so many companies with poor Facebook pages, I’m not inclined to visit too many more.

On the flipside, their Facebook page is 1000% better than most. They’ve got actual social interaction going on. They’ve got videos of people talking about their race last year, race maps, updates on training run times and practice race days. Just great stuff. It’s too bad their flyer doesn’t say that.

On top of that, they ask you to register at Active.com right on the flyer, when they could easily have had you get the link to the Active registration page on their Facebook page. In fact, their fan page is so good, I bet it would even improve their conversion rate over the Active.com order page.

1 more missed opportunity.

So my charge to you is: Don’t ask anyone to follow your business on Twitter. Don’t set up a fan page on Facebook and don’t put that “Follow us on Facebook” sign on your company invoices. Nope. Resist. Don’t do it. In fact, don’t even start a social media strategy unless you know what you’re going to do.

The 5K folks had a great plan in mind for their Facebook page. They should have said, “Get up to date information about the race, get registered for door prizes and hear what past participants have had to say about the race – all on our Facebook page. Also, become a fan and then get all the Registration Information.”

How many more fans would a race of 700 people get to their page with that marketing plan? With only a week to go – they have 114 fans. That’s 586 fans shy of the number who registered directly through Active.com.

I would encourage you to jump over to this Social Media Examiner article where they interviewed the folks at Intel about how they manage their Facebook page. You can see here how important it is to have an objective – and how to drive people there using that objective.

Don’t ask people to “follow you on Twitter” – give them a reason.

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Google Starred Results – A New SEO tool

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: facebook, google favorites, google SEO, google starred results, google stars, Search Engine, Search Engine Optimization, Web page, Web search engine
Posted in The Technical Internet Stuff

Did you happen to see the new “Google Starred Results” on your last search? It would have showed up at the top of the search results. It’s like an interactive “favorites” button – but one that stays in Google and not necessarily on your computer.

My question about Google Starred Results (and I see Wayne Liew has the same question) is whether they’ll play a part in the search engine’s algorithm. Since the entire web is moving from “factual proof” to “social proof”, it only makes sense that Google will weigh these stars as “social proof” that a web page is good.

Right now “links” and “traffic” are the ways Google measures “social proof”. (I’m way overusing quotes now, sorry). The more links a page has from other sites and pages on the net, the more likely it is that your page is “valued” by the general community.

As Facebook and Twitter take over as the leaders of social proof, will a combination of links from those sites plus the stars give a web page even more value to the search engines than either alone?

SEO is fun if you like puzzles. And I imagine being the guys that design the puzzles is pretty fun too. If Google wants to remain the top search engine, it continually must prove it returns the best most relevant results.

The question for us SEO lovers is whether Google Starred Results is just another piece of that puzzle for them, or is it just an added feature purely for the enjoyment of searchers?

So your task, if you choose to accept it, is to star not only your favorite sites as they come up in the search results – but your own sites. And if you’re a company with employees, I’d ask that you have them do it too.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world – so don’t hesitate. Step up and play ball.

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How to Add the Facebook Like Button – A Daunting Decision

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: facebook, facebook fan pages, how to add the facebook like button
Posted in The Social Media Phenomenon

Please "like" me

So I added the Facebook Like Button to my site today. And now I’ve got a couple hundred posts that haven’t been “liked”. I wonder if I was better off a few moments ago. (pssst. . . I include “how to add the Facebook like button” at the end of this post.)

Contrary to the advice I give clients about starting Facebook Fan Pages, I didn’t tell anyone about it before adding it to the site. And let me tell you how embarrassingly awkward it looks when every single posts has the words “Be the first to like this”. . . Arghhh. . .

So my mom came to the rescue and “liked” a few posts. That’s what moms are for “Doncha know?” Now I’m wondering, will the “like” button cut down on the comments section? Will it actually increase the number of people who do something when they’re here – the ones who don’t even comment. Maybe it’s just me. . . I’m curious.

So think about this daunting move before you decide to create a Facebook fan page or even add the button to your company site. Fan pages are a bit “delicate” when it comes to the start up. Ever show up at a fancy restaurant only to find you’re the only one there? What kind of impression does that give you?

So if you’re going to learn how to add the Facebook button with the intention of doing it, contact some of your existing fans and see if they’ll “Like” you before you announce the change. Don’t press the button yourself or get all the employees in the office to do it – ask your clients, fans and vendors. They’ll like it that you “owe” them one, anyway.

If you can get 10 people to “like” your blog post or 50 people to join your Facebook Fan Page before you really announce it, you’ll be looking really good. That ball will start rolling downhill immediately – and no one will feel awkward being the first.

OK, so how to add the Facebook Like Button to your blog – you can do one of two things. You can go to “plugins” and search for “Facebook Like button” or you can e-mail me and I’ll send you the zip file. But please, before you go, please, please, please. . . . press the “like button”.

You’ll make my mom happy.

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What to Name Your Facebook Group or Fan Page

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: facebook, name facebook fanpage, name facebook group, steps of the buying process, title
Posted in The Social Media Phenomenon

The name you pick for your Facebook group or Fan Page is critical to its success. If subscribing to groups and becoming fans of pages were a private thing, and no one knew that you did so – titles would probably not be as important. But on Facebook – becoming a fan or joining a group is a way to communicate to others what you like – and who you are.

Look at the Facebook Group called “I Went to Bellevue East High School” – there’s no real content value there. In fact all the posts are “Hey, I went there too and I went to X elementary school”. But, what if that was the Facebook Group name of the school you went to? Would you click on it?

: Image via CrunchBase

Compare that to a Facebook Group named “My Favorite Place to Take Kids on Vacation Is. . .”. This is one of the most content rich, user generated Facebook Pages. There’s no spam, and users give great tips on places to take their kids on vacation. Awesome resource.

But if you think about the Buying Process, as we’ve talked so many times about, people don’t necessarily come to Facebook for content. You’re at Facebook to connect, write on people’s walls and show people pictures and tidbits about you. Having the title “My Favorite Place To Take Kids on Vacation Is. . .” on your Facebook wall doesn’t say anything about you. Maybe it tells people you have kids, but it doesn’t tell people what your favorite place is. The only reason you’d join that group is if you were actually looking for that kind of information.

Let’s look at the numbers. The Facebook group with the title that speaks volumes about who you are by showing people where you came from drew 486 people in a matter of three weeks. The heavily promoted Kids on Vacation site garnered 200 people in 9 months.

Aside from choosing a shocking title like “I Will Quit Facebook If They Start Charging Us”, choose a title that speaks volumes about the person who joins it.

Think about this. . . People talk about going to Legoland on the Taking Kids on Vacation group. It’s a great place to learn about it, but the Legoland California fan page has 2,016 people and the Legoland Billund site has over 5,900.

Would you rather tell your Facebook friends “I have kids” or “I’ve been to Legoland California and it rocks”? Tell me which group you’d join.

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Google Wave, Twitter, Facebook, Latitude and Outlook: The Future

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: AOL, facebook, Google Wave, Latitude, lebron James, My Twitter Clinics, Outlook
Posted in The Social Media Phenomenon, The Technical Internet Stuff

Have you seen what Google Wave is all about yet? It honestly will change the face of the internet forever. There’s no going back. Even if Google Wave fails, if no one uses it – there’s no way to put back the ideas they’ve presented.

Imagine if AOL had failed? Would the internet had failed? I don’t think so. The idea behind the collaborative sharing that AOL put together could never be forgotten and so it shall be with the Wave.

Will Facebook, Twitter and Outlook still exist now seeing what is possible? Or will they adapt and co-exist with this new technology? Can you imagine integrating Twitter with your Outlook account? What about integrating YouTube and Facebook with that?

And finally what really sets Google Wave apart – the blog. Turn an e-mail into a blog post instantly, and then allow commenters to be seen in your Outlook – and have people that know you on Outlook be able to comment on your blog without ever going there. And if they incorporate Google Latitude – you’ll never wonder where anybody is, where posts were made or where your true fans lie.

The saddest part about Google Wave is the fate of the engineers behind. They’ll be lauded in engineering circles. They’ll be applauded at Google conventions. And they’ll be heralded in internet chat rooms. But they’ll never be made into a poster on a teenagers wall.

There’s nothing sexy about genius, hard work – unbelievable ideas and concepts that will shatter what we know today. Nobody will take down their Lebron James poster. Nike will not feature Lars in a Superbowl commercial. And McDonald’s will not be giving out Google Wave Toys with the happy meal.

The price of genius is silence from our popular culture. So Cheers! Google Wave engineers. Thanks for this one big step for Google, one giant step for the Internet.

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Connect with Dan

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: Connect with Dan, delicious, facebook, friendfeed, My Twitter Clinics, stumbleupon
Posted in

It’s so cool to build connections on the different social networks. I regularly chat with people on YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Stumbleupon that I never would with Facebook alone. Below is the list of networks you can find me, as well as a bit about what you can expect from me on them. Click on one of the buttons to visit my profile!

Facebook is where you can find me. Not that I’m on Facebook a lot, but what I’m doing, my pictures, and all my friends are there. Please come hang with us!

My Favorite Place To Take Kids on Vacation Is. . . is a Facebook group I started to get people together sharing their favorite places to take kids on Vacation. Join and share yours.

I get e-mail on my phone, at my desk, at my home office so if it’s easiest to e-mail me, feel free to do so at tri4time@hotmail.com

I didn’t start using YouTube until this year, but now absolutely love it. I post most of my Facebook videos and a lot more here on Facebook. Check out all my social marketing tips here.

I enjoy LinkedIn, but don’t use it as well as I should. I’d love to hear your tips and ideas on how to use LinkedIn better.

I’m loving Foursquare. It’s not a site we can chat, but we can connect there. If you join, “friend me” – it’s a great way to see what local businesses are doing for revenue.

Before voice mail, before Facebook and before the contact form on this blog – I’m on Twitter. The only faster place to reach is my cell phone (but not always)

I love Stumbleupon. When I first found it I was addicted to the Stumble button. Now I just love seeing cool pages and ‘stumbling’ pages for friends. Check out my page, there are some really cool websites out there.

I use Flickr for both my personal photos, photos of cool places we’ve visited and as a marketing tool. I load up all the photos from my websites and both caption and save them as my keywords. A lot of traffic can be derived through keywords. Add me as a Contact to your Flickr account!

Technorati is a great way to increase the exposure to your blog and to create new friends with similar interests. Let’s chat there.

FriendFeed i(and spnbabble) are great places to go when Twitter is down. I also keep track of some of my off-line groups like “Nashville Geek Breakfast” there.

Brightkite is different from the rest for me. When you travel you can log-in on Brightkite with your location and it shows you whose near you. I use it to see what’s going on in the places that I’m traveling.

Delicious is almost my favorite web app. I save everything to my Delicious account, my favorite sites, my most used sites, sites I need to visit later. Then when I’m on the road – no matter where I am – I can still get access to it all.

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How to Research Your Favorite Hotel, Resort Or Vacation Destination

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: common person, easiest place, facebook, favorite hotel, favorite place, flickr, gusher, hotel resort, hotel rooms, mr potato head, side of a mountain, Strong Museum, tourist attractions, travel photos, trickle down, tripadvisor, vacation destination, waterfall, waterfalls, wonderful place
Posted in Niche Affiliate Marketing

The internet is a wonderful place to research your favorite hotel, resort or vacation destination. In fact, because of this easy-to-access information hotels and tourist attractions alike are having to pay extra special attention to their customers. They’re now also forced to make sure their hotel rooms, park trails, and restaurant floors are especially clean. There are just too many ways for the common person to make his opinion known.
Go Daddy $7.49 .com Sale!

Let’s start with the easiest place to do research…TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor has millions of reviews on everything. In fact, when you search for a hotel on Yahoo, TripAdvisor is who pops up after you’ve selected the hotel you’re interested in. And beyond the reviews, people have profile’s on TripAdvisor that you can access and actually ask questions about the person’s experience or review. It’s probably the most commonly used site to do vacation research.

Now for a bit more obscure but often more helpful…Flickr. Flickr is a photo sharing site where millions of people have posted their vacation and travel photos. If you’re headed to Jamaica and aren’t sure which of their waterfalls you want to visit, search Flickr for the name of that waterfall. You’ll likely find tons of photos from the place and will really be able to tell if the waterfall is just a trickle down the side of a hill, or a beautiful gusher off the side of a mountain.

Finally, Facebook is another great place to look. There are lots of groups on Facebook where people talk about their experiences. The group My Favorite Place To Take Kids On Vacation Is…has great postings about places I’d never heard of before. For instance the Strong Museum in New York is a museum that celebrates “play”. They have toys, games and lots of hands-on exhibits. They even have a Mr. Potato Head exhibit with a life-size Mr. Potato Head. Groups like this are awesome for finding new places you’ve never heard of and to ask others what their experiences have been like.

If you want to check out that Facebook group, go here: OR HERE

Otherwise, read about my favorite place on earth, great ideas for taking kids on vacation and my reviews of some famous destinations at

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Work From Home Doesn’t Mean the Work Will Be Easy

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: affiliate marketing, facebook, family and friends, friends, google ads, home parties, making money, making money at home, My Twitter Clinics, network marketing, part time job, search engine results, traffic generation, website, working from home
Posted in Getting Things Done

Working from home doesn’t mean you’re going to have lots of time to play with the kids, watch movies and do the dishes. To succeed from home, on your own, you’re going to need a better work ethic than you did in your day job. The difference is every minute you spend will result in dollars in your pocket.

I’ve been working from home for a while now. Just like you the work started out as a part time job to make sure I had some income in case something went wrong with my job. I’ll tell ya, it’s a good idea to start before you quit or get fired, there’s a lot of work to do before you’ll really be making money.

Let’s take networking marketing as an example. While the network marketing model of old required home parties, discussions with family and friends and the inevitable loss of friends, the new model requires none of that. To be successful you’ll need to develop some “about me” style websites, sales pages, create Facebook accounts and Twitter followers. You’ll to have a variety of places on the internet where others can find and learn about you. That desire to hear more is where the sales come in.

To make money using Google ads, you’ll need to have a website in place that gets traffic. That traffic generation part is what takes a bit of time to create. Whether its posting your site’s photos on Flickr, commenting on relevant blog and article posts, writing articles like this one, or building pages that rise to the top of the search engine results – all of that takes time.

Affiliate marketing is the same way. In order to sell things through links or e-mails, you have to have built a list of people to receive these links. Whether that’s Twitter, opt-in pages, Facebook groups or purchasing e-mail lists, it all takes time – the kind of time you don’t have once you are unemployed.

If you’re interested in specific ways you can start making money at home, please contact me at tri4time@hotmail.com or follow me on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/danrmorris

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The Hub and Spoke Internet Marketing Strategy: A Twitter Clinic

Posted By: DanRMorris | Tags: affiliate marketing, basic internet, blog, Dan Morris, facebook, Google, hub, hub and spoke, internet marketing strategy, Internet Marketing: My Ph.D., My Twitter Clinics, network marketing, relevant traffic, sitebuildit, strategy meeting, Twitter Clinic
Posted in An Internet Marketing Journal

I haven’t done one in a while, but spent some time at a biz strategy meeting tonite and feel like tonite is a good nite for a twitter clinic

Tonite’s twitter clinic is about your basic internet marketing strategy and how to create the structure. I’ll post this later on my blog.

So let’s get started. First of all I don’t think you’re going to get very far without a website. That means a blog, a sales page or a site.

There must be a place people can go to buy what you’re selling. That’s not a negative thing. If you’re selling shovels, you’ll need a place

for the guy buying shovels to go. So let’s call that page your money site. Let’s define money site again. You need a page, a Facebook group,

a blog site, a full blown website, a squidoo page – something! where the transaction can be made. If you’re doing affiliate marketing where

you only need people to click on a link – then maybe Twitter is all you need. But you won’t get far with that. A Facebook Group can be more

lucrative than Twitter (sometimes). I prefer a full blown website, but sometimes that’s very easy to put together. Now that you have a site

(or a page) the goal is to get people there. The more relevant traffic you get, the more buyers you’ll find.That’s where the structure comes

into play. Like FedEx, your structure needs to be hub and spoke, where your money page is the middle hub and everything else you do is the

spokes. Maybe you’ll write an article for ezinearticles.com pointing people to your site – that’s a spoke. Maybe you’ll start a Facebook grp

and you’ll send messages to the group with the link to your site (another spoke). The key is to build spokes where relevant traffic can be

directed to your money site. Sometimes you need to have two steps before your money site. Maybe you’re selling antioxidant drinks. . Build a

few articles that send people to a review site. One spoke to another spoke and then have links to your money site on the review site. You’d

do this when you’d expect the buyer to do research before actually buying. Attract the lead, give them research and a place to buy.

Other spokes are forum and blog posts, twitter links, facebook links, digg/delicious/stumbleupon links, blog articles, press releases

and spokes can be off-line as well. Infomercials drive folks to websites. That’s a spoke driving traffic to the money site. So basically the

ideal internet marketing strategy is to have a site where people buy and then a bunch of ways people can find you. This system works great

for network marketers. MLM folks can’t change their company site, but they can use the internet to drive traffic there. My favorite way to

do that is with a SiteBuildit Site. This is a site that’s designed to exploit a niche and get to the top of Google for that niche. If you’re

in a Candle MLM, maybe the niche is ‘bedroom candles’ from which you create a site all about different kinds of bedroom candles with links

to your network marketing site to sell them candles. Check it out for yourself http://www.ilovesbi.com/limitedtime.html It’s the best way I

know to drive tons of traffic to your site, while you’re working on another niche or spoke or business. So tonite’s Twitter Clinic has been

about creating an internet marketing strategy.

Letters From Dan

Google Starred Results – A New SEO tool

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Connect with Dan

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How to Research Your Favorite Hotel, Resort Or Vacation Destination

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Work From Home Doesn’t Mean the Work Will Be Easy

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The Hub and Spoke Internet Marketing Strategy: A Twitter Clinic

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