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Vinny O'Hare

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Social Media

Hootsuite Bulk Uploader Date Changer

I use Hootsuite a lot for scheduling my social media post. I have a few spreadsheets that I upload every month with 30-50 items in each and when the month changes to the next month I have to go into my Google Drive (Never use Excel with Hootsuite) and open the spreadsheet. One of the things you would think is that you can just do a simple search and replace and change the month. Normally you would think that would work but what ends up happening is the days of the week also get messed up.

Let's say I am going from July to August. I would open the spreadsheet and go EDIT > Search and Replace and change the date from 7/ to 8/. Well it works fine but it also changes the date on the 7th, 17th, and 27th of the month to the 8th, 18th, and 28th. Needless to say that if you don't fix this the spreadsheet will have errors in it when you upload it via the Hootsuite bulk upload tool because the post are not in order date anymore and the times will get messed up.

Hootsuite Bulk Uploader Solution

Hootsuite Bulk Uploader solutionAfter months of struggling with this I finally figured out a solution. In the find and replace box add a caret (That funny thing above the 6 key on your keyboard) in the find section. Then scroll down and check off match case and search using regular expressions. You should then be able to look at your csv file and notice that the dates for the 7th, 17th, and 28th hasn't changed at all.

Save the file as a csv and you are good to go. Then make the same changes the next month. This will save you valuable time using the bulk upload tool.

 

Speaking at Author Marketing Live

Vinny O'Hare at author Marketing live graphic

Just putting on the finishing touches to our presentation for Author Marketing Live. Debbie and I are doing a presentation called “Fast & Easy Ways To Find True Fans & Rabid Readers with Social Media” which I have to say I am quite proud of.

I have about 4 or 5 tips that will help authors save time when using social media while building a fan base that will want to read their books. While I can't say exactly what these tools are I can say that it will be a sold out audience and we are prepared to have authors sitting there with their eyes wide open and writing down the tips we are giving them.

It will be my first time in Cleveland unless you count the 2 minutes I spent there changing planes once. If you are going to be there I look forward to seeing you, please come up and say Hi!

If you waited to long and didn't get a ticket I suggest you follow the hashtag #AMLive14 as I will be tweeting from the stage. Well not really since I set up the tweets to go out last week.

Extend Facebook Reach With One Button

I was talking with a buddy online and he was telling me how his Facebook reach was going down and down and down. At first I gave him a few tips on how to increase it and then I told him why not put your Hootsuite tweet sheet in and push the same tweets to Facebook as you are putting on Twitter. I talked a little about this in my Twitter post last week.

Of course I would not do this all the time but for the sake of testing I did it myself with one of my sites. I pulled out my monthly Twitter sheet I have set up for Hootsuite and deleted the first 9 rows and saved it and uploaded it using the bulk upload tool in Hootsuite. As you can see below I expanded my reach with no problem. This was only posting 2 more times a day.

Expand Facebook Reach

Now if I was to do this seriously I would have a longer Tweet sheet than having the normal 140 characters. Maybe take a snippet of content out of a page and link it back to that page. Odds are the image for the post would get pulled automatically from the page?

If you are using Hootsuite and the bulk uploader why not give this a try! For people that are familiar with the tool already this could be set up in a matter of 1 minute pushing one button.

[Tweet “My Facebook reach has been off the charts since doing this.”]

What Twitter Has Become To Me

This past week I have seen a ton of people going back and seeing their first tweet since it was Twitter's 8th anniversary. Twitter set up a special url for you to go see what your tweet was. If you are curious about it you can check yours out here.

As I was looking through my account I started to think about how much my opinion of Twitter has changed. I was very vocal when it came to them putting “Paid Tweets” on the site. I was even mentioned on the NY Times website. My thoughts have changed since I think Twitter has so many users that have given up on the service that it has just become a broadcast platform to a degree.

Scheduled Tweets

Schedule tweets in bulkPeople get so upset over scheduled tweets it cracks me up. Sure sometimes breaking news happens and a scheduled tweet goes out. Does anyone notice? Does anyone care? Isn't there much bigger things in life to worry about? I just got finished scheduling about 2000 tweets. Some are evergreen, some are funny, some are interactive, some are informative, and some are tweets to landing pages that are designed for sales.

I break them up and most go out in the early morning so when I get up I already have interaction to respond to. I also schedule some for my European audience, which has been some of the best interaction I get. Guess being a night owl helps with that.

I am guessing that the 140 characters are too limiting to have a meaningful conversation especially if you are using Twitter on the web. I use Hootsuite where I can filter people into a list. I don't have to see tweets from everyone I follow. I keep a few private list set up and keep track and respond to my @ messages. Between that and the RavenTools social monitor I can keep up and track everything in all the social media accounts I am responsible for.

Hootsuite has a bulk upload tool that is simple to use. A simple csv file with 3 rows and hit what social media accounts you want to post to and you are done. I recommend using Google docs to set up the CSV file, for some reason it doesn't play nice in excel.

I use the bulk upload tool to upload to Twitter and also to Facebook and G+. Sometimes I set up different files for each but you can blast the same message out to all 3 if you want. If you hook up some apps in Hootsuite you can blast out to even more places. I concentrate on the big 3 social networks for the most part.

Using the schedule in bulk tool in Hootsuite makes life so much easier. You can sign up for a free account but I use the pro account for the features.  It is well worth it for me.

Add a Call To Action Near Your Social Media Buttons

I was just browsing Facebook when I saw a post from New Media Expo about the decline in organic Facebook results when it came to new posts. They highlighted a writer (Andrea Vahl) that did a 24 hour experiment on organic post where she posted to Facebook asking for people to like the post so she could judge organic traffic.  Andrea Vahl went on to show graphs and while her experiment is still going on as I write this it made me think.

Since we are always talking about call to actions why not add a line of text near your social media buttons asking the reader to click and share the post. I am sure just adding a line or two will help with the organic reach in Facebook, plus whatever benefits comes along with Google tracking social media now. It just doesn't hurt to ask.

At first I was going to add a line in the after post section but then I looked closer at the social media sharing plugin that I use Sharing is caring Wordpress plugin. It has a section to add a line of text so I did. This is what it looks like. I am sure you will also see it at the bottom of the post.

social media call to action

I am sure I am going to change it up when I think of something better and do some A/B testing on it. Inside the plugin is where you ad the text. You can see in the extended options where I circled in green.

Sharing blog post

You can also change the CSS and other settings if you choose to do so. For now I will leave it as it is. I will probably do some testing of calls to action across my other sites and track the results. For now I suggest adding a line if having people sharing your post is a goal of yours.  Go ahead and follow the instructions below and share the post. 🙂

Knowem Social Media Optimizer Tool

I just got a look at Knowem's Social Media Optimizer tool and I was amazed at how many of my websites are not fully optimized for social media. You get to see all the details that your site should be doing when it comes to social media. I encourage you to put one of your websites into the url field and see what you are missing.

Without a doubt this new social media tool from Knowem will help you improve your website when it comes to social media data that your site is telling the search engines. You will see what you can improve when it comes to your site details on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. It will also show you some stats when it comes to local if your site is local based and some SEO mistakes you may improve upon.

Social Media is a Waste Of Time

Ok now that I have your attention you need to read further. Social media is one of the best ways to get traffic to your website but you have to have tracking installed so you can track what you are doing and the response you are getting. Below you can see my report of my Twitter account. I get this daily as part of my Raven Tools report.
Track twitter

I normally only track one month at a time and have it versus the previous month. This report shows two months worth of data though. At first you may look at this and say OMG Vinny you had over 1000 post in the time. That is correct about 500 a month, but when you factor in that about 700 are automatic I only did about 300 post in two months. Most of my tweets were during Affiliate Summit. I really didn't do much tweeting at all.

The number to look at here though is the amount of re-tweets. For very little effort I get RT's on my post like crazy. That is the goal so that I get new followers and I can funnel them towards my email newsletter list. You can also see that I get a lot of other mentions and that is just fine by me. Lets break it down even further. In the graph below you will see that I track post, mentions, and events.

What I do is when I make a post on my site I create an event so I can track it. This is the dark gray lines on the chart below. I can see what post received traffic and more important what post didn't see traffic. By looking at this I can see that my post on 8/9 and 9/6 worked well on Twitter. I need to go in and see what they were and find a similar topic to write about.

Twitter tracking

The main thing is that I track every single thing I do when it comes to social media. If you look above you can see my follow 500 people experiment in full effect also. The results of that aren't in yet since I am waiting on some more figures. I also get reports on Facebook and G+ that look just like this.  I have this report emailed to me every morning along with the rest of my Raven Report.

Do you know what you are doing on social media? Are you just posting to Facebook and Twitter praying that something will get retweeted? That isn't a good idea and is probably a waste of time.

Getting Your Video To Go Viral

A few years ago when I bought my first smartphone I figured I would make a little video on how I can watch NFL games from my phone. Little did I know that by using “Direct TV on the Droid Phone” I was tapping into something that was to go viral. I shouldn't say viral I should say it got a lot of traffic. When I made the video (Which Sucks BTW) I didn't do any keyword research before I named it. You should always do that to help with traffic. This video has 41,000 views and it could of had more.

Now I did no promoting for this video and actually forgot all about it until I started seeing traffic in my Google analytics to my cell phone site which was in the description at the time. Every week I would see a few hundred hits from the text link in the description box to my site. When they clicked on the link it gave them a text wrap up of what I said in the video. I also embedded the video on the bottom of that page in case anyone wanted to see it again.

My cell phone site was an old looking frontpage made site that is currently being redesigned so in the mean time I changed the video to link back to my site where those people now end up seeing the pictures I take with the cell phone. It is only a stop gap measure until I get the cell phone site back up.

Use The Reply Button On Your Videos

What I learned about the video though is that when someone ask you a question on the video you should reply. People end up liking the video and the video gets ranked higher on YouTube based on the action. From now on I will always reply back to people no matter what their crazy question is.

People will end up subscribing to your channel and sharing your videos. You always want to put your videos in the best places to get the most views.

After you make a video you should also embed it on a new post on your site so it goes out to your newsletter subscribers. Tweet out that page a few times and tweet out the page it is on YouTube also. The more plays you get the more YouTube notices its popularity and that helps with rankings. Send an email to your friends and ask them to watch it. Bribe them and tell them there is a surprise ending or something.  You should also place the link to your page on Facebook and G+. In a few days go in and do the same thing with the YouTube page that your video is on.

Do not upload the video to Facebook as that won't help you with visitors back to your page.

Before you upload the video to YouTube you should rename the file name. Instead of uploading 21312312312323.mov you want to call it something like watchtvonphone.mov and help Google find it better. You also want to add a few paragraphs of text in the description field with a relevant website url somewhere so the viewer can click on it and be on your website.

Sharing Your Post

At Affiliate Summit I was talking to an affiliate that was telling me that he didn't have a real social media plan. I told him I know that he didn't because I was on his site a few days before. It was then that I saw something that stopped me in my tracks.

He had all the social media buttons on the site but they all showed 0 clicks on them. I said to myself if he didn't think the post were good enough to share why the heck would I share his post. When I told the affiliate about this he looked at me like wow I never thought of that. Not saying that having 1 click will help you but if no one knows the post exist in the first place it has 0 chance of getting spread.

I am sure someone that reads this will say no wonder why no one is using the social media buttons on my site! They are not using them because they never saw your post in the first place. Every time I write a blog post I will take 3 minutes to click on the social media buttons and share the post across the 3 or 4 social media platforms that I have buttons for on the post.

This gives me a head start and allows others that follow me a chance to see the tweet or Facebook like or whatever I have done and share it with their friends. I also suggest in the newsletter that goes out that people should use the share buttons on the bottom of the post if they like it and want to help my site get more readers. You will be amazed at the amount of social shares your post receive when you put it in your readers mind what to do when they read a post. After a few newsletters with that message your long time readers will re-tweet and like your post naturally as long as it is quality.

I also told this affiliate that he should hook up with a few bloggers that are in his niche or even in his area and team up. Having 3 or 4 bloggers helping share your post on social media when they see a new post. It is pretty simple to set up, all you have to do is sign up for each others newsletter and just use the social buttons whenever they get a new newsletter.

Since having only 1 click on a social media button isn't that good when it comes to crowd sourcing (Which is what you want to happen) having a few buttons that show 3 or 4 clicks helps with that. After being spread on a few places by other bloggers you will end up with a few new readers that will start liking your post and you will end up with more than the 3 or 4 likes.

I see this situation a lot when someone launches a new blog. It takes a lot of work and then they make a few post and nothing happens and they get discouraged and the site ends up failing. Using this simple tip will help a new blog get its legs a little quicker.

If you have a good relationship with a few bloggers in your niche (and you should) you can set up this system very easy. You may be surprised at the results.

Google vs Facebook There is No Competition

I have been a fan of Google+ since it came out as I like the clean interface. I have not been a fan of Facebook or as I lovingly call it Spambook. Both serve a purpose for me and I consider them both as tools. While everyone and their grandmother in the tech industry likes pitting one against the other I just don't care who will win the battle of the social networks. I already consider that game to be over but it is not what you think.

Facebook has a gazillion users I get that and Google+ has only just begun to get started but as I see it Google+ is the winner. Maybe this is the geek side of me talking but I am finding the level of interaction on Google+ to be way higher than that on Facebook. Most people use Facebook to play games and talk to the people they didn't like in High School but for me it is just a marketing tool.
[Read more…] about Google vs Facebook There is No Competition

Google+ Business Pages Cleaning Up The Internet

I am sitting here thinking about Google+ for business pages. The more I do, the more I think this is going to be used as a signal that will help clean up Google's search engine spam and make the internet a better place at the same time.

I just set up a few business pages and as I was inserting the code they give you for the head of your pages. I noticed it contains something similar to the rel=author code that they have been trying to push on everyone. Although it is not required to use the service I am sure that Google will use this as some sort of trust factor. They would be stupid if they didn't use it. They are tying Google+ accounts to the websites that have pages. It is too early to tell but I am sure that this could be used as a social signal in the near future.
[Read more…] about Google+ Business Pages Cleaning Up The Internet

The First Victim of Google Plus Will Be Foursquare

If you have followed me you probably know how much I don't like foursquare since my twitter stream was filled up with people they were announcing they are “Mayors” .  Since that post it has grown to 10 million users. Not bad but I can safely say that the first victim of the Google+ entrance into social media will be Foursquare. Sorry all you virtual mayors out there it seems you all just became lame duck politicians just wasting time.

Today Google+ which has an amazing smart phone app already announced they bought The Dealmap. The Dealmap comes with 2 million users which is 1/5th of what Foursquare has. Not a bad head start for Google+ if they add this to their app in the “Nearby” section it will destroy Foursquare.

The other night I was walking down the street in NYC and was explaining to my friend how the Google+ Android app works. As we were walking down the street I said to her that if we wanted to see what people nearby were having for dinner we could just get that information with a few clicks. Next thing I knew we found a nice vegan restaurant that had a raving review by some Google+ users.  I am sure that once Google+ decides to add a deal into the mixture it will be the end of Foursquare, at least as we know it.

Google+ at last report had about 20 million users already on Google+ This is a great starting point for advertisers that are already working with Google, I am sure that it is only a matter of time before they add deals to the Google+ smart phone app.

Thoughts?

 

 

Google+ Tips and Tricks

Since everyone is talking about Google+ I wanted to share some tips I have learned so far. This post will always be expanding as Google+ is so new there are sure to be more tips and tricks over time.

Keyboard Shortcuts in Google Stream

Scroll to the next post down – hit the “J” key

Scroll up to the next post – hit the “K'” Key

Jump to chat – hit the “Q” key

Add * before and after the message to make it BOLD

Add _ before and after the message to make it ITALIC

Add – before and after the message to make it a Strike Through

Get to the top of the page just click on the black line across the top of the screen and it will jump you up to the latest post.

Circles

To add a user to your circle you got to your circles tab and enter their email address and find them. You can then add them to a post by using their name with an @ circle in front of their name and click add to a circle.

Private Circles – I have a circle I named “Private” and have no one in the circle. When I upload a picture from the android app that I want to use for a blog post I upload the photo to the private circle. You can also use this to save text for blog post or to post to Google+ later. When I am back on the computer I can open that circle stream and my info is waiting for me to use.

Rearrange your circles – So you don't want your circles in the order Google has them. On your main screen go up to the Circles tab and click it, then you can just left click on a circle and move it where you want. They no longer have to be arranged in alphabetical order. This was updated on July 29th 2011

Photos

After uploading a photo click on Actions then Edit photo where you can change the photo with Google's built in set of tools. There are many options for you to use.

You can drop and drag photos from your desktop right into the stream. No need to browse your computer for a file.

Usability

To add a friends name to a post just add an @ or a + in front of their name and it will make that into a click able link to that persons profile and sends an alert to that friend if they have alerts turned on in their profile.

If you are following people that get a lot of comments on their post you can go to the top of that post and on the right hand side you will see a drop down where you can click Mute This Post. Makes Google+ much cleaner.

Profile

You can use links in your profile body and select the anchor text for SEO needs. You can also include links to all your websites or online profiles in the sidebar under links.

Profile pictures – You can add more then one photo to your profile to serve as your profile picture. You can set it up to rotate to a new picture when someone clicks on it. After you upload a profile picture you will see it. Then click on edit profile and click on change your photo and a box will appear where you can upload more pictures. Right now you have to add one at a time but I am sure Google will fix that in the future. When you see someone else's picture on their profile click on it to see if they have added more. Need more explaining you can see a video on adding your picture to Google+

Sparks

I have been using sparks to read up on my interest.  You click on the word Sparks on the lower left sidebar and  add a topic into the search box. Then when you find a good one click on the blue “Add Interest” button and it will be saved in your side bar. I use this for keyword research for when I am writing blogs and looking for a story in the niche.

Come follow me on Google+

Google Plus is Much Better Than Facebook

Google + A Faster, Leaner, and Better Facebook

Google + Stream Shot
Picture of Google Stream

You all know that I am not the biggest fan of Facebook. Their system was good but I am not an apps guy so that whole system is a waste of time. I don't really need the e-mails for games like Farmville and Mafia wars. I know you can turn them off but in the user face is always asking for new request and I just can't stand that. Half the time the invites are from people I really don't know very well.

Will Google Plus Catch on? It Already Has

I can see this spreading like wild fire, All they need to do is put a message across the top everyone's Gmail account and they will have millions of users overnight. That plan worked well for Hotmail. Then the next step would be to add sponsored messages to the right like Gmail and allow companies to advertise on either search results, content network, or social network. G+ would be an immediate money maker for Google. I wouldn't mind the intrusion of ads, you don't even notice them on your Gmail.

I have been playing around with Google + for two or three days and I can tell you I really like over Facebook. For one you can add people to circles, and only send messages to those people on your wall or as Google calls it your stream. I have set up different circles for family members, press, birdwatching, Atlanta Falcons fans, SEO, and affiliate marketers.

What I really like about Google +1 is the photo section. The photos are much larger and they have the person's name who took the photo and they are all right in your face when you open up the photo section. The photo section can make you a better photographer. I haven't played with the video section yet but I'm sure it will be just as fast as the rest of Google +1.

Google + Photo Section
Google + Photo Section

The one thing I wish Google +1 had was a Google -1 button. This way you can give a negative vote to something you didn't like. This would balance out the so-called social media gurus who have disciples clicking on everything they do thinking it's the gospel. I know some people won't like that but that's the way I think.

The Google + Android App

So following the best things about Google +1 is the android app. It is by far the fastest app I have on my phone. What I like and what I don't like at the same time is the photo upload. When you upload a photo you have a chance of geo-targeting it. You can tell everybody where you are when you take the photo. Of course all of this information will be shared across Google's servers.

On the app you have five places you can go stream, photos, circles, huddle, and your profile. I'm not exactly sure what huddle will be used for right now but it looks like you can get some friends and put them all in a huddle and it could be used if you were going to meet at a certain place. If  plans changed you would be able to shoot everybody in your huddle a quick message letting them know what the new plans are. At least that's what I picked up from the YouTube video.

Will this be the Facebook killer, I don't think so some people still like to play Farmville, and Mafia wars. Will this be the twitter killer, I don't think so.  Will this put the final nail in MYSpace, I think so. What I do see it killing is daily booth. With faster and better resolution photos, I see no need for daily booth to exist. Of course that's only my opinion. I do see Google +1 as something that will definitely make its mark on social media and the way we communicate with each other. Of course it's all too new to speculate, but when I see Chris Brogan and all the points that he made in his post about Google +1 I think it has a very good chance.

I have been nothing but impressed with Google +1 so far. The only thing I don't like is the nested comments on a post. I would rather see every comment that is made than having to click a button to open up the thread when it has more than three comments. I am also sad that I had to use an older Gmail account to sign up with because I have a Google business's account that is my main account. Hopefully Google will let us switch that at a later date when they let business apps in. Right now there are a lot of smart people sitting on the sidelines because their main account is a Google business account. I have been told by some people that they are working on this right now, I just hope they let us switch.

Google Hangouts Can Become All The Rage

One cool feature that I like is the Google hangouts, you can do a 10 person video chat all at the same time. This will come in handy for me, as I can have 10 people and teach them common sense SEO all at the same time. I will probably set something up like Tuesday night hangout club or something like that. It is much easier to explain stuff when you are all looking at the person or they are seeing you. We'll Google hangouts kill Skype video chats, I don't think so. It's just something cool and I'm sure some businesses will use it once they get in. Parents will have to keep an eye on their kids as this will be a time suck and take away from homework time. At the same time it could also be used for parent teacher meetings.

You can immediately have a family reunion, using Google hangouts. You can also set up a hangout every Sunday at one o'clock during the football season and talk to your buddies all around the country all at the same time we watch the game. Doesn't that sound cool!

Thanks for reading my little wrap up I hope to see you on Google +1 when they open it from the beta.

Ask Your Users a Question

facebook fan page results
Facebook Fan Page Results

So the other day I am playing around on one of my Spambook Facebook account fan pages and I decided to try something new and use the questions app option. I heard of people having success with it so I thought I would test it on one of my smaller Facebook pages.

The fan page I used was based on cars so I asked my 42 fans “If you could own a car from any decade what year would it be?”  I gave them a few multiple choice answers to chose from. Simple enough and I figured I would get a few responses and I did. Not many but the amount of people that looked at the question was off the charts.

108 people looked at it and about about 50 went to my website from Facebook that day. You can see by the chart that using Facebook questions you can really get some traffic. I really didn't know what questions to ask and I may do this once a week. Maybe I will make every Friday “Question day” and focus on getting to know my fans a little better. They can also learn more about me as we interact with each other.

I also picked up 3 new fans and since I only had 42 to start with that is a nice size percentage wise so I guess each question you ask will help in building fans too.

I don't see any downside to using questions as long as you don't ask 5 -10 questions a day, that I could see as annoying. Odds are you would lose fans at some point doing that.

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