Social Media | SageRock Digital Marketing Blog

November 30, 2011 By Sage Lewis 2 Comments

Why You Need To Start Working Google Plus Now

I’m going to impart some wisdom to you based on my own personal failings.

I’ve finally decided to really start working my Twitter account. The value of Twitter has really made an impression on me recently. People with influential followings can do some amazing things.

But I should have made this realization years ago. If I had started earlier it would have been much easier. Trying to make headway into Twitter now is much more difficult today. It’s a mature space. The thought-leaders have been working it seriously for years.

Fortunately for you and me, we have another unique opportunity: Google Plus.

You might say: “But Sage, Google Plus is such a small place. No one is there.”

That’s kind of true. But Twitter and Facebook were small once too. The thought leaders took a chance on it then and they are reaping the benefits today. But there are people there: Leaders.

What made me inspired to write this post is this post:

These are 50 thought leaders on Google+… and (probably) you and I are not on this list.

The longer we wait on making inroads into Google+ the harder it will be to break your way in as a thought leader.

So, this is what I want you to do right now:

Start following people and adding them to circles to keep people organized.
Check out: Who to follow on Google Plus? Google+ Suggested Users.
Start sharing things and posting a little bit. Try to post something once a day.
If you see an article, picture, photo or video you like share it over at Google+.
Start sharing and commenting on other people’s posts. “If you want friends be a friend.”

I’m not going to flush out how to do all of these things here. If you have questions about Google+ please feel free to ask them in the comments. I promise I will respond.

I’ve also have created an ongoing Google+ Resource Guide here if you want to learn more.

Be a leader. Dive into Google+. I know not all your friends are there yet. But convince them to come over. It’s a pretty sweet place. And take the opportunity to meet new people.

Go get ‘em! https://plus.google.com/

Filed Under: Social Media

November 24, 2011 By Sage Lewis Leave a Comment

Giving Thanks From a Cambodian Refugee

I’m going to tell you the story of a social media master who laughed at me when I told him I was sitting with the foursquare mayor of his restaurant.

This guy probably has never been on Facebook, Twitter or Youtube. But all of us social media “experts” would do well to study his technique.

As we are sitting at the sushi bar of Golden Dragon Restaurant in Cuyahoga Falls Ohio, Frank S., the foursquare mayor says to me: “Ask Hon to show you his cobra snake bite.”

“You did not get bit by a cobra,” I say in disbelief.

“I sure did,” Hon says showing me a white welt between his thumb and forefinger There’s a nasty scar like he was in a knife fight. “When I was 10 in the Cambodian jungle.”

“Did you go to the doctor,” I naively ask him.

He laughs at me again. “What’s a doctor? Mud and piss is how I treated it.”

Political commentary of the GOP debates is playing on the TV above the bar.

“Are you a Republican,” I ask.

“I don’t like either Democrats or Republicans. In wrestling, Hulk Hogan and Rody Piper both come out yelling and screaming at each other. After the match they sit together in the back laughing and counting all their money. That’s what Democrats and Republicans do.”

“Where I come from we want the government as far away from us as possible. In Cambodia the closer the government gets to you the more likely it is you are going to get killed.”

He then patiently recounts his story of walking through the landmine filled jungles of Cambodia to escape the Khmer Rouge. He walked the distance of Chicago to Akron making his way to a Thailand refugee camp.

He did this at the age of 10 years old with his two brothers and mother.

“Your dad didn’t go,” I ask.

“He got blown up by a landmine.”

I say I’m sorry. He easily makes a joke about wanting reparations.

He had relatives that had moved to Canada and Australia. So his mother tried to apply to move there. They weren’t accepting refugees at the time. They then ran out of time. The camp ran out of money and his family was sent back to Cambodia… the same Chicago to Akron trip through the landmine-infested jungle only eating what they could find along the way.

They didn’t give up. They eventually once again made the trip back to Thailand.

This time they had a sponsor… a church in Akron Ohio.

That was enough to get them over here. America was sensitive to the cause and had room.

Hon, Ming, Chai and his mother moved to Akron. The kids went to North High School. Their mom had a skill. She was a seamstress. Otherwise they probably would have gone to the Philippines.

The mayor asks, “How did you afford this restaurant?”

Hon says “entitlements.”

We’re quiet for a minute. Hon then laughs and says, “No, man. The owner before us had enough of running a business. We just took it over from him.”

I’m sitting there on the edge of my seat. My mouth is gaping open.

Hon says, “Do you know the movie “The Killing Fields”? That was my life. Do you remember the blue tent at the end of the movie? That was the Thai refugee camp I spent two years in. They had ice cream and free food. It was heaven. In Cambodia I lived in a cave. I drank the same water the cows pissed in.”

He says, “Today my daughter tells me she wants a flu shot. I tell her I see her washing her hands all the time. What does she need a flu shot for. The west is the only place in the world where people have food allergies. It’s because we all have so much.”

“In Cambodia we were allowed to own 2 things: a neckerchief and a spoon. 1 spoon. Everything else was owned by the government. If you took a piece of fruit off a tree you were stealing from the government.”

I am sucked in. I can’t believe the story I’m hearing.

And you know what, when I’m in Akron there is no other sushi for me than the Golden Dragon Restaurant in Cuyahoga Falls Ohio.

It’s great sushi. That’s no doubt. But now it’s more than sushi for me. It’s a family living the American dream to its fullest. It is a place of love, happiness, hope and dreams that have come true. It has magic.

Good social media has magic. But there’s no trick to it. It tells a story. It pulls its viewers in. It has a soul. It’s honest and open. That’s the secret to social media.

Filed Under: Featured, Social Media

November 18, 2011 By Sage Lewis Leave a Comment

Journalism in 2011 & Occupy Wall Street

It’s Thursday 11/17/2011 at about 2:15 Eastern Time.

I’m watching the Occupy Wall Street protest live at: http://www.ustream.tv/theother99

The segment I’m currently watching is being broadcast by Tim Pool: http://twitter.com/#!/timcast

He has been covering this protest live, non-stop since 7:00am using nothing more than his cell phone with 4G and 4 donated Energizer XP18000 backup batteries. (After 8.5 hours his first battery is still at 75% power.)

Here is a picture of him from MSNBC:

This is been interesting to watch because of the stark difference between his broadcast and CNN.

Here is a screenshot of his broadcast on ustream.tv:

At this time he has nearly 28,000 current views with a total of 314,000 total views. The broadcast also has a live chat feed tied into the ustream chat, Facebook and Twitter on the right.

He is exhausted and wants to take a break. He won’t. His hands are freezing because he has no gloves. Someone is supposed to be bringing him gloves but they are a mile away.

It was raining for about an hour. He used a plastic bag to protect his camera. He really wanted an umbrella. Finally, someone gave him one.

Here is the live video feed from CNN for about the last half hour:

I’d like to get you a shot of the video they are shooting. But it doesn’t seem to be coming back up. When they are on the air they have no sound. The CNN reporter clearly looks uncomfortable with her stylish raincoat and perfectly done hair.

Tim broadcasts screens of other peoples’ cameras and video cameras. He gives credit to any and all other citizen journalists at the movement.

And then earlier this week we had this:

Associated Press Staff Scolded for Tweeting Too Quickly About OWS Arrests — Daily Intel

Apparently the AP policy is that you can’t scoop the wire on Twitter. If you are an AP employee you can’t put something on Twitter if it hasn’t been put on the wire first.

I have been in the Internet business full time since about 1996. It always seemed to move fast. But I’m here to tell you, the speed of change is faster than I’ve ever seen it. And it just seems to be getting faster.

Take a look at this line graph:

It took Google+ 16 days to reach 10 million users. There has never been a faster adoption rate of any media in the history of humanity. And who knows if it will even stick. People may already be moving on.

This incredible speed of change is potentially leaving the old guard left in the dust.

As all of this goes on I can’t help but think of the American Revolution and the Red Coats.

Here are these guys wearing red, marching in line. They are easy pickings for the Revolutionaries. The Indian-learned fighting tactics of the Revolutionaries were infuriating and also effective against the Red Coats.

It feels the same way with so many forms of powerful organizations:

Music industry is pissed people are stealing their music.
Movie industry is pissed people are stealing their movies.
Colleges refuse to offer education in current technology.
News organizations enforce protocol no matter what.

The old guard leaders are having an incredibly difficult time with the concept of sharing information, giving away information, trading information. Information appears to want to be free. The old guard hates that.

I recently had a professor tell me that he didn’t want his students talking about his class on Facebook because that’s too much power. They couldn’t be trusted with the information. This wasn’t some nuclear physicist. He was a PR professor.

It’s the hoarding of information that will be the death of these organizations. This is their red coat. If they absolutely refuse to let the information go and be free they will die.

Think about this from the perspective of your business. How much of your business strategy has to do with hoarding information:

Pricing.
Your weaknesses.
Your financial solvency.

It’s the companies that become increasingly transparent and open that will be the companies of the future.

Filed Under: Featured, Social Media

November 16, 2011 By Sage Lewis Leave a Comment

My Top Tweets From SES Chicago #seschi

So, unfortunately I could only stay a couple days at Search Engine Strategies this time. I’m running back to Ohio to teach my University of Findlay class tonight.

But I thought I might post some of the notes I took at the conference. I got a lot of really good stats, tips and concepts (as usual).

Here are my tweets (http://twitter.com/sagerock) for the hashtags: #seschi and #omschi:

1st step is to convince people that social matters. Maybe make your own study so you can truly quantify social. @LosBuenos #seschi

Conversion Buddy is a new tool that helps you track to the conversion of socially shared links. http://ow.ly/7uiNQ @datadivadalley #seschi

Here’s a good (and the first) live blogging writeup of the Mikel Chertudi #seschi keynote. http://ow.ly/7ucg5

MarketShare – an affordable solution for attribution tracking if $10k – $20k for metrics is chump change for u. http://ow.ly/7ubUx #seschi

Video: Demographic Makeup of SES Chicago 2011 Attendeeshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVuyscmzuac&feature=share #seschi

By 2020 there will be 50 billion connected devices on the planet.@mikegrehan #seschi

FTC says: You have to disclose your affiliation if you have a material connection. Consider: http://cmp.ly #seschi #omschi

http://Dirtyphonebook.com - you can look people up by number & make anonymous calls. “That can’t be legal.” #seschi #omschi

Here’s your Twitter tip of the day: Tweet conferences you attend. 2051 followers at 8am – 2073 at 2pm.#seschi #OMSCHI

Find the bloggers that are likely to engage in comments. You will develop a relationship a lot faster. @adamproehl #seschi #OMSCHI

Search Podcasts on iTunes or Amazon to see popularity. These people most likely are on Twitter & have a blog. @adamproehl #seschi #OMSCHI

Klout – shows what kind of fish you are in which pond. The number by itself means nothing. @adamproehl #seschi #OMSCHI http://ow.ly/7sVOX

Followerwonk – enter a keyword & shows people that talk a lot about that topic. @adamproehl #seschi #OMSCHIhttp://ow.ly/7sVEC

BlogPulse is a good place to find influential blogs @adamproehl #seschi #OMSCHI http://ow.ly/7sVuO

Here is my first video at the OMS Social Media Summit #seschi #OMSCHI http://ow.ly/7sTQz

Digital advertising to the CMO is just one big bucket. (TV, print, digital) so social is currently 1 small part. @LosBuenos #seschi #OMSCHI

The top 100 advertisers have very serious Facebook presences.@LosBuenos #seschi #OMSCHI

Exposed Fans also tend to spend more at Starbucks than non-fans. @LosBuenos #seschi #OMSCHI

The single biggest time spent on Facebook is on the Newsfeed (48%). So that’s where most brand exposure happens.@LosBuenos #seschi #OMSCHI

95% of people that check in use Facebook Places. @LosBuenos #seschi

85% of U.S. Internet users visit a social media site. @LosBuenos #seschi

If you are interested in more stuff like this you can follow me here:
http://twitter.com/#!/sagerock

Filed Under: Featured, SEM News, SEO, Social Media

November 2, 2011 By Sage Lewis Leave a Comment

The Secret Key To Content Marketing Revealed

I started this story on Monday talking about the power that content marketing has had on my business.

I honestly thought I was going to tell you this secret in that post. But I got going on how effective all of this has been for our company. So I thought it would be fun to hold out on you before giving you this insight I’ve come across.

Let me tell you a story:

I have run 3 marathons: Chicago, Pittsburgh and Akron.

One of the tricks to running a marathon is that you have to put in A LOT of training time. Near the end of your training you are running 12 miles each day during the week and 20 miles on Saturday. Forget the endurance that takes. It’s boring as hell.

You are out there for hours at a time with nothing to do. You can’t read. You can’t talk on the phone. Sure. Your legs are busy. But your mind and hands are doing nothing.

So I started tweeting.

I would tweet from the trail all the time.

The other thing about endurance running is that it does crazy things to your mind. You are sometimes reaching a point of hallucination.

So you connect exhaustion, with entering a point of spiritual awakening and you can get some interesting tweets.

People loved these!

By far, without a doubt, my running tweets have been my most followed and discussed social media engagements I have ever done.

People would come up to me and talk to me about what I tweeted over the weekend.

If you read Monday’s post, did you come to the point where I started talking about statistics? I put a graph of traffic patterns from the SageRock blog. I then reiterated some traffic numbers.

Did you find yourself glazing over? I know I did.

Reading statistics is the most dry, boring kind of writing.

Reading about someone’s journey towards training for a marathon is engaging.

Think about what you remember from stories, movies and the Bible.

Jesus turning water into wine.
Luke Skywalker destroying the Death Star.
Indiana Jones running away from that big huge round bolder.

It’s the stories we remember.

We struggle to remember dates and figures.

What were the years of Vietnam?
What were the years of WWI?
What were the exact years Ronald Reagan was president?

We remember images from those time periods. But we struggle to remember the statistics.

Content marketing is exactly the same way.

In Monday’s post I mentioned that I have been keeping up on this blog even though things have gotten really busy. 3 posts a week come hell or high water.

But I’ve really slowed down blogging on my personal blog, SageLewis.com. (That actually has more to do with the anti-depressant medication I’ve started taking than being busy. But I’ll be talking about that more over there in the next week or so.)

I firmly believe that it’s the personal stories that create the engagement. It’s not the Web marketing tips I put out.

Now don’t get me wrong. I think I need both ingredients. If I didn’t write this blog talking about Web marketing people would quickly lose touch with the fact that’s what I do for a living.

However, without the personal stories I can’t get a serious level of engagement.

It’s a delicate mix of stories and information. And ultimately I think they probably become one. The stories convey the information. Every major spiritual leader in history knows this truth.

I would encourage you to spend some time reading James Altucher’s blog. He is a well regarded hedge fund manager and author on the same topic.

But his blog has nothing to do with finances. It’s all about his personal life. He goes very deeply into some of his most intimate parts of his life.

I also recommend spending some time at the Zappos CEO’s Twitter feed. 1.8 million followers and never a mention of buying shoes.

One of his most recent posts is:

Want happiness? Don’t buy more stuff – go on vacation! Time Magazine article: http://ti.me/oJTbCR

He is actually advocating not buying stuff.

We all have to come to terms with our lot in life:

No one needs the shit we are selling.

You can tell people all day:

How you are going to make them more money.
How you are going to save them money.
How you are going to make their lives:

Happier.
Easier.
More fun.

But it’s all bullshit.

More often than not you are complicating peoples’ lives by injecting yourself into their routines.

Do you know how much money and effort I would save if I just stopped drinking Diet Coke? And don’t get me started on drinking alcohol and smoking. That’s like having a marketing director take over your entire body and mind from the inside.

We have to sell our stuff to people through their heart, not their mind. We sell through the connections we make.

We sell by being real human beings.

I drink Diet Coke because it’s refreshing and a little bit of a pick me up. But why do I not drink Diet Pepsi? I mean I’ll gladly drink Diet Pepsi if that’s what’s being served.

The Diet Coke people have gotten me at a very deep level.

Think of every Coke commercial or ad you’ve seen in your life. It’s telling a story of being:

Happy
Young
In-love
Beautiful

Never once have they tried to tell me statistically why I should drink Diet Coke over Diet Pepsi. It’s impossible. They have sold to my heart by telling me a story.

If you want content marketing to work for you the secret is to reach peoples’ hearts not their minds.

Tell a story. Be real. Be vulnerable.

When you start to feel nervous about whether or not your should post something that’s when it’s about to get good.

Go down that path. Get to the truth. The truth will set you free. The truth will make you successful.

Filed Under: Featured, SageRock, Social Media

October 31, 2011 By Sage Lewis Leave a Comment

The Secret Key To Content Marketing

I love blogging.

I have a note near my desk that I would like to do nothing but teach and blog.

They are my two favorite parts of my job.

They also happen to be the primary drivers of new business for SageRock.

It’s been this way since the beginning.

When Rocky and I started SageRock in 1999 we had no money for advertising. So we did the only thing we knew how to do: We wrote.

Since then we have tried many different kinds of promotions:

Trade shows.
Direct Mail.
Ad buys.

Nothing has ever had the effect of content marketing.

The difficulty of content being your primary driver of new business is that it is labor intensive. You can’t simply buy your way out of writing a blog post 3 times a week.

Over the last 12 years we have always had very clear patterns of behavior.

We would write and write and write.
Then we’d get super busy with work.
Then we’d stop writing because we had to get the work done.
Then the new business would slow down.
And then we’d start writing again.

That seems like a potentially workable strategy. But here’s the thing: Getting an audience back after not creating content for a while is incredibly difficult. There is no guarantee they will come back. And very often it’s a new set of people that start following you again. You lost the other people when you stopped writing. They moved on.

It is always much harder to get an audience than to keep an audience.

So once again we are in the same spot we have been in before. We’ve been building a lot of great content. And we’re getting super busy. And once again I’m being pulled back into production. Last week I built out 2 comprehensive audits for clients. They are fun to do but they take a ton of time.

I have vowed not to fall into the same pattern I always fall into. I am going to do everything I can to stay in the writing and teaching role.

We’re trying some new techniques this time around.

The primary issue is often my salary. I take a good sized salary. (The same as our COO.) He then is often stuck because he is paying me to write, sell and teach. So he isn’t able to hire new people for production. Therefore he often asks me to do my fair share of production.

This time around we are now paying me hourly and commission on anything I sell. I turn in my hours bi-weekly. I have different hourly rates for when I am producing, writing and selling.

Here are my hourly rates:

Production is $50/hour.
Internal Administration is $30/hour.
Internal Marketing (like blogging) is $15/hour.
Sales is $10/hour.

I then also make 15% commission on anything that I sell.

This new setup interests me because SageRock is only paying me for what I produce. I’m not sucking down unneeded revenue through the year that could go towards production.

Then if there is profit at the end of the year we will probably split that up somehow as well.

I’ve been using this approach most of the year. It’s been a great way of keeping the company profitable while also building good infrastructure. And most importantly I’ve been able to continue to market and sell because I’m not dipping into money that should go to building our production team.

If you look back at this blog you will see that I have consistently put out a piece every Monday, Wednesday and Friday since May.

I’ve been really consistent (3 days a week) since May 9. I then didn’t post anything between then and April 7. I posted about 1 post a month in January, February and March.

Here is a screen shot of traffic just to our blog. It is comparing April 2011 to October 2011.

We had 566 more visits in October compared to April. And we had 497 more unique pageviews. Our average time on the page is up 16 seconds. Our bounce rate is still very high. But it is mostly due to Greg’s Meta Description Length post. People come to that page as a reference and then leave.

Our organic Google traffic is up nearly 16%. Direct traffic is up 17%.

And if traffic numbers don’t interest you our revenue is considerably up. I’d tell you those numbers but they aren’t in yet. I’ll probably do a financial year in review post early in 2012.

Considering we have not done any other marketing this year besides training, teaching and content there is little doubt in my mind that it works.

No matter how you look at the numbers it works.

But here’s the thing. It’s starting to slow down. While I have been really diligent keeping up on this blog I have fallen down in one key area.

There is more to this than just spitting out content. There is more to it than even producing quality content.

I didn’t start this blog post with having a cliffhanger in mind. But because I rambled on long enough for one post you will have to wait until Wednesday to find out what the secret key to content marketing is.

See you Wednesday!

Filed Under: Featured, SageRock, Social Media