Nuclear Chowder Marketing

001 Podcast Nuclear Chowder Show – Easy Online Marketing For Small Business

This is an historic blog post today. Well, that may be overly dramatic… but it’s a big deal for me. This is the very first official Nuclear Chowder Show podcast.

The first podcast I ever did was back when I owned a martial arts school. Podcasting was pretty new back then. Of course since I love to try new technology, I dove in head first.

Since then I’ve done several podcasts for myself and clients, but it’s been a while. So I am really excited to launch this new one.

In this inaugural podcast I am going to kick things off and set the tone for podcasts to come. I am also going to share a very easy way to market your business effectively, both online and offline. This is a really powerful strategy and one we’ll come back to in future episodes.

This is actually episode 001. My goal is to produce 100 episodes (and beyond). So there are more great episodes to come.

On these podcasts you will hear me talking online marketing for small business based on my years of experience owning my own business and helping others. You will also hear interviews from online marketing and business experts from around the country. I will also be interviewing successful business owners who want to share what is working for them in their businesses. It’s going to be a blast!

Make sure to leave a comment below and let me know what you think. And be sure to share any questions or ideas you have that you’d like to see covered in future episodes.

Want To Be More Visible Online? Google+ Just Might Be the Answer

Google+ ripple Brenda Batttin

This is a Guest Post written by Allison Rice, Marketing Director for Amsterdam Printing and Google+ Power User. Allison regularly contributes to the Promo & Marketing Wall blog, where she provides actionable business tips.

Why does your company use social media? It’s so you can be found more easily by the casual searcher looking for your type of services, right? Sure, there are the added benefits of keeping your customer base up to date on specials, bringing them in with web-only coupons and reaching their friends through shared links and posts. But, ultimately, your goal is to be found by as many potential customers as possible.

And that’s why Google+ works. Unlike other social media sites, it has the power of the world’s largest search engine behind it. Businesses with Google+ pages are automatically more visible than ones without, and list much more favorably in search results.

For example, a business with a Google+ page would not only appear higher in results than one without, but it would display with its profile icon or brand image, rating stars from users would appear under its name, and the number of likes as well as reviews. In fact, there’s a lot that Google+ has to offer businesses of all sizes and these are just some of the reasons it’s currently ranking second only to Facebook in terms of active members on a social media platform.

Target specific customers with Circles

From the second you open a business page, Google+ helps you organize your business by asking you to classify your contacts into Circles. The default categories are:

- Family
- Friends
- Acquaintances
- Following

But you can create your own types of Circles right off the bat. If you run a dentist’s office, for example, you could place your customers into categories such as Kids, Cosmetic, Braces, Dentures or Annual Reminders, and you can also place them in more than one Circle. You then have the option to send posts or specials or share links with a specific Circle, several or all. A tally of each Circle shows how many customers you have in each category and can help you quickly see your strongest – and weakest – social media customer base.

Be found with Places

Even if your business doesn’t have a Google+ page, it can still be reviewed and rated through Google+ Places. Functioning similar to Yelp.com in that it helps people find reviews of restaurants from friends and locals as well as popular hotspots, Places got a huge boost when Google acquired Zagat, a leading restaurant ratings and reviews provider.

Places is a great example of the overarching focus of Google and Google+: integration. Through Places:

- Searchers can find your business on Google Search, Maps and Google+.
- Your business information is listed along with your number of reviews and links to those reviews, your phone number, directions to your office and your website, as well as your Zagat rating if you’re a restaurant.
- If a Google+ user looks up your reviews, recommendations from people in their circles will show up first. This also happens if someone on Google+ searches for your business.
- Respond to reviews.
- Use Google Offers to create coupons that can be highlighted on Google Maps, mobile apps, Google Wallet and the Google Offers website.

See your hard work pay off in Ripples

Ripples is one of those functions on Google+ that’s not widely talked about but offers an incredible benefit to small businesses. Namely, it allows you to see in an instant the effectiveness of your social marketing.

Google Ripples is basically an analytics graph for a single post, but instead of showing you bar and line graphs with views and visitors, it displays a single dynamic circle graph with your post at the center. Radiating out from your post are other smaller circles, each of which represents a reposting of your original post.

By hovering over each circle you can see who posted it and what comment they might have made when it was posted. Smaller circles branch off from these showing other repostings, and so on. One-off postings appear in single circles and large concentrations of shares appear within a larger, encompassing circle. It’s easier to understand visually, and with one click you can see if one person or hundreds have seen and shared your post. You can also identify those who help spread your word the most.

It’s important to note that Ripples can only be viewed on posts that have been made public, but you can view the Ripples on any public post, not just your own. To see a Ripple:

- Log in to Google+ and click on the arrow in the upper right hand corner of a public post
- Select View Ripples

It’s that easy! And once you’re able to see what posts are favored more by your followers, you can start narrowing down the focus of your future posts and instantly reach more people.

This article just scratches the surface of how Google+ can be beneficial to your business. What are some ways you’ve found that Google+ has helped your company? What features do you wish Google+ explained more or included in their social media services?

Destination Focused Tribe Building Strategy for Bloggers

Initially, Triberr was built to enable bloggers who use Twitter to group up with one another and share each other’s content across their respective Twitter audiences.

But imagine for a second, if Triberr enabled bloggers to connect their email lists and enable cross-promotion that way. It wouldn’t have worked. Why?

Email lists are closely guarded, highly sensitive, and fiercely protected.

In all my years of blogging, I have never even considered sharing my email list with someone else. Twitter, on the other hand, is a different story.

Trust and Intimacy

Twitter is a low trust network.

This is not a knock against Twitter, far from it. It’s what enabled Twitter to proliferate in the first place.

The social contract we “sign” when we use Twitter is simple. I trust that if I follow you, you will share something of some small value with me. That’s it. That’s where it ends.

Therefore, we can say that Twitter’s trust model is unidirectional.

Just because I trust you, it doesn’t mean you trust me, so you may -or may not- follow me back. Those that do, often do it out of reciprocity, rather than trust.

Let’s contrast Twitter’s trust model to Facebook’s trust model.

Facebook uses a bidirectional trust model. I can ask you to be my friend all day long, but it’s not going to happen until you accept my friend request. Only then, we can see each other’s wall, photos, etc.

Thus, Facebook requires a deeper trust between two people.

Would I share other blogger’s posts on Facebook? You bet. But I am way more selective than I am on Twitter. And there are several reasons for this.

I share more –lots more- on Twitter due to the fleeting nature of the twitter stream. Facebook wall moves lot slower, so naturally I share less. Otherwise my friends would disown me.

We can safely assume that sharing that happens on Facebook will be different from sharing that happens on Twitter. So creating a tribe where the mutually agreed upon terms are to share via Facebook will result in a completely different tribe make up when compared to your Twitter tribe.

Your Facebook tribe will probably be smaller, and the trust (or maybe we should call it intimacy, instead of trust?) between the members of the tribe will be lot deeper when compared to a typical Twitter based tribe.

This logic can be extended to other destination networks as well.

While LinkedIn’s trust model is identical to Facebook (bidirectional), the culture of LinkedIn is lot more clear.

Most people use it as a shrine to their professional achievements. There is no room for cat pictures on LinkedIn. And providing industry-specific, serious content, is the norm.

With that in mind, our tribal strategy comes into focus.

LinkedIn is typically used to keep up with your professional connections, so building a LinkedIn tribe on Triberr will result in a tribe that is industry-specific.

Trust between tribemates becomes even more important, and the quality of content, relevance, and professional delivery (no F bombs, for example) becomes supreme.

How Schedulability Affects Sharing

Ya, I’m pretty sure I made up that word. Schedulability

Because of the way people consume content on social networks will be specific to that social network, the frequency with which you post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. should be different as well.

Posting on Twitter 50 times per day is perfectly acceptable as long as the tweets are properly spaced out. However, posting 50 times on Facebook or LinkedIn would probably get you banned.

Triberr will stagger your activity and post to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in whatever interval you specify.

However, with some networks the sharing is 100% manual. Posts sent to these destination networks (SU, G+, Pinterest, etc.) can NOT be cued, staggered, and scheduled via Triberr.

Taking this into consideration, building a Pinterest tribe (for example) requires the following, mutually agreed upon terms.

Each post must contain an image, otherwise, there’s nothing to pin.

Pinterest can’t be scheduled, so a deeper level of commitment is needed to sit there and pin each post.

Also, while Pinterest usage allows us to pin 50 things in a row, and no one would care because no one sits there and looks at our Pinterest “stream” (there is no such thing), doing that on G+ would be unacceptable.

So, creating a G+ tribe would require an agreement amongst the tribe members to log in several times per day to their Tribal Stream and post 1, maybe 2 post to G+ each time they log in.

Peculiar Porcupine

As you can see, each destination network has its own peculiarities, which need to be understood and handled appropriately.

The Chief’s job is to consider these peculiarities and build a team that can work well together.

We at Triberr plan on making these strategies more obvious and built into the tribe creation and management process, but nothing can replace little bit of education. And I hope this post helped a little.

Final Word

Is yours.

Tribe Building Strategy for Multi Author Blogs

Time Management Platform for Bloggers

Getting Likes And Metrics On Facebook

Jon Loomer stopped by the Nuclear Chowder Show on Youtube yesterday. Jon is a Facebook likes and metrics animal. The guy really knows his way around Facebook from paying extremely close attention to what’s going on, not just random speculation.

I broke the complete interview up into parts. This is part 1. Make sure to check back on the Nuclear Chowder Marketing blog for the next installment. I’ll also come back and link to them below as each show is released.

In this show Jon shares his knowledge on community building and metrics. He also shares some excellent tips on blogging straight from the school of hard knocks.

In this episode I posed a few questions to Jon:

1: Is it harder to build a community today on Facebook than in the past? Let’s face it, people change. Their habits change. And of course Facebook changes.

When Facebook was new, I used to LIKE any and every page. But these days, my LIKE is much harder to earn because I know the drill now.

Jon has almost 12 thousand likes and an active community. I asked him if there are differences today in building a community. Have changes in people habits and Facebook made it harder or easier?

2: What stats are real on Facebook? Insights say some ridiculous things. You see high or low or skewed metrics.

Most people look at reach and likes. But there is a ton of data if you look at. Jon uses Reach as a point of reference. He thinks of it as an imaginary stat like someone seeing a sign in front of a house.

Jon’s most important metric is a link click. It is buried within the post level export under Consumptions. Posts talking about this metric.

Stay tuned for the next episode. And let us know what your opinion is. Do you think it is harder or eaiser to build a community on Facebook today?

Two articles that Jon wrote were referenced on the show:

jonloomer.com/facebook-lookalike-audiences

agorapulse.com/facebook-ad-metrics-measure

Check out Part 2 of my interview with Jon where we discuss Facebook ads and more on community building

How To Add Recommendations Box to Facebook Page

Do you have the recommendations box on your Facebook business page? If not, it’s pretty easy to install.

Having recommendations is a huge advantage for you. There is nothing more powerful than social proof to generate more sales for your business.

In this week’s show, I will explain why you need it and how to quickly get it on your page.

You may have had recommendations on your page in the past but then Facebook made a change and they went bye bye. Well, Facebook changed again, (as they love to do), and recommendations are back. But they may or may not be on your page.

In the picture below you will see where the recommendations box should fall on your page if it is already there. If you don’t yet have recommendations it’s actually pretty small and may be hard to see.

It is actually, (and surprisingly), simple to install this on your page. However, for a business who operates out of their home, it may present a challenge. You must use a physical location.

You can actually make it hard for people to find your address. I’ll talk about that later. But first, here’s what you do to make sure your location is set right:

1: Hit Edit Page and select Edit Settings from the drop down. This will be at the top of your admin panel.

2: Select the option to edit Basic Information from the list

3: Enter a valid address. (The benefit of having recommendations far outweighs someone knowing where you live. First, they can find out anyway if they really want to. Second, it’s hard enough getting the phone to ring… you’re not going to have truckloads of people all the sudden showing up at your home asking for a tour. Not that I am condoning or recommending you lie… but if it was me and I was really worried about people knowing my address, I’d probably put the post office or Starbucks. God knows I’m there enough.)

4: Select the little box that says ‘Show this map on the page’.

A couple of things… First, if you do not see a place to enter your address, you need to change your category which will be the drop down box at the top of the page. Some categories don’t allow for an address. Don’t worry too much about this. Just change it to something close enough. And you can always change it later.

Second, if it already has your address and the maps box is selected but you still don’t see the recommendations box, you may need to do a few more steps. You can start by selecting a different category. I changed mine and that worked. I also believe that if you deselect the maps box and save the page, then return and select it again, this may be enough to make the recommendations box appear as well.

In fact, if you had old recommendations from before Facebook disappeared this option, you should see them return. It’s as easy as that.

Once recommendations are on your page, the maps box will appear prominently in your tabs area. See the picture below.

You can move the map tab by clicking the pencil icon and swapping positions with other tabs. This will at least bury it so most people won’t even see it.

Now that you know how to make sure the recommendations box is on your page, leave a comment and let me know if it was already there or you had to put it back. And make sure to head over to my Facebook page at Facebook.com/NuclearChowder and leave a recommendation. It would be much appreciated.

Why Shared Media is the Best of Both Worlds

Guest Post by Jessica Ann

Social media is all or nothing. You’ve got to give it your all, or you’ve got nothing. Right?

Not so much.

There’s such a thing as sharing the work. And you may or may not be aware that you’re already doing it.

Shared media falls between owned media and earned media. Let me explain…

Owned media is the foundation of your brand (i.e., your website or blog). And earned media happens when customers rave about you (or worst case, if they complain). But there’s a gray area between owned and earned that’s just as important.

It’s called shared (or partially owned) media and it’s where the fun begins.

Earned and owned media take time to build. It’s a long-term process with no silver bullet. While shared media won’t make you an overnight success (nor should you want it to), it can create brand awareness in a quicker way.

Sharing and engaging on social media sites allows your content to be distributed rapidly. But your business shouldn’t stop at sharing on social networks. You really need to own the content for long-term success.

Businesses who only post on Facebook or Twitter without the foundation of a website are heading down the wrong path. Facebook may be the current media darling, but who really knows its future? It has the potential to go the way of Friendster, with Internet archeologists uncovering the civilization years from now. Who will want your content then?

If you already have a blog, shared media is the perfect balance to distribute your content. Here are a few ways to do shared media:

Facebook: Write a blog post about your business and post a paragraph from the post, along with the link. Those interested in reading further can click through to your blog and read your information where you own the content.

Instagram: Instagram is now web-friendly so you can easily email, capture a screenshot, and/or upload an Instagram photo to your blog. Even though Instagram (owned by Facebook) technically owns your photo, you may want to add a watermark before it gets posted to your blog. It could end up getting distributed on Pinterest (see below) without your permission.

Pinterest: Create a board that’s about your business, and pin the Instagram photo that you posted to your blog. Remember to watermark it with your company logo or your signature if you’re worried. Adding a watermark has the added benefit of further branding your content.

YouTube: Embed your YouTube video into a blog post. YouTube’s robust search maximizes your SEO and content to its full potential. Just make sure that you either describe the YouTube video or explain what your business does in the blog post. It’ll help with SEO and clarify what you’re about

Fusing your own, owned media channel with social media creates shared media – the best of both worlds.

Do you use shared media to market your business? Please tell us about it below.

This article originally appeared on the Vocus blog.

A Conversation About Triberr With Dino Dogan

I had the pleasure of interviewing Triberr founder Dino Dogan yesterday. We talked for almost an hour-I got a little sun burned in the process-about the many benefits of this social media channel for bloggers.

I edited these videos down into 5 to 12 minute segments. I’ll also give a brief synopsis of what we discussed in each video (for those who would rather read… but you still should watch because Dino is pretty entertaining).

If you’ve been following me for any length of time, you know I preach that small businesses should be on social media. And a blog is a central part of that strategy. If you’ve pulled the trigger on your own blog (I hope you have), you should go join Triberr. It will help you blog better and attract readers.

Triberr, in a nutshell, allows you to connect with other bloggers. It is a blogging community. This powerful tool plugs you into your ‘tribe’s’ social media. So if you have 10 people in a tribe, each with 1,000 Twitter followers, you can now reach 10,000 Twitter followers. Same with Facebook, Linkedin, Google Plus and more.

Part 1 – What is Triberr

Triberr connects bloggers and blogs together. It is a social network for content creators.

They are now pivoting into a destination network for people who want to consume content. Bloggers are the most vigorous content consumers.

Part 2 – How to use Triberr

What makes Triberr a great place for bloggers is it can be used to find content to read, learn from and re-blog. It provides a community for bloggers to connect and get to know one another.

The concept is to build a ‘Tribe’ of bloggers. This is your community that you can share content and comments with. It provides an ecosystem where bloggers can help each other.

Part 3 – Re-blogging on Triberr

In this part, Dino and Mike discuss a very powerful feature of Triberr, re-blogging. If you install the Triberr plugin into your WordPress blog, you will have the ability to pull other people’s content into your own blog.

Think Huffington Post. They have a ton of content pulled and syndicated from other blogs. This is a fantastic way to fill your blog with high quality content.

Part 4 – Re-blogging Your Competition

In this part we discuss one of the objections that may come up, re-blogging your competition. If you’re a Social Media Marketing company that specializes in Facebook ads for small business, do you want to re-blog an article from a company that does the exact same thing?

The answer may actually be yes. It’s counter intuitive but the fact is your audience is going to bond with and buy from you. A great blog by a competitor will likely just boost your credibility.

Part 5 – The Duplicate Content Myth Busted

In this part we discuss a common myth; duplicate content. Everyone knows you can be penalized for duplicate content. Your SEO rankings can drop like a brick if you churn out content that is the same across your site. Or you blatantly steal someone else’s content.

But, with Triberr, you’re protected. The other person gets credit. And if you are re-blogged, you get the SEO juice as the original author.

(The thumbnail of this video makes me look like I am challenging Dino to a break dance fight. And he looks like he’s ready to throw down)
Part 6 – How To Get Bloggers To Comment On Your Blog

If you have a blog, the one thing you want more than anything else is interaction. You want readers. But more than that, you want those readers to comment.

Part 7 – The Value Of Comments On Your Blog

When someone does something nice for you, you feel compelled to respond in kind. The law of reciprocity is behind why you want to go out and leave comments.

Triberr makes it very easy to leave and receive comments. Dino’s goal is to remove friction for bloggers in every possible way.

The beauty here is if there are twenty comments on a blog post written by another author and you re-blog it, you instantly have 20 comments on your blog. And how do you get more comments? Really simply, leaving comments. If you want 100 comments, leave 100 comments.

Are you on Triberr? Let me know in the comments how you have used Triberr to boost your content marketing.

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