Echelon Media » Business Blogs

SMS – How do you get started blogging?

Josh — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 01:57:10 +0000

In this clip Josh tells us some basics as to how to get started blogging. Choosing a platform, content and frequency are key. But getting comfortable is really where you need to be. Check it out. We’d love to take some questions and elaborate on this topic more.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTc8alez2L4

[SMS] How often should you post to your blog?

Brian — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 16:05:08 +0000

We all know that blogs encourage people to be social, but how often should you post to your blog?

For your niche how often do you post to your blog?

Find more Social Media Short videos here.

If you would like to ask our crew a social media question drop us an email at sms@echelonmedia.com or drop us a comment on the Echelon Media Facebook Fan Page.

Social Media And The 80/20 Rule

Allyn — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:36:00 +0000

If you’ve been in business for more than a week, you’ve undoubtedly heard someone mention the Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. Just in case, here is a simple definition from which we are gonna draw some super kewl Social Media for business parallels.

“The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.”

You’ve probably thought about this in relation to employee behaviors, realizing that 20% of your workers bring in 80% of the results or revenue. You also may look at it in light of customers, whereas 20% of your customers drop in 80% of your bottom line. We could go on forever with this, so let’s get to the social media part of it before you are tempted to bust out your P&L statements and verify my assumptions!

The 80/20 Rule For Business Blogs

Our clients all know that I am a blogger first, and a marketer second. That’s important because we have to get in the proper frame of mind in order to be accepted leaders within communities online. When we play this right, we gain outspokenly loyal customers!

You see, bloggers as a group are very giving people. We work together to accomplish goals together. Josh brings this principle into the business sector when he talks about Trade Rings, and all boats rising together. I am going to take it even one step up from there (towards the Echelon! )

On your business blog, you want to give more than you grab. In fact, 80% of what you do on the blog, meaning articles you post, should be in some way about someone or something else. Now I’m not telling you to go and endorse your competitors here, don’t go there! I am, however, telling you that there are lots of great things going on within and around your community outside of your 4 brick walls and those things matter, a lot!

Let’s pretend you are a restaurant with 10 locations in the Indiana and Illinois and you have 300 employees. Your blog is rockin’ cool and very interactive (because you hired Echelon Media to run it for you, of course! ) and here are a few ideas of articles to post that will satisfy the need to GIVE 80% of the time:

Example #1 — one of your employees at the Indianapolis location just ran in a 10-k event for charity and you do a write up about her, but more importantly about the charity and how much money was raised for a good cause. You include lots of pictures of people at the event because you know people love to see themselves in print! (like on a popular blog)

Example #2 — A local church in Tinley Park, Illinois has a thriving youth group and private school and once a month you cater in food there at a super discount. You don’t necessarily post about your goodness, but rather how impressed you are with the young people who attend the school. Maybe one of them is an Eagle Scout or just got accepted to West Point or the Air Force Academy… you get the idea.

Example #3 — Some new luxury condos are going up across the street from your South Bend location and you do a huge write up talking about how nice these condos will be and how great the builder and his crew are. (I hope you see how filling up the condo units will benefit your restaurant)

See how simple that is? You are giving while increasing your own brand in an indirect way. Remember, 80% of your posts should be of this nature. Here’s a quote to bring this concept home to you:

“I will use my blog to build up people in my community, instead of using people in my community to build up my blog”

Get it? I learned this concept in Bible college believe it or not, but it plays out very well in the business world as well.

The other 20% of your posts can and should be directly about your business. Talk about your specials, sales and expansion. Your 80% of giving will mean that people will want to be engaged with your 20% about you!

Just so you know, Twitter works the same way but in 140 characters or less — make 80% of your tweets about others, for others and with others, and 20% of the tweets about you.

Simple!

How To Tell If You Need A Social Media Consultant Company

Steve — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:53:56 +0000

I could have titled this article simply “How To Tell if You Need A Consultant.” Many years ago I served my time in the corporate world. I’m very grateful for what it provided to my family and it’s how I paid my bills. The one thing that I was in constant amazement over was the sheer amount of consultants that my company hired to tell them how to run their business.

This never set well with me. My upper management, who had very little real world experience, hired consulting services who were equally green. It was the blind leading the blind. The greatest resources the company had but sometimes never used were there all the time. They were called employees. For some reason, upper management at the telecommunications company I worked for refused to use experts. The experts were serving in the trenches every day. The experts were already on the payroll.

If your car started making a grinding noise when coming to a stop would you take it to a plumber? Absolutely not, he’s not an expert at car repair. If your company had a fleet of gas engine service vehicles would you bring in a consultant who specializes in hybrid battery cars to discuss fleet maintenance?

I recently sat through a meeting with a “consultant” as part of a group. This consultant was a smart person and presented the materials great and had some very good ideas in theory. It wasn’t long before the consultant started covering some areas in which I consider myself quite fluent. It took about 2 seconds for my left eyebrow to raise as I realized this person did not know the material that was being taught. As I looked around the room, the others sat quite mesmerized and knew none the better. Inside I just chuckled to myself. The subject matter at hand dealt heavily with website building.

The thought that kept entering my head was “Why was this person brought in as a consultant?” As I looked at the handout materials and I double-checked the business card, there was not even a site listed. Only email, phone number and the obligatory Social Media profiles. I found myself listening to a consultant over web building best practices who did not have a website.

Only Jesus can do that.
A friend of mine is going through consultant hell right now. He works for an oil company. As a matter of fact, my friend has pissed off quite a few of the management because he refers to the conultant as “Jesus.” When pressed as to why he calls him Jesus, my friend says, “He has to be Jesus, he doesn’t own an oil company, has never worked for an oil company but yet he is telling you how to run your oil company, only Jesus could do that.”

Back to my question now, “How to tell if you need a social media consultant company?” Do you already have excellent skills in SEO, internet marketing, community building and driving traffic to your site through effective use of tools like Twitter & Facebook? Do you have anyone serving on your staff that is proficient in Social Media? If you have evaluated your existing resources and the answer is no, it may be time to bring in people who practice what they preach.

Social Media Consulting, Social Media Marketing or Fleet Maintenance advice, make sure you work with real people who actually do the heavy lifting and get dirty. The world is full of fluff and pie in the sky but your company needs to hear from those who serve in the trenches daily. Do your research and make sure that if you are going to hire someone for advice, that they are actually qualified to dispense it.

2010 EchelonMedia.com Social Media Consultants

Your Business Blog And Social Media; A Match In Online Heaven

Allyn — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 23:55:50 +0000

If you’ve spent any time researching online strategy or social media marketing, you know that everyone who has ever flexed a profitable mouse button or massaged a keyboard for money will tell you to get a blog for your company website. Even Google has stated that blogs help in search rankings. But why, how, when and which kind? …and more importantly, who is gonna build it and keep it updated? …to what end?

Blogging For Business

At Echelon Media, we understand exactly how daunting the idea of business blogging can be: not only technically speaking, but time wise too. So it’s cool if you are not fired up about 750-word blog postings, we’ve seen this before .

So why have a blog? The answer is simple: to show your human side. You see, your regular website is pretty static. It may look nice and have a few pictures, but the content is pretty straight forward, like a fact sheet. And that’s cool because that is what a business website should be… Now add a blog… blogging allows you to speak to your customers and potential customers in normal conversational tones (kinda like you’re reading now!), adding in a trust factor and personal loyalty that can’t be accomplished through flat HTML codes and files. Throw in some video and holy cow, you’re kicking into high gear now!

Another HUGE benefit to having a blog is the public relations tool that in can become. If you are smart, you will use your blog to highlight your employees and what they are doing not only in your business, but in your local community as well. Trust me, your “walk talks louder than your talk talks” and a blog can illustrate that clearly and concisely, bringing goodwill to your brick and mortar store.

Now that we’ve shown you how awesome it is to have a blog that we operate on your behalf, and just how much good it will do for your business, let’s explore the other side, social media.

Social Media For Business

Social media is: the collection of websites and applications that enable people to interact and share information online.

When it comes to your business, social media is: a collection of online tools you use to meet and interact with existing and potential customers. Some of the best known social media sites are: YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Flickr. There are also industry specific social media sites, but we don’t wanna weigh you down…

(re-read that above, it’s important!)

Let’s illustrate: here’s Al on video. He’s so cool:

Ok, so now you can see the relationship that blogs have to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. Sweet action! Tapping the potential that exists in the two can rocket your business’ online presence with very little investment. And before you ask, “NO, social media sites are NOT just for teens and young adults!”

In addition to being all happy and huggable in the blog and social media spaces, the two combined can and will help you dominate search results in Google, Yahoo and Bing. That is what we call Search Engine Optimization, and, oh yeah, we are experts there too. (our backs hurt from all the patting we do, don’t worry, we’ll be fine )

Lastly, we understand you; the Small Business Owner… and you don’t have time to blog and Tweet and be all social online all day. After all, you have employees, customers and a 500-line P&L to tend to dontcha? So let us do it all for you! (the blogging and social part, not the P&L part )

Yep, that’s right, let the experts at Echelon Media build, operate, and update your blog and social media profiles on your behalf. It’s all good and not as costly as you think.

Our approach to social media is just a little different than most, and we’d love to share that with you! Contact us here.