briancampbell.com » Social Sites

Creating Your Keyword List

Brian — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 16:00:06 +0000

After you’ve laid the foundation for organizing your social media activities by setting up your gmail account, spend a few hours on creating the keyword list for your niche. Not knowing your keywords before attempting to do social networking is like navigating without a compass, driving without directions, or walking through a jungle at night with a blindfold on – you’re totally blind & helpless. Fortunately for you, you’re reading this blog & subscribed to it’s RSS feed – so you always know what’s going on. Before doing your keyword research, you need to know what audience you are seeking. What products & services are you trying to promote? What is your blog really about? Don’t be too vague like "Helping people be successful" – that’s way too vague. You want to precisely identify your audience (like "Raising Great Families" , "Xbox 360 owners" , "Fans of the movie The Godfather" , "Day Traders" etc…). The next thing you need to do is to create a list of 50 of the most important keywords for your niche. These are the words that your intended audience are going to google and searching for. This is the vocabulary you should be using. Without doing your keyword research, you will probably end up using 5-10 keywords repetitively & they may not even be the ones that people are searching for in your niche. Here are some tools for you to build your keyword list: KWMap.Net – Type in any niche keyword and this site will show you related keywords graphically as DNA-strand-looking pictures. It also produces a list of the related keyword phrases for you to copy. Simply click on any of the suggested keywords and it will produce another related keyword search. This is a great tool to give you ideas of similar & related keywords. Don’t build a huge list from this, use it to expand your thinking about your keywords. Only write down relevant keywords that your audience would search for. KeywordElite – This software lets you build massive reports of how much keywords cost, what people are bidding on them for pay per click, huge lists of related keywords. This software is not free. If you’re serious about "owning a piece of the Internet" as my friend John Reese likes to say, it’s one of the most powerful tools you can use. WordTracker – This is the Rolls Royce of keyword research. This is for people who know what they’re doing. If you have experience with SEO or you have just completed Traffic Secrets 2.0, you’ll know how to use this effectively. If not, this is too advanced for you. You should know about it, because you want to quickly get to the point where you can benefit from it’s awesome power! Amazon – Compiling a list of top authors & titles of the best selling books in your niche is a good idea. Although there aren’t many books dealing with social media yet, Joel Comm & his new book "Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time" are on my keyword list. You should have at least the top 10 authors & titles of their best selling books in your niche on your keyword list. You should also look for any movies that people in your niche would watch. These are just a few tips for getting started with your keywords. You should also brainstorm your own list based on what you think would be the hottest keywords. Go to google and search for your keywords and see the other phrases people are using. Take at least a few hours to build this initial list. Once you have your 50+ keyword list, you will want this to become your vocabulary. Look & think about this list often. Include these words in your titles, articles, tweets, profiles and every time you put words out there to the social networks.

Use Gmail As Your Social Media Cockpit

Brian — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 01:23:05 +0000

Over the next 30 days, I’m going to be teaching you how to methodically & efficiently cover the social media landscape like a highly skilled explorer. You need to first set up your cockpit, or control panel. This is like the instrument panel, or dashboard where you can monitor all activity at a glance. You’ll save time and become more efficient when you can see in real time what’s happening across all of your accounts. You won’t miss anything important, and you won’t waste time clicking and refereshing endlessly… The first thing you need to do is to set up your gmail account properly. Gmail is a free email account provided by google. But gmail is so much more than an email account. You can use yahoo, hotmail, or any others, but your Gmail account will quickly become one of your most valued resources. Here’s why:

You need it to log into google friend connect
Use the same email account when registering for your social media accounts
Use Google Reader from within gmail to monitor RSS feeds (piece of cake)
Gmail does things in one place that would usually require multiple accounts, saving time.

There are two important things you need to do once you register for your free gmail account. Setup Message Filters: Have messages from facebook go into a "facebook" folder. Have messages from twitter go into a "twitter" folder. Have emails from squidoo go into it’s folder. See a pattern yet? This organizes the information flowing to you, so you can scan and receive messages without sorting through unorganized information. Monitor RSS Feeds: Every blog & vitually every social media site provides and RSS feed of activity (i.e. the new stuff that’s being added by users). Use Google Reader from within your gmail account and you’ll be able to quickly see where all the new action is throughout your social memberships. Don’t resist getting RSS feeds set up – it’s the only way you won’t go totally crazy & quit doing social media! I’ve prepared a video to show you how to set up message filters and RSS feeds in Gmail & Google Reader. Take the time today to learn how to do this & you’ll save yourself 80% of the time you’ve been wasting without it! Think of your own creative ways of using filters and RSS feeds to organize your efforts.

Tip: Put The Social Media Source Blog’s RSS feed into your google reader. This way you’ll get the information as it’s published, and you’ll also have gone through the process and learn by doing it.

Twitter Mini Crash Course

Brian — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 21:54:12 +0000

Here is a 4 part Twitter mini crash course showing you exactly how to automate & start building your following. Video #1: How to Get Started Using Twitter – Basic twitter features explained including, profile, home, replies and direct messages. Also included is how to walk through the twitter world by following people, reply to their tweets and using keywords in your profile. Video #2: Social Relationship Building On Twitter – Build a targeted twitter following that positions you as a highly respected expert on twitter. Know who to follow and who is most likely to follow you. How to have followers that are interested in what you’re doing. Video #3: Tweetlater + Twitter = Automation & Ease – Use twitter more effectively with Tweetlater, using these powerful features: Evenly distribute your tweets over time. Manage multiple twitter accounts. Automatically follow people who follow you, and unfollow people who stop following you. This video tutorial walks you through the practically useful features so you can immediately begin using this valuable free service. Video #4: How to Use Twitter – These Twitter basics show you how to start tweeting so you can build quality relationships, build social equity and brand yourself as a niche expert. Make your tweets more conversational. How to walk through the twitter world effectively. How to get exposure from top tweeters & how to make your twitter activities more effective for fast growth. This video also gives a good demonstration of the profile, home and @reply twitter page views.