Flipping for local businesses

Two or three beers into an #evfn at Whole Foods in Chandler, Tim Conley points a Flipat me and says "tell me how small businesses can use social media." The result:

Hunt, Capture & Share by Evo Terra from Tim Conley on Vimeo.

I think I did remarkably well considering my self-induced disability and lack of preparedness. And if you want more stuff like this, check out Tim's blog on mastering local marketing. Or if you want to try and trip me up post-beverage, drop by #evfn some Friday night!

Five Twitter Twooisms for Social Media 101

Image by chuck-reynolds via Flickr

I like Social Media Club Phoenix for a lot of reasons. Right now, I like it because it gives me a reason to make a blog post. Those have been light as of late. Sorry about that.

This Thursday, I've once again been asked to put on Social Media 101. Just like all the other times, this is the perfect chance to get some real-world, hands-on experience on topics that seem obvious to everyone but you. Asking questions of "social media experts" is sometimes daunting, especially when they are talking way over your head. We don't do that during the SM 101 portion of Social Media Club Phoenix. It's a safe place to get up to speed before the full meeting starts.

This week, I'm taking on Twitter. As if you couldn't tell by the topic. I'll cover these five things:

• Why it’s OK to Follow people you aren’t friends with
  
• Why yes, all those fields in your profile are important
  
• A picture is worth a thousand characters
  
• The evils of auto-DMs
  
• Desktop & mobile apps to keep you sane

Social Media 101 kicks off promptly at 5:30. We only have :45 minutes to roll through this stuff, as the full meeting starts at 6:30. So get there a bit early and be ready to go. I figure it'll take me half an hour to cover my stuff, leaving you 15 minutes to ask questions.

After we're done, Social Media Club Phoenix will be hosting a panel discussion called "Your Novice Is Showing". Sounds perfect. And those who attend SM101 will be less-novice than they were just an hour earlier.

See you at Jobing.com HQ!

Related articles by Zemanta

• 5 Reasons Your Wordpress Blog Sucks (funanymore.com)
• Mixing it up at Social Media Club Phoenix (funanymore.com)

5 Reasons Your Wordpress Blog Sucks

Image via CrunchBase

I'm having a blast leading the Social Media 101 sessions at Social Media Club Phoenix each month. If you're in Phoenix the 2nd Thursday of the month, you should come.

This week I'm giving a brief workshop on making Wordpress-powered blogs better. I take the 101 seriously. This will focus on 5 low-level but often-missed changes that are easy to implement and will improve the blog. The official title for tonight is "5 Simple Things That Make Your Blog Better". But over here, where I have to be less sensitive, that's 5 Reasons Your Wordpress Blog Sucks.

1. No one knows who the hell you are.
   You spent all that time coming up with a clever blog name. You're writing from a first-person POV. You've filled your post with great and actionable information. I'd love to give you credit, help spread the word or even leave you a comment. Trouble is, I have no idea who the hell you are.
   
   You need an About page. And it needs to say something about you. Wordpress comes with a page already set up. It's called... you guessed it: About. Edit it. Enter in some stuff. Like who the hell you are.
   
   
2. No one knows how to contact you.
   You've done a great job getting my attention. I see we share common goals, and I'd like to reach out to you to share something, buy something, or just strike up a conversation. It's not quite something I want to leave in a comment, so I need to contact you privately. Trouble is, you haven't even the decency to post an email address. No, your last Tweet won't do. I want a direct, one-on-one method of contacting you.
   
   The simplest fix: add your contact info to the About page. A better fix: create a new page. Call it Contact. Fill that sucker up with every way possible for people to get a hold of you. Don't be cute. Afraid of spam? Spell out your email, but don't link it.
   
   
3. You have a rotten permalink structure.
   Dipping into a little technology, but don't panic. Suffice to say that "p=123" in a URL doesn't tell me -- or Google -- what your post is about. If you want your posts discoverable, then do the very basic thing of upgrading your permalink structure to use the title of your post as the URL.
   
   Settings > Permalinks > Month and Name.
   
   Save and done. Your URLs now look all fancy like. Which Google cares about more than people, though I look at them, too.
   
   
4. You aren't branding your posts "in the wild".
   Not all of your readers go to your site. Shocking, I know. And while still in the early days, RSS readers are becoming more popular. With an RSS reader, I can subscribe to your blog and have the content come to me. And it's only the content of your posts. No branding. Nothing other than what you put in the posts. Unless you do some tweaking.
   
   First, make sure that Wordpress is associating your name with the post the way you want. Go to Users and edit your user name. Fill out your first and last name, then change the "Display name publicly as" to the one you want. By default, Wordpress associates your user name with all posts. Not all that helpful if you've used "hotrocker1986" since leaving highschool.
   
   Second, and not for the faint of heart, is editing your themes to get your name up there front and center. I do it, but I'm not afraid of .php. Well, I can't write it. But I know enough people to help me if I screw it up terribly. But adding some static text isn't that hard. Specifically, I edited the following:
   
   • Main Index Template
     
   • Single Post
     
   
   But hey, I like to live dangerously.
   
   
5. You don't post for the future.
   Ever wonder how hard-core bloggers manage to get a post up just about every day and still hold down a day job, family responsibilities and a grueling travel schedule? Here's their secret: the don't post every day. Nope. They post in batch. They write when and where they can, when the opportunity strikes or the mood takes them. And they rarely write directly in Wordpress. They gather up posts, sometimes a dozen at a time, and then feed them into Wordpress all at once. But they feed them out to you one at a time.
   
   This magic is called "future posting". It's really nothing more than adding a post, but changing the "publish immediately" option (look for the small calendar on the right side of your screen) to some date in the future. Got five posts? Load all of 'em up and increment the date by one each time. Now you're posting like a rock star.

I hope this is helpful. I hope I can get through it all in half an hour tonight! See you at #SMCPHX!

Mixing it up at Social Media Club Phoenix

Image by chuck-reynolds via Flickr

I've had a love/like relationship with SMC Phoenix for the last year. On one hand, I love the idea of getting social media enthusiasts together for the purpose of discussing social media. There are plenty of informal gatherings (e.g. #evfn, Gangplank, various Tweetups ...) happening all over the valley all the time. But those are more social gatherings that use social media rather than social media gatherings. The difference is subtle, but there.

In my experience, SMC aimed to do just that, but meetings all too quickly devolved into just another social gathering. A gathering of "usual suspects" who -- without actively trying -- created a nearly impenetrable wall for anyone who was new to the group. I blame no one for this. And I fully recognize that this may be my own misperception of reality. So there's no need to fill the comments with a bunch of "I disagree, Evo" statements.

Because this post is about the future. An unsure future, but a testable future.

Tonight, SMC Phoenix is trying a new direction. It may not be the direction from now on. Hence my use of the word testable. Current-coordinator Jeff Moriarty is tweaking the format and clarifying the scope. Enough to entice me back tonight for what I hope will be the first of many happy returns.

So if you've not been to SMC for a while, give it another shot. And if you're sitting on the sidelines wondering if it's for you, now is a great time to try. I hope to see you there.

Social Media Club Phoenix
Meets the 2nd Thursday of each month
from 6:30p - 8:00p
at Jobing.com headquarters (not the Arena)
4747 N. 22nd Street (between Indian School and Camelback)
Phoenix, Arizona