Update Your Profile Picture Across Multiple Websites All At Once

February 19th, 2010

I visited a social network this morning that I haven’t been to in almost three months. I wasn’t surprised to see that it still had an old picture of me on my profile. I thought I had updated my picture on all my social media networks a while ago, but this wasn’t a network that I go to a lot. It did get me curious, though, so I checked some of my other profiles. It turns out I only thought I updated all my online avatars with that new photo. More than half still had my old photo up.

Wouldn’t it be nice if I could update my photo in one place and have it updated everywhere? I think so, and the folks at Gravatar agree. They’ve created a central repository where you can upload photos of yourself.

Then any social network or other website that uses Gravatar doesn’t need to ask you to upload a photo. They can look at the email address you used to sign up and pull the image straight from Gravatar. So when you update your Gravatar photo, it automatically updates your photo on every site that uses Gravatar. Makes life a lot easier.

Who uses Gravatar?

I’d love to tell you that Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIN all use the Gravatar protocol. They don’t. If you want to update your photo on these sites, you have to go to each one individually and upload an image.

Most of the action that Gravatar gets is on blogs like this one. That’s right. If you create a Gravatar account (it’s free) and leave a comment on this post, your picture will show up right next to your comment. It will also show up on comments you leave on thousands (if not tens of thousands) of other blogs.

What if you leave a comment and you don’t have a Gravatar? Nothing breaks. You’ll just have a non-descript gray icon that looks vaguely like a human being. I find that when I’m reading a blog post with a long list of comments, the ones with a unique image next to them tend to catch my eye.

Why doesn’t every site use Gravatar?

My first guess is that they want to allow you to be unique on their site. You might put a casual photo of yourself on Facebook and a more professional photo of yourself on LinkedIN. I prefer to have one photo that works in a professional or casual context, but maybe I’m in the minority.

Clay Mabbitt
social media, web
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3 Easy Ways to Add Readers to Your Blog

September 20th, 2009

This isn’t going to be rocket science, but it will be easy peasy. It will be so easy you’re possibly already doing it, but not realizing it’s a marketing activity that helps you build readership to your blog/site. I’m going to use the three most popular mediums I know this blog’s audience uses, but you can just about mix and match any medium to push content out and about.

  1. Tweet It. Yes, get yourself a Twitter account if you don’t just yet, but it’s a great way to gather readers and build followers of your content and company. Use a service like Bitly to shorten your links and track how many people are visiting that link. I recently showed a client how one Tweet sent 121 people to his website; he had no idea you could track links like that. Be sure to send people to the link you’re talking about, though, not a homepage unless that information lives there or there is another reason people cannot get to that information, like a membership subscription.
  2. Status Updates (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook). If you’re working on a blog post, tell people about it and link to your blog. Maybe they didn’t even know you had a blog! Maybe the new topic you share is just the thing someone has been trying to learn more about. We often release how-tos on our blog (Thanks, Clay) and the Facebook icon for sharing links was just the information someone needed. You never know who you may reach.
  3. Roundup. In your email newsletter (yes, you need to have one at least quarterly if not monthly), add links to your most popular blogs in a blog roundup. If you’re not sure what this is about, check out our newsletter. We often use this roundup feature to remind our newsletter readers of our blog and share our most clicked-on topics.
Raquel Richardson
branding, business smarts, marketing, social media, web
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Decide what’s important. Decide if it’s personal.

August 16th, 2009

The bigger the news in social mediaville, the grander the assumptions for what social media is and isn’t. For example, there was a recent reporting saying 40 percent of the tweets on Twitter were pointless. Pointless for what audience? Who decides?

When it comes to your social media activity, or any marketing activity for that matter, your audience decides what’s pointless, what’s important, what’s fun to know and what’s unnecessary. You learn by the activity, comments and links generated from your efforts. That’s the bottom line and that’s what’s important to know and understand out of this whole social media hairball. You have to figure out what marketing activity is right for your mix, and how and what those right mixes are in your strategy.

Here are two areas of advice to get you started right. You figure out these two things and the rest will flow.

  1. Decide what’s important. Take this opportunity to talk with your clients and prospects about what they would like to know about the area in which you are the expert. What is important for them to know? How can you help them filter all the information that’s out there and learn what they need the most? Now deliver the goods and keep asking regularly.
  2. Decide if it’s personal. What voice does your marketing deliver? Is it funny? Is it uber serious? Don’t be something you’re not and don’t make your company’s marketing message something it’s not. If social media is forcing anything at the marketing table, it’s authenticity.
Raquel Richardson
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How to Use LinkedIn for Business – 7 Ways to Get and Stay on Track

June 29th, 2009

Many of us have been on LinkedIn for years, starting with opening an account and adding your online resume. You placed all of your pertinent information and were proud of yourself for tackling a project to completion. Next, you took some time to invite individuals to make connections with you and over time maybe added a few features.

But now you’re aware of something new:  people are talking about how they are building their business with LinkedIn connections. You visit LinkedIn only to further learn you’re somewhat behind the ball in keeping up with all this online tool can do for you. Although these steps do not examine all the wonder you can work up, they will get you walking in the right direction, set groundwork for making updates, and make future additions less time consuming and more manageable.

LinkedIn is pretty amazing when you take the time to think about the potential. Did you know all 500 of the Fortune 500 companies are represented on LinkedIn? Guess what, 499 of them have director-level and above employees listed. This means you can possibly make connections and get introduced to some of the top companies and minds of our time. Learning how to tap in to this community and others can be done with tackling the seven tips.

1.     Join groups and add to the conversation. By far the quickest way to network within LinkedIn is joining groups, monitoring the discussions within the groups, and adding your value when it’s possible. Some basics here still apply – you should have your key message down, you should stick with your sales process, and you should focus your time and effort to a specific goal or conversion. Select groups that make the most sense for your business, or among topics you can contribute the most value. You’ll build your credibility and open doors for offline conversations that flow right in to your sales process.

2.     Use the status updates frequently. This could mean that you tell me when you’re visiting your grandma in upper state New York, or, you could more judiciously use it to talk about a project you’re completing, a real-world networking event you are attending or any other business-related activity that would connect you to a potential sale for your business. These updates are searchable and help other people find you through those key words. Use them wisely.

3.     Add in your book reading list and updates via the Amazon application. You can build your credibility by sharing your knowledge of what you’ve learned from your latest reading. Follow others in your network to see what they are reading. Maybe someone is reading the same book you are, or have, and you haven’t connected with them in over a year. This would make for a great reconnection opportunity.

4.     Write recommendations. This one may not be as out of the box for you, but have you done one? Typically we tend to receive once we give. Set aside 20 minutes to write a really great recommendation for two of your top clients, vendors or business-related contacts. They will welcome and enjoy your time and attention. Don’t go for a ‘you write one for me, I’ll write one for you mentality.’ No one likes keeping score or feeling like they have to do you a favor.

5.     Are you hosting seminars, webinars or other events? If not, you should be and announcing those events via LinkedIn is valuable. Share your occasion and invite connections or those from your groups.

6.     Send specific offers or articles to your groups or networks. Let’s say you found a how-to guide that really hit the mark for business and would be a valuable tool for most of the people in your network. Send it to them! This easy feature allows you to share that guide, article, link, news, announcement, etc. to your entire network with one click. I wouldn’t make a habit of hitting your network with multiple, daily announcements, but used well and with pertinent information you’re sure to find a win-win.

7.     Enhance your search engine results. Make sure your blog (please tell me you have one) is feeding in to your profile. Likewise, have all three links in your profile utilized to drive traffic to your website. These links are found toward the top of your profile. Typically you see My Website and My Company but if you select Other you can add in one more, so link to your blog or something relative to your business.

Now that you have built a better foundation than when we began, make 20 minutes as day possible for you to continue to build on this start. Test it out for a few months, tweak when necessary, and determine if more or less time is required to make an impact on your business by using LinkedIn.

Raquel Richardson
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Still Afraid of Social Media?

March 4th, 2009

I avoided social media for as long as I could.  I’d heard people talking about how much they loved Facebook and Twitter, but I dreaded the idea of adding another time commitment to my already overflowing schedule.  Well, whether I like it or not social media is here.  Maybe it’s because of the current atmosphere of fear about the U.S. economy.  People are looking for ways to promote their business without investing so much money.  You probably are, too. 

Social media becomes exponentially more effective as more people use it.  Like the yellow pages.  If only 10% of the businesses in your industry are listed in the yellow pages, most of your customers aren’t going to start with the yellow pages when they are trying to find someone that does what you do.  If nearly everyone in an industry is listed (think pizza delivery), then customers will go there confident that every possible option is presented to them.  If your name isn’t there, you don’t exist.

Because everyone is jumping on the social media bandwagon, that means your customers are going to start viewing the social communities as a complete listing of everyone in your industry.  So like all the plumbers who must pay to be listed in the yellow pages, you must get involved in social media.  Does that mean you need to spend an hour a day on every one of the dozens of sites available?  Thankfully, no.

I suggest sticking with the major players, and if there are niche sites that makes sense for you, join one or two of those as well.  In my world, LinkedIn is one of the top professional networking services, and it’s a must for just about anyone.  Twitter can be very important if your customers are reasonably tech savvy.  Facebook is good if you offer personal services or if a large segment of your customers is under 30.  (Or if you want a large segment of customers under 30!)  MySpace is a must if you are involved in music, but otherwise I advise taking a pass.

It can also be helpful to identify one or two niche communities to get involved with.  I’m involved with a community that defines it’s niche geographically, Smaller Indiana.  On a smaller stage like this your voice carries more weight, and a larger percentage of the participants can be either customers or referral sources for you.  Are there other social media sites you’re wondering about?  Ask me in the comments at the end of this post.

Once you know where you’re participating, just set aside 30 minutes at a time to be online.  If you can do it everyday, that’s ideal, but you can still benefit by getting on less frequently.  Try to make sure you’re doing this at least once a week.  Go to your account and enter information about you and your business.  Invite friends to join the community.  If you find an interesting person, leave them a comment.  Don’t worry that you won’t be able to fill 30 minutes.  These sites are successful because they make it very easy to get involved.

So you’re convinced of the importance social media is going to play in the success of your business over the coming years, but you still aren’t sure how to get started.  Silver Square can get you started with our social media package.

Clay Mabbitt
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