Now you can take advantage of the new, simple — it’s drag and drop — menu system in WordPress 3.0 to reveal all types of content at your website. It’s a new CMS feature that lets you bring posts, categories, tags and more, directly to your navigation menu – great for content marketing strategy. This is important for “Visitor Behavior Optimization” (VBO) where you make adjustments to your dynamic site structure based on a review of Analytics and other testing reports (more on VBO in a future video).

Learn more about using WordPress 3.0 Menus in this 3.5 minute video…

If you find yourself squinting — watch in a larger window at Screencast.com.

Video Production & Distribution Note:  We use Jing Pro by TechSmith to produce our videos, then upload them both to the Jing Site and also to YouTube.com for a double marketing reach.  So far we like the quality that Jing delivers better than the standard compression delivered at YouTube.

What’s with the metaphor in the title? Well, besides the fact that I hail from the Pacific Northwest — home of raindrops and rivers — there’s been a surge (pun intended) recently in new services for the techie-socials among us, with related apps — the raindrops. Then, there’s the great mash-up of services, where drops and streams combine to make… rivers of conscious social connections.  And guess what?  At least one new river looks to carry a raft of customers to small businesses in your hometown.

Streams Collide: Google Buzz  has millions of instant users — plus its own app store online — BuzzAware, already, in just about a month. One new service combines Buzz, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube — allowing easy sending of videos and photos — see HomePuzz.

Hootsuite, my social aggregator of choice, allows me to simultaneously monitor tweets about my company, linkedin network activity, and Facebook updates — on one screen. Oh, and Hootsuite just added FourSquare as a new network it monitors. Now what’s FourSquare? It’s yet another new way to connect socially, but it specializes in pulling online people into real world places. And, Mashable reports that Foursquare has momentum — 100,000 new users in the last… 10 days. Wow. Of course all of these social flows are streaming (another water analogy?) on the latest “phones” with apps galore for iPhones, Google’s Android platform, and Blackberries. Whew.

Above, my customized Hootsuite view monitors personalized streams from Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.  I’ve also added Plaxo, and FourSquare.

Local Business Enters the Social Media Flow…

So, what does all this mean for business? Well, quite a bit if you’re 15th Ave. Coffee & Tea in Seattle, Coopersmiths’s Pub in Ft. Collins, or one of 15 ice-cream parlors listed in the Portland area, including Granny Gedunk in Stevenson, WA. A popular promotion is to award a freebie to a patron with the most recorded visits to your establishment as reported by Foursquare. “Just show me your phone” –  you can ask to see the official Foursquare tally for someone with most visits to your venue.  In Foursquare parlance, that person is known as the “Mayor” and people compete to become Mayor so they can get the award — a free coffee, complimentary cone, etc. Heck, there’s even a “Mayor” of a Plaid Pantry on Interstate in my hometown of Portland, Oregon. Not a lot of imagination on the part of that Mayor, but it must be paying off for that chain convenience store.  You can see a list of some popular Foursquare haunts here.

Above is a promotion advertising perks for the “Mayor” from Foursquare

Not long ago, I resisted the torrent of social media washing my way. Back about 18 months ago, I had not even joined Twitter. Now I have over 8000 followers there for WebFadds. Any business? Yes. One confirmed client by Twitter contact alone, plus Analytics shows a good flow of traffic to my business site from there.

Use Analytics to make Social Media prove itself for your business. Above, I can see direct traffic from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIN to WebFadds.com.  TIP:  The next step is to review dollar value goals in Analytics so you can gauge the ROI from Social Media activities. LinkedIN shows a 7.7% conversion rate, with Twitter landing 2.3% in conversions for the past month.  Make it pay — contact me for more details.

So now it’s time to dive into FourSquare, and widen my Hootsuite monitoring window to add another Social Media flow to watch. Tweets, Facebook Friends, LinkedIN business, Foursquare hometown — scrolling on screen direct to stream of conscious connection.

Where does it all end? It doesn’t — the ocean is too big. The better question might be — where will it take you? My advice is to connect anew on Foursquare now — the tool automatically finds friends from Gmail, Twitter, and Facebook. It’s good to see social become local, once again.

We’ll be pleased to give you a quote on launching, and monitoring your Social Media Marketing campaign.

WordPress CMS News: A new report shows WordPress taking a leading position as one of the top four Open Source Content Management Solutions — read more here.  Version 2.8 is coming soon, and rumored to add even more flexible CMS capabilities.  If you have upgraded to 2.7.x, the upgrade to 2.8 will be easy — no expensive programmer required… just push a button.  If now… contact us, and we can upgrade you.

Are you optimized for Twittering yet? Social Media Marketing is coming fast and hard, with Twitter a major force (see below).  You will find me twittering @webfadds (and Spirit too). And, there are ways to optimize and automate — I’ll show you some here.

Not yet? Well, maybe you’re still on the fence about the “business worthiness” of Tweeting. It’s simply micro-blogging for business people and you are out there letting people get to know you before they buy. Why? People buy from people they know. It’s that simple. Add to that the ability to brand and establish authority in your niche.

And, the Twittersphere itself is offering increasingly useful tools to take your twittering to the next level…

Twitter Resources:

• Polling? You bet — check out: StrawPoll
• Productivity? It’s covered. Track Daily Goals with a social twist of accountability  | An event manager that auto-links to Google Maps, updates your Google Calendar, and auto-invites via Twitter  | Twitter for Organizations | Share files on Twitter
• Job Search? You got it… a job search engine for Twitter
• Research? Check it out… Track Trends and Events with TwitScoop | Tweetscan hunts for topics of interest and sends you an alert
• Publicity? Of course. TweeTube shares photos, YouTube videos, multiple website urls and more (from your iPhone too)
• Staying Efficiently Organized? Right. Have a good look at Easy Tweets* to promote your business and monitor your brands featuring an easy, efficient dashboard (we include coaching for this service in our Social Media MAX pack)
• In Gmail? Yup. Get an app to do Twitter from Gmail (another reason why Google is watching carefully)

Interesting Business Marketing Use of Twitter: ForkFly — a service providing discounts from hundreds of Portland, Oregon merchants. Hmmmmm. Get a following, sell access to focused followers. Earn money. Opportunity knocks.

Another Interesting, Government (hey… looks like they can be efficient sometimes) use of Twitter: If you are a Twitter user you can get northbound Canadian border wait times by sending a direct message to WSDOT – the Washington State Department of Transportation.

Is all of this useful in business? Well, what is one closed sale worth to you? Ten? I had a business meeting last week with a prospect I found on twitter, and am estimating proposals this week. Still questioning it? I agree, in business you have to focus on ROI… so do it. You can track it — Web Analytics Word is reported that Ominiture, a popular commercial Analytics provider, is integrating with Twitter.

Time to Get Going: We have a new package — Social Media-MAX Pack – here at WebFadds to help you get going. You leverage your Business Blog in a synergy with Twitter to engage prospects and leads… and learn about your niche. We coach and train you on efficiency in addition to installing and configuring your package. Contact us to start today.

It works. A week ago, I had 38 followers on Twitter. Now I have 295 (at time of writing), 344 predicted later this week, with over 1,000 predicted ( by yet another twitter service, of course) next month…

How did I do it? I’m practicing what I teach… using the synergy in our Social Media-MAX Pack is very powerful. Like a rocket. Watch me prove this @webfadds.

Is it fake? No.  Not if your intent is actually to engage colleagues and prospects in dialog about your niche focus, and business passions (with a bit of the personal side sprinked in, so people can know you too).  There are automated tools that save you time, but if you proceed ethically, (no spam) with honest intent… it’s for real.  You’ll probably see a few “fakes”… but Twitter is pretty quick to close down those accounts.

You can use our “old technology” contact form to get started… or just contact me on Twitter. And, we can chat about ways to increase conversions at your site too.

* WebFadds is an authorized reseller for Easy Tweets.  You’ll find excellent service and features (more coming… in Beta now) from the support folks there.

Contact Us · (360) 566-2451 · Email | Twitter: WebFadds

Hello -

What is your Video Strategy? Video Strategy? Yes… get ready for it. I too held off, but WebFadds just received a new client as a result of my first video posted on YouTube in January.  I mentioned this WordPress 2.7 with conversion tip video in an earlier edition, but some of you said the video was not permitted in your email — so here’s a direct link: WordPress 2.7 Introduction – Using WordPress as Your CMS.

Whether you’re a service provider, or selling products… video is becoming a key component of good content. But, will sales result from any video you place on your site? Jon Quarto-vonTivadar, writes how that is NOT the case in his article: “Video Views Up, When Will Sales Follow?” Take a look — he has good advice.  And here’s a series of articles about producing videos.

The Most Important C’s of Successful Online Marketing: A while back, I wrote an article on the five C’s that contribute to your success online: Content, Community, Conversation, Connection, and Conversions. Note that at the original writing the final word was Convergence, though I am updating this strategy to change that to Conversions, for the best focus, from a business perspective. Which of the “C’s” are most important?

Content. Everything else is secondary.
Conversions. Everything else — except Content — is secondary.

Get Content… and you'll Get Customers.

What about the other three C’s? They’re important too, because even in these times of new technology… people will still buy from those they know. But they’re not primary.   Because you can chat people up and plant links here and there back to your site, doesn’t mean you’ll be successful… even if your Google pagerank increases. Unless you have persuasive content, and continually focus on improving your conversion rates, all else is just busy work with no pay off.

And yet, I often see many requests for SEO work, or social network linking projects with little consideration toward first making your Content compelling, on target, and persuasive — a discipline my colleagues Newt Barrett and Joe Pulizzi write about in a new book about, “Content Marketing.” You should get their book – Get Content, Get Customers.

I see even fewer marketing project proposals written with an eye toward Conversions. Why?

I’ll close with some interesting results from our LinkedIn poll on “How well does your website convert visitors to leads or customers?“  which point to the answer to that question:

Results by Job Function…

This result shows that some creatives actually focus on conversions — those are the ones you want to hire, because they begin with the end in mind (your strategic business goals).  Marketing types, so far in this poll, seem focused on sales (yellow), but not completely clear on the concept of conversions — they do not understand how “optimizing” (blue) landing pages (adding your value proposition, for example), can increase your conversions .

So… how well is your site converting? Stop by at LinkedIn and take the poll… and if you’d like to focus on, and increase your conversions — give me a call.