Watch This Space!

Did you ever notice billboards with this message? “Watch This Space!” You drive past it everyday and then you naturally start watching to see what ad shows up there. That’s what I am doing with this post, alerting people that there will be new activity here soon.

Coming Soon to a Browser Near You…

In the coming weeks I will be adding to the blog, increasing frequency of posts and promoting through FaceBook, Linkedin, Youtube and Twitter. It’s interesting to see the correlation between blog posts, Social Media and actual traffic to the blog and our business websites. I am watching this through Google Analytics installed to this WordPress blog.

Tools: Free
We’re using these and seeing results. Are you?

Linkedin Groups – Joining Linkedin is important because it is primarily for business connections, as opposed to personal connections as on Facebook. Simply having a completed profile gives you instant professional credibility. For a long time I was on Linkedin, but never bothered joining any groups. Mistake! There are hundreds of groups on Linkedin that you can join and post messages to with links to your blog or business sites. By doing this and commenting on other posts in the groups, you add to your visibility and drive traffic to your sites. You build up connections with people you would have otherwise never reached.

FaceBook Fan Page – Same note here, I was on FaceBook for a long time before I established this business page for my blog. It allows me a forum to post all of my blog articles and for people to click “like” on them without the onus of having to accept them as a “friend” on my personal page. According to Google Analytics, Facebook is now the leader in referral traffic to my blog.

Tweetdeck – Tweetdeck is an amazing program that allows you to see multiple networking streams on a single page. From here I can comment on my FaceBook, Twitter and Linkedin accounts at the same time from a central location. They have just added a “scheduled tweet” function that allows you to schedule updates to your profiles at later times, when you may be busy doing other things (automation). It operates a little slow at times, but overall I am very happy with Tweetdeck, and you can’t beat the price to use – FREE.

Mashable – Mashable is a great resource for popular stories on the web. When I don’t have anything “brilliant” of my own to post, I visit Mashable, and find great content to share, quickly.

YouTube – Everyone is familiar with sharing and watching Youtube videos but did you realize it is a social network within itself? Even if you don’t produce videos yourself, I encourage you to set up a channel (free) and start marking videos as your “favorites” and then sharing links to videos on your other networks. Also if you do have your own video content, it is important to post here as every video posted becomes it’s own unique URL, which then starts showing up in search engines, particularly Google, owners of Youtube.

Tweepi – If you are like me, Twitter is a bit overwhelming. Tweepi allows you to easily see who has not followed you and purge them out of your system. It also shows who is following you, that you have not yet followed back. Again, it’s FREE. If you are not using Twitter yet, that’s OK. I suggest you get comfortable with FaceBook and Linkedin first, then jump into Twitter – use Tweepi to help keep followers list updated.

Tools: Not free, but good value, in my opinion…

Mail Chimp – Mail Chimp is a user-friendly newsletter generation service that you can pay for on a monthly or individual use basis. You can create multiple email campaigns and even automate them by having it pull stories directly from your blog into an email newsletter. I am about to launch my first campaign using Mail Chimp. I hope you’ll sign up for this using the box in the right hand column of this blog.

Shopp – If you are using WordPress to blog, this is a shopping cart application that integrates directly with your site. In Shopp you can create a store and have multiple products offered for sale from the blog, customized to your posts. I have just purchased Shopp (only $55) and will be implementing this as well in the coming weeks.

Not Paid Advertising!

I am writing about the tools I am already using, or planning to use. To be clear, I have no affiliation with any of these sites, and am not receiving any compensation for mentioning them here. This post is about my experiences, yours, obviously, may be different.

What tools are you using?
I would love to hear about it, just post your comment below.

Statistics – June 30, 2010
FaceBook – page for this blog: Trace-TV-Film-Music-Media – 237 people “like”

Linkedin Profile – 426 connections
Twitter: @TraceTV – our primary Twitter account – Tweets about Video, Film, Music, Social Media and fun – 2,265 Followers
Twitter: @AquariumConcept – Tweets about Social Media, Positive Thinking, Goal Setting, Literature, Art and Travel – 564 Followers
Youtube: tracetvfilm channel – 31 Subscribers, 9,786 Total upload views
This blog is currently getting 30 – 40 visits a day.

An Experiment

My reason for posting these stats is so that we can have a starting point for tracking growth on these accounts. It’s all an experiment, isn’t it? When you consider that most of the tools listed here are FREE, it’s a no-brainer to utilize them to drive traffic for small business. I will update this post monthly with new statistics, and we’ll see what happens!

What About You?
I am curious if you are using a blog in any way to drive traffic to your business websites. I look forward to your comments and suggestions. It’s a wonderful thing that we have the technology now to be able to share insights easily, so please let us know about you!

Tracy Ready - Photo by Stephan R. Lewis

What About Me?
I make my living as a Director of Photography, Writer and Producer for corporate, broadcast and documentary projects. I also love to sing and to write song lyrics and have drifted in and out of the music industry for the last 30 years. Now I am putting the finishing touches on a full length studio CD co-produced by Sal Salvador. See> band page on Myspace for more about this project

My primary business site > Trace Productions
Stock Footage > City B-roll and Texas B-roll – Pro HD stock footage

I am also available for speaking engagements and panel discussions on topics of Social Media and networking for small business. If you are interested in having me speak to your group you may contact me directly via email – tracy@traceproductions.com or by phone – Office> 972-437-4433

To learn about how I view social networking for small business, please watch the videos in these posts:
Keep the “Social” in Social Media
Social Networking for Freelancers

Thanks for tuning in… Trace