This post was written by guest blogger Michele Rempel

I recently spoke to a group of university business students and asked them, “How many of you believe that your personal presence on all social media accounts is ready for scrutiny by recruiters, potential employers or potential clients, right now?”  Only a few of the 80+ students in the audience raised their hands.  Of course, I wasn’t surprised, given that they had only begun the school year and most of them were not yet seniors.

I know that I would get more raised hands if I were to ask a group of business professionals.  However, my experience has been that most business owners or employees are thinking about that question superficially and not in the way that is going to benefit them the most in this age of social media.  If you are looking for clients, customers or a new position, it’s a good idea to own, manage, monitor and even dominate your personal digital presence.

Your Personal Digital Presence – Own It

This may sound crazy, but do you own your own domain name, such as www.danielstoica.com?  One of the best ways to get your personal brand and content out there is to have your own website or blog site on your own name.  Of course, some of you have a really common name, so you may have to find a variation, but consider purchasing your name as a domain if you can.  I heard Nathan Latka, a young social media phenom, tell his audience a couple of months ago that his future children will only be named whatever he can purchase as a domain.  Although that may seem a bit extreme, I understand his point.  With social media, it’s easier to become your own brand than ever before.  See if your name is available at www.godaddy.com or www.1and1.com.

Your Personal Digital Presence – Manage It

The best way to ensure that your personal digital presence represents the real you is by producing your own content on the web as well as associating yourself with other people’s good content.  Consider writing your own blog posts  and then linking them to your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.  You can set up your own blog site at www.wordpress.com, or consider having someone help you start a blog site with your own domain name. If you have a tough time writing, then you can out other people’s content (giving them credit, of course) about subjects that interest you.  Find a blog post that you would like to share and then send the link to that blog post (with your own quick introduction) using an application such as www.ping.fm.  Your name gets associated with the information that you’re sending, even though you didn’t have to write anything.  The idea is to have your name and brand associated with appropriate content, over and over again.  When people search for you on the internet, they’ll see listings of good content associated with your name.  Keep in mind that every Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blog post, etc., gets indexed on the search engines.

Another way to manage your digital presence is to check up on your social media accounts regularly.  I don’t mean just send out Facebook or Twitter posts; I mean check and update your personal information wherever you’re being represented.  Is your information current and correct?  Have you changed your tagline, brand message, or job responsibilities?  Do you have a good photo?

Your Personal Digital Presence – Monitor It

How do you know what is being said about you or your brand? Do you Google yourself or your brand on a regular basis?  Better yet, do you have your Google alerts set so that you get an email when you’re mentioned on the internet?  Set up a Google alert by going to www.google.com/alerts and you’ll get an email whenever your search term gets mentioned.  Even if you don’t think anyone is talking about you or your brand, you may be in for a surprise.

Your Personal Digital Presence – Dominate It

The goal of owning, managing and monitoring your personal digital presence is to ensure that you are being represented the way you want.  Posting content that represents you, your brand, service or product on all of your social media accounts will help you dominate the search engines and ensure that you can be found.  And when you are found, your name or brand will be associated with good content in listing after listing.

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Michele Rempel is a Partner and Project Manager for Website Development and Social Media Marketing Management at Mandatek, LLC. She leverages her previous experience as an educator & administrator to effectively communicate with clients and translate their visions into website and software projects as well as social media marketing campaigns. Michele enjoys speaking and writing about social media and is also in the process of starting an additional company called Mediavine Marketing to simplify social media marketing for small businesses and individuals. Find out more about Michele on Twitter.


*Photo by Franco Bouly

We’ll show you how to connect all your social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and your blog and cut your time in half.

Join us for a free teleseminar to learn the exact steps you can take to connect all your social media accounts.

[The live teleseminar is over - register below to download the slides and audio]

Have you ever felt frustrated trying to manage multiple social media accounts? Would you like to get more results from your social media activity without having to put in more time?

If you are like me, there are never enough hours in the day.  When you are faced with managing multiple social media accounts, there are days when it can all seem overwhelming.  But, it doesn’t have to be like this.  In fact, social media should HELP you achieve your personal and business goals, not eat up your valuable time that should be reserved for working on your business and enjoying your time with family and friends!

The key is implementing a system to easily manage your social media marketing.  And, there are plenty of tools out there to help you with this.

Here are just a few things we’ll be covering on the call:

• Understand why every individual and business needs to own their online identity and that there are a few key social platforms you must be on.
• Discover that there is a process to setting up your social accounts to ensure your longterm success.
• Learn how to “Connect” all of your social accounts to ensure you are consistent with your messaging across multiple platforms.
• Learn how to syndicate your content across multiple platforms to maximize your reach with the least amount of effort.
• Manage your time efficiently with social media management tools to ensure you are working smarter, not harder.

In this teleconference, Trevor Turnbull is my special guest. He’s a social media consultant and founder of Social Connect Blueprint.

Trevor is an online entrepreneur with extensive experience as a business owner, business development professional and social media consultant. He’s the founder of Social Connect Blueprint, a social media training website that provides live, interactive training and educational webinars with thought leaders in the social media world.

Trevor is also an avid sports fan and the co-founder of Sport Fan Connect, a consulting company that works with sports teams, brands and events to help improve the connection between and add value for clients, their fans and sponsors.

I’m excited to have him on the call as our guest.

What we’re going to focus on is a fast-start version of connecting your social media accounts to make your time more efficient.

On this call we have only 100 spots and expect to fill up fast. It is critical that you register for this free teleseminar now

After you register, leave your most important questions in the comments section below. We’ll answer them right here on the post.

*Photo By canvascanoe

Here is a list of recommended WordPress plugins that we at Folk Media have used for our own blogs and websites and for our clients.

Fighting Spam – http://akismet.com/

SEO – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

Category control – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/order-categories/

Comments – http://disqus.com/comments/wordpress/

Page display – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exclude-pages/

Share on Facebook – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/facebook-share-new/

Share on Google Buzz – http://www.clickonf5.org/google-buzz-button-wordpress

SEO & Sitemaps – http://www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator/

Pages Management – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pagemash/

Social Media Sharing – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sociable/

Share on Twitter – http://help.tweetmeme.com/2009/04/06/wordpress-plugin/

Share on Twitter – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twitter-tools/

Visitor Stats – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/

*photo by baboon

We’ll show you exactly how to create a website that looks amazing, attracts customers eager to buy what you’re selling and is easy to update and manage using a free tool called WordPress (Even if you don’t know know anything about website code or HTML)

[The live teleseminar is over - register below to download the slides and audio]

Join us for a free teleseminar to learn why major companies like The New York Times, MTV and People Magazine use WordPress and the exact steps you can take to produce a great looking website and attract customers.

Here’s just some of the keys you’ll learn by attending this event:

• How to make an AWESOME looking website for free using WordPress. I’m not joking. We use WordPress to design and manage the site you are on right now and we don’t know HTML or other web code.
• WordPress is a free online publishing tool that makes updating your website easy and quick – we’ll show you exactly how this works with screenshots and graphics.
• Why using a WordPress blog can be the smartest strategy for attracting customers and clients online.
• We’ll show you how using WordPress to manage a blog is so simple you can literally START USING IT WHILE YOU ARE STILL ON THE CALL!
• We’ll talk about why Google loves WordPress and how just by using WordPress you will show up to potential customers in search results… which in turn sends customers to your site to buy what you are selling.
• We’ll show you how you can use WordPress on your own website and can customize it to look how you want (YourBusinessName.com)
• We’ll show you how you can switch the look of your website any time by choosing from thousands of free themes.
• If used right – WordPress is a “customer attracting machine.” The problem is most people don’t know how to set up and use it properly. We’ll cover the mistakes that you are most likely to make and how to avoid them.
• Plus: answers to all your specific questions. (In fact, feel free to ask some questions below).

I’m Joel Mark Witt and the publisher of Folk Media. Folk Media is on pace to help over 500 small businesses create, use and profit from a solid social media strategy in 2010.

Joining me for this training is John Lucchetti. He’s an expert at online marketing and a frequent contributor to the Folk Media site.

On the call, you’ll be learning the same WordPress strategies we share with our private clients and which we’ve used to grow our own businesses.

I’m serious – we use WordPress on all our sites – even this one. Look around and see for yourself what a simple free tool can do for your business. It’s very powerful.

What we’re going to focus on is a fast-start version of using WordPress that you can implement right after the call. (or during the call)

We’ll talk about the power of WordPress, the WordPress tools for managing a website without sucking up all your time, and the step-by-step plain English instructions that you can start doing right away – without hiring any “guru” or agency!

On the last teleseminar we had people from all over the world call in. Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Canada and Australia were just some of the places people joined us from.

On this call we have only 100 spots and expect to fill up fast. It is critical that you register for this free teleseminar now

After you register, leave your most important questions about WordPress and blogging in the comments section below. We’ll answer them right here on the post.

*Photo by

Scheduling gives you freedom

You are a busy person and social media marketing can take A LOT of time. If you’re not careful it can drain your productivity. By learning the fine art of scheduling your online content you can save time and triple your effectiveness.

Back to the future posting

You’re probably asking “what is he talking about – schedule my content?”

First, remember that content (Twitter posts, blog posts, online articles, Facebook updates, etc) are the currency of the internet. You are as good as the content you produce. If you’re business isn’t producing content on a regular basis, you need to develop a content strategy.

But creating all that content takes time. Just think of how long it takes you to log onto Twitter each day to make one or two updates. Just the login time can be a pain and you might give up.

The best advice I can give you is to schedule your Twitter updates and other posts online. This means that you can sit down for a few hour each week, write out a large percentage of your messages or posts and then schedule them to update in the future.

5 solid tips on scheduling content

Here are my best ideas around scheduling content for your business.

1. Identify which systems already allow updating. For example, WordPress has a scheduling feature built in to the system. Of course other applications like Twitter and Facebook don’t so you’ll need to…
2. Use a tool. Hootsuite is an excellent free application that will give you the power to schedule updates for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Foursquare and LinkedIn.
3. Batch your writing. The secret to posting in the future is to batch all your messaging and writing. For example, after you finish writing a blog post on Monday that will go live Wednesday, consider pulling small snippets of text and scheduling tweets and Facebook updates to go out throughout the week.
4. Balance your broadcasting with discussion. Be sure you aren’t becoming a one-way channel of information. Discussion is second only to content on the web. Set up some alerts with Google or Tweetbeep to stay on top of discussions you can enter.
5. Create an editorial calendar. This idea has helped our team stay topic focused over the long term. Take a blank calendar and write down the content by week or day that you want to cover for your business. If you follow this calendar you’re life will be much easier when it comes time to sit down and write.
   

Today’s Action step: Schedule a piece of content for the future

Take the next 10 minutes and schedule a piece of content for the future. If you’d like to schedule a future piece of content for Twitter or Facebook,  go get yourself a Hootsuite account and schedule a message for tomorrow.

Today’s exercise is designed to get you familiar with the notion of scheduled content.

Now go take action.

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Joel Mark Witt is the Publisher of Folk Media and author of 21 Days To Twitter Leadership. He is a producer, author, and speaker who consults with businesses and nonprofits on how to use social media in marketing and communications. Get more from Joel on Twitter or Google Buzz.

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*Photo By Howard Gees

Content is only valuable if it can be found

When it comes to using blogs for online marketing most professionals will tell you…

“Create compelling content.”

So let’s assume for the purpose of this article that you’ve gone through the basics of content creation. That’s a great start. But it’s also important that Google and other search engines can easily find your stuff.

By using the updating service built into WordPress, you are able to send alerts to pinging services across the web. Don’t let the word “pinging” confuse you. It is simply a way that blogs and websites tell search engines that new content has been added to your site.

3 Steps To Pinging

By adding in a list of pinging services to your WordPress blog, you are able to update Google and other search engines more quickly. Here’s how…

Step 1 – Open up settings

Step 2 – Click on the writing tab

Step 3 – Copy and paste ping list into the update box at the bottom

Scroll to the bottom and paste the list below into the box. Click update.

Here’s the list of ping services:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://www.wasalive.com/ping/

http://www.blogsdominicanos.com/ping/

http://www.xianguo.com/xmlrpc/ping.php

http://www.feedsky.com/api/RPC2

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping

Your content … found

Having great content is the foundation for online marketing. But your audience needs to be able to find that content. Now go take action and update your WordPress blog.

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Joel Mark Witt is the Publisher of Folk Media and author of 21 Days To Twitter Leadership and How To Use Social Media To Find A Better Job. He is a producer, author, and speaker who consults with businesses and nonprofits on how to use social media in marketing and communications. Get more from Joel on Twitter or Google Buzz.

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*Photo by mknowles

WordPress is a very powerful blogging tool for small businesses and nonprofits. It’s free and easy to use. But the true power of WordPress can be found in using it with an iPhone. Now, with a simple app, you have the ability to update your site from anywhere.

To get started with WordPress right now visit WordPress.com. You can sign up and have a blog running in a few minutes.

For advanced features visit WordPress.org. This option allows you to install WordPress on your own website.

To download the iPhone application visit http://iphone.wordpress.org

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Joel Mark Witt is the Publisher of Folk Media and author of 21 Days To Twitter Leadership and How To Use Social Media To Find A Better Job. He is a producer, author, and speaker who consults with businesses and nonprofits on how to use social media in marketing and communications. Get more from Joel on Twitter or Google Buzz.

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There are a few blogs and sites on this list that aren’t Fortune 500 companies. But for the most part all these companies listed here use the blogging platform WordPress to manage their sites.

• Nokia
• Honda
• Onstar
• Ford Motor Company
• Samsung
• GE
• NFL
• American Express
• People Magazine
• Harvard University
• Wall Street Journal
• Best Buy
• Coca-Cola
• Ebay
• Xerox
• GM
• Anderson Cooper

We’ve already written about the top five reasons why your business should use WordPress, If you need help getting started visit our WordPress Services page.

*Photo by Powerhouse Museum

If you’ve been reading Folk Media for any amount of time you may have heard us mention the blogging platform WordPress. It is a powerful blog management system that can also be used to manage a non-blog site. In this article I’ve outlined five reasons you shoud use WordPress for your business or nonprofit.

1. Powerful SEO (search engine marketing) capabilities

WordPress has great SEO functionality built-in. The code that WordPress uses is easy for Google and other search engines to “read” and index. Google loves WordPress blogs. There are also free plugins you can install to add even more SEO juice to your blog.

2. WordPress is FREE

You can’t beat free. Other blogging platforms cost money. WordPress is built as open source. This means that the code is free for anyone to use and build upon. So you are free to download and install WordPress on your server without spending a penny.

If that sounds too difficult, you have two options:

• Let Folk Media download, install and set up WordPress for you.
• Start a free hosted blog at WordPress.com. It is hosted on the WordPress servers and you have limited customization, but it is a great way to get started.

3. WordPress is easy to learn and use

If you can edit a Microsoft Word document, you can write and publish using WordPress. The interface is a basic text editor with the standard menu buttons you already use in your favorite word processor.

You don’t need to learn HTML, CSS or PHP to make your site look good. Most themes and plugins come with push button shortcuts that allow simple customization.

Because WordPress is hosted online, you can update your website and blog from anywhere in the world. It gives you complete freedom and mobility. If your business is closed due to a massive winter snow storm, you can sit at home, log in to your WordPress site and update your blog in your bathrobe. There is even a mobile iPhone App to manage your site on the go.

4. WordPress is customizable

There are literally thousands of free themes that you can use to create the perfect look and feel for your blog. There are also themes for sale like WOO Themes (the one we use) that allow you more control over the look and feel of your site.

In addition to great themes, free plugins can also help you manage the look and feel of WordPress. A plugin is a simple computer program that works with the main WordPress code allowing you to manipulate it without having to know code yourself.

WordPress is very customizable. With so many options, there are several fortune 500 companies using WordPress to power their blogs and sites.

5. WordPress has a good support community

It is estimated that one percent of the internet is powered by WordPress. With that much penetration, WordPress users can rely on a large and growing community of developers, designers and specialists who understand the system and how to get the most out of it. If you are looking for resources and help in using WordPress visit the free support forums.

WordPress is here to stay. If you are looking for a free, easy and simple way to manage your online blog or website I recommend WordPress.

Download this article as a PDF

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Joel Mark Witt is the Publisher of Folk Media and author of 21 Days To Twitter Leadership. He is a producer, author, and speaker who consults with businesses and nonprofits on how to use social media in marketing and communications. Get more from Joel on Twitter.

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* Photo By Peregrino Will Reign

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As a business owner or professional, blogging can be confusing. Mix in the multiple platforms, terms and tools and blogging can become downright scary.

I want to demystify some of the pain points for you so you can get your business up and running with a blog. Here is a quick sketch overview of the four platform tools in online blog publishing.

Blogger.com

Blogger is the best starting point for most people. It is owned by Google and you can be set up  and publishing in a matter of minutes. To use a camera analogy – Blogger is like a point and click fixed lens camera.

But unlike a point and click, Blogger does have the option to manually override the entire template and customize it for your business.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Blogger is a good starting point – but your business may want something a little more robust…

Enter WordPress

This platform is fast becoming a standard in online publishing. It is open source (meaning it is free) and has multiple add-on features and plugins. We use WordPress to power the FolkMedia.org site and our other client sites.

Unlike Blogger, if you want to get the full benefits of wordpress, you will need to host it on your own site. If you are tech savy, you could read the install instructions and follow the step-by-step setup. Of course we here at Folk Media would be happy to help you install and host. (How’s that for a shameless plug?)

Movable Type

Movable Type is your choice if your business wants a good solid publishing platform that is backed by a great customer service team. They charge for the blogging software – but you get support.

Some of the largest online publishers and media companies use Movable Type to power their blogs and content. The folks over at Six Apart (makers of Movable Type) have built a very useful CMS.

Ning

Want a custom MySpace/Facebook type platform for you clients or customers? Ning may be a great solution.

Ning is free. It is easy to set up and easy to publish. The templates and styles are customizable. If your organization or business lends itself to high customer feedback and involvement – then Ning may be the solution you need.

These are four of the top players in the online publishing and blogging space. Personally, I am blog platform agnostic. The important thing to remember is to create compelling content that people want to read – see – listen to – or watch. The platform is only a tool to amplify your unique business voice.
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Joel Mark Witt is a producer, speaker, and new media leader who writes about social media and its impact in the business world. He is also the Founding Director of Folk Media. Send him an eMail: joelmarkwitt (at) folkmedia.org or follow him on Twitter.

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