Attract More Visitors

In my last post How to Improve Your Memory During Your Workout at the Gym and YouTube video I showed how you can use the free software program Evernote to jot down notes so you can remember anything anywhere at anytime.  As I mentioned this works on any platform/ computer (PC, Mac, iPhone, Mobile Phone).

Turn Photos of Notes into Recognizable/Findable Text

One thing I didn't mention about Evernote is that theoretically you can also take photos of your handwritten notes with your mobile/iPhone and Evernote will recognize your handwriting so you can search/find your notes later.

Turn Lost/Misplaced Notes Into Information Bonanza

How many times have you taken notes at a live lecture, webinar, conference call, and filed the notes somewhere (in that giant uncategorized file)...where they're totally lost to you, since you can't locate them when you need them?

Think of all of the conferences, seminars, etc. with tons of great info that would be excellent to tap into...if you just could find it and view it.  This should be great for students, conference/seminar/webinar-attendees, knowledge-lovers, and internet marketers (who are always studying and learning).

Now there's a solution, or at least a potential solution...

Not Quite In-Focus Yet

I haven't quite gotten the note recognition functionality to work yet with my T-Mobile Wing phone but this most likely has to do with the resolution (size: number of pixels), quality (fineness), brightness (of light), and/or the distance from the orginal handwritten note (due to the focal length of the camera).  Evernote addressed this in their Help/Support: Why can't Evernote find some of the words in my pictures?

How to Turn Handwritten Notes into Retrievable Information

1. Install Evernote on your Mobile Phone or iPhone.
2. Start the Evernote program (on your phone).
3. Select "Snapshot" (Note: This takes you to your phone's camera).
4. View the handwritten note through your viewfinder and when it's the clearest, take the photo.
5. Press the curved arrow button.
6. Enter a title.
7. Press "Done" (Note: Then your picture will upload to your Evernote page on the Internet).
8. Go to your Evernote page on the Internet.
9. Refresh the page (by hitting <Ctrl> + F5 on a PC, or Command/Apple + F5 on a Mac).
10. View the photo of your handwritten note.
11. Note: It may take awhile for Evernote to recognize/index the photo of your note.
12. As I understand it, your note will be processed quicker if you opt for the fee-version of Evernote (which also increases your monthly storage allowance).
13. Search for a word in your note and Evernote should find your handwritten note so you can read it.

Note: If this doesn't work, then play with the resolution and quality settings on your phone's camera and/or the brightness of the light as well as the distance of the camera from your note.

That's it! (once I figure the last part out, that is).

FYI: It looks like Griffin has a solution for improving the clarity for iPhone photos of text/notes called "Clarifi": A protective case with built-in close-up lens for iPhone 3G.

--> If anyone knows of a clarity-improving solution like this for the T-Mobile Wing or other non-iPhone mobile phones please let me know with a comment below...

Attraction and Internet Marketing

Question: What does all of this have to do with attracting visitors and Internet Marketing?

Answer: People are attracted to:

• How to articles.
• Solutions to problems.
• Tools and gadgets.
• Tips and Reviews.
• Keywords of interest (e.g., "treasure")
• YouTube videos.

Writing blog posts or making YouTube videos addressing what attracts people can increase the traffic to your blog/YouTube site and to your website from there (if they find information of value to them), e.g., IncreaseOnlineProfits.com.

Last word: Always provide valuable content which helps people since "Content is King".

Comments, Questions, Better Solutions?

• Have something to say about this?  Let me know...
• Have a better solution.  Chime in...
• Have you gotten this to work with your T-Mobile Wing or your mobile phone?
• Were there any additional/crucial tips to getting this to work.  If so, please let  me and the AttractMoreVisitorsblog readers know by leaving a comment below...

Know anyone who might find this blog post interesting/helpful?  Then please use "Tell A Friend" below...

An "Emergency Response" approach might be what's needed re: quick Social Media responses to real world and online faux pas.

Critical to get Info out fast

Having been involved in an Emergency Response Strike Team while at UNOCAL, a global energy resources ("Big Oil") company,  we knew that it's critical to get accurate information out to the media/public as quickly as possible.

With Domino's Pizza's social media problem hitting the web as well as the traditional news sources within the last week it seemed timely to offer a possible solution for future events like this.

Brief Background of Domino's Situation

Some Domino's employees filmed several YouTube videos which showed them treating pizzas/food at Domino's in ways that would cause great shock and distaste for Domino's customers.  This shock could lead to reduced sales as Domino's customers may wonder whether this was an isolated event, or is widespread throughout their company's locations and employees. Domino's didn't respond to the videos right away, taking a "wait and see" attitude at first.  This allowed the situation to play out online, particularly on Twitter.

For more detailed info and links to the now-pulled videos see the Consumerist's post: Domino's Rogue Employees Do Disgusting Things To The Food, Put It On YouTube.  Since then Domino's president has made/uploaded an apology video to YouTube.

Major Problems

• Was the response in Social Media quick enough?
• Was the YouTube video apology accepted as being a genuine apology?

Result

This entire scenario certainly caused a "brand emergency" and could cause a "brand disaster" for Domino's.

What's Needed: A Different Mind-set

With other company's having similar problems, e.g., JetBlue's runway fiasco awhile back, it might be helpful if companies considered an entirely different way of responding which would require a different mind-set:

Consider what happened as the worst possible event possible for your company, product(s), and brand.  Then act...fast!  And take action where your customers are likely to be/read/interact with their news (e.g., Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, or where-ever your customers are likely to be engaged at).

Take a Lesson from the Emergency Response PR Guidelines of an Oil Company

Here's an excerpt from BTC Pipeline Company's Oil Spill Response Plan - Azerbaijan:

"Oil spills are typically highly visible events and will generate public interest and concern.  The media and the public will base their opinions on information that is available to them.  It is important that they have access to factual and timely information.  It is well documented that refusal to talk to the media during a crisis situation creates the assumption that some wrongdoing has taken place.  If BCT does not provide accurate and timely information, reporters will obtain their information from potentially unreliable sources or those who can only speculate on actual events or actions. A "no comment" position can adversely affect BTC's reputation as a responsible corporate citizen, and could result in restrictive legislation that could affect both BTC and others in the industry. It is BTC's policy to cooperate with the media and make timely, accurate information available to the public."

This was written in 2005, well before the recent social media explosion.  But its possible application to bad web PR situations is crystal clear: Get ahead of the situation and respond - respond as quickly and as well as you can.

10 Brief Guidelines for Social Media Emergency Responses

1. Get a response out as quickly as possible.
2. At a minimum, respond in the venue the original SM Emergency occurred in, e.g., YouTube.
3. Then consider other social media venues your customers may frequent and consider creating information streams of communication in them, e.g., Twitter.
4. Get your CEO/President out in front of the situation...and do it in a believable way (minus points for not looking into the camera and talking to us).
5. Continue monitoring the situation and communicating with your customers.
6. Consider ways to put your customers at ease.
7. Consider ways to win your customers back (rewards, etc.).
8. Be truthful and transparent throughout this process.
9. Mean what you say.
10. Do what you mean.

10 Necessary Actions BEFORE Brand Emergencies/Disasters

1. Do Reputation Monitoring.
2. Monitor the web re: your company name, product(s), brand(s), and principals/executives.
3. Do Scenario Planning and Risk Assessments for everything you can imagine...and more.
4. Consider "what if's" for likely as well as unlikely situations.
5. Definitely consider scenarios for the worst possible situations.
6. If you already have disaster scenarios you've created in the past, dust them off, and make them current given new/currently available communications methods.
7. Assume that the walls of all of your facilities, file cabinets, hard drives, servers, and "cloud computing" are transparent.
8. Revise your social media emergency response plans accordingly.
9. Do SWOT analyses for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats for your company and each of its subsidiaries, products, brands, as well as for your competitors.
10. Rinse and repeat (start at #1 again as this is an ongoing process).

Bottom Line

Ideally you want visitors and customers to be attracted to your website and online presences (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc.) in the best of circumstances so they will have the best possible impressions of your company, brand, products, etc.

Cold dose of Reality: Life isn't always Ideal, so be prepared for the worst and act accordingly. And most of all act quickly!

Your visitors and customers are probably more than willing to meet you half-way, but the burden is on your company and all of your employees to let them know what's going on (create quick communication streams, e.g. via Twitter), what you're doing to solve it (currently), how/why this will never happen again, and how you'd like to form/continue the relationship with them (communication and enticement-wise).

There's a great trick for shortening web addresses (URLs) in your Twitter posts (and no, it's *not* TinyURL!).

But first, what is Twitter?

Twitter is a micro-blog where you post 140 character updates simply answering the question "What are you doing? These short one-way posts, known as tweets, are shown on your Twitter profile page. These updates can also be received on Facebook, your mobile phone, your blog, etc. For more info see the Twitter Wikipedia article.

Table of Contents

Since this is long post, please see the clickable Table of Contents* (below/right) -->
* How was this Table of Contents created?  See Bonus Trick #5 below.

PART I: Best Short URL Tool & Trick

Problem

Web addresses (URLs) are long. Clearly with only 140 characters for an update message in Twitter, the less characters (letters, numbers, symbols, and spaces) you use, the better.

Solution

Shortening the URL using free web services like SnipURL or TinyURL which take long URLs and make them shorter.

--> Note: This is also great for PowerPoint presentations as well as Email messages, where long URLs can break-up if they're longer than one line (e.g., a huge link to a Mapquest map - yikes!).

These are great solutions, but SnipURL's "snipped" URLs can be shortened even more.

With all of the people using TinyURL in Twitter (about 2.5 million uses as of when this was posted), it's too bad they don't know about SnipURL and the trick for making their URLs even shorter. And of the 90,000+ uses of  SnipURL in Twitter, only half used the trick.

Examples

For these examples, we'll use this "long" URL: http://attractmorevisitorsblog.com/about/

SnipURL Example

Copying and pasting the long URL above into SnipURL.com you get this shortened URL:

http://snipurl.com/3n4l1

TinyURL Example

Copying and pasting the long URL above into TinyURL.com you get this shortened URL:

http://tinyurl.com/5s6o8n

Comparison of Short URLs

http://snipurl.com/3n4l1 - SnipURL - 24 characters

http://tinyurl.com/5s6o8n - TinyURL - 25 characters

http://attractmorevisitorsblog.com/about/ - Original - 41 characters

Both short URLs have far less characters then the original URL.
This savings would be even greater if you started with a longer web address.

Note that the domain names are 7 characters for both of the URLs (excluding the ".com"):

• snipurl (7 characters)
• tinyurl (7 characters)

The number of characters after the ".com/" can vary, but there are usually 4 to 6 characters.
From what I've seen, SnipURL's algorithm seems to create less characters at the end than TinyURL.
- Definitely a case of "less is more".  This might be because TinyURL has been used more than SnipURL.

For the example above the characters following the domain names are bolded below:

http://snipurl.com/3n4l1 (5 characters at the end)

http://tinyurl.com/5s6o8n (6 characters at the end)

Trick: Using SnipURL

With SnipURL, you can shorten the URL even more, by using any of SnipURL's shorter domain names: snurl.com or snipr.com. For the example above, any of these URLs will lead to the same web address:

http://snipurl.com/3n4l1 - Original Shortened URL (24 characters)

http://snurl.com/3n4l1 - URL using snurl (22 characters)

http://snipr.com/3n4l1 - URL using snipr (22 characters)

Compare these with TinyURL which had 25 characters:

http://tinyurl.com/5s6o8n

--> So by using "snurl" and "snipr" you can save a few characters.

How to Use the Trick

Simply "Snip" the long URL to get the shortened SnipURL, e.g:

http://snipurl.com/3n4l1

- How: By cutting and pasting the long URL into the box on SnipURL.com's home page.

Then delete the "ip" in the middle of the SnipURL above to get:
http://snurl.com/3n4l1 ,

Or delete the "u" and "l" in the SnipURL above to get:

http://snipr.com/3n4l1

Now you're probably thinking, "Can I make the URLs even shorter by deleting the leading "http://" characters too?"
- Answer: Yes, but then the URL won't be clickable in Twitter (Yikes!).
- See the deleting the "http://" test in Twitter.

If the description of the Trick above doesn't make any sense, just view the Video below...

Video: How to Use the Trick

Why You Need This Trick

You might be thinking, "This is completely ridiculous - You're only saving a few characters at most with this stupid trick."

Answer: Yes, but with only 140 characters allowed for a post, the prime Twitter real estate (space available) is very valuable and you need to save every character you can...especially if you are trying to squeeze several URLs into a post as in the next example:

Real-life Example

Twitter Tweet & SnipURL Example:

See this Twitter post as an example:

Wordpress Tags comment on Marketing Over Coffee: http://snurl.com/3htvy.
How-to link: http://snurl.com/3htwu. WP: http://snurl.com/3htxg.
01:56 PM August 19, 2008 from web

Now you're probably wondering, "Why would you want to post such a cryptic message?  Are you a spy or something?" (Answer: "No!").

Well, here's the situation: I had just posted a comment to the blog page of one of my favorite podcasts, Marketing Over Coffee.  Unfortunately MoC's software/settings for Comments had stripped the helpful links from the comment I'd made.

As a workaround to this dilemma I posted the tweet above so someone searching on the keywords might find the links. (Ok, I cheated and used my first name in the search to limit the number of search results...but you get the idea, right?).

What did I do with the extra characters saved with the SnipURL Trick?
- Inserted the phrase: "How-to" to describe the link
(which actually gives the solution many people might be searching for).

6 Bonus Tricks

Bonus Trick #1:
- How do you know where you're being sent before you click on a shortened link?

For SnipURL: You can check where a Snipurl.com URL leads by adding a "peek." to the URL:
E.g., "http://peek.snipurl.com/whatever"

For our example above, try this link: http://peek.snipurl.com/3n4l1

For TinyURL: You can preview where a TinyURL.com URL leads either in your short link or on your computer:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/5s6o8n - In your short link (example).
http://tinyurl.com/preview.php - On your computer (settings).

Bonus Trick #2:
- How do you get SnipURL's (Snip!) into your Browser Links or Bookmarks toolbar?

Go to SnipURL and "simply" drag the Snip! button to your Links or Bookmarks toolbar.

While this usually works fine for Firefox, in many cases it doesn't work for Internet Explorer.
--> Trick for IE: Right-click on the Snip! button, choose "Add to Favorites", then click the down-arrow next to Create, scroll down to the Links folder, and click Add.  Easy, right?

Bonus Trick #3:
- How do you get your Twitter posts to be displayed in the right column of your blog?

Use the Twitter Tools Wordpress Plugin which can also be found at the Wordpress Plugins page on Alex King's website.

Bonus Trick #4:
- How do you get your Blog posts to be displayed on Twitter?

Use the Twitter updater w/ TinyURL Wordpress Plugin which can also be found at the Fireside Media Development Blog site.

Bonus Trick #5:
- How did you create the Table of Contents on the right side of your post?

By using the "Table of Contents Generator" Wordpress plugin which can be found at Scott Yang's Table of Contents Generator WordPress plugin web page.

Bonus Trick #6:
- How can I use SnipURL for Market Research and Trend Spotting or Trend Watching?

Just go to SnipURL's site and Browse and/or Search for what you're interested in:

http://snipurl.com/site/browse

And while you're there, be sure to subscribe to their "Snips" e-Newsletter, which sends you an email of interesting snippings every week - definitely a guilty pleasure(!), but you can get a read on hot trends and popular culture too.

What do you think?

Do you have a better way to do this? If so, please leave a Comment below...

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• Subscribe to the Feed (see the orange "subscribe in a reader" feed icon at top-right of page.
• Let your favorite Social Media/Networking site know (see "Share & Enjoy" icons for Digg, etc. below).
• Tell A Friend (see "Share This Post" and/or TellAFriend button/link at bottom of post).

PART II: Attracting Visitors and Internet Marketing Techniques

What does the blog post above have to do with Attracting More Visitors to your website or blog?
- How can these Internet Marketing techniques help promote your site?

• Twitter is a great way to attract potential visitors to your blog or website.
  • Set up a Profile, link to your website, blog, etc., start writing tweets, follow others on Twitter and be followed.  For a great write-up of how to do this see this eBook by Joel Comm: "Twitter Secrets: How Short Messages Can Make A Big Difference To Your Business".

• Intriguing/interesting Titles attract people to your blog posts, articles, or emails.
  • Using carefully selected keywords is very effective and critical to the success of your Titles.

• Delivering on what your Title promises is very important.
  • Just in case someone wanted something other than what they found here, bonus tricks were included.
  • Did you find what you were looking for?
    • If yes, then more value was provided.
    • If not, hopefully you found something that was helpful (a trick, resource, or link).
      • Since "Twitter Tools" is a very popular search and "Twitter Tools" is also a Wordpress plugin, content was provided for those searchers finding this post as well:
        • Bonus Trick #2 and other info "Twitter Tools" searcher might find interesting/helpful.
        • Ditto for those searching for "short URLs".
      • People love Bonuses.
      • Bottom Line: You can never lose by adding value.

• Uploading a video to YouTube has several advantages:
  • The video can be searched/found on YouTube or search engines.
  • Linking a YouTube video back to your blog or website both in the video description and within the video can be very powerful.
    • Of course with any Social Media community, try to be sensitive to what they consider to be blatant marketing (bad) vs. subtle markerting (may be ok, depending on the community).
  • Any video has the potential to become viral and be passed around exponentially.

• Use Examples
  • People like examples as they show "how to".
  • People love Stories...and Examples can tell a story and make cold data/info personal.

• Asking your readers to do something is a "Call to Action". (e.g., Tell A Friend)
  • Sometimes all you have to do is ask and people will respond favorably.

• "Always be Testing"
  • The Twitter Test "deleting the "http://" test" (above) is a tiny testing example in homage to what Bryan Eisenberg says: "Always be Testing" (in his book titled: Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer):

• Navigation/Usability: If a web page or blog post is long, make them easy to Navigate (e.g., the Table of Contents)
  • If the post was broken up into several posts, then it would appear in reverse order and lose its scanability, effectiveness, and flow. Instead of doing this give your readers an easy way to navigate (links, Table of Contents, etc.).

What do you Think...now?

If you liked this post you might also enjoy receiving our 77 Great Tips of Internet Marketing to help you Attract More Visitors and Create More Customers(SM).