@BasilPuglisi

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Puglisi

Personal & Professional: Social Network at Home

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If you’re a business owner, sometimes we forget that in the world of branding and marketing that Social Media is still about being personal. The person you are when you leave work is just as important to your customers as the professional.

There are many ways to extend your network and show the person behind the professional. One example of this is to share your experiences, and while we have taken to the 140 character world of micro blogging let’s not forget that sometimes more is, well more.

In this case I have attached a review of a restaurant in East Hampton that my wife and I recently visited. I had walked in and found at the end of my business meeting that he had missed a few basic structural needs for the SEO of his website, after thirty minutes he was well on his way to correcting the problem and my wife and I had the opportunitiy to be his guest just a few nights later.

In this case I took the time to share our experience and post it to TripAdvisor, Google Places, Yelp and more, after all, I felt this relationship and experience was worth more than 140 Characters.

(also note the added value of the link “restaurant”, this provides a SEO reference or backlink for his website)

Rugosa offers a contemporary dining experience with a service that almost matches the exquisite tastes its kitchen provides.

Let me start off by saying I am completely biased, or am I? After all, is it not a personal touch that we all want from a night out?

Bill Mammes had my wife (Natalia) and I as his guests this past Friday (Jan 21, 2011), it was an experience that I did not expect. The atmosphere is both elegant and comfortable, a combination that is tricky at best to accomplish.

We used OpenTable.com to set our reservation; it was simple and user friendly. The Open Table platform uses a web version and offers mobile applications. When visiting www.RugosaResturant.com, you will find it integrates fairly nice with the restaurant website as well.

While Yvette (Spouse & co-owner) provided a warm smile and courteous introduction, she was quickly matched by the young server Jon, whose enthusiasm and professionalism instantly uplifted our end of the week winter mood.

Jon is a student of wine (or Oenologist) and while he seems to favor Italian reds, he bolsters a wonderful respect for the Long Island whites. His enthusiasm could easily overtake an unsuspecting guest.  My wife and I found him to be a wonderful part of our night out.

Chef Mammes not only didn’t disappoint, he surprised us at the start. While I started with the Autumn Salad, I found myself quickly stealing from my wife’s plate. Jon had recommended the Duck Cannelloni (Duck Confit, Trumpet Royale Mushrooms and Sautéed Spinach with Star Anise Jus) which in itself brought new meaning to “appetizer”. While I would like to tell you that the Autumn Salad was good as well, the truth is that it’s Butternut Squash, Apples and more was really just a backdrop to the Duck Cannelloni.

The main course was exquisite; I went with the 14oz Painted Hills Rib-Eye with Bulgur Wheat, Spinach in a Red Wine Sauce. My wife (Natalia) bested me once more with the Lightly Smoked Salmon, Cauliflower, Fingerling Potato and Cucumber Horseradish Sauce. As you might have guessed, I found myself once again with poor table manners reaching onto her plate.

As the evening continued on, we enjoyed live music (which was appropriate) and I surrendered to Jon’s wisdom, as by now he had earned our trust. Natalia went with the Petit Basque which is a Sheep Milk Cheese from Pyrenees Honey Glee, Red Wine Poached Prune with whole Wheat Raisin Bread, and while she enjoyed it, I finally found my treat that would leave an impression. I had the chance to finish my night with the Bruleed Lime Meringue, a fresh lemon curd with cream and mixed fresh berries on top.

Rugosa was a wonderful experience and while I’d like to say that I recommend it, I dare not be so bold, but hope you will find this review worthy of a visit so that you may follow with your own review. I can say this, we left so refreshed that while it was a late departure, we quickly made our way to the East Hampton Theaters for Black Swan, but that’s another great experience for another time.

NEVER FORGET THAT YOU HAVE A NAME AND LIFE BEHIND WHAT YOU DO! CONSUMERS KNOW THIS TOO!

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What is About.me All About?

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About.me was founded by Tony Conrad, Ryan Freitas and Tim Young in December 2009, after they were looking for a way to create one place where their profiles can be posted and which has the ability to guide visitors to a more comprehensive information about them. A place that will serve as their ‘splash page’ for personal and professional use.

They seem to have touched a nerve. With seed money of only $425,000, they formed About.me.

During a short beta period that began in September 2010 and ended with the launch in December 2010, about 400,000 people signed up for the service. About.me was bought 4 days  after the launch by AOL for an undisclosed amount.

So what is About.me all about?

About.me provides a place for a user to have a professional looking calling card. The site’s advanced technologies enable users to upload a picture of their choosing that becomes the background for the page. Templates allow users to write a short profile, and ink their page on the site to other social network sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook and personal blogs. Users can also post links to other sites they have on the internet and with the registration an e mails service is provided through the site. One place where users can create one concise profile, and visitors can find immediately everything they want them to know. 

Unlike other social media sites like MySpace and Facebook which started with the same concept, but evolved to be something else, about.me is all about you – the user. They leave the sharing and the conversations to other sites. When clicking on the link to Facebook for example a window opens with your pictures from the site. Another click will send your visitors to the site itself.

What is also interesting about them is what is going on in the background. There, machines and logarithms are crunching numbers and come up with information that might be very interesting to you: a dashboard with stats on visitors, where they came from, social media reach and how much time the visitors have spent on the page.

Being such a young company, it saw a surge of 316% in the past 3 months. Just last week they saw an additional surge of 62%. About.me is already ranked 1,907 in the United States, and the biggest numbers of users are in Canada, USA, Azerbaijan, South Africa and Israel.

About.me prides itself for being easy to use while having a high quality design. Looking at people’s pages on the site proves how far we have evolved from having to turn to expert designers for our personal space on the internet. It is very appealing and artistic.

A similar service exists in the form of Flavors.me, which has a paid service on top of having a free, limited, version. Many of the features of Falvors.me are available only through the paid plan while about.me is completely free. Falvors.me also makes you pay for the stats.

Analysis shows that the average users are in the range of 18-24, have no children and browse the site from work. It appeals more to higher income, higher educated crowd.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/19914735]

video added 2/14/2011

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Internet Marketing: Watch out, get educated and be an informed consumer!

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University of San Francisco is offering Certificates, and Master Certificates in Internet Marketing, but beware of the rookies trying to sell you, or teach you about what they themselves barely seem to know.

If you find the advertisement on Facebook it seems to lead you to the website usanfranonline.com, however it opens up like any other early year 2000 capture website. It looks to convince you that they are the source for internet marketing, however the website and brand presentation fail on the most basic level. Once you spend a few minutes looking around and realize that nothing is interactive (with exception to the video) you start to get the feeling you landed on an infomercial (and you kinda did).

The video featuring Joe Laratro is the hardest thing I have ever had to watch, here is a individual that is mildly known for being an internet marketing source dragging through one of the worst video pitches . What’s so bad about it? Well in case you didn’t fall asleep yourself, let’s look at how it failed.

  • Video Length: 3:30 Seconds

Well if you can keep them that long, then great.  Unfortunately for most an initial pitch might want to meet the industry standard of 60 seconds.

  • Background: Blurry fake back drop, of what one can assume is San Francisco

Video Media is Social Media, how about a real shot of the San Fran Campus, perhaps a real scene which helps deliver the real feel to what’s going on. This next one really hammers home our point.

  • Message: Speech? Joe is reading off a teleprompt at best! What is worse he is doing a bad job of it, his eyes and facial expressions make me want to cry for him. Let’s try genuine, you know the most important part of Social Media and Internet Marketing back in 2009 till now!

Does Joe Laratro not know enough about what you’re talking about to have real pitch to the camera? If this doesn’t come second nature to him, then he shouldn’t be doing this!

If you are going to do this, let’s get a video shot in documentary style and have him talk to the side angle as if you where addressing someone in the room.

Summary:

While I am sure that Joe Laratro knows something about internet marketing, it’s a lot like watching a newspaper try to launch their first website, cumbersome at best. In this case, it is possible that their program could teach you something, and it better if it’s endorsed by USF. When you visit their main website, it at the very least shows signs of branding and web development that are only few years outdated (i.e. they have social bookmarks at the very bottom of the site, but nothing that allows you to see and interact with what they are doing with the most basic tools in twitter or facebook.

It’s great that someone in academia is trying to get into the digital world of internet marketing, just wish they had learned how to do it for themselves before trying to teach others.

Consumer and Business Lesson:

Do your homework, don’t take anything at face value, while the website may seem impressive even if it does show signs of Social Media and modern internet marketing, dig deeper and find out how they are using it so you are at least prequalifying them before tossing your money away.

In the end this is about protecting your brand, seeing the big picture and looking beyond the fact that the tool works. SEO doesn’t sell anything, SEO or Social Media create exposure which will lead to websites and calls. You have to make sure during execution that the brand image is consistent and shows value to meet a need.

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Sidenote: While this may seem personal, I have never met Joe Laratro or attended any of his meetings. I was drawn to this publically available media based on two concerns.

First, There are many people who have jumped out of the woodworks claiming to be SEO or Social Media experts and business owners should be aware of the most basic tools to determine if someone is credible.

Second, I spent years in student affairs and hold a Bachelors and Masters from Accredited Universities. I  have also studied online with Capella University and Walden University for Doctoral Level classes. I believe in online learning as a tool and when you toss together a program as vague and questionable as USF has here it makes all future programs and online degrees look bad.

***Note my upcoming book will look at this in detail***

How to Protect Your Digital Brand Online

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One of the first things the small or large business manager needs to learn is how to protect your digital brand online. Your digital brand is comprised of everything that is online about you so it is important to know what is already there before going any further.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SRVIuNPCmo]

Damage Control

One of the easiest things to do is to go to a search engine such as Google and perform a search for your name. Googling yourself will give you a good place to start if you need to do some housekeeping on the web. You may be surprised at what you find and see the need to start performing some damage control.

Social networking is the way many people communicate these days and almost everyone has or has had a Facebook or MySpace account possibly beginning in their college days. If these sites do not project you or the brand that you represent in the way that you would like to be perceived, either clean up the site or take it down. Be aware that traces may remain on your friends’ pages.

Don’t Forget About the Good Old Days!

Go back through old history that you may have forgotten and delete comments and pictures that project you in a less than favorable light. You may still appear on your friends pages so if there is something particularly bad, contact your friend and ask them to remove it for you.

Training to Protect Your Digital Brand

When setting up social networking sites for your business, it is important that the people responsible for setting up these accounts realize their possible impact on the digital brand. Twitter can be one of the worst offenders as many business rush to have a brand presence on Twitter. An untrained employee can cause irreparable damage by tweeting unprofessional comments that may poorly reflect on the digital brand.

If you find untrue content on the web that is unflattering to your brand, you can ask the webmaster of the site to remove it. Many will do that just to avoid any possible legal consequences. Depending on your circumstances you may want to check the web for fake sites that are plagiarizing your content or products that can affect how people see your brand. The important thing is to stay informed so you can perform damage control.

Create a Positive Online Image

An online presence is a must for a brand to be successful in today’s competitive marketplace. A positive impact from your digital brand can be expected if you stay on top of the situation and take control. Make sure there are many positive images of your digital brand online which also helps bury any bad content that may exist.

Make sure that those who are trusted with the responsibility of maintaining these social networks are aware of the language, tone, and values that you want your digital brand to project. This is how to protect your digital brand online and make it work for you.

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Picking the Right Social Network for your Brand

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As for internet visibility, or digital brand as it is being called now, 2010 proved, without a doubt, the power of the social network. Facebook just passed Google in the number of hits per day. People are using the internet to connect and be connected more than they use it to perform searches.

Aside from it being a sociological phenomenon that no doubt will be talked about and researched, it opened a world of advertising not used before. Facebook makes it extremely easy to connect with almost anything that is a digital brand, with one click of a button. Just type into your Facebook page that you liked a certain television show and immediately you will be connected to their site, to see more.

As a way to advertising your brand, it is a goose that can lay golden eggs. And why not? It is free, it is simple and everyone with a little understanding of how the system works can join in and be effective. Right?

Not so fast. The problem with social media is that it is multiplying. New sites, with new possibilities for connectivity between people are popping up like mushrooms after the rain. You can join all of them and spend most of your time updating and chatting while neglecting your core business. You can hire people to do it for you, believing that bigger is better and the more sites you join will yield better results, only to find out that the ROI (return on investment) is not worth the effort.

Before you embark on the social media voyage, you should know that not all sites were born equal and knowing which one to join is the most important aspect.

Here are some questions you should ask yourself:

–          What is the strength of the site?  You have to do a little research. What can Twitter do for you? What can Dailybooth? Evaluate the site to see if it fits you and the character of your business. Think of a strategy; what do you want to achieve, how can this or that site get you there?

–          How much time you are willing to invest? How much time you can afford to spend on social networking? An hour a day? A week? Social media is, after all, just that – social. Scott Stratten (1), a man with over 74,000 followers on Twitter says the amount of followers started to grow when he dedicated time and interacted with others. You have to maintain presence for social media to work.

–          Do your customers use social network at all? Most businesses have communities. Check them out. Are they talking about your kind of business? Maybe they do on a forum of another kind. It is a bit of a detective work, but you have to find out where your potential customers are.

–          If you had to pay for the service, would you still do it? How much are you willing to spend on this form of advertisement? Granted, joining is free, but maintaining it will cost you a lot of time.

–          Social media is a long term commitment. Having a page up then not updating it for months has a worse impact than not having one at all. It shows you don’t care, don’t follow through and maybe you are out of business. If it’s up there it should be maintained.

Thinking ahead about a strategy before embarking on this trip is important. Treating social media seriously, as part of an advertising campaign, is important as well. Those are the things that will yield results. Use the questions above to get organized and start thinking in the right direction.

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Apps and Sites to help Businesses Manage Social Media Branding

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If you are a small business owner active in the social media circuit, there are some free or inexpensive apps you should know about.

Apps are very popular. As of 2009, iPhone users downloaded more than 2 billion apps through iTunes which has more than 85,000 apps for sale. From apps that let you find your car in a crowded parking lot, or alert you when you are getting low on gas, to apps that help you maintain your digital brand from your smartphone.

Here are some Apps to help you should know about:

Twist – A free app which lets you search topics on Twitter that are related to your business. You can get that information in real time and see what people are talking about.

Tweetmic – Allows you to record your tweets and publish an audio file on Twitter stream. Can be used for personal invitations and announcement to tweets you can record quickly while you wait for the traffic light to change.

Qwitter – Lets you know via e mail when someone leaves your Twitter account. It is a paid service that costs $4.99 a month.

YouTube for pages – To stay connected and integrated, this app lets you connect your business channel on YouTube to your Facebook account. You can post your video only once and using this app, connect it to all your other social media sites you are involved with.

Networked Blogs – A promotional tool that lets you link you blog to Facebook. A free app.

Sites:

Mybrainshark.com – A free site that allows the creation, narration and sharing of multimedia presentations.

Icebucket.com – a search engine specializing in blogs. It helps narrow the results when you want to check what blogs are relevant to your business.

KnowEm.com – Allows you to check the availability of your brand name, and see who is using similar names. It can check this information in about 120 social network sites in a matter of a few seconds.

Blinxx.com – another free search engine that allows you to search videos from YouTube, Vimeo etc. Again, this search helps you narrow down the search results to videos only.

Those are but a few examples of how apps and sites can help the business owner save time and get organized. With the proliferation of social media sites it is important to be able to aggregate information relevant to the business. It is equally important to be able to create connections between the official website and social media sites, so they can feed and connect to each other.

  [Read more…] about Apps and Sites to help Businesses Manage Social Media Branding

Blog 2.0 – Puglisi’s Blog 2011

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Happy HolidaysPuglisi’s blog has seen a slow and steady increase in its visitors, so much so, that it will undergo a few upgrades and looks for 2011. The blog founded by Brand Marketing Educator, Basil C. Puglisi will move from text based blog articles to media…. after all if it’s a blog about digital media it should include some of the web 2.0 feel.

The blogs original intention was to be a personal space for Puglisi to store research thoughts, track stages of development in digital trends and develop a base of knowledge to act as a resource to reinforce his seminars and events.

In Jun 2010 – 32 visitors that where tuning in to read about Digital Media and Visibility Marketing.  As of Dec 28, 2010 the blog had 208 visitors a month and continues to grow despite little if any advertising.

In 2011, we be stepping up the professional brand of the blog, you can expect to see everything that Basil C. Puglisi has learned over the last decade with a healthy mix of digital and academic expectations being executed.

Changes coming in 2011:

1) Citations: It’s just good practice to make sure that you share sources when writing. This reinforces that your work has research value and is developed from more than one point of view.

2) Charts, Pictures and other visuals: If we are talking about growth, locations or people, we should show you what we have seen or found.

3) Video: This is the fastest growing trend in the world, be it for learning, marketing or documentary videos is no surprise that YouTube is the second largest search engine.

The road map to developing a successful blog is a process, one that must develop a good foundation and then add the bells and whistle, or in this case the sources, and media. While some have criticized the lack of advanced features on the blog, it turns out that the development of a good content foundation still supersedes any social media or technology driven media. In this case, now that the foundation has been laid, we move into the more advanced features in 2011.

Happy Holidays!!! Social Media Do and Don’t

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So as we hit Christmas Eve, I like to take a minute and share a few Social Media etiquettes for the general year, but ring even more true for the Holidays.

1) Don’t sell anything!

At this point if you haven’t capitalized on your call to action you lost that chance by now. After all social media is about trust, consistency and professionalism, not selling.

2) Engage in genuine content.

Find ways to thank people, share info for free that has value to it, even if you hold back a little at least your getting in the spirit of giving and those on the other side might do them in return come the new year…hint, hint…

3) Be at peace with the (social) world.

This is a time for peace and relaxation, there is enough stress without you adding to it, expect the site visit to be short. Put away the sword, find things positive about what you agree with, reinforce similarities even with competitors… being the fair and honest (you) will mean everything to people when it comes time to spend money.

4) Stay engaged.

While now is not the time for long drawn out affairs, stay true to what others expect, if you check in everyday, hour, whatever, stick to this, consistency is almost as important as content.

5) Have fun.

This is what makes you different, just like someone smiling over the phone, you can tell when the person engaging you in social media is doing it because they are having fun, or because they are forcing it.

Happy Holidays!!!

Please be safe & responsible!

Can You Get Free PR?

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How to make the most of your internet presence and increase your visibility is a subject many small business owners are grappling with. With the enormous speed in which social media is evolving, you probably have this question reverberate in your brain: am I doing all that I can do to advertise my business?

Even if you don’t have a big advertising budget, there are some things you can do to get free – or almost free – PR. But you have to know how to do it.

–          Do your homework – know what is happening in your niche, what makes you different and better. Identify local publications and trade magazines. See which writer writes about your area of business and what is he writing about (personal story, facts, sales?)

–          Build your story. It has to be compelling, short and to the point. It has to entice the writer to look into your new venture.

–          Choose the date carefully. Does your business have something to do with dates? Holidays? Writers are looking for things to write about which are relevant to the date of publication. They are more likely to look into your business if it has something to do with the date of the next issue.

–          There are few site you can go to which will cost relatively very little but will start you up on the road to a PR campaign:

PRWeb is one of them. Their site helps you create a press release and they will send to search engines, news sites, geographic location sites and 5 industry sites. Press releases start at $80 and go up to $360 if you want your release to appear in big newspapers like New York Times or USA today.

1888 Press Release – a similar service to PRWeb but more variety in pricing and more control over the message. They also have editors going over your press release to check for grammar mistakes and appropriate content.

MediaSync. A site that aggregates material according to subject or market and allows you to see who writes about your kind of business. It also lets you contact the writers or bloggers to offer them new information to write about. Their service is free. In the future they will introduce a paid subscription for going deeper in measuring the influence the writer has had.

Handle Your Own PR. A service designed for medium and small businesses, it offers PR tips, media lists and press release writing assistance.

These are but a few initial steps to increase the visibility of your small business, but these steps cost you – in time, not money. It has been said that the most expensive element a small business owner has is his time. If time is an issue, contracting a consulting firm that knows all the ins and outs of online advertising world and social media websites. There is much more that can be done to increase your business visibility.

Social Brand Visibility: Are You LinkedIn?

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LinkedIn is a business based social networking site which connects you to your business contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities. It helps you expend the network of professionals in your field.

The site allows users to maintain a list of contacts with people related to their business. It connects users to friends of professional friends and increases their professional circle.

Through LinkedIn you can develop a professional profile which is posted on the web so you can establish an authoritative resource that allows people to find you.

Employers searching for workers can use their LinkedIn network to get first hand recommendation. It also allows job seekers to see if anyone needs their expertise.

Being free, open and friendly, it encourages people to approach you. When your contacts change jobs or change their e mail address you are still connected to them through LinkedIn.

This familiarity and wider circle of business ‘friends’ enables you to reach out to members of your group for direct introductions and recommendations.

You can upload your address book, develop relationships and maintain them. You can join a group and see experts talk about a common issue and solve problems.

You can share tweets and use their mobile application to stay connected on the road. It keeps you in touch with people that might matter to your career.

LinkedIn offers users the ability to research companies with which they are interested in working. When searching a specific company what is shown as a result are different statistics about the company; the ratio of female to male employees, what are the most common titles given by the company to their workers, the location of the company’s headquarters and a list of present and former employees.

LinkedIn has more than 80 million registered users in over 200 countries worldwide. It operates in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. LinkedIn has 21.4 million monthly unique U.S. visitors and 47.6 million visitors globally.

Since 2008 LinkedIn launched DirectAds as a form of sponsored advertising.

In November, 2010, LinkedIn started allowing businesses to list products and services on company profile pages. It allows members recommend certain products they liked and write reviews about their finds.

If you are interested in expending your circle of business connections, talk to like-minded people, help and be helped in solving professional problems, LinkedIn is a site which will allow you do all that for free.