Four Social Media Sites You Don't Use (But Others Do)


Facebook.  YouTube. Twitter. Sure, you know the biggies, and like all the other business owners hoping to increase conversion with social media, you have your accounts all set up and current.  They have engaging content and tightly focused marketing copy. Well, maybe not everything is where you would like it, but you think you have your bases covered.

However, there is still plenty of online social media real estate to be had, and since preferences and popularity shifts so rapidly on the internet these days, it does not hurt to have your eggs in more than one basket.  Whether you’re just starting out with social media or you’ve been doing it for a while, one of the goals of  social media  is to engage with your current and potential customers at the places they are “hanging out”.   Therefore, here are four most popular places to hang out on the web (besides the ones you already know about).

Are you Engaging with Squidoo?

Squidoo LogoMillennia from now, cultures will wonder at how bizarrely we decided to name our popular websites.  Seriously—YouTube, Facebook, Hulu, and now Squidoo?

Strange, inexplicable name aside, Squidoo is rapidly becoming one of the premiere social networking sites out there.  The concept is relatively simple: Squidoo allows private and corporate users to post individually tailored “lenses”, small articles that focus on one particular topic of interest to the writer.  These lenses have a static URL and can promote or are promoted by other websites.  Sales can obviously be boosted in the case of product reviews.

Who Has The Biggest Ego?

It may be fair to say that visitors have the biggest ego’s while on your website: they want what they want (and don’t want to have things they’re not interested in pushed on them – such as in popup windows, flashing banner ads or pages blocked until the user provides personal information like an email address) and visitors are happy to provide you with their opinion of the usability of your website or landing page (read: they’re willing and expecting you to listen to them). 

5 Mistakes to Avoid in Redesigning Your Website

Everyone makes mistakes—that’s probably one of the reasons why you’re considering a redesign of your website…to fix some things on your current site.  However,  a redesigned website does not mean that it will be error free, and the effects of just one little error can compound more than you can imagine.

Given the volume of people looking over your website, it’s more than worthwhile to  double-check your site for design errors and fix them wherever you find them. Here are five big ones that hinder usability in website redesign.

Podcasting 101: How to Make Your Company's Podcast Market-Friendly

PodcastingWe’ve mentioned before that podcasting is one possibility for improving the stickiness of your social media marketing campaign.  Depending on your product and your market, you just may have something interesting to say that people would be willing to take time and hear.  Podcasts are great because they humanize your company, offer up useful tidbits of knowledge about your industry, and further your marketing message in a (hopefully) compelling way. If you’re gonna grab a mic and take the plunge, here’s what you need to do.

10 Ways to Lower Your Website's Bounce Rate

Bouncing off Your Website

photo by laurenatclemson

Your bounce rate is a key indicator of how well your website or landing page is working for your visitors.  Think of it as a vote against your website.  When a visitor bounces off your website, in effect they have said “No Thanks.”  Since we all want increase the popularity of our websites, here are ten great ways to reduce your website’s bounce rate and have your visitors saying “Yes Please.”

Conducting Your Own In-House Landing Page Test

Testing your Landing PagesWith all of the web analytics tools out there for business owners, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the data-intensive means of landing page testing. Certainly, advanced online landing page testing has its place—we wouldn’t be in business otherwise—but sometimes it can be useful to conduct your own test before the design ever hits your website.  Here’s a quick set of questions you can ask some sample users—preferably people in the office or friends and family who aren’t familiar with the landing page’s design or even purpose.