Rubis Business Solutions, Inc. » Web Marketing

Feedburner Won’t Publish to Twitter?

Shawn Cheatham — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 23:35:31 +0000

Awhile ago I quipped about how useful the Feedburner Socialize and Goog.gl feature was and how it provided the ability to combine 3 great tools (Google Analytics and Feedburner with Twitter) to provide better/more measurable data. Over the next couple months I was satisfied but not 100% sold on what I was getting, so I decided to checkout Dlvr.it.

By far a much better solution than the aforementioned, Dlvr.it has over the past several months become my de-facto personal feed publisher. All my personal feeds have went off flawlessly through Dlvr.it. It’s a powerful little tool, so after getting some finicky Feedburner Socialize results over the last few weeks, I finally decided to turn over the Rubis RSS feed to Dlvr.it. Much to my surprise, I realized that Dlvr.it has a Google Analytics setting for source feeds which all but sinks the Socialize function.

To be fair, I didn’t make the time to figure out what was going on with Feedburner’s Socialize feature, so I have no idea if it’s my problem or working as designed. Nonetheless, if you just need something quick and easy to publish feeds checkout Dlvr.it

Leave SMS or Vmail…Get Inbound link

Shawn Cheatham — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:55:02 +0000

Initially this post was going to provide a list of ‘I value/like/love/dislike’ features about Google Voice from a few of our clients and colleagues. I was flabbergasted when my call for quotes turned up “I set it up but haven’t started using it yet”. That said, nearly everyone mentioned that they like the number routing feature, as well as the “click to call” website feature that you can drop on to your website.

Do yourself a favor, take a minute to setup your Google Voice account and to test it out…leave us a vmail or SMS at 650-488-3040 with your website URL and we’ll post a link to your site. Why is that a big deal? The more inbound links translates to more traffic to your site. Think of a link like a fishing with a net…bigger net usually means more fish.

Fishing net on Fotopedia

Personally, I value the FREE SMS messages. Paying for SMS messages is akin to highway robbery in my book. We pay for data and voice, WTH do we have to pay for text sent over the same network. Ok, I’m ranting, so moving right along.

iPhone Users

A new option for iPhone users, if you haven’t already heard…get Google Voice on your device (without jail breaking). Here’s how…

On your iPhone
Open Safari
Go to http://m.google.com/voice
Enter your Google Voice (Gmail) Username and Password
Click the bookmark button on the bottom of your browser
Save the bookmark to the Main Page
You should have a nice little Google Voice icon on one of your application pages
TEST it out….call us 650-488-3040 leave us a voicemail (or SMS) with your name and website and we’ll post a link to your site

Looking forward to hearing from you! Have a fabulous weekend!

Annotations in Google Analytics

Shawn Cheatham — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 18:00:58 +0000

In Chicago last month, Google announced a new Google Analytics feature that will allow you input annotations on a specific date (coming in January). The feature functions very similar to commenting on a section of a document in that you’re able to select a specific date and enter a bit of text explaining what occurred on that particular day. This is a handy little tool that gives you the ability to explain why your site suddenly increased or decreased. Say for instance, you started a web marketing campaign for a new product offering and the campaign leverages Google AdWords, your company blog, and YouTube videos. Over a few days you see an increase in the traffic to your site and since it’s fresh in your mind you can easily pinpoint the stimulus. However, what about 3 months later when you’re developing a new web marketing campaign and you go back to look at the previous results? Do you remember which campaigns started on a particular data? What was it about a campaign that seemed to work well? Annotations in Google Analytics is similar to a sticky note that helps remind you of what was going on a particular date. The annotation feature also gives you a way to share comments with other users within your organization.

If you’re already using Google Analytics take a look at the 1 minute video below. If you’re not using Google Analytics and want to learn more about setting it up on your website, feel free to drop us a note.

FeedBurner, Twitter & Analytics

Shawn Cheatham — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:00:12 +0000

Way back in November Google Analytics announced a nice little integration with FeedBurner. Basically, with a couple configuration settings you can connect your FeedBurner RSS with Google Analytics to save time and get a better analysis of your feed.

Today, Google went a step further by announcing two nuggets that caused us to pause…sigh…and then give two thumbs up. First, the Goog.gl URL shortener and second, the Feedburner Socialize setting which when combined allows you to publish a feed to Twitter. Why is this a big deal? Because the Goog.gl + FeedBurner + Twitter combo means near real-time publishing of your RSS feed! At first glance, it may seem like semantics and honestly, we’re not overly concerned with ‘immediate’ publishing or reading a feed….not today anyway but ‘real-time’ is becoming increasingly useful. We won’t go into the details of why that’s the case because for now this combo, when combined with the functionality released in November, provides a fair amount of flexibility and more importantly streamlining.

For example, if you’re hosting a WordPress blog you’re able to remove “post to twitter” plugin’s. Likewise, if you’re using a web-app that sends your RSS to Twitter (TwitterFeed, RSSToTwitter.com etc.) you can remove your blog RSS feed. Here’s how;

Pop open your FeedBurner account (Sign Up Here if you don’t already have one) and navigate to the Analytics tab. In the bottom-left column you’ll see Services – Configure Stats where you’ll be able to configure your Google Analytics settings.
Go to the Publicize tab and find the Socialize link in the left navigation pane. Add your Twitter account and fill in the relevant details. You might want to set the Item Limit to 1 initially since your feed will publish almost immediately.
After publishing a blog post head over to Google Analytics, go to Traffic Sources > Campaigns and you’ll be able to evaluate your RSS feed stats with a lot more functionality than you would otherwise have in FeedBurner.

Do you have multiple feeds?

If you’re burning multiple feeds you can make the above FeedBurner Publicize > Socialize setting for each feed. Keep in mind there’s a “many-to-many” relationship, so you can have multiple feeds going to multiple Twitter accounts and vice versa.

Alternative Ideas

UPDATE: We’re still testing the following scenario, so we’ll let you know how it turns out. If you’re using Google Reader to read feeds, you might also want to try publishing your “shared articles”. Grab your Google Reader Shared Items URL ( http://www.google.com/reader/shared/YOUR-USERNAME) and RSS URL, add your Shared Items URL to FeedBurner and finally in FeedBurner go to Publicize > Socialize to send your shared items to your Twitter account.

We’re not advocating that bombarding us with every link and blog post to the world, instead this is meant to help save you a little time bouncing from tool to tool while publish your content.

Finding a Strategy for Social Media

Jeff Kramer — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:00:51 +0000

For businesses, it has become increasingly popular to dabble in online social networks, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and the like. Typically admission to these networks and the dearth of functionality they offer is free, so at first glance it seems rather harmless to start commenting, tweeting, and sharing. However, it probably won’t take you long to wonder whether there’s a point to it all. As for the value that social media can bring to small businesses, there are a number of competing perspectives, some positive and others negative and even a few that allude to social networking as a marketing wonderland.

Free ≠ Zero Cost

As my late Grandpa use to say, “Son, nothing in life is free and clean up your plate.” Looking around the internet today it appears as though there are a plethora of free tools, however, ‘sign-up for free‘ doesn’t mean there isn’t an associated cost. Leveraging these free tools as part of your business does in fact have a cost which is why you should carefully consider a measured approach to these tools. Something to think about: Developing a strong strategy is about understanding how you are going to be better by being different.

Here are 4 simple steps to begin building a successful social media strategy;

Step 1: Ask

Ask your customers and colleagues – How are your peers socializing and sharing information? Do your customers use LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, MySpace or other social networking sites? Typically it is a combination but as a small business it is important to get an understanding where people are hanging out and whether there are relevant conversations occurring in that community. Now ask yourself, “how can I become part of that community…that conversation”?

Step 2: Learn

Social Media 101 – If you’re considering leveraging these tools you need to a have a basic understanding of what they’re about. Spend some time reading up on how these tools are currently being used for small businesses. Online searches, case studies, talking with other business owners, or working with a trusted advisor are all good starts to increasing your social media IQ. Failing to understand the basic concepts, lexicon and etiquette will result in missed opportunity when it comes to successfully leveraging these tools to better your business.

Step 3: Define

Define a goal – Most small business know exactly what their goals are but leveraging social media to support those goals can seem challenging. Are you trying to connect with more prospects? Increase repeat business? Improve client experience and satisfaction? Perhaps you simply want to meet interesting people in your industry but whatever it is be sure to keep track. Regardless of your goal, having a clearly defined strategy that maps to your business goals can be the difference between success and failure.

Step 4: Start

Start & Evolve – Too much analysis and planning can also be counterproductive. Having a base line strategy along with a feed-back loop to evaluate your strategy is a great place to start. Developing a great strategy requires a bit of experiential learning with an adaptive mindset, so start small and evolve your approach based on your hits and misses.

Social media is the latest tool to be added to the belt of small businesses. Even though many of the tools are free, taking time to think about your social media strategy will pay dividends in the long run. Keep in mind that these tools and communities are evolving at a phenomenal pace, so it’s important to take an agile approach to social media strategy.

Building Web Presence | A Recipe

Shawn Cheatham — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:30:19 +0000

Rubis Solutions helping businesses execute consistent web strategies

We recognize that phrase is a bit ethereal but for all intense purposes it’s really what we do. On any given day you’ll find us helping customers deploy collaboration tools, deciphering last weeks web analysis or building a website to dynamically publish content across several business networking sites. Taken individually, carving out a web presence is pretty straight forward but it can be a little daunting to figure out how to get the most bang for your buck. Here’s our quick-fire recipe for building web presence;

1. Get a website

2. Get Local

3. Get Reviewed

4. Get Graded

6. Get Advice

7. Get Noticed