Burgie MediaFusion Blog

Back that thing up

burgiemediafusion — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:36:44 +0000

Have you ever thought to yourself, “I really hope nothing happens to my computer, my life is on there, my work…my everything” and intended to continually back your information up (as we all know we should do). BUT DIDN’T and then BOOM it happens- the hard drive fails, and you are essentially busted for not doing something that you already knew you should be doing. You are left feeling embarrassed and frustrated at the same time. Then you are in limbo while there are many attempts to retrieve your lost info, and you feel even more foolish that you didn’t back that thing up. You now have to sort through old emails to try to gather up any info you can to resave it to your computer. You spend hours going through archived information, and overall you are still kicking yourself and feeling like an idiot.

So heed my advice, BACK THAT THING UP- trust me, you won’t regret doing it!

(p.s. This happened to a “friend” of mine- I would NEVER be so foolish….)

Natalie Monroe
Burgie MediaFusion
o: 800.713.0445

Google algorithm penalizes sites with too much clutter

burgiemediafusion — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:16:40 +0000

Can’t find what you’re looking for on a web page due to a plethora of ads?

No worries, Google is at it again.

The engineers at Google are always trying to better our search experience. So it came to know surprise when they announced that they would once again be morphing the mysterious Google algorithm to penalize those websites that are ad heavy above the fold.

Although Google understands the need for advertisements on web pages, they want their consumer, who is ultimately your consumer, to be happy with their search results.

“Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away,” Matt Cutts posted on the Google Inside Search blog last week.

Google claims that less than 1% of sites will be affected by the change, but those who are concerned can use the Google Browser Size tool to see how their website looks on different screen resolutions.

Shawna Polivka
Burgie MediaFusion

Put your company on the map

burgiemediafusion — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:29:55 +0000

Did you know that one out of five searches is location related? Creating a listing on Google Places is a quick and easy way to make sure your company appears when consumers come looking for you. And, it’s free.

The importance

The advantages of listing your company on Google Places are endless, but here’s just a few:

It’s one more way to up your SEO
Phone books are quickly becoming a thing of the past. When people start looking for your service or product, they head to the Internet. Google Places will make sure you appear in their search.
If optimized correctly, your Google Places listing makes your business show up on the the first Google page.
Mobile users can find you more easily, too, in the palm of their hand.
You don’t actually have to have a location to advertise your business.
It’s a great place to have your consumers write a review.

How to sign up

It only takes a few minutes to sign up. Go to Google Places and click “Get Started.” The site will try to find your company by phone number. If it’s not found, you can manually enter in the information and location.

Share your business hours, photos, videos, address, website and any other information that will attract consumers.

Shawna Polivka
Burgie MediaFusion

First Lady on Twitter

burgiemediafusion — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:09:42 +0000

Michelle Obama has taken to twitter (@MichelleObama) to tell us how she feels (in 140 words or less). The account debuted last week and she currently has 364,000 followers and growing. All of her personal tweets will be signed MO, all others will be from the campaign staff. The President has over 11 million followers and growing.

Two years ago the administration had blocked the use of Twitter at the White House and now our President and First lady are actively on Twitter.

We of course think social media is a great way to spread any messaging you want to relay to massive groups. President, First lady or business owners, social media is necessary and relevant.

What are your thoughts on White House Officials using social media?

Natalie Monroe

How to keep up with social media

burgiemediafusion — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:35:23 +0000

Twitter? Tweeted. LinkedIn? Updated. FourSquare? Checked In. Google+? Shared. Facebook? ANOTHER CHANGE?!…

Yes, social media is time consuming. Here are some tips to help you manage your profiles more quickly while staying up-to-date with the most recent changes.

Helpful websites

By browsing these websites once or twice a week for headlines, you can keep up with the most important changes.

Social Media Today - has the latest trends in SM
Mashable - always has breaking news on SM platforms, a great site for resources and guides
Tech Crunch - the latest information on new online and mobile technologies
Social Media Examiner - from news to tips to case studies, this site covers everything social media

Another way to quickly browse social media headlines is to subscribe to social media focused RSS feeds through Google Reader. This allows you to look at headlines and articles from multiple RSS feeds in one area. To access articles on-the-go, try the app, Reeder.

Stay organized

Although it doesn’t take much time to set up a profile, maintaining one can be a different story. And because it is essential that you update all profiles and manage posts AT LEAST once a week, organization is key.

Thankfully, websites and apps exist to keep things organized from one site.

Hootsuite - keep up with all of your profiles on your computer or laptop
Flipboard - a great organizational app for your iPad
my6sense - easily access your profiles on your phone

And remember, having one, well maintained social media site for your company is better than three sites that are never updated. Take it one step at a time until you can find a way to quickly manage them all.

Shawna Polivka
Burgie MediaFusion

Help your consumer find you online

burgiemediafusion — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 15:32:19 +0000

When consumers want to find a product or a service, they often go to the Internet to find a review or referral that says where they can get the best bang for their buck. Make sure you are present when they head to referral and recommendation websites.

General referral and review websites

Try to have a registered web presence on at least 2 of the following websites:

Yelp – free for business owners to sign up!
Google Local/Maps – important for people looking for information in a specific area/zipcode/neighborhood
City Search – this site is specific to each city
Insider Pages

Referral and review websites specific to your industry

Research where people are looking for advice on your company’s specific industry, too. I suggest typing “Find a (your service here)” into your search bar and see which sites are most popular.

Auto:

Angie’s List- specializing in auto, home, health, outdoors
Better Business Bureau

Restaurants:

Home services/contractors:

Service Magic - home improvement, contractors
Angie’s List
Better Business Bureau

Health:

Angie’s List
IDEA fit – personal trainers

Realtors:

You will need to take the time to monitor these sites. This will allow you to respond to both good and bad comments in a timely manner.

And remember, Google Local and Yahoo Local are very popular. To appear in the top rankings in searches, make sure your location is marked on your regularly updated social media, blog and website.

Shawna Polivka
Burgie MediaFusion

Keeping up with Google+

burgiemediafusion — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 11:47:22 +0000

If you haven’t noticed, Google engineers are trying to unify all Google products through Google+. As a result, many products have been added, changed or discarded. Here are some of the recent transformations:

Google Reader

Google Reader recently launched a new version of the popular RSS reader. Among the changes is a connection to Google+ and the elimination of friending, followers and shared content.

Although the followers have disappeared, users can now create specific Circles for readers.

Additionally, the new +1 button allows users to share articles on their Google+ profiles with one click in lieu of manually posting a link on their profile. This will allow companies to quickly and easily share relevant content with consumers on their company profiles.

GoMo

GoMo (HowToGoMo.com) is a Google Initiative to try and help companies create mobile friendly websites.

The site allows you to see how your company’s website translates to a mobile device and suggests agencies near you who can help build or enhance your mobile site.
Creative Kit

The Creative Kit is a new photo editing tool found in Google+. It allows you to not only crop your photos, but change the lighting and colors, add text and insert funny clip art.

What’s Hot

What’s Hot is a new category that can be found on

your Google+ Homepage stream. This category allows the user to see what is popular on Google+ at the moment (like trending topics on Twitter). The engineers say that they try to mix up the users. If you find something you like, you can add the person to one of your circles.

Shawna Polivka
Burgie MediaFusion

A Time to Reflect

burgiemediafusion — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 11:41:58 +0000

I know most people typically write about why they are giving thanks and we at Burgie MediaFusion are filled with gratitude for all of our many blessings both personally and professionally. 2011 has been a year of great fun and we continue to be amazed at how quickly our world is changing.

As we reflect in the next several weeks, I look forward to sharing some great lessons that I have learned as owner of this great company. My hope is that by sharing some of our successes and failures we might help others achieve in 2012. We also invite you to share with us some of your 2011 greatest events and hope that we have an opportunity to learn from you.

Challenge 1: How to Play Nice in the Sandbox…

We learned sometimes you do just have to get up and walk away!

The beginning of 2011 brought BMF a new client, with that new client came existing vendors and suppliers. We knew we would have to learn to “fit in” and play nice in the sandbox. Typically, we have one or two suppliers in the mix but this particular client had a company they had worked with for years and felt they were the best provider of all things they might need. After introductions took place it was very clear that us “newbies” were going to have to prove our worth and ability to make it on this new team.

After two weeks; we quickly learned that we didn’t even want to go to practice. The path and steps we normally took to complete a project were not going to work and it was unknown how to best proceed because continual mistakes, miscommunications and errors were taking place. We decided to confront our client; express our concerns and try to develop a process and a chain of communication to help minimize errors and keep projects and tasks moving quickly.

We soon learned that our goals and our processes were not going to be used; that we were NOT going to be able to communicate effectively and that we needed to back away.

And for the first time in a long time, we stood up for ourselves, our process and our work model. It was a great experience for our entire team because we learned that our process does work, our work model helps achieve success and that even though our expectations of our partners are high—we still plan to keep those expectations. Walking away and standing up for what we knew to be the “right” process helped to define a better working relationship for us with our client and helped them to realize that their expectations were not being met.

But mind you; it is in our DNA to play nice with others so this lesson has proven to help strengthen all of our relationships. It helped us to learn that when selecting partners you have to outline expectations all the way through the relationships; not just at the start. We are truly excited to take what we learned and continue to adapt and change to serve our clients better by defining our process with each of our partners.

Barb Burgie

Burgie MediaFusion
o: 800.713.0445

The mysterious algorithm behind Klout troubles users

burgiemediafusion — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 18:20:56 +0000

Klout is a site that measures your social media “influence,” “reach” and “amplification.” It gathers information on your use of 12 social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Google+. From that information, it gives you a score from 1 to 100 stating your influence on certain topics in the realm of social media.

Sounds like a good way to evaluate your company’s online presence, right?

The catch is, no one knows what algorithm is used to create the score. This is to prevent similar websites and social platforms from copying the tool.

Under pressure

In October, the site decided to revamp and improve its process to encompass more social media sites to better track a user’s online presence. As a result most users noticed a substantial drop in their Klout score.

The change upset some users, many of who quickly took to Twitter to vent their frustrations. Some went so far as to delete their Klout account. Users debated the “point” of Klout, how the score was decided and if it could negatively sway a potential employer’s opinion of you.

Without the algorithm, it seems as though users can’t decide if their Klout score accurately describes their online presence. Or perhaps Tammy Kahn Fennell said it best when she wrote, “#Kloutapocalypse: You’re Not That Influential, Deal With It.”

Change is good

In response to all the negative feedback, Klout founder and CEO, Joe Fernandez tweeted: “Not exactly fun having the internet want to punch me in the face but I believe the product is in a much better place…”

With the addition of so many social media websites in the past few years, Klout is simply trying to include as many social media platforms as possible. It now tracks your company’s online presence through blogs, Foursquare and even YouTube posts.

While your score might have decreased due to the “improved” algorithm, the daily changes in the score will remind you to keep your company’s social media up to date.

As with all social media platforms, we must remember that social media is constantly changing to IMPROVE how we interact and connect with each other. In time, “this too shall pass.”

Shawna Polivka
Burgie MediaFusion

Treating others the way you would like to be treated…even on social media.

burgiemediafusion — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 17:18:10 +0000

I recently attended a seminar and it was on how to make the most out of your social media pages. I learned a good tip…

If you have problems with people spelling your last name wrong put that in your summary so that way when people Google your information it will pull—even if your name is misspelled.

However, I also found that my “old” fashioned beliefs were not in agreement to the presenter. In fact, I actually was surprised by the response I received when I suggested treating others the way you would want to be treated. The speaker stated that it “takes too much time.”

So, I have decided to blog about it because I disagree and wondered your thoughts? If someone asks you to be friends and you don’t know them—what do you do? Ignore? Well, my advice would be to email and ask how you know one another. Sometimes, it is obvious that they are spammers (and ignoring is fine) but for the most part I often realize I may have forgotten who they are and how I might be connected to them.

I recently had a LinkedIn contact email me and write a nice note stating my name was familiar but he just couldn’t figure out how we knew each other. I responded letting him know that we worked together with one of my clients and he immediately accepted my request. I guess my Grandma Grace and Mom would be proud because I truly think it is worth the time to email back and ask the question “how do we know one another”? It is just like not returning a sales person phone call. I try to get back to folks even to say we are not interested at the time, because I figure that if I treat others the way I want to be treated we all might work to build a more respectful and kind world.

I look forward to hearing your comments on what you do and how you think it is best to handle those requests! Maybe we could start a new movement in Social Media?

Barb Burgie

Burgie MediaFusion