Laser Burn Media

How to Use LinkedIn to Build Your Business

September 6th, 2010

LinkedIn is one of the most powerful, yet most ignored, social media platforms out there. Designed to be a site to help professionals network, LinkedIn represents 75 million members spread across 200 countries. The site is chock-full of high and mid-level decision makers from thousands of companies. Despite this fact, when looking to design and execute a social media marketing strategy, it’s common for businesses to overlook or under utilize LinkedIn.

Here are five ways that you can use LinkedIn to build and grow your business…

Create a LinkedIn profile for your business. While you may have a LinkedIn profile for yourself, it’s also important to ensure that your business has its own profile, as well. This allows other LinkedIn to learn more about your company, what it does, where it is, and to better understand how your products or services can be of benefit to them. Not only will this allow you to reach potential customers, it will also expose your company to potential employees, helping build relationships with key talent.
Join and actively participate in some LinkedIn groups. By joining in a few relevant groups and actively participating in the discussions, you can begin to build relationships with potential clients, suppliers, and employees. Becoming active in these groups is perhaps the quickest way for you to begin building a strong network across LinkedIn, one that could pay dividends in the real world.
Actively promote your LinkedIn profile. The most effective way for you to build your network on LinkedIn is to reach out to the people who you encounter on a daily basis. Your customers, your employees, your suppliers, and the people who visit your website. By adding as much of your existing network to LinkedIn as possible, you are better able to organize and contact the members of that network. Also, this allows you to begin to build stronger relationships with these contacts and to potentially expand your reach into their networks, as well.
Actively participate in the Answers section of LinkedIn. Answers (LinkedIn.com/Answers) is a feature on LinkedIn that allows you to ask a question to ask a question and have it answered by any number of subject matter experts on LinkedIn. Additionally, it allows you to answer the questions of others. This is a great way for you to build your reputation as an expert in your industry and to build relationships with others who are in or are interested in your industry.
Actively request recommendations. Make it a routine part of your followups with clients and suppliers to ask them for a LinkedIn recommendation. These recommendations help build credibility for you and your business, something that will come in handy as you actively try and build and leverage your LinkedIn network.

While not meant to be a complete and comprehensive guide to using LinkedIn for your business, following these five steps will certainly put you on the right path. Remember that a successful LinkedIn strategy, like any other social media strategy, involves building and leveraging relationships across your network. When used properly, and on a consistent basis, LinkedIn can definitely help you grow your business and build solid, valuable relationships. Give it a try, and while you’re at it, feel free to add me to your network.

-Dan Cheek
LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@laserburnmedia.com
Twitter.com/laserburnmedia
(570)795-9467

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Tags: linkedin, networking, social media, social network
Posted in Social Marketing Strategy | No Comments »

Why I Co-Founded Laser Burn Media

September 2nd, 2010

After serving four very exciting years in the United States Army, I came back home to Northeast Pennsylvania. Still adjusting to civilian life, I began to take an interest in the Internet and social media. I began working for RCN, where I spent my days troubleshooting high-speed and dial-up Internet connections for customers. At RCN, I learned a lot about how the Internet works, the mechanics of a network and how to maintain it. And in my free time, I became increasingly interested in building websites.

I wasn’t then, and am not now, a programmer. I know very little about working with CSS, Python, or Java. I can do basic things with HTML, but that’s the extent of my coding prowess. However, thanks to the many powerful website publishing software platforms out there, WordPress being chief among them, I was able to create websites without having to know how to program. For me, this was huge. I began building sites for me, my friends, and family. Most were short lived and just for fun. It wasn’t long before I began to pay attention to how many hits those sites were getting and how the tweaks and changes I made to the sites affected traffic levels. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was beginning to learn the basics of search engine optimization.

I also began promoting some of these sites on various social media platforms. It was also about this time that I left RCN and enrolled at Wilkes University. In exchange for my four years of military service, the Army had agreed to help me pay for my education. I took full advantage of the GI Bill and became a full-time student, majoring in Business Administration. The business program at Wilkes is very forward thinking and hands on. During the freshman year, all the business students are put into groups and told to form a business. The first semester is spent planning the business and the second is where it is executed. Any profits made by the business are then used, at the end of the Freshman year, to fund a public service project.

My group decided to create an advertising booklet that we would distribute all over the area. We pulled some strings at the school printing office and got them to agree to print all of them for us at no cost. We may have forgotten to tell them we were looking at two runs of four thousand copies each (each copy contained about 10 pages), but whatever. Agreement in hand (we made them put it in writing and the suggestion of one of our business professors), we began to visit local businesses, asking them to place an ad in our book. The prices for ads ranged from $25 to $100, depending on the size and location of the ad. With no production costs, everything we made was profit. In the end we grossed over $2,000.

As I progressed through business school, I decided that I wanted to make a career out of marketing. I was also becoming more and more involved with social media and website design. I became interested in local politics and decided that I would use the Internet and social media to take on a mayor who was running for Congress. While this mayor was wildly popular, he struck me as a bigot and a moron. I set up a blog and began to promote it via social media. I read up on SEO and learned how to build quality back-links to increase the site’s performance in search engines. I learned how to write good content, how to partner with other bloggers to spread my message, and how to move my ideas across various social media platforms. That site, which I still run today, attracted quite a bit of attention from local, state, and national media. I achieved a number one search ranking on Google, ahead of the mayor’s own campaign website. The mayor lost that election (although he is running again, which is why the site remains active).

I graduated Wilkes University in May of 2009. I graduated into one of the worst economies the nation had experienced in a long time. Jobs were hard to find. Many companies weren’t hiring. I tried getting in with several local media and marketing firms, unsuccessfully. When I ran out of marketing firms to apply to, I decided to form my own. I partnered with one of my classmates at Wilkes, John Botch, and we formed Laser Burn Media. John had interned for a long time with a local online marketing firm and was Google Adwords certified. He knew all about designing and executing online search marketing campaigns. I knew quite a bit about building blogs, using social media as a marketing platform, and how to use the Internet to build relationships with a target audience.

Today, Laser Burn Media is one of the few online marketing firms operating in the Northeast Pennsylvania area. John and I know we operate in a rapidly evolving industry, where things are constantly changing. We spend a lot of time keeping up with all the latest ideas, strategies, and news related to online and social media marketing. Both of us are determined to become the very best at what we do. We want Laser Burn Media to be the go-to online marketing company for small and medium sized businesses. We take what we do very seriously, put in a lot of hours to get better at what we do and how we do it, and are determined to earn the trust and respect of our competitors, our clients, and our community. I co-founded Laser Burn Media because I want to be the absolute best at what I do and I want to do it on my terms.

-Dan Cheek
LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@laserburnmedia.com
Twitter.com/LaserBurnMedia
(570)795-9467

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Tags: Online Marketing, social marketing
Posted in Online Marketing | No Comments »

Understanding the Culture of Social Media Platforms

August 30th, 2010

Every social media platform (Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, etc.) has it’s own “culture.” Each of these platforms has it’s own language, its own customs, and its own personality. Paying attention to these cultures is critically important to anyone looking to use these social media platforms for marketing or brand building. Ignoring, or not properly understanding, the culture of a particular platform will make your marketing efforts suffer. And you’ll look silly, and will be ignored, in the process.

Understanding the culture of a particular social media platform is no different than understanding the culture of another group, city, business, or country. By that, I mean that it requires a lot of listening and observation. When I was in the Army, I was stationed in South Korea for fourteen months. During my time there, one of the most valuable lessons I learned was how to appreciate a different culture. There were many things about the South Korean culture that, at first, didn’t make any sense to me. For a 21 year old kid, it was a lot to take in. Over time, however, I did learn to accept and appreciate the culture there. Once I decided to make the effort to learn and experience as much as I could about the South Korean society, my time there became much more rewarding and enjoyable. It’s no different when it comes to understanding and operating on a social media platform.

To give a better idea of what I’m talking about when I refer to a social media platform’s culture, let’s use Twitter as an example. Twitter represents a community of 200 million users who communicate with each other in 140 characters or less. Certain symbols and abbreviations (@, #, RT, etc) have taken on special meaning and they have adopted unique customs like Follow Friday and Music Monday. The communication across Twitter is rapid-fire, with many users sending multiple updates an hour. Compare that with Facebook, where most users rarely post more than three times a day. Someone who’s attempting to use Twitter to market a brand or business had better be well versed in the culture of the platform. Otherwise, they will be quickly ignored for the same reason that telemarketers are widely ignored.

So does this mean that your marketing department needs to enlist a sociologist to help you navigate social media? No. However, it does mean that before any campaign is launched across any social media platform, time and care must be taken to understand the culture of that platform. Anyone looking to use any social platform for marketing purposes needs to understand who uses that platform, how they use it, and how best to interact and build a relationship with its community. Otherwise, you’ll just be wasting a lot of time with little to show for it.

-Dan Cheek
LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@laserburnmedia.com
Twitter.com/LaserBurnMedia
(570)795-9467

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Tags: Facebook, social marketing, social media, Twitter
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How to Not Use Twitter

August 18th, 2010

Twitter represents one of the most dynamic and powerful communication tools currently available to the masses. The service makes it easy for almost anyone to quickly share information with large numbers of people. It allows for a dialogue across continents, government censors (sometimes), and platforms (web, phone, app, etc). Updates are sent and received in real time, allowing for communication at a speed that, when you think about it, is really amazing. All of this said, Twitter remains a tool. And, like any tool, the user needs to take care not to misuse it.

This is especially true in marketing. Yes, when used correctly and intelligently, Twitter can represent a hugely powerful marketing communication tool. However, it’s easy to go the other way, as well, and really end up screwing yourself and your brand. In an effort to help you avoid this disastrous fate, here are some tips that should be followed to keep you and your brand from falling into common pitfalls.

Don’t spam people. If you want your audience to quickly ignore and block you on Twitter, just send out endless amounts of links across Twitter. People don’t like that, they don’t fall for it, and they aren’t going to take you seriously if you do this. It’s better to not Tweet at all than use it as a mass spamming tool. Just don’t do it.
Don’t blindly follow thousands of people hoping they follow you back. This little trick might get you a few dozen, maybe even a few hundred, followers. However, they aren’t going to be quality followers. Chances are, they’re either spambots or people trying to do exactly what you’re doing. Either way, these type of followers aren’t going to be paying attention to what you’re Tweeting and they’re just going to clog up your Twitter feed with useless jibber-jabber.
Send Tweets that people can understand. Many people and brands, in an effort to stay within or under the 140 character limit, will shorten words by replacing them with symbols or think it would be smart to remove all the vowels from every word. And while this might result in a Tweet that meets the character limit, it also results in something that no one is capable of understanding. At least not easily. And people aren’t going to waste time trying to figure out what the hell you’re talking about. Again, you’ll be ignored.
Don’t overuse hashtags (#). Yes, adding a hashtag to your Tweets can sometimes make it easier for other to stumble across them and make them available to a larger, ongoing conversation. However, adding more than two hashtags makes your Tweet look stupid, spammy, and mindless. If your Tweets are relevant, people will notice. Over-hashtagging just comes across as amateurish and annoying. Don’t do it.
Don’t RT someone’s RT who is sending a RT from someone else. You know what this is? It’s the equivalent of getting an email that contains the subject line of “FW: FW; FW: FW: FW: Funny Picture!” I don’t open those emails because I know it’s probably not that funny and possibly a virus. I don’t put much value in tweets that contain multiple “RTs”, either.

These are just some simple rules that, if followed, will help ensure that people take your Tweets a little more seriously. They will also keep you from getting a reputation as being annoying or a spammer. As I said, the upside to Twitter is massive and if used correctly, it can add great value to your marketing efforts. You just have to think before you Tweet.

-Dan Cheek
LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@laserburnmedia.com
Twitter.com/LaserBurnMedia
(570)795-9467

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Tags: social media, tweet, Twitter
Posted in Social Marketing Strategy, Twitter | No Comments »

What I Learned at Toys R Us and Best Buy

August 17th, 2010

While I was still in college, between my junior and senior year, I got a Summer job at Toys R Us. Right after I graduated college, I began working at Best Buy. I learned a lot from both companies. I learned about leadership, the selling process, team work, and customer service. I also learned valuable lessons about marketing, customer service, and running a business. These are the lessons I want to talk about now.

Toys R Us was, hands down, the worst job I ever had. The pay was horrible, the management and store leadership was incompetent, employee morale was non-existent, and customer service wasn’t even a consideration. I ended up working there a week and then, disgusted, I just stopped showing up. I received no training (well, I did watch a video explaining how to clean up blood and spilled cleaning chemicals), no one showed me around the store, and store management treated me as if they didn’t care if I showed up the next day or not. It was common for employees to argue with one another in front of customers, for leadership to scold employees in front of other employees, and for managers to argue with one another in front of all of the above. In one week, I learned a lot about how to not run a business, how to be a horrible boss, and how to be a lousy employee.

Upon graduating business school from Wilkes University, I found myself trying to get a job in one of the worst economies in a long time. I had a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration, with a concentration in Marketing, and I couldn’t find a job. I had also, right after graduating, gotten married and moved into a new apartment with my wife. I needed a job…quickly. Best Buy provided me that opportunity. My only other experience with retail was at Toys R Us, and as you can imagine, I was expecting the worst. Best Buy, however, was an entirely different experience, for the better.

I worked at Best Buy for about six months, the whole time selling computers and computer accessories. Unlike Toys R Us, which was about as unorganized as possible, Best Buy was very structured. I received constant training on selling, customer service, merchandise, and store policy. Every morning, everyone in the store was briefed about the sales goals for the day, week, and month and provided an update with how we were progressing against those goals. We knew how much we were selling, what we were selling, and who we were selling it to. We knew which items provided the highest margin for the store, and which items we made almost no profit on. Store leadership was engaged, led by example, and ensured that everyone was on the same page. I enjoyed working there and learned a lot from the experience.

As I work with clients and help them with their online and social marketing efforts, I am constantly remind of what I learned from my time as an employee of these two retailers. Here are three examples of what I learned and how I apply it today at Laser Burn Media….

Best Buy taught me the importance of building relationships with customers. People could buy computers from a lot of different places, including the store right next door to Best Buy. So why did they buy from us? Because we were trained and encouraged to develop relationships with our customers. We took the time to find out what they needed and then found solutions to meet those needs. One time, I was talking with a customer for over an hour about her computing needs and what options she had available and what would work best for her. She then told me that she had just purchased a computer from one of our competitors, but after talking with me, was going to go return it, come back, and buy a computer from Best Buy. And she did. When done right, that’s what social marketing can do.
Both Best Buy and Toys R Us taught me the importance of being an expert at what you do. At Toys R Us, I remember feeling overwhelmingly frustrated about the fact that store leadership would, at random, assign me to work in a certain department without taking the time to ensure that I knew anything about what I was supposed to be selling. Customers would ask me questions about this toy or that video game and I would just kind of have to fake my way through it. Sometimes I was able to help the customer, most times I wasn’t and just ended up looking stupid and useless. I never want to feel that way again and am dedicated, every day, to learning as much as I can about online marketing and social media. And with as fast paced and rapidly evolving as this industry is, this is something that is critical, in my experience.
At Best Buy, I learned the value in building your business around the customer. Everything we did revolved around the customer. Making them feel welcome, identifying their needs, and then having the knowledge and products to meet those needs. Toys R Us provided an example of what happens when you build a business around a product. Their strategy seemed to be stuff a big store full of toys, hope this generates traffic, and then hope that enough of that traffic is converted into buyers. This type of marketing strategy struck me as wasteful and highly inefficient, leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. Marketing efforts should be built around the customer and her needs, not around a product and its features.

Best Buy and Toys R Us provided me with two very different experiences and presented two very different business philosophies. In my opinion, Toys R Us is lucky to still be in business. I would never shop there unless I absolutely had to, as my one week of working there was enough to make me never want to step foot in any of its stores ever again. Best Buy showed me, first hand, the power of relationship building in business and how important it is to focus on identifying needs and developing solutions to meet those needs. I’m glad that I had the opportunity to work for both of these companies, as it provided me with more than a paycheck. Both employers provided me with valuable business and marketing skills that I use everyday at Laser Burn Media.

-Dan Cheek
LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@laserburnemdia.com
Twitter.com/LaserBurnMedia
(570)795-9467

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Tags: best buy, customer service, social media, toys r us
Posted in Social Marketing Strategy | No Comments »

Shut Up and Listen

August 11th, 2010

No offense. And, no, I haven’t lost my mind like a certain JetBlue steward. What I was trying to get at with the title of the post is that, as marketers, business owners, customer service people, employees and employers, it’s important to listen. Too often, we become fixated on our own message. We want people to hear what we’re saying, read what we’re writing, see what we’re producing, and buy our stuff. However, it is critical to take the time to, well, shut up and listen.

Listen to your customers. Your social media efforts should not be simply about using Facebook and Twitter to shove your marketing stuff down peoples’ throats. Instead, and this is where a lot of businesses and brands get it wrong, social media should be fixated on building relationships with your target audience. And, as any marriage councilor will tell you, listening is a key part of building relationships. If you’re not listening to what your customers and potential customers are saying, then how do you know what they want and need? How do you know what their concerns are? How do you know what they’re saying about you, your competitors? Do they understand what you’re selling or why what value your goods or service have to them? If you’re not listening, you have no way of knowing any of this for sure. Listen to your customers, take a moment to understand what they’re saying and why they’re saying it, and then respond.

Listen to your employees. Hopefully, you don’t hire stupid people. And if we can agree that you hire intelligent people, then it makes sense that you should probably listen to what they’re saying. Give your people access to Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn (at this point, I realize all of the HR people in the crown just stopped reading and now think I’m on drugs). And don’t just give them access, interact with them across these platforms. Ask questions, answer questions, share information, gather feedback, all that good stuff. Social media platforms represent one of the most powerful communication technologies in the history of mankind. Just like you do with your customers, use social media to listen to what your employees are saying (and I don’t mean spy on them), process that information, and then respond. The smart people, who you hired and pay to work for you, will appreciate it and can help you make your business better.

Listen to your competitors. Because, like your employees, your competitors are smart, too. Only they’re not looking to help make you money. They’re looking to take it away from you. Your competitors, as you read this, are huddled up with all of the smart people that they have working for them, and they are plotting your doom. They are planning on how best to steal your customers, steal your market share, and defeat you. So, yeah, you should probably pay attention to what they’re saying. Follow them on Twitter, friend them on Facebook and FourSquare, and add them to your LinkedIn network. Listen to what they are saying, how often they are saying it, and who they’re saying it to. You don’t have to say anything back to them (although that is fun, from time to time), but you should certainly be aware of what your competition is saying.

By using social media to actively listen to your customers, your employees, and your competitors, your social media efforts will become much more focused, more relevant, and more intelligent. Your business will become more dynamic and will be able to respond much more quickly to changing market conditions. You will,very quickly, learn what part of your marketing message is working and which parts can be improved. All of this starts with listening. So sit back, shut up, and listen to what everyone is talking about.

If you business or brand would like help in using social media to make your organization a better, more active listener, Laser Burn Media can help. Our online and social media professionals can work with you to develop and execute a social marketing strategy. Laser Bun Media specializes in working with small and medium sized businesses and are capable of working with almost any marketing budget. If you would like more information on how we can help your business, please don’t hesitate to CONTACT US directly.

-Dan Cheek
LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@laserburnmedia.com
Twitter.com/LaserBurnMedia
(570)795-9467

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Tags: listen, social media
Posted in Business Advice, Social Marketing Strategy | No Comments »

Social Media: No Longer Optional

August 6th, 2010

It used to be that the Internet was used primarily to look up information. That’s changing. Today, an increasing number of people are using the Internet to connect with people. The Internet is no longer slow and accessible only through big, clunky computers. Today, the Internet is fast and accessible through any number of highly portable devices. People carry the Internet with them and it allows them to instantly connect with other people through a large number of social media platforms. The Internet is increasingly becoming more social.

Consider the following:

So why should you, as a business owner or marketer, care about all of this? Because it shows that people are increasingly integrating the Internet into their lives. They are now tapping their social networks for everything, from helping with purchasing decisions to finding a date for Saturday night, and everything in between. Businesses that can find a way to integrate themselves into their target audience’s social networks have a huge competitive advantage over those that do not. Inc.com recently ran an article spotlighting the importance of social media as a business tool. To quote directly from the article (full version can be found HERE)…

“When so many people are turning to the Internet to find soul mates, you can rest assured they are looking online for everything else – from their next pair of Oakleys to a new optometrist – and if you are a business seeking customers, you are well-advised to look online, too. You’ve heard it before: Social media is no longer an option; it’s a necessity.”

A business that doesn’t use Social Media to spread it’s message is wasting a huge opportunity. People are figuring out what to buy, where to hang out, and which service to try by tapping into their Social Media networks. So why are you still spending money on placing ads on TV, on billboards, and on the radio? By participating in Social Media, your business or brand has an opportunity to interact with current and potential customers. You can provide value to them by providing information when they’re looking for it, where they’re looking for it. You can gather their thoughts on your product, your competitors, and hear their concerns. You can then adjust and respond. Social Media allows to build meaningful, valuable relationships with your target audience where they are, where ever they are. No matter how big you make it, a billboard or newspaper ad can not do that.

Social Media isn’t some flashy new fad. It represents a shift in the way people gather information and interact with each other. Businesses who adapt themselves to become more social are going to have a huge advantage over the ones who choose to ignore the trend. As people increasingly use Social Media to help with purchasing decisions, the effectiveness of traditional media (print, television, radio) is going to decrease. Additionally, as fewer and fewer advertisers turn to traditional media to help share their message, these media companies will have to increase their prices for advertising just to remain profitable. So advertisers using traditional media will be spending more and getting less. Your customers and your competitors are embracing social media. Are you?

-Dan Cheek
LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@laserburnmedia.com
Twitter.com/LaserBurnMedia
(570)795-9467

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Tags: laser burn media, Online Marketing, social media, traditional media
Posted in Social Media in Society | No Comments »

Does Your Social Media Have a Strategy?

August 1st, 2010

It’s not uncommon for businesses, of all sizes, to have a social media presence. However, in my experience, having a well planned, carefully thought out strategy attached to that presence is far less common. There are many reasons for this, but the result is the same: Wasted opportunity. Not having a clear, focused social media strategy results in the Facebook pages and Twitter accounts belonging to thousands of brands and businesses to go largely unnoticed. Do not make this mistake as you contemplate adding a social media presence to your business or brand.

Here’s a mistake many business owners make: They set up an account for their business on some social media platform (Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, etc.) and then….not much else happens. Why? Because this is as far as the planning went. There was no, “and then” added to the strategy and, as a result, nothing more happens. The profile just kind of sits there, it’s updated sporadically, it collects a few fans and followers, and then it just goes silent. The business owner might then be inclined to shake her head in disgust, thinking that social media has failed her and her business. Just a waste of time. However, a closer examination will reveal that it wasn’t the social media platform that failed, it was the plan that failed.

So, as I said before, don’t let this happen to you. Take the time to ensure that your social media efforts aren’t flying blind, destined to achieve nothing. Here are some questions that you should ask yourself when fleshing out your social media efforts. As you answer these questions, you move from a rough idea to a strategy.

Why should my business have a social media presence?
Which social media platform(s) best suits my business?
How much time am I willing/able to devote to this per day, per week, per month?
What type of social media strategy do my competitors have?
How do I want to use social media (find new customers, build relationships with existing ones, build my brand identity, etc.)?
What are my criteria for success and how do I measure this?

These are just a few of the questions your social media plan should look to answer. It’s also important to keep in mind that once you have a social media strategy in place and are working at executing it, it is also critically important that you monitor its progress. Have a plan, but be willing to adapt. Identify what’s working, what’s not working, and where your areas of opportunity lie. Tracking your results and monitoring the data will allow you to make informed decisions and greatly increase the power and effectiveness of your social media efforts. These are the efforts that will lead to a a successful social media strategy and, ultimately, a stronger business.

Laser Burn Media can help your business develop and execute your social media strategy. Our social media professionals specialize in working with small and medium sized businesses and can work with you to develop a custom based solution for your online marketing needs. We can work with any budget and will sit down with you, answer all of your questions, address all of your concerns, and provide industry-leading customer service throughout. Laser Burn Media would be honored to work with you to help make your business stronger. All you have to do is ask.

-Dan Cheek
LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@laserburnmedia.com
Twitter.com/LaserBurnMedia
(570)795-9467

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Tags: online markting, social media strategy
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Why We Chose to Use Tumblr

July 27th, 2010

If you’re reading this, you already know that we have a blog. We’ve incorporated our blog into this site, which also serves as our main website. Considering this, it may seem a bit confusing to some as to why, as of two days ago, we have also set up a Tumblr account for Laser Burn Media. We decided to do this for a couple of reasons, which I’ll share with you now.

First, let me briefly explain what Tumblr is, as there are still many people who aren’t all that familiar with it. Tumblr is a free blogging platform that is designed to allow users to quickly post almost anything, links, photos, video, and even full blown blog posts, from almost anywhere. While not nearly as functional as WordPress (which powers this website), Tumblr isn’t meant to be. It’s essentially an online notebook that is great for quickly and easily sharing whatever you want to share and it can be done quickly and with very few key strokes. But that’s just my definition. Here’s how Tumblr describes themselves…

“Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything. Post text, photos, quotes, links, music, and videos, from your browser, phone, desktop, email, or wherever you happen to be. You can customize everything, from colors, to your theme’s HTML.”

Right, so now that we all know what Tumblr is, let me now explain why we decided that in addition to this blog, Laser Burn Media also could benefit from a Tumblr blog. For starters, we really love the idea of being able to shoot out quick Tumblr posts from anywhere, even from our cellphones. This has a lot of benefits to both us and our clients. It can serve as a virtual notebook and scrapbook. If, while out and about, we see something interesting or suddenly get hit with an interesting idea, we can quickly shoot it to Tumblr. Our Tumblr account then feeds that post with our Twitter account, automatically. The ability to rapidly and easily share almost any type of information from anywhere has too many obvious benefits to ignore. And, as our Tumblr is our “notebook”, it’s quite possible that a short Tumblr post will turn into a full blown, fully fleshed out post on this blog.

Tumblr also allows us to interact with an entire community that we might not otherwise have contact with. In addition to being a blogging platform, Tumblr is also a social networking site. Users can interact with each other, follow fellow Tumblr blogs, and participate in a diverse community of online enthusiasts. As a business, having access to this community is something that is hugely valuable to us. We hope that our Tumblr blog will allow us to build our brand recognition, help us generate leads, and allow us to share industry information with other social media professionals. Simply put, Tumblr represents a community of users that we would be foolish to ignore.

Finally, there are real SEO (search engine optimization) benefits to having multiple sites all pointing to each other. When determining where your site will show up in a search results (ie #3 on page 1 of the results or #7 on page 72716), Google places a high value on the number of other, quality sites linking to your site. Google is also placing an increasingly higher value on links coming from social networking sites, as well. So having a Tumblr blog will potentially help us in both of those areas. Having multiple sites (this one, our Tumblr blog, our Twitter profile, and our Facebook page) creates a large “net” across the internet and since all the sites link to each other, it can help us drive traffic to the sites, build the ever-valuable back links, and potentially increase our relationship with our audience. The more people we interact with, the more likely we are to earn links to our sites, and the better our sites will then perform in search results. Or so the theory goes, anyway.

Tumblr is, by itself, a very powerful and incredibly useful social media and blogging platform. We believe that by combining that versatility, and the large community of users associated with it, with our other web properties will pay large dividends for our company. Additionally, by using both a full blown publishing platform (WordPress) and the quick and nimble Tumblr platform, we can create a deeper level of engagement with our audience, providing them with a wide range of content and have the ability to do so from almost anywhere. Tumblr adds an exciting and powerful tool to our toolbox that will allow us to do our job better. Considering all of this, setting up a Tumblr blog was something we couldn’t pass up.

If your business or brand would like help with increasing your presence on the web, providing you with a way to build and leverge powerful relationships with your target markets, please consider enlisting the services of Laser Burn Media. Our professionals will work with you to develop a custom solution to your online and social marketing needs. We specialize in working with small and medium sized businesses and can work with almost any budget. Best of all, we’ll sit down with you, answer all of your questions and address all of your concerns before we accept a dime from you. What do you have to lose?

-Dan Cheek
LaserBurnMedia.com
dan@laserburnmedia.com
Twitter.com/LaserBurnMedia
(570)795-9467

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Tags: blog, laser burn media, seo, social media, tumblr, wordpress
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