Sign Up for Google Reader and Alerts

Each person at the Boot Camp signed up for Google Reader and Google Alerts. We did this so each person could clearly and easily see how the things they posted on line were real and being reviewed or noticed by a variety of online services.

Google Reader is a way to organize your blog reading. Since everyone is going to be creating their own blog, setting up Reader will be a way they can see a service notice their blog posting right away. They will also go back and subscribe to the other blogs created in the class to see how tracking other blogs works, looks and feels.

To set up Google Reader you go to your Google Account. If Reader is not one of the options you already see, scroll down and click on more options. Select Reader from the options.

Click on Reader. Click on the "Add a subscription" button in the top left area. Cut and paste or type in the blog's web address - url.

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You have now added and account blog subscription. You can add as many as you want.

Add Alerts the same way. Once you have added Alerts to your account, click on the Alerts link and add any words or phrase. Be aware that common words or popular phrase may bury you in results. Setting an alert for the word "insurance" would probably send so many results as to not be useful. Enter the name of your agency, your name, your competitor's name will probably be very useful.

What is Google Page Rank

Google Page Rank is a value assigned by Google to represent in a rough way the importance of your web page. Notice I did not say web site. Only web pages have a Page Rank.

All other things being equal, the page with the highest Page Rank for a search term or phrase will be the first page displayed in Google Search results.

Here is Google's explanation from their own web site...

• PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.
  PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance.
  
  
• Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Our search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), our technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. We also analyze the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query.
  

You can find you page rank by adding the Google Toolbar to your browser. This will also show you the page rank of every web page you are on as you are on that page.

For those who do not what to add a toolbar, there are sites such as PRChecker.info that will tell you any pages page rank.

Find and Claim Yourself Online

To get the Boot Camp started we first had everyone Google their name or their business' name. We used this format for the..

1. inside quote marks, you name or business name
2. followed by a space, a plus sign, a space and then your home city and state

Here is the picture of one such search.

Notice where this shows the number of responses? You can track the changes in this number as a very rough guide to how present you are on the web.


The quote marks limit the search to results with just those words in them, as opposed to results that have either of those words in them. The reason I don't put the city and state in quotes is I want the results with either of those words.

Next Everyone went to their Google account Profile and if they had not already done so, they entered some basic information on their profile and then claimed their Google Profile URL. This is at the bottom of the prfile page.

Finally, to complete our first set of tasks, everyone claimed their local address. This is done through Google Local Business.

More tomorrow. This will take a dozen or so posts.

More Local Business Videos

Mashable has a great post on local business use of videos.

Here is my favorite...




You could do this!

The post at http://mashable.com/2009/11/14/small-business-video/ has four more great examples.

Re-Cap of 1st Agency Boot Camp

This is a long post and a rough re-cap of the first agency boot camp.

Over the next two weeks I will be posting details with pictures and arrows  explaining each of the things we did. I will organize them in a link list on the right hand side of this post so they will remain easy to find for anyone wanting to run their own Agency Boot Camp without me, or for those who may be able to learn online without attending a boot camp.

Here we go....

First Boot Camp Recap

8 attendees

5 agencices

1 husband and wife team

4 individual agency owners

1 marketing person from Jenesis - -agency management system

1 marketing rep from GMAC insurance

Started the class about 9:10AM.

Starting at 9, I showed a Youtube video of the Evian babies ad just to sort of settle the room and wait for the last 2 folks to arrive – bad traffic jam.

Began by asking questions about what level folks were at.

Who has a web site – 3 of 5 agencies had one.

Who updated their own website – no one.

Who had a blog, Google Reader, Google Alerts, Google analytics, twitter, YouTube accounts – one or two Twitter accounts but not really used.

Who had Facebook – a couple but not really used.

Focused all morning on actual hands on doing – the mechanics of the tasks.

First I had everyone Google their names and /or their business names. I showed them how to search with quotation marks and plus signs. The search was “name name” + city, state. Most folks did not know about searching with quote marks or plus signs.

I had them either save the results pages or write down the number of results to compare to later searches.

Next I explained Page Rank to them. How to build it, what is realistic, how to know what yours is, how to know what your competitors is.

Then I spoke about how Google determines relevance in search, about the importance of exact search words match. I told them about how in July my ACORD Forms site was found using 6700 unique search words.

The top 5 words or phrases were 22% of visits, the top 100 were 52% of visits, the bottom 6600 were all unique searches and 48% of my traffic – sales.

I explained this long tail of search, finding niche phrases, combined with being local is how a small business beats a national business in search and online.

I had every one go to their Google account and complete their Profile. The purpose was to claim their name, and/or their business name – or both.

Next I had every one claim their address on Google maps. I did not remember exactly how to do this so I asked them to use Google to search for “claim your address on Google maps”. This taught everyone I do not have all the answers, but I know how to find them and now they know how to find them also.

I spent a lot of time – most of my time – going from person to person to be certain they were all able to complete each task.

I showed them my blog – DukeThinkingOnline.blogspot.com. I pointed out the ClustrMaps gadget.

I had them go back to their Google account and sign up for Reader and add a blog or two to the reader to see how it works.

I had them sign up for Google Alerts. They entered their names, their business names, their competitor’s names – whatever they wanted, for a comprehensive search and daily alert emails.

We took a break at 10:30AM

Everyone created their own Blog account through Google blogspot.

It took about 10 to 15 minutes of the meeting for folks to decide on their blog’s name. I should have anticipated this. Going forward I will ask folks to have already selected a name for their blog and save this time.

First part of sign up was spent demonstrating How you can add a sub-title, move things in the layout around, choose a template.

Showed how to add gadgets to your Blog page layout.

Talked a little bit about adding Adsense – how to monetize a blog or web page. This lead to a discussion of affiliate marketing in general. Explained how this works and mentioned that ClickBank and Commission Junction are the two large, reputable firms in this space. Mentioned that you could sign up as the affiliate of several insurance companies and get paid a commission for sending visitors to their site to get quotes. You are much better off selling your own service – but this is an option.

Spent small amount of time showing settings – mainly the setting for comment management.

Discussed connection between headline or each individual post and the tags – keywords.

Showed how to type in text, upload a picture.

Talked about how Blogger loads all pictures to the top of the page and how to move them – drag or cut and paste and then delete the one on top of page.

Save post before posting. Preview post.

I had everyone go to YouTube and showed them where the embed code is located on all YouTube pages.

Everyone copied the embed code from a video, then went back to their Blog editor, went to the HTML tab and learned how to paste the embed code into their blog.

Then they went to the compose tab and the preview and saw the video embedded in their blog.

Everyone posted their blog entry.

I had everyone pass around their blog’s name to each other and go visit those blogs. This made everyone realize they had just actually added something real to the web – live.

Folks commented on each other’s blogs.

Folks went to check their Google alerts and Reader accounts. They added their blog’s url to their reader and Alerts accounts. They added others in the class also. They saw how instantly the Reader updated to show the latest posts. This was a big eye opener – it made them believe.

I had everyone go to Twitter and either sign up or sign in.

I discussed Twitter in general. I showed them how to use url shorteners and the pluses and minus’s of this.

I had each person tweet about one of the blogs they had created or commented on with a url shortener in the tweet for tracking.

I had them follow each other and retweet each other.

I mentioned direct messaging.

I talked about how people use Twitter to follow news, etc. How they can use it to drive site traffic. I did not have time before lunch to talk about how to find people in your community on Twitter. I forgot to talk about how to find local blogs to comment on and begin to become a part of your local community.

We broke lunch right at noon. Since we were meeting on the cheap, we all went out for lunch.

We started back around 1:10PM – a little late.

We had a discussion about how to place your main web site url in your comments, in your properties section of any picture you put on your web pages, in the description of your video files and in your YouTube videos.

The benefit being all of this leads to a higher link back count for Google rankings.

This led to a discussion on how search engines and specifically Google understand your page and decide what to show first for search results.

This turned into a discussion of how to build a three tier page structure for maximizing your search results and findability.

After this discussion I showed the class how I use SiteSell to build web pages without having to program.

Then how SiteSell gives me a good bit of analytics for understanding and improving my web page results. It is not that everyone needs to use SiteSell, it is to show the types of things you can get to allow you to control your own web site instead of relying on a third party.

Finally we got around to using our Flip Video cameras.

Everyone recorded a short video – nothing special – just something to have to go through the process once.

Everyone plugged their camera into their PC and exported the file to their desktop.

They logged on to their YouTube account and uploaded the video. They added a description – including a url – and added tags – YouTubes version of keywords.

They cut and pasted the embed code into a blog posting.

I talked about using Camtasia to make somewhat more elaborate videos – better editing and voice over.

I talked about how inexpensive the limited hardware I use for good quality voice over is and how to use the free program audacity for sound recording works

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We took a break at 2:30 for 15 minutes

After the break I started talking about what you should expect your web site to do and what you needed to think about for your customers experience on your web site.

I asked them what was the first thing they said to some one who came into their current office. They all said some version of “How can I help you”

I told them this was exactly what they needed to say to a visitor to their home page on their web site.

We discussed the fact that nobody really comes to your web site to get your phone number. They come to your web site to get something done. The same things they come to your office for or call you on the phone for. So I asked people what it was that made people call them or come see them.

We created a list of these reasons. Then we began talking about how to provide a solution to each of these needs to a web site visitor.

I said I felt most of their web visitors would be existing customers and so providing the service needs of these customers was the single most important thing – better service = better retention + maybe cross selling.

We talked about the need to be able to not just give a quote online, but to make the full sale online.

I had Rick Pegram talk extensively about his experience with ZipRater and ZipDealer and how this “end to end” online ability to make sales 24/7/365 has changed his world.

Both Rick and I agreed that starting the move to having a real online business was slow at first, but that it is realistic to think you can build your online presence over a 24 month period to a point where it generates more than ½ of your revenue. That means it generates as much as you do now without it.

I briefly showed SehHey as a way to provide customers with secure access to their policy information and forms they needed. This was very brief.

We talked about what might be next.

Several folks thought the one day format was great because they had been exposed to so much, they wanted time to try things out and absorb things. But they all seemed to think getting together in 4, 6 or 8 weeks for a next meeting would be very valuable.

They wanted to have worked on some things enough to know what to ask about. They wanted to share with each other what they had done and the results. They wanted me to cover more things – they all knew how little we had scratched the surface and how things are changing so quickly.

We left around 4:45 PM I think it was a very useful day for all of us.

Agency Videos

NOTE: I am working on a complete write up of the Monday Boot Camp. I will post it over the weeekend. It will be in a format which will help others who did not attend.

Now - on to videos.

Most agents first videos seem to be things like...

1. The scene opens with the agent talking to the camera.
2. The agent says "I'm a great guy and I can save you money"
3. The video ends.

There are much beeter ways to do this.

As my college writing teacher used to say endlessly "Show me, don't tell me"

Your video should do one of two things...

1. Provide an answer to the questions "how to"
2. Tell a story

If you want people to believe you can save them money, get a written release from a customer you just sold a policy to and saved money, use that Flip Video camera to film that customer saying "Hi, I'm -------- and I just saved $xxx.00 buying my new insurance policy from "your name here"

Take a look at the way Gary Vaynerchuk does videos. He spent years perfecting this on his http://tv.winelibrary.com/ site. You will be hard pressed to beat his passion and style. But you should try.

First Boot Camp

I am excited to annouce the first agency boot camp.

Boot camp will take place Nov 9 at:

Holiday Inn Express
4912 South Miami Blvd
Durham, NC 27703
919 474-9800

Here is the outline for the class...

Goals of Agency Boot Camp – ABC

This is all about making money for your business.

The primary goal of Boot Camp is for you to actually do things – hands on experience – so you will be in control of your business’ future.

All the things we cover are designed to get you started making money from your online presence. You will extend your physical office to a new online office where your customers can get the same things done with you 24/7 online as they can now get done by coming to your physical office or calling you on the phone.

REQUIREMENTS FOR CLASS

You will need a wireless capable laptop or netbook. The entire class is hands on and depends on you being able to do things online during each session.

Active Gmail account before you get to class.

You will not need to learn how to do any programming. You do not need any technical knowledge beyond the basic ability to use a computer, browse the web, and use a word processing and spreadsheet program at a basic level.

Outline of Timeline

Day 1 – The Web as a Social Business Platform

9:00 to 10:15 – Check Google, Yahoo and Bing search to see how many results appear for your agency name and your agency’s lines of business. Hands on sign up for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google accounts, Blogspot, SehHey, Tweetdeck. Basics of how to use each of these services.

10:15 to 10:30 – Break

10:30 to 12:00 – Write your first blog post. Add a picture. Embed a video. Post your first tweet. Learn how to use url shorteners in Twitter and track results. Tweet about the blog post or web sites of others in the class.

12:00 to 1:00 – Lunch

1:00 to 2:15 – Create fan badge in Facebook for your business page. Become a fan of other attendees pages. Send message to fans. Include url shortner in message. Send update using Posterious. Check Facebook and Twitter to be sure it posted. Read posts from others in the class. Retweet. Check url click through rates.  Learn to use SehHey. Post documents to share. Send invitation. Accept invitation, etc.

2:15 to 2:30 - Break

2:30 to 3:45 – Defining your markets and your niches. Create spreadsheet for measuring your goals and results. How to design a web page and web site for sales and search. Web site analytics.

3:45 to 4:00 – Break

4:00 to 5:00 – Writing your web page to make sales.

Thanks to GMAC Insurance for sponsoring the camp so all can attend free of charge.