Land Surveyor Blogs

Sadly, I discovered something a couple of days ago while checking out my Klout Score. I had recently unfollowed a LOT of land surveyors on Twitter due to inactivity or simply lack of use and noticed that my score actually went up! I try to not unfollow surveyors who are on this network, but I am seeing that if I were to do so, I'd probably go up in score another 10 points. Why does this matter? Because the ever fluctuating Klout measures a person or entity's overall influence on the web, taking into account all of their social media profiles and measuring engagement. What this told me is that land surveyors need to get on the ball with how they promote themselves and their companies.  At the end of this post, I will tell you who has the highest Klout of any surveying related profile on the web...

We all know that land surveyors and surveying companies are going through a LOT of changes right now, especially when considering the social media learning curve.  There are loads of tips around LSU for ways to improve your company's web presence, but today I'm going to talk about a few of the mistakes you may be making and how to improve them and thus, get your company on the right track with your marketing strategy.  

Indeed,mistakes are a healthy part of every marketing strategy, and they're certainly nothing to be ashamed of in the new(ish) world of social media. That said, being sloppy is a whole different story.  Let's whip your online presence into shape.

What makes the following social media mistakes particularly sloppy is that they cost little time and no money to fix, have enormous returns, and as such are huge misses to your overall business marketing. Surveyors, please stop being sloppy about the way your business is portrayed online, and make damn sure you're not making any of these 11 social media mistakes which may be costing you and your company money, by leaving it on the table.

11 Sloppy Social Media Mistakes You May Be Making

1. Failing to use the social media accounts you set up. When someone out there searches for a land surveyor in your area, stumbles across you and sees an abandoned social media business account, it basically just looks like that company doesn't have its ducks in a row. Not only that, it's even more important to keep those accounts up to date if you're linking to them from your website and blog. Whatever you do, don't just set it and forget it. If you're going to have an account on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+, devote the little bit of effort that it takes into keeping it engaging and regularly updated with fresh content.  Syncing your Facebook and Twitter accounts with your Land Surveyors United profile makes this super simple, as you can simply engage and share things about your company on LSU and we automatically send out the updates to your account for you.
2. Failing to link back to your website in social media profiles.  YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ all allow you to link back to your website. There is simply no excuse for not doing this.  Not only is that five more links into your site, it's five more ways your hundreds or thousands of followers can get back to your site to find more information about your products and services.  Placing the link in your Land Surveyors United profile
3. Failing to claim your accounts. Twitter handles get snatched up like wildfire, especially if your company name is somewhat common. And if you're a big brand name, you don't want to see Bank of America's Google+ snafu happen to you-you'll be sorry. If you are lazy about your claim and fail to lock-in your name on social networks, you miss out on great opportunities to rank for keywords in organic search, risk running into brand and PR issues down the road, and will ultimately end up having to compromise the name you select.  Sadly, many of the land surveying related profile names on Twitter like @landsurveyors and @land_surveyors for example are owned by people who have fallen victim to number one above.  Many of these great names were taken by people who didn't know what they were doing and never actually shared or tweeted anything at all....shame on you. Our twitter name for LSU (@landsurveyorsu) was actually one letter too long to be @landsurveyorsunited, but due to the fact that we have recently begun Land Surveyors University, it all works out just peachy.
4. Failing to separate your business accounts and personal accounts. You've got to separate the two- it is necessary. Companies that do not do this are not only building a disjointed and confusing brand experience, they're ultimately not making the most of their company's online presence. Public business accounts can return results in search engines and publish content tailored specifically to customers and prospects. Furthermore, they make for a clean, forward-facing and identifiable social media presence for your business.
5. Failing to explicitly asking someone to engage with your content. As you see on LSU, you have plenty of ways to engage every piece of content on the site.  Why?  Because sharing specific types of content with others publically will gradually show the search engines the type of subjects to associate your account with.  Over time, the sharing of 'surveying related' content with the world will boost your profile or your company's profile higher and higher into the search engines for those keywords, thus helping you to smoke your competition when anyone searches for 'land surveying' in your area.  Also remember that you'll never get followers on other social media channels simply by following or liking them.  You have to have content being shared on your profile for anyone to ever actually find you.  If you want someone to like, comment, retweet, or watch, just ask.
6. Failing to Include a picture. This should actually be number one and it seems basic, but when your account shows up without a photo or profile image on a social network, it looks and will be seen as abandoned and unofficial. In fact, you might as well not been there at all.  Are you invisible?  Is your company closed for business?  Social media is designed to be personal and engaging, so including a profile picture, whether of a person or a logo, will automatically give your profile some life and legs. If you don't believe me, Twitter accounts with a picture have 10 times more followers than those without one. Now imagine you posted some really helpful information or surveying tutorial onthe network and it managed to make it to the top search result on Google (and it happens often), then someone in search of your services finds the post and wants to contact you to do business, but you have no professional image for your profile.  Its very simple to understand why they might continue searching for a surveyor who cares about their business or  more importantly, details.
   
7. Failing to have a blog subscription and RSS feed set up. If you're putting out helpful content and useful information, why wouldn't you offer your readers or stumblers an easy way to subscribe and be notified whenever you post something new? A subscription field on your blog is an easy way to build an opt-in database for lead nurturing, and an RSS feed will get you repeat visitors to your site that will help build your blog a loyal following.  Land Surveyors United is not a blog, it is a social network which has been retrofitted into a social support system, so offering a simple subscription form isn't quite appropriate. Instead, we publish a digest.  Nevertheless, if you have a blog that you maintain about surveying or your life as a surveyor, you can easily import your blog's RSS feed into your profile page using the RSS module.
8. Failing to place social media follow and share buttons on your website. What's the point in writing or publishing something if you do not offer a way to share it? Share buttons for all the social media accounts you use regularly should ALWAYS be included on your homepage and next to every piece of content you submit or write, especially your blog. For example, every single solitary piece of content on Land Surveyors United includes buttons to simply Like, Send to a friend, Share on Linkedin or Tweet the content so that your followers gradually gain a better idea about you or your company. It may seem trivial, but  the simple act of sharing something you even marginally appreciate  increases the chances of your profile showing up in search engines for  the things that matter to you.  In the short term, sharing the  content you appreciate will gain you  more followers who are  interested in the exact same things you are, because they found you in search. Share and be shared.
9. Failing to include links in your tweets. What if you shared something and then someone Retweeted it, but you forgot to place a link in there somewhere? You wasted your time. A retweet is great, but a click is better. If you don't include links in your tweets, you're not driving new traffic to your site with your social media reach..You might say "But I only get 140 characters and that's not enough for links."  To that I say "Shorten It." On Land Surveyors United, every Facebook Like, Tweet Google +1 etc. automatically shortens the link to the content for you when it goes out, creating a link back to the content.  Write a post and drop a link to your website in the end, then tweet it and watch people come to your website via the link on the post which was linked back to from the tweet. Its magically easy to build your reputation online like that. TIP: When you update your status from the home page or your profile, drop a long link in there and it will ask you if you want to shorten it...it will do this for you.  For best results  , place your link 25% of the way into your tweet.
    
10. Failing to post updates with context. I hate to have to single anyone out, but I must for the sake of this point.  You may know of or are following our good friends at Lacy Surveying which just so happens to have the most followers of any surveying firm online.  Now considering the fact that  @lacysurveying has 25,809 followers presently, but only 40 tweets and NOT ONE of them are actually about surveying.  Imagine if they had helpful surveying related content rolling through their profile.  They'd conquer the world!  How did they get that many followers?  Perhaps they played the number 3 above correctly or maybe used some secret software to increase it.  Who knows!  The point is I've been on twitter since week one, but never came across their profile until recently because there is absolutely nothing about surveying in there and their last tweet was December of last year.  Instead of just throwing up a link to a blog post, include some commentary describing what's interesting about it. Studies have found that lengthy status updates show higher interaction rates than shorter ones, measuring from 1 to 450 characters and seeing higher interaction rates the higher the character count. Other studies have shown similar findings on Twitter, where the most clicks were received on tweets up to 130 characters.

 11.     Set up a Google+ Page if you havent: Imagine if you were one of the first to set up a profile on Facebook. You'd have so much more head-start than anyone else in the industry!   If you haven't set up a Google+ business page yet, you're missing out on  great opportunity to get in on a new social network in its infancy. Even better, the engagement with that page effects your search engine rankings, unlike Facebook.  Unlike companies with thousands of followers on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn, most of the Google+ landscape is ripe for the picking. Be the first in your industry to stake a claim instead of playing catch up later on.  Join in on the Land Surveyors United Goog+ page and share something interesting.

Who Has the Highest Klout in the Surveying Industry?

If you had to guess who has the highest Klout in the surveying industry, would you guess maybe Topcon or Trimble? Well you'd be wrong. Land Surveyors United (originally set up as ePalmetto back in 2007) actually has the highest measurable influence on the web according to Klout. If you can find one higher please let me know. I only say this because following and engaging with LSU on Google+ , twitter or facebook will actually do wonders for your social media influence. We always return the favor. 

Don't be embarrassed if you're failing at one of the above.  Its a learning process and if you're making any of these social media mistakes, shhh...we won't tell anybody about it...as long as you promise to go fix it. These are simple mistakes to make, but luckily, they are also super easy to remedy. And whether you have a weak  social media strategy or a robust one, fixing these social media mistakes is a guaranteed way to supplement your efforts.   I took this time to explain this to you because no one else in this industry will.  Everyone other than Land Surveyors United seems to be so preoccupied with racing to the top that they couldn't care less if you were there with them.  I want ALL surveying companies to be at the top of search engines in thier area, so please do not hesitate to ask any questions you might have and i'll do my best to point you in the right direction.  Good Luck out There!