Well tonight I spent about 20 minutes on the Maxon Show Promoting Imperious Design and talking about social Media as a marketing platform for small businesses. This is a great way for businesses to compete with larger companies and with very cost effective strategies. I was able to record most of the conversation and it is here for your listening pleasure. Enjoy!
Listen to me on The Maxon Show
I will be on the maxon show tonight promoting social media marketing at 6pm Tune in online or on your SLC radio at k-talk 630am. Check out the show site The Maxon Show.com and fan page Facebook Fan Page you can listen live from the fan page (I set up that page). See our pricing structure at Social Media
Fantastic article by Justin Hale
http://utahpulse.com/featured_article/putting-social-back-social-media
Putting the Social back in Social Media
By Justin Hale
Social Media is by far the largest and probably the most misunderstood concept of this generation. I grew up in an age where, you either walked over to someone, wrote them a letter, or called them on the phone. Personal touches were important to me. If you took the time to write, or stop by, it showed a little pride in yourself. Phone calls were kept short, and the use of please and thank you were in great abundance. 
Then comes Social Media, the biggest change since e-mail and IM. Just like we have seen some losses in the personal touches of the tools of the past; it is important to remember what it teaches us as a reminder for our futures.
Hopefully, all of us have learned some etiquette. I have seen some mistakes from time to time and you can use this small list to clear up any confusion you might have left:
Social Media is to develop relationships of trust. Social Media is supposed to be social, not a forum for pure advertising, Spam, and other annoying practices.
Social Media is personal. This means you shape who you are on-line and off-line. Keep your dirty laundry to yourself, and business and family separate.
Social Media is about catering to interest. Watching TV as a status makes me snore, there is no big deal about that.
Social Media is collaboration. If you only post things about yourself, you are probably the only person looking at it.
Social Media is open. People from all walks of life will see, and may not understand what is being portrayed. For example, sarcasm never bodes well.
Social Media is about friendships. People like to hear from you about others too. Gratitude goes far.
Social Media is about quality experiences. People always have a wide variety of things to do make sure their time is well spent.
Social Media is about progress. It should be used to promote more than just awareness but to lead into action.
Social Media is interactive. Please treat as a two-way form of communication.
Social Media is about sincerity. Know words like: puffery, flattery, embellishments, and tales, yarns, and countless others and please refrain.
Social Media is about creating. You create an attitude, a reputation, a look, a message, a genre, a purpose, mission, etc. (People call this branding.)
Social Media is about targeting who you care about. By trying to say your audience is everyone, where in reality you are unable to touch anyone.
Social Media is about truth. You can’t spin, doctor, patch or change what really happened. It is always better to say, what you will do to fix it.
Social Media is a reference. What people say back to you, or whether you pay attention to them means a lot.
Social Media is the future. This is an integrating function to social skills, in being able to perform in the circles that one travels.
There will always be basics to remember, and the simple politeness of getting back to people. People is what makes life more enjoyable, and a little less lonely.
You want to spend your time with someone who is genuine and real, not just an avatar. Put the Social back in Social Media. Take care of your followers, and they in turn will care for you.
We have entered into a new realm of time. It is no longer the baby boomers that are strictly driving the economy. Studies are showing that it is a social media driven economy. If you are not into social media as a company then you are missing out on some great returns on your business. I have displayed a video here that illustrates the online generation! This is the economy for years to come. I hope that you enjoy these factoids as shown here. Pay attention. I had to watch it and pause it a couple of times to get the most out of it.
Awesome Facebook Advertising post from Nick O’Neill last March on allfacebook.com
Over the past few years Facebook has witnessed a dramatic rise in new user adoption and with that rise has come the opportunity for brands to interact directly with existing customers and engage new ones. At the end of 2007, Facebook announced the launch of Facebook Pages and last week they launched a revised edition which includes a number of significant upgrades. This week, those pages will be going live for all. There are numerous ways for brands to leverage Facebook but the overall branded experience is becoming increasingly integrated into a single offering as the new Pages product highlights. So what are the primary benefits and changes for the new branded pages?
Pages Are Profiles for Brands
One of the primary reasons for launching Facebook Pages was that many companies were using user profiles for their companies, in turn violating Facebook’s terms of service. While I’m sure there were many other reasons for launching Pages, the easiest way to understand them is through viewing them as “Profiles for Brands”. This means brand pages can essentially do everything that users can do.
Pages Have Access to Users’ Feeds
This is probably the single most important feature within the new Facebook Pages product. Many in the press have described this as Twitter for Facebook. It’s an accurate description but for those that don’t understand what Twitter is, this makes things more confusing. Essentially when Facebook users become a “fan” of your branded page, they will be notified of your status updates anytime you update the status on your brand page, via the primary news feed on the homepage.
The News Feed is Now Real Time
This is actually an update to the site homepage but it will have a significant impact. Previously Facebook cached the homepage for at least 15 minutes in addition to automatically filtering all feed stories. This means that any feed story which made it to the news feed previously would stay there for a fairly long period of time. The news feed has since been redesigned to stream stories instead displaying the automatically filtered stories as “Highlights” on the right hand side of the page.
Pages Can Integrate Multiple Applications
Earlier this week I posted the example of a robust branded Facebook page which integrates an application into the experience. Pages could previously integrate basic applications but now there is space to integrate applications that are just as robust as those with standalone canvas pages. Not sure of what “canvas pages” are? A canvas page is the space in Facebook below the Facebook header and to the left of Facebook’s sidebar ads. Essentially you can now post applications which take up the full width of the page. I’ve gone ahead and posted a photo of the canvas area in the photo below.
Brands Can Join the Conversation
Social media has always been about joining the conversation and for the first time ever on Facebook, brands can now be a significant part of the conversation. Just as I mentioned earlier, these conversations can take place within a Facebook Page as well as in a user’s news feed. I can’t emphasize how important joining the conversation is. While your social media strategy should continue to include other outlets (blogs, Twitter, etc), Facebook should now attract much more attention since there is the potential for conversation.
As I mentioned in the introduction, Facebook Pages present a massive opportunity for brands to directly engage with their existing and future customers, even the occasional passer-by. This conversation brings with it the power that all other social media tools and platforms provide which is why this latest release of Facebook Pages is so important for brands. Yes, changes will come to the Pages product over the coming months and years but as many early adopters know, it’s often best to wait until the second version of a product arrives. Now that the second version of Facebook Pages has launched, it’s time for you to take your brand to the next level.
Below, I have outlined 10 tips for creating engaging Facebook Pages. These are only the top 10 and there are many other lessons to be learned but this should serve as the ultimate starter guide for any brand/company looking to make their entrance into Facebook.
Advertising your brand’s page is always extremely important. One of the greatest features of Facebook’s new pages product is that you can link directly to specific tabs. That means you can separate which pages a user views by default based on the ad that they clicked on. For example, perhaps you’d like to target two groups of users in different geographic locations. You would display one advertisement for people in Washington, D.C. and those users will land on a page which is specific to users from Washington, D.C. A different page would be displayed to users from San Francisco for example.
While this system isn’t necessarily the most scalable (for example having 500 tabs doesn’t really make much sense), it can instantly increase the conversion of new visitors into fans. This method also requires a bit more investment in customization but I’d argue that it’s well worth it, especially for smaller brands and companies.
Why on earth would I tell you not to let users land on the wall? Well, my biggest concern is that they’ll bump into humpty dumpty. Seriously though, there is a huge opportunity to present users with engaging information and while the content provided by fans of your brand can be engaging, you have absolutely no control over it. That’s why it’s much better to have new visitors enter a controlled environment and then proceed to navigate through areas with less structure. Yes, the wall can be extremely valuable for letting users talk to you and your brand but such unfiltered waters are the last place you should force a new user to navigate through. Provide your users with a safe entrance to the muddy waters we call “social media” and they will forever thank you for it, trust me.
I honestly believe that this is one of the most important components of a fan page. It’s a simple component yet within the confines of a 200 pixel wide box, you would be surprised with the creative ideas that people come up with. Recently Rob Banagale, a guest author on AllFacebook, published an article entitled “5 Creative Ways to Hack Your Facebook Profile Photo“. If you haven’t read it, I suggest you check it out. More impressive than the photos included in the tutorial are the photos that numerous users posted at the end.
I cannot tell you how many standard Facebook Pages I’ve seen in which the basic logo is displayed. If your company has more than one employee (has extra resources), there should be no excuse for not creating an engaging photo for your Facebook Page. It’s one of the first things users look at and it has the potential to leave a lasting impression so make it good!
The photo posted above is a unique user profile photo but I think it illustrates how you can develop creative photos that take advantage of the awkwardly positioned border. If you have other creative profile photos or Page photos that you’ve created or seen please let us know about it.
The last thing you want is for users to land on your Facebook Page and leave immediately. The greatest opportunity you have to capture their attention is through engaging applications. There are currently over 55,000 applications on the Facebook platform and a relatively large portion of them can be directly integrated into your fan page. Over the coming weeks there will be numerous applications that are built around the soon to be updated Facebook Page API which will make it easier for brands to launch a relatively engaging Facebook Page within minutes.
For larger brands I highly recommend that you develop a more robust experience for the user. Games, quizzes, and other types of dynamic content in general can help keep users on your Facebook Page for longer durations of time. As you know, we live in an attention economy and that means you want to get all the attention you can from consumers. One thing you should make sure is that your application has a call to action so that when a new user lands on the page they are immediately engaged.
As I stated before, this is the first time that brands have the opportunity to be a major part of a user’s conversation on Facebook so take advantage of it. That means every time someone comments on your new status, a photo, a video, a discussion thread, or anything else, you need to comment on it. Gone are the days of a one-way conversation in which the brands talk down to their customers. We are in the midst of a conversational revolution and your company needs to be part of it. At this point, you don’t have the option not to participate.
Failing to engage your customers and potential customers means less revenue, and it also means you’ll be losing to your competition who is engaging with their customers on a regular basis. Whether you are a small business (dentist, physician, plumber, restaurant, etc) or a large corporation, you need to be talking to your client and the only way to do that is through a two way dialogue. They’ll ask you questions that you can reply to and you can ask questions as well. Ask about what would improve their experience with your company. Also, ask them about the world in general because at the end of the day, they’re humans just like you.
It takes extra effort to engage your clients and going that extra mile will always keep clients coming back. You want to promote an exceptional brand right?
Just like in other areas of social media (blogs, Twitter, etc), it’s extremely important to provide interesting content to your readers. Facebook is no different. By regularly referencing other relevant content, your fans will keep returning to your page. While attracting repeat visitors is not the single most important component of fan pages, repeat engagement is easily the second most important variable. In virtual economies, one of the most effective measurements of the state of an economy is repeat usage. Facebook pages and other digital content channels are no different. Users that return to your page regularly are significantly more likely to become paying customers.
Even more important is that existing customers who return to your Facebook page are more likely to continue as customers. The bottom line is that a plain looking Facebook page is not doing your company any favors. Yes, having any sort of presence is always better than nothing at all but if you took the time to read through this guide, please do me a favor and make a little extra effort to create an engaging Facebook page. So how do you find interesting content?
While I won’t dive to deep into the details about finding interesting content, you should be able to find relevant content to your readers by doing a search on Google Blogsearch, and leveraging an RSS reader like Google Reader. Typically I would assume that most readers of this site know what RSS is but if you don’t it’s a simple way to read the content on sites without actually having to visit each site individually. If you want to learn more, check out Google’s Feed 101. If you want the short answer for finding interesting content: look for it. I wish I could say it’s easier than that but unfortunately it still takes time to find interesting content.
You can turn to other forms of content aggregators like Delicious.com and Digg.com but those typically only serve specific communities. If you are outside of the new media industry, you’ll have to use traditional sources like Google News, Google Blogsearch, and the mainstream media.
If you are on Twitter, reposting information is essentially the same as a retweet. By reposting a person’s information, you are complimenting them and they will be more likely to pay attention to you. I should note that I’m using “you” and “your brand” interchangeably in this part because in social media, you should be placing a face on your brand. Right now Fan Pages aren’t extremely conducive to putting a face on the brand but that will change overtime. Reposting the information that other users post is extremely valuable.
Don’t overuse this though! I can’t tell you how often I see people on Twitter retweet other users continuously, hoping that it will suddenly increase their follower base drastically. While it will help, this is not something which should suddenly drive thousands of users to your fan page. Instead, it’s a good habit to get into as overtime you and your company’s reputation will build for engaging users on a regular basis.
While it’s extremely important to monitor the conversation that users are having within your branded Facebook Pages, it’s also extremely important to help spark the conversation. By posting questions to users, creating new topics within discussion forums, and performing other activities that create dialogue (such as the previous one mentioned), you’ll keep users coming back to your Facebook Page. This is similar to the concept of posting blog posts regularly (which by the way can be automatically imported to your Facebook Page) on your company blog.
Just as I’ve emphasized the importance of quality content and engagement with your fans, the most important thing is persistence. Unless you keep engaging your fans on a regular basis and continue to post interesting content, you are going to find it difficult to continuously attract new fans.
Tagging users in photos and videos is probably one of the most effective promotional activities that you can do. The only challenge is coming up with content to tag users in. The best way to get photos and videos of your fans is through hosting events as I mention in the next tip but if you can’t host events, you’ll need to come up with creative ways to tag your fans. So how do you do that? That’s a bit more complicated but nothing that a creative marketer can’t figure.
One way would be to introduce a contest to your fan page and then tag the winners of those awards in a trophy photo. If you want to take that idea a step further you could actually integrate your fans’ photos into the trophies. This is just one idea though and there are a limitless number of ideas out there. Tagging users is a naturally viral process because as soon as you tag one person, their friends see it and then users are driven to that album which in this case, resides within your fan page.
There is one extremely limiting factor about fan page photos though: you must be a friend of a user to tag them! Yes, it’s unfortunate and honestly I don’t think it makes much sense. While Facebook should enable fan pages to tag members of the page, they haven’t done so yet. Theoretically I could suggest leveraging “guerilla tactics” or overly aggressive techniques to tag members. What are these “guerilla tactics” that I speak of? Well you can figure it out on your own but one example would be adding a fan as a friend for the sole purpose of tagging them in a photo.
I don’t recommend using this technique or any technique similar to this though because you may end up in Facebook jail (a.k.a. getting banned from the site). For the time being I would recommend posting as many relevant photos as possible and tagging those users that are in them. The more tagging that takes place, the quicker your page will spread.
Events provide an amazing opportunity for brands to reach out to their fan base. Best of all, these events don’t actually need to be in person events! While it’s not possible to view the network density of the fans of your brand (you can’t easily see how many fans are friends with each other), when multiple people RSVP to an event there are increased odds that your event will be distributed through the social graph, in turn driving new users to your brand’s page.
Like previous tricks or tips that I mentioned, there are inherent limitations. The primary one being that messages sent out to an event created through a fan page do not end up in a user’s inbox. Instead, those messages are sent via page “updates” which are displayed in a separate area. Fortunately, Facebook’s redesigned homepage, which is launching this week, includes updates at the top of a user’s homepage, making them more visible.
I know that I started this article by suggesting that you could attract millions of users to your Facebook fan page. I firmly believe that it is possible but it will take a lot of effort. Putting forth that effort though can produce substantial rewards. I’ve only touched on ten strategies that can be used to drive new fans to your page but ultimately, the more time you invest in your brand’s Facebook page, the better response you’ll get.
Yes, you could choose to simply set up a page and let it stand there because your brand alone can attract hundreds of thousands if not millions of users. If you’ve read this far in the guide though, I’m guessing your brand alone will not cut it. Instead, through persistence and consistent attention to your branded page, you will be able to generate new customers and retain existing ones. No, a Facebook page should not be the end of your company’s social media strategy but with 180 million or more Facebook users and millions more joining every week, there is no excuse not to be on the site.
But Nick, you told us that we’d have millions of fans though and that’s why I read this article. Yes, I did! There are many more techniques to improve the rate at which fans return to your Facebook page and I am glad to share those with you. If you want to have access to them, you are going to have to sign up for our newsletter though. I know, I teased you with all these tips, but honestly this should be enough to get you started. If you have any tips that you’d like to share us with please do and we’ll share it with the community.
Great article on Google adwords campaigns. You can see the original here.
I recommend closely monitoring your Google web marketing campaign (every day or two) for the first week or two that you are experimenting with Google Adwords. In this initial period of your web marketing campaign, you should be focusing on adding new keywords as you think of them, and making gross adjustments to keyword bids. For instance if you find that a certain keyword term is resulting in an average ad position of #20 or worse over the first few days, you may wish to significantly increase the bid on this term. Likewise, if certain terms are consistently achieving a #1 or #2 position as consuming all your daily campaign spend at their maximum bid (or close to it), then you may wish to reduce the bid on these keywords to achieve a higher number of clicks at a lower position.
After this initial tuning for the first week or two, it’s important that you then slow down your adjustments. An important thing to keep in mind is that any adjustments you make to the actual advertisements themselves (not the keywords) results in Google immediately slowing ad delivery of these ads while they go through an editorial approval process. This usually takes up to a week, and so you need to allow at least a fortnight to see the results of any changes in ad wording. Because of this, when making changes to advertisements, you may want to ensure that you have at least 3 or 4 different advertisements for each Ad Group, and that you don’t make changes to all of them at once (depending on how important the changes are of course – for instance a change in your website address would require immediate change on all ads of course!).
Keyword changes can be made with more immediate feedback (they are implemented almost immediately).
Therefore I recommend that after the initial week or two of adjustments to your web marketing campaign, that you move to a fortnightly or monthly monitoring of your campaign depending on how significantly you are investing in this advertising medium, and the level of changes you are making. By all means login each day to view your results or receive a daily email report (Google offer these reports as a standard feature) but in general adjustments should be given time to take effect before drawing any far reaching conclusions from these.
It may sound silly, but depending on how sophisticated your Adwords web marketing campaign objectives are, you may want to consider keeping a diary. At Salsa, for our own Salsa Internet adwords advertising programme, we only run 4 or 5 campaigns, with most of these only having a handful of Ad Group’s and yet over time I’ve found myself forgetting exactly what changes I’ve made to which groups and how the advertisement wording has changed over time.
This can be frustrating when you find yourself with a feeling of de ja vu in making changes to your campaign. A short diary entry about the general nature of changes you made over time can be a very useful thing, particularly if you have a large number of Ad Groups or Campaigns that you are managing.
Try to avoid strong reactions or drastic campaign changes based on observations over the short term. Results measured over a longer period of time (at least a month) are always more reliable than reacting strongly to a few days of data.
It is that new year again. We are past the holiday season that for some was very busy business wise and for others was a very difficut end of year. Hopefully it was good for you and your business.
Now a new year is upon us and it is time to finalize our budgets for this year if we have not done so already. Is marketing a high priority for you this year? If it is not (or even if it is) let me lay out a few reasons why it should top the list.
1. You need customers
2. Your competition is probably tightening their belt too and not looking at marketing much
3. Travel expenses ought be secondary to marketing.
4. The new equipment or other large purchases can wait. Honestly what need is it going to be if you aren’t getting the clientel in your door to pay for it?
5. It can be much less than you think.
To discuss some great ways to market and get your name out there read on.
For about 15/mo you can pay for an online newsletter service or even for $150 you can pay someone to do it for you. For around $250/mo you can get your company listed a top the major sech engines. For as little as $300 you can get a professional business video to promote youself on youtube, facebook, linkedIn, your blog, your website, and the plethora of other free video sites out there. Are you using social media to its fullest? For as little as $150 you can have us set up a customized facebook page for your business and as little as $1/day you can advertise that page to your ideal client on facebook. And of course you ought to look at your company website. Is it time for a facelift? Do you just need to update content? Do you really not even have a site? Is there more your site could be doing? Ask yourself these and more and let’s look at what we can do for your business. Get noticed in 2010! Make this your year to take your business to the next level!
I could not say it any better than has been said by Shannon on E-Zine Articles. I hope she won’t mind my reposting this fabulous article here. I hope that you all benefit
How to Optimize Your Facebook Page For Your Business
By Shannon Evans
SEO for Facebook…really? Can you truly optimize your business Facebook fan page for search engines? YES!
The first step to optimizing your site for search is to identify the best keywords you should use. Keywords should be selected on the basis of how potential customers who have NEVER heard of your brand name but who NEED your goods/products/services are searching for providers. Keywords are tricky to pick out but with a little help from Google’s keyword tools (insights, trends, sets, etc) you can uncover not only the right words and phrases but the search volume itself. Try and find good keywords and link them to your company name as you choose your Vanity URL.
Make sure your Facebook Page URL represents the identity of your business and your brand. They frown on black hat behaviors so keep it above board and choose a username that represents your brand! Part of the process to get a vanity url is to have 100 fans on your page. Once you get more than 100 fans you can implement this SEO element with Facebook.
Once you have investigated and selected the best keywords and selected your vanity page URL it is time to concentrate on the actual optimization of your Facebook page. Here are some general guidelines for on page optimization:
Add keywords to your “about” box
Place your company website link url in your profile
You can add more than one URL so add your Twitter link, LinkedIn profile link, etc.
Publish interesting content on a regular basis that is related to your products or industry that is not ’salesy’
Use keywords in everything you post if possible
Be social, interact, evoke comments
Add video from YouTube, add photos or products, your store front, etc.
Find links related to your site content.
Put your Facebook page url on your email, newsletter, website, etc.
The “About” text is the place to pack your description with keywords as close to the top of the page as possible. You are limited by the amount of text you can place in her it is still the best place to add custom text. There is a 250 character limit so use keywords in your text and be selective!
The “info” tab is a critical place to include more keywords/phrases as well as your links to your website and other social networks where your brand has a presence. This is essentially where the descriptive metadata for your fan page is pulled by the search engines and really boosts your content score. Facebook has a super high page rank with all the search engines therefore it is critical to have your website on your Facebook page to provide a valuable link. To have your website displayed on your main profile page click access the information box on the left side of your profile page. Click on the yellow pencil and you will be able to edit the box. Check the box “website” for your site to be displayed. Now visitors can go directly to your website. Here are some things to add to this box:
Local Search Information – complete address for a brick and mortar business or city, state, and zip if you work from home or only have PO box.
Company Data – Mission statement, Products, Services, Brands carried
URL – add links to your website, blog, and other social networking personal pages
Facebook lets you create “static FBML” (Facebook Markup Language) boxes and tabs for large volumes of content, images, or video. The more content you have on your page the greater your content density score with Google; however, keep in mind that each tab you create has a separate URL from the search engine perspective. To add a custom tab or box to your page:
In the search box on the top right of your Facebook page type in “static fbml”
You will go to a page of listings. Select the “Static FBML” application button.
A new page will open and on the top left side are two options. Click the “add to my page” icon.
Choose the page where you wish to add the custom content box or tab.
Close the dialog box and go to your Fanpage. Just below your profile photo click “edit Page”
A new page will open. In the application list is the application “FBML 1.” Click on the pencil beside it.
Select “edit”
A new page will open with 2 fields – “Box Title” and “FBML”. Name the box or tab with a Keyword related to the content you will place there. If this will be a Tab Title you will be limited to 10 characters.
Click “save changes”
To return to your application settings page click “edit” at the top of your page.
Click the pencil next to the name you selected for the FBML application and then choose “application settings.”
To add the FBML you just created as a box select “add” next to the “box” option.
To add the FBML you just created as a tab select “add” next to the “tab” option.
Status updates are a great place to post direct links to your website; however, you want to do that judiciously. No one likes to be sold to or constantly pitched. Since Google really likes pages that link to relevant sites, posting relevant related links near the top of your page’s structure are legitimate Google boosters for your Facebook page.
Post the raw URL in the status update frame or use the “attach link” feature. Posting the raw url Facebook automatically links the text to the URL. The resulting anchor text is what it is…you can’t change it; however, the url is linked directly to the destination page and does not have Facebook.com as part of the menu bar on the destination page.
If you use the “attach link” feature Facebook pulls the title, body, and any images from your page and creates a suggested image and text to the side of your page’s link. This is great for increasing your keyword density too by changing the anchor text before “sharing” your link. This link will go through a share url that places the destination url in an iframe that has the Facebook menu bar at the top. It will also include a share feature as well as a place for comments.
Content is still king so what you post beyond URLs can influence your searchability. But highly optimized keyword rich content is useless if it is not interesting and varied. Photos are terrific but add keyword rich captions perhaps with a geo-targeted keyword for additional mojo. Post an event and include text and keywords as well. Create a discussion forum for those events and to discuss brands and product reviews, etc. All the content you share on your Facebook Pages are indexable by search engines.
There are even some offsite things you can do for your Facebook Page. One of these is getting inbound links from you website and vice versa. Reciprocal related linking from related and authoritative websites help your PageRank. Put a Facebook badge or Facebook Fan Box widget on your website to encourage your website followers to link back to your Facebook page. Links from other Facebook pages are also a form of inbound links to your page. The more fans you have the more links you have to your Facebook page thus adding to your “Google go juice.”
Encourage your followers to comment and discuss topics on your page. Get them to “like” content on your page as that links their name back to their profile page thus creating yet another back link. When Google’s spiders see that your fan is commenting on your page as it is indexed Google sees reciprocal links. This type of linking is heavily weighted.
SEO is important to all that you post on the nternet related to your business. Growing your social media connections on Facebook is greatly aided by simple search engine optimization tactics. You can do a lot to maximize your brand’s exposure to search engines through your Facebook Fanpage.
Shannon Evans is recognized in the Puget Sound as an expert in how to make your business have a web presence rather than just a web page. Her conversational marketing techniques and practices outlined by Practical Local Search, LLC you will see your small business presence on the web increase: http://www.practicallocalsearch.com/. She is a consultant for social marketing campaigns that allow you to organize your marketing and sales efforts in an inexpensive delivery platform that is easy to set up and manage. The ability to send, deliver, and track any installed resource gives you the power to create a marketing program quickly and easily in a scalable format that can grow with your business.
Shannon is also a co-author of Get Found Now! Local Search Secrets Exposed: Learn How to Achieve High Rankings in Google, Yahoo and Bing and multiple business ebooks. Her books teach entrepreneurs how to leverage the internet to attract new clients.
Shannon has a wide and varied background in both the practical and the pragmatic aspects of the business world. Shannon loves nothing better than teaching local businesses how to think globally and to be searched locally.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Shannon_Evans
I found this earlier and it is very simple to do, but not everyone is doing it. Make twitter a lot easier to use. You can link up any rss feed to your twitter account.
If your blog is not already set as an rss feed then go to Feedburner to set up an rss feed for your site.
Once you have done that then go to TwitterFeed, set up an account, then add your feed, give it a name and you are good to go. You can add multiple twitter accounts as well as multiple feeds so if you have a friends blog that you would like to feed to your twitter account or another blog or some other feed then you are able to do this. Between this and the blog import on Facebook (see earlier post http://imperiousdesign.com/blog/?p=31) you can truly automate a lot of your effort, then once a quarter compile your blog posts, add a little bit of fresh content and send them out as your newsletter. You now only have to focus on one thing to generate social media and drive links to your website.
I hope this is beneficial to you and your business!
Hopefully you all have set up your facebook fan page now. If not then visit our prior post at http://imperiousdesign.com/blog/?p=16 then come back to this page. We are now going to look at importing your blog or other rss site into your Facebook page. If you have a blogger page or a hosted blog through wordpress or some other Content Management System you will be able to do this very easily. If you would like to get a hosted blog that is formated just like your website we would be happy to assist you with that. Facebook is great to create a feed out of any blog so that they can automatically update the content onto your wall without you doing multiple steps. You update and they import it into your Facebook fan page wall just like below.
The first step to accomplish this is to add a note section to your fan page. See below
If it is not under the arrow then you will need to click on the plus sign and this will add the notes section to your page. Once you are on the notes page then you will choose to “Write a New Note” as seen below.
then on the “Write a New Note” page you will click on the small note icon in the top right of your page as seen here.
that will then bring you to a page showing all of your current notes. You may then from here “import a blog” as seen in the top right of the page. See next image.
As seen here it says “edit” since I am already importing my blog. For your first time it will say “import blog”. Click on that and then come to the next page where you will enter your blog address. For example: http://sample.blogspot.com or http://imperiousdesign.com/blog depending on where your blog is hosted. Facebook will automatically create the feed to bring it in.
once you have submitted it it will take you to a confirmation page where there is listed your blog posts and you can confirm import as long as it is the correct page. If it is some other content then you may need to check your url. I hope this helped and I would be happy to assist anytime you are in need.
All Facebook Katie Freiling Designer