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
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.
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.
Welcome to my blog on web development, search engine optimization, local listings, logo design, how to get your site noticed, and more. I hope that you are able to find this site beneficial and helpful to your online marketing approach. Please consider us for any of your online needs.
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All Facebook Katie Freiling Designer