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January 12th, 2010 No Comments

I know it has been a while but new posts are coming soon!

With Twitter becoming a much used medium for social interaction, the question must be asked by large corporations who use this method to interact with their customer base – “Do we want to satisfy or pacify?”

From my experience, some companies have adapted well and provide useful, intelligent, sometimes fun and friendly interaction with customers, potential customers and the users as a whole.

One such company is Rogers Communications. From personal experience I can tell you that Rogers Social Media Team does take action to resolve problems. At the same time, they do so in a friendly manner providing timely repsonses to any questions asked. The issue that I had was resolved to my satisfaction within an acceptable timeframe. They did not merely pass the information on to another department but instead made sure my issue was being handled correctly and to my satisfaction.

Rogers Social Media Team also recently ran a completely Twitter driven competition from an event called HoHoTO . I was not at the event, but from what I could see by following the #hohoto hashtag in Tweetdeck they pulled off something quite amazing and the whole thing was a resounding success.

Other corporations cannot or do not offer the same level of service. From a recent interaction with General Motors customer service via Twitter, it appears their only role is to provide information and pacify unhappy customers. I guess the fact that their real customer service is offered through a network of dealerships prohibits them from committing to anything. If that’s the case, then maybe interaction with disgruntled customers is not something they should do.

Pacification can lead to frustration. Satisfaction is the best course of action.

Have you had any interactions with companies on any social media networks or sites that have made you happy or mad? Tell us about them!

How to Optimize Your Facebook Page For Your Business

December 12th, 2009 No Comments

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

Google CEO Joins Twitter

December 8th, 2009 No Comments

When I say “joins” I do not mean he has been employed byTwitter. But he has started Tweeting.

This is interesting because this was the same man who called Twitter the “poor man’s email”. It would seem strange that he would want to use Twitter unless he had some business plan behind it. Many are speculating that there could be be some tie up between Google and Twitter in the near future.

Maybe it is all just part of Google’s plan to rule the world. Seems not so long ago we were saying the same things about Microsoft.

Twitter – Only Useful If You Are Famous?

December 2nd, 2009 No Comments

Twitter allows you to post ‘tweets’ and let everyone know what you are doing at any one given moment in time. People can then follow your tweets and suggest to others that they also follow your tweets – and so it goes on.

However, is Twitter only useful for those who are already famous? Of course everyone wants to know what Simon Cowell is up to and of course everyone would love to hear what Chris Moyles had for his breakfast (well almost everyone!). It can make the famous even more famous and is almost certainly a way for them to massage their own egos by counting the number of followers they have on twitter.com before they set off on their way to work.

But does Twitter have uses for the non-famous and even for businesses? Well there is certainly an increasing number of businesses adding to twitter.com on a regular basis and using the Twitter badge on their own websites to allow people the option to link through from one to the other. It can be a way to drive up business but only if your business is one where there is lots of activity and newsworthy items to report on – you are, otherwise, likely to run the risk of annoying your followers and making them wonder what you do all day!

You only get a couple of lines per tweet on twitter.com in which to tell people what your business is up to so it needs to be succinct and punchy. However, if you have a promotional offer to advertise, then Twitter could be a great way to send a blast with an update to all your followers – assuming by now that you have some followers! You can put a picture on there of either yourself or your logo and you can set your username up in your own name or your business name.

Perhaps for smaller businesses and start-ups, it could be a great way to get friends on board who may already have a Twitter account and ask them to spread the word. It’s another form of free advertising which is another positive. It can also be used as a form of referral marketing as well as for networking. It shows that your business is in tune with modern society and is accessible, transparent and open to new business connections. It could also be a great way to increase brand awareness – both for newer and already established businesses because your name is out there and is being passed around among a whole network of users.

As with all other social networking sites, you do have to remember to update your tweets as and when you get the time and have something worthwhile to say. It has become another platform for communication which can only be a good thing as there is no such thing as too much advertising – as long as it is worth reading.

Like most networking sites, they were set up with the aim of connecting people and have grown to become so much more. Twitter.com is no different and can be exploited to use as you see fit for your business if you are smart enough. You do have to remember to let people know that you are on twitter.com as well – don’t forget that part!

Could twitter.com allow the non-famous person to become famous? Who knows – it seems anything is becoming possible.

Pete Moore is a UK based author and co-founder of http://www.EzWeb123.com, an award winning website builder that enables anyone to create a professional looking website, for whatever purpose, in literally a few minutes. Why not create yours today?

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Peter_J_Moore

The Funny Facebook Status

December 1st, 2009 No Comments

Two years ago, the Facebook status was nothing more than a novelty on a growing social network called Facebook. Now, the importance of having a funny Facebook status is such that large companies are employing people with marketing savvy and expertise to write their promotional messages and paste them into their Facebook status updates. How did this come about?

The Facebook status – some history

Facebook used to serve the purpose of a social network between University students. Famously, Harvard University was the first to have access to the network, and it soon grew to encompass all of the major campuses in the USA and globally. One of the novelties of each person’s Facebook profile page was their ’status message’. Its format was simple:

Danny is XXXXX

Where ‘XXXXX’ means exactly what that user decided to say about themselves. All of the Facebook statuses were therefore in the third person, and they produced a quite boring range of response. ‘Danny is eating pizza’. ‘Danny is watching a movie’. This formatting gave users a dilemma. It was not flexible enough for them to enter the types of information which they wanted to share with their colleagues and friends, and so usage of this function was relatively low.

At the same time as Facebook received a global rise to prominence, another social network was becoming more and more popular. Twitter billed itself as a ‘micro-blogging’ platform, and was in effect a company built around a similar form of status updates. The difference, however, was flexibility. Twitter users were not forced to use the third-person to describe their thoughts or feelings, in fact they just had an empty box in which they could write whatever they desired.

The concept was simple, but the service exploded in popularity. Twitter suddenly had the world talking, and the Facebook status appeared to be dying away.

By this time, Facebook had become the world’s largest social network. They could not help but notice Twitter’s rise in terms of global branding, and they needed to adapt. This happened with a clear move by the developers to strike at the core market of Twitter. Facebook redesigned their ‘home feed’ page – the page that users see when they log in – and included a huge amount of prominence to status updates. Also, they had removed the need for users to use their own name in their updates, and thus removed the ‘third person’ restriction.

The results were staggering. Facebook’s page views experienced an increase such that Twitter had experienced just months before. Users were becoming interested in what people were doing ‘real time’ – users noticed that Facebook had also put more of an emphasis on posting its users’ statuses as fast as possible into their friends’ home feeds, meaning a comment which they made could be discussed almost instantly, a la Twitter.

The other prong to the Facebook attack was to add a ‘like’ button to all items on the Home Feed. This added the ‘user vote’ system, which meant that statuses which had more ‘likes’ were displayed on more users’ pages. This again meant that the importance of having a funny or amusing Facebook status was paramount – if you could get users to click on that button you were confirming yourself as a trusted and influential user of the system, and for marketers, this is extremely important.

If you log in to Facebook today, you will notice that a far greater number of people are using status updates. There are newer functions coming out which will further enhance this system, such as ‘friend tagging’ within statuses and more. The importance of having a funny Facebook status will only continue to rise, and with it, Facebook’s standing in its position as the world’s most powerful social network.

Sammy is a technology author who writes about Facebook and loves a good funny Facebook status. He changes his more than five times a day.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sammy_Till

The Facebook Christmas Application Blitz

November 30th, 2009 No Comments

Yes, it’s that time of year when Facebook is filled with applications that enable you to send all kinds of wonderful “gifts”. While this is a lot of fun keep in mind that using these applications means allowing the developers of the program access to your personal information.

Although most developers are responsible characters, there are always going to be a few bad apples. Generally, the most they are going to do is use your email to send spam (an excellent reason not to use you primary email address for Facebook). However, the potential is there to take personal information and use it illegally.

What precautions do you take to protect your personal information? Have you ever had your information stolen?

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