Category: Featured

Jul 22

Are You Taking Full Advantage of Your Facebook Page?

Recently Facebook announced they’ve surpassed 250 million users on the site, maintaining their number one slot as the biggest social networking site on the web. That’s a growth of 50 million users in just under 4 months. Have you jumped on the bandwagon yet? If you are like most of us you’ve started a personal page and might have put up a business listing, but did you know you can make better use of your pages which can help you grow your business, brand, and traffic?

One great tool Facebook allows you to utilize is for your RSS feed. If you have a blog and have yet to set up an RSS feed, DO IT! RSS feeds publish your frequently updated work in a condensed version based on your posts. You are able to import your feed and update your friends on your personal page, and also update your fans on your business page….without having to lift a finger. Heres how:

Import RSS Feed On Your Facebook Personal Page:

  1. Log into your personal page, and click the “Applications” icon at the bottom left of the Facebook toolbar on the homepage.
  2. Click on “Notes”.
  3. Once there you will see “Note Settings” on the right hand side of the page. Click “edit import settings” and follow the prompts to import your RSS feed.

Import RSS Feed On Facebook Business Page:
There are several applications that provide you with RSS capabilities. Doing a simple Facebook search for RSS will yeild several of these, like SocialRSS. Follow the simple instructions, and you’ll soon be up and running.

Many other Facebook applications are available, in addition to SocialRSS. Have a Flickr page? Add it to your Facebook page. Active on YouTube? You can add that too. Customizing your own static Facebook box is available too, if your so inclined. You can even update your Facebook status from Twitter through Facebook’s Twitter application. Facebook applications allow you to update your pages simultaneously, while also allowing users who might not frequent those sites to view your information.

Last month Facebook started allowing vanity URLs. These customized URLs allow you to optimize your business page for branding efforts. Business pages are not allowed vanity URLs until they reach 100 fans, but personal profiles are allowed vanity URLs without those requirements. Be mindful of the URL you decide to use. Think about your brand, your name, and the keywords associated with the content on your blog or for your business. Some opt to keep their personal profile seperate from their business associations, and others don’t. Make sure you decide which route to go before you choose your URL, as Facebook WILL NOT allow you to change it. Most reccomend keeping them seperate, securing your personal name for your personal profile URL and securing your business name for your business profile, after you reach 100 fans that is. Intigration of your keywords in with your business URL can be a good idea. For example, if you had a business as a web hosting company in Miami you might want to have a customized URL like the following: http://www.facebook.com/MiamiWebHosting or http://www.facebook.com/MiamiWebHostingbyBlueWater.

Another new development at Facebook was the integration of the Facebook Fan box. These fan boxes can be placed on your blog or website so your on-site visitors can stay up-to-date. Just remember to actually partipate on your Facebook page! Converse with your fans, use your status messages to announce things of interest, upload pictures, and act human. The last thing your fans will want to see is a lack of interaction.

Utilizing your Facebook page in the best way possible, and organizing your online social efforts will provide you with increased traffic to your site, a better brand identity, and soon you’ll find that your efforts truely pay off.

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Guest Blogger Kaila Strong is the social media architect at Vertical Measures, a link building company providing social media marketing services to a wide variety of clients. In addition, Kaila writes on the Vertical Measures Blog: Link Building Best Practices, and is a self described Twitter addict (@cliquekaila).

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Jul 21

Still resisting social media?

As reported by SearchEngineWatch.com, a new engagement index calculated by The Wetpaint/Altimeter Group is debunking some myths about social media, for example that it can’t be measured or that it doesn’t work in B2B environments. It also reveals that companies who’ve invested in social media are weathering the recession better.

The study looks at the depth of involvement of the top 100 global brands in various social media channels in an attempt to measure the true value of social media. Customized criteria were used to score each company’s involvement in social media channels including blogs, branded social communities, discussion forums,  social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Wikis, and content distribution sites. The highest ranking company was Starbucks, which uses 11 channels and employs a social media team of six people. By comparison, #2 ranking Dell spreads social media responsibilities around to all employees, who spend 15-20 minutes a day sharing their thoughts on Twitter and personal blogs.

Although the engagement index reveals a significant correlation between social media involvement and financial performance, don’t expect social media to be a magic solution for disappointing second-quarter profits. Engagement takes time, and the quality of your social media campaigns is critical when it comes to building relationships with your customers and earning their trust — which is, after all, what social media is all about.

More key findings from the study:

  • Focus on quality over quantity. Engaging deeply in one or two channels is preferable to skimming the surface of several.
  • Keep content fresh and respond to comments;  customers want companies that engage with them.
  • Make social media a part of everyone’s job, from the CEO on down. A few minutes a day from all employees adds up.
  • Tailor your social media campaigns to your industry. Luxury automotive brands such as Mercedes-Benz and Porsche engage in just two channels each. If your target audience doesn’t depend on social media, certain channels may not be right for you.
  • Do something. You don’t have to do it all, but you must start somewhere, or risk being left behind as consumers become more dependent on social media.

Read the full study here (PDF).

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Posted in Et cetera, Featured

Jul 21

The New Generation of Splogs

Splogs, or spam + blogs, date back as far as 2003, when sites that were designed to host spam displayed nonsensical computer-generated text or text stolen from other sites. These early splogs generally contained links to affiliated Web sites. Content was often gibberish and solely for search engine purposes. Blogger defines spam blogs as those containing  “irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.” Blogging platforms such as Blogger and WordPress have implemented measures to  identify and remove spam blogs.

The term splog is also commonly used in reference to spam in blog comments, including spings, or fraudulent  trackbacks. Both blogs and trackbacks that point to spam sites are often easy to spot due to their overtly spammy appearance. But other types of splogs aren’t so obvious.

Search for almost any topic on the Web, and you’re bound to find a blog that looks legit … and yet somehow smacks of insincerity. Blog posts containing poorly written bare-bones text and seemingly disingenuous endorsements of various sites and services are popping up all over the Internet. Is this the new generation of splogs?

Blogs that appear to be helmed by actual humans, often focus on a particular niche, and link to a variety of sites rather than one single site can much more easily bypass the anti-spamming measures taken by sites such as Blogger and WordPress.  While comment spam and overtly bogus blogs may be easy to spot and report to blogging platforms, these newer types of splogs are more dubious.  They may contain a user profile and the content may be unique, but clearly written to benefit the target sites, whether or not they are affiliated with the blog in question.

With sploggers continuing to find ways around anti-spamming efforts, are legitimate bloggers forced to live with the consequences? Is the blogosphere destined to compete with the splogosphere forever, despite the best efforts of those committed to preserving the integrity of the Web?

Image courtesy of: http://informedvoters.files.wordpress.com

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Posted in Et cetera, Featured

Jul 16

The New Internet Explorer 8 Ads: Just Plain Annoying

Has any one else seen the new ads by Microsoft promoting the new update of internet explorer, IE8? The feature former Lois and Clark actor Dean Cain and involve situations that apparently require the use of extremely long acronyms. S.H.Y.N.E.S.S. is the funniest, I’ll admit, but the most controversial (and most disgusting) is the O.M.G.I.G.P. ad, which features a woman projectile-vomiting after seeing what her husband has been looking at on the computer.

Although Microsoft quickly pulled the ad after receiving overwhelming negative feedback and it is now hard to find online, I still can’t get the image of the man at fault falling to floor after slipping his wife’s vomit. Commenters on YouTube apparently were thinking that same thing, as some asked if it was a joke  or if Apple was behind the entire thing, as mentioned in the above linked article.

These video ads, designed as a viral marketing campaign for Microsoft, are definitely not as successful as they were supposed to be. Overall, I think a lot of professionals in the internet marketing industry would agree with me — Microsoft should focus on providing a better web browser, stop taking ideas from Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox (like private browsing and faster navigation), and learn the line between an offbeat ad and an offensive one.

Image from http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/stone/2009/04/21/test.html via Google Images

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Posted in Et cetera, Featured

Jul 15

Twitter: The New American Superhero?

Twitter: The New American Superhero?

I saw a re-tweet this morning on twitter from @KhloeKardashian — it said:
“RT **AMBER ALERT***3 YR OLD GIRL WAS TAKEN BY A MAN DRIVING A NEWER SILVER TRUCK IN IDAHO FALLS,ID LIC. PLATE #72B381. KEEP it goin”

That got me to thinking…if Michael Jackson’s death can take over Twitter in a matter of a few hours, then what else can it be used for? Can Twitter’s powers be used for good, instead evil (gossip and celebrity news)?

It appears, at least according to this re-tweet, that there is definitely hope. If we could re-tweet this Amber Alert (and every one here after), think of how much the chances would increase that that little girl would be found. Think about how many more people would read the news or donated to a non-profit organization if we gave them a chance to through Twitter. We need to tweet the important issues so the Joe Average will take notice. In my opinion, the entire concept behind Twitter is that it makes people feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves. They are part of a community (albeit, a digital one) that is always in the loop and on the list — and normal people want that. They want to belong to something.

To quote another superhero: Peter Parker in Spiderman, “With great power, comes great responsibility.” Twitter is now the fastest growing viral news source on the internet. We, as Twitter users, must band together to create a team of everyday superheroes that drives non-profit fundraising and awareness campaigns, tells the government when we’re angry, and becomes a community that looks out for one another.

Perhaps instead of looking at Twitter as just an internet marketing forum to boost your company and its profits, think about all the good you can do. Re-tweet that Amber Alert. Tell everyone about that controversial article about questionable government policy.

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Cartoon taken from: http://neuroanthropology.net/2009/04/14/fear-of-twitter-technophobia-part-2/

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