social media successMost people are engaged with some form of social media these days and this trend is likely going to keep growing. As a business owner or consultant, this is the ideal time to incorporate ways to succeed in social media into your marketing platform, and it helps to know some basic dos and don’ts. In the article “How to Succeed with Social Media: A Brian Solis Interview, ” there are some pointers for mistakes to avoid and ways to make social media succeed for you. Here are some tips drawn from that article:

1. Don’t Rely on the Past: Social media is constantly growing and evolving. This is an exciting time as it seems that almost anyone can become an innovator. With social media, you can’t just take a template for what to do in social media and expect it to work just like it did yesterday. Because of this, it’s important to be open to experimenting and creativity, just as if you are a student to social media and learning what works. Basically, you have to keep evolving with what is available. 

2. Don’t Forget to Blog: Not only are blogs important to succeed in social media, but if done correctly, they can add value to a website that ultimately has a blog that reads like a good book. The best blogs work to power and inspire others, rather than just add self-serving content or marketing jargon.

3. Do Keep a Facebook Fan Page: If you business doesn’t have a Facebook fan page yet, you’re missing out on crucial ways to build your brand and interact with customers. Not only can you customize the tabs in Facebook, but you can also have your Facebook fan page monitored by Google Analytics. Some experts are predicting that Facebook fan pages could become even more popular than Twitter, but only time will tell.

The most important thing to succeed in social media is simply to engage, be real and authentic, and to constantly be reevaluating and growing with the platform.

Comments (0)

Even though Facebook is constantly changing, there are some good tips and Facebook secrets that you can use to get the most out of it—and impress your followers with creative status updates. These secrets are pretty basic, but they can make your Facebook account really stand out and be easier to use than ever before. Try these out for yourself:

  1. The Dislike Application: Now that the “Become a Fan” button has been replaced by the “Like” button, there has been a lot of talk about incorporating a “Dislike” button onto Facebook. Personally, I don’t like the idea of a “Dislike” button and think that if you don’t like something don’t view it. However, if you are curious and want to check out this application, you can use the Status Magic Facebook application.
  2. Hide Status Updates: If you only want your status updates to be available to certain friends you can use the privacy settings and friend lists. The easiest way is to create friend lists for groups (i.e., business, personal, etc.), so that you can separate out who you want to see your updates by list.
  3. PreSchedule Updates: Just like with the other social media sites, like Twitter, you can use a service to schedule status updates. One that is easy and free is called Later Bro. I use Hootsuite and love it.
  4. 4.     Tag People’s Names in Status Updates: Another new Facebook secret is using @ tags in your updates to tag people, so that the post shows up both on your wall and their wall. The feature also works with brands, companies, pages, and events. You simply type the @ symbol and the name without a space and is shows up in blue with the name as a hyperlink.
  5. 5.     Add Symbols to Your Status: This trick allows you to type various symbols into your status updates. Interestingly, the only symbol you can type into the status update box is a ♥, by typing “<3,” but can type in characters and symbols using “alt” plus various number combinations.
  6. 6.     Make Status Updates into a Word Cloud: The application Status Analyzer 3D generates a word cloud list of anyone’s most recent status updates.
  7. 7.     Type Upside Down: There are a few amusing options to flip your text, such as TypeUpsideDown.com and UpsideDownText.com.
  8. See Updates Around the Globe: A site called OpenBook allows you to see updates from Facebook users around the world whose privacy settings are open to everyone. The most interesting thing here is you can narrow search results by keywords and subject matter.
  9. Check Your Status Statistics: Find out how many times you’ve updated your status with the application called Status Statistics, which gives you information about your posts.

10.  Link to Anyone’s Profile Page: This final Facebook secret allows you to share what looks to be an anonymous link to a random Facebook page. However, when the person clicks on it, they will automatically be directed to their profile page. The url is:  http://facebook.com/profile.php?=73322363

Try these secrets to make your status updates more creative and dynamic. For more information and other social media tips, check out the mashable blog.

Comments (0)

During this three-part Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Series, we’ve discussed the crucial coding that goes between the head tags:  a unique and accurate title tag, a good description, and appropriate keywords and phrases, as well as the content of your web pages between the body tags.

To conclude, I’ll discuss submitting your website to the search engines (SEs) and then how to monitor the results.

The Process of Crawling

Read More→

In Part I of this Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Series, we looked at the importance of using a unique and accurate title tag, a good description, and appropriate keywords and phrases in your HTML code within the head tags of your site as the first phase of optimizing your website for the search engines.

Although being found by the search engines (SEs) is key to increasing traffic to your website, equally important is the content of your site, which is what those visitors will see once they find you, and the topic of today’s post.  It is too easy to get caught up in pleasing the search engines and forget that the ultimate goal of our website is to provide valuable information to our visitors.

With that in mind, follow these rules of thumb to keep your visitors happy and encourage them to bookmark your site for repeat visits.  And remember, it takes between 15-30 seconds for someone to decide whether your site is what they’re looking for.  Good content and design are crucial to people and the SE “bots” that will be crawling your site.

Hyperlinks

Read More→

According to recent estimations the World Wide Web contains over 100 million websites.  With numbers like that, it’s no wonder why search engine optimization (SEO) is more important than ever.  But, unlike Kevin Costner’s character in “Field of Dreams,” simply building it doesn’t mean they’ll come – website visitors, that is.  There’s more to being popular online than designing and publishing an eye-appealing website.

This post is one in a series of three that will help expose how some achieve high organic search engine rankings while others fall short of that mark.  Organic SEO means spending time, patience and a little know-how versus money for pay-per-click campaigns.  Success starts with appropriate and descriptive tags and coding in the HTML.

For the intents and purposes of this post, let’s use a fictitious company called Wow Business Support (WBS).  WBS specializes in business support services and is physically located in Toronto, Ontario.

Read More→

Are you looking to grow
your business online?