Archive for Blog

Aug
24

3 Tips to Succeed with Social Media

Posted by: admin | Comments (0)

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)

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→

May
27

Saving Face on Facebook

Posted by: admin | Comments (1)

For those of us who use Facebook, keeping up with the pace of change can be difficult at times, especially when it occurs behind the scenes without premise or much, if any, publicity.  To that end, I have been reading posts by Mari Smith, Relationship Marketing Specialist, who seems to have her thumb on Facebook’s latest switcheroo, authentication requirements for setting custom landing tabs on Fan Pages.

In order enlighten and lead you from the land of confusion, I offer the following synopsis.

On May 19th Mari reported that some members of her community alerted her to the fact that default landing tabs for their Facebook Pages had reverted back or were now working.  Although I knew Facebook made alterations to their Page requirements in this regard, my curiosity was peaked nonetheless.

You see, without warning Facebook made it mandatory to have at least 10,000 fans on one’s Page before the default landing tab option was made available.  During Mari’s initial research of several Pages, she discovered that this was in fact true, but not on a consistent basis.  Some of the Pages she tested with less than 10,000 fans did not lead to default landing tabs, but some did.  To add to the perplexity, some of her community members reported that they did have over 10,000 fans and were still unable to create default landing tabs.

Then, on May 20th, Mari posted the following, which was provided by the same Facebook staffer who reported on the initial authentication requirement update:

 “Hello,

As of last night, we’ve removed the recently-added authentication requirement for setting custom landing tabs on Pages.  The requirement was instituted as part of a Pages quality initiative, and we apologize for the inconvenience this caused to our developer and business community.  We are re-investigating the situation, and will not make any further changes without first giving our community standard notice and lead-time.

Thanks for all your feedback,
Matt Trainer
Facebook Developer Network Team”

So what is the moral of this story?  In order to save face on Facebook, it is imperative that we, as a social networking community, continue to keep each other informed of legitimate changes occurring on this social media forum and to raise flags when glitches happen.  And if I may be so bold, it is equally important for Facebook staff to keep their users informed of any significant changes they are making or contemplating. 

Yes, change is good.  Change helps us grow.  But change disguised as surprise can leave egg on the face.  (Pun intended.)

Comments (1)
Are you looking to grow
your business online?