It’s great to have your own blog to support your main website: you can keep updating it with new content and engage with a community of readers. But what if that community isn’t growing or responding as you had hoped, no matter how great and fresh your content is? Don’t worry: an increase in engagement is not impossible. Facebook Connect is one of the most popular ways to reach out to members of the social media community through your blog. This Facebook API (or application programming interface) is currently being used by all kinds of third parties: from websites like the Huffington Post and Mashable, to gaming consoles like Xbox Live and Sony PS3, and even mobile applications on the Apple iPhone. Basically, what this tool does is integrate Facebook into your blog, so that you can tap into the social networking site’s 400 million active users worldwide. Facebook Connect also allows you to help your blog readers connect with – Read the full article
Is your company making use of a Facebook Fan page? Now with more than 300 million users currently registered, numerous companies have set up Fan Pages fundamental to their advertising labors. People are looking for the most interesting and one-of-a-kind pages to “like”. But what are the best ways of getting maximum number of page likes? Here are the top 5 suggestions for the same: Make your own username – The username or URLs for your Facebook pages are, by default, lengthy and unattractive. Select a different domain name for your page and advance it to your Facebook page. If you by now have a web portal you can make use of a sub-domain, for example name.facebookfanpage.com. Put forward incentives – Users should know the reason to join your page. Present a rebate on your products, or make certain declarations on your page if you have something new about your business. Give these users a bait to like your page. – Read the full article
A Facebook Page with lots of fans can do wonders for your brand. Not only is Facebook a naturally “viral” online channel for engagement; its Fan Pages are also a pretty flexible Internet marketing platform, with space for lots of apps, optimization opportunities, multimedia content, social sharing, and trackable information. Of course, to maximize Facebook’s power, you actually have to get people to officially “like” your page. Without enough “likes”, you may be wasting effort on something that’s not reaching anyone at all. You’d be like a chef preparing 30 starters and 50 main courses for a restaurant that has less than 10 customers. The product/service/brand may be good, but no one knows enough about it. Want more Facebook fans? Need more people to like your Facebook Page? Here are 11 really effective tips: Comment and reply. If someone posts on your Wall, don’t ignore it. Respond in a timely manner. Say thank you or write a meaningful comment that – Read the full article
Facebook’s photo sharing feature has become increasingly popular among Web users. This feature has enabled people to share their special moments with their family and friends all over the world. Besides individuals, businesses have also taken advantage of Facebook photo sharing as a social media marketing tool to promote their products and services. The following are some guidelines that will help you use Facebook’s photo sharing feature more effectively. Name your albums Facebook automatically stores uploaded photos into an ‘untitled album’ (usually with the date of upload). You can change or arrange such albums easily according to your personal needs. When creating an album, the first thing to do is to appropriately name the album. Facebook automatically names albums according to the date when they were uploaded. However, a name such as ‘August 8, 2011’ is not likely to grab anyone’s interest. Therefore, select titles which are catchy and relevant to the photos contained in the album. Customize the album – Read the full article
Social media advocates are often quoted as claiming that social media is the greatest form of advertising because it is free. At Silicon Beach Training we use social media in a big way; we use it to increase exposure for our training courses. We use it to build relationships with key influencers and our customers. We also use it extensively to promote and share our flow of content generated to inform and inspire our existing customers and potential clients. One of the most important paybacks for all of this activity is it seriously improves our ranking. I believe that Google is going to up the stakes on this one, too; social shares are going to become even stronger signals that affect page position. In order to sustain these benefits, however, we need to employ people. We employ full-time people and we need to tap many external sources for content generation, paid for in currency and in back-links. Time and people – Read the full article
In light of the current recession and housing market downturn, real estate agents have to turn to new ways of creating and running their businesses. Social media marketing is one of the best, if not THE best way to do just that. The National Association of Realtors has a whole section of their website focused on social media for the real estate professional. The Field Guide to Social Networking for REALTORS® has eBooks, videos, and a ton of other resources to help you along the way. Facebook Ask around and you will be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t heard of Facebook. Even if they don’t use it, they probably saw the movie last year about it! And it’s likely that most people you know are using Facebook and have hundreds of friends. A word of caution on catapulting yourself into this too quickly: mixing personal and professional can be a very slippery road. Keep your personal Facebook profile and create a Fan Page – Read the full article
It’s not uncommon for businesses today to use social networks – namely, Twitter and Facebook – as a platform for engaging with customers and managing customer relationships. This development has given rise to an increasing number of social media solutions and dashboards, each promising to streamline all tasks and bring a new level of ease in customer engagement. Let’s take a look at the best of these solutions and their features. MediaFunnel MediaFunnel is a social media suite for businesses and enterprises, with a host of features designed to make Twitter and Facebook accounts easier to manage. One of these distinguishing features is Multiple User Roles, or the ability to assign Administrator, Publisher, and Contributor roles and grant various levels of permission to review or publish tweets and Facebook posts (for greater editorial control and efficiency). Apart from monitoring Twitter and Facebook for mentions and tracking the performance of links via Bit.ly and BudURL, MediaFunnel also enables you to – Read the full article
Search engine optimization is considered both an art and a science. You can learn it and fine-tune your processes to allow for your own set of SEO best practices. But as a beginner in SEO, you should expect to make a lot of mistakes. But that’s okay: it’s a good way for you to learn. However, you could also learn from the mistakes of others. Here are the top five mistakes that most SEO beginners commit: 1. Not focusing on content. Most site owners and webmasters tend to rely on tricks and so-called SEO techniques to get a better ranking on search engines. Because of that, they neglect the content of the site. This is probably the biggest mistake that anybody doing SEO could commit. Over the years, webmasters have gained artificially high ranking from getting links from link farms, or getting reciprocal links, or spamming DMOZ. There were other black hat and grey hat techniques. But over time, these tactics were found out – Read the full article
