First it was buffer app that integrated the auto scheduling feature. Buffer app is still the leader as it integrates flawlessly with other third party apps. Even Facebook is using the buffer capabilities while other applications like Sprout Social and HootSuite are now rolling out their own versions of this technology.

Why should you schedule messages using social media? Because it makes it easier for you to focus on getting good content out to your followers and fans. It’s also important that you schedule content at the right time of day (or night) so that your content reaches the largest audience.

In the past I used Tweriod to determine the right times to tweet. Then I would take that data and place it into Buffer. This way I always knew when I buffered something from my iPad, Android, PC, or Mac, I would always reach the right people at the right time.

Now Hootsuite has joined the auto scheduling revolution. It’s one if the the most popular social media dashboard applications on the market. Here’s what HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes had to say about this new feature:

“It’s really quite simple – instead of our users manually selecting what time they want to schedule or post their social media messages using our Scheduling feature, they can opt to use our new AutoSchedule technology to optimize and automate the scheduling process. We want our users spending more time finding and sharing content and less time worrying about the best time of day to share it.”

Some worry that this is taking the social out of social media but the truth is as social media evolves, many businesses will need to reduce the time and effort it takes to send messages out and by eliminating the guess work out of “when should I tweet?” then this will only benefit both the users and brands.

Very cool! What do you think about this new feature? I plan to implement it more often. Although I use several tools including Sprout Social, I will have to figure out my new strategy!

What do you think?

I am very excited about this new feature from SproutSocial.com. In the past I have always relied on buffer app to buffer and schedule content. But I also relied on SproutSocial to monitor and manage my Facebook and Twitter Accounts.

I spoke to the owner of Sprout Social a few months ago and he had mentioned introducing a feature like this. So I am very excited to hear it’s live!

What is Sprout Que?

Just like Buffer you can select what times your social media content is sent to your followers and fans. You can choose custom times or base it off of optimal times that their system has chosen for you. I also like to use Tweriod to check the optimal times for me to send content based on when my audience is online the most.

Sprout Social went ahead and introduced something called optimal send time and this seems to compete directly with what I was talking about with Tweriod.

“Sprout Social’s ViralPost patented technology analyzes your social media channels to determine the optimal times. The algorithm factors usage patterns, engagement patterns, content consumption volume and 12 other indicators to determine the moment your content will have the greatest impact.”

The down side is that if you prefer to use this feature (which you obviously should), you must pay the 99/month premium plan. So this isn’t at a price point for everyone.

But if you chose the basic plan, you can still que your content (maximum 5 posts per day). If you have an account, you have plenty of tools to use to submit your content. For example, if you use Google Chrome, there’s an extension to que content right from the browser. This is excellent if you plan to curate content from multiple sources.

If you use Android or iPhone, the company also has superb apps for you to use that feature the que content capability as well.

Have you tried Sprout Social yet? If not, you can use my link to Sign up for a free 30 day trial of Sprout Social.

Facebook is giving brands until March 30th to completely transition to the new timeline for fan pages. It’s important for your business to understand the changes and learn how to make the most out of your fan page.

Facebook has completely removed the “forced fan gate” option where you could require someone to like your page before viewing the wall. But you can still direct traffic to a custom app or landing tab.

There has been a lot of discussion about the changes and the impact those changes will have on brands using Facebook fan pages. But I see it as a great opportunity for brands to do some great social marketing.

Here are some tips to help you build an effective marketing campaign on Facebook using the new timeline layout.

1. Facebook Timeline Cheat Sheet

This will help you make the necessary changes when you are re-designing your page. If you need a killer design and custom tabs created, you can hire me to do it all for you at a very low cost of course!

But the PDF is yours to use-FREE!

*Be sure to download the Facebook Timeline Dimensions cheat sheet.

2. The Cover Photo

The biggest change is the introduction to a much larger cover photo. This is going to give brands a huge opportunity to showcase great design and branding.

Having a creative and stylistic cover photo will give your brand a boost.

However, it does come with some limitations as Facebook is giving strict guidelines as to what you can and can’t have in your cover photo.

• No Calls to Action-You can’t ask people to “like” or “share” your page and there can’t be any graphical representation (arrows pointing etc) to imply any calls to action either.
• No pricing information-Price or purchase information cannot be included (60% off or download it at our website www.coolmusic.com).
• No company information-This is one of the most frustrating guidelines in my opinion. You can’t include any details about your company such as your web address or contact information. These details are supposed to go in the about section of your fan page.

Some creative examples of the timeline cover photo so far include:

• Subway
• Redbull
• Fanta (my favorite)

3. Profile Image

Your profile image has been changed too. It appears next to every post in the news feed as 30 x 30 pixels. The profile picture can be best utilized as your logo but as seen in the examples above, can be creatively incorporated into the overall cover photo.

4. Pinned and Highlighted Posts

Now you can pin a post for 7 days to increase exposure to whatever topic you are wanting to place above the fold.

To help you tell your stories you can also highlight a story by clicking the star icon in the upper right of a post. This way it spans all the way across the timeline.

Here’s an example of Ford using it:

5. Company Milestones

To spice up your page, you should use milestones. You can tell people about big events in the life of your brand or company.

Click on the line that runs down the middle of your timeline and select milestone. Then you can fill out the information needed.

This is one more reason why people might want to come to fan pages much more often than before.

6. Applications

Facebook has removed the ability to have a default landing page for all visitors. You can still direct ads and traffic to a specific app but you can’t force people to like your page as before.

You have complete control over the top row of apps. To move apps around, simply click the “+” sign to open the drop-down for the app you want to edit. The you can click the app you want to replace in that position. This allows you to move the apps around. You can’t move the Photos app though.

To change the photo or name for your app, click on the pencil icon for your custom app, click edit settings, then select the name and photo for your app.

7. Facebook Offers

Facebook is slowly rolling out the offers feature to fan page owners. This is one of the most exciting new features for businesses on Facebook.

Better than deals, this new feature lets fan page admins create an offer which is then sent out to the news feeds of your fans, making it more visible. Offers are easy to share too, both through the post itself and then when the offer is claimed. Fans get the offer by agreeing to the terms and then clicking the claim offer button.

The offer is then emailed to the fan. This is powerful for local businesses!

There can be some issues with this system though. Make sure you set an expiration date on your offer and make the discount manageable. And make sure you can handle the response incase the offer goes viral!

8. New Facebook Admin Panel

The new admin panel is a lot more user friendly. There’s a nice tab at the top that says admin and when you click on it, a swift menu drops down allowing you to see notifications, messages, page tips, new likes, and insights.

9. Facebook Ad Changes

Fan pages currently only reach about 16% of their audience each week with posts according to Mike Hoefflinger, Facebook’s directory of global business marketing.

That’s why Facebook has created what they call the “Reach Generator” which are ads designed to connect to your existing audience and will include the page post stories.

These ads will not be based on CPC or CPM models. After you use the reach generator, businesses can expect to reach 75% of fans with one post. These ads will be sown on the right side of the page and will be placed in mobile streams and news feeds.

Another ad feature is Premium on Facebook. This places an impactful story ad in the news feed, mobile stream, and is visible to logged out users.

I personally think this is a great move for Facebook and brands will definitely benefit from the new features.

We’re seeing Facebook grow up and learn from their mistakes in the past.

What do you think? Have you made the switch to timeline yet?

If you need help with the process, have questions, need a Facebook ad expert, or need a custom designed cover graphic, please let me know.

I am here to help!

Please leave your comments below:

As you probably know, Facebook made the decision to bring the timeline to brand pages last week. In addition to numerous other changes,  the way you design your fan page has completely evolved.

I decided to create a Facebook timeline dimensions “cheat sheet” to make it easy for you when re-designing your fan page. This should give you a nice template to work with and help you with sizing the images and making sure they are optimized.

The Cover Photo

This is the top photo which takes up the entire realestate above your content.

Dimension: 851 x 315 pixels.

Profile picture

This is best used for your logo although it can be creatively incorporated into the cover photo. Look at Fanta’s fan page as an example.

Dimension: 180 x 180 pixels.

App images

All app images are much larger in size with the new update. App image sizes are 111 x 74 pixels.

Uploaded photos

When you upload a photo directly to Facebook, it can be 404 x 404 pixels.

The Highlight and Milestone Image

This new area can include photos or videos. But the max dimensions are 843 x 403 pixels.

Facebook Timeline Dimensions Cheat Sheet Download

Feel free to share this with your friends, re-tweet, and like!

A fast website matters. In fact, Google has learned even one second is too slow for some web users. According to a NY Times article, “These days, even 400 milliseconds — literally the blink of an eye — is too long, as Google engineers have discovered. That barely perceptible delay causes people to search less.”

Naturally, Google wants your website to load fast. One of their many SEO ranking factors is website load time. They want the best possible experience for their users. Part of that experience is having websites load super fast.

But how do you make your website load fast? If you use WordPress, then this tutorial will show you how you can test your website speed and dramatically decrease website load time. Even if you don’t use WordPress, these tips can still help!

With the following steps, I was able to take one of my WordPress website’s load time from 18 seconds to 2.78 seconds.

I will be applying these tips to this blog soon too.

Tools to test your website speed

Before you begin, use the following tools to analyze your current website speeds. This way you can compare results and use them to make further performance decisions.

Pingdom Tools-Test load speed and find out what areas of your site need improvement (ie. image, css, js, and other file size compression).

Use Google’s Speed Test Tool and view their recommended guidelines for website performance.

Another option is to use loads.in to test and analyze performance.

Remove plugins that hog performance

Also, make sure you analyze any plugins that might be causing your overall WordPress performance to stall.

P3 Plugin Performance Profiler is an excellent plugin that can tell you which plugins are causing performance issues.

Use a caching plugin to decrease load time with WordPress

Setting up W3 Total Caching Plugin

There are several caching plugins for WordPress but the one I found that works best is W3 Total Cache. Plus it allows you to utilize additional features that work with a content delivery network.

W3 Total Cache is a very robust caching plugin and it can get fairly complex.

I strongly suggest you experiment with toggling on and off Object Cache, Database Cache, Browser Cache, and Page Cache and test the results with each one using Pingdom tools.

For some servers, caching may already be present and turning on some of these features in W3 Total Cache might increase load time and create the opposite effect we are looking for.

However, based on testing and our server configuration with VPS.net the following seems to work well:

1. Page Cache Enable-Disk: Enhanced
2. Minify Enabled. Use Auto.
3. Database Cache Enabled (Disk).
4. Object Cache Enabled.
5. Browser Cache Enabled.

See screenshots:

Configuring Cloud Flare CDN to be used with W3T.

Cloud Flare offers a robust and FREE content delivery network. Anyone can use their system and it’s quite impressive for a free service. Using a CDN alone will give you a noticeable speed increase. You can use this service with any site-not just WordPress.

I’m not going to explain the complexities of a CDN but you can read more about them here. 

First, go sign-up with CloudFlare.com.

Get a free account.

After you register, login and you will see a field to add your website URL.

Cloudflare will spend some time detecting your DNS settings and you should be able to follow the on-screen instructions.

Just make sure your IP Address for your host looks correct. Click “Im done adding my DNS settings” and now CloudFlare gives you a new DNS to use.

This is important.

• The new DNS you should copy into a text file.
• Go to your domain registrar (the place you registered your domain) and replace the two DNS fields you currently are using with CloudFlare’s DNS.
• Make sure you also save your old DNS settings incase you need them again.
• It can take up to 48 hours to propagate (usually only an hour) and then your site will be using CloudFlare as a CDN.

The next step is to sync W3 Total Cache with your CDN. This is where the magic happens.

You need to acquire the API key from your CloudFlare account and copy and paste it into the API key field in W3TC.

Make sure you add your account info, use “low” as your security level and make sure development mode is off.

Click save when finished.

Optimize images in your blog posts

Now that we have the caching plugin setup, we can run all of our images through Yahoo’s Smush.it platform which optimizes all of our images using a “lossless” technique.

Smush.it uses optimization techniques specific to image format to remove unnecessary bytes from image files. It is a “lossless” tool, which means it optimizes the images without changing their look or visual quality. After Smush.it runs on a web page it reports how many bytes would be saved by optimizing the page’s images and provides a downloadable zip file with the minimized image files.

We will use a plugin to assist us with bulk “smushing” of our images. Wp Smush.it is a plugin that does all of the hard work for us. Go ahead and install it.

After you have installed it, make sure you click on your Media tab and click “bulk smush.it” and the tool will take all of your existing images and run them through Yahoo Smush.it.

Please note if you have a lot of files already, it might take some time to complete. If it times out or stalls, just run it again.

For some files, it might not work if they are over a certain size. Consider deleting those images and replacing with optimized versions. You should be optimizing each image you insert into your wordpress blog posts.

Final Thoughts

After you complete these steps, be sure to clear your browsers cache. Now go back and test your website speed and watch your new speedy website!

Of course there are many other options to help load time but this should significaly help you with minimal effort.

Please post your results or questions in the comments below!

I would appreciate your Facebook Likes, Re-tweets and all that social love of course!

One of the issues for brands when it comes to adopting and using Google Plus is the lack of in-depth analytics and other features available.

But Google wants to change this.

Google+ for Business is a new site dedicated to showcasing the current and future features of Google+.

Among those features? Analytics.

In the coming weeks, Google will open up new API’s and release new tools to help brands analyze their audience engagement and page performance.

Soon, you will be able to see what people are saying about your business and how many +1′s your business receives.

But the most important feature will be the ability to see how all of your social media marketing efforts on G+ affect your overall website traffic.

Social analytics

Last year, we all jumped on the bandwagon and installed Plus 1 buttons on our websites. But some of your posts got far more “likes” than “+1′s” right? Slowly people started clicking on the plus buttons.

That’s a good thing because Google is going to use +1 as a tool to measure user behavior.

This functionality is already inside of Google Analytics but apparently we will see a more feature-rich section for G+ Business Pages.

How do +1s affect user behavior? Coming soon, Google+ pages suite of social analytic reports make it easy to find out. Analytics measure +1s and how engagement on your site changes when personalized recommendations help your content stand out. Also see aggregate, anonymized demographic information about the Google users who have +1’d your site.

Analytics on a page

In the coming weeks, Google will give page owners access to tools that show who’s interacting with your page, social activities (+1′s, shares, comments, etc) and other data to help you decide what is working for your business.

API’s for third party developers?

Google is planning to release their first set of Google+ API’s which include access to public data and hangouts data. Google has kept their APIs closed since launch so this is a nice sign that they are ready to start involving third-party developers.

This means new apps and service integrations (hopefully).

Are you using G+ for your business? Share your results/thoughts below:

via Measure – Google+ for business.

If you didn’t know already, Pinterest has become a major social media powerhouse in recent months rivaling Google Plus, YouTube, and Twitter. Over the last year, Pinterest has seen a 2,702.2% increase in traffic.

The average time users spent on Pinterest rivals Facebook, Twitter, and even YouTube for time spent.

28.1% of users have an annual household income exceeding $1000,000. 50% of the users have children. This is big news for retailers as most are seeing a huge increase in referral traffic from the sites.

Check out the complete infographic showing Pinterest stats from Modea.

Currently you need an invite to join Pinterest, leave a comment below and I will send you an invite.

You’ll notice that the majority 68.2% of users are women. Anyone with a Pinterest account will imediately notice the amount of women’s fashion articles being pinned.Pinterest could be the fastest growing social media site out there, with a 2,702.2% increase in traffic since last year. The average time users spend on the site is much more than Facebook or Twitter. It even rivals YouTube for time spent. Pretty impressive considering the time commitment it takes to watch a video vs. browsing pictures.The most interesting thing is the marketing implications this information presents. 28.1% of users have an annual household income exceeding $100,000. 50% of them have children.

via Pinterest Infographics Reveal Marketing Potential | WebProNews.

Facebook is finally rolling out the new changes to Facebook fan pages bringing over the timeline layout released earlier for personal pages.

Among the many changes, the most notable change is the removal of custom landing tabs or “fan gates” where marketers could offer something in return for a “like” before landing on the wall.

This method of generating fans was very powerful. In fact, there have been hundreds of fan page products released just for this purpose.

Here is a screen shot from Colin Costello showing the before and after. Notice the default landing tab option has been removed.

Before

After

Facebook is also rumored to be releasing “Facebook offers” where fan page admins can create exclusive offers for their fans. Facebook also released fan private messages and over a dozen other features.

It will be interesting to see how Facebook fan page owners will adjust to the new timeline and features of the the new fan page setup.

You can view the entire list of changes here.

Admins you have until March 30, 2012 before your page will automatically get the Facebook Timeline.

I’ve been checking out the new Facebook profiles for pages, and have noticed that they have done away with the welcome pages. If you go to my Giveaway Tab application, you can see that you are taken to the welcome page. I have attached two pictures — one with settings from the new profile with no option for default landing tab, and one with the old with the option. A lot of pages used this default landing tab to get people to like their page.

via Industry Reacts To Premium Ads, Sponsored Stories For Mobile And Facebook Timeline Pages.

2011 was the year of Googles algorithm change that shook the foundation of SEO for good.

Yup, Google Panda. Like it or hate it, it’s here for good. But let’s look at how panda evolved over the course of 2011.

Google has confirmed Panda 3.3 and is making sure quality content trumps all.

Now with Google Panda, all it takes is one page of poor, spammy content on your website to make it plunge in the search results. So make sure you keep inventory of your pages of content.

Searchengineland and BlueGlass have put together a nice infographic that tells the story of Google Panda since it was first implemented:

http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-update-112805

One year ago, Google launched its “Panda Update” designed to filter low quality or “thin” content from its top search results.

Below, our infographic produced in conjunction with BlueGlass covers how Panda works, what it impacted and the various updates from Panda 1.0 through Panda 3.2 that have happened along the way.

After the infographic, you’ll also find more information about the Panda Update ranging from in-depth analysis of how it works, “winners and losers” and well as recovery tips.

via Infographic: The Google Panda Update, One Year Later.

Search marketers might want to pay close attention to some of the changes announced by Google in Panda 3.3.

Google hasn’t completely released all of the details surrounding the new changes to link evaluation, but instead we are left scratching our heads with the announcement that Google is getting rid of a link evaluation signal that has been used for years…

Evaluating Links
Google says it’s getting rid of a link evaluation signal that it’s been using for years. This one’s sure to prompt discussion:

Link evaluation. We often use characteristics of links to help us figure out the topic of a linked page. We have changed the way in which we evaluate links; in particular, we are turning off a method of link analysis that we used for several years. We often rearchitect or turn off parts of our scoring in order to keep our system maintainable, clean and understandable.
We’ve reached out to Google in the past, asking for further clarification on the items in these monthly roundups. The company has indicated that the blog post says everything Google wants to say. That, along with Google’s understandable (and necessary) reluctance to give away too many details about ranking signals, leads me to assume we won’t be getting anything more than the above about this.

A link evaluation signal that’s been used for years is now turned off? The SEO mind races….

Plus Google is making enhancements to Local Search. This is good news for those using good SEO tactics to rank for local keywords. It sounds like Google is only improving the local search system:

Here’s another one, along with the link evaluation signal, that I’m actually surprised Google would so openly reveal. The company says traditional algorithmic ranking factors are now playing a bigger part in triggering local search results:

Improvements to ranking for local search results. [launch codename “Venice”] This improvement improves the triggering of Local Universal results by relying more on the ranking of our main search results as a signal.
Traditional SEO has played a bigger part in Google’s local search since the launch of Places Search in late 2010. And now it sounds like that dial is being turned up a little higher, too.

Google’s post also says local results are being improved because of a “new system to find results from a user’s city more reliably. Now we’re better able to detect when both queries and documents are local to the user.”

via Google Confirms Panda 3.3 Update, Plus Changes To How It Evaluates Links, Local Search Rankings & Much More.

Related articles

• How This Month’s Google Search Changes Affect Local Businesses (readwriteweb.com)
• How Google Evaluates Links (davidnaylor.co.uk)