I mean wow. Many small business owners start to get a brain freeze when social media gurus start talking about the thrill of digging into data about your social media activities – but I’ve discovered a quick, cut-to-the-chase program that shows you what the heck is going on with your Twitter community.
It’s not triple level, gobbledeegook esoteric knowledge, either – it’s straightforward number crunching of the most useful information that Ed Everyman can understand and use. And yes, it’s free! Jump on, use it once if that’s all you want to do – or check back every so often for another look under your Twitter hood. Good stuff.
Click here to see and sign up for SocialBro.
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Source: businessinsider.com via Ann on Pinterest
More people have mobile phones than electricity or safe drinking water. In fact, mobile is the most pervasive technology ever invented. Do you have your mobile website yet? Thanks to Business Insider for this chart. Click here to learn the answer to “what is a mobile website?” Want to get a mobile website in days? Watch this 15- min video on what a mobile website is and how to get one quick.
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Do you have a Pinterest account that you’re using for business purposes – in whole or in part? It’s great that the platform is so popular. But as with all social media, you should think about how it works, who’s using it, and why, before you throw your boat in the water and start paddling.
Here’s an excellent article on how to use Pinterest best – and how to totally miss the boat. Click here to read about how L.L. Bean – yes, missed the boat – with Pinterest. You’ll understand the best way to take advantage of Pinterest – and you’ll get ahead of the crowd because many business users just don’t get it. Read on and surge ahead!
TweetI still wonder how Facebook’s ”Fear and Punishment As a Marketing Model” is being discussed in business schools across the world. So horribly negative – and so very successful. First, they give out a totally free product and tie the use of said product to one’s own sense of popularity and self worth. Like wearing make-up for women – you wouldn’t be caught dead without it, even though according to all logic, it’s absurd to feel that you must hide in your home unless you’ve painted colors onto your face in a manner similar to every other woman. How weird, honestly, is that belief system? Yet it is embraced in the western world without question. Lack of makeup actually creates fear and shame!
So Facebook inculcates in us the belief that we must have a Facebook account, and page. And it’s free, so why not – and why not now? Facebook takes over the world, and they attach an advertising component to their free product and rake in the dough. Then they start changing the free product – without, seemingly, any concern for or even interest in approval by their “buyers.” The changes cause a huge wave of concern, consternation, chatter, and jumping-to by users. In other words, the arbitrary and capricious changes garner a lot of attention, and the fact that it’s negative hurts them not a bit. Users cry, “What will happen to my account? Will my page look bad? Will horrible pictures tagged with my name be suddenly searchable? Will I lose applications I’ve installed? Will I be able to find anything again? Will all of my search patterns be made accessible to voracious hordes of advertisers who know more about me than I ever wanted them to?”
Not only does this negative attention not hurt Facebook, it in fact actually creates an upsurge in the perceived value of the product. Why? Because each change creates a Fear of Failure, or Fear of Exposure, or Fear of Loss. The world responds not by throwing the darned product away, but by feverishly working to make sure they keep the product, which they now view as more precious than ever!
Well, enough of my rant. I have gone out and found a couple of very good resources to guide you in your quest not to lose face on Facebook. Here they are:
Timeline for Facebook Business Pages is HERE by Engage121.
and:
Fan Pages get Timeline! – posted by Daniel McGaw at Social Media Today.
Enjoy!
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Booyah! I just created three mobile websites – one for each of my business and service sites: NetMarketing-123, PR-123, and WebTraffic-123. I feel a huge sense of relief, to be honest, and I’m really excited too, because I want to share with you just how important it is to have a mobile website, and also how easy it actually is to get one up and running.
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I’ve talked in past blogs about the benefits of registering your business with Google Places. If you’ve read those posts, you know that you can register your business in up to 100 “places” – as long as you legitimately do business or provided services in those areas – and you can do so whether or not you have a brick & mortar store or office. If yours is a virtual business, my recommendation is to list yourself in the top 100 metropolitan areas.
But now here’s a new boost for those of you with a physical address – Google’s Business Photo Program. Google just launched a “trusted photographers” program and, while it’s not free, it’s a very streamlined service to get high quality photos of the interior of your business on Google Places and Google Maps. Basically, Google has vetted known professional photographers that you can contact to come to your business and photograph its interior, including a panoramic photo. The photographer comes over, takes the photos, and then posts them on Google Places and Google Maps for you. It’s not free – you negotiate with the photographer on his/her fee, and it’s not available everywhere, but it’s worth checking out.
You can also embed the images on your own website, Facebook page, link to them with Twitter – you get the picture. And of course having images on your site always gives you a better chance of being seen on search engine results pages because when the searcher chooses “images” for their results, you’ll be there. With high quality photos, yours could also stick out from the crowd on the images results page and be that much more enticing, encouraging better click-throughs.
So spiff up your shop and be the first on your block to take part in this pilot program – and get a new boost for your online presence.
I harp a lot in my weekly updates and to my clients directly about the essential elements for a successful website home page. Last week I stumbled across an “old friend” website that has every necessary ingredient, nicely organized and presented in an enticing way. It beautifully represents all that I teach.
Did I have anything to do with it? Nah… But I’d like you to see which website I’m talking about – SimpliSafe. Here’s why I think it’s close to a perfect example of a website that will generate a high conversion rate:
- Provocative headline right up there, front and center. “Don’t buy a burglar alarm until you have scrolled down this page” catches interest right away.
- Visuals of the product they’re selling, up front.
- Credibility enhancing media endorsements cleverly positioned above the menu bar: very visible yet not interfering with the flow of the copy on the page.
- Media endorsement logos repeated right under the product images. They’re not afraid to be redundant – an effective tactic when done well.
- Media endorsements “told” to the viewer via the headline at the top on the left. Again, good redundancy of one of the most persuasive selling features they have to offer.
- Video on home page, right up at the top. And not just one, but two!
- A clean, simple, not-too-many-choices menu bar. After all, when a visitor comes to the page, he’s not likely to have so much interest in the product being featured that he’ll want to click on 12 different menu choices about the product, its origins, its founders, etc. Offering just a few simple choices is more appealing and better matches the initial interest level of the visitor.
- First scroll down, the site features a fun-looking, colorful yet very clean and crisp presentation of the many selling features of their alarm system.
- Finally, when you continue scrolling down the home page, you find that it goes on, and on, and on – a classic sales page or splash page format. They present comparison charts, quotes from happy customers, excerpts from media writeups, more videos, and more. Research has shown that for a product based website, a long page with lots of info and repeat invitations to click and buy is often more effective than a shorter home page with lots of menu tabs to click on to obtain that same information.
Do you have a product based website? Take a look at your home page and see if you might adopt some of the effective techniques that Simplisafe is using.
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TopRank’s Ashley Zeckman, who authored the article, gives many tips for getting the most out of your images so that you help SEO and social media presence through their use. Click here for the full article how to maximize search and social media results with your images.
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Read the full article by clicking the link below:
Where is PR Going in 2012? Part 3 – Smart Use of Technology
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