Facebook currently has three types of groups: Secret, Closed, and Open. First, a quick overview of each – followed by my case for why the secret ones are the most powerful.

Open Facebook Groups

Open Facebook groups are a great way for people to gather together around a shared cause or vision. The downside of these groups is that they tend to become rather large and the noise (and spam) becomes overwhelming. Regrettably, it’s easy to end up leaving more groups than you join for this reason.

Closed Facebook Groups

Closed groups require invitations to join, but as Facebook says: “Anyone can see the group and who’s in it.” So you may want to rethink joining a group called “I Attended Rocky Horror Picture Show Over 100 Times” if your goal on Facebook is to present a professional image.

Secret Facebook Groups

Secret groups are what they appear to be: they’re secret. Only current group members can see the group and its posts, and only the group administrator can add/invite new members. Beyond the technical privacy benefits, secret Facebook groups have significant personal and professional advantages over open and closed groups.

How a Secret Facebook Group Changed my Life

In 2011, I met a group of businesswomen who were all conversing consistently using a certain hashtag on Twitter. We started to get to know each other quite well, and decided to take some of our conversations out of the public eye via our very own secret Facebook group.

What happened after that is indescribable. This group of women have become WAY more than just “Twitter friends.” We have personally and professionally gotten to know each other on a deeper level than ever expected. We share about personal joys and issues, as well as professional successes and challenges. These women feel like family to me.

In addition to communicating daily in our secret Facebook group, we group video chat once a month, and most of us have now met in person during various travels to each other’s states. Almost all of us went on a group trip to Arizona last fall to spend a fantastic long weekend together. We are friends, mentors, and professional colleagues that consistently refer business to one another due to the level of trust that has been built up between us.

The Secret Power of Secret Facebook Groups

So how exactly did the secret Facebook group contribute to the building of the amazing relationships described above?

1. Cultivation

Secret groups provide an opportunity to develop the seeds of friendship that often can only cultivated within the privacy of “real life” gatherings. Social networking is great for meeting new people, but really getting to know someone requires an element of privacy. Secret Facebook groups provide that privacy.

2. Comfort

As people get to know one another, they naturally develop empathy. Secret Facebook groups often evolve to become a support group, even if they started out purely professional in nature. Members offer up their experience and advice, a shoulder to lean on, or some humor to help other members through their day. Those of us in the technology sector often forget that as humans who are inherently social, we need each other and even long for deeper connections.

3. Collaboration

The trust that develops over time can sprout into collaboration and/or referred business. The format of a Facebook group allows members to collectively brainstorm about projects via the posting of photos, documents, and organized conversations. In doing so, members have the opportunity to demonstrate their expertise to one another, which when combined with the trust built in these groups, leads to referred business.

Share Your “Secret”

So there you have it – those are the “secret” powers of secret Facebook groups as I have experienced them. I know of many other people who use these groups in this way as well. If you’re one of them, I’d love for you to share your experience in the comments below.

Having just returned from Wordcamp Miami and seeing the latest and greatest that WordPress has to offer, I feel compelled to try to debunk a myth that I hear way too frequently:

“Isn’t WordPress really limited in what it can do?”

WordPress Powers 17% of the Internet

People often think because WordPress started out as a blogging platform, that it must pale in comparison to other website software options. Yes, WordPress did start out as purely a blogging tool, but it didn’t stay there. WordPress has evolved into a robust CMS (content management system) that powers 17% of the websites in the world today, including some very big and widely known ones (i.e. Mashable and Techcrunch).

Plugins, Plugins, and more Plugins

WordPress is an open source software written in PHP. This means that any developer that knows the PHP programming language can write plugins, or add ons, that add new features to the core set of WordPress capabilities. And they do. Tens of thousands of them do. Some plugins are extremely robust, such as BuddyPress, which creates a comprehensive custom social network on a website with a few clicks. If there’s something you want your website to do that isn’t included in WordPress by default, chances are “there’s a plugin for that.” And if there isn’t, you can make one.

Pre-designed Templates? Pfft.

WordPress also supports HTML and CSS, which means that the design, the aesthetic look and feel of a WordPress site, can be edited without any limits. A common misconception about WordPress sites is hat they can only use predefined design templates. Not true at all. A WordPress site can be designed 100% custom, to mimic precisely the look of an existing website in any language, or any graphical “mockup” representing a desired look for a site. Photoshop files can be translated into WordPress themes, and custom fonts can be adapted into web fonts to create a very high end look and feel.

Custom Software Compatibility

WordPress can also reside side-by-side on a server with other custom software programs, and can pull the functionalities of those programs into the WordPress site by embedding the custom software into the WordPress site’s look and feel. WordPress can even pull in information from software that resides on other servers via API (application programming interface).

WordPress-Powered Mobile Apps

One of the newest trends in WordPress development is using responsive (mobile-friendly) design to create mobile websites and even mobile apps in WordPress. Yes, mobile apps. iPhone, Android, and Blackberry all have open source WordPress apps that can be customized to pull in a mobile WordPress site, essentially creating a mobile app the runs on WordPress. Or, traditional mobile app programming languages like objective C can call information from a WordPress site into the custom mobile app, which results in an app that is “powered by WordPress.”

Want an example? Check out this YMCA check-in iPad app built by WebDevStudios that scans a member’s badge with the iPad camera and allows them to choose what activities they’ve done to earn badges, points, and prizes. Or there’s the “DMA Friends” app that allows Dallas Museum of Art visitors to enjoy a much more interactive experience while touring the museum, also developed by WebDevStudios.

The ONE Limitation of WordPress

So, tell me again, after reading all of this – how exactly is WordPress limited? Oh, wait, I know. WordPress is indeed limited by one thing: Your imagination.

In our recent “Social Media Mashups” (#SMMashups) On-Air Hangout, Lena West and I discussed how brands can “mash up” or combine different social media platforms for a brand new experience. We talked about neat things like Overblog and VisibleTweets, as well as combining Hangouts and tweetchats, Instagram and Facebook Contests, “Pingating” on Facebook, and our own mashup concept: Pine.

Pinterest + Vine = Pine

“Pine” refers to a mashup of Pinterest and Vine. It started with Lena’s idea of how a company like Ikea, who needs to show their customers how to assemble things, could use Pinterest boards to show each step of an assembly and embed the boards on their website.

I then found out that Vine videos are now able to be embedded in a website, and the light bulb went off. How great would it be to be able to show not only step-by-step pictures of an assembly, but brief stop motion videos of each step right alongside the pictures?

So the “Pine” mashup was born. Embedded Pinterest boards + Embedded Vine videos = a brand new, unprecedented form of customer service.

Applications for the “Pine” Method of Customer Service

Not only for assembly applications, the Pine method of customer service could be used by all sorts of brands, including:

• Personal Trainers / Fitness Experts
• Chefs / Cooking Instructors
• Computer Programmers
• DIY / Craft / Home Improvement Brands
• Art Teachers
• …and more

Essentially, any brand that needs to show someone how to do something could use this method of combining Pinterest boards and Vine videos to give their customers an enhanced experience with their product or service. Brands that provide an amazing customer service experience (think Zappos) retain and gain more customers than their competition, by far.

This multimedia method of customer service is not only powerful, but INEXPENSIVE to produce. Think about how much video production and website programming would have gone into creating something like this in the past. The cost of creating this type of experience would have been out of reach to most brands. But now anyone with an iPhone or iPad (and hopefully soon Android) can provide this incredible experience for their customers.

How Will You Use Pine?

What applications can you think of for this new method of social customer service? Tell us your ideas in the comments below.

App developers: Do you have an email marketing plan?

Do you only plan to develop one version of your app and never improve it?

Do you intend to retire after your first app?

Of course not.

Email Marketing for App Developers

Do you know how many customers you’re losing (or how much money) because you don’t have an email  marketing plan?

iPhone sales outpace BIRTHS worldwide, and this market is growing…FAST. (For more amazing stats on mobile, watch Erik Qualman’s mobilenomics video.)

If you don’t collect email addresses from your app users, you’re missing out on an opportunity to maintain and grow your customer base.

3 Reasons Email Marketing is Key for App Developers

Here’s why mobile app developers should be using email marketing:

1.  Often users download an app and try it once or twice but forget about it or worse: delete it off of their device.  Email marketing can not only be used to remind the customer of your product but to get valuable feedback needed for you to improve your product.

2.  According to C|net Apple and Android both have about 700,000 applications available in their respective stores.  That’s overwhelming.  The app developer that collects email addresses and uses them to stay top-of-mind with their users will rise up among the masses, and will avoid the “what-was-the-name-of-the-app-I-downloaded-last-week” syndrome.

3.  Unless you plan to build one app and retire, you wouldn’t want to reinvent your customer base when you build your next product. Don’t lose touch with your existing loyal fans because you failed to ask for an email address upon their first download. Ask for the address so that you can follow up with a strategic marketing plan – for both your current and future products.

Email is an Investment in Your Company’s Future

Email marketing is a simple way to invest in your company’s future.   In regular updates you can inform your customers of ongoing developments, remind them of the value of your app, or send surveys to ask for their feedback.  All of this contact keeps your brand’s name at the front of their memory increasing the likelihood they’ll continue to use your app (or give it a second try), download another from your product line, and tell their friends.

Tell Us Your Experience

Are you an app developer? Share your experience with email marketing in the comments below.

There are two ways of losing money on Google:
1) Not Ranking. 2) Ranking.

1) How to Lose Money By NOT Ranking on Google

The way to lose money by NOT ranking on Google is simple: do not invest in SEO (search engine optimization). But exactly how much of a return will you get on that investment?

There is a simple formula that can help you calculate your potential ROI on a search engine optimization investment.

How to Calculate Your  Missed Google Opportunity

You can estimate how much money your company is losing to “missed Google” opportunities with the following formula:

1) Take a key phrase you want to rank for, and run it through the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

2) Make note of the number of searches per month (use “local” for domestic and “global” if you sell internationally).

3) Take the number of searches and multiply it by 0.5.

(Between 48% and 53% of Google searchers click on the first website on the search engine results page, so I just use 50% as an average for this purpose.)

4) If you know your site’s conversion rate, multiply the above result by your conversion rate. This is the number of sales and/or leads you are losing out on by not ranking in the first position in Google for your desired term. 

If you don’t know your conversion rate, first of all shame on you, secondly, a safe estimation to use is 2%. Conversion rates vary by industry, but across the board approximately 2% of web visitors convert into leads (or sales in the case of online stores).

Are you crying yet?

Don’t cry – just grab a piece of that missed opportunity pie by working with a high-quality SEO consultant to develop your organic search engine optimization strategy. (P.S. Be sure to learn How to Spot A Black Hat SEO ‘Professional’ before evaluating SEO consultants.)

2) How to Lose Money By Ranking on Google

The second way to lose money on Google is to pay them to rank you, i.e. sign up for AdWords.

Building an SEO reputation in the eyes of the search engines takes time. Paid search advertising (i.e. Google AdWords) is a great way to generate instant traffic; however, AdWords as a long-term strategy is not wise, especially since organic (i.e. non-paid) search results are clicked on 94% more than AdWords ads.

Additionally, if you don’t consistently “tweak” AdWords campagins with negative keywords, new match types, A/B versions of ad copy, and different bidding methodologies, I guarantee you are flushing money down the toilet.

So just how much money are you losing on AdWords?

How to Calculate Your AdWords Losses

1) In AdWords, change the date range to “All Time.”

2) Click on the “Keywords” tab. Click on “Keyword Details” and under “Search Terms”, click on “ALL”.

3) Tally up the amount of money spent on phrases that are irrelevant to your business.

4) Cry.

If you own an online store, another way to calculate your AdWords losses is:

1) Look at the amount of revenue in the “Google/CPC” source/medium metric of Google Analytics E-Commerce Conversions report for a specific time period.

2) Compare that to the amount of money you spent on AdWords in the same time period.

3) Cry.

Another Reason Your AdWords Money is a Waste

How to Stop Relying on AdWords

Share Your Data!

I was beyond dismayed to receive an email this morning from LinkedIn, indicating that they are retiring their (in my opinion) best feature: LinkedIn Answers.

LinkedIn Answers is (was) a Quora-type question and answer forum, where business people could ask for advice in a variety of topical categories. In turn, professionals could answer questions in their area of expertise, which in my experience, was THE best lead-generating activity one could do on LinkedIn.

Why LinkedIn Answers was the Best

LinkedIn Answers was better than any question and answer forum on the web for several reasons:

1) Credibility: Nowhere else on the web can you get an answer to a question and immediately click through to review the person’s entire professional history. This provided an instantaneous and thorough way to evaluate the credibility of the advice given.

LinkedIn Answers also helped professionals add credibility to their LinkedIn profiles. The act of answering a question generated an activity item on one’s profile, which also showed up in the news feed of their connections. Additionally, after answering enough questions in a category, one could earn “Expert” status and be featured on the Answers homepage and in those categories.

2) Focus: The questions and answers being traded on LinkedIn Answers were about business. Although other question and answer sites have categories for business, there are none that are as business-focused and as widely used by business professionals in the world. Because of LinkedIn’s enormous worldwide presence, one could find an expert to answer even the most obscure/niche business questions through LinkedIn Answers.

3) Organization: Today’s LinkedIn email suggests asking questions in groups and via polls. This is highly ineffective for two reasons. First, groups are incredibly noisy places where people constantly try to promote themselves. In my experience, very little “real” discussion occurs in groups. Secondly, Polls have no categorization and are only viewed by connections. In LinkedIn Answers, I could ask my question in a specific category and get an answer from an expert in that category, regardless of whether I was connected to them or not.

4) Lead Generation: In the experience of my colleagues, clients, and myself, LinkedIn Answers was hands-down THE best lead generation tool on the site – perhaps even on the entire web. The psychological concept of reciprocity never failed me when I was answering questions on LinkedIn Answers. If I took the time to give a very thorough and helpful answer, the asker would nearly always write me back a personal message of thanks, and would often either ask to have a further discussion (hello, LEAD!), connect with me and follow me elsewhere (increasing my exposure to their network), and/or share my content with others (because it helped them so much). The “pay it forward” and “give to get” concepts that go along with answering questions on LinkedIn Answers never failed to get me leads and enhance my business presence on the web.

Irreplaceable Value

Where can I go for all of that now? Nowhere.

How LinkedIn Killed its Best Feature

LinkedIn greatly diminished the potential of its Answers feature by hiding it. It didn’t even have it’s own menu item in the site’s main navigation. One had to click on the “More” menu item at the far right to find it.

I kid you not, just last night I gave a presentation about LinkedIn to 27 business professionals, of whom nearly all were members of LinkedIn. When I asked who had heard of LinkedIn Answers, not a single hand went up. I then proceeded to tell them about the feature and show them examples of how it had produced leads for me. Many were beyond excited to try it.

I now have to message them all and tell them that LinkedIn decided to remove this incredibly valuable lead-generating tool, and that there is nothing on the web as nearly as relevant for business people as this forum was.

What Great Feature will LinkedIn Kill Next?

First they nixed the Events feature (which was GREAT for driving business people to events like seminars and webinars), and now they killed their best lead-generator.

What feature do you think they will remove next?

Developing a formal Facebook marketing plan has many benefits. A marketing plan ensures clear, consistent brand messaging, helps avoid social media blunders, and provides a way to measure success. Facebook marketing plan templates are hard to come by on the web, and the ones that are out there aren’t necessarily comprehensive.

Facebook Marketing Plan Template – Summary

The following is a summary of the comprehensive Facebook marketing plan template that I have developed, available for download below. The full document is 12 pages long and contains approximately 1,900 words that will guide you through the process of developing a professional, thorough, and comprehensive Facebook marketing plan.

Sections

The Facebook marketing plan template consists of 3 major sections:

• Current Situation Analysis
• Strategic Facebook Marketing Plan
• Reporting, Measurement, and Continuous Improvement

Current Situation Analysis

This section of the Facebook marketing plan template highlights the following:

• Goals, Strengths, and Weaknesses
  Provides a high-level summary of the brand’s existing Facebook presence
• Current Facebook Situation
  Statistics on the current activity level and engagement on the page, as well as a competitive analysis

Strategic Facebook Marketing Plan

This section of the template covers:

• Audience
• Brand Message
• Posting Frequency
• Post Content, Mix, and Ratios
• Tactics to Increase Brand Awareness
• Tactics to Increase Fan Engagement
• Harvesting Competitive Intelligence
• Contests
• Coupons/Offers
• Advertising

The full template contains explanations, suggestions, and examples for each of the above.

Reporting, Measurement, and Continuous Improvement

This section of the Facebook marketing plan template details what metrics will be measured, what the goals for those metrics are, and how often they will be reported on. Metrics covered in the template are:

• Total Number of Fans
• Overall Engagement Rate
• Other Page-Level Metrics
• Other Post-Level Metrics
• Google Analytics Metrics
• Advertising Metrics

Download the Facebook Marketing Plan Template

To download the full 12-page Facebook marketing plan template in Microsoft Word format, complete the following form. If you do not wish to be contacted after downloading the template, simply uncheck the checkbox. Need another format? Contact me and let me know what you need.

You may also be interested in my Facebook EdgeRank E-Book, available as a one-click download.

One of my favorite things about internet marketing is the measurability of results. Even free web analytics programs such as Google Analytics contain a wealth of data that can be used to track campaign effectiveness and find areas for continuous improvement. Compared to traditional “offline” marketing, internet marketing by nature is more measurable, and therefore, marketers are held more accountable for campaign effectiveness.

On the flip side, the wealth of data available to internet marketers can be overwhelming and can easily lead to “paralysis by analysis.” Therefore, the first and most important step in defining an internet marketing measurement plan is:

1) Define Your KPIs

KPI stands for “key performance indicator” and refers to the metrics that are the most important. A key step in whittling through forests full of data, choosing your KPIs before embarking on an internet marketing plan or campaign will reduce the risk of “analysis paralysis” when campaign data starts coming in. [Tweet this]

Some common internet marketing KPIs are:

• Unique Visitors
• Time on Page
• Bounce Rate
• Traffic Sources
• Conversion Rate

Once you have your KPIs defined, the next step is to state precisely how you would like them to change.

2) Define Measurable Objectives

An objective is more specific than a goal.  A goal is a lofty idea, i.e. “I want tons of website traffic.” An objective defines how much of the thing you want, and in how much time. An objective would be “Increase unique visitors by 10 percent per quarter.” A good test of objectives is the “SMART” rule. An objective is “SMART” if it is:

S: Specific

M: Measurable

A: Attainable

R: Relevant

T: Time-Bound and Trackable

Now that you know what exactly you are tracking, and precisely how you want those metrics to improve and in how much time, the last step is to set a reporting protocol.

3) Define a Reporting Protocol

Internet marketing campaigns are subject to temporary fluctuations, so in most cases they should not be monitored on a daily basis. Data should be reviewed periodically to look for trends and averages. Depending upon the campaign, the time period for reporting could be weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Setting specific timeframes for reporting and data review is the final component of a well-organized campaign measurement plan.

You may even want to include a protocol for when and how the reported data should be reviewed, and what kinds of action will be expected to be taken after the review. The goal behind defining measurable objectives and a reporting protocol is to foster continuous improvement. If objectives have been met too easily, perhaps new and more aggressive objectives should be set. If objectives are not being met, new tactics for achieving them should be defined.

Conclusion

In summary, your internet marketing measurement plan should define WHAT is going to be measured, HOW MUCH improvement should be seen in HOW LONG of a time frame, and HOW OFTEN  the data should be reviewed.

Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Prospective clients often ask me if they should invest in SEO (search engine optimization) or social media. Their company only has so many marketing dollars to spend, and they want to spend them as wisely as possible. They have heard a lot about both SEO and social media marketing, and know they should probably be doing at least one of them, but they do not understand either one enough to make the decision on their own. So they ask me.

SEO or Social Media: Which is the Wisest Investment?

I answer this question by turning it into an analogy.

Should you put two front wheels on your car, or two rear wheels?

Just as a car needs both front wheels and rear wheels, your company needs both SEO and social media. [Tweet This]

SEO and social are more interdependent than ever. Search engines are using social “signals”, such as “likes”, retweets, and “plus ones” as votes of confidence, similar to the way they look at relevant inbound links.

On the flip side, it is extremely beneficial to have carefully-selected key phrases in your social content, since more and more social media posts are being indexed by search engines. It also helps to have those phrases prevalent in your social posts when users run searches within a social network.

Additionally, by having a presence on each major social network, you can easily dominate the first page of Google for “branded” searches. Branded searches are searches for your company name, or variations thereof. A Google search for a company name often produces profile results from Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google Plus, Pinterest, Quora and SlideShare. If your company has profiles on all of these networks, then you will nearly dominate the first page results for your branded terms. This is especially beneficial when there are other companies with names similar to yours.

Blogging is the Fuel that Drives it All

There’s a second part to my automotive analogy of SEO and social media.

Blogging is the fuel that drives the car.

If SEO gives you two wheels, and social media gives you the other two, then blogging is the fuel that drives the car. Blogging frequently with carefully-selected key phrases will boost both your social media presence and your SEO rankings. Search engines like to see consistently-expanding sites with fresh keyword-rich content. Social media fans love to see genuinely useful articles that help them solve their most pressing issues.

The social signals (likes, shares, retweets, etc.) generated by the social interest help boost the search engine rankings for the articles. And the carefully-chosen key phrases in the freshly-pressed blog articles bring your company more visibility in Google. These two factors play off of each other for an exponential “snowball” type of effect. Or, to stick with the automotive analogy:

Keyword-rich blog articles rev up your marketing’s RPMs.

[Tweet That Quote]

Are You Running on Empty?

What kind of shape is your internet marketing vehicle in? Are you running on all cylinders? Or are you running on empty? Leave your comments in the box below.

A long-awaited feature has been added to Google Analytics: Shortcuts!

The intention of shortcuts is to provide a simple way to reach frequently-used reports with less clicks.

If you attended or watched the recording of my “Top 3 Google Analytics Reports for SEO” webinar, you’ll know that I recommend checking just a few Analytics reports on a regular basis. However, each of these reports requires several clicks to drill down to. In theory, shortcuts would help make these top priority reports easier to reach.

As soon as the official Google Analytics blog announced the addition of this feature, I tried it out right away.

Google Analytics Shortcuts: The Good

The shortcuts do achieve their intended purpose: they create a list of links to your favorite reports. This makes it easy to focus on the most important reports, and eliminates the need to memorize the path of clicks to find them.

Google Analytics Shortcuts: The Bad

As excited as I was to create my shortcuts, I was bummed to find out that the list of shortcuts resides on the “Home” tab, instead of the more frequently-used “Standard Reporting” tab. The “Standard Reporting” tab is also the default landing tab when I first sign into Google Analytics, so having to travel over to the “Home” tab is an extra (and annoying) step.

I was also disappointed to realize that the shortcuts are profile-specific. I manage a lot of Google Analytics profiles, and I wasn’t enthused at the realization that I will need to recreate the list of shortcuts once per profile. I use the same reports regardless of which client’s data I’m reviewing, so I’d prefer one master list of shortcuts that applies to all profiles. Additionally, if I decide to make a change or addition to my shortcuts, I would need to repeat that change on each profile.

Your Google Analytics Shortcut Feedback

What do you think of the new Google Analytics shortcuts feature? For instructions on setting up shortcuts, refer to this Google Analytics blog article. Then come back and let me know what you think in the comments below.