If so, you should sign up for Hyper Alerts, a service that will send you an email each time a post or comment is made on a Facebook page. You don’t have to “like” the page to receive updates.

You can receive “alerts,” as Hyper Alerts calls them, “within minutes,” hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly.

The service is free, and unless you are requesting the “within minutes alerts,” you do not have to install an application. To sign up, visit the Hyper Alerts site.

“Social media is just another facet of marketing and customer service. Say it with me. Repeat it until you know it by heart. Bind it as a sign upon your hands and upon thy gates. Social media, by itself, will not help you.”

I agree with so much that Shankman says in this article, but I understand why many people, especially small businesses and nonprofits, feel the need to hire “social media experts.”

In fact, I believe that small businesses and nonprofits can benefit greatly by hiring an individual or a company with social media expertise. They just have to be careful to hire the right one.

Reasons Why People Hire Social Media “Experts”

One: Lack of Time

If you’re already overwhelmed by the sheer number of things you have to do on a daily business just to keep your business afloat or you’re focused on working with the population your nonprofit is serving, how can you possibly find time to tweet or post on Facebook?

Two: Lack of Expertise

It’s easy for those of us who understand and enjoy using social media to lose sight of how complicated and overwhelming that world can appear to others. What a relief it is to find an “expert” who can solve your problems, magically creating a Facebook page and placing a pretty icon on your website that invites everyone to “Like Us! Please!”

The Trouble

The trouble is that many social media “experts” aren’t in business to help their customers, they’re in business only to make money. So they set up your accounts, give you a few pointers, and quickly move on to the next customer. Or they charge you an expensive retainer promising to gain you a large number of fans and followers, and maybe they do, but those fans have simply “liked” your page and forgotten about it. Because either they’re people who aren’t genuinely interested in your work or they are interested in what you have to offer, but there is no compelling, ongoing conversation taking place on your social media accounts to keep those followers engaged.

And there you are staring at Foursquare, Twitter, and Facebook with no idea how to use them (lack of expertise). And you’re too busy to deal with them (lack of time). Think of all those Facebook pages you’ve seen that just sit there gathering dust, occasionally updated by spammers, with ten fans who all happen to be relatives and friends of the business owner.

The Other Trouble

The other trouble is that many business owners don’t have — or are unwilling to invest — the time, commitment, and money needed to make social media work. Like all facets of marketing and customer service, a social media campaign takes work, sometimes hard work.

So What’s the Solution?

For some businesses, it’s as simple as deciding to manage social media on their own. If you want to go this route, I’d suggest that you start by looking over some of the resources listed on my site and then wade in slowly — perhaps with a Facebook page. It doesn’t have to be “fancy” with a lot of photos and features — at least not at first. What’s most important is that you tend to it on a regular basis and that you offer good content. (If your only reason for choosing to do it yourself is to save money, remember that your time is worth money, so the cost is still there.)

For others, it comes down to finding the “right expert”— a knowledgeable, helpful, reliable individual (or company) who not only has expertise in setting up social media, but who is also committed to helping their clients make the most of all that social media has to offer.

You Might Also Like:

• Not every business needs a social media campaign. Here are some things to consider before you create that Facebook page.
• “Small Businesses That Understand Social Media”
• Also from the wise Mr. Shankman: “Is Your Social Media Expert Really An Expert?”

Photo Credit

Don’t. Help is here.

I’ve updated my Resources page with links that can help you in mastering social media. My favorites for those who are just wading into using Facebook and Twitter are the Mashable guides. If you’re more interested in LinkedIn, subscribe to their blog. And if you use Facebook for your business, be sure to check out the two Facebook-centric sites I’ve listed.

Am I missing one of your favorite resources? If so, let me know by leaving a comment below.

Photo: )ota

In the past, I’ve talked clients through this as I believe people learn best when they are actually performing a task. I’ve even thought about creating a tutorial on how to add images to WordPress, but now I don’t have to, thanks to Smashing Magazine. They’ve published a post that explains (almost) everything you need to know about how to add and manage images in WordPress.

Read it here: Better Image Management with WordPress.

Photo: BigTallGuy

Here are seven tips that will improve your website’s search engine rankings:

1. Create accurate, descriptive page titles (title tag).
2. Use the page description meta tag and have different (unique) descriptions for each page on your site.
3. Make sure your site is easy to navigate.
4. Have good content and don’t overload your copy with keywords — you should be creating web content for your site visitors not for search engines.
5. Make your URLs easy to understand — use relevant words and try for easy to remember filenames.
6. Use alt tags to describe your images.
7. Try to build inbound links back to your site, but make sure they are quality links (more about that shortly).

I could go on and on, but I don’t need to — in depth information on SEO best practices can be found at Google’s Webmaster Central, where you can find SEO tips and a PDF titled “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.” Bing also has a set of Webmaster’s Tools and best practices for SEO.

Just remember that SEO is not something you do once and then abandon. You have to work at it, and pay attention to what works, abandoning what doesn’t.

Now about those inbound links …

Getting a lot of inbound links to your website can help it rise in organic search rankings, but Google wants those to be legitimate links. For instance, if you have an online book store and book publishers and reviewers are linking to it, those would be legitimate links and would increase your site’s visibility. But inbound links to your book selling site that originate from link farms are not legitimate. You know those web pages, the ones you stumble across that are nothing but a list of links? Those are link farms. And you know those emails you get, where people ask you to trade links (“I’ll link to your site and you link to mine?”) — they’re not legitimate links in Google’s eyes, either. They call that “black hat” optimization, and Google hates it.

To find out what happens when you practice “black hat” SEO techniques and get caught by Google, read The Dirty Little Secrets of Search, an article that tells the story of how Google responded when J.C. Penney was caught using paid links to increase its organic search rankings. It’s a long article, but worth the read (thousands of others must agree as — at the time of this post’s writing — it was the most popular emailed article on the NY Times website).

Layout:

The first thing to consider is the category — or type — of theme you will be using:

• Business/Corporate themes place a home page focus on services and/or products.
• Magazine/News themes feature articles and images on the home page and often contain posts by multiple authors.
• eCommerce themes include many of the elements you need to get an online store up and running.
• Portfolio themes are focused on showcasing art produced (photographs, illustrations, etc.).
• Industry specific themes are designed to meet the website needs of a specific industry (education, real estate, dining).
• Blogging themes are focused primarily on, well, blogging and are generally the simplest of themes in terms of layout.

What if you don’t know exactly what type of layout you want? All you know is that you want a website that looks something like your favorite website — not necessarily from a design standpoint, but from the way it is laid out. Then study that site — looking at layout and content, not design (meaning the colors and fonts and images) — and figure out what it is you like about the way the content is displayed. Then decide if it’s a magazine-type site, a corporate site, a portfolio site, etc.

Look, also, at the number of sidebars a theme offers. Some themes come with only one sidebar, others offer you the ability to choose multiple sidebars.

Function:

One of the greatest things about WordPress is its “extensibility.” Using plugins (applications/programs that enhance your site), you can pretty much get your site to do anything you want it to do. Some themes come with built-in functionality so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel by tracking down all the plugins you need. Things to consider when looking at the functionality of a WordPress theme include:

• Will you be adding video? Some themes come optimized for this, making it easy for you to embed videos.
• Will you be selling products? Some themes come with store templates to make it easy for you to add products.
• Will the primary focus of your site be photography? Some themes make it very easy for you to upload and manage your photographs.
• Is it important to you to have a rotating slide show on the home page? Many themes have this function built-in.
• How concerned are you with SEO? (Stupid question, I realize.) Some themes come with built in SEO functions, though many people are happy simply adding a plugin to handle this.
• Are you looking for a widgeted footer? Some themes allow you to pack a lot of content in the footer — from video, to your latest tweets, to images and excerpts from posts. Not every theme comes with a widgeted footer, so it’s something to keep in mind.
• Are you hoping to have ads on the site (Google Adsense, etc.)? Again, some themes make it very easy for you to place advertisements on your WordPress site.
• Are you in a specific niche industry? There are real estate themes that make it easy to integrate listings; restaurant themes that make it easy for you to have an online menu, etc.

Remember that not every theme will contain every function you need. You can always add a plugin to your site to accomplish what you want.

Design

Ah, design — it’s what catches your eye when you see a website you love. But unless you’re a designer yourself, or have hired someone to customize your WordPress theme, you’ll want to choose one that — right-out-of-the-box — comes closest to giving you the look you want for your website. Again, study some websites that you like and figure out what it is you like about them. For instance, are they full of images and color or are they minimalistic and focused on typography? This will give you a starting point for considering design.

Things to consider when choosing a WordPress theme based on design:

• How easy is it to customize the header?
• How easy is it to change the background?
• Does the theme offer more than one style? For instance some premium themes offer several color variations with each theme.
• Are you someone who cares about typography? Some themes make it easy for you to change typefaces (fonts and sizes).
• Have you found a WordPress theme you really love? Look at it closely and imagine what it will look like without the images and custom logo and icons — because that is how the theme will look when you first start to work with it: empty. Do you still like it as much? Or is it really the beautiful photographs the theme demo uses that you like?
• Many WordPress themes have a demo or preview mode that lets you see a theme “in action” before you download or purchase it. Take time to investigate how a theme works if it offers this option. You can see this to a limited degree when choosing from the free themes offered at WordPress.org. One premium theme developer, Woo Themes, offers what they call the WooThemes Playground where you can try out a theme before purchasing it.

Free or Premium?

Only you can make that choice. If you’re committed to using a free theme, then download a few that you like and take time to work with them to get a feel for what’s important to you when creating your WordPress site.

If you have your heart set on a premium theme, obviously most times you won’t have the luxury of testing the theme before you purchase it. But if you do your homework first, you’ll be making an educated decision and can purchase a theme that most closely meets your needs in terms of layout, functionality, and design.

My personal opinion is that most premium themes are worth the cost: you get a beautifully designed theme with built-in functionality and — most important of all — you get the help of a good support forum. If you’re considering purchasing a theme from a designer who does not provide support, I suggest you purchase another theme (one that comes with support).

Often you’ll start with a logo or a photograph that is the jumping off point for the color scheme. But where do you go from there? This can be a real quandary.

Thankfully, the web abounds with tools that can help you select the right colors for your new website.

Here are seven tools that can help make the difficult job of choosing a website color scheme that much easier:

• 0to255 — a simple tool that helps web designers find variations of any color; perfect for hovers, borders, gradients, and more;
• kuler — explore, create, and share color themes;
• Color Scheme Designer — generate color schemes;
• ColourLovers — a creative community where people from around the world create and share colors, palettes and patterns;
• Color Palette Generator — create a color palette to match an image;
• Color Schemer Gallery — website ready color schemes;
• Daily Color Scheme — a new color scheme every day.

What are your favorite tools for selecting website colors? Leave me a comment and a link to the website.

Photo: unleashingmephotography

That kind of thinking is wrong. Social media is not “free” — it takes a lot of time to maintain Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, and time is money, especially for a small business owner.

Here’s the best reason to have a website: it’s the best way to reach your customers.

Think about this: what about your customers who aren’t on Facebook and Twitter? How do you reach them? What about the fact that Facebook’s advertisers are placing ads — perhaps competitor’s ads — on your page? What about the fact that you, the business owner, don’t own the information on your Facebook page? (Surprise! Facebook owns that data.)

If these facts don’t give you reason to reconsider your “I don’t need a website” thinking, consider this:

“Search engines, which are still the most popular way by far to find information online, use website and blog traffic to determine your ranking.” — Ramon Ray, Open Forum Blog

Here’s the truth:

You should be using social media to augment, not replace, your website content.

I could go on and on, but I don’t need to as Ramon Ray has already written a great post about this on American Express’ Open Forum blog:

30 Reasons Why Old Fashioned Websites and Email Marketing are Best for Growing Businesses

Read it. You’ll be glad you did.

Image Credit

Although the author wanted to be able to add new content to the site and to start a blog, she didn’t want to worry about WordPress upgrades, plugin upgrades, security, etc. — all the issues that go along with having a self-hosted WordPress site. She didn’t want a website with a lot of “bells and whistles.” By her own admission, she isn’t tech savvy. She also had a small budget for the site.

Thinking over what she needed, I realized a site on WordPress.com would be “just right” for her. The yearly costs are low — no hosting fees, just the annual fee for her domain — and because WordPress.com themes don’t require (or allow) many customization changes (unless you purchase the CSS upgrade), I was able to quickly create a website that fit her needs and her budget. Plus she will never have to worry about upgrading her software or making sure the site is secure.

It was my first time working with WordPress.com and while I was frustrated by some things — the inability to have more than one page template for instance — all-in-all it was a good experience. Most important, I think the client is happy with her site and happy to have worked with someone who listened to her — and gave her what she both wanted and needed.

There’s a belief in the world of many WordPress users and so-called “experts” that the right way to go when creating a website — the only way to go — is to use WordPress on self-hosted sites. I disagree — you should consider the needs of your client when making such a decision. WordPress.org versus WordPress.com? Sometimes WordPress.com comes out the winner.

From WordPress: WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org

In addition, LinkedIn has announced an easier way for you to keep track of what’s happening with your LinkedIn contacts: LinkedIn for Outlook. With LinkedIn for Outlook, “Outlook users can … transform their desktop inboxes into their hub for all things LinkedIn.”

According to a brief, informative video that LinkedIn has produced on this new application, users will be able to see — at the bottom of any email — “current information about the status of their LinkedIn Network … including who they are connected with, what articles they are reading, and when they’ve updated their profile.”

To learn more, and to move your LinkedIn profile from a static page to a social place, go here:

• Integrating Twitter and LinkedIn

• Integrating WordPress and Linkedin

• Add your blog (other than WordPress) to your LinkedIn Profile

LinkedIn for Outlook

• Microsoft Outlook Becomes A Lot More Social (Mashable)

• Download LinkedIn for Outlook