The following is a review of Shoeboxed.com, a receipt scanning and business card scanning service.

Here’s the way Shoeboxed works: they send you two envelopes in the mail, you put your receipts in the envelopes, and you send them to Shoeboxed. About a week or so later you get an email. Your scanned receipts are now organized and available online.  They are organized/broken down by store, purchase category, and credit card. Need a copy of a receipt? No problem. Just log in, search by the amount, and you can print out a copy on the spot.

One of the best things about about Shoeboxed is that it’s painless to use. I just put my receipts in the envelope every day and mail it in at the end of the month. I also have a rule in my inbox that forwards incoming receipts to a secret email address and it goes right into my account. I can also use my iphone to take a picture of a bill and email it in … in a few seconds, my receipts are organized online.

They have a few different plan options. If you are only going to use an iphone, it’s free. If you want to mail in receipts, it starts at $9.95 and goes up to 49.95 a month. The more receipts you need to send the higher the cost. If you want the physical copies back you’ll need to be at the “classic level” or $19.95 a month (that’s what I use).

Two of the other services that they offer are business card scanning and document scanning. Include  important documents and business cards in your envelope and they are scanned and in your account. It’s all pretty painless.

While this is a great service there are some questions you should be asking yourself. I contacted Shoeboxed and spoke with Sonny Byrd who was actually happy to answer these questions:

I’m sending you a lot of confidential information such as complete name, address, social security number, credit card numbers and so on. What sort of precautions are you taking to make sure my information isn’t used inappropriately, or that I don’t become a victim of of identity theft.

This is not actually quite accurate. Receipts by law cannot contain credit card numbers (other than the last four digits which is not a confidentiality threat) or social security numbers. Receipts do not contain addresses other than that of the vendor. Bills, invoices, and statements may have more detailed personal information, and fortunately we are completely equipped to protect our users from data loss or theft. We use the exact same SSL encryption practices as online banks and medical information providers. We are also a TrustE certified site. We protect your physical hard copy documents very intensely when they are in our possession. Our state-of-the-art operations facility is tightly held under lock and key including 24/7 video surveillance and secure key card access. All of our employees are rigorously trained and vetted including undergoing full criminal background checks. We are proud to have a long track record of keeping our users’ data secure and will continue to do so.

What are some tips you can give people to make sure they are getting the most out your service?

Be sure that you keep up with your usage! It’s easy to send in an envelope or two, or use Shoeboxed Mobile for a couple of business trips, then let your paper clutter go back into disarray. Just be diligent with your usage, and be sure to keep the submissions coming into your Shoeboxed account. That way you’ll always be safe and sound for your taxes, bookkeeping, and in case of IRS audit.

Every company has customers who find uses for their products they never would have thought of. Have you had that happen yet, and can you share it with us.

Sure! While Shoeboxed is known for processing receipts and business cards, you can actually send virtually any paper document in to us for processing to your account. This opens us up to receiving a lot of very unusual things. We have had users sending photographs to us, mathematical papers, and have even received the occasional sock!

Thanks Sonny.

I’ve been a Shoeboxed customer since March and love the service. For $20 a month I get receipt scanning, receipt organizing, business card scanning and document scanning, with almost zero extra effort. I can 100% recommend them as a service I use. You can give them a try with a free introduction. I think you’ll find it’s an extremely helpful service that lets you get on with the more important tasks in your life.
photo credit: Carly & Art

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Shoeboxed.com Review – Receipt Scanning & Business Card Scanning Software

It’s 2012 and social media and social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are constantly mentioned on mainstream media news and entertainment websites and broadcast programs. Print ads for everything from movies to toothpaste have those ubiquitous little Facebook and Twitter logos, hashtags, and often special social media vanity URLs. The question is does your business need to be involved in social media, is it worth the time, what’s the benefit and is there ROI somewhere at the end of the tunnel?

At the current time, in my opinion, there simply isn’t an excuse for your company not to be involved in social media. In 2011 SEOMoz did a study and showed social media helped with SEO efforts. In early 2012 Search Engine Land showed that 20% of all searches had a author icon result in it (see How to Create a Google Author Profile for more information). With an enhanced listing if you aren’t using social media as tool to get a rich snippet in the SERPs and your competition is, you are playing from a disadvantage.

It’s not simply a matter of having social profiles on all the prominent and important social websites, it’s being involved that counts too. Use social services like KnowEm to secure your profiles to prevent any trademark issues. Test and try each of platforms to see where your customers are, where you get the most engagement, where you get the most traffic, where you get the most links, and most importantly where you get the most sales. Once you know which channel is most effective interlink the rest crosspost from your Twitter profile to Facebook if that’s what works for you. If Facebook works better crosspost to Twitter. If Pinterest is what drives your traffic then focus your efforts on creating the most crazy awesome wedding board you can create. As Steve Martin says “Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You”.

Unless you happen to be in a very specialized niche, chances are Facebook or Twitter is where you’ll find most of your audience. Google Plus is ghost town unless you are chasing Web 2.0 weenies (or Google employees … yeah I went there). If you get traffic from other social sites and want to enable cross posting look into services like If This Then That to try to automate the process, and remove the grunt manual labor. Automate your primary feed and with cross posting, and scheduled posts from Hootsuite and/or Bufferapp you’ll be spending less than a hour a day publishing on social media. Thanks to services like Tweriod you’ll have some idea when those ideal times are, without having to be chained to your desk to reach your optimal audience. Just remember customer service is now an interregnal part of social media, use it as a contact starting point to take the discussion offline or out of the public eye whenever possible. It’s not that you’re hiding, it’s that you don’t need to broadcast every part of every customer interaction.

In my opinion having your links pass through social media channels, whether the links are nofollowed or not, creating the corresponding user data, and the developing trusted author accounts are the three biggest areas you have the most to gain from using social media, and again and in my opinion those are the three areas you should spend your time on.

photo credit: BigStockPhoto/iofoto.com

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Does Your Small Business Need a Facebook and Twitter Social Media Account

I recently wrote a story How Brick and Mortar Stores Can Use eCommerce to Drive Sales about tips that eCommerce stores can use to drive traffic to their brick and mortar locations. However, what really needs to happen is offline stores and small businesses need to grow up and  stop hiding in the corner from online commerce bogeyman. They need to give up their antiquated who moved my cheese mentality. It’s a fact that consumers’ preference for eCommerce stores will continue to grow, smart phone and tablet shopping will continue to rise, and merchants who don’t recognize this trend will fail. The first will be the small local stores followed by strip mall tenants but, at the end of the day, no one including big box retailers like Best Buy is immune. No one is too big to fail.

So what do small local businesses going to do to need to compete:

Your website has to be more than a 20 page brochure-ware website. You can’t show up to the Indy 500 in a stock, off the floor Toyota Camry and expect to compete or ever win. Be smart. “Find your spike” that makes you stand out from everyone else and embrace it:

Don’t strive to be a balanced, well rounded merchant; embrace your uniqueness and the customers who are looking for it. Studies have shown that people on dating sites who embrace their unique beauty and set themselves apart from what is considered traditionally attractive do much better at finding dates and long term partners.

Engage in social media … regularly. Social media is a time consuming aspect of marketing. Unfortunately, small businesses can’t afford to ignore it anymore. You don’t need to spend all day on Twitter: look for tools that allow you to spend less time on social media sites and be more effective with the time you do spend.

Don’t get in a position where you are dependent on Google to survive. Diversify your income stream and pipeline for traffic, leads, and customers. While I’m a zero inbox type of person, and creating and sending out email messages fills me with overwhelming level of self loathing, the depths of which you will never understand, I firmly grasp that it’s a necessary evil to survive. It’s simply impossible to make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. Just do it in a way that adds value for your customers and doesn’t clog up their inbox with useless drivel. By building a firm social media fan base, cultivating your customer engagement, and implementing a proactive outbound marketing channel strategy, you will be sending Google the social validation they are looking for, and you’ll be immune to Panda Updates, Penguin updates, or whatever naming structure Google finally gives its algorithm changes.

photo credit: BigStockPhoto/Olly2

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Why Offline Stores and Small Businesses Need to Embrace Online Shopping and Build Better Websites

A lot has been said and written about Pinterest in the past few weeks and months, from how marketers can use use it to drive traffic to how affiliate spammers are using it to generate income. However, I’m going to take a slightly “bigger picture” view of Pinterest.

How Should Web Publishers Use Pinterest

The Marketing Lie … Attention Does Not Equal Customers

The truth is the one thing modern online marketing “professionals” seek more than anything else the praise and recognition of their marketing peers. That praise and recognition gets THEM a dose of pseudo celebrity, which, if they are smart, can be turned into getting themselves customers and generating billable hours. The needs of their clients and the effectiveness of their campaigns for getting new customers are secondary matters.  The primary goals are perpetuating fame and ego stroking. The success of their campaigns usually comes from riding on the pseudo celebrity status and the “reach” of the guru, which is measured by some meaningless statistic like Klout Scoure, and the sheer number of their lemming like followers. This isn’t just about online marketers. Real world offline marketers rarely “connect” with their intended audiences or demographic. If you don’t believe me, read this article on why marketers are having a hard time reaching generation “Y”

Young people do not want what the title photo shows, a Sonic done up like “The Fast and the Furious” circa 2002. Young people would rather get herpes than go to the “Sonic Lounge” at the SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas. Ask Ford how their “Fiesta Movement” worked out, and I mean sales to young people, not just “social media impressions”. Car companies that indulge in these silly campaigns are like an obese person trying to lose weight by switching from Coke to fruit juice when what’s really needed is hard physical exercise and most importantly, self-discipline.

How Website Owners Should Use Pinterest to Understand Their Customers

Why Are You Doing A Wedding Dress Collection on Pinterest

Earlier this week Dana Todd asked why I (a forty something, married male) had a Pinterest board dedicated to Wedding Dresses. My initial response was that it contributed to that special brand of crazy, which I have been carefully cultivating over the years. Truth be told, there is more than a kernel of truth to that statement. However, the real reason is slightly more nuanced. IMHO to be a successful marketer, you have to immerse yourself in the world of your customers. You have to do so from their point of view and their perspective, not from yours in the ivory tower of the corporate boardroom, trapped behind a bunch of slide shows and power point presentations filled with carefully crafted and manipulated data. To really understand your customers you have to walk in their shoes, breathe their air, feel their situations from a first hand perspective. Sure, it may sound like bunch of voodoo zen fortune cookie wisdom, akin to the concept that to really know what it’s like to be in a forest you have to “be the leaf,” but there is some truth to the practice.

If you run a wedding site, you should be following and watching what types of wedding dresses are people pinning and reacting to. Yes, celebrity weddings will influence what brides want to wear, but if you really want to taste the sweet nectar of knowledge, you personally have to pick the fruit straight from the tree and take a bite … not wait three weeks until it’s sitting neatly packaged in the produce aisle of your local supermarket and has lost most of it “nutritional and informational value.” Yes, I understand you’re “management” and your job is to guide the process, to make sure things get done, but don’t underestimate the value of getting your hands dirty once in a while. There’s a good chance you’ll learn something … maybe even something worthwhile.

So what are the takeaways from this post:

• If you have the time to get involved in social media, be on the lookout for ways to do it that let you see real data from real consumers, not manipulated data in a PowerPoint
• Marketers in every area are almost always like insurance salesman trying to sell you a whole life insurance policy … also known as the one that financially benefits them the most
• Embrace criticism from your customer–don’t fear it. 99% of the time that customer is telling you what’s wrong with your product or service and how to fix it (looks squarely at Google+ team and Vic Gundotra for the gross incompetence in how PAYING Google apps customers are still being treated as second class citizens on Google+ with the lack of migration tool)
• Don’t be a short sighted marketer and strip mine Pinterest for traffic, filling it with spam to the point that it’s useless. Take a long term view and use it as a rare, unfiltered window into what your customers aspire to or think is awesome.

photo credit: BigStockPhoto/alenkasm

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Why Website Owners Should Be Using Pinterest

Recently I’ve been talking with some friends who don’t fit into the traditional SEO, publisher, or writer-with-delusional-dreams-of-becoming-a-famous-blogging-rock-star categories. They want to build and run websites in their spare time about subjects they are interested in. But they don’t want them to be  hobby websites; they want to use them to supplement their income. One of the lessons I’ve tried to teach both of them is why your websites needs different types of pages or templates and how the goals of each of these templates is different. In this post, I’ll try to teach you some of those same lessons.

eCommerce Product Templates

While these template types doesn’t apply to to the individuals I discussed earlier, I’ll mention them here in case they do apply to your case. If you run an eCommerce website, whether you are selling just one, a few, or hundreds of home made products, understand that there are different types of eCommerce pages but that each kind serves the same purpose: guiding you down the conversion funnel. I’ve written about them in greater detail on the Referral Candy website, so check out SEO for eCommerce pages, SEO for eCommerce category pages, and SEO for new products pages.

Lead Generation Template Pages

If you work in the lead generation space directly or as an affiliate, these are going to be your “money pages.” If you aren’t familiar with the concept of site hierarchy and money pages, I suggest checking out this classic post from WebmasterWorld on theme pyramids. It’s a really good visual representation of the concept that makes it easy to grasp.

Back to lead generation pages. They should be pages modeled after the click here you idiot format. You want to take the “long form sales letter.” Blend it with your theme to look professional but use minimal navigation and strategically place calls to action. DO NOT GIVE PEOPLE A LOT OF WAYS TO LEAVE THIS PAGE. Don’t make it a trap, but try and get them to do what you want them to do so you make money. Use very minimal navigation.

Adsense Pages

If you are running Adsense or some other contextual based program like Skimlinks or Viglink, there are your secondary money pages. These will usually take the form of information articles or blog posts with affiliate links or minimal tasteful Adsense sprinkled in. These pages will probably make up the majority of your website. They should bring you the most “drive by” traffic. Think lots and lots of keyword focussed articles and head and tail content.

Informational Library Templates

These will be your most well written and technically accurate articles. This is where you want to pay for good, expert quality content. Like lead generation copy, this should have a template with minimal navigation and advertising–but for the exact opposite reason. Instead of keeping people in the sales funnel, you want to use it to generate links. For example, try creating science projects and classroom lessons to target high trust and value “.edu” and library links.

Glue Page Templates

I’m sure there’s a big, fancy, MBA marketing school name for this conceptl, but I call them glue pages. Basically they are non- commercially oriented pages about subjects that people would expect to see on a “real website” about a your particular subject matter that make it look complete and thorough. You can put contextual or banner ads here, but they can make your website look cheesy. For example, let’s say you run a Baltimore Travel Website. Pages including information about cab services, emergency medical services, local supermarkets, drugstores, calendar of events, etc. would be what I would classify as “glue pages.”

Trust and Authority Templates

IMHO for the past several years, doing well in Google has largely been about how much trust you could convince them to have in your website. Template boiler plate pages like privacy, terms of service, and contact info fill this role. For more detailed instructions see how to make your website look more legitimate.

The key point I want to emphasize and want you to take away is that, while you can use one template for your entire website, you will be much more effective if you use specific templates to fill specific roles and purposes. The key to being effective is to maintain consistent branding with a masthead or logo, vary the size as needed, and then add or remove sidebar and secondary navigation as required.

photo credit: Shutterstock/Olly

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Why You Need Different Templates for Your Website

Whenever I go to a conference, or at least a dozen times a week by email, I get asked “What are some ‘SEO secrets’?” or “Hey–what keywords do you rank for, and can you show me some of your websites?” Until you have earned my trust, though, I’m really not going to show you anything. I made that mistake once and 3 months later saw a “clone” site from that person. It’s not that I’m a stuck up jerk and am not interested in helping people or paying it forward, because I really believe it’s a part of my role in the community. But there’s a difference between someone showing up at my door to ask for free food and someone asking, “Hey, can I go fishing with you so I can learn how to fish for myself?”

While I’m not a first generation SEO like Greg, Rae, or Todd, I have been been around a while, asked a lot of (sometimes stupid) questions, experimented and made a lot of small and awesomely catastrophic mistakes along the way, dabbled in the black arts, tried stuff and failed, and that’s how I learned. So much of what goes on today in the SEO community isn’t about asking questions, learning, and teaching; it’s about attention whoring, popularity contests, and SEO drama. Too many people are focused on finding the secrets for quick and easy ways to set up ATM machines on their front lawn so they can parade around like peacocks on display, having people tell them how they are like fabulously famous rockstars, when instead they should be putting in the effort to learn how it works, what keeps it running, and what do when when something breaks or your whole network gets torched. Because they don’t put forth that effort, when something goes off the rails, they are right back where they started: with no knowledge. All they can do is look for the next “handout” or SEO Secret.

Learning SEO is a lot like hunting. Without learning how to stalk your prey, how to hunt ir down, and how to “make the kill” that will feed you and your family, you won’t survive. Instead, everyone wants an ATM funded by SEO secrets. But when Google announces they are changing the algorithm specifically targeting SEO sites, your website built on tricks without knowing what you were doing or why you were doing it is likely to be a casualty caught in the crossfire. However if your website has strong technical platform with good information architecture practices, good or better quality content that exists for the users’ benefit and isn’t a wrapper for Adsense, and a solid social media and real world marketing plan and strategy, you are lot more resistant to these fluctuations. Content may be king, but if your tech foundation is so bad that search engines can’t understand it (listen up, Ajax and Flash developers!), your information architecture is so crazy and convoluted that search engines cant make heads or tails of it, and you don’t market on the proper channels where you can find your customers (not just the new hot social media channel that the techno weenies are talking about like your Pinterest page for whole life insurance), the best content lies trapped under lock and key where no one but you can see it. It’s the combination of all the pieces working together–content, information architecture, and good marketing & promotion–that leads to true success, not the elusive secret you are looking for to avoid one or more of those the steps.

Instead of focusing on ferreting out SEO secrets, concentrate on learning the fundamentals–like choosing the right URL structure. Learn how to silo your website, create evergreen content, and create seasonal content. Learn when you need to pay for premium content. Learn how to market with social media, how to automate it to get more ROI for your time. Learn how to develop and and when to email to your list. Learn how to build trust through links. Learn how to audit your content regularly and to keep your website lean, mean, and up to date. Learn to trim the fat, those useless parts of your website that don’t help you or your customers. When you learn those skills, you’ll find you don’t need to spend so much time looking for shortcuts, secrets, and tips … and you’ll spend less time worrying about algorithm changes. SEO drama my be a fun distraction or give you your 15 minutes of fame–but, unless it’s adding to your bottom line, it’s not helping you. It’s a distraction.

photo credit: Shutterstock/Willyam Bradberry

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2. BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory.
3. Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed!
4. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
5. Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
6. TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.
7. Article-Writing-services.org - Article Writing Services creates quality content for websites and blogs at no cost to site owners.
8. Link Building Services - Hire WeBuildLink.com for well-planned advanced link building campaigns. Very affordable. Contact us now for a FREE evaluation.
9. Try HOTH Plus+ NOW - The First 1-Stop Link Building Solution Powered by 100% College Educated Copywriters!
10. Professional website designs - Get a unique brand image with website designs that sets you apart and convert your visitors into customers. Make a brand, not just a website
11. Krystal Glass Whiteboards - Glass writing boards for offices, boardrooms, and classrooms.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

SEO Secrets, Tips & Tricks – Why it’s Not Worth Your Time

One of the questions I get asked by clients who are developing a social media strategy is should I cross post my Facebook posts to Twitter and vice versa, or does everything need to be unique?

IMHO you need to look at social media like Moneyball and you need to look at your actions in terms of ROI. I don’t believe all the social media gurus riding on unicorns who preach that social media is about the conversations man (best said in a hippie voice for dramatic effect). Social media is about giving you an alternate channel to connect with new or existing customers, demonstrate your expertise, solve problems, or promote products with the goal of providing customer service, building loyalty, and making sales. At the end of the day, nothing happens until someone sells something.

If you have a personal Twitter account and personal Facebook page, it doesn’t matter which way you choose. However, if you have one or more professional Twitter accounts and one or more Facebook brand pages, you are limited in how you can connect them. A personal Twitter account can connect and auto publish to a personal Facebook page and vice versa. You can’t connect a Twitter account to a Facebook brand page, but you can connect a Facebook brand page to any Twitter account.

Enabling the link between Facebook Brand pages and Twitter

Once you know which situation you fit into, set up one to auto-publish to the other, then find the plugin that publishes your new posts to Facebook or Twitter. Voila! You are done with the first step.

No one wants to follow or engage with someone who only talks about their own stuff. You need to demonstrate your expertise, share industry related news & information, or basically curate your feed so it’s interesting and has value to others. My favorite tools to do this are Hootsuite and Bufferapp (see How to Automate a Twitter Feed With Hootsuite and Bufferapp). I use news readers like Zite and Flipboard to find stories about specific topics to populate my accounts. I then use Twitter lists and Facebook friend lists to look for related accounts to like, share, and retweet from (see How to Create a Local Twitter Account).

The one downside to this approach is that Twitter and Facebook become identical. If you want to post to only one account you have to log in and do it to that account. It’s a minor annoyance but, with the time you save over the long haul , you should still get more return from less work.

So what are the takeaways from this post:

• Assess your current situation with personal/brand pages to figure out which account should be the master account that publishes to the other account
• Configure your blog to publish to the master account
• Curate your feed, make it more interesting, and demonstrate your expertise with on-topic discussions, ideas, and links from other industry-related sources with smart news readers
• Use tools to automate and spread out your posts, allowing you to work in batch while appearing to be active in social media all day

photo credit: Shutterstock/Nerjon Photo

Related posts:

1. Facebook vs Twitter: Which is More Valuable? Recently there has been a lot of talk about Facebook...
2. How to use Hootsuite to Publish to Your Facebook Page The following is part of a series on using the...
3. Does Your Small Business Need a Facebook and Twitter Social Media Account It’s 2012 and social media and social networking sites like...
4. Facebook Brand Page Timeline Checklist Starting March 30th, all Facebook brand pages and profile pages...
5. Your Facebook Fan Page – 5 Ways to Make the Most of It If your business targets consumers, do you already have a...

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

How to Cross Post From Twitter to Your Facebook Page

Starting March 30th, all Facebook brand pages and profile pages will be switching to the new timeline format. Some brands have already made the change but, if you haven’t, here’s a handy checklist of items you need to be aware of and fix before the change takes place.

New Guidelines

With the new time line format, Facebook released a new set of brand guidelines. You can read the page for specifics, but some of the important points to remember are:

• Don’t use a cover image you don’t have the copyright for or permission to use (more on the cover image later in this post)
• Don’t use pricing or calls to action in cover image. I suspect we’re going to see a lot of people get creative in “breaking” the spirit of this rule while staying within the actual rule itself
• Don’t try to incentivize liking or sharing in your cover image. Again, I suspect people will get pretty creative playing within the rules here
• The contact information, such as physical address, telephone, email and web address, should only be in the “about” area of your profile

Cover Image

The cover image is probably the first thing you’ll notice about the new timeline format. The new Facebook cover image size is 851px X 315px (that’s 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels high). As mentioned above, don’t use an image you don’t have the rights to or the permission to use, and don’t use it to show pricing, sell, or as a call to action.

That said, you do want to use it to make an impression. Here are some examples of how non profit organizations are using cover images. You may have noticed that a few pages integrated the cover photo with the profile picture.  Although it looks complex, the process is really a lot easier than it looks. Here’s a free Photoshop template for Facebook timelines.

Choosing a cover image isn’t something you should take lightly. IMHO it’s something you should put some thought, time, energy, resources, and money into. You know the saying: you only get one chance to make a first impression. Don’t blow it. If you don’t have anything appropriate, hire someone to take some good, high quality photos. Ideally you want something that is consistent with your brand’s message. If you don’t have any pictures, according to Shutterstock, it’s ok if you use their pictures for your brand pages, but not for your personal page (I would follow up with any stockphoto service you might be using). If you can’t find anything or don’t have a budget, there are some nice free images approved for cover image use from Digital Blasphempy.

Engagement and Messaging

One of the fears a lot of companies have, and one of the reasons they avoid getting involved in social media, is the fear of people saying something negative about them on their brand page. The thing is, if people have something bad to say about you, they are going to say it somewhere. It’s better to have it done on your page where you have some level of control. But that’s not part of the new timeline format change. Instead of doing customer service in public on their Facebook wall, brands can now have private messages with customers/fans. Hopefully this will remove some organization’s concerns about getting involved on Facebook and social media in general.

Loss of Landing Pages

One of the biggest complaints about the new format is the loss of a default landing page. In the old system, you could “guide” the customer’s experience with different landing pages. This gave brands a lot of control, but it was also heavily abused with like-gating and tricking people in sharing or linking you. Now you have one default landing page.

Only 4 Tabs are Available

Similar to landing pages, you used to have multiple tabs, but now you only have four. The first is the photos tabs and is “locked” into the first slot. If you haven’t done a anything with photos before, now would be a good time to backfill that area. You can control the three other tabs’ names and icons, so use them to your advantage

Pin Featured Content

If your company has an important post, message, or or offer, you can now “pin” that to the top. It won’t be displaced when you post new updates or upload new photos. Just keep in mind that you can only pin something for 7 days. When you’ve pinned it, you’ll see a little ribbon in the upper right corner.

Milestones

Like personal pages, brand pages can now have milestones. Use them for things that are important TO YOUR CUSTOMERS, not for things like when you clipped your toenails.

Brand Name Changes and Vanity URL

If you don’t have a brand page yet, choose wisely: once you pass 100 fans/followers, you can’t change it. If you are over 100, you can force people to unsubscribe to get yourself below that threshold and change your name. If you’ve got a good size following, though, that’s not a viable solution, and you’re stuck with the name you chose when you started. Facebook has also removed the minimum of 25 fans/followers to get a vanity URL. In the age of Fiverr.com, it was a pointless restriction that was easy to overcome.

So there you have a recap and checklist of everything you need to know about the new Facebook timeline format. If you’re interested in following my Facebook fan page with SEO, marketing, and social media posts, here’s a link to my page.

photo credit: Shutterstock/Olly

Related posts:

1. Tasks to Help You Establish Your Brand on Facebook Starting a fan page on Facebook is easy, but how...
2. How to Cross Post From Twitter to Your Facebook Page One of the questions I get asked by clients who...
3. How to use Hootsuite to Publish to Your Facebook Page The following is part of a series on using the...
4. Your Facebook Fan Page – 5 Ways to Make the Most of It If your business targets consumers, do you already have a...
5. What Are You Doing To Earn Facebook Likes and Facebook Fans It seems everyone in social media and SEO is obsessed...

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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Facebook Brand Page Timeline Checklist

Online reputation management (ORM) is a huge, and growing market. For others it means they have a huge public relations problem. I have worked with a few companies and individuals with just such a problem. I’ll tell you the story and outcome of one such client, who will remain nameless.

ORM Problem: My client fired an employee who posts negative information about the company on a forum and review site. The truthfulness of the postings are irrelevant and they stand to lose a lot of business for people searching their company name. The negative postings (negatives) were listed in positions 2 and 4+5. Even someone searching for their phone number will see these negative results!

ORM Failed Solution: My client came to me through a referral. They had already hired an ORM firm ranked on the first page of Google and got literally no results after 3 months. They gave me all of the information they had which included a few business listings and web 2.0 type sites that were built with duplicate content. In all, they spent $3500 and had 6 web 2.0′s and 25 business directory listings. None of those 31 pages were showing up on the first 3 pages of the SERP’s. $3500 down the drain.

My ORM Solution: When I explained my approach to his problem my client was shocked and initially not interested at all, and you might be as well.

• Step 1: Scrape content and spin heavily. I spun a single 400 word article to 98% uniqueness, then did it again with a different article and combined them into one 400 word article.
• Step 2: Throw it against the wall and see what sticks.

When all that matters is the negatives moving down and off the first page or two, who cares what site is showing up in the #2-10 positions? All my client wanted was to have the negatives out of view. I created 8,000 unique pages of content over the course of 48 hours.

• Step 3: Wait. For most people this is the hard part. You want to do something, but until you know what is going to stick against the wall. During this time, I’m getting the pages indexed. I usually give this step about a week. After a week I expect to have about 75% of the pages indexed and usually see some starting to show up on the first 5 pages. For this client, I had 5 pages in the top 10, and controlled the entire 2nd and 3rd page. Literally every single page was one I created for this client.
• Step 4: Link building to the ranking pages. Now that we know what is sticking to the wall, we need to build some links to these pages to get them to move up. The timeframe is completely dependent on the quality of your link building methods. I generally shoot for 1-6 months depending on the competition of the keyword for this step.
• Step 5: Change content so it’s appropriate. After you move the negatives off the first page, you should have 3-9 pages one the first page that you created. If the content isn’t reflective of your client, it needs to be rewritten and changed on the pages you created…You did keep the username and password of every page you created, right? Depending on the client, they might want to provide the content, they might want to review content you have created, or they might not care as long as it’s good.

This method does not work for competitive keywords and should be clearly explained to your client along with a timeline of expectations. In SEO, it’s usually impossible to give an exact timeline and I find it’s usually better to over deliver.

Some clients have a very public brand, are overly concerned about their public reputation, or get themselves into regular trouble. These clients generally need an ongoing ORM relationship. Small companies and single issues can usually be handled in under 6 months.

For my client, the total time from start to finish for 3.5 months. He now owns the entire first page. One negative is at the bottom of the second page, and the other negative is nowhere in the top 100. Success!

Brandon Hopkins owns a complete link building service at DiamondLinks.net. He frequently works with ORM clients and even agencies building links and content for their clients. Contact Brandon if you have a reputation problem!

photo credit: Shutterstock/Josh Resnick

No related posts.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Online Reputation Management and the “Spaghetti Method”

I’d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored the blog this month, without them there wouldn’t be regular posts here.

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6. LinkWheel SEO – Get Web 2.0 Backlinks
7. TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price.
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photo credit: Shutterstock/Akaphab

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Advertisers:

1. Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links.
2. BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory.
3. Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed!
4. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
5. Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
6. TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.
7. Article-Writing-services.org - Article Writing Services creates quality content for websites and blogs at no cost to site owners.
8. Link Building Services - Hire WeBuildLink.com for well-planned advanced link building campaigns. Very affordable. Contact us now for a FREE evaluation.
9. Try HOTH Plus+ NOW - The First 1-Stop Link Building Solution Powered by 100% College Educated Copywriters!
10. Professional website designs - Get a unique brand image with website designs that sets you apart and convert your visitors into customers. Make a brand, not just a website
11. Krystal Glass Whiteboards - Glass writing boards for offices, boardrooms, and classrooms.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Thanks to This Month’s Sponsors Feb 2012