And with 526 million daily active users, Facebook is definitely worth your time to know better.

Today, we’ll start with Facebook Advertising.

There’s been a lot of talk about Facebook Ads recently, and it isn’t hard to figure out why. Now that the company has gone public, the conversations about how Facebook is going to make money has gone from something us media geeks talk about to something scary investor and banker types talk about.

When GM announced this week that they were stopping their Facebook advertising campaign because the ads weren’t succeeding, the ad program got even more press. It was bad press, granted – but press nonetheless.

The simple truth about Facebook ads is that they help a brand get seen, but are not great for getting people to complete a sale.

Facebook Post ads turn a fan page's content into ads. They show how many people liked, commented on, or shared it.

Think about how you use a search engine: When you go to Google, you have something specific in mind you’re looking for. If you want to find some shoes, for example, you might know what shoes you want to find, or if there’s a store nearby that sells them. You are goal oriented on a search engine.

Social media users, however, is a bit more capricious. People don’t tend to go to Facebook to find something specifically. They stumble in to see what’s going on with their friends and family.

Ads that ask people to immediately buy something don’t tend to do very well. They ask a user to stop what they’re doing – which is fun and satisfying – and go to another web site to lay down their credit card. Advertisers who measure their success by how many sales they land because of an ad won’t see the upside of Facebook ads if they look at them this way.

On the other hand, ads on Facebook are seen. What’s more, they can target people in a geographic location, or who have an expressed interest in something.

Let’s say you own a shoe store in Ontario that sells Christian Louboutin shoes. You could create an ad that shows these shoes, and only show the ad to other people in Ontario, who have interests in fashion or luxury goods – or even have “Christian Louboutin shoes” listed as a specific interest. This kind of targeting limits the number of people who would see the ad, which means less money the store would have to spend on the campaign. It also means the people who do see the ad are exactly the right kind of people who would be interested in it.

You can't get this level of targeting unless you know this much about the people seeing your ad. That's information Facebook has in spades.

However, it still isn’t likely to get people to stop what they’re doing on Facebook and run down to their store.

Instead, it plants in their mind the image of the shoes the store put in their ad. People may see the ad a few times, and keep thinking about those shoes. The successful ad worms its way into a person’s head, and eventually makes them a customer. They may ultimately go down to this shoe store, or go on Google to do that laser-focused, goal-oriented search I mentioned before.

But it all started with the ad.

So if you aren’t going to ask people to go off Facebook when they click, where do you send them? To your Fan Page. One of the great new features of Facebook ads is that your posts can now be the content of the ad itself.

You can highlight a particularly engaging post on your fan page, and let that draw people onto your page. If they become fans, your regular posts will eventually make them consider becoming customers. A particularly awesome feature of Facebook Ads is that you can set up an ad that changes with each post to your Fan Page – so the content is always fresh. If people see one ad today and don’t click through, tomorrow’s ad might do the trick instead.

The point is to not think of these ads as a direct, immediate source of revenue. Instead think of them as an opportunity to find the right people who might be interested in what you have to say. Buying advertising for any business is always a serious commitment, so be sure your Fan Page’s content is going to be updated regularly and, frankly, be very awesome.

Facebook ads can only bring the horses to the water – what you say on your page is what will make them drink.

Just another aquisition? Maybe. But the possibilities for marketing using either have always been great – now that they’re combined, it is REALLY worth your time to get to know Slideshare.

You probably already know what Linkedin is: A professional networking site, where you can post your resume and (usually) business related updates. If you want to share a lot of new information about what you do with your job or your business, Linkedin is the place to do it, because so many other people who use it are looking for just that kind of information. Also, if someone wants to research you, your Linkedin profile shows them everything they might want to know about your job history, education, blog address – whatever you feel comfortable sharing.

Slideshare, while incredibly awesome, hasn’t ever been as famous as its new, adoptive parent. The best way to think of Slideshare is this:

It’s YouTube for slide presentations.

If you have your own slide presentations, and you want to get them a wider audience, Slideshare has always been the place to go. Sure, you could convert that PowerPoint to a video and actually share it ON YouTube. The problem with that is people who go to YouTube aren’t usually looking for that kind of presentation.

And people on SlideShare are ONLY looking for that kind of presentation.

You can not only add your slide presentation, you can also include an audio file with it that talks people through your slides – as if you were presenting to them live. If you have a video on YouTube you want to include with your slides, you can do that as well.

Best of all, Slideshare is very SEO friendly. A slide presentation properly titled and tagged with terms people actually use to look for the content you’re sharing can get you high search engine rankings, and in turn a big audience for what you want to say.

Slideshare presentations have always been sharable on Linkedin profiles. Attaching the widget allows anyone who comes to your Linkedin page to see the presentations you want them to see. Now that SlideShare is actually owned by Linkedin, it’s going to be interesting to see what improvements are made.

To read more about about the advantages of Slideshare for marketing, check out this article from Mashable: 8 Ways to Get the Biggest Marketing Bang Out of SlideShare

If you want to subscribe to any of our podcasts, it’s a really simple operation. Just be sure you have iTunes loaded on your computer before you begin.

1) Click on the image above for the podcast you’re interested in. You’ll be taken to Apple’s iTunes page for the podcast.

2) Click on the button. You will get a pop-up asking if you want to let the page open iTunes for you. You do, so click on the “Launch application” button.

3) Once iTunes loads, click on the, “Subscribe free” button.

Voila! You’re done! Now, whenever there is a new show on that podcast, iTunes will download the show for you automatically. If you have an iPod, iPad, or iPhone, you can sync it to your iTunes account so these shows are loaded onto the device for you. This way you can have the shows ready for you whenever – and wherever – you’re ready to listen to them.

]]> http://isageeks.com/mobile/isagenix-podcasts-itunes/feed/ 0 http://isageeks.com/mobile/isagenix-podcasts-itunes/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Isageeks/~3/vO0Zp5tl-20/ http://isageeks.com/socialmedia/celebration-timeline-contest/#comments Thu, 03 May 2012 17:43:29 +0000 admin http://isageeks.com/?p=1583 Submit your past Celebration event photos, and you could become a permanent part of our new Facebook Timeline. What’s more, you’ll win a ticket to the 2012 Isagenix “Your Future Starts Today” Celebration event this August in Phoenix, AZ!

People getting their groove on at Isagenix Celebration 2011

This is a digital-photo contest only. NO PRINTED PHOTOS, PLEASE!

• Please submit any and all photos you have from past Isagenix Celebration events that you or your team members have attended – starting with our first event during our inaugural year in 2002 through last year’s ‘Ignite Your Future’ Celebration event in San Diego.
• Please include your name, approximate date the photo was taken (month/year is fine), and any specifics you think would help in writing the photo caption (names, landmarks, name of party or dinner, etc.)
• Photos will be judged on quality and clarity, and there is no limit to the number of photos you submit.
• We will select 10 winners (one for each year Isagenix has held a Celebration event), and each winner will receive one FREE ticket to this year’s Celebration event in Phoenix, AZ.*

Submitting your photos for the contest is easy. Simply email them to: photos@isagenixcorp.com.

Limit submissions to 5 photos (5MB) per email – but feel free to send as many emails and photos as you like.

Deadline for submissions is: Thursday, May 31.

*Winners will receive a ticket to the 2012 Isagenix “Your Future Starts Today” Celebration event taking place August 9-12, 2012 in Phoenix, AZ only (a $299 value). Transportation to and from the event along with lodging are NOT included in this prize, and are the sole responsibility of the winning associate. All photos submitted will become the property of Isagenix International, LLC. All winning photos, or any additional selected photos for use on the Web, will require a release form signature from the owner for use on any current or future Isagenix Web sites.

We will keep you updated as we have further information.

Mobile devices are great for podcasts.

More than half of Twitter’s traffic comes from mobile devices.

So what did we do? We created a Twitter account for our podcasts, of course! Where did you think we were going with this?

Each day a new podcast is added, it will be tweeted at @IsagenixPodcast. All five of our podcasts will be there – each with their own #hashtag, if you like using those to search for content:

Isagenix Products (#IsagenixProducts)

Isagenix Business (#IsagenixBusiness)

Isagenix Fitness and Performance (#IsagenixFitness)

Isagenix Healthy Aging and Wellness (#IsagenixHealth)

IsaBody Challenge (#IsabodyPodcast)

IsagenixPodcast's profile, as it looks on the iOS Twitter App

What you need to do:

First, you’ll need to be sure you have Twitter on your mobile device, and that you have a Twitter account to sign in with.

Go into your Twitter app. Look for the user, “IsagenixPodcast,” or if you’re reading this post from your mobile device, just click on @IsagenixPodcast.

Now subscribe to us. Every time we have a new podcast, it will show in your Twitter stream. If you need help finding the show, do a search with the hashtags above to find it.

Each tweet will have a link to the podcast show itself. When you click on that, you’ll be taken to where the show itself lives on IsagenixPodcast.com.

Now, you see that, “Download Call” link? That’s what you click to get the show onto to your device. Then you can play it at will.

If you’re using an Apple device (iPod, iPhone, or iPad,) you can subscribe to these shows on iTunes. Then all new shows will update to your device automatically. Bear in mind, since the feeds for “Isagenix Healthy Aging and Wellness” and “Isagenix Fitness and Performance” are so new, we’re still waiting for iTunes to display them. It should only be a couple more days until you can find them there.

If you’re one of the many Android, Blackberry or Windows Phone users, of course, you won’t be using iTunes to find podcasts anyway. So @IsagenixPodcast on Twitter is an easy way to keep up to date on new Podcasts.

So what does, “going viral” mean? Basically, it means your blog article, Tweet, or Facebook post will spread quickly from person to person – like a virus. People won’t be able to help it – they’ll “like” it or forward your post on to their friends, and their friends will forward it to their friends, and so on.  You get the idea.

However, this is rarely accomplished with posts titled, “Lose Weight Fast!” or, “Become Super-Awesome Rich! Ask Me How!” and a picture of an IsaGuy.  As a matter of fact, they fail almost 100% of the time – the exact opposite is what you should be shooting for.

Take this IsaGeeks post, for example. The title doesn’t really have anything to do with the article I’ve written, outside of having something about viruses in it, but it entices you to read more.

“Wait, what – viral outbreak??”

Exactly. Also, the picture of our own IsaGeek Eric is interesting to look at, and makes you want to read more. (Don’t Google, “viral pictures,” by the way – it’s stuff you can’t unsee). The title is, “viral outbreak,” and there’s a dude in a bloody hazmat suit – something must be going on, right? Yep – I’ve got your attention is what’s going on!

So here are a few tips to help you write righteous uber-posts that get more people’s attention – for better or worse:

1. Lists

Everyone on the internets loves lists for some reason. There’s something about bulleted or numbered items that appeals to our desire to be efficient. There’s no fluff in a list. It’s just straight, pure, unfiltered, awesome content. If you wanted to read someone’s opinion, you’d be reading an op-ed somewhere, right? There’s no opinion-filler in lists – just little pops of the info you’re after.  It’s like the Cliff’s Notes of a post – it’s almost like cheating. (Notice how my tips are in list format? Yeah, baby!)

2. Go the ego route

People love, love, love to talk about themselves. Get in touch with your inner Sun Tsu and use their massive ego against them to get a response, then get them to share your stuff around. How? Ask their opinion – everyone’s got one. Facebook makes this insanely easy by providing you with an “Ask Question” option right on your wall:

Bet you never even saw that there.

3. Keep things relevant

If possible, try to keep things topical and make comments on big and/or current events or pop culture. Know why The Simpsons has been on the air for like a bazillion years? Because they’re relevant – every episode is a commentary on current events, which keeps people interested. Dishing out Monty Python quotes might not get you as much readership as, “Silly Tax Laws,” for example (since it’s tax time and all that.) A non-relevant post is as useless as a snooze button on a smoke alarm.

4. Funny works

Boring is, well… boring. People reading your posts are unlikely to be looking for C-SPAN-type material. Some of the most popular sites on the internet are geared around humor. LOLCats, The Oatmeal, and the Fail Blog are sites that draw huge numbers of readers each month due to their particular brand of funny. Going the humor route is a surefire way to get some eyeballs on your post.

Even the major news sites recognize this, and you can repurpose their content for your post.  Just imagine what you could do with this: http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2011/06/20/best-places-to-get-naked/

5. Use the interwebs to your advantage

There are a ton of tools you can use to get your stuff out there. Facebook and Twitter are spectacular for this, but don’t overlook other options just because you’ve never heard of them or you’re not familiar with them. Sites like Reddit, Digg, and Pinterest are social-oriented and typically linked into other social sites, such as Facebook. People interested in weight loss or cleansing will stumble on your post this way – and the more views are better than fewer.

6. Use interesting / funny /compelling images in your posts

We’ve harped on including images with your posts previously, and this rule still holds true. Images are steroids for your headline, and unlike professional athletics, steroids are legal here. Use them to your advantage. You’ll notice the vast majority of the posts on IsaGeeks have images. We run all sorts of analytics (we’re geeks, after all) and the posts with images get about 80% more hits than those without.

The best part is the more outrageous the image, the more traffic you’ll see. However, there’s definitely a balancing act you’ll want to follow: You don’t necessarily want to have nekkid pictures of anyone on your post, unless you’re trying to attract a particular, uh… type of internet surfer. (You know – bored office temps, members of Congress, Charlie Sheen…)

So. Considering all the above, here’s what you don’t want to have:

This might be a better way to go:

The content for the above post was actually used by an Associate on Facebook with great effect – it caused a flurry of “How’d you lose the weight?” responses, which the Associate then responded to privately.

Them’s ninja skillz, yo.

Because when it’s all said and done, it’s up to everyone else whether or not what you have is “viral” or not.

IsaGeeks on Google+

That same week, Facebook announced they would look into creating their own search engine. Whether this gets built from scratch or Microsoft sells Bing to them still isn’t clear.

So is Google+ trying to be Facebook, or is Facebook trying to be Google? The answer is both.

Ever since Google Plus hit the scene, Google has maintained that they are not trying to compete with Facebook. They aren’t trying to because they don’t have to. Google is already the most visited site on the internet, and the undisputed king of search. And being a successful search engine is far more profitable than being a successful social network.

Consider this: Google accounts for 64.86% of all search traffic, 73% of all Americans use search engines, and 59% use them daily. People spend much more time per month on Facebook, but they don’t tend to go there to research products or buy things. They go to search engines for that. For Google, that means big business in ad revenue.

Google Plus is actually Google’s attempt to get user data to help with their search product. When you click the +1 next to links in search, you add information to your profile that tells Google something about your interests. They use this to deliver better targeted ads to you.

Facebook, on the other hand, knows they are missing the boat by not having a search function on their site. With that many people congregated under one digital roof, it makes sense to give them a search tool so they don’t have to leave the site. It’s likely they wouldn’t even try to challenge Google in search, though. Microsoft has already sunk billions of dollars into trying to do just that with Bing, and they’re still a distant 2nd place in search engine popularity.

No, Facebook would include search on their page to enhance their primary business, social media. Just as Google used social to enhance their primary business, search.

So while it looks like the two companies are in direct competition, they really aren’t. They are both masters of something the other one isn’t, and they are both trying to do what each other does best.

Instagram (or, if you use the spelling of it’s website address, instagr.am) is a photography app for Apple and Android mobile devices. With it, you can publish photos on the go, and share them with other people.

It’s fairly simple to use once you’ve installed it. You can take your picture using the app, or simply select a photo that’s already on your device. You can then apply a selection of “filters” to the image. These can either add a particular hue to your photo, or go as far as making your pic look like an old Kodachrome snapshot.

It will also ask you if you want to share the picture. If you don’t, it will only appear to all of the other people using Instagram. If you do, though, you can have it automatically post to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Posterous or Flickr. As long as you’ve set these up in your profile, it can push them over. You can even have them automatically e-mailed to your friends.

From Brian: "Shooting the next IsaGeeks video. Brendan called me a 'tourist'"

Here’s the hitch: It only works on your mobile device. You can’t do this from you desktop, you have to do it through the mobile app. Also, it doesn’t appear to be out yet for the Blackberry, Windows Mobile, or any other device that isn’t Apple or Android.

Why’s this something you should know about? Because it’s one of the easiest ways to share something interesting with your followers on other social sites. Instead of saying where you are or what you’re doing, show them – you’ll get to include a message with your photo anyway, but people respond to photography a lot easier than they do to just text.

So if you have an iPhone, iPad, iPod or Android phone, give it a spin!

We’re really digging this new layout, and we think you will too.

Updated Cover and Tabs

For starters, Timelines makes everything much more visual. Instead of poking through a lot of text links to find what you want, apps are separated into a neat collection of graphics at the top of the page. Here you can see what we’ve been up to on Pinterest, YouTube, Google+, the photos we post, our events… it’s all laid out nice and neat at the top of the page for you.

Isagenix History

They don’t call it “Timelines” for nothing, either. The point of this new layout is to make it easier to track back through your history.

As such, we’ve started updating our Fan Page with highlights from Isagenix’ 10 year history.

Facebook Storefront

And finally, if you’ve already set up your own Fan Page of your own, and you are using Isagenix’ Facebook Storefront app, we’ve created an image for your use.

After your page is changed to the Timelines layout, you can use this as the display image for your Storefront.

Just follow the instructions for changing the icon for apps on your Timelines.

So stop by if you haven’t already, and let us know what you think!