A

• Advanced Segments- This is an option that is available on almost all of the reports you can view. Advanced Segments allow you to drill deeper into your data. For example if you are looking at a report of “New Visitors” you can select advanced segments and see how many of those new visitors viewed your site on a mobile device.
  
• AdWords- The AdWords report will help you if you have synced Google Analytics and Google AdWords.
• Audience- A Standard Report in Google Analytics that allows you to view data about the audience your site has reached and how they have interacted with your site.
• Automatic Alerts- See Intelligence Events

B

• Behavior- Section of reports that helps you understand how users interact with your site.
  
• Bounce Rate- Percentage of users who come to your site and leave only viewing one page
• Browser OS- Identifies what Browser Operating Systme users are using to view your site

C

• Campaigns- Reports generated to help you understand the performance of online and offline campaigns. This is more of an advanced feature.
• Cookie- What Google Analytics uses to track user behavior
• Conversions- You can set goals for your site. When those goals have been met a conversion takes place
• Custom Alerts- See Intelligence Events

D

• Dashboards- Basically this is a summary of the Google Analytics data available to you. Dashboards can be customized so you can quickly see the data that is relevant to you.
  
• Data Hub Activity- Reports that integrate information from Google’s Data Hub Partners and helps you view social conversations taking place with your brand
• Demographics- Reports that provide information to help you identify what market your message is reaching. See also Language and Location
• Dimension- Data that relates to language, location, referral source, browser type etc…
• Direct- Visitors that type your web address into a browser or visit you through a bookmark

E

• Engagement- Report that helps you determine how engaged users are with your site. How many pages do they view? How long do they spend on your site?
• Exit Pages- Pages where users leave your site

F

• Frequency- How often a visitor visits your site
  

I

• In-Page Analytics- Allows you to navigate your site and view performance reports at the same time.
• Intelligence Events- An event can be anything that you would like to have Google Analytics monitor for you. For example if traffic falls 50% in one day, or conversions increase 25% in one day. Intelligence Events come in two types, Automatic Alerts and Custom Alerts
• Automatic Alerts- A group of events preset by Google Analytics.
• Custom Alerts- A group of events determined by the user.

L

• Landing Pages- Not everyone lands on your home page when they come to your site. The Landing Pages reports will help you identify which pages users land on most frequently and how those pages perform when a user lands on them
• Language- A Dimension that shows you what language site users speak
• Location- A Dimension that shows you where site users are located
• Metric- Data that relates to visits, bounce rate, page views, etc…

M

• Mobile- Reports with data generated by users using a mobile device (VERY IMPORTANT- If you have low mobile traffic it doesn’t mean people aren’t looking at your site on a mobile device, it more likely means your site looks bad on a mobile device)
  

N

• Network- Identifies what network users are using to access your site
• Network Referrals- Report that helps you understand which social network has sent you traffic
• New Visitor- A Visitor (see definition of Visitor) that has never been to your site, or has cleared the cookies on their machine.
  
• (not provided)- Google used to provide you tell you what keywords triggered your site in search results. Now they hide all of that information in the black box call (not provided)

O

• Organic- Traffic that comes to your site from organic search results
  

P

• Paid- Reports related to Google AdWords performance and other paid search campaigns. Anything other than Google paid search has to be manually uploaded.
• Page Depth- Shows how many visitors visited deep into your site. For example a page depth of 1 means one page was viewed. A page depth of 10 means 10 pages have been viewed.
  
• Pageviews- A measurement of how many pages have been viewed
• Plugins- This report helps you identify social sharing that is taking place through your social sharing plugins.

R

• Real Time- A feature in Google Analytics that allows you to view user interaction with your site as it happens.
  
• Recency- Time between visits
• Referrals- Sites that refer traffic to your site
• Returning Visitor- A machine that has previously been cookied by your site that is returning to visit your site

S

• Search- Reports that are designed to help you understand traffic that comes from organic search
• Shortcuts- Allow you to create a quick link to your most commonly viewed reports straight from the homes screen.
  
• Site Search- Allows you to see how many users are using your sites search bar and what they are typing into the search bar. This takes a little advanced set up.
• Social- Reports designed to help you understand and track the role of social media with your websites performance
• Sources- Something that sends you traffic

T

• Trackbacks- They are basically a blogging high five. They have little SEO value but will show you what kind of bloggers link to your content
• Technology- Reports provided to help you identify what technology is being used to view your website
  
• Traffic Sources- Reports created to help you identify where your traffic comes from

V

• Visit Duration- How long users are engaged with your site (measured in seconds)
• Visitor Flow- A report that visually shows you how users navigate your site and when and where they leave your site
• Visitor- Google Analytics registers a visitor by placing a cookie on a machine. Therefore if you visit a site with three different machines you are three visitors.
  

My Two Cents on Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can help you understand the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts. I recommend spending some time to get to know Google Analytics. Come up with 4 or 5 reports that you can place on your Dashboard.  Try to use Google Analytics to understand the effectiveness of your Social Media efforts, and advertising campaigns. Google Analytics is a free tool that can help you understand where to effectively spend your internet marketing dollars. Let me know what you think. Place your comments in the comment section below or contact us here at Vivid Image for any specific questions you may have.

Don’t Forget to Check…

Forms: Some websites only utilize one form, and others have dozens of them. It’s easy to forget, so do a careful audit of forms.

• Inventory all the forms on your site, the goals for each, and wording/content visitors see.
• Evaluate your process. Do you now do more contact via phone, but were only asking for email on the form? Get it added.
• Correct trouble spots. When you created the form you may not have required an address, but it has since created a headache; make it required.
• Test them all to make sure they are working, you receive proper notification and it’s routed to the correct person.
• Check the email confirmation and thank-you page verbiage is correct and up-to-date.
• Remove old forms for past events.
• If using WordPress, go into the back end and look at the entries to double check you haven’t missed any correspondence with clients or potential clients.

Contact Us: It’s critical this information is up-to-date, and just as important it’s not irritating. People expect to find all information and methods of contacting you in the form they prefer.

• Don’t withhold information, i.e. not publish your email or phone number
• Make sure it is correct.
• If you have a PO Box, physical address, and/or multiple locations, list them all. Don’t make people hunt for the information.

Footer: When is the last time you looked at the information contained in your website footer? This is important, as it is information seen on any page of your website and a place visitors have the habit of checking for quick contact information.

• Is your physical address in the footer, and not just a PO Box? Google and Yelp like a physical address and so do people trying to drive to see you.
• Is your copyright date the current year? It’s important to visitors to know you keep your site updated.
• Is your phone number, privacy policies, and other info you want up-to-date.
• Click the links and make sure they are all working.

About Us: This page often includes staff and is often the most over-looked place on your site with out of date information.

• Delete staff names, information and pictures who are no longer at your organization
• Add new staff to the page

Emails: Since email is a critical communication component of website marketing, it’s very important you check all emails listed on your website.

• Do an audit of the emails listed on your website and who gets them; follow up with that person to make sure they are getting them.
• Do a test email from your site to make sure it goes where it’s intended to go and isn’t trapped in a spam filter.
• Make sure that emails aren’t listed or routed to someone who isn’t there or isn’t checking that email.
• Consider routing critical emails to more than one person.

Links: Links can change and it’s important to check them periodically to make sure they work

• If you are suggesting a link that navigates a visitor away from your website, do you have it set to pop-up a new browser? Click and make sure.
• People will sometimes change their Twitter handle, which is fine. However, a link from your website will bring up an error if it doesn’t get changed there too.
• WordPress has a wonderful Broken Link Checker that you should be monitoring. If you link to an article that gets changed or removed from the web by its author, it will cause a broken link and error on your site. You don’t want visitors frustrated, your cited source for your article gone, and Google to adjust your ranking. Correct the link, find a new one, or remove it; just make sure it isn’t broken.

Professionalism: You want a site that looks professional and trustworthy. Some affiliations and awards will do that, but anything outdated simply detracts.

• Remove really old awards, or if it’s an award you’ve received for many years list the most recent.
• Check affiliate icons and links that they work correctly and that affiliation is still reputable and relevant.
• Remove mention of lapsed certifications or clubs you no longer hold.

Products: E-commerce sites need to keep sales up, so it’s even more critical that products are updated.

• Look through products to see if packaging has been updated and replace images.
• Replace old photos with new/better/clearer images.
• Don’t leave product images blank!
• Check through pricing to make sure what is listed on your website matches other sales materials or marketed prices.

 Home Page: This is the place you send people and often times their first impression of your business.

• Evaluate your homepage for any fresh content needed.
• Old blogs feeding in, calendars that feed in but have no events, etc
• Update your pictures. If it’s important that customers come back to your site, you want to make sure it looks fresh each time. Updating your pictures is important.
• Is your logo looking out of date?
• If you feature videos on your homepage, have you posted a newer one in YouTube you can swap it with?

If you are unsure about making a change, talk to your project manager. We recommend you get in the habit of maintaining your website on a frequent basis. There are times when very little needs to be changed, but the more often you audit your site, the less likely it is something (needing change) will go unnoticed!

First of all, let’s keep in mind that it is called “Social Media” and not “Automated Media”. The foundation of marketing with social media is about building relationships with people and increasing brand loyalty. These goals simply cannot be achieved if the majority of your social media is automated. With that out of the way, let’s dig a little deeper into this controversial topic and some of the most commonly automated social media.

Scheduling Facebook Posts

I have been using Facebook Scheduler rather than Hootsuite when I need to schedule a Facebook post.  It is useful for scheduling posts on a targeted day or time when more people are online and sharing is more likely (such as weekends and evenings). Facebook Scheduler also allows you to schedule the posting of a photo (with limitations – for instance you cannot tag photos or put them in a specific album), where Hootsuite does not. Since Hootsuite is third party application, the posts created in Hootsuite will not rank as well (and be seen by as many), as the posts that are created within Facebook.  Facebook’s algorithm, called EdgeRank, is said to put more weight on posts that are created in Facebook, and these posts will appear more often in your fans’ news feeds.

Scheduling Tweets

One guideline to follow if you are going to automate anything on Twitter, is to make sure your tweets read like human-created tweets and are under 140 characters. Often Facebook posts that are automatically sent to Twitter are too long to have an impact. The best practice is to engage on Twitter, and not just have Facebook feed into it. If you are going to automate your Facebook posts to Twitter (here is one way to do it), make sure that the majority of your tweets are actual real tweets. You will be missing out on opportunities for engaging with others with replies and retweets, and adding hashtags if you only use Twitter to duplicate your Facebook content. Hootsuite is a great tool for scheduling tweets, that I use in conjunction with Twitter.  If you do schedule tweets, pay attention to current events, and know when to pause them (i.e. don’t post about your “Blowout Sale” during the Boston Bombings).

Syndicating Blog Posts

Previously, it was common practice to use third party apps that automatically syndicated your blog post to Facebook (such as Networked Blogs or RSS Graffiti), but now they are also negatively affected by Edgerank and have new rules requiring re-authentication every 3 months.  If you use a third party app to post your blog to your Facebook page, you will also lose some engagement because there will be no personality with automatically generated content (i.e. asking a question about the topic, relating it to your brand, etc.). There are RSS syndication tools built in to Hootsuite that will publish a link to your blog post to other social networks (such as Linkedin and Twitter) that can be useful, too. But again, I would suggest following them up with real tweets and status updates. Since frequent posts are common practice on Twitter (i.e. every couple hours), a syndicated link to your blog post  could be followed up with a question or discussion point later.

Cons of Automating Social Media:

• It can be too easy to “set it and forget it”, missing out on opportunities for real conversations and events, and losing touch with your network.
• When you automate your posts, you cannot tag others. Tagging can be done in Facebook and Linkedin to get your posts more exposure and engagement.
• The same exact content will not appeal to your audiences for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. It is OK to use some of the same content, but the content needs to be tailored so it is  best received on that particular social network. For instance, in Twitter you will want to add hash tags.
• You want to avoid repetition with customers that follow you multiple social networks. If you are posting the exact content across the board, your most loyal followers will get inundated quickly. Make each social network fresh.

A Few Things You Must Automate:

• WordPress allows you to schedule publishing your blog post for a specific day and time. By all means, use the built-in WordPress scheduler.
• Set up Google Alerts for specific keywords or brand names, to give you notification of blog post ideas, current discussions, and news in your industry.
• Use social share buttons on your posts to enable your readers to automatically share for you!

In the end, it is up to you to weigh the pros and cons of social media automation, and to make any automation that you do as personal as possible and tailored for that social network.  Be careful to not sacrifice engagement and interaction! If social media is an important part of your marketing, but you don’t have the time to invest in, it may be a better choice to consider outsourcing your social media, rather then automating too much of it.

If you found this post helpful, please comment or share to let us know – Thank you!

Are you automating any social media?  What types of social media automation do you feel is acceptable?

Top 5 Reasons I Love Using EventSpot (by Constant Contact)

1. No paper wasted
   • Your entire invitation process and collection of registrations can be done completely online.  You can even set up a mobile phone check in process when your guests arrive the day of the event.  How cool is that?  Plus, if you charge for the event, you can set up a pay online process through an online payment solution of your choice.
2. It’s affordable  (no long term commitment required)
   • EventSpot is as low as $20-$25/month with up to 5 events to market a month. There is no minimum monthly commitment, no registration charges, and includes an unlimited number of attendee registrations!  (Other event marketing solutions may charge based on the number of people who attend).  There are discounts available for non-profits and pre-payment plans if you run events several times per year.
3. It’s easy to share on your social media networks
   • Whether you use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc…once you create the event, it generates a unique URL that you can share anywhere!  (And you can set it up to track where people are coming from).  It’s really cool.  If the people you want to target aren’t your Facebook friends, that’s OK.  You can invite them in other ways.  All they need is the link to your event home page.
4. No technical skills necessary
   • I’m not a techie or a graphic designer.  I’m a business person.  I have created several events using EventSpot all by myself!  If you can type and upload a photo, you can do this.  I am happy to walk you through it if you need help.  Constant Contact has an excellent customer service team too!
5. It organizes everything for you in one location (online)
   • If you have multiple people within your organization who handle the event marketing process (typically the case) everything is managed within the software accessible online no matter where everyone is located!  You can see who has registered, who can’t make it, who hasn’t responded to your invitation.  To reiterate, it works slick!

If you are interested in talking to me more personally about how to test drive EventSpot before you decide for yourself, please send me an email or call  (320) 587-8974 x 108 to connect live and discuss!

You may have noticed that Google Authorship and Author Rank have become very important in your Search Engine Optimization quest for the top spot (If you haven’t you should read my post on Author Rank). Or maybe you are just vain enough to wonder, “how can I get more people to see my picture?” The good news is that if you are working with the most up to date versions of WordPress and the Genesis Framework setting up Authorship is very easy. It may have taken me 5 minutes to follow these steps so there is no excuse for not doing this. Remember, if you contribute to multiple sites you will have to set up Authorship for each site. The process may be different depending on how the site is built. Without further delay…

Step 1

Link your WordPress user profile to your Google+ page.

Log in to your site’s WordPress dashboard and click on Users. Then click on your profile. Scroll down about half way down the page you will see a box labeled Google+. Copy and paste your Google+ profile URL into this space (if you don’t have a Google+profile now is the time to get one). You’ll see another space called “Biographical info” and it won’t hurt to fill that one in as well. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click “Update Profile.” When you’re done, it will look something like this.

Example of Authorship Search Engine Results Snippet

Step 2

Add a reciprocal link from your Google+ profile.

Go to your Google+ page and click on “About.” You will see a blue box titled, “Links.” Click on edit. There should be a space in the center of that blue box that says “contributor to.” In that space you would add the URL of the site that you contribute to, and the name of the site. It should look something like this after you have entered all of the information. In the bottom right corner of the “Links” box you will see a button labeled “Save.” Click on that to save your changes.

This is what your Google+ link should look like before you click save

Step 3

Test it!

Thankfully Google has provided a tool to make sure this is all done properly without spending hours searching for yourself. Go to the Google Structured Data Testing Tool  and copy and paste a URL from any blog post that you have posted on your site (keep in mind this should be from the same WordPress site that we used in step 1. You may need to repeat the process for other sites you contribute to). Then click the preview button to the right. If you have set up Authorship correctly it should look something like this…(click image to view larger)

This is what it should look like if you have set up Authorship correctly.

That’s it! Pretty easy stuff. If you don’t work with WordPress and the Genesis Framework you can get a different set of Authorship instructions from Google here. If you still are unsure of the benefit or advantage to Authorship you should check out my other post  What is Author Rank and Why Should You Care?

Authorship is essentially linking your Google+ profile to content that you have produced on the web. When it is done properly and your content appears in Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) it will look something like this.

Example of Authorship Search Engine Results Snippet

What does Authorship DO?

Authorship helps Google determine Author Rank. Author Rank will be another tool that Google will use in its algorithm to help determine quality relevant search results and reduce spam. Prior to Authorship when you would perform a Google Search you would see titles, snippets (descriptions) and URLs to help determine which content you would like to read. Authorship provides users with the last missing piece by letting users know who wrote the content they are about to read. Think about this in a real world example. If I asked you to go into a book store and pick out a book based off of a small snippet of text, the title and the publisher would it be very easy? You might grab a book published by Doubleday and end up with a science fiction novel by Isaac Asimov, or a horror novel by Stephen King. In the world of search results Authorship solves a problem that we didn’t know existed by answering the question, who wrote what I am about to read?

The What’s in it For Me?

Authorship provides many benefits to many people; here’s a quick list of those benefits.

Writers

For those that write, Authorship provides you with some very interesting insights and a new level of understanding of your content. If you log into Google Webmaster Tools with the same Google account that is linked to your Google+ page, Google will provide you with statistics for your content no matter what site it is published on (provided you are the verified author). Seeing statistics like Click Through Rate and average position in SERPs will help you craft better and more relevant content, or maybe reinforce that you are as awesome as you think you are.

• Quick Tip- Set up Authorship sooner than later. Studies are showing that early adopters to Authorship are benefiting from an increased Click Through Rate. It’s my opinion that as the practice becomes more widely used that benefit will decrease.

Readers and Google Users

Authorship will help Google Users and content readers by answering that big question, who wrote what I am about to read? But more importantly Authorship provides Google with another indicator of quality relevant content. This will only improve the search experience and reduce spam in the search results.

Google

Google benefits in a few different ways. As I’ve stated a few times above, Authorship will improve search results and the search experience which improves Google as a product. The controversial benefit to Google is the benefit that Google+ receives. There are two major battles in the Internet marketing world. The battles are on the social front and the search front. Google is winning the search front, however on the social front Google is in a less favorable position. Some see the Authorship push as a way to force users toward Google+. This might very well be the case, but I don’t care and neither should you. My opinion for almost everything, “is mind your own business.” And I don’t mean in the elementary school definition “of mind your own business;” I mean you should do what is right for you and your business. The benefits that you can receive from building an Author Rank far outweigh any philosophical statement that you can make by avoiding it.

Tips You Can Use

• Claim a Google+ page, if you don’t have one already. 
• On every site you own, set up Authorship. If you Contribute to a site and they have not yet embraced Authorship share this post with the webmasters and encourage them to get on board.
• If you don’t know how to set up Authorship and you use WordPress with Genesis you can  read my post on setting up Authorship, or do it the hard way and follow directions provided by Google
• Power Tip- If you have a website that produces content without an identified author you can link that content to a companies Google+ page. This is not yet featured in search results, but it is a safe bet that establishing your site as a Publisher will be just as important.

Thanks for reading. Tell me what you think in the comments section below or go here to find more great content.

10. Create a Fabulous Event Profile Image- Gone are the days of Facebook only giving you a small thumbnail space for your event image. Now you get a large area to display an event photo that you need to take full advantage of, and never, ever leave it blank! The size of the image needs to be 714 x 264 pixels.

9. Highlight the Event- You need to do two things. First, move Events up into the visible tabs on your fan page, directly under your cover image. To do this, click the down arrow on the right-most tab to see all options. Repeat the process by swapping positions until you get the Events tab where you want it. Next, create a custom image that goes along with the event and upload that to your Event Tab. The size is 111 x74 pixels, and you simply need to click on the pencil/edit icon visible when you roll your mouse over the tab, then click on “edit settings” and then upload custom image.

8. Invite-The only invites you can send (for free) on Facebook to an event are to those to whom you have a personal connection. This is precisely why it is so important you treat Facebook as a networking and relationship tool, rather than a news dissemination device. I’m not advocating you spam all your friends and family with every event you create, but do go through your connections to those who might be interested.

7. Share-One way to get the event in front of your fan base and into their Newsfeeds is to “share” the event. The day you create it, it’s likely to find its way into the Newsfeed of quite a few fans. However, Facebook’s algorithm is dependent upon a variety of variables, so you should NOT assume all fans saw it the first time you posted. Share the event, and/or post and link to it regularly in the days leading up to the event.

6. Keep It Fresh-Once people start to join the event, keep the information fresh. Post event updates, teasers, prizes, speakers, pictures, videos, etc to keep interest of those who plan to attend. When something excites them, they may comment (which their connections will see in their news ticker) or they may share it to their wall (which their connections will see in their Newsfeed).

5. Email-Add the event link to your email footer. Invite people to “click to RSVP”.

4. Newsletter- Include the event and link in your eNewsletter. Don’t assume everyone is on Facebook as often as you. They may be more occasional users, and simply haven’t seen what you have going.

3. Paid- Consider promoting your event (paid) on Facebook. You can set a budget, the audience, and other parameters that can make it a very cost-effective marketing effort. Think about the cost of a postage stamp if you were to mail a flyer to everyone.

2. Look Elsewhere-If it’s a big enough event that transcends a target market that isn’t entirely on Facebook, you’ll need to market the event elsewhere. It’s likely that many people won’t have even heard about it if all your eggs are in one basket.

1. Cross Promote-If you have any other businesses, organizations, or people (speakers, presenters, etc) who are also part of the event, have them help cross-promote on their fan pages, events, newsletters, etc. This is very effective and can really help the word spread. It takes a little extra work to figure out which vertical industries or partners are key to helping, but can make a world of difference in traffic (and success) of your event! You can now co-host events that will greatly help with this. See example below:

Do you have an idea you’d add to this list? What have you tried that has worked really well?

In addition to driving traffic to Facebook Events, there are other things you can do to drive more traffic to your fan page (in general) you should check out.

Privacy

Privacy settings for your personal Facebook profile seem to change often, so now is a good time to review and tweak them (here are some tips). Also, take a look at your other social media accounts, such as Linkedin, to ensure you are giving people access (or limited access) to your profile as you prefer. It is also a good idea to take a look at your third party apps that have access to your profiles and remove or revoke permissions if you are not using them anymore.

Notifications

Adjust your notifications to limit your distractions or give you a heads up. For instance, you can tell Facebook when you want an email, text, sound, or push notification. Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, Pinterest, and Flickr will also give you as little or as much notification of activity on your accounts as you wish. Now may be  a good time to play around with these to see how you can increase your efficiencies overall. Nutshell Mail is one tool that some people like for streamlining notifications.

Branding & Images

It is always a good idea to periodically update your headers and profile images for all your social media channels. Consistent branding across all your social networks is important, but freshen them up for the season! Here is a helpful tool for determining what size image you need for each social network.

Bios

Review your “About” and “Bio” sections of your social media profiles so that they are current, keyword rich, descriptive, and complete. Add links to your website and other social networks whenever you can.

Organize

If you are on Twitter, take a look at who you are following and organize them into lists, so you can easily see tweets from those who are most important to you. Take a look at your Pinterest boards, photo albums, and other areas that can be better organized or grouped as well.  Hootsuite can be a useful tool for organizing your social media updates and lists of Twitter followers.

What’s New?

Take some time to dig into changes and new options for promoting your business through social media.  For instance, YouTube has a new channel layout, Pinterest has added analytics for businesses, and Facebook is constantly making changes.  Linkedin Company profiles now include banner/header images and photos or documents in status updates. New and emerging social networks are always popping up that could create fresh opportunities for you.

Build

Think about how you can further build your social networks in new ways – if you have great blog content, there are so many ways to re-purpose it for social media. Another way to build your company’s social media presence is to help your key staff to optimize their Linkedin and Twitter profiles if they are somewhat stagnant.

It’s the perfect time to do a little bit of social media housekeeping and planning for the new quarter.  Small changes could make a big difference in how your customers perceive you, or might just save you a bit of time so you can go outside and enjoy Spring!

Will you be using any of these social media spring cleaning tips? If so, let us know by commenting below, or sharing this post!

Notifications: Page admins can no longer take a quick glance at fan page activity in the notification area at the top of the fan page. To find the same information that was once there, now requires an extra click. You will be notified by the same icon along side your fan page at the left of your Newsfeed and a bright red icon will be next to “Notifications” at the top of your fan page when you navigate there so that you are made aware of recent activity. However, you’ll have to click to see what it was. The red icon notification will remain there until you take that step, but will “re-set” itself as soon as you do.

Page Likes: The nifty little box displaying who has most recently liked your fan pages has been replaced with a Facebook promotion box. The “Likes” are still there, but it requires an extra click to see.

Ads: If you run any paid ads, Facebook now gives you a snapshot of how the ad is doing right on your homepage.

Audience Suggestions: Need some feedback from your fans? You can check for suggestions in the admin panel. Facebook added its own icon. I have yet to see anything appear here though.

Specific Replies in Comments: Now you can reply specifically and directly to a certain comment in a thread. This is one of the best, new features added to Facebook in a long time to encourage discussion and better fan engagement. To turn this on, go into your fan page admin panel and check the box as indicated in the graphic above.

Group Post from Home Page: Post an update in a group you are a part of on Facebook, right from your Newsfeed.

There are lots of other changes happening on Facebook soon. You can read more here about how you will be able to alter your personal settings so you see everything in your Newsfeed and not get items censored by Facebook’s algorithm. What change would you like to see Facebook make?

Email is STILL the most cost-effective, targeted, trackable, and efficient way to build and maintain relationships in all types of business and organizations. This session will teach you how to master email marketing communications with a comprehensive look at best practices and winning strategies that lead to increased profits, revenue and participation (or engagement instead of participation).

What you will learn:

- What is permission-based email marketing and becoming a trusted sender
- Email list building
- Increasing deliverability and open rates
- Writing good subject lines and content – getting readers to take action
- Tracking results and what to do with this information
- How email and social media marketing work together to achieve goals

This seminar is provided at no charge for both current clients or new businesses interested in learning more about email marketing.

Click HERE to register!

Contact Michelle Falling should you have any questions before you decide if this seminar is right for you.