How do you make your Facebook page more appealing? One way is to customize it through applications, and now there is bevy to choose from – everything from games to polls to blog/RSS feeds and video boxes. Applications not only enable customization, but if used correctly will also create a page that’s made to stick – your fans will actually want to hang out there, and contribute and share your information with their friends.

Relevant, rich content and regular interaction are imperative to attracting Facebook fans. Applications can help you push new content to your page, make it appealing and keep your fans engaged.

Five to get you started:
1.    Blog RSS Feed Reader – this will automatically feed your blog into your Facebook stream. If you don’t have a blog, there is no better time to start one. There are several blog and RSS reader apps out there and you can also do this with the built in Notes app. Two that work well are the Blog RSS Feed Reader and Social RSS. These can be customized to look like your actual blog.
2.    Static FBML – allows you to add a customized box to your page using Facebook Markup Language. Get creative – add images, videos, text – anything to customize it to your brand. This app was developed by Facebook so it won’t be subject to the problems third party apps sometimes encounter.
3.    Extended Info Box – allows you to fill in more information about your organization beyond the standard information categories. You can also choose the name of the box so it matches your brand.
4.   YouTube Video Box – allows you to import videos from your YouTube account and has an integrated search option, which is handy if you have a lot of videos. There are several YouTube applications on Facebook, but this one seems to be the easiest to use and only requires one step for adding your videos.
5.    Polls – this application makes it easy to create polls for fans. You can add pictures, videos and links to the polls. Again, use your creativity here.

Explore Facebook and all of the applications offered there. Be sure to read the reviews and check who developed it. There are tons of solid applications, but many of them can be overloaded with bugs and not worth the time. Check out the apps other organizations are using too. Zappos.com, for instance, has a very engaging page and more than 32,000 fans. Poke around see what they’ve done – their huge fan base shows they must be doing a few things right.

Question of the week:
What Facebook applications are you using to actively engage fans?

For more tips and tools check out JetPack Radio. Feel free to fan Wired PR too!

Enclosures: MP3, M4V

So you have established Facebook is where your organization needs to be. You did your demographic research, determined how you will engage your fans and allocated the time and resources to truly be interactive. So the logical next step is to create a page. But how do you build a page that will be most appealing to your audience? Start with a few of the basics to get a good foundation, then listen to what your fans are asking for and how they are spending most of their time on your page.

Start with the tabs
The wall – this is your landing page for fans and your life stream. It’s all of the activity and interactions with fans. Devote most of your attention here as your page gets going.

Info – this is all about your organization. Be sure to be descriptive, but concise, punchy and appealing. Don’t forget to post links to any of your Web sites or social networks here too. Use this information and the links in the small box under your icon too.

Photos – consider opening this up to fans, allowing them to post, tag and comment on photos. Photos create another level of interaction and can spark dialogue. Post photos of your customers here too (with their consent of course) and tag them. Again it’s creating more activity on your page.

Boxes – you can add various built in boxes like “links” and “notes,” but they also afford you the ability to customize your page. (More on this in the next blog).

Notes – use this to post articles, press releases, anything…get creative. You may find though that you don’t even need this tab. Most of the other tabs get the job done and are more useful.

Events – use your creativity here too. You don’t have to limit it just to in-person events. Think outside of the box. Maybe host online event or some sort of contest or special promotion on your page that is contained within a set number of days.

Landing page – for fans the default landing page is the wall, but for non fans and non Facebook members you can direct them to a different tab with a call to action. Mashable and Victoria Secret’s Pink do this effectively with their landing pages.

Post no bills
Will you allow fans to post comments, photos and videos? You would be wise to leave it open. You can always moderate any inappropriate postings. Keep in mind the more people post the more it will show up in streams, which means more of their friends see it. Not allowing this level of interaction could potentially have a negative effect.

How will you kick start these conversations and postings? Think like a blogger, unravel stories over time and engage your fans with questions.

One last tip, be sure to grab your vanity URL. Not only does it help you retain your brand identity online, but also there are talks that Facebook may be launching an email platform. The platform would use your vanity URL as your email address. You don’t want to get stuck with one that doesn’t fit your organization.

Couple questions:
If you have a page what is one strategy you’ve used to successfully build your fan base? Could running a promotion to get new fans and not extending that offer to existing fans have a negative impact?

For more tips and tools check out JetPack Radio. Feel free to fan Wired PR too!

Enclosures: MP3, M4V

Is your company on Facebook? Now, more often than not the answer to that question is yes. In fact, it may seem your organization is living in the dark ages if it hasn’t claimed a piece of the Facebook real estate.

But Facebook may not be for everyone or every organization. Before starting a fan page, every company should ask themselves a few key questions:

1) Is your target audience on Facebook? Bottom line, you have to go where your target market is. If they are not on Facebook don’t waste your energy and resources there. Go where they are.

2) If they are on Facebook, ask if you can dedicate the time and resources to truly interact and engage them in two-way communication. If not, then you may want to reconsider creating a page. Unless you’re willing to turn the reigns over to a couple of loyal brand ambassadors like Coca-Cola did with their page. (Read the Mashable post.)

3) Finally, why would Facebook users want to fan your page? What are you going to offer them?

Once you’ve established Facebook is where your company needs to be, what do you do to get started?

Begin building your page being sure to go through the tabs thoroughly and filling in as much information as possible. Include links to your Web site, blog if you have one, and other social networks you are a part of. Think of it as an extension of your Web site (information wise), but as a blog (content wise). Fill it with photos – if appropriate – and tag people in them. Upload your logo or whatever image you want to represent your company in your profile picture.

Before you hit publish, develop a plan for engaging your audience. How are you going to interact with them? What voice will you use? Is going to be more personal or from a business approach? Who will respond to comments, questions and other posts?

How often will you post? Some companies that really have it down typically post a few times a day everyday. Either through questions or relevant information their fans can use. If you go too long in between posts, you will lose your fans attention – staying top of mind is key. BUT you also have to be relevant.

Going through this process will take a little more work, but it will build a good foundation and help ensure the success of your page.

If you have a Facebook page, what tips and tools did you use in the building it? Did you go in with a strategy? What has been the outcome?

For more tips and tools check out JetPack Radio.

Enclosures: MP3, M4V

There are countless free online tools out there – everything from white papers to eBooks, to tool kits and guides. While they run the gamut on what they offer, there are a handful of useful tools to help manage, market and maybe even grow your business. Google offers a fare share of resources, as well as Bing, Yahoo and several other sites dedicated to the small business.

These tools will focus on creating awareness and driving people to your brand online:

• Google’s Local Business Center – as local search grows this will become a valuable stream for businesses. It enables you to list information about your business – address, hours of operation, photos, videos, real-time updates and special offers. You can also track views, actions and where the searcher came from. (For more see the below interview with Chuck Reynolds)

• SEOMOZ.org – search tons of free resources and information on search engine optimization.

• Websitegrader – enables you to essentially test the effectiveness of your Web site by giving you an actual grade on the site. It will also tell you where you need to make improvements and offer a few suggestions.

• Google Webmaster Tools – search articles, tips and information on improving your site and where it shows up in search results. It is also a great tracking, management and guideline tool.

• Google Analytics – allows you to track your site’s activity. Find what key terms brought searchers to your site, what part of the world they came from, how they navigated your site, how much time they spent there, and even set up specific tracking events. Extremely thorough and intuitive.

A few others to check out:

• Bing Local Listing Center

• Google Favorite Places

• Yelp

One last note, Google is now doing sentiment analysis, which essentially means it is geo-tagging blog references. Now, when a search is conducted for your business on Google maps it will not only pull up the location of your business, but also any other online references, including blog posts. Yet another reason to get listed on Google Local.

What free tools are you using to help your business get discovered online? Please share.

For more tips and tools check out JetPack Radio.

Enclosures: MP3, M4V

PHOENIX (Jan. 22, 2010) – Entrepreneurs Cecil Chambers, a Grammy-Award winning music publishing executive, and Jeff Lowy president of Encore Creative an award-winning event production company, have announced the formation of Big Tyme LLC, an independent production company with three television shows slated to debut later this year.

Big Tyme’s first venture will be a musically-driven reality show similar to American Idol in which winners will be signed to a recording contract at the end of the season. Chambers and Lowy recently entered management agreements, pending a studio deal, with two Valley artists who will also serve as the show’s ambassadors. A teen version of the show will be introduced later this year, and a culinary-focused program is slated to begin production late first quarter. The culinary production, which will be taped before a live audience, will be a sports-themed show filmed in the Valley.

Chambers, who also serves as the CEO of Triumphant Entertainment, brings 15 years’ experience to the company and has worked with big-name talent such as Usher, Destiny’s Child, Michael Jackson, and Christina Aguilera. Jeff Lowy also brings an extensive production expertise to the company having worked as a special event producer with Fortune 500 companies such as Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Sony,  BMW and the NFL’s Corporate Hospitality Village under his company Encore Creative.

Linda White Wolf, producer and host at KAZT in Phoenix, and platinum award-winning record label executive, will join Big Tyme as a principle and serve as marketing director.

The production company will not only shine a spotlight on Arizona talent, but also help stimulate the local economy by opening jobs in the entertainment industry.

About Big Tyme LLC
BigTyme LLC was founded by Cecil Chambers, a film and recording executive and CEO of Triumphant Entertainment, and Jeff Lowy, special event producer and president of Encore Creative. The company will introduce a series of locally produced television productions ranging from music to culinary, spotlighting Arizona talent and boosting the Valley’s entertainment industry. For more information, visit www.TriEn-llc.com.

Is your site the top listed in Google search results? Or is it buried in the fifth “O” of Gooooogle? There are a few good practices you can implement to influence Google’s algorithm and improve where you land in search engine result page (SERP).

This post will concentrate on two key influencers of search results – relevance and authority – and how to impact them – that is if you don’t hire someone that specializes in search engine optimization (SEO). Keep in mind, there are many schools of thought on SEO tactics, but a good, searchable site starts with great content and structure. For a more basic overview refer to “Googlefying Your Business: Understanding Google Basics.”

1. Relevance (on-page SEO) – determines how closely a given Web page matches the search term. This is where keywords, tags, attributes, content and anchor text become important.

• Keywords – determine which keywords are relevant to your industry and which are being searched the most. Refer to your Google Analytics and Webmaster accounts for some insight on the words searchers are using to find you and include them throughout your site.
• Page Title – this appears at the top of the browser window and as the link in search engine results page (SERP). It helps Google determine the content of the page and helps searchers determine whether or not to click on your link. Be sure to use descriptive keywords.
• Page Description – information about the page or a snippet about what the searcher will find on the page. While meta descriptions won’t impact page ranking, good descriptions will make searchers more likely to click on your page.
• URLs – Again this is where rich keywords can be used to impact SEO and your click-through-rate. Also be sure to customize your URLs to match the page. For example, for an “About Us” page, the URL should read http://example.com/AboutUs.
• Images – Google doesn’t read images, so if you do use them, use an “ALT” attribute to include a few words of readable, descriptive text.
• Content – Create useful, relevant information. Sites rich with information will naturally use more keywords and potentially gain more inbound links.

2. Authority (off-page SEO) – This is another element that can influence Google’s algorithm. Some might argue it is the primary influencer. It is a measurement based on the number of inbound links on your page from other pages and their authority – not all inbound links are created equal. How do you build your authority?

• Interact – get out there and post to other blogs. Don’t spam, but offer thoughtful responses to blogs you are already reading and that interest you. Once you post your comment a trackback will be created.
• Blog – the more thought-provoking, useful content you create, the more comments and references you are likely to receive.
• Anchor text – this is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink that usually gives the user a relevant description of the link’s destination. Using relevant keywords as anchor text can help with search results.

There are countless ways to impact SEO, but this should give you a good base to start from. I’m curious what SEO tactics have been used? What has been successful? What hasn’t worked?

For the audio interview click the play button below, and for the video podcast visit Getting Found Online

Are you being found on Google? If not, how can you be sure that you are? After you’ve run your site through Websitegrader.com, created Google Webmaster and Analytics accounts, and submitted your URL and Sitemap to the major search engines, understanding the basics of how Google works can help you improve where you show up in search results.

As part two of this four-part series on “Googlefying Your Business,” this post will cover a brief anatomy of Google. While Google uses an intricate algorithm to determine search ranking, there a few key components to improving your search results:

• Crawling – this is how the Googlebot discovers new and updated pages to be added to the Google index. Google regularly crawls the web – a process that can be enhanced by providing your Sitemap data to the search engine – and detects links on each page of the sites it visits. It adds these links to its list of pages to crawl. More inbound links can equal more crawls. In other words, the more sites you have linking back to or referencing your site the better.
• Indexing – the Googlebot reads every page it crawls and compiles an index of the words and their location on these pages. When a search is conducted Google looks through the billions of pages in its index and delivers the best result based on relevance and authority. This is also where keywords come into play. Key content tags and attributes like Title tags and ALT attributes are all processed. To help ensure the site is indexed you can also manually add it to Google.
• Serving results – when a search is conducted, Google searches its index for matching pages and returns, or serves, the most relevant results. Relevancy is based on hundreds of factors, but a couple important factors are keywords and incoming links from other pages. Simply put, each link to a page on your site from another site can help improve your site’s search-ability. We’ll delve a little deeper into affecting search results in the next blog. In the meantime, visit Google’s Webmaster Guidelines for a few tips.

With these three components, and a basic understanding of how Google works, you can begin to think about how to improve your site and increase your ranking. If you’ve recently gone through this process, what did you find to work the best? Feel free to share any tips or tools.

If you are serious about improving your SEO, I recommend contacting an SEO specialist. For more tips and tricks checkout Chuck Reynold’s blog at rYnoweb. Another good read Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah.

For the audio interview click the play button below, and for the video podcast visit JetPack Radio.

Googlefying Your Business

It’s no secret that Google is the number one search engine, so it should come as no surprise that it can also make or break the traffic on your site. Google is extremely powerful and when a site is properly optimized traffic can reach new heights, resulting in more potential leads.

This post is part one of four part series on “Googlefying Your Business.” First, a few easy steps to get you started on the right foot.

1.    Websitegrader.com – Measure the marketing effectiveness of your site. This free tool by HubSpot will review your on-page SEO, Google Page Rank, indexed pages, traffic rank, inbound links, and blog grade to name a few. Great place to get started.

Websitegrader.com homepage

2.    Google Webmaster Tools – Create an account and verify your site. The tool will allow you to monitor and test your site’s performance.

• Test crawler access
• Submit your Sitemap
• Research top search queries and keywords, links to your site, RSS subscriber stats, internal links
• Detect crawl errors and malware
• Review HTML suggestions

3.    Add your site’s URL to Google – Help Google index your site. While Google adds new sites to its index every time it crawls the Web, this will help accelerate the process.
4.    Submit your Sitemap – This also helps Google index your site faster and more accurately. According to search engine optimization (SEO) guru Chuck Reynolds of rYnoweb, every site should use one.
5.    Add Google Analytics – Analyze traffic data, test and track campaigns, customize reports and charts, and determine how to best target and reach your audience.

What tools have you used to optimize your Web site and bolster its marketing effectiveness? Leave a comment with any suggestions you might have. Stay tuned for more on this topic.

For the audio interview click the play button below, and for the video podcast visit JetPack Radio.

Googlefying You Business

It’s no secret the holidays are the optimum time to market your business. Consumers are prepared to spend (even this year, albeit not as much) and if you capture their attention you could lay the foundation for a long-term relationship or at the very least a sale. Beyond the holiday sales, some companies have figured out interesting ways to garner that attention.

Giving back
Get creative with giving back. Villa La Paws Pet Resort and Spa created an “Operation Home for the Holidays” program in an effort to connect deployed military and their family through real-time video chats, and videotaped holiday greetings.

Another example is Urban Burn Boot Camp, which offered 21 days of unlimited boot camp workouts in exchange for a toy for their toy drive.

Outrageous traditions
Little did AZ88 know when they commissioned a local artist to design a Christmas tree installation in 1992 they would be starting a tradition. Each year locals make it a point to see the new outrageous design, which has included Barbie dolls, electrostatic balls, crushed gas cans, and this year, $1 bills.

AZ88 Tree - courtesy of recklessbrother on Flickr

Coach House - courtesy of chris.shutter on Flickr

Similarly, the Coach House, a small, traditionally laid-back dive bar goes over the top with lights and ostentatious decorations. Loads of tinsel, wrapping paper, lights, metallic ornaments, candy canes – and the list goes on – attracts viewers every year.

Surely you’ve heard of the infamous Neiman Marcus holiday catalogue. These often outrageous gifts garner tons of media exposure. CNNMoney.com, the Wall Street Journal, countless blogs and a few national TV networks had a heyday with this cupcake go-cart. Though the go-cart is beyond the financial means of the vast majority, it gets them looking at other, more affordable merchandise in the catalogue.

Neiman Marcus Cupcake Go-Cart

12 Days of Christmas
Ok so there’s nothing new about promotions, but these have some creativity. Boon Inc., a baby product manufacturer, created an interactive 12 Day Holiday Giveaway that draws people to their Facebook page daily for a chance to win one of their products.

Meanwhile Gary Vaynerchuck of Wine Library offers free shipping and reduced prices on wine during his 12 Days of Xmas promotion. And Buddy Stubbs Harley Davidson, with a similar 12 Days promotion, offers discounts and a customer appreciation holiday party.

The options are endless. Take notice of what others are doing and think about what you can do differently next year, and start preparing now. Let me know what you think. Have you come across any interesting tactics or are you implementing any yourself?

What is the driving force behind your business?

Sure market research, smart marketing and operations, a good product, and hard work are all essential components of success, but I’m talking about the one thing that keeps you doing what you do, day in and day out.

Hopefully it’s passion.

Passion is the one common denominator among thriving entrepreneurs, strong businesses and great leaders. Of course successful businesses get by without it, but those with true passion at the core often grow faster and stronger, and outlast their counterparts. More importantly, people want to interact with impassioned businesses and leaders.

At the Blogworld and New Media Expo in October, I spoke with C.C. Chapman, marketer and creator of the Managing the Gray podcast, the Advance Guard (now Campfire) and Digital Dads, to name a few, spoke about leveraging passion.

Everyone has a passion, but why is it so important in business, social media and life in general? How do you learn to leverage it?

“It is really important, if you are creating content, whether it’s blogs, or podcasts or anything, that you are creating content you are passionate about,” Chapman said. “It might be a hobby, it might be your family, it might be a topic, but whatever it is, if you’re not writing about it from a passionate perspective then why would the readers connect with you?”

He said with so much content being produced it’s imperative to have passion behind your delivery. Consumers naturally gravitate towards the people who are creating content they feel passionate about. Once you’ve tapped into your passion, leveraging it to earn a living takes hard work and persistence.

“Just having a passion isn’t enough. You have to work really hard. Keep improving your skills. Do everything you can do to make your passion better. Something small and keep building on it. When you get to the point where you’re earning a paycheck from what you love doing, it’s the best feeling in the world.”

“Everybody is passionate about something.”

Thank you C.C. Chapman for the great interview and thank you for the podcast about passion that gave me the extra nudge I needed to pursue mine.

Was your business sparked by a passion? If so, I want to hear about it. Please leave a comment.

Also here are a few motivating resources I’ve come across:

• Entrepreneur magazine: Finding your passion
• The Huffington Post: How do I find my passion?
• Book: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
• Book: Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life by Donald Trump (Ok, so I haven’t read this one, but the title alone is motivating.)

For the audio interview click the play button below, and for the video podcast visit JetPack Radio.

CC Chapman Interview