HAPPY Technologies

Archive for the ‘Facebook’ Category

Mari explains how Facebook Places and Deals work, why you should pay attention to them and how you can use them to grow your local business.

Share your feedback and see the show notes!

Facebook Marketing for Local Businesses

As more customers become smartphone-savvy, local businesses can leverage the opportunities offered by Facebook Places and Facebook Deals to get new customers to come to their location and to reward current customers.  Mari shares what you need to know.

Facebook Places

You’ll learn how to claim your business on Facebook and take advantage of your Facebook Place page so you can make offers through Facebook Deals.

Facebook Deals

Find out about the four different kinds of deals and how your business can use them.

1. Individual deals: For one-time offers
2. Loyalty deals: To reward repeat business
3. Friend deals: To incite up to 8 people to check in at once
4. Charity deals: To get people to donate to a charity

And Mari shares how some brands are using deals to grow their business.

Be sure to listen for Mari’s hot marketing tip to find out how you can also include Twitter to leverage your Facebook marketing with Places and Deals.

Want to learn more about Facebook marketing?

Watch this video from Mike Stelzner (founder of Social Media Examiner).

If you’re not fully leveraging the power of Facebook, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Most businesses still haven’t figured it out.

There’s one easy way to take your Facebook marketing to the next level. By attending the web’s largest online Facebook conference, Facebook Success Summit 2011, you’ll become empowered to use Facebook to gain more exposure, better engage customers and grow your business.

It’s the web’s largest online Facebook marketing conference. Go here for a free sample and to learn more.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Social Media Examiner TV, make sure to tweet about it (use hashtag #SMEtv), share it on Facebook or even embed this episode on your blog.

Are you using these Facebook marketing tips for your local business? If so, what has been your experience? Leave us a comment below.
Cheap Expert SEO Services | HAPPY Hosting

By Michael Stelzner | Social Media Examiner

Are you looking for creative ways to spread the word about your Facebook page?

Your fan page can be one of your organization’s richest sources of interaction, R&D and lead generation. The only problem is making people aware of it!

Unless you have a built-in audience like big-boy brands Coke or Red Bull, you’ll need to educate your fan base on how to find you on Facebook.

To help you out, I’ve put together a list of 20 different ways to promote your Facebook page. Even if you only put a few of these ideas into action, you’ll start seeing growth and increased conversation on your fan page.

Are you ready? Let’s get started.

#1: Put your fan page URL in your email signature

How many emails do you send per day? Now imagine each email you send is a chance for someone new to find out about your awesome fan page!

This URL goes out on every email I send! Talk about free publicity!

#2: Write a blog post about your new fan page

Give your readers five compelling reasons why they should join your fan page. Don’t beg; just give reasons they’ll benefit.

#3: Tag other, well-trafficked fan pages in your updates

Their fans might see your page and you may get some cross-traffic.

#4: Ask your Twitter followers to join your fan page

Give some compelling reasons why your Twitter base should join your Facebook community. If Twitter is the new water cooler, think of your fan page as an invite to come in and chat.

For example, tweet something like, “Wanting more conversation than 140 characters will allow? Join us on Facebook at http://fb.me/awesomefanpage.” A nice and simple ask that will get results.

#5: Invest in Facebook ads

They’re easier than you think and you can spend as little (or as much) as you’d like.

#6: Put a fan page widget on your blog or website

You’d be amazed at how many people simply don’t know about your fan page. Putting it on your website (i.e., your home base) will get it in front of all of your website visitors. My favorite example of this is from Klout. It got me to Like them!

#7: Customize your fan page UR

Vanity URLs are a fantastic way to make your fan page memorable. Check this awesome fan page http://facebook.com/awesomefanpage. Vanity, baby!

#8: Put your fan page URL on your business cards

Combine offline and online by letting the people you meet IRL know about your fan page.

#9: Put a link on your personal Facebook profile

Put this under the “links” section. This is a “soft sell” of sorts, letting your friends passively know about your page. You might have forgotten that people actually check that part of your profile!

#10: Harness the power of your team

Have everyone in your organization put your fan page link on their personal profile.

#11: Ask fans to post a link

Ask all of your current fans to post a link to the fan page on their personal profile. As long as you don’t ask this often, I’ve found that people love to help out. Leverage the power of your existing audience and get results!

For instance, at Monk Development, we simply asked everyone to post a link to our company fan page on the same day. We doubled our average daily Likes because of one simple step.

#12: Put a tag in your YouTube videos

If you make compelling videos as a part of your content marketing strategy, throw in a well-timed fan page link at the end of your YouTube videos.

The Gregory Brothers, the geniuses behind “Auto-tune the News,” are some of the best social marketers around. They always include a link to their fan page (and other social networks) at the end of every video and make it a welcome addition to their content.

#13: Put your fan page URL on your Twitter profile background

Lots of tweeters still use the web-based version and your profile background is a prime piece of web real estate. Cross-advertise and use one social network to promote another!

CenturyLink does a great job of this. If you go to their Twitter page, you can clearly see where their fan page is located. They don’t make you guess, which leads to conversions!

#14: QR codes for your page

I bought the furniture for our house mostly because the store used QR codes to get me to their fan page. Once I got to the fan page, I was welcomed with a custom landing page that welcomed me to the store. It wasn’t elaborate, but it was creative and it worked! They engaged me as a customer both online (QR code leading to fan page) and offline (sales agents in the store), making sure I knew I was welcome. Smart!

#15: Use your fan page

Use the “Tell Your Fans” feature. With the tools built in to the fan page, Facebook allows you to import a contact file or import your contacts from Hotmail, Yahoo, etc. Good for when you’re just starting out and want to tell people you already know.

#16: Add a Like box

Place this in your blog/website sidebar. This is a given. A must. But when you do this,make sure you set the options to include face pile. That way, your Like box will show your readers how many of their friends like the page as well. Genius.

#17: Use targeted keywords in a Google AdWords

Use a keyword-based ad and direct people to your fan page. This is like Facebook ads on steroids. If you’ve never used AdWords before, it’s fairly straightforward.

#18: Redirect your webinar guests to your fan page

If you use GoToWebinar, you can choose to send registrants to a URL of your choosing after they sign up. This is where you let them know of the awesomeness that is your fan page.

#19: Put your fan page URL in your Keynote/PowerPoint slides

When I present, the last slide I show is my contact info, complete with our organization’s fan page. Most people are already on Facebook, so it’s a no-brainer togive them an easy way to connect with you.

#20: Last, and certainly least, invite all of your friends (if you must)

This is at the end for a reason. Pester your friends only as the nuclear option. I’ve given you 19 other ways to let people know about your fan page. Give your friends a break!

Don’t let the list stop there. There are hundreds of different ways to let people know about what you and your online community are up to on Facebook. Why not get creative and start a list of your own?

What are some of the most interesting ways you’ve seen people or businesses promote their fan page? Let us know in the comments box below and share what you’ve found!

 

By Justin Wise | Social Media Examiner

Expert SEO Services – HAPPY Hosting

The 2010 Pew Internet & American Life study found that 58 percent of all consumers with access to the Internet research a company’s product or service online before giving them their patronage. Most of those consumers are not going directly to a company’s primary website, but are rather visiting third party sites like Facebook and Yelp to seek relevant information and reviews about businesses.

In an age where “you are who search engines say you are,” being actively involved across social channels is more important than ever as it gives businesses an opportunity to effectively write their own reputation. A positive Yelp review can do wonders for a business, but on the other hand, a negative one can cause a tremendous amount of damage.

Properly controlling your business’ online presence is not an easy task. This is not something that can be achieved by your part-time intern or you nephew who is in college studying marketing. With so much content inundating the web on a daily basis, strategically managing your business’ online presence takes full time commitment. Based on the potential results effective social media marketing can have on your business’ bottom line, managing your online presence is a matter not to be taken lightly.

 

Cheap Expert SEO Services | HAPPY Hosting

Bruna Fernandes | Business to Community

There will always be obstacles for businesses in the world of social media, but solutions continue to stream in from different platforms and software companies. Most recently? The irksome conundrum of having multiple Facebook pages for your organization that have been created by various social media correspondents over time. Thanks to a recent post by Emily Garman of The Social Animal, it is now easy to consolidate your business’s plethora of Facebook pages into one page.

The first step is to get Facebook to “authenticate” your pages. In layman’s terms this means that Facebook needs to make sure these pages actually belong to you and your business. This involves following a link and a copy/pasting of all the URL‘s of your pages. After one has entered the URL’s on the authentication form, it’s a two-day wait to get them checked out. An email should be sent to notify that the pages have been thoroughly looked over.

Then Follow this link and type in the URL of the main page to be displayed (this is the page that all the other URLs will be merged to). Now enter the URL’s of all pages that need to be merged. Keep in mind that Facebook will only let you enter five secondary URLs at a time, but a simple refresh of the form allows one to enter the remaining URL’s.

The great thing about this merge feature is that all the fans of your other pages will now become fans of your single, main page. The only downside is that any videos or pictures will not transfer over, so be sure to save those and post them to the new page. It should always be an organization’s goal to simplify their media strategy. Having multiple pages for an organization isn’t efficient, and in times like these we could all be a little more economical.

Image credit: simplyzesty.com

 

Cheap Expert SEO Services | HAPPY Hosting

Matt Carroll | Business to Community

Are your Facebook fans frequenting your website? Do you want them to?

Keep reading for five ways to drive traffic from Facebook to your company website.

Thoughts on Facebook

While Facebook has become an increasingly significant communication medium, for many businesses and organizations, their website remains the primary consumer touch point.

So what do you do if you want to get your Facebook audience to engage more on your brand site?

You could of course have everything on your Facebook page point back to your brand site, but you run the risk of alienating those people who want to consume content on Facebook.

Savvy marketers are using traditional and social channels to support one another.

So here are five suggestions for ways to drive traffic back to your brand website without undermining your presence on Facebook.

#1: Take advantage of tabs

There are many different ways to use tabs for the dual purposes of engaging fans in the Facebook channel and providing relevant links back to your website. A good example of this is Honda. When users first land on their page, they’re encouraged to Like the brand but can also easily click to the Honda site for more information about any of their vehicles.

As you create tabs for your page, think about how you can offer users utility on Facebook but without hosting all of your content on your Facebook page, especially when the content already exists on your website. Where appropriate, include links that drive users back to your site.

Remember that you can set any tab as the default landing tab for people who have not previously Liked your page. This way you can shape their initial interaction on your page to support your objectives both on and off of Facebook.

#2: Share articles or blog posts

If your company produces content that is hosted on your own website, be sure to post it to your wall.

Even if there is a high level of overlap between visitors to your website and your Facebook page, don’t assume that people are seeing every new piece of content on your website. Promoting articles and blog posts is an effective strategy because the content will be consumed on your site but can gain additional visibility through sharing, commenting and Liking on Facebook.

Media companies are major practitioners of this because they have produced a wealth of content, but you don’t have to be The New York Times to take advantage of this strategy.

Amnesty International USA does a good job on their page of posting updates from their website and blog. Many of these items have generated significant feedback on the page. At the same time, interested readers are driven back to the source, where they are encouraged to subscribe to a newsletter and donate to the organization.

It’s worth noting that in addition to posting stories to their wall, Amnesty International also features a separate tab dedicated to its blog. Posts are summarized on the tab, but full post content can be found only on the blog site.

#3: Use teaser content

When you post an article (as in the previous example), you provide your fans with a clear picture of the content being shared. The post will contain a headline, photo and intro text. But in this case, I am suggesting you provide only a teaser to pique the user’s interest. Some might find this a bit sneaky, and it’s not something you want to do all the time, but it can be an effective way to entice a click.

Target does a good job of this on their page. As you can see in the example below, they have posed a question that is likely to generate interest and they have included a short URL so it’s not immediately clear where the link will take you. However, you have to be careful when using shortened URLs because some users may be apprehensive. In this case, Target has their own short URL so it can be a trusted source.

#4: Run a contest on your brand site

Many companies are using contests to engage their fans on Facebook, but don’t forget that contests can also be a great tool to cross over to your brand site. Especially when your contest is more than a simple giveaway, you may find it easier to integrate your overall brand identity when the promotion lives outside of the confines of Facebook.

With the right platform you can run the contest on your brand site and still benefit from integration with Facebook and other social channels.

Here is an example from the airline WestJet. They’re strongly promoting the contest on their Facebook page, but all of the interaction takes place on a branded site where they have full control over the user experience.

#5: Special offers on your website

Whether you are an ecommerce site promoting a sale, a publisher providing access to exclusive content or a small business offering a coupon, you can selectively determine how you present offers on your website and through social channels.

It may seem obvious for a shopping site such as Gilt Groupe to promote special offers to its Facebook fans. But what Gilt does really well is balance the content that it shares on its wall so that it isn’t all about their sales. They include conversational wall posts, photos and polls to keep their audience engaged and keep their page from being simply one big advertisement.

Another option to consider is providing your fans on Facebook with access to offers on your website before promoting to other channels. This will encourage people to stay engaged with your brand on Facebook, but ultimately you are able to drive them back to your site.

Managing multiple consumer touch points can certainly be a daunting task. As long as you have a clear sense of which channels best serve specific objectives, you canderive benefit from Facebook marketing without sacrificing the investment you’ve likely made in your website.

What do you think? What other strategies have you used to effectively bridge the gap from Facebook to your brand website? Leave your comments in the box below.

 

Cheap Expert SEO Services | HAPPY Hosting

By Ben Pickering | Social Media Examiner

According to new research completed by Dan Zarrella, almost 1 in 3 posts to the site come from mobile devices.

The research is based on a random sampling of more than 70,000 Facebook posts, large enough to generate a 99 percent confidence interval with a plus or minus .5 percent margin of error. In other words, this is likely to be fairly accurate.

Most surprising from the analysis was that the vast majority of these updates came through m.facebook.com, not through smartphone devices (although iPhone and Android accounted for close to nine percent total).

So how is this changing over time? Unfortunately, we aren’t sure, but I’d be confident in guessing that mobile Facebook usage is continuing to grow rapidly.

BlackBerry, the device that parent company Research In Motion has been taking a lot of slack for lately, was actually the third most popular mobile device.

Given that Facebook employees themselves used to mostly use BlackBerry, it’s not surprising to see such statistics.

Personally, I’m an iPhone user and fairly satisfied with the Facebook mobile experience on it, however it looks like the vast majority of users still use “dumb phones” or simply prefer to use Facebook on their desktops.

Adelaide SEO Sevices | HAPPY Hosting

by Nick O’Neill | All Facebook

A few weeks ago I launched my very first contest on one of my various french websites. My objective was to increase my Facebook fans, Twitter followers, newsletter signups and improve the notoriety of my website. The contest is now over and I’ve had time to analyze the results and I must say I am quite impressed!

It took me quite some time to plan out my contest. I read all the blog posts and articles I could find onbuilding an online contest but what really helped me were the thousands of contest pages which already exist on the web. So many websites are currently doing contests and you notice the size of this industry when looking at specialized websites which index all the contests online. So I analyzed about 20 existing contest webpages in my niche and took all the best ideas plus added some of my own magic to condense them into one ultimate contest page.

If you want to start a Facebook & Twitter contest, you’re in the right place.

Building my contest page, I had a few goals in mind. What was my target? Anybody that speaks French (it’s a French website), that has a Facebook or Twitter account and that’s interested in laptop computers (the niche of my website). I needed to find what on-page elements had to be present in order to create the maximum amount of buzz and convert visitors into participants.

List of on page elements to include on your contest page. They are in order of how my page was built.

1. One great image at the top of your contest page. This will be the graphic identity of your contest so make it nice, include your logo if you have one. I also included a picture of the products they could win.
2. Describe your contest (in your text, include links to various pages on your site. Your contest page will receive backlinks and should have a high PR. By deep-linking to your articles, you’ll send some link juice):
   1. Why you are doing this contest? Your site’s 3rd anniversary? A new product just came out?
   2. What prizes are offered? Include more than one!
   3. How to participate? If there’s more than one way of participating, make sure you insist that they should participate using both methods.
   4. Include buttons for visitors to participate. Make it easy for them! They should need to click and voila, done.
   5. Now you can add more information about your contest. What are the details?
      1. When does it end?
      2. How many winners?
      3. How will you contact the winners and when will the prizes be sent?
   6. Add more details on the various prizes. If it’s a laptop, give the specs.
   7. Include a photo of the first, second and/or third prize. They should want it!
   8. Conclude by thanking your audience for their participation and asking them to send the contest to a friend by email. I had included a button in javascript (sharethis) they just had to hover over to get the email form.
   9. Add the comment form. If you are using WordPress be careful! By default, the comment form goes under all the existing comments. If someone has to scroll down 100′s of comments to leave a comment, he won’t. I had to modify my php wordpress template.
   10. Note: To keep the page loading quickly (speed is important for SEO), I configured WordPress to only show the last 20 comments in order of earliest to oldest. It would have been ridiculously slow if I was showing all 907 comments! WP or the plugin All in One SEO adds canonical urls pointing to the original contest page URL, so multiple pages of comments won’t get separately indexed thus creating duplicate content.

To get a strong buzz around your contest you need to use the power of social media. Luckily for you, it’s also how they should participate. Here’s where the magic happens.

To participate via Facebook

A visitor must click the LIKE button (social plugin) which you have added yourself into the page. This is linked to your Facebook page (you need one!) which receives an additional LIKE (It also posts a link on their wall).

Second, they have to click the Facebook Share button. This posts your contest link onto their Facebook wall. Make sure your page TITLE and the first paragraph of text are well written and attractive because all their friends will now see your link in their activity page. Some say using LIKES and SHARES are the same, they both post something on their wall. It’s up to you to use just LIKE or both.

Finally, I asked visitors to post a comment on the page. This will be useful to get their email address to contact them. They will give you a valid email!

Everybody that participates via Facebook will advertize your contest on their wall for all their friends to see. You’ll get a lot of additional participants, people who would never have found your page otherwise!

To participate via Twitter

A visitor must Tweet your specific message. You need to include a few important things within the 140 characters. ex:

Win a #laptop! Retweet this message & follow @YOURNAME to participate! #YOURHASHTAG http://www.bit.ly/YOURCONTESTURL

Include the prize(s). Explain how they can participate via Twitter. Include your own unique Hash Tag (awesome for statistics). Shortened URL to your contest (Great for stats also!)

It’s pretty easy to create the Twitter link. Start with http://twitter.com/?status= then add your tweet. You mustn’t have any spaces or special characters. Spaces should be replaced by %20. Search for an online tool to convert your tweet if needed.

Secondly, I asked them to follow me via Twitter. Follow @yourtwittername linked to my Twitter account.

Lastly, they needed to leave a comment on the page with the URL to their tweet. You also get their real email addresses this way. Note: Because of the #! inside the Twitter URLs, WordPress is unable to convert into a working URL. The only active part is http://www.twitter.com. I couldn’t find a fix for that.

Everybody that participates via Twitter will have a tweet on their feed for all their followers to see. If you get a few big fish, you’ll get loads of RT and new followers that way.

Tip if using WordPress. You’ll have a lot of various codes inside your post (javascript…). WordPress might modify your code when you switch to VISUAL mode so it’s important to stay in HTML mode. I built my entire post inside notepad and I’d paste the HTML code from there. This saved me a number of times because WordPress had modified my code in some way.

Sources

Visitors found my contest page through these sources:

• On my homepage and in my sidebar I included a big red banner telling people to participate. My site gets 3,000 views per day.
• About 7,000 people signed up to my newsletter in the last six months who are interested in laptops (my niche). I sent them three eBlasts dedicated to the contest over the two-and-a-half weeks. My newsletter CTR is pretty bad at 10%.
• A friend of mine accepted to send my contest eblast through his email signup list (an extra 5000 emails).
• The same friend (thank you!) accepted to add a banner on their homepage (targeted) linking to my contest.
• Twitter users clicking through their followers tweets.
• Facebook users who are friends with someone that participated.
• Google indexed my contest page pretty quickly and I was in fifth place in the SERP for a popular query similar to “Win a laptop”.
• I submitted my contest to ALL the websites specialized in indexing contests.

Top Six Entrance Sources to the contest page (Google Analytics):

The Aweber email lists brought in 63% of the visits! That’s huge! Twitter came in 13th place. I received a lot of traffic from contest specialized websites but generally their audience mass participates to contests. Meaning they will be low engagement and it’ll probably harder to make a buck from them as they will not convert. It’s still nice to get the extra Facebook LIKE or Twitter RT.

Tip: A few days before the end of my contest, I changed the title and first paragraph on my page to add a sense of urgency. Two days left to participate! All the new Facebook Shares now had the updated title and description which prompted users to participate right now. Same with Twitter, I updated my tweeting message to let everyone know it was their last chance to participate. I noticed my old Twitter message was still being tweeted 80% of the time! I suppose these are people which ReTweeted their followers message. That means the buzz on Twitter really worked well!

Results and statistics

My contest lasted two and a half weeks. Here are the statistics from the various tools I used to track the success.

• Google Analytics stats for the specific contest page:
  • Pageviews: 11,709
  • Unique views: 6,264
  • Time on page: 1:21
  • Bounce Rate: 36%
• Bit.ly Stats (mainly Twitter):
  • Clicks: 164
  • Tweets: 97
  • Facebook Shares: 776
  • Facebook Likes: 174
  • Comments: 145
• Blog Comments on WordPress:
  • 907 comments added on the post
• Aweber (I use the lightbox popup email form)
  • I doubled the number of signups from 900 to 1700 for the 2 weeks.
• Facebook
  • My Facebook page went from 300 to 1,600 LIKE so 1,300 new LIKES in 2 and a half weeks!
  • According to sharethis, there’s 1100 SHARES.
• Twitter
  • Increase from 1,700 to 2,100 followers, 400 new followers.
  • Tweeted 334 times (How do I check stats on RT?)
  • How can I get stats on the Hashtag?

Some charts

Pageviews during the contest:

These are the pageviews to the specific contest page recorded by Google Analytics. You clearly see when I sent my 3 newsletters to reach a maximum of 1750 pageviews in one day.

Visits coming from each of the newsletters I sent (3 total – GA Goals). Sent to 11,000 emails using Aweber. To track inside Google Analytics, you can add a tracking code to all your newsletter links using: ?utm_source=aweber&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=YOURCAMPAIGNNAME

The email list isn’t very high quality (CTR 10%) as I do not ask for a double-optin so there’s a lot of garbage emails. I regularly clean the list removing emails which haven’t opened my newsletters. A lot of people recommend to use double-optin but I decided not to use it as my list grows faster. I’d rather just manually clean my list.

Aweber new signups in last 30 days:

I sent the first eBlast to the targeted emails on April 26th. The more visitors landed on my contest page, the more users would see the lightbox email form which converts to 3.8%. It appears for all new visitors after 10 seconds.

New Facebook Likes in last 30 days:

As you see, there are 3 peeks which correspond to the three eBlasts I sent to the email lists. A lot of people decided to wait the last minute to participate so the highest peek was on the last day of the contest. Also, you’d be surprised how many people actually go back to your Facebook page to unlike it after the contest has passed.

How could I have improved my contest?

If my site was a little bigger, I would have prepared a nice video with a pretty lady explaining the rules and asking people to participate. Video marketing is huge and if done properly it would have been a great source of visitors.

I’m not very familiar with tools to analyze the Twitter activities. I’d love to see the Buzz that was generated by Twitter users, number of ReTweets, statistics on my unique Hash Tag… Maybe someone can recommend a few free services?

I believe only one blog spontaneously wrote an article about my contest. An extra backlink and a few additional visitors but that’s not enough. I should have spent some time contacting blog owners in my niche to ask if they could advertize for my contest. In exchange, you could offer the same when that blog launches their own contest.

Maybe next time I’ll try Facebook ads and other PPC campaigns to promote the contest. The cost can rise pretty fast so set a budget and stick to it.

Conclusion

The results of the contest surpassed my expectations.

The three prizes cost me around $1000 and that was my only expense. I monetize my niche using Adsense and eBay and my revenue did rise during the contest but I didn’t make an extra $1000. I still think it was worth it because of the additional 800 targeted newsletter signups, 1300 Facebook Likes and 400 new Twitter followers. I’ll be able to market products and services to these new leads and in the long term, I’ll make a lot more than $1000.

Facebook is a lot more powerful than Twitter mostly because there are just so many more people using it. Twitter users often have a Facebook accounts but the opposite is not always true. With both platforms, I was truly impressed at how easy it was to create a buzz. If they have something to gain from sharing your message, they’ll happily complete the actions you request of them as long as you don’t make it too complicated.

By requesting that users leave a message on the blog post to notify that they have participated, I got to read a lot of great comments from users complimenting my site and the contest initiative. It felt quite nice to read so many positive comments and I read all 907 of them! Some users regularly visit my site but never left a comment before so it was great to get their feedback. This contest has definitely increased the number of loyal readers.

If your site doesn’t have much traffic and if you are lacking access to a newsletter email list, think twice before starting your contest. It does take some time to setup and manage properly. Offer prizes which people will want to win but which will not cost you an arm and a leg. Certain electronic products can be cheap, easy to buy and will get people participating.

This was a great experience which I will definitely do again. I’ll make sure to come back to this great article to remind myself how to do it right. Hopefully some of you will contribute your own tips & tricks.

Adelaide SEO Sevices | HAPPY Hosting

by Arnaud Joakim | SEOMoz

Think LinkedIn is the only place for business? Facebook is growing rapidly and it’s becoming a destination for businesses and business professionals alike to establish a presence. Here are over 30 Facebook applications to help promote, network, communicate, collaborate and accomplish more with your business.

Which apps do you use? If I missed any that should be on this list, please feel free to add them in the comments.

---

Blog Promotion

---

Networked Blogs app – This app shows up on your profile or in your boxes tab and displays your blog and any of the blogs you like to read. It’s a great way to promote yourself and others.

Notes (Default App) – Default App found on the right side of your profile. Add your RSS feed and view your friends’ feeds. When your blog updates it shows the article in your feed.

Social RSS – This one can be in either a box on your profile or even better, its own tab on your profile.

Simplaris BlogCast – Quick and simple way to put the title of your blog post and a link to it in your feed.

---

Business / Self Promotion

---

Define Me – Displays a cloud of words others use to describe your business. This could be your best friend or worst enemy depending on your business and customer service.

GLPrint Business Cards – A flashier business card; gives you options to create your digital business card.

IEndorse – Testimonials are a great way to build the value of your company. This app allows Facebook denizens to endorse your company or find it via the IEndorse business database.

My BusinessBlinkWeb – Create a widget that promotes your business and that others can place on their profiles. This basically turns your friends, clients, or customers into your advertisers.

Professional Profile – Create a tab on your profile for all of your professional contacts, information, and activities. Very useful if you want to separate the two sides of yourself.

Posted Items (Default App) – Share anything you find on the Internet by posting it to your profile. Videos, blogs, or even articles about you or your company or anything else you find interesting.

Testimonials – Like IEndorse it’s a way to gather customer testimonials, but it doesn’t have the business database for searching businesses.

---

Communication

---

CalliFlower – Free conference calls!

Smart Phone – Phone to phone calls and even some conference call features that are all handled from your FB profile.

SmartMessage Center – Smart is right. This tool allows you to send messages to groups or individuals and gives you back one single result that you can share. It’s a great tool for gathering information and then organizing it into a single page instead of wading through pages and pages of replies. You can even get the results exported as a PDF, RSS, or XLS file.

Telephone – Talk, IM, or leave voice messages. I’d say it’s more like a cell phone than a telephone, but you get the idea.

Voice Mail – Voice messaging, voice chat, voice enabled wall posts, and more. Add some sound to you profile or just make it possible to leave voice messages.

---

Networking

---

Introductions – If you’re not good at meeting new people this app will help introduce you.

My LinkedIn Profile – Creates a badge from your LinkedIn profile that gets displayed on your Facebook profile.

SocialFly – Create notes about your online contacts, setup reminders to talk to them, and manage your contacts. Great app for keeping up with business contacts.

Tag Biz Business Network – Puts a tag cloud of descriptive tags on your profile and participating friends’ profiles. These tags link back to the Tag Biz directory where you can easily find similar businesses or people and make your networking time more efficient.

Workin’ It! – Helps you post and send out your work experience to potential employers or clients and gathers recommendations from your friends and co-workers.

Xing – Hooks into your Xing account (like the LinkedIn app does with LinkedIn) and brings the networking features of Xing to Facebook.

---

Collaboration

---

Huddle by WorkSpaces – Store or share documents, make plans, collaborate on projects, and more (also one of  the LinkedIn apps).

My Office – This virtual office will help get everyone on the same page by sharing documents, tasks and more.

Adelaide SEO Sevices | HAPPY Hosting

by Josh Peters | Mashable

Incoming search terms for the article:

• testimonial app facebook

Having an online newsroom for your company is a very important way to provide information about your business for customers, bloggers, and journalists. Through a well put together newsroom, you can control the story in order to make sure news about your company reflects what you want out in the public. Unfortunately, most corporate newsrooms are boring, static, and sometimes days late getting info up. Facebook can help you change that.

Facebook Fan Pages are perfectly suited for use as company newsrooms because they have a low barrier of entry, high visibility, numerous customization and automation options, and can be put together in an afternoon. A Fan Page can be more engaging and informative than most newsrooms out there, or it can act as an information portal that redirects customers to other, more engaging product Fan Pages. This guide will show you how to use a Fan Page to give your company a voice on Facebook by creating an interactive newsroom.

---

Basic Setup

---

A Facebook newsroom is not only a great way to disseminate information about your company from a central hub, but it’s also a good way to test the social media waters. The first step is to set up a Facebook Fan Page:

1. Sign into Facebook
2. Navigate to facebook.com/pages/create.php
3. Fill out all of the info you can and upload your company’s logo
4. Add content and set up the applications you plan to use (the rest of this post will help configure your page)
5. Click Publish this Page at the top of the page (bright red lettering) and your page will be live

Facebook does not automatically make you a fan of your Page just because you created it, so becoming your first fan is something you should remember to do after you create your page. Also make sure that you fill out all the info about your company that Facebook lets you enter. By entering as much information about your company as possible, you are not only providing a better resource for your customers and the press, but also making your newsroom easier to find.

---

Pulling in News

---

By setting up your page to automatically pull in information from already established presences your company has — such as your blog, Twitter account, or press release page — you can put your Facebook newsroom on autopilot and provide a good resource to fans and journalists with little effort. You can use one of the following apps to display your company’s blog posts on the page:

Facebook Notes – This is a default app on your Fan Page. To access it, click on the Notes tab at the top and then using the subscribe option you can enter your company’s RSS feed. Now new posts will show up automatically on your page.

Networked Blogs – This app will let you import your company blog feed, as well as display links to other blogs you like (in the style of blogroll).

Social RSS – If your company has more than one blog, perhaps broken up into categories in the style ofZappos, you can use the Social RSS app to bring in multiple RSS feeds.

Simplaris Blogcast – This is another super simple RSS app that supports multiple blogs.

Selective Twitter Status – You could just import your Twitter feed RSS to any of the apps above, or you could use Selective Twitter Status to only display tweets ending with the #fb hashtag. That way you can control which of your Twitter content appears on your Facebook newsroom Fan Page.

Involver for Pages – Involver is a complete suite of applications for Facebook Fan pages, allowing you to easily pull in RSS feeds, YouTube videos, Twitter streams, and more.

Once your own content is coming into the newsroom you’ll want to tackle what other people are saying about you. The best way to do this is to use Delicious to gather articles about your company. With Delicious you can bookmark and share press mentions of your company, which is smart because it allows you to completely retain control over the information appearing on your newsroom. If you’re already doing this, then it’s as simple as adding an app to start displaying the articles you find.

There are two good applications you can use to sync your Delicious account with your Facebook Fan Page.Delicious box adds a box on your Fan Page that shows your latest Delicious bookmarks. A slightly more sophisticated option is My Delicious, which adds a box that displays your latest Delicious bookmarks, but allows you to show only bookmarks that have certain tags. So instead of showing all your bookmarks as they come through, you can set it to only display the ones you’ve tagged as “PressReleases” or “GoodArticles” or “Testimonials” or any other tags.

---

Pulling in Images, Videos, and Links

---

Once you have text updates set up to flow into your newsroom, you may want to import images and videos. This is an opportunity for your company to post any commercials, videos, pictures, ads, etc. that will help to make your Fan Page a one stop shop for all news and information regarding your company.

When it comes to managing video for your Facebook newsroom you have a couple of options. The first is to just upload videos using the built-in Facebook video app. Facebook even allows you to record a video using your web cam from within the same app, so that you can quickly create a video if you have a quick message you want to get out to your customers. Alternatively, you can host your video content on YouTube and then import it into your Fan Page by using the YouTube Video Box app.

The links section (bottom left of your Fan Page) is a great place for you to place links to any official documents, pages of your website or anything else that you feel is important and isn’t being imported or represented through any of the other methods.

As you become more comfortable with both Facebook and your fans you can allow them to add their own videos, photos, and links to the page. This will help to create fan (aka customer) testimonials so that when other people come looking for information about your company they will see more than just your company’s sanctioned info. They will see real customers saying how much they like your product or company.

Use every section of the Fan Page to your advantage and really help tell the ever evolving story of your company through pictures, links, and words.

---

The Finishing Touches

---

After your Fan Page is published and live on Facebook, start inviting your Facebook friends to become fans and build your numbers. Once you hit 25 fans you are eligible to claim a username for your page. To do this go tofacebook.com/username and click on “Set a username for your Pages.” What this does is make it so that instead of your page having a super long URL that is filled with random numbers and letters it will behttp://www.facebook.com/YourBusinessName.

If you or someone at your company is familiar with writing code for the web and wants to learn some of the nuances of FBML (the Facebook Markup Language), you can add the FBML App to your page and open up a host of new customization options. This is a more advanced option and requires a lot more time and dedication, but is worth it if you have someone able to do it.

Your Facebook newsroom is a one-stop portal for all information flowing out from your company, so you’ll want to make it discoverable by doing things like linking to it from your website, business card, email signature, and other social media profiles. If you follow this guide and keep working at it, you can create a very engaging news and information hub for your company. Keep pumping in good info, and keep it regularly updated, and your Facebook newsroom will likely serve as a great spring board for other opportunities and ways to engage your customers using social media.

Adelaide SEO Sevices | HAPPY Hosting

by Josh Peters | Mashable

Ask anybody why they use Facebook, and most people will respond with reasons like staying in touch with friends, or being able to share pictures. Rarely does one’s professional life ever get mentioned when describing the social network. When it comes to business networking, LinkedIn tends to take all the thunder, and Facebook is generally written off as a place just for fun. Yet, perhaps that’s a mistake.

Facebook, after all, has 250 million active users compared to about 44 million for LinkedIn, and even though the atmosphere is clearly not as focused on business, there are still a ton of opportunities for professional networking that business users would be remiss to pass up. Once you look beyond the obvious social features like sharing pictures and poking friends, there are plenty of ways to tap into the professional community on the world’s largest social network.

In this post we’ll talk about how to setup your Facebook for professional use, how to find others to network with, Facebook features that work for professional networking, and ways to maximize the value from those features.

---

Setting up your Facebook for business networking

---

If you’re like most people, your personal and professional lives have already blended. You share your personal stories and pictures with your work colleagues, you discuss both work and your personal life on your blog and Twitter, and you’ve probably let go of the notion that professional and personal must be kept completely separate.

But even with that blurring of our work and social lives, most of us still want some separation, and I would recommend actually splitting the two on Facebook. Once split, you can continue to reap the social benefits of Facebook with your friends and family while simultaneously connecting with your professional colleagues.

Here’s how to split the two.

– Go to your friends list by clicking on the Friends tab -> All Friends at the top of your Facebook page.

– Click the “Create a New List” button and create one called Professional.

– You can now go through your entire friend list and add all of your professional contacts into this new and separate business list.

– Once you’re done, navigate to your profile privacy settings by clicking on the Settings link in the top right corner of your Facebook; then click on privacy; then click on profile.

On the profile privacy settings page you can begin slicing and dicing your Facebook world into personal and professional segments by restricting access to various parts of your profile using your newly created friend list. For example, if you don’t want your professional friends to see any of your pictures, click on “edit photo album privacy settings.” In the “who can see this” drop down, click on “customize” and then in the “except these people” field type in your newly formed professional friends list. Now only your personal friends will be able to see your pictures.

Though these settings can get fairly complicated because of their granularity, you can control your entire Facebook experience from this area of the site and decide what parts of your personal life you would like your professional friends to be able to see. Bear in mind that there are no best practices here. Meaning, if you don’t want your professional friends to see your wall comments, don’t let them. If you don’t want your professional friends to see your pictures, don’t let them. It’s your world and you can set it up exactly how you like.

---

Using Facebook groups for networking

---

One way to professionally benefit from Facebook’s enormous user base and to grow your professional network is to participate in Facebook Groups. Facebook Groups is a feature that allows Facebook users to connect, discuss and network with each other within the context of a common interest or topic.

---

Finding groups

---

There are groups on Facebook representing just about every topic under the sun. To find the right group for your professional aspiration, think of topics that will motivate you, allow you to connect with others of professional interest, and will allow you to gain insight into your industry/skill set – groups around these topics are the ones where you’ll find professionals you can network with.

Now that you have a direction in mind, enter your keyword into the search box on Facebook, and click on the “Groups” filter to the left of the results. You can also filter down the displayed groups by drilling into a number of sub categories, including business (a good bet for many professional groups), common interest, geography, Internet and technology, and organizations.

There are, of course, other ways to find Facebook Groups. Here are a few techniques that should give you plenty of groups to get started with.

– If you have friends whose professional advancements you respect, go to their profile page and click on their info tab. Towards the bottom of the page, you’ll see links to all of the groups to which they belong.

– On the main page of any Facebook Group, there are links to several other similar or related groups.

– Conduct an Internet search for “popular Facebook Groups” coupled with some of the keywords that interest you. You’ll often uncover blog posts, articles and people tweeting about a variety of groups, some of which may interest you.

Once you find a group that interests you, it’s a good idea to evaluate whether or not it will be a good fit before joining and pouring too much time into it.

---

What to look for in a professional group

---

There are millions of groups on Facebook, so how many should you join and which ones? Joining too many might prove to be unmanageable, so it’s a good idea to only join the ones that you can actually see yourself participating in.

Below is a list of the features you’ll find in each Facebook Group and what to look for in each to determine whether a group is quality enough to be worth joining.

Recent News – This section contains news from group administrators that is either about the group itself or is about a topic that might interest the group. Is it up to date? Is it useful information or just self-promotion?

Member Listings – Lists all group members including their profile photos, location and link to their profile page. This is an easy access way to send a message to a specific group member OR to request them as a friend. You can also use this tool to evaluate the group before joining. Does the group attract people with similar backgrounds and interests to yours? Can you see yourself giving information to and appreciating information from these other members? Do they seem like people you would value interacting with?

Discussion Board – The group’s discussion board allows members to engage in a discussion about topics listed by other group members. Before joining, use the discussion board to measure group activity and member engagement. Are discussions recent? How many are there? Are they interesting and on-topic? You should contribute to an existing discussion or start your own, once you’ve joined.

Wall Posting – This section is usually for member introductions or job postings. This is a great way to introduce yourself and your interest in this group. How recent are the latest postings? If there is any spam, how quickly is it cleaned up?

Groups also often have photos, videos, links sections, and event listings. You should evaluate these areas for recency and quality of information, as well.

---

Group participation

---

Once you’ve joined a group, it’s time to start participating. This is where the real fun begins and the true business value will happen. Below is an example workflow I would recommend following upon joining a group for professional purposes. It’s a great way to show your presence in the group and get some professional networking activity under your belt.

Post an introduction on the Group’s Wall stating your interest in the group. If you’re looking to network, say so. If you’re looking for a job, say so. If you can offer advice, say so. The key here is to make this a simple introduction so the group knows who you are – not an advertisement for yourself or services, which may come across as spam.

Add links to interesting events, pieces of news or blog posts. Anybody who reads them will know you posted them, which will add to your professional branding efforts.

Go to the discussion board and comment on a few topics; don’t be generic. Find a discussion where you could truly add value and help some fellow members with their questions or contribute to some discussions with your thoughts.

Post a topic for discussion. Ask a question or propose a thought-provoking topic of discussion and share your thoughts — the object is to engage your fellow group members. Check back on this discussion often so you can participate and remain an active part of it.

Add friends. Because Facebook was intended to be an online extension of your offline social graph, it is proper etiquette to know somebody before adding them as a friend. While being in the same group might satisfy that requirement for some people, I think it’s a good idea to have some sort of further engagement with a member before requesting them as a friend. Once you’ve engaged someone (such as in a discussion board topic), request them as a friend but include a personal note letting them know you appreciated the interaction. That way, they will have some context for the request and will be more likely to accept. Once you’re friends, make sure to add them to your professional friend list so that you are able to maintain that line between social and professional.

Now that you’ve gone through this workflow for each group you’ve joined, you can now consider yourself to be an active member. So what’s next? Networking! Come back to each group often to post new links and videos, engage in discussions or start your own. You should also invite other existing contacts to join the group as a way to help spread the word and keep the group active. Also remember to befriend those with whom you’ve been active and take your professional relationship to the next level.

Once you have the basics down, professional networking on Facebook is very similar to professional networking in real life. The same rules and etiquette apply. As you build your professional network on Facebook you’ll be able to use those contacts for job hunting, business development, and more.

---

Conclusion

---

Although Facebook was built as a social network and most people treat it as such – there is a tremendous amount of professional value that can be gained there. Once you’re a member of a few groups and have completed the introductory workflow for each one, the professional value of Facebook should be evident and ready to be fully realized. Be creative, have fun, and remember: What you put into things is what you get out of them, so always try to stay active!

If you have any other tips for professional networking on Facebook, please share them in the comments.

Adelaide SEO Sevices | HAPPY Hosting

by Boris Epstein | Mashable