Archive for category Facebook

How to Manage Your Business Social Media Account on a Tight Schedule

Posted by Joe Koh in Facebook, Guest Posts, Promoting Your Blog, social media, Social Networks, Twitter on January 4, 2012

Internet Business Marketing – Introduction of Social Media

Social Media is a must use for anyone on the internet. Twitter by itself now has in excess of 100 million people accessing its platform and Facebook has over 750 million active members. YouTube is way ahead of the rest with website hits of up to 1.5 million per day, 100 million video streams per day and 63 million visitors each month. The best thing about all of this is that all these sites are free to use and just imagine how you could get a nice slice out of that pie of people. Imagine how you get your business noticed on any or all of these. You could really get a boost in your search engine ranking while using these and other websites and tools for giving your business more exposure.

But you say you are always busy and don’t have the time to use social media no matter how successful it is. Let me help you out with that. What you need to do is to make a schedule for Social Media. The three steps in this process are:

Create your presence by creating an account on the website or websites you want to make use of.
Next you will need to get used to the idea of providing information on a daily or weekly basis to any of these websites you choose, ensuring that your information is search engine optimized.
Develop websites ensuring you’re linking and back linking is being done successfully.

Looks easy right? – Wrong it can be a bit daunting and if you are working alone it can take hours to get just one website done up. But let me give you some more advice to help you along.

Internet Business Marketing with Social Media - Focus on the Essentials

Devote a set amount of time each day to perform your social media tasks. Say an hour or two. Update one website at a time ensuring you have completed your work for one before you get to the next one. It is a bit hard to do all of this yourself especially if you want to use multiple websites. What you can do is get some of your employees to help you out if you have employees. If not you can get any teenagers in your household to help out if you are lucky enough to have them. If you have your own business you can create a position for someone who will specifically handle your social media management each and every day.

If none of the above are options for you, then you could hire a service that offers social media management along with internet marketing. They will take everything off your hands from setting up the website to generating and disseminating the information that you will use for posting to the websites. There are experts at what they do and they know just how to develop your social media presence to get you the best results. You can find these services at affordable prices giving your enough discounts for contracts that run over a year so it can be affordable. There are those that don’t require you to sign a contract which allows you to stay with them as long as you need.

It doesn’t really matter how you do it but that you do it. Social media marketing can open a lot of doors for your internet business. If you are not making use of this tool then you probably aren’t seeing your full potential as a business.

Internet Business Marketing with Social Media

If you find that you cannot find the time to do it yourself then hire someone to do it for you. In no time you will be able to break even making more than you are paying for getting it done while creating a source of income for somebody else. It will all pay off in the long run just be patient and you will see the results you need to be successful.

<a href=”http://askjoekoh.com/askInternetMarketing”>http://askjoekoh.com/askInternetMarketing</a>

10 Comments

3 Successful SEO Marketing Strategies

Posted by jtoney in Blogging, Facebook, Guest Posts, Link Building, Marketing, SEO on December 2, 2011

It seems today there are a million ways to increase your site exposure. New SEO strategies are popping up weekly, some more effective than others. As websites grow, more people are veering away from basic SEO marketing and expanding alternative techniques. This sparks the creation of new strategies that when utilized with the basics, can increase your page rank and overall traffic. Therefore, we should take a look at these growing trends and see if your site can benefit from them.

Coupon Marketing:

With the current economic state, coupon shopping has become widely used. Many shoppers refuse to pay retail and spend hours clipping, printing, and collecting coupons. This trend has increased the use of coupon marketing among SEO professionals. However, coupon marketing is about more than just dangling a deal and hoping someone bites. By registering coupons with known coupon distributors such as couponchief.com and retailmenot.com, you are able to reach a customer base that was once foreign. The bargain shoppers receive these coupons through emails as well as Google search results. Since these sites are instantly indexed as new coupons are created, there is little wait for your marketing to take effect.

Along with a wider range of prospective traffic, these coupon sites build backlinks that are solid. With your site address posted to their site, your page rank increases. Since these sites have grown in popularity in the last 3 years, their rank is more than enough to be beneficial.

Credit Card Marketing:

Many sites seem to stay away from credit card marketing due to the bad wrap it has gotten from spammers. However, by choosing the proper credit card affiliates you will be able to increase your traffic with credible backlinks. Larger banking institutions allow for affiliate programs which allow you to offer benefits and rewards people may not get otherwise.

With the current rise in bank fees, credit processing fees, and ATM charges, many consumers are looking for an alternative to their current bank. This is a great time to research credible credit card merchants and find one that you can utilize for SEO marketing and increasing your traffic.

Social Networking:

Using the trend of social networking has become a highly respectful and successful means of SEO. By creating discounts on Facebook, tweeting your latest news on Twitter, and getting LinkedIn, you are exposing your site the possibility of a massive traffic increase. Combined with other SEO strategies you can create a page following beyond the occasional browser.

Many are utilizing coupon marketing with Facebook since their promotion of Facebook Coupons. For those selling items, this is a great way to increase sales. However, it is also a great tool for those who monetized their blogs, are offering discounted affiliate deals, and are looking for a way to increase traffic to their sites. By creating fan-based coupons, discount codes, and Facebook fan-only deals, you can require members to “Like” your page before seeing the deal.

Creating a new tab in Facebook

The most popular way of creating these fan-based deals is by creating a new tab in Facebook that requires members to “Like” their page. Here are instructions on how to create that:

1. Log into your Facebook page and type “Static HTML: Iframe Tabs” in the search bar. Click the first search result in the dropdown list.
2. Next click the “Add Static HTML to a Page” button and select the page from the drop down list. This will take you to your Facebook page.
3. On your page click on “Edit Page”, navigate to the “Apps” section and click on “Edit Settings” for the “Static HTML: IFrame Tabs” application. You will get a pop-up for you to enter the custom tab name. Enter the name you want visible on your tab and click “Save” then click “Okay”
4. Next the “Static HTML” editor will load and you will need to click the “Enable FBML” box if it isn’t already selected.
5. In the editors “Enter your Content Here” box you will need to type or paste the following code:

<fb:visible-to-connection>
 <img src=”YOUR  COUPON IMAGE  URL”>
 <fb:else>
 <img src=”URL TO AN IMAGE TELLING THEM TO LIKE PAGE FIRST”>
 <fb:else>
 <fb:visible-to-connection>

6. The first URL you replace will be to your coupon image. The second URL will be to another image you create advising them to “Like” you page first. Once they “Like” your page, the coupon will be visible under that tab. Each time you want to change your coupon you will need to change the first image URL with your new coupon image. After entering the URL’s click “Save and View Tab”. The page will load showing you what your new fans will see when they “Like” your page.

For those who just want to increase traffic without offering coupons or discounts, this technique can be used for anything you want you entice members with. It could be as simple as a new and interesting post on your blog where you use the title to entice them to click “Like”, or it can be a product review for something new. Whatever you want to use to convince them that it is worth it to click “Like” is up to you.

In the ever changing world of SEO, many are starting trends that will last long into the future. Following the current economic state, new products, and the trends of blog readers will increase your options for SEO marketing and allow a more versatile strategy. Take a look into your current SEO marketing plan and see if you have room for more.

facebook, marketing, SEO, strategies

13 Comments

The Future of Computing: Cloudy with a chance of showers

Posted by ThomasStone in Facebook, Technology on July 11, 2011

“Of more than 2,000 CIOs surveyed by Gartner recently, 43% of them predicted that the majority of their IT infrastructure will run on cloud technologies within the next four years.” –From Forbes Magazine, May 23rd.

Because of its high levels of convenience and efficiency, cloud computing is poised to be the major form of data storage in the future. Facebook, one of the world’ largest data clouds, saw its brand value grow by 246% last year, according to Brand Z’s 2010 report.

That year Facebook overtook Google as the most-viewed site on the web. Google also saw competition from Apple, which de-throned Google as the most-valued brand at an estimated $153 billion.

The 3 companies poised to dominate the web in the future are, not coincidentally, the 3 companies most-associated with cloud computing: Google, Apple, and Facebook.

Facebook is already a giant cloud: a nebulous site where people share links, photos and apps with each other and no one really owns any of that data. Apple is looking to improve the power and versatility of their mobile devices even more by off-loading data storage for future iPads completely onto clouds. Google was a pioneering company in developing offsite data storage, and now they have developed their own operating system (“Google Chrome OS”), with the intention of releasing this system on mobile devices that store all their data on Google’s cloud. It is obvious that cloud computing is going to revolutionize the internet, and it is coming, whether we are ready or not.
The major concern that many consumers are raising, though, is whether cloud computing is secure enough. Moving away from personal storage and towards communal storage scares many users, since it opens up the data to possible access by many more people, but cloud computing also has some security benefits.

The major areas of concern in data storage are: Privacy (how public the data is), Security (how likely the data is to be lost or accessed by an unauthorized user), Availability (how reliably accessible the data is for users), and Compliance (how data access is restricted to meet the standards of organizations like the PCI).

Both companies that use cloud computing and those that don’t have failed one one or more of these security issues, which is not surprising, since 90% of companies claim they have been hacked in the past 12 months. Security breaches are, unfortunately, a ubiquitous part of using the internet today, cloud computing or no.

When Sony Online Entertainment was hacked in April, I was one of the 77 million users exposed to the attack. While Sony first claimed that the breach was small and did not compromise any personal or credit information, later they discovered that the breach was much larger and did include the personal information of several users. I recently heard from my bank that my credit card may have been compromised, and the most likely reason in my mind is the recent attack on SOE. Luckily I received a replacement card and I did not have anyone making unauthorized purchases on my dime.
SEO tried to “make good” the month-long downtime and breach of secure information with the give-away of in-game goodies to all affected players. The gift packages ranged from limited edition character outfits, valued at about $5, to 1-month of free subscription, worth about $20. The package was not viewed as sufficient by many users, and 3 have now filed a lawsuit against SEO, claiming that Sony spent too much of their security budget to protect the servers containing their intellectual property while spending next-to-nothing to secure the servers containing customer’s sensitive personal data. Sony CEO Howard Stringer indirectly admitted this when he claimed that the cyber-attack was probably connected to SEO’s attempts to protect its intellectual property from people trying to modify it.

With the SEO attacks, it seemed for a few days that the attack had only compromised in-game player information and not more-sensitive information like credit card numbers, since the latter is stored on a separate 3rd-party server. It seemed for a moment that cloud computing had actually saved user’s credit information, but unfortunately that turned out not to be the case.
A leading name in cloud storage, Dropbox, experienced a cyber-attack on June 18th, where a major snafu in the authentication system allowed people to log in to any user’s account by simply copying the username into the password field. Analysis of the bug showed that for the 4-hour period that this lapse was happening, only one person seemed to exploit the weakness, and that this person accessed hundreds of accounts. The motives of the person were unknown, though apparently they did not download information from most of these files. Dropbox CEO Drew Houston responded to the incident, apologizing, offering credit counseling, and offering to talk personally with the affected users. The attitude of Dropbox users seemed to be: “no problem, these things happen.”

The relative-clemency that Dropbox users have shown in response to this incident and the relative-wrath that SOE users have shown in response to that attack reflects a difference in the paradigms of the users and CEOs. Users of SEO games didn’t seem to understand that their personal information was going into “the cloud,” and hence they felt more betrayed when it was compromised. Meanwhile SOE seemed astonished by the breach and responded as such, enlisting the help of authorities and seeking out the cyber-criminal. Dropbox users seemed to understand that their data was publicly-stored and at higher risk of unauthorized access, and they seemed unsurprised that their information was compromised. Their nonplussed response was probably also due to Dropbox’s CEO’s timely and frank missive, where he accepted responsibility and then tried to move on from there.
Cloud computing or no, if you post share information in any form on the internet, it is likely to be hacked at some point or another. Users need to understand that cyber-crime is a part of the internet, and probably always will be. Being smart on the user end, though, can prevent you from a lot of undue hassle when your information inevitably gets hacked. Users should always have a strong password that cannot be easily cracked.

Passwords and other sensitive information should be written down or stored on external drives, never stored in the cloud. Sensitive data stored on sites like Dropbox should be encrypted to protect it from unauthorized access. Perhaps most importantly, users that buy things online and store their credit card information on a site should understand the inherent risks. Once credit card information is stored online, the user should start keeping a keen eye on that account and expecting identity theft.

Cloud computing hasn’t made the web any less-secure, but it has made security issues all the more salient. Perhaps this new security-awareness will actually drive users and companies to be more-responsible in looking after their own digital security.

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

cloud, dropbox, facebook

11 Comments

The Best (and worst) Social Networks for Bloggers

Posted by Daniel Snyder in Blogging, Facebook, social media, Social Networks, Twitter on October 2, 2010

Soon after I started blogging I realized that in order to successfully promote my blog I was going to have to start being active and participating in some social networks. The question was (and sometimes still is) which ones? I have accounts on literally dozens of social networks but I am only active on a handful of them. It’s important to realize as a blogger you can’t make it alone! Search out a Blogger Community, and start spending time building your network. Successful bloggers all have one thing in common: experience. There is no overnight blogging sensations, they have all spent a lot of time and energy getting themselves to that place of success. These successful bloggers no longer need to self-promote since their readers do it for them. Eventually your readers also will submit your content to social networks and tweet your posts for you. Right now however reality for the rest of us is that the road to success is dependent upon the relationships we develop within social networks.

Blogging is a hard road, and it would sure be boring if I was going at it alone! Thankfully I have developed a great network on a number of excellent online social communities, some which directly serve bloggers and others which are more generalized. I recently took advantage of the network I’ve developed and asked some blogging friends whom I respect their thoughts on the Best and Worst Social Networks for Bloggers. There are a lot of networks to choose from, and there is no way I could discuss them all in one post (can you feel a series coming on?) I haven’t and probably never will try out every social network that exists, and new ones are springing up all the time so let’s find out what the general thought is towards the Best and Worst Social networks for bloggers.

The Best Social Networks for Bloggers

Twitter

Hesham at famousbloggers.net recently wrote an article where he says “Twitter became the most enjoyable social media platform for me, it’s the best place I can share my articles so far with less effort, it’s the most active work station for ideas on the internet planet, and the simplest and most fast way of communication on earth as we all know.” Four out of the Five bloggers I spoke with about this question all said Twitter is by far the best social network for a blogger. Here are a few of the reasons why. Jillian from the 5kmission says “It’s a real-time search engine, if you write about trendy topics. Hashtags put you in front of new groups of people constantly, unlike most social networks where you have to already be “friends” with someone to see what they’re saying. It’s a good way to spread published content, conduct quick surveys, ask for help, and lots of other useful things.” John Paul from JohnPaulAguiar.com agrees “I think once you learn some basics to using Twitter, it can be the best social network for bloggers to get free targeted traffic back to their blogs..Period!” Michele the newbizblogger declares “I actually get more visits from Twitter than any other SN tool I use.“

I have to agree, Twitter is my favorite platform for actually engaging and interacting with people. It makes it simple to share your posts and links, and you can expand your connections in a scope that is virtually unlimited. Twitter also drives more traffic to my blog than any other referral source. If you’re doing well on twitter than you can also use it to monetize, Dragon Blogger and I are both fans of Sponsored Tweets and we are using it successfully to generate an income with twitter, find out more about Sponsored Tweets here.

Blog Engage

Blog Engage is also one of my favorites, and probably right now the one I use second most to twitter. It got mentioned as the favorite network for bloggers by Kiesha from weblogbetter.com who tells us “I like it because it allows bloggers, whether they be beginners or experts, to share their posts in a friendly environment. It’s a great place to discover new bloggers and make new friends. Whenever I’m looking for great content to inspire my writing, I just log in and take a look at the upcoming posts. It also allows you gauge how well you’re writing. If a post receives a lot of votes, that let’s you know how well your doing. There’s also a forum and a blog that members can submit guest posts for. Overall, it’s a great place to gain some good exposure for your blog.“

I agree here as well. Blog Engage is a super friendly network, you can meet people, and engage with twitter friends outside of twitter. Right now Blog Engage is running a blogging contest with a prize of $1000 USD! So well worth spending some time there if you are a blogger looking to expand your sphere of influence. One great thing about the Blog Engage members is that they are all bloggers who realize the importance of supporting other blogs, they comment, retweet and participate in the community more than any other network I’m familiar with. I have previously written a post about the Blog Engage community and you can read my thoughts here.

Facebook

The final network I’ll mention here today that can be considered one of the best social networks for bloggers if of course, facebook. John Aguiar the author of TwitterDummy also acknowledges facebook as being a valuable network for bloggers, “even though I think FB takes more time and energy to get real results for bloggers. But if you have a fan page for your blog and work it each day bringing new readers daily, then I think bloggers can do well.”

I personally have not had much success with facebook, but as John mentions it takes time and energy and I simply haven’t given it the investment. I primarily keep facebook as my ‘private’ place on the net for direct friends and family. I haven’t expanded my facebook network beyond this, and I don’t really put any effort into my fan page other than it being a glorified RSS feed for my tweets.

The Worst Social Networks for Bloggers

It’s hard to classify a social network as being flat out bad for bloggers. The general response among the bloggers I asked can be summed up in the words of Kiesha Easley from WeBlogBetter (Blog tips and tricks to help you build a better blog.) who tells us “…there are potential benefits in just about every popular social networking site. It’s what you make it. You get what you put into it and I think you can do well on any site if you put your heart into it and actually make it a point to be sociable.”

Most people I asked didn’t want to single out a network and declare it as ‘the worst’. And I understand that, after all we do have to be positive. And every network offers something different. But one network does stand out as perhaps being the worst for bloggers. MySpace. MySpace is a mess, saturated with multi level marketers most bloggers would be wasting their time there.

Reddit I think also deserves a mention for being one of the worst networks for bloggers. Reddit has a lot of good things going for it as a news aggregator, but the community is somewhat elitist and snobbish, they can’t stand people who want to promote their blogs, and you’ll find yourself banned pretty quickly if you submit links to your own blog. I’ve had several accounts, and have even attempted to participate in the community – but it never felt like a friendly place.

Other Valuable Networks for Bloggers

As I mentioned above there are a lot of other networks, which I may dedicate another post to. Here are three worth mentioning and that you should take time to look at Bloggers Base, Bloggers, and BloggerLuv. The bloggers that participated in this article are all excellent inspirations, great writers, and awesome people. I hope you take a moment to take a look at their blogs. Almost every one of the bloggers I talked with acknowledged that it’s not so much about the best and worst but rather as Dragon Blogger tells us “I think the social media network you have the most followers and friends who interact with you on is the most important for your blog. For myself that would be Twitter with over 6,000 friends, but for some this could be Plurk, Friendfeed, Facebook, Google Buzz…etc“

What’s your opinion, did we hit the mark or miss it by far? What are your favorite networks for bloggers? What do you think is the worst. Let us know with a comment!

blog engage, blogger community, blogger social network, social media, social media bloggers, social networks for bloggers

83 Comments

Coca Cola takes facebook from virtual to reality seamlessly

Posted by Daniel Snyder in Facebook, social media on August 22, 2010

Technology, it’s an amazing thing. But when you combine incredible technology with amazing creativity and the bold world of social media the possibilities are limitless. With the boom of social networking over the past few years it is no surprise that the push is on to come up with creative ways of linking the social world online with the real world. Coca Cola Village in Israel partnered with facebook to seamlessly allow the teens enjoying themselves at Coca Cola Village to share their experience online. The now famous facebook “like” button became a real life reality as vacationing teenagers were given RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) bracelets which were encoded with their facebook user name and password. When the wristband was ‘swiped’ over top of the real life thumbs up box their facebook status was instantly updated with what they were doing at the village. In addition if photographed by one of the official village photographers, the RFID bracelet would tag everyone in the photo and upload it to facebook automatically.

The video below tells the story. But what’s accomplished by this? Ultimately this is Coke partnering with a company called Promarket and Publicis E Dologic to utilize social networking successfully and to the utmost extreme. The Coca Cola village holds 650 teens at one time, and in each cycle facebook was seeing about 35,000 posts! That means every teen was posting Coca Cola branded content just under 54 times on their facebook profile, to be seen and liked by all their friends and family.

The CEO of Edologic, Enon Landenberg, is quoted as saying, “We are continuously looking for ways to connect the physical world with the virtual world. The idea behind “The Like machine” is an ultimate solution. It is an innovative and pioneering method, and through it the possibility to involve your Facebook friends in events and experiences that are happening to you around the world becomes a very true reality.”

What are your thoughts? For me, it makes me wonder where this is headed next. I can see this technology (which isn’t too complex at all) being integrated into a lot of other aspects of our daily lives. Do you think that’s a good idea? Or, perhaps like the few people I discussed this with, that idea sounds scary. Share your thoughts!