Facebook For Business

Is Facebook Affecting the Economy?

Facebook, Facebook For Business, SEO, Social Media Advisors

Recently on this blog, I talked about how people sometimes misunderstand the nature of certain websites in this post. Facebook and Google are sort of like apples and oranges: there is no way to directly compare them. Now, it seems some people are even willing to blame Facebook for the downturn in the economy. Sounds funny, but read on:

“While Facebook has been taking off and Zuckerberg has been banking billions, however, a lot of other things have been going wrong. So I created a few charts comparing Facebook’s growth to the unemployment rate, the median price of a home, and the S&P 500 stock index. If you’re a conspiracy theorist, you’ll be very, very suspicious.”

In this article (quoted above), the author notices the correlation between unemployment, low real estate prices, and the stock market on one hand, and the extreme success of Facebook on the other. Why, he asks, does Facebook seem to do well whenever the economy gets worse? Is Facebook hurting the economy?

This is one of those cases where my wife, who questions everything, would likely tap this guy on the shoulder and say, in a sort of academic tone, “correlation does not establish causation.” In other words, just because two things happen together all the time, it’s not always easy to tell if one causes the other or the other way around.

For example, when my son was a baby, there was an article in one of our parenting magazines about how children who had night lights in their rooms were more likely to have glasses when they grew up. Oh no, everyone said! We can’t use night lights, because they cause nearsightedness!

A year or two later, the recommendation to go without nightlights was rescinded. Can you guess why? You may have already figured it out: Nightlights are purchased by parents who have trouble seeing in their children’s rooms at night, and parents with poor vision tend to have…? Children who grow up to need glasses (just like their parents do).

So, using that principle, I think it’s far more reasonable to conclude that the relationship between bad economy and Facebook is pretty intuitive. Facebook is not harming the economy; far from it. It’s even created some new jobs and new career paths. The reason that Facebook does killer business when the economy is down is that unemployed people are bored, and bored people love Facebook!

Hence, the economy is influencing Facebook. It’s not rocket science.

ALERT: Google and Facebook are NOT locked in epic death battle!

Facebook, Facebook For Business, Online Consulting, SEO, Social Media Advisors

Sorry for the dramatic headline, but I figured it might not hurt to use the same tactic that I’ve seen others employ with regard to my email inbox.

I guess I’m just a little bit tired of hearing self-proclaimed gurus and experts say things like, “SEO is dead” or “Facebook KO’d Google” or anything similar. The fact that YouTube receives more searches than Google, or Facebook has more traffic than Google, doesn’t mean that Google is harmed by this or going away anytime soon. Google actually owns YouTube, in case you didn’t already know that part.

Yes, I agree that our time online has undergone a shift from old-school surfing and searching to using the internet as a primary source of entertainment and socializing, too. This is revolutionary and terrific, and I use these new tools as much as anyone (and probably a whole lot more, in some cases). That being said, there is not a death knell ringing for traditional SEO efforts.

I welcome any disagreement or proof to the contrary – I have an open mind on this. Here’s a quick question for you: If you want to find a book, or movie times, or an address, or find out about homes in another area of the country, would you visit Facebook? If you’re halfway normal, the answer is no. You would probably start with Google. If you’re heavily involved in social media, you might ask your friends/followers for recommendations for a good local plumber or electrician, but if you’re in a hurry, I bet you would go to Google or another search engine for this.

My point here is to be wary of those who proclaim any prevalent technology to be dead, unless of course they’re talking about digital laser discs or 8-track tapes, neither of which will make a comeback.

If someone is going against the grain, it doesn’t always mean that they’re innovative or ahead of the curve. Sometimes, they are just trying to sell you something (“Buy my new system”, “Listen to me talk”, etc.), or they just plain don’t understand the internet very well. I see way too many emails and pitches about video being the “next big thing”. I’ve been hearing this every year since 2007 or so. I promise that video is important, but it’s not even a trend anymore – it’s just plain here.

I’ve been online since 1994 or 1995, and I’ve seen a lot of changes. I started my first website in 1998 for my business, and I started blogging in 2004. Even though I feel like I understand this stuff pretty well, I don’t consider myself to be a full-blown expert, other than in certain specialized niches. I am not selling anything with this post, either. 🙂

A few thoughts I want to share with you:

Google and Facebook really aren’t competitors at this point, and I don’t see that changing.
Facebook, Twitter and blogging are all important and useful in your marketing mix, but don’t overlook SEO.
YouTube may get a lot of searches, but most people aren’t going there to buy anything. If you manage to get leads from your videos, I bet they found the video…..on Google’s organic search results.

The bottom line is that not everyone is as knowledgeable as he/she may indicate. Sometimes, those who are respected as teachers and consultants for internet marketing and social media are simply those who are speaking loudest, or in the right place at the right time.

There are a bunch of people I respect in social media, people who “walk the talk” and whom I admire. I won’t even attempt to name them here, because I know that I will leave out someone important. Many of them have written books on these subjects and they deserve their accolades. Unfortunately, however, I’ve also seen a growing group of people who are proclaiming their importance and tech knowledge to anyone who will pay attention.

Just some food for thought. Sorry if this one came across is negative. I just really hate to see anyone being led astray.

Thanks for reading!

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/span112/3682335659/

Is This a Preview of The New Facebook Email?

Facebook, Facebook For Business, Online Consulting, Social Media Advisors

So Facebook recently told the world about their latest and greatest feature, new Facebook email. I will be honest, I wasn’t really excited about this new feature. My initial thought is, another email address to keep track of and set up. My second gripe was that this meant another place for spammers to reach me and fill up another inbox. Today, my second complaint of this new email system was already met. See the email to the right that came into my message system. (I don’t even have the new Facebook email yet.)

Here’s a spammed message from someone who “found me in South Carolina” and wants to “expand their business.” Their project doesn’t interfere with what I am currently doing & can make me rich.

Now getting a spammed message once in a while is no big deal. I know that their are people trying to scam and do things the wrong way all the time. My issue though is going to be more with Facebook on this one. Since these messages are being sent from a member to a member always, how will they be filtering all the messages from their 500 million members? Or, will be just be inundated with so many spam & junk email messages on a daily basis that we all just ignore the account & never even look at the content inside it.

Are messages like this what we all have to look forward to with the new Facebook email? What do you think of this new feature that Facebook is launching?

The Best of 2010- Year in Review

Custom WordPress Sites, Facebook, Facebook For Business, How To Blog, Online Consulting, SEO, Social Media Advisors, Social Media Training

As this year comes to an end I always try to reflect back and see what successes and what struggles we faced as a company and reflect as we make our preparations for the upcoming year. One of the places where I start this is by looking at my Google Analytics to see what pages, what posts were the most popular of this year. This post will share what you the visitors of 210 found important and were interested in.

Here are the top 5 most visited posts from this past year:

5. Goo.gl Changes Link Shortening

The first week of October I wrote about Goo.gl releasing a link shortener how this could be used to build QR codes, track the traffic instantly to a specific link & also share that information collaboratively with others to view. One of the links shared via goo.gl has already received over 500 clicks in the last two months from over 8 countries.

4. Using Creative Commons Photos- For FREE!

This past year I was asked over & over how to get safe and legal photos to use in your blogs. I was spending so much time teaching people how to do this that I finally made a short video and wrote a blog post on how to do this. It seems that people really wanted to know how this was done by the amount of traffic the post has received. If you are looking to get good photos for free for your posts, check this one out.

3. Facebook Page of 47,000 Gets Shut Down Over Vanity URL.

The online community really shocked me by the power they posessed when Jonathan Rivera and the Real Estate Referral Group page was shut down. The reason it was shut down was over a trademark violation in the user name he chose for the group. Even though he tried to get Facebook to change the URL he was unsuccessful and the page was then shut down. However after the post we wrote here on 210 and the one over on Tech Savvy Agent and a massive online effort by thousands, the page was reinstated & the URL was changed.

2. Custom WordPress Sites.

This was an actual page of our site and was neck and neck all year long with #1 for the most popular thing on our site. While this is not an actual blog post and is a static page, I was amazed to see the amount of traffic it has received this year. What it shows to me is that people are recognizing the importance of having a powerful website. It also shows me that you have realized the importance of your site having a solid platform like WordPress powering it with their great plugins and blogging components.

1. Google Instant and How it Will Change Your Keywords

In September of this year Google release Google Instant. The day that it was released I wrote a blog post about my thoughts on Google Instant and what I thought it meant towards search engine rankings. This post was by far the most popular one of the year receiving 2 1/2 times the traffic of any other blog post on our site. People understand that while social is important, having a good grasp on SEO is huge. It also showed me that in the upcoming year we need to do classes and posts regarding SEO. I think one of the reasons this post received so much traffic was due to the amount of people sharing the content on both Facebook & Twitter. It was shared on Twitter 66 times and Facebook an additional 41 times.

So as we make our plans for next year, be on the lookout for a post this coming week where we will share about some of the things 210 has in store for next year & also a post regarding what we see as the hottest new things for 2011 that you want to jump on before everyone else.

Thanks to everyone for an amazing 2010 and for Jason & myself we want to wish each and every one of you a Happy Holidays and an amazing new year!

Social Media Engagement vs Sales

Facebook, Facebook For Business, Social Media Advisors

Today I decided to start another mini series here on the 210 blog. It was birthed out of cleaning out my Page Suggestions box on my Facebook Profile. You know what I mean, all those wonderful requests you get to join pages like “My Dog is Cuter than Yours” & “Save the endangered Grass.” In addition to the silly requests, you also get invited daily to join pages of your friends & connections on Facebook. This post talks about ways to get more people converted to liking your page & participating on it.

Before I share what can help increase the number of people joining your Facebook Page, let me first share my requirements to click like and join your page. If your page can accomplish any one of the following things, it stands a good chance I will like it. It has to do one of these:

Engage me on a topic I am interested in.
Give some sort of information that can be helpful to me.
Be involved with a charity/cause topic that interests me.
Be different & unique with what they offer that captures my attention.
Be the page of a good friend who I enjoy helping and am interested in what they might say..

So as I was clearing out the 428 invitations to join pages, I decided it was time to turn it into a blog post as I found several pages (about 419) that didn’t follow any of these rules. Here are 6 ways to convert guests to fans of your Facebook Page.

Engage Me at the Title

The first thing that makes me not want to join a page is the title. If you want to attract more people to your page and get them interested in what is happening there, you need to have a great title. You need to pick this wisely in the beginning because once you set the page title, you can never change it.

We work with a lot of clients in the real estate industry and when they go to set up pages, they normally set the title to something like the one to the right. I hid all this person’s incriminating info to protect their identity. Trust me when I say they are not alone with creating a page title that is simply, their name, Realtor. In this case, they didn’t even use REALTOR® properly. But that is a whole other conversation. When you are trying to get your friends on Facebook and all of their friends to join your Facebook Page, you need to start with an interesting title. The only people that will be joining this page are those that are friends of this agent. As you can see, so far the page only has 1 fan. If you make the page more about an area of interest, a specific topic or idea, people will be more willing to join. When the title sounds like a sales pitch, or business card, people are not as quick to join and participate.

Ask ME Questions

One of the best ways to get interaction & people talking about your Facebook page is to ask questions that people can’t resist answering. For example, one of the pages I created has over 90% of the posts I place just being questions. The interaction level on this page is really good and people love to find out more information not just from me. I can go to this page once every 3-4 days and ask a simple question and the fans of the page give enough answers helping the group find new & interesting things without me having to do all the leg work. This page has grown on it’s own to over 650 fans and I have done hardly anything to accomplish this. I might spend a total of 10 minutes per week on the page.

Too many times do I see Pages turned into just another aspect of broadcasting all the info you have on your website which can be helpful, but nobody wants to just read all about you unless you are an internationally known brand or celebrity.

Include Posts by Others In Your Feed

One of the simplest things you can do on your Facebook Page is change the settings as to what shows up in your feed. The default is always set to just the things said by the page. In a matter of seconds you can change that to show what the page & the fans of it are saying on it. I think this is a major component to whether people feel important on the page. Think about this a moment: What is the best type of advertising for a business? Word of mouth from happy clients! If you hide the fans that are saying great things about your business, you are overlooking a very powerful source of marketing. Change the settings to show both, and then monitor what is said. I will give you a fair warning that you may get spammed by this, which seems to be taking place more often lately.

The one comment I get when I mention changing to this option with a client is “what if someone posts something negative about us?” You do run the risk of something like this happening whether it is true or not. But, this is also a great way to grow your business by how you handle these types of situations. I have seen way too many companies handle it incorrectly, but if you can address the complaints timely and properly, it shows that your business is paying attention & cares what your clients think. Doing this type of customer service can take a business from good to excellent over night.

Respond! Respond!

Replying to what people say on your Facebook page is HUGE. Every time a fan writes something on your wall, you get free advertising as it shows up on their wall activity. So, if that person leaves 5 comments, there are 5 links back to your page promoting it to their friends. When the friends see that, they become curious and will come visit the page too. You also make the fans of the page feel important when they are receiving direct contact from you.

A good friend of mine, Mike Mueller calls this comment tennis. Whenever someone comments on his page, he makes sure to always go back and be the last commenter on anything. This can become a little time consuming if your page starts to take off, but the rewards from doing so can be great. If your page grows so large that you feel you are spending too much time doing this, then add an additional admin to the page to help you monitor/respond to everyone.

Be More Vain

Facebook introduced the use of vanity URL’s several months back and so many still are unaware of them. What’s a vanity URL? Well, it a simpler way to tell people to get to your new page. Instead of trying to tell someone to visit our Facebook Page by visiting: http://www.facebook.com/210consulting?v=app_4949752878&ref=ts I can simply say, go to http://facebook.com/210consulting. Not only does it look nicer on a business card and email signature, but it is also easier to remember. To set up a vanity URL for your page, you need to have at least 25 people who like your page. Once you reach this number you can then visit http://facebook.com/username and claim your URL.

Make sure you spell your new vanity URL properly and that you are NOT violating any trademark laws! You remember what happened to this rather large group of 47,000 fans. Facebook will not change the links once you select them, so take some time to think this through before claiming yours.

Get Custom Landing Pages

What a better way to engage your new fans than with a custom landing tab on your Facebook Business page. The possibilities on these tabs are virtually endless. I’ve seen everything from the implementation of welcome videos to mini versions of a full website built inside a tab. In fact, with the write person creating your tab, you could even do e-commerce right inside your Facebook page. These tabs can be branded to match your site and build your branding inside Facebook. These aren’t always the simplest things to build, the take a pretty good knowledge of HTML & FBML to create. My suggestion is to hire a professional to build one for you. For a few hundred bucks you can have something great built that can pay off for itself in no time if it increases your business. If you need help setting a custom landing tab, contact us, we know the best in the biz at making these.

If you implement these 6 simple steps into your Facebook Page strategies you will begin to see the conversion of people to your page increase greatly. If you have any questions, or need any more assistance with a Facebook Page, feel free to ask us. We would love to assist!

How to be a Social (Media) Butterfly on Facebook

Facebook, Facebook For Business, Social Media Advisors

With the advent of Facebook as a keeping-in-touch tool for (just about) everyone over the past year or two, I am often surprised by how much my friends and acquaintances remember about my status updates and my life in general. It often serves as a conversational shortcut, keeping me from the necessity of catching everyone up on what I’ve been doing, even when I haven’t seen them in months.

Conversely, I think some people expect me to pay attention to each of their updates. Herein lies the challenge. 🙂

“I don’t know if you saw it on Facebook or not, but we’re expecting another baby.”

“You probably already know this from Facebook, but I quit my job.”

And so on.

Well, frankly, I haven’t always done a terrific job of keeping up on news from my friends and family on Facebook in the past, but I found a way to change that, and I wanted to share it with you.

As with most things that are worth doing in the social media world, this is a little bit time-consuming to do on a regular basis, but I can assure you that it’s worth the time if you take a few minutes each day or even weekly to spend on this technique.

Before I give you this tip, I guess I should take a minute to explain that “EdgeRank” is the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine who shows up in your “News Feed”, which is the default page that you see when you first log in to the network. This is dependent on three distinct (and somewhat complex) factors; for a full explanation, you can see a terrific article on Techcrunch here.

So, how can you easily manage to interact with a large number of people while still paying attention to their updates (i.e. taking this out of Facebook’s hands and controlling it yourself)?

First, in the upper left hand corner of the page, click on “Friends”:

After that, click on “Status Updates”:

As you might well imagine, this page will display ALL status updates for ALL of your friends.

This is a great place to scan updates quickly to see what your friends are up to, and to interact with them.

My only caveat about doing rapid-fire responses on this page is to be prepared for the onslaught of replies. You might consider changing your Facebook settings so that you won’t have to deal with emails from that. Just a suggestion. 🙂

I hope this is helpful. I found that it expanded my Facebook horizons quite a bit, rather than depending on their news feed algorithm.

If you have any questions, let me know. Also, we provide coaching on this stuff and we can help you to develop a solid marketing strategy for your business.