No Shortcuts for True Social Media Success

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Social media has exploded over the past five years, especially for the marketing of businesses. Why? The simple answer is because it’s free. But, while it is free to use, in order to be successful on social media, you have to invest a lot of your own time and effort.

There are opportunities for you to get all of those ‘Likes’ and followers you desire overnight though. Ellen Gipko, at Search Engine Journal, discovered multiple freelance job postings in search of, or offering, ‘Likes’ or followers for a price.

While having more ‘Likes’ than the competition may initially draw people in, they aren’t sticking around if your page is a ghost town. And what good are 500 Twitter followers if they don’t interact with you and create an interesting, entertaining forum?

There seems to be no evidence that having a boat-load of “REAL USA LIKES” on your Facebook page improves your SEO rankings either.

So while you may be jealous that your main competitor’s profile boasts more ‘Likes’ than yours, remember that old saying: C.R.E.A.M. or Content Rules Everything Around Me. If you put in the leg, er finger work, you’ll get the ‘Likes’ and followers and have a reputation to grow on your success.

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Facebook Shifting Focus to Mobile and Search

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference last week that his company “burned two years not working on mobile.” As Carly Page reports, he even went as far as to say “Now we are a mobile company” and “we are going to make a lot more money than on desktop.”

Zuckerberg, however, dispelled rumors that Facebook would move into the hardware game by releasing their own mobile phone.

There could be a search function implemented into Facebook in the near future though. Facebook is currently seeing about a billion search queries per day, which is understandably enough to make even a wealthy man like Zuckerberg take notice.

 

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10 Steps to Great Online Connections

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Marketing your business online is a great way to build and grow your audience. In order to do that effectively, you need to network. Specifically, you need to make connections to bloggers and other content publishers. Sonia Simone at CopyBlogger has 10 steps to do just that, without turning in to someone people dread talking to.

1. Make Something Noteworthy

One great project brings influential people to you. If you’re doing something unique or game-changing, networking will be a snap. That probably sounds difficult, and it is. That’s why we aren’t all millionaires.

2. Be Positive

This isn’t just about the power of positive thinking, but rather about your positive online persona. Share helpful content and make friends through social media.

Being the bad guy could get you noticed, but it doesn’t make people want to do business with you.

3. Have an Opinion

Whatever your area of expertise is, be an expert on it. Stay current and be informed at all times, in order to contribute intelligently to discussions in your area.

4. Twitter

The Twitterverse is a popular spot for bloggers and content creators to congregate. What do you have to lose by attempting to connect with them with your own great content or intelligent questions? They’re a simple ‘@’ away.

5. Change Forums

Find the spot where the majority of your audience spends their time and deepen your Twitter connections there. Whether it’s Facebook, Google+ or another venue, you’ll sound more intelligent and competent than you did in 140 characters or less.

6. To the Real World

Soldify your online connections with real world meetings. Business connections are just like dating: face-to-face > online.

7. No Whining

Remember the step about being positive?  That means you don’t use your social media accounts to complain…about anything.  Try to read your posts from an outsiders point of view and be sure it’s engaging and positive.

8. Don’t be a Teenage Girl

OK, if you are a teenage girl with a successful business, congratulations to you. My point here is don’t talk about people behind their back, or in this case, online. No good can come of it, but plenty of bad can and probably will.

9. Don’t be a Geeky Fan

You will probably encounter some people who are both influential for your business and who you admire. Just be cool about it. Don’t gush over them. Rather, try to find a common ground by being enthusiastic about your shared interest, which also happens to be the area your business operates in.

10. Be Prepared for Twists

It’s great to set goals for yourself, but failure to reach those specific goals doesn’t necessarily constitute failure. Generally, if you are working towards the right goals and doing things the right way, you’ll have success. Just know it might not be the success you originally planned for.


 

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Protect Yourself From Social Media Pitfalls [INFOGRAPHIC]

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“Social engineering” is a term for the hackers patrolling social media sites looking to steal your personal information. Think of the secruity questions sites like banks use in case you forget your password. Now think, are the answers to my security questions available to the public on Facebook or another social media profile?  More often than not, people allow their maiden name, pet’s name or birthday to be shared without ever considering the possible ramifications.

As Andrea Smith reports for Mashable, Trend Micro’s Titanium Internet Security 2013 is one anti-virus software that also protects you against hackers on social media.  Not only does it show you exactly what is being shared with the world on your account, but it also highlights suspicious links and advises you to avoid them.  You didn’t think all those ‘too good to be true’ deals and offers your friends were claiming were completely legitimate, did you?

There are also parental controls to keep children safe online.  No need to friend your kids, as if they’d let you.  Instead, it monitors posts for keywords to ensure that nothing fishy is happening on Junior’s account.

The included infograhpic includes the results of Trend Micro’s Annual Consumer Security survey and highlights the dangers of your social media activity.

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Facebook Messages Get An Update

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Facebook Messages is going through a change in design, to more closely mimic an email interface. They are testing it with limited users at the moment, but this change will roll out to all users over the next few weeks. In a recent post on their blog, Facebook stated, “The new side-by-side layout lets you click your most recent message on the left to see the whole conversation on the right. You can also bring conversations to life with multiple photos and emoticons.”

Read the full article here:
Facebook Messages Testing Recent Design Overhaul

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Google Is Now Showing “Hidden” Facebook Pages

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Originally Facebook was completely cut off from Google. All posts by personal profiles were hidden from the search engine, and you couldn’t do searches inside of Facebook that way. It appears that somehow Google has been able to get access, and some searches for Facebook content will display results with direct links to posts from personal profiles. This may have come from people sharing the links through other crawlable sites (such as Twitter). At any rate, some of these posts are now showing up in the Google SERPs.

Read the full article here:
Google Search Results Show Some Facebook User Posts Leaking Out Of Walled Garden

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Facebook Status Updates For Businesses: 7 Tips

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Facebook has implemented an algorithm called “EdgeRank” which adjusts the weight of importance of any post based on how popular it is. So how can you improve the EdgeRank of your posts on your business accounts on Facebook? Here’s a few ways:

  1. Scheduling – Pay attention to when your followers are most active on Facebook, when they’re most likely to see new posts. Try experimenting with different times of the day. Facebook allows you to schedule posts, so this is easier to do than you might have expected.
  2. Add tags – Pages that you’ve “liked” will be more readily available so that if you want to add a tag it will be easier to find these. To find any sort of connecting page to get a tag, just type in an “@” sign and start typing. You can discover many tags this way – it’ll help promotion.
  3. Add a location – When you do a status update, there’s a “placemark” icon that looks like an inverted teardrop you can click on. This can come in handy to tag events or to put your business location when people have a reason to come visit.
  4. Target specific locations – You can make your post in a specific place (instead of “Public”). Doing this is good if you are needing only to connect with people that are in that location, for example if you are promoting an event in that area.
  5. Target by language – Use the same customization you use for location (instead of “Public”) to target a language. This way you can do a very personal outreach to members of the public who are more comfortable with a different language.
  6. Add pictures/photos – If you put photos in your posts, it will grab attention much more readily and make it a lot more tempting to share or comment on.
  7. Emphasize a post – You can pick out special posts and draw attention by either “highlighting” it (click the start at the top of the post) to make it go across both columns in your timeline or you can pin your update. Pinning it will make it stay on top of all updates so that something of particular importance will stay at the top until you unpin it. To do this, click the pencil icon and choose “Pin to Top”.

Make your Facebook posts stand out by trying any one of these or a combination. See what works best for your page and keep those practices.

Read the original article here:
7 Tips For Crafting Local Business Updates In Facebook

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Search Result Ads In Facebook Now Showing

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Facebook has started testing Cost-per-click Ads in search results where advertisers pay the publishers when a certain ad is clicked. Users are not able to differentiate sponsored results with that of original results until they look for below the listings for the term “sponsored” (in small print). However one can’t search for each and everything under the sun, advertisers can only choose a specific entity within Facebook, like a brand. This is looked upon as a new money making initiative by Facebook.

Read the full article here:
Facebook Tests CPC Based Search Ads – Search Engine Roundtable (blog)

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Your basic Facebook Business Timeline Guide [Infographic]

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Hubspot puts together a great Facebook business page instruction list. This is a basic “How To” guide for anybody looking to quickly understand and learn Facebook Timeline for businesses. It sums up each key feature nicely all while adding directions for some of the more difficult processes. Overall this infographic is knowledgeable and straight to the point all while helping you better understand the features.

Facebook Business Page Timeline Cheat Sheet

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Bing and Facebook – Has Bing Overstepped Google?

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You may have heard about this, but Bing and Facebook have joined forces, and now Bing is going to start displaying results based on Facebook posts.

Read more

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