Most people don’t like change. And these changes caused quite an uproar amongst users, even to the point that users were fighting with each other about whether or not the changes were good. I must admit, I joined the debate.

Tickers, Timelines and Top Stories

Personally, I really like all the changes, except one…top stories. There are some pros and cons to this one.

Basically, Facebook picks which status updates/posts should be your “top stories” based on the relationship, number of people who like it, etc. and puts those at the top in the news feed. Most would argue they would rather see ALL of their friend’s updates, as well as updates from the pages they’ve liked, chronologically. That’s certainly how I feel.

What does this do to marketers who have worked so hard to grow their audiences and cultivate communities on their Facebook pages? The jury is still out, but I see some issues.

Pros and Cons

The bad thing: This means the likelihood of their audience seeing their posts will go down. In fact, I can see in the analytics where site traffic from Facebook has already started to decrease.

The good thing: Marketers who count on their business pages for website traffic and customer interaction will now have to work much harder to generate relevant, interesting, sharable content. Better content means more people will “like” it and be more likely to share that content with their friends.

Where Should We Focus?

The biggest takeaway for me in regards to the explosion of Google+ and the significant changes/updates to Facebook is the fact that regardless of social media evolution, everything always comes back to your website. Social media will continue to change and develop, as it should. Your website should also  improve on a regular basis, but IT should be your top priority…not mastering social media marketing. Your website is Base Camp. It’s a platform that YOU can control. The visitors generated from Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. should land on a website that doesn’t look like its straight out of 2004. Basically, it’s very important that your website doesn’t suck.

Make sure your website is at the top of its game. It needs to be visually appealing, have modern architecture, be search engine friendly (do the keyword research) and social media friendly, incorporating all the latest widgets and buttons that make for easy sharing. Your website should have a blog integrated within the site, not separate. It should also have analytics installed and you should be posting on the blog regularly, if not often.

Roll With The Changes

Don’t freak out when Facebook makes changes. This wasn’t the first and won’t be the last time they do. Also, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Get active on Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, YouTube, etc. and get familiar with Google+. But, most importantly…have a website that stands out amongst your competitors. Make “Base Camp” your top priority and then put the icing on the cake with an awesome social marketing campaign.

Feel free to contact me with any questions or to learn more.

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Well, here we are in June of 2011 and location-based social networks and QR Codes are all the rage. Everyone’s talking about Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and now, Facebook Places. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn are all considered mainstream and imperative in terms of marketing.

However, it is obvious that many, if not most, businesses have yet to venture into the simplest and arguably the most effective type of social marketing…blogging.

Blogging is nothing new. Blogs date back to 1997, took off in 1999 and were considered mainstream by 2004.

It’s 2011 and your company hasn’t started blogging. Why is that? Are you afraid of what someone might post on your blog? Here’s the deal…people are going to talk about your company, whether it’s on your blog or in the grocery store. Perhaps you don’t see the importance and you’re not completely sold on blogging for business.

A recent study by eMarketer shows a strong increase in companies entering the blogosphere. Their study predicts that 43% of companies will be blogging by 2012.

Here’s a short list of 5 reasons why your company should be actively blogging:

1 - Blogging gives you the opportunity to establish yourself as the expert in your industry or field. Are you a local fitness center or gym? Your blog should contain posts and information on why someone should join your fitness center, as opposed to your competition. You never want to downgrade your competition on your blog. Rather, focus on what your fitness center has to offer and emphasize all the positive attributes of your facility and staff.

2 – Blogging gives your current and potential customers a platform to ask questions and communicate with your business. This adds credibility and can increase customer loyalty. Monitoring your blog closely, answering questions and replying to comments will promote trust and transparency.

3 – Search engines love fresh content. If you don’t add new content to your website on a regular basis the search engines have nothing new to crawl and distribute. Integrating a blog into your site makes it easy to post fresh information on a regular basis for the search engines to find.

4 – A blog is another chance to issue a press release, announce an event, launch a new product or make an important announcement. Blogging is marketing. What are you marketing? Your business!

5 – Your blog serves as what I call your “content distribution source.” With every blog post you publish, you can take that article, create profiles on dozens of other social platforms and post. Not only will this generate more traffic to your blog and website, but you’re also creating links, which will aid in search engine optimization.

Maximizing your blogging efforts will take time, but it’s worth it. Post often, include important keywords for your business/industry and engage with your audience. In my opinion, this should be the first step in creating a powerful social media presence and personality for your company or business.

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They’re trying so hard to master Facebook and Twitter. There are so many theories and nuances about both. The smaller, local business is more likely to have issues unless they hire a trusted consultant or employ someone with solid experience and a good track record.

Here’s my beef…

What about your websites, people? Do you even care what they look like or how well they work? How about those Google search results? Are you ranking at all?

It’s 2011 and I’m still seeing websites in the market that scream 2002. And slapped somewhere prominently is a great big, blue “F” with a caption that reads “Join Us on Facebook!” Join us? Do I join a page? Do you still have a scrolling marquee on your home page? There’s your sign.

Is Facebook going to be around forever? Most would say nothing lasts forever. So, unless you’re banking your entire web presence on Facebook  (this is a mistake, by the way), you’d be much better off giving your website an overhaul and making it search engine and social marketing friendly.

Make sure your website is clean, visually appealing, easy to navigate and has a blog integrated into the main part of the site…not separated from it with a different root URL, etc. Get it ready for the search engines with solid metadata (yes, it’s still important…even ALT text), proper URL structure, heading tags and a domain name that’s registered for more than one year.

We’re scratching the surface here in this post. This is the Reader’s Digest version.

So, take a break from the social media kegstands and get your Base Camp set up on a firm foundation. Then you can get back to the party and you’ll most likely get better results from whatever it is you’re drinking.

Feel free to contact me with any questions.

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Inbound links, or backlinks, are essential for helping your website rank higher in the search engines. The more QUALITY links you have to your website, the greater the chances are that you will rank higher than your competitors.

By now you should be posting regularly on a blog. Regularly meaning at least once a week. The post should be original content (your content) and you should be taking that post and publishing it on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and any other social network or bookmarking sites you use.

However, there are many other free sites that will help create more inbound links that you may, or may not know about. Try these on for size…

1 – Pitch Engine
2 – Free Press Release
3 – Ezine Articles
4 – Articlesbase
5 – Free Article Submission
6 – Geckoe
7 – E-Articles
8 – WebProNews
9 – Buzzle
10 – GoArticles

How popular is your website? What things do you need to implement to increase your search engine rankings?

To find out more, contact us for a free website analysis.

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Here are a few quick tips that will help you create those links and improve your search engine rankings.

1 – Write and submit articles. You know your business better than anybody else. Take some time and write a few articles that pertain to a certain aspect of your business. Then, create accounts on EZineArticles.com and GoArticles.com and submit your articles to their aggregators.

2 – Start your own blog and link out to other blogs. Linking out as much as possible increases the likelihood that you’ll get a link back. When you start your blog make sure you list yours with the most relevant blog directories.

3 – Post comments on other blogs. If your comments are inciteful and thought provoking there is a much better chance that other readers will click on your profile, which leads them back to your site or blog. Don’t spam. That’s lame.

4 – Write and submit press releases. Make sure they are well-written and interesting. Submit them at PRWeb.com. It’s not free, but the investment is well worth it. Not willing to shell out the cash yet? Try Free-Press-Release.com.

5 – Social Bookmarking. Take the interesting content from your main website, articles, blog posts, etc. and post them on social bookmarking sites like Delicious, Digg, Reddit and Stumbleupon. This will create a churn of traffic back to your site.

Monitor your analytics closely to measure what’s working. There are hundreds of ways to create inbound links to your website. These are just 5 simple ways to get the ball rolling as you work towards taking it to the next level.

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Here are five key ingredients your site must have in order to be successful:

1 – Page Titles: The blue bar at the top of every page of your site should contain the name of your site and the title of the corresponding page. This will aid in SEO.

2 – Clear, Concise Navigation: Your nav should be simple and short, but specific. It needs to be laid out in a logical manner with layers kept to a minimum.

3 – Quality Links: Your site should link out to specific websites and pages/articles of interest to your readers and users. Additionally, your site should have as many inbound links as possible for better SEO. These are links coming to your site from other quality websites.

4 – Contact Info: Are you making it easy for your users to contact you from anywhere on your website? Google may find a particular page of your site to distribute to a user. Will that user be able to locate your phone number, email address and simple contact form easily from that page? Put this info on every page, if possible.

5 – Content: Keep it to 250 words per page. Make it simple, specific and easy to read. Remember, your users are looking for pertinent information, not a novel. One of the secrets to SEO has always been GOOD CONTENT. Make sure you use a keyword research tool and incorporate those keywords into your content.

This is a short list, but if you implement these five key parameters your website will be more successful. There are certainly more things you need to include for optimal performance. We’ll touch on these soon.

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