Archive for March, 2010
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, March 24th, 2010
As the Facebook population grows, more and more businesses are using Facebook Pages to promote their business in this forum and to reach out and connect with fans there.
Your Facebook page may be the first contact a prospect has with you and it is important to stand out from the crowd. One way to do this is by customizing your Facebook page to include tabs that go beyond the basic “Wall” and “Info” tabs in the vanilla page set up. Once you have created these new tabs you can customize each page. Here’s how:
Customize Your Facebook Page
First thing you need to do is add the Facebook Mark Up Language to your Page. To do this, Facebook search “FBML” find the FMBL application and click to add it to your site.
Once you have added this, go to your Page and click edit. Under “Applications” you will see FBML. Click to edit to add a new tab.
The box title shows “FBML”, edit this to show the title you want to appear on the tab on your page. Click to save. The new tab will now appear on your Facebook page.
To edit and add content to the page click to edit your page again and click to edit on the pertinent FBML application you just created. Finally, add the code you want to appear on the page.
The easiest way to generate the code is to use a CMS editor. I used WordPress to generate the code for the connect tab content I created on the Out-Smarts Page.
To add images to your new tab page, upload them to WordPress and use the hyperlink functionality if you want to link the image to an external page (exactly like you would if you were uploading and linking an image to a blog post).
Once you are happy with the content, copy and paste the HTML code into your FBML window. To find this click on applications then edit as before.
Click to complete and save. Go back to your Facebook page and voila, you will have a new tab there and if you click on the tab the content you created in WordPress will appear there.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, March 22nd, 2010
These days building relationships online is as important to growing your business or reputation as networking in the real world. Not only can you be more effective using social media but you can also get more done in less time.
The Internet is a great way to expand your career horizons and get to know new and influential contacts. Here are a few pointers to bear in mind when using social media to network.
1. Dont try to network in every Internet networking hub out there. Choose those where you get the biggest impact (i.e. those that your existing contacts already use, those that reflect your target audience, or those most applicable to your niche). The most popular are LinkedIn (Professional Network), Facebook (fastest growing) and Twitter but there are many networks that are industry or job specific (like Active Rain for real estate) too so take time to check them out.
2. Leverage existing on-line networks to grow new ones. I use the Out-Smarts’ Facebook Page profile to promote our Twitter account and vice versa and add more contacts in that forum
3. Promote your activity in your chosen forums by including it in business cards, profiles and on your website.
4. Use widgets. Most of the social networks allow you to widgetize a link to your profile. Add this to your site, blog etc and include widgets for other networks in your networking profiles.
5. Always remember to be professional in these forums – ask the Granny question and make sure your content is appropriate to your professional standing.
6. When you meet new contacts in the real world find then on-line and add them to your networks.
7. Trawl the friends of your friends and contacts and add those you know or those gurus in your business.
8. Dont spread yourself over to many networks or allow them to suck up your time. Schedule it into your day.
9. Join groups. Facebook and LinkedIn both offer groups. Join applicable ones and gain access to more people in your field.
10. Participate in the right forums. These should relate to your industry or market and to those of your prospects.
11. Ask and answer questions and use your status to attract new contacts.
12. Blogs can be a great way to build your network too. If you have a blog, always follow up with people who leave comments to connect with possible prospects and peers.
13. If you don’t have a blog then use blog comments as a forum to connect with influential bloggers in your industry, to build awareness of what you do and to add value for their visitors in turn.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, March 18th, 2010
Blog comments are a great way to build links back to your website and are an important component of social media marketing. I have said it before and I will say it again, links are like gold on the Internet, the more you have the higher your ranking will be. However you should never comment simply for the sake of it.
When commenting on blogs, always:
- make sure that the comment is relevant to the post
- look to add value and enhance the information contained in the post
- include your email address so that you can establish a connection and build a relationship with the blogger
- make sure the URL you link back to is correct
- comment on blogs with a page rank of 4 or higher as those links are more valuable then links from lower ranking sites
- don’t simply post “great post” or ” thanks for this” – this has no value whatsoever and simply makes your company look unprofessional
- use your real name or an appropriate nickname when posting (I often use “Outsmarts) to make it more authentic
- don’t include links in the comment body that simply link back to your site. If you do include links make sure, again, that they link to a page that is appropriate to the post
- check spelling before posting – it looks more professional. I’ve noticed that many spam comments contain poor spelling – its a tell tale sign that a firm is outsourcing their link building to cowboy SEO firms.
- don’t comment on numerous posts on the same site at once, again this is something spammers do and will increase the likelihood that the blogger will simply delete your comments.
Here’s an example of some blog spam that appeared on our site recenty: someone called Elva Cohoon recently posted a comment on an old post on this site called Sex and Babies for Sale on Craigslist. Her comment was about real estate, the post had nothing to do with real estate.
Normally I would simply delete comments like this but I decided post a comment in response: hopefully Elva will get the message and avoid posting spammy comments on our blog in future. The point here is that if you decide on a spam link approach, your comments can backfire. Bloggers are a fickle bunch and don’t like spam, if you don’t follow comment etiquette like the 10 tips outlined above your tactics will trip you up, your company will look unprofessional in these forums and you risk being called out in the public forum.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, March 17th, 2010
We all know how annoying spam can be but I realized recently that I hadn’t even given a thought to blog spam in months and yet when this blog was launched on our new website a few years back, it was the bain of my life.
In the first few days this blog was inundated with comments and posts that were downright disgusting and definitely not something I wanted our brand to be associated with. Christine from Bluelime Media, one of our partners and our go to expert on all things web design and WordPress, suggested the Akismet plug in. It was the very first plug in we installed and, quite frankly, the best so far.
Why, because to date our blog has been protected us from over 15,000 spammy comments. If you haven’t already installed it, do it now.
In WordPress, go to plug ins, click on add new and find and install the akismet plug in. To complete the process you will need a WordPress API number. To get this you need to sign up for an account at WordPress.com or click here – you don’t need to get a blog, just click on the “just a username” option. Once you have done this, your API appears at the top of the screen when you click on profile. Copy and paste the API into the akismet plugin details on your blog and you are done. Akismet will filter out all obvious spam and alert you to those comments that require approval.
Its a good idea to keep an eye on the comments and delete any that are irrelevant.
