The 10 Second Facebook Fix Guaranteed to Send You More Traffic

Use the Info box. You can put a clickable link in there! You just need to include the http:// part first.

Yes, it really is that simple. And yet, more than half of Facebook page admins don’t seem to realize that they can add a link in that box. And some of the ones that do include a link, never bothered to test it. If they had, they would know that including a link is only half the battle. You need the http:// to make it clickable and spare your potential page members from retyping (and possible forgetting) your URL.

What’s an Info Box?

The Info box is a small, 250 character count box located below the page or profile icon. And it is an underused goldmine, for both traffic and SEO purposes. This Info box is one of the first things a current page member sees, as it has prominent placement when they are looking at either the Wall or Info tab. And while potential page members, who have not yet clicked “like,” can and should be directed to a more custom landing tab, they will more than likely very quickly click to see the Wall and, therefore, the Info box. (more…)

Customer Service Rep, Meet Marketing Manager

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that I’m not shy about voicing my opinions. Yes, I will complain when something is not up to par, especially service. In my mind, it’s the easiest to fix, because all it takes is some common sense and human decency. The shipment might not get here faster, and the kitchen won’t magically un-run out of something, but your attitude can make all the difference. And when something is good, be it food, fast shipping or the smallest of favors, I will always rave about it online. To the point that people have actually asked me if I work for companies I talk about, because of how mushy-gushy I can be.

The answer is no. I just really like to give credit to people who are awesome. And I also like to call out those who, quite frankly, suck. I started this post a few weeks ago, after a particularly long, drawn-out and heinous customer service experience. Then I began to wonder if I was being too dramatic. So I stopped mid-post.

3 weeks later, same issue, same company, even more of a pain in the ass. So here you go NSTAR. This one’s for you.

Customer Service Impacts All Aspects of a Business

Customer service goes hand in hand with marketing, now more than ever thanks to social media. Word-of-mouth now includes Tweets, Facebook status updates, emails, IMs and text messages. Consumers have more places to voice their opinion, while Marketers have more channels to listen to. The end result is that when a company screws up, as every company will at some point, it’s more likely that people will hear about it. (more…)

What Brands Should Learn From Facebook’s New “Community Pages”

As a user, I find community pages supremely annoying. Yes, the push to greater connectivity is pretty cool, but connected doesn’t mean “created out of thin air.” I’m all for connecting me to an existing page that already has good content, but I’d rather not have Facebook troll my profile for random phrases that may or may not mean anything to a single other soul on the site, then create a so-called community page connected to my singular profile. Kinda defeats the purpose, don’t you think?

Are Community Pages Good for Brands, or for Users?

However, if we’ve learned anything from this ongoing privacy debate, it’s that no one cares much about the average Facebook user. It’s all about the money. Which, as a free site for most of us, means it’s all about the brands and businesses that use the site for marketing. (more…)

Page Admins: Don’t Bother Sending An Update To Facebook Fans (Or Whatever They’re Called Now)

OK, I’m calling it: marketers should probably give up on mass messaging people who “Like” their Facebook Page (Facebook users formerly known as “Fans,” who, coincidentally, Facebook still calls “Fans” in the admin section of all Pages).

A few months ago, I talked about how Facebook moved the notifications for Page updates to a subset of the Facebook private messaging system. Basically, they buried them. Go check your Updates Inbox; if you’re anything like me, there are a lot of “unread” blue dots in there.

Page Updates Moved to Messages

These mass messages sent from Facebook Page Administrators to the entire group of people who “Like” a Page used to have their own little icon indicator at the top left-hand side of the Facebook navigation bar, where Messages, Notifications and Friend Requests still live. Now, the only way to access these updates is from the messages section; it almost looks like they are a subfolder of these messages. And while you can choose to get email alerts about a lot of site goings-on, Page Updates are not one of these options. And so, most people never notice them. (more…)

Get Graduation-Ready, Social Media Style

It’s that time again! Besides random excuse-for-a-sale holidays, it’s also graduation season. Very soon, scores of barely legal to drink college graduates will be flooding the job market, looking for their first big break after school. But outside the trauma of most likely having to move home, many grads have a lot more on their minds then ever before: the internet, and how they are represented on it.

A lot has changed in just the few short years since I graduated. Back then, there was no Twitter. I had a Facebook account, but there was little available to do on the site besides poke and post pictures. Blogging seemed incredibly dull and self indulgent, and I had no idea that I could, or should, purchase my name as a domain name. (more…)

Every Day Is a Holiday for Online Retailers

I’m a little bit obsessed with shopping. And I love a good sale more than anything: the excitement, the elbowing and jockeying for position, the occasional waking up early to score the best deals. And so I’ve embraced the gimicky promotions and overdone advertising to announce super shopping sales. Or, I thought I had.

It’s Not Just About Buying Gifts

For as long as I can remember, my mother and I have pored over the Thanksgiving Day paper in search of coupons for the biggest shopping day of the year: Black Friday. We would wake up before it was light out and somehow always forget to warm up the car, shivering all the way to the highway as we compared discount percentages and calculated our plan of attack.

Hallmark holidays have always been big business for stores. Christmas, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day–we’ve been told you buy gifts for these occasions, and so said gift items go on sale (along with the rest of the store’s inventory). Then department stores started jumping on the bank holidays, screaming “Sale!” for such events like Memorial, Columbus and Labor Day. And of course, let’s not forget the day after Thanksgiving. (more…)

How Search and Social Media Intersect: Focus On Facebook

In case you missed my presentation on search engine optimization and social media at Pubcon South in Dallas last week, I’ve uploaded it to SlideShare and added it here for your viewing pleasure.

Optimizing Content for Both Facebook and Organic Search

As you may have noticed, Facebook is one of my favorite topics. It’s also a major player in real-time search and should definitely be included in any search engine optimization strategy. Since Twitter often steals the show at conferences, I focused exclusively on Facebook for this presentation, explaining how to use SEO tactics to optimize content for both Facebook search and organic search in search engines such as Google and Bing.

Figuring Out Facebook: What NOT To Do

I love my mother. Really, I do. But she’s from a different generation, and some of the things she says when trying to discuss Facebook, or Twitter, or even just the internet in general, are just too hilarious not to share.  Like when she told me she couldn’t watch a video because “that damn FoxFire won’t let me click!”

Last week took the cake, however. After receiving an email asking me to print something for her (another newfangled technology she can’t always get to work), I called her about another matter. She asked if I had gotten her email and I said I would bring her printouts the next time I saw her. She then insisted, for several minutes, that she had emailed me separately for something else.

Learn From My Mom

Finally, I got it out of her that she had “hit reply” to an email Facebook sent her, which I realized meant she had left a comment on an ongoing thread on her Facebook Profile, not emailed me.

This is what it looks like.

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Online Retail Marketing: Tips From An (Almost) Professional Shopper

You wouldn’t think I’d be impressed by static banner ads much these days, considering that I’ve done countless versions for clients and, quite frankly, have seen waaaay cooler stuff online, either through work or my extensive online “window shopping.” However, the simplicity and stopping power of a well-executed and targeted banner is enough to get even my jaded online attention.

You Should Know What Your Customers Want

Overstock.com recently re-targeted me with a tailor-made banner that showed three items I had been browsing on their site. Now, I know they can track these things and that the logic and programming behind the ad is fairly standard these days, and the design and messaging of this ad isn’t even that revolutionary. But they just got it so right. I’ve been incorrectly targeted before, but this ad was dead-on and actually drove me back to the site to debate how much I really needed another pair of jeans.

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The Internet, In Infographics

I’ve got a growing collection of images I think are cool slowly taking over my desktop, so I figured it was time to share. (This is why they stay on my desktop; until I do something with them, as a motivator to blog, print, wallpaper or what have you with them. So far, it’s maybe half working.)

I owe these infographics about the internet to Fast Company, who reported on a BBC study that charted the 100 most visited websites in January. You can read more about their findings on the BBC News site. They’ve also got a great hover feature that allows further breakdown of each interest category.

What We’re Looking At Online

I kind of wish that search had been broken out into types of searches and mapped to the more targeted interest groups, but I guess that strays a little far from site visits into site behavior. But I love that, all search engines aside, social networks and shopping are officially recognized as such a big part of other people’s internet lives besides mine.

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