Top 75 Apps for Enhancing Your Facebook Page

Have you customized your Facebook page? There are thousands of apps that can help you engage with your fans. These apps allow you to customize your landing tabs, add your blog, add videos and photos, add chat, add polls, contests, geolocation, scheduling, email, ecommerce and much more.Top 75 Apps for Enhancing Your Facebook Page | Social Media Examiner

7 Big Ideas All Marketers Must Grasp | ClickZ

As marketers, the end of Q2 means time to start thinking about the fall planning and budget season. For the folks at the past 10 cities of the Online Marketing Summit, there are some resounding themes and ideas worth sharing. Here are the top seven killer ideas for fall 2010 based on discussions led by marketing experts from around the nation: 7 Big Ideas All Marketers Must Grasp | ClickZ

5 Predictions for Small Business in 2011

Over the course of 2010, Mashable has offered quite a few small business resources, ranging from tips on social media and marketing to resources for web design and development.

As this year wraps up, we’d like to look back at the technological advancements that small businesses have benefited from and predict how those technologies will affect entrepreneurs in 2011.

Here are my five predictions about how small businesses will continue to adapt to changing technologies as we move into the new year.

Read on: 5 Predictions for Small Business in 2011

The Most Useful Web Marketing Posts of 2010

The December 21 2010 special edition of Who's Blogging What, a newsletter that covers over 1,100 top web marketing blogs to help busy online professionals involved in social media, search marketing, email, user experience and web analytics. Listed via the link below are the posts from 2010 that WBW readers found to be the most useful.

WBW | The Most Useful Web Marketing Posts of 2010

Multiple Gmail Accounts Just Got a Lot Easier to Manage

Google’s announced yet another awesome Gmail feature today. Called e-mail delegation, the feature will allow you to easily manage multiple Gmail accounts without signing in and out of Gmail and switching accounts manually.

Originally, e-mail delegation was useful for granting others access to your primary Gmail (gmail) account — personal assistants, for example.

With today’s changes, this basic feature is going to be more useful for any Gmail user with multiple accounts of his or her own.

When you sign into your primary Gmail account, you can choose to grant access to another account. Just navigate to your Gmail settings by clicking the link in the top right corner of Gmail’s web interface.

Read more: Multiple Gmail Accounts Just Got a Lot Easier to Manage

Playing 20 Questions With Your Digital Strategy

Start with a concise brief that details business objectives and do some initial prep work to help keep the work focused and on track. Check current site and campaign performance, do your competitive research and test your assumptions about your audience demographics by confirming their media, device, channel, property, and other consumption preferences through research tools starting first with your own site stats. Develop a persona that describes your best customers. You are now armed with information that should help guide your strategy.

Read More: Playing 20 Questions With Your Digital Strategy | ClickZ

Check out LinkedIn’s New Share Button

With just a few lines of code, publishers, bloggers, and businesses can easily include a button on their site that lets readers and visitors “Share on LinkedIn”.

Read More:
Check out LinkedIn’s new Share Button

Invite Email Contacts to Like your Facebook Page with “Tell your Fans”

Facebook Page admins can now send all their email contacts an invitation to Like their Page through a new tool called “Tell your Fans”. Contacts can be imported directly from supported email web services or uploaded through a contact file. The tool is available to “admins of any new or smaller Pages”, and can help businesses convert their email database they’ve built for years into a Facebook audience.

Learn More: Invite Email Contacts to Like your Facebook Page with “Tell your Fans”

Top Social Media Tools -BUSINESS.COM

From real-time customer service to reputation management and competitive intelligence, B2B marketers are quickly discovering the powerful and versatile effects of social media. With interactive marketing forecasts projecting social media spend to outpace all other types of online marketing at a compound annual growth rate of 34% from 2009 to 2014,1 and research indicating 86% of B2B firms use social media,2 it‟s clear social media has become a key component of any online marketing program.

Read More: Top Social Media Tools -BUSINESSCOM

Google Places: Does Local SEO and Google Boost Make for a Local SEM?

Small businesses face a multitude of challenges daily; servicing customers, generating sales, meeting payroll, and in effect doing what they 'do' for a living. Basically, they've got there hand in everything and this rarely allows for deep specialization in any one specific facet of their business. Local businesses do not have the time required to research keywords, monitor results, and modify bids and ad creative along with all the additional complexity that is associated with SEM.

Read More: Google Places: Does Local SEO and Google Boost Make for a Local SEM? | ClickZ:

Connecting the Social Web and Your Business

A very specific - but too often overlooked - aspect of social media-based marketing is integrating the social Web with your online (and by extension, offline) marketing conversion process. Creating an online presence is a 'Step 1/Must Have' for most businesses now, and right behind that is carving out a space in the social outpost for brands, products, and services whose customers and business objectives indicate a social presence. For the record, I'd argue that this means 'most, if not all.'

The missing step? Connecting the two. It sounds simple enough, but consider the marketing context: for many marketers, individual marketing channels are often treated as standalones, with an overall level of coordination (only) around the message and objectives. This is a hold-over practice that grew out of traditional media planning and creative, and it makes sense from efficiency and overall awareness campaign management points of view. However, from the vantage point of those learning about your product or service through collaborative interaction on the social Web, the experience is obviously much less compartmentalized.

Read More:Connecting the Social Web and Your Business

You Have Verified Your Google Places Listing, Right?

There's a ton of great things that come to a business owner that verifies his business.

You get to:

* Upload pictures
* Upload videos
* Make coupons
* See really cool stats about your Google Places listing
* Create tags to make your listing stand out
* Post events or specials to your page

Read More: You Have Verified Your Google Places Listing, Right?

How To Get Found By Search Engines

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making a website appear more prominently in search-engine results, and it’s a battleground for anyone who relies on eyeballs on websites. If you’re a casual blogger you may have never heard of it, but with a bit of simple SEO tweaking, you’ll see your hit rate rise rapidly.

Read more: How to get found by search

Get the Most From a Small Business Social Media Presence

Today’s reality is that your business needs to be on social media, but the mere existence of your business on sites like Facebook (Facebook) and Twitter (Twitter) doesn’t guarantee a single sale, or even a single referral. In order for businesses to succeed in the social media space, they need to be properly educated on what works and what doesn’t. More importantly, business owners need to have realistic goals about what they’ll get out of social media.

Read more: HOW TO: Get the Most From a Small Business Social Media Presence

Real Estate Hunters Turn to Mobile

Putting to rest any doubts about the importance of its mobile app, real estate search website Trulia found that the percentage of its online visitors — who also used its app — was as high as 46% in some cities last month. The just-released study is further evidence of the growing mobile web, which Morgan Stanley recently predicted will eclipse the desktop web by 2012.

Read more: Real Estate Hunters Turn to Mobile

Is Your Brand New Website Already Outdated?

As new devices, platforms, and programs enter the marketplace at a dizzying pace, it's almost impossible to stay at the forefront of what's new. In most cases, it's not even important to have the latest, greatest technology driving your website. There is, however, a baseline of functionality and usability that is surprisingly absent from many sites - even when they've just launched. Here's a quick litmus test to check your site.

Read more: Is Your Brand New Website Already Outdated?

Understanding How and Why Facebook Users Interact with Pages

Image via Wikipedia65% of Facebook users only access the site when they’re not at work or school – typically meaning early morning or evening. That means that if you’re making social media only a part of a 9 to 5 work day, you might be missing out on connecting with consumers during the times they’re likely to be online.

Read More: Understanding How and Why Facebook Users Interact with Brands

Social Media Increases Small-Business Exposure

While just one in 10 business owners reported using social networking for marketing last year, 39% indicated they did in September 2010. The impetus is driving sales by connecting with consumers. Facebook was the clear leader among small-business owners, with 27% using the site to attract new customers, vs. 9% using LinkedIn, 8% using Twitter and 5% maintaining a blog.

American Express found that among businesses that use social media marketing, 39% said it increased the exposure of their business. But the second most common response, selected by 17%, was that social media tools had not helped them.

Read more: Social Media Increases Small-Business Exposure

How To Build Your Facebook Landing Page (If You’re Not A Programmer)

Building a Facebook Landing Page is easier than you think, even if you are not a programmer.
We’ll look at a topic that might seem basic for some. For other people, specially new visitors, this might feel like “been there done that”. Yes, there are too many blog posts out there that have discussed the topic but I’ll promise you this: We’ll go over the why, the what and the hows of building a landing page for your Facebook Page. Why is it important? What do we need to consider?

Read more: How To Build Your Facebook Landing Page (If You’re Not A Programmer)

5 Tips for Optimizing Your Brand’s Facebook Presence

So – you’ve set up a Facebook public profile for yourself, your brand or your company, and you’re starting to post content. Now what?

Read More: 5 Tips for Optimizing Your Brand’s Facebook Presence

Why Twitter Is a Big Win for Small Businesses

The ins and outs of using Twitter for small business growth: Why Twitter Is a Big Win for Small Businesses

How to Create Custom Facebook Pages [Tutorial]

Image via CrunchBaseDo you really need to hire designers or skilled programmers who understand the ins-and-outs of Facebook APIs in order to build interactive and beautiful fan pages? Well, the answer is no. Read more: How to Create Custom Facebook Pages [Tutorial]

Brands Need to Help Locations Develop a Voice in Social Media

Research conducted by comScore shows that 69 percent of consumers are more likely to use a local business if it has information available on a social networking site: Local Laryngitis: Brands Need to Help Locations Develop a Voice in Social Media | ClickZ

18 Super Easy, Highly Effective Tips to Grow your Fans via Facebook Ads

Unless you have a large existing fan base or newsletter base, the best way to grow your fans is via Facebook Ads coupled with a promotion (e.g. contest or coupon). In fact, the #1 way that Facebook users find out about fan pages is via Facebook advertising so it is extremely important to your overall social media success that you know how to run Facebook ads effectively. Simple things like the image you choose or the title you use can make the difference between success and failure when it comes to advertising. We’ve compiled a list of practical, easy-to-implement and highly effective tips to help you maximize the performance of your Facebook ads. Read more:18 Super Easy, Highly Effective Tips to Grow your Fans via Facebook Ads « Wildfire Social Media Marketing Blog

What's Working at Twitter and What Isn't

Ad Age editor Abbey Klaassen sat down with new Twitter CEO Dick Costolo during the IAB's Mixx Conference at Advertising Week to talk about what's working, what isn't and what's ahead for the fast-growing micro-blog service.

Media Outlook 2011: Digital

According to eMarketer, after a 3.4 percent dip in spending in 2009, online ad revenue in 2010 will jump 10.8 percent to $25.1 billion. The following year looks nearly as strong, as the researcher is predicting growth of 8.4 percent, bringing total spending to $27.2 billion. That won’t hold true for media in general, says Geoff Ramsey, CEO of eMarketer, meaning that digital dollars are likely to grow at the expense of other sectors like TV and print.

Similarly, PricewaterhouseCoopers is forecasting 9.8 percent growth in spending on the Internet, with revenue netting out at $25.2 billion. “We’re still very keen on our numbers,” says PwC partner Russ Sapienza.

Read more: Media Outlook 2011: Digital

The Value of a Liker | Facebook

"Who are “likers”? People who click the Facebook Like button are more engaged, active and connected than the average Facebook user. The average “liker” has 2.4x the amount of friends than that of a typical Facebook user. They are also more interested in exploring content they discover on Facebook -- they click on 5.3x more links to external sites than the typical Facebook user.
As publishers work to identify the best ways to reach a younger, “always on” audience, we’ve found that the average “liker” on a news site is 34, compared to the median age of a newspaper subscriber which is approximately 54 years old, as reported by the Newspaper Association of America.

What are the best ways to reach these people?

1. Implement social plugins, beginning with the Like button. When a person clicks Like, it (1) publishes a story to their friends with a link back to your site, (2) adds the article to the reader’s profile, and (3) makes the article discoverable through search on Facebook.
2. Optimize your Like button. By showing friends’ faces and placing the button near engaging content (but avoiding visual clutter with plenty of white space), clickthrough rates improve by 3-5x.
3. Publish back. Publishing engaging stories or status updates (things that are emotional, provocative, related to sporting events or even simple questions) increase on-Page engagement by 1.3-3x
4. Integrate the Activity Feed or Recommendations plugins. Highlighting most popular content on your site leads people to view more articles. Those who click on the Activity Feed plugin in particular generate 4x as many page views as the average media site viewer. Place it above the fold on your home page and at the bottom of each article for maximum engagement
5. Use the Live Stream to engage users during live events. The live stream box can serve as a way to reach your audience, facilitate sharing of your content, and get them involved in what you’re streaming, be it an interview, conference, or other type of event. This week we released new updates to the live stream.

Read more: The Value of a Liker | Facebook:

25 Tips for Killer Facebook Marketing

Getting your brand a Facebook page is like getting a shop at the prime location of the newest mall in town. Footfalls come in automatically without making much of an effort. People of all age groups, ethnicities, income groups, etc are on Facebook. So are their friends, family and acquaintances.

The chances of your marketing campaign going viral and gaining a word of mouth momentum are immense with this mammoth audience. At the same time, even a small slip will derail the campaign and people notice that too. So what are the right ways and key steps that make a marketing campaign on Facebook a success? Read more:

25 Tips for Killer Facebook Marketing

Find the Best Fall Travel Deals on the Social Web

The sweet memories of summer vacation may be fading, but that doesn’t mean travel season has to end too. In fact, fall is one of the best times to travel, as many airlines and hotels try to fill their books between the summer and winter vacation seasons.


But, with rates falling faster than the autumn leaves, how do you hone in on the hottest deals happening right now? Fortunately, there are plenty of ways the social web can help you save money on major travel expenses like airfare, lodging and car rentals.

HOW TO: Find the Best Fall Travel Deals on the Social Web

How To Create A Facebook Page Reveal Tab

Want to increase the number of fans you get each day? One way to improve your conversion of new visitors into fans is by adding a reveal tab. Learn how to actually create the reveal tab. This tutorial will effectively walk you through the process of creating a reveal tab in order to increase the conversion of new visitors into fans.

How To Create A Facebook Page Reveal Tab

10 Tips and Tricks for Your Facebook Fan Page

Facebook is one the fastest growing social media network and its users are increasing by thousands every day. Due to its vast base of users, it takes no effort to acknowledge its influence and any company will jump on the bandwagon to utilize Facebook because it allows them to boost their brands or products also in the same time engage with possible clients. It is convenient for a company to create a Facebook page, publish their profile and products however, setting up a Facebook page that receive many "likes" and a huge fan base is never an easy task.

Read more: 10 Tips & Tricks For Your Business's Facebook Fan Page http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/tips-tricks-for-your-business-facebook-fan-page/#ixzz0zkKsRMtg

Meet the New Twitter.com

An easier, faster, and richer experience. Coming soon to all users! You will now find @mentions, retweets, searches, and lists just above your timeline – creating a single, streamlined view on the left of the screen. On the right, you can see the features you’re familiar with, including whom you recently followed and who recently followed you, favorites, and Trending Topics.
Read More: Meet the new Twitter.com

The Facebookification of Twitter

Twitter is about to become a major multimedia destination, thanks to some new partners and features.

Mashable recently reported that Twitter is bringing multimedia to the stream. If you tweet a link to a video, for example, it will be embedded and play right in the Twitter stream. Twitter has “multiple partners” for the launch, including web video, live-streaming video, and video platform partners.

Bringing pictures and videos to the stream is one of the biggest changes Twitter has ever made. Instead of going off-site to watch your favorite YouTube video or livestream, you can stay on Twitter.com and browse multimedia all day long.

Read more from Mashable:




The Facebookification of Twitter

How to Create Fan-only Facebook Content

Image via Wikipedia

This article from Social Media Examiner is an excellent step-by-step for the FBML beginner and explains in detail how to create fans-only content on your Facebook Custom Tab

Read the full article

Track Your Website Visitors and Their Behaviors in Real-time

A real-time analytics, heatmap and alert system that overlays all the data on the user’s website – so they never have to log in to another site.

Name: SeeVolution

SeeVolution makes it easy to visualize how visitors are using and interacting with your website. SeeVolution also offers real-time traffic and analytics information that you can view as an overlay on your live website.

SeeVolution has just entered beta and the service is free for up to five different domains. After signing up for the service, you enter in the URL of a site you want to monitor and SeeVolution provides you with a few lines of JavaScript to put on any pages you want to monitor. If you want to track your entire site, just insert the code into the footer section of your website or template.

Read the full story here

HOW TO: Run Your Business Online with $10 and a Google Account

Online infrastructure for your small business doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. By leveraging many of the free and inexpensive products offered by Google, you can create a website, a domain-branded e-mail system, and a document collaboration platform, all unified under one master login and password.

Follow the steps below, and you’ll be on your way to a customizable and scalable business infrastructure:

HOW TO: Run Your Business Online with $10 and a Google Account

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

How do PageRank updates work?

5 Items to Delete From Your Website Today

Hubspot's blog along with many others are full of advice and instructions of things to add to your website. These often include: start a blog, monitor social media, or optimize your site for search engines. While all of these things are important, today I would like you to do something completely different: think about things you should stop doing.

When we add ideas and actions, websites become more complicated. Complication creates confusion and often translates to lower effectiveness. So today instead of telling you to add new things, we offer a few suggestions on things to remove from your business website.

Read more:

2010 Online Marketing Blueprint

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

2010 Online Marketing Blueprint

View more documents from HubSpot Internet Marketing.

11 Free Services for Scheduling Social Media Updates

Maintaining a constant social media presence can be difficult, especially for busy entrepreneurs looking to stay in touch with their communities. Luckily, there are plenty of tools out there to help ease the burden. One of the most useful functionalities for a social management tool is the ability to schedule updates.

Here is a list of 11 free services for scheduling social media updates, either across multiple social platforms or just for Twitter ().

11 Free Services for Scheduling Social Media Updates

How Marketing Agencies Can Outgrow Their Competition

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

How Marketing Agencies Can Outgrow Their Competition

View more presentations from HubSpot Internet Marketing.

Video for Marketing

How to Use Online Video for Marketing

View more documents from HubSpot Internet Marketing.

Accelerate Your Real Estate Prospects on Facebook

Many real estate agents claim they are not getting a return from their Facebook profile or fan page. One of the primary reasons is that many agents use Facebook and other social networking sites as a free-for-all promotional platform, using it only to market themselves and their listings.The mere meaning of the word “social” means “not-business.” Your listings, sales, and announcements should be the secondary focus of your social media on your Facebook fan page. Instead, build a local community that your fans will value and recommend to their friends. Here are some ideas to accelerate your prospects and build awareness among your community:

Create a Facebook Fan Page for your
neighborhood or town. Whether you set up a second fan page from your business or decide to start with one fan page, make it all about the community. This will create an affinity among the locals that a business typically can’t.

Post rich content and post often!
On your Facebook Page landing page, highlight articles, photos, videos and links that your fans will value and pass along to their friends. Here are a few ideas:

• Discounts for nearby restaurants, dry cleaners, car wash. etc.
• Home improvement tips
• Local events
• Links to coupon sites such as savings.com.
• Neighborhood garage sales
• Tips on finds at local thrift stores

Promote your listings subtly.
Consumers will feel alienated if you constantly promote your listings. Instead, set up a separate facebook tab on your community fan page for your listings and sales OR link your community fan page to your business fan page.

Monitor comments
Take the time to read and comment on other people’s posts. Give your fans the full freedom to comment and interact, and don’t try to control the conversation. By allowing people to express their opinions freely, you assure that they will come back.

Keeping it Relevant on Twitter

Well, I finally did it. I purged my Twitter account. That's right, I "unfollowed," with a mission in mind.

I have always been a proponent of relevancy, and Twitter is a key component of our PR strategy - giving us that connection and engagement with our followers.

But, quantity over quality was not working for me. I decided to go the opposite route. @floridahalfback was my first account on Twitter - a tourism and relocation specialist in the Southeast U.S. I have created other Twitter accounts for various divisions and clients of Leisure Linx, but I got my feet wet in early 2009 with @floridahalfback. I quickly built my follow list, focusing on the region that this account serves the most. Then I started following my follower's follows (a mouthful in itself). I was quick to follow everyone who followed me, and my follow/follower numbers stayed consistently close in quantity.

But as time went on and I passed the 500 follow mark, I found myself overwhelmed with replies, retweets, clicking links, and going deeper and deeper into these links until I was so far off the mark I had to slap myself awake! Have you ever been driving your car and suddenly realize you don't remember the last ten minutes of driving? Did I stop at the stoplights? Did I really make that turn off that busy exit? I remember none of it, but I know I must have done it well. It's the same feeling with irrelevant social media connections.

I don't know about you, but my time with social media is limited. AND it is very important. But my goal is to  balance my "A" priorities (revenue-producers) with "B" priorities (engagement and maintenance).

So on January 9, 2010, I started unfollowing the irrelevant. It was a bit scary. I was careful at first to only unfollow those that hadn't tweeted in a few months. But as I dug deeper, I reminded myself of the goal to follow those individuals and businesses who are relevant to this Twitter account. I dropped my following count from 710 to 475, a 49% drop - all within about a one hour period. It made me nervous but I was a woman on a mission to get organized so I crossed my fingers and watched the results. Within minutes, my follower count dropped by a few - probably auto-bots. The next day I checked my Twitter Counter results. Still just a handful of drops. All in all, for the first 24 hours I lost 38 followers, and a few days later that total grew to 52. So within the first week I had lost 6% of my followers and yet I was following nearly 50% fewer Tweeters.

Now ten days later, this Twitter account is noticeably efficient and meaningful. I am interacting with related businesses and visitors, retweeting relevant information, and I have more time for my "A" priorities.

I must note that not all of my deleted follows were irrelevant to my overall business, just irrelevant to this account. I subsequently followed these folks from another Twitter account such as @Strategy140.

If you have time on your hands and love to read and research, I don't recommend purging your Twitter account, but in my case it has handed me back a nice chunk of time to know those I follow better, and to engage more efficiently.