Facebook Change Haters I Have A Copy of Windows 95 For You
If you did not watch the Facebook F8 Keynote today you missed out on the major changes coming to Facebook, you should be able to see the recorded keynote at F8.Facebook.com if you want to get an idea of what is coming.
One thing to note, and a year ago it would of been a big announcement in and of itself, Facebook has 800 millions users now. That is an amazingly huge number that goes to tell you that as much of a waste of time some people feel Facebook is no one really cares, we use it, period.
There has been plenty of whining and complaining on Facebook changes the past couple days, simple changes like the new combined news feed and the news ticker that shows light weight activity on the right side of the screen. BTW, if you have an issue with all the change I have a copy of Windows 95 I can sell you, and if you buy today I will throw in a free Motorola RAZR:)
Well, if those changes have got you all in a tizzy just wait until you see whats coming next, if you have not heard Facebook is launching 2 major new updates to the platform that will be rolling out to the users over the next couple months. One is called Facebook Timeline the other is a new way to look at social apps, it call comes down to being able to perform a VERB on any NOUN, instead of simply hitting the like button on a book you can READ a book. This may seem simple on the face of it, but in big picture impact is exponential in terms of connecting people to things.
If you think about the ability of your friends to say they are "cooking lasagna" or "reading Bringing Down The House" enables you to discover items that you would of never thought of, the great example of using Spotify combined with Facebook to literally listen to music real time with your friends as it flows through your Facebook stream is amazing.
One concern about all this new posting of reading, writing, running activity is that it would flood the news stream. Well that is not the case, that is what the nice new ticker on the right side will do such a great job handling, all light weight activity will be put there, out of the major news feed.
Here are a couple links to details of the new features:
About.me Launches Personal Profile Page Service
If you have not checked it out already you may want to go to About.me and claim your profile. About.me is a service that provides a custom personal profile (example About.me/bmarler ) as well as analytics on interactions with your profile.
This is a great use of a Dot ME domain as well, since the profiles contain a custom background, a bio, plus easy integration with your social networking profiles it is easy to create a simple page about yourself that integrates all your various online profiles in one easy to access location.
As an example of why this could be useful, on my business cards the back of the card is dedicated to my social media profile links, i.e. Facebook.com/brucemarler , Twitter.com/brucemarler ,etc.
With the use of About.me/bmarler I could simply put the link to my profile on the card and all the information on my profiles would be there for someone to access instead of having several different profiles.
Even if you do not plan on using all the social media functions it is probably a good idea to claim your profile name now.
Free 3G For All Google Chrome OS Devices
As is being reported by Mashable, Techcrunch, and others Google has announced that for a period of two years people purchasing a Google Chrome OS device will receive 100 MB of free 3G data per month. The 3G mobile broadband service will be on the Verizon network.
I am sure many will complain that 100 MB is not much, but for people that are on wi-fi frequently 100MB may go along way.
Verizon will also offer day passes and I am sure will have monthly service plans that offer larger chunks of data.
More importantly this continues to show that the mobile web is becoming more and more embedded in our day to day lives. People that had no interest in using the internet on their mobile phone are now using broadband on a daily basis on their iPhone or Android phones.
As more and more devices come out that have mobile embedded in them it becomes a natural thing to use something that seemed to "techie" in the past. As companies like Google, Apple, and others make it easier to get access to information on both mobile phone and small computing devices people that were once opposed will now not even realized they have shifted to using things they once considered to complicated.
Apple has done a great job of this with the iPhone and iPad, if Google can keep it simple and have mobile broadband included on their Chrome OS devices this will only help the mobile web go further.
Once again, people will complain that 100 MB is not much, but in many cases consumers do not need a huge chunk, not everyone is watching Netflix, YouTube, or other major bandwidth consuming applications. Many are happy with email and web browsing, for those users 100MB may go along way.
On another note, I was just reading an article yesterday about people that complain when they are getting something for free, one of my favorite articles ever, read it here: Freetards
Facebook Deals Coupon Simple To Launch
Filed under: Facebook, Facebook Promotion, Local Search Optimization, Location Based Services, Low Cost Marketing, Online Advertising, Small Business Advertising, Small Business Marketing, social media
Although our LocalTek team has spent much time taking a look at various ways our local business customers could use Facebook Places and Deals it was not until today that we decided what promotion we would offer once we claimed our Facebook Places page.
If you are a local business owner Facebook now makes it easier to claim your Places page by adding an email associated with your domain name to your Facebook personal account, submitting your information, and then they review it and approve (or not). Once this is setup you can submit Facebook Deals for review and inclusion in your page.
As Facebook Deals usage is free it was a no brainer to offer our potential customers a special if they checked into the LocalTek office, since much of the talk with customers these days is around mobile and social we decided to offer something that combined both as a special, we offer a free mobile website with the purchase of a new small business website if the customer checks-in to our Facebook Places page on their mobile phone.
After your submit your listing you have to wait for approval, but it took less than 4 hours for us to be approved for our deal after a quick setup.
Although there are mixed opinions on merging your Facebook business page with your Places page (one of the main things you lose when doing this is any landing page you may of built separate from your business page wall) for our local business we have determined that we would like to merge our Facebook page with our Places page. We have over 660 "likes" on our page and having those combined with our Places page makes sense for us as we would like to have our Deals available to see for all of our fans.
Whether you need a company like LocalTek to help you setup your Facebook Places and Facebook Deals or if you have someone in house to do this it only makes sense to take advantage of this free service Facebook is offering. With more than 500 million users spending an average of 55 minutes a day on the site take advantage of this marketing opportunity instead of delaying.
Go like our Facebook page now to see what deals we offer in the future, you can see our Facebook page here, feel free to Like it : Facebook.com/LocalTek
You can see our Places page here: LocalTek Places Page
As mentioned, soon they will be one and the same, the Facebook Deal we setup is on the Places page for those looking.
Facebook Launches New Profile Layout
Unless you have been asleep for the last 24 hours you have probably heard that Facebook has launched an opt-in profile layout change that focuses on the visual appeal (i.e. lots of pictures) of a profile.
Mark Zuckerberg was on 60 minutes tonight showing the layout just a few hours after Facebook announced the changes and allowed people to start switching their profile over to the new visually enhanced layout.
Along with showing 5 recently tagged photos of the persons profile at the top of the profile page they also have moved the standard options at the top of the page to the left hand menu as well as put the "Poke" link in a prime spot at the top right of the page. Poke is something that I have not used on Facebook in years but with it being in prime territory now instead of lost in mix I am sure a lot more "poking" will be going on.
CBS has a nice tour of the redesign, check out the story.
I personally like the new layout, I like the menu items being on the left and like the friends list on the left. I am sure though, as with every other time Facebook makes a change, there will be a lot of people complaining for whatever reason. If you would like to change your profile to the new layout click here.
What do you think of the new layout, do you like it or not, why not if you do not like it?
Social Media Is About More Than A Facebook Page
Filed under: Facebook Promotion, Small Business Marketing, Small Business Web Development, social media
Even though Facebook and Twitter have been around for a few to several years it has really been this past year that main street small businesses have really started to take notice. As people realize more and more that their customers are not consuming information in the same way they have in the past it becomes obvious that billboards and newspapers are not the only way they have to market their business these days.
Although some business owners and consumers still look at Facebook and say, what a waste of time, why would I use that? One thing to keep in mind is that we as business owners need to realize it is not about how we used the social media and in particular Facebook, it really has everything to do with our customers. And they ARE using it, more and more everyday. 55 minutes per user average per day.
Let me make one more reference, the other thing people say is a complete waste of time is TV. Most businesses WANT to advertise on TV but cannot afford it, yet social media is a very targeted medium that is a "time waster" yet people resist because they do not understand. Once again, people need to step outside of how they use the internet and think about how their CUSTOMERS use the internet.
Social media is the ultimate "word of mouth" marketing, if you need away to think of Facebook or Twitter, look at it like this, it is a friend telling another friend what they like. Sometimes seemingly meaningless posts about what store someone just bought something in is the ultimate advertising for your business.
All that said, many people, once they understand they have to take the leap and open a free Facebook page for their business, make the mistake of not moving the page forward and thinking about a true plan of how to engage their customers.
Although a Facebook page or Facebook Places page is free, in many cases it is worth it to pay a small fee for a local company to help you get your page setup properly. Although you may not be ready to do everything that is possible on Facebook at this time it may be worth it to take the advice of someone that has taken the time to understand the possibilities of how it can be used to engage customers of your business.
In some businesses, such as a coffee shop, it may be important to send specials, events, or other things out on a daily basis but also you can use it as an educational tool to teach your customers about the various coffees and types of coffee drinks. Your customers will pay attention and spend more time on your page or website if you try to educate them rather than sell to them everyday.
Also, sometimes it takes thinking outside the box, some businesses that seem "legacy" still have a need to get a message out. Large corporations have figured this out but many of the local marketing companies that people work with daily are really just now getting their minds around social media and are having a hard time articulating a plan to their customers about how to use online marketing and social tools as a solid marketing mechanism. Once again, ask for ideas outside of just creating a Facebook page. It takes more than that.
A few examples of what your business should be prepared for is proper pay per click advertising on Facebook, understanding how to use it in a manner that is effective and targets customers in your target demographic and area is very important. Once again it is about more than just buying keywords and paying per click, if it is not targeted and driving people to your Facebook page or website that actually matter to your business the clicks are of little use. As I said before, it is about more than being able to create a Facebook business page.
Another great example of create Facebook use is creating a visually appealing landing page or tab for your Facebook page. A couple examples are:
As you can see it is a page within your Facebook presence that allows for you to give people a way to interact in a way they are used to with common websites. Although these webpage like interfaces are by no means required it is becoming more important to have a professional appearance for your business when people find you on Facebook. This is a great way to do that. The cost to have a professional create these types of pages is minimal compared to what the cost of creating marketing materials or logos costs in many cases.
Once you have your page setup you need to make sure you keep it active. What does this mean?
It can be as simple as taking 30 seconds to a minute to post a link to a specials page on your website. Or maybe ask your customers a question about what they would like to see added to your store. Little things to connect with people that have shown interest in your business in the past but may of lost top of mind awareness of what you offer.
The key though is working with someone that can see the bigger marketing picture, although you may start with just having a Facebook page, if you are taking advice from someone, make sure they have a history or working online and understand how people are engaging with businesses on the internet. If they cannot help you come up with a real plan that makes sense for how your customers are using social media tools it may be time to switch the marketing company you are working with.
Also, for further reading, here are a few Facebook How-To's and Tips.
Foursquare.com and Why Local Business Should Pay Attention
Filed under: Location Based Services, Small Business Advertising, Small Business Marketing, mobile apps, social media
I have been using Foursquare for sometime now and have recently started to see quite a few more people start to join the fast growing social/location based game/app/service. With most of my attention being focused on local search for local businesses and local online advertising on Missouri.me, apps like Foursquare pique my interest and I like to watch their evolution and the way people use them as they evolve.
It is important to not necessarily watch how the early adopters use them since they tend to be power users and their day to day usage will be much different than the mass of users that come in later and are less techie. When I see my wife using Foursquare everyday I start to see how people will really use the service and the power that small businesses will have if they use the service to help draw people into their doors.
The past month (with one of the examples happening today) I have witnessed a couple examples of what will start to happen as the general consumer starts to come online with apps such as this. There is no need to go through all the hype around Foursquare and all the huge projections since all of that has been reported on virtually every tech site in existence so I would prefer to talk real world examples of how it draws people in.
First example is a restaurant in the town Localtek is based in, Spokes is the name of the restaurant, this is a place that I visit on occasion when friends are there. Recently while I was checking into locations on Foursquare I noticed there was a "Special Here" banner at the top of the Foursquare iPhone app. If you click it you could see that Spokes was offering half price burgers to the person that is the Foursquare mayor of Spokes (Foursquare has the concept of Mayor for the person who checks into a location most frequently plus a few other requirements).
So what happens? I start to go to Spokes now because it is a competition to try to get the mayorship, it should be noted I do not even necassarily eat burgers when I go there but based on the competitive factor I start to go so I can check-in. I am sure the special will change at times so why not go for the mayorship so I get future specials.
A little special like that and I show up, and I am sure others have as well. And when people show up to eat at a restaurant they typically bring more people. It all starts to add up. This is a simple example, but this is in a town of less than 20 thousand people. This is not a large city with a huge base of technology focused people. This is rural Missouri and people are taking advantage of this. There is a base of right around 2 million users on Foursquare and I am already having to fight for mayorships.
Now you start to think about local coffee shops offering half price coffees or other specials for mayors, or maybe a restaurant offering something to people who are mayors elsewhere to try to get them to come to their restaurant instead of the other and you start to see some of the power.
Another example is something that happened just today, my wife, daughter and I were in a mall and they were running into "chick" stores so I was browsing a bit. I happened to notice another "Special" banner and it was for a small watch kiosk. You could unlock the special by checking in.
So what happens, I go check out the watch kiosk and since I checked in I got a free watch cleaning. Small stuff but now my wife and daughter start browsing. As you can imagine other consumers will do this same thing and this will drive additional purchases since people show up for the free watch cleaning. What an easy and great way to drive people to stop at a kiosk most people would just walk on by.
These are just a couple examples but as you can see this is something local businesses will have to watch and pay attention too. With apps on both the iPhone and Google Android based phones based on location launching everyday and those with disposable income being the ones most likely to have them it is no longer possible for a business that has been around for dozens of years to ignore the shift happening to local online and in the mobile world.
Foursquare is just one example. Watch as many more come to market as people figure out new and unique ways to tap this new technology. For those of us in the tech world it may not seem new but until recently there was not a true way for local businesses to be able to tap into this marketing channel.
5 Free Social Media Tips For Local Businesses
Although this blog has been a lot quieter the past couple months I have been very active working with small businesses on everything from selecting the right domain name for their website to using social media to promote their business effectively.
As much as we may be a for profit business we also truly feel it is our mission to help educate the local business owners who understand they need to move a portion of their marketing efforts online but either a) think the cost is too high or b) feel like it is too time consuming or technical.
One of the things that we show as part of the holistic marketing model they need to look at now that they can no longer just use the legacy methods (i.e. print) as their only form of advertising is social media.
Over 50 percent of their customers are now looking online but most have not shifted any of their marketing spend to online (more on that in a future post). Since they may not feel comfortable spending money online as they are just now in the beginning of the education process we feel it is important to help them with low cost or even free online marketing tips, in many cases these are social media tips.
Here are 5 tips that a local small business can use today to help promote their business for free using social media:
Use Proper Links To Your Website When Posting On Facebook:
One of the most frequent mistakes I see people make when promoting their website on Facebook is not actually making the link to their website active, for example if I was to share something about this blog and put the following you would not be able to click on it and go directly to this site, instead you would have to hope your friends on Facebook either copy and paste the link or type it in, people will not typically actively do this:
Check out my blog at BruceMarler.com
Instead you need to add http:// in front of the link or website name to make sure it is an active link in what you are sharing on Facebook, for example it should look like this:
Check out my blog at http://BruceMarler.com
If you do the above on Facbeook people can click directly on the link to the site and this will drive significant more clicks to your business website.
Create a Facebook Page For Your Business Not A Personal Account:
One of the more frequent mistakes that people make when first thinking about using Facebook for business promotion is using a personal Facebook account rather than a Facebook Page. This happens more frequently than you may realize.
It is best to keep your personal account separate from your business account. This will help you promote to your customers rather than family and old high school friends who may not be interested in a business thousands of miles away and on the other side keep you from posting vacation pictures to customers rather than your family.
Facebook pages are free. They are great for interacting with your customers and promoting special offers. They also allow you to get top of mind awareness with your customers after they had forgotten about you. As many people may visit your website, do business with you, and then move on by taking advantage of a Facebook Page to put links to your website and specials and events you may be having you can keep your brand or business in front of customers who have visited you in the past.
Claim Your Facebook Username For Your Facebook Page:
One of the easiest things you can do to protect your business brand online is by claiming your Facebook Username for your business page. This means that you no longer have a long string of characters as the link to your page, instead you have a short and brandable link to your fan page, example is http://facebook.com/localtek
You can see exactly what brand is being promoted (Localtek) instead of something much longer like this:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/CITY-NAME-MO/YOUR_BUSINESS_NAMEs/7708322067?ref=ts
As you can see the top link is much more effectively promoting your local business online. To do this you can read this How To Set Your Facebook Page Username Tutorial.
Promote Your Facebook and Twitter Accounts Offline:
As much as we online marketing folks like to believe that the world revolves around online marketing and nothing else matters that is not true, more and more a holistic approach is needed when promoting a business. One easy way to take advantage of mixing various promotion types is to make sure you add your Facebook Page and Twitter account on any print materials you may have or even make sure you mention in any radio promotions you may be doing as well.
As an example we recently designed new business cards for our company and on the front we have standard corporate business card information (website, address, etc) but on the back we have our social media information to make sure people know where they can connect with us through our social media presence online.
If you are already paying to have materials created you should promote your online presence. If they become your friend on Facebook or follow you on Twitter even after they through away that business card you still have access to them when your promote yourself on either service.
And one more tip:
Suggest Your Facebook Page To Your Friends:
To be clear as I say suggest your page I do not mean be spammy, do not promote it daily to all of your friends but if you are in business and need to promote why not start with people that are comfortable with you and are likely to accept your Facebook page suggestion?
That way when you put out promotions they are likely to "Like" them and this in turn means it is likely to be seen by their friends as well which begins to take advantage of what social media is all about when it comes to business promotion, peer to peer recommendations. A recommendation from a friend will always go further than any advertisement someone could do.
In many cases we have heard customers tell us that they have created a Facebook Page but could not understand how to get people to see it. The step missed was suggesting to friends and family to get things moving.
The above tips may be simple but they will help get you moving at no cost, if you have further tips feel free to post in the comments.
A Few Facebook How-To’s
I have had a very large amount of people using the posts that I had previously did concerning How To Create A Facebook Fan Page and How To Set A Facebook Page Username. I thought I would do a quick post to give new readers and followers links to the previous posts rather than sending out the same email over and over with links to them. Also if you would like to connect with me on Facebook do so at Facebook.com/brucemarler or you can also become a fan of our properties at:
Here are links to the how to and Facebook info posts:
How To Create A Facebook Fan Page For Your Website
Setting Your Facebook Username For A Fan Page
How To Promote Your Facebook Fan Page
Facebook Fan Page Vs Facebook Group
It has really been great to see the explosion lately in usage of these social media tools to tie together a companies web presence with their social networking presence. With over 400 million users on Facebook and people spending more and more time on there it is more growing more important everyday to make sure you business is found not only in basic search but also in Facebook search as well.
Is Linkedin Gaining Traction Due To The Bad Job Market?
We have had quite a few seminars in recent weeks in various parts of the state of Missouri and during these seminars I ask several different questions related to technology usage. Some of these are about local search and print media trends but many are around social media and how it relates to how people are promoting their businesses online.
I always ask for a show of hands to find out how many people in the room have Facebook accounts (always more than 60 percent, typically way more), Twitter (typically 40 to 50 percent), and then Linkedin.
As someone who thinks Linkedin is one of the most underutilized social networks for getting business done it has always been interesting to see the number of hands raised, typically less than 20 percent, sometimes close to zero.
Why is that? Because most people do not understand that social networks can be used to get business done, with most peoples first knowledge of social networking coming from stories about MySpace (My who???) or from the early days of Facebook people cannot be faulted for not understanding the importance of social media and business but it has always been a nice feeling to see that look in peoples eyes once tools (and that is what it is) like Linkedin are explained and case studies shown.
Well, I have noticed a major uptick in Linkedin accounts when I ask for the show of hands these days. The percentage of people with accounts increased in every seminar we have had over the past month or so.
Why? I think I know.
With the economy being what it is and the tough job market continuing I think people are using every avenue they can. Not Linkedin is not just for making contacts, it has been another online source for the job hunt. A great tool to use when Monster.com is just not cutting it.
With Linkedin being a social network based on trust it seems only logical that people would actually start using it for job hunting, sure people have been doing this for years but I think there are quite a few newcomers that are just now figuring out the power of using peer recommendations for finding jobs.
I am glad to see this network starting to gain traction even with those not in the corporate or tech world. That is usually the biggest hurdle for online networks like this, getting to mainstream consumers is never easy. I think it is starting to happen.