Going into 2012, search engines such as Bing have started to understand that keyword matching is just part of the equation to figure out relevancy, and that the significance and the authority level of the web page is emerging as a larger determinant for search relevancy.

That brings us to your Linkbuilding Approach as a webmaster, business owner, or internet entrepreneur as we commence 2012. These Five (5) Linkbuilding Suggestions net you the backlinks and relevance you will certainly want this year.

Multiple But Relevant Links

All of us want a billion backlinks to our websites, and believe me, with a small amount of funds, you can get them. There are plenty of linkbuilding deals on Fiverr.com and websites like The Hoist that will sell you hundreds of links.

Problem is, Google is looking more than ever on quality which means sites linking to yours should be complimentary, in the same market space in the world, and somehow associated to your material.

Your landing page should in some way be an extension of the concepts put forth on the connecting site. If that website concerns gourmet foods and your page speaks to single parents, that type of link won’t help you much and in reality can damage your Google page rank.

So how do you get them?

• Talk to site proprietors hoping to exchange hyperlinks to begin with, generally done in a resources page. This is still a sound tactic and has existed for years.
• Leave blog comments on articles with similar subject matter as yours, especially authority sites (more on this later on).
• Distribute your articles for publication on news and blog websites that are a good fit for yours.
• Post applicable links to your website on social media websites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The best are links to blog posts or landing pages pertinent to Twitter trends or hash-tag lists and LinkedIn discussion groups.

Similar Neighbors

The realm of web search is going local and is placing more and more focus on local sites. Even if your business is not constricted by where you reside (such as an online SEO website that might work for clients globally), it is more useful than ever before for local businesses to be linking to yours.

Network in your Chamber of Commerce and push link exchange, keeping in mind that the more similar these businesses are to yours (and they’re local), the better off you are. If your SEO establishment is in San Diego, encourage your local links to read “SEO San Diego” in order to make your link relevant to their market and provide you with the local essence.

Authority Sites

There are a couple of major sorts of authority sites in the online world: huge, greatly trafficked, content specific sites (imagine Inc.com, Wall Street Journal), and educational and governmental pages. Search engines are still giving lots of street cred to university.edu pages and .gov sites, especially federal government (who knew).

The principal ways to achieve backlinks from these websites are to deliver valuable, unique material in the means of write-ups or leave responses to pieces currently on these pages. If you’re blessed enough to submit great material and get published on a high-authority site, that is worth its weight in gold to your linkbuilding method.

Don’t waste your time with auto-posting, scraping applications that will certainly post meaningless responses for you. They’ll go up but in most incidents be deleted in the policing of the page. You can explore the internet and find lists of rich PR .edu and .gov pages (sites with PR of 4, 5, 6, 7) that permit forum postings with backlinks. Buyer beware and frequently check the domains applying PR Checker.

Anchor Text Methods

This is one thing you can easily manage utilizing Article Marketing strategies, where you submit material for syndication and publication on high ranking sites. The actual words in your link, termed anchor text, need to be relevant to both the page on the website that is displaying your work, but additionally to the destination website that the hyperlink leads to.

That means that if you are linking “click here” you’re missing half the benefit of the link technique.

So how does this work? Back to the gourmet food page. You publish a write-up on that site about your best ways to employ cooking wine, then within the body of the write-up, you link red wine reduction recipe to, you got it, a webpage that contains exactly that. Give that fella a cigar!

Your Landing Pages

We just explained how your landing pages ought to be associated to the hyperlink. You ought to also be linking to several pages on your blog, commonly termed deep links, and not just your homepage.

This technique should be a natural if your website is composed effectively with a product page for each product and an article for each individual idea you may be linking to. This tells the search engines that your domain is material rich on lots of pages, and that is key to you winning the relevance medal.

Is doing this stuff simple? Nope, but that’s simply the point. You’re doing it the right way, and that practice will reward Linkbuilders in 2012.

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Here are a few timeless tips for building natural links that will attract and engage customers to your business blog:

1. Create content worth linking to. No matter how many tactics you find here and elsewhere, there simply is no substitute for creating content that others may find useful. With an Optimized approach to online marketing, understanding your market and customers is essential for developing an approach for content, SEO, Social and promotions that result in links. If you understand what content types, topics and formats resonate with influential link sources and the communities around them, your content promotion and social networking efforts can become more effective, more quickly and a “win” all around.

2. Competitive Link Research on competing web sites or blogs will help identify who is linking to competitor sites that are not linking to yours. This is back link analysis 101 and can still be useful for spotting opportunities of all kinds. For example, if another web site or blog is already linking to multiple competitors in a list of resources relevant to your product or service, there is a chance they’ll link to your blog about the same product/service category as well. Monitoring the competition using SEO link tracking and social media monitoring tools can reveal many, many different types of linking and content opportunities. They can also reveal what NOT to do.

3. Engage on other blogs and industry news websites that allow comments. Interactions should always be useful, timely and relevant.  Simply promoting links to your event or blog post as the first time comment does not provide much value. It’s like interrupting a conversation and trying to sell something to a group of people that know each other and you’re the stranger. Develop connections, ask questions, answer them, share resources and recognize others that contribute. When guided by topical themes and objectives, those behaviors can be instrumental and developing connections with influential link sources and the media.

4. Make Sharing Easy where ever you’re publishing useful content, especially on blogs.  While the social proof offered by Twitter, Facebook, Google+ counters is fairly superficial, they do work at attracting attention and validating to the reader that the blog post is worth checking out. Make the act of sharing easy by including sharing options but also by including titles that are social media optimized. Share titles will pre-populate a Twitter sharing window with text that is more interesting from a social share perspective.

Don’t leave it to the reader to write their own description of the blog post they’re sharing, although that ability should certainly exist. Of course, title tags should be keyword optimized for search engines. Sharing expands the visibility of your content on social networks and communities. Shared links can be a useful signal for search engines and the expanded visibility can catch the eye of another blogger or journalist that might link back to the source from their own website or blog.

5. Guest post on other blogs and include a link to your blog in the bio. In the course of getting to know blogs that already rank well on the keyword phrases you’re targeting, you may notice that they often accept guest blog posts from others. Contact the blog owner and suggest a compelling post that would be first and foremost, valuable to their readers. If it makes sense editorially to link from within the guest post to your own blog, be sure to use relevant keywords as the link text. Do not use the exact same link text every time. Make the anchor text relevant to the source and the destination.

6. Write testimonials or case studies for services and software that you use. They may publish with a link back to your blog.  Testimonials must be well written, genuine and specific in order to be useful for the service/product owner. Get at the essence of what’s great about the product or service and even add something unique. If you’ve written a review of the product/service on your blog, that can also get you a link from their press page.

7. Event and Job listings should always have a link back to your blog. Blogs can be useful recruiting tools that help candidates understand the culture of your company. When purchasing job listings on other web sites, add a link to your blog. The listings may expire, but may also introduce your blog to candidates that write their own blog and decide to write about a listing with a permanent link to the hiring company blog. The same goes for event listings, which like job listings, are often syndicated to networks that turn up in RSS feeds, as Tweets and updates on other social networks.

8. Distribute optimized news via a wire service with a link to your blog included. Our client, PRWeb, is a pioneer in providing competitive SEO value with press release distribution. It is essential the the release is well-written and offers compelling news worth sharing and linking to.  Many blogs and some news web sites will re-publish your press release exactly as it was distributed, including good links back to your blog. Journalists use News Search engines to look up past press releases and research on stories, which presents an opportunity to be found and included.

9. Contribute Op Eds or Articles to industry web sites, online newspapers, magazines and association websites. Your article can include a link to your blog in the credentials area.  If you suggest content to another web site such as a letter to the editor, why not keyword optimize the title? You might also include a link back to your blog where you’ve written many more articles on the same topic. Those links build credibility of your article and also for you as an author and subject matter expert.

Along the lines of op eds and contributed articles, be sure your media relations efforts include a link request when an industry publication decides to include you or your company in a story. Many newspapers and magazine websites have a policy of not linking out, but if you are diligent in asking and give a good resource for the link destination, it could pay off very nicely. News websites can be very useful to search engines and link sources.

10. ABN – Always Be Networking and growing your social networks, email lists and channels of distribution. Share especially useful content from your blog where relevant. Be useful to others and they will useful to you by promoting your content and attracting links. Don’t be gratuitous when sharing links to your own content, but when you have something particularly special and valuable that’s highly relevant to a particular network, then by all means, share it with them. Some are bloggers as well and may link to it from their own blogs as well as pass the link along to others.

11. Sponsor content on web sites or newsletters archived to the web that allow you to include a link. It may be a nofollow link, but it may not.  Many newsletters sent via email are archived to the web or have landing pages on the web. Ask those newsletters if you can buy an ad or even contribute a short article.  The article credits should include a link to your blog where there are more resources on the same or similar topic.

12. Hire bloggers to write content for you. They’ll often cross-post it to their own blog with a link back to yours. Of course, you should be considerate and simply mention that this is ok, don’t ask them or require them to do it. If you have regular contributors to your blog, those bloggers may be prone to promoting and linking to their work on your blog as a way to build attention to themselves.

Bonus tip: When others link to you, THANK THEM!  Building good will is one of the most underrated marketing skills online. Be genuine, thoughtful and courteous. Also be SMART and driven to get links where it makes sense.

What linking tactics for blogs have you found to be most effective? What challenges are you facing in attracting other sites to link to your blog?

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A recent study published by Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, an Australia-based research group found that less than 1-percent of Facebook “Fans” actually engage with brands. Researchers looked at the top 200 brands using Facebook’s “People Talking About This” metric as a proportion of overall fan growth over a six-week period in October 2011. As a result, the team discovered that the percentage of People Talking About This compared to overall fans was only 1.3%.  While this metric and approach is only one way to measure supposed engagement, the truth is that even by Facebook’s own standards of measurement, marketers are already boxed into a reporting process where each report serves as a benchmark for future activity. That’s the problem though. Engagement is confused with incidents and not outcomes or influence, the ability to cause desired effect or change behavior.

Businesses Take a Medium’alistic Approach

Brands and their marketers suffer from what I refer to as medium’alsim, a condition where inordinate value and weight is placed on the technology of any medium rather than amplifying platform strengths and ideas to deliver desired and beneficial experiences and outcomes.  Said another way, businesses are developing for the sake of development and establishing supporting presences without regard for how someone feels, thinks, or acts as a result. In doing so, “engagement” programs are calculated, brought to life in the form of an editorial calendar that, by its very nature, isn’t not designed to really engage people at all.

See, engagement is not defined through likes, comments, shares, RTs or impressions. This activity is simply a result of engagement.  Focusing on soft metrics is at the detriment of the customer experience and is potentially a distraction away from developing more meaningful connections and relationships. Engagement is by design. And, this is why businesses that are attempting to drive engagement numbers are benchmarking against lower standards. Instead of benchmarking against themselves, marketers and developers should consider benchmarking against the opportunity. Doing so is far more ambitious and as such, aspirational in the development of future strategies.

For example, I ran a quick experiment with a global beer brand to prove a point. We looked at the 1-percent engagement rate and decided to run a non-scientific experiment to not only debunk the value of the engagement number as defined, but also demonstrate the need to think through desired actions and outcomes. In the middle of a business day, I posted a picture of a frosty mug filled with said beer with an ocean view in the distance. I added one word to the post, “cheers.” Within minutes that 1-percent engagement rate was eclipsed with people uploading pictures of their favorite moments while enjoying their favorite beer. Along with comments, Likes, Shares, etc., the marketing and digital teams were temporarily elated but quickly realized that the engagement they witnessed was only fleeting. While a simple example, the lesson is that engagement must mean something more to groom the community toward desired sentiment, outcomes, or to simply serve the needs of the community based on stated expectations or desires.

Redefining Engagement to be More Engaging

It starts with redefining engagement as we know it today to ultimately improve experiences tomorrow. I spent some time exploring existing definitions and I was surprised to find a lack clarity around such an important word. Since we spent so much time talking about what engagement is not, I invested time in researching the best practices of brands that were clearly driving communities in a particular direction through digital, social, and mobile channels. Those companies include Virgin America, Dell, TOMS, Whole Foods, Giant Nerd, among others. As a result, a working definition for engagement came into view…

Engagement is defined by how a brand and consumer connect and interact within their networks of relevance.

Simple. But, it’s also incomplete. It’s not just about the moment or competing for attention, it’s about the aftereffect.

Engagement is measured by takeaway value, sentiment or feelings, and resulting actions following the exchange.

If we look at the nature of the community in which brands are investing today, editorial programming, contests, gimmicks, campaigns, etc. lend to only one of the multifaceted sides to customer engagement.  Community is much more than belonging to something, it’s about doing something together that makes belonging matter. This is why businesses must think about investing engagement by defining experiences, journeys, feelings and outcomes. Without doing so, they by default introduce experience divides that disrupt flow, hinder sentiment, and obstruct clicks to action.

Redefined engagement opens the door to new strategies and resulting metrics that lend to meaningful experiences and results. By designing more meaningful initiatives, businesses can now focus on causing effect, changing behavior, or reinforcing value where previous engagement metrics can now document the progress of progress. The ultimate measure however is now something more substantial, such as…

- Shift in sentiment
- Satisfaction
- Acquisition
- Referrals
- Conversion
- Leads
- Brand integrity/Reputation

Thinking through experiences, journeys, outcomes, and sentiment will at the very least improve the number of customer interactions and overall allegiance. It is in the relentless delivery of value that extends moments beyond merely competing for attention. Engagement is about cultivating community behavior against a defined vision, mission and most importantly, purpose. Step back to gain perspective and to see new possibilities that your competitors are missing. You are an architect of experiences and as such, you must begin with the end in mind. Then, reverse engineer the outcomes and experiences your community will value and in turn, your management will value as well.

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While that may be good conventional wisdom for a lot of things, it’s terrible wisdom for most aspects of online marketing. In fact, good marketing requires the opposite principle. Instead of resting on what appears to work well, we should be looking for ways to improve what is already working and make it work better than before.

Know what changes to make and when to make them

The thing about websites is that while the overall campaign may be a success, there are always areas that are not performing as strongly as possible. “Fixing” good Web marketing isn’t about changing what’s working well, so much as finding what isn’t working well and changing that.

The last thing you want to do is to start making random changes to your website. Every change must have a purpose and a point. Adding content is good, if it’s done strategically. If not, you’re just adding useless or ineffective content. Adding keywords to existing content can be a great way to expand your reach, but if you don’t do it strategically, you can create larger losses than gains in your search results.

In SEO, there are almost always things you can do to improve the performance of your website. Fix broken links, address poor architectural issues, write valuable content, research keywords and tweak keywords on a page. A good marketing strategist will tell you what’s working well and not so well, and then give you an idea what to do.

The key to making any change to your site is to measure the results. You have to know that your changes are making your overall performance better, not worse. One thing we often miss is that a small improvement in one area can sometimes create a bigger loss in another. That’s not good strategy!

Follow the ROI. Implement changes that improve results, even incrementally. We often see people not willing to make any kind of change because they don’t like it, yet they are not willing to test to see if it will, in fact, make things better for them. Don’t be afraid to do what you don’t like if it gets you better results. Not everyone thinks like you do!

In Web marketing, you don’t have to wait until something is broke to fix it. Being willing to make changes designed to continually make your site better. Amazon makes changes to its site on average of about every 2 weeks. Each one is designed to improve conversions from what was already an improvement from the time before.

We can learn something from that. Don’t break it, but do keep making your site better at drawing visitors, engaging with them for their needs, and driving them through the conversion process. Each successful change you make will push you further and further toward unbeatable. Just ask Amazon!

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Here is an insight into my typical blogging process:

THE BIRTH OF A BLOG POST

I am constantly bombarded with ideas so collecting inspiration for topics is a continuous process.  I may have an idea from something I see on TV, something I read, or a question from a student in class.  The trick is to have the discipline to capture these ideas when they occur. As soon as I can, I record these topics as a headline in WordPress, nothing more. That way, when it is time to blog, I have a wide selection of potential topics.

I currently have about 70 ideas in the hopper. Some of them will never see the light of day. Maybe some of them will be combined or trashed. Some of them you will see this week!

TIME TO WRITE

I usually do all of my blogging for the week in about a 3-4 hour period on a weekend morning. It has to be quiet with no distractions.  In this period my goal is to write at least two blog posts for the upcoming week. Usually I can write though an idea quickly but sometimes it takes adding and massaging over a couple of weeks to flesh out a big new idea.

During this quiet time I JUST WRITE.  I don’t necessarily spend a lot of time trying to be perfect right off the bat. Editing and refining can come later.

I also try to write ahead if I can so I have a few completed posts in case something happens and I can’t blog for some personal reason. I have about 10 posts in reserve. I rarely write during the week unless there is a short-term topical opportunity.

FINAL FLOURISHES

On Sunday night I’ll figure out what posts I’m going to publish for the week. I’ll take a last look at these pieces, do a final edit, and then “decorate” them with illustrations or graphics as needed.  I don’t often get feedback on the funny illustrations I come up with, but in my mind this is one of the fun reasons to come to the {grow} blog and it is a creative challenge for me to come up with something that will make you snicker.  My rule is that if I can’t execute an illustration idea in 10 minutes, I move on to something else. I have to be very disciplined about the time I spend on blogging.

At this point I’ll also spend some more time on the headline. Headlines are so important — more important than the actual blog copy because if you don’t grab your reader’s attention, they’ll never even get to the copy.  I find headlines very difficult to write. They must be accurate, descriptive, interesting and most of all, “tweetable!”  You have to make your posts easy to share!

PUBLISH

I have never posted an article that I have been completely happy with, and many times I’m a little nervous about what the reaction might be. Ultimately it takes courage to be an effective blogger, to put yourself out there, to be confident enough to be imperfect, and to take your licks.

My decision on what to publish is often determined by my work schedule. If I think a post will generate a lot of comments, I won’t publish that on a day that I can’t pay attention to the comment section. I post from one of the amazing {grow} contributing columnists on Wednesdays and a cartoon on Friday so I know I will have at least those days completely free to do client work.

COMMENTS

The best part of the blog is the community commentary. Here is my philosophy on comments:

• Comments are an opportunity to celebrate the people in your community.
• When people offer you a gift of their precious time to provide a comment, it only makes sense to give them a gift back and at least say “thank you.”  I try to acknowledge most comments.
• Comments build community.  This is where you create meaningful connections. I have written a lot about power and influence on the social web. In my estimation, the blog comment section is where the action is (and ironically it is not considered in a Klout score!).
• If you put yourself out there, you’re not going to connect with every person, every time, even in a community of well-intentioned professionals.  Don’t be thrown off-center by criticism. It’s a sign that you took risks. Take the high rode, stay positive.

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Video Optimization Seems Daunting

Marketers often falsely assume that a video is not easily optimized; the process, they figure, is not worth the trouble. After all, you have to produce and edit a compelling and relevant short video, find a space for it on your site and then convince others to view it.

However, if your company embeds videos from its own YouTube channel, the effort is in fact worth it. YouTube, in sync with its parent company Google, provides plenty of opportunities for SEO. The more familiar you are, the easier it is. Here are a few suggestions for technical optimization:

• Say keywords out loud in the video script. Google uses speech recognition software to convert audio for closed-captioning, meaning your audio can be crawled by search engines.
• Include the word “video” and your company name in the YouTube video description. It sounds redundant, but it works.
• In the video description, place a link to your company at the very start. The placement is important because roll-over viewing only displays the first part of the description.
• Place three to five keywords in the video tags. Put them in quotes and separate them with a space.
• Enable comments, ratings, video responses, embedding and syndication. You want viewers to interact with you to increase organic search rankings.
• Optimize your YouTube channel. It should share a name with your company. Put keywords in your channel tags, just like you would in individual video tags.

Some Services are Difficult to Market Visually

B2B marketing seems especially difficult to pull off with video, since you’re often selling parts or products in bulk or hard-to-illustrate services. You rarely have reason to communicate directly with consumers, and you have fewer options to make a compelling, colorful case.

Let’s say you’re a small business credit card processor. You don’t have many opportunities for video storytelling, so you’re tempted to scrap the idea of a marketing video entirely. A video demonstration is difficult, sure, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make a simple video discussing benefits. Consider slides to display data and facts so that you’re not simply staring into the camera. Keep it short and use the optimization suggestions mentioned above.

Businesses Assume Other Businesses are Disinterested in Video

That might have been true years ago, when videos took longer to load and play. But because of YouTube embedding and Flash, viewing a marketing video takes next to no time. Video has become less of a luxury and more of a necessity in recent years.

Because video is more widely accepted as a B2B marketing tool, be aware that your competition is growing. You must emphasize quality so that yours is the video that gets watched. It’s not enough to market your leather gloves with a salesman speaking directly into the camera about how he uses his, and it’s just as bad to have an incredibly busy animated adventure selling the gloves. Follow these tips when making your marketing video:

• Simplicity is key. One concept per video, and don’t pack it with unnecessary frills that could annoy your business viewers. Background music is fine, but don’t let it overpower the video.
• Short videos are best. A minute or two should be plenty of time. You don’t want to lose your viewer, and you must consider that certain video-viewing platforms (including smart phones and tablets) still are slow to load longer videos.
• Illustrate thoughts with graphics and still shots, overdubbing with voice.
• Use quality editing equipment. Consumer-level programs such as Final Cut and iMovie typically can get the job done if you’re familiar enough with them.

If you have any suggestions for B2B marketing videos, or if you can refer any compelling videos you’ve made, please feel free to comment below.

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First off, the only way to get on Pinterest is through an invite from someone already on Pinterest. Once you get your invite, you can use either your Facebook, or Twitter account to set up a new Pinterest account. Once you have logged in, you can upload a picture to serve as the avatar for your profile. From there you are taken to a listing of default “pin boards” where you can start pinning up pictures immediately to get you going (ex. Pictures of Me, Things I Love, etc.). You can even make up your own pin boards, and pin pictures to them as well. There are several categories to choose from, such as Art, Fitness, and Sports. There’s even an Other category if you still can’t find a category that would fit your picture. Surprisingly enough, Pinterest is not limited to just pinning pictures. You can also pin videos as well. So if you have a favorite video that you would like to share with others, just go ahead, and pin it up.

Here’s where it gets interesting for those who are doing marketing, and looking for a new avenue to market your products (for those who haven’t figured out some ideas already). Pinterest also has a Gifts category that is sectioned off according to price. Therefore, if you are looking to market a low, or high dollar item, then doing so on Pinterest is a possibility. Please keep in mind that spamming the site will get this feature shut down eventually, so please utilize this feature with wisdom, and some degree of moderation.

Here are some ideas of how you can use Pinterest to market your products:

– Write an article about various products that you offer under a particular price point (ex: Great Gift Ideas Under $20). Pin the pictures in the article to a pin board in your Pinterest account, and share them with others.
– Create a video teaching someone how to do something, and share the video on Pinterest. To make this idea even more powerful, you could write an article, or blog post, and include the video on the blog post, and then pin the video from the blog post to your Pinterest account.
– Take some funny pictures in your area, or neighborhood, and put the URL to your website at the bottom of the picture, and then share the picture on one of your pin boards.

While Pinterest is definitely a marketer’s dream, in order to help keep it that way, there are still a few things to ask yourself before posting a product picture, or video to Pinterest:

– Does the picture that you’re sharing provide value? Is it one that people would be willing to share? If the picture appeared in a regular magazine, would people pause to look at it, or would they skip right over it?
– Does the information in the video that you are sharing solve a problem? Does it highlight something unusual, or different? If its a video that you wouldn’t mind writing an article about, then there is a good chance it would do well on Pinterest.
– Have I “Liked”, or commented on other media shared on Pinterest that is not my own? If you show that you are interested in other people’s work, this will persuade people to be more accepting of your marketing efforts.

Pinterest definitely has some great possibilities in regards to marketing. Since the majority of people who use Pinterest are interested in finding interesting things on the internet, and also sharing those little known gems with others, Pinterest is a great place to share your articles, pictures, and videos with a growing population of people who engage with others via social media. Also, due to the fact that person wishing to join Pinterest must first get an invite from someone already on Pinterest, you won’t have to worry about having only “spam bots” view your shared media. But again, all of this must be taken with a grain of salt. If Pinterest is used wisely, then it can continue to be a profitable marketing avenue for many years to come. But if it is abused, then soon restrictions will be put in place making it difficult to market successfully on Pinterest. Keep that in mind when you formulate your marketing plans for Pinterest.

Do you need a Pinterest Invite? Feel free to get in touch with me. And don’t forget to follow me, you can follow me on Pinterest as Bhartzer.

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Plenty of posts have been written about all the new features, but I want to point out a few that I think are ripe for marketers.

The obligatory debate rages on about whether or not this format is good or bad for companies, smart marketers are discovering some tweak that need to be made in order to get the most from the new design. (You can get some helpful tips on pages from the Facebook Help page as well)

The Cover Image

The Cover Image dominates the Facebook real estate

The biggest change from a design standpoint is the addition of what Facebook is calling the Cover Image. This 851 x 315 pixel image dominates the head of the page and while this tip isn’t much of a trick as a reality – use this space!

Because the image so dominates the design of the page make sure you send a very strong visual image with this real estate. There are some rules that Facebook is going to enforce, such as no calls to action and no references to “Like” or other Facebook terms.

You will also have the ability to tuck a profile kind of square image (180 x 180) into the cover. The sizes and position of these images are fixed but you can get pretty creative with this space. The main bit of advice is to get an image that says a lot about what your brand is all about.

The About Box

The About tag offers a nice branding opportunity

Down below the Cover Image is the About tab. This box links to the traditional about page that has always existed. However, you now have the ability to dictate what show up on your Facebook homepage in this box.

Edit your about settings to dictate what shows on the about tab

If you’re set up as a local business in your Facebook About settings then the default for the About box is your address and phone. This may be fine, but if you would rather have a tagline and link to your website, then edit your About settings. Keep the text short, about 90 characters including web address, so that it doesn’t fall off the page.

Tab Calls to Action

Create custom calls to action for your other pages and apps

To the right of the About box you’ll see images for all of your current pages and apps or what used to be called tabs. You can now have 12 apps and pages listed and the first four will show up on this bar.

Here’s the cool trick for this one. Now you get to create images for these apps instead of simply using the default app or page images. So now if you want to send someone to a page to grab a free eBook you can use an image to create a call to action. You simply open the page and hit edit settings and then upload a 111 x 74 pixel image that you want to represent your page. You can rearrange the order of the tabs to make the four most important stand out.

The Pin

You can pin an item to the top of your page for 7 days

Another way to bring focus to something you are marketing is to pin a story or item to the top of the page. As the admin you can pin a story for up to 7 days and will appear as your top story.

To pin an item you simply click on the edit button to the top right of a story and hit Pin to Top.

The Star

When you star or highlight an item it spreads across both columns

Facebook lines the posts and updates on your page up in two columns. If you want to bring special emphasis to an important post or highlight a product launch you can hit the star in the upper right corner of the update to highlight it.

This makes the post spread across the page and brings special emphasis to it.

Take the time to update these little features today. I’ve seen a traffic spike from Facebook due to some of these more marketing friendly little tweaks.

In the end though it’s still about the content. Make sure you continue to invest in the wall and creating visually and mentally stimulating content.

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I’ve seen this in various forms since we opened Ignite Social Media in 2007. Don’t get me wrong, we have great clients and they typically “get it.” But it’s recently become clear to me that the people I come across that don’t get it often miss two fundamental points. Specifically:

1. Social media marketing doesn’t work unless people share; and
2. People share content for specific reasons, most of which have to do with how it makes them feel about themselves.

Let’s examine these in turn.

The Math Works: Shares Trump Broadcast

You’ve got Facebook fans and Twitter followers and blog readers. You even have some YouTube subscribers. Excellent. Let’s say, for simple math’s sake, that you have 10,000 of each. Here’s some math to think about.

10,000 Facebook fans * 16% average fan viewing = 1,600 people likely to read your post.

Not very impressive if nobody shares your post. Now, let’s assume that 10% of your fans who see the post (1.6% of your total fans) choose to like, comment or share, so that it goes into their news feeds. Now the math gets better.

(10,000 Facebook fans * 16% average fan viewing) + ((10% of viewers sharing) * (150 average friends) * (12% average friend viewing)) = 1600 + 2880 = 4,480 likely to read your post.

Now we’re doing about 3x better, even before a few friends of fans may share it even further. It’s because of the following truism. (Call it Tobin’s Law and make me feel good, will ya?)

The size of your network is always smaller than the size of your network’s networks.

I didn’t have to major in math to be pretty confident in that statement, yet it’s forgotten. There’s plenty of research showing that friends of fans are statistically more likely to buy than non-friends, so networks of networks are great targets.

Why People Share

This is the secret sauce. People share either because you’ve blown them away with the product experience (congratulations, by the way) or because it makes them feel good in some form or fashion.

That’s it. Does your social interaction, social promotion, social content fit one of those criteria? If so, you’ll do well. If not, it will sit there, unshared.

This is not new. 45 years ago, in 1966, Ernest Dichter did a study on word of mouth marketing that was recently resurrected by Harvard Business Review. We can see why people share in this pie chart.

Product Involvement

Product involvement, says Dichter, is the most prevalent reason that people talk to their friends about products they encounter. He says it’s about 33% of the product based word of mouth and it’s because the experience with your product is either so surprising or so fulfilling that they must tell their friends.

This is great. If your product development people can give you this and if you can create an online experience about the product that creates that same feeling, your sharing will go far. Our Jeep client has a rabid fan base because of the product experience and the Jeep Facebook fan page is always abuzz.

Self Involvement

If you don’t have a great product that just lights up the Internet, you’ll need to make your audience feel something else to share. Self involvement, which Dichter says is about 24% of the shares, means that the person feels smart by having inside information. Most everyone likes to be an expert in some area, and like it when their friends look up to them for it.

So if you can share your knowledge or share your opinion by sharing content crafted by a brand, that symbiotic relationship may be the perfect way to go.

Other Involvement

Self involvement makes us sound awfully self centered and, many times, we are driven by self interest. But we also like to help others.

Dichter says that about 20% of the time, we share stuff because it will help a friend or a neighbor out. “Here’s a coupon for that product I know you’re thinking about buying,” or “I came across this really negative review of product A. You may want to avoid it.” This helps people, but I also believe it makes us feel good about doing it, so chalk another one up for some small amount of self interest.

Message Involvement

This is why we share videos of funny cats. This is why we share articles about computer viruses. 20% of the shares fall into message involvement, where the “message is so humorous or informative that it deserves sharing.”

Again, I believe we share funny content in part because a small part of us feels funnier because we found it and shared it. So there’s that self-interest and that “how it makes me feel about me” creeping into the equation again.

Summary

Ask yourself if your social content fits this criteria. Will it be shared for one (or more) of the four reasons outlined above? If not, can you imagine a reason that someone will share it, other than the fact that they work for your company? If not, maybe it’s not the best content to be putting on the social web.

Regardless of format (blog posts, status updates, videos) you should be thinking of its “share factor” while also thinking about the search engine benefits of the content. The best pieces have that social passalong we’re all looking for, plus the ability to be discovered in search engines for months to come.

Who knew that 50-year-old research could so help inform social media marketing?

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Being distant from clients has disadvantages. Because you can’t “swing by” the client’s office, or easily schedule time to get together, it creates an additional burden in the communication process. We have to double our efforts to make sure efficient methods of communication are in place.

Open Up Your Communication Options

So what is the best way to communicate with distant clients? Is it by phone, email, instant messenger, Skype or social media?

I think they can all be valid forms of communication, although none is exclusively the “best” method. How you communicate can be different for each client. In fact, they can all be used, depending on a particular need at a particular time. Find out which communication methods work best for you and your clients and go with that as much as possible.

Phone: This is clearly the more traditional approach, but no less effective or important. We find that email can be cumbersome or require lots of back and forth; sometimes it just helps to pick up the phone and hammer out details. Phone calls are much more personal and can really help when handling sensitive concerns.

Skype: Skype is great, especially if you are using the video and screen-sharing options. The downside with Skype is we often have poor connectivity issues that lead to sound or video loss. To combat this, we use Skype in conjunction with a phone call so we never lose audio even if we lose video. Skype is the best way to meet with clients “face to face” without traveling. It doesn’t eliminate the need to meet with clients in person, but it does provide an added personal level.

Email: There is a big push right now for companies to eliminate email for internal communications. I’m not so sure about that. Email is a great way to communicate on your time and allow someone else to respond on their time. Email is great with clients for the same reason. It allows a conversation to take place at the best time for each party involved so everyone stays as productive as possible.

Instant Messages: We don’t use IM a lot for our clients but we do internally. While it can be great to make instant contact, it is also the most interruptive form of communication and can lead to reduced productivity if you get too many IMs too often. Used properly, however, it can be a great way to have a quick conversation to answer urgent questions without the delays of email.

Social Media: I would never rely on social media to communicate with clients. It’s far too spotty to be an effective means of communicating anything of importance. If your clients choose to follow your Twitter, Facebook or RSS feeds, great, but I wouldn’t rely on a Facebook message to communicate with a client. Social platforms are great for pushing out good information that anyone, including clients, can choose to read or ignore. Anything important needs to be handled through other methods.

Can You Over-communicate with Clients?

When working on a client account, there can be a lot of communication as recommendations, consulting info, thoughts, ideas, approvals and updates that need to be shared. Is there an appropriate level of communication you should aim for? Should you be in touch with them daily, weekly or monthly?

If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you can’t over-communicate. But each client is different and the level of communication they need varies. It’s important to find that place between what the client wants and what they need. Give them more than they want and never less than they need! After a few weeks or months of working together, you’ll get a feel for what is appropriate for the work being done.

What works for one may be different than what works for another, but if you find the best way to communicate with each client, you’re more likely to be sure they stay happy. If you have no clear ways to communicate with clients, establish internal guidelines that will provide the framework for consistent and effective communication moving forward.

Silence can magnify frustrations and inhibit results. But good communication covers over a multitude of frustrations and magnifies the positive. The time it takes to open up the lines of communication is far more valuable than the time itself, even if it is taking away from “important” work. Perception is everything and good communication improves the perception of your success.

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