Social media is fast becoming one of the best ways to create awareness of your small business and let customers know what you can offer them. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more recently Google +, all offer extra web presence and ways to communicate directly to the people that are most likely to need the product or service you offer.

While you should not spread yourself too thin, one thing to remember is to try and focus your efforts on the types of social media that are best suited for you. Facebook and Twitter are the two top ways to communicate with your customers and should not be ignored, along with LinkedIn and the up and coming Google +.

If you are using videos on your website then signing up to Vimeo or YouTube is a good idea too. But there are plenty more out there, which may be especially suited to your business, so don’t ignore the lesser known networks!

How to get started with social media

If you are new to using social media, then begin by signing up to Facebook. It’s the most widely used form of social media and you have a variety of options when it comes to presenting your business on the network. You can choose from creating a personal account, a business account, or a business fan page.

Each has its differences and unfortunately the business account has the most limitations on it, so it is probably best to go with one of the other two. Creating a business fan page is a great idea because all your updates will automatically be sent to anyone that is a fan of your business.

Next sign up to Twitter and try to register your business name as your username. Creating a LinkedIn profile should be your next port of call. You may or may not already have a blog for your business, but if you don’t, start one now!

WordPress is widely regarded as one of the best web blogging platforms out there, and it’s simple to set up and is easy to integrate with social media websites. Get some quality content up on your blog and try to keep adding to it regularly. The more interesting your posts, the more people will look at them, so don’t post any old drivel.

Combining your social media accounts

It can take a while to get all the accounts setup but once you have it’s time to combine them and really harness the power of social media for your marketing goals. Connecting your different accounts is not particularly difficult, just go to the account or profile option pages once you are logged in at each website.

Begin with connecting your Twitter account to your Facebook page, as this will then post all of your tweets onto Facebook. This is very easy to do with the Twitter app on Facebook. To configure the app, simply press “go to application” and then click “allow”, following prompts to log in. Now you will update not just your Twitter followers, but also you Facebook fans every time you tweet. This will save you time and your message will reach more of your customers.

Next you need to think about how to make the most out of your blog. Using the ShareThis tool is a great way of giving the reader a wide range of options as to which social media they want to share your blog post with. Enable this tool on your blog and your blog’s content should start spreading across the web. Also, install one of the varieties of Twitter buttons available so that readers can instantly retweet your blog’s content to all of their followers too, with one click of the mouse.

To let all your LinkedIn connections know instantly when there is a new post on your blog, link your WordPress blog to your LinkedIn account with the WordPress app for LinkedIn. Search for the app and follow the instructions, but remember that your LinkedIn and Twitter worlds are now intertwined.

HootSuite users can also amalgamate the two services using the third-party app. This handy tool will then automatically publish a short introduction to your new blog post on your LinkedIn profile, so that people can link through to your content from the LinkedIn website.

Once you have done all of this you will find your updates, tweets, messages and blog posts reaching many more people than they did before. The result should be more awareness of your business and what it does, an increasing amount of fans and followers, along with an integrated way to communicate with all your customers.

About Olivia

Olivia Lennox is a London-based SEO and social marketing consultant. Having pioneered 2011′s most prominent viral campaign, her ambition for 2012 is to lead small businesses into social media success.

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If you run a small business you may know:

1. You need a website AND
2. Social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, etc.) provide important ways of connecting with potential clients (and current clients).

But don’t stop there! Learn ways to integrate social media with your website. Potential clients who find your website might want to learn more by visiting your social networks, and possible customers on your social networks may want to learn more about your business by exploring your website.

Where can you place social media icons on your website?

There are no exact rules of placement of social media icons on your website. Put them in places where you want potential customers to take action. This could mean a header, footer, a contact page (see illustration of social media icons on a contact page at right), or on the sidebar of a blog. Whatever place you choose, it’s a good idea to think about making it a spot where one can easily add an icon – after all, social media networks are popular, and you may decide a new one is worthy of placement on your website.

On some websites, businesses place social media icons next to highlighted staff members, as one staff member may be using one social media for the business and another may use two different ones. This may seem obvious, but be sure the icons actually link properly to the social media site. How annoying to try to click on a Twitter icon with no link.

What kinds of plugins are available to help with integration?

There are many plugins available for integrating social media with your website. If you use WordPress, you can search the WordPress codex for recommendations on plugins. Some of the Facebook plugins that can show your site are especially enticing – wouldn’t you want to join a group or like a site where 100′s of other smiling faces have already liked? See example of Expand2Web’s Facebook Like Box plugin at right. You can see a larger version of the Facebook Like Box on the About Websites for Small Biz page. Here’s an article talking about various Facebook plugins in detail.

A recent newcomer to the social media mix is Google+. You may want to add the little + button to the bottom of your posts, next to a Like button and Tweet button. Google+ little plus signs can influence how search engines rank site pages. Sites with more plusses will have more influence.

Some plugins can help you with placing multiple social media networks on your website. Addthis, a social media plugin that can help you link to multiple networks, is informative because it includes analytics. This can be quite helpful if you need to report back to the boss on the site’s progress with social media.

Link back to your website on social media

On the social media sites, link back to your website in creative ways. For example, you might write a blog post on a topic that will interest a wide variety of your Facebook fans. Make sure to create a nice icon on the blog post that will appear when you put the link on Facebook business page, so it will be more enticing for users to click. Spend time to develop the meta description for the post, as this will show up on Facebook as the description. Also, talk to people about the post by using friendly, concise language. People relate to other people – if you capture their interest, they may want to learn more.

Above is an example of a shared page on Facebook with a thumbnail of space to highlight the post. Wouldn’t you be more likely to click on it if has interesting imagery?

How do you know the social media effect is working?

Are you getting hits to your own site via social media? You can keep track of social media traffic to your site via Google Analytics and other web analytics packages. In the other direction, you can monitor whether and how much people are putting your content in their social media streams by how many likes, tweets and plusses you get on your posts.

On the right is a panel from a Google Analytics screen – to see how many hits a site got from sources such as Facebook or Twitter (Twitter now shows up as t.co), go to Standard Reporting tab and click Traffic Sources->Sources->Referrals.

How are you integrating social media with your website?

About Leora

Leora Wenger builds websites for small businesses, libraries and three Rutgers University departments. She loves tweaking PHP, composing a striking web design, stretching WordPress, and publicizing sites. In her spare time she’s a mom, wife and daughter. Every now and then she squeezes in the time to paint a watercolor or two.

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Modern day businesses are living in a digital age where the key to success relies highly on online presence. As a small business owner you’re probably familiar with the marketing benefits that social media profiles can provide for your business. With increased traffic, brand exposure, and arguably better Google rankings, social media is currently the word on every business owner’s lips.

The advantages however, of social profiles for small businesses aren’t restricted to customer marketing purposes. Business social profiles can also help you to recruit new employees more effectively and keep staff turnover to a minimum by sourcing the best candidate for your position.

Small businesses need to grow in order to be as successful as possible; and to grow you’ll need to increase your staff numbers. Many small businesses make the mistake of taking recruiting too lightly as it can be a time consuming process, yet choosing the right employee from a stack of applicants is a crucial decision which could completely change the dynamic of your business.

Advertising

There are many recruitment aspects of social media just waiting to be taken advantage of. Firstly, there’s the initial concept of free job vacancy advertisements. This can be used in the same way you’d market a new product or service you’re offering via social channels. A simple status update advertising the vacancy should attract adequate attention.

Advertising vacancies on online job boards can be rather expensive, whereas you can post anything on Facebook free of charge – keeping recruiting costs to a minimum. You can include a link to your website where the vacancy is listed so those who are interested are directed to the correct location. In order to use Facebook as an effective job listing tool however, you’ll have to gather a rather large fanbase of relevant people.

Sourcing Employees

You can also use Facebook to scout for talented individuals who you’d like to recruit. You can track students who have just graduated with a relevant degree and are looking for career opportunities, or find someone who’s been laid off and looking for work within your industry. Send them a friend request, and if they accept they will be able to view any status updates you post regarding job vacancies.

Communicating with Applicants

Connecting and communicating with potential employees using a platform that they feel comfortable with is an excellent way to show how much you value your employees. Too many employers make the mistake of interrogating potential employees at the interview and “laying down the law”.

Although letting employees know their boundaries is essential, playing the “big, bad boss” can deter a valuable employee from joining your organisation. If you engage with candidates on a mutual platform, such as Facebook or Twitter, you’re more likely to spark an interest and get insight into the real person behind the “job interview persona”.

You can also use social media to have a personal view on applicants who’ve applied for a role within your company. Very rarely do people show their true colours at an interview and it’s surprising just how good people can be at lying! On Facebook however, people generally tend to be more themselves so you can see what they’re really like. Obviously you’ll want an employee who has a certain level of charisma, but if all their pictures include them naked and passed out on a bed then they may be worth reconsidering.

There are over 750 million Facebook users, so disregarding social media sites within your organisation limits your marketing and recruitment strategies. Using social media as a recruiting tool helps to broaden your horizons when hiring new employees. So create social profiles, gather a fanbase and start sharing!

About Stephanie

Stephanie Staszko writes for flat fee recruitment specialists Blue Octopus. She enjoys writing about social media and online marketing and her guilty pleasure, home improvement.

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YouTube is the world’s most popular video sharing site, not to mention the number two search engine in the world. With such a heavyweight online status it’s no wonder YouTube has become a key platform for online users to dominate on the web. One of the biggest ways users think to do this is by creating viral video content or by becoming a YouTube Partner, but you might find out that this approach is completely the wrong way to go about cracking YouTube.

YouTube Partnership has gone under a lot of scrutiny lately, and the concept of viral video has been debated in depth in both positive and negative lights. So why shouldn’t you want to become a YouTube Partner? Why should you want avoid a viral video status? This article aims to tackle those big questions once and for all.

There’s A Tiny Partner Profitability

Reel SEO recently published a very informative article highlighting how little money YouTube Partners actually make, noting how a viral standing on YouTube may not be that profitable at all. The article highlighted two case studies where the users were making between $1 and $2.50 per 1,000 views for their viral video content.

As YouTube allows on page advertising, it would be within reason to suggest that the ads being placed on these viral videos are paying for that placement and as such would surely be providing YouTube with a lot of revenue. Yet this money doesn’t seem to transfer equally to those who actually created the viral video content to begin with. Now this is just an educated speculation, but it certainly doesn’t paint a picture of viral video being profitable.

The biggest issue with viral videos gaining a Partnership is that the majority of YouTube Partners are individual users and not brands. This means that the amount of revenue Partners can generate from their viewership is very small. Unlike a brand that may have a strong connection with users, with lots of products/services to sell, individual Partner users don’t have such a connection or much in the way of products/services.

The two cases Reel SEO highlights are such genuine real-life experiences that there’s not an awful lot the YouTube users who made the video can do to gain any other source revenue, other than from views. The Partners may try and create stickers or t-shirts to try to monetize the viral wave, but the cost and distribution of those products will undoubtedly prove extremely costly once the viral hype fades away.

Realistically a viral Nike ad will certainly boost Nike revenue, but a viral video of a cute kid has no monetary worth in terms of branches of revenue, and clearly won’t make much from its viral standing either.

Viral Audiences Are Extremely Detached

The biggest reason you shouldn’t want to become a YouTube Partner is because it tends to only accept viral users and videos with viral potential, which means the whole process and cost won’t be worth your time and effort.

Viral video has typically been the dream of all Internet video marketers, yet it could quickly become a nightmare and here’s why:

The online world is fickle, fast moving and ultimately users only want to see entertaining videos, which are everywhere on the web. The furthest connection an online user will realistically make with a viral video is a comment, a social media share or a like. The extremely passive and detached relationship the online world has with viral videos means that they won’t invest much time or effort into watching the video, and especially not interacting with the video.

What Should You Want?

It’s not so much that you shouldn’t want your video content to go viral, but more a case of wanting a viewership that maintains a long popular life on the Internet without going stale. Establishing a longstanding amount of online popularity will allow you to grow your single video into a widely popular video series, which is far more powerful and profitable than a forgettable, one time video output.

If you are a brand or business you should want to use Internet video to help spread brand awareness and encourage a growth in sales, social media influence and of course website traffic. Bloggers too can seek to follow a similar path if they’re looking to boost their Subscribers and viewership. The reason brands, businesses and bloggers should do this is because playing a slow, popular game with Internet video allows you to build up a stronger online presence and create a stronger relationship with your viewers.

This is where you make those lasting connections that can create all sorts of short and long tail opportunities, and allow you to enjoy a greater stream of revenue than a mere few bucks a month for being a YouTube Partner.

There’s no easy way to crack YouTube and viral videos and Partner placements may actually do a lot more hindering than helping. However, by following the essential marketing basics of cracking YouTube through social media sharing, embedding video content onto your blogs and websites, search engine optimising your YouTube video content for a strong search engine ranking on both YouTube and Google, and perhaps testing out some creative video email campaigns, you may just do it.

What’s your experience with viral video and YouTube Partners? Share your knowledge in the Comments section below.

About Andy

Andy Havard is a Marketing Executive at Skeleton Productions, a UK based Internet video production company.

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While social media is essentially a free tool for businesses to use for advertising and customer connection purposes, chances are likely that your business has at least a small social media budget.  This budget can go towards market research, hiring new people to deal exclusively with social media, social media based advertising, or many other social media related items.

How do you decide how and  where to spend your social media budget, though? The key is understanding what different social media  networks can do for your business and how you can best leverage them for your needs.

Research the demographics

One way to decide how best to use your business’s social media budget is to understand who uses different types of social media tools. For instance, Twitter has a higher concentration of middle-aged  adults than does MySpace or Facebook, and Facebook is best known for the college-age and twenty- something crowd it draws on a regular basis.

Understanding who is using these different social media outlets will help you decide where you can best plug in your budget dollars, since you’ll want to target the social media outlets that have more of your target demographic audience already engaged.

Figure out the free stuff first

Before you start budgeting out money from your social media budget, first figure out what your business can do without any extra costs. If you already have a web master, for instance, you could tack a couple of social-media-related job tasks onto that person’s job description.

Many small business owners handle the bulk of social media interactions and updates on their own, as well. Once you’ve experimented with different types of social media and understand what you can get for free, then you’ll be ready to start allocating your money towards boosting your social media presence and success.

Look at options you need to pay for

Again, before you start allocating dollars, make sure you know what’s out there. For instance, your business might decide to hire a part-time freelancer to write your blogs so that they are more polished and professional than what you might write on your own. You may also decide to use social couponing tools like Groupon or Living Social to connect with a local audience; these tools can be somewhat expensive, both in upfront costs and in the services and products you end up offering at a steep discount, but they can net you a ton of new business in your local area!

Another good option for spending your money on social media is to hire a consultant to help you lay out a social media campaign. While you can probably spend enough time online researching your different options to come up with a campaign for your business, it may be more cost-effective to hire a social media expert to help your business come up with a plan.

Consultancy fees can be steep, but an excellent consultant can save you money in the long run by helping your business come up with a social media plan that fits into your business’s current long-term budget. Plus, a consultant who really knows her stuff may be able to help your business create a truly successful social media campaign that really boosts your business’s bottom line!

Decide where the money goes, but be flexible

When you’re first starting out budgeting for any type of business-related operation or task, you know that you need to both make solid decisions and let those decisions be flexible. The same goes for your social media budget. Make choices that you think will benefit your business, but be sure to track how your social media paid campaign is working for your business. If you feel that re-allocating funds will help make your campaign successful, go for it!

Remember, it will probably take six months or even longer to get real, tangible results from your social media campaign, so hang in there, and don’t be afraid to try something new if what you’re doing now simply isn’t working for your business!

About Daniela

Daniela Baker is a social media advocate helping entrepreneurs evaluate small business credit cards at CreditDonkey. She also contributes to the writing team’s research on social media.

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Today feels very different without Steve Jobs.

We lost one of the greats of our age- in the same panthon as Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman.

Even though I didn’t know Steve personally, he has been a role model and hero for me for many years, and had a big impact on my life.

I learned about the magical world of computers on his first invention (with Steve Wozniak) as a kid – Apple ][+. I got sucked into the games, and learning to program this amazing new creativity machine. This launched me into a whole career which I am excited an passionate about still today.

I used to hate my cell phone. Now it is a wondrous device for personal productivity, fun and entertainment.

And he inspired me to leave my cushy corporate job, and start my own company to “make a dent in the universe.”

Even though he is gone, he will continue to guide many of my actions as I strive to that high bar he set for “thinking different.”

Rest in peace Steve. You have changed the world for the better.

Here are some of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes:

What a computer is to me is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with, and it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

It’s better to be a pirate than to join the Navy.

That’s been one of my mantras: focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

We are artists, not engineers.

Let’s go invent tomorrow instead of wondering what happened yesterday.

I’m as proud of what we don’t do as I am of what we do.

Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that.

Let’s make a dent in the universe!

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

Social media and SEO go hand-in-hand when it comes to building your online brand. The two disciplines are intertwined more than ever and the most successful websites are the ones who have managed to leverage social media for SEO and vice versa. No longer existing in separate silos, the lines between social media marketing and SEO are slowly disappearing.

In order to give your brand the best chance at succeeding in the online world, here are 3 ways you can derive SEO value from your time spent on social networking sites:

Link between profiles
Think of social media marketing like the wheel of a bicycle. Each social profile is one of the spokes and your website is the central hub linking them all together.

You never want the visitor’s journey to end at any given social profile. By interlinking your social profiles with each other, as well as with your website, you are encouraging visitors to extend their interaction  with your company and your brand. The longer you can keep them engaged the better chance you have of getting them to convert.

Linking between profiles also gives you the chance to connect with your target audience on more than one platform, increasing the amount of touch points your brand has in their online lives. For instance, if someone connects with you on LinkedIn, why not send them a message inviting them to follow you on Twitter and to Like your Facebook page? You don’t know which one of these social profiles plays the most important role in their online social lives, so by  creating a loop between all of your social profiles you are helping ensure your message gets heard at least once.

Keep in mind that the end goal of social media marketing should be getting your social connections over to your site, not driving traffic from your site towards your social profiles. Don’t dedicate prominent real estate on your website to giant “Connect with us on Facebook!” buttons. Your site should focus on converting your visitors, not turning them into fans/friends/followers. Keep the “connect with us” buttons on your site, but don’t let them overshadow the other goals of your site.

Promote your content

Content marketing forms the backbone of your SEO and drives most of your online marketing tactics in general. But creating great content is only half of the battle. It doesn’t matter how unique, informative, inspiring or useful your content is if no one sees it. That’s where social networks become incredibly valuable from a marketing perspective. Social media marketing thrives on fresh content and gives your social connections a reason to interact with your social profiles. It keeps your brand top-of-mind and present in their online social lives.

Every time you (or one of your connections/readers) share a piece of your content on a social network that creates a valuable inbound link for your site. Not just ways to drive traffic, these social signals are being used by the search engines to determine the importance of your content. The more times a piece of content is shared across various social networking sites the more valuable it becomes and the better it will rank in the long run.

You don’t have to publish the whole blog post to your Facebook wall either. A small snippet and image is enough to attract the attention of your network. It’s a teaser to get them interested and give them a reason to head over to your actual blog/site to read your content.

Customize and optimize profiles

Social profiles can rank in the search engines like any other webpage. Make sure you take full advantage of this opportunity and properly optimize your profiles like you would your site. For instance, Facebook allows users to create custom URLs for their pages; this is a great place to target your most relevant keywords. You should also focus on targeting relevant keywords in your biography or info sessions.

Not every profile will allow you to post the same amount of information, so it’s important to ensure consistency across your profiles. Before you start getting really heavily involved in your social media marketing, write a few company biographies of varying length that all focus on the same core message. You want to present a unified brand across all of your social profiles so you don’t accidentally confuse your audience.

About Nick

Nick Stamoulis is the President of Brick Marketing, a Boston social SEO agency. With over 12 years of Internet marketing experience, Nick Stamoulis shares his knowledge by posting daily SEO and social media marketing tips in his blog, the Search Engine Optimization Journal (or SEO Journal) and publishing the Brick Marketing SEO Newsletter, read by over 150,000 opt-in subscribers.

Contact Nick Stamoulis at 781-999-1222 or nick@brickmarketing.com

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Oftentimes the old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” applies to many successful businesses.

But what happens when a well-known social networking brand changes what it offers customers. Will such a change have an impact in your particular efforts to reach out to current and potential business?

Recently, Facebook announced it was making changes to its users’ pages, leaving
some happy, some upset, and some just plain confused.

First off, why would the social networking giant do such a thing?

The site reports to have some 750 million users, clearly setting itself apart from competition like Twitter. Secondly, for those small businesses that use Facebook fan pages to promote their brands and services; would such a move give them more, less, or about the same amount of opportunities to work with customers?

Needless to say, the move elicited responses from many Facebook users, including one who simply shared “This sucks. That is all.” Okay, rather succinct and to the point.

Having looked at the changes, yes, they do present a different page for those small business owners who use social networking on Facebook to reach out to people, but the changes are not that drastic that customers and potential customers will run in droves.

The noticeable change is that instead of defaulting to one’s friends’ recent posts, Facebook’s News Feed gets over run more often than not by a “top stories” feature. Using an algorithm, the site combines a number of factors like which friends one interacts with most often and which friends’ posts produce the greatest amount of comments and “likes” on them.

According to a Facebook developer, the reasoning behind the top stories posts is to assist users who do not use the site regularly in locating the top content not just that which is new. He adds that all of one’s news will flow in a single stream with the most interesting items getting top billing.

Another new feature for users is to the right side of the home page, a ticker if you will, that reports streaming details of one’s friends’ activity. The Facebook developer noted earlier states that this feature helps fill in the time lag that is sometimes seen with the news feed.

Facebook and Small Businesses

As a small business owner, what kinds of success have you had using Facebook to
market your products and services?

According to Facebook CEO Sheryl Sandberg, all small businesses should be taking advantage of the company’s social media offerings.

Sandberg, who previously worked as VP of global online sales and operations
at Google, remarked in a recent USA Today piece that she foresees those small
businesses that came to Google’s ad program in turn spending their advertising dollars with Facebook, who reportedly employs around 3,000. As Sandberg sees it, all small businesses should be utilizing Facebook to increase their business opportunities.

Should your small business have yet to create a Facebook page, stop for a moment and realize the advantages to such a move:

• With some 750 million users, it is a great opportunity to reach out to people;

• Other than time and effort, there is essentially no cost involved, so why wouldn’t you want to do it;

• The fast speed at with such a site runs allows you to instantaneously spread the word about your small business;

• Participating on such a site shows individuals that you are up to speed at least with the social media aspect of the Internet. If not, it could leave you missing out on some potential new business when individuals see you are not as socially involved as others.

While more changes could be in the air for Facebook, if your small business is not taking advantage of the social networking giant to promote your company, it is time to come face-to-face with the reasoning behind this.

About Dave

Dave Thomas writes extensively for www.business.com, an online resource destination
for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.

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Who ever thought we would be having this conversation right now? From strong beginnings to an Oscar winning film, Facebook has become synonymous with two things – social media domination and privacy violations. But it wasn’t always this way.

Back when it was still “TheFacebook” in 2005, Zuckerberg and friends locked down privacy into a fairly simple rule: No personal information could be seen by people on the website that weren’t a part of a minimum of one group that you specified in your settings.

By April of 2010, this same privacy policy devolved into a contrived message summed up pretty much as: you and your friends belong to us.

The recent launch of Google+ hasn’t helped matters for Facebook (although the long-term interest in the new social media network is up for debate). For the first time, there are some very smart people that seriously doubt that Facebook can stay on top without some deep rethinking of some of the glaring issues that their shrinking community faces.

So, what is it going to take to keep Facebook from being dethroned by the invading superpower that is Google?

Pull Down the Curtains on Privacy

It’s become fairly clear that Facebook, while hiding behind a supposed claim of total transparency, hired a top tier PR agency to slam Google in May of 2011. According to an article in PC World titled Fallout From Facebook’s Google Smear Scandal, Facebook hired Burson-Marstellar, which then attempted to solicit The Huffington Post, Politico.com, The Washington Post, and USA Today, among others, to launch an attack on Google’s privacy policies. Particular focus was to be put on Google’s bid in the social media market. It wasn’t exactly a school yard bully situation, but it could have far reaching repercussions for Facebook.

Facebook has to fix their complicated privacy options. While nobody can blame them for attempting to monetize a site with a current estimated worth of around $75 billion, it can’t be at the expense of users’ privacy.

One way that Facebook can set themselves above Google is to fix the privacy issues that have plagued both companies, as well as subtly letting the world know that privacy is no longer an issue (but still is with Google).

Simply comparing the 6,000 word privacy policy from Facebook to the just over 1,000 word policy from Google should tell you that there is a fairly serious clarity problem. So, Facebook needs to do the following to fix privacy issues on the site:

• Give users more control over who can tag who in pictures. Something as simple as an approval message before the tag registers would work fine.
• Clean up the privacy statement.
• Focus on letting users know what Google does and Facebook doesn’t (Google mines everything you do on the web, Facebook doesn’t, for example).

Borrow a Few Ideas From Google

Sometimes imitation can be just as effective as innovation. And in an increasingly competitive market where Google has gotten involved, nothing is more critical than making sure Google doesn’t offer anything Facebook doesn’t offer.

Facebook needs to realize that Google is a vast team of innovators and that they have some good ideas about social media. While Google is struggling to build a loyal user base, Facebook already has the largest community on the web, and they have the budget to begin imitating some of the cool features that Google+ has to offer.

One key example is in how much Google+ is being hailed as the next big social network for businesses. Therefore, Facebook needs to focus on business accessibility.

Why not begin improving on the video conferencing sessions that Google+ offers? With Google+ launching ad free, and Facebook now earning the designation of having more display ads than any other company on the Internet, Facebook could lose members to Google+’s ad free (at least for now) environment.

So, what can Facebook do right now to imitate Google and clean up their own features?

• Facebook already features lists that function similarly to Google+, but they are not very functional. Fix these lists and make them easier to use.
• Let users choose which notifications they actually receive (I don’t need to know that my old ex-girlfriend from middle school is having a Saturday barbecue 2,000 miles away).
• Along the same lines, let users control their news feed. You probably have plenty of friends on Facebook that you want to keep friends, but don’t need to know what they’re doing every second of the day.

Keep Innovating!

Most importantly, Facebook cannot get too bogged down chasing Google+ features. They have to keep innovating their own ideas to stay competitive.

Facebook needs to build some excitement about their website again, just like the excitement that made them so successful in the past – and just like the excitement that has everyone curious about Google+ now.

Facebook has already proven that they have a strong hold on the mobile community with their network being available to anyone with a decent phone and a nearby wireless internet connection (despite Google’s technical advantage in the Android world). This needs to be a primary focus of new innovations for Facebook.

To appeal to a wider audience, and keep businesspeople excited, Facebook needs to focus on the following areas when innovating new products:

• Mobile Facebook Chat
• Facebook Chat Rooms (Why don’t we have this yet?!?)
• Video Conferencing
• Document Collaboration

Don’t get me wrong; Facebook is far from out of the game. In fact, there’s not really any danger of Facebook falling to Google+ any time soon.

However, Facebook is only a few privacy violations away from losing their community’s trust forever. And for a company that only thrives as long as their members trust them, that’s a serious mistake to make.

Both Facebook and Google can completely destroy their chances at dominating social media by continuing to package user data for third party advertisers. But the real pressure lies with Facebook. Google can afford to lose the social media war. Facebook on the other hand, is beginning what could be the championship title match of their existence, and no amount of “Likes” can save them if they fail.

About James

James Wilson is a full time internet marketer and freelance writer. He specializes in turning small websites into profitable ventures with minimal investment cost.

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been the name of the game for many years now in the world of internet marketing. Endless focus is put on Google page rank and backlinking. Small businesses and major corporations have been using tips and tricks to better market and rank their company blogs and websites for years now.

Web marketing is all about being seen. You want your product or service’s website and blog to be as visible as possible to the general public.
While SEO focuses only on optimizing search engine results, there are other smaller venues that can benefit a business when optimized.

Many small businesses use Facebook Fan Pages to market their product or service. Facebook Fan Pages are a great way to get your product or company into your consumers’ mind on a regular basis. However, the only way that consumers who join your Facebook Fan Page will ever really see your updates is if you optimize the page so that it pops up on their Newsfeed regularly.

Follow these tips to better optimize your Facebook Fan Page for your consumers’ Newsfeed.

How Often You’re Posting
When it comes to the content that you actually post to your company Fan Page on Facebook, less is more. You have to be careful with how much you post and how often you post it. Try not to update and post things so often that your “followers” feel they are being spammed.

It has been shown that posting 2 to 5 times a day is the optimal posting schedule. With posting only 2 to 5 things each day, you will stay present on your fans’ Newsfeed without becoming a nuisance. For many people, their Facebook page is a very private and personal thing. If someone feels like you, as a business they support, is intruding upon that space, they will likely “unlike” you.

Another good tip for the types of things you post on your business fan page is to use shorter character count in your posts. Your posts should be quick and to the point, so that your followers will actually read them. Try to keep your posts under eighty characters long. It has been shown that posts longer than eighty characters are significantly less successful on a Facebook Newsfeed.

When You’re Posting
Though many people don’t take it into consideration, the time in which you post something on your Facebook fan page makes a difference. Try to post things between 10 am Eastern and 4pm Eastern. This is the timeframe that is most productive and successful for Facebook posts.

Another good strategy can be posting things after regular business hours. Many users get on Facebook after they get off of work. You may find that you get more interest in posts that are posted during this time.

Not only does time of day come into effect but also the day you choose to post on. It has been shown that Thursdays and Fridays receive the best engagement rates for Facebook users. If you post something on your fan page on one of these two days, your followers will be more likely to see it on their Newsfeed.

How You’re Posting
One of the big things that Facebook takes into account when determining what content to place on users’ Newsfeed pages is how that content is posted to Facebook originally. Facebook will place more importance on posts that are done manually rather than by a third part application.

Obviously, as a small business, it can be difficult to update and post to your Facebook page on a regular basis without the help of an outside client. Use third party applications at times but be sure to post manually as well.

About Lauren

Lauren Bailey writes regularly for best online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email blauren99 @gmail.com.

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We are on the lookout for Guest Authors to share their expertise with our readership. For consideration, please visit our Author Guidelines page and submit your ideas to our Content Manager. We look forward to hearing from you!