Archive for the ‘Facebook’ Category

HOW TO: Suggesting Your Facebook Page

Thursday, December 2nd, 2010

You’ve set up a Facebook page for your business, but now you’re wondering just how to get more people to “like” your page. You can grow your following by including a link to your Facebook page on your website in addition to your company newsletter and any other promotional materials. But, if you’re looking for a quick boost, we at CyberMark recommend that you suggest your Facebook page to your Facebook friends. Facebook’s page suggestion feature offers a simple, organic and effective way to build your following using your built-in social network.

In order to suggest your page, just log in to your Facebook account and go to the page you want to suggest. From the menu directly underneath the profile picture (pictured below), select Suggest to Friends.

Next, a screen will pop up. From this screen, choose which friends to send a page suggestion. To select friends, simply click on their profile icons.

Suggest to Friends Facebook image

Once you’re finished selecting friends to send a suggestion, you may add a short, personal message that tells them briefly why they should consider following this page. For best results, keep this message concise and straightforward but appealing. We recommend something along the lines of “Follow this page to keep up with our company news and special offers on products and services.”

You don’t have to be a page administrator or even follow a page to suggest it to your Facebook friends. However, note that you can only suggest a page to people with whom you are currently Facebook friends. Hence, you can send out mass suggestions to people you don’t know.

You can only benefit by building your following on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites. Recent search studies even indicate that your social media rank may help determine your website’s page rank. Here at CyberMark, we’ll keep you in the know on other ways to increase your following on social media.

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Posted in Facebook, Social Media | No Comments »

Post Insights Now Available on All Facebook Pages

Monday, November 29th, 2010

Want to know just how many people are viewing your Facebook posts every day? Facebook has released Post Insights, which reveal basic data such as impressions and amount of feedback about each individual Facebook page post to page administrators. First released to only a few select pages back in January, Post Insights are now available on all Facebook pages for posts published on or later than June 25, 2010.

Page administrators can view Post Insights in two places: underneath each post as it appears on the Facebook Page wall and in the Interactions section of their Insights pages. Here’s an example of how Post Insights, which have been highlighted, are displayed at the bottom of each post:

Facebook page post insights image

Impressions is the cumulative number of times the post has been viewed by users on the Facebook page wall and in page fans’ news feeds. Feedback % indicates how many of those impressed-upon users responded to the post, either by liking it or commenting on it.

The Post Insights in the Interactions section of the Insights page can give administrators a better idea of which posts are the most successful in attracting attention. Here’s an example of an Interactions page with Post Insights:

Facebook Page Post Insights Interactions Image

We’ll keep you up to speed on more ways of measuring the success of your Facebook page.

Keep up with the latest Internet marketing trends, tips and strategies by following CyberMark on:

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Posted in Facebook, Social Media, Web Analytics | No Comments »

Facebook to Roll Out Local Deals

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

Today, Facebook revealed that it is launching a local deals platform for Facebook Places, the social network’s location-based check-in system. With Deals, area businesses will be able to inform nearby customers about specials.

Here’s how Deals will work. Users can find deals in their area by looking at their Facebook Places check-in screen, available through the iPhone Facebook app (or touch.facebook.com for Android users). Businesses with current deals will be signified with a yellow icon. To claim a deal, users simply check-in to that business. By claiming a deal, users can post a deal on their Facebook wall, sharing the deal with their Facebook friends.

Facebook Places Deals image

Facebook will allow organizations to offer four kinds of deals:

  • Individual deals – specials and free items
  • Friend deals – deals groups of users can claim together
  • Loyalty deals – rewards for regular customers
  • Charity deals – allow users to donate to a cause

Businesses will only be allowed to run deal at a time.

Currently, only a few businesses are offering deals, and most of those businesses are big chains such as Gap or Chipotle. Here a few examples of deals that available now or will be made available in the near feature:

  • European clothing retailer H & M is offering 20 percent of all purchases.
  • Starbucks will donate $1 to Conservation International for every check-in.
  • TAO and LAVO automatically add users and a guest to one of their nightclubs for checking in.

By posting deals through Facebook Places, businesses stand to benefit in several ways. Firstly, it’s a great way to inform nearby customers about your specials. Plus, when customers opt to claim your deals and publish them on their Facebook wall, even more people can find out about your business. Offering deals to current customers will help strengthen the relationship and encourage repeat visits. Moreover, Facebook deals offers businesses a free way to promote on the world’s largest social network.

To create a deal for your organization, go to your business’ Place page. If you haven’t already done so, claim your Place page by clicking on the “Is this your business?” link on the bottom-left side of your page. Follow the directions to verify your business.

Once your page is claimed, go to Create Deal at the top-right of the screen. Then, on the next screen, choose a type of deal from the menu. Define your offer by specifying a deal summary (i.e. 20 percent off all sweaters). Depending on the type of deal selected, you may also need to include a way to claim the deal (“present screen to cashier”) and the number of friends and/or check-ins needed for the deal to be valid. After that, add details and restrictions, such as the time frame of the deal, whether the deal is unlimited or only available to a certain amount of customers and how often customers can claim the coupon (“once” or “once every 24 hours”). As you build your deal, a mock-up will appear on the right-side of your screen.

When are done creating your deal, submit it to Facebook for approval. It can take up to 48 hours for your Facebook deal to be approved. Once your deal has been approved, you will receive confirmation and information about promoting and editing the deal. For more details about this process, please check out this video from Facebook.

At CyberMark, we can help you take advantage of this new advertising feature to get the word out about your business on the Internet’s most visited social platform. Contact us at CyberMark to discuss implementing deals that will effectively promote your business.

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Posted in Facebook, Social Media | No Comments »

Local Lure: Social Media Marketing for Local Businesses

Thursday, October 14th, 2010

online social media imageDoes your organization depend on local customers? If so, attracting area customers is crucial to the continuing success of your organization. With Internet marketing, you have many opportunities to raise awareness of your business among customers in the markets you most want to target. In Local Lure, our new blog series about local SEO, we talk about the ways you can gear your marketing to bring in more locals.

Social media marketing offers a terrific opportunity for local businesses to connect with local customers. According to a recent Nielsen study, the typical Internet user spends an average of about 25 percent of their time online using social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook. In addition to making your business more visible to area customers, social media marketing can make it easier to keep customers up-to-date on the latest company news and even help improve your SEO. We recommend the following social media sites for building a local following:

Facebook

The most visited website on the Internet, people of all ages, races, ethnicities and income levels use Facebook to connect with others. Given its popularity, more and more businesses are finding that having a Facebook page is not only a good idea but a necessity. Offering a large toolbox of applications and features, it’s easy to create a customized Facebook page for your business to reach out to more locals.

Twitter

Much like Facebook, Twitter is on the rise with people of all walks of life. With a Twitter page, you can send out short updates to current and prospective customers in your area.

Yelp

Yelp, a user review and local search site, is popular with influential consumers, especially in major markets. Each month, more than 30 million users go to Yelp to find businesses in their area – from restaurants and shops to plumbers and lawyers. If your business is already listed on Yelp, go ahead and claim your listing to respond to customer reviews both publicly and privately, add bios and about us statements, photos and other informative content.

MerchantCircle

MerchantCircle is a social network for businesses. Through MerchantCircle, businesses can connect to area customers as well as other businesses. By claiming your MerchantCircle listing, businesses can customize their listing layout, add links to their website, blog and other social media sites and post pictures.

Groupon

Groupon features one-day-only specials (i.e. $50 for $100 worth of clothing) in each major market. In order to take advantage of that coupon, customers must purchase that coupon for its face value in advance. In addition to receiving money from promotions upfront, being featured on Groupon helps businesses of all sizes inform local customers about their business.

If you’d like to know more about how social media marketing can have a positive effect on your local business, contact us at CyberMark. We can create a custom social media strategy for your business that will help you reach more customers in your area – and beyond.

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Posted in Facebook, Groupon, Local Lure, Local SEO, MerchantCircle, Social Media, Twitter, Yelp | No Comments »

Search Round-Up: September 10, 2010

Friday, September 10th, 2010

Search engine news imageEvery week, our search news round-up brings you the latest web marketing developments in everything from search engine optimization to pay-per-click advertising. Here are the biggest stories this week:

According to Study, Users Spend More Time on Facebook than Google and Yahoo

A new study from comScore reveals that web users in the U.S. devote more time online to Facebook than Google and Yahoo.

In August, the average U.S. web user spent 41.1 minutes on Facebook, about 9.9 percent of all Internet usage. In comparison, the average U.S. web user spent a total of  39.9 minutes (9.6 percent) on Google sites such as Gmail, Google news and YouTube, and 37.7 minutes (9.1 percent) on Yahoo.

At the same time last year, time on Facebook and Google only accounted for 5 percent each, while users spent 12 percent of their time on Yahoo on average. And in 2007, users spent less than 2 percent of their total Internet time on Facebook, 4 percent on Google and more than 12 percent on Yahoo.

Mozilla Firefox 4 Beta Offers Audio Interpretation Feature

Mozilla released a new audio feature in Firefox 4 Beta that will help users “visualize sound.”

“With this new API,” reads a post on the Mozilla blog “developers can read and write raw audio data within the browser, presenting audio information in completely new ways that could allow, for example, for people to visually experience a speech or a song through Firefox.”

Powered by HTML 5, Firefox 4 Beta can interpret audio into waves, abstract animation, streams of numbers and various other visual interpretations.

Firefox 4 Beta developer David Humphrey has prepared this video to give users a better demo of the browser’s new audio feature.

To check out just what Firefox 4 Beta can offer, download it for free here.

Google Instant Displays Search Results as Users Type

Wednesday Google unveiled Google Instant, a search enhancement that predicts, then displays results as users type. The new AJAX-powered search feature is intended to make searches faster and more intuitive. Watch this video from Google to find out more about how Google Instant works.

Currently, Google Instant is available on Google domains in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia to users with the following browsers: Chrome 5, Chrome 6, Firefox 3, Safari 5 (for Mac) and Internet Explorer 8. Google Instant will be rolled out to new domains and languages over the next several months.

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Posted in Facebook, Google, Search Engines, Technology, Yahoo | 2 Comments »