LinkedIn & SlideShare Webinar

Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

LinkedIn & SlideShare Webinar

Friday, March 8th, 2013

If you’re looking to increase your online visibility and generate more leads in the B2B arena, then you’ll want to learn how to use LinkedIn and SlideShare. Good thing we have a free webinar coming up on both.

FACT! Linkedin has over 200 million members.

FACT! Two professionals join LinkedIn…every second!

FACT! SlideShare gets 60 million visits every month.

FACT! Every month over 400,000 presentations get uploaded to SlideShare.

FACT! People love when you scream “FACT!” at them.

If you’re looking to generate more leads through LinkedIn, or have been wondering how you can use SlideShare to increase your reach and improve your online visibility, then you’ll want to check out our free webinar, How to Use LinkedIn and SlideShare to Build Your Business, on 3/28/2013 at 2pm ET.

But why listen to me? Let’s turn our focus to this fine looking gentleman:

Remember: even if you can’t be on the webinar live, you can still watch it on demand at your convenience. However, you do need to register by the 28th, so why not take care of that right now?

Overview:

Even professionals who are on LinkedIn are often only scratching the surface.

In this webinar you’ll see how to setup and optimize your LinkedIn profile and build your network. You’ll learn the ins and outs of setting up a company page. You’ll discover how to use and leverage Slideshare, even if you’ve never presented before.

Attendees will learn:

How to setup and maximize your LinkedIn profile
How to build your network quickly and ethically on LinkedIn
How to use LI Groups to extend your network
How to get started with Slideshare
How to integrate your Slideshare and LinkedIn activity
How to enhance your profile with slideshows, blogs and more
How to integrate LinkedIn and Slideshare into your overall marketing

Register now!

Rich Brooks
LinkedIn & SlideShare Marketing

Tags: LinkedIn, slideshare, webinar
Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »

How to Measure Facebook Ads ROI | Facebook Conversion Tracking

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

Social Media ROI: Facebook’s new conversion tracking allows small businesses to really track the ROI of their Facebook Ad spend.

Facebook has created a new way to measure your ad performance and it’s really quite simple.

By generating what Facebook calls a “pixel”–which is really just a snippit of code–and adding it to a landing page on your website you can track leads, registrations, checkouts, page views and more.

Ever used Google Analytics Goals for conversion tracking? Well, this works really quite similarly. You want to make sure that you add the code to a confirmation page; this way you can track folks who went through the entire purchase or registration process.

How to setup Conversion Tracking in Facebook:

First you must visit your ads manager or power editor (Note you can only use power editor in Chrome) and select “Conversion Tracking”.

If it’s your first time here you will need to accept the terms of service. You then want to name your pixel. Make sure that you give each conversion pixel a distinct name so you know exactly which ad campaign and web page you are tracking.

Once you name your pixel and select the proper category, click “Create pixel.”

Facebook will then generate a tracking code for you to add to the header or your landing page. If you do not know how to do this yourself you may need to ask your web developer for help adding the code. Below is an example of what the code will look like.

Next step is to check the conversion tracking dashboard to make sure that the code has been properly installed. If it is installed correctly it should say “Active” under pixel status. It will say inactive until it is added to the page.

Time to create your ad campaign.

How to Create Your Facebook Ad Campaign with Conversion Tracking:

To set up your ad campaign that goes along with your tracking pixel you must visit your Ads Manager or Power Editor.

In Ads Manager:

Create or edit an existing ad
In the “Campaign, Pricing and Schedule” section check “Track conversions on my website for this ad”
Select the corresponding pixel you created

In Power Editor:

Create a new ad or edit an existing ad
In the Creative section check “Track conversions on my website for this ad”
Select the corresponding pixel

Caveat: Your ad destination must point folks off of Facebook or you will not have the option to select conversion tracking.

The downside to this? You can’t run page post ads with video.

In order to run a video ad on Facebook the video must also be hosted on Facebook. See the problem?

For example, we have a Twitter for Business webinar coming up and we have set up a video ad on Facebook that we would like to use to drive folks to the webinar registration page. I can set up a tracking code for the ad and place it on the “Thanks for Registering” page to track how many folks registered for the event via our video ad (or at least that’s what I would’ve liked to do). However, since it’s a video on Facebook I am not given the conversion tracking option. Therefore, I would need to use a regular ad and drive folks off the site to our website’s webinar description page.

What’s better than being able to track your Facebook ad ROI? You can finally prove to your boss that Facebook Ads DO work!

Visit Facebook’s Conversion Tracking Help page to learn more about it.

Have you started using conversion tracking on your Facebook ads? Are your results surprising?

By Joan Woodbrey Crocker
“That was easy!”

Tags: Facebook ads, Facebook Ads ROI, Facebook Conversion Tracking, Social Media ROI
Posted in Analytics, Facebook, Social Media, Web Marketing, Web Marketing for Small Business | No Comments »

10 Ways to Use Facebook Graph Search for Business

Monday, February 11th, 2013

How to Leverage Facebook Graph Search for Your Business.

Want to know how the new Graph Search works? Visit Facebook’s Graph Search page.

Want to sign up for beta? Sign up for the waiting list to try it out!

Concerned about Privacy? Visit Facebook’s Graph Search Privacy page.

Want to know what Graph Search means for your business? You are in the right place.

Graph Search opens up a world of opportunities for your business. The search bar at the top of Facebook was pretty much useless until now. For example, have you ever typed in the name of a business that you know has a business page and not been able to find it? I know I have. Well, Facebook Graph search not only solves that problem, it offers these business benefits below…

Graph Search will help your business:

1. Get Found. Graph Search uses several different criteria when providing your search result. Likes, check-ins, your bio and content will all help you get found. So, by getting more likes, check-ins and posting multiple times a day you are more likely to pop up in search for those who may not know your name, but may be searching for your product or service. Especially, if you are local to them.

2. Manage Your Reputation. You can now conduct searches on Facebook to see what folks are saying about you.

3. Find Journalists. Not only can you search Facebook for those in the media that may be good connections for you to promote you business, you can also see if any of those journalists already follow “like” your page. This gives you the ability to reach out to them for promotions, news and events that you may want to publicize.

4. Recruitment. Search for locals in your area with the right qualifications that match your company culture. For example, you could look for college grads, in Portland, Maine, with a degree in communications that like Social Media Examiner and Mashable.

5. Understand Your Audience. Want to know how to reach your audience? Want to know who to target with your Facebook ads? What better way than to look deeply into the folks that already like your page. What magazines, websites, blogs do they like? What activities? What do they do for work? Male/female, age etc? Graph Search will now allow you to see not only all the folks who like your page…but your competitors as well!

6. Competitive Research. Like I said above, check out your competition’s fans. Who are they? What’s different between your likers and theirs? What are they doing better on their page to come up in Graph Search? Are they getting more check ins, better offers, etc? Survey their fans, ask why they chose them over you, what do they like about your competitor? This can then help you in other aspects of your marketing and SEO.

7. Find Influencers. Using Graph Search you can specifically reach out to folks that like your brand that are influential among their friends to possibly create a brand ambassador.

8. Take Advantage of Others’ Photos. Do a quick search of others photos of your product or establishment and ask for permission from the owner to use them on your page, website and in your marketing. Not only is this free photography but they most likely will show a social aspect. You can offer a discount or giveaway to folks for their permission.

9. eCommerce. It has never been easier for someone to find a product on Facebook. Graph Search will allow folks to find products not just by searching for them, but by recommending products based on friends’ likes. For instance, someone can ask the question What kind of cameras do my friends like? Are they Sony users, Nikon, or something else? People are likely to buy what their friends have recommended.

10. Potential for Perfect Targeting for Facebook Ads? Facebook hasn’t mentioned anything about it yet, but there could be sponsored ads within Graph Search and with the new capabilities of search within Facebook you now have the ability to research your audience well enough to target your audience perfectly.

How to optimize your Facebook Biz page for Graph Search

Search results are based on information on your Facebook business page, content/updates you’ve created, likes, the searchers friends, check ins and more.

Make sure your bio is complete
Make sure you include location
Create different Facebook pages for different locations to take advantage of ‘Nearby’ mobile feature
Make sure to include keywords in bio, updates etc.
Acquire likes
Get more check ins – create check in deals
Photo tagging of locations, employees, patrons etc.
Update content regularly
Create Facebook Offers/promotions/contests

Are you excited about the possible opportunities Graph Search offers? What other business benefits do you see coming from Open Graph?

By Joan Woodbrey Crocker
Psyched for Graph Search!

Posted in Facebook, SEO, Social Media, Web Marketing | No Comments »

How To Customize What You Share on Facebook

Friday, December 14th, 2012

We’ve all done it – posted a link to our status, Facebook page or a friend’s timeline only to see an irrelevant image or description text populate the page. This is not only frustrating, but also not helpful when trying to reach your audience with accurate links and info.

The image below demonstrates how stray code can muddle a link posted on Facebook. Back Cove Yachts wanted to post a link to their business page but an old meta-tag populated outdated information which led to a confusing message to their fans.

I updated the meta-description on the PHP page and still no dice. Our web developer, Andy, told me to add Open Graph tags to the page.

What is Open Graph and How do I Use It?

Unfamiliar with Open Graph, I quickly Googled it, and voila, I hit a Facebook developer page.

When you arrive at the Facebook Open Graph Protocol page, you’re clearly told why you should use these tags, “the more information you provide, the more opportunities your web pages can be surfaced within Facebook today and in the future.” It’s basically helping your Facebook search results internally and externally.

By adding open graph tags to your page header code, you’re telling Facebook how to display a link to your page.

These tags can also help promote your site in your users’ newsfeeds, collect user names and data, auto-fill forms, remember Facebook login info for apps, as well as give you a larger social graph to analyze by tapping into a user’s friend groups.

Keeping your clients’ or your own audience’s links accurate is quite valuable and a big time saver. Open graph tags will auto-populate your link posts in the future without any tinkering and keep your brand messaging tighter. It also gives you the flexibility to create custom landing pages with specific link content on Facebook.

Add these basic “meta og” tags (image below) inside the head tags of your page to begin tweaking your link appearances. Change the fields in blue (below) to customize your link. Many more options and explanations exist on the Facebook Open Graph Protocol page, so take a few minutes to see what it can do for you.

Once you’ve updated your open graph meta fields, then save the page and upload again to your server to see the results. You don’t need to add all these tags, but I’d recommend the title, URL, image and description fields to start.

Another handy tool is one of the Open Graph plugins for WordPress. There are quite a few to sift through, but the better ones handle the laborious task of updating all your pages’ meta tags by handling it quickly through a plugin.

Some of the top results when searching for Open Graph plugins are “WP Open Graph,” “WP Facebook Open Graph protocol,” “WP Open Graph Meta,” and “Open Graph WP Implementation.”

For current open graph discussions, updates and more, check out the Open Graph Protocol Facebook group. If you need to figure out why your open graph code isn’t working, you can use the official Facebook Debugger.

You can also see what Google will make of your link in a search query with the excitingly named Google Structured Data Testing Tool.

Alternatively, if you’d rather not go messing around in the code, contact your nearest web developer!

Are you currently using a WordPress Open Graph Plugin? If so, which one and is it working well for you? Let us know in the comments section.

Happy linking!

Chris Felax
Web Developer

Tags: facebook open graph, web development
Posted in Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing | 1 Comment »

The ONE Thing You Need to Succeed Online

Tuesday, December 4th, 2012

Discover how to attract quality customers and quickly grow your business.

If I told you that there’s something out there that would dramatically increase your online visibility and drive more qualified traffic to your site, would you believe me?

With this magic potion/formula/bag of beans you could attract just the right type of customers and build your business?

Well, it exists. And successful marketers and businesses have been using this method successfully for years.

It’s called content marketing.

When you use it correctly you’ll increase your SEO, build a blog that attracts customers, and engages your audience in social media.

What’s that? You don’t know how to use content to market your business?

Well, luckily Social Media Examiner has put together 22 of the world’s leading experts for the first ever Content Success Summit!

Here’s just a few of the key takeaways:

Discover the best ways to market your business with content
See how successful content producers operate
Pick up new content marketing strategies
Discover how to grow a loyal following
Uncover how to sell your products and services via content, and
Get a leg up on your competition.

The best part is, you can gain all this amazing information without leaving your home or office. The Content Success Summit is a 100% virtual event that allows you to watch live or recorded presentations from top marketers like:

Joe Pulizzi, co-author of Content Marketing
Ann Handley, co-author of Content Rules and chief content officer of MarketingProfs
Michael Hyatt, author of Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World
Michael Stelzner, author of Launch
Amy Porterfield, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-in-One for Dummies
Derek Halpern, founder of Social Triggers
Pat Flynn, founder of Smart Passive Income Blog
James Wedmore, author of The YouTube Marketing Book
Marcus Sheridan, founder of The Sales Lion
and a dozen more, including me! Rich Brooks, author of a book to be named later.

I’ve been involved in almost all the Success Summits that the Social Media Examiner has put on, either as a presenter or as an attendee, and here’s what I’ve discovered:

You get an insane amount of content for the cost of admission.

I never fail to pick up dozens of tips for growing my business and I’ve been doing this for years.

If you’ve never attended a Success Summit, or even if you have, this will be a great way to kick of your marketing efforts in 2013.

And if you act now (you knew that was coming, right? ) you can save $300…over 50% off the regular price.

Just use this link before it’s too late!

The event takes place over the course of the month of February, with every session being recorded for later or multiple viewings.

Learn more, see the full list of speakers and topics, and reserve your space now!

Rich Brooks
Content Marketer

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media | No Comments »

7 Easy Steps to Convert Your Pinterest Profile into a Business page…And Why You Should Bother

Friday, November 30th, 2012

Pinterest Announces Business Pages. Take these 7 quick and easy steps to convert your profile.

Pinterest just released business pages. Like many others you may have already created a Pinterest account for your company using the individual profiles. No worries! The good news is if you already have an account you can simply convert the existing account without losing any of your info, followers, boards or pins.

So, how do you convert your profile into a business page and what are the benefits of doing so?

Here are a few immediate benefits from converting your account:

1. The new Business accounts allow you to sign up under your business name rather than first name/last name
2. They allow you to verify your account for better search and a clickable URL
3. They offer some free buttons and badges to help build your audience
4. And, having a business account gives you access to upcoming features for businesses only. Pinterest isn’t saying what these might be yet, but it could include advertising and/or better ways of reaching your audience.

Below are step by step instructions on how to convert your existing Pinterest account into a business account.

1. Visit http://business.pinterest.com/

2. Click on “Convert your existing Account”

3. Enter your information including business type, contact name for the page and email address.

4. Read through the Agreement and check off “Accept Terms.” You’ll notice the terms and conditions are slightly tweaked from the personal profiles agreement.

5. Click “Convert Account.”

6. Next Pinterest provides you with several steps to help get started with your business account. Step one is to verify your website. You can do this one of two ways…

You can verify your website by uploading the verification file to your server or you can verify it by adding a bit of code into the <head> of your index.html file. If you don’t know how to do this on your own you may need to ask your webmaster.

You will want to make sure and verify your website so that Pinterest creates a clickable link to your site on your Pinterest page. Your URL will also show up in search results.

7. You are done! It’s that easy. Below is a preview of how your Pinterest business profile header will look once verified.

Last but not least make sure to check out the business resources Pinterest offers and visit their blog for the most up to date information. Here you can find guides, case studies and more.

What do you think of the new business accounts? Will you be converting your profile?

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
Check out Our Biz Account!

Tags: pinterest business accounts, Pinterest for Business, Pinterest marketing
Posted in Social Media, Web Marketing | 1 Comment »

Get Notifications: The Free Way to Reach More Facebook Fans

Tuesday, November 20th, 2012

Now your fans can get all of your business page updates with the new Get Notifications button. Here’s how.

Ever since Timeline was introduced it seems as though the only way we can get in front of our Facebook Business page fans is to pay to do so. Well, let your heart not be discouraged, Facebook recently introduced a new FREE way to stay in front of your fans. Enter ‘Get Notifications.’

By checking off ‘Get Notifications’ you are telling Facebook what you are interested in and what you want to see in your news feed, rather than Facebook guessing. Once checked you will see all updates from that particular page in your news feed.

If you’ve been updating your news feed 5 or more times a day in order to improve your Edgerank, you may want to rethink that. Otherwise you’ll hijack the news feeds of those followers who get everything.

At this point we aren’t sure if Facebook will give you the information on how many of your fans have opted to get notifications. However, you may have noticed that some pages are already marketing this function.

Here are the steps we recommend to get your current fans to sign up for your notifications.

Create an update asking your fans to click the ‘Get Notifications’ button. Let them know that you will not be burdening them with an obscene number of posts.
Instruct them on how to they can get notifications. It can be found one of two ways.
1. You can hover over the ‘liked’ button on the Facebook page that you want to receive the notifications from (see image above)
2. You can hover over the liked button in the newsfeed to click off ‘Get Notifications.’
Create a Promoted post, so that more of your fans can see the update.

You may not have this on your page yet. Facebook is slowly rolling it out. It will be interesting to see if the reach percentage on posts goes up or not.

Is “Get Notifications” available on your page yet? Which brands would you subscribe to on Facebook?

Joan Crocker
Facebook Marketer

Tags: edgerank, Facebook, Facebook Marketing, Facebook Page, Facebook Reach, Get Notifications
Posted in Social Media, Web Marketing | 1 Comment »

Quick and Dirty Guide to Pinterest’s New Secret Boards and 7 Secret Board Ideas for Businesses

Thursday, November 15th, 2012

Pinterest Introduces Secret Boards, Shhh…Don’t tell!

Have you ever had a great idea for a Pinterest board or found something you wanted to pin, but you stopped for fear that your competition would see it and copy you?

Whatever profession you are in, be it an interior designer, home stager, wedding/event planner, website designer, clothing designer, author or something else, your ideas are one of your most valuable assets. You don’t want to lose them to the competition. Pinterest has come up with a solution so you don’t have to worry anymore.

Recently Pinterest rolled out secret boards. These boards are hidden; only people with whom you share the link can view or access them.

So, how do you set up a secret board and what kinds of secret boards can businesses create?

Here is how to set up a Secret board on Pinterest.

1. Login to your Pinterest account.

2. Click on your profile.

3. Scroll to the end of your boards and you will see a greyed out section like what you see below. (Or you can go to create a new board)

4. Click on “Create a Secret Board.” Once you do, the board below will pop up.

5. Name the board and select a category.

6. Here’s the important part. Make sure the ‘secret’ setting is set to “On.”

You can make a secret board public by switching the button to off. However, you cannot take an existing public board and make it a secret board.

7. You may have multiple contributors to your secret board. You can invite them by adding their name into the ‘Who can Pin’ field and then clicking ‘invite’.

Only the person who created the secret board has the ability to make the board public.

8. Click ‘Create Board’ and you are done.

It’s really that simple.

So, how can you use these boards for business purposes? Here are a few ideas to get you started.

1. Competitive Analysis and Research
2. Competitive Products
3. Ideas for Your Business
4. Internal Idea and Communications
5. Corporate Event Ideas
6. Research Boards
7. Your Favorite Business Resources, Blogs and Mentors

Do you think you will take advantage of Pinterest’s Secret Boards?

Joan Woodbrey Crocker
I’m Creating a Secret Board Right now!

Tags: Pinterest, Pinterest Secret Boards
Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Social Media, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »

Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

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Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

If you’re looking to increase your online visibility and generate more leads in the B2B arena, then you’ll want to learn how to use LinkedIn and SlideShare. Good thing we have a free webinar coming up on both.

Social Media ROI: Facebook’s new conversion tracking allows small businesses to really track the ROI of their Facebook Ad spend.

How to setup Conversion Tracking in Facebook:

How to Create Your Facebook Ad Campaign with Conversion Tracking:

How to Leverage Facebook Graph Search for Your Business.

Want to know what Graph Search means for your business? You are in the right place.

Graph Search will help your business:

How to optimize your Facebook Biz page for Graph Search

Countdown of The Top 10 Most Popular Blog Posts from Flyte this Past Year.

What is Open Graph and How do I Use It?

Your Year in Review!

Discover how to attract quality customers and quickly grow your business.

Pinterest Announces Business Pages. Take these 7 quick and easy steps to convert your profile.

Now your fans can get all of your business page updates with the new Get Notifications button. Here’s how.

Here are the steps we recommend to get your current fans to sign up for your notifications.

Pinterest Introduces Secret Boards, Shhh…Don’t tell!

Here is how to set up a Secret board on Pinterest.

FREE REPORT

Subscribe

Search

Recent Posts

Favorite Posts

Categories

Archives

Featured Presentations

Follow Rich Brooks

Featured Clients