I was listening to Derek Halpern’s Social Triggers Insider podcast and he was discussing how irrational our decision making process is and how we’re more motivated by the fear of loss as compared to the hope of gain.

It reminded me of a study where Duke students stated the cost they would be willing to pay for a ticket to a Duke-UNC basketball game. When some of those surveyed actually got tickets to the game through a raffle, they were only willing to sell them for significantly more than the amount they had originally valued them at.

In the first case they were focused on the money they would lose (have to pay.) In the second, they were focused on the lost opportunity of seeing the game live.

In an example from Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, a campaign to get home owners to insulate their homes was much more effective when the ad focused on the money home owners would lose by not insulating their homes rather than in the cost savings.

Why would this be?

Because gains are fleeting and losses linger. People behave irrationally to avoid loss. Gamblers bet more recklessly after losing a big hand, compounding their losses.

While in no way am I recommending that you manipulate people into making bad decisions, it is important to understand why your marketing is more or less effective than it could be.

So, how can you use this in your own web marketing?

Leverage scarcity. Scarcity, one of Cialdini’s “weapons of influence,” is powerful because it represents a loss of freedom…in this case freedom of choice. We want what we feel may be taken away from us if we don’t “act now!”

If you’re selling a product, promote its limited quantity. Beanie babies did this effectively by managing supply and “retiring” some products forever, greatly increasing demand.

If you’re offering something that’s virtually limitless, like a white paper or audio recording, you can create an artificial scarcity by putting an end date when the product will no longer be available.

If you’re planning an event, make sure you mention the limited seating. Or perhaps you can offer early bird tickets, which gives you the opportunity to market to people’s loss aversion multiple times: once when tickets are announced, once when the early bird discounts are expiring and then just before ticket sales end.

Create “ownership.” Loss of money (and the freedom of choice that comes with it) can be a barrier to people buying your products or services. However, once they’ve taken ownership of something it’s difficult to give that up. (Remember those Duke fans?)

So, is there a way in which you can help your prospects take ownership of your product or service?

The “puppy dog close” is a famous example, where pet store owners let indecisive families “try out” a puppy over the weekend. Rarely are those cute, doe-eyed puppies ever returned.

If you have a service that requires monthly billing (like a membership site), you could provide a free month of access.

This is especially effective when you still require customers’ credit card information up front while allowing them to opt-out within the trial period. (Not surprisingly, most don’t.) Constant Contact, Spotify and plenty of other companies use this method to efficiently grow their user base.

How can you test to see if loss aversion will work for you?

One way of testing this idea out is to create an A/B split in your email marketing, where you send out the same offer to two different groups, but worded differently. Send out one offer to half your list that touts the cost savings, and another that focuses on the lost income, and see which one converts at a higher rate. 

You can do run a similar experiment on your website with Google’s Website Optimizer, which allows you to randomly show different pages to incoming visitors and measure conversion rates.

Takeaways

For better or worse, people are more motivated to avoid pain than to gain pleasure.

While you may want to tout the financial savings your employee retention software can offer, you’ll sell more when you put the focus on how much businesses stand to lose in employee turnover costs buy not buying the software.

If you don’t want to lose any more sales with ineffective web marketing, please contact us today.

Yeah, I went there.

If you’re looking to increase your online visibility, build trust, and convert prospects into customers, then online video and YouTube marketing need to be part of your online marketing activity.

Why is YouTube so important? Today we enjoy faster connection speeds, unlimited hosting, and a video camera in every pocket or purse. That makes creating and sharing videos incredibly easy and affordable.

In addition, videos often appear on the first page of search results, and even when they don’t, people often go directly to YouTube to conduct a search. In fact, YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world behind Google, which owns it.

YouTube also gives us advanced annotation tools that allow us to create clickable calls to action within our videos to encourage engagement and subscriptions. With promoted videos you can even create links that take viewers to your website or other web property.

But let’s start with the basics. How do you create videos that help build your business?

1. Start with a keyword analysis. Since search and online visibility are such a big benefit of YouTube, make sure you’re using the same words your ideal customer is using.

2. Create compelling videos. Most of us will never create a “viral” video with millions of views because we don’t own a piano-playing cat or a sneezing baby panda, but thankfully those aren’t required for success. In fact, most of us couldn’t handle a million new customers all at once, anyway. “Now serving 3,424,022. No? Now serving 3,424,023. Please, everyone, form a straight line. No pushing.”

This is not your competition. Thank God.

Instead, you should create content that addresses your audience’s needs.

Your goal should be to create videos that are helpful, valuable and compelling to your prospects and clients. If you can blog about it, you can create a video about it. Your video content may consist of how-to’s, answers to frequently asked questions, expert interviews, screen video captures, slide shows and more.

3. Work your keywords into your video. There are four obvious places to use your keywords in each video:

• Title: Just like your blog posts, make sure the title of your video includes your keywords. Twice is nice.
• Description: Don’t scrimp here! Too many people ignore the description, or just write a one-sentence description. Feel free to write a blog-post length description, working in your keyword phrase(s) multiple times.
• Tags: Make sure you use your keywords and variation of those keywords in the tags section.
• Narrative: YouTube is listening! YouTube takes your audio and creates an automatic transcript and uses this as part of their algorithm. So bake those keywords into the narrative as well.

4. Include calls-to-action. Want people to take an action at the end of your video? Tell them what to do. “For more ideas on pet costumes visit our website at embarrassyourcat.com.”

You can also include a clickable link in your description. Best practice is to start your description with the URL you want to drive traffic to and make sure you include the http://…otherwise the link won’t work.

There are also some advanced techniques to create links to your online properties…but that’s a conversation for another day.

5. Leverage social media to attract more eyeballs. Once your video is live, you can create a surge of traffic by posting links to your social media outposts, such as Twitter and LinkedIn. You can also embed the YouTube video on your Facebook profile or business page. Make sure you write a blog post with your video embedded in the post. And don’t forget about Google+, which, like YouTube, is part of the Google empire.

Every view counts towards your total view, whether your viewer is at YouTube or not.

6. Don’t expect one video to change your business. As mentioned before: forget about your dreams of creating a viral video. Instead, focus on creating a steady, consistent stream of helpful videos that address your ideal customer’s biggest problems.

That will help you increase your online visibility and drive more qualified traffic to your website.

Next month we’ll look at some more advanced YouTube marketing tactics, but in the meantime, be sure to check out flyte new media’s YouTube channel and subscribe!

In Conclusion

Start with keyword analysis. Work your keywords into the title, description, tags and narrative. Create videos that answer your prospects’ biggest questions, and then promote those videos through your social media profiles.

Rinse and repeat.

‘Tis the season…to start thinking about how you’re going to grow your business in 2012.

Based on what we’re seeing out there, here are a few things that you need to include in your digital marketing plans for 2012.

Develop a Mobile Strategy

The iPad 3 will be dropping next year, Amazon’s Kindle Fire has a web browser, and more tablets are entering the marketplace. In addition, more and more people are walking around with computers in their pants, also known as smart phones.

“Mobile” covers a lot of ground: location-based apps, QR codes, SMS marketing, text messaging and more. But the best place to start is with a mobile-friendly website. People on mobile devices have different needs and expectations than they do when they’re on a desktop machine.

What do your customers want from your website when they’re on the move? Directions? A phone number? Store hours? Lengthy bios on all your staff? (Not.)

Be sure to view your website on an iPhone, Droid and Blackberry. How does it look? Will it help turn visitors into customers?

Improve your Facebook Presence

If your prospects are on Facebook, make sure you have a strategy that works.

Start with a landing page that is optimized to accomplish one goal: get people to like you.

Further Reading: What is a Facebook Landing Page and Why Do I Need One?

Follow up by creating engaging content on your Facebook business page that encourages people to like, comment and share your content. This will land you on your customers’ news feeds, and help you stay front of mind.

Further reading: Facebook Marketing: Understanding EdgeRank

You may also want to experiment with some targeted Facebook ads to attract new prospects.

Turn Your Blog Into a Lead Generation Machine

Search will continue to be a critical tool for attracting new business. If you want to rank well at Google, then you’re going to need to blog for your business.

Create keyword-rich blog posts that answer your ideal customers’ most important questions. When they ask these questions at Google or Bing, your blog posts can appear near the top of the results. This will help drive qualified traffic to your blog where you can establish your credibility and drive interested prospects to your contact form.

Further reading: Ultimate Blogger’s Guide to SEO

Leverage Online Video

These days, video is inexpensive, easy to create, and incredibly engaging. So why aren’t you doing more of it?

In 2012, set yourself a goal that you’re going to create one video every week that addresses your prospects’ big questions, shows how to use your product, gives a tour of your facility, spotlights one of your customers using your products, or whatever it is that will convince your ideal customer that they should be talking to you.

Post your videos to YouTube, and give them keyword-rich titles, descriptions and tags. Embed them in your blog, post them to Facebook, and promote them through Twitter and LinkedIn.

Further reading: YouTube Marketing Handouts

Build Your List

The most important asset most businesses and non-profits have is their list. The easiest way to build your list, and to get permission to email the people on it, is to get people to sign up for an email newsletter.

To increase your subscriber base, you’ll need to create a piece of email bait: something of value that will encourage your prospects to give their email addresses to you. This might be a white paper, or entry to a giveaway, or discounts in your online store that are only available to subscribers. Whatever will motivate your prospects and customers to subscribe, that’s your offer.

Every page of your website should promote your email bait for maximum results.

Further reading: List Building: How to Build a List of Contacts from Your Website

Seek Professional Help

If you feel like these are great ideas but you need help implementing them, you may want to check out flyte training: your personal trainer for web marketing.

This is our new six-month program, open to 10 businesses, non-profits and individuals at a time, who are looking for some real help in growing their business in 2012.

In Conclusion

Next year is going to be an amazing year of growth and profits for your company once you put some of the right pieces in place.

It’s going to take hard work, commitment and consistency to succeed, but we know you’ve got it in you.

See you on the web!

Google Plus (or Google+) is Google’s latest attempt at creating a social media platform to take on Facebook and Twitter. At first it was only open to individuals, but recently Google allowed businesses, non-profits, brands, and just about any other thing that’s not a person to set up a page.

Although the process is pretty straight forward, I created a video which you can watch below or view at YouTube (How to Create a Google+ Business Page in Under 3 Minutes.)

Some things you should know before you get started:

• You’ll need your own Google+ account. Since Google+ is now open to the general public, this shouldn’t be much of a barrier. You can create your own profile here.
• Start building your own page by clicking on the “Create a Google+ page” link in the right column.
• Currently there’s not much difference between business pages and personal profiles. In fact, the biggest difference so far is that you can’t add people to your business’s circles until they’ve added you.
• Currently there’s not a lot of add-ons like there is with Facebook business pages. You can’t create landing pages, pull in RSS feeds, or get any type of analytics. Also, it appears that only one person can be an administrator of a page. One would assume that all this will change over time if Google’s serious about challenging Facebook.
• Once you’ve created your page, you can toggle between your personal profile and business page by clicking on the link next to your profile picture.

So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and build your own Google+ page. And in the meantime, please add flyte new media to your own circles on Google+.

Last month at the Social Media FTW conference flyte had a booth promoting our services. At our booth was a tip jar. However, instead of asking attendees to leave loose change behind, we asked them to pull a web design or internet marketing tip out of the jar.

Despite the fact that there were over 400 people at the conference, recent population surveys tell us that many more couldn’t make it. Even those who did were not able to read all the tips.

So, to share the knowledge, here’s our list of web design and internet marketing tips that appeared in the jar.

Web Design Tips:

• To increase contact form conversion rates keep the number of fields to 5 or less.
• Good web design is not just about pretty pictures. It’s also about having a user-centric philosophy.
• When designing a web site give priority to the website user’s needs.
• Before designing a web site, clearly define the objectives of your company and your user.
• Before the design process begins, create wireframes to help define the overall structure of the website.
• Hire a professional web copywriter to write your website content.
• To design a great website, you must understand the needs of your users.
• Include a site search on your website.
• Limit primary navigation categories to eight.
• Limit the number of fonts to 3.
• When developing navigation naming, the text should be clear as to where the navigation button is taking you.
• Each page on your web site should contain a “call-to-action”.
• No two web users are alike so make sure you offer multiple ways to navigate your web site.
• Don’t make web users think. The web page should be obvious and self-explanatory.
• Limit the number of clicks it takes a user to locate the information they are looking for.
• Keep it simple. This principle should be the primary goal of web site design.
• Limit the primary color palette to 3 colors.
• An e-newsletter signup form on your website is a great way to grow your customer database and initiate customer relationships.
• Utilize video on your web site. It’s another great way to deliver content.
• To avoid overwhelming, confusing and frustrating the user, limit the number of items on your home page.

Web Marketing Tips:

• Visit Google Trends and look at the Hot Trends for the day to come up with blog titles/topics.
• Check out keywords by region in Google Insights for good terms to use in blog posts targeting local audiences.
• Check out Google’s Contextual Targeting Tool via Google Adwords, for help with keyword ideas and organizing and structuring your keyword lists.
• Use Wordtracker’s Keyword Questions Tool for good blog post titles/subjects.
• Google Instant Search provides suggestions while you are typing your search term, use these suggestions for blog topics.
• Check Out Ubersuggest for keyword ideas http://suggest.thinkpragmatic.net/.
• Look at Ask.com’s Related Questions and Related Searches for good blog posts ideas.
• Think long tail keyword phrases not single keywords.
• Title tags are the most important part of your site for SEO.
• Spend extra time to create compelling titles that grab attention.
• When using images for content optimize them by using alt text, captions, and URLs.
• Your audience consists of 3 types of searchers: Navigational, Informational and Transactional; make sure your content serves the correct audience.
• Place your keywords early in your content and make them prominent, bold, in header tags, linked, title, and bulleted.
• Facebook ads are a cheap way to get information out to a highly targeted audience.
• Update your Facebook page at least once a day. It will help your Edgerank.
• Posting questions on your Facebook page, especially T/F, Multi Choice, and Agree/ Disagree type questions will get you more engagement.
• Check out this cool Free Tool on SEOmoz LDA http://www.virante.com/seo-tools/lda- content-optimizer.
• Post links in your Twitter updates; shown to get more Retweets and engagement.
• Twitter Tip: “Please ReTweet” gets 3x more ReTweet’s than “Please RT “.
• Post to Facebook and Twitter on Saturdays and Sundays to beat the competition.
• The least shared type of information on social media are negative messages; stay positive.
• Create a Facebook landing page to welcome new fans and inform them why they should like you.
• Repurpose your blog posts for Facebook updates, Twitter updates and YouTube videos.
• Use NetworkedBlogs to syndicate your blogposts to Facebook.
• Make sure you have sharing tools on your blogposts.
• Set up Google Alerts on your brand and keywords for blogposts, articles and status update ideas.
• For more bloggers in your niche, check out AllTop.com.
• Create blogposts that are short, sweet, to the point, and that have a catchy title.
• Make sure your social media status updates provide your audience with content they want.
• Use Twitter Search (http://twitter.com/search) to find tweeps in your niche.
• Keep blogposts around 250 – 500 words and articles 500 – 1,000 words.
• As you think of blogposts, be sure to make a note of them. You’ll be glad you did for a rainy day.
• When possible, use a photo in your blogposts. They’ll help enhance the content.
• Don’t forget about video. Even a “talking head” clip of you can help add personality to your content.
• Remember, images and video are just one more way to rank well at the search engines.
• If you have a local business, don’t forget about local search. Try starting with Google Places: http://www.google.com/places/.
• It seems simple, but make sure all of your social profiles are 100% filled out. That means a photo, information, and a background (depending on the site).
• One of the best ways to get an incoming link to your website? Guest blogging. Make sure you have a blogpost ready to go before you make contact.
• Make sure all of your web efforts are connected; and that they all link back to your website.
• Do you make PowerPoint presentations? Try uploading them to Slideshare.net and get some traffic to your website that way.
• Don’t join every social networking site under the sun. Find out where your audience spends their time and spend yours there, too.
• Use Twitter as your new RSS feed. Follow the movers and shakers in your industry and read the articles they talk about.
• The web-based Twitter not working well for your lifestyle? No problem! There are easy to used web, desktop, and mobile apps that are easy to use. [TweetDeck is one of our favorites.]
• One of the toughest (and most important) social media decisions to make is what voice your account will be coming from. The business? The owner? An employee?
• Remember to always add value. So, always be less “sales-y” and more resourceful.
• Add your personality to everything you put out there. People like doing business with people.
• Don’t dilute your message. If you don’t have a lot of time to devote to social media, do one thing and do it well.
• On both Twitter and Facebook, try doing at least a few tweets and status updates every day. And feel free to use the same ones.

Thanks to Ryan Goan for the web design tips, and Joan Crocker and Nicki Hicks for the web marketing tips.

If you need any web design or internet marketing tips that are tailored to your business or non-profit, please reach out to flyte today. Thanks!

Rich Brooks
Delegating

Photo credit: Tina Burnell

Recently, after I had sent out an email about our upcoming social media conference, I heard back from one of my contacts. He was curious to learn more about social media, but wondered if it offered any benefit for his B2B company. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this concern.

I find this attitude surprising, in part because we’re a B2B business ourselves. Soccer dads aren’t hiring us to design websites nor are NASCAR moms looking to get themselves search engine optimized…unless they are doing so for their business.

We use social media every day to market our business and services. We post videos to our YouTube channel, engage with fans on our Facebook page, and connect with other business people on LinkedIn. The entire flyte crew has Twitter accounts that we use to varying degrees, including one for flyte, and we do our best to keep our three blogs fresh: flyte blog, our web marketing blog, our Maine SEO blog and our newest Florida SEO blog.

And I would argue this is not just for “geeky” industries like web design and Internet marketing; I see plenty of CPA firms, commercial real estate agents, and corporate event planners engaging with their customers on the social web.

So how do you create a social media campaign for a B2B company?

Each company is unique with its own products, services, audiences and goals. So, there’s no one size fits all.

Some companies need to deal with the fact that their best customers aren’t active on social media during the work day, or may even be prevented from visiting these sites by a corporate firewall. Other businesses are in a heavily regulated industry and need to tread carefully on how they engage with customers. Still others have products or services that have been traditionally sold in person (um, like books or shoes. I mean, who would buy those over the Internet?)

With that major caveat aside, here’s how I’d start creating an effective, sustainable social media campaign for a B2B organization:

Content Creation
Some businesses will have difficulty reaching their target audience using social networking, at least for the time being. For those businesses I recommend focusing on education through content creation.

Your audience is most likely still using the web, searching for solutions to their problems. You should create blog posts and videos that address your ideal customer’s biggest concerns. If you’ve been in business for long enough, you probably know many of the problems that already vex them. Start there. You should also invest in a keyword analysis which will uncover other similar searches that your audience is Googling.

In reviewing flyte’s YouTube statistics, 9 out of 10 of our most popular videos of all time include the phrase “How-To.” What does your audience yearn to know how to do? Save money on corporate taxes? Plan a large company picnic? Comment on their Facebook business page as themselves? Then you need to start blogging and creating videos that answer these questions in order to get in front of them and grab their attention.

Social Networking
While I think that B2B companies can use Facebook business pages to their advantage, I’d start with LinkedIn. In fact, I’d argue that LinkedIn is one of the most important online tools businesses can use for growth. (For more on LinkedIn, check out LinkedIn Power Tips for Growing Your Network, an interview I did with Lewis Howes, published at FastCompany.com.)

Everyone in your office should be on LinkedIn with completed, compelling profiles. You should join groups and connect with people in your industry, your customers’ industries, and your local community. Just answering a few questions in these groups in a non-salesy manner can generate leads and business for you. You should also check out the Answers section for another way to establish your credibility and connect with people who need your business’s services.

And although not appropriate for every business, there are plenty of networking opportunities on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms. Many of our prospects cite Twitter as how they first discovered us. I once landed a job from an old friend after we reconnected on Facebook.

And don’t underestimate the power of social networking to put a human face on your business. People like doing business with people they like, and an active social networking presence from you and your co-workers can help tip the scales in your favor when competing for a contract or getting a word-of-mouth recommendation.

I’m not arguing that any B2B company should put all their eggs in the social media basket. Advertising, direct mail, email marketing, SEO, pay-per-click advertising, webinars, and a good sales team are all important ingredients for success. However, adding social media to your marketing mix will pay huge dividends both now and in the future.

So, what are you waiting for?

If you’d like help developing a social media plan for your business, or a personal trainer for your social media marketing to help you stay with it, flyte can help. Just contact us to get the ball rolling.

Rich Brooks
B2B Social Media Marketing

Over the past few weeks I’ve been getting a lot of questions about Google+, Google’s new social networking platform. Questions like: “How do I get started?” “Does it work a lot like Facebook?” and “What? Another social networking platform? If I close my eyes will it all go away?”

If you’re serious about growing your business on the Internet then Google+ is something that you’re going to have to pay attention to…at least for now. There’s already evidence that Google+ and the +1 button (similar to Facebook’s Like button) are having an impact on search results.

For years we’ve been saying that the secret to online visibility comes down to two things: search and social. And with Google+, they are forever intertwined. So, to help you navigate these fresh waters, we’ve create a series of Google+ how-to videos, with this article providing context and narrative.

Setting Up Your Google+ Account

As of the time I wrote this, Google+ is by invite only, but if you go to flyte’s Facebook page and request an invite on our wall, we’ll be happy to send you one.

Probably the first thing you’re going to want to do on Google+ is review and edit your profile. Chances are that Google already has some (hah! “some”) information on you, perhaps through your Gmail account, or your use of a Google app, or even because at some point you set up a Google profile.

However, it’s probably a good idea to review your information and update it as necessary. Make sure you customize your page as much as you can…like any social network, the more “lived in” your profile is, the more you’ll be able to attract and engage other people on the network.

Once you’ve take care of your profile, the next step is to adjust your privacy settings. One of the things I like most about Google+ is how easy it is to manage and control your privacy.

Organizing The People In Your Life

Unlike most other social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) that added the ability to group and filter people well after you had made a mess of things, Google+ launched with Circles, which is how you’ll organize different groups of people in your life. They work like Twitter lists or groups on Facebook (not Facebook Groups, that’s a different animal entirely.)

Google+ starts you off with some preset groups, but you can rename them or delete as needed. Also, no one but you can see your circle names, so feel free to give circles names like “Ne’er Do Wells,” “Stinkers” and “People I Wouldn’t Want to Meet in a Dark Alley.”

As you create your Circles and drop people into them–a very fun activity thanks to the slick interface–keep in mind is that Circles control both your incoming stream (messages from other people) as well as who sees your outgoing messages. No need to bore your family with a link to your latest blog post; now you can just share that with your Business Connections circle. Likewise, photos from your kid’s birthday party can be safely shared with friends and family but no one else.

Hangouts: Group Video Chat

Whether you have vendors from China or clients from China, Maine, or it’s raining and you don’t want to go outside, Google+’s group video chat option, called a Hangout, is a great, free option to having face-to-face meetings, whether it’s one-on-one or with multiple people at once. As long as they have a video-enabled computer, you’ll be able to see the spinach stuck in their teeth. (Provided everyone’s got a good connection.)

Sparks: So Far, Not Much

Although Google+ is promoting Sparks as one of the key concepts of Google+, so far they’re not very impressive. Basically, they work like Google alerts, but with fewer and less interesting results. (At least that’s been my experience.)

Sparks are areas of interest; choose a preset Spark or create a new Spark and Google finds and retrieves information about that interest–SEO, video games, the debt ceiling–readily available to you and only a click away.

From an business and networking standpoint, the way you might use Sparks is to get ideas for blog posts or videos, or to have something to share with your Circles that would be of interest to them.

Sharing on Google+

As with so many other social networks, sharing quality content is critical to your visibility and engagement. If you’ve ever shared anything on Facebook–and if you haven’t, you’re probably not reading this post–then the Google+ sharing tools will look familiar.

Go to the top of your Google+ home page you’ll see a sharing box. Choose what type of content you wish to share–update, video, photo, or link–and your .02, and then choose which Circle and/or people you’d like to share that with.

If you’re sharing a video you can upload your own video or choose a video from YouTube.

How About Google+ for Businesses?

Out of the gate there’s no equivalent for Facebook Business Pages on Google+. Some businesses have already created pages, but Google+ has been asking businesses to hold off as they’re rolling out some business-specific plans which are now being accelerated. Google has not been shy in saying that they may start taking down personal profiles of businesses.

It’s probably not worth starting a page for your business just yet, but rather you should be concentrating on building your personal network on Google+ instead.

The Takeaway

If growing your business or non-profit via the Internet is critical to your strategy, then you should be checking out Google+. Set up your account, organize your connections into appropriate circles, and start sharing some quality content.

Spend time reading others’ posts and commenting on them. Play around with a Hangout. Create a Spark. And lastly, feel free to connect with me on Google+.

If you have any questions about Google+ or how you can use social media to grow your business please contact flyte today.

Show of hands: how many of you are on Facebook? (The sound you just heard was the noise of 700 million hands being raised.)

When you log into Facebook you’re presented with your News Feed; recent updates from your friends and pages you’ve liked. It’s Facebook’s way of letting you know what’s going on in your world.

Except that you don’t see all your friends’ activity, or updates from all the pages you’ve liked. Facebook determines what gets into your News Feed with an algorithm called EdgeRank.

So, how does EdgeRank affect your business? Well, most people, even when they’ve liked your page, don’t regularly return to it (if ever). The only time they’re going to see your updates is when you appear in their News Feed.

In short, to engage your audience you need to get into their News Feed. To get into their News Feed, you have to understand and increase your EdgeRank.

EdgeRank has three important variables:

• Affinity: how much affinity a person has for your brand. In short, if they’ve liked or commented on your posts in the past, you’re more likely to show up in their News Feed. Affinity only works one way, however; no matter how much you comment on their activity, it has no direct impact.
• Weight: Facebook sees everything you publish as an “object.” Each comment or like an object gets adds to its weight, increasing the chances it will appear in someone’s News Feed. That makes it easier for them to comment on it, helping it get into even more News Feeds for even more comments and likes. It’s a virtuous cycle.
• Time: no matter how popular your update may be, over time it’s no longer “news” and it’s chances of showing up in a News Feed decreases.

So how can you increase your EdgeRank?

• Post items that encourage engagement. Ask questions that require short, easy responses. Mint.com does a great job of this with updates like, “In 5 words or less, what’s the best financial decision you’ve ever made?”

• Use photos and videos. The tiny thumbnails Facebook uses almost require someone to click on them to see what’s going on. (Or maybe I’m just getting old.) Couple this with a question or caption contest and you can really increase your visibility.
• Choose your moment wisely. If your target audience is work-at-home moms, you may want to post something after the kids have gotten on the school bus. If they’re office dwellers, maybe lunchtime is your sweet spot. You may need experiment a bit to find the time your audience is most likely to see your updates.
• Seed your updates. Sometimes you need a “fire starter” or two. Message some friends and fans privately asking if they’ll comment or like an update. Use other platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn to drive people to the update.
• Use Facebook advertising. If you need to re-engage people who have liked your page in the past, you might want to target those people through inexpensive Facebook ads. Remember: you can target your ads to people who have already liked your page.

• Unhook your automated posts. Tools like HootSuite, NetworkedBlogs and even TweetDeck make the life of the busy social media marketer easier, but they water-down the impact of your posts. Manually post your updates to Facebook for maximum effect.
• Post regularly. Try and post every day so that you increase your chances of getting in front of your fans.
• Become a fan of flyte new media on Facebook. While there’s no evidence to show that this has any direct impact on your EdgeRank, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Plus, we share a lot of great tips on Facebook marketing and EdgeRank, which will surely increase the effectiveness of your Facebook page.

In Conclusion

Like search engines, Facebook will undoubtedly tweak EdgeRank to improve it and to keep Facebook marketers from becoming too complacent. However, focusing on creating engaging content and posting regularly is sure to help any business or non-profit improve their Facebook marketing effectiveness.

If you need help setting up your Facebook page, improving your results, or creating content that engages your audience, please contact flyte new media today.

Additional Reading:

• 6 Tips to Increase Your Facebook EdgeRank and Exposure
• How to: Use EdgeRank to Improve Facebook Page Views and Fans
• EdgeRank Checker | Check Your Facebook Page’s EdgeRank
• Top 5 Tips for Improving Your Facebook EdgeRank
• How to Increase Your Facebook Engagement Score

A few weeks back I was interviewed by a local business radio show. They run a Top 5 Tips segment on different subjects and asked me for my top 5 tips on blogging. You can read the highlights below, or listen in: I have a recording of the show complete with some lame graphics down at the bottom of the page.

1. Own your own domain name. You want to use a domain like mycompany.com/blog or mycompanyblog.com instead of mycompany.blogger.com or mycompany.wordpress.com. This way you’re building up trust for your domain, not your hosting company’s, and you’ll keep all the inbound links you build up in case you ever want to move. We did that with our own web marketing blog: flyte blog, and it turned out to be incredibly important when we moved to the WordPress platform.

2. Blog so that the search engines can find you. Every blog post you create, creates another web page. Every web page is another opportunity to rank well for specific search your prospects are doing at Google or Bing. For more on blogging and SEO check out the article Ultimate Blogger’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization.

3. Create keyword rich links back to your main website. Blog about topics related to your products and services and then link the keywords to your web pages. For more detail check out Magnetic SEO: What Electromagnets Can Teach Us About SEO.

4. Engage your audience on and off your blog. Respond to commenters on your blog. Away from your blog, use social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter to engage people and bring them back to your blog.

5. Be patient and persistent. You will not get page one results on day one. Plan to blog 2 – 3 times a week for six months to get results.

In Conclusion

While there’s no magic formula to blogging success, by taking these best practices to heart, you can expect better results from your business blogging activities. Blog on!

If you have any questions on how to make the most of your blog, please contact flyte today.

–Rich Brooks
President, flyte new media

“What do I blog about?” “how can I blog for search engine visibility?” and “how do you get your hair to do that?” are just some of the questions I field on a typical day. Luckily, there’s a simple trick I use that will help address the first two issues. There’s also a simple trick for the last item, but that’s between me and my hairdresser.

Never forget this: you are an expert at what you do. You have forgotten more than most people will ever know about cat training or electric boats or building a business.

Chances are that when you’re in front of a customer or prospect, most of the questions they’re asking have been asked before. I’m sure the same is true when it comes to the questions you get via email from prospects.

Well, if you’re fielding all those questions, how many more people are asking the same questions at Google?

• How do I cook gluten-free meals?
• What do I need to start an alpaca farm?
• How do I survive a zombie apocalypse?

When you receive the next email asking for advice or help, don’t respond. Not immediately, at least.

Take the question and copy & paste it into your blog. You may need to doctor the question: broaden it to make it more helpful to a wider audience or remove any reference to whomever sent you the email in the first place. (They may not want to see their name at the bottom of a question about how to buy a toupee.)

Once you’ve crafted the question, go ahead and answer it in the most helpful, non-salesy way possible. As appropriate you can create keyword-rich links to a page on your website that offers a solution to the person’s need. Answering a question on closing techniques? Link to the page on your upcoming sales courses.

When you’re all done, create a keyword-rich title for your post. There are a few ways to do this:

• Create a shortened version of the question: How do I choose the right DSLR for me?
• Phrase it as a how-to: How to Coook for a Diabetic
• Frame it as a tips post: Networking Tactics for Your Inner Wallflower

After you publish your new post, send an email with a link to the person who asked you the question, letting them know that it was such a great question you published it. I’ve never had anyone get upset with this, and almost everyone has been psyched to see their question get posted to my blog, even if I renamed them “Puzzled in Portland.”

What I’ve discovered is that it’s these posts that answer a specific question that often bring the most qualified traffic to our website and web marketing blog.

In Conclusion

To succeed online in a competitive industry, you need to create lots of quality content. To that end, don’t hide some of your best, most relevant material in an email that reaches just one prospect.

Leverage the power of blogging and SEO to attract, help and engage a wider audience, who will recognize you as the expert in your field.

If you have any questions on how to build a blog that attracts and converts more qualified customers, please contact flyte today.

–Rich Brooks
President, flyte new media