If you have been advertising on Yahoo, now is the time to carefully review your Yahoo account. Specifically in regards to the character count in your ad text titles. The reason for this careful review is for you to be ready for account migration from the Yahoo PPC platform to MSN adCenter which is the platform for Bing.com ads.
Yahoo has allowed up to 40 characters in the title. Bing/Microsoft will only allow 25 characters including spaces. For accounts that have been migrated already and did not make the changes, adCenter simply drops the ads. I had one client do his own migration and no ad text imported which was a huge problem for a program of his size.
By the end of this month all ads served on Yahoo and Bing will be controlled from the Microsoft adCenter control panel. It is by far better for you to control what gets imported and prepare now than to have an import arbitrarily done for you.
Don’t wait, get started in preparing your account this week to prevent end of the month problems.
I spoke briefly about the new Digg in last month’s newsletter and this month I want to pass on my candid comments after having really used the application.
First, I really like it. It was easy to update my profile and the application allowed me to feed my blog, post my website URL, link in Facebook and tie in Twitter. In other words, it allowed me to create a complete profile that showcases my outreach programs to allow followers to get a broader picture of my online interaction.
But what I am finding is that Digg is not just about letting people know about you, it is about finding out what other people are talking about in your industry too.
I use many tools to stay on top of what is going on in my industry – RSS feeds, watching forums, monitoring important blogs, and watching certain users on Twitter. What I have found from my use of Digg is that I can more quickly get the “pulse” of what is happening by watching the Digg counts on topics and articles. I can search by topic, industry, and even keyword and then see what articles have been “Dugg” by others; rising to importance. I can then choose to click-in to read the full article and even “Digg” it myself to post it to my own personal profile.
This ability to see what is happening quickly on a topic is incredibly valuable. I find one of the hardest things as a busy professional is to identify who to watch with the time I have. Although I watch some very specific people and authority sites, I am aware that I could be missing legitimate new voices that are emerging in my industry or with new thoughts or applications by not watching a greater variety of sites and people. Digg allows me to do just that; watch people and topics that I maybe was not aware of and should be watching on a regular basis.
Digg now allows you to follow these key new people, almost in a Twitter-like way, so that once you find them in a Digg or topic search, you can monitor their traffic, social bookmarks, blog posts, and tweets. In some ways I think that this instant ability to track trending information may be more important to me in the long run than monitoring blog posts of people in my own industry.
In this world of rapid fire information exchange, it is important to know what to watch, what is trending, and what other industry experts are talking about. If you are active in your industry, this is another really great tool to maintain your edge over your competition.
You don’t have to be an Internet Marketing professional to use Digg. Digg can be valuable for any industry professional. To set up your own account and try out Digg visit http://www.digg.com. Don’t forget to follow us when you do your set up, our Digg page is http://www.digg.com/mccordweb.
I have done quite a bit of research and writing on the topic of how to improve your Google Maps, now known as Google Places, placement. For many businesses that sell locally, like lawyers and pest control service companies, placing well on Google Places can mean big business and terrific free exposure.
I am asked repeatedly if we offer services in this area, and have been performing services for a few select clients over the past year. However, we are now ready to roll out a program that may help to garner you the placement you want for your local selling business. Please be aware we don’t guarantee placement, but from our experience and understanding of what seems to work in Google Maps, many of our clients have had their listing become visible (when it was not previously) and some have nice improvement in their position.
We invite you to click in to read our full pricing and information on this new service. Set up is $240 and monthly updates are $40. Included in our set up is the purchase of 20 images to rotate in your Google Places account. Although this service may not be a good match for every business, if you sell locally, it is one you will want to review carefully.
I’m sure you’ve seen them – Facebook Fan Page Welcome Pages; specially created pages with images and links to your website the first time you hit someone else’s Facebook Fan page. Well, here’s how to create one for your own Facebook Fan Page.
First off, this is for your Fan Page and not your personal profile. The welcome page you create will only be visible to people who are not your fans yet. When they fan you, or now “like” you as Facebook has changed the descriptor from “fan me” to “like”, they will be directed to your wall and won’t see your welcome page again on entry.
Welcome pages can be great to give an overview of your business, link to important information about you, showcase products or services, or even direct customers to your online store.
Here are the steps to follow to set up your own Welcome Page.
1. Make sure you are logged into your Facebook account and are on your Fan Page administration page. This page will start with Settings, Wall Settings, Mobile, and then Applications just to name a few. Under “More Applications” click the “Static FBML” Link. Follow the link and click on the new Facebook page that appears to add this to your page.
2. Click back into the manage your page section again and look for a new item in your page management control panel that is called FBML. Click edit. A new screen opens that is titled FBML. Change this to a one word or two word header such as Shop Now or Welcome. This name will appear on your Facebook tab, so it has to be short.
3. In the page content enter your information. You can either create a line break between paragraphs by using simple html code such as <p> before each paragraph and ending with </p> after each paragraph or pushing enter to create the needed white space.
4. For web users who know their way around a bit of html you can link in images using html code and a complete URL from an image hosted on your own website’s server, and even link to pages or products using html code as well. If this part is over your head, you should get your webmaster involved. This page does not take complex html code only very simple elements such as images or links. That being said you can liven up the experience using html and image elements on this page.
5. lick “save changes”. You are not done yet, but almost. Navigate back now to your edit fan page control panel and then “Wall Settings” go to view settings. Under “Default Landing Tab for Everyone Else” select your new Welcome or Shop Now page from the drop down. Voila, now when a new possible friend/fan comes to your Facebook Fan page for the first time, they will see your Welcome page.
If this sounds too complicated for you, you may want to consider paying us to set this up for you. You can visit our Facebook Fan page for pricing and Fan page management levels.
