Month: November 2010

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Facebook Business Pages Demystified for Business Owners

I have just published earlier this week my most recent white paper. This one is called Facebook Business Pages Demystified for Business Owners. You can download or read this white paper online from our website.

This interesting white paper will help you to get started reaching new business prospects on Facebook fast and understand why Facebook is the new place for businesses to be. With Facebook being more popular than Google.com and the place where 50% of registered users login every day, Facebook is the place to be for your business too.

Here are some fun facts from Facebook:

  1. Facebook has more than 500 million active users.
  2. 50% of the active users login once a day.
  3. The average user has 130 friends.
  4. People spend over 700 billion minutes a month on Facebook.
  5. The average user creates 90 pieces of content each month.
  6. More than one million websites have integrated with the Facebook Platform.
  7. Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook.
  8. There are more than 150 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
  9. Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events.
  10. More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.

That is 10 super reasons your business should be on Facebook. 

I have another white paper, a longer and more detailed one that spells out how to use Welcome pages and FBML which is Facebook’s simple code. You can download it, “Facebook Business Page How-To Guide”, now. To get the PDF you will need to subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter.

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Google Boost for Google Places, A New Advertising Model Being Tested

Here’s what Google says about Google Boost:

Google Boost is a new online ad program that lets business owners build search ads from their Google Places account. The goal is to make the ads contextually relevant.

Google is really putting some muscle behind moving to strongly monetize Google Places or as it used to be known Google Maps. Google Boost is currently being tested only in Chicago, Houston, and San Francisco. The new program will allow business owners to create AdWords-like ads but from inside the Google Places platform. The client will be able to set a budget and Google Boost will do the rest creating a keyword list and serving the ad when relevant. The price model is pay per click, in other words you only pay when someone clicks into your Google Places page.

Google expanded the Google Places tag recently out of selected markets and is now offering the mini yellow icon for $25 per month to Google Places businesses who want their map marker in the local list to stand out. I consider the Google Place tag a grab for cash by Google, but I am testing to see if the little yellow marker does generate extra activity and will let you know at the end of my testing period.

In the meantime, with new management moving into Google Places, Google Boost testing being done now, and Google emphasizing local search placement above Google.com organic listings and in some cases even above existing AdWords ads I expect to see even more efforts to further monetize this important listing for local serving businesses.

If you aren’t even on Google Places now, make sure to check out our Google Places set up and placement services.