Posts

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What Do You Really Need When It Comes to Facebook Interaction?

Okay so you have a Facebook Fan page, now what kind of interaction do you really need in order to grow your visibility? From personal experience, I have found that fans will typically not jump into discussion or forum-like interactions. They will however share your video links from YouTube and even comment on interesting status updates.

It is important when you set up your own Facebook Fan Page to try different things to see what your own fans like and don’t like. I have found for myself that Fans won’t take the time to join in heavy discussions on industry specific topics. My fans like YouTube videos and small informational snippets.

When you set up your own Facebook Fan Page, I recommend that you try out different approaches for about 30 days to see what your fans like. I even recommend asking them. Running contests and doing polls are just a few ways you can elicit a response from your own fans.

Facebook makes it easy for you to know what your fans like by sending you a weekly activity update so you can identify how many times fans have interacted with your page and how many new fans you have gotten.

I feel that it is important for a business to have a Facebook Fan page with the strong acceptance and use of Facebook. Facebook is a mainstream application and another great and fun way to share information with customers, prospects, and business colleagues.

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Blogging Your Way to Better Organic Placement

Although it is hard to quantify if blogging will help your website place better organically, I have to say that from reviewing four different clients in the same industry, blogging can definitely make a difference.

Here is one concrete example, we have four clients in the same state, three of which are located in the same general service area. Three blog, one does not. Monthly I review site placement and prepare placement reports for several of these clients.

One site we have been blogging for since 2006 has garnered top Google placement on many keywords, another site that we designed but just started blogging for is moving up in placement. One site we did not design, but blog for is now placing organically on terms it had not placed on before., and the other fourth site we designed, but is not blogging, placed well initially but now after three month is starting to drop in the search results. Of specific interest is the site for which we did not do the design for is now placing organically, but on the blog posts not the website pages.

From this I can unequivocally say that blogging does help your organic placement. When blogging is teamed with great SEO web design, you can definitely move up in the organic results. Additionally, we have found that when we blog heavily on specific phrases for over 30 days at a time, we can additionally garner placement on these terms. This is particularly important on location or geographic specific terms.

One big note however is to remember that the results you can receive are all based on on-domain blogging versus off-domain blogging. Blogging can be an excellent way to position your website organically, just do it the smart way.

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Should Local Businesses Use Twitter?

Twitter is the big buzz on the Web, but if you sell or service locally should you consider Twitter a must have in your marketing arsenal?

Personally, I feel based on strong Twitter use for my own business and that of my clients that Twitter is best used by businesses that are selling nationally or globally. Typically we see responses to tweets from around the world and just not the local service area. Based on that interaction, unless you have the budget for Twitter on top of money set aside for Google AdWords and Facebook, I would not consider tweeting practical for targeting local customers.

I do however feel that if your budget is limited that you should still consider social media, but maybe move Twitter down on your list or priorities.

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What is an AdWords View-through Conversion?

Some of the terms used in Google AdWords can be confusing and this is one of them. A view-through conversion is a conversion you have had from the content network in a 30 day period when you are advertising with a display ad. The user did not click your ad, but saw it – confusing right?

First, it used to be that someone had to actually click your ad and visit your website for a conversion to be recorded. Not so anymore, just seeing your ad and visiting a content site will set the cookie that when a user does go later (in a 30 day period) to your website to buy, a conversion is recorded and noted in the AdWords control panel as a view-through Conversion.

It is important to remember that this is only for the Google Content Network and not for Google.com or search partner sites ads and only available for image or display ads. This type of conversion is not recorded for a text ad shown in the content network.

For more in-depth information on view-through conversions visit the AdWords Help Center.