• More than 350 million users are active on Facebook
• 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• More than 35 million users update their status each day
• More than 55 million status updates posted each day
• More than 2.5 billion photos uploaded and 3.5 million events created each month
• More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news, blog posts, etc.) shared each week
• More than 1.6 million active Pages on Facebook
• More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
• Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

And, its not just Facebook anymore. Google now uses social content when determining the ranking of web pages (SEO). Facebook is good for SEO and it has been very good for businesses for some time now.

Facebook Tips for Fan Pages

First Things First – Plan
To be effective requires a plan as well as fresh content on a regular basis. Once again, “content is King.” Give your potential customers and existing clients a reason to not only visit your Facebook pages but also help promote them. Keep in mind that updating the page doesn’t require a significant amount of effort if you first have a solid plan. Planning your campaign is a must – allocating the necessary resources to implement your plan goes without saying.

Social Networking is All About Leveraging Technology
Online marketing requires integration so understand that a significant amount of content is distributed automatically to numerous social media channels. Maximize your content and get better results by:

• Linking your blog posts to your Facebook wall. Your business website doesn’t include a blog? Get one.
• Use a service to update all of your social networks at once (Facebook, twitter, etc.)
• Similar automated services, widgets for example, are available for your YouTube and Flickr feeds

Engage Visitors But Avoid Confusion
Create a landing page on Facebook that you control. It is preferable to send traffic to a controlled welcoming page that highlights your brand instead of the “wall” page on your Facebook fan pages. The Fan page “wall” is a great and valuable tool for communicating with customers and prospects but it can be extremely confusing to first-time visitors.

A controlled page can also be used to offer users an incentive to become fans and help promote your brand. Contests, coupons, weekly specials and other tactics are being used effectively by numerous brands.

Be aware that new Facebook marketing guidelines were published last year in November. The guidelines require brands, marketers and advertisers to go through an approval process for contests. Get help if you don’t understand the requirements.

Interaction and Communication Required
First and foremost, understand completely that social media is all about interaction and two-way communication. Here’s a few basic tips to help you get conversations started:

• Ask questions that solicit honest opinions
• Create polls and provide access to tabulated results as well as candid reviews that support multiple views
• Don’t just post relevant industry news, provide – on a timely basis – executive summaries of industry trends

Don’t miss out; social networking will without a doubt enhance your brand and increase your marketing ROI. Face it, someone else paid to develop the technology and all you need to do is learn how to use it and get plugged in. 

Consider Ads
Advertising your business on Facebook is definitely something to consider. In fact, there are unique tactics available to precisely target a specific ad to a specific demographic profile. For example, you can target college graduates working in your target market that like fine wines and classical music – or a 50 something professional that likes head-banging punk music and Mexican food.

The two basic types of advertisements on Facebook are: (1) Display ads and (2) Social ads. Either can be purchased like banner ads (Cost Per Click, CPC) and Cost Per Thousand, CPM). Given Facebook users like staying within the Facebook environment, in general, create a killer Facebook Fan Page and direct your ads to that page.

Better yet, create a specific “tab” on that Fan page for your campaign; each tab has a unique URL by the way. If you’re not familiar with Facebook Fan page design, outsourcing is the way to go. Although relatively straight forward for design pros with programming skills, business owners that really don’t understand the features and how to use them will inevitably waste a lot of productive time on social networking.

Just like any business project, the social marketing rewards you’ll receive will be a reflection of the effort you put into it; haphazard planning and implementation won’t get you the results you desire online. But, those allocating the appropriate resources are gaining excellent results by leveraging social networking technology. 

Local Search Marketing Strategies and SEO Tips

Before you start bidding on keywords and throw money at PPC (pay per click) marketing, consider using simple “organic SEO” online marketing strategies to improve your local SEO results. Whether your revenue comes from business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C), increasing your local search ranking will benefit your business.

First and foremost, create an SEO friendly website. The first step you can take to improve your local – as well as your overall search engine results – is make sure your website is search engine friendly. Make it easy for search engines to identify your business location and your keywords by following this short-list of SEO tips for local search:

• Prominently display your business name and address as text on both the top of the page and in the footer. In the header, it helps if you use an “H1″ tag that includes your address. Avoid placing your address and keywords in image files given they can be hidden from the search engines. Also, it is difficult for your site visitors to capture your address and phone number for future reference when it is embedded in an image.
• Include your business name, address and keywords in your page titles; within your website header “<Title>” HTML. Also, use keywords for your URL names when creating sub-pages (i.e., www…/online-strategic-marketing-plans/).
• Depending on your state, it can be helpful to abbreviate the state in one of the addresses and spell it out in the second (i.e., AIM Custom Media serves clients throughout the United States. Locally, we serve the Metro Richmond, Virginia area from our office located in Glen Allen, VA 23059).
• Check to make sure your company is listed on the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo Local, and MSN Live Search (Superpages). For each business listing, include a complete business description and use the same keywords that are on your website. Always include contact info in business listings given your prospects may not click through to your website.
• Ask your clients to rate your business. Again, on the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Provide your clients with a list of keywords and politely ask them to use the same keywords in their review (make sure these keywords are on your website). For the best results, you want each review to be unique so don’t use templates for this purpose.
• Add links to your existing clients on your website, with a testimonial of course. Include their address and a description that includes a few of your keywords. Contact your clients and ask them to return the favor by including a link to your site on theirs.
• Develop a list of local business directories. We have a list of the Metro Richmond, Virginia regional publications; Metro Richmond media websites, Richmond city magazines, Richmond newspapers, local Chamber of Commerce, and local blogs that we include in our “local” client’s online marketing plans. We do the research for clients in other areas. For example, our local list includes business directories and resources local to Hanover, Henrico, and Chesterfield counties. Depending on your target market, this can be a long list. Contact all of them and get your business listed.
• When possible, upload images or photos to the business directory and include the name of your company and keywords in the image’s description (“alt” tags). Do this for all of the images on your website.
• Take out your Strategic Online Marketing Plan for 2008 – if you don’t have one stop reading here and work on that first! Your marketing plan includes an evaluation of your top competitors. Visit your competitors’ websites and their links. It is easy to determine who is linking to your competitors’ websites. You can do this through Google, Yahoo, etc. What  companies in your industry are listed? Will they include a link for your site? Likely they will given the links help them also.
• While you’re at it, determine who is linking to your site. Contact the companies and ask them to include the correct info for your company as well as your keywords.

If you outsource your website maintenance, consider changing over to a content management system that allows someone in your office to update content on a regular basis. Fresh content is key to SEO. The conversion is a one-time expense that will, if setup properly, lower your annual website maintenance costs, increase your presence on the web, and enhance your ability to communicate with your existing clients and prospects (think increased referral rates). It is working for our clients. Feel free to call us if you want to learn more about lowering your costs while increasing your marketing exposure; we can do all of the above for you affordably if you like (Ph: 804-915-7379).

Organic SEO is one of the most cost-effective and long-term online marketing strategies but there are other methods to consider such as social networking, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, etc.  Pay-per-click can be an excellent tool for testing ideas and generating leads; however, working on your organic SEO should be your first priority:

Tom Chandler, owner of one of the top ten blogs for writers explains, “For a freelancer, pay-per-click advertising can be a flexible, effective, affordable marketing tool. I’ve used it several times over the years to quickly generate leads during slow periods, though I’ve discovered — as my blog-driven organic search results improved — that I don’t need it running all the time.”

Social networking and pay-per-click are another ballgame. Subscribe to our blog and you will receive our articles on these topics via email when they are published. Please feel free to share this information with your friends.