new media solutions
5 Places besides Google and Google Places where your business is supposed to be listed to enhance your SEO in regards to Local Searches
1. Twitter Search
2. Facebook Search
3. Foursquare Search
4. LinkedIn Company Search
5. Pinterest Search
How to boost your Social Business Footprint with Pinterest
Pinterest is slowly becoming one of the most popular Social Media and Social Business platforms on the Globe. Although it’s normally just so cool to play with it, browse the stunning collection of images and repining everything that catches your eye it’s still a tool that could grow your business online. Here are a few tips on how to achieve this
With 13 million current users Pinterest is the fastest growing New Media Platform.
Here are a few ideas on how to make Pinterest work for your business
More than 66% of adults are connected to one or more social media platforms, but who exactly are these people?
1. Boolean Search To master Google search, you can follow certain terms and tricks. For instance, rather than asking Google a question in the search box, include specific items such as type of file or title name.
Google has an entire directory of public data, which you can access to look up trends. Type keywords such as “population” or “unemployment,” followed by a province.
Google’s developers think they are funny- just type in “let it snow” to see for yourself. There are a number of other hidden easter eggs as well.
4. Or
Instead of searching using multiple variations of a phrase, try adding the OR Boolean operator. Say you’re trying to find Company X, but you can’t remember if it’s located in San Francisco or San Mateo. By adding OR, which can be abbreviated using the pipeline character |, you can search for both. For example: “Company X” San (Francisco | Mateo)
This search will return results that contain Company X and either San Francisco or San Mateo, which can help cut down on trying a slew of Google searches with multiple variations of similar elements.
5. Not
Even more powerful than the OR operator is the logic gate NOT. Don’t want something included in your results? Exclude that term by adding NOT, which is signified by a negative sign (-) in front of that element. For example, to get information on coats but not coats of arms, try: coats -arms
In this search, Google will exclude all results that contain the term “arms.” The term that can be excluded can be anything, and it’s one of the most useful Google tools to clean up your searches for more relevant results.
6. In title
Another way to help narrow results is to limit results to terms listed in the title of a Web page only. A straight Google search for a biography on Abraham Lincoln, for example, might be cluttered with results from Lincoln, Nebraska or tourist information on the Lincoln Memorial; chances are that a full biography will be found in a Web page that contains the complete phrase “Abraham Lincoln” in its title. To search through just titles, use the intitle tag: intitle:”Abraham Lincoln”
7. In url
Along the same lines as intitle, Google allows you to restrict your searches to URLs. This comes into play most often when you need to search through university or government domains but can’t get past the heaps of unrelated information. For instance, searching for official information on Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor from the U.S. Government, you can search for information only on GOV domains: “Sandra Day O’Connor” inurl:.gov
Google will return results that contain the phrase “Sandra Day O’Connor” only from domains that include the suffix GOV. It’s not limited to suffixes, however, works fine for the complete URL.
8. Site
The tag inurl will search across URLs, but to search for something across one individual domain, use the site tag, which is particularly useful when you’re hunting for a needle in a haystack. For example, let’s say you’re running Windows XP and Internet Explorer starts crashing every time you try to open your bookmarks. Searching for either “Windows XP” “Internet Explorer” or “bookmarks” produces millions of results, most of which will be no help to you. To limit it to Microsoft’s support database for Windows, try: “Windows XP” “Internet Explorer” “bookmarks” crash site:support.microsoft.com
Only results from support.microsoft.com that contain those three phrases will be returned.
9. In anchor
If you know the filename of a program you’re looking for, you can search for Web pages that link to it through the HTML anchor tag. This will return any Web page that links to the file winamp.exe. You don’t need the suffix EXE, but including it can eliminate irrelevant results.
10 Stocks
Did you know you can check the latest stock prices through a Google search? It’s true. All you need to know is the stock symbol and the stocks tag and Google will automatically redirect you to the Yahoo! Finance page, which lists the current stock price and all its accompanying financial information. For example, to see how much Microsoft is currently trading for, enter: stocks:msft Within less than a second you’ll be brought to the page on Yahoo! Finance listing its price (currently, around $25 a share). If you’re using Firefox or the Google toolbar in Internet Explorer, stock prices are always one short Google search away.
11 Phonebook
Google also contains business and residential telephone numbers, to access them just enter a person’s name, state, and either their phone book or by phone book tags. To find John Doe in Johannesburg, type: phonebook: John Doe, NY
That will give you all the address and phone numbers listed for John Does in Johannesburg.
12. Wildcards
Wildcards, like asterisks (*) or question marks (?) that stand in as a blank placeholder when searching, have been around since the days of DOS. What you might not know is that you can use the asterisk in Google. For example, if you’re looking for a directory of trees, but you don’t know what organization to search under, you can enter a wildcard: “directory * trees”
Google will return results that include a directory of Christmas trees, a directory of evergreen trees, and so on. It’s a powerful tool that can be used to expand a search when the results are too narrow.
13. Mix & Match
Our final Google tip is the ability to mix and match some of the above tools. For instance, you can combine NOT with the site tag to exclude unwanted domains. Looking for information on O’Reilly’s, the Irish Pub, but getting hits for O’Reilly the technology book publisher? Exclude oreilly.com: O’Reilly -site:oreilly.com
This will exclude all results from oreilly.com, helpful if a couple of unwanted domains are dominating your search results.
There are also more Google tags like cache, link, daterange, filetype, intext, info, filetype, and related that you can find on http://www.google.com/help/refinesearch.html.
A Blog is a reason to share:
Play off the familiar. Mention a celebrity or a pop culture touchstone and your readers will instantly relate.The key to a successful business blog is variety — so mix it up with different types of posts. If every post is “Seven Ways to Use Our Product,” it’s going to get old fast.
FROM: ENTREPENEUR
Step 1. Revisit your goals. At its most basic level LinkedIn is about marketing: marketing your company or marketing yourself. But that focus probably got lost as you worked through the mechanics of completing your profile, and what started as a marketing effort turned into a resume completion task. Who you are isn’t as important as what you hope to accomplish, so think about your goals and convert your goals into keywords, because keywords are how people find you on LinkedIn.
But don’t just whip out the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and identify popular keywords. It’s useful but everyone uses it—and that means, for example, that every Web designer has shoehorned six- and seven-digit searches-per-month keywords like “build a website,” “website templates,” “designing a website,” and “webmaster” into their profile. It’s hard to stand out when you’re one of millions.
Go a step further and think about words that have meaning in your industry. Some are process-related; others are terms only used in your field; others might be names of equipment, products, software, or companies.
Use a keyword tool to find general terms that could attract a broader audience, and then dig deeper to target your niche by identifying keywords industry insiders might search for.
Then sense-check your keywords against your goals. If you’re a Web designer but you don’t provide training, the 7 million monthly Google searches for “how to Web design” don’t matter.
Step 2. Layer in your keywords. The headline is a key factor in search results, so pick your most important keyword and make sure it appears in your headline. “Most important” doesn’t mean most searched, though; if you provide services to a highly targeted market the keyword in your headline should reflect that niche. Then work through the rest of your profile and replace some of the vague descriptions of skills, experience, and educational background with keywords. Your profile isn’t a term paper so don’t worry about a little repetition. A LinkedIn search scans for keywords, and once on the page, so do people.
Step 3. Strip out the clutter. If you’re the average person you changed jobs six or eight times before you reached age 30. That experience is only relevant when it relates to your current goals. Sift through your profile and weed out or streamline everything that doesn’t support your business or professional goals. If you’re currently a Web designer but were an accountant in a previous life, a comprehensive listing of your accounting background is distracting. Keep previous jobs in your work history, but limit each to job title, company, and a brief description of duties.
Step 4. Reintroduce your personality. Focusing on keywords and eliminating clutter is important, but in the process your individuality probably got lost. Now you can put it back and add a little enthusiasm and flair. Describing yourself as, “A process improvement consultant with a Six Sigma black belt,” is specific and targeted but also says nothing about you as a person—and doesn’t make me think, “Hey, she would be great to work with.”
Share why you love what you do in your profile. Share what you hope to accomplish. Describe companies you worked for or projects you completed. Share your best or worst experience. Keep your keywords in place, leave out what doesn’t support your goals, and then be yourself.
Keywords are important but are primarily just a way to help potential clients find you. No one hires keywords; they hire people.
Step 5. Take a hard look at your profile photo. Say someone follows you on Twitter. What’s the first thing you do? Check out their photo.
A photo is a little like a logo: On its own an awesome photo won’t win business, but a bad photo can definitely lose business.
Take a look at your current photo. Does it reflect who you are as a professional or does it reflect a hobby or outside interest? Does it look like a real estate agent’s headshot? A good photo flatters but doesn’t mislead. Eventually you’ll meet some of your customers in person and the inevitable disconnect between Photoshop and life will be jarring.
The goal is for your photo to reflect how you will look when you meet a customer, not how you looked at that killer party in Key West four years ago. The best profile photo isn’t necessarily your favorite photo. The best photo strikes a balance between professionalism and approachability, making you look good but also real.
Step 6. Get recommendations. Most of us can’t resist reading testimonials, even when we know those testimonials were probably solicited. Recommendations add color and depth to a LinkedIn profile, fleshing it out while avoiding any, “Oh jeez will this guy ever shut up about himself?” reactions. So ask for recommendations, and offer to provide recommendations before you’re asked.
The best way to build great connections is to always be the one who gives first.
From:
Jeff Haden learned much of what he knows about business and technology as he worked his way up in the manufacturing industry. Everything else he picks up from ghostwriting books for some of the smartest leaders he knows in business. @jeff_haden
In today’s world, any smart marketing campaign will include a mix of the various popular social media platforms. But it is important to remember that with any social media platform, in order to maximize the return, you need to be an active, regular participant in the community.
You won’t gain any value by signing up for a social media service and only posting your marketing content. Those that get the most value out of social media are those that engage and communicate with other social media users.
Additionally, you want to position yourself where your current and potential customers are. Just because a social media site exists doesn’t mean that it’s right for your business or that your customers will be there. There are a lot of options in the social media realm for promoting your business online these days, so research into your audience demographic is important. One of the best and most visited social media websites you may wish to consider is StumbleUpon.
What is StumbleUpon?
StumbleUpon is a social media bookmarking site that allows users to “like” websites and add them to their profile. These websites are then shared with their friends through their profile and by using the “stumble” button, which is added to a user’s browser toolbar when they sign up. The stumble button basically sends a user to a random website, usually one previously liked by a friend. StumbleUpon boasts more than 30 million users. Each user fills out a survey of their interests, so there is definitely the potential for your business website to reach a broad and targeted audience.
What are the Benefits of StumbleUpon?
StumbleUpon asks their users to define the categories that interest them, everything from action movies to zoology. If your business fits into one of these interest categories well, your site can get a lot of new visitors that are more likely to be interested in your business. Additionally, you’re going to get a steady stream of visitors if you use it properly, as opposed to a burst of visitors from other paid advertising services that could potentially skew your website statistics or crash your servers.
As mentioned above, if you’re not actively going to use StumbleUpon, this solution may not be a good fit for your marketing campaign. In order to get your website “stumbled upon,” you need to be an active user and receive high ratings from other users. If you do nothing but create a profile, submit your site and walk away, you won’t get any benefit from the site. Moreover, StumbleUpon has a very specific policy against using their service for promotional purposes. If you run a business and are only promoting your business’ website, you will most likely be identified as a spammer and kicked off the service. That is why it is greatly important to participate in the community.
If you want to use StumbleUpon purely for promotional purposes, then you will need to sign up for their Paid Discovery program. Essentially, StumbleUpon will place your site in front of users that are interested in discovering new sites. Every user that clicks on your site will cost you a flat fee of $0.10. They also offer some upgrade options that allows your site to get seen more often. They also offer the option to create a site or brand channel that will allow users to follow your company. You need to contact StumbleUpon directly for this service and it will cost you, not to mention the bounce rates are sometimes known to be high if your website does not fit the category well.
Why you Should Add a StumbleUpon Badge
The simplest and least expensive solution, if you feel StumbleUpon is the right fit for your business, is to add the StumbleUpon badge to your website. StumbleUpon offers html code for free that allows you to insert their badge onto your website pages, encouraging other users to add your site to their profiles. This will exponentially increase your discoveries in StumbleUpon, especially if those who add you are active users.
Of course, every social media site offers some sort of badge or widget – we see them everywhere. One thing to keep in mind here is that you don’t want to clutter your home page with every service’s badge. You only need to utilize those that you are targeting. Dedicated users to any service, including StumbleUpon, will actively promote your site if they find the content useful. StumbleUpon even offers a toolbar for their users to easily like websites and add them to their profile.
Choose the Right Social Network for Your Business
Ultimately, you need to choose the social media services that are right for your business. You can’t be engaged with users everywhere. If you try, you’ll quickly be focusing only on social media and not on your business. Stick with a handful of services where you can build a following and engage customers on a regular basis.
Give StumbleUpon a try. It may be the one you’re missing!
Guest author: Grant Webb works with Bisk Education, providing continuing education and test preparation for professional accountants. Including accounting CPE programs and CPA Exam Review courses.
The latest and greatest version of the WordPress software — 3.3, named “Sonny” in honor of the great jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt — is immediately available for download or update inside your WordPress dashboard.
WordPress has had over 65 million downloads since version 3.0 was released, and in this third major iteration we’ve added significant polish around the new user experience, navigation, uploading, and imports. Check out this short video that summarizes the things we think you’ll find are the cat’s pajamas:
Experienced users will appreciate the new drag-and-drop uploader, hover menus for the navigation, the new toolbar, improved co-editing support, and the new Tumblr importer. We’ve also been thinking a ton about what the WordPress experience is like for people completely new to the software. Version 3.3 has significant improvements there with pointer tips for new features included in each update, a friendly welcome message for first-time users, and revamped help tabs throughout the interface. Finally we’ve improved the dashboard experience on the iPad and other tablets with better touch support.
There is a ton of candy for developers as well. I’d recommend starting your exploration with the new editor API, new jQuery version, better ways to hook into the help screens, more performant post-slug-only permalinks, and of course the entire list of improvements on the Codex and in Trac.
You can check out the improvements in detail on the WordPress Codex. And no doubt we’ll be posting about them over the next few weeks.
We’re all excited! Thanks to all of the WordPress crew who put together our favorite piece of open source software.
Timeline, the redesigned version of the profile that Facebook gives users much more flexibility in how they present themselves. Users can customize their banner image, make certain types of content more prominent, and decide what moments of their life they want to feature. Everything users have ever posted to Facebook is now much more accessible, so most will want to browse through their Timeline and ensure all their content is appropriate and has the right privacy settings.
Here we’ll walk-through all the new features available in Timeline, how to control what’s displayed, and discuss how Timeline will impact users and the rest of the site. Facebook has struck a balance between creating a common structure for all profiles but giving users to ability customize the way they present themselves within those boundaries. In this way, the site has become more personal without following Myspace’s mistake of allowing users so much freedom over arrangement of core features that browsing becomes confusing.
Those who want to early access to Timeline can sign up at its new about page. It’s also possible to get a developer release of the Timeline now. To get access, those who aren’t already developers users must have a verified account and install the Developer app, then create an application, click “Get Started Using Open Graph”, edit some settings, then wait a few minutes and return to their profile. They should see the Timeline, and can select to make it visible it to their friends immediately or it will be automatically published on September 29th, 2011.
At the top of the Timeline is the Cover, a giant banner image. Users can select any of their their album photos as their Cover, or upload a new image. Once selected, users can click on their Cover to bring up options to reposition it, choose a new image, or remove their current Cover.
With this option, Facebook has given users more control over the look of their profile than ever before. It may also lead to the rise of applications that let users create collages or other special images specifically for use as Covers.
Below the Cover users see the biographical information that previously appeared on their Info tab. This includes their work, education, current city, and hometown. There’s also an “About” link that expands the Info section to reveal work and education details, a “History by the Year” of a user’s employment and schooling, a user’s Relationships and Family connections, their About Me text, favorite quotes, basic info and contact info. Users no longer have the option to “Feature” certain friend lists, family members, or Groups.
To get users to keep their Info up to date, there are edit links in the expanded About section and a big Update Info on the main Timeline view. By getting people to share as much biographical information as possible, Facebook gains valuable data that it can charge advertisers to use for targeting their ads.
Beside the Info section, the Timeline displays four channels of different types of content. By default, these are Friends, Photos, Map, and Likes, but users can click a drop-down to swap in other categories into the featured slots. When viewing a friend’s Timeline, this drop-down reveal the non-featured categories.
The categories users can choose from include:
Above the featured content categories is a button called View Activity that shows a red counter of posts and info that require approval before appearing on a user’s profile. When clicked, the button reveals the Activity Log, a private log of all of a user’s activity since the joined Facebook. Downward arrow buttons next to each piece of content let users select its privacy and whether its featured on, allowed on, or hidden from a user’s Timeline.
A drop-down in the top right corner lets users filter to only see certain types of activity or content published through specific apps. By visiting the Activity Log after using an app with persistent permission to share a activity, users can hide specific actions such as listening to an embarrassing song or watching a controversial video. As there is no “incognito mode” or way to preemptively prevent certain activity of an approved app from being published, this is the only way to hide specific actions.
Users should considering browsing through all their content in the Activity Log and ensuring they at least know what they’re sharing and with who. As the Timeline makes this content much more accessible to others, users should make sure nothing added to Facebook long ago is visible to the wrong people.
Besides the View Activity button on the Info panel of one’s own Timeline is a settings drop-down that lets users preview their profile from the privacy perspective of a specific friend. There’s also a link to creating an embeddable profile badge for websites.
When viewing another user’s Timeline, this area includes Friend and Subscribe options that let users send someone a friend request, add them to Friend Lists, subscribe to their public updates, and modify the volume and types of that friend’s content that will appear in the news feed. The panel also lets users send a Message to someone, and includes a drop-down menu that reveals See Friendship, poke, unfriend, and report/block options.
A publisher on the left side of the Timeline lets users post new updates. If a user scrolls beneath the publisher, a floating bar appears allowing them to publish without returning to the top of the Timeline. In addition to the standard status update and photo options, a Places button lets users compose an update that includes a tagged location.
There are also five new types of updates that let users share important life events in more detail than a profile info change or status update. When an user indicates they are publishing a life event, Facebook knows to publish this more prominently in news feed, to a wider set of friends, and to those who’ve specifically subscribed to their life events. The types will also give Facebook more data on a user’s identity and behavior that could be used for ad targeting.
The new publishing options are:
At the top right of the Timeline below the Info section is a panel of a user’s “More Recent Activity” such as Liking Pages, new friendships, subscribing to someone’s updates, installing new apps, and more. Individual activity stories can be hidden from the Timeline, or all past and future activity stories of that type can be hidden. An edit icon lets users manage what story types they’ve hidden.
Panels for a user’s recent Music, Video, and other media types appear in this area as well. This lets a user’s friends get a quick snapshot of what they’re listening to, watching, or reading.
Below all these other features is the Timeline itself, a reel of all of a user’s important updates from their time on Facebook. A set of links in the top right corner of the profile lets users skip to a specific month, year, or the beginning of the timeline. By scrolling to the bottom of the Timeline, older updates are displayed. Previously, users had to scroll to the bottom of a wall to view older content, and couldn’t navigate to different time periods on the profile. Timeline makes content posted even years ago accessible with a few clicks, meaning the history of a user’s time on Facebook factors much more heavily into how they’re perceived.
Hovering over an update on one’s own Timeline reveals options to hide, feature or change its date. By clicking on the center line running down the middle of the Timeline, users can insert new content at specific dates in the past.
In some cases when users scroll to the start of a month or year on the Timeline, they’ll see summaries of all their activity in that time period, such as friendships, wall posts from friends, Event RSVPs, Likes, Places tags, photos. There’s also a special panel that displays all of wall posts a user got on their birthday. At the very bottom of the Timeline, users can edit the story about their own birth.
Facebook preserves the privacy settings Timeline users had previously set for the profile walls. The relatively new “Limit the Audience for Past Posts” privacy control lets users apply the “friends only” visibility setting to anything they’ve published publicly or to more than just their friends. Before the launch of Timeline this wasn’t as necessary, as it was so difficult to get to old content. With the Timeline’s navigation bar making older content more accessible, users may want to use this privacy control to limit the visibility of posts they published to “everyone” years ago.
Users can now grant applications persistent permission to share their activity to the Ticker and Timeline. Therefore, users should occasionally check their Activity Log to make sure they’re comfortable sharing all the things they’ve listened to or watched.
The Facebook user base’s reaction to forthcoming rollout of the Timeline is likely to be mixed. Some will enjoy the customization features and ability to use Facebook as digital scrapbook they can share with friends. Others might feel the Timeline violates their privacy by making their older content so visible. In reality, this content was already available, it was just harder to get to.
It may take some time for users to clean up their Timeline, but once they’re comfortable sharing everything on it, we think it will become popular and make the profile a much more accurate and vivid representation of people’s identities. When users want to get to know a new friend they won’t just browse all their photos, they’ll be able to scan everything they’ve ever shared, which could significantly increase the amount of time people spend on Facebook.
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