Wow.  How fast does Social Media change?  It changes everyday and I work on keeping up but honestly it isn’t my “job” to do so nor do I focus on providing social media marketing advice or consulting.

Therefore, knowing everything about everything is completely impossible. 

I want and encourage all social media enthusiasts, real estate investors, brokers, consultants and friends to understand what is happening with Facebook.  You will want to check this out!  (Even if you still think that Facebook isn’t something that can be a “life-changer” for you or your business.

Thanks to @CShanes of the 24/7 Entrepreneur for putting together this great post!

Click below to see and hear the goods!

http://the247entrepreneur.com/news/the-social-network/

Foursquare, launched in 2009, is a hot mobile social media platform self-described as a “friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things.” 

So far Foursquare has been very successful with

• Individual users
• Media outlets, such as The New York Times and The History Channel
• B2C (Business to Consumer) companies, like Starbucks and McDonald’s

But B2B companies have yet to embrace Foursquare. Many see it as having limited utility and aren’t quite sure how to leverage it, so they don’t see it as a viable business application.

So are there ways B2B companies can use Foursquare to reach new customers or promote their brand? Let’s get creative and look at some of the ways B2B companies can follow the lead of other Foursquare adopters to market their products or services.

Using Foursquare to Promote Events and Tradeshows

Early adopters have already been using Foursquare successfully to promote events and tradeshows. Back in January, Intel partnered with Foursquare during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and offered unique badges and freebies for check-ins. Foursquare hasn’t introduced the event function on mobile applications yet, but B2B companies can follow simple steps to implement it.

• Start by creating a new profile for your event.
• Then, add the venue and event description.
• Use the “Tip” function to broadcast event updates, incentives, and nearby meetings and venues to event participants.
• Encourage check-ins, engage participants and reward them.

Also, don’t forget to flag the venue as closed after the event is over.

Integration with Other Social Media Platforms

B2B companies can also effectively integrate Foursquare with other social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, to synergize marketing efforts and enhance end-user experience. By linking Foursquare to Facebook and Twitter, check-ins can be shared across platforms. B2B companies can host social gatherings, such as lectures and meet-ups, where savvy social media users will check in at the event venue on Foursquare, send out real-time event updates on Twitter, and share event photos on Facebook, which may even prompt their friends and followers to also become supporters of the company. These marketing efforts will all help with building brand awareness and generating leads.

Targeting Search Engine Results

Bing Maps has integrated Foursquare data for users to view quick venue tips and mayorships. Google and other search engines are sure to be developing their own location-based features too. Foursquare mapping and commenting features really benefit B2C companies, especially retailers with storefronts.  B2B companies can also benefit by adding company locations and listing company events, venues, trainings, seminars, etc. on Foursquare.

Location-based platforms are changing the overall search picture. Search engines will likely integrate real-time location-based data into search results, as they’ve done with universal search elements and real-time social updates. Companies with more check-ins and tips from engaged fans will rank higher in the blended search results. It’s very possible companies will be able to leverage Foursquare to boost their SEO efforts through brand engagement signals, much like what has happened with Facebook and Twitter.

Tracking Sales Team Performance 

Another way B2B companies can use Foursquare is as a sales management tool. B2B companies can use the mobile networking platform to track sales and sales performance metrics and to offer incentives to its sales staff. For example, the sales person who works hardest and collects the most check-ins could earn a reward. What’s more, the sales team could possibly identify potential leads and grab personal data about the leads by tracking their check-in behaviors on Foursquare.

However, this brings up proprietary data issues. Sales people probably don’t want competitors to know where they have been and who they’ve had sales calls with. The solution would be to launch a private version of Foursquare with custom applications. With a custom version, B2B companies can set restrictions and allow only current employees into the account. Check-in updates from the sales team would be shared internally and could even be available to only the management team. And management could send out real-time lead information to the sales force.

The customer service team could benefit in the same way. This would work like emailing or text-messaging, but with location features, which would be easier for two-way communication. To be more advanced, employees can view the updates and tips through a corporate email account with a simple connection. And every company and employee can have several Foursquare accounts for public, private and other use. In the future, a person’s online and mobile accounts will all be connected, but with advanced features to address privacy concerns.

Enhancing Corporate Culture and Community

B2B companies can use Foursquare to build community within the organization. Through checking in the corporate location, both management and employees will achieve stronger internal relations. Whoever checks in the most will become the mayor, and everybody has an equal opportunity to obtain the mayorship, not only the CEO. The mayorship can also be stolen by another employee. In the game-like process to grab mayorship, employees will gain a better bond, build morale and better internal relationships.

Employees might also check in together at a restaurant after work, or at the airport on a business trip. Internally, they win badges of swarm (50+ people are also checked in here) and jetsetter (5 airport check-ins). With a better sense of company unity, they can show clients and fans that they’re part of a great team with a strong corporate culture.

Partnering with Foursquare

Inspired by Twitter, Foursquare has opened its API to developers. There’s a potential for B2B companies, specifically software companies, to adopt a Foursquare component into their products through the API. Foursquarefox, a third-party Firefox plugin, enables you to check in and locate friends from your browser.

How do you see Foursquare as valuable business tool?  Look forward to hearing your thoughts…

The social networking platform Ning announced a couple weeks ago that it was making some substantial changes to the company. The news, coming just one month after Jason Rosenthal replaced Gina Bianchini as CEO, was sour for both employees and for many users of the service. Ning will cut 70 jobs and will end free subscriptions to the site.

Rosenthal writes in the press release, “We will phase out our free service. Existing free networks will have the opportunity to either convert to paying for premium services, or transition off of Ning.”

You’ve created a Facebook fan page and people are frequenting your page.  But do you really know how many people visit your page, what areas are popular and what parts of the world your visitors come from?

Facebook Insights shows some demographic information on your page, but is limited to information about interactions with your fans.  The free Google Analytics tool offers more sophisticated and comprehensive data.  Adding Google Analytics to your fan page can be done easily but requires some special steps.

One of the limitations of Facebook fan pages is they can only run limited JavaScript. Google Analytics needs JavaScript code included on a page to correctly track visitors in the traditional way.  And running JavaScript won’t work on your fan page…

However, there is a new solution.  Using free and opensource FBGAT (Facebook Google Analytics Tracker), you can get Google Analytics working on your Facebook fan page. Now you can track visitor statistics, traffic sources, visitor countries, and keyword searches with all the other powerful reporting of Google Analytics.

What follows are the instructions to set up Google Analytics tracker on your Facebook fan page. (Note: Your fan page must use an HTML application like static FBML for you to use this method.)

#1: Create a Google Analytics account

If you already have a Google Analytics account, create a new website profile to separately track visits to your Facebook fan page.

Where it says “Add a Profile…”, simply paste your fan page URL or use Facebook.com.

After the step above, Google will display your tracking code. The tracking code generally looks like this: UA-3123123-2.  Note: Google will tell you to activate the website.  You do not need to do this.

#2: Get your tracking images

The way to work around the Facebook JavaScript limitation is to generate custom images. FBGAT is a free tool that will generate your custom image code to track visits on each of your Facebook fan pages.

The above screenshot shows what the code generator looks like.

Here’s what to include in the fields shown above:

• Analytics Code: This is the tracking code that you got in step #1. (It is very important that you enter this correctly.)
• Domain on Analytics: The domain name you created in step #1 (use Facebook.com if you used it in step #1).
• Page Link: This is to let you track the page on Google Analytics. What would you like to call your page so that you’ll recognize it in Analytics?
• Page Title: This is for your reference.

After clicking the “Generate Code” button, you’ll get a code which you’ll need to copy in full. You’ll have to generate a separate code for each fan page you want to track and place it as shown in step #3 below.  Note: If you have multiple pages powered by FBML, you can do this for each page.

#3: Add the code to Facebook

Place the code generated as shown within your Facebook page using an app like Static FBML.  Programs like Static FBML allow you to add HTML to your pages.  By simplify editing your Static FMBL pages and inserting the code from step 2, Google Analytics will track all visits to those pages.

You can place the code anywhere as long as it does not disrupt functionality of your existing page. I prefer the top or the bottom of the page.

That’s all there is to it. The tracking has begun. Google Analytics will now need about 24 hours to show you a report of your visitors.

Tracking Visits to Your Fan Page Wall

The wall might be your main page. To track this, again you will need to create a page with static FBML. The only difference is that to show this on the wall, you are required to make it a box. Just click on the (add) on the Box, and it will be added to the wall. To change this setting, click on “Application Settings” under the FBML that you would like to create as a box. As with other pages, please note that you have to create a unique tracking code for this page as well.

What do you think? Will you be able to better justify your Facebook marketing with this added insight?

This blog was originated here:  http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-add-google-analytics-to-your-facebook-fan-page/

Please comment below.

So many people wonder whether they should start their online hobby or business as a blog or a static website. The two have many differences, but I honestly believe that in most cases a person should start a blog instead of a website. Some still remain unconvinced, especially since blogs are newer on the scene. However, these are the reasons why I think a dynamic blog is better than a static website.

1. Blogs are easier to setup and manage.

A blog can be installed with Wordpress, the best blogging platform and my choice, in five minutes. You don’t have to get up close and personal with coding it, all of the core files are already there for you and all you have to do is upload them and create a database (which takes two seconds). You can find an amazingly beautiful theme or design, upload it in one minute, and if you want you can easily tweak it. You can login to the user-friendly dashboard and write your content, manage your categories and comments, change your options or blogroll, and much more without dealing with anything over the top and complicated. The blog platform does all the work with the technical stuff while you get to enjoy writing for your site and running it however you like.

2. Blogs retain interest.

Because blogs are updated all the time and it’s easy to browse through them and all of their content, that makes them a favorite with online visitors and readers. A visitor is much more likely to return to a blog than a static website. Blogs catch and hold attention and it’s easier for the reader to get lost in one for hours since the content is navigated the way it is. That can happen with a website, but it’s a lot less likely. Blogs are at more of a personal level, and all of the posts are easily accessible and featured for the readers. Instead of a website where visitors have to crawl through page after boring page, consider a blog and keep your readers longer and have them coming back all the time for more.

3. Blogs are more search engine friendly.

Just like they’re reader friendly for being updated all the time and having a huge collection of interlinked content, they’re search engine friendly for those same reasons as well. It’s not always true, but more than likely that a blog will rank better in search engines than your average website. The more a site is updated, the more often a search engine bot will come back and crawl your site so they can quickly index the new things you have to offer. And when a bot is coming to crawl your site, it will have many more options with a blog since all of the content is linked to and featured everywhere. Besides those things, blogs are easy to optimize, especially with all the plugins available (see All In One SEO Pack). And blogs attract links more than static websites as well, which will help you out in the search engines too.

4. Blogs gain an audience more easily.

Just like how I mentioned that blogs retain interest, they also more easily gain an audience. With the abundance of content and such a navigable site, readers will like your blog. A blog will also be found for the first time by visitors because they are usually much more popular than a static website. If you write good content and provide things of interest, you’ll get noticed easily. And once you start building a readerbase, your readers will help promote your blog for you. People will talk about you, link to you, and grow your blog for you. Usually when I first learn about a blog I learn about it through someone else or another a blog I read. People like to stay on top of blogs about topics they’re interested in, and that’s easier to do with a blog. And for an audience, the easier it is the better.

5. Blogs help build author and visitor interaction.

When you have a static website your visitors aren’t going to be known to you like they would with a blog. With a blog, anyone who likes your page or post can comment on it. You’ll start to learn your readers’ names and their own blogs or sites. You’ll have conversations with them and discuss topics through the comments or email. And even if a reader doesn’t comment, you might see them voting for your content a lot via social media, their avatar might be popping up a lot on your MyBlogLog widget, or you might be getting linked to by them and see it via your trackbacks and incoming links. As your blog grows you’ll come to recognize hundreds to even thousands of your readers, with dozens becoming people you know much more closely.

6. Blogs can be made to look however you want.

Like I mentioned earlier, you can achieve any look you want with your blog, WITHOUT having to get up close and personal with the coding. There are so many free themes, plugins, and resources available that are already built and coded for you – all you usually have to do is upload them and click the ‘activate’ button. If you find a theme you like you can upload it, and if necessary, tweak it here and there to make it perfect for your blog. Plugins can manage and run things automatically without you having to lift a finger after you install one. There are plugins that work behind the scenes and block spam, create navigation systems, generate sitemaps, and enforces WWW or non-WWW for your blog. Then there are visual ones, like plugins that encourage visitors to subscribe, create contact forms, rotate advertisement banners, let you create polls for your blog, and thousands more. A blog can look however your heart desires – it can even look like a static website if that’s what you want, while still being managed much more easily.

7. Blogs allow readers to subscribe via RSS.

RSS readers are one of the most valuable things a blog can have. Subscribers are people who love your blog and what you write so much that they want it delivered to their feed aggregator or their email inbox each day. They are people who are targeted to your content and are probably your blog’s biggest fans. By allowing people to subscribe, developing regular readers is even easier than it was before. The amount of RSS subscribers a blog has is one of the ways to determine how popular and valuable it is. Besides providing value to you, it provides obvious value to your readers as well and makes things much easier for them to read everything you write.

8. Blogs are popular with social media sites.

Since blogs have a bigger sense of community and the blog owner and readers interact, (as well as bloggers interacting with other bloggers), you’d know blogs are popular with social media sites, like Super Blogging’s readers’ favorite StumbleUpon. Since you’re already building relationships with the readers who come to your blog, it’s easy to encourage social media votes and promote your blog this way. Loyal visitors and blogging friends will often vote for your best content, and using a blog over a website content is easier to promote.

9. Blogs build links much more easily.

And again, since blogs have such a huge community and personal aspect to them, they gather much more links. Bloggers try to link to other blogs as much as possible, not only because this helps build exposure and traffic (since a blogger is alerted whenever they receive a link), but also because blogs are huge sources of easily browsed information to direct their readers to. At Super Blogging you might notice I do weekly roundups called “The Best of the Blogosphere”. I do this to point my readers to fantastic content from other bloggers, and also to get those other bloggers’ attention. And since blogs collect many links each day or week, they often develop better rankings in search engines as well.

10. Blogs are better for a million more reasons.

What other reasons do you need? They’re easier to setup, easier to manage, have thousands of free themes and plugins to install, build a loyal readerbase quicker, are promoted by others, retain interest, are more popular with search engines AND social media, are easily customized, promote interaction, offer RSS subscriptions, and much more. Websites used to be the only choice, but blogs are quickly gaining popularity to overrank them. It always depends on the goal you want to achieve, but 95% of the time I’d tell you to start a blog.

Did I leave any out? Please let me know if forgot any reasons stating why a blog is better than a website, or if you think differently, please tell me why in the comments as well. What do you think? Is a blog better than a static website, or is it the other way around?

Glossary of Blogging and Social Media Terms

This is – and always will be – a work in progress.

A

Adsense: Google’s pay-per-click, context-relevant program available to blog and web publishers as a way to create revenue.

Adwords: The advertiser program that populates the Adsense program. The advertiser pays Google on a per click basis.

Aggregator: A web-based tool or desktop application that collects syndicated content.

AJAX: An acronym (Asynchronous Java Script and XML) representing a way to create real-time Web applications.

Akismet: Comment spam filter popular with WordPress blogs.

Anonoblog: A blog site authored by a person or persons who don’t publish their name.

API: An acronym (Application Programming Interface) representing a computer system or application allowing for requests to be made of it by other programs and allows for data to be exchanged. Think “programmable web”

Archives: Most often an index page, often organizing posts or entries by either category or date.

AstroTurfing: A fake grass roots push to generate buzz or interest in a product, service, or idea. Often this movement is motivated by a fee or gift to the writer of a post or comment or may be written under a phony pseudonym.

Atom: A popular feed format used for syndicating content.

Avatar: A graphical image or likeness that replaces a photo of the author of the content on a blog.

D

Dashboard: The administration area on your blog software that allows you to post, check traffic, upload files, manage comments, etc.

Date-Based Archives: The archives of a blog site, organized by time-stamp. Almost every blog will have some form of time-stamp and many archives are listed along the sidebar. Some list in weekly, but most on a month-by-month basis.

Delicious: A social bookmarking site and a property of Yahoo! Allows users to quickly store, organize (by tags) and share favorite web pages. You can also subscribe to RSS feeds of other users and share a page specifically with another user.

Digg: Digg is a place for people to discover, share and recommend  content  from anywhere on the web.

Digital Storytelling: A digital story is a nonfiction narrative, composed on a computer, often for publishing online or publishing to a DVD.  This can be done with any combination of images, video, narrative, music and text. (h/t – Ourmedia’s Social media glossary)

Domain Name: The identifying name of an internet site. The domain name of my site is “www.converstations.com”

Dooced: A term associated with someone getting fired for the content written in a blog post or web site (not for the act of writing, but for what was published). From the popular site, Dooced (by an author who once vented about her company — and got fired because of what was written).

E

Ecosystem: A community and their environment functioning as a whole. The blogosphere can be viewed as an ecosystem (See It’s the Conversation Economy, Stupid)

Ecto: A stand-alone publishing application, allowing users to compose posts offline.

Edublog: A blog site focused on education, be it teacher, administrator, consultant or student.

EFF: The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the leading civil liberties group defending your rights in the digital world

Entry: An individual post or article published on a blog. Each of these entries, while appearing in an index, are also web pages unto themselves.

Event Blog: A blog specifically launched as a companion to an event (e.g. Blogger Social)

Expression Engine: A robust content management system (CMS) with plenty of features. Not a free tool.

Eye Rest: Using “gifts” in your posting to give your readers a rest. Includes images, bold text, bullet points, lists, and hyperlinks.  May go against writing like your teacher taught you – but does she read your blog?

F

Feed: The RSS or Atom feeds used by news aggregators (aka feed readers). We have a category dedicated to Feeds (coming soon)

FeedBlitz: An RSS service that makes it easy for those addicted to email.

FeedBurner: FeedBurner is a Google company/tool allowing web sites, blogs and podcasts to “burn” content into a simple way for readers to subscribe (incl. email). I don’t just recommend this tool – it’s a must-have.

Feed Reader: An aggregator of content, subscribed to by the user, so that specific content or search results arrives in their “reader”. Among the popular (and free) tools are GreatNews, Feed Demon and Google Reader.

Findability: Refers to being locatable. Though tied closely with Information Architecture on the Web, particularly within one site, findability has also become a popular term in creating a findable, locatable and navigable presence on and across the web and social networking. Also see findability.org

Folksonomy: The collective indexing by use of tags, labels or keywords by the consumers of the content. The tagging system of Flickr of Delicious are examples of this social indexing.

H

HTML: The acronym for HyperText Markup Language. The coding language used to create and link together documents and files on the World Wide Web. The code is embedded in and around text and multimedia files in order to define layout, font, colors, and graphics.

Haloscan: A free, easy to use commenting, ratings and trackback service for weblogs and websites, allowing visitors to leave instant feedback. Popular on Blogger sites.

Hat Tip: A hat tip is a public acknowledgment to someone (or a website) for bringing something to the blogger’s attention. Also known as H/T (H/T for this definition: Blogossary)

Hits: A measurement used in Web analytics, a “hit” is often defined as any request for a file from a Web server. In one web page, there could be several files embedded in it. If on one page you have four images, two JavaScript items and you use an auxiliary CSS file — you’d have eight hits on one page.

Hyperlink: A navigational reference to another document or page on the World Wide Web.

M

Mashup: Most often a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single tool. Not necessarily restricted to online applications (“Hey – you’ve got Peanut Butter on my Chocolate!”)

Meme: Keeping things simple, here’s a partial definition from “The Daily Meme“: In the context of web logs / ‘blogs / blogging and other kinds of personal web sites it’s some kind of list of questions that you saw somewhere else and you decided to answer the questions. Then someone else sees them and does them and so on and so on.

MicroBlogging: A form of blogging allowing users to compose brief text updates and publish them. These messages can be submitted and received by a variety of means and devices, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, mobile device, MP3 or the web. Think Twitter

Moblogs: A blog published directly to the web from a phone or other mobile device.

Movable Type: Movable Type is a publishing platform a served web publishing platform (it sits on your server) created by SixApart, the same folks who operate Typepad (a hosted web publishing platform — hosted on their server).

MyBlogLog: A Yahoo-owned community and social networking site that tracks traffic and visits to member sites. One of the better community-building applications available.

N

Navigation (Nav): A menu of links or buttons allowing users to move from one web page to another within a site. Top navigation is what I use on this site. You will often see links as a footer on a site. That would be bottom nav or footer nav.

NetNewsWire: A free RSS news aggregator for the MAC

News Aggregator: A web-based tool or desktop application that collects syndicated content

NewsGator: An RSS company that provides us with FeedDemon, NetNewsWire,  its own web-based feed reader and powers the feeds in Microsoft Outlook.

Newsvine: An open source, community news service, which lets members customize the news viewed by “seeding” articles or posting for others to view and rate.

Ninnyhammer: An idiot. It’s also a term of endearment (my wife’s nickname for me).

NoFollow: An HTML attribute instructing search engines to not allow a hyperlink to a web page to be influenced in ranking by that link. Originally implemented to combat certain types of search-engine spam. There is a movement to NOT use the No-Follow on blogs, especially the comments area

S

SEO: Acronym for Search Engine Optimization A good beginner’s guide to SEO can be found at SEOmoz.

Sidebar:A column (or multiple columns) along either or both sides of a blog site’s main content area. The sidebar is often includes contact information of the author, the blog’s purpose and categories, links to archives, honors and other widgets the author includes on the site.

SMO: Acronym for Social Media Optimization, a term coined by Rohit Bhargava

Spambot - automatic software robots that post spam on a blog (h/t Barbara Ling)

SOB: A badge of honor in the spirit of community and knowledge sharing. Created by Liz Strauss at Successful (and Outstanding) Blog(gers). A complete directory of SOBs.

Social Bookmarks: A method for Internet users to store, search, organize, and most importantly – share web pages. Two favorites are Delicious and StumbleUpon. For a great video on how social bookmarking works, check out CommonCraft’s Social Bookmarking in Plain English.

Social Media: The tool set (including blogs) which everyone can use to publish content to the web. This can include audio, video, photos, text, files…just about anything. And these days, everyone is a content producer.

Splog: Nickname for Spam Blogs, or blogs not providing their own or real content. Sploggers use automated tools to create fake blogs full of links or scraped content from other sites in order to boost search engine results.

Style or Style sheet – CSS that determines the look/feel of a site. (h/t Barbara Ling)

Syndication – Allows your blog content to be distributed online. (h/t Barbara Ling)

If you’ve suggestions, additions or modifications, add ‘em in a comment. Together we’re smarter.

LinkedIn is one of the staples of the professional business world. The network is purported to have more than 8½ million members, all professionals from around the world in no less than 130 industries. It is held in very high regard and recruiting managers use its platform to head hunt their next superstars.

It is important to optimize your visibility if you want to use LinkedIn for your benefit. Make sure that you treat your profile as if it were your resume or CV. Don’t skimp on any of the details and fill out your profile as carefully as you would write a resume for distribution. To add to your visibility insert your profile’s URL within your e-mail signature, allowing you to break ice more effectively when you mail some new business prospect or other professional. Add as many connections as you possibly can and work on your network membership to increase your footprint as much as possible. Your aim should be to appear as high as you can on the list of search results relevant to your specialty.

You should definitely allow your profile to be available for search engines to index. As Google highly rates LinkedIn profiles they are likely to be ranked well when people search. Select “full review” and make sure that your actual name appears in your profile’s URL.

When talking about visibility, don’t forget to promote your personal blog or website by entering the details in the relevant categories. Remember to enter your name and appropriate keywords to help you achieve the best search engine results.

To narrow down your job search features, don’t forget that you can use this network’s advanced search option by entering your relevant keywords to find out where others with your skill set currently work. When you are focusing in on a prospective new employer, use LinkedIn to study profiles of their current employees. This will give you a good feel for the makeup of the company and should you get the job, help you to fit in more quickly.

While on the subject of getting to know people at the company, do some research to find out more about your interviewer. Wouldn’t it be great if you shared some passion in common, went to the same college or enjoyed similar sporting activities?

As your goal is always self advancement, check out the health of the company and the industry that you are targeting. LinkedIn’s advanced search enables you to enter company names and you should focus on former employees who may well be willing to give you a candid opinion about your target company and its key personnel.

As with any network, the major benefit comes from being able to interact with other members. Ask pertinent questions and you should receive high-value answers from those people who are “in the same boat” as you, can talk from experience and may be more than willing to pass on their advice.

Do you use LinkedIn?

Do you liked LinkedIn?

Tell me about your experiences and how it has helped you.

Dave Hageman