Do you have an email newsletter that you send out weekly/monthly/bi-monthly? Why not connect it with your Facebook Page for your business and kill two birds with one stone? Don’t know how? It’s easy, trust me. Here are some instructions:

If you use Vertical Response as your email platform

If you use Constant Contact

If you use iContact

Providing an email sign up to your newsletter can be as easy as downloading the Static FBML application to your page and then following some simple instructions. Have questions, please contact us and we can help you get up and running.

Increase your reach by over 24% by creating this simple form and pasting it right into your Facebook Business Page profile. It will show up either as a tab when you download the app, or in the left hand corner of your Page profile.

Examples:

Get people to sign up via your Facebook Page for news, latest events, or hot deals THEN follow up with a short, but sweet, BLAST through the “Send an Update to Your Fans” feature. Whether you have 10 fans, 100 fans or a billion fans — say hello to them via this feature  fast and effectively.

Facebook is making communication easy, folks. Jump on the band wagon and promote your business through these easy to use tools.

Don’t miss out on the added 24% of traffic/customers/leads that you could get by broadcasting your email newsletter through social media.

With jobs running scarce, the economy shaky and even long standing media closing its doors, we are turning to the internet as our lifeline. With our desire to always stay connected, we post just about anything to our social media profiles – from what we had for breakfast, to whether or not we think it will rain for another 30 days straight. We ask our ‘followers’/’fans’/’voyeurs’ to take polls, quizzes and/or give us advice on what life throws at us. In the world of the internet, we may think it stays on our screens, but it doesn’t. Anything you post online is public and for all to see.

For those who may have just gasped after reading that, rest assured. Each social media networking site has privacy settings that you can alter based upon your preferences. My suggestion? If you don’t want your mom reading about your night out, why would you post it publicly on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter? Don’t post pictures or enable the ‘tag’ feature on photos…your employer does not want to see you pie eyed at some random bar on a Friday night.
Here are some do’s and don’ts when it comes to Social Media.

Social Media Don’ts:

• Don’t Be Pompous: Just because you are sitting in front of a computer screen doesn’t mean you are invincible. No one likes a ‘know it all’, so don’t act like one. If you are looking for a new job, follow those in your niche. Ask questions. Be available for meet ups. Be Proactive. Get your ego in check and act humble. It’s all about networking and building friendships.
• Don’t Slap it on Heavy: Let’s face it. The job market is tough and the hiring process is not easy. Stay true to yourself and don’t lie about your past work experiences because Google always remembers. Tout your winnings, but not too loudly as this might offend your followers or perhaps turn people away from contacting you. Believe it or not, a self promoting tweet may be the demise of your online persona.
• Don’t Blab About Anything and Everything: No one cares if you are drinking a Coke or “so tired you can’t keep your eyes open”. People care about unique, enticing content. Share your thoughts, your goals or talk about the latest project that you worked on. Update your statuses with ‘sticky’ content and it will drive people to look at your profile and even follow you.
• Don’t Just Set it and Forget it: Social media profiles take time to setup and even more time to maintain. If you setup a Facebook Page for your business, it’s wise to have someone on staff to update it regularly. If you setup a Twitter account for your client, it’s best if you maintain weekly status updates; checking for new friends, direct messages, shout outs or reviews. You never know when that ‘hot lead’ will come in…it’s best to be ready.

Social Media Do’s:

• Do Be Friendly, Cordial and Respective: People love feedback. Comment on statuses of those that you follow and respect. Virtually get to know your friends by checking out their social media profile. Where do they work? What is their passion? Comment, share posts, befriend. Karma, folks. It does come back to you.
• Do Participate: Just like with status updates, you can also post messages on links that people share. Or, take it upon yourself to share the content of your peers via a ‘Share This’ button. Blog about a new product. Make news viral. Share the ‘link love’ by giving others a direct link to your website. Link popularity is a huge component to getting found in the search engines. The more high quality links you have pointing to your website, the more credible and valuable your website appears to the end user and the search engines.
• Be Proactive About Leads: You may have a variety of social media accounts. Synch them up using Hootsuite, TweetLater or Ping.fm and update statuses quickly and efficiently with these tools. Make sure to check regularly for direct messages, shout outs or ‘thumbs up’ and give the love right back. Connect, Engage, Communicate and Befriend.
• Do Set Your Privacy Settings: Like I said, no one really wants to see you carrying on in pictures, especially not your employer. We have become too comfortable online and seem to post everything for all eyes to see. Be aware of what you or your friends are posting about you. Set your privacy settings so that you must approve everything first.

Online social networks, whether for personal or business use, are a wonderful thing. Just make sure you know how to use them appropriately to make them work for you!

What is LinkedIn?
Similar to other social media sites, like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter, LinkedIn is an online community where you and other users can interact, post updates, add photos and display information about the most important product…YOU.

LinkedIn is different from most other popular social media sites because it is geared toward business professionals. Rather than making ‘friends’ with other users you make valuable ‘connections’ on LinkedIn. Think of it as a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week, online networking mixer. With the economy and job openings seemingly going by the wayside, it’s time to start getting creative and being proactive about your most marketable asset: yourself. LinkedIn allows you to put your best foot forward and begin building your new image.

How Do I Build My LinkedIn Network?
You can build your online network by making connections with other business professionals you know or have worked with in the past. These can include college friends, professors, current coworkers, past coworkers, club/group/chamber associations, and the list goes on.

First, begin by connecting with your colleagues at your current place of employment. Next, input your email contacts and connect with your entire list within seconds! If you do attend local business mixers, whether through local Chambers of Commerce, or attend niche trade shows, make sure to collect those business cards and check to see if your peers have accounts. Again, if they don’t – send invites to these new friends asking them to create an account and link to you.

With over 35 million business professionals currently using LinkedIn, you can connect and network with like minded business people on both a local and national front or promote your business services shamelessly to your connections! Build your sphere of influence and open up your network tenfold through this ‘virtual handshake’.

What If I’m Currently Unemployed?
If you are one of the many who may be on the look out for a new opportunity, don’t fret – consider your former employers. LinkedIn allows you to find connections you may have from companies where you have worked in the past. Where did you go to school? Where did you learn your craft? Where did you study? You can find people from your past educational institutions or organizations and connect. Simply put in the name of your past businesses/education organizations, and LinkedIn will do the work for you. You might be surprised at who you find and connect with!

Once you have a connection bank, the next step would be to browse your connections’ connections…do you know these people? If so, send them an invite to connect with you. You will be on your merry networking way in no time!

How Can I Personally Benefit From LinkedIn?
Get seen, be heard and connect! There are many benefits of using LinkedIn, whether you want to promote a positive image of yourself online, network with others, stay in touch with business connections, monitor group updates and/or stay up to date on industry news through RSS feeds. In short, LinkedIn provides an open platform for self promotion and business networking, which often go hand in hand.

Looking for a job? In today’s world, submitting a resume may not be enough to land you that dream career that you’ve been striving for. Competition has ramped up, and employers are looking for those who enjoy interacting and engaging within their respective niche. Most interviewers will ‘Google’ your name to see what information comes up, trying to learn more about you. Try ‘Googling’ your name, and you will see that your LinkedIn profile may pop up above other listings for you. If you don’t have an account yet, ‘Google’ one of our names, either Sarah Lamansky or Destiny Malone (go ahead, try it), and scroll down. Google now offers direct links into social networking platforms (MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn). Traditionally, Google only allowed 10 links on the results page…now the 11th is given to these privileged social networking platforms…showcasing YOU.

Your LinkedIn profile is almost like an online resume that people can view at any given time – an open showcase of everything you have to offer. So make the most of it! Beef up your profile with your professional skills, job experience, credentials, you name it. References are even available upon request; meaning, you can request recommendations from your connections. Anyone viewing your profile can then see and read all the recommendations you’ve received, and it adds to your credibility and positive image as a business professional.

How Can My Business Benefit?
You can use LinkedIn to monitor your competitors and keep an eye on other big players in your niche industry. You may find new business ventures, leads or skill sets, and your LinkedIn profile may be priceless for sealing the deal with a potential client or finding that new business opportunity. You can even use LinkedIn to find or pre-screen potential employees.

Google likes LinkedIn! Many search engines consider LinkedIn.com a reputable site and give more weight to those links. Try ‘Googling’ our company’s name, Mannix Marketing, and you’ll likely find our LinkedIn company profile among the first page results. Also, any links you post on LinkedIn to your website will aide in boosting your site’s search engine rankings as well.

Take note that a LinkedIn company profile differs from an individual LinkedIn account. Employees of your company who have individual accounts can actually help build out this company profile, where you can add a company description, links, photo, etc. This provides a sort of mini-website showcasing all your company has to offer and can be accessed from all of your employees’ individual accounts. In this Internet Age, the more information available online that is controlled by YOU, the better.

How Do I Get Noticed On LinkedIn?
Be active! Change your status daily. Make regular profile updates. Comment on your connections’ statuses. Become an expert in the ‘Answers’/’Questions’ section. Create a poll. Add applications to your profile. Start discussions with peers within your selected groups (you can search groups related to your profession, or browse through a list of groups that LinkedIn suggests for you based upon past/present professional expertise). Staying active on LinkedIn is the key to standing out among the other millions of professionals who utilize this networking super giant.

*This article will be featured in the Glens Falls Business Journal in the July issue

Have you checked this new search engine out yet? Do you like it? Let us know what you think of this latest search platform. I was pleasantly surprised, actually, and plan on investigating it further. Bing offers us searchers categorized listings and if you hover over certain links, you will see ‘more info’. Streamlined and quite nice!

The fly-outs next to the actual links give users a quick glimpse into what the page is about prior to clicking on the link.  Like Google, there are advertising links and options for the user to ’sign in’ with an account. Bing’s search results categorize the listings  for you – depending on your industry. See here:

The results are in and they seem pretty good to me! Critics are biting their tongues as they review this new engine. With a mere 8% of the search market, I think it’s safe to say that Microsoft has some catching up to do in order to compete with Google’s dominating, 64%. Oh well, I guess you gotta start somewhere! Kudos to you, Mr. Bing for putting yourself out there.

You may have noticed something like this for your brand:

Or these ‘mini’ Sitelinks:

What’s the story with Sitelinks? As of yet, the true secret has not been unmasked to the prying public. As you know, search engines like to (and need to) keep some things private. Therefore, the determining factor (s) of how search engines choose Sitelinks is not 100% known. But we have a hunch as to what they are looking for…

• Unique, fresh content and SEO friendly website architecture are two of the biggies. Surprised?
• Strong anchor text and interlinking between the inner pages (or guts of the website) will strengthen the value and show search engines what it truly important and relevant to your website theme. Shocked?
• Navigational Patterns: Where do people click, how ‘hot’ are certain landing pages, and how long do visitors stay on-site are some variables that search engines look at when determining what web pages to list.

What this means for You: Even if you are not ranked #1 for a particular search query, your website still has a chance to have Sitelinks listed, which in turn will drive deeper traffic into the guts of your website. See this example below detailing how different domains for a search query have sitelinks. Maybe it’s not all about being ranked #1 after all…

In the below example, Saratoga.com is deemed the authority on the keyword phrase “saratoga“. Google is listing Things To Do, Hotels & Resorts, Lodging and Attractions & Adventures as the top pages for visitors to go to. All of these pages have keywords in the Titles, Meta Descriptions, H1s and throughout the body of the web page itself. Also, any anchor text linking to these pages incorporates top keyword phrases, thus strengthening it.

As Google states, “…[sitelinks] are meant to help users navigate your site. Our systems analyze the link structure of your site to find shortcuts that will save users time and allow them to quickly find the information they’re looking for. We only show sitelinks for results when we think they’ll be useful to the user. If the structure of your site doesn’t allow our algorithms to find good sitelinks, or we don’t think that the sitelinks for your site are relevant for the user’s query, we won’t show them.”

Regarding your website architecture: Stay away from long queries or lengthy sessions IDs. Say “No” to an all flash site (of course!) and always remember that every element of your web page can be optimized: From the URL structure, down to the Site Footer, and everything in between.

Google (and other search engines) still use the bulky ‘authority‘ status (typically 8 Sitelinks) too. The same principle is involved here when choosing the 8 Sitelinks. Make sure that you are using the Google Webmaster Tools console to see what pages Google may pull from to list within the top 3, 8 or mini Sitelinks. These pages are dynamic, therefore, they can change from time to time.

For some search queries, I’ve seen the 8 sitelinks listed for the #1 ranked site and mini Sitelinks listed for websites within the top 10! I’ve even seen sub domains and blogs awarded these mini Sitelinks. The options are increasing. Got good content? Do you update it frequently? Have you branded yourself on the web? If not, you best start. If your site already has Sitelinks listed for your domain, consider it like a pat on the back from the search engines. Nice job, kid. We really like your site.

Currently, you also have the ability to block pages that Google has deemed ‘important’ in the Google Webmaster Tools console. If blocked within your account, these pages will not be listed for up to 90 days. Although you have this capability, we do not recommend blocking pages.

Because we are not a Google centric place here are some examples of Yahoo’s version of Sitelinks, called Quicklinks and MSN’s take, appropriately named, Destination Pages.

Yahoo Quicklinks:

MSN Destination Pages:

We will update you as the news trickles down…until then, sign up for Webmaster Tools and start learning about your website. Follow us on Twitter for all the latest, breaking news!

So, what can I do with this search engine? See real time tweets in the left hand console – see who’s talking about you and reply, retweet or view tweets instantly. If you type in search.twitter.com into your browser, than search on your name you can also monitor what’s being said here. Twazzup offers a cool console with everything all in one place. On the right hand side, view popular tweets, trend makers, and most popular links. Geez! So much to look at, so little time…

Also check out  OneRiot Twitter search engine:

Do you see this becoming the next best thing in real time search?

If you type in a non local search query, Google now shows search results related to your IP address  regardless whether you typed in your location or not! What’s even better is that these local search results are pulling in whether you are signed into your Google account or not! Wild. Go ahead, try it out.

For kicks, I typed in “restaurants” into Google. The first 3 results show restaurants.com, zagat.com (reviews of restaurants in major cities) and of course, restaurant.com. Low and behold…guess what comes up next!

In the fourth spot, a Google map appears listing restaurants in the Glens Falls area. These local business listings are known as the “10 Pack” that are based upon your search query and IP. Sometimes, if the locale is off the beaten path, Google may only list the top 3 local places within an IP address.

Even though I didn’t add my location to my search query, Google is customizing my results to where my IP is located in hopes of providing me with even more relevant  information. Google also supplies me with additional restaurants in the 12801 zip code:

Google also gives you the option to change your location to somewhere more specific. By simply clicking on the “change location” link above the 10 Pack listings, you can customize search results for a  broad based search phrase. Type your zip code and you are off!

Does Google only pull in local results for obvious products or services? Answer = No. Try queries such as, “police stations“, “parks“,  or even “dog kennels” and local results will appear among nationally ranked sites. So what?

This new search functionality puts local  businesses on the map whether they are trying to get found or not! For the first time, both national businesses and local businesses are somewhat on the same playing field. With the query “dog kennel” Google gives me the option of shopping for a crate/kennel, reading reviews about kennels, or booking a stay for Fido at Bailey’s Bed and Breakfast in the next town over!

Bottom Line:

• Now more than ever, claiming your local business listing matters. Have you claimed your local Google or Yahoo local listing? Contact us for more information. Get Found locally.
• The long tail does matter. Make sure each web page has fresh content as the engines will either pull a snippet from the Meta data or the web page itself. Getting listed in the “10 Pack” will make you more credible and clickable!
• IP Matters:  Are search engine rankings truly dead? Us marketers have heard this a lot lately. Dead? Maybe not completely cu put…but maybe less relevant now with the onset of  personalized search and intent based search within advertising platforms.

Stay tuned for more buzz about Local search and Google Local Business Listings…

What’s the Buzz over  Social Media Optimization all about?

Aside from traditional search engine optimization, website traffic and analytics prove to be the leading metrics in determining if a search engine positioning program is effective. Build brand recognition through these social media networks and become a rising voice within the array of niche communities on the web.

Post videos on YouTube, create a Facebook Page, open up a Twitter account, or join a network on LinkedIn. Promote yourself, your business and even acquire new sale leads through the use of these social media networks.

Why is Social Media Optimization Important?

Invite, Engage, Connect, Communicate. By establishing yourself/company in an online niche, not only will you promote your business (or product), but also create immediate connections between you and people like you. Go ahead, try it out! Contact us if you need help.

Weigh in on the conversation here! What social networks do you like?

Google has always ‘collected’ information on websites – whether it’s through the code you place on sites for AdSense, Adwords, Analytics or Webmaster Central Dashboards. Google collects data from websites on an on-going basis to make search, as a whole, better. Some people think this may violate private policy issues, as both Google and Yahoo make you check a box that says basically you are allowing them to ‘follow’ your every move. The fact is, if you have any Google code placed on your website, then Google does have the ability to use your website information for generating data.

‘Intent based advertising’ in Google AdSense links categories of interest to the user’s browser history – in essence, Google will remember what you’ve search upon and try to place ads strategically for categories that peak your interest (except for categories related to health or children). Someone who has spent time browsing about pages on Dell computers will find ads for Dell computers appearing even when they’re on a site unrelated to Dell computers…it’s all about targeting ads based upon your interests and search history. To read more about this, go here, Google’s Behavior Based Ads.

Behavior Based search was one of the topics that was heavily discussed at PubCon – an annual Internet Marketing Conference that our SEO team attended this year. Google is already doing this with the use of Personalize Search, instead of offering ‘did you mean‘, or actually typing in words for you in the search bar, Google is now carrying this idea over into the AdSense Platform and actually showing ads based upon your search history.

Google has stated that their data retention time is around 9 months, compared to Yahoo’s 90 days policy. Does this perk your interest? Voice your opinion below!

Branding: Whether you know it or not, you are marketing yourself (a.k.a. your “brand”) through your obsessive need to tweet. 140 characters may not seem like a lot… but,  the effectiveness! If you think about it, what a cool concept. It’s no secret, we are all busy people. We don’t have time to sift through ‘buy me’ newsletters, or sell-sell-sell promotional materials anymore. The competition has ramped up, the economy is in the dumps right now, and our job as marketers to find innovative and ’sticky’ ways to convince people that our services are the best has changed. 140 characters can be pretty powerful stuff…if you know how to use it.

As I was driving into work today, I overheard on the FLY 92.3 (Albany, NY) the crew talking (debating) about Twitter.  I couldn’t sit still. I wanted to call in, but knew (with my luck) that I’d get flagged by the boys in blue. So, I tore into the parking lot, ran upstairs with a Dunkin in hand, turned on my computer and quickly put together an email and sent it to the the Fly Morning Crew, via Twitter.  Some of my points:

• Twitter encourages constant linking out: to other sites, your site, etc.
• Builds brand awareness and allows the ability to monitor your brand. The service makes it easy for you to monitor what others are saying about you. Either use the direct search site, or type it right into the search box on your profile
• Stream of consciousness – Facebook has now morphed into the same look and feel as Twitter (regarding status updates).
• You can now see real time tweets in Google search results (if you have the scripted installed).

I didn’t expect much, if anything, from this email. I just wanted to put my two cents in as to why Twitter can help you, a business, or the average Joe. To my surprise, I got a phone call from Brian Cody, from the Fly Morning Crew, thanking me for taking the time to write an email and for connecting. In our conversation, I got to say a little bit about what our Internet Marketing firm does, what I do as a Search Marketer, and of course a little more about Twitter and all the hype.

10 minutes. That’s all it took for me to be able to educate someone on how to use Twitter, promote my industry, promote my place of work AND make a connection.

If you have 10 minutes, then why again aren’t you utilizing Twitter?