Your business is expanding but you find yourself needing to spawn more buzz, connect with clients faster and engage new consumers. Having a Facebook page for your business is the perfect marketing tool and with the new Facebook updates networking is even easier and more effective. I’ll explain new Facebook redesign and how you can use it to move your business forward.  If you don’t have a Facebook business page, you need to acquire one pronto, with 500 million Facebook users this is an imperative step towards creating an online footprint for your business.

The most obvious of the changes occurs on the business’ home page. The clunky, crowded tabs have moved from the top of the page to the left hand side of the page. This allows for longer tab names, a cleaner look and new icons that identify what program the tab is running.  One exciting change, because of all the potential it poses, is the 5 picture strip that runs along the top of the page. This strip includes the last 5 pictures that the administrator uploaded. With these changes brings so many possibilities from displaying pictures of company events, quickly introducing new products, and even customizing your page since you are allowed the option to exclude any pictures

Logging in as your business’ page instead of as an administrator is also a change that this update has introduced. With the admin setting, instead if logging in as a person, you can log in as your brand and comment and like other pages as your product. This allows for your page to be more interactive than previously. Other admin settings include a profanity blocker; this keeps your page clean and more family friendly. Administrators can pick keywords to be monitored, and posts that are caught by the block will be held for review and approval before they can go live. The largest portion of your page, the Wall (where you and your fans converse and share) will now offer another setting, ‘Everyone’. The previous setting ‘Page post’ only displayed posts made by the administrators while the ‘Everyone’ setting allows fans to post alongside the page officials. Facebook has set up a system of determining the most relevant posts by how much the post is liked and commented on, thus highlighting the most relevant and buzzed about posts on your page.

‘Sponsored stories’ are a new advertising format that we truly feel connects Facebook users with products instantly. Instead of FB users seeing the typical list of ads on the right hand side of their pages, they are now seeing ‘sponsored stories’, a form of ad that shares the places your friends have checked in to (i.e. restaurants, events, shops), pages that your friends have ‘liked’ and applications that your Facebook friends have used. This leads to increased visibility of your product or brand generated by the people your fans trust the most, their friends and family.

If you are reading this, chances are you already have your business page created and you have successfully introduced your business to the world. If you haven’t, it’s not too late. Let’s start by setting up your business’s page:

1. Start off by going to www.facebook.com and clicking the create page button
2. Add your details. Choose whether you are a local business, brand, product, etc and then name your page (make sure you choose carefully as once you choose your name you will not be able to change your mind)
3. Read the agreement and click the box acknowledging that you are the official representative of your business
4. START YOUR PAGE!

Keep in mind that starting your business page is only half the work – maintaining and managing your page is extremely important.

Next we need to create your unique username or vanity URL (customized web address). Giving your business page a vanity URL personalizes your page and ups the level of professionalism. Your FB vanity URL is linked to your username making it easy to remember and therefore easier to find.

1. Go to www.facebook.com/username and sign in
2. Choose from the usernames provided or create your own (again make sure you choose wisely and spell correctly, you can’t change it once you set your user name)

There is no doubt that Facebook has put tremendous thought into how people will use the new business pages. This new update gives your company the opportunity to reach new customers through inventive concepts, now it’s up to you to seize them.

As someone who owns and runs their own business I can vouch for the fact that we can get so wrapped up in our work that we forget what matters. Well, recently my brother suddenly passed away, and that has given me some new perspective. It was a typical lazy Sunday and I was with my Creative Director when I got a series of frantic calls and texts from my family and my brothers fiancee. Once I got a hold of them I heard the devastating news. “Steve is dead”. August 15th, 2010 at about 4:00pm.

Without question this has been the most tragic experience I have ever gone through, but some good has come from it. My brother who was a high-profile attorney for a very big law firm in Chicago and worked non-stop. So much so that he almost never had time for himself or family get-togethers  – or at least not enough looking back. He was always busy with work and trying to get ahead, and it’s funny because everything that motivated him to get ahead involved spending time with his friends and family and taking adventure trips.

Knowing this about my brother gave my partner and I the idea to slow things down a bit and evaluate the way we run our business vs. the way we want to run our business. It felt very reminiscent of the movie Jerry McGuire. Fewer clients, better attention. We decided that we want to take extra special care of every client that loves working with us and that we enjoy taking care of and start to let go some of the clients that we are just not right for. Previously, we have been willing to take on projects where the time-line and budget were both tight. No more. Life is too short and uncertain to spend it killing yourself for those who just don’t appreciate you.

As I write and look at this graphic portrait of Steve, (That my Amazing Creative Director drew) I can’t help but think of all the unfulfilled possibilities and dreams that lay before him and his fiancee.

Thank you, Steve, for always believing in us and all the support over the years. We are devastated to lose our brother and our legal ninja. We will be finished re-designing his Website soon… Until then here is a simple holder page we put up in honor of him www.StephenVernon.com.

So why is it email marketing is so successful? For starters:

COST
Email is way less expensive than traditional forms of marketing…i.e. direct mail.

IMPACT
You can reach a larger audience.

RETURN
Email has a better return on investment than most other forms of marketing.

IMMEDIATE
Emails arrive instantly, unlike snail mail.

METRICS
You can measure reactions to your messages and test alternate campaigns easily.

RELEVANT
Send emails in response to your Web site’s visitors actions.

A successful email marketing endeavor needs to be built based on a list of people who have opted in to hear from you, that you provide with compelling and valuable emails. To deliver those emails you’ll need a reliable email company to ensure that your emails get sent out and delivered reliably. Here are the top 6 Email Marketing Companies we recommend.

Mail Chimp
Good Mail
Campaign Monitor
Constant Contact
iContact
AWeber

Mail Chimp is who we use and recommend most often, but all will get the job done. The main difference is their cost structure. Mail Chimp is free as long as your email list is under 1,000 recipients.

In addition to the benefits listed above, email marketing helps build strong relationships with the individuals that make up your audience. Plus it integrates well with social and viral marketing.

One of the most common mistakes that business owners make when it comes to their marketing is ignoring their customer base in favor of their own preferences. “Because I like it” may be a viable reason for picking tonight’s dinner choice, but it just doesn’t cut it when it comes to justifying your branding, communications and advertising decisions. In order to successfully speak to your target audience, you – the owner – need to face the harsh reality that the opinion that often matters least is your own.

Where does GoDaddy fit into this cautionary tale? While you may think that I’m going to cite the company’s shameless use of T&A as a sign that its horn dog owner has let his penchant for hot chicks and race cars get the better of his marketing goals, that’s actually not my issue with GoDaddy. While their campaigns may seem slimey and off-putting to some, their hot and heavy advertisements have garnered attention from millions and helped make GoDaddy one of the top domain resellers in the world.

GoDaddy’s problem is specific to a situation in which most customers don’t want to be, but will inevitably find themselves – waiting on hold for customer service. To save our clients the hassle of dealing with this common annoyance, we gladly make calls to GoDaddy on their behalf… and are subjected to the horrendous hold music that never changes – music that had its heyday during the unfathomable success of Neo-swing in the 90′s. On a recent call, when my ears were just about one horn solo away from bleeding, I asked a GoDaddy rep if there was any significance to this particular genre of hold music. He replied, “The Squirrel Nut Zippers are one of Bob Parsons favorite groups”.

Of course they are.

Just because Bob Parsons likes rockabilly and swing music doesn’t mean he should make his customers listen to the looping Squirrel Nut Zippers album, Hot while they are waiting on hold – just like your preference for electric blue and mustard yellow doesn’t necessarily make them the best colors for your identity, web site and print collateral. Consider your objectives, your research and, above all else, your customers when making decisions regarding your business and your brand. Your bottom line will thank you for it.

Anyone starting a blog or that has been blogging. Here is a quick list of some things that you should do if you would like your blog to be successful:

DO’S

• Subscribe to CopyBlogger.com
• Read other Successful blogs – This will help you get better
• Use lists – So that your info is easy to digest.
• Break / announce news – So that you’re content is fresh and so that your posts need to be read now.
• Become an expert – Research your industry and stay current so that you become know as the go to person.
• Be timeless – Write posts that will have a constant relevance.
• Be a resource – Be willing to share your expertise so people can come to depend on you.
• Write short – Less is more, remember the KISS method (Keep It Simple, Smart).
• It’s okay to be nearly libelous – Write snarky things about other bloggers, daring them to respond (with links back to you) on their blog.
• Link – Share the link love and expect some back.
• Coin a term or two – George Bush was famous for this.
• Conduct email interviews – Reach out to well-known figures in your field and see if their open to an interview.
• Use photos – The salaciously interestingly variety can be the best.
• Encourage your readers to digg, retweet your posts – Do it with every post.
• Post your photos – On flickr
• Encourage your readers to subscribe – Via RSS.
• Educate your readers – Find a starting point and take your readers through a months-long education.
• Include comments – Maybe not initially, but once you have some good traffic then your blog becomes a virtual water cooler that feeds itself.
• Again be a resource – Point out and link to little-known resources.
• Write about stuff that appeals to the majority – Gadgets and web 2.0 are great topics.
• Write about Google – Find interesting tie ins to Google.
• Post on weekdays – There are more readers then.
• Post on weekends – There are fewer new posts.
• Write about a wide variety of never-ending different topics -This way you don’t bore your readers.
• Get a professional design – Think how you would dress yourself if you were meeting with a stranger.
• Edit yourself – Ruthlessly.
• Be patient – It’s going to take some time.
• Give credit where due – It makes your writing more useful.
• Write about obscure topics – This will help you find an obsessed minority that you can get in with.
• Write about interesting / polarized topics – This will ensure people want to read and share.

DON’TS

• Don’t write about your cat, your boyfriend or your kids.
• Don’t use run on ads.
• Don’t interrupt your writing with a lot of links.
• Don’t promote yourself and your business or your books or your projects at the expense of the reader’s attention.
• Don’t be boring.

We want to know what you find helpful and feel free to post links to other resources.

When it comes to developing great content for your site there are two essential components;

1.) The written copy
2.) Company photos and stock images that relate to the written copy

Clients frequently come to us with no photos or poor quality images. Regardless of the situation, here are some great stock photo sites that have vivid images sure to breathe some serious life into your content and your Website.

1.) Think Stock Photos
If you need to acquire some serious images Think Stock has the best payment plan options.
A one month subscription costs $249 and will allow you to download 25 image/day for a total of about 750 images. Or one year subscription costs $199/month with a daily download limit of 25 for a total of 9,125 images. This is the best value for the money. Even if you don’t need to download 25 images every day you can find other images that would have relevance to future projects or content for your site(s).

2.) Stock Xchng
Is good resource as a first line of defense because most of the images are free except for that very top row and the very bottom row. They pull many of their paid images from iStock so chances are any paid images you can find directly from iStock.

3.) iStock Photography
Provides many of the paid images that Stock Xchng offers. iStock’s images are pretty fantastic, but they are all paid. You can either pay-as-you-go on an as needed basis or purchase a subscription.

iStock Pay-As-You-Go Pricing (Images range from 2-3 credits to as much as 30-50 credits)
12 Credits – $18.25
26 Credits – $39.00
50 Credits – $73.00
120 Credits – $170.00
300 Credits – $390.00
600 Credits – $690.00
1000 Credits – $1,075.00
1500 Credits – $1,550.00
2000 Credits – $1,900.00

iStock Subscriptions
They also offer custom subscription plans depending on what you need. Their subscriptions range from:
A 3 month subscription with a daily credit limit of 30 for $979.00 to a 1 year subscription with a daily credit limit of 480 for $46,146.00.

4.) Jupiter Images

5.) Corbis Images

From the Dashboard mouse over the “Content” tab and in the drop down menu click on “Image Manager”.

• Click the “Browse…” button and find and select the image you want to upload. This is very similar to the process of attaching an image to an email. Keep your image titles short with no spaces and no symbols other than the hyphen, dash or period.
• Click “Send”. This will upload the image to your CMS.
• Once you have uploaded the image you can go back to your page directory by mousing over the “Content” menu link and clicking “Pages”.
• Select the page that you want to add the image to and click its name or the edit icon.
• In the “Content*:” box, place your cursor where you want to add the image.
• Click the little icon that looks like a tree in your WYSIWG editing bar. This will open a small pop-up window.
• Browse your uploaded files by clicking on the little box with the red dots inside of it. Select on the image you want to add.
• For SEO purposes, give a name or description of the image in the “Image Description” and “Title” fields.
• If you’d like to change the display of the picture by giving it horizontal or vertical spacing or alter the alignment, just click the “Appearance” tab.
• Once you’d made your desired changes, click the “Insert” button near the bottom of the window. This will add the image to the “Content” field.
• If the image needs to be sized down, click on one of the corners and move it toward the center of the image.

You’re all finished! You can either click “Apply” to continue to work on that page or click “Submit” to process your changes and return to the page directory.

Here’s a video on using the Image Manager and File Manager:

After you have logged in, from the Dashboard mouse over the “Content” tab and in the drop down menu click on “Pages”.

• Before you click on the “Add New Content” button. If you want to create a page with a similar format as another page, just mouse over the icon on the far right side of the screen that looks like two sheets of paper. If you hold your courser over this icon it will read “Copy”, click on this icon to create a duplicate page.

• If you want to create and entirely new page, click on the “Add New Content” button near the top of all of the page titles.

• Under the field labeled “Title:” input the title for the name of the page.

• Under the “Menu Text:” field input the name of the page as you want it to appear in your CMS pages directory.

• For the “Parent” drop down menu only select one of your other pages if you want this new page to be a sub page or “child” of another page.

• Now you can paste in the content from a word document into the “Content*:” field. You have to click on the 4th icon from the left in the top row.

• Once you have entered the content you can hit “Apply” to process your changes or you can hit “Submit.” Hitting Apply will allow you to make changes and continue to keep editing. Hitting Submit will process your changes and shoot you back to the Pages directory.

Editing an Existing Page
• After you have logged in, from the Dashboard mouse over the “Content” tab and in the drop down menu click on “Pages”.

• Then click on the “Name of the Page” you want to edit.

• Make any changes and once you have edited the content you can hit “Apply” to process your changes or you can hit “Submit.” Hitting Apply will allow you to make changes and continue to keep editing. Hitting Submit will process your changes and shoot you back to the Pages directory.

Here is a video tutorial if you learn better visually.

Here are some tips for those looking to start a corporate blog.

Corporate blogs are the new faces of business. Customers, employees, and those interested in a particular company or field of business are constantly looking for information. A corporate blog can help to not only increase one’s ranking by driving traffic to the business’s site but also provide genuine insights and fresh perspectives about hot topics in an industry.

Creating a corporate blog is an excellent way for companies to not only build rapport with clients but also to keep employees abreast of what’s going on. When starting a blog there are some definite things you’ll want to consider to make sure that you hit the ground running.

Select the Right Blog Software

When laying the foundation for your blog be sure and pick the best blogging platform. You might also want to consider having a custom blog designed to help you stand out. WordPress, Typepad, or Blogspot are the top three in their field.

Host Your Blog Directly on Your Domain

Make sure that your blog is a sub page on the corporation’s website. The goal of you blog is to generate traffic to your Website and if you host your blog on another domain other than your website’s URL you will be dividing your efforts and you will miss out on a lot of traffic.

Go Beyond Text in Your Posts

Blogs that contain nothing but line after line of text are more difficult to read and less interesting. Consider offering images, interactive elements, the occasional multimedia content and some clever charts & graphs.

Always Think About Your Brand

Remember that your brand is more than your logo. Your brand is how people perceive your business, how you engage and interact with people online and offline, etc. So make sure that you are building an image that people will want to associate with and that people feel they get value from being a subscriber of.

Designate an Editor

Corporate blogs flourish when they have an editor to monitor and ensure blog posts pass whatever standards the company has set. It should be someone who’s a well-respected thought leader as that person will ultimately attract readers.

Create Fun, Interesting Content

This is quite possibly the most important and also probably the most over looked. Keep in mind that at when you decide to start a blog the content is going to need some serious help. To help this the best thing you can do is read other successful blogs. Here is one that is particularly helpful called CopyBlogger. This blog is all about writing great copy and developing a blog that engages visitors.

Here is a great article CopyBlogger put out about “Warning Signs that your Content Sucks”.

What have you found to be effective for your companies blog?