Are Your Facebook Fans Even Seeing Your Posts?

Posted on February 14, 2011 by Linnea

Recent changes to Facebook may keep your fans from seeing your content, but there is a something simple you can do to help fix this for yourself and educate your friends and fans.

If you are a business owner who has put efforts into your Facebook marketing, worked hard to attract fans or “likes” to your business page or friends to your personal profile you may be surprised to learn that many people are not seeing your content in their Facebook newsfeed.

I found this out myself wondering why I only saw posts from the same batch of people day after day while some people’s posts had virtually disappeared from my news feed.

The change to Facebook came when the powers that be decided that we would most like to see posts from people we interact with most and people that our friends interact with most, rather than all the posts from all our friends and all the pages we have “liked”.

Here’s the simple fix for yourself.  On your news feed page (the one that you come to when you login to Facebook,  scroll all the way to the bottom.  Look for Edit Options.  Click on that and change the option to “All of your friends and pages”.  Voila!  You will start seeing posts from everyone you are connected to in your news feed again.

However, this doesn’t solve the problem of your friends and fans seeing YOUR posts unless they do the same, or unless you interact with them more often.  Take the opportunity to educate your followers as a first step.

More to come on this and other Facebook topics!

Use URL Shortening Tools to Track Your Social Media Posts

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Linnea

I have been using URL Shortening tools for some time now. I started using tinyurl.com and at some point switched to bit.ly. As a small business owner, I often observe what software is being used by people I consider “power users” of social media and internet marketing tools, and try out the tools they use.

At first I just used the URL Shortening tools to do just that – shorten long ugly links into a reasonable length so I could add them to a Twitter post without using up so many of my 140 characters on a link!

I came to realize that tools like bit.ly are much more powerful that just shortening a link. You can also create custom links as well as using the automatically created links if you want something that looks more readable and memorable.

The best feature, though is the fact that you can track your links in the manage section of bit.ly. Here you can gather data about how many times your shortened link has been clicked as well as info on which sites it has been viewed and if it has been shared.

Keep in mind, you must be logged in to bit.ly when you create your link if you want to manage it.  I missed out on tracking some of my links just by being in too much of a hurry to log in before creating my shortened link.

Many Twitter clients like TweetDeck, TwitterFeed and Seesmic also integrate bit.ly into their software making it even easier to shorten, share and track your links that you post on websites, email newsletters and social media sites.

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Posterous is a Great Tool for Leveraging Communicaton

Posted on August 18, 2010 by Linnea

I just recently discovered the joys of using Posterous.  I have been aware of Posterous for awhile now, and had checked it out briefly at some point earlier, but now I get it!  Not only is it a nice lightweight sort of blogging/social networking site, but it makes it super easy to leverage your information to various places in your online world with a click of a button. You can simply send an email to post@posterous.com from the email you signed up with, and voila! Your Posterous is now updated with your emailed post, including pictures or video.  You can choose to connect your Posterous account with various other media like your blog, or Facebook or Twitter.  If you have made the connection, one email to Posterous can update one or multiple platforms.  I’ve tried it out and it works great.  You may need to tweak your blog post a little if you add a photo in your email upload, if you are a perfectionist like me, but I have to say, the process is simple, slick and overall great!

Does Your Website Need an SEO Audit?

Posted on September 25, 2009 by Linnea

Many painting contractors have spent some effort in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of their websites so that they can rank higher in the search engines, particularly Google.  It’s quite common to see that while some of the search engine optimization that small businesses have done to their site are working, there are many other things that can be done to improve the website’s position in Google that have been overlooked.

For example, is the site optimized for the most frequently searched, relevant and commercially viable keywords that fit the services that your business offers?  Do you know what those keywords are?  Many painting contractors miss optimizing for some very relevant keywords.

There are also a number of on-page and off-page factors that affect how your website ranks in Google.  Many business owners may use some but not all of the factors to the best extent they could with a few (often simple) adjustments to their website.

An SEO Audit entails a review of how your pages rank for the top keyword phrases relevant to your business, an analysis of your site’s on-page and off-page SEO factors, a review of your Google Analytic’s search engine statistics, and some recommendations for you on what things you can do to improve your site’s search engine ranking.

When should you consider having an SEO Audit?  Now is a good time, if you have done a lot of work on your website and it still isn’t ranking in Google as well as your competitors’ websites.  Certainly, if you are considering a major re-do of your website, investing in an SEO Audit before you start the project will more than pay for itself, by focusing your web designer’s efforts more effectively.

Here’s where you can find out more about getting an SEO Audit for your website.

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Does Your Blog Add Fresh Content to Your Website?

Posted on September 18, 2009 by Linnea

Well, maybe.  It depends on how you set up your blog and how it is hosted.  It is often recommended that the easiest way to keep your website updated with new content is to add a blog and make frequent posts.  However, your decision on how to set it up can make a world of difference.

A question recently came up as we were reviewing statistics for a client’s website. He has a great blog that is keyword optimized and his blog posts rank very high in Google for some of his key phrases.  But it turns out that the blog isn’t hosted on his domain, but on a third party domain, so while he is getting traffic to his blog, he isn’t really building any backlinks or authority to his own site.

Here are 3 scenarios that I know of that business owners can be aware of when deciding to set up a blog.

  1. The blog lives on a sub-domain of a third party, for example www.yourcompanyname.thirdpartydomain.com.  While you get the benefit of getting your posts to rank in Google by optimizing them, the weight of the overall authority and backlinks goes to the third party which can still help you indirectly, but is not your web property.
  2. The blog lives on a sub-domain of your own URL, for example www.blog.yourdomain.com. Using this scenario actually doesn’t accrue authority to your domain but does accrue backlinks and authority to the blog itself which is still your own web property.
  3. The blog lives on a subfolder or page on your site, for example www.yourdomain.com/blog which would then get all the accrued authority and back links to the same site.

So, it really depends on what you want to accomplish with your blog on how you set it up. Only the third scenario is going to update your primary domain with fresh content, but you may have other reasons to use one of the other scenarios.

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Will the Microsoft Bing – Yahoo! merger change consumer internet search?

Posted on July 31, 2009 by Linnea

According to PC World Magazine,  we should still count on Google to stay on top as the go-to search engine in spite of the recent merger of two giants Microsoft and Yahoo!  with the addition of the Bing search engine to Yahoo!

Author Todd Weiss, in a recent article states that Google is likely to stay on top as the search engine of choice for savvy consumers.

He cites the following reasons:

Google continues to come out with great innovations and free services that consumers love to use.

Though Bing may improve the Yahoo! search function, those like Weiss who have tried it say that in spite of some cool features, it doesn’t measure up in functionality to Google, plus Google has the advantage of familiarity for most consumers

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Improve Your Search Engine Ranking with Relevant Content and Links

Posted on July 12, 2009 by Linnea

Create ranking synergy by being smart about how you write your website content and using links to get better results.  You want to create pages that people like, content that keeps them on your site reading and looking around, and that brings them back for more. Good linking will help your good content get found and tie your content together in a way that gives it context and relevance.

Here’s how good content and good links work together:

Read More→

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How to Make Your Blog Stand Out

Posted on July 6, 2009 by Linnea

When a visitor comes to your blog, you have less than 3 seconds to engage them.  So you want them to immediately feel that they have come to a place where they can get the information they seek presented in a way that is easy to use and interesting to read.

Put yourself in your reader’s place, and think about what you like to find when you visit blogs on topics that interest you.  Use some or all of the following guidelines to make your blog stand out from the competition.

Read More→

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Get Great Results with Email Marketing

Posted on June 29, 2009 by Linnea

More businesses are engaging in email marketing every day.  For one, it is lower cost that snail mail marketing, and it is easy to create and deploy, thereby saving time as well as money.  Whether you are just getting started with email marketing or you have even been doing it for awhile, here are 5 things that you can start doing this month to improve your results.

Read More→

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What’s New with Google Local Listings

Posted on June 16, 2009 by Linnea

We’ve already been talking to our painting contractor clients for some time about the importance of Google Local Listings aka Google Maps.  This free feature should not be overlooked as a step in optimizing your business presence online for any small business owner.

I just got an email from Google regarding my local listing which I found of great interest.  Here’s how you can find out about yours…just go to the Google Local Business Center online.

You can log in to your local listing and see your statistics on how many impressions or views your local listing has received.  It also gives you information about how many clicks to your maps and clicks to your website have resulted.  You can see the statistics for my business listing below: Read More→

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