If anyone has been on Facebook the last few days, then you’ve noticed a big chance to the status update box.  WHERE’S THE LINK ATTACHMENT on the profile pages and groups?   Well, Facebook removed it for now.  HOPEFULLY enough people will complain and they will bring it back!  This feature is still available to Facebook business pages, however!

In the meantime, here is a way to add a link to your status update so that it posts the info box and doesn’t just include the http:// text, which takes up your characters:

Paste the URL into status box. Hold shift, and hit enter twice. It will embed the link into your post as if you were using the link ability.  This works sometimes and sometimes it doesn’t, but this is the best option as of right now!

Good luck and I’ll keep everyone updated should Facebook change this back!!  Let’s hope they do!

I’ve been many things in my life post college.  I’ve been a sales rep, a manager, a marketing assistant, an executive assistant and now, a business owner.  The most important job of all, even before parenthood, I became a dog owner.

I purchased an amazing little Rottweiler puppy at the ripe old age of 22.   I probably should have thought about that before I purchased that dog, as at 22, I could barely take care of myself and I was trying to find my way in the crazy world we call “Adulthood”.   But this tiny puppy had a master plan that I was not aware of at that time in my life.  She started her life with me in West Chester, hopping with me along my journey from apartment lease to apartment lease and arriving in Center City Philadelphia when she was just 1 year old.  She became a City Dog and I became a City Rat.   I didn’t have much of a family so my beloved Kiya became my family.

It was only 6 months before she came into my life that I met a guy..  This guy later became my husband.   When I brought this tiny puppy home, he first said.. “You have no business getting a dog at your age”… He very quickly fell in love with this tiny puppy immediately thereafter.

As in any young relationship, we had problems.  We were both career-driven and our relationship often came 2nd, but that dog who was growing into this force and holding our relationship together had a master plan that neither of us were able to recognize.  She loved us both unconditionally, no matter what.  We could never end our relationship because of that dog and made the decision to finally give living together a shot.  From that point on, this dog sank her teeth into us with her love and we never discussed parting ways again.   After 4 more years of City-Living, we decided to once again bounce Kiya back to West Chester where she began her life.  We bought a house, got married and a year later had our first child.

On Saturday, August 20th at exactly 10:15, we laid our beloved to rest.  She was with us for 11 years.  Through all of the trails and tribulations of a young relationship, to beginning a marriage and then becoming parents to now 3 young children, she was there through it all.  You see, part of the reason why I’m writing this post has nothing to do with business, but has to do with life and a lesson I will take to my grave.  For anyone reading this, I want you to know that one simple decision in your life can write your entire life-story.  She knew what she was doing and in the end we did too.  Her plan as a dog was to build a family. Without her our family would have never existed. There would be no Evan, no Keira and no Reilyn, our three beautiful children. She lived long enough to bring our 3rd and final child home only 8 weeks ago.

We don’t have a crystal ball and often it is hard to explain why things happen.  But to all of my readers, trust the master plan.  Everything in life truly does happen for a reason and sometimes it takes 11 long years to figure it all out.  I believe that her plan isn’t over for us and we still have things we will learn in the future because of this dog.  She changed us and molded us into what we are today.  Today we are sad, but we are a happy family and we owe everything that we are today to her..

Rest In Peace my beloved Kiya.. We will NEVER forget what you gave to us as young adults and what you gave to us so many years later… A fantastic marriage and three amazing kids..   I will always hear your sharp toes going across the kitchen floor, I will never forget your smell or the way your fur felt in my hands, I will never forget the annoying sound you made when you rattled your metal bowls with your paws when you wanted more water and food, I will never forget the hours you spent in our pool even when we told you to get out, I will never forget how gentle you were with each child we brought into our home and most important, I will never forget your perky ears, wagging stub and the way you panted when you heard daddy walking through the door.

As always, I’ve been reading and staying focused on educating myself in the world of social media.   This can be a very daunting and time-consuming method of one’s business.  If you are in an ever-changing industry, like social media marketing or traditional marketing, staying on top of ALL of the articles is almost impossible.  Social Media changes almost daily.  If you use social media for your business and are managing it yourself, here are some tips I picked up to help my clients’ marketing campaigns stay fresh and to the point.

1.  Set up Google Alerts for keywords based on your industry. This is a great way to have great content in your industry emailed to you daily.

How it works for me:  I set up Google Alerts that are targeted to EACH one of my clients…Tons of emails, yes, but I focus on many different industries at one time.  If you are in one industry, this is a very effective tool that you can use for blogging, tweeting and facebooking!

2.  Allow yourself only one hour in the morning to read articles or blogs first before diving into Facebook or Twitter.  Otherwise, you can get side-tracked easily in the very addictive world of Facebook and Twitter.  Before you know it, you’ve just spent your hour breezing through other people’s profiles and status updates.  Stay focused.

How it works for me:  I’m a mom of three kids.  I get up earlier than the rest of my family. I make my coffee and go to my office and I devote my one hour to research and reading blogs/articles that pertain to each client.  After all of that, THEN I focus on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

3.  Use downtime effectively.  Almost everyone has a smartphone and you can bookmark webpages on your phones.  Use time that you spend in waiting rooms of doctor’s offices, sitting in the bathroom while your kids bathe, etc. etc. to read the blogs and articles that you’ve bookmarked on your phone.

How it works for me:  Over the last 6 weeks of bringing a brand new baby into our family, I’ve used feeding times to read.  I know I should be spending that time looking into my newborn’s eyes and soaking that all up, but I have two businesses to run, so I use a lot of that time to read.   I also have two other children under the age of 5, so I get up earlier than the rest of my family. I make my coffee and go to my office and I devote my time to research and reading blogs/articles that pertain to myself and my clients for one hour.

4.  SCHEDULE BLOG POSTS, TWEETS AND STATUS UPDATES!  This is a fantastic use of time!!  With technology at our finger tips and the ability to outsource almost anything, there is no excuse to blog once a month.  Outsource this to someone that can do all of your blogging for you and schedule everything so that you can focus on client satisfaction, retention and development!

How it works for me:  I use Hootsuite and WordPress to schedule everything.  I manage a ton of social media networks for clients and if I didn’t have the ability to schedule posts, tweets and blogs, I would be lost!  This is the best thing since sliced bread!  There are still some tricks that cannot be done on Hootsuite, so there’s still a ton of work that goes into effectively managing people’s social media marketing campaigns, but I don’t give away all of my secrets! 

These 4 tips should better prepare you for time management.  Most of us know these skills, but need a reminder..so here is your reminder!

Stay focused or outsource it!

If you’ve been on Facebook regularly over the past year, then you’ve noticed people tweeting in their Facebook status updates.   Annoying?  While I first found this annoying, I’ve also found this beneficial when I’ve been on my Blackberry.  Why?   When you click on a Twitter ID, (ie @ipro4u) or a hashtag (#twitter)  in someone’s Facebook status update from your smartphone, it will automatically open up to Twitter and go directly to that person’s Twitter account or produces the trends for that hashtag.   This gives you the option to start following their tweets easily right from Facebook or to get a look into that hastag!

That being said, with the ability to easily link your Facebook Profile page and Facebook Business pages directly to your Twitter account, I still HIGHLY recommend tweeting different things than what you are saying on Facebook.   It’s OK to link the two, just make sure that once in awhile, if not more frequently, your tweets are different than your updates.

If you’d like to link your business page to Twitter, go to:  Link Facebook Business Pages to Twitter.   As long as you are an administrator of the page, you can link as many business pages to Twitter as you want!

You can also link your tweets to your LinkedIn account!  Again, keep your LinkedIn updates fresh by manually updating it once in awhile if you do have it linked from Twitter!

Happy Linking  

Up early this morning doing my normal routine.  Coffee, open up my computer and begin doing my one hour of reading and research before the fam gets up.   My thoughts have brought me to the topic of SEO and Social Media Marketing.   My business partner, Leigh Maro and I have developed SEO and Social Media Marketing packages for many different companies.  We’ve had numerous conversations over the last few months regarding this exploding industry and how hard it is to compete in a service that has become extremely scammy.

We’ve been on numerous conference calls and have gone to tons meetings with potential clients who have told us the type of packages that have been offered to them by other professionals (or claimed professionals) in this area and I am taken back at the price and structure of it all EVERY time!    You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars nor sign a year-long contract to have your website ranked or be successful in social media.  While both are a commitment and a job in and of itself, it’s definitely not necessary to get roped into paying more than what you budgeted for.  I’ve listed out 2 of the biggest warning signs of potential scammers out there promising results and over charging!

1.  GUARANTEEING RESULTS. A true Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Pro will NEVER guarantee results.  Depending on what type of business you are in, the web and search engine world is VERY competitive.   You want someone that will work hard to get you in the top pages of Google and Bing (yahoo is now directing people to bing) and you want someone to be dedicated to YOUR business.  This means they need to get to know your business and they need to know what your competitors are doing with their facebook pages and twitter accounts AND find out where they are ranking and take a look at their keywords.

2.  I can get you THOUSANDS of Followers in a short period of time. WRONG!!!!!!   This baffles me almost more than Guaranteeing ranking results.  There are strategic ways of thinking and planning to get the RIGHT followers to your page.   If you have 500 fans and out of those 500 fans, 350 of them are in the automotive business and you are selling parts to airplane manufactures,do you think what your tweeting or facebooking will make any difference to the majority of your fans/followers?   Um.. I’m gonna say a big fat no on that one!   You want your audience to not only like what you are putting out there, but you NEED them to engage and interact with your status updates.   If your fans never like or comment on a status update in Facebook, Facebook will stop filtering your posts into their newsfeeds.  You must get interaction, or eventually you will be facebooking to no one.   This is hard to do, you must stay on top of your game at all times and keep putting great content out there that PERTAINS to your business.  No one wants to read what you ate for breakfast on a business page, keep that stuff for your profile page.  Also, be consistent with content.  Don’t tweet about guitar lessons when your business is in jewelery making.   One single tweet about guitars will produce followers who are interested in guitars and most (I say most, b/c you never know) of those people will not be interested in your jewels.

Find companies that are not running SEO and Social Media on automatic pilot.  Find a company that is doing it organically and you will get better results every time!  You don’t want someone throwing generic tweets and status updates on your twitter and facebook accounts and you don’t want a bunch of keyword buying, link-building by the hundreds, over-promising, and installing link directories….   DO IT ORGANICALLY!!!

If all else fails, EMAIL US! We’ll get you on the right track!