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!

Have you noticed a difference with your post insights on the facebook pages you administer?  That’s because they have gone “Real Time”.  Doesn’t explain exactly why it would significantly LOWER the number of post impressions you are now seeing.   This may either be a bug or facebook is calculating the post impressions differently.  That being said, it doesn’t appear that the calculations are correct.   For instance, it’s hard to imagine a post only receiving 7 impressions but yet getting 15 comments.   Hopefully, this is a bug and facebook will work through the kinks.  We will be monitoring this and if anything changes, we will post new information.

In the meantime, you can read more about this on All Facebook.

A little Facebook Talk:

Who has a profile page for their business?  Not sure the difference?  If you have to accept friend requests for your facebook page AND it’s for your business, then you are using a profile page for your business.   I DO NOT recommend doing this.   Facebook can and will delete any profile pages that are used to promote business services.   You can also only have up to 5,000 friends.   I am seeing a few of my clients as well as a few of my regular contacts going through the MAJOR ordeal of transferring a profile page over to a business facebook (fan) page. NOT FUN!

If you want to create a page for your business, here are the steps:

The easiest way to create a business page is to go to a page that you already “Like”.  At the BOTTOM LEFT-HAND corner of that page, you will see the options:  Unlike, Create a Page, Report a Page.  Click on “Create A Page”.  Then just follow the steps.    There are steps you can take to make it SEO friendly, etc., so if you are unsure that you are doing it right, you might want to contact a professional page builder to set it up for you.   Contact Us if you would like a free consultation on Facebook!

A little LinkedIn Talk:

Do you have a LinkedIn account?   That’s great, but how are you using it?  Do you have testimonials?  Do you have your Wordpress Blog feeding to your profile page?   Do you know about all of the fantastic Applications that can be integrated into your LinkedIn Profile?  How many local groups have you joined and are actively participating in?   How do you promote on LinkedIn?    Are your discussion posts frequently about the same thing and are they an in-you-face type of promotion?   LinkedIn is a great tool to use for business owners, but beware of how you use it and if you are really using it at all!!

A little Twitter Talk:

Ah, Twitter.  Some people love it and some people hate it.    The ones that hate it think they just can’t get their point across in 140 characters.  You know that if you integrate your facebook page AND twitter account, you really don’t have to worry about posting in Twitter?  Just make sure you at least thank those who follow you!  Also, the more you follow others, the likelihood they are to return the favor and follow you!   So, be selective in who you follow.  Also, remember that Twitter has it’s own search engine capabilities!  That means someone can type in that little search box actual keywords that pertain to YOUR business.  The search box isn’t JUST for finding people.  You can use it to find out who’s looking for YOUR services or who’s tweeting about your services.  That little search box is one of the best marketing tools on any social network!   USE IT!   And then there’s TWIBES, hashtags, Twitter Lists….. it goes on and on and changes almost DAILY!   Can’t keep up?  OUTSOURCE IT!

A little Business Talk:

The first and most important part of ANY business is a WEBSITE!  It’s the most important marketing piece you have!   This is followed by a GOOD SEO package!   There is never a point in having a website if no one can find you.  I often say, what’s the point in owning a car if you can’t drive it?   SPEND the money on a good site and get someone who KNOW how to ORGANICALLY perform Search Engine Optimization!!   In my line of business, I ALWAYS start on the company’s website and then I take a look at their competition.  How do their competitors’ sites rank against theirs and how do they look?   Are their competitors involved in Social Media and have they integrated it all on their website?   Research is a key component in coming up with a great marketing strategy!

The second is ORGANIZATION and ADMINISTRATION!  Are my clients organized and how are they handling their administration?   If these are some of the things you are lacking in or just don’t have the time to focus on, this would also be a good thing to OUTSOURCE!  Get someone else doing those admin tasks and have someone come in and help get you organized and caught up!   This is so essential to growing you business.  The minute you fall behind is the minute you loose control over your business and your business becomes its own entity!
Read my blog post titled: Managing A Small Business for more information!

Make 2011 GREAT and Outsource some of your projects!  Remember,  at Independent Projects, we understand that business owners can do anything, but simply can’t do everything.  We help get you organized and recognized by offering business management support, brand marketing and social media marketing.

Contact us for information on how we can help!

I keep seeing so many of my facebook friends falling for the facebook dislike button.  With so many viruses out there that spread like wildfire through facebook, I’m certain to check out everything before I join a group, like a page, download an application, etc.  You can never be too careful.  Here’s some info on the facebook dislike button:

Facebook Dislike Button is a Scam!

Independent Projects has been involved in Social Media over the last three years. With a fantastic designer and coder on our team, not only are we able to create a business fan page, group or account on facebook, we are also able to design some very unique and awesome custom FBML Static Landing Pages!

We can create and manage your facebook pages, twitter accounts and linkedin profiles. We are on top of researching all the latest social media trends and take careful thought as to our clients’ status updates, as fan pages and twitter accounts are search engine friendly. Because of this, the status updates must makes since to one’s business so that the fan page can be found appropriately in the search engines, otherwise known as social media optimization. We also do the best we can to drive trafic to your site from facebook, linkedin and twitter.

Our social media packages are affordable! Contact us today to find out how we can get started for you!

Still on the fence about creating a facebook fan page for your business? Let me tell you a little story about the awesomeness of the fan page. This is why I think every business should have a fan page!

This week my husband who is a voice over actor, received an email from a lady in Philadelphia. She wanted to get back into voice over work, but it’s been awhile. In the voice over industry, it’s beyond important to have current vo demos. And they have to be good. Really good. This lady found my husband’s information because a friend of hers from CALIFORNIA came across Jason’s fan page. Why?? Because fan pages are indexed. Groups pages are NOT! This means that if you have the right content on your fan page, there is a good chance that your fan page will come up in a search engine based on someone typing in a relevant keyword that matches YOUR keywords. Pretty damn cool, huh?

Some other tips:

Fan page status updates appear in ALL of your fans’ newsfeeds. Why is this important? If you have a group page, your “members” have to go to that group to see any interaction on that group’s page. Unless you are giving away free stuff every day, the likelyhood of your members going to your group’s page everyday is slim to none! Yeah, you can send a message to everyone with a group page, but you can also send an update to your fans with the fan page.

The Static FMBL Application. This is probably the COOLEST feature the fan page has to offer! You can create a custom welcome landing page. This means that people who visit your fan page that are not yet fans will FIRST see a defaulted Welcome to ” ” page. This can be as simple or as awesome as you want it to be. This can be a great alternative to creating a website if you do not have the funds for a site yet. I do have to say that creating a welcome landing page isn’t easy. The FMBL application allows for coding. You can write text in there, but it’s pretty dull. If you really want your landing page to stand out, you do need to talk to a designer who knows a little something about coding!

Disclosure statement: I would NEVER recommend to anyone that they DON’T need a website. When starting a business this is by far, the MOST important marketing tool. That being said, the fan page is an alternative until you can get to a point where you can pay to have a website designed. When you do, I highly recommend going to Maro Design.

If you’d like to move your business forward by creating a fan page, contact us!