Harvest Business and Internet Blog » facebook

How to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page & Get Lots of Fans

cgseo — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:47:18 +0000

Ever since my last year’s post on the differences between the Facebook fan page and Facebook group ( which needs an update by the way ), people are contacting me with various questions related to the topic. One of the most frequent questions is about the most effective ways to promote a Facebook fan page. So here you go: the most effective, not really difficult to implement and quite obvious ways to promote your fan page : Round 1: Create fresh content for people to want to

Facebook Beats Google as the Most Visited Site on Christmas Day

cgseo — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:36:52 +0000

In what could be a preview of an impending battle between Facebook and Google in the coming days, Facebook has beaten Google as the most visited website on both Christmas Even and Christmas Day, says a tweet from Hitwise’s Twitter account. It was the first time that Facebook become the number one site during Christmas Day. Last year it was Google as the most visited site with Facebook closely following behind. But come to think of it, it is not surprising for Facebook to be visited more both during Christmas Eve and Christmas Day since majority of people are spending their online time during those days probably greeting their Facebook contacts, sending Christmas wishes and greetings to their loved ones, friends and family who are not with them on those days. Facebook after all is more of a communication tool than Google. What made the event surprising was due to the fact that Facebook has been lagging behind both Google and Yahoo! Mail all through out the year in terms of site visits. It only goes to show that email is a thing of the past during these days, as Facebook and perhaps other social sites like Twitter are the more preferred ways of communicating online especially during special occasions. Most importantly it is also quite surprising that online users still visited Facebook despite the slew of privacy issues that came out during the year. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Facebook Beats Google as the Most Visited Site on Christmas

Analyze HTML Elements & Microformats w/ Semantic Checker

admin — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 12:39:09 +0000

Semantic Checker is a new and still experimental Firefox addon (download it here ) highlighting semantic elements in the web page you are currently viewing. The tool should be used for on-page analysis as well for educational purposes (to see which sites are introducing new HTML elements and microformats, for example). Here are the elements the tool supports: Semantic HTML4 elements Shortened words: and (by the way, if you are wondering about the difference, find it here ); Headings : h1-h6; Quoting : blockquote, cite (more info can be found here ) Lists : dl, dir, menu (more information here , the latter two are deprecated) Emphasis tags : , More elements : code, dfn, address, legend, samp Semantic HTML5 elements For all those interested, here’s a cool list of HTML5 tags. The tool supports the following ones: Sections : article, aside, header, footer, nav; Content, media, data etc tags : figure, mark, meter, audio, video, progress, time, command, datagrid, details, datalist, keygen, bb, outpu, ruby Input-attributes : datetime, datetime-local, date, month, week, time, number, range, email, url, search, color Microformats hCard, hCalendar rel-license, rel-nofollow, rel-tag Vote Links Now let’s try to use the tool at a number of popular web pages. Twitter Profile: Facebook Group Page Stumbleupon Favorites Page: My

Yahoo to Shut Down MyBlogLog

cgseo — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 12:29:09 +0000

Still remember MyBlogLog? Sometime in 2006, it was one of the hottest social networking tool for bloggers because of one simple reason – it allows bloggers to put a face on their blog visitors. I remember using MyBlogLog for quite some time until Yahoo purchased it in 2007 and MyBlogLo started offering blog site analytics tools both as free and paid service. MyBlogLog was a pretty useful blog management tool back then. It’s widget feature was interesting. And it’s ability to show you blog-related trends and information was invaluable. Then somewhere along the way I lost interest in it and perhaps other users too. Although many continue to use it, somehow MyBlogLog lost its luster. Until now, ReadWriteWeb reports that Yahoo is finally shutting down MyBlogLog. Although there was no reason cited yet. Yahoo is probably just doing what is right. MyBlogLog’s lost its relevance today. Does it also show that blogs are becoming obsolete? Perhaps yes, and perhaps no. Blog as a social networking and communication tool is no longer applicable. There’s Facebook and Twitter for that. Blogs’s uses are now reduced as a source of factual information. Going back to MyBlogLog, question now is, what will happen to the accounts of those who still use it. To blogs who rely on MyBlogLog services for their management and administration aspects? What will happen to those paid subscribers, if there are any still? Let’s wait for official announcement from Yahoo for answers to this question. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Yahoo to Shut Down

Should You Be Marketing Yourself Online?

admin — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:35:08 +0000

I can’t tell you how many jobs I’ve landed just by coming up in searches for my own name in Google. Since I am an Internet marketing professional having a web presence is a must. What if you’re not a marketing professional, is a web presence something you should work on and will it benefit you? The answer of course is…Yes! As with any business your brand is what people identify with. If you are a freelancer or a consultant you are your brand. When you Google your name what comes up? How many results are of you? How many are of someone else? If someone wanted to hire you and learn more about you what would they find? These are important questions. It should also be important to you that when a search is done on your name that information pertaining to you and your area of expertise shows up. Why? The top reason “people searches” are done on the net is to establish ones credibility. Not having anything is almost as bad as finding something bad. Does your Myspace page show a picture of you flipping off viewers? That could be damaging and costly to your image and reputation. You can keep your personal profiles private, just don’t have damaging content or photo’s showing in your limited profile. How To Brand

Facebook Top Search Term 2009, Google Top Visited Site

cgseo — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:00:37 +0000

Experian Hitwis e has just released two significant data of 2009 – top-search term and top-visited site with Facebook and Google earning the top spot respectively. Facebook beats dislodged last years top-searched term – MySpace. While Google obviously retained its last year’s position. Moving from last year’s 10th spot, Facebook accounted for 2.48% of the top 300 searches in 2009. Including other variations of searches related to Facebok such as facebook.com, facebook login and others will amount to 1.09% of the top 300 searches. Following Facebook are MySpace with 1.02% of the searches, Yahoo with 0.95%, Google with 0.63% and Craiglist with 0.62% of the top 300 searches. In the Top-Visited Site category Google is again on the top spot for the second straight year. Google accounts for 6.70% of all U.S. visits from January to November 2009. Following Google is Yahoo mail with 4.44% of visits, Facebook with 4.26%, Yahoo (the main portal) with 3.36% and MySpace with 3% of the U.S. visits for 2009. Interestingly, Yahoo Mail remains to be one of Yahoo’s stronghold, which remained as the no. 2 most visited site since 2008. This only goes to show that its mail service is still the most used product on Yahoo, even beating Gmail, and Windows Live Mail. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Facebook Top Search Term 2009, Google Top Visited

Introducing Google’s Own URL Shortener

cgseo — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:31:32 +0000

The order of battle for Google this week seems to be on URL shorteners. This has been quite a trend on Twitter and Facebook with various third-party URL shortener sites offering this kind of service. But while others offer it as a stand-alone service, Google is taking the URL shortening thingie on a different approach – via Feedburner and Google Toolbar . As mentioned by the a post from the Official Google Blog , Google’s URL Shortener is offering a service based on the following: Stability: Google’s scalable, multi-datacenter infrastructure provides great uptime and a reliable service to our users. Security: As we do with web search, shortened URLs are automatically checked to detect sites that may be malicious and warn users when the short URL resolves to such sites. Speed: At Google we like fast products and we’ve worked hard to ensure this service is quick. We’ll continue to iterate and improve the speed of Google Url Shortener. To use Google’s URL Shortener, you need to have either Google Toolbar. When you share a website or blog via the Toolbar and you selected Twitter, the link will automatically be shortened when posted as a tweet. It works similar to other URL shortener that you have already used in Twitter before. The shortened URL always begin with “http://goo.gl/” For Feedburner, the URL shortener feature offers something else aside from letting you share links. You can try this out by going to Feedburner Publicize Tab’s Socialize service. Then add the Twitter account to which you would like to post items from your Feed. After doing this, you can either start sharing all your feeds to Twitter or customize which feeds you want to share to Twitter and how exactly you want them to look like when you send them as a tweet. Google said that URL shortener is currently being tested yet. Hence it was rolled out as a feature of Google Toolbar and Feedburner. But they are planning to make it available as a stand-alone product once they’ve proven it to be useful. I’m pretty sure it will soon be available on a wider audience pretty soon. Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Introducing Google’s Own URL

The Local Search Engine Optimization Cheat List

cgseo — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 15:03:13 +0000

Like James Morris once said, “ There is no secret sauce in SEO “. Really, if you can allow the time for some studying, you are most likely to be able to do it yourself. What you really need is (1) to understand the good old KISS principle (just keep it as simple as possible), (2) take any rumors and myths (even if they come from trustful sources) with a grain of salt and (3) bookmark some easy-to-implement, step-by-step tutorials. This post is an effort to give you a clearly defined and easy to comprehend guide on the steps to optimize your business for local search : enjoy! I have taken the following steps to promote my business in local search: I have displayed my full business contact information clearly on my site. I am taking advantage of these placements to make my contact information stand out and easy to find: Title of the page (especially for the contact page); Meta description of the contact page and “About us” page (to be displayed in SERPs) Bottom of each page throughout the site ( bottom of the page is the traditional placement for contact information, so most visitors will first look for it there – I don’t make my visitors search for my contact info; it is right there where they are used to seeing it). My site Contact and About-us pages contain sufficient information on where my business is located as well as phone numbers including local area (search engines are often believed to associate local area code as the local search rankings factor ); thus, I don’t need to add “nofollow” attribute to those pages; I have made sure my business domain WHOIS information lists my business mail address and contact phone number; I have the list of my local competitors and have researched their local promotion tactics (I know where their local backlinks come from). My business is listed in the regional sections of popular directories like BOTW and Business.com . I claimed my business and edited my listing in local search engines like Yahoo! Local , YellowPages and CitySearch . For international businesses: I have compiled the list of most powerful local search engines and claimed my business listings there. Examples of these include: 411 Canada ; Australia’s local search engine ; UK’s local search engine . I have created my business profiles at major business social networks and included its address there (examples: CrunchBase for technology companies; Facebook pages, etc) I have found and built relations with powerful local bloggers and journalists and get featured by them; I have made my site more accessible for mobile phones . I understand how important it is to optimize my site for mobile searches. I have read and thought over these awesome guide on local search optimization: Local Search Ranking Factors (2009 edition!) Local search guide ; Facebook Pages & Local Search Engine Optimization ; Local Search : User Recommendations Make Your Business Money Enhance Your Google Local Listings 3 Keys To Success For Local Search SEO Did I miss anything? Please add in the comments! Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . The Local Search Engine Optimization Cheat

Social Media Marketing Snake Oil

cgseo — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:30:14 +0000

This post is a response to BusinessWeek’s recent “ Beware Social Media Snake Oil ” article. I would like to elaborate on a few concepts and misconceptions the article had. Right off the bat, one thing this article fails to separate is social media for small business and social media for large corporations as defined by different goals and objectives. When discussing social media people tend to lump all facets of social media and all social media channels together. However, social media is an all encompassing word for: Content Aggregation Media Sharing Bookmarking Blogging/Micro-Blogging Networking Forum conversation These facets are what define social media and should be treated differently, for each facet can have its own unique set of analytical measurements and objectives. All are tools to an overall marketing strategy though. Risk The article dives right into proclaiming utilization of social media “tools”, such as Facebook and Twitter, to be risky in many ways. Employees encouraged to tap social networking sites can fritter away hours, or worse. They can spill company secrets or harm corporate relationships by denigrating partners. What’s more, with one misstep, one clumsy entrée, companies can quickly find themselves victims of the forces they were trying to master. The article also uses a quote from James Cooper, Saatchi’s digital creative director, stating: Social media [campaigns], by their nature, are unpredictable, which makes them an easy target for critics. “Anyone who says ‘This is going to work’ is either lying or deranged,” he says. He compares the risk model with venture capital, where one bet out of 10 might pay off richly, while the others struggle or even bomb. Rebuttal First and foremost, companies should learn to dedicate resources towards social media. Not just have one of their SEOs or tech guys handle it as part of their already over-piled list of duties. Employees won’t waste time on social media if there’s a system of checks and balances. Rules can be set in to place to dedicate X amount of time each day conducting a diverse array of social media related tasks. If there is a well-defined social media policies and guidelines then there should be little worry over an employee “spilling company secrets” or “harming partner relationships”. Let’s not focus on the medium here let’s focus on the message . If an employee leaks company secrets the secrets will find a way to travel to the masses regardless of which channel the secret was released. Loose lips sink ships. Companies just need to define clearly what employees should and should not discuss both online and offline. What is worse is not monitoring the sentiment about your company and doing nothing. The conversation will happen whether you are there or not to try to control it. To address James Cooper’s point, no marketer knows how a campaign is going to turn out. Isn’t that the beauty of marketing? That it’s a game of successes and failures? One must look at the overall results of several campaign initiatives to judge the overall outcome and ROI. Judging campaigns on a one-off basis is fine to measure results and refine direction but most campaigns are a single node in an overall strategy. Success Metrics and

Google Friend Connect Joins Forces with Twitter

admin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 11:45:31 +0000

Following Yahoo’s recent announcement on the integration of Facebook to its content network, it’s now Google’s turn to do the same. Not with Facebook obviously, but with perhaps a better ally – Twitter. Starting today, you can now connect your Twitter ID with sites that use Google Friend Connect. You don’t have to do anything if you’re already a Google Friend Connect user. The integration just works automatically the next time you login to GFC using your Twitter ID. And what can you do with this integration? Many things actually. For one, you can now tweet anything from the Google Friend Connect site that you are currently logged-in to. GFC and Twitter’s integration will certainly give these two online properties a big boost in terms of usage and userbase expansion. GFC currently boasts of around 9 million sites, while Twitter boasts of well, how many users does Twitter got now anyway? If you’re not yet into Google Friend Connect, now may be the right to start using it. Learn more about Google Friend Connect from this site . Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal . Google Friend Connect Joins Forces with