Blogging Beats Facebook

Blogger - Easy to Use

Here is a fantastic infographic about why business blogging is a more productive use of time and resources than Facebook.

Wordpress - Medium Difficulty,  Maximum Functionality

More Complex, Maximum Control

Points 10, 5, 3, and 2 are the most important in my opinion especially using your blog as a content hub to connect your website and social media platforms together.  In our industry product blogs are a great resource for sales, designers, and clients when specifying a project.

Blogger, Wordpress, and Drupal are three great blogging platforms with Wordpress becoming the industry standard.  A Wordpress.com site provides ease of use and free hosting while a self-hosted Wordpress.org site gives you more control.  This site is a Blogger blog.  If you want absolute control and are very design savvy Drupal can let you get any look you want.

Blogging is a great way to position you as an expert whose advice and recommendations can be trusted.  For more information about blogging please contact us.

Google+ Effort = Results

I'm a firm believer that Google+ is going to be a big deal for business and more importantly an easier social media platform for small organizations to have success with.  If you are new to Google+ this infographic from Chris Brogan's blog is a fantastic place to start.

Click here to view.

A great interview with a Google+ evangelist

The two most important points after you have your Google+ page ready to go public are to have a link to it on your website, social media tools, email signatures, etc. and to put a +1 button on all the content pages of your website and blog.   Sites with the +1 button get 3.5 times the traffic from Google+.

The main ideas is to spread the word about you and your organization and these are the two best tools to help you do that.  The "About" section is especially important to get done right for search rankings.  Remember that pages are for companies and profiles are for people.  The default privacy setting for pages is public.  Only individual users can +1 your page.

Other advantages of Google+ are:

• Along with Pinterest the most visually appealing social media platform.
• Pages are easy to set up.
• They switch to mobile versions when accessed by tablets and phones.  This is important as mobile marketing works its way up to becoming a dominant form of communication.
• Circles allow segmentation and targeting of prospects, customers, vendors, employees, etc.
• Unlimited storage of photos on Picasa which is great for the design aspect of our industry which relies heavily on image.  It is also free.
• Easy sharing of videos as well as photos.
• Easy integration with other Google productivity tools and apps such as Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar, Google Presentations and the Chrome browser.
• Hangout function allows easy videoconferencing for larger organizations with multiple locations.
• It can be a simple blog platform.
• Easy to maintain, optimize, tweak and add content to.
• Like Facebook it could be a good customer service tool but much easier to use.
• You can use Google Ad Words to promote your page.

In other words Google+ is a great tool to have in your marketing toolbox and one that is versatile and easy to use.  What has your experience been with Google+ both for personal use and that of your organization?

Social Media's Positve Impact on Education

Tech and Learning is a great publication covering the many technologies used in education.  They recently had an interesting article about social media in the school environment.  "Social Media: It Does Have a Place in the Classroom" shows that forward thinking educators realize the potential benefits that increased social skills and interaction with peers bring to their students.  Students learn that they can have an impact on the larger world and build their e-portfolios.  The three C's of social media at the end of the article are important for all of us to remember.

Another good article by James Careless is "21st Century Student Handbook:  Teaching Today's Web-Centric Kids".  Interacting in real-time on social media while "live" events unfold is a great way to learn about the workings of government.  Technology increases the engagement of students and increases learning.  How are institutions in your market using social media and the internet?

Facebook Timeline: Delight or Disaster?

Facebook's new "timeline" design will be forced on users later this month. It is quite a change and requires a good bit of work to may sure your page looks its best when the change occurs. Here are three articles with importatnt information.

 7 New Facebook Changes Impacting Business

Facebook Cheat Sheet for Sizes and Dimensions

14 Ways Facebook Betrays Small Business

Click here to view page

Trying to be proactive and update a client's page before the mandatory design change proved a frustrating experience.  There are still problems uploading your selection for the page's cover photo and newer posts aren't loading.  Some of the images from older ones aren't either.  So, check out the articles,  make your changes ahead of time and cross your fingers that Facebook gets the kinks worked out.

Since you can know longer have a landing page as the first item your fans see I recommend creating a post with the information you want them to see first featured in it.  Pin that post to the top of your page.  Unfortunately you will have to repeat this work around once a week as Pins aren't permanent.

You will also have to find Facebook apps from the web now rather than your Facebook page.  Some useful ones are available:

Networked Blogs - to insert your blog in a tab
Bilginet - for a Contact Tab
Tradable Bits - for your Twitter feed

What do you think about Timeline?  Personally, I think it makes Facebook an even poorer social media platform for organizations in our industry than it was before.

Reuben Walker, Jr.