Web 2.0 Development Firm Launches Interactive Guide
June 30, 2008 Web 2.0 Development Firm Launches Interactive Guide - Social Media Power Offers Hands-on Instruction on Social Media and Optimization: Social Media Power launches a practical, solutions-oriented guidebook to social media and Web 2.0 optimization to benefit entrepreneurs, small businesses, authors, and small publishers.
Top Picks: Facebook Applications for Business Pages
The Social Media Power team has compiled a Top Picks list of Facebook Applications that we use most often for our business clients. We found that implementing these applications creates an interactive page that also gives visitors a personable look into a business.
My Flickr (http://apps.facebook.com/myflickr/): Display photos from your Flickr account using this application. These photos can include logos, product photos, photos from events, etc.
Upcoming (http://apps.facebook.com/upcoming/): Add all of your events to upcoming.org, and you can easily display them on your Facebook page with Upcoming’s Facebook application.
YouTube Box (http://apps.facebook.com/videobox/): Allows visitors to play your YouTube videos right on your Facebook page.
Simply RSS (http://apps.facebook.com/simplyrss/): This allows you to display up to eight RSS feeds on your Facebook page and display the feeds from your business’s main site and newsrooms.
Book Share Books (http://apps.facebook.com/bookshare/): This application is good to share books key team member’s have written or to highlight books relevant to your industry.
Notes (http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2347471856): Facebook notes are like blog entries, where you can post entries and your fans can comment on them. You can also pipe your regular blog entries into this application.
Static FBML (http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=4949752878&ref=s): This application will allow you to create your own custom Facebook boxes using standard HTML or Facebook Markup Language. Do not be intimidated by this application, though, it is easy to implement, and can add to your page customization.
To see these applications in use, visit:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dalton-Publishing/9792568507
http://www.facebook.com/pages/USInsuranceOnlinecom/10125499057
Note: If you use a particular application regularly, consider donating to the application’s creator.
Social Media Tip of the Week: Getting the most mileage out of your best content.
When you post highly informative entries on your site or blog (especially those that demonstrate your expertise), make sure you don’t just click publish and move on, try and get the most mileage from them as you can. Some ways you can do this is to bookmark them in your favorite social bookmarking sites; add them to crowd-sourced news sites if they fit with their guidelines; submit them to article submission sites if the content is appropriate; create a Squidoo lens from them; or add them as notes, posts, or blog entries to your social networking profiles or pages.
How to Build an Impressive Social Networking Presence, Beginning with Facebook
How to Build an Impressive Social Networking Presence, Beginning with Facebook
by Deltina Hay
Professional and social networking sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, and Squidoo are effective outlets for finding new readers, but it is easy to find your message spread thin if you don’t choose the right strategy. Many businesses settle for sparse profiles on various sites, never discovering the other powerful marketing tools many of these social networking platforms have to offer-most of them for free.
To avoid the scattershot approach, choose one or two social networking sites that fit your business well and invest the time to maximize your presence in them. Let’s explore what that might look like if Facebook is one of your choices.
Prepare your best information before you start.
Avoid the “I will go back and fill that in later” trap. Have all your necessary information on hand, ready to copy and paste on the spot. Complete a worksheet containing:
1. Key Terms:
Make a list of your best key terms and weave them into the rest of your worksheet items. Key terms are one, two, or three word terms that someone might use if they were searching for your business in a search engine.
2. General Information:
Your Name
Business Name
Email Addresses
URLs
Instant Messaging screen names
3. Biographical and Descriptive Information:
Short bio (50 words)
Longer bio (100 words)
Short company description (50 words)
Longer company description (100 words)
Business mission statement
4 List of Products
I based these worksheet items on a typical Facebook profile and page. If you choose a different social networking site, examine some completed profiles and base your worksheet items on them.
Create an account and thoroughly complete your profile
If you haven’t already, get a Facebook account. Completely fill out your profile using your worksheet. Under the relationships tab, choose “networking.” You can skip the personal and education tabs for business profiles, but there is no harm in filling them out. If you have an existing account, upgrade your profile information using your key terms.
But don’t stop there!
Facebook, like most good social networking platforms, offers many marketing opportunities for businesses-some for free. You can find these by clicking the “Advertising” link in the footer of the Facebook site, or by following this link: http://www.facebook.com/business/.
Since I can’t cover all of the marketing tools in one article, let’s focus on my favorite: The Facebook Page. It’s my favorite not only because it is free, but because it makes use of the many diverse Facebook applications.
Facebook pages are specifically for marketing a business or a product. They offer a way for a business to represent itself to the Facebook community in an authentic way. Facebook users can search pages the same way they search for people within the network community.
Create your page by going to “Page Manager” in the left sidebar of your Facebook profile, or by following this link: http://www.facebook.com/business/ and choosing Facebook Pages. Choose the best category for your business.
Use key terms in the name of your Facebook page!
It seems that the actual page name is the only text on a Facebook page that is used in a search. With that in mind, use at least two of your best key terms in your page name.
Populate your page with all of your best worksheet information. You may have only a few seconds to catch a reader’s attention, so put your best key terms forward.
Once your page is in place, add applications to help represent your company in your own unique way. To find applications for your page, click on “Applications” in the upper left corner of your page, or search for them here: http://www.facebook.com/apps/.
Applications are not difficult to install and are usually very easy to set up. Use this general rule of thumb when choosing an application: If you can’t figure out how to set it up after the second try, find another one. There is often more than one application available to accomplish the same task.
Applications Top Picks:
My Flickr (http://apps.facebook.com/myflickr/): Display photos from your Flickr account using this application. These photos can include logos, product photos, photos from events, etc.
Upcoming (http://apps.facebook.com/upcoming/): Add all of your events to upcoming.org, and you can easily display them on your Facebook page with Upcoming’s Facebook application.
YouTube Box (http://apps.facebook.com/videobox/): Allows visitors to play your YouTube videos right on your Facebook page.
Simply RSS (http://apps.facebook.com/simplyrss/): This allows you to display up to eight RSS feeds on your Facebook page and display the feeds from your business’s main site and newsrooms.
Implementing these applications creates an interactive page that also gives visitors a personable look into your business. To see all of these applications in use on one page, visit http://www.facebook.com/pages/Dalton-Publishing/9792568507.
Note: If you use a particular application regularly, consider donating to the application’s creator-they do not get paid to develop these applications.
Promoting your social networking presence
Now that you have invested the time in creating an impressive presence on Facebook (or whichever social networks you chose), go the extra mile and research how you can promote your new presence both inside and outside of the network. Here is a link to Facebook’s promotional guidelines: http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/promo_guidelines.php.
Of course, invite everyone on your mailing lists to join your network and visit your sharp new page!
Don’t turn your back on your investment
Remember: The social Web is a fickle place! You need to keep your content dynamic and interesting in order to encourage people to return to your page, or to recommend it to their friends. Do this, and you will see better results than those who just move on to building their next profile. Once you have a good, healthy presence in one community, use your experience to move on to your next successful presence.
Copyright 2008 by Deltina Hay. All rights reserved.
Social Media Tip of the Week: Don’t spread yourself thin.
Like any good networking strategy, it is best to do a lot in a few areas as opposed to a little in all of them. First, get a feel for all of the options available to you in the social media arena, then decide which of them are the best fit for you and which you actually have time to maintain. Since dynamic content and participation are what will help you succeed in the social Web, invest them wisely.
Social Media Tip of the Week: Complete your profiles!
When you join social networking, social bookmarking, media sharing, or other social sites, be sure and complete ALL of the information in your profile. This is how people will learn more about you, and what will ultimately lead them back to your site.
Top 9 Most Useful WordPress Plugins
We find that each time we install WordPress, we automatically install almost every one of these plugins. Using all of these plugins, one can feel confident that their site will be social media and Web 2.0 optimized; search engine ready; close to spam free; and easily integrated with Flickr and YouTube.
- Anti-Spam:
- SEO:
- Stats:
- Social Bookmarking:
- Images:
- Video:
We hope you find this list useful!
The Social Media Power Team
Social Media Tip of the Week: Add Signatures to Your Blog Posts
Add a signature like the following to each of your blog posts to give a little boost to all of the sites you are managing:
Copyright 2008 by Deltina Hay
Web 2.0 Developer and Publisher
http://www.socialmediapower.com
http://www.daltonpublishing.com
http://www.empoweredbywordpress.com
SMP Founder Launches Social Media and Web 2.0 Optimization Book
Social Media Power founder, Deltina Hay, has written a no-nonsense guide to social media marketing and Web 2.0 optimization to help businesses, authors, and publishers achieve success in the social Web.
Title: A Step-by-Step Guide to Social Media Marketing and Web 2.0 Optimization
Author: Deltina Hay
Publisher: Wiggy Press
Pages: 60
Format: Fully Interactive E-Book
ISBN: 978-0-9817443-2-2
Download/CD Price: $29.95
Kindle Price: $14.95
A Step-by-Step Guide to Social Media Marketing and Web 2.0 Optimization is a straightforward, easy-to-follow strategy that can lead anyone through the social media and Web 2.0 optimization process. Many of the tactics outlined in this 60-page guide can be implemented right out of the box and with little knowledge of programming or HTML.
This book is the first in a series.
For more information about using this guide to help you build your social media and Web 2.0 strategy click here!
We want to see you succeed in the social Web, and hope that this guide will help you to that end!
The Social Media Power Team
Building a Web 2.0 and Social Media Optimized Site with WordPress
So, you’ve armed yourself with knowledge about Web 2.0 and social media, and now you’re really ready to tap into the power of the new, social Web? If you’ve decided to build your own Web 2.0 and social media optimized Web site to that end, here are a few steps you can follow to get started:
The most effective way to easily build an optimized site is with WordPress. Yes, WordPress is a blogging platform, but it can also be used as a content management system (CMS) to power your entire Web site.
Use these resources to get a good feel for how WordPress operates:
- WordPress
- Empowered by WordPress
- The book, WordPress for Dummies
And, for an explanation of the basic elements of a WordPress site, check out “The Basic Anatomy of a WordPress site” post on Empowered by Wordpress.
Planning your Site:
Make an ambitious list of what you would like to have on your site. Don’t hold back on an idea you may have for your site based on an assumption that it will be too difficult or too expensive to implement.
The plugins available for WordPress are at:
This site will give you ideas on the types of things you can add to your site. You will discover that you can easily utilize plugins to accomplish seemingly difficult functions.
I find these are pretty typical functions most entrepreneurs, small businesses, authors, and publishers are looking for:
- Image Galleries
- Streaming Video
- E-commerce
- Amazon Widgets
- Blogs/Podcasts/Vidcasts
- Random Quote Generators
- Newsletters
- Mailing list sign-up
- RSS feeds from other sources
- Events listings
- Forms for submissions
- Social Media Newsrooms
Choosing a Theme:
Make certain you only search for themes that are “widget ready.”
- You can also purchase themes from TemplateMonster.com. Again, make certain any theme you choose is “widgetized.”
- Do not choose a theme before you plan your site, however. You want your theme to accommodate your content, not vice versa.
- Choose at least twelve themes that you like. You will find that you will not be able to use many themes that you choose for various reasons.
- Try and look only at the overall look and feel of a theme, with the idea that the colors, fonts, images, and most anything else can be customized to fit your needs.
Installing WordPress and Beyond:
- Use the following documentation to help with all of these steps:
- Installing WordPress
- Choose a host. WordPress works best on a WordPress-friendly host. I use WestHost. They are affordable, reliable, and have fantastic tech support. Their personal starter plan for $6.95 a month is all you will likely need.
- For a list of other WordPress-friendly hosts, go to WordPress.org.
- Carefully read the installation guide on WordPress.org. WordPress is installed differently when you use it as a CMS than if you only use it to blog.
- Next Steps
- Installing your theme
- Customizing your theme
- Deciding which plugins you need based on your initial plan
- Installing and setting up your plugins (Always read the readme.txt file!)
- Setting up your sidebars
- Building your pages
- Posting blog entries
On Open Source Etiquette:
The developers have put a lot of time into these projects. Please show them respect by:
- Never deleting the credits from the footer of a theme, or from a plugin
- Making donations to the open source developers whose plugins you are using
When using the support forums:
- Always search the forums thoroughly for an answer to your question before posting.
- Give back if you can: check the recent posts for questions from newcomers you might be able to answer.
Here are some sites powered by WordPress to help inspire you:
- AlaskanArtandPhoto.com
- AccoladesPublicRelations.com
- DaltonPublishing.com
- EmpoweredbyWordPress.com
- LesMcGehee.com
- OwenEgertonNewsroom.com
- JoeOConnellNewsroom.com
- GaryKentFilmmaker.com
- RicWilliams.com
- KelleyBurrus.com
- OwenEgerton.com
- RobertStikmanz.com
- AmyWink.com
And, if you’re looking for even more information, rest assured that help is readily available to you. WordPress and the people who contribute to it are perfect examples of the Social Web in action. On WordPress.org you will find a plethora of help, not only from their documentation, but also from the community that has sprung from this demonstrated spirit of interactivity, sharing, and collaboration.
And don’t forget to have fun!
Copyright 2008 by Deltina Hay. All rights reserved.
