Facebook Open Graph Explained

You may heard the buzz around Open Graph and wonder what it's all about. You may have even read the Wikipedia entry for Open Graph but still don't know what it is. I'll do my best to explain it in a moment, but don't worry if you don't understand what it is. The more important questions are why you need it and how to use it, which we will also get into.

The Jargon

Open Graph is a type of Microdata (RDFa to be exact), which most notably has been implemented by Facebook. Microdata are basically special tags in web page code that can contribute to a "sematic web." Open Graph was designed to "socially graph" web pages, but it also can do things like provide Facebook-like functionality on sites and apps outside of Facebook.com.

Why It's Important

Since the dawn of the Internet, websites have primarily used HTML to display web pages in browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome. But HTML is formatting language, it tells the browser you have titles, paragraphs, images, but the browser and your computer have no idea what those titles, paragraphs and images are talking about.

You could be viewing a web page about a new Lexus but your computer doesn't know it's a page about a car. Open Graph and other Microdata technologies give meaning to webpages that other computers can understand.

Now with Open Graph, Facebook can put a web page into context, understand how to categorize it and how does the information relate to other entities: what kind of information is it, what is it talking about, who authored it, who else would Like it?

Now think about Facebook, the biggest social network in the world. If they know what a web page is about, they can show it to people who are interested in the same topics. If you have a website about football, wouldn't you rather Facebook show your articles to people who are sports fanatics instead of people who are knitting fanatics? Ah-ha!

Because of the famous "Like," Facebook knows what people are interested in, and with Open Graph, they can match web content to people's interests. Now you're beginning to see the power of Open Graph.

Open Graph goes beyond matching content to interests. It can identify how people relate to content. A video may have dozens of contributors, producers, actors, directors and more. Facebook can connect a video with everyone involved.

Think about someone who writes Kindle books, creates videos, and produces articles all over the web on several different sites. Open Graph can attach authors to their content no matter where it's hosted or shared, and connect that content to the author's fans.

Open Graph has detailed tags to help describe and catalog different types of content, video, audio and text, down to the individual roles of people collaborating on the piece of content. Where the content was produced and where people reside geographically. Most large and popular sites have been using Open Graphic for years now.

Why you need to use Open Graph:

Here's a summary of why you should integrate your site with Open Graph:

• Ensures your content shows up correctly in Facebook.


• It can help your content reach more people.


• Provides a personalized experience for visitors by recommending articles based on interest and showing which articles have been Like'd by friends.


• Can help you reach your target audience and demographic much more effectively.

Ever post an article from your website on Facebook, and the wrong image was posted?

This is an incredibly frustrating problem, especially when you use a posting service (like me) and you find the last dozen articles were posted with the wrong image or wrong description. This usually happens when the wrong tags are used, but sometimes it can be something else. I'll explain later how to avoid these problems.

The problem is without the right Open Graph tags, Facebook is left to guess what the information on the page is about, and they usually get it wrong.

With the proper tags, Facebook will understand what your content is, how it's organized and how it should be displayed within Facebook.

There are endless possibilities if search engines and computers can truly understand your site's content. There are rumors that Facebook will begin allowing people to add widgets from their favorite sites on their Timelines, and that this will only be possible with sites having Open Graph tags.

Google, Bing and Yahoo have teamed up to support a different set of Microdata published at schema.org. I have a hunch that very soon if Google is unsure what your site is about because you're not using rich snippets, they'll push it down in the search results in favor of sites that they understand and trust. Quote from Google:

Because we're always working to expand our functionality and improve the relevance and presentation of our search results, schema.org contains many new snippet types that Google may use in future applications.

You may not care about search results and get your traffic from other sources, but it doesn't end here. In the quote above "future applications" could mean a lot. Google and Facebook are continually working on ways to expand their reach and profits: new marketplaces, payment processing, messaging, advertising and more. In the future, without Microdata, your overall Internet presence could suffer.

And it even gets more intriguing: Google clearly states in Webmaster Central that it already recognizes Facebook Share coding for videos.

How to Implement Open Graph on Your Site

If you use WordPress it's easy. There are plugins in the WordPress repository that will insert the Open Graph tags automatically into your site's HTML markup. Here's an example of what some of these tags look like:



The official Facebook WordPress plugin is one place to start. WordPress SEO by Yoast is good. Jetpack from WordPress has gotten better this past year at implementing Open Graph tags. All these are free to use.

The three plugins I mentioned auto-populate the tags. But there are other plugins that let you manually add tags beyond the basics like title, description, image, author, etc. This type of implementation would be handy for video or music producers.

If you don't use WordPress then you'll have to manually add the HTML tags to your header either by using a web page editor or having your developer insert them for you. If you don't understand what I just said, consult with any web developer. A number of you reading this might be using Joomla or Drupal, which may have Open Graph plugins available like WordPress does.

Dealing with Open Graph Problems

If you use a plugin to add Open Graph tags to your site, it doesn't guarantee you won't have display problems when your articles are posted on Facebook. Here are a couple common Facebook posting problems and how to fix them.

Too small of an image

Your article needs to have an image at least 200 x 200 pixels or Facebook won't use it. Instead, they'll find a different image on your site big enough and use that, which can result in some lame looking Facebook posts that result in low click-throughs.

I've had problems with images that were either 200 pixels wide or tall. I assume whatever tool I used to measure my image wasn't accurate or my image was really 199.5 pixels on one side and I didn't know it. To be safe, make sure your images are much more than 200 pixels on any side.

Wrong description

Earlier I said if you don't have Open Graph tags to tell Facebook what your web page is about, it will guess and usually it's wrong. But sometimes a WordPress plugin will tag the wrong description, which will foul up your post when you share it on Facebook.

In my experience, this usually happens because of a plugin conflict or there are WordPress short codes in the content. If you can't fix the plugin conflict or depend on short codes, use the Excerpt field in the post editor in WordPress. Either copy the first few lines of your article into the Excerpt box, or write a custom description. Most Facebook Open Graph plugins will use the Excerpt for the description.

If you don't see the Excerpt field below the post editor, click Screen Options at the top left of the admin panel and check Excerpt. It should appear below the main post edit box.

Get to know the Facebook Debugger

If you're having problems with the way your posts are displayed in Facebook, and you have no idea what the problem is, try using the Facebook Open Graph Debugger:

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

Enter the URL of the page you're having problems with and the debugger will identify any issues.

In the example above, the debugger tells me I have one image too small and it will chose the second image in my post instead.

If there is nothing wrong with your page the Response Code will show 200.

This tool can help identify problems in your Open Graph tags, which you may be able to fix yourself. If you have consistent problems with your tags you may need to try a different plugin or ask a developer to look at your site.

The Future of Open Graph and Microdata

We may be at the very earliest stages of an exciting new frontier with the semantic web. At some point it will become mainstream to have Open Graph and Microdata tags on web sites.

Those who embrace these technologies will have a head start on where the web is going. The rest will be scratching their heads wondering what just happened.

This was just an overview of Open Graph, if you have any questions about your website, please get in touch with me here or on Twitter.

Quick Social Media Cover Image Sizes

There is no shortage of services and independent designers who will create cover photos for your social accounts. They'll likely come up with something creative based on your input and feedback, and provide the correct sizes you need. All at a fair price.

But what if you just want something simple that will get your profiles done quickly so you can move on to more important activities?

This is often the case for me. I like to get new Pages up quickly so I can start posting content and growing the followers. I needed a table I could glance at and know what images I need and what their sizes should be. A barebones list of images and dimensions that can be used to guide cropping and resizing. I can always upgrade the cover photos later if I want. Plus I think it’s a good idea anyway to change cover images from time to time to keep the Page fresh.

So I came up with a social media profile and cover image size table below, which quickly gives me exactly what I need.

Profile images, or “avatars” as some social sites call them, are usually square. In the table I didn't specify maximum sizes for Facebook and Google+ profiles because I’m not sure what they are. I couldn't find anything in their support pages. Being curious, I uploaded some very large image files to each social network. No problem! Of course, I was asked to crop the images since they were so big, and then they were reduced further when saved.

The following image size information was compiled by reading the specs on each social network's support pages and reviewing advice posted by graphic designers. The dimensions are up to date at the time this article was posted. For best results use the largest sizes listed if you can. All image dimensions are in pixels, with width first followed by height.

Social Network	Profile Min	Profile Max	Cover Image Min	Cover Image Max	Background Image
Facebook	180 x 180	n/a	851 x 315
Twitter	240 x 240	500 x 500	520 x 260	1252 x 626	1600 x 900
Google+	250 x 250	n/a	480 x 270	2120 x 1192	1920 x 1080
LinkedIn	200 x 200	500 x 500	640 x 220
YouTube	200 x 200	1600 x 1600			2560 x 1440
Pinterest	165 x 165	600 x 600
Gravatar	80 x 80	420 x 420
Tumblr	64 x 64	n/a
Foursquare	128 x 128	100KB	860 x 130 (brand pages)

 

I like to use this table by looking up the social media accounts I need cover images for, and then start with the largest.

For example, according to the table the YouTube background is the largest image. But let’s say I just need to create cover images for a new Google+ Page and a Facebook Page. Since Google+ it’s the biggest of the two I need that's where I start. And because I started with the biggest image I need, I may be able to use the same cover and crop and resize it down to Facebook size. It’s all about being efficient.

However, some of you may want to use an image template instead that shows where the profile image and other content is placed over the cover image. That way the content can be accounted for and designed around.

The content can also be creatively merged into the design if you want, such as this classic example from the Ford Motor Company's Facebook Page:



Note how the profile image of the Mustang emblem on the car's grill was incorporated into the overall cover image design. If this is something you want to design into your images it’s helpful to have templates that show where other content is positioned on top of the cover image.

Here are some diagrams with downloadable Photoshop templates: http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk/blog/social-media-cover-photo-templates/ This is one of the more up to date references I found.

The social networks seemingly frequent changing of cover sizes has been a source of frustration by many social media users (especially the ones who paid for custom designs). You get your YouTube channel or Facebook Page looking slick and then they go and change the sizes on you. And if you don’t update your Pages look outdated.

However, it seems like these sizes are stable now and may be around for a while. The trend over the years had been larger cover images, but how much bigger can they get? That’s why I think these sizes might be stable. But Facebook is the wildcard since their cover images are relatively small. Given they are the biggest and with the other networks chasing them, hopefully they won’t feel the need to make any "improvements" for a while. One can hope.

Time To Take Advantage Of Google+

It's been nearly two years now since Google+ publicly launched and many are still ignoring what has become the second largest social network. If you're a small business owner using Facebook or Twitter, Google+ may be one of those things on you plan to get to someday. You may have excuses: you don't know how to use it, you're wondering if you should even attempt to use it, and the biggest one of all is, "How the heck will I find time for another social network?!" These are valid points to think about, and believe me, you're not alone.

This article will explain the significance of Google+ and show you how to use it to build your online authority, expand your community, and share your content with a larger audience. You will learn how to take advantage of all the features on Google+ and know how to make the many features work for you. But before you can even consider these valuable features, let's take a look at what exactly Google+ is.

Google+ Explained

Google designed Google+ to make sharing on the web more like sharing in real life. Basically, the user experience on Google+ is similar to that of Facebook. The major difference with Google+ is to make it easier to control who sees what content with "Circles," which are specific groups of people instead of just publishing content on your Wall for everyone to see.

For example, do you want your business associates to see pictures of your new kitten, or just your friends and family? Likewise, do you want to bombard your family with posts of industry news related to your businesses? Circles are the way to group the people in your life so they only see what you want them to see.

Regarding your business, Circles provide efficient, targeted messaging to your customers and clients. This can be much more effective than other social networks. Using Circles you can place your followers into categories, similar to direct mail or email segmentation lists. You may have content or campaigns intended for prospects, those who you have not done business with yet. You may run a campaign for a subset of your paying customers. You may have content for entire client and prospect base. With Circles you can control your campaigns for precise targeting.

There are other important reasons to use Google+ beyond the Circles feature, one of which is search discovery. Think of the millions of people who search Google every day. If you want to increase your Google Search presence, you should consider this—Google will always favor itself. When you share content from your website on your Google+ Page, you are helping your business rank higher in the Google Search Engine.

Google has also integrated Google+ in its other services, such as Gmail, Google Docs (now Drive), YouTube, Google Local others. And don't forget about Android, Google's platform that powers more mobile devices than Apple's iOS. Soon having a Google+ may not be an option, it may become a necessity in surviving online.

Getting Started on Google+

Creating a Google+ account is fast and easy. There are only 3 steps with only a few pieces of information asked about you, most of which are optional.

When you visit http://plus.google.com, you'll see the welcome screen with the Sign in box on the left. Sign in with your Gmail account or click CREATE AN ACCOUNT if you don't have one.

Complete the information (you don't have to put your real birthday), click the agreement checkboxes and click Upgrade.

In the next screen you're asked to add people you know. When you hover over the Add button a popup will appear with four starter Circles for you to select from.

More on Circles in the next section.

Click Continue after you add a few people or skip adding people for now.

Next you're asked to follow celebrity accounts. Click Continue when you're done following.

The next step asks you to fill out your profile. Like Facebook, you have the option of adding places you've lived, worked and gone to school. Click Finish and you're done!

After creating your account you'll be on the Google+ home page, where you can begin participating. However, you may want to visit the Setting page where you can change your privacy settings, or head to your Profile page and change your background image and profile picture. Both are available by hovering over the Home link in the upper left corner.

How To Use Google+ Circles

If the whole concept of "Circles" has you confused, just understand what a "Circle" represents by remembering they are simply groups. You can have a Circle of friends, prospective customers, current customers, business organizations, or any number of possibilities.

Creating Circles

As you may have notice when you created your account, Google+ provides a few default circles to get you started: Friends, Family, Acquaintances and Following. You can drag people from a list of suggested people into circles individually or by highlighting multiple people at a time and dragging them all into one circle. These suggestions come from your Gmail account, so if you don't see someone you'd like to Circle, try adding them to your Gmail contacts.

You can also create a new Circle on the fly by dropping a friend onto the "Drop here to create a new circle" or simply hover over that circle to create a new one before you start dragging your connections over.

When you add your first person to a Circle, you'll get a popup notification that you can now share with them and see what they are sharing with you. After you place someone in one of your Circles, that person doesn't know which of your Circles they're in. No one does. They only receive a message that they've been followed. You could have a Circle labeled "Jerks" and the people in that Circle will never know.

You will also receive a notification that they will appear on your public profile. You may not want this. If not, you can click on the "Change" link which will take you to your Google profile with a highlighted box where you can change the visibility settings to show people in all circles or just selected ones, select whether anyone on the web or just people in your circles can see that information and select whether to show people who have added you to their circles.

You may wish to add people who are not on Google+ yet, adding them to a circle means that they will receive your Google+ posts via email. You should be aware that those people haven't signed up and might not really want to receive your updates. You could perhaps create a circle for those who only receive email updates for tighter control of the message volume.

Posting

If you use Facebook, sharing content on Google+ is almost the same process.

You have box where you can write or paste a link or upload a photo. The text box supports hashtags to group posts and helpin searches.

The big difference is the To box that pops up after you enter some content. The To box allows you to share your post with any of your Circles, or a person in your Circles, or a combination of Circles and individuals.

The Public option means that anyone will be able to see your post. However, people specified will receive a notification of your post. This is important to understand: notifying people each time you have a new post may annoy them. It's best to have public posts and occasionally share something with a specific Circle or a few individuals.

After you click Share your post will appear in your Stream where people can +1 and comment on your post, similar to Facebook's newsfeed.

Next, Communities and Hangouts...

Google+ Communities

Google+ communities are theme oriented public discussion groups that exist within the social network. Any member of Google+ can create or join a community to share information or participate in discussions. Unlike Circles, members of a community do not have to be in the same Circles to participate and exchange information. Google+ communities are more like online forums meant to start open discussion and exchange ideas on specific topics.

Benefits of Creating a Google+ Community

Creating or joining a community Google Plus has several benefits:

• Communities content is indexed and discoverable by the Google search engine and on Google+.


• Create and manage your own Google+ community and become a reference on a topic of expertise to increase visibility and personal branding.


• Communities allow you to meet other members sharing a common interest, and provide a place to build relationships through social networking.


• Creating a community around a recurring event such as an annual exhibition or conference is a great use of Google+ Communities. Members can receive information before events, and continue discussion after events.

There are only three simple steps to get started with your own community.

1. Go to https://plus.google.com/communities and click the Create a Community button.


2. Choose if it should be a public or private community
   
   You are shown a prompt to set the visibility of your community on Google+. You can choose between four types of community:
   
   • Public - Anyone can join: everyone can become a member, and you see the list of members and posts.
   
   
   • Public- Moderator approval needed to join: Anyone can send a registration and may join if the moderator approves.
   
   
   • Private- Let people find through search and request to join: Users can find the community and apply for registration. They are restricted in the fact that they do not have access to the list of members.
   
   
   • Private- Hide community from searches: The community does not appear in the search results. Only those invited can join.
   
   
   
   


3. Next, name your new community and decide if you want to approve new members or not. When creating a community on Google+, if you have a Google+ Page for your business, choose a distinct name to avoid confusion.

With those three simple steps, you have started your first community. Now you can create categories to guide conversations. You may also add a tagline and a brief description so people know what your community is all about. Your community profile should have a picture that helps describe your community. At this time (this stuff changes frequently), the picture has to be at least 250x250 pixels even though only 200x250 pixels are visible.

Note: the visibility of the community cannot be changed after the creation.

Once your community has launched, you'll can refine the look of your community and invite members.

Add a visual content in connection with the theme of the community to make it easily identifiable: Actions > Edit Community

Fill the "About" section: short description of the principle and the spirit of the community and add URL to other relevant sources.

Invite members: in the Actions dropdown menu, select Invite people. Then add names, circles, or e-mail addresses and send the request.

Create categories of discussion which can be created or modified by the owners of a community or moderators. These will act as filters and help organize community discussions. You may appoint one or more moderator for the community.

Many well-known brands have jumped on the Communities bandwagon. The truth is, however, you don't have to be a well-known brand. Anyone can create a community to discuss most any topic.

You may find that Communities will compliment your Google+ businesses pages. While Google has yet to devise a mechanism where the two actually intersect, a business page can serve promotional functions, while Communities focus on topics of shared interests and interaction.

Google Hangouts

Hangouts is one of the biggest features of Google+. Hangouts is Google's instant message and video chat apps that is fast becoming an alternative to Skype.

Like Skype, Hangouts offers chat, video calls, screen sharing and so on. But there are a few unique features in Hangouts that have people excited:

• Allows video chat with up to 10 (9 friends and yourself), while Skype charges for more than 2 people on a call.


• Has built in Google apps like Google Docs and YouTube live stream.


• People can have fun with emoji and wear animated hats and disguises on screen.


• Hangouts can stream live via the "On Air" feature. Viewers can watch a Hangout live on YouTube, great for your own "TV" show or other live broadcast.

Getting Started With Google Hangouts

To run a Google Hangout you must have a Google+ account, but you already knew that. To start a Hangout with someone, they need to be in one of your Circles. Just click on the New Hangout link on the left of your Google+ profile and invite the people from your Circles.

If you have the Google+ app on your Android or iOS device you can start a Hangout from your phone.

What to do if you want to Hangout with more than 10 people?

While Hangouts are limited to 10 participants, with On Air you can have an unlimited number of viewers. Also, if you have a Google Business Account, you can have 15 participants. Usually, you'd limit the number of presenters anyway, but if you need to have more than 15 speakers you could organize a Hangout into sessions where presenters and viewers switch. With these additional options you should be able to organize any type of online meeting.

A Daily Plan For Social Media Growth

When I first starting using social media I wanted someone to give me a checklist, something I could complete every morning and not have to think about the rest of the day. I like routine and when I have a daily regiment I find I make daily progress. But after searching online for some time, I never found a social media daily plan or checklist from the experts. So I came up with my own checklist, and in the following article I take you through it step-by-step.

It may not be the best plan, or best plan for you, but it’s a starting point. Many business owners and online marketers use social media because that’s what you’re supposed to do these days, and lack a real plan they can stick to day-in, day-out to reach their goals.

This article is designed to give you a plan, one you can execute every day to reach your goals, even if you have a busy schedule.

It’s a flexible daily plan that you can (and should) tweak to meet your own business needs and goals, and is intended to be one part of your overall social media strategy. I hope you find it useful.

A Daily Plan For Social Media Growth http://t.co/gpE5MaYlmi @techiediy One of the greatest posts I have come across.

— Lance Wyllie (@LanceWyllie) August 22, 2013

Contents

1. Introduction and Goals


2. Going Big


3. The Plan


4. Phase I


5. Seeding Your Accounts


6. Groups, Pages and Automation


7. Phase II


8. Weekly Tasks


9. Tools


10. Phase III

YOUR GOALS

Without goals, you won’t be able to measure success and know if what you’re doing is worth the effort. You may not know why you are performing certain activities and become inconsistent. The following are a few basic examples, but you could certainly come up with many others:

• Networking, growing personal networks


• Serve customers and gather feedback


• Establish yourself as an expert or thought-leader in your niche


• Capture leads


• Drive traffic to your website, products

The daily plan detailed in this article is focused on growing your social networks, so that your social media accounts serve as a platform to reach any of the example goals, or those goals that have yet to be inspired. The larger your network, the easier it will be to network, get traffic, leads, and establish yourself as an expert.

For the remainder of this post, the main objective will be to grow your networks as quickly as possible with the least amount of effort, so that at any time you may pivot to any campaign or new goal that develops.

YOUR MODELS

I recommend having a second objective that will help you tweak your social media plan. Identify someone, a person or company, who is successful in your niche and is currently at a level in their business that you want to reach. If possible find more than one. These will serve as models to emulate.

Study your models. Determine how big their social networks are. Using tools like Quantcast and Alexa you can gauge how much traffic they are driving to their sites. Take note at what they are posting and see what gets the most Likes, Retweets and Google +1’s.

With some deep research, you may even be able to estimate how much money they’re earning online. Use this information to come up with targets for you to reach.
Your second objective should be to reach your target in X number of months. As your social media plan is in motion, you can adjust your activities as needed to meet the goal.

Next we go BIG...

HOW BIG?

Your first milestone in your social media journey should be to reach the level of someone who is already having success in your niche. However, your work doesn't have to end there. It’s the philosophy of this author that bigger is better when it comes to your own social networks.

You may hear a very different type of advice from the social media “gurus," who preach building quality networks by screening friends and followers. In my experience, the amount time it takes to “qualify” people I allow in my network does not justify the payoff. That’s just me.

There are many advantages to having social networking accounts with large followings. People (and advertisers) are attracted to big numbers. Even with so-called “low quality” networks (if there is such a thing), with large networks you’ll have more traffic, more joint-venture opportunities, and you’ll find it takes less effort to grow your followers and fans. Your networks will become real assets you can leverage.

The truth is that there is no right answer here, and until you find the answer for yourself, just grow. As you grow and measure your success, your goals will become clear and your strategy will become refined.

THE BIG FOUR

In our social media daily plan, we’re going to focus on the big four social-networking sites: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

There are two more sites you should have a presence on and use for traffic: YouTube and Pinterest.

YouTube is an extremely powerful tool for connecting with your audience and driving traffic. It’s not a part of our daily plan because it takes time to produce quality video content. However, I suggest you create video content and include a video marketing strategy as part of your overall social media plan.

I mention Pinterest because the site can deliver lots of traffic depending on your niche. It’s worth testing with your visual content to see if it can help meet your traffic and business goals.

THE BIG PICTURE

As mentioned earlier, the daily action plan is meant to be a portion of your overall social media strategy. The plan includes activities that will easily fit your schedule every day. I recommend allocating a few hours a week or more in addition to the daily plan for maximum results. It’s important to have consistent time each week to create content, perform research, measure results and other tasks.

Now, onto the Plan...

THE PLAN

The goal of this social media daily plan is to give you a set of activities that can realistically be performed every day to grow your following on the big four social networks.

These activities can be done in about 20 minutes a day on average. Some days they may take longer, perhaps 30 minutes, and on other days you might get through them in only 15 minutes.

It’s up to you if you want to complete tasks in the plan every day of the week, or Monday through Friday. I recommend at least committing to Monday through Friday, but for the fastest results, more is better.

No matter how busy you are, you should have 20 minutes in your day to zip through these tasks.

Think you don’t have 20 minutes? Time how long you spend reading emails in the morning. I was shocked to find that I was spending about 45 minutes every morning! And when looking closely at my inbox, I found that 70% to 80% of messages were unimportant. Most were offers, news, a few jokes, things that didn’t really necessitate my immediate attention. Since that analysis, I’ve changed my daily email habits. If you’re in the same boat, see if cutting the time in half in the morning gives you and extra 20 minutes.

There are also recommended weekly tasks that you may perform on one of your “off” days, or you may replace one of the days in your daily schedule. I recommend the former.

I encourage you to go beyond this plan, the more you do, the faster you’ll grow. Use this plan as a base minimum in your overall strategy. In other words, if your strategy is to do one hour of social media activities per day, there will be some days your schedule may not allow you to spend an hour, on these days you can fall back on this plan.

The Plan has two phases and an optional third phase:

Phase 1: Preparation and set up. During this phase, you’ll some light research and set up your social networking accounts, or clean up your existing accounts in preparation for the next phase. You will also “seed” your accounts with some base followers. We’ll also throw some automation tricks into the mix to maximize your time for other tasks.

Phase 2: Execution. After the set up phase, you’re ready to put the daily plan into action.

Phase 3 (optional): Maintenance. When you have reached your goals for growth, you may want to reduce your phase two activities and enter a maintenance mode that is less intense and allows time for new tasks. This phase is optional; you may continue with phase two activities as long as you like.

CONTENT

Based on models you’ve identified in your marketplace, you should have an idea of what type of posts gets the most Likes, Retweets and Google +1’s in your marketplace.

A mistake you may see others make is direct selling on most or all social media updates. While that strategy can work, it destroys your credibility and reputation. This strategy is usually used by people who don’t care about reputation and create lots of fake personas to make it work.

Social media is all about building relationships, not business transactions. People just don’t like to be sold to. Any attempt to sell directly on social media may harm your online presence. In a live situation, a customer would think of excuses and come up with a polite “no” to a sales pitch. But on social media it’s all too easy for customers to turn you off, all they have to do is to click the “unfollow” button, and you’re gone.

I like this example my friend came up with. Social media is much like dating. If a guy walks into a bar with the intention leaving with a new committed relationship, he’s going to walk out empty-handed. In dating, since the two parties don’t know each other very well, there’s a series of progressive steps that builds rapport before there’s any talk of commitment.

It’s the same in social media and sales in general. You need to woo and nurture and to gain respect. Keep this in mind as you decide on what to share with your network.

Be helpful and add value to your followers. Don’t share links only from your website. If you are an expert in your niche, then you probably pay close attention to industry news. Share new and helpful information you discover from other sites.

Humor is also very effective. These tasks don't always have to be serious, and you can have a lot of fun with your ‘work’ if you like. In every industry, every market, no matter what it is, there is a humorous side or a joke to be made. Even posting a funny picture that has nothing to do with your niche can go a long way to help you grow your following!

Sourcing Content

When it’s time to for my daily tasks I already have lots of great stuff lined up and ready to share. It’s all in my inbox. Subscribe to sites that have great content and let the news come to you. Set up Google Alerts on your target niche keywords and have them send to your email or your RSS reader.

Note: In the Automation section of this chapter, you’ll learn that you can automate some of this type of sharing to maximize your time for other tasks. However, it’s a good idea to monitor the news for things you can comment on in your sharing.

Share everything you touch. Not just your articles and videos, often your comments on one social site can be shared on other sites. When you update your LinkedIn status, share it on Twitter. When you leave a comment on a blog or on a YouTube video, share the article or video on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter. Wherever you leave your mark, share, share, share!

TIP: Use the free Twylah ‘Power Tweet’ to share any place you visit online to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and others. To get the Power Tweet button, first sign up for Twylah (free), then search for the Power Tweet bookmarklet instructions.

Indirect Updates

Indirect updates can help build engagement but more importantly can help you get lots of Likes and +1’s. Indirect updates are posts that don’t necessary have anything to do with your niche. They can be humorous images, jokes, inspirational quotes. These get shared like crazy on Facebook and Google+ you should include it in your strategy.

Be on the lookout as you browse through the web or when people share interesting and humorous images or articles. If you see something funny, intriguing shocking, make a note to use it for your daily tasks. Look for content to share on Imgur and Reddit, these sites have an endless supply of hilarious pictures and stories.

Next: Phase I

PHASE 1: PREPERATION AND SET UP

RESEARCH

Phase 1 starts by identifying people you want to model and emulate in your niche. Take notes on topics and posts your models are sharing that are getting the most votes (Likes, Retweets, +1s) on each of the social networks.

Take a close look at tags they are using. These may be good keywords you’ll want to use in on your social account. See if the keywords in tags are being used in post titles and on their profiles. Take note of keywords that appear repeatedly, you may want to use these later in your own profile and posts.

To get the most from you keywords, you can run keywords you’ve discovered through the Google’s keyword tool: https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool. This tool will give you some sense of traffic volume these keywords receive. If they are getting lots of traffic, keep them. Ones that are not getting much traffic many not be worth using.

You can also use the tool to find new keywords that people are already searching for.

This keyword exercise is not an exact science but should give you a little insight into which keywords to focus on.

PROFILES

After your research, you may want to write out your bio ahead of time so you don’t have to come up with one on the fly as you fill in your profiles. Get your wording right and include some of your target keywords if you can. If you use Word or some other text editor, you can simply cut-and-paste your bio into each profile.

The next step is signing up on the big four social networking sites and completely filling in your profile. I assume many reading this already have accounts on these networks, if this is your case, you’ll need to go through your profile to make sure it’s complete.

Note: I recommend having multiple Twitter accounts. Have at least one Twitter account for each of your websites, and one account for your own public persona.

Having complete and professional profiles is a critical; you will be judged by your profiles.

Here are some tips to having optimized and effective profiles:

• Profile Picture - Add a clear picture of yourself, preferably a head shot. It doesn’t have to be a professional shot, but realize that you’ll be instantly judged by your picture.


• Professional Headline/Description - Try to include your targeted keywords in your title and summary. Don’t force your keywords, make sure your headlines and description look natural.
  
  
  
  • On Facebook, you may use the Employers fields for your headline. This appears at the top of your profile and anywhere when people hover over your name.
  
  
  • On LinkedIn, this appears similar to the description you have indicated in your Current Position and appears below your name.
  
  
  • On Twitter, this is your Bio and appears next to your profile picture.
  
  
  • On Google+, this is your Introduction and appears on your profile and in Google Search results.
  
  
  
  


• Links - Each of the big four social networks allows you to have links on your profile. Use them! Link to your primary websites, Facebook and Google+ Pages and your social media profiles.


• On Facebook, be sure to include the http:// on your links to make them clickable.

Next: Seeding Your Accounts

SEEDING YOUR ACCOUNTS

One of the problems with social media is that it can be tough to get followers when you’re just starting out. When you have a low number of followers, circles, connections, Likes, etc., it tells people (perhaps unfairly), two things about you:

• you’re not popular; and


• I’m not going to grow my own network much by connecting you.

These are more reasons to grow your followers as much as you possibly can: a large following is a form of “social proof” to people who don’t know you. Another important reason is that your following becomes an asset that people will want a piece of, and one you can leverage.

It’s much, much easier to grow your social accounts when you have 1,000 connections compared to 10. But how do you make the leap from 10 to 1,000? Here are some ninja tools and tricks that will get you there quickly:

Import Your Contacts

Once you've cleaned your profiles, start seeding your social accounts using your email contacts. Add your Skype, MSN, Yahoo and Gmail contacts to each of your social network accounts.

Note: To add new contacts to Google+, you must add them to your Gmail contacts first. Then you can circle people in your Gmail contact list.
TIP: Import your Facebook friends into Yahoo Mail. If you don’t have a Yahoo Mail account sign up for one for free, it’s worth having for this tip. Then add your Yahoo contacts again to Twitter, Google+ (via Gmail) and LinkedIn. You’re sure to add a few extra contacts to each of these social networks.

OpenNetworker

This site can literally help you add thousands of connections on LinkedIn. Everyone who I’ve introduced to this site has added one to two thousand new connections in just a week or two! Sign up for a free account and then download the available lists of contacts. These are people who want to network and want to be added to your social accounts. Import these email addresses into each of your social networking accounts.

Note: On Facebook, identify yourself as an OpenNetworker, otherwise you may get complains and Facebook may restrict or even ban your account.

OpenNetworker has an optional paid subscription for $50 USD a year that allows you to add your contact information to the download lists (free accounts can only download the lists). For only $50 I feel it’s worth the cost as you’ll get friend new requests every week. One person I referred to this site added about 4,000 connections on LinkedIn alone in just a few months.

Free or paid, you may sign up here: OpenNetworker

Twiends

UPDATE: Tweinds has undergone a number of major changes during August 2013. They removed the auto-follow back feature, which was in response to a change in the Twitter TOS. At this time, they also do not give free seeds, including if you have a PAID SUBSCRIPTION. It's hard to fault them for removing the auto-follow feature, but the timing was terrible for taking away free seeds. Not giving free seeds to VIP's (paid subscribers) also lessens the value of subscriptions.

I'm leaving this part of the article unabridged in case Twiends brings back free seeds. You can still use Twiends to gain followers, but without auto-follow and free seeds it will be slower. If you are interested in learning about an advanced tool I use to grow my followers, please get in touch with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ or Facebook.

Twiends is a free online service for Twitter that allows you to earn credits called “seeds” that you can exchange for followers. It gives people an incentive to follow regardless of your follower ratio.

So you follow people, build up your seeds, and other people follow to earn seeds from you. If it doesn't make sense, just take it from me, it works extremely well in growing followers fast!

After signing up, I recommend you head over to the setting's page and adjust them to be more conservative. This will help minimize unfollows from people who are just out to get seeds and not really interested with connecting with you on Twitter.

This last setting is critical in my view. When you’re getting follows on seeds you’ve built up, you should auto-follow those people back. You automatically earn more seeds since most people on Twiends offer them too.

The process of growing your Twitter accounts can be automated by buying seeds. They have some paid packages for buying seeds. You can walk away, and your account will grow automatically until you run out of seeds!

Now, if you shop similar services, Twiends can seem expensive. You can buy followers, which is another option for much cheaper than this. However, there are risks when you do that, you can get a lot unfollows and inactive accounts following you. Furthermore, it’s against Twitter’s terms of services to outright buy followers.

There are also a number of sites like Twiends that sell seeds cheaper. One is YouLikeHits.com which I’ve used before and is not bad. I've found Twiends to give me the best-quality followers. Also, they have some features I like and return seeds automatically if you've spent them on bad accounts.

Personally, I’ve had great results buying seeds from Twiends and even the smallest package can deliver 2,000 to 3,000 new followers if you have auto-follow turned on.

Facebook Page Likes and Google+ Page +1s

After a few days have passed since importing your contacts into Facebook and Google+, you may start soliciting Likes and +1s. You may want to wait a little longer than a few days to do this step and give your contacts more time to respond to your friend requests.

Once you've gone through these steps you should have a good base network to start with.

Next up: Groups, Pages and Automation...

GROUPS

Facebook and LinkedIn groups are a powerful way to get more connects, engage with your target audience and even get traffic directly to your website from posting in groups.

Find and join LinkedIn and Facebook groups in your niche. Join as many as you can, there’s no commitment or expectation after joining a group. As a member, these groups will be available to you for posting.

There is a limit on LinkedIn to 50 groups you can belong to simultaneously, but that should be enough for most people. On Facebook, the limit is 300.
I also suggest you start your own groups you control. Invite all your connections and friends to join your groups.

TIP: On your own groups, you can add an RSS from your site, so that your articles will post automatically to the LinkedIn group. Not only will your posts show in the group page for members to see, but your posts will also show up in the daily digest that gets emailed directly to members. It’s free email traffic, which is some of the most targeted traffic you can have. This is a very powerful LinkedIn feature that you should take full advantage of.

FACEBOOK PAGES AND GOOGLE+ PAGES

Both Facebook and Google+ give you the option of using each of the networks as your Page. This means when you Like or +1 something, it shows as coming from your Page instead of your personal account.

This is important in growing your Page Likes and +1. As you’ll see in the daily tasks, you will Like and +1 posts and comments as your Page to create interest for your Page.

To use each network as your Page, visit your Page and select the option under Edit Page on Facebook, and on Google+, use the ‘Switch to this page’ button.

Using Facebook and Google+ as your Page, browse through other people’s Pages in your niche and begin Liking, circling and +1ing them. This may get you some Likes and +1s and will send updates to your newsfeeds for easy discussion monitoring later.

AUTOMATION

To maximize your 20 minutes a day schedule, you can leverage some automation techniques to perform some sharing activates for you.

Use free online services such as Dlvr.it or Twitterfeed to auto post to your Twitter and Linked accounts and your Facebook Page from your RSS feed. Use Hootsuite to do the same for your Google+ Page.

Use these services for status update posts to LinkenIn, Twitter and your Facebook Page.

Here’s basically how auto-posting with these services works:

1. Copy an RSS feed from your site.


2. Add these feeds to an RSS auto-poster, like Twitterfeed.


3. Add your social accounts and setup Twitterfeed to post new items on your behalf.

How to use these services is beyond the scope of this article, but there are plenty of free and paid tutorials available to help you get started. Here are few auto-posting tips:

Your own website or blog is great for auto-posting. As soon as you publish a new article it will appear on the big four social sites. You can also set up auto-posted updates on your comments if your site has an RSS feed for them (like WordPress).

Find sites in your niche that produce quality content and use a few of these for auto-posting (more on this in the Content section).

Twitter followers can tolerate lots of updates; Facebook fan usually can’t. You can set up a feed to post as frequently as every 30 minutes for Twitter and you’re sure to get more followers every day. If you did the same with Facebook, you’d likely lose followers. LinkedIn is somewhere in between.
In other words, this strategy is great for Twitter but be careful with Facebook. Set up feeds to post at different frequencies for each social network (which can be set up on both services I mentioned).

When it comes to automation, this is just the tip of the iceberg. As you get comfortable with the technology, you can explore other automation tools and opportunities. Some of the 20-minute-a-day tasks can also be automated but only with paid tools. This is also an option.

If you spend about 20 minutes a day, this phase may take a week or less. This is the heavy lifting of the plan, from here on its easy street.

Next: Phase II...

PHASE 2: DAILY TASKS

The following daily tasks are some of the most effective social media activities you can do in a short timeframe. Of course, you can modify the tasks to fit your needs. Either way, take this opportunity to use a checklist that will provide daily direction and focus.

If you want to outsource your daily social media activities, this gives you a solid task list you can easily assign to a staff member.

Missing from these tasks is direct posting updates to your Facebook Page, Twitter and LinkenIn accounts. That’s because I recommend Dlvr.it, Twitterfeed or any other RSS posting service for these tasks. If you don’t want to use an RSS service for auto-posting, you may add posting updates to your daily plan.

Tasks to grow your audience:

1. Respond to any new comments on your website, LinkenIn posts, Facebook and Google+ Pages, Twitter retweets and mentions. Thank everyone and Like, +1, the original comment, and retweet Twitter mentions and retweets with a ‘thank you. ‘


2. Respond to all open friend requests, connection invitations, follow back new followers and circle everyone who has circled you since the previous day.


3. Sign in to Twiends and then sign out for each of your Twitter accounts. You’ll get 10 bonus seeds and if you have auto-follow turned on, that could mean 10 to 20 followers for each of your accounts every day you do this task.


4. Make at least one new post, or one new comment, in at least one LinkedIn and one Facebook Group.
   
   
   
   1. Tweet your posts using the built-in Tweet button (LinkedIn).
   
   
   2. Like and +1 the entire discussion for more exposure (LinkedIn).
   
   
   3. Like other people’s comments and post a response.
   
   
   
   


5. In Facebook, switch to using Facebook as your Page (see FACEBOOK PAGES AND GOOGLE+ PAGES). Like at least one comment on 20 to 30 Pages in your niche. (This sounds like a lot but it will only take a couple minutes.)


6. Make at least one new post each on your Google+ personal stream and your Google+ Page (the latter can be automated with RSS and Hootsuite).


7. Switch to using Google+ as your Page, then circle 20 to 30 (or any number you’re comfortable with). Find people in your niche to circle who have a strong following.


8. Make an indirect update (e.g., a funny or inspirational picture) to your Facebook and Google+ Page.

If you have time remaining…

9. Using Facebook as a Page, leave a few new comments or respond to someone else’s comment on other Pages.


10. Circle new people on Google+ using your personal page.


11. Answer one question in LinkedIn Answers.

When should you perform these tasks? There have been studies that show the best times to post for maximum views and engagement is the following (US Eastern Times):

1. 7 AM


2. 5 PM


3. 11 PM

It’s for this reason that I like to do my daily tasks first thing in the morning, and on some days, I repeat the tasks in the evening before I shut down my computer. Evenings are good because people are home from work and school.

Of course, this may vary depending on your own networks and where most of them live, when they like to be online, etc. A great tool to use is Crowdbooster, which will analyze your posts and your network, and recommend posting times for maximum effectiveness.

Next: Weekly Tasks...

Phase II: Weekly Tasks

In addition to your daily activities, you need one day each week for tasks that are not needed every day and for a little housekeeping.

Getting More Facebook Page Likes and Google+ Page +1s

To grow your Facebook Page Likes and Google+ Page +1s, there are several online groups and forums you can join that offer ‘Like swaps’: you Like my Page and I’ll Like yours. On LinkedIn, there are numerous groups you may join and add your Facebook Page, Google+ Page and Twitter links. If you are using OpenNetworker (see Seeding Your Accounts), chances are that you’ll be invited to many of these groups.

Join a few of these groups and add your links if your daily Facebook Page and Google+ Page growth is slow.

You may also invite new friends added to your accounts during the week to Like and +1 your Pages.

Housekeeping

You need to purge people who are no longer following you on Twitter and Google+. If your number of followers is disproportionally lower than the number of people you follow, that could send a red flag to potential followers. Twitter will also limit how many people you can add per day. If people see you follow a lot of people but few people are following in return, they are going to wonder why people are not following you back and may assume you’re a spammer or just very unpopular.

To maintain a balance you need to purge some of the people you follow who are not following you back. You also should give people a few days to follow you back. On Twitter, three days is enough, on Google you might go an entire week before you uncircle someone.

Here are a few free tools that will help you keep your accounts balanced:

Twitter: JustUnfollow.com (limited to 50 unfollows per day) or ManageFitter.com (limited to 100 unfollows per day)

Google+: Uncircle Uncirclers+ Chrome extension (doesn’t work for Google+ Pages –must do manually)

Unfollow starting with the people you’ve followed the longest, and limit your unfollowing to just portion of your unfollowers. That way, you’re giving the people you’ve followed recently a chance to follow you back. Make sense? This is hard to articliate, but when you start using these tools, I’m sure it will make much more sense.

Also on Twitter, if you don’t follow people back in a timely manner, they’ll think you’re not interested and quickly unfollow you. So it’s important to stay on top of new followers.

Keep in mind there are paid tools to help manage your social accounts. Tools that auto-follow and auto-unfollow are great because your Twitter accounts can grow so fast that they can be hard to manually keep current.

Note: Automated unfollowing is against Twitter’s terms of service, so use tools that have this feature at your own risk.

Next: Tools....

Phase II: Tools

There are numerous tools, both paid and free, that can help manage your social media activities. These tools range on the low end from making scheduled posts, to helping discover new people to follow, to higher-end products that can nearly automation you’re entire social media strategy.

I recommend you perform your daily tasks manually at least for a few weeks so you can properly judge how these tools work and what they actually do. The worst thing you can do is buy a tool based on hype then discover that there are free tools that do the same things.

One tool I strongly suggest you start using right now is your phone. By using social media apps on your smartphone, you can perform many of your daily tasks whenever you have idle time, such as waiting in line at the bank or at the doctor’s office. This is a great way to turn downtime into highly productive social engagement.

As you’re out running errands, you can stay following back new followers, accept friend requests, respond to comments, and even take interesting pictures for indirect updates. This will free up your time reserved for your daily tasks and allow you to devote more time for heavy lifting activities, which have more pay off.

Install the official apps for Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter. All are free. In addition, install the official Pinterest app and any other apps that help you share content.

Tracking

You’ll need to keep track of your activities to evaluate their effectiveness. This information can be used to make any necessary adjustments to your tasks or schedule.

In the beginning, your goal may be to grow your networks. There are certain tasks that take longer than others, it’s important to know how much are these tasks contributing to your growth. This may be hard to gauge, if you suspect an activity is inefficient, give a break for a week and see if your growth rate is affected.

If your goal is to drive traffic to a website, get leads or make sales, those metrics may be easier to measure. Google Analytics can tell you how much traffic is coming from each of the social networks. You can also create campaigns in Google Analytics to measure leads and sales or use click-tracking software.
Facebook and Google have analytics to show Page engagement and which posts are getting the most views.
For Twitter, pay attention to what type of posts are being Retweeted and Favorited.

If you are auto-posting with Dlvr.it (see Automation) you’ll get free analytics that will report how many clicks each of your post received. This is extremely valuable information that can steer you in making posts that bring maximum results. Twitterfeed also offers some free stats, but they are not as robust as Dlvr.it.
Take note of patterns in what type of content your networks are responding to. Use this data to give them more of what they like.

Add your social accounts to Klout. Klout will analyze your social activity and calculate a “social credit score," and indicator of your reach and engagement. Klout can also be used to grow your networks. You can give people ‘K’s, which are Klout votes in categories of expertise. Use your Ks to reach out to people who have large followings to get their attention and follow you. If you have solid social accounts (optimized profiles, balanced following), you have a good chance of getting a followed by a social media leader when you hand out Ks.

The previously mentioned Crowdbooster can provide you with the best times to post to reach those already in your networks. Recommendations are based on analytics of your posting, not on surveys or studies. It’s based on hard data you can take action on.

Next up: Phase III...

PHASE 3: MAINTENANCE

This is an optional phase. If you’re comfortable with your daily social pace, then there’s no reason to change what you’re doing. I encourage you to keep it up!

However, if you’ve been pushing yourself to reach a level of growth, and you’ve reached your objective, then you may want to reduce the intensity. Adjust your daily tasks to focus only on the activities that use the least amount of time and provide continued engagement and some growth.

Beyond the Plan

The intention of this article was to provide you with a foundational plan to follow and execute every day. I continuously come across people using social media but not getting anywhere, because they don’t know where they are going. By now I hope you know exactly where you’re headed.

Of course, you can be much more aggressive with your social media activities than what was proposed in this article.



For example, you can grow your Twitter account faster by following 100-200 new people a day, same with Google+. This was not recommended in the daily plan because it causes two problems with new and smaller accounts:

• When people see a disproportionate amount of followers compared to followed, they assume that you are not popular or a spammer, and thus many will not want to follow you back.


• Twitter will restrict your account from following new people when your ratio of followed to followers reaches about 10%. (The ratio is not published, but in my experience, it seems to be about 10%.)

Once you reach enough followers, say 1,000, you can start to get more aggressive in growing your following. Keep in mind that you have to manage your ratio and use tools such as JustUnfollow.com or ManageFitter.com to purge non-followers each week (or every day if necessary).

As mentioned earlier, there are a number of paid services and very sophisticated tools that can accelerate your growth and automate your activity. This might be the next level in your business, or outsourcing your tasks to VAs.

Add more social posting to your plan. Post your article images to Pinterest if you haven’t already started. Create YouTube videos. Experiment with StumbleUpon, Reddit. These are all social sites that have brought in a ton of traffic for my sites.

You now have a plan, and in executing these tasks everyday you’ll gain an intimate knowledge of social media and your audience. Soon you’ll know exactly what you need to do next to achieve greater goals for your business using social media.

Is The SpareOne Phone The Best One In A Disaster?

With the recent tornado in Oklahoma, it brings to mind the need for being prepared. And one of the very specific needs is communication. Whether it be for emergency communications or connecting with family, you have to have a phone as part of your emergency plans. Without one, you are going to be isolated and will have to rely on others to communicate with the outside world. You could rely on your own cell phone, but that probably has a low battery from being used. The SpareOne emergency phone is becoming very popular after it was released this year.

The SpareOne emergency phone meets many needs you may have in a disaster. It runs on a single AA battery which so many of us have on hand and with a price of $100 is worth your consideration. What makes this different is the convenience it brings. With the AA battery, they are saying that it can sit for up to 15 years with the included battery and maintain the charge. That may be overstated, but even at 5 years, that makes this a good idea. They have included a water proof bag to hold it in. And given the current disasters with rain getting everything wet, this makes it ready as part of your disaster kit.

The SpareOne works out of the box to call 911. But that is where it stops. If you want to use it to make regular phone calls, you are going to have to add a GSM capable sim card. For those of us on Verizon, you will have to purchase one as your sim will not work. There have been some suggestions to purchase a GoPhone and use that sim card. That could work, but adds to the expense. You might be better off purchasing a phone where you just add minutes to it for a base price instead of the SpareOne. Then you only have to make sure that there are enough minutes on it when an emergency happens.

The other feature for the SpareOne is a feature that will respond to someone sending you a text message. It will reply to them automatically saying that cannot receive text messages. This is because there is no screen with the SpareOne to conserve battery life. In today's world of Social Media, the lack of an interface to text message is a huge draw back. I doubt there are few countries around the world where text messages is not a concern in an emergency. This single lacking may be the deciding factor for many as phones have long since moved beyond being used for voice and now have a larger usage for communicating via data with texting and interfaces to the web with apps.

Take a look at the SpareOne and decide for yourself as to whether it meets your needs. Or you might be better off getting something like the Eton FRX3 which can charge up your phone. If comes with a solar panel or a hand crank to keep its internal battery charged up.

Bad Advice

The Internet is an extraordinary resource. Any subject you want to know about or understand is right at your fingertips. We can rely on the miracle that is the Internet for all of our informational needs.

Or can we?

More and more I’m seeing bad advice given to others in forums and in online groups. And thanks to social media, which makes it so easy to have public conversations, the problem is getting worse.

Here are some recent examples:

From a popular Facebook group: “Just download pictures from Google Images and you’ll be fine.” -A response to someone asking where they can legally get free images for their site. This is terrible advice that could get you into legal trouble with image owners.

From “A-list” blogs: “Never use pop-ups on your site…” –I’ve seen this one stressed by several “expert” bloggers. Though annoying to some (I don’t care for them either), pop-ups can increase conversions. To say “never” is awful advice that could cost you sales. Pop-ups should at least be tested if you’re thinking of using them.

Posted on LinkedIn: “WordPress is bad for business…” –I’m not going to get into this one, that’s just a big bowl of wrong right there.

Needless to say, you should not trust information you find on the Internet. “Well, duh!” you might be saying. But judging by the amount of bogus “interesting facts” forwarded to my inbox, and poor advice perpetuated by Facebook Likes, I really don’t think people have a clue that the “helpful” information they are passing around is, in reality, garbage.

So what to do about this problem? Here are a couple tips:

1. Question all online content, unless it’s from a trusted source that consistently provides accurate information. How to know if info is accurate to begin with? Read the next tip.


2. If you want to verify something as fact, you can crosscheck the info with other sources, or if it’s how to do something, you can test to see if it works.

It might seem like a pain having to crosscheck or test information. And it can be. But here’s what makes it worthwhile: by taking time to double-check a fact or see if a tip really works, you’ll discover the truth.

Armed with truthful information, now YOU become a trusted source. An expert.

You are the expert others will rely on for trusted information. And who do people do business with? Those they Know, Like and TRUST.

We’re heading into an era where online presence, that’s websites and people, are measured by trust. Online trust is behind the whole “content curation” trend. Google even has a “TrustRank” they assign to websites.

Without trust, it’s going to be hard to be successful online. And as time goes on, it’s just going to get tougher to make it online without that trust. By simply protecting yourself from bad information, you can become an expert and start building that foundation of trust that’s going to be critical for success in tomorrow’s online world.

Small Business Needs To Look Beyond Print Media

Decline of print advertising requires other options

 
There are changes ahead which small businesses must pay attention to in order to keep up with a changing market. The communication methods of the past are not the ones that a small business owner should be focusing on in the future. While they will be around for a while, they will eventually fade out as newer technologies replace them. That does not necessarily mean that the newer technologies are better, but just changed. There are many signs of the coming changes and these should be obvious to everyone.

We have been observing a shift for years away from print media to electronic. While some seem to transition themselves others do not. Take for example the Yellow Pages which have seen declining revenue for years. Some cities are now requiring them to only be delivered to households which specifically request a printed version. Since there is always going to be an electronic version of the Yellow Pages, it can continue to be considered as a way to communicate your business.

One of the ways to share information about your business was newspapers from 20 years ago. But that is becoming a dying art and is slowly being reduced as a way to get the word out about your business. Small home town newspapers are becoming a thing of the past because of rising costs and dwindling readership. Consolidation of newspapers large and small as been going on for the last 20 years and probably longer. Costs associated with printing and delivery of printed media are forcing a change in the industry to try and stay alive. One of those changes has been the attempt at using paywalls as a way to prop up dying revenue from printed copies. The electronic versions of printed newspapers has not been going as well as expected because there are too many other free sources for news.

Even many of the larger newspapers provide their electronic version for free, so attempting to change to a paywall will drive people away. So, what are you as a small business owner to do when the historical methods you have used in the past no longer are working? Even the US Post Office is looking to down size because of slowing mail delivery revenues. By now, you should have been thinking about other methods to get the word about your business or products. Just reading this articles shows that you are aware of how technology is shaping the future. There are a number of things which you can do and here are a few.

Social Media - With the huge popularity of Facebook, you now have the ability to use Facebook Brand pages to promote your product. The whole idea of Facebook is to create a following of your brand and with that there is a sense of loyalty to those who may be following you. These can be used by both small and large business alike. Even with the recent Facebook Timeline changes, you can leverage them to promote your business. There are many methods and strategies described to leverage Facebook for your small business. And Facebook is not the only Social Media game in town. Google+ is another one of the avenues out there to be explored.

Google Places - Here is another opportunity for you to explore as a way to drive traffic and people to your location. There is even a Google Places for Business which you can take a look at. With this, your business will show up on local searches and puts you in the public's eye. Take a look at the link for a slide show presentation on this topic.

QR Codes - Another option for some small businesses is the idea of utilizing QR Codes in the promotion of your product is a possibility if it fits. Not all businesses can leverage the growing popularity of these little square boxes. If you are not familiar with them, here is a QR Codes for Small Business 101 article to help you. These should be part of your Mobile Marketing Strategy going forward. At the link, there is a white paper which can help you understand the move towards mobile. With the fast growth of smart phones, this is another opportunity you should be considering.

As you can see, there are a number of technology related areas where you can promote your business outside of trying to use AdWords advertising. The future is going to be ever changing and you need to leverage both the past and the future to grow your small business.

Facebook Timeline for Pages –What You Need to Know

The new Timeline layout is coming to your Facebook business Page whether you like it or not. Now the Facebook Timeline is mandatory for Pages. As of March 31th, 2012, ALL Facebook Pages will switch over to the new layout. If you haven't updated your Facebook Page and don't know what to do, then you should take a few minutes to watch the overview videos below.

To help you prepare for the changes, we have a number of materials that will help you with the transition. We have a video overview, broken into three parts below, that will explain the Timeline for Pages, how to use it, and some of the features of the new layout.

Then we have seven new training videos to walk you through how to update your Page and use some of the new features. We also have a 17 page PDF (and ePub) guide if you'd rather read about the changes than watch the videos. The links for these materials are at the bottom of this page.

The first video segment opens with Facebook's incredible reach and then explains the new Timeline layout, the cover image and restrictions, and how the new profile image works.



 

TEAR DOWN THE WALL! The infamous Wall has been replaced by the Activity Feed. This video explains how the About section, App display, highlight feed, navigation and the new Activity Feed all work.



 

Pinning. This last video in the series demonstrates pinning posts, the friend feed, Milestones, shared stories, messaging and more.



 

The list of seven Facebook Timeline for Pages how-to videos can be found on the following page, along with the downloadable companion guide:

Facebook Timeline for Pages

How to Increase Your Klout Score

If Klout is important, then asking how you can raise your score is certainly a natural enough question. You might even be trying to decide how much you can guess about the algorithm and how you can turn your guesswork to your own advantage.

What is Klout?

Klout has been around since 2009, but it only really seems to have started gaining lots of ground and attention very recently. Suddenly, Klout scores are popping up everywhere, a sort of “bragging rights” metric that gives people a snapshot of how important they seem to be to the social media world. But what is Klout, exactly?

Klout is a free social media tool that lets you measure your effectiveness at engaging your audience with valuable content. It combines the best aspects of a pure “metrics” tool with the functionality of a social media platform. Of course, that’s not the real question. The real question is: how do you turn all of this into new leads and sales for your business?

Demonstrating Your Brand

One of Klout’s greatest strengths is its ability to show you exactly which topics you’re dominating as an influencer. If you’re not getting any topics at all then your focus is probably too broad. If you’re trending for all the wrong topics then you will know it is time to adjust what you’re doing. You can also gain more traction in a topic when someone else chooses to give you +K for it—a stamp of approval which indicates you’re giving your audience exactly what they’d like to see.

Measure Your True Reach

If you’ve ever wondered how many of your followers are actually paying attention to your content then Klout will prove very useful. Klout gives you something called a “true reach” score. You may have 1,000 followers on Twitter, but if only 3 of them are responding, sharing, or clicking then something is very wrong. Getting followers is easy. Standing out from the general noise is the hard part.

Another Source of Social Proof

You can display your Klout score across a number of forums. In fact, you currently have a score whether you’ve ever interacted with Klout or not. For better or for worse, Klout is starting to gain a lot of attention, and people will make assumptions: namely, that a higher Klout score indicates greater niche authority. Raising your Klout can’t happen unless you’re actively doing everything you can to create this kind of authority to begin with, however. It’s a clear case of success breeding success.

How to Increase Your Score on Klout

If you are new to Klout, the absolute fastest (and easiest) way to bump up your score is by adding all your social networks and services to your account: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, YouTube, Tumblr, Blogger, Wordpress, Flickr, Instagram and Last.fm. You may not have accounts with all these services, add as many as you can. I've seen many people double their score after connecting all their accounts.

You can start taking control of your Klout profile and score by visiting klout.com.

Once you've added all your social media accounts you should see your score go up. After that it's a little more involved to build your score. In truth, trying to make guesses about the Klout algorithm is the wrong way to go about things.  There is a social proof benefit to having a high Klout score, of course, but it’s not the end-all, be-all of what Klout has to offer. Klout is, first and foremost, a metric that measures your performance -a valuable  tool that tells you how well you are engaging your networks. It makes no sense to “game” your Klout score. Gaming the Klout system would do little more than reduce the usefulness of the measurement, which tells you whether or not anything you are sharing is actually worth reading in the eyes of your audience. If you want to see better numbers you’ve got to take the time and make the effort to put out better content.

Don't Worry About Your Score!

Having the mentality that you must grow your score iconically allows you to avoid some of the truly bad, shallow advice on Klout that you can find all over the internet. Some people advocate raising your Klout scores in ways that aren’t very respectful of other people. For example, some people advocate ignoring anyone whose scores are “too low,” because lower scores supposedly bring down your own scores.

One blogger even went so far as to say that people with low scores aren’t “important” enough to associate with. This kind of thinking reeks of the behavior of high school cliques. Such a mentality is too selfish to be conducive to the kind of relationship marketing that has transformed the relationship between customers and the people who provide their product and service. It also ignores the fact that the boost you get from Klout will only take you so far: if you’re not genuinely “about” helping your customers, if, instead, you’re all about what others can do for you, then your business isn’t like to succeed, even if you manage to get a Klout score of 100.

Klout will back this up, saying that the absolute best way to increase your Klout score is to “constantly offer great content that people want to share and respond to.” In other words—keep using social media effectively, and your Klout score will follow!