We’re willing to bet, too, you aren’t even doing half of what you could be doing with it to optimize your business.

As with other social networks that appear to maintain rigid design structures, Facebook does allow you to get away with the occasional trick to help make your profile or fan page stand out among the rest. If you plan to rely on Facebook for the bulk of your social marketing, you especially want to pay attention to different ways to optimize that space. You may already know about custom tabs (and if you don’t, we’ll cover that soon enough) and manipulating the Boxes tabs to arrange information the way you want, but there is so much more you can do to turn a simple wall thread into a genuine hub for your customers and soon-to-be customers that will keep them coming back to interact.

You can maximize your profile picture!

That all-too-critical profile picture is the first thing people will see when they visit you. More than likely, given the positioning and small print of that dinky About You box underneath it, they will miss your main URL. It’s important to take advantage of your allotted space here to advertise who you are and what you do. This example from Eurobookings illustrates how they have used the maximum 200×600 pixel spot to showcase the beautiful hotel rooms they book. The URL is clear and they have branded the picture with their logo. You look at this and you know this is a page for travel accommodations.

The challenge, of course, comes in designing a cascade like image to suit your company. If your logo is more horizontal than vertical, choose images relevant to your business and be sure to make your URL prominent.

You can add custom boxes on your personal profile!

Customizing on Facebook isn’t limited to fan pages. If you have a fan page for your company live, you must have a profile to manage it.  With the application HTML Profile Box, you can add custom HTML code to your profile to advertise anything at all – your main site, your Facebook page, products and more. You can link anywhere in the world, and set the profile box on your profile sidebar, so every time a new friend comes to visit your information is there to guide them anywhere on the Internet. In this example, a teaser advertisement for an upcoming book is placed on the author’s personal profile. As newcomers visit, though it’s possible they won’t see the entire profile as dictated by the privacy settings marked, the custom box should remain visible for anybody to see.

Two caveats to using HTML Profile Box that I have found: it appears you can only use the application once on your profile, and you need to make sure permissions are turned on to have it appear on your profile. It’s important for your personal profile to have some kind of optimization done that guides people to the fan page, where you are more apt to collect people who “like” what you have to offer.

You can sell stuff! If you take Paypal for goods and services, you can sell on Facebook. There is a nifty plugin called Payvment that allows you to integrate a small cart on a custom Facebook tab. What you have to offer, people can buy it right there without having to leave Facebook:

Certain fees may apply. Be sure to check with the site and plugin as you set up your account.

You can collect e-mails for your newsletter! The relevancy of e-mail marketing in the age of social media remains under debate. However, as long as e-mail is still used, e-mail marketing is germane. If you have a newsletter or alert system in place and use a system like Aweber or VerticalResponse, you can set up a tab to collect opt-in interest for your company:

Check with your e-mail marketing setup to see about Facebook options.

You can host a live chat! Live Stream is one of many helpful plugins designed to shape your Facebook experience. With this code inserted in a custom tab (or even on a website that accepts iframe code), you can host a live chat event for your business.

Advertise your Q&A session for your products, host a live book launch party, get all the family and friends together for reunion…the possibilities are endless!

With these and other Facebook fixes, you can create an interactive forum for your company that truly puts the social in social media!

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with Facebook Marketing. She has helped a number of companies, including Virginia Beach web design firms, global trade forums, European hotel booking sites, and Gainesville bed and breakfast inns achieve optimized social profiles.

Just like the song says, you gotta have friends. Friends are there to help seed your Farmville gardens and help destroy the forces of evil in your Mafia Wars. Friends are there to retweet the URL of that “not safe for work” Lady Gaga video you managed to sneak peek while the boss wasn’t looking, and you can always count on them to “like” your Facebook status every time you come up with a whimsically snarky comment about which Real Housewife of Boise is sporting fake…well, let’s say enhancements. In this age of social media, everybody has the potential to be your friend, even people you don’t know and may never meet in your lifetime.

So comes the dilemma as you approach your social marketing strategy: do you grow your Twitter or Facebook page following naturally, hoping that people you do know will recommend you and your business to others, or do you embark on the aggressive vaccum cleaner process of sucking in every profile in sight? If numbers are the only thing that concern you, there are ways to amass plenty of warm bodies. People sell services that strictly invite Facebook “friends” and mass follow Twitter users that automatically refollow. For as little as fifty bucks you could have the ears and eyes of thousands of people, but are they really paying attention?

Consider for a moment the pros and cons of the guerrilla invite. We’ve discussed this topic before, but it’s one worth revisiting as ideas on social networking change. If you don’t switch gears as you promote, it means you haven’t grown in your strategy, and it’s good to weigh all options. With the blind follow of Twitter users, for example, you could match your follow count to your followed by as many as six figures if you wish. If those followers boast the same volume, there is the likelihood your tweets are lost in a sea of other updates, but one can also argue that by following a good number of re-follows there is the possibility your message will be seen by people who wouldn’t otherwise follow you naturally. You had to find them first, then they become interested.

Same goes with Facebook and even LinkedIn. With the latter, there are groups solely designed to connect “open networkers,” people who will connect to you regardless of your industry. As a writer and social marketer, it might benefit me to network with as many people as possible because ultimately every industry will need marketing help, right? Gaining more connections increases my chances of finding work. However, for the niche business you might not benefit as much, unless one connection happens to know of somebody interested in what you do.

Where Facebook is concerned, triggers are in place to reign in your mass friending activities. Unless you know one of those magical loopholes to gain five thousand friends in one fell swoop, you might be better off approaching people slowly. To be certain, there are accounts created strictly to sell and spam, which won’t do you much good when you try to sell. However, in a sea of kelp you’re bound to catch a few fish.

So, how do you approach networking? Is it better to throw everything you have against the wall and see what sticks? Do you take out a thinner brush and draw out a more thoughtful plan? Look at what you’ve done to start, and if it hasn’t worked you might consider bolder measures. Experiment with different lighters to see what sparks the fire in your campaigns.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media writing and local PPC campaigns. Clients include Gainesville bed and breakfasts, European hotel search engines, global trade forums, and Virginia Beach web design firms.

It’s true, Spider Writers has enjoyed opportunities to mingle with the rich and famous. We’ve always been proud to count a bona fide Guinness record holder among our clientele. For years, Hampton Roads resident George Bell was known as America’s Tallest Man, yet today we have learned his title is now claimed by a man in Minneapolis. Igor Vovkovinskiy appeared on the Dr. Oz show to be measured for the official title.

Our friend George took the news in stride, saying he was happy for the opportunity to have been the country’s tallest man, and he congratulated Igor. If you’ve ever met George, you know that he’s truly a stand-up guy (no pun intended), and his friends in Hampton Roads will always look up to him (literally!).

Now, those of us who helped George with his website are wondering: what about his URL? We registered http://www.americastallestman.com for George for the purpose of promoting his record, but now that he’s officially off the Guinness books, what is the future for the website? Of course we would like to keep it live, since being the second tallest man in the US is quite a bragging point, too. To our knowledge, Igor hasn’t expressed interest in building a website, or registering a URL to define him. When George’s domain expires, should we let it go or re-up for another year?

When you think about, Igor is Ukrainian-born, but lives in the US. Technically, then, George is the tallest American-born man. If Igor moves back to the Ukraine, will George get his title back? One might think charting world records is simple, but there sure are a number of provisions!

Well, we haven’t decided what to do yet. For now, George’s site is still active at the same URL and you’re welcome to visit. This experience, in the meantime, has prompted other thoughts on domain naming issues, in particular for businesses and organizations that change scope and may require a new identity.

Let’s say when you launched your online presence, you specialized in writing services. You chose a domain that naturally represented your skills, and included “writer” in some form on the URL. You do a decent business, win a few clients here and there, but as you work you realize you’re doing more work directly with social media and networking. The writing component is still there, but not as prominent as, say, your freelance Facebook and Twitter work.

Suddenly the “writer” URL doesn’t really define your business. You can change the way your page looks easily, and maybe re-title it for search, but the URL sticks out like a sore thumb. What to do? Should you register a better domain, or keep what you have? There are a few schools of thought on this. For one, depending on how long you’ve had your URL, you may have established solid branding and recognition with it.  It may also be solidified within search…it’s not uncommon for some websites to lose that mojo when they move to a new domain. That’s something to think about.

If you are able to secure a more appropriate name for your business site, you can always point the URL to land at your current site. That way you don’t lose the momentum you built and you have a proper domain for print promotional items. Going to a site like Domize can help you determine a good name to register.

Until then, we’ll keep an eye on George. He could have a late growth spurt, you never know.

Not everybody is happy with Facebook right now. Accusations of breach of privacy and disregard for online safety have prompted grassroots protests and mass deletions of accounts on the premise that not only does the social network do nothing to protect user privacy, but actually encourages distribution of information not necessarily meant for everybody’s eyes. If you use Facebook, perhaps you’ve seen viral status messages from friends imploring you to make adjustments to your settings to ensure that the complaint you make about your boss isn’t broadcast to the free world. Reports that some users prefer to delete their profiles altogether may concern other diehard Facebook fans, and as a business with a strong Facebook presence you might wonder if this backlash will affect the way you promote your products and services.

The privacy concerns making the news, naturally, concern users who are wont to share personal information and photographs on their networks. While they believe at first only select friends have access to the data, neglected privacy settings may allow certain (read: embarrassing) information to be found in Internet search. We’ve all heard stories of people getting fired from their jobs or losing out on other opportunities thanks to a slip of the keyboard – an outsider might opine, “Well, don’t post anything you wouldn’t shout into a megaphone,” yet one can argue users and Facebook need to meet halfway on ensuring security measures.

As a business, you want exposure for your Facebook page. Despite the grumbling, Facebook is still one of the most used websites on the Internet – it’s a powerful search engine and marketing tool, and as you amass fans (or people who “like” your page and company, per the new policies) the opportunity to expand your reach grows. If you are concerned about losing fans due to a protest against privacy settings, know that you do have a few options for keeping your page visible and the information available, even to people who don’t use Facebook.

1) Integrate the content into other networks. Feed status updates into your Twitter account to capture that audience, and place a fan box on your main website. If you use Squidoo, there is now an option to embed a fan box in a lens, too. Anywhere you can place your page’s RSS, take the advantage.

2) Keep your page active and visible. Offer as much data on your page to new visitors and those who do not use Facebook. As a business page, you should feel comfortable with the information you post there. Don’t give away any trade secrets, but encourage participation with the content you do provide.

3) Be respectful of current fans. Make sure whoever monitors comments on your page is courteous to posters. Just as the products and services you impart online are available to others, so are bad vibes. If you receive a complaint, be tactful in your response, because that’s what people will see. The impression you make on Facebook coupled with the timeliness of your information will keep people on your page.

How will Facebook fare in the future? Like Google, it may continue to grow and offer amenities we can’t live without, or it could go the way of lesser social networks if and when another player comes along. Whatever the fate for this network, it is still a top used site and as such holds importance in your social optimization. Mind your p’s and q’s on your Wall tab, and you should be fine.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media promotion and Virginia Beach web design. Clients include European hotels, real-time global trade forums, and vendors of pet supplies.

Ten years ago, I worked at a bookstore in Athens, Georgia which had a rather large hobby shelf nestled in between the biographies and the photography coffee books. Here one found those blue cardboard folders for holding dimes and statehood quarters, and photo albums for baseball cards. This particular time, however, the must-have fad among kids was the pog. Pog were essentially flat cardboard discs bearing different images and such – sort of like trading cards, kids collected and traded them by the thousands. Now, pogs had been around for decades in different incarnations (mainly as bottle caps of certain fruit drinks), but in the 90s they were all over the damn place, and by the century’s turn they had disappeared. How many attics and closets are storing plastic tubes of these little buggers, who can say?

This morning I received in my e-mail a notice from The Huffington Post that they are now awarding nifty new badges to frequent commentators and networking registrants. The rules are simple: if you blog and tweet HuffPo links enough, you get a nice little sticker next to your profile. The idea behind badges for social portal members isn’t new, either. Glue and Foursquare, two rapidly growing networks for product and information sharing, have similar award systems in place. It’s not uncommon for me these days to check Twitter and see somebody I’m following post that they’ve earned the “Underwater Basket Weaving” or “Goo-Goo for Lady Gaga” badge on whatever network. Basically it appears pogs have resurfaced in a sense – on cannot trade them online, but I imagine if you give a network a few weeks they’ll figure out how to do just that.

Why do sites give out shiny happy “stickers”? If one chooses to apply the Pavlovian principle to the Internet, it’s because we crave rewards. We sign up for credit cards to spend thousands of dollars to earn enough points to buy a CD, and we collect grocery swipe cards to save fifty cents on products we wouldn’t normally buy, but because they’re sale it’s okay – we’re saving money! Never mind that we’d save even more if we didn’t buy the prune juice we’re not going to drink anyway.

Social stickers are fun. They are incentive to declare us as authorities on major networks, and in turn encourage people to follow our profiles and promote our websites. With Glue, for example, I can browse the books I’ve written on Amazon.com and add them to my list, thereby promoting myself as an active Glue user and an author, and supplement my authority by adding books I’ve edited as well. If I’m active enough on the site, which is connected to my Twitter account, an alert is release whenever I earn a new sticker, and Glue users following will see that and perhaps follow my profile with the hope that I’ll like their stuff. By this logic, the happy shiny stickers can benefit your social marketing.

Now let’s say you haven’t written any books or have any products to sell – what good are all these stickers and all this time spent on social crack sites? One can argue that any time spent socializing on the Internet is networking. Part of bringing news of your services to people involves finding people you may interest. With Glue and Foursquare and similar sites, you have the opportunity to search people by their likes and dislikes, and from there build a trust that just might transfer traffic to your websites.

Will stickers and badges go the way of the pog? It’s possible. The way the Internet and social media advances, surely something new will come along that users Must. Have. Now. In the meantime, though, they sure are cute, aren’t they?

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media optimization and travel social media services. She has helped a number of companies increase their traffic through social media writing and Virginia web design.

Surely this is something you do already – I don’t have to tell you that once you have published your blog post or article or Squidoo lens that you should ride the social merry-go-round. It’s a task that’s become automatic to me as well: I publish, then embark on the social media tour. I tweet, I buzz, stumble, digg, reddit, and so forth. As a social media specialist assisting multiple clients with building traffic referrals to their main sites, I’ve been told the social bookmarking work I do for them does have a positive effect. Some have reported instant spikes in traffic, while others detect long tail improvement. If you, however, have taken on the task alone of getting your important URLs listed on the major networks and bookmarks, you should know it’s not work that necessarily works on a solo flight. One Digg won’t get your story far in a world where people are willing to promote pictures of cheeseburger-loving cats for free. If you want that same level of attention, you have to get social with the bookmarking and foster your own buddy system.

Make New Friends, Keep the Old

Social sites like Digg and StumbleUpon make it somewhat easy for you to find connections. If you use a free e-mail services like Hotmail or GMail, for example, it searches your contacts for people who have registered, and gives you the option to fan or subscribe to them. From there it’s only a matter of recruiting friends to assist you in a mutual backscratching endeavor to help boost your sites’ visibility in these networks.

Digg, especially, frowns upon people creating multiple accounts for a singular purpose, preferring users instead naturally grow interest in the links submitted. To prevent spamming, some sites like StumbleUpon and Mixx limit the number of URLs from one domain an account can submit, while Reddit imposes a time limit in between submissions. As you gather more social bookmarkers into your inner circle, it could prove mutually beneficial for everyone involved.

I have a friend, for example, who helps my efforts by “liking” each Facebook page I create, and retweeting every promotional post on my personal account. If you want to wage a viral campaign, sometimes it takes only one clip for something to spread. Let’s say you have ten friends and family with accounts all over the place. If each just did one thing to help your site, that’s ten opportunities for an outsider to find your information and share it elsewhere.

Work on growing your buddy system, and remember that it works both ways. For the work you have friends do, don’t be selfish in sharing their data. A variety of information not related to your work, too, boosts your authority in social search, so you don’t look completely like a self-promoter. The more you assist each other, however, the sooner you’ll find a positive difference in your overall traffic.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with Virginia Beach web design and social media writing. Businesses benefiting from Kathryn’s expertise include European hotels, Norfolk handyman services, and Gainesville B&Bs.

VIRGINIA BEACH, VA – Spider Writers, the social media optimization branch of CINIVA Systems, a leading Virginia web design firm, is proud to announce they will assist in building the social presence of MarginUp, a supply chain portal based in Bellvue, Washington which specializes in managing real-time trade activities between wholesalers around the world.

“Having assisted local distributors of health products in the past with increasing their search visibility, we are excited for the opportunity to work with an organization like MarginUp,” said Kathryn Lively, content and social media specialist with Spider Writers. “In this economy, it’s important for our businesses to operate at optimal levels, and we believe companies working with MarginUp can help boost their overall profit margins.”

MarginUp is a closely held company comprised of staff experienced in global trade, electronic data interchange implementation, XML solutions, and  wholesale distribution communication. Their goal to bring an affordable real-time trade environment to worldwide trade brokers and agents, freight carriers, and storage companies is presently realized through their main website, and will be supplemented through social networking.

About Spider Writers

Spider Writers is a division of CINIVA Systems, one of the top Web design and development firms in the Mid-Atlantic region. Spider Writers has had the privilege of creating highly functional and unique social media presences for major organization and local businesses, including the Jamestown Settlement and Yorktown Victory Center, the Currituck County Department of Travel and Tourism, and Sundays Blue Box Tanning Resort.

On the Web:

MarginUp – http://www.marginup.com

Spider Writers – http://www.spiderwriters.com

Contact Information

Kathryn Lively
Spider Writers
a division of CINIVA Systems
258 N.  Witchduck Rd., #258
Virginia Beach, VA 23451

In a show of support for the dethroned Tonight Show host, the Lamar Advertising Company arranged select billboards around the country to display words of wisdom (?) from @conanobrien. Whether or not the move contributed to TBS’s decision to offer Conan a late night slot is debatable, but one can wonder if we’ll see another marriage of social media and off-site advertising in the future. In fact, will such things become commonplace one day? If so, one must definitely take note that one day what happens on Twitter won’t necessarily stay there.

In our culture, it isn’t unusual for what a story or event one might normally perceive as local interest touch the consciousness and hearts of people nationwide. When a young child in a rural community goes missing, the nation seems to hold its collective breath, waiting for the end result of the search. When a young woman is denied admission to a military academy based on her gender, we debate the legality and morality of the case. We may never meet these people, but in some cases we may accept that we share a common bond and therefore feel it necessary to share our opinions.

Recently, a young woman in Fulton, Mississipi made national headlines when her school’s administrators denied permission for her to wear a tuxedo and escort her female date to the senior prom. Feeling discriminated, the student took legal action, which resulted in the prom’s cancellation. What began as an event of limited local interest quickly ballooned into a matter of national concern over gay/lesbian. This student, who wanted nothing more than to enjoy her prom, turned literally overnight into an activist or a troublemaker – depending on which viewpoint you read.

In the time of Rosa Parks, there was no Internet to publicize the conflicts that gave rise to the powerful civil rights movement, yet through word of mouth and a willingness to participate among the greater community one saw Parks’ simple refusal to give up her bus seat blossom into a series of stirring protests and events that made discrimination against race illegal in this country. With the example before us now, we can witness first hand how social media has effected how the nation feels about various issues.

The Social Media Backlash

Subsequent stories of Constance McMillan’s situation continue to reach audiences far beyond the Mississippi borders. The Huffington Post shares photos ripped from students’ social pages of an alternative prom thrown attended by her classmates while Constance was directed elsewhere to a “fake” event. Twitter searches for the name of the high school in question lead to many condemnations of the school’s alleged treatment of McMillan, and if one pulls up the school on Google Maps, there are more than 40 one-star reviews, all set by people responding to this issue.

Probably the most damning evidence that social media could cause problems for people involved in this controversy comes from a stream of comments in a blog that exposes pictures of the secret prom. Building on reactions from at least two of McMillian’s classmates (who defended the school’s actions), other commentators proceeded to expose the students’ names and Facebook and Flickr links with the prediction that anybody tied to this high school and the shunning of McMillan is basically doomed.

While the social profiles in question on this thread have since been made private or deleted, it’s possible that many could have been subjected to screen shots and posted elsewhere, as pictures of the prom were leaked over the Internet. Whether or not any of McMillan’s classmates will suffer discrimination or hardship themselves in the job market because of this is uncertain. The fact remains, however, that even the simple act of posting a photo, a link, or an opinion on a social site presents the opportunity for receiving mass praise, or major backlash.

Has social media ruined the lives of anyone involved in this issue? It’s difficult to say now, though on the outset it appears public opinion of the school’s administration isn’t very positive. Sympathy for McMillan’s plight and subsequent treatment arguably outweighs support of the school’s decision – McMillan has appeared on national television and received support from various celebrities, though one might conclude she is suffering a bit of backlash herself, as certain comments suggest she is milking the sympathy for attention. Either way, McMillan stands to benefit from the social buzz – she’s been offered generous amounts of scholarship money and is hailed as a role model for gay and lesbian youth. Meanwhile, one will wonder if anybody else attached to this high school encounters obstacles in life based on their connection, complicit or otherwise.

Saving Your Life with Social Media

Once you post an embarrassing picture, a snide remark, or something equally damning to your reputation, it’s out there. You might think you can turn back time and erase the evidence, but web archive retrieval or a visitor with a quickness for the print screen button can come back to haunt you in the long. People will debate whether or not high school students posting prom pictures is a bad thing, but given the context of this story the motives could be interpreted in a certain way.

Are the students who attended this alternative party where McMillan was allegedly excluded mocking the young girl, or did they just want to share memories? This may not be the best example of how social media usage can come back to burn you, but given the publicity of these events it does illustrate the power of a social network’s reach. If somehow your business page espouses an unpopular policy or replies in a negative manner to customer feedback, it could be detrimental to your reputation. If your personal profiles are connected to your business presence, it’s advised to tread carefully so that one doesn’t harm the other.

In short:

• Keep as much controversy off your pages. Some hot-button issues (religion, politics, etc.) can’t always be resolved in your favor. If the purpose of your page doesn’t involve touchy subjects, do your best to keep your focus on your brand and cater to your following.
• Avoid confrontation. There are people who live to goad you in hopes of encouraging a blow-up. Always keep your cool online, even if you use the same profile name over multiple profiles. It doesn’t take much for somebody to Google you and make your life hell.
• Hire trustworthy admins. If you’re unable to manage your social presence, make certain the people in charge can be trusted with promoting your image online. Don’t let one hothead remark posted as a knee-jerk reaction spiral into a PR nightmare.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media optimization and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels, European hotels, and Virginia web design firms.

In everybody’s life, there is that one person to whom everybody went for advice – anything from solving a difficult crossword puzzle clue to seeking help with setting up a retirement account. Maybe in your case, this person was a parent or grandparent, or one of those know-it-all friends who didn’t specialize in any particular trivia, but knew what you need by way of experience or absorption through media and observation.

These days, you might see people continue to turn to these sages, but in the online world – where people need specifics on improving sales and marketing and other outlooks – people prefer trusted brands for advice. Or else, somebody is apt to blurt out a question on Twitter with an appropriate hashtag and hope somebody catches it. Depending on your business, it’s probable you qualify as an expert in your field, and if you’re willing to invest the time in assisting others with questions and problems you’ll find your generosity goes a long way. Despite the proliferation of funny videos and snarky comments on news wires, people still do remember kind acts. The question you answer today could turn in a genuine lead sometime down the road.

That said, if you find the traffic isn’t necessarily booming at your website, blog, or social media profile to accommodate regular Q&A sessions, you may wish to extend your reach and find the questions not yet resolved. With the rise in social sites that guide people toward the best wines, recommended movies and music, and restaurants and local businesses, it stands to reason help sites would follow, and three in particular provide experts with added opportunity for exposure.

Yahoo! Answers

One of, if not the, oldest Q&A forums online, Yahoo! Answers is accessible through your Yahoo! account and allows users to ask questions on basically any topic. Here one will find everything from serious queries about PHP coding to more whimsical observations (“Why do emo bands suck so much?”) As you participate in Yahoo! Answers you’ll have a page that charts your activity and lets you add contacts. You can add a short bio and include your URL for reference.

Google Knol

While not an interactive Q&A site like Answers, Knol may prove a significant tool in your marketing if you invest the time in building your topics. As Knol is a term meaning “unit of knowledge,” this site serve as a type of wiki where contributors publish articles on a variety of topics. Your profile page allows you a bio and link and an RSS feed of your activity, which can be implemented elsewhere on the web.

Aardvark

Aardvark is a recent acquisition of Google, billed as a real time forum for people seeking assistance of any type. With Aardvark you can connect your Facebook account or your GTalk and have questions in the subjects of your choosing delivered to you. Your profile allows one URL for promotion. Because Google has purchased this social site, it’s not yet determined what will change in the near future.

Qhub

Short for “question hub,” Qhub.com allows users to set up their own forum site. Users can register to ask and contribute answers, and one can also customize headers and create form widgets to place on other sites and blogs to draw in traffic. Qhub presents a good opportunity for smaller businesses or individuals seeking a message board type solution that doesn’t require much coding.

However you decide to seek and resolve queries, what’s important is making yourself available. By building your reputation as an expert you can increase not only your authority but your visibility.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media optimization and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels, European hotels, and Virginia web design firms.

In our work, we assist a number of local B2B and B2C companies with their overall search health. When one has to compete with several businesses for the top result under, say, “Virginia Beach home improvement” or “Norfolk real estate agent,” it can turn into a virtual fist fight. One can optimize specific keywords on the main site, blog and tweet and distribute articles linked back to the main URL, and you will see some improvement – how you fare on page one, however, depends on a number of factors. In addition to all this work, we strongly suggest taking advantage of local business listings.

Whether you have a physical retail location, or a headquarters for your online concern, it’s important to have your information confirmed with sites like the Google Local Business Center, Yahoo Local Listings, Yelp.com for services and UrbanSpoon and the like for restaurants. While you might find on certain sites your listing is available – but needs only to be “claimed” by an owner or manager – taking the time to manage and enhance your listing can boost your visibility in search results. With review-based social networks, you have the added advantage of blended search paradigms to have your optimized listing called up, and regular monitoring of such pages can assist with mediocre or negative reviews, and hopefully establish your business as one that is concerned and ready to listen to consumers and clients.

Dress Up Your Profile

With Google Local Business and Yelp, for example, one can add photographs of the business to give customers a better idea of what to expect. Google Local also allows you to set up coupons as incentive, while through other social networks you can advertise specials as people find your pages. Have visitors print your page for a discount, for example, turning your network into a coupon itself.

Taking control of your online business profiles lets you clarify hours of operation, address and phone, and web URLs. The more you monitor your pages, too, you can get on top of bad feedback and soothe any raw nerves in a timely manner that gets noticed, not only by the plantiff but others who view your profile.

Direct People to Your Profiles

You might wonder how useful it is to direct visitors to these social and search profiles rather than your main site or blog. Fact is, should these pages show up in search before your official sites, potential customers and clients will see that information first. If you know there are people ready to praise your work and products, encourage them to visit these profiles and post their opinions. they more made available gives newcomers a basis for trying your services.

Once you have control of your name online, you can move into controlling the success of your business.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media optimization and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels, European hotels, and Virginia web design firms.

It’s one thing to have an active social network account with scores of fans and followers, and another to regularly provide information and incentives to keep people interested. Unless you monitor your profiles for feedback and follow up on concerns and questions, however, you will soon discover these online hubs become stale and provide nothing more than another source for inbound linking. Management of social networking page is not unlike tending a garden – your attentiveness and care fosters growth, and like the bees that collect pollen to spread to corners you may not notice people will assist in your account’s popularity if they feel it’s worth promoting.

It goes without saying, then, that you (or whomever is in charge of your social marketing) remains on top of monitoring your accounts. The longer it appears your pages and statuses are neglected, the worse it looks for your company, and it may allow competitors or spammers to overtake your space. Follow-up on feedback, and follow through on social promotions. Here are just a few ways to achieve this level of dependability.

Respond/Reply: If somebody posts a question on your Facebook wall, answer it. If somebody plugs your Twitter account during a #followfriday spree, acknowledge it, and thank YouTube members who compliment your videos. Even if a fan makes a general comment, or promotes something unrelated to your company on the fan wall (it will happen, but do not chide the poster and risk alienation), don’t let the opportunity pass without at the very least clicking the “like” button. Make your social presence conversational, and monitored the comment threads created.

Give Users Alternatives: Are you set up on UrbanSpoon, ePinions, or Yelp, or a relative review network? Take a moment to mine good reviews and brag about them on Twitter and Facebook. The promotion you give helps others know you’re found elsewhere and may encourage them to click through and add their own experiences.

Reward Good Mojo: If you notice a day or week where fan participation is quite active, show them you’re listening. Offer a contest or deep discount, a freebie related to your business. When you’ve hit a point that people will check out your social profiles because they want to, and not necessarily because they’re looking for incentive, giving them a nice surprise is one way to foster that good feeling.

If you promise customers and clients the moon via social media, don’t wait until the evening hours to make good. Nurturing your presence is a job meant for any hour of the day, nothing is simpler than clicking a response window to say thanks.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media optimization and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels, European hotels, and Virginia web design firms.

It’s not unusual for a writer to keep a notebook near at all times, even in the age of technology and nifty handheld gadgets. For the prolific blogger who relies on the frequent production of content to build high search relevancy and a strong social media following, the temptation to remain glued to the computer is strong. Especially if you’re always brimming with ideas and topics to write, you want to get everything down and scheduled so interest in your business remains solid. Eventually, though, you’ll be called upon to go out to dinner, board a plane, or perhaps go to church.

While your pastor may frown upon your tweeting during his sermons, that nifty handheld gadget can be a godsend (pardon the pun) in the downtime away from your desk. Knowing which apps to use to enhance your marketing on the go can help you keep a creative focus and foster ideas when you’re unable to fully apply them at work.

The advantage to composing notes and ideas on your BlackBerry, Android, or iPhone is that – unlike the tried and true pad and pen – each has the ability to upload content to some kind of blog client or social network. Facebook and Tumblr allow users to update with ease, and there are several Twitter clients for reading and posting quick missives. For longer pieces, however, and news that must meet a schedule, there are specialized apps available to increase your productivity as you travel. Some are free, others are not, and not all are yet available across all phone platforms. Yet, if you have the means to try them all, you just may find you can go outside once in a while and seek deeper inspiration for your business interests.

Think Now, Tweet Later – You remember that Seinfeld episode where George is driving away from a meeting after being zinged by a co-worker, and only when he’s far removed from the situation does he think of a good comeback? How often does that moment define us? The ideas pop into our heads at the most inopportune times – if George had Twitter access he might be okay, the rest of us can take advantage of the Birdhouse App. Working on a similar premise as the IPhone’s Notes Application, Birdhouse is set up to store tweets for later use. You may have business news that can’t be released until a certain time – Birdhouse stores your information and helps you fit the 140 character limit. Once your tweets are ready to move beyond the draft stage, you can publish from multiple accounts and email yourself a backup copy. For the business that relies on Twitter to impart information, this is a handy tool that eliminates other apps that don’t publish directly. (iPhone, $1.99 – website)

Blog On – While Wordpress and Tumblr have proprietary apps for users to update as they please, those who remain faithful to Blogger, Movable Type, and other platforms may find it more of a challenge to blog on the road. If you’re the hardcore type with multiple blogs over different platforms, you’ll want an app that accesses more than one to make your life easier. BlogPress supports multiple brands and allows you to publish with ease – whether you use Blogger, Wordpress, TypePad, or even LiveJournal, this app provides a one-stop forum for your updates. (iPhone, $2.99 – website)

Sho- Your Social Side – Where BlogPress provides multi-blog platform capabilities, Sho-Zu can turn you into a social media machine wherever you are. This handy application lets you update Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, and a host of other social sites. You can even FTP material to any server! With support for multiple phone platforms, this app is worth the investment if you find you travel often and still need to stay online. (multiple, free to $4.99 depending on phone – website)

You never know when inspiration for a good article or marketing campaign will strike. Before you reach for that cocktail napkin to jot down notes, however, try an app that connects you to where your message needs to go. The Internet is 24/7, and these applications can keep your brand visible at all times.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media optimization and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels, European hotels, and Virginia web design firms.

When utilizing social networks to promote your products and services, it’s good to know that through general sites like Facebook and Twitter you have the ability to grow a following and interact with people willing to opt in to your updates. These all-encompassing media sites attract a variety of demographics and act as a strong catch-all for your business. You may find through your fan page, too, that you can determine if women more often than men are active in feedback, or if the majority of fans come from a specific area – perhaps not necessarily where you are based. If you believe these are the only social platforms at your disposal for fostering trust among potential customers and clients, however, you could be selling yourself short.

As developers fine tune social media to offer Internet users more options for their specific interests, we’ll see a rise in usage of niche portals. Already Yelp.com, a search and review site for local restaurants and other businesses, claims 10 million unique visits a month. You can bet it’s a popular place for browsing recommendations, and the site’s accompanying smart phone apps makes it all the easier to access. Depending on your business, you might not think it’s worth your time to establish a profile on such a site. Yet, when you consider the traffic generated there, you have to ask yourself, why not?

On the Internet, a profile is a profile – an opportunity to promote. As I am a professional writer, one might expect me to limit my online activity to places where I’m most apt to promote my work. It’s true I spend quite a bit of time blogging and on Twitter, posting links to those blogs. However, I also like to twist the old adage of all work and no play to integrate my personal interests into outside-the-box marketing. I dine out often, so I use Yelp to record reviews and get opinions on new spots from other users. On my Yelp profile, I have my URLs listed so anybody passing through knows where else to find me. So far, 120 people have come by since I launched the profile – there’s 120 potential click-throughs. Because I also depend on name recognition in search, the profile is likely to come up in search – not as high as official sites, I hope, but the link will be there to displace something unrelated that gets in the way.

If you have interests outside of work, taking advantage of specialized networks like Yelp for dining, Goodreads for reading, WAYN for travel, and even Blip.fm for music may benefit you in a number of ways. For one, many of these niche networks integrate with each other, allowing you to create a more rounded profile of yourself. People will see that you are an actual human being rather than an automaton design to spout business updates. Also, you have the space on your profiles to advertise what you do. Visitors with profiles elsewhere, who otherwise might not have found you on Twitter and Facebook, may just click through from a minor network to follow you deeper. The trust you build across different networks can spread beyond the Internet, so never rule out personal networking for the purpose of growing your business.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media optimization and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels, European hotels, and Virginia web design firms.

The company faced with marketing to a young demographic may find social media optimization a challenge, given that despite the impression of technological savvy among teenagers, If your products and services skew toward teenagers and young adults, you might ask yourself if it’s worth it to have that Twitter account or Facebook page if you aren’t certain the people who should patronize you find the right material.social networks are not where the kids are. According to Quantcast, teenagers 13-17 populate the following percentages of over social media usage:

• Digg – 11%
• Facebook – 22%
• MySpace – 16%
• Twitter – 13%
• Yelp – 5%
• YouTube – 15%

On the outset, the numbers appear distressing, and if your marketing and writing has leaned heavily toward these networks you might wonder if the efforts on your part are wasted.

Not exactly. One thing to remember about building content on certain networks is that search engines do pick up on the keywords. Even if a particular Web user doesn’t patronize Twitter or Facebook, if he/she is searching for your product, there is still the chance of a click-through to a tweet or status update if the key phrases show in results. Another thing to remember, too, is that as teenagers mature, and if your company changes focus, you can adapt your social media strategy to introduce new trends and continuously market to new audiences.

For now, though, where is that important teen audience? Here is a brief rundown of the more popular hangouts:

Bebo.com (39%) – This social network, according to Quantcast, is the most used in the 13-17 demographic. Similar to MySpace and the like, Bebo allows for integration with YouTube and instant messaging – which is popular with the age group.

WhateverLife.com (49%) – One look at this flashy community site and there’s no mistaking for whom it’s designed. Registered users can read entertainment news and keep online journals, access design layouts, and connect with other users via message boards.

Whether you feel either site is useful in your marketing to cater to this important audience is for you to discern, just remember in the fast-changing world of SEO and social media, there are no guarantees that these percentages will remain the same in five years. Keep the content fresh for search, and entice your readership.

Kathryn Lively is a social media specialist assisting clients with social media optimization and travel social media services. Clients include Gainesville hotels, European hotels, and Virginia web design firms.