Category Archives: Internet

I wrote a lot about how social media is an important factor ofSEO and online marketing, and I fully believe this to be true. Your customers and potential customers are on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.  Contacts and future employees are on LinkedIn. Pinterest is great if you have something to sell. Google+ will give you a spectacular traffic boost. It’s the facts of life in the digital age.

But–and this really is a big but–you shouldn’t join every social network, and you sure as hell shouldn’t join one and make yourself look like a fool or, even worse, completely forget about it.

Let’s break this down one by one.

Why You Don’t Need to Join Every Social Network

The social part is important. You should be using these venues to engage with people. Your conversations might be short and superficial, or they might be a little more involved, but conversations need to happen. This means you need to make time for it. If you’re trying to do this all yourself, you need to make time but also set a time limit for social networking. Otherwise, you’ll get lost in the abyss. There’s a limited amount of time and an unlimited number of social networks. Do the math. With that said, if you don’t have time and can’t afford to hire the job out, you might want to consider foregoing social media altogether. It won’t help, but it will do less damage than spreading yourself too thin and being seen as unresponsive.

The second argument for this point is that your target audience isn’t on every website. If you’re not selling something that you can visualize, Pinterest makes little sense. LinkedIn isn’t the site to connect with consumers, and Twitter is full of bloggers and marketers but isn’t saturated with everyday customers. Everyone is on Facebook, but it’s not the place to make business contacts. Pick and choose wisely.

Social Networking Is the Public Face of Your Company

It’s okay to socialize on Google+ or Twitter. In fact, your fans and followers will expect a little bit of it. There’s nothing wrong with chatting casually, but I like to think that you should keep it friendly but not familiar. That was something I was taught at my first job, and I think it helps you remember how to communicate via social media.

I’d like to point out that you should avoid text speak and annoying abbreviations as much as possible. Use proper English, punctuation and keep an eye on your grammar. Most people aren’t sticklers about it — I mean, have you seen my Twitter feed? — but your social communications still represent your brand and your reputation. You don’t want people snickering or shaking their heads because your typing skills are so silly.

I would go so far as to recommend that you not overtly let people know if you’re new to using Twitter or Google+. Instead, hit up the Internet and find some tutorials that explains what @replies, direct messages, circles and video chats are all about. You don’t have to jump in head first. You can dip a toe in the water and get used to the environment. Just remember how you look while you do it. Fake it ’til you make it.

You Have to Be Active on Social Sites

It’s not good enough just to join, you have to post. This is why it’s so important to pick the social networks that are the best fit. You need to ask questions of followers, post polls for fans, offer coupons, talk about the latest news and link to your newest blog post. If you don’t give people a reason to follow you, then they won’t. It’s more than that, though.

People search out brands and businesses on social networks because they want immediate feedback. If you haven’t signed in for weeks or months, it’s bad for branding. Consumers won’t see your profiles as resources, but it could be worse than that. They might not see your company as one that can provide answers, cares about  customers or understands the Internet. In short: they ignore your social and Internet presence. Even if you start posting, consumers may have long ago ignored what you have to say.

Getting people to come back is a lot more difficult than getting them to show up in the first place, and that’s hard enough as it.

Take your time. Do your research. Make time to be active on whichever sites you join. Do it right, and you’ll thank me later.

I love the way this infographic is done. There’s so many these days, and so few infographics are done in a way that I find visually appealing, but MBA Online managed to do it with this one.

Of course, I knew all this already. As an Android fangirl, I am happy.

I would love to see someone really tackle the issue of fragmentation, however.

There is a local establishment that uses a profile rather than a page for business activities, and it’s so strange. I don’t understand who thinks that’s a good idea. I don’t want to befriend a business, but I may want to like it. This business isn’t the only one that operates like  that, so it seems that this is a needed post.

You should get a Facebook page if you are or represent the following:

• A business — of any sort. If the general public doesn’t want to talk to you personally, there’s no need for a profile.
• A brand — Maybe you’re not selling anything directly, but if brand recognition is what you want, then a page is what you need.
• A website — A website may be a brand or a business, but it’s also worthy of a page. Facebook even has a category specifically for pages.
• A location that consumers would “check into” — You can both have a page and claim your page on Facebook Places.

A page, rather than a profile, gives you a great place to post photos, generate buzz, host giveaways and advertise events and promotions. You can interact with consumers, and because multiple people can administer a page, it doesn’t matter who in the company is doing the interacting. When you post website or blog updates to Facebook, you can also generate traffic to your own website. Include your website URL in your “About” section. If you have no website at all, a Facebook page is an adequate substitute, but I’d advise against using this as your only Web presence.

However, a Facebook page requires that you’re active. You should post at least once a day and respond to any comments, questions or concerns your fans have.  You should completely fill out your profile and use your company name in the text areas. Make sure to use a recognizable name for your page title and claim your company name as the URL for your new Facebook page.

Furthermore, you won’t directly sell anything from your Facebook page, but it’s a good way to encourage visitors to click over to your website to see new products or deals. Patrick Healy has something to say about this.

Listen, I’m no better homemaker or whatever it is, but I am starting to think that all those pins are fake. How do people make these amazing recipes and use miracle cleaning tricks and get them to work? Because, for the most part, I cannot. I’ve made a few recipes that were a little disappointing, but this last Pinterest-inspired activity I attempted was the miracle pan cleaning posted on One Good Thing. It seemed easy enough. Peroxide and baking soda aren’t hat hard to find, and my pans could use a little TLC. I was soon making a paste and putting it all over my cookie sheets. I forgot about ’em and assumed I would come back to some clean pans, but they looked exactly the same an hour+ later.

I decided it was all me, so I slathered on some more ingredients and let them sit even longer. I came back and nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Now, my peroxide might’ve been less than potent, so it’s not like I was necessarily misled, but I’m starting to think that Pinterest is full of more misses than hits. Tricksy internet.

I’ve been loving my brand-new iPod Nano except for one thing: it refused to show my “Top Rated” playlist in the same order as in iTunes. In fact, on iTunes showed the playlist as ordered by dated added on for both my library and iPod, but my iPod kept showing the playlist by play count.  A quick Google search for “ipod playlist sort order” told me that I just had to right-click the playlist and select the option to copy by sort option. In fact, I had the same problem with my iPod Touch, and that did fix the problem, but it wasn’t going to work this time around.

The next result suggested that I should edit the information for all tracks to remember position. This also did not help. I finally set the iPod to manually edit and dragged my correctly-sorted playlist onto it, but that was to no avail. I resorted to a complete restore, and the sort finally did change… to another wrong order. According to iTunes, my iPod already should be sorted how I want it.

Then I figured out how to fix it.

How to Fix iPod Playlist Sort Order