Command, Contest, Cause and Connect

“We’ve got to have a Facebook page!” That’s the exclamation of every small business. And, while many pages go live, they sit almost lifeless, as one of an infinite number of silent trees in a dense forest.

Many small business owners are increasingly recognizing that Facebook is fast becoming their number one public relations tool. But in order to sustain the life-blood for that page, they need to incorporate public relations tactics to generate traffic and build brand awareness. An easy and creative way to do this is to incorporate 4C’s to “PR” your Facebook page: command, contest, cause and connect.

Creating command of an issue or topic is central to establishing a niche authority in your industry. Apple commands the portable music market. Google is the search authority. Nike is the running show king. They all sell other products or services, but have commanded a niche. Let’s say you’re a baker, with shelves full of cookies, cakes, pies, donuts, breads, etc. Pick one of your products. In this instance, let’s take the cake!

Establish your command as the local cake authority. Some suggestions might include posting fun articles on your page about cake related stories (Kim Kardashian’s desire to have a “William and Kate” cake), contacting local reporters offering yourself up as the local Cake Boss, and posting any ensuing coverage on your page. And, while we’re talking about “cake” TV shows, post comments that critique episodes of Ace of Cakes. Encourage your fans to send in their favorite cake recipes, or have them vote for their favorite cake. Gradually, your command of the subject of cakes will begin to spread, inevitably drawing more customers to your business, who, while there to purchase a cake, may pick up a dozen donuts and a loaf of bread as well. Substitute “cake” for any of your product offerings, then “command” becomes “cookie” cutter!

Contest

PR driven contests are a great way to build traffic and fans on your Facebook page so long as the contest raises and reinforces awareness about your service or product offerings. MasterCard and American Airlines, Dunkin’ Donuts and Captain America: The First Avenger, and EA Skate and Miracle Whip, all non-competing entities, recently teamed-up for co-sponsored Facebook contests.

Similarly, for a small business, Facebook contests are more successful and effective when co-sponsored with a non-competing local partner. Let’s go back to the bakery! We can indulge ourselves in pastries – almost guilt-free – as long as we keep up with our exercise. How about hitting the gym, literally and figuratively!

For example, the bakery works with a local gym for two weeks on a mutually beneficial promotion, and offers fans of the gym’s Facebook page 15% off of its whole wheat bread and gluten-free products; in exchange, the gym offers a 15% discount on products and services available at the health club to the bakery fans. During this promotion, new members of the bakery’s Facebook community will be eligible to wín a month’s free supply of whole wheat bread; similarly, new fans of the gym’s Facebook page can enter to win a free one-month membership. This “out of the box” contest and unlikely pairing allows the bakery (also the gym) to spread brand awareness to a brand new audience online.

Cause

Nothing spreads goodwill like supporting a local cause, particularly one that has an active fan base on Facebook. Every major corporation and business helps support a variety of causes, i.e. Toys “R” Us and Autism Speaks, Macy’s and the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Kmart and the March of Dimes. Local businesses should adopt the same big-business mentality, and not only help support a local charity, but engage your fans (and theirs) in a clever campaign to raise awareness for the cause and for you. Let’s go back to the baker who is in the food business. Inevitably, the baker is providing day-old bagels to soup kitchens, which is noble, but is it helping grow brand awareness and business, particularly via social media?

So, let’s cook-up a cause campaign! Suppose the baker embarks on a “Pie-Us” (notice the synonym for noble) campaign to help the soup kitchen. The first order of business is to partner – again, as above, two heads are better than one – with a local restaurant (preferably one that the baker works with as a vendor, or any non-competing food business) for a new pie recipe contest via the bakery’s and restaurant’s Facebook pages. The champion pie (named after the winner), prepared by the bakery, is then sold to the restaurant and served there for one month. For each pie sold, the bakery and restaurant make an agreed-upon donation to the soup kitchen. The campaign helps a worthy cause, promotes brand awareness (for all three entities), solidifies the bakery as the local authority on pies, and creates excitement and new fans on the bakery’s Facebook page.

Connect

By its very nature, social media is meant to connect. Thus, Facebook initiatives should connect your business with new and potential customers. For every new fan you gain on Facebook through unique cause programs, contests or promotions, you’re automatically connecting with your new fans’ Facebook friends, introducing your brand to scores of potential new customers.

Many businesses “preach to the choir” by keeping their posts and activities limited to bland (can we say “stale” at this point) and business-centric posts, links and comments. Moreover, they treat the page as a circular, posting endless sales and specials. This was not how Facebook was intended to be used, and this will not connect you with new customers.

A famous automotive CEO once said that the secret to success for a business was to “communicate, communicate, communicate.” Today, that word can be replaced with connect. Connect by commanding an issue, connect with local and non-competing businesses, connect contests to causes and promotions, connect your brand to new customers by connecting PR to social media campaigns on Facebook!

Since we are over seven months into the year I decided it was time to give my take on what may happen in web design in 2011. (At least I thought I should probably write it before the year was over.)

So, over the past several weeks I have read a number of my favourite web design magazines, web design blogs and articles and viewed a number of cutting edge websites, particularly outside of North America, so that I could share some thoughts about what appears to be some of the major trends in website design for 2011. There is nothing scientific contained here, just some observations.

1. Less Use of Flash

It is not the fact that Flash is not a great technology…(when used appropriately it is)…but in the past year or so it has been over used, misused, abused to the point that it has developed a bad reputation. Certainly, the ongoing shenanigans between Adobe (creator of Flash) and Apple (iPhone and iPad) are not helping the situation. Today, websites need to have a clean, uncluttered design, fast loading and above all must be Search Engine friendly. This is a problem for Flash and now with the coming of the new web coding languages of HTML5 and CSS3, together with the explosive growth of web surfing on mobile devices perhaps it is the beginning of the end of Flash in web design.

2. Simpler and Cleaner Design

Simple. Minimal. Uncluttered. There’s nothing quite as “attention grabbing” as an honest, straightforward message on a quiet backdrop. Quiet can be interpreted several different ways. Forget black and white or shades of gray, although these are still very popular in certain industries. Think of green, yellow, red or even blue as your primary color. However, limit your palette to two or three colors. Work within the shades of each color for variety and depth. It can be truly remarkable what a few colors can do for effective messaging.

3. Mobile Ready Design

Smartphones, tablets, netbooks, the list goes on and on. There’s a dizzying amount of mobile products available to the consumer in 2011. This means your web design must be responsive to multiple devices. Creating a mobile ready website is not simply removing the bells and whistles from your existing design. One of the most important advances is that you can design a whole site and allow your coding to conform to the user’s viewing medium. It may be tempting to just create a dedicated mobile site, but that may no longer satisfy your audience. Increasingly, mobile sites include the option to visit the original site. If you do not offer this option or if your original site is not optimized to mobile standards, you are simply not ready for 2011. Forecasters predict that smartphones will outsell personal computers this year, and by 2013 more time will be spent surfing the internet on a mobile device than on a personal computer.

4. Large Photographic Backgrounds

Large scale backdrops will surge in 2011. These images will be high resolution, and covering the entire site. Large photos are an instant way to grab your audience. Massive images were once taboo for web designers, but thanks to better image optimization, faster internet connections, and smarter loading methods, designers can gain a lot in some sites by pushing image sizes to the maximum. Trends also point to soft and slightly transparent imagery that does not overshadow your content, but harmonizes with it.

5. QR: Quick Response

You may have noticed those square barcodes (looks like lots of squiggly unrelated lines) popping up on business cards, magazines or elsewhere, so you may already know that they are a hot trend for 2011. These barcodes are called QR, short for Quick Response. And how exactly does QR translate into web design? Quite well, in fact. Simply take a photo of the unique barcode with your camera phone. Like magic, your phone will call up the website associated with that barcode. The beautiful thing about QR is the flexibility. Feature your QR on your website, in order for site visitors to have a shortcut to your mobile site. 2011 is all about mobility and it will be smart to take advantage of this new medium.

6. Thumbnail Design

Our good friends at Google have introduced the average internet user to thumbnail browsing. The days of clicking through to see the content of a website are now gone. Now, you just click on the magnifying glass and hover. And just like magic before your eyes is a glimpse of what waits on the other side of your click. This is another issue for Flash-based design that is definitely going to be a problem. The preview will not display those elements of your design. As the average internet surfer becomes more internet-savvy in 2011, expect to see more people navigating by these means.

These are by no means a complete listing of all the trends. In fact, we could probably write an entire posting on the trends in the use of different fonts alone.

People long have loved to find new and innovative uses for the most innocuous technologies and advances. In the late 19th century, “moving pictures” were a nickel-arcade novelty. Today films such as Avatar are made on budgets comparable to military-grade hardware investments. Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone could barely call from one room to another; now the average iPhone has more uses and computing power than all the computers used in World War II combined. This trend is repeating itself with the rise of social media network marketing practices. What started as socialization programs only slightly more complex than the average e-mail client has grown into one of the newest and most promising marketing niches in the entire world. Taking advantage of this means familiarizing oneself with a few surprisingly simple concepts that have unusually far-reaching implications. In particular, marketers are finding that the “Like” and “Share” features on Facebook have become the newest and best tool in the marketing online arsenal.

We “Like” It

The “Like” function is a pretty simple one – people click “Like” for things that interest them. On the surface, this seems almost irrelevant, but thinking so ignores the way Facebook operates. Taking advantage of the “Like” function is actually the key to getting good marketing opportunities out of Facebook.

When a user clicks “Like,” whether on Facebook itself or through a site’s Facebook plug-in, Facebook records the data and uses it in a number of ways. First, a notification is put up on the user’s wall confirming the “Like.” This informs other users who are familiar with the wall about the product, news item or event, giving them an opportunity to examine and potentially “Like” it as well.

Therefore, if a user has even 200 friends, which is not that great a number given the increasing inter-connectedness of online communities, that’s 200 people who will see what their friend “Liked,” and who will have the chance to “Like” it themselves. This is the very foundation of viral content, or content with the ability to move rapidly along through intermediate connections of hundreds of people.

Additionally, Facebook makes recommendations to users based on things they have “Liked.” Thus if friend A has friend B, and friend A puts a “Like” on business C, friend B will not only get an announcement about the “Like,” but may have the business recommended to them since they “Like” friend A. This is still another route of communication and an indirect marketing opportunity that requires no more effort than a simple click. Thus it is to any business’ advantage to put a plug-in allowing people to “Like” them on Facebook via the business’ site.

“Share” a Little, Gain a Lot

“Sharing” is another process which allows users to spread information about themselves and the products, news items or events they enjoy across multiple networks. This level of extra-connectedness in essence performs the same function as “Like,” but with more data given which people can use to evaluate contacts and make connections.

“Like” simply gets a basic fact out there. “Share” will tell users more about each other, allowing for the kind of networking that drives modern business. It also expands the audience beyond the immediate momentary location of Facebook to other sources such as LinkedIn or Twitter. This further creates the potential for any post to go viral, allowing it to spread quickly among related yet distinct audiences.

Two-way Street

The communicative rather than broadcast model will serve marketers well in the area of “Liking” and “Sharing.” Yes, it is good when users “Like” a business – it drives referral traffic to the business and allows for more information to get out there. However, equally good is when a business provides “Likes” to others and for their material.

In the first, most mercenary example it will increase the business’ own traffic automatically. Consider friends A and B from before. If friend A puts up a post that Business C likes for whatever reason, friend B will see the “Like.” This creates another indirect marketing opportunity and referral traffic automatically. So it’s clearly to a business’ benefit to be active in the community and to consistently “Like” things that are interesting to the business.

Indirectly, it creates goodwill in the community. The model of the Internet is a place where people exchange ideas and information, so people respond well to good comments. If business C “Likes” friend A’s post, then friend A may “Like” them in return, for reciprocity if nothing else. This can be amplified by providing well-thought-out, insightful and proper comments on various walls throughout a given Facebook community.

At its roots, Facebook “Likes” and social networking “Shares” create opportunities to be more involved, and they reward increased and thoughtful involvement more than automatic, disinterested participation. Actively read through communities touching on a brand’s interests and look for the “Likes” and referrals others are following. Provide commentary for your brand, as well as for the interests of others, and people will respond out of courtesy. The brand that behaves like a human will receive human consideration, while the brand that acts like a robot will be blocked out automatically.

The homepage of your website is often the landing page and is critical to the success of your online business. When people land on this page, you have just a few seconds to capture their interest. This page will be a giant factor in your conversion rate which is the ratio of visitors that respond to your goal action. This goal action can be subscribing to your newsletter, signing up for your ecourse, ordering your products, etc.

Your homepage needs to contain certain elements to be successful in raising your conversion rate. Read the list carefully and check to see if your homepage meets all of the following criteria.

1. Color - The color you choose for your website can have a big effect on your visitors. The type of site you have should be a factor in the colors you choose. There are essentially two types of colors – cool and warm.

Browns, blues and greens are cool colors and can make you feel relaxed, calm and assured. These colors are good for sites pertaining to medicine, relaxation and other sites that have reassuring answers to your problems.

Yellows, reds and oranges are warm colors that bring out feelings of energy, excitement and happiness. These colors work well for exercise sites, sports sites and other energetic type sites.

Purple is a good color for fashion and jewelry sites. It emulates sophistication, royalty, and luxury, but it is also feminine and romantic.

2. Clutter – How does it make you feel when you walk into a business that is messy and full of clutter. It doesn’t exactly bring out the confidence in said business. Your website is the same way. You don’t want it to look like a junk-filled mess! Keep it simple, clean, consistent and easy to follow. Don’t fill your site with flashing banners, junk ads or fancy hard to read font.

3. Header – The header you use for your homepage is very important. You have just a few seconds to “capture” your visitor and the header can be a vital factor in achieving that goal. Make your header professional, short and to the point. You want the header to get the visitor to want to know more about you and your products/services. The header should outline in a few words what the benefits of your site are in a way that will make the visitor stay longer. Color is also a consideration.

4. Ease of Navigation - Another critical point to consider is how easy it is for people to navigate your site. Does your site feel like a maze with doubts on how to get from here to there? Visit your site as a customer and take note on how easy it is to navigate and how well laid out and simple the page is. Is your menu easy to find and follow? Is the font easy to see and read? Does one part of the page flow into another? Are your links prominent and easy to find? Look over every aspect of navigation with an extremely critical eye because people will not stay on a site that makes them feel lost and confused.

5. Use Testimonials – Testimonials are invaluable to your site because they reassure the visitor by increasing your credibility thus allowing them to trust you and your products more easily. Sprinkle a few short testimonials on your landing page where appropriate and have a section saved just for some of your best testimonials. Use detailed testimonials as opposed to more generic ones. For example: “I love your product and will purchase more” is not as good as “Your product helped me lose 20 lbs in just 6 weeks!”

6. Contact Information – Nothing makes me leave a site faster than when no contact information or email address is found. This, to me, says the person does not want to be bothered with customers, questions or anything else. I wouldn’t ever do business with a website that does not provide complete and accurate contact info. More than likely, not many people would so it is extremely important to have your contact info prominently displayed on your homepage and every other page of your website.

7. Capture Visitors’ Email Addresses – Most of us are familiar with the phrase, “the money is in the list.” In a big way, this is true. Capturing your visitors’ emails allows you to keep in contact with them so you can build that ever important relationship that will turn them into customers. Most people will not purchase anything on a first trip to a website so by capturing their emails you can astronomically boost the chances of converting that person into a customer. You can put a subscription form on every page of your site and be sure to have one on your landing page. Building a mailing list will help you market your sales, specials, etc. and will also help you build a solid customer base.

8. Call to Action - A Call to Action is a specific thing you “order” your visitors to do. This can be done with a text link or graphic. For example: Clíck here for a free marketing ecourse. You are giving the visitor very clear and concise instructions on what to do. Sometimes your visitors need a little push to complete the call to action so you would use something like this:

Limited Supply Clíck Here Now, or Sign Up Today for a Free Consultation.

Provide incentives to help your visitor make the decision to complete your call to action. Have just one clear call to action. Do not give you visitors too many choices because it will just result in confusion and indecisiveness.

9. Always Proofread – Always proofread and proofread again to be sure you catch all typos, grammatical errors and so forth. Make sure all your links work and everything on your landing page is in working order and correctly done.

10. Analytics – Be sure to take advantage of your site stats and analytics. This information can be critical to making your page a success. Google Analytics is free and provides a great service for anyone who has a website. You want to see how many people are going from your landing or homepage to other pages of your site. And if they are not, try to find out why, so you can improve your homepage. Monitor your bounce rate, conversion rate and other valued information.

You just cannot throw up a website and expect to boost your revenue. You have to nurture, maintain and care for your site and always be improving it. Keep abreast of the latest trends, info and data and always be learning how to make it better. Your landing and/or homepage is critical because it often decides the fate of your site so be sure to make it the most efficient and effective webpage possible.

Small business social media starts with making the decision to be part of the conversation. Not as easy or cut and dried a decision as one may think. What are the factors involved in this process? The pros and cons?

Pros:

* Potential to raise website page rank

* Potential to find new customers or clients

* Potential to make new business connections

* Potential to reach current customer base with new products or services

* Potential to get customers talking about me or my company

* Potential to find out what you are not offering to your customers that they want

* Potential to have your PR department consisting of your customers

* Potential to get great reviews from happy customers

* Potential to feel important because you have 15 followers! (Joking)

Cons:

* Time consuming
* Energy consuming
* Resource consuming
* Costly
* Don’t know what to say
* Don’t know where to start
* Don’t have any customers or clients to help you get started

The current trend in search engines is to use tweets and status updates, shares and reviews about you or your website as a piece of how they rank your site. So for no other reason, because of this you need to have at least a minimal social media presence. Facebook Business Page, Twitter account, Linked In, Yelp, Google Places and a YouTube channel. There are over 400 social media sites out there, but these are the 6 you should start with. Privacy is a concern, but you control what is seen and accessed, not visitors. Google and Bing utilize the share button as a strong indicator that people view you or your site as an authoritative site. Sharing is the highest form of social media flattery followed closely by reviews and links.

Don’t get lost in the hype over how well social media helps big business. Big business throws hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars into their PR campaigns of which social media is a part. You don’t have that kind of budget and therefore all the great white papers on and case studies of big business success in social media just doesn’t apply to you. Focus instead on what you can do locally to effect a positive return on investment (ROI).

Local Social Media is a task that can consume time and energy of small business owners and be a drain on their budgets if not managed well. Just like any other small business task, managing is the key to success. So manage it, don’t let it manage you.

Start with picking someone in your company who will handle the day-to-day social media activities, who will spend 15 minutes every day to either tweet something on Twitter, or retweet something, post a status update on Facebook or check the insights and activity. It doesn’t have to be you, the business owner. I recommend to my clients that they have someone else do the basics and leave the relationship building to themselves. Once you have established who, decide when. Facebook marketers are notorious for posting multiple times a day and losing their audience. Twitter feeds can and often are more than once a day without being annoying, while Linked In may be once a week or even every two weeks. Here is how we set up our clients:

LinkedIn - Business Owner ONLY! Once a week unless involved in an ongoing discussion that has benefits for your company.

Facebook - Employee when posting general info, owner when discussing more detailed things. Remember if you aren’t the one posting let your followers and fans know that someone else is. Don’t ever let them think it is you if it isn’t. Once a week can be enough as long as your fans know what day and what time they can expect your update.

Twitter - General Tweets for the company can be done by an employee on the Business Page, but we suggest that the Twitter page name be the company name with the profile picture and bio being that of the owner. And the owner should use Twitter to build relationships with other business people not so much as a customer relations tool. Twitter is very personal and should be handled like you are just standing around the office water cooler shooting the breeze, not as a sell, sell, sell site.

YouTube - Videos about the product or service you provide. When appropriate the owner should at least narrate, but this can be delegated to an employee.

Yelp, Google and other “places” sites where people can review. Employee level work, mainly in setting up the site.

The next step once you have delegated who does what is to determine which accounts you need. We set up 6 main accounts for clients and let them choose which others might work for them with our thoughts on each.

Setting up each site can be a little cumbersome and time consuming but well worth it.

* Facebook – 5 – 10 minutes
* Twitter – 15 minutes
* LinkedIn – 30 minutes (this is your business card, don’t skimp)
* YouTube – 30 minutes
* Yelp – 20 minutes
* Google Places – 30 – 45 minutes
So the set up takes a little time. One person could get it all done in a morning or by the end of the week if they took on one a day. You can hire firms to set them all up, average cost is about $100- $150 per account depending on how elaborate you go. $500 – $1000 or in house depends on your budget. I believe in using professionals but have seen some great set ups done in house.

Set daily tasks for Twitter, Weekly for Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube. Set 30 day, 90 day and 120 day goals for what you want accomplished in those time frames. Don’t worry about ROI like you do with conventional marketing and advertising. ROI in small business social media is rarely a dollar for dollar return but more likely the building of solid long term relationships that turn into referrals.

A daily task goal for Twitter may be just following others in your field. Listening to their conversations and where appropriate, join in.

Weekly for Twitter may be to have added 25 new followers per week.

Monthly might be getting an equal number of followers to follow you back.

Facebook should be a planned out weekly, monthly and quarterly marketing campaign that includes your fans and customers thoughts and ideas.

LinkedIn starts with building on current connections and strengthening them. Who do you know and who do you want to know?

Small business social media should be treated like any other aspect of your business. Manage it, review it but most of all be consistent. Don’t open an account and then forget about it. You didn’t open your store and then forget to reorder inventory. Stay on top of it and it will over time – 6 to 12 months – pay off.

Google had to do something to compéte with Facebook, otherwise Google would have to give up its position as the top site on the web. Perception is everything on the web and Google would lose both revenues and reputation, if it has to settle for second place.

Will Google+ Become Popular?

Google+ might catch on or it might not. Anyone remember Google Buzz, Google Wave, or even iGoogle – those haven’t exactly been knockouts with 3/4 of a billion users? Could Google+ go the same route?

Right now, Google+ is getting some good press and everybody seems to be clamoring for an invite. Google says it’s testing out the system with a few users at first – which is very hard to swallow. Given all the resources Google has at its disposal, they should be able to roll-out any system, with 10s or even 100s of millions, signing up.

All the talk recently has been about Google+ and can it beat Facebook at the social networking game? But a more interesting question to consider is the heated Google vs Facebook competition. If you just examine the Alexa numbers alone, you will see that Facebook is beating Google hands-down in some very important traffic stats.

Actually, in both May and June, Facebook knocked Google out of the number one position a couple of times. You can see this if you compare the stats for Google and Facebook in Alexa. But where Facebook must have Google really concerned is in the number of “Pageviews” and “Time Spent on Site.” Facebook easily wins the day.
Could this limited availability be a marketing ploy on Google’s part and somewhat fabricated? By limiting supply, even on a free product, you create a built-up demand for that product. Old marketing trick that still works wonders for any campaign.

Regardless, Google+ has some features worth considering if you like these social networking cesspools. I particularly like the “Circles” feature, where you can limit contact to a certain group of people – such as keeping your close friends and family totally separated from your work or business colleagues. This has been one of my major problems with Facebook. I don’t want to mix the people I meet and work with online to have access to my family contacts and friends. In other words, you want to keep the people you “truly” know away from online acquaintances and contacts. Just common sense at play here, especially in regards to safety and security.

Besides these “Circles,” Google+ is divided up into four other features:

Instant Upload - You can instantly upload your videos and photos to your account (in the cloud) and then decide which group or circle of friends you want to share them with.

Hangouts - Group video chat where you can talk to up to 10 friends at once. The person talking the loudest will be featured in the spotlight, with the others displayed below. Teenagers will probably like this feature the most, but it could also become popular for business conferencing.

Sparks - Tell it what you like or want and this program will bring interested related stuff to your attention. Used to spark discussions and sharing the stuff that floats your boat with friends and colleagues. This is basically a search engine disguised as socialized chit-chat. Wonder if Google knows anything about search engines?

Huddle - Group text chat where everybody can talk at the same time. Makes it easier to get everybody on the same page and again may become popular with the younger set. This feature can be used directly from your phone, if you’re using an Android 2.0+ or an iPhone 4.0+ phone.

I believe the whole “Trust” issue could be a major factor in the success of Google+. I believe Google has built up a lot of trust with web surfers and this could bring onboard a lot of users.

But even with some good press and some good reviews, especially when it comes to the “Circle” feature of grouping friends, it doesn’t mean hundreds of millions will be leaving Facebook for Google+. Geeks and techies will no doubt jump ship faster than your regular “moms and pops” on Facebook.

Once you have all your networks built up in Facebook, most people are not going to jump ship just because another program comes along, even if it’s from Google. Then again, we always have to remember, the Internet is very “fluid” and changes quickly.

MySpace was once more popular than Facebook!

But many web users will always think of Google as a Search Engine and leave it at that; they will keep their social connections separate. However, Google+ only has to cut into Facebook’s numbers to knock Facebook back down a couple of pegs and/or to stop Facebook from getting to a billion users, which will have its own bragging rights.

Of course, I look at all this stuff from an SEO viewpoint. Google+ will give Google another powerful way to rank web content. It will be another large pool of data Google can draw upon to discover what content, sites, videos, articles… users are sharing and recommending. I don’t believe Google gives a hoot about the social aspect. They probably don’t give a hoot about you or your aunt Sue, but they do care about what you and your Aunt Sue are doing online, what sites are important to you and what content you’re viewing.

I believe a major SEO shift is happening in the background…

Instead of just backlinks, Google is now looking more closely at your whole site and content, ranking it accordingly. Google MAY also be getting ready to switch more of their ranking signals towards their OWN data coming from 160+ million Google Chrome users, the new Google +1 Button and the even newer Google+ social networking platform we are talking about here. Plus, Google also has all that data from YouTube, Google Analytics, AdSense and AdWords… and, of course, all that vast data from its own search engine and how people use it.

However, getting back to our original question, can Google+ be a “Facebook Killer” as many people are suggesting?

It’s way too soon to be making those kind of calls, but despite its rather awkward name, Google+ will eat away at Facebook’s numbers and members. Perhaps, it just has to slow down the Facebook bandwagon enough so that Google can hold onto the top spot on the web. If I were Facebook, this new entry would cause me some concern and I would be adding new features like video chat and keeping a close eye on what Google is doing with Google Plus.

At first glance, I thought the choice of Google+ was a rather awkward name, but if you combine it with the Google +1 button it makes much more sense – especially when you look at this not as a social network, but more as a ranking system designed by Google to help it provide higher quality rankings in their index. Nothing wrong with that and everybody benefits. Besides, killing two birds with one stone is not a crime.

Thinking of keywords can be quite difficult. How are you suppose to know what people are searching for… right? Well, you’re in luck, as the Free Keyword Suggestion Tool can provide some much needed assistance to this mundane task.

Just type in a term and pick a geographic market (the U.S. is the default option). Then the tool will try to tell you how many searches are performed for it and some related terms on a daily basis. Those numbers might not be completely accurate, but should at least act as a helpful estimate.

Your Web browser can enhance your Internet experience, but of course, the speed of your Internet connection matters, too. Still, you won’t have to pull your hair out of frustration if you’re using a browser that won’t crash or freeze all of a sudden.

Here is a Web browser review that summarizes the pros and cons of the best and worst browsers.

Google Chrome Review

Let’s start off the showdown with Google’s killer Web browser, Google Chrome. The search company entered the arena of Web browsers with a remarkable entry. Everyone seems to love Chrome’s simplicity, compatibility, speed and advanced features.

While Chrome’s features are relatively complex, they’re engineered in such a way that users can easily use them.

The download manager is very convenient and inconspicuous. It’s integrated at the bottom of the window and just sits there while the downloading is occurring.

Another one of Chrome’s interesting features is the drag and drop function. You simply highlight a text or link on a webpage and drag it to your search bar to get search results.

With the recent roll-out of Chrome 10, the browser seems to have earned more followers. The pinned tabs feature is a delight and the minimalist layout allows you to maximize the display of your entire computer monitor.

The browser has problems with Windows OS integration, though. However, Chrome’s biggest drawback is the lack of add-ons. For instance, it doesn’t have toolbars for StumbleUpon, S3Fox, AdBlock or other applications that many depend on. If it weren’t for that, Chrome would probably be the best Web browser.

Mozilla Firefox Review

Of course, there’s good old Firefox. This product from Mozilla is reportedly the fastest browser as far as download speed goes.

Most Internet users are impressed by the browser’s security functions. There’s a pop-up blocker that prevents 100% of pop-ups from showing up, and the spyware feature has greatly protected so many computers from certain viruses.

Firefox’s tabbed browsing capability is one of the main reasons why the browser became such a hit a few years back.

Now that Firefox 4 is here, it looks like the browser is still ready to fight despite the tight competition. The new and improved version boasts interesting features like Tab Groups, which allows you to group regularly used pages together. There’s also a new layout that maximizes a lot of monitor space.

One disappointing thing about Firefox, however is that it easily crashes if you’ve opened too many tabs. In fact, this is the reason why Mozilla invested so much in the memory recovery feature.

Internet Explorer Review

Developed by Microsoft, Internet Explorer has generated a lot of support, as well as hate. While some say that it’s the worst Web browser ever, many still use Internet Explorer because it comes pre-installed in Windows-based computers.

Yet another streamlined new browser, Internet Explorer 9, looks like it’s ready to compete. Overall speed performance is impressive, and graphics are delivered better. IE 9 also boasts of sharper looking fonts so that you can easily drag and drop tabs, just like with Chrome.

The final version of this new IE was released last March 14, 2011.

Earlier Internet Explorer versions were a pain sometimes. The entire browser would freeze and crash at times if one single page failed to load. With IE 8, however, only the affected tab would close if it got bugged.

Speed-wise, Internet Explorer 8 is definitely better than its predecessors. The faster downloading has considerably helped Microsoft win back some customers.

Integration with other Microsoft applications is another plus. Internet Explorer 8 can easily work with Outlook Web Access, among other computer programs.

IE 8 has its fair share of shortcomings. For one, it only supports Windows, and it lacks a download manager. What’s more, launching the browser takes a frustratingly long time.

Internet Explorer 9 looks promising, but it has a problem with websites that show up incorrectly.

Apple Safari Review

A favorite among many Mac users, Safari has come a long way. It was even more loved when it became available for PC users in 2007. Of course, there are others who think that Safari is better left to Mac users.

One good thing about Safari is that it looks clean. One look at the browser and you’ll figure out where the options are and what most of them are for.

Simplicity and ease of navigation give the browser more cool points. There’s no need for a lot of customization, and this may be one thing that make it run effectively and smoothly.

Safari 5, specifically, is praised for its cover flow, lovely interface elements, fast JavaScript performance and good tab integration.

On the other hand, people looking for themes and personalization may get turned off by the Safari’s simplicity. More importantly, Safari doesn’t come with extensions (yet).

Bottom line

The browser of your choice remains a matter of personal preference. On the other hand, you can’t help but notice differences among these browsers. One thing’s for sure; you will always have a choice if you’re big on speed, features, add-ons, security or convenience.

Do you have an obligation to be good, and by good, I mean good at your job? Do you have a responsibility not just to be professional and do what you do on time and on budget but also to be creative, thought provoking, and stimulating in the way that you do it?

Myth-Making as a Branding Strategy

The reason I ask the question is I recently read a comment on a business blog posted by a self-proclaimed advertising expert that justified the notion that schlock advertising works. I don’t know about you, but I find the idea disturbing. Sometimes ads work and sometimes they don’t. There are lots of reasons why advertising fails and in many cases it has more to do with implementation rather than conception. And yes we all know that schlock advertising like negative political ad campaigns work in the short-term, but ultimately the tactic leads to audience disillusionment and frustration, which is why we talk to our clients about marketing not advertising.

Marketing is About Building A Legend

Marketing requires you to take the long-view; it’s an approach that requires a company to stake out a position and build a personality that customers can rely on to be consistent and ethical both in offering and in execution. Marketing is about building a legend, an iconic brand that explains who you are, what you do, and why anyone should care. Marketing is about psychological persuasion in order to improve your audience’s businesses or personal lives. Marketing is about transformation, it communicates a brand story that acts as a metaphor that defines your identity, which in turn helps customers define and express themselves.

Beware Junk Research

A reliance on market research that tells you what people said as opposed to what they think is of little or no value. Even research that tells you what people did, doesn’t tell you what they will do when presented with an unknown option. Even opinion polls on soon to be released products are of little use: without some commitment of value those opinions won’t tell you how people will respond when they have to reach into their wallets to make a decision. Sure there’s good research, mostly available to big corporations produced by the social scientists, psychologists and university professors who study human behavior. Most of the rest of it is hindsight justification for whatever happens to be trendy or in-vogue at the time.

Market Leaders Are Proactive

Research that asks people what they want is useless, how can they know if they want something if it hasn’t been put on the market yet. Marketing is about defining your audience’s need not reacting to what your competitor has already established. By definition that kind of approach will leave you as an also-ran, not ever a market leader.

Market leaders are proactive not reactive. Asking everybody’s opinion on what and how to sell is weak and ineffectual and is not only reactive, it’s downright regressive. Your customers can’t tell you what they don’t know, that’s why they rely on you.

Brand Stories

Brand Stories are how companies use psychological persuasion to transform viewers into loyal customers (brand evangelists) by changing attitudes, preferences, and preconceptions. Brand stories allow the audience to vicariously transform themselves by providing a look at what could be.

Business is obsessed with technological solutions to psychological problems, one very significant reason why so many tech-based advertising tactics fail. Whether it’s Ad Placement Auctions, Search Engine Optimization techniques, or QR codes, if the final destination is a piece of junk, you lose!

Mainstream media promotes techie-solutions mostly because it’s easy and can be presented in a twenty-second sound bite rather than providing the underlying significance of why something really works, a process that is more complicated and takes more time. Take the Old Spice commercials that were hyped based on the technical wizardry of the creators, when the real genius of these ads was the message. Businesses run out and emulate the technique without a clear understanding of why it worked and more often than not miss the target altogether.

What’s Your Big Idea?

So if technique is merely the how, what’s the why, the why anyone should care? Ask yourself, and be honest, what’s your big idea? Steve Jobs famously asked John Sculley, the head of PepsiCo, whether he wanted to sell sugar water for the rest of his life or change the world? What self-respecting senior executive could resist the challenge and opportuníty? Are you selling today’s sugar water laced with Facebook, Twitter, and whatever the next big thing is, while allowing your main online presentation channel, your website, to fall behind?

Sure there’s a place for these IPO-based gimmick sites, but are you following the crowd because that’s what the carpetbaggers are promoting right now, or are you a true entrepreneur with a real idea, an honest point-of-view, a fascinating story to tell, and a real product or service that will set-off the endorphins in your audience’s heads when they hear about it?

What’s Your Emotional Value Proposition?

The key to successful marketing is finding your Emotional Value Proposition. It’s how you humanize the outdated notion of a sales-value proposition that no self-respecting marketing expert gives a hoot about. If you look at what Jobs offered Sculley, it breaks down to an opportunity to achieve ‘self-actualization’ the highest rung on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Jobs understood that in order to attract a high-powered, success-oriented executive he had to give him something big, and from a psychological perspective there is nothing bigger than being all you can be.

In the case of Old Spice the message was more primal, it’s about sex, a basic level ingredient on Maslow’s Hierarchy. The message is clear: purchase the product and you attract and satisfy women, what could be more fundamental? Everybody knows sex sells but do you understand why? Sex sells because it’s essential to our survival as a species; we either propagate or we disappear like the Neanderthals. It doesn’t get any more Maslowian than that.

How To Find Your Big Idea So if you’re selling the most features, lower prices, better service, and best staff in the business, you’re communicating the wrong message. Your audience isn’t stupid; no one promotes the idea that they have no service and sell cheap crap that doesn’t work. No one really cares that you Tweet, Facebook, Google, or text message your day away. What people want to know is what are you going to do to move them up the Maslowian ladder. Every successful brand, product, or company is based on a big idea. What’s yours?

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