Maybe you remember a couple of months ago when Facebook accidentally rolled out some changes to fan pages, giving all of us a sneak peek of what was to come. Well, now those changes are actually here.

Throughout the day, I manage and monitor multiple fan pages. I just received a notification at the top of the screen to “preview” or “upgrade” to the new style of fan pages. Upon clicking “preview,” I was given a very useful tour of the changes that Facebook accidentally shocked us with two months ago.

And now I will give you that same tour with some explanations and interjections along the way.

1. Facebook Photos Change

Fan pages will now feature the most recent pictures in a bar across the top of the page just like new individual profiles. This bar will feature the photos added to the wall by the admin or any photo that tags the fan page.

The fan pages that we monitor often receive irrelevant or spam-like photos in the “Fan Photos” section of our page. The good news is that these pictures will not be featured in the bar at the top of the page. Also, as it stands now, individuals cannot tag a fan page in a photo, which prevents spammers from simply tagging multiple fan pages in a picture and as a result, receiving the most prominent space on those pages. I’m glad that Facebook anticipated these issues and prevented this new feature from becoming a spam fest that all admins would have to monitor carefully.

2. Facebook Navigation Change

A big change to the overall format of the fan page is the location of tabs, which are often where we and other marketers host campaigns and special features of the page. Instead of being located at the top bar of the page, these tabs are now available below the profile picture of the page. These tabs now feature an accompanying icon; it will be interesting to see if these icons will be customizable in the future.

Developers are thrilled with the updated model for building apps on Pages announced today, which brought the introduction of iFrames to pages. According to Facebook, “this means you can now build apps that run across Facebook (including Pages and Canvas applications) using the same simple, standards-based web programming model (HTML, JavaScript, and CSS). In addition, you can easily integrate social plugins and the Graph API within your tab.” Basically, developers now have much more freedom in tab creation and greater potential for interaction among fans.

One negative of this new tab location is a less prime real estate position on the page. It will be interesting to compare traffic to these tabs before and after this switch. Also, just as with individual profiles, there is no longer an “info box” displayed below the profile picture.

3. Facebook Wall Filters Change

This new feature is one that I have a problem with as the moderator of a page. Now, instead of posts appearing on the page in chronological order, it seems as if “top posts” and “the most interesting stories” will appear first. These top posts are determined by the number of interactions, which translates to likes and comments. This could make monitoring comments a nightmare because the spam could be hiding at the bottom of the page or it could be displayed prominently if it happens to attract comments and likes from fans. Moderators will have to regularly check deep into the page to ensure that spam or profanities aren’t lurking on the page somewhere instead of simply checking the most recent comments at regular intervals.

Fortunately, admins can still choose a default landing of either “Everyone” or just posts from the admin. By selecting a default landing of admin posts only, moderators can help eliminate the potential prominence of spam.

Luckily, Facebook also has a new feature, a moderation blocklist, in the works to block spam and profanities. Using this blocklist, admins can choose strong filters, medium filters, or none at all. Admins are not allowed to see the words or types of spam associated with each filter. However, admins can tailor the filters by “unmarking” spam that automatically goes into the Spam filter. This Spam filter was instituted in October 2010; it currently catches recognizable spam and places it into a filter only available for admins to view.

4. Facebook Admin View Change

This is the most interesting change for me. Before the switch, an admin could interact as the brand page ONLY on the page itself through comments and wall posts. Now it appears as though admins can log into Facebook as the fan page, which now opens up the possibility for the brand page to interact in the following ways:
Get notifications when fans interact with your page or posts
See activity from the pages you like in your news feed
Like other pages and feature them on your page
Make comments as your page on other pages

Basically, these changes give the branded page a bigger voice on Facebook by allowing them to interact with other pages through likes and comments. The first bullet point above is an interesting one, though. For pages with a lower number of fans, these notifications will be helpful so that admins can receive a quick reminder and remain active on the page without having to check for comments and interactions throughout the day. However, for pages with a large fan base, these notifications would come in overwhelming numbers, making this “helpful reminder” into an overload of notifications. Can you imagine getting about 500 notifications within 10 minutes of posting a comment?

5. Facebook Settings Change

This change is not too exciting – just a new location for managing admin controls and certain features of the fan page.
Facebook is now allowing admins to preview this feature for the next 4 weeks, but these changes will become mandatory on all pages starting March 10, 2011. Admins should note that after opting to the new version, they will not be able to revert back to the previous version.

More money is wasted on advertising than any other business function. That is not to say businesses shouldn’t advertise but rather people should understand how advertising works. There are many ways to characterize ads, but for our purposes let’s make it simple and separate advertising into two distinct approaches: saturation and emotional.

One of the things I’ve learned over a long career is that business folk invariably take their lead from the wrong sources. Small and medium size businesses look to the mega corporations to learn their tricks and adopt their attitudes when they have little in common – advertising being no exception. Since our clients are mostly medium or small size companies we try to help put some of these issues into perspective.

If you’re big enough and have the money available, there are all kinds of marketing initiatives you can invest in, but if you have a limited marketing budget you need to be smart about how and on what you spend your advertising dollars. And the most effective and cost efficient place to spend those dollars is on your website. Yes you need to attract people to your site, but if once they arrive they find it lacks intriguing, engaging content, then you’ve wasted your money. So what tactical approach should you take to deliver your marketing message?

Saturation Advertising

The first approach is saturation advertising like you see on television. Anyone who has spent an evening sitting in front of the TV set is familiar with what I am talking about: the constant repetition of the same commercials over and over until the ads become an unwelcome irritation. The fact is no matter what you do to avoid commercials they eventually seep into your head. Even fast forwarding through commercials on a recorded program has an effect. Saturation advertising depends on repetition not quality, which is why some of the worst and/or stupidest commercials can still be effective.

There are some great commercials on television that do engage the audience with an entertaining, memorable, marketing message that enhances the brand and generates leads, but when push comes to shove, television advertising is all about repetition not quality.

Does Saturation Advertising Work?

Does saturation advertising work? The short answer is yes it does, at least for a television audience it does. Most people believe that it works on others but not on them, a phenomenon, psychologists call the Third Party Effect. The fact is, repeating something automatically makes it appear more believable.

The majority of people will respond that they don’t pay attention to commercials, but inattention does not protect you from the influence of repeated messaging. In fact bad commercials work better if the audience isn’t really paying attention, and fail when the audience is actually listening carefully. Careful attention brings to light all a message’s conceptual, technical and performance issues.

Will Saturation Advertising Work For You?

But saturation advertising is expensive because it relies on huge media buys in order to get the required number of repetitions needed to worm its way into an audience’s collective consciousness. It’s a messaging tactic that depends on deep pockets and that rules it out for most companies. Advertising that depends on constant repetition just won’t work on the Web unless it’s merely to supplement an existing extensive integrated television and print campaign.

Just as an aside, the music industry uses the same tactic. The constant repetition of a song, even of inferior quality but with minimum rhythmic value and a repetitive catchy chorus, can become a hit if heard often enough on the radio or on television in a music video. And like most saturation advertising it’s controlled by whoever has the most money available to purchase audience access. The same holds true for political advertising. Politicians can get away with the most incredible nonsense if they raised enough money to drown-out their opposition.

The Web is a different communication environment compared to television. Where television and the Web converge is with programming: your website is not an advertisement, or at least it shouldn’t be if you want it to be effective; your website is the equivalent of the program not the commercial, and that is why the key to success is the ability to turn advertising into content, and content into a memorable experience. You need to engage your audience with the same kind of techniques and messaging that is used in the programs you watch and not in the commercials you try to ignore.

If You Don’t Establish Your Brand, You Won’t Have a Meaningful, Memorable Message

If you can’t saturate the market with your brand then you have to find a better, more cost effective way to influence your audience. I use the word brand instead of product or service because that is where you have to start – you have to think ‘brand’ not product/service. What we’re talking about here is advertising intended to promote and grow your company within the context of a long term marketing strategy rather than a promotional ad intended to let your audience know about a particular sale or promotional event. Companies that stick exclusively to a promotional format are basically teaching their customers to only purchase goods and services when there’s a sale, and that’s a tough way to make monéy on a long-term basis.

We all know how popular the Google AdWords program is and we all know how expensive it can get in order to gain access to the keywords that trigger your ad placement. The Google system is basically relying on the same principle as television advertising: big audiences and lots of placements equals lots of leads.

The problem in addition to the continual expense is that even if you attract a large initial audience, that audience will not stick around long enough to get your brand story if that story is not at least as interesting and entertaining as the television programs they watch. And even if that audience manages to stick around a while, if your site isn’t interesting enough, they won’t ever come back and that reduces your chances of being remembered. Unlike television where the audience is captive to the commercials, a Web audience is not. Unlike television where the experience is generally a compromised gróup decision, Web viewing is not.

For most Web-based businesses their website is their best and potentially most effective advertising venue, but people only go to websites that interest them, and they will leave in an instant if a website doesn’t engage, inform, and entertain them.

Emotional Advertising

“People forget what you say, but they remember how you made them feel.” – Warren Beatty

Everybody likes to think of him or herself as a rational, intelligent human being, but in truth, we are all motivated by the same hardwired emotional triggers. Our brains are marvelous, malleable organs that absorb information without us even knowing it; they process information, massage it, and produce instinctive responses to external stimuli. Our survival and dominance as a species depends on this ability. Our brains are not cameras that just record input; they are interpretive instruments that produce gut-instinct. As a consequence, successful long-term marketing strategies depend on an emotional brand association with basic Maslowian needs.

No matter who you are or what you do your competitors will undercut your price, add new and better features, or come up with superior alternative solutions. The business world is littered with the corpses of once proud companies that owned their market until someone came along with something better, or cheaper, or just different. No one wants a Polaroid camera when digital cameras are all the rage. Once proud Kodak has been humbled and downsized considerably because they saw themselves as a film company and cameras as merely a way to sell more film rather than tools of human creativity. Products and services come and go, but brands are forever, and brands are defined by their emotional appeal.

In less than five years, social media has revolutionized not only our communication culture but how we conduct business. The dizzying effect of endless and sometimes unfettered-24-hour access to people and information has transformed the various tools into a game changer.

There is a broad and increasing list of sites, including BlinkList, YouTube, Delicious, Flickr, Tumblr, BlogMarks.net, and the triumvirate of major sites: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. These social destinations have become to business professionals and entrepreneurs what golf is to C-suite powerbrokers – a juncture to strategically network and close deals based on shared interests and personal engagement. But these sites do more by offering users valuable real estate to advertise products or services, create and expand brand recognition, solicit feedback, build relationships, and create community forums. Users also have unprecedented access to consumers, hiring managers, prospective clients, industry experts, and opportunities.

Moreover, social media levels the playing field by allowing anyone access without restrictions on time, location, or social status.

The most diligent and creative players are reaping huge benefits. According to a report from Forrester Research, 55.6 millíon U.S. adults – just shy of one-third of the population – visited social networks at least monthly in 2009, a jump from 18% in 2008. Recent Nielsen research says Americans spend nearly 25% of their time online on social networks and blogs, up from nearly 16% a year ago.

The initial foray into social media can be daunting and bewildering. Newcomers to the space might wonder: Who’s reading? Will I be heard or noticed? Isn’t it all just fun and games? Isn’t it invasive? Making the effort worthwhile requires time, patience, and a work-smart-not-hard strategy. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a corporate professional, the success of marketing your products, businesses, or your personal brand will be determined by how well you engage interest on the varying platforms. In part one of a series on social media strategies, Black Enterprise offers some tips to get you connected.

What Business Owners Should Know

Finding out who your customers are and how they like to be served is essential for the success of any business. Questions and surveys offered on social media platforms can help business owners quickly access that information. Jason Burton, social media strategist and marketing director of Lab 5702, a boutique marketing firm in Kansas City, Missouri, says such data can help you position your product to broader groups outside your initial base of contacts. “Put your product in front of the trendsetters or the next level of users,” he suggests. “Targeted searches let you drill down beneath the surface to find followers and potential influencers that can use or promote your product or service.”

Location-based social mapping services such as Foursquare, Google Latitude, Loopt, Facebook Places, and MyTown allow consumers to benefit from their influence. For example, if you visit your favorite flower shop in Tucson and tweet it to your followers, you get $2 off your purchase. The greater the network and influence, the bigger the discount. These services also enable users to find friends and events; share locations, updates, tips, photos, and comments; and share across online social networks and blogs. Loopt has more than 4 million registered users and partnerships with every major U.S. mobile phone carrier and is available on more than 100 smartphones, including the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android. Google Latitude and Foursquare boast more than 3 million users each. Greater social media interactivity has been facilitated by mobile apps such as ÜberTwitter, MobileLinked IM, and Nimbuzz. According to a Juniper Research report, the number of downloads from mobile application stores is expected to rise from fewer than 2.6 billion per year in 2009 to more than 25 billion in 2015.

What Corporate Professionals Should Know

Carmen Hudson, CEO of Tweetajob in Seattle, oversaw employer branding campaigns when she was senior manager of talent acquisition for Yahoo and has witnessed the shift in recruitment practices. “Companies are cultivating and marketing a brand that attracts and is attractive to certain types of candidates,” she explains. For companies such as Yahoo, Starbucks, Apple, and Microsoft, social media is increasingly at the forefront of that strategy. Recruiters will, for instance, use LinkedIn to create a search stream of attributes to find precisely the type of candidates hiring managers are looking for with minimal time and fuss. Moreover, Hudson adds, “They’re also looking at how many followers you have. Do you have a strong network? If you’re an expert, friends and/or follower numbers are strong indicators of that.”

A Jump Start Social Media survey of hiring managers indicates that 66% go to LinkedIn to find candidates for openings, 23% go to Facebook, and 16% to Twitter. “Job seekers who frequently post and update profiles are nimble and often get to job opportunities first,” Hudson says. “Recruitment officers can execute a well-rounded and more diverse search, through a search stream of attributes because they now can meet candidates where they play,” says Hudson. At the same time, companies can promote the brand and the company message, which gives the job seeker a more informed perspective on the companies as potential employers.

How to Maximize Social Media Marketing to Promote Your Brand or Business

• A blogging platform such as WordPress or Blogspot is essential, advises Warren Laidler, webmaster and creative director of DeLite Multimedia in New York City. Blogs have greater potential for organic leads because their content-rich nature makes them more search engine friendly. Search engines love content-driven platforms and rank them higher than static websites. “Think of your blog as a launch pad or hub for your enterprise. Your social media efforts should lead back to your blog or website, which should be dynamic and informative, providing content and information that encourages visitors not only to return, but to distribute your content to their network.”

• Blogs or websites should contain SEO, or search engine optimized, keywords and phrases that help visitors find the business when they search via Google, Yahoo, Bing, and others. Laidler also suggests pulling in RSS feeds and useful links into your blog. “RSS feeds allow you to import content from outside sources and are a great way to share information that visitors find interesting.”

• Work on engagement and consistency. For example, your Twitter timeline should be a combination of original updates, retweets, or shares from other sources, replies from connections, inspirational quotes, and trending topics. A standard formula is two to four tweets per day. Positive activity can also blossom quickly and create buzz that reaches well beyond a businesses’ core audience. In the virtual world, consumers and job seekers can become influencers and trendsetters by persuading their network to take action or purchase a product or service. Laidler suggests using tools like Klout or Twittergrader.com to measure your social media influence and find out the reach of your Twitter posts.

Every owner of a website on planet Earth knows that getting a constant flow of traffic is the key to making money online. The world wide web attracts such a massive number of buyers that regardless of what you sell, you will make some really good money when you have lots of traffic.

Internet marketers are constantly coming up with newer ways to expand their reach across the Internet because no website can survive without enough specific traffic. In their quest to obtain more of the elusive traffic, the website marketers have come up with some rather creative ways to bring in greater amounts of traffic in a short period of time and with little effort.

My email inbox has been flooded with sales letters promoting some automated software or seldom used secret that promises an explosion of website visitors within 30 days. The disturbing part of all this is that it goes against the teaching of our early years; that nothing good comes easy and there is no quick path to building a successful business. As a result of these promises of abundant website traffic and exploding sales figures, many have abandoned those time tested methods of attracting real targeted website visitors that are prepared to take some kind of action. Keep in mind that website traffic isn’t something that you can just get, but visitors will come to your website when you have something to provide, enticing them to click on your link.

Too many people are cashing in on a person’s desire to get to the top without much effort by offering some really useless website marketing techniques that could actually kill their search engine rankings. The fact is that these are nothing more than ‘Marketing Fads’, that may produce some huge results in the beginning, but when the newness wears off their effectiveness will fade away forever just like the telephone booth.

Remember when pop-ups and pop-under advertising came out years ago? This was the hottest marketing tool since the time of placing fliers on cars in parking lots. However, when people around the world started using pop-ups to promote their websites there were windows popping up every time you visited and exited a website. Internet users worldwide got so sick of all those pop-up windows that someone invented pop-up killer software. The search engines even started penalizing websites that were using pop-up scripts and soon after that method of website promotion faded away.

I will attempt to identify and explain some of these useless website promotion techniques that should be avoided at all cost. Using some of these bad website marketing techniques could certainly kill your search engine rankings.

Automatic Search Engine Submission Services

These free search engine submission websites allow you to put in your URL, keywords and a description of your website. You then click Submit believing that your website is on its way to being indexed on thousands of search engines. Not so! First of all, the major search engines require manual submission by hand and even implement coding script to prevent auto submission. Secondly, when you click on that Submit button you have no idea where your website link will end up going. Your website link could be automatically posted to illegal or international directory websites that are nothing but a colony of spam links. If Google crawls your website and finds out that you have links to your website coming from other websites with rotten content, then your website will pay the price in low rankings.

There is absolutely no substitute for manually forwarding your websites to the search engines. You will have complete control over where your link is going, and the search engines will automatically crawl your website to get your title and description.

Auto Submission to Directories and FFA sites

You may have seen those places that claim you can blast your website to over 2 million websites and directories. As a general rule, please stay away from anyone that uses the word ‘Blast’ because this is just another way of saying Spam. It sounds like you are literally placing your link on millions of other websites and getting tons of instant backlinks to your website. Those FFA or Free For All websites are nothing but a link farm containing links from sites with bad or irrelevant content. The search engines won’t ever see your website as being respectable enough to rank high in the search results if it is affiliated with that type of environment.

Lead Generation Software

I once got an email that said, “Héllo Webmaster, My name is John. I have been searching the Internet for some business opportunities and came across your website. I just wanted to know if you are still in business today. Please email me at this_email@emailaddress.com and let me know. Thank you.”

I replied to the person giving them more information about one of our websites. That particular email was forgotten until I got a few other emails with the same content from different names and email addresses. This matter sparked my curiosity and prompted me to do some further investigation to find out why these emails turned up so frequently.

I discovered that this was the work of lead generation software that extracts website links and email addresses from the Internet for any category. You just type the keyword in the search box and the software literally pulls in millions of email addresses. The software even allows you to email all those addresses. On the surface it appears to be the perfect way to put your website link in front of millions of people in the same industry as you.

This has the look and smell of spam, but because the one sending the email does not attempt to sell you anything, it’s not quite spam. This marketing technique is not very effective because the email is generic, impersonal and did not give the reader a reason to respond. Your emails should speak to a person’s needs and not just at them. Readers respond to emails if you find a way to reach their interests, giving them a reason to take action.

Backlink Generating Software

Google loves websites that have lots of quality backlinks, considering such links votes on the importance of those sites. Somebody got this crazy idea to automate the link building that Google loves, hoping to get huge numbers of valuable links and move to the top of the search engine results. Google has now gotten smart and has found to way to detect how you are getting your backlinks and even the speed at which you are getting them. So, if you are still buying links or using software to get instant backlinks, then chances are Google will find out and penalize your website. Nothing can substitute for writing valuable content that will automatically attract quality backlinks.

Automated Article Submission and Article Spinning

Writing high quality articles is a great way to attract targeted visitors to your website. Again, someone invented a way to automate this process as well. They came out with article submission software that they claim will automatically send your written articles to hundreds or even thousands of dírectories. There is even software that will take one written article, spin the title and words around, and send them to more directories. This software sells like hotcakes because people don’t want to do the labor intensive work of writing their own articles and sending them manually to article dírectories.

The real, authentic article directories that can syndicate your articles are getting smart and have installed a special code that disallows auto submission of articles. They have also installed a special script that can detect articles that have been spun off from the original. Most of them manually approve articles before they are published in their directory and can easily detect duplicate and spinned content.

Conclusion

Widespread use of these automated website marketing techniques has taken away the need to apply really genuine website promotion that gets real results and replaced it with push-button marketing. You may see some quick and positive results, but only for a short period of time. Treat your website like an infant; give it lots of attention, feed it some healthy content, protect it from dangerous spam activity and let it grow naturally over time.

Be Less Like a Brand and More Like a Human

Social media has walked the fiery coals of skepticism and has brilliantly performed as a marketing, customer service and relationship building tool beyond expectations.

All size businesses have taken the polar bear plunge into what felt like an alien way of communicating with their customers. When businesses began using Facebook fan pages, Twitter, engaging on forums, blogging, creating videos on YouTube and more, they realized that being a less like a brand and more human created real long lasting relationships with their customers.

It isn’t free: Social media costs time – a lot of time. If you have someone that is customer focused, understands how to write headlines and reaches out to the right audiences, then you are starting out solid.

Be Creative: Social media isn’t sell media. Be social. Have fun engaging your community, from congratulating them on opening their new business, to commenting on their blog and attending networking events with them.

Have a Team: This isn’t a one person show. Just like customer service everyone needs to be trained and have at least a basic understanding on how to help customers, sell the product as well as assist with customer concerns.

Start with Employees: The people that know how to talk about your brand, company and culture the best are your employees. Treat them as family, acknowledge and appreciate and make them feel as they are an important part of your business. Employees are the first to share with their communities and network their experience with your company and brand.
Listen First: Enough with the megaphone blasting your message to customers and employees. Start by spending some time listening to them instead. Reach out and connect with your customers, employees and fans of your brand and make them feel that they are the center of the conversation.

Customers Turn into Marketers: Customers that feel acknowledged and appreciated are loyal, excited to help and eager to be your brand evangelists, at no charge.

Consistency Matters: Have your pixel pixie help you create a Twitter background that matches your website branding, and a Facebook logo that fits, little things that your graphic designer can do to enrich
Connect online then in real life: Find ways to connect offline, have an open house, attend a networking event and then share the experience with your social media communities.

Seek Guidance: Look for someone who understands the tools, language, has experience and passion working with social media to give you an hour or two to give you a tour. Learn about social media management tools, ways to monitor effectiveness, help with content strategy and ways to find your audience.

Looking forward to a prosperous 2011 of seeing your business being social online and off.

Here’s a question for you? What do you need to be successful? What will it take for you to climb out of that deep, dark, dungeon of despair and mediocrity? What are you willing to do to be the best you can be?

Look around. Things are nuts, the economy stinks, politicians are goofy, people are addicted to cell phones, businesses are obsessed with Twitter and Google and Facebook; everything is made in China, and it’s all CRAP! You’re lucky if anything you purchase works the way its suppose to and god help you if you complain. You’ll spend hours on the phone with some clown who doesn’t know, doesn’t care, and doesn’t get paíd to really help you. They are the purveyors of frustration and creators of cynicism. Athletes pretentiously thank God for their base hits and million dollar contracts, and we watch in astonishment. Trust me, God doesn’t give a damn about who wins the next Nascar race, or that you get an even bigger flat screen plasma for your birthday. He’s got bigger fish to fry like global warming, child starvation, and deadly pandemics. You’re on yóur own fella. So get use to it.

So what’s a poor entrepreneur to do? Follow the big boys as if they were The Enlightened Ones. Right, how’s that worked out so far? Do you really want to go down the same road as GM or Lehman Brothers? Nobody is going to bail your ass out of trouble; you can count on that.

People have stopped thinking. We educate our kids to be engineers and technicians, but they don’t understand the world, they don’t understand people. Unable to get into med school or law they become Web entrepreneurs because they think it’s an easy way to make a buck. You don’t ever have to see or hear from customers, they’re not people they’re just digital ghosts with bank cards. Well maybe that’s the problem. Maybe that lack of communication skill is what’s wrong? So how do you communicate, how do you serve your public, how do you become a success?

Do you really want to know, or do you want to keep doing the same thing with the same results you’ve been doing? Maybe it’s good enough for you, but good enough isn’t good enough anymore. Now you have to excel, now you have to be different to stand out. Now you have to be better, or at least as best as you can be. And all it takes is a fundamental understanding of how to communicate.

Are you ready to take the leap? Are you ready to communicate your message so people say, “I want that!” Don’t get me wrong. There’s no mystery, no secret, no great panacea for success. It’s just a question of learning how and what to communicate, and that my friend is the why of it all.

Words Have Meaning

That’s right, words have meaning. Even in an era where language has been bastardized by text message lingo and meaningless business palaver dumped on us by consultants who don’t run anything but their mouths, even today, words have meaning if you know what to say and how to say it.

Sure, sure, people are busy, I get that, but you know what frustrates them more than anything, it’s when companies waste their time with bland, meaningless platitudes. People crave information. They demand to know more, be more, and achieve more. The potential is limitless. Are you filling that demand with meaningful, memorable content? Words are the foundation of persuasion. Words have meaning.

Language Defines The Conversation

If you want to be the market leader you have to control the conversation and you do that with the language you use. If you can control the words you can dominate the market. The words you use make a difference. Use the right words in the right way, and you’ll own the conversation, and put your competitors at a distinct disadvantage.

The Republican Party in the USA has controlled the political discourse for some time thanks to political consultant and pollster Frank Luntz. Luntz is the architect of the Republican Party’s language policy. It’s Luntz who was responsible for turning “inheritance tax” into “death tax,” “global warming” into “climate change,” and “eavesdropping” into “electronic intercepts.” Control the words and you control the conversation no matter what side of the political fence you sit on.

People respond emotionally to the words used. The right language can spark an argument or an agreement; it can generate an order or a rejection. Words can move you. Move you to action. And that’s what marketing is all about.

Voice Provides Clarity

Words aren’t much good if nobody hears them. Writing has to speak with a voice, an attitude, a point-of-view, and it has to be heard – out loud. The sound of the human voice delivers more meaning, more nuance, more depth of emotion and excitement than any other communication tool at your disposal. The proper use of tone, cadence, rhythm and phrasing creates something special, something more than just clever prose; it creates an experience and defines a brand.

Sound is by far the most complicated of communication tools and at the same time the most ignored and misunderstood. The wrong voice, the wrong music, and the wrong sound effects will kill any chance you have of delivering an effective marketing message.

Personality Makes the Connection

Even the best words won’t work if they aren’t delivered properly. Creating a distinct identity demands a superior performance, one that delivers personality. Personality is the means by which you connect with your audience. After all, if you don’t connect, nothing you say will be heard. Combine the right sound with the right words and the right personality, and you’re on your way to getting where you want to be.

Putting It All Together

There’s a reason we recommend video as the best way to convey your marketing message to your Web audience. Video can deliver your words, it can control the conversation, it can establish your brand, and it can present your message in the most meaningful, memorable manner if you do it right. You may have a great message, but if it’s not delivered effectively, you are turning over your primary asset to your competitors.

May you live in interesting times.

Is that ancient expression a curse or a blessing? I think it depends on how you define “interesting” and more importantly how you adapt to it.

If you define interesting to mean unpredictable, challenging and threatening then clearly we are living in interesting times. Business these days is more like shooting the rapids in a rubber raft than canoeing in a duck pond.

It’s too easy to be mesmerized by the danger of capsizing. If you focus on the rocks, that’s where you will go. The secret is to look for and steer to the high water and paddle like a fiend.

Survival is Not the Goal

If you set your sights on surviving you could slip and sink. If you set your target as thriving then you might flourish.

How do you thrive in these turbulent waters?

Marketing is the result of all the messages that you and your staff send. In fact, your staff sends more powerful marketing messages than all the advertising you ever do. Therefore, marketing becomes the end result of almost every business decision you make.

Think Long Term

Don’t make knee-jerk decisions especially about business strategy. Gather as much relevant information as you can. Seek the advice of people you respect. Be clear on your purpose. Examine both the short term and long term effects of major decisions. Once you decide, act quickly and confidently. Your staff will be looking to you for leadership and hope. Be open to course corrections when and as needed while clearly focused on the objectives and purpose.

Prepare for Disaster

The fire department prepares for disaster – they don’t focus on it or obsess about it. They think, plan, acquire the best tools and rehearse their response so they can move swiftly when and if needed. Where are you exposed and how can you protect yourself? When you are shooting the rapids it is foolish to save monéy by not buying life vests.

Review Expenditures

Don’t make across-the-board cuts. That’s a political response and just dumb. Instead, categorize expenditures and investments into four categories:

* Items that are needed because of the turbulent times to keep you above water or deal with disaster. Plus, items that generate a good return. These are new or increased expenditures.

* Items that are mission critical and need to be maintained as is.

* Items that provide variable return. Peg the expenditure level to the conditions and vary as conditions change. Treat it like an exchange rate.

* Items of questionable value. Eliminate them or phase them out.

Review Training

Review does not mean reduce or eliminate. Training can be more important during turbulent times. This is when your skills and those of your staff should be at their best. You don’t want to be losing sales because of poor customer service or quality control. Categorize your training needs into three categories:

* Key individuals that will steer you through the turbulent times. Provide individualized coaching or training to them. Invest strongly in your best assets.

* Departments that need to stay sharp and ahead of your competition. Provide group training, tele-seminars or attention to improving skills sets.

* Staff that need to be motivated and reminded of purpose and the little things that make the difference. Get them each a copy of a book that best conveys that message. Ask each person to report at weekly meetings on an assigned chapter in that book. Make them feel important. It only takes one person’s mistake or sabotage to sink your raft.

Review Advertising

Too many companies stupidly make major cuts in advertising during turbulent times. My guess is that they did not review their advertising during the good times. Categorize your advertising into three categories:

* Advertising that is measurable and has demonstrated a profitable return. Continue to measure as you grow your investment in this profitable avenue. Unfortunately, too many companies don’t measure their return on advertising or they don’t design their ads in a way that allows the results to be measurable. So they have nothing in this category. A shame.

* Advertising that has gained market recognition and that you believe to be working. You just don’t have a clue how profitable this venue is. Start to build in some measurement indicators. Vary the ads and measure. Then increáse or reduce investment appropriately.

* Advertising that is merely “me too” ads. You bought an ad because your competitor did. It might be a waste of money, but you don’t know. Reduce the expenditure or eliminate it.

Build Relationships

In turbulent times nothing is more important than relationships. We will warmly remember those who suffered with us or helped us through the turbulent times. Invest strongly in strengthening the relationship with your best clients. Segment your clients into three categories:

* Best clients. Divert more attention to their needs. Instruct your staff accordingly. Jump through hoops for these clients. Provide them additional value and services to help them. Communicate with them more often.

* Average clients. Maintain service levels and pricing. Attempt to upgrade them to A clients by introducing additional services.

* Pain-in-the-ass clients. Don’t let them bully you into reducing your prices. Instead, you might reduce your level of service to them. Give them the choice of upgrading or leaving. You’ll have less stress in your life.

Important Note for You

Relationships are more important than branding – especially during turbulent times. When you have the choice to invest in branding or invest in relationships – choose relationships. It is the far more profitable choice for small and medium sized enterprises. Remember that big business invests in branding because they cannot build relationships. Don’t be fooled by the branding hype.

Online Social Media

Don’t hide. Use the Internet to keep your message and name in front of people. If you haven’t yet created your blog, this is a good time to start. Post regular tips, news and positive messages. Register and maintain your accounts on social networking sites like LinkedIn.com, Plaxo.com and Facebook.com. Explore the use of YouTube.com and Flickr.com to publish product news and demonstrations. Barack Obama, the US president, used these tools to successfully promote his presidential campaign and he plans to use them to convey his messages to the American people and the world.

May you thrive in interesting times.

Facebook has taken social networking by storm over the past three years, growing to become one of the most used sites on the Internet, both from a new user point of view and a returning visitor rate as well.

Facebook brings together many millions of people who all connect, share information, photos, events and pretty much everything about their lives, whether they mean to or not.

In the same way you can connect to friends, you can also use Facebook as a great way to promote your business or website because the power that Facebook can offer you in terms of exposure is almost second to none when it comes to the potential that this site can offer to you.

Below, we look at our top five ways of utilising Facebook to really promote your business or website.

Set Up A Facebook Page

Facebook pages can be an amazing tool if you utilise them correctly. You can start to build up a “fan” base of people who are interested in your product who will like your page and therefore get information instantly when you add any new posts, photos, discussions or events to your page.

This means that not only does your post go onto the people who like your page walls, but then any of their friends could also see this, allowing you to spread the word to thousands more people just by growing your like list.

Tell Your Friends, Colleagues, Loved Ones And Anyone Who Will Listen

As mentioned above, its time to tell all of your trusted and not so trusted friends and contacts on Facebook about your page.

The more people you tell, the more people will start seeing your posts every time you add them, meaning that you can really get some excellent exposure from just a small pool of friends, as long as they have many more friends on their lists.

Build Up Your Likes

The more likes you have, the more your business page or general page will get exposure, as the things that you post and promote will start to get spread across many peoples Facebook walls and profiles.

This means its important to really only add good content to your Facebook page, things like adding your blog RSS feed and adding solid articles and noteworthy information.

Join Related Groups

On the same line as pages, groups are a great way to find other people who are interested in the same things that you are.

For example, if you enjoy playing Fifa 11, you simply type into your search box “Fifa 11″ and then take a look at all the groups and pages. You can then join these groups and join in the discussions which can then lead to you promoting your related product.

Don’t just go storming in and start making loads of posts about what you are offering, as this will simply lead to either being blocked or becoming known as a spammer!

Use Facebook Advertising

Although we find the Facebook Advertising slightly more expensive than other cost per click models, the demographics you can place on your advertising is second to none.

For example, if you wanted to appeal to 30 – 50 year olds who live within 20 miles of your postcode and were interested in dancing, Facebook allows you to do this. Because of the data they collect about you as you are using Facebook, they can then really make sure that you can target any advertising very close to your perfect audience, which is not really rivaled elsewhere as of yet.

It is true to say that using Facebook to promote anything is hard work. You have to really work at your page, improve it on a daily basis and keep adding good content to keep not only the people who like your page happy but to also attract new ones.

If you are prepared to do the leg work, there is no doubt that this social networking site can drive extra traffic and sales to any business or website.

Google wasn’t satisfied with just having Instant Search, now it has introduced something called Instant Previews. Searchers and web users can now browse a large instant “preview” of a site’s content by placing the cursor over the small magnifying glass displayed beside each listing. These previews are large and Google sometimes highlights a major paragraph or quote from each displayed site.

Searchers can get a general look at the layout and design of a site, onpage graphics and bold headlines can usually be seen from the preview. However, small print and the general content of the page can’t be read, so searchers will have to click through to your site if they want to read your information. Assuming of course, they don’t find what they’re looking for in the headlines or bold print.

Whether searchers will use this new feature remains to be seen, but these instant previews could have some ramifications on who gets the “click through” to their site. One would also reason that getting the top spot in the rankings have diminished somewhat, if searchers can quickly preview all of the top 10 listings and then make their decision. So they might not click the top listing, but decide one lower down is worth clicking. This could make any listing on the first page more worth having, not just the top one.

This doesn’t really affect any of your SEO strategies and you should be optimizing for the search engines as usual. After all, getting those top rankings for your targeted keywords in the major search engines is what brings in the quality traffic to your site. In this regard, it’s business as usual.

However, Google’s Instant Previews does change the whole nature of SERPs or rather Google’s search results in that webmasters and marketers have another hurdle to get past before they get that final click. Searchers might click your top number one ranking preview and decide your page is not up to standard or it’s not what they’re looking for, and can quickly try out the other listings instead.

From Google’s perspective these previews could improve the “overall” quality of their results because searchers will come away happy, especially if they have not wasted their time clicking on a link, only to find it’s not what they’re looking for. Now they can easily find the right results more quickly and efficiently.

For the webmaster or online marketer, these new Instant Previews can be seen as another chance to get that all important click. They must make sure their page design is up to scratch and featuring a catchy headline which draws visitors to their page or site. Also, highlighting a well worded summary could help attract more of these visitors. So too, would placing your main keyword phrase in bold print so that it can be read from the preview.

Needless to say, webmasters/marketers must always keep their targeted keywords front and center. Highlighting them on your page in the main title is already a given, but now you should make sure they can be read from the preview. This could possibly give you an edge with it comes to getting that click from Google.

On a more general note, these previews also add to the time searchers will spend on Google’s results pages. Google has been steadily focusing on this factor in recent months. Why? One good reason – the longer a searcher stays on your page the more likely they are to click your paid ads. Stands to reason, if the searcher can’t find what they’re looking for in the so-called “free organic listings” (actually, truth be told, for very lucrative keyword phrases these are not free, nor organic) they will look to the paid Adwords listings.

If you check out the average time spent on Google, according to Alexa, in 2009 it was around 7 minutes and now in 2010 that average has jumped to around 14 minutes. And that’s before both Google Instant Search and Google Instant Previews are fully rolled out and implemented. One would expect that number to go much higher. While this is nowhere near Facebook’s average time of 31 minutes, Google has still doubled the time it had only a year ago. No wonder, Google can afford to give their employees that 10% raise, they have probably earned it.

Nor should Google be criticized for doing all of this, they are a business and their goal is to bring in more revenue. Besides, these previews will no doubt improve the effectiveness of Google’s SERPs. Searchers can more quickly find what they’re searching for on Google and come away happy. A satisfied customer is the ultimate goal of any business, why should Google be judged any differently.

However, for the webmaster and online marketer, keeping Instant Previews in mind when creating webpages is a must. Here are some suggestions you can follow:

1. Improve Your Graphics – These can really grab the searcher’s attention in the preview so it’s vital to have eye-popping graphics right next to your important information.

2. Create Great Headlines – Good headlines quickly capture the searcher’s attention and draws him/her to your page; just make them bold enough to be seen in Google’s previews.

3. Write An Informative Summary – Place your important information in a short summary which also captures the viewer’s attention. Entice these viewers to visit your site or page.

4. Take A Multi-Layered Approach – Just don’t aim all your marketing towards free organic search, but try video listings, news listings, image listings… to get other ways onto Google’s first page.

5. Finally, PPC Advertising – This is probably not what you want to hear, but paid listings through Google Adwords is another option. Besides, for extremely lucrative keywords, as more and more major companies throw major funds into SEO and Keyword Link Buying, organic search is not really free or even available to everybody anymore. For the small-time webmaster or marketer, paid listings in Google may be your only option and that option is quickly becoming too costly for many.

Of course, how Instant Search and Instant Previews play out in the near future is still open to wide speculation. Will searchers even use those added features in their daily searches? Or will users opt–out and go back to a more gentle, less hurried Google? One thing that all of us can be sure of, Google will be constantly rolling out new features and innovations just to make all our lives a little more interesting.

If you go the SEO route you will have to write web content which will rank high in all the search engines. Plus, if you’re into web marketing, that very same content will have to convert into sales or leads in order for you to make a profit. It’s what I like to call my “Double Barrel Web Tactics” and I have been using these simple tactics to earn a full-time income from the net for over 5 or 6 years.

Not that that’s any kind of feat to brag about since countless individuals are doing the same thing and probably doing a much better job at it. But I have picked up a few tricks over the years which have helped me along the way. One of the most important is writing top ranking web pages which convert into sales.

Create SEO Empowered Webpages

First, in order to get those pages to the top of the search engines, especially Google, I follow some simple SEO rules. They can be summed up as such:

– Concentrate all your content around one central keyword phrase for each web page.

– Include this keyword phrase in the Title, Meta Tags, Headline and in the URL.

– Place this keyword phrase and variations of it throughout the page.

– Have a column of related keyword links on each page.

– Have very simple site construction with all links no more than 3 clicks away from the homepage.

– Build valuable one-way links to this page from keyword related sites around the web.

– Use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube… to promote each page.

Choose Your Keyword Battles Carefully

Furthermore, you must use keyword phrases which are competitive for your site. Picking long-tail keywords which have less traffic but still bring in sales, is one way of doing this. Targeting really competitive keywords is rather pointless unless you have endless funds and resources to build links and/or purchase PPC traffic. The average webmaster is better off choosing keyword phrases where he/she knows they can contend and can rank high in the search engines.

One good site which will tell how much competition your chosen keywords will have is Google’s https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. It will also give you some estimate of the amount of traffic each keyword phrase receives each month. All valuable information to help you pick your keyword battles.

Writing Webpages Which Convert

For me this is the most difficult part of earning an online income – writing web copy which converts into a sale or a lead. Keep in mind, you don’t always have to sell something, many companies will pay you 10s of dollars just to supply them with a lead or potential paying customer. I sometimes find this is much easier to do than making an actual sale.

My marketing online tactics are very basic – I give my visitor a strong incentive or reason to purchase from my site. I find using simple discounts, coupons and free trials to be one of the most effective ways to make a sale or capture a lead for the companies and products I am promoting. Giving those online shoppers or customers 10%, 20%, 50% or more OFF will usually convert well. So too is offering bonuses, discounts, and coupons if they purchase from your links. For leads, offering a Free 30 Day Trial works the best.

But don’t ever forget, visitors who use your site also want information about the products or services they’re buying. Giving them clear unbiased information will go a long way in capturing a lead or sale. Providing customer reviews and feedback is another way to boost your conversions. So too are customer testimonials and video reviews.

Another tactic I use is picking keywords which have a high probability of commercial intent and which are more likely to bring in revenue. Just finding those customers and visitors who are in the right mind-set to buy is the key. Targeting certain keywords such as best deals, discounts, coupons… and targeting certain niche markets such as wedding gifts, corporate gifts, holiday gifts… have done very well for me. People are actually searching for a special gift and are ready to purchase.

One handy tool for determining the online commercial intention of your keywords is Microsoft’s Adcenter Labs. It will give you a good starting point for choosing which keywords and niche markets you should target with your web pages.

Marketing online is not some mysterious formula, it is merely a double barrel process of keeping all your SEO ranking factors in order and targeting customers when they’re ready to purchase. You build up your rankings with quality one-way links while offering the resulting traffic valuable information and a good solid reason to purchase from your web site or page. Using special deals, discounts, and coupons will go a long way in boosting your conversion rates. So too, will targeting certain keywords which have great online commercial intention or potential, such as the gift niche markets. Try this simple Dual marketing tactic and watch both your traffic and sales grow.