Main Content RSS FeedLatest Entry

Leveraging facebook in 2010

I’m in the audience for January’s Social Media Club (I’m live blogging). While I’m seated around rather amusing people that are snickering and having a good time with the live twitter feed (not that I haven’t been as well. Good lord it’s been hard to focus) I’ve been learning some good information about how to leverage facebook… especially now that facebook has their new algorithm.

As I am sure most of you have seen facebook’s new Live Feed. Basically it allows you to see the most active friends, groups and pages within your own personal feed. It limits it to 200-250ish items… so if you’ve a friend or an item that doesn’t update often they won’t be seen as much in your stream. You can change between Live Feed and News Feed but be warned the Live Feed does not list things chronologically.

The majority of the discussion has been about leveraging facebook for business to consumers. Here are some notes that I’ve taken… though I am hoping to get my hands on the official notes from the evening.

Three great pages to
Facebook – Sephora
Facebook – Mint
Facebook – Grockit

the algorithm doesn’t have a rank, but the post/item has a rank as well.

you want a simple question “yes, no, do you agree with this.” “finish this statement – if i could have bought one thing from 2009 what would it be….” You don’t want to ask people a question that requires people to click through.

you’re competing to get into their newsfeed, not against other companies.

facebook is the post modern email newsletter

if you’re not doing facebook advertisements you should. use the engagement advertisement, not just the one to get you friends

interactions are more important than fan count – and is on its way out.

you want to post less often on facebook than on twitter – only once to twice a day

we think they’re going to focus on the small business. the new yellow pages

facebook is not allowing contests unless it is approved by facebook. you can’t do one on facebook that requires people to upload information. Facebook doesn’t want you to give away material things.

facebook is for branding, not selling. They do better if they get involved in being social.

make sure to use a url tracking site (bit.ly, etc). PLUS if you use the same URL through bit.ly put a + sign at the end of the link and it’ll show you the tracking information on it. You can use the + sign trick on any bit.ly link and it’ll work.

use the @ tag (@username/group/page) and it gives you the ability to identify and reference people in photos, videos and notes.

Recent Entries

It’s Conference Season Here In Phoenix!

This past week was the beginning of conference season here in Phoenix. I feel rather proud being able to say that.

Phoenix conference season.

I’m used to hearing how it’s conference time in California, New York… Chicago… London… and now it’s happening here. In Phoenix. It makes me so excited. It’s been a long time in coming and it’s fabulous to see designers in the industry really taking the lead on creating large events.

Perhaps large marketing conferences will come here, too. Like SES… or SMX… Ah… a girl can dream.

It started off with the first (and hopefully not last) Phoenix Design Week that ended last night – posts to come soon. It was a huge success and a great kick off to the conference season. Within the coming months there is TEDx Phoenix, Wordcamp, Podcamp, Geekweek, Ignite Phoenix 5 and more.

seopenguin is attending a lot of the conferences in the next few months and look forward to blogging/live blogging them. Perhaps I’ll see some of you there.

Sunnyslope Art Walk and On The Wall Film Fest!

More than 125 local artists and musicians will be sharing their talent at the 4th Sunnyslope Art Walk on Saturday, October 10, from 5 – 9 p.m. Artists and musicians will be set up in various parking lots along Central Avenue between Dunlap and the Canal. Click here for a map.

Art ranges from the eclectic (like the popular Sock Zombies and sci-fi inspired sculpture) to the modern (like architectural furniture) and fine art (like painting and photography)

Musicians include: Jimmy Peyton’s Midnite Blues, Los Compadres Jazz, Insinceros, Todd Miller, Surf Duo, Steelin’ the Night Away, Decades Too Late, Jaleo, Honey Pistol and more!

Immediately following the Art Walk, head over to 8801 for the first ever “On the Wall” Film Festival, a truly non-sanctioned film for film sake event… and it’s projected on a wall (the wall at 8801 N. Central Avenue)! While the art walk is a free event, admission to the film festival is a $2.50 donation. Proceeds benefit myxMedia and Studio303. Both are nonprofit arts and education organizations. Local student filmmakers will exhibit a variety of shorts. These films are unrated.

via Sunnyslope W.I.N.S Community

45 Minutes.

In five months I’ll be five.

Well, a five year old Internet Marketer. I’ve been a part of the internet movement for a lot longer; I’ve been coding and designing since before table layouts were popular, when web-rings were still all-the-rage and I remember using Yahoo! as my main search engine because Google was still infant trying to make it’s way in the world.

Which, it was slowly doing as it wormed its way through an underground of users, collecting more and more sites for it’s search engine directory. Yahoo! was still the predominate search engine; they had already acquired AltaVista and were using them to help bolster the search index they’d already created. There was a search engine battle coming, the mass of people just didn’t realize it would be a newcomer that would emerge victorious.

At the time I was addicted to design. I drew layouts in history class and code on my math homework (it was math, honest!) I attended a design college, geeking out over the latest design trend and feeling as if I and my contemporaries would revolutionize the face of web design.

As luck would have it I attended as guest speaker event where Search Engine Marketing was covered. It was a 45 minute class and rather rudimentary. It was 2004, Yahoo! was it’s own search engine again after having taking back it’s search engine results from Google. MSN was using Yahoo! as its search results provider and was eying Google, who was beginning to monopolize the industry. Directories were heavily utilized as were doorway page and keyword spamming; Ask Jeeves walked on scene and local search came into town. That was just the tip of the iceberg. Video search/media search and desktop search came out. In March an event that would change the face of searching rolled out: Personalized Search.

45 minutes changed my life, it would just take another four months before I realized it.

I graduated and started in a web design company within weeks: January 2, 2005 actually. I had no problems with designing and coding, still enamored with the lofty goal of design revolution. All I wanted to do was make the web a prettier place. A client had heard about this up-and-coming tactic called Search Engine Optimization. Seizing the opportunity was easier than I thought.

“Does anyone here know anything about something called SEO?”

I contemplated my reply. I had really only had 45 minutes worth of knowledge, something I mulled over in my head for about 5 seconds before shyly raising my hand, “Yes, I know what SEO is.”

I suppose the rest they say is history.

search results^3

a few days ago i posted a question in the google section of cr8asite forums regarding a client and a key term.

this client has PPC and for a while had been asking why they’re not showing up in the yellow sponsored box. for a few months this was a complete mystery to me and have expressed that to this client on a few occasions. Read More..

open book

i’m not a blogger, that much is probably painfully obvious. and if the lack of blogging skills doesn’t give it away my lack of good grammar will. so, welcome to my mash of thoughts i’ve been carrying around for awhile.

seopenguin has been around since before i went to SES NY with the hopes that i would write up reviews and post comments about the “classes” i sat in on and about the people i met, the things i did.

i had put those up, and then in a move i lost the posts.

to be honest that’s ok. Read More..