Archive for June, 2009:
Although FaceBook.com released usernames or vanity URLs for Fan Pages today at 04:00 UTC, they did this morning change the minimal criteria for users to obtain a username for their Fan Pages from 25 users to over Pages with over 100 fans.
We understand that this is part of a staggered approach from FaceBook to ensure that TradeMarks and large brand names get first rights to brand names.
We will keep you updated on when smaller Fan pages will become eligible for their own username.
We have all seen the For Sale/For Rent signs real estate agents place out the front of properties they have on their books. These signs are ineffective in an age of Internet access enabled mobile phones, Internet access availability from almost anywhere.
The typical For Sale sign usually consists of a photo of the agent, the agency name and a phone number and physical contact details of the office. Sometimes there is a web site address to the office web site and some agents might even add a direct link to the property they are selling. Yet these addresses are in no way easy to remember and usually end in a multitude of numbers or require hard to remember reference codes to input to the web site to search for the desired property.
To effectively use the Internet to sell real estate, one shoudl consider that their customers will have Internet access from outside a property and want the information then and now, not after calling a mobile phone to listen to a sales pitch and to wait for a period of time to view the property.
Real Estate people need to re evaluate their web sites by asking if their site is viewable via a mobile device. If not, make it compatible for computers and mobile devices. Then depending on your web site address you may need to consider a smaller and easy to type in a mobile device address, maybe your company initials and .com. Then use human frinedly url’s. I sugest using the street name and number at the end of your organisation url.
Secondly advertise the URL predominately on the sign and make sure all of the relevant information is on the site as well as good quality photos of the inside and outside.
FaceBook users at sign up and from their Friends pages are presented with a service called “Friend Feed” – an option to import their contacts from Gmail, HotMail and various other email and Instant Messenger accounts and services. http://www.facebook.com/find-friends/?ref=sb
Most of us used FriendFeed as an efficient manner to keep in contact with friends and colleagues who were already on FaceBook or to perhaps invite them to join Face Book.
In the past several weeks users may have noticed that their “Friends Suggestion” list increased substantially in size and was often rather accurate for no known reason. Although there has been speculation that FaceBook had kept peoples contacts on their server, FaceBook had never admitted it till now. But now, when a user uses the Friend Feed service a dialogue box appears with the following text:
“We will not store your password after we import your friends’ information.
We may use the email addresses you upload through this importer to help you connect with friends, including using this information to generate Suggestions for you and your contacts on Facebook. If you don’t want us to store this information, visit this page.”
Now users can clear their stored imported contact lists by using the new Face Book tool at http://www.facebook.com/contact_importer/remove_uploads.php
LinkedIn is a professional networking site that consists of 10 million professionals who network with colleagues, seek employment opportunities, hire staff, network with other like minded individuals, potential business partners and potential employees.
LinkedIn is essentially an online Resume that is easily updated and available instantly to potentially the whole world.
Some people question the usefulness of LinkedIn if they already have a job or already own a business. The main advantages are networking, showing that you are authoritive on a topis, employment and business opportunities, learning up to date information about your industry and assisting you to be in the minds of people when opportunities arise.
We have compiled some basic tips to either get started with LinkedIn or to revive and promote your account.
1. Use your LinkedIn address in your email signature, business cards, web site and wehre ever else is applicable.
2. Complete all of your details. If possible update the same day your career or skill set changes.
3. Seek references where possible.
4. Add your photo to your profile.
5. Join groups that are related to your industry or that you can share your skills with. If information or answers in groups is of value to you, you can view the authors profile and consider networking with that person or adding them to your contacts list of experts.
6. Starting your own discussion in a group is a quick and easy way to raise your profile. Ensure your question is thought provoking and not an question that the answer is commonly known or easily found.
7. Subscribe via RSS to profile updates, groups and questions you have posted.
8. Update your status message regularly with professional information. Keep it different than your FaceBook status message.
9. After meetings or conferences, search for the names of your new colleagues and add them to your network. It is important to do this at the early stages of your relationship to better grow confidence and trust.
10. Add Your Blog via the LinkedIn widget. Wether it is your professional or personal blog. This will give insight into who you are and further more into your skill set.
11. Seek Employment consultants in your area and network with them.
12. Dedicate a few minutes each day to reading about changes in your network and look for opportunities to netwrok.
Karaitiana Taiuru
http://www.linkedin.com/ktaiuru
Most properties that are for sale and rent are advertised on the Internet, whether on the real estate agents web site, a Realtors web site or an auction web site. Advertising properties on the web is the most convenient manner to find the dream property and the most effective manner to sort out those potential people who are interested in the property.
More often than not, Real Estate Agents and property investors create an advertisement for a property that they hope will entice potential customers to ring them and meet with them. This defeats the purpose of online advertising and will just waste your time and money as potential customers move on to the next property they are interested in.
To gain the maximum advantage from advertising properties online, the advertiser should:
1. Include inside and outside photos of the house.
2. Use Google Maps to show the location
3. Use Google Street View
4. Give a good description of the property
5. Include email as well as your phone number as a means of contact.
6. Don’t have any hidden surprises such as fees you did not mention on the advert.
Real Estate Agents should also do the following to maintain and gain new relationships and coverage:
7. Use Twitter to send property updates and market trends.
8. Create a Fan Page for your self so that your clients can give feedback and un edited testimonials. Beware, if you are a dishonest Real Estate Agent i would not suggest doing this.
9. Maintain a regular blog with tips and new emerging trends.
10. Utilise online communications more. The telephone is not the only form of communication.
Google is offering businesses the opportunity to get $75 of free advertising on Google sites. The offer is only open to new Google advertising accounts.
To see if the offer is available in your country and for further details, visit the default Google page for your country then follow it with a /stimulus .
For example, New Zealand businesses visit http://www.google.co.nz/stimulus .
To fully make the most of this great opportunity to experiment with online marketing we sugest you use all of the Google tools available to select key words and tips on writing your adverts. We also advise to use Google Analytics on your web site.
Once you have the free advertising running on Google, you will need to proactively manage adverts to ensure you can adjust to changes in behaviour.
FaceBook will release Vanity url’s ie a FaceBook address with your option of a name in it such as http:/www.facebook.com/JohnSmith as opposed to the current system of un memorable names. Release date is Saturday 13th at 4.01pm. Countdown clock here http://www.facebook.com/username/
Users can choose a name for their profile and Fan Pages (If you have 1,000 fans before May 31). For individuals and companies who have common names you should be ready at 4pm to register your names before some one else does. The consequences are significant if you miss your prime name as eventually vanity URL names will become the normal way to find companies and individuals on FaceBook. If you miss your company name then your competitors will be gaining your traffic and visitors.
Your vanity url should be the same as your organiastion domain name to avoid future confusion with your customers.
For individuals you should consider future employment prospects will be able to find you more easily so you should use a name that you will still be happy with in the future.
FaceBook have made names non transferable. This means you get one chance at your vanity url name and removes much of the motivation of cyber squatters to bulk register and resell names at a later date.
FaceBook vanity URL’s are now in line with Bebo, My Space and the many other social networks who already offer vanity URL’s.
Some web companies consist of individuals or teams of people with only one skill set. This skill set is usually web site design. By this we mean individuals or teams who can make a site look visually appealing without any consideration for security, search engine rankings, who visits your site and where/why they leave and sometimes even navigation of your site.
While the look of your site is important, there are also a number of technical considerations to ensure you gain maximum benefits from a web site. There is no point having a nice looking web site if no one can find it on the Internet and you have no idea about how many visitors your site receives.
A web designer should not be responsible for the technical tasks and likewise the technical team should not be responsible for the visual design of your site. There should also be a search engine optimisation/online marketing person in the team.
Typically a web design company will tell you that you must host your web site on their servers for maximum returns. They neglect to inform you that the maximum returns are not for you the customer but for the web design company itself in terms of revenue gathering.
If your design company use a proprietary system that allows you to make updates to your web site, then you will essentially be stuck with your company for ever. Make sure your design company use an open source system that can be moved from one server to another.
An example of the need to move will be if your web design company cease to exist, prices are raised high due to the monopoly or you become unhappy with the customer services provided.
Often Web design companies resell hosting space on behalf of a dedicated web hosting company and usually at a greater price than you could pay directly for the service from the hosting company. If this is the case, be aware that there could be long delays in gaining customer support – if any support at all. Many resellers offer no or very little technical support.
The same is true for your domain name. Many web design companies offer to register your domain name so you do not have to worry about the technical issues. If you can read and write English then there are no technical issues except maybe writing the name of the server where your web site is at. Something like ns3.netmania.co.nz . Reputable hosting companies have this information available on their web site or freely offer the information.
Some companies whom register your domain name will add their contact details to your domain name in the technical, and admin fields. But some will also add their details to the registrant (domain name owner) field. Hence you will not own your company domain name.
To check your .nz domain name visit http://www.dnc.org.nz . If you do not own your own domain name our advise is to talk with the company that registered your domain name first. If you can not solve the issue there, there are solutions at the www.dnc.org.nz web site.
With the current recession we have seen a large increase in small businesses creating an online presence with e-commerce web sites often selling products which would be better suited to having an information web site as opposed to directly selling products online, or at least set up to do so.
A great deal of small business e-commerce web sites are built in a pre packaged system – more often then not it is oscommerce because of its powerful features and simplicity to install and customise.
More often than not, installing such a system such as oscommerce and making it visually appealing is where the web developer stops.
As a customer you should know prior to any work commencing:
- Is your product sellable online or is it better with an information web site
- Does the site comply with local laws
- What “Ecommerce Best Practice” steps have been taken, ie Returns, Payment methods etc
- Will each page have a unique Title ?
- How will each product appear in search engines
- Are the sites links human readable ?
- What are the benefits of the SEO add ons ?
- Advertising strategies if any
- Social Media strategies if any
- How is customer feedback and complaints handled ?
- What directories will your site appear in ?
- What other SEO tasks will be implemented that ensure your site and products will appear in search engines.
- How will you know where your visitors enter and exit your site?
- What analytical software will be used for your site ?
About two weeks ago Microsoft launched their new new search engine called Bing – http://www.bing.com. One the surface it is simple and attractive to look at. It also has some familiar search options that we see in Google. It is still not yet scientifically proven how effective Bing is, nor if it will be a real competitor to Google. We do know that Bing is already taking a sizeable part of the market share away from Yahoo!.
As web site owners and especially if you have an ecommerce site, you need to know where your traffic is comming from to assist your strategy of investment, adverts, Search Engine Optimisation etc. This is usually done with software such as Google Analytics or default software in your CPanel of your web hosting.
Within the popular Google Analytics, Bing will appear in your statistics only as a referring site. We want to share with you this quick fix so that Google Analytics can incorporate traffic from Bing under the Default Search Engines list.
In your code on your site you will need to add this line
pageTracker._addOrganic(“bing”, “q”);.
The Google Analytics page and further details are here. When Google release the completed patch we will notify you and give any tips and instructions that are required.
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