Enough said, here is what apparently took place in the beginning of this year:

On January 21, 2011 the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office entered into a Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction with Reply! Inc., Case no.: C11-00208.

Without any admission of wrong doing the injunction applies to Reply! Inc., its agents, employees, officers, managers, representatives, successors, and assigns when acting on behalf of defendant.

Reply! Inc. is hereby permanently enjoined and restrained from directly or indirectly doing the following during telephone solicitations of real estate agents for the sale of real estate leads (Leads).

a. Representing that use of Leads may result in an average or anticipated close rate, unless Defendant is able to produce data based on the experience of customers who have purchased Leads from Defendant supporting any such representation.

b. Representing that Defendant’s lead service can be cancelled at any time unless defendant also discloses: that written notice of cancellation is required; the period of time that will elapse before the cancellation is effective; and that, until the effective date of the cancellation, the real estate agent will continue to receive leads and be billed for such leads.

c. Representing that real estate agent will not be charged for invalid Leads or will receive a credit for invalid leads, unless Defendant also discloses the time limit within the request for credit must be received;

d. Representing that credit will be given for invalid Leads, unless Defendant also discloses that no credit will be given as long as the name and telephone number provided with the Lead are valid, even if the Lead does not respond to the real estate agent or does not want to be contact.

e. Representing that Leads are “valid”, “validated”, “good”, “screened”, “qualified”, “verified”, or words to that effect, unless Defendant discloses: (1) the validation, screening, qualification, verification or other such process is automated and as a result some Leads will have invalid names or telephone numbers, (2) even for such invalid Leads, the real estate agent must make a request for credit within the time limit for such request and in accordance with company policy, (3) Leads are not screened for credit worthiness; and (4) some Leads may not respond to the real estate agent or want to buy or sell real estate.

f. Representing that any Lead will actually be interested in buying or selling real estate, unless defendant also discloses that Leads are generated through Defendant’s websites and affiliated websites, and consist of people who are looking online for real estate information.

g. Representing that any leads consist of people who are seeking a realtor or expect to or who expect to be contacted by a realtor, unless Defendant also discloses that: a Lead is created when a consumer completes and submits a form on the Internet requesting real estate information; including home valuations, and provides a phone number at which they can be reached; and (2) Defendant does not guarantee that the consumer will actually be interested in buying or selling real estate or that the agent will make contact with the Lead.

h. Representing that the real estate agent may accept or reject Leads.

Reply! Inc. shall pay civil penalties in the amount of $40,000.00 and investigative cost related to this matter in the amount of $30,000.

Happy, healthy and prosperous 2011 everyone!

Meanwhile the company has announce both on their official blog as well as via Twitter their intention to open new office in Los Angeles:

LeapFish.com announces opening of a new office in Los Ageles on Twitter

According to a blog post at http://blog.leapfish.com/ that announces the move, the company is hiring Inside Sales Professionals, Client Services Professionals and Search Marketing (SEM) Professionals.

Am I the only one who finds it strange that an Internet company would move away from Silicon Valley? Evidently I am not the only one. Even former LeapFish.com telemarketers appear to be surprised:

Back in San Francisco area the trouble for LeapFish is far from over. There is one more ongoing lawsuit in California Northern District Court- Ellis v. DotNext Inc. Can that be a reason why LeapFish.com is moving to Los Angeles?

Of course there might be some benefits from being near Hollywood celebrities. A tweet by Ashton Kutcher or Ellen DeGeneres can send millions of visitors to LeapFish. Easier said than done? Perhaps. Some Hollywood celebrities have already been heavily criticized for promoting companies that engage in questionable practices, which may make other celebrities more cautious.

No matter how you look at it, the future (if there is any) of LeapFish.com is still clouded in question.

Disclosure, everything written above is exclusively my personal opinion.

I am always fascinated by a good website but more so by its founder(s). Every time I visit one, I immediately start to research who was behind it. So was the case with BiggerPockets a few years back. As soon as I visited the website for the first time I wanted to know who was behind it. It is extremely inspiring to learn from people like Josh Dorkin, the founder of BiggerPockets.com.

Josh started the the website in 2004 and today BiggerPockets is an extremely vibrant community of real estate investors with over 60,000 active members.

If you are like me, wondering why did Josh start such a website, watch the video bellow:

In addition to being a great learning place for beginner investors BiggerPockets features hundreds investment properties.

And here is another short video in which Josh tells you how you can benefit from being a part of BiggerPockets- the community of real estate investors:

I am not sure if I ever venture into real estate investing myself. If I do, BiggerPockets will be the first place I will turn to and not the “real-estate-“gurus”-who-sell-their-books-on-TV”. BiggerPockets is a community of real investors many of whom are more experienced and more successful that any given “guru” you see selling their books on TV.

I understand that Josh is planing to make plenty of new videos for BiggerPockets- so I might be posting few of those in the future.

Now go and explore this wonderful resource of real estate investing!

If you have no time to read the eBay listing, here is a short run down of things:

• Go-Beyon-MLS.com is being auctioned on as is basis.
• In addition to the website (both domain name and content and control over RSS subscriptions) the winning bidder will also assume control of Twitter Account as Facebook Fan Page (consider it as a free added bonus) associated with this website as neither will be of any use to me once the website sells.

I make this post sticky and will update it as the auction progresses and I find that some important questions should be answered and clarifications made.

I will also use this post to make a daily note about this auction, just like the one bellow:

Firday, October 15, 2010 minutes after listing went live: There is barely any activity as far as views/watchers are concerned only 2 views and you guessed it – 0 watchers. Hopefully things will change soon.

Here is what it said:

just so you know, Ms. Slader is the only employee left at Dotnext. Everyone was let go yesterday

Note to new readers: Dotnext Inc is a parent company of LeapFish.

The Contra Costa Time in fact confirms that Dotnext has been “downsizing” while quoting the CEO of the company:

….”The company has downsized,” said Ben Behrouzi, a Danville resident who is founder and principal executive at DotNext….
…At its peak a few months ago, DotNext had about 100 workers. Now it has about 15, Behrouzi estimated. Numerous employees were let go this week…

The real reason for downsizing and possible bankruptcy maybe directly related to a lawsuit…

Cortellessa vs Dotnext Inc

For the sake of brevity(you can find all the documents of this case on Alameda County Superior Court’s Website), I will only provide copies some documents. Bellow is the copy of the original complaint:
Cortellessa vs Dotnext

According to court’s documents Ms. Cortellessa and the class action members in the above lawsuit were awarded a settlement of $85,000:
Cortellessa vs Dotnext – Judgement
However recently filed “Notice of Defendants’ Failure to Deposit Settlement Payment with Settlement Administrator Filed” says it all – Dotnext/LeapFish failed to pay:
Cortellessa vs Dotnext – Failure to Deposit Settlement Payment

A “Civil Order of Examination (Order) Issued” suggest that Dotnext Inc may have some explaining to do about inability to pay the settlement:
Cortellessa vs Dotnext – Civil Order of Examination

The above document which was filed on August 3, 2010 states that the Defendant Dotnext/LeapFish is considering “bankruptcy or other form of liquidation of assets”(to see the full size of the image bellow just click on it):

In the August 12, 2010 article by George Avalos of Contra Costa Times, CEO of Dotnext/Leapfish continues to deny any rumors about possible bankruptcy:

“We’re not filing for bankruptcy,” Behrouzi said. “We haven’t even considered filing for it.”

No matter what the end result of this ongoing lawsuit may be, those familiar with the story of LeapFish may ask what happened to the $10M LeapFish allegedly raised in the pre-launch phase? Of course the bigger question is whether or not LeapFish will be able to bounce back and recover from this “unpleasant setback”?

Disclosure: The above post is my personal opinion and does not represent official position on the issue of any of my clients or my business partners. Comments (if any) bellow do not represent my opinion nor do they represent position on this topic of my clients and business partners.

Related Posts Elsewhere:
Cuil No Longer – Leapfish To Deadpool Next? – Andy Beard predicts LeapFish heading straight into the deadpool.
Leapfish To Deadpool Next? – the one and only Lord Matt agrees with Andy’s prediction on his fantastic website.

Ms. Slader, who according to her several online profiles is an executive assistant of Dontnext, Inc. as well as company called LeapFish.com wrote the following Tweet:

I rarely challenge people about what they say on twitter, unless their profile clearly states association with a particular company or institution.

Here is what Ms. Slader’s profile says as of the writing of this article:

Therefore my challenge to Ms. Slader was purely based on her representing a particular company, otherwise Ms. Slader would have never learned of my existence:

Ms. Slader took my comment as a threat:

While overlooking the vicious and very personal attack on my hair style (see my twitter profile picture to see what I am talking about) I would like to clarify one thing, should Ms. Slader cared enough to read this post. My tweet was not to threaten or scare anyone. What I really hoped for, in fact, was that Ms. Slader would get the hint and delete that hasty tweet, before it added more embarrassment to LeapFish’s already struggling reputation.

I also believe that Ms. Slader did not come to a conclusion that “bloggers are disgusting & twisted” on her own, but rather was influenced by her boss(es) or coworkers. Perhaps while taking notes during one of company executives meetings? Therefore it makes more difficult to explain her vicious and personal attack based on disliking my “fictional haircut”, a courtesy of YearBookYourself.com. I only wish I had such a beautiful set of hair!!!

The moral of the story??? Do you know if your secretary is active on Twitter or Facebook? Do you know what is she/he saying? Does it make your company look bad? Should you ask her/him to make their tweets private and hidden from the outside world???

In my opinion, Ms. Slader would be better off calling out, Matt Brown, Robin Wauters, Jolie O’Dell, Trace Richardson, Marshall Kirkpatrick and few others rather than making a “blanket” statements directed towards bloggers in general. Could it be that Ms. Slader is not aware of the fact that LeapFish.com awarded numbers of bloggers with Wiis, personal computers, iPads and plans to award $50,000 in cash in exchange for “good” publicity?

Disclosure: The above post is my personal opinion. No one paid or offered me any gifts to write the above posts.I believe Ms. Slader is good and hardworking individual. I believe Ms. Slader’s opinion of bloggers may have been influenced by others, perhaps even her boss(es). It is possible Ms. Slader made the above statements against her own will.

Exposing this website to as many potential buyers as possible may not be as easy as initially envisioned. Part of me sincerely hope that the future owner of this website will be one of the regular readers or subscribers. I understand, however that my hope may not realize. Meanwhile two website come to mind where I can sell this blog: eBay and Flippa.com. I am still uncertain which one to use.

Selling Website or Blog on eBay
Being the King of online auctions it is no wonder eBay attracts thousands of sellers who try to sell website or blog. Yesterday (July 6, 2010) for example 1,591 auctions ended in the category “Internet Businesses & Websites“. The bad news, however, is that only about 120 the those listings actually sold. Two highest auctions ended in $8,100.00 and $13,990.00 – one of these buyers did not get a good deal in my opinion. While eBay certainly can expose you “website or blog for sale” to a larger “audience”, there is good chance you may end up selling you website to some one with very little experience as far as websites and Internet business are concerned. This is certainly not my Intention. I do not want to sell this blog for more than it’s true value is. I was surprised however to see so many auctions ending not being sold for as little as $0.99- surely the domain name along should be worth more than that.

Selling Website or Blog on Flippa.com
Flippa.com is a relatively new website and unlike eBay is exclusively dedicated to buying and selling websites.
It of course attracts completely different kind of buyers and sellers – both buyers and sellers on Flippa.com know what they are doing. It appears that half of the websites listed at Flippa.com end up being sold. Take for example the listing from yesterday, July 6, 2010, out of 89 ended auctions 47 were sold. Even though Flippa.com has a slightly higher listing fee ($19+5% success fee)- it offers more flexibility when the length of the auction is concerned. If you list your website or domain at Flippa.com as public auction you can have it active up to 30 days and up to 6 months if you list your website as a “private sale”.

Since I have never sold a website or domain before, I created following poll to find out if you prefere Flippa over eBay:

As of today, I am leaning towards Flippa.com….

I was trying to find, without any success, a business using this new “advertising” opportunity with Google. Maybe because it is new.

Should you jump on using this new “yellow tagging” advertising? It all depends. If your listing is already getting good results, above described yellow tag can draw more eye-balls to your listing. The good news is that you can give it a try for one month to see how well will it work for your business.

Have you seen these “yellow tags” around yet?

UPDATE, June 25, 2010: Apparently Google has been rolling out tags from city to city since April 20, 2010. I understand, however, that at this time not every one has this option in their Google Places Accout… yet.

When I showed this to my wife, I told her that I am willing to give my car to any one who might be willing to make this offer. She said she would give hers as well. So if you decide to make this offer you will receive a bonus, two sedans in “as is” condition!

Dane Carlson’s widget estimates the worth of this blog at about $25,000.

Dane Carlson’s blog value estimator has been around for some time now.

I remember coming across this widget about 4 years ago and as many other bloggers would check it out to satisfy my ego and dream of the time my websites would make me filthy-rich.

Not sure how correct this estimation is, I would however seriously consider an offer of this amount.

But my guts are telling me that when I list this website for sale and bids will not likely to reach this amount. Only time will show.

No cars as a bonus with will be given to any one who offers this amount, sorry.

Good folks at Websitevaluecalculator.com think this blog is worth only $103?

Come on guys, give me a break! Really???

Considering the yearly cost of domain, plus the web hosting costs your guesstimate is laughable at best. I do want to recover some of that.

Besides if I made the estimate considering ad/affiliate revenue along it would be worth much more than that.

In fact, I believe that the link from this post to your not so cool website value “guesstimator” is probably worth more than that!

Seriously guys, give me a brake.

Initially I wanted to comment on every estimate in this post, however most of these estimators rely on a third part tools and are not always accurate. Most of them are designed for no other purpose than “link-bait”. Neither would I recommend that you would use these tools if you ever decide to sell your blog or website.

I am sure you can find all the tools I mentioned so far and the ones bellow amusing and entertaining. The truth is I will rely on none of them to determine the amount I think this blog is worth.

If you are interested in purchasing this blog, or just be a spectator of an interesting auction (most likely via eBay) you should do one of the following: subscribe to this blog, follow this blog on Twitter or become fan on Facebook.

Bellow are some other guesstimates of this blog’s worth:

URLAppraisal.net guesstimates Go Beyond MLS worth at $17,110.83:

$17,110.83

How Much is Your Site Worth?

Websiteoutlook.com guesstimates the worth of Go Beyond MLS at $14439.40:

My site is worth $14439.4.
How much is yours worth?

DNScoop.com guesstimates the worth of Go Beyond MLS at $3,450:

My Site is worth
$3,450

How much is
your site worth?

Sitevaluecalculator.com guesstimates the worth of Go Beyond MLS at $3,520:

Site Value
Calculator

Values this site at
$3,520

Ninjawebappraise.com guesstimates the worth of Go Beyond MLS at $3,582:

My site is worth $3,582.
How much is yours worth?

Yourwebsitevalue.com guesstimates the worth of Go Beyond MLS at $6,316:

Sootle.com guesstimates the worth of Go Beyond MLS at $36,719:

This website is worth
What is your website worth?

Valuemyweb.com guesstimates the worth of Go Beyond MLS at $1,962:

$1,962

Website Calculator

I am going to start with USP – Unique Selling Point. Now if you know even 1% of what you need to succeed online this should be like teaching grandmother how to suck eggs. However, we all, even me, need to be reminded of the basics.

What is it about the real estate (or necklaces, watches, computer cases or greeting cards) that you are promoting that no one else offers? Why would Mr Joe Public choose you over the other six or seven thousand people in the country offering the same or similar services?

If you don’t know the answer to this question then your business in in trouble.

Let me illustrate this with a story of real estate in the UK. In a small corner of the UK there are three towns. The area they are in has about 120,000 people in it. One real estate agency that has been doing very well opened a branch less than five miles away in a second of the towns. It did not do very well.

Why?

Well, for starters they did not advertise the business but also they offered the same commission rate as everyone else. They did offer  a slightly more comprehensive service than many competitors but without something exciting to cause word of this service to be spread the slightly better service was a well kept secret.

So what did they do?

They dropped the commission rate to make it the lowest in the town, they started to offer not just a better set of reports but a guarantee of specific actions at no cost if the property fails to sell within a time period,. They did not tie people into an exclusive contract and they offered free professional photo shoots. All that in a down turn economy.

What they did was change the USP so no the question is not why would Joe Public use this agency but why would Joe Public want to use any other agency.

When the economy is grey then a USP that is a shade of grey different tot he next guys does not stand out.

What will you offer to make your services stand out?

It does not need to be the lowest price (although if you can afford to compete like that good luck to you). Offer the customer more bang for his or her buck and suddenly you have a reason to be chosen.

Stand out. Go further. Be seen.

The PRLog review by Janet Meiners Thaeler inspired me to take another look at their services. But today I would like to list a few benefits along with drawbacks of my own about using PRLog.

The Benefits:

It’s Free
To submit a press release to PRLog does not cost you a penny. In today’s economy it’s a plus I suppose.

Your Press Releases at PRLog go live with a click of the button.
I have used the PRLog for 5 press releases so far- all of them went live right after I clicked the “publish” button. This can be useful if you need to get your news out fast and do not have time to wait through the approval process other website have in place.

PRLog is ranking well in Google and their traffic is on the rise.
I have noticed that all of my press release were crawled by Google within minutes of them going live. One of the press releases has a Google Page rank of 3 while four other press releases have page rank of 2. According to Alexa PRLog’s traffic has been rising steadily over the last several months and according to Compete they are averaging about 1 million visitors each month.

The Drawbacks

Poor click through to your website.
Press releases at PRLog seem to get more views as the “age” – considering that one of the goals of a press release is to “announce” news, it is somewhat backward. Even as the views of your press releases increase I also find that click through to your websites do not.

No control over the anchor text in your links.
When publishing a press release at PRLog, your links are just converted to a clickable URLs. Considering the possible SEO value you maybe able to get from using PRLog, the ability to have control anchor text should be considered by PRLog developers.

PRLog press releases do not get republished on other sites as much as one would wish…
In comparison to other similar websites, press releases from PRLog do not appear to draw much attention from publishers and webmasters. EzineArticles.com will get you better results as far as this goes.

To conclude I wish to say that PRLog has come a long way. If your advertising budget does not allow you to purchase press release services, PRLog should be considered as an option- you can’t beat the free price tag. However you should not expect great results on a single press release at PRLog.

Joe Ferrara

According to Jay’s post, Joe was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor and is currently in an Intensive Care Unit in a New York hospital.

I have never met Joe in person. Joe however left a lasting impression on me during the few phone conversations we have had in the past.

My wife and I wish Joe a speedy recovery. If you can help Joe and his family with medical bills make sure to click the button bellow – Jay Thompson is coordinating the donation fund for Joe.

Make sure to grab the following code to post the donation button on your website:

Matt Brown

Before we set off on our voyage of discovery today I want to give you a bit of background as to why I am writing this article. I have found myself of late being adviser to a lot of people setting up facebook pages for lots of different reasons. Rather than repeat what I have to say ten times I am going to try and summarize it. Where possible I am going to use the Go Beyond MLS page as an illustration.

Now I should also point out that I am not a guru at this sort of thing but a really enthusiastic geek. With that in mind let us look at setting up pages.

What is a page?

A page is a blog.

Don’t look at me like that a page is basically a cross between twitter and wordpress. For plugins you have applications and instead of tweets you have posts with attachments.

All the basics of blogging apply to your page. We will talk about this in a moment. First some basics to make sure we have not missed anything.

Making the page

Most of you that read this article will know how to make a page already but for those that don’t this is the quick version.

1. Go to a page (the Go Beyond MLS Page is good).

2. At the bottom of the left hand column you will see a link that says “Create a Page for My Business” (this link leads tot he same page).

3. Click it, fill out the details and there you are a page. It has no fans (not even you) and is ready for customisation.

Getting the basics in place

There are some things that a page needs before you even make yourself a fan of it. These are simple that it is easy to overlook them.

1. Upload a picture. In fact if you got as far as making the page and did not have the perfect logo then you need to stop whatever you are doing and get one. Now.

Your picture is your only branding that you get. Everything else looks exactly as facebook wants it to look.

A good image can be as tall as you like but is limited in width. Take a look at the Lord Matt fan page (and become a fan perhaps). You will see that it has a customised image that fills down the page and adds my character to the page. I also get to make the public speaker and blogger points boldly while getting two pictures of me on the one space.

If you do not have the skills to make such an image then a photograph might do. Just remember whatever you use had better be yours to use.

2. Put something short and snappy in the about box.

Treat this like the most important tweet you will ever send. I like to end with a call to action (suggest to friends).

3. Find something worthwhile to say for all the fields under the info tab.

If the fields on the info tab are very much not what you need and do not fit in the slightest then you are not to late to delete the page and try picking a better category. Make up your mind now because it’s the work of ten minutes to change things with no loss if you change them now.

Okay assuming that you stick with your current settings write that “about” section and make sure you make it good.

You have around 100 to 300 words before people have to click to see more so just like blogging you must capture people’s interest within as few lines as possible and then keep it. If it takes days to get the “about” perfect then that is what it takes.

4. Consider making the about tab the default landing page because your wall is not going to be very interesting to start with.

There are more advanced things you can do like adding new tabs that people land on but for now let us just stick with the info tab.

To make it the default landing page you are going to have to click “Edit Page” which is found just under the image you set a while back. Get in there and make some changes.

5. Consider making the default for the wall both fan and page so that it is as much like a basic facebook profile as possible.

You can do this when looking at the page proper.

Still not ready, whatever you might think

It is still not time to be a fan of your own page. The basics are done (more or less) but now you need to do something so fundamentally simple that you could actually miss it entirely.

You need, and I do mean need, to make one of the best status updates you have ever written. You need this because as soon as you are a fan it is possible people you know might come and visit the page. Becoming the first fan is the first motion that starts the door opening and you do not want to invite people to the party before the catering is planned.

Only then are you free to fan the page.

How to get notifications when someone comments on your page

There are only two ways to get a notification of something getting a comment (that I know of) on a page.

1. You have to like the something in question – press that like button and move on.
2. You have to comment on the something and (I think) not be an admin.

A word of warning to page owners with many posts. If you go “like” made you will spam the hell out of your own wall and devalue it. Also if you are the only one carrying out actions on the page it will look spammy if you went and liked everything. No one likes everything. Don’t do it.

If you can get a friend or two that you trust to co-admin the page with you then you can carve the likes up between you but remember that none of you can comment as you on the page once you are an admin. So you might like to get your closest friends to poke you when there is something to look at.

Honestly though you should be going to your own page most days anyway…

Your page is a blog so write on it

Your facebook page is a blog. So like a blog you need to write on it. Daily.

You want to see regular updates. Links, videos, comments, forum posts (that’s a whole other topic), pictures and all the other stuff that walls can have and it needs to happen organically – a little at a time.

I’ll talk about how you can automate a few tasks at another time and place but before you can understand what tasks can be trusted to a computer you need to understand the tasks. Most of them can only be done by you.

Now that we are one!

Now that you have your first fan (you) it is time to get more. This is how.

1. Add value. Make it worth while to be a fan.
2. Invite all your friends. Twice if need be.
3. Link tot he page on your blog or website.
4. Do not stop with the valuable updates.

Getting fans is a slow and organic process but by removing reasons not to fan your page you help things move along well.

I’ll be talking about this and other topics soon.

Now I know full well that meta tags are not exactly ground breaking for SEO but when it comes to social linking several tags can be quite important. Specifically the meta description tag. When posting a link in facebook the meta description is the first source of content for describing the link.

Ugly facebook link

I first noticed this when working on my Face Link tool which was created to make facebook link links for blogs. Here is an example of a good looking link to my blog. You can see that the tool was able to get a title and a description

The fantastic site of Lord Matt

The realm of Lord Matt – Lord of vast imaginary tracts of hyperspace.

Generated by Face Link Tool with thumbnail by BitPixels

Beyond making my little applications work the meta part of a web page also impacts of the quality of your search engine results listing. The description being used most often as the text that goes with the search result.

As such in a competitive market not using a description tag is a fatal mistake that your competitors will take advantage of.

So the result is not just that pretty much all blogger blogs produce rubbish looking links in facebook but that they have a significant disadvantage when the going gets tough. After searching for a while I have concluded that there is not really a decent solution to this aside from putting Google off with duplicate description and keywords.

In short blogger.com is not, in my opinion, suited to the world of web 2.0 nor business marketing.

In short, I confused them (Facebook Apps and Facebook Pages). However, after creating a Facebook page for Chocolate Belles, a business I have been advising about internet marketing over the past two years, I found a new appreciation of Facebook Pages and how useful can it be for any business. But I have to leave it at this, sine Matt plans to share more useful tips about Facebook and all it has to offer to help you with you online marketing efforts.

In the meanwhile if you do not see your picture in the widget bellow, chances are you not yet the fan of Go Beyond MLS on Facebook, please join us and don’t be shy to interact with us on Facebook.

What I am going to do int his first article is simply look at the Facebook fan page for this website and use it to explore Facebook pages in general and what they can do for your blog (regardless of niche).

Vlad tells me that apart from setting up the page he has not actually done very much with it least of all tell anyone about it.

This, for this article’s purposes, is fantastic! It means that we can actively measure what I am about to have said (keep on reading or you might miss it) and watch what happens as we implement the theory. Over the next few months I’ll revisit the topic of Facebook and representing your blog therein reporting on our efforts to go beyond just having a page and to actually getting traffic from it.

As I write there are 3 fans. In three months let us see if we can get over 100.

The page as it is

Go Beyond Facebook Page

In other words we have settles down to making Facebook a very expensive feed reader. That’s fine but it’s not exciting enough to get the average Facebook user to do much by way of interaction.

According to something I was reading (somewhere) the average Facebook user fans two pages a month. That means to see growth in the page’s fan base some work is going to be needed.

Then the page must add value to the user’s day and if that was not enough it must actually be interactive enough to get enough interaction to show up in the news feed of the fans who have added it.

Facebook promotion is no walk in the park. Keep reading for an insight into using pages.

Go beyond what is missing!

The first thing that most people are going to say is missing is the fans. Look for yourself. (When I wrote this there were three of us)

Yet this is not what is missing but a metric that we are heading in the right direction to attract people.

What is missing is the variety of media that can be found on any page in Facebook.

Pictures

This is a tough one for a blog. Many blogs are of non visual topics and yet people are going to want to see that the blog has something of a gallery. Pictures break the page up and give the senses a change of pace.

So what can a blogger show pictures of?

Well for starters there is the writer or writers of the blog. Assuming that your names are known then some images of you serve to help the fan connect with you on a deeper level.

If images of oneself are not enough then there are diagrams. A well thought out diagram illustrating some key point from you recent blogging allows Facebook users to see that they are getting exclusive content.

Product shots – fans in your t-shirts. If you produce a physical product then this is an ideal space to allow fans to show themselves off with their newly purchased product. Mum’s, sisters and close friends might also agree to get the ball rolling.

Status updates

The Facebook page is like your personal Facebook wall and has the opportunity for you to speak with the voice of your blog. Give your fans something to ponder or shout out to a fan that has submitted some particularly interesting comments.

Let the Facebook users know that the page has a life that goes beyond publishing the blog feed.

Videos and links

Any article, youtube video or podcast by someone interesting from in or near your niche could be worth sharing on your page. The concept of linking out, adding value and being the resource for others that drives blogging applies here too.

Furthermore a good resource can be sued to connect with your Facebook friends and promote your page to them in a not-at-all aggressive way. Posts of all forms of link have a SHARE button which will post the link to your page and say “from NameOfYourPage” which gives you a little exposure and, so long as it is interesting, enhances your social capital as an interesting person.

Go Beyond what is expected

One thing that you will find about pages is that they have very little opportunity for energy saving automation, branding or free text. However with a little inventiveness you can get quite a lot out of them.

Take as my first example a little shameless self promotion: My very own fan page.

The image below is a screen shot of that page.

Matt's Facebook Page

You might notice that the left hand side is almost all customized. This is because there is no limit on relative height for your profile image. Use this space to get the most out of the branding and impact space of your page.

In my case I made sure there were images of me that I could use to get an attractive thumbnail which you can see is a picture of a poster of me getting some attention from the lovely ladies (yes it is a genuine fake).

A little planning and you can maximize your impact buy controlling the image dimensions.

Additionally you might notice int his screen shot that there is a visual variety in the posts themselves. This happens to be because I posted a largish number of links recently and have yet to write a new blog post.

Talking of blog posts when-ever I write a blog post I know that my Facebook page (and twitter account) will be updated to. To do this I use NetWorkedBlogs which is a valuable application for Facebook using bloggers. To get the most out of it it is vital to make sure that 80% or more of your blog posts have an image in them that the NEtWorkedBlogs app can use. Keep the images varied and the page “wall” will look interesting.

You can also get added feedback onto your page if the NetWorkedBlogs application posts to other locations (like your personal wall or another page). This is because a like or a comment in any location is a like or a comment on all copies of the post. This too makes your page look interesting.

Going beyond the theory: The game plan

This is the game plan for the page over the next few weeks and months in roughly the order they will be carried out.

1. A taller image.

2. NetWorkedBlogs doing it’s thing.

3. Status updates, links and videos.

4. Invite fans.

Once this minor tweak is fully in place I shall revisit the topic and look at what else can be done to use Facebook to engage with potential readers and promote your blog. The results we are looking for as a result of good promotion of the Facebook page are:

1. More fans

2. More fan interaction

3. Traffic to the blog

Final thoughts

So far we have not looked at methods of getting from three fans to one hundred. However it is vital to get the foundations right or the rest will not stand up too well.

Have you made a fan page yet? What was it like and did many people “fan” it?

With the arrival of Google Buzz, I began to question whether or not I should continue to concentrate on Twitter. I hope I am not the only one. Two days ago Twitter decided to intruduce even more “nofollow” attributes this time to their internal linking structure. I understood (but did not agree) when they introduced the first round of nofollow attributes to their links, I guess as young startup you needed to do what you needed to do.

So today I have replaced the Tweetmeme button (courtesy of Tweetmeme ) with new and shiny Google Buzz button (courtesy of Hameedullah Khan). The Tweetmeme button was moved to the button of each post. This is just a symbolic gesture of my personal dissatisfaction of the way Twitter is “innovating”, I have nothing but love for Tweetmeme.

Twitter has bigger issues to deal with….

For Twitter trying to manipulating the flow of the Google juice at this stage of the game is really childish, and if that is the reason for the latest change I just feel sorry for Twitter. Really guys, is this the best you’ve got? Now if the recent change was made as a further attempt to eliminate spam my question is the same, is this the best you’ve got? There are ways to eliminate spam without punishing your users.

There is also another factor, and I maybe completely wrong about it… I appears to me that many of my online are starving for a more meaningful way to keep the conversation going (which in my opinion is impossible to have on Twitter). So if you compare Twitter and Google Buzz from that perspective, Google Buzz wins hands down, and if you thought Google Buzz is no threat to Twitter you should really think again.

Now back to the new and shiny Google Buzz button- you need to use your GMail/Google Reader to interact with it. You can also follow Go Beyond MLS on Google.

While the above numbers are not something to brag about, I still was surprised to learn that there were attempts to view this blog on mobile devices.

I am sure that the experience of the above users was not the best one. Navigating this blog from a mobile device has probably proven to be a complete nightmare… Until a few days ago that is.

If I have implemented changes correctly, this blog is now optimized for mobile browsing and users should see it in manner shower in the picture to your right. How did I do it? Simple. I used a plugin called WPTouch (developed by Dale Mugford & Duane Storey of BraveNewCode). You can also download WPTouch at WordPress plugin repository.

The reason I decided to go with WPTouch is that it offers easy way to customize the feel and look of the “mobile version” of your WordPress, if you like to keep the color scheme that resembles your website for example. Currently the plugin allows you to customize colors of title, header, sub-header and links. I wish however the developers would also allowed changing the background image/color right from the plugin’s dashboard:

The plugin also offers an easy implementation of AdSense mobile ads. Just enter your AdSnese publisher ID and your AdSense channel and you all set:

Your AdSense ads will be published on every “single post” of the “mobile” version of your website:

WPTouch is the most advanced way to optimize your WordPress for mobile phone users and visitors that I have seen so far. It does not seem to conflict with any of the other plugins I use on this blog. The developers, however, included a list of plugins that are not supported and may not work well with WPTouch- you can see that list in the plugin’s dashboard.

A special thanks goes to Zac Johnson for introducing me to WPTouch.