Now Facebook has also made it even easier to track and distribute this information, all with the push of a button. Known as Facebook Share, this tool quickly allows users to share content and measure how many people are reading the links. With a few lines of code, you can get the Facebook Share button as a widget on your website. The live counter keeps track of how often the URL is opened and sent to other Facebook users. It also gives you a few other key features, such as how many people “like” the link, how many comments are posted, and clicks back to your site.

The Facebook Share button can easily be added to a website. To try it yourself, go to Facebook’s widgets page and paste the html code into the body of your website. This is a great opportunity from Facebook to get real, measurable results and keep your marketing efforts going strong.

Share

On September 16, MarketingProfs, an online resource offering beneficial information and products to marketers put on the Digital Marketing World conference to help entrepreneurs and business owners further develop their marketing knowledge and skills and learn about current marketing trends.  The fall conference was the second of two free conferences (the first Digital Marketing World conference was held in the Spring) in order to help people continue honing their marketing skills during an economical downturn.

With featured keynote speaker Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, publisher of Talk magazine and the founder of The Daily Beast , this online event had an array of professional, interesting guest speakers and insightful presentations.

While each presentation was impressive and delivered a great deal of information, the one that stood out to me was Building Customer Loyalty on the Social Web, presented by Becky Carroll, Founder of Petra Consulting and Michael Brito, Social Media Strategist with Intel.

This presentation detailed the importance social media plays in corporate branding today. The presenters pointed out that 60% of Americans use social media. Of those 60%, a staggering 93% believe companies should have a presence on the social web while 85% believe companies should be interacting on the social web. This was important to hear because these stats prove just how much of an impact social media marketing is having on consumers. Why is having a social media presence important? Because it:

• Builds client loyalty.
• Gets people talking about your business.
• Creates an easy avenue for customer feedback.

Many of us who are already using social media to market our business realize the importance of a social media presence already, but how many of us know how to maintain that presence? Here are the steps I learned from the Building Customer Loyalty on the Social Web presentation to gain loyalty and keep it:

Listen to what your customers have to say. Browse social networking sites and read what your target market is talking about in order to gain some insight into what you can offer to help them or what you should be avoiding in terms of your service and/or product.

Talk with your customers. Be authentic and genuine when talking with your target market. Show them there is a real person behind the brand. Being engaging and real helps to instil trust and thus increase customer loyalty.

Energize your target market. Use social media to identify enthusiastic customers. Use their enthusiasm to promote your service or brand to others.

Be supportive. Make it possible for customers to support one another. Help your customers don’t spam or sell the product or service.

Embrace your target market. Use social media as a resource for turning customers into innovation.

Social media marketing is not just about listening but is also about engaging and acting. By being authentic , thinking long term rather than short term and posting information your target market is interested in, your customer loyalty will quickly begin to grow.

Keep a List of Topics on Hand

When you sit down to write your blog, have a list of topics on hand and ask yourself “why should I write this?” and “who would want to read this?” The answer to those questions is often a good springboard. As you write one blog, you will likely have ideas for others—so keep that list handy. There will be days when the creative energy is low, so that is a perfect time to find your list and charge yourself up.

Be Curious About Everything

Just like an investigator, answer the questions of who, what, when, why, where, and how. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a journalist, go ahead and pretend you absolutely have to get to the bottom of your topic. Each of these questions will get you deeper into a subject matter.

Mix it up

Often, as you begin to write you’ll end up deleting your first few sentences and starting your writing somewhere in the middle. This is normal. Writing is not necessarily a linear process. When you get to the end of your blog, however, go back to the beginning and do a check for repetitive words and read it out loud. Also, don’t underestimate the power of the thesaurus. Your readers’ eyes are going to glaze over if you don’t vary your vocabulary. So mix it up!

Get to the point

Do you use long sentences over and over? Try challenging yourself to write shorter ones. Readers like it when we get to the point and do it quick. If a sentence is getting out of control, turn it into a series of bullet points.

Choose active verbs

One last bit of advice about the mechanics is to use active verbs instead of passive ones. Try to avoid “was” and “were” followed by the “ing” verb form. Staying in the present tense keeps your voice strong. And above all, have fun with writing and encourage commentary from readers to get comments for feedback.

You can also increase your ranking by incorporating SEO copywriting into your website. You’ll want to first identify a list of phrases and words that your target audience is searching for and place them in your content. Ideally, the keywords should be weaved into the content so that it isn’t totally obvious to readers.

Heather Lloyd-Martin, CEO of SuccessWorks International, says that titles are the most important SEO element on a site. She recommends a unique title on every page of your site with several keyword phrases. A great title should be no more than 75 characters long—just enough to compel readers to want to read more and click on your site. She also suggests no more than 250 words of content per page. If your site is too wordy, not only will readers lose interest, but the search engines also like shorter bursts of content.

While working on the keywords content, type phrases into Google to see what people are searching for in your target market—and then make those your key words. You are now helping to direct readers—and search engines—to find you and click to your site. Since the search engines are set up to rank by keywords, try to have not only words, but also phrases that are specific. Use keywords and phrases 4-5 times per webpage, and remember to balance your keywords with relevant, useful content. You don’t want to just direct visitors to your site without giving them an incentive to stay.

1. Say it out loud – even if there’s no one to hear you say it, admit that you are stressed out. Turns out, simply vocalizing your negative emotions helps to keep them in check.
2. Write it down – write down what bothers you and stresses you out. Once you have your list, rate each entry on a scale from 1 (causes least stress) to 5 (causes most stress). Identifying and prioritizing the causes will clear your mind and help you figure out how to deal with the stress.
3. Reduce – look at your to-do list for today and scratch just one task off of it. The truth is, we usually put too many non-essential things on our plates. Ask yourself whether completing a task will matter much next week, next month, next year.
4. Delegate – choose one item on your to-do list and delegate it. Trying to control every single step leads to unnecessary stress.
5. Take a break – even if you can only spare a few minutes, get out of your office (or home office), stretch and go on a short walk.
6. Drink a cup of tea – take a moment to make a cup of your favorite tea, then make sure you enjoy the result (no drinking at your desk, please).
7. Read – pick up a book, make yourself really comfortable and read a few pages before returning to work.
8. Dance – tune into your favorite music station or pop a CD in a CD-player and bust some moves.
9. Change your outlook – choose one source of your stress (stressor) and think of it as an opportunity, instead of a problem. 
10. Be mindful – choose an object from your surrounding (a pencil or a notepad will do) and spend some time simply looking at it. Concentrate fully on this object, trying to notice the details of color, texture, shape, smell, the way it fills in your hand. This simple exercise in mindfulness is a powerful relaxation technique.

Now it’s time to get down to business. You’ll be following four basic steps:

1. Pick a topic that will resonate with your target audience. For example, If you are a dentist who’s trying to use articlemarketing to grow your business, don’t write an article about gardening.
2. Choose relevant keywords that will show up on a Google search. While you don’t want to go overboard on keywords, try to use them at least once in the introduction, again in the conclusion, and a couple of times within each paragraph of the article—again, without overdoing it. 
3. Use smart writing to grab your readers.  Remember, you are writing an article, not a thesis. You want to compel your audience to keep reading with tools such as short sentences and paragraphs, subheadings, lists, a great title, and a polished final draft. Remember those keywords are important.
4. Publish your article online. The first crucial step is to upload the article to your website, since the search engines love fresh content! Once you’ve done that and you are the author of the article on the search engines, the final step is to submit it to online article directories. These can be found in various free and paid versions. Do a Google search for “article directories”

And there you have it! With a little effort, you can have an article marketing campaign by that is free to low cost—and easy to do. Now that you know these four basic steps you’ll be generating hot prospects and targeted clients in no time.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone explains, “If people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information. For example, with accurate, tweet-level location data you could switch from reading the tweets of accounts you follow to reading tweets from anyone in your neighborhood or city—whether you follow them or not. It’s easy to imagine how this might be interesting at an event like a concert or even something more dramatic like an earthquake. There will likely be many use cases we haven’t even thought of yet which is part of what makes this so exciting.”

Developers are currently testing the new features, which have many implications. While the tool could be a great way to meet people with similar interests or help businesses advertise more effectively, there are obvious privacy concerns. Having someone know exactly where you are and what you are doing is a red flag for opt-ing out of the feature. It all depends on how you use Twitter. For businesses, having a location tool seems like the ideal way to get customers to come to you. But for the average person who tweets from home or elsewhere, it could completely change the way we view personal privacy. Only time will tell.

What is Twitter Search and how can it help you? Twitter Search (http://www.twitter.search.com/) allows you to view and review the information and people you want to connect with. You can view only the Tweets you want to view in real time.  there is no time consuming search, the latest Tweets relevant to your search appear when you type in your desired keyword. In one place, you can simply analyze what your target audience is talking about, the latest trends in your industry and opinions about your service and product.

Using Twitter as part of your overall marketing strategy is an excellent way to connect with people and companies who have seemed unreachable in the past.  Now the Twitter Search feature allows you to easily gain access to these connections without  having to scroll through the masses. The best part of the feature is its ability to save your searches. Instead of starting your keyword search from scratch each time you log on, Twitter saves your keywords and the information you are interested in. In a sense, it automatically favorites the information, companies and people you are interested in.

I have provided the link above, but Twitter Search is also available on your Twitter profile page. For a while there, this feature was only available to a select group of users. However, after much trial and error, Twitter has made it available to all. All users now can see a Twitter search box to the right of their homepage under your account information.  Once you type in a search, Twitter saves this information underneath the search box, creating a helpful list of  topics and information.

Have you used the Twitter Search feature on your profile homepage? I find this tool very useful and would be interested in learning your thoughts and opinions as well.

This is a bit of a shocker. Facebook, who has seemingly been in a race to emulate many of Twitter’s features, just announced that it’s launching the ability for Facebook Page admins to simultaneously update both their Page and Twitter.

Facebook explains how this will work in a blog post:

“If you manage a Facebook Page, you now will be able to decide whether to share updates with their Twitter followers, and you also will be able to control what type of updates to share: status updates, links, photos, notes, events or all of them.
 
If you have multiple Pages, you will have the option to link each of those Pages to different Twitter accounts. This new feature will only link Facebook Pages to Twitter, not your individual profile. It will soon be available at http://www.facebook.com/twitter”

While that makes a lot of sense from a convenience standpoint – many big time Twitter users also have popular Facebook Pages and vice versa – it’s surprising to see Facebook so openly acknowledge Twitter’s reach. That said, by giving users the ability to update both services via Facebook, they’re clearly hoping that the Facebook Page will become the first stop for admins.

That would mean lots of “via Facebook” messages showing up in tweets, and in fact, it’s not hard to imagine Facebook quickly becoming one of Twitter’s most popular clients. However, I wouldn’t expect this functionality to be extended to user profiles anytime soon, which would clearly be a bigger win for Twitter than Facebook.

We did suspect that Facebook might be working something along these lines last month when messages “via penguin FB” showed up on Twitter by way of a Facebook engineer. But now, we know the details, and it definitely creates a lot more intrigue in the ongoing Facebook vs Twitter battle.

So whether you are invited to an event through Facebook or are planning to host one of your own, you should understand how to use the Facebook event feature effectively. Here are the top eight steps to setting up your Facebook event and creating buzz in the process:

Use a catchy title

Just like creating a catchy title for your article, your event title needs to grab the invitee’s attention. Keep them excited about what is in store for them at the event. For example, instead of “BBQ at my place”, try something like “Mix, Mingle and a little Jingle BBQ!”.

Post an attractive photo

Post a photo that will grab the reader’s attention. Instead of a standard picture of a BBQ, use a  group photo from last year’s event (if there was one), or even a funny picture of you cooking up hamburgers. Of course, the type of photo you use depends on the event and the audience, however it is important to post a picture that will entice the invitees to attend. If you are an attendee, share any photos you have as well. Whether they are photos from last year’s events or photos after the event has taken place.

RSVP with a message

If you are invited, RSVP your response to attend and write a message in the event box (seen on the invite to your profile page). Without even visiting the event page, your message will be transferred to its wall!

Write a message on the wall

When you click on the event invite, you will be taken to the event page. You can RSVP here and write on the wall. When you write directly on the wall, your response will feed to your profile as well as the feed of your friends. This will create more visibility for the event. This step is also recommended for the host; generating buzz on both ends.

Allow guests to invite friends

Create more visibility for your event by allowing your guests to invite their friends. Of course use this at your own discretion. Depending on what type of event you are hosting and how large you hope it will be.

Share the event

On the event page, there is a share button. When you click on this, your event (whether as host or guest) will be published on your profile page. Of course you will want to use your discretion with this and only share with the friends you feel would benefit.

Share with Twitter

Depending on the nature of the event, share with your connections on Twitter, posting a link to your Facebook event.

Post video

Before or after the event, invite guests and friends to view a video. This video can be footage from last year’s event such as guest speakers or of you personally inviting your guests. As a guest, if you captured any video, share it with the other attendees!