Countdown to Timeline
Both the challenge and excitement of social media is how quickly it changes. Only last newsletter we were telling you about custom Facebook landing pages and now Facebook has done away with them completely! It’s still as important as ever to customize your Facebook page to capitalize on the tremendous Facebook traffic, but now you’ll need to utilize the new ‘Timeline’ format. And time is ticking–all Facebook will be automatically transferred to Timeline on March 30th! Check out our updated Facebook profile and read below for a rundown on some major changes:
Setting a Brand Image with Cover Photo
The most obvious change of Timeline is the splashy, high-impact header photo. While such a large image could be a marketer’s dream, Facebook specifies that no calls to action, contact or purchase information, financial offers, or references to Liking the page be present in the image. Facebook’s Product Director of Ads, Gokul Rajaram, states the cover image’s:
“…Goal is to symbolize what an organization is all about. For a restaurant it could be a popular menu item, a band could display album cover art, and a business could show a picture of their customers using their product.”
These restrictions haven’t stopped users from being creative, however. Just check out these clever header images at the bottom of this Huffington Post article.
Connecting with Customers through Private Messaging
A new feature in Timeline is that users are able to send direct private messages to your Page, allowing you to interact with the users without the interactions being displayed publicly on your wall. This feature is automatically enabled, but can be disabled. However, this feature is best left enabled, as this is a great new customer service channel and should be utilized if possible. If your business doesn’t have the capacity to maintain this communication channel, perhaps Artsy Geek’s Social Media Services are for you!
Telling a Brand Story with Milestones
One of the best marketing opportunities that Timeline provides is being able to tell brand stories. Timeline allows users to enter “Milestones,” which are featured prominently. Check out how The New York Times uses Timeline to educate Facebook users about its rich history, and uses Milestones with captivating images to punctuate its events. Think about the events that transpired to bring your business where it is today. If you are a music artist, dig up an old photo of you with your first instrument; if you sell goods or services, perhaps use a Milestone to capture the inspiration that inspired your wares. Communicating your company’s depth of innovation, inspiration, and insight may never have been easier!
Pin, Prune, and Highlight
Although Timeline has done away with custom Facebook landing pages, you can still promote a custom page from your landing page by using Pinned posts that link to a custom page. Pinned posts will stay up for 7 days or until you Pin a new post. Highlight is a function you can use to highlight important posts. The feature gives posts prominence by making them appear the full width of the Page. Unfortunately, however, Highlighted posts cannot be Pinned.
Opposite to Pinning and Highlighting, you may want to prune through your Timeline to hide posts that are no longer relevant, contain broken links, or don’t convey messages you want readers to see.
‘Like’ Opportunity
An engaging Facebook Timeline gives you the opportunity to catch casual browsers of your Facebook page and communicate your business’s services, history, identity, and promotions. Utilizing your Facebook page’s new functionality and implementing the most effective social marketing strategy may seem like a full-time job when you already have one, which is why we here at Artsy Geek offer several social media service plan options.
Artsy Geek Facebook services start at only $300! Contact us to discuss how we can create a Social Media strategy that works for your goals, brand, and budget.
Before you get caught up in the day-to-day, have you planned your year? What are your goals?
It’s probably safe to bet that many of us want the same things: awesome products or services and more sales. So how can we achieve these goals?
Having a plan to connect with your existing customers is essential. Are you leveraging the power of social media?
Our 2012 Marketing Checklist will help you quickly assess your current online marketing plan.
Read on, and know you’re not alone. We’re here to help you with marketing on and offline.
The Artsy Geek 2012 Marketing Checklist
Leverage your Facebook page.
Make sure the info section clearly links to your newsletter sign-up and sales pages. And make sure those links work!
Artsy Geek Tip
Reach out to one complementary Facebook page a week where potential clients may be hanging out. Share an article or a blog post on their wall to make a new friend and gain new likes.
Bonus points if your Facebook is branded to match your website, business cards and other marketing materials.
Want more tips? Need help with a branded Facebook page? Let’s talk.
Embrace Twitter.
Utilize your Twitter page to engage your customer base. Don’t skimp on replies and retweets.
Artsy Geek Tip
Set a goal to reach out to one Twitter user and make one new friend a day (or a week…). Use the website who.unfollowed.me to unfollow those who didn’t follow back. Twitter is a conversation after all!
Bonus points if your Twitter profile is branded with your look and feel.
Don’t forget LinkedIn.
Many use LinkedIn to find reputable professionals…reputable professionals like you.
Artsy Geek Tip
Spend a day leaving recommendations for your contacts that you truly believe in. Every recommendation on their profile is a link back to yours and your business.
Bonus points if your LinkedIn business page is fleshed out and consistent with your marketing.
Wondering how you can better use LinkedIn? Let’s discuss.
Be easy to find.
Make sure your social media profile links are prominently displayed front and center on your website.
Artsy Geek Tip
Embed your latest Tweet or your Facebook stream so your potential customers will want to get to know you better…and connect.
Capture local search traffic with Google Places.
Ensure your Google Places page has accurate info, and a fleshed out description.
Artsy Geek Tip
Upload photos and video when you can. Google loves photos and videos.
Ask your customers for reviews and enter them yourself on your profile.
Make sure your description is keyword-optimized to really leverage that local search traffic.
Need help optimizing your Google Places profile? We’re your man (or women as the case may be).
Offer deals to your customers.
Capitalize on your internet and social media marketing by offering special deals on your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Yelp pages.
Artsy Geek Tip
Set up a calendar of deals — and when you need to promote them — in advance. Set up reminders to make sure they happen.
And what if you’re already feeling super confident in the areas I’ve already mentioned? Kick it up a notch with an Artsy Geek-crafted integrated blog and a mobile version of your website.
Invest in your web presence now and lock in your commitment to furthering your business goals throughout 2012. Set up an appointment with Jennifer now!
Would you share your message in invisible ink?
Did you know that our friends with visual impairments navigate the web completely differently? Without their eyes to guide them, they are reliant on the functionality and text of a website to get along.
Accessible websites are designed to be easy to use for people with visual, motor, auditory and cognitive impairments.
Benefits of Web Accessibity
-
Increased Reach
Six percent of Americans are visually impaired. If your web presence is not optimized for Americans with disabilities, you are not reaching a major share of your target market.
-
Search Engines Love Accessible Websites
When you design a website for accessibility, you also help search engines understand your website better which increases your rank in search engine results.
-
Public Relations
Having an accessible website demonstrates that you understand and care about the various needs of people coming to your website. When people feel understood and accommodated, they are more likely to view you as professional and trustworthy.
-
Meet Legal Requirements
According to the Americans with Disabilities Act, a website must be accessible to people with disabilities. If your website is not accessible, you are vulnerable to legal action.
Quick Tips for an Accessible Web Presence
-
Provide Descriptive Text for Images & Multimedia
Use the alt attribute to describe the function of each visual aid. Or, if you are sharing a photo with a message on Facebook, repeat the message in the caption for those with visual impairments. Provide captioning and transcripts of audio and descriptions of video.
-
Think When You Link
Many people link by saying something along the lines of “Click here for more information about our services.” Those using a screen reader only get “click here.” Link the informative part of the sentence such as, “Click here for more information about our services.”
-
Keep Your Pages and Posts Organized
Use headings, lists and a consistent structure. Building your website using a content management system such as WordPress makes this easier as such tools are built in.
Want to build an accessible website or find out how accessible yours is? Contact us today!
Here at Artsy Geek we remember when Google Buzz was released. While we laughed, Google employees cried. Yet another failed attempt of Google trying to break into the social media world. With the advent of Google+ however, it seems the game may have changed.
Google+ finally showed the some of innovation Google has been known for, and seems to foreshadow the coming of a fully social, fully integrated entourage of free products that are oh-so-easy to use and then, inevitably, desperately needed.
Taking a staggering 88 days to reach 50 million users (see above) Google has finally broken into the social media world, and Google+ is just one of many products to come. Even the world’s social media sweeheart, Facebook, took 1,325 days to reach that number. Add that to Google’s acquisition of Youtube and you see that that everyone and their grandmother now already has a Google account, so their numbers are likely to keep growing, as joining Google+ is as easy as taking candy from a baby. Or in this case, Facebook.
My advice? Be on the cutting edge, start at least nurturing your Google+ account now. It’s easy, and has certain great advantages.
For example, months ago I started a Google account for each Twitter handle I maintain. I set up each Twitter account to update the corresponding Buzz account, and voilà, I now have a Google searchable database of everything I have ever tweeted from that account. Trying to reference an article you read and tweeted 9 months ago? Search it in your Google account, done.
Little did I know, that as I was building my databases, I was actually participating in Google+ and priming my account. That is only one way to take advantage of Google+.
Google+ has taken the anonymity of Twitter and the intimacy of Facebook and merged them together with circles. Why go anywhere else? Once the integration of Google Places, Maps, Navigation, Apps, and even Latitude happens, will we even need Yelp, Foursquare, Tumblr or anything else for that matter? Will Google’s outrageous and bold ambition work? We can’t know for sure, but it is definitely worth taking the time to reach for that extra little plus?
Ready to get started on Google+ but not sure how? Check out this great guide from Mashable.
“Search engine what?” and “What is SEO?” are questions we hear all the time from the people we meet and work with. Here’s some quick definitions to help you figure out what SEO is all about.
search engine optimization (SEO)
The process of maximizing the number of visitors to a Web site by ensuring that the site remains high on the list of results returned by a search engine
SERP
A search engine results page (SERP), is the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The results normally include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page. Read more
You’ve probably heard it before – it’s important to back up your data. Of course it’s prudent to back up your computer in case it’s broken or stolen, and external hard drives are now cheap and easy to use. But your online data is valuable to your business, and it needs to be backed up as well – even though it does not reside on your own computer.
The Internet is a bit like the Wild West. There’s not much of a sheriff and few opportunities for legal redress, because no country has jurisdiction and scam artists can be anywhere in the world. Viruses that spread over the Internet no longer just target your own computer, but now target websites and web-based software. Even the best website, if it’s not regularly maintained and backed-up, can be vulnerable. On the Internet, nobody is safe. Read more
Here at Artsy Geek, we’re proud of our brand and we want to use it when we communicate with colleagues, clients, and potential clients. One way we help boost our brand is by sharing information on Twitter. We use a URL-shortening service to make the most of our 140 characters – you may be reading this because of a link you followed from @artsygeek! Rather than using is.gd to shorten the link, we use our own branded URL – artsygk.us. It looks cool, it’s memorable, and it works better than other options like is.gd or bit.ly.
This post is reachable as http://artsygk.us/c – with up to three characters in the trailing code for more than 32,000 combinations, even our recognizable 10-character domain creates shorter URLs than bit.ly. By having our own domain, we also avoid the risks associated with some free shorteners – that they can go out of business, or their Libyan .ly domain could become off-limits because of the international situation. We can also create custom shortlinks like artsygk.us/bike, and change the pointed page to our favorite upcoming Oakland bicycling event, so the link stays relevant.
How do we maintain our own link-shortener? Do we pay Hootsuite over $670 a year to use our “vanity URL”? No, we have our own personal service that is customized with our look and feel – and it is free. It’s called YOURLS, Your Own URL Shortener. Read more
Many of the sites we build for our clients are built using the awesome Thesis theme, and incorporate the use of the Thesis-specific functionality of post images and post thumbnail images. Using post images or thumbnail images associate a particular image with that post so that it can be dynamically included in excerpts or teasers.
This post thumbnail image is essential to this archive of Wide Hive Records' discography.
The same image is rendered at a different size on the full post page.
When you specify a post image that image is automatically resized as a thumbnail image for the pages that use teasers. Some websites don’t use teasers, but that’s no reason not use the thumbnail image functionality. Read more
If you do nothing else with your Twitter business account, you should make sure you don’t miss any mentions.
People mention your twitter handle in their tweets to talk to you.
Missing mentions, after all, sends the message that you don’t want to be talked on Twitter. If you don’t want to be talked to on Twitter, do yourself (and your business) a favor, and don’t be on Twitter. Delete your account even!
Here’s a quick tip: Set up your free account at socialoomph.com and set it up to track your twitter handle (@artsygeekdesign, for example). It will send you emails once or twice a day, and–importantly–won’t send you emails if you aren’t mentioned (except for the occasional promotional email). Read more
WordPress comes equipped with a way to make your post into a photo gallery. I grabbed some photos I took as on the drive home from Sonoma a few weeks ago to test this out.
You can customize the gallery based on what order you’d like your images to show up in (I chose random) and how many columns they should appear in.
It’s as simple as uploading the images (you can do them as a group!) and inserting the gallery. After you insert the gallery, you can edit it to add/remove columns and photos! Easy as pie.
We installed the Facebox plugin, so that the photos open up over the page. It’s worth noting that by default, WordPress will display the captions below the thumbnails; I decided to avoid using captions for this reason. That’s a problem easily solved by some WordPress-ninja-coding that we’re happy to help you with. Read more
Amy from Piedmont Piano offered to take me out to lunch the other day so she could pick my brain about how they could better use Social Media to spread the word about the intimate concerts they regularly offer.
These concerts feature amazing local musicians, but are often only partly attended. What could they do?
I commended their use of Facebook to create events for the concerts and post videos. Though they use Twitter only occasionally and have a limited following, I wouldn’t recommend starting there.
The major trouble is that there is no easy way to get tickets. People are asked to call and purchase the tickets over the phone. Never make people take an extra step!
Nancy has a blog, has dabbled a little in Twitter, and described Facebook as “a gated community that won’t let [her] in.” But, she recognizes that “social media toppled a really tough military regime. It’s not a force to be ignored!”
We sat down to brainstorm ways that she could better use social media to help her grow her business as Oakland’s only lady barber.
Blogging
I asked Nancy how much traffic her blog was getting. She didn’t know too many details, but reported that she was getting hits from all over the place. When we looked at her blog, it made sense: Nancy’s passion is sharing her opinions about politicians’ uninspired hair cuts. And she’s great at it.
But it makes sense that she would not be attracting a lot of local traffic. I suggested that she write some posts about what’s happening around here–or at least pepper her posts about politicians with relevant key phrases like “Oakland barber.” She can also start her opinions with, “As Oakland’s only lady barber…” No matter how she does, she should aim to mention keywords about her location and services multiple times in every post.
I also she suggested that she include a photo of herself in her blog to humanize it better. What’s that quote? “A photo is worth more than a thousand words”?
Many Oakland businesses are using social media to reach their fans and customers. Here are a few tips to put the cherry on top of that social media sundae.
1. Get Personal
All of us Oakland business owners have our own reasons for starting a business in Oakland and for staying here. Our fellow Oakland residents share our love for Oakland and our passion for the community.
By sharing what it is about Oakland that you love you will connect with the people who share that love. Shared love is a strong bond that isn’t easily forgotten.
Beyond that, ask your fans and followers what it is that they love about Oakland, or what it is that is the top priority for change in their minds. Care about their responses. People love to be heard, and will remember that your business cares not only about the community but about individuals like them.
Disclaimer: This tutorial helps our clients write the HTML to insert into WordPress Posts, Pages and Widgets. It is in no way a complete introduction to html, and someone wanting to learn more best check out W3Schools. They’re awesome.
What is HTML?
HTML makes the world wide web go around. It’s a kind of like DNA except for websites.
Writing something in html is just like writing something in Microsoft Word or Notepad, except that you tell the browser what type of thing you’re writing. You do this by beginning with an opening tag, such as “<p>” and ending with a closing tag such as “</p>”.
Luckily WordPress handles most of the html for you. Sometimes some HTML knowledge comes in handy when editing your Posts and Pages, and it’s always necessary to update some Widgets. Read more
