Posts Tagged ‘Advertising’

So, you have created your own Facebook Fan Page and you have people taking a look and hoping to find out more about your business. Give them something to read when the land on your page. Although the wall can be full of great information you have been posting, it could also be full of comments and posts from your fans that you don’t have as much control over. Send them to the info tab instead!

You have four main sections on the info tab. The websites section can hold more than just one url. Put one on each line and add links for Twitter, LinkedIn, Kudzu and anywhere else  you would like people to visit. Use the Company Overview, Mission and Products section to add more information and let people know about who you are as a company.

Not sure how to do this? Log into your account and go to your page. Click on the Edit Page link that shows up underneath your page image. From the next page, click on Edit from the Wall settings. From here you can determine default landing page. You can also determine the default view for the wall and which posts will show (only your Page posts, Just Fans, or both Fans and Page posts).

Feel free to share a link to your Facebook Page below. How do you have your Facebook Page set up to encourage peiople to become a fan?

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If you have had your Facebook Profile or Fan Page for a while, you might not know that you can select your own unique url. This makes it easier to give a client the link of http://www.facebook.com/GeorgiaTrolleyServices rather than giving them the link of http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lawrenceville-GA/Georgia-Trolley-Services/78159213364?ref=ts. The first is a lot catchier and easy to remember!

So how do you do it? You need to be logged in to your account first of all. Then simply type in the following url:

You will then be prompted to select your preferred username:

Keep in mind that if your name is John Smith, chances of you getting this name as your unique url are pretty slim! You might have to get creative. Usernames are a relatively new option that were introduced around the middle of 2009. It was announced that the feature was coming and some users grabbed their username as soon as they were able to! With the first launch of this, you could only select the username for your profile and not for your Fan Page. So, many people (including myself) used their business name as their username. I am kicking myself now because I have a Megan Walker Facebook Profile with the username of http://www.facebook.com/PurpleStarConsulting but then have a Fan Page with a url of http://www.facebook.com/PSConsulting. If I could choose again I would, but once you pick the url, you are stuck with it!

If the username is available, you can select it by clicking Confirm. If you are not sure, click Cancel and search for something else. As I said, this is final so you want to be sure! Once you click Confirm, you can start sending people your new Facebook url! A lot easier and simpler to remember. *** (while this facebook url is real, it is used for a test account and is not monitored)

Want some free and shameless promotion? Post your own unique Facebook url! Let’s see what you got!

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Ok, so I think this is pretty cool. Microsoft introduced a Beta (in testing) project back in January 2009. They created new technology using barcodes, similar to those you might find on products in the grocery store. These bar-codes can be placed on fliers, on the back of business cards, on the back of packaging or in your store somewhere. You can create them to hold data that when snapped with your camera on your smart phone, you can be taken to a website, see an advert, view a video, or download your online business card directly to the phone!

The first step, in order to actually click on these bar-codes is to download the tag reader from the Microsoft website. Or, download it from your phone browser using this link: http://gettag.mobi This will download the application to your smart phone (which must have a camera). Next, you need a tag to snap! Using the Tag Reader application you downloaded, you will simply click a picture of the bar-code tag in the image below. My BlackBerry phone needed a bit of patience and practice when snapping the image. My husbands Sprint HTC Touch Pro 2 phone didn’t even need me to click the camera, it zoomed in and found the image on it’s own, pretty cool!

Creating the tags is pretty easy. You must create an account, or you can use your MSN Live account and log in with that if you already have one. Once you are logged in, you can start creating tags. It allows you determine what will happen when someone snaps your tag. Do you want it to go out to a website (as the one above will), dial a number that you can set up with some kind of advertisement or 1-800 number with information, or even download your business card to their address book!

As you can see on the tag above, you can customize the tags with your own images and include them in the bar-code. Clicking on the tag above will download my vCard (business card) directly to your address book! The possibilities are endless! Although this is relatively new, companies are catching on to the technology. Microsofts website shows Pilsbury and General Mills using tags on some of their fliers, and Xbox and Best Buy have used them also. They can be used to send information about new products, generate hype about up coming events, or send information to customers in a fun and unique way.

How could you envision incorporating this into your business? Can you see it catching on, or a need for this method of distributing data? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

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Not all web designers or web design firms are created equal. Do you know what to look for? Depending on the level or complexity of the site you are looking for, most designers can put together the visual side of your site. If you want an online contact form, that’s pretty simple standard stuff, want an image gallery to display your work, that shouldn’t be too difficult either. However, what else are they offering you? How are they going to help you and your website succeed long after the work is completed and the check has been written?

Here are some questions to ask (in no particular order). If you want to be sure you aren’t just paying for a standard site and are getting a site that works for you, use these questions through your selection process and pay attention to their answers:

1. How will you help me promote my site? – Promoting your site is really up to you with regard to advertising and marketing, but a good web designer may submit your url to some of the major search engines as standard course. Simply submitting your site to Google, MSN and Yahoo can help speed up the process of the web crawlers finding your nice new site! Even better if they create a sitemap.xml file for you too! These can also be submitted to the search engines. Direct from the sitemaps.org website “In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.”
2. Do you create a favicon.ico file for my site? – This file is used to create a little icon to appear next to your website url in the address bar. For example, look at the top of this page at my website address and you can see a little purple star next to it. This is my favorites icon. When someone adds this page to their favorites folder, it will also show up there. It is not a necessity but nice to have your site stand out above all of the rest of the sites they have saved and visited.
3. How will people find my site once it’s finished? - A web designer has different sections of code they can be using to help promote and index your site within the search engines. Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it is more commonly referred to is something that should be done by default. If you meet with a designer that says they don’t do this, or doesn’t know what it is, move on and find someone that does! There are META TAG sections in the code which allow you to place keywords and a description, that if carefully chosen can go along way to moving you up to page number one of search results! This is what we all want, knowing that a potential client will tend not trawl through to the 2nd, 3rd of 4th page of results. First page is key. Another item that can be used is the title of the page. For example, when visiting my home page, the title (which is at the immediate top of the browser window and exists on every page of every single website) is Web Design, Marketing, Advertising and SEO in Lawrenceville, Dacula, Snellville and Gwinnett County – Purple Star Consulting. When searching on Google, if someone types in some of these key words, the title of a page is also looked at.
4. How will I know who is visiting my site? - It’s no good having a site but not having any idea how many people are looking at it. Without some kind of statistic or traffic tracking code on your site, you won’t have any idea. A web designer should add this code when working on your site, then give you all the log in information necessary to monitor and review the information. Google Analytics is one of the easiest to read and understand. For my clients, I have a document I send them once all of the code is in place so they can log in on their own and know exactly how to use the portal. With a simple Dashboard and easy to understand traffic patterns, display of links that were clicked on and key words that were used to find you, this is one of the best ( and free) products out there.
5. What if I need something changed, can I do it myself? - This is a tricky one. The simple answer is yes, any one can change things on their own site, but only if you have a certain level of knowledge. One of the reasons you probably are looking for a web designer is because you either don’t have the time, don’t have the knowledge or want it done right and professionally the first time right? If it’s simply just word changes here and there, if you have a web hosting package that includes a WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get), then you should be able to log in, open the page and then just change the text and save. If not, you would need to have Dreamweaver, Front Page, or simply use NotePad to make changes. That can be tricky and if you are not careful and/or confident in what you are doing, you could end up causing problems with your live site. So, if you ask this question, just be careful about their answer. The answer is yes, but if they are guiding you responsibly they should also give you the BUT at the end. Sometimes it’s better to work with your web designer over time and work out some kind of rate for changes you need over a months time frame.
6. How will I know if my site is working for me? - Hopefully the biggest sign is that you are making more money, getting more calls and in turn getting more clients! If you work with a large firm, the personal touch might not be there once the work is complete and you no longer need them, and perhaps they no longer need you either! At Purple Star Consulting, we want all of our clients to succeed. As part of that, every month or so after having worked with them, I will do some tests. Go out to Google and play the role of someone browsing the internet doing some research. By thinking like the average person, I come up with keywords, type them in and see where my client site comes up. Depending on the business, (and how much competition is out there) the site should start showing up in the listings. I will then send the findings on to the client, even if we are not currently doing business, wanting them to continue on in their success.
7. What can I do to continue the success of my website? - Great question! The web designer you work with cannot be held 100% responsible for the continued success of your site. Each day, more and more domains are added to the web, more companies are formed and there are more people clambering to get that top spot in the search listings. Once the initial work is complete, truly the best way to continue the success of your site is to keep it fresh and new. Think of it as a plant. If it’s in full bloom and healthy and beautiful, if you stop watering it, it’s going to shrivel up and die. Constantly updating your site means that the web crawlers will stop by and reindex your site if there is more information to see! Having a blog is the best way to update content. A blog also is an ideal way for you to make changes yourself even with very limited knowledge, and no coding needed! Your web designer should be able to suggest the best type of blog to add and integrate into your site.

So, take these questions with you, ask me these questions, or feel happy in the knowledge that you know your web designer did all of this for you already! If so, congratulations on having a great website!

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A friend of mine posted a question on Facebook, asking where she could advertise at a low cost, or even better, for Free! I have found a few sites that allow you to post your company profile, with a short bio and a listing of the services you provide. There are the old faithfuls, of Kudzu, Facebook, Google Maps, Yahoo Local of course, but sometimes it’s hard to find solutions that are quick and cost effective to use for the small business owner. I am looking for very cheap, preferably free! Below is a list of some that I have used that might help:

Local.com – There are two sides to this site. The first is to post an ad in the classified section. This runs for 30 days and is then removed. I found the categories to be a little limiting but it’s free and another way for people to find you. The other way is to add your business to the listings for people to search through. Local Promote allows you to list your services, website address, contact info and more. This is not removed and does offer an upgrade for a special offer of $49 a month at the moment. This allows you to add your logo, up to 5 photos and promises you will be found at the top of search results for some of the major search engines.

Superpages.com – This site allows for a fairly comprehensive submission of your business to their listing. However, to add your logo costs $25 a month and at a costly $22 a month per format, you can add bold, colored fonts or italics to your listing. I can target the area my business is listed (in my case it’s Dacula) but it would be an additional $77 a month to have it listed and targeted to the rest of Gwinnett County, $254 a month to the Metro Atlanta area and $384 a month for the whole of Georgia, so big differences there! You can see my profile page by clicking here.

GenieKnows.com – I hadn’t heard of this site before but it’s similar to the other two in that you can list your business at no charge. It also allows you to add quite a lot of information about your company which is good to see. I added my company but was dissappointed that I wasn’t able to then review it once complete. Instead, I received an e-mail to let me know that it could take up to two weeks for it to display. “All submissions are subject to review” which is probably a good thing!

Talk Gwinnett – Talk Gwinnett is the local site for the Gwinnett Gazette. Another free site but with a very basic listing available. Pretty much you can have your e-mail address and basic contact information. To add your website address is $10, to add a logo is $10 and to add a description is $5! You can submit your company in up to 3 categories for free, then it’s an additional $5 per additional category. It’s free, but all in all, not going to do much for my business.

Domestic Sale.com – Free again! This one allows you to add a long description, an e-mail address, link to your website, contact info and even a logo at no cost. However, I found that once I had uploaded my logo, it totally distorted all of the colors so much so that it doesn’t really look like my logo anymore. Aside from that, you can post a lot on this site at no cost.

Yahoo Local – With this one, I thought I had already created an account. When I did a search, I came up in the listing but with very little information. It seems that through searches and hits on the internet my site was then listed and I hadn’t needed to do anything. I signed up to modify the listing and add more information. Once this was done, it stated that it would take up to 5 business days for the listing to be updated. Not sure how they will verify I am who I say I am though! When I set up my business page with Google, they provide two options to verify you are the business owner. One is to call you on the business phone, the other is to snail mail you a postcard with a code on it which you enter into a website. So, we shall see if Yahoo believe me and just go with it!

urbanGwinnett – This site is local to the Gwinnett County area and allows for the submission of your business. You can select the category you wish to be listed. With not too many listed at the moment, you can actually have the monopoly of a whole category if you pick wisely! Visitors can write reviews, e-mail you and also see a visual of your website directly on the urbanGwinnett website. A well run informative site, worth posting as it is totally free!

Switchboard – This site is powered by Superpages.com. Similar in layout and content, it’s free and allows you to add basic information to this listing, before adding on cost for additional elements.

LTTA – Lawrenceville Tourism and Trade Association – If you are a member of the LTTA, you are automatically submitted into their Membership Directory. If you are a small business of 1, it is only $50 for the year, a great price. This also gives you other benefits, the ability to leave your business cards and brochures at the LTTA office, and be invited to their networking and social events. If you aren’t a member already and are local to the area, be sure to check it out!

Although there are many more, finally I will end with the best!

NEW Lawrenceville – this is a community run website. If your business is local to Lawrenceville, Georgia, simply visit the site and use the form to submit your business. With up to 200 words available for your company bio, and the ability to have your phone number, e-mail address and website listed, along with your logo, this free service is well worth taking advantage of. Even better, you can also submit articles that are of relevance to Lawrenceville and can include your business sales, promotions and events. Can’t get better than that!

If you know of any others, let us know! info@purplestarconsulting.com

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