Internet Marketing Optimization | SEO Expert

5 Killer Ways to Promote Your Facebook Fan Page

Have you ever wondered, “How do I promote my fan page on Facebook?” This article reveals 5 Killer ways to use the power of Facebook to grow your fan base.

Why Do You Need a Facebook Fan Page? You may ask, “Why do I even need a Facebook fan page?” Here’s why: Right now Facebook has an Alexa ranking of 2. They are the 2nd most trafficked website next only to Google!

This means your Facebook page will get indexed faster on Google and other search engines, so if you don’t have a fan page, be sure to create one and promote it.

Here are 5 Killer ways to grow your Facebook fans:

#1: Invite People From Your Facebook Friends List

Do you have your personal friends and professional colleagues segmented into lists on your Facebook home page?

I have a number of lists in my personal Facebook account.

You can invite these lists as groups to your Facebook fan page rather of sending individual invites. This is the easiest and fastest way to jump-start your fan base.

When you click “Suggest to Friends” on your fan page, start typing in the name of your friends list in the filtered friends section; for example, “Social Media Experts.” This will automatically send an invitation to your facebook fan page to all of your colleagues listed in that category.

It’s possible that it may take a while before you start seeing those known faces pop up in your fan page because people are busy. There have been a few occasions where I’ve softly nudged them with an individual invite, but I keep that to a minimum.

As you add more people to your network, remember to go back to your same lists and send the invite to the new people you have added. The names of those who have already been invited will be “grayed out” and the invite will only be sent to your new contacts.

#2: Find People With Facebook Search

The updated Facebook Search feature (see the Search bar at the top of Facebook) gives you a view into conversations of your friends and status updates that may even show you who may be looking for the services you offer.

There is even an option to search “Posts by Everyone,” which gives you a glimpse into conversations of people who may not even be connected to you. After entering a search term, there will be a display, “Posts By Everyone.” This allows you to view conversations from others who aren’t in your friend lists.

Here is a screenshot when I entered “buying a home” in the Search field:

As you can see, there is a person saying “I think we are buying a house tomorrow.” If this person is already in your contacts list, the following is a very easy conversation starter: “Hi ______, I saw your Facebook comment about your plans to buy a house tomorrow. Do you need any help with school information in that particular area?”

There is another person stating that they plan to stay in their house for a long time. This can be a potential candidate for a loan refinance. Again, if this person is already a friend on Facebook, it would be very easy to start a conversation without sounding like an annoying salesperson.

#3: Attract People With Facebook Social Ads

Social Ads provide advertisements alongside your Facebook sidebar which show related actions your friends have taken on the site. These actions may be things like “Leah is now a fan of The Offspring. Would you like to become a fan too?” It is possible to tailor ads to your friends and their interests, which makes it more appealing for them to take action because you are interested as well.

This strategy requires a small budget, but can be very effective in finding your target market. It is very important to do a Facebook search with specific keywords in your particular niche to find out if it’s being talked about on Facebook (see #2 above).

If you click on “Promote With an Ad” on your fan page, you can start a campaign.  You can set a daily spending limit of $10, $25, or other appropriate amount. Because I market mostly to businesses with my keywords (such as real estate broker, loan officer, real estate investor, and so forth) which are in numerous profiles as job descriptions I have been able to use Facebook Social Ads effectively for my fan page.

It’s possible to run your Facebook ads for only 4 to 5 days with a $25 per day budget. Then stop the ad for a few weeks if you like and run the same ad again. This allows your fan page to grow in spurts and I have found it to be very effective in growing my fan base without spending a lot of money at once.

#4: Facebook Fan Page Twitter App

The Facebook Fan Page Twitter application is a great tool that brings your Twitter following back to your fan page. When you post a status update, a link or a photo (you can choose) on your Facebook fan page, there will be an update to Twitter with a shortened bit.ly link back to your fan page. This is just pure genius to drive traffic from another source right to your page.

There are other Facebook and Twitter integration applications; however, this is the one that leads people directly back to your page. This gives them an option to become a fan of your page right at that moment if they click on the bit.ly link from Twitter.

#5: Facebook Fan Box Widget

The Facebook Fan Box Widget is a great feature to add to your blog or website. This widget allows you to show your fan base and allows others to become fans instantly. This is just one way to promote your page across several social media sites. It is important to cross-reference all of your social media sites so others can find you and your websites on other networks.

So what do you have to add to this list? Are you finding other effective ways to promote your Facebook fan page? I would love to hear from you and your successes in promoting your pages in the comments below.

If you have any question in this regard, don’t hesitate to ask. You can contact me through our Contact form or just send me an email at Wahid@wahidqazi.com.

5 Killer Strategies to Boost Your Company’s Product using YouTube

Whether you run a small business from your home or work for a large corporation, you can use YouTube to boost your company. As you probably know, YouTube is a No.1 video sharing community where anyone including you and your business can upload videos for others to view. The trick is to determine the right kind of video to upload, and then finding a way to profit from YouTube viewership.

Using YouTube as a Video Host

Do you already have videos in your business? If your answer is yes, you can easily upload those videos to YouTube, for anyone to view. (Whether anyone wants to view your videos is another story, however, which we’re going to cover shortly.) Aside from making your videos public, there’s one more good reason to upload your videos to YouTube; when YouTube hosts your video, you don’t have to.

That’s right; YouTube is, at its most basic, a giant video hosting website. Instead of taking up valuable storage space on your own web server, you can allow YouTube host your video instead. You will display the video on your own website, of course, but you do it by embedding code for the video in your site’s underlying HTML. The code points to the video on the YouTube site; YouTube then serves the video from its website to appear on your webpage.

Not only you save on storage costs, you also don’t have to pay for all the bandwidth used when visitors watch your videos and YouTube offers unlimited bandwidth. Yes, you still have a slight bandwidth usage when someone views the text of your webpage, but the bandwidth used to deliver the video comes straight from YouTube.

If you run a small business with limits on storage and bandwidth, letting YouTube host your videos can be a real cost saver. And if your video happens to become popular or even viral, you don’t risk having your servers overload and shutdown; YouTube’s servers will handle the load as I said earlier YouTube offers unlimited bandwidth.

Creating an Online Video Presence

What types of videos can your business make for YouTube? It depends on the type of your business and on the way you want to use the Web.

First, look at any existing videos you might have made for use in your business. Perhaps you’ve taped a company meeting, seminar or webinar, or you have a PowerPoint presentation that’s been converted to video. Or maybe you’re a realtor who has recorded video house tours or a motivational speaker who has a speech or two recorded on tape. Any of those videos could make a good beginning point for moving your business to YouTube.

Take the example of realtor. Today, most realtors take digital photographs of the houses they list, and then potential buyers view those photos on their website. But there’s nothing stopping you from using a camcorder to produce a video tour of the house, editing that tour into a short video, and then publishing that video on YouTube. You can then embed the YouTube video on your own website, so that potential buyers can view the video. It’s a great improvement to a realtor’s selling services, and it doesn’t cost you a cent (beyond the cost of shooting the video, of course).

Here’s one more example for you. If your business is a leader in its category, or if you yourself are an industry specialist, you can establish and exploit that expertise via a series of YouTube videos. All it takes is a video camera or webcam pointed at you behind a desk; you then spend three or four minutes talking about a peculiar topic or issue of interest. Think of it as a professional video blog; if you truly know what you’re talking about, it will help to establish your professional credentials and polish your company’s image.

For that matter, there are a lot of different types of videos that can help enhance your company’s image. There may be value, for example, in placing a video online of your company’s most recent sales conference or at least the part that introduces forthcoming new products. Or maybe your company has hosted a seminar or conference that is of interest to others outside your company. These videos can be edited for duration and uploaded to YouTube, where any interested party can view them.

That said; there is one type of video that you don’t want to upload. YouTube is not the place to recycle your company’s commercials. Users will not go out of their way to view something online that they try to avoid in the real world. Unless you have a really clever, Super bowl worthy commercial that people want to view again and again, keep your ads to yourself and don’t upload them to YouTube.

Promoting Products and Services via YouTube

So far, I’ve talked about videos that only broadly boost your company, in terms of enhancing your company’s image. You can also use YouTube more directly to boost your company’s products and services that is, to drive potential customers to your website where they can buy what you sell. To do this, you need to make and upload videos that function as online infomercials, subtly boosting your company’s products and services.

Let’s say that you offer gift baskets for sale. You create a short video for YouTube about how to make gift baskets something that would be of interest to anyone in the market for them. You prominently display your web page address and phone number within the video, and in the descriptive text that accompanies the video on the YouTube site. Because the video has some informational content (the how-to information), it attracts viewers, and a certain percentage of these will follow through to purchase the gift baskets you have for sale.

Or maybe you’re a business consultant and you want to promote your consulting services. To demonstrate what you have to offer potential clients, you create and upload some sort of short video a motivational lecture, perhaps, or a slideshow about specific business practices, or something similar. You use the video to establish your expert status and then display your email address or web page URL to solicit business for your consulting services.

Or maybe you have a full-length DVD for sale. You excerpt a portion of DVD and upload it to YouTube, with graphics before and after (and maybe even during) the video detailing how the full-length DVD can be ordered.

Likewise if you’re a musician with CDs to sell, an author with books to sell, an artist with paintings or other artwork to sell, or a crafts maker with various crafts and such to sell. The musician might create a music video to promote his CDs; the author might read an excerpt from her book; the artist might produce a photo slideshow of his work; and the crafts maker might upload a short video walk-through of pieces she has for sale. Make sure you include details for how the additional product can be ordered, and let your placement on YouTube do the promotion for you.

As an example, Charles Smith Pottery offers a series of instructional videos on YouTube that demonstrate how to use a pottery wheel. Interested viewers can then access the accompanying website (detailed both in the video and in the video’s description) to learn more and to see what products the company has for sale.

Another example is t he San Francisco Electric Tour Company, which offers Segway tours of the San Francisco Bay Area. The company created an entertaining demo video about the Segway and their tours and then uploaded the video to YouTube. Interested people can view the video and then contact the firm to schedule a tour. It’s quite synergistic.

Then there’s John Pullum, a hypnotist and mind reader who provides corporate entertainment and motivational speeches. He’s uploaded videos of several of his appearances to YouTube; they’re both entertaining and informational regarding the services that he has to offer. Any viewer who likes what they see can then go to his website to learn more or to arrange an engagement.

The key is to create a video that people actually want to watch. That means something informative, useful, or entertaining. It can’t be a straight commercial, because people don’t like to watch commercials. It has to provide value to the viewer.

Once you get the viewer hooked, you lead him back to your website where your goods or services are for sale. It’s a two-step process watch the video, then go to the website to learn more or buy something. If your video is interesting enough, viewers will make the trip to your website to close the deal.

Shooting for YouTube: Proper Production Values

When you’re producing a video for YouTube, keep in mind that the video will be viewed in a small (320 x 240 pixel) window on the viewer’s computer monitor. It won’t be viewed on a high-definition widescreen TV; it won’t even be viewed on the full computer screen. No, your video has to be compelling when viewed in that small YouTube video window.

What this means is that you don’t need to spend a lot of money on sophisticated video values. Skip the HDTV recording, skip the widescreen aspect ratio, may be even skip the ultra-expensive lights and makeup. Make your video good enough to be viewed at a 320 x 240 size, and don’t waste your money on production values that won’t be visible to the viewer.

In addition, keep that size in mind when deciding what to shoot. Don’t bother with crowd scenes; all those people will be too tiny to see in the small video window. Instead, compose an image that has maximum impact in the small window. What works best, more often than not, is a large subject against a simple background. That might be nothing more than the speaker full-frame against a light background; it’s a big image with good contrast, which is what you want.

You should, however, spend a few bucks for onscreen graphics. You want a title for your video, appropriate subtitles throughout, and your company’s phone number and website URL. These graphics need to look professional, and be large enough to read in the YouTube video window.

You can shoot a video for YouTube using professional video equipment, a consumer-level video camcorder (shooting in digital video format, of course), or even a computer webcam. Many video blogs are shot with simple webcams, just a person in front of the camera, talking about the subject at hand. You’ll probably want to transfer the video to a computer for editing, of course; any consumer-level video editing program, such as Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker or Apple’s iMovie, should do the trick.

As to length, YouTube lets you upload videos up to 10 minutes long. If you have a longer video say, a half-hour seminar on tape you can simply edit it into several shorter segments. In fact, shorter segments are generally better; I recommend keeping your videos to three minutes or less. Anything longer and you’ll start to bore people and lose viewers. Even if you have a 10-minute video, you might want to edit it into three or four 2- or 3-minute segments. YouTube viewers have a short attention span, and you need to compensate for this.

Uploading Your Videos to YouTube

The hardest part about uploading a video to YouTube is creating and editing the video. The uploading process itself is so simple a CEO can do it.

First, however, you have to make sure that your video file meets YouTube’s requirements, which are as follows:

• MPEG-4 format video with either the DivX or XviD codecs
• MP3 format audio
• 320[ts]240 resolution
• Frame rate of 30 frames per second (FPS)
• Length of 10 minutes or less
• File size of 100MB or less

If you shot your video with a digital camcorder or computer webcam, it’s probably in the right format to begin with, so there’s no conversion necessary. Your only concern is to stay within the length and file size limits.

To upload the video, click the Upload Videos link at the top right-hand corner of any YouTube page. This displays the Video Upload page; you now have a little paperwork to do.

First, enter a title for your video. Make sure it’s descriptive without being overly long. Next, enter a description for the video; this can and should be longer and more complete. (And don’t forget to include your phone number and website address in the description.)

Then enter one or more tags for the video, separating each tag by a space. Tags are keywords people use when searching; use as many tags as necessary to capture all possible search words and attract as many potential viewers as possible.

Now pull down the Video Category list and select a category for the video. Click the Upload a Video button when you’re ready to proceed.

Step two of the video upload process is where you specify the file you want to upload. Click the Browse button to open the Select File to Upload dialog box; navigate to and select the file you want and then click Open. This loads the filename into the File box on the Video Upload page.

With all of that done, the final step is to click the Upload Video button. YouTube finds the video on your hard disk and starts uploading it; the progress is shown on the Video Upload page. Once uploaded, take note of the video’s URL (to link to from your site and use in promotional material) and the embed code (to embed the video in your own website). Your video is now ready for viewing!

Getting Top Positions about More Hits? Thanks to Google Alert!

How many of you think this way? Let me repeat my question, is getting top positions about more hits to your website? I guess all will answer in YES, but the truth is a bitter reality, thanks to “Google alert”.

Getting King’s place doesn’t mean more Money!

In the same manner getting top positions doesn’t mean more hits to your website, when a website comes at top place in search engine, what it shows? It has three things to show, page title, description and website address. Site title and description help searchers to motivate (to visit) or reluctant (to leave).

Hard to justify with different Industries every time

It takes years to understand one business properly, how can one expect from SEOs should understand all industries? YES, SEOs understand their JOB very well, most SEOs understand the common sense of business.

To Understand clients’ industry/business and its term is just like giving them the best outcomes, it will not only help to communicate with Clients but this way SEOs can help them in correct direction.

Why to Thanks Google Alert!

Google Alert is a very effective utility of Google, it tells us about which websites are hits with search keyword phrase/s, it really helped me knowing the fact that not all top ranked website/s are hits, it’s about the best description tag that turns searchers to click on that website/s, it doesn’t matter where website/s ranked, you can experience it by yourself, http://www.google.com/alert is a free service, create your alerts and whenever you get alerts, try to search with those mentioned keyword phrases and see the position of the hit website/s.

How important is Description Tag?

Description tag can turn searchers to be visitors, so you can guess how important description tag is! Bringing websites to top positions require a lot of things including healthy content, good link popularity, easy navigation, logical site structure, clean html and relevant title/description tags.

SEO efforts are not just to bring websites to top, bringing website to Top is just one of the elements of SEO efforts. A SEO involvement is the 2nd heaviest involvement than website owner.

Understanding Clients Business…

1. Understand clients target audience and market
2. Select the best keyword phrases according to product/services, keeping target audience in mind
3. Focus on the most relevant keyword phrases
4. Re-check all keywords by “Reverse Engineering Process“, either the selected keyword phrases give the exact traffic your clients require or not
5. Write “Title”, title belongs to keywords, try to include relevant keyword phrase within the limit of 60 to 70 Characters
6. Write “Description Tag“, description tag is very important bringing traffic and converting visitors into customers, it belongs to products and services, write is according to products and services, it has to be central idea of the page and site

Motivate SE Searchers!

Searchers are never the less important than Visitors, it’s easy to motivate visitors than searchers, a visitor visit a page but a searcher view collectively not more than four lines of title, description and website address.

Do you know?

• Who your searchers are…
• What they must be looking for…
• What description your website is showing off after search…
• On Which page your searchers are directed…

If you still miss some answers of above mentioned questions, you should be able to find out all, after knowing all answers, you can easily motivate your searchers to hit your website.

About The Author

Wahid Qazi is a Researcher, SEO, Trainer, Speaker and Author, specializes in branding and promotion, pioneer of SEO industry in Pakistan, and has trained dozens of quality SEOs.

Top 7 Fundamentals for Google Optimization! Google SEO Tips and Techniques by Expert!

Who doesn’t want to get Top Ranking Positions in Google? 1st Page Placement in Google is NOT difficult, you need to follow Google Optimization Guidelines, and this Article has Summary of the Seven Fundamentals for Google Optimization.

Google optimization is about following Google guidelines, Google likes ethical SEO practices, those SEO practices which are to help website owners as well as Google and it has published guidelines for SEOs here: http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/seo.html

Top 7 Fundamentals for Google Optimization

1. Fresh and Original Content
2. Clean and Validated Code
3. Easy and Accessible Navigation
4. Good Interlinking of Web pages
5. Healthy and Relevant Incoming Links
6. Domain Age and Registered Period For
7. Same Contacts at Site and Domain Registration

Fresh and Original Content

Google love fresh and original content on web page, selectable content/text copy of your web page, google can’t read content on images or at pics but if your website is completely based on images so there’s a solution for you, you can use your slogan on ALT tags.

e.g.; “<img src=”image source” alt=”Search Engine Submission | Submit Your Website on 100 Search Engines With a Single Click. “>

Clean and Validated Code

Clean and validate code helps google to crawl deeply, try to put content at the beginning of your web page, ignore nesting, javascript or comments, in fact try to shorten the text format with the help of external CSS.

Easy and Accessible Navigation

Text or image base navigation helps google to read, google bot can’t read javascript, dhtml, flash base navigation, try to avoid using these practices which google doesn’t like. Keep your navigation at top or left side of the web pages, make sure to add a sitemap page which will guide web surfers and web bots to read each and every page of your website, if you have huge website then make sure to add at least all main categories’ links at sitemap page.

Good Interlinking of Web pages

Web links are like roads and streets at website, make sure all website’s internal links are text base or image base, with relevant content.

Healthy and Relevant Incoming Links

Google likes referred websites, specially referred from quality and relevant resources. The more referrer links the more top rankings. Here one thing should be remembered that one relevant incoming links is better than hundred irrelevant links.

Domain Age and Registered Period For

Google started keeping new registered domains in sandbox since April 2004, in sandbox almost all new domains kept on probationary period for 6 to 8 months, in some cases for longer period, Sandbox domains don’t get good rankings.

Google also likes to rank better to those domains which are registered for longer period like for 5 or 10 years, because whoever registered domains for longer period shows how much s/he is serious with her/his business and most probably won’t do SPAM with those domains.

Same Contacts at Site and Domain Registration

Google likes true businessmen and a true businessman doesn’t misguide his website visitors, google likes those websites which have physical mailing address to their contact pages and google compares it with that physical mailing address which is used in domain registering.

About The Author

Wahid Qazi is a Researcher, SEO, Trainer, Speaker and Author, specializes in google optimization and promotion.

Organic Vs PPC! Who wins?

Interesting comparisons between Organic and PPC listings, everybody wants to know which is of more worth and value, I would say that both have different preposition and benefits. Here is list of elements between both organic and PPC with their pros and corns.

Organic Listings

1. Long Lasting Effect
2. Slow Results
3. Low Cost
4. Less Control Over Ranking
5. More Clicks Than PPC
6. No Management
7. No Monitoring
8. Assumption
9. Gigantic Exposure
10. More Text Space
11. Uncontrolled Title And Description

PPC Listings

1. Effect Depends On Budget
2. Quick Results
3. Expensive
4. Complete Control Over Ranking
5. Less Clicks Than Organic
6. Complete Management
7. Complete Campaign Monitoring
8. Authentic
9. Limited Exposure
10. Less Text Limitation
11. Controlled Title And Description

I’m sure, this comparison will help you take better decision and best use of your hard earned money, both these marketing are very effective in different scenarios, if you have big budget you must go for PPC first and also keep organic as secondary marketing for long term. If you have small budget then organic would be an excellent choice with some paid listings in directories and industry related portals.

About The Author

Wahid Qazi is a Researcher, SEO, Trainer, Speaker and Author, specializes in google optimization and promotion.

Manual Vs Automated Submission! Which one is the best

We all know how important link popularity is for better rankings in top search engine like google, yahoo and msn! In this article you’ll come to know the linking types and brief comparisons of manual submission and automated submissions.

Comparisons of Automated and Manual Submissions:

After looking at the comparisons, you can easily know why manual submissions are considered to be good and recommended by professional SEOs. Don’t look at the shortcomings and a little ease in automated submission, these shortcomings and little comfort can be a nightmare. Submissions are a very important part of link building campaigns, and if your submissions are made correctly they can play huge rule in link building. Try to submit manually so that you can get the maximum benefits out of it.

More links VS More Valuable Links?

Effective manual submissions can be very useful increasing link value, automated submission can create only more incoming links but effective manual submissions can give those links more value.

A professional submitter should always take care of few things, which can give his/her submissions more value.

Take Care of These Elements When Submitting…

1. Should know the type of the link, going to be visible after submission
2. Should know the limits of title and description
3. Should create multiple titles and descriptions according to limits
4. Should check and re-check those submitted links periodically
5. Always keep passwords and ids save for future updates