Starting at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, June 13, 2009, Facebook users will be allowed to create their own personal username for their profile. So what all does this mean to a Facebook user? It may be more obvious for businesses, bands, celebs or public figures, but there is actually benefit for every Facebook user. Whether for business or personal use, you can now change your Facebook URL to match other social media networks that you use. Keeping your identities the same will form your own personal branding, making it easier for friends, family, and professionals to find you online.

Originally assigning random numbers to each person’s profile made it hard for someone to look up your public Facebook account in search engines. With the ability for personalized usernames, search engines will now be able to pick up the URLs just like they can with your Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr, and other various social media network accounts. This should allow your brand to be ranked in search engines along with your social media networks, blog, business site or your own personal website, making it easy for people to connect and learn more about you. As expected, Facebook will not let you choose generic terms for your username such as shoes or butter, which will eliminate competition for choosing keywords that are often times nearly impossible to rank for, without the help of SEO professionals.

The greatest business benefit with this, besides easier collateral brand (ex: www.facebook.com/companyname) is Reputation Management.  The first 10 results in Google for a “branded” search phrase is your reputation.  Smart, innovative companies are optimizing social media profiles, press releases & other “rank-worthy” content so the first 10 results for their company name(s) present positive sentiment. We’re seeing successful execution with Triangle Direct Media clients.

Now with short and direct URLs it will be much easier to share your Facebook profile with others. You will now be able easily address your Facebook profile URL over the phone and even fit your new custom URL on business cards and into ad space. Usernames can only include alphanumeric characters with the option of a period or full stop, and must be five characters in length. Users must choose wisely, because once the Facebook username is set it cannot be changed.

To select your username, visit the link below after 12:01am on June 13th:
http://www.facebook.com/username/.

Perspective can quickly be lost when blog posts are written for the purposes of SEO [embedding keywords, anchor links, etc]; you must remember that you’re also writing to and for ‘the people’. An article on Search Engine Journal reminds us how important it is to write for people and not exclusively for search engines. As blogging is originally intended for social interaction purposes, both personal and business, the posts should be written to engage the reader. Instead of just dropping a link in the post, you need to put focus into making the content of your blog post interesting and useful to readers. Creating posts with valuable content will increase the chance of people re-blogging your link. If you create worthy content, it will spread through social media channels and the aspect of search will in a way take care of itself.

Make sure that you post in your blog often enough so that your blog doesn’t look to be a pure-play SEO strategy. Frequent posting is also a benefit for SEO purposes, as search engines are keen on routinely spidering fresh content. When it comes to SEO, what should be the focus is primarily including a few targeted search keywords in both the title, post, and into your URL. As the attention is on writing for the people, you can focus on SEO when posting images by using ALT tags. Utilize XML Sitemap plug-ins, which will update your sitemap and notify all major search engines when you edit or create new posts. When writing a blog post, keep in mind that SEO is important but don’t forget that you are also blogging for the people.

Starting out as an online journal, blogs have emerged into a cost-effective and easy way to build your brand online. An article from MSNBC introduced four constructive goals in addressing your site’s needs using a blog platform.

Goal 1: Provide Fresh Content

What types of content on your business website frequently changes? This is what you want to update regularly on your blog. Content may include upcoming events, sales promotions, press clippings, or informative articles about your products and services. Blogs will show your newest posts at the top while pushing older posts down the page, so you want to make sure what you post is more recent news than your last.  There are blog plug-ins that can serve your most popular or most viewed posts, above the fold to ensure relevance to your audience.

Goal 2: Stay Connected to Customers

Blogs aren’t meant for one-way communication. Just like in doing business, you have to attach another face to the scenario. Provide a comment area after each post where customers can provide input, feedback and opinions. Give the customer an area to comment on trends that you see in your industry or even submit their own testimonials about your services. The customer will feel more connected with your brand, and more likely to come back to read future posts.  Be sure to use a comment spam filter so your blog does not become a haven for spammers. A great filter is Akismet.

Goal 3: Be visible to search engines

Many SEO experts suggest launching a blog when concerning the improvement of search engine rankings for your business. Blogs effectively serve fresh content with keyword friendly URLs to your business site, which search engines love. These top keywords need to be what you want your business to be searched for, linking directly to your business’ site. This tactic will gradually increase search rankings, and potentially improve business.  Ongoing, relevant content not only educates consumers, but it also educates search engines about your industry knowledge, credibility and expertise.

Goal 4: Add new functions to meet change in technology

As technology is rapidly changing and growing, you will want to consider plug-ins compatible to your blog. To help maintain your brand’s reputation add video about the history of your brand or pictures from community involvement. These tools will keep you up to date with the fast-paced web technology and also provide variation to your site’s content.  Popular plug-ins that are now “must haves” include SEO-friendly plug-ins, comment spam filters, and other social media capabilities.

If you’re not comfortable with web technology or just have too much on your plate, you may want to turn to New Media Marketing & SEO professionals who have a strong understanding in how to execute these goals. Let Triangle Direct Media create and maintain a strong, growing social platform for your business.

Non-profit organizations are using online networks to aid in fund-raising. According to a survey, more than 85% of nonprofits around the country use social media. A particular nonprofit organization, Living Beyond Breast Cancer has recently won fund-raisers through Facebook, Blogging, YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr. Through online networking you can reach so many more people, and even people from areas around the world you never thought to reach. By increasing friends and followers on these social media sites, it can in turn increase funding and cause awareness.

With e-mail blasts, personal calls, and brochures fading out, social media marketing is becoming a trusted branding technique for fundraisers. Nonprofit organizations are drawing a special fondness to this strategy with the current economic situation, as being one of the most cost-effective means of promotion. With social networking also being the fastest way to get to people, Living Beyond is expecting to double their target of $100,000 from last year’s goal. This particular marking trend has continued to reach a vast majority of nonprofits in the last two years. Nonprofits call this process of social networking to raise funds as “social giving”.

Even with the current economic situation, 80% of retailers are claiming the web to be better fit for survival from the recession than offline retail. According to the 2009 State of Retailing Online: Marketing Report, e-commerce sales will increase 11% this year from $141.3 billion in 2008 to an expected $156.1 billion. Almost one-fourth of online retailers surveyed for the study have plans to spend more this year on their web business plan than had initially intended. Cutting back on areas such as staffing, retailers are now focusing on enhancing areas such as search and social media marketing in their online businesses.

Organic traffic was rated over 50% among effective marketing tactics to be used. To increase organic traffic, retailers are using high value marketing tools designed to help address and optimize their site’s performance. Improving areas such as site structure, on-page and off-page content, retailers can increase online exposure using highly-targeted links and social media. Such techniques will enhance performance, brand reach and usability for online customers, in turn, helping to maintain customer loyalty and generate incremental revenue lifts.

There is no doubt that online retail is making its shift from a surviving industry to a thriving industry. With the current economic scenario it has become apparent that traditional retailers must invest in their online presence in order to keep their retail business thriving during the economy’s down cycle. Even in a down market, there is still evident optimism for the internet marketing industry.

Triangle Direct Media Offers SEO Audits.

Triangle Direct Media has expanded its online marketing functionality to include SEO Audits.

The focus of the audits is to  identify and offer solutions for increasing clients’  visibility in the  major search engines. Custom prioritized recommendations are made to the client for implementation.  Triangle Direct Media also offers full service solutions, however the  audit is a perfect  for many companies that do have the in house teams available to act on the points made by the TDM engineers.

Feedback on the many audits performed to date has been spectacular.

For information contact Triangle Direct Media.

I apologize for not writing in here for a long long time. Our company has grown exponentially and some of our blogs have been neglected. This is one of them. I have been pleasantly surprised with the many contacts coming in from this site so for anyone that is interested we will be appearing at the Electronic Retailer Magazine E Retail Summit in March.

So if you are going or are in the area stop by for a chat!

According to a recent study users are spending nearly half of their online time not emailing, not instant messaging… but actually reading content… And I may be speculating here but I am sure that its not a coincidence that BLOGS have gained popularity in the last few years at a frenzied Pace.

User generated content, user generated reviews have more credibility and now it seems more of an audience then ever before.

This presents an opportunity to those that are dialed in to marketing using social shopping or online product reviews especially those that are done by consumers for consumers.

It’s been a while since I posted in here but saw this and thought it was interesting.. along with Web 2.0 is TV 2.0 on the way also?  Time Warner pulling back from investing in Time Warner Cable TV because the web has shown itself as a viable avenue for television programming.  WOW.

” The Wall Street Journal’s Matthew Karnitschnig has this piece today that says Time Warner is thinking of lowering its investment stake in Time Warner Cable because, in part, the Internet is emerging as a “viable venue for watching TV.” The question of whether Time Warner should reduce its 84% ownership stake in separately traded Time Warner Cable will even be put before the board at an annual strategic review next month.”

I also noticed an article on the front page of WSJ with the headline “Threat for Big Media: Geurilla Video Sites”   is the WSJ hip to the fact that advertising Web 2.0 Style is the way to go?

On-line Video Advertising  as mentioned here and on some of our other blogs just became even more important.

Article Here

Everyone has been touting video on-line etc.. for a while but this is new to me that their was an actual non investment due to the fact that TV programming can easily be delivered and watch in most homes.

What is Web 2.0 Marketing? The answer to that begins with what is Web 2.0? and Who are the Web 2.0 consumers?

Below is a video that Heath in our office ran across in You Tube. I have to admit I had never seen it. He ran across the video in a search for how other people are defining Web2.0 … Here it is and also a link to Prof. Wesch’s video on youtube. This is a good 4 minutes of video showing where the Internet is headed. If your company is not prepared at the very least you will lose sales by not embracing 2.0 marketing concepts.

The future for 2.0 Marketing is exciting, fun, effective, and the companies that employ 2.0 Marketing early stand to gain a foothold in the Web 2.o landscape.

Keep doing what you are doing if it generates results, but look ahead to what changes on the Internet are being brought about by blogging, social media sites, and user generated content to ensure your company’s place in front of the 2.0 Consumer.

Thanks to Prof. Wesch for making Web 2.0 easy to understand.

Here is a Link to the YouTube Video Web 2.0 by Prof. Wesch

Or Click the picture below and it will play right here.

 

 Web 2.0 [04:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download