Alberta Business Marketing

The jury is out on the importance of Facebook Pages.  Are these pages important to your overall online marketing of are they simply a distraction for many small business owners?

How many Facebook Page invites do you receive in a day?  If you are like me, you ignore more than you accept.  Facebook Page SPAM is on the rise people…don’t say I didn’t warn you.

It seems this craze is impact many of my business colleagues here in Calgary and throughout the global business community.  Everyone seems to be creating pages on Facebook these days.  However, one very important question needs to be asked.  Are they being used to drive people to your marketing website or are they something that is simple “nice to have”.  An even more important question is this, is your Facebook Page increasing opportunities in your sales pipeline?

I am only addressing serious businesses right now, there are many examples where Facebook Pages are great and I am sure there are some business success examples, but just like the latest MLM craze to hit your doorstep, Facebook Pages are a FAIL for many small businesses.  Your community group, church organization or association is where I see a need for this type of online marketing or community building platform, but not your small business or least, don’t put a tremendous amount of your focus on Facebook pages.   Let’s focus on your small business and what matters the most to your survival, bringing value to the market (which a Facebook Page can do if done right) but eventually you must convert people into serious prospects which generate revenues and profits.

The jury is out on the effectiveness of Facebook Pages.  However, the nice thing about Facebook Pages are they are extremely easy to set up and once setup, if your social media consultant is on the ball require no attention at all.  Feeding your blog, RSS feeds and any other type of information directly into your page is totally doable.  Like I said “set it and forget it”.  Did you notice I said “feeding your blog posts”, your blog posts feed into your page and your fans share your posts. It can become viral.

Another good thing about Pages are as a marketer, you can send messages directly to your “fans” if you ever need to share information.  Also fans don’t have to be Facebook Friends either, they simply become a fan.

I still doubt their overall effectiveness for the average brick and mortar business.

What success have you had with a Facebook Page?  Please feel free to share your story.

Calgary  Business Facebook Pages worth mentioning:

• Calgary Entrepreneur and Business Professionals
• Stuart Crawford – Calgary Social Media consultantt (little self promotion)
• Clic Readers – Magnetic Eye Glasses
• Chestermere Real Estate

Don’t spend more than 10 minutes a week on this, if you are, you are spending too much time on Facebook Pages.

Tags: Blog software, Business/Finance, Calgary, community, Criticism of Facebook, Facebook, Facebook Inc, Human Interest, Online social networking, overall online marketing, Social information processing, social media, social media consultant, Technology/Internet, The Facebook Era, web 2.0, World Wide Web
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“Facebook is not social media” my 14-year-old son told me the other day.

“Dad, we just call it Facebook, it is only you adults who label it with that stupid term” he went on to tell me.

You know something, that son of mine is a pretty smart kid!  An old guy like me can learn lots just by spending a day with my youngest son.  You know the kid, quiet but when he says something, it is full of knowledge and intellect.

Yes, Facebook is just like my backyard BBQ on a warm summer day.  As I look around I have friends from back home, friends from my military days and yes some business friends…and even the uncle that no one speaks about publicly. You know something, it is not a complete business tool, Facebook is a tool to socialize and learn the personal side of life.

Sure, I know some of you are saying that you have had success advertising on Facebook.  Facebook does have a place, if you have a product geared to the commercial market or you are doing some market research, perhaps Facebook is somewhere you need to be.

When I consult with clients as a Calgary Online Marketing Specialist,  I offer advice on having a Facebook Page as a tool to share there daily going ons, heck, even I have one.  Here is the trick…AUTOMATION.  I rarely update my Facebook Page manually it is completely automated.  This is what I share with my clients.  Set it and forget it.

I am working on several presentations over the next few months and they will be around a topic entitled “Life After Facebook”.  Where can someone serious about building a business turn?  Well, I have some thoughts and Facebook has nothing to do with it.  It is strategy, it is prospecting….more to come.

Tags: Blog software, business tool, Calgary Online Marketing Specialist, Criticism of Facebook, Facebook, Facebook features, Facebook Inc, Human Interest, Online social networking, Social information processing, social media, success advertising, Technology/Internet, web 2.0, World Wide Web
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18 hours per week the average Canadian spend online.

I think I spend 18 hours or more each day online.  Since I work and own a vibrant Calgary Internet Marketing Consulting firm, well I should be online most of my day.  My word processor is online, my email sits in a data centre somewhere in the world and you want to catch up with what I am doing…tune into my online services.

My fellow Canadians are now tuning into YouTube and other online video sources to get their video entertainment, hurting the television advertising industry.  Canadians are shift their viewing to online media vs. cable television and of course fueling a heated debate about a so-called TV Tax we are facing here in Canada.  This unrest in the cable TV community and the traditional television networks such as Global, CBC or CTV are causing many Canadians to review the value of our modern-day television services.

What do you think?

Are you turning to online resources to watch video or even traditional television programs?

During CBC’s National, Peter Mansbridge reported about a family who has completely cancelled their cable service and switched completely to the Internet for their online television or video watching.  Bypassing the traditional advertisers and the parents actually claim they can even control the content being viewed in their home.

Social networking is consuming Canadians time, efforts and attention span.  We saw reports this week about Facebook, Twitter and other services are now part of people’s daily routine.  Social Media is woven into the fabric of almost every Canadians life, many checking Facebook first thing in the morning and just before they go to bed.

Why are we still trying to figure out if Social Media is something we need to get involved with?

Combine this with iPhones and other smart telephones and now…well the world is truly connected.

Tags: Blog software, Cable TV, Calgary Internet Marketing Consulting, canada, Compagnie Generale de Batiment et de Construction, CTV Inc, Facebook, Facebook Inc, Internet, Mass media, online media vs. cable television, Online social networking, online television, online video sources, Peter Mansbridge, Social information processing, social media, Social Media Ventures Inc, social networking, Technology/Internet, television advertising industry, television networks, television services, Twitter Inc, web 2.0, word processor, World Wide Web, YouTube Inc
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

Working with Today’s Business Woman Magazine

Thanks to my good friends at Bulletproof InfoTech, one of Calgary’s top Microsoft Partners serving the needs of small business in Calgary.  Rene Sloos and the team allowed Ulistic to use his boardroom with fancy SMARTBoard to show the team from Today’s Business Woman the power of blogging.

Blogging as some of you may know is a passion of mine and whenever I have the opportunity to share the ins and outs of WordPress blogs with those looking for insight using this social media technology is a blessing.

Tags: blog, Blog software, bulletproof infotech, Business Woman, Business/Finance, Calgary, Computing, Content management systems, Internet, Microsoft Partners, PHP programming language, rene sloos, Social Landscape, social media technology, Technology/Internet, this social media technology, Uncategorized, wordpress, World Wide Web
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Have you heard of Jeremy Epstein?  I don’t believe he is related to Juan Luis Pedro Philippo DeHuevos Epstein at all?  Actually this Epstein is a fictitious character.   Besides being a handsome man, Jeremy Epstein is a pretty savvy Marketer from the DC area.

Jeremy shared a very interesting story of link spam showing up in his blog the other day and where it came from and who was doing it.  A while back, I was getting a tonne of link spam as well when I installed the IntenseDebate Wordpress plugin.  Stay clear of this plugin all of you WordPress bloggers, total trash and full of spammers who surely increase your comment count but not in a good way.

Jeremy shared a story about four firms who are paying some SEO firm in North Carolina to do SEO work for them.  According to Jeremy’s blog post this SEO firm employs blog commenting and linking tactics aimed to get a higher number of inbound links to their client’s websites.  First off, what about the NOFOLLOW tag Google put in place a while back designed to combat this type of behaviour?  A good SEO firm would understand this loophole has been closed quite sometime ago and link comments don’t work anymore.

Jeremy shared the names of these four firms on his blog post. But I will say this.  There are some SEO firms out there who wound rather take their clients money and run.   I wonder if these four business are even aware that the behaviours of their SEO firm just got them blogged about by my Washington, DC friend.

Question…how do you know what your SEO firm is doing out there?  This is why we are teaching our clients how to do their Calgary SEO work and our approach of education will help your business stay clear of this sort of junk that happens out there.

Buyer beware comes to mind, how are you going to employ your next search engine optimization firm?

Read the complete post from Jeremy here.

Tags: Blog software, Computing, E-mail spam, Google Inc., IntenseDebate, Jeremy Epstein, Juan Luis Pedro Philippo DeHuevos Epstein, Nofollow, North Carolina, PHP programming language, search engine, search engine optimization, Spam, Spamming, Stay, Suh, Technology/Internet, Washington, wordpress, World Wide Web
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