Alberta Business Marketing

One of the things I like about Facebook is that the free widget “Facebook Fan Box” that makes it easy to keep your website always fresh.

Yfrog Widget is a Showstopper for Photos and Video

Now Yfrog, the Twitter photo and video sharing platform offers a free customizable widget that will update your Webpage any time you stream video or take photos and sharethem on twitter with YFrog.

The delicious user interface for creating the Yfrog widget allows users to customize the shape of the widget and colour it to seemlessly plug in and match your Web site.

Each video or photo posted to Yfrog shows up in a live stream along with your comment and clicking on the Widget brings you to the full version of the photo or video as hosted at the site.

How to know if YFrog’s Widget is for you:

• looking for an easy way to keep your Website always fresh
• enjoy taking photos and video on a regular basis
• photos and video would help your ideal client appreciate something special about your business.
• You use twitter regularly
• have a mobile device that captures photos and video
• you have a healthy disdain for Facebook and wouldn’t dream of putting a Facebook Widget on your site.

What do you think? Is it important to have an always fresh Website?

Tags: Facebook, multimedia, photos, Twitter, Video, Yfrog
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By now, most of us have heard that the Web is social, but are you taking action to encourage social actions on your blog or website? Of course we can socialize with our fans and followers on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and the like, but now even our websites and blogs can become places where social actions can bring big benefits.

Three Steps to Earning Tweets and Likes

Step 1: Create great content, stuff that gets people excited, interested and enthused about the content you create.  Think beyond basic website information, think about providing something that your fans will want to tell others about.

Step 2: Ask for the action you want people to take.  Be straightforward – instead of leaving it up to your website visitor to decide how to share, ask them to Tweet about it or Like it.  I like to call this action “a small yes”  vs a “big yes”, like opening their wallet to get out a credit card!

Step 3: Make it easier to take that step by providing buttons that make it easy! Grab the new Twitter Tweet code http://twitter.com/tweetbutton and make a customized Facebook Like button http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like.  Then just paste the html code into your blog or website.

Benefits of Buttons

The nicest thing about using Facebook and Twitter buttons is they are interactive and easy for the users.  It is a very small request to ask a visitor to Like or Tweet about you when all they need to do is click a button on your webpage.  If a visitor likes what they see, engaging with it, brings some sense of personal satisfaction.

A big benefit is that this action is social, letting the website visitors spread word about your offer to all of their friends and followers. Actions produce results that are instantly visible to the clicker.  As the button is pressed, the counter updates, showing number of times the page has been Liked or Tweeted.  It’s a small bit of feedback that encourages users who are social to take action on your page.

Sharing can be viral:  When visitors see others have tweeted or liked your content, it encourages others to share it too! Tweet Button is very well designed

Tweet Buttons Well Designed

The Twitter button is well thought out and features text you can define (default is the page title), a shortened URL and a link to your preferred Twitter account. Users of the code can also recommend a second twitter account to follow once the user confirms their tweet.  Twitter users can also edit the tweet to their desire.

Using the Code

Twitter Tweet Button code is super user friendly, because wherever the code is used, the tweet that is generated automatically creates a shortened URL to the page that was liked.  Once you’ve decided on the design of the button you want for your site, you can use the same code over and over again on any page that you would like tweeted.

The Facebook Like button is highly customizable.  Website editors can even choose to show the Facebook avatar (photo) of the last person who liked your stuff.

Facebook Like button could be better

One of the downfalls of the Facebook Like button code generator, is that the Url to Like must be updated for each page the code is placed on so that when people Like your content, the link in the Facebook status update links directly to the content that was liked.

Think about your site users and fans before determining how social to make your button.  Adding a counter encourages action, but I think most users might be hesitant to see their face show up on the webpage of a tourism business.  My preference is for a simplified counter to save page space.

Get Social on your Webpage or Blog with Facebook Like and Twitter Tweet buttons

If you are in the tourism business, there are big benefits to be had by creating content that engages your audience, just make sure you are making it easy for webpage visitors to share your content with their fans and followers by using Facebook Like buttons and Twitter Tweet buttons.

Tags: Facebook, facebook like, tweet button, Twitter
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

By now, most of us have heard that the Web is social, but are you taking action to encourage social actions on your blog or website? Of course we can socialize with our fans and followers on Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and the like, but now even our websites and blogs can become places where social actions can bring big benefits.

Step 1: Create great content, stuff that gets people excited, interested and enthused about the content you create.  Think beyond basic website information, think about providing something that your fans will want to tell others about.

Step 2: Ask for the action you want people to take.  Be straightforward – instead of leaving it up to your website visitor to decide how to share, ask them to Tweet about it or Like it.  I like to call this action “a small yes”  vs a “big yes”, like opening my wallet to get out my credit card!

Step 3: Make it easier to take that step by providing buttons that make it easy! Grab the new Twitter Tweet code http://twitter.com/tweetbutton and make a customized Facebook Like button http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like.  Then just paste the html code into your blog or website.

Benefits of Buttons

The nicest thing about using Facebook and Twitter buttons is they are interactive and easy for the users.  It is a very small request to ask a visitor to Like or Tweet about you when all they need to do is click a button on your webpage.  If a visitor likes what they see, engaging with it, brings some sense of personal satisfaction.

A big benefit is that this action is social, letting the website visitors spread word about your offer to all of their friends and followers. Actions produce results that are instantly visible to the clicker.  As the button is pressed, the counter updates, showing number of times the page has been Liked or Tweeted.  It’s a small bit of feedback that encourages users who are social to take action on your page.

Sharing can be viral:  When visitors see others have tweeted or liked your content, it encourages others to do it too!

Tweet Button is very well designed

The Twitter button is well thought out and features text you can define (default is the page title), a shortened URL and a link to your preferred Twitter account. Users of the code can also recommend a second twitter account to follow once the user confirms their tweet.  Twitter users can also edit the tweet to their desire.

Using the Code:

The Facebook Like button is highly customizable.  Website editors can even choose to show the Facebook avatar (photo) of the last person who liked your stuff.  One of the downfalls of the Facebook Like button code generator, is that the Url to Like must be updated for each page the code is placed on so that when people Like your content, the link in the Facebook status update links directly to the content that was liked.

Think about your site users and fans before determining how social to make your button.  Adding a counter encourages action, but I think most users might be hesitant to see their face show up on the webpage of a tourism business.  My preference is for a simplified counter to save page space.

Twitter Tweet Button code is super user friendly, because wherever the code is used, the tweet that is generated automatically creates a shortened URL to the page that was liked.  Once you’ve decided on the design of the button you want for your site, you can use the same code over and over again on any page that you would like Tweeted.

If you are in the tourism business, there are big benefits to be had by creating content that engages your audience, just make sure you are making it easy for webpage visitors to share your content with their fans and followers by using Facebook Like buttons and Twitter Tweet this buttons.

Tags: Facebook, facebook like, tweet button, Twitter
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

LinkedIn, Facebook and many other Social Networking sites have been suggesting friends and followers for a while now.  Do you follow these people just because the service recommends them to you.   Deep down inside where many Facebookers or LinkedIn users never get a chance to visit there is some formula or algorithm that figures out who you should know and offers suggestions based on your friends, there friends and a number of other criteria.

Twitter is now jumping of the “suggest a friend” campaign with their own “suggestions for you” program.

The Twitter blog has more information on how this will work inside Twitter.  Read the Twitter blog.

Are you the type to follow whomever is suggested to you?

What do you think about the automated suggestions?

In the LinkedIn world, I have used the suggestions to my advantage.  When I see a name pop up from someone I haven’t heard of in a while or a long-lost colleague, LinkedIn can be a great way to get back in touch with people.

But what do you think?

Tags: Blog hosting services, Facebook, Facebook Inc, Human Interest, linkedin, LinkedIn Ltd, Online social networking, Social information processing, Social Landscape, social media, Social network service, Technology/Internet, Twitter, Twitter Inc, web 2.0, World Wide Web
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For travelers, getting advice from someone who has been there, done that has become second nature with traveler advice sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp!, Google Maps and others. But most of the time, we have no idea who those people are that are giving the advice.

Social Networking should be smarter
Is it someone like me? or are they someone with different values, interests and attitudes. I know I’ve seen reviews for places I’ve stayed that in no way reflect my experience.

It’s a foggy area that can make it difficult to interpret the relevance of travel reviews for me.  I want to know how much I have in common with the person leaving the reviewbefore assigning any level of credibility, validity or relevance.

The ideal travel review site would be a little more like LinkedIn and Twitter.

LinkedIn uses business connections to help me find people who are connected to people I know and easily network with people in my industry. Folks I’m connected to there have more in common with me than most, but the nature of my work, doesn’t fully define my interests and attitudes.

Twitter probably does the best job of finding people like me:
I’ve found quite a few people on Twitter, that I’ve later met in person and hit it off with from the get-go. I could have followed almost any early adopter on twitter and I would certainly have found a kindred spirit in the tech area, but these sort of connections clearly aren’t so easy for the non-techie. Twitters new “Suggestions of Users to Follow” tool may be a step in the right direction toward finding people who are a lot like me. Until now, twitter searches, twitter lists, Follow Friday advice has given me really neat, interesting people to follow, but it can be a lot of work. I wonder if Twitters algorithm, using people you follow and the people they follow as a starting point will offer users access to more people who are a lot like themselves.

Facebook integration with Travel Reviews

Many Facebook users I’m connected with have credibility and I trust their opinions because I already know most of the folks I follow there personally.  User profiles, photos, uploads, status updates and activities give me a good overall picture of any Facebook user’s interests and attitudes.

Wouldn’t it be great to connect my trusted sources to my upcoming trips?  Having my Facebook friends, Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections offer travel advice would be much more valuable than a collection of reviews whose credibility is in question.

As if in answer to this half-written blog post, along comes TripAdvisor TripFriends and Bootsnall Traveler Connect app.  Both connect with Facebook to enhance travel experiences.   TripFriends helps me connect with my Facebook friends to get advice from people I already know.  As Steve Kaufer, TripAdvisor founder says, “Get great travel advice from your friends before you go.”  Traveler Connect helps me find other travelers going to the same place I am, or connect with locals living there. According to Bootsnall founder Sean Keener, “I can ask travel questions, arrange to meet for a drink, and create some unique experiences not found in a guidebook.”

What’s Next for Travel Review sites?
I see a future where I’ll be able to get travel advice exclusively from people who share my outlook on the world.   Connecting all my social networks to travel reviews will take time, but these two projects are a great start.  Over time,  I’ll be able to quickly bring into focus the 10% of travel reviews that really mean something to me.

Have you seen any social network that comes closer to finding people like you than Twitter or LinkedIn?  Seen anything to rival the new TripAdvisor TripFriends and Bootsnall Traveler Connect projects?

Tags: bootsnall, Facebook, free web marketing stuff, social networking, traveler connect, tripadvisor, tripfriends
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