Biz Tips Blog: Online Marketing, Visibility and Business Blogging Tips

Celebrate Effective Communications Month and Get Lots of Gifts!

I'm celebrating Effective Communications Month and you get the gifts! My good friend Felicia Slattery has assembled 14 amazing experts (myself included) who are sharing their tips and techniques for free!

Research has shown that effective communication is an essential part of your overall business success.  If you are an entrepreneur or small business owner, you don't want to miss this opportunity!

In honor of Effective Communications Month - a real honest-to-goodness holiday listed in Chase's Calendar of Events-throughout the month of June you can pick up loads of fabulous tools to help you communicate more effectively in your business with your customers, clients and prospects so you can enjoy greater success. 

The best part? It's all free! There is nothing to buy now-or ever. This isn't some teaser offer where you only get to see what's listed and then have to buy something in order to get the goods.  This is completely 100% free to you.  That's right -- we're doing a real giveaway going on all month until the end of June. 

What's the catch?  There really is none.  If you don't know her, Felicia is just that kind of person.  She likes giving away useful stuff.  [NOTE: you do have to opt-in to get the gifts of your choice - that is a small price to pay for the information you're getting, believe me, I've checked it all out.]

Felicia's got some powerhouse folks on board with her like PR expert Shannon Cherry, video expert Lou Bortone, Bob the Teacher, Jeff Herring and Maritza Parra and many more!  You'll see tools to help you with writing ebooks, creating your signature program, showing appreciation to your clients, creating a membership site and even how to raise business smart children.

I'm giving away my updated (2010) program on How to Drive Quality Traffic to Your Blog. It's been "off the market" for several months and the only way to get it right now is via the Effective Communications Month Giveaway.

Go right away to: http://www.EffectiveCommunicationsGiveaway.com and let the experts shower you with gifts!

Image from Shutterstock.

YouTube Search Stories - Tell Your Story in 35 Seconds

Recently YouTube debuted a video creation tool called Search Stories. The idea is that every search tells a story. It's super simple to use and outputs a 35 second video - with sound track - that tells your story via Google search results.

You input up to 7 search terms. You then select whether results are from all Web pages, images, blogs, Google maps, news, products or books. A screen shot of what will show in the video is provided so you can decide if the search tells the right story.This works the best if you have a lot of search results on your name, business name, and lots of images posted around the web and of course they need to be tagged appropriately so they come up in your search queries.

Next step is to add a music track, then click a button and the video is generated and you can load it to YouTube and share with the world.

Inspired by Mari Smith, I played around with Search Stories and created two: one for the Radiant Success Event I'm co-hosting with four colleagues in Raleigh, NC, and a total ego video created by searches on my name and blogs. It's fun and if you're creative, you can develop a great search story about your company, products, services and events.

Here's the Denise Wakeman vanity video... ;-)

What's your search story? How would you feature your business, blog or products?

Create a YouTube search story and then post the link to your video here in the comments. I'd love to see what you come up with and give you a visibility boost by giving your video a thumbs up or making it a favorite or commenting.

Related:
A Quick Lesson in How to Create Online Visibility with Video

My video channel: DeniseWakeman.tv

Facebook Pages Are All the Rage - Do You Have One?

If you've got a business, you need a Facebook page. That about sums it up. But there are so many nuances to making sure it is optimized and works to achieve your business goals. And, then how do you get people to "like" your page and get them to stay and engage with you?

Where do you start?????

This week I attended a great presentation at the Social Media Success Summit by Mari Smith, also known as The Pied Piper of Facebook. She defined quite a few elements that need to be in place for creating a active Facebook page. Coincidently, Mari's first book, Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day [aff], was also launched this week which means you can tap into her deep expertise on the subject of Facebook.

I received my copy today so I haven't read it yet, but a glance through the table of contents reveals that the book goes deep on strategy, measurement, planning and then promotion and engagement. Plus, readers are invited to a 3 part live webinar on creating Pages with the authors in June. That's a great twist and value-add for the book.

One of the key features that makes a Facebook Page so powerful is that you can add custom tabs. There are some design constrictions. It's worth understanding them and getting a custom tab added to your Page so you can add your branding and personal welcome to new visitors. You can also add opt-in forms and video.

I've personally found that creating custom tabs is not that easy. For most people I recommend you invest a little money and hire someone who knows how to design content for Facebook. Here are a few resources you can investigate for custom Facebook page and landing tab design:

• Twitterimage - Did my design (not my welcome tab - I did that and it's pretty basic)
• FanPageEngine - do it yourself for designing design custom tabs (I'm going to experiment with this but need a new banner designed first)
• FanPage Generator - a little pricey
• Mari Smith's do it yourself tips

A search on Google will also provide you with many options. When you see a custom page your like, find out who designed it.

Is there a custom landing tab that stands out for you on Facebook? EzineArticles has a great landing page and multiple custom tabs (circled in red):

Related Post:
Facebook Pages Fast Becoming Essential For Business

Facebook Pages Are Fast Becoming Essential for Business

Do you have a Facebook Page for your business? I've had one for a couple years but only in the last year has it really taken off. With 400 million users, it's a force that cannot be ignored. That's where people are hanging out -- even in the demographic you serve, I'll bet. Heck, my 101 year old great aunt uses Facebook to keep up with her large extended family!

I read an article on Web Pro News that supports why you must have a page - Google Makes Facebook Pages a Priority for Businesses.

Google announced via Twitter this week, that public status updates from Facebook are now included in the search engine's real-time search feature. That means the largest social network in the world is getting play in Google's real-time search alongside Twitter, MySpace, and others, and these real-time results are often featured prominently on the first page of search results for the hottest queries.

Content in Page updates is indexed by Google. Content on Profiles is not. It's another opportunity for you to be found via search by your ideal client.

I've found that "fans" like to interact, click the "like" button, comment on the links and status updates I post. They also click through to my blog posts which are automatically fed to my page through the Notes application.

The Blog Squad on Facebook

I post links to cool resources I find and articles related to business blogging, marketing on the web, social marketing and online visibility. It's the perfect venue when I don't need to write a whole blog post but I want more than the 140 characters that I get with twitter. And when you link your Fan page to your twitter account, your updates are automatically sent to twitter with a link back to your Fan page.

Showcase Your Blog with WiseStamp in Your Email

Are you leveraging your email to get more traffic and visibility for your blog? Most people are not, yet it's a great way to introduce people to your content. Think about how many emails you send in the course of a day to clients, prospects, vendors and colleagues.

I use Gmail for all my email accounts (all my email addresses are forwarded to my Gmail account so they are easier to manage and I don't have to log in to multiple email clients). I also use the Firefox browser and was thrilled when I learned about an extension called WiseStamp.

WiseStamp Firefox extension empowers your email signature on any webmail service (Gmail,Yahoo Mail ,AOL, Hotmail, Google Apps…) Easily customize, Include IM & Social profiles, Automatically share your Blog posts, Quotes, News, Bookmarks and more…

I was even more thrilled when I learned that they added functionality to include an RSS feed in the email sig. This means you can showcase your latest blog posts (and drive more traffic!). When the feed gets updated with new content, your email sig is updated. Here's my current signature: