Managing a successful Facebook Business page is not a simple task.  There are a number of tools that a number of small businesses fail to utilize/exploit; our goal with this post is much like our previous post about Twitter in which our goal is to equip you with the necessary tools to successfully manage your Facebook Business Page.

1.     Choose the best name for your Facebook Page – and don’t change it
Selecting the right name for your Facebook page is important to your page’s success.  Keep it short and sweet, and use your business’s real name as the name of your page.  While you may think that adding key words will help SEO rankings, they will be counterproductive as Facebook looks down on ‘spammy’ named pages.  Also, if you change the name of your business page, it will cost you SEO points.

2.     Use the “About” text box to place keyword-dense text
An important SEO strategy that should be employed on your Facebook Page is to place keyword-dense text as close to the top of the page as possible.  Facebook limits your ability to place custom text, but there is an “About” box on the left hand side of your Page right underneath your profile picture.  In that location, you can type up to 250 characters that are recognized by search engines.  Be sure to choose your words wisely.

3.     Use the “Info” tab to include more important keywords, text, and links on your Page
An important follow-up to placing keyword-dense text in the “About” us box is utilizing the “Info” tab.  This is an ideal opportunity for you to increase your Page’s content score for a variety of search engines.

• Address and additional fields for contact information are important fields for local searches
• Company Overview, Mission, and Products/Services are important fields for product searches
• Websites is another valuable opportunity to add direct links to your own website and/or other social media pages your company has.

4.     Develop a Personality
It is important to determine your brand personality as it makes your company unique and authentic.  It is easier for consumers to connect with brands that are personable, as well as approachable.  Be sure to keep it casual, yet professional.

5.     Do not ignore your fans
People do not like being ignored; the same etiquette applies to Facebook.  If someone posts on your wall or comments on a picture you have posted, respond to them.  Not only do these individuals feel valued, they are likely to remember you for when they need your product or service.

6.     Secure a Vanity URL
Facebook allows businesses to create their own Facebook URL (e.g. www.facebook.com/synergeticbizsolutions).  However, in order to be able to do this, you will need at least a minimum of twenty-five fans to do this.  Once you hit that number, be sure to quickly secure your vanity URL.  For instructions on how to create a Facebook Page vanity URL, visit http://bit.ly/aDDsa7.

7.     Use iFrames
Because FBML applications are no longer available, iFrames can be utilized to custom design and develop your pages to make them stand out.  It is important to note that in order to use iFrames, you need to know HTML and CSS (highly recommended).  If you do not, this is not an issue as our team specializes in the development of iFrame pages.  Be sure to check out our portfolio (http://www.synergeticbizsolutions.com/portfolio.html) to see some sample iFrame pages.

8.     Default Landing Page
Once you develop pages using iFrames, it is wise to designate a page as a default landing page.  These landing pages are meant for people to ‘land’ on these specific pages when searching for or typing in your page name.  This is a great tool when using a certain page to push a promotion or product launch.  For instructions on designating a certain page as the default landing page, be sure to visit http://www.creativeramblings.com/use-a-default-landing-tab-for-your-facebook-fan-page/.

9.     Post Direct Links to your Website in your Page’s Stream
As we are always mindful of SEO, we encourage posting direct links to your website in your page’s stream.  Be consistent, but do not post a link on a continuous basis where it may seem that you are spamming your Facebook page with your website link.  Not only will this help your Facebook SEO as search engines boosts pages that link to relevant sites, this will also help your website’s SEO as it will generate traffic to your website. 

10.  Facebook Advertising
Last, but not least, Facebook advertising can be a worthy tool as you can target ads to appear to a certain demographic (i.e. age, sex, location).  This can be a wise investment as your ads will appear to the most relevant and targeted audience who are the ones that are most likely to purchase your products and services.  For more information on Facebook advertising, visit http://www.facebook.com/advertising/.

If you have any questions or are interested in Synergetic Business Solutions’ social media services, please contact us.

By Corey Axelrod

The internet is a limitless universe and the potential of creating value off something on the internet is astronomical.  Because of this potential, there are numerous competitors trying to capitalize on the opportunity.  Sorting through these competitors essentially separates the powerhouses from the weak ones in the industry.

We all remember the heydays of MySpace – while it might be overrun with bots and spam today, it is important to remember that MySpace helped spark the fuse for the need of great social media sites online.  Today, there are so many different sites where we can frequent and interact with a very diverse range of people regardless of whether you know them personally or not.

As of late, I have been prodding and poking the Holy Trifecta of social media websites: Facebook, Twitter and Google+.  To understand which fits you better, it is suggested to go back and see why those sites were established in the first place.

With respect to Facebook’s establishment, founder Mark Zuckerberg had a brilliant idea of giving users the ability to be exclusive.  Facebook gives users the power to decide who they wanted to be friends with on Facebook, either by submitting friend requests or confirming/ignoring friend requests.  As cliché as it is, those who are not befriended by you are essentially left outside in the rain wondering what’s going on inside by looking through fogged up windows.  Nevertheless, for those you interact with, you’re able to see what they’re up to and vice versa.

Founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, established Twitter because he enjoyed the simple, yet straightforward use of “status updates” of his friends.  He just wanted to be able to peer at what his friends were doing or were thinking about.  If there was anything more, they can just lead their friends to what they want to share.  Twitter is a very simple, yet effective for the fast-paced world we live in nowadays.  However, as each tweet is limited to 160 characters, it might be not enough for you to get your point through and essentially forces people to be creative when composing their tweets.

Google is an information powerhouse.  Google wants to be all seeing and all-knowing.  Google+ promotes a great flow of information, but is very similar to Facebook while cutting out the junk (i.e. games and apps).  It is very clean and works wonders.  However, Google+ hides the concept of exclusivity very well; you can be exclusive while simultaneously public.  It allows you to control who and what can see things up on your wall.

One of the reasons social media is successful is because it gives people the ability to feel exclusive in a community in which you are able to control what you want to share with the public.  I truly believe Facebook and Google+ are the two perched at the top of the industry.  However, because of Google+ seamless integration with the plethora of Google Apps, Facebook could be left lounging around with MySpace. Twitter is in a different world as it is like texting on the Internet. Texting is getting really popular - it can be professional or not.  

Nevertheless, I am going to give Twitter a +1 and keep tweeting. However, I am still chained to Facebook AND Google+.  This is because the people I keep in touch with are not willing to adopt newer sites and prefer to stay with what already works for them.  However, if Google came up with their own version of Twitter (i.e. Googler), all bets are off.  The Internet is like the gold rush, you need to keep mining as you never know when you will hit gold!

By Justin DiBiase (Contributor to the Synergetic Business Solutions' Blog)
Follow Justin on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/justin_dibiase.

What is Quora?

Quora.com is a crowdsourced question-and-answer (Q&A) site which allows users to follow questions, topics, or people that interest them. It is a source for continuous knowledge as it encourages users an opportunity to collaborate with others and create thoughtful-even long threads of responses and discussions. Quora was created by two former Facebook employees, Adam D'Angelo and Charlie Cheever, and publicly launched in June 2010.

How is Quora different from other sites?

You may wonder how this site differs from other Q&A sites like Yahoo! Answers, Ask.com, Facebook Questions, LinkedIn Questions, Stack Overflow, Aardvark, Digg, Answerbag, Mahalo, and WikiAnswers?

Quora combines social networking and in-depth answers into a social search site to differentiate itself from these other Q&A services. Users can interact with others through discussions around each question, or directly, through private messages. In addition, users can refer a question to someone they know who has pertinent knowledge, "thank" a user for a helpful answer (even if you didn't ask the question), connect through Facebook and Twitter, and check statistics on each question, including views, monitors, and followers.

Some say that Quora is created as a blogging innovation; others find it uninviting, geeky, and poorly explained. However, people will realize after using it how addictive, interesting, and informative Quora is.

Quora’s focus is to make existing questions easy to find and on emphasizing people to use their "real" identity, instead of 'chickbabe101', when asking or answering questions, resulting in their frequent classification as a "social search" rather than just a Q&A community. Communities of users are able to push the best answers to the top of the queue by clicking on triangles that appear beside each answer to “upvote” or downvote” answers, a feature seen in sites like Digg and comparable to Facebook's "Like" option. Note that nothing qualifies the most popular answers as accurate nor do people who write these responses qualify as experts.

What does Quora mean for businesses or business professionals?

As businesses and business professionals perpetually struggle to gain traction through Likes, RT's, comments, clicks, friend and follower counts. Quora presents another opportunity to experiment engaging with the community to learn, share your knowledge, and develop deeper relationships with supporters.

You're advised to consistently listen, answer, and monitor within Quora, especially if it is indeed where your community is asking and answering questions. New visitors may be drawn to Quora's breadth of questions and quality of answers about job advice, food, and social media more than they would be otherwise. As quoted on Quora's About Page, "...each question page (may) become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the question." 

You may gain followers answering such questions that users find useful, which will allow you to be viewed as a specialist or knowledgeable with valuable insight.

Again, the idea is if people ask good questions, people will respond - particularly if people provide quality answers. 

Get started by following questions, topics, and people related not only to your own business, but also your markets. You may find noteworthy individuals whose perception and experiences worthy of attention among Topic Groups (users who follow specific areas of interests) you follow.

By Christie Ong

Ever wonder how influential you are online? Klout, a social media analytics service, claims to measure online influence by calculating the "Klout Score" ranging from 1 to 100, which indicates how wide, how strong, and how engaged your audience is.

The score is based on users' activity on the following networks: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Foursquare, analyzing your most influential topics, number of followers and friends, and the number of clicks, comments, and retweets.  According to the company, "The final Klout Score is a representation of how successful a person is at engaging their audience and how big of an impact their messages have on people." 

Your Klout Score, topical influence (identified with a +K button), location, and other factors, all earn you perks such as free tickets to events and the like. Klout will notify you with the right Perk (e.g., coffee, movie) in regard to whichever topic you're influential in.

While Klout is constantly improving, this metric application presents an interesting way to see how influential you are online. Please keep in mind that your score may not always be a reliable indicator of how influential you are. Someone with a low overall score may in fact hold great expertise on different topics or influence over a particular group. Sometimes such calculations fail to account other details that most often matter. As of now, Klout doesn't allow you to connect to your other networks like YouTube, WordPress, and RSS feed.

We encourage you to check out your Klout Score and give people +K for being influential in certain areas.

By Christie Ong

Over the past few days, I've given consultation sessions on how to use Twitter.  Now, while Twitter may be in theory a simple social media platform to use, there is much more to Twitter than one can possibly imagine.  It's important to understand the 'nuts and bolts' of Twitter, and within this post, five key steps will be listed on how to be effective with your Twitter experience.

1) Come up with an effective Twitter handle (name): First and foremost, your Twitter username can only have 15 characters.  Be sure that your Twitter handle reflects who you are representing, whether it is you as an individual or a company/business.  For my own personal twitter, I use the handle @CoreyAxelrod; it makes sense, doesn't it?  It's my name, and I want people to know that I'm representing my own 'personal brand,' one that is separate of the companies I work with.  For Synergetic Business Solutions, I ran into a small issue, 'Synergetic Business Solutions' has 28 characters.  So instead of using 'initials,' I opted out for abbreviations in @synbizsol.  With this, it's a logical approach as the business name is being enunciated.  It all boils down to what you believe will be most effective.  If you feel the need to change your username on Twitter, go to the following website and follow the instructions: http://support.twitter.com/entries/14609-how-to-change-your-username.

2) Type up a descriptive profile description: When people think of Twitter, they usually do not think of it as a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or reputation management tool.  However, that's one of the biggest mistakes people can make.  Your profile description is essentially your Twitter page's meta tags that are picked up by search engines like Google.  This means that you want to be as descriptive as possible in your profile description.  A good way to do this is to write a Twitter 'bio' about yourself or your business in third person.

3) Posting your first tweet: There is no cure all ails with Twitter.  Not everyone does the same thing on Twitter.  Some people use Twitter as a base for interacting with others while others use it primarily for sharing and retrieving knowledge.  The best advice to give you is to keep your messages short and concise; you'll sooner than later find your own 'Twitter personality.'  There is one point that I wanted to make, and that is you need to be careful of not placing your opinions on your company's Twitter handle.  For example, if you are stating your own personal opinions on your company's handle that does not reflect how all employees in the company may feel, you can find yourself in some hot water.  Bottom line, be smart.  Whatever goes up on the internet is available for all to see.

4) Interacting on Twitter: When it all boils down to it, the purpose of Twitter is to create constant connections.  There are a few ways to do this, and they include using the @, #, RT, and d buttons.  

• The @ button is understood as being intended for talking to or with a particular person; this can be done by entering a Tweet with a @username at any point of your message.  This is a great way for engaging in conversation with other people on Twitter.  
• Use the hashtag symbol # anywhere in your tweets before relevant keywords.  This allows tweets to show more easily in Twitter searches.  You can click on hashtagged words in any messages to show all other tweets in that specific category.  Find the hashtags most relevant to you, and use them as a way to share and gather information.  
• RT is an abbreviation for ReTweet, which is like Repeat. It’s like forwarding other people's messages.  If you see something really interesting from one of the people you follow, you may want to RT it so the people following you can see it.  You can click either the 'retweet' button or type RT with the username of the person you're retweeting along with their message.
• Last, but not least, be sure to use the d button.  This allows you to send direct messages to other people using Twitter.  These messages are private between you and intended recipients, and are not shared with the general public.  This is a great tool to converse with people back and forth, as well as a way to build a more personal relationship with said people.

5) Integrate Twitter with other social networks: Do you have a blog? or a Facebook page?  Share your information and what you may be posting on your other social network pages.  It's all about integration.  Twitter is a vital part of web 2.0, and it is up to you on how you want to use Twitter.  Twitter can be the core of your social media strategy, or a supplement to other social media platforms.  Be sure to capitalize on the potential that Twitter can deliver you and your company.

By Corey Axelrod

While last night’s events of the President announcing the death of Osama bin Laden brought joy to many around the world, the power of the internet and social media truly came through.  According to Mashable, more than 27,900,000 tweets were tweeted in a matter of two hours and 35 minutes (from 10:45 p.m. ET to 2:20 p.m. ET).  This is only representative of the impact of social media, and how people have become accustomed to using technology to communicate with other people.  However, there were two lessons learned yesterday evening: the fact that people are completely blasé about the information being reported and that scheduled tweets are just simply not effective, and are rendered completely irrelevant in the midst of mass hysteria.

It is important that as communicators, we ensure factual and accurate information.  It is unfortunate that Fox News spelled Osama bin Laden incorrectly, and spelled Osama as Obama (for more, see http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/another-fox-news-mistake-obama-bin-laden-dead/politics/2011/05/02/19560).  There was another instance in which I found an error on an article posted by Rochester’s very own 13WHAM – responsibility was spelled responsability.  Now I’m not poking fun at Fox News or at 13WHAM, I’m only bringing out the inadequacies in reporting supposedly factual information.  If you’re going to put information out there, be sure that you’re at least reporting correct information, as well as using spell check.

There’s another thing that was brought to the surface by myself and Mack Collier yesterday (http://mackcollier.com/ and twitter.com/mackcollier); this is the fact that there were scheduled tweets released in the midst of all the hysteria.  Any other day, these scheduled tweets would have been perfectly fine.  However, as some scheduled tweets were tweeted while sandwiched by tweets about bin Laden, it just rubbed me and others the wrong way.  This is because social media is supposed to be a means for a company to add a personality to a brand, as well as to interact with its fans/followers.  The point here is that while scheduled tweets enable consistent communication, it can instantaneously take away the personality behind the brand if used incorrectly.  Yesterday was just further proof that scheduled tweets are rendered ineffective.

By Corey Axelrod

As I write this blog entry, I sit on an Amtrak Train riding back from Framingham, Massachusetts to Rochester, New York.  The mind is running away with ideas, and I realize how grateful I am for having a short hiatus from the normal every-day life.  All in one day yesterday, a trip was made to Springfield and Westfield, back to Framingham, then to Boston, and then finally back to Framingham.  For me, all of this was an opportunity to just let go and allow the mind to explore new ways to enjoy life.