Many people are like this now, which is a shame. Because when you do pay attention, you will occasionally find some hilarious flubs by the automated system and the companies that have bought AdWords. These are five of those examples.

1. Cupid Is On eBay

We all want to be loved. Now it is easier than ever…just hop on over to eBay and buy some! Not only is it available, but it is apparently cheap. That hasn’t been my experience, but hey, I am not the expert here. Whoever managed to apparently bottle, brand and advertise love is a genius, and probably worth trillions. I bet that can buy a whole lot of the love stuff.

2. Screw Dominos!

Thinking of ordering Dominos? Pizza Hut has something to say about that. This is the search equivalent of a photobomb. It isn’t even subtle, Pizza Hut literally thrust themselves right in there like a canon ball in a swimming pool, splashing their marketing all over the place. But what I really love about it is how it is actually the result above the real Dominos site. I don’t know if there is a clearer way of one business giving the other a finger. This by the way is not allowed by Google but doesn’t mean this can’t be done.

3. I Can Confirm This

This one is just clever. It reacts tot he ad above it, and is very amusing because of it. I love witty advertising, especially when it has a bit of a sarcastic flare. For those who don’t know, this refers to former GameSpot editorial director Jeff Gertsmann. In 2007, he was fired from his position for unclear reasons. Though it is widely believed to have been advertising pressure that led to his being unfairly bumped from the company. A number of colleagues left in protest, and it caused quite a stir. Even years later, this reference is a funny one.

4. Toddlers On Clearance

Not only can you buy love these days, but apparently you can buy a baby, too! They are even on sale, so I bet you can get a great deal. There is no word yet on whether or not you can get a two-pack deal on twins. But we will keep our fingers crossed.

5. Oh My…

I have never seen a worst example of advertising on Google. Why this would even register for an ad is beyond me, but I am sure it caused a great deal of embarrassment for eBay. Which, by the way, does not specialize in the sale of African slaves. Or indeed people of any kind.

Have you seen any examples of funny Google AdWord flubs? Let us know in the comments.

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Ann Smarty

Community Manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas

Ann Smarty is the pro blogger and guest blogger, social media enthusiast.

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The post 5 Funniest Google AdWords Ads appeared first on SEO Chat.

Mike Moran raised that question recently over at Search Engine Guide. He acknowledged that we’ve had the World Wide Web for more than 15 years now, and search engines of one kind or another for most of that time. So this may seem a little unrealistic to ask now. Still, you probably spend a lot of time focused on tasks like keyword research, putting out press releases, adding new content, etc. How much of that is for visitors, and how much is for the search engines? How much of it would you do if you couldn’t depend on Google sniffing by your website and bringing human visitors to it later?

There WAS a time, however brief, before search engines. And even after search engines came to be, many of them weren’t very good. Some of us can actually remember that far back. In those days – post-web but pre-Google – marketers plastered a company’s URL on everything they could think of: stationary, business cards, pens, buses, catalogs, brochures, taxis, billboards, convention swag, magazine ads, online display ads on other websites, you name it. You still see plenty of that, of course, but now there are other options.

“Right,” I can hear you saying, “there are search engines.” But we’re trying to get away from the search engines with this mental exercise. If you couldn’t depend on the search engines to pick up your content and bring you visitors, what would you do? Aside from plastering your URL everywhere, I mean.

Moran offers a good answer that you should think about carefully. “I suspect you’d spend a heckuva lot more time promoting your content. I think you’d tweet it. I think you’d blog about it to your subscribers. I think you’d post a video about it on YouTube. I think you’d mention it in your e-mail newsletter. I think you’d make very sure that you were promoting it every way you could to people you thought might be interested.”

Does that sound a little annoying? It could be – if your content isn’t worthy of being promoted. If it is, though, you need to ask yourself why you aren’t doing this already, regardless of Google.

Let me give you an example. There’s a farm about an hour or two from where I live that sends me a semi-regular newsletter to let me know what’s coming ripe there. They grow both organically and hydroponically; in addition to the fruits, vegetables, and plants, they sell supplies for hydroponic gardening and give classes out at the farm. Their newsletter is always full of information I find of interest, even when I don’t act on it right away. Therefore, I welcome it, and don’t consider it spam.

What about your content? When you post something new on your website, or blog about some new or enhanced product or service, are you sure that your readers and visitors will find it of interest? Or are you just doing it to improve your standing in the search engines, and to feed more delicious keywords to Google so it’ll reward you with a bump in your rankings? If you’re only doing it to feed Google, trust me, your visitors will know. To them, the smorgasbord you think you’re laying out will taste like gruel, and they’ll go elsewhere for a truly filling content buffet.

Now, if your content is good, and you’re truly excited to tell others about it, that will show, too. And if it is that good, you should be promoting it in the ways Moran described – because traffic is traffic, after all, and Google can see what you’re doing. “Increasingly, search engines are looking at social media activity, too, as a surrogate for page quality (just as links are),” Moran noted.

Are you still hesitant to promote your content? Why? Don’t you think it’s worth the effort? Then perhaps you’d better back up and rethink your content strategy. As Moran points out, “if you don’t think your content is worthy of that level of promotion, then that’s the first thing for you to work on, because Google probably doesn’t think much of that kind of content either.” Good luck!

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Terri

The post Imagine There`s No Google appeared first on SEO Chat.

This topic comes up all the time on the SEO Chat forums. In fact, we offer an entire subforum on local search techniques, and you can find also find a variety of threads in other parts of the forum that deal with issues for essentially locally-based websites.

Perhaps one of the biggest differences between promoting a website for a local business and doing the same thing for a national firm or brand involves link building. As noted in this recent thread, when you’re starting a new local-based business, figuring out where to get your links from can be a challenge. The good news is that link building may be less important at the local level than other promotional opportunities.

Your first step, according to long-time SEO Chat forum member jsteele823, should be a visit to Google Maps. If you look on the left hand side, you’ll see a line that says “Put your business on Google Maps,” with a link. Click the link, and you’ll be taken to a Google Places page which you will be able to use to add your business. This screen will include a text box in which you can enter your phone number to see if Google Maps already has some information about your business. Do it; you’d be surprised at what Google collects. You’ll be able to claim your business, fill out your listing, and correct any errors that may have accumulated.

By the way, Yahoo and Bing also boast their own versions of Google Places. You’ll want to create or claim your business listing on their sites as well.

From there, your best bet is to go with local opportunities for link building. Check with your local Chamber of Commerce; you might be able to get a good link from their website. Next, you might look into websites that do a certain kind of local geo-targeting, but on a national level. By this, I mean websites such as Yelp, which let customers review local businesses. You may also want to look at setting up a Facebook page and/or a Twitter feed; explaining how to do that and run it properly would take up another article or three, so I won’t get into that here.

Some of what you need to do will depend on the kind of business you run. Try looking for community outreach opportunities and asking politely for leads and links. Is your ice cream parlor providing refreshments for a children’s charity event? Ask for a link on the web page for the event. Did your  computer firm install new computers at the local elementary school? Some schools run their own blogs; you might get a link from a post reporting on the event. Sometimes, if you want to promote your company online, you need to go offline first. Networking is networking, regardless of where you do it.

Sometimes you need to get a little creative, be patient, and stay focused on your real goal – which isn’t to rank in Google as much as it is to get customers. You should remember, therefore, that your website is a means to that end. Let me give you an example.

I live in a gated community where the residents are mostly 55+ years old. Joe, one of the residents, runs his own computer services business catering to that age group. He started a computer club here in the community. Whenever his club meets, he lists his email address as the contact for more information – and the address contains the name of his company’s website. Without even linking to his site, then, he’s telling his target market where they can find him online. Potential customers can research the services he offers, read testimonials from satisfied customers, and so on.

These club meetings, by the way, aren’t just a group of people meeting; Joe puts together a good presentation on topics likely to interest his target market. One previous presentation covered digital cameras; this week, he’s doing a presentation on Windows 8. Anyone curious enough to go to these presentations is probably a good candidate for Joe’s services. Yes, putting it all together is a fair bit of work, and he isn’t even getting a live link out of it, necessarily – but he IS reaching his target market and getting customers. He’s getting his website in front of the right demographic for his business – and he isn’t even using Google to do it. Now that’s going local!

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Terri

The post Promoting a Local Business Website appeared first on SEO Chat.

Indeed, how to best use Twitter to promote your website comes up as a topic for discussion regularly on our forums; you can take a look at the latest thread covering this subject for some ideas. The best ways to use Twitter to increase the traffic on your website might actually be more indirect than you might think.

Take SEO Chat founder Darren Ward, for example. While not a big fan of Twitter, he’s been able to make it work for his clients “by just actively engaging,” he says. You can do this by searching for keywords relevant to your niche on Twitter, and responding to related tweets. You should also respond when others address you and post reactions to your tweets – and do it quickly, as Twitter users tend to have a very short attention span.

Respected SEO Chat member and moderator Darren Haye shared that his company does giveaways on their Twitter feed; those who hope to win need to follow their Twitter feed. If you’re just starting out and don’t have any followers, you can begin by advertising the giveaways on your website.

Haye notes that there are a lot of “ifs” for someone with a new website who is also new to Twitter. “If you’re a new site and have no real visitors you could always search Twitter and follow anyone talking about your topic and hope they follow you back. If they do they may well click on the profile link to your site, and if your content is great maybe they will share it with their Twitter followers, thus increasing yours…”

As another way to get the word out about your company and your brand, you might consider sending gifts to celebrities with lots of followers to get them to tweet about you. But Haye noted that, in his experience, “people with 200,000+ followers tweeting at the optimum time only sends about 3,000 people…the bounce rate is very high and the sales are very low, but we do sell expensive products that aren’t really easy to impulse buy.” Obviously, if you’re selling something that is not very expensive and more likely to be purchased on an impulse, your mileage may vary.

The poster to this thread that made me really believe that most of us need to rethink the way we use Twitter for promotion, though, was Dr. Marie. She’s a veterinarian with a popular pet care website, so she has a certain amount of built-in expert authority in her niche. Still, I think that her approach can be duplicated by anyone.

Dr. Marie notes that she has just over 1,000 hard-earned Twitter followers; not a single one of them came from being bought or auto-followed. Still, she notes that she might get ten visits, if she’s lucky, after she tweets something about her website. As you might guess, this is not the main way she uses Twitter, and it’s not the reason she loves it. Instead, she’s found four different ways to use Twitter that help her business quite a bit, albeit more indirectly.

The first way she uses it is to keep informed about her own niche. “I follow important people in my industry and get info on breaking news stories very fast,” she explained. “That way I can write blog posts about the news stories.” This plays right into Google’s preference for a constant stream of fresh content.

The second way she uses Twitter is to help with building relationships in her niche. “I connect with people in my industry. Sometimes these connections turn into friends who I share links with,” Dr. Marie added. Using a social networking website for…social networking? Not a bad idea at all.

The third way Dr. Marie uses Twitter is to help her keep informed on the latest SEO developments. For that, she uses a separate account to “follow the top SEO folks,” since she wouldn’t want to confuse anyone about her brand. “I learn a lot about what is happening in the SEO world this way,” she noted.

Finally, if you do all the writing for your website, you’ll appreciate the fourth way Dr. Marie uses the microblogging platform: “I use Twitter search to get ideas for content.”

It’s worth noting, by the way, that Dr. Marie doesn’t really care how many people are following her; indeed, given how she uses Twitter, that hardly matters. If you haven’t considered using the microblogging site to build up your website and your traffic in this way, I urge you to consider it. Instead of looking like a self-promoting spammer, you’ll be building quality content on your website. Such content should improve your ranking and visibility in Google, which should also improve your traffic. It might not be the most direct way to use Twitter for increasing the number of visitors to your website, but it’s probably a lot more sustainable over time. Good luck!

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Terri

The post Twitter: Rethinking Your Approach appeared first on SEO Chat.

With that in mind, it’s not surprising that this question should get asked on our SEO Chat forums. You can read the thread and join the conversation if you’re interested. The answer, in this case, seems to be a definite “yes,” if two Matt Cutts videos available on YouTube are any indication. Search for “What impact does server location have on web rankings?” on YouTube (without the quotes) and you’ll spot the videos pretty quickly. Of course, that answer raises other questions.

The first question is, why should your web server’s location affect your ranking in Google? The search engine tends to make an assumption that if your IP address comes from France, and your top-level domain is .fr, then you’re probably based in France. It will assume that your business is therefore more relevant to someone searching from France and (especially) using google.com.fr than it is to someone searching from the US using plain old google.com.

Note what I said above about “tends to make an assumption.” It’s not an ironclad rule; it’s not as if Google doesn’t realize that we’re a global community and the Internet is a global phenomenon. Cutts states that you won’t show up only on searches specifically from your web host’s country. Still, you can probably guess that if you’re a bank based in France, you may not show up as high in the results for someone using Google.com in the US and searching on the keyword “bank.” Nor should you, in Google’s opinion, since it tries to show the most relevant results for each particular search and searcher.

In one of the videos I mentioned above, Cutts mentions that you can specify in Google’s webmaster console that your website is relevant for a particular country – and you can even do that for specific parts of your website. That’s something you might want to do if, for instance, you’ve built a site with sections for customers in different countries. In that case, if your server is based in Mexico, but is relevant for users in the U.S., you could probably tell Google in this way that it should take that into consideration when deciding your ranking on the country-specific versions of its search engine.

While this shouldn’t be a major worry for you, that’s probably not all you can do to make sure Google knows where you are. You can claim your business listing in Google Local. You can make sure your business name, address and phone number are correct and up-to-date everywhere they appear on your website. You can make an effort to build links with other businesses that are based in your area. Cutts notes that if you find a great deal in a particular country, and you really want to stay in that country with your web server, that’s fine; but if you are worried about it, you can try switching the geographic location of your web server, which is essentially changing your IP address, and “that might end up helping for various countries. So it’s the sort of thing where I encourage you to experiment,” he concludes.

Have you noticed any difference in your ranking in country-specific versions of Google that you can trace to your web server’s IP address? We’d love to hear about it.

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Terri

The post Server Location as Local Ranking Factor appeared first on SEO Chat.

I’d like to give a tip of the hat to Stoney deGeyter for the insights in his article that inspired this one. I particularly liked his observation that “social media is more than just pushing content, it is actively creating content in small, digestible chunks. Or, as old people like to call it, communicating.”

As it happens, I’m one of those “old people.” And deGeyter makes one heck of a point here. When you’re chatting with your friends, you’re not trying to promote your business; you’re ENGAGING. If you own any personal social media accounts that aren’t connected to your business, I bet you get plenty of comments whenever you post something – possibly more than you do when you post as your business. I know I do, and I don’t have that many “friends”!

Why do you see such a difference? Well, your personal social media account probably has more history, but there’s also the fact that so many people know you AS a person, rather than as your business. What if you could get your business social media account(s) to behave – or dare I say it, engage – more like a real person? You’d probably get more people communicating with your business online, right?

So what should you do? First, stop mouthing off all the time about what you know. Yes, content is king, and continues to be king, but short attention spans online grow even shorter on social media sites. Do you remember the last time you went to a party and got stuck for three and a half hours next to the guy who was obsessed with bass fishing and couldn’t wait to tell you about his last fishing trip and the new lures he tried out and how he fixed his favorite pole and…you get the idea? Don’t be that guy!

Don’t get me wrong; I think most people enjoy listening to someone talk about his or her passions. Please remember, though, that talking is only half of being engaged; listening is the other half, and it’s even more important. What happens in a group if everyone only talks about what’s important to them, and no one listens to anyone else? “I belonged to a business networking group like this once,” deGeyter noted. “Everyone was there to promote themselves so nobody really cared about what everyone else was promoting. They wanted to get their spiel in and that was it. The group was a dud. If people only want to sell and never want to engage, nobody gets anything.”

Don’t just talk AT your audience; ask questions. Listen to the answers, and build your next communication with them around that. Heck, stop thinking of them AS your audience, if that helps. Audiences are passive; you want to get your readers ACTIVE. Ask for suggestions. Ask for opinions. Listen to the answers. You could get your next great article idea from your engaged community; you might even learn something!

Does that mean you stop posting articles or publishing quality content? Not at all. You can always do what we do here, and what I’ve seen many other companies do: publish an article on your websites and post a link to it on Facebook or Twitter or another site. But don’t just post the link; ask a question. Remember, real people post links to their latest blog posts on Facebook, too. Give your community a reason to want to read your content and engage with it.

Indeed, to some extent you can use what a real person would post as a guide for how you might communicate with your community. Real people look for advice, state opinions, listen to others, give thoughtful replies, and so forth. Think about what kind of “person” you want your business to be, and let your social media interactions reflect this vision. After all, it’s a lot harder to corner someone online for three and a half hours if they don’t want to spend the time with you!

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Terri

The post How to Be a Real Person Online appeared first on SEO Chat.

Andrew Shortland covers this topic in eight points for Search Engine Land, and his first two are “Don’t Do It!” and “Seriously. Don’t Do It!” That said, things can happen that make it unavoidable. In Shortland’s example, a dentist’s son went into the family business and wanted the name changed to reflect that. But a major change in the focus of your business can also prompt a change; so can trademark issues; and so can other events that may or may not be beyond your control. What should you do then?

If you absolutely must change your business name, be prepared to roll up your sleeves and go to work. If at all possible, try to keep the same domain name. If you change it, you could lose a lot of search engine traffic. If you must change it, “make sure you have a good URL redirection plan in place,” Shortland advised. Indeed, planning well may be the most important thing you can do to minimize the negative impact on your business. You’ll need a good PR plan to build new links and social sharing signals with the new name. A paid search campaign – again, with the new name – can fill in the gap while you’re working on the SEO for the new domain.

Your next step is to update your business contact data – not just on your stationary and your website, but everywhere. You must make sure that Google knows your business name, address and phone number. The search engine looks at this information to determine where you are geographically and what you do. It indexes yellow page sites, local chamber of commerce sites, and so on to get this data. That means if you haven’t completely corrected that information in even one place, your local rankings could drop.

Speaking of local, “don’t forget about updating your NAP [name, address, phone number] data on your Google+ Local page, Bing Local and Yahoo Local profiles,” Shortland noted. And as you bring in the new, make sure you get rid of the old. Some sources might give you hard time about it – and these could cause duplication issues down the line. If you find a lot of sources won’t let you change your data, you might consider changing your phone number – though only as a last resort – so searchers looking for you can better distinguish your new information from your old information.

While you’re going about updating your business name in various places online, make sure  you update it on your website! In fact, you should update it there before you update it on services such as Bing Local and Yahoo Local. You’d think this would be a no-brainer, but Shortland revealed that “it’s not uncommon for a business to change its name but forget to change it on its website.” Don’t become another statistic; at the very least, you’ll confuse potential customers, and you definitely don’t want to do that.

Speaking of your customers, be sure you tell them all about the name change before you do it. “When you change your name, it might put off customers who weren’t in the loop and don’t understand what’s going on,” Shortland explained. So get the word out, especially if you have a presence on Facebook and/or Google+. You can even show them a “sneak peak” of your new name or elements from the new site, and find out what your customers think of the change.

I haven’t covered everything; check out Shortland’s article for more details and suggestions. Rebranding is a lengthy, tedious, potentially expensive and detail-laden process. It is not for the faint of heart, and it should not be attempted lightly. If you find yourself in this unenviable position, I wish you good luck; you’re going to need it.

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Terri

The post Rebranding and SEO: the Painful Details appeared first on SEO Chat.

DarrenHaye, one of our new moderators on the SEO Chat forums, posed the question in a new thread. “Google doesn’t use NoFollow links in terms of SERPs, but does it use them in identifying webspam?” he wondered. The idea was this: would Google assume that a nofollowed link leading to your site was dropped as part of comment spam, and that therefore the site it led to was spammy?

This question incited quite a bit of discussion among our regulars – including some that departed from the traditional “no incoming link can hurt you” stance. Long-time SEO Chat member tstolber stated “I believe that Google does use them to some extent when looking at a back link profile…I do believe that having too heavy a nofollow back link profile with irrelevant links CAN devalue” the authority of your website. He noted that “recent evidence (lots of analysis on Penguin) shows that there is some correlation between nofollow low relevance back links and sites being devalued.”

DarrenHaye continued his research and found a quote on the Google Webmaster Forums that indicated using the rel=”nofollow” attribute is as good as deleting a link for purposes of the Penguin update. The sense I get from this is that if the nofollow was added later, you lose whatever link juice you got from it – but if you’d been penalized for that link (for it being “unnatural,” perhaps), you’d also lose the penalty. It’s as if the link no longer exists, for those purposes.

Another long-time forum member, gazzahk, brought his perspective to the discussion. While he noted that Penguin did change the way link juice was valued, nofollow links pass along no link juice to begin with. So owners of websites who think they’ve been affected by having too many nofollow links pointing to their sites might be deluding themselves. Say site A sees a drop in its rankings and traces it to Penguin. The owner checks his back link profile and spots a lot of nofollow links. He blames those. But he’s wrong in this case.

Sites B, C, and D are linking to site A. These are not nofollow links; they’re passing link juice. However, a whole bunch of spammy websites are linking to site B, and at least a significant number are also linking to site C. Google spotted those spammy sites, and devalued their links. So sites B and C lost a lot of the link juice they were getting from those links. That means they have less to pass on to site A. So their links are worth correspondingly less…and site A loses some of its rankings, not because of all the nofollow links, but because links that don’t even connect to it directly got devalued.

Other issues that gazzahk noted in reference to Penguin include changes to the benefit from anchor text, “and it appears there may also have been a significant devaluation of what type of links to and do not bring juice any more. It also appears that there was a significant change to geo relevance around April as well.” If you saw your website’s ranking drop in April, Google’s Penguin update may be to blame.

Not surprisingly, SEO Chat forum member fathom also weighed in on the issue. He noted that “According to Google, any link with the nofollow attribute in the element is categorically dropped from the link graph.” Additionally, “a dozen or so Google staffers have suggested if you have been devalued by PENGUIN you do not need to delete webspam; simply add[ing] the nofollow attribute will undo devaluation while allowing you to keep any referral traffic from ‘paid links,’ ‘traded links,’ ‘link wheels,’ or any other webspam links.”

This is a little different from worrying if nofollow links pointed to your site are hurting you; it’s more a question of managing your outgoing links, and making sure that the ones that get dofollowed are relevant. Google assumes websites can control their outgoing links, after all. Still, simply slapping nofollow on the links in your blog comments might not be enough.

Consider this: a number of spammy comments on your pet-training blog talk about cheap drugs and drop links. You have them nofollowed, so you figure you’re covered and don’t bother to actually clean up the comments. Well, Google crawls that page of your blog, takes a look at the content, and its algorithm gets confused. Is this page about pet training or cheap drugs? Moreover, all those spammy comments might look like keyword stuffing to a computer algorithm.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of this discussion. How do you handle the rel=”nofollow” attribute for your website? What kind of role does it play in your link building campaign? Feel free to answer in the comments below or join the discussion at the thread, linked above. 

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Terri

The post Can No Follow Links Hurt You? appeared first on SEO Chat.

I want to give a tip of the hat to Elle Rose Williams, writing for Search Engine Journal, for the ideas I’ll be covering here. For the purposes of this article, I’m going to assume that you’re building a reputation as an expert in your field, and you’re reaching out to other bloggers and places where you hope to send guest posts. If you haven’t received a lot of positive replies, perhaps something in your approach put off your prospective editor.

I’m going to start with a tip that Williams didn’t include, but I think belongs on every list of tips for those who want to write guest posts: read the fine blog. You don’t need to read the whole thing, but please try to find the time to skim at least three posts. You need to get a sense of the blog; how else will you know if you can really write for it, and whether its audience will be interested in what you can share with them?

Once you’ve determined that you can write something worthwhile for the blog’s audience, you need to let the editor know. To do that, it helps to get the editor’s name, and use it in your letter. If you can’t find that name, Williams recommends that you apologize and explain why you’re not using it. That adds a personal touch to your e-mail, and will help you stand out.

You want to get across to the blog editor that you are a real person with something valuable to share, and that they want to work with you. To that end, Williams suggests that you “be friendly, not efficient.” Truth is, you can be both, but you need to strike a careful balance. I share her expressed perspective: “I want to work with contributors who are friendly and can be trusted to deliver some excellent content, not people who clearly grabbed my email address somewhere, pasted in a rude message, and then moved on to the next email on their list.” Show me that you took the time to understand my website and my needs; then show me how you can meet those needs.

One great way to show me that you understand my website is by making your email more personal. Remember my comment above about at least skimming a few posts? Williams suggests that one way you can get the blog editor’s attention is by “mentioning a previous blog post he/she wrote that you loved.” As a writer and an editor, I guarantee you that this will get your query letter noticed! At the very least, you’re showing that you’ve put some personal effort into it, so in the editor’s mind, your email has just left the spam category and proven to be from a real person.

Another reason you should write a personal letter to the blog editor, rather than going with something that’s mostly cut-and-paste, is that first impressions matter. In a case like this, if you give a poor enough first impression, you’ll never get the chance to fix it. If you met a dentist at a networking event, and there was something wrong with his teeth, would you start using him? I didn’t think so. Likewise, in your outreach email, you’re trying to convince the blog editor to use your writing services. That editor is going to make assumptions about the quality of your services based on the quality of your email. That email had better not contain any spelling or grammar errors – even if the blog itself is written in a somewhat “relaxed” style. This is how you show the blog editor that you’re a professional, and deserve the backlink you hope to earn with a guest post.

Finally, please remember that blog editors are overworked. For some of us, this is a labor of love, squeezed in between what we need to do to earn a living. For others, this IS what we do for a living, and it takes long hours to make it pay. Either way, if you really want to show that blog editor that you’re an expert in your field, propose a topic in your very first email. Williams recommends that you “Include three article suggestions in your email. This makes you look conscientious and engaging (both good traits), and it also gives the editor maximum control without technically having to do any thinking or hard work.”

If you keep these tips in mind, you should improve your odds for getting approved the next time you approach a blog editor for whom you wish to write a guest post. Good luck!  

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Terri

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I’m going to assume you already maintain a Facebook account for your business; in fact, I know of some companies with Facebook accounts that never bothered building a separate website. I won’t go into the logic behind that. Right now, I’m just going to assume that your business is on Facebook, and you’re hoping to use the social network to help it grow. That means you need to learn how to make and keep friends on Facebook without annoying them.

If your company includes a physical presence where customers show up, you can start making Facebook friends simply by mentioning that you have a Facebook page. That goes double if they ask about mailing lists or other ways to stay informed of what you’re doing. Hey, it happens! Just yesterday I was decluttering my den and happened across the address and phone number for one of the local U-pick-it farms. I called them up and found out that it was the last day of their season. When I finished picking (there’s nothing like fresh-picked blueberries!), I asked how I could find out when their season starts next year. They referred me to their Facebook page, and I added them as a friend as soon as I got home.

Be sure to add information about your Facebook page to your website, and to any hard copy you hand out: brochures, business cards, stationary, etc. This way, customers will know right away where to turn when they want updates about your business. These can include special events, promotions, discounts, or whatever would be appropriate for you to post on Facebook.

Now we’re closing in on the heart of the matter. What, exactly, is appropriate for a business to post on Facebook? What can you post if you want to keep friends? To answer that, we need to look at two things: what users do when they’re reading Facebook, and what they do when they’re posting to Facebook.

I’ll start with myself, though I admit I may not be typical. I go to Facebook when I need a break from something else; if lots of users do this, it would explain why so many people get on Facebook while they’re at work. I skim Facebook for quick updates from my friends, cute cartoons, and interesting links. I rarely spend a lot of time reading any one thing. When I do choose to read a long item, I try to go through all the shorter items first, and then the longer ones. I usually do this by opening the interesting links in a bunch of new tabs in my browser, so I can hit them all at once, in succession. It’s the most efficient way to “goof off,” at least for me.

What does this say about how you should post to Facebook? We’ll start with the posts themselves. They should be short and sweet. They don’t all need to be short, but for the most part, if you want to share something long, you’re better off posting a teaser and including a link. Incidentally, used correctly, this could be a good way to drive traffic to your blog.

Your Facebook posts should also be interesting, or at least pique your readers’ curiosity. For which of these posts are you more likely to click through the link: “Back from my trip. Here’s my latest blog entry” or “Went to MakerFaire and had a blast! Read all about it in my blog”? I’m guessing you’d be more likely to click through to the blog entry described in the second post, and I’m not saying that just because I’ve been to several MakerFaires.

I’ve just told you HOW you should post to Facebook; let’s talk a little more about WHAT you should post. Obviously, you can use the social network to tell users about your blog posts. That’s not redundant; as I’ve hinted, visitors are typically in a different frame of mind when they’re skimming Facebook than when they’re reading a meaty blog post. But you can do a lot more.

Is your business seasonal? Use Facebook to remind customers about the important times. A U-pick-it farm could let customers know about when crops are ready (and any last minute changes). An accountant could remind his clients to make appointments early, to avoid the rush around April 15. An artist who does a number of regular shows could remind customers of where she’ll be, so they can buy from her booth.

Speaking of artists, if you get in new and unusual items, you can share that on Facebook – especially if the new items are particularly photogenic. If you make jewelry, show off your latest creations; if you’re a yarn shop, take a picture of that gorgeous Noro yarn that just came in. Just make sure that what you’re writing about is the kind of thing that really would excite your customers – not just something that YOU hope will excite them. That’s going to vary with the size of your business, believe it or not.

Has my local yarn shop hired a new person with mad skills who will be teaching classes? Yes, I want to know about that, as well as what classes she’ll be teaching. That’s worth a Facebook mention. Has my local JC Penney hired a new general manager? Um, yeah…not so much.

On the other hand, I care more about the political stance of larger businesses. So if my local yarn shop owner happens to vote for a candidate with whom I don’t agree, well, I’m probably not going to boycott her business, even if she mentions her support on Facebook. But if my local large retail store contributes to a cause with which I vehemently disagree, I’ll avoid darkening their door unless I must.

But the best part of being a business on Facebook is that you can do certain things more easily on the social network than you can do them on your own website. For instance, as I write this, the Orlando Mini Maker Faire is holding a tiny contest to encourage their friends to discuss which maker they’re most looking forward to seeing this weekend. The winner gets a prize worth $20: a kit for a pin that flashes your name in gorgeous LED lights, which you can put together at the event. The prize’s coolness factor alone – for this event’s target audience – is worth more than $20. You can customize this idea for your own business.

It’s also easier to ask questions and get feedback from your friends on Facebook than on your own website, unless you’ve built up a lot of traffic and a large community. You can even make a post asking your friends what they’d like to see you posting, and how often they’d like to see updates from you. After all, it’s only friendly to find out how often your friends would like you to stay in touch, right?

Which brings me back to the original point I wanted to make. If you want to make and keep friends for your business on Facebook, you need to keep your friends’ interests foremost in your mind when you post. Unless they’re also shareholders, they don’t care how well your company did this quarter – though they might be interested in your business expanding to new locations if you’re opening up near them. After all, that would make things more convenient for them…and that’s just one of the things that friends are for. Good luck!

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Terri

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