Thinking about utilizing Facebook’s Daily Deals feature to bring in local business? Think again. Facebook has pulled the plug on the local deals offering after rolling it out just four short months ago.

Facebook Daily Deals was introduced as a competitor to Groupon, Living Social, and other deal sites but failed to find legs in its five test cities. This announcement comes as a surprise to those of who took advantage of the deals, as well as to Groupon who is planning on announcing their initial public offering later in the year. That means less competition in their dominance of the deals market.

If you’re not familiar, these sites work with local businesses to solicit limited time offers for area residents for special products or services. The discounts are huge– averaging 50-90% off normal prices. The kicker of these sites is the time limit to not just purchase the discounted product, but the timeframe in which to use it. Deal sites will ask a few questions to get a better profile on their user base, and then send out tailored deals and featured daily deals via email.

If your business was planning on taking advantage of the Facebook deal feature, you’ll now have to funnel efforts into an already established deal site. Though this short-lived effort didn’t pan out, fear not for your merchant presence on Facebook. The company isn’t removing their Ads, Pages, and Sponsored Stories feature and plan on continuing to develop and improve their Check-In Deals, which allows users to check in to local businesses. Users that check-in to a business automatically share the activity with their friends and activate special deals offered by business owners. This may be something to look into further if you’re looking to activate social engagement with your storefront.

Daily Deals may not have had a chance to gain a strong enough competitive presence, but it is clear Facebook is working to re-think local business, and that in and of itself is something to be excited about.

(Source: Reuters.com)

There are clouds on the horizon, are you a part of the oncoming storm? Talk of cloud computing has been populating tech news stories for some time, and is just now really breaking into mainstream news with recent major launches of Microsoft Office 365, Amazon’s CloudDrive, and Apple’s iCloud. Now’s not the time to fear thunder, this is the next wave of integrated technology. Cloud computing, or “The Cloud,” can help small businesses grow in these still-shaky economic times.

What is The Cloud? Clouding technology allows you to access and share data from remote servers at any given moment in time. Chances are, you’re already a part of various clouds. Google Apps, the leading example of cloud technology, is what you are probably most familiar with. Google Docs has been around for several years and allows you to create and work on basic office documents from virtually any access point. You are in control of what you share and what you keep private in any one of your personal clouds.

But clouds can, and should be, more than just personal databanks for music, photos, and personal information. Cloud technology can grow a small business by reducing lag time in staffing and increasing access to vital resources. Companies that utilize clouding reduce space needed for server rooms on-site. Remotely they have access to phone, email, and other functions needed to run business as smoothly as possible. What’s more, clouds require little IT skills to implement into practice, no more intimidation by technology necessary.

How else can moving into The Cloud help your bottom line? By reducing the time and work needed to move new branches online. Setting up infrastructure is frustrating, time consuming, and is a blockade to turning profits quickly. But with vital applications hosted on a remote server (your business’s cloud), you can implement training programs accessible anywhere that reduce time from days, or even weeks, down to hours. These applications can even be accessed by smart phone or personal tablet, freeing up employees and management from feeling “stuck” at the office.

Sounds great, right? Thinking of looking up cloud companies after you finish reading? Hold tight. Though cloud technology is moving at the pace of well, a summer thunderstorm, staff may be a little slow to respond initially. Avoid moving all of your applications and programs up into the cloud, instead choosing the most vital (like email, phone services, and document databases) to be first. And be patient. There will be kickback and frustration at the unfamiliarity of a server holding data hundreds or thousands of miles away. But the efficiency and ease of use of cloud technology is undeniable, and you’ll see just how quickly business can move. If your business isn’t focused on heading up into the clouds, your profits will be left stuck in the mud.

Google Plus (also know as Google+, G+, and G Plus) came out about 2 weeks ago, and I strongly encourage your business NOT to use it – YET! I say this because officially, your business cannot sign up for the service. Here’s the official video explaining the service for businesses.

That’s not to say your business can’t get ready for Google Plus. Here are 3 things you can do to prepare for the coming soon Google Plus for business.

1) Have your employees create their personal Google profiles using their real identities. Google will be deleting all private profiles as of July 31st, 2011, so make sure your employees have public profiles, and include links to your business sites.

2) Create a free Google places account – Your business can use Google Places free of charge to create a fantastic listing that you control, can add pictures and contact information to, as well as update as needed quickly and easily. Create a free profile on Google Places at http://www.google.com/places/.

3) – Want to know what people are saying about you that the rest of the world can also find using Google’s search engine? Set up free email alerts at http://google.com/alerts on your company brand and all your key employees, to make sure you know what folks are saying, and to prepare for more conversations using Google Plus. Learn more about Google Alerts.

Right now is the wrong time to use Google Plus for your business, but stay tuned! Soon it will be the right time, and you’ll want to make sure you’re ready.

What else will you do to prepare for what’s coming with Google Plus?

Related article: What you can personally do to prepare for Google Plus at 12 Minute Social Media Playbook.

A reader asked the following difficult question:

About 4 years ago, I had some bad press that ended up in a local paper. Though things have since been sorted out, this darn article still is the first hit for my name and my company’s name, making me look like I have a bad reputation. It’s the only bad thing that shows up in Google. What can I do to drop this down in the Google rankings?

NOTE: I’ve changed some details to protect the question asker.

This is a tough spot to be in, as I always advise businesses to build their online rankings before they need them, just in case something like this happens.

It DID happen, so what can your business do?

• First, secure your name as a dot com and start writing articles. Make sure to use your name in the articles, on your about page, and as the name on any picture you use.
• Next, build out as many other sites as you can: Google profile, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and others. Make sure you also set up an account at WordPress.com and create a profile and add an image to your profile. They call that a gravatar.
• Also, comment with a value on as many sites as possible in your niche too, being sure to leave your real name and a link to your business site or your new personal .com address.
• Then, get involved in as many non-profits that you are passionate about, in hopes they may list you on their site when you volunteer with them.
• Don’t be afraid to ask your friends to link to you and offer to write an article or two on their site, using your name as a link in the sign off.
• Look for article repositories too (ezinearticles.com is one, search Google for others) and write articles there.
• Find friends and others in your industry who are willing to interview you about your business on their site.
• Look for other ways to make the news for doing good things.

Caution: While all of this may help you populate the internet with good things about you and your business, unfortunately Google and other search engines may still list whatever they want at the top. They use a combination of relevance, authority, freshness and a black box that is closely guarded to percolate what they deem most important to the top of their rankings.

Advice conclusion

Even if you don’t have anything bad said about you, I’d recommend you do the things I recommend anyway, to keep your business name and personal name with sites you control near the top of the search engine rankings.

Has this happened to you? How did you deal with it?

Don’t worry if you don’t know how to do all the things I mentioned. I’ll be writing a series of articles coming soon that will explain how to set up all these different services and a little about how to use them.

Stay tuned!

How do I Increase my Google PageRank?

Popular question with many popular answers. Only Google knows what you really must do at any given moment for a great PageRank because they change their algorithm often. A change in May was more or less targeted to prevent strong ranking for product based pages typically in ecommerce sites with few links, little traffic, and content that’s not all that unique.

But wait, what is Google PageRank?

A bit from Google’s PageRank page tells you, essentially, to have good sites link to you and do your best to follow their webmaster guidelines.

Think that’s a lot to consider? You did check those two Google links right? I mean, that’s THE WORD straight from the horse’s mouth. But, still, there is more to it.

I’ll assume you want longevity in your online efforts, not just temporarily gaming the system (bad idea). If you still haven’t checked the Google Webmaster Guidelines, check it now to see their “Quality guidelines” section and the things NOT to do.

When you want to increase your Google PageRank you really want to increase the likeliness of being found when someone searches for something that matches the content of your site. One really solid approach to this is to employ the power of inbound marketing (Turning Minds will do this for you) and you’ll be able to build a solid foundation to your online presence.

Wondering how Inbound Marketing has anything to do with your Google PageRank?

It’s about the content silly. No really, think about it. If you originally cared about your PageRank that meant you cared about your customers finding you when they did a search. So that means you want your customer to visit a web page on your website with relevant information (content) about what they are searching for – and that’s how inbound marketing becomes important to your overall plans for PageRank.

But you just want to know about PageRank tips right? Ok, fair enough. First off, SEO Pixie Dust isn’t really an option.

So what now? Just the facts please:

• Use Page Titles on every page
• Use proper coding conventions with CSS and XHTML (programmers don’t always know or do this)
• Make sure to have a Google friendly sitemap for indexing purposes
• Use an RSS feed on your site and submit to to RSS directories
• Apply keywords to the meta data of the site (but not too many)
• Create content that is meaningful and matches keywords (but not too many keywords)
• Use heading tags < h1 > to emphasize the keywords and content of the article
• Create high value links into your content (tricky, but social networks help this)
• Share and distribute content across the web that is in high traffic areas that link back to you in a meaningful way

Other Tips:

• Social bookmark your pages to help people find your content
• Post meaningful comments on other related blog posts and forums
• Blog regularly on your site with concise content that matches a search
• Use social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and many more to create visibility to your content
• Employ writers and content providers that understand content development and SEO AS WELL AS YOUR AUDIENCE
• Make friends with people who will think your content rocks and link to it (because they think its good)
• Add sharing tools like sharethis.com to make it easy for others to promote your content
• Absolutely be familiar with the Webmaster Guidelines from Google

Got more questions? Need help putting this into action? Tweet me, call me, or email me!

Amplify is a relatively new service that sits somewhere in between the micro-blogging services like twitter and facebook and a full blowing blogging platform like wordpress or blogger. As the founder Eric Goldstein puts it, in his interview with Robert Scoble, the service is built around conversations and you’re not limited to the 140 characters of twitter.

Clipping Bookmarklet

One of the features of Amplify that sets it apart from its competitors, is the ability to clip pieces of a website to bring into your Amplify site to then curate and comment more about that story. Amplify has a unique bookmarking tool which allows you to pick and choose parts of an article you want to copy to your own story. Think of it like newspaper clippings you clip to use in a scrapbook. Only these clipping now become the conversation piece you can then use to build upon to get across your opinion, therefore enticing conservation.

Many other services in the market like tumblr and posterous have bookmarklets as well but you are only given the option of clipping the whole article or just the images or just the text but as granular as Amplify’s where you can even highlight a few words to be clipped. Once you are done with making your selections when the bookmarklet, simply click the done button to bring your selections across.

There are even bookmarklets for mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPad, and Android!

Autopost to Multiple Services

You also have the option of autoposting your content to your other social networks as well. Amplify just about covers all of the major ones. They support twitter, facebook (profiles and pages), Google Buzz, posterous, tumblr, WordPress.com, Blogger, Ping.fm, Plurk, Friendfeed, Diingo, Clipmarks, and Delicious. Like I said all of the major ones. Amplify can now be your posting hub, you can make your posts to Amplify and broadcast your posts out to all of your other social networks as well. Amplify also has a post-by-email feature that is similar to other sites where you can post stories directly to your amplify page via email.

Community and Customization

Amplify is not just a blogging platform, it’s a social network as well and shares similar features to twitter and facebook. You can follow others in the community you feel speaks to you and your interests just like the other services. You can choose to let everyone follow you back or choose individually who can follow you. Now the other thing that differs about amplify is something called sources. The difference between followers and sources is, sources are people you already follow from other services like twitter, facebook, email, etc.

Since the underpinings of Amplify is WordPress MU, you have alot of similar features like widgets, headers, background images, themes, and the like. Unlike WordPress though, the options are stripped down and very user friendly. Sure each person’s site will not look full blown custom but you can still give it unique enough touches to stand out. You can even customize your sidebar with widgets like your most recent posts, your twitter feed, tags, rss feeds, etc.

Amplify’s Latest and Greatest Features

The latest round of features added to Amplify are in my opinion, what makes the service nice in their claim to fame of “conversations first.” These features were just added to Amplify as of August 19, 2010.

Live Feed: You have a newsfeed that now updates in real-time and shows you the latest comments to your posts, postings by those your follow, and recommendations (like facebook likes) of your posts.

Mentions: Every user has a mentions feed which displays the latest mention of their twitter @username on Amplify.

Conversations feed: This is where you go to see the latest comments on your postings, posts you previously commented on, or eavesdropped on (more on that next).

Eavesdropping: This is a feature that every thread-based network needs. Basically if you see a great post that is garnering a lot of comments that you want to keep up with but don’t want to comment on. There is a feature for that now! You hit the eavesdrop button and now whenever a new person comments on that thread, you will get a email notification or be able to see it in your conversations feed.

Better Email Options: more options that let you control what you kind of email notifications you receive.

Increased character limits: Microblogging and Direct Messages has been increased to 500 to 1,000 characters.

Conclusion

Some may say the market is already saturated with too many players in the micro blogging market, but I think Amplify has enough features that set themselves apart from the rest to establish a great community. I have used the service off and on and I noticed a real sense of involvement among the other users. Many of my posts get noticed right away and I am quick to receive comments and recommendations. Give the service a shot, you will quickly learn the different features and be on your way to finding new ways to use the service.

My Amplify is http://bryansays.amplify.com and Justin’s is http://mccjustin.amplify.com Be sure to follow us if  our content appeals to you and leave comments below if you have any questions.

Sources: [TheNextWeb, Cinch]

How do I auto post my tweets on my Business Wall on Facebook?

It turns out there are a few answers to that question. I personally decided to use the Selective Twitter Facebook App because it allowed me to post both to my personal wall and to my business page on Facebook.

Here is a quick video on how to post an update on twitter and auto post on your Facebook wall.

As you can see, there is not much to it. Simply update your twitter user name in the “Your Profile” tab and the “Your Fan Pages” tab and save changes. That’s easy!

Twitter now makes it easy for you to see where common connections exist between followers. This should make it easier to understand how you are attracting followers and what the relationship of a new follower is to you and your other connections. I see this as being very similar to how Facebook allows you to see who your common friends are.

Take a look at he following graphic. This shows when you look at your “following” screen and it also shows when you are looking at a users twitter landing page. In this case, I’m looking at Joe Sorge and it’s showing my followers who also follow Joe.

On the far right side of a users landing page on twitter, you can see the avatars of the people following this person whom also follow you:

I think this will make it easier to understand connections you have in common. This also makes it easier to start a discussion with a new contact. In this case, I will send Joe an @reply that connects us through @philgerb even though we have more than 20 common followers.

How can this help you make new contacts and start new conversations?

Erik Qualman’s  ”Social Media Revolution 2″ video has some amazing stats regarding online usage and social media.

Quoted from Erik’s blog post on this video.

Stats from Video (sources listed below by corresponding #)

1. Over 50% of the world’s population is under 30-years-old
2. 96% of them have joined a social network
3. Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.
4. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
5. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
6. Years to Reach 50 millions Users:  Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…
7. Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year
8. iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
9. We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it.”
10. If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s 3rd largest ahead of the United States and only behind China and India
11. Yet, QQ and Renren dominate China
12. 2009 US Department of Education study revealed that on average, online students out performed those receiving face-to-face instruction
13. 80% of companies use social media for recruitment; % of these using LinkedIn 95%
14. The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females
15. Ashton Kutcher and Ellen Degeneres (combined) have more Twitter followers than the  populations of Ireland, Norway, or Panama.  Note I have adjusted the language here after someone pointed out the way it is phrased in the video was difficult to determine if it was combined.
16. 50% of the mobile Internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook…people update anywhere, anytime…imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
17. Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé – some universities have stopped distributing e-mail accounts
18. Instead they are distributing: eReaders + iPads + Tablets
19. What happens in Vegas stays on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook…
20. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
21. While you watch this 100+ hours of video will be uploaded to YouTube
22. Wikipedia has over 15 million articles…studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica…78% of these articles are non-English
23. There are over 200,000,000 Blogs
24. Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth
25. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $1,712.32 per hour
26. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
27. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
28. Do you like what they are saying about your brand? You better.
29. People care more about how their social graph ranks products and services  than how Google ranks them
30. 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations
31. Only 14% trust advertisements
32. Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive ROI
33. 90% of people that can TiVo ads do
34. Kindle eBooks Outsold Paper Books on Christmas
35. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation
36. 60 millions status updates happen on Facebook daily
37. We no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
38. We will non longer search for products and services, they will find us via social media
39. Social Media isn’t a fad, it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate
40. Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie and less like Mad Men Listening first, selling second
41. The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in 5 years
42. Bonus: comScore indicates that Russia has the most engage social media audience with visitors spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month – Vkontakte.ru is the #1 social network

I think it’s clear that Social Media is not a fad and that the web is here to stay.  What are you doing to embrace social media and improve your online presence?

Sticker Giant recently ran a social media promotion that got my attention. Which is the point right?!
This video gives an overview of the recent iPhone end call decal promotion and the social networks used in this promotion and some of my thoughts on the effectiveness and strategy of the promotion.

So, if you watched the video, you would have noticed this basic formula:

• Culturally on topic (iPhone issue with dropped calls)
• Conversational in nature (iPhone issue plus free sticker)
• Clearly defined audience
• Pushed exposure by spreading the message across multiple networks (Twitter, Dailybooth, Facebook etc)
• Focused the ‘sell’ on customer acquisition (sending your email)

What was the cost of this promotion?

- Perhaps 30 minutes to write the blog and post the offer across the social networks and the cost of 50 stickers.

What’s gained?

- Visibility amongst Sticker Giant followers, increased awareness by iPhone users, 50 new emails to market to0, and the PR value of the joining the ‘end call’ conversation and spurring more conversation.

What would you add to this promotion? Tell us about your social media promotion!

Editors Note: Sticker Giant’s social media campaign is managed by Micro Media Marketing and they can help you with a similar campaign. Contact them directly or send us a note and we can collaborate or make initial introductions for you!

What is the center of your marketing universe? Traditionally, for Brick-and-Mortar stores it was always the store visit. All marketing efforts drove people to the store. For mail order companies it was the catalog / phone / fax. All people needed to call or fax the order.

Today, the center of the marketing universe is your website.

The savvy business who wants to leverage their marketing budget to the fullest does these things:
1) Has a website with lead generation and call to action capability
2) Considers their website in all their traditional marketing campaigns and uses the web as a tool to complete the marketing effort
3) Values content and places it on the website and in various places online to extend online presence
4) Engages in community discussion in social places that are aligned with your business

When your website is at the center of your marketing, you can attract and keep your customers, entertain and educate them, and keep them coming back for more while building your role as their trusted source in your area of expertise.

Ready to leverage your marketing online and offline? Let us know, we’re here to help.

( Original Image by vitroid )