Facebook vs Google – Who is Winning?
SUMMARY: Google & Facebook are used for radically different purposes. Most people use Google to find stuff and then they’re gone. On the other hand, most people on Facebook socialize online. Lots of them. And for a long time. This article looks at some of the ways you can engage with that social conversation and deepen the connection your business has with its clients.
Who’s winning the battle for the attention of the rapidly growing online global marketplace?
Well, perhaps this is the wrong question.
Google is undoubtedly doing well when it comes to visitors. Facebook is getting some tidy numbers too when it comes to visitors, but as the information in the snapshot from Compete.com shows, the user base on Facebook is growing faster.
And what’s more, users spend nearly 30 minutes per day on Facebook, and only on average 13 on Google.
So how does that effect you as a business owner? Should you be hiring SEO or social media management companies to help grow your business?
In this article we’ll take a look at what’s best for you. But first, let’s have a look at some competition scores 
Facebook vs Google: Who is growing faster & Why That Matters to Your Business
Let’s take a peek at what Compete.com tells us about Google & Facebook ( the #1 & #2 sites on the internet at the moment, in terms of fraction of total web-based traffic & unique visitors/month):
OK, that’s a LOT of data, but here are the KEY points:
1. Facebook is growing at nearly twice the rate of Google.
2. The top key “tags” for Facebook contain words like:
Social, Social Network, Community, Friends
& on Google, the top tags are more to do with finding the best place to work, search engines and SEO.
So how should we interpret this?
Clearly, Facebook is an online place where people hang out and Google is a online encyclopedia.
One is focused on people and the other is focused on knowledge.
A no-brainer.
Facebook is brilliant for building online engaged communities who will share stuff through their friendship networks (instant referrals), and Google is brilliant for finding answers to specific problems or questions.
If your business depends on a community of loyal customers based in a social setting then Facebook should be your primary focus.
On the other hand, if your business depends more on transactional one-off, non-social interactions where people are not such a time-consuming part of the operation of the business, then you should be focused more on optimizing your Google Places listing, or hiring an SEO or Adwords Qualified company to market your business online.
Two quick & obvious examples to finish off which should clarify whether Facebook or Google can help your business the most:
You run a restaurant: use Facebook to build your online community through your Fanpage, run contests, special offers, funny quizzes, coupons, exclusive 2 for 1 discounts, and so on.
You run an auto repair business: use Google Places to get 1st Page exposure on Google, hire a local SEO firm to get you in the top 3 spots, pay for a Google Adwords campaign to generate leads for your email database.
Finally, what applies to Facebook also applies to YouTube & Twitter. If you’re on Facebook, your business needs to be using Twitter and YouTube.
By all means use the social networking sites if you run a transactional business, but use them more for branding your business. And definitely use Google Places if you are a restaurant. But expect that they will produce different results in terms of growing your customer and client base.
If your business isn’t yet effectively using Facebook and you know you should be,call us on 0845 80 555 80 or leave your details on the Contact Page (and as a thank you, we will send you a copy of our Facebook marketing guide and keep you updated with webinars and special offers).
Facebook Friends Affinity
SUMMARY: Who do you interact with the most on Facebook? This short article will tell you how. It is approximate, but it might influence some of your decisions as a business owner, when you consider who you want to build social connections with online.
So, how do we know how socially connected we are with someone?
One way to tell is by looking at what happens when you start typing in a status update: if a person’s name comes up after you’ve typed one or two letters, then you have some idea of the extent of your connection with them.
Now, that’s all fine, but what if you want to take things a bit further? What if you wanted to know how Facebook sees things?
Why would you want to do that, you might be asking? Well, if Facebook thinks you are strongly socially connected with someone, then it will be more likely to display your posts in their Top news feed.
Do note however, that what we’re about to show you below is a very rough approximation of how likely it will be that your content will be seen on someone else’s wall. (It’s called “EdgeRank”, and if you want to know more about how EdgeRank works, contact us here: Tell me more about how EdgeRank works.)
Here’s our cool method for seeing who you’ve been communicating with:
- Drag the hyperlink below to your web brower’s bookmarklet at the top of the page
- Login to your Facebook account: make sure you wait until Facebook has finished loading(important!)
- Click on the Bookmarklet once you’ve logged in to Facebook:
Drag the link below into your bookmarklet section of your browser:
(It’s usually just below the address bar where you type in URL’s [if you ever do!])
DRAG THIS LINK TO YOUR BOOKMARKLET:
Here’s an example of what our boss (Dez Futak) gets when he does this (and don’t forget, this is a measure of social engagement, or Facebook friends affinity):
Remember: this information can & will change depending on who you are interacting with & how often. And also, you can see how approximate it is at being a useful metric, because the second name on the list is Dez Futak’s! (that’s because he effectively tags his name to increase the likelihood that people will visit his profile).
Finally, Don’t forget to contact us if you want to keep up to date with forthcoming webinar events, free training and special offers.
Many thanks to Jeremy for the original article & the source of the javascript code.
Top Tips for Using Facebook Pages
SUMMARY: Facebook Fanpages provide businesses with an incredible opportunity to promote their brand online for free. Use the 5 tips below to to help your business get started with Facebook now.
Any questions? Contact us to sign up for free training webinars and find out how we can help your business grow using Facebook.
As our article 7 Reasons Why Facebook is Good For Your Business shows, Facebook Fanpages can become a powerful marketing tool to help build customer loyalty and when done well, can even be an effective viral marketing channel to build a community of supportive customers who want to tell others about your business.
Below are some basic tips you need to ‘get right’ in order to set the right foundation for your presence on Facebook.
Need any help? Contact us to find out how you can use Facebook to increase your customers.
Tip #1: Name your page carefully
You are only allowed to have 75 characters for your Page’s name (including spaces), and you will not be allowed to change your Page’s name once you’ve already got 100 “likers”. So choose your name wisely. Make sure it’s a name that you like and a name that you will have no trouble being stuck with forever.
Only use an actual company name if:
1) you own the company
2) your company allows you to
3) you know that you will never leave that company.
Only include your name if you’re promoting it as a brand. And when you do, include s descriptive words that will tell people who you are or what it is that you do. Don’t skip this detail, as Facebook (and the Search Engines) will use this information to index your Fanpage.
A well written info page with useful content about your business (such as opening times, your mission, website address and so on) will give Facebook a good idea of how to categorize you when people search for certain keywords (yes, people do use the search facility within Facebook).
Lastly, considering that Facebook Fanpages are accessible by and through search engines, include important keywords (words related to your business/industry) in your Page’s name whenever possible.
Tip #2: Promote your page in as many places as (ethically) possible
Promote it on your site by using a Facebook ‘badge’, Like This and other Facebook social buttons, bookmark your Fanpage on social bookmarking sites, put your Page’s link on your business cards and other printed matters, create a QR code on your website to encourage mobile users to like your Fanpage to get special offers, and so on.
Tip #3: Make your Page unique
Don’t settle for what Facebook gives you by default. Make your Page stand out. Think creatively about how you can add value to Facebook users’ experience when they visit your Page. Take time to think about how to design your page in such a way that it will not only catch people’s attention but will also get people to “like” it.
Tip #4: Do not make your Wall the landing spot
Never let new users land on your Wall. The Wall doesn’t really tell anything about your brand, and it won’t have much impact on new visitors. Instead create a Like/Reveal Tab offering visitors something in return for Liking your page.
Tip #5: Update Your Fanpage regularly (but not too regularly)
On any given day your Facebook Fanpages will receive some of its fans (or “likers” as we often call them). If you are the admin of your Fanpage, you get to see how many impressions (similar to views) your Fanpage post has received.
If you wait 2 or 3 days between posts, you will find that your impression count goes up higher than if you posted twice in one day. It’s important not to dilute the impressions per post unnecessarily, as you want to give time for your post to be shared by your fans’ friends, and their friends also.
How often you should update depends on how much interaction you gain on your Fanpage: ideally, the more interaction, the better, as Facebook will give you a higher measure of authority (called “EdgeRank”) and spread your content further.
Register below to receive updates of our up & coming free online training events to help you maximize your marketing efforts with Facebook.
7 Reasons Why Facebook Is Good for Your Business
SUMMARY: As the economies of the world shake and crumble, it can be tempting to skimp on paid advertising or social networking. Facebook is still growing massively, and your business can benefit from it by building a virtual community of loyal customers. Read the rest of the article to find out how, and contact us to get access to our free webinar events for more in-depth knowledge
At the time of writing, there are around 700 million Facebook users and around half of them go online every day.
Most TV and print ads for brand names now instruct you to “Like” their fanpage instead of going to their website?
Why the sudden change?
In this article you will learn why businesses, small and large, are moving over to Facebook and why you need to do the same for the survival and growth of your business.
Here are 7 excellent reasons for using Facebook for your business:
- Get FREE exposure for your business in the world’s biggest online community, which gives you another way to attract leads to your business.
- Easily tap into Facebook’s built-in ‘viral’ pass-it-on technology, either naturally, or through incentives such as coupons and special offers.
- Instant feedback: if you do well, or do badly, your fans will tell you. A bad review should be seen as a golden opportunity for your business to show its true colours, and we can recommend some simple strategies to help if you’re concerned about this.
- Instant unsolicited referrals from fans – “Can anyone recommend a good restaurant in…?”
- Build customer loyalty through online quizzes, games and more (again, we can help with effective strategies).
- Advertise special offers, discounts and promote Fanpage-only coupons free to your fans (who needs Groupon? – keep 100% of your sales instead).
- Promote events that you are hosting at your business premises to further enhance your customer loyalty by meeting them “offline”.
- Interact with your fans publicly so that others who are “just looking” can see that you care about your customers.
Are there more than ‘just’ 7 reasons? Almost certainly: we haven’t mentioned the easy way to seemlessly integrate Facebook with text message and smartphone marketing for starters: if you want to find out more about how to use Facebook for your business, register for our free webinar event below.
How Video Marketing Can Boost Traffic to Your Website
SUMMARY: Video marketing has become one of the standard ways to attract both new clients and also search engines to your business website. This article looks at how this works and what you can do to increase the chance of people finding your business when they are looking for a solution to their problem.
Embedded videos on your website improve your site’s search engine ranking. According to Forrester Research (April 2010), ranking videos on for certain keywords can be as much as 53 times easier than getting the equivalent written article ranked. In addition, linking videos back to your website (especially if they are syndicated out to several video sharing sites) provides a natural and powerful way to get legitimate backlinks to your site so that your business becomes more likely to be found when someone searches a particular keyphrase.
Posting your videos to content sharing sites can significantly increase the number of users who click on your site’s link. YouTube is currently the world’s second largest search engine, trumped only by Google. Setting up a YouTube page for your business’s videos is a great way to amass a huge number of potential new customers.
Video marketing targets potential customers who are looking for your business’s products or service. That is because search engines will return your video as a search result when Internet users conduct a search using keywords that correlate with your site. In this way, video marketing is much different, and much more effective, than other forms of marketing that employ a hit or miss method of advertising.
Simply put, videos make your business more personable, and people respond to personable. Creating videos for your business’s website puts a face to the name, so to speak, and allows you the opportunity to greet potential customers with a virtual handshake and a smile. When you post videos on content sharing sites, you are literally inviting people to visit your site, and you are able to demonstrate your business’s positive attributes to them before they even click on your site’s link.
In this fast-paced, technology-based consumer market, your potential customer is one that is used to instant gratification. And, with so many websites clamoring for their business, customers can afford to be picky. You cannot afford to ignore video as a medium for connecting you to potential clients. Bring your web marketing to the next level by contacting us below, where creating effective video marketing is our specialty. We can be reached by phone, at 0845 80 555 80 or email us at video@bristolmarketinglabs.com
How to Optimize Your Videos
SUMMARY: There are two ways to optimize videos: First, create compelling content which people will want to watch and share, and second, add the right details for your video title, description, tags, url. Lastly, if you can get your video transcribed, use the transcription as the description of the video.
In case your head is spinning with the summary, the details follow!
Create compelling content in a short, punchy video. Although you might want to tell your visitor all about your business, you must be careful to do so in an eye-grabbing and attention-getting manner. Make your video tell a short story with a dramatic 3-5 second introduction that wakes your viewer up. Ideally, you want to share high quality content either about what you do, or perhaps in a related topic.
For example, if you are a restaurant specializing in local cuisine, you could shoot a hand-held video of one of your top chefs cooking your dish of the month, along with a brief description of how to create such a meal. Don’t worry that people will stop coming to your restaurant though – most of your viewers want to be entertained, they don’t want to cook.
The last 15-30 seconds of the video can be a compelling call to action, where you encourage the viewer to visit your Facebook fanpage for special offers and coupons/free glass of wine, and so on.
What you offer your viewer will depend on your business, but make sure that it is time-limited in some way so that people are more likely to take action.
If you need any help with producing your video, let us know: we can provide online training if you want to do it yourself, or link you up with one of our video production partners.
Create keyword-optimized video titles and descriptions. When your video is ‘spidered’ by a search engine, the first thing it does is look at the title of your video. If you are making videos as a way of getting noticed for keywords for which you want your business to be found online, then it’s very important to choose a title which contains those keywords. Likewise, the first few words of the description below the video should contain those same keywords.
Create video transcripts. Although YouTube is getting close to being able to read the contents of your videos, it’s still early days, and Google still cannot read the content of your videos accurately. If you get your video transcribed (and we can provide this service if you require – contact us for details) then when your video gets spidered by a search engine, you can guarantee that what you want your video to be communicating can also be ‘seen’ by the search engines as well as your human visitors.
Share your videos everywhere with a video syndication tool. Although YouTube accounts for over 60% of the video traffic online, there are many other video sharing sites on the internet, including Vimeo, eHow, Blip TV and more. When you create a video, don’t just upload it to YouTube, upload it everywhere else as well. Don’t worry of this seems like a daunting task: it doesn’t have to be, as there are several video uploading tools where you can spread your video around without having to log in to each and every video sharing account. Fill your details below in the form if you want to know more: we offer a mass video sharing service, and can even register your accounts for you.
Optimize your video’s URL. If you can include relevant keywords in the the URL in your description, you stand an even better chance of your video ranking better in the seach engines, and this not only means it is more likely to be shown in the earch engine results, but also the view count will be higher, increasing the chance that people will make contact with you, or visit your Fanpage or website.
Example: let’s say you offer fitness coaching especially for professional athletes and your company website is
BirminghamFitnessCoaching.com
In the URL description below the video you should create a link something like this:
http://BirminghamFitnessCoaching.com/fitness-coaching-professional-athletes.html
Whilst that looks like a long URL to type, don’t worry as when someone visits the video they will be clicking on the URL not typing it (make sure you start the link with http:// in order to make the URL ‘live’)
So, make sure that video marketing is part of your marketing toolkit, as it’s a great way to connect you with your potential clients, and the search engines (especially Google) love finding relevant, content-rich videos to put on their front page.
If you want help with moving forward with video for your business, please fill in the form below and we’ll be in contact soon.
How to Rockstar Your Business with Video
SUMMARY: Using inexpensive video equipment you can put video on your website to pre-sell your visitors. Video is the next best thing to having a face to face conversation with potential clients, and it’s not as difficult as you think. Use the 3 tips below as starting points to get started with video on your website. Where video really ‘rockstars’ your business is in enabling you to reach a huge audience very quickly: it’s the next best thing to being on TV or in a film.
Video Tip #1: Introduce yourself and your business. Make a short walk-through of your business premises and explain to customers exactly what it is that your business does. Also take some time to familiarize viewers with your business’s key services/products. That way, you are putting a face to your business’s name and providing potential customers with a positive and personable first impression.
Video Tip #2:Use video to promote a sale or a special offer. Create a short, concise video highlighting your business’s coupons or price reductions. Remember that the Internet allows you to communicate in real-time with potential customers, so you can update your videos as often as you like.
Video Tip #3:Demonstrate how your product or service works in your video. A great way to impress on customers the importance or value of your product is to show them how it works. If you do that on video, then you exponentially increase your potential customers – customers who otherwise would not have visited in person to ask how to use your product.
Once you produce the video (or videos) you choose to represent your business with, it is time to get noticed. Here’s how to do this:
1) Set up free accounts on all of the major social networking sites, like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, then upload your videos.
2) Also, don’t forget that avenues like eBay, blogs, and Google Places can also be very valuable tools for your video marketing.
3) Be sure to link your accounts so that your fans, followers, and viewers can spread the word easily and naturally.
4) If it seems like a daunting task to set up all of those accounts and upload all of your videos, look into a mass-upload service, which will do all the footwork for you (we provide such a service, so give us a call on 0845 80 555 80 if you want us to do this for you).
Put your video marketing into capable, professional hands by contacting us at Bristol Marketing Labs, for your web marketing needs. We can be reached by phone, at 0845 80 555 80 or via email at video@bristolmarketinglabs.com