StumbleUpon shoots past the 1 billion mark!

StumbleUpon is one of the internet’s most used bookmarking services and according to their latest figures it has become even more trendy.

Users can bookmark their favourite pages using the websites toolbar and then click the stumble button and find other related pages that they may like. It is a awesome  tool that allows users who are interested in your service or product to find your website and contact details.

StumbleUpon users are currently bookmarking more than 1 billion web pages per month and with increases in visitors to the site, the bookmarking company has become a awesome place for companies to interact. If you would like to advertise your service through online sites such as StumbleUpon, Facebook and Twitter take a look at our social media pages on our website and find out how you could gain customers online.

Upsetting trend: big brands pimping Facebook “Likes”

A upsetting and abhorrent trend has emerged on Facebook, where big brands force visitors to “Like” their page in return for a gift, coupon, or special access to promotions or contests.

“Don’t ‘like’ us yet?” Jockey asked in a current email. “You’ll want to now!” Umm, no, I won’t. “Like our page to unpack prizes!” demands Pepto Bismol. Nah! My liking feels fine. Like us before you can create your own royal wedding commemorative stamp, demandsPeople publication.

What do compulsory likes prove?
They explain that people will click a Like button because they like coupons, discounts and games, but they surely don’t indicate that we plan to buy from the brand again, or come back to the Facebook page. Like so many upsetting marketing practices, forcing Likes is a nothing more than ham-handed bean counters’ idea of how social media works.

Facebook and other social media let retailers connect their online and corporeal properties in ways never before possible. And, asMediaLogic’s recent Retail Marketing Reports note, total visitors to social sites now rival physical retail traffic and, in some cases, are approaching the reach of national paid media. And, the report notes, more than 30% of retailers are forcing visitors to Like their Facebook fan pages to access their promotions.

Sadly, people who are forced to Like brands are also forced to give them entrée to their individual data, unless they jump through Facebook’s notoriously complex privacy jewels.

Will you silent respect me in the morning?
And the long-term appointment, earned media, brand evangelism, and kindness that Facebook and other social media can produce are lost in the process of buying likes. while People Magazine pimped its way past the million (forced) Facebook like mark in January, Forbes cluelessly advised “It’s still early in the game but clearly all publishers need to be paying much closer attention to their Facebook fan pages and how many ‘Likes’ they’re racking up. It’s a real-time indicator of how relevant a brand is to its spectators — and especially to its advertisers.”

Nope, it’s not. Forcing community to like your brand is a lot like getting a kid to promise to be good in exchange for a cookie. Or promising someone you’ll still respect them in the morning. The promise and the like are forgotten as shortly as the goodies are gone.

10 Amazing Tips to help you Raise your Fan Page on Facebook

If you own a business (and I do judge a website or blog a business) then you most likely have either heard about the benefits of owning a fan page and using it to drive traffic to your website, attract opt ins, interact with likeminded nation, and so much more. Or you are looking into it as a future investment for your business website or your blog,  I thought I’d share various methods  to assist you.

For the record, Facebook is the second highest traffic website with 135 million unique visitors each month, if you are able to siphon off even a small portion of that to your website or blog I’m sure you’d be happy as traffic is truly the lifeblood of a blog, and without it things can be very lonely indeed.

Here are the various methods.

a)      Add the Facebook widget rig

ht into the center of your blog, where people can see that

b)      Create a facebook fan page on Facebook, brand it and link back to your website

c)      There is impressive to be said for social proof, nobody likes to be the first person to join a page that has no other members so get your friends and colleagues to join

d)      Allow members to like a fan page directly from a website.

e)      Incorporate at least 3 major points of contact into all correspondence in the signature section of your emails. Now whenever you send an email out there is your Website, Twitter account, and Fan page listed at the bottom where curious people can click over and check things out, and hopefully add themselves to your network. Investigate creating and using a digital signature that has your picture and a brief overview of who you are.

3.       Write blog posts occasionally with blatant links to your fan page knowing that a few people will read the post, find value and add themselves to your network.   http://www.facebook.com/wsioms (hint, hint, nudge, nudge…) lol

4.       Run a contest and I gave away  something that has a value of around R500.00 for the winners.

5.       Use a free service like www.socialoomph.com and set up a direct message that says hello,  point your new followers to your faceboo fan page. As you can imagine this will assist to cut the time taken to answer each new follower.

a)      Start a Twitter account and actively grow your Twitter community.   Sent out a series of email to your database inviting people to join you. It’s important to note that it works really well if you have a few different messages and rotate them as your needs change. Point to your fan page one month, and free e-book offer the next. This is one tip I’d implement if I were you!

6.       Another hidden gem that I’d highly recommend you take advantage of is www.Twiends.com This is a social growing community that connects Twitter users, Facebook pages, and YouTube enthusiasts. You used to be able to use them to drive traffic to your blog or website also, but they’ve been slapped by Google recently and taken the feature offline until further notice. This one is powerful, so head over, tell them I sent you, and start using them to add fans and followers to your social network!

7.       Try finding facebook fan pages that are in your niche, and liking them, mention to the owner that you too are working hard at growing a fan page community, and ask if they’d reciprocate. Most will, but don’t be upset if they don’t. Often they just might be busy with building a business and not have time to respond to every request made of them.

8.        ‘Like’ pages that create videos and post them on the page with the intention of helping people toward furthering a goal. The page that comes to mind is Get 10,000 fans that ironically has close to 25,000 at the time of this writing.

9.       Make sure you interact with the current members of your page, and post quality information for them daily. Also develop a set of rules for members who wish to post links on your wall. There are unfortunately millions of spammers who target large fan pages with no other goal but to spam the internet with links to their crappy offers or affiliate pages. I personally remove the links within minutes usually, and ban the user that spammed it in the first place.

10.   If you have an email list of subscribers that you’ve built up via your blog them make a point of asking them to also head over and like your fan page. Perhaps you can even find some way of rewarding the ones that do as a way of saying thank you. These people are already fans of your blog so it usually isn’t too hard to convince them to also “like” your facebook fan page as a way of showing their support.

Social Media Strategies For Entrepreneurs

Social media strategies for entrepreneurs require to be a lot different than social media strategies employed by, let say, Old Spice. If you are an sovereign marketer or have a small team, you just may not have the time or money to hire hilarious actors for a YouTube campaign that generates millions of views within a few hours.

while it comes to social media, a lot of people are looking for the big home run, where they could be receiving a greater return on a series of small, simple methods. Here are some strategies you can use that are easy to do, proven, and inexpensive.

1. improvement your site. It’s wonderful to me how many absolutely crappy websites have “share me!” widgets all over them. Why would your visitor want to share a awful site? Before you invest any time or money in social media strategies, make sure your website is worth sharing!

2. comprise share options on your site. If your site is excellent and valuable of people sharing, you must make it easy for them. Tweetneme is a great blog plugin to create viral re-tweets of blog posts, Facebook has great sharing tools, and there are a lot of great social bookmark sharing tools as well.

3. Brand the “large three.” YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are the major social sites going. It’s worth taking the time to brand your YouTube channel, Facebook  Fan Page, and Twitter page. It’s simple to create a customized page or channel on all three of these sites.

4. “Like This.” This could go in step two, but it’s so great I am breaking it out. Install the Facebook “Like” button on all of your websites and blogs! You might have to beg your friends and family to go “Like” it to get some information, but once people see others Liking your site, they will too. This one tip alone could lead to significant traffic and sales from Facebook.

So there’s four very simple, free methods you can employ to improve your social marketing strategy in a hurry.

Facebook E Marketing Policy: How to Start a Fan Page on Facebook

Now recently Facebook passed the magnificent goal of hitting over 500 Million users. According to Nielsen Wire, the usual amount of time per person spent per month on Facebook is over 7 hours. This amount continues to raise. really, research also suggests that people spend three times more time on Facebook than they do Google. What does this indicate for your business? Obviously, that if you are not on Facebook, you need to be. What are you waiting for? You want to have your own Facebook e Marketing strategy in place by having your own business fan page. The point of this article is to explain to you how to start a fan page on Facebook.

Actually starting a fan page on Facebook is rather easy. But before, I begin to even explain to you the method. I want you to do something very serious, which is called benchmarking. By doing some study on what your competitors are doing on Facebook and their Facebook Fan Pages, you will be extra prepared and well equipped to know what to do with your business’s page. Look at their page and observe what type of comments are they posting to their wall, what type of images, videos, and discussions are they posting. perform they sell any products on their page? Do they have a opt in box for their fans to subscribe to for a free newsletter? Do they have a modified welcome tab? All of these are great things to have on a Facebook Fan Page and are important in knowing whether or not your competitors have and how they show them.

For your Facebook e Marketing policy, consider whether or not you want your business page tied into your personal profile. You can set up a fan page on Facebook off of your personal profile or you can have totally exclusive from your personal profile. It is really up to you as well as what type of business you have. For example, many sole proprietors will have a page that starts off of their special profile, because they are their brand and they want their fans to know what goes on in their personal lives. This makes them make that trust factor with others. However, a larger corporation like Target would not want to be started off of their CEOs main personal profile. This would not look very great . And, there is no reason why any person would need to know what is going on in the personal life of the CEO in order for them to shop at Target.

Once you have determined whether or not you want to be associated with your business’s page, now you need to know how to start a Facebook Fan Page. The following are four easy steps to get your business’s own fan page started today!

1. Go to Facebook.com/Pages

2. Fill in the information below Official Page.

3. ensure the box next to where it states that you are the official representative of your business and have the right to create the page.

4. Click on make official page

Congrats. You have just started your business’s executive Facebook Fan Page.