Ignite Your Business Visibility with Facebook Connect.

Have you ever wished you lived in a shopping mall? It sounds funny, but it would make life a lot easier, especially if you lived in a huge mall like West Edmonton Mall or the Mall of America.

You could park the car, enter the building, and everything you needed would be laid out in front of you without ever having to leave home. Stores in that mall would probably get a lot more business than stores outside the mall because it would be easier to access them, and residents of the mall would recommend certain shops and services to each other by word of mouth.

Now imagine you had a place to live on the Internet and were able to visit different websites without having to give up the comfort of that home. The Facebook Connect feature was unveiled in 2008 to create easy, one-stop access to websites from your Facebook profile. It’s an API that enables people to use their Facebook identity and connections to authenticate themselves on any third-party site, community or blog. In essence, it makes your Facebook profile the “home base” and eliminates the need for new sign-ups on other websites.

In Powered, Inc.’s e-book “Marketing Predictions for 2010,” Aaron Strout, Chief Marketing Officer, predicts that Facebook Connect will play an increasingly important role in the ways brands connect with their customers and other constituents on Facebook in 2010.

It’s already showing an incredible ability to help businesses draw more Traffic, thereby increasing their Return on Influence and ultimately their Return on Investment.

Here are some examples:

Increased Traffic:

The Official Facebook Connect News Page reports that since implementing Facebook Connect, the CBS Insider has gained a significant increase in traffic on theinsider.com, with over 85% of new registered users using Facebook Connect.

Increased Return on Influence

According to Facebook’s latest statistics from Citysearch,"Since implementing Facebook Connect, daily registrations have tripled, and connected users are twice as engaged as users not using Facebook Connect. 94% of users who write reviews share those reviews back on Facebook, where 70% of their friends who see the review click on it, and travel back to Citysearch.com.”
This points to the viral nature of Facebook Connect, the ability of users to bring content, activity and conversations from third-party sites back into their Facebook newsfeed, thereby creating more social engagement.

Increased Return on Investment

Lauren Miller in her article “5 Services Using Facebook Connect Effectively” reports that although the Tap Tap Revenge 3 App on the iPhone may be one of the simplest implementations of Facebook Connect on the iPhone, it’s become one of the biggest selling apps of all time on the app store.  It works great because it gives you rewards when you tell your friends about the game and posts updates on your friends’ newsfeeds about your activity and scores.

All this being said, Facebook Connect has great potential to open up a very profitable niche for you and your clients’ businesses. This is good news for our VAClassroom graduates who are already providing Facebook services for their clients or are planning to add that service in the near future.

As Ken Burbury says in his article “Five Reasons Companies should be Integrating Social Media with Facebook Connect,” “At the end of the day, companies need to fish where the fish are. And right now the fish are spending their time on Facebook.com.”

What are your thoughts on Facebook Connect? We’d love to hear your comments!

Don’t Just Shorten Your URL: Understand Your Social Media Traffic Too!

Creating a shorter URL link, made increasingly popular by the micro-blogging giant Twitter, has now evolved into the next generation.   You knew it was only a matter of time, right?

The new kid on the block is Cligs, which is growing at a rapid rate, providing not just shorter URLS, but the additional features of providing you the stats of your submitted links, with analytics, social media monitoring and geotargeting capability.

The driver behind Cligs is to help you understand your traffic.  By tracking the traffic going thru your links, your online activity and the buzz it creates, whether for business or otherwise, is made transparent to you.

Why use Cligs?  Besides being FREE and user-friendly, it provides:

-    An informative Blog, regularly updated with news features and tips;

-    Real-time analytics, who’s sharing your link and who’s linking to you;

-    Geo-targeted destination URLs, to target your marketing and promotions on a per-country basis;

-    Referral statistics, to show which links sent you traffic;

-    Tools, gadgets and widgets, such as WordPress plugins;

-    Various Twitter applications, such as a short a URL partnership with “Twitblogs”, the blogging service with Twitter which automatically gets tweeted with a link to the full post;

-    Ability to create an unlimited number of cligs, pointing to the same destination from different sites for traffic tracking purposes;

-    100% search engine friendly.

Has anyone tested out Cligs yet? I would love to hear your feedback!

TwitWall: When 140 Characters isn't Enough

For businesses who are utilizing Twitter’s staggering marketing potential as part of a Social Media Marketing campaign, Twitter provides a lot of room for creativity and innovative solutions for reaching target audiences.

Now that celebrities (such as Ashton Kutcher and CNN) , presidential campaigns and millions of users worldwide are accustomed to micro-blogging, Twitter is providing an enhancement to the micro-space of Tweeting.

For everyone already on Twitter, how many don’t realize they have a TwitWall? This easy to use feature is a blog companion for Twitter, allowing a space for Tweeters as an alternative, or addition to their micro-blog of maximum 140 characters. This page within Twitter allows users to embed their favorite videos and widgets, upload photos, mp3 music, podcasts, and source-images originating from existing http:// locations.

The little set-up time and effort involved is very appealing for those wanting more of a presence on Twitter, outside the context of the micro-blog. Additionally, TwitWall utilizes your existing Twitter followers that you’ve already established, with everything posted on your TwitWall updating your status on your Twitter timeline. It also carries over the personal branding design preferences of your Twitter page, such as background image, colours etc.

So why use TwitWall as a blog page rather than just your traditional blog post?

This question was posed to TwitWall founder Michael E. Carluen, who stated, “For users who currently have existing blogs, TwitWall can be a repository of content they would like to share with their Twitter network, but does not fit the general content of their main blog.”¹

As an additional blogging platform that’s unique to your followers, TwitWall provides a dynamic new communication tool, ready to be discovered!

A Social Media Widget to add to your Virtual Assistant Toolbox.

As I have discussed in previous posts, Social Media Marketing is a rapidly growing niche for Virtual Assistants to tap into. Some Virtual Assistants are positioning themselves as Social Network Specialists for busy clients who want to leverage the power of Social Media, but simply do not have the time. I came across this cool social media widget on Internet Girl Fridays' Virtual Assistant website. This particular Social Media Widget enables you to present all your social network profiles in own location on your website or blog. While this widget is great for showcasing your many Social Network Profiles, I do think it would be ideal for those of you who are seeking to add Social Network Profile Set-Up and Management services to your VA portfolio. It could serve as a nice marketing tool to prospective clients interested in expanding their exposure and business presence through the Social Networks. You would be able to showcase the quality profiles you have set-up for your own business and in turn give them a taste of what they could expect if they were to hire you to set-up and manage their online Social Profiles. Again, most businesses simply do not have the time to effectively manage and update their Social Network Profiles, so a most excellent "in-demand" service for a Virtual Assistant!