Ping.fm

If you’re always on the run, you may not have time to sit down at a computer and update your page every day or two. Did you know that you can update your page status from your phone? Using a service like Ping.fm, you can send a text message or email that will automatically post to your page. While Facebook does already have a similar integrated feature, Ping.fm allows you to post the same thing to several different places, such as twitter, MySpace, other social networks, a blog, etc. You can send updates, and sometimes pictures from the web, your phone, your chat software, or an email.

Import your blog automatically

If you already have a blog, or podcast, you can set your Facebook page up to automatically import it, and post it as a note. To set it up, click on Edit Page in the left hand column, and then click the pencil icon under the Notes section, and select Edit. You will then be taken to the Notes section, and will see a link on the right-hand side that says Import Blog. This will take you to a place where you can paste the link from your blog. Once you’ve done this, you will be able to preview the import, and confirm that it is correct. From then on, your blog will automatically be imported soon after each new post.

Promote your Facebook Page

You can add a badge to your website that advertises your Facebook page, and gives people the ability to immediately become a fan. You could also add a link to your email signature.

Do you want to expand your fan base faster, across a larger area? Then you may consider using Facebook’s paid ad program. Your ads will then show up in the right-hand column of Facebook pages. Cost is based on the number of clicks, and you will have access to stats showing the number of clicks and ad impressions.

Add Applications to your Page

http://www.facebook.com/apps/directory.php#/apps/directory.php?app_type=0&category=100

This is a list of business applications that you could add to your Page, to extend it’s functionality. The sky is the limit when it comes to applications. Just make sure that the applications you use actually add something to your customers experience, not just used for the sake of adding it, or because of it’s “coolness” index!

I hope this series has helped you to see how easy, and useful a Facebook fan page can be for your business. For more help and up-to-date information, be sure to visit Facebook’s own help section. Jump in and get started today!

So how can you get the most out of the time you spend maintaining your page? Read on!

Consistency

It’s really easy to create a page, but for real results from your page, it’s important to be consistent when adding information. This way you are keeping people engaged, and demonstrating trust with your customers. Simply becoming the latest flash in the pan, doesn’t benefit anybody.

Don’t spam

Facebook offers all sorts of exciting ways for businesses, large or small, to connect with their customers. Getting the most out of your page is all about finding ways to help your clients, not simply annoying them with announcements, and gimmicky sales. Nothing is more annoying than a greedy self-centered business spamming our personal profiles.

Connecting vs Marketing

While Facebook can be a great benefit to your business, you shouldn’t see it as simply a marketing tool. You see, the benefit to your business comes from creating loyalty with your customers. When you focus on connecting with your customers by asking for feedback, and showing a more personal side to your business, your clients will appreciate it, and develop more trust with your company. These days, a trustworthy company that cares about it’s customers is valued more by consumers than businesses which simply try to compete financially within a given market. If you’re focused on providing the best for your customers, then Facebook will be great for you. If the money is all that matters at the end of the day, then go market on QVC, and stay away from Facebook. Remember, you can’t fake sincerity! Your customers will know.

Practical Suggestions:

1. Start a discussion by asking for feedback on a new product or service idea. (Some companies spend a fortune on focus groups, while you can find out for free directly from your customers!)
2. Post pictures of your team, products, office location, or even equipment. Pictures are worth a thousand words, and nothing will help potential clients feel like they know you than a well thought out gallery of pictures related to your business.
3. Share links, videos, and news related to your industry. People like to know that you’re staying current in your industry, and that you are actually interested in your field.
4. Share tips related to your business that actually help your customers, e.g., how to select a product for quality, a tutorial, or a product review.

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for Part 3 on Friday!

Why should you have a Facebook page for your business?

Simple! Much of the web is based on a ‘pull’ method. You are constantly trying to pull people to your website, for information, pictures, sales, etc. Facebook allows you to “push” updates to where people are already spending much of their time, and as a result becomes a marketing tool to pull people back to your website for more information(where you have full control of the site, and your customers experience), if you already have a site.

Isn’t Facebook just something for young people/nerds/(not you)?

Actually, Facebook’s demographic’s span the entire gamut from young to old(whatever your definition of old might be!). In fact right now, Facebook’s fastest growing demographic is people between the ages of 45 and 55. Hardly just your college students anymore! It’s a marketer’s dream come true, practically every demographic represented, with an easy, low pressure way to connect with them.

Can’t I just create a regular/personal account for my business?

Short answer: Yes, you could, and no you shouldn’t. Facebook fan pages present a much more professional approach to putting your business online. Fan pages are much more public, and easy to join. They also protect the members of the page from businesses. Businesses don’t see as much of their members profile, thanks to greater privacy controls. This means that more people will be willing to join a fan page, than might want to join a personal facebook page used for business, and risk exposing their contact information to overzealous marketers. With Facebook fan pages, you still have the ability to contact your members, but you simply do it within the structure that Facebook has setup(more on that in a future article).

If Facebook is really so great, then why do I need a website?

Having your own website gives you more flexibility over how you present information to your clients. It also allows you to present a custom website to your clients, which helps to re-enforce the legitimacy, and professionalism of your company, as well as re-enforce your brand. A combination of a good Facebook page, pulling people back to a good website, can be one of the most effective online marketing tools for creating top-of-mind awareness for your company.

It’s all a matter of creating trust. Anyone with a few minutes can create an excellent looking Facebook page for their fly-by-night business, but few can or will invest the time or money into creating a great professional looking website for the same company.

How to get Started

Setting up a Facebook fan page is actually very very easy. I would recommend that if you don’t already have a personal Facebook profile, you should create one, and use it for a couple of weeks, to familiarize yourself with Facebook, and begin adding friends. Then once you’re familiar with the interface, and familiar with how others are using Facebook, then go ahead and create your business page. You’ll thank me later!

Creating a Page

Click on the following link to go through the page creation form. http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php It is extremely simple to use. Just select the type of business you have, type in the name, and type in your full name as a “signature”. Once you click “Create Page”, you will be asked to either sign in, or create a personal account from which to manage your page’s profile.

Adding a profile picture

Once your page is created, you will see a placeholder on the top left of the page for a profile picture. Mouseover that image and you will see a link pop up over the image that says “Change Picture”. Click on the link to be taken to an upload form, or to select a previously uploaded image.

Adding your information

Click on the Info tab, and then click on the “Edit Information” link. (I told you this was pretty easy!). Make sure to add your phone number, address, hours, and your website.

You can also upload picture, and even videos by clicking on the appropriate tabs at the top of your page. If you have videos on youtube or a similar video site, you can share those on your page by simply pasting the link to the video in the Share box.

Adding Events

You can simply announce an event through the Share box, or by clicking on the “Add Event” link in the left column of your page.

That’s all for today! Part 2 will cover some Best Practices for maintaining your page, including the do’s and dont’s on content. Part 3 will cover tips and tricks for getting the most out of your page, and a few plugins, and applications to enhance your page’s content.

Part 2 will arrive on Wednesday, and Part 3 will be available on Friday, so stay tuned!

Figure 1. Traditional Web Browsing

Let’s say you want to keep up with all the new information on many different sites, but you don’t have the time to go visit each one of them every day. Figure 1 diagrams the problem.

The solution? RSS of course!

RSS allows you to go to one site(called a reader) that pulls all the new information in from all of the sites you want it to(providing they’re RSS enabled, more on that later), and shows it to you in one place. This method is illustrated in Figure 2. So much easier and faster! If a site hasn’t updated recently, you haven’t wasted any time going to their site, only to be disappointed. If they have added new information, you’re still saving time by reading everything in one place.

Figure 2. RSS Browsing

Figure 3.
RSS Icon

What sites are eligible? Sites must be RSS enabled in order to work with your reader. All blogs, most news sites, and many, many other types of sites, are RSS enabled. How can you tell? The standard icon used to denote RSS compatibility is shown in figure 3. This logo, or some variation of it, is the first and best clue that you can subscribe to that site.

I’m interested, but how do I get started?

1. Sign-up for a reader. There are many free RSS readers out there, but the one that I use, and highly recommend, is Google Reader.

Figure 4.
2. Once you’ve created your account, go to an RSS enabled site of your choice, and click the RSS icon. One of two things will happen:
   
   a.) You’ll be taken to a page that allows you to choose the reader your using(figure 4), and subscribes you to that RSS “feed”.
   
   b.) Or you’ll be taken to a page full of code. In this case, simply copy the url and go to your reader. Once in your reader you’ll see a link that says something like “Add Subscription”. Figure 6 shows the link in Google Reader.
   
   Figure 5.

   Once you click that link, you’ll be given a place to paste the url that you copied earlier. Now you’re subscribed!

That’s it! Now instead of trying to visit 20 or 30 websites every day, you can visit one site, and read everything new in a few minutes! It’s just that simple.

Figure 6. Subscribe Button

More information on using Google Reader.

More in-depth information on RSS.

Quality content for website, print, and advertising is a scarce resource. Content is often created as an afterthought, with little regard for quality. Many avoid it, even fear it, because they don’t consider themselves good at grammar. But what if I were to tell you that good content could be created without a dictionary, and without being able to identify a past participle? (Actually, a past participle is defined as job security for English teachers!).

Writing is as simple as putting a complete thought down on paper. People informally communicate all day long, verbally and in writing(email, notes, etc). But when it comes to writing a “formal” tutorial, or product description, or a proposal, we tend to get writer’s block. The fact to remember is that we are still trying to accomplish the exact same thing as always: communicate a complete thought.

I would propose that formal writing is percieved as more difficult, not because it actually is more difficult, but rather because we are more worried about what others will think.

Addressing Writer’s Block

In my experience, you will never have writer’s block, if you have something to say. Now, before you roll your eyes at such a seemingly obvious statement, hear me out! When we have something to say, something that we know and need to communicate, you don’t have a problem getting it out. But when you’re trying to write an article/paper to fill a space requirement, or fill a commitment, writing’s as fun as a heart attack, right? For some, beginning a paper is the most difficult part. Simple solution: Make a list of points you want to cover, write about those points, and save the introduction for later. Many times your intro will sound better that way.

Writing’s greatest advantage is also it’s greatest disadvantage. You get/have to plan what you’re going to say. For many, taking the time to plan their words is a foreign concept, and thus makes writing seem slow and tedious. But if you embrace the discipline of planning your content, you will find the reward of accomplishment in the resulting quality paper.

Defining Quality Writing

So if an English degree isn’t the key to good writing, then what is? Quality writing exhibits 3 unique characteristics: Concise, Clear, Comprehensive. Let’s look at these individually.

Concise

Most English classes from grade school on up to collegiate classes make a significant mistake when teaching good writing skills. Teachers typically give writing assignments that are length based, rather than content based. The result is that many writers considered good, are actually just writers who know how to fill space. What a waste! The whole point of writing is to communicate an idea or process, and if you can fully explain that idea in one sentence, then why write a whole book about it? All you accomplish by adding “fluff” to your writing is to hide, or water down, the idea you’re trying to convey. Don’t make your readers wade through a tome to get that tidbit of info.

Does your content seem a little confusing, or a little dry? Find a way to cut back on the number of words. It’s amazing how much clearer it will become.

Clear

Very much related to concise content is clear content. Do I need a Phd to understand your paper? If you’re writing to Phd’s then you’ve succeeded, but if you’re trying to write a general product description, then you have failed miserably. Know who you’re writing to, and take great care to make sure they can understand what you’re saying. Note: talking down to your audience is just as bad as intimidating them with foreign lingo.

Comprehensive

Alright, you’ve made great efforts to keep your writing clear and concise. Congratulations! Now the last thing to consider is this: Have you left anything important out? Sometimes you can leave out information simply because you forget that your audience may not be familiar with your profession’s terms and lingo. This is something that I see happen all the time. Read your content with the perspective of your audience, continually asking yourself if anything is missing in that section.

As you can see these three characteristics overlap quite a bit. Making sure that you strike a good balance between the three will create far better content than you can imagine.

Tables

First we’ll look at tables. Tables are created using a combination of four different tags: <table>, <tr>(table row), <th>(Title/heading cell), and <td>(normal table cell). Let’s take this in 3 steps.

Step 1

<table>
  <tr> </tr>
  <tr> </tr>
  <tr> </tr>
</table>

Figure 1.

First we define a table area by using the table tag(<table> </table>). Naturally, everything related to the table is put inside these two tags.

Step 2

Then within this tag we define the rows in our table(See Figure 1). As you can see, we just added three rows to our table.

Step 3

<table>
  <tr>
    <th>1</th>
    <th>2</th>
    <th>3</th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>4</td>
    <td>5</td>
    <td>6</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>7</td>
    <td>8</td>
    <td>9</td>
  </tr>
</table>

Figure 2.

Add the cells within each row(for the example we add three cells to each row). In our first row, we want these cells to show up as headers for each column, so we use the <th> tag. Then in each of the remaining two rows, we’ll use regular table cells(<td>). For the sake of the example I’ve thrown in some numbers as sample content. Figure 2 shows the code, and Figure 3 shows the resulting table.

Lists

Lists can come in two primary different styles: Ordered Lists, and Unordered Lists. Unordered Lists tend to be more popular, and put a bullet in front of each list item. Ordered Lists place a number in front of each list item.

<ol>
  <li>List Item 1</li>
  <li>List Item 2</li>
  <li>List Item 3</li>
</ol>

<ul>
  <li>List Item 4</li>
  <li>List Item 5</li>
  <li>List Item 6</li>
</ul>

Figure 4.

The tags used for these lists are <ol>(Ordered Lists), <ul>(Unordered Lists), and <li>(List Item). The <li> tag is used within both list types.

Similar to the table tag, the <ol>, or <ul> tags are used to define a list area, and nested inside them is a group of <li> tags which define each item in the list. Figure 4 shows the code for the lists shown in Figure 5.

Atrributes

As we saw with images and anchor links, sometimes additional information can be included within a tag. These are called attributes and always contain two pieces of information, the name and a value associated with it. They are formatted like this: name=”value” . You can find references online that detail what attributes can be used for any given tag. We will look at one commonly used one, that works with most tags. This will bring you up-to-date on the three most common attributes(src, href, and class).

<p>
  Paragraph 1
</p>
<p class="president">
  Paragraph 2
</p>
<p>
  Paragraph 3
</p>

Figure 6

The class attribute. This one is widely used for design and styling purposes. It can contain any alphanumeric value, with no spaces. Using a class variable assigns an area in your HTML page that a web designer can use CSS(future tutorial!) to apply styles such as colors, text styles, and backgrounds selectively.

Take a look at Figure 6. You will see three paragraphs with some random text in them. The middle paragraph has been randomly assigned a class of president. Now a knowledgeable web developer can style that paragraph differently from the rest. Let’s say he adds a dark background to it and changes the text color to red. The final result would then look something like Figure 7.

Paragraph 1

Paragraph 2

Paragraph 3

Figure7

Summary

Hopefully, this brief tutorial helped you grasp some of the concepts surrounding HTML. Looking at a long page full of HTML markup can seem very intimidating, but it’s important to look at the page not as a whole, but rather as a collection of extremely simple parts. This makes things so much simpler, and easy to understand. Find it slow and painful to create HTML? Slow down! That’s right, sometimes the best way to speed up a slow task is to slow down, develop some good habits, and don’t waste time looking for the shortcuts.

P.S. I’m no hypocrite, this set of articles was coded by hand(and rather quickly to, I might add).

Additional Resources:

Here are few links to a few quality resources on the web to helpfully shove you on your merry way towards HTML nirvana.

• HTML Tags Cheat Sheet
• In depth HTML tutorials
• HTML and attributes reference

The basics

<p> </p>
<b> </b>
<i> </i>

Figure 1. Tag Pairs

HTML, as mentioned earlier, is all about defining different areas of content, such as paragraphs, so that your browser knows how to lay out the web page. In order to define these areas, we make use of “building blocks” called tags. With few exceptions(which we’ll discuss later), every tag is actually a pair of tags. One is placed at the beginning of the content area, and a matching tag is placed at the end of the area. Some example tag pairs are shown in Figure 1.

As you can see, tags are defined by <, and >, with the name of the tag being included within those symbols. You will also notice that the name of the closing tag begins with a forward slash (/). Other information can be included within a tag, besides just it’s name, which we will cover later, once we look at some of the most used tags.

<img />
<br />

Figure 2. Unique Tags

Just like everything in life, there are exceptions to the general rule of tag pairs. These tags define their own content, or effect(such as an image or forcing a new line). These tags without a closing tag will have the forward slash at the end of the tag info. Examples are shown in Figure 2.

Now let’s look at some of the most used tags for defining content.

Popular Tags (A.K.A. The Rockstars of HTML)

These tags cover probably 70% of the HTML you will need to know to create/edit your own content. Many, many more exist, and can be found in various references online, as needed.

Notably missing from this list is tables, and lists, to be discussed in Part 2.