Some background:

As some of you may know, Facebook have relatively recently rolled out an external “Like” system whereby content outside of the Facebook site itself can have Like buttons. Straight away tons of sites (this one included) added the Like functionality through embedding code manually or using plugins. I have personally used the FB Like WordPress plugin for this blog and find it works well but here’s the manual code for your self-hosted WordPress blog if you prefer. It should be pasted in your “single.php” theme file ideally:

<iframe src=”http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php echo urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID)); ?>&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ allowTransparency=”true” style=”border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:25px”></iframe>

Check your code:

What I realised is that it makes no difference whether you use the Like or Recommend verb for your button. The important thing is to make sure that you either use the XFBML version of the button code or if using the IFRAME version, make sure to use the “Standard” layout with at least 450px width. Doing it either of these ways ensures that people will be given the option of leaving a comment and it’s this comment that ensures the article link goes on your wall. All is explained in this paragraph from the Facebook manual code link below:

When will users have the option to add a comment to the like?

If you are using the XFBML version of the Like button, user’s will always have the option to add an optional comment to the like. If you are using the Iframe version, users will have the option to add a comment only if you are using the ‘standard’ layout with a width of at least 450 px. If users do add a comment, the story published back to Facebook is given more prominence.

Get manual code:

Here’s the link to get Recommend/Like button code for your site or static page. The link also has some important information about the distinction between Like and Recommend and leaving comments:

http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like

Here’s the manual code again for your self-hosted WordPress site:

<iframe src=”http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=<?php echo urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID)); ?>&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ allowTransparency=”true” style=”border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:25px”></iframe>

Since Liking/Recommending in this way is akin to ‘Sharing’ and to avoid the ambiguity between Like & Recommend, here’s a link to a decent WordPress Facebook Share plugin:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/share-on-facebook/

Conclusion:

It has already been proven via stats that bloggers have started to get a lot more traffic after installing Like buttons so make sure you have yours!

PS – Please “Like” this article if for no other reason than to see how it works!

Leon.

I regularly leave comments on other forums and blogs and a lot of these sites now have automated systems which email you when someone has responded to a thread that you left a comment in. When the automated system emails you and you have your responder setup, they will get replies everytime they email you. Some comment threads can get very big so that’s a lot of automated emails flying about and you will not be liked by the forum/blog admin. I’d left a comment on this guy’s blog and he had new comment notification turned on for the thread so he got a pile of my auto responders in his inbox every time someone left a new comment!

The upside is that hopefully he will now remember my business name forever!

Here’s a few other reasons not to setup auto responders:

• If spammers know there’s a working email address they’ll spam some more,
• Sites that send out Newsletters don’t want a ton of auto responders back at them,
• No one likes getting a non personal email response.

I believe Auto responders are generally useless these days because very few people will bother to hang around until you get back from your lovely holiday to email you again. They’ll either look for a response from someone else in your company or go elsewhere. If you are a one man band kind of business like I am then you really have to check email all the time and it’s easy to do via smart phone or laptop while you’re away.

I’m personally noticing a big increase in Foursquare usage among my friends and online contacts and the whole Location Based/Geo Tagging networking area is big news at the min. Here’s how it works in simple language:

Sign up at Foursquare.com and search for venues or add your own. These venues can then be found by others searching Foursquare from either the website or on their mobile phone and they can “Check In” and/or leave reviews and tips. Actions such as checking in or leaving tips can then be shared among the users friends both on Foursquare itself and on other networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

The benefit of this is pretty obvious if you are say a coffee shop or restaurant. A Foursquare user checks in, leaves a positive review and potentially hundreds of his friends see this review. There’s a good chance at least a few of them will drop by to check out the establishment for themselves.

Also, by claiming ownership of a business listed on Foursquare, you can access additional features such as offering specials for frequest visitors and visitor stats, further promoting your venue. You can also of course link to your venue on your website or Facebook page, etc..

As for all the scaremongering about people checking in on Foursquare and thus alerting cyber criminals that they’ve left an empty house behind, ready to rob – Bull. It’s a bit of a leap to think that A: Criminals will bother to find the exact property and travel to it and B: Presume that there’s no one else apart from the Foursqare user (or his rabid dogs!?) living there too.

Here’s my business on Foursquare! http://foursquare.com/venue/2509033

Here’s another interesting post re Foursquare – http://conoroneill.net/location-based-marketing-ireland-and-foursqua

Leon.

SEO

Are you sure your site has been properly optimised to do as well as it possibly can in search results. Have you got the right keywords, url and relative content? Here’s some more info on SEO.

Call to Action

You need to decide what the most important part/page of your site is and make sure its easily accessible. That might mean putting a call to action button or link in a prominent place so visitors are left in no doubt about what to do or where to go to enquire or buy your products.

Analytics

You should have some decent system of checking your website stats to see how many visits you are getting, at what times, for how long, what pages viewed, what keywords used, etc.. I use Google Analytics for this. It’s free and fairly comprehensive.

Refferal URL

You should have some kind of form on your site with a question that asks people where they came from or how they found your site. Also, if someone rings, get into the habit of asking them how they found your number.

Internet & Social Media Marketing

Once you’ve done all of the above you need to tell the world about your website and product/service and the best methods of doing that these days are the likes of Blogging, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Online Advertising.

Website ineffectiveness can be caused by ignoring the above but it might also be a reflection on your product or market so don’t rule that out!

Leon.

• Only buy from secure “https” URL’s.
• Only buy from well known sites.
• Don’t buy tickets from an untrusted or unknown source no matter how pro it looks.
• Ticketmaster.ie is the only place you should really be buying tickets from for major gigs in Ireland.
• Visit the Ticketmaster.ie site only by typing it in your browser as opposed to clicking a link in an email or search result.

However, there is another issue here and one that I was reading about only yesterday – SEO is dead, long live SEO in which the author talks about Google turning a blind eye to cynical and possibly illegal practices whereby companies buy links and use dirty tricks to get themselves up the search engine results at the expense of more honest companies who use traditional SEO methods.

What happens in our problem above is that people Google “Miley Cyrus Tickets” or whatever and as well as the legitimate sites coming up in results, you also see a number of fake or “phishing” sites that may only just have been put up a few weeks ago or may even be using Google AdWords to get to the top of the pile.

The question is, should the search engines be doing more to vet or block out these kinds of sites and by doing so wrestle control of the web and safe browsing back from these criminals?

I think so..

Leon.

I can maybe understand people laughing at Twitter with all it’s funny acronyms – Tweet, Twitterer, Twits, etc..but I’ve been trying to figure out why people’s eyes glaze over when you start talking about this stuff in general and why they think you’re joking when you say this is probably the most important thing you can do to promote your Website/Business at the minute.

My best guess is that the amount of information you often need to convey about how to use each service/site and exactly what it all means and what it can do for people is just overwhelming to the listener and they can’t fathom where to begin or where they’ll find the time to do it all.

So they laugh out loud in frustration!

If you are one such person who doesn’t get it and who laughs at us poor nerds thinking we know it all, then please don’t and here’s a simple definition of what we’re all talking about  when we mention “Social Media Marketing”:

Social Media Marketing means making friends online through various different websites with the ultimate aim of letting as many people as possible know about your product or service.

Nothing funny about that!?

I make a point of installing this code in all my sites at no cost and I’ve well over 100 clients sites added to my personal analytics account now. I have setup automated monthly emails to clients with a PDF attachment showing a quick breakdown of their visitor statistics. I have added some clients as users of my own account so they can login and view more detailed stats.

I believe for me its a valuable add on service and one that more and more clients are asking for and impressed by when you bother to do it.

The basic rule of thumb or modus operandi for me with all these Social Networking sites is as follows:

1. Register a FREE account (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Friendfeed, MySpace, Bebo, etc are all free to use),
2. Add some relevant profile information and be sure to add a link to your web address somewhere,
3. Find some of your existing friends on the site and connect to them,
4. Find contact in your market area by searching for related keywords and connect to them also,
5. Import dynamic content (Articles, RSS feeds etc..) from your main site or blog to each site using site applications or widgets.

It’s the importing of content from 1 central location (preferably your own site) that makes these things manageable and apart from the initial profile setup on each site and networking you shouldn’t have to visit each site too often.

Within your Facebook, Linkedin, etc.. accounts there should be some section where you can add an application to your profile, so look for any RSS, Twitter or Blogging applications  and add these to your home page. Then, whenever you write an article on your site/blog or Twitter, it goes straight into your social networking profile automatically, saving you some time!

Some of these networking sites can also communicate with each other so check out the settings in each.

Some applications I use and recommend are:

Facebook -”Simply RSS” and “Twitter”

Linkedin – “WordPress”

MySpace – “RSS Reader” and “iTwitter”

Bebo – “Twitter”

The most interesting thing about Facebook adds for me and the thing that sets them apart slightly from Google AdWords is the fact that you can target your adds to specific Facebook users based on Location, Age, Language, etc.. As you pick these filters the system continually refreshes the amount of people you can target based on your choices. For example I chose to target the add to people over 18, living in Ireland who speak English. This gave me a user base of 142,780 to market to! You can also use keywords based on the type of things people put in their Facebook profiles which is handy.

You can set a max daily spend and an amount per click just as in AdWords but the add you submit needs to be reviewed.

I’ll post results of my add campaign here soon..!

1. Given that Online Networking requires a a lot of time dedicated to it to be properly effective, where will these companies get the time if they have more than a few clients?
2. How will an external company best know how to represent you to the world. Will they say the right things on all your profiles and will they interact with your potential customers in a manner you’d be happy with?
3. If you’re going to spend the time telling someone else exactly what you want said on your behalf all around the net, wouldn’t you just be better off doing it yourself anyway?
4. Will the marketing company have other clients on their books who are your direct competitors, and if so how would they handle this?

In short, getting someone else to promote your company on your behlf requires time, effort and trust on your part if you wan’t to avoid potential problems.

Isn’t the best person to represent your own company you!?

I’d like to offer up this very simple but hopefully useful explanation of Social Networking for those new to the net or the concept of using online networking to further their business image, generate sales leads or partnership opportunities.

“Online Social Networking is the process of Branding yourself and your business online and by talking about them as much, as widely and in as many different ways as possible.”

You do the above by signing up for the following sites (the most widely used among many!) and getting involved! I’ve linked them directly to my own profiles on these sites to give an indication of how you might use them:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Linkedin
• IGOpeople

You might also do some Blogging and participate in Forums related to your market sector to help raise your profile and interact with others.

* NB – You need to avoid thinking, as I did myself, that getting involved in Social Networking will bring you work directly, it rarely does. Instead what it does is subtly and indirectly raise your profile over a period of time so that people who should know about you and your services when they need to, do.

It does work though, trust me, just takes time!

Leon.

Twitteriffic (FREE)

This is the first one I downloaded and was using it for quite a while and wondering why I couldn’t do basic things like search, follow and unfollow. A basic app only just to get you started.

Twitterfon (FREE)

Got this yeaterday just after forking out for the one below! It’s got a nice, intuitive layout and does absolutely everything you need to do on twitter.

Tweetie (Commercial)

Very similar to the one above with the same features but just a bit slicker in my view so its my winner!

Leon.

In no order of importance:

A Blog

Draw visitors and potential clients interested in your market sector to your site by installing a blog and giving them the info anf interaction they need.

Google Alerts

Find out straight away what others are saying about you or your business on the net and find out who is linking to your site.

Newsletter

Offer an incentive and capture customer data by offering an auto newsletter signup, then keep in touch with your database offering promotions and discounts from time to time etc..

Zoho Invoice/CRM

Manage your customers, invoices and sales leads professionally and effectively and setup discreet auto payment reminders via email.

RSS

Setup an RSS feed on your site so that people can subscribe to your latest news posts and keep in touch with your business.

Google Analytics

Every web site needs to have some kind of tracking system that tells you who visited your site, when, from where and why. Google analytics is the industry standard.

Social Networking

Sign up and actively use at least 1 or 2 social networking sites such as Twitter, Linkedin or Facebook., the idea being that you create and communicate with your own business network in the hope of generating some sales leads or partnerships.

Skype

A widely used multi part instant communication system offering real time text chat, audio and video phone calls and file transfers.

Leon.

Theres a few ways!

The whole idea is to get your site talked about and publicized and one of the ways you can do this is to submit online press releases. There are many sites you can do this on both paid and free but I’d like to mention a free one thats Irish related, its www.IrishPressReleases.ie

You simply register with the site and post your press release for free. It then gets submitted for approval and if approved it goes out to anyone who is registered to receive releases from the site. It is also publicised on the site itself.

Make sure to include your web address!

Leon.

Here are some reasons for choosing a .ie domain over a .com if you trade primarily in Ireland:

• .ie domains require you to be a registered business before you can purchase one which means that you can better trust a site with a .ie address.
• .ie domains have been proven to be one of the safest and most secure domains to use and are attacked far less than .com’s.
• On Google Ireland, .ie addresses seem to do better in searches than .com’s.
• There are more domains and keywords still available in .ie than .com.
• There is an air of respectability surrounding a .ie that a .com just doesn’t have. This is due to the requirements you need to register a .ie compare to a .com which can be bought by anyone.

If you’d like a new site or a change of address and want to go with a .ie, take the time to get your business name registered, its inexpensive and fast. See the Companies Registration Office for more details.

Leon.

There is a very large list of Social Network sites supported including the main ones:

• Twitter
• MySpace
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Bebo

You can also post updates from popular Instant Messaging desktop programs including:

• AOL
• GoogleTalk
• Yahoo Messenger
• Windows Live Messenger
• Mobile Phone

Check it out,

Leon.

1. First step. In conjunction with the client we pick a suitable domain name that is a good keyword for their business area. I check to see if this domain name is available and if its the .ie version I request ‘proof of trading’ from the client. This is most often in the form of a Company Registration Number available from www.cro.ie
2. When the domain has gone through, I organize hosting for the site, ie – the physical location of the files and pages that make up the site and allow it to be viewed on the web.
3. I install the Content Management system or Website Framework for the site.
4. I sit with the client and take them through picking a suitable template for the site incorporating a color scheme and layout that suits their tastes and sector. I may direct the client to the template viewing area of my site so they can browse in their own time – www.reverbstudios.ie/web_templates.php
5. I request page content and images from the client to finish the site off. Alternatively, I can sit with the client and talk them through adding their own content and using the Content Management System themselves.

Most basic site builds take less than a week if all content is ready to go. E-commerce/Online Shop sites typically take a little longer.

Leon.

1. Online Dating – One of the first things I done was met my current partner of 6 years!
2. Online Banking – I regularly manage my finances and transfer money online.
3. Tax Returns – I submit my dues via ros.ie each year.
4. Buisness – I earn a living from Internet related activities. This is my favorite!
5. Buying – Almost everything you buy is cheaper on the net, so I buy everything I can.
6. Booking – I have often booked holidays, flights and accommodation online.
7. Selling – I’ve sold loads of stuff to people all over the planet via eBay from my bedroom!
8. Communication – Via this blog, email and instant messaging I regularly talk to strangers from far any wide.
9. Information – I research all the info I might need on almost anything by using search engines.
10. Writing – I indulge my hobby of writing via my blogs!

Basically, there’s nothing you can’t do without a computer and an Internet connection, one of our better inventions!

Leon.

I’ve been doing a bit of this myself recently and I think its been a bit of a waste of time. By default, wordpress seems to set all external links in comments as ‘nofollow’ links which means that most of the search engines including google will either not follow the links at all or if they do they wont index the linked to pages/sites.

Most wordpress blogs and sites ask for your name, email and web address when you post a comment and when the comment goes live the personal name that you put in becomes a link to your site and links to your site are great, the more the better but the search engines just wont take notice! The link can still be followed manually by other visitors to the blog so by all means continue to comment on other blogs but if you want to be noticed by the search engines then try to get links on non-wordpress sites or sites that don’t use nofollow.

Pingbacks and trackbacks seem to be treated the same way so these are pointless from a search engine point of view too.

*TIP – if you use the firefox or internet explorer browsers, theres a great SEO plugin called SEO QUAKE that will tell you whether a site or ‘Links page’ uses nofollow.

Fo more info on ‘nofollow’ see HERE.

Leon.

Some of these emails are getting very professional and I have to have a good look at some of them before deciding they’re spoofs.  Heres some of the things to check:

• Email Logos & Graphics – if these look a bit shabby or pixelated then it might be an indication of a spoof.
• A lot of misspellings and bad english phraseology.
• Direct website links to login to your account are never included in emails from these kind of companies, especially banks so if you see one this could be another indication.
• If you hover over links in the email and look to the bottom left of your screen, browser or email application and look at the ACTUAL location the links refers to and see if its the same as the link in the email. Often the address will be different when it shouldn’t be.
• Check the senders email address. To do this (in outlook express) right-click on the email and select ‘properties – details tab’ then scroll down to the “Return-path”, “Received from” and “From” lines and make sure these display the actual email address of the institution and not some random one.

These tips are good for any email purportedly from a legitimate source and requesting your personal details and which you might be suspicious of.

And remember also, you can’t win any lotto you havn’t entered!!

Leon.

Designers seem to get carried away with the latest design and web technology and add as much trickery to their sites as they can in an effort to show off or reel in customers etc..(and by the way, I know I am probably a little guilty of this as well but I’m sure I’ll get over ‘widgets’ and ‘gadgets’ soon!).

How many of us want to mess with gadgety bits or sit waiting for stuff to load or would we just prefer if sites fed us the info we need straight away or with no more than one or two clicks? I’m kinda tired of waitin for sites to load or havin to scan a page with a ton of content and info boxes to find the relevant links.

In protest at this trend I purposefully setup one of my latest sites www.responsibletourism.ie in a VERY minimalist fashion!

Don’t lets forget websites need to serve information or purpose fast, efficiently & painlessly, thats their primary function!

Leon.

Many computers come with the likes of Norton Anti-virus, McAffee or some other trial anti-virus software installed straight out of the box and while these are excellent programs, they can be difficult to use, expensive to update and can hog a lot of your system resources, slowing your computer down.

Most casual computer users don’t need to pay for anti-virus software at all as there are many excellent programs out there for FREE and they’ll be more than enough protection.

Heres what you need for full PC protection against Viruses, Spyware, Internet attacks and Spam (all FREE, click to view download page):

Anti-virus

• Avast anti-virus
• AVG anti-virus

Spyware

• Adaware SE Personal
• Adaware 2007
• Spybot Search & Destroy

Firewall & Internet attacks

• Zonealarm

Spam

• Bullguard Spam Filter

If like me you use the computer a lot or for business then you might want to fork out a bit for an all-in-one security solution. the one I use and am very happy with is Bullguard Internet Security. It’s automated, handles everything, is fast, doesn’t slow down the PC and its not too expensive per year.

Stay safe..

Leon.

If you go forward in time again to the present day and extrapolate a little and think of all the feature rich, highly interactive, image, sound, video and functional rich websites we now see then this is basically the next level of the internet or Web 2.0.

Web 3.0 is on the way for any who can manage to complete level 2.0!!

Leon

• News sites
• Forums
• Books
• Wikis

If you want to search news sources only, open your browser and go to www.google.ie and click on “News” up the top left. This opens a page solely dedicated to news headlines from around the world. You can browse the latest headlines by location or topic. Google claims to index news from over 4,500 sources so you can be sure of finding that obscure story you heard the tail end of on sky!

Searching for information on forums is done exactly the same way as above only this time click on “Groups”, Google’s term for forums/discussion boards. Doing this opens up a dedicated page where you can input a search term that will return results from groups only, or, you can just browse through groups/forums listed.

Books, remember them!? Google has a dedicated search system just for books. Click on the “Books” option top left of the google home page and you’ll be given results that show book titles only. Clicking on a result actually brings you to a preview page where you can digitally browse through the book and read the content. Some books are completely free to look through or download, others are paid for and google will provide links to locations where you can buy the book.

A Wiki is defined as a piece of software that allows groups of people to easily create, edit and link internet pages together. Perhaps the best known Wiki is www.wikipedia.org which is a large information based site/encyclopedia written by the internet community themselves in a collaborative context to give information on a vast range of subjects. If you feel you know something worth saying (and preferably accurate!) about almost anything, then feel free to post.

So how do you go about finding this information then? Well obviously a PC and an internet connection is a prerequisite and once you have those the first & most logical place to visit is www.google.com. Google is biggest and best search engine on the internet and its main function is to locate whatever information you tell it to. Heres how to tell Google what to do!:

1. The Google home page consists of a few elements including the Google multicolored logo, some random links to other Google services and the Search Box which is what we are going to use. Google’s home page is deliberately simplistic because its only function is to serve up the info you require.
2. The hardest part of any information search is to choose the right keywords to type in. Obviously this is simple if you are just looking for general info on say ‘weather in leitrim’ in which case you just type in ‘weather in Leitrim’! The word in and other similar words such as the, it, him, etc are not necessary and will be ignored by google.
3. Searching the above term throws up results with links to a Leitrim newspaper and the weather page on MSN which gives us the basic weather details at a glance. Done!
4. Sometimes you may need to be a bit more specific to find the exact details you need or you may need to do a ‘special’ Google search and this may need an ‘Advanced Google Search Operator’!
5. All this is is a special word you type in before your keyword, for example if you want to know what a specific word means you will find out quicker if you put the term ‘define:’ before your keyword, eg, ‘define:leitrim’ tells us that Leitrim is a “A former UK Parliament constituency in Ireland” – controversial!!
6. Other search operators you can use are ‘site:’ which searches only on a particular site, eg, web design site:www.reverbstudios.ie throws up all the pages in my site with information about web design.
7. ‘allintitle:’ searches only in the titles of web pages, eg, allintitle: web design shows me results for pages which have the words ‘web design’ in their title meaning you get a more relevant search.
8. You can also use things such as ‘OR’ which searches for either search phrase or ‘-’ which searches for your term but not for the word you put after the ‘-’ sign, eg, ‘graphic design -website design’ searches for Graphic Designers but not Website Designers.
9. Google can also be used to do basic maths calculations simply by entering 25 – 13, 45 * 3, 35 / 10, etc..
10. Currency conversions can be done by typing in ’10 euros in dollars’ etc..
11. Google also has an ‘Advanced search’ link from the home page which has all kinds of options for filtering search results. Also, there are several sub-sites within Google which search for information in just one topic, eg, Images, Books, News, etc.. links to these can be found on the Google home page.
12. You might like to download the Google Toolbar so you can search directly from your browser without having to go to the Google site, you can get it HERE.

Happy searching,

Leon.