Since they new features have been in effect for some time now I wanted to go seek out any interesting Google+ cover photos. After Facebook released Timeline profiles, unique designs and creative uses were plastered everywhere, but what about Google+?

This is exactly what you don’t want to have as a Google+ cover photo:

Here are some creative designs that I found on Google+ profiles from people and brands:

As you can see, many people are sticking with the separate thumbnail images for their cover photo choice. I can understand this choice, it allows a unique representation of yourself or brand without much image editing. The large single image cover photo choice is a very odd size and requires cropping and resizing a large picture or making something from scratch.

I was hoping to see much more creativity but unfortunately the majority of profiles viewed were of the stock Google+ photo with only a profile picture. Brands are the more likely users of custom cover images but unless I am missing something, Google+ has no easy way to search only brand pages.

What are your thoughts on Google+ cover photos and the future of Google+ overall?

Marketing a business on social media can provide great benefits like increased web traffic, sales, lead generation, and higher brand recognition.

If you’ve decided that social media is a focus for your business the next question is, in-house or outsource?

Larger businesses will sometimes chose to run social media marketing efforts in-house because of marketing teams and resources that are already in place. If this is the case you may find great success, but don’t overlook the option of outsourcing social media to an agency focused on social channels.

Although most aspects of social media are free, it is important to understand the large time investment that a business owner or staff will be required to undertake.

Outsourcing social media marketing is a great to way ensure a professional social appearance and achieve specific marketing goals at low cost.

There are some preparations you should take before talking with a social media marketing partner to ensure a good fit and clear objectives.

Social Media Outsourcing Checklist

1. What are your goals for social media?

It is important to have an understanding of what you hope to get out of social media marketing. Having goals at the beginning will make it easier for the social media marketer that you hire to plan and execute strategies. Goals will also make it easier for both you and your marketer to track progress and determine what is working and not working.

Some examples of goals:

• Number of followers, likes, checkins
• Number of people signed up to a newsletter
• Mentions on Twitter
• Comments and likes on a Facebook page
• Clicks from social media to your website/landing page
• Sales made from links on social media

2. How will social media complaints be handled?

When businesses interact on social media, there are sometimes complaints and issues from customers that need to be addressed. In many cases these could be handled very simply by your outsourced social media marketer, but it is important to clearly define messaging.

You should prepare a document for your marketer that will indicate who to direct questions or complaints to within the company. Also include who should be contacted if a problem needs to be escalated, this may be the business owner or a sales or customer service person.

3. Who Creates Content

It is hard to make an effective business presence on social media without creating any original content. Unique content is important to draw in new followers, encourage interaction, and drive sales/leads.

Content can include such things as: graphics, contests, ebooks, white papers, videos and a lot more.

In order to be effective in a social media strategy and campaign, it is important to evaluate if there are internal resources available for these tasks or will it be part of the outsourced work. Finding a social media marketing partner who can also help with these tasks when needed will result in a more complete solution for your business.

Have Questions Ready

Don’t be afraid of asking as many questions needed to make yourself comfortable with the social media process.

Finding out what tools your social marketer uses is a good way to learn more about the process they use. Also look at some of their other clients (if available) to see how those accounts are handled. It is important to feel comfortable with an outsourced partner because they will be controlling a very personal part of your business.

Need Help?

Check out some of our other blog topics on social media to get a good understanding of how it can be an exciting new growth opportunity for your business.

If you are ready to look into outsourcing social media get our free assessment and learn how we can help.

via flickr

In order to be seen by Facebook users and help spread your message you need to have engagement.

One metric that measures engagement and increases your Facebook page reach is likes.

Likes help your page by letting you know what content is valued by followers and also makes sure your followers see what you post more often.

EdgeRank

Facebook uses an algorithm called EdgeRank to determine what shows up in a persons news feed. It is the goal of any Facebook page to increase their chances of showing up in a news feed because it helps spread the organizations message and increase engagement.

Not every update made by friends and pages can be seen by a user because it would fill feeds too quickly and results in a lot of scrolling.

To solve this problem Facebook uses their EdgeRank solution to determine what content a person is more likely to enjoy seeing.

When someone likes a page, this means they agree to have that businesses posts appear in their feed. If that follower never interacts with the page again, some of that pages updates might not make it into that persons feed.

Higher Page Interaction = More Page Posts in News Feeds

Facebook also gives more weight to multimedia posts because they have determined that this type of content is more interesting to users and generally results in higher engagement. With this in mind, you can achieve higher engagement rates when sharing links on your Facebook page.

Increase Likes for Links

Often the content that a business wants to post to a Facebook page is a link to things like blog posts, ebooks, press releases, and other content. To ensure this content is seen by as many followers as possible is the key to increasing engagement and post likes.

Since Facebook adds more EdgeRank value to multimedia posts their is a simple trick to make links show up more often in the news feeds of followers.

Add a Picture

If the content you are sharing already has a picture included just save that to your computer, if it doesn’t use a resource like flickr to find a picture that is related.

Instead of just posting the link to a Facebook page, upload the picture as a post and then paste the link and a quick summary as the picture comment.

After some testing on a few different Facebook pages, we have determined that this increases engagement by about 50% on average.

One of the first priorities of marketing your small business online is making sure your website is optimized. If you haven’t accomplished these basic tasks, all of the great content being created might be a waste.

Google is constantly updating to try and stop those who want to cheat their way into search engine results. Follow these tips to make sure that your small business shows up in searches and is never penalized by Google.

Title Tags

These tags are extremely important as both search engine optimizers and also to catch users attention in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). Putting your most important keywords near the beginning of the title will provide the best results.

You don’t need to use your domain name in the title because you will already be ranking highly for this. These title tags should usually be less than 65 characters.

Meta Tags

The description meta tag gives searchers an idea of what your content is about on the results page. It is important to add some keywords here but also make sure it is relevant and will receive attention.

The description should usually be between 160 and 200 characters.

Image Alt Tags

Internet users are increasingly desiring photo shareable content. Sites like Facebook and Pinterest are leading this charge. Adding photos and images to content is a great way to draw attention and increase the chances of content being shared socially.

When adding images, make sure to include the alt tag with a relevant description of the image. This will help with ranking in search engines as well as providing traffic through photo searches.

Commenting

You have to be careful when implementing comments for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes. If you come across as a spammer, your efforts will have a negative effect.

When leaving comments on no-follow and do-follow blogs, in both cases only make comments that are helpful and relevant. Do-Follow blogs will provide some SEO benefits that Google and other search engines will see.

No-follow comments will also help but in a different way. When you make relevant comments on a more popular no-follow blog, you have a chance to be noticed by the author and then linked to in their content.

Social Media

Social media is quickly becoming a very important aspect of SEO. There are many reasons that social media can contribute to your website being seen by SERPs. The first benefit is that as your content is shared socially, you increase chances for others to see it and create links to it. These back links will help establish authority with Google.

Secondly, social media channels like Google+ have a direct effect on SERPs. When a users pushes the +1 button, all of their Google friends are then more likely to see that content on relevant searches.

Google has even recently announced that other social media channels will effect search results. They have said that the Google algorithm takes into account how much a certain page is shared on Facebook or Twitter as an indication of quality.

Guest Blogging

Regardless of what product or service your business sells, guest blogging can help generate targeted traffic to your website.

With millions of blogs on the web, it doesn’t take long to find one that focuses on a relevant topic in your industry.

Take the time to make a connection with blog owners and ask if you can contribute content on their site. This will give you the opportunity to reach a new audience, find social followers, and generate quality back links that Google will find.

As always, whether it’s your own site or as a guest, be sure to make quality and genuine content. This will provide lasting impressions on readers and search engines online for the future.

For some small business owners, getting started with social media marketing is frightening. It can be very difficult to face potential criticism of something you have poured your life into. Social media should be a place to engage and learn from your customers and community but sometimes there are some bad apples.

Use the built in Facebook settings to protect yourself and your business.

Steps to protect your Facebook page:

Access settings from: Admin Panel -> Manage -> Edit Page -> Manage Permissions

Posting Ability

These two check boxes determine if others can post comments, photos, and videos to your timeline. Unchecking these boxes will prevent possible hurtful posts from being shared on your page but they can also reduce potential engagement. Allowing others to post photos related to your businesses or events you have can generate a lot of positive feedback and bring in new likes. It might be best to test the waters first with this setting. If your posts have had any negative comments it might be best to keep the timeline feed under control.

Post Visibility

By default, your timeline will show recent posts by others in a box on the top right of timeline. If you have sincere questions and comments from followers, I’d suggest leaving this up because it could act as a helpful FAQ for new members. If you are plagued by harassment and negativity, it is a good idea to minimize visibility and hide this box.

Tagging Ability

Tagging is a risky setting to have, it allows others to tag your business in photos that may or may not be appropriate. Luckily you can always untag yourself from a photo to reduce potential damage. With risk there is reward, if you are tagged in a photo, this is a new opportunity for friends of followers to discover your business.

Moderation Blocklist

In this box you can add keywords that you feel would be used in potentially hurtful posts/comments. Add keywords in the box separated by commas, if someone uses these words, the comment will be flagged as spam. If you use this box, be very careful that the words added would not negatively affect people trying to provide legitimate feed back or advice. Also be advised that silencing complainers can sometimes give them a bigger soap box to stand on.

Profanity Blocklist

The profanity blocker can be set to none, medium, or strong. Unless your business involves vulgar language somehow, there really isn’t much of a reason not to use it. Social media conversations around a business should be kept civil and respectful.

In extreme cases you can also block specific Facebook users. To do this you go to their profile, click the settings button (next to message) and select block. This should only been done for someone who is spamming your page or being unreasonable. Do not block anyone who simply leaves a complain, those should be dealt with individually.

Finding the right balance of protection and engagement can be different for every business, luckily small business owners can have a tighter control over their online communities with social media.

The ‘like’ is a Facebook metric and tool for you to interact, engage, and measure your businesses on the social media platform. An issue that plagues some large businesses using Facebook is social media negativity.

The following is an example from Facebook of a post on the McDonald’s Page:

McDonald's Picture Post

Negative comments to their post

The McDonald’s page has around 19 million likes, because of this fact, there are bound to be negative comments popping up on their feed. The problem for big brands like McDonald’s is that their own Facebook page can become a platform for brand negativity. Comments from a few can easily be seen and quickly spread to comments by hundreds.

An issue with social media is that moderation is difficult. There really isn’t any fact checking and people who wish to do harm have the potential to even create lies about a company. As a large brand it is important to strategize how to defend yourself and not look like you are silencing complaints.

Problems for big brands on Social Media:

• Difficult damage control when negative comments multiply
• Many ‘likes’ = large public platform for complainers
• It isn’t realistic to address everyones complaints

Large brands usually have the advantage of PR agencies, in house social media teams, and crisis management. Small businesses usually must face these problems alone, luckily there are some advantages to being a small business on social media.

Benefits of small brands on Social Media:

• Loyal and invested followers will defend against attacks
• Able to offer help and/or discounts to small number of complaints
• Knowledge of business as a whole to answer questions

How does the small business owner take advantage of social media?

Challenge of Social Media for Local Business

Many small businesses are considered ‘local’ this means that they operate in a specific geographic location and mostly do business with their surrounding communities. The problem is that social media is global and as a small business owner it can feel difficult to be heard.

It also initially appears challenging to connect with the right audience. Spending valuable time chatting up a twitter user in a different country isn’t going to grow local a business.

Finally, once you’ve built an audience, what do you do with it?

Standing Out

The first step is to take advantage of the local social media tools available. Facebook, Google+, Yelp, and Foursquare all allow local businesses to ‘claim’ their location and take control of it.

Increasingly, customers are using computers and smart phones to find local options, you want these users to find informative gateways and not a blank page.

Facebook Local Business Unclaimed

Facebook Local Business Page - Claimed and Customized

Take the time to understand the benefits of each network and make your profiles and pages look consistent with your company branding. Create some simple signage for your business location so visitors know they can check in on Foursquare and Facebook or leave a review on Yelp.

Finding Your Local Audience 

Usually the best place for a local business to start is on Facebook. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past five years, you have a Facebook account with a number of friends.

After claiming your Facebook business page, make a status update or send a message to all of your friends letting them know about it.

Don’t be afraid to make the request and include a call to action like:

“You love our coffee and donuts so go and ‘like’ our page”

via flickr

It is also a good idea to encourage friends to share with their friends. This can grow your potential reach from a few hundred friends to a few thousand.

Some other ways to gain local Facebook likes:

• Put a ‘Find us on Facebook’ sign in your business
• Send an email notification to your email list
• Put links on your business website or blog
• Use Facebook advertising and specify State, City, or Towns

Twitter also has value for local business marketing. With many people adding locations to Twitter bios and tweets, it isn’t very hard to find local users that you could turn into customers. Twitter users are also very active, winning one over could create a very vocal advocate for your business.

To find local Twitter users to follow and connect with you have a few options.

First, you can do a simple search from within Twitter and specify an area. You can use your city/town and a radius around that point to find users within. Use the following formula and change the radius and city/town to anything you want.

(Twitter Search) near:YourCity within:25mi

There are also some great online tools that will help you find tweeters in your area.

Check Out:

Twellowhood

Nearby Tweets

Twiangulate

Put Social Followers to Work

After growing a modest following the next step is to put them to work for you.

via flickr

Think of your social media followers as potential word-of-mouth advocates. To keep them happy and interested you will need to consistently engage them.

Check out our post with some great methods to increase word-of-mouth marketing.

Some local businesses owners are always on the go with no access to a computer, we put together a list of tools to do your social media marketing from anywhere, check it out.

Generally the way large businesses take advantage of social media is to send traffic to their website. These websites are then filled with content and offers, all pointing to lead capturing elements (when you fill out a form with your name and email). This is how they generate leads that are passed off to sales teams to make a sale. This is a great and successful form of marketing but as a local business owner, you may not have the time or budget for a task of this size.

A powerful marketing term that you should know, even as a small business, is call to action. These are usually those email capture tools or sign ups. As a local business, you need to think of this process slightly differently.

What is your business goal?

Likely you are trying to increase traffic into your location or spread awareness and public image.

To accomplish this, be creative with your calls to action. Instead of email sign ups, point your social followers to review pages and voting sites. Don’t be afraid to ask for their support, chances are they want to give it.

Try some of these examples:

• Have you given us a 5 star review on Google Places?
• Check out our Yelp page and suggest your favorite meal.
• Check in on foursquare and leave a great tip for your friends.

Make sure you include links with these calls to action, making it easy for followers to accomplish the task.

Key Takeaways:

• Take control of your social business listings online
• Use important information and consistent branding
• Find local followers on Facebook and Twitter with the tools listed
• Consistently engage with your social media audience
• Use a call to action relevant to your local business

If you have any personal experiences, successes, or failures with local business social marketing please let us know in the comments.

One of our favorite social media tools is Buffer. This powerful online app let’s you easily maintain a consistent feed on your social media accounts. Add links, messages, and pictures to the major social channels like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. With Buffer, you can look like a social media pro and only spend a few minutes a day updating your feed.

We are excited to announce this Facebook sweepstakes and give away 1 year of Buffer Pro to a lucky winner. Details of the contest and entry form are on our Facebook page. Check it out and enter, good luck!

Enter the Sweepstakes here.

When a visitor gives content a +1, it increases the chance of showing up in social search results of their friends. This is very powerful to increase SEO and help spread valuable content.

Now Google has added a new button for social sharing, the Google+ Share button. This button is similar to a Facebook Share button because instead of simply giving something a +1 (or like on Facebook), this button will share the content on a users Google+ feed.

There are three different button options to chose from, they look like this:

If many major sites adopt this new button, Google should see a nice boost to Google+ user feeds. For this to really matter to users and to marketers, we will need to start seeing better stats on the amount of people actually spending time in Google+ feeds and profiles.

Hopefully developers, like my favorite Digg Digg bar, will be integrating the new button into plugins soon, for those of you who want it.

To get the code for your button use the Google+ Share Button Generator.

Running a promotion campaign on Facebook is a great way to gain new ‘likes’ and to generate engagement on a page.

These giveaways, if done right, have the potential to bring in hundreds and even thousands of new likes.

Two important factors will determine the success of your Facebook promotion, planning and a prize relevant to your page.

To get started on the planning process, it is important to understand the different types of Facebook promotions you can run, these are contests and sweepstakes.

Sweepstakes

A sweepstake is the simplest type of giveaway promotion, it requires little effort for contestants to enter.

With its easy entry, sweepstakes will usually get you a larger number of page likes and also accomplish this faster.

The downside of running a sweepstake is that some of the people who initially like your page will then unlike it after the sweepstake is over. Also, with easy entry into the sweepstake, you will likely end up with many ‘likers’ who don’t care that much about your Facebook page and won’t engage.

Example of Facebook Sweepstake

White Cloud giving away a Nissan Leaf - Simple to enter

Contests

Running a contest on Facebook requires more planning than a sweepstake and can require more sophisticated software. A contest will require that entrants complete some sort of task in order to enter the contest and be eligible for prizes.

A very popular contest type on Facebook is a photo/video submission. This type of contest will create very high interaction on your page from fans but lowers the amount of entries you will receive.

Requiring more time and effort to enter makes some people uninterested but those who are will be valuable fans. The value of the prize can have an effect on this however, a more valuable prize will usually lead to more entries.

Often user submission based contests are judged by Facebook fans using a voting system, this is another great way to increase page interaction.

Example of Facebook Contest

Cycle Trader - Submit Pictures of a Bike with voting system to win

As always make sure you are following the Facebook guidelines for a promotional giveaway.