With the new changes to Facebook Graph Search, the pages you like on Facebook will soon appear in search results. For most of us, there’s nothing to worry about. Declaring you “Like” How I Met Your Mother is just a sign you enjoyed the show’s witty writing before Barney and Robin got together… for the second time.

However, for one reason or another, you might have liked a page you shouldn’t have. If you’re uncomfortable with unwittingly shilling for companies you no longer support or if you just want to avoid expressing your love for anything embarrassing, here’s the best way to remove your unwanted page Likes:

How to find Facebook pages you’ve liked

1. Visit your profile and click the Likes app (it might be hidden under the application dropdown button).

2. Scroll to the bottom of your Likes page and click “Show Other Pages.”

3. If you’re like me and have gone on some major liking sprees, you might need to click on the “show more” button to see the complete list.

Over the past four years—Facebook pages have been around since 2009—I’ve liked around 300 different pages. I’m really into Ghostbusters, Disney World and social media, so don’t worry if you haven’t liked as many pages as I have.

To remove a page from your list, you’ll need to unlike it. Hover over a page title, click the Like button, and then select “Unlike.”

This is just a demonstration. Please keep liking Portent’s Facebook page.

If you have any troubles or need any other questions answered, feel free to leave me a comment or tweet at me at @SocialDoug.

The post How to Find Pages You Like on Facebook (and Unlike Them) appeared first on Portent.

Shooting a video on Vine is dead simple. Press your thumb on the screen to record, lift your thumb off the screen to stop. The editing system is so easy, my Taiwanese mountain dog could do it.

Since Twitter created the app, you can expect two things:

1. Vine uses Twitter rules in updates

Hashtags and tagging other accounts work the same as they do on Twitter. Posts uploaded in the Vine social network don’t have to adhere to Twitter’s 140 character limits. However, when sharing Vine updates on Twitter, the Vine URL will take up roughly 21 characters.

If you don’t want Twitter to take a bite out of your message, limit your Vine status updates to 110 characters.

2. Facebook is pissed about Vine

As Mike Isaac reported on All Things D, there was a brief moment that Vine published updates to Facebook. No such luck only one day later. If users try to publish on Facebook or search for Facebook friends on the Vine app, they’ll be left with an annoying error message.

This isn’t the first rodeo for Facebook and Twitter. Back in December, Twitter disconnected from Facebook’s newly acquired Instagram by removing access to Twitter cards, which disabled the best part of Instagram’s photo integration.

Since you’ve always wondered, here’s our Vine-enabled six second tour through the Portent office at the Smith Tower (as well as some other random moments).

The post Twitter’s Vine App Looks Awesome appeared first on Portent.

What’s the big deal about Facebook Graph Search? It’s a common question this week, and while it doesn’t warrant a Notre Dame think tank disaster group, we should all care (at least a little) about Facebook’s new “smarter” search engine.

From businesses and Internet marketers to everyday Facebook users, this new way of search should give us all reason to reevaluate how we plan to use this search engine. Check out these three examples:

Why Internet marketers should care

Facebook’s ultimate goal with Graph Search isn’t difficult to figure out. They want to keep users engaged on Facebook with the hope that they will no longer rely on Google to discover new stuff.

One minor detail that was mostly overlooked during Facebook’s announcement is that Graph Search is a product of Facebook and Bing. The two engineering teams have been working together over the past two-and-a-half years on the current, yet clunky Facebook search experience.

With the new Graph Search, marketers can expect Facebook search to change to a two column result page that combines Facebook friend results with Bing results. We can already expect Facebook to feature their sponsored pages in Graph Search, but what’s to come of Bing ads in Facebook?

Image from Bing

Our best guess

If we know anything about Bing PPC, we can guess that advertisers will have very little control over where their ads will be served on Facebook. The most likely scenario is that Bing will serve ads from a new content network shared between Facebook, Yahoo! and Bing. Ultimately, this will increase Bing’s opportunities for ad impressions, but don’t count on Bing to make advertising any cheaper.

Why businesses should care

Graph Search is Facebook’s version of a recommendation search engine. It relies on a plethora of signals that include self pics, winky face status updates, check-ins and “Likes” to determine relevant search results, which will have an outrageously strong impact on local search.

Many industry leaders, like Matt McGee, editor at Search Engine Land, believe Graph Search might succeed thanks to Facebook’s billion-plus user base, provided that users find the experience appealing enough to break their Yelp and Google habits.

Welcome to the popularity contest

How many people actually talk about McCoy’s Firehouse Bar & Grill on Facebook? They totally should because it’s one of the best places to get a beer in Seattle’s Pioneer Square, but if users don’t Like or talk about a business on the social network, it won’t show up in search results.

Facebook is already an important signal in local SEO and the only way for local businesses to win in Graph Search is to increase engagement. The more likes, comments, pictures and mentions they receive, the more often their business and products appear in search results.

Local businesses can get a jump on optimizing their Facebook pages before Graph Search takes affect by following some of our local SEO tips for social networks. At a minimum, Facebook pages should clearly display the name, address, phone number of the business, and any other signals of trust like links to the website.

After optimizing the page for local search, business owners should curate a content schedule to regularly update the Facebook page with news and pictures about the business, as well as encouraging fans to upload their own photos and reviews. For more engagement ideas, we highly recommend using Rafflecopter for contests. Their widget is dead simple to build and the Rafflecopter blog is full of awesome ideas for social media promotions.

Facebook’s user agreement

Facebook’s page guidelines are long and boring, but page administrators should know Facebook bans any promotions that require users to upload a picture or status update on a Facebook page. In other words, page admins can’t incentivize Facebook fans to make updates.

As a wild prediction, I think Facebook might bend these rules in the future. It would be in their best interest to create new features like an Instagram/Facebook app that rewards fans for taking pictures of food. If Facebook really had its act together, it would partner with restaurants to show menu options and calorie counts, and maybe it would even share geo-target information on Instagram. They could call it something goofy like YummyPics… it’s a half-baked idea, but something like this could work.

Why Facebook users should care

To the generic Facebook user, Graph Search is a game-changer when it comes to privacy. Facebook hides behind the claim that, “No one can see anything that they wouldn’t have otherwise been able to see.“

While that might be true, millions of Facebook will soon realize all the embarrassing pages they liked in college are now public information on Graph Search.

What’s a Facebook user to do?

Fire up the flux capacitor and take a trip back in time to remove yourself from any pages or groups that might prevent you from volunteering with children.

Keep in mind, there’s also the situation where you liked a page for some reason, and it’s not offensive, but you just don’t want to be a free marketer/advertiser for that company. For the sake of you and your friend’s sanity, remove those likes.

(In a follow up post, I outline the steps to find and unlike unwanted pages on your Facebook profile. Check it out. You’ll like it.)

Facebook thinks you can’t opt out of Graph Search

Zuckerberg calls Graph Search the “third pillar of what Facebook is all about.” Facebook is betting big that users will continue to take pictures of their fusion pad thai and make updates about their favorite organic baby food, but will they? Or will the changes inherent in Graph Search have an impact on Facebook user’s Liking habits?

Is it worth Liking something on Facebook if it could haunt you in the future?

TL;DR Recap

When it comes to Graph Search, marketers should worry about Bing, businesses should worry about local search, users should worry about appearing in ridiculous search results, and Facebook should worry about people abandoning their social network.

Facebook Graph Search is still in beta, but here’s a link if you want to jump on Facebook’s waiting list.

How do you think this Facebook experiment is going to play out?

The post Who Should Care About Facebook Graph Search? (Hint: Everyone) appeared first on Portent.

What’s New About Business Pages?

Not a lot, which is a good thing because sometimes it’s tricky to implement social media advice. Basically, business pages make three major changes on Pinterest:

1. Website Verification

Pinterest will add this nifty checkmark to your profile to verify that you own the site. Verification will most likely impact search results in Pinterest, making your brand easier to find.

2. New Buttons

Adding to the Pin It button, Pinterest now offers a Follow Button that will allow users to follow your account. Go ahead and try it: Portent, Inc.

Pinterest also unveiled a Profile Widget and a Board Widget that displays 30 of your latest pins in an iframe that links to your business page.

3. Access to New Features

Pinterest is a little vague about what these features are, but my guess is that Pinterest analytics must be right around the corner. In the mean time, I highly recommend pingraphy for scheduling and tracking pins.

How Do We Sign Up For a Business Page?

If you already have a Pinterest account, it’s not too difficult to create a business page by verifying your website. Here’s a quick walkthrough:

Log into your profile and visit Pinterest’s business page. If you don’t have a page yet, you can now join Pinterest as a business.

To finalize the process, you’ll need to verify your website, which you can do by downloading a Pinterest verification file and uploading it to your site’s server.

Uploading the Verification File

For many of us, this is where we hit the wall for our knowledge of the Internet. To upload the file, you’ll need FTP access for your website. Since some server setups are complicated (especially for those of us that don’t know what we’re doing), make sure that you’re in the right folder when you upload.

You’re looking for the docroot – it should be browsable at your domain without any subfolders (www.yourdomain.com/pinterest-file.html). Most hosting companies use “httpdocs” but it might also say “wwwroot” or some other variation.

Once the file is uploaded, check for the file in your browser. In our case, http://www.eigene-homepage-erstellen.net/pinterest-b107e.html. It should look like this:

If all went well, visit the verification page again and click to complete the process.

If you have any trouble converting your Pinterest Business page, don’t be shy. Leave a comment or send @Portent or me (@SocialDoug) a tweet and we’ll get back to you.

The post Claim Your New Pinterest Business Page Today appeared first on Portent.

The “local SEO busters” are inspired by our favorite band of paranormal investigators and eliminators, which had to have been the coolest local business in the 80s, amirite?

Who ya gonna call for local SEO help? By now, we hope it’s us.

Two weeks ago we made an open call for questions related to Local Search. Since then, we’ve discussed the meat and potatoes of local SEO: offsite factors, social strategies and the fundamentals of local search. Now, to wrap up our Portent Local Series, we give you All The Answers.

Portent’s Local Team

To answer your questions, we put together our rag tag team of search experts consisting of Doug Antkowiak (me, the lead social media guy), Nick Bernard (offsite SEO guy), George Freitag (local SEO guy) and Josh Patrice, our SEO Team Lead and presenter for our upcoming webinar SEO Tips for Small Businesses. So, with that, let’s get to the Q&A.

General Questions

We’ll start with the general questions about local search and go into specific parts later in the post.

Question 1: For businesses like doctors or lawyers who want to target a broad radius of cities surrounding their office, how does one effectively do this? Service area pages covering the same info seem spammy, but in most cases the information you want to provide your site visitors isn’t going to vary that much. -Mike Wilton

Answer: This is always tough since Google is going to have a bias against any business without a physical address in the city. The most successful strategies I’ve seen have been to try and target the localized organic results (the results outside of the lettered results).

So, if you can fit the target city in your title tag and homepage text, do that. If it’s a ton of surrounding areas, create a unique page targeting the nearby city and fill it with original content related to that city. You should even include directions to your business, if possible. If you can get some good links to this page, even better. You may never get in those lettered results, but at least you’ll show up on the results page.

Question 2: How do the Bing and Google local algorithms differ? -Skeeter Anderson

Answer: Google and Bing both serve localized results based on the query and the location of the searcher. The big difference is that Google’s local results are more incorporated with the organic results. So, apart from a few exceptions, Bing tends to give 5 numbered local results and 8-10 organic results below for most local searches. Google’s results, on the other hand, will typically vary from subject to city and everywhere in between. Secondly, Google tends to display business results from the company site, whereas Bing is more inclined to provide results for directory sites like Citysearch or Yellow Pages.

Question 3: How can I achieve anonymity in local search when everything is based on my address? I run my company out of my garage. -Skeeter Anderson

Answer: The best way to stay out of the local results is to not put your address anywhere. You can still target the localized organic results by mentioning your city and services in the content.

Question 4: Is there any way to advertise on local search? -Allen Yarguth

Answer: Both Google and Bing serve ads in localized results just as they do for any search result. You can bid on any local search phrase through their networks. On top of that, Google also has Google Adwords Express, which places ads as local results directly on the map.

Question 5: What is the best way to combat similar businesses that share the same exact address? -Kim Wetter

Answer: You’ll want to spend the time to make sure all of your directory listings are displaying their contact information in the exact same format. In some cases, you may even want to go so far as to help your competitor update their directory listings as well.

If you continue to encounter problems, you can try visiting Google Map Maker and editing your listing directly or report a problem to Google.

Question 6: How will iOS 6 affect local search? – @jana_obscura

Answer: Naturally, it’s too early to predict eveything about how Apple’s abandonment of Google Maps will affect local search, but the most significant change is that this takes Google’s local results out of most iPhones and replaces it with data primarily from Yelp. Because Yelp is also a content provider for Bing, this makes Yelp one of the most visible content providers for local business information. So businesses, if you were debating setting up a Yelp page before, now’s probably the time.

Local Directory Questions

Since directory listings are so important to local search, we decided to put all those questions together in their own section.

Question 1: What is the relative importance of directory listing? -Kevin Stevens

Answer: Directory listings are the best signal search engines can use to determine your business’s popularity online. These contain the citations that contribute to your business listing’s trust in the local results. On top of that, most issues related to duplicate map listings, incorrect business information and other local problems can be traced back to an inaccurate directory listing somewhere.

Question 2: What local biz listings (Google, Yahoo, etc.) are the most important to be listed in? Should you encourage customers to leave reviews of your business on review sites? If so, which ones are the most influential? -Robert Wall

Answer: You’ve already hit the most important directories, but I’d also include Bing and Yelp. After that, it depends on your type of business. For most businesses, Citysearch, Hotfrog, and the phone directory sites are appropriate, too. After that, however, you’ll really want to focus on niche directories like Urban Spoon for restaurants or Healthgrades for medical practitioners.

As for reviews, they are definitely important. On Google, they really are encouraging customers to use Google+ so a review there is ideal. Google will also link to most other review sites below the Google reviews on the +Local listing. I’d also recommend Yelp since, apart from having their own loyal users, they are also currently a content provider for Bing’s local listings and the primary content provider for Apple’s map system.

Question 3: We work with a lot of clients trying to direct their customers to one directory over another to write their reviews. Is this worth the effort? Is one directory, like Yelp or G+ local, better or worse for leaving reviews? -Jeff

Answer: In a perfect world, all the reviews would be counted. Unfortunately, Google places such a high preference on its own reviews, that your clients should direct as many reviews as possible directly to the Google+ Local page. Like we stated earlier, Google will still link to the other reviews at the bottom of the local page, but it just won’t be displayed as prominently. Bing, on the other hand, has many different partnerships and will display reviews from Yelp, Citysearch and other popular directory sites directly in its business listings.

Also, you should also be sure to consider niche directories for your industry. Restaurants, travel, medical and other industries have very influential review sites that are looked at by both Google and Bing.

Question 4: Is it worth it to pay for a link on a directory site? -Emily

Answer: This is always a tricky situation, but it ultimately depends on your business. The phonebook’s websites, BBB and even some local directories can often be worth looking into but you generally need to pay to be included. Going back to the Portent post about Local Business Directories, it is very important to focus on the niche directories available to your business.

Question 5
Johnny Wyatt had a great multi-part question that I’ve divided into separate parts:

1. When optimizing directories and local listings such as Google+ Local/Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Business Portal, Yelp, City Search, should the description field contain identical copy from site to site?

Answer: Ideally, you should write unique copy for each site since different sites often serve different markets. I do know, though, that this can be time consuming so I have not noticed any negative impact from repeating the same description on different directory sites. They should, however, be different from the copy used on your website.

2. Phone number… where we have multiple locations and where we desire tracking capability, should we have a different phone number for each location in the listings and on the locations pages of the website even if we have a central number? One example is a school with four locations. TIA/West, TIA/East and so on. One website, one central phone number, unique phone numbers for each location. Can I use a unique tracking number for each location that points to the actual number? Should that be the number on the website location page?

Answer: Tracking numbers should always be used with caution. The reason why the phone number is so important in local search is because of the importance of your NAP mention across the Internet. Referring back to The Brick and Mortar of Local SEO post, each phone number can potentially be indexed as its own business location, so if this is not what you want to happen, then you shouldn’t use tracking numbers or at least make sure they are not indexed by the search engines. Google and Bing will also allow you to use several numbers, so if you want to use a primary local number and use the main line as a secondary number, the search engines will typically understand that both are associated with your organization. Basically, only use a number if you want it to be the number you used in the phone books. If not, you should stick with the main line for everything.

Question 6: I have a client who says the road that their business is located on doesn’t even show up on Google’s mapping system yet and the pin is way off from their actual location. How do we go about fixing this? -Shaylee

Answer: The answer is the in the amazing, incredible Google Map Maker. This is a crowdsourcing site that Google uses to edit all information in its maps. You can add new roads and buildings, edit existing features and more. Pretty much any element of Google Maps can be edited through this. Changes are then reviewed by combination of peers, Google staff and automated bots before being published.

Social Media and Google+ Local

With Google+ and Google+ Local being so new, it’s understandable that we had a lot of questions related to these.

Question 1: Is there any benefit to adding custom attributes to Google+ local profiles? -Gyi Tsakaliakis

Answer: This is one of the less clear points of Google. There have been some mixed opinions on how much the content in the descriptions and additional details sections influence a listing’s ranking. My experience, though, has shown that the more information you give Google in your listing, the more legitimate your listing appears. So if anything, filling out those sections shows to Google that your listing is actively managed which adds to the trustworthiness of the listing. However, I strongly advise that you avoid any blatant keyword stuffing in any of the custom sections of your listing.

Question 2: Is there a connection between Google Plus Local rankings and Organic rankings? -Jason

Answer: Absolutely. Google looks at both the website and the local listing when ranking its local results. On top of that, it also looks for a strong connection between the two so it’s important that both support each other and use identical contact information, whenever possible.

Question 3: What are your thoughts on the Google+ Local pages transition? -Courtney

Answer: It’s currently quite a headache for businesses to have to update two separate pages – one Google+ Local page and one Google+ Business page – even if you migrated over your “Places” content. It’s changed before, and it’ll change again. For now, Google+ Local is where you want to focus your effort.

Question 4: Have you ever had to deal with Google showing a local business’s Google + local page with about 1000 reviews, the right NAP, but the wrong URL? -Joshua

Answer: This sounds like you might have multiple listings for your local business in your Google Places account. Check out our earlier post about optimizing your Google+ Local page for more information.

Question 5: In addition to connecting your social profiles to each other, you should customize each profile so that it better reflects the brand presence you have built on your website. Facebook Timeline and Google+ have allowed for larger banners, and Twitter just rolled out a more customizable profile page. The more consistent brand image you can project across your social media sites, the better brand awareness you can create. -Nick

Answer: While it’s not a question, Nick does bring up a really important point. Like I was saying in my post about optimizing social media for local business, it’s critical to reflect as much website information as possible on your social media assets. I think one of the reasons businesses overlook updating items like banners is due to limited resources and the constant changing landscape of social networks. You probably saw it, but we just profiled how to update your Twitter account with a new header image.

Question 6: When I log into FB as my PAGE I can’t Comment or Like anything on the entire web, whether within FB or on sites outside of it. If I log into FB as my PROFILE I can do all those things. Is this normal behavior? I want to add FB commenting to my website, but I’m afraid I won’t be able to reply to any comments!!!!!! Thanks for any insights… -Emily

Answer: Facebook tries to keep a strong separation between pages and profiles. Basically, pages can only comment on other pages within Facebook. To answer your question about installing Facebook commenting on your blog, Facebook allows you to moderate the commenting with your personal profile. You’ll have the power to block bad words and inappropriate users, but if you need to respond to a question you could comment as your personal profile. Another option might be to respond to a comment by posting a new update on your Facebook page wall. Check out this link for more info on the Facebook comments app.

Question 7: I “claimed” our page to update our address. Well the pin from Google finally came and I was able to update everything, but rather than fixing out-of-date info, it just turned it into an entirely separate Google+ local page which means the old one with the bad address still exists. I imagine if I try to claim that one, it will just create another duplicate. Google fail.

Answer: Try logging into your Google Places account. You should be able to see both Google+ Local pages on your dashboard. Update your original Google Places page with your new address and info. As for the new duplicated page, visit the Google+ Local page and click the “edit business details” button above the “manage this page button.” Under the headline “Is any of the following true…” mark the box that says “This is a duplicate.”

Question 8: I am thinking of hiring a guy to do optimization on my Google+ business local page. Is it worth it. He want to sign me in to a 1 year contract, with a monthly fee. Is it even possible to optimize the local page?

Answer: After checking out your site and your Google+ local business page, I can see you have a few optimization opportunities. However, I’m hesitant about the terms of your internet marketing contractor. The one-year contract sounds fishy to me, especially if he’s only offering optimization for your Google+ business page. If you’re going to hire anyone to help you do local business optimization, make sure that expert offers social optimization, directory submissions and onsite optimizations (which might be your greatest opportunity for improvement).

Question 9: Why are my reviews not posting/where did my reviews go? -Mark, Steven, Natalie, Beau and probably others online

Answer: This isn’t a specific question we received, but we tend to see enough posts related to this any time we mention Google+ or local search to make this worth mentioning. Basically, reviews on Google don’t always post and sometimes existing reviews can disappear. This is one of the more frustrating aspects of local and, unfortunately, there isn’t always a definitive reason. Essentially, Google is looking for reviews it knows to be real. That is, written by an actual customer for real life reasons. To do this, Google looks at information about the reviewer. Does he/she have a Google+ profile? Have they written reviews before? If they have, are all reviews for a specific type of business? Do they seem trustworthy? Google may even look at things like a reviewer’s Gmail activity, YouTube activity and other Google properties to make sure that the reviewer is a real person.

When reviews are removed or don’t show, it’s usually because they don’t meet one of these criteria or, for some reason, may seem untrustworthy. Maybe the business received a string of reviews from the same IP address. Maybe they got a ton of reviews from brand new users all at once. Maybe reviews seemed to be keyword stuffing. Again, these are just possible answers. The only strategy is to try and get reviews from people already active in their Google properties. I know this isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but it’s one of the only way Google can prevent it’s local listings from being completely spammed by fake reviews.

Did we leave anything out?

Thanks to everyone who asked their questions – I hope we were able to get them answered for you. But, if you think we missed anything, or you have any lingering questions about local, feel free to post them in the comments below.

The post Portent Local SEO Q&A appeared first on Portent.

Why You Can’t Ignore Social Optimization

You can’t afford not to create a social media strategy for three reasons:

1. Reputation Management

As a rule, you should claim as many social media listings as you can now, so someone else can’t do it later. Even if you never make an update, controlling your business name on a social account will prevent someone posing as your brand.

Use Knowem or Namecheck to see what you might have available.

2. Search Engine Optimization

We’ve said this many times before, but Google and Bing both confirm that Twitter and Facebook influence SEO. So do Google+, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and others.

When customers search for brand names, social profiles create more opportunities for clicks and traffic because they occupy valuable space on search engine results pages.

This is a personalized search result. If you’re logged into Google+, you may see something similar.

If you don’t create and optimize these profiles, you’re leaving referral traffic (and money) on the table.

3. Secondary Contact List

Social media fans are a valuable commodity. If you can make your brand interesting and create an active social media routine, you can foster an engaged audience that will willingly allow you to advertise to them FOR FREE.

Social Audience + Social Strategy = Referral Traffic/Assisted Conversions/More Money

Align Your Social Networks with Your Website Information

There’s a lot of information out there about optimizing each individual social network, but the main rule to follow is to never leave an information section blank. When filling out your profiles, you should focus on including the following information:

• Business name

Try to use your official business name as it would appear in the phonebook. Also, don’t include keywords or city names, unless it’s a part of the official name.

• Phone number

This should be a local phone number. If you don’t see a spot to include your phone number, add it into your business description as a call-to-action.

• Website

When you add a link to your website, make sure you include the “http://.” Most of the time, this will activate the link in a social network description.

• Location

Take any opportunity to include your complete address. Social networks like Facebook, Google+ and Foursquare provide map listings for business locations. If there isn’t enough room for your address, include your city, even if it’s in the profile description.

• Link to other social networks

When possible, link to your other social accounts. For instance, certain social networks will have a field where you can enter your Twitter handle. Always make sure these fields are filled in if they are presented.

Where to Start Your Local Social Optimization Strategy

If you’re just getting started, I took the liberty of highlighting the location information in each of the most popular social networks. I recommend the average business owner create the following business accounts:

Facebook

Everyone has a Facebook personal account. Facebook Pages are different because they represent a company, organization or public figure. Most importantly, Facebook pages allow you to advertise your company on Facebook.

Google+ Business Pages

Just like Facebook, Google+ for Business is different than a Google+ personal profile. Google+ pages do not have advertising yet, but page listings do often appear as blended Google search results.

Google+ Local

If you created a Google Places account, you now have a Google+ Local account. It might be the most important local/social account because Google+ Local pages display Zagat reviews, which pits them head-to-head against Yelp. Google is slowly integrating Google+ Local with Google+ Business pages, so keep a close eye on your business page over the next few months.

LinkedIn

This is the current LinkedIn Company Page, but keep an eye out for changes that should be rolling out soon.

Twitter

Twitter is a must for most businesses. At the very least, you can add your location and website to your bio.

Pinterest

For businesses, it’s simple to connect your Twitter account to your Pinterest profile. However, it currently isn’t possible to link a Pinterest account with a Facebook Page.

Foursquare

Here’s a look at the web-based version of Foursquare. This information will also show up in the mobile app.

You might have noticed we’ve been answering questions about local SEO this month. Do you have any questions about optimizing your social networks for local SEO? Post them in comments and we’ll answer them on October 2nd in our Local SEO Q&A blog post!

The post How to Optimize Social Networks for Local SEO appeared first on Portent.

You can check out my slidedeck below. I’ll add a link to the recorded version of my presentation later today. If you’re interested in any of the sources in my presentation, here’s a link to my complete Pinterest link bundle.

Next Month

Tune in for our next free Portent webinar in September. Elizabeth Marsten will be speaking about Google Shopping and Product Listing Ads (PLAs) just in time for the holiday season. Get in the know for October and beyond as Google retires the “free” product feed format on Google Shopping and moves to pay to play listings. We’ll go over best practices on how to set up in AdWords, Google Merchant Center and Google Analytics, lesser known details and tips for success.

The post Possibilities of Pinterest Webinar SlideDeck appeared first on Portent.

Even though Google is still working out the kinks of integrating Google+ Local with the rest of the social network, the following local business optimization tips will help you prepare for when the search empire finally get their Death Star fully operational.

What’s New With Google+ Local?

Besides making your local business profile page look exactly like a Google+ Business page, the biggest change you’ll notice is the integration of the Zagat 30-point review system (Zagat joined the Google family last fall and now they’re doing everything to stick it to Yelp). Check out George’s introductory post about Google+ Local for a more in-depth overview of the Zagat rating system and how it affects your previous reviews.

How To Find Google+ Local Pages

• Any Google search for a business location will now display a result like this in Google Maps. When you click the “More Info” button, you’ll visit the new Google+ Local Business profile.

• Or, sign into your Google+ profile and click on the new “Local” tab. Then, search for your business name and city.

What To Know Before You Optimize Google+ Local

You know what really grinds my gears? When I see a link to “manage this page” even though I’ve already claimed the page.

This link appears by default on all Google+ Local pages, which means every Google+ Local page looks unclaimed. Don’t freak out. If you’ve already claimed the page in the past, you can use this button to edit your page information.

Expect to Wait When Updating Your Page

Updates can take 24 hours to a week to go into affect. Also, the more times you try to update your page, the longer you’re going to wait to see results. Think of it as the digital version of spinning your tires in mud.

Google+ Local Pages Aren’t The Same As Google+ Business Pages… Yet

If you have a Google+ Local page and a Google+ Business page, Google says you should treat each page as different entities. This separate but equal stance won’t last long. You can sign up for an early upgrade request to merge your Google+ Local page with your business page, but expect some temporary issues along the way.

Tips to Optimize Your Google+ Local Page

When it’s time to update your Google+ Local page, your dashboard will look exactly the same as it did for Google Places.

Most of the local business optimization tips rely on the phonebook rule, which means all of your business information that appears online should appear exactly as it does in the phonebook. Since you’re not 65 and don’t have a phonebook handy, just make sure all your online and print business listings are congruent.

At the bare minimum, every business location should contain the following information:

Business Name: This should be the official business name, as it would appear on everything from phonebooks to business cards. It shouldn’t contain any keywords or local describers, unless it’s part of the official city name for that location.

Address: Write out the full address of your business and use second address line for suite numbers, etc. Also, double-check your map listing to see if Google placed you location pin in the correct area.

Local Phone Number: The “main” number should always be a local number, not an 800 number. If there is a toll-free number, add it as an “alternate phone.”

Website: If the business has only one location or if the location pages contain little or no content, the URL should point to the homepage.

However, if the business has two or more business locations and the website has devoted pages to each individual location that include 5-6 sentences of original content, then the URL should point to that location page.

Categories: You must have at least one category description tag by default, but every business should have five (it only displays two at a time). Category description tags are sorted in order of importance and you should use one of the preferred, pre-populated categories whenever possible. The categories should not contain any local describers.

Business Hours: Business hours are signals of trust to users and search engines. If you don’t want to share your hours, Google might list your business as “closed.” It doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s been known to happen.

Pictures: You should have at least one image larger than 250×250 but less than 1024×1024 and under 1MB. This square image should be your logo or a picture of your place of business. Each page allows you to upload 10 images. By default, if you upload one image or less, the page will display a map of your location along the photo strip a Google+ (which I think looks pretty rad).

What’s frustrating about uploading images is that Google doesn’t give you the option to rearrange photos or select a photo as the page image. Sometimes it doesn’t show your photo at all (we’ve been having issues with the Portent logo for at least a week).

Suggested Information

Your Google+ Local Dashboard has areas to submit additional information. It isn’t required, but this info might improve the page user experience in the future.

Description: Your Google+ Local page will add a “from the owner” box under the business hours. Use this opportunity to add short sentence or two about why you’re special.

Email address: Your email isn’t currently displayed anywhere on the Google+ Local page, but it does appear on a Google+ Business page, which means Google may incorporate this into the listings in the future.

Videos: Videos will enhance your “profile completion percentage,” but videos do not show up on a Google+ Local page. Since Google+ Business pages do incorporate videos, this might be another feature added later.

Did Your Google+ Local Optimization Work?

You’re not the only one frustrated by this process. Be patient. When you evaluate your Google+ Local page, use this post as a check list to see if all your vital information is up to date and check to see if the Google Places pin is in the correct spot on the map.

Once you feel confident in your listing, share the link to your new Google+ Local page and remind customers and clients to give you a review.

Let us know if you’re having any luck.

The post How to Optimize Your Google+ Local Business Page appeared first on Portent.

Taking its roots from the phrase bi cause during the 13th Century, “because” introduces a direct reason for any occurrence or action in a statement. Last month, Ian touched on the power of because during his Social Media Means Business presentation and I thought it was too juicy to pass up a post on the PI blog.

Because, Because, Because, Because, Because…

Because of the wonderful things it does… Da Duh… Da Dun Dun Dun Dun Dun. Ask Google about the “Power of Because” and you’ll go down a yellow brick road of hundreds of psychological studies of people getting what they want with that one word. The most famous experiment was conducted by behavioral scientist Ellen Langer, where she set up three scenarios to see if a complete stranger could use persuasion tactics to cut in line at the photocopier.

The Because Experiment

As the control, the “stranger” simply asks the person standing in line, “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” Roughly 60% of participants allowed the copier cutter to move ahead of them in line.

However, when the “stranger” used a reason in his request, “May I use the Xerox machine, because I’m in a rush?” participant compliance soared to 94%. What ever happened to “no cuts, no butts, no coconuts?”

Here’s the part that will really knock your socks off. When the “stranger” used “because,” but followed it with an asinine reason, “May I use the Xerox machine because I need to make copies?” 93% of participants continued to comply.

The “Because Experiment” shows that it’s always important to give someone a reason, even if your reason isn’t very compelling.

Because Social Media is Important

Now that you know how to save time on your next Kinko’s trip, you should also consider using because to persuade your readers. Before you start inserting the big B in all of your tweets, remember that one of the most under-utilized tactics in social media is to simply ask people to make an action.

Dan Zarrella is one of my favorite social scientists (quick plug that I’m not being paid for, Dan’s book Hierarchy of Consciousness is a highly recommended read) and he wrote about the 20 phrases that will get you the most retweets. The words please, retweet and “please retweet” all drive an incredibly high amount of interactions. Try to capitalize on the power of because with one of these highly retweeted phrases.

Even my boss will tell you, asking people to like or retweet something is the easiest way to get people’s attention.

The next time you need to persuade your audience to take action, ask them to help out and give them a reason to care about it.

Read this BECAUSE it’s amazing portent.co/Lstwbf Please retweet BECAUSE it will make @portentint happy

— Doug Antkowiak (@SocialDoug) June 12, 2012

The post Read This Because I Said So… The Power of Persuasion appeared first on Portent.

The next time you feel the tingle to tweet your profound opinion, here are some examples of why you should think of the long-term implications of writing your short sentence.

10. Cairo in a Tizzy for Kenneth Cole

While Kenneth Cole’s new collection wasn’t quite as exciting as the Egyptian riots, Kenny C used the opportunity to springboard him and his brand into a PR nightmare. Protestors even attached the tweet-gaff onto the window of the downtown New York store.

Re Egypt tweet: we weren’t intending to make light of a serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment -KC

— Kenneth Cole (@KennethCole) February 3, 2011

9. The Gleek Springs a Leak

After overhearing who will be crowned prom king and queen on an upcoming episode of Glee, actress (and recurring extra on Glee) Nicole Crowther decided to leak the news early on her Twitter feed.

Glee writer, producer and creator Brad Falchuck was pissed. Instead of ignoring the leak, which would have just been a blip on the social media radar, the leader of the Gleeks replied to Crowther’s message (validating her rumor and ruining her career) with this tweet:

@nicolecrowther hope you’re qualified to do something besides work in entertainment.

— BradFalchuk (@BFalchuk) April 17, 2011

Crowther’s Twitter account says she still works in “the biz,” but fears the acting career she’s always dreamed of “will never become a reality.”

8. Sarah Palin “Refudiates”

To reeducate you on the refudiate debate, Palin’s original tweet was “Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.” One of her aids Palin pulled the tweet down later, tweeting:

“Refudiate,” “misunderestimate,” “wee-wee’d up.” English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!

— Sarah Palin (@SarahPalinUSA) July 18, 2010

What’s the problem with making up new words? Normally, something like this isn’t that damning for the typical tweeter, but when one of your party’s platforms is to demand that immigrants speak English, goofing up the language you’re forcing people to speak doesn’t go over well with the press.

7. Motor City Twitter Meltdown

The world is full of bad drivers. Scott Bartosiewicz wanted to remind us of this mundane fact by ranting on his personal Twitter account. One problem: he was still signed into the @ChryslerAutos corporate account.

Image via Stance is Everything

@ChryslerAutos followed up this tweet with:

Image via Huffington Post

Their resolution? Fire Bartosiewicz and refuse to renew their social media contract (reportedly worth over $100,000).

6. Mind Like a Scientist, Arm Like a Damn Rocket

If there’s one thing we should all know, don’t drink and tweet… especially if you’re racist. Former baseball pitcher and former radio producer Mike Bacsik is our shining example. After a few drinks, Bacsik gave us his best Kenny Powers impression during a Mavericks-Spurs game with this tweet:

Image Via SBNation

Bacsik was fired from his radio station the following Tuesday.

5. Bing Binged It Bad When Supporting Japan

The Microsoft search engine posted this tweet shortly after the Japanese earthquake in March, 2011:

Image via Huffington Post

What started as an effort to help Japan quickly mutated into a PR meltdown. It turns out that the tweeting public is pretty savvy, so when you try to seize a natural disaster as a marketing opportunity, people will see right through it. Once the hashtag #F–kYouBing started trending, Bing knew it was time to send out an apology: “We apologize the tweet was negatively perceived. Intent was to provide an easy way for people to help Japan. We have donated $100K.”

4. Mocking the Attack on Lara Logan

Nir Rosen was a journalist and fellow at the NYU Center on Law and Security… that was until he tweeted, “Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson. Where was her buddy McCrystal.” When reporter Lara Logan was sexually assaulted during the riots in Cairo, Rosen was critical of Logan’s reporting, insisting that she was trying to top CNN anchor Anderson Cooper’s coverage of the event by getting too close to the action. Rosen refers to Logan’s brutal attack as almost an “I told ya so” moment, implying that she shouldn’t receive our sympathy because she was a “major warmonger.”

Rosen later tweeted, “it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too,” which refers to the knee-slapping hilarity that would have ensued if we found out Anderson Cooper had also been sexually assaulted during the riots. Rosen apologized and resigned from his fellowship within 24 hours. While he deleted most of his tweets, this still remains in his feed:

on the job you get used to making jokes about our own death, other people’s deaths, horrors, you forget that you sound like a dick at home

— nir rosen (@nirrosen) February 16, 2011

3. Gilbert Gottfried Gets Aflacked

When Aflac signed Gilbert Gottfried to be their spokesperson, they should have known what they were getting into. Remember, this is the same guy who joked, “I have to leave early tonight, I have to fly out to L.A. I couldn’t get a direct flight, I have to make a stop at the Empire State Building.” He said this three weeks after 9/11.

Gottfried has a twisted sense of humor sometimes, so it wasn’t out of character for him to tweet jokes like:

Image via BuzzFeed

Surprised or not, Aflac wasn’t delighted. It turns out that Aflac is the top foreign insurance company in Japan and earns 75% of its revenue from that market. Gottfried might have been dumb about his tweets, but Aflac probably shouldn’t have hired the comedian in the first place.

2. Chris Brown’s Twitter Trend

We all know Chris Brown isn’t the most eloquent Twitterer. He’s even told his fans to F-off a time or two. But when people started reacting to Brown’s 2012 Grammy appearance, society hit a new low. Without getting into too much detail about Chris Brown’s relationship with Rihanna (or my opinion on domestic violence), here are some of the most disturbing tweets from Chris Brown’s fans:

Image via BuzzFeed

1. Weiner’s Weiner

Winner of the Trojan’s boner of the year award for dumbest tweet, Anthony Weiner’s erect boxer picture taught us all why a Twitter direct message still isn’t private.

Famous enough for a Wikipedia page, the Anthony Weiner Sexting Scandal started when Weiner sent a picture of his underoos to a 21-year-old female college student in Seattle, WA. The picture and screenshots of the original message were sent to conservative blogger and published the next day.

Weiner claimed his Twitter account was hacked:

Image via BuzzFeed

As it turns out, sending a picture of his privates wasn’t a one-time thing on Anthony Weiner’s bucket list. He did it a lot. Weiner admitted to the whole ruse when a different shirtless picture surfaced. Two weeks later, he resigned from his seat in Congress.

Sorry for all the unwanted attention on #WeinerYes follows.I didn’t mean to make you famous.#CollateralDamage

— Anthony Weiner (@RepWeiner) June 1, 2011

Takeaways

These people failed for a variety of reasons. Some tried to take advantage of a current event with an ill-timed joke. Others didn’t own up for their mistakes and paid dearly for it.

Ultimately, what all ten of these tweeters share in common is their lack of foresight. Don’t ever forget that the Library of Congress takes record of every tweet. Ever. The next time you tweet just another short sentence, keep in mind the whole world can see it and they might just retweet it.

The post The 10 Dumbest Tweets of All Time & the Idiots Who Wrote Them appeared first on Portent.