So how can a business build a successful non-commercial "commercial" presence
in social media? By being active, genuine, creative and, most of all, keeping the
business angles on the back-burner. As an example of this, here is my Facebook strategy
for businesses just starting out in social media. I like using Facebook for this
because Facebook is better suited for people who are already popular. If no one
knows you when you arrive on Facebook you will have to do much work before you can
create influence.

A Facebook Social Media Strategy

Facebook is a closed membership community built for people, not businesses. If
your account does not have a person’s name as the user name or if they discover
that you are not a real person, Facebook will delete your account.

Messages are the simplest and most common form of communication on Facebook.
They occur in different formats and different places They can be one-to-many communications
or one-to-one. Most messages come in the form of:

• Personal updates
  When you place a message on your profile it appears on all of your Facebook
  friends’ Facebook | Friends pages (status updates, notices). If you write on
  somebody’s wall it will appear on all of their friend’s home pages.
• Group messages
  If you are the administrator of a group with 5,000 or fewer members you can
  send a message to all of the members. These are great because they go into people’s
  personal inboxes.
• Event invitations
  Members can send RSVP style event invitations to their friends and to members
  of groups that they administer.

Hopefully by now you realize that The first key to successful push promotion on Facebook is to have lots of friends like Luis Perez does.

The second key to Facebook success is to create anticipation.

Facebook members, especially the popular and influential ones, receive a crushing
stream of messages. If people do not look forward to your messages they will skip
over them or quickly forget them.  It’s difficult to get around this by using
frequency and multiple impressions because it will earn you a reputation as a spammer.

The best way for a business to build a following from scratch  on Facebook

Identify groups that contain your prospect or customer base or targets

• Match your industry
• Match your niche
• Focus on systems or technologies that are prominent in your own business
  or industry

Identify the leaders and key people in these groups and solicit them for friendship
with custom crafted personal messages

Spend a week following your new Facebook friends’ messages

• Keep track of the people they engage with.
• Note what they converse about.
• Note their status messages.
• Note which topics and styles of messages seem to drive the most interest
  and response.
• Note the things they do NOT write about.

Join the conversation

• Update your status before 9am, at noon and at 4pm each day.
• Write noncommercial messages that fit within the tenor of the larger conversation.
  Begin with three or four each day and spaced apart. If a message thread picks-up
  popularity then respond with the same frequency as you would in a natural conversation.
  Otherwise hold back. You are building goodwill, not prominence.

Add friends

• Draft a message to ask for friendships, one that sounds personable, and
  keep it handy.
• Request friendship from other people who converse frequently with your Facebook
  friends. Don’t try to add everyone all at once. Pace it out.
• Approve all requests for friendship from others.

Become a leader

• Leadership is within your grasp, just wait until after you become accepted
  as a regular.
• Write articles on your own website’s blog, articles that extend and expand
  on topics from Facebook. Then, message your Facebook friends with a link.
• Celebrate other members’ news. Congratulate them and retell their story
  to your own friends.
• Stay out of arguments. Avoid taking sides.

Get creative

• Take your Facebook conversation to other Web 2.0 platforms. For example,
  you could tell people that you’ll be on twitter for an hour and welcome live
  messages.
• Hold an event offline. If lots of people in your Facebook community are
  going to a conference or will be in the same place at the same time, host a
  dinner or a party or a game or an activity where everyone can get together.
• Hold a contest. You could give an iPhone to a random person who adds you
  as a Facebook friend or subscribes to your blog during the next week.

Now You Can Market your message

• Hype your business indirectly. Never tell people your product or service
  is great and that they should try it.
• Tell people what you are working on and why you think it’s so cool.
• Let people know you are excited.
• Drop updates and insights. Make it sound like you are telling people insider
  information.
• Remember, Never sell directly!!! You’re more savvy than that.
• If you absolutely must sell then make it sound absolutely genuine and not
  resemble a sales pitch.

The post Killer Facebook Marketing Strategy appeared first on Portent.

Recently I was poking around a few design blogs and noticed something interesting. It seems like the trends and styles that were so popular only a year ago are starting to fall out of favor. Smashing Magazine and Web Designer Wall have all but declared web 2.0’s glossy style dead. Last year, or maybe two years ago, I got a lot of inspiration from this page, as I’m sure many others did. If you’re wondering what I mean by web 2.0 (and yes, I hate those words, but what else do you call it?), read that page. Looking at it now, it does seem a little dated. What happened? Overuse, mostly. The simplicity and ease to which you can design a website in this style has lead many a novice to replicate it. All you have to do is grab a shiny button Photoshop template, slap a gradient down, and voila, web 2.0! For me, the death knell was sounded when I went to start a new account with Qwest and was greeted with this:

What words come to mind when you look at this? Corporate? Safe? Sterile? Neutered? Not to knock whoever designed the website, it does look very professional and very… Qwesty. But it doesn’t look that great. It looks like a door knob: functional and appropriate, but completely lifeless. Come to think of it, it looks like Windows Vista. Not that anyone has ever looked to Qwest for setting trends in design.

But wait, you say, isn’t this the same style that Apple, Mozilla, et al. use? Not really. Not anymore, anyway. The glassy buttons do look almost exactly like Apple’s did; two years ago. Likewise, Mozilla used to be the poster child for this style, but look at it today.

Very different! Trends in web design, as in everything, are fleeting. What looked good yesterday rarely passes muster today. This is why I never purchase web design books. However, there are a few web 2.0 design conventions that have always looked rather stale to me, and I’m glad they’re slowly disappearing. Here are a few things that are best to avoid, and if you do use them, use them sparingly.

Glass Buttons

Glass buttons: bevel & emboss’ high class, snooty cousin.

Glass buttons are quickly becoming the bevel and embossed buttons of yesteryear. Ever since they first appeared on Apple’s navigation the internet has been inundated with tutorials on how to make those cool, jelly tabs, and every twelve year old with a pirated version of Photoshop has followed suit. They will never be as ugly as bevel/emboss, but their increasing prevalence has started to make them look tired and old hat.

Gradients

Gradients: Rather dull.

Gradients. Gradients gradients gradients. A long while ago, gradients started to replace the flat, solid colored backgrounds of old. I don’t think gradients will ever go away. In fact, we use a gradient background on this site, and it looks fine. There’s nothing wrong with gradients, per se, but they are everywhere! A lot of sites nowadays are moving in a more illustrative direction, which may be inappropriate for our site, or Qwest’s site, but that doesn’t make the designs any less beautiful.

The screen comes to life.

The average user’s internet speed is rapidly increasing, allowing for larger, more detailed images. I particularly enjoy the emphasis on hand-drawn elements, which easily separates the real artists from the stylists. If you are a designer and you can’t draw, it might be a good time to start learning.

Like I said, styles like these may not be viable for every company, but they are another option to consider besides the good old gradient or solid color. Never settle on the first solution that comes to mind. Try a pattern, a drawing, or a photograph as a background. And never use gradients on every element of your design.

Glass Table

This effect doesn’t look bad, and in fact, Apple and other companies still use it. But like the other devices in this list, it is becoming overused. My main problem with this trick is that turning something upside down and fading it out is not really what a reflection looks like. If you are going to use it, try looking at an object on a real mirror and attempt to replicate that effect. You can even render the reflection or shadow in a 3D program. In this way you will separate your designs from the amateurs. To illustrate this point, take a look at this image I swiped from Nike’s website. I created the first, wrong image. Nike did it correctly.

Stripes

Stripes done poorly. These stripes create a visual ‘buzzing’ effect that distracts from the real content of the page

A lot of websites use stripes in some way or another. There is even a tool to create these for you. Without the learning curve of Photoshop, I expect we’ll be seeing many more websites using stripes in the future. There’s nothing wrong with stripes, but can you think of a more interesting way to use them than as a tiled background?

Digg, RSS, Delicious icons

These have become almost de rigueur in recent years. Every website has some RSS, Digg, StumbleUpon, or Facebook icon somewhere. Before just slapping the icon on your site, consider other methods of displaying them. You are not required by law to use the little orange RSS button (though I do think you should keep it orange). Try different variations on the theme, while still keeping the icon recognizable. Here are some clever examples:

Digg icon

Twitter Icon

RSS Icon

Make the icon a part of your design, rather than an extraneous element.

Sans-serif fonts

When I was in school, they taught me that sans-serif fonts were for the screen and serif fonts were for the books. But what I’m realizing now is that serif fonts can look just as gorgeous as their footless cousins. Take a gander at the I Love Typography site. I have no trouble reading the type and it’s all in serif. You can’t make your whole site in Adobe Garamond, but how about using it for a logo or your headers?

Serif fonts look just as good.

Badges/Stickers/Star Flashes

The beta Sticker – a crime against humanity.

Just don’t use these. Ever. If you have used them in the past, I pardon you, just like Ralph Fiennes pardoned that kid in Schindler’s list.

In Summation

Before you throw your Web 2.0 out the window, remember that there are some trends that will never fully vanish. What aspects of the web 2.0 era will endure? The clean, simple layouts; the larger, more readable text; the bright colors, the emphasis on the user and not the designer. Always put the needs of the client and the end-user before your own artistic preference. If glass buttons are what Qwest wants, that is what Qwest will get. But there is always a way to do a fresh take on an old recipe. Be aware of trends, but do not allow them to dictate your own style. Otherwise, you will quickly become yesterday’s news.

Jarrod is an interactive designer at Portent Interactive, a Seattle internet marketing company. He looks nothing like the picture at the top of this article

The post Does Web 2.0 still look good? Did it ever? appeared first on Portent.

When Twitter came on the scene 2006 I was an early adopter. Chatting IRC style with the addition of subscribers and an archive was most compelling to me. I was quick to abandon it too. Back then you may as well have shouted, "Hello!," into a desert canyon, but without the comforting echo. Twitter reached a tipping-point (and I began using it again) during the 2007 SXSW conference when attendees used the tool to chat during sessions and figure-out which bar to convene in. At the same time conference bloggers lit the Internet with stories about just how revolutionary Twitter was.

Today the question is,

"How do I use Twitter to get rich for marketing?"

Personalities like @GuyKawasaki, @SethGodin and @JasonCalacanis all use Twitter so there must be gold in them there hills. Right?

Right size your expectations.

Twitter is a lousy audience building tool when you have to start from scratch.

Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Jason Calacanis did not create new audiences on Twitter. They brought their audiences with them. They told blog readers and subscribers, "Follow me on Twitter to receive more fresh content and enjoy some personal time with me."

So how do Guy, Seth and Jason use Twitter to grow the readership their blogs and web sites? They exploit the fact that no one enjoys being privy to only one side of a conversation.

• On Twitter everyone has their own followers
  • When you send a message to Guy Kawasaki your followers see what you write
  • When Guy writes to you people will not see what Guy writes unless they follow Guy too or visit his profile
• When your followers see you conversing with Guy Kawasaki
  • Many will want to know what Guy wrote to you
  • They will visit Guy’s Twitter page
  • Some will follow Guy
• New followers will get Guy’s messages, both personal and marketing

The larger the audience you bring with you to Twitter in the beginning the more useful Twitter will be as a marketing tool. If you have only a small audience Twitter will prove difficult use.

You can build an audience from scratch on Twitter.

It takes time to make new friends. As you become more involved and recognized people will follow your account. It can be a slow process, especially at the outset.

• Create an account with your real name (Unless your nickname is widely recognized).
• Use a Twitter search tool
  • Find discussions that interest you
  • Make sure you have a potential audience on Twitter
• Visit the Twitter pages of @names you see frequently in messages.
• Read their recent posts
• Evaluate them
• Follow them
• Visit their web sites and blogs
• Participate in the conversation.
  • Be online during peak posting periods
  • Use people’s @names in your posts
  • Seriously, engage people and use their @names in your messages. This is the most important secret of all.
• Write compelling content
  • Write only when you have something worthwhile to contribute
  • Don’t be a troll or somebody who fans the flames of argument
  • Avoid useless messages like, "Me too."
  • Use Tiny URLs (Firefox addon)

Here is one last hint.

Don’t follow too many people right away.

If you visit somebody’s Twitter profile and see that they follow 250 people but only 25 follow back, chances are good you will not follow either. The ratio is unnatural, too far apart. Keep this in mind for your own account when you begin following users. Start with under 50 then grow gradually. You’ll pick-up speed soon enough.

If you want to follow me

These secrets and some determination should get you started. And, if you want to follow my tweets here is my Twitter Profile: SEOinSeattle.

Update: See what Neil Patel thinks about Twitter too.

The post Twitter Secrets Revealed appeared first on Portent.