While you might not be able to create a page right now, it’s only a matter of days until your company or organization can get started. What can you be working on in the meanwhile?

Here’s a quick list of links that might help you prepare:

• An introduction and overview to what Google + pages look like from Google

• Mashable’s guide to the new pages
• And our favorite: Danny Sullivan’s writeup for Search Engine Land, which includes some of the earliest dos and don’ts, a good guide for creating the page and, no doubt, other updates as they become available

I presented a case study of a three-month campaign we built and managed on behalf of one of our clients – Dane Elec – and their NAS product my-Ditto using the Sweepstakes app provided by Wildfire.

My goal was to show some of the great lessons we learned during this campaign, as I think they apply to so many situations and some of the challenges we had to overcome.

Enjoy – and please let me know if you have other questions we can answer for you!

Privacy has been touted as one of G+’s hallmarks. Having connections sorted into circles means that all content shared on the network is likewise filtered as it is posted. When a user attempts to share content that another user has shared with a smaller group, they see a warning message that encourages them to think twice before sharing.

On the one hand, it can be easily dismissed as a trivial chiding by the network – but I can tell you it’s given me pause more than once.

The circle-sharing facet of Google + is simply a feature that Facebook doesn’t have an answer to, and I think the ability to select smaller niches with whom to share will certainly resonate with some of today’s web users that lament that lack of flexibility within Facebook.

That said, I’ve had an eye opening experience in the last few weeks presenting for a few groups of novice social media users, people who are literally newbies within Facebook. There’s a misunderstanding out there, and it goes so far beyond the networks that it bears mentioning.

The greatest threat to the privacy of your content online isn’t Facebook or Google + and the various controls or lack thereof. It’s the people you’re connected to.

Uncle Bob is a big threat to your privacy. Let me explain.

Let’s say you’re a parent with young kids. You love the ease with which you can share pictures on Facebook (feel free to sub in Google + here interchangeably), from your camera, your iPhone, etc. You have scrupulously set your privacy settings to only share photos with your friends and you’ve kept a close rein on whom you’re connecting to on Facebook. Your friends are really your friends – folks you know in real life, family members, etc.

You post a pic of your kids at the park playing on the swings with Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob likes the picture and can’t help but be proud of his nieces. Using the free screen capture function already installed on his computer (and here for Mac users), he takes a “picture” of your picture. He shares the pic on his Facebook wall too…

While you’ve been careful only to share with friends, Uncle Bob is a bit less concerned about web privacy (or a bit less savvy with the tools and simply doesn’t know better).

Uncle Bob has just made your private image into a public post on his wall. Depending on his particular settings, that image is potentially viewable to any Facebook user.

Despite the best efforts of networks, there is no such thing as protected, private content within Facebook or Google +. There isn’t a setting that can block screen captures (let alone taking a pic of a screen with an actual camera).

If you truly want to ensure that no one else is going to see it, don’t post that content on a social network. Don’t add it to a password-protected post on your blog.

And for that matter, don’t send it as an attachment in your email, where its rebroadcast is only a “Forward” away.

There are many steps we can take to minimize who sees what, but remember the privacy of anything you post is at the mercy of those with whom you choose to share it.

You can view the presentation here and I hope you’ll give your feedback.

Image credit: techiemania.com

When you decide to dive into blogging, the plain white screen in front of you can be a bit intimidating.

What should I say? How do I start? Do people really want to read about that?

Good question. A good blog will look different after six months. It’s a development process. You’re in infancy now, you’ll go through a gawky teen period with every conceivable social bookmarking icon and changing themes as often as your retainer color, and evolve into a functioning adult.

That said, here are a few good first posts to help you cut your teeth in the blogosphere if you’re marketing your business.

• Who you are: Why should we listen to you? What is your education and expertise? What are your credentials that would make us sit up and take notice when you offer commentary on a particular topic? From both a human and professional angle, introduce yourself to your readers and explain why we should believe what you post and act on it.
• What your company is: Now that we know who you are, what does your company do? You’re more than a cog in the wheel, even when you’re the owner, so explain why you founded the company, what your mission is, what problem it is that you’re solving.
• Your successes: When it comes to your business, what are you most proud of? What success stories do you have to offer? What do clients say about you? If you have a case study that shows how you’ve helped a client, now’s the time to post it.
• Your client base: Of the first five posts, this might be the most important. Explain who your typical clients are – with some detail, if possible. This allows a reader (who might be a potential client) to see themselves in a possible business relationship with you. Who hires you? Why? What can you do for them? Who gets the most out of your services? From your perspective this is also the time to narrow your target market – if you’re trying to appeal to a specific type of client, spell it out for them. Make it clear that you are uniquely suited to aid them and cater to their needs specifically.
• Why you’re the best for me for this job: What sets you apart from your competition? Why should I hire you instead of the other guys? What experience do you have that makes you a better fit for my needs? This post should be a no holds barred marketing post that establishes why you are the expert in this area, why your service model is superior. In short, make it clear to your readers why you are the person to consult for the services or products provided.

Your first five posts should each be:

• Between 250 and 600 words in length – make it easy for readers to learn about you without a huge time commitment initially. Pages with too little unique content are less likely to get indexed and ranked in Google, so give those robots a little something to nibble on.
• Written in a conversational tone to engage the reader.
• Tagged and categorized to make them easier to find – now and in the future – on your site.

Jump in a get your feet wet. Pretty soon, that white page looks inviting. And happy blogging!

My presentation provided ideas and strategy for using web-based tools to compliment traditional methods when you’re searching for a job. It’s my opinion that many of our tried-and-true methods of reaching would-be employers have a web-based corollary.

To be sure, the elements involved take some skill, industry-specific knowledge and time, but I think they can play a role in our job search today.

I finished my presentation with tips to continue your personal branding when you find employment – cataloging achievements and building connections along the way.

You can view the presentation slides here. Nefesh B’Nefesh also videotaped the seminar, and I hope to make that available here on the blog shortly.

My husband is a history geek. He just finished his master’s in Middle Eastern History and is now starting a Ph. D. in Political Science. As such, he’s prone to share tidbits of “interesting” information that he comes across during his research.

Husband: “Hey, I just found out what Saddam Hussein did before he became the leader of the Baath Party.”

Me: “Marketing?”

Husband: “No. He was a torturer.”

Me: “There’s a lot of overlap.”

I think I was at least half right.

On that note, I’ll take a minute to share a great post by a true social media expert – Chris Brogan. His post “How to Market an Offline Event Online” provides great basic information for anyone looking to promote a live event. But the real gold nugget we can all take away is something that isn’t said frequently enough:

Without being “that guy” (and never forget, I mean this for either gender), mentioning your event is easy across your Twitter, your Facebook, your LinkedIn status, and all the other social sites that make sense to promote. A word of caution: this gets close to what feels like carpet-bombing, so go gently. In fact, out in front of such a promotional effort, make sure you’re doing your good deeds and promoting others, and sharing other good information. People don’t like a tireless self-promoter, but they don’t mind someone who shares the good stuff, even when some of it’s their own.

Keep an eye on subtlety and make sure your self-promotion is only part of the content you’re sharing. Otherwise, it’s just torture.

We will be offering free, 15-minute consultations to help you explore how social media might fit the marketing needs of your business. Please contact us via email at kelli@pixelpointpress.com to let us know when you’d like to meet – we will be available from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. – or drop by our table to find an open slot.

Stop by to take part in a tweetorial as well – a brief tutorial about Twitter – and learn more about our upcoming classes.

We look forward to seeing you and learning more about your business!

If you can’t attend the fair, you might consider one of our upcoming classes – Hands-On Twitter and Facebook on Oct. 25. A few spots remain in each class – take both for NIS 400 plus VAT.

Join us for hands-on classes with two of today’s most popular social media tools. These two-hour quick courses will walk you through, step-by-step, the social networking facets you need to begin reaching out on the Web.

Registration is first come, first served – class sizes are limited to ensure individual attention and time for questions. If the courses fill as quickly as our SMM classes, we’ll offer additional classes – let us know if a different time or location might suit you.

For more information or to register, please contact us at kelli@pixelpointpress.com.

Location:

Both classes will be held at JBS Business Class in Talpiot, Jerusalem. Directions are available here.

Date and Time:

• Sunday, Oct. 25
• Hands-On Twitter: 12:30-2:30 p.m.
• Hands-On Facebook: 2:40-4:40 p.m.

Cost:

• NIS 225 +VAT for either course; take both for NIS 400 +VAT

Details:

• Classes are taught in English
• Participants need a laptop – Internet access is provided
• You will receive a cheshbonit mas

Hands-On Facebook:

• Settings: Account, Privacy and Applications
• Profile and Inbox: Custom URLs, sharing content and etiquette
• Applications and Features: Photos, Videos, Groups, Events, Notes, Links, Credits, Chat, Pages, Real-time search
• Marketing: Ads, Pages, Connect, Business Accounts, What is FBML?
• Facebook Lite: Which one should you use?
• Help: Troubleshooting your Facebook problems

Hands-On Twitter:

• Your account: Your username, real name, profile, image, background, link to your site, etiquette
• Follow: Blogs, importing e-mail addresses, search, third-party referrers
• Get followed: Sharing content, asking questions and answering others
• Learn the lingo: Retweets and via, hashtags, direct messages, favorites, blocking
• Make it easy: Using third-party apps to tweet, group and track your traffic
• Help: Troubleshooting and mistakes to avoid

Both classes will be taught by Kelli Brown of Pixel/Point Press.

Please contact us at kelli@pixelpointpress.com for more information or to register for classes.

86% of professionals in a variety fields said that they have adopted social media in some way.

Social media’s uptake as part of a complete marketing strategy is heartening and reflects estimates early this year that a larger portion of dwindling marketing budgets were being allocated to the social media sphere.

But now, the bad (and in my opinion, it’s really quite bad):

In fact, 84% of respondents said they don’t currently measure the ROI (return on investment) of their social media programs. Even less encouraging, more than 40% of respondents said they didn’t even know whether they could track ROI from their social tools.

I’ve already heard several arguments to explain the phenomenon.

• Companies are allocating so little to social media that it’s cheaper not to track results.
• You can’t measure the quality of the interactions, so it’s irrelevant to track social media ROI.
• You can’t measure the impact of branding and thought leadership.

In my opinion, these arguments just don’t hold water. And I think it’s downright scary that companies are investing in tools that they can’t (or, more accurately, don’t think they can) track. Social media marketing ROI breaks down into two basic categories: concrete financial outcome complete with hard numbers and softer trending that may or may not have stats to back it up.

What’s really behind this issue? In my opinion, it’s that most companies, consultants and non-profits don’t have concrete goals that can be measured within a social media campaign. It never ceases to amaze me how many clients we’ve had that can’t specify a goal for their SMM efforts. Common responses include:

• Getting the name out there. (Out where? What’s the target market? What number of new site visitors is considered a success?)
• Driving web traffic. (Unless you make your money off of page views that you sell to advertisers, Web traffic alone won’t make you any money.)
• Engaging our users. (Let’s be specific – is launching a blog and getting readers and subscribers enough? Are comments critical to you? What about how often your users share your links?)

Without concrete goals, there is no way to track your strategy’s ROI. I understand that it takes more time and costs more, but if your strategy is a success, don’t you need to know that? If your traffic comes entirely from LinkedIn, do you need to keep posting in Facebook? If your PowerPoint presentations on SlideShare.net go viral, but your YouTube videos are a flop, do you really want to keep putting time and money into producing video?

Our intial consultations include working through what might appear to be a simple worksheet. After a lot of experience, we’ve found it to be an extremely useful technique that encourages our clients to quantify (or at least qualify) their goals. We cover:

• Campaign goals that can be measured
• Target market(s)
• Other influential sites
• Competition – both direct competitors and others vying for your audience’s attention
• Content
• Media to be generated in house
• Media to be crowdsourced from users
• Networks to be used for distribution
• Resources available for this campaign – financial, people power and time to build a buzz

Are you getting ready to launch a social media marketing campaign? What tools do you have in place to track the effects? What benchmarks will you use to evaluate the outcome? I’d love to hear your thoughts on SMM strategy and the importance of tracking ROI in the comments below.