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!

Now, instead of seeing the usual chronology of updates from your friends, groups and pages you follow, you get hit with the entire list of updates from your network whenever another contact posts something relevant. Also, if you search for a given term within Facebook and return to your news feed, you’ll see that Facebook also offers up an aggregation of content on the term you just searched (which is how I pulled up the Apple results below).

Not to mention that Facebook will likely struggle with relevance – confusing oatmeal (as in, the delicious breakfast dish) with The Oatmeal (the witty web comic site), an issue touched on at The Next Web’s coverage of this new feature.

For example, my alma mater the University of Missouri School of Journalism was featured at Apple.com for their use of Macs in the classroom. Facebook latched on to the concept that this was an article about Apple and clumped together everything from my news feed into a new Apple category. Given what I do for a living and whom I’m connected with, this new aggregation is utterly worthless – Facebook cannot accurately assess which content should be aggregated together, as it’s relying on the very old fashioned method of searching for keywords.

A couple other examples where the aggregation does more harm than good – Google:

So what’s the harm in posting content that’s vaguely related? Two major issues:

• That content is now less prominently displayed in my feed. As seen in “Google” above, I’m going to have to work harder to see what AllFacebook.com and my other friends may have mentioned about Google. My options are to either unfollow (or hide content from) pages that update more frequently to ensure preferred content doesn’t get buried or click through at the bottom of every aggregation. That’s not an extra step most users will be willing to take, and it’s a potential loss for anyone using Facebook as a marketing tool – your content just became less likely to be seen, especially if you’re covering the same hot-button, timely issues that everyone is.
• So easy to spam! Want to ensure your content is consistently and frequently featured again on the home news feed? Just toss in a few top keywords and spam away! No doubt this is something that will improve with time, but … honestly! It’s 2011! Google did away with ranking based on meta keyword data ages ago, but now we’re back in the same boat when it comes to content distribution on Facebook.

I’d love to hear from others – is anyone genuinely excited by this new “feature”?

Registration is first come, first served – course sizes are limited to ensure enough attention to student questions. All courses are taught in English. For more information or to register, please visit our website or contact us at classes@pixelpointpress.com.

If you would prefer to host a course for your company or organization onsite or prefer private tutorials, please contact us at classes@pixelpointpress.com to make arrangements.

Pixel/Point Press is offering two courses this fall, and four courses this winter:

Fall 2011:

- Social Media Marketing

- Hands on WordPress

Winter 2011 (November and December – registration will open in October):

- Search Engine Optimization

- Google Analytics

- Email Newsletter Marketing

- LinkedIn and Blogging for B2B Marketing

Social Media Marketing

Jerusalem: 9 a.m. to noon, Sept. 7, 14, 21

Tel Aviv area: 9 a.m. to noon, Sept. 5, 12, 19

Cost: NIS 750 +VAT, early bird price NIS 675 +VAT (registration must be received and paid by Aug. 22)

Want to make the most of your web presence? Are you a new oleh looking for a job? Have a small business but need help finding clients? Join us to learn more about using the social media tools available today to market yourself or your business. Click here for a complete course outline.

Hands-On WordPress: Build and Maintain Your Own Website

Jerusalem: 9 a.m. to noon, Oct. 24, 31 and Nov. 7, 14

Herzliya: 9 a.m. to noon, Oct. 26, Nov. 2, 9, 16

Cost: NIS 1500 +VAT, early bird price NIS 1275 +VAT (registration must be received and paid by Oct. 10)

Learn how to build and manage a website using the robust tools and options provided by the WordPress content management system. All participants will leave the course with a fully-functional website and the skills to maintain and expand it.

This four-session course is a hands-on approach to learning the content management system. Each three-hour session will balance time for presentation and explanation of the tools while allowing students time to experiment and ask questions as they arise. This course is geared toward:

- Small business owners needing to develop and maintain their own site

- Marketing managers needing to contribute to and maintain a company blog site in WordPress

- Individuals looking to expand their knowledge and skill set with a content management system

Click here for a complete course outline.

Coming this Winter:

Search Engine Optimization

In today’s business market, having a well-designed engaging website is only part of the challenge. Learn how to improve the ranking of your site in Google and elicit more traffic from your targeted market of potential clients and influencers. Our search engine optimization (SEO) course will teach you the simple technical changes that provide the most improvement and help you tailor your marketing message to convert clients coming to your site through search.

Unlike other courses, this course caters to marketing executives, small business owners and consultants – all technical jargon will be explained thoroughly so that participants will be able to implement the suggestions given on their own. No prior web development or design knowledge is required. Click here for a complete course outline.

Google Analytics

Learn how to interpret and customize reports from Google Analytics to understand what your web and search traffic mean to your business.

Email Newsletter Marketing

From templates to reports, learn how to build and manage email newsletter marketing campaigns. This course covers the pros and cons of several of today’s most popular tools and introduces best practices for email newsletters.

LinkedIn and Blogging for B2B Lead Generation

Learn how to build a successful B2B blog and make the most of your network within LinkedIn. This quick course will cater to the needs to business to business marketing. This course is best suited for small business owners, consultants and sales team employees looking to generate and nurture business leads.

Classes are taught by Kelli Brown, CEO and lead consultant at Pixel/Point Press, and the staff at Pixel/Point Press. Please contact us at classes@pixelpointpress.com with any questions.

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.

From Amodiovalerio Verde’s presentation, you can learn a lot about who’s using LinkedIn worldwide.

What struck me was the image from his presentation – in the Middle East, we’re rather blue. And it got me to thinking, I wonder if Israel, as a separate segment, is the same way?

As a result, we went through and compiled the statistics for Israel alone. There are more than twice as many men as women on LinkedIn that have designated Israel as their location. That said, it would appear that many people do not disclose their gender or age.

The statistics are far from flawless, but at least they give us a peek within the system to see who’s using it.

I hope you enjoy our short demographic look at LinkedIn’s Israeli users. We’d love to hear your feedback.

The numbers are generated using LinkedIn’s advertising platform.

We also hope to do the same statistical reporting for Facebook soon. Enjoy the presentation and feel free to share!

I hope I hear from many of the participants again – there’s only so much one can cover in a short presentation, but I know this group has some fabulous opportunities when it comes to marketing themselves online.

If you’re interested in learning a little more about using social media as a tool for recruiting and retaining students, you can view my presentation below.

My presentation covered optimizing your Facebook page and website for Facebook search.

Enjoy!

Strangely, we’re seeing an increasing number of clients wanting only a customized Facebook page. Having mulled over the pros and cons several times in the past few weeks, I thought it was time to cover those issues here.

Facebook page options:

Facebook pages allow for a great deal of customization using any number of tools, whether it’s a purchased solution like those at HyperArts or Involver or a Static FBML custom tab. Facebook allows page owners to direct visitors to a different tab depending on whether or not they are a fan of the page. Page owners can also “reveal” new tabs and information when users become a fan of the page – another little technique to encourage visitors to convert.

One thing is for certain: Custom Facebook page landing tabs have a huge impact on encouraging users to convert into followers.

How it might work:

Vitaminwater's logo from their Facebook Fan Page

First off, how would you replace your website with a Facebook page? Vitaminwater is one example – Vitaminwater.com now redirects to the company’s Facebook fan page. The page is set to a “home” tab for new visitors that have not previously become a fan of the page. The page has upwards of 2 million fans.

We would also recommend connecting to rich media – using a YouTube tab from Involver.com, which we prefer over direct uploads to Facebook – and ensuring that you delete any empty tabs (Discussion and Reviews if you aren’t using them).

Pros of the Facebook Page-only approach:

In a word, simplicity. As detailed by Guy Kawasaki’s post on how he chose a Facebook page for the promotion of his upcoming release, Enchantment, it’s generally easier to create a robust Facebook page than to design and develop an entire site – even if you’re only spearheading the effort, and not doing the grunt work yourself.

In this case, less is more. Less to build and customize means less cost than the average website. Less time and fewer revisions are likely. Less effort will go into maintenance – perhaps.

By virtue of existing within Facebook’s monster of a network, your page is more likely to find some traffic – and that traffic is more likely to build virally as people click the “like” button.

In addition, a Facebook page is a great starting point if you need to get up and running while a site is being developed. Due to Facebook’s partnership with Microsoft Bing, simply having a Facebook page can help with your SEO. As confirmed last week, social mentions are also a factor in your site’s SEO, so a Facebook page/site might be a good precursor to your eventual home on the web.

By confining your content to Facebook’s sphere, you also save yourself a bit of work maintenance-wise. There’s no site to maintain – though you should keep and eye on comments – no content management system to upgrade, no plugins or themes to worry about. Hacking is less of a concern, assuming you have a solid password.

In addition, you don’t have to worry about search engine optimization and getting your website found by ranking for keywords among relevant target market traffic.

Cons of the Facebook Page as a Website approach:

With a few exceptions, here’s why we still wouldn’t recommend it. Several issues can vie for top honors, so these are in no certain order. This list could go on a lot longer -we’re just picking the low-hanging fruit.

You’re not building up any search engine ranking: The “ignorance is bliss” approach to SEO means that your work and content aren’t helping you accumulate any increased search engine results rankings for your content. By not allowing you to influence so many of the factors that go into ranking, Facebook is taking you out of a potentially large market of prospective clients. If search is a major source (or prospective source) of potential new clients, you’re going to need your own site with control of your SEO. Content is a huge and resource-heavy aspect of web-based marketing. When you take the time to create good content, make sure you showcase it on your own site so you get the absolute most benefit from it.

You’re at Facebook’s mercy: While I think Guy makes a good point that Facebook isn’t likely to disappear any time soon, that doesn’t mean that the Fickle Facebook Finger of Fate won’t put the kibosh on your well-laid plans. As the well-known proverb goes, “Man plans, Mark Zuckerberg laughs.” For example, you might remember that several months ago Facebook planned changes to pages that would prevent smaller pages (less than 10,000 fans) from directing new visitors to a specific tab (which, as seen above, is crucial to conversion rates). It was a huge slap in the face to smaller business and non-profit pages, as well as anyone who was starting from scratch. Although they reversed the decision, there are no guarantees. As with all efforts within social networks where you haven’t paid a fee to play, remember: You’re playing in someone else’s sandbox, and you can be told to go home at any time. They don’t owe you anything and their interests almost certainly aren’t the same as yours.

Oh look – there’s a competitor’s ad! Facebook places advertising in the right sidebar on pages. If your competition is advertising, it’s entirely possible, if not likely, that their ads will appear directly opposite your own content. You need one place on the web that is all your own – a website is an excellent and cost-effective way of achieving that.

Ch-ch-ch-changes: While there’s no CMS, that doesn’t mean there aren’t changes. Earlier this year, Facebook trimmed with width of page tabs to 520 pixels, which meant anything from minor tweaks to a major overhaul for all page tabs and applications. They also killed page boxes. Next up, we’re expecting the switch from Static FBML to iFrames as the leading way to develop pages – although FBML isn’t going anywhere, new pages won’t be able to use the application. Meanwhile, iFrames aren’t available, meaning developers are somewhat stuck between a frame and a hard place.

Analyze This: While Facebook Insights have generally improved and certain applications add additional functionality to track page traffic, the options aren’t as strong as what’s available for tracking site traffic and conversion rates on your own website.

We’re just hitting the tip of the iceberg here, but hopefully it offers some food for thought.

So, when would we recommend using a Facebook page in lieu of an entire website? Here are some possibilities.

A one-off event: If your goal is to promote a one-time event, a Facebook page might be just what you need. You’ll have the calendar functions to encourage RSVPs and the viral properties of the share button. And for follow up, photo galleries and video apps help take things full circle. Guy’s book release is a perfect example.

A targeted subsection of another site: If you need to brand and market a subset of your organization and the gap between the markets or messages is too diverse, a Facebook page might offer you a home on the web without the need to develop another site. That said, WordPress can be an easy way to get a strong site up and running – we’d recommend giving it a good look before ruling out another site.

When you want the site to die out: If your goal is to make a splash and dash, without the goal of building ongoing community or search engine ranking, a Facebook page is a less messy way of creating a web-based home to direct traffic to for a finite period. If ongoing maintenance is a concern, a page might be your best tool for the job.

What have we missed? Are we crazy for admitting there might be a few times to go all Facebook? Or are we ridiculously old fashioned for pushing for a good old website? We can’t wait to hear what you have to think.