“Social media is just another facet of marketing and customer service. Say it with me. Repeat it until you know it by heart. Bind it as a sign upon your hands and upon thy gates. Social media, by itself, will not help you.”

I agree with so much that Shankman says in this article, but I understand why many people, especially small businesses and nonprofits, feel the need to hire “social media experts.”

In fact, I believe that small businesses and nonprofits can benefit greatly by hiring an individual or a company with social media expertise. They just have to be careful to hire the right one.

Reasons Why People Hire Social Media “Experts”

One: Lack of Time

If you’re already overwhelmed by the sheer number of things you have to do on a daily business just to keep your business afloat or you’re focused on working with the population your nonprofit is serving, how can you possibly find time to tweet or post on Facebook?

Two: Lack of Expertise

It’s easy for those of us who understand and enjoy using social media to lose sight of how complicated and overwhelming that world can appear to others. What a relief it is to find an “expert” who can solve your problems, magically creating a Facebook page and placing a pretty icon on your website that invites everyone to “Like Us! Please!”

The Trouble

The trouble is that many social media “experts” aren’t in business to help their customers, they’re in business only to make money. So they set up your accounts, give you a few pointers, and quickly move on to the next customer. Or they charge you an expensive retainer promising to gain you a large number of fans and followers, and maybe they do, but those fans have simply “liked” your page and forgotten about it. Because either they’re people who aren’t genuinely interested in your work or they are interested in what you have to offer, but there is no compelling, ongoing conversation taking place on your social media accounts to keep those followers engaged.

And there you are staring at Foursquare, Twitter, and Facebook with no idea how to use them (lack of expertise). And you’re too busy to deal with them (lack of time). Think of all those Facebook pages you’ve seen that just sit there gathering dust, occasionally updated by spammers, with ten fans who all happen to be relatives and friends of the business owner.

The Other Trouble

The other trouble is that many business owners don’t have — or are unwilling to invest — the time, commitment, and money needed to make social media work. Like all facets of marketing and customer service, a social media campaign takes work, sometimes hard work.

So What’s the Solution?

For some businesses, it’s as simple as deciding to manage social media on their own. If you want to go this route, I’d suggest that you start by looking over some of the resources listed on my site and then wade in slowly — perhaps with a Facebook page. It doesn’t have to be “fancy” with a lot of photos and features — at least not at first. What’s most important is that you tend to it on a regular basis and that you offer good content. (If your only reason for choosing to do it yourself is to save money, remember that your time is worth money, so the cost is still there.)

For others, it comes down to finding the “right expert”— a knowledgeable, helpful, reliable individual (or company) who not only has expertise in setting up social media, but who is also committed to helping their clients make the most of all that social media has to offer.

You Might Also Like:

• Not every business needs a social media campaign. Here are some things to consider before you create that Facebook page.
• “Small Businesses That Understand Social Media”
• Also from the wise Mr. Shankman: “Is Your Social Media Expert Really An Expert?”

Photo Credit

Here are seven tips that will improve your website’s search engine rankings:

1. Create accurate, descriptive page titles (title tag).
2. Use the page description meta tag and have different (unique) descriptions for each page on your site.
3. Make sure your site is easy to navigate.
4. Have good content and don’t overload your copy with keywords — you should be creating web content for your site visitors not for search engines.
5. Make your URLs easy to understand — use relevant words and try for easy to remember filenames.
6. Use alt tags to describe your images.
7. Try to build inbound links back to your site, but make sure they are quality links (more about that shortly).

I could go on and on, but I don’t need to — in depth information on SEO best practices can be found at Google’s Webmaster Central, where you can find SEO tips and a PDF titled “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.” Bing also has a set of Webmaster’s Tools and best practices for SEO.

Just remember that SEO is not something you do once and then abandon. You have to work at it, and pay attention to what works, abandoning what doesn’t.

Now about those inbound links …

Getting a lot of inbound links to your website can help it rise in organic search rankings, but Google wants those to be legitimate links. For instance, if you have an online book store and book publishers and reviewers are linking to it, those would be legitimate links and would increase your site’s visibility. But inbound links to your book selling site that originate from link farms are not legitimate. You know those web pages, the ones you stumble across that are nothing but a list of links? Those are link farms. And you know those emails you get, where people ask you to trade links (“I’ll link to your site and you link to mine?”) — they’re not legitimate links in Google’s eyes, either. They call that “black hat” optimization, and Google hates it.

To find out what happens when you practice “black hat” SEO techniques and get caught by Google, read The Dirty Little Secrets of Search, an article that tells the story of how Google responded when J.C. Penney was caught using paid links to increase its organic search rankings. It’s a long article, but worth the read (thousands of others must agree as — at the time of this post’s writing — it was the most popular emailed article on the NY Times website).

Often you’ll start with a logo or a photograph that is the jumping off point for the color scheme. But where do you go from there? This can be a real quandary.

Thankfully, the web abounds with tools that can help you select the right colors for your new website.

Here are seven tools that can help make the difficult job of choosing a website color scheme that much easier:

• 0to255 — a simple tool that helps web designers find variations of any color; perfect for hovers, borders, gradients, and more;
• kuler — explore, create, and share color themes;
• Color Scheme Designer — generate color schemes;
• ColourLovers — a creative community where people from around the world create and share colors, palettes and patterns;
• Color Palette Generator — create a color palette to match an image;
• Color Schemer Gallery — website ready color schemes;
• Daily Color Scheme — a new color scheme every day.

What are your favorite tools for selecting website colors? Leave me a comment and a link to the website.

Photo: unleashingmephotography

That kind of thinking is wrong. Social media is not “free” — it takes a lot of time to maintain Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, and time is money, especially for a small business owner.

Here’s the best reason to have a website: it’s the best way to reach your customers.

Think about this: what about your customers who aren’t on Facebook and Twitter? How do you reach them? What about the fact that Facebook’s advertisers are placing ads — perhaps competitor’s ads — on your page? What about the fact that you, the business owner, don’t own the information on your Facebook page? (Surprise! Facebook owns that data.)

If these facts don’t give you reason to reconsider your “I don’t need a website” thinking, consider this:

“Search engines, which are still the most popular way by far to find information online, use website and blog traffic to determine your ranking.” — Ramon Ray, Open Forum Blog

Here’s the truth:

You should be using social media to augment, not replace, your website content.

I could go on and on, but I don’t need to as Ramon Ray has already written a great post about this on American Express’ Open Forum blog:

30 Reasons Why Old Fashioned Websites and Email Marketing are Best for Growing Businesses

Read it. You’ll be glad you did.

Image Credit

There’s no question why we choose easy-to-remember passwords, even when we know we shouldn’t. Now companies are forcing us to choose something a bit more complicated than, say, “password” (number 3 on the list). Recently Twitter banned subscribers from using 370 of the most popular passwords. You can see a list of banned passwords here. Security experts have lots of advice on how to choose passwords; see the Times article for some tips and browse the comments for reader suggestions. At the least you should follow this advice:

“… bowing to the reality of our overcrowded brains, the experts suggest that everyone choose at least two different passwords — a complex one for Web sites where security is vital, such as banks and e-mail, and a simpler one for places where the stakes are lower, such as social networking and entertainment sites.”

One tool that can help is the Secure Password Generator located at PC Tools, which will generate a random password; there is a secure version located here. Just remember to note the password somewhere so that you’re not locked out of your favorite site the next time you visit.

Photo: rpongsaj

“If you own or manage a website, you are responsible for that website’s security. Compromised websites can infect visitors with badware, and are commonly blacklisted by search engines, web browsers, and security vendors. Many legitimate websites are the targets of malicious hacking attacks, during which code linking directly to badware is inserted onto an otherwise innocent, but poorly secured, website.” (StopBadware.org)

On a regular basis, all website owners/administrators should check their sites for badware by using these tools:

• Google’s Safebrowsing Diagnostic Tool: To test your site, use the following URL, but replace “example.com” with the name of your site:
  • http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=example.com
  • If I wanted to check my site, I would enter: http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=rmfcommunications.com

• Check to see if your site is listed in the Badwear Website Clearinghouse at StopBadware.org.
• View your domain’s site report at McAfee SiteAdvisor.

Hopefully, your website will pass these diagnostic tests. However, if you do find badware, you’ll need to remove it. You can find tips for doing this at StopBadware and BadwareBusters.

WordPress users can find tips on keeping WordPress installations secure at “Hardening WordPress.”

Once you’ve removed the badware from your site, you should request a review of your website from the services that have issued warnings: Google, StopBadware, and/or SiteAdvisor. If you don’t, visitors to your website may see the following warning: “This site may hurt your computer.”

To create your own favicon, follow these steps:

1. Create the image you would like to use as your favicon using a graphics program such as Photoshop. If you don’t own a graphics program, you can use a free one such as GIMP. Because a favicon is tiny (only 16 pixels x 16 pixels), it’s important to keep the design simple.
2. Save your design as a gif, jpeg, png, or bmp.
3. Upload your image to one of the many favicon generators available on the Internet. I use the favicon generator at Dynamic Drive. Download the newly created favicon and make sure it is named “favicon.ico”.
4. Upload your favicon to your website. It should be placed in the root directory of your website (do not place the favicon in an images folder).
5. For HTML pages, place this code in the head section of each web page: <link rel=”shortcut icon” href=/favicon.ico”> — if you are using WordPress, you can find instructions on editing your page header here.

That’s all there is to it!

Sometimes you can’t see your favicon even though you’ve followed all the correct steps. If so, empty your browser cache and then refresh your page. Your favicon should appear.

1. Copyscape: use Copyscape to search for copies of your web content. If you discover someone is using your work and passing it off as their own, dive into Copyscape’s list of resources and suggestions for what to do if you discover you’ve been plagiarized. Place a Copyscape banner on your website pages. This does not protect your work, but it does discourage would-be thieves.
2. Place a copyright notice at the end of each blog posting: “Copyright [year] [your name]. All Rights Reserved.” Look at the end of this posting, and you’ll see my copyright.
3. The folks at WordPress suggest using a more-detailed copyright notice on your blog, stating what uses you will and won’t allow. I’ve placed this copyright in my sidebar. If you do not want excerpts of your work used, you can modify the notice to remove that language. This article also includes some other great ideas for protecting your work and gives suggestions on what to do if your work has been stolen.
4. There are good suggestions in an article at Freelance Switch, including a novel use of Google Alerts: “… choose one or more phrases that are relatively unique to your work, place them in quotes and set up a Google Alert to notify you automatically when a match is found.”
5. Use watermarks on your images. Other suggestions can be found in this posting from Web Resources Depot.

While there are no guarantees that your work won’t be stolen, taking some, or all, of these steps should help. And should the worst occur, you can follow these steps to recover your website property.

Copyright 2010 Regina Fried. All Rights Reserved.

Photo: Kreg Steppe

And that is the source of your problem: a website that looks good in one web browser, might not look good in another web browser. I call this the “Browser Woes.”

Let me explain.

A web browser is the software program you use to view web pages; you’re using one right now to read this article. Many people are surprised to learn that not everyone uses IE. In fact, there are many web browsers available — the most popular are IE, Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera. Complicating matters is the fact that not everyone uses the most current version of a browser, so while you might be using the current version of IE (8.0), someone else might still be using IE 6.0. Websites also perform differently on different platforms (Windows, Linux, MAC OS, etc.).

Experienced web designers know that they have to test websites to be sure they work and look good in, at least, the most popular web browsers. When I’m creating a website, I use software to simulate how it will perform in various browsers. I also test it on different computers — both Macs and PCs. But what if you can’t do that? How can you test your website? Submit it to BrowserShots. Here is how the service is explained on its home page:

Browsershots makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server here.

Browser shots is easy to use: enter the URL of your site and select the web browsers and platforms you want to check. Within 30 minutes, you’ll get a series of screenshots comparing, for example, how your website looks on a PC using Google Chrome to how it looks on a Mac using Firefox. Browsershots also allows you to click on each screenshot to see a larger image.

If you’re satisfied that your website looks good across the most popular browsers, you can launch it to the world. But if you see a problem, you’ll have to determine what is causing it, correct it, and resubmit the website to BrowserShots for another check.

If you notice that your site looks good in Firefox, but not IE (this is one of the most common problems web designers face), you might be tempted to simply slap a disclaimer on your website — something to this effect:

“This site works best in Firefox 3.0. Download it here.”

Don’t do it. You’re asking your visitor to take an extra step to view your site. And there’s a good chance that she might leave and go to a competitor’s site. Instead, fix the problem (try searching the web for help if you can’t figure it out on your own) or, if you can’t correct it, revise the website so the problem is eliminated.

I wish there was one simple answer, but alas, Sad Day (as my daughter would say), there is not. It takes work to rise above the cacophony of voices on the Internet. Since I launched my blog, I’ve been reading extensively on this subject and studying a lot of other blogs. The Internet is full of suggestions on how to promote websites and blogs — so many that if I followed all of the available advice, my fingers would never leave this keyboard. It’s difficult to separate the good advice from the bad.

I wish, before I had undertaken this task (oops! I mean labor of love), that I had read this excellent article by NY Times reporter Azadeh Ensha on this very subject. Of course, it wasn’t published then …

10 Ways to Build Traffic to Your Site

Some of these were on my To Do List and have already been accomplished, but HitTail is new to me. Oh, there is no rest for the weary.