From the early days of MySpace, to the newer cool apps of today like Facebook, Del.icio.us and Twitter, when it comes to social media, there are NUMEROUS applications, widgets, gadgets, and much more to choose from, abuse, and stay up all hours of the night reviewing your “friends” status updates, comments, various posts, and more.  Today I want to spend a little time and talk about one of my favorite social media apps: Facebook.

In my previous days when I was heavily involved in real estate, I was always keeping on top of technology (I still do), and much of the research I found spoke highly of social media, and the infamous Facebook.  I was aware of it’s existence, and knew it was popular among the teen generation, but little did I know of it’s huge following and awesome networking opportunities.  So I jumped on board and created a profile, imported my email list and found many of my friends, family members, classmates, acquaintances already online.  My younger sister teased me and “couldn’t believe I joined Facebook.” I think she just felt a bit awkward knowing that I would  be able to see her comments, posts, and crazy pictures from that time forward.

Over time, I updated my profile, and I continued to update my status.  I wanted to make sure that the people that I know, knew exactly what I did and why they should pick me.  I also took advantage of the huge network, and searched out new connections to become a source of referrals and knowledge in the future.  I found that Facebook was a fun and productive way to keep up with friends and family in my personal life, and a simple and easy solution to continue to meet new people for my professional career.

Facebook allows you to create different groups, and control what information is shared with the different groups.  I currently have only two groups: personal and professional.  People within my personal group can see my full profile, or at least the information that I have included.  Contacts within my professional group can still see my basic contact information, status updates, posts, and more…but not necessarily have the ability to look at my photo albums, etc.

Facebook is definitely one of the leading social media applications available right now, and its fun and highly customizable.  It even has somewhat of a professional look and feel to it, unlike the often funky and obnoxious MySpace and Hi5 like applications.

So how can a social media tool like Facebook benefit you, or your business?  Jump online and give it a decent shot, update your information, search for new contacts, keep up with your friends, find and restablish contact with friends and aquaintances that you haven’t spoken to in ages, and much more.  Use it to your advantage, post items about your job, what you do, offer your service…Create a page promoting your business.  Facebook even offers PPC and Impression advertising with the opportunity to target your audience based on their likes, hobbies, age, status and more…all at a fraction of the cost of traditional PPC with the leading search providers.

So when you ask yourself, “Why?” or “What’s In It For Me?,” just take my suggestion and jump on board and give it a try.  At a minimum you are bound to reconnect with old friends or family, and beyond that the opportunities for you and your business are limitless!

As an SEO (search engine optimization) and PPC (pay per click) management company, I’ve just about heard it all when I am talking to “potential clients”. Every excuse under the sun… well… almost all of them. We had an interesting situation come up that I am going to tell you a little about. I’d love to get some thoughts on this…

A company that builds custom metal doors and gates for “high end” homes was wondering and asking “Why would I need SEO and would it actually be beneficial to me?” He even mentioned that he has seen a little slow down in his particular area(s). He said that if we could come up with some research and legitimate answers, he would sign up. The challenge was on. In looking around for some great information (and in a nutshell), here’s what we discovered: The housing market in his area had actually not decreased or recessed near as much as he thought. Statistical numbers actually showed that his market had remained almost level as a whole. In fact, money spent on “higher end” housing was even up a little bit (surprising I know).

So why was his business down?

Here is the conclusion. Many people are STILL spending money. Even though he has a very niche industry and market there is no reason why he would be down. His website was not ranking very well…anywhere. His competitors websites were. There is a rule of thumb to remember: if you are not being found in the search engines easily for your keywords, some one else is. The trend for money spending has slightly changed, and I believe that’s what he was noticing. People are nervous, and are not as careless with their money spending habits as they once were. All the data seems to be showing that people are spending more time trying to learn about products/services [now] more than before where they were being more hasty to spend money.

Where are they looking? Online.

Basically we were able to show that with better positioning in the search engines, he would be able to appeal to more people who are “looking” for HIS service/product.

This is how we can do it —-> Search Engine Optimization <—-

We seem to spend a lot of time hopelessly trying to talk our clients out of doing massive upgrades to their site. I think we all have a little bit of the “If you build it, they will come” mentality. We’re somehow convinced that if we build the biggest, baddest, best-looking website in the world, that the search engines will be magnetically pulled to its abounding beauty and the site will be an instant success. What we should really be thinking is, “if you promote it, they will come.”

There was a great article in Practical Ecommerce by Mat Greenfield about a year ago where Mat said that many of his clients spend 90% of their web budget on design, and only around 10% on “other stuff.” It’s sad how many beautiful websites that are out there in the webiverse that will never be seen by anyone but their owner, never be graced with the smooth touch of the GoogleBot, and will eventually die without ever having the chance to fulfill the measure of their creation: making a sale.

Web design is certainly important. A great looking website can help buyer confidence and trust and can be an outstanding sales tool for your company…. as long as you have traffic. I have often said that I would rather have a Plain Jane boring site with traffic, than a maxed out Cinderella site without traffic. Perfect Example: Craigslist.org vs. Oodle.com. Both classified ad sites that provide free listings. Oodle has a great look and feel, exciting images, and “oh so sweet” web 2.0 goodness. Craigslist on the other hand has a design that could very easily land it in the web design “Hall of Lame.” So which site would you rather own? Before you answer, just in case you’re not familiar with either site, Craigslist has about a billion times as much traffic.

So how can a site like Craigslist do it? If you’ve been thinking about spending a ton of money on web-design, this would be a good time to site back and say “Hmmmm….. I wonder if web-design isn’t really as important a factor as I think it is?”

Now before I give you the wrong idea and accidentally convince you to make your website out of sticks and mud, let me clarify a little: Having a good looking website is important. Having an AMAZING looking website with every conceivable bell and whistle, animations by Pixar that jump right out of the screen, celebrity endorsements, and a flux capacitor, really isn’t important. In my experience, the biggest result of having a boatload of additional features built-in to your website is that you get to do a boatload of upkeep.

I use this analogy often: A website without marketing is like a car without gas. You can have the nicest Rolls-Royce in the world, but if you spend everything on the car and don’t have any money left to put gas in the tank, it’s just a decoration, not a useful tool. You’d be much better off buying the junkiest 3 cylinder Geo Metro you could find, and having plenty of money left over for gas.

I got my start in ecommerce back in 2000, and I initially spent about $1000 on a website. The website didn’t look very good, but it worked, and people could order on it. After having the site for about a year, I was convinced that the boring design was detracting customers from making a purchase, and that a really high-end expensive website would make all the difference. We found some really great web designers and got the site redone for about $7500. We did notice an increase in sales, but it was slim, and certainly disappointing. Unfortunately, I had to learn many lessons the hard way, but eventually figured out that marketing, not design, was the key. By mid 2002 my company was spending over $20,000 a month just in pay-per-click fees, and making a very healthy profit margin. I have no doubt that the results would have been nearly the same with the previous “boring” site design we had.

One important factor in the story above that needs mention is that we were already making money before we made a large investment in web design. Many new site owners are under the impression that they need to spend tens of thousands of dollars just to launch a site. Not so. Websites are cheap these days and maintaining them is easier than ever. You compete with the big boys in your industry NOT by having the best design, but by doing the best marketing.

So, the moral of our story is:

• Web promotion will get you more business than web design
• It’s better to start off with an inexpensive, but decent looking website, then upgrade as your profits grow
• Make sure you save a healthy portion of your web budget for marketing

Despite how convincing my arguments are, many of the people I talk to are beyond convincing and I still hopelessly ramble on to the deaf ears of people who will spend their very last farthing on a new kitchen table while their cupboards are bare. But…… if I can save just one virtual soul from the hellish nightmare of being a lonely, unloved, cobweb ridden website in a death sentence of unvisited obscurity , it will all be worth it.

Maybe I should hire a celebrity spokesperson?