Original at How to best leverage Facebook BlitzLocal

The geeks will talk about the Don’t Be Evil Toolbar, made by Facebook and Twitter folks. Or maybe the components of EdgeRank– the relative weightings of likes, comments, and posts. No black magic, complex formulas, or more software to have to master. But here’s what really matters– more newsfeed exposure and traffic.

• Post when your particular users are most likely to be online– not a generic rule of thumb.  Hint: look in your web analytics to see, or consider when your TV shows air, stores are open, and customers are shopping. If you’re the NFL, you better be running Facebook ads when the Super Bowl is on to capture when fans are talking.
• Run Sponsored Post Story ads to amplify your organic postings. Odds are that only 5% of your fans are seeing your posts (the larger the page, the lower) and then only a percent of that are engaging with you (clicking like or commenting). The newsfeed is so competitive now, jammed with so much stuff, that you have to run ads now if you want to play. Sorry.
• People who are browsing Facebook are not interesting in shopping for Tide in the 150 ounce family size jug right then.  But they are interested in something funny and perhaps a discount for later. So don’t spam them with your product offerings, sales, and traditional banner ads. Give them something worth sharing– look at your stats to see what is shared the most and do more of that.
• Do not apply SEO methods to Facebook– any more than you’d wear swimtrunks to a wedding. Don’t try to stuff your keywords in your posts, page titles, or other content.  People don’t search on Facebook, they navigate.
• Actions speak louder than words– if you don’t build an open graph app that has actions (read, watch, listen, cook, etc…) you will get drowned out of the newsfeed. Posting alone carries little weight without ad amplification. Hey, Facebook is going public in June 2012 and they have to demonstrate revenue, right?
• Google+ is a lame social network right now– lots of Google users, but no traffic.  Forcing users to click on +1 is not a strong strategy for brands yet. Maybe that will change in 6-9 months, if Google can apply social relevancy to their products.

We have an all-star line up for our panel, who will likely disagree with what I have just said. Be ready for an interesting panel!

Original at Facebook vs Google in 2012– EdgeRank vs PageRank BlitzLocal

Read here to see what the Facebook engineers had to say, and hear what has worked for several case studies.

Intro: Facebook Platform for Mobile

How has the web changed since the early days?

• Photos!
• Facebook tagging (social)
• Games
• Not focused on rendering the best graphics, but social aspect
• 200 million people playing games on Facebook Platform
• The rise of mobile
• Across all levels of mobile devices
• 350M users of Facebook mobile
• Twice as engaged as desktop version
• Social + Mobile
• Friends, Newsfeed, search, notifications, requests, bookmarks
• Photography, websites, music, communication, games, books

Web Apps (HTML5) Development: Matt Kelly & Vikas Gupta

• How to facilitate sharing with friends
• Problematic when sharing over different types of devices
• Apps don’t exist across platforms
• Hard to share content between them even if apps exist
• How can Facebook fix this?
• The social channels
• Requests: user to user direct messaging
• Make sure they are super fast! Almost real-time
• News Feed: one to many sharing with friends
• Posting, view on wall, view on news feed
• Open Graph: Lightweight, seamless sharing
• Wherever your app lives or works, Facebook distributes properly so there are no holes.
• Bookmarks
• m.facebook.com
• Gives users a specific spot to get back to your app
• Mechanism for engagement
• Native facebook for iPhone
• Payments
• Use credits to monetize apps
• Build social from the ground up
• Search, login auth, directed to app
• Social apps work everywhere
• iPhone, laptop, android, ipad, android tablet
• HTML5 works across all platforms

Native App + Open Graph: Aryeh Selekman & Christine Abernathy:

• iOS and Android + Facebook platform
• Open Source Native SDKs
• Developer app settings
• Fields to configure iOS and Android apps
• Linking and app distribution works appropriately if these fields are filled out correctly
• Single Sign On (SSO) login without typing
• Login with facebook button

• Understanding Native Distribution
• If an iOS or app exists, all requests/News Feed Stories/Timeline stories will link directly to native app (or apple store if not installed)
• On android, requests/News Feed Stories/Timeline stories wil only direct to your mobile web app
• 5 Best Practices
• 1. Build a mobile web app
• HTML5: distribution on m.facebook.com on all webkit enabled touch browsers
• native wrappers
• take advantage of SSO capabilities

• 2. Implement SSO
• 3. Implement requests for app discoverability
• Rate now, invite friends, send requests
• 4. Leverage existing friend graph
• Promote activity and interaction
• Re-engagement
• Push notification through native channels to let you know your friends joined
• 5. Get your app on timeline

• Open Graph and Mobile Apps
• One API – distribution to ticker, Timeline, newsfeed
• Allows you to define what people do in your application
• Reading, listening, watching, etc.
• 4 Steps to get started using open graph
• 1. Define your actions and objects
• Action verbs
• 2. Design your Timeline aggregations
• Pictures, maps, represent actions and data that people send through
• 3. Markup and expose your objects
• Everything represented by underlying URL
• Where do objects live
• 4. Publish actions
• Object URL
• Action names

Native Distribution for Mobile Apps

Case Study: PhoneGap

• Pattern
• Embed a chromeless browser in a native app
• Create a bridge between the browser and the native code providing access to native APIs
• Write a web app
• Package the web app with the native code and deploy to devices
• Write once debug everywhere
• Take note
• HTML, JS, CSS included in an app package
• HTML loaded on file:// URI scheme, no cross domain request restrictions
• Engineering wise, approach is simple to extend to new platforms
• Support Platforms
• iOS, Android, BB, webOS, Symbian, Windows Phone (mango), Samsung Bada
• Mobile first!
• HTML5: write native code easily, scale like an app so width is design width – no pinch zoom etc
• CSS3: webkit transformations
• The future
• Tooling
• WebGL
• Facebook, Linkedin, Walmart use case
• Continue polyfilling HTML5

Case Study: Washington Post Social Reader

• Coding for the futures
• Everything you write effects possible futures
• Architect for the foreseeable futures
• Short term futures
• Building mobile second
• Use mobile to rethink boundaries
• Roll mobile learning back into the webapp

Case Study: Thuzi

• Hospitality app
• Social by design
• Send invites, RSVPs
• Share great offers with my friends
• Provide reviews of the experience
• Capture the moment for a special occasion (Timeline)
• Local by design
• Dining is a local experience
• Find a local restaurant
• Invite friends, redeem offers, find out what’s happening
• Native by design
• Want to ensure you have access to the newest native APIs
• Want to have the fastest app possible
• Want to guarantee formatting correctness
• More choices for monetization – iAds, etc
• Many existing open source libraries and blog posts and tutorials
• Are not dependent upon plugins or other 3^rd party series for push notifications

Original at Facebook Mobile Hack NYC BlitzLocal

Brands and companies have understood the importance of communication with their customers. Traditionally, in a somewhat antiquated means of communication, chagrined customers would call a 1-800 number or write (if you were even less technologically inclined) to express their displeasure with a company. With platforms such as Twitter and Facebook that allow for instant response and timely interaction, good brands and companies have created accounts on these sites that are staffed full-time by a customer service representative.

1.     Responding requires a high-touch and thoughtful approach

Some great examples of brands that have taken to Twitter are:

-        Airlines:

• Delta’s @DeltaAssist
• American Airline’s @AmericanAir

-        Cable providers:

• Time Warner’s @TWCableHelp
• Comcast’s @ComcastCares

-        Motor companies:

• Ford’s @FordCustService

Engaging customers about their complaints is one of the best ways to retain brand loyalty and encourage their continued use. That being said, there is a right way and a wrong way of communicating with customers. There are two basic categories in which complaints fall: 1.“[brand] sucks” and 2.“[brand] help” – and knowing which to respond to is important. If a Twitter user merely tweets, “@Delta, you truly suck”, how is a brand supposed to respond? There is nothing in which to engage them with. However, if a Twitter user posts “@DeltaAssist traveling with an infant and had a confirmed seat on window but got moved to aisle”, it is Delta’s duty to respond to this customer.

However, one to three tweets should be the maximum for exchanges online; after that, the conversation should be taken offline by exchanging contact information. Sometimes, the problem can be resolved in just one tweet – for example: “@DeltaAssist: I’m sorry about your seat, please DM your confirmation # so we can check your next flight for you.” This takes care of the situation head on without going back and forth.

We’ve also noticed three great ways brands are responding to their fans on Twitter:

1.     Take advantage of over-share

If you’re in NYC, you’ve probably eaten at a food truck or three. The great thing about many food trucks is their ability to be mobile – they are restaurants on wheels! Brands such as the Souvlaki Truck have created Twitter accounts to monitor what they’re fans are saying about them. We recently tweeted to the @SouvlakiTruck recently about missing their food – they used to be right around the corner from us – once they saw our tweet, they responded by offering a care package to be sent to our office. The following week we were all dining on their delicious Greek food.  And because they were tuned in, the Souvlaki Truck was able to be proactive and garner 60,000 impressions from our tweeting our appreciation.

2.     Reveal the human side of brand

Recently, one of our interns tweeted to his colleague that we were out of sweet potato chips and hummus. Another great brand @PretzelCrisps, took it upon themselves to offer their snack as a viable alternative that goes great with hummus. They engaged him and asked for mailing address. Sure enough, that afternoon, bags upon bags of Pretzel Crisps were dropped off at our office. By revealing themselves as real people behind the social media platform and not just an automated bot that responds, the Pretzel Crisp brand was able to create a relationship with a new customer.

3.     Create personal interactions

One particular brand that has an interesting campaign on Twitter is Jell-o, which launched their “Pudding Face Mood Meter” in an effort to gauge America’s current mood. Jell-o is tracking tweets that contain smiling and frowning faces and are taking the opportunity to tweet to those users that tweeted frowning. While they are cued in to the collective American feelings at a current time, they are not making the interaction personal. It seems more insincere to tweet to someone who is having a bad day: “here, have a coupon for a free Jell-o pudding” as opposed to engaging the user if it’s appropriate to your brand message. This misguided effort to connect with new fans and the connection between the brand and the message they wish to convey is not obvious.

The few things we’ve learned from the culture of dissatisfaction are:

1.     That even though consumers are increasingly venting on Twitter and Facebook, certain brands are proactively transform complaints into praise.

2.     Brands can strengthen their existing customer relationships and create new ones by engaging the right way.

3.     As long as you make it a good story – the word will spread itself.

Guest author David-Michel Davies (DMD) is Executive Director of The Webby Awards & the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences.       He also serves as Chairman & Co-Founder of Internet Week New York. DMD has appeared on CNN, Fox News Channel, and Good Morning America to discuss Internet trends and news, and he has lectured to audiences at a diverse mix of conferences and companies including Interbrand, Microsoft and the Institute for the future.

Original at The Webby Awards Presents: Social Media & the Culture of Dissatisfaction BlitzLocal

One of their latest attempts to capture their fans attention is a game on their Facebook page called “The Quest for the Golden McRib.” The Quest is no simple or cheap flash game but a highly interactive set of challenges that incorporates Google Maps and real world McDonalds stores.  The game has loads of content and the mix of challenges will appeal to hardcore gamers as well as casual ones.  When the gamer successfully completes a challenge they receive a collectable badge that they can either keep tucked away or post it to their wall to brag to their friends.

The social aspect of this has huge potential to revolutionize the way we Facebook.  Gamification has begun, and you’ll probably be seeing a lot more of it over the next few years as others seek to diminish or negate the marketing edge of their competitors.  Although The Quest is ultimately a rather silly game; (elves with butterfly wings and pirate hats, rapping eagles, etc.), games on Facebook are still in their infancy. You can see that advertisers are contemplating new and unique ways to keep their brands fresh in consumers’ minds.  Ultimately, this is a win-win for everyone: the advertiser gets to speak directly to the consumer who is being entertained, as opposed to being forced to watch a commercial.  As gamification is further utilized and perfected, expect games to become even more compelling, common, and social.

Blake Beier is an Analyst with BlitzLocal, and a big fan of games.

Original at The Quest for Engagement: Fast Food and the Social Media War BlitzLocal

The Bottom Line: Facebook Ads are the most versatile, targeted way to advertise online, and they have incredible reach.

Challenges with Facebook Advertising

• Banner Blindness
• You have to hire a graphic artist to make all the ad creatives

Facebook Glossary:

• Connections: The number of individuals who liked your Facebook page, RSVP’d to your event, or installed your app within 24 hours of seeing your ad or sponsored story. Basically, a connection is a conversion.
• Unique Reach: The number of individual people who saw your sponsored stories or ads.
• Social Reach: The number of people who saw your sponsored stories or ads because their friends liked your page, RSVP’d to your event, or used your app.
• Frequency: The average number of times each person saw your campaign’s sponsored story or ad. This is helpful for measuring ad fatigue.

Basic Ad Formats

• Basic Ads
  • “Like” ad: Links to tab on Facebook page
  • Event ad: Links to event
  • Application ad: Links to application
  • Standard ad: Links to specific URL
  • Sponsored Stories
    • Page “Like” Story: Mary-Jane likes your page, Page “like” Story lets Mary-Jane’s friends know about the like
    • Page Post Story: You published a post to your page’s fans. Page Post Story allows this post to show up in fans’ news feeds
    • Pages Post “Like” Story; Alex liked one of your page posts in the last 7 days. Page Post “like” Story lets Alex’s friends know about the post like
    • App Used and Game Played Story: Lauren played/used your game or app. App Used/Game Played Story tells her friends about this action
    • App Share Story: Hayes shared a story from your app in the last 7 Days. App Share Story lets Hayes’ friends know about the share
    • Check-in Story: Lisa checked in or claimed a deal using Facebook Places. Check-in Story lets Lisa’s friends know about it.
    • Domain Story: Mike liked/shared content from your website or pasted a link from your site to his wall. Domain Story lets Mike’s friends know about this action.

The complexity and potential of targeting on Facebook

• There are so many ways of targeting that it can be confusing
  • Age, likes, interests, birthday, apps, education, timeline content, friends, event RSVPs, fans
  • When choosing targets, focus on two things:
    • Narrowing your audience
      • Demo and Geo Targeting
        • Geography: Country, State, Province, City or Zip targeting
        • Demographics: Gender, Age, Birthday, Relationship Status, Language
        • Workplace and Education Targeting
          • Workplace, Education, Preferred Language
        • Likes and Interests Targeting
          • Favorite TV Shows, Movies, Books, Music, Hobbies, Religion, Political Views
• Thinking outside the box – Let’s say you want to sell golf clubs
  • Nick (who plays golf) is an obvious target
  • Barbara doesn’t like golf – but she likes the Palm Beach Country Club
  • Chaz doesn’t have the word golf anywhere on his profile, but he plays golf for a living: he’s a sales guy!
  • Try the obvious targets, but Facebook’s best advertisers use non-linear thinking to target ads.

Campaign Organization Tips

• An “Account” in Facebook is similar to a “Campaign” in Paid Search
• A “Campaign” in Facebook is similar to “Ad Group” in Paid Search
• Warning: Don’t create campaigns with many different targets and ads. Keep your campaigns small.
• Do not put all segmented target groups in one campaign – as your ads are competing within the campaign.
• Prevent ad fatigue, or banner blindness by changing ads frequently
  • As soon as CTR trends down, submit new content!

Q&A:

What is a good CTR?

• Anywhere from 0.1-0.4 is really strong CTR, even .08% is okay
• Dennis Yu, CEO at BlitzLocal outlines 11 Killer Ways to Increase Your Facebook CTR

What images work best?

• Logos traditionally don’t work well
• Images of people are effective
• Format design keeping small size in account

What is a preferred or optimal frequency?

• Keep it small!
• 6,7,8 is bad

Any issues with click fraud?

• There is a department at Facebook dedicated to click fraud with a sophisticated monitoring team.
• More difficult to produce in Facebook than in search where you can just search to make a specific ad appear.

How will timeline affect ads/business pages?

• Yet to be determined!

Fans much more likely to take some type of action than non-fans.

Targeting workplaces is a great tool for B2B marketing.

What sort of company uses page post story? How breaking should the news be? What types of posts work best?

• Entertainment, news businesses using these most effectively
• Have emotional connection so people will click

Is there advertising on Facebook mobile?

• In testing, not released to general public yet.

Notes taken by BlitzLocal Analyst Matt Prater

Graphics obtained from: http://www.slideshare.net/TradaPaidSearch/facebook-ads-you-can-make-them-work and www.facebook.com.

Original at “Facebook Ads: You Can Make Them Work!” Webinar by Trada BlitzLocal

6)  Making The Wrong Type Of Facebook Page

*RcFishingWorld would be much better off on Facebook with a business page instead of a personal profile.

Personal profiles are the only pages most Facebook users will ever be familiar with, however, they lack many essential resources which business profiles otherwise would include. For example business pages give page administrators access to insights about your pages’ audience through statistical insights such as; page views, demographic views, traffic sources, and other key statistics otherwise absent in a personal profile. Even though business pages do not allow you to actually “friend request” your target market, they still give you access to your audiences news feed via the “like” button. Bottom line: make sure you make the right type of profile!

5) Not Posting Frequently Enough On The Wall

*Mortgage Advice is not engaging their 2,000 fans.

Take this business page as an example, “Mortgage Advice.” This page has over 2,000 fans, but they are not reaching out to any of their fan’s news feeds, because Mortgage Advice is not posting anything. By simply posting, “Check out Mortgage Advice… For such and such reason,” they would easily generate a couple hundred impressions and draw a small piece of internet traffic to their business, but they are not utilizing this potential. If Mortgage Advice added a few nice graphics and than reinforced their more professional look with some interesting wall posts, which were than updated and maintained, than even this business could generate some revenue on Facebook! Instead their simply letting their fans waste away.

4) Not Engaging Your Audience, or Worse Yet; Acquiring Fake Fans!

By neglecting fans, business pages are essentially shooting themselves in the proverbial foot. Edgerank and Post Quality Score are metrics of Facebook’s content management filters. Unlike the past, everything users post does NOT appear in your audience’s news feeds; information which users do not engage, is subsequently filtered out to save users time, relieving content which may be perceived as spam or unimportant to the user.

This also means fake fans will do more harm than good to your page because they bring down your engagement rates. Companies which entice clicks and engage people through interesting posts, will maintain contact, pages which do not engage their audience will be filtered out of their audiences’ news feeds all together!

Some tips for increasing your engagement;

• Make sure to respond to comments, and don’t worry about commenting on your own material.
• Never leave a fan hanging and always respond to whatever questions fans may post, positively enforcing fan engagement.
• Also feel free to “like” your own material, as this does not harm your Edgerank or P.Q.S. scores.
• There are many techniques to raise your engagement for example try to ask your audience questions,  instigating engagement. Using these simple guidelines, can quickly garner huge results and massively improve your pages marketing on Facebook

*See how each post only makes impressions on 10% of CiviliansNews.com‘s audience?

3) Not Running Sponsored Stories

Sponsored story advertisements are displayed for current fans and friends of current fans, in order to spur re-engagement. Re-engagement is for fans who at one time “liked” your page, yet lost interest over time. After a fan becomes un-engaged, ignoring your page for some time, their news feeds will start filtering out your pages posts, losing contact to your audience member’s news feed. In order to regain contact with these fans you SHOULD run a sponsored story Facebook advertisement, if un-engaged fans click the advertisement than just like that, your page will start making impressions again on that user’s news feed.

A tip for sponsored story advertisements: try to focus on third party articles which positively endorse your organization. This makes the sponsored story appear as if it may have been run by a 3rd party, so you don’t look like you’re tooting your own horn.

2) Not Keeping An Eye On Your Competition

Later this year Blitzmetrics.com is going to be bringing FREE social media analytic dashboards to all businesses who sign up on their website. These dashboards will be full of information about your competitors’ social networks as well as your own fans’ engagement. However, this free product is still not scheduled for release until later this year. Until then let’s talk about keeping an eye on your competition manually.

It’s really as simple as “liking” your competitors’ pages, than following their activity in your business page’s news feed. When logged in as a business page, the business will maintain a news feed consisting of things the business page “liked.” This is useful because, by liking your competitors, you can personally monitor their actions on Facebook everyday. Commenting on your competitors’ pages is also allowed as well. Spamming a competitor’s page is an easy way to violate Facebook rules and policies, however, it is still not completely disallowed. Often times, large companies will even disregard this type of engagement because even if you’re shouting out your own page on your competitors’ walls, it raises your competitors’ engagement rates, making this tactic a double edged sword.

Ignoring your competition is a massive mistake: make sure to keep a close eye on what your biggest competitors are doing everyday. Check out how they are utilizing social networking and employ techniques that they have used successfully for yourself!

1) Being Overly “Business-ey”

Have fun! When utilizing the social networks for business, it is always important to remember what you’re doing and where you’re doing it. The social networks are still a taboo, unknown realm of marketing. Most users are young people, and most of their time on the sites are spent concerned with high school friends and ex-girlfriends, which will often take precedence over corporate marketing campaigns.

As far as posting content, remember that users are unlikely to engage with the same monotonous business messages. Try adding a bit of provocation to your posts. A sense of professionalism is always inherently mandatory, however, don’t be afraid to dive into a funny joke, funny topic, or peculiar interest. Stirring up, or aggravating fans increases engagement and inevitably will increase the volume for which your material is shared.

Hopefully these basic guidelines help you run a successful business or fan page on Facebook. Good luck!

-William Larsen, BlitzLocal Analyst

This is an article from one of our analysts, who we encourage to share opinions. It may or may not reflect the views of BlitzLocal.

Original at The 6 Biggest Business Mistakes On Facebook! BlitzLocal

Ranking well for the proper keywords will generate targeted, high quality leads for any business. Customers who shop or price check online are constantly using Google search, and the businesses that rank well on Google meet potential clients who found them because of their search engine rankings. Dennis’ friend recently started a racquet stringing business out of his home in Boulder, Colorado. Knowing his customers often found racquet stringing services online, he asked Dennis if he would help him climb up the Google search results for keywords like “Tennis”, “Boulder”, and ”Racquet“, knowing his customers would likely use these search terms if they were looking to get a tennis racquet strung in Boulder. Often times competition for search results is fierce, making it a very competitive field. Take the term “Remote Control Car” for example. Searching even this three word term, causes Google to display 15 million results. Obviously, the results listed first will receive the most views from prospective customers; but how do you get your business to the top of the ladder?

Dennis started by explaining that clickable links online, termed “back links”, are essentially connecting web traffic together from one site to the next. For example, any link in this article, which takes you to another page, is a back link. Receiving high quality, “back links,” from reputable sites, is one of the major components Google uses when ordering search results, particularly when a search query returns millions of results. Essentially, the amount of back links and how well they fit the target search (among other things) determines who gets to be at the top of the search. This creates multiple dimensions to the importance of back links to your site. It is important to have back links because, not only do they account for a great source of direct traffic to your website, they piggyback off other sites’ traffic and funnel it through a direct link to yours, and play a vital role in how Google ranks sites in keyword searches.

The impact of a back link is determined by the rank of the page your site is linking with. This clout, or credibility of a website, is kept in a system of scoring called “Google Page Rank.” You can easily download a page rank application, which tells you the page rank of any page you are surfing, or linking to,  displayed in the bottom right hand corner of your browser, after downloading this free tool from quirk.biz.com. The page rank scale goes from 1 to 10, but it is important to note that the page rank scale is also aggregate. An aggregate in this context, means that sites which rank even 1 level higher than others are ten times stronger than sites ranked even one level lower; exponentially rising and falling in the Google pecking order. In order to zoom past all the other search results on Google, it is important to score well on Google for back links, because Google takes into account the quality and amount of back links to your pages, ranking pages with more, higher quality back links, ahead of sites which are not as well-linked to the rest of the internet.

Although ranking a small business page requires more than simply 1 or 2 back links, even from a page rank 5 site or above, a single “PR5″ back link is usually enough to rank well on certain Google keywords. Particularly if your intended Google keyword queries return less than 2 or 3 million results, and the keyword results your seeking are not in heated competition with other websites. In more sought-after search fields, one must acquire more back links that are ranked higher; ideally with matching keywords and topics, to impact competitive search results the most. A good way to obtain back links on reputable sites is to guest-post material on other sites, for example a friend’s blog, but that is just one suggestion for anyone getting started tackling any major keyword searches.

To rank his friend’s tennis racquet business, Dennis started by quickly writing a short article on his PR5 blog, laced with keywords for Next Day Racquets, that he later hoped to rank for in Google search. He identified ”Boulder, Tennis and Racquets,” as the keywords that would work best, because the company is a start-up business in Boulder, Colorado that sells tennis racquets, and Dennis realized that it was feasible to rank even higher than his friend’s business rivals for these keywords. He again determined, “Boulder, Tennis ,Racquets,” was the ideal search term for his friend’s business by discovering that the term received an acceptable amount of highly targeted web traffic, while additionally targeted prospective local customers. Keyword research played a vital role in this process, whereby any search query with less than 2 million search results would be relatively “low hanging fruit,” that with a few steps could be overtaken on search results.

The material that ranks number 1 on Google, on average, receives 4 times the amount of organic traffic that the content ranking number 2 receives. So the importance of being ranked high, for any business, is tremendous. After determining the desired keywords, Dennis wrote a highly targeted article about,”Boulder, Tennis and Racquets,” on his PR5 blog. Dennis also went ahead and created a social media outlet, (his specialty), via a Facebook.com fan page, for his friend’s business (which it would use as a sales page for the time being). He then went on to link his blog to a new article post about Next Day Racquets, while intermingling another link into Next Day Racquet’s Facebook fan page.  After linking the PR5 blog with Next Day Racquets Facebook fan page, he went ahead with a simple little trick that quickly allows Google to index the newly posted material. WordPress blogs are already great at pinging the search ladders, informing Google instantly about the emergence of new content, but a great way to get indexed even faster is to use the Google plus 1 system. By pushing plus “+1″on the newly formed content on his blog, Dennis actually got Google to instantly crawl the post and in turn got the post instantaneously indexed on the search ladder, with no wait or time-delay!

The result? Next Day Racquets ranked number 1 for the keywords, “Boulder, Tennis, Racquets,” in 15 minutes! By simply writing a high quality, keyword articulated article, on a reputable site (his own blog), then linking it to his friends business fan page and then “+1″-ing the results, Dennis instantaneously brought the Google indexing spiders running to the site and had it ranked number 1 on the search engine keywords just as fast. Dennis achieved what most business owners never do; he ranked Next Day Racquets in the top 5 of Google search for important keywords and search terms. Not only that, he did it quicker than I could have ordered a Domino’s pizza. After a few weeks the listing did fall from ranking very 1st on the ladder, down to number 4 on the search results. Even so, Dennis Yu was able to get his friend more Google recognition in 15 minutes than home businesses ever get at all! Not only that, he didn’t use any unethical business or black hat S.E.O. and instead properly mounted Next Day Racquets on the search ladder, for the long run. Dennis Yu is truly a professional. Check out more on his blog www.Dennis-Yu.com.  I hope this article helps people maximize their search engine opportunities; it sure helped me!

-William Larsen, BlitzLocal Analyst

Original at Dennis Yu of BlitzLocal Ranks Small Business #1 on Google in 15 Minutes! BlitzLocal

Soles4Souls is Not Letting Your Old Shoes Go To Waste

It is dysfunctional to think that Americans discarded millions of athletic shoes over the course of this past year; worse yet, leaving most of those shoes to rot away in dangerous landfills.  It has been estimated that the average American owns between 3-5 pairs of shoes today. So where do most of these shoes end up? Most of the shoes are worn, then thrown away to later rot in landfills.  When surveyed by the EPA in 2007, landfills were proven to be leaking pollutants in 82% of those surveyed.(http://www.cleanair.org/Waste/wasteFacts.html). With the increasing pressure to recycle, combined with the danger of modern-day landfills, many worn sneakers should be re-used or recycled across the world today.

Surely recycling is a better option than leaving shoes to rot, contributing to the massive waste piles and hazardous material leaking out of landfills today. As the world grows more connected, better uses for our used shoes are becoming more and more clear as well.  Most Americans reap the benefits of a society of abundance, while other societies around the world do not know such peace of mind. Wayne Elsey, founder of the charity Soles4Souls, is attempting to help people in need benefit from the tremendous amount of American used athletic shoes in our landfills today.

Excess. The filthy little word that illustrates over-abundance and waste. When examining the different facets of an average Americans daily life, excess is everywhere; over-sized SUVs, gaudy jewelry and twenty five pairs of shoes in our family closets! While the average American will own between 3 and 5 pairs of shoes at a time, the point in which we decide these shoes are no longer usable is the subject of this article today. These days, some people deem shoes unwearable, even if the shoes only have a single scuff! Other more patient sneaker patrons, will wait until their shoes are a little worn down before abandoning them completely. A gritty working-class person may even let their shoes go until they are worn through to the sole before deeming them unusable. In any instance, these shoes can still serve a good cause and can still be recycled, even after the original owners are done with them.

Soles4Souls is one of the organizations I recently discovered that had the fundamental aspiration to distribute used shoes to the people who need them, all over the world. Wayne Elsey, founder of Soles4Souls, apparently looked at devastation around the world, and envisioned aiding other countries with Americans used footwear. The epidemic of improper footwear runs rampant worldwide. Soles4Souls tackles this challenge by literally taking one man’s trash and turning it into another man’s treasure; quite noble to say the least. I learned that with that vision in mind, Wayne’s organization Soles4Souls has collected and distributed over 14 million pairs of gently worn shoes worldwide, in over 127 countries.

Even our earliest ancestors understood the importance of recycling what they used, and not wasting their resources. Why is it that this mantra seems to have been all but lost in regards to today’s footwear? While some may find it difficult to envision the lives of those struggling overseas, it is important to simply know that others around the world are indeed people; people with emotions, ideas, creativity, imagination, thoughts and feelings, who need shoes just like us. When Wayne envisioned supporting others with Americans’ worn-down sneakers, I imagine he was thinking of these people. The abundance of sneakers in America today is ridiculous and the footwear statistics are staggering. In my opinion, giving your sneakers to Soles4Souls is not only empathy; it’s common sense. It has been estimated that Americans purchase nearly a million pairs of sneakers per day. Instead of wasting these massive amounts of used sneakers, give them another chance. The landfills don’t need these excessive reserves of used shoes, but other people around the world do!

Original at Is Modern Waste Management Obsolete? Soles4Souls Is Recycling Used Shoes! BlitzLocal

Step 1. Open your favorite image editing software. I will be using Paint Shop Pro because I don’t have the patience to torrent Photoshop CS3.

Step 2. Create a blank canvas with the measurements 500px x 70px.

Step 3. Build the masterpiece you wish to place on your profile.

Step 4. Using the crop tool, divide the picture into 5 tiles, each 100px x 70px. (Most likely your software will display the measurements so you can get this precise size.)

Step 5. After saving all 5 files, upload them in REVERSE order and set them as profile pictures.

As you can see above, my masterpiece is in reverse order.

If you set each as a profile picture (in reverse order), revert your profile picture back to the original picture, your profile should appear like this.

Good luck, and let us know how it works out in the comments!

About the guest author:

Kody Wilcox is an Analyst with Blitzlocal and a Facebook enthusiast.   

Original at How to Make a Really Cool Facebook Banner BlitzLocal