Announced as a beta version earlier this month, Facebook Places provides a presence for your business’s physical store locations encouraging your customers to share that they’ve visited your business by “checking in” to your Place.
Facebook Places could make for some great organic impressions and may put a whole new twist on in-store promotions and loyalty programs. Imagine the fun you could have with interactive incentives and real-time inventory reductions. Used creatively, this could be a clever venue for businesses to better optimize Facebook.
Foursquare destroyer?
We’ll have to see if this new Facebook capability will grab influence from Foursquare or even Twitter’s new location option. Give it 4-6 months and we’ll see how the trends are playing out.
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Guest Blogger Paul Patzloff is a hybrid creative marketing professional based in Edina, Minnesota. His insights on small business innovations from around the globe can be found at The Up Take blog at paulpatzloff.com
We’re finally taking our own advice (promoting something BIG on Facebook, that is!) and giving away a free website – a value of up to $3,000 – this Fall to one lucky Facebook fan.
Winner will be chosen October 15th, and will have the option to either use the credit for personal/business purposes or donate it to a local organization or charity of their choice.
Stay tuned for more details, as this promotion will start mid-July. To receive updates, simply become a fan on Facebook and keep an eye out for more info!
We received this question from a client today via email:
I received this email today for a link request. Do we have anywhere on the new site that would cater to someone looking to establish a link exchange? Is this a safe practice?
Dear sir
I would like to build a reciprocal website link between www.mysite.com and www.yoursite.com. I believe that the content in both websites would be of great interest to visitors and this could result in increased web traffic and improvement in search engine listing positions for both businesses…
Unless you know it’s a legitimate site, we wouldn’t recommend participating in these exchanges…9 times out of 10 it could potentially harm your website’s reputation (especially with Google).
Plus, you’ll notice that the majority of these link spammers only offer links on one page, often called Links or Resources…if it’s not a site-wide exchange with a reputable site it’s definitely not worth the effort.
BTW, the person who emailed this message was using one of the many link-spamming tools available on the market – anything with an email template like the one in the example above is mainly junk unless it’s a personal email to your company with the specific reasoning behind the link request. 1,000+ other sites probably received this same email, and who knows what other link-exchange relationships that site might get into in the upcoming weeks.
In the Works: A new website for Virginia Wolff Inc, a wedding florist out of Chicago, Illinois. About Our Client: Virginia Wolff creates some of the most compelling floral designs Chicago has ever seen. They’ve been a highly sought after florist for decades. Over the years, Virginia Wolff has attracted attention from Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, Elegant Bride, Bon Appetite, and many other media outlets.
Join them as they discover elegant ways to transform flowers into captivating masterpieces!
In the Works: A new website for In Pursuit of Passion, a television series that celebrates adventure, ambition and the awakening of the human spirit.
About Our Client: In Pursuit of Passion invites you to join host Tracy Rosensteel as she embarks on a global journey in search of impassioned risk-takers and extreme adventurers. Produced by Inizio Entertainment, LLC, In Pursuit of Passion introduces a group of strong-willed individuals who follow their dreams despite the dangers and risks that lie ahead.
Come join us for epic new episodes and stories from the edge of peril!
Keep an Eye Out For: In Pursuit of Passion on DVD! Season One is currently available on Blu-Ray, and will be available for purchase on the new website.
Be sure to check out In Pursuit of Passion’s latest trailer:
We received this question again today from a client via email:
I have a question for you. I got all excited yesterday because I Googled the following terms on my computer and got the following results:
keyword 1 – #2 on page 1
keyword 2 – #3 on page 1
keyword 3 – #5 on page 1
keyword 4 – #2 on page 1
Then when I did the same searches on another computer – I get much less favorable results. Any thoughts on this?
Here are 2 of the most common reason that results could differ on multiple computers:
If you visit your website often (or any other website for that matter) the results in Google will become “skewed” since it wants to favor that result for you. Search engines like Google take into consideration browsing patterns and preferences and therefor try to provide the user with the most relevent and beneficial results based on past activity specific to that browser/computer.
Google (as well as Bing & Yahoo) occasionally goes through what some people call “The Dance” – they’re reorganizing and reshuffling the index for the search results, and rankings/pages become unstable and inconsistent. We’ve noticed that this may take 1-2 weeks to complete, and when it’s done you’ll have a better understanding of where you stand.
If interested in obtaining unbiased results when performing Google searches, we’d recommend reading through Google’s tutorial on how to disable Google search preferences.
Mission Accomplished: A full website makeover for Banners Express!
About Our Client: Banners Express is one of the most creative custom banner, decal, and graphics companies in the Dallas area. They design full scale graphics for company vehicles, signs, posters, and much more. With a friendly staff and very fast turnaround times, they are a one stop shop for your banner and printing needs.
Check out their custom vehicle wraps. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen!
Keep an Eye Out For: Updated porfolio items, specials on printing, vehicle wraps, advertising, and more.
Announced as a beta version earlier this month, Facebook Places provides a presence for your business’s physical store locations encouraging your customers to share that they’ve visited your business by “checking in” to your Place.
