You can get a free @facebook.com address by going go to your Messages view in Facebook and clicking the Claim your Facebook email link. Your facebook email will automatically be your profile username. (Note you cannot set these up for Fan pages but you can for Group Pages and Personal Profiles)
Your email address will match your public username. Once it is registered you cannot change it.
If you don’t have a username yet, or someone else has already registered that email address, you will be prompted to choose one when you create your email address.
Once you have set up your Facebook email address, anyone can email you using any type of email account, and the emails get delivered to your Facebook Messages, just like an email inbox.
When you send messages to other peoples email addresses, the emails are formatted to look like Facebook messages, which include your name, your profile picture along with your message.
Why do you want a Facebook Email?
We haven’t quite worked that one out yet! However, if I were you I’d register it anyway so that you secure the name you want, than when you find out what to do with it let us know.
Silicon Beach Training provide a host of SEO Training courses and Social Media Courses.
We shot this short video interview with Claire Stokoe (@killer_bunnie) last year, and then forgot about it!
We discovered it lurking on the office iMac this week and decided to unleash it! Claire explains why Brand Monitoring using Social Media is so important – and gives some great tips on how to do it. A full transcript of the video is below.
Have you invested in search engine optimistation? Are you pulling potential customers into your site using Social Media? Are your pages now doing well in Google. Yes? Well done! Now take a look at the bounce rate and the time users spend on your site once you have got them there. If your bounce rate is high and your users are leaving quickly there’s still work to be done.
If you are not ranking so well in Google, don’t know what your bounce rate is or haven’t started your Social Media Strategy yet – then maybe you should enrol on our SEO training, Social Media Training and Google Analytics training courses in Brighton, Sussex.
Now with Google instant previews landing page optimisation is even more important. Google Instant Previews often shows images of pages that rank in the SERP (search engine results page). Decisions about the value of a link or site will be made based on the look and feel of a page before they even click. Keep in mind that Flash isn’t supported by Google Instant Previews.
What is a Landing Page?
A landing page is a page on your site that a user is brought to when they click on a link, online ad or any other entry point.
What is a Conversion?
What you want a user to do once he or she reaches a page is called a conversion. This forms the basis for landing page optimisation.
A conversion can be:
A user filling out a form
Downloading something
Buying something
Signing up for a newsletter
In fact a conversion is any action you want your users to take. A microconversion can be something like a click to the next page or time spent on the page this can help you identify which part of the conversion funnel could be improved.
What is Landing Page Optimisation?
Landing Page optimisation begins with tests conducted in a controlled environment. The web developer makes tweaks to the look, layout and positioning of elements on a page, image changes, content changes, call to action changes, headline and title changes etc. in order to influence the ‘conversion’ (user behaviour).
The first step is to choose the landing pages that are most important to your business. Take a look at Google Analytics. Which pages drive the most traffic or conversion already? These pages would be a good place to start.
Now it is time to start testing. One type of testing is called A/B split testing. You need to create two different versions of a Web page. You can do this either at the same time, tracking visitors by IP address so no one visitor receives the same landing page twice, or you can test one page at a time for a specified duration. It is possible to do A/B testing using Google Website Optimiser. See video below:
Another type of testing is called multivariate testing. This is best done after your initial A/B tests. Multivariate testing allows you to test multiple elements within a landing page, and conduct more detailed analyses of these elements to see what creates a successful page.
google heatmap show the hotspots on a web-page
Google’s heat map
A Heat Map shows the most likely areas of a web page to produce click throughs this example was developed by Google for its AdSense program.
Dark Orange – the hottest area of a web-page.
Orange – areas next in importance for visitors.
Yellow - areas of moderate interest .
White – areas with little or no activity.
Grey – neutral areas.
Consumer Behaviour
When people are looking to buy a product online they spend time researching the product first. They then decide on a handful of sites from which to make their purchase. One small change on a landing page can affect your conversion rates. These changes can include:
Shape of buttons
The grouping of related elements
The color scheme – particularly contrast
Color of elements
Size of elements
Speed of page
Legibility
Layout
Alignment
Suggested Benefits
Call-to-action
Types of questions you ask in a form
Confidence building – testimonials and client recommendations
Customer Incentives
Offers are becoming more and valuable for Internet marketing and landing pages. Be specific – the more specific the offer, the higher the response rate.
Most people will agree that there isn’t a perfect time to send out your emails or newsletters, but generally speaking, Tuesday is probably the closest you’ll get to an ideal day. Friday turns out to be the worst day to send out your emails though, so hold off sending them at the end of the working week.
If you want to learn more about email marketing then try our fantastic Email Marketing Course here at Silicon Beach Training. Something you may also be interested in is our SEO Training and PRINCE2 Practitioner training in Brighton, Sussex.
The general theory is that very early in the week (Monday) you will have lots of emails to go through from things being sent over the weekend, you’ll also have a lot of work to do so any emails that aren’t important or work related will be overlooked and probably sent to the trash. But on Tuesday you should have caught up on your emails and be set in what you’re working on for that week, so you may have a few spare seconds to look over some other emails that you wouldn’t have earlier had time for. Nearing the end of the week, you may have deadlines for the end of Friday and you need to get on with work to hit those expectations, you won’t have time to be sifting through emails that aren’t highly important.
Sunday- The new Tuesday?
But for people who can’t just leave work until Monday morning, Tuesday could easily be replaced by Sunday as the new day email marketers. If you check your work emails from home, then a lazy Sunday afternoon might be the perfect time for you to sift through a few newsletters or lower priority emails as you have the time. It’s a much more relaxing experience, you don’t have to rush to find anything important and so you’ll spend more time reading rather than ignoring or deleting.
A lot of people check their work email at home and many also do work related study at the weekends, so this appears to be a potential treasure trove for email marketers to send out lazy Sunday afternoon emails and aim them to be relaxing and less in your face style.
thanks to Laurence Simon AKA isfullofcrap on flickr
In a nutshell, if you are serious about Social Media (see our Social Media Training Course) you should use you blog to provide content for Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook accounts. Your blog also gives you a great way to post links into comments on posts about similar topics which is very good for your SEO or Search Engine Optimistation (see our SEO Training course). If you are new to blogging and want to know what to write about check out our regular Blogging Training course in Brighton, Sussex.
Here are the reasons why I think every business should be Blogging:
Blogging defines your business or you as an individual – good for social media (see our social media training course).
You can ask for feedback on your blog and get others to generate new content – good for SEO (see our SEO Training course).
You attract links to your site. Posts get picked up by news feeds and other bloggers all the time.
You can use your important keywords in the body – good for SEO.
You can make some keywords into anchor text – good for SEO
You can link to your blog with your microblogging sites (Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, Tumbler etc) – good for SEO and Social Media
You can check your analytics from your blog to see what interests people, what works and where they go next. (see our Google Analytics Training Course)
You can use your blog to concentrate on individual product or services
You can advertise special offers or promotions and then link to them from other sites – Good for SEO, or tweet about them etc – Good for Social Media
Blog posts are a great place to embed videos. Great for SEO and Social Media
We recommend WordPress for your blog though there are alternatives around (we offer wordpress training of course!) WordPress however make it easy to SEO your blog, add plug-ins and widgets for adding social media elements. The best thing is to integrate your WordPress site seamlessly into your main site like we do. In fact our free resources section is one wordpress site and our silicon beach training blog is another wordpress site. This is best for SEO as Google sees the site and the two blogs as one domain. You can learn how to do this on our customising wordpress templates training course.
Many will tell you that Social Media is fast becoming an essential tool for business in all areas, but most of these people will not be able to tell you how to use it properly!
Make sure you’re not selling yourself short, Social Media isn’t just Twitter. Remember, Facebook & even YouTube can be used to help you and your business
Twitter can still become a valuable SM asset to your company. Look at Chris Brogan’s blog post ‘50 ideas on using Twitter for business‘, which forms part of his Social Media 100 project.
Do you offer a product/service? Offer support via Twitter. If you’re attempting to create sales from your use of Twitter, think about offering a ‘Twitter exclusive’ voucher code or discount offer.
Use Facebook pages, users can ‘Like’ your company or product, and you can encourage discussion and feedback from Facebook users. This can be invaluable, especially when you consider the fact that Facebook has over 400 million active users. That’s a lot of people you can potentially reach.
YouTube is, to me, an almost criminally underused resource for businesses. Start up your own YouTube channel and fill it with interesting, different content. A few videos giving a tour of your offices, or introducing staff helps to create a different kind of relationship with your customers and users. There are more uses for YouTube within your business than you think.
On a more professional level, LinkedIn is a valuable tool that enables you to build working relationships with fellow professionals.
Lastly, make sure you blog. Offering a slightly relaxed standpoint from within the business will help others to better understand what it is you do and how they can relate.
However, using all these different platforms can prove to be a fruitless exercise if you fail to consider how these services can help your business. Don’t use SM platforms for the sake of using them, ensure that you can use them well and use them to your advantage. A training program focusing on Social Media would be an ideal starting point.
Pair this with some SEO training, tie it all in together and you’ll be well on your way to creating a formidable Social Media presence for your business.
How to use Digg effectively: 10 steps to becoming a Digg pro!
Effectively using Digg can be hard to do, but when done it’s an invaluable way of achieving high Google rankings and driving traffic to your site. As with all in Social Media Marketing success comes with finding the balance between remembering the end game and remembering that it’s a social network – so no spamming or constant self-promo! This ten step guide will talk you through the Digg must-dos, tell you what big mistakes to avoid and help you decide if Digg is a useful marketing tool for your business. See this guide to the best social bookmarking sites if you’d like to compare Digg with other sites such as Delicious and StumbleUpon.
Below you’ll find a comprehensive list of Social Media Tips, Guides, Plugins, Platforms, Analytics Tools, Apps and other great Social Media resources. This list is designed as a reference guide for delegates who have attended our Social Networking training or SEO training courses in Brighton, Sussex – but it would be mean of us not to make it available to everyone. We also provide creative courses like Photoshop Training and Leadership and Management Training like PRINCE2 Training and Business Analysis Courses. Enjoy…
