Argentima SEPTIMO PAIS más adicto a Twitter

Una nueva investigación de comScore, empresa líder en la medición del mundo digital, se publicó esta semana y mide el nivel de penetración de Twitter país por país. El estudio presenta los primeros 10 países en los que Twitter tiene el mayor alcance entre la población en línea, y revela un sorprendente ganador: Holanda. También es el país del mundo que más usa LinkedIn, un 26,1% de sus habitantes.

Por América Latina los ganadores son Brasil con un 23,7% de penetración de Twitter en el 3er lugar, Venezuela con un 21% ocupando el 5to puesto de los países donde Twitter es más importante y popular, y por último está Argentina con un 18% y una posición de séptimo en el top 10. Tres ubicaciones realmente impresionantes y que muestran el interes tan grande que despiertan en nuestra región el uso de las redes sociales.

Mike Lee, vicepresidente senior de comScore, explica sobre la posición dominante de Holanda en el estudio:

El mercado del social media en Holanda es realmente único y llena de historias interesantes. Es uno de los pocos mercados que quedan donde un jugador local de redes sociales continúa superando a Facebook, aunque la diferencia es cada vez más tenue

El top 10 de los países con más penetración de Twitter en el mundo:

1. Países Bajos 26,8%
2. Japón 26,6%
3. Brasil 23,7%
4. Indonesia 22.0%
5. Venezuela 21,0%
6. Canadá 18,0%
7. Argentina 18,0%
8. Turquía 16,6%
9. Filipinas 16,1%
10. Singapur 16,0%

En Venezuela es realmente impresionante lo que se vive con Twitter, muchas veces pareciera que que toda la población tiene una cuenta de Twitter. El presidente de Venezuela tiene su cuenta y muchos funcionarios públicos importantes, muchos de ellos hacen un uso importante de la herramienta, políticos de todas las corrientes también lo usan. También muchos artistas y personalidades. El Twiteq, una reunión mensual de tuiteros, reúne en cada edición a más de 500 personas y muchas marcas tienen cuentas de Twitter muy activas. Venezuela es un país que respira Twitter en este momento, y en gran medida se debe a la pasión que tienen los venezolanos por los teléfonos celulares. Twitter se ha convertido en la killer aplication de todos los smartphones. No se si esto pase en otros países, pero me encantaría saberlo: ¿cómo sientes que está Twitter en tu país?

Expedia on how to grow your ADR without impacting occupancy

In working with hotels across various chain scales and markets, Expedia identified a handful of strategies that can effectively increase ADR without impacting occupancy. This article uses Manhatten as example, but the observations and recommendations can be applied to any market.

As the industry recovers from historical lows in occupancy and ADR, I’ve been hearing a common question from many hotels – “How are we going to grow rate?” Occupancy growth has to come first before rate growth, but in markets that are already seeing occupancy come back, hotels have the ability to achieve ADR increases. 
In working with hotels across various chain scales and markets, I’ve identified a handful of strategies that can effectively increase ADR without impacting occupancy.  I use Manhattan as an example because it is in many ways leading the recovery among U.S. lodging markets, but these observations and recommendations can be applied to any market that is experiencing even modest occupancy growth.

1. Grow your yieldable channels mix

Adjusting your segmentation to reflect more yieldable business, such as OTA channels, is the best place to start because it’s where rate adjustments can have the most immediate impact. In Manhattan, Expedia ADR has been growing faster than the market’s as a whole.  Expedia ADR for Manhattan in June was up nearly 25% year over year, versus market-wide ADR growth of just under 18% . Year to date, the spread is just as pronounced, as the market has grown ADR by 9%, versus Manhattan ADR growth of 14% on Expedia. That means the OTA segment is growing at 57% the pace of the market, and this is due to the fact that the OTA channel is yieldable, as opposed to other pieces of business that were contracted at lower rates prior to the recovery. Because OTA pricing floats off of a hotel’s best available rate, revenue managers can raise or lower rates in immediate response to the market, while with traditional wholesale or contract segments, hotels are locked into fixed rates.  In a recovery environment such as the one we find ourselves in now, pockets of demand that allow for rate increases may not become pronounced until closer to the date.  In these instances, the hotels that achieve the highest rate increases will be those that can yield up a larger percentage of their business, as opposed to hotels that may already have contracted fixed pricing.

2. Implement a need date strategy
Every market, even in a recovery, has slow periods. But with the right strategy, it is possible to grow rate over these need dates. In Manhattan a prime example is the autumn weekend on which Yom Kippur falls.  Corporate travelers check out early, and the locals leave town.  Year after year, the market tends to react to the gap in occupancy about three weeks prior to the actual date, and cuts pricing to drive last minute occupancy.  But once the 3-week window is reached, not only has the prime booking window passed, but the business in that window is at a considerably lower ADR than in the preceding 4 months.  By anticipating need dates, hotels can use advance purchase promotions to fill their rooms further ahead. As long as the dates are identified correctly, promotional rates and the occupancy advantage a hotel gains earlier on will result in a higher ADR than if the hotel waits until the last minute to pick up occupancy. And if you have rooms left last minute, having that occupancy base allows you to discount safely through an opaque channel like Hotwire, as opposed to dropping your retail pricing. To successfully implement this strategy, it is critical to know the booking windows, which for many markets may be further out than expected. For example, in Manhattan, 50% of Expedia’s international package business is already booked 90 days prior to arrival. For international standalone, the average booking window is 60 days. These patterns are examples of the information hotels can use to implement promotional strategies to target the customer during their shopping cycle.

3. Use value ads rather than rate promotions
Once you’ve identified your need periods, the next step is to create an offer that will help shift business in your direction without leaving rate on the table. One effective way to stand out that won’t affect ADR is to use value adds. For example, the best performing value adds we have seen in Manhattan are free breakfast and free upgrades. If your property doesn’t have a managed restaurant on-site or the ability to fulfill a value add at check-in, some OTAs like Expedia will manage the value add on your behalf.  For example, Hotels.com’s inline merchandising program recently offered a “free” pre-paid $50 Mastercard with qualifying bookings. Participating hotels saw a lift in their bookings, without an impact on their rate.

4. Turn up the volume on demand during eak compression dates
Every now and then, I hear some hotels talk about “cutting distribution costs” over peak dates by closing out OTAs. But a secret that many successful hotels have realized is that they can achieve higher rates over peak periods by ensuring inventory remains available through their distribution channels, and yielding rate up in response to the significant demand that ensues. We recently looked at one of Manhattan’s highest compression years in recent history. That year, there were 50 days with over 95% occupancy (according to STR). Over those dates, the market ADR was $344 and Expedia’s net ADR was $354. The reason behind this is that Expedia brings a lot of fairly price-insensitive demand at 2-3 weeks prior to peak compression dates, driven by customers that can’t find availability at their usual hotel. By keeping inventory open and adjusting rates up, hotels not only fill rooms at higher rates on Expedia, but also on their own channel through the Billboard Effect. We recently started sharing new peak compression date data with our hotel partners, which provides advance guidance to determine when a hotel has the opportunity to increase rates, or in some cases to revisit and perhaps reduce rates for specific dates. We share a mutual desire with our hotel partners to identify the ideal rate based on what the market can bear.

5. Stop giving away room upgrades
Many hotels offer some assortment of room types, even if it’s just a choice between standards and suites. The trouble is, the lead-in room type is often overbooked, forcing the property to upgrade the guest for free at check in. By applying a promotional strategy for upgraded room types (being sure to target dates or upgraded room types that might typically go unsold), hotels can entice bookings for higher rate rooms and achieve a higher ADR overall. For example, a typical mix of bookings at one hotel I work with in Manhattan was 75% standard rooms and 25% suites. After they began applying a promotional rate just for the suites, they boosted the mix of suite bookings to 33% and grew overall ADR from $226 to $253. They started getting paid for those room upgrades, and it paid off in higher ADR.

Obviously, the hotel industry today looks much different than in years past.  As hoteliers navigate today’s landscape, they need to remain flexible and open-minded to using new and different marketing channels in order to adapt and drive demand in the recovering market, and putting the above strategies into practice is a great place to start.  In the final analysis, it benefits an OTA and its hotel partners to grow rate and occupancy.  Reach out and engage your OTA market manager.  Odds are, they’ll have insights and suggestions about your marketplace that you may not have considered before.  Working together with OTA marketing experts like Expedia will accelerate the return to improved rate - but only through active collaboration

By Nick Graham, Expedia Director of Market Management for New York

10 Tecnicas SEO y herramientas para conseguir mas trafico.

Estar en los primeros lugares requiere un trabajo arduo de posicionamiento que involucra al código de programación, al diseño y a los contenidos. Para la optimización de la página se recomienda

• Contenido relevante, actualizado
• Conseguir backlinks o links externos hacia nuestro sitio, que sean de calidad. Tener una política agresiva de links recíprocos o LinkBuilding: Algunos sitios ofrecen la posibilidad de colocar un link a nuestra Web a cambio de poner un enlace a la página de ellos y esta puede ser una buena forma de incrementar la visibilidad, a condición de que el intercambio se realice con un sitio de calidad y relevante para nuestro rubro.
• No usar guiones bajos en nombres de archivo largos, usar guiones normales (-), 
• Usar palabras clave en el título de la página, 
• Utilizar título y etiquetas meta diferentes para cada página, 
• Usar etiquetas de encabezados (h1, h2, h3…) para definir la jerarquización del contenido, colocar en ellas las palabras clave, y usar código html. 
• Hay que enlazar internamente las páginas de nuestro sitio de manera consistente,
• Es conveniente incluir un mapa del sitio, que facilita al buscador el paso por las diferentes secciones del sitio en forma ordenada. 
• Usar también palabras con errores que suelen ocurrir al teclear rápido, como por ejemplo 'compar' en lugar de 'comprar'”. 
• Usar nombres de archivos que contengan frases clave y limitar el contenido en Flash, marcos o JavaScript, porque este tipo de contenido no es indexable por los robots de los buscadores, ya que para ellos es un espacio plano por el cual no pueden navegar.

Otras herramientas para conseguir más tráfico giran en torno a:

1. Redacción de notas en otros sitios, así como publicar banners que lleven tráfico a la Web del hotel.

2. Difusión a través de las redes sociales: Las redes sociales permiten mayor visibilidad, se posibilita el intercambio de ideas con los consumidores y experiencias sobre una marca y se gana en interacción con los mismos. Un grupo en una red social permite una mejora del posicionamiento en los principales buscadores, ya que los perfiles públicos son indexables por los mismos, aumentando la notoriedad de la empresa en Internet.

3. Analizar los resultados y la tasa de conversión: Si usamos el sistema de publicidad paga a través de enlaces patrocinados de los buscadores, conocido como SEM, para estar en los primeros lugares, generalmente se usará el sistema de pagar por clic (PPC), es decir, sólo tendremos que pagar por el anuncio si un navegante hace clic en él. Lo ideal es conocer los hábitos de tráfico de nuestros potenciales clientes y tener presencia sólo en esas circunstancias y no pagar clicks de navegantes que responden a otro perfil. Existen servicios que nos permiten supervisar la tasa de conversión de los PPC, partiendo del número de exposiciones de nuestros anuncios, la cantidad de clicks en cada uno de ellos, y el total de contactos efectivos.

4. Dar de alta en directorios importantes como Yahoo!, directorios temáticos y aquellos que sean relevantes para nuestro rubro.

5 Ways to Optimize Images on a Website or Blog

1. Pick an Appropriate Image

When selecting an image for a website page or blog post make sure that your image relates to the content, topic and theme. An image can help to visually relay a message and at the same time draw in your readers. The image doesn't necessarily have to relate to the content literally, it can serve as a creative interpretation, a way to generate curiosity. So next time you add an image, give it some extra thought.

2. Name the File Appropriately

Sticking with the theme of your content, pick a related keyword or keyword variation related to the content of your blog post or webpage. This has become more important with regards to how images are ranked in search results.

Many users commonly will name their image "pic1.jpg" or "logo.jpg." Are you guilty of that?

In this example a website was generating a lot of traffic from Google Images for the keyword "handcuffs," which is odd because they are neither in the law enforcement field nor in the kinky toys business. What had happened was that a blog post about how reduced budgets were handcuffing you to goverment used an image of handcuffs, which worked in this context, but was just poorly named. Note that Google in this case is citing the "location", aka file name as associated with the word "handcuffs."

Clearly the intent was not to generate a lot of traffic for the word handcuffs, however, since Google has to rely on textual cues as to what an image is about, you have to be as clear as possible about how the image relates to the content. By the way, notice how not a single visitor converted from that traffic source (and more than likely they won't) because those users are not the target/intended audience.  

3. Apply Alt Text

This is the name that will appear in association with the image. It's an additional way for search engines to identify what the image is about. Be sure to be descriptive with this text, as well, and do not overstuff the alt text with keywords. The point is to be clear and descriptive as to what the image is about and how it relates to your content. Generally this can be conveyed with five words or less.  

4. Image File Size

Most users like to view larger images, don't make me squint. However, it's important to keep a balance between an image being large enough and enjoyable to view, while at the same time not being TOO large. First option: Resize large images before uploading and inserting them. Just resizing an image within your blog does not reduce the file size enough. A file size of an image should be under 25k. Note that you can see the dimensions of an image through the image source and see that even when it's scaled down to a thumbnail it is still rather large (see dimensions of the first image above). Second option: Ideally the image would have been resized rather than scaled down. If you can edit the HTML of an image, it should instead appear as <img width="106" height="72" src="name.jpg" alt="name" />. Here you are indicating the precise size of the image through HTML, which is clearer for search engines this way and overall helps with page load time.

5. Maintain an Appropriate Image to Text Ratio

Your blog posts and your website pages should not be cluttered with images. Simple rules! Now, imagine if none of those images on your website were visible. Does your content still convey the message without them? The best practice is to have at least one image above the fold, typically aligned on the left or right so that the content wraps around your image, and your content can shine

Read Original Article at Hubspot 

Keywords tips by Hubspot

Background on Keywords

Today, most business purchasers looking to buy a product or service start the process by using a search engine to find vendors and product information. How can you make sure that your business is found when these people are looking for you or your competitors? You need to make sure you rank high in the search engine results, for as many search terms as possible, and hopefully for many of the terms that are searched on more frequently. The first step toward ranking high in the results for the most common terms that people search is to have the right keywords as part of your online presence.

Some things to keep in mind:

• You have to get on the first or second page of search results. If you are not on the first or second page of search results, it is almost like not being there at all.
• Shorter search phrases are searched more often. Usually more searches occur for “marketing” than for “online marketing” and both of those terms are searched more frequently than “small business online marketing”.
• It is usually more difficult to get ranked on the first or second page for popular searches. Because people know that “marketing” is searched more often than “small business marketing”, more people are trying to get onto the results for “marketing” and it is usually more difficult to get highly ranked for the more frequently searched term.

Picking Keywords

1) Create a keyword list.
Start by thinking about the 3-5 words that you think people will search on to find your business or businesses like yours. Then use keyword tools to understand how often people search on the terms related to your business. I used the keywords “marketing”, “lead” and “small business” for this example.

Here are two tools that allow you to enter one word (like “marketing”) and get a list of related search terms as well as the number of times people search for each term.

• Overture Keyword Tool
• Keyword Discovery

Google’s Keyword Tool is a little bit different because it does not give you the total number of searches, it just tells you if the search activity is low or high on a 1 to 5 scale. But, it has another useful tool that allows you to put in your website (or a competitor’s website) and then it will analyze the site and spit out keywords that are related to the site. This part of the tool is useful if you don’t really know where to start on finding keywords.

• Google Keyword Tool

Google Keyword Tool allows you to find keywords related to your website or a competitors web site.

For a really advanced tool that combines a lot of data from a variety of sources, you can use the SEO Book Keyword Tool. There is a lot of data and links in the table of results it produces, I will leave it to you to investigate:

SEO Book Keyword Tool

2) Combine and analyze the results. As you search, cut and paste the results into a spreadsheet. (I have found that in Excel it works best to copy the results from the Overture Keyword Tool and then using “paste special” and then “paste as text”.) Once you have done this for 2-3 key terms, you should have a spreadsheet with 200 or 300 rows. To analyze the results and make them useful for your business, we need to figure out which terms are the best ones for your company to focus on. To do this, try the following steps:

• Score each term on relevance to your business. Go through each row of the spreadsheet and score each search term on how relevant to your business it is in a new column called “Relevance”. I like to use a 1 to 5 scale, with 5 being the most relevant for my business. For example, I would give the term “small business internet marketing” a score of 5, while just the term “marketing” would probably get a 3 score, and the terms “lead crystal”, “lead singer” and “lead acid” should all get scored as a 1. These are all related to the word spelled “l-e-a-d”, but are not related to the word “lead” as I mean it, which is as a sales or marketing lead. The way I like to think about this is for the people searching on that term you are scoring, how likely is it that they will convert to a customer when they visit your website. A score of 1 means your business is not relevant to the person searching, a score of 5 means it is the perfect business for them.
• Score the terms by the number of searches. Create another column called “Volume”. In this column, we will score each term by the number of searches. Use the sorting functionality in Excel to sort the search terms from the largest number of searches at the top to the lowest number. Create another column called “Volume”. Now, in this volume column, we will score each term by the number of searches. For example, if your list contains 300 search terms, the top 60 in terms of number of searches would get a score of 5. The next 60 terms get a score of 4, continuing until the last 60 terms get a score of 1.
• Find the best search keywords. What we are looking for is terms that get a lot of searches and are very relevant to your business. For instance, “small business online marketing” is a very targeted term for our business, but it gets fewer searches than just “marketing”. Using the two scores we now have, we can create a column that gives a total of the relevance score and the volume score. Create a final column called “Total Score” and have it be equal to the sum of twice the relevance score plus the volume score. (You want to double the relevance score since it is more important than the volume score because there is usually a lot of competition for the high volume keywords and it is not worth going after unless they are very relevant to your business.) Now sort by this column to give you the terms at the top of your list that have the highest combination of search volume and relevance. In the image below you can see what terms became the ones I should focus on for my example. Often the most relevant terms have the highest volume, but there are usually some interesting findings as well. For instance, for me the terms “contemporary marketing”, “search engine marketing company” and “sale lead” all got a 3 for a volume score, but because of their high relevance, they are in my top 30 search phrases to focus on.

A list of search terms scored for volume and relevance and sorted by a total score.

3) Pick your keywords and use them on your web site. You really want to boil it down to a list of the 3-5 most important individual words, and then a list of the top keywords and phrases that you will use on your website. I usually like to focus on the top 30 terms from the spreadsheet. You should use the keywords in the page titles, the URLs, the page metadata and the text on the page itself.

Read Original Article at Hubspot

15 essential tasks to complete after installing WordPress

WordPress is a blog publishing platform that can be used to run many different types of website. Every time I install WordPress I run through the same geeky routine to ensure that it is well-functioning and easily discovered.

So, aside from the theme (the way the website looks) and the content (what the website says) these are my next steps after installing WordPress…

1. Create a Favicon

A favicon is a 16×16 pixel icon associated with the website that usually sits in the address bar of your browser. There are many online favicon creators and a plugin you can download for Photoshop. No self-respecting website is seen without one. Once saved upload to the route of your website and call in the <head> of every page like so.

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://robcubbon.com/favicon.ico"/>

www.jpg.pagespeed.ce.EmUXl7FHPQ.jpg" height="100" alt="http www" width="600" style="margin-top: 40px;" />

2. Put keywords in your URLs

One of the most important things you can do to your WordPress site in terms of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is to get your permalinks looking pretty!

By default WordPress uses web URLs like this: www.your-site.com/?p=N

. In the WordPress admin panel go Settings > Permalinks, choose Custom Structure and enter/%postname%/. Now your URLs will look like this: www.your-site.com/keyword-rich-post/.

If you are getting an error message when trying to do this or it doesn’t work, put this in your .htaccess file on your site’s route.

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

3. Create an XML sitemap

An XML sitemap is a file that lists the pages of your site and gives search engines other important information, for example, how often you add content, which is helpful in getting new pages crawled quickly.

Creating an XML sitemap on a WordPress site is incredibly easy. You just need to installGoogle XML Sitemaps plugin and follow the instructions.

Once you have created your sitemap you should submit it to Google and other search engines, see below.

4. Register your site with Google Webmaster Tools

This is something that will take 5 minutes and will tell you how many of your pages are indexed by Google, how fast your site loads in comparison to others, alert you to errors, enable you to pick a geographical location, submit your sitemap… really, the Google Webmaster Tools is a pretty awesome free service.

In order to register you have to upload a file to the route of your server so that Google knows you are indeed the webmaster.

5. Create a Robots.txt file

After you’ve submitted your XML sitemap to Google you need to tell other search engines out there of it’s existence by creating a “robot.txt” text file and putting in the route of your server. Here’s mine:

Sitemap: http://robcubbon.com/sitemap.xml

You can also ward search engine robots off certain areas of your site that aren’t for public consumption. So, for example, by adding Disallow: /dev/ to the file you can make sure the search engines don’t crawl or index any page inside the “dev” directory of your website.

6. Make a contact page

99% of websites require a noticeable link to a contact page which includes details of how to get hold of the website’s owner(s) as well as a contact form. There are various WordPress plugins that will help you with the contact form but the one I always use is Contact Form 7. It has an excellent default form ready to plug in and play or you can set up more complicated forms with extra fields and dropdown menus. It can also send an acknowledgment emails.

7. Install a spam filtering plugin

“Kismet” sometimes means a predetermined course of events – so take comment spam out of your destiny by installing the Akismet plugin that comes with WordPress. There are other comment spam plugins by I find this one usually does the trick. You will need a WordPress API key. You can use the same one for multiple sites. Just search your email client for “WordPress API” and you should find it if you’ve done this before.

8. Install a database backup plugin

There are two things you need to do in order to back up your WordPress website successfully: one is to back up the files on the server; the second is to back up the database. I use this WordPress Database Backup plugin to make copies of my MySQL database – you can get it emailed to you every week!

9. Install Google Analytics

Another Google service. The pro is cool website visitor stats that are absolutely free. The con is that Google gets to look at your bounce rates but that’s never bothered me. Again, registering takes five minutes, all you have to do it paste a bit of code given to you on the Analytics site into the footer.php of your theme.

10. Ensure good page titles with an SEO plugin

Search engines attach more importance to the title than anything else on a page so, for this reason, it’s necessary to get them right. A good SEO plugin like HeadSpace2 SEO or All in One SEO Pack will enable you to get the important keywords of a page at the beginning of the title as well as set the page meta information both globally and individually.

11. Install a related posts plugin

If you are using your WordPress site as a blog, one of the most essential plugins that will increase your site’s “stickiness” is the WordPress Related Posts plugin which creates a list of other articles with connected subject matter. I use a textual list here but there are other plugins that can show related posts with thumbnails like the nrelate Related Content plugin.

12. Add Subscribe to Comments plugin

Another great way to get visitors to stay – and return to – your site is adding the Subscribe to Comments plugin. This plugin enables commenters to sign up for e-mail notification of subsequent entries.

13. Add social networking and bookmarking buttons

And, staying with bloggy-type plugins for the moment, another great idea is to enable visitors to easily vote for your blog posts on various social bookmarking and networking sites. You may want a Twitter, Digg or Facebook button. Or you may want a plugin that displays multiple voting sites. It depends entirely on the type of blog and which type of social media it is drawn to. But without these buttons there is much less chance of traffic from social media.

14. Install a cache plugin

These plugins cache pages and deliver them without accessing the database making the site much faster. And, as speed is now a contributory factor in search engine results, it’s a good idea to install one of these. I use WP Super Cache.

15. Mobile plugin

Everyone’s talking about the mobile internet revolution and, while it may not be as seismic as some commenters will have you believe, you’d better get onboard. A normal blog or website may take long to load and be difficult to view on many smart phones. There are several great plugins that will format your site with a mobile theme for mobile visitors. WPTouch is generally considered to be one of the better ones.

How to Create IFrame-Based Facebook Pages

1. On your Facebook page, click on “Edit Page” (in upper right corner).

2. Click on “Apps” at the left hand side navigation. This will show a list of  any tabs that you currently have along with other installed applications.

3. At the very bottom of the Apps page, click on “Browse More Applications”.

4. In the search box, enter “developer” to search for the Facebook  Developer app.  Use the smaller search box on the left and not the main Facebook search bar at the very top of the page.

5. Click on the Developer app, then select “Add to my Page” under the logo at left. A box will pop up to show which pages you can install the app on. If you do not already see your page listed there, the app is likely already installed. If your page IS listed, click on “Add to Page” (left navigation towards the bottom) to install. After you have installed the app or if it is not listed, close the pop up window and click on the “Go to App” button under the logo on the left.

6. Click on the “Set Up New App” button at the top of the page. 

7. You’ll need to have a name for your page. This name will be what displays on the “tab”, so choose wisely.

There are now three screens that you will need to fill out to properly set up the app.

• The About screen contains basic information about the page/app. You can upload a logo for the page and will need to add your privacy policy and terms URLs to this page. NOTE: You MUST add either a trailing slash or a ‘?’ after your URLs for privacy and terms.  This is required by Facebook to submit the form.
• The Web Site screen contains information about your own company domain. NOTE: Like on the About screen, you will need to enter a trailing slash on your website URL.
• The Facebook Integration screen is where many of the setup details are entered.  
• Canvas Page: Should be something short and memorable as part of the URL for the app you are creating. This will become the URL for the Facebook app that will appear in your iFrame.
• Canvas URL: The actual page on your server with the content designed to appear in the iFrame, e.g., ‘Thanks for visiting our Facebook Page’. The Canvas Page will grab this URL and place it in the iFrame. Must have the ‘/’ at the end or a ‘?’. You can also supply a secure (https) version.Once you have completed these three screens, click “Save Changes”. You will be able to come back later and edit these settings as needed.After saving , click on the “Application Profile Page” (right hand navigation column, 2nditem from the top) link to add the new Facebook tab page to your Facebook page.
• Once on the Application Page, click on “Add to My Page” (left hand navigation column) to add the new content to your Facebook Page. A pop up window will appear. Click on the “Add to Page” button adjacent to your Facebook page name.
• Go to your Facebook page. If you don’t see the new Tab Page listed under the logo, you may need to change the order. Simply click on More” then “Edit” and drag your Tab page higher in the order to ensure it is a page that shows in the menu there by default, if you prefer.
• Preview the tab page by clicking on it. Make sure that the layout works the way you want. If it doesn’t, you can always edit your style sheet or page on your own website to ensure it fits properly.

 

How to Use Geolocation in Your Marketing Initiatives

The Value of Geolocation

It’s easy to see why marketers would be interested in geolocation: You can effectively target customers at the most important point in the consideration cycle – standing right in front of you. Digital marketing has historically been tasked with either an awareness/brand-building role, or – more frequently – a direct response role, driving customers right into the ecommerce funnel.

But we know that social media breaks down that wall between brand-building and purchase behavior. We’ve seen marketers effectively drive sales through social media engagement – Starbucks is one brand that’s done a great job on that front.

For consumers though, the benefits of geolocation are not clear. A study on consumer geolocation adoption shows when people have smartphones (and know about geolocation services), more than 30% say that privacy concerns prevent them from sharing their location on digital devices. So, how do we effectively use location for marketing purposes?

Build Geolocation Into Your Social Strategy

Sharing location is a high-trust activity.  To overcome consumer concerns about privacy, marketers can use the brand’s authority. In fact, brand trust is the only way geolocation technologies will move into the mainstream.

Nike’s running community, Nike+, is a great example of this. Nike uses geolocation to share successful runs easily across Facebook and Twitter. Runners share their achievements with their friends and build new relationships as part of the Nike+ community. In both cases, the benefit of tracking your athletic performance and achievements provide a clear reason to share personal information with Nike.

There's a way for everyone to get into Nike+, so choose the way that suits you best and start enjoying your membership in the world's largest running club.

Yelp also builds geolocation successfully on top of a social media strategy. By allowing reviewers to check in to restaurants, users can later be reminded to review the restaurant and build their reputation as an authoritative foodie. That reputation is worth giving up some privacy for.

Yelp is the fun and easy way to find and talk about great (and not so great) local businesses.

Don’t worry about getting your casual customers to check in. Instead, incentivize your most loyal brand advocates – your existing social media followers. Your customers will let you know how much they trust your brand based on their check-in behavior. And you can tell how vocal and influential a customer is when she raises her hand with a check-in. Reward and reinforce that behavior.

How to build geolocation into your social strategy:

• Tell your social networks that checking in is important to you. Make sure you remind your fans and followers to check in, especially for important or large events.
• Encourage cross-promotion from location services to social networks. Offer rewards for Foursquare check-ins – but only if the person is also a Facebook fan. Deliver rewards through Facebook to assure compliance.
• Use geographic information from social networks to drive location-based participation. Social networks like Facebook have city/state data on users – so use that for targeted messaging to drive in-store experiences.

Go Beyond Coupons to Real Rewards for Checking In

The good news is that there are ways to get customers to use geolocation services. The bad news is that the low-hanging fruit is not motivating customers right now.

Why consumers use geolocation apps:

• Coupons: The most common geolocation marketing approach is a discount for checking in. McDonald’s tested this out last fall, and increased check-ins by 33% in one day. But this is exactly the wrong strategy. Because these are already loyal fans, you don’t need to discount and give away margin. In fact, only 7% of users in the White Horse survey said they use geolocation for coupons.
• Badges and passport stamps: These are also not a motivating factor – though they can be a nice surprise. 4% indicated that this was a motivation for checking in. Games are fun when they’re well-designed (just look at the staying power of chess and Monopoly, even with advanced videogame consoles) – but when games are badly designed, they’re pretty boring. And right now, achievement badges in geolocation services are just not that interesting or meaningful.
• Social Engagement: By far, the most important motivation for consumers is the social component of location. 41% said the reason they checked in was to “connect with people I know or could meet” and another 21% said they were trying to “find a place liked by people they trust.”

Foot traffic and check-ins are not the same.

Marketers must create rewards and reinforcements that yield richer social connections with their customers. By putting customers in touch with each other, the brand creates a meaningful and engaged community around a shared idea. That’s a win for everyone.

Taplister does a great job of this by connecting beer aficionados with geolocation information about where their favorite pours are on tap. Taplister successfully builds on the beer lover’s desire to taste, compare and discuss beers with others interested in the topic. Alcohol has helped form new friendships for thousands of years – this just streamlines an activity that’s already important to many people.

Try searching for your favorite beer or browse our extensive database. Cheers!

Coke Zero’s TRON LiveCycle app also uses technology to build new social connections. This real-world game allows users to compete against other players in a live-action version of a TRON competition. The gaming elements provide a compelling experience to challenge existing friends or meet new ones.

How to go beyond coupons to encourage check-ins:

• Create a branded app or layer: your brand’s fans have something important in common – you! Help them meet each other by having your own geolocation experience.
• Use badges to drive new behaviors: Giving someone a free coffee after they already bought nine is incentivizing something they would have done anyway. Instead, use achievement badges to push someone to do something they would not have otherwise done – like recommend your business to a friend.

Read full article at Social Media Examiner.