Win a Free Facebook FBML Application Tab!
Posted by Analisa in Social Media / Inbound Marketing on February 8th, 2010
Call us crazy, but we are giving away our Facebook Page development services for free. We have received many inquiries about our custom FBML page, and Tim’s posts on FBML are wildly popular, so we wanted to share the love with you!
A business or organization that comes to us by Feb 22nd, with the following requirements, will win a FREE custom-designed Facebook Page tab (a simpler version of our custom tab).
The winner must:
- Have an existing Facebook Fan Page (in addition to a personal profile or group);
- Supply 2-3 images;
- Supply text, with hyperlinks, if desired;
- Be willing to make HyperArts a temporary admin of your Page (for implementation purposes);
- Be a fan of HyperArts!
We will design and develop a page for a business or organization that contacts us regarding this contest, simply email smo at hyperarts dot com with the URL to your website and your Facebook Fan Page.
How to Announce and Promote Your Blog – Best Practices
Posted by timware in SEO - Google, Social Media / Inbound Marketing on January 12th, 2010
OK. You’ve set up your blog, in a subdirectory of your primary domain, you’ve implemented a well considered “taxonomy” for categories and tags, and you’ve begun to blog. You’re very pleased with the posts you’ve created (you should have at least 4 or 5 posts published) and want to begin promoting your blog.
In promoting your blog, the most important thing you must remember is don’t overdo it!. In the community of bloggers and social media, patience is the key. Make sure your primary objective is adding value to the Web. Be sincere, relevant and informative.
Three Things You Should Know About Blogging
- Check your facts, your grammar and your spelling!
Remember, you are your brand. Your posts represent who you and your brand are to the world. Your reputation — your expertise and your attention to detail — is on the line with every post. Poor writing, erroneous facts, and spelling errors scream “Amateur!” First and foremost, take that extra bit of time to get it right before publishing. - Make Sure Your Blog is Properly SEO’d!
These SEO steps are essential in maximizing your search engine rankings for each post:- Your posts should be search-engine-friendly, and this is more than just incorporating keywords into your content. Your posts’ URLs should be natural-language, keyword-rich: “/your-blog-directory/the-title-of-this-post-keywords/”, not “/your-blog-directory/?p=123″ (in WordPress, use “Permalinks” to accomplish this).
- Your category “taxonomy” should be well organized with keyword-aware category names.
- Each post should have a unique, descriptive and keyword-rich title tag and “description” meta tag (Read my post on SEO Best Practices for your WordPress blog).
- Again … Don’t Overdo It!
Remember, you’re entering an established community. Take time to introduce yourself, get to know the conventions and etiquette of the blog space, and be patient. If you make contributions of value to the conversations, you will get value in return. Here is an excellent list of suggestions of what NOT TO DO to promote your blog!
Will You Continue to Follow Twitterers Who Tweet Ads?
Posted by timware in Social Media / Inbound Marketing on January 12th, 2010
Skip the rant … take the poll…
I read the a San Francisco Chronicle article this morning on the pay-per-tweet advertising model which is starting to gain ground and has a lot of people, including me, feeling very uncomfortable (and not in a good way).
Advertisers like Sony, NBC Universal and Microsoft have lined up for campaigns that pay Twitter users a few dollars to $10,000 per tweet, depending on their number of followers or their sphere of influence. [...] In the past six months, companies like Ad.ly, Sponsored Tweets of Orlando and newcomer MyLikes of San Francisco have launched services to broker ad deals between Twitter users and sponsors. The tweets are supposed to be marked with notations such as “(ad)” or “#ad” to comply with new Federal Trade Commission guidelines governing advertisements or endorsements by bloggers, experts and celebrities.
Like a lot of people, I think this flies in the face of the “spirit of Twitter” and the spirit of opt-in marketing. It seems like bait and switch. We start following people because of the value of their tweeting, and now advertising begins to creep into the mix. Of course, I understand that folks gotta make money. But, as Mashable’s Pete Cashmore asks, isn’t this “the exact same outdated model of interruption-based advertising that we’ve been trying to block out with a TiVo or an internet ad blocker?”
Once our favorite tweeters are taking money from advertisers, can we trust any product recommendations they might tweet? Can they take advertising from Microsoft and still criticize Microsoft? Hmmm. Troubling.
I’m very curious as to what others think about this. Will you abandon those you follow when you start seeing their ads in your Twitter stream?
Loading …Information & Opinions about Ads on Twitter
- Twitter Ads Are Evil: Here’s Why – Pete Cashmore
- Robert Scoble on in-tweet Twitter ads
- Mark Suster, Ad.ly investor, defends in-tweet/in-stream Twitter advertising
Facebook Static FBML and Internet Explorer – CSS & Stylesheets
Posted by timware in Social Media / Inbound Marketing, Web Coding on December 18th, 2009
In my post on adding the Facebook application Static FBML to your Fan Page, I laid out in detail how to use this very useful app to create very nice page layouts for your Wall tabs. As I’ve researched this further, I found that good ol’ Microsoft Internet Explorer versions 6, 7 and 8 do not handle these Static FBML pages like Firefox, Safari and the other browsers. Of course, any seasoned Web developer expects this and IE does not disappoint.
Static FBML CSS: Internet Explorer (all versions) and other browsers
With Internet Explorer you have only two options in applying CSS styles to your Static FBML application tab:
- Calling an external stylesheet using, for example:
<link href=”http://yoursite.com/styles/layout.css” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” />
Of course, you need to upload the CSS file to your server (or some Web-accessible server). NOTE: Add this string to the end of your external stylesheet call to force Facebook to refresh the version it has cached (example): <link href=”http://yoursite.com/styles/layout.css?v=10.0” rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” /> - Putting the CSS styles inside the HTML mark-up, i.e. inlining the styles, for example:
<div style=”font-size:14px; margin:0 auto;”>
Although inlining the styles has appeared to always work with Static FBML application-tab pages, using calls to an external stylesheet seems to be only recently supported. I tested our HyperArts Static FBML Page, calling an external stylesheet, and it’s working fine. (If anyone does notice an issue, please let me know!)
The option that <em>doesn’t</em> work with Internet Explorer is using the style tag to embed your CSS rules:
<style type="text/css">
.some-class { margin:0; font-size:14px; }
#some-id { margin:0; font-size:14px; }
</style>
Although the above works in most other browsers, Internet Explorer ignores the contents of that tag.
If at all possible, you should choose the option to call an external stylesheet. You have much greater flexibility in applying — and making changes to — your CSS using a stand-alone stylesheet.
Facebook to limit app tab pages to 520 pixels – 240px less!
Posted by timware in Design, Social Media / Inbound Marketing on December 10th, 2009
This morning I read a very interesting post by Michael Lazerow of BuddyMedia.com about Facebook’s upcoming changes to Fan Pages.
There are a number of changes that will affect marketers who’ve been working Facebook, but for me, as a Web designer, the one that caused the most pain was Facebook’s intention of reducing the width of application pages from 760 pixels to 520 pixels.
The first thing I did was look for another authoritative source of this and, unfortunately, I found it on Facebook’s Developer site where, in stark red type, they state: “Important: In late 2009/early 2010, application tabs will be 520 pixels wide. For more information, please read the Developer Roadmap.” On the Developer Roadmap:
Application Tabs will be the only way to integrate applications into profiles and Pages. Application tabs will shrink from 760 pixels wide (today) to 520* pixels wide to accommodate a slightly revised design. Boxes, info sections, and the Boxes tab will be removed in the near future.
Now that’s a BIG difference and all the brands/businesses who’ve labored over creating custom pages using apps like Static FBML are going to have to rethink those pages, now that they have 240 fewer pixels to work with. Here’s what the maximum width will look like (example from a recent page we created, anticipating the reduction):
So I and a whole lot of Web designers have their work cut out for them, so to speak.
Of course, the question is, What happens to that 240 pixels of new real estate Facebook has available to use for itself? Is this a “land grab” by Facebook?
Other resources:
Michael Lazerow’s Blog Post on MediaPost
InsideFacebook.com (Justin Smith)
Google Real-time Search – Better than Bing?
Posted by timware in SEO - Google, Social Media / Inbound Marketing on December 8th, 2009
UPDATE (Dec 9, 2009): When I did a Google search this morning, having just launched Firefox, it appeared Google was integrating the real-time search after the “News results for….” by default, and it included a little scrollbar:
However, just checking here at 5:38PM PST, it appears that real-time search doesn’t show by default but is revealed by clicking the “Show options” link beneath Google’s logo:
and then selecting “Latest” to see the streaming real-time results.
So it appears they’re still fine tuning….
ORIGINAL POST: Dec 8, 2009: Today Google announced the rollout over the next couple of days of real-time search, blending content from their index with real-time feeds from Twitter, FriendFeed, MySpace, Facebook, as well as blogs. This comes right on the heels of Microsoft Bing’s rollout of a similar but more limited feature last week, which they originally announced on October 29. Although Google’s real-time search is not “officially” live yet, you can check it out here. Below is what Google’s real-time feed looks like.
Blog Hosting for Best SEO: External, Subdomain, Subdirectory?
Posted by timware in SEO - Google, Social Media / Inbound Marketing, WordPress on October 25th, 2009
Where and how you host your blog is as important to your search engine rankings as what plugins you use and how you optimize your blog posts. I have previously discussed the best WordPress SEO plugins, but here I want to discuss the importance of how you set up your blog’s hosting: 1) separate domain; 2) subdomain; 3) external hosted solution (WordPress.com, Typepad, Blogger); 4) subdirectory.
I won’t go into the separate-domain issue, but you can read Mark Jackson’s Search Engine Watch post about this option. Needless to say, the benefits to your primary domain in this case would be nil, except for backlinking from the new, blog domain to your primary domain. But because this blog domain will have likely been recently activated, you will have to wait at least a year before Google assigns it any meaningful TrustRank to the new domain.
As all SEOs know, a business should almost always host their blog under their own domain, rather than the other options mentioned above. When other websites link back to your posts or other pages of your blog, you want the backlinking credit to go to your domain, not to Blogger.com or Typepad.com.
Recently, a client asked us about setting up a blog for them and we told them what we tell all our clients:
- Use WordPress as the blogging platform: We love the incredible number of plugins and themes that are developed by the very large and active WordPress community. And we really like WordPress as a blogging platform (and Dan Cederholm agrees!);
- Install WordPress in a subdirectory: Install the blog under your own domain, in a subdirectory that has a keyword-rich name, eg /widget-sales-usa/) rather than “blog” (we actually use “blog”, but there’s a reason…) or “wordpress.”
HubSpot Business Blogging?
Not long after this conversation, our client informed us that they had purchased the HubSpot “Business Blogging” package, and they asked if this would be as beneficial to their SEO as having a WordPress blog. I decided to do some research.
Read the rest of this entry »
Negative Feedback is a GOOD Thing?
Posted by Analisa in Social Media / Inbound Marketing on October 23rd, 2009
I read a blog post from Ignite Social Media this morning, “How to Handle Negative Reviews” and it reminded me of a topic from last night’s social media event here at HyperArts…Tisha from Numi Tea brought up the topic of negative comments on their Facebook page and it started a lengthy discussion of the actual benefits of a negative post on a social media site.
Ignite points out that on some sites like Yelp or TripAdviser, the business or organization does not have the opportunity to respond to negative reviews. But if a complaint is made via Twitter, or Facebook or a blog comment, there are several ways to turn that negativity into something beneficial for both parties involved.
How to Add YouTube Videos or Flash to Facebook Static FBML Pages
Posted by timware in Social Media / Inbound Marketing, Web Coding on October 9th, 2009
As detailed in my previous blog post on the Facebook application Static FBML, this Facebook app is a great way to create custom pages with layouts created in CSS/HTML, or by using Facebook’s proprietary FBML (Facebook Markup Language).
Recently, someone asked us how to embed video in a Static FBML page. Well, you can actually embed any Flash object using FBML, and it’s pretty easy. Here’s how it’s done if you want to embed a YouTube video (Note: you can use this technique to embed any Flash object with the .swf extension).
Read the rest of this entry »
Best WordPress Plugin for Blackberry, iPhone, iTouch, PDA Display
After viewing our HyperArts blog on my iPhone, I realized that there must be a WordPress plugin to display WordPress sites in a PDA-friendly way.
One site I found that talked about PDA-friendly blogs, FarFromFearless.com, touted the plugin iWPhone Wordpress Plugin and Theme. However, when I tested it out on my iPhone my site displayed absolutely nothing. On the developer’s page, they only claim compatibility to v. 2.5 of WordPress, so apparently they’ve stopped developing this plugin.
After some searching on the WordPress Plugins site, I located the plugin WPtouch, and it works great.
