Following on from our previous article on how to set-up and manage your Facebook Page, we now go into more detail on enhancing your businesses Facebook Page.

Now it's more important than ever to have a Facebook account representing your business. There are over 800 million users worldwide, with the average user logging in at least once a day. Having a strong business presence on Facebook means you immediately widen your audience base into the millions, and here's the best part; it's free.

However if you're not already social media savvy, creating one of these pages can be a daunting task. So, we've put together a guide on how to make the most of your brand's Facebook page, focusing on three important methods.

Start the Conversation
One of the most important things to do, after setting up your business page – is to start a conversation. Interact with your audience. The whole point of the page is to get your brand 'out there' on the Facebook stage so the more you converse with your audience and interact, the more you'll get out of the social platform.

Conversation doesn't have to be ground breaking, Nobel prize winning stuff – asking how your fans are today, uploading details of a promotion, survey or competition is more likely to initiate user engagement.

• Know your business

What is your unique voice? How can you bring your company story to life in an interesting way and in a way which your audience can connect to?

• Know your customers

Who are they? What's important to them and how do they connect to your brand? What will attract their interest?

• Know your goals

What sort of relationship do you want with your consumers? As well as using Facebook as a marketing tool do you want to drive customers to your site? Or simply create awareness of your brand? By defining your goals not only will it help clarify your strategy but measuring success will also be easier.

Set aside five to ten minutes a day to monitor your page and upload content. This means that your page will stay fresh and interesting for your audience. Be relaxed and conversational – keep it human to maximise audience connection.

Make sure you encourage user participation, by fun and interesting content which is easy to interact with. If a fan posts something on your wall reply to is as fast and efficiently as possible! It's a fantastic medium of free PR for your brand, so make the most of it.

Expand your fan Base
The wider the audience the further your content goes. Think of it as being a larger emailing list, the more contacts you have the more people are going to see your message. Facebook works in the same way – the more people 'Like' your page or become a fan, the wider spread your message will go.

Why not create a customised landing page, like theone below, for your Facebook? You could do this alone or work with a developer to create one. This will make your page stand out from competitors and will appear more professional.

Another great way of expanding your fan base is to co-promote. By partnering yourself with another local or affiliate brand you can latch on to their fan base, and they to yours. You can re-post any competitions or promotions they are running and they should do the same for you. This then pushes your brand and Facebook page out to the partnering brand's audience.

Another great way of driving more fans to your social platforms, is by using social plug-ins on your main website. You can easily install a 'Like' box on any of your website pages so it makes following you on Facebook even easier – fans don't even have to log on to the site to like your page. For more information about Facebook's social plug ins, you can check out their page here.

Here's one of Anicca's from our homepage:

Users can also 'Check-in' to your business or office.  This will appear on their status and will tell all those who 'Subscribe' to them that they are connecting with you physically as well as digitally.

Analyse and Optimise with Facebook Insights
Facebook offer tools to analyse and revise your success on the social platform. The tool, named Facebook Insights, comes as a basic package free of charge with any non-personal page you create.

Insights allows you to gather key metrics for your page – providing data about who visits your page and what users actually do on it.  You can then funnel this information to your advantage and create ways to drive more fans to the page, and increase interactions. You can download a guide on how to use these features here.

It is one thing to create a Facebook page, but making the most of one and fully utilising it to reach all of its potential audience is another thing entirely. However if you ensure you make the most of these three methods then the success of your Facebook page should definitely improve.
If you'd like to know more about how Anicca can help you with your social media presence or for social media advice, get in contact with us today.

In our social media age every business, however big or small, needs to have some kind of social standing. Sometimes people are daunted by social media - branding it to be 'a social thing for the youth generation', well, it's not.

There are over 800 million people logging in to Facebook, which means it’s a priceless platform to spread the word about your brand - and best of all it's free!
To help you on your way, we will be submitting some quick guides to setting up your business on Facebook and how to get the best out of the time you put in.

So here's how to get yourself started:

You need to go onto the Facebook website and sign yourself up. Once you've created your account using an email address and creating a password you can go from there and create your own business page. Follow this link here to get your page rolling, you should see a screen like the shot below:

Step 1: Pick a category and name for your page
Select the category which best fits you company or brand. If you can localise your listing do so – it always makes your page more accessible to local customers (this category is recommended by Facebook to local businesses which provide a product or service to or in a particular place). Remember to choose you category carefully as these cannot be changed afterwards.
Step 2: Add a Profile picture to represent your company
Click 'Upload Picture' near the top of the page and choose a photo to upload for your page. This image should be something which best represents you company or brand so people who don't know who you are. You should select an image which is a decent size and clear, so that when seen as a thumbnail people can still identify you. If you want to see an example take a look at a personal profile, and look at the size of the 'Profile Picture', as that’s the same as yours will be.
Step 3: Add information about your Brand
Underneath your profile picture, you'll see a section which says 'Add information to this page'. Once you can start adding information, put in as many details as possible. Transparency is important, especially on social profiles so the more your audience can find out about you the more trustworthy your page will appear, and you'll also appear more interesting to the fans. The more you talk about who you are, what you do and where your customers can buy your products the more successful you'll be.
Step 4: Make it rich and engaging for your audience
Just like user profiles, business pages have multiple tabs, the first being a wall tab for yourself and users to share information, a business Information and Boxes tab (for applications), all of which will come with the page by default.

You can choose to devote entire tabs to several Facebook applications, such as Photos, Reviews and Discussions. In addition, applications built by outside developers can choose to use Page tabs.
The richer the content you add, the more ways users can engage with you and extend that connection to their friends. Post photos of employees, customers and products. Add video clips of your bar or hairdressers or tyre-fitters doing what they do best. ‘Behind the scenes' content often works well. List an event for your grand opening or in-store sale or why not write a note about up and coming promotions. The choices are endless, entirely controlled by you and most importantly they're free!
Step 5: Publish yourself!
When you're ready to share your page with the world, simply click 'Publish page', and you're now connected to the Facebook sphere.

Optimise your page's performance by clicking the "Edit page" option and setting a variety of your own controls. For example, you can control the default landing page for users who have not yet 'Liked' your Page.

You can also choose whether or not to allow fans to share Wall posts, photos and more; allowing these will enrich your page and increase its reach across Facebook.
Facebook Adverts can link to your page, reach your exact target audience and increase your fan base. Since Facebook can automatically enhance your adverts with stories about these fans engaging with your page, advertising your page can generate a virtuous cycle of consumer engagement over time.
Don't forget to share updates and your page with other friends on Facebook. You can do this by using the 'Find friends on Facebook' tool. Once you've selected who you'd like to connect to you can then share information, updates and everything else on your brand's page with them.
Step 6: Update regularly
It's important to keep your brand's page fresh and update it as much as possible.  This doesn't have to be hours of work, five to ten minutes a day will be ample time. Keep people updated on any relevant news about your company or another. Keep posting competitions or promotions and update previous posts. By doing this you'll be able to roll out a higher level of content, so your fans have more of an opportunity to see what's happening with your company and give them more of a chance to interact with you.
You can also now send messages to your fans by clicking 'Send an update to Fans', located in the top left hand corner of the page. Updates are a great way of sending out new, interesting information, promotions, sales or other events.
So now you've got your page set-up and are able to update your page and share these updates you can begin to fully utilise your Facebook page. Remember the more you put in the more you'll get out, and that if your content is rich and engaging then your fans are far more likely to interact with you and your page.
If you find social media a complete mine field and wish to know more about the subject, you can check out our previous social media blogs or why not contact us for social media campaign management and set up?
Visit our homepage for more information, or give us a call today!
Keep checking our blog page for more in our 'How to...' blog series.

Last year, we saw the social network roll out the new profile interface but it wasn’t until this week’s blog post that they announced the timeline will become mandatory for all users.

When your profile has been updated to timeline, you will receive a notification and then you have 7 days to make any changes you want.

You can choose to publish your new timeline profile at any time in these 7 days or it will be automatically updated and made live at the end of your 7 day preview.

What is Facebook timeline?

If you’ve already updated your profile to timeline the first thing you’ll notice is the new photo banner. At the top of your profile you have a large header banner which is filled with a photo of your choice.

screenshot from Facebook Blog

The main purpose of timeline is to allow you to tell your story.

Facebook is encouraging users to add life events and personal details which pre date Facebook. You can add things like births, deaths, homes, jobs and holidays.

You can add extra details to your timeline from your status box by clicking on ‘life events’.

You can choose to hide posts from your timeline or change the date or location of the post too.

screenshot from Facebook Blog

There is a privacy dropdown menu which allows you to custom select those that can see posts. If you don’t want to delete a post but don’t want it visible to others there is an option to just make it visible to your.

screenshot from Facebook Blog

One of the main new functions of timeline is the activity log which allows you to review your posts all the way back to when you joined Facebook.

The new interface may look scary but that’s only because its new but don’t panic there is an introduction guide to help you through the whole transition.

President, Barak Obama, is inviting people to use 'Hangouts' on Google+ for a 45 minute chat on Monday (30th January).

The US President, who already uses Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, will be answering questions via the Google+ video feature – Hangouts.

Hangouts on Google+ allows you to video chat, chill out while on the web and watch YouTube videos together. You can invite anyone from your circles to join and they can also invite anyone from their circles to join too.

The search engines social network currently has 90m worldwide users and is estimated to have 400m users by the end of 2012.

Voters are being invited to post questions to The White House YouTube channel by 28th January. The top voted questions will be selected to join Obama’s live Hangout session on Monday.

Macon Phillips, The White House director of digital strategy, said, "For online engagement to be interesting, it has to be honest.

"We want to give Americans more control over this conversation and the chance to ask questions they care about.”

You can watch Obama’s live Hangout on The White House YouTube channel on Monday at 10.30pm.

Enrich your Blog with Zemanta

Unless you have the right tools and knowledge, writing an optimised blog article, product description or content is a hard task. However there are certain sites and tools which you can use to boost your chances of ranking well in a search engines results page.

Zemanta is a plug-in tool that looks over your shoulder while you blog and gives you tips and advice, suggests related content and pictures which makes sure your posts get promoted as they deserve to be.

The tool also suggests links and enables you to link your blog with other sites such as Wikipedia, increasing your Page Rank and your chances of being listed in Google's search results.

Zemanta offers a free service which allows a user to create content and optimise it, making your content more likely to rank well. The software also allows users to download 'bloggers assistant', an 'add-on' for your internet browser. The idea is that you can use whichever blogging platform you like (be it WordPress, Blogger or Squidoo for example) and the add-on will appear next to your editor,  you can then input links into your own copy from there.

If you are a user, Zemanta will start recommending your posts to other users where appropriate. They won't rank them any lower than other professional media articles, which means they will show up in sidebar recommendations.

So here's how you use Zemanta: -

1. Firstly, you can try before you download! Click on the Try Demo icon in the orange box. This way you can actually test the product before you download it, see how it works for you and make sure you like what it does.

2. If you're happy with what you see, go back to the homepage and select 'Download Extension'. You can select exactly which browser, blogging platform or download a 'free writer plug-in'.

3. Follow the installation instruction which will now appear. These instructions will differ depending on which browser you use.

4. Alternatively if you're using the tool as a server-side plug-in then hit 'Get Zemanta for...' and the tool's installation will transfer onto your hardware.

5. If you get stuck anywhere along the way – fear not – you can check out Zemanta's FAQ and tutorials page here.

6. Or, if you'd rather watch a video explaining how it's done, check out their Video below:

Zemanta in 60 Seconds from zemanta on Vimeo.

But remember that using a tool like this, will feed plenty of links into your content, but should be balanced out with optimised content and title tags.

This is what Anicca Solution's SEO team specialise in. Our staff are qualified Internet marketing professionals, Anicca Digital Solutions is an SEO agency that takes the guesswork out of SEO. With over seven years experience in SEO and Internet marketing, we know the precise SEO services needed to not only move your website up the search engine rankings - but keep it there too!

With collectively eight years of experience in the field. Here are some of the many SEO services we use to enhance websites just like yours:

• SEO keyword research – finding the best performing keywords, in terms of search volume and competition, that are relevant to your business
• SEO audits & strategy – a thorough review of your current SEO and a detailed strategic plan of how to improve it
• Competitors Audit – analysis of your competitors to identify further SEO action points in your market
• Link building – we find the best quality inbound links to your site to improve your search engine rankings
• SEO-enriched content creation – keyword-rich, unique content for your site that appears higher in the search engine results
• SEO training courses – we can show you how to improve your SEO yoursel

If you're interested in our services or would like to find out more about what we do at Anicca Solutions, contact us today.

Well, Google is endorsing this type of social search with their introduction of ‘ask on Google+’ feature.

This update is slowly being rolled out and if you search on Google (.com and co.uk) whilst signed into your account you will see an eleventh result on the first page prompting you to ask your friends on Google+.

screenshot from searchengineland.com

If you click on the hyperlinked ‘ask on Google+’ you will see this box appear:

screenshot from searchengineland.com

You can then choose to use the standard greeting or customise it and post to whichever circles you want.

This post will then appear at the top of your Google+ stream.

We knew that the search engine giant would be pushing their social network in 2012 but as they add more features which integrate with search we’re starting to ask why aren’t you on Google+ yet because it’s becoming a necessity for brand management, marketing and ecommerce.

If you need any help setting up or managing your company’s social presence call our SEO team today to find out about Anicca’s social packages.

By Jemma Crowston

In the latest Google’s webmaster blog post they announced that they will be tweaking the algorithm to take website page layouts into consideration.

This update to the search engine results will only affect less than 1% of searches globally.

Google has reacted to complaints that when you click on a search result and you reach a page which has blocks of ads ‘above the fold’ the user isn’t getting a good service if the content they are searching for is hidden beneath the scroll.

Sites like this may not rank highly after this algorithm update.

Google said, “We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content. This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page.

“This new algorithmic improvement tends to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads.”

The algorithm change will noticeably affect less than 1% of searches globally.

Google has suggested that you consider how your web pages use the area ‘above the fold’ and make sure the content is not obscured or hard for visitors to find quickly.

If you update your web page layout Google will re-crawl and process enough pages from your site to assess the changes.

How long that takes will depend on several factors, including the number of pages on your site and how efficiently Googlebot can crawl the content. On a typical website, it can take several weeks for Googlebot to crawl and process enough pages to reflect layout changes on the site.

Google are still advising website publishers to focus their efforts on making their website user friendly and not to focus too specifically on algorithm tweaks as the search engine giant estimates that they will make more than 500 improvements to their algorithm during 2012.

Anicca Solutions is once again an official blog partner for SMX London (May 15-16) and you can take advantage of our discount code.

The Search Marketing Expo is an annual event which takes place around the globe offering you a chance to network and learn about new techniques in the search industry.
Ann Stanley (MD of Anicca) has been a guest speaker at the SMX London and SMX Stockholm shows.

She delivered a presentation on keyword research and copywriting for search success in Stockholm last September.

The 2012 SMX London will take place on Thursday, 16th May and Friday, 17th May at the Chelsea Football Club, Stamford Bridge.

Delegates will have a choice of presentations to choose from including SEO, social media, paid search plus a host of advanced sessions on all the search marketing areas.

Whether you’re a search marketing novice or expert, the SMX London show will bring you up to speed with the latest techniques to help you maximise your online presence.

Book your tickets today for the SMX London show and use our discount code – ANICCA012 – to receive a 15% discount.

If you’re planning on joining the 12 hour ‘blackout’ protect your SEO efforts by following a few simple guidelines from Google.

What is SOPA?

Let’s start off by giving you a bit of background to tomorrow’s activities:-

Last year, we saw US Congress draft two bills; Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA).

PIPA would give the US government more control over the access of rogue websites containing infringed content and it’s expected to be discussed by the government on January 24.

SOPA was intended to take down any infringed content from search engines and webmasters but after a huge anti-SOPA movement via social networks such as Facebook and Twitter the act has now been paused.

The web goes on strike

Despite the bill being paused, protestors have planned a mass ‘blackout’ for 12 hours tomorrow (Wednesday 18th January) from 5am to 5pm UK time (12am-12pm EST) to discourage any similar legislation in the future.

One of the websites who have come out in support of the strike is Wikipedia who has an estimated 25m visitors a day.

Twitter addicts (like me) breathed a sigh of relief when Twitter CEO Dick Costolo branded Wikipedia’s support of the strike as ‘foolish’ yesterday.

How to protect your SEO during the ‘blackout’

Website owners are being encouraged to join the strike by taking down their site for 12 hours using but Google’s Pierre Far has released some useful tips on how to protect your SEO whilst ‘going dark’.

Here are the do’s and don’ts from Far’s post or alternatively you can read the full Google+ post entitled ‘Website outages and blackouts the right way’.

Do:

- use a 503 HTTP return in the header for all the URLs participating in the ‘blackout’

This method will ensure Google does not index the copy (or lack thereof) and it won’t consider the blank pages as duplicates.

Don’t:

- change the DNS settings

- change the robots.txt file contents

- alter the crawl rate settings in WMT

Anicca won’t be joining the strike tomorrow but let us know if you’re planning on joining the strike by leaving a comment below.

By Jemma Crowston

So you think you’ve created a great title tag and meta description but when you search for that page an alternative title appears. Why?

We discover the truth about the alternative title tag decisions Google often makes with their latest blog post entitled ‘Better page titles in search results’.

You’ll often read complaints about title tags not appearing properly in search results so the search engine king has written a reply via their blog.

What is a title tag?
This is the first piece of text people see when they search for a keyword or phrase; it’s the first sentence and the text link which leads visitors to your site.
The meta description is the short sentence underneath this which pulls in the visitor which will often include keywords suitable for that page and any unique selling points (USP).

In Google’s blog post they explain that alternative title tags are often used when a page has no title or a non-descriptive title. For example, a title using the word ‘home’ does not indicate what the page contains.

Google said, “We use many signals to decide which title to show to users, primarily the <title> tag if the webmaster specified one. But for some pages, a single title might not be the best one to show for all queries, and so we have algorithms that generate alternative titles to make it easier for our users to recognize relevant pages.

“Our testing has shown that these alternative titles are generally more relevant to the query and can substantially improve the click through rate to the result, helping both our searchers and webmasters. About half of the time, this is the reason we show an alternative title.”

Some of the other issues which can affect whether your title tag is used or not is if you duplicate titles for different pages on your site or if you use unnecessary long and hard to read titles.

Google has said they try to let webmasters know if their titles can be improved through the HTML Suggestions feature in Webmaster Tools.

Anicca’s WORDS team specialises in creating SEO content for websites and if you need any help or advice on making your title tags and meta descriptions relevant for search then contact us today.