“Aside of the marketing issue – Facebook in effect defeated it’s own purpose by not allowing businesses to connect with customers on a more intimate level. By forcing “fans” to see only the wall or info tab upon entry, they learn nothing about who they are dealing with, other then the info Facebook allows them to see. I understand any company’s desire to increase revenue, but not at the expense of the users – small business is the back bone of Facebook. Facebook is slowing taking the “social” out of its “social network.”

I could not disagree more. Newsflash to Facebook Marketers: We Facebook users are not idiots. We use our own accounts day-in and day-out with the Wall as the primary feature. It’s what WE actually like about Facebook.

We know how to go to the Info page to get someone’s email or phone number, and we know where to go to look at their photos and videos if we want to. The concept of  Tabs are not foreign to us, though we might not know that YOU call them Tabs.

We know how to like a page or business, as evidenced by our love for Barack Obama, Boo and Can This Onion Ring Get More Fans Than Justin Beiber. We know that when we visit a page, we will be presented with the options to interact with that person, company or brand through their various applications and tabs.

Oh, and by the way, the average person doesn’t know the difference between their personal page and a PAGE or a GROUP page (trust me, I’ve had to explain it about a billion times to friends, small biz owners and non-profit managers). It’s precisely BECAUSE they don’t know that difference that they don’t expect to interact differently on Pages than they do on their OWN pages – they expect to use the Wall first and foremost.

This is THE reason the Facebook landing page restriction shouldn’t matter to your business. An average Facebooker wants to come to a wall and see real interaction between the person behind your brand and the people who like it. Get that one thing right, and noone will care what tabs they land on (or don’t). You’ll continue to accumulate fans and likes by the dozens and hundreds, mystifying the dozens of Facebook marketers who today swear it can’t be done.

If you’re using WordPress (please, tell me you’re using WordPress already), the videos below will show you how to find, install and use a plugin called Organize Series. Keep your hard earned series from being relegated to page 28 of your site.

And yes, I know I could have made a series of these four videos…

INTRO TO ORGANIZING SERIES ON WORDPRESS

HOW TO ADD A SERIES

A POST IN A SERIES USING THE DEFAULT SETTINGS

HOW TO ADD A POST TO A SERIES

Undoubtedly, this video has been shared on Facebook and Twitter the same number of times. I’m not even an OSU fan, and when President Gordon Gee comes across with Brutus Buckeye, I almost shed a little tear.

So this post you’re reading right now…it could be about anything, right? It just happens to be about OSU because that’s what was hot in my neck of the woods this week. Whatever your non-profit or small business writes about, you obviously want your readers to share with other people, whether those people are at your site or not. Now visitors can simply click a Facebook LIKE button on your site and just like they LIKE a link or video on Facebook, they can LIKE your article. Once they LIKE it, a short line will appear on their wall that says, “Angie Meeker likes Adding a Facebook Like Button To Your WordPress Website,” except that it will have their name, and their article, obviously. Let’s get people showing their friends on Facebook how much their like your website.

Here’s how to install the NEW Facebook LIKE button on your WordPress site.

BTW – It didn’t show up in my feed because when I tested it earlier, and it DID show up, I hid it…so that it wouldn’t be there when I went to show you it magically appear for the video. Try it yourself and see it work!

Jim has a new book coming out this August. Attention! This Book Will Make You Money: How to Use Attention-Getting Online Marketing to Increase Your Revenue will be released shortly before the the Affiliate Summit. (Yes, those are affiliate links-go preorder your copy so you have it before the Summit). But what good is a kick-arse book without a kick-arse website to go with it?

www.attentionthebook.com.

We created a site for Jim which gives his attention getting ideas a platform for making you money. He’s giving away some pretty great ideas and goodies already, including a copy of Linchpin. If you haven’t been there yet, pack up your attention and go there now!

PS. If your site needs a refresher, or you’re ready for a new site altogether, mention that you got our attention through Jim and get a $50 discount!

Non-profits are very easily drawn into the next big idea, whether it’s coupon books, swipe cards at the grocery store, or in this case – multi-level affiliate marketing online. Here are three things to remember when considering any affiliate fundraising program online.

1.  This type of affiliate marketing relies on a large number of end users who will first download the application and then use it on a regular basis. First and foremost, this client doesn’t yet have a large, consistent number of guests to her site. Not everyone who visits her site will enroll in the program, obviously, so if her non-profit is going to depend on it as a regular source of income, then they need to increase the number of views their site gets on a regular basis. This will give the affiliate program a fighting chance!

2.  For this particular client, a quick conversation about MyShoppingGenie revealed that it wasn’t the best match for the particular type of person who DOES visit her site. Her end user is likely not one who is at home comparing prices of products to purchase online, so an affiliate product that helps do that better probably wasn’t going to be a homerun for her site. Make sure that your affiliate program makes sense for your unique users. For example, if Kroger offers a shopper’s reward program for non-profits, but there’s no Kroger in your IMMEDIATE area, then DON’T enroll in the program. This might sound obvious, but you need to have laser-sharp focus with the programs you offer your guests and supporters. Offering too many programs that don’t address exactly who your people are helps neither you nor them.

3. Don’t forget to keep hanging up your jacket, and putting it on. Whether your non-profit is about rescuing animals, recycling, stopping crime or giving away furniture, remember to keep first things first on your website. You must post fresh, relevant content to your site on a regular basis. Ask yourself, “If I was someone even REMOTELY interested in this non-profit, WHY would I come back to this site?” Every non-profit has a huge story to tell, and your website is one of your best assets for telling and sharing that story. When you get sidetracked and plaster your website with several different affiliate programs, guests will get distracted from that one thing you do best, whatever it is. Focus on creating your OWN affiliates first, and after you have an army of affiliates who market your non-profit simply because it’s part of who they are… then take some time to investigate the opportunities to earn some extra income through online advertising like affiliate marketing.

Take a look at the NEW Fifth by Northwest Area Commission website!

August 20, 2009

To Whom It May Concern:

As the President of the Central Ohio Crime Stoppers, I highly recommend Angie Meeker of AngieMeekerDesigns.com and YourCrimeSite.com to design or redesign your anti-crime website. We contracted Angie Meeker in October 2008 to redesign our website, www.stopcrime.org. Since the redesign, our website has received over three times the traffic it did in the previous year and is expected to reach over half a million views this year.

The greatest improvements in our websites since hiring AngieMeekerdesigns are: 1) our ability to maintain the sites ourselves. We can easily post new crimes, photos, videos, links, etc…. Before, we had to contract our developer to make even the slightest changes; 2) the ability for guests to share each of our articles and pages on various social networks via links at the end of each article; 3) the simple design which allows individual crimes to be seen and archived in an organized fashion and; 4) our search engine rankings have improved dramatically, never returning off the first page of results with most keywords.

We continued to utilize her services to create www.crimestopperstube.org, a video website for Central Ohio Crime Stoppers. She then redesigned www.OHMW.org, Ohio’s Most Wanted, for the Ohio Crime Stoppers Association. This site makes each of the Ohio Crime Stoppers affiliates a contributor to post their most wanted criminals and displays them in various categories.

AngieMeekerdesigns cares about the success of the Central Ohio Crime Stoppers. In addition to design services, Angie has handled the purchases and transfers of domains, hosting, and SSL certificates for each of these sites. She has twice spoken on camera to the television media about our website offerings and attended a planning meeting with a local broadcast company to give input on how we could use their services online.

Developing a modern, effective presence on the internet is our responsibility as we endeavor to protect our communities. A static, never changing website, or worse – no site at all, is no longer an option. AngieMeekerdesigns will increase the success of your program, and I strongly encourage you to use her services to create your next website.

If you would like additional information about AngieMeekerdesigns, you can telephone me at ********** [phone number obscured for website].

Sincerely,

Kevin Miles, President
Central Ohio Crime Stoppers & Ohio Crime Stoppers Association

Their goals were to streamline and standardize the organization’s website to better highlight important and timely information, and to provide a consistent presentation of information from page to page. They wanted to ability to easily include videos and photos showcasing their music performances and social events and needed to the ability to sell tickets to their events easily.  As the demographic of their members change, utilizing social networks such as Facebook, Linked in, and Twitter to spread the value of membership becomes more important, so we created accounts on each of those networks and integrated them with the website itself. It was also important to be able to link to other organizations and their members’ own performing groups. They needed to be able to easily manage their concerts and tours. Now, in addition to managing the organizations own concerts, members can submit their own private performances to be published on the site directly (see here).

We were able to do all of this and more!. Take a look at the new site and our solutions to their challenges at http://www.WomenInMusicColumbus.com.

How can social media be used to find a lost dog? Play this video from AT&T to see! Then ask yourself how can your company use social media to give your stakeholders the opportunity to share your value?