Today I was looking over some of my clients Facebook pages and noticed they didn’t have a contact tab. I couldn’t help but wonder why? Having a method of contact on Facebook is so important. For one, it’s a way for potential clients to contact the business with questions. For two, Facebook pages don’t have an option to send a message. So if someone doesn’t want to write on your wall, they have to search for your contact information. I personally find it frustrating when I can’t find an easy way to contact the company. Thirdly, it just makes sense to make it easier on your customers to get in touch with you.

So with that said here’s one contact form I like to use. It’s by a company called ContactMe. Their form allows you to customize your contact information, add your social networks, and includes a map that that links to Google Maps for directions. Pretty cool huh?!

You can check it out by going to Beacon’s Facebook Page and clicking on the Contact Us! tab located in the left navigation.

Be sure to check us out on Twitter, @BeaconTec, for more great tips too! :)

 What are some of you favorite Facebook Apps?

Google has now launched Google+ Pages for businesses and brands. It’s a great way to help reach your audience. They are also adding this new setup into their search results, giving the end-user a more meaningful connection to what they are looking for.

With this option of social media marketing it can be great marketing tool for the businesses. We currently help our clients with all their social media marketing needs and this will be another great step to help them reach their targeted audience.

You can learn more about Google+ Pages by clicking here.

Last week, the world of social media was temporarily rocked by an accidental leak from a Google employee (the world of social media moved on quickly because that is what social media does).  Steve Yegge wanted to vent some opinions on Google+ in an internal memo, but accidentally made the post public.  To their credit, Google has not tried to suppress the post after the fact – you can read it here.  It is a bit lengthy, but I highly recommend taking the time to read it to get some pretty candid opinions from a Google developer towards one Google’s latest foray into social media.

In this post, Yegge expounds on some of the mistakes made with Google+ and makes some comparisons with an area where he finds Amazon.com & Facebook to be superior.  What really stood out to me was Yegge’s take on products and platforms:

“That one last thing that Google doesn’t do well is Platforms. We don’t understand platforms. We don’t “get” platforms. Some of you do, but you are the minority. This has become painfully clear to me over the past six years. I was kind of hoping that competitive pressure from Microsoft and Amazon and more recently Facebook would make us wake up collectively and start doing universal services. Not in some sort of ad-hoc, half-assed way, but in more or less the same way Amazon did it: all at once, for real, no cheating, and treating it as our top priority from now on.”

“A product is useless without a platform, or more precisely and accurately, a platform-less product will always be replaced by an equivalent platform-ized product.”

It occurred to me that since this was meant to be an internal post from a developer for other developers, those without a background in development may not understand the differences between platforms and products within the context of this post.  While the words can mean different things to different people across various industries (or even within this one), what purpose do they serve in this post to explain the [perceived] flaws in Google+ in relation to its competitors?

In this context, Yegge is criticizing Google+ for working on a closed system.  This makes it a “product.”  It is a versatile system with a variety of the features that people like in other social media systems – i.e. pictures, music, games, etc.  But, at the end of the day, the user is beholden to the features that Google has created for them.  Google+ is a pre-packaged product where the user’s ability to customize the experience is limited within the framework that Google allows.  Think of it as buying a car.  After purchase, you can add features like a CD player, power locks, keyless entry, et al.  You can even change car’s color.  But, you can’t drastically alter what the car is.  If you purchased an SUV, you cannot remake it as a sports coupe.

Yegge argues that Google+ (and maybe even Google itself to a certain degree) should be looking at itself more as a platform.  In this context, think of a platform more as a building foundation.  The foundation is a necessity and provides some direction for what it to be built upwards.  However, architects and foremen still have plenty of leeway on how to proceed.  For example, look at the openness of Facebook.  This was a system that originally served simply as a networking site.  However, over the past decade, it has evolved into a site where people listen to music (Spotify), play games (Farmville, Mafia Wars), determine their genealogy, take quizzes, etc.  These activities are done primarily through applications developed by third party developers.   These are people with no affiliation to Facebook, but can still use Facebook as a platform to develop apps designed to work specifically within it.  This means that every user experience is different depending on what apps they have installed on their page.  This also means that Mark Zuckerburg and Co. have given themselves significant flexibility for the future.  They do not have to dream of the next big thing, they will still benefit from it if occurs on their platform.

But, by being a product over a platform, Google+ has determined that it already knows what its users wants and will be able to provide that experience for them.  With over 40 million users at the time of this post, they are obviously doing something right.  But for sustainability purposes, without being in a platform setup, Google will have to constantly be on the edge of taste in order to prevent from going the way of MySpace…

- EJW, follow me on twitter: @ejwestksu

So you or your company is now enjoying a few or many social media networks. Now what? Analyze it guys! Use the data to learn from the users that interact on your profiles. Don’t guess; get the facts and stats to keep improving your conversions and levels of engagement. Listed below are a few options that can help.

For the Larger Companies:

• Radian6 is a salesforce.com company that continues to grow and gain viability.  Their packages start at $600 a month.
• Sprout Social has packages that range from $9 to $49 a month.
• Buddy Media works with customers like Ford, Sony, and Bose.  Their pricing is based on the separate products they have.

For the Smaller Companies:

• HootSuite starts with a free package for the beginners.
• Argyle Social has packages that range from $199 to $899.
• Postling has a special running right now $1 for the first 30 days- no strings attached.

And remember, we are always here to help. Just fill out our contact form or #AskBT us on Twitter.

So I heard through the grapevine that Starbucks offers a loyalty program.  If it weren’t for the grapevine, I would have no idea the program exists.  There are no in store advertisements, no ‘would you like to join our loyalty program’ question at checkout, no mention of it on my receipt – nothing.  This may just be my local Starbucks, but anywho – the main point of my post is their totally lame ‘Welcome’ message.

I went through their fairly straight forward sign up process and within minutes I received the following email.

C’mon Starbucks?!  What a missed opportunity.  Welcome message campaigns are huge.  If you read any of the dozens maybe hundreds of blog posts out there on email welcome series, you would know that when done properly – they are significant revenue generators.

Lets see how Starbucks’ welcome message performed based on a 4 criteria from a great Bronto blog post, “Optimize Your Sign-Up Part 3: Landing Page & Welcome Message Musts.”

1) Thank the person for signing up.  FAIL – They were nice enough to welcome me, but no thank you.

Who loves Twitter and Facebook? We do!

If you aren’t already following us on twitter then check us out @beacontec! If you are, then talk to us! We love chatting with others;  whether its sharing information or just getting feedback!  We’ve met some really great tweeps and look forward to meeting and talking with many more!

Check us out on Facebook too!

So don’t wait any longer, look us up and join the conversation!

Everyone loves social media and majority of us have some type of SM account. Of course, not everyone uses it for the same reasons. An individual might have a Twitter and Facebook page just to keep up with family and friends whereas; a business uses them to promote the brand. No matter what your reason for SM, it’s always good to know your standing in the social media world. So I’ve put together a list of my Top 5 SM tools I use:

                     1.   Facebook Grader – This measures the reach and authority of your FB page.

                     2.   Edgerank Checker – a great site to measure your EdgeRank for facebook.

                     3.   Twitter Grader – this measures the power, authority, and reach of a twitter account.

                      4.  Klout – this measures your authority and reach on Twitter, Facebook, Foursquares, YouTube, and LinkedIn and recently started doing “+K” where other users can give you more of an influence on certain topics. You can also see how you compare to other users on twitter as well.

                       5.  Social Mention – A real time analysis of your social status. It also offers great information on your strength, keywords, user, and a lot more.

Make sure to check out our Twitter & Facebook accounts to see what we're buzzing about!

@beacontec & https://www.facebook.com/beacontechnologies

Lots of <3,

Ashley

I recently provided a client with a list of non-flash animation options (a.k.a. JavaScript plug-ins) for their new home page banner image area. My good friend Wendy Honeycutt came up with a great list that I thought I’d share:

• http://tympanus.net/codrops/category/tutorials/
• http://tympanus.net/Tutorials/HoverSlideEffect/
• http://tympanus.net/Tutorials/CompactNewsPreviewer/
• http://www.serie3.info/s3slider/demonstration.html
• http://galleria.aino.se/
• http://www.gcmingati.net/wordpress/wp-content/lab/jquery/svwt/index.html
• http://css-tricks.com/examples/StartStopSlider/
• http://www.sohtanaka.com/web-design/examples/image-rotator/
• http://jqueryglobe.com/labs/slide_thumbs/

*Note: most JavaScript plug-in apps are customizable. Thus, the speed of image rotation, background colors, font styles, and transparencies can be adjusted.  Some really cool stuff out here!!

What are your favorite sites for JavaScript plug-ins?

I want to use this first entry to give you a quick introduction of myself. I want you to feel like you’ve known me for a while when you read my postings. I also want to develop what I like to call a “web relationship” with you. What I mean by “web relationship” is that I want you to enjoy reading what I have to say and hopefully continue to come back! I also hope not only will you just read what I’m posting but share it with others too and especially comment and give me your thoughts!

Career Past: Before coming on board at Beacon, I worked for a Top 100 Internet Retailer as a web marketing specialist. While there I was responsible for social media, email content, banner ads, certain IT responsibilities related to the Oracle software we were using (i.e. SQL, Product Data, Server Management), Sales for Categories/Affiliate Stores, Managed a few Paid Advertising Accounts (i.e. Working with the client to get banners onto the homepage, posting hot deals, getting them into emails, etc.), and the list could go on but I will just sum it up by saying Marketing on the web portal of this company. Now I know you’re wondering what made me leave this big company. Well let’s just leave it at personal reasons and a determination to find a company that would foster growth and continual learning.

Career Present: Obviously, I am now a Web Marketing Analyst for Beacon and thoroughly look forward to all the great things I will learn and accomplish here. I’ve been here for a week now and solely focused on becoming well acclimated to GA as well as starting to get to know the clients I will be managing. While I had basic knowledge of GA and what you could learn from it, I had no idea how much information could be gained and the depth of it. There is an overabundance of information that can be gained if you just spend the time to look into the different reports. Not to mention, I love that you can set up “goals” and have them tracked to see if people are accomplishing what you want them to on your site. Coming in I had basic knowledge of SEO but now I’m seeing it’s a world within itself and can be a little overwhelming. I feel like this is an area I need to spend a little time on so I can have a better grasp of it. I know a lot goes into getting websites ranked higher but I had no idea there were so many ways to do it. With all that said, I am looking forward to this new chapter in my career and hoping it’s a long standing one with Beacon!

Personal Background: While I don’t want to give away too much information here I do want to share with you who Ashley is. I was born and raised in from Oldsmar, FL but moved to Greensboro, NC at the start of high school. I graduated from UNCG with a Business Degree and concentration in Marketing. I’ve spent most of my working years in the furniture industry but after graduating switched career paths and began doing Web Marketing. Apart from working, I am the mother to a wonderful 9 year old boy whom I spend most of my time with. We live in the country on a horse farm and spend a lot of time just doing farm chores. I have 3 of my own personal horses, I board a friend’s horse, and I also train horses when time allows. Along with horseback riding, I also love traveling, riding 4 wheelers, wakeboarding, spending time with family, and hanging out with friends.

So there is a little bit of information on myself. I’m very excited about beginning a career here at Beacon and look forward to everything it has in store for me! TTYS

Lots of <3,

Ashley

Google+ is the latest social networking tool launched by Google end of last month. It’s extremely popular, already having over 10 million users despite being in ‘field-trial’ mode. If you are one of the lucky few who managed to score an invite for Google+ but don’t have a lot of friends yet, read below to see how to invite your Facebook friends. Even though Facebook has been trying very hard to stop users from making the switch over to Google+, there are a couple of ways left to export your friends list. Below is one of the ways you can export your friends  from Facebook and import them into Google+. This method works for now, but it may not work for long if Facebook decides to block this too.

1. First create a Yahoo Mail account, if you don’t already have one.
2. Log into your Yahoo account and click on “Contacts” tab.
3. Click “Import contacts” and select Facebook from the list.
4. Log into Facebook if it prompts you and authorize Yahoo to import your contacts.
5. Once you start the import, it could take a few minutes depending on how many contacts you have.
6. Next, log into Google+, and click “View and edit” link right below your circles.
7. Click “Find and invite” link on the top and click on Yahoo.
8. Login to Yahoo and authorize Google+ to import your contacts.
9. Wait a few minutes for Google+ to import all your contacts than you can add them to your circle. However, it seems like Google+ has some issues with importing contacts from Yahoo. This step did not work for me, but I know it works for most people. If it didn’t work for you, read the steps below to try an alternate method.

Alternate method

1. Go back to the Contacts tab in Yahoo Mail, click on “Tools” dropdown and select “Export”
2. Click on “Export” next to “Yahoo! CSV”, follow the steps and click export.
3. After a few seconds, you will be prompted to save a file. Save it somewhere on the Desktop, you will need it in the steps below.
4. Open your Gmail account, and click on the “Contacts” link on the left.
5. Click on “More actions” to open the dropdown and click on “Import”
6. Browse and select the csv file you just saved in step 3 above. And Click Import
7. Wait for the list to be imported into Gmail than go back to Google+.
8. Refresh the “Find and Invite” tab and all your friends should show up and you can now add them to your circle.

Let me know in the comments if this didn’t work for you.