According to twitters instructions the embeddable timeline widget has a maximum width of 520px. If you need your widget to be wider than 520px you will not be able to use the width attribute. If you need it wider you’ll need to override the max width using the following CSS (change width accordingly):

#twitter-widget-0 {width: 100%;}

Now that we have been practicing for some time, we are aware of good (and, bad) ways to employ social media. Opinions will vary about the “best of the best”. That is the beauty of the web, it always changes. From a book summary I read on social media, here are some of the best practices according to the author at this point in time. This is not an exhaustive, all inclusive list. The basics are covered and should align with your current techniques for using social media effectively.

There are multiple platforms* available for your content and they should be used relative to the target audience. Having likeable content is a fundamental criteria for success. Get your customer to listen to you and then….

1. Listen first, and never stop listening - You want to know what customers think. Ask and they will tell you. Next, the most important thing to do is listen. Closing the loop by acting on what your customers tell you will prove that you not only listened, but that you understand and can do something about it.
2. Define your target audience better than ever – There are many tools that allow you to focus on your true demographics for your product/service(s). Define them and determine what will make them “like” your content.
3. Think – and act – like your consumer - Remember, it’s about them, not you. Don’t sell them; instead, provide content that is of interest to them. Get them talking about topics of interest and find ways to integrate your wares into their lifestyle.
4. Invite your customers to be your first fans - Word of mouth (WOM) is key here. The more likes you get, the better your credibility. Be clear about your value proposition and define what is in it for them. Remember, there is no value-add if only your employees are interacting with your content.
5. Create true dialogue with, and between, your customers - Related to listening and being genuine. Get them talking about you to leverage the WOM effect. When your customers share tips and tricks with others, it proves they are engaged. It also saves you from providing customer support directly. Help guide the discussion by acknowledging comments – and, correct where needed.
6. Be Authentic - Get connected by demonstrating an interest in your customers. Personalize it by including your name.
7. Be honest and transparent - You can spot a phony a mile away. Your customers can too.
8. Integrate social media into the entire customer experience - Another fundamental for success and cannot be stressed enough. Make sure everyone who interacts with your customers has the same message and is aware of promotions and specials. Regardless of how they find you, it should be a consistent message. The last thing you want is a disconnect among channels and mismanaged expectations from your customers. If they are online, they can tell their network about you – the good and the bad.
9. Don’t sell! Just make it easy and compelling for customers to buy - They already found your content and are engaged. Don’t insult them with a bland sales pitch. State the (relative) value proposition clearly and make it easy to “Add to Cart”.

Having a dialogue with your customers is easy using a social media platform. I would add that you keep in mind how you want to be treated. After all, we all are consumers in the end.

*Platforms range from Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, FourSquare, LinkedIn, Google+, Blogs, and specialized networks (e.g. flickr, yelp, etc.)

After my last blog Free Social Media Vector Icon Set I received some feedback not understanding why I did it.  Saying you can go to places like Icon Finder and find all you need there.  Icon Finder and many other sites do have a great selection that I do use often but sometimes its hard to find sets that are vector, include all icons I need and are the original colors.

The color is important because though I may want to make them all one color or style later I do not want to have to go find the brand colors when I want to just use the regular icon.

Having all the icons I need in a set is important because I cannot recreate some of the themed icons on icon finder (or other icon sites) to match the others in the set.  So basically if they don’t have the specific icon I need in that set and I cannot match the style then the set is useless to me.

The most important of all is the vectors part.  A lot of times it says you are downloading a vector but you are not.  I was originally just trying to learn how to handle vectors in Adobe Fireworks (I normally use Adobe Illustrator) but it turned into this icon set to give me something to practice with.  I know there is a lot of ways to describe what the difference between a Bitmap and a Vector is but I’m just going to stick with what makes it different when it comes to these icons.

To see if your icon is a bitmap or vector within Adobe Fireworks just look at the layers panel.  If it says ‘Bitmap’ then it is a bitmap and if it says some type of path than it is a vector (may need to ungroup items before this will display). Also you may notice that (when ungrouped) a vector has a path with dots on it when a bitmap simply has the entire rectangle as the outline.  You will understand this more when we try resizing and editing a bitmap vs. a vector.

Resizing

Here is an example when we try resizing the different types.

If you see the left Bitmap is really blurry but the right vector is still crisp and clean even at 475px.  In fact you could resize a vector to ANY size and it would keep itself looking crisp and clean since it is based on paths than can scale to any size vs. the bitmaps pixels that have already been flattened together.  This is why Logos are made as vectors to ensure even if you wanted your logo on a HUGE banner that it would still look just as good.

Modifying

So let’s say we want to change the color to make a set of red icons.  If you notice in the properties tab there are no options for color fill for the bitmap.

But still let’s try under filters to add a color fill.

As you can see that’s not going to do what we need it to. Saving the file as a bitmap basically removed our options of doing anything later.  We cannot easily set the twitters ‘t’ to be a different color or remove that outline.  It is permanently set within the bitmap image.

The main reason why I created the social media icon set was to practice using and creating vectors within Adobe Fireworks.  In the end I ended up with not only a great set for use as is but also a great source file for other icon sets I want to create.  Though I do LOVE the square set as is I have also done some experimentation for other types of icons.  Please see my other blog  Using the Free Social Media Vector Icon Set as a Source File for Other Icon Sets for more examples of using the original social media icon set as a source file for other icon sets.

Here’s an interesting Infograph I came across and wanted to share! What do you think of these stats? Is it what you thought or are they completely opposite of what you were thinking?

(Infograph Courtesy of: Online MBA Resource)

At the beginning of this year Twitter released a big redesign that incorporates a simpler look and feel that pays special attention to the Connect, Discover, Me, and Home sections.  At the same time that they made their site more aesthetically pleasing, they also released brand pages for companies to utilize. Currently, Twitter is only allowing larger size companies, (companies that can spend $25K on online advertising within Twitter and have a large amount of followers), the option to upgrade to these more optimized company pages.  Some example companies are Coca-Cola, McDonalds,  Nike, and Verizon Wireless.

Some of the new Twitter brand page features are:

1) the allowance of bigger (835×90 px)branded header image

2) larger space for in-depth company information and a more prominent looking taglines

3) the allowance for a free promoted tweet section highly visible at the top of your timeline for uses landing on your page

4) the control for these companies to control what tweets visitors see when they visit their pages (this is big- to learn more click here)

Here at Beacon, we are speculating that the roll-out for all companies –great and small- will be available within the next 4-6months without such steep entry points.  The enhanced features are cool, but expensive at this point in the game.  They do however help with increasing general branding strength.  I would be curious to see some company Analytics to see if the extra marketing really provides any additional direct conversions for their products.

Here at Beacon, we strive to make our clients and prospective clients feel like we are here to help. We want everyone to feel like we are all part of the same team and we all are working towards the same goal. We know that Web Design, Search Engine Optimization, and Web Development are areas of expertise that might generate a lot of questions for anyone not familiar in them and because of this we want to open up a line of communication for YOU to ask US questions. So if there is something you don’t understand or want better clarity about, now’s your chance to ask us!

To Enter a Question:

1. Send us a tweet using @BeaconTec
2. Make sure to include #AskBT in your tweet. This way everyone can see the questions being asked.

Answered Question: 

Answers to more in depth questions will be posted on the blog. Some answers might be in the form of a video while others are written out.  Any simple answers to questions will be posted on twitter. For answers posted on the blog, a tweet will be sent out notifying participants that a question has been answered.

Rules and Regulations:

*Beacon reserves the right to only answer questions we feel appropriate for the subject matters listed above.

*Profanity and slander are prohibited.

*Participants can submit more than 1 question but Beacon cannot guarantee that each question will be answered.

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

Eight weeks down, two more to go.  The past two months have really gone by quickly.  I spent some time today reflecting back and what all I have done and learned so far here at Beacon.  I’ve learned a lot, but I realize that there is still a lot I don’t know.  Since this week was the start of a new month, I spent a lot of time this week working on transitioning the accounts I was working on to other members of the WMS team.  This involved some meeting time and talking about what I had been doing, what I planned to do, and what steps could come next.  The other major thing I did this week was to compile monthly reports for the clients I had been covering.  Like I mentioned a few weeks back, that’s not the most glamorous task but it’s really not so bad.  I found it very rewarding to see growth in the clients I covered and to see things I had done start to show results.

The other big thing I did this week was to sit down and map out a final two week plan to help market Beacon itself.  I’m excited to be getting into this since my background from undergrad is marketing.  Some of the things I am going to be doing involve PPC campaigns, setting up various tracking measures, creating possible promotions, and a few other ideas.  This will be fun.

On a side note, I have been doing a lot of work with social media for several clients as well as for Beacon, and the more involved I get, the more I learn.  I’ve always been comfortable with Facebook, but I never really have had much exposure to outlets such as blogs, Twitter, and Foursquare.  That has changed during my time at Beacon.  I’ve learned how to utilize various outlets to accomplish different tasks.  For instance, I’ve learned that using Twitter can be very valuable for interacting with customers and is a great tool for promotional contests.  Another thing I learned is that Foursquare, which is a location based check-in service, is great for driving foot traffic into a business.  The way that is done is by first setting a location for the business within Foursquare.  Then you can set up options where special offers will pop up on someone’s cell phone if they are running the Foursquare app and they are within a specified geographical area of your business’s location.

The final thing I want to talk about relates to social media as well.  The “new kid on the block” is Google+.  I was able to get an invite to join Google+ today.  For those who are unfamiliar with Google+, it basically is a social media outlet similar to Facebook.  There are subtle differences between the two that I have observed, but overall it seems to be more or less the same.  The concept is almost the same as Facebook, and the only real differences at the moment are that Google+ calls features by different names than they are called within Facebook.  I’m not entirely sure if it’s something I’ll stay with but I’m willing to give it the “old college try.”

This week was a fun week.  I got the opportunity to learn some things that I was not familiar with and then got to put what I learned into practice.  I learned how to create SEO landing pages.  Basically these pages serve the purpose of helping a website rank for keywords that are important to the website.  This is turn helps the page to appear higher in search results.  Making and editing these pages is not the most fun task, but it is a good skill to have.  I think I spent probably around four hours learning how to do this and then actually working on them.  All-in-all, I would say it was a good experience.  I learned some information on effectively creating title tags, meta descriptions, and page content.  These are skills that will help me even outside of SEO work.  I had to think about getting my message across in a short message and efficiently say what I am trying to say in that short message.  This is a valuable skill to have.

Another thing I did this week was to learn a lot about Twitter and how to utilize it.  One of the clients I am working with is focusing a lot on social media and trying to increase its presence and better communicate with whom it is connected.  One of the things fun things with this client is that I am getting to learn more about Twitter and then share that information as well as help manage the Twitter account.  Some of the things I’ve been working on are optimizing whom the client follows as well as helping with communicating to the client’s followers.  I have been looking over some of the tweets that the client sees and retweeting them to the client’s followers as well as a few other related tasks.

Aside from that, there were the usual meetings/brainstorming sessions.  These are great because I get to learn more about SEO and different methods and tools.  Another thing I did this week was start to conceptualize a layout for a monthly newsletter for a client.  I really like to do things like that because it allows me to be more creative.  I don’t really have great drawing talent so it looks pretty rough on the piece of notebook paper that I hashed it out on, but it gets the job done.  I guess the next step is to practice using Photoshop to work on my graphic editing skills and also using Dreamweaver to compile the newsletter since it will be sent out in HTML.