The new facebook pages are here….again, although this time I feel like we are much more seasoned facebookers and can adapt to the change without joining groups like “I want the old facebook page back” and posting whining status updates. And if you need a little help Mashable.com has posted a overview of what changes have been made to our Profile Pages and our Pages, I have included it below.

Kate

The below article was posted on Mashable.com by Jennifer Van Grove

Update #2: The push appears to have been accidental. A Facebook spokesperson tells us, “While we are always experimenting with new features internally we are not making changes to Pages() right now. Organizations invest a lot of time on their Facebook Pages because millions of people find them useful everyday. We remain committed to providing ways for Page owners to customize and control the experience on their Page. If we do make changes, we will provide partners with advance notice.”

Update: Pages have been reverted back to the old style, and a new tweet from Facebook suggests that the mass transformation may have been unintentional or caused prototype features to get accidentally pushed as well. “Also, some internal prototypes were exposed to people and resulted in us disabling the site briefly. It’s now back to normal,” reads the tweet. We’ve reached out to Facebook for additional clarification.

Facebook) ceremoniously launched its new Profile Pages less than two weeks ago. Today, Facebook has gifted Page admins with a similar holiday surprise — a big facelift and feature overall to Pages.

Here’s what’s new: Pages now match Profiles and Place Pages in style and design, there’s a new left-hand menu that has been introduced to replace tab navigation and Facebook Questions have been integrated into the experience.

Facebook has also included a new feature that lets Page admins quickly switch between accounts. The Account menu option in the upper left-hand corner now includes a “Switch Accounts” option, as seen below. Admins can click it to pull up a menu to log in to any of the other Pages they have access to.

Today’s Pages transformation was to be expected, as we initially got wind of the pending changes when the new Profile Pages went live. Still, the unannounced push comes as a bit of a surprise.

Dec 07, 2010 

If you’ve ever been horrified by the design of a small or local business website, you’re not alone. There are so many aesthetic travesties out there, and worse, many small businesses still don’t even have a website. One recent study concluded that a paltry 54 percent of small businesses maintain a home on the web. 

Your business doesn’t need an elaborate multimedia site, but you do need an eye-pleasing and informative destination. After all, you wouldn’t (purposefully) hang an ugly sign on your storefront or office. Why would you present an ugly website to your prospects? 

With this in mind, we spoke to some professional web designers about their favorite small business websites. They explained why these sites make sense for each company and why the design is an asset to their business. 

 
Shopping carts and product galleries have become staples of the e-commerce landscape, but that doesn’t mean they have to look stale. If you sell attractive products, make sure they live on an attractive website. 

 
If you’re targeting a certain customer demographic, good web design can help. 

 
If you thought some small business websites were rough, visit a government agency online sometime. They can be notorious for bad design, poor navigation, and a general disinterest in Web 2.0 functionality. 

December 1, 2010 by Mark Schaefer Please click here for original article.

About the AuthorMark Schaefer is a consultant, author, and college educator who blogs at www.businessesgrow.com/blog. 

Groupon also plans to add other features to the Deal Feed, such as connecting your feed to Facebook and see what your friends are doing, which merchants they’re following and what deals they’re buying.

Groupon’s Long-Term Strategy

This is a huge step for Groupon, shedding new light on the rumored acquisition deal from Google, which may be valued at as much as $6 billion dollars. Besides growing amazingly fast right now, and having relationships with thousands of local merchants (which is of huge value to Google), Groupon obviously has a clear long-term strategy that may redefine the way we buy things online.

Original article can be found on Mashable.com here. Posted by Stan Schroeder

Website Spotlight: gellens.com October 21, 2010 By Alice Allan Leave a Comment

This week, our website spotlight falls on San Diego real estate agents Maxine and Marti Gellens, who are behind the visually stunning gellens.com.

gellens.com caught our eye because it covers all the bases. Great real estate photography gives visitors an immediate feel for the type of homes they’ll find here, while a regularly updated blog covers hyper local news. This emphasis on local knowledge is then underlined with seven sections on local communities.

gellens.com also covers those three key questions we saw being addressed so well at chrisophechoo.com: “where is my next home?”, “how much is my property worth?”, and “how is the market?”. Moreover, the right hand sidebar of the website’s blog is one long call to action, with no fewer than three opportunities for visitors to sign up for alerts, and links to three social media profiles.

As if all that weren’t enough, gellens.com also has three static calls to action that appear on every page of the website, prompting users to provide phone details, send an email, or even talk to Marti and Maxine through a live chat window.

With so many ways to capture leads, it’s hardly surprising that these two agents can say that in the past ten years they have closed US$1.2 billion in real estate sales and have been ranked number one in the nation by Prudential twice during that time.

So, which aspects of this website can you replicate on yours?

Click here for more interesting articles from PropertyAdGuru click here.

As we all know, social media marketing attempts to create a conversation and engage its audience with something more than just a product. It’s the notion of a lifestyle, and what it means to buy a product and then engage with its makers. 

The public, having grown wary of traditional advertising, has become more difficult to convince. That’s where the brand ambassador — the person who creates a sense of credibility, likability or interest — comes in. And while “real people” acting as the face of a huge brand is nothing new, the age of social media has made a compelling case for marketers to choose this route over traditional advertising. 

Here are five successful ambassador campaigns from the last 15 years that have made a big impact on their respective brands, as well as the marketing landscape. They serve to illustrate how in today’s social media world, conversations with passionate people are an excellent (an often more successful) way to sell a product. 

1. Wendy Kaufman, The Snapple Lady

Wendy Kaufman began working for Snapple back in 1991 and became a brand ambassador by chance. Kaufman had been answering the company’s fan mail in her free time, since no one else in the office wanted to do it, and she recognized that there were many people trying to connect with the tea and juice maker. When Snapple’s new ad agency heard of her good-natured gesture, it developed a campaign around her — launching Kaufman into the spotlight as one of the first everyday people to advocate for a consumer brand. Before the web was mainstream, and long before social media as we know it today, the campaign was a fresh and creative way for the company to connect with fans. 

The ads, featuring Kaufman reading and answering fan mail, were a success and were in part responsible for launching Snapple as a household name and boosting sales from $23 million to $750 million a year in 1995. While Snapple inevitably let her go in 1994, Kaufman returned as a spokesperson for the brand in 1997 after the company was bought by Quaker Oats. 

Today, fans can turn to the web and meet Dave on the Best Stuff Web Show, who asks random people about what they think is the best stuff on earth, offering challenges and answering tweets from the company’s Twitter feed. 

2. Jared Fogel, The Subway Guy

Jared Fogel became a brand ambassador for Subway in 1999 after word of his amazing 245-pound weight loss, attributed to eating almost nothing but Subway sandwiches, hit the news. In 2000, Fogel and his weight loss success were introduced to the world in a commercial for “The Subway Diet.” It was a campaign that was a huge hit for both Subway and Fogel, who starred in more than 50 TV commercials and made in-store appearances across the U.S. 

Since launching Fogel’s campaign, Subway’s sales more than doubled to $8.2 billion. In 2008, the company celebrated Fogel’s maintained weight loss for a full decade by retiring his 62-inch pants, a staple of the commercials. 

After Fogel took a break from Subway in 2005, the company saw a 10% drop in sales, and felt the need to bring him back — proof of how important spokespeople can be to a brand. 

Today, Jared is still a Subway spokesperson, and is working with the company in new, digital ways to reach out to consumers — with Jared’s Journey, an interactive and informative guide, complete with a timeline() as to how Jared has kept the extra pounds off. While the Subway Guy isn’t as prominent in commercials, he is still a staple of Subway’s website — asking fans to make a promise, like the one he made back in 1998, to start living healthier.
 

3. Tony Martin, Kelly Ferris and Antonio Santiago – Coca-Cola

Last year Coca-Cola plucked three people out of obscurity to travel the globe, visiting 206 countries (every place Coke is sold), making videos, taking pictures, tweeting, blogging, Facebooking, and interacting with all the world’s Coke-loving fans. 

Team “The MIX” — Tony Martin, Kelly Ferris and Antonio Santiago — were named the winners via online votes from fans all over the world. All regular, everyday people with very different backgrounds — Martin, a kindergarten teacher from D.C., Ferris, a South African-born university student from Brussels, and Santiago, a university student from Mexico City — have spent the past year visiting more countries than most see in a lifetime and spreading a message of “Open Happiness.” 

Since the team was chosen by consumers, their fans are more invested in their activities. Since January 1, the team has been making its own way (save for airfare) across the planet on Expedition 206. It’s their job to get their own food, find places to stay, and meet people along the way. While the team has been given a per diem for food/travel expenses, it’s up to them and the people at home interacting with them to decide what they do with it. 

In the past year the team has made stops to visit the FIFA World Cup in South Africa, the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, and the World Expo in Shanghai. Currently, the trio are visiting Angola, with the Maldives next on the list, and will finish in the U.S. on December 31. 

Throughout the entire trip, fans have been invited to interact with the team, offering or recommending places to stay, not-to-miss attractions, amazing places to eat, and more. The whole concept is pretty creative, inviting consumers not just to think about the product but the message of unity that Coca-Cola can bring to the world. That’s a difficult message to convey with traditional advertising. 

4. Microsoft MVPs

Mircosoft MVPs are brand ambassadors, but on a smaller scale. It’s a brand ambassador program designed for sharing expertise with others. The program was originally launched within Mircosoft’s support teams as a way to recognize, reward and support users who had been the most active on Usenet forums in helping others solve their tech issues. Over the years, the MVP program has grown into a brand of its own. 

As the site says: “With the MVP Award, we thank these inspiring individuals for representing the voice of thousands in the community through the powerful and independent feedback they give us, and for helping our customers maximize the potential of their software. MVPs are passionate about improving technology. From beta testing to helping Microsoft identify real-world customer needs, MVPs offer amazing contributions with great dedication. And they answer millions of questions each year from technology users around the world.” 

MVPs have to earn the titular honor each year. In turn, they get to display the program’s logo on their resumes, business cards, blogs and social networking profiles. Each year, thousands make the journey to the Microsoft’s HQ in Washington for a week-long summit and celebration with the company’s execs and product teams. 

A program like this serves to recognize its most engaged consumers, giving them a title that both reflects well on them and the company. It fosters a sense of community and competition that keeps people interested and distinguishes them from other brands. 

To keep track of the MVP community, there is an MVP blog, along with Twitter(), Facebook() and YouTube() accounts. 

5. Walmart’s Moms

It’s a simple concept: “Mom” shops at Walmart the most, so she probably has a few tricks up her sleeve. Walmart has created an online community made up of moms who share their thoughts on forums about parenting, healthy living, the environment and politics. It features 20 mom bloggers who specialize in different areas that interest their consumer demographic, like Christine Young’s From Dates to Diapers, and Melissa Garcia’s Consumer Queen. 

Walmart has created a group of brand ambassadors who are accessible to consumers, yet they aren’t seen as spokespeople. It’s important that the moms are viewed as regular people who are available to offer some helpful advice. 

Like any large corporation, Walmart channels its social media presence through the usual platforms. But its
Walmart Community Action Network on YouTube is fairly unique in the amount of consumers they talk to. The ways in which everyday consumers shop at and experience Walmart is the best promotion they can get.

For the original published article on Mashable click here.

Del Mar Stubbs Inc, Marketing, Advertising, Promotion