Email signatures are a great way to easily share your social media information with people you know and new contacts. I have a few different signatures I use depending on the company and the situation around the email. This is a great way for people to quickly learn more about you, your company and your products or services.

There is a great service called WiseStamp that is available for those that use web based mail (Gmail, Yahoo, Windows Live and AOL). You can embed recent updates from your social media sites, recent blog posts or podcasts. This is a great free plugin! It works with firefox or flock browsers, internet explorer is not supported at this time. Want to see some sample social media signatures that have been created by others?

For Outlook users you can use images and links with HTML to share your networks. I have not found an easy way to integrate live feeds into a signature with Outlook. But the images and a compelling statement will get people clicking on your links!

What do you use for your email signatures?

I was just reading this months Facebook Ads newsletter and read this great case study and had to share the information with you all!

Cathy Bennett launched an online scrapbooking service in 2007. Cathy’s marketing efforts have been focused on driving traffic to her website and increasing awareness of her company. In 2009, she decided to create a Page, the free public profile that enables companies to share their business and products with existing and potential customers on an ongoing basis. She soon realized that she had a wide variety of people joining the Page, from moms to high school students.

So, she started advertising her Page with Facebook Ads. Cathy discovered that creating seasonal ads that were specific to Easter and Thanksgiving, for example, increased clicks. Also helpful was Facebook’s anonymized targeting that let her reach potential customers based on specific “Likes and Interests” listed in their Facebook profiles. Since 2009, the company’s website has received over 200,000 visits from Facebook users.

Cathy’s complete story about her scrapbooking company on Facebook can be found here.

Facebook ads can help increase traffic to your fan page, your website, a free teleconference, a product launch…and so much more!

Have you used Facebook ads?

You may have seen this on some websites already, they’re pretty awesome. Facebook officially unveiled their Open Graph API and tools over a month ago. Over 50,000 websites have already started using this technology. I’m pretty sure this number will grow as businesses discover new ways to use these tools with their website visitors.

To install the wordpress Like button there are plugins that work very easily, for any website owner. Here are a few that I found:

Like – Let your readers quickly share your content on Facebook with a simple click. It supports multiple languages and has many options for you to customize.

Facebook Like Button – Adds the facebook Like button and has a nice admin panel. Also supports multiple languages.

Facebook Like Button Plugin – This plugin allows you to have global settings and be able to speficy what posts have the button and exclude it from other posts and/or pages.

These are only a few plugins. Look them over and see what one fits your needs best. Facebook has added many social plugins for you to use. I love all these new features!

How are you using Facebook on your websites and blogs?

As many of you know I love VAclassroom and all they do for online businesses. This summer they are running a very special summer skills camp. These skills can be used by you for your business or for your clients.

I have a special coupon to share with you, get $50 off with this code: CAMP2010 There is also early bird pricing until June 30th, so you can save $150! Awesome isn’t it.

I will be presenting on one of the classes! Simple Blueprint for Building a Profitable In-Demand Facebook Page Service. I’m super excited and hope to see all of you there.

Here’s what skills you’ll be building:

• Success Strategies for Crafting and Delivering a Winning Social Media Presentation for Your Clients and Community.
• Easy-To-Implement System for Designing and Building a Winning WordPress Blog Site.
• WordPress Plugin Central – Implementing the Right WordPress Plugins to Ignite Traffic and Results for Your Blog.
• Leveraging the Power of Free Information Products to Attract and Win New Clients.
• Simple Blueprint for Building a Profitable In-Demand Facebook Page Service
• Social Network Management Bliss – Mastering a Proven System for Seamlessly Organizing Your Social Networking Activities.
• Developing a Winning Squeeze Page / Landing Page That Converts!
• Discover an User-Friendly System for Writing Articles and Press Releases that Produce Results.
• Effective Tactics for Creating a Winning Online Newsletter/ Ezine for You or Your Clients.
• Success Strategies for Effectively Measuring Your Client’s Internet Marketing Results and Return on Investment (ROI).

Don’t miss this summer special to add all these great skills to your tool belt. See you there!

So many businesses are seeing success with targeted Facebook ads. Facebook ads offer businesses flexibility and optimization of their ads. You can chose dates and budgets for your ads, as well as who you want to target.

What’s in an Ad?

The Title
No longer than 25 characters, is the bold blue headline. A strong title can include your business name, the name of a product, a call to action, or a target audience’s interest.
The Destination URL
Every Facebook ad must have a destination URL that is directly tied to the ad, so this may not be your home page. This is key to getting your ad approved. If your link is not revert to the ad you are likely to get rejected. If you want to promote something on Facebook (event, page, application or group) then you will need to chose the option “I want to advertise something I have on Facebook”
Image
It is highly recommended to add an image to your ad to make it more appealing to the eye. The ad system will resize any image you add to 110 by 80 pixels.
Body Text
This will appear just below your image and has 135 characters available. It should include details to your offer, product, service or event.

Targeting
The targeting options need to directly match your advertising goals. You can set a number of filters to assist you in reaching the best audience for your ad. Options include; Location, Language, Demographic, Education and Work, Likes and Interests, and Connection Targeting. As you edit each of these areas Facebook will update you on your estimate reach alone the right hand side.

The Like button on ads
Many ads will have the well known like button. This allows users to express their liking over ad. Their friends will also see this action on their version of the ad. There is an “X” in the top right corner where users can close the ad. These actions assist Facebook advertising improve their system.

Reporting
Once you run an ad you will have access to reports from Facebook on how you ad is doing. These reports include standard metrics like Impressions (the number of times your ad was shown) and Clicks (the number of times your ad was clicked on), and Conversion metrics. You will be able to view demographic and profile information on those that have clicked your ads, for example; age, gender, location, interests, books, etc.

Facebook has a webinar recording available to you on “How to harness the full potential of Facebook Ads and Insights”. Great information to those who want to run ads on Facebook.

If you would like more information on Facebook ads here is the resource center from Facebook.

Hashtags can be used for many things on Twitter. Hashtags have the ‘hash’ or ‘pound’ symbol (#) followed by the tag (word). They are used as a way to tie events or topics together. You can use them for your business, for an event, and for a topic in your niche. These hashtags get indexed so they are a great strategy to add to your tweets!

Check out this short video by Mari Smith. She explains it very well!

I recently had the pleasure of offering a workshop to local women’s business group. We held the event at a great local cafe, Sertinos, where we enjoyed some wonderful food and coffee before the workshop. I covered Twitter and Facebook basics for all the business owners in attendance.

Check out a few pictures of the workshop on my facebook fan page!

Just a little food for thought, I found this group through social media! Had I not been on Facebook and meet another woman business owner and she not recommend this group I would not have know about them. I would have never had the opportunity to hold a workshop! If you are in the Tucson area and are a women business owner please check out Sharon Michael’s Group, Women Who Want To Successfully Work For Themselves

Add more social media to your website! This is a free Google tool that lets website owners of any experience level add personalized social media features to their website.

I really like the members gadget. This gives you the ability to easily add a member feature to your website. You can also customize what information you ask for. This gives you the ability learn more about those visiting your site, priceless information!

Watch this short video for a quick overview of the options Google Friend Connect can bring to your website.

A quick post to let everyone know that Facebook is making a change to size of your fan pages soon. If you have any customizations on your page you should get them updated as soon as possible.

The width of the pages are been shorten to 520 pixels, that’s down 240 pixels. You will more than likely need to do some redesigning to fit this new width. You or your fan page manager should make these changes right away.

For more specific information visit: http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Roadmap_Profile

Please let me know if you have any questions.

I have been testing out a few systems lately and asking questions to all the big brands and one has provided a solution. SocialOomph has now added the ability to schedule updates for your Facebook profile and any page your are an administrator for.

This makes me so happy, not only for myself but for my clients too. We can now streamline our tasks even better.

What can you do with the new Facebook feature?

• Schedule status updates — Free up time. Now you can keep your Facebook status updates fresh by scheduling them to appear on your Facebook account at the dates and times of your choosing.
• Schedule page wall updates — Be productive. You can schedule updates to be posted to the wall of any Facebook Page of which you are an administrator.
• Secure Facebook Connect access — Peace of mind.

This is only available to Professional members so get your free 30 day trail and see all the possibilites there are with SocialOomph.