I found a very cool little app on the web called QuotesCover.com that I think a lot of small business owners will find useful for adding a professional touch to their social media channels and more. It’s easy to use, yields great results and – best of all – it is FREE!

The concept is simple: you select your favorite quote and an output format such as Facebook Timeline cover or updates, New Google + cover, wallpaper (mobile, tablet or PC), or poster or business card.

Then you can add a background photo, tweak the text font type, size, color and orientation, and even highlight words with asterisks, until you’re satisfied with the image. Then just click the ‘Download Picture’ button to save the image in .png format to your computer. I made the one on the left while writing this post.

No need to worry about re-sizing the image in Photoshop. If you made your format selection correctly, everything is done for you!

So have fun with this one. It’s a fast, easy and elegant way to add some punch to your social media channels so your small business can get recognized and stand out above all of the noise out there.

Here are a few examples I’ve done in the past few days.

New Google+ Cover

Facebook cover

Facebook image update (square)

Facebook image update (rectangular)

It was inevitable that Facebook and smartphones would come in to play as a means of disseminating information on his condition to friends and loved ones both near and far. But the manner in which each is used in such an emotionally charged and catastrophic event should be examined.

Telecommunications (voice and SMS; Facebook Messaging for Mobile): In the early stages of the emergency, there was an outpouring of on-site aid given by close friends and neighbors. Then word spread quickly over the “coconut telegraph” and my phone began to ring incessantly with people who were concerned and wanted to help. That’s a wonderful thing! But tying up a telephone line when it needs to be open for family and loved ones – and medical professionals – does not help in an emergency situation such as this. In fact, it exacerbates it.  It puts the wife and the guy in the ambulance dealing with the emergency on the spot and adds stress to an already extremely stressful situation.

Using SMS (text messaging) and Facebook Messaging (especially for those who are located out of country) allows those with concern to offer their help and express their concern without the intrusion of a voice call. Text messages may then be answered as time allows. They may then be forwarded to others so that accurate information can be clearly communicated. Relaying voice calls can lead to misunderstandings and miscommunications, which can cause more problems than those at hand. Using SMS in the early stages of an emergency – if you are not directly involved in it – is by far the best way to show your support for those who are involved without unintentionally making things worse.

Facebook: Do not be so quick to update your status on Facebook in the event of an emergency of this kind, no matter how genuinely concerned you are. Imagine being the father, brother or best friend of the victim and, before you have been notified by telephone by those directly involved in the emergency, you find out through a mutual friend’s status update on Facebook that your son, brother or best friend has just had a heart attack! It would be horrible, to say the least.

Facebook, in this situation, was the best way to communicate my friend’s status and condition to friends, family and loved ones. BUT! Not until all of his immediate family had been notified by telephone by someone close to the situation on exactly what had happened and what was happening. (It should be noted that tweets with a hash tag would have worked too, but not to many of his friends and family are on Twitter).

Once the “all clear” sign was given by the immediate family, one of my friend’s childhood best friends made a single post on his own page and tagged people in it to get the information out to those who needed it most. That post was then shared by other friends on their own pages for friends of friends to see and so that nothing was lost in translation. As more information became available, more posts – or comments on previous posts – were used to disseminate it.

Facebook and smart phones are invaluable tools for dealing with all of those involved in an extreme family emergency. But there is some very important – and very simple – etiquette that needs to be followed in order to make a bad situation better instead of making it worse. So think twice before pressing that button or making that call. Ask yourself, “What if it was me?”

Pinning for Pinterest

Pining for Pinterest infographic

How Will Facebook’s Graph Search Change Digital Marketing?

How Facebook’s Graph Search Will Change Digital Marketing infographic

Average Facebook User

But first… For the uninitiated, Google+ circles can be very confusing. Users can create as many or as few circles as they want, and then add as many people or brands to them based on the circle topic they choose. It’s the “as many” part that can overwhelm them. Sometimes, there is less freedom in too much choice. It took me awhile to consolidate the 10+ circles I started out with into about 4 or 5 that I actually use. As with all new tools, there’s a learning process involved with how to use them and Google+ was no exception for me. And just when I got the hang of it, Google+ Business was rolled out and the process started over again.

Newcomers to Google+ will laugh at the People and Pages suggestions they will encounter when they first create their profile on Google+ - unless they’re social media geeks like me. In my case, the suggestions had little to do with my personal interests and only by happenstance fit in with my professional interests. So building circles from scratch can be somewhat of an intimidating and daunting task if none of your friends or peers are on Google+. Searching on hash tags is a good way to drill down and find people/businesses to add to your circles, but even they can lead to more generic choices than what you are searching for.

Enter Google+ Communities. Whether you are a hobbyist or a hotel, Google+ Communities are a great way to build your personal circles and your business brand via public and private communities where people, brands or both gather to share information and talk about common interests.

Anyone can start a community and invite people to join. Communities can be public or private and need at least one moderator. Categories can be created for filtering post topics also. For instance, outside of my work in social media, I’m a scuba diving fanatic. A Scuba Diving Community might have categories for ‘general discussion’, ‘underwater photos’, ‘underwater videos’, ‘dive spots’, ‘dive travel’, ‘industry news’, etc., allowing you to filter through the posts within the community, thus targeting more specific information relevant to you subinterest.

Google+ Communities are searchable also, so it’s easy to find the communities that best suit your interest(s). And you can even invite community members to Google+ hangouts, or participate in them, to further enhance your reach or your knowledge. What’s more, once you are a community member, you can add other members to you circles and they can add you, or add you back. In this manner, your circles sort of build themselves instead of you having to build them yourself.

625,000 people join Google+ every day. Google +1′s become more and more relevant every day in Google Search. Add to that authorship verification and how Google Search weighs verified authorship against non-verified authorship in search results and you really can’t deny that having a Google+ personal and/or business page counts for both you and your brand.

New to Google+? Join a Google+ Community. Listen and be listened to!

Here are a few statistics (between July 2011 and July 2012):

• Increase in time spent on mobile usage: 120%.
• Increase in time spent on mobile web usage: 28%.
• Increase in overall mobile web usage, unique U.S. audience: 82%.
• Increase in overall mobile app usage, unique U.S. audience: 85%.

While my sense was for mobile adoption to increase significantly in 2012, I think few would have predicted these figures. And they go on for overall time spent on social media and how that time was distributed between devices used to access social networks – big increases for mobile and tablet devices all around, while PC usage increased marginally or even decreased. Read the infographic-packed report.

Another report by digby.com entitled “(Mobile) Industry Statistics” reinforces the figures provided in the Nielsen Company report and provides even more mind-blowing statistics related to mobile consumer behavior (you can really get lost it this report, though the figures are not as current as in the Nielsen Company report).

• 55% of mobile owners access mobile web.
• 29% of mobile users are open to scanning a mobile tag to get coupons.
• By 2014, mobile internet is predicted to take over desktop.
• 57 percent of consumers will not recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. Similarly, 40 percent of consumers will go to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience.
• Mobile search will generate 27.8 billion more queries than desktop search by 2016.
• By 2013, 54% of all phones globally will be smartphones.

Although statistics can be manipulated, numbers don’t lie. If you own a small business in Paradise, or just about anywhere else – retail, restaurant, hospitality or specialty service – you need to take note of these figures. Because if your business is not “social” and it isn’t “mobile” in 2013, it’ll be broke in 2014.

1. E-mail Communications: The first sounds easy but frequently is not and needs to be monitored carefully: Email communications. Even small business projects can require communications between several people. It’s important to set up email communication protocol so that everyone is kept in the loop. A primary contact for each segment of the strategy (i.e. social marketing, SEO, web design), and a “Grand Poobah” who oversees everything on the marketing strategy side, needs to be identified. In communications to the primary contact the rest of the team should be Cc’d so they are kept in the loop. There should never be a need for Bcc’ing anyone on small teams. If there is, there’s something wrong with your strategy.

2. Online Content Sharing: The second sounds difficult but once implemented turns out to be fairly easy: Content sharing. “Hub” and “spokes” (website and social media channels) require a great deal of original content in the form of images and videos. Some of that content may be provided by the web designer, some by the social marketer. But most of the content needs to be provided by the client and needs to be distributed to the rest of the team for implementation. I’ve found that a FREE Dropbox for file sharing is the easiest and best solution for small teams (we can talk about Basecamp and even Dropbox for Teams - other more robust collaboration tools for larger teams – in a future post).

Dropbox allows you to create a folder on your computer hard drive and invite people via email to access the folder. Any files uploaded are automatically synchronized to the computers of those who have been invited to the folder and have installed Dropbox on their machine. The files can also be accessed via web browser by logging in to a Dropbox account. And there’s even a mobile app that allows the team to access their Dropbox files and folders via smart phone (iPhone, Android).

Dropbox recently introduced a nice new feature that allows Dropbox members to share their Dropbox folders directly with anyone via hyperlink – even those who do not have a Dropbox account! Just copy the link to your clipboard and send it to someone via email or text message (mobile) – or Facebook or Twitter. Voila! Now they can access your folder and its contents! This is a powerful tool, but it can be dangerous too. If a disgruntled team member has privileges to “Allow members to invite others”, they can share private information with people you may not want them to share with.

Clearly, there are many more robust team collaboration tools available. But for small teams (2-7 people) a good email communication policy and a FREE Dropbox is really all you need. So why spend more if you don’t have to? Keep it simple. Get results.

 

(NOTE: This was originally a guest post entitled Hotel la Finisterra’s Top 4 Mobile Apps for the Techie Traveler. I am republishing this post with some revisions and with one additional smart phone app that I think is killer for any techie traveler – TuneIn Radio Pro!)

Smart phones have revolutionized the way many of us travel. The first iPhone running the iOS was released in 2007 and only 3 short years ago the Android OS was just a buzzword. Since the advent of both, the world just hasn’t been the same. My friend, client and fellow geek, George McGolrick – owner at Hotel la Finisterra here in Costa Rica – has his fingers on the pulse of mobile technology, as do most of his guests – they’re a pretty tech savvy bunch! He’s noticed 4 apps that just about all of his guests with smart phones use. I added a 5th in this post.

1. magicJack APP (iPhone, Android):  If you live in North America, travel and have not heard of magicJack, you’re either dead or living in a cave. magicJack is a device that plugs into a USB (Not USB3) port on the user’s computer (or in the case of magicJack Plus, plugs directly into a router), and that has a standard RJ-11 phone jack into which any standard phone can be plugged. It provides Internet-based telephone service (VoIP) to the United States and Canada. Pretty cool, right?!

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! Now anyone with an iPhone or Android can use the magicJack APP to call anywhere in the U.S. or Canada for FREE! You don’t need your computer to place calls. All you need is a WiFi connection (will work on 3G, 4G too) and you’re able to call and receive calls via your iPhone (You’ll actually get a free telephone number from magicJack so your friends and family can call you on your smart phone). Existing magicJack customers can sign in to magicJack APP with an active U.S. or Canadian phone number on their magicJack account and may use it to make and receive calls with the magicJack APP. I think this one’s revolutionary!

2. Instagram APP (iPhone, Android): Two months ago, Instagram celebrated the 2nd anniversary of the first photo taken with Instagram.

Since that date over 50 million people have shared more than 1 billion photos on Instagram. In April of 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram (and its 13 employees) for $1 billion. What’s my point? It’s a pretty popular app, and that’s an understatement!

So what is Instagram? Instagram is a free photo sharing program that allows users to take a photo, apply a digital filter to it and then share it on a variety of social networking services [Twitter, Facebook (personal and business Timelines), Tumblr, Flickr and Foursquare] as well as Instagram’s own network. Photos are confined to a square shape – a throwback to Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid images – and the filters allow users to be creative and add even more personality to their photos. And the square format works great with social media. Frankly, I find it addictive. Once you start taking photos with Instagram, you probably won’t stop! The filters are awesome!

3. Google Translate APP (iPhone, Android): Supports 64 different languages – one of them happens to be Spanish. This little app is not only useful, it’s pretty darn fun too! Travelers can either type or speak their native language into their smart phone and then see the written translation and/or listen to the spoken translation via the app. This one becomes a hilarious bar game after a few cocktails! ¡Pura vida!

4. Google Earth APP (iPhone, Android): OK… So this one is just plain cool. If you’re like me and so many others like me, you can immerse yourself in Google Earth for hours without knowing the time is passing. I didn’t list any GPS APP’s here because there are so many. But if you have one on your smart phone, like most techie travelers do, you can plug-in your coordinates and zero in on your location on the Google Earth APP and see what’s interesting nearby. I love taking screen captures and posting them or tweeting them out to my friends, family and followers to make them jealous! You can have a ton of fun with this one!

5. TuneIn Radio Pro (iPhone, Android): No matter where you are in the world, TuneIn Radio is there with you. That means you can bring your favorite radio stations in L.A. or Chicago with you to your destination AND explore new vibes and sounds at your destination(s). Enable location services and you can search for local radio stations at your destination. Add those stations to your presets and bring the sounds and vibes of your vacation home with you to amaze your friends and family (and maybe your dog)!

The TuneIn Radio free version (iPhone, Android) allows you to listen to music only. The pro version that costs 99 cents allows you to record the station you’re listening to. That’s key if you’re in a country where your SIM card won’t work while you’re on the road away from WiFi. So you can record music at your hotel hotspot, then hop in your rent-a-car and hit the road or lay on a deserted beach and listen to what you’ve recorded until you can get to another hotspot. NICE!

So even though your SIM card may not work in Costa Rica or Nigeria, and you may not have cellular coverage, there is usually plenty of WiFi available (unless your on an Everest assault or canoeing up the Amazon). And with these apps you can stay connected with friends, family and co-workers and have a wonderful time poolside or at the beach sipping a cold tropical drink while you make everyone jealous back home.

¡Pura vida!

The promotions run for 72 hours on any post less than three days old. So you can promote older posts as well as new posts. The cost of the promotion drops if you only promote to “People who like your page”, and averages $3 – $10 per promotion. But why limit yourself!

Promoted posts allow you to reach more of the people who like your Page AND their friends – and that second part is key, because it allows you to grow your brand loyalty and following on Facebook while promoting an offer or discount to both prospective and current followers. By clicking the “People who like your page and their friends” radio button you can keep current customers warm while reaching out to prospective ones. Because, in the end you want them both to be coming through your door!

I’ve had good results with Facebook ads. But even while targeted, in my opinion they spray more bullets while hitting less marks. You get a lot of “likes” but little conversion. With promoted posts, you can target friends of friends. And referrals convert into sales more effectively. I’ve gone almost exclusively with promoted posts to avoid spraying bullets and having to pay for nothing. It’s not about the number of people who like your page. It’s about reach and how many people are talking about you. 400 likes with a 90k reach and 1500 people engaged is better than 1500 likes and 20 people talking about you. Promoted posts work much more effectively toward that end.

Promoted posts have more than doubled and tripled Facebook reach and engagement on the small business Timelines I have been using them on, and have resulted in a 20-30% increase in inquiries regarding the offers being promoted. And at an average cost of a little over $10 per week!

So what are you waiting for! For $40 a month in beer money, you could be making many times more than that! Check out Facebook Promoted Posts. You have very little to lose and a whole lot to gain.

Pura vida!