Over the past two years, small business owners have been told that it is an absolute necessity to have a presence on Facebook. Many have heeded the advice and built a basic Facebook page by using tutorials (like this especially thorough one), or by following instructions provided by Facebook or suggestions from experts like our own Eric Groves. But once that’s done, what happens next?

With a business to run, and other communication tools such as a website to update, many Facebook pages unfortunately become inactive. How can a business owner make use of a Facebook page without devoting too much time to its upkeep? After all, you’ll get the most value from the site if you keep it current and use it to engage with your fans and customers.

I thought I’d share some of the latest trends and best practices for enhancing your Facebook Wall tab, which is the default landing tab for any user who comes to your page. It’s the most important tab because the updates to that tab may be in the News Feed of Facebook users who have “Liked” your page.

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Over the past two years, small business owners have been told that it is an absolute necessity to have a presence on Facebook. Many have heeded the advice and built a basic Facebook page by using tutorials (like this especially thorough one), or by following instructions provided by Facebook or suggestions from experts like our own Eric Groves. But once that’s done, what happens next?

With a business to run, and other communication tools such as a website to update, many Facebook pages unfortunately become inactive. How can a business owner make use of a Facebook page without devoting too much time to its upkeep? After all, you’ll get the most value from the site if you keep it current and use it to engage with your fans and customers.

I thought I’d share some of the latest trends and best practices for enhancing your Facebook Wall tab, which is the default landing tab for any user who comes to your page. It’s the most important tab because the updates to that tab may be in the News Feed of Facebook users who have “Liked” your page.

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It’s been hard to escape the World Cup these past couple weeks. In fact, chances are good that you spent some time on Saturday either watching or hearing someone talk about the round-two soccer match between the United States team and Ghana. (If not, the U.S. lost 2-1 in overtime, ending the team’s participation in the tournament.) Maybe you’ve even developed an appreciation for the buzzing sounds of the vuvuzela, like I have.

Two weeks ago, we asked you to tell us who you thought would make it past the first round, and now that we know who did, I wanted to share the results of our survey with you. (After all, it’s a best practice to share what you learn from survey feedback, no matter what you’re asking about.)

If you’ve not been paying much attention to the tournament, here’s how the first round worked: There were eight groups of four teams, and the top two teams from each group advanced. Accordingly, we asked you to tell us which teams in each group would come out on top. Here’s what you said, and how your choices matched up with the actual results.

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Do you know about Constant Contact’s iPhone app? What about our Contact Capture Tool? These are just two examples of apps that have been developed to integrate with Constant Contact.

Since those two launched, we’ve heard lots of great ideas from customers and developers for additional ways to further integrate social media, mobile devices, desktop computing, fundraising technologies, and other business tools with Constant Contact. Now, we want you to turn those ideas into action and develop the next generation of Constant Contact apps.

Introducing the Constant Contact Developer Challenge — your chance to develop an app and win! Three prizes will be awarded in each of three categories (Contact Management, Social Media, and Mobile); gold is worth $5,000, silver is worth $2,500, and bronze is an iPad. There will also be a $10,000 grand prize for the best in show. If your app wins, you could win up to $15,000.

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Do you know about Constant Contact’s iPhone app? What about our Contact Capture Tool? These are just two examples of apps that have been developed to integrate with Constant Contact.

Since those two launched, we’ve heard lots of great ideas from customers and developers for additional ways to further integrate social media, mobile devices, desktop computing, fundraising technologies, and other business tools with Constant Contact. Now, we want you to turn those ideas into action and develop the next generation of Constant Contact apps.

Introducing the Constant Contact Developer Challenge — your chance to develop an app and win! Three prizes will be awarded in each of three categories (Contact Management, Social Media, and Mobile); gold is worth $5,000, silver is worth $2,500, and bronze is an iPad. There will also be a $10,000 grand prize for the best in show. If your app wins, you could win up to $15,000.

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Here we go again. Every six months it seems, we’ve got someone proclaiming “email is dead.” Last October it was a Wall Street Journal article that said email was on the Back 9. Now, it’s Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who proclaimed to an audience at this week’s Nielsen Consumer 360 event that “Email — I can’t imagine life without it — is probably going away.” (Watch a video clip here.)

Sandberg’s logic is that only 11% of today’s teens use email, instead preferring to communicate via text messaging and social networks. When these young people grow up, she’s saying, they’re not going to use email. Really? When they look for jobs, how will they submit resumes? Are they going to tweet the link at a company’s HR department? And how will they sign up for Facebook accounts? Last time I checked, you needed an email address to do that. Suffice it to say, a vast majority of teens either don’t drive or own cars, but I’m pretty sure the automobile will still be around for a long time.

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Here we go again. Every six months it seems, we’ve got someone proclaiming “email is dead.” Last October it was a Wall Street Journal article that said email was on the Back 9. Now, it’s Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who proclaimed to an audience at this week’s Nielsen Consumer 360 event that “Email — I can’t imagine life without it — is probably going away.” (Watch a video clip here.)

Sandberg’s logic is that only 11% of today’s teens use email, instead preferring to communicate via text messaging and social networks. When these young people grow up, she’s saying, they’re not going to use email. Really? When they look for jobs, how will they submit resumes? Are they going to tweet the link at a company’s HR department? And how will they sign up for Facebook accounts? Last time I checked, you needed an email address to do that. Suffice it to say, a vast majority of teens either don’t drive or own cars, but I’m pretty sure the automobile will still be around for a long time.

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It’s getting more likely that the people who are reading your emails are doing so on a mobile device than they are on a computer. Two recent pieces of information back this up: Last week, a Morgan Stanley analyst predicted that use of SmartPhones will surpass usage of PCs by 2012. And then at the DMA’s Digital Marketing Days conference this week, I saw the following tweet:

The third most-clicked-on link. That means many people are clicking on that link (when it exists) more often than they’re clicking on some of the content in the emails they’re receiving.

Are your emails mobile-friendly? The good news is that you don’t need to start over with a new template to answer “yes.” Here are six ways to make sure that when someone reads your email on an iPhone, Droid, or another similar device, that your message will get through.

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It’s getting more likely that the people who are reading your emails are doing so on a mobile device than they are on a computer. Two recent pieces of information back this up: Last week, a Morgan Stanley analyst predicted that use of SmartPhones will surpass usage of PCs by 2012. And then at the DMA’s Digital Marketing Days conference this week, I saw the following tweet:

The third most-clicked-on link. That means many people are clicking on that link (when it exists) more often than they’re clicking on some of the content in the emails they’re receiving.

Are your emails mobile-friendly? The good news is that you don’t need to start over with a new template to answer “yes.” Here are six ways to make sure that when someone reads your email on an iPhone, Droid, or another similar device, that your message will get through.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }