A2Z Computer Services Inc

Corporate I.T. Solutions, Computer Repair and Web Design in Henderson, KY

Multiple Admins for Google Plus Business Pages

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Google PlusGoogle Plus is rolling out some new features this week to keep us occupied over the holidays. Among these new features is the ability to have multiple admins on your Google Plus business page. 50 to be exact.

The inability to have more than one admin on Google Plus pages have been one of the biggest downfalls since they launched. This gave Facebook an advantage as you can have multiple admins on your Facebook business page.

Now that pages can have up to 50 administrators posting and responding, I would venture to say that we will see a rise in business interaction on Google Plus. According to Mashable, while most top brands have Google Plus pages, few of them have many followers.

Businesses, both small and large, have had to determine exactly how Google Plus will fit into their already crowded social media strategy. We’ve all been learning exactly how it can work alongside Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and all the other social networks that we’re a part of. With multiple admins, we will see a rise in business interaction on Google Plus and become one step closer to figuring this thing out for our businesses.

How to Setup Multiple Admins on Your Google Plus Business Page

To add new admins to your Google Plus business page, make sure that you are using G+ as your business.

Click the settings button on the right side of the black navigation bar at the top of your page and go to “Google+ Settings”.

On the left side of your settings page, click “Managers” and then simply type in the email addresses of the individuals that you would like to make admins on your page.

It’s that simple.

On a side note, if you’re on Google Plus you can add us to your circles to stay up date on all of the happenings at A2Z.

 

Why Your Website is the Hub of Your Internet Marketing

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With the rise of social media marketing through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and all of the others, many businesses have forced their websites to take a back seat when it comes to their internet marketing. There are even businesses that opt out of setting up a website because it seems easier and cheaper to just have a Facebook page. While Facebook is a very important tool for companies to embrace, it cannot replace your website. Rather, it should be used to pull more customers and leads to your website where the real sale can take place. Below are 4 basic reasons why your website is the hub of your internet marketing.

1. You own your website.

It’s important to remember that you do not own Facebook, or any other social networking site for that matter. Facebook has strict rules that many business owners either don’t know or simply ignore altogether, especially when it comes to contests, sweepstakes and giveaways. If you break these rules your page is subject to being removed. Facebook is also known to make big changes and updates without warning. Your website only changes when you want to change it. You dictate how your website functions and when changes are made, this is very important.

2. Your website can display all of your information.

Your website can be as large and complex as you need. To give a full presentation of your services and products you need space and organization. A website meets this need by allowing you to have as many pages as you can fill with content. You’re also able to easily make changes and updates as your products evolve. Facebook only allows for so much, which is why sites like Facebook and Twitter are perfect for giving your potential clients a teaser, or sample, and then pulling them back to your website where the real sales presentation can take place.

3. Search Engine Optimization

SEO is king. Being involved in social media does help your SEO, but your website does more. As I mentioned above, you can fill your website with as much content as you want. The more pages of content that you have, the more that search engines such as Google and Bing have to look at. Search Engine Land recently blogged that a new industry report says SEO Beats PPC & Social Media For Generating Leads. Search engine optimization cannot be ignored and the organic SEO on your website is the foundation for it all.

4. Mobile Optimization

More individuals are accessing the internet from their smart phones. Social media is perfect for mobile interaction, but not so much for sales presentations. Keep in mind that making more sales is what drives you to market and promote your business in the first place. Facebook allows you to have custom tabs and applications on your page, but those tabs and applications are not viewable in the mobile version of Facebook or in the native Facebook application. However, your website can be optimized for mobile browsing and allows for consumers to conveniently view your content on the go, which is very important.

These are very basic points, but my purpose in presenting them is to simply remind you of the importance of your website. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and all of the other social networking sites are very important as well and should not be ignored. All businesses and organizations can benefit from using social media in some form. Just make sure that you don’t forget your website, which is the hub of your internet marketing.

 

Facebook Contests: Do’s and Don’ts

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Facebook contests and giveaways are very popular these days. It’s rare to not see posts from friends who have just entered to win a gift card or an iPad. It’s just as rare to not see posts from company pages that you like promoting their latest sweepstakes and how you can win. Contests are a great way to generate buzz about your brand on the largest social network around. However, there are a few problems that many businesses run into when it comes to making Facebook contests a part of their social media strategy. Below is just the tip of the iceberg that I hope will create some conversation and get you thinking about the use of contests in  your social media strategy.

You are not allowed to run contests on the Facebook platform.

According to Facebook’s Promotional Guidelines, companies are not allowed to run contests or giveaways using the Facebook platform. This means that you can’t ask a question in a post and randomly pick a winner from the comment thread. You’re also not allowed to run a contest through voting in your photo albums. Essentially, if a tool or feature is native to Facebook you’re not allowed to use it for running your contest.

So what is the right way to run a contest? Third party applications. These applications integrate with Facebook but they are not part of Facebook, they are not running on Facebook’s servers. These applications allow you to run fan generated contests, sweepstakes and other types of promotions. This is the only way that Facebook allows you to run contests. Unfortunately, many either ignore this rule or simply don’t know it exists. You’re also not allowed to announce contest winners using the Facebook platform. Winners must be contacted in private through email, phone or some other method.

It’s important to run your contests the right way so that you won’t potentially lose all that you’ve worked for in building your Facebook presence.

The contest is over. Now what?

Picture this: Today is the big day. For the past month your company has been running and promoting a sweepstakes on your Facebook page to give away an excellent prize. You check your page insights and see that your interactions, impressions and new likes have skyrocketed over the last few weeks. You’ve managed to gain hundreds, maybe even thousands of new likes on the page. You’re ecstatic. All these new people have seen your logo and shown interest in your company (or at least the contest). You draw the winner, give them their prize and thank all the entrants for participating. You go home for the weekend and relax knowing that you have succeeded on Facebook. Monday morning comes and you sign into Facebook as soon as you sit down at your desk. You pull up your company page, click the text box to begin writing a post when you suddenly stop and think “What now?”

As I said before, running contests through Facebook is an excellent way to generate buzz, gain more likes and to simply show community appreciation. I also believe that these special promotions can be a part of everyone’s social media strategy in some form or fashion. However, contests cannot be your entire social media strategy. If you do nothing but continually run contests how will your business truly benefit? You may have 10,000 likes on your Facebook page or 10,000 followers on Twitter but are those individuals truly relevant to your business? You need to provide true value to your online community or else they will leave. If they don’t care about your products or service then they will probably leave as soon as the contest is over. Give your followers a reason to stick around, give something of value.

Your business needs a social media strategy that makes education and customer service a priority. Yes, you should grow your page as time goes on with various promotions. But the true value lies in the content that you’re putting out there and the conversation that takes place around your brand daily.

Our goal at A2Z is to help businesses use social media in a way that is effective in giving value to the online community, creating awareness about your products and services and bringing you more business. Contests help but they cannot do it all.

Are contests part of your social media strategy? Based on what you read above, are you running them the right way?

First Thoughts on Google Plus

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google plus iconLast week, all of us at A2Z finally received our invites for Google Plus (Google+). In this post, I’m going to share a few of my initial thoughts, reactions and expectations after a few days of exploring Google’s brand new social networking site.

The Design

Upon entering Google+ for the first time there were a few things that instantly caught my attention. The first of these being the minimalist design and layout. Everywhere you go on the site, you see a lot of white space and the content is given center stage. A clean and minimal design is not only easy on the eyes, but it also makes navigation simple and quick and lets you focus on the content and interaction. Another great feature to the design and integration of Google Plus is the gray toolbar that we recently saw show up at the of the page when you’re logged into your Google account. This not only allows the user to switch from Google Plus to Gmail to your Calendar and more, but it also sports a notification box for your Google Plus, allowing you to receive notifications regardless of which tool you’re using in your Google account.

Your Profile

As with the rest of the social networking site, your profile sticks with the same minimalist look. You have your information page that displays all of the information about yourself that you choose to put out there. With each piece of information that you place on your About page, you also choose the type of people that you want that to be available to (i.e. Friends, Family, Everyone, etc.). Your Posts tab simply shows all of your posts that you’ve sent out. Your profile does not have a wall for people to write on. All interaction is done from the stream, which essentially makes sharing and interacting a hybrid between Facebook and Twitter.

Circles

Circles have been of the most talked about feature in Google Plus. Rather than sending friend requests like on Facebook, Google Plus allows you to add people to various Circles that you have created. Just because you add them to your Circle, doesn’t mean they have to add you. It’s the equivalent to following people on Twitter and adding them to a list. Another plus (no pun intended) to this feature is that allows you to be selective with who you share posts with. Let’s say that your Circles are titled Family, Friends, Co-Workers and Clients. If you’re sharing an update about your vacation, you may not want that seen by clients, but only friends and family. Likewise, not everything you share with clients may be relevant to your cousins. Circles makes online sharing and interaction a little more similar to interacting with your different circles of friends in real life.

Hangouts

Hangouts allows you to do group video chat with your Google Plus connections. This may not be something that everyone will have need of, but I can see this really being used for online business meetings, study groups, etc.

Closing Thoughts

It seems that after a few failed attempts at social networking, Google has finally struck gold. Google Plus is estimated to hit 20 Million users this weekend and admission to the site is still by invitation only. Admission to Google Plus will be available to the public on July 31st. This makes Google Plus the fastest growing social network ever. There’s a lot of talk about how Google Plus could take down Facebook or even knock out Twitter and to be honest, it’s hard to fully agree with that. Will some people leave those sites altogether to put more focus on this new site? Maybe. Most people, though, will not completely leave Facebook, even the ones who have been feeling “Facebook fatigue” lately. I see great success in Google’s social networking future and look forward to seeing more updates and refinements to the site.

 

Why we created a new Facebook page

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A2Z Computer Services, Inc on FacebookIf you “like” our page on Facebook there’s no doubt that you’ve seen a bunch of posts from us this week regarding our new page. Earlier this week we launched a new page for A2Z Computer Services, Inc. on Facebook because of some technical issues with our old page.

Don’t worry, these technical issues are not a virus or anything that will effect our fans on the page. When we originally created the page a long time ago we categorized the page incorrectly and didn’t have our “official” name as the page name. Instead of having the page categorized as “Local Business” we had it as a “Product / Service”. This is fine for some but in our case we were unable to have the phone number, address and hours fields. This also means that individuals viewing our page from their mobile phone couldn’t access our number, address and hours of operation.

Therefore we decided that even though we have a large number of fans and followers on our original Facebook page, the best solution would be to create a new page and migrate our connections from the original to this one. This isn’t the first time we’ve encountered this issue. We have gone through this process for various clients before as well.

It can be a hard choice to make this jump for some, but the choice to do so is often the right one. The process of notifying the current fans on your page to the new one can take time but patience is a virtue. Once our new page’s numbers are back up to where they should be and all of our fans on the old have had a chance to come to the new one we will delete the old page. Until then we will be updating both pages and and doing lots of promotion for the new page.

We appreciate everyone’s continued support and look forward to furthering our relationships that we have began on Facebook and other various social media outlets.

Click here to visit our new Facebook page: A2Z Computer Services, Inc. on Facebook