Comparing Mobile Blog Designs: What Works Best?

One area of mobile site design that is particularly important for mobile SEO is the blog. Blogs get special treatment in search engines, as sources of fresh content and easily-digested RSS feeds.

Facebook’s ‘Promoted Posts’ switcheroo

By Gini Dietrich

The awesome thing about the web and social media, in particular, is it levels the playing field. No longer do you need millions of dollars to spend on PR firms and ad agencies in order to build your brand and reputation among the masses.

Today all you need is a good writer, a self-hosted website or blog, and organically grown social networks. With those three things, you suddenly are competing with the big boys for reputation and credibility. You’re seen as a thought leader in your industry. You’re creating kinship among your prospects. And you’re selling in a way that has never before been possible.

All of the tools are free so it’s a really low barrier to entry. And it works.

The big social networks continue to run their platforms free to us because they consider us the product, not the user.

We’re the Product

Take Google for example. They have been successful because they keep introducing free features – analytics, blogging, RSS feeds, Google+, Docs, Hangouts, and more. Their thinking is of course, if they offer really good free features, we’ll continue using them, which boosts their pageviews and drives advertising.

Advertisers are their users. We are the product. And it works really well for them. They do, after all, have a market cap of $25o billion.

So why is it Facebook is trying to squeeze more money out of its users? Why not look at us as Google does…as the product?

Sure, I understand they’re now a public company and they have to find new ways to make money, but there are several business models before it lighting the path.

And yet.

If your business has a Facebook page, you’ve likely seen a decrease in “Likes” and interaction. We have one client who went from 10,300 interactions per day to less than 3,000. Overnight.

Promoted Posts

Why? They’re not using Promoted Posts to increase their visibility. In other words, they’re not paying Facebook to show their updates to the more than 63,000 people who have voluntarily liked their page and opted in to have them in their stream.

Only 30 percent of those people are seeing their updates. The other 70 percent? My clients have to set aside a budget to pay to promote their posts to those people.

Yes, those people who’ve already said, “Hey Facebook! We want updates from this company.”

If they were to pay for it, they’d need a budget of $228,800 to reach the people they were reaching for free before the social network’s IPO earlier this spring.

Small Business Implications

I run a small business in Chicago. We update our Facebook page 20-25 times per week. We have just a tad more than 3,500 fans so we wouldn’t be charged as much per post as our client. But we’d still have to spend in the $25,000-$30,000 range to reach the people who have voluntarily liked our page.

So I would have to decide if it’s more important to reach all 3,500 of our fans or pay for half a person to help service clients. I think you know which way I’d lean.

Suddenly the playing field is no longer level. We’re both the product and the user at Facebook.

Seems like a pretty big conflict of interest.

To read more on Facebook’s new policy, check out this article — “Facebook, I Want My Friends Back” — on the pop culture website “Dangerous Minds.”

A sampling: “I can sympathize with Facebook’s travails on the stock market and I can appreciate that they are providing a value—a great one, unprecedented, really—by connecting such a vast number of human beings in an electronic global village. But I can’t pay them $2000 a day and $672,000 a year for the exact same product that I was getting for free back in March!”

And here’s a potential way around the problem, courtesy of All Facebook.

Gini Dietrich is founder and chief executive officer of Arment Dietrich Inc., a Chicago-based firm that uses non-traditional marketing in a digital world. Her column appears on Crain’s blog for Chicago entrepreneurs every Friday.

Follow Gini on Twitter: @ginidietrich.

Join Crain’s LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And stay on top of Chicago business with Crain’s free daily e-newsletters.

Five benefits of having a business blog

By Nick Harrison

A business blog can be a terrific way to increase your customer base and stay in touch with your existing one. There are, in fact, many benefits to having a blog, and the more you know about those benefits, the better your blog will be.

1. A blog can boost your reputation as an expert: Customers want to do business with people who are experts in their industry. So by projecting a knowledgeable image and sharing insights about the products and services you offer, your blog can have an impact far beyond your website. A blog is a terrific way to provide tips, answer questions and teach visitors about your industry.

2. A blog gives you more pages to talk about products and services: Having a blog can allow you the room to provide more information about the products and services you offer. An example, one of the things our company offers is building custom websites. Sure, we have a page about web development on our site, but by offering customers tips about things to look for with every blog post about websites, we can better publicize our offerings versus what we could do with just a single page.

3. A blog helps customers find you with SEO: One of the toughest things I deal with regarding SEO for business is this: I often run into clients who have very little content on their website but want to compete with sites that have substantially more. Each blog post can represent a new page of searchable content. If I only have one page on my website talking about web development, it is likely to mean I have one chance at a search ranking. If I have 10 pages about web development, that gives me 10 separate pages that can be indexed.

4. Social sharing: Blog content can give people the ability to share that content with others. It allows sharing on Facebook and Twitter and more. Regular website content pages are rarely ever shared.

5. Community building and interaction: A blog can be a great way to build RSS subscribers and social media relationships, which allows you to build a community of customers and potential customers to constantly be marketing to. With that built-up community, each blog post can essentially be a sales advertisement.

Remember that time is money and that there are other things you could be doing besides blogging, so, when you blog, make it count. Ask yourself how this blog post is going to help your business make more money. Am I thinking about SEO? Is this post going to help me sell my products and services?

Nick Harrison is creative director for Chicago-based branding, web development and social media firm Dashal, whose client roster ranges from small businesses to best-selling authors to major consumer brands.

Follow Nick on Twitter: @HarrisonNick.

Join Crain’s LinkedIn group for Chicago entrepreneurs. And stay on top of Chicago business with Crain’s free daily e-newsletters.

Privacy risk from ads in apps rising: security firm

Advertising networks have been secretly collecting app users' personal data over the past year and now have access to millions of smartphones globally, says security firm. Use of these RSS feeds and headlines is governed by our terms of use . Enquire about licensing these feeds here .

Privacy risk from ads in apps rising: security firm

Advertising networks have been secretly collecting app users' personal data over the past year and now have access to millions of smartphones globally, says security firm. Use of these RSS feeds and headlines is governed by our terms of use . Enquire about licensing these feeds here .

12 Must-Know Media Sites

In December 2006, I posted a piece titled "The Nouveau Niche Media" about all those new blogs and their growing influence over more traditional media, and commensurate allure to PR pros. Below are some of the we found back then on myriad blogrolls (remember those?) in in many subscribers RSS feeds (remember RSS?). Here's what I wrote: "…as someone who's toiling in this new media reality, I'm …

12 New Media Influencers

In December 2006, I posted a piece titled "The Nouveau Niche Media" about all those new blogs and their growing influence over more traditional media, and commensurate allure to PR pros. Below are some of the we found back then on myriad blogrolls (remember those?) in in many subscribers RSS feeds (remember RSS?). Here's what I wrote: "…as someone who's toiling in this new media reality, I'm …

12 New Media Influencers

In December 2006, I posted a piece titled "The Nouveau Niche Media" about all those new blogs and their growing influence over more traditional media, and commensurate allure to PR pros. Below are some of the we found back then on myriad blogrolls (remember those?) in in many subscribers RSS feeds (remember RSS?). Here's what I wrote: "…as someone who's toiling in this new media reality, I'm …

Subpug RSS Reader Looks To Pull You Away From Google Reader

As far as web sites go, there’s only one site I look at more than Google Reader. You’re on it right now. There’s nothing technically “wrong” with Google Reader, but when you look at it every five minutes, every day of your life, another RSS reader option is super exciting. Enter Subpug . It’s a new RSS reader that just launched on Christmas and it’s pretty slick if I do say so myself. It’s aimed …