Working Words

We prepared and promoted a very successful webinar for our client Sterling Pacific Financial last month. We tried out a service called ReadyTalk — really affordable, relatively easy to use (there is a bit of a learning curve, but that’s partly because the service has a lot of features), good support. A good choice for small/medium businesses and/or small marketing departments.

Check out the results, here:

Worth noting that this was promoted via email, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Social media results were our best yet: nearly 80% of respondents were new to our database. Tide is turning in favor of social media for investments and b2b.

When I first heard about using Static FBML to add custom content to Facebook pages, I was eager to get started customizing our clients’ pages — but, I stopped in my tracks when I thought, oh, great, another markup language to learn! Couldn’t they have just used HTML somehow? 

But there was good news … with the Static FBML application, all you really do need to know is HTML — that is, after you have figured out how to get the application working on your page, which is anything but an intuitive process.

For whatever reason, Static FBML works a bit differently than other Facebook applications and settings, and if you don’t keep the steps at your fingertips to remind you how to work it, you’ll go mildly bonkers.  I found a great tutorial on Social Web School  – I suggest you visit it and bookmark it.

Alternatively, here’s a quick overview:

(1)  First, install the Static FBML application — use the search box to find it, choose “install on my page,” then click the page you’re interested in customizing.  (Be sure you’re an administrator of the page you have in mind before you start.)

(2)  ‘Add’ the application using the + on your page.  (After you add it, ignore the pencil — which doesn’t help you edit the page.  Confusing, I know!)  Instead, go back to the page’s wall and select “edit this page” on the left side.  Scroll down until you see Static FBML listed near the bottom.

(3)  From here you can add the HTML you want to appear on the site, as well as edit the title of the box.  (To see samples of some very basic customizations we’ve done, visit Sterling Pacific Financial’s page (see the white paper promo on the left side) and Saint Mary’s College Women in Philanthropy (the “give” banner).)

(4)  After you create your content, you need to move it to a box to allow it to display (until you do so, it will appear only in the “boxes” tab).  Go to the boxes tab, click the pencil near your new box and choose “move to wall.”

This should be enough to get you started.  For a more comprehensive tutorial (with pix and comments), visit Social Web School:

Social Web School – FBML Tutorial

Nice post on SEO myths from biznik — the ideas aren’t novel, but they’re simple truths that are sometimes easy to forget (especially the myth about SEO being cheap/free — how many times have we heard SEO sold to small businesses as a “free” alternative to advertising?).

Sterling Pacific Financial’s Josh Fischer has been invited to present in PENSCO’s upcoming webinar. His topic, “Mortgage Pool Investing for Retirement,” introduces an easy, straightforward approach to adding real estate notes to an IRA portfolio. (A great way to diversify beyond the public markets.)

We just finished the launch of a new web site and marketing program for AIF Opportunity Fund. Interesting project because marketing is severely constrained for investment opportunities — so we had to build the site to conform to securities regulations regarding accredited investors.

The fund identifies opportunities to purchase real estate assets at significant discounts, and allows investors to participate, providing the opportunity for individuals to invest in multiple real estate projects with a single investment. As a volume buyer, the fund has access to opportunities (and prices) unlikely to be available to individual investors.

Did you know we manage Sterling Pacific’s blog, Sterling Vision? It has been a central component of our SEO and trust-based marketing approach for Sterling. We don’t provide the blog to spark debate — not delusions of Huffington Post or Drudge Report grandeur — but rather to include information relevant to Sterling’s investors, to provide a sense of the financial market issues and news we consider interesting and important, and to provide regular content updates that help Google perceive the site as fresh, relevant, and professional.

It appears to be working. Since we’ve been building/maintaining the blog (and other elements of Sterling’s social media strategy, like its Facebook page), Sterling’s search results have steadily moved upward. And, more important, the people who find the site are finding it credible and compelling (evidence: actual investor and borrower emails and phone calls). This credibility is critical in a largely unregulated industry with a wide range of standards: many highly professional, top performing companies, but also many bad actors.

By now you may have seen the latest in social-media-meets-work-life disaster stories, this time the woman who dissed the boss she forgot she friended.

Now, it’s hard to disagree with those who point out that this is yet another example of why you should always watch what you say on Facebook, via Twitter, on your blog; there have been well-publicized incidents of job-destroying posts via all of these social media. And even back in the olden days before social media, prudence would dictate that even putting anything of this sort into writing, was risky (especially email).

And yet … is the point of these “social” platforms to share our social selves openly with friends? Or is it just PR for our careers?

Right now I count among my friends many clients and former clients — a diverse group with diverse tastes and boundaries, so I am always cautious about what I post. But I wonder how cautious some of them are. They’re not posting screaming rants about their bosses, to be sure. But, I have seen posts about after-hours behavior, strong political views, and relationship troubles from some friends that I think might offend some of the others. It makes me wonder what people are assuming about the people they friend on FB.

I wonder if more categorization would be beneficial. Don’t most people have layers of friendship — lifelong friends and intimate relationships with near transparency; work colleagues, to whom we’re bonded (maybe only for the moment) by current tasks; admired ex-bosses whom we hope will always remember us as youthful overachievers; former youngsters we once mentored, whom we hope still think highly of us; siblings (we may trust them with our lives, but still not want to tell them everything); etc. We wouldn’t discuss the same things with these groups in person … yet with social media, you’re seemingly left to choose either to reveal so much it’s not prudent or too little to be genuine. Or, you can choose to just not to make all your friends your “friends” — by rejecting your boss or client’s friend request. (Talk about ‘not prudent!’)

Isn’t some categorization in order? Instead of just FB friending, could we “colleague” people we know mainly through work life? “Relation” people we’re connected to by blood? “Client” people whose business we’re grateful to have — and anxious to retain?

Just thinking out loud here ….

A quick plug for a company I really appreciate: FiftyFlowers. I met their CEO, Liza Atwood, through an AFWPI event a couple of years ago.

Liza started her clever concept of bulk delivery of super-fresh flowers from Central and South America after a stint in the Peace Corps in Ecuador. She’s passionate about her business, and it shows. I’ve seen the flowers she delivers … they’re beautiful. And the cost savings is substantial.

I see on her site now you could order 25 red roses for Valentine’s Day for $69.99 (delivered!). Or, a guaranteed-to-impress 50 is just $99.99. Highly recommended.