Dove

Design: Dove did a lot of things right here. Their coloring is consistent, as is their theme and layout. Their Cover Photo has a central focus, drawing attention away from the profile picture and to more productive parts of the page. The major flaw is the App Images which, while appropriate, are underemphasized and non-descriptive
Message: This Timeline does a great job of emphasizing Dove’s Real Beauty campaign, targeting women who are perturbed by brands that portray unrealistic expectations of attractiveness.
Grade: B+

TemplateZone

Design: With the exception of one application image, the colors and styling of this page are consistent and functional. The bright Application Images draw attention, yet the Cover Photo also commands attention.
Message: TemplateZone builds and distributes email, Office, and form templates for use by small to medium businesses. While the application images are slightly confusing, the Cover Photo does a great job of emphasizing their products.
Grade: B

Mitt Romney

We here at High Impact Designer approach this subject with no political bias.*

Design: Whatever your feelings are about Mitt Romney, it’s clear he chose the right person to design his Timeline. His themes and images are all incredibly consistent and descriptive. The only major flaw with this layout is the slightly elevated focus of the Cover Photo drawing attention away from the Like Button and Applications.
Message: Political. Romney’s Page makes it clear he is running for office and wants your vote.
Grade: A

*Jimmy McMillan 2012

Rockstar Games

Design: While the styling of this page is consistent, some of the colors are off and there is a definite imbalance of text in the App Images. The focus on the right side of the Cover Photo is fantastic and draws the eye right to the Like Button.
Message: Rockstar has tailored their Page for the release of their latest project, Max Payne 3. You can get a clear sense of what the game’s about from the art, and the Apps are clearly labeled to help visitors learn more.
Grade: A-

Best Buy

Design: The color scheme of this page is dead on. Blue gives the page a cohesive look (especially within Facebook), yellow draws attention to the Profile Picture and Apps, and black and white fill in the details. The App Images themselves are also expertly laid out and give the viewer an immediate understanding of what they represent. The only two things wrong with this page are the redundancies in the Apps and the repetition in the Cover Photo: If there is a title in the App Image, it shouldn’t repeat the title underneath, and the copy-pasting of models in the Cover Photo makes the image slightly unsettling.
Message: Best Buy has always emphasized their customer service when advertising. This page is a great example of that behavior, presenting the viewer with an army of eager employees ready to help make a purchase.
Grade: A

‘Do real marketers actually use Twitter?”
In one word: YES!

Do you want to get more followers? Do you want to learn something new? Do you want to make genuine connections with people in your industry?

Of course you do! So to get these great benefits you need to get on Twitter!

I know Twitter can be a little intimidating, I mean there are 114 Million tweets published EVERYDAY. So you need to learn how to deal with this data and start getting something from the segmented tweets you actually want to read. Here are my top 5 tips for getting started on Twitter:

1. Get a 3rd Party Tool

There are two types of tools you need to get. The first is a tool that lets you post outside of twitter on a nice looking dashboard.  I use TweetDeck, but many people prefer to use Hootsuite.  Either will work fine, they allow you to see your posts outside of the browser.  In TweetDeck you can also set what you want to be alerted about, this is important when you start following a significant amount of people.  Rather than getting an alert from everyone, you can set it to alert you when you are mentioned or when a specific hashtag is used.  This keeps relevant information coming and and makes your Twitter feed’s fired hose of information more like a squirt gun.

The next type of tool is an analytics tool.  I use Crowdbooster to schedule Tweets, check my impression rate, evaluate my account’s growth and identify my most influential followers.  Crowdbooster also suggests what time you should be posting during the day based on the number of impressions you get. An analytics tool gives you information about how your Twitter campaign is doing and gives you tips to make it more effective.

Between TweetDeck and Crowdbooster it is extremely easy for me to optimize my Twitter campaign.

2. Follow People in your Industry

Prior to creating a Twitter account you need to have a clear persona for your user. For my personal Twitter I have set myself up as a resource for people looking for information on Social Media, Email Marketing, and Affiliate Marketing.  I know the influential people in my field so I find them on Twitter and start following their tweets.  People are notified when they get new followers, either via email or in their analytics tool.  Most people will follow you back if you are relevant to their industry and will definitely follow you back if you have enough Klout.

3. Mention the people you Follow

Now you have an account, are set up on TweetDeck and Crowdbooster and have followed some of the leaders in your industry. Great! It is time to start posting.  A good way to start is to reply to other posts and adding your spin in 140 characters. Make sure the user’s handle that you are mentioning is in your tweet and they will be notified. In most cases people respond back, so don’t just say ‘That was SO interesting’ add to the discussion.  Twitter is the ultimate place for quick, direct and to the point public discourse. People are excited when their content is Retweeted or replied to, remember this is social media (keyword SOCIAL).

4. Join a Hashtag Chat

So you have identified the big players in your industry, but one person isn’t the be-all-end-all of a topic. Expand your horizons with hashtag chats.  If you are involved in a hashtag chat and are using TweetDeck, set a new column with that particular hashtag.  Join chats that fit within your niche and start answering the questions and interacting with others.  If your tweets are of high quality they will start a wave of discussion, get you more followers, and many more retweets.  The more people mention and retweet you, the more your message & brand spread.  I attend 5-7 hashtag chats a week, here are a few I HIGHLY recommend:

• Social Chat #socialchat Monday @ 9pm EST
• Brand Chat #brandchat Wednesday @ 11am EST
• Social Media Measure Chat #smmeasure Thursday @ 12pm EST

5. Post Valuable Content with Relevant Hashtags

If there is one thing you must have noticed during this entire post I kept telling you to post content that adds value.  People don’t care about everyday banalities, they care about the latest information with well thought out critique.  If you find a good blog post, then give a quick summary add the link and throw a few hashtags in like #blog and #[post's topic, e.g. SocialMedia, FacebookTimeline, etc...].  People follow all sorts of hashtags, so now the information that would normally only be seen by your direct followers is being served up to other people.

Twitter is a fun and powerful tool. I have met some very great people through Twitter and have started some very positive joint ventures with other people.  Social media is very important and all too often we talk too much about Facebook and forget about such a great tool for networking.

Facebook’s Answer to Circles?

Facebook rolled out some new privacy settings that closely resemble the functionality of Google Circles.  I believe it was Mark Zuckerberg who was so skeptical about this approach.  Zuckerberg thought that asymmetrical sharing was not something people would be interested in.  I think one thing he really overlooked was that our social lives, both online and in real life, are segmented.  Segmentation is key in personal relationships, allowing to choose the lists of people who I can share content with makes it easier for me to share relevant data.

Here is a breakdown of the latest privacy settings on Facebook:

Now when you click on ‘What’s on your mind?’ in the update status window, you are shown new options.

If you notice at the bottom you can edit who you are with, your location, and who you want to share this information with.  When you are tagging who you are with, the old method of using the ‘@’ in front of a ufriend’s name still functions. It is important to note that if you tag anyone in a photo or as ‘someone you are with’ they need to verify this information before it is published.

The most interesting change here is choosing who you want to see this information.  Though this process isn’t as seamless as Google+’s circles, it is a start. 

By default you share this information with your friends.  You can also choose to make this information public.  The custom feature is pretty cool.

You can choose who to share this information with with the drop down menu.  You can choose to share with friends, friends of friends, specific people or only me.  You can also choose to hide the post from specific people, you know like your boss.  I have never used list son Facebook so I am not sure how this functions with your current lists.

Privacy is something that is discussed a lot when it comes to social networks. Presently, I follow a hashtag on twitter #socialchat, and last night we discussed privacy settings.  #Socialchat is a great discussion that involves industry leaders discussing all things social.  Here were some of the topics discussed last night:

• When it comes to privacy, is it fair to blame the SoMe Networks only or should individuals take responsibly as well?
• Sites like Facebook, have ran into legal trouble with privacy officers around the world, why not in the US?
• Ppl love free apps & social networks, isn’t giving up a bit of privacy just part of the price we pay for it?
• If someone chooses to not partake in SoMe because of privacy concerns, what’s the big deal?

See how people answered these questions HERE

All in all it is nice to see Google+’s innovations making Facebook rethink some of its strategy.  Competition is always better for the consumer and to be frank, the proof is in the pudding.  I am interested to see how these two networks will cause further innovation!

A Look at an as-of-yet Unreleased App

A week and a half ago the tech world was abuzz at the news of an official iPad from Facebook. The community has been clamoring for such an app for some time, and given the popularity of both the platform of Facebook and the iPad, this is not too surprising. Facebook had kept pretty mum on a Facebook app until they published it to the App Store. It’s common practice to bundle all versions (iPhone and iPad specifically) of an iOS app together into the same app in the App Store. In Facebook’s update to 3.4.4 on July 24^th, they included the iPad version. It took people very little time to discover that by merely flipping one number in a hidden setting (and having a jailbroken iPad) gave anyone access to what will likely be Facebook’s iPad app.

MG Siegler of Tech Crunch took a long look at the app and took a lot of screen shots. While many people feel that Facebook’s iPhone app is growing a little long in the tooth, Siegler remarked that this was a breath of fresh air. Other than having more room in which to work, given the much larger screen, the biggest, and most welcome addition, is the navigation through the app and the addition of overlays for various functions. The navigation has been revamped and moved to the left side in a list form that makes it easy to get to various parts of your Facebook. This navigation is present in both the landscape and portrait views on the iPad. The other touted feature was the extensive use of overlays to keep the screen from becoming to cluttered and squished. Instead of loading a new window, such as for a wall post, and pushing others out of the way, it merely loads on top of everything else. Given that the keyboard will have to pop up for anything with typing, using these overlays is an ingenious method to present a short task unobtrusively, allowing the user to go back to his/her business quickly.

Messaging, photos, comments, and all those other Facebook goodies are of course present and better from the large screen. Siegler noted that similar to other apps for Facebook, the iPad version does not have an inclusion for any gaming, surely to the distress of Zynga and others. If any of you have opinions on what should be in the Facebook iPad app, let us know in the comments!

Social Page Builder Takes the Number One Spot for Facebook Fan Page Creation Tools

Top Ten Reviews launched one of their newest review sites for Facebook Fan Page Creation tools.  Everyone at High Impact Designer is excited to announce that our Social Page Builder product took the number one spot!  Top Ten Reviews has a very thorough review process, with 40 different components of the Fan page creation tools being compared side-by-side to 10 industry leading products. Some of the aspects that are critiqued are the tool’s features, templates, ease of use, help & support and supported browsers.  After fierce deliberation (well, hopefully not too fierce) their editor’s decided that Social Page Builder was the best tool for the job with many check marks to our name (seriously, look at all the check marks in that table).

Side-by-side Comparison Breakdown

Features

Top Ten Reviews compares the features of each product, including lowest price and number of tabs allowed. Another interesting metric in the ‘Features’  list is the Facebook fan limit. Apparently some companies, like ShortStack and North Social, limit the number of fans your pages are allowed to have, and their pricing increases when your fan base does.

One of the other strong suits that Social Page Builder has is its layering system, in which all pictures and boxes of text are in their own separate layers that allows total control. This feature is scarce among our competitors and is what set us apart from our competitors.

Templates

High Impact Designer is a product created by TemplateZone, so it is no wonder we have an edge on content.  With over 250 Facebook templates to choose from, there is something for everyone.  Currently our template features are missing lead generation forms, but this is a feature we are releasing within the next two weeks!  You definitely want to keep an eye out for all of our new features.

Ease of Use

In the ease of use category, Social Page Builder was one of two products that did not require Photoshop, which would be a very significant investment to make as it runs around $700, certainly not something you want to when you’re paying a mere $20 a month for Social Page Builder.  With Social Page Builder, you simply have to double click to change your images and our image editor takes care of the rest.  Want to see Social Page Builder in action and get some questions answered attend our next webinar, Click Here to sign up.

Help & Support

Social Page builder supports its customers on Facebook, through email, through their tech ticket system, and over the phone.  We want our customers to have the best experience, so if you have an issue reach out to us immediately.

We are very happy that Top Ten Reviews has named us as the number one Facebook Page Creation Tool.  At TemplateZone our goal is to create world class quality templates that you can implement easily. Now any company can have a great looking Facebook, and you don’t need to be a multi-billion dollar company to do so!