Jeremy Brown, Mobile & Web development

Official account of a web developer no one's heard of. Expect posts on Mobile, HTML5, CSS, SEO, social, jQuery, EECMS & crap music taste.
Based in Sydney Australia.
You can find me here --> twitter.com/jeremybrown
Questions welcome

Archive
2011 (29)
2010 (12)
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Howto: Building a successful Facebook page

Company Facebook Pages are becoming very popular; Facebook is working hard to grow these audiences for businesses an example is Holden Australia who has experienced 100% fan growth in the last 3 months alone from 30,000 to 65,000 http://www.facebook.com/holdenaustralia

I don't suggest disregarding one social network over another however it makes sense to invest more time in Facebook purely on its size of audience and the quality fans versus Twitter followers. Facebook users are authenticated and there are far less spambots creating the echo chamber that is encountered on Twitter.

2010 Statistics of the top Social Media sites in Australia
Active Australians per month
Facebook - 9.3 Million
YouTube - 4.3 Million
Twitter - 800,000

Age range of Australian Facebook Users
18-25     2.8 Million
26-35     2.4 Million
36-50     1.9 Million
50+         1 Million

I would recommend registering your account name across all of the most popular networks to prevent squatting & competition. KnowEm.com is a service that will register user account details on over 300 services. With this there are a few simple updates that can dramatically improve the performance of your Facebook Fan page.

Updates for your website

Updates for your Facebook page
  • Think like a SEO, rename your account to include keywords and a description an account “technews.com” becomes"TechNews.com - IT news, analysis, business issues, networking, for CIO's, IT managers and IT professionals."
  • Using a tall image that includes your logo will help you stand out in search results
    http://www.facebook.com/HondaAustraliaCars
    Facebook_honda_australia
  • Add Google Analytics account and tracking tag to your Facebook page to track 
    http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-add-google-analytics-to-your-facebook-fan-page/

  • FBML is Facebooks simple HTML language allowing you to build a custom page http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/fbml/ Building a FBML page setting it your homepage can encourage visitors to become fans. Some great, simple examples include http://www.facebook.com/makeuseof saw a 40% increase in followers with this page http://www.facebook.com/FoxNews has 1.4 million followers.
    Foxnews_facebook_like
     
  • If you are a more advanced FBML programmer you can build a page that will integrate your wall posts, BandPage allowed http://www.facebook.com/goodcharlotte to add an interactive tab that promoted tours played music and sells merchandise but you may just want your Twitter feed or links to your website and other social media pages.
    Facebook_good_charlotte

If the thought of FBML and code is scary try http://apps.facebook.com/easypagecreator/ to create a simple Facebook landing page 

 

None of these updates are really that hard, the hardest part is the discipline required to continually add content and engage, this is where the most growth will be experienced. Keep an eye on http://www.allfacebook.com for news, tips and upcoming changes to best manage a Facebook page.

 

 

 

Five simple rules for your tags and blog entries

When you first build your webpage the <title> tag in the HTML doesn’t seem so important. 

You don’t often see it and you are probably caught up with getting the design right and the text content approved by the client or finishing an article, it's easy to forget how much exposure this little tag holds.

Never forget that the title tag is usually the first impression visitors get of your website. In any search engine your website is represented by the "blue link" text entered in your website’s <title> tag, 10 words identifies your website, what it represents and its offering.

So its time to put some thought into your <title> tags

  1. Avoid the word "Welcome" its not what your business sells, lead with your company or product name

  2. Use the : or | character to seperate target keywords as dashes and underscores actually join keyword terms together

  3. Your business name is important, not as important as the relevance to a search. Lead with the keyword letting users scan quickly down the left of results to find you. Put your company at the end of your title. 

  4. Start your tag with a popular search term. Wendy’s <title> tag was "Works a treat", which could mean anything. Updating their tags to include their product offering ice cream, donuts, hotdogs and the location Australia improves their chance to appear for "donuts in australia" 

  5. Think of every page as a target landing page. Don’t jam all your offerings on one page, build it out to your key search terms each on their own page.  Make sure all pages have a unique title tag!

Remember you can always review Googles top results for your target term and reflect your titles to be more like them. With anything the top results are the best results and you are aiming to be amongst them. Avoid trying to be unique and beware of being too clever.

 

A simple example of a title tag

The most common written title tag for a website like this would be 

Jeremy Brown's blog


But this new tag would improve our results for people searching for a designer near our office location. 

Jeremy Brown - blog from a Senior Developer - Sydney NSW


Better again I could focus on target keywords with the most traffic, and still keep it short enough

Jeremy Brown | Website Development: SEO : HTML : JavaScript | Senior Developer in Sydney NSW