It’s easy to add links to your Facebook page or LinkedIn profile to your website. It is simply a matter of adding some HTML code within your design.

Of course many of the social media sites offer widgets that will create a custom badge on your website that pulls in content from your profile. We are just discussing the basics today, getting those social media links on your site with the appropriate icons.

1. You need the images that you plan to use for your links. I recommend using images directly from the social media platform. Here are the links:

Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/promo_guidelines.php

LinkedIn. http://developer.linkedin.com/docs/DOC-1101

Twitter. http://twitter.com/about/files

YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/t/creators_downloads

If you looking for something with a little more style, please check out the enormous amount of social media icon sets found at Smashing Magazine. I like some of the sets in this post about free icon sets.

2. After you have the image, you plan to use, you will need the actual link for your profile or page. The easiest way to find the link is to navigate to your profile and copy the URL in the address field of your browser. From there, you will probably have some editing to do.

Facebook. The address in your browser bar will show additional information that you don’t need for your link. If you have a Facebook page with less than 25 followers, your link should look like this:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/<town>/<page name> /<string of 12 numbers>

Depending on the type of page you have set up, you may not have the <town> field. If you have at least 25 followers, then log in to Facebook, after login, navigate to http://www.facebook.com/username. Be sure to select “Set a username for your Pages.” This will give you a new simpler URL of your choice, as long as it is available.

Doesn’t http://www.facebook.com/laurabcreative, look better than http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sterling-VA/laurabcreative/26156294968?

LinkedIn. From within LinkedIn, navigate to Edit My Profile. If you haven’t already set your custom URL, do this by selecting Edit following your existing URL in the Public Profile field. Your new URL will look like this:

http://www.linkedin.com/in/<your name>

My LinkedIn profile is http://www.linkedin.com/in/laurabpoindexter

Twitter. Twitter is the easiest site for URLs. Your URL is:

http://www.twitter.com/<your Twitter handle>

Your handle is the 15 character username. For example, my URL is http://www.twitter.com/laurabcreative.

YouTube. YouTube also has inherent URLs that are already customized. All users have channels, whether you post videos or not. You will see the URL is:

http://www.youtube.com/user/<username>

You can remove the “user” in this URL and it will still work. For example, one of my client’s YouTube channel is http://www.youtube.com/loverugbycompany.

The media hype, warranted or not, over social media sites can be overwhelming especially for small businesses. Where to start? How to keep up? It seems like it could take up all your spare time and it can. This is why I recommend a well thought out strategy for small businesses that includes social media as part of an online strategy which is just part of an overall marketing strategy. However, if you have a retail location, I have one social media site that you can take advantage of with only a few minutes a month of time and the rewards can be immediate. What is this magic site, you ask? foursquare.

The definition. Foursquare is a mobile application that helps you find new ways to explore your city. Foursquare helps you meet up with your friends and lets you earn points and unlock badges for discovering new places, doing new things and meeting new people. Users can also choose to have their Twitter and/or Facebook accounts updated when they check in

The company was founded by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai and is based in New York City. The service launched in March 2009. There are currently nearing 1.6 million users and with 10+ check-ins per second. And the numbers keep climbing. They have been called the next Twitter in regard to meteoric rise in users and influence.

It’s part social networking site, city guide and game – all in one. Users check in to local establishments and earn points for checking in. Their friends can see where they have checked in. Users can also unlock certain discounts and tips that other users have left behind. And it’s not just discounts; tips include what to order at a restaurant and what not to miss at a museum. This is word of mouth at its best. Since the application uses the GPS location of the user’s mobile phone, a user can find places and discounts that they would not have been aware of otherwise. For a quick overview, visit the demo video on the home page.

I’ve noticed that foursquare is currently being used by restaurants, bars and coffee houses. Most discounts I have seen are for the mayor of the location (the foursquare user who has checked in the most times at that location in the last 60 days). This is where the game aspect comes in as users earn points and badges for checking in. Right now Starbucks is offering $1 off Frappuccino to the mayor of each of their locations.

It is nice to entice foursquare users to compete over the mayorship of your location; however, I think many businesses are missing the boat. I would offer a discount or special offer to any foursquare user who checks in. You can still offer a super special discount for your mayor.

What kind of investment will this take? Unlike social media sites like Facebook or Twitter where frequent updates help you stay in front of your fans and followers more often, foursquare users see your specials when they are in your neighborhood. A modest investment of a few minutes a month to change the special and you are on your way to participating in this new online trend. Don’t stop there; promote your special on your other marketing platforms along with in-store materials provided by foursquare. Find out how to access your listing and get in-store materials on the business page.

Foursquare is also sharing info with local merchants who use foursquare to share discounts. So you can keep track of your best customers and get an idea of their habits through foursquare.

If you are a retail location like a restaurant or retail store, I would get online right now to verify your location information and add a foursquare special. It’s easy and you can start tracking results right away.

This post is an article I wrote for a golf tournament I am sponsoring today. Keep that in mind when reading. This is for the golfers to read while on the course. They will be enjoying a sunny, beautiful Thursday afternoon, but you get the hyperlinks!

Top FREE Mobile Applications You Can Be Using to Do Business Today

You’ve got a smart phone. It’s not just for turn-by-turn directions, you know.

1.   LinkedIn. The top business networking site has mobile applications for BlackBerry, iPhone and Palm Pre. Use LinkedIn mobile to keep up to date on what’s going on in your network and to contact any of your connections. Access your LinkedIn search, connections, messages and more.

2.    Evernote. Now available for most mobile platforms, desktop and online. Evernote gives you a place to store all your, well, notes: text, a full webpage or webpage excerpt, a photograph, a voice memo, or a file attachment. Notes can sync across platforms, organize into folders and become searchable.

Hot Tip: Take a photo of a business card with Evernote mobile and it automatically recognizes the text so it becomes searchable. No more stacks of business cards creating piles on your desk. Simply snap the ones you want to follow up with. You could even give the card back on the spot.

3.  Google Sync. Having trouble keeping all your calendars synced across devices? Need to see both personal and business appointments? Google Sync allows you to integrate Google Calendars with your native phone calendar. It can also sync your contacts. Google Calendar can be synced with your desktop calendar application and allows the ability to share or make your calendars public. Share a personal calendar with your spouse to keep track of the family. Visit www.laurabcreative.com/speaking to see a Google Calendar made public and formatted into an event listing. Wow!

4.    Ping.fm. You may have heard of Ping.fm but are not sure how to use it. Ping.fm is simply a tool to help you update your status on over 40 social networks. It allows you to access your account via SMS (text message) or a third party mobile application like BlackPing for the BlackBerry. Ping.fm can be useful in updating your status across your social networks but be careful, each social network is different and your updates should not be blanketed across all of them. Ping.fm does allow you to set up different groups to separate your audiences. I highly recommend this. I don’t want to see “RT @dulleschamber @laurabcreative @guykawasaki blah, blah, blah” in your LinkedIn status. And at least 70% of your network doesn’t either. They probably don’t even understand it because they are not Twitter users.

5.    HootSuite. HootSuite bills itself as “the professional Twitter client”, but it’s so much more than that. It is a complete web-based social media dashboard which lets you schedule updates across different social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Facebook pages, MySpace, Foursquare, even Ping.fm). This includes adding photos and updating a WordPress blog. The dashboard also allows you to share the load with your team, giving you the ability to manage access to business profiles. The mobile application is available for iPhone and Android as a free limited version or $1.99 full version. The web-based dashboard is free.

6.    NutShell Mail. This is not a mobile application per se. It is a service that “brings a summary of your social network updates to your inbox in a single email on your schedule”. You decide how often you want to check your social networks, set up your schedule and view everything in a single email. Nutshell Mail was just acquired by email service provider Constant Contact.

7.    Documents To Go. Allows you to view Microsoft Office and PDF files. The full version ranges from $15-$30 depending on the platform, but the viewer is free. If you need to look at files while you are away from your computer, Documents To Go will fill that role. The premium version allows you to create files.

Hot Tip: Keep your latest sales presentation on your handheld and you will always be ready to show it to prospects.

8.    RSS reader. There are so many RSS readers and it’s hard to recommend one without knowing you a little better. RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication and allows you to pull the updated posts from a particular site, usually a news or blog site, but in reality almost anything can be made into an RSS feed like the public calendar mentioned earlier. The best mobile application depends on your phone but almost all of them sync with the free Google Reader which allows you to set up and track your preferred feeds online.

So, with the applications above, you can keep in touch with your business contacts, keep track of all your brilliant ideas, keep your calendars synced with all the appropriate devices and anyone who may need access, update and track your social networks on your schedule, view and share files and keep up-to-date on your industry. And you’re playing golf!

Social media is all the rage in the marketing world, especially the small business marketing world. I know this because it is what I do and what I hold seminars on. And I talk to business owners everyday who say “oh, I already have a Facebook page”. As if that were enough. I often equate it to a decade ago when businesses thought they could just build a web site and their sales would skyrocket. We all know how successful businesses were who had a site with no strategy.

I use this blog to give you real world examples of good and bad marketing which I tag as “Brilliant” or “Daft”. This is not to highlight or criticize the companies in my example, but rather to get you to think. Are you doing something similar? How can you make it better? If it’s a good idea, can you use it in your business?

I encourage my clients and audiences to look at what is working in other industries and apply it to their business. I absolutely love this example below by a guy looking for a job in advertising…

Does that give you any ideas on what you could be spending your AdWords budget on other than fighting for those hot keywords?



Creation of Facebook gift application for fitness company.

laura b creative Receives a 2009 Constant Contact All-Star Award

Constant Contact recognizes laura b creative for commitment to best practices in email marketing

Sterling, VA — April 19, 2010 – laura b creative, today announced that it has received a 2009 All-Star Award from Constant Contact^®, Inc., a leading provider of email marketing, event marketing, and online survey tools for small organizations.  laura b creative was selected for meeting Constant Contact’s best-practice standards for the use of Email Marketing throughout 2009.

“I am thrilled to receive this designation for the second year in a row. I am a firm believer in following email marketing best practices and providing valuable content both to my readers and on behalf of my clients”, said Laura B. Poindexter, principal of laura b creative.

laura b creative received a 2009 Constant Contact All-Star Award for demonstrating best practices in the effective use of Constant Contact Email Marketing in the following areas:

• Frequency of campaigns
• Open rates
• Bounce rates
• Click through rates

“I not only received this award for myself but also on behalf of two of my clients,” said Poindexter.

“Our customers work hard to build strong relationships with their customers through email marketing and some, such as laura b creative, truly excel in this effort,” said Gail Goodman, CEO, Constant Contact. “We created our All-Star Awards to highlight those customers who are passionately committed to following our best practices as they work to improve their customer communications. We’re proud of the role we play in helping laura b creative be successful and we look forward to continuing to assist the company with its marketing efforts.”

About Constant Contact, Inc.
With more than 350,000 customers, Constant Contact, Inc. is a leading provider of email marketing, event marketing, and online surveys for small businesses, nonprofits, and member associations. Founded in 1995, Constant Contact helps small organizations grow stronger customer relationships by delivering professional, low cost, easy-to-use online tools backed with award-winning support, education and personal coaching. Constant Contact is a publicly traded company (Nasdaq: CTCT) with offices located in Waltham, Mass.; Loveland, Colo.; and Delray, Fla. To learn more, please visit www.ConstantContact.com or call 781-472-8100.

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Today and tomorrow, the world turns not only to the Super Bowl, but more conversationally to this year’s crop of Super Bowl ads. The premise of this blog is to share good and bad examples of marketing in action which I denote as Brilliant! or Daft! Of course, my denotation of these marketing examples are based solely on my opinion and experience as a marketing consultant. I believe all marketing should be measured solely on sales and nothing else. If it’s boring, but the phone is ringing – stick with it. If it is cool, new and exciting, but the phone is not ringing then what is the point. Businesses are after all in existence to make money.

That being said, the Super Bowl ads often highlight many Daft! advertising efforts. The most popular and most remembered Super Bowl ad of all time – the Mean Joe Green Coke ad – was pulled after just a few months because it did not result in an increase in sales.

A recent Ad Age article about holiday ads shows that while consumers like them, that doesn’t mean they’re influenced by them. A new survey has found that half of consumers say they’re not inspired to shop at the retailer whose holiday TV commercial or online promotion they liked best.

So enjoy the game and the commercials, but don’t model your small business campaigns on anything you see today.

I can give that question an unequivocal “yes”. This week I dropped my BlackBerry. If you read my last post about My Truly Virtual Office, you can see how vital the BlackBerry is to the whole operation.

From the time I dropped it, there was about 20 hours before I could get to a Verizon store. They will send me a new BlackBerry but it takes 2 days. However, I was smart enough to bring in an old phone to get activated in the meantime. That is why we keep our old phone lying around, right? 24 hours into it’s second tour of duty, my old smartphone blew a gasket. Complete crash – equivalent to a PC blue screen of death, but with no recovery option.

So here I sit, in a coffee shop between appointments, using the wifi and being completely out of touch with clients, friends and family. It will all be resolved this afternoon when the FedEx man brings me my new BlackBerry, but it did make me think about how much we take for granted due to technology.
Here are 3 thoughts for you to ponder:

Do you have a back up of your important phone data, including contacts? Luckily, I had synced my contacts with my Google account so with Internet access, I can access all my contact info and when I have my new BlackBerry, I just need to resync to Google to pull all my calendar and contact info back into my new phone. I also just luckily copied all the photos and videos from my phone last week because I wanted a backup after our trip to the White House.

With that in mind, do you have a backup of ALL your important data? I’ve had enough computer crashes in my career to know the importance of an automatic daily backup of my computers. I also regularly back up my clients’ web sites. I know the host has built in redundancy, but if that does in fact fail, isn’t it better for me to have a backup to reupload immediately or move to a new host.

Do you take the immediacy of our current technology for granted? Do you send an email to someone and assume that they got it and expect an immediate reply? I am usually quick to reply to email because of my BlackBerry but this week, I have only been able to check email a few times a day. And in looking at my Inbox, I have 2115 messages in the last two months. That is not spam and that is only one of my many email addresses. Of those messages, 1249 are unread. What that means is that I most likely saw it come over and read the subject, but I haven’t read it completely or responded to it. I don’t think my Inbox is much different from other professionals out there. My advice: if you send an email on an urgent matter, follow up with a phone call.

My office is now truly virtual. I have worked for myself from home since 2000. I used to say my office is Starbucks and now after many years of meetings at the coffee shop and working at home in my office, I can truly say that I have a virtual office.

In the past year, I have answered important emails while playing with my toddler at a favorite playground, updated a client web site at an internet café and gained emergency access to a difficult client website using a dial up connection at a friend’s house.

I’ve tried a lot of different things over the years including a USB cellular internet connection, using a Palm to display PowerPoint presentations and even a paper (gasp) calendar. Now, I truly feel virtual and organized based on advances in both the technology available and applications to work with that technology.

Here are the most important tools I’ve found in my new virtual office:

My BlackBerry. Without question, the ability to read and respond to emails anywhere, anytime allows me to stay on the grid wherever I am. The BlackBerry Facebook application lets me stay in touch with friends. I would LOVE a Linkedin application ASAP.

Google Calendar. With its Google Sync capabilities, I’ve solved many problems. Keeping calendars on all my devices – BlackBerry, laptops, desktops, Palm – in sync along with the ability to publish 2 different public calendars and keeping most of my appointments on a private calendar. My toddler even has a calendar of important play dates.

Various Social Media Apps. In a future post, I will explain how I have streamlined my social media process for myself and some of my clients. Since we are talking virtual office here, BlackPing has been a lifesaver in allowing me to post from wherever again through my BlackBerry.

Evernote. I think that Evernote was made for me. I am constantly thinking of ideas for my clients, my blog posts, and my other businesses. Evernote lets me keep my random thoughts organized and accessible from any internet connection (including, you guessed it, my BlackBerry).

PassPack. I have a ton of passwords like everyone, but add to that all my client passwords. Since I could be out of the office when a client emergency arises, I need access to all these passwords at all times. PassPack lets me do that and keeps them secure as well.

PayPal. Strange to find on this list? PayPal allows me to bill clients if necessary when I am out of the office, receive payments and transfer to my bank account. This is crucial on long vacations.

Starbucks. The coffee chain stays on my list for not only offering a place to meet with warm, toasty beverages, but the free 2 hours of WIFI a day saves me the $30/month I was paying for cellular internet service.

All of these tools have also allowed me to downsize my laptop, removing applications I am unlikely to use when I’m out and about (read Illustrator and Photoshop), and leave me with a laptop that is super fast.

Honorable Mention goes to my wireless all in one printer which allows me to print from any computer, anywhere in my house.

All that being said, I do have a wish list: a BlackBerry app for Linkedin and Constant Contact. Please, please, please. The playground is calling.