Top 10 For the Weekend

April 16th, 2010 by Paula Keller French

We’re constantly coming across interesting articles, photos, and links around here. Some are relevant to our line of work, some not so much, some are funny, some are informative. Today we’d like to share a few of the most practical and useful ones with you.

Check out this blatant use of buying Yelp! reviews. While they aren’t directly handing out cash to each customer that gives them 5 stars or writes something positive about their salon on Yelp!, this practice still goes against the ranking site’s terms of use.

Linking strategies change from time to time. The recent trends show a rise in content strategies such as using social media and syndication. The decline in link bait for content strategies is a strong move for the community but what happened to the outreach efforts?

As you’ve read in many of our other posts, managing a Facebook fan page can be a tricky task. Most people just don’t know where to start. This post by the Social Media Examiner walks you step-by-step through creating a strategic plan for your fan page, just as you would any other business or marketing venture… even if it’s just on a few post-its on the wall.

So you’re always hearing about how such-and-such company made it big in social media by using such-and-such tactic, but often times, you feel like that certain tactic isn’t quite right for you, your product, or your budget. This slideshow offers mini case studies on a number of different company’s successes and failures via social media. With a combination of these, you can hopefully evaluate what the tipping point could be for your social media tactics.

You can never have too much advice when you are planning your social media strategy. Once again, the heart of this post from Outspoken Media lies in creating a dynamic Facebook fan page, with a focus on what you are offering your fans, ranging from specialized content to great conversation.

Our last link for the weekend isn’t a tutorial or explanation about how to further your business, but just an interesting post regarding the changing nature of transactions in our everyday life. While the percentage of our daily transactions happening via technology is continually increasing, it’s important to remember there is still usually a human on the other end… a real person, a lot like you!

Thanks to puptoes74, and wordle.net for the nifty images!