Blog Archives
Facebook is Now Making Business Pages Pay-to-Post
This is a screen grab from Facebook. I am an admin of this page, and Facebook wants businesses to now pay for the people who have already “Liked” that page to get updates in their news feeds. This new update has not yet been implemented across the board, but it is going to be. There is a bunch of more info on this topic over on AlwaysUpward, who have gone through the motions to figure out a work around. You can read that series of 2 articles by clicking here if you want to make sure you continue receiving updates via Facebook. It is a pretty convoluted series of steps, and it may be easier to set up a Twitter. Your call.
That being the case, I want to take a minute to let you know that the Facebook pages for my various sites (Alloy Productions, Stephen King Fansite and MetalsPeak) will still be in existence, but I am going to use it a lot less. I will send the posts to Facebook still, but only about 10% of you will see the posts in your news feeds. If you want to see all of the posts that go up on these blogs, then I suggest you subscribe to the RSS feed or sign up for an account with Google+ or Twitter. Twitter is my preferred method of social networking, and probably the most accessible, so that is what I suggest. Links to our other social sites can be found at the bottom of this blog post, for each site. You can also subscribe to this blog or hit me up on Twitter or Google+ to see all of those posts as well. Those links are at the top of the sidebar on the page you are currently on.
Understand that Facebook is backing all of its “Page” users into a corner with this move and it is out of our hands. I apologize for any inconvenience, but if I wanted to pay Facebook for people to see my posts, I would run an ad. As I said before, this new functionality has not yet been implemented on all pages, so I’m trying to make you aware of it before I have to start paying to make sure you see it.
Thanks for your attention to this matter,
Matt Jacobs
Alloy Productions: Google+ | LinkedIn | RSS Feed | Twitter
Business Pro-Tip: Claim Your Foursquare and Yelp Venue Pages!
Photo Credit: http://www.buzzbadges.com
This blog post is to make you aware of “Check-In” sites. What are “Check-In” sites? Well, Facebook has the functionality built-in to their site, but there are plenty of others out there, as well. Foursquare, Google Places (which is also a part of Google+ now), Urbanspoon (for restaurants) and Yelp are the major ones that come to mind. Different sites cater to different crowds so it depends on what reason people have to “Check-In” to your place of business. Should people be interested in just letting their Facebook and Twitter friends know where they are and with whom, Facebook and Foursquare work best for that. Whereas, if people want to leave detailed reviews about their experience at your establishment, Google Places and Yelp tend to be the sites people lean toward. Nowadays, Yelp is almost completely comprised of jerks that want to say horrible things about your place of business, no matter what the experience was.
You may be wondering why I am bothering to post about these sites. Well, here’s some info you didn’t know…
Alloy Productions Event: Web1.0 Workshop – Web Presence Basics for Bands, Brands, Bloggers and Businesses
View the Workshop Details on Facebook
The owner of Alloy Productions, Matt Jacobs, is holding a workshop for people interested in expanding the web-presence of their band, brand or business. We are calling this workshop “Web1.0″ and it will be the first of its kind to be offered in the area. “Web1.0″ will focus on the importance of maintaining a website/blog and social networks. Matt will give a short presentation and will leave plenty of time to answer your questions. This workshop is not about how to get more “Likes” on Facebook or more “Followers” on Twitter, but we will touch on the importance of engaging that audience.
The event is open to all comers, but we would like people to email us or click the “Attending” button on the workshop’s Facebook Event Page if they plan to attend so we can be prepared. The purpose of signing-up, is so we know how many people to accommodate when it comes to refreshments, chairs, etc… We do have a limit of how many attendees will be permitted in the room, so we may need to setup a second date for the “Web1.0″ workshop. We want to make sure that the people that are interested in this workshop get a chance to attend.
Sign-up is simple enough, just send an e-mail to matt@alloyproductions.org with “Web1.0″ in the subject line. Make sure that you include you’re first and last name, the name of your business or organization, a link to your current website/blog and what type of organization it is (i.e. band, business, non-profit organization or self). You can also click the “Attending” button on the Facebook Event page and ask questions or leave comments there or to sign-up!
We are hoping that this will be the first of a series of these workshops. We will continue to host these “Web1.0″ workshops as long as people are interested in attending. We also plan to hold “Web2.0″ workshops in the near future that will focus on advancing your web-presence even further for those interested in audio/video podcasting.
If you have any questions about whether or not this workshop is for you, feel free to ask them here as a comment, asking them on any of our social network pages or by e-mailing them to matt@alloyproductions.org.
“Web1.0″ Workshop Details:
Place: Albany Public Library 2450 14th Ave. SE Albany, OR 97322
Date/Time: June 28th, 2012 from 5:00 pm – 6:oo pm
Cost: Free
Connect with Alloy Productions on: Facebook | Google+ | Linked-In | Twitter
Mortal Kombat: Tablets vs. Laptops FIGHT!
Photo Credit: PC World – 10/26/11
I recently picked up an iPad. The reason behind this is because my laptop (which has a loose battery) will up and shut off from time-to-time. This is very embarrassing when it happens in front of a client, during a consult. That has ACTUALLY happened to me. Feel free to ask Ashley over at Loafer’s Station is you need confirmation. I thought to buy a new laptop, but realized that there are a ton of useful accessories out there for things like iPads, so I went with the iPad. Being that this is fairly new purchase for me, I haven’t had the chance to play with the full functionality of the iPad as being a solid replacement for my laptop (I am getting ready to purchase some hardware that will allow me to hook my mixer and mics up to the iPad so I can podcast from it) but from what I know about the hardware that exists out there, I don’t see why I couldn’t make a full and complete transfer.
After I started using my iPad for updating Twitter and such, I got a question from someone via Twitter that spurred this blog post. To preface this embedded Tweet, Stephen (the person that raised this question; as you will see below) and I were discussing how much I liked my new iPad. That led to a Twitter conversation about a meeting that I had attended the night before. I know Stephen and I know that he is a big fan of Android devices. So that is what led to this exchange:
@alloymatt Haha. I just want your take on tablets. Think they’ll ever replace laptops?
— Stephen Parker (@tittlemanscrest) May 12, 2012
That made me start thinking about the topic, so I promised him that I would do a blog post on the subject, and took to Google later on to get some figures. This is that blog post…
Speaking of Business, Check Out This Event My Business is Doing
Click “Attending” on this Workshop’s Facebook Event Page
The owner of Alloy Productions, Matt Jacobs, is holding a workshop for people interested in expanding the web-presence of their band, brand or business. We are calling this workshop “Web1.0″ and it will be the first of its kind to be offered in the area. “Web1.0″ will focus on the importance of maintaining a website/blog and social networks. Matt will give a short presentation and will leave plenty of time to answer your questions. This workshop is not about how to get more “Likes” on Facebook or more “Followers” on Twitter, but we will touch on the importance of engaging that audience.
The event is open to all comers, but we would like people to email us or click on the “Attending” button on the Facebook event page if they plan to attend so we can be prepared. The purpose of signing-up, is so we know how many people to accommodate when it comes to refreshments, chairs, etc… We do have a limit of how many attendees will be permitted in the room, so we may need to setup a second date for the “Web1.0″ workshop. We want to make sure that the people that are interested in this workshop get a chance to attend.
Sign-up is simple enough, just send an e-mail to matt@alloyproductions.org with “Web1.0″ in the subject line. Make sure that you include you’re first and last name, the name of your business or organization, a link to your current website/blog and what type of organization it is (i.e. band, business, non-profit organization or self).
We are hoping that this will be the first of a series of these workshops. We will continue to host these “Web1.0″ workshops as long as people are interested in attending. We also plan to hold “Web2.0″ workshops in the near future that will focus on advancing your web-presence even further for those interested in audio/video podcasting.
If you have any questions about whether or not this workshop is for you, feel free to ask them here as a comment, asking them on any of our Workshop event page on Facebook or by e-mailing them to matt@alloyproductions.org.
“Web1.0″ Workshop Details:
Place: Albany Public Library 2450 14th Ave. SE Albany, OR 97322
Date/Time: May 20th, 2012 from 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm
Cost: Free
Connect with Alloy Productions on: Facebook | Google+ | Linked-In | Twitter
Posted on Biz Blog – Hootsuite, Seesmic, Sprout Social or Tweetdeck: Who Has the Best Social Networking Client?
I posted an article a couple of weeks ago (CLICK HERE TO READ) talking about the importance of engaging your online community and the importance of using social networks to keep your community informed about things that they will find relevant, but will also help you drive business. This can be difficult to do if you have Facebook, Foursquare, Linked In and Twitter pages, like Alloy Productions does. I know it can get confusing and be a pain in the butt to run around and post a status update to all of those pages! I’ve had to do that. However, technology can help with that! There are 4 major players in the game that are offering software dashboards, online dashboards and mobile apps that allow you to manage them all in one place. In this article, I plan to breakdown how these clients work and state, in my opinion, which of them I choose to use and why.
