Here’s some tips on how to get more Facebook fans and Twitter followers:

• Update all pages on a regular basis – it doens’t have to be every day or every hour but as long as your fans know you will be updating they will keep interest in your content. Tweeting everyday for a week and then not at all for a month will leave them wondering what’s up
• Post or tweet about entertaining or buzzworthy topics that interest consumers – if I see an interesting news article or hear something that I think my followers have an interest in I share it.
• Share links to items in the community that are important to people – similar to just posting a snippet of content. Share some links from time to time. You may think everyone else read it too but more often than not due to busy schedules people are only reading articles that their friends and influencers post
• Tweet about non-company related items – if your company is posting on Facebook or Twitter, don’t forget to talk about non-corporate items. Company picnic, foundation grants, charity events, industry news.
• Ask questions that encourage interaction between the company and the individual – your fans and followers like to be engaged – interacting with them keeps interests up and make people feel included.
• Have a contest, promotion, or offer a gift card to people that become fans or followers – everyone likes free stuff or the chance to win something exclusive. Its not that hard to build some excitement for your company with contest
• Find other business in the area that are on twitter and see who they are following – join other companies in your industry to engage consumers or fans. Learn about industry topics and find consumer insights with your competitors.
• Make the environment open and friendly enough that people feel comfortable leaving comments – if your Facebook or Twitter feed seems just one way, your fans might not talk back to you. While you might not be able to answer every question or reply to all comments, being engaged with your followers is always the best customer service policy.
• Thank current fans and followers for their support and utilize word of mouth by encouraging them to recruit other fans and followers.
• Include links to popular sites on Facebook and Twitter.
• Make sure to understand who your audience is and keep track of current trends.
• Include Facebook and Twitter on business cards.
• Promote Facebook on Twitter and Twitter on Facebook – use applications like Twitter’s Facebook app or Selective Tweets.

I downloaded Bobby Labonte’s ‘B Lab’ iPhone application today and took a look at the first iPhone application for a NASCAR driver.

Developer: Xco Software LLC
Category:Sports
Size:4.7 MB
Cost: $0.99
Download: View In iTunes

Here’s a quote from driver Bobby Labonte, “We’re creating an app that will give fans in-depth information of everything that I’m involved in each day,” continued Labonte. “The B Lab is more than just race information, but rather unique content including video and audio updates, race day previews, and contests for app only users, that will help draw race fans closer to what it’s like for everyone that touches my life. It’s going to be pretty cool and I’m looking forward to it.”

After downloading I ran the application. The first thing that happens is that it downloads a set of images and content. This seemed a little slow but I don’t know exactly how much it downloaded. The initial ‘Welcome’ screen is a little confusing. You see a picture of Bobby and two buttons at the top (Skip & Begin). There’s a button at the bottom with a headphone icon, but the audio there is a ‘test’ file. Not sure how that got left in the application. I’m guessing there was supposed to be a greeting from Bobby.

If you click Begin you receive a Opt In message for Coke. No matter how many times I filled out the form (and even saved my contact info in the preferences) this option is available. It seems unfinished, as I would expect this to go away after one load and an option to Opt Out in the preferences.

Clicking Skip brings you into the application where you can find a lot of information about Bobby. The menu items are:

• B Lab Bio
• B Lab Career Highlights
• B Lab Schedule
• B Lab Interviews
• Go Behind The Scenes
• Latest B Lab News
• B Lab Partners
• Bobby’s Facebook
• Bobby’s Twitter
• B Lab Contact
• Email Bobby

The first few menu items link to simple text and image sections. Basically short web pages in the application. They contain some good information about Bobby. I’m sure most fans know it all but you can always educate your friends. The B Lab Interviews contain a couple recent videos that were online – Bobby’s Sonoma interview (audio only – volume was a little low) and a video where Bobby is talking about the difference between the Wing and the Spoiler. Will be nice to see more videos here later on.

Latest B Lab News just points to a news page on BobbyLabonte.com which is kind of disappointing for an iPhone app. Facebook and Twitter links also link to those websites. The developers didn’t link to the mobile versions of the pages either. Luckily Twitter picks up on the fact that I am on an iPhone and redirects me to their mobile version. Personally I think the application should link to the Twitter and Facebook apps – if that is possible.

Contact B Lab tells you all the name and address information for Bobby’s fan club and email Bobby brings up a customized email form that allows you to mail the fan club.

When I first started using the application it crashed several times. After about 5 crashes it seemed to stop crashing. Not sure if there was something conflicting on my phone or if the application is just a little buggy.

There’s also a lot of additional application pages about Bobby’s other activites:

• BL Racing – Bobby’s dirt track team
• Bobby Labonte Foundation (I played at his annual golf tournament in April… OK ‘played’ is a stretch but I was there LOL)
• Breaking Limits – Bobby’s marketing company
• Other – email address storage and settings

So while this application has some cool features, its pretty simple. The best parts is that is consolidates a lot of Bobby Labonte information into one place for his fans, it costs $1 and it should in the future have some good insider content (one would hope – paying fans can at least get content first).

Cons – right now the app is a little buggy. Having 5 crashes right off the bat wasn’t fun. It does not have much real unique content and has a lot of weblinks. The coke sign up form does not have a “Next” button to get your through the fields so it was awkward to fill it out has half the fields were covered.

In the end I would give it 3 out out 5. If you are a Bobby Labonte fan you need to get this application, even if its just to show your support for Bobby. If not you can probably skip this application.

More information about Bobby Labonte can be found at http://www.bobbylabonte.com

A fashion blog that is about every aspect, from high end designers, to how to make a celebrity style your own. Here’s a great blog about fashion and shopping from an up and coming blogger. Check out My Little Thimble at http://mylittlethimble.wordpress.com/

Or you can follow Avrielle’s fashion tips on Twitter @asuleiman

Recently I was working for Morningstar Properties to optimize their Mini Storage and Marinas websites. While they had nice and clean websites neither were SEO friendly. After working off and on for a couple months we have both sites fully optimized with search engine friendly titles, metas and descriptions as well as copy on their pages that is geared towards they keywords that they are looking to capture for organic search traffic.

On the Mini-Storage site we dynamically update the location pages as well to make them more locally appealing by utilizing the location address and neighborhoods by integrating them into the titles. Also by recoding some of the styles to use H1 and H2 tags we’ll better tell the crawlers what is important.

Over on marinas, we also made major title updates and added a quick directory of locations on the home page in text so it is easily seen by users and crawlers alike. All and all a very fun project to work on and best of all seeing positive keyword ranks very quickly was cool to see!

Morningstar Marinas – http://www.morningstarmarinas.com/
Morningstar Mini Storage –  http://www.morningstarstorage.com/

I always look at where traffic is coming from, especially from traffic that I purchase. Back in November a client’s site had a huge spike in traffic from junk ad sites. Most of the site ad ads from Yahoo and due to Yahoo’s less than optimal ad software I had to block these sites manually by domain. I had noticed in Compete.com’s site that competitor sites had also been receiving a lot of traffic from these sites.

Today (ok – I let this sit for a while LOL) I think I have uncovered at least one source of traffic to sites like that and confirmed my belief that the sites are as I had suspected junk click sites built for the sole purpose to generate content advertising publishing revenue.

Here’s how it works:

1. Internet users sign up for a site like www.treasuretrooper.com
2. They are offered 5 cents to click on links. When I first joined I was offered 7 links and could come back the next day to click some more.
3. There’s a message that says: “Receive 5 cents for each of the links that you click below! After clicking, please click any link that interests you on the page that pops up. You may click each of these links once every 24 hours. Please note that cash click earnings do not count towards reaching minimum payment.” and a few links:
   1. Asthma Relief Online
   2. My Diabetes Center
   3. Best Online Teaching Degrees
   4. Find Nursing Degrees Online
   5. Best Psychology Degrees Online
   6. Best Guide For Fitness
   7. Bank Account Wizard
   8. When I clicked Find Nursing Degrees I ended up here: Nursing Degree Answers which is a short page with a bunch of Yahoo ads.
   9. That site is similar to a lot of others I have seen that dynamically serves up Yahoo Publisher ads. Search on any topic and you will get different ads.
   10. TreasureTrooper.com is well ranked in countries like Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Pakistan, and India which is not bad by itself but if you are a US company doing business only in the US who don’t need that foreign traffic. Although according to Alexa almost 50% of their traffic in the US.
   11. In Alexa one of the suspect sites has 100% of traffic from US which I find hard to believe. However three of my client’s competitors receive between 5% and 11% of their traffic from India but they don’t do business in India.

There’s surely dozens of affiliate sites like these signing up people from low wage Asian or Eastern European countries where a $50+ a month can buy a lot. There’s something terribly wrong about this as someone makes $0.05 cents to click on a link where the advertiser is charged $1-$10+. For the advertiser is results in excessive clicks that don’t convert. If they are not aware of these sites they’ll end up paying a lot more for their online advertising budgets than they should.