How are Facebook ads different than other forms of advertising and what should you do to capitalize upon that?

What are the 5 most effective techniques in managing your Facebook page so that it gets traffic and conversions?

How do you measure the ROI of your Facebook marketing efforts and justify this to others within your marketing organization?

What are the first critical steps you must take in setting up your Facebook page if you don’t already have one?

Dennis Yu of BlitzLocal and Justin Kistner of Webtrends will cover these questions, as well as questions from the audience in a free 60 minute seminar on Wednesday, October 27th.  Register here for Facebook Marketing Secrets:

In a former life, I ran a sponsored webinar program for an analyst firm and we relied on extensive promotion of on-demand recordings to meet our lead generation targets. So, I could feel the pain and frustration of Webinar Success’ Ken Molay when I read his recent blog post that described his first-hand experience with a recording vulnerability in GoToWebinar that resulted in the unrecoverable loss of an important webinar recording.

Since Ken’s post, we’ve fielded a lot of questions about our own recording functionality. ReadyTalk users can rest assured that (as always) their recorded content is safe and accessible. I also wanted to take this opportunity to highlight a few things that make ReadyTalk’s recording and playback functionality unique:

Immediate Access – With a few clicks of the mouse or commands on the telephone keypad, your ReadyTalk recording is initiated and stored to our servers. As soon as your conference ends, you can immediately access your recording file through the Manage Recordings interface in Conference Center. No waiting around for your conferencing vendor to make the recording available for use.

Easy (and Undo-able) Editing– With our easy-to-use recording editor, you can quickly cut out unwanted content from the beginning, middle, or end of your recording to create a polished and professional playback. Uh oh … made a mistake? Don’t worry – it happens! We always keep the original version of your recording so you can undo one or more edits with the push of a button.

Industry-Standard File Formats – What good is a conference recording if it’s locked away in a proprietary file format? At any time, you can download your ReadyTalk recordings in up to four industry-standard formats (Flash, high-resolution .MP4, .MP3, and .WAV). Once you download, you can edit your recordings using your favorite third-party editing tool, store them on your own servers, and distribute them as you wish.

No Downloads for Viewers – Unlike some conferencing services, ReadyTalk doesn’t make your audience download a special player to view your recordings. Whether you embed your ReadyTalk recording in a blog, social media site, or other website or simply share the playback link, viewers can watch a high-quality replay of your recording with a single click. No downloads required (as long as they have Flash 9.0.28 or higher).

ReadyTalk knows how important your recordings are and we’ll make sure they are always there where, when, and how you need them. We’re also committed to making our recording and playback features even better. Tell us what else would you like to do with your ReadyTalk recordings …

The recording interface makes it easy to edit and share recordings immediately after a webinar.

As Director of Product Marketing, Anita is focused on talking to customers about their needs and translating these into priorities for the ReadyTalk product roadmap. Before joining ReadyTalk, she gained first-hand experience with the challenges of running a webinar program while serving as director of marketing at an IT analyst firm. When she’s not thinking about conferencing, she likes to do yoga and spend time with her dogs.

I just read, RIP, the Press Release (1906 – 2010)—and Long Live the Tweet, in which Simon Dumenco discusses why he feels the press release has been replaced by tweets. The article is especially timely since I have two press releases to write today. Perhaps in the celebrity world press releases should be retired. After all, I don’t need to read 300 words on a celebrity’s recent escapades if it can be shared in 180 characters. But, I definitely don’t think the press release is dead for the rest of the world; here’s why:

Regulatory filings: Let’s get this one out of the way. It’s a gimme. As long as it is required for public companies to publish a press release about regulatory filings, press releases will continue to exist.

Reporters and the media: Yes, reporters and bloggers have turned to Twitter to find stories and sources, but they still want a single document with the facts.

Information seekers: Looking at site traffic, people still go to newsrooms looking for information about the company and to read press releases. If people are looking for it, then there must still be some value.

SEO and organic search: Posting a press release on a website adds content to the site, which is crawled by the search engines. This can help with search rankings. Additionally, distributing press releases on a wire, such as PRNewswire, can lend to externally sites linking back to your site, which helps a lot for SEO. If you’re looking for more information on SEO, check out Integrating Public Relations with SEO Strategies by Sarah Skerik of PRNewswire. The article has great tips for how to optimize your content, including press releases, to help with rankings.

While the press release isn’t going away, it is changing. It’s shorter (or should be). There is less space for and time spent on crafting perfect quotes for executives. Overall, I’d say that press releases are evolving with a continued focus on clear, concise writing with a focus on getting the facts out.

Has your company moved away from press releases? Do you still use them? How would you like to see them change?

We recently kicked off the summer Webinar Series, The Evolution of Conferencing, and are excited for part two this month. We’ll be addressing the case of the multi-tasking marketer. If you’re part of a marketing team, you fully grasp the concept of ever-looming deadlines and repeat fire drills. It’s all in a day’s work. But, as the workplace continues to adapt to a changing landscape, marketers have become more efficient with their time by implementing tools that can ease the load and dovetail some of these duties into an effective work-flow. This comes as a benefit not only to the one completing the task but also the team, customer or prospect who is directly impacted by the project.

So, give me an example, you say. Well, consider your conferencing platform. You’re not just using it for remote meetings these days. It’s likely to function in a number of ways – training, demos, collaboration, web events, podcast series and more. This is what we mean by ‘multi-tasking marketer.’ Responsibilities that span a range of projects, all with the end goal of providing qualified leads to the sales organization and meaningful content to those evaluating your service or product.

Multi-tasking has become a habit for most – some are able to manage it in a productive manner, others may still need some guidance (self included). This new series is focused on how conferencing continues to adapt to the frequent advancement of the hundreds of other technology platforms we use everyday to get our work done as marketers. From social media integration to campaign monitoring tools that allow for tracking and reporting, web conferencing continues surprise many with it’s new and innovative uses. We hope you can join us for the upcoming event (we promise it will be well worth your time, plus it doesn’t cost you a thing!) In the mean time, check out this free whitepaper download with tips on choosing the best provider for your needs and tools to consider that  may help you validate your multi-tasking habits.

1) Buy ads. You can target your cause very specifically on Facebook. Then add pay per click, just like you would do on Google. BlitzLocal recommends a small ad budget, but using Google Grants as a primary vehicle to drive people to your website is a great idea. Then have a ‘like’ box there.

2) Get a ‘like’ box on your site. If you hit “edit page” and go to the bottom right, you will see an option for “promote with a like box.” Grab the code there and paste it into your site.

3) Create a contest. As a condition of winning the prize, whatever it may be, require that fans write a comment of at least 30 words on why they deserve to win or whatever. For them to comment, they have to like the page.

4) Incentivized like tab. This is advanced stuff for programmers only. So if you know someone who understands FBML (or ask kindly and perhaps we will do it for you), you create a landing page that reveals the content behind it only if they click like. Think of it like a scratch off ticket. So have something attractive enough to stimulate action. See example here for Grameen Foundation.

5) Let your users participate. Most fan pages allow post by page only,which is the default option. Change that setting to “posts by pages and fans.” When people know they are allowed to participate, they will; their participation, in turn, notifies their friends’ notifications, which, in turn, bring those friends in.

6) Send a Facebook message. Little known option, but when you click ”edit page”, you can send a message to fans. This generates a real email, not a Facebook message. Whatever you do with your regular email program, so it will with Facebook.

7) Interact with users. Not just because it’s the polite thing to do, but because it increases your Post Quality Score, which then increases your prominence on the walls of your page’s fans. When you or a fan makes a comment or hits “like”, only a portion of friends will see it. That percentage is governed by how much interaction Facebook sees.

Choose a custom url. Go to Facebook.com/username to choose a url for your page. The option is available once you get to 25 fans. A short url is better than a numerical monstrosity, making it easier for fans to remember you and find you.

9) Mention your Facebook page in your other marketing efforts. The custom url helps. Place the url in your email signature line, business cards, brochures- even paint it on the side of your minivan! Print sticker with your logo and Facebook url below.

10) Cross-promote with sister organizations and those who endorse you. Did you know that pages can become fans of each other? Don’t go crazy here doing link farms and chains, but you might as well get every advantage you can get.

11) Update your Facebook page with your twitter and rss feeds (blog posts). We believe that if you post content once, it should be available everywhere. We are too lazy to have to manaually copy content to 15 other sites, so we use easy plugins and apps to do that. Likewise, meet users where they are, by making it convenient for them.

12) Get popular people to mention you on their wall. Did you know that if you post the full url of your page (which includes the http part), then it creates not only a blue clickable link, but also shows how many fans the page has? More fans means you look more popular, which means more people will check out what’s there.

13) Automatically invite all your friends: you aren’t actually clicking on every single friend you have when you hit “suggest to friends are you? Check out this article for a clever trick.

14) Say things that are controversial. Don’t be inflammatory or rude, but do pose charged issues that will bait people into expressing their opinion, thereby drawing people in. You might even seed the discussion or wall post by arranging in advance what side each of your team members will say, just to get things started.