Home

4 Ways to Be Prepared for Facebook Timeline

For those of you that get enraged whenever Facebook makes changes, prepare to have a terrible week. Facebook is expected to unleash “Facebook Timeline” to the masses next week in what is sure to cause a massive social media frenzy.

It’s the biggest change to ever happen to Facebook, largely because it completely redefines Facebook’s purpose in your life. Facebook started as a “re-creation” of the college experience. Essentially, it was a place where college kids could relive last night’s kegger, “poke” friends, and stalk classmates of the opposite sex.

Those days of Facebook are long gone, and that has never been more apparent than with the upcoming release. ”Facebook Timeline” is essentially your life story in a digital format. You can document your birth, your relationship history, your changes in eating habits, your work and education, and much more. For a solid overview check out the video that Facebook put out cover it: Facebook Timeline Video.

For those of you who are terrified of change, here are 4 couple tips that will help you get your new profile setup:

1. Facebook Cover Photo

This is the giant photo that will sit behind your Profile Picture. For the more technically inclined you can create a custom photo to really make your profile look good. The image size to use is 840 x 310.

For those of you that just want to use a standard photo there are a couple of websites that are already set up that allow you to download Facebook “Cover Photos”. Here is a link from Mashable covering a couple of them: Facebook Timeline: 5 Sites for Customizing Your Cover Photo.

Or, you can just do a Google image search looking for the exact dimensions of 840×310.

2. You’re Such a Square

The new Facebook Profile Picture is going to be a square. A 180 x 180 square to be exact. Most people have some form of software for cropping photos, but if you don’t you can go to sites like this.

3. The Past…Is Easily Accessible in the Present

Your Facebook history is literally a click away. With the new “Activity Log” your entire Facebook history is only a click away. Want to know who you poked in August of 2007? It’s a simple click away. It currently says up top “A Private Log of Your Activity”, I wouldn’t be surprised to find features like this to cause a whole new wave privacy issues.

4. It’s Pretty Cool

Despite my concerns of Facebook having all this information, I will admit that seeing your Timeline is really, really cool. Visually, it’s leaps and bounds ahead of any previous version of Facebook. One of the main focuses is media and that shows through in a big way. So greet the new Facebook with open arms, and be ready to give it a try!

3 Ways I’ve Found Twitter Useful

Written by admin

I’ve never been a big fan of Twitter. THIS video from SuperNews pretty much summed up my feelings about Twitter and the people that used it. I had already been an avid user of Facebook and saw no need to send 140 character “tweets” about nothing out into cyberspace.

As someone who works in the internet marketing field, I really had no choice but to join. I’ve had a Twitter account for about 2 years now (completely guessing on that) and had rarely used it up until a couple of months ago. My Twitter usage is still far more as a consumer of tweets rather than a producer of them.

Within the past couple weeks, I’ve realized that I’ve used Twitter in a couple of useful ways and figured it was time to give Twitter it’s due. Here are 3 ways that I’ve found Twitter useful in the last couple weeks.

1. Miami Hurricanes Football

Being a Miami Hurricane fan living in the Chicago area has it’s challenges. Chicago is an NFL city. We’re consumed with the Chicago Bears and so is the local media. Worse yet, when college football is brought up it’s all about Notre Dame. Needless to say, the Miami Hurricanes don’t get a ton of media coverage in Chicago.

Roughly 80% of the people that I follow on Twitter are related to the Miami Hurricanes football program. Players, coaches, and the South Florida/Miami media all keep me up to date on the happenings of the Canes…via Twitter. Better yet, guys like @SaveUMFootball find the stats and the research for me. I’m kept up to date on recruiting, coaches, players, and more all from taking 1-2 minutes to check one Twitter feed. It keeps me informed about something I’m interested in without me wasting time doing all the research myself.

2. Battlefield 3 Beta

Yes, I’m 26-years old and play video games. Not ashamed of it. I love teamwork games and it helps me stay connected with friends I might otherwise lose touch with.

With the upcoming launch of Battlefield 3 (October 25) they released a beta test for the game. Having purchased the dreadful Medal of Honor game, I was given early access to the beta 2 days before the general public. The real test of the game would be how it would play with my friends so we made plans to all play the night it was released to the public. Of course, as we tried to get our party together the EA servers went down.

Many people took to Twitter to vent about the problem, but it also made EA aware of many of the issues and frustrations people were having. It also allowed them to communicate to a large group of people that they were aware of the issue, and were working to fix it. I knew when the servers were back up immediately, thanks to Twitter.

This might not seem like a big deal because it deals with a video game beta test, but think of how this could be used in other businesses. Customer vents issue and frustration –> Company acknowledges issue and updates customer it’s being fixed –> Customer gets updated when the issue is resolved. The better question is, what business wouldn’t that be useful in?

3. iOS 5 Installation Issues

I love when Apple updates their operating system. Downloading and experimenting with a new iOS is like getting a new electronic product without having to pay for a new one. I was particularly excited about iOS 5 because it was going to include about 200 updates/improvements.

I download the OS and continue to the install. Unfortunately, I kept receiving “Error 3014″ and the update wouldn’t go through. Since Twitter was abuzz with users downloading the new iOS, I figured I’d check and see if anyone else was having issues. I searched “Error 3014″ on Twitter and found a group of people having similar problems as me. Within seconds I also figured out how to get around “Error 3014″, as one user had tweeted that temporarily disabling his antivirus program did the trick for him. I figured I’d give it a try, and sure enough, it worked for me as well.

A quick Twitter search saved me time and frustration with upgrading to the new iOS. I also use Twitter searches to find updates on injuries for my fantasy football players (among other things).

Clients Complain About Finding Your Website, Is This You?

Written by Justin Sterenberg

It had been 5 1/2 years since I had been to my dentist. Now before you jump on my back about how disgusting that is, I shall have you know that I had no new cavities and my oral health was in general good condition.

So let’s just say that I didn’t have my dentist’s phone number on speed dial, and to be completely honest – I had forgotten where their office was. I remembered my dentists name, so I did what any 25 year old would do – I googled the dentists name. (If you’re surprised that I didn’t pull out my handy address book or look in the yellow pages then you MUST keep reading)

After googling his name, it was on to the adventure of finding out where the office was and what the office number was — and worse yet — it didn’t look like they had a website. So what should have taken me 1 minute to do ended up taking me 10-15 minutes instead.

After the joy of having a stranger scraping and cleaning my teeth I struck up a conversation with the dentist about what I do for a living. We briefly discussed some of the online marketing opportunities available, and my general dissatisfaction with my experience trying to find their business online.

Let’s take a step back and look at this from a big picture point of view. As an existing customer of theirs, what did I want out of my online experience with them?

Google their business name and find it ranked #1 on Google (easy to do when looking for a specific business name – look up Justin Sterenberg and see what site comes up #1)
Find their phone number and address
Find this in about a minute

Simply put, that didn’t happen. This is just a guess, but I would venture that about 80% of small businesses provide online customer experiences that fall far short of what their customers are looking for. The sad part is that this is a simple problem to fix. It doesn’t require a $20k flash based website, an optimized PPC campaign running split tests, or a multi-year SEO campaign. It requires a simple website build and a submission to Google Places, which you can have built for less than the crown you just put into your last appointment.

How man of you have had similar issues? Are you already a customer of a business that can’t find that business online? Sound off in the comments section below.

7 Reactions to the AskMen.com “Great Male Survey 2009″

Written by Justin Sterenberg

I’m a fan of AskMen.com – the online men’s site that boasts 7 million readers per month. Being that I’m in their target demographic, that’s probably a good thing.

In my opinion, AskMen.com is like an online version of GQ, only it’s for straight-guys who don’t have trust funds. The articles on the site are also clearly meant for men, as they usually consist of a 5-10 bullet points with a corresponding paragraph. It’s functional, it’s logical, it’s to the point.

The 2009 version of “The Great Male Survey” came out on their site this week, and as someone who voted I wanted to check it out. And so, sticking with the theme of functional, logical, bullet-pointed posts – here are my 7 reactions from the AskMen.com “Great Male Survey” of 2009…

1. The Belief in the Institution of Marriage

75% of respondents said “Yes, I believe it is a necessary institution, and one that I will participate in to help preserve” when asked if they believed in marriage. Ahh, there may still be hope for our generation.

If you are getting married, try and find a way to top this for your wedding entrance:

2. More to Love?

52% of readers said that no, they wouldn’t dump their girlfriend if she became too fat. Of course, that means that 48% of readers said that yes, they would dump their girlfriend if she became too fat. C’est l’amore.

3. Wanted: Sugar Momma’

83% of respondants said that yes, they would be in a relationship with a woman who had a higher income than them. I don’t know if this stat is accredited to men starting to be cool with women making more than them, or the flat-out fact that the economy is just plain scary right now. Either way, it looks like the majority of men don’t mind if their woman makes more cheese than them.

4. Give It Some Time

61% of men said that the economic crisis hasn’t directly affected their career progress. Give it time fellas, he’s only been in office a couple of months.

5. Brad Pitt Was Seen Walking Into a Starbucks Today!

When asked if they followed celebrity gossip, 81% said “No, gossip is for women.” Amen to that. It’s clear that men have far more important things to focus on than trivial things like celebrity gossip, like fantasy football for example.

6. Obamanation

When asked which male celebrity they were tired of hearing about, Barack Obama tied Alex Rodriguez for first with 21% of readers voting for him. Obama’s poll results are also worse than George W.’s at this point in his tenure in office. Now that the lights are dimming on our prom king president maybe people will see that everything that is being done to ‘stimulate the economy’ is really all about giving as much of our power over to the federal government as Barry O can squeeze out of us.

7. Getting It Right Guys

57% of men said that being a good husband/and or father who takes care of his family was the #1 thing that makes a manly man in 2009. Much to my surprise, being wealthy was lowest on the list with only 2%. For this answer I offer a tip of the hat and a clip of a cigar to the fathers and husbands taking care of business at home.