Berbay's Blog: Marketing for law firms, engineers, CPAs, architects and other professional services

Berbay often receives questions about using social-networking services such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. We recently got an email asking about Tweetdeck, a popular application that enables users to (among other things) update multiple social-media accounts simultaneously. We thought that our response might be of interest to readers of this blog.

Dear Berbay,

I use numerous social-networking services (Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn), so I recently downloaded Tweetdeck in order to be able to update them all at once and thus maintain them more easily.

Once I had the application up and running, though, I did a test update from Tweetdeck and it only posted to Twitter. What went wrong? How can I connect Tweetdeck to Facebook and LinkedIn as well as Twitter?

Janet

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Dear Janet,

Thanks for the question. Tweetdeck can be a useful tool—but it can be tricky. A couple things could be happening:

• You might not have added all your social-media accounts to Tweetdeck. When the application is open, in the upper left-hand corner, there are symbols for Twitter, etc. indicating which accounts you’ve added. The first thing to do is double-check that the symbols for Facebook and LinkedIn show up there.

• If you have added all your accounts, another possibility is you haven’t given Tweetdeck permission to update all of them. Where Tweetdeck lets you choose which social-media outlets you want it to sync with, make sure you’ve selected Facebook and LinkedIn.

Hope that helps. We’re more than happy to walk you through the process.

Best,

Erica Hess
Account Manager

Even if you don’t have thousands of people following your blog, there are still many reasons to have one. For instance, depending on how it fits in with your website, a blog can contribute to a higher search engine ranking. There are ways to “push” your blog comments out into the world via social media outlets, RSS feeds, etc. Blogging can be a great way to build your credibility, so that when people do visit your blog, they immediately see that you are the expert. Also, blogging is just a nice way to express yourself—the “Dear Diary” of the internet age.

At a recent conference in New York, I met a woman from Tokyo who told me why she blogged about her business. She said that when people met her, even for the first time, they felt that they knew her. Because of this, they immediately trusted her. She didn’t have to start building that trust from scratch. I thought, “Wow, what a great case for blogging.”

In a typical Google move, the company has redesigned and upgraded its popular place-reviews site, Google Places. By doing so, it has altered some content that will greatly affect a rated firm’s SEO. Specifically, Google Places will no longer be drawing reviews from other mass-review sites from around the web like Yelp or Merchant Circle.

Google Places allows web-users to both post and read reviews of businesses when they search for that place in Google Maps. Google’s presence on the company review landscape has enticed many savvy, SEO-oriented businesses to take an active role in shaping their Place page.

Previously, Places pulled reviews and rankings from sites around the web, allowing, for example, a Yelp review to appear as a review on Google. Now, however, evaluations of businesses must be posted directly to the Places page to appear as a review.

By eliminating reviews from third party sources, Google retains greater control over reviews posted on Places, clearly spurred on by the belief that it has enough of a presence to stop piggy-backing on already established sites.

With this new awareness, your business should add Google Places to your roster of sites that help promote your services. In addition to monitoring reviews, you should request clients to post feedback directly on your Place page, rather than simply on sites like Yelp.

Although Google Places is relatively new to the scene, its influence cannot be overlooked, as Google has proven time and time again with its many other popular applications.

Berbay is often asked about the best ways to optimize and utilize social media sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.  We were recently asked about a specific privacy setting on LinkedIn and thought our explanation might be of interest to you.

Dear Berbay,

When I Google an individual, often her full employment history will appear on her LinkedIn profile. Because I’m new in my career, I would prefer searchers not immediately see this information about me. Is it possible for a LinkedIn member to block this feature?

Thank you for your help.

Sara

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Dear Sara,

Thank you for your email.

You are able to block Google and other search engines from generating your LinkedIn profile when someone searches your name.  If you do not want to hide your entire LinkedIn profile, there are also ways to edit what information on your profile becomes public and what remains private. To do so, simply follow these steps:

• On the upper right hand corner where your name appears, click the drop-down “Settings.”
• Under the right-hand column, click “Edit your public profile.”
• On the right-hand column, look at the box titled “Customize Your Public Profile,” which allows you to un-check anything you do not want to appear to the public.
• If you want to hide your profile entirely, you can select the option “Make my public profile visible to no one.” This will completely eliminate your LinkedIn public profile.  You will then not be searchable on LinkedIn or search engine sites.

I hope you find this helpful. Again, thanks for reaching out to us.

Megan Braverman
Account Manager