If you are reading this post, you have (at least) started to tap into the tremendous benefits of Social Media Marketing, and have (more than likely) created a Facebook Page for your business or organization. This being the case, it’s important for you to be aware of several significant changes to all pages that were recently announced by the world’s largest online social networking site.

Facebook claims these changes, which were initiated on August 23, 2010, enhance the usability of their services and facilitate ease of implementation for developers. Our initial review of these changes reveals that, for the most part, the revisions only affect pages that currently have custom content such as tabs and boxes. However, companies and organizations that are planning to add custom content in the future should pay close attention to these changes as well.

Boxes be Gone

The first major change is the removal of the Boxes tab, as well as any boxes appearing in the side bar of the page. Prior to this change, whenever you added custom Facebook Markup Language (FBML) tabs, RSS feeds, events schedules, or other miscellaneous applications to a page, you could choose to place them in the Boxes tab and/or a sidebar box on the wall. Facebook has started notifying users via messaging in profile boxes, and in their Help Center, that the Boxes tab, boxes on profiles and pages, and application info sections will be going away. If you want the content formerly contained in these boxes to appear on a Facebook page, you will need to create new custom tabs. Therefore, it’s crucial that you review all of your pages to ascertain if any of your content has been or will be removed by Facebook.

We Are All Getting Skinny

The second change that Facebook made on August 23rd was to significantly narrow the width of custom FBML tabs. With this change, the previous 755 pixel width of FBML tabs has been narrowed to 520 pixels. The impact of this reduction is that any Facebook tabs that have not already been re-sized for this change will have approximately one-third of its right-side cut off. This means that 235 pixels of the tab will now be invisible to visitors! Once again, it is extremely important that you review your Facebook tabs as soon as possible to determine if they will be negatively impacted by this change.

Why the Changes

Given that both of these revisions do not appear to give businesses and organizations more options, or enhance user experience, we can only speculate as to why they were made by Facebook. We suspect that they have been implemented to provide more room for advertising on the sidebar of each page. As almost everyone is aware, Google has done fairly well with the real-estate running along the right-side of their organic search results! Whatever Facebook’s rationale is for these changes, this newsletter is intended to alert you to the fact that you need to now format your current and future fan pages accordingly.

As a founding SEMpdx board member, EngineWorks will be participating on this panel presentation, and will have several team members present at this event. The expert SEMpdx panelists will be delivering recommendations on the most up-to-date strategies for connecting with your online audiences through integrated Social Media Marketing campaigns. Find-out what it really takes to achieve success through social networks and online communities such as Facebook, Twitter, and StumbleUpon.

Here are the details for this exciting evening:

SEMpdx Integrated Social Media Presentation
4:30pm to 6:00pm PDT
Tuesday
September 14, 2010
Hotel deLuxe, Portland, Oregon
Registration
Directions

We encourage you to join our EngineWorks crew for an evening of education and discussion pertaining to this critically important component of Search Engine Marketing.  You can visit SEMpdx.org to conveniently register for this event online.

Before I begin, let me just get one thing out of the way — I’m not exactly sure what to call this new offering from Microsoft. It appears that the official name is Bing Toolbox, but Microsoft has undoubtedly continued its nasty habit of inconsistent naming (*cough* Live).

A fellow team member here at EngineWorks introduced it as Bing Webmaster Central. I then searched for it in Bing and Google, and it came up under the Toolbox name. In Bing, it was actually ranked second to Google . . . definitely a chuckle moment. I then found other various results, including an FAQ-type sub-site from Microsoft, that referred to this new tool as “Bing Webmaster Center” and “Bing Webmaster Central.” When I finally remembered the login, the Web app refers to itself as “Bing Webmaster Tools”.

Huh?

Moving beyond its name, the actual product uses Silverlight. For those who aren’t familiar, Silverlight is a platform similar to Flash. I immediately noticed the responsiveness — when you click, the delay is much shorter, and feels like a real application within your browser.

The reason for the zippy-ness, however, may be due to its lack of features. Being a new application, its interface is rather austere. I was only able to find four real features: 1. pages indexed, 2. pages crawled, 3. a query table, and 4. a hybrid of impressions and clicks over time. The graphs within each of these features aren’t bad. They’re easy to look at, and easy to get data for each day with a simple mouse hover.

Unfortunately, the only tabular data in this tool is buried under the Pages Indexed graph, and displays impressions, clicks, and CTR for each search query. Good, but not great.  It’s useful for getting a general idea of which keywords are producing clicks. However, that’s about all. In my opinon, the real gold is knowing absolute visitors/clicks (as provided in Google Analytics), which is not available in this Bing Webmaster Toolbox.

From my initial cursory review, I am pleased to report that this tool-set represents real progress at Microsoft. Even so, you’ve still got a long drive ahead, Bing, to catch-up to Google Analytics.

As depicted in the following eMarketer graph from this article, total U.S. spending on social media advertising is projected to rise even further next year, to more than $2 billion.

In this article titled ‘Social Network Ad Spending to Approach $1.7 Billion This Year’, eMarketer attributes the strong growth in overall online advertising, especially on Facebook, as the main driver for this significant growth in Social Media Marketing.

Facebook is projected to receive more than half of all domestic social media ad spending this year, according to eMarketer.  They also report that spending within MySpace continues to decline, as Facebook and Twitter become more popular.

Due to the fact that our clients here at EngineWorks greatly desire to connect with their target audiences, and to establish rich two-way communication, we have seen revenues through our Social Media Marketing services parallel this trend reported by eMarketer.  And, we fully expect it to continue to accelerate in the months to come!

Much of this effort is directed toward justifying marketing programs, but the marketers surveyed often lacked an effective way of communicating the success—or otherwise—of their campaigns to other executives. While three-quarters of marketers begin initiatives with clear goals set out, only 56% have a system for letting company executives know how the campaign fared.

Here at EngineWorks, our team of search marketing experts operates under our proven formula of setting proper expectations, delivering on those expectations, and keeping our clients fully informed of our performance. We understand that, as we drive strategy and achieve outstanding results through our data-driven marketing services, it is extremely important to ensure that our clients are continuously aware of our achievements.

As noted in this eMarketer article above, more than half of all marketers lack the ability to convey their success to the ‘higher-ups’ within their company. Therefore, given that our interactive services are extremely measurable, we strive to ensure that the account executives within the marketing department at each of our valued clients are completely aware of the actions we employ to achieve the highest return on their advertising dollar.

If there’s one thing we fully understand . . . it’s that our clients’ boss or owner wants to understand! Thus, we make it easy for their marketing department to convey our success through on-going consultation and professional reporting.

Tonight, August 10, 2010, EngineWorks will be giving away several ultra-hip signature t-shirts at the SEMpdx Social Networking Rooftop Party. This lively event, taking place at the Hotel deLuxe in beautiful downtown Portland,will feature enjoyable food, drinks, live music by Donerail, and lots of networking.To enter to win an obsidian black t-shirt emblazoned with our sizzling, full-color logo, simply post the following ‘tweet’ via Twitter.com:

RT @engineworks I want a T-Shirt #SEMpdxParty

We’ll randomly draw several lucky winners at tonight’s event. You must be present to win, however.

Note that pre-registration for our SEMpdx Rooftop Party has been extended.

So, sign-up now, and we’ll see you there.

This year’s SEMpdx Rooftop Party is being held at Hotel deLuxe, and will feature a fabulous evening of adult drinks, hors d’oeuvres, live music, and social networking with hundreds of interactive marketing professionals from the Great Pacific Northwest. Along with fellow co-sponsor Online Marketing Summit (OMS), EngineWorks is privileged to be a featured sponsor of the festivities at this innovative annual event.

This year, our Rooftop Party will showcase a live performance by local rock music band Donerail, whose members include several search marketing professionals from SEM firms in the Pacific Northwest. Our team at EngineWorks is very excited to hear fellow Search Performance Specialist, Dan Niska, rock the party as Donerail’s bass player!

Note that our Networking Rooftop Party is a pre-register event only, and does not allow registration at the door of the event. The pre-registration deadline is 12:00 Midnight on Tuesday, August 10, 2010.

In addition to sponsoring this wonderful party, EngineWorks representatives will be available throughout the evening to meet with individuals interested in discussing the benefits of our data-driven Internet marketing services. To schedule an informal meeting with one of our team members, simply post a request on this blog.

This competition and awards ceremony, presented by the Boutique & Lifestyle Lodging Association (BLLA) in conjunction with Hospitality Design Magazine, is the only contest of its kind dedicated to the boutique hospitality industry. Online boutique lodging properties from around the world will be competing for recognition of achievement in several equally weighted categories, including design and architecture, customer service, and marketing and sales.

Winning properties will be honored at the Boutique & Lifestyle Hospitality Awards Luncheon, a networking banquet being held September 15, 2010 at the Miami Beach Convention Center, and will be showcased online in the Boutique & Lifestyle Hospitality Awards 2010 Winners Gallery on the BLLA website, Hospitality Design website, and editorial coverage in Hospitality Design Magazine.

The judging panel, featuring industry experts within advertising, public relations, and digital marketing professions, will rate each online property based upon its success within each category. In addition, the 2010 Boutique & Lifestyle Hospitality Awards will recognize one individual as “Hotelier of the Year” for outstanding achievement in owning, managing and/or marketing a property or small brand.

Entry submission is currently open to all online boutique properties, and can be accessed through the following link:

http://guest.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Summary.aspx?e=dfff66f6-41b4-4ff0-aae1-7c19cb965b51

Information pertaining to registering and attending the awards luncheon can be found through the following link:

http://guest.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Invitation.aspx?e=487ade0f-a77c-41b2-b4cc-4d1bb4e4c123

The BLLA has been formed to be a unifying voice for this unique sector within the hospitality industry. The professional association is recognized as the definitive resource for researching, locating, and booking boutique and lifestyle hotels. EngineWorks is privileged to be an exclusive partnered service provider to the Boutique & Lifestyle Lodging Association.

This year’s SEMpdx Rooftop Party is, once again, being held at Hotel deLuxe in beautiful downtown Portland, and will feature a fabulous evening of adult drinks, hors-d’oeuvres, live music, and social networking with hundreds of interactive marketing professionals from the Pacific Northwest. Along with fellow co-sponsor Online Marketing Summit (OMS), EngineWorks is privileged to sponsor the festivities at this innovative annual event.

New to the Rooftop Party this is year is a live performance by local rock music band Donerail, who will be providing enjoyable party music throughout the event. Featured members of Donerail happen to also be search marketing professionals from SEM firms in the Pacific Northwest, including Dan Niska, Search Performance Specialist at EngineWorks, and Josh Patrice, SEM Specialist at Portent Interactive.

The SEMpdx Networking Rooftop Party is a pre-register event only, and does not allow registration at the door of the event. The pre-registration deadline is 12:00 Midnight on Tuesday, August 10, 2010.

Information pertaining to pre-registration and attendance at this exciting social networking event in Portland can be accessed through the following link:

http://www.sempdx.org/blog/events/sempdx-social-networking-rooftop-party-2010/

In addition to sponsoring this wonderful party, EngineWorks representatives will be available throughout the evening to meet with individuals interested in discussing the benefits of advanced Search Engine Marketing. To schedule an informal meeting with an EngineWorks team member, simply send an e-mail to Kent Schnepp at kent@engineworks.com.