Saturday, January 21, 2012

Facebook & Marketing

Here is some great insight on how to best use Facebook.

1. Track ”People Talking About This”


People Talking About This is one of the new metrics for Facebook Pages. Unlike other metrics on your Insights dashboard, it’s also the only one visible to the public.

This number represents the total number of people who, over the past seven days, have engaged with your Page in any way — by Liking it, commenting on or sharing a post, answering a question, tagging your Page, or responding to an event. In your Insights dashboard, you’ll also see a percentage increase or decrease next to the current number, so you can compare this week’s engagement against last week’s stats.

If you want to build a thriving community on Facebook — or if you want to turn existing fans into raving superfans — engagement is the most critical metric you can track. And People Talking About This is a good measure of overall engagement.

Luckily, the best way to increase engagement is easy: Just ask.

Ask your fans questions, request their opinions, and ask people to click. Don’t post, “I’m excited about the Superbowl this year!” Instead, write, “Click Like if you’re excited about the Superbowl this year!” You can also ask people to share your content. I might write, “If you found this tip useful, make sure to share it with your friends.” Inserting mini calls-to-action reminds your audiences to act, not just read.

Tip: Never let a post go unattended — meaning, when someone does comment, Like or share your post, reach out to him personally and acknowledge his action with a thank you, or use it as an opportunity to expand the conversation. But whatever you do, don’t leave fans hanging.

2. Track “Engaged Users”

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3. Track “External Referrers”

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Read more here:

Friday, January 20, 2012

Learning Programming? Scratch & Java

Are you interested in learning to program? Here are some quick notes on programming languages for new programmers.

Scratch is a fun, interactive, programming language that can be used to create and share your own interactive art, games, and music. This is very cute and may encourage new and young programmers -- to get into programming. Scratch is developed by MIT.



If you are interested in some mainstream languages, Java is a great first language to learn. Here are some links and tutorials.