Like a lot of people, I post on Twitter and Facebook when it’s convenient to me.

But I should be posting when my readers are reading.

Because there’s nothing worse, in social media terms, than having a great post buried because it’s way down the timeline by the time your readers tune in.

They’ll never see it.

That’s why I was interested in this infographic that crossed my desk the other day.

It shows clearly that marketers (and by extension small business owners) are busy posting stuff during the day, but consumers are more focused on social media in the evenings and on the weekends. (and it varies by platform)

Stands to reason, right? We all have jobs, and they sometimes keep us away from our computers…

Based on this infographic, I’m going to experiment with posting outside of business hours (using Hootsuite’s scheduling feature).

Have you tried this yourself? How did it work out?

It’s a real question.

The other day I was looking at a site for a client and when I looked under the hood I was surprised to see (okay, not that surprised) that they had never hooked the site up with analytics.

This means they know basically NOTHING about what’s been happening on their website for the past three years.

Sure, they could dig out the server logs and run them through a simple program, but this isn’t going to tell them much.

I was disappointed, selfishly, because I always enjoy sharing before-and-after stats with clients.

Getting analytics going isn’t hard. You can sign up for the free Google Analytics product and have the code running and collecting data within 20 minutes or so. Maybe an hour if you get confused halfway through.

Once it’s running, you don’t have to touch it. You don’t even have to look at your stats if you don’t want to. But they’ll be steadily collecting as the days, weeks, months and years pass.

There’s gold in those stats.

If you’re one of those people who haven’t signed up for an analytics program and installed the tiny bit of code on your website, it’s time to make a change.

Here’s a great free resource to help you get this done. Eugen Oprea has a free Google Analytics course that walks you through setup and understanding the data.

It’s at http://www.eugenoprea.com/google-analytics/. Go sign up now.

It’s free, and I don’t get anything for sending you there.

Another analytics resource is GetClicky. This is a great little service that gives you real-time, as-it-happens data on your website. You can actually see the clicks individual users make as they go through your website.

I like this service, which is paid, because it makes me look at my visitors differently. I learn a lot by putting myself in their shoes and wondering, for example, “why did they click that link, not the one above it?”

Sometimes I learn a lot just by seeing someone go to a page I know needs work, and then they disappear from the site instead of staying engaged. Kinda brings focus…

You can get GetClicky here, and yes, that’s an affiliate link because I think it’s a great service and it’s helped me fix one of my sites, so I can recommend it confidently.

What holds you back from installing analytics? Or from making good use of it? Share in the comments.

I was lucky recently to get an advance copy of Laura Roeder’s new Kindle e-book, Facebook Fame.

I didn’t figure I’d learn much, but I was wrong. Laura’s got a whole bunch of tips and tricks in addition to the basics, and I like her whole approach to FB.

Check out her launch party for the book.

Here’s my review:

This is a great book about making a name for your business on Facebook. It covers the basics, so it’s good for someone who is just starting out, but Laura Roeder also sneaks in some advanced tips and techniques. I’ve been helping a non-profit’s Facebook page for over a year, but a couple of things here were new to me, and I know I’ll use them.

Here’s a small example. Laura walks you through how to choose whether to post on your page “as your page” or as yourself. This is something that’s pretty confusing when you’re starting out, and it was even confusing to me as someone who had been a page admin for a year. (I don’t think you used to be able to do it, but without Laura’s book I never would have figured out you could.)

The book also shows you how to get more info out of your Facebook insights. Honestly I’d only ever looked at the overview, but there’s a lot more information available.

Overall, though, the basic mindset that Laura Roeder operates from is more important than any particular tip. She understands how to use Facebook without getting used by it. And she understands what Facebook is good for an what it’s not. You’ll save a lot of time and effort by following her advice because you’ll focus on what works and builds your business rather than on distractions that don’t.

Hop over to the launch party site to check out the launch and get a free sample chapter.

My friend Sonia over at Copyblogger wrote a great post about what’s probably the best thing you can do with twenty dollars today, this week, or maybe even this year.

I did it.

How to Rule the Whole Freaking World

To be perfectly precise, I actually did it this morning, when I read this post on Seth Godin’s blog:

That buzzing in my ear didn’t mean I was about to die

Please check it out and consider buying the book as well. Or skip the considering part and just buy it.

Afterward, take a careful look at each of those articles. They’re very different, but they’re both pretty much brilliantly written. If you’re trying to become a better writer, study them.

If you’re a small business owner with a website that doesn’t look great on mobile devices, help is here. And it’s free.

Get the details.

This short e-book will unlock the mysteries of creating a special web page that will be shown automatically to anyone who visits your website on a mobile phone.

The e-book will help if your homepage has a lot of big images, like the homepage at the SeaDoc Society. (Visit seadocsociety.org on a mobile phone to see the automatic detection and redirection in action.) It’ll help if your homepage has a big Flash slideshow that doesn’t show up on mobile devices. And it’ll help if your page just comes across cluttered and hard to navigate.

You can go from this:

to this:

Or from this:

to this:

You can do this yourself, for free, without having to hire a designer or sink a lot of money and time into a solution.

Click to continue…

Egg decorated without following instructions...

Last night we sat down at a friend’s dinner table with 6 kids to decorate Easter eggs.

Fancy Ukranian Easter eggs (also called Pysanky eggs).

To make them you take raw eggs and decorate them with wax and then dip them into colored Easter egg dye. By dipping into a sequence of colors, you can create fantastic patterns.

5 of the kids and I had never done this before. There’s quite a bit of technique to master. You use a tool called a kistka, which is a tiny brass funnel attached to a dowel, to drip beeswax onto the egg. To melt the wax you hold the kistka in a candle flame. It’s tricky to get the wax flowing just right. I had a lot of trouble getting a steady flow. I felt a bit like Charlie Brown trying to write with a fountain pen.

There’s also the matter of the dyes. Certain dyes work well before and after other dyes. Other combinations simply turn your whole egg black.

So what’s the point of all this?

Of the eight of us decorating eggs, only on person actually read and followed the instructions.

She copied a pattern from the instructions, and dipped the eggs in different colors in the exact right order.

Now, she’s not a particularly artistic person, certainly not an egg decorating expert. But she blew the rest of us out of the water.

Eggs decorated by following directions!

This is the power of following step by step instructions.

And you don’t have to be an expert to get “expert level” results. That is, as long as we define expert level results as being an order of magnitude better than your immediate competitors. Of course there are thousands of people who are true pysanky experts. A novice following instructions can’t hope to compete.

But still. Her eggs rock because she followed instructions.

This is a tactic I’ve followed in my own business, whenever I can.

It’s one thing to know the general ideas behind something, but another to have step by step instructions that get you from where you are to where you need to be.

It’s also why I try hard to document things as I do them, to make my own instruction sheets for my future forgetful self.

I’ve been working these past few months on a few different sets of “detailed instructions” for a couple of important areas for your small business or non-profit.

One relates to brick and mortar businesses. It’s about getting more people onto your newsletter list when they’re making a purchase.

The other is about how you can put up a simple mobile-friendly website for all those millions of people who are doing most of their online research on their mobile phones.

I’ll let you know as soon as they’re available.

This is a quick guide for small businesses & small non-profits who need to understand the impact of the new Pages features on Facebook.

The key piece is that you can now like other pages as your page. When you make comments on other pages as your organization, instead of as yourself, you can raise the visibility of your organization. See below for more details.

It’s a summary of some points from a webinar by Laura Roeder, with additions from other sites around the web. Laura has a program called “Zero to Facebook” (aff) that I have not taken but have heard good things about.

Laura feels that the new changes to the way Facebook handles pages will help businesses (or non-profits) increase their reach and visibility.

There are a few areas to pay attention to:

1. Photos.

Your page now has photos across the top. These are taken from your photo uploads.

Trouble spot: The photos are taken from the most recent photos you upload, or the most recent photos in which you tag your org/company.  According to one source I read, photos uploaded by fans won’t end up in the bar. The photos are displayed randomly. Another source.

Action item: Since these photos set the tone for your page, it’s important to take a look at what’s up there and make sure they’re what you want. Laura also implied that it’s good to keep them fresh. This makes good sense.

You can remove a photo by hovering over it and clicking the x that appears.

2. Display of Updates

Updates are no longer in chronological order. Facebook has a secret algorithm for deciding which show at the top.

Trouble Spot: Posts from community members might get pushed down and you might not see them.

Action Item: Set up page notifications so you get an email when things are posted. Facebook now has a feature for this. There’s a good third party tool at www.hyperalerts.no

3. Navigation changes

Navigation is on the left now instead of the top. You can now have more subpages. The Static FBML tool will go away March 11, but existing static “tabs” will still work. The new way of doing things is to have 520px wide iframes.

4. Display of “liked pages”

The left column now displays profile pics for the pages that your page likes.

5. Using Facebook as your Page

This is the big change that will have the most impact.

Using Facebook as your Page instead of as your personal profile will let you disentangle your personal and business existences on FB.

And it gives your business/org much more visibility.

To use FB as a page, you go to the Account pulldown at the top right and choose “use facebook as page.” You’ll get to choose the page you want to be on the next step, if you have more than one you administer. You use the same menu to switch back to being yourself.

Action steps:

–Like other pages. Think about where your ideal fans hang out and like those pages. Don’t just like pages that are in the same field as yours. Think laterally.

–Leave comments on another pages as your page. If allowed, you can post updates to the wall of that page.

–Consider improving your photo/logo, as that’s most of what shows up when you post or comment on the wall of another page. Faces or clear logos are best.

–One of the best ways to get noticed is to share interesting free content on other people’s walls or in response to their posts.

–Keep track of the activity on the pages you’ve liked: when you’re using FB as your page, the “home” view shows items from the pages you’ve liked, not from your personal friends.

If this was helpful, pass it around. Not helpful? Make a comment…

Do you know those people who stand on busy street corners handing out leaflets? They drive you nuts, right?

But you never see them in quiet residential neighborhoods, do you?

There’s a reason.

If you’re trying to communicate with people, you need to go where the people are ( that’s a link to my own guest post on a popular blog).

Small businesses get this concept when it comes to retail space, but sometimes we miss the point when it comes to our online marketing.

We build a website and a social media presence in the blind hope that if it’s interesting enough people will show up in droves. And then we get frustrated when all that effort doesn’t seem to pay off.

There’s a way to fix this.

How? You go where the people are. In this case it means you write for other people’s websites instead of your own.

It’s called “guest posting,” (which you probably already know) and it’s kind of like taking over for the leaflet guy when he takes a lunch break.

You see, busy websites require a lot of content. And that usually means that the website owner will welcome a well-written post that his or her audience will appreciate.

You’ve probably already heard of this concept. There’s a lot of buzz about it right now. It’s a great way to get new people to click through to your own site, and to get links to your site for search engine optimization purposes.

Of course, there are a few tricks to doing it right. These have been explained in various guest posting guides (I like this Guest Posting Guide from Chris Garrett, which is both thorough and cheap).

But for a lot of small business owners, the biggest problems are coming up with topics and figuring out what other websites might be interested.

I recently got a great insight on how to solve these problems from Jon Morrow at guestblogging.com

Jon’s trick is to think laterally. Get out of your own niche and make a connection to some other niche. This has two big effects. One is that it puts you in front of a new audience. The other is that it gives you something new to write about.

For example, if you own a bed & breakfast you’re probably sick to death of writing posts about great things to do nearby. In fact, you’re probably so sick to death of this topic that you haven’t even gotten around to writing very many posts about it!

But try giving things a twist. Approach a wedding site with an article on “5 Tips for a Country Wedding.” Or a gardening magazine with a piece on how you grow your own flowers for your guests for your entire high season.

If possible, connect your business to one of the Big Three evergreen topics: Money, Love, and Health.

The essence of guest posting is that these articles are much more powerful if they’re on someone else’s high-traffic site than they ever could be on your own.

If you’re not sure how you would write articles relating to your business, take a look at http://guestblogging.com/quit-blogging/. On this page Jon Morrow asked his readers to share their business niches and he went through each one offering ideas for articles and places to publish them.

If you have questions, ask them in the comments. I’ll be happy to answer them.

Update: I’ve added a transcript of the interview. Look below…

[Watch the intro video on YouTube if you're on a mobile device]

The other day I had the chance to interview Andrea Vahl, otherwise known as Grandma Mary, the crotchety Facebook expert. Andrea shared several tips and techniques for making your Facebook page more appealing to your fans and “likers.”

By the way, Andrea will be co-authoring the next edition of Facebook Marketing For Dummies, so she’s worth listening to…

Take a listen to the interview. We kept it short, so there’s no fluff to wade through. Just some great suggestions for getting more fans and increasing their engagement with your small business.

[Right click to download the MP3 file.]

We focused on small local businesses (yes, the brick and mortar types), but the advice is just as applicable to online-only businesses.

Putting up a fan page is a lot of work, so you want to make sure it’s doing good things for your business, not just sitting there “taking up space” on the internet.

Among the topics covered:

• how to turn walk-up customers into fans
• how to use your page to connect your customers to each other
• how to keep the focus on your fans, not on your business

Have you discovered a great way to increase engagement on your page? Let us know in the comments.

Oh, and don’t forget to click the button to share this post on FB and Twitter. Your friends with small businesses will be glad to have this advice.

If you’re interested in learning more about the nuts and bolts of setting up a great Facebook page for your business, check out Andrea’s guide to Facebook pages. She walks you through every step, and with a sense of humor! It’s a real time-saver.

Andrea’s e-book: How to Use Facebook to Grow Your Business

If you liked this interview, be sure to sign up for my newsletter (check out the sidebar or click here to sign up) so I can let you know when I publish new stuff.

Here’s the link to Andrea’s e-book: How to Use Facebook to Grow Your Business

And here’s another reminder to sign up for my newsletter: click here.

Mobile web usage is growing. Are you ready?

For many small businesses, creating a website that functions decently on mobile browsers is the last thing on their mind.

And it’s easy for people to tell themselves it doesn’t matter. After all, isn’t mobile web traffic just 1% of all web traffic?

I can definitely understand this perspective. Particularly when you think about how hard it can be to solve the mobile website problem. I’ve often noticed that when you don’t see a viable solution to a problem, it’s really hard to keep that problem top of mind.

But mobile web traffic is not going away. In fact, it’s growing steadily. For details, check out the article, Mobile Web traffic grows, not slows, during summer, on Mobile Marketer Daily.

Here are a few highlights:

• According to Nielsen, “the number of consumers accessing the mobile Internet in the United States has jumped from 54 million in May 2009 to 72 million in May 2010, a year-over-year increase of 34 percent.”
• The mobile analytics firm Ground Truth has found that mobile users are on the web for an average of 3 hours a month and view an average of 1,000 pages a month.

Traditional web traffic dips in the summer as people are outside playing instead of stuck at home in front of their computers.

But web traffic through handhelds is not dropping. And if you think about it, it makes sense. When we’re out and about, our phones are right there with us. I recently drove to California and back with my family, and we used the mobile web constantly throughout the trip, whether to get maps, find interesting places to eat, or find things to do. In contrast, I opened my laptop only a couple of times.

So what’s a small business owner to do?

Well, you can invest the time and money to create a website that works on mobile phones (but check first — your existing site may be perfectly decent). But while you’re pondering that (and putting it off), there are plenty of other actions you can take.

For example, make sure to update your listing on Google Local and on Yelp. Find out how people are searching for businesses on their phones and make sure you’re part of the results. (Don’t have a phone? Don’t know what apps people are using? Ask them!)

Where are the good coffee shops?

Don’t think this effort will matter? Check out this search I just did on Yelp’s iPhone app for coffee shops near me. Where is Enzo’s? Straight Shots? Teezers? KT Chocolates? Those are 4 excellent and distinctly different places to get a cup of coffee within half a mile of my location, but none of them show up. It would take less than 20 minutes for any of those businesses to get listed on Yelp, and that could result in hundreds of dollars of additional income over the summer tourist season.

(The only listing that’s there is a misplaced pin for a fine dining establishment.)

Photo credit: iphonepics via Flickr creative commons