The new Facebook page layouts have recently been the topic of much discussion in the online marketing world, with a host of new and improved features thrown in along with one or two unpleasant twists. Among a few hidden ‘gotchas’ in the new layout that could hugely impact compatibility, another catch was that online marketers had less than a month to review the new changes before these updates were applied to Facebook across the board. How these will affect your social media strategies remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure – from a looks perspective, the changes offer a lot of benefit to marketers.

So what has been changed in the layout, what are the hidden twists, and most importantly, how will this affect your Facebook marketing strategies exactly?

1. Increased User Experience

The main changes in the new Facebook page layout have been in terms of user experience. Facebook has taken the invaluable feedback that they got from marketers, and have added features that add to your visitor’s overall experience, which allows your brand to be more like an individual – commenting, ‘liking’ and interacting with other pages much as you would with your personal Facebook account. The ‘Use Facebook as a Page’ function in your Account menu allows you to use this capability to get the most from the updated interactive abilities.

2. Better Landing Pages

Another good upgrade to Facebook pages is that it’s now much easier to specify landing tabs directly in your advertising campaigns. This allows you to create specific landing pages much more easily to drive more traffic to these pages. This is particularly helpful for marketers who had to adapt their welcome page to promote specific campaigns.

3. Random Images

One of the potentially frustrating updates is of course the much-talked about random image gallery that pulls from your photographs. With a bit of effort and time, you can make the most of this feature by creating fun and eye-catching image sequences, but without a bit of work, the images simply appear random and messy. The best way to get around this is to at least ensure that you have plenty of great images uploaded to your page.

4. Wall Post Time Issues

Yet another frustrating issue is that Facebook has changed the wall post format, so that posts are not always chronologically displayed but rather displayed in an automatically interest-based way, based on interactions. This will be especially frustration for social media campaigns such as competitions or giveaways that rely on time and date. There have been a few complaints about this, so with any luck this feature will be ironed out soon.

5. Application Integration

One of the most concerning changes however is that Facebook will be adding changes to how applications integrate on the social network. This is something that many developers and marketers will need to consider, as it effectively means that building your own social commerce application will be a little trickier and the applications that you can use will be changed significantly. As Facebook puts it, “you will no longer be able to create new FBML apps and Pages will no longer be able to add the Static FBML app.”

All in all, the Facebook page updates offer a better interaction for internet marketing and even a better visual impact, however these changes will require a bit of work to ensure that your page integrates the changes smoothly.

Having a great business website is not enough in the realm of Online Business. “Build it and they will come” is not an effective point of view or strategy when it comes to building your online empire. There is much to be done to get the best results from your business online.

Search Engine Marketing or SEM is divided into 3 major elements namely, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), PPC (Pay per Click) or paid advertising and Social Media marketing.

Using these elements, either individually or in conjunction with one another, is crucial – especially for new businesses or existing businesses looking to expand into the online world.

As a new website, or a website that has not implemented any online marketing strategies, your products, services or solutions will not rank for any of the valuable industry keywords that your potential customers are searching for in the major Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc). This of course means that traffic to your site will be low and that ultimately you will achieve less conversions, sales and revenues without a proper online marketing strategy for your business.

PPC Advertising

Many consider PPC to be the easier strategy of the two. This may be true from an implementation point of view, but there is a lot to know in order to run an effective PPC campaign. Considerable research would need to be done, but with a little insight and savvy you will be able to find all the tools and knowledge you need from Google’s Adwords support system.

PPC is very effective in quickly attracting targeted traffic, depending on your budget.

Advantages of PPC

* Your PPC campaign can be up and running in minutes.

* No modifications to your website are necessary.

* You pay only when users click your ads.

* You can choose exactly how much you spend on the campaign.

* You control who sees your ads by use of keyword targeting.

* You can choose the language and geographic target that your ads are displayed in.

* Your campaign can be effectively tracked and monitored for optimum results.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO as a whole consists of a myriad of elements that will be used to analyse your business and business needs, create a strategy, and to implement and Optimize that strategy to maximize results.

The following Questions are the Answers to your perfect strategy:

1. What does your target market want? And where are they from? (Keyword research and Geo Targeting)

2. Who are your competitors, and what will it take to beat them? (Competitor Analysis)

3. Does your website facilitate competing with these competitors? (Web layout and structure)

4. What are the most suitable online strategies for your business?

5. How long will it take to implement the strategies, and what results are achievable?

6. How can we improve your strategy to improve your performance?

Improved SEO rankings take time. Although you may see improvements in both rankings and traffic within 3 months it generally takes between 3 and 6 months to see a noticeable increase in performance.

The reason for this delay is that Google and other search engines have to crawl millions of sites daily and this takes a little bit of time. Google has large scale updates where the number and quality of inbound links toward your site, as well as the quality of resources and information that appears on your site, is ‘weighed and measured’ and then will add or subtract from your online authority and credibility – this determines whether or not your rankings improve.

Social Media Marketing

Another online marketing strategy is Web2.0 and Social media. Social bookmarking, blogging and networking can facilitate an influx of traffic and links from other sites that will add to your online reputation and credibility. But we delve deeper into social media and viral marketing at a later stage.

So as you can see, there are quite a few things to consider when starting your Online Marketing campaign. To get the results you are after you will either have to learn the ins and outs of online marketing and the online world, or you’ll have to find the right people who know the right stuff about what your business requires.