Did you have a hard time adjusting to the Facebook Timeline Format?  I was one of those that really liked the “old” format … probably because I’d finally gotten comfortable with it.  So, I was a reluctant adopter of the new Timeline.

I started  noticing that smart businesses were finding ways to implement its new  features to increase online sales leads and drive traffic to their websites.

Not wanting to be left behind in the dust…I started using it and discovered… I liked it!

Let’s take a look at some essential Timeline features that should be part of your Facebook strategy.

Choose an Effective Cover Photo

Every visitor to your page sees your cover photo first, so make it a strongly branded image. Cover photos should be 851 x 315 pixels for a perfect fit. Keep in mind that Facebook prohibits calls to action and other promotional information in the cover photo. References to “likes” or “shares” are also taboo.

Rearrange Tab Order

The tabs that used to appear in the sidebar (photos, likes, videos, notes) are now placed directly underneath your cover photo. Only the first four tabs appear, with additional tabs accessible via the drop-down arrow.

You can rearrange tab order so the most important information is always visible—just click the edit button and choose which tab you’d like to swap positions with. Use tabs to promote email sign-ups, FAQs, events and other essential information.

Add Milestone Events

An excellent new tool to drive traffic and increase online sales leads, milestones highlight special events throughout the month or year. Spotlight a product launch, annual sales event, or new store opening and add a date, description, links, videos, pictures and more to flesh out the post.

Pin Posts

Pinning posts is one of the most exciting new Timeline features in terms of being able to keep information visible. Pinning displays important posts (an email signup list, an online sale, a contest or giveaway, etc.) at the top of your page for up to one week.

Highlight Posts

Highlighted posts remain in position on the Timeline, but stretch across two columns to draw more attention. You can highlight multiple posts, but be careful about highlighting too many and thereby losing effectiveness. Use highlighting to draw attention to your latest ads, YouTube videos, customer testimonials, sales, promotional events, and more, all with the goal of encouraging people to visit your site.

I think once you get used to the new Facebook Timeline features, you’ll really like them…at least that’s been my experience.

If you’ve got any good tips for using the Timeline pass them along.

“If you build it, they will come.” Really? This famous saying may apply to ghostly baseball stadiums, but it’s hardly applicable in the world of online marketing.

Many businesses unconsciously follow this business model as they’re setting up their website.

They build and optimize, design and promote, but they fail to perform the most important step of all: differentiation.

Why You Need to Define A Market Niche

Over sixty-five percent of new marketing ventures fail. Why? While there may be a variety of reasons the collapse of an online business, one of the most common is failing to properly define your market niche.

Consider this: According to Google Adwords, users searched for “book store” over six million times, and that search returns more than one billion hits. That’s a lot of competition.

Narrow that search down to “childrens book store” and you’ll see just 12,100 searches. Now you have a keyword that still generates plenty of traffic, but also allows you to market more effectively to a particular audience.

After all, a shopper looking for John Grisham novels isn’t likely to stick around on your children’s book website anyway. You can narrow your market down even further by adding geographical indicators and other unique identifiers, ultimately attracting the traffic most likely to buy from you.

How to Find Your Market Niche

Online marketing success is all about finding a niche that balances demand with competition. Look for a niche with sufficient demand that isn’t currently being met in your marketing arena.

• Begin with a broad idea that you love. If you don’t love what you do, you’re not likely to spend the time and effort it takes to build a great website, market it well, and keep it updated.
• Perform keyword research. Use a keyword tool, such as the one for free in Google Adwords, to find out which keywords related to your broad idea receive the most searches.
• Choose a narrower topic that still competes. Ideally, you want a topic that receives plenty of searches but that isn’t competing with millions of other sites. The more specialized your niche, the more likely your ideal customer will be to find you. Look on the fringes for niches that haven’t been well-filled and that provide plenty of marketing opportunities without huge competitors.
• Develop your UVP. During this process, don’t forget that all your marketing efforts should stem from your unique value proposition. Your UVP provides direction by determining what makes your business unique. What do you offer that no one else does? Even if you’re selling a product that other businesses in your area sell, you can differentiate yourself by new or different services from your competitors or focusing on a unique aspect of that marketing niche that your competitors have overlooked.

 Now it’s your turn… How did you discover your market niche?

This week’s edition includes tips for increasing your average order value, simple steps to making your website more user friendly, leveraging your thank-you pages, practices to help increase your conversion rate, and some Google Analytics tips:

- Increasing your average order value (AOV) is something that is often overlooked.  Amp Up Your Ecommerce: 7 Tactics to Boost Average Order Value from KISSmetrics covers 7 simple tactics that you can implement on your site and also has some tips on how to take these concepts further

- MarketingProfs’ Three Steps to Making Your Website More User Friendly  outlines three steps to checking the usability of your website along with tips for improving the user experience on your website, and explains the importance of website content, layout, and testing

- There are plenty of opportunities to keep your prospect engaged with your website, content, and brand even after the conversion event.  How to Leverage Thank-You Page Real Estate for Better Marketing from HubSpot offers 8 Ways Your Thank-You Page and Emails Can Keep Prospects Engaged

- Conversion Conference shares some practices that helped achieve outstanding conversion rates results in 4 Good Practices That Will Help You Improve Your Conversions By +20%

- Tips, best practices and maybe even a few Analytics secrets that will help you set up and maintain an effective Google Analytics account for your website can be found in 12 Most Rewarding Tips for Google Analytics from 12 Most

That will cover it for this week and I’ll leave you with a quick reminder to request one free conversion idea for your website as well as to signup for our blog updates and conversion tips newsletter. If you have any tips, suggestions, or resources you’d like to share please leave us a comment below and please feel free to suggest topics that you would like to see covered in future Conversionator posts.

Donna has been in the Marketing and Research fields for over 20 years working with a wide array of industries and contributes The Conversionator weekly roundup post to the Diamond Website Conversion blog.

It’s tempting to view conversion optimization as a checklist of things to test or things to tweak on your site.

And while optimization does largely depend on your attention to details, knowing what to change requires a more foundational understanding of conversion optimization basics.

Why do certain strategies increase conversions while others turn people away?

When you can answer this question, you are well on your way to discovering what needs to be changed on your site, with or without someone else’s checklist.

Let’s take a look at four conversion optimization basics that will revolutionize your approach to online success.

1. Great designs are invisible. The goal is to give people what they while making it as easy as possible to get where they want to go. When your design elements get in the way of the visitor taking a desired action, they have become hindrances to conversion. Bad designs include things like confusing navigation, distracting animations, misleading headlines, poorly written copy, and poor placement of essential elements like the call to action. Good designs place elements in intuitive places, communicate clearly, and make it easy for the visitor to get where he wants to go.
2. Conversion is psychological. Conversion happens in the mind before the customer clicks. That means your goal must be mental persuasion, not merely techie gimmicks. Make an emotional connection with your reader that places an emphasis on urgency, need, and benefit.
3. Simplicity is KeyThe more complex your design, the more engaged a viewer will have to be to accomplish his goal. And in the fast-paced world of web browsing, that can be a fatal mistake. Focus on the three kings of conversion: readability, clarity, and usability. Make it easy to read and assimilate information, make it clear what you want the reader to do, and make it easy to accomplish that action.
4. Test, test, test.No conversion optimization strategy is complete without testing. In fact, testing may be the most important of the conversion optimization basics, because without it, you have no way of knowing how effective your website is. Could you be converting at a higher rate? What elements are standing in the way of conversion? Testing is the only way to know for sure.

One you have a solid grasp of what you’re trying to accomplish, you can move past these conversion optimization basics and begin evaluating some of those best practice lists you’ve been poring over. But never forget, a checklist is only beneficial insofar as it accomplishes the goals listed above.

We’re testing call to action buttons at the moment.  The wording that drives me crazy when I see it on a call to action button is  “submit” which always brings up images of having to kiss the ring of a king or something equally silly … what wording on a call to action button drives you crazy?

This week’s edition includes forgotten content marketing assets, Net Promoter Score insights, tips for Google-proofing small business SEM and for conducting competitive intelligence assessments, and seeing Instagram in a new way:

- Most businesses are sitting on a treasure trove of entertaining and relevant content that their prospects and customers would love. 5 Content Marketing Assets You Forgot You Had from Convince & Convert suggests five places to look for interesting content to share

- Increasingly, companies are adopting the Net Promoter Score as the corporate metric. 10 Things To Know About Net Promoter Scores And The User Experience from Measuring Usability explains 10 things to know about the Net Promoter Score if you’re concerned about improving the user experience

- There have always been many shades of gray in SEO, which is why language matters, and how small business thinks and talks about SEM guides action. Search Engine Watch offers up How to Google-Proof Your Small Business SEM Strategy so that small business can continue to enjoy the benefits of Google’s massive traffic

-  Competitive intelligence assessments empowers you to anticipate and face challenges seen and unseen. 10 Tips For ‘Spying’ On Your Competition from CBS News Sales Machine shares 10 perfectly legal ways to conduct online “espionage”

- Although Instagram is primarily used among smartphone owners and consumers to document their daily activities, 4 Ways to Make Instagram Work for Your Small Business from Flowtown shows how businesses can also tap into Instagram’s popularity and utilize the app to reach their customers on a more intimate scale

That will round it up for this week and I’ll leave you with a quick reminder to request one free conversion idea for your website as well as to signup for our blog updates and conversion tips newsletter. If you have any tips, suggestions, or resources you’d like to share please leave us a comment below and please feel free to suggest topics that you would like to see covered in future Conversionator posts.

Donna has been in the Marketing and Research fields for over 20 years working with a wide array of industries and contributes The Conversionator weekly roundup post to the Diamond Website Conversion blog.