Making a choice between using a LinkedIn Company Page or a Facebook Business Page to market your business, product, or service depends on what you want to get out of the page and what amount of time you can devote to working the page. Working the page means updating, editing, posting, LIKE, etc.

LinkedIn and Facebook both have their advantages and disadvantages. The choice of using one in preference to another depends on what you are selling or promoting, what you know about your market (demographics, target, etc.), your expectations of business life span, and what other functions you will use this page for.

LinkedIn Company Pages and Facebook Business Pages differ in audience size.  As of February 2012, Facebook has 845 million active users and LinkedIn has .  I did find one interesting statistic

LinkedIn has more than 2 million companies with LinkedIn Company Pages.

If you want the opportunity to market to the entire population of many countries  a Facebook Fan Page properly developed, advertised, and promoted will usually result in more visits.  The Facebook Business Page has the advantage of being very useful for selling products or services that have a short shelf life – will not be on the market long – because the fan page format is easy to change and remove when not needed.

LinkedIn Company Pages have the advantage of being able to direct your offering to a selected in the know group of people who are already savvy to what you are selling or what your company does. Selling to people who know your company or product is usually an easier sell and a faster sell.

The specificity offered by LinkedIn Company Pages outdoes Facebook’s Fan Page. Facebook’s Fan Page can be limited in who views the page but that requires you to have already made that person or company a friend. Linked In Company Pages has the advantage of being able to directly contact people in the same business or market through highly specific groups and group discussions that already exist at Linked In.

If your LinkedIn Company Page is a reflection of your corporate web site you have a hiring advantage when you need new employees. LinkedIn allows you the convenience of selecting potential new hires from a verifiable set of competent candidates with documentation. A Facebook Fan Page cannot offer you the same high level of potential employees as LinkedIn can.

The choice is yours.  For me, I chose both.

You can visit the Upstream Marketing LinkedIn Company age by clicking Upstream Marketing LinkedIn

The Upstream Marketing Facebook page is still in beta but you can visit it by clicking Upstream Marketing Facebook

It had to work, right?  Facebook is the most- visited website in the world.

Many thought persuading visitors to shop would be easy.

Not so fast…

Bloomberg said the Gap, J.C. Penny, Nordstrom and Gamespot all opened and closed stores on Facebook because fans haven’t bought anything.

Forrester Research Analyst Sucharita Mulpuru told Bloomberg:

There was a lot of anticipation that Facebook would turn into a new destination, a store, a place where people would shop. But it was like trying to sell stuff to people while they’re hanging out with their friends at the bar.

For me, it reminds me of days gone by.  I don’t know if they still exist but remember the rose peddlers from years ago.  You were on a date at Studabakers or Celebrations  (Houston Baby Boomers will remember these clubs) and a beautiful rose peddler would come up with a basket of roses and ask if you wanted to buy a rose for your date.

Today it’s a lot more sophisticated. The rose peddler know your likes, dislikes, search habits, buying habits, friends… but it’s still intrusive.

Also, what is the incentive of buying at a Facebook storefront when we all know most retailer spend a lot of money making online purchases on their main e-commerce site very easy. Once I leave my friends on Facebook it’s just as easy to visit Bass Pro Shops to check out the latest lure from KVD.

Let me know if you have ever purchased something direct from a Facebook Storefront.

If you have not done so already, read my blog titled What is a geographic modifier.

Now that you have an idea of what a geographic modifier is, you might be wondering how to pick the right one.

Website Design Houston is a pretty obvious choice for Upstream Marketing.  This helps narrow down website design companies in Houston for someone searching for a website design company.

If your business is in a particular geographic area, you can choose the city, state or possibly neighborhood.

Some companies that are able to operate in many locations struggle to define the geographic area that they will market to.

I would recommend looking at your customer list and seeing where the majority of your business comes from.

Let’s say you are a real estate agent and you can work in any part of Houston. Realtor Houston  or Real Estate Agent Houston might be your first choice but remember to check the number of competing sites and it’s 39 Million.

Check your client list very closely and you might find the majority of your listing and sold properties comes from a specific area like the villages (Bunker Hill, Piney Point, Hedwig Village, Spring Branch, Memorial, etc)

Now before you just randomly select one like Realtor Bunker Hill Village, you want to check the search volume for this search term.   Search Volume is different than number of results. Search Volume is how many people actually used that specific search term.

I would recommend you visit Google Keyword Tool and plug in your keywords along with each geographic modifier (Realtor Bunker Hill Village or Real Estate Bunkerhill Village or Homes for Sale in Bunker Hill Village.).  Check the search volume for these keywords.

Google will be glad to provide you with other popular geographic modifiers as well. We will go into more detail how to use the Google Keyword Tool in another blog post but for now look at the search volume for each word.

Sorry to say Realtor Bunker Hill Village had 0 searches.  What did have some searches is Real Estate Bunker Hill which had 390.  Not a high number but with homes in that area selling for over 1 Million, reaching just a few of the those 390 people would be beneficial.

Try looking for your right geographic keywords and if you have any questions, please contact me.

A geographic keyword modifier is the use of a geographic term in the beginning, end, or in the middle of a keyword term. For example, Upstream Marketing specializes in website design so my main keywords are website design. I could geographically modify the keyword by adding the term “Houston” to it, making it “Website Design Houston” or “Houston Website Design.”

Why would I use a geographic modifier?
Even though I design websites for companies all over the world, most of my business comes from the Houston area.  The keyword Website Design had over 6 million searches last month alone. The first thing most people think of is, I have to rank on the first page of Google for this keyword and the money will be flowing like a rain storm in Houston.

Wait just a minute…

Type in the search term Website Design in Google and view the number of results.

1,650,000,000

This number is a good indication of how many web pages have been found for the keywords Website Design.  Over 1.6 Billion.

I’m 1 in 1,650,000,000.  The odds of winning Lotto Texas are 1 in 25,827,165.

Having my website Upstream Marketing rank for the specific keyword Website Design would be almost impossible due to the number of competitors.

People searching online can add geographic modifiers for a state, city and neighborhood, I did some keyword research on the keywords Website Design.

- Web Design Texas (state modifier) – 12,110 searches last month with 173,000,000 results
- Website Design Houston (city modifier) – 9,900 searches last month with 77,700,000 results
- Website Design 77057 (neighborhood modifier) – 0 searches with 2,030,000 results

As you can see, as the geographic area gets smaller, the number of results gets smaller which means less competition. You also have to take into consideration the number of searches gets lower as well.

It might be easier to rank for Website Design 77057 but no one is searching for that term.

Geo-modifiers provide you the ability to target a specific city or neighborhood and this means a more targeted search and a quicker ROI for your website.  This is  extremely relevant if you are in a very competitive business.

Next time we will discuss how to pick the right geographic keywords.

After several years of watching social media, blogs, and search engine changes, I knew the pump industry needed a platform to host all the digital information.  The search for information was changing to more of a community approach, so I created EmpoweringPumps.com to serve as this connecting point for the global pump industry.  Empowering Pumps is more than a website;  it’s company focused on connecting, educating, and promoting the global pump industry. We will continue to listen to the industry and add features to the website based on the demand said Charli Mathews, Founder and Publisher of Empowering Pumps.

When you visit Empower Pumps. check out the Sales and Marketing Section.  Empowering Pumps has this sales and marketing section dedicated to helping Pump Industry Businesses grow their sales.

I had the privilege of co-authoring an article on website marketing titled The “Force Multiplier” Website: Changing Conversations More than One Audience at a Time.

View Article

This month they are adding a  Career section to the site.

Empower Pumps is connecting the Global Pump Industry.

UI will be held in New Orleans at the Ernest N Morial Convention Center

Underwater Intervention is the combined annual conference of the Association of Diving Contractors International and the The Marine Technology Society’s ROV Committee

I had the privilege of working the staff at ADCI on a redesign of the ADC-Int.org website.  The ADCI website has since been redesigned again by their media partner.

Many of my industrial marketing clients will be at UI 2012.   If you are going to UI 2012, please stop my the following booths:

ACDI  Booth 936

Commercial Diving Supply Booth 128, 130

Geospace Offshore Booth 200

Marine Technology Society  Booth 320

PMI Industries Booth 134

Forum Energy Technologies Booth 401

Umbilicals International Booth 428

UI 2012 is a niche show for the Offshore Oil & Gas Industry including commercial diving, marine construction, diving contractors, ROV and more sectors.

For more information and to register, please visit www.underwaterintervention.com

See you in New Orleans!

• 75% Access the web
• 63% Email
• 53% Entertainment
• 48% Play games
• 41% for Social networking
• 29% for Researching services & products
• 25% for Reading books
• 21% for Listening to music
• 19% for Shopping
• 13% for Reading magazines
• 11% for Watching TV

75% use their iPad to access the web.  When was the last time you checked your website on an iPad.

Is your current website tablet friendly?

Can you turn the iPAD around and the site follow.

Does the Navigation work correctly?   Is the navigation thumb friendly?

FLASH does not work on an IPAD so if your site is programmed with FLASH you will get nothing in that area.

If you see errors or your site is not tablet friendly you are missing out on a lot of business.

If you are reading this blog from a tablet, I welcome you to visit www.bortunco.com to see just how well a tablet friendly website can look.

I walked into a fireworks warehouse just before New Years that had a sign that said sales of these fireworks benefit area schools.  As soon as I walked in I was asked what type of fireworks I was looking for.   I wanted a one fuse box that would have a number of firework shots for a good finale.

A high-school age girl met me and in her hand was a tablet.  She asked again what type of fireworks I was looking for.  I repeated what I was looking for and she showed me her tablet.  Each fireworks box that was for sale on the shelf had a name and on her tablet was a video that represented what kind of firework show you would get from that firework.

She would tap on the name of the firework, a picture of the firework box would appear and then a video of the firework show would play.  She showed me two videos and by the second one I had made up my mind.  I was sold.

It was not long before I noticed almost every worker selling the larger firework boxes had a tablet and once they showed a video to a prospective firework buyer the sale was made.

It’s the start of 2012.  Time you to think how technology can help your business grow in the New Year.

Here is one feature that really stood out for me this past year.

Real Time Data

Previously, Google Analytics data was typically delayed up to 24 hours after a visit to your website. Now, Google Analytics offers a real-time data solution. With the  real-time Analytics, you can view the activity on the site as it happens, reviewing important items like top active pages, top referrals, keywords and traffic geographic locations.

Another way is to make sure campaign tracking is correctly implemented before launching a campaign. When getting ready to launch a new campaign it’s critical to make sure your measurement plan is working before you start driving visitors to your website or a particular landing page. With the Real-Time reports you can find out in seconds whether you’re getting the data you want in Google Analytics.

If your website is not programmed with Google Analytics, ask your webmaster to add it today.  The information provided will help justify any website expenses you have planned for 2012.

Now 67% of consumers researched online prior to a purchase and I’m proud to say I’m one of them.

I’m in Orange Beach, AL for the Thanksgiving holiday.  Every year that I come here I see the signs for Fried Mullet.  Now, enjoying saltwater fishing I know mullet is pretty much a bait fish and not one that I would normally look to eat.  While sitting in a restaurant earlier this week the waitress made a point to say ” We have All You Can Eat Fried Mullet, this Friday”.  Now I can take her word for it and show up on Friday to eat fried bait fish or I can do what in 2011?  I can turn to the internet and see what people say about eating Fried Mullet.

So I turned to Google and started researching Fried Mullet and area restaurants that served this fried fish.  What I found were customer comments on different restaurants including the one where I heard about their All You Can Eat Friday event.  Good reports, bad reports, honest opinions on what it was like to eat fried bait fish and where to go to get this Gulf Coast specialty.

So, after reading all these reports I chose Joe Patti’s Seafood Restaurant in Pensacola, FL. I did not even know they had a restaurant but next door is their fresh seafood market which I had visited before. My internet search led me to something I did not even know existed, even though I had been to their fish market before.

I was surprised to find a fresh fish taste, fried just right, not greasy and it reminded me of fried catfish.

So to help others looking to find good Fried Mullet I went to my favorite review website Trip Advisor and let a positive review for the Fried Mullet at Joe Patti’s Seafood Restaurant.

Now you are probably wondering what Fried Mullet has to do with industrial marketing?  Think about it, if you were looking for a BOP Test Unit a couple of years ago, you would turn to the set of green books called Thomas Registry to find a BOP Test Unit Company.  There would be a list of suppliers with their contact info and that was it.  In 2011, you would turn to the internet to look for a BOP Test Unit supplier.  You would do your research and try and find the best company to fit your needs.  There are many industrial product directories where you can leave positive or negative feedback on a particular company.

So when was the last time you visited Google and did a search for your own company and the products you sell?  It’s time to find out if your fish is greasy and your customer service is terrible or if you are the best BOP supplier the Oil Industry has ever seen.