Some annoying posts on Facebook and Twitter.

Everybody sees some annoying Facebook posts at times. When a 30 something becomes a parent for the first time they'll start posting hourly updates about their babies activity and then start posting pictures. (Here's babies first step. Here's babies first poopy. Etc). If you have a single person who isn't in a relationship, they'll start talking about their dog's activities and act as if he's people. If it's somebody in a relationship they'll start saying things like "My boyfriend did this and that". All of that is annoying. 

The Twitter equivalent to this is when you start taking the whole "What are you doing?" philosophy literally and start posting about every phone call you make, every sandwich you've eaten, and every subsequent bowel movement in colorful detail.

I think Facebook makes it hard because if you friend somebody you sort of feel obligated to continue following people even if they start posting nothing in their feed other than pictures of their child's latest accomplishments. I think one way to solve that would be for Facebook to create an "acquaintance" setting rather than a pure friend relationship where you don't receive the vast majority of their status updates but that's something that Facebook has to solve. 

What becomes really annoying though is when a business you like starts posting this kind of garbage. They'll post a bunch of posts that say how great they are and they'll start buying likes at the types of sites listed at Buy Facebook Fans Reviews instead of creating high quality content that people will  want to share on their own. I really think that everybody should consider how annoying their posts might before posting them because that would make Facebook and Twitter much nicer for everybody.

On dates, always think before you speak, and on Facebook always think before you post!

Good Web Design Matters

One of the things that you quickly learn when you start dating is that first impressions matter. This is why caring people are late on first dates, they're trying to make sure that their outfit, hair, and maybe makeup is perfect to create the right first impression. 

Web design works in much the same way. When somebody visits your page, you might only have a half-second to capture their attention before they close that tab. There's a million sites in Google who sell exactly what you do. If your site is slow, ugly, has displeasing colors or bad typography, they'll close the tab and move on to the next one faster than you can blink.

One failure in business is ignoring quality design. Apple has become the largest company on planet Earth merely by focusing on great design and a high-quality user experience. A lot of businesses spend a lot of money on things whose impact can easily be measured: very experienced employees, marketing and advertising and even buy Twitter Followers, a good manufacturing system, and other capital expenses. But then when it comes to web design they try and scrimp and save. Place value on web design as well.

Don't scrimp on quality design to save a few bucks. You'll get what you pay for if you try and outsource to the cheapest web developer.

Make sure you post on all of the social networks

Much of the focus of small businesses is on Facebook and Twitter. And that's a great place to start. You can see through how many businesses put a sign in their window that asks them to follow them on those sites, how many national brands are advertising their Facebook page in their Super Bowl ads, or even how many sites you can buy Facebook likes at to see how important and how much emphasis people are placing on the 800 pound gorillas in Facebook and Twitter.  

But don't ignore things like YouTube, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, Yelp, and many others as well. Just the search engine benefit alone is meaningful, but it also helps you find more customers you might not have been able to reach. Some portion of the population aren't active on Facebook, but are active on LinkedIn for example. Or maybe some people decide that Facebook isn't for them because of privacy concerns, but they love posting on Pinterest. If you want to try and reach as many people as you can, you'll try and develop many different social pages and see what works best for you. It's not necessarily too time consuming to do this. There are some types of social media management software that can allow you to post on multiple social networks with just one post. Or through various sites' APIs you can even make your own custom solution.

Having a primary focus on Facebook and Twitter is certainly wise and a valid strategy, but don't forget to look and see what other options are out there because every little bit can certainly help you out, particularly when you are a new business and just starting out and need every advantage you can get.