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If you're marketing to marketers, then it is a bit of a different story in that they may actually be interested in your content. I guess it depends on how valuable you find your other interactions with the group. A lot of LinkedIn is about self-promotion, but I often question just who, if anyone, is listening, especially in groups.

We did have a problem with that for a couple of days, but it should be fixed as of today. If you still can't get it to work, send an email to help@seomoz.org and we'll look into things for you from the help desk. Thanks!

Thanks to both of you for confirming what I had believed.

I think point 3 is the biggest one. instead of searching facebook for you or remembering your facebook page url, they will be remembering your main domain url which is good for future business.

I would highly recommend against doing this....the model that Facebook wants multiple location businesses is have a Facebook Place account (which allows checkins) for each brick and mortar location and then a Facebook Page for the actual brand. Even though it may seem appealing to get all those users and combine them, I would petition them on each of the individual Places pages to 'Like' THE Official Facebook page. Perhaps even incentivize them to do so with a fan gate or something like that. If you do decide combine the stores into one page there are some downsides: Not adhering to Facebook best practices for businesses which who knows what this could mean down the road but it's pretty clear that FB is serious about people following BP especially with regard to businesses. Facebook has the ability to create local deals based on checkins, you obviously will lose this and the ability to do this going forward. If you lump your locations together and someone tries to check in on their iPhone, they won't see your business but they'll have the ability to 'Add' it so they can check in. So basically the location you just merged will now exist again only you won't have control over it.

You can follow as many people as you like daily. Tweet wise, I think after 250 tweets or so, you get asked to come back later. Wait an hour or so and everything should be ok again. Remember, you want an audience that are interested in you and your service. No point having 50,000, 95 year olds following you if you sell Club 18-30 holidays. Pick your audience to follow, then try engage and interact with people who you think are good for you. Usually if you follow a celeb and reply to their post, their followers could see that reply and may follow you, so you get people interested in the same stuff. Get retweets from anyone is good, so maybe be cheeky, ask for a follow so you can DM them, then DM them some sales speech on how you can work together or whatever. It takes time, over 7 months I have grew our twitter from 40 to 1,350 followers. Which I think is great progress. All natural followers from interacting with my audience and others.

How could they do that? You see one of the companies I work for is a boring niche. We used a Facebook ad to gain users and we gained 1000 of these users when I pulled the plug. With 1000 users in a boring niche we got no interaction. So, do you believe Google can determine a boring niche from a non boring niche? What do you think will get more attention a Lady Gaga post or a metal building post? I am unsure of how much value these mentions have or how they are calculated. I find too many flaws in it. However, if your in a non boring niche and users are interacting you should do fine, and most likely this will help. Im speaking from a boring niche perspective... Whether I get 1,000,000 users to like me or 5 its the same interaction for each post. Non existant.

Thanks Miriam. In an ideal world, I agree with you, but there are many reasons why this system will work better for them, so it looks like they will be going with it. The "Joe Bloggs" name was just an example name. They will, of course, be using a believable looking name. Thanks,

Hey, What I mean is what I've said in the question. Client asks how much should I invest in Facebook ads and what can I expect in  return? So you have to provide them with a number, say $1000 and then how many likes, clicks etc will I be able to get. I believe there are a number of variables involved here so was just trying to figure out how others go about it. Regards,

Hello, I sent you a PM, but I will post here as well. My name is David Crader and I work at Evolve Creative Group in Akron Ohio. We offer a great SEO training service to many local businesses, and would love to give you a few pointers. You can read about our training service here: http://www.evolvecreativegroup.com/search-engine-optimization.asp Just click the "Professional SEO Training Service" drop down. Whatever you need training on we can help. Link building, reputation management, on-page SEO - we know it all. My e-mail is davec@evolvecreativegroup.com and my Skype ID is Dave.Crader. Look forward to speaking with you. Thanks, Dave

Here are the two plugins we've been testing: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/facebook-awd/http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/simple-facebook-connect/AWD has more goodies and options. SFC is made by http://ottopress.com/, probably a more experienced WordPress developer and better supported. Both should work for Facebook comments. Hope this helps! Tim

I went to MozCon last year and a speaker presented info on just this sort of thing.... what to do when your niche category is relatively lame.  You might look at last year's presentations for some ideas. This is a real opportunity!  Depending on your client reception to these ideas, you might want to take a look at a few things.  Decide on a social media tone that's appropriate and sales-worthy. Set them up as a leader in their field - authoritative tone and feel Offer up interesting material - who says it has to be business as usual?  As Ben mentioned about the pirates and creative posting - what if you inject some humor?  Laundry fails?  Cartoons/Comics?  Funny videos? Copper mining equipment ... sorry to say, that's pretty dry.  Wouldn't their potential contacts love some awesome humor interspersed with some helpful content. Here's another perspective .... think about a big player like Pepsi.  Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiP70pBUjuw&feature=related Granted, big video, big budget ... but they were offering something memorable that really had little to do with drinking the product. With a little creative thinking, that might be just the ticket for scoring decent returns in a tough category.

Thank you Geoff, I create a bunch of content regularly and I was really just wondering if social bookmarking was worth the time anymore. And I figured it would likely be fodder for Google sanctions and penalties down the line; I'm very OK with social bookmarking going the way of the dodo, thanks. dodo.JPG

I know this is a late response, but thanks for your comment here. That was what I needed to hear

Hi Ben, Thanks for your answer. We are anticipating it to drive traffic, presumably people will like looking at cars that have been in an accident. I'm still not quite sure how Slideshare builds links back to the client's website. Any experience with this? Can you embed anchor text in the slides that link back to the client's site? Yes, I think I'll put them in monthly galleries, now it's just a questions of where I'll load the images. Rafi

If you've never done it before then it's probably a good idea to get the word out. Although if you're going to be doing a lot of this in the future then you might want to start building up your own social media accounts.

Thanks so much - that has helped clarify.

you are right it will be to much to manage all this groups. how about a page with Events for the different training groups? This is easier to manage and gives the opportunity for the others who weren't on that event to read the comments see pictures etc.