October « 2009 « Spiderworking.com's Social Networking blog

October 29, 2009

October 27, 2009

5 ways to populate your Facebook fan page.

So you’ve got a Facebook business page, you’ve started to gather fans but what should you post?

One of the nicest things about Facebook is that you can keep in touch with your fans on a daily basis (I wouldn’t recommend more than once a day). This gives you a unique way to enhance your brand, to establish yourself as a customer and to converse with your customers and fans.

Trying to find content for your page however can seem like an impossible task, so I thought I would share with you some of the tricks that I use to keep my page populated.

1. Google Alerts: Google alerts is a free subscription service. You can choose words or phrases as your ‘alerts’ and Google will send you daily or weekly emails listing web, news and blog results containing those phrases. When they hit your mail box in the morning scan through them for stories that would be of interest to your customers and that will help enhance your brand.

For example, for Feelgood Organic Hampers I have a Google alert for ‘Organic Ireland’, occasionally there will be a great story, posted in a newspaper or a blog about someone producing organic food or living a sustainable lifestyle in Ireland, the sort of story that not only would be of interest to my fans and customers but which is also relevant to my brand. When I find one of these gems I share it on my Facebook page.

2. Import your blog: Importing your blog into Facebook means that your page will automatically update whenever you post a new blog entry. The simplest way to do this is to use the notes function:

Click the ‘edit page’ link under your company logo.
Click on the pencil next to the ‘Notes’ application.
Choose ‘edit’ from the drop-down menu, you will be brought to the notes page.
On the right hand side of the screen click the link ‘import blog’ and follow instructions to feed your blog into your fan page.

3. Ask a question: Another example from Feelgood Organic Hampers. Gardening has been a massive trend this year and one which I have taken an active interest in, sharing my experiences on our blog and across our social networks . As every gardener knows slugs are a massive problem so I asked the Feelgood Organic Hampers Facebook fans and Twitter followers to give us their Slug solutions. They obliged by posting their suggestions on the fan page wall.

4. Have a competition: Offer a small prize in return for a short story, a caption, a name for a product. Spread the word about the competition through your mailing list, twitter, your blog, your other social networks as well as through your Facebook page. You will find that this brings you plenty of new fans too.

5. Company news and promotions: You will soon loose fans if you constantly directly promote your business but that doesn’t mean you can never do it. As long as you are providing value to your fans through other interesting content it can be beneficial to add company news and special offers to your news feed.

If you need help with your Facebook fan page join our online community and ask a question. We’d also love to hear your Facebook fan page success stories.

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October 23, 2009

How can PRzone.ie benefit your business?

PR Zone Logo

We include a free PRzone.ie account as part of all our social networking packages. But why is it worthwhile creating a profile in PRzone.ie? What can you do once you have an account? What are the benefits of using the PRzone.ie service? I asked them to give us a quick run down of why it is a valuable tool for business:

What exactly is PR?
Is PR only for the big players?
Does it add value or would I be better placing an ad in the local newspaper?

We have been asking small and medium business owners their views on PR over recent months and how valuable or not it is in the marketing mix for their businesses.

We tended to get the same answers!!
‘What is pr?? Public relations..press releases?’
‘It’s for large organisations with large marketing budgets!’
‘I don’t have the time for any of that!!’
‘That’s big money ….I already advertise on radio, local newspapers etc!!’

Believe it or not, as a marketing practitioner for nearly 20 years, I have discounted the value to be gained in having a PR policy against the time and money needed to make it successful particularly for my SME clients.

I have tended to mentor my customers to be creative in their below the line techniques in particular to get their products, services and companies noticed.

Since becoming involved in PRzone.ie many of those preconceptions have gone out the window. Here is a Press Release site specifically designed to meet many of the message requirements of smaller businesses in particular.

So what’s so unique about PRzone.ie that makes it stand out as a critical business tool?

Well here are but a few!

1. It is specifically designed for small and medium Irish Businesses.
2. It gives your business an immediate free profile on the site.
3. PRzone.ie immediately notifies the major search engines, our Twitter profile and other online services when content is published to bring your profile and message to a widespread audience.
4. You are immediately linked to all of the other businesses already registered on the site.
5. You can add articles written about your business to your profile.
6. Within your profile you can select the media from a comprehensive list that you want your Article or Press Release to go to.
7. You can use the power of your customer testimonials on your profile
8. You can easily add PRzone.ie’s professionally designed signature to your Outlook and instantly raise awareness of what’s happening in your business with every e-mail you send.
9. You can include your articles on your website by simply adding our News Feed plugin.
10. You can leverage the power of the business groups you are a member of on the site.

There is a cost to publishing an article on PRzone.ie. That cost is currently €85 per publication. Compared against other mass advertising techniques like local newspapers and radio and considering the “community benefits” aspect of using the site it looks to me like a no brainer and an inexpensive direct marketing tool for businesses with an eye on the end of the recession.

When completing your on line registration, PRzone.ie asks that you enter a your registered business number and vat number. This is to ensure that PRzone.ie connects with other likeminded businesses in a credible and verifiable manner which distinguishes the site from other general press release sites.

Tags: PRzone.ie — Tags: Ireland, PRzone.ie, Publishing —

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October 19, 2009

How to create a new group in Linkedin

If my last post about ‘The 10 Minutes Street Network” has inspired you to start your own group here’s how you do it:

Sign in to Linkedin
On the left hand side of the page click the ‘Groups’ button.

On the right hand side of the next screen click the ‘Create Group’ button.

On the next screen you will be asked to enter some information. You can upload a logo in PNG, GIF or JPEG format and add information about the group here.
You can choose a specific geographical location if relevant to your group eg: Ireland
Click the ‘Create Group’ button at the bottom of the page.
On the next screen you can send invitations to others to join the group.
You can add connections by clicking the book to the right hand side of the screen.