I posted a few weeks ago about how Facebook users could hide updates from Farmville. It proved very popular! However if you are a user of Farmville or any of the ‘noisy’ applications it is possible to stop them updating your Facebook status and it’s very simple.
Log into your Facebook account and click the ‘Account’ tab on the top right hand side of your page.
From the drop down menu choose ‘Application Settings’.
On the next screen scroll down until you find the offending application.
Click ‘Edit settings’.
From the pop up window select ‘Additional permissions’ and uncheck the box ‘Publish recent activity (one line stories) on my wall.
Click ‘OK’ and updates from that application will no longer auto publish.
It’s important to update your blog on a regular basis. SEO experts believe that after time search engines will get used to how often the content in your website is updated and will visit accordingly. So once you have decided how often you are going to blog it’s important to keep to this schedule.
Sometimes however it’s impossible to keep to your blogging schedule, what about when you go on holiday? If you have a meeting? If you simply don’t have time that day? One of my customers asked me if it was possible to schedule posts for the future.
The good news is that yes you can write your blog posts when you have time and schedule them for later:
Log in to your wordpress account and click ‘New Post’ on the top right hand side of the screen.
Create you blog post as usual but instead of clicking ‘Publish’, choose ‘Edit’ next to ‘Publish immediately’ on the line above the publish button.
Add the date and time that you want the post to publish.
When using social media to market your brand or service it is important to consider the many opportunities to use online video. With websites including YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo and Metacafe to name but a few there is huge potential to get excellent exposure with an online videos for your organisation. When making a video for online use it may be appropriate to make your own production but if you are looking for something a bit more professional we recommend the services of Hedgehog Productions.
I asked Bryan Corden the MD of Hedgehog Productions to tell me a little more about using video for online marketing and here are his comments.
“There has been a huge growth in the use of online video in the last two years as seen by the fact that YouTube now has over one billion visitors every day. Several major corporate organisations are now specifically creating adverts for use online similar to this example by Old Spice “The man you could smell like”. The advantage of a professionally produced video is that it adds creditability to the product or service that you are offering and it can be specifically produced to suit your intended audience.
When making a video the first step is to outline the objectives and goal of the video. Who is the intended audience, what messages do you wish to convey and what action would you like your viewers to take having watched your video. From there you can go on to develop your script and story board before you commence filming. Once your video is created you can host it on your own website and you can host it for free on a huge range of online video sites. You can also optimise your videos so that they are found by Google and other search engine websites.
Once you have produced a video it is worth considering how you will integrate into your existing website. As the home page is normally the most visited page of any website this could be the ideal location or alternative you might create a specific page for your video content. There are a range of players that you can use or you can integrate the videos directly from YouTube and other online video websites. Hedgehog Productions use a TV style player on our website and you can see it in operation here www.hedgehog.ie.
So if you wish to take advantage of video as part of your social medial marketing strategy you can contact Bryan directly by email to bryan@hedgehog.ie.”
I was lucky enough to be at an Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls) gig in Dublin this week and aside from being an amazing night out it also showed me how musicians and performers can use Social Media to communicate with fans and creatively overcome issues.
The support act ‘Bitter Ruin‘ were a self proclaimed ‘really small band from Brighton’ who had stumbled upon an opportunity to tour with Amanda Palmer. Towards the end of their set they asked us to stand to attention so that they could take a picture of us all, they would put the pics on Facebook and we could tag ourselves in them. What better incentive to become a fan of their page! I’ve tagged myself in the pics but they are so dark I’m not sure it’s actually me! Their hard work is paying off too, I notice that this ‘small band’ now have over 1,000 fans and growing rapidly.
The Amanda Palmer part of the gig required far more technology. Due to the volcano the original show which featured at least two other artists wasn’t able to go ahead as planned. Using Twitter and Facebook Amanda managed to assemble all the tools she required for the gig. A computer, a webcam, a kazoo and a Twix bar. When someone is described as ‘phoning a performance in’ it usually refers to a poor or lacklustre performance, but at this gig it meant literally phoning it in as Amanda’s co performer Jason Webly appeared via Skype to the audience. The whole show was then broadcast live across the Internet to around 3,000 viewers.
Social media has always been a fantastic way to promote artists and music and it’s great to see that bands of all sizes are using it creatively to market themselves.
Have you ever been to an event and eyed with envy the twitterfeed projected onto a screen displaying tweets using the event’s hashtag?
TwitterFall is a simple web based app which allows you to quickly set up a twitterfeed for your event. Twitterfeeds are great ways to encourage user interaction at any event both for those attending and those watching on from home or work.
Follow us on Twitter for daily tips and cool links: @spiderworking
We recently showed you how to create polls on Facebook. You can also create polls for twitter and we discovered this quick and simple application when creating our latest poll.
Twtpoll‘s free service allows you to create polls, automatically post them to twitter and even embed them in your website. You simply sign in with your twitter account, follow the simple steps and your poll is created. The premium service starts for as little $4 per poll giving you detailed demographics on your respondents. Other subscription levels allow you to brand your poll.
@marketingelves@Spiderworking are there any tools that would allow you to track what’s been said on twitter on a local (Ireland) basis #smq
Twitter have recently introduced geotweeting although not everyone is using it and it’s not 100% accurate. It does mean that you can use Twitter’s in house ‘advanced search‘ to find local users. You can search by town or country.
Not as accurate but still useful is Tweepsearch, enter: location:”your town” into the search box and it will throw up results based on the information users have added to their profile.
Although Facebook does allow you to target by town in other parts of the world it has yet to introduce this for Ireland. The official reason from the Facebook site is:
Unfortunately, our targeting capability internationally is still somewhat limited. Cities may not be available in certain countries due to the small number of users in these locations. Cities will be made available as Facebook traffic in the area increases.
If you have a social media question you would like us to answer leave a comment below or tweet it at us (@spiderworking) including ‘#smq’ in the post.
UPDATE 13th May 2010
Facebook now allows you to target individual towns and cities within Ireland with your ads.
These two excellent free web applications allow you to monitor your brand, competitors, industry or any topic online. Simple to use, they search the social web for mentions of any keywords you choose to search for.
Social Meniton: The most comprehensive social media search tool we’ve found that not only throws up results but measures sentiment and other data relating to your key words. It also allows you to download a csv (excel) file so that you can track progress over time.
Who’s Talkin: Not as detailed information but it’s faster to throw up results and allows you to switch quickly between one network to another.
For more video tutorials and social media videos subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Running a social media campaign is a fantastic way to drive traffic to your website and to improve your google ranking. But it should not be used alone. For this reason, if we are asked to work with a customer whose website requires SEO (search engine optimisation) we refer them to our expert partners t2. I asked Rita from t2 to tell me more about SEO:
Search Engine Optimisation is the process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. Simply put Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the process of making your website friendly to search engines like Google. Successful SEO helps a site gain top positioning in for relevant words and phrases. It is not not enough for a website to look good it has to be found on search engines using words related to your business or service and by people in your locality, whether it be on a county, country or international basis. If your website is not being found by search engines like Google you are missing out on valuable sales and enquiries.
t2 can optimise your website for the most relevant keywords and phrases. Through comprehensive keyword research we can find out what words people use to find your business’ product or service. We use best practice techniques in order to enhance your website’s performance and in turn your return on investment. If your website is not performing on Google but you don’t know why talk to t2 today.
“Search Engine Optimisation is the process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. Simply put Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the process of making your website friendly to search engines like Google. Successful SEO helps a site gain top positioning in for relevant words and phrases. It is not not enough for a website to look good it has to be found on search engines using words related to your business or service and by people in your locality, whether it be on a county, country or international basis. If your website is not being found by search engines like Google you are missing out on valuable sales and enquiries.
t2 can optimise your website for the most relevant keywords and phrases. Through comprehensive keyword research we can find out what words people use to find your business’ product or service. We use best practice techniques in order to enhance your website’s performance and in turn your return on investment. If your website is not performing on Google but you don’t know why talk to t2 today.”
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been asked by people to blog on a couple of things that are really bugging them. So here’s the two top offenders:
1. Farmville – How to hide it
A common problem. Whether it’s Farmville or Fishville, Mafia Wars or whatever the latest craze is it seems to drive people mad. There is however help at hand, hiding these games from your newsfeed without hiding the friends using them is relatively simple:
Find a post from one of your friends using Farmville on Facebook:
Hover your mouse over the top right hand side of the post and ‘Hide’ will appear:
Click ‘Hide’. Facebook will give you the option of hiding the game or hiding the user. Click ‘Hide Farmville’
Facebook then confirms your action:
And that’s it, Farmville won’t bug you again!
2. Using Facebook Profile Pages for Business
I’ve blogged about this before but the problem seems to be getting worse and it’s really annoying people. Two people have asked me to blog about it in the last week.
This morning I logged onto facebook and this was what my news feed looked like:
Flooding a newsfeed like can prove an annoyance to people and you run the risk of users hiding your profile altogether. Apart from just being annoying there are other reasons you shouldn’t use a profile page for your business:
1. Visible to the whole world, good for SEO and for encouraging fans.
2. Demographics – Facebook offer some great demographics which mean you can see if you are targetting the right audience with your page.
3. Respect your customers, respect their privacy.
4. Facebook don’t want you to do it… they could close you down.
A Facebook fan page is visible to the whole world, you don’t need to be a Facebook user or logged in to view it. Because of this it is also visible to search engines, giving you inbound links to your website improving your search engine optimisation.
Demographics – Facebook offer some great demographics, you can see what age group your fans fall into, whether they are male or female and in what geographical area they live. This means you can see if you are targeting the right audience with your page.
Respect your customers, respect their privacy. By using a personal profile page for business you are asking friends to share personal information with you but all you offer in return is marketing information. This isn’t a fair exchange and is likely to annoy fans and attach some negative sentiment to your brand.
Facebook don’t want you to do it, they could close your profile down loosing you your friends in the process.
If your still not convinced look at this profile page that is promoting a business:
This is space that should be devoted to offering valuable content to your customers and enhancing your brand. Yet on a profile page it’s cluttered with irrelevant information.
So if you value your customers and fans please, please, please change to a business fanpage!
At Spiderworking.com we set up business fanpages for customers, offer training, consultation and even Facebook campaign management. Get in touch or call us on 01 442 9410 to find out more.
01 442 9410
