A few weeks ago on our podcast we showed you how to make your own Customised Facebook Page.  This week we’re going to show you four landing pages that we really like.

1. Dell For Business

Launched at the beginning of the month Dell’s new Facebook page acts as a window to it’s other Facebook presences and to it’s website.  We’ve always found Dell quite innovative on Facebook, their social media for small business page offered lots of free guides.  This new page takes it one step further offering customer services via Facebook.

2. NetBizAutomation

Another great shop window page which virtually brings the NetBizAutomation website onto Facebook with tabs and links on the welcome page bringing you straight into the company website.

3. SteelMaster Buildings

The welcome page encourages people to sign up to their website, shows off their buildings and encourages interaction via a photo contest.  For existing customers this is a great way to get them more involved in the brand and spread the word to their other Facebook contacts about what SteelMaster can do.

4. Simply Zesty

As you would expect from a company handling Social Media for business Simply Zesty has a great custom Facebook page.  The page offers a free E-Book on using social media, it is well targeted, looks great and more importantly would encourage people to ‘Like’ their page.

We’ve created a customised landing page for our Facebook presence check it out by clicking here.

We’re currently offering our Facebook community a 50% discount on creating customised Facebook pages bringing the price of a basic page like our own down to just €75.  Follow the link on our Facebook Page to avail of this very special offer.

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.

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.

This is the last of our series of blog posts answering your social media questions from the recent contest.

Our first question comes from @marketingelves their website is here.

@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.

Our last question is from @360Dvirtualtour their website is here.

@360Dvirtualtour @spiderworking can fb adverts target specific locations in ireland or must it be ‘ireland’?

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.

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. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

You cannot have been on Facebook without encountering Farmville. Everyone must have at least one friend who is playing, for some people it’s a timesucker, for others it’s an annoyance but it has recently emerged that farmers are actually benefiting from the skills they learn using the Facebook game.

One such case is Farmer Sixsmith from Crettyard.  Since playing Farmville he has been able to hone his farming skills.  He plays the game from the comfort of an armchair in one of his fields and often returns to it for tips during the working day.  I spoke to him on Monday and he sees Farmville as a great addition to his farming life. He told me that “we learnt how to put the hens to bed in Farmville” and that “Farmville helped me learn how to plough in a straight line!”.  He also believes that Farmville sends out strong messages to farmers that animals shouldn’t be left unattended for random friends to look after them.

The wonder of Farmville according to Farmer Sixsmith is that “Fertilizing crops doesn’t pong”.

To find out more about using Farmville as a Farming aid visit the ‘Farmville for Farmers‘ Website.

Many thanks to Farmer Sixsmith for helping us put this article together.

This is the second in our series of blog posts answering your twitter questions from the recent contest.

Our first question comes from Jenny from @jattconsulting more info on them here. (site still under construction)

@Spiderworking How do you run a contest or a poll on facebook?

There are a number of ways of running a poll on Facebook.  Which method you use is determined by what sort of results you want.   If you are running the poll for research purposes and you want definite answers to your questions I would recommend using one of the applications that has been designed to run on Facebook Pages.  Probably the best application currently is “Polls” which is not only the best looking application but it also makes it easy for your fans to see the options.

If however your Poll is just for fun, or designed to create more interaction on your page, using phtographs or the Notes Application can attract more users.  One of my favorite Irish Facebook pages Hairy Baby runs polls using Photos on a regular basis. They load a picture or a series of pictures and use the description box to ask the question.

We recently ran a poll on our own page using the notes application and again found it a good way to encourage interaction.  Because we weren’t limiting our responses to specific answers we discovered options we hadn’t considered in the original poll.

@EJQ of Eilis J Quinlan & Co. asked:

@Spiderworking. How do you UN -follow someone???

Unfollowing someone is simple.

If you know the username of the twitter user you want to unfollow go to http://www.twitter.com/useryouwanttounfollow – Make sure you are logged into twitter.

On the right hand side of their page you will see a cog symbol:

Choose “unfollow” from the drop down menu.

We’ll be answering more of your Twitter questions next week.

If you like cool social media tools don’t forget to become a fan of Spiderworking.com on Facebook where every Monday we showcase one of our favourite apps.

If you’re a blogger did you know that you can feed your blog automatically into Facebook. In this weeks video blog we show you two ways to do this:

1. Using the existing “Notes” application
2. Using Networked Blogs:

If you want to know more about some of the coolest social meida applications  join our Facebook page, where every Monday we feature a “Monday Morning Cool Tool” last weeks tool turned text uʍop ǝpısdn.

I’ve been asking for your social media question small or large and this weeks one is a biggy!

John Abbot from Abbot Consulting asked:

“would you agree with Gartner’s predictions about Facebook becoming the hub for social network integation by 2012.”

Lets have a closer look at what Gartner predicted:

“By 2012, Facebook will become the hub for social network integration and Web socialization. Through Facebook Connect and other similar mechanisms, Facebook will support and take a leading role in developing the distributed, interoperable social Web. As Facebook continues to grow and outnumber other social networks, this interoperability will become critical to the success and survival of other social networks, communication channels and media sites.”

There is no doubt that by 2012 Facebook will have continued it’s massive growth, maybe even reaching a billion users worldwide.  However there is a danger that more users may result in less interaction with the site.  It is possible that with so many friends to keep up with that users will be overwhelmed with the information coming in.  There is also the danger that people will begin to feel that Facebook is too commercial, they will become fans of too many pages and find their news feeds full of marketing messages.  For this reason it is important that page owners keep their posts interesting and relevant to their target audience.

Certainly Facebook are aware of the possible downside of growth and have been quite innovative in the way that they allow their content to be shared.  Facebook Connect for example and the opening up of Facebook chat that puts them in strong competiton with other IM solutions.  Mobile apps such as ‘Urban Spoon‘ will make the way we interact with our facebook friends very different and it is this move forward, creating a Facebook Profile allowing you to easily share experiences across both the mobile and standard internet, that could give Facebook the ability to become the ‘hub’ Gartner predicts.

In some ways Google Buzz is already attempting to make use of your Google profile in a similar way.  By buying into several platforms such as YouTube and Blogger and by allowing you to syndicate these to your email contacts using Buzz there is the potential for Google to become stiff competition to become the ‘hub’ in the future.  Whether Buzz succeeds as a social network will not be clear for quite some time.  It may even be beyond 2012 before we see it take off in the way Twitter and Facebook has, but I would imagine that Facebook will be keeping a close eye on it’s progress in order to stay one step ahead.

]]> http://spiderworking.com/blog/2010/02/24/your-social-media-questions-answered-will-facebook-become-the-hub-for-social-network-integation/feed/ 2 http://spiderworking.com/blog/2010/02/17/your-social-media-questions-answered-facebook-groups/ http://spiderworking.com/blog/2010/02/17/your-social-media-questions-answered-facebook-groups/#comments Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:39:24 +0000 Amanda http://spiderworking.com/blog/?p=259

We were asked by Lorna from Garrendenny Lane Interiors:

“Wondering about the effectiveness of forming a group on Facebook – how do I invite people -is it friends or fans or both? “

Facebook groups are a good way to create a bit of a buzz around your industry.  A business should always have a ‘Page’ first but a group is a good way to add value to your brand.  They can be a great place for people with a similar interest to share information.  For example, it might be worth Lorna starting a group about interior design in Ireland, that way she could keep on top of the current sentiment attached to her industry, share information, start discussions on particular trends all whilst gathering a group of people together who would have an interest in her brand and what she has to offer.

Mashable published a great article on the difference between Groups and Pages recently.

There a couple of things you should consider when you are setting up a group:

• They have a very short shelf life – group pages do not update members news feeds the way that Pages and Profiles do so it can be easy for people to forget about them.
• They are connected to your personal profile.  Members of the group will know it is you that is administering the group, unlike a page which appears as an entity on it’s own.

The advantages are:

• You can message members directly.  From a business page it is only possible to  send ‘updates’ which often remain unread in a fan’s inbox.  From a page you can send a message which appears in the inbox the way a personal message does.  Be aware not to overload your group members with messages though, use this feature sparingly to avoid people leaving your group.
• If your business already has a page and you are running a new initiative it can be a way to gather together those with a specific interest in it, rather than overloading your fans news feeds with the same message.  For example, Spiderworking.com just launched it’s Work The Web Workshops.  Imagining that a number of the poeple interested in the workshops would already be fans of Spiderworking.com we decided against setting up a business page. Spiderworking.com’s page will be promoting Work The Web and clogging up fans news feeds with the same recurring message could result in loosing them.  For this reason we set up a group.  It also means that we will be able to message directly those interested in the workshops.
• People may be more inclined to join a group because they know that a group cannot pollute their news feed.

Inviting people to join a group

You can invite your ‘friends’ directly to join your new group.  You cannot invite ‘fans’ of your business page directly but can post details of the group on your wall and ask them to join.

If you have a social media question that you would like answered no matter how large or small  leave a comment on this post or tweet us @spiderworking.