Over the last few weeks I’ve had a number of people contact me with problems about the Places app on Facebook.  When you input your exact address Facebook is supposed to add you to the map.  The problem is it’s not very accurate.  One person with a premises in Limerick ended up in Belgium on the Facebook map!  One solution to this problem is to add a Google Map Tab to your Facebook page.  This allows you to locate your business and add some information underneath.  You could use this for directions to your venue or to display opening times.  Although it’s not adjusted to Timeline width yet I think this offers a pretty good solution to the problem.

To install the app click here.

You will need to give the app basic permissions for your Facebook profile page. Once you have done this you can add it to your page.

Once added click on your new tab, then click edit at the top of the page to add your address and change the info displayed underneath.

I added Google Map Tab to my test page, this is what it looks like.

Have you had problem with Facebook places showing you in a different location to where you are?  How have you resolved this? I’d love to hear any solutions you’ve found as I know it’s an issue that will persist.

Last week I asked the Spiderworking.com  Facebook community to share their cover images.  And what a great selection we got.  If you are still struggling to find something that works maybe these examples will inspire you.

If you haven’t sorted your cover image yet don’t panic.  According to this article your page visitors don’t really look that hard.  On the other hand I think having a good cover image makes a great first impression so it’s worth putting a bit of thought into.

Cocature

As a total chocolate addict this one from Cocature is hard for me to resist.  I love that they’ve made it seasonal too. That’s one of the nice things about cover images, you can change them as often as you want.  Just like our next example -

Wicklow County Enterprise Board

Great image and straight away it tells you something about the Wicklow County Enterprise Board.  They change their cover image on a regular basis, have a look through their photo albums to see past examples.

Connemara Heritage & History Centre

I love the Chicken avatar on this one from the Connemara Heritage & History Centre and the cover tells the story of the business

Country Hounds

There’s a lot of animal related businesses connected to us on Facebook. Here’s the first of many.  Country Hounds… now with all these dog pages can someone balance it out with a cat page please!

David Dempsey Photography

Very clever use of the cover image by David Dempsey Photography, it’s a portfolio of his work all in one image.

The Little Coffee House

For the best looking women you’re likely to find at a coffee shop!  I love this pic from the Little Coffee House it really made me smile.

My Girl Friday

The first of two Virtual Assistant pages that shared their cover photos, this one from My Girl Friday reminds me of Mad Men for some reason.  A really attractive image.

Oldfarm

Not dogs this time but pigs!  I really like the way this image from Oldfarm puts a personal touch to the brand.  The pigs are beautiful but so is the farmer!

OutofhoursAdmin

Our second Virtual Assistant, Outofhoursva has recently switched her avatar image from a illustration to a photo.  I love this as now I can see the real person behind the name. The cover image is fun and communicate exactly what the business is about.

Pedigreedogs

A simple use of a logo from another doggie page Pedigree Dogs although it should be noted that it’s against Facebooks cover photo guidelines to include a web address in your cover image.

Pet Sitters Ireland

Bonus points to Pet Sitters Ireland for including a cat in their cover image! (big cat lover here).  I really like the avatar too.

Technically Tanya

A really visually attractive image from Technically Tanya. The black and white works well and the picture tells a story.

Zwartbles Ireland

I love the Zwartbles page, it’s always full of beautiful pictures of the sheep.  The cover image is no exception, and it’s seasonal too – those lambs have a real spring in their step!

I’ve really enjoyed looking through all your cover images, such a wide range of businesses on Facebook! If you missed our call out to show off your cover image post your links below. If I get a chance I’ll do a follow up post.

You have probably noticed that I think there are more important statistics than your Like or Follower count.  However you do need to build a following, if you don’t no one will see your posts or know you exist.  Here are some tips on building your Likes on Facebook, including some suggested by my Facebook community.

Ask – The Wise Words Method

At the February KLCK Bloggers meeting Mona Wise from Wise Words shared her method for building her Like count.  She went from 0 to  over 3,000 in a year.

Her method was simple but effective, she asked 12 friends to ‘Like’ the page and asked them to ask 12 of their friends.

If you are going to try this choose your 12 friends carefully, who is most likely to help you and who is most likely to pass your message on to other friends?  You also need to make sure that you are clear about what you are asking.  It’s easy for us to forget that people may not necessarily know what ‘Liking’ a page means.  Include simple instructions in your email or Facebook message asking people to click the ‘Like’ button at the top of your page, and don’t forget to include the link.

Don’t be tempted to ask people twice, if they don’t respond you could be risking a friendship for persistently asking for a Like.

Of course she also offers great content. But more on this later.

Memes – Shareable Images

You must have noticed the trend over the last few months for meme’s or sharable images.  These are photographs with captions that inspire, entertain or are just a bit of fluffy fun.  Get them right and they spread like wildfire across Facebook.  How does this help you get Likes?  If you create a meme it will always link back to your Facebook page.  In the description area when you upload the photo make sure to add a bit of information about you and why you are sharing it.  You can always include a link back to your Facebook page in the description too.  Here’s a video I made on how to add a link to Images.

It’s easy to create your own Meme’s.  There are lots of free generators out there.  I’m a fan of Troll.me, it allows you to upload pictures and add captions.  A great tip from Úna-Minh Caomhánach is to make sure that they have a mass audience.  She tried a few Lord of The Rings memes that didn’t reach as far, probably due to a small LOTR literate audience.

Once you’ve  created your Meme you will need to ask for the Like or the share initially, once your Likers get used to sharing you won’t need to any more, they will do it automatically.  Which brings me on to…

Ask for Likes and Shares

This is something I feel uncomfortable doing but it does work.  When a user interacts with a post on your page their comment or like appears on the Ticker on their friends pages.  In some cases it also appears on the news-feeds of their friends.  This means your updates have the potential to spread way beyond your existing community.  So ask people to ‘Like if you agree’ ‘Share if you like this’ ‘Tell us if you know someone like this’.

Try to vary your call to actions and don’t ask for a share on every post as people will soon get tired of it and think you’re begging.

Add a Like Box to your website

Like boxes are fantastic.  You’ve probably seen them on websites, filled with pictures of the people who Like the Facebook page.  The advantage of a Like box over a button or text link is that people don’t need to leave your website in order to Like your page.  I made a video tutorial on this recently and Dee Sewell from Greenside up followed it.  According to her comment on my Facebook page she’s attracted 29 new likes in the last month since adding the box.

Competition

Competitions are a fantastic way to attract people to your page.  Remember you must abide by the Facebook promotional guidelines when running a contest.  I always recommend using the Short Stack App (affiliate link). It’s easy to create pages there and there’s lots of cool bits and pieces you can add on to encourage sharing.

Sweepstakes style contests are the best at attracting new likes, these are contests where contestants just enter their name and email address to go into a draw.  The less someone needs to do to enter the more ‘Likes’ you will attract.

You need to push word out about your competition way beyond your Facebook page, posting about it on Twitter and letting your email list know really helps drive traffic

Email Digest

A great suggestion from Greg Fry.  When you’re sending out your email newsletter include a digest of your Facebook posts encouraging others to Like it.

When people can see you’re adding valuable content and that you have something to offer they are far more likely to see why they should Like your page.

Great content

This should really be at the top of your list.  If you are producing good and engaging content people will want to join your page.  Think hard about what will appeal to your target market and be creative.  Don’t be tempted just to copy everyone else.  Once you’ve decided what it is you will do on Facebook tell people, tell them what the advantage is of joining your page.  For me it’s that I share useful hints and tips on using social media for business, what’s yours?

Fan only offers

Do you have something special that you can offer to just your Facebook Likes?  Something that would be worth clicking that Like button for?  If you’re a retailer it could be first look at new products, exclusive products or a discount store.  If you’re a consultant an e-book, a free consultation.  Make sure what your offering is unique to Facebook, if you try and pull the wool over people’s eyes the will find out!

Email signatures and printed matter

Finally, one of the most simple things you can do and one of the things that so many people overlook.  Include links to your social media pages in your email signature, on your business cards and on flyers and other printed matter.

Do you have any hot tips for getting more Likes?  Anything obvious that I’ve missed?

This weeks cool tool could prove to be a bit controversial.  Post Planner is an application for Facebook that helps you think of things to post.  One of the biggest time sucks when managing Facebook pages can be deciding what to post today.  I use several methods to combat this, I have a schedule and a list of content, I bookmark interesting links, I write down ideas that pop into my head during the day and I’m always looking for something new and creative.  However, like everyone else I get brain freeze from time to time and this is when I could see Post Planner coming in handy.

Once you authorise the app to Facebook (and it looks for a lot of permissions) a click on the light bulb icon will throw up a number of suggestions for posts.  Unfortunately the free version teases you with question suggestions but if you try and activate them you are asked to sign up for the free trial.  However when you click through to sign up for the trial it looks for credit card details to activate it. This really put me off, maybe I’m an old fuddy duddy but I’m still not ready to trust my credit card to a company I stumbled on through a Google search that has pretty comprehensive access to my Facebook profile.  Sacrificing the Facebook data and my credit card info at the same time was a step further than I was willing to go.   If you sign up for the free trial there’s lots more cool stuff you can have access to, including ‘fill the blank’ updates ‘ask for likes’ updates and posting to your Facebook page rather than just your profile, they have a huge database of ideas for you to tap into, all of them aimed at getting more interaction.  Tempting as it is I’m still not ready to hand them my credit card info.

For free and without the trial there is one useful feature and that’s the ability to schedule updates.  Yes there are tools such as Hootusite that allow me to do this as well but the beauty of doing it through Post Planner is that you don’t need to leave Facebook.  As a free user I can only schedule updates to my personal profile page but I can see that pairing the posting ideas with a scheduling function could yield great results, particularly if you want to target users in a different timezone.

I’d love to try the full functioning app or to hear from anyone who has done the trial.  What do you think?  Would a Facebook app with access to your profile information scare you off giving credit card information or am I being overly cautious?

I’m loving playing around with the new Facebook Timeline,  I feel a bit like a kid with a new tool, there’s lots to learn and discover.  One thing is for sure.  Images are a huge part of the new design.  Your cover picture, your logo, your tabs, even featured of pinned stories look better with images.  Here’s all you need to know about those images, ideal sizes and a few tools that will help you create killer images to promote your page.

1. Cover Image

Dimensions 851 x 315 pixels

If you have a photo you can upload it full size and choose the section you would like to use as your cover photo.

This is a huge space for you to play with, it gives you the chance to really own your page.  The image you use should capture the essence of your brand.

Rules!

As with almost everything on Facebook there are rules around what you can and can’t do with your cover image, and as usual you can see them being broken all over the place.  However if you want to ensure you don’t loose your page you must abide by them.

Here’s what they say:

Facebook rules regarding cover images

Some Examples

Wiggle have a striking cover image with colours matching their branding

Greenside Up - Nature and the garden all in one image

Kerrigans Butchers - A friendly shop with friendly staff

2. Avatar / Logo

Dimensions 180 x 180 pixels minimum (displays as 125 x 125 pixels)

We may have gained space with the cover image but we’ve lost space with the avatar.  The old pages allowed us to create banners where we could feature not only our logo but some info about us and even a call to action.  The new avatar size allows just enough room for your logo.

3. Tabs

Dimensions 111 x 74 pixels

You can now display three apps underneath your header and you can customise the images that appear on them.  This gives you the opportunity to keep your branding consistent.  If you have a shop, a competition running or even a blog tab you can draw attention to them using customised images.

If you missed my video last week on how to feature tabs and how to add customise images to your tabs here it is again.

Examples

No Photoshop? Some Tools That Can Help

So Timeline gives us so many opportunities to show off beautiful images but if you don’t have photoshop how can you create them?  There are lots of free photo editing tools that you can play around with to create those images, here’s three of the best.

FotoFlexer

FotoFlexer is by far the most user friendly one I’ve used.  Simply upload photos, add filters, text, even re-size.  You can do all this online and save the completed image to your computer hard drive.

Aviary

Aviary is more complex and gives you far more tools and functionality.  Like FotoFlexer there’s no need for a download, you simply upload your images and edit them online.  The interface is more complicated, but you can do far more.  Aviary has a full suite of tools including screen grabbing outside it’s image editor app.

Gimp

Gimp is an open source image editing programme that unlike the other two needs to be downloaded to your computer.  This is the Rolls Royce of free image editing and it’s what I use.  It has massive capabilities for both editing and designing images.  The downside is that it can take a while to get your head around it, if you are used to Photoshop you will find the interface clunky in comparison.

Have you enabled Timeline yet?  Have you done something creative with your page?  Have you seen any creative cover images?  I’m always looking for examples so please do share your pages below.

Running competitions on Facebook and the promotional guidelines surrounding them is a topic that constantly comes up for discussion. Companies big and small can be seen breaching them and there seems to be a huge amount of confusion about what you can and can’t do. Contests are a great way of building your community but if you break the rules you risk loosing your page.

The Promotional Guidelines

And of course when Facebook originally issued their promotional guidelines they were huge and very confusing.  If you managed to wade through the legalise language you would usually stumble at the last barrier, the requirement to pass your promotion past Facebook for approval, as a result of the complexity many businesses just shrugged their shoulders and ignored them risking loosing their pages altogether.  Thankfully they have since loosened the restrictions and made them a lot easier to digest and the need to submit your promotion to Facebook has disappeared altogether.  You can view the guidelines in full here.

The key points to remember are

- You cannot run a Facebook competition on the ‘Wall’ of your page.  You must use a third party app or create your own iFrame tab

- You cannot condition entry on taking an action on Facebook, e.g. Liking, commenting or sharing a post or uploading a photo directly to Facebook.  However you can make Liking your page a part of the entry process (but not the only condition to entry)

- You cannot use any action on Facebook as a voting mechanism, e.g. Liking a photograph

- You must include a disclaimer including text similar to:

“This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.
You are providing information to [disclose recipient(s) of information] and not to Facebook.”

I recommend you read the full guidelines and make sure you understand them fully before you launch your contest.

If that still seems confusing here’s a fantastic video from Facebook that puts it in simple terms

Rules Smules, everyone else is breaking them right?

I’m sure you’ve seen lots of busiensses breaking the rules on Facebook and it can be tempting to jump on board, after all if everyone else is doing it why can’t you?  Do Facebook really take down pages that break them?

The answer is yes they do remove pages. Having your Facebook page removed by Facebook isn’t something businesses tend to shout about so it is often assumed that it doesn’t happen.  Small businesses may be able to keep page removal under their hats but bigger brands aren’t so lucky, a quick Google search will give you examples of pages closed by Facebook for breaching the promotional guidelines including FCUK India.  If you do have your Facebook page disabled follow this link to appeal.

Of course the main reason we run competitions on our pages is to attract more ‘Likes’ so running the risk of losing your entire fan base can’t be worth it, especially as there are some fantastic tools that can help you run an effective competition for free or for a very low cost.

The Good News

Running a competition by the rules is easy.  There are a number of applications that work with Facebook for running legal competitions.  I use ShortStack (affiliate link) as I find it’s easy to customise, great value and there are lots of bells and whistles that can ensure the success of your competition including an option for entrants to tell their friends about the competition or share it to their Wall.  You can run a sweepstakes contest for free using ShortStack and their paid service starts at $15 (around €11) per month with no minimum subscription period.

If ShortStack isn’t for you there is plenty of choice here are three others you may want to look at. Wildfire app, WooBox and NorthSocial

What sort of competition should I run?

There are many kinds of competitions you can run on Facebook and I’ll elaborate on the benefits here over the next couple of weeks but a rough guide if you’re keen to get started:

- For a first competition to build your fan base a sweepstakes works well as entry is simple for your community

- If you have a reasonably active community a caption competition where users vote for the winner will gather momentum and encourage entrants to invite their friends

- If you have a very engaged community a photo contest where users vote for the winner will attract lots of new users and gives you great visual content to share.

I’ll be delving further into competitions on this blog soon so watch this space.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on contests on Facebook, do you enter them? What compells you to enter them?  Have you found them effective for your own business?

If you would like Spiderworking.com to help you set up a competition on your Facebook page get in touch.

I met someone last week who wondered if I still ran Spiderworking.com.  The reason?  She ‘Liked’ my Facebook page but hadn’t seen any updates from me in months.  Since Facebook made it’s latest changes to the newsfeed at the end of last year reports have been coming in of page updates not appearing in the stream.  Page owners also saw a significant drop in their page and post views and a new statistic appeared on our pages ‘talking about’.  All of this combined means that if we really want users to see our updates we need to encourage interaction, the ‘talking about’ stat has become the most important insight on our page.

So how can you encourage more interaction on your Facebook page?  I’ve been experimenting and here’s what I’ve found works so far.

Always look for feedback

Whenever I post something to Facebook I ask for feedback, instead of posting a link and saying what it’s about, I think about why I’m sharing it and add my thoughts and ask others for their opinions.  I try to end most posts with a question mark.  This has been a valuable tool for me and has helped me gather ideas and content for blog posts amongst other things.

Other effective tricks I’ve seen other pages use for getting feedback are posts with a missing word (see below), or asking for ‘three words to describe’.  Giving likers something simple to do will encourage more engagement than asking for a long opinion.

example from Mari Smith

Share on Twitter

If your posts are no longer appearing on the newsfeeds of all your fans you need to be reaching them elsewhere.  Posting links to Facebook posts on Twitter and asking for feedback is an effective way of widening the conversation beyond those who pick up your stories on Facebook.  Facebook users no longer need to like a page to comment on it so you may find you will get more interaction from new users this way.

I try and post one Facebook discussion a day to Twitter and have found it effective for getting new comments, all of these are hugely valuable not just for encouraging sharing but again for garnering opinion on topics that I can translate into blog posts or content in the future.

Use a variety of content

It’s widely agreed that images and videos have better edgerank than other types of content.  Images and video are also more visually attractive to users, they will catch your eye the way a status update or a simple link won’t.  When I’m posting a status update I try and find an image that illustrates my point and add it to the update. It’s important to include a variety of content types on your page and I wouldn’t recommend using the image trick for every update.  People get tired of the same content and you will discover that video and links will reach different users than images and status updates.

example from Amy Porterfield

Run a competition

Running a competition on Facebook will get lots of people talking about your page.  Use an app like ShortStack that allows you to configure sharing, this way people who enter will be prompted to tell their friends.  If you have an active user base running a photo contest that is judged by Facebook users will encourage competition entrants to share your page with all of their friends.

example from Country Hounds

Great content

This should really have been my first point.  Creating compelling content that people will want to share will always encourage interaction and shares.  I always recommend creating a content schedule for Facebook, you can download a blank schedule word document here.  Think about when you are going to post and what sort of content you are going to post on each day.  This will make it easier for you to find content to share and encourage consistent posting.

Carry a camera and a notebook with you everywhere and look out for photo opportunities that will work on your page.  I find the voice memo device on my phone invaluable and am always recording snippets of ideas when I have them.

What have I left out?  How do you encourage engagement on your Facebook page?  Let me know… leave a comment.

One of the highlights for me of the SMM11 event in London earlier this year was the presentation by John Morter, the man behind the ‘Rage Against The Machine for Christmas No1 Campaign’.  He was amusing and gave us lots of handy takeaways.  The one that resonated with me the most, possibly because it’s something I had been advocating myself for some time, was his tip to change your Facebook page avatar when you have a new offering or important news.  The change in profile image will draw people’s attention and maybe make them take a fresh look at what you do.

With Christmas on it’s way Facebook is awash with seasonal avatars and for those selling gifts or Christmas products adding a bit of festivity to your page reminds people that you are there, a fresh avatar attracts new post views and can even be a spark for a conversation.

This year we chose to add antlers to our logo.  Last year more dramatically we made it snow.  The reaction has been great and we’ve seen lots more interaction since we made the change.  It also gives us something else to talk about, we asked our ‘Likers’ to share their pages with us and you can see both their and our designs below.

There are a couple of downsides to being festive, you must remain true to your brand, a cartoon Reindeer or Santa whilst suitable for some companies doesn’t suit others. You need to make sure your brand shines through so that your avatar doesn’t get lost in the sea of Santa hats.

Think about how you can modify your logo to reflect the season without hiding your branding. When creating your festive profile picture imagine your decorating a shop, how you decorate depends on who you want to come in the door, once you have identified this create something that reflects it.

Featured above OutOfHoursVA, MyKidsTime Sligo, Avon From Fiona, Prints4Gifts and Spiderworking.com

What do you think?  Does changing your avatar draw more attention to your page or do all the Santa hats mean you’re missing updates from the pages you usually follow?  If you have created a festive page share your link with us on our Facebook page.

This morning my feeds were full of the news that Facebook is launching a ‘Subscribe’ button that can be added to websites. This made me revisit my use of Facebook subscribe and whether I wanted to continue.

When Facebook first rolled out ‘Subscribe’ I thought it was a good idea, in fact it was something that had been possible for a while under another guise. It used to be the case that if you sent a friend request to someone and they didn’t respond you would see their public updates in your newsfeed. Subscribing just formalised this process, and I think we have Google+ to thank for the simplification of it. Initally I allowed subscribers, partly as an experiment to see how it would work but as I accumulated subscribers I began to understand the benefits. I like having the option, it means I don’t have to friend people I don’t know and can keep my friends down to the people I do communicate with on a regular basis. However there are a few glitches that I’m not altogether happy with.

Firstly if I want to post a lot of content that I think has relevance to my subscribers there is no way of restricting this. Many of my friends are just that, they have no interest in social media beyond keeping in touch with friends, if I’m constantly posting business social media links they are going to start ignoring my updates altogether. I am what I’d call a ‘power’ Facebook user, which is a polite term for someone who posts a lot. I like that I can restrict content to just those I think would be interested in it by using friend lists but if I want my subscribers to see it I can’t stop it pumping out these social media news stories to everyone on my friend lists.

So why am I concerned? Surely I could just post the social media stuff to the Spiderworking.com business page? The Spiderworking.com page is aimed at a very specific audiece. It’s there to provide useful tips and handy information to small business owners using social media. Many of the interesting articles I want to share publically through my profile would not fit that remit. I like being able to share these with a wider audience and my Facebook profile, along with my Google+ page allow me to do this. To be able to filter content just to subscribers would give me the opportunity to share this stuff without boring my non-business, non social-media related friends.

However this isn’t my biggest problem with the subscribe button. As I mentioned above I love being able to filter content to the appropriate audience. I often choose to share posts publically, to just friends or to a specific group of people. This functionality is key to what I post on Facebook. However if I comment on a friends ‘public’ post or ‘Like’ it this appears on the newsfeeds not only of all my friends but also my subscribers. These could be fun comments with friends that may seem odd or inappropriate to a public audience. As a result of this I’ve stopped commenting on some posts. I’m becoming less social.

So I’ve reached the stage where I wonder if having subscribers is worth it? I have very little contact with them and if they fell into my target market surely it would be better for them to connect with my business page? Not having subscribers wouldn’t fix my second problem totally, comments I make will still go out to my entire friend list and publically but without subscribers they won’t automatically appear on ‘strangers’ news feeds. I have to consider if it’s just my ego stopping me abandoning subscribers and clearly if this is the case it’s not a strong reason to hang onto them. I’ll be re-thinking the entire Spiderworking.com social strategy for the New Year and will decide then if having subscribers on Facebook is a worthwhile exercise for me.

Have you allowed subscribers on your Facebook profile? If so do you see a benefit? Do my concerns concern you too? I’d like to hear your comments.

We are seeing more and more young people entering the world of Social Media.  Facebook & Twitter are becoming the tools that our youth are choosing to communicate and for many parents this is worrying.  Not only do many of them not understand the networks but they are concerned that their children could be leaving themselves open to dangers or acting inappropriately online.

It is important therefore for parents to familiarise themselves with social networks, to understand privacy settings and what levels of privacy are appropriate for young adults.  Understanding the tools gives parents the opportunity to open a conversation about social media and for them to create a supportive environment in which children will feel more comfortable reporting any issues.

Some parents approach to social media is to ban its use altogether and it’s worth noting that both Facebook and Twitter do not permit users under the age of 13.  However, banning a child over the age threshold from using these sites will just encourage them to use them outside the safety of the home.  Internet cafes and friends with computers will give them the opportunity to set up accounts without your permission and without your advice.

It’s not all bad news…

The Good News

A study by EU Kids online showed that Irish Children were the most responsible in Europe, only 7% of our teens add personal contact details to their profiles as opposed to 14% in the rest of Europe and only 11% have public profiles in comparison to 29% in the EU.

Using social media can be very beneficial for young people:

• Confidence – communicating online can give young people added confidence. Even a shy child will often come out of their shell and start talking online.  This will build their confidence and communication skills in real life relationships and make it easier for them to integrate into new groups.

• Social media is here to stay, it is already being woven into the fabric of our lives in much the same way as the phone and the email are already.  This makes it an important life skill that will become more and more relevant in their future lives.

• Children are able to connect with other like minded people. These could be people they share hobbies and interests with or support groups for children with issues.

• Education – Social media can be a space where children can learn from each other, they can share, view and understand a wide variety of content and opinions and learn to debate these.

• Staying in touch with friends and family geographically far away, this is becoming more valid in Ireland at the moment with many families seeking new homes overseas. Social networks allow children to keep their friendships alive.

How to stay safe online

I’ve created two downloadable guides to Facebook and Twitter privacy for teens.

Download the guide: Facebook privacy – Recommendations for teens and young adults by clicking here

Download the guide: Twitter privacy – Recommendations for teens and young adults by clicking here

Suggested Rules

After discussions with parents I’ve compiled a list of suggested rules for young people using social media.  It is in no way complete and I’d love to hear your thoughts so please do leave a comment.

• Don’t’ become friends with someone you don’t know in real life
• Don’t agree to meet up with strangers
• Don’t include personal contact info, hometown or other information that could have people track you offline
• Think three times before posting something. What you post has longevity and could be connected to you in the future.
• Respect the privacy of others
• Never send personal contact info via a social network
• Don’t use geolocation services that broadcast your current or past location
• Computers should be used in shared family spaces
• Never ever share your password

If you would like Amanda to come to your school or youth group and talk to parents or children about using Social Media safely contact us.