This week we are going to share with you our three favorite Irish Facebook pages.  All three of these inspire us to make our page better and we hope they will do the same for you.  All three are also retail business pages, next month we will look at some great Facebook B2B pages.

1. Hairy Baby

My customers must be getting tired of me constantly referring them to Hairy Baby but it is a truly great and successful page.

What they do right

• Post interesting content that encourages interaction – Just for fun Polls & questions.
• Polls for market research.  Hairy baby often ask their customers to collaborate on a new T-shirt idea.  This makes users feel that they have some ownership of the brand and of course are more likely to buy the product when it is launched
• Not all business. Most of the hairy baby posts are not about selling T-shirts, they are aimed at encouraging interaction and it’s working judging by the number of comments they get.
• Accent.  All Hairy Baby posts are written in an Irish accent which is genius!  Their t-shirts are targeted at an Irish or ex-pat Irish market.
• Letting the customers have their say – The wall is set to allow posts from fans and the page.  What better way to showcase what your customers are saying about you.
• Fun.  Hairy Baby updates always make me smile!

Click here to Like the Hairy Baby Facebook page.

2. Puddleducks

Another page that anyone who has seen me speak in the last year will have heard me talk about.

What they do right

• Aim content at their target market
• Invite participation – they encourage people to post pictures of their children wearing Puddleducks products onto their wall.  This not only encourages interaction but also helps spread word about the page across Facebook.
• Giveaways – Monthly giveaways with the prizes always being relevant to their target market.
• Cross platform promotion – A recent childrens art competition was promoted through Facebook, Twitter, the Puddleducks blog and the Pix.ie photo sharing site.
• Not all business – lots of good links to other events and sites that would be of interest to families with small children.
• Letting customers have their say – look at the Puddleduck’s wall and you will see lots of great comments from customers.
• Fun- Splashing around in puddles is fun and this is a message that Puddleducks successfully promote.  Again their updates make me smile.

Click here to Like the Puddleducks Facebook page.

3. Champion Sports

A familiar high street brand with an excellent Facebook presence.

What they do right

• Posting valuable content to their target market.
• Invite participation – They’re ‘Anyone but France‘ campaign has attracted 417 people to sign the ‘pledge’ so far.  Again this spreads the word about Champion Sports across Facebook.
• Not all business – lots of good links to videos and content about sports fan with the odd special offer thrown in.
• Giveaways – in conjunction with their website they run competitions.
• Fun – The ABF campaign mentioned above and most recently a recreation of the Hunky Dory ads with a less trim model is enough to make you smile.

Click here to Like the Champion Sports Facebook page.

The four things that these pages have in common:

1. Valuable content
2. Encouraging interaction and participation
3. Not all business
4. Fun

All great tips to bear in mind when planning your Facebook campaign.

Of course we think our Facebook page is pretty good too!  You can Like Spiderworking.com on Facebook by clicking here.

Each week we are featuring one of the Work The Web workshops here on our blog.

This weeks featured workshop is ‘Owning Your Own Website’

Who is this workshop for?

This is not a course for nerds or technophiles – it is a course for the common or garden business person who wants to understand and appreciate the technology behind one of their greatest sales tools – their website.

This weeks video blog from Spiderworking.com concentrates on the free tools which you can use to monitor Twitter.

These tools help you:
1. Monitor what is being said about your industry and Brand.
2. Help you find people of interest to follow.

The three tools featured in this video are:
Tweetbeep
Tweetscan
and
Tweepsearch

In my last post about shortening links I mentioned that alot of people accessed twitter through third party software.

As you can see from above I’m loving Hootsuite at the moment but here are some links to other solutions.  Feel free to enter your favorites in the comment box below:

Tweetdeck

Tweetie

Hootsuite

Every time Facebook changes it’s layout it upsets it’s users and this latest version is no exception. But I believe that it can be good for business fan pages and it can help you establish a bigger and better fanbase.

For more videos on social media and how it can benefit you subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Has Twitter increased traffic to your website?

Has Facebook had a positive effect on your bottom line?

Has Linkedin helped you forge new business contacts?

Has social media enhanced your business or brand in any way?

If the answer is yes we want to hear from you.

We’re putting together a series of blog posts featuring businesses that have found success through social networking online. If you have a tale to tell we would love to hear from you.

If you would like your business to be featured become a fan of  Spiderworking.com on facebook and leave a short synopsis of your story here.  We will be in touch for further details.