Spiderworking.com's Social Networking blog « Page 37 of 42 « Social Media Help for Small Business

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.

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.

This week we show you two applications that allow you to post short video’s to twitter.

Bubbletweet which posts popping bubble shaped video.

and

YFrog which posts regular video.

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.

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.

This week Amanda from Spiderworking.com demonstrates a cool web app for videobloggers. Trying to remember what it is you wanted to say can be a challenge when you are a video blogger. Easypromptor is a autocue / telepromptor device that you can use on your own computer.

If you like cool social media tools become a fan of Spiderworking.com on Facebook where we help blow the Monday Blues away with a weekly “Monday Morning Cool Tool”.

A big thank you to everyone who entered our Twitter competition. The winner of the €50 Spiderworking.com voucher was @OscarBearGrylls.

We will be answering all the questions we were asked over the next few of weeks but here’s two for starters:

Our first question comes from @Madeline from Life Love and Everything.

@Spiderworking How do you know if an event has a twittertag and what that twittertag is?

Twitter tags or hashtags are very organic, some spring up spontaneously, some are created with a specific purpose in mind. Some take off, some trend then die quickly and some never get beyond a few tweets.

Twitter users watching the recent BBC documentary series ‘The Virtual Revolution’ were delighted to see the hashtag for the series appearing at the opening of the show, it was the talk of twitter for most of the programme. Sadly twitter tags are not always as easy to identify. Some events can attract more than one #tag as the recent battle to establish a tag for ‘BBC Question Time’. Both #bbcquestiontime and #bbcqt were being adopted by viewers with most finally settling on #bbcqt, probably because it’s shortness allowed more comment. Although, as far as I can see, the BBC did not create this tag, they have actively adopted it even advertising it on the ‘Qustion Time’ site.

Conferences and events tend to invent their own tags and will often list them on their websites. Some display a twitterfeed screen at the event including the tag. Obviously if you aren’t at the event and they haven’t indicated the tag on their website, it is harder to discover what it is. In this case, searching the twitterfeeds of tweeps you know are attending could help.

There are a few #tag directories, Hashtags.org being perhaps the best, it allows you to either view current trending hashtags or search one of your choice. The result is a list of tweets containing the tag and a graph, showing the tag’s popularity over time. Another directory; TagDef defines #tags, again you can choose from trending tags or input your own. The site offers you a definition of that tag and a list of tweets using it. The definitions are, like Wikipedia, user generated so it is worth comparing them with the twitter stream to confirm the meaning.

Our second question comes from our winner @OscarBearGrylls who asked:

@spiderworking how many companies have used your services to launch them on twitter?

This is a hard question for me to answer as we offer training to groups as well as setting up accounts for individual users so for now that number will have to remain a pretty vague up to 50. We most recently trained a group of Journalists from ‘The Nationalist’ and are looking forward to reading their tweets in the future.

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.

Spiderworking.com's Social Networking blog

Social Media Help for Small Business

Our Partners: T2 Helping your website be seen

How To Add Video To Twitter

Farmville helps farmers hone their skills.