Blogging Archives « Spiderworking.com's Social Networking blog

Blogging Tips, Facebook 20% Text Rule and The Blind Instagrammer - The Social 7

It’s another blog heavy social 7 this week. Maybe because I’ve made the finals of the Social Media Examiner Top Social Media Blogs I’ve been focused on blogging this week. A massive thank you to all of you, the readers who nominated me and those who have helped me build it over the years. Here’s my pick of my reads this week including plenty of blogging tips and advice, fun Twitter statistics, and a blind photographer who takes better Instagram shots than me. Have a great weekend.

The secret sauce of a great blog post

There is a lot written and preached about writing great blog posts. I’ve been reading a lot of blogs recently and although many of them have great content I find a lot of them are missing something, that something that might want me to go back and connect with the blogger more regularly. I had attributed the missing piece to personality, some might call it storytelling but I think this article from Social Media Explorer really nails it. The secret sauce according to them is emotion and the article makes a compelling case including a remarkable blog post that seems to be succeeding for exactly this reason.

The typical Facebook post receives only 0.03% negative feedback

Pages are still reeling from the recent Facebook edgerank changes. We thought we knew the landscape of Facebook and then all of a sudden we realised our posts weren’t reaching as far and that images no longer seemed to get the most views. One thing Facebook has been clear about is that much of this is due to negative feedback to posts. The negative feedback statistic can be found in your Facebook insights by clicking ‘Engaged users’ next to an individual post in the insights interface. Any negative feedback will be listed here.

Negative feedback referrers to a user hiding the post, hiding all posts from your page, unliking your page or reporting it for spam. Facebook now uses this information as part of the edgerank algorithm to decide who to show your posts to. The good news is that in fact most posts don’t get much negative feedback. Read more on this on the Edgerank Checker blog.

How blind people use Instagram

I love this story. A blind guy who uses Instagram, and what is almost frightening is a lot of his photos are better than mine. I love that he is able to share visual moments from his life with others even though he is unable to see them himself.

How to blog with confidence

We had the first meeting of our bloggers network this week and one topic that came up straight away was how hard it had been for some of us to return to our blogs after the Christmas break. Personal bloggers were finding it particularly difficult to find inspiration. As part of our session we reviewed this post from Write On Track that gives some great blogging tips on getting your mojo back. One of the top tips was becoming part of the blogging community so it looks like those attending our blogging group had already taken one good step forward.

New Facebook guidelines – 20% text overlay on ad’s and cover photos

This week the new regulations about images you use in promoted posts and cover photos came in to effect. Essentially this means you are not allowed to have more than 20% of your image devoted to text. Facebook have a handy tool that advertisers can use to check their promoted posts but it would be handy to know in the design stage if you are going to be complying with the guidelines.

This excellent template from ShortStack will help you plan those images ahead of time.

Source: shortstack.com via Amanda on Pinterest

How to blog successfully about anything

My final blogging tip of the week is this monster article from SEOMOZ on how to blog about anything. Is it really possible to blog about something you have no interest in? There are ways and the key seems to be questions. Not just answering questions from your clients but also asking them. Reading this reminded me of the early days blogging here at Spiderworking.com, before I had found my voice I spent a lot of time researching the questions people wanted answers to and even posing my own ones. I remember a series of posts asking what the rules of social media were was particularly effective.

50 Fun Twitter facts

32% of all Internet users are using Twitter. Over the span of 16 days, the London Olympics generated 150 million tweets. I love these kinda fun statistics, they help us to put a bit of personality on the more serious numbers based Twitter stats. Here’s 50 for you to wade through from All Twitter.

And from Spiderworking.com this week

What is the reach of your RT’s and what are your most commonly RT’d posts?

This weeks cool tool analyses the RT’s that you get on Twitter and shows you who manages to push them out to the most users. What I really loved about this tool though was that it was able to show me my most RT’d tweets. It could also form a basis for identifying your best brand ambassadors although I’d be cautious on basing this on follower account alone. Read more here.

Pinterest tip – Get more blog shares on Pinterest

I’m determined to embrace Pinterest more fully in 2013 and part of that has been looking at making my blog posts more shareable there. Here’s this weeks 30 second video tip, it’s the first thing I’ve tried and it is bringing some, all be it limited, results already.

Video tips and book review – How To Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck by Steve Stockman

There is a lot of terrible online video out there. At some stage we were all told that we needed video on our sites and this spurred everyone to throw together one regardless of quality. This week I review and share some key tips from a wonderful book How To Shoot Video That Doesn’t Suck. This will definitely change the way you plan and produce your online videos.

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How To Get Your Blog Posts Shared More On Pinterest - Pinterest Tip

In 2013 I’ve set myself the challenge to spend more time on Pinterest. It’s not a network ideally suited to my business but I’ve seen so many clever things done on it I wanted to up my efforts to see what can be done.

Here’s one of the first Pinterest tips that I implemented and it’s working, I’m only a week in to the new year marketing and I’m already seeing traffic coming in to my blog from Pinterest.

Includes examples from Jon Loomer and Ching Ya

If you enjoyed this blog post why not subscribe to my newsletter or my blog posts via email. Click here for more info.

The office is about to close, I am sitting at my desk wearing a Santa hat listening to Christmas songs on the radio. I may blog sporadically between now and January 7th but the office is well and truly closed. Here’s wishing you a fantastic Christmas break.

Here are 7 social stories to keep you occupied over the holiday including a way to hack your WiFi signal to make it stronger, some Pinterest and blogging tips, Facebook page fails and the basics of creating a buyer persona.

There’s no such thing as a Twitter elite

There are people on Twitter who for one reason or another have become celebrities of the genre. People who have lots of followers and have been on Twitter since it was a text service or those who court controversy and have built up a significant following, there are also some lovely people who attract followers with their magnetic personalities. There are the real celebrities too. The likes of Stephen Fry, Amy Huberman, Justin Beiber. All of these seem to be the thought leaders on Twitter or the ‘Twitter elite’. This amusing article from the New Statesman describes how we should deal with these people, and why they may seem to hate us.

How to create a customer persona

How much do you know about your customer? Are you creating content that will really interest them? Creating a buyer persona, defining your typical customer types can help you market to them better. It can ensure that you are meeting their needs, it can make sure you are speaking the right language. This excellent post from Social Media Explorer takes you through the basics of creating these personas. It’s worth giving this a shot even if you are a small business, knowing more about your customer will always make it easier to know what to post and what other products and services to form synergies with.

The worst Facebook posts of 2013?

Since the arrival of ‘Condescending Corporate Brand Page‘ on Facebook we have been entertained by some of the worst examples of begging, ridiculous, annoying and just plain bad Facebook posts from business pages. There are posts asking you to like if you love your Children, to like if you had a birthday this year, irrelevant posts including cat pictures and more. This article showcases some of the worst, they’re annoying but I can’t help smiling at the craziness of some of them.

How to boost your WiFi signal

I love this video from HackCollege and I’ll definitely be checking some more of their minute long videos out. I do have problems with my WiFi reach but sadly my router doesn’t have and aerial so it won’t work for me. If you try it let me know if it works.

Important update to Facebook promoted post and cover image guidelines

After my initial skepticism I am a convert to promoted posts on Facebook. It means that when I have something that is really important for me to push out to a wider audience I can. I don’t use them often but I’ve been pleased with the results when I have.

Facebook are in the process of changing their guidelines for promoted post advertising and cover images. It seems they want to discourage images that are primarily made up of text and these new guidelines relate directly to that. Neither your cover image or an image that you include in a promoted post may have more than 20% of the area covered in text. According to this post from Inside Facebook they will help us measure our text to ensure we comply. Make sure your images don’t break this rule in order to avoid promoted posts getting rejected in the future.

4 Tips for writing a blog post opening that turns heads

I’m always trying to improve my blog, I’m also one of the founders of the KLCK Bloggers Network, a group of like minded bloggers who get together once a month to share our experiences and knowledge. Because of this I’m always looking for articles and hints and tips for writing better blogs. This one from Jeff Bullas is great and focuses on the opening paragraph of your blog. What should it do and how can you make it more effective? These are tips I’ll definitely be putting in to practice in the new year.

The 3 step guide to creating Pinterest-friendly graphics for your blog

I’ve still not fully embraced Pinterest, it’s not a network that naturally attracts me but it’s one that I’m aware is not going to go away. It needs to become part of my social media marketing mix and it’s another one of my new year’s resolutions to make it work in 2013. I have a plan of how I want to approach this and hopefully you will be seeing great things from my Pinterest in the year to come. One thing that I know I’ll continue to use it for is sharing my blog posts so this article from Pro Blogger was a great find for me. It’s a step by step guide to creating strong pinnable images for your blog.

And from Spiderworking.com this week

Easily create customised Facebook cover images

This weeks cool tool helps you create customised cover images for your Facebook pages and profiles. You can choose an image from their bank of stock images, customise it with text, your own images and other stock photos to spruce up your Facebook page. I made one in minutes to wish everyone a happy Christmas. It’s simple to use, here’s how it works and how to create your own.

How to migrate a Facebook friend page to a Facebook Like page

For one reason or another lots of people set up friend pages on Facebook rather than business or Like pages. This is against Facebook’s terms of service and they do remove friend pages that pose as businesses when they discover them. The good news is that if you are a business you can now easily switch to a business page. This week I show you how and show you some of the benefits of having a Facebook business page.

And that’s all from me until Santa arrives. Have a great holiday, I’ll be back in business on the 7th of January.

If you enjoy reading my blog please nominate it for the Social Media Examiner Top 10 Social Media Blogs. Last year I reached the finals but I’ve been working hard all year long to make it better. I would be over the moon to make it in to the top 10 this year. To reach the judging stage I need to get a lot of nominations so please nominate www.spiderworking.com/blog by visiting this post and leaving a comment including the link and why you think I should win.

photo credit: Daviddje via photopin cc

As the year begins to draw to a close we’re seeing lots of predictions for next year, including my own. Twitter and Facebook both released their trends of the year and Google told us what we searched for the most in 2012. I have included some predictions here but I’ve also found a great checklist for bloggers / article writers, an interesting article on how often we should get involved in conversations about our business online and the most annoying hashtag uses.

Have a great weekend. I’ll be back next week with my final roundup of the year.

The Internet of things explained

The Internet of things connects all the electrical devices around us enabling us to streamline and even eliminate menial tasks. This is going to be one of those phrases you will be tired of hearing by the end of 2013, it’s not new but it’s a concept that is gaining ground. I’d almost say it is inevitable that something like what is demonstrated in this clever interactive infographic is going to happen. In parts the concept delights me and in part is scares me.

Do people really click on the links in your blog posts?

You might notice that the sections of text I am making links out of this week are considerably longer than usual. The reason for this is that I am testing one of the theories put forward in this article from Hubspot. They started measuring the click throughs on links from their blogs and analysed the data. They discovered a few things including that longer anchor text results in more click throughs. The article is full of other interesting snippets of information and is really useful if you do a lot of internal linking within your own site.

Five annoying ways people use hashtags in Tweets

I wrote an article about the abundance of hashtags on Twitter earlier this year. When used well a tag can bring a community together, help us share and enjoy live and virtual events and spread the word about campaigns. When done badly they can make tweets unreadable. If like me this makes you grumpy or if you find that you have a bit of a hashtag addiction yourself it’s worth taking a look at this article from All Twitter outlining five ways that hashtags can be annoying.

Article writing checklist

I can be guilty of hitting that publish button on a blog post before I’ve spell checked properly or read it through to make sure it makes sense. Time always seems to be at a premium but unless bloggers take a moment to sit back and make sure the post is really ready to go it can result in them becoming unreadable. Having made mistakes time and again I was delighted to find this article. It’s a really handy checklist for bloggers or article writers outlining what to do before you hit publish. There’s also some tips on blog planning and commenting.

Who is using Google+?

I seem to be getting into more and more conversations about Google+. I am asked are people using it, who is using it, do we really need to have a page? The answer I give to point 3 is always a resounding yes, for the two former questions this infographic from Social Times might help.

Learn about data visualization software.

A quick look shows that the biggest segments are English speaking, American, single men, aged 18-24. I was happy until I saw the 18-24 bit! These headline stats are all we can see for now but if your target market happens to fit those specifics you should definitely, definitely be on Google+.

The biggest Twitter conversations of the year

I am totally fascinated and a bit obsessed by tweet per minute statistics. For example, during the Olympics tweets peeked at 116,000+ Tweets per minute, when President Obama appeared on The Daily Show there was a peak of 327,452 Tweets per minute and although there’s no concrete statistics I love the ‘Summer Wars’ case study that saw viewers of the film creating their own live event by tweeting a phrase every time one of the characters said it. For more on the trends and the year on Twitter check out Twitter’s own ’2012 Year On Twitter’.

Why you shouldn’t join every conversation about your brand online

Monitoring mentions of you, your business and brand should be one of the first things you do when constructing a social media policy. There are free tools like Google alerts that can help you, there are paid tools for those who have the budget but none of these tell you when you should respond to people talking about you online.

We may assume that we should always respond, particularly if people are saying negative things about us but this isn’t always the best policy. This brilliant post tells us why.

And from Spiderworking.com this week

Screen cap, annotate, add arrows all with one app

This weeks cool tool is a great one for blogging on the go. When I’m working from home I can use my mac to get screen grabs and edit them with GIMP, when I’m out and about it’s harder. This weeks cool tool does it all in one and is available cross platform. I’ve installed it on all of my devices. Find out more about how it works here.

Why isn’t there a search box on my Facebook business page?

This is a question I’ve been asked a lot this year. If you set up a pure Facebook business account or if you migrate a page you will find that your functionality is limited. Luckily this can be easily fixed by adding an admin. Here’s how to do it in one minute.

10 digital trends to watch out for in 2013

What does the near future look like? I’ve been trying to predict it, here’s 10 trends I think we should keep an eye on in 2013, some of them will happen, some of them will just begin to take off, some of them may not work at all. I’ll look forward to looking back on this one this time next year.

It’s a long post so if you’d like the headlines here’s a slideshow I made of the key points.

photo credit: repazeblack via photopin cc

This weeks cool tool is one that I know I’m going to be using on a regular basis (the reason for the cat picture will become apparent as you read on).

It can be hard to find exactly the right image for your blog posts. I carry a camera with me everywhere in order to build my own library of images that I can slot in to my posts but sometimes I have nothing that suits. Occasionally I will buy an image from one of the stock photo sites.

I rarely investigate ‘creative commons’. These are images that depending on the license, you can use for free on your blog as long as you attribute them to their source. One of the reasons I don’t use them on a regular basis is that it can be hard work to find them, it takes quite a bit of time to find the right image with the right license. I spend time dodging back and forward from site to site to find them and generally give up and end up buying one instead. That’s where this weeks cool tool PhotoPin comes in handy. It searches creative commons images and if requested will return results with the ‘commercial’ license, allowing you to use them on your business blog. It also gives you the exact code to past in to the bottom of your post to make sure you are attributing correctly.

It’s a massive time saver and it will help ensure that you are complying with copyright when using images on your blog.

Here’s how it works:

Visit the site www.photopin.com

Type in a search term – I’ve gone for ‘cats’

In the left hand side bar click on ‘commercial’

Choose an image you would like to use

Hover your mouse over the image and click ‘Get Photo’

Choose the size of picture you want to download and click ‘Download’

Copy the text in the Get HTML box

For WordPress go to the post that you are going to insert the image into

Click on the ‘HTML’ tab

Scroll to the bottom of your post

Paste in the HTML that you copied from the PhotoPin site

Upload the image you have downloaded as usual

The attribution will appear at the bottom of your blog post (see below).

Is this a tool you would use? How do you source images for you blog at the moment? Do you have a cool tool you’d like me to review. I’d love to hear your thoughts below.

photo credit: akk_rus via photopin cc

You must be familiar with the orange RSS feed logo that appears on blogs and websites. RSS feeds are a wonderful way for users to keep up to date with your latest blog posts, for you to keep up to date with your favourite blogs and when added to tools such as Hootsuite or Twitterfeed they will auto-update your social networks each time you add new content.

More on RSS feeds – what they are and how to use them here

For me RSS feeds are an essential part of my social media schedule. I subscribe to my favourite blogs and scour Google Reader (a tool that brings all my feeds into one place) every morning for stories that interest me and may interest my readers. Using feeds this way for content discovery is also something I teach as part of any social media strategy. I would be lost without them.

I was surprised to hear this week that the latest Apple OS update (Lion) had removed RSS from both the Safari browser and it’s Mail application. I was also dismayed to hear that someone had been given the advice to not display their RSS feed prominently on their blog. The reason being that people would be forced to visit your site to consume their content rather than reading it off site.

This seems like bad logic to me. If you write a blog and I stumble on it, and if I find your content interesting I’m likely to want to subscribe. There’s nothing worse that searching the site looking for the feed link, sometimes I give up, sometimes I try adding /feed after the web address to see if I can identify it this way. If you make it easy for me to subscribe you can be sure I’ll be visiting your website again.

In your blog settings you can choose how your content is displayed on RSS readers. Compact shows you just the first paragraph of text, it gives you a taster of what is to come but forces you to click through to the main website to read more. You can also display the full text of your blog, readers can then consume the entire post on their reader app. Both of these have advantages and disadvantages.

Compact

Advantage - People have to visit your website to read on, once there you can entice them to buy, read more, get in touch.

Disadvantage – if your first few lines aren’t compelling enough your reader may not click through. I know that I have to be really impressed by an opening to be encouraged to open another tab on my browser to read your stuff.

Full text

Advantage – Readers can skim or read your entire post without leaving their RSS reader app, this offers a better user experience.

Disadvantage – If the full text is available readers have no reason to click through to your site. If distributing the full text via RSS be sure to include a strong call to action either in the text or as a footnote.

Is your RSS feed easy to find on your Blog? Is it something you’d like to promote more? Leave your comments below.

I’m sitting down and starting to write this post on social media day. I didn’t plan anything this year but as usual have speant most of the day posting to, training on and working with clients on social media. It seems strange that social media needs a day, it’s not like we have to heighten awareness, almost a billion people are now on Facebook, Twitter seems to have hit the mainstream big time and Google+… is still there.

This week I look at one great update to G+, an artilce on how to display your real email on your Facebook profile again and when is the right time to #tag?

Google+ Events

I’m still a big fan of Google+, I may not be sure where it fits into the social media world yet but I really like the way it works and the content discovery in particular. Recently Google integrated Google Places into the network, re-naming them Google Local. This week they launched events. In my mind this is a brilliant integration and one I know I will use for our KLCK Blogger network meetings in the future. Find out more about Google Events here.

Facebook emails – How to display your own

Without telling anyone Facebook quietly changed the email address that displays by defalt on your Timeline. Instead of displaying your email address of choice they now show your Facebook email. Your Facebook email is an address you are automatically given by Facebook that when used sends the message directly to your Facebook message inbox. The reasons behind this move are unclear, except of course to push the use of Facebook email. Somewhat predictably this has annoyed a massive amount of users. If you want to switch your display email to another address here’s how.

Twitter tip – Track more than your @mentions

If you are using Twitter for business it is important to keep track of what people are saying about you, your industry and your competitors. For tracking your own mentions it’s not enough just to rely on people using the @mention to talk to you, you need to see what people are saying when the conversation isn’t directed at you. Have a look at this simple way to do this using Twitter search.

How often should you post to Facebook?

This is one of those questions that is notoriously hard to answer. It really depends on the amount of time you have and how much your customers want to hear from you. However I was surprised to see the statistics in this report that suggest posting to Facebook just once a day is hugely more effective. I personally tend to post twice a day but can see the advantage of posting just once. Limiting yourself to this means that not only will you reach more people, avoid the risk of annoying your audience but it also means you will make sure that the one piece of info you do post will be the best you can find. More on the study here.

How do you reward your Facebook audience?

We ask a lot from the people who choose to Like us on Facebook, we drive constantly for interaction , we ask them to share, comment or Like what wer’e doing. In return we should always try to provide them with what they want, whether it is tutorials, information, fun or something completely different. But how do we reward them for their loyalty? Here are 50 examples of big brands thanking their Facebook fans. It could inspire us all to think of a way to make our own audience feel valued.

Five editing tips for Bloggers

Do you just write your blog posts and click the publish button? It really does pay to edit first, I have lost count of the times I’ve looked back on a post only to find it littered with typos or sentences that don’t make sense. At the very least spell check and read it through before publishing, although this article suggests, quite rightly that we shouldn’t rely on spell check. These editing tips take it a bit further, all great tips and all worth investigating.

To hash or not to hash?

Hash tags seem to have evolved over the last 12 months, I attribute it perhaps to a new wave of Twitter users. Once they were just about search, it was much easier to follow everyone talking about the same topic using a tag. They were popular for TV shows, conferences and Twitter chats. Some people used them with humour, to denote the way they were feeling. Recently I’ve noticed them being used in a slightly different way. People are beginning to use two or three of them in each tweet to maybe define further what they are talking about. I’m not convinced of the value of this, do people use these tags to search? Are these tags really that relvent? Recently I saw a tweet that had every other word tagged, this made it very hard to read. I could just be being a grumpy old social media freak but I did find this article really helpful. It gives you a decision making guide for taggging.

From Spiderworking.com this week

Using Buffer to shcedule tweets

This weeks cool tool was Buffer, this app is simpler to set up and use than Hootsuite and allows you to schedule tweets into the future, it includes an inbuilt link shorterner and there’s lots of useful add ons.

Do the new promoted posts affect the Facebook newsfeed?

There has been a lot of talk on Facebook recently about the new Facebook promoted posts, some pages have been sharing a meme that is a tad misleading. This week I looked into the newsfeed, how it works and how it is decided if posts feature there. Believe it or not nothing has changed but there is one reason your posts might not reach as many before. I also suggest a fix for users. Read more here

15 second Facebook marketing tip

If you’ve been keeping an eye on our Facebook page you may have been following my 15 second Facebook Marketing tip. Here’s this weeks one about posting links.

This week Facebook launched a new kind of advertising a plug in for WordPress that is too complicated for most of us non techies to understand and re-named it’s camera app as camera*. I’m ignoring most of that, although you will find my own post on Facebook promoted posts below. I also left out the Buoy that Tweets although I was tempted to include it. Check out @galwaybouy on Twitter if you want to know more about that.

Instead I found some interesting stories about saying sorry, a great Irish tourism campaign and a wonderful post for blogging newbies from Chris Brogan. Have a great weekend.

Twitter #tag pages

Twitter ran it’s first TV ad. It seems strange that whilst other companies are trying to find ways to include Tweeting in their ad’s Twitter is buying television advertising space. In some ways it makes sense, when we watch TV we do so with others, tweeting with the #tag for the show, Twitter advertising their new #tag pages in this space might turn it on it’s head but it brings traditional and new media even closer together.

The first #tag page was for the NASCAR event, this is a new kind of Twitter premium product that will collate stories about a particular topic on a branded page. I can’t really see what’s in it for brands though, it’s already possible to display a #tag feed, I’m yet to understand the benefit of paying for it on Twitter. I’m sure all will become obvious soon enough. More on the new pages and how they worked for NASCAR here.

Twitter personalises trending topics

Trending topics as we know them could become a thing from the past. Twitter has announced trending topics tailored to users, now instead of just being able to see what is trending in a specific area you will see topics that are trending amongst the people you are following. In many ways this is a good thing, you are more likely to be interested in topics that are discussed by those you follow, those who have been selective about those they connect to will see the most benefit as only the most relevent stuff, the stuff you really are interested in will trend. On the other hand I’m not sure how this will effect the #tag, and the amusing #tags that you often see pop up in trending topics. It will be interesting to see how they evolve after they are rolled out. Here’s Twitter’s announcement about the update.

Tourism Ireland trust one couples holiday to their social media followers

One of the most innovative industries in social media has to be tourism, we see some great campaigns coming from hotels and airlines, we’ve seen some great competitions sending couples on dream honeymoons or trips of a life time. The latest campaign from Tourism Ireland is allowing the British public to direct the holiday of one couple in Ireland. It’s unclear quite how much control the public will have. There are mentions of voting on specific destinations or tasks but it does sound a bit more like a choose your own adventure than giving complete control to the social media crowd, that’s something I’m sure the couple in question are releived about. I’ll be keeping my eye on their progress. More on the campaign here.

Chris Brogan’s blogging primer

Getting started with blogging can often be the hardest step, and when you’ve stared you need to make sure you don’t stop. That’s why I’ve chosen to share this wonderful little post from Chris Brogan. 21 tips on getting blogging and keeping blogging. If you’ve been putting off starting read this post now and get started! I’m wondering is this post from Chris Brogan going to be one that fits in to his tip 15.

My best (most popular) posts were the ones I spent the least time writing.

Five types of Facebook fans

There is no doubt about it, marketing on Facebook isn’t easy anymore, with so many businesses competiing for the same audience getting someone to Like your page let alone seeing them intereact or buy from you business takes work and we need to be more creative in order to shine. For me step one has to be understanding your audience, if you know what they want you can connect with them better. Even if you do know your customers and feel you understand them it’s important to know they are not all the same. Different sorts of Facebook fans have different needs and that’s where this article on Social Media Today helps, it describes 5 different types of fans and the best ways to reach them.

Saying sorry

I picked this story out this week as it’s an example of how simple responses in social media can mean a lot. I’ve been reading some stuff on companies that were planning on automating their customer service tweets and Facebook updates. This in my mind is a terrible idea. I recently asked people on my Facebook page where they turned with customer service queries, the replies were split mostly generationally, with the younger people saying Twitter and social media and the older generation using the phone as they believed they were more likely to talk to a human being. Although age wise I belong to the older generation I turn to Twitter or Facebook for customer service. Interestingly I do so because I feel I am going to get a response from a Human being and probably a better response too. This story about American Airlines outlines how you can buy the loyalty and endorsement of a customer simply by communicating and saying sorry. If you are a company thinking of automating your customer service via social media please don’t, we all appreciate the human touch and it’s the only real way to learn from your customer.

How social media helped save the Troy Library

This is a great watch, the story how one Library in the states raised funds using a clever campaign and social media. All the more amazing for it requiring people to vote to increase their taxes!

And from Spiderworking.com this week

Embed Tweets, Facebook & Google+ updates on your blog

This weeks cool toolSocialDitto is very handy for Bloggers who like to quote or show examples from social networks like Twitter and Facebook. You simply input the URL for the post you want to share and it generates embed code for you. More here.

Facebook’s newest advertising solution – Promoted posts

Facebook recently added a new type of advertising for business pages. Now you can pay for a particular update to appear in more of your fans newsfeeds. I was interested in this option as a way to recharge a stale audience or to perhaps promote a special offer. But how many people could you reach? How would they work? I experimented with it myself and this is what happened.

Last week I was away in the Highlands of Scotland, relying on a sporadic Internet connection so it was by text that I heard that I’d made it into the finals of the Social Media Awards for this blog. Of course I’m delighted, and I’m even more delighted to be nominated alongside Beatrice Whelan (for the Sage Ireland blog) and Lorna Sixsmith (for Write on Track). As you are probably aware Beatrice, Lorna and myself have been working together on various blogging events over the last two years.

In 2010 Lorna and myself met eight other keen bloggers in the Clanard Court Hotel in Athy and the KLCK (Kildare, Laois, Carlow, Kilkenny) Bloggers network was born. We’ve been meeting every month since and it’s been great to see some fantastic business blogs evolve. Beatrice was one of the bloggers we saw bloom in our first year. She started blogging after attending one of our meetings and made it into the final of the Blog Awards in 2011 for her own tech blog. Lorna also made it into the finals of the Blog Awards with the Garrendenny Lane blog.

In 2011 we ran our first bigger event, Beatrice had at this stage joined the committee of KLCK and together we joined with a social media group in Chipping Norton for ‘Bloggers International‘. We packed out the room we’d hired in Portlaoise, it was great to meet so many bloggers from all over Ireland.

As you may be aware last year Damien Mulley, who was the brains and brawn of the Irish Blog Awards, announced that 2011 was to be the last awards. As a passionate blogger I didn’t want to see an end to what had become an institution. Irish Blogging deserves to be celebrated, it’s a massively efficient business marketing tool and Ireland is full of amazing blogs, I for one wanted to make sure we could continue the tradition and it didn’t take me long to persuade Lorna and Beatrice to join me in my madness. We chatted to Damien and pumped him for advice.. and two months later we’re in the grips of organising what will be our biggest event yet.

One of the disadvantages of taking on the Blog Awards is that I can’t win! In the last year I’ve made massive changes to the blog, I’m constantly working to make it better. The first hint that I was on the right track was when I made it into the finals of Social Media Examiners best Social Media Blogs of 2012, this spurred me on to work even harder and as a result a blog that didn’t make it into the Blog Awards finals at all last year has made it into the one and only blog category in the Social Media Awards. Of course I want to win, the competition is fierce and any one of the other blogs would be a deserving winner but I can’t help but want to have an award for my mantelpiece. I’ll find out next Thursday night, I’ll be Tweeting, follow the hash tag #sockies. But if I don’t win I’d be almost as delighted to see one of my fellow KLCK team take the trophy.

Would you like to sponsor Blog Awards Ireland 2012? We have category sponsorship available so do get in touch sponsor@blogawardsireland.com.

This week we asked the KLCK Bloggers Network to share the top tips they picked up at the meeting. Here they are

Susan Fitzgerald from Vibrant Ireland – Include a maximum of 3 outbound links in your blog post and make it more content rich.
Mairéad Kelly from Encouraging Excellence – Use one keyword in multiple blog posts
John O’Connor from Red Oak Tax Refunds – Use Google Page Speed Test to check your website loads quickly
Valerie Humphries from Kehoe Auctioneers – Use one of your keywords (search terms you want to be found for) in the title of your blog post
Simon Lewis from Anseo.net – Use a SEO plugin on your WordPress & Play around with the permalinks (or pretty links) your blog generates.

You can view the full presentation from Beatrice Whelan on SEO and blogging here. For details of future meetings keep an eye on the KLCK Bloggers Facebook Page.

What are your top SEO tips? Leave me a comment below and if I get a few I’ll include them in a blog post.

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5 SEO Tips For Blogging From The KLCK Bloggers Network