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

1. Dell For Business

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

2. NetBizAutomation

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

3. SteelMaster Buildings

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

4. Simply Zesty

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

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

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

I was lucky enough to be at an Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls) gig in Dublin this week and aside from being an amazing night out it also showed me how musicians and performers can use Social Media to communicate with fans and creatively overcome issues.

The support act ‘Bitter Ruin‘ were a self proclaimed ‘really small band from Brighton’ who had stumbled upon an opportunity to tour with Amanda Palmer. Towards the end of their set they asked us to stand to attention so that they could take a picture of us all, they would put the pics on Facebook and we could tag ourselves in them.  What better incentive to become a fan of their page!  I’ve tagged myself in the pics but they are so dark I’m not sure it’s actually me!  Their hard work is paying off too, I notice that this ‘small band’ now have over 1,000 fans and growing rapidly.

The Amanda Palmer part of the gig required far more technology.  Due to the volcano the original show which featured at least two other artists wasn’t able to go ahead as planned.  Using Twitter and Facebook Amanda managed to assemble all the tools she required for the gig. A computer, a webcam, a kazoo and a Twix bar.  When someone is described as ‘phoning a performance in’ it usually refers to a poor or lacklustre performance, but at this gig it meant literally phoning it in as Amanda’s co performer Jason Webly  appeared via Skype to the audience.  The whole show was then broadcast live across the Internet to around 3,000 viewers.

Social media has always been a fantastic way to promote artists and music and it’s great to see that bands of all sizes are using it creatively to market themselves.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been asked by people to blog on a couple of things that are really bugging them.  So here’s the two top offenders:

1. Farmville – How to hide it

A common problem.  Whether it’s Farmville or Fishville, Mafia Wars or whatever the latest craze is it seems to drive people mad. There is however help at hand, hiding these games from your newsfeed without hiding the friends using them is relatively simple:

• Find a post from one of your friends using Farmville on Facebook:

• Hover your mouse over the top right hand side of the post and ‘Hide’ will appear:

• Click ‘Hide’. Facebook will give you the option of hiding the game or hiding the user. Click ‘Hide Farmville’

• Facebook then confirms your action:

And that’s it, Farmville won’t bug you again!

2. Using Facebook Profile Pages for Business

I’ve blogged about this before but the problem seems to be getting worse and it’s really annoying people. Two people have asked me to blog about it in the last week.

This morning I logged onto facebook and this was what my news feed looked like:

Flooding a newsfeed like can prove an annoyance to people and you run the risk of users hiding your profile altogether.  Apart from just being annoying there are other reasons you shouldn’t use a profile page for your business:

1. A Facebook fan page is visible to the whole world, you don’t need to be a Facebook user or logged in to view it. Because of this it is also visible to search engines, giving you inbound links to your website improving your search engine optimisation.
2. Demographics – Facebook offer some great demographics, you can see what age group your fans fall into, whether they are male or female and in what geographical area they live.  This means you can see if you are targeting the right audience with your page.
3. Respect your customers, respect their privacy. By using a personal profile page for business you are asking friends to share personal information with you but all you offer in return is marketing information.  This isn’t a fair exchange and is likely to annoy fans and attach some negative sentiment to your brand.
4. Facebook don’t want you to do it, they could close your profile down loosing you your friends in the process.

If your still not convinced look at this profile page that is promoting a business:

This is space that should be devoted to offering valuable content to your customers and enhancing your brand. Yet on a profile page it’s cluttered with irrelevant information.

So if you value your customers and fans please, please, please change to a business fanpage!

At Spiderworking.com we set up business fanpages for customers, offer training, consultation and even Facebook campaign management.  Get in touch or call us on 01 442 9410 to find out more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

@EJQ of Eilis J Quinlan & Co. asked:

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

Unfollowing someone is simple.

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

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

Choose “unfollow” from the drop down menu.

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

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

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

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

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

In a previous post I talked about how to populate your Facebook fan page but when you have that vital piece of information that you want to share, what’s the best way to do it?  Should you use the ‘Notes’ application, should you post it in your status update? or should you just post a link?

Status Updates:  If you have a short piece of news or have a short announcement to make use the Status bar at the top of the page.  It is now possible to allow facebook to update your twitter page so always try and stick to the 140 characters that twitter allows.

Notes: If you have something a bit longer to say use the notes application.  You can also add pictures and add tags to a note.  It is also possible to import your blog into notes.

Links: If you find a cool link that you would like to share with your fans, or want to share a link to your own webpage click   this button underneath your status update. Paste the link in the box provided.  If there are pictures in the link you are posting you will be given a choice of thumbnails.  Scroll through the thumbnails using the arrows next to the pictures.  It’s a good idea to comment on the link and why you are sharing it.  You can do this by writing in the status update box above the link. Finally post the link by clicking the add button.

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.

So you’ve got a Facebook business page, you’ve started to gather fans but what should you post?

One of the nicest  things about Facebook is that you can keep in touch with your fans on a daily basis (I wouldn’t recommend more than once a day).  This gives you a unique way to enhance your brand, to establish yourself as a customer and to converse with your customers and fans.

Trying to find content for your page however can seem like an impossible task, so I thought I would share with you some of the tricks that I use to keep my page populated.

1. Google Alerts:  Google alerts is a free subscription service.  You can choose words or phrases as your ‘alerts’ and Google will send you daily or weekly emails listing web, news and blog results containing those phrases.  When they hit your mail box in the morning scan through them for stories that would be of interest to your customers and that will help enhance your brand.

For example, for Feelgood Organic Hampers I have a Google alert for ‘Organic Ireland’, occasionally there will be a great story, posted in a newspaper or a blog about someone producing organic food or living a sustainable lifestyle in Ireland,  the sort of story that not only would be of interest to my fans and customers but which is also relevant to my brand.  When I find one of these gems I share it on my Facebook page.

2. Import your blog: Importing your blog into Facebook means that your page will automatically update whenever you post a new blog entry.   The simplest way to do this is to use the notes function:

• Click the ‘edit page’ link under your company logo.
• Click on the pencil next to the ‘Notes’ application.
• Choose ‘edit’ from the drop-down menu, you will be brought to the notes page.
• On the right hand side of the screen click the link ‘import blog’ and follow instructions to feed your blog into your fan page.

3. Ask a question: Another example from Feelgood Organic Hampers.  Gardening has been a massive trend this year and one which I have taken an active interest in, sharing my experiences on our blog and across our social networks .  As every gardener knows slugs are a massive problem so I asked the Feelgood Organic Hampers Facebook fans and Twitter followers to give us their Slug solutions.  They obliged by posting their suggestions on the  fan page wall.

4. Have a competition: Offer a small prize in return for a short story, a caption, a name for a product.  Spread the word about the competition through your mailing list, twitter, your blog, your other social networks as well as through your  Facebook page.  You will find that this brings you plenty of new fans too.

5. Company news and promotions: You will soon loose fans if you constantly directly promote your business but that doesn’t mean you can never do it.  As long as you are providing value to your fans through other interesting content it can be beneficial to add company news and special offers to your news feed.

If you need help with your Facebook fan page join our online community and ask a question.  We’d also love to hear your Facebook fan page success stories.