Google Alerts

May 25, 2011

3 Ways Social Media Can Help You Blog – pt. 3 Find Inspiration

If you get bloggers block Social Media can help. This week in part three of our series on Social Media and blogging we look at how it can help you find inspiration for blogging.

Be inspired by others – Blog Directories

I find I am inspired by other bloggers, some that work in social media and others that just produce well written interesting content. But how do you find blogs to inspire you?

There are a number of popular blog directories. Technorati, AllTop, BlogCatalog are some of the most well known. If you’re in Ireland or have an Irish interest Irish Blogs is fantastic. A quick internet search will also provide you with topic or industry specific blog directories.

Search these for blogs of interest and be inspired!

Social Bookmarking Sites

StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious and Digg are full of great links and information that can both help you guage what is trending in your industry and inspire you. Search for topics that interest you and they will throw up lots of interesting stuff you might not find elsewhere.

Google Alerts is not only a fantastic research tool but it can also give you a snapshot of what people are talking about relating to a specific interest. Once you have discovered the current trends write a blog post with your particular insight into the topic.

Linkedin Groups

What are people talking about or looking for information on in your Linkedin groups? If specific questions are coming up write a blog post addressing these questions or topics. Ask your own questions on Linkedin Groups or within Linkedin Answers to discover what others think, aggregate the answers in a blog post or answer the question from the feedback you have received from others.

Click here for part one on research

Click here for part two on finding readers

Do you have any secrets on finding inspiration for your blog? If so I’d love to hear your comments below.

Tags: Blogging — Tags: alltop, blog, blogcatalog, Blogging, delicious, digg, Google alerts, inspiration, Ireland, Irish, irish blogs, Linkedin, reddit, Social Media, Stumbleupon, technorati —

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January 19, 2011

5 tips to keep your Facebook community entertained

Back in October we asked you to share your social media questions with us. Dan from Tradesmen.ie asked:

“When you don’t have content to post to Facebook are there any other resources to use to keep Fans entertained/interested?”

Here’s our 5 top tips for keeping your page populated and your community interested:

1. Don’t panic!

You don’t have to post to your Facebook page everyday or several times a day, if you have nothing to share it’s fine to leave it for a day, your community won’t disappear. In fact recent research has shown that pages that post more than three times a day have less ‘Likes’ than pages who post less frequently. (Thanks to Krishna De for the info).

2. Create a content calendar

Creating a content calender allows you to spread your content out and ensures that you are consistent in your updates. Plan out your month, when are you going to post and what are you going to post on those days. Consistency will keep people coming back to your page. Think about creating a weekly feature just for your Facebook page, whether it be a recipe or in Tradesmen.ie’s case a DIY tip.

3. Be generous

Social media is all about sharing. You don’t need to produce all the content for your Facebook page yourself. Find content from others that would be of interest to your target market. You can post links, videos and quirky news stories that your community might find appealing. To find links use Google Alerts and subscribe to RSS feeds from your favorite blogs.

4. Ask for feedback

Ask questions or run polls to encourage your community to interact. ’What DIY job have you been putting on the long finger?’ or ‘What’s your favorite makeover show?’ for example. Ask your community to ask their own DIY questions and get some of your experts to answer them for them.

5. Be personal

People often think that just because they are running a business page they should keep it strictly about business but people like to know there is a real human being behind the page. There is no harm in sharing what is happening in the office today, Hairy Baby kept us entertained last year with stories of Seamus the bird stuck in their factory, we were all delighted when he finally found his way out. Cafe Paradiso in Cork shared photographs and stories about their refit after being hit by the floods last year. I even noticed today that Simply Zesty were talking about what bar of chocolate they would bring into the office for ‘Chocolate Wednesdays’!

Have we left anything out? What tricks do you use to keep your page populated? Let us know by commenting below.

Tags: Facebook,Your Questions Answered — Tags: business, Content, Content Calendar, Editorial Calendar, Facebook, Google alerts, RSS, Sharing, Strategy, What to post —

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October 27, 2009

5 ways to populate your Facebook fan page.

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.

Tags: Facebook — Tags: Facebook, fan page, Google alerts, import blog to facebook —

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