One of the highlights of day one on the digital stage for me was Stephen O’Leary from O’Leary Analytics on the benefits of listening to social media. It was a great, easy to follow demonstration of how using search terms such as ‘I wish someone would invent’ could show some interesting results. I grabbed Stephen afterwards and asked him to share some of his ideas and to tell me how they can translate for small businesses in Ireland. Here’s some of his key points:
- People are already talking about what they want online without us asking them.
- Try searching ’I wish someone built’ or ‘ I wish someone invented’. Very often you will find people talking about things we could never build such as light sabers but sometimes they will be real things that are feasible.
-Message boards like ‘Boards.ie’ ‘MagicMom’ ‘rollercoaster’ are big in Ireland. There is lots of data to mine from them and they are very important for listening to what our customers want to say.
- First step for small businesses on a budget is Twitter search – search for what it is you do so if you sell soap search for soap. Then try searching the same on Boards.ie and the other popular online forums.
- Use these tools to find out what sort of conversations are people having about your industry, product and service.
- Before you speak listen to what people are saying and then you will know what you should be speaking about.
This week I talked to Eamonn O’Brien of the reluctant speakers club about his success in driving quality traffic to his website using Google+.
In the last month of using Google+ he has discovered that;
- Google+ has been great for finding things that are genuinely useful to himself and other people
- Easier to spark up conversations than on other social networks
- More professional people and business people on Google+
- Content is more useful from a business perspective than on Facebook
- There are better in depth and quality conversations
- After just one month he’s getting 6% of his web traffic from Google+
- He’s getting more Google organic search traffic since he’s started using Google+
- Visitors from Google+ are spending around 13 minutes on his site compared to traffic from Pinterest that stays an average of 10 seconds
- The bounce rate from Google+ is lowest of all the social networks he uses
- He’s building new relationships and connecting with people he meets on Google+ elsewhere.
Eamonn is the CEO of The Reluctant Speakers Club, a leading provider of public speaking courses in Ireland. To learn how he can help you gain more trust and inspire others with your ideas, email eobrien@thersc.ie , call +353.1.5311196 or log onto www.thereluctantspeakersclub.com
You can circle Eamonn on Google+ here and the Reluctant Speakers Club here.
Have you had success with Google+? I’d like to hear about your experiences.
There’s so much to learn with the new Facebook Timeline business pages. I feel a bit like a child with a new toy. The new tab displays are great, they really highlight those customised tabs.
This week I show you:
- How to feature your best tabs on Timeline
- How to change the tab names and the images that display with them.
I’ll be back next week with more on the Facebook Timeline. Is there anything that you’re finding challenging with Timeline? Is there anything you’d like me to cover in a tutorial? Leave your suggestions in the comments below.
You may have noticed Facebook Like boxes on websites, they are those boxes filled with the faces of the people who ‘Like’ the Facebook page connected to the website, some may even include details of the most recent posts from the page. There is a massive advantage to having a Like box over a simple link or button that brings you to the Facebook page.
1. People don’t have to leave your website to Like the page
2. When we send people to our Facebook page they may get distracted by other Facebook activity and forget to click the Like button
This week I show you how to create the code for a like box. Before you start you will need to know the dimensions in pixels of the space that you want to plug the Like box in to.
There is currently a bug with Facebook that makes it necessary to add a snippet of code yourself. Watch to the end of the video and I’ll show you how to fix it.
This week I look at one way to increase engagement on your Facebook page. Not only does a photograph catch the eye of your audience more than a link or status update, it also has better edge rank (a stronger likelihood of appearing on the news feed of the people who Like your page.)
Engagement is becoming crucial on Facebook, the more engagement you get the more likely it is that your next story will appear in the feeds of those Likers that engage with you. It also has the added strength of spreading the virility of the post beyond your existing Likes and to the friends of your Likers.
Photographs are crucial and in this tutorial you will discover the best way to share links using photographs as well as discovering the best way to create and add to photo albums.
There are many reasons you may want to add a form to your Facebook page including:
- To get people to complete membership forms for a club or group
- To get people to subscribe to a publication
- To send people something out in the post
- To email someone a voucher or offer
This week I show you how to add a simple form to a Facebook page using Google Docs and WooBox
If you are inspired to create a form after watching this video why not show it off by leaving a link to it below.
There hasn’t been a day gone by this week without someone mentioning Pinterest, both on the blogs I follow and students on courses I’ve been teaching. And it’s not surprising, statistics are showing that it is a massive driver of web traffic. I only adopted it when it was added as a Timeline app on Facebook but can see it’s attraction immediately. There are lots of clever things you can do with it for business but this week I thought I’d show you the basics.
I show you:
- How to find people to follow
- How to follow people
- How to set up boards
- How to pin
- How to install the Pinterest bookmarklet
I’ll be following this up with a more advanced tutorial in a few weeks time. Let me know if you have any questions in advance and I’ll try and include the solutions in my next video.
It’s often believed that Facebook is not a good tool for B2B. However there a number of ways that Facebook allows you to build relationships with other businesses on Facebook.
This week I show you how to use Facebook in business mode. How to tag business pages, how to share content and comment on posts from other business pages.
If you would like to download a blank Facebook schedule to help you plan your Facebook campaign click this link http://bit.ly/xEnhtl
We follow so many people on Twitter that it can be hard to keep up with the people that really matter to us. Customers, friends, competitors and peers are all important people for us to follow but unless we can cut out the noise their tweets could get lost in our streams.
This is where Twitter lists come in. They allow us to filter content and just see the specific users we want to at one time. They help us build relationships. This week I show you how to set up Twitter lists.
We follow so many people on Twitter that it can be hard to keep up with the people that really matter to us. Customers, friends, competitors and peers are all important people for us to follow but unless we can cut out the noise their tweets could get lost in our streams.
This is where Twitter lists come in. They allow us to filter content and just see the specific users we want to at one time. They help us build relationships. This week I show you how to set up Twitter lists.
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