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 by visiting this post and leaving a comment including the link and why you think I should win.
