The arrival of social media has heralded a change in how we view our customers online. Social media platforms now offer the facility to cement your relationship with clients and customers. These applications give businesses an opportunity to lay the groundwork for repeat business. We have found that there is a five step plan any SME can put in place to get their social media strategy right.

1. The time of day you interact with customers is likely to be on a routine or unofficial scheduled basis. When someone buys a newspaper in your shop at the same time every morning, they may also log on to Facebook at the same time each evening. We are creatures of habit and every business must establish when the best time to interact with their customers through social media is.
2. Social media offers a branding platform like no other. It is important for SMEs to brand every aspect of their social media presence. Whether that means using the same corporate colours or ensuring your logo is clearly visible, make your branding an integral part of the overall Social Media strategy.
3. Engaging in conversation is what social media platforms offer us perhaps more than anything else. Businesses must be aware of the difference between talking and selling. Hard selling in a social media environment will not come across well. A general rule of thumb is to adhere to the 80/20 ratio. Spend 80% of your time networking and making connections and spend the remaining 20% selling.
4. It can be tempting to focus on gathering fans and to concentrate on the number of fans that can be attracted. It is far more advantageous to have fewer fans that interact with you and each other than hundreds who joined on a whim and who do not spend any quality time on your profile.
5. And finally, when it comes to newsfeed optimisation, simply because you post something, it does not mean everyone will read it. Make sure your posts are automatically highlighted by Facebook (everybody can customise but if a fan does not customise their newsfeed, Facebook will decide what is highlighted).  The following issues are usually taken into account – how recent the post was made, what your connection is like with your Facebook fans and whether it is a post, video or photo.

Keep these five key issues in mind when executing your social media strategy and make the most of this excellent opportunity to connect seamlessly with your target audience.

Would you start a conversation with a customer only to walk away halfway through? If you’re a retailer and on Facebook, this may be one of the things you are doing – without realising it. Facebook in business is a valuable tool for anyone involved in selling directly to the public. But it must be treated more like an engaging, informative shop floor conversation than a warehouse clearance sale. Social Media in business is a long term investment but too often is seen as a short term fix.

1. Like any other aspect of business, strategy is what will keep you focussed and defining your Facebook strategy is crucial. First of all, the target audience must be defined. In some cases the target audience online is identical to that which walks though your shop door. Establish if you are trying to engage with the same people online as you already do offline. Or are you using Facebook in business to target a new market? And what do you want them to do when they are interested? All this must be planned defined and calculated as much as possible. Random posts about the odd special offer is a waste of your time and may have little impact on an audience that is only approached when there is a sale on.
2. Social media in business is a conversation and the retailer must behave like they having a conversation with their customers. Listen to what your customers tell you on comments, by email and more. Deal with negative comments head on. Customers need to be heard – online and offline. Customers are more than fat wallets and social media is an idea platform on which to engage and chat.
3. Retailers must make sure that their customers make the connection between their online Facebook and their Main street shop. This can be achieved by clear branding, using your logo, shop name and location just like it appears on the street. Making the connection between the geographical location and the Facebook identity should improve local traffic in particular.
4. When consumers take the time to become a Facebook fan, they are making a seriously positive statement about your brand for all to see. It is advisable not to let that go unnoticed. Discounts and other freebies are obvious answers but creative, well thought out offers and gifts will likely increase your fan numbers.
5. Facebook in business is the face of your brand on the Internet. It’s that simple. Retailers should not be afraid to be themselves in the online world. If you are larger than life behind the counter, Facebook fans may be disappointed to see a quiet, conservative Facebook profile. Have fun with your Facebook business profile.
6. Facebook is all about activity and if a retailer is not active, the initial efforts in gaining brand profile and presence may be in vain. Once the effort is kept up, it will be worthwhile in the long run.
7. And finally…. post what you think your Facebook fans and friends and potential customers want to see. Be it video, podcasts or photos, it’s important to keep your customers’ requirements in mind at all times.

Happy Connecting

Facebook is making some great changes recently – one of the most recent and possibly the one that will have the biggest impact is where you can allow people to subscribe to posts that you share publicly through your personal profile account.  You may have noticed that when you are posting to Facebook you can now decide to share it publicly, with friends or customise who sees it. 

Allowing people to subscribe means that posts from your personal account can reach a larger audience.  So how do you activate the “Subscribe” button.  It’s easy, log into your personal profile, on the left just under your profile picture you will see a new link called Subscriptions. Click on that and you will see a button at the top to Allow Subscribers.  Below that you will see who you have subscribed to.

 This is ideal for those who don’t want to have both a business page and personal page and would like to reach a larger audience through their personal page. If your goal is to represent your business or brand on Facebook I recommend that you set up a separate business fan page.

You can have unlimited subscribers but you can only subscribe to 5,000 peoples updates.  

 A good move by Facebook, have you activated your Subscribe button yet?  Got many subscribers?

I work a lot with the tourism sector and find that smaller properties like B&B’s are finding it increasingly difficult to increase their Facebook connections (likes).  Here are some tips that may help (some of the tips are generic and could be used by any business):

1. Promote your Facebook page in the rooms. Consider placing a tent card in the room with your Facebook page details and ask guests to connect with you. Give them an incentive to connect e.g. discounts, up to date news, competitions etc
2. Do you have a public computer for guests to use? If so, set your Facebook page as the home page, every time a guest uses the computer they are immediately brought to your Facebook page
3. Put the Facebook logo on ALL promotional material, including business cards, brochures, leaflets etc. Don’t miss any opportunity to make people aware that you are on Facebook.
4. Put the Facebook logo on menus – some of you may not like this one, especially if you serve dinner or evening meals.  Nobody wants to be sitting beside someone that is on their phone in the middle of dinner but it may be ok at breakfast time.
5. Use QR Codes on printed material to allow people to access your Facebook page with ease. It is a great talking point and may give you an additional opportunity to persuade them to connect with you.
6. Ensure the Facebook logo is on your website in a prominent position – don’t feel that it should be in the footer of the site as this may never be seen by your website visistors.
7. On departure, send an email to all guests asking for feedback.  Give them the option to leave it on Facebook or Trip Advisor, most people will have an account in one or the other
8. Competitions – Facebook competitions are a great way to increase your “likes” but you must use a third party app like www.wildfireapp.com or www.northsocial.com . Competitions entries can be completed by liking the page or get more inventive and interactive and ask people to submit photos or videos.  Don’t waste the opportunity, use competition signup  to gather data for e-newsletters or bulk text marketing.
9. Embed the Facebook Like Box on your website  and ask them to like your page.
10. Add your facebook page link to your email signature
11. Create a welcome page – as you are providing a very personal service why not include a welcome video
12. Add e-commerce (f-commerce) elements to your Facebook page. A lot of the booking engines can now be integrated into Facebook .  The ideal one will allow people to book on the page and not take you to a separate pop up page.
13. Get active – no point in asking people to become a fan if you are not going to converse with them.  By timely and remember the 80 /20 rule. 80% personality and sharing information. 20% selling.  Important that you dont appear to salesy, you will loose fans that way.
14. Ensure your Facebook link is on your LinkedIn Profile
15. Use the @tag when writing on other business or friends walls.  This could be used in the body of the post or sign off using it. To do this simply type in @ and your page name and it will automatically create a link to your page.  This is especially important when writing posts on other business page walls that would be relevant to your business and your guest interests.
16. Add link button and share button to your website and blog. This allows readers to endorse and share your content which will gain you more connections. People trust peer recommendations.

I hope this helps you on your way to Facebook domination. Happy connecting

Any questions call me on 087 8348279 0r 062 67054.

Great news for all you folk out there that created a profile page for your business instead of a fan page. You can now migrate your profile to a page. To explain this further, if you are collecting “friends” on your business page it is the incorrect type of page. You need to get people to become a fan or “like” your page. Facebook frowns on people who set up a profile page for a business, another reason you should have a fan page is that the profile is limited to 5000 friends so once you get to 5000 you can go no further.

This new feature will allow you to migrate your profile to a fan page but be aware it will not sync up all content. Your friends will be changed to fans or “likes” and your profile picture will transfer but everything else will be lost so it’s a good idea to download your images etc before changing over.

This is excellent news and long due. For more information click http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php?migrate

After a long wait, Facebook deals is finally here -  it is currently being tested with some of the leading brands A|Wear, AXA, Champion, Guinness Storehouse, Insomnia, Meteor, Milano and SuperValu.    Facebook Deals means that (when out of the test stage) you will be able to offer freebies and discounts to people who check into your business using Facebook Places.

Out of the 500m Facebook users, over 200m of them access their Facebook page via a mobile device making deals an ideal way to build loyalty, get new customers and spread the word fast.  

Think of someone on the street near your business, lets say you are a restaurant.  If this person uses Facebook Places to check out what restaurants are nearby and you are using deals, they will see your listing with an icon beside it which will let them know that you are running a promotion.  Now you have given them a reason to drop in and make a purchase.  To avail of the offer they will check in using Facebook Places and as a result their friends will be made aware of their location. You can then build loyalty by offering your most loyal customers specific discounts.

There will be 4 types of deals available:

• Individual Deals – one time deals. You can offer this to new and existing customers to launch a new product, offer a new gift etc.
• Loyalty Deals –  the promotion can be claimed after a certain number of checking. This is a great way to build loyalty.
• Friends Deals –  offer discounts of groups of up to 8 people when they check in together. In order to claim your deal, your customers need to introduce what you have to offer to their friends and family.  Great way to build exposure.
• Charity Deals –  every time a user checks in, you donate to your favourite charity.  Let them know you care.

This is a great move by Facebook and I look forward to checking in and claiming my deal.   I hope it does not take too long for deals to be rolled out to everyone.

For more information visit http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Deals_businesses_US.pdf .

Facebook has just rolled out some new features to their pages which are interesting. 

1. Notifications by email: you can now choose to get notifications by email when someone posts or comments on your page, this I feel will make it a lot easier to monitor interaction without having to log into the page several times a day. I would have expected this feature a lot sooner but better late than never.

2.  Posting preference: You can change your preferences and choose to post under your Business Page name or your personal profile name that your business page is connected to e.g. I could choose to have all my posts to MY business page in my personal name Sandra Moody Hennessy,  or my business page name Dynamic Web Marketing.  Great if people know I own the business and manage the page, not so good if they don’t as I could be a random person posting information.  Interestingly, the only posts feeding through to my Twitter are the ones posted under my business page.

3.You can activate a new feature ”Use Facebook as page”.  If I change my settings  to “Use Facebook as Page” the layout changes to the new personal profile layout and it appears that the business page will now function just like personal profile. Getting notifications and information on new likes via the icons on the top left etc.  This is good as you will now be able to see all interaction on your page with easy. About time this was rolled out.

What worries me about this feature is that my personal profile now seems to have disappeared, even though I set up both pages within the one account (same log-in) I cannot see any of my personal page details. The home page is now the new Business page home page.  I have to go to Account and click the link to switch back to be able to access my personal page information which in my mind is extremely annoying. 

On the plus side this new feature means that you can now comment on other business pages as under your business page name OR your personal page name, so if you want your business page to be seen by more people then you will be very happy with this new addition. Something to think about though, will this mean an increase in spamming. Businesses posting any type of nonsense on your page just to get their page name seen.  We will have to wait and see.

Yesterday Facebook Places finally went live in Ireland.  Now we await the launch of Facebook Deals.  This will allow you to make deals & discounts available to people who are using Facebook Places. It is very simple, click the check in button on your Facebook mobile app and a list of local businesses will appear (only ones that have set up a Places page).  If they have a deal available there will be an icon to show this and it will help drive people to your door.  You mange the deals, there are 4 types:

• Individual deals
• Loyalty deals
• Friend deals
• Charity deals

I am an avid user of Foursquare so I wonder if Facebook Places & Deals (when/if launched in Ireland) can convince me to change loyalty.  We will have to wait and see, for now if you want more information on Facebook deals visit http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Deals_businesses_US.pdf

Here’s hoping that Facebook don’t wait another few months before launching Deals in Ireland, how can businesses in Ireland compete online when these new tools are not made available until months later than everyone else.

Overnight Facebook Places finally went live in Ireland. So what does that mean for you and your business. At the moment people can check into places update their friends letting them know where they are and what they are doing, if they are in your premises this means that they will be promoting your business.  Here is my experience so far:

First thing I did was to create my Facebook Places page. This morning I added my business while lying in bed watching TV using my iPhone. There is a Check In button on the iPhone app that allowed me to check in, as my business was not listed it asked me to add it. It really was that easy.

The next step was to claim my listing, to do this I went to my laptop, opened my Facebook home page, clicked on my business name. On the left there is a link “Is this your Business?” allowing me to claim my listing. Great easy so far.

It is asking for my contact details, address, all the usual things. Oops, a stumbling block, it is asking me for a utility bill showing my business name and address, now I have a problem and I foresee other people may have the same issue. Being a small business I work from home, so do not have any utility bill in the business name. They are in my or my husbands name. So what do I do here.

I have submitted another bill from a .ie domain registration, it is the only bill that I have that looks professional and includes my name and the business name. Now I will wait, come back later to see if I have been accepted.

Update Saturday 05th Feb 2011:

I got an email back from Facebook stating that they had accepted my application to claim my Places listing, the email included a link to manage the page.  The first thing I looked for was if there was a way to sync it with my business page and on the left I found a link to merge it with my business page. 

This is a good move by Facebook but when I merged my places page with my business page the layout totally changed, this I do not like.  It now has the same layout as a personal profile page, instead of tabs at the top they are now links to the left.  I do not like this feature and I doubt I can do anything about it.  I received an email from Facebook saying that they had received a request to merge the pages and that it may take up to a week, so lets wait a week and see it anything else changes.

Do you manage your companies’ social media? Are you finding it hard to find the time to update Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn?  Did you know that the average office worker is interrupted by co-workers, emails or phone calls every 11 minutes and it takes the same time to re-focus? Does this happen to you? 

Millions of people each day use social media to interact with companies, friends and family and by interacting with them you are influencing where they spend their time and money.  Here are some tips to try easy the pain:  

-          Use applications like Tweet Deck and Hootsuite to schedule your posts.  Take an hour a week and schedule the most important posts. You will always know special offers and event details ahead of time, so ensure that you have them scheduled well in advance.

-          Want to cut out the interruptions?  Why not start work 1 hour early, one day a week.  I can already hear you all screaming at the computers as you read this, saying things like, it’s easier said than done, I cannot get up any earlier etc etc,   but I tell you it really helps.  You will get so much more done when there are no interruptions and it may take less time than you thought so maybe you only need to get up 30mins early next week.

-          Make it count – find the right time of day. Analyse when your connections / followers are online.  If they are online at 5pm then ensure that your posts go out at 5pm.  If they go out earlier they will get lost in amongst all the other posts from companies, friends and family.  If you are timing it better and getting better interaction and results you may find that you don’t need to update your pages quite so often.

-          Focus on the social media sites that your existing or potential clients use.  All too often I meet people who are active on all the major social media websites, just because. Why not find out which ones your clients are most active on and focus on these.  Better to use 2 well than 6 badly.

-          Remember to sync your accounts together; this means that your Facebook posts can feed into Twitter. Twitter into LinkedIn etc.  This will reduce the amount of work needed, but be careful to ensure that this works with your strategy. If you are targeting different sectors on different social media sites this will not work as the information needs may be different.

Happy posting