On the 31st of March - Facebook will be rolling out a significant change to how business pages look and work. Facebook Timeline will take effect for all business pages around this day.

Is your business ready?

We will be conducting several information sessions to help you get ready for the change.

We can also book you in for any changes you would like us to do on your behalf.

This information session will cover

1. The new cover page and changes to the rules around what can be used on this graphic
2. Modifications to your TABS and where they will appear now
3. Favourites - what this means for your key content
4. Changes to your default landing page
5. Private messenging - how this works for brands.

For more details, make sure you visit our training page.

Places are filling fast - so don't delay!

Many thanks to those brave revolutionaries who joined us to take on our Social Media Revolution information session.

We taught them how to increase sales by marketing with Social Media and how tools such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ can work for business.

Our Social Media for Business workshop answered many questions and reassured our clients about connecting with their customers.

Social Media has been attributed with starting revolutions, bringing down governments and changing the way we think, buy and communicate with each other in ways not seen ever.

We were delighted to share this uprising with all those in our session. 

View all our photo's here

A little out of date - but a taste of things to come!

Join the revolution - the social media revolution - book now!

Did you know that Australia is the most prolific user of Social Media globally?

No?

Then check out this Australian video infographic view of Social Media ... 

 

This is last in my occasional series Social Media 101 series is about LinkedIn (aka how to keep tabs on everyone you have - or ever will work with); a personal favourite of mine and one I have found extremely beneficial from a professional development standpoint.

So what is it? According to the LinkedIn information centre:

“LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 120 million members and growing rapidly...LinkedIn connects you to your trusted contacts and helps you exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of professionals.”’

So that is a lot of old uni mates you can catch up with.

I like to think of it as a mix between Facebook and Twitter – people you know or would like to know on a purely professional basis, you make deliberate connections like Facebook but are more free to interact with people you have never met in the way you can via Twitter. I have my Twitter feed hooked up to my account so that I can connect with a larger group of people via the one medium – very time effective.

Like most of these social networking tools, it has really come of age in the era of the smart phone, which makes it so much easier to connect and find people to share knowledge, experience and ideas. I have found it invaluable in seeking out networks and expanding my knowledge, from finding answers to tricky technical questions, to answering items within forums and sharing my knowledge and expertise with potential partners and customers.

Like most social networking tools it works best with a free exchange of ideas and being authentic in your approach.

So here is a quick list of 10 reasons to give it a go!

1. Online recommendations to help gain new customers
2. Keeping in contact with people who care about your business
3. Building a social media profile without the SPAM
4. Building your business network online
5. Obtaining answers to difficult business questions – I love this
6. Winning new businesses by answering questions – this works really well too!
7. Keep in touch with your industry by joining online groups - join a conversation or argument!
8. Networking with industry peers
9. Boost searchability - a LinkedIn company profile assists with google searches and your own profile online
10. Keep tabs on your competition!

 

Well no you aren’t – but you could be mistaken for thinking that way (too many overpaid celebrities are!)

In the last couple of weeks we have seen a flurry of twitter inspired news stories, from the Royal Wedding, through to the Osama Bin Laden assassination and then our very own #DWTS controversy.

So in a nutshell what is it and why would I use it?

Twitter (www.twitter.com) is commonly referred to as microblogging.

A great description I found is to consider it an online post it note – you only have 140 characters to get your point across – so you need to be short and sweet. In the same way that a post in note might be stuck on your terminal at work or on the fridge for everyone to see, twitter, unlike facebook, is potentially visible to the entire world –they just need to be searching for a keyword in your tweet or following you specifically.



So, some useful terms for beginners:

A tweet is the 140 character message that you post online. You must be a member of twitter to tweet. When you create your account – you create a profile that people will know you by online – i.e. www.twitter.com/bosweb or @bosweb

Following – these are people you follow and you see their tweets in your twitter feed (just like, say, pages you like inside facebook or the status updates of your friends inside facebook)

Followers – these are the people who follow you and are interested in what you have to say. It is usual for beginners and first time users to follow lots of people and to not have as many followers

# hashtag – this is often how people follow a conversation from various sources – even from people they are not following. So when Q&A is on TV, you can follow online by searching inside twitter using #qanda or, if your are contributing to the fake posts for Dancing with the Stars, use #dwts when that is on TV! If you follow bosweb, we had some fun posts for #Cookingsongs the other week – I am sure our clients where a bit perplexed!

#FF – Follow Friday, you might see lots of these on a Friday as they are people recommending who are good people to follow on a Friday.

We find it really easy to manage twitter and follow lots of people and conversations using Hootsuite a social media dashboard – we also hookup facebook here as well. You may also hear the name TweetDeck and you can integrate twitter and facebook so that you can push out the one message to all your social media channels. And just like facebook, using twitter on your phone is fantastic – you can really keep your finger on the pulse!

It is a great way to communicate with your clients if in business to provide advice, hints or tips  to clients or to understand what your competitors are saying about you, and what they are saying about themselves.  You can also get a heads up on what people are saying about you or your business!

Or you can just get on your soapbox and spout forth into the twitterverse for everyone’s enjoyment!

Facebook: Giant waste of time, or valuable business tool?

It is no surprise that I am in the latter category!

Have you seen The Social Network? Great movie, it is hard to imagine that something as ubiquitous as Facebook only really started in 2004.



When business owners ask me ‘what is social media?’ what they most likely mean is – ‘talk to me about Facebook!”



For today’s business owners, Facebook is likely to be the first step on the path to understanding social media and how it can work for your business. They may have ignored their kids as they migrated through msn, bebo, my space and finally Facebook – but the sheer size, magnitude and influence of Facebook can no longer be ignored by business owners.

In 2010 when Facebook celebrated its sixth birthday it announced that it now has over 400 million members. That’s quite an accomplishment, as in 2009, the social media giant had 150 million users. For the stats minded – try this link - there are 10 million users in Australia right now! That is an awful lot of friends talking to friends talking to friends!

This is the beauty and power of Facebook and why you should be seriously considering it for your business. Your competitors already are!

So some FB basics:
1. When setting up your business on Facebook, make sure you set up a page and not just a profile! It is breaching Facebook guidelines for businesses to operate on Facebook as an individual – so make sure you read the guidelines!

2. A profile page is you personally interacting with friends, family and various pages you like on Facebook. You need to approve people as ‘your friend’ before they see any of your information or status updates depending on your privacy status.

3. A business page allows people to LIKE YOU, which means that each time you update your Facebook page with all the great stuff going on in your business they see it! It also means that you do not need to see the personal lives of each and every single one of your likers filling up your business page!

4. Be mindful that at any time FB can change their rules, change their interface (which they do a lot!), and change the way you can set up you page – nothing to be worried about – just something to be aware of. It is not like a website where you control the content and display yourself.

Trickier stuff:
Once you have set up your page, what do you do with it!
1. Tell all your friends to like your business. Tell your staff and your family – this kicks off the chain reaction of people seeing that Mary Smith likes Style – The essential guide for… on Facebook. This enables all Mary’s friends to perhaps click on that link to find out all about this new page that she likes!

2. Create a Welcome tab for new likers to see – you may need a hand with this to have a really groovy one done that best promotes your business.

3. Link your Facebook page at your website – put the link to Facebook in your email signature – spread the word.

4. Think about a Facebook ad campaign – this is going to allow you to target a very specific demographic who would be interested in your business based around what that Facebook user has indicated as being a like or merely an item that they have commented on.

5. Tag people and pages – expand your conversation with others.

6. Don’t just promote yourself all the time, comment on newsworthy items, give SHOUT OUTS to clients or businesses (again using tagging!) to recognise what they are doing well.

7. Be polite and honest. Once a comment is in the public domain – it is out there! So choose your words wisely.

We find many clients find the initial setup and process a little daunting – especially if they are not a Facebook user themselves, don’t be daunted! If you are stuck or worried, talk to your webdeveloper, teenage son or daughter or a trusted friend who may be more into facebooking than you.

We normally find that once technical items are taken care of and some basic how to’s are provided – they are off and running and promoting their businesses to engaged and interested customers in no time!

Last weekend I spent a very enjoyable 24 hours in Mudgee with my husband at the Mudgee’s Short Film Fest – Mudfest. It was great!
But what was really great was that I won the tickets via a Facebook competition that I entered - just by liking the Mudfest page - I entered the competition and was the second name out of the hat (the first person could not come!)

Of course I bragged about my win on Facebook and wanted some suggestions of places to stay at really short notice. Thanks to some other FB friends, I found a few groovy little places (who also had Facebook business pages) and I am now  a fan of those as well – particularly the spectacular Mudgee Guesthouse.

I am now also a fan of a few of the films – including the Academy Award winning Shaun Tan and The Lost Thing.

Whilst at the screening – we also connected with some people via twitter on the ground – saw some fun pics posted via twit pic and caught up with the election.

A few people are now following our @bosweb feed on twitter as a result and we also have a few new fans on our Facebook page.

Okay – so if you have kept up with the above, you are probably wondering why this is called social media 101 – well to get your social media, you don’t need to understand the technology at first – you need to understand the concept.

In the space of a few hours, I connected with three different businesses and posted tagged links to their fan pages to all my friends (I don’t have millions of FB friends but you can get the idea!). These people could then also click on my link and follow through to the businesses in question – creating brand awareness, interest and, who knows, even sales!

I had coffee with some agribusiness and social media legal specialists during this last week in Dubbo (contacts I met via twitter! and I have done some business with them!). We were describing the light bulb moment when people ‘get’ social media.

Imagine that you are at a business function after work, you don’t really want to be there, but you go – because we all understand the benefit of networking  – but sometimes you would just prefer to be at home in pyjamas with a nice glass of red!

Imagine if you could still connect with people who are interested in your business, your services or your products – but without the after hours function and just the comfort of home. Now you can start to see the convenience and 24/7 nature of social media.

In coming weeks I will chat specifically about Facebook fan pages (and why you should have one for your business!), Twitter – yes if you are a professional, then this is where clients are talking about you and then finally Linked in – connect with all your old uni friends and colleagues.

It will be social media 101 – but with perseverance you will have your light bulb moment!