Tai Guy Media

10 Tips for a Successful Facebook Fan Page

2011-05-07T22:35:00.000-04:00

Most of the items on the top ten list are pretty common sense, but some I have picked up after having been using social media for a few years now. Here is a more detailed explanation of my top ten best practices for Facebook.

Top Ten List

1. Create a profile and test the waters 1st.

You wouldn't enter a jousting competition without having taken some lessons first, right? Right? If you are not yet on Facebook, it's a pretty good idea to create a personal profile and play around with Facebook a bit...learn the lingo, how it works, what people are doing with the platform and give yourself a basic understanding of how it works before you create a fan page and go live with it.

2. Develop a plan with goals & guidelines.

This is probably the most important step in the launch of your fan page. You need to understand exactly what your goal is in getting into social media. Is it to interact with your customers? Is it to drive sales? Increase brand awareness? Get newsletter signups? Once you know what your goal is, you can come up with metrics to measure success against, whether it's gaining new fans, getting a certain number of newsletter signups, a certain level of fan interaction, etc. You also need to know who your audience is and what appeals to them. What is interesting to a twenty-something may not be interesting to that boomer customer. Once you have your goals and intended audience in mind, you can come up with guidelines to help manage the flow of your page. This may include things like number of times you post a day or week, whether you will use polls and contests, allow photos and videos to be posted, etc.

3. FB is part of the overall marketing strategy, not the entire enchilada, so it should follow your branding standards.

If you are on multiple platforms, then everything should have the same look, whether it's the website, advertising, newsletter, social media or regular media. Use your logo and photography. If you have certain colors associated with your brand, then use them. People should be getting the same message no matter whether they are looking at your website or your fan page.

4. Once on FB, create a customized landing page for people who are not fans yet.

If you have a web person or a basic understanding of HTML, you can design a graphical landing tab on your fan page and edit your page settings so that people who are not yet fans of your page will see this page first. The landing page is a life boat in the sea that is your wall. If your page is somewhat successful, then the wall will have a lot of activity going on and much of it will be content from fans, which you have no control over. Having a designated landing page for new fans allows you to put exactly the information you want them to see in front of them. It could be as simple as letting them know this is the official page for your business, reminding them to click on the "like" button up top, asking them to sign up for a newsletter, etc. It is your one chance to directly message them before they jump into the fluid nature of the wall. Some examples of pages that successfully use this technique are the Coca Cola and Starbucks pages.

5. The “One in Four Rule”.

People get turned off pretty easily if they think that all you are doing is selling them something. If you are blatently self-promotional, then you will lose fans. The "one in four" rule is a good guage. One out of every four posts on your fan page should be some sort of marketing or promotion. The other posts can be links to articles about your product, interesting information about your property, asking about the weather, etc.

6. Engage your fans with questions, content, polls, contests, etc.

People become fans of pages because they like them or have some sort of a connection to them. They want to feel like they are part of the community around your property, business or product. They especially love it when you ask them what they think. Happy fans can be some of the best brand advocates for you because they are passionate about the product. Test their knowledge, ask for feedback and use your fans as an extension of your brand.

7. Be responsive- take part in discussions, answer questions, provide information.

Any good community involves give and take. Fans want to be acknowledged and heard. They want to feel like they matter. Sometimes a simple thank you for posting something goes a long way. Calling a fan out by name for a great suggestion or cool photo they posted will encourage them to share your content with their friends and that leads to increased exposure. Nurturing your fan base and being responsive will help build the community on your page.

8. Optimize your page- SEO keywords, profile pic.

Chances are good you have a website. And chances are pretty good that you use some sort of analytics program like Google Analytics or something similar. If you do, then you have access to some great information about your customers. You know what key words they are searching by to find you. You also probably know what some of the buzz words are for your industry. You want to make sure that your fan page contains as many of these SEO key words as possible without being obnoxious about it. Some great places to do this are the info page and the little box you get on the left side of your fan page wall. You can also place a much larger profile pic on your fan page than you have on your personal profile. Your fan page picture can be as large as 300x600, a bookmark size. Take advantage of this extra space with a bigger, bolder, better logo or scenic picture of your property or business. This not only makes your page look better, but gives you the opportunity to add more branding elements in the same profile space.

9. Cross-promote all your platforms: email signatures, website, blog, Twitter bio, FB link, ads, etc.

Leverage all your platforms. You probably put your website in your email signature, so why not your Facebook URL and Twitter URL? Put graphical button links on your website to your Facebook and Twitter accounts if you have them. Add in your Facebook URL in the description for your Twitter account. If you do magazine or print ads, put a blurb at the bottom about following you on Twitter and Facebook. If you have a newsletter, do a story about your new Facebook page. Add links to Facebook and Twitter into the header of your newsletter. Use every platform to reinforce the other platforms. It shouldn't matter where people see your brand- they should know that you are on Facebook.

10. Have fun and show personality.

If you run your fan page like a corporate page, people will tune out. They are not interested in stuffy shirts and robotic answers. They want to know that there is a person behind the page and that that person has a personality...even a sense of humor. Have fun with the page and show personality, but make sure the personality you project fits with your business demeanor. You don't want to take it too far...just show your fans that you are indeed human.

Twitter: TaiGuyMC
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Email: TaiGuyMC@gmail.com

QR Codes...oh the places you'll go!

2011-05-01T22:29:00.000-04:00

Example of a QR Code

Seen these strange looking images around lately, maybe in a magazine, on a postcard or on various objects (like the soda bottle pictured) and wondered what they were? They are called QR Codes, short for Quick Response codes and can be scanned by smart phones to perform any number of functions.

QR Codes were actually developed by an auto maker in Japan in 1994 and have been tremendously popular there. They have been much slower to make their way to the United States, where they are just beginning to take off as a marketing tool. Anyone with an iPhone, Android or Blackberry, can download a free QR Code Scanner and be off and running.

The difference between these codes and the standard supermarket bar code is the amount of information you can store in them. A regular bar code can only hold up to twenty numerical digits, where a QR Code can hold thousands of alphanumeric characters of information. A scanned code can link to content on the web, activate various functions of the phone or perform other actions.

Scan the code to go to the Tai Guy Media Blog

As a marketing tool, QR Codes can be used on billboard ads, guerrilla marketing campaigns, in-store displays, event ticketing and tracking, trade-show management, business cards, print ads, contests, direct mail campaigns, websites, email marketing, and coupons.

As a marketer of your company, brand or product, you can create your own QR Codes for free and there are quite a few choices, depending on what kinds of bells and whistles you want.

Scan this code to go to the TaiGuyMC Twitter page

A free site that is good, but requires a free account registration is uQR.me. The nice thing about this website is you can change the destination of your QR Code, even after you have created it. The site gives you many options for what you can do with your QR Code, including what they call a "leaf", which is a note that you can edit with a standard WYSIWYG editor. Other options include linking to a website, video, vCard and Facebook Like button for your website or fan page.

MyQR.co is one free site where you get four options for creating a code- a web URL, a message, a CV/Contact info card or a map. You also have the option to change the colors of the code. Once you have selected your option and colors, you generate and download the code...simple as that. No registration required for the basic uses of this website. If you want advanced tracking, which is something key to marketing effectively, you will want to register for free on this website. Registered users get access to not only how many views of their code there were, but also what type of phone scanned it and where the user who scanned it is located- in the U.S. or abroad.

If you have a smart phone and want to have some fun with QR Codes, download a free scanner app and scan codes whenever you see them, just to see what lies on the other side, but if you really want to have fun with them, create some of your own and promote the heck out of your website, business, band, product or to send out invites to your next social media club meeting. The possibilities are endless!

Cheers,
Tai Freligh
Tai Guy Media

Twitter: TaiGuyMC
Facebook: TaiGuyMediaConsulting
Email: TaiGuyMC@gmail.com

Mobile Magazines are Appsolutely Changing our Online Experience

2011-03-30T06:38:00.000-04:00

The following is a guest blog post we did for Sabrina, Inc. on what the future holds for two print magazines that recently went mobile in the iTunes app store...

Surf the Web, Sauté the Onions and Get a Taste of the Seacoast, all while never leaving our app-

Mobile Magazines are Appsolutely Changing our Online Experience

We wrote earlier about how more and more magazines are going digital with their own apps. Two New Hampshire magazines; Coastal Home and Taste of the Seacoast went mobile a few months ago with the help of one of our clients, Sabrina Velandry of Sabrina Inc in conjunction with publisher Keith Lemerise, Trends Marketing, LLC and the mobile platform provider, PixelMags. Coastal Home Magazine features refreshing stories about northern New England seacoast homes, gardens, and art scene. Taste of the Seacoast magazine is the area’s ultimate food, wine and fine dining companion. The cool thing about these magazines is that within the apps for both publications readers will have access to other exciting offers. Subscribers to the app will be able to download cookbooks, catalogs and special issues dedicated to New England cooking and restaurants.

We downloaded the latest two issues and played around with them. The magazines translate beautifully to the iPad, with gorgeous photography, easy navigation, and the ability to expand and shrink pages. Readers may also click on links to websites and additional advertising material, both without ever leaving the app. The recent release of the iPad2 will mean even more opportunity for the iTunes apps to get exposure and provide more options for what can be done now and in the future of mobile publishing. And that has us excited for the future of mobile applications like the Taste of the Seacoast and Coastal Home.

Food enthusiasts will especially enjoy what is on the horizon for the Taste of the Seacoast app. They are working with national and boutique New England food brands to bring a wealth of multimedia to their app. Imagine reading a recipe in the magazine, being able to go to a website to order ingredients for it and then watching a “how-to” video while you cook, all from your iPad and all from the comfort and ease of the kitchen. Viewers will be able to play videos, search recipes, access companies’ websites for more information...all from within the virtual newsstand on their iPad, Android or iPhone, and without ever having to leave the Taste of the Seacoast app. We’re impressed! But we urge you to experience this for yourself. Be sure to download the free apps today!

Winter 2010/2011 issue of Taste of the Seacoast can be found in the App store. Spring 2011 Issue of Coastal Home can be found in the App store.

We get social media. We geek on social media. We help you get your geek on. Let us know how we can help with your own social media efforts. Twitter: TaiGuyMC

Foursquare, Places, RedLaser, Shopkick...LBS Has Jumped the Check-In!

2011-03-27T22:59:00.000-04:00

To the casual social media user, LBS or location-based services, is about check-ins, badges and mayorships. But a lot has been going on in this area in recent years to expand the offerings for both the consumer and the business. Not only can you check-in to earn badges, mayorships and special offers, but you can get tips sent to you with more information, including tips from your friends about everything from the menu to the waitress to the parking.

On the business side, you no longer need to be a brick and mortar business to get onto LBS. On Foursquare, for instance, you can claim your "brand" and also leave "tips" at different locations. A great example of this is the History Channel. Somebody who checks in to the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, CA, will get the following tip pushed to them: "On February 9, 1960, Joanne Woodward became the first performer to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. One-time actor Ronald Reagan is the only U.S. President to have a star."

A note on privacy...most of these LBS apps will allow you to decide whether or not to broadcast your check-ins to Facebook or Twitter.

Here is a brief look at some of the big players in location-based services and what they offer.

Foursquare is probably the one location-based service that most everyone has heard of. It was launched in March of 2009 at SXSW and has since grown to more than 6.5 million users. By “checking in” via a smartphone app or SMS, users share their location with friends while collecting points and virtual badges. You can also get "tips" from other users and from other brands based on your geographic check-in location.

Facebook launched Places last year. You'll notice in the logo that they have a nod to Foursquare with the number 4 in the square (despite Aaron Sittig, the lead designer at Facebook, claiming that they “could only wish we’d been so clever”). Places lets you check-in, get deals, see where your friends have checked in and view comments that have been left at various locations by your friends.

RedLaser is a free mobile app that was purchased by eBay. It allows consumers to scan barcodes and comparison shop, find out more information about a product, including who has the lowest price in the area for it as well as any listings on eBay. The app now scans QR Codes as well.

shopkick was founded in the summer of 2009. This app uses a combination of check-ins and scans to award "kickbucks" to users that are ultimately available to redeem towards different offers.

Beyond these, there are a lot of other options for LBS that you can check out, including Yelp, Gowalla, Scvngr, and Google Hotpot.

I get social media. I geek on social media. I can help you get your geek on. Send me an email at taiguymc@gmail.com or Tweet me (@TaiGuyMC).

There's An App for That!

2010-12-07T21:43:00.000-05:00

The following is a guest blog post we did for Sabrina, Inc. on two print magazines going mobile in the iTunes app store...the original can be found here!

More and more magazine titles are appearing in the iTunes store with their own apps. Earlier this summer Hearst Magazines released a version of their Popular Mechanics magazine as an app for the iPad. Within five days, 10,000 copies of the $1.99 app for the iPad had been downloaded. Hearst has announced plans to have iPad apps by the end of the year for Esquire, Marie Claire, Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar and the Food Network.

As more and more magazines go mobile, it pays to be involved with where the technology is headed.

One of our clients, Sabrina Velandry of Sabrina, Inc., was recently promoted to Director of Mobile Publishing for two local magazines she is involved with- Coastal Home Magazine and Taste of the Seacoast.

Keith Lemerise, Publisher with Trends Marketing, has helped shepherd these two publications into the digital age. Coastal Home Magazine has been in print since last spring and Taste of the Seacoast has been around for more than a decade.

“We are excited to partner with Sabrina, Inc., and PixelMags to make our publications available as an app for iPads and smart phones” said Lemerise. He added, “we are the first New England Publication to be available as a download on iTunes.”

The first 5,000 downloads of each app are free. After that, the issue price goes to $1.99. All three issues of Coastal Home Magazine will be available to purchase on iTunes. For Taste of the Seacoast, the summer issue is available. Within the free apps for both magazines will be other exciting offers, including books and special interest publications, cookbooks and catalogs.

The best part of these new apps is that they act as a virtual personal newsstand. Once a customer downloads a back issue, current issue, SIP, book or catalog, it lives in their “newsstand” and is accessible whether they switch phones, get a new phone or replace their iPad.

Mobile publishing is a growing trend and we expect to see a lot more being done with the technology, including a lot more titles being added early in 2011.

We get social media. We geek on social media. We help you get your geek on. Let us know how we can help with your own social media efforts.

Is #newtwitter the Bomb Diggity?

2010-10-13T21:42:00.000-04:00

Twitter today announced that the New Twitter has now been rolled out to all 160 million users of the service. Read about it here (via Mashable.com). Everybody now has the opportunity to check out the new and improved Twitter to see how much the service has been improved, but will this latest and greatest version of Twitter be the death knell for third party applications like TweetDeck and Hootsuite? Until they add a few key features...probably not.

Casual users of Twitter will like the new interface and features. You can view other users profiles without leaving your timeline. You can view multimedia without leaving your timeline. Your Direct Messages can now be viewed as threaded conversations. You also have easy access to all the different ways to view your timeline, whether it be @mentions, retweets, searches or your lists. These are all great features for someone who does not follow a lot of people or who likes to have a little more control over their Twitter stream.

So, where does the New Twitter fall short? A few key areas have not been addressed, and where several third party applications offer the features that Twitter is lacking, I don't think you will see those applications being in any danger of losing major market share. Three key features are lacking. They are:

1. The ability to edit your retweet before sending it.

Twitter and New Twitter do not let you change a tweet that you have set up to retweet, so you are at the mercy of your tweet being cut off randomly or not making sense. Both Hootsuite and Tweetdeck let you choose which method of retweeting you want to do- the classic version, like Twitter currently offers, or the modern version, which lets you edit your tweets down to fit better and to add your own comments in. Personalizing tweets is a big part of what makes your user stream have a personality of its own.

2. The ability to automatically shorten long URLs.

Nothing chews up your 140 characters quicker than a super long website URL. Websites like ow.ly (which is part of Hootsuite and is the default URL shortener for that service) and bit.ly or TinyURL have made it very easy to shorten a URL into a web address that is, in some cases less than ten characters long and also trackable. The problem is that you have to cut and paste your URL into their website to get the shortened URL, which means leaving the Twitter website and then coming back again with the new URL. Tweetdeck uses bit.ly and is my favorite because it automatically shortens any URL you add to a tweet, without ever leaving the application. Hootsuite has a space beneath where you enter your tweet to paste a long URL and it will shorten it and add it automatically to your tweet...all without ever leaving the application.

3. The ability to organize who you follow on Twitter into multiple columns, viewed at the same time.

Finally, and this is probably one of the more important features for power users of Twitter, you are limited to viewing one timeline...one column, whether it is all of the people you follow or a particular list. For someone like myself who follows more than 150 people on Twitter, it's like trying to find a needle in the ocean...it's just way too large to adequately see what is going on. Personally, I use Tweetdeck because it allows me to have as many columns side-by-side as I want so that I can view multiple columns at the same time and cruise through each list rather quickly. I have saved searches for mentions of my Twitter handle, a Direct Message column and several columns for the various lists I have, everything from athletes and television actors to musicians and social media folks.

In the end, the lack of these three features- URL shortener, columns, and retweet editing, makes the New Twitter a bust for me. Until these features get added to Twitter, I will keep on using Tweetdeck and I'm sure other folks will continue to use third party applications that do offer a richer tweeting experience.

What are your thoughts on the New Twitter? Are you a casual user? Power user? Does this impact what you think about the changes that Twitter has made to the core product? Drop your comments below the post!

We get social media. We geek on social media. We help you get your geek on. Let us know how we can help you with our social media efforts!

A Collection of Articles to Save YOU Time

2010-09-15T21:09:00.000-04:00

We know that it takes time to do social media...time to learn what works, time to get a system going, time to actually feed the content beast and time to maintain it. That's why we've collected a few links to some articles that we have found helpful in saving us what we have in limited amounts- time! Check them out and let us know if they were helpful or if you have your own time saving tips for social media! If you haven't bookmarked Social Media Examiner, you should. They are a great resource and one of the five websites that I recommended to follow in a previous blog post here on Tai Guy Social Media Musings.

1. Facebook Marketing in only an Hour a Day? (Social Media Examiner)
2. How to Write a Great Blog Post in Just 15 Minutes (Social Media Examiner)
3. How to Manage Your Social Media Marketing in Ten Minutes Daily (Social Media Examiner)

We get social media. We geek on social media. We help you get your geek on. Let us know how we can help you with our social media efforts!

Free Way to Track New Content on Your Facebook Page, Part 2

2010-09-01T21:43:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I posted about the Fan Page Notifier, a free program that allows you to track new content posted to your wall. You can read the post here. This free program is a great way to get emails whenever somebody posts new material on your fan page, but it has one weakness- it doesn't track comments on posts.

Facebook has done a great job of tracking comments on individuals' profile postings. You can get a notifier in your email, a notifier right in your Facebook account and even a popup on your page that tells you when someone has posted a comments on your posts or content that you have posted. The folks at Facebook have yet to apply this technology to Fan Pages. Until now, there has been no real easy way to track comments on your Page posts, other than by manually checking every single post and then checking them again to see if any new comments have come up. This is extremely tedious and time consuming, and if you have a popular Page that gets a lot of posts, then you are apt to miss new comments on old posts.

Enter Better Facebook. This program does a whole lot of great things for your Facebook experience, including allowing the filtering of content into separate tabs and lets you track activity on your Groups, among your Friends and other things. I am just focusing on the "mark read" option today. Once you have downloaded the program and added it to your Facebook account, you will need to go into your settings and tweak a few things.

On the "Popular" tab, you will want to make sure and select the box that adds "Mark As Read" links to each post. Then, on the "Display" tab, you will want to check a few more things off.

You will want to check the Experimental box, icons next to Mark As Read, and hide old comments. You may have to play around with the settings to get them just right...and Better Facebook can be finicky, but the latest version seems to be less buggy.

The program will essentially have to absorb all the data currently on your page and then it can start to process. You will need to go through all your posts and select "Mark As Read". As soon as you select this on a post, it removes it from your Page wall altogether. You will end up with a completely blank wall on your Page at first. After this, anytime a new post is made, it will show up on your Page. Anytime there is a new comment on a post, that post will show back up in your Page feed with an indication of how many new comments there are. Try it out for a few days and let me know how it works for you or if you have any questions on how it works.

This program has a lot more features that should be explored, but if you are interested in just seeing new comments and new content on your Page, then you should just concentrate on the settings I have just outlined.

We get social media. We geek on social media. We help you get your geek on. Let us know how we can help you with our social media efforts!

Use Facebook Notes as Press Releases

2010-08-22T23:30:00.001-04:00

Chances are that you are a small business owner who has a page on Facebook because it is the smart thing to do. The chances are pretty good too that you have a very small staff and not a lot of time to devote to your social media. So why not make Facebook work for you? You can use your Facebook page to not only advertise your property for free, but you can also be a one man promotions department as well! The key is to use the Notes tab on your wall.

Facebook recently redesigned their notes application to make it a lot more user-friendly. The notes editor is now a WYSIWYG style editor, when before it was a more advanced editor that required the user to have at least a basic knowledge of the workings of HTML code to do anything special, like bold, underline, italic, etc. For those who are not familiar with a WYSIWYG Editor, it stands for "What You See Is What You Get". It is set up much like using Microsoft Word to write a document. You can now select text and click on the appropriate button to have the effect take place, i.e. bolding something.

The new WYSIWYG Editor for notes!

As you can see from this screenshot, there are a lot of options for what you can do with your notes, including adding pictures in.

You can use your notes tab to write press releases or to copy and past press releases into the body of the note. If you are already doing press and media for your property, then you can easily cut and paste your latest release into a note and then format it and publish it to your page. If you are not doing media right now or if your business is entirely based on Facebook and Twitter, then you can use this feature to draft and post your own releases on Facebook and also link to them from your Twitter account if you have one.

You have the ability to save drafts of notes, so you can do what I do and save a PRESS RELEASE TEMPLATE, which has all the required sections already in place, like contact information, date and location, subject line and your "boiler plate", which is at the end of all your press releases and contains more information about your company and what you do. Keep a template draft and change the meat while keeping the bones the same. I have included a shot of what a basic template might look like for you.

Let us know how you are using Facebook Notes and if this was helpful. As always, we are happy to consult with folks on how to make your social media presence as strong as it can be or help you get your feet wet in the world of Facebook, Twitter and all the other platforms that are out there!

Cheers,
Tai Guy Media Consulting

We get social media. We geek on social media. We help you get your geek on. Let us know how we can help you with our social media efforts!

5 Easy Ways to Engage Your Facebook Fans

2010-08-11T21:49:00.000-04:00

There are many ways to get fans of your Facebook Page involved, but I will just briefly touch on five of them today. The idea behind these five easy ways to engage your fans is the same...empower them to be your experts in the field. Chances are that if they are fans of your page, they happen to know something about the subject matter, whether it's social media trends, your lodging property or brand. By asking them their opinion or knowledge of something, it will encourage them to not only comment on your post, but be more likely to come back to your page in the future if they know that you value their knowledge and are actively seeking their opinion. So, how to engage them quickly and simply? Here's a few quick ways to do it...

1. Ask a question. The simpler and more to the point, the better. For example, "What is your favorite iPhone application?" "Where do you go in New York for late night coffee?".

2. Create a fill in the blank statement. The nice thing about this one is that you can really focus your brand message. Say you are a tourism destination and you want to highlight the fact that you have a lot of historical sites to visit. Your statement might look something like "We love learning about history. When we visit Philadelphia, we always check out _____ ."

3. Polls. Polls are a super easy way to get fans engaged in your page, but can be more elaborate than a simple yes or no question. A sample poll could highlight the fact that your restaurant offers three seafood dishes. The poll question would be "Our favorite seafood dish at Chez Ristorante is:" The three choices to pick from would be your dishes, i.e. "lobster bisque, shrimp scampi, king crab".

4. Statements. Make a statement on your page about your product, property or topic. For example, "The foliage in New Hampshire is spectacular". "The coconut pancakes at Bob's Dough Shack are not to be missed!". Statements are pretty much guaranteed to get a discussion going, with fans either posting in agreement, "Fall rocks in NH!!", or by offering up their own alternative statements- "Actually, summer is my favorite season in New Hampshire."

5. Quotes. Post a relevant quote that people can relate to and you will get engagement from your fans. Say you are a coffee shop with a Page on Facebook. You might post the following quote as a status: "Sleep is a symptom of caffeine deprivation". The people who are fans of your page are most likely fans of coffee in general and can relate.

Let us know how these work for you. What are your suggestions for engaging your Facebook fans?

Tai Guy Media can help you come up with guidelines and a strategy for your social media or help you rethink what you are already doing. Drop us a line...we are on Facebook (Tai Guy Media Consulting) and Twitter (TaiGuyMC)!

A Free and Easy Way to Track Posts to Your Facebook Page!

2010-08-05T21:01:00.000-04:00

If you run a Page on Facebook, then you probably spend a fair amount of time scrolling through posts to see if somebody has posted new content to your wall. Fan Pages that have a lot of very engaged fans will have new content posted quite frequently...and at all times of day. The best Pages are those that stay engaged with their fans, whether liking a post, answering a question or leaving a comment. If you don't want to spend all your time checking your Page, then you will want to use this free application, called Fan Page Notifier.

The best fan Pages are those where the administrator is very engaged with the fan community that inhabits it. Responding to questions, "liking" posts or even leaving a comment on something a fan has posted shows that you value them as a fan and that you value the content they are taking the time to post on your Page. Rather than spend all day checking on your Page, you can now get email alerts anytime something is posted to your Wall.

Fan Page Notifier is free and works with your Facebook log-in. You can get alerts for any Page that you are a fan of. In my case, I chose only to get email alerts for one of those Pages- one of the ones that I Admin for. Go to http://fanpagenotifier.com/ and enter your Facebook log-in information. The application will then ask you to "Connect" with Facebook. After that, choose which Pages you wish to receive email alerts for and then you are off an running. You will receive email alerts anytime anybody posts on your page, including yourself.

This application works for any Page that you are a fan of, so if you want to monitor content posted to fan Pages that you are interested in or that regularly posts content that you can share on your page, you can do so.

Tai Guy Media can help you come up with guidelines and a strategy for your social media or help you rethink what you are already doing. Drop us a line...we are on Facebook (Tai Guy Media Consulting) and Twitter (TaiGuyMC)!

Facebook Pages Create Fans

2010-07-21T21:27:00.001-04:00

So you've made the decision to have a presence on Facebook. Do you create a fan page or a group page? Let's take a quick look at the difference. Groups are created on Facebook to foster group discussion around a particular topic area while Pages allow entities such as public figures and organizations to broadcast information to their fans. Only the authorized representative of the entity can run a Page. If you are a business looking to get onto Facebook, then there really is only one choice- a Page.

The advantages to running a Page are many, but here are a few key ones.

1. Anybody can read a Page, but only someone who has "liked" the Page can contribute content.

2. Anybody can add a Page to their Favorites.

3. Only fans of a Page can tag it in a status post.

You can see how the mere choice of a Page gives you a head start on encouraging community interaction and the building of a fan base. People who "like" your page get privileges like being able to post on the Page and interact with you and your fan base. Fans of the page can also help spread the word about your business by tagging you in their posts, providing a direct link to your Page. For a good FAQ on tagging, check out this link from Facebook.

At the same time, Pages allow people to absorb information and be filled in on what's happening with your business without having to be a fan of the Page. This allows them to join the discussion when they are comfortable with doing so. Pages allow you to get information out to a lot of people and engage them on different levels, whether someone who "likes" the page or not.

Tai Guy Media can help you come up with guidelines and a strategy for your social media or help you rethink what you are already doing. Drop us a line...we are on Facebook (Tai Guy Media Consulting) and Twitter (TaiGuyMC)!

Optimization is Prime

2010-06-28T20:53:00.000-04:00

You couldn't watch either of the Transformers movies without being beaten about the head and shoulders with logos for General Motors branded cars. It was a win-win for GM in the "product placement" arena because every time you see one of the main characters, you see a GM logo. It may seem like a world away, but it's the exact same deal in the social media arena. Every time you put content out there or send people back to your fan page or blog, you want them to know it came from you. To do that, you need to have your page optimized.

They say optimization begins at home. Well, they don't really say that, but it fits. There are a few easy things you can do to use as much of the landscape on your home page as possible. From our post on Facebook Best Practices Explained, here are two easy tips for optimizing your fan page:

1. Use your analytics program to see what key words are being used to find your site. You probably also know what some of the buzz words are for your industry. You want to make sure that your fan page contains as many of these SEO key words as possible without being obnoxious about it. Some great places to do this are the info page and the little box you get on the left side of your fan page wall.

2. You can also place a much larger profile pic on your fan page than you have on your personal profile. Your fan page picture can be as large as 300x600, a bookmark size. Take advantage of this extra space with a bigger, bolder, better logo or scenic picture of your property or business. This not only makes your page look better, but gives you the opportunity to add more branding elements in the same profile space. When you edit the thumbnail that appears next to your posts, make sure it includes your entire logo. You may have to play with your profile picture a bit to get it right, but it is worth it. Nobody will recognize your logo from just a portion of it or a single word from your property or business name.

Finally, a word of caution when pushing your content out there. Search programs are getting faster and the algorithms are getting more fine-tuned. Google just recently overhauled the way their search works. Check out this post from Geeks Are Sexy on the new "Google Caffeine". They explain it rather well, but in a nutshell, data that has been crawled by the search spiders gets published to the index much faster now, rather than on a publishing schedule. This means that your content will be pushed into the search results almost immediately. I published a post on Blogger at midnight and had it come up in a Google Alert by 5am the next morning. All this is to say that optimizing your content and brand are great for when you get positive coverage, but negative coverage will come back to you just as fast. The take-away is to get yourself out there, but take a moment before you publish because once it's out there, it lives on the internet forever!

Tai Guy Media can help you come up with guidelines and a strategy for your social media or help you rethink what you are already doing. Drop us a line...we are on Facebook (Tai Guy Media Consulting) and Twitter (TaiGuyMC)!

Five Websites You Should Read

2010-06-21T21:41:00.000-04:00

In order to stay informed and to be in touch with what is going on with social media, you really need to pick a short list of "must-read" websites and follow them religiously. If you use a feed reader, add the website in. If you don't, most websites allow for email signups. Either way, you will want to read your short list on a daily basis. I have a short list that I get email updates from on a daily basis and then I supplement them with other articles. Here are five websites that I follow on a regular basis.

1. Social Media Examiner (http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/)
2. The Social Media Guide (http://thesocialmediaguide.com.au/)
3. Mashable (http://mashable.com/social-media/)
4. Social Media Club (http://socialmediaclub.org/)
5. Chris Brogan (http://www.chrisbrogan.com/)

Check these websites out and let us know who you follow!

Tai Guy Media can help you come up with guidelines and a strategy for your social media or help you rethink what you are already doing. Drop us a line...we are on Facebook (Tai Guy Media Consulting) and Twitter (TaiGuyMC)!

Some Awesome Social Media Stats

2010-06-12T23:44:00.001-04:00

Thanks to Hubspot for passing on this presentation of "Social Media Marketing: 27 Awesome Stats, Soundbites and Slides". They are one of the social media companies that I follow on Twitter and am a fan of on Facebook. I also get email invites to webinars and free white papers. You should add them to your resources.

Ten Twitter Tips

2010-06-09T23:36:00.002-04:00

Here are a collection of tips for making Twitter easier to use.

1. Use applications like Hootsuite (www.hootsuite.com) or Tweetdeck (www.tweetdeck.com) to organize your account into groups, mentions, etc. in a format that is easier to read than just using the Twitter page.
2. Group the people you follow into lists that easily identify why you are following them. For example, you could have a list called "Tech Bloggers" or "Social Media Tips".
3. Create search columns using not only your own Twitter name, but key words for what you are interested in. For example, "social media" or "Facebook".
4. Find out who the people you are following follow. Look through their list of followers and add those people that make sense. Oftentimes, they will be following like-minded people or other industry folks.
5. Use Twitpic (www.twitpic.com) to add links to photos to your tweets. Everybody who has an account on Twitter, has an account on Twitpic. You log in with the same username and password as your Twitter account. Upload a pic to your account and you will be provided with a short link you can add to your tweets.
6. If you are putting a tweet out that you hope will be re-tweeted, then consciously make it shorter to allow for people to re-tweet without having to edit down to fit the 140 character limit. Give yourself 140 characters minus the letters for "RT" and "@yourname". So, for example, I would subtract two for "RT" and another 9 for "@TaiGuyMC", plus another two for spaces, leaving me 127 characters to tweet.
7. Take time zones into consideration when deciding when to tweet to make sure you have eyeballs on Twitter. Noon eastern is the best time in general to tweet. East Coast folks are hitting up Twitter during lunch and West Coast folks are checking their morning Twitter feeds (9am PST).
8. Take advantage of scheduled tweets. Twitter, as well as most apps, have a feature that allows you to schedule a tweet to be sent at a later time. If you write several tweets in one sitting, you can schedule them to go throughout the day and have a steady stream of content without having to be at the computer all day long.
9. Link your blog and Facebook accounts together to Twitter, so that when you post something on your blog or on your fan page, it automatically gets tweeted to your account.
10. Re-tweet helpful information of interest to you and your readers. This supplements your information with other helpful information, making your Twitter account a good all-around source of information on your topic area.

Tai Guy Media can help you come up with guidelines and a strategy for your social media or help you rethink what you are already doing. Drop us a line...we are on Facebook (Tai Guy Media Consulting) and Twitter (TaiGuyMC)!

The Rules of Engagement

2010-05-26T22:34:00.001-04:00

You don't have to be Samuel Jackson to have a successful and thriving social media presence, although it wouldn't hurt! You do, however, need some rules of engagement.

One of the best ways to build up your community, whether on Twitter or Facebook, is to be engaged. Pay attention to your fan base, watch what they do, listen to what they say and then respond. Get them excited by asking questions, looking for their opinion, tapping into their expertise as a fan of your property, product or business.

Acknowledge their presence. When somebody posts on my fan page, I always leave a comment or at minimum, "like" their post. On Twitter, if somebody @ tags me, I will respond directly or retweet what they said. These are all simple ways to show your fans that you care about what they have to say, that you acknowledge their presence (I "see" you) and you value their contribution.

Oftentimes, the little things make a big difference, so I try to spend part of my time when checking in with my Facebook page or Twitter page on engaging my fans. Following these simple "rules of engagement" will help build up and nurture your fans and followers and keep the conversation going.

Facebook Best Practices Explained

2010-05-19T23:13:00.004-04:00

Most of the items on the top ten list of best practices are pretty common sense, but some I have picked up after having been using social media for a few years now. Here is a more detailed explanation of my top ten best practices for Facebook.

Top Ten List

1. Create a profile and test the waters 1st.

2. Develop a plan with goals & guidelines.

3. FB is part of the overall marketing strategy, not the entire enchilada, so it should follow your branding standards.

4. Once on FB, create a customized landing page for people who are not fans yet.

5. The “One in Four Rule”.

6. Engage your fans with questions, content, polls, contests, etc.

7. Be responsive- take part in discussions, answer questions, provide information.

8. Optimize your page- SEO keywords, profile pic.

9. Cross-promote all your platforms: email signatures, website, blog, Twitter bio, FB link, ads, etc.

10. Have fun and show personality.

Got questions about social media? Tai Guy Media can help you out and we are very reasonably priced. We know that many small businesses have neither the staff nor the budget to devote major resources to social media. That's where we come in. We can get you up and running smartly, efficiently and cost-effectively. Drop us an email at tfreligh@gmail.com or leave us a message on Facebook or Twitter or comment here on the blog!

Interview on NH Tourism and Social Media

2010-05-15T23:02:00.000-04:00

This was an interview done last year of me by the folks who run the blog and social media efforts for the Balsams Grand Hotel. They did an excellent job and the basic ideas I talk about here still apply. It's amazing to think that since this interview, our fan base has grown from 1,600 to 6,600 on the VisitNH Facebook page and we have nearly 2,000 followers on our Twitter account. You can see the original article here: http://thebalsams.com/blog/?p=1124. With thanks to the Balsams, here is the article:

Social Media Brings the World to New Hampshire

Posted by The Balsams Blogging Team on November 16, 2009

Tai Freligh is communications manager for New Hampshire’s Division of Travel & Tourism Development (DTTD). It’s his job to help make sure tourists keep traveling to New Hampshire. Toward that end his office has successfully leveraged a technology that was once the domain of teens and net geeks: Social media.

Q: When did you start expanding onto Facebook, Twitter, etc.?

TF: DTTD began dabbling in social media in August 2008 with a Twitter account and really got things rolling in November 2008. When our public relations company, Montagne Communications, came on board in 2008, their expertise in the social media arena allowed us to expand our efforts and to really put a strategy around what we were doing. We launched on Facebook at the end of July this year and activity on both accounts has been growing ever since.

Q: What’s the main message you’re trying to convey on social media?
TF: Our message is that New Hampshire is a great place to visit – and that “you’ll love it here.”

Q: What’s the benefit of extending the NH travel/tourism website into the social media domain?

TF: As more and more travelers use the internet to research and plan their vacations, our goal is to find ways to encourage them to visit New Hampshire. We are always looking for cost effective and creative ways to promote all that New Hampshire has to offer and extending our brand into social media was a natural progression for DTTD. Our target audience was already online and it was time to start speaking directly to them.

Q: To what extent does the community contribute to your social media content?

TF: The community plays a vital role in our content – it was the genesis for the creation of the Fan Benefit (see below) and influences so much of what we do online. We strive for interaction with our fans – it’s the only way to know if we’re succeeding online. We encourage our fans to contribute their knowledge of New Hampshire as well as uploading photos and videos to show everyone why we love it here.

A couple of examples:

We’ve had fans who are considering relocating to NH and post questions on our discussion tab asking where they should move. Other fans have been anxious to offer their recommendations.

We just wrapped up our summer promotion, The NH Dream Vacation Scavenger Hunt, where participants submitted photos of themselves in places around the state holding an “I love it here” sign. Visitors went to NHDreamVacation.com and voted for their favorite images for a chance to win a Dream NH Vacation. We saw tremendous participation in the program and extended it to Facebook by loading the top 25 photos on our Fan Page and encouraged others to upload and tag their photos.

We also have a fan who posts trivia about towns she’s visiting in NH in a feature called “Where in the State is Mom.”

(Editor’s note): As of this writing she reports she’s in The Balsams Ballot Room, witnessing their first-in-the nation voting process. It occurs even during relatively minor election cycles.

Q: What is your social media reach at this point, and what are your plans for the future?

TF: We have more than 1,600 fans on Facebook and almost 1,500 followers on Twitter and are becoming increasingly active on Flickr and YouTube.

We just launched an exciting new initiative on November 2nd called the VisitNH Facebook Fan Benefit, which is an exclusive opportunity for our Facebook fans to take advantage of significant savings at New Hampshire businesses and attractions. A new Fan Benefit will be highlighted on the VisitNH Fan Page each month.

It also offers the travel industry an opportunity to partner with DTTD, and provides low-cost opportunities to market their business through our existing social media infrastructure.

Q: Will the program continue indefinitely?

TF: Yes, we intend on utilizing social media as a component of our overall marketing and communications strategy for the foreseeable future.

Q: What are some things to avoid when using social media?

TF: It’s all about transparency and honesty. Although we are promoting the state we try not to sound like we are doing sales pitches, which would be a complete turnoff to our fans/followers. We also limit the number of posts and tweets per day to a reasonable amount and make sure that what we post is current, relevant and useful. Lastly, we limit the number of people who handle the day to day social media communications for DTTD to myself and our public relations agency; this keeps us focused and allows us to present one “voice” for NH Tourism’s social media.

Q: Are neighboring states doing this?

TF: Yes, many states participate in social media. I think you’ll find that New Hampshire stands out from the others through our activity online. Take for instance the Facebook Fan Benefit, we’re proud to be the first state in New England to give something back to our fans by offering such an incentive and we believe it’s yet another way we are differentiating ourselves from others in the tourism industry.

Q: What’s been the feedback from the online community regarding your efforts?
TF: The feedback as been extremely positive, which can be measured by the number of fans/followers, the interactions we’ve had with folks online and the response we hope to get from the Facebook Fan Benefit.

David Ridley
The Balsams Blogging Team

We help develop strategies for companies looking to get into social media or improve their current social media presence. We also help run short-term contests and promotions. Check us out on Twitter (TaiGuyMC) and on Facebook (Tai Guy Media Consulting).

There can be only one!

2010-05-11T22:59:00.000-04:00

I read with great interest this article today from Inside Facebook (an excellent website BTW). The basic crux of the article was that it appears Facebook is adding location functionality to its mobile website a la Foursquare and GoWalla. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has not been afraid to incorporate aspects of his competition into the Facebook platform. Back when it was just Facebook and Twitter, status updates on Facebook suddenly changed to resemble the format of tweets. Now, with the possibility of location-based capabilities, Facebook is positioning itself to be all things to all people. Some folks like that...some folks want to have multiple platforms they use.

When businesses are first looking to get into social media, but don't have a lot of time, I recommend that they look at the different options out there and decide which one is the best fit. You are going to want to pick one platform and do it well rather than be on multiple platforms and do them poorly. My personal recommendation is to use Facebook if it is going to be the only one you use. It has a lot more that it can do, including posting of photos, videos and links, and now with the possible added ability to "check-in" and use other locational functions, it puts it a little bit out in front.

We help develop strategies for companies looking to get into social media or improve their current social media presence. We also help run short-term contests and promotions. Check us out on Twitter (TaiGuyMC) and on Facebook (Tai Guy Media Consulting).

Top 10 Facebook Best Practices

2010-05-10T19:30:00.001-04:00

Here is a top ten list of best practices for Facebook. Try them out and look here for a more detailed post on each individual item in the list later. Enjoy!

Top Ten List

1. Create a profile and test the waters 1st.

2. Develop a plan with goals & guidelines.

3. FB is part of the overall marketing strategy, not the entire enchilada, so it should follow your branding standards.

4. Once on FB, create a customized landing page for people who are not fans yet.

5. The “One in Four Rule”.

6. Engage your fans with questions, content, polls, contests, etc.

7. Be responsive- take part in discussions, answer questions, provide information.

8. Optimize your page- SEO keywords, profile pic.

9. Cross-promote all your platforms: email signatures, website, blog, Twitter bio, FB link, ads, etc.

10. Have fun and show personality.

The Social Media Revolution

2010-05-07T14:44:00.002-04:00

I was at a tourism conference today and saw this video for the first time. It really excited me because it made the case for why social media matters and it made it in a compelling and short time frame. The battle cry has been for a while that everybody needs to be on social media, but for the most part, there haven't been solid reasons given or guidance. Watch this video and then finish this article, you won't regret it!

Now I don't recommend going right out and signing up for Twitter and Facebook and Foursquare and blindly jumping in. You need to be selective of what you have time to do and do well. You also need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each platform and who the target audience is. A great way to do this is to check out the articles and how-to guides that are available on www.mashable.com.

You also need to come up with a plan on exactly what you want to accomplish with your social media efforts. Do you want to increase awareness of your brand? Do you want to sell more products? Do you want to provide an outlet for improved customer service? Do you want to create a community around your business or hospitality company?

Once you have decided on some goals for your social media strategy and decided which platforms make sense for you and the time you have available, then you can go ahead and jump in. I recommend signing up for a personal account on some of these and playing around a bit before you go public.

Cheers,
Tai

Tai Guy Media can help you come up with guidelines and a strategy for your social media or help you rethink what you are already doing. Drop us a line...we are on Facebook (Tai Guy Media Consulting) and Twitter (TaiGuyMC)!

Test for Echo

2010-05-05T23:59:00.000-04:00

Good evening, blogosphere.