Posts tagged Business
What a business should do starting on twitter
0Recently I had to contact a work client and explain to them how to use twitter. I went through the different options for them but when I had sent the email I seen that there was some good general information in it that any business could use so I’m going to share those bits of advice here for everyone.
The first thing with twitter is don’t wait for followers to start tweeting, you need to be using twitter in order to get the followers. Get used to using the twitter website and any clients so that when your follower numbers do grow your ready to take full advantage.
If you have a website get your designer to put a twitter widget on it, this is the easiest way for your customers to find you on twitter and to see what you’re doing. The widget will link to your twitter account and display your recent tweets, this makes it a nice way to make your website look fresh and updated.
You might be inclined to link your facebook page to your twitter account so that anything you post on facebook will get posted to twitter automatically but this won’t increase the number of people that follow you by very much. People on twitter are looking for interactions so that means you need to use twitter differently from facebook.
A simple way to increase your interactions on twitter is to follow groups and individuals that work in the same area of your business. Mention these people in your tweets or retweet some of the things they’re posting.
On twitter you can setup saved searches, these are useful if you’re looking for certain things or if you’re looking for people to interact with and help. You should setup searches for things to do with your business, products and maybe even the local area. The idea is to find people that are posting messages about things you have an interest in, in the hope that you can offer them help either with a business related matter or maybe they’re just looking for somewhere to eat in the area. Make any interaction a positive one and hopefully you’ll gain a follower.
The main thing to remember is that twitter is all about what you post and how you interact with others. Portray a positive image of your business and be proactive in helping your customers.
How to use Facebook Places on your desktop
1In this post I will explain how you can use Facebook places, which is normally used on a mobile device, on your desktop.
But why would you want to use Facebook places on a desktop computer or laptop? Well there are a few good reasons why this is useful:
- See how Facebook places works
- You can easily see if your business is listed
- Can easily find a business to claim
To be able to use Facebook places you will need to have Firefox installed along with the Geolocater plugin. The Geolocater plugin is used to set your location for use in Facebook places.
The first step is to open firefox and browse to http://touch.facebook.com this will bring you to the mobile version of Facebook.
From here you will see the places tab on the right. When you click the places tab firefox will go to the page but pause asking you to select your location.
At this point you will want to open the Geolocater plugin by going to Tools > Geolocater > Manage
Create a new spot by clicking the Create geolocation button in the top right corner. Search for the loaction you want and click the Switch from Select to Search geolocation, give your location a name, fill out any other information you want and click save. You will then be asked Do you want to use this new geolocation? click OK.
Returning to the open firefox tab you will now see your new location selected in the dropdown in the location bar at the top of the window.
Clicking on the Share Location button causes Facebook to use that location for Facebook places.
You are now able to view all businesses listed in that area, check-in to places and even create any business that might be missing.
A useful tip here is that you are able to create multiple locations in geolocater so if you are managing business in different areas you can setup locations for each and just select which location you want to use when going into the places tab.
How to use Facebook to Promote your Business Part 1: Profiles, Pages and Groups
2Introduction
With the recent updates to facebook pages I needed to go back over all my client training documents and redo some sections to reflect the changes and additions. I’ve decided to put together a few blog posts covering the topic of using facebook to promote a business. This is the first post and the others will appear in the facebook category over the next few days.
In this post I will briefly describe the differences between profiles, pages and groups.
Profiles
A profile is a personal page for individuals. A profile is needed to use either pages or groups.
To create a profile sign up on facebook.com by filling in your details.
Once a profile is created you have the choice of what you want to do with it. You can make your profile as public or private as you want, the default is public. If you are going to use facebook to promote your business your profile should not be the main focus of your customers and you can keep it private with no connections, no photos. and no status updates. If a business feels they’d rather keep everything professional they can setup a dummy profile for the business that’s only used to administrate the business’s page or group alternatively they can turn their employee’s personal account into admins for the page. The second option might not work for every business since it would mean people would be logging into their personal facebook accounts at work.
Depending on your needs for your business there are some limitations of a facebook profile. A profile has a limit of 5000 friends, when this is reached no more friends can connect with you and what’s worse is the friends can not be transferred to another profile, page or group. Anyone that requests to be a friend of a profile has to be approved so this can lead to spending quiet some time approving friend requests each day if your profile became popular.
Another issue from a business point of view is that facebook has evolved in such a way that it is expected that a profile is an individual and so the applications available for profiles are more geared toward the individual rather than having any real business use.
Pages
Facebook pages are a step up from profiles. They are designed to handle so called “public profiles” of celebrities, bands, businesses and brands. Because of its’ intentional design a facebook page has become a powerful business tool and has attracted many application developers that have created additional applications that are specifically aimed at helping businesses to promote themselves.
With the recent changes a facebook page can do everything a profile can do. The differences for a business are that a page does not have a friend limit and a page does not have any privacy functions, in essence a facebook page is an online public profile for the business. Another feature of a facebook page is that it can be controlled by several different users each with their own profile. If an administrator posts something on the page then it appears to have come from the page rather than the individual and as with profiles anything posted on the page gets distributed to the entire page’s friends.
One of the new changes and a huge addition for businesses is that a business can now use facebook as their page. Under the Account menu there is an option to “Use Facebook as Page”. This option lets the user select a page that they can use as their profile. This enables the business to go on to fans profiles and other business pages and leave comments and posts as the business instead of their own personal account.
Groups
Groups are used for discussions and events etc. Groups are a way of enabling a number of people to come together online to share information and discuss specific subjects. They are increasingly used by clubs, companies and public sector organizations to engage with stakeholders – be they members of the public, employees, members, service users, shareholders or customers.
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