Posts tagged facebook

The Benefits of Social Networking for Businesses

By Bob Toovey on January 27, 2012

This is a guest post by James Williams who is the Community Manager for TM International, a Paris-based recruitment agency

Social networking is not a new phenomenon. This won’t be the first time you’ve heard the term and if you are like the many millions of “constantly-connected” professionals out there it’s probably something you do on a regular basis. Networking has always been a great tool for businesses to reap benefits from, and that hasn’t changed. What’s changed is the way we network – what we do and how we do it. As technology continues along its path to world domination it’s becoming much more common for the “traditional” methods of networking to be replaced by new “social” techniques. However, what’s become clear to me is that there are still quite a large number of people who don’t really understand the benefits. Some don’t know why people do it, some don’t know what to do, some are unsure where to do it and some have no idea whatsoever and appear to have missed the whole social media revolution. So this can just be a general recap for everyone on why social networking is so important for your business.

The first area of benefit for social networking is awareness. Now the reason I say area of benefit is because there are a large number of benefits that occur from increased awareness as a sort of “knock-on effect.” Awareness is really the umbrella term under which a multitude of other benefits lie, and I will go on to discuss those. Social networking is the easiest and one of the most effective ways of increasing awareness of your business. The days of advertising in the local paper or magazine are behind us, with TV advertising likely to follow in the next few years. As a business trying to get your name out there you need to be where the people are. And where are these people? On social networks! Facebook’s got 850+ million users, LinkedIn is approaching 150 million and Twitter now has well over 300 million, and that’s not even mentioning the newest social network Google+ which has the fastest growth rate of any social network in history. So if you want people to be aware of your company then, without question, you have to have a presence on social networks.

But people being aware of you is just the start. The more people you reach, the more people will visit your profile on whichever social network. The more people who visit your profile, the more people will visit your website (provided you have included a link to it!). And with drastically increased traffic to your website and social networks there is a much bigger chance of you winning new business. For example, say you have a fan base of 200 on Facebook, a Twitter following of 300 and 500+ connections on LinkedIn. You then choose to advertise your product/service on LinkedIn. This has already reached your connections on that network instantly, and because you’ve linked up your LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook accounts, your post has been published on your Twitter feed and on your Facebook page. So before anyone has done anything, in the click of a button you have potentially reached around 1000 people. But that’s nothing! Social networking gives you the perfect opportunity for what I like to call “the ripple effect”. This is similar to the process of things going viral (apart from it’s not a YouTube video of a cat dancing). Your initial reach of 1000 people can be multiplied to an incredible number. Your LinkedIn connections share the post/information with their connections. Your audience on Facebook clicks “like,” sharing that information with every single one of their friends. And finally the people who follow you on Twitter “retweet” it to their followers and so on. That means, providing you post good content, you can grow your initial network of 1000 people to 20, 30, 40 times that. Without sounding too dramatic the possibilities are literally endless.

The problem with increasing the number of people who know about your business is that you are also increasing the potential number of people who can criticize you. However, if you are choosing to opt out of using social networks for your business, what’s important to remember is that people are going to talk about you online whether you have a presence there or not. Therefore social networks give you the opportunity to manage your e-reputation. You can use your social networks as a platform for your customers/clients. You can develop a relationship with them and create a personable online experience which allows the customer to voice their opinion in a way that will not prove negative for your image. By managing your e-reputation you create a much higher potential for customer loyalty, and therefore retention, as well as gaining new customers who will see your positive and helpful image online.

Because of the connection to customers which social networks provide you, social networking can also be a great way to understand customer needs. This can in turn allow you to come up with new ideas for your business or simply improve on previous mistakes because you now have channels which allow constant feedback. And as you know, listening to feedback is one of the most important factors when it comes to business success.

Keeping the customer/client in mind, social networking provides the perfect opportunity to target the right people. Through your social networks you can target relevant industry professionals, whether it be in LinkedIn groups, on a Facebook page or by using the # tag on Twitter. So this means you can implement a targeted marketing effort which will drastically increase your efficiency and effectiveness. It may sound obvious but once you know where your customers are it makes it much easier to communicate with them and social networking allows you to do just that!

And that’s just a few of the benefits that social networking can bring you. It really can’t be stressed enough that social networks are the place to be for today’s businesses, they are essential to your survival. Who knows, in the future the social network may even replace a company’s website.

This entry is filed under Guest Post and tagged business, facebook, linkedin, social networking, twitter.

Product pictures on Facebook: 3 easy steps to boost their power!

By Bob Toovey on December 6, 2011

Are you putting your Facebook Fan Page photo albums to go use? I am sure you have uploaded a few pictures but is that all you are doing? Adding pictures of your products from your oneline shop is good and time well spent but you can go one better…

I have one idea I would like to share that is simple and will boost their power in only 3 easy steps!

Step one – Find the best photo of your product

Take a look at your online shop, choose a product that has a great photo. If you have original pictures then select one that is largest and best quality. Otherwise select one that shows off the product the best.

Step two – Upload to FaceBook

Create a photo album that is named after the category that your product belongs in. That way you can add more similar products later. During the process you will be asked to add a description. The first line in the description should contain the web address (URL) of the product itself. Make sure this URL is a direct link to the product page on your web shop. Best bet is to copy and paste the link from the address bar in your browser.

I have done this with some of my pictures but they point to the blog post that the pictures go with. As an example, here is screen shot of an image with a simple description (make sure yours is much fuller).

In the above example, I have used a simple graphic with a short description – I don’t have an online shop! However, I am sure you can see how you could use your product picture and a full description.

One published, this is what Facebook shows…

You can see that the link is clickable, that means that if someone likes the look of the product they can go straight to it’s product page.

Step 3 – Add more pictures

You can create many more albums each with a selected range of products. Which ones you choose is up to you but you could…

Add seasonal products
Add products that are already popular
Add products that aren’t selling to well and need a boost

Boost your picture power!

Nothing works better than word of mouth and Facebook is the digital equivalent. Once someone leave a positive comment (‘I bought one of them and they are brilliant’), people are more likely to click the link and find out more. Each comment is a recommendation and it has been proved that people will buy because friends already have.

This entry is filed under Social Networking and tagged facebook, photos, pictures, recommendations. | 1 Comment

Mobiles, pushing to hard and what I don’t really care about

By Bob Toovey on December 5, 2011

Hopefully you have chance to watch the video I posted featuring Gary Vaynerchuk.There are several points that hit me while watching it that I want to share.

Mobile, don’t ignore or pretend it’s not there.

Mobile phones are in our pockets, just about everyone seems to have one. Apple made them a ‘must have’ and Google keeps innovating with Android. They connect us to our friends, Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, Google+, the Internet, Email and more.

We go out with our phones, we use them in our homes while watching TV. We share moments with our friends and take pictures that we can’t wait put on Facebook or Twitter. In short, they have become indispensable.

Have you realised how mobiles will affect our lives? Are you ready in your business? Have you started to plan for it?

Social Networking – don’t push!

Show your customers that you want to help them. Demonstrate you have the skills, understanding and the willingness to fix their problem – to help the with their needs. Let the customer ‘discover you’. You can answer questions on Facebook and Twitter with details of your products, how much they cost and when you can ship them. These days, people don’t want a sales pitch in answers to their questions. They need help, if they new what was needed then they would just go off and buy it.

Don’t get left behind or else…

I really don’t care if you think that social media is ‘not your thing’ – it is or will be very soon for your clients.

I don’t care if you don’t like the modern ways, ‘traditional methods have always worked before’. Your customers want to check you out, find out more about the products and see what their friends think of it all – all on the Internet.

I won’t mention that it’s all a ‘fad’, it is totally obvious that it’s not.

If you don’t care then you will be left behind.

Read as much as you can about social networking. See how teenagers or your own kids, are sharing their lives on their mobiles (‘Mum/Dad, gotta watch insert-latest film. All my friends have seen it and they think it’s great).

If social media and mobiles are beyond you, get someone in who understands it! Learn from them, let them develop your business in to the new areas that are up and coming.

If you want to make it through or do better in the next few years then don’t get left behind!

This entry is filed under Business ideas and tagged facebook, gary vaynerchuck, mobile, mobilephones, social networking, twitter.

Google+ vs. Facebook: Google’s battle plan

By Bob Toovey on November 25, 2011

This is the second part in a series of guest posts by James Williams who is the Community Manager for TM International, a Paris-based recruitment agency. You may want to read part one first, part three is here.

In Part 1 I focused on the explosion of Google+ onto the social business scene. I talked about the ever-increasing rivalry between the two tech giants, briefly mentioning some benefits and ultimately recognized Google+ as a force to be reckoned with. What I didn’t do was go into too much detail or discuss the future implications. Now unfortunately I cannot predict the future, but what I can do is explain what is happening right now and offer some suggestions on what I think is likely to happen in the next few months and the New Year.

Already, since Part 1, things have changed. Google+ was getting a lot of negative attention, and had been since its launch. Many people had written it off before even giving it a chance. But, in the last week or so, opinions and attitudes seem to have gradually changed. People are recognizing that Google+ is not a fad and it will not just disappear; it is something that has to be taken seriously. I mentioned a few of its benefits in Part 1 but the key focus was its potential, and its potential is huge.

Everyone wants to know who will win the battle for social dominance. Marketers are dying to find out so they can plan their strategy and know how they need to think. So, will Google+ overtake Facebook? And ultimately can Google beat Facebook?

As you are probably aware by now, this is not a question with a simple, or definitive, answer. The reason it isn’t as simple a question as: who will win the battle? is because the competitors are fighting for different things. Google and Facebook work in completely different ways and they have very different ideas when it comes to what makes the best social site. However, despite these differences, the rivalry between the two will continue to escalate and will without doubt impact you as a business.

So, in this part I am going to focus on what Google are doing (and planning to do) to “beat” Facebook.

Firstly, we have the +1 button. This is the fastest growing social recommendation widget in history, with over 5 billion impressions a day. Not bad. These +1’s are going to be connected to your Google+ brand page. This will allow Google to extend your brand on a global scale; and by analyzing who is recommending you and where you are being recommended, Google can put your brand where people are.

The +1 button is revolutionizing the world of recommendation. You should never forget the fact that people trust people. A recommendation could become more important than your advertising strategy, a reality that becomes a lot more real with the growth in influence of +1’s.

Now, I mentioned Google Direct Search in Part 1 but what does this mean for the future?

“in ‘+YouTube’ goes straight to the Google+ YouTube Page< and automatically adds YouTube to your circles on Google+ for easy following. An on-going relationship gets established through one Google Search. This isn’t about Google — it’s about Plus and your brand, putting you at the center of everything on Google.”

So, Google is giving you the ability to connect with customers in the easiest possible way. You will be able to develop much deeper relationships and this will prove invaluable because relationships are the most important thing in business. Google+ aims to transform your relationship with Google; they want to give you the power.

Another benefit I underlined in Part 1 was the importance of Google+ for SEO, but how will that become influential in the future? This is quite simple. Google+ will become more and more important for businesses because it is your Google+ page that will appear when customers search for you. Google’s updated search engine will ensure that all features of Google+ are inter-connected with all things Google, something which is quite simply going to become crucial to your company’s SEO.

If your business isn’t on Google+, it quite simply should be. But will Google+ beat Facebook? Well, Google+ is going to win but that doesn’t mean that Facebook is going to lose. As I mentioned, they are fighting for different things. Google+ will transform marketing and search branding. They are going to have an influence on you; that much is certain.

For now Facebook remain in the lead, and in Part 3 I’ll look at what Facebook are doing, and what they have to do in the future, to make sure that there remains more than one social superpower.

This entry is filed under Guest Post, Social Networking and tagged facebook, google, Google Plus, social networking.

Which social network to use? Better to ask, which ones are my customers using?

By Bob Toovey on November 23, 2011

Where will you spend your time, Facebook or perhaps Google Plus? Or even the less discussed Linked In? Are you on Twitter and invest your time Twittering? Services are competing against each other. They keep adding new features to attract new users. James Williams wrote a guest post last week discussing how Facebook and Google are competing for your time.

So where will you be? Choosing just one or plan to use them all?

Actually I think we are asking the wrong question…

Where is the conversation?

Are people already discussing your products and services? It could be they are doing it on your blog by leaving comments. I trust you are responding to them.

They could be talking about you on Facebook. Are you there answering questions and being helpful?

Are you aware they might be writing about you on Google Plus? Isn’t it time for you to find out?

Just what are they saying about you, your products and services on Twitter?

Join in the conversation

If people are talking about you then you need to be there and be part of the conversation. It really doesn’t matter where that is. Like any good business, you go where you see the market – go where the customers are.

Answer the critics, stop a crisis happening in it’s tracks. Encourage those who love what you do to talk about it, share the positive experiences.

No conversations going on? Create a place for it to happen

If there really is no chatter going on then it’s time to create a place and situation for it to happen. Create a Facebook page and invite people in. Ask questions, ask for opinions and keep on asking. Put out a few questions or ask for comments on Twitter. Good response? Keep at it.

Create the opportunities and follow where they go.