Pinterest Infographic (Good One)
May 8, 2012 at 11:46 am
Just getting my thoughts together on Pinterest for a talk I’ve to give to a group who market to women, aged 25-44. This is a good up-to-date infographic that I thought worth sharing, sourced from Tamba via Quora.
Really Innovative Use Of YouTube
April 23, 2012 at 12:41 pm
This little YouTube experience really brightened up my Monday morning! Thanks to Valentina for sharing it. It’s the most innovative use of YouTube I’ve seen in a very long time. Type any year (literally) and see what happens…1912, 1939, 1971… all spot on!
Don’t We Look Pretty!
March 29, 2012 at 11:32 am
Tourism Ireland Facebook Pages are now sporting rather fetching new designs, across all markets and in a variety of languages. App covers all updated. Posts pinned. Rubs hands together… another job well done!
Smaller clients are also being attended to with the greatest of loving care. My favourite is these guys:
The interesting thing about Christophes Cafe in Smithfield is that their market is largely made up of the legal profession. They may not be the most willing to be liking, sharing, commenting, but boy do they take up the offers in person! Goal is to increase footfall and reach. Tick! Another happy customer.
Tags: christophes cafe smithfield, Facebook Pages Timeline, timeline for pages, tourism ireland social media
Facebook Introduces Timeline For Pages
February 29, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Today at around noon GMT, the first Pages wearing the new timeline launched on Facebook. Big bold prints are in for spring/summer 2012, ladies and gentlemen… some of the earliest sightings include:
Red Bull
Starbucks
Old Spice
For these are the couture clients of Facebook; the chosen ones…
…whose advertising budgets reach the loftiest of heights.
Facebook contacted a handful of selected advertisers and gave them an early in on the new Page design. They were able to test how their Page looks and launch today. For the rest of us, indeed the vast majority of Pages, the new Page design will be rolled out on 30 March. You can choose to go before then. On 30 March all Pages will be switched over to the new look (and we can laugh at all the brands that aren’t prepared for it!)
I haven’t seen any Irish brands sporting the new Page design, but that’s hardly surprising when you look at the list of top Facebook brands and many names – Pringles, Skittles, Disney – are not among the chosen ones either.
Update: Many quick off the mark Pages are taking the leap and here’s a nice cover image that makes a change from the large pic favoured above:
What Does This Mean For You?
You’ve got time to play around with designs and copy and get your Page ready for its timeline debut.
Cover Photo: Use a unique image that represents your brand. All the early adopters seem to have gone for one large image, but you might go with a montage of smaller images showing your product being used by happy people. You could go with just text? Image dimensions 399 pixels and of course there are rules!
- No pricing
- No calls to action
- No contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section
- No references to Facebook elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features, ie no ‘like us’ and an arrow?
- Nothing misleading, or infringing on other people’s IP
If you are a marketer, you might find it very difficult to produce the requisite image. Take my advice – hand it over to your most creative designers and let them rip!
You can change your pic as often as you like, so make sure you factor this into your seasonal content planning.
There are several other elements you can fixate on, don’t just concentrate on the large cover photo. Here are the main ones:
Profile Pic: has now been freed up so now you can go with something different to your previous profile pic. This is a hugely important asset as this is the bit that most fans will engage with through their wall. You could play safe and go with your logo. Or choose something quirky and colourful that works well in a tiny square shape of 180 x 180. I like that Old Spice has chosen not to go with their logo. Imagine this face peaking out at you every time their post appears on your timeline!
Display Panels On Top: what were your left hand links are now perched prettily at the top of your Page. Photos are locked into the first spot, but you can change the order of everything else to highlight apps, fan numbers, etc.. I like this as it’s a much more visual display of good quality content from your Page. The max number of items here is 12, and 4 is visible ‘above the fold’. Note that the ability to set a default landing tab is now gone.
Lift the skirts of design and look at the quality of the fabric, the text, where attention to detail and getting the mood right is all important.. you can start by taking a cold hard look at your ‘About Us’ description.
Red Bull’s is too long at 26 words/150 characters. Old Spice adds a URL and it pollutes what I think should be a clean and simple message.
Starbucks nails it, adhering to best practice and keeping to 20 words or less. Know that the first para of your About Us info is being picked up to display on your ‘home’ Page, so go in and have a new look at that.
Pin Stories to the top of your Page, so you can keep popular posts on the go for even longer! Is this marketer’s nirvana as even loftier numbers of likes and comments can be achieved?
Get to work on crafting your company timeline. This is the newest feature and one for the content people to shine. You can highlight key dates in your company/brand’s growth going right back to inception. Choose stories you want to tell, add pics, and locations, and make this into a really rich resource to detail growth and take your fans on a little journey… I am really looking forward to some of the brand stories that come out of this. In the meantime, Starbucks has done it rather well. Note that fans can comment or like each point in your timeline.
Overall?
I’m happy that control for the initial image that a user sees is back with the Page owner. I have found the ‘top 5′ images of the old design very annoying as they are largely beyond the control of the Admin. The random displaying of all images from the Page has actually entered my dreams, replacing the “never-ending site map” dream that happens occasionally when I go to bed with my brain fully switched to On.
I’m dying to see what Smashing Magazine and Mashable come up with in the next few days and weeks as the world’s great designers get down to playing with the large space that Facebook has now given up to us.
I’m also considering the impact all this will have on results brought in using Social Media Monitoring Tools. Right now, in all honesty, exploring the social web for Facebook results tends to bring the most insignificant results because all of the action takes place behind the closed doors of many people’s profiles. I’m wondering if people will be more likely to engage with each other via the Page’s timeline, ie. if I post a hugely witty comment on a brand’s timeline, will my friends who see that enter the conversation there as well? Will this be the Godsend that lifts conversations out of the private and into the public domain?
But, I’m also thinking about workload – and updating processes for producing and managing content. It’s a no-brainer that we’ll have to create a content schedule around the cover image alone… Keeping on top of comments posted on events in the timeline will be new. But chnage is good. And I can safely say I’m more excited about the launch of new look Facebook Pages than the damp squib that was Google + Pages in late 2011.
What about you?
What do you think of Facebook Timeline for Pages? Please post any gorgeous examples in comments below.
Read on for top things to watch out for … careful now 
Here’s another great post on the changes from Fluffy Button.
Tags: Facebook Pages Timeline, Facebook Timeline for Pages
The More Things Change…
December 19, 2011 at 7:02 am
The more they stay the same!
Eye Tracking Facebook Pages
Eye Tracking Web Pages:
Facebook Accounts For 52% Of Sharing
December 14, 2011 at 12:48 pm
I love it when the round-ups of the year come out and this is the first I’ve seen for this year. Interesting points for me are:
- Facebook accounts for 52% of web sharing – they just make it so easy, and we’ve all learned how
- Mobile has exploded. Finally, after years of hype, it has happened.
- Chrome overtook Firefox in November. But lovers of Firefox, read this article about why it’s not doomed!
Tourism Ireland Facebook Fans Hit 500,000
September 21, 2011 at 10:48 am
Delighted to report that Tourism Ireland’s Facebook fans has hit half a million and it’s been picked up by the mainstream media. Am personally delighted about the mention of Ireland Town the St Patrick’s Day virtual game that consumed my life for a couple of weeks earlier this year!
Best headline: The Journal.ie - ‘they like us’
Facebook Landing Tabs – Yes or No?
August 15, 2011 at 8:01 am
I’m doing some testing at the moment as to whether having a landing or welcome tab on your Facebook Page increases the likelihood of a like, or whether it acts as a barrier (like an old school ‘skip intro’ page on websites). I don’t think there is a hard and fast answer; it depends on YOUR fans and their preferences. But I’ve carried out a little research into what some brands do, and collate below my thinking towards best practice on Facebook landing tabs. If you’re trying to decide whether to have one or not, I hope this helps.
Important Features of Facebook Landing Tabs
- Engage and get the max impact with the first 10-15 words
- Ask for the like and be human about it – I like this “We like you, do you like us?”
- Show the best of the Page’s content, and give people an idea of what they can expect as part of your community
- If you’re in hotels, or car hire, or ecommerce, it can be a good idea to offer some form of incentive to encourage visitors to become a fan – such as a money off coupon.
https://www.facebook.com/threadless
Design Led Landing Tabs
Here are some of my favourite examples of landing tabs that go straight in and ask for the ‘like’ but in a visually creative way:
http://www.facebook.com/VirginItalia
https://www.facebook.com/EnjoyEngland
http://www.facebook.com/TescoIreland
http://www.facebook.com/Microsoft
http://www.facebook.com/redbull
Getting The Tone Right
It’s really important to set the right tone. Don’t overwhelm people who are browsing, and don’t demand that they DO stuff straightaway – “upload all your pics and tell us why [our brand] is so great”. Kind of like what these guys do, but that could just be a cultural thing {smirks}.
Here are some of my favourites that get the tone right:
http://www.facebook.com/holdenaustralia
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sweden/49607452291
http://www.facebook.com/sonyericsson
And finally, I have to give this one a mention – Ford.
I like the way they creatively use the profile pic and landing tab image, and very neatly show off their team. Ford gets a lot of kudos online about how great they are on social media, yet I have contacts on the inside who tell me that they are only now nutting down a strategy for Facebook and are in the process of rolling out monitoring software. I think the reason they get such good press is because they are doing better than most other car companies. If you are a car company and you want to earn yourself lots of online love, get started, invest a little and create a community.
Tags: facebook landing tabs, facebook welcome tab
But is your business really using social media?
July 27, 2011 at 8:51 am
There’s a lot of talk about how many businesses are using social media. There was an article in Sunday’s Business Post about it last week – claiming victory for Ireland over England and the US:
The research also reveals that there was a rise in Irish companies using social media to win new business, with 44 per cent of firms successfully winning new customers online.
Although this was below the global average of 47 per cent, Irish firms lead Britain (41 per cent) and the US (43 per cent) in their usage of social media for customer acquisition.
It goes on to list all the different types of social media tools being used by Irish businesses:
Websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are the most popular forms of social media used by Irish businesses. Firms are also availing of blogs, microblogs and online forums to connect and engage with customers. Nevertheless, firms also emphasised the need for a balance of marketing media, made up of traditional and digital techniques.
I can imagine some business owner, faced with this survey from Regus, ticking the boxes of all the tools he’s ever heard of. Or ticking yes because they have a Twitter account (not touched since March 2010) and a Facebook Profile with lots of friends….
On the same weekend, over the course of being out and about, I met 3 small business owners – all very different to each other and in very different lines of work – but all were expressing worry about the same thing.
- “I know I need to use social media but I don’t know how.”
- “I have a Facebook Page because my mentor from the Enterprise Board said I should have one, but I don’t really do much with it… I don’t know how to get fans.”
- “Don’t talk to me about the other things apart from Facebook and Twitter, I haven’t even got them right.”
And now Facebook rows in with the announcement on Tuesday of its new online education centre aimed at helping small businesses use the social networking site. It’s interesting timing as it underlines Facebook’s support for businesses to be a part of the social network (provided you do it according to their rules!!) which is in contrast to Google’s controversial shut down of business accounts on Google Plus.
Tips for Small Business Owners in Using Social Media
- Don’t set up Pages, profiles, accounts unless you are willing and able to dedicate resource to manage them on a weekly basis
- How often? Try and commit to posting on your Facebook Page 3 times per week for starters. Use Tweetdeck to live on Twitter and it will become second nature and not something you have to count the tweets about!
- Allocate a little budget (doesn’t have to be much) to Facebook ads to reach your target audience. If they are on Facebook and it is an appropriate channel to engage with them, you should grow your fan base pretty easily.
- Once you’ve got fans you have got to engage with them. Write a Facebook editorial plan and stick to it. Try and mix it up in terms of chat, pushing product, and chat again. Images work well, so go and find beautiful images that will start conversations. Be creative.
- At the same time as you’re using Twitter to chat to your followers, start using the Advanced Search feature to find people talking about your service/product in realtime. Choose whether it’s appropriate to engage with them.
That’s what you need to do for starters. Next up is how to extend that activity beyond Facebook and Twitter. How to listen to what’s being said about you and your business across the social spaces and how to respond and engage. Consider how you can move the social activity away from just being something you or your marketing person look after, to something that is second nature to everyone in the organisation.
More on that in another post. Please leave a comment if you want to see this soon. That’ll incentivise me to write it before this season is out.
Social Media Awards Finalist
May 25, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Tomorrow night it’s a dust down the oul’ gúna, invest in a blow dry and put on my best razzle dazzle smile, for it’s awards time again! And this time, me and my team are up for not 1, not 2, not 3… OK let’s try and be a little humble here… 6 awards at the inaugural Social Media Awards.
For the last 18 months or so, I’ve been working with the great team at Tourism Ireland in the role of Social Media Project Manager. It’s a great team to work with because of the vision for embedding social media firmly within the organisation’s every activity, the professionalism of everyone working there, the fun we have, and of course the great results achieved. I work closely with Maxmedia who develop content, Betapond who have developed quite a few apps, gem the contact centre and Radical on media buy. When I began at the end of 2009 Tourism Ireland had a handful of Facebook fans, Twitter wasn’t really happening, and there was no blog.
Now we communicate daily with over 365,000 fans, have several Twitter streams on the go, blogs in English, Spanish, Italian, and French – which are all great – go and read the English language blog. We develop plenty of apps to keep our fans happy and a very impressive social game called Ireland Town to mark St Patrick’s Day. Currently the UK team has a couple of bloggers in Ireland whose trip is being fuelled by Facebook fan’s directions. There are 3 promotions running that offer great prizes and facilitate data capture. And fresh off the block just today is the latest app that is focused on capturing user generated content – Ireland Holiday Stories app. If you have a great story to tell about a trip you took in Ireland, why not come on over and share it with us?
So, tomorrow night, we’re up for an award in pretty much every category we could enter! If we don’t pick up at least one piece of foam I’ll be very disappointed! If you’re going to the awards tomorrow night, come on over and say hi. I haven’t been out to one of those gigs in quite a long time, so it’ll be great to see some old faces again.
Facebook Page for a Non-Profit Organisation
Integrated Facebook Campaign (Page, App and Ads)
Best Twitter Account – Support, CRM
Integrated Facebook Campaign (Page, App and Ads)
Use of Social Media by State Body/Org
Customer Care using Social Media (Integrated)
Innovative Use of Social Media
