You can preview your design and fix any potential problems. During this time only you as the administrator can see how your page will look when it is automatically rolled out at the end of March.  Facebook have  introduced Timeline cover rules which you need to read and adhere to so your Page doesn’t get removed for violation of the rules.  Updates have changed together with new features on the admin panel.  Until the end of March you can work on your design while running the Pages in the old style and if/when you are satisfied you can then publish.

By previewing your present page design in Timeline you can check how status updates and other activity will look in the new layout.

It’s obvious from all of these restrictions that Facebook are keeping the marketing off the Timeline cover.

So what can you do?
For some businesses it will be an ideal extension to their portfolio. Photographers, designers and other ‘visual’ businesses will find it easy but for others it may be a little more difficult to represent your brand.  Check out some of the brands that already have their Timelines and see what they have used and if yours doesn’t look good, change it!
Mari Smith
Owen Phillips
Jesse Stay
Nigel Botterill
Herbal Essences
Flickchart
Lifehacker

For help with social media contact us by email, or telephone Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

The first wiki software programme was developed by Ward Cunningham and originally named wikiwikiweb. (Wiki is an Hawaiian word meaning quick or fast.)

A wiki is a website that can easily be updated by anyone with permission.

It can be run on your own server or hosted on a cloud service.

A wiki is lockable, access can be restricted and information controlled until reviewed.

Corporate memory can be built with a wiki.

Build and develop standardised procedures and policies for an organisation.

Collaborative tools

There have been big changes in office technology and the rise of cloud software now enables people to work together on files.

Services like Google Docs, Basecamp,Dropbox allow combined workings on most things.

The new programmes allow all members to work on the same version of a file, so no more worries about which version you are on. Gone are the days of locked down files while someone else works on them.

Accounting programmes like Xero,Kashflow,Sage and Quickbooks can be set up for work to be input by you or your bookkeeper, and access for accountants authorised. Edit rights, access and authorisation can be organised according to needs.

Emails too

As with all the previously mentioned cloud-based services there may be some risks. Ensure you have reliable Internet access and its provision has a good level of security. Use Gmail or similar hosted services, using their protected systems will provide you with a safer and more secure data protection than most small businesses can afford.

The Cloud and it’s Shadow

More like a silver lining than a shadow. All these forms of communicating, whether its instant messaging, wikis and collaborative tools all leave their own ‘digital copy’, a transcription of the ‘conversation’. Everything within a programme is time-stamped and assigned to respective participants and if anything goes wrong and requires further investigation it’s hard to hide all the evidence from anyone determined enough to follow the trail.

Can you see how using instant messaging and cloud services could speed up your communications?

Maybe you don’t need to go as far as CEO Thierry Breton of French technology company Atos who hasn’t sent an e-mail in 3 years but perhaps a change in how you use email and other communication tools could help with your work load. The estimates are that 90% of the world email traffic is unsolicited, which if not handled right can be an incredible drain on your time and productivity.

Thierry’s answer to the problem was to implement a zero email policy for its employees(within the company) and has encouraged them to use instant messaging and collaboration tools instead. Email has been used as the main communication app for businesses for the last 20 years, while instant messaging was looked on as being too clunky. It may not be easy to rethink the habit of checking emails first and last thing of your working day and include instant messaging in your communications. Technology has moved on rapidly and there are many instant messaging tools readily available and easy to turn on, many are part of programmes you already know and use. e.g Microsoft Office, Skype, None of these are new technologies and instant messaging is probably the most used part of the Skype telephone service by businesses.

It can distract you from other matters, as the nature of the app is that an immediate response is required, but being able to acknowledge a problem, share links and deal with a matter is better than waiting for a response to an email. (Especially if the automated email response says, ‘we will try to answer your email within 48 hours, 4 days, or whatever) That’s worse than snail mail.

Social media tools such as Google+,Facebook,LinkedIn have built in instant messaging and

Google + has its Hangouts feature enabling impromptu video conferencing. Twitter offers public and private channels for instant messaging while Yammer, a corporate tool allows staff to communicate with each other, especially useful if you have employees in various countries. Relying on external providers for security and reliability is a downside of using the social media platforms as a business tool.

I personally have in the past had great responses from ‘chat’ when dealing with problems via customer services. I wish all companies used it!

Immediate Network – browse by visiting a profile and looking at the connections on the right-hand side of the page. If you notice someone of interest, invite them to connect.

Advanced search for people – If you find someone you would like to connect with check whther you have any mutual connections. If there are, then ask if they can make an introduction to this new person.

Browse your immediate network – Visit a profile and again look at the connections on the right-hand side, if there’s someone that interests you, invite them to connect.

Groups- join groups that your target market joins. This gives you the opportunity to interact with others in the group and help increase your visibility so people will begin to contact you.

Your searches for people can be saved within LinkedIn and alerts sent out. (3 alerts can be saved but more than 3 require account upgrade) Email will be sent to you via LinkedIn with new prospects weekly or monthly.

Updates and Interactions – follow your network to see if there are any opportunities for you to build valuable relationships. If someone mentions an interesting person ask for an introduction.

LinkedIn is a great tool to grow your business , meet new contacts and advance your career but remember you need to have completed all the sections for it to work successfully and help you build your network. If your profile is complete people can be sure they have the right person or company.

Upload your contacts from your various mail accounts and any other address books you have using the ‘add connections’ tab.
Log in to your email and LinkedIn users have a small blue icon with ‘in’ next to their name. Select these names and write a semi-personal message to them. Tick ‘Add a personal note to your invitation’ and replace the standard note with one that relates to how you know them. (Not too personal as it is going to several selected names.)

While waiting for these people to accept you can add to your network by using the LinkedIn tool for retrieving colleagues and classmates.
Again, first select the people who are already members as they will be the most responsive to your invitation.
Since LinkedIn uses the information in your profile it is important that you have completed fully about companies you have worked for and schools, colleges and universities you have attended.

You can either look up current and past colleagues on the profile search or using the same menu, click ‘colleagues’ tab and this will show all the companies you have listed on your profile and the number of people who are already LinkedIn members.

Clicking on the any of the companies listed will provide a list and from that select the people you know. Write a personal message to them either individually or semi-personal one if sending out a batch of invites. Repeat for all other companies that you have worked for.

Classmates – follow the same procedure as that for companies but using the ‘classmates’ tab.

Some top tips for optimisation

Your public URL edit this to show your name or business (rather than a number) then when people search the main search engines your LinkedIn profile will show in the results.

Website listings in this section of your profile you can list up to 3 URLs. Choose ‘other’ option when setting up these links. Use descriptive keywords and relevant terms to result in more opportunities for higher ranking in the search engines.

Twitter – You are allowed more than one twitter account so provide links to them here giving people other ways to connect with you.

Visibility – ensure your complete LinkedIn profile is publicly visible to everyone. You need other professionals to be able to contact you at anytime, if you are invisible it will be very difficult to build your network.

LinkedIn Applications

To build an influential and vibrant LinkedIn profile there are many applications available to help. Have a look around and choose the appliccations that are best suited to you and your brand.

Slideshare

This app allows you to upload presentations and visually show your expertise. Video and audio can also be embedded into a presentation which can be an effective way to make your profile stickier.

Amazon – Reading list

This is an opportunity to review and show your latest reads, sharing your passions and interests with people. Similarly, when you are searching for connections and introductions on LinkedIn you can gain insight into others passions and interests, if they too have this app installed.

Travel and Events

Allows you to share with your connections where you are travelling and what events you are attending and can lead to opportunities to connect face-to-face with other LinkedIn members.

Wordpress or Blog Link

These applications allow you to pull blog posts into your profile. When you have taken time to create a blog, this is a good way to share your content.

Polls

The polls application allows you to conduct research either within your own network, or to a targeted audience of professional people. Polls can help you understand your audience, but do ensure your survey is easy to understand, and questions are interesting so you have a good response rate.

LinkedIn Profile

Your profile needs to be completed fully – it is the foundation on which you will begin to build your influence.
A profile will showcase your talents,experience,background, interests, expertise and passions. Additionally you will appear competent in the use of the LinkedIn Network.

A fully completed a profile may lead to new networking/business oppportunities. Without it people do not know enough about you and you cannot move on to the next phase, to grow your influence and build your business.

Professional Image – First impressions count – it is essential to upload an image that will atttract connections.
This is your best opportunity to make a great first impression, and it is essential to attracting connections.

Headline – 120 characters at the top of your profile are there to describe what you do. Use brief but descriptive keywords to create a compelling headline, so professionals in your sphere can find you.

Position – complete your current position and at least two more previous positions that you have held

Summary section – Using the third person, this section lets you expand your description of who you are and how you help people.

Recommendations – for LinkedIn to class your profile as completed you will need at least three recommendations.
Give before you receive. If you first give a recommendation then you may ask for one.
This can then be displayed on your profile

Specialities section – use customer-focused keywords in this section, then when people are searching you will show in the results. To find these keywords, consider what words and phrases people in your target market might use to find someone with your background, experience and service you offer.

Interests & Group Associations - in these sections each of the terms will be hyper-linked, thus taking you to users with the same interests in the network.

Anyway, thinking that GiffGaff’s offers will work better for us, I decided to finish the rolling contracts, keep the numbers and move to GiffGaff. The winner for them has to be that calls between GiffGaffers are free, together with the ‘no contract’, ‘change your mind each month if you want to’ deal.

Now I find myself in a complete tizz, my number has been ported out to my GiffGaff number and when the new Sim is put in the phone we have USIM locked. So backwards and forwards between various numbers, GiffGaffers being very helpful, T-Mobile saying £15 please and 28 days to release the phone. Arrrghh!!!

And so to Twitter, after getting the usual email automated responses from T-Mobile, saying we may take 7 days to answer your query, just shout ‘help’ on Twitter and we are off. It remains to be seen whether anything gets sorted but at least T-Mobile responded within minutes and not days.

You feel that someone is listening and not just fobbing you off, but that may come later. Wish me luck!

So what does that tell you about Social Media? That if it is going to work for your business, it’s good to talk and listen to your customers. Twitter is quick at getting results, no business wants it to be broadcast across the internet that people are unhappy with their service. Handled correctly, social media, can nip things in the bud and customers know they have your attention because you have answered them with something other than an automated response.

It would be nice if things didn’t always happen this way, but with plethora of technology, folk can’t be expected to understand how it all works and companies must handle that knowledge with care, likewise their customers.

For help with anything techy email us, twitter @tamarabaranova, or just plain pick up the phone and talk to Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

Are you admin for pages on Facebook?

From then the social network will no longer collect data from the old page insights and insights as we know it, will disappear completely on February 15th 2012.

On the old page insights they advise you to back up your information as this will be deleted on February 15th but your data from December 15th will be collected in the new improved insights.

Have you also noticed…. on your personal Facebook page how you can fine tune what you see or what people see of you? If you are tired of seeing what everyone is listening to and reading, change the settings. You now have multiple choices for handling this overload of information in your news feed, by hide,delete,unsubscribe,unfriend, report or block options. The button to the right of a post drops down to give you all these options and a much calmer way to handle the regular (far to regular) postings of some. You can then still decide to visit their feed when you choose rather than your page be overloaded.

You can click to view all updates, or most or only important ones too, so again you can refine individually, what you see according to how much you want to see of friends. Further changes can be made on a friends’ profile where the subscribe button allows you to customise even more precisely. Options are here too, to add friends to particular lists; Places of work,schools,residences and family relationships.

How to hide yourself away…on chat. The follow on from all this privacy and hiding of other people’s posts, leads me to this option. On the chat screen there is a small settings button which gives you the option of, to chat or not to chat, primarily you can see who’s on line and they can see you are available to chat. If you want to refine this, limited availability can be optimised and you can restrict who can communicate with you at any point in time, alternating between your various lists.

Do you need any help with all the things that Facebook keep changing? Email us or telephone Tamara on 0203 468 8594 to find out how to optimise your pages

The most popular type of QRC are two-dimensional and allow the contents to be decoded fast. Their use is gradually being taken on board by major brands and allows companies to ‘sell’ to a mobile customer base with the ability to scan the codes from smart phones (with camera).

How could you use a QRC in your business?

If your product requires installation, a code on your packaging that plays a video of installation instructions. Overcomes the problem of the manual not being in the box and so much easier to see how it’s done than just reading how to install.

Business cards with the code can import all your contact information.

Roadside advertising contains a code to take you to further information about the advert, a trailer for a film, product information for car or cooker.

QRC on an appliance – when your machine goes wrong you have a code on it that leads to the manual on line. How easy is that when you have no idea where you put the manual and you bought it so long ago.

In store signs carrying codes that can be stored or sent to friends; to tweet, view a video about the product, share.

Apps – a code that takes you to the app download, so easy and fast, no need to spend time searching for the download.

Advertising – code that gives you the time, the date, the place. Where a product is produced, who by and when, so much more information than can be mentioned in a normal advert.

QRC can easily take your customers to a more comprehensive description of your products.

Can you think how you can use QRC in your business?

If you have an idea how you could use QRC, get in touch and we can help you put your ideas into reality. Email us, or speak to Tamara on 0203 468 8594.