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.

Now, it’s all a beautiful use of social media and while not everyone appears to have accepted the apology in the same way, (and why would they?) I think it’s entertaining but then I’m not personally affected by the brand disappearing off the shelves.

The video has worked and more than that people who don’t need to see the apology have viewed the apology. Downside of this, the video wasn’t made to be viewed on mobile devices, so a lot of niggles from people who were sent the link but couldn’t then view it. Mobile audiences are growing so don’t restrict your audience by forgetting them. Think mobile.

Social media, customer services, online petitions raised the voice level of the customers. The voucher offer, initially only available to its Canadian customers, J&J have now realised the errors of their ways and made it available to the US. Slight problem here is Canada get an easy to print coupon and the US have to download Coupon Printer and then print it out.

The coupon is dated for use by Dec 20th 2011 and for any product, as they are still working on the time-line for production of the much loved Ultra brand. So a bit tight with the expiry date of the voucher. Considering how viral the video has become, use the momentum and don’t lose everyone on December 20th 2011?

Is there any way we can help with your social media? Email us, or telephone 0203 468 8594 and speak to Tamara.

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

Tagging You can now tag by location and when tagging people who are not actual Facebook friends you can choose whether the tag shows in your profile or on your wall. Removing a tag has also become clearer with a choice of options, and an ability to remove and then block the tag creator.

Privacy settings
Within the home drop down button settings can be adjusted for how you interact with people. Privacy can be restricted so that only friends can see your posts and you can control your default privacy setting to public friends or custom.
Via the inline audience selector privacy can be controlled for status updates, photos and information, with the ability to use these as you share, or afterwards. It’s worth remembering that people you share information with can then share it with others.

The options are broken down into the following areas:

How you connect – who can -
look up your profile by name or contact info?
send friends requests?
send you Facebook messages?
post on your wall?
see wall posts by others on your profile?

How tags work
Profile review of posts friends tag you in before the appear in your profile. (Be aware they can still show up elsewhere on Facebook.)
Tag review for those that friends want to add to your profile.
Maximum profile visibility of tagged posts once they are on your profile.
Tag suggestions when friends upload look-a-like photos of you.
Friends can check you into Places app.

Apps and websites
Lists all the apps,games and websites you use and then allows you to individually edit all the settings. This allows you the opportunity to do some spring cleaning and clear out those that you no longer use.
Within this space you can edit settings that control how your info is brought by others to the apps they use. Use it to control the categories of the information.

Instant personalisation which allows you to see relevant information about your friend when you visit partner websites.

Public Search which controls whether a preview of your Facebook profile is visible when people search for you using a search engine.

Limit the audience for past posts although you can change this setting it means that any posts you have shared with everyone will be restricted to just friends. Maybe a more selective method is to choose the audience for your individual posts instead.

Blocked People and Apps

Don’t forget that you can run your account within a secure setting by going to account settings, security and enable secure browsing. Keeping your information safe while browsing on Facebook.

Too much information! Have a look around the settings and it’s not so daunting, but if you would like some help email us here, or speak with Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

It may be a very good tool but it still needs help to market your pages and spread the word, don’t just expect the folk to come flocking to your pages.

Plan and build your marketing strategy so that you don’t waste your energy supplying all the trimmings only to discover that you have no fans.

If you have a blog, network them so that when they are published, it shows up on your Facebook page.
Cross promote across your various social media networks to grow your fan base.
Increase conversations with your fans, capture the interest of people who want to spend money on your products or services.

If the people behind the branding are passionate and committed to making customers happy you can bring this excitement to your brand. It’s down to you to spread the word and enthuse your fans who will then pass the message on and attract new followers. Don’t waste time on those that are not interested, be sure you know your market, making it possible to target them and fine tune your Facebook ads for your audience.

Branding your Facebook page, so that it resembles your website or blog, lets your followers know that they are dealing with the same company. It’s possible to now do as much on your Facebook page as you can on your website. You can let people know of any events you are hosting or special offers you have.

Engage with your followers by keeping your pages up to date with interesting snippits for your audience to read. Use video and photos to entertain and educate your fans about your products.

Next week, getting started and some useful tools for using Facebook. Need any help or advice, email us, or speak to Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

Tell Twitter you need a job. Using Twitter to announce that you are looking for work gets the message out quickly and to an audience that you could never hope to reach with just an email. The information is not reliant on an email being read, it’s there for all to see in 140 letters or less. In the same way that you are looking for work with keyword searches , likewise companies are looking to recruit. Select your ‘follows’ by researching them, checking that they are the right people to follow, this will build a good network for you to read and learn from. Follow your industry and recruiters within your area of expertise helps improve the possibility of someone noticing when you tweet that you need a job or that someone that you follow will know of an opening. Choose your ‘follows’ wisely, focus on people who can help with your job search and don’t just add for the numbers.

Make your Twitter presence a balanced one. Try to involve all aspects of yourself in the Twitter feed. It’s nice to see the person behind the words, with some personal ’140s’, but don’t concentrate on this entirely. It’s good to add some words of value, whether it is links to your blog, things you have found valuable and think others might benefit from or retweeting other people’s words of wisdom. Don’t let your content fall into the ‘spam’ category, there is nothing more likely to lose your following or get you ignored. Aim to impress your prospective hirers and add value in your tweets.

At this point, if you feel you need to keep your work life and private life separate, set up two individual accounts and organise settings of the account to make sure that people need to be authorised to view your private account. Better still, don’t put it on the internet if you have any doubts, the web has an awful habit of coming back and biting you.

In your bio, briefly describe yourself and include a link to your site, ensure the information that people will be directed to is professional and honest. If I find that the information I’m sent to is in anyway unprofessional, I don’t feel the need to follow them. Your bio on Twitter can be linked to your blog, website, LinkedIn profile or a visual CV. Don’t miss this opportunity to impress people, letting them know all about you and your abilities.

Twitter has the ability to reach an audience that you would be hard put to match in any other way and on a personal level too. But remember if you don’t want the word spreading don’t put it on the internet.

Do you have any experience of Twitter either for job search or employment? Can we help with your Social Media experience? Email us or telephone Tamara on 02034688594.

Tweeting on Twitter,sometimes known as micro-blogging, allows you no more than 140 characters to get your message across. With millions of people tweeting billions of tweets, all available to everyone on the site, your selection of who to follow and read reduces the mass of information available to you personally. Your ability to have short and pertinent snippets to read from your chosen areas can be a refining tool, and reduce the mountain of information available to a manageable amount. Using the site in the same way as other social networking sites, it allows you to connect with recruiters. Unlike other social network sites there is no requirement to ask to connect and wait to be accepted, you can simply ‘follow’, you are then able to see all of their writings.

By following recruiters and hiring agents, you are able to listen and learn from their words. You can reply to anything you read that they have written, hopefully drawing attraction to yourself from the recruiters.

To begin making connections Twitter search and Twellow will find the people you want to follow. Some may well follow you back but don’t worry if they don’t, your ‘follow’ will enable you to communicate with them. You can follow conversations and reply if you have anything to say. If you have found a post informative a ‘thank you’ is very welcome.

Twitter search allows you to search any keywords you choose, identifying your niche, and searching for jobs and vacancies within the tweets. Many hiring managers/recruiters will tweet about vacancies they have. Keyword search for your job you are looking for, and Twitter will provide a stream of tweets containing theses words. The search term can then be saved and reviewed several times throughout the day. When using a Tweet reader, e.g. Hootsuite, Tweetdeck keyword searches can be entered and when these words appear in any conversation the tweet will appear in your feedreader.

As many businesses track social media sites to check when they are being talked about, good or bad, responses to tweets can be rapidly executed. Likewise if you are tracking companies for job vacancies you can be first to respond and have your application in before the crowd.

Next week, other helpful ideas for using Twitter when job searching.

If you are having problems using Twitter, email us here, or telephone Tamara on 0203 468 8594.

A good image to distribute with your article can be researched by virtual support. They can track whether submissions have been successful by using Google alerts and research other places which may accept articles.

A VA can use and re-purpose the articles into blog posts and extract links for social media updates. Using excerpts/clips from the article for Twitter updates and link back to the complete article, together with ensuring they are posted to all social media channels.

When assisting with press releases the same work can be done by your virtual assistant as that done for articles, ensuring the press release is sent to the right people and the most beneficial outlets, and in the mode that they are best received. Make sure that the articles or press release are easily read and reproduced. It’s of no use to you if all the hard work put into the work falls down because it is inaccessible for whatever reason. If the media require hard copy it’s not worth sending it by email as it may well be binned and not reach an audience at all.

Virtual support can contact and submit press releases to television, newspapers and radio. They can be responsible for submitting items of information to the same channels.

Using Google Alerts to monitor keywords and competition a virtual assistant can analyse the success of the press releases and help you to make the necessary changes.

Do you need help with articles, press releases or do you want to know more about Google alerts? If so, email us here, or telephone Tamara, on 0203 468 8594.

Copy can be written, for your approval, that regularly connects you with your affiliates and can supply them with banners and links to use for promoting your business. For Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, virtual support can write social media updates that affiliates can use to advertise and promote. They can write examples of blog posts that can also be used to spread the word about your product.

By implementing a timetable, promotions can be scheduled and materials organised that will be required to run the proposed campaign.

A VA can manage your programme by supporting your affiliates, answering any questions and help them with any difficulties they may have. By keeping in touch with them by email they can provide tips to help promote your product. Contacting affiliates by phone, providing a personal touch, can help your team, knowing that there are real people within the business, there to assist them, in what can be a rather ‘lonely’ internet world.

A virtual assistant can run regular reports to check on affiliate sales and follow up with contact to them to help with promotion or congratulate on their performance!

Are you thinking of starting an affiliate programme for your business? You can email us here, or telephone and speak to Tamara, on 0208 468 8594.