Facebook and the BBQ

Facebook Top Tips From Someone Who Knows!

The story goes like this, you are having barbecue, you invite all your friends around and once everyone is there you immediately get out your white board and marker and try to sell them your products and you coerce them to tell all their friends about your products too.  You immediately make everyone feel uncomfortable and they all think the same thing too…

What an A-hole!

Now go look on Facebook and see how many business owners are doing exactly that.  I’ll explain further… Some don’t even allow fans to post comments! Sort of like, “Its my wall” and “I am not even slightly interested to hear what you have to say, just buy my stuff” and others merely repeat come in to see us and buy our stuff!” eg; Cocktail hour reminder every day at the same time, it aint social – its boring, where’s the unsubsctibe button?

Most business owners know they should have a Facebook presence, but sadly they have no clue how to go about it so within a short space of time they crash and burn damaging their credibility along the way. They then come to the seemingly logical conclusion that Facebook “only works for the big players” or Facebook “does not work for my niche” and the sad fact is thay failed by their own hand by being the a-hole at the barbeque!

When people search on Google they are looking to solve a problem, get an answer, mostly they are looking for something they will eventually pay for!
They are in buyer mode!

When people use Facebook they go there to look up their friends or maybe share photos, a joke or two and keep up to date.
They are in social mode!

The A-hole in the bbq story is commonplace on Facebook and for all business owners who want to use facebook to help build their business we need to imagine we are at that barbeque and act socially, gain respect first. When you do, they will come to you as the expert with the answers to their problems, instead of searching on Google.

Use face book to connect with your fans, share stuff as if they were your friends or die a social death on facebook. You see, now your fans have something called a subscription button, they may still be your fan but they have switched off your messages by clicking unsubscribe.

The moral of this little story…..

Don’t sell yourself too hard on social media and ask for your fans opinions!

If you would like to discuss your facebook presence and how it can be improved don’t hesitate to get in touch with Jules or Richard for a jargon free chat. Call now on 0845 164 5025

Facebook and the BBQ is a post from: SELMOR- Relationship Marketing

Google Launches a new Guide to Using Google + Pages

Yup! It was back in July when Google started making inroads into the social media scene, it started initially with their Google +1 buttons you may have seen appearing on websites of late.  Its a simple idea, if you like what you see you give the site a +1 and google recognises it.  The interaction is what google measures when assessing a site for relevance whick is another factor in how websites are ranked in search results.

They took that concept a stage further and launched Google plus pages which have a similar look and feel to Facebook but orgainises things into circles.  Most UK businesses, (who are so far behind with social media it hurts them and they don’t even know it) don’t know about this potential marketing avenue.  If they are aware of it?  It must seem like another fire hose of information overload for them so they ignore it for now.  The time will come when you will lose your business if you do not start to get  a firm grip on social media which is a daunting prospect because there is little training available.

Google have last week lauched a guide to try and ease the burden on business owners, to help them get started.  The video above gives a small insight of how social media can help your business, and I know its American but hey the brits are so far behind, this is a mall bicycle retail and repair shop taking advantage.

I am constantly amazed by the lack of interest shown by British business people to even try to understand social media, those that have had a go blindly and failed now triumphantly proclaim it will not work for their business niche!

Well I have a news flash for you…

Social media is nothing more or less than word of mouth advertising (which is inherantly free) and that works for absolutely any business niche.  But try to sell sell sell and you will fail, fai, fail!  People will switch off in their droves.  You need to listen, listen, listen and then start asking questions that invoke their opinions. Engage with them on a conversational level and then they will buy, buy, buy and recommend someone they see as a contemporary instead of a salesman.

So as I said at the start Google introduce their new guide to help unravel some of the confusion and you can get started here

If you require any other help on matter related to online marketing Richard or Jules will be happy to take your call 0845 164 5025

Google Launches a Guide to Using +1 is a post from: SELMOR- Relationship Marketing

Facebook Holds 90% Of Social Market

Facebook currently receives 90% of all social networks traffic!

We at selmor have said this all along.  If you have a B-C business the place to be is Facebook because that is where your customers are spending most of their time. We don’t say to ignore Myspace, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others just concentrate your efforts on Facebook.  If you are a B-B business LinkedIn is your best bet.  Twitter is for celebs and public figures and MySpace is mostly a music community now.

To remind us of just how major Facebook’s F8 announcements on music and media on Facebook were, comScore created this chart of time spent on various social networks. 90% of all time on social networks is spent on Facebook, with other the other 10% split between Myspace, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others.

If you would like to know more about how Facebook marketing can help your business please get in touch on 0845 164 5025 of contact us here

Facebook Holds 90% Of Social Market is a post from: SELMOR- Relationship Marketing

What Is Facebook Subscription?

Facebook’s latest function, Subscription, is pretty much “Ronseal Quick Drying Wood Stain”, it does exactly what it says on the tin.

Primarily, the subscription feature serves a dual purpose.  The first is the one which will probably get most of the hype is the ability to subscribe to someone who isn’t a friend.  Now before you think Oh wow, I’m going to go and find Mark Zukerbergs profile and subscribe to him, there are 2 factors you need to take into consideration:-

1. Has he set his profile to allow subscribers?
2. Has he set up his privacy settings to be found?

If you are able to find and subscribe to the personal profiles of people who interest you, you will then receive any public updates they make, within your news feed.  It may be worth noting that depending on how the followed person sets up their subscriber settings, you may or may not be able to comment on these updates.

The second purpose which will probably see most use statistically, is the ability for you to control what updates you see from your friends. This is a fantastic feature as it will dramatically reduce a lot of news feed activity to things that interest you rather than currently where you have a lot of items which just don’t!

As this process is rolled out, you will see all of your friends have a subscribe button.  As friends, your already subscribed to them, so as stated above, this is where you can control what updates you actually see such as Games, Photos, Updates etc.  Again, any non-friends have to allow people to subscribe to them or you won’t see the subscribe option.

Subscribe Vs Page
Why subscribe when we have fan pages? Well firstly, as I’m sure most will know, Facebook TOS clearly states that profiles are for real persons only, so brands like Coca-Cola or Budweiser for example, can only have a page. Now celebrities, public figures and such are real people, so they are allowed personal profiles. These people may prefer to allow subscribers instead of having a fan page so it’s less to monitor and maintain. But it is purely optional, you can choose one or the other method, or perhaps even both.

The key differences are, a profile with subscription is only great if all you want to do is personally connect with your followers. With a Page you have many marketing features to help brand your page and promote your product. In short, you can monitize much more efficiently with a page than you can with a subscriber.

If you need to know more about “What is a facebook subscription?” feel free to ask in the comments or get in touch directly.

What Is Facebook Subscription? is a post from: SELMOR- Relationship Marketing

Incoming search terms:

• what is subscription in facebook
• what is a subscription on facebook
• what is subscription on facebook
• subscription in facebook
• facebook subscription
• subscription facebook
• what is subscription
• subscription on facebook
• what is subscribe in facebook
• subscribe facebook

Facebook Profile vs Facebook Page

If you are a business wanting to get on Facebook then you want it to make more money for you. Profile pages are meant for friends and family. Business pages are meant for business.  Sadly, too any businesses’ misguidedly use a profile page instead of a business page for their business.   Below are the pros and cons of each.

Profiles Benefits
You can proactively ask people to be friends
You can post directly on friends/customers’ walls
You can direct message friends/customers but only 20 at a time

Profile Drawbacks
It is against Facebook terms of service for a business to use a profile as you would have access to personal data.
This is also against UK privacy legislation, partly why Facebook added it to their terms of service.
Limited to 5000 friends.
Facebook can close your account at any point for breach of service terms.
No marketing tools available to you.
No Branding opportunities.
You can’t bulk message friends.
If you’re using only a Profile page, you’re missing out BIG time!

Business Page (aka fan page) Benefits

• You can make money with a business page
• You can customise a business page
• It is not limited to only 5000 fans
• Your fans get to see your updates in their news feed
• Your fans can interact with you and your business
• You can bulk message all your fans in one go.

BIGGER BENEFITS

• Your guests/customers can “check in” to a fan page, this advertises your business to their 150+ local friends for free.
• Special Marketing Tools: Facebook and Facebook app developers (Selmor.co.uk are facebook app developers) have a whole range of tools that are designed specifically for Pages and business growth.
• You can “BRAND” a business page
• You can insert your own website right into Facebook
• You can make sales right on the page
• Insights are available to you (Insights help you measure the effectiveness of your communication. Insights give you measurements of the amount of impressions a particular status update has vs the amount of feedback, the demographic breakdown of the users on your Page, the languages people speak, top cities where people are from, and graphs that show interactions with multimedia such as pictures, video, and audio)
• You can access Facebook’s advertising platform (which allows you to specify how much you’re willing to spend, and target people primarily based on their likes and interests section.  Facebook’s Ad platform allows you to have a greater control over who interacts with your content. Meaning only the people who are going to be the most interested in what you have to say will be seeing your content on a regular basis)

Business Page Drawbacks

Can take time to manage and attend to customer’s needs but hey, you would have to do that anyway!

To find out more about Facebook fan pages for your business call Jules or Richard today on 0845 164 5025

Facebook Profile vs Facebook Page is a post from: SELMOR- Relationship Marketing

Why should my business be on facebook?

Facebook Business Facts

There are some pretty compelling reasons why you should include social media and particularly facebook as part of your marketing strategy:

65% of Facebook users are 25 and older.
40% of Facebook users are over 35.
The fastest growing demographic continues to be 55+.

Your customers are already there, facebook is the de-facto social media platform with over 800 million users worldwide so you can be sure that your current and future customers will be on facebook.  Do you even know how to interact with them?

Your competitors are probably already ahead of you as over 800,000 local businesses have created a facebook page and are engaging their old and new customers daily.

If you think social media is a fad; think again!
If you don’t understand facebook; read on!

Creating your Facebook business page is simple, you can easily do it yourself because facebook steps you through the process without the need for any technical stuff.

It is also easy to update a facebook business page.  Whether you have a weekend special offer, a clearance offer or simply announcing a new product or service updating your page notifies all your fans in one go.

Facebook gives you the opportunity to interact and communicate directly with your customers in ways never before possible without any technical know how. You can share videos, share and upload pictures, link to your website or any other website and get your customers talking about your business, this is shared virally with all their friends bringing you brand new customers and reviving lapsed ones.

Facebook also helps your online rankings in getting your business found online by potential new customers.  So if you are still wondering Why should my business be on facebook?

To discuss options open to you and your business…. Call Jules or Richard for an informal chat on 0845 164 5025

The Three Facebook Options

Facebook offers three types of tools, each with a different set of features and intended use.

Profile
A profile is a personal facebook page, it must be a real person, most folks refer to their “profile” as their “facebook page”.

It is where you connect with friends and family. Both parties must agree to be friends. Friends have a personal level of interaction and personal data is shared such as photos, DOB, phone numbers, email address’s etc.
You should not accept a friend request from a business for obvious security reasons.

Page
For business use mainly and as such usually referred to as a “fan page” to separate it from a personal profile.

Intended for non-personal use for business, public figures, authors, bands and others. Facebook refers to this as your official page. You make a connection when one person (a fan) decides to like the page (or the business it represents). Facebook used to call these “likes” your business fans, so the term “fan” is still used to describe this relationship today.

The important thing to remember is when someone likes your page, they are automatically advertising the fact to every single one of their friends on facebook, most of whom live locally, so for a local business to miss out on this viral and free advertising is absolute business suicide, you can be sure your competitor will be scooping up your customers if you are not there.

Group
Groups have changed considerably over the last few months. They used to be for causes or common interest and as a group owner you had considerable marketing power in that you could direct message every member in bulk with just one click.

This has all changed and groups are now much more focused and used mainly for collaboration purposes. Groups are not really suitable for business except as an internal communication tool.

Call 0845 164 5025 and ask for Jules or Richard.  The possibilities are immense to learn in more detail “Why should my business be on facebook?” today on 0845 164 5025.

Why Should My Business Be On Facebook is a post from: SELMOR- Relationship Marketing

Incoming search terms:

• facebook
• Why Should I have My Company on Facebook
• Why facebook for business
• facebook for business
• face book
• why should my business be on facebook
• why my business be on facebook
• why should a business have a facebook page
• why use facebook for business

Restaurant Marketing

Selmor offer a highly specialised restaurant marketing service. Instant Response Marketing (IRM) is innovative and devastating in its results.

Once everything is in place, it takes a week or so to set up and get started, you will have the ability to contact your own customers old and new directly and instantly with your offers for free. Thats right, offer after offer direct to your own customers and it will not cost you a penny!

Now you can compete with the big boys like McDonalds, KFC and Dominos with their big budget TV ad campaigns but it can be free to you. You also will be able to place your offers for today on their screens in their homes today. You will also have your customers promoting your business to their friends for you in the process without even realising they are doing it.

We’ll be using the magic of Facebook, the all powerful social marketing platform where your customers already congregate and talk about your business, if you are not there to garner them as fans they will surely be tempted by your competitors.  Imagine being able to make an offer to hundreds of local customers at the click of a button!

But that’s not all….  That is only the first part, the next few pieces of the puzzle combine it into the power house marketing strategy the we call IRM!  So powerful that once in place, you can fill your restaurant with paying customers time and time again still at the click of a button, as and when you have need or space in your bookings sheet.

If you want to know more about “Instant Response Marketing” call Jules or Richard on 0845 164 5025 today

We will guarantee you a 100% Return on Investment or you pay nothing subject to conditions.

If we fail to generate enough gross profits in your business to pay for itself plus 100% ROI by the time it is completed, we’ll keep working for free until it does.

Since we take on all the risk for your success, we are very careful about selecting clients who can achieve a positive ROI – even with minimum response rates.  If qualified, we will help you to ensure that the entire service pays for itself as rapidly and reliably as possible.  The guarantee is really that simple.

If you are at all considering whether this service might be right for your business, you need to schedule your Marketing Strategy Session immediately.

Call us now and discover how to take your restaurant marketing forward with IRM by Selmor.

Restaurant Marketing is a post from: SELMOR- Relationship Marketing

Incoming search terms:

• how to market a restaurant
• restaurant marketing
• restaurant marketing plan
• uk restaurant marketing plan

Mobile Website Designer

The latest addition to the Selmor stable of search engine friendly products is Mobile Website Design.  It appears there is currently a shortage of mobile website designers, particularly here in the UK as they seem to have taken off quicker in the US although currently demand is high for those of us providing the service often described as mobile optimisation.

Mobile Optimisation

Now you may have heard of this before but despite the number of people accessing websites from their iPhones, Blackberries or other smart phones for example, less than 1% of UK businesses have taken the plunge so far, by optimising their site for mobile browsers. Naturally these are the usual suspects, market leaders, trend setters and generally those with bigger budgets, but that’s not to say its an expensive process. Far from it, Facebook, Domino’s, The BBC, Hilton Hotels, William Hill, Ford Motors and of course Google, have all take the plunge and become mobile optimised.

Due to the abundance of smart phones, the majority of folks are now web enabled 24/7, which means they can now search on line the instant they have an idea or need. The trend for mobile search is only going to increase and these alone, are great reasons to have your website mobile optimised but there is much more…..   Your “mobile website designer” will be handing you a whole new kingdom.

The easiest way to explain mobile optimisation is via a demonstration, so you’re going to need use of a smart phone for this.
Rather than me give a long winded speech about mobile optimisation, below you will see 2 links. All you need to do is first view both links via your web browser on your computer.
http://www.numerion.co.uk/
http://www.selmor.co.uk

Now view those same websites via your smartphones and the difference between a mobile optimised website and a non-optimised website becomes all too clear, literally.  You see it’s not about making it smaller, it’s more about making it more user friendly on a mobile device.

Mobile Website Designers Tips

This brings huge benefit to you in that you can serve your customers the information they need in a simplified format. Surveys have shown, mobile browsers are predominantly looking for any (or all) of the following 4 things:-

• Services/Products Offered
• Location
• Contact Details
• Hours of Business

By providing this in an easy to use format you are light years ahead of your competitors and I believe over the next twelve months we will start to see a divergence in search engine results between mobile and desktop devices and that as more and more business’s start to embrace mobile optimised websites Google will start to serve them up to mobile browsers first.

Thank you again for you time reading this and I hope it has been informative and of some benefit to your business.

If you would like to speak to our very own tame mobile website designer call Jules right now on 0845 164 5025

Mobile Website Designer is a post from: SELMOR- Relationship Marketing

Incoming search terms:

• mobile website design
• mobile website designer

Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Optimisation

You almost certainly found our website by using a search engine coupled with the fact that we intentionally wanted to be found for the search term….

Search Engine Optimisation

Most people (about 80%) start their search to find all manner of information, products and conduct research online.  Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask (Yahoo and Bing have now merged) play a major role in the success or failure of your business online.

Frankly, what’s the point of having a website if nobody can find it?  Or equaly badly… Are you being being found for something you don’t provide?

“Search Engine Optimisation” or SEO means preparing the pages of your website so as to make them relevant to the search engines in an effort to rank in the SERPs (Search Engine Reslults Pages) for the keywords you want to rank for. Well that’s a part of it, thats the part that is known as “ON-Page” search engine optimisation (the stuff you can do on the site).

Then you have to contend with “OFF Page” search engine optimisation,  that is something that happens naturally if you have an active website, which is continually added to with good quality content/information, such as a news site or a well known brand.  Other websites will start to mention or even recommend you and this gives you relevant links back to your website (back-links).  These are like votes to the search engines and increase your ranking by popularity. Some websites carry more weight than others.

Local search engine optimisation is what we do for a local business when they are only interested in customers from their local area.  National or even international search engine optimisation is a different ball game and a longer term strategy than local due to the time it takes to build the required backlinks needed to top the existing competition.  If you are in a very competitive niche you can be sure that SEO is going to be part of your strategy for a long time as all the competing websites are working to keep you off the first page just as hard as you are trying to get there.

Local Search Engine Optimisation

Fortunately a local business does have a huge advantage in the form of Google Maps or as they are now referred to Google Place Pages.  These are provided free by google to any business but you have to claim it.  Then you have to optimise it!

Why?

Simply because Local SEO is still in its infancy compared to national SEO, most local business’s are asleep when it comes to internet marketing.  Not only have thousands of business’s not claimed their Places page, many more business’s don’t even know they exist and of those that have claimed them about 90% are NOT optimised.

Local Search Engine Optimisation

This means for the savvy business owner, who has had the good sense to talk to a search engine optimisation professional, will understand exactly how mush business can be had online and how to optimise for it and get it before his competitor.  Those business’s that wake up later will have to enter the race when every one else loong gone ahead.  Ultimately this will cost you more the longer you stay asleep.

If you have a business and you are not online you are losing business to your competitors and you don’t even know it. Depending on your business that could be costing you anything from a few hundred pounds a month to millions of pounds a year.  When you do wake up, do something about it immediately; like spaek to a search engine optimisation expert and see how much business is out there before you decide this internet thing is not for your business.

Your business type will also have a bearing on what is the best type of search engine optimisation for you.  Other factors at play are the extent of competition, what you sell and who you sell to.  More on this in the next post where we will look a little deaper into Local SEO Services – Local Search Engine Optimisation Services

Search Engine Optimisation is a post from: SELMOR- Relationship Marketing

Incoming search terms:

• local search

Google Places Local

You can submit your own Google Places Local listing as shown in the video but to get it to out rank your competition so people can actually find you, WILL require the work of an experienced Google Places Optimisation expert.

Google Places Local, (previously Google Maps) has introduced a range of new features including local search and map listings, real-time updates, custom codes and coupons, and even photos and videos for local businesses.

Google places local listings have been changing of late. The Location War going on right now has many fronts, but it is being funded by one thing: convincing local businesses to spend money on online advertising.

Google Places Local- Escalating The War

By making a big push to become the defacto directory for local businesses on the Web but they are not currently charging for “Google Places Local” listings in the UK, although they have been experimenting in other countries with paid Google places local listing options.

One out of every five searches is related to location, but local search still represents a relatively small portion of Google’s revenues. Google wants local businesses to claim their Google Places pages (4 million have already done so), update them and at some point maybe buy local search advertising.

Google Places Local Is Evolving

In the last few weeks alone, Google places local has been undergoing some pretty interesting changes as they seem to be merging both forms of search results and local search results can now vary from the traditional Google places local listing to a combination of Google places local listings mixed in with organic results.

A Brief Explanation:
Organic Search: Customer types in “dog grooming” this will bring up all sorts of results including how to tips etc. This will not be much use to someone looking for a dog groomer in Preston.

Local Search: Customer types in “dog grooming Preston” the addition of the location triggers the google places listings to appear, as in the example below. If you google places page is well optimised you will appear on the first page of results or even th coveted “A” spot! Click the image below to enlarge.

Google Places Local Ranking

Getting your business ranked in Google places was once a fairly simple affair however, over recent years as more and more business’s come online, the space has become more competitive and so the services of professionals are in more demand to make sure your customers find your Google places listing before they find your competitor
Businesses can also add real-time updates to their Google Places page (a feature that was switched on earlier this year), define the areas they serve, and services they provide.

Google Places Local Timing

Google Places is now more than ever a fantastic vehicle for local lead generation and businesses to gain an advantage over their competition with a Google Places listing that shows up high in search results. However, placing a listing has become more technical than it once was and so to ensure you have a good placement giving you maximum possible exposure, you should talk to us about our Google Places Listing Service please Call 0845 164 5025 or complete our call back form and we’ll call you!

Looking Forward…

Google Places is designed for one-off searches, and is powerful as a search tool a far as it goes. What is missing, however, is the social aspect.

Currently businesses cannot add their Twitter streams or Facebook pages to Google Places Local but I’m sure in time we will see this develop. How do you establish an ongoing online relationship with customers with Google Places?

Watch this space for more on Google Places Local!

Google Places Local is a post from: SELMOR- Relationship Marketing