by Kimberly | Nov 6, 2010 | Blog, Facebook, Featured, Social Media
Facebook announced this week the launch of Facebook Deals for local business which ties in directly with their Facebook Places feature. Sounds remarkably similar to Foursquare but Facebook has a much, much larger user base. Will this blow Foursquare and other geo-location services out of the game? This is yet another feature that local businesses need to be on top of and figure out how to use it to their advantage. Foursquare and Yelp already have proven track records of helping driving customers to businesses. Now, the biggest player of them all has stepped into the ring. Most business have heard or know that they really should have a presence on Facebook with a Business Fan Page. How Facebook Places and Deals Help Local Business Build loyal customers Visibility- when someone checks in at your Facebook Place, it shows up on their profile and in the News Feed for all their friends to see. In order for a business to be able to create a deal in Facebook, they will need to have claimed their Facebook Place first. Then you can create a Facebook deal, wait to get it approved by Facebook and then promote it. Users can find Facebook Deals when they check in at different locations using Facebook Places for Android or the Facebook iPhone App. There are four kinds of deals currently available. Individual Deals- Discounts, freebies and coupons for individual users that check in Friend Deals- You and other friends check in together to claim a deal. Loyalty Deals- Earn a deal or a discount based on checking in a certain number of times. Charity...
by Kimberly | Aug 10, 2010 | Blog, Featured, How to, Social Media, social media marketing, Twitter
There are several different options available to help you manage multiple social media accounts at once. Among the most popular are Tweetdeck, Seesmic and Hootsuite. Depending on your needs and desire for access, then you might consider each one of these for different reasons. All of them have a web version and apps for iPhone. Tweetdeck and Seesmic also have downloadable desktop versions. For everyday non-mobile use, I have found Hootsuite to be my preferred social media management tool. Hootsuite provides you with a comprehensive social media dashboard for managing multiple social media accounts and platforms all in once place. First built as a Twitter management tool, Hootsuite has grown to include the ability to post to LinkedIn, Facebook, Facebook pages, Ping.fm, MySpace, WordPress, Foursquare and importing RSS feeds. With Hootsuite, you can pull in multiple Twitter accounts, multiple Facebook profiles, multiple LinkedIn accounts, etc. For Twitter accounts, you can quickly and easily view your Home Feed, your @ mentions, your sent tweets, your direct messages, plus add columns for any of your Twitter lists, columns to monitor keywords or key phrases, and a pending tweets column for any scheduled tweets. You can have up to 10 columns for each twitter account showing at one time. I typically add a few columns for monitoring keywords and a few more columns for lists of specific twitterers for different purposes. For example, I might like to keep up on the tweets of my colleagues, social media people and local friends. Hootsuite makes it easy to reply, re-tweet, send a direct message, add a tweet as a favorite, reply all (for tweets...
by Kimberly | Jun 17, 2010 | Blog, Featured
Any small business or entrepreneur anywhere near an Internet connection these days, will have heard about the importance of using social media as a marketing tool. Many will not know the ins and outs of how to go about getting started or keeping up with their social media efforts. What’s more is that small business owners and entrepreneurs are VERY BUSY and they just do not have time to learn and maintain everything that goes with social media. This is where I come in as a Social Media Virtual Assistant. I help small business owners figure out the what and the how for using social media for their business. We identify what their goals are and how to work towards achieving those goals and some measurable outcomes in using social media for business. I can take care of the initial set up, including all the technical aspects along with my recommendations or shortcuts for how to fully optimize a their presence on different social media platforms. I will give suggestions for how to help syndicate their content throughout their networks and I can help set up systems for helping to manage or automate where it seems feasible. My efforts work best and get the best results with clients when there is good, open communication and when the client clearly understands and participates where needed with the different social media platforms and networks. The biggest mistake I encounter in working as a Social Media Virtual Assistant, is that some clients come to the table with a “set it and forget it” mentality despite my best efforts to advise them otherwise....
by Kimberly | May 12, 2010 | Blog, Featured, Social Media, Twitter
Last week, Twitter launched Blackbird Pie where you can post the link to a specific tweet and it will automatically generate code to embed that tweet into your blog post. Previously, most folks were mostly using screenshots to show a tweet or a series of tweets. While the code generate does seem rather long just for one tweet, it does become a pretty handy tool as it includes that Twitter account’s avatar and part of their background. To get the code you need to grab the link for that particular tweet which can be found by clicking on the time stamp listed below in small font underneath a tweet. Usually it says something like “about 2 hours ago.” If you click on that it will take you to a page for that specific tweet and you just need to copy the URL for the page. It usually looks something like this: “http://twitter.com/jkvirtualoffice/status/13878799371” And when you enter it into Blackbird Pie, click “Bake” and it will generate the code for that tweet which you can then paste into your blog post. @TR_Founder a-hem…I think you meant “SaWheeeet!”less than a minute ago via HootSuiteKimberly LeRiche jkvirtualoffice What’s also nice about this feature is that it will generate links to Twitter account of the person who tweeted it as well as to the Twitter accounts of any Twitter folks who might be mentioned in the tweet. Related articles by Zemanta What is Twitter really up to with ‘Blackbird Pie’? (socialmediatoday.com) Twitter Cooks Up The Blackbird Pie Tool To Bake Tweets Into Your Website (techcrunch.com) Twitter Launches Blackbird Pie Tool To...
by Kimberly | Apr 21, 2010 | Blog, Featured, Social Media
Google’s YouTube has recently launched their SearchStories feature which allow you to create video search stories using search terms, and then adding music and easily uploading to your YouTube Channel. You simple enter search terms, which can be either keywords or phrases and then you have the option of showing what comes up for these terms in either a web search, images, blog search, product search, map and a few others. Once you enter a keyword term or phrase, then there will be a preview image listed below your search terms. You then choose a music clip to add. Here is the actual search story video I created for my social media virtual assistant business. You can go here to create your own Search...
by Kimberly | Apr 19, 2010 | Blog, Facebook, Featured, Social Media
So Facebook is making some pretty big (and complicated) changes that will impact significantly how users use, navigate and perceive the platform. Among the biggest change is that users no longer “Become a Fan” of a fan page. Instead they will now “Like” a page and people will no longer be listed as fans, but will be “People who Like This.” Facebook explains the change here: Why did “Become a Fan” change to “Like”? To improve your experience and promote consistency across the site, we’ve changed the language for Pages from “Fan” to “Like.” We believe this change offers you a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which you are interested. They also explain here what it means to “Like” a page: What does it mean to “Like” a Page? When you click “Like” on a Page, you are making a connection to that Page. The Page will be displayed in your profile, and in turn, you will be displayed on the Page as a person who likes that Page. The Page will also be able to post content into your News Feed. So far I’ve found this page in Facebook’s Help Center to be the most comprehensive explanation of how all the changes work and tie together. Along with the “Like” for fan pages, they are launching Community Pages which will link to your profile info so that your interests become links to community pages that reflect these interests. You also have the option of linking your interests to specific fan pages. This, of course, means increased public visibility for your...
