Hurricane Preparedness for your High Tech Devices
Not since 1991 Hurricane Bob has a hurricane threatened the Cape Cod area. With the abundance of social media tools, mobile devices, and so many websites on the Internet news and information is readily available with the click of a mouse or a tap on your screen.
Here are some helpful tips to prepare yourself in the event Hurricane Earl affects Cape Cod or if there is another natural disaster in your area in the future:
Before the storm
- Be sure your laptop and mobile devices are fully charged.
- Purchase a car adapter for your laptop and mobile device. If you loose power, you can always use the car as a power source.
- If you use a router, check to see if there is a battery back up for it or better yet connect it to your generator. Rember even if there is an internet connection but you loose power you router will not work.
- Create favorites or bookmarks of important sources of information like www.weather.gov, www.fema.gov, your local news stations, red cross, and town web sites. If you are on Cape Cod we have created some favorites at http://www.delicious.com/capecodsocialmedia.
- On facebook be sure to “like” or become a fan of these websites you have bookmarked and on twitter you can follow them or create a list of them for others to follow.
- Download weather, hurricane, and safety related applications on your mobile devices. A flashlight application will help out if you loose power. If you have a Kindle download some good books to read.
During the storm:
- Update your status so friends and family can follow developments and include a time you expect to make your next update. You can use facebook places to make updates as to where your location is.
- If it is safe to do so, take pictures with you camera or mobile device to document the storm and help out emergency personnel.
- Listen to local radio stations for updates. Alternatively, you could listen live via the radio station’s website with your computer or laptop.
- Track the storm on your computer, laptop, or mobile device so you can be aware of what is happening with the storm and be aware of when it is safe to venture outside.
Please add any additional information that will help others prepare for and deal with a severe storm.
How to Maximize your Facebook Page Name
If you have had the good fortune of having children do you remember how much time and energy went into naming your child? The same time and energy should be put into creating your facebook page name. Now that facebook has surpassing google with worldwide traffic – http://www.google.com/trends?q=facebook,+google . You might want to reconsider your facebook page name to increase your facebook page presence and your social media optimization.
Case in point. Say your have a cleaning company called Acme Cleaners, Inc. on Cape Cod and you specialize in the laundry service for consumers. If you picked “Acme Cleaners, Inc.” then everyone that likes your page or makes a comment on your page would post on their wall the following:
“Jane Smith likes Acme Cleaners, Inc.” or Jane Smith likes Acme Cleaners, Inc’s status”
If everyone on Cape Cod knew who Acme Cleaners, Inc was then your facebook page name would be fine. However, what if Acme Cleaners, Inc. is just starting out and not many people know about them?
If the facebook page name was called “Acme Cleaners – Cape Cod’s preferred laundry service for your dirty clothes” then the wall posts would look like this:
“Jane Smith likes “Acme Cleaners – Cape Cod’s preferred laundry service for your dirty clothes.” or Jane Smith likes “Acme Cleaners – Cape Cod’s preferred laundry service for your dirty clothes status”
The difference in the facebook page name clearly shows what service Acme Cleaners provides. People on Cape Cod are more likely to become a fan of Acme Cleaners and take advantage of their promotions, laundry service advice, enter the dirty laundry sweepstakes and everything else that Acme Cleaners posts on their facebook page.
You can even take this one step further by useing google’s search tool to find out the most popular local key words are for your website and your business. Then based on that research you can add some of those keywords into your facebook page name.
On a side note, if you already have your facebook page name, Facebook will not allow you to edit the name. You will need to create a new one and delete the old one.
Take the extra step to do the google research, be creative with your name, and enlist the assistance of your trusted advisors to come up with a great Facebook page name for your business. If you don’t have the time, we are available for hire to consult with to create the perfect name for your business and design a customized facebook page to engage and entice your fans.
Facebook Landing Tabs
By now you’ve been following facebook and probably have a facebook fanpage or a facebook profile for your business. You’ve probably posted some useful information to your fanbase and updated your status with events happening this summer. So now where do you take our facebook page? How do you get “to the next level.”
What is a landing page?
A landing page is a page on your facebook fan page that a user can go to. You can make it the default landing tab on for non-fans by editing your page and changing the wall settings. Some studies have shown a conversion rate of visitors to fans increased 24% with a landing page. Here are some great examples of landing page:
http://www.facebook.com/Starbucks
http://www.facebook.com/adidasoriginals
How to create a landing page?
You have a couple of options, but it depends on how much time and money you want to spend on it. If you’re a self-expert and have the time and patience, then you can learn all the fbml programming language here http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/fbml/ . If you get stuck, you can do some research on line or contact us for some assistance.
If you’re web savy enough, then you can probably create your own landing page with some 3rd party applications that are available. Most of these are template based, so your customization can be limited, but it is a great way to save some money and set yourself apart from your competition. Here are some of the programs available:
http://www.facebook.com/FanPageEngine
http://northsocial.com/store/first-impression/
If you like this concept to create your facebook landing page but aren’t web savy enough, we’d be glad to put it all together for you.
The last option is to have a customized landing page developed by a professional programmer for your business, organization or non-profit. You can do a Google search, post your gig at www.craigslist.com, or hire us to do the work for you.
Once you’ve created your landing page, we’d love to see them and hear your success stories.
Facebook for Your Business
In this learn at lunch event we uncover the black hole about social media and explain it in terms you can understand. We show you why facebook is such a powerful social media marketing tool to reach your target audience and the reason behind facebook applications. We then wrap up the event with creative ways to attract, retain, engage and entice your fans to get your facebook fanpage to grow like
a bountiful garden.
Our learn at lunch events are designed for people who want to combine education with a great meal. We provide a 1 hour seminar on various social media subjects in a relaxed and friendly environment at your favorite Cape Cod restaurant. This one is at Scargo Cafe in Dennis, MA .All of our events are “hands on” so you have the opportunity to apply what you are learning immediately on your own laptop. While lunch is being served the event wraps up with a question and answer period.
Facebook For Your Business
In this learn at lunch event we uncover the black hole about social media and explain it in terms you can understand. We show you why facebook is such a powerful social media marketing tool to reach your target audience and the reason behind facebook applications. We then wrap up the event with creative ways to attract, retain, engage and entice your fans to get your facebook fanpage to grow like
a bountiful garden.
Our learn at lunch events are designed for people who want to combine education with a great meal. We provide a 1 hour seminar on various social media subjects in a relaxed and friendly environment at your favorite Cape Cod restaurant. This one is at Scargo Cafe in Dennis, MA .All of our events are “hands on” so you have the opportunity to apply what you are learning immediately on your own laptop. While lunch is being served the event wraps up with a question and answer period.
Facebook for your Business
This learn at lunch event is for those wanting to grow their existing business with facebook. You will learn the advantages a facebook page has to offer versus a profile or group. The correct way to setup a facebook page, how to install applications to your fan page, how to attract and retain fans, and how to engage your facebook fans.
Our learn at lunch events are designed for people who want to combine education with a great meal. We provide a 1 – 1 1/2 hour seminar on various social media subjects in a relaxed and friendly environment at your favorite Cape Cod restaurant. All of our seminar are “hands on” so you have the opportunity to apply what you are learning immediately on your own laptop. The seminar is followed by a lunch with a question and answer period.
Price – $60 per person includes the seminar, lunch , and a non-alcoholic beverage.
In House Seminars
We can customize a seminar for your specific business or organization and teach your employees how to use social media to increase sales, provide professional on line customer service, and how to engage customers to spread the good word to their friends about your business. We will show your employees how to properly setup their social media profiles, how to set their security settings properly, and provide tips on what to do and things to avoid. All of our training is “hands on” meaning your employees use a laptop or computer at the seminar and actually do the things we are talking about.
These seminars can be done at your place of business, at a restaurant, or any location of your choice.
Price – $350 for a 1 1/2 hour session (up to 12 employees)
Learn at Lunch
Our learn at lunch seminars are designed for people who want to combine education with a great meal. We provide a 1 hour seminar on various social media subjects in a relaxed and friendly environment at your favorite Cape Cod restaurant. All of our seminar are “hands on” so you have the opportunity to apply what you are learning immediately on your own laptop. The seminar is followed by a lunch with a question and answer period.
Price – $45 per person includes lunch and a non-alcoholic beverage
Automatic VS Manual: Friends Or Enemies?
Just like a car’s transmission, you can now choose to update your social media feeds automatically or manually. Choosing your method is not as simple as “which one is better?”. You should take into account the social media feed and your situation. For example, with a car if you’re buying an Audi mainly for performance reasons, you’ll probably want to stick to a manual and use that power. But if you’re a city commuter who doesn’t want to shift those gears on the drive home, go with an automatic. If you’ll be going to the mountains a lot, dealing with mud and rain, then a manual transmission is likely to hold up wonderfully. Are you a power person, commuter, or are you driving in the mountains?
Advantages of automatic feed updates:
- Able to schedule when updates occur.
- Saves time by creating all your updates at one time for the day or week.
- Harmonize your updates when your clients are live on social media sites.
Disadvantages of automatic feed updates:
- Updates can become stale and lack authenticity.
- Too many updates can turn off clients and be interpreted as spam.
- Updates can be out dated or irrelevant.
In conclusion, automatic makes us more efficient and productive but use it sparingly and when it is appropriate and remember it is quality not quantity that counts. Whether you are using automatic or manual updates, be sure to follow the basic social media guidelines.
Here are some tools that will help you automate.
Socialoomph is a great tool to schedule tweets, set up your automated direct messages and even set up automatic ‘follow’ or ‘unfollow’ rules for your account. You can also schedule status updates and wall updates on Facebook (with a professional account). In addition to automatic updates, Socialoomph has a lot more features including: brand monitoring, weed out spam, track keywords, find relevant twitter followers and much more. To receive all the tools of Socialoomph you need a professional account, but they do have a free trial so you can take it for a test drive.
Hootsuite allows you to integrate Facebook, LinkedIn and Ping.fm status updates, allowing you to manage your social profiles from one location, and to schedule updates in advance. It also lets users manage their entire Twitter experience from one easy-to-use interface. With HootSuite, users can manage multiple Twitter profiles with multiple editors on each, schedule tweets, track stats, RSS their content, and more. Best of all it is free 
Stay tuned for our next post about other social media applications that help you organize all your accounts in one place.
Event Promoting – Going Green with Social Media
It’s another cold day on Cape Cod and a great time to work on your business plan for 2010. Since we are a tourist destination, a lot of businesses rely on the summer season to get their cash registers ringing or they come up with creative ways to get a ringing in the off season with special promotions and events. Most business owners send out a postcard, a newsletter, or an electronic newsletter promoting their event. That is just the tip of the iceberg to market your event. Here is a list of tools and websites you can use to enhance your event promotions and get others to promote the event for you.
Facebook Events– You can create an event on your facebook fan page or profile with all the information, photos, website links etc…and send an invitation to all your fans and or friends about the event. Once your fan receives your invitation, you want to come up with ways for that fan to SHARE the event with his or her friends to create that many to many connection and get others to promote your event. You can also export your event(say to Google Calendar) or copy and past the url of your event to your website, blog, etc…In addition to posting your event on Facebook, you can use facebook ads to promote your event to a specific target group. For example, if you are having a wine tasting event you can target people over age 21 on Cape Cod.
Twitter’s key is retweeting and hashtags. With all those followers you have with your twitter account you can ask them to help promote your event by retweeting it for you. Perhaps offer an incentive for retweeting. Another key ingredient is to use an effective hashtag for your event and promote it. Create a new hashtag but be sure it isn’t used by someone else already.
Online Web Sites – Socializr and Evite are free online services providing innovative ways to share event and party information with your friends. You can also post your event on upcoming, Garysguide (for business events), or local Cape Cod Web Sites like Cape Cod Today or Cape Cod Times.
Google Calendar- Lets you create invitations for special events, send those invitations to friends, and keep track of responses and comments all in one place. You can export your facebook event and import it into your Google Calendar.
During your event be sure to have someone take photos and videos so you can post your media and thank all those that have attended. On facebook you can create a photo album of your event and then tag people. Once a person is tagged it shows up on their wall for their friend to see. You can also upload photos to the Flickr account and post videos on YouTube (Vimeo and Viddler are also good alternatives). Post recordings of your live video streams as well (you did have a live video stream or two, right?).
We’d love to hear your comments about your next event and what ideas you used from this blog post. If you have any other suggestions for promoting events, please share what you know.
