Tommorrow, Facebook will launch its new feature, Facebook Places.
Following the initial and encouraging success of other location-based social networking platforms like FourSquare, Gowalla and Yelp, Facebook have introduced a similar, but they say very different, element to their existing platform.
Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said yesterday, “There are three main things that we are trying to do with Places, help people share where they are in a nice and social way; show who is around you; and finally help you to you see what is going on, and to help you discover new places and things to do.”
Sounds a lot like FourSquare to me! Read more ›
This is my 100th blog post on The Bowditch Group’s blog.
(OK, actually it’s my 104th – I forgot about the milestone coming up and kinda missed it. But let’s just pretend it’s my 100th blog post.)
I have taken the opportunity this morning to look back through some of the old stuff and plan for the future as well. It’s really hard to objectively look at your own work and appraise it but even I can honestly say that some of the stuff I wrote early on is just crap.
Also, it’s interesting that a few opinion I fervently gave in the early days are no longer my opinions – due in large part to the other bloggers I have networked and interacted with since kicking all of this off. I have learnt so much from other people and I’m sure I will continue to as well. The blogging community is generally a very generous one and I am grateful for all of the help, advice and criticism I have received along the way.
Here is some of what I learnt when I reviewed the blog over its 6 month life thus far: Read more ›
My most read post of all time was 15 things you should be doing on Linkedin but probably aren’t, having had more than 10,000 visits now.
But I can honestly say that I still don’t really use this great platform to its full potential.
Later today, I am going to a client’s office to help her optimise her Liinkedin profile and show her some tips and tricks to get more out of Linkedin, and that article will obviously be the basis of most of what I go through with her.
But I must have missed at least a few things that I either omitted or just plain didn’t know about. So I would like your help.
What have you found has helped you get more out of Linkedin? What could I, and my readers, be doing to improve the usability of it and get a greater return from it? Read more ›
In the first post of this 3 part series, I talked about how to target your ads very specifically so as to get the absolute best value from them. This is made a lot easier by the inbuilt filtering of the Facebook Ads platform so that the ads only appear on the profiles of those who you have targeted rather than them appearing on every profile regardless of that user being in your target market or not.
In this post, I will share the secrets of writing compelling headlines, the right copy and the perfect image.
These are, in some ways, the most obvious reason for an ad succeeding or failing, but it can also be very difficult to get the copy right and sometimes I have changed just a few words in the copy or changed the headline slightly or used a completely different image and the ad has gone from no clicks to hundreds in one day.
Don’t forget … I am running a special offer this week on Facebook Ads giving you 20% off the normal campaign prices. It’s only for this week and if you want to take advantage of this great offer, you need to click here now.
So let’s start with what potential customers are going to be drawn too first: the headline. Read more ›
This is the first of the transcripts from the hugely successful SmallBizOnline 2010 event that I held at Treetops Resort at Avoca Beach on Wednesday 30th June 2010.
All of the presentations from our amazing speakers were audio recorded and painstakingly transcribed by The Transcription People – a fellow small business based on the Central Coast of NSW.
In this session, Virtual Assistant Nicole Hammett of Little Miss Useful shared her secrets to outsourcing some (or even all!) of your business to virtual assistants – and the ups and downs of that process.
Please note: These presentations weren’t scripted and they were highly interactive so from a transcription point of view, reading them can be a bit disjointed and detached at times. This is not the fault of the transcription but rather an inherent problem with doing presentations that involve off-the-cuff remarks, humour and audience participation – the way that we want it of course! Please keep that in mind when you are reading the transcript. Read more ›
This is the first of a six part series about how to put together a complete online marketing plan for a small business.
I have blogged before about the need, not only to put together a comprehensive online marketing plan, but to really believe in it. And the best way to make sure everyone in your organisation is on the same page when it comes to your online efforts is to give them a formalised picture of it – even if your whole organisation is just you.
This is what we do for our small business clients when they first sign up with us – give them a diagram that represents what we are going to achieve online and which platforms are going to help us do it. It’s important that they are included and that they can see the benefit from which of the 27 points on the plan that we decide to adopt for their business.
There is basically 7 prongs to the overall online marketing plan for most small businesses. I suggest that every small business utilises at least one platform from each of the following 7 prongs: blogging, social networking platforms, complimentary social networking, groups/communities, events/networking, advertising and measurement. Read more ›
This is the first of a series of guest blogs from James Hallam, a fellow Aussie blogger who also blogs about small and medium-sized business and how they can make the web work harder for them.
I really like James’ writing style and, although it can be pretty in-your-face, it’s also always sensible, simple and features common-sense solutions to everyday problems faced by small businesses and their blogging effort.
In this post, he goes through the 6 reasons your blog sucks and nobody’s game to tell you.
Reason 1: It’s about you.
Unless you’re Lady Gaga, nobody cares what you’re wearing today. Have a look at your text. How many times do you say “I”, and how many times do you say “you”?
“I’s” should be approaching zero, and “you’s” should total a very big number. Remember that everyone else has the same problem you do – they all think they’re the most interesting person in the world. So put yourself in their shoes and talk about them for a change. Read more ›
Judging from the great feedback and interest I received after posting the first part of The Secret to Designing Facebook Ads That Actually Make Money, I have decided to offer a special discount for new Facebook Advertising Campaigns booked in this week only.
The campaign includes working with you to determine the right Facebook users to target the ads to based on your market’s location, demographics, likes and interests, education and work, and their connections already made on Facebook.
Then I develop compelling headlines and the right text in the ad to really capture the Facebook user’s attention and direct them in specific terms to do what you want them to – click through to a sale, ‘Like’ your Facebook Page, sign up to your database or whatever it is.
Next, I work with a series of different images and through a series of split testing over the first few days of the ad campaign, I determine which headline, copy and image work best to get users to click through to your landing page or your Facebook Page.
These prices DO NOT include your bid and budget for the advertisements during the month. Your budget for the spend can start at just $1.00 per day.
Remember, the more targeted you make the potential reach of the ads, the better value they will be. Read more ›
Tommorrow, Facebook will launch its new feature, Facebook Places.
