Facebook "Timeline" for pages... is coming!

Just when you thought you had social media figured out, Facebook throws "TIMELINE" at you.  Meaning there are lots of "apps" and new designs, and new ways to use it for your business page.

STARTING MARCH 30, FACEBOOK IS REDESIGNING THE WAY YOUR BUSINESS WILL USE FACEBOOK.  YOU SHOULD GET READY FOR THIS TO MAKE SURE YOU HAVE IT LIKE YOU WANT IT!

Everything is changing, but don't worry, ThriftyHipster has your back.  We'll be discussing how to use timeline and how to best use it for drawing in patrons, what apps to install, how to manage photos... This is going to take several posts.

But anyway, we wanted to introduce you to the topic.

To see what your page will look like in TimeLine, Click Here for Preview.

Branding

• Cover Image: A huge image across your page.  You want to make sure this is NOT an ad, but rather, something that showcases what you're all about.
• About Section: a VERY short, punchy description about your business
• Page Apps: Will now be found on the right side of the "About" section, otherwise, you'll have 4 above the fold.
• No Custom Landing Page: Sorry, this is out, so your specials and fan-grabbing pages will be tough to find (we've figured out a work-around)
• "Like" Customization: depending on who your fans are this might be an issue. We'll discuss this in a future post

Customer Service: New Messaging Platform!

This is pretty cool.  Timeline will allow users to send direct, private messages to your page.  It's important that you set up a channel to deal with incoming messages and a policy to deal with them so you're not perceived as ignoring fans.

Highlights Feed

Basically, greater personalization and friend response is what this will be used for. This is very different than your facebook page of before and allows users to read each feed, jump moments in time, and interact on a whole new level... Meaning that a good strategy with posts and images can really open up new fans and opportunities!
Further, you'll have less control over the friend activity section, so you'll want to make doubly sure to respond to negative feedback immediately.

Composing Updates/Videos/Links... And Milestones

This is probably the coolest new addition to this, is the Milestones.  Set important things that happened to the company, and allow a user to quickly navigate to different milestones so they can track your accomplishments, new product launches, and big events you want to pump up for the future.

Twitter: A Step by Step Guide

A quick rundown on Twitter.  These points will be explained further in future posts. Click the "Twitter" link on the right for a full list of Twitter posts.

1. Sign-up and post a profile. Do it Here.  Write a little about yourself, and remember your audience! They want to know why they should follow you...Meaning what message will you give them?
2. Follow People and Make Friends. Find your favorite blogs, friends, staff, or whoever you think your customers would like. Just click the "follow" link on the top right of their Twitter Page. Here is ours for example.  The easiest way to do this quickly is to find people you like, or are similar to you, and see who they follow.  You can see this on the top right under the "follow" button, ie. 652FOLLOWING
3. Write some updates. Link interesting ideas, mention cool stuff, plug an event, invite them down for drinks... Remember your audience and engage in conversation.
4. Post some Links.  The "tinyurl" link: We have one made for you (find out more, call us at 612-246-4373), or just copy/paste your link in any url shortening tool. Here is Google's:  http://goo.gl/
5. # ! @ links, etc... WTF?!? Some of the online speak can get confusing, so here is what Twitter Uses



Anthony Weiner's Weener. DM, don't Reply!

1. the "@" - The thing you should use the most! Reply to users by using @TheirTwitterName. They will see you posted them and hopefully reply or share this with their followers!
2. the "#" hashtag - is for Trending conversations. More info than you'll ever want to know is found here on the Twitter blog.
3. the "d" Direct Message - a direct reply to a follower that will NOT go to the rest of your list. This is different from a reply, because only one user will see this.  Want to know what happens when you screw this up? "d TwitterNameUwantToReplyTo"
6. Monitor Conversations about your company. Follow what people say about you.  This is SUPER easy in Twitter and probably the best use for it.  Do people like you? Search what they are saying! You can even subscribe to an RSS feed of this! Twitter Search - Enter your name

That about sums it up! Give us a ring if you have any questions or need any custom backgrounds made up (612-246-4373)!

SEO for beginners: Key words

Want the basics? Well, the best thing is to make sure you're on as many free listings you can be on.  We're not going to get in to Search Engine Optimization, or explaining how the Google algorithm works...  Just know, stuff that we give you will help your SEO, meaning you'll get found when people search for you or things you offer.

No doubt you've heard about "keywords" but have no idea how to use them to get found, or even, what words are important.  Well, it's time to do some research and find out.  You want to keep in mind 2 things when developing a key word strategy:

1. What words are searched the most -FIND OUT-
2. What words can you actually "out-rank" your competition on (meaning you come up before them)

* Remember, Google's job is to try and "guess" which results are the most relevant, so the more relevancy you have, the more often you'll be included in the front page of a search query.

For example, do not just focus only on major words that you cannot rank on, ie. "Minneapolis Bars" returns a result of ThriftyHipster, Yelp, CityPages, CitySearch, etc.. (in that order)  Your bar will not outrank these because they are too general of words.  Highly searched? Yes, but too tough for you to "compete" on.  Instead, focus on words less used, but still heavily used... ie. "Bloody Mary," "brunch buffet," or "best burgers" might be words you can rank on.  

I like 2 tools for figuring this out.  They give you search volume and competition level... Meaning the more searches and lowest competition words are what you want to focus on.

My 2 favorite tools to do this are:

Google Insights

or

Google Analytics tool (my preference)

This should get you started! So look up keywords that are what you think people search and where you'd want to be found in those searches and record the ones you want your bar to be found in.  Remember to focus on only a few and you should be able to be found first!

Should your Restaurant have Twitter?

Some people like ThriftyHipster, some like Facebook, some like Twitter, some like reddit, some like dig, some like all the above or any combination of them.

Twitter is a silly little application. You can only send 140 character updates, but the response these get is amazing.  Think of it more like a text message to friends, but one they’ll only see when they log in to twitter (which for some people is all day, for others is never).

Get your Twitter Handle

You might ask, is it worth it?  The answer varies by what your restaurant provides, but that does not change the fact that you definitely should at least register for a handle.

1. Only 1 handle is allowed per email
2. Similar to a domain name, only 1 handle is given out – So even if you don’t plan on using twitter, you’ll want to claim your name before someone else does!

Choose a Handle: Best is to make it your domain name, Facebook name, but keep it short too!
For Example: If your domain is “elisfoodandcocktails.com” you’d probably want your Twitter handle to be @eliscocktails.
However, if your domain name is short, like britspub.com, you’ll definitely want @BritsPub.