Category Archives: community building
Targeted Social Network Posts
Facebook Page Suggestions, Group, and Event Invites
Hey folks – this is on my mind so even though I’m getting set for tonights Pittsburgh Penguins game against the detested New York Islanders I want to take the time to share some thoughts with you about Facebook page suggestions, group invites, and event invites. You know from reading my blog, seeing my website, Facebook page, and Twitter feed that I’m a social media consultant and while most of the work I do is client specific there are a lot of little tips and tricks that I freely give away partly because the information is freely available and partly because, if they are friends, fans, followers, or the like it actually helps me more than it helps them.
Stay on target …
Businesses use social networking websites to increase their bottom-line. Like most forms of advertising or promotion social network posts, events, and so on are a double-edged-sword. Sending status updates or event invites to ALL of your followers, fans, or “likers”, (whatever you want to call them), is missing the point of having a social media presence.
I’d like you to get to know me … yes I would …
The main reason that people like your business (people who you didn’t know before starting the business) is because they like you enough to want you to know what they want from you. Does that make sense?
With all the talk of privacy concerns and people claiming that they don’t like being tracked or watched by corporations these people are trusting you with knowing them, with knowing about them, and they are inviting you to market to them intelligently.
Consumers know that you are collecting information about them and while they don’t like it what they like less is when you don’t use that information to market to them in an intelligent way. It makes you look dumb and it reinforces their belief that you are not their friend, that you care more about their money than them, and that you don’t deserve to collect information about them.
Get to know your Facebook Fans
Your fans, by virtue of them becoming your fan, are willing to share information with you in order to find out valuable time-saving information that makes sense to them. They are willing to virtually become friends with you so treat them like they are your friends. The information they are providing to you is an act of friendship – they are making themselves marginally vulnerable, (or seriously vulnerable if you’re loose with their credit cards), it’s your turn to return the favor by treating them like a friend.
Knowing your Facebook fans is not enough
So now that you know them, now that you’re building trust why would you violate it, or pretend that you don’t know them when it comes time to send out promotional material.
What am I talking about?
I’m talking about events, groups, messages, and other requests that you send to your fans and friends. If you are creating a Facebook event (as a Facebook page) and wish to invite people make sure that you invite people that are first and foremost within a geographical area that will allow them to attend. It should go without saying that you should never create an event that doesn’t physically happen. In other words – if you want a bunch of people to do something at a set time no matter where they are – don’t turn that into an event. Even worse if you want someone to say – vote for your business in a contest or something – don’t create an event to ask people to vote. Doing so is ignorant and wastes their valuable time.
Now that that is out of the way on to more important things. Facebook allows you to narrow your event invites by geological location – use that. They go farther in allowing you to target updates that you send by age, sex, and maybe one day by selecting individual fans (a man can dream can’t he).
If you are going to use your individual profile to invite people then by all means – don’t annoy people by inviting them to something they would not be interested in. I personally have 1200 some friends on Facebook. When I create an event or a page, when I do anything beyond sending a status update I try to make sure that they person whose time I’m taking up will see value in what I’m sending.
I’ll write more on the subject later – for now: GO PENS!
Square Up Credit Card Payments
Tell us how you really feel Don
I’ve told people over at Facebook about Square but I’ve got to post a blog about it because it’s just freaking awesome. Before you get into the bulk of the post please note that I am not being paid to post this. I’ve got to say it up front because I’ve read through what I wrote and some of it sounds like it was written by a paid spokesperson. I promise you that I genuinely LOVE this idea and their execution and that I am not in any way being compensated for writing this.
What is Square
If you have not heard about it Square is a credit card payment acceptance system. There are a few other systems out there – Intuit (the people who make Turbo Tax and Quicken) have a similar app and doggle for your smart phone but I’ve not tried it. Mostly I didn’t try it because at first it only worked with iPhones and I’m an Android user.
I keep seeing them advertise their version but I’m honestly not even interested in checking other options (beyond looking at the price points) because I really like Square so much. That’s not to say that I’m not a fan of Intuit. I use a lot of their products and like them a lot. I know there are a few more out there too and I’m sure PayPal will likely get into the game soon but as long as the price is right I’ll stick with Square and since they are already cheaper than PayPal I’m saying good bye to them.
Where did you hear about Square?
So I still have not seen any ads for Square but I heard a report about it on NPR which prompted me to look into it and I keep hearing about it via word-of-mouth. To me both of those are much better than an annoying TV ad any day. When I heard the report on NPR and then found out that it was cheaper than PayPal I signed up.
It was really easy, they do the micro-deposits to verify your checking account and they send you a free card reader that plugs into your headphone jack on the phone. That means that it works with any smart-phone that can have the app installed on it. You can accept cards without the reader too (it just costs a bit more) which is cool because when getting ready for a shoot I am usually focused on packing gear for the shoot, not on remembering a hardware plug-in for my phone.
Why is Square different?
I still get a lot of checks so accepting credit cards was something that I’ve always been a bit hesitant of (due to cost and volume). Most of the time companies charge you a monthly fee on top of taking a cut on each transaction. Square doesn’t do that. It was made with small businesses in mind – photographers, landscapers, and so on (per the report on NPR) so they don’t charge a monthly fee since the people it’s made for may only accept one credit card payment a month. I’m in that boat and since it still costs me money per transaction I’d prefer to keep taking checks as much as possible. That being said when a customer would rather pay by card I don’t need to send them to my website to use PayPal or to write down all of their info and then double shred it when I’m done.
Why wait until today to tell everyone?
I decided to say something today because I got this email from them that made me like them even more than I already do:
Hi WDO,
Starting today, Square has dropped the 15¢ fixed fee on payments you accept using your Square card reader. Now you’ll simply pay 2.75% per transaction, no matter what you sell.
Why are we simplifying our pricing? Learn more.
How freaking cool are these people! They’re making their service cheaper! That is just awesome.
Check them out and sign up to accept credit cards on your smart phone cheaper than any other service that I know of right: here.
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