Trial and Error

Back on my initial post, I listed a number of ideas that my readers and friends had given to me to help promote my new business.  I wanted to report back to you how many of the ideas you suggested worked out.  I am going to go through them in order of what was suggested, and show you the results to date.  Then you can determine whether it would be a fit for YOUR business or not.

How to create more awareness of your business through Social Media

Suggestion #1.  Pay for a link on Facebook.  – This I found to be a fun, and effective means of getting my name out there.  Facebook is very user-friendly when it comes to placing an ad.  I put in the MAXIMUM amount of money I would want to spend on a daily basis (you only get charged for each click-through) and you can cancel at any time.  So as long as you watch your Facebook account, this is very manageable.  The overall number of people who clicked through was very small, however the overall impressions (meaning my logo was on Facebook to a very specific group of people who i wanted to see the FIITFU logo) was very high.  Here is what a report would look like from Facebook about the effectiveness of my add.  I had three different ads, each one looked a bit different (my logo was changed up a bit) and each had different verbage to try to promote the usage of FIITFU.

I am going to continue to allow this ad to run as I am having high exposure of my logo at this point which is great.

Suggestion #2.  Send an email to all your friends asking them to like you on Facebook.   This was an effective tool as it helped to add people on in a quick amount of time.  I sent about 80 emails and asked them to like me on Facebook (by the way you need 25 likes on Facebook to get your own URL for a company or group as opposed to a NUMBERED URL.  For instance, my URL is now www.facebook.com/fiitfu  It use to be www.facebook.com/12345677.mj.fiitfu  or something long like that, so it is much more professional looking now!)  SO how did it work, at the time of posting my original entry, I only had 16 likes, I am now at 71.  Still not the 1000 that I have as my goal, but as they say, life is about the journey, not the destination!!

Suggestion #3.  Read this “eye opener” book on social networking. http://www.sociablebook.com.  What a great book!  I read Sociable, and it is an easy to follow and stimulate great ideas book!  From this book my main thing that it has influenced me to do is start a VIDEO BLOG which you will see on this blog.  (be sure to watch for it!) Some other great points it directs you to a number of different ideas and how to use social media to your benefit.  The bottom line, JUST START USING IT!  Social media is a very safe place for Trial and Error, and meant to be a supportive community for sharing ideas.  Thanks to the boys that published this book, I would recommend it to anyone.

Suggestion #4.   Take a course “Connectonomics” from local expert Matt Astifan http://webfriendly.me.  I had the privilege of listening to Matt at a local SWAN networking group, and he really is an expert on Facebook!  Matt and I have had some dialogue since his speech and he is also a great support when it comes to social networking.  He has a course coming up on Friday July 15th – Learn the Secrets of Facebook Marketing on a Shoe-String Budget Faster and Better then your Competitors. Be sure to check out the link if you want to learn more about it.  In the mean time here were a couple of important tips that Matt gave to me that YOU may also want to ensure you follow.  

 I just checked out your fan page, here is a quick tip. I recently noticed that people often get lost when on a Facebook fan page. The reason I have notices is that the banner is too long that it pushes the tabs below the fold. I recommend shorting your banner to 400 pixels high (you currently have it to the maximum which is 600).  TIP 2.  When you post an email address online it is a good idea to separate the @ symbol (for example learn [@] webfriendly.ca). Spamming softwares search the internet for addresses posted online and scrap them into excel files to be spammed on end for years… lol… They will also do this with many “info@…” email address because most companies create these. 

There were some other suggestions for ideas on social media, which I will still try out and report back to you!  Here is to Helping Your Business!  Make it a great day!