Teaching Facebook Classes in Limerick

As any of you who follow me on Facebook will know my page is very active, I have nearly 1,300 'likes' on the page, made up of a good community of fans. Last year I also set up the Limerick Milk Market page and gathered 2,500 fans, before a member of staff took it over a few months ago. A lot of people have been asking me how to get this kind of following, and I've written a couple of articles online to help people out. But these make more sense to someone who is experienced with Facebook. Recently I've started teaching one-on-one classes in setting up and running a business page. It's kind of been a word of mouth thing, but I figured I would spread the word about it here too. 

Usually people call to my house (and I give them a nice cup of tea/coffee), firstly I gauge what level they are at and what they need from the class. From there I can teach them the basics of setting up their page and running it. Or for the more advanced client I can go through the ins and outs of running a successful page, ways of gathering more fans and keeping them interested.

Over the past couple of years I've set up and run several pages, so I've learned every trick in the book that there is to know. Ideally these classes are geared towards a small business trying to spread their name locally and built up a brand identity. 

I've devised two price plans based on the experiences from previous classes:

Beginner Class: €45

Who is this for: This is for total beginners who either aren't familiar with Facebook at all or have a personal page but don't really know how to set up, or don't know what to do with their existing business page. Depending on the ability of the client I can get into further detail of marketing strategies for business pages. 

Result: A comprehensive knowledge of Facebook, and how to make it work for your business. During the class we will set up a page, or flesh out your existing page. The client will learn how to gather a following and  establish their brand. Also a full set of notes will be provided to help them afterwards while developing their page.

Duration: One class for 2hrs -2hr 30 mins (depending on the needs of the client)

Intermediate Class: €35

Who is this for: This is for someone who know how to use Facebook already, but has hit a brick wall when it comes to their Business Page. A lot of people find that they set up their page, gain about 40-80 likes and interest seems to dry up. This class is to tackle that problem

Result: Build on their knowledge of the tools on Facebook. All the ins and outs of Timeline will be explained, showing how they can be used to flesh out a page. Tactics for gathering a following, and creating relationships with your fans on Facebook. Also a full set of notes will be provided to help them afterwards while developing their page.

Duration: One class for 1hr 30 mins- 2 hrs ( depending on the needs of the client) 

I am available to teach classes Mon-Fri daytime or evening. Please email me at ruthcrean@yahoo.ie to check times and availability. 

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Tackling Timeline

Those of you who run business pages on facebook will have noticed that they are phasing in Timeline for pages. You have till the end of the month until it's mandatory, so that gives you a bit of time to figure it out and play with your page design before it goes live. At this stage I'm a bit of a business page expert, for anyone looking for tips on setting up a page I wrote this article last year on 'Facebook Pages:An Idiot Guide'. Whereas today's article is a bit more advanced for those with established pages who know the basic ins and outs already.

Firstly I cannot overestimate the amount that facebook has helped my business, it may be time consuming but at the end of the day it's free, and it's a form of advertising that customers actively opt into and pay attention to, you just can't buy that kind of press. I've had my page for about 2 years and it has brought me lots of new customers, real and online sales, and helped me build a personal relationship with the people who buy from me. They get to put a face to my business and I get invaluable feedback, it's a win win situation.

In the past few months facebook have been making lots of little changes that at first seemed very limiting to pages, but now that they have unveiled Timeline most of it gels together very well. The most obvious difference with Timeline is the appearance, it's a much wider 'wall' with two columns instead of one. Older stories are now accessible by date from the panel on the right hand side, giving the lifespan of the page. They have added a new tool which means that you can bump up old posts by Pinning them, this is done by clicking the pencil icon on the right of any post and choosing the option 'pin to top'. This brings this post to the top of your timeline on the left hand column. It's a good idea to regularly pin popular posts that reflect your page so that prospective 'likers' can gauge quickly what your page is about. Once an item is pinned it remains at the top for 7 days.

Another way to make a post more noticeable is to star it(do this by clicking the star icon on the right of any post) this makes the item double width, and much more noticeable when scrolling through older posts. It's good to punctuate the timeline with a few of the favourited posts to break up the double column layout.

When I first went onto timeline I was disgusted that landing pages were made defunct as there is no longer control over what tab a new viewer arrives on. Previously I had designed a landing page that reflected my business and brought me lots of new 'likes'. Facebook have replaced this with a cover photo, a large image that sits behind your profile picture. It is fine to use an image of one of your products in this window but to get the best results it would be better to have a text and image graphic. Although be careful facebook have some rules about what text can go here, you are not allowed to point towards the like button, include sales promotions or other info that should be in the about section. The dimensions for the cover photo are 851 px wide and 315 px tall, and make your document 72 dpi.

They have also added 'milestones' to the timeline, which act like starred posts(double width), but are designed to highlight key events in your business like awards, press etc. Your chosen event date will then be marked in your timeline. You can create these in your status bar, next to ask a question, and you can upload a photo with your description, the picture dimensions are 843 px wide and 403 px tall. This new feature can be used to great effect to give the history of a business in a dynamic way, especially for older businesses as they can mark events and trivia through the past decades. There is a lovely example here at Leo Burnett Worldwide.

Facebook have added a handy admin panel at the top so all traffic and notifications are easily available. Thank goodness the days of no notifications on business pages are over, that was a nightmare! You can monitor traffic, reach, and who is talking about your page. They have also added a private message section which is really handy rather than people having to discuss sales on your wall. During my research for this article I found out that pages can directly message their 'likers', although be careful not to abuse this and alienate your readers by spamming them. But you can only message people who have already send a direct message to your business page, you can not start a new conversation with one of your fans. It would be a good idea to post an update letting your fans know that they can now send you a direct message, as most people don't know the mechanics behind a business page.


You should also note that the amount that your updates appear in peoples news feed has changed over the past few months, someone who interacts with your page is more likely to see your updates that people who don't. This means that you need to post more regularly, and at different points in the day. It is also advised that you post different types of things, not just talking about your business all the time. Use pictures, ask advice, questions, share finds from Pinterest etc (For more info on this large topic head over to this great article).

The magazine format of timeline has meant that facebook is becoming a much more visually based forum. Do things like share photos of work in progress, a yummy muffin you are eating, or materials you just purchased. There are lots of ways to vary your updates, just start thinking outside the box.  You'll soon start to notice your 'talking about' numbers increasing, and afterwards your likers. Try to post information that people will want to share, George Takai (Ensign Sulu from Star Trek) has a great business page where he posts loads of funny geek pictures, he gets hundreds of 'shares'  every day because his content is great.


All in all I'm pretty happy with it now that I've learned all the new features. At first I hated it because it meant that I had to relearn lots of things. One frustrating thing is that they don't have an attach link function anymore in status updates which leaves an ugly pasted link at the end of the update, it seems like a pointless change. But the overall benefits outweigh any clunky problems. Knowing facebook they will come up with a whole host of new changes in another 6 months just to annoy everyone!

Helpful Articles:
Involver
The Drum: 5 ways timeline will impact business pages
CMVLive: Timeline, what's it all about?
How to get more interaction on your business page

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Geeky Love

It's so nice having the time to be prepared for Seasons ahead, usually I'm scrabbling at the last minute to get Xmas, Paddys Day, and Halloween things made. So for the first time I have Valentines items listed ahead of time, if you want to browse through my shop for gushy lovely goods for your loved one, click here.

A few days ago I spent ages perched at my computer making new Valentines designs for my badges, but I didn't want to go down the traditional pink hearts route.Instead I got my geeky thinking cap on and came up with some fun alternatives. My particular favourite is the facebook 'I 'LIKE' You' badge, perfect for the Valentine you've been stalking for the past month!

The Milk Market on Facebook

A few days ago I set up a facebook fanpage for the Milk Market, as we definitely need the extra advertising. These days social networking is a free and easy tool that every business should avail of, it's a quick and lets your customers know about news/special offers/opening times etc.

I'm doing the Market one to help bring in extra customers on Fridays and Sundays, and also profile the Saturday market too. I plan to have a photo album for each trader with all their contact info so people can see the amazing things that are for sale there. I also want to let people know if any of the traders are giving special offers, or introducing a new line of products. It's a bit of extra work for me, on my already busy schedual but a little bit of work every day makes it manageable.

I've been delighted with how popular it's been in only a few days of having the page, in just over two days I've already gotten 700 fans, this is mostly through to people doing the 'suggest to friends' thing, which really helps getting new fans. Since there are so many traders I hope that it will continue to grow in popularity. Have any of you seen numbers like this before? It's taken me nearly 9 months to get the same number of fans on my own business page.

It's All, like, Connected Dude

As anyone who runs an Etsy shop knows balancing creating and listing is very time consuming. Add to that the time put into running a blog and a twitter/fanpage and all those minutes/hours take away from your time creating work. That's why I was so delighted recently when I found a few applications that helped me link it all together. Firstly I found Networked Blogs on facebook, which automatically posts a link on my fanpage everytime I publish a new blog post. About a moth later I found their option to also post my blog posts on my twitter account. This has definitely increased my readership and makes me wish I knew about this a year ago!!Last week I found the final element, an application that publishes my fanpage updates to my twitter, which is ideal as I put in much more work into my fanpage than my twitter. It means I can pretty much leave my twitter account alone for a while if I'm really busy but my updates are still fairly regular. All I have to do now is figure out how to get more fans and followers!! When I think back to when I started I really didn't have much clue, I let myself stumble along for too long not knowing much, I really should have put in some research and figured this all out ages ago.

To anyone thinking about setting up a fanpage I would really recommend it, as I hit a completely different audience that my blog readers. It seems like everyone is on it these days and it's a very easy and free way of communicating with your customers. I have just over 670 fans in the space of a few months, it involved a little bit of work every day, but nothing majorly time consuming like a blog.

Busy Business

It's been another busy week. I attempted to take a well earned break yesterday but I spent most of the day on the computer answering emails and catching up on a few things. Ah well, I'll try again next week.
I eventually caved and purchased a facebook ad. I had no idea how this would work out, I set the limits pretty small at $10 per day for 3 days, which is a similar price to buying an ad on craftcult for a week. So far I've gotten 7 extra fans and that has cost me ten quid, as you pay per the amount of people that click on the page. To be honest I was expecting better results for my money, and maybe paying for advertising on craft sites would be more cost effective for me. I did want to increase my fanbase beyond people I know though. It seems like it hit the 200 mark and then stopped growing. I did notice an increase in clicks when I switched my picture from a pincushion to mixed buttons, I think this is because in Ireland it's impossible to buy good buttons so it would have grabbed peoples attention. I'll see how the 3 days pan out and I'll let you guys know how it all works out.

I also saw this blog post earlier in the week about sustainable materials being used by artists and designers. It was looking for artists who use recycled materials to exhibit in Limerick City Gallery in a group exhibition of artists working in different media. I couldn't believe I hadn't heard about it earleir and it it literally on my front door step! So I contacted the guy and told him about my recycled and customised clothes, and it looks like I'm going to be exhibiting my work in the gallery. I really can't believe this, since I moved to Limerick 10 years ago it's been my ambition to show my work there. I never would have guessed when I moved down here at the age of 18 that I would be show casing my fashion designs there. It's funny where life can bring you! The work has to be delivered to the space on Friday week (11th March), with the option to rotate the work as the 6 weeks progress. I'm going to create 3 outlandish exhibition pieces, and then have a smaller set of more comercial works there too. To be honest I would have liked more time but I'm well used to working to crazy deadlines at this point.
So if you are or your know any artist working with sustainable material check out this post they are still looking for contributers.

Also Happy World Book Day everyone!!

I Caved and Joined Facebook

I eventually caved and I joined facebook. I've been hearing so much about it in the forums on Etsy that I thought I would give it a shot. It ends here though, I will not join twitter. I'm already starting to feel a little bit of social networking burnout between the 2 shops, 2 blogs, my own facebook page and a fanpage. I know other people do a lot more but I still want to have time to make things...and oh have a life too.
When I was setting it up I found it a bit clunky, and it's pretty annoying that I can't sign on seperate from my personal account. When I eventually connected to the 'My Etsy' tab though it works a lot better. I'm rather impressed with the live feed to my blog too. Hopefully this drive more traffic/sales etc and make everything link together a bit better. There are loads of people I know who are on facebook who are otherwise internet/computer clueless so maybe it will reach a different market.

So if you wanna become a fan click here, or go to the shiny new button I made for my sidebar.

Note: I love this picture, I typed in internet networking into getty images and this is what popped up...I love it!

Facebook...does it work?

I'm curious, I'm thinking of setting up a facebook fanpage and I was wondering if any of you have tried it? I keep on hearing in the forums on Etsy that it's really good for sales and it's avery effective way of driving traffic towards your shop. But there are lots of things that work for some people and not others, so I thought I would ask you guys too. I know it's not too much extra effort but I don't want to spread myself too thinly and not have enough time to make things.

Also if you have fan pages, you can leave links here as a comment and I'll come have a look.