social media marketing - Versatile Marketing | Digital Marketing Consultancy

It’s hard to believe that it is November already and that can only mean one thing – Christmas is just around the corner! Christmas is the ideal time to plan a special digital marketing campaign making use of your email list, social media promotions and adding some seasonal graphics to your website. If you send Christmas cards or emails to your customers make sure you include your social media profiles to promote your online connection with your customers.

Versatile Marketing can help you plan your Christmas marketing campaign and it is certainly worthwhile to start the planning now. Simple ideas which can work wonders for small business include an email mail-out with a discount code to your existing customers, a Facebook competition with a prize just in time for Christmas, a blog competition/giveaway and a Twitter campaign with some Christmas cheer for your valued followers. Sending a personal seasonal message on LinkedIn to your connections can also be valuable for re-establishing contact with those individuals you’d like to do business with in 2012. It is also a fabulous time of year to become savvy with YouTube and introduce some new videos to your online marketing. As with any campaign your Christmas campaign should follow a well thought out plan with realistic goals which can be measured. Happy planning!

Facebook Marketing for Business – No Personal Profiles

July 29, 2011 By Sam Cannell

The number 1 mistake I’ve been seeing a lot of recently is businesses using Facebook Profiles to promote their businesses instead of ‘Pages’. I’m sure the majority of these business owners have no idea that they are breaking Facebook’s rules and are actually at risk of having their account removed from Facebook.

A lot of small business owners decide they will promote their business on Facebook because it’s the ‘in’ thing to do or someone has said ‘you have to get your business on Facebook’ but they have very little understanding of the platform and how it works.

Facebook has three categories – Profiles, Pages and Groups. Profiles are designed for individuals to use for personal use, pages and designed for business/community use for genuine organisations and groups are best suited to smaller groups which may need to keep content private or restrict membership.

If you have already set up your business as a ‘profile’ and you have a friend base you are probably wondering how on earth you go about correcting this. As a business a ‘page’ offers you far more functionality so yes it’s definitely worth making the transition. It also means you aren’t breaking Facebook’s rules and won’t be deleted!

Firstly before you rush off to transfer your Profile to a Page you need to back up your content as the data transferred by Facebook is limited. When you convert your profile to a Facebook Page, Facebook will transfer profile pictures and your ‘friends’ will become ‘likers’ of your new page.

To avoid losing important content, Facebook recommends taking these steps before you convert your profile:

Download your profile information. You can download a file that contains all of your sent and received messages and all of the photos and videos you’ve uploaded to Facebook.
Appoint a new group admin or a new Facebook Page admin to any groups or pages that you manage. The account you’re converting will lose these admin rights during the conversion process.

The full process is detailed on the Facebook Help Centre. Once your profile has been converted to a ‘page’ you will have access to the many features available to businesses using Facebook marketing.