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4 Simple Steps to a Facebook Timeline that Tells Your Marketing Story

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So how about that new Facebook Timeline?

Love it? Hate it? Either way it’s here to stay (until it isn’t).

As always, Facebook loves to change things up and people love to kvetch about it. You can always use new Facebook Features to improve your marketing, so how can you use the Facebook Timeline to your advantage? Read on.

First, a few facts about the Facebook Timeline. The Timeline only affects personal profiles at the moment. Facebook has not announced when (or even if) they will roll the new Timeline look out to Facebook Pages.

Second, not everyone has the Timeline yet. If you don’t, you can visit Facebook’s Timeline page and click the gigantic green button to get started with it.

Third, whether we love it or hate it, Facebook’s going to be rolling the Timeline out to all personal pages in the coming weeks. Hey, it wouldn’t be Facebook if they didn’t turn everything upside-down on you every six months, right?

The Timeline essentially replaces what we called the “Wall,” and is accessed when you click on your name in the upper right corner of the page when you log into Facebook.

If your business strategy includes using your personal Facebook profile to connect to customers (and there are many good reasons why it should) then you need to use your Facebook Timeline to tell a story.

There are four key parts to the Timeline that will help you tell your story:

  1. Using the Subscribe button
  2. Adding a great Cover photo
  3. Crafting your About page, and
  4. Adding activity and Life Events to your Timeline.

Let’s take a look at each of these four more closely …

Simple Step #1: Understand the Subscribe button

The Subscribe Button on Facebook allows people to get your Facebook updates without actually friending you.

The Subscribe button is perfect for people who want to use Facebook and the Timeline to support becoming authorities in their topics.

Facebook Privacy settings have gotten better, so you can control who sees particular updates. Some of your customers want to connect with you personally on Facebook (not just via your Facebook Page) and the Subscribe button will help. It lets you keep a personal profile, without having to friend everyone.

If you get a friend request and you have your Subscribe feature turned on, then they will be subscribed to your Updates — but only the ones that you mark as Public.

Simple Step #2: Add a Cover image

OK, this is the fun part: deciding on your Cover photo.

The Cover photo is like your website header — one you can easily switch out whenever you like. You can use personal photos, something great from your graphic designer, arty shots of your fleet of Lamborghinis … whatever strikes your fancy. Here are some great examples of how people have had fun with their Cover images.

Have Fun:

Showcase business and life:

To highlight your work, combine both work info and some information about your life in the photo.

Be creative, and remember you can rotate these photos based on your mood or things happening in your life. You can use any photo as your Timeline Cover, just hover over the lower right side to change it.

If you want to design something unique, the dimensions are 851 pixels wide by 315 pixels high, and remember to leave a good spot in the lower left corner where your profile picture will go.

Simple Step #3: Spruce up your About Page

Just like on your blog or website, a well-crafted About Page can showcase your business and experience and let people know what you do and who you serve.

First, make sure your Facebook Page (or Pages) is linked to your “Employer” section in your profile, as shown in this picture.

To do this, start typing the Page name in your “Work” field and it should pop up in a drop-down menu. This ensures that people can easily connect to your Facebook Page by hyperlinking it in your profile.

Also make sure that this is public information by clicking on the little people icon next to the Work field.

Now edit the “About You” section on the right by adding all kinds of interesting goodness. You can add hyperlinks, testimonials, and go deeper into your business. But keep it real and fun.

Remember, your friends will see this. They know you.

Watch your privacy in all the sections of your About Page by clicking on the little Edit icon in the upper right corner of each box. Only share publicly what you intend to be public.

Simple Step #4: Decide what’s in your timeline

Go through your posts and decide what is going to be Public and what should remain more personal.

When you turn on your Subscribe button, everything defaults to be shown only to your Friends of Friends. Make some of your posts Public to highlight your business: your blog posts, articles you might share, business Events, etc.

To control who can see your post, click the icon next to the date. The world icon is Public as shown in this picture.

Make important posts longer and more prominent by clicking on the star icon in the upper right corner of the post that says Feature. That post will then span the whole page and not be collapsed by other posts nearby.

Add significant Life Events to your Timeline with the Life Events. Don’t add them all at once because they will post updates to all your friends and you will look like you are bragging. Add just one a week. Life Events show up larger than, well … you know, life, if you have a picture with them.

Facebook’s intent with the Timeline is to tell your life story.

Obviously your life is richer and more complex than a few photos and status updates, but why not use this to your advantage and let people know more about you?

The world is spending more time online searching and learning.  Use this tool to get to know your clients and have them get to know, like, and trust you.

Or just use it to find some good cat videos.

Either way you win.

(About the Author: Are you ready to drink the Facebook Kool-aid? If so, Andrea Vahl has lots of handy tutorials on how to get started and how to effectively use Facebook, with the help of her alter ego, Grandma Mary. Get more from Andrea and Grandma here: AndreaVahl.com.)

A Small Business Beginning of Year Website Checklist

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Even though this post was written years ago, it still holds true for today:

The time of year when we make resolutions has approached and I’m going to suggest that small business owners make one. Namely, it’s a suggestion that you resolve to fix up your website and pay attention to things you might’ve ignored for too long. I know you’re busy and time is at a premium, so chances are good that you’ve missed a few minor issues that are making your website look old and outdated.

Think about this way: Your car needs a tune-up every 15,000 miles or so to keep it running at its best. Your teeth need a checkup at least once or twice a year. I bet your doctor would also like to see you regularly, too. Well, a regular checkup will also keep your website running in peak condition.

With that in mind, here’s a small business website checkup that you should tackle at least once a year.

1. Review your company information

If you have a staff listing or directory, is it up-to-date with correct names, titles, and other contact information? If you have an “About Us” page or something similar that discusses company history, make sure it’s updated—especially references such as “We’ve been in business for eight years.”

2. Review your contact information

Are the phone and fax numbers, mailing and email addresses listed on your site all current? You’re obviously losing customers if the phone number has changed.

3. Review your email routing

If you list help@yourdomain.com as the main contact address on your site, is it being routed to the correct person? If your shopping cart sends order information to orders@yourdomain.com, is that going where it needs to go? Make sure your email routing reflects any organizational changes you’ve had.

4. Review and test your contact forms

If you have contact forms on your site, review them to make sure they work, they’re easy to use, and to see if they need to be updated. You might want to start asking people how they found your site or something else that your contact form doesn’t ask now. Also, be sure to “break” the form—submit it without the required information and see how understandable the resulting error message is.

5. Review your automated outgoing messages

Do you send an automated confirmation message or receipt after someone orders a product or uses your contact form? If so, review that outgoing automated message to make sure it says what you want it to say, and that it has the right contact information, etc.

6. Update your copyright / privacy policy

If you have a copyright notice on your site, make sure it’s not outdated. If you have a privacy policy, review it to make sure it accurately describes your current policy toward handling your customers’ personal information.

7. Test all outgoing links on your website

Outdated or broken links make your site look stale. It’s also a source of frustration for your customers who click on links that don’t work. Check all links on your site to make they’re accurate and up-to-date. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) offers an online link checker that makes this easy to do.

8. Review the hidden sections of your website

If you have any password-protected areas, do the passwords need to be changed? If you had staff changes during the year, this might be a good idea. It might be a good idea even if you didn’t!

9. Review your domain record

Make sure your domain registrar has current contact information for you. If they don’t, you might miss renewal notices and other important announcements about your domain. You might also want to read How to Protect Your Domain, which has some additional things to look for on your domain record.

10. Do an overall review of your website

This is something you should really be thinking about on a regular basis, but websites often get ignored in the daily grind of running a small business. Ask yourself: How fresh is the content on my site? Do any pages need to be updated? How does my site look? Is it time for a more professional or modern design? Does my site offer the kind of features or tools that let my customers get what they want when they visit?

Some of these suggestions will only take minutes to complete, while others will be more time-consuming. But no matter how busy you are, checking your website at least once a year is a resolution worth making … and keeping.

(original article written Dec 13, 2007 at 7:03am by Matt McGee)

How To Avoid Negative Reviews And Bad Publicity For Your Online Store

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It’s rare for my wife to hold a grudge against anyone or anything. So the conversation below took me completely by surprise the other day when she and I decided to do some Christmas shopping online together.

Me: Let’s go pick up everyone’s gifts at “The Big Convenient SuperStore” (Not the real name).

Wife: I will never shop at that store again.

Me: Huh? Why not? It’s so convenient and cheap. We can get all of our shopping done at one place.

Wife: I ordered there a few years ago and had a bad experience. Can’t remember the full story but I didn’t get my order on time.

Me: Is that all? Was it their fault?

Wife: No, they shipped it out the same day, but it got lost in the mail.

Me: So what’s the big deal? That’s not the store’s fault. It’s the shipping carrier’s fault. Did you get a refund?

Wife: Yes, but I don’t care. Still never shopping there again.

Me:**Rolling my eyes** Okay whatever.

Wife: What do you mean whatever!?! If you must know, the customer rep I spoke to was rude and condescending.

Me: Ahhh ok…I get it. But it’s a large company and you probably just got someone in a bad mood.

Wife: Doesn’t matter. They should train their employees better. Oh and don’t say “Whatever” to me ever again!

Me: Yes ma’am.

I learned quite a few things from this brief conversation with my wife. Lesson 1, never say “whatever” to your wife. Lesson 2, shopping is often more about the experience than the product or the price. My wife was so furious with this company that she vowed never to shop there again.

But if you look at the situation from an outside perspective, the store didn’t really do anything wrong. One, we received the package late but it wasn’t the store’s fault and two, we got a full refund. No harm was done and no money was lost. Yet this store managed to lose a customer for life just because of a bad phone conversation. Perhaps the customer rep used the word “whatever”. Who knows?

The Anatomy Of A Bad Review

Later that day, I happened to be reading through some Yelp reviews of restaurants in my area when I noticed some interesting patterns of behavior. While most of the reviews were thoughtful, written in a neutral tone and provided an unbiased review of the food, every now and then I’d come across an absolutely scathing review that had nothing to do with the food whatsoever. Here’s an example.

The food came quickly. But the servers (they switched between 2) were rather curt. I mean this one guy slammed the plates on our table and didn’t care ask who ordered what. And what shocked us the most was when my brother hadn’t even finished his appetizer, the waiter took away the plate right from under his nose… and never apologized even when we called him out. This was by far the most awful experience we’ve ever had. We’re never going back again and wouldn’t recommend you do either. This place deserves a zero but 1′s the lowest you could give out here.

Almost every 1 or 2 star Yelp review had similar characteristics. The customer was not upset at the food so much as the service which resulted in the restaurant getting slammed.

The Real Reason Customer Service Matters So Much

I’ve been doing customer service for quite some time now and the situations are almost always the same. When someone calls with a complaint about your business, the actual situation is often quite trivial. Blah Blah Blah…my order didn’t arrive on time. Blah Blah Blah…you accidentally sent me the wrong thing. Blah Blah Blah, the quality of your product is not good enough.

The strange thing is that as a customer, you rarely remember the financial hit that you took when placing the order. It’s all about the disrespect or the indignity that you faced when speaking with the customer service rep.

When a company representative angers you or treats you with a lack of respect, that tends to override everything else. For example, whoever spoke to my wife must have really said something bad for her to boycott an entire store because no harm was actually done. A simple “whatever” and a rolling of my eyes inadvertently disrespected her as well, a mistake that will probably come up again in a future altercation. **Sigh**

Key Takeaways

So what have we learned? When a customer takes the time to send you an email or call you on the phone, make sure that the customer never leaves angry. Do what you must do and make things right, especially if it is your fault.

If there’s one piece of wisdom that I’ve gained from dealing with customers, it’s that their emotions are worth way more than any dollar value. If you can deal with a negative situation in a positive fashion, you can almost always turn the customer around.

After all, whenever you are representing your small business, you have to take off your operations hat and don your marketing cap. Conversations with the customer absolutely matter and even though you might lose a few dollars in the process, it’s worth every penny in terms of mind share because the effects are exponential.

“The Big Convenient SuperStore” lost more than just my wife as a customer that day. I’m no longer allowed to shop there and most likely my kids and her friends will not either. Word travels fast.

(view original author http://mywifequitherjob.com/how-to-avoid-negative-reviews-and-bad-publicity-for-your-online-store)