Archive for the ‘Marketing & Strategy’ Category

5 Lesser Known Facebook Tricks

Friday, December 9th, 2011

With sites like Twitter and Google Plus hot on its heels, Facebook is hustling to maintain its lead as a social network leader. Over the past few trick up sleevemonths, the site has been slowly rolling out changes big and small to keep things fresh. And it doesn’t look like its momentum will be slowing anytime soon. With so many new features and improvements, it’s only natural some of these developments would be overlooked. No worries! Here are 5 things you didn’t know Facebook could do for you:

  1. COLLABORATE ON A DOCUMENT Within a Group page, click on Docs at the top of the page and then the Create a Doc button on the right-hand side to create a text-only document that everyone in the group can edit. When you save the document, it will be posted to the group’s feed, just like a status update, with an Edit button in the upper-right corner. To see previous revisions, click Recent Changes.
  2. ADD A CALENDAR TO YOUR PAGE If you’re a business owner, a team coach or a performer who wants to keep everyone on Facebook apprised of your coming events, simply creating separate Facebook events for each one can be ineffective. These can get lost in the stream of events, making it hard for people to check for, say, your next game. As an alternative, use the Social Calendar app, which was not developed by Facebook. Go to facebook.com/SocialCalendar and click the Add to My Page link in the lower left corner. That will pop up a menu of pages you manage. Click Add to Page next to one or more pages, then click Close. Those pages will now include a Calendar link in their upper left corner, just below Wall, Info and Photos. Social Calendar is pretty smart — it will autocomplete the names of events you’ve already created, and if you type in an Address field, it will add a map link to the location on the calendar. But for maximum attendance, you should still post status updates announcing an event.
  3. TRACK YOUR PAGE’S SUCCESS On any page you own, whether it is for your business or your clog-dancing club, click View Insights in the upper right corner. Facebook will display charts of user information and page interactions. Beyond the number of Likes and comments, it will plot a graph of page views and user feedback, plus a breakdown of which Web domains are sending traffic to your page, and the demographics of your visitors. If you want to do your own number-crunching, you can export the data into an Excel-compatible file.
  4. CREATE A POLL Hiding in plain sight above the box to enter status updates is a Question button. Posting a question looks just like posting an update, except that it takes the first three answers from your friends and turns them into a poll to keep the discussion focused. You can also set up the poll with your own answers, or add more to those Facebook creates.
  5. EDIT LINK NAMES AND DESCRIPTIONS If you want to post a link to your Facebook page but don’t like the title or description that Facebook automatically pulls from the linked page, you can change it. Before you click the Share button, click on the title or description in your pending post. They will change into editing boxes, like those to rename a file on your computer desktop. When you’re done editing, press Enter to save your changes.

Looking for more tricks you didn’t know Facebook could do? Check out this article by Business Day Personal Tech.

Christmas is Coming: 8 Festive Package Designs

Sunday, November 27th, 2011

Now that Thanksgiving is over, businesses and retail stores are providing holiday cheer with festive decor and special packaging. The following creations will be sure to get even Scrooge excited for the launch of this special season.

Christmas Absinthe Package Design

Christmas Marks and Spencer Christmas Package Design

Christmas Beer

Christmas Kenzo Package Design

Christmas Pudding Package Design

Christmas H and M Package Design

Christmas penhaligons1

Christmas swiss biscuit package design

10 Important Social Media Stats for Small Businesses

Friday, November 18th, 2011

Facebook For Small BusinessAs social media continues to become more prevalent to businesses, companies are curious as to what percentage of their budgets should be allocated to networking . Whether you’re just skimming the surface or are already all in, the following stats prove just how important social media is for revenue growth and brand exposure.

  1. Today there are 800 million active Facebook users. Even more impressive, over 200 million of those members joined in 2011. Though its membership has been on a steady incline for several years, the site seems to be taking off now more than ever before.
  2. 90% of online American adults use some form of social media each month.
  3. 98% of 18- to 24 -year-olds access social networking sites monthly.
  4.  More than 400 million people log in to Facebook every day.
  5. One out of every five social network users visits a social site after leaving one.
  6. The average Facebook user spends 20 or 30 minutes on his or her account during each visit.
  7. Small businesses don’t have to spend much to get results: 60% of all small business decision-makers spend less than $100 on social media
  8. 50% of all small business owners reported gaining new customers through social media – most notably through Facebook and Twitter.
  9. 51% of Facebook users and 64% of Twitter users are more likely to buy from the brands they follow
  10. It only takes 20 people to create meaningful many-to-many interactions and bring an online community to a significant level of activity. That’s something almost any business can achieve.

Read 16 more important social media stats for small businesses

Package Design Eye Candy: 12 Delicious Designs

Monday, October 31st, 2011

As the last few hours of Halloween dwindle down, costumes have long been replaced with cozy pajamas and bags brimming with candy have been deposited on the floor. In honor of all of the loot collected by children across the US tonight, here are some incredibly sweet (and clever) package designs.