The CLO’s Blog - Chris Nadeau

Life, business and web talk from a former pro-hockey player, turned web dude!

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“One word that comes to mind when I think of Chris is "SOLID". He is coach-like, very creative with a brilliant work ethic and full of integrity. Love this guy!!!!" -- Greg Hemmings, Hemmings House Pictures

2 Easy Ways To Add Twitter To Your Facebook Page


Over the past few months, one question I constantly receive is how you can streamline updates to multiple social platforms.  The main one I have been receiving lately is how do we combine our Twitter account with our Facebook Page?

To be honest I really don't like sharing how to do this, because I truly believe the two platforms communicate differently and I would hate for you to get lazy in one community and not reap the benefits from truly engaging with people on Facebook and Twitter.

However, I understand we are all busy and the odd combined Tweet and Facebook Status update is not that bad when you have customers calling you and sending you emails about projects you are working on.  Trust me I know. :-)

So today I am going to show you two easy ways to integrate Twitter with your Facebook Page in under 5 mins.

Here are the two apps you need to make this happen:

Involver

Selective Tweets

If you have other ways to add Twitter to your Facebook Page, please share them in the comments.

Yes, Your Customers Still Use Email


It's been close to a month in a half since I wrote a post about How Do You Digitally Start Your Day and in the post I mentioned that I would comeback with an update on the numbers.  Well today is that day.  Here is a quick snapshot of how the readers of my blog digitally start their day. 

Digitallystartpoll
As you can see 67% of the readers of my blog view their email first, 28% go to Facebook first and then 6% visit a news site first.  I was hoping to see more people say they came to this blog first.  I guess I need to amp it up here.  Ok, enough about me.  :-)

Read the rest of this post »

How Do You Digitally Start Your Day?


Cafe

Ok, don't give me every detail. :-) But after you brush your teeth and drink your coffee, how do you digitally start your day?  Most of us today have a computer for our jobs or a mobile phone.  So what is the first thing you check in the morning or the start of your day that is digital?

I am curious to see if most people who I know and read this blog do the same as me.  For me, after I do everything family and Chris related, I quickly breeze through email, either on my computer or mobile.  Once I see that there is nothing urgent, I then either open up Facebook or Seesmic Web, which I use as my social network dashboard.  Yes I know Tweetdeck has one and Hootsuite.  I like Seesmic Web, ok!!! :-)

After I respond to a few messages and check a few things out, it is onto doing the things I want to do for that day.  Most of the time. ;-)

If you have a second I would love to see how you digitally start your day?  Please take a moment to answer the poll. 

Now that you answer this, why do you check your choice first?  

I think this is a great question as a business owner/business that we should all ask ourselves.  Where do our customers go first?  Now that you understand the importance of where your customers spend their digital mornings, you’re ready to develop a marketing strategy that will allow you to better communicate across all interactive channels.

I am looking forward to seeing the results as I plan to compare the results here to a report that landed in my inbox the other day.

How To Easily Switch Your Facebook Profile To A Facebook Page


Yes, it's true.  You can change your Facebook Profile to a Facebook Page and I am going to show you how to do this in less then 3 mins.

For all you businesses out there that set up your Facebook account as a personal profile, please read this and watch the quick video below on how to do this.  You should not have your page set up as a profile.  Why you ask?

  1. Facebook profiles only have a 5,000 friend limit.
  2. You are missing out on all the page tools that you can use with a Facebook Page to help promote your business in Facebook.  The ability to add apps to your page is one major reason you should switch.  Collect email addresses, run contests, add a YouTube Channel etc.
  3. If you are operating as a business on a personal profile page, you really are not following FB's Terms of Service.  

So, are you ready?  To start the migration, head over here, but before you do this you should download your information just to be safe. ;-) 

To download, go to Account->Account Settings->Download Your Information and click “learn more”.  Once users click “Download”, the button will change to read “Pending” and users are informed that they will receive a download link via email. For users with a lot of content, the wait can be several hours. Users will eventually receive a “Your download is ready” email from Facebook containing a link back to the Download Your Information page.

What’s not included with the download:

  • Contact info of friends
  • A list of installed apps or any content from within those appls.
  • A list of Pages you are an admin of, or any content from within those Pages
  • Groups content
  • Facebook Questions data, such as a user’s asked or answered questions

Watch how I did it for this FB Profile

If you don't like the outcome of the conversion, converted accidentally, or your conversion was interrupted resulting in having neither a profile or a Page.  You can reverse the process here.

Thanks for reading and watching.  Please share this with anyone you know that should be doing this and let me know if you have any questions.

Video: Why Businesses Should Be Using Facebook's Question Tool


I am going to be doing more quick, short videos like this in the future.  Just little things I see out there that might be helpful.  Please watch the video and share your comments.

Go here on Facebook to start asking questions.

PS - Shot this video with my new Samsung Captivate Droid phone.  Can you tell I am a little excited. :-)

How To Make Facebook Page Communication Easy


Facebook recently upgraded its Pages feature, providing businesses new tools to customize their pages and interact with consumers more easily and quickly.

Facebook hopes the new features will help you manage communication, express yourself, and increase engagement.  Two things that I really like with the upgrade, well actually it is three things. :-)

1.  I love the use of photos across the top of the page similar to the personal pages.  I think this makes the page pop more and creates more interest around photos.  See here.
Fbpage_photos
2.  You can now navigate and interact with other areas of Facebook as your Page.  The other piece a like is you can now comment on your page as you, if you so choose to do so.  To do this you now manage this under Your Settings when you click on Edit Page.

Hockeyzen_fbpage

3. You can now receive email notifications when people comment, like or post items on your fan page.  This was always a real pain in the you know what.  You always had to go back and check your pages for converstation.  Not now...this means you can choose to receive notifications about fan activity, Like and comment on other Pages as your Page, and get your own News Feed where you can engage with the latest and most important news from other Pages you like.

Now it's funny that Facebook announced this yesterday because I did find a tool finally to help keep me up to date on any comments made on the fan pages I manage.  I was just getting ready to write a post about it and then I saw the Upgrade option in Facebook for fan pages.  However, I will still share, because I think this is a sweet little tool, that might do a better job of notifiying you when you have activity on your fan pages.  The name of the product is Hyper Alerts.  Hyper Alerts sends you an email within minutes after a posting on your Facebook Fan Pages - or only a summary each hour, day, week or month if you so prefer.  This is what comes in your inbox when you have some action on your page.

Hyperalerts
What do you think of the new Facebook page upgrades?

 

How to Add the Facebook Like Box to Your Website


Facebook has been making a lot of changes recently to the way their Like Pages (formerly known as Fan Pages) function for businesses/personal brands.  For example they recently added the ability to add a "Like" button to your own website and they also have their Live Stream widget which is very powerful when running a real-time event.

But, they also have a pretty cool like page widget that you can add to your website very easily, called the Like Box.  The widget is fairly easy to install and can include photos of your page’s fans, a stream of articles or both.

Here is how you can build an audience for your business, personal brand or non-profit by adding a Like Box to your Web site or blog.

Pretty easy eh?  I hope you found this helpful.

 

3 Quick Tips for Facebook Ads


Advertising

Photo Credit: joiseyshowaa

So it's been close to 3 years since I signed up for Facebook.  Over those three years Facebook has added a lot of functionality to their platform.  One of the real game changers that I think they added in the last year was the Facebook Fan Page.  In the U.S. alone, about 100 million unique visitors flock to the social network every month. Many business owners are among them, using Facebook Fan Pages to promote their companies and create customer communities.  However, when you have a fan page, you have an opportunity to promote your page with an ad in Facebook.  (you can also promote a website outside of Facebook).

Over the last year I have been experimenting with them and I must say I am very impressed with how affordable the ads are compared to Google's related keyword ads.  Now I am not saying it is a piece of cake and everyone will flock to your page, however I think if it is done right you can get some very nice results.  Here are 3 quick tips on getting started.

1.  Pick your target

Just like taking a shot on net...pick your spot, take aim and fire.  Facebook has a huge advantage on Google and other networks, because for some unknown reason users are willing to share huge amounts of personal information on Facebook.  Therefore, when you use Facebook Ads it lets you pick your target by Location, Age, Sex, Keywords etc.  Because of this you can really drill down to exactly what niche you want.

2.  A picture is worth a thousand words

The picture you use for your ad will literally make it or break it.  We just launched a new ad for The Hockey Zen with a new photo.  We are using what we think is a great photo of fans celebrating a goal at a hockey game.  only time will tell if this works.  We had great results with just using our logo.  It's important to use something that definitely does not blend in with the facebook site.

3.  Keep your ad simple

Create your ad so that it is as simple and easy to read as possible. Avoid long sentences or complex punctuation. Use simple, grammatically correct, complete sentences and language. Use proper punctuation, punctuate the end of sentences, put spaces after periods and commas, and don't use hyphens in place of periods.

Don't try to fit every detail about your product or service into the ad. Make it clear what your product or service is so a user can tell what your website will be about, but save the details for your landing page.

Bonus tip: It costs $0 to create an ad. So what are you waiting for?  Give it a try and you might be surprised.