Today I was working away as usual and a customer came onto Facebook and said Hi and then told me he was away in London with the family and got mugged and needed help. A little strange as I know him, but didnt think we were at ‘That‘ stage of business that he would be so familiar and chatty.

I knew something was wrong and called his office and the receptionist told me he was actually in Gorey and that he was with a client in the next room. I said what had happened and that she believed he might have a virus, I agreed and said that this type of virus and hack was common and to get his PC sorted out as soon as he could.

I directed them to a page on their security page with information about it.

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=96651525765

mean while in the chat I copy and pasted in this link and said good bye. If you have experienced similar let people know as often money will try to be extracted via a link to a payment system. Good Samaritans get ripped off too.

Ignore it and let the person know asap.

Yes, you may have heard the rumours that Facebook are now automatically “Tagging” photos of people who use this social network for image sharing. The Giant of social networking with an estimated 700 million users has a new feature to read an image and use facial recognition software to “Tag” or mark an individual.

Big Brother!

There may be data protection issues involved here as I can image that being “tagged” is bad enough when its a photo you didnt know was taken. Then to find out it was put on-line.  But for it to be promoted online must be a final straw for some Facebook users.

To Change the Facebook setting (yet again, we seem to be doing these every few weeks these days) you will need to go to “Customise Setting” – > Suggest photos of me to friends”. Or go to the help Centre and read up on your privacy settings.

For more information on how to use social media for work, life and business call Dave Jordan on 053 9430748

Anyone see the new feature on Facebook whereby they are updating the comments live on the page without the refresh the page. I was having a chat with a web designer in Leitrim called Leon Quinn when the comments were popping up live. Another demonstration that websites are living and breathing animals that are always changing and adapting.

Instant Updates.

These are all the trend these days as people are growing up in a instant twitter fed news environment that Facebook seem to have realised that people are looking for. It maybe have search implications too as Social Media sites are featuring higher in search results these days.

Any thoughts people?

I have a contact who is a Social Media Mum as she calls her self and if looking for work maintaining Facebook and Twitter accounts for small businesses in the Wexford area. She love Facebook and currenmtly runs campaigns for Driving schools and Florists etc.

If you are looking for this type of service for your buisiness and would like to farm it out to someone then give me a call and I will put you in touch.

053 9430748

With many businesses now understanding that an Internet presence is vital to communicate to customers it has also come to my attention that they are under the impression that a facebook is the total solution. and for some I hope it is. It’s easy to set up, easy to manage and it can get a message across quickly.

I understand that times are hard in rural Ireland and a cheap website is called “Facebook” but I think that people must think about what they are actually doing. I live in Gorey in Co. Wexford, a small rural market town designed with a wide main street for stalls and where pedestrianisation would be ideal, by the way ! In the past year we have seen a huge increase in businesses starting a Facebook page and fair play to most of them, they are updated often and in some cases with an actual goal or theme in it’s content.

“Facebook is a Pub”!

This is how I described Facebook to a client whist giving a Social Media Training last week in the office. We discussed how some people feel that Facebook is the Internet now, but I think its more like a meeting place such as a Pub. In a pub you can meet new people, meet potential customers, discuss ideas and potential routes for your personal life, your business life and even you love life. But to go to the pub to socialize to meet potential business contacts is good for some businesses, but maybe not too good for others. Some people might like to do their transactions in the pub but I think it would be rather limited, whilst others would prefer to give out their business cards and then invite the new contact to visit their office or shop.

This is exactly the relationship I see with Facebook and a business website. Facebook is the place where you can meet people and then you invite them to your office or online shop. Not been able to convert the fans and friends into real customers is a problem I hear about all the time.

So whats the answer, well I think a business has to think about what they need the business facebook page for and how they will manage it and use it. A pub for instance can use it to announce a music event or a special offer on the costs of drinks etc, whereas a solicitors office might use it to let their clients know about a change in the law regarding a specific subject and inviting them to come in for a consultation.

A retail shop would totally integrate it into the advertising and if they have an online shop, they would then let people know and share with others what they have just purchased or intend to. So if you are thinking about setting up a facebook page for your business just remember being about to meet customers and not have the capability to carry out a business transaction can mean that your gone to a lot of work to get a new person into your business but they aren’t a customer will they actually buy something!

If you would like to set up a Facebook page for your business and need to get direction into how to get started then call me, Dave Jordan and we can talk about “settin up a facebook page” or a “digital marketing strategy”, I speak both!

Tel: 053 9430748

For help from Facebook see http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=721

You may have noticed that Facebook has launched Facebook Places in Ireland. This feature was opened to the public yesterday but has been running in the USA and UK since last summer.

“Check in”

This is the term to allow users to show where they are and enter information about the place they are located. Again you must remember that website like facebook and google don’t create content we do, they merely give us back that information in a format that is useful to us.

So what good is Facebook Places, we similar to other websites that run on mobile devices it will allow you to pin point you location and tell others you were there and what you thought of the place, be it a cafe, hotel, restaurant etc

Remember that Facebook are competing with Google and know that mobile phones have GPS built into them and the ability to use this information to let friends and family know where you are is a great tool to social media and using technology to interact with each other.

Like FourSquare, when you are logged in it can show you who is also near by. This can have a Big Brother effect but remember this is an option, so you dont have to panic and strap you mobile to the dog when you go to the pub!

Facebook’s Places will grow over the coming weeks in Ireland as the hundreds of thousands of iphone and HTC’s phone all allow people using Facebook to write up new Places they find and share.

So if you are a business and would like to use this, make sure you onto Facebook and Check In soon.

For more information on Facebook Places and how the Internet can help your business give us a call on 053 9430748 or check us out on http://www.facebook.com/cadamedia

They guys at twitter have launched a new business centre for twitter to help business get involved and start using it and understanding how they can benefit from it’ts use. So for all those questions that you wanted to know about twitter and what they hell is it etc then see the link below.

http://business.twitter.com/

Well this discussion has been going on for a while now as many businesses found that they didn’t like that Fan pages as the interactivity was very one way and that they felt that they only put announcements on their Facebook page but then they changed and set up a friends page that they had more interaction with their customers!

Interesting point, this can also be changed in the settings and you can allow your Fans to post to your page, just make sure you monitor it as they can say anything! I mean “anything”, Be warned.

This week however say yet another change by Facebook in the changing the “Become a Fan” button to “Like” a business or group pages. It means changing a few marketing pages as many of us are still putting “Become a Fan” on our literature and websites.

Facebook found that nearly twice as many people just clicked on “like” and that they had not become Fans, It has been suggested in search engine circles that this new system will also mean that you click like and then in the future Facebook will know what you like  and thus display similar stuff that you might like too. so really changing from a basic direct forwarding of information from a company page to giving you content from other businesses and groups that might interest you.

Are Facebook going up against the Google and Bing with their suggestive content, maybe, but we do know they are always active in developing their site so its a good thing to keep an eye on where they are going. Standing still means that you turn into a “bebo”.

For more on how social media can help draw sales leads to your company contact Dave Jordan of Cada Media Ltd today. Tel: 053 9430748

News today that Facebook have overtaken Google as the number 1 website in terms of visits according to “Hitwise”.

This is something I was only giving a talk about today to a group of business people here in the south east. I was explaining that social media needs to be managed correctly by staff of businesses if they are going to use this tool to attract traffic to their business using Facebook.

I had mentioned that facebook had over taken Yahoo and Microsoft already and this news today that this has happened this week has huge implications for the search world in general.

Companies will now be wondering if they should get a website and Facebook should now be exploiting this fact with their advertising costs and web designers/ programmers guru’s should be writting Apps for facebook.

The Whole World’s In A State O Chassis !

If you remember the quote from,  Juno And The Paycock then you will know what I mean. If we look at this in other terms, lets say 10 years ago we needed to find a telephone number where did we look ? Yes in a big yellow book in the office, now that big yellow book has been demoted to “Computer stand for your Monitor”

The whole world is changing, now we look for information online usually Goolge. But if Google have been toppled off the number 1 position in just 3 short years, what is next?

Food for thougt, chewing gum for the brain.

Enjoy the St Patrick’s Day where ever you are

I was browsing facebook and a friend of mine who works in a Media company in Sweden posted a link to a blog from a social media company in the UK. The post was about the percentage of tweets that contain brand names or organisation names. So what you may say,but like everything on the net you have to read between the lines to fully understand the benefit and reason for something.

We often get asked, why have a twitter account for business as most people just put some rubbish on it about what they are doing rather than actually using it for it s real purpose.

Conversation.

Twitter is a mini blog of types that give you the ability to ask questions, people will ask where a restaurant is, what shampoo do others use, what time is Metallica on stage, what ever the question is you must remember it is logged and search-able.

Twitter is a search engine that if we really think about it. It logs the real-time conversation that pople have online and you can search it to get the latest information.

http://search.twitter.com will show you what people are saying right now and don’t forget twitter is mobile so its not just nerds like me writting on their blog in the office on a dark evening, Its people standing outside supermarkets, sitting in restaurants, they are all around us telling us things using their mobiles.

19% of tweets mention brands