What's the new Facebook 'Promote' Feature all about?

If you are a Page admin then you may have noticed that there are new icons on you business Facebook Page when you are writing a post that weren’t there before..? Does the word promote ring a bell as shown in Figure 1?

Figure 1

So what does this new 'promote' feature do?

Well, promoted posts are a simple way to reach more of the people who like your Page and their friends. Visit your Page to try promoting a post. Promoted posts are available to Pages with 400 to 100,000 likes.

When you promote a post, it will be shown in the news feeds of more of the people who like your Page than you would reach normally. Friends of the people who have interacted with your post will also be more likely to see the story in their news feeds for up to 3 days from when the post was first created.

What to know how it's done? Well here you go!

1. Go to the sharing tool to create a post and enter your post details.

2. Click on the Promote drop-down button and set your desired budget. Note: the budget you set is a lifetime budget and not a daily budget as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

3. Click save and away you go, it's that simple!

So you may be thinking, if I don’t promote my post, will the people who like my Page still see it?

Nothing has changed about how your posts are shared with the people who like your Page.

A lot of activity happens on Facebook and most people only see some of it in their news feeds. They may miss things when they’re not on Facebook, or they may have a lot of friends and Pages, which results in too much activity to show all of it in their news feed. 

If you don’t promote your post, many of the people connected to your Page will still see it. However, by promoting a post, you’re increasing its potential reach so an even larger percentage of your Page audience and the friends of those interacting with your post will see it.

All of the above information has been taken from the Facebook Help Page so if you get stuck please click here for more information or give Nutcracker a call on 01384 455 141 today.

Top 10 tips on how to get in Google’s good books!

Google Panda's updates are designed to penalise sites with weak content and favour those with quality content. So here is what you need to do to stay ahead of the game:

1. Produce high quality unique content
2. Get rid of low quality pages
3. Avoid duplicate content and scrapped pages
4. Become an authority
5. Promote content over social media
6. Improve bounce rate
7. Improve user experience
8. Avoid keyword flooding – use language that sounds natural
9. Vary anchor text- use 10-15 different key words and alternate between them
10. Focus on high quality back links, especially if you only have low quality ones.

However be patient when making these changes…results don’t happen overnight.

(Source: Search Engine Journal)

So you may wonder why it is so important to rank favourable amongst Google searches. Well that’s because worldwide we conduct 88 million searches per month on Google. Along with Google analytics been used on 57% of the top 10,000 websites.

Don’t forget about the Penguin update that happened on 24th April 2012, which evaluates your websites incoming links to see if your site involves link schemes intending to improve rankings.

Is your business being talked about on the web?

If your company manufactures or supplies a specialist product, then the chances are someone is talking about your company across the web!

How can this be?

Well, millions of people interact daily through a number of mediums, social networks, forums and blogs, and they could be talking about your brand or service.  Questions on all sorts of topics are asked daily. People asking where they can source a product from, or have a technical question which requires someone with technical knowledge to help them.

You can pretty much guarantee that there is some kind of forum or blog that is dedicated to your field, from manufacturing, engineering, services etc.

How does this benefit your company?

We all know that word of mouth is the best advertising anyone can get.  So if someone is recommending your company through these mediums, wouldn’t you like to know about it? Follow up on a lead? Help out with any technical queries?

Nutcracker can help you identify these hidden leads, and alert you when anyone is discussing your brand or company on the web.

Contact us today for more details on 01384 455 141 or 

email   info@nutcrackerdesign.co.uk

‘Worfe Looking At’ charity calendar in aid of Breakthrough Breast Cancer’

An image taken from the 'Worfe Looking At' Charity Calendar 2012

Nutcracker has recently contributed both time and expertise towards another project on behalf of Breakthrough Breast Cancer. Since completion of the project the Breakthrough Breast Cancer team have been in contact with our Sales Director, Rob Hupperdine to personally thank him for all of his ‘wonderful support for the ‘Worfe Looking At’ charity calendar in aid of Breakthrough Breast Cancer’.

Breakthrough Breast Cancer stated that ‘the time and resources you (Rob and Nutcracker) kindly gave towards the project have been instrumental in its success’. They went on to say that our final fundraising total of £3710 could help fund a specialist incubator that is vital for growing delicate cells at the correct temperature and humidity within laboratories.

Without the support of people like Rob and companies such as Nutcracker, vital funds would not be raised and discoveries into new treatments simply could not happen.

Nutcracker continues to support Breakthrough Breast Cancer so that vital improvements in breast cancer prevention, treatment and services can continue.

If you would like any information about Breakthrough Breast Cancer and the work that they do then please visit www.breakthrough.org.uk or email: info@breakthrough.org.uk

Coming Soon to Facebook – Find and Share Offers!

Facebook will soon be allowing its users to get discounts from businesses when they post an offer onto their Facebook Page. In order for users to claim an offer, all they will need to do is click ‘Get Offer’ from the story anywhere that it appears on Facebook.

Pretty soon you will start to see offers by Pages that you like within your news feed. Upon clicking ‘Get Offer’, Facebook will send you an email that you can either print off or show on your mobile phone at the business to redeem your discount.

It sounds exciting doesn’t it?

These offers are a great way for organisations to engage with customers and to drive new people to their business. In creating offers suitable for the target audience of you business you are encouraging people to talk about your Page and share the offers between friends.

Offers are FREE for Page Admins to create! However currently they are only available to a small number of business Pages. Facebook do however plan to launch offers more broadly soon (Facebook, 2012).

Watch the below video for a greater insight into the future of Facebook Offers.



So how can Nutcracker help when offers are available?

To ensure that your offer is claimed and shared its value should be carefully considered along with the headline and imagery used. If people don’t notice or understand your offer or if it looks like spam then they may hide it from their news feed and unlike your Page – which would be disastrous!

We advise that your Page Admin and organisation track how many people claim, like, share, comment and bring each offer into your business. This will allow you to get a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t for your customers (Facebook, 2012).

The Latest Google Algorithm Update.

We've had the panda, and now for the penguin!

Googles latest algorithm update which occurred on the 24th April 2012, is reportedly termed the ‘penguin update’. This follows a recent tweet from Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) who is the head of the webspam team at Google showing a cuddly panda and a cuddly penguin. See picture to the left.

The details of this update are still quite sketchy, but here at Nutcracker we think it’s fair to say that it will be targeting webspam. Webspam is classed as ‘black hat’ techniques which some companies still employ to try and cheat the system!

We at Nutcracker believe in doing it the hard way, and insist on using ethical (white hat) techniques. We adopt a holistic approach and strategise from A-Z. Through using these white hat techniques all of our clients successfully sailed through the Panda update and we are confident that the penguin will be equally as successful.

Bring on the Panther we say!!

Welcome to the team Russ!

Nutcracker would like to give a warm welcome to the newest member of our team, Russ!

Hi, I'm Russ - web designer, graphic designer, nerd, musician and general big, friendly type. I'm one of the company's techie go-to people, and (apart from a short absence) part of the purple furniture. Out-of-hours I can mostly be found plucking a large, stringed-wardrobe (double bass) and writing/performing original music.

I'm 44, married to Jayne and live in Dudley - a stone's throw from Nutcracker. I originally hail from Wolverhampton but moved to Dudley when I got married, almost 20 years ago.

In my spare time I'm a musician (bassist and multi-instrumentalist). I often use live looping and effects to create layered music - sometimes with multiple instruments but mostly only using a bass guitar. My music has been described as, "subtle layers of sound that emerge gracefully like cinematic soundtracks". Visit my website to listen - http://www.russsargeant.co.uk

I'm currently involved in lots of different musical projects ranging from forming a jazz duo with a local saxophonist to writing and recording with ambient and progressive artists in the USA.

Right... back to work... ttfn.

Russ