Facebook Friday: The Little Scarf Shop

Good Morning, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

Today is the first of the page reviews that people have paid the bargain price of $49.95 for.  The Little Scarf Shop Facebook page surprizingly enough is related to a website that sells cashmere scarves 🙂  It has 171 people liking the page and has been going since December 21^st 2009.

What’s working:

• Lovely pictures posted
• Good photo albums for different collections
• Good information in the info box
• Great that they have the URL www.Facebook.com/thelittlescarfshop

Recommendations

Keywords

Below is a table of the top 25 keywords in Australian search (as per Google’s keyword tool).  However 100 keywords came up in the search.  Basically when people are searching for scarves these are the words they are using, therefore these are some of the words that should be incorporated into the content on the page.  The reason is that it helps with SEO (search engine optimisation) so the page will appear higher in the rankings when people search in Google or Bing etc.

KEYWORD	GLOBAL MTHLY SEARCHES	LOCAL (AUS) MTHLY SEARCHES
scarf	5,000,000	201,000
scarves	2,740,000	49,500
shawl	1,220,000	27,100
pashmina	673,000	14,800
shawls	550,000	9,900
silk scarves	165,000	5,400
scarf accessories	201,000	5,400
fashion scarves	27,100	4,400
womens scarf	40,500	3,600
tie scarf	135,000	3,600
wool scarf	74,000	2,900
cashmere scarf	165,000	2,400
scarf knitting patterns	40,500	2,400
red scarf	110,000	2,400
mens scarf	110,000	1,900
pashmina shawl	110,000	1,900
pashmina scarf	90,500	1,300
pink scarf	49,500	1,300
skull scarf	40,500	1,000
wholesale scarves	27,100	1,000
cotton scarf	27,100	1,000
scarf dress	33,100	1,000
scarf tying	27,100	880
winter scarf	40,500	880

Recommendations

• The info tab basically contains nothing!  This is a huge missed opportunity, it needs to be rich with keywords explaining what the product is, what colours it comes in and about the company
• Look at increasing the size of the profile pic (there is 180 wide by 540 pixels high to play with) to include an image of someone in a scarf along with the logo
• There are no reviews on the page, so encourage people to write them, perhaps offer a discount off your next scarf
• There is no landing page, this is really important with a product that is so visual, have a landing page that includes the Autumn winter collection to show people what is on offer, this could include an enewsletter signup form for your newsletter to build your database
• Add a store application (eg Vendor) to the page, this uses paypal for payment, and could result in extra sales, plus you could offer special deals for people who like your page through the store, eg a free booklet on tying your scarf.  It is important that your Facebook page is a community that people want to be part of.
• When posting photos use ones from the website and therefore people can click on them to go straight to the store to buy
• Make short videos showing people how to tie the scarf to add onto a video tab on the page, you have explained in one post, but it might be easier for people to see, this could even be done as if they are looking in a mirror so that they can follow the video and tie it at the same time
• Make a video on washing your scarf, sounds very basic, but people will be nervous about washing it at home themselves.
• Respond to all comments on the page, it encourages people to post more as they know you are listening
• Ask questions in the posts, eg what do you wear your scarf with?
• Use the polls application to find out info such as favourite colour
• You could include information on what cashmere is, explain to people make it easy, ask people what they think it feels like, eg cotton wool etc.  Try to get people to imagine so that they want it
• You could ask people what are the strangest ways you’ve used your scarf, eg the woman on the page who commented that a child wiped their nose on it
• You could have your scarves traveling around the world, where has yours been?  Encourage people to send in pictures similar to the post you have from Neema
• How about writing a piece with pictures which is 1 scarf 100 ways, or maybe not 100, but similar to the pieces you see in fashion mags, so that people can see that you can wear it with pj’s, tracksuit, work clothes, party clothes etc.
• You could write notes on the notes tab on which colour scarves suit which skin/hair colours
• There needs to be a posting strategy around the page, decide first of all what your purpose is for the page, then use that when posting, decide on how many days a week you want to post and then make sure each post is adding value to your audience.  Currently there are a lot of selling posts, which is ok if they are spread out amongst others, but they aren’t.  Look at the reason why people come to your page, and what scarves are all about ie fashion and tie that (literally!) into your posting.

USA audience

You mentioned you want to target the USA audience.  There are a few ways to do this:

• Facebook ad’s, targeting them at women in the USA, you can choose fashion as an interest for them, that is going to be the quickest and easiest way to get people to your page
• Go to USA fashion or magazine pages and post value adding posting, eg did you know that wearing a scarf like this gives the illusion you are 2 sizes smaller (I’ve made that up) then you can afterwards put from The Little Scarf Shop (hyperlinked) and people will go and check you out

Both of these can be used with any audience you are trying to target, but it is all about adding value, not just spamming another page with hey I’ve got a great red scarf!

Summary

You need to give people a reason to visit your page not just once but again and again, as you offer them something that they want.  Just promoting buy a scarf is not going to do that, it needs to be more than that.

Using Facebook ad’s is a very cost effective way to get new people to your page, you don’t need to spend that much, it could just be $10 a day.  Use it to get them to your page, not to your site, then when they have liked the page you will have them there to keep talking to, instead of them hitting your site and leaving.

Did you love this review? You can get your page reviewed by the Chief Rabbit for only $49.95, just email info@SocialRabbit.net

Mental Monday: The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich

Good Evening, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

Today is mental Monday, when this Rabbit reviews a book, today’s is The Accidental Billionaires: Sex, Money, Betrayal and the Founding of Facebook by Ben Mezrich.

The story starts in October 2003 and ends in May 2008 with a where are they now in 2009.  It follows Mark Zuckerberg’s progress of building what was initially called “The Facebook” through Harvard and into the business world.  My key take outs from this book were:

• Mark is a VERY VERY focused guy who will get whatever he wants eventually – regardless of who he has to step on to get it
• Mark had a very clear vision and nothing stopped him from achieving that vision
• You need to be passionate about what you are doing to achieve your goals
• Don’t care what other people think of you, eg Mark attended a meeting with potential investors in his pajamas
• If you can play the game you can win, eg the pajamas meeting was to make the investors feel that they could control him in business, because obviously he had no idea

Obviously it is hard to know when reading this book how much is fact and how much the author embellished.  I wonder if Mark actually contributed to the book, it seems very very unlikely.  It is far more likely that his first business partner Eduardo Saverin contributed, there is a lot of info in the book about how Mark basically took advantage of him in the early days and was then “persuaded” to devalue Eduardo’s shares to nothing.

Regardless of this, the book is all about power, people who want power, people who want to be seen, to be recognised and use their IT skills to stand out where normally they would be labeled “geeks”.  Mark is portrayed as someone who is so focused he will stop at nothing to keep his beloved “Facebook” growing, and yet when people who work with him have fulfilled their usefulness they seem to “disappear”, not in the killing them off sense, but that they are no longer part of Facebook.  The reasons seem to be that they are a liability, or have exhausted their usefulness.

This is a very easy read, and even it is not 100% true, it is a very interesting story that makes you want to find out what happened to the players in the end, although of course we all know that Facebook survived.

The main points that I got were that the vision and focus above all else will help you to achieve your goals no matter how big.  This is because you don’t worry about what others think, you don’t worry about upsetting people, you just worry about “your baby” working, growing and succeeding.  Plus if you put in a lot of hard work you will succeed, there are many times in the book when the Facebook team are coding for 4 days straight with no sleep, that is how passionate and driven they are to achieving the results.

So this weeks book, was perhaps rather frivolous, versa others that have been reviewed, but as in Crush It! it is all about the hard work and dedication that get results.  If you’ve read it tell me what you think in the comments below or on the Social Rabbit Facebook page.

Mental Monday: Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk

Good Morning, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

Today I’m reviewing the book Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk, the full title is actually “Why now is the time to Crush it! cash in on your passion”.  This book is a very easy read, I think I read it in about 1.5hours, maybe less.  Gary is the creator of Wine Library TV a video blog on wine, and using blogs he grew his family liquor business from $4M to $50M in 8 years, not bad hey?

Gary is ALL about doing something you love, being passionate about it, and using that passion on the internet.  He is also BIG on hard work, as in really hard work, he talks in his book how when he first started his video blogs he would make the blog and then spend 8-9 hours A DAY commenting on other blogs, researching, tweeting and generally getting out there and “meeting the neighbours”.  This I have to say is one of the main reasons I love his work.  The fact that he does work.  The way he writes in his book is exactly the same as the way he talks (I saw him in April in Sydney).  When I was at the conference in Sydney a lot of people kept asking him but how long do you spend on social media a day, how long do I need to spend, and similar questions.  He kept coming back to one point – I love it and therefore it doesn’t feel like work.  This is what I love about him, as this Rabbit feels exactly the same, EXACTLY, if you enjoy it does it matter how long you spend doing it?

So in true form here are a few of my favourite bits from the book – they are all direct quotes,

• I know you were hoping for some links and resources, but if I’m going to teach you how to fish properly, I can’t bait the hook for you.
• Your blog will be your main home, your central location with a no-exceptions open-door policy where anyone can find you.  It also serves as storage for all the content you will create, essentially building an archive where people can see how you and your business have evolved and expanded.
• The real beauty of Twitter and Facebook (and all the other social networking sites) is that they offer a massive opportunity for every entrepreneur and business to keep constant tabs on what their customers are thinking about them.
• If you are a video blogger you must have  TubeMogul account.  It’s a website that allows you to upload your video once, then distributes it to countless video-sharing sites for free.
• If you want to dominate the social media game, all of your effort has to come from the heart
• assuming you’re doing this right, you’ll be bleeding out of your eyeballs at your computer [on hard work and time spent]
• No one makes a million dollars with minimal effort unless they win the lottery.
• If you contact me within a year of starting your business to complain that you haven’t made the money you thought you would, you’re not listening.  I said that you could make a ton of money being happy; I didn’t say you could do it overnight.
• But creating your content is the easy part.  Of course your product should be as good as it can be, but it should also be the least time-consuming element of your whole endeavor.
• Care.

 I think that from the extracts above you get the idea behind Gary and his book.  It is a quick easy read that you will want to come back to every time you need that kick up the bum to get you moving.

Until next week enjoy, have fun and get busy on your social networks.  If you have a book you’d like me to review please post it in the comments or on the Social Rabbit Facebook Page.

Facebook Friday: The Atrium Cafe

Good Morning, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

It’s Facebook Friday again… today I look at The Atrium Cafe’s Page, see below.  This is a local business in Launceston, Australia which doesn’t have a website, this is it, so it needs to work hard for the cafe.

What’s working:

• Great regular posting
• It is a local Tasmanian business and the posts are aimed at the locals, which is great, they know who their audience are
• Fantastic engagement with their customers, eg the post on Megan’s birthday saying they have a surprize for her.  It makes their customers feel special I’m sure
• Lots of comments on what they are doing with other local businesses, eg Rotary, which a) gives them an endorsement and b) promotes Launceston
• Enticing pictures of food that make you want to go & order it
• Every comment is responded to
• The reviews tab is very very positive with each person rather than just overall raving they are picking out the details that made it special for them

What could be improved:

• There is no landing/welcome tab, so new visitors land straight on the wall, this should be added as it could be used to showcase the cafe and the food
• There is no phone number for the Cafe, or any way to contact them other than visiting, big mistake… you need to make it as easy for people to contact you as you can. otherwise they won’t bother
• The page has not got its username yet, this would help with SEO and make it easier to direct people to the page, so go to www.facebook.com/username to get it ASAP
• The info box under the profile picture again is very empty, I get the impression that they are going for a simple look, but with no keywords in here they are missing out on SEO opportunities, especially as this is their web presence
• In the info tab there are hardly any relevant keywords, these should be included for example: A friendly welcoming environment with delicious freshly made food… etc
• Photo’s tab, I would add in albums, currently it is very boring, give people a reason to click on albums and sell the products through the images, eg The Cafe, I’d want to see what it looked like inside & out, lunch menu – take a picture and have it in the album with photos of the food also in the album, they could so the same for breakfast etc.
• Take off the discussions tab they are not using it, and don’t really need to
• Go with the notes tab for notes, instead of the notes box on the Boxes tab and the Notes tab.  It just cleans it up and makes it easy for people to find
• The profile picture can be A LOT bigger there is 200 by 600 pixels to play with, so could have a montage of food shots.  The food shots are all great, but give people as idea of the range, also remember you can change this as often as you like
• How about having a people who like only tab where they can print off coupons to bring in and use, it will encourage customers to visit and like the page and also encourage people to keep coming back
• They need to make sure that they are promoting that they have a Facebook Page in the cafe so that people know to go and like the page
• Use the poll app to engage customers further and get them involved in the food decisions, prehaps consider having a dish of the month/week that was voted on by the Page visitors, you could get them to offer suggestions and then put those suggestions in a poll
• There is also nothing on the page about corporate catering, obviously this is something they offer, this could be an image on a FBML tab called catering

Overall a great page with lots of interaction, but it could be working harder for the business, a phone number on there would be the best thing if only 1 of these were implemented.

Until next time readers, remember if you have a page you want ideas for, ways to improve it and telling what is going wrong let me know in the comments or on our Facebook Page www.Facebook.com/SocialRabbit

More reasons I love the new Facebook interaction

Good Evening, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

I am a self-confessed lover of the new Facebook “likes” and social plugins that came out in April 2010, it is just delicious for me as a consumer, as well as a marketer, I can see the world opening up into such a wonderful place (no, I’m not drunk!).

Here are more reasons I love it:

I went onto www.CNN.com over the weekend to check out their like buttons, then went back today to show people and it remembered me – no clicking required 🙂

As a Consumer why?

– I feel special that they remembered me (even if I know it isn’t that a real person remembered me, it feels like the old days when you shopped local and people knew your name and said hello when you walked in)
– It makes my life easier to be able to update my Facebook page from here

As a Marketer why?

– The sites engages with the consumer EVERY visit!
– The site makes the consumer feel special and therefore puts them in a positive frame of mind
– It allows them to share important news with friends quickly and easily
– The plugin allows the consumer to see what their friends have been looking at, which keeps them up with what is important to their friends and gives them something incommon to share, eg that was so awful about x on CNN wasn’t it?

On the www.Levis.com site I am even MORE excited, this to me is the ultimate in marketing, and will give you millions (ok well maybe not millions, but lots) of ideas that you could use on your site:

You can see here that Levi’s have got totally onboard the “like train”, asking you directly to declare your likes they have turned it into a campaign.  They have partnered with Facebook in a way that they claim is going to help you with “like-minded shopping”. 

I click through to the “Friends store” do you like that?  🙂 (if it’s early & you are only half awake I’ll explain – you have friends on your personal Facebook profile, so once again they have used the Facebook terminology).  I can see on the next screen which jeans everyone “likes” voted on (you can’t see the jeans in the screen shot they are above the  like buttons).  I then scroll down and see what everyone recently liked, it appears that none of my friends “like” Levi’s hence why I get this.  But the clincher for me on this is that I see upcoming birthdays!  I see that it is my friend Seb’s birthday on May 3rd, now if I was on a site that sold something he might “like” I might buy him a present there and then….

As a Consumer why?

– I am reminded of my friend’s birthdays and if it was a site with a gift that worked I would have bought it (but I don’t want to buy Seb jeans!)
– I like it that I can see which jeans are popular, for me I only buy one style, but if I was buying an item for a friend, or buying a non-clothing item I would look at this as a guide to what I choose
– If one of my friend’s had liked something I would (if I valued their dress sense/opinion) like it to, or buy it if it was right, either way I would look at it

As a Marketer why?

– I am engaging my customers right at the point of purchase
– I am getting onto their level showing them that I understand that they are into Facebook and I have made life easy for them
– I have shown them I care by prompting them of their friend’s birthday so that they don’t get repercussions for forgetting
– I have made it easy for them to buy items that they are unsure about by showing them what others are choosing
– The “like” voting on the jeans helps me to know which I should promote in the next newsletter/home page of the site to boost sales
– The “like” voting also helps me with stock control

So do you get it yet?  Can you see the power that Facebook has unleashed for marketers with the global web liking?   I think I can see where this is going next, addresses in Facebook accounts and credit cards/payment system linked to it so that you can on this Levi’s store buy it straight away, no more needing to add to a cart and check out, one or two clicks and it’s yours, plus you can choose which friend you want to send it to….  Imagine the possibilities…

Well this Rabbit has to go and have a lie down, all this excitement is too much!  Let me know your thoughts in the comments or tell me on the Facebook Page www.Facebook.com/SocialRabbit and apologies for not having a “like” button, I would if I could, but technical challenges mean I can’t, but soon, I have the warren onto it.