Promoting your company or product on Facebook

Promoting your company or product on Facebook

There are a few different ways to promote your business on Facebook:

1. Facebook Profile: you can start spreading the word about your new company through your own profile. I wouldn’t recommend creating a separate profile for your company as it apparently is against Facebook’s Terms of Use and it would require a lot more work to start from scratch, invite friends to your new profile, manage this profile regularly, etc. A lot of the people you know and already are connected to as a friend on your personal profile might be discouraged to befriend your new company, fearing you might overwhelm them with marketing material or something of that sort.
People use Facebook to hang out with their friends and see what they’re up to, not necessarily to buy stuff or book their vacation. With that in mind you can plan a strategy to let them know about your company and make them curious enough to visit your site. There are a few spots on your profile where you can input your website and write a blurb about it. I strongly believe you can do a lot of promotion from your personal account, without being intrusive by using the following tools:

2. Facebook Groups: This tool has been around the longest, and even though most people I’ve read on the subject and myself, will tell you that Facebook Fan Pages are the way to go. You mustn’t underestimate the power of groups. Groups are usually created with a purpose and therefore contain a more or less homogeneous demographic. Usually are better for specific, short term campaigns. You can take advantage of already existing large groups that contain your target demographic by joining them and using the discussion board to invite people to your website and your Facebook Fan Page.

3. Facebook Fan Page: Initially introduced in mid 2007, this feature really picked up during the last half of last year when big brands (like Coke) and popular music artists and bands started using them to reach their market/fan base. The Facebook Fan Pages have several advantages over the previous marketing tools provided by FB. The most important one in my opinion is that you have no limit to the number of fans you can have (one case often mentioned is the Obama fan page, which reached 800,000 fans after just a few months) and you, as the administrator of your page can contact all your fans at once by sending them an update.
Fan pages come with a variety of applications like photo albums, video, discussion boards, events calendar all are oriented to bring relevant content to your audience as well as interaction with them, there is also a huge variety of 3^rd party applications you can add to it for free.

4. Facebook Applications: One of the most popular features in Facebook is that you can develop your own application and add it to their network. There are a lot of types of applications, I am sure you’ve been invited to a number of them. They can be games (like online scrabble or boggle), gifts (like Superpoke) or networking oriented (there’s one where you create a Facebook business card that attaches itself to your outgoing messages), etc. There are a few applications within Facebook that let you build your own application for free, however the options are very limited and if you have an innovative or very specific idea you will need to hire someone to program your application for you.

5. Social Ads: Of the 5 features in this document, this is the only one that Facebook charges money for. Facebook Ads work similarly to Google Adwords, but within the Facebook network. With them you can target a specific demographic (by location, age, gender and keywords in their profile), and a very cool feature is that you can add a social action. To exemplify this: normally you would create an ad so that people who click on it go to your website, the social action is an addition in case your company or product has a Fan Page or a Facebook Group related to it. The social action tells the person who is seeing your ad, if someone in their network has become a fan of your product or has joined your group. It personalizes the ad to each viewer encouraging them to pay more attention to it.

Publishing and Promoting your Page

The first step will be to make a Facebook Fan Page for your business, you can start by clicking on the following link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

If you’d like further information before getting started, Facebook has a cool how to guide here: http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/pages/guides/creating_a_facebook_page.pdf

Getting it right

1. Make sure to select the right category for it (i.e. Travel Services)

2. Choose a title for it that explains what it’s about, so people will find it naturally, this is very important to get right the first time, because it is the only part of your page that YOU CANNOT EDIT in the future.

3. Facebook provides an essential set of applications according to your industry, but very little control over your design. Just make sure to add your logo or a banner with your logo so you can start building your brand. Pick a graphic that captures the essence of your product or company.

4. It is prudent that you browse through Facebook Pages of your competitors or similar businesses to get a feel of what you can do.

5. Organize your page’s content in a way that emphasizes the content that your target market will find most compelling. Facebook pages have a basic structure composed of boxes (1 box for your photos, 1 box for your discussion board, 1 box for your videos, etc.), so you can drag the boxes around until you’re happy with the resulting layout. In my opinion it is very restrictive, but you can still make a difference. You also can always change it in the future, try new things and compare results through time. Once you’re done publish your page and make sure YOU become a fan of it too, so your friends can see in their news feed that it’s live.

Keep it up to date

6. The key as in everything else on the web is updating regularly. Post pictures every so often, update the calendar with events (trip dates and other events you find relevant). I would also advise to post a copy of every blog you do, on your page and profile, using the Facebook Notes application.

Making it Viral

7. When you post pictures or write a blog that portraits or mentions someone already in your Facebook contacts, make sure to tag them, so their friends will be curious and visit your post.

8. Encourage your closest friends and colleagues to comment on your posts, fan your page and interact with your company’s presence on Facebook. Interaction is also key to give your Facebook presence more visibility.

9. You can also add some comments yourself to push your posts’ popularity, the key is not overdoing this or you’ll sound desperate. Try to always comment back on other people’s comments to engage them in a conversation.

10. On your website, make a link to your Facebook fan page (preferably very visible) so that “Facebook junkies” may choose to stay in touch with you and your company that way. Facebook has an approved “Badge” for this purpose, shown here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/manage/promo_guidelines.php

11. Create unique promotions for your fans and publish them on your website. Something like: “10% off for our Facebook fans”.

12. You can draw a fans name every so often to give him a prize (merchandising or a special discount).

13. Encourage them to interact by making contests (photo or video contests could be an idea) and reward the winner with something. (again merchandising or a special discount could be the way to go ).

14. Acknowledge every fan that writes on your page’s wall by posting a thank you note on their wall. Not only is it polite but it will draw some of their friends’ attention.

Check your Stats

15. Facebook provides very intuitive stats for your page called “Insight”; you should check them regularly to figure out which actions improve your progress and which slow it down.

Promoting your Facebook Page beyond your circle of friends (and their friends)

Your friends will be the ones to start spreading the word about your page by becoming fans and interacting with it. But, what if you have very few friends on Facebook? Or what if your product or company caters to a very specific interest group and that will prevent it from becoming viral easily?

There are a few actions you can take:

1. The first suggestion would be to find friends and people you know but don’t have as contacts yet to share your page with; you can find them easily using the Find Friends features that Facebook has.

2. If you still feel you don’t have enough friends or not enough friends that will contribute to your target, but have a friend who does, try to get him/her involved in launching your page, as Facebook pages can have multiple administrators.

3. Find the friends that will be the core of your startup page, the ones you know will be most likely to support you by interacting, inviting people, discussing and bringing your page alive and send them personal invitations. These people should be very active in Facebook and have large networks of friends and are sort of leaders within your target group. If you can, get your favorite bloggers to write an article about your product/company.

4. Once you have exhausted the options to invite all your friends and colleagues to your page, the next step would be to find the people you WANT and invite them to your page; this can be accomplished by joining the right groups.
There is however an etiquette (based on common sense really) that you should consider when promoting your page in groups:

a. Make sure to join groups in several networks to have a broader scope. You can start by clicking on the “Groups” link on your Applications bar at the bottom of your Facebook homepage, there you will see the groups recently joined by your friends, which can be a good choice to get you started, and you will also be able to search groups by keywords or subject. Find groups that are related to your target, and preferably ones that have many members.

b. You shouldn’t start promoting right after joining, you could take some time to participate, enter discussions to answer questions, etc. Provide some help to gain a reputation.

c. This way hopefully some members will request to be in your friend’s network and following your activities, blogs, etc. Or you will also want to add some of them as friends. At this stage you can start inviting them to events in your page, etc. If they feel they were the ones who found you, they will be more likely to recommend you.

5. Promote your Page with Social Ads. Like I mentioned earlier, when someone becomes a fan, people in their network will see their name and photo over your advert, Social Ads can be paid per click (like Google Adwords) or per 1000 impressions and you have full control over your budget as well.

Link of interest:

This is our own Facebook Page of Antigua Guatemala, which we did as a kind of experiment. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Antigua-Guatemala/31088286953

This one is a page we recently did for one of our websites, Llegallega.com, where you can send huge files to your friends and colleagues. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Llegallegacom/24202486865

If you need assistance with your Facebook promotion, feel free to contact us, we’ll be happy to help!

Shootthefile.com - Start sending HUGE files now!

A few days ago we launched Shootthefile.com, the English version of our successful website Llegallega.com

SHOOTtheFILE.com, because you can’t attach 1GB to an email

Our website allows any user to send files up to 250 MB for free and up to 1GB for a small fee without jamming your recipient’s email.

A step forward

In our everyday life, we receive an enormous amount of emails, they are either work related or personal, and a lot of them come with attached files. Short movies, word processor files, PDF, PowerPoint presentations and photographs are among the most common examples. We often need to spend several minutes, sometimes more, to download these emails to be able to read them.

Shoot the File started operations, in June 2007, as Llegallega.com; since then, it has become one of the leading websites in Spanish to send large files with many positive comments throughout the blogosphere and digital press. This success led us to explore new markets; we are now launching our brand for English speaking audiences: SHOOTtheFILE.com.
By allowing our users to host their files securely in our servers, Shootthefile.com makes email communication more efficient.

This is how it works:

1. You enter www.shootthefile.com and fill out the form; first, entering your recipient’s email, then selecting the file you want to send, and then typing your email address, add a short message and click send.

2. While the file is uploaded to the Shootthefile.com servers, you can see its progress in percentage and MBs loaded. It is of importance that You don’t close the webpage during this process.

3. After completing the previous process, you are then taken to a success page where you will be provided with a direct link to your file, for reference.

4. The same link is sent to you and your recipient’s email address.

Free and paid options:

a. If your delivery is under 100MB, you can use the yellow tab without registering. The files you upload will remain on the server for 7 days and will be available for 10 downloads.

b. If you wish to send a file of under 250MB, you can create a free account and login to make your delivery using the orange tab. You will need to confirm your registration the first time through a link sent to your email. The files you upload will remain on the server for 7 days and will be available for 10 downloads.

c. If you want to send files of up to 1GB, you can register for a Premium account by choosing the Premium option when creating your account and following the checkout process. All transactions are handled through Paypal. When you are done, you can start using your Premium account by logging in using the red tab. If your subscription expires, your account will be automatically downgraded to a free 250MB account. You can then upgrade it back whenever you want. There are different payment options: monthly, for 3 months, for 6 months and for a year. The files uploaded through a Premium account remain in our servers for 30 days and are available for 100 downloads.

d. If you want to send a file larger than 250MB but don’t want to purchase a Premium subscription, you can also use the Shootthefile Express service; with this option, you can buy a one-time delivery of up to 1GB using the green button on any of the tabs. Once you buy it, you will receive an email with the code assigned to your transaction, you will need to enter it in the green tab.

Who are we?

Shootthefile.com was developed and is operated by the award- winning Guatemalan company, Akasha Design.

During 2007, the website was operating in a Beta stage, providing only free 100MB deliveries, but, thanks to the feedback from our users, we decided to implement a more robust platform with all the new features described before.

The development was done in PHP, Perl and Java; it has combined the efforts of a multinational team of designers and programmers from Guatemala, Spain, Indonesia and Ireland.
The site is hosted in one of the most secure datacenters of the world, and we guarantee the uptime and speed. We pride ourselves with providing with great customer service, the Shootthefile.com staff is very accessible and will respond any questions shortly. Depending on the hour, you can contact live chat support directly from the site.

Shootthefile.com doesn’t have a waiting period of time before your download is available; It doesn´t restrict the use of download accelerators all though the latter are not advised as they often represent a conflict to the server by placing multiple requests, and hence affecting the number of downloads your file is available for.

For more information contact:
Ricardo Rubio
Project Manager/CEO
Akasha Design
info@llegallega.com
GT : +502 5680-3160
US: +1 714-709-4519
ES: +34 965992853

Llegallega.com, Cuando el archivo es demasiado grande para un email

Recién esta semana lanzamos la nueva versión de nuestra web Llegallega.com, incluyo a continuación el comunicado de prensa que hemos estado enviando a los medios:

Llegallega.com, Cuando el archivo es demasiado grande para un email

Nuestro sitio web permite a cualquier usuario enviar archivos de hasta 250MB de manera gratuita, y de hasta 1GB a un costo módico, sin saturar la cuenta de correo de quién los recibe.

Llenando un vacío

Hoy en día recibimos en nuestro email gran cantidad de archivos adjuntos, por razones de trabajo, amistad o entretenimiento. Estos pueden ser películas cortas, presentaciones de Powerpoint, fotografías digitales o documentos de texto (Word, PDF, etc) entre otros.

A menudo nos vemos en la necesidad de esperar varios minutos (en el mejor de los casos) para que toda esta información se descargue y podamos leer ese correo tan importante para nosotros.

Llegallega .com es la opción en castellano por excelencia para envíos de archivos grandes, como fue mencionado en la edición digital del periódico español El País.

Permitiendo al usuario enviar archivos enormes sin saturar el correo de su destinatario, Llegallega.com agiliza la comunicación por email, alojando en sus servidores archivos que de otra manera serían imposibles de enviar.

El sitio funciona de la siguiente manera:

1. El usuario ingresa a www.llegallega.com y escribe en el formulario de envío el email del destinatario, escoge el archivo que desea enviar dentro de su disco duro u otro medio de memoria disponible, escribe su dirección de email y un breve mensaje para el destinatario y le da clic a enviar.

2. El archivo es cargado a los servidores de Llegallega.com, proceso durante el cual el usuario puede ver el progreso de dicha carga, en porcentaje y cantidad de MB restantes.

3. El usuario es llevado a una página de carga exitosa, en la cual se le proporciona un enlace directo, para su referencia, con el que puede descargar su archivo.

4. El mismo enlace es enviado por correo electrónico al destinatario, con copia al remitente.

Varias opciones para los usuarios:

a. Si su envío es menor de 100MB puede utilizar la primera pestaña (amarilla) sin necesidad de registrarse.

b. Si desea enviar un archivo de hasta 250MB puede hacerlo registrándose de manera gratuita. Escoja la pestaña naranja y siga los pasos para registrarse. Deberá confirmar su registro pinchando el enlace que le llegará por email. Sus archivos permanecen en nuestros servidores durante 7 días ó 10 descargas.

c. Si quiere enviar archivos de hasta 1GB puede crear una cuenta Premium siguiendo los pasos de registro y pago en la pestaña roja. Si su cuenta Premium llegara a vencer, no la pierde, simplemente se convierte en una cuenta gratuita de 250MB. Puede cambiar su cuenta gratuita a Premium en cualquier momento. Hay planes mensuales, trimestrales, semestrales y anuales a precios razonables. Los archivos enviados por una cuenta Premium permanecen en nuestros servidores durante 30 días ó 100 descargas.

d. Si necesita hacer un envío de más de 250MB pero no quiere comprar una cuenta Premium, puede utilizar el servicio Llegallega Express, el cual le permite comprar un envío único de hasta
1GB. Utilizando el botón verde en cualquiera de las pestañas puede adquirir su envío express.

¿Quiénes somos?

Llegallega.com es desarrollado y operado por la empresa guatemalteca Akasha Design, ganadores de la Arroba de Oro 2007 en la categoría de Comercio electrónico (con el sitio watermala.com).

Durante el último año Llegallega.com había operado en fase Beta, proveyendo envíos gratuitos de hasta 100MB solamente, y gracias a la enorme aceptación que ha recibido por parte de sus usuarios y la blogósfera, decidimos implementar una nueva plataforma, más robusta, con varios niveles explicados arriba en el subtítulo de “Varias opciones para los usuarios”.

Su desarrollo se realizó en lenguajes PHP, Perl y Java, y ha requerido un esfuerzo conjunto de un equipo internacional condiseñadores y programadores de Guatemala, España, Indonesia e Irlanda.

El sitio está alojado en uno de los centros de datos más seguros, rápidos y confiables del mundo, en Montreal, Canadá, para asegurarnos que el servicio esté siempre disponible y sea tan rápido como la conexión local del usuario lo permita.

Además de esto, el equipo de Llegallega.com es muy accesible y responderá a cualquier duda qué tenga de forma rápida, y dependiendo la hora, también cuenta con ayuda en vivo por chat.
Llegallega.com no tiene tiempo de espera para las descargas ni restringe el uso de celeradores de descarga.

Nominación y Premio, despedimos bien el 2007

Hace tiempo que no publico nada en el blog, y en esta ocasión las noticias no son tan frescas, pero si buenas. El pasado octubre (2007) fuimos a la cena de gala de los Premios Exponet 2007 de prensalibre.com con Watermala.com como uno de los sitios nominados en la categoría de Transacciones En Línea, fue una intresante experiencia, a pesar de no haber ganado.

Luego, el mes siguiente fuimos invitados a la premiación de la Arroba de Oro 2007, nominados nuevamente con Watermala.com, esta vez en la categoría de E-commerce y en esta oportunidad sí ganamos!!! Acá están las fotos:

Test 1

About this month's campaign:

Prueba 1

12 min DVD for World Link Partners

This is a video I made for World Link Partners ( www.worldlinkpartners.org ) using Flash 8, and converted to AVI with ADShareit SWF to Video Converter Pro, and later with VirtualDub. It was processed that way to get the best results recording it to DVD format

This is the low res version I uploaded to Youtube. Feedback will be appreciated.

Este es una presentación que hice para video World Link Partners ( http://www.worldlinkpartners.org/ ) utilizando Flash 8 y convirtiendo el resultado a AVI usando ADShareit SWF to Video Converter Pro y luego procesándolo en Virtual Dub. Fue procesado de esa manera para obtener los mejores resultados al grabarlo en formato DVD.

Watermala.com está finalmente al aire

Hace varias semanas que www.watermala.com está al aire (desde el 25 de septiembre oficialmente).
Incluyo un screenshot de la página principal y otro de laherramienta para personalizar las camisetas, los invito a visitarla. Por el momento llevamos un par de miles de visitas y algunas camisetas vendidas, así como un par de pedidos al por mayor. Incluso nos recomendó alguien en un foro. Me llamo Ricardo, no Rodrigo, pero gracias por la recomendaciòn de todas maneras ;)

Por último quería recomendar una interesante herramienta de Google, llamada Google Alerts que les manda un mail cada vez que google encuentra algo relacionado con lo que se le ponga en la alerta. Así me enteré del comentario en el foro.

Más fotos cortesía se live2fight.org

Acá hay unas cuantas fotos que me pasó Erick de www.live2fight.org ellos están participando en la categoría de asociaciones, así que porfa voten por ellos, Guille lucha contra la leucemia desde hace 2 años y necesita de todo el apoyo que podamos brindarle.

Gracias a Erick y a www.live2fight.org por contribuir con estas fotos para nuestro blog. Un abrazo,

Here are some pics courtesy of www.live2fight.org they are participating in the Associations category and we recommend you also vote for them. Guille has been fighting leuchemia for the past 2 years and he needs all the help we can give him.

Thanks to Erick and www.live2fight.org for these pics. Hugs.

d-aka.com en la arroba de oro 2006

Quiero inaugurar este blog con un video resumen de la actividad en la que participamos recientemente. El Festival de la Arroba de oro 2006, para el cual estuvimos regalando a quienes votaron por nosotros, camisetas con los diseños que tenemos publicados en www.watermala.com y además, contratamos al caricaturista Luis Arriola (www.wildpachanga.com) para que dibujara a algunos de nuestros votantes, quienes también se llevaron su caricatura en una camiseta.

I'd like to open this blog with a short video from our recent participation in a webdesign/development festival "La Arroba de Oro" in which we gave away t-shirt to people who voted for us onsite with the designs we have published at www.watermala.com. We also hired a cartoonist, Luis Arriola (www.wildpachanga.com) to make drawings of some of our voters, whom also took home a personalized t-shirt with their cartoon.



Acá hay algunas fotos también:
Here are some pics too:


El público no faltó en ningún momento
The crowd gathered around us the whole time







Erick, el zappo, de www.live2fight.org fue una de las víctimas de nuestro talentoso caricaturista

Erick, el zappo, from www.live2fight.org was one of our cartoonist victims













Sara ayuda a los organizadores a escoger un diseño para sus camisetas, al final de la actividad.

Sara helps some of the Arroba's staff to choose from our designs at the end of the evening

Nuestros diseños de "Me in Guatemala" fueron muy populares.

Our "Me in Guatemala" designs were very popular among the crowd








Otra feliz víctima luciendo su caricatura junto al artista.

Another happy victim showing her cartoon beside the artist.


My partner in business as well as in life, Sara.

Mi socia en los negocios y en la vida, Sara.













Mi hermana Isabel y su amigo Jean Carlo fueron una gran ayuda.
My sis Isabel and her friend Jean Carlo were a big help.