So what is it?

Facebook places allows you to connect with friends and people around you – in real time via your smart phone.

How Do You Use It? Example – At a bar with friends.

At the bar, you open up Facebook mobile on your smart phone, tap ‘Places’ and Facebook plucks and saves your location via GPS – you’ve officially ‘checked in’. Then you can checkin tag your friends to that ‘Place’, the bar, and those Facebook users get added to the ‘Place’ group.

How is that useful?

I haven’t really figured out why you’d want to do that, other than feeding the Facebook database with more personal information.

Ok, so how about for advertisers?

Ah… Well, its a gold mine for advertisers. With this new addition to highly targeted local, real time advertising expect to see adverts when you start using Facebook Places.

For Example…

You are at the bar and your group of friends are all checked into Places. Now, as an advertiser, imagine you own a pizza restaurant 100 yards from the bar. The pizza restaurant owner can send an advert for extra an large pizza (enough for a group of friends) a few hours after you made the Facebook Places check in.

We all know what happens after a few hours drinking beer, and I’m sure there is an optimal time to send that advert out based on when you checked in to Places.

Think I’m joking and it won’t happen?

Advertisers are set to spend $3.3 billion on social networking websites in 2010, with Facebook’s revenue to hit $1.2 billion in this year alone. This stuff is real – and advertisers value your ‘Really smashed with Johnboy in town’ updates.

Privacy

As with most Facebook developments, Facebook have set all Facebook accounts to default into the privacy settings they (and more importantly their advertisers) want, which in a nutshell is open and willing to accept anything. So make sure you review your privacy settings following the launch of Places in the UK, in particular:

‘Customise Settings’ > ‘Things other share’
‘Customise Settings’ > ‘Include me in People Here now after I check in’

When you check in, your location is visible to your friends and another Facebook user around – people you don’t know. That weird girl at the bar with one eye and a strange twitch could know all about your favourite music and what you did last weekend.

If you’d rather be more private, you’ll have to opt out of this setting – or Facebook Places altogether.

So what happened on Facebook?

A wave a Greenpeace supporters and Facebook users changed their profile pictures to anti-Nestle slogans, and started leaving comments – lots of negative comments.

How did Nestle react?

Badly. The Nestle PR team couldn’t cope with the influx of negative comments, leaving responses such as ‘Oh please… it’s like we’re censoring everything to allow only positive comments’…Just click here to visit the page to get the idea, everything they post gets slated.

Probably not the best reaction to concerned customers. Nestle eventually had to apologise for how they reacted; “We’ve stopped deleting posts, and I have stopped being rude”. They have been true to their word, and there are still thousands of negative comments on the fan page.

What can we learn?

Personally, I don’t think this sort of PR horror story could have been avoided for Nestle. I’m no Eco warrior, but Nestle are cutting down lots of trees and killing orang-utan’s to make KitKats, I can see how that would annoy people – Social media just whipped it up into an angry storm.

That said, it could’ve been managed and responded to better. Nestle should have admitted to the problems, and listened to the concerns of their customers and responded with solutions. Not just deleted comments and started being rude.

Should I avoid Facebook fan pages for my business forever?

Definitely not. Granted, this is an extreme ‘bad case’ of what could happen, but only because Nestle are in the wrong to start out with. If your business has good core values, good customer service and a good product… then I still believe a fan page is great to connect with existing and future customers.

But before you jump on the social media bandwagon – ask yourself how your business would react if you had a negative comment on your fan page. Are you prepared – or would you delete it?

I can’t thank Andrew enough for his continued work on my new website. He took my original ideas and previous website stat data to build a user friendly and ‘findable’ website in the search engines.

Andrew has got me top of the search results, and I’m so busy as a result of new work and leads through the website, Andrew is slowing down his pace with the Google optimisation!

Highly recommended.

David Parnell
Pest Control Hertfordshire

David has seen a huge rise in website visits as a result of the new keyword researched website – and he now ranks top of Yahoo, top of Bing and is on the 1st page (at the time of writing 3rd on Google.com) of Google!

TBO Media hail from the historic town of Bishops Stortford. Bishops Stortford has a long and interesting history, dating back to the ice age nearly 250,000 years ago! If you’d like to read more about our town’s history, head over to stortfordhistory.co.uk

Things have moved on a lot since then of course, and today the thriving market town is host to a huge range of business sectors (including many web design agencies!) to meet demands. You could walk down the high street today and be able to find (pretty much!) everything you would ever need. The town is well connected transport wise, with the M11 gateway, stansted airport, and regular trains into London. This is what makes Bishops Stortford such an attractive option for many businesses, including ours.

For us web design companies, being based in Bishops Stortford means we are strategically well placed to serve our clients all over Hertfordshire, and for TBO Media, Europe. Being outside of the London catchment area means we are able to take advantage of lower overheads and costs to our business. This enables us to offer a lot more affordable rates on our web design services compared to many central London based companies. You would be typically paying much higher rates per hour for the same level of service, and the same end products.

To arrange a free quotation (or maybe even a free website) then give us a call on 01279 310692 and we’d be happy to help. We offer 100% non geeky explanations of our services, and promise not to confuse you…we’ll try anyway. Alternatively, click here to email us of fill out the form below for a call/email back:

Lynn is with us today to answer a few questions about her company and how she is using online marketing to promote her business.

Hi Lynn, thanks for taking the time to speak with us today! Firstly, what was your motivation to move into the Gas bottle hire industry?

Hi guys, I have an experienced ADR operative working with me who has 15 years experience in the industry.  We researched the local area and found that the service for delivery was sadly lacking.  A lot of dealers leave a voice mail service for orders to be placed, and customers are left to guess when the delivery will arrive.  At TASS GAS we offer a more personal service in that every call will be answered by a member of staff and the customer will know exactly when their delivery will be made.

2. Do you feel an online presence in your industry is an important area to cover?

I think an online presence is essential for all businesses, especially for the type of product we are selling.  People will be able to see our range of products easily and obtain prices.

3. Part of your strategy has been a new website, was getting online a daunting/confusing task?

I would normally find this daunting and confusing, however I had none of the stress or worry as this was completely taken off my shoulders by TBO Media.

4. What’s the next step for you and the business?

Our next step is to expand the areas we cover, we are methodically targeting areas in Hertfordshire and Essex, once these are covered we will move into other districts.

5. How did you find the experience of dealing with TBO Media?

I have to say that I was so impressed with the way TBO Media handled my order.  I was given clear and concise information,  they researched key words to ensure my website got the best possible chance of reaching the top entries on google and I was offered very competitive packages to choose from.  In short it was a excellent experience and I would not hesitate to recommend TBO to anyone.

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us today Lynn, and all the best with the new venture! Remember readers, if you need gas bottle refills, with competitive prices and a focus on superb customer service, visit Lynn’s new website by clicking here.

Open source software means the source code is available to the public. You are able to change, add and configure it as you wish, and use it for commercial and personal projects.

How much does it cost?

Its 100% free, no strings attached. No license costs, and available to all.

If its free, why does TBO Media charge for it?

We charge for our time in setting up and customising the software to suit your business. Having the cost of the source code at zero, we can pass these savings onto our customers. The Open Source Directory Project claims ‘savings of about $60 billion per year to consumers’ who have adopted open source solutions over the paid for versions.

What are the hidden costs?

There are no nasty ‘per user’ license costs hidden away here. To be honest, you only need to factor in updating and maintaining the software with the latest security patches, this is standard practice to keep at the leading edge and reduce risks of hacking and down time. These costs are minimal over the course of a year – average being 2-3 updates a year.

Is it only for budget websites?

No! Open source software is a great way to save on costs, regardless of the size of your business. See the examples below for some global corporations who are using the software.

Can it be customised to reflect my company brand?

Yes. That’s part of what you pay us for!

So, who uses it?

Everyone from home users, small business and global corporations. The software is extremely flexible, making it appeal to all business models.

What are some examples?

• Vodafone (Iceland)
• Burger King (USA)
• Olympus (Australia)
• Cable and Wireless (USA)
• Avis (Nicaragua)
• Porsche (Brazil)
• Nikon (USA)

Is it safe/secure?

Yes. The nature of Open Source Software means it is always being tested for security holes, unlike many paid for versions which sit for years with security holes. The security patches are available to download for free, and will see you running the latest versions within 30minutes. TBO Media are able to update and install these patches as you wish, saving you the hassle.

Isn’t it buggy code built by teenagers?

No, this is a nothing more than a myth. Open Source Software is high level, well coded software with teams of developers, maintainers and editors working on the projects.

So that’s our top tips on Open Source Software, let us know what you think!

We strongly recommend upgrading your browser to greatly improve your web browsing experience and security online. All of these browsers are free to download.

• Download Safari
• Download Firefox
• Download Internet Explorer 8

Why remove support for this browser?

Internet Explorer 6 is a last generation browser, and cannot provide the same experience as modern internet browsers. Supporting Internet Explorer 6 means slower progress in the development of website design and development. Continuing to support IE 6 will hold us back.

Thanks again, and if you have any problems upgrading your browser please let us know.

“Let me tell YOU how to become a millionaire in 3weeks with your blog on cats”

You’ve heard it all before, right?

It doesn’t really work like that. Since we have been building blogs for customers and personal projects, we have learnt a lot about what works, and what is a waste of time. With our soon to be published ebook, we can tell you how to make money with your blog, not millions, but enough to pay for the next bag of groceries… Maybe even more.

We’ll talk about the following in the soon to be published E-book:

• Setting up a blog
• Keyword Research
• Getting Links
• Writing content
• Monotonize a blog

Sound interesting? Register your interest on the form below to be notified when we release the E-book: