April

For most people April is the time to start thinking about planning our holidays or at least a short break. This is probably the month that you can give free reign to your sales message. After all if you have been careful about not  overdoing the sales pitch then you can feel justified in talking about your great offers to your list.

This is a great time to share springtime outdoor photos of your area on Facebook and Twitter too.

Have you heard of Pinterest? This is a new social platform that in January this year drove more traffic to online retailers than LinkedIN, YouTube and Google+ combined. In simple terms it is an online pinboard  where you ‘pin’ media that you find around the net to a series of image boards. It's great for businesses that are interested in promoting scenery, travel, cookery and food. We'll be offering more help about how to get started with Pinterest soon.        

May

With school holidays looming many of your followers will be searching for ways to keep the kids entertained. Even if your business doesn't particularly facilitate children's activities (and perhaps it could start!) your Facebook and Twitter followers will appreciate it if you share ideas and links you have discovered.

You could set up a kids colouring competition or essay competition – fans can submit their entries to your Facebook page. Once you have shortlisted the winners you could ask your fans to vote in a poll to decide the final winner. This sort of engagement can be great fun and a real way of building the number of Facebook Fans in particular.

Gardens are in full bloom now too so if this is something you can talk about on your website or in your emails then don't hold back. If you are in the hotel business then this is the best time for tours of local Open Gardens for your guests.        

June

With so much going on there are lots of great opportunities to create quick, simple videos of your business and of people enjoying your products and services. Sometimes the best ones are those made by your customers.

Why not run a competition on Facebook – the best clips  can be loaded to your YouTube channel – with the correct keywords they will be a great boost to your search engine optimisation. If you send an email campaign sharing the YouTube Video links very quickly after they have been uploaded to YouTube they will be even more effective – Google really takes notice of a sudden burst of traffic to a new video!

The key new elements are shown in the screen shot of Coca Cola's Page here and explained below:

1 The Cover Photo

There is a great new cover photo position. This is an image with dimensions of 851 pixels x 315 pixels. Facebook are very strict about what is allowed in this image. The idea is that the viewer will get an immediate feeling for your brand and what your business is about rather than be told information in the form of text.

So the following rules apply:

• No price or purchase information
• No contact info – this should be given in your 'information' or 'about' sections
• No 'Calls To Action'
• No references to Facebook features such as 'Like' or 'Share'
• No instructions or arrows pointing

It is worth bearing in mind that this top section is no longer fixed in position so that when visitors scroll down through your timeline they will no longer see your Cover Photo and branding in the same way. If you don't prepare and upload a new cover photo this top space will be blank on April 1st.

2 The Profile Picture

If you don't upload a new profile picture it will take the one you already have from your old Facebook page. This will probably not look correct as the dimensions of this new profile picture are different. An  issue here is that your Facebook profile picture when you add it, has to be at least 180 x 180 pixels  but on the Timeline it will be displayed at 130 x 130 px. including the border and 125 x 125 without the border.  It’s an important detail if you want to use some sort of combination between the profile and the cover image such as we have done on our Facebook page.

3 About

This section allows 150 characters to describe your business message.

4 Photos

The Photos area shows the Facebook native app for photos and is fixed in position.

5 Likes

This shows the number of 'Likes' for your page. It's position can be swapped with another app/tab

6 Custom App View

Previously your custom apps were in a column on the left side below your profile image. The icons allowed were very small. Now you may show your App Tabs in a more prominent position and with a larger image of 111 x 74 pixels. These App Views can be moved (except for the Photos App) to other positions.

7 'More' – The rest of your Custom Apps

If you have more than 3 Apps they can be viewed by clicking the More button which also shows how many more Apps you have. You may show up to 12 Apps. If you have more than 12 the extra ones will only be shown to Administrators of the page but may be linked to if you wish.

Some More Important Points To Note

• It is no longer possible to set a default landing page.
• Fan Gating / Fan Reveal Tabs still work.
• Existing Customs Apps will work fine except they will still be just the previously allowable width of 520 pixels. You may wish to have them altered to avail of the wider 815 allowable width.
• It is possible to 'pin' a post to the top for 7 days – a useful feature.
• It is possible to 'highlight' a post which will give it the full width of the page.
• Businesses with an interesting history will enjoy adding 'milestones'  to their timeline, completing the picture for their fans.
• Very old FBML Facebook tabs are expected to cease to function after June 1st 2012.

We will post further details as they become available. In the meantime if you would like some assistance preparing your business page for the change to Timeline please contact us soon!

Want to get quick access to great looking reports on any campaigns you’ve sent?

You can view your account on any popular mobile device like an iPhone or Android and the mobile version will be shown by default. You don’t need to install anything, because it is a web application, not a native phone application. Here’s a quick preview of how it looks on an iPhone.

You can access to your account using Safari and login to email.mailmaker123.ie

Launch it like a real application

One great thing about the iPhone is that you can launch web applications just like a traditional app you’ve bought from the App Store. By logging into your account with Safari and

adding it to your Home screen, you have a dedicated button that will load your latest reports with a single click.

January

A new year's greeting is good particularly if you share some of your plans for 2012. It helps to build rapport with your subscribers. If you are planning some exciting development in your business this year then why not talk about it. Even small changes can be the source of good content.

For example if you are thinking of offering a different type of cuisine or plan to introduce a new spa treatment you could mention it and link through to your Facebook page where you could have a poll asking readers to vote for their favourite option.

You could also share some spectacular winter photos and finally you could suggest that they start thinking about plans for Valentine's Day.

February

Spring is finally in the air! Get everyone thinking about the upcoming Easter break by including a link to a video on your website or YouTube channel of some fun local activity. Link through to your Easter offers page.

Valentine’s Day may be significant in your business. If so then make sure to send your February newsletter out in good time before the 14th to allow it to work it’s magic. If you’ve been busy adding the details of all those who have had their wedding in your hotel to your email database then you could easily create a segment of your list and send a special offer or gift to those couples.

March

Your St.Patrick's Day greeting may be simple or more elaborate depending on your customer base. If you have a good many readers outside of Ireland you might consider a special email campaign just to them. This can be achieved by creating a segment of your list based on the rule country=not Ireland (ask us if you need help with this). You could link to a humorous Paddy's day video or simply create a slideshow of beautiful Irish scenery. Don't forget to include a website link, a good description and keywords to any video you upload to your YouTube channel. The combination of an email campaign and video can really increase traffic to your site if done correctly. Also you could run a competition – you could have the entry requirement be that all your readers have to do is forward the email to 3 friends. You will see from the reports who has entered – simple! A forward from a friend is a very powerful qualified referral even if you offer a prize! Of course you can mention your Easter and Summer Break offers now too.

We hope these suggestions have given you some food for thought. We'll be posting our ideas for April, May and June very soon.

While it’s still early days for Dynamic Images, the possibilities are endless. As any custom field can be used when personalising an image, its applications go beyond the gimmicky. For example, you can use it to generate personalised tickets to an event using ‘Name’ and ‘Ticket number’ custom fields in your subscriber list. In a similar manner, you can also create truly bespoke reminders and email invitations.

Although the technology is still relatively new and some kinks still need to be worked out, why not get ahead of the rest with some stunning email campaigns this Christmas.

Benefits To You:

• You save postage, paper and your time.
• It’s the environmentally friendly option
• Your Christmas email can bring traffic to your website via links
• You can have your Christmas campaign scheduled, ready to go.

Choose one of our three designs shown which we will customise for YOUR business – Cost: €69 plus delivery at normal rates or have a bespoke design created for you for €190.

If you would like to know more please email us at info@mailmaker123.ie or phone Tina on 086 3176679 or Lynda on 087 6651373.

Thank you.

On October 1, 2011, Facebook will require all iFramed pages (that includes your business page if it is delivered over an iFrame), applications, etc to be served on Facebook through secure servers.  This does not apply to FBML pages.

Quote from Facebook Developer Blog: "October 1: All Canvas apps must process signed_request (fb_sig will be removed) and obtain an SSL certificate (unless you are in Sandbox mode). This will ensure that users browsing Facebook over HTTPS will have a great experience over a secure connection."

So what does this mean for my Facebook Business Fan Page?

Many Facebook users have enabled Secure Browsing so at the moment if your iframe Fan Page is not served through secure servers your vistors get a pop up asking them if they want to default to a non-secured browsing session.  Most often people answer NO to this question so they don't get to see your page. It would appear that as of October 1st Facebook will not allow a page to be delivered over a server that does not have a security certificate.

How can I sort this out easily before October 1st ?

You may purchase a security certificate for your server, speak to your hosting company or web designer.

Alternatively you can avail of our secure servers from €9 per month – see more details here or contact us, we would be happy to help.

• New vertical split window
• Streamlined WYSIWYG editor
• Add Social Sharing including a Facebook button to LIKE a campaign or Facebook Page
• Easily add alt text to any images
• Now iPad ready

Also we are now in a position to offer some new design layouts for your templates including multiple images in a repeater such as those we have used in our August Newsletter. Please get in touch if you would like your template upgraded to include these options.

Note: The 4 FREE templates that are pre-loaded to any new Free Trial Account have been updated to avail of these features. Ask us if you want these free templates loaded to your existing account.

From Your iPhone: For those iPhone users, the processing of uploading any video is really simple. First, shoot a video with your iPhone. Second, after your video has been recorded,  click the share icon (the bottom, left button that looks similar to a window with an arrow– you might be familiar).

After you hit the share icon, you’ll get be served with three different options:

• Email Video
• MMS (text message)
• Send To YouTube

Choose the “Send To YouTube” button and you’ll be asked to enter in your YouTube username/password. After entering that information, you’ll be brought to a publish screen that looks like this:

Depending on how long your video is, it may take a while to publish. Once the video is has completely processed, the video will be published for you to see on your YouTube Channel.

But I don't have an iPhone - don't worry just follow the steps are below:

From Another Mobile Device: This option is a slightly more roundabout way to uploading your video in comparison to using the iPhone, but still, the process isn’t too difficult to manage. First,  go to http://www.youtube.com/my_videos_mobile_upload from your computer. Once there, you’ll see your account’s YouTube sharing address. It should look something like this:

Take your given address and put it into your phone as a contact. The best way of doing this is to name the contact “YouTube” or “Uploads.” Once you’ve saved the contact to your phone, select the video you want to upload, then e-mail it to that contact. There you have it. The video will now be automatically added to your YouTube channel. Just ask us about setting up a feed from YouTube to your facebook fan Page – see an example here.

MarketingSherpa confirm this approach in this article….