Welcome to July

Welcome to the July issue of our newsletter. Despite the wintry temperatures outdoors, June turned out to be one of our busiest months ever, with lots of new design and build projects underway, as well as delivery on more scoping, competitor analysis and search marketing strategy documents than ever before!

Along with delivering information of value in report form, we are also continuing to run and develop our series of free informational seminars for clients. Following on from our popular “twitter world” social media seminars in 2009, we’ve been running weekly AdWords seminars for those clients interested in exploring the world of Pay Per Click for the first time, or keen to optimise their existing campaigns.

We have more seminar topics in development, but would love your feedback on what is of most value to your business, as well as your preferences for time of day and other details. Please take a few moments to click through to our brief survey so we can ensure that what we are delivering is both relevant and timely.

We look forward to your feedback and your participation in upcoming events.

Sue and Graham

Checking out Facebook Social Graph – The “like” button

By now you will no doubt have seen Facebook “like” buttons popping up on a number of the sites you visit every day – no longer just restricted to pages within Facebook itself.

The functionality that allows other sites to install like buttons is known as Facebook “social graph”, and as well as providing a public impression of how popular specific content and websites are, it also provides a source of relevant information about the people who are visiting your site and reading your content.

Of course, having someone click the “like” button also means that person’s Facebook profile will then be connected with your Facebook page.

The benefit of this is that you, as the website owner, can also send content to the Facebook newsfeed of the person who clicked on the button, providing a direct channel to deliver news, offers, links or photos, simply by putting new content on your company Facebook page.

This provides an opportunity to offer discounts or special offers directly to customers who are interested in your products or services.

Perhaps the biggest benefit is the two way interactivity this function adds to your site and your brand.

So how do you install Facebook Social Graph?

1. Set up a Facebook business page if you don’t already have one. This functionality does not work with individual profile pages or group pages.
2. Get a username for your page (you need to have 25 fans before you can do this)
3. Install the social plugin on your website
4. Start posting great updates and content!

If that sounds a bit overwhelming, the first thing you need to do is give our SEO team (or your hairyLemon account manager) a call, and we will get it all sorted for you in just a few hours.

Below are some examples of Facebook work we have done for clients:

1. Set up a Facebook page
2. Create an awesome landing page (this is what people who click on the Like button on your site will see the first time they go to your FB page).
3. Add the Facebook like box to your website. Ideally add the option that shows your fans, especially if you already have a good number of fans on Facebook.
4. If you have content on your site that is suited to sharing, like your news, blog posts and other compelling content, you can add the smaller version of the like button to those too.

Once you have everything in place, you can use Facebook insights to get more information about the people who like your company and your content, which is data that can help you tailor your online marketing strategy further.

With more than 500 million active users on Facebook, you really can’t afford to ignore this powerful social networking platform.

To get your Facebook presence optimised please phone +64 3 377 0031 or email your account manager today for a quote

Tapping into Your Facebook Friends via Tripadvisor

New functionality was recently launched by popular crowd sourced travel advisory site Tripadvisor.com that will allow you to not only read the opinions of strangers about the places you plan to travel to, but also the opinions and experiences of the people on your Facebook Friends list.

The new service is called Trip Friends and uses the Tripadvisor map application that has been on Facebook for some time. It allows you to see all your friends who have used that app to show the places they have visited.

Once you have connected your Tripadvisor account with your Facebook account, when you choose a destination, there will be a new box on the right suggesting you get travel advice from your friends and showing the friends who have visited that location (and added it to their Facebook map).

You can choose who you want to ask for advice, either as a post on your Wall, or you can select a friend to send a private message to.

Any replies you get to your question will also show up for you in the Replies tab.

Trip Friends is just one of many new features Tripadvisor has rolled out in the last six months, and a strong indication of how important the Facebook platform is becoming to leverage networks and deliver useful information to anyone seeking higher levels of relevancy in online reviews.

The usefulness of this functionality is of course dependent on the size of your Facebook friends group, and how many of them are actively using the trip map to record where they have travelled, but as more people become aware of it, no doubt it will rapidly increase in value for travellers.

Dynamic Controls New Site Launch

This month saw the launch of a brand new web presence for long term Lemon client, Dynamic Controls. This Christchurch based manufacturer of mobility devices has taken a leadership position within the industry, and the first phase of the new site roll out is the first real public face of this new position.

Dynamic is focused on helping to improve quality of life and wellbeing for people with mobility issues, including developing an innovative iPhone app to assist users of electric wheelchairs and scooters. We are excited to see the next phases of this site come to fruition, and encourage you to have a look at the fresh new site.

Internal Changes at the Lemon

Things never stand still at the Lemon, and the last month has seen some reshuffling internally, with Gordon Sutherland changing roles from Project Manager to Front End Developer/Integrator and Manisha due to go on maternity leave at the end of August.

We are currently recruiting a new Project Manager to help pick up the load, so watch this space for further developments.