Category Archives: Articles for other sites

Made another contest app for a client

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Sometimes I make contest apps for Facebook for my clients at work. This one is using a template and looks nicer than some others I’ve made in the past (I’d used the client’s colour scheme previously, which didn’t really look good in this format). The picture slider feature is pretty cool, I’m probably going to use those more often in the future.

Toplock ALT Tower app contest

 

The contest is for TopLock Locksmiths in Northcote who are a 24 hour locksmith company servicing all around Melbourne. The contest is for one of their clients ALT Tower Serviced Apartments, who are one of their clients. The winner (automatically generated from a database of entries) will get a night away in a luxury apartment and can do whatever they want in the city and come back and stay there for the night. I think the contest should do well as it should appeal to most people, everyone wants to stay somewhere fancy every now and then right?

For some weird reason I had a lot of problems getting the Facebook ads to work. It appears as if the filtering for ads on Facebook isn’t very well organised. I kept getting error messages that made no sense to how  was running the contest, I made appropriate changes to remove use of the word “Like” from anywhere (their filter seemed to think I was telling people to “Like” the page to enter, when I had said you must like the page to be able to enter). Though I’m still sure I hadn’t done anything wrong (Like gating to have fans enter a contest app is the correct way to run a contest rather than those dodgy “Like this photo to enter” contests that most small businesses do which actually violate Facebook’s terms and conditions). I also kept getting emails when my campaigns were rejected that showed a blank space where the error message was meant to be, so it was hard to fix. In the end I made an appeal to Facebook and showed them that their filter was screwing me around and they approved my ad. Still quite sure this was an error by them the whole time as I’ve made many ads similar to this in the past without a problem.

The thing that confuses me most is that how could a link to an app be confused with “liking this picture to enter the comp” style contests that other people do?  Oh well hopefully Facebook fix how their filter works. The contest framework I used is quite popular with Facebook.

I just really like Bacon Deluxe Burgers from Hungry Jack’s OK?

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Keith with Hungry Jacks Bacon Deluxe

 

On my Facebook page there’s some kind of joke going about how I really like Bacon Deluxe burgers from Hungry Jack’s. Well I guess it’s not really a joke because they are probably my favourite burger ever and I’m sure I eat them more than once a week and have a habit of posting pictures of me eating them sometimes. Above is a photo of me holding my first Bacon Deluxe Burger of 2013. The first of many. I made this photo to commemorate that special moment. The photo got over 200 likes as well which wasn’t too shabby.

Keith Bacon Deluxe eyes

Above is picture of me that I pasted on top of a picture of a cat against an optical illusion that I saw in my Facebook news feed. I figured it would probably look better if I switched the head for mine and added Bacon Deluxe burgers over my eyes. I thought maybe this picture would make a good cover photo and would encourage people to buy them for me. It didn’t really work though. Someone bought me a McFlurry recently but that’s totally different.

McDonalds Hamburglar unemployed

This picture was made with two uses in mind, the initial Instagram photo for the POW! Fridays Instagram account to promote a dress up night in 2012 (can’t remember what theme it was) and then also to go with my article about the Hungry Jack’s Makes It Better App for iPhone and Android. I wrote that article a while ago but haven’t shared it or this picture on Facebook yet, I’ll do that today, hopefully people understand it. The joke is to do with how a lot of the old McDonald’s mascots are all gone and that the Hamburglar is now unemployed and uses the Hungry Jack’s app to get his burgers. I guess it’s kind of like a political cartoon but in a photo. Political cartoons aren’t really that funny. Oh well.

Why are the marketing departments of some companies scared of Social Media?

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I have volunteered on committees that my local council pay for at least 5 years now and the entire time, we have been asking for official Social Media presence for those organisations for that entire time. Myspace completely disappeared in that time and now Facebook is the biggest thing, but by the time they actually get around to approving anything people might not even be using that one anymore. I discuss how these sort of organisations could greatly benefit from social media sites / online advertising here.

It is a real shame that waste so much money on printed newsletters which I assume few people actually read. Similar budgets could be targeted to the correct people online. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. I find out about nearly everything that interests me via Facebook or Twitter. I actually get annoyed whenever I get mail that isn’t a parcel from eBay or something. I don’t even open half things sent to me unless it’s something important like a phone bill.

 

I love that you can schedule posts for Facebook Pages now

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I run a few Facebook Pages for myself as well as some of my clients. Having to actually be online at certain times to post things is really annoying. I am aware of third party tools that let you do that too, but I don’t really like it when Facebook indicates that this post has been posted via Hootsuite or whatever else.

Now you can actually schedule the posts in advance from within Facebook, I’m amazed they never did this sooner. It is pretty simple to do. I wrote a little article about it a while ago, you can find it here. It is great because some days I can get the rest of the week’s posts ready in one go. Sure I may have to jump on again later to post some other news as it occurs, but I’d usually log into each page a few times a week anyway, so that’s not a problem.

Pinterest iPhone article I wrote for Social Media Overflow

I’ve been using Pinterest a lot lately. It’s great and I spend a lot of time out and about with my iPhone 4S and do not actually at a computer. With some snooping around without the Pinterest App I found something that allowed my to install some code into my Safari app that would let me Pin things from my phone. Before this you could only really see things already on Pinterest and not add new things. So here is my article “How to install the Pinterest Pin It button on your iPhone” and if you want to check out my personal Pinterest here it is.

Started Using Pinterest

I’ve started using Pinterest lately, it seems a bit girly but for SEO purposes it looks like it could be useful for some people. Maybe it might help me get more traffic to my blog? I am going to try and use it similarly to how I planned to use my Tumblr. Here is a link to my Pinterest account and I also wrote an Article for Twemps about how I think Pinterest is a great way to visually bookmark things. Check it out.

Integration between Social and SEO

I keep changing my mind about how I feel about social media and SEO becoming more and more integrated with each other. It is good that Google is taking social media signals into consideration, but as Google keeps integrating Google+ into everything it is starting to look like things could get annoying. I wrote an article for Social Media Overflow / Twemps about the good things coming from the integration between Social and Search, check it out.

Google Panda Article I wrote for BizCatalyst

The Panda update for Google Search has been a huge issue for SEOs for quite some time now. Social media is becoming increasingly more relevant to search algorithms and are something everyone needs to start paying more attention to.

I wrote a little article about the social side of the Panda update for BizCatalyst to highlight a few important points to take note of.