You may have heard by now that Facebook is changing what we can do with Business Pages. As of 10th March 2011, all Pages on Facebook will have a new look, and some important new functionality. Anne Hill has written an article, 10 Tips for Using New Facebook Pages, which is well worth a read.

Linked to her article is an experiment into how the Facebook news feed works, which you will also find interesting.

The articles aren't long, so if you've got ten minutes Publisha recommends taking a look if you want to give your readership a boost.

If you're going to start a blog, or want to plan a blog, here's a useful 13 step blog planning worksheet.

If you think about these questions while you're planning your corporate blog or personal blog you'll keep your writing on-track. Good planning is the first step to success, so here's what you need to consider. 

SECTION 1: THE BASICS

Q1. Audience: Who is your intended audience? In other words, who is your blog aimed at?

Q2. Purpose: Why will people read your blog? Examples include: for information, for entertainment, for relaxation, learning “How-To”.

Q3. Tone: What style of writing do you want? Examples include: formal, relaxed, conversational.

SECTION 2: TOPICS AND CATEGORIES    

Q4. Topics: What general topic areas do you want to write about?

Q5. Categories: What categories will you divide your articles into?

Q6. The yawn test: Why will your readers care about each category you've chosen? If you're struggling to think of a reason, ditch it!

Q7. Types of media: What media do you wish to use? Examples include text, images, video, audio.

SECTION 3: IDEAS FOR ARTICLES

Q8. Sites to watch: Which sites are you going to regularly scan in order to get ideas for articles?

Q9. Life experiences: Which experiences in your day-to-day life are you going to use as a source of ideas for articles?

SECTION 4: GETTING IT WRITTEN

Q10. Frequency: How often do you want to add a new article? (Once or twice a week is a good starting point).

Q11. Authors: Who is going to write your articles? Will you do this yourself, invite other contributors (free of charge), or pay people to write?

SECTION 5: PROMOTION

Q12. Announcing new articles: Where will you announce new articles? Publisha automatically posts to your Facebook wall and Twitter feed. Consider other specialist news sources, such as putting technical articles on Hacker News, and general sites such as StumbleUpon, Reddit and Digg.

SECTION 6: TRACKING AND IMPROVEMENT

Q13. Tracking: How will you see which articles are most popular, and decide which direction to take your blog in future? Publisha has built-in analytics, and you can easily link Google Analytics. These are likely to be your best choices.

We’ve been developing our core marketing processes for Publisha, and come to the conclusion that pretty much all internet startups have to focus on the same 12 core marketing processes.

In this post I’ll list the processes and show why start-ups should get into a process frame of mind.

THE PROCESSES

 
Here they are. Process number 12 ties the rest together.

1. Drive targeted traffic to homepage
Aim: Get the right potential customers onto the homepage.

2. Signup
Aim: Get them to sign up for a free account.

3 Induction immediately after signup
Aim: Get the user to set up their account ready to actually use it.

4 Activation: keep them going
Aim: Ensure user is still using the site 30 days later.

5. Push them to Pay
Aim: Encourage payment within 30 days through roadblocks and desirable features.

6. Payment
Aim: A smooth payment process with minimal dropout.

7. Retention
Aim: Ensure user accounts remain active.

8. Referrals
Aim: Get users to refer other potential customers to us.

9. Testimonials
Aim: Get users to tell us why we’re great, in a form we can use in our marketing.

10. Upgrades
Aim: Get users onto higher-paying accounts and deliver more value.

11. Re-activation
Aim: if a publisher stops using their account, we get them going again

12 Continual Improvement
Aim: Continually measure and optimise all the marketing processes.

 

WHY YOUR START-UP NEEDS TO THINK IN TERMS OF PROCESSES

If you’re looking for coherent direction, improvements in your business every day, and a feeling that you’re not floundering but executing a plan, you need processes. In short, they can shortcut your route to the top.

If you’ve ever worked in a big company you have two things: my profound sympathy, and probably some experience of processes. There’s an old saying, “Education is wasted on the young”, the thinking being that you don’t appreciate it until it’s too late. Well, that’s exactly what I think about processes as they apply to start-ups. They say there’s a lot that big companies can learn from start-ups. Well, here’s something start-ups can learn from the big boys.

All that start-up stuff about “We’re nimble” can often be code for “We don’t really know what we’re doing, so we just flit around from thing to thing without a coherent plan and a solid direction pushing us forward”. So the momentum never gets going. I think processes are a great way to give that momentum.

Bigger companies formalise this into talk of “Quality Management Systems” and accreditations like ISO:9001, but you don’t need to get that heavy with it to get the benefit.

Another benefit: as you get bigger and take on more staff, you can already say “This is how we do things round here”, and have a good base to work from.

HOW IT WORKS IN PRACTICE

It’s not rocket science. It’s not even new: hurray, that means it’s tried and tested. The idea comes from an American called W Edwards Deming who’s been dead for nearly 20 years, and he was 93 when he croaked! He invented it in America, everyone there told him he was crazy, so he went to Japan, showed it to them, and they used it to thrash the Americans by making things better and cheaper.

If you want to get all funky and MBA about it, it’s called the Deming Cycle, or “Plan Do Check Act (PDCA), which you can check out on Wikipedia, but you can go with a light version of it to make sure it doesn’t take up too much time.

Here’s what we do:

Plan: What are you going to do to get the results you want?
Do: Go and do it!
Check: How did you do? This is where your metrics come in. 
Act: What are you going to change in the process to improve it for next time?

So for each of the first 11 processes I’ve listed above, this is what we do. Process number 12 is really this Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle, where you break out the metrics, the Google Analytics, and all that good stuff.

AN EXAMPLE PROCESS

Not to go into too much detail, but to take Process 1 as an example, here’s the basic sorts of things we cover in our plan. No great surprises here:

1. Drive targeted traffic to homepage

* Search Engine Optimisation
* Search Engine Pay-Per-Click
* Facebook Advertising
* Joining in on Discussion Forums
* Blogging
* Commenting on Articles on other blogs
* Twitter
* Affiliates
* PR and press coverage

Each of these items then breaks down into further detail on what we’re going to do. So for the item on commenting on articles on other blogs, we have lists of the blogs that we comment on.

We then have regular review meetings of the processes where we discuss results and decide how to change our processes. Over time, we think this will let us get better and better at what we do.

Why not try it and see how it works for you?

PS - I'm contemplating whether building your email list should be a separate process in its own right. It's a very important step: many people come to your site but won't sign up on a first visit - you worked for that traffic, so it's a shame to waste it, when you could send them your newsletter and other offers and hook them in later.

When you’ve written your article using Publisha, you can now easily announce it on Twitter, Facebook, Google, and a host of other services. This helps to alert your readers that a new article is ready for them, and it will boost your readership.

To begin, simply write your article as you normally would, and then click the “Save and Publish Article” button.

You’ll notice that the right hand sidebar now has the Promotion buttons that you can use. Let’s look at some of these buttons in depth.

First, let’s start with Facebook. Make sure you’re logged into Facebook in your main web browser. Then switch to your Publisha window where you are editing your article, and click the Facebook button to share into Facebook. You’ll then be taken to a window where you can choose a headline or short message, choose a picture from your article, and then share the article onto your Facebook wall.

Next, let’s look at Twitter. This time, make sure you’re logged into Twitter in your main web browser. (If you don’t have a Twitter account yet, sign up for free at www.twitter.com). Then switch to your Publisha window where you are editing your article, and click the Twitter button to share into Twitter. You’ll be taken to a link with a suggested tweet and a short form of your URL. You can then modify the tweet if you wish, and then click the Tweet button to alert your followers.

You can explore the other services, which all work in a similar way. In particular, take a look at StumbleUpon and Digg.

We’re using AddThis to help power the Promotions feature, so for a full run-down on the services available you can see http://www.addthis.com/services.

Facebook has launched a service that allows businesses to offer users deep discounts through its smartphone application.

Users physically out shopping who "check in" to the Facebook Places programme via their mobile smartphone will be presented with an offer they can redeem immediately in the store.

Businesses will be able to use a self-service interface to create their own deals and publish them on Facebook, a feature that will eliminate the need for a sales force to sign up businesses. Facebook does not take a cut from the deals.

Read more here: http://yhoo.it/aCgIVN