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How to Take Good Food Photos for Your Facebook
This is a guest post by Terry Ford. if you’re on Facebook a lot, then his tips for sharing photos that people will enjoy may be helpful to you… Thanks Terry!
If you love social networking with Facebook, you probably use it in a variety of ways. Everything you do on your site enables your friends to get a glimpse into your everyday life, interests and passions. You can chat with friends and relatives with ease, and share things that are important to you with them, and vice versa. Just scrolling through your newsfeed can bring you lots of interesting information, from valuable articles to cool photos to exciting gossip and news. It can also be boring sometimes, with people sharing lots of mundane things that you’d probably never think to ask about in the real world.
But besides the mundane, there are lots of common threads that connect us on Facebook. Most people love babies, so posts about children are well-loved. Talk about your kids or post some cute pictures, and you’re sure to get a lot of “likes.” Everyone loves a good movie or book, too, so share what you’re enjoying at the moment, and you’re bound to get some positive responses. Share your good news and people will congratulate you. If you talk about things that are upsetting you, you’ll get moral support and kind-hearted advice from people who care about you.
What’s another thing that everyone loves? Food! It’s become a trend to post pictures of our meal before we devour it on Facebook. Pictures of food and drink always get good responses. Post a picture of your food and you might here, “That looks delicious!” or “You’re making me hungry!” or “What’s the recipe?” But of course, the key here is to take a good picture of your food. You want it to appear as appetizing online as it is on your plate. Here are some tips to taking mouth-watering photos of your food for your Facebook. Keep in mind food bragging has a negative facet. Be careful and be considerate.
Use a Good Camera
Don’t even bother posting a blurry, dark picture of your food. It simply won’t look good or even be recognizable. The point is to showcase your good eats, not leave people guessing. Nothing is more frustrating than a picture on Facebook that we can barely make out, your food included.
Watch the Size
If you take a picture with your cell phone, don’t post it if it’s only going to appear as a tiny little box. These photos are even worse than blurry ones. They are so small we can’t even enjoy looking at it. It will hurt your friends’ eyes if they have to strain to see the details. Don’t post tiny thumbnail pictures. Not of your food, not ever.
Check the Background
When you take a picture of your food, make sure the rest of the table that will be showing looks nice. It’s all about presentation, here. We don’t want to see a dirty, balled-up napkin or lipstick-stained glass, too.
Eat Good Food
People want to see pictures of good food, not something that looks gross. Don’t take pictures of your meal at the local fast food joint. Go to a fancy restaurant and show off the beautiful plating and exotic meal.
Don’t Forget Your Drink
No one eats a meal without having a drink to go with it. Don’t leave out your beverages. Sometimes there is nothing more refreshing than the sight of an attractive Margarita complete with fruit slices and tiny umbrella. Delicious!
This and other useful social media info comes to you from Terry Ford. Terry enhances the quality and accuracy of her written work using Grammarly grammar checker.
2
The Power of Custom Facebook Apps
Image via Wikipedia Gain credibility, visibility and spread the word about your book or business. This is a Your custom Facebook app can include: Example: You’re an author of a book on growing your own herbs. You could have a custom The possibilities are endless. For niches/businesses that are local in nature (realtors, attorneys, etc…) I will only do TWO Prices range from $499 to $1499 depending on how much and what you want your app Please contact me today to discuss your custom Facebook app and we can have your own
tremendous opportunity. You can’t normally have something like this done for less than a
couple grand at best.
Facebook app could give a tip a day, with an optin form to grow your mailing list that you can
market to over and over again over time, a video of you talking about how your book can help
and a link to where they can buy the book then and there if they like. *Hint* Offer a 10% discount
on the book if they sign up through your optin form (or even offer a discount to anyone who buys
after becoming a user of your app)!
per niche/business per area. Be one of the few that uses such innovation and technology!
to include. I CHALLENGE you to go to any programmer freelance site and put up a job listing
for someone to build a full app with a combo of the above features and get it done for
less than $2,000 – $5,000!
app up and running within days.
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How to Get More Fans for Your Facebook Page
Image via Wikipedia
One of the most commonly asked questions about Facebook is, “How do I get more fans on my page?” After all, the fans are the whole reason you want to have a Facebook page for your business. It’s the fans that are your audience, that you interact with, they are who your Page is for.
Getting fans to your Facebook page isn’t all that difficult. Let’s go over some things you can start doing today to attract more fans to your Page.
Give Them a Reason
Why should someone like your Facebook Page? What’s in it for them? What are they going to get out of it?
Remember that your fans don’t care about you or your Page. They only care about what you can do for them. If you let them know right off the bat what they’ll get out of being a fan of your page, then they will be more likely to click that like button.
Set up a welcome page that has a message for non-fans telling them why they should like the page, and another fans-only page where you deliver some goodies once they click Like.
Invite Your Friends and Followers
Do you have followers on Twitter, friends on your Facebook personal profile, an email list of people who want to hear from you, connections on LinkedIn? Invite them to join your Facebook page! Make it enticing by having content that you only share on your Facebook page and let them know that’s the only place they can get it.
You may want to pick and choose who you invite, as well. For example, you probably don’t want to invite ALL your Facebook friends, because some of them won’t be interested. Instead, go through your list of friends and pick the ones you think would be interested and only send your invitation to them instead of blasting it out to everyone.
Link to Your Facebook Page
From your website. From your Twitter profile. From your LinkedIn profile. From your email signature. From your blog post announcing your new Page. From your author bio on guest posts.
Every time you have a chance to link to your Facebook Page and direct people there, do it!
Do you have a freebie that you give people when they signup for your list? On the thank you page where they download that freebie, link to your Facebook Page and invite them to join your community to get more goodies!
Print Your Facebook URL
If you don’t already have your custom URL for your Facebook Page, go to facebook.com/username and set one up. This gives you a shorter URL that is easy to remember and easy to include on print material.
Put your Facebook URL on your business cards, brochures, fliers, and any other promotional materials you are printing.
Display it in Your Physical Space
If you have a storefront or office where customers come, put up a sign for your Facebook Page so they know they can find you on Facebook. You could even have the URL printed on your receipts or put it on your store window or door.
Talk About It
You can mention your Facebook Page in your elevator pitch, at the end of talks or workshops, in conversations with people, on your webinars or teleseminars, and any other chance you have to tell people where they can connect with you further.
Facebook Advertising
Facebook ads are a great way to get some new fans to your Facebook Page. You can target your ad by age group, interests, geographical location and many other details so that you reach the exact audience you want. Facebook ads are pay-per-click, meaning you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.
Once you start looking for opportunities to mention your page and invite people to join you, you’ll start seeing them everywhere. Try some of the ones I’ve mentioned here, but keep your eyes open for other opportunities that will pop up as you’re out there running and marketing your business.
And remember that not everyone will join your page on the first invite! They may hear about it several times before they actually go and check it out. So don’t be afraid to keep mentioning it and keep putting the invitation out there.
As your fan base starts to grow, you’ll see more interaction from fans and you’ll be able to have conversations with them, to find out what they want so you can improve your content, and to make offers for things that they will be interested in buying.
Your Turn
What strategies do you use to get fans to your Facebook page? Which new ones are you going to start using today? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
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How a Pest Management Company integrates Social Media
Image via Wikipedia
JP McHale Pest Management is one of the top pest control companies in New York and Connecticut. We are a family run pest management company that is located in Buchanan, New York. Through our integrated pest management, we use the most effective and eco-friendly materials when treating pest issues. Please visit our website or contact us if you have any question or would like to know more about our services.
Here at JP McHale Pest Management, we integrate social media marketing via blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. Our goal is to generate more traffic to our website and to reach out to other pest control companies and people in our community. Every company has a website, but not every company utilizes the opportunities on the internet to drive traffic to their website. Here at JP McHale’s, we use the following techniques to generate more traffic and exposure to our website:
Blog:
In addition to our pest control website that explains our services, we have a blog where people are informed of pests in the local and nationwide news. We will occasionally post funny pictures or videos related to pests to give the readers a little laugh. This blog helps people understand more about pests; how they act, what environments they are found in, and why they behave the way they do. For example, if suddenly there was an outbreak of a certain pest, we can inform the readers of it right away, unlike a normal website. Through the blog we can interact with other pest control companies. By posting our RSS feed, people can be notified of our updates. We can exchange information with other pest companies to expand our knowledge on pests, and the interaction also give us link exchanges that boosts up our page rank with Google.
Twitter:
Twitter connects people worldwide in a matter of seconds, which produces a lot of opportunity for many people to be in contact with us. JP McHale follows people in our service area and other pest control companies. We organize our followers through TweetDeck. TweetDeck not only allows us to organize our followers, but we can single out tweets with specific words, such as “carpenter ants” or “termites”. By doing this, we can tweet at people who ask a question or are curious about a certain kind of pest, to which we can answer. We will also post a link to our blog post when we publish a new story.
Facebook:
Facebook is the new craze from people in high school, to people in retirement homes. Everyone’s on it. JP McHale has a page that enables people to “Like” us. When people “Like” us, we will come up in their newsfeed whenever we post something on our page. Again, went we post a new blog entry, we can link back to our blog through the Facebook page. Unlike Twitter, we can post photo albums to our Facebook page. The albums we current have are pictures from the field, how to identify you weeds, and how to identify summer pests. This enables users to learn about our company in a casual and friendly way.
There are many other social media sites that companies can use to increase traffic to your site. We feel these are the most beneficial sites to drive traffic to our website.
14
3 Ways You Should be Promoting Your Facebook Page
So you finally broke down and got yourself a snazzy Facebook page made. It’s been a long time coming and you’re pretty excited. But now what? It isn’t going to do you or your business much good if no one sees it, now is it? You know you should practice what you preach – and trust me, someday soon when I gather a little more time I’ll be putting these to use, as well!
Facebook Promotion #1 – Videos
Everyone knows video is hot. So what can be hotter than a video that you load on your Facebook page that has the “Like” feature embedded right into your video? Give your readers some valuable content and a video like this can dramatically increase your fans – or, umm “likers” Your video has a clear and direct call to action right in the corner. So start creating some kick-ass videos, whether they’re funny, informational or simply entertaining and start posting them. You can put them directly on your fan page. You can also put them elsewhere, like on your site, and link it to your fan page. It will have a watermark logo that takes your visitors to the video on your fan page. The video on your fan page will then have the “Like” button in the corner of the video when their cursor is over the video.
Fan (Likers) Incentives
Give people an incentive to “Like” your Facebook page. One way to do this is with Payvment. Using this cool tool you can create an instant fan discount. It’s also especially handy for creating a store front right within Facebook. Add as many or as little products as you want! Want see an example? Molly Sims has a very attractive storefront. A more basic one can be found on Vanity Shoes.
Email Signatures
How many emails do you send on an average day? If you aren’t including your Facebook fan page in your signature you are missing an opportunity to get your page in front of eyeballs with each and every email. There are two great services you can use for doing this, both of which are free and add a little pizzazz to your signatures.
The first is DOOID. With DOOID you sign up and input your chosen social profiles, websites, contact information and messenger ID’s. Include as little or as much as you want (and they have tons of social sites to choose from). You can choose which information is public and which ones aren’t. Then use the email signature feature to create your badge, which is pretty smooth looking I must say. There are several looks to choose from (more if you upgrade, which is very cheap). Then all you do is paste the code into your email (follow the directions for your email provider). I’ve been using it for a few months and LOVE it. But I do have to say… I updated it and have since not been able to get it work.
Secondly, there is Wise Stamp. This one is a plugin that you use in your browser that automatically embeds itself into your email program. You can customize it with colors, images, fonts, etc… to get the look that you like. I played with it but the link I had wasn’t working. I’m sure it’s something I was doing wrong, though. I’ll probably play with it some more and see if I can’t get it to work some time soon. **Possibly something wrong with my Yahoo email or something, as DOOID was working fine and now I can’t get it to work. Also, when putting an image URL into the plain signature feature of Yahoo signatures itself doesn’t produce the image – just the URL. So… I don’t know right now.
