What marketing is your fellow industry colleagues using? Can you suggest tips for those behind you? Work out who your power players are. The big boys. The ones that you look up to, the next level. Follow them closely, observe what tricks they use in their marketing, use google alerts to track their progress over a period of time. Get involved with them, and support their goals and achievements. Become a giver and watch the kind of responses you get in return. Follow Online ma

Collaboration is they key.  As a musician I spent slot of my time alone writing music, through school and my 20s. It seemed an isolated career until I started to collaborate with other writers. I learnt from them, they (hopefully) learnt from me and an altogether fun and beneficial time was had by all! The same goes for business. Until the turn of the century, collaboration was an unknown entity and I still believe that businesses could benefit from working with others. Soci

At last! An app that allows you to manage your Facebook pages from your iphone. (Requiring iOS 4.2 or later and no Android yet) We’ve been waiting for this for ages and although in its infancy – I’m sure that when developed a little more, it shall make life a lot easier for us marketers! Now, I am not saying that it is as good as sitting at your lappy and sorting your pages out, don’t expect and all singing all dancing app, as you will be extremely disappointed – BUT at least

As we have already mentioned, the art of promoting oneself or ones business is entirely up to you. Are you a great party guest? Do you get inundated with Christmas cards? Do people come to you for advice often? If you answered yes to these questions then you will have a head start on marketing your product, brand or service. Chances are you won’t go steaming in and introduce yourself and what you are selling immediately, you will take into consideration the advice on the OPT

We’ve covered the types of social media available to us. We’ve covered the basic uses of these social media outlets. We will continue to revisit these avenues with current updates and ideas in this blog. This week I want to talk about self promotion and social media. I’ve come from a performer background and although self promotion come easily to most in my field, it didn’t to me. I was from the ilk ‘to tell people what you do and talk yourself up was uncool and made you sou

Ok – so we now know how to set up an ad campaign on Facbeook. But where to drive them is just as important. Driving fans to a page that contains a “ Reveal Tab ” hiding exclusive Fan content is the most effective way to convert visitors to fans.  And now Facebook has evolved somewhat, we can now add custom tabs and pages and tailor make them so only fans who have ‘liked’ your page can see certain content.  Genius! Therefore, it would be a waste of an opportunity if you just d

Monday I spoke about split testing your ads. You get that now!? Then comes the content part. It is integral for you to think clearly about what you want to say on your ad. Firstly you have to recognise what you want to achieve from it. Sales? Promotion? Click throughs? Redirection? News? What do you want people to do when they have read it? Where do you want to take them? Now, have you looked at your keywords recently? If you have answered ‘No!’ then thats next on the age

Happy Monday people. This week we are going to chat about Facebook’s advertising platform and how to run a brilliant campaign that will increase sales, likes, click throughs etc.  We cover the basics here on the OPT blog so Novices, this is for you! So, why run a Facebook ad? The biggest plus? You can target specific demographics and the targeting options are wide.  You can really pinpoint who you want to hit as people share all kinds of information with Facebook about what t

Those not familiar with Facebook Insights here’s a brief explanation.They are analytics that give you better insight into what your community wants from your pages.  It centres around interaction and development of fans. Its the perfect way to measure your social media performance.  Up on the left sidebar underneath your profile pic, you will find  Insights . Here are the definitions of the main Facebook Insights . 1.  Main Insights:  Here you can view every post you have wr

Why should you tag yourselves on Facebook? Facebook say: “Photo tagging for Facebook Pages enables people to share richer stories with friends about the things they interact with in the real-world, such as businesses, brands, celebrities, and musicians.” OPT says, yes we agree but if you are a brand, business, celebrity or musician the benefits are more enticing.  We’ve all had the odd drunken picture put up of us at the Christmas party (eww), we’ve all seen our ex flaunting

So you have a Facebook page, but have you  thought about doing any of these handy tips? Design a good product page (600X200 pixel photo) Post interesting and original comments and tell your tale Use page as a viral blog Offer your fans something for free A ‘call to action’ button is something that people are using now to recruit new fans. Use a good one on your page. Ask your followers to invite their followers. Always link and link back to your twitter and you tube channels.

Our Wednesday post comes from Chris Brooker ( @codecraftonline )  a professional web development company based in Leeds, UK. 2012 will be the year of social search. When Google created their first search engine, they had no idea how to make money from it.  The answer turned out to be incredibly simple, since they know what you’re interested in, and what you’re thinking about at the moment your fingers hit the keyboard.  For instance, if you’re thinking of buying a new car, an

This week we have covered many important tools to get familiar with to get the most from Twitter. It’s Sunday, you have much homework, so just a somewhat obvious reminder today. Do make sure that you make sure twitter is connected with all your other sites online. When I say connected, I don’t just mean that you have typed your twitter address on your Facebook page etc. I mean, you have to decide whether you want your twitter and facebook updates to sync. You may wish for

“An all in one social media dashboard packed with amazing features” After a week’s worth of OPTs Twitter Tricks – we believe we have saved the best until last! We have mentioned social oomph a blog or two ago – well this takes that to the next level but is totally free.  Each one slightly differs in navigation so it really is down to taste, which you prefer. We also haven’t covered the use of location with twitter and other social media sites.  If you are business that works

“Another fantastic, free social media tool that can boost your results and save you time”  OPT First launched as ‘Tweet Later” Social Oomph allows you to schedule tweets. Blogs and manage your follows among other things. If you are like us and manage plenty of twitter accounts, blogs and sites it is an essential part of your life! Also – it enables you to sit down at a convenient time and plan your weeks social media updates, then forget about them! We at OPT like it because

It’s a creative market out there. Now more than ever and business is not just for the academic, techno minded geeks. Anyone can start their own business (as long as you have a great idea, with legs of course!) Technology has allowed people like me, (academically challenged, ahem) to flourish and enhance their natural skills – the ones they were born with and make a go of their own business. I personally thank Steve Jobs for making my life so easy behind a screen. I am a tru

It goes without saying that we all would like the option to try before we buy, not only would it earn immediate trust and loyalty from our customers, but it gives them a CHOICE. We live in a world nowadays where (and some may argue) that there are too many choices. Pfff. I disagree and I love that there are numerous amounts of choices in our everyday lives. I love that you can change your career at the drop of a hat, or fly off to distant lands in a day or bag a much sort aft

Think and Tweet Later! Here are our simple twitter rules for a trustworthy campaign! Building communities is SO important. Your customers/clients need to feel very important. They care far less about your advertising than about what your other customers are saying about you and how you respond to your customers is vital to success! Having an ‘active twitter presence’ enables you to demonstrate strong customer service, rather than just claiming you offer it! You also don’t w