You already know that, along with everything else on your plate, you need to develop Facebook as a valuable marketing tool in some shape or form, so how will you do it? There are a number of ways to leverage Facebook as marketing technique and you need to have ‘a reason’…

• A place to interact with your consumers and potential consumers – brand building in its crudest sense.
• A means to manage customer interactions and feedback.
• A source of relevant traffic to your commercial website.
• A means to build a list of potential consumers interested in permission-based communications.
• In terms of applying those goals you need a fan page, and a Facebook marketing plan.

The challenge
Though your window is your Facebook Fan page 96% will come not come back to it after first ‘Liking’ your brand, in fact Brand Glue estimate that 99.5% of brand interactions take place in the News Feed, not on your Fan page. On top of that Brand Glue also calculate that what you do ’share’ in Facebook is actually been seen by as little as 0.5%. Very few people see what you post – they’re shielded from you by the Facebook algorithm (EdgeRank), much like Google tries it’s best to shield you from the porn, spam or just irrelevant search results (i.e most of the internet). So, like search engine optimisation, it’s down to you to breakthrough because you’re super relevant, remarkable and interesting. You know it’s true, as well. When did you last visit a page that you’d previously ‘Liked’ and how often do those brands appear on your wall? But, all’s not lost, you can still benefit from your Facebook presence and drive traffic to either/or your Facebook page or other more commercial web presence.

It’s an art, not a science
Aside from Brand Glue’s data I really liked this ‘Innovation’ post by The Daily Beast. I’ve summarised it in this section. They basically created their own test with a Facebook newbie to see what really happened around Facebook visibility, by their own admission it’s not a scientific experiment, and yet it’s good enough to reveal the obstacles that you’ll need to overcome with EdgeRank:
• Facebook does not value or help newcomers, which makes sense too – after all do you immediately trust everyone that you meet over people you’ve known months or years? As The Daily Beast comments “following 500 million people into a party means that a lot of the beer and pretzels are already long gone”, and the clique’s have formed too. They found that ‘invisibility’ is a huge issue for those new to Facebook and it’s especially acute amongst friends who are already really popular with several hundred friends (doesn’t that sound like High School!). When people interact with you the invisibility starts to change.

• The Catch 22 of Facebook is that you need friends and fans to interact with your updates in certain ways (more on that below), but you aren’t likely to have friends interacting with your updates if you don’t have exposure in the first place. Dammit. The goal, especially early on, is to get people Liking you like crazy.

• The Facebook VIP area of “Top News” is where the gold is at. The current newsfeed system offers users two options: “Top News”, a highly selective feed of updates from friends, and “Most Recent”, a “fire hose” that shows updates in reverse chronological order. The challenge is that Top news is the default for 95% of Facebook users. Again, dammit. Top News will show you hours-old updates from some friends while ignoring newer postings from others, Facebook’s ranking system makes judgments about items it thinks you’ll be interested in like Google does on search results. The Daily Beast say this: “What became clear after two weeks was that it’s not the amount of activity you have, but the type” (more on that below).

• Facebook’s “fire hose” of “Most Recent” is also censored – so no matter what you do your brand cannot guarantee any kind of cut-through. If you’ve never tinkered with the “Edit Options” button on your Most Recent feed, this underscores why you should check it out—there’s a little-used setting that caps the number of friends shown in the feed.

• Links in status updates trump plain status updates – and photos and videos in status updates trump those with links. Facebook wants you to bring something more than your solitary thoughts to the party! Think about times you’ve spotted a thumbnail-size photo from a friend in your feed and clicked to see it full-size. Facebook likes those clicks, it’s links, and rich media formats help deliver them.

• Comments are the not-so-secret Facebook visibility juice you’re looking for – if items you post attract comments from a few friends, The Daily Beast found that it clearly raises your visibility overall. The more people that are interacting, commenting and clicking – the more news feeds you will appear on.

• Breaking into the social elite is hard, even in Facebook! Those with 600+ friends are very difficult to gain visibility with compared to those with 100-200 friends. Hurts, doesn’t it! This is par for the course and a reminder you have to work your way up by doing some remarkable thinking and hard work. So the key, as you build your Facebook tribe, is making sure to include some without huge networks. They’ll see more of your feeds, interact in Facebook-approved ways, and up your visibility with all.

What are the take-aways for you?
Think of Facebook’s news feed as huge popularity contest, one that you get to control just how popular you (and your business) are, ideas and content are your tools.You and your brand need to be more social. In what you say and do, and how you say and do. There’s a reason that some of the kids at school were more popular (not the obviously good looking ones) – they were “involved”, they were social and it made them popular. Here are some pointers to keep in mind:
• Interact: “Ask for comments and likes,” says Widman, CEO of Brand Glue. That’s the immediately actionable strategy. “Put the question first, rather than last… Ask a question where people don’t need to click through a link to give you an answer… make your questions relatable, to drives results. Another example technique that Brand Glue advocates is fill-in-the-blank posts, for example, “Fill in the blank: I’m saving money to buy ____,”. Brand Glue used this with their client which resulted in 210 comments and 13 likes

• Rich media content: Given that this naturally creates more interactions, it’s going to be important that the content is relevant and of interest, think how you could weave rich media into basic posts and interactions, take a varied approach and be topical and entertaining. According to Reggie Bradford, CEO of social media management company Vitrue, “It gives the consumer the ability to engage with that content. If they watch the video or click on the photo to enlarge it, that’d show up higher on the EdgeRank.”

• Integrate: Facebook is not the be all and end all, yet it is of major importance as a part of a social media plan – what else are you doing – blogging (hopefully), using twitter (ideally), any industry specific sites? By doing that you have more reach, more touch-points with your market, more content and content ideas and more points of interaction which makes sharing back in Facebook natural as part of a wider social media plan, the content will be varied and your interactions richer

• Strategic influence: In order to show up in someone’s news feed, you need to be friends with them or fans of their page, they can be fans of yours too of course. You need to target specific individuals and businesses to friend and fan. Even if you’ve friended your top customers or clients, you should pay attention to who their friends are and who they interact with on a regular basis. The more you interact with their friends, the more likely you are to show up on their feeds as well. Who are the influencers? You want to fan as many people as I can within the relevant network, maybe I want national media as my friend and follower or to friend partners and alliances. Learn who’s talking, who are the influencers, the advocates and influencing voices. Some will be easy to interact with, if you’re interested in targeting someone that seems unresponsive, you may want to try tagging them in your posts and photos. Put the ‘@’ sign before the person or business’s name, then select the correct name from the drop down menu, this shows on their profile giving you more exposure, just be careful pushing that too far!

• Commitment: It’s a bit like a new site or a new blog – it takes time and commitment before reward comes through, otherwise everyone would do it. So are you prepared to be cute with the tactics and also commit to Facebook and your Fans for the long haul, Facebook hope so, and in return it appears they will (in an unfriendly robotic kind of way) reward you for it. Though you do not want to spam, posting very regularly is important, just make your content valuable as well as regular.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has launched the Government’s new online Budget portal allowing businesses to send their ideas for the Budget direct to the desks of the Treasury officials working on the Budget, which will be held on 23 March 2011.

The Chancellor said:

“I want to hear about your brightest and best ideas. Because next month’s Budget will be all about growth. In particular I want to know what businesses, large and small, want from me. So go on-line and tell me what you think.”

The portal is another example of the Government’s commitment to transparency in policy making. It will improve the way businesses, charities and the public sector can communicate with the Government.

It follows on from the October 2010 Spending Review, when over 100,000 members of the public went on line to submit suggestions on how the Government could save money – such as the idea to stop producing National Insurance cards, which will save £1 million a year.

To submit an idea Click Here

There are no quick and easy ways to succeed in business. No short cuts, no free handouts, no regular out-of-the-blue windfalls, no perpetual guaranteed lucky breaks. So even if it’s tempting to rush headlong into the first opportunity you can see, take a short but meaningful step back and make sure you are really prepared and ready to move forward.

Here are five tips to keep you on the right track.

1. Planning in business is about all preparation and preparing far enough ahead of what you want to do. Remember, Noah built his Ark before it started to rain. So it’s about thinking ahead, all the time. However business opportunities, once discovered, don’t remain there indefinitely, so be prepared and ready to proceed armed with the facts and resources you need to exploit them.
2. As well as the widespread and worthy business advice available from a variety of sources, there is also plenty of rubbish around about starting a business or pursuing a new business opportunity. In fact it could be argued that there is too much emphasis and encouragement on starting up and ‘just going for it’ and there are an increasing number of unqualified providers willing to give this advice. So shop around for your advice, and get opinions from at least two or three sources before you act on anything. If one adviser says ‘you’re right’ or ‘you’re wrong’, get a second or third professional opinion until you have a broader set of views.
3. You’ll also come across plenty of critics and detractors about your business ideas. Some of these critics may actually be helpful and constructive, but a lot will just be negative or downright dismissive. However, if you can see the action you think needs to be taken to move your business forward, and on balance feel that the constructive criticism outweighs the negative, then follow your gut with caution, not reckless abandon.
4. The road least travelled often proves to be the road best travelled. In other words, don’t always look down the same well trodden track as everyone else. If possible look for the less beaten path, which will be less crowded, more interesting, bear more unpicked fruit and lead to more undiscovered little opportunities. Truly enterprising people are prepared to explore those paths and places which in general are where others fail to go, picking up valuable little gains along the way.
5. Although you need to take sufficient time, don’t dither too long in devising or writing your business plan. The detail may be interesting and in many cases important, but if it’s just irrelevant, states the obvious, lacks focus or deviates from your main commercial objective, then you may not only waste a lot of your own time, you might also bore the hell out an investor or lender.

Make sure you aren’t a turkey when you start up or pursue a new business venture. Don’t rush - always prepare carefully and pick the right opportunity for you. But in the end don’t take too long or you might miss it by a whisker, which in business can amount to a heck of a lot.

From 1 March, businesses must ensure their websites comply with rules set by the Advertising Standards Authority. The Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) has produced a website audit service to help advertisers understand whether their online marketing communications comply with the new rules.

Research from Intuit, makers of QuickBooks financial management software for small businesses, has found that one month on from the VAT rate increase, small businesses in the UK have been largely unaffected despite widespread media hype. Two thirds (67%) of those surveyed confirmed that overall, the VAT increase has had no impact on their business.

Most small business owners (39%) chose to absorb the additional cost of the VAT increase rather than pass it on to their customers. Even when considering all the associated costs including admin, absorbing price increases and loss of revenue, almost 70% of small business owners claimed the VAT increase had cost them less than £350. When asked how much time they spent dealing with the change, 46% of small business owners estimated that they spent less than five hours managing the VAT increase.

When asked if increasing VAT is the best way to tackle the national deficit, 44% of small business owners said they agreed with the Government’s decision, followed by 13% who thought that raising income tax would be more effective. When looking for advice on how to manage the change, around one in five (19%) turned to other small business owners for support, and the same number turned to customer support from their accounting software firm to help them make the change.