It’s not all about appearances though! We’ll step you through the additions and give you some great tips for your Facebook page

Profile Pic

Like it? It’s cute, distinctly Active Travel Mullingar and works well as a thumbnail. Remember this is going to be the face of your Facebook presence so of all things we’d recommend you get this looking awesome. Like a business card it should look professional and not squished and bitty. Also consider how it appears in the thumbnail that appears beside your wall posts.

Welcome Tab

Custom Welcome Tab

First up it’s the Welcome Tab. This is a custom Facebook tab designed and created by Cookie Web for the ATM page. It’s a wonderful way to introduce new fans to your page and your message. It will appear when non-fans first access the page. We use the opportunity to tell them about ATM, it’s goals, lead them to events and helpful info and maps around Mullingar.

 The Wall

The Wall

Where the action happens. Probably the most important part of the Facebook page – this is where you connect with your people! If the wall posts are dull, infrequent, too frequent even you can loose fans. It’s so easy for Facebookers to unsubscribe from updates so it’s more vital than ever to plan and deliver your posts with some panache! We say: make sure the content is compelling, try a variety of media (i.e. pics, video) and always ask your subscribers to contribute.

Info Tab

Info Tab

This is something you can all do easily yet often the Info tab contains nothing but one or two lines and a link to the website. This is your opportunity to give people another overview of your products/services/goals etc. Give them links, tell them more! Work it!! Check out what we’ve done with ATMs info tab for ideas.

Events

Events

Another way to let people know what’s going on is with the events facility – you don’t have to invite people – just post up any company events as it’s an excellent way to show off your vibrant business.

Photos & Albums

Photos & Albums

Custom Tabs

Custom Tab Maps & Routes

Sometimes you might have something special that you want to add to your Facebook page. In this case Active Travel wanted to showcase the maps and routes for walking and cycling in Mullingar directly within Facebook. We were easily able to put this together for them. Other ideas might include – a sign up tab for your newsletter, a shopping tab highlighting your sales items, a video introduction to your business. The options are pretty much unlimited. You can do your own through a Facebook App provider but we would caution you to look at the monthly subscribe costs – it might just be cheaper for your local friendly web designers to whip up something perfectly suited to you without a subscription necessary.

Especially if you are a Mullingar local please do visit Active Travel Mullingar’s Facebook page and LIKE! Are just take a snoop around and think how you might implement some of these ideas into your own Facebook page. Do you need to set up your Facebook page? Our WebTweaks.ie website will show you how…

Ingenious Ireland - Guided Podcast Tours

The website is developed in WordPress of course and we’re using an ingenious number of plugins to enable people to view the products and complete the purchase. The podcast pages are very informative, featuring a great little image gallery, resource links, download excerpt button and shopping cart facility. Check out and definitely listen to the ‘Hill of Tara’ podcast tour.

The brains and the voice behind the Ingenious Ireland podcast tours is science and technology journalist Mary Mulvihill. She wrote the award winning book Ingenious Ireland with a new edition coming in 2011. Be sure to check out the event listings on the website for upcoming public talks and tours such as ‘Lab Coats and Lace‘.

Socially Ingenious

Mary is an dab hand at blogging (see her own http://marymulvihill.net/) and makes excellent use of twitter to promote Ingenious Ireland. The tweets are informative, witty and not pushy. Check out the Ingenious stream. Facebook is also utilised to promote the tours – become a fan of Ingenious Ireland.

Ronan Casey - Click to launch website

Ronan is a keen tweeter and we used a brilliant little plugin, Tweet Tools, that shows his latest tweets on the website and also automatically sends out a tweet when a new post is published. Hook that into Facebook and you’re all socialised up with minimum effort. Twittering is all about up to second conversation snippets – so if you do have a website than hooking in your twitter updates (tweets) is great way to keep your website fresh and up to date. We’ve recently done something similar to great effect on OurKilcock.ie interlinking the blog, twitter account and Facebook Fanpage.

`Kavaleer presents Garth & Bev - click to launch site

Cookie Web were engaged to create a holding page for the www.garthandbev.tv (there is a complete website pending) and to setup a Fanpage for the program on facebook. Facebook is a notorious for it’s poor interface design and this makes it a bit tricky for people to setup pages – once it is setup though it’s a doddle to update the page with pics, videos, links and news. Each time you update your legion of fans will received updates on their profile walls – it is a brilliant way to keep in touch with your audience. But, as always, only update when you have something genuinely interesting to put out there. You will run the risk of being de-fanned if you insist on updating daily (or even more horribly, hourly) with stuff only your Mum would want to hear about. Luckily Gary and Andy don’t suffer from being boring – and yes I am still being objective!! Check out the Garth and Bev Fanpage and please become a fan!

Of course we were honoured guests at the launch party on the 22nd of November at the fabulous Odessa Club in Dublin. It was a fantastic turnout – the place was literally jammed with kids stuffing themselves with popcorn and getting their themselves sketched by the resident caricaturist. But a hush fell over the noisy crowd when Garth and Bev started up on the big screen and all the kids (and adults as well) watched spellbound (and silent) as two 11 minute episodes played out. Check out the photos of the day on the Kavaleer blog. And don’t forget to watch the show … and become a fan!

We’ve been sitting on this one for a little while because we wanted to watch it grow a little more before we blogged about it. I got the idea for creating the website back in 2008 – I really like my little village of Kilcock and think we have some great parts and real character but usually only found out about stuff happening driving past on the way into Dublin or reading about it two weeks later on the notice board at the bakers. So after much thought I decided to set something up that promoted the area of Kilcock and it’s local news, events and organisations.

Kilcock News & Events Website

The only thing I could really invest in the project was time. And with a business in it’s first year and an infant in her’s I couldn’t invest too much of that either! But it went ahead and it looks great if we do say so ourselves and it’s gaining momentum and page views!  I needed to make the setup of the website quick and easy and on a very low budget – so here was our approach:

We used WordPress of course – which is open source, free and has plenty of support options.

We themed our website with The Morning After WordPress template - it’s also free, looks tres stylish and with only a couple of custom modifications the website was up and running and looking great.

And then We Plugged away… is there anything WordPress can’t do? Well probably but make sure you check the plugin directory first.  On the site we’ve plugins for the gallery, rotating ads, thumbnail generation and seo.

We promoted the website with a Facebook Fanpage. We created a Fanpage for Our Kilcock and with a few weeks had over 350 fans that could keep abreast of Kilcock news and events without having to leave Facebook.

And finally… Build it and they will come?? Well actually no. Build it and then promote it – online and offline. And in this case offline promotion was very important – the approach was old-school but effective: phonecalls, advertising in the community noticeboards (butchers, bakery, local cafe etc), word of mouth, local networking groups etc. Online promo was through Facebook and a couple of other related websites. We’ve still got a lot more to do… It’s very much a work in progress but we’ve got steadily growing visitors and a couple of contributers who approached us in the early days with offers of content (we have our very own local chef who contributes fortnightly recipes featuring local produce) and photographs of Kilcock. These contributions are so valuable to the website – it keeps the content fresh and varied and relieves some of the pressure in delivering regular content. Several of the local businesses have also approached us to advertise on the website.

Check out the website for our local community – www.ourkilcock.ie.

1. I love the design of the website (great work Heidi)
2. Green Farm Food have rebranded this year and we were allowed sneak peaks throughout the transition from the old brand to the new traditional country feel. I’m sure you’ll agree it looks fantastic.
3. And of course I have to mention the charming  and welcoming staff

Check out the website for some delish recipes, articles about healthy eating, their full range of products and upcoming promotions in-store.

Green Farm Foods website