Point of Sale Software

Here are some Articles from the Blog Subject - facebook -

Why your facebook page is not as good as it was.

POS SOFTWARE

 

Facebook has been a ripper of a way for Australian businesses to connect with customers. However, over the years, changes have made it much harder for people to get the same value out of their Facebook pages without paying. Years ago, any business could just post away and reach almost all their fans for free. Today, it is different.

Firstly, you still need a Facebook page.

I recommend every business makes a Facebook page - it costs you nothing and gives you a web presence that is vital for organisations today. If you don't have one, I suggest making one now! An active Facebook page remains useful for branding and customer engagement, but it should not be relied on alone to reach people. Today, it is just one of many mediums.

Organic reach

Organic reach refers to how many people see your post without advertising.

Organic reach is declining.

A study found that organic reach has declined to 6% without paid advertising. So, if you have 1000 people following your Facebook page, only about 60 people see your content. It's better than nothing, but what is the same any more? 

Some reasons would be:

  • Facebook is trying to make more money: Facebook is like any business trying to make more money, and as its product becomes more important, it can charge more.
  • Increased competition: As more people like Pages, there are more Pages, so the competition for visibility on Facebook is more challenging.
  • Quality matters: Better quality content is available, which is what Facebook wants; you need to do a better job to get noticed.

Bottom line: Unless you pay, only a very small percentage of your fan base will see your content.  This makes achieving marketing goals very difficult without paying. As organic reach declines, businesses rely more on Facebook's paid options.

 

Owning your audience

One alternative is to focus more on building owned channels like an email marketing list. Email allows you to communicate directly with your customers. You control it yourself rather than relying on Facebook's platform.

Email marketing remains a very cost-effective way for local retailers to stay in touch with customers. 

Conclusion

It is more challenging for small businesses on Facebook to compete with larger companies that can afford big advertising budgets. Facebook would argue, correctly, I think, that its tools still help small retailers find customers cost-effectively. For no cost, you can get free advertising; what is wrong with that?

While Facebook offers exposure, retailers must adapt to limited organic reach. 

Our Facebook page is down

POS SOFTWARE

Facebook

The Facebook page for our company went down, as many of you are aware. We were informed that an account associated with that page had been the target of an attempted hack. As a result, we immediately disabled our POS Solutions page while we reviewed their security measures. We decided to keep our page down even though we know this will be inconvenient for many of you; we want to ensure our page remains secure. It's now back up. Once we digest it, I will brief you on what the hackers did, give us a week. It is weird.

Also, consider following us on Twitter for the most recent information and updates if you want to reap the benefits of social media. Keeping in touch is easy with our Twitter account.

Conclusion

Consider this an opportunity to review your cyber security and exercise caution when using social media.

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17 Content Ideas For Your Facebook Business Page

POS SOFTWARE

A modern business needs an online presence. The best and fastest way to make such a presence is a Facebook Business Page, and it is free.

Despite what many of you hear from news outlets using overseas information, Facebook in Australia figures are slightly up.

- 6 in 10 Australians use Facebook

-1 in 2 Australians uses Facebook daily

It makes sense for businesses to establish a presence on Facebook to get more customers.

On Facebook, David can compete with Goliath as the page is the same no matter what size you are.

Need help in setting up a Facebook Business Page? It is easy. To start, all you need is a few photos and supply them with a few details. If you are still unsure well for our customers, we provide such a service for free.

In all your communication, e.g. email, you should include your Facebook page address. Every one of your customers should know of it. Push it. As you name spread Facebook will push the word out to relevant people, that is how their systems are designed.

Here are some ideas on what to write about

1) Most industries have a trade cycle, a trade show for the public, etc.

2) Look on Facebook at what other retail stores like you do, take notes of what they do and change it to your needs.

3) Google can be used to generate ideas. Put in a few words applicable to your business and see what comes up. What comes up is what people are looking for now.

4) Almost all businesses have stocktaking sales, Mothers Day, Fathers Day, Xmas, etc.

5) Suppliers often notify you of their seasons and promotions. Often they provide free marketing aids, too, like photos and information.

6) If one of your suppliers suddenly grows in the market, write about how good it is and that you have these products.

7) Suppliers often have new products. Write about them. Tell them how it can help bring value to their lives.

8) School holidays often supply marketing opportunities.

9) You can check your sales reports to see when your business is busiest. Try and find out why and let people know what you have at that time.

10) New products in the shop work well too. Take a photo. Most of us have a smartphone that takes excellent photos. Please take a quick snap, add a few words, and you have done it.

11) Best sellers are also good. Go to your top-selling report, check out what is selling now well and let your customers know that you have it.

12) Your community and local area can generate ideas too. This makes you relevant to the local people.

13) Temporary Service Changes, for example, if your business is temporarily closed or you are now offering new or changing services.

14) Testimonials from happy customers are a proven way to grow revenue. Today something like 92% of people checks testimonials before buying something. I look at reviews before often buying nowadays.

15) A customer tells you are interesting story to do with your shop or products, if it is interesting to you, it probably would also be to your customers too.

16) A simple SWOT analysis can generate many ideas.

17) Tips and extra uses for using the products you market can be used.

Nothing here costs you anything.

Final notes:

a) Try to engage your audience.

b) Avoid the knockers. You will make mistakes; we all do. There is always some knocker who thinks they know it all. This is life. You are in business; you need a hard head to pick yourself up and improve.

c) The important aspect is keeping the content fresh.

d) Use Facebook's statistics to see how you are going. If something does not work, try something else.

e) Avoid politics; 50% of people will not like whatever you say.

f) Put someone in charge that likes Facebook. It will not be a job for them but a pleasure.

Try it and grow your revenue and meet customers in a new way.

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Facebook marketing 2021

POS SOFTWARE

Many of my clients do use Facebook marketing. When asked, they will say for them it is the cheapest and most profitable form of advertising. That is why they use it.

The first question that many who are not using Facebook advertising will ask is, can they get more people onto their Facebook business page without paying? This is tough as you will find that even with those who liked your page, few get your latest updates.

Although Facebook sees itself as an advertising medium, its main hook is for family and friends. These get priority. What is left, hundreds of million organisations worldwide with Facebook pages are all fighting to get noticed. Now a few years ago, Facebook changed their systems so that unpaid got less to try to get people to pay if they wanted to get people to see their latest stuff. This means you are competing with all these people in a smaller space.

So those that use Facebook today, what they see is what Facebook thinks most interests them. If Facebook feels what you posted is of little interest to your public and does not invite meaningful interaction, they will not display it. 

Your content has to be good to show up if you do not pay.

It is not so easy if you pay either, but that is a story for another post.

Now if you do want to use Facebook you need to test and continually review what is working. No point in using Facebook measures as really who cares how many likes you get in business if no one comes and importantly buys. So put in Facebook if possible a rarely used phone number and/or email address. Most email systems support disposable addresses without needing to register them first. This is perfect for this task.

Next is what you need to know is who did respond to your Facebook post.

Luckily our point of sale software has a very advanced system for doing this. What you need to do is enter into the POS system a Promotion ID.

Firstly you need a Promotion ID here are some tips:

- Make a unique ID for each different promotion. This will allow you to distinguish each promotion. Don’t reuse or recycle these IDs for different promotions. If you feel you must use the same ID  add a date or year after it, eg add say F2Nov2021 (F=Facebook, 2/Nov/2021 if it was first live today).  

- Once you make an ID, don't change it. 

- Do not use spaces, it can be confusing, e.g. a person was looking at Jan  2019, and it sometimes worked, and sometimes it did not. What we found was the ID was Jan 2019 (One space no, two spaces which he sometimes used)

Now in Detailed Transaction Entry see the red arrow, below for more details.

Purchase Order Numbers

Now you see the Promotion ID. 

Enter the code when putting in the sales.

Now you can watch the transactions based on this code, letting you recognise whether you are receiving value for your efforts.

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Facebook defamation decision by High Court opens all page owners to prosecutions

POS SOFTWARE

If your store has a Facebook page, please consider the recent High Court ruling

Now, if you post or share content on this Facebook page and allow comments, you may be responsible for the statements made even if you do not know of these comments.

One solution is that you can disable comments, but this is not what any of us want to do, so we are introducing on our Facebook page more surveillance in case.

Under the new defamation laws in some states, you must get a "concerns notice", and only then do they have 15 days before they can file a lawsuit. So you get some time to plead your case. You may want to check on this in your state. However, even if this is true in your state, I am unsure what happens if the affected person is in Western Australia and you are in NSW. In which case, you may not be given a grace period. I am not a lawyer, so I cannot answer these questions.

But, if you receive one of these notices, I firmly recommend that you take action.

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Why You Need a Facebook Page for Your Shop

POS SOFTWARE

If you are not using Facebook to generate more sales, you are already behind. 

An active Facebook page for a modern business is now essential. 

Let us start with some figures. 

There are now approximately 25 million Australians.

There are now 16 million active Australians on Facebook. Some of these have a few accounts, but clearly, most Australians have a Facebook account. 

According to best figures for Jan 2021  {link was removed}

60% of Australians use Facebook
50% use Facebook daily

As a rough value, it is almost certain that yesterday over half your customers were on Facebook. Today they will be on too and tomorrow and so on. That is a lot of people. 

Why not try to reach out to them? Do you know it can be free?

Why not regularly try inviting them to your business?

Looking to go forward

Check out a few similar businesses to yours on Facebook.

Check the ones you like.

See what they are doing on Facebook now.

Please take a few notes about what they do. 

Now give it ago. 

It is not hard.

It can be a lot of fun too.

If you need a hand, well give me a call.

Note: I have done a webinar on the basics of how to market your shop free online in your market space if there is enough interest, I am happy to do another one. 

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Facebook's ban on Australian News, check how it will affect you?

POS SOFTWARE

Hot point for discussion today is that neither Facebook nor the Australian government was bluffing. Both are now busy blaming each other. 

 

Clearly, Facebook, are more concerned about larger jurisdictions than the Australian government. US, UK and European Union as well as talk in many countries like Brazil and Indonesia. For example, Australia has 14 million Facebook users, and Brazil has over 130 million. To agree with the Australian government could cost Facebook billions of dollars. So Facebook has blocked content from a range of Australia organisations. Besides news, they also stopped a range of sites, e.g. Harvey Norman, Bowel Cancer Australia, University of South Australia and realestate.com.au. This will be a blow to many of these people. 

Still, how does it affect us?  

The first point is that none of that money Facebook was to pay was intended to go to my clients even though the online availability of news has affected many of them too.  

Those who run a Facebook page for their business will need to select where they get their news they share carefully. Currently, Facebook does not tell you that it does not share; it just does not share the page. As many pages are affected beside news sites, you may not know it was not posted to your target market. What you need to do is once you post to Facebook go back into your personal page and see if it was shared with them. If it was not, then you need to search for a Facebook allowed site with similar information. 

It will affect many of the online promotions until the advertisers adjust.

Other then that can you see any effect? I can't so let us move on.

Update: 

This video I think shows well Facebook's position.

Comments

ARE YOU GOING TO PAY CHANNEL 10 FOR POSTING A LINK TO THEIR CONTENT

I was really just making the point that the whole thing is a bit silly because this is what the proposed legislation whats facebook to do. If a media company places content with a link on their facebook page then the proposed legislation says facebook must pay for each times someone clicks on it and goes the the original content provider

Facebook claim that this traffic they direct to the publishers is worth over $400 million a year and they do this for free. 

 

From what I can see, the Google News Showcase is going to be protected by a paywall,probably to be paid for by ads so Google will not pay anything either, it will be the consumer that pays.

 

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Learning Social Media marketing

POS SOFTWARE

If you have not yet, look into using Social Media marketing!

Today more then ever, every business needs social media marketing. Few are going to walk past your shop now. So many of our clients now every day do something on their Facebook company page. It is their main communication method. Today in business using social marketing has never been more important. Vital, I would say.

No business can ignore social media as part of its marketing mix.

Checkout statistics for social media in Australia

"85% of the eligible (age 13+) Australian population have active social media accounts and spend an average of 1 hour 47 minutes per day on social media."

 

I was shocked a couple of days ago when a client asked us for help in setting up a Facebook page. We did help him out but now the problem is that he does not know how to use it. I told him, that he better learn. There is no excuse if he cannot do it get someone to help him. Then I gave him a few pointers. What I advised him was that there are plenty of good online courses, that he does not need to pay a cent for them, to learn.

The two courses that I suggested was

Facebook Blueprint

And if he wanted something more detailed, Hubspot was pretty good.

If you know something better please let me know.

The fact is that every serious business and organisation today needs a web presence. Today the web is the major means of communication between business and their clients.

So I recommend you go to Facebook now. See what a few similar businesses to yours are doing there now. Check the ones you like and take a few notes about what your business needs. Note the words they say. Presumably, they have experimented and found that these work for them so why not for you?

If you are not there, I recommend you go to Facebook, see what a few similar businesses to yours are doing on Facebook now. Check the ones you like and take a few notes about what your business needs. Note the words they say too. Presumably, they have experimented and found that these work.

Items like Facebook are mainly free.

You can always experiment later with the paid services.

 

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A great idea for your facebook business page

POS SOFTWARE

I saw this on my facebook page, and I think it is an excellent idea for my clients who have businesses that are local to do. Have a read, and I will take you step by step through the process.

What has happened is that Facebook has recently just rolled out a feature that allows you to invite everyone to like a page that you found. This is what they are asking everyone to do.

If you go to a Facebook Page, in this case, I will use Ingleburn newsagency for the example, but what I suggest you consider is doing this for your shop.

On the left-hand side, you will see "community" (which I have circled in red with an arrow). click that

 

 

Now on the right-hand side, you will see this.

 

 

Now click "See all Friends" where the red arrow is, click that.

 

This is what appears.

 

Now they press the red arrow, and then the green arrow and the invites are off.

See how you go.

If you want to learn more about Facebook marketing, click here.

Note: If you still have not got a Facebook business page and are unsure about how to set it up, and your a client of ours, contact us, and we will set one up for you free of charge.

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Social Media Is Important For Your Small Business

POS SOFTWARE

I was listening to a video newsletter. In this video what the presenter did was did an interview with a small business owner who owns and runs a successful lotto agency in Dandenong. 

She is clearly an experienced business owner, running a business not too dissimilar to many of my clients. Now, what when asked did she think was so important to her business success. Her response was social media in particular Facebook and Instagram and being involved in the local community. When I looked up her business Facebook account, I could see that yes she was regularly posting information relevant to her customers on the latest in lotto and her community. Clearly based on her interview here, it is working for her business. 

Too many people today have not caught on that the traditional methods of marketing advertising or direct mail are less effective. Today much of the world largely connects, as she states through the social media community.

PS: What is weird about social media and shows how different it is, is although I do not know her or her business, through social media, I can see that she is a friend of a very close friend of mine. It is a small world.

What is amazing with such powerful tools like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Pinterest, etc which are free to business what amazes me, is too many business people do not use it. Yet the reality is that these have fundamentally changed the way we are now connecting, communicating and collaborating.

If you have one of our websites, it is easy to automatically connect these social media to your site.

Here are some benefits of doing social media:

Customers: 

It can bring more customers to your shop. Most people are looking regularly at their social media accounts if you are there, it brings your shop to their attention.

Create more Sales:

Have something to sell them, why not offer them something. New products are coming in all the time. It does not have to be earth-shaking, a new shipment of pet food, a new range of cards, some cooking pots that are now on sale, some new magazine, etc 

Cost: You cannot beat FREE. 

Builds Relationships with your Customers: People on social media are communicating. You can answer questions, give advice on a product and talk to potential customers quickly and efficiently. 

Still unsure

The first point is to look at facebook to see what similar business to yours are doing. Then if you like what you see and want something similar and need help and are a supported user of ours, we do offer a free setup of a facebook account for your business.

 

 

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WARNING ON YOUR FACEBOOK BUSINESS PAGE

Facebook point of sale

You have a Facebook page for your business!

The way Facebook works is that the business pages are connected to the person who created it. So if you got someone to make you a facebook page for your business, that Facebook page is linked to their account, it is their property. Now say they leave your business, there can be problems as even if the person gives you admin access to that page, as it is still technically connected to and owned by them. In today's case, the separation has not been a happy one, and they refuse to even talk to the owner of the business.

The only way around this if they wish to continue with Facebook is to start a new page and start again. They then have to report to Facebook that the old one is impersonating the business which is messy as I am sure that Facebook does not want to get involved in disputes regarding the admin position of this page.

If you have such a Facebook page now, make sure that it is linked to your account. Also, consider giving someone else your passwords just in case something happens to you, and so the business can still use its Facebook page. If you are reluctant for some reason to do this, consider setting up a “legacy contract” for that someone who will take over an account is for some reason you cannot.

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