Facebook Friday: Secrets of Sydney Walking Tours

Good Morning, Social Rabbit here with your guide to the world of social media.

Today’s Facebook page review for Facebook Friday is the Secrets of Sydney Walking Tours page, the business offers ‘walking tours with a twist’ based in Sydney, NSW.

What’s happening on the Page now

• 76 people like the page
• The page has been going since March 2010

What’s working:

• The profile picture stands out and explains clearly what the business does, however they could utilise the space (180 x 540) a little better if they wanted to.
• The information tab is filled out with all the necessary information in regards to the company and what they offer, they have also included their website and contact email address so that it makes it easier for customers to contact them.

Recommendations Going Forward

• To gain more exposure the link to the external websites should be listed in the info box under the logo.  This needs to be include http:// so that it hyperlinks to the sites.
• They do not have their unique URL set up,  you can get this here: http://www.facebook.com/username/
• There is no landing or welcome tab for the page, currently non-likers are landing on the wall tab which tells them nothing!  They could have a landing tab that includes the walking tours that they have advertised at the moment or any ‘seasonal specials’ etc.
• The phone numbers are not anywhere on the Facebook page, these should be added as well, you need to make it as easy as possible for people to contact you.  The best place for these is on the info tab.
• At the moment the info tab has a testimonial from a customer, which is great to have, however initially looking at this you don’t  know what the company does, the info box really needs to  have  information on the company and products (such as what is on the about us website page), including the keywords that people search on.
• There are over 18 testimonials on their website, so they really need to create a reviews tab to show everyone what a great service they provide, and encourage visitors to write on it
• When you land on the wall, you only see posts from ‘secrets of Sydney’ and no-one else, its really a good idea for the settings to be changed so that you can see posts from everyone including your customers, they might be saying amazing things about you, yet no-one else can see this unless they change their view.  To change your settings you need to click on ‘edit page’, ‘wall settings’, ‘default view for wall posts’ and change this to ‘all posts’.
• While there are lots of posts by the page, there needs to be a posting strategy in place, as there were 5 posts on August 9^th, yet from the 10^th August until the 18^th there weren’t any posts.  Bombarding people with 5 posts in a day is going to turn people off the page.  You need to be consistent with the posting and ensure that you are giving your visitors value with each post.
• The posts that the page admin has put up are also very factual, they don’t really engage people or encourage comment.  Try posting up thing like: True or False xxxx or What reminds you of Sydney more and have a photo of the opera house and bridge.
• There is a Photo’s tab set up, however there are only two albums, one for profile pictures and one other.  It would make sense to split the albums up into the different types of tours that you can do, and then link each photos back to the website, people can click on them and go straight to the site to purchase.  It would also be a good idea to ‘tag’ the people on the tours in the photographs so that this shows up on their friends news feeds and will potentially reach a bigger audience of ‘likers’.
• The discussions tab is not being used at all, it should either be used or be deleted
• On the website they have a downloadable brochure of all their products, they could set up a PDF tab and have this available to download from the Facebook site as well, giving people more opportunity to see the tours they have.
• The Boxes tab is also empty so should be deleted, however as of August 23 Facebook will be automatically removing this tab anyway (however as of today 25/8/10 it is still there…)
• A newsletter sign up tab could be added to the page using the FBML app, to encourage more people to find out about the walking tours on offer and build their database, currently they don’t have a newsletter sign up on the website, however using free web based software such as Mail Chimp they could start this.
• Half way down the info Tab is the only place I found that tells you what tours they have on offer, I would suggest setting up a ‘Tours’ tab with the static FBML application (http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=4949752878&v=wall&ref=ts) and include the different types of tours they have available, and what they involve, each tour image could then click through to the details on the website.
• On their website there is a section where you can enter your booking details and someone will contact you regarding confirmation and payment, they could set up a ‘Store’ on Facebook and sell the tours directly using PayPal
• Secrets of Sydney could create an events tab which lists all of the walking tours that are coming up and the dates etc, this makes it easier to find as at the moment you have to go to their website to find out more information. Having everything in one spot is easier for people to access
• Including a ‘likers only’ tab and offering customers who ‘like’ the page special offers and discounts off their next order via Facebook or the website will encourage more people to like the page and hopefully increase sales.
• Video could also be utilised on the page, with short snippets of what you see on the tours, or tour guides talking about their favourite parts of Sydney to give people a favour of what they can expect.
• Tips could be posted up each week about a different secret place in Sydney, which would give people more reason to visit the page, plus you could encourage them to post up their tips
• They could post up pictures on the page of places around Sydney but from a strange angle and engage people by getting them to guess the place.

Summary

Overall this page could very easily be turned into a fantastic place to visit and engage people.  Visitors and residents alike love Sydney, Secrets of Sydney need to turn that passion into exciting words and visuals to get visitors talking on the page.  There is so much information that Secrets of Sydney can convey to people through the page, especially when you look at pages such as I love Sydney that has 128,000 people liking it, there is huge potential for this business.

If you need help with your Facebook page, let the Chief Rabbit review it for you – only $99 and you will come away with lots of ideas to improve your Facebook page as well as exposing your page to over 4000 people!