Enhance Your Website with Widgets - Tuesday Tip

Widgets are a great way to enhance your existing website. With widgets you can show off upcoming events and coupon promotions in a variety of ways and in different places. They help you accomplish several things:

• Keep your website updated with fresh content
• Communicate to people know what you have going on
• Drive traffic with Events and Promotions

What are the Widgets?

Widgets are basically visual blocks of data which are interactive in some way. With Squareberry, the widgets are designed to show off upcoming Events and Promotions that you have scheduled.

There are several types of widgets in Squareberry...

The List Widget is commonly used on Home Page and sidebars on websites. It offers a simple vertical list of upcoming events and you have the ability to control the number of upcoming events it shows.

The Day Widget shows simple day cells (like you would see on a full month calendar) but only shows the number of days you want shown.

The Landscape Slider Widget delivers scrolling panels of upcoming events and promotions. Viewers can scroll through or click to see the full details. The Landscape Slider can scroll vertically or horizontally. It is great for enhancing a home page or even the footer of a website.

The Portrait Slider Widget is the newest widget in Squareberry and offers a strong visual presentation. Its behavior is similar to the Landscape Slider, but the information is presented in a taller more visually striking manner. The Portrait Slider could greatly enhance a website home page or be used on internal pages.

With both slider widgets, the panels are automatically generated. If your event/promo has an image in it, the image is seen. If it does not have an image, a small map for the location is seen. If it does not have a location, then only the text content is shown.

All of these widgets can add visual appeal to your website. They also help to keep people updated and drive real world traffic. It is important to communicate the events and promotions you have going on. All of the widgets automatically update based on your schedule in Squareberry, so there is no need to keep updating them on your website at all.

Original post: http://squareberry.com/news/enhance-your-website-with-widgets/

Tuesday Tip - Spread Your Schedule Out to Draw in Customers

Using the Social Media Planner

The Social Media Planner allows you to schedule your events, messages and promotions far in advance. You can plan, repeat, edit and optimize to lay out an ideal social communications plan. With the Planner, you can build the perfect communications plan to drive more real world traffic.

Spread Your Events and Promotions Out

Normally, you don't want to have your events and promotions pressed into a tight schedule. Spreading things out can help in a variety of ways:

• You are covering more ground offering things for people to participate in at a variety of times.
• You are more likely to get repeat customers. People don't usually want to go to the same place they went last night, but a week from now they will be more interested in returning.
• It gives you more opportunity to get first time visitors. A first time vistor/customer is not in tune with your schedules and will be happy to find something going on when they are able to stop by.

Promote Future Happenings During Current Happenings

A great idea is to promote future happenings during your current happenings. If you have a special event going on with a good crowd, use it as an opportunity to highlight upcoming promotions and events you will be holding. Never assume that everyone already knows about all the happenings you have going on.

Original post: http://squareberry.com/news/tuesday-tip-spread-schedule-for-drawing-customers/

Tuesday Tip - Social Calendars Show What You are Into

Many organizations profile and display their employees at their location, on their website or even in marketing materials. Most of the time, this is done to show the human side of the organization and give the customer/viewer someone to connect with. Having real people's pictures and info let first timers know that there is actually someone there.

A Social Calendar can do the same thing! It is a great way to show off what the people in your organization are into and what they have going on.

Your Social Calendar

A social calendar is a great way to show off community events, staff birthdays, important dates and organizational happenings. Your social calendar could feature birthdays of all your staff members, your weekly staff meeting, a mysterious date a few weeks away when you have a big announcement planned or even Organization parties. Displaying a social calendar like this can breathe life into your organization the same way a "Meet Our Staff" page does.

Snagged Categories Show What You Are Into

Another great way to let people get to know your organization a little more is by Snagging categories and events from other organizations, teams, and fun calendars. This is a great way to show off interests and activities your staff is into.

Your social calendar could contain holidays, local sports teams schedules, birthdays of famous and inspirational people or even anniversaries of important date sin history. Your social calendar can be as personal as you like.

Can't find a category you want to Snag? Make it yourself! You could become the source for everyone else to Snag from!

Check out the Squareberry Team's social calendar here: http://squareberry.com/about-squareberry/squareberrys-social-calendar/

Original post: http://squareberry.com/news/tuesday-tip-social-calendars-show-what-you-are-into/

Tuesday Tip - Ask Questions + Get Feedback

Questions Get You Feedback...

...and feedback is good!

Social Media and other aspects of the web have given organizations a great opportunity for getting feedback, responses and more information from their customers than ever before. Organizations should take advantage of this to gain insight and optimize the way they do business, plan events, communicate and more.

Why is feedback so great? Well, it helps you modify and perfect the way you are doing things. It is important to constantly adjust your methods to fine tune them and create the ideal experience for your customers/visitors/etc. Questions can also help promote further conversation and discussion.

Ask Questions on Social Media

Social Media is the perfect outlet for getting feedback. You could post a simple question on Twitter or LinkedIn, or use the Question feature on Facebook. Your question is seen by the people following you, who can respond instantly. Before social media, gaining feedback so instantaneously was uncommon.

Respond to Comments/Mentions with Questions

You can instigate further conversation by asking questions to people who have already commented or mentioned you on social media. For instance, someone may mention you on Twitter, saying that they are at your restaurant. Responding with a question like "Have you tried the Salmon?" does two things: it recommends something to your guest and it carries the conversation on, encouraging them to respond further and keep the conversation going.

Squareberry Tally Feature

Squareberry allows you to place a single question on every event you make. Each question comes with 3 buttons allowing viewers to answer "Yes", "No" or "Maybe". This feature allows you to get quick feedback from your viewers while adding an interactive element to your event page.

Original Source: http://squareberry.com/news/tuesday-tip-ask-questions-get-feedback/