Choosing a Username for your Facebook Page

If 25 people or more are connected to your page, you can select a username for your Facebook page or Facebook profile by going to: http://www.facebook.com/username/. The Page username must be at least five characters in length and only include alphanumeric characters (A-Z, 0-9), or a period or full stop (“.”).

Facebook state:

“The selected username should clearly identify the artist or business represented by your Page. Create a username that is as close as possible to your public figure or business name (e.g. AshtonKutcher, PizzaHut) to avoid any confusion or misrepresentation. In addition, generic words (e.g. restaurant) are not available as options for Facebook usernames. Think carefully about the username you choose for your Page as once it has been selected, you will not be able to change or transfer it. Be sure to check out Help Center for answers to common questions about usernames for Facebook Pages. If you wish to report an infringing username, please visit our username infringement Help Center”

Full instructions for setting a Facebook Page Username

This should take you 5 to 10 minutes.

• Login to Facebook
• Go to Account
• Go to Manage Pages, Go to page, Go to edit page, There will be a hyperlink on News for page admin - click Usernames
• Click link 'Select a Username' or click: http://www.facebook.com/username/
• Then click the hyperlink - 'Set a username for your pages'
• Check availability and choose your desired URL name for your Facebook Page.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Autumn Lifeboat Lottery

We are back to promote the RNLI Life Boat Lottery. To help the RNLI save lives at sea and be in with a chance to win with the Lifeboat Lottery read on. (Sourced above image from RNLI website).

The draw ends on the 10 September 2010.

We are sharing our support as the RNLI are just a stone throw away from our offices in Poole. The RNLI is an independent charity; this means they don’t receive any funding from the UK government. They can’t save lives at sea without public support. Lifeboats need to be designed, built, fuelled and maintained, and their crews trained and equipped. Lifeguards also need training and equipment.

Some interesting ‘did you know’ facts about the RNLI, taken from their Twitter page

• 6 out of 10 launches only possible thanks to legacies
• 139000 lives saved since 1824
• 22 people are rescued every day
• Funded by voluntary donations
• 4, 500 volunteer crew members

Amazed by those statistics, if so, why not help out and try your luck with the Lifeboat Lottery.

This Autumn, you can win a cash prize of up to £5,000 with the RNLI. The closing date is 10 September 2010 and the draw will be held on 24 September 2010. Tickets are available from lottery@rnli.org.uk, or by calling the RNLI Supporter Care team on 0845 121 4999. Before you contact please make sure you head over to the RNLI website to view further details on the lottery, as you are required to read the ‘Terms and Conditions’ and ‘Information on Responsible Gambling’.

Best of luck!

You may also wish to view all the other ways in which you can support the RNLI here.
How to Support the RNLI

Thanks for your attention

All at Rocktime x

Online Marketing Summit Bump

In celebration of the start of the Online Marketing Summit kicking off in New York today Kaylee has kitted out her baby bump with a NY Big Apple. We won’t be attending the Online Marketing Summit but we will be viewing the Virtual Summit On Demand, and checking up on trends on Twitter.

Find out more about it here: http://www.onlinemarketingsummit.com/spring-2010-omvs/

The Online Marketing Virtual Summit is covering all major domains of online marketing, including Social Media, Search Marketing, Web Analytics, Integrated Marketing, Online Advertising & Mobile, Website Strategy & Usability, Email Marketing, and Demand Generation.
All areas that are of interest to the Flashlight team, the event sounds “totally awesome” so we are pleased we can get involved virtually, via listening, learning and hopefully a little bit of engagement too.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Geek Video of the month

This Apple iPad live Finger Painting demo is pretty awesome and wins hands down for Rocktimes Geek Video of the month. Great to see a creative use for the iPad with the Brushes App. I want one! :-)


Author: Kaylee Bradley

Google - security, privacy and the World Cup!

Google is continuously developing and updating their suite of products and services and I’d like to briefly mention a few that I heard about recently which have implications for a variety of users which didn’t get quite as much attention as I think they deserved.

Firstly is the ability to search Google over an SSL encrypted connection. This is currently running under their ‘beta’ tag and is available at https://www.google.com(notice the ‘s’ in https).
This only appears to be working on the main site and not the country specific variants at the moment. When you are on this you can see the little secure padlock in your browser signifying the secure connection. So what does this mean? Well in a nutshell it means that the data from your browser and the Google server is encrypted so that no third party, listening in the middle, is able to see what is being sent to and fro. Your search terms and the results from Google cannot be intercepted and read by anyone or anything that may be spying on your internet connection. Who could be spying, or why you wouldn’t want them to see your search is a question for another day.
One side effect this has is to do with referrers, or lack thereof. Due to the way the web browsers work, if you are on a secure site and click on a link, the referrer information that is normally passed to the new link is not actually passed. So if the SSL version of the Google search becomes more popular, then webmasters will not be able to tell where their visitors came from or what they searched for if they visit the site via this new service. A plus point for privacy concerns some may say. However for internet marketing managers it could seriously affect their ability to know how people reached the site through natural search and would confuse search engine optimisation (SEO) strategies. Google have yet to comment about the above implications for SEO and Analytics, in reality this means that SSL could be some way off, watch this blog for updates.

You may also want to read this post from E-consultancy and the reader comments
"Will opt-out threaten Google Analytics?"

Talking of privacy, the second development that caught my eye is the release of the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on, also currently in beta. This is an add-on available for the major web browsers (IE 7 & 8, Google Chrome 4.x upwards and Mozilla Firefox 3.5 upwards) that once installed allows you to prevent the Google Analytics ga.js script from sending information about your website visits back to Google Analytics.
I haven’t tried this myself but it sounds like users can make themselves almost invisible to Google Analytics which would again have implications for webmasters who are relying only on GA for their usage statistics. Statistics packages that are based on web server log files, such as SmarterTools’ SmarterStats, would not be affected as they process the access logs that are created directly from the web server and don’t rely on client side javascript to feed them data.
The Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on can be found at http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout and is also linked from the Google Privacy Center.

Any finally, it may be too late for England in the 2010 FIFA World Cup, but if you search on Google for “world cup” you get a special results page that has the latest fixtures at the top. I especially like the special image at the bottom of the page that deals with the results paging – Gooooooooooal!

Author: Andy Clarke

5 reasons Hotels should use Foursquare

With the surge in popularity of the smart phones, social media sites like FourSquare, which offer ‘Geo location based Checkins’, are ones to watch. Foursquare allow users to ‘check in’ using mobile phones when they visit any location be it a cafe, library, office, shop, hotel etc. They can share their location with friends and win virtual badges for their activity ie: ‘ a mayor badge – for person who visits the location the most’. Find out more about Foursquare here.

The above image shows a hotel, local to our offices and a recommendation I gave; anyone who searched for ‘Hotel Du Vin’, on FourSquare, or who searches for 'Nearby Tips' when in Poole will see this review.

The Guardian wrote an article as a FourSquare user, have a read, as it explains the concept of Foursquare well: "Yesterday I took the tube into central London and walked to a random corner of Soho. I opened the app on my phone and went to the "nearby tips" section....."

Sharing with you, our top 5 reasons why hotel marketers should use FourSquare

1. Provides ability to send out offers and promotions, to local visitors, using FourSquare and interact with your customers Such as:
@ Hotel Max: Come in, show our front desk that you checked in on Foursquare and get a $20 gift card to use towards your next stay and be entered into a raffle to win a free stay!

2. FourSquare can help hotels drive repeat business, as people come back to the same place to become ‘mayor’ (receiving a badge for number of check ins) and retain their position.

3. On search of local places it allows people to find out more about you from others, i.e. This hotel has the best Wi-Fi access in Poole, and allows the hotel owners to learn from peoples comments.

4. Enhances brand regonition via increased awareness within Twitter, as many Twitter users opt to link their Foursquare account with their Twitter account, if you see that one of the people you follow regularly ‘check in’ to a certain Hotel restaurant etc, then you may be interested to find out more.

5. We’ve recently seen the site HotelChatter adding Twitter mentions and Foursquare mentions of hotels to their site under a section called Hotel Social view their story here: They are also beginning to start a list of USA Hotels using FourSquare, we will be watching this list to view how they are using this geo locater social tool.

Want to know more about FourSquare and Social Media Networks, get in touch with the Flashlight team and talk to us further about social media strategies that would suit your business.

Author: Sarah Griffiths

Sandcastle Event @sandbanks_beach July 12th

If you are local to Sandbanks, why not take part in a sandcastle building bonanza at Sandbanks beach in July and attempt to break a world record?

We have just found out that the Lewis-Manning Hospice in association with Dorset Business - the chamber of commerce and industry are organising an attempt to break the world record for Sandcastle Building.

The event takes place on Sandbanks Beach on Monday, July 12th. The record breaking attempt will be from 6pm to 7pm. Family fun is organised before. A few of us from Rocktime will be down there.

To join in, you need to set up a team of four, and will need to raise £150 plus VAT to take part – which will include tickets to a BBQ beach party taking place from 7.30pm to 11pm. Tickets for this event are £20 a head. Spectators of the event more than welcome, free of charge.

For more details call 01202 701000 or visit lewis-mann ing.co.uk/events

If you do attend here are some tips on how to build the perfect sandcastle from The Guardian.

Thanks sent to http://www.flickr.com/photos/echoforsberg/ for the photo