Archive for the ‘Features’ Category
Introducing Facebook Connect for Fan Pages
Many local businesses now have a Facebook Fan page where they can reach out to existing fans and friends who are already using Facebook. There are of course, 500 million some odd people on Facebook now so thats a lot of people to reach out to. For many business owners and managers Facebook has become a second, third and sometimes fourth place to monitor and manage - which means they are running short on time. One common theme we all hear from our customers is that they don’t have enough time to do all this updating.
Well our goal here is to make our customers lives’ easier, and with this release we are doing just that. After a short set up, that literally takes 30 seconds, users can update their Facebook Fan Page with one click, whether its promoting an event, sharing an article they published or just giving a shout about their business. And most impressively, with the existing Twitter integration, business owners can now share updates and links about their business on Twitter and Facebook at the same time, from one simple dashboard. Post and share your information with millions of users on Facebook and Twitter with one click.
Currently this is only live in Providence and Saratoga, but we will be releasing it across the network over the next 7 days. We are working hard to make the best user interface available to you and will be rolling out several improvements in this system as we get feedback from you. So please if you have questions or comments please let us know, you can Ping us on Twitter @thelocallife or reach us by email.
Thanks so much,
- Jamie
We’ve Updated Our Photo System
Well we’ve answered your calls for a better image management system, and we are rolling that out today. We’ve made some spiffy improvements and eliminated most of the bugs we have had reported. So if you are adding events, and articles frequently, you’ll be very pleased.
The events and articles steps for photos are completely revamped and redone. You can upload an image, in any browser (including Internet Explorer 6,7 & 8), and see it instantly so you know what you uploaded. If you don’t like it, you can click “Delete” and upload a new one. You will see old images in there as well, so if you are updating an existing article, business or event, you can delete the old images, or just add more.
Please let us know if you encounter any bugs or errors. You can always let us know you had a problem by using clicking the “Report a Bug” Bubble in the top right of the screen. I read every single email that comes through :)
Thanks for being a part of The Local Life,
- Jamie
New Features for Friday the 13th
In our quest to bring you more tools, and a better user experience, we are announcing two new features this weekend, both of which are now live. The first is a more advanced way for users to track views of their business and event pages. Its a simple addition that allows you to track, by day and by month, how many people are looking at your page. Not overly exciting but we think it will help you track what is happening on your page.
Second, and much more exciting is the new Fans feature. If you use Facebook or Twitter, you are probably familiar with “Friends” & “Followers”; well for The Local Life, “Fans” is our version of those two things. Becoming a fan of a business will soon allow you to follow any updates a business makes to their page, like adding a new coupon or event. Once we have a few fans, we will begin to show the businesses with the most Fans on the homepage, and within each Category.
We will also be introducing some new functionality for business owners around Fans, which we will update you on fully when we go live with them, but we think they are pretty exciting as well.
For now, log in and become a Fan of your favorite business. Its easy - just click onto the “Become a Fan” tab on a Business Page click the button; simple Who doesn’t like simple?
Update Twitter from Your User Page
Well for those of you who don’t know what Twitter is, its a ragingly popular new messaging service that lets you broadcast short messages of 140 charachters or less to people who “follow” you, or those who care about what you have to say. For businesses, it is becoming a popular tool to send out specials and build good will with your customers, often resulting in more sales for those businesses using it wisely.
Since our ultimate goal is to help our small business customers increase sales, we just pushed out another great feature for our customers and users: Post to Twitter. As of last night anyone can update their Twitter Status from your User page, simply by adding your Twitter username and password to your User Profile. For those Businesses who use our Dashboard to track click throughs and views of their page, you will now see a message prompting you to either add your Twitter account, or to Post to Twitter if you already set it up.
No fancy stuff, just enter your Username and Password to Twitter like you would however you access Twitter, and then start sending your messages instantly. The beauty here is that not only will all of your followers see your post this way, but anyone who goes to your Business Page on TheSaratogaLife will see it too!
Let us know if you have any problems, but you should see a message in RED if you have any errors. As always you can contact us by clicking the “We’re in Beta” bubble in the top right. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
Thanks for stopping by today and being a part of The Saratoga Life
- Jamie