Funeral Futurist | Robin Heppell

Welcome to my collection of Free Social Media Resources for Funeral Homes and Cemeteries.  This is part of my Funeral Social Media Week Promotion.  This promotion is in conjunction with the launch of the New & Improved Traffic Geyser Tools and Social Media Marketing Machines.

Also, don’t forget to register for my free webinar this Friday:

Advance Social Media Strategies for Funeral Homes & Cemeteries

Fri, Dec 17, 2010 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM EST / 10:00 AM to 12 NOON PST

Below I have create 3 Groups of Social Media Resources for you – that are all free to use.  If you wish, please leave your favorite free social media resources in the comments section.

5 Free Funeral Industry Friendly Social Media Icons

There are hundreds of free social media icons available for download on the Internet, but some aren’t appropriate for your funeral home or cemetery website.  Here is a list of my top 5 choices.

1. IconDock.com – Vector Social Media Icons: Classy icons in original colors and vector based so that you can scale the icons to the desired size.
2. IconsEtc.com – Blue White Pearls Icons: Very classy, all white with blue icons. For other colors with the white pearls design, click here for the White Pearls Icons Custom Search.
3. MediaLoot.com – New Social Media Icons: Original colored icons with slight embossed border.
4. ChethStudios.net – White Magik Social Icon Pack: Similar to the white pearl, these icons have the original colors for each social media website.
5. IconsEtc.com – Blue Jelly Icons: Glossy, all blue icons. For other colors with the jelly style, click here for the Jelly Icons Custom Search.

• Honorable Mention: IconsEtc.com – Whitewashed Star Patterned Icons: Maybe not for funeral homes but have a cut-stone look to them and could be appropriate for Monument Dealers.

If you would rather have all of your social media set up done for you, just click this button

and we would be happy to get you all set up in a week!

5 of My Favorite Free Online Social Media Tools

1. Ping.FM: A social media account aggregater where you can send one update out to your various social profiles like Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter.
2. Feedburner: FeedBurner is a web feed management tool that provides custom RSS feeds and management tools to podcasters, and other web-based content publishers. This service is owned by Google and will also automatically take your new website posts and tweet them to your twitter account.  Although other services do this as well, this set up gets pushed instantly through Google’s system – letting Google know immediately that you have new website content.
3. iGoogle Dashboard + Google News Gadget: By adding the Google News Gadget to your iGoogle Dashboard and adding topics that would be relevant to connecting to you and your community, all of the latest news gets sorted and funneled right into your lap. Then you can re-purpose this by sharing it on your blog, Facebook or Twitter.
4. HootSuite: Similar to Ping.FM, HootSuite allows you to schedule your updates in advance. I placed it under the iGoogle Dashboard because you can now gather a week’s worth of content from your iGoogle / Google News dashboard and then schedule it to be distributed out over a number of days – all with in an hour… now that’s smart social marketing!
5. iTunes Podcast Network: The most overlooked & powerful tool right at your fingertips.  3 to 5 years a Podcasts were for techies, but now with so many people having “pod-catching” devices including you – whether it is your computer, iPad, iPod, Zune, iPhone, Blackberry, Android, or other smartphone, you have the ability to receive and consume podcasts.  As a learner, you can get the latest training on any subject – more up-to-date than any university program – my beat up iPod is literally my Online Marketing MBA!  On the other hand (or in the other hand) of your potential client families,

Animoto is a great and easy way to create promotional videos

(You can even make Video Tributes & DVDs)

5 of My Favorite Free Social Media Plugins for WordPress

1. AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget:  The AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget allows any visitor to bookmark and share your site easily with many popular services.
2. RSS Footer: This plugin makes it easy to add a line of content to the beginning or the end of all the articles in your feeds, for instance to display a link back to your website.
3. Simple Facebook Connect: Simple Facebook Connect is a series of plugins that let you add any sort of Facebook Connect functionality you like to a WordPress blog. This lets you have an integrated site without a lot of coding, and still letting you customize it exactly the way you’d like.
4. Social Profiles Widget: This plugin/widget allows you to insert icon links to your social profiles in any widgetized area.
5. WPTouch: WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress website into an iPhone application-style theme, complete with ajax loading articles and effects, when viewed from an iPhone, iPod touch, Android, Opera Mini, Palm Pre, Samsung touch and BlackBerry Storm/Torch mobile devices.