I asked our Social Media savvy friends at SocialFlow to team up with me to write a series of blog posts, listing and explaining best practices for optimizing your social media publishing. Here are our TOP 8 master points for getting results from your business efforts in Social Media.
1. Start with great content: Align an ideal mix with your goals that may incorporate evergreen content, external resources, personality, questions, tips/how-tos, video, images and audio.
2. Don’t over-publish: Find the sweet spot of enough messaging to satisfy your audience but not so much that they get tired of hearing from you.
3. Master a content cycle: Keep a constant flow between listening, planning, creating, publishing and evaluating. All are important in social, and all will enhance your results.
4. Think outside your time zone: Publish in off hours and recycle occasionally to hit night owls and those on a different schedule. Remember, not all your fans and followers are online at the same time. It’s okay to recycle your message.
5. Engage & reward your audience: Interactions, contests quizzes and conversation are all great ways to do this. Use a content management and publishing application like Engage121 to help you effectively and efficiently reach your community and prospects.
6. Make sure your website encourages social sharing: Do you have easy social tools on site? Are you using Open Graph tags correctly?
7. Meet your audience halfway: Listen to them, and use the keywords and hashtags your audience is already using.
8. Save time through science and technology: Use the SocialFlow Optimized Publisher™ to streamline your publishing to Facebook and Twitter. Optimizing means you don’t have to guess when the best time to deliver your message is or how often.
Tune in next Tuesday as we go in depth to cover how to approach and execute these best practices one-by-one.
Just a few hours ago, the redesign for Facebook Business Pages was unveiled at fMC (Facebook Marketing Conference) in New York. This new version of Facebook showcases the timeline format and cover photo that many personal accounts have already adopted. This latest format will allow you to build more “brand centric” business pages with a full image across the top and a more prevalent brand icon position.
The transition period for the new Facebook Business Page will happen over the next 30 days, with a total changeover occurring on March 30th. Engage121 is committed to ensuring that your business on Facebook is unimpeded by this change — that it only enhances your Facebook efforts. We have carefully reviewed the changes and your workflow will not be affected whatsoever. We do, however, strongly recommend you review and update your profile to take advantage of the new features to present your brand properly.
As always, if you have any questions regarding this new enhancement, please feel free to call your customer experience representative.
Below is a video and screenshots highlighting the features that will be available to business pages with the new Timeline design, such as a Cover Photo, new placement of your apps, and private messaging from your Fans.
You can see all of these features by visiting your Business Page and clicking “Preview” in the box at the top of your Page. In the next screen you will see “Welcome to Your Page Preview,” here you can eitherPublish Now and instantly change your Business Page to the Timeline design, click Start Tour to see the new features outlined, or Help to learn more.
I will walk you through the Tour now using my own Business Page.
This is what you should see when you visit your Facebook Business Page today if you are the admin.
By clicking Preview you will see the next screenshot.
By clicking Start Tour you will be introduced to the new features and design in Timeline.
As with personal profiles you will now be able to add a Cover Photo to your business Page. This is a great way to catch the attention of your community. I would recommend changing your Cover Photo often to highlight promotions or offers you have available.
There is no longer a landing tab for your page so non-fans will immediately see your Cover Photo, Profile Picture and 4 apps. Your Cover Photo is now the main way to tell a viewer about your company, use a photo that best represents what you do. The optimal size for a Cover Photo is 850 pixels x 315 pixels wide.
Make sure not to include any contact info, calls to action or about information on your Cover Photo, it is against Facebook’s Terms of Service, below.
You may need to change your profile picture if the current sizing does not fit the new design. Make sure that you are using a high resolution, high quality image that represents your company well. The boxshowing your #of likes will now rotate depending on who is viewing your page. If someone visits your page and some of their friends like your Page they will see their friends show first in the like box.
“Photos, likes and apps are now at the top of your Page. Photos show in the first spot, but you can change the order of everything else so people see what matters most. You can show a maximum number of 12 apps, so make sure to put your most important ones first.”
*I will recommend that you go through your apps to make sure they are all working, any apps that are no longer applicable I would remove. The prominence of your apps is now very important since there is no longer a landing tab, 4 apps will be all that is visible on the timeline so make your most important and engaging apps past of the first 4.
“Hover over a story and click on the star ( star icon ) to make it wider, or on the pencil ( pencil icon ) to pin it to the top of your Page, hide or delete it entirely.”
*Since Timeline shows all of your history, dating back to when you first created your Page, or started your company if you choose, I would suggest reviewing all of your posts and images to make sure they still represent your brand correctly. If you would like to hide them you can do so by clicking the Pencil Icon as mentioned above. You can also pin posts and they will be placed at the top of your timeline and it will stay at the top until you pin something else. This would be great if you launched a new product and your post contained a link to a video demoing how to use this new product.
“Keep track of your activity on your Page from the admin panel. Respond when people write on your Page timeline, and view your latest insights.”
*You will now see your Admin panel on your wall and you will now be able to make changes to your information and see your page insights in your timeline (wall), you no longer have to click “edit page” in the upper right and go to a new screen.
“Now people can contact you privately using messages. Notifications about new messages will appear right in your admin panel.”
*It will be interesting to see how this feature rolls out. For large brands, such as Starbucks, monitoring these private messages could become overwhelming and end up being one person’s entire job. It will make reaching out to your top fans easier, but they must message you first to open the line of communication.
That is the tour of the new Timeline for Business Pages. I am excited to see what brands decide to feature as their Cover Photo. I do think branding this design will be very helpful to market your business. Timeline will now show all of your history; Events, Promotions, Fan interaction, Tagging, Videos and Images all in ONE place. A person will be able to get a great sense of your company just by scrolling down your Timeline. On that note, make sure your page is the “Best of the Best” at all times and you are always wearing your Top Hat!
You can download a PDF from Facebook to see more highlights here. There are also many helpful articles outlining the new features and changes.
Key Changes:
*There is no longer a landing tab for Non-Fans, they will automatically be directed to your Timeline (wall). This places a HUGE importance on the Cover Photo, and the ordering of your apps in the new panel. This will now be the only way people will be introduced to your brand.
*Users will initially only see posts or interactions on the page from their friends, alongside posts from the page, unless they choose to click on “Recent posts by others.”
I watched the LIVE stream from the fMC conference today that Facebook hosted, it was exclusively for Marketers. Here are a few new, very exciting features that will soon be available to Pages.
Reach generator: Will help you make sure your fans see your stories. You will be able to take one of your posts every day and move it to the Facebook home page. The Reach Generator is meant to reach 75% of your fans on a daily basis, which will result in more engagement, more comments and your Fans telling small stories on top of your stories. Ben & Jerry’s reached 98% more of their fans using the Reach Generator for one of their campaigns.
Premium Facebok: It is the new way to distribute your content. You start with the page post, then the post goes to the right hand side of the Facebook homepage. TODAY when you tell stories and communicate the story to who you are connected to, that story with premium Facebook will be eligible for distribution in the Facebook newsfeed. This will also be available on Desktops & Mobile devices.
Facebook Offers: Publishing the offer as a story, then it will go on the right hand side of the Facebook home page, and it can be in the newsfeed. Remember this is mobile friendly. Macy’s published a Facebook Offer in their newsfeed and since it is available on a mobile device, it gained them huge rewards in sales.
Reminder: If you would like to drive traffic to your website Facebook is now offering a reminder to your community to your website when they log out of Faceboook. 1-800-FLOWERS used this feature and it drove sales on their website.
Once you had read over all of the Timeline features and you have decided what photo to use for your Cover Photo, read through all of your old posts, featured a post and highlighted a few key posts then you can hit PUBLISH at the top of your page. This is what our new Timeline page looks like:
Will you be Publishing now or waiting until March 30th?
In case you missed it, foursquare announced this week that any business can create its own foursquare page. Until this point, foursquare partnered with companies on an individual basis so only about 3,000 or so organizations have business pages, and those businesses tended to be big brand names such as Intel, Louis Vuitton and Tiffany.
It is interesting that foursquare started with geo-marketing and check-ins and is now moving to pages – while Facebook started with pages and is now moving to track check-ins.
As for our clients, we are already working with them to set up their Facebook presence and anticipate doing the same with foursquare business pages.
The new foursquare business pages will allow businesses to:
Communicate with the entire foursquare community with tips and check ins
Push check-ins to facebook and Twitter
Upload photos
Enable teams to manage the page
Foursquare will feature completed pages in its gallery. Go to foursquare’s blog for more details.
Wake up Connecticut and New York. New Jersey is winning.
McDonalds is running a new campaign in the New York tri-state area to determine who has the most pride in their borough, state and town. And, the company is running a foursquare contest and will award the region that has the greatest number of foursquare check-ins with Summer parties. Every party attendee will receive a FREE McCafe. New Jersey has already won the first Summer party, but the contest is not over with another party scheduled for early August.
Much has been made of McDonalds face off with Starbucks, and this campaign will undoubtedly drive a large sampling and sales of McDonald’s coffee beverages. The campaign will also increase awareness of foursquare, as McDonalds’ customers will see the foursquare sticker throughout the populous tri-state area. It also confirms just how mainstream foursquare has become.
At Engage121, we help customers use foursquare and other social media platforms to increase loyalty, run smarter daily deals and grow their businesses every day. Contact us and we would be happy to help you.
And, for you competitive types in the tri-state area, check out Toast Your Town for more details on how to use social media to praise your town and maybe win the next party.
I was on business in Chicago for a three month stretch so it is no surprise that I sampled some excellent pizza. Having also lived in New York City for five years, I ate plenty of delicious pizza there too. I won’t get into which is better – a New York slice or Chicago deep dish but regardless of your opinion you may enjoy the following video interview, How to Turn Your Local Customers into Raving Fans. Michael Stelzner, Social Media Examiner’s founder and executive editor, interviews Mr. Ramon De Leon, managing partner of six Dominos pizza restaurants in Chicago.
My first thought was that Mr. De Leon must have his work cut out for him running a pizza chain in Chicago – the town is filled with pizza connoisseurs. To differentiate, Mr. De Leon combines social media and traditional channels with a dose of good, old fashioned courtesy and service.
Here are a few interview highlights:
Pizza real estate: Mr. DeLeon notes that email may only make it to an inbox, but a pizza box lands on the dining room table (or at least the kitchen counter in my house where it seems to sit for 24 hours after the pizza is gone). Mr. De Leon uses this valuable real estate for customer tweets which he knows will start a conversation if not generate an immediate sale.
Thank you very much: Sure Foursquare is great as you know when your customers are checking in, but an old fashioned “thank you” added to a check-in makes it personal. Mr. De Leon makes sure that he tells his check-ins how much he appreciates their business, and he assures that if you do check in you will get beyond “the wow” in service.
Tweets and customer service: One of Mr. De Leon’s customers missed most of a football game due to a delay in an order. After seeing her tweet, Mr. De Leon not only replaced that order and gave a complimentary one, but also he sent her to a live football game the next week! I bet she is a customer for life now.
Mr. De Leon tracks three metrics and states, “his sales are up, his profits are there, and he is having fun.”
I am sold. Next time I am in Chicago I will stop by for a slice. Watch the interview and you will too.
“Photos, likes and apps are now at the top of your Page. Photos show in the first spot, but you can change the order of everything else so people see what matters most. You can show a maximum number of 12 apps, so make sure to put your most important ones first.”
