For those of you who have been involved in social media and online publishing for sometime you will no doubt remember the ‘good old days’ on Facebook when all you needed to do was post quality, relevant content on a regular basis to your Facebook business page and a large portion of your page’s fans would see the content and then hopefully like, share and comment on it. Those days are long gone now since Facebook started making it increasingly harder for business pages to get their content in front of their fans. [Read more…] about Improving Your Facebook Organic Reach in 2015
How to Utilize the Personalization Features of Facebook
Facebook is becoming more intuitive and taking strides to give Facebook page administrators more creative control over their pages. There are several new features that make it possible to have a somewhat cohesive theme throughout the page as a whole.
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Many Facebook users are taking their time when it comes to getting acclimated to the new Facebook Timeline layout, but it can be a great way to further promote your company and its products. A good example of this would be a website design firm listing their available services, or a business consultancy including a photo of their office with the contact information. The photo could also change to reflect current marketing promotions or seasonal messages.
Custom Tabs
Custom tabs have been around for years, but they remain under-utilized, especially by small businesses. They have so many uses, but many owners stay away from them because they do require some set-up time with a knowledge of HTML or FBML. Custom tabs can be used to create contact pages, coupons, event sign-up, and much more. All it takes is the installation of the blank tab app and creating the new page.
Posting Display on Timeline
Another new feature of the Facebook timeline layout is the options to decide how certain posts, timeline milestones, and photos are displayed. They can span the width of the page or just be on one side. Or, they can be removed completely.
Post Promotion
Facebook now allows page owners to promote either their pages via Facebook Advertising on the sidebar, targeted to their demographic, or the promotion of posts via the option to sponsor it, meaning that the post may show up in target audience members’ newsfeed, even though they haven’t liked your page yet. Users can opt out of this service, but a highly targeted ad is likely to engage their interest and make them want to “like” your page.
Offers
Facebook Offers is slowly rolling out to all pages; it is an option that isn’t available to everyone yet. It allows a business to host a deal or coupon on their page. If someone clicks “get offer”, they will be sent the coupon or offer link through their personal email account that is connected to their Facebook account. Users like claiming offers because it doesn’t tell the company their personal contact information and also allows them to get a great deal.
There are so many different ways to personalize Facebook and make it showcase your company’s personality and the products or services that you have to offer. Not taking advantage of these may only prevent you from being as successful as possible on Facebook.
How On Page SEO Helps to Develop a Crawler Friendly Website
The crawlers are programs that check the pages for keywords. Well, this is only a general consideration, as the program is more complex than it sounds. It has to check millions of pages at 24 hours, but the majority of pages are visited even often. Google keeps the principles of crawlers secret, and this is the way it should be. There is no method for webmasters to determine all the parameters that are considered by those crawlers, but some of the aspects and the working principles behind those crawlers can be anticipated.
[Read more…] about How On Page SEO Helps to Develop a Crawler Friendly Website
Do Social Media Really Anchor Your Marketing Campaign?
The strategy of positioning a website in social networks must be coherent and in concordance with the general business strategy of the company, and the efforts to position the website online need real and reachable objectives. We always say that the positioning strategy is the one that must guide the webmaster in choosing his social media platform. One thing is certain: without social media, a website can’t survive today, therefore it is important to have a strong online presence, and this can only be done with a good marketing campaign. [Read more…] about Do Social Media Really Anchor Your Marketing Campaign?
Negative Effects of Social Networking Sites for Students
The popularity of the social networking sites increased rapidly in the last decade. This is probably due to the reason that college and university students as well as teens used it extensively to get global access. These social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook have become a raging craze for everyone nowadays.
The negative effects of these social networking sites overweigh the positive ones. These sites have caused some potential harm to society. The students become victims of social networks more often than anyone else. This is because of the reason that when they are studying or searching their course material online, they get attracted to these sites to kill the boredom in their study time, diverting their attention from their work. Other negative side effects of social networking websites include the following: [Read more…] about Negative Effects of Social Networking Sites for Students
What Are the Benefits of Scheduling Your Social Media?
There are many services available today that allow social media marketing managers to schedule tweets, Facebook posts, and more. Some of the free and paid services available include Buffer, Sendible, TweetDeck, and Hootsuite. Many of these services also have mobile apps that allow for monitoring, publishing, and maintenance while on the go or away from the office.
While total automation is never a good thing, there is a great balance between automating your RSS feed from your blog and manually scheduling your posts, as well as taking the time to re-tweet or respond to content or posts when necessary.
Finding great content or internal news or marketing pieces to share and then scheduling when they go out can always be a great way to make sure that your company’s social media constantly have a steady social media presence.
Many social media users (depending on the industry) are most active in the morning and right after lunch. However, depending on the industry your company is in, this may vary. To find out when your Twitter followers are most active, check out Tweriod.com. Then, schedule your posts around the times that Tweriod mentions.
Besides allowing your company to have an active presence on social networks throughout the day, scheduling posts have other benefits. For social media marketers that will be out of the office or away in a meeting, they can schedule a few messages while they are gone. This also works for holidays when the office or company is closed. The social media profile can wish followers and fans a “Happy New Year” or it can remind them that the offices are closed for Memorial Day– whatever is applicable.
This convenience can help decrease the stress placed on those responsible for the social media marketing of the company. Planning ahead is always a good thing, as long at the content that is being scheduled will be timely when it is finally published.
No matter how or why a company is scheduling some of their social media posts, it is important to look through the click-through rates of posts (or the Facebook Insights data) to see what posts were successful and if there is a pattern that relates to time of day, the content itself, or both. Tracking these can help improve the effectiveness and engagement of a company’s social media presence.
Offering Free Resources via Social Media to Increase Engagement
If you are a business that is looking for ways to get more Facebook or Twitter followers, providing free resources that are relevant to those in your industry or are of interest to your target audience can be a great way to continue to grow your online communities while also setting your business up as a valuable resource. There are several great resources to promote via social media: white papers, exclusive information, or free products. These resources (and others), that are only available by liking a Facebook Page or following a company on Twitter (offerpop offers a service that allows you to send exclusive coupons or content to followers only).
White Papers
A white paper, according to Wikipedia, is “an authoritative report or guide that helps readers understand an issue, solve a problem, or make a decision.” Many marketers use white papers as a way to promote their survey or research findings or to elaborate on a specific area or issue of marketing that they specialize in. White papers are great to share via social media because they can be downloaded easily as a PDF from a customize Facebook page tab.
The key to a successful white paper is an engaging topic and title. These is what people notice first and what will entice them to complete the actions required to receive the white paper.
Exclusive Information
While white papers provide an extensive, multi-page look at exclusive information, there are other ways to package and present unique information, such as articles, ebooks, a set of tips, or specific instructions on how to complete a certain action. Just like with white papers, these headlines and snippets or previews of the information promised must be engaging enough to entice users to follow a Twitter profile or like a Facebook page.
Free Products
Several companies give away products or entries into sweepstakes for prizes to users who have liked their page on Facebook. While in some cases, this may be against Facebook’s policies (please do your own research before setting up a sweepstakes on Facebook), sweepstakes, contests, and free products can help increase your online following and user engagement.
However, the hardest part of the strategy of providing free resources via social media is keeping these users engaged after the promotion is over. Companies must continue to provide useful and engaging content on their Facebook pages and Twitter profiles that will keep users interested. Because fleeting interest is so common online, the fight to keep the attention of users should always be a high priority.
How to Stay Connected With Customers Via Social Media While Out of the Office
In some company’s marketing departments, there are only one or two employees who may handle the social media aspect of a company’s online presence. Because of this, when those employees travel for work or go on vacation, there may be issues that arise from ensuring that the company presence online stays constant. However, there are some ways that social media coordinators or marketers can ensure that the corporate social media marketing and outreach isn’t compromised just because they aren’t in the office.
Scheduling
There are a variety of services that allow companies and individuals to schedule their social media posts to sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. These include LaterBro, HootSuite, TweetDeck, and Sendible. Costs and features may vary; some services offer a free account but have limited features. A social media marketer could schedule posts to run while they are out of the office, thus keeping the social media presence current and updated.
Smart phone Access
Scheduling social media posts may be part of the problem, but social media marketers will also need to monitor the accounts to answer any posts, questions, or comments. Usually smart phones like the iPhone or Android make this process fairly easy; the Twitter app can send a user an alert when someone follows or mentions their username in a tweet. The Facebook Pages app does the same. To stay connected to social media profiles, it is almost a necessity to have a smart phone so questions and comments can get answered in a timely manner.
Take It On the Road
Some social media marketers prefer to take their company’s social media presence live on the road with them. Companies live-tweet and share photos and updates from their conference, meeting, or other event that the company (or just a handful of its employees) have traveled to. This may make the users feel more connected with the company, but also takes a higher level of commitment and engagement from the employees’ side.
Transferring Duties
If the employee is on vacation or will be too busy with other duties, they may not want to be responsible for the social media community for their company. This is when it becomes necessary to cross-train other employees to handle social media while those who usually handle it are out of the office. This can take some of the stress and anxiety off of the departed employee’s shoulders while also giving other employees a chance to learn more about what goes into building and maintaining a social media presence and community.
Photo courtesy of vjeran2001 on stock.xchng