Posting

Connecting to Your Social Media

16 Jan
by Caitlin Thayer, posted in Facebook, Social Media, Twitter, YouTube   |  No Comments

If you’ve taken the first step and gotten your business or organization on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others, then pat yourself on the back because you’ve already got a jump on many organizations out there who are still trying to figure that out. What you don’t want to do is fall behind because you aren’t properly connecting all of your platforms.On your website it’s extremely important to make sure you have the links to all of your social media platforms. For anyone whose first encounter with your organization is via your website, you want to make sure you give them all of the information they’ll need to connect with you on all of the other platforms that you’re putting time and energy into. Give them the opportunity to help you spread the word about your organization and be able to tag you in any posts they make about you by giving them direct access to your social media pages. If possible, try to use the social media logos with a hyperlink to the pages, these are the most recognizable. If you just use words with a link, it could get lost in all of the other words on the page. Put the logos in the header, in the footer or on a sidebar so anyone who scrolls down the page will see them easily. I prefer the header, so if someone doesn’t take the time to scroll down the page they are still going to see them.

On Facebook, you want to create tabs on your business page for your Twitter feed, blog feed and YouTube channel if you have them. The Twitter tab will allow you to showcase your Twitter feed on your Facebook page. It will be very obvious to anyone who visit your Facebook page that you also have a Twitter account and *hint hint* they should be following you. This means, however, that if you have your tweets auto-feeding into your Facebook page, that you should probably stop doing that. No one will want to follow you on Facebook and Twitter if the content is exactly the same. See my previous post on The Art of Re-Posting. Also create a tab for your blog to feed into, and if you use Networked Blogs you can set it so it will auto-post to your wall as well.

Also on your Facebook page, in the info section make sure that you have the URL’s for your website, Twitter account, blog, YouTube channel… anywhere you’d want people to visit.

You want to do the same thing on your blog and YouTube channel. Find a place to incorporate a link to your Facebook page, Twitter account and all of the other social media platforms that you’re on. There is only space to put one link on your Twitter profile, so make that a link to your website, and when people click on it they’ll see all of your other social media platforms then.

And try some direct marketing approaches as well. Post your blog links and your Twitter link on your Facebook page every so often, post tweets asking your followers to join your Facebook page and read your blog, and blog about your efforts on Facebook and Twitter. Showcase a post you made that got a lot of great comments or highlight a Twitter conversation that occurred about your brand. Don’t be shy about promoting yourself.

It’s pointless to waste your time and energy on creating and updating your social media pages if you don’t let people know they exist. Make it as easy as possible for people to be able to find them, and it will make your job that much easier.

Tips for Getting Seen on Facebook

24 Oct
by Caitlin Thayer, posted in Facebook, Social Media   |  No Comments

Did you ever wonder why you never see some of your friends in your Facebook News Feed? If you only have 3 friends you probably get to see all three in the News Feed, but if you have  few hundred there are most likely a handful that never show up. Tom Weber and The Daily Beast did a one month test to see if they could figure out how Facebook’s News Feed algorithm works.This also applies to business pages. If the members of your organization’s page on Facebook have a few hundred friends and like a lot of business pages, you’ll have to fight for your spot in their News Feed.

The Daily Beast’s one-month experiment into Facebook’s news feed yielded the following discoveries:

  • A bias against newcomers
  • “Most Recent” doesn’t tell the whole story.
  • Links are favored over status updates, and photos and videos trump links.
  • “Stalking” your friends won’t get you noticed.
  • Raise your visibility by getting people to comment.
  • It’s hard to get the attention of “popular kids.”

As a business owner getting started on social media, you may read that and think that it would be fairly impossible to grow your business page, especially if you won’t be showing up in anyone’s News Feeds because you’re new and you don’t get any interactions. Whenever I do presentations I always get asked by those getting started on Facebook how they can begin to grow their page members. Here are the tips I give to all of my clients:

1) Get your friends involved. If you’re a small business owner, or you’re the solo employee, you don’t have much of a choice on this one. A lot of people like to separate their business Facebook from their personal Facebook, but you’re friends support what you do (I hope) and should be willing to join your business page in order to help you grow it. Ask them to join, and then ask them to suggest the page to their friends.

2) Get your staff involved. If you have a business with some staff members, get them on board with being on Facebook. Tell them why you’re doing it, what you hope to get out of it, and what they can do to help. Like your friends, ask them to join the page and suggest it to their own friends.

3) Ask your friends/staff to interact. From the article we learned that profiles and pages show up in the News Feed more often when posts/photos/videos get a lot of comments and interactions. When you’re getting started, ask a couple of friends and staff members to be dedicated commenters. This will also help break the ice for new page members to feel comfortable interacting as well.

4) Put the Facebook logo on your home page. If you’ve already got the traffic on your website, why not tap into that to help grow your Facebook page? If someone has taken the time to check out your website and what you’re all about, it’s likely they’ll be willing to join you on Facebook as well to see what you talk about there.

5) When you get to 25 page members, create your unique URL. A lot of people forget about this, but it’s so important because it will help you market your page. Put that URL on your business cards and in your email signature. To do this, go to facebook.com/username and it will prompt you to create your own URL (facebook.com/whateveryouwant). Make sure you spell it correctly, because it can’t be changed!

6) Keep the posts coming. Even before you start worrying about getting people to your page, you should be worrying about what they’ll see when they get there. You can be actively inviting people to join, but if when they get there they see two posts that were posted over a week ago, they might not stay. Sometimes it feels weird to be posting information and asking questions when no one is responding, but keep it up and over time you’ll see an increase in your interactions. And make sure the posts include a variety of photos, videos and links. Like they said in the article, links are favored in the News Feed over plain status updates, and photos and videos favored over links.

Do you check your Facebook updates?

13 Jul
by Caitlin Thayer, posted in Facebook, Social Media   |  1 Comments

So, Facebook updates. Raise your hand if you can tell me how to find your Facebook updates. They’re currently tucked away within your Facebook messages page. Does anyone remember when updates used to be featured on the home page? You’d see how many updates you had received on the top right corner of the home page. For an organization with an Official Page, having the updates on the home page was great. Everyone would get a very visible notice when they received an update from any organization that they were a fan of. Now, any update I receive gets lost among the messages I receive. Maybe it’s just me, but I frequently forget that updates even exist! I went into my inbox today and found that I have over 500 unread updates.

Facebook seems to be changing they layout without organizations and Pages in mind. When Facebook first started, groups were more popular for organizations, Pages were useless. Then they changed the layout of the Pages so everyone switched from groups to Fan Pages. Updates were front and center and life was good. Now, updates are hidden and forgotten.

So what can organizations do? Well, it certainly doesn’t hurt to keep sending the updates. There are people out there who still make the effort to read them. But also make sure you’re sending out the important information through the Page itself. Remember, you can post items multiple times! Not everyone will see it the first or second time you post it. You aren’t annoying anyone with multiple postings, so go for it!

The other problems with Pages are that administrators can’t invite Page members to events. Facebook reprimands those organizations that create a person for their organization so that means that the employees of said organization have to pull from their own friend lists over and over again. As someone who has invited friends to work events over, and over, and over – it gets old.

The good news is, remember that blog I wrote a while back about how annoying it was that the person who created the Official Page would be the administrator forever and ever? Well, that’s not the case anymore. In case you hadn’t noticed, anyone can be removed as an administrator. I’d like to think it’s because of the e-mails I sent. You can bet I’ll be sending more about the updates.

The Art of Re-Posting

14 Apr
by Caitlin Thayer, posted in Social Media   |  6 Comments

Ok kids, here’s the lesson for today. When you have multiple social media outlets, like most of us do, don’t be lazy about re-posting.

Lesson #1 – Don’t link your Twitter feed with your Facebook status updates. If when you post something to your personal page on Facebook or post something to your fan page, and the exact same thing shows up on your Twitter account with the auto-link to your Facebook update because it’s too long – this tells me something. It tells me that there is absolutely no reason for me to be following BOTH your Facebook fan page AND your Twitter account. Why do I need both? You’re just giving me the exact same information. So do you know what I do? I either un-follow, or un-fan one. That way I’m only getting the information once and you’re not clogging up my feeds with repetitive information. NOW this doesn’t mean that you can’t post the same info in both places, but these are two different platforms! They require different phrasing – so phrase it differently. Take the extra 3 minutes to write it in both places and you’ll keep me as a fan AND a follower.

Lesson #2 – If you are the owner of a business and you have your personal page and also have a “person” for your business (we’re seeing this more and more now, I’m having banks and restaurants friend me on Facebook) DON’T post the same thing on both your personal page and your business profile at the same time. Same idea – why do I need to be friends with both you and your business when you’re just posting the exact same thing. It eats up my news feed and makes me grouchy. I end up hiding one of you, usually your business.

Lesson #3 – (This is going to sound pretty familiar now…) If you use Hootsuite or Tweetdeck and you manage multiple Twitter accounts, I know it looks so convenient and easy to hit select multiple accounts and tweet the same thing to 2 or 3 different accounts at the same time. You know what happens? I think you do… you eat up my Twitter feed and I un-follow one or more of your profiles.

So what to do about this? My technique – I post something on my business account, an hour later I re-tweet with my personal account, or vice-versa. There is nothing wrong with re-posting the same link or information on one account. When you write a blog post, you’re supposed to market it on your Facebook and Twitter accounts and it’s OKAY to post it multiple times over the course of the day(s). Not everyone will see it the first time. Just don’t post it from multiple accounts AT THE SAME TIME. Show us that you’re not lazy and you’re willing to take the time to post something throughout the day on different accounts for something you care about.

Your friends and followers will thank you.