When you get right down to it, a
lot of the chatter surrounding using Facebook for business makes it seem more
complicated than it really is. It is really somewhat simple: drive engagement,
stay ‘Liked’ and get to the top of the stream. Follow these seven simple best
practices and you can’t miss.
Rule
1:Ask
questions. The most straightforward approach to spur engagement is to ask for
it. Literally. There are a lot of different ways to approach asking questions,
so mix it up a bit.
For instance, you could do a real simple
question and encourage fans to ‘Like’ if they agree. Also, questions that begin
“what’s your favorite…” or “where are you going to be…” or “who else wants…”
can be great comment generators. Once you see what gets people posting and
‘Liking,’ you’ll have the information you need to create templates for best
question formats.
Rule
2: More video. You probably already know you should
be doing more of this, right? Get into a habit of regularly making very short
videos. Maybe it is a how-to on your products. Or a brief interview (30 seconds
to 2 minutes) with someone at your business. You can also do brief clips about
topics related to your industry but that have nothing to do with selling your
products.
Plain and simple, people love to click on
video. You should be posting them regularly.
Rule
3: Ride a pop culture wave.There are certain TV shows, movies, and
current events that grow beyond normal interest and become a genuine
phenomenon. When this happens, use it as an opportunity. Post a link to a poll
about it. Make a funny comment and ask for responses. If you can tie it to your
company in some way, do it. But that is not necessary and can be
counterproductive if you stretch it too far. Sometimes the point is just to
generate positive engagement and nothing else.
Rule
4: Keep the conversation going. If a post is
generating comments, are you making a point of posting back? This can be as
simple as posting a thank you for a compliment or as thoughtful as asking a
question about their comment. Show you care about the conversation.And don’t forget that a larger thread often
appears higher in Facebook feeds.
Rule
5: More photos. This is an off-shoot of Rule 2. You
already know that visual does better, but do you have a consistent plan for
generating relevant photos to post on a regular basis? Here are a few ideas to
get you started. Snap and post photos of employees in their work “habitat” with
a fun caption (don’t over-do this one). How about personifying your product in
some way? For example, how about clicking a photo of the product as if it were
attending an event? Have a brainstorming session with your staff to come up
with the zaniest photo opportunities including your product.
Rule
6: Be a content curator.Are you concerned that people will hide your
posts, or even worse, “Unlike” you? This is a real concern. One way to maintain
your value to your fans is to seek out content your audience is likely to find
valuable, entertaining, or both. Think of your social media as not just a
channel to push content, but also as a listening station. Use social media to
follow others with your radar up for what you can pass on to your fans.
Rule
7: Give them something! This is a very important
rule. Facebook users obviously are likely to be much more interested in the
personal posts of friends and family than they ever will be in any particular
brand.You need to give them regular
incentives to continue being fans. Regularly announce giveaways, promotions,
and discounts. If you are a retail operation, what can you do to drive them
from online to your store. If you are a service-based business, what link can
you provide to offer a special package of services to your Facebook fans? Be
consistent about offering these incentives to keep people on board.
Facebook success is really not that
complicated. Post regularly using these 7 guidelines and you can count on being
well ‘Liked’.
You Can Literally EXPLODE Facebook to Create Traffic, Leads and Profits
After perfecting social media with success guru Tony Robbins and
dozens of other high profile clients, Amy Porterfield reveals below exactly how…
“When I decided to launch Social Media Examiner’s Facebook page I turned to Amy Porterfield. Not only did Amy help me build a super attractive Facebook page, she also took an active role in the day-to-day management of our page. In less than 10 months we grew an active fan base of more than 16,000 people using Amy’s techniques.
I strongly recommend her.”
Michael Stelzner, CEO and Founder, Social Media Examiner
Put to Work the Same Simple Facebook Strategies Amy Uses Every Day
As the internet and Social Media evolve one thing is clear – Facebook is king. Fast approaching 1,000,000,000 members (yes that’s ONE BILLION), Facebook is the site where everyone is spending time online!
“Every successful business depends on people – Facebook is where they are spending their time online. Either you will use Facebook and succeed or you will not embrace Facebook and fail.“
- Sean Malarkey
Have you put off using Facebook to generate more business? Has a fear of not knowing where to start kept you from moving forward?
Today, that’s all going to change!
You Can’t Afford to Ignore Facebook:
You already know Facebook is the Largest Social Network with over 800 million members. Your customers are using it!
Every day Facebook users comment or press the “Like” button more than 2 billion times.
Facebook users post 30 billion pieces of content every month. How much of it is about your product or service?
A recent study by Forrester found that of U.S. adults who use social networking sites, 96% of them are on Facebook.
Facebook reached one trillion page views in June 2011, making it the most-visited web site in the world!
Facebook is an incredible,
unlimited source of hot leads.
Did you know that Facebook users spend over 700 BILLION minutes a month on Facebook? The potential to attract quality prospects is mind blowing.
The great news is that there is a huge source of leads right at your fingertips. The bad news is that most people are doing it all wrong and not capitalizing on its massive potential. It’s time you start leveraging the most powerful social media platform.
You already know to survive in business you must build a huge list of ravenous prospects.
Here’s what your Facebook strategy
will do for you:
Automatically create a huge flood of leads for your product or service
Attract highly-targeted prospects who WANT to do business with you
Get testimonials with social proof
Position yourself as the most sought out leader in your industry
Grow a vibrant community of raving fans around your product and service
Turn Fans into Super Fans that are eager to buy what you’re selling
Here is exactly how this program will instantly transform your business:
How to get automated leads and SALES 24/7
The little-known trick to attract highly-targeted prospects who WANT to do business with you
A simple but powerful way to get your testimonials on autopilot day in and day out
How to be instantly recognized as the most sought out leader in your industry
The simple paragraph that creates a vibrant community of raving fans who happily spread the word about you, your products and services
You already know it’s time to stop wasting your energy and make Facebook work for you. This program will turn your Facebook fans into SUPER FANS, action-taking raving fans who are eager to buy what you are selling.
It does not matter if you own a Mom & Pop brick and mortar shop in small town or if you have multiple online eCommerce web sites, You Need Traffic To Keep Your Business Afloat!
More and more savvy business owners - offline & online, are using the massive power of the Internet to pull traffic to their businesses. One of the fastest growing segments on the Internet is Social Media!
This article is intended to be a very straightforward guide to Social Media and everything that Social Media encompasses including blogs, social networks and forums etc. It is intended to introduce both newcomers and perhaps even some more experienced people to the world of social media.
So, what is Social Media?
So, what is this social media that has the Internet buzzing with excitement? Well, Wikipedia (an interesting form of social media in itself) describes it as:
"information content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies that is intended to facilitate communications, influence and interaction with peers and with public audiences, typically via the Internet and mobile communications networks."
This can encompass not just text and information based services like blogs etc, it can also contain image and video based services such as Flickr and YouTube for example.
Social media instigates a sense of community, making users feel connected with each other through participation and communication via many forms of media. Technorati, a blog submission service, has over 133 million blogs indexed, displaying the staggering rise in popularity of people wanting to be heard and connect to each other.
Social Media and your Business
Social media can benefit any type of business and if approached correctly, can help build relationships with consumers and other companies through networking and raised awareness of your service.
With social media you can easily speak directly to your customers, using Twitter to gather feedback on customer satisfaction, raising awareness of a recently launched product through Digg or using YouTube to promote your move into a new office location for example.
An example of a company using social media in a great way is Starbucks. Starbucks created a whole new website and blog centred around customer suggestions for their service. A user would go onto the website and suggest a way Starbucks could improve, everyone registered on the website would then vote their favorite ideas and then Starbucks would post on their blog regarding which ideas they liked and how they would be actually implemented into the Starbucks service.
Companies are always thinking of better ways to run their service, social media gave Starbucks a way to connect with millions of existing customers and gave those customers an opportunity to build on the Starbucks service in a way only they could know how.
Burger King launched a Facebook application which encouraged users to 'sacrifice' 10 of their Facebook friends in return for a free Whopper burger. It was taken down by Facebook not long after launch citing privacy concerns, however in the relatively short space of time the application was live, it gathered over 20,000 users and consequently over 200,000 friends were sacrificed in the name of free burgers.
This social media example was well built, was easy to share and gave the user the incentive to network with friends which made it very popular in the short space of time it was available.
These are only two examples of successful social media solutions by companies on the Internet, companies like Sun, Ford, Dell and IBM are all currently reaping the benefits of using blogs, twitter accounts, Facebook pages and other social media tools to connect with customers and make their companies more transparent to consumers.
Social media, blogs especially, aren't going to disappear overnight. They now act as invaluable customer service methods with the ability to conduct informal discussion with your customers and let them get to know more about you and your company in an inexpensive way.
Establishing a social media presence for your company gives you the ability to reach potentially millions of new customers through Facebook, Twitter, Digg etc, many of which may have been unreachable without a presence on these networks. Having profiles on the various social networks gives you the maximum potential to raise awareness of your brand, gain more visitors to your website and the capacity to convert those targeted visitors to customers.
Social Media in Numbers
2,000,000,000 Searches through the Google search engine every day
1,360,652,987 Tweets on Twitter as of March 2009
700,000,000 Photos added to Facebook every month
900,000 Blog posts every 24 hours
38,040 Diggs the most popular bookmark on Digg has received in the last 12 months
412.3 Years it would take to watch all of YouTube's content as of March 2008
13 Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute
Social Media Forms
Although social media can come in many forms, it has its main ones:
Blogs
The most well known of 'obvious' social media forms. Blogs act as a frequently updated hub of contextual information where users can get involved and give their input through comments.
Forums
The oldest form of social media, in use before the term 'social media' was made popular. Internet forums act as areas for online discussion, usually centered around certain topics.
Content Communities
Content communities differ from usual forms of social media in that they allow people to share and use particular kinds of content that blogs and forums don't fully concentrate upon such as images (see Flickr), interesting bookmarks (see Digg and del.icio.us) and of course video (see YouTube).
Micro-blogging
A relevant newcomer in the social media world. Micro-blogging combines blogging and social networking in that it allows people to update small amounts of content online through web-based, desktop and also mobile clients (see Twitter).
Social Networks
Social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo etc allow the easy creation of personalized web page accounts that facilitates communication between users.
The Distribution of Social Media
People only have a certain amount of time to check their favorite websites, this mightn't even include blogs or social networks. Couple this with the fact that people seem to be working longer hours than ever these days and also using blackberrys and iPhones to work away from the office, and you're faced with a daunting task of attracting people to your blog or website.
One remedy to this has been the introduction of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. RSS feeds allow a user to effectively 'subscribe' to a website or blog, meaning they are notified through a newsreader when new content is available.
RSS saves people a lot of time when reading blogs and website updates, meaning communities can grow and become more valuable to both the user and author saving both parties time and money.
Social Networks
Joining a social network usually involves creating your own web page with information about yourself, be it personal, professional or otherwise and you then connect with other people on that network.
Although most of these networks are relatively young in their age, a selection of them are very popular and have changed the shape of the Internet for the near future at the very least.
MySpace
After launching in August 2003, MySpace became the most popular social networking website in the United States in mid 2006, attracting well over 100million account holders.
MySpace has largely built it's popularity based upon its comprehensive music service where bands can upload tracks directly to their profile for fans to listen to, even launching it's own record label to release music from MySpace upon.
Bebo
Bebo is a popular social networking tool with more emphasis on the younger user than its competitors. It is also geared towards colleges, schools and other educational institutes which is where Bebo has found its niche. It was purchased by AOL in early 2008 for over £400million.
Facebook
First available to University students, Facebook was opened up to the public (people over the age of 13) in 2006 and it's userbase has skyrocketed ever since.
The service allows you to join networks and groups of organizations, sports teams, location specific groups etc and also offers developers the chance to write applications for the service at no charge
Facebook currently has over 235million account users.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn has its own niche in the social networking world in that it is targeted solely toward the working professional.
LinkedIn allows you to create your own career profile and network with past and present workmates and is mainly used for career-orientated networking and job / project searches.
LinkedIn has approximately 40million users.
Friends Reunited
Friends reunited is a social network based upon the theme of reuniting and connecting with former (and current) classmates. It is identified as the first social network to achieve prominence in Britain, surviving the dotcom bust.
Blogs
A blog (standing for web-log) is a type of website maintained by an individual or company that is commonly updated with news on latest events, opinions, reviews and any other material the author deems worth of publishing.
With recent developments in blog hosting technology, it's possible for anyone with a basic knowledge of the internet to create and run their own blog using platforms such as WordPress and blogger.
Topics
The reason blogs are so popular on the Internet is because they act as a hub of information for any given topic. This can include website design articles (see a list apart), celebrity news (see TMZ), politics (see Huffington Post) and technology news (see techcrunch).
Although some blogs contain posts around a number of topics, the most popular ones have a defined theme and user base.
Comments
Almost all blogs have a comments structure in place allowing readers to submit their views on that blog or article. Comments act as a networking tool in itself, with many people growing the reader-base of their own blog or website through the clicks they receive from commenting on other peoples blogs.
Forums
The Internet forum is the relative grandparent of the social media family, evolving from the bulletin board style of networking which was popular in the early years of the Internet.
Like blogs, forums can be about any number of topics and attract people mainly looking for information and discussion around a particular theme or subject. Where the two mediums differ are that whereas blogs are usually the views / news from one individual or company, forums act as a discussion venue where many discussions are ongoing at once in different locations called 'threads'. Also, a blog has a clear owner, again that may be an individual or company depending on the blog itself but a forum is effectively ran by its members.
Many forums have been running from the early days of the Internet and have thus gathered a huge amount of members, Gaia Online has over 16million registered members and is one of the most popular on the Internet.
Content Communities
Content communities don't particularly adhere to typical social network frameworks, as they aren't particularly intended for networking between people using the usual means. Two examples of this are Flickr and YouTube.
Flickr
Flickr is an image and video hosting website where people can create a personal account and upload photos they have taken. It's also used by bloggers and webmasters as an online photo storage system, where they can host all of their images in a searchable database. As of late 2008, it is claimed that Flickr holds more than 3billion images.
The social aspect of Flickr comes into play through the creation of various subject-orientated groups where users can comment on relevant images that have been uploaded.
YouTube
YouTube is the largest video hosting website on the Internet with well over 120million videos currently hosted through its service. Youtube members can upload their own footage, create channels / playlists of their favourite videos and share them with friends.
YouTube has quickly become one of the largest websites in the history of the Internet with more than 6billion videos viewed on the service in January 2009 alone. Before the public launch of YouTube in 2005, there were very few methods of video-orientated social networking available via the Internet, YouTube changed this with the ability for its users to dictate its content through the uploading of personal video.
Micro-blogging
Micro-blogging is the latest in the way of social networking, combining blogging, instant messaging and the popular status updates of the Facebook service into one neat package.
Popular micro-blogging services such as Twitter allow a small (in Twitters case, no more than140 characters) text based 'update' to be published on your twitter page and to those who are 'following' you.
Although it is a web based format, over 90% of 'tweet's published via twitter are by mobile, desktop or instant messaging applications. Twitter is largely used by the web industry as a way of passing useful links to one another, as well as a very quick and easy networking tool between account followers.
It has recently began to attract a lot of press attention due to the amount of well known people using the service. President Obama used Twitter in the run up to the election to keep voters informed of his campaign, connecting to a completely new audience to previous candidates.
Conclusion
Although Social Media is a relatively new factor on the Internet, the advances we have seen in a short space of time have been staggering. Two to three years ago MySpace was the service everyone was using to connect with each other, who would have predicted that within 24 months there would have been a service in Facebook that overtook it as the Internet's leading social networking tool.
The future of social media is an exciting one, and we could see some interesting developments even in the short term such as the adoption of the mobile social network. Although a lot of people are using Social Media on mobile phones already, this number is expected to increase significantly in the near future with the development of more and more clients for social networks on mobile phones.
Social media is expected to evolve and grow into exciting new services and shows no signs of disappearing any time soon. The potential for growth and monetary gain for businesses is too great for them to ignore social media, helping spread news of services and offers to hundreds, if not thousands, of friends in an instant. Some companies aim for that kind of promotion and never reach it, some pay millions to get it, with social media, it is in everyone's grasp.
A company that neglects both social media and the benefits of search engine optimization is shielding its services away from millions of potential customers.
Opening your company up to social media services allows you to connect instantly with new people, couple this with a comprehensive search engine optimization plan and you are in a perfect position to attract new customers and network inexpensively.
Well that's it for our guide to Social Media, grab yourself a cup of tea (or coffee if you're that way inclined) and relax.
When you get right down to it, a
lot of the chatter surrounding using Facebook for business makes it seem more
complicated than it really is. It is really somewhat simple: drive engagement,
stay ‘Liked’ and get to the top of the stream. Follow these seven simple best
practices and you can’t miss.
