We talk a lot about competitions on Facebook but Twitter can be a great tool for a competition. The promotional guidelines are looser and it’s easier to reach a mass audience. This weeks cool tool helps you manage your Twitter competition, it allows you to see entries, prompts entrants to share it via Twitter and can choose a winner for you. (I’m waiting for my Twitter competition to close to see how this works). It took me around 10 minutes to set up a basic competition but you may need a little longer to add your own privacy policy and terms and conditions.
To get started visit the Binkd website and sign up for a free account. Free accounts allow you to set up a free Twitter competition so after signing up scroll down the options until you find Twitter contest.
Next you will need to name your contest, set the dates and times for start and finish of it. You need to visit each tab on the interface to complete information.
- ‘Twitter’ connects the application to your Twitter account, and allows you to compose the tweet you want entrants to send.
- ‘Prizes’ allows you to describe your prize, categorise it and upload a photograph or image of it.
- ‘Terms’ allows you to add the T&C’s of your contest, e.g. no cash alternative, one entry per person and your Privacy Policy e.g. we won’t share your email address etc.
- ‘Design’ allows you to add a header image if you wish to brand your page more strongly.
Now you’re ready to launch your contest. I’ve created a test competition here that just runs for one day. You can see the page below.
Once someone enters they are prompted to Tweet an automated tweet to tell their followers about the competition.
I’ve played with lots of Twitter competition apps in the past and even tried to manage them manually, this one beats all of them hands down for simplicity. I’m dying to set up a real Twitter contest now so keep an eye on my Twitter account over the next few weeks for details.
If you set up a Twitter competition using this app I’d love to see it so do leave your links below in the comments.
Mark Zuckerberg wore a hoodie this week, everyone seems to be talking about it. In other news Facebook is still rolling out new features left right and centre and Pinterest is still the topic grabbing all the headlines. This week I look at that self driving car from Google, how the ad breaks are becoming better than the TV shows, and a great article on using Google+.
Google and the self driving car
The Google self driving car
It sounds like something out of a science fiction novel but it looks like the driverless car is well and truly on it’s way. This week saw the new Google car that drives itself get the go ahead for real life road tests in Nevada, although it still needs to be accompanied by a responsible adult. This is Knight Rider, Total Recall and more all rolled into one. Unfortunately the car doesn’t look quite as cool as KITT. Many of my Facebook friends are wondering if you can drink and sit in one of these as it drives you home. More on the driverless car from PC Mag.
Facebook launches document sharing
I’m a big fan of Dropbox, for those of you who aren’t aware of it Dropbox is a cloud based system that allows you to save and share documents. It’s easy to use and means you can access your documents from any PC or Smart-Phone. A couple of weeks ago Google launched Google Drive, a similar application that some called the Dropbox killer. Yesterday Facebook announced that tit was going to be rolling out it’s own document sharing to all Facebook groups. As a heavy Facebook group user I’m going to find this really handy, although I don’t seem to have it yet. Instead of using Google docs or the limited document creation that Facebook has previously allowed I will now be able to share stuff directly to a group instead of linking off site. There seems to be some concern within the online community that Facebook may be gearing up to take on Dropbox and Google Drive but I see no evidence this so far. I also feel trust levels about Facebook aren’t high enough for people to share sensitive documents the way they might on Dropbox. For more on the new document sharing feature check out this article from Mashable.
The power of an Obama Tweet
Obama at almost 60,000 RT’s after endorsing same sex marriage
Obama has to be partly responsible for the clamour of politicians using social media. He set the standard during his last election campaign, utilising social media across the board. Many have tried to imitate him, some successfully some woefully. Can anyone forget Gordon Brown’s YouTube videos, even his fans felt slightly uncomfortable watching his cheezy performance on screen. This week shows that Obama has lost none of his power, a Tweet from his account endorsing gay marriage received almost 60,000 Re-tweets, and counting. Read more here and follow the live RT score here.
Shazam advertising and Britain’s got Talent
You may be familiar with Shazam, it’s possibly the first iPhone app I ever heard of. The original application helped you identify music that was playing, so if you were in a shop or a club you no longer had to ask a member of staff what was playing, you could let your phone tell you. Since then they have expanded and this weekend sees the first TV advertising using Shazam. During Britain’s Got Talent on Saturday night advertisements from Pepsi Max and Cadbury will display tags, prompting Shazam users to check in, those who do might win something cool. At the moment I have no concept how this will work but I am downloading the app and will tune in to the ad breaks to see what happens. More here.
Is Google+ a ghost town?
I’m really beginning to like Google+, it takes a while but once you realise it really isn’t Facebook and understand how to discover stuff and interact it really is a great network. It’s still new but I’m finding myself getting more and more immersed in it. This article is full of great tips on how to make the most of Google+, I won’t be implementing all the suggestions but it’s a great reminder of some of the features that we may have forgotten about. If you read this and follow the advice I guarantee you will find G+ more fun. A big hat tip to FIR podcast for alerting me to this article.
Social gifting – what’s that?
Social gifting is a trend I will be keeping an eye on. Already consumers are getting used to doing their gift shopping online and sites like Groupon show that their is an appetite for online voucher buying. Now there are applications springing up that allow you to send gift vouchers to friends phones. More here. Although I love the simplicity of this idea I’d hope that people would use it for spontaneous gifting, I think the process of choosing, buying and wrapping a gift for your loved ones is important and I’d hate to see a future where exchanging Christmas gifts would just be a series of beeping phones.
A marketers guide to Pinterest
This is a really clever video that turns infographic into infovideo. A great guide to Pinterest it’s filled with stats and hints presented in animated infographic form. It certainly holds your attention. I’m imagining we’re going to see a lot more of these in the future, maybe they will become as viral as infographics.
And from Spiderworking.com this week
Preview links on Twitter before you click with Embedly
I really love this tool for Twitter, it’s a browser add on that allows you to preview links from Tweets the same way you preview images and videos. In fact it’s so useful that I’ve been using it a week and I can’t remember life without it.
Last week I was away in the Highlands of Scotland, relying on a sporadic Internet connection so it was by text that I heard that I’d made it into the finals of the Social Media Awards for this blog. Of course I’m delighted, and I’m even more delighted to be nominated alongside Beatrice Whelan (for the Sage Ireland blog) and Lorna Sixsmith (for Write on Track). As you are probably aware Beatrice, Lorna and myself have been working together on various blogging events over the last two years.
In 2010 Lorna and myself met eight other keen bloggers in the Clanard Court Hotel in Athy and the KLCK (Kildare, Laois, Carlow, Kilkenny) Bloggers network was born. We’ve been meeting every month since and it’s been great to see some fantastic business blogs evolve. Beatrice was one of the bloggers we saw bloom in our first year. She started blogging after attending one of our meetings and made it into the final of the Blog Awards in 2011 for her own tech blog. Lorna also made it into the finals of the Blog Awards with the Garrendenny Lane blog.
In 2011 we ran our first bigger event, Beatrice had at this stage joined the committee of KLCK and together we joined with a social media group in Chipping Norton for ‘Bloggers International‘. We packed out the room we’d hired in Portlaoise, it was great to meet so many bloggers from all over Ireland.
As you may be aware last year Damien Mulley, who was the brains and brawn of the Irish Blog Awards, announced that 2011 was to be the last awards. As a passionate blogger I didn’t want to see an end to what had become an institution. Irish Blogging deserves to be celebrated, it’s a massively efficient business marketing tool and Ireland is full of amazing blogs, I for one wanted to make sure we could continue the tradition and it didn’t take me long to persuade Lorna and Beatrice to join me in my madness. We chatted to Damien and pumped him for advice.. and two months later we’re in the grips of organising what will be our biggest event yet.
One of the disadvantages of taking on the Blog Awards is that I can’t win! In the last year I’ve made massive changes to the blog, I’m constantly working to make it better. The first hint that I was on the right track was when I made it into the finals of Social Media Examiners best Social Media Blogs of 2012, this spurred me on to work even harder and as a result a blog that didn’t make it into the Blog Awards finals at all last year has made it into the one and only blog category in the Social Media Awards. Of course I want to win, the competition is fierce and any one of the other blogs would be a deserving winner but I can’t help but want to have an award for my mantelpiece. I’ll find out next Thursday night, I’ll be Tweeting, follow the hash tag #sockies. But if I don’t win I’d be almost as delighted to see one of my fellow KLCK team take the trophy.
Would you like to sponsor Blog Awards Ireland 2012? We have category sponsorship available so do get in touch sponsor@blogawardsireland.com.
One of the features I like the most on the new Twitter is the ability to preview images and videos right there on the feed. I’m more likely to expand an image than click it. With links and articles this problem can escalate. How do you know if it’s worth your while to click through and read? That’s where this weeks cool tool comes in handy. Embedly is a browser extension – an application that attaches to Chrome, Firefox etc. – that allows you to preview any piece of content on Twitter before you click.
Now when you visit Twitter you can see the option to ‘expand’ each individual post, revealing a quick preview of any link attached to it.
If you use Instapaper there is an option to add the story to your account to read later. This is a great little tool and I can see it improving my Twitter experience, because I can see what I’m getting into before I click I anticipate that I will discover lots more great articles and blogs.
So now it’s up to you to give it a try. Let me know how you get on.
Yet again the Facebook IPO is dominating social media news this week, but I’m not going to delve into that. I’ve found some great stories on using visuals in social media, Facebook advertising, writing great email copy and some interesting Linkedin stats. Have a great weekend.
Flickr and Pinterest partner
The big discussion around Pinterest over the last couple of months has been about copyright and attribution. The concern that Pinterest users were inadvertently breaching coyright was addressed for the first time recently when Pinterest released a piece of code that when added to a website prevented pinning. Photo sharing site Flickr was one of the first to implement this code on copyrighted and unsafe images leaving those with a creative commons licence to be shared.
This week Flickr and Pinterest have moved closer together. Now you can share to Pinterest easily from Flickr keeping the original attribution of the image meaning the original owner of the image will get credit for it. I imagine this will be just the first of many partnerships that Pinterest will forge as these are issues that will not go away. For more on the partnership and the benefits to Flickr here’s a great article from Read Write Web.
Linkedin buys SlideShare
I’ve always been a big fan of SlideShare. It’s a really strong B2B tool that connects users via presentations. If you haven’t used it yet it’s really worth checking out. I don’t upload much there any more but find it a great tool for researching topics. If your target market is an international one it’s a great way to reach people outside your regular networks. One of the reasons I joined SlideShare was because of it’s Linkedin integration. It’s possible to display a SlideShow on your Linkedin profile using the application. This is handy for people like me who may wish to offer teasers of courses, share slides from a speech and it’s even more useful for those who work within a visual industry. It’s a fantastic way to showcase your portfolio. The news this week is that it has been bought out by Linkedin, this is an aquisition that seems to make sense. I would consider SlideShare a B2B social network not just a presentation sharing site, so the merger with the biggest B2B social networking site seems obvious. Read more on the merger here.
Facebook organ donor initiative
You can now add being an organ donor to your Facebook Timeline
Facebook launched a new feature this week that allows users to announce that they are an organ donor. It’s easy to add to your Timeline (you will need to be converted to Timeline for this to work). Just go to your Timeline, choose ‘life event’ from the status menu. Choose ‘Health & Wellbeing’ and organ donor from the subsequent menus. It then prompts you to add more info and asks you to officially register with the appropriate organ donor registry.
I’m often asked about Facebook advertising, although it’s not something I specialise in I am always interested in the latest developments. Facebook recently added some options to their self serve ads. If you are thinking of using Facebook advertising or haven’t had success with it in the past this excellent article from Social Media Examiner walks you through the options and shows you the kind of ad’s that work well.
Email marketing – Writing great copy
With so much emphasis being put on networks like Facebook it can be easy to forget one of the most effective online marketing tools. The email newsletter. I’ve been researching this area recently for some courses I’ve run and I’m often surprised at how few companies seem to utilise them. It doesn’t matter if you’re creating a beautiful HTML newsletter or simply sending a text email the copy is central to it’s success. This article from HubSpot gives great examples and suggestions that will increase your open and click through rate. It certainly has me thinking about how I can refresh my email newsletters in the future.
The rise of the visual social network
You really can’t have a conversation about social media at the moment without Pinterest coming up. Facebook seems filled with meme’s and images, the new Twitter interface makes it easier for us to view photos and Google+ always reminds me of a rich content version of Twitter. Images have become central to social networking but how and why did this happen? I remember less than a year ago creating memes and them being quite unique amongst the other content I was seeing, now they’re everywhere. This great Infographic and analysis shows the speedy rise of visual social networking and proves that we all need to be thinking visually in order to encourage more engagement.
Linkedin 4x better for B2B leads
Not really a surprising headline but I thought it was worth sharing this story. Anyone who uses Linkedin on a regular basis is probably aware of the potential leads that can be generated. I for one always find it the best network in terms of effort v the number of leads I get. It seems I’m not alone as this short but statistic filled article shows. So if you are still overlooking Linkedin, or not investing time in it and if your target market is other businesses I’d take another look. The article itself links to some really handy resources to get you going.
And from Spiderworking.com this week
Cool tool that helps you promote events via Twitter
My Twivite page for the next KLCK Bloggers meetup
This weeks cool tool was Twivite that allows you to create an event page that integrates with Twitter. It’s quick and easy to set up. More here
How to bring online relationships offline
It’s a bit of a bugbear of mine but I hate it when people to refer to ‘real people’ as being people you don’t communicate with online. This week I looked at how bringing online relationships offline can be a successful way to build both personal and business relationships. All the people I know are real! More here
Finalist in Social Media Awards
It’s not often I get to blow my own trumpet but I’m delighted that this blog has made it to the finals of the Social Media Awards for Best Business Blog. I’m listed against some great blogs including those from my co Blog Awards Ireland organisers Lorna Sixsmith (for Write On Track) and Beatrice Whelan (for Sage Ireland’s blog). The competition is fierce but I’m sure it will be a great night whoever wins.
One of the biggest criticisms of social media is that people are abandoning ‘real people’ to spend their time online. I see it differently, social media is a great way of meeting new people, forging new relationships and it’s a way of always having a ‘real person’ to hook up with wherever in the world you find yourself.
I’m in Scotland at the moment, my parents live in a pretty remote village on the east coast not far from John O’Groats. On my way here I met up with a friend in Edinburgh, a friend I met online through a mutual friend on Facebook. We had breakfast before I had to catch the train. There used to be a fellow tweeter who lived just up the road from my parents and we were able to meet for a pint and a chat when I visited. Last week in Dublin I went to a TweetUp with the host and listeners of the FIR podcast. It was great to meet new people with similar interests and to chat with some people I hadn’t seen in a while.
These are all real people and they are all people I’ve met online. They’re not strangers, they are people I know I have something in common with and as we’ve chatted online it’s easy enough to bring that conversation into the real world.
How does this translate to business? One of the things I love most about social media is that is able to take the coldness out of cold calling and the fear out of networking meetings. Here’s a few tips on building these relationships.
Linkedin Events
Linkedin is a great place to find out about networking events happening near you. Once you’ve decided which ones to go to check out the guest list and see who you might have a synergy with, who you may have met online before. Remember this isn’t people you want to sell to directly. These are people you can build strong connections with, people that you may be able to refer business to in the future or who may be able to refer business to you. If there is someone you are keen to meet drop them a message or an email before the event and arrange to meet them. It’s great to walk into a room at an event and know you have someone to meet.
Linkedin Connections
I’m quite strict about who I connect to on Linkedin. It might be old fashioned but I still use it as a trusted network. I tend to only connect to people who I’ve met and had a chat with or had a prolonged discussion with online. Of course all rules are there to be broken and if I haven’t met someone personally I sometimes offer to meet for coffee so we can get to know each other better. I’ve met some great people this way, people I can refer business to and people I can just ask a question of if I need help as well as people who might need to ask me for help from time to time.
Building relationships with Twitter
Twitter is a great relationship building tool. You can attempt to get to know anyone you want to on Twitter. Getting into conversations with people, chatting about topics you have in common mean that you can really get to know people. It’s simple to take this one step further and suggest meeting for coffee, a milkshake or lunch. As someone who lives down the country I find this particularly useful during my trips to Dublin and it’s how I found myself having a great chat over breakfast in Edinburgh yesterday.
Going To Events with Twitter
I travel to conferences quite often, most of the time alone. Following the Twitter #tag means that I’m never stuck for someone to talk to in a lunch or coffee break. Recently in London I got to meet to Irish Tweeters, @paulinesargent and @jilloherlihy. You might think it odd that I travelled all the way to London to meet to Irish people but it was a great opportunity to get to know them better and hopefully forge stronger relationships in the future.
I’m really only scratching the surface with this blog post and I’d really like to hear your stories of real people you’ve met offline. Leave your stories and suggestions below in the comments.
This weeks cool tool is a really handy app for promoting an event on Twitter. It’s easy to set up and you can have a homepage for your event, linked to your Twitter account in minutes.
There’s lots of great features including the ability to link the Twitter idents of event organisers and sponsors, adding your event #tag and encouraging those who RSVP to share the event via Twitter. I really like that it makes it easy for people to help share your event without too much effort.
To test it I set up a Twtvite for our up-coming KLCK Bloggers meetup in May. You can view the event page here.
Next enter the information about your event. You’ll need to add your Twitter account, the event title and a short tweetable explanation. Underneath add a more detailed explanation. You can also choose a customised url (web address) for the page. I chose www.twtvite.com/klckmay2012
The next step is to add event organisers and sponsors via their Twitter accounts, these are displayed on the event page so it’s a great way for people to find out a bit more about the people behind the event. It’s also a great way to showcase sponsors.
Next add venue details and date and time. Try and add a full address for your venue as Twtvite will add a map to your page.
You also have the option to add free or paid tickets for the event.
Before you publish your page you have the option to add a banner image and a photo or a video to it. This isn’t essential and if you skip this step the big grey panels disappear when you activate it.
Once you’re happy with your design click ‘Activate’ at the top of the page and your event will go live. You’ll be prompted to tweet it straight away.
Here’s what the finished event page looks like
I really like this as a quick and easy solution for spreading the word about your event. If you set up an event using Twtvite I’d love to see it so do leave your links and comments below.
Hat tip to @Jangles for alerting me to this great app.
There’s been a lot of talk about the Facbook IPO again this week, Google+ have finally launched a share button but I’m not going to talk about either of those things. Here’s my top social media reads of the week.
Tweeting the French election results in code
The French presidential election is in full swing and Sarkosy seems to have taken a bit of a battering. I’m not too familiar with the French political system but it seems that election law forbids anyone reporting the results before an official announcement. Of course Twitter users decided to ignore these rules and started tweeting results in code, using terms such as ‘Flan’ and ‘Tomato’ to signify candidates. A great way to rebel! Here’s a full story in The Guardian.
Facebook change the size of profile pictures for business pages
Around the time that Google+ launched their re-design Facebook quietly changed the size and positioning of profile pictures on Facebook Timeline profile pages, this week it implemented the change on business pages too. The alignment of the newly sized profile image is slightly different on business pages to profiles but the size is the same. This has meant that anyone with a really cool integrated cover and profile image, like the Pizza Hut one featured here has had to quickly re-design. If you’d like to have a go at creating a an integrated image and have Photoshop or another image manipulation programme the geniuses at HyperArts have created a downloadable Photoshop template to help you. You can get it here.
How to make Infographics
I blame Pinterest… well actually even before Pinterest was the big thing I’d got a bit tired of Infographics, now the online world seems to be flooded with them. Some are brilliant some are not so great. However it can’t be denied that the pairing of easy to consume data with a network like Pinterest means they can generate phenomenal traffic. If you’ve ever fancied creating your own there are lots of apps out there to help. This great post from Write On Track tells you all the basics and shows you some tools that might help you out.
How to measure your social media success for free
Measurement of your social media campaign is an essential part of everything you do within social media. If you don’t know if your efforts are working it can be easy to get disheartened. If you measure you will discover what works and what doesn’t work. It will help you see the results of your efforts and keep you motivated. demonstrates some simple techniques to help you meaure. Here’s a brilliant post from Social Media Examiner that shows you how to measure using free tools. I’d recommend bookmarking it as it’s something you will want to return to over and over again.
The problem with engagement
I’ve talked about this a lot. Engagement is becoming the most important part of what we do on social media. There are lots of things you can do to encourage people to engage with you but getting obsessed with your talking about stat, or the number of @ replies you have can be just as bad as counting the number of Likes or followers you have. Why? Well unless you are engaging with your target market all the engagement in the world won’t help you reach your business goals. So have we all gone engagement mad? Are we all scrambling so hard for likes, comments & mentions that we are forgetting our key messages and business goals. This week I’ve read two articles that suggest just that. This one from the brilliant Brian Solis and an easier to read but less in-depth look from Jason Falls.
Facebook EdgeRank explained
Here’s a scary fact. Only 16% of your Facebook Likes see your content appear on their newsfeeds. Why is this? It’s all down to an algorithm called EdgeRank, this scores every piece of content you post according to three main factors. The higher the EdgeRank the more likely it is to make it to the newsfeed. It’s this EdgeRank that is driving the engagement frenzy I talked about in the last paragraph. Here’s a fantastic post from EdgeRank Checker that delves a bit deeper into the algorithm.
Google+ tactics used by the blogging pros
There are probably lots of reasons you’ve either not bothered with Google+ or that you have given up on it. One of the biggest barriers for many has been trying to define a strategy that is different to what you do elsewhere. These tips from ProBlogger could essentially be used on any social network but they might inspire you to rethink Google+.
And a special mention goes to…
This is link number 8 but I couldn’t sign off without mentioning this brilliant project from Christina at CG Online Marketing. Here’s her latest post and videos about Irish Dogs For The Disabled.
And from Spiderworking.com this week
Add a YouTube tab to your Facebook page
I’ve not been video blogging for Spiderworking.com for a while. Instead I’ve been working with TweakYourBiz TV to interview some social media heroes and innovators. I’ve also had my flip cam out creating videos for Blog Awards Ireland. I have noticed though that a lot of people who visit my Facebook page have been hitting the video tab. It’s great that these videos are finding a new audience but I was also very aware that the videos uploaded directly to Facebook were a bit dated, the most recent video blogs have been uploaded exclusively to YouTube and linked to Faceobok. This weeks cool tool shows you how you can add a YouTube tab to your Facebook page.
How to be delightful
Do you reward the most active people on your social media channels? What do you do to inspire your brand advocates to share more of your content or refer you more? I recently received a bottle of champagne for tweeting a lot at a conference and it inspired me to think about how this sort of reward could be translated to small business. Read more here.
How to be successful on Facebook
Many businesses feel they hit a brick wall with their Facebook marketing. In this post I wrote for the Sage Ireland blog I share some of my tips for success, tips that I hope might help you get over the first few hurdles.
A bottle of Champagne arrived in the post for me recently. I was delighted, it was unexpected and of course Champagne just makes you feel happy. Here’s how and why it happened and how being delightful could benefit your company.
Last month, as regular readers might know, I attended Social Media World Forum in London. I will always Tweet at a conference like this, firstly I know there is information on the day that I will want to share with my followers because it is useful, secondly I get to meet people at the event itself. I am always aware however that I might be flooding the Twitter stream with my tweets so try and hold back, only sharing the very best information. The event was great, I met lots of new people both in person and on Twitter and I learnt loads too.
A few days after my return I got a Tweet from one of the event sponsors Synthesio saying that as I’d Tweeted so much they were going to send me some Champagne, could I DM my address. I was sure once they found out I was based in Ireland they would change their mind but a week or so later the Champagne arrived in the post along with a really handy little book ’The Quick Start Guide To Social Media Monitoring’ (pictured above).
Surprising people like this is a great way to build brand ambassadors, you can be sure every time I see the Synthesio logo now I’m going to remember the champagne and how nice it was to get such a surprise. I’ve even looked into what the company do, at the conference I was aware of their branding but didn’t look any closer. Now I know the next time a client is looking for paid brand monitoring their name will make it onto my recommended list.
How can you be delightful?
So how can you be delightful? Take a look at the most engaged users on your social media channels, why not treat them to something? Don’t make it a competition, don’t even announce it in advance, surprise them and reward them for their loyalty. A discount voucher isn’t enough, it should be something tangible. If you sell a product you could send them a sample and ask for their feedback, if it’s a service can you offer them a short consultation for free. If you want to be really delightful why not research your influencers a bit further. You can find out quite a lot from a Facebook profile or by reading a few tweets. Try to discover what they’re in to and reward them with something that matches those interests. If they are a reader buy them a book from the genre they are interested in, if they are a wine lover find a great bottle that they will love, if they are a foodie an artisan food product would go down a storm.
The result will be a very happy person who will have an even stronger connection to your brand and will talk about you even more pushing your brand awareness and encouraging more referrals.
Have you ever delighted your customers? Have you ever been delighted by a spontaneous gift from a comapny? I’d love to hear your stories.
I used to upload all my videocasts both to Facebook and Youbube but changed strategy towards the end of last year. The reason? I have found the inbuilt Facebook video app frustrating. It can take ages to upload videos and then they seem to disappear only to re-appear a day or two later. It was this that pushed my decision to upload to YouTube only and link to it from my Facebook page. The videos can still be watched directly on Facebook and I’ve cut the time it takes to load by half.
The disadvantage is that those who visited my Facebook page and wanted to watch videos from the archive could only access those I’d posted directly to Facebook. The video tab displayed the old ones but the new ones, linked from YouTube were not easy to find. YouTube for Pages from Involver solves this problem by allowing you to add a YouTube tab to your Facebook page. Here’s how it works.
Follow this link and choose which of the Facebook pages you manage that you want to add your YouTube tab to. You will need to give the application some permissions to access your Facebook account & you will need to provide some basic information to Involver if this is the first time you have installed one of their apps.
Next add your YouTube username and choose some options for your page. Do you want to include videos you favourite as well as those you upload? Do you want to allow comments? Do you want to display related videos? Most importantly do you want to allow the app to autopost your uploads to your Facebook Timeline? I don’t recommend this option as posting manually allows you to add your own blurb and encourage more interaction.
Once you have saved your changes here a YouTube tab will be added to your page. The good news is that this app is fully optimised for Timeline and occupies the full tab width. Here’s what mine looks like.
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