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An 8 Step Guide To Setting Up Facebook Competitions

photo credit: JD Hancock via photopin cc

Last week I was asked to speak to the KLCK Bloggers Network about Facebook competitions. It’s always a topic that gets people talking. Some people know they are running Facebook competitions against the rules but don’t know how to run them properly. Others are already running them by the rules and are frustrated by those breaking them and then you have users who have got used to the Like and Share competitions that pop up but are getting tired of seeing so many in their newsfeeds.

Whatever your opinion there are some strong marketing reasons to obey the rules.

1. You will attract more of your target market to Like your page

2. You won’t attract as many fake or spam accounts

3. You can get more information from the people who enter your competitions such as email addresses and use that information to market to entrants on other platforms.

4. You run the risk of loosing your Facebook page and you won’t get it back unless you spend thousands a month on advertising.

It’s important to put a plan in place for your competition before you start. This will mean that you will maximise the return on your investment and be able to measure more accurately what does and doesn’t work.

Here’s my 8 step guide to getting started

1. What is the purpose of your competition?

photo credit: Daquella manera via photopin cc

Likes – Yes Facebook competitions are absolutely the best way to get new Likes to your page but I think it’s important to target these likes. Do you want new Likes from the country or the town you operate in? Do you want to reach more people in the US? What age group do you want to target? Is it mostly male or female people? By getting into the nitty gritty of your targeting you can start to build your competition to attract the right audience.

Engagement – The ‘people talking about’ statistic on Facebook is becoming the most important stat to watch. Getting people talking about you will help push your page updates to more people, increase brand awareness and rank you higher on graph search. The best way to get a good stat here is to create and share valuable shareable content that is of interest to your target market but a competition can help too.

Using my favorite Facebook competition tool ShortStack (affiliate link) you can configure a sharing widget that prompts people to share your competition every time they enter.

When you are sharing the link to your competition on your Timeline you should share it with a good image. This way people are more likely to Like and Share it even if it isn’t part of the competition itself.

User generated content – If you run a photo or story competition you are getting your followers to create content for you. This is a great way to encourage more interaction and to involve users in your business. They will feel like they are part of what you are doing and are more likely to become brand ambassadors. Make sure you state clearly in the T&C’s of the competition that you will be using the uploaded images or stories for promotional and marketing purposes too.

Email subscribes – For me this is one of the easiest and most valuable reasons to run a competition. Even though I am essentially a social media marketer you cannot deny the power of email. Email subscribers will still be there even if Facebook isn’t and once you have that email, and permission to use it, you are able to communicate directly on a one to one basis with your potential customers. By using a competition app like ShortStack (affiliate link) you will not only increase your Facebook Like count but you can also increase your newsletter subscribers.

Set goals

Whatever it is you want to achieve make sure you set yourself realistic goals. You can monitor these for the length of the competition and adjust your strategy if you feel that you are going to fall short.

Tip – Make sure you set SMART goals for your competition. That is goals that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic & Timely

2. What competition type?

photo credit: Sasquatch I via photopin cc

I’ve written about Facebook competiton styles before. It’s important to choose the right type for your business and one that will match your goals.

Sweepstakes – We’d call these a draw in Ireland. This is when you put all entries into a hat and pick a winner. This is the type of competition that gets the most entries as users don’t have to do much. The barrier to entry is low.

Caption contests – Choose an amusing photograph and ask people to caption it. These work best if you include pictures of people or animals and ask contestants to tell you what they are saying. The barrier to entry is higher than the sweepstakes style so make sure that you have reasonable interaction on your Facebook page before you start. You will also need to decide how you will choose the winner. Will people vote for their favorite or will you get someone to judge it for you?

Photo competition – These competitions are great for getting user generated content. You will get less entries than through a sweepstakes or caption contest as people need to put in more effort. They will however give you lots of content to share and will encourage the friends of the people who enter to visit your page. We created one of these for Blog Awards Ireland last year and shared some of the photos as part of the AV on the night.

The barrier to entry is quite high so make sure you have a good interaction rate consistently on your page before you set one up. Asking people to vote for the winner will attract lots of extra people to your page but you can end up with not the best picture but the most popular person winning.

Story competition – Again the barrier to entry for these is pretty high but you can get some really lovely content to share. Once the competition is over you might think of making an ebook from the best entries.

Tip – Make sure you choose a competition style that matches your current interaction level to ensure enough entries

3. How are you going to seed it

photo credit: Ella Baker Center via photopin cc

How are you going to get your Facebook competition going? Getting those first entries is essential to it’s success and you will need to continually promote it to ensure a good flow of entries for the duration of your competition.

Mailing list – If you have an existing email list in place you should email them to let them know about your contest including the link and details. This is a great way to get existing subscribers to Like your Facebook page. For me this is the easiest and best way to seed a competition as you are starting with people who have already shown an interest in your brand by subscribing to your email list.

Facebook advertising – I’ve found Facebook advertising to be extremely effective for seeding and getting momentum behind a new competition. It also makes it easier to know that you are targeting the right people. Depending on the size of your target market you don’t need a huge budget. You can make a good start with €20 or €50. Make sure the ad is set up to land on your competition tab and not your Timeline.

Tease – Like a teaser trailer you can build up a bit of excitement about your competition before you even launch it. Tell your Facebook followers that you are going to launch a competition soon, you could even hint at the prize and what it might be about. The cleverer you are with your teases the more traction you will get when you do launch.

Sharing configuration on ShortStack – I know I’m constantly going on about ShortStack (you know it’s an affiliate link now right!) but I really do love it. One of the cool features is that it allows you to set up a sharing box that people are prompted to post to their Timeline after entering. I’ve created a PDF tutorial on setting up competitions on Facebook using ShortStack. You can download it here, it talks you through setting up the share box as well as the competition.

Promoting via newsfeed – Just because you’ve got a lovely shiny competition app on your Facebook page it doesn’t mean that anyone is going to enter. You are going to need to tell them about it regularly and the best way to do this is to share it as part of your posting schedule on your Timeline. It’s a good idea to vary the way you share the link to your competition tab. Create a few good images and share the link as part of the description when you post these. Post it as a link a few times and occasionally share that link without the thumbnail. This way you know you are going to reach a large portion of your existing fanbase.

Tip – Don’t forget to promote the last few days of your competition, make sure users know it’s the last chance to enter, this will spark a last minute rush of entries.

4. Choose A Prize

photo credit: Kaptain Kobold via photopin cc

Choosing the right prize for your competition can be crucial. It can make the difference between lots of entries or just a few. Take into account all the steps above; your target market, how much effort they have to put in, how much it will encourage people to share.

Aspirational – your prize doesn’t have to be high cost but it should be aspirational. It should be something that people can imagine themselves with, something they can see themselves using or enjoying. A book is more aspirational than a book token, a years worth of chocolate more than a box of chocolate bars.

Related to your business – If you are someone who sells iPads it might be a good idea to give away an iPad, if you don’t find something that is relevant to what you do. If you can give away your own product that is ideal but if not find something that compliments what you do. For example if you promote a business service why not give away a stack of business books, if you are a local business why not club together with other local business owners and give away a hamper of prizes from the area.

Appeal to your target market – In step one you defined who you wanted to attract with your competition, your prize needs to compliment this. For example chocolate might attract more women and a sports prize might attract more men (I’m being very sexist here apologies).

Tip – If you are targeting people outside the country you are resident in always check the shipping rates and what you are able to ship to specific countries. For example some food items can’t be sent by post or courier to some countries.

5. What App Are You Going To Use?

Competition Apps – You have probably noticed by now that I am a big fan of ShortStack (affiliate) which has a free starter option for pages under 2,000 Likes and is well priced if you are over that. Download my ShortStack tutorial here.

There are plenty of other apps available. Probably the easiest to use is EasyPromos, it’ss slightly easier to get started with than ShortStack although lacking in features.

Image Editing Apps -If you really want your competition to stand out you will need to do a bit of design work. Sites like PicMonkey can help you resize and add text to images. If you want something more feature rich but a little bit more complex I use Photoshop alternative GIMP which you can download for free.

Tip – On ShortStack you can upgrade to a paid plan for a month and downgrade to the free plan once the competition is finished.

6. What Question Are You Going To Ask?

photo credit: Leo Reynolds via photopin cc

Whether you are running a sweepstakes competition or a photo competition you need to think about the question you are going to ask or what is required in the photograph/story/video etc.

Market research – You could use your competition as an opportunity to find out more about your customers. I’d recommend staying away from asking too many questions but if there is something that you would really like to know the answer to you have the opportunity to ask as part of your sweepstakes contest.

Shareable content – Even if you are running a sweepstakes you can ask your entrants to share something that you can then use for content on your Facebook page. This will not only encourage more entries but more interaction. Think of a question that isn’t too hard to answer that would provide interesting answers. I once ran a ‘tell us a joke’ competition for a client and they were able to make shareable memes from the less saucy jokes that were shared. For a photo contest you should set a theme that will compliment your brand so that when you re-share entries they will compliment your message.

Tip – It can be a good idea to ask a question that people will need to visit your website or bricks and mortar premises to enter.

7. What are the rules?

photo credit: breyeschow via photopin cc

There are very specific rules for running a competition on Facebook. I have written about them in detail before here.

You should however write your own set of rules for your competition. Here’s some things you should consider including:

Who can enter?
No cash alternative or substitution for the prize
If people are sharing quotes, jokes, stories, images or videos you need to say what you intend to do with them. Will you use them for marketing and promotion? If so include this in your rules.
Who can’t enter? What age group? People who work in the business or a sister company? People who are related to you?
How will the winner be picked?
What is not included in the prize – Delivery? Flights? Spending money?

Tip - If you are stuck for ideas for your rules Google ‘rules for Facebook competitions’ and you will find some great examples from other businesses to inspire you.

8. Measuring Success

At the beginning of this process you set yourself some SMART goals, now it’s time to see how you measured up. Of course measurement will depend on what goal you set but here’s a few tips.

Facebook Insights – Take a look at your Facebook insights page and monitor the increase in specific types of users. This could be by age by gender by country or by city. Make sure you make a note of these before you launch your campaign so you can easily measure results. You can also use insights to measure the increase in people talking about your page.

Email Subscribes – If you have asked people for an email address as part of the entry process and if you have requested permission to use this address in future it’s easy to measure new subscribers. ShortStack will either send you an email for every entry (free version) or write them to a database that you can download and open in Excel on completion of the competition. You can then take these emails and add them to your mailing list where permission is given.

Google Analytics – If you don’t have Google Analytics added to your website I highly recommend that you do. It gives you so much detail on where your traffic comes from and what pages it looks at it beats any other statistic tool. If website traffic was one of your goals you should monitor the traffic coming from Facebook before, during and after your competition.

For more info on Facebook competitions take a look at my previous posts on the topic:

How To Run Facebook Competitions By The Rules

6 Facebook Competition Styles – Which Is Right For You?

5 Reasons Why Facebook Like & Share Competitions Don’t Work

Yes Facebook Pages Do Get Taken Down For Breaking Competition Rules

ShortStack Tutorial – PDF Download

At Spiderworking.com we assist businesses to set up and manage Facebook competitions. Get in touch to find out more.

Facebook Tip - How To Get Thumbnail Images To Show On Links

Facebook tip: Have you had this problem? You want to post a link to Facebook, you paste it into the status update box and the title comes up but there’s no image to accompany it. You try it over and over again with no luck. There’s a picture on the website but none appears on the page.

Luckily there’s an easy solution. I discovered it last week thanks to Fiona from Hunters Lodge Living at our bloggers meetup. Using the Facebook De-bugging tool you can force Facebook to recongise the images. Here’s how it works:

If you are a Twitter newbie or are nervous of getting started sign up for my A Beginners Guide To Twitter online course starting on 10th of June. More info here.

ReTweet The Old Fashioned Way With Classic ReTweet - Cool Tool

I still feel that I was quite late to find Twitter, it’s something that I put off for a long time but as soon as I joined I was hooked. It’s still possibly my favorite network, I love scrolling through it, getting into conversations and discovering great content on it.

When I started on Twitter users still had to do the really long winded RT method. We had to physically copy and paste a tweet and type RT @username before the content. It seems like hard work now that we can just click the RT button underneath a tweet.

There were however some great advantages both for the user and the original tweeter to the old fashioned method. So much so that when I use Hootsuite I have it set to send my RT’s automatically in that format.

1. When you send a ReTweet via the old fashioned method your followers are going to be more interested in it. They choose to follow you because you share good stuff, when they see a link from you, with your name and picture next to it they are more likely to pay attention than if it comes from a stranger. If someone uses the old method to share your content you will usually get more click throughs than via the new method.

2. The person you are RTing will be aware that you have shared their tweet. When you write a popular tweet that gets shared over and over again it’s easy to loose track of who has shared it. If you share the old way the RT will appear in the @ replies of the original tweeter, they will be less likely to miss that you have shared.

3. You can add your own comment to the end of the RT, telling users why you are sharing it and personalising it.

On mobile devices we already have a version of this old RT method ‘Quote tweet’ which essentially does the same thing but on the web there isn’t this option. Even knowing the advantages of the old method it still seems like hard work if you are accessing Twitter via the web it’s much easier just to click that ‘Retweet button. That’s where this weeks cool tool comes in handy. It’s a browser plugin that works for both the Firefox and Chrome browsers.

Here’s How It Works

Visit the add on page. For Firefox, or for chrome
I’m going to be demonstrating the Firefox version
Click the ‘add to Firefox button’

Click install now on the window that pops up
It’s as simple as that, it’s now installed.
Open Twitter and hover your mouse over the tweet you want to share

Click ‘classic RT’ and a window will pop up showing the tweet

Just click ‘Tweet’ to send it.

I’m delighted to have found this as although I use Hootsuite for most of my tweets this will prevent my lazy RTing from the web browser.

If you are a Twitter newbie or are nervous of getting started sign up for my A Beginners Guide To Twitter online course starting on 10th of June. More info here.

The Importance Of Conversation Part 2 – Linkedin, Pinterest, Twitter and Google+

photo credit: Cia de Foto via photopin cc

In part one of this blog post I discussed the different ways to build relationships via conversations on Facebook and on Blogs. Read more here.

Conversation is the best way to build business relationships. Have you ever been to a networking meeting? If it’s a big one you probably come home with a pocket stuffed with business cards. Most you will never look at again, many will end up in the bin. It’s the people you meet over and over you remember. You might meet them at networking meetings again or you may arrange to meet up for coffee and a chat. Online we need to replicate this offline relationship building and that is where conversation really helps.

Here’s some ideas for getting those conversations:

Linkedin is the business network. It’s a fantastic place to connect with other businesses who may either require your services or recommend you to others. The first step is to connect to the people you know. If you go to a networking event and get chatting to someone request to connect to them the next day, look up your current customers and connect with them also. Immediately you have built a network of people to get to know further.

Status updates – Now you are connected to people you will see updates from them appear on your Linkedin home page. Make a habit of scrolling through these on a daily basis and liking and commenting on things that you find interesting. If the post might be of interest to your other connections share it on as well.You should also make a point of updating your own status on a regular basis with professional news and links to content about your industry that will spark discussions with your connections.

Groups – Groups are where all the magic happens on Linkedin. Groups are essentially discussion forums on specific topics. Use the search function within Linkedin to find groups that may be industry specific or one of the excellent business forums that are out there. If you are stuck for one to join have a look at the profiles of some of your connections and see which groups they are a member of.

Endorsements – I’ve written about endorsements before. I’m not a huge fan but they can be used well. If you endorse someone make sure you are endorsing them for something that you know they are good at. They will get an email from Linkedin every time they are endorsed so it’s another good way to remind them you exist.

Private messages – Linkedin will send you updates when your connections change their profiles, when they endorse you and when they have business anniversaries. Use this as an opportunity to get in touch with them via private messages to congratulate or thank them, re-kindling your relationship with them.

Twitter

It’s easier on Twitter than any other network to get into conversations. It’s part of what I love about Twitter, you can tweet anyone you want to whether it be Stephen Fry or the local shop. Getting into conversations will improve your follower count and help you get to know people who can help spread your message. Various social media practitioners have set different ratios that they believe you should use for promoting via conversing and sharing content from other users. It tends to sit at about 30% promotion and 70% conversation. It’s a hard ratio to reach so don’t worry if you aren’t there yet. The key is to make conversation an important part of your Tweeting.

Set targets – If you are not good at small talk or if you are shy you may need to set yourself goals for conversation. Start with something small, I often recommend new tweeters attempt to get into two conversations a day. This could be as simple as saying good morning to someone or commenting on the weather. Good relationships often start with small talk so it’s a good place to start your social media conversations too.

Twitter search – Twitter search and Twitter advanced search are fantastic tools for finding people and conversations. Advanced search allows you to search locally as well as for key words and phrases. Add a ‘?’ to your search and you will find people asking questions.

Twitter chats – Twitter chats happen when a group of people go online at a specific time to discuss a specific topic. In order to join in you just need to follow the #tag and tweet using the tag. They are a great way to meet new tweeters, get into conversations and build relationships. If you want to give it a go tune into #blogchatie every second Thursday at 9pm (GMT – currently daylight saving at GMT+1), The next one is on 23rd May 2013.If Blogging isn’t your thing you might find one that you’d enjoy from this comprehensive list.

ReTweets – A good way to break the ice with a new contact could be to RT some of their content. Choose stuff that is relevant to your target market and use the ‘quote tweet‘ option if you are using mobile or the old fashioned RT method if you want to be sure they know you shared.

Lists – If you are following a lot of people on Twitter you may find it hard to keep up with tweets from the people you really want to see. If this is a problem for you it’s a good idea to set up a few lists. You could have one of your favorite tweeters, the people that you want to build relationships with. Once they are in a list you can choose to view just the tweets from those people. It’s a really good way to stay in touch with the people you really have to.

Although Pinterest is a visual network it can still be a great place to find people and conversations.

Comments – I find that I rarely get a comment on Pinterest but when I do I really pay attention. Essentially Pinterest is a place to share images so conversation seems hard to slot in. However if you find an image you like why not comment on it, you will usually get a response and that is the spark of a business relationship.

Likes & RePins – Although commenting isn’t huge on Pinterest, Likes and RePins happen a lot. Just like Twitter by RePinning and liking you will be alerting a user to your existence. Always remember to keep your RePinning relevant to your business and target market.

Google+

Are people using Google+? Yes they are but it’s still a lot less crowded a space than Facebook and Twitter. I don’t spend a lot of time there but whenever I do I find something of interest. The lack of a crowd can be an advantage, it makes it easier to get involved in conversations.

Search – I really, really love the search on Google+, you can type anything into the search box, a sport, a book you are reading, a band or something obscure. Whatever it is you will find someone talking about it. Because updates aren’t limited to 140 characters like Twitter it’s easier to get into proper conversations. You can comment directly on a post giving you the opportunity to connect with more than just the original poster but also the other people in the comment thread. This is absolutely the best thing about Google+

Circles – Circles work in a similar way to Twitter lists and Facebook Interest Lists. You can group people together relating to specific topics or related to how you know them. The obvious circles to create have always been friends, relatives etc but you should look at setting one up for experts in your industry, customers, competitors and people you would like to get to know. You can then filter your feed by circle to ensure you are talking to the people you really want to.

Communities – Communities are similar to Linkedin Groups, they are topic specific discussion groups. Their a great place to meet like minded people and get into discussion and conversation. There are communities based on every topic available so take time to find a few that will be relevant to your business.

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Last week I wrote a blog post about the importance of conversations on Facebook. In that post I mentioned Facebook interest lists as a good way to keep on top of posts from important people and even your competitors. They work a bit like Twitter lists. Here’s how you can create them.

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Do Your Facebook Ad's & Promoted Posts Obey The 20% Rule

A little while ago I showed you a tool that will check your cover images to ensure they only contain the allowed 20% text.

Just like your Timeline cover picture images used in promoted posts and Facebook ads can only contain 20% text. This week I’ve found a tool via All Facebook that checks your Facebook ads and promoted post images to make sure they comply.

Facebook Image Text Detection from TechWyse will be a huge help to anyone creating adverts, saving time by ensuring they don’t get rejected.

Here’s how it works

Visit this webpage on the TechWyse site

Upload the image you wish to use in your advert from your computer

Once the image has uploaded click on each square on the grid that contains text

You can see in this example that text fills approximately 56% of the image so I couldn’t use it in an advert

Where as this example fits the 20% pretty much perfectly.

I really like that I can load image after image quickly and easily to check my Facebook ads. It will make life a lot easier. If you are a chrome user you don’t need to go to the website at all as there is a chrome extension available. You can even embed the tool in your website for others to use. Just like I have below.

Will you use this tool, how do you test your images at the moment? I’d be interested to hear your feedback.

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medium_5069179060 — photo credit: Derbeth via photopin cc

This weekends roundup of cool links includes 20 apps to help you mess around with your photos, some of which I’m using already, how to make your pins go viral and some blogging, Twitter and Facebook tips.

2 Keys to Writing a Great First Paragraph For Every Blog Post You Ever Write

Marcus from the Sales Lion has been popping up in my feeds quite a lot this week. He has a pretty inspirational blogging story, when his Swimming Pool Business started blogging it saved them. I’m not mad about templates for blogging but they can sometimes help you over that bump of bloggers block. That’s why I’ve included this link in this weeks roundup. Writing that first paragraph can often be the hardest bit, when you have it done very often the rest falls into place.

How A Picture of Kale Went Viral On Pinterest

If you are not familiar with Kale it’s a green vegetable similar to spinach, not the most likely of things to go viral anywhere. It did however manage to get shared 451 on Pinterest resulting in 1,936 clicks to a website. If it can be done with Kale it can be done with anything. This post and Infographic shows you how they did it and is packed with tips for helping you get more shares on Pinterest too.

50 Excellent iPhone Apps For Photography

I’ve been doing a picture of the day Tumblr this year and as the days pass I’m looking for new and interesting apps to create more interesting images. I found this article whilst searching for an app that would make a chalk drawing from an image and have started playing with a few of them already. So far ColorSplash is my favourite. It allows you to highlight a portion of a photo in colour whilst leaving the rest black and white.

Although this is highlighting iPhone apps I’m sure many of them are available or there are good alternatives for Android users.

5 Of The Best Social Media Campaigns 2012

I like to look at what big businesses with big budgets do with social media to inspire me, my clients may not have the budget but great ideas can spark other great ideas that will translate to smaller budgets. That’s why I am always interested to read posts like this one that show some of the most creative recent campaigns. For me Prometheus had to be one of the best campaigns I’ve seen. Some of it was a bit hit and miss – the TV ad trailer followed by a Tweet stream didn’t really live up to the hype – but the clever things they did with teaser trailers and on Linkedin really caught my imagination. For more stuff go get your creative juices flowing read this on Social Media Today.

How to Optimise Images For Your Facebook Page

Even though images don’t have the biggest organic reach on the Facebook newsfeed anymore they are still the type of content that gets the most interaction. I love this Infographic from PostRocket that shows how you can optimise your images.

9 Twitter Tips & Tricks

I see a lot of posts full of Twitter tips but this one is really useful. It’s not your standard stuff but more focused on information that the average user might not know. In fact in includes lots of stuff I share on my courses so it must be good! Definitely worth a look how ever experienced a tweep you are. I’ve seen many a social media aficionado make some of the mistakes that reading it could have prevented

3 Awesome Ways To Identify Your Biggest Fans & Collect Customer Testimonials

I am a big believer that social media sites are just a set of tools that facilitate word of mouth marketing. Much of this happens away from our pages. Our page likers, our followers etc may recommend our products and services by sharing our content or by becoming more familiar with us and what we do. Of course we can amplify this by collecting good, believable testimonials from our happiest customers. This post from unbounce looks at how we can approach getting testimonials both on and offline.

And From Spiderworking.com this week

The Importance Of Conversation – Part 1 – Blogging & Facebook

Due to the bank holiday it’s been pretty quiet here at Spiderworking.com HQ. However I did write one mammoth blog post… so mammoth in fact hat it had to be split into two halves. Here’s part one.

If you enjoyed this blog post why not subscribe to my newsletter or my blog posts via email. Click here for more info.

The Importance Of Conversation Part 1 - Facebook & Blogging

I’ve always thought of Social Media as an extension of my offline activities. Imagine going to a dinner party where you didn’t know anyone. Each person would bring conversational topics to the table and you will soon get chatting. You’d find out a lot about each other, what each other does for a living, what they like and you’d find shared ground to build your conversations on whether it be Children, cats, cars or sport. You’d come away liking some of the people you met and their names would jump to mind next time someone required a particular service product or skill.

Imagine now being at the same dinner party and each of you just tried to tell you about their job and why they should hire you. Everyone, at the same time, trying to get their sales pitch in, no two way conversation just a constant sales patter with everyone shouting over each other. Sometimes Social Media sites look like this, sometimes I think we’re forgetting about the social in social media.

Whatever social media we partake in we mustn’t forget to converse

Blogging

Blogging is content creation, can this be a conversation? – Yes, good content is a good way to get people to your website, to capture leads and make sales but it’s not static. People can participate by leaving comments or by sharing your content to their own social networks in order to spark discussion.

Here on my own blog I find the comments very informative. Not only do I discover what issues people are having with social media but I find that other people jump in to answer questions if I am slow. This is great as I can learn from the people who engage with me and other readers.

To encourage more conversation on your posts leave an open ended question, ask for opinions or leave it unfinished.

Bloggers also need to be proactive, get involved in conversations on other blogs by commenting. This will help you become part of the blogging community as well as giving you the opportunity to share your expertise.

Facebook

It is on Facebook that we are most forgetful about conversation. We can become obsessed with pumping out content without thinking about communicating with other businesses but if you make the effort you will find that Facebook for business can be a great place to connect with other businesses who target the same audience you do and to get referrals and shares.

Here’s some ideas for getting into conversations on Facebook:

Business mode – When you log into your Facebook page via your personal profile do you access it via the cog on the top right hand side of your page? When you do this you go into ‘Business Mode’, you are now using Facebook in your business name and any comments shares or likes come from your business rather than yourself.
Whilst in Business Mode you should find pages that share your target market, not competitors but businesses that you have a synergie with. If you are a local business this could be other nearby businesses, if you sell products aimed at the family it would be other family businesses, if you work in tourism it would be other tourist related pages.Once you have ‘Liked’ these pages in business mode you should make an effort to review their posts on a daily basis in your business newsfeed (click ‘Facebook’ on the top left hand side of the blue toolbar). Like and comment on their posts when appropriate and share them when they offer value to your followers.

Messaging – Once you have started to build a relationship with other businesses in business mode you can take the next step. You will need to use Facebook as yourself, not in business mode for this next phase.Visit the Facebook page of the business you want to connect with and send them a Message explaining who you are. If you have liked or commented on something they have done on Facebook recently make reference to it and then ask if there is anything you can do to help them spread the word or if there is some way you can work together. This will work equally well if you want to sell to them.

Interest lists – Again this is something you will need to do from your personal profile. Interest lists work like Twitter lists, they gather together the content from a specific group of people and pages so that you can view it separately from your main Facebook newsfeed. You don’t have to Like a page in order to add them to an interest list so it is a great way of keeping an eye on competitors as well as potential customers. It’s a great way to make sure you don’t miss anything from the pages you care about. I’ll be creating a video on creating and viewing interest lists over the next couple of weeks so watch this space.

Sharing – I’ve touched on this above but if you want to look generous it’s a good idea to share content from other pages, you should work this into your content schedule. Make sure it’s relevant and interesting to your target market.

Next week I’ll be sharing my tips for conversations on Linkedin, Pinterest, Twitter and Google+.

Do you have any tips for conversations? If so I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

How To Contact Facebook & Why Twitter Rocks At Privacy - The Social 7

It’s been a while since I’ve been in the office long enough on a Friday to compile my best reads. It’s a shame as there’s been some fantastic stuff appearing over the last few weeks, I may try and squeeze some of it in over the next couple of weeks.

In this weeks roundup I’ve chosen the good news about Twitter privacy, a great list of ways to contact social networks including Facebook. A really interesting read on encouraging your employees to become brand ambassadors and some great PicMonkey tips. It’s a bank holiday here this weekend, I hope you are all getting this sun and will be able to make the most of it.

How To Contact Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter & Google+

I’m often asked if there is a way to contact Facebook? Is there a customer service email or phone number? Sadly the answer to direct contact is no but there are ways of reporting stuff to them. This post from Kikolani covers all the forms that you will need to report an issue or to get in touch with Facebook. It also covers LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest but it’s the Facebook list that occupies the most space. This is one to bookmark, you never know when you may need this info.

Twitter Earns Top Spot For Protecting User Privacy

When we think about privacy on social media we generally think about who can see pictures of our children and our updates. But privacy is more than that. Twitter is leading the way in protecting our information not just from people we don’t want to see it but also from governments. They earned a full score card on the latest study from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Not only will they kick up a fuss when a government comes looking for your data but they will tell you and fight for you in court.

In comparison to Twitter’s 6 stars Facebook only got 5 and MySpace a big fat 0. I’d love to see Facebook making inroads in this area too. I’m sure everyone would be more comfortable with transparency and protection of this kind. Find out more on this study on the All Twitter blog.

Very Clever Use Of Vine

It’s only a few months old but it looks like it’s here to say. This week saw an update to the app that supports the front facing camera, at last we’re going to be able to shoot selfies, and the announcement that an Android app is on the way. Here’s a Vine from the Lowe’s hardware store. It’s part of a series offering six second useful tips, this one shows you how to clean rust from your knives.

How To Get Employees To Share

Your employees could be a huge asset to your social media campaign, most people use one social media site or another so it makes sense to encourage them to engage and share your content. They could be your best brand ambassadors if you just give them a push in the right direction.

This excellent post on the Jeff Bullas blog walks you through the benefits and the how tos of putting an employee engagement strategy together.

Cool Pic Monkey Secrets Revealed

I’m a massive fan of Pic Monkey, although I have GIMP on my big computer for editing images I use PicMonkey all the time when I’m on the move. It’s easy to use and has a lovely interface. If you want to put text on your images or even put Instagram style filters on them PicMonkey is the place to look. I discovered this article from their blog via Google+ this week, it’s full of tips for using the app and I’ve even put one of them into action already. Give it a read and if you haven’t used PicMonkey yet give that a try too.

18 Fresh Stats About The State Of Social Media Marketing

I love a good stat and a good graph. This post from Social Media Today is full of quick fun statistics. Here’s a few to whet your appetite:

52% of all marketers have found a customer via Facebook in 2013

Women are more likely than men to regularly check out a brand’s social page (48% vs. 43%)

59% of Twitter users have visited B2B tech brand sites, compared to 40% for the average internet population.

18 Sweet Tips For Facebook Page Posts

And my favorite Infographic of the week has to be this one from Post Rocket. It’s simple no nonsense tips that will help your Facebook marketing.

And From Spiderworking.com This Week

Get Alerted About Trouble On Your Facebook Page With ShitStormAlerts

This weeks cool tool is one for those of you who worry about customer complaints getting out of hand on your Facebook page. ShitStormAlarms monitors your page and drops you an email and text message if it sees unusual activity. So in theory if someone posts a complaint and it is jumped on by a number of other people it will let you know. It’s a handy one to have but one I hope I never have to use.

Have You Made Your First Vine Yet?

Last week I worked with a really creative group on a digital marketing course. As part of the course we cover online video and of course no discussion about video these days can neglect Vine. Here are some of their first attempts at making a Vine. I think they even helped me improve my own Vines.

6 Ways To Capture Leads From Facebook

I was lucky enough to guest post for Jon Loomer again this week. This time I looked at the different ways we can capture leads from Facebook. We tend to obsess about the number of Likes we get and the number of people talking about our page but ignore the most important stat, sales leads. Here’s my six top ideas.

How To Create A Social Media Policy For Small Business

When we think about social media policy we tend to think that it’s just for big business. I’m a big believer that every business, whatever the size should consider a policy. This week I put together a list of the different types of policy we should consider and some tips on putting them together.

What Is Social Media And What Is It For

I’ve been playing with SlideShare again. This presentation is the basis for a guest blog I’ve just written and looks at the different ways that businesses use social media.

What Is Social Media And What Is It For? from Spiderworking.com

Have a wonderful weekend. I’ll be back in the hot-seat on Tuesday

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How To Create A Social Media Policy For A Small Business

We often hear about social media policy but often in the context of big business. No matter what the size your organisation, even if you are a one person business it’s important to have guidelines in place. This will ensure that you have a consistent voice, that everyone including yourself is aware of what and what isn’t appropriate and it enables you to react with a level head if you have to deal with negative customer feedback.

Here’s three types of policy you should consider and how to get started:

Policy 1. For Employees

This is one you might not have thought of but it’s important to let employees know how to refer to you when posting updates to their own social media channels.

Are they allowed to mention you and your company?

Are they allowed to mention the names of work colleagues?

Should they expect to appear in social media updates by the company and by colleagues?

I’m sure you have seen some high profile cases when a staff member has been fired or suspended after posting about their employer on their personal Facebook or Twitter accounts.

There are many good reasons why you should allow your employees to post about you to social media channels. They could be your best brand ambassadors and can help carry your message far beyond the reach of you alone.

If you do allow them to talk about you make it clear what is not acceptable when discussing your company and what penalties will be incurred if they break the rules.

Remember that in order to make sure all your staff really do read your policy you have to make it short, sweet and easy to read.

Policy 2. For Those Updating Your Social Media

Whether it is you, an employee or a number of people updating your social media channels it’s important to have some guidelines in place.

If it’s just for you it can help you stay consistent with your language and tone of voice. It also helps you take the emotion out of your decisions when you need to deal with customer complaints etc. Here are a few points to think about when constructing your policy:

What is your brand personality?

Earlier this year at Social Media World Forum I attended a presentation from Bruce Daisley from Twitter. He introduced us to a simple way to decide on your social brand personality. It’s tempting to always try to be fun on social media but that doesn’t suit every brand. Bruce showed us this triangle and told us to choose two points from it in order to define our tone of voice.

Quite quickly I identified myself and ‘Give Info’ and ‘Help’. Knowing this means that I can ensure that my posts are always consistent. Of course sometimes I am fun but it doesn’t inform the content I create.

If more than one person updates your accounts it also means that you have a consistent voice.

How to deal with complaints

If you have ever had to deal with negative feedback you are probably familiar with the emotions it can bring out in you. It can be hard to keep these off your social media channels, it’s very easy to type something in the heat of the moment and live to regret it. Unfortunately one bad comment from you can mean the situation spirals out of control quite quickly attracting more attention to the complaint.

For this reason, even if you are the only person in the business you must have a set of guidelines that you can refer to in the heat of the moment. Think about your customer service process, will you thank people for their comment? Will you rectify it in public or will you take it offline and if so how? If someone is abusive how will you react?

It’s a good idea to write yourself a list of things that could go wrong and decide in each situation how will react. It’s not a good idea to write it word for word as social media users soon spot cut and paste responses.

When will you delete a post?

It’s important to decide in advance when you will remove a post from your page, how will you identify posts that need to be removed, will it be due to bad language, abuse or something else? You will also need to decide how you will handle complaints from the person whose post you removed and their friends.

How long it will take to get back to customer queries

It’s quite scary to realise, particularly for small businesses, that 42% of social media users expect a response within one hour of posting a query to your social media channels.

You may not be able to respond this quickly if you are on your own and I believe that consumers will give small and micro business a bit more leeway. You need to work out how quickly you are realistically going to respond and set this as a goal, making sure that esquires and comments don’t hang for any longer than that.

3. For the public posting on your pages

This will come from the decisions you make in 1 and 2, the difference is that this is designed to be viewed by the public. You need to include

1. Under what circumstances you will remove posts

2. What sort of language is permissable

3. If it’s acceptable for people to post commercial posts to your pages

You should put this information on your website so you can refer people to it when necessary. If it’s really important to you that people read it in advance of posting you could also add it to your Facebook page as a tab.

These are just starting points for your policy, larger companies will need to get more departments involved, smaller companies may just need to create a basic policy. Whichever applies to you it’s never too soon to think this over and start developing guidelines.

Further reading

Do You Have A Facebook Posting Policy – My post for Tweak Your Biz

5 Must-Haves For Your Brand’s Social Media Policy – From Likeable Media

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Spiderworking.com's Social Networking blog

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