When I introduce mature students to social media, they ask for health warnings. I’d like to read your thoughts on careful engagement online.
This is a good question and one we should all consider before engaging.
If you are embarking on a social media campaign to promote your business it is important to remember that this is ‘Social’ media, simply broadcasting rarely works, you must be willing to become a part of the conversation, to encourage people to actively engage with your brand. This can be quite a scary prospect, by allowing people to participate you are to a certain extent outsourcing the building of your brand. You cannot have complete control of how your audience promotes your business, for this reason I think it is important to spend time in advance of launching your campaign assessing your target market and deciding exactly what sort of message you want to send out via social networks. It is always worth consulting with your marketing department (if you have one) to make sure that your social media strategy fits with the overall marketing strategy for your business. Social media should be part of your marketing mix not separate from it.
I would suggest that you ask yourself 3 questions before you start a campaign, whether it be on Facebook, Twitter or any other online network.
Who is your target market? Once you have considered this you can keep your posts on message. For example, Spiderworking.com targets micro & small to medium enterprises so we tweet links and information that we believe will benefit this audience.
How personal do you want to be? Although engagement and conversation is an important part of social media I believe it’s important to keep business pages business orientated. The level of your personality that you want to allow into your Tweets and posts should be decided in advance.
How will you react if someone attacks your brand? Although we all hope this will not happen to us, engagement through social media means that there is always the potential that a disgruntled customer could voice their complaints online. This doesn’t happen because you use social media, this happens because your customers do. The good news is that because you are already using social media you can react swiftly to rectify the situation. Having a plan on how you will deal with complaints, even if you never need to implement it is very important.
If you have a social media question that you would like us to tackle, leave a comment below.
“would you agree with Gartner’s predictions about Facebook becoming the hub for social network integation by 2012.”
Lets have a closer look at what Gartner predicted:
“By 2012, Facebook will become the hub for social network integration and Web socialization.Through Facebook Connect and other similar mechanisms, Facebook will support and take a leading role in developing the distributed, interoperable social Web. As Facebook continues to grow and outnumber other social networks, this interoperability will become critical to the success and survival of other social networks, communication channels and media sites.”
There is no doubt that by 2012 Facebook will have continued it’s massive growth, maybe even reaching a billion users worldwide. However there is a danger that more users may result in less interaction with the site. It is possible that with so many friends to keep up with that users will be overwhelmed with the information coming in. There is also the danger that people will begin to feel that Facebook is too commercial, they will become fans of too many pages and find their news feeds full of marketing messages. For this reason it is important that page owners keep their posts interesting and relevant to their target audience.
Certainly Facebook are aware of the possible downside of growth and have been quite innovative in the way that they allow their content to be shared. Facebook Connect for example and the opening up of Facebook chat that puts them in strong competiton with other IM solutions. Mobile apps such as ‘Urban Spoon‘ will make the way we interact with our facebook friends very different and it is this move forward, creating a Facebook Profile allowing you to easily share experiences across both the mobile and standard internet, that could give Facebook the ability to become the ‘hub’ Gartner predicts.
In some ways Google Buzz is already attempting to make use of your Google profile in a similar way. By buying into several platforms such as YouTube and Blogger and by allowing you to syndicate these to your email contacts using Buzz there is the potential for Google to become stiff competition to become the ‘hub’ in the future. Whether Buzz succeeds as a social network will not be clear for quite some time. It may even be beyond 2012 before we see it take off in the way Twitter and Facebook has, but I would imagine that Facebook will be keeping a close eye on it’s progress in order to stay one step ahead.
“Wondering about the effectiveness of forming a group on Facebook – how do I invite people -is it friends or fans or both? “
Facebook groups are a good way to create a bit of a buzz around your industry. A business should always have a ‘Page’ first but a group is a good way to add value to your brand. They can be a great place for people with a similar interest to share information. For example, it might be worth Lorna starting a group about interior design in Ireland, that way she could keep on top of the current sentiment attached to her industry, share information, start discussions on particular trends all whilst gathering a group of people together who would have an interest in her brand and what she has to offer.
Mashable published a great article on the difference between Groups and Pages recently.
There a couple of things you should consider when you are setting up a group:
They have a very short shelf life – group pages do not update members news feeds the way that Pages and Profiles do so it can be easy for people to forget about them.
They are connected to your personal profile. Members of the group will know it is you that is administering the group, unlike a page which appears as an entity on it’s own.
The advantages are:
You can message members directly. From a business page it is only possible to send ‘updates’ which often remain unread in a fan’s inbox. From a page you can send a message which appears in the inbox the way a personal message does. Be aware not to overload your group members with messages though, use this feature sparingly to avoid people leaving your group.
If your business already has a page and you are running a new initiative it can be a way to gather together those with a specific interest in it, rather than overloading your fans news feeds with the same message. For example, Spiderworking.com just launched it’s Work The Web Workshops. Imagining that a number of the poeple interested in the workshops would already be fans of Spiderworking.com we decided against setting up a business page. Spiderworking.com’s page will be promoting Work The Web and clogging up fans news feeds with the same recurring message could result in loosing them. For this reason we set up a group. It also means that we will be able to message directly those interested in the workshops.
People may be more inclined to join a group because they know that a group cannot pollute their news feed.
Inviting people to join a group
You can invite your ‘friends’ directly to join your new group. You cannot invite ‘fans’ of your business page directly but can post details of the group on your wall and ask them to join.
If you have a social media question that you would like answered no matter how large or small leave a comment on this post or tweet us @spiderworking.
The average Facebook user has 130 friends, add to this fan and business pages and your news feed can begin to look a bit daunting.
Lists are a great way of filtering your friends and pages into categories, allowing you to view their news in seperate sections. You can use it to separate friends from work colleagues or to categorise your pages by type, for example restaurants or Irish Businesses.
How do you make a list?
Log into Facebook and click the ‘Account’ tab on the top right hand side
Select ‘Edit friends’ from the drop down menu.
On the left hand side of the next page click the ‘All connections’ tab:
Click ‘Create New List’:
A window will open, here you can name your list and select which friends and pages to add to it.
Once you have set up a list it is simple to add connections and pages to it. When the window is closed you can scroll down through your friends and use the drop down menu on the right hand side to choose which lists to add them to.
Now go back to your home page. Click on ‘friends’ on the left hand side of your screen. Your lists will appear here. By clicking a list you will be able to see the updates just from those on the list.
In a previous post I talked about how to populate your Facebook fan page but when you have that vital piece of information that you want to share, what’s the best way to do it? Should you use the ‘Notes’ application, should you post it in your status update? or should you just post a link?
Status Updates: If you have a short piece of news or have a short announcement to make use the Status bar at the top of the page. It is now possible to allow facebook to update your twitter page so always try and stick to the 140 characters that twitter allows.
Notes: If you have something a bit longer to say use the notes application. You can also add pictures and add tags to a note. It is also possible to import your blog into notes.
Links: If you find a cool link that you would like to share with your fans, or want to share a link to your own webpage click this button underneath your status update. Paste the link in the box provided. If there are pictures in the link you are posting you will be given a choice of thumbnails. Scroll through the thumbnails using the arrows next to the pictures. It’s a good idea to comment on the link and why you are sharing it. You can do this by writing in the status update box above the link. Finally post the link by clicking the add button.
Every social media network is different. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin amongst others are all brilliant in their own way and it is important to understand how each one works so that you can make the most out of them.
It is impossible to watch the news at the moment without your heart going out to those effected by the flooding. People loosing their homes and their businesses, devastated by the ‘aquapocalypse’.
Spiderworking.com is delighted to join the scheme initiated by Galway based IT company ‘Kro IT solutions‘ to pledge time and services to a business effected by the flood.
Ruairi from Kro launched the initiative yesterday with on his blog promoting it across social media networks. Using the hashtag #flood2help the cause quickly spread across twitter. People shared the blog link on Facebook and soon the pledges of help started flooding in (excuse the pun). Others started to blog their support and soon the pledged hours started clocking up. At Spiderworking.com we pledged a tailored social media marketing package.
If you have a business and would like to pledge your help leave a comment on Ruairi’s blog, blog about it yourself letting Ruairi know so he can link to you, and spread the word on twitter, facebook and the rest of your social networks.
1. Visible to the whole world, good for SEO and for encouraging fans.
2. Demographics – Facebook offer some great demographics which mean you can see if you are targetting the right audience with your page.
3. Respect your customers, respect their privacy.
4. Facebook don’t want you to do it… they could close you down.
Every time Facebook changes it’s layout it upsets it’s users and this latest version is no exception. But I believe that it can be good for business fan pages and it can help you establish a bigger and better fanbase.
For more videos on social media and how it can benefit you subscribe to our YouTube channel.
this button underneath your status update. Paste the link in the box provided. If there are pictures in the link you are posting you will be given a choice of thumbnails. Scroll through the thumbnails using the arrows next to the pictures. It’s a good idea to comment on the link and why you are sharing it. You can do this by writing in the status update box above the link. Finally post the link by clicking the add button.
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