I’m sitting down and starting to write this post on social media day. I didn’t plan anything this year but as usual have speant most of the day posting to, training on and working with clients on social media. It seems strange that social media needs a day, it’s not like we have to heighten awareness, almost a billion people are now on Facebook, Twitter seems to have hit the mainstream big time and Google+… is still there.
This week I look at one great update to G+, an artilce on how to display your real email on your Facebook profile again and when is the right time to #tag?
Google+ Events
I’m still a big fan of Google+, I may not be sure where it fits into the social media world yet but I really like the way it works and the content discovery in particular. Recently Google integrated Google Places into the network, re-naming them Google Local. This week they launched events. In my mind this is a brilliant integration and one I know I will use for our KLCK Blogger network meetings in the future. Find out more about Google Events here.
Facebook emails – How to display your own
Without telling anyone Facebook quietly changed the email address that displays by defalt on your Timeline. Instead of displaying your email address of choice they now show your Facebook email. Your Facebook email is an address you are automatically given by Facebook that when used sends the message directly to your Facebook message inbox. The reasons behind this move are unclear, except of course to push the use of Facebook email. Somewhat predictably this has annoyed a massive amount of users. If you want to switch your display email to another address here’s how.
Twitter tip – Track more than your @mentions
If you are using Twitter for business it is important to keep track of what people are saying about you, your industry and your competitors. For tracking your own mentions it’s not enough just to rely on people using the @mention to talk to you, you need to see what people are saying when the conversation isn’t directed at you. Have a look at this simple way to do this using Twitter search.
How often should you post to Facebook?
This is one of those questions that is notoriously hard to answer. It really depends on the amount of time you have and how much your customers want to hear from you. However I was surprised to see the statistics in this report that suggest posting to Facebook just once a day is hugely more effective. I personally tend to post twice a day but can see the advantage of posting just once. Limiting yourself to this means that not only will you reach more people, avoid the risk of annoying your audience but it also means you will make sure that the one piece of info you do post will be the best you can find. More on the study here.
How do you reward your Facebook audience?
We ask a lot from the people who choose to Like us on Facebook, we drive constantly for interaction , we ask them to share, comment or Like what wer’e doing. In return we should always try to provide them with what they want, whether it is tutorials, information, fun or something completely different. But how do we reward them for their loyalty? Here are 50 examples of big brands thanking their Facebook fans. It could inspire us all to think of a way to make our own audience feel valued.
Five editing tips for Bloggers
Do you just write your blog posts and click the publish button? It really does pay to edit first, I have lost count of the times I’ve looked back on a post only to find it littered with typos or sentences that don’t make sense. At the very least spell check and read it through before publishing, although this article suggests, quite rightly that we shouldn’t rely on spell check. These editing tips take it a bit further, all great tips and all worth investigating.
To hash or not to hash?
Hash tags seem to have evolved over the last 12 months, I attribute it perhaps to a new wave of Twitter users. Once they were just about search, it was much easier to follow everyone talking about the same topic using a tag. They were popular for TV shows, conferences and Twitter chats. Some people used them with humour, to denote the way they were feeling. Recently I’ve noticed them being used in a slightly different way. People are beginning to use two or three of them in each tweet to maybe define further what they are talking about. I’m not convinced of the value of this, do people use these tags to search? Are these tags really that relvent? Recently I saw a tweet that had every other word tagged, this made it very hard to read. I could just be being a grumpy old social media freak but I did find this article really helpful. It gives you a decision making guide for taggging.
From Spiderworking.com this week
Using Buffer to shcedule tweets
This weeks cool tool was Buffer, this app is simpler to set up and use than Hootsuite and allows you to schedule tweets into the future, it includes an inbuilt link shorterner and there’s lots of useful add ons.
Do the new promoted posts affect the Facebook newsfeed?
There has been a lot of talk on Facebook recently about the new Facebook promoted posts, some pages have been sharing a meme that is a tad misleading. This week I looked into the newsfeed, how it works and how it is decided if posts feature there. Believe it or not nothing has changed but there is one reason your posts might not reach as many before. I also suggest a fix for users. Read more here
15 second Facebook marketing tip
If you’ve been keeping an eye on our Facebook page you may have been following my 15 second Facebook Marketing tip. Here’s this weeks one about posting links.
