Last week we looked at Facebook Insights and concentrated on the user menu. This week we delve deeper into the interactions menu and how it can be used to find out what content is most popular.
View part 1 by clicking here
Spiderworking.com - Data Driven Digital Marketing Strategy For Small Business
ROI Driven Digital Marketing Strategy for Your Business
by Amanda Webb
Last week we looked at Facebook Insights and concentrated on the user menu. This week we delve deeper into the interactions menu and how it can be used to find out what content is most popular.
View part 1 by clicking here
by Amanda Webb
Over the last few weeks we’ve looked at how you can boost your Twitter profile using an Image, by completing your bio, by injecting your personality and by sharing. This week we look at how to customise your profile and how conversation can help you build relationships.
By customising both your colour scheme and background on Twitter you are enhancing your brand, when people visit your profile page it should fit in with the rest of your web presence. You can change the colouring of your sidebar and your text matching these to your website, Facebook page or logo. Changing your background to a photograph, your logo or simply your brand colouring like @BeatriceWhelan again drives home your branding.
Taking it one step forward you can add some information to your background like @thechurch_ie. It’s important to note however that depending on your screen resolution you may be able to view more or less of the background so if the information on your background is important; a phone number or a discount code make sure you add it to your bio as well.
What makes you choose to follow someone on Facebook? For me I click through to their profile, have a look at their bio and have a quick scan of their tweets. If a lot of their tweets start with @ I know they are conversational. Conversation and engagement are the life blood of Twitter. Yes you can be successful if you don’t converse but it’s easier to build a following and become a part of the community if you do. Engaging on Twitter gives you the opportunity to prove your expertise and learn from others. It can get you noticed by people you want to connect with. Whereas someone may not reciprocate a follow engaging them in conversation can make more of an impact on them.
Ken McGuire does this well on all of his accounts but @AnyGivenFood is a great example of someone who converses and stays on topic. He not only joins in conversations with others but instigates conversations himself
Another great example is Carol Tallon @BuyersBrokersLtd, again plenty of conversation but all with a professional edge.
Do you have a number 7 or 8? I’d love to hear what you think the most important ways are to improve your Twitter presence. Maybe you disagree with my top 6. Let me know by leaving a comment below.
by Amanda Webb
Over the last few weeks we’ve shown you how to set up your business page on Facebook. This week we look at how you can manage your pages success using Facebook insights.
by Amanda Webb
Last week in part 1 we looked at how you can boost your Twitter profile by writing a great bio and by including a picture. The tips I am going to share this week may seem like child’s play to many experienced Twitter users but they are things that are often overlooked.
As business owners we are constantly seeking our USP, what makes us different to our competitors? What makes us stand out from the crowd? For me, the one thing you always have over your competitors, the thing that makes you truly unique is you and your people. In social media this is a massive asset, injecting personality and tone of voice into your tweets makes them uniquely yours.
One of my favorite Twitter accounts, spanning way back to the old days when I was blogging for Feelgood Organic Hampers is @KieranMurphy of Murphy’s Ice Cream. There is personality in his tweets, somehow always related to ice cream and always making me hungry.
Bigger companies can have personality too. Last week I showed you how Honda identified the people behind their tweets. The Roger Smith Hotel (@RShotel) in New York City has become a bit of a social media celebrity of late and although they are being very creative with their marketing it’s still easy to find the personality tweets.
So how do you add personality to your tweets? As children in school we are constantly told to write in a particular way, to make sure our grammer is correct. We are encouraged to have a professional writing style. The key to tweeting with personality is to throw all of these rules out the window. Tweet as you would speak and the personality will flow in naturally.
If you are familiar with @chrisbrogan you may be aware of his strategy that you should spend 12 times longer talking about others than yourself. Sharing is a massive part of what Twitter is about, Re Tweeting others and sharing blog posts from others that are of interest to your target market is easy and valuable. Not only does this provide you with great content to share with your target market but it also opens a way to connect with other Twitter users in your industry, provoking conversation and forging new relationships. 12:1 may seem excessive to some but however much you choose to share it should be a huge part of your Twitter strategy.
As well as sharing other people’s content you should make it easy for others to share your Tweets. As you know tweets can be up to 140 characters long but if you want to maximise your Re-Tweet potential, especially amongst the more established Tweeters who still use the old fashioned RT method try and confine your tweets to 120 characters. This allows space for a full RT.
Asking for a RT is a way to increase the number of shares you get but be aware not to use this tactic too often. Asking for a RT of every post will just make you look like you are begging! Sian’s wrote a good post on ReTweeting recently.
One of my favorite Irish business accounts for sharing is @GarrendennyLane, Lorna the owner is a keen blogger herself but constantly tweets links to other great design blogs.
To find content to share set up some Twitter lists of your favorite tweeters, the ones who create and share the best content. This way it’s easy to discover good stuff to share. Find some good blogs covering key areas of your industry and keep an eye on them
If you have any tips and tricks you’d like to share on using Twitter do let me know, leave a comment below as I’m always looking for great Tweeps to include in these posts.
by Amanda Webb
Twitter is an immensely powerful network. Compared to Facebook the user base is tiny and even with 175 million registered accounts only a fraction of those are thought to be active. The community might be small compared to other networks but it is easier to reach your target market using Twitter and Twitter users tend to be more passionate, willing to share and converse with others. Anyone who has got an @reply from a celebrity will understand how easy it can be to reach people usually innaccessible to them. So how can you make the most of your Twitter presence? Over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing my top tips.
There is nothing that makes you look as untrustworthy as the defalt Twitter profile image, people will assume that you don’t tweet or that you aren’t serious about tweeting, a lot of the spam on Twitter comes from a faceless account and as a business this is the last thing you want people to associate you with. But what should the avatar be? For business do you use a photograph of yourself or your logo? To answer this you need to ask yourself a few questions. Are you always going to be the person tweeting for your business? Is your brand based on your persona? How important is your brand identity?
If you are not going to compose every tweet yourself posting a photograph is misleading, even some celebrities have fallen fowl of this, transparancy and trust are important in social media and any doubt of your authenticity can do you more damage than good. If you are your brand including a profile picture of yourself is important, people will recognise you and associate you with the information you share – building trust. Make sure it is a good professional photograph and one that is identifiably you. A great example of this is @KrishnaDe who uses the same profile image on all of her social media channels. It is unmistakably her and you would have no problem identifying her if she walked into a room.
If your brand identity is important to you use your logo on Twitter. I use my logo for Spiderworking.com as I want people to to recognise the brand, I use it consistently in one form or another on all of my social media. I also want to seperate business from pleasure, @spiderworking is all about business, if I want to talk about anything non business related I use my personal account @hamperlady. At the moment I am the only person tweeting for @spiderworking I hope in the future other employees will join the conversation… don’t worry I’ll let you know if and when this happens.
A great example of how this can work is @CuriousWines, as featured last week. They use their logo on their account but both @curiousmatt and @curiousmike use photographs on their personal twitter profiles.
Twitter gives you a 160 character bio to introduce yourself on Twitter, bare in mind that this is one of the things people are going to focus on when they choose whether to follow you or not. Again you need to consider who is going to be tweeting on behalf of the company. Is it just you? Are there two of you or are there multiple tweeters?
If you alone are tweeting for your business or if you share with just one other person try and be as personal as you can in your profile. Of course you should talk about what you do, your business but try and add a bit of personality too. @Umnumnum_cork and @ladyumbrellaltd do this really well.
If you have multiple tweeters for your business using your bio to identify who is who can be a great way to instill confidence in your followers. @Toyota have five people contributing to their account, they use their bio to list each one including their individual twitter accounts and the initials they will use to sign off their tweets.
Next week we’ll be back with part two but in the mean time if you have any words of wisdom to share let us know in the comment box below. I’m still looking for tip number six so I’d appreciate any help you can give!
by Amanda Webb
This week in part four of our series on setting up a Facebook business page we look at how you can make your page look pretty.
We show you how to fill and edit the images that fill the marquee at the top of your page and show you an application that allows you to create a free landing tab to encourage people to like your page.
If you missed the previous entries in our series here they are:
Part 1- Setting up a Facebook business page
Part 2 – Adding a profile picture and posting status updates, links and photographs to your Facebook business page
Part 3 – Inviting people to ‘Like’ your Facebook business page
We’d love to know what you would like to know about Facebook business pages. If you have a question leave a comment below.