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Monday 25 February 2013

How to Use Facebook for Business


Are you using Facebook for business? While many small businesses are entering into the fray, they are using it in a very ‘traditional’ or ‘push’ marketing way. They understand that Twitter has potential for them to connect with their customers, but they aren’t quite sure how to use it and how they can benefit from it. As a result, many fall off the map and end up wasting time and resources with little to no benefit. Rather than rushing into using Facebook without knowing exactly why, your business should consider a more strategic approach.

Coming up with a strategic approach to using Facebook will compliment all other marketing efforts and provide customers with a valuable online resource. The best news? It’s free! All Facebook marketing requires is patience and consistency. Here are ten tips for how to successfully use Facebook for your business.

1. Identify your audience: Do you know who your customer is? Take time to identify your target customer and research their shopping habits. Audit how they use Facebook, the type of content they 'like' and read, how actively they engage online. Once you create your ideal consumer persona you can begin to create a marketing strategy.

2. Create your business page: Make sure that when you create your Facebook page that it adequately reflects the look and feel of your website. Also, identify keywords that describe your business and see what type of keywords your competitors are using to describe their business. Your Facebook profile should include those keywords so new and existing customers can find your page.

56% of customers say that they are more likely to recommend a business or brand after becoming a fan.

3. Set goals: Nothing feels better than crossing a to-do off your list and achieving a goal. Set daily, weekly, and monthly goals. Come up with a cadence for how often you post and what time you post. Also, figure out the type of content to post. Will you be posting articles, photos, videos or all of the above? For example if you have a company blog, you can post the links to your Facebook page. Setting goals will set the pace for your success and achieving smaller goals will keep you motivated and focused.

4. Enlist page administrators: Facebook page maintenance does not need to be restricted to one person. If you have a couple employees or a team get them involved. Having more than one voice contributing to Facebook will make your content and copy more interesting and personal.

5. Create a places page: If your small business has a physical location, use the “Check-In” feature to claim its “Places Page.” Your customers will then be able to “check-in” with their mobile devices, which will automatically post to Facebook, letting all their friends know that they support your business. Best of all, it provides free advertising.

90% of people trust peer recommendation via social media.

6. Create a content calendar: The easiest way to streamline post activity on your business page is to create a simple content calendar. Content moves quickly on Facebook. Figure out when your customers are the most active on Facebook and plan on posting then to increase the chances of your post being seen, liked, and shared. Set aside time weekly to research post ideas and then disperse them throughout the week. You may even want to experiment with having daily themes – overtime you will develop a strategy that works best for you and your target consumer. Have fun and do not be afraid to experiment. Be sure to vary your post type to include video, links, and polls – different types of content will appeal to different people.

7. Email your database: Once your business page is up and running, send an email to your database. Be sure to let them know that liking your page will give them access to special events, promotions, and insider tips and tricks. Promote the exclusivity and how your Facebook page will add value to your customers.

8. Promote your page and posts: Many people create fantastic Facebook business pages and then forget to promote them. Do not make that mistake! Add Facebook links to emails, add like buttons to website, blog or any banners marketing campaigns. You can also promote posts to your friends and friends of friends so get more views and likes.

9. Monitor your success: All Facebook business pages are equipped with an analytics feature called Facebook Insights. Insights is available to page administrators and is an easy way to track fan engagement and post success. It's important to look at views, Regularly check Insights to see how your page is performing and make adjustments where needed. Two insights that you should pay attention to day-to-day are "Lifetime Likes" and "Lifetime Total Subscriptions." This will show you if your fan base is converting or not.

10. Bonus Tip: A Facebook business page is a great place to show off your superior customer service skills. Respond to all customer comments in a timely manner and be sure to maintain a positive professional tone.  Your Facebook page is an extension of your brand experience so be sure to wow your customers every time.

There is no one size fits all formula for using Facebook for business. Start small, experiment, post regularly, and actively strive to engage with your customer

orginal article here: http://socialmediatoday.com/alexhisaka/1203526/how-use-facebook-business

Friday 22 February 2013

3 Ways Pinterest Could Be Even Better


Pinterest-art

Pinterest continues to grow and could soon top Twitter, a social media site that had a two-year head start on the picture-centric pinboard site. According to Pew Research Center, the two sites are neck and neck: 15% of Americans use Pinterest, and 16% use Twitter.
The Pinterest team hasn't been idle over the past year. Pinterest has added pages for businesses, mobile apps, secret boards, and it has a major redesign in the works. But what pinners want most, isn't included in the new design.
On behalf of ladies who pin, here's what Pinterest could do to make its avid users happier (most of whom are female, outnumbering men four to one).

Search Your Own Pins

You can't search your own pins, and that's a problem. According to Repinly, a Pinterest directory that tracks pins, pinners and trends, popular pinners have each created around 35 boards and pinned 2,757 photos on average. Sifting through pins for that perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe that you pinned six months ago can take far too long.
Boards display only the last few pins added, so if you have a lot of pins, like Anilú Magloire's "Home Love" board, ranked No. 1 on Repinly with more than 22,000 photos, good luck finding a specific pin.

Moving Pins

Related to the searching function, you should be able to rearrange pins within a board. Pins are placed in chronological order, meaning the first photos pinned appear at the bottom of a board. While Pinterest lets you choose a photo to feature, and you can change these board cover photos at any time, you only have one option for changing the order of pins: delete and re-pin.

Browse the Web on Smartphones

In an update last August, Pinterest added its own, built-in browser to its iPad app, leaving iPhone and Android without the nifty feature. (On the desktop version, pinners add a "Pin it" button to their browsers so they can pin a photo from any website that hasn't blocked the function.)
On an iPad, pinners type in a web address, visit a site and can pin a photo using the "Pin it" button. If you're using a smartphone, however, you have to take a screenshot with your phone and then pin from your camera roll. For those who pin, this is simply too much work.
Pinterest has not responded to our questions about new features, but testers thus far have posted only complaints about the redesign. Some don't like the bigger photos; they'd rather see more pictures on the screen. And many complain that they can't see who has re-pinned their pins: "Please get me out of this testing phase and back to how it was," Jena Dacres Thiele commented. "Or change it to tell us what pins were re-pinned and when."
In response to comments on the blog, Pinterest has said it will not add any new editing features to the update, and the mobile apps will remain unchanged.
If you'd like to weigh in on future Pinterest features, visit Pinterest's Feature Forum.

Image courtesy of Flickr, mkhmarketing
This article originally published at TechNewsDaily here

Wednesday 20 February 2013

Facebook Assures Users That Graph Search Safe For Minors


imageFacebook has alleviated fears that its new Graph Search engine might be unsafe for users between thirteen and seventeen.

Graph Search, Facebook’s new comprehensive search engine that can access and discover information in its “Social Graph” based on the queries of its users is slowly being rolled out to servers in the United States.

Due to the amount of information users enter into Facebook, many have been concerned that Graph Search will invade their privacy. When Graph Search was announced, Facebook made it very clear that it could only be used to see information shared with the searcher or the public in general.

In a safety announcement last week, Facebook said minors will have the same restrictions on Graph Search as on every other part of Facebook:
As with all of our products, we designed Graph Search to take into account the unique needs of teens on Facebook. On Facebook, many things teens are likely to do - such as adding information to their timelines or sharing status updates - can only be shared with a maximum of Friends of Friends. In addition, for certain searches that could help to identify a young person by age or by their location, results will only show to that person's Friends, or Friends of Friends who are also between the age of 13-17.
Facebook also offers three safety tips for Graph Search users:

  • Manage Your Activity Log: Activity log makes it easy to see the things you’ve posted on Facebook, make changes to the audience of past photos and other posts, and choose what appears on your Timeline. We recently announced some new tools that make it easier to take action on multiple photos, such as untagging them, or requesting that they are removed with one click.If you are ever concerned who can see content you have posted or shared on Facebook, review it on your Activity Log.
  • Review About Me: In addition to your Activity Log, review the 'About' tab to check any basic info you have shared with others on your profile, such as your current city, your workplace, Pages you like, or your education. The same people who can see this info on your profile can search for this info about you. Check this section to make sure you are comfortable with the audience you have chosen to share this information with.
  • Reporting:  As always, do not hesitate to report any abusive content you see on Facebook in the report links throughout site.
You can sign up for the Graph Search preview waiting list here.

Are you looking forward to using Graph Search?

Monday 18 February 2013

Social Media Users Say Pinterest Is as Popular as Twitter


While Facebook reigns supreme in the social media landscape, the latest study by Pew shows users are pinning just as much as they're tweeting.

Twitter attracted 16% of social media users, followed by 15% on Pinterest in 2012. Everyone's favorite pastime is still Facebook, though, raking in a majority of respondents' votes. Tumblr comes in as the least popular with only 6% of people on the site.

The report details who exactly is using these networks, explaining that sites like Instagram appeal more to women, Latinos and African-Americans.

It's no surprise the study finds young adults more interested in social media. An overwhelming 83% are more likely to be on the sites than older demographics. Each network offers distinct services and draws specific audience groups. Image-heavy Pinterest attracts women, adults under 50 and whites. Twitter users tend to be urban residents.



Unlike other networks, Pinterest is equally popular with different age demographics; 19% of younger users and people 30 to 49 use the site, and it also yields the largest difference in gender than any other of it social counterparts. Women are five times more likely to be pinning (secret wedding boards, anyone?) than men.
Though Pinterest is catching up in popularity, the percentage of Internet users on Twitter doubled in the past two years.

What do you think of the findings? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Image via iStockphoto, akinbostanci 

Friday 15 February 2013

Twitter Is Updating Its API Metadata To Help Developers Filter Tweets By Language And Importance

imageTwitter developer Arne Roomann-Kurrik has announced on theTwitter blog that the social media micro-messaging service is introducing new metadata to tweets in order to help developers “work with targeted subsets of Tweet collections”.

The improvements will help Twitter app developers filter and organise tweets by the language that they were written in an identify tweets that Twitter considers “high” value.

The language that the tweet has been written in is identified by Twitter’s machine language detection algorithms and marked by a new lang attribute in the metadata. “The values will be valid BCP 47 language identifiers,” says Roomann-Kurrik, “and may represent any of the languages listed on Twitter's advanced search page, or "und" if no language could be detected.”

This language update allows systems that compile and organise Twitter data, “such as analytics services or real-time search streams, to offer language-specific curation, aggregation and analysis of Tweet content.”

The filter_level attribute values Tweets from a stream as either "none", "low", or "medium", with a final classification, "high", to be introduced later. “The "medium" (and eventually "high") entries will roughly correlate to the "Top Tweets" results for searches on twitter.com”. This classification system will make it easier for apps to surface high-value tweets and other content from “noisy” feeds.

Both filter_level and lang will be available on Streaming API responses, with the latter also on REST.filter_level will be activated first, on Wednesday next week, with lang coming shortly after. However, the release times are subject to change, so Roomann-Kurrik advises that developers keep an eye on the calendar of API changes.

Here is an example of the new attributes present in metadata:

image
In the example above, the tweet is given a classification of "medium", meaning it is a quite high-value result in the search, and the language is English, as specified by “en”.

Public streaming endpoints will also support the filter_level and lang parameters, providing filtering of streamed data on Twitter’s side of the process. Users can connect to a public stream and specify the languages of the tweets that their search will return, as well as setting a filter_level parameter. 

At some point, Twitter will undoubtedly introduce the changes into the Discovery tab. However, there is the possibility that, instead of being organised chronologically, Twitter’s default home stream could be organised in order of value to the user. 

Would you like to see your Twitter stream organised by importance? 

Wednesday 13 February 2013

Google Changes “Circles” Tab To “Find People”


gplus_iconGoogle has renamed the Google+ “Circles” button in the toolbar to “Find People”, a move suggesting further changes to come.

Google is supposedly making the changes to keep up with the constant stream of new members joining Google+ every day. In September 2012, Google reported that it had surpassed the 100 million monthly active user mark. A few weeks ago, the Global Web Index reported that, in December 2012, Google+ registered almost 350 million monthly active users. In just four months, Google+ increased its MAU figures by 250 million.

“With so many new people signing up for Google+ every day, it’s easy to miss friends and colleagues who’ve recently joined”, said Google employee Sean Purcell on his Google+ page when the update was made. “So today we’re making some updates to Google+ to help you find people you care about and add them to your circles.”

The “Circles” icon has been renamed to make navigation easier for new users who might not know what Google+ Circles are. Google were concerned that new users would have difficulty working out how to add their friends and colleagues: a function vital to the usability and popularity of the service. Renaming the button “Find People” makes its function self evident to Google+ novices.


Clicking on the “Find People” button takes the user to a list of suggested people to add. On the right of the page there is a list of suggested areas to look, including “Find Coworkers”, “Find Classmates” and “Gmail Contacts”, which allows users to see people who they are already talking to on Gmail. Furthermore, there is a “Connect Services” button with options to link the users Yahoo and Hotmail accounts to their Google+ profile to find more contacts.

Although the “Circles” button in the toolbar on the right of the screen has been changed, Google+’s defining Circles feature still exists in the form it was before: users can categorise the people they add into circles for colleagues, friends, family, acquaintances or following, managing their circles in the “Your Circles” tab at the top of the page. Users can also still create circles if the pre-existing options don’t fit the description of their relationship.

Do you like the changes Google has made to Google+?

Friday 8 February 2013

Twitter Updates App, Improving Search And Discovery


Twitter has updated its app for iOS and Android devices, as well as its service on mobile.twitter.com, so that users can find content faster.

Information in the Discovery tab has been consolidated into one stream, with tweets, activity, trends and suggestions all together. There are also preview pictures of activity and trends at the top of the page for quick clicking.

The most relevant Search results are also contained in one stream, regardless of whether they are tweets, photos or accounts, and the omnipresent search button, previously only available on Android and iPad, has been introduced to the iPhone.

The default setting on the Connect page is focused on interactions, but if a user wants to see their mentions they can select “mentions only” in the Connect settings tab.

Links have also been improved, so that clicking on one will take you to the site immediately instead of enlarging the Tweet first.

“As always,” says Director of Product Management Esteban Kozak on the Twitter blog, “you can learn more about what’s new in our mobile apps from the App Store or Google Play.”

What do you think of the update?

Wednesday 6 February 2013

Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences Helps Advertisers Find Similar Customers


Lookalike AudiencesFacebook is testing a new ‘Lookalike Audiences’ feature that helps advertisers to search out an audience similar to their Custom Audience in order to aim ads at them.

Lookalike Audiences can be made once an advertiser has uploaded a list of data from which the other audiences can be gathered. This data could be in the form of customer email addresses, phone numbers or user IDs to create their Custom Audience.

Algorithms of Facebook are able to analyse the Custom Audience data that has been created and then create another audience that will have similar characteristics. A Facebook ad can then be created and targeted towards this Lookalike Audience.

Information that can lead to the person being identified is not shared back to the advertisers and the information used to create a Lookalike Audience is only used by Facebook, not to be used for email marketing or other ad targeting. Advertisers in the beta testing stage have seen lower costs per action than when using traditional targeting schemes.

Facebook have said that while using Lookalike Audiences, an online travel site saw 70% lower costs per action and an online shopping site saw a 56% lower costs per action.

This feature is only in limited beta in the U.S. currently and Lookalike Audiences cannot be created yet through the ad dashboard or the Ads API.

Advertisers will be able to optimise the reach of their Lookalike Audience, meaning they could access larger amounts of people but be less precise in terms of their similarity to the Custom Audience. On the other hand, they could be optimised for similarity which will be more precise but on a smaller scale.
This feature could prove to be an influential opportunity for advertisers to achieve their goals and make advertisements even more relevant to all users.

CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg said that: “There’s a big opportunity in front of us to make every ad that we’re showing a lot better . . . The biggest ways we’re going to do this are by improving targeting and relevance so we can show everyone content that they care more about and by designing better ad products that aren’t just about links and text and images. For targeting, I’m most excited about the work that we’re doing on Custom Audiences.”

Businesses will be more able to reach out and find users who aren’t in their database with the help of Lookalike Audiences. This feature would be more effective for advertisers rather than having them select their own demographic and target interest-based users.

What do you think about Lookalike Audiences? Do you think it is a good idea?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Monday 4 February 2013

Facebook Launches Its Own Gift Card


Facebook Gift Cards
Yesterday, the Facebook Card was released to some users in the United States: an all-purpose gift card which can be sent to friends, topped up with credit and reused.

In an effort to further monetize the site, Facebook has partnered with a number of companies – Target, Jamba Juice, Olive Garden and Sephora – to create a new gift card which can be sent to a user’s friends.

Starbucks, who has its own digital gift card available on the Facebook gifts page, is not one of the partners, despite the fact that Facebook has begun suggesting that users purchase Starbucks gift cards specifically on friends’ birthday notifications.

Users must first choose a brand from the Gift Cards & Digital category and then a value to send: either $10, $25, $50 or $100. Target, for example, gives brief descriptions suggesting which of its products could be bought with each amount:

imageThe recipient will be notified on Facebook as soon as the gift is sent, while the actual gift card will arrive in the post a few days later. The card is activated before it is sent and can be used as soon as it arrives.

Facebook Cards are reusable and can be topped up at any time, so if you receive another Facebook Card gift it will just be added to your existing card, regardless of which brand was chosen.

All four brands can have balances on one card so, for example, if a recipient were to receive a $10 Target gift card, a $25 Jamba Juice gift card and a $50 Sephora gift card, one card would be used in all three stores.

Facebook Gift Cards
Facebook does not say what would happen if one person were to receive more than one gift card on one day, having not owned a gift card before, something that is likely to happen considering that there are very specific days set aside for gift giving: birthdays, Christmas, Chinese New Year etcetera.

Would Facebook tally all of the amounts on one card and then send it out, or would multiple cards be sent?
Recipients can view their Facebook Card balance at any time on mobile and desktop devices. Facebook will alert users to any balance change whether a new gift or a purchase.

If Facebook Cards proves popular, the gifts sent and purchases made using them could provide Facebook marketers with valuable user information and targeting data.

The Facebook Card is currently being rolled out to users in the United States.

Would you send your friends a Facebook Card as a gift?