So, you have a great company website.  After reading all the hoopla about social media you realize that quality engagement begins with listening to your target audience, so, you decide to set up a company Facebook page.  You’re off to the right “social” start, and now you’re ready to engage!

But just having a Facebook company page is the tip of the social iceberg in relation to obtaining a quality audience to speak with.  If your Facebook company page seems to be having trouble gathering that target audience, consider “plugging-in” your website to Facebook for some super direct, high speed help.

Facebook is all about helping people share their experiences with one another.  When people are looking directly at your website, what better opportunity do you have to ask them to engage with you further, and ultimately share what they found interesting on your site with their entire social network? Without a Facebook social plug-in, people would have to go through a laborious procedure to copy the link of your page and paste it into an email, and send that email to all of their friends.  Facebook offers people an easier way with their social plug-ins which are helpful little graphic tools you get right from the Facebook website that you insert onto your website to provide people on your site a more personalized and social experience, while also giving them a very easy way to see you have a Facebook page and voluntarily connect themselves with it.  Here is an example of the Facebook “like” button plug-in you might see on a website:

But the best social “magic” that happens when people click that “like” button within the social plug-in you’ve inserted onto your site, is that their “like” action will automatically post to their personal Facebook page, which is seen by all of their Facebook friends, thus advertising your page exponentially by word of mouth marketing at no cost to you.  This increases the likelihood that because one potential customer liked your page, their friends will too, increasing your chances of getting more traffic to your site and your Facebook company page.

There are many types of plug-ins offered that serve different social functions such as the “Comments” plug-in which allows people to comment on any piece of your site, the “Recommendations Box” which gives people personalized suggestions for pages on your site they find interesting, or my favorite, the “Facepile” plug-in that displays the Facebook profile pictures of people who have liked your page or have signed up for your site.  This plug-in shows people which of their friends already like your page, as well as how many people all together like your page, thus prompting them to also like your page because it gives them that “I want to be a part of that group too” feeling.

If you want to try some free word of mouth marketing on Facebook and reach way beyond your own sphere of influence, try inserting one of the Facebook social plug-ins onto your website’s homepage to gain more targeted fans at the speed of light.

Facebook launches a new local business tool that allows a user to search for local businesses with their mobile application.  The biggest difference with this new app is that it features their “Friends” recommendations.

The new feature is only available on mobile applications and the goal is to focus on reviews, check-ins, and ratings by user’s “Friends” list.  This allows for a much more unique customer experience as the searcher will know exactly who gave the reviews and what their “Friends” thought of the experience at the local establishment.  This application is only available on Facebook’s mobile platform and not the desktop version.

This is a huge opportunity for local businesses to establish their brands within a community.  By receiving reviews from customers that will directly influence other customers, it will help them gain maximum exposure.  The only thing required to be able to use the Nearby feature is to have a Facebook page, as the feature does not openly use data on the web.

Here are some tips from Facebook on how to promote your business within Nearby:

1. Update your page’s basic information, including address, hours of business, phone number, and details about your product/service.
2. Update your Category – Example:  If you’re a restaurant, make sure you select the appropriate category in order for Nearby to allow your business to be found appropriately.
3. Encourage Friends/Fans to “like”, “check-in”, ratings, and recommendations

At this time, the Nearby feature is completely free and automatically indexes all business that have pages on Facebook.

Recently Facebook upped the ante on local search with its release of an updated iOS and Android app with a beefed-up Facebook Nearby.

Previously, Facebook’s Nearby function let users see where their friends had checked in. With this most recent update, users can now search local businesses by name or category. But landing on the result pages is more complicated than simply being “nearby.”

Because the algorithm that determines what shows up on the Nearby results page is largely dependent upon Facebook data, user check-ins and interactions, which now include star ratings, have a lot to do with the results. Facebook says results will get even more personalized when users check into and rate businesses.

In order to ensure you don’t get lost in the proverbial shuffle, it’s important to optimize your Facebook page for this new stage in local search.

First and foremost, if you don’t have a Facebook page, get one. Facebook is vying to become its own ecosystem. Companies that don’t exist within the ecosystem simply won’t exist for a key demographic of users who turn to Facebook for everything from finding a restaurant to viewing friend’s vacation photos.

Next, optimize the content on your About section. Include descriptive, keyword-optimized language, as well as all of your pertinent business information, including your location, services and hours of operation. While you’re at it, make sure your business is being listed under the correct category. If you’re not, you’ll have a much harder time showing up in relevant search results.

Finally, and most importantly, encourage Facebook fans to interact with your page by checking in and rating your page. The more popular your business appears, the better chance you’ll have showing up in these newest of search results.

It would seem the business community is not using their Facebook pages effectively – or at all. A new study by Recommend.ly, a social media analytics company, notes that two-thirds of business pages are inactive. Among those, 63.9% have no cover photo, 70% are updated zero times a month, and 83.4% have never participated in a conversation.

Is your Facebook business page among the wayward majority? If so, it’s time to get your social mojo back.

The best way to do this is to change your perspective.

Social media marketing does not have to be the oft-ignored elephant in the room. And you do not need to have a staff member 100% dedicated to social tasks in order to achieve success. All you have to do is designate someone to take the reins.

One way to do this is to rotate the responsibility. If you have a staff of twelve, for example, have each person take over social media marketing for a month. To maintain consistency, ask each person to submit a content calendar for approval beforehand.

Give your staff an idea of what should be on the calendar by taking the lead.

To start, take a look at what you’re already doing that may be relevant to your Facebook fans and Twitter followers. This includes:

• Sales and promotions

• Blog posts

• New products or service lines

Then, beef up your calendar by adding:

• Quick, engaging, educational information about your products or services

• Relevant industry information

• Links to other relevant topics of interest

Once you’ve got your calendar, schedule your posts with a free tool like HootSuite, or use the Facebook scheduler.

While tools like HootSuite are great for set-it-and-forget-it social media management, it’s important to remember that social media is about engagement. Make sure whoever is managing your social media efforts builds time into their calendars to check your page for fan posts. And, when a fan leaves a post, respond to it! They don’t call it social for nothing.

This week, Facebook announced the launch of Facebook Collections, a Pinterest-Inspired social shopping feature aimed at giving advertisers another avenue to reach Facebook’s 800 million active users.

And Facebook Collections isn’t the only social foray into e-commerce. Sites like Fancy and ShopStyle are upping the ante when it comes to engaging users – and their credit cards.

While ShopStyle feels more artistic and aspirational in nature, allowing its users to play the role of fashion editors (or at least their interns), building lookbooks based around certain themes, trends or color schemes, Fancy brings the visual aesthetic of Pinterest fully into the territory of e-commerce, allowing users to “fancy” various products with the option to buy them.

This is exactly what Facebook is setting out to do with its Collections feature. While only select advertisers are in at the onset - Pottery Barn, Victoria’s Secret, Michael Kors, Neiman Marcus, and Fab.com among them – if user’s buy into the concept, advertisers of all stripes could soon be adding their creative to Facebook Collections.

While these early advertisers aren’t paying anything to be involved – and Facebook isn’t taking a cut of the purchase price – you can be sure that Facebook Collections will come at a price to advertisers eventually. Once, of course, Facebook has the data to backup whatever revenue model they roll out.

As for other social shopping sites, their revenue models look more like affiliate marketing models than anything else – which is good for advertisers, who get brand exposure while only having to pay an affiliate-style finder’s fee once a user clicks “buy.”

The social network is set to launch a new advertising service that will allow advertisers to retarget users and bid in real-time based on a user’s recent browsing activity. The new service will be called Facebook Exchange and is rumored to be available within a few weeks. A Facebook spokesperson said that pricing will based on a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) and ad spots will be sold via third-party vendors.

Facebook Exchange will target users by tracking cookies and the partner sites will then use these cookies to identify Facebook members. The social network will not allow its members to block these cookies and will leave it to the third-party vendors to take responsibility for giving the users the opportunity to opt-out.

The third-party vendors include Triggit, Turn, DataXu, MediaMath, AppNexus, TheTradeDesk and AdRoll.

There has been no word of any changes to the current Facebook advertising options, where advertisers can target its members by using specific demographic data alongside user Likes.

The Google Display Network (GDN) offers a similar product via Remarketing, however, the new Facebook Exchange product will allow advertisers to target people who like specific products or brands, allowing advertisers the ability to reach extremely targeted audiences. It will be interesting to see how the Facebook Exchange platform can supplement advertisers’ paid search marketing efforts and Remarketing campaigns through the GDN.

Continued from the article Facebook Timeline Guide for Business Pages, these recommendations are for preparing your brand for the new Facebook Page design.   Making sure you understand the new ways fans will experience your brand, and what steps to take to optimize your Timeline for release will ensure you are confident when rolling out the new Timeline to the public.  Spending time checking privacy settings, getting familiar with the new admin tools, and deciding how to leverage new features aid in building a successful strategy for your new Facebook Page.

Different User Experience - Spend some time becoming familiar with the new user experience with Timeline.  A default landing page will no longer be available for customized tabs or apps, all users will first experience the Timeline for a brand.  Four main images below the header will be how the tabs/apps are accessed.  There are static containers/boxes in the right column of the Page - below the header - with content based on the friends of fan’s unique interaction with your brand (likes, comments, check-ins).  The first box tells the user how many and who of their friends have been active on the Page and the second box is a collection posts from everyone that has interacted with your brand in Facebook (i.e. comments and tags).  This third container can be hidden from view via the management options. Once disabled, the posts will be distributed chronologically through the timeline instead of in that static box.  When a user is logged out of Facebook, the first static box on the right changes to show “Also On: [company website link]”.   This is great for when the Facebook page is found via search results, by offering anyone that isn’t a Facebook user a path to your main website.

Cover Image is a Must – You will need to design a banner image that is unique to your brand and will be something recognizable that fans will respond to.  Facebook wants to stress the importance of the experience, not being sales focused, but authentic and has provided guidelines for what the images can contain.  According to Facebook, the image you upload must be at least 399 pixels wide and the cover image may not contain:

• Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”

• Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section

• References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features

• Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”

Take note that the image header disappears once a user scrolls past it and a small navigation bar becomes available and includes the profile thumbnail and links to different features on the page like apps and highlighted posts.  This affects the visual brand presence when diving deeper into the Timeline, so highlighting image/video focused posts and adding company milestones should be considered to enhance exposure.

Review Post History – Use the activity log to review old posts from your timeline to determine what to hide, highlight, star, or pin.   You will want to make sure any posts that might have been a negative community experience are repressed when publishing so as not to incite a new conflict once the post is re-revealed in the page.  You can hide or delete a post, but by deleting the post you are removing it permanently form the page.  To hide a post, you hover over the right corner of the post to view the pencil icon and select the option to hide it. You can always unhide posts from the activity log.

Develop a Company Story - Determine what milestones to add to your brand’s timeline to create a unique company story.  This story should be similar to your existing brand voice and include images for each important event highlighted.  Adding these milestones helps to humanize your brand and shape the initial experience, so spend time organizing and building posts to reflect your company in a way that is intriguing to the user by including fun facts and photos about the company’s history.  Also, you can no longer automatically direct a user to a welcome tab with your company information; however, you will be able to link directly to the tab’s unique URL in posts and campaigns.  You can arrange which three tabs are viewed in the header area with the dropdown arrow.  The photos tab is static and will always populate in the first tab location.

New Page Management Tools – Admin panel is the new hub for most of the page management features and links.  From the panel you can see the most recent fan activity, likes on the page, and private messages.  Access to the page settings and privacy settings are within the dropdown navigation in the upper right corner of the panel.  You will also notice a message area where private messages from any visitor to your Page will appear.  Private messages can be an excellent customer service tool. However if you aren’t going to utilize the feature it can be deactivated in the manage permissions menu.  Another new feature Page managers should use is the Likes Insights tab, where upon clicking it on any Pages tab you can view basic insights for the audience activity.  Consider reviewing competitor Pages to better understand what they are doing to entice fan activity.

Facebook Pages will adapt how a consumer learns about your brand.  Take time to understand the new feature’s so you can build campaign strategies around them.  Audit what you have shared in the past, and discover what historical data can be created to enhance your brand awareness.  Utilize the management tools to connect with your audience, and decide if private messaging will be activated.  Focus on getting your images designed before the page is converted.  Using the preview function you will be able to identify which images will require the most attention.

If you need help developing your page or determining what strategy to implement going forward, then give us a call at 561-620-9682 or e-mail us.

Facebook Timeline is changing the way Business Pages look, how they are managed, and how they interact with fans.  The new Facebook Pages are being pushed out to all existing Business Pages on March 30th, 2012.  Before your company’s Timeline is released to the public, make sure you have optimized what you are sharing with your fans.  This blog reviews the features of the existing Facebook Timeline and the new Facebook Page features for businesses.  Check back next week for tips to guide you through the pre-launch of the new page before the end of this month.

All Facebook Pages will look different, act different, and the tools have changed.
Many people have been getting used to the new Timeline layout within their own pages since the release in September 2011.  It boasts a much more visual experience organizing all status updates chronologically in a bi-column format with larger image areas.  Timeline includes integrating check-ins and photos onto a geographical map, and a new header design for highlighting a main image along with your profile thumbnail.  There is also a new navigation layout - below the header - with about info and image boxes that link to photos, friends, likes, apps, and more.  With this layout a new type of content is being highlighted in your newsfeed - based on a social plugin (Open Graph API) - that shares your activities, like what you are listening to, depending on the app. Going back over time, a user has more control over who can view posts by hiding them or staring them, and can add Life Events throughout the timeline at any point to note important status updates that might have been missed.

The Facebook Pages are similar in appearance/features to the individual Timeline.  The new page will allow you to interact more freely with your fans, includes enhanced graphics, the ability to feature posts, and engage in private messages with fans.  Social Media marketing strategies can leverage the large banner/header, the ability to pin a post for up to seven days to the upper left area of the page, star a post (making it appear larger in the Timeline), and also highlight the company “milestones” by adding posts to dates in the past to promote the history of the brand.

To learn more about how to leverage these new features, and what to focus on before publishing your company’s new page, look for the second part of this article in the coming week, or give us a call, 561-620-9682.

Facebook’s paperwork for its Initial Public Offering filled this month, has created some media buzz and speculation as to what the company will be doing next.  The IPO included stats like, “Facebook  had 845 million active users as of Dec. 31, with slightly more than half of those people, 425 million, using mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to visit Facebook. An average day on Facebook sees about 483 million people logging into the world’s largest social network, an increase of 48 percent over the previous year.”, and other tid-bits that sparked a lot of ideas as to what to expect this year from the company.  In just the beginning of this year, Timeline was released for user profiles and will soon be made available for businesses too. If you haven’t been following all the media, here is a review of a few anticipated Facebook Updates in 2012 we think are important for businesses watch for.

Mobile App with Ads
The IPO alluded to mobile as a potential revenue source, and cautioned that the lack of mobile revenue could harm it, since nearly half of the users access the site on a mobile device.  According to Zoe Fox at Mashable, “Users of Facebook‘s apps — for Android, iPad and iPhone — may begin seeing ads as soon as early March, as the company looks to gain an addition revenue source before it goes public.”    Also, a new advertising method to expose ads to mobile users called, Sponsored Stories, was released in December of 2011, and embeds the advertised posts directly into the newsfeed of an individual’s profile.

Facebook Timeline for Businesses
On Feburary 29th, Facebook will be sponsoring an event for marketers where it is expected to announce the release of Timeline for Business Pages.  Timeline was recently released to profiles for all users and although it is getting mixed reviews, it offers a new experience for the site.  Timeline aggregates every Wall post in a profile into a chronological view that can be adapted, added to, and hidden away from view, changing the way information is accessed. Also, the new enhanced options for sharing with media partner applications directly in the Timeline.  Facebook VP-Marketing and Business Partnerships David Fischer said Timeline for brands would be “consistent” with the Timeline look-and-feel, but not a carbon copy.

What does that mean for businesses?
Marketers can use those mentions from user interaction, and give their brand wider distribution through sponsored stories. “Marketers want to promote stories about the things they’re affiliated with but don’t always own the apps,” said Gokul Rajaram, Facebook Ads director of product management, referring to apps from services such as Spotify, Netflix or Pintrest that allow users to share what content they’re consuming. “Now you can promote stories from any app about objects you own, not just from the page owned by the marketer.”  This will open a whole new way to target ads as well, based on what a user is listening to, reading, or watching when the ad is served.

Brands will have the ability to promote the history of their business by adding historical facts to the Timeline.  A large customized design in the profile banner can be adapted more often to promote the brand, campaigns and contests, or other relevant marketing to drive traffic to.  Unfortunately it’s rumored that Page Tabs,  which were once visible under the profile image, will now be condensed and hidden in a box at the top of the page.  Kunur Patel of Ad Age Digital suspects that the format change is to promote the use of the “Open Graph” apps and could put pressure on brands to develop their own apps using custom verbs other than “like,” in the same vein as Pinterest, which has a Facebook app that tracks when its users have “pinned” something.

As Facebook continues to expand, and gain the billions of revenue expected from the public offering, there will be new internal initiatives being added frequently to ensure that the revenue generated by the company will meet stockholder’s expectations.  That being said, we expect the advertising element within Facebook to continue to expand and add options for businesses to increase exposure and engagement with their fans.

What updates will you need to make in your own Social Media Strategy for the Facebook of 2012?

There are a lot of articles circulating about the benefits of mobile advertising. In fact, many companies and brands are embracing mobile advertising and seeing impressive results. However, the mobile advertising market hasn’t been cornered by one particular vendor and some are wondering if Facebook is going to join the mobile scene.

Facebook is recognized as one of the top social media sites. Plus, numerous businesses appreciate the advance targeting features that are available in Facebook such as demographics, interests, connections, etc. Some would like to use these advanced settings to reach the mobile market. This means businesses would already be prepared to pay Facebook to reach their respective audience. Another plus is that people use their cell phones to check on their Facebook accounts already, so it’s not like Facebook would have to entice anyone to go on their site via a mobile device. They also, have loads of mobile user data at their fingertips. According to an article on CNET, “Facebook already has access to data of a large mobile user base”… Facebook says nearly half of its nearly 800 million users already log in via mobile devices, giving the network momentum in a market estimated to be worth $630 million.” 

Facebook seems to be in a great position to join the mobile market, and despite rumors that they will be offering mobile advertising soon, Facebook has declined to speak about the matter.  Many businesses will benefit if Facebook gives them the ability to run mobile ads.  The ball is in their court to enable mobile ads and only time will tell how they’ll proceed.