Wednesday, 23 April 2014

10 Facebook Rules Every Business Needs to Know Before Posting

On Facebook there isn’t one “perfect post” or ideal time of day to post. Instead, you can develop a strategy that gets different types of content to different types of people, at different times. The key factor to remember when creating Facebook content is that you need to be vigilant—constantly looking to diversify what and when you post.
infographic1. Keep things positive
Being positive promotes engagement and encourages sharing. Equally as important, being negative may cost you fans. People are quick to unlike a business if posts are negative or controversial.
2. Make your posts informative by giving “tips” and including links
The most appealing updates are ones that offer something. Don’t disclose everything — this increases the likelihood that fans will click.  Post an interesting fact. If you are an expert in the field, share tips. If you’re sharing a blog post or an online article, create a status update that features the piece’s most interesting fact or statement to stir reader curiosity and encourage click-throughs. Instead of copying and pasting a long URL into your status update, use a link-shortener like Bit.ly to make your post brief and more likely to be shared.
3. Always Include images and your logo
Posts with images get the highest amount of engagement on Facebook, so be sure to include one when you can. The perfect size is 800×600. Increase your brand awareness by including your logo on the images that you post. Creating content is “king.” The more original content you can create, the better.
4. Keep your posts mobile-friendly
Use simple imagery that can easily be seen on mobile devices — anywhere from 50-70% of your fans read your posts on their phones.  This means that when you are creating content, mobile users should be your first thought as opposed to being an afterthought.
5. Thank and reward your fans
Your fans want to feel as if they are part of a community. This turns casual fans into brand advocates. Make your fans feel as if they are benefiting from being your fan. Offer Facebook exclusive deals and thank them. This helps your business grow through word of mouth and proves popular as a post topic.
6. Always respond to posts
Posts aren’t the only activities that grab attention — comments and responses are equally as important. Engage with people and build relationships through conversation.  This includes being available to respond and addressing negative feedback. Never delete a negative post. Instead, address it and own it. Admitting fault makes you look more credible. 
7. All of your posts need to be engaging
Ask questions to get engagement. Multiple choice questions, fill in the blank, and describe this picture in three words are all simple techniques that increase engagement. You cannot simply share stories or information. Engage the audience with your posts. The more people are engaged with your content, the more people that will see your content. If you are posting consistently with your company logo (see #3), the more people will develop a connection between your company and your message.
 8. You should be posting 5-10 times a week
A common mistake many companies make is posting too much or too little. You want to make sure that fans see your brand. Your “superfans” will see all of what you post, whereas casual fans will see less. Posting 5-10 times a week helps assure that if fans missed a message on Monday, they will see a different message on Tuesday.
9. Get feedback from your fans
All too many companies fail to get feedback from their fans.  Your Facebook fans can be your own personal focus group and they are often interested in sharing their opinions. Additionally, they like to think that their opinion could help shape future business decisions.
10. Develop a consistent tone
It is important that you aren’t harming your brand by posting information that does not match your brand identity. Just because you find something amusing, doesn’t mean that your fans will.
Bonus:
11. Tell users what to expect

If you’re posting a video or linking to a lengthy blog article, set your followers’ expectations by telling them exactly how long it is so they know what to expect.
Day of the week:
Moods change by the day of the week:
Mondays: Morale is low but optimistic.
Tuesdays: People are at their lowest. The week feels as if it has still only started. People are also most susceptible to advertisements.
Wednesday: The week is starting to look up.  People are more motivated.
Thursday: There is a light at the end of the tunnel. People are in good moods and like to be reminded of it.
Friday: People are checked-out and looking to get out. They are easily distracted.
Saturday: People are out enjoying their weekends.
Sunday: People are optimistic and motivated about the next week.
In essence, mood matters. This means that you should post different content on different days of the week.
Time of day:
Post when the audience is listening not just when your business is open. This will ensure more user engagement. However, do not always post at the same time of day. Fans that are on in the morning are going to be different than the fans that are on in the evening.

Too Much Content: Could It Happen?

Short answer: yes. Too much content can actually scare potential clients and readers away. If they have to wade through a pool of different content to get to the meat of your website, they will run away very fast. “When is content considered too much?” you ask.
Let’s discuss this and how to avoid publishing or creating overwhelming amounts, and as a bonus give you some ideas on how to use your content to tease readers into wanting more. So, get your thinking caps on and get ready to learn about The Day of Too Much Content.

How Do I Know I Have Too Much Content?

If you start noticing that you are losing readers and visitors it is a very good indication that your content might be overwhelming. We know that you have spent countless hours preparing your content and we know that is pretty awesome, too. Just because the content is great and has had a lot of preparation does not mean that your customers will like it, though. Less really is more when it comes to content writing.
Business2Community suggests self-examination when you start realizing your website is losing readers. We are going to unpack what this means in the following section.
1. It’s a Tough Crowd, Charlie Brown. Just ask any comedian – audiences are hard to pleaseWhen you are writing your content, you need to know your audience and what they expect from you. If you aren’t talking their “language” you are going to lose them quickly. If your audience is in the tech world, you shouldn’t write things that aren’t related to that field. If your audience doesn’t know much about tech, don’t write about tech. Simple as that. Too much of the wrong content will hurt your company.
2. Are You Living up to Your Expectations? You have expectations for your company; everyone does, but are you living up to them? If you aren’t, it is time to re-evaluate your content strategy and re-evaluate what you expect from it. You may think you’ll go viral if you post a ton of photos a day on your social media site but instead you realize that your page likes are going down. This means you need to stop sharing so much and start sharing small, impactful photos or updates. Don’t spam people’s newsfeeds.
3. Where is Your Audience Going? Are you sending them to your front page or to a specific landing page? If you’re sending them to your homepage, you should know that they will feel very overwhelmed. Most front pages are packed with information, photos, links, ads, etc. and that gets very confusing and overwhelming. Tweak your landing pages to bring in customers to a specific place. You can use a landing page to give a brief description of your company, encourage people to sign up for updates, and give links to your social media sites. A landing page is crucial to a successful website and company.

Tease Audiences into Wanting More

If you want to bring in more people, you have to tease them, not overwhelm them. Here are a few ways you can do this and start gaining back your readership.
1. Giveaways. People love getting free stuff and giveaways are a perfect opportunity to build relationships with clients. You can use giveaways to keep your existing clients but you can also use them to bring in more readers and promote your company more. Giving people the ability to get extra entries is one of the ways to do this. Tell people they get one entry simply by commenting but can get X amount more (chose how many entries you’d like to give) by sharing on social media sites and blogging about it. People will do whatever they can if there is a potential to win, so take advantage of that!
2. Spoilers. If you have a big announcement coming up, think about spending a few days/weeks prior by vague tweeting and updating. This will start garnering interest because curiosity is a major part of human consciousness. Occasionally let something “slip” to make people chortle at your “mistake” as they attempt to solve what the big news is. You can even implement giveaways into this and give a prize away if someone guesses the big news (just don’t tell them until you have announced your news!).
3. Ask for Input. Your clients and readers are the best resources to utilize to find out if you post too much content. Send out questionnaires and make a web poll for them to access. You could create an anonymous tip box where people can freely tell you what needs to change. Take their suggestions and start implementing them into your content creation and you will see tremendous growth in visits to your website. Creating client participation is very important to all businesses.

Make Changes and Succeed

Creating enough content that isn’t overwhelming will save your business and will bring in more clients. Stay away from making common mistakes with your content and begin to be more personal with your readers. This isn’t the time to feel bad that your site isn’t drawing in readers; it is time to take action and make changes!

Twitter's New Profiles Are Now Available to Everyone



Twitter_redesign-2
IMAGE: MASHABLE, WILL FENSTERMAKER
Twitter's redesigned profiles, which the company has been testing for months, are now available to everyone.
The Facebook-like redesign emphasizes larger text, images and a customizable profile that is designed to be a more in-depth summary about the user. You can activate your new profilehere.
The new rollout showcases a user's most popular tweets in a larger font. Users can also pin a specific tweet at the top of their feed, and they can now filter feeds so that they only show tweets with images and/or video, regular tweets or tweets and replies.
User photos are a bit bigger, and profiles now have a wide cover image, again similar toFacebook. Information about the user falls under the profile image, followed by smaller photos of that user's friends.
Speaking of, one of the most prominent changes to Twitter's profiles is the "following list." However, it's not a list, but rather an organized collage of the accounts a user follows, complete with a miniature version of their profile images, cover images and basic information.
Until now, the only users with the new Twitter profiles were celebrities and a select few other accounts.