Tag Archive for: social media

Sincerity of Facebook ‘Likes’ is Serious Business

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The existence of fake or bought Facebook ‘Likes’ has been pretty well documented, but now, Facebook is actually stepping up their efforts to stop the practice. As Doug Gross reports for CNN, last month, the social media site announced plans to improve its “”site integrity system”. Those plans include cutting out fake ‘Likes’ and eliminating spam accounts.

There are many ways a page can gain ill-gotten ‘Likes’, but Facebook claims their new system catches all of them. The selling of ‘Likes’ is a strictly forbidden practice and some pages have already seen a large number of their ‘Likes’ disappear.

A blog post detailing the new site improvements stated it best, “a Like that doesn’t come from someone truly interested in connecting with a Page benefits no one”. 

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Facebook Introduces ‘Gifts’ To Increase Revenue

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No doubt you’re aware of Facebook’s struggles since becoming a publicly traded company. Weary and wary investors want to see effective ways to monetize the social media giant, which Facebook is currently putting all its efforts into. Jon Swartz reports the latest attempt to increase revenue at USA Today.

In May, Facebook acquired social-gift-giving company Karma and, last week, announced a new service called ‘Gifts’ that will allow users to share gift certificates to retailers through their profile. Interestingly, Facebook plans to start by making Gifts available to a small group of users on the main site and through an Android app. The iPhone app isn’t expected for another few weeks.

This is the 2nd public attempt to increase ad revenue by Facebook in recent weeks. You may remember the recent announcement that Facebook Offers would now require businesses to pay to be included.

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Create Your Social Media Presence with These Fundamentals

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To maximize your business’s potential, you need an online presence. But in order to be successful with your endeavors into social media, there’s a foundation that must be layed. Here are four fundamentals, or building blocks, to get you started on creating your social media presence.

1. Set Goals, Make a Plan

Without a plan and clear goals in mind, you are already doomed to fail. Afterall, if you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know when you get there? Or, more importantly, when you veer off course.

Think about how you will define success and how you plan to achieve it. Consider why you are using social media and how you’d like it to benefit your business. Also, put yourself in your desired audience’s shoes and try to discover what they’d like to see out of your profile.

The Digital Relativity blog has more on setting goals.

2. Tools

By tools, I mean the social media platform of your choosing. This goes right along with making a plan because before jumping in, you should be researching various platforms to make sure you are using the most effective one for your business.

If your target demographic doesn’t include women 18-30, maybe you can skip making a Pinterest account.

If you want to concentrate more on articles and written content, you may not need to spend time on Instagram, YouTube or Tumblr.

Not that you can’t manage more than one social media platform at once, but you’ll likely be most effective with your time if you narrow down your choice as much as possible so your message is most powerful and received by your desired audience.

3. Be a Credible Source

Once you’ve landed on the right site for you, become a source of constant, consistent, credible content. Not only should you create your own, but you can also share content from other sources. You can even share competitors content and add a little extra commentary to set yourself apart.

The idea is to send the message that your business is the expert in your field. Ideally, when people think of topics that pertain to your business, they’ll think of you.

4. Build an Audience

What good is any of this if no one is around to see what you’ve done? Certainly, being on the right social media platform is a great start. Boxcar Marketing has some tips for building an audience on specific platforms.

Having great content is also key to making sure you have users continually viewing your profile.

Once everything is in place, target influential users that boast a large following and send them your content in hopes that they’ll share it. This isn’t necessarily someone you personally think is influential, but rather someone your users will respect and likely be paying attention to already.

Also, be active on your profile and on other user’s profiles. If you receive comments on content you’ve shared, comment back and start an intelligent discussion. If you see interesting content shared by someone else, drop in your two-cents, which again helps you become a trusted expert in your field. Interaction will bring potential customers back more than sterile content.

Above all, be professional, be courteous and be relevant. Don’t stray off course from your business. This isn’t a profile where you share your views or you interests. This profile is for the users that need your service. Give them what they want.

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Facebook Friends with an Ex Not Just Bad, Bad For You

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A recent study led by psychologist Dr. Tara Marshall found that conitnuing to be Facebook friends with an ex after your break-up can be psychologically damaging. And here you thought “Facebook stalking” was just a fun term to throw around.

Dr. Marshall concludes that keeping tabs on an ex actually hinders the healing process after a break-up. In other words, it’s harder to move on when you constantly see the person you used to date smiling in your timeline.

Another Facebook landmine exists for those who are now in a stable relationship. Finding an ex and friending them can be upsetting to your current partner, even if it’s for nothing more than catching up.

Julie Kent has more at The Cleveland Leader.

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The Cost of Social Media Continues to Rise

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I’ve written before about the hidden cost of social media marketing. While Facebook, Twitter and the like are all free to use, their is the inherent cost of your time to keep your online presence where you want it.

Heather Clancy, of ZDNet, now reports that managing social media for small or midsize businesses often costs hundreds of dollars per month for tools or for outsourced manpower.

Clancy’s report is based on research done by Duct Tape Marketing, who’s creator, John Jantsch, attributes the findings to business owners’ realization that social media is “an essential element of the marketing mix.”

Despite spending nearly $1000 per month on social media, almost all responding business owners said their online presence has “somewhat helped” or “helped a great deal”.

It appears social media has joined the ranks of print, radio or TV ads. It’s a pay to play system, so you’d better be sure you’re getting your money’s worth.

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Use Social Media for Awareness, Not Sales

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Forrester Research Inc. recently researched the purchase paths of 77-thousand online shoppers to come to the conclusion that social media does not lead to direct sales. As Zach Stambor reports for Internet Retailer, “less than 1-percent of transactions for new and repeat customers can be traced back to social links.” 

Despite these findings, another Forrester survey found that, when asked, consumers claim that they do make purchases based on social media posts. Nearly half agreed that they find out about new products or brands through social media and 40-percent said social media posts are “a great way to discover sales.”

Essentially, this means that, despite the lack of direct sales associated with social media, it is still a valuable tool to raise awareness of your brand. Think about your own purchase path for products you’ve bought online. Does one email or social media post lead you to whip out your credit card? More than likely, you do some research and view mulitple marketing channels.

Forrester’s purchase path analysis found just that. One-third of shoppers take this multi-faceted approach for first time customers and it’s almost half of repeat buyers.

Perhaps the most telling statistic to come from the analysis is the role of email for repeat customers. Almost a third of that return business came from email. 13-percent went directly from email to sale and 17-percent read the email and clicked through to other marketing channels.

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Social Media: From Private to Public?

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Facebook, Twitter and, perhaps to a lesser extent, other social media platforms have become a public forum where ideas, opinions and news are exchanged. Peter M. Gunn, of Huffington Post, argues that because social media is a essentially a public service, it’s time to take it out of the private sector and into the public one.

Social media companies have, without a doubt, changed the way we communicate. But then, fire stations changed the way we fought fire and they began as private entities. There’s actually a good argument that your privacy would be better protected by a government run social media site than it is on Facebook. For example, when is the last time the Post Office ‘shared’ your personal information with another company? Now, when is the last time Facebook ‘shared’ your email address, demographic stats or browsing habits?

Also, Facebook and Twitter can’t protect First Amendment rights. Thanks to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which says law enforcement can gain access to electronic documents with only a subpoena, they can’t protect Fourth Amendment rights, either.

Perhaps, rather than the broad step of government run socia media, stricter regulations on existing social media could be put into place. Considering the deep pockets of the existing companies, however, and their current investment in lobbying, that seems unlikely to occur.

Certainly, there could exist a public-owned social media alternative that protects your freedoms, while the privately-owned alternatives continue to thrive. Case in point, the US Post Office doesn’t run FedEx or UPS out of business. It comes down to how much protection you want for your online communication.

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Get More Retweets

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Would you like the increase in your audience and the thrill that only comes from a retweet? Of course you do. Ann Smarty, of Search Engine Journal, has seven ways for you to get retweeted more.

1. Read Expert Opinions

Reading this article is a good start. Now, go find more opinions on getting retweeted and become an expert yourself.

2. Find Peak Hours

Use available analytic tools to find when your desired demographic uses Twitter. Then, tweet so you’re near the top of your audiences timeline.

3. Use Viral Content Buzz

It’s a free social media platform you should look into. There’s an option to get you more retweets while you retweet other users. Maybe it’s a bit of a cheat, but it gets the job done.

4. Twitter Chats

When you participate in Twitter chats, you gain the ears and eyes of a large audience. Suddenly, you’re a familiar name to many more users.

5. Get the Scoops

Follow news outlets or other streams that break news first. Then, spread the word about breaking stories or tweet about stories you just find interesting. Links get more retweets and links to news no one else has heard makes you a desired follow.

6. Name Drop

Pay attention to those that follow you that boast their own impressive number of followers. Mention them by name in some of your tweets. Hopefully, they’ll retweet you occassionally. If not, at least you may capture part of their audience by showing up in their feed.

7. Repeat Yourself

If you have success with a particular tweet, don’t just forget about it. Use it again, as long as it is still relevant, down the road. It will be new to a big chunk of users.

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You Should Be Tracking These Social Media Goals

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Want to know how to evaluate your buisiness’s performance in social media? Is your time and effort getting acceptable returns? Andrew K. Kirk, of Social Media Examiner, has 4 goals you should be tracking to ensure a positive social media ROI.

1. Brand Recognition

Obviously, you need people to be aware of your business. But the more people know, the more likely they will become active members of your online community.

Track your growing popularity with Klout, which gives you a social influence score based on your performance across multiple social media sites. Log your score each month and think about what actions you took during that time frame. Soon, you should be able to pinpoint what positively and negatively affects you online presence.

2. Traffic

Just as people need to be aware of your business, people also need to visit your website. Visitors will likely learn more about your business directly from your site than from anywhere else.

With Google Analytics, you can easily track visits and discover what is affecting those.

3. Repeat Business

Any business needs repeat customers to thrive. For your online presence to thrive, you need visitors to return to your site and stay longer.

To track loyalty, you can customize Google Analytics and then do a little math. Well worth it in the end.

4. Conversions

The previous steps don’t necessarily translate into an improvement in your bottom line. Afterall, the effort you put into your online presence better be worth it. You should know the ratio of overall visitors to your site to conversions. You should also know the correlation of social media activity to conversions and the source for the majority of your traffic that converts.

Again, Google Analytics has you covered. By setting up some goals and tinkering a bit, you’ll soon have all the data you need to measure your goals and get the most out of your time on social media.

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Twitter Updates Improve Experience…For Advertisers

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Twitter users have no doubt taken notice of multiple, recent updates to improve user experience. What they may not have noticed is that these updates are mostly geared toward helping advertisers engage consumers, as Romain Dillet writes for TechCrunch.

Recent improvements include a better search function. Finally, right? Well, now it’s much easier to find specific companies and follow them.

There’s also the changes to the look of profile pages. For businesses, the company name is much larger than the @username and a giant logo appears as the header. These changes affect users as well, but were clearly designed with advertisers in mind. Much like the ability to pin a tweet to the top of the timeline, which will most likely serve to let consumers know about current specials.

Certainly, there are still room for improvements to make Twitter a perfect advertising machine. However, in order to remain effective, Twitter also needs to keep normal, product-buying users happy and on-board. That juggling act is no small feat.

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