Entries Tagged 'facebook' ↓

It had to happen sooner or later.

The social media giant, Facebook, no longer satisfied with invading our personal life, is now gearing up to make an impact in our work life too.

The idea behind “Facebook at Work” is to provide a work-related social media experience that will rival the likes of Google, Microsoft and IBM’s enterprise tools.

Currently, it is being used within Facebook helping teams to communicate and plan through Messages and Groups. They can also collaborate on projects.

Once bit of good news is that this new platform will be hosted separately from private Facebook to ensure security between personal and private versions, with no sharing of information or data across the two sites.

There is no news yet as to when it will be available, but as soon as I hear anything I’ll let you know.

Sally Ormond, Briar Copywriting Ltd

As an online marketer, you’re always looking for new ways to boost your customer engagement.

Have you considered embedding your Facebook posts on your website or blog?

Back in July, Facebook announced the ability to embed public posts onto your website using just a few lines of code.

How do you do that?

Posts from either your personal or business page can be embedded. All you have to do is click on the drop down arrow (top right of the post you want to embed) and you’ll see the option to embed post:

Once clicked, you’ll then get the code required. All you have to do is copy and paste it into your website or blog.

The only caveat is that you can’t embed public posts from within groups. Of course, the privacy settings of the poster will also affect your ability to use the post.

So what benefit will embedded posts bring?

Well, they can be used as:

•  Testimonials
• Examples of Facebook usage if you blog about stuff like that
• Interactive material especially if it’s a statistic you want to share (referencing the original source with a link)
• A tool through which to share video
• A way of boosting engagement of a Facebook discussion

Not only that, but all embedded posts include a ‘Like’ button for the page, so you could also increase your fan base.

Over to you

Is this news to you, or are you already using it?

If so, what have been your experiences? Good or bad.

Leave a comment below

Author: Sally Ormond, Copywriter and MD at Briar Copywriting Ltd. Follow her on Twitter and Google+

What’s going wrong?

You’re regularly adding new updates to your Facebook page, but they seem to be falling flat on their face.

No one is commenting, liking or sharing.

Perhaps all your fans are out and their mobiles have run out of charge so they’re not seeing what you’re writing.

Or perhaps you’re just not engaging with them.

Check out some of these common mistakes and see if any of them ring bells for you.

1. Too broad and personal

What exactly are you writing about?

How broad are the questions you’re asking? It’s always best to ask something specific if you want to get a lot of responses. Also, make sure your questions aren’t too personal in nature.

2. Mixture

There’s nothing wrong with text updates, but they do get pretty boring after a while.

Mix them up with photos, links and videos to keep the interest of your audience. You can even add polls to find out what your fans are thinking.

3. Fun

Even if you’re writing for a big company, inject a bit of fun into your updates. No one will engage with you if you keep posting boring corporate stuff. Facebook is all about having fun, so don’t be a stick in the mud.

4. The wider world

There’s nothing worse than a business harping on about themselves all the time. There is a whole world out there to write about and comment on, so open your eyes and write about other stuff too.

5. Relevancy

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because you like something everyone else will too.

Think about your audience and what’s important to them – you must put their needs before yours.

6. Hello?

When you do get comments don’t ignore them. Facebook is about 2-way communication, so when a fan reaches out to you respond to them and strike up a conversation.

7. Offers

Every now and then make them an offer they can’t refuse. Make it a Facebook only offer and you’ll encourage a whole new raft of people to like your page.

8. Patience

It’s not going to happen overnight.

You’ve got to give it time to start to work and you’ll be learning about your fans as you go along, honing your posting until you find something that works. But it is worth the effort, so hang in there.

There’s a lot more to Facebook than just writing random status updates. You must constantly think about your audience and what they’ll want to see – it’s just like marketing!

Author:

Sally Ormond, copywriter and MD at Briar Copywriting Ltd.

You’ve probably heard by now that Facebook is introducing the clickable hashtag (#).

Many see it as getting in on Twitter’s act, but will it really add value to Facebook users?

One thing’s for sure it will definitely help advertisers. With an already highly targeted marketing facility, Facebook advertisers will be able to use the hashtags the find hotspots of user activity around specific events and topics.

As for normal users of the social media platform, well they will be able to find out what their friends think about a trending topic and can group comments together on the same topic simply by typing a hashtag alongside a keyword.

This is what Facebook’s Greg Lindley had to say:

“Every day, hundreds of millions of people use Facebook to share their thoughts on big moments happening all around them. Whether it’s talking about a favorite television show, cheering on a hometown sports team or engaging with friends during a breaking news event—people on Facebook connect with their friends about what’s taking place all over the world. To date, there has not been a simple way to see the larger view of what’s happening or what people are talking about. To bring these conversations more to the forefront, we will be rolling out a series of features that surface some of the interesting discussions people are having about public events, people, and topics. As a first step, we are beginning to roll out hashtags on Facebook.” (Facebook newsroom)

You can search for hashtags using the search bar at the top of the Facebook home page. They will also tie into those from other sites such as Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and Twitter.

So what do you think?

Have Facebook just copied Twitter, or do you think the hashtag will be a valuable addition to its functionality?

Leave a comment below and let us know what you think.

More and more businesses are beginning to utilise the power of Facebook as part of their online marketing strategy – in fact 69% (source: zednet) of small business owners currently use it.

But if you want it to make a different to your business, you have to know what you’re doing; miss-use it and you could do more harm than good.

So what do you need to know to make sure you don’t make any Facebook marketing faux pas?

1. What’s the plan?

Setting up a Facebook business page is easy, perhaps a little too easy.

Frequently, a business will get all excited about using Facebook, set up a page and then sit back and wait. But without a plan about how you’re going to use your business page, its value to your business is limited.

Before you get going think about why you want to be on Facebook, is it for:

• Building brand awareness?
• Connecting with your customers?
• To gather a loyal following of fans?
• Improve your customer service by increasing your accessibility?

A plan is essential if you want to get the most out of it.

2. It’s not free

 Uh?

OK, there is no charge for setting up your Facebook business page; the cost we’re talking about here is the cost in man-hours for you.

If you want your page to be effective you must have someone (or a team depending on how popular and successful it is) monitoring it for you. Therefore it’s essential you keep this invisible cost in mind when you analyse the effectiveness of your Facebook strategy.

3. Joined up marketing

Your entire marketing strategy – on and offline – must be linked to get the best out of it.

Make sure all your marketing (website, brochures, flyers, business cards etc.) show your Facebook page address. Of course that also means that if you’re directing people to the page it must have content they need, but more about that later.

4. Measure

How do you measure your page’s effectiveness?

Well, you could take the number of fans into consideration, but that only goes someway to showing the popularity of your page. A more valuable measure would be the number of shares you get and comments on your page’s content.

If these are both high it suggests that you’re providing the kind of content your customers and fans want.

5. Getting the balance right

When it comes to the content you put out, you have to do a bit of research. Take a look at the response to your comments, posts, videos etc. Find the type of content your fans like the most and give them more of the same.

Also make sure your frequency of posting is right; too much and you could put people off; too little and you won’t engage them.

As you can see, marketing with a Facebook page takes a lot of thought and a well-devised strategy.

How are you using yours?

Are you happy with your engagement levels?

Leave a comment below and share your Facebook business page experiences.

Author: Sally Ormond. Copywriter and MD at Briar Copywriting Ltd