To be successful in social media your page/brand requires a mix of authenticity, openness, transparency. Your page as a whole, all the areas complete – showing the “personality”, or brand of your business. If it applies, make it fun – add visually appealing graphics where ever you can. We’ve heard all over the web to “Tell Your Story” – you can do that so easily with a FB page.
This is your Overall Visual Branding – anyone can do this to get started… **On Next Page** Profile Image, Navigation (iFrame App = FB App + Web page), About Box, Your Likes, Photostrip, Wall ***Setting up a page: you can now edit your categories, something FB didn’t use to allow you to do. Edit Page Basic Information Category: 2 drop downs
Profile Image, Navigation (iFrame App = FB App + Web page), About Box, Your Likes, Photostrip, Wall ***Setting up a page: you can now edit your categories, something FB didn’t use to allow you to do. Edit Page Basic Information Category: 2 drop downs
A vanity URL is simply a “pretty” address. Normally, a profile or business page has a long string of numbers and other characters to identify it. Trying to point people to your page using this address is next to impossible to say out loud – and sending via email, it may be long enough to break… Once your page has 25 ‘fans’, you can register a Vanity URL, or “Username”. Facebook.com/...username – short, simple, and sweet. You can say, “just visit my page at Facebook.com/...username”. Makes it much easier to remember, or even search for you.
Social Media Strategy You know you’re supposed to have a page, you’ve gotten this far… but now what?!? What do you do, and why? To be successful in social media – for your business, for your brand, for you – as I mentioned earlier, your page needs a mix of authenticity, openness, transparency. To a certain extent – it’s a bit about giving up control. The key thing that is different with setting a social media strategy is to realize that it is not all about reaching a mass audience and blasting your message out - it is more about connecting with your customers, developing relationships, having a conversation, and ultimately, reaching the influencers. If your customers are local, you already have a leg up – most likely you personally know many of your customers! DiscoverWith any business, if you begin to tap into what your market wants, you’ll both come away better for the experience.
#1: Determine Your Goals and Objectives What Do You want to get out of it? What messages are you trying to send out? Keep it S pecific, M easurable, A ttainable, R ealistic/Relevant, and T imely (aka be SMART #2: How much Time do you want to spend? Figure out how much time you have each week to spend on your Facebook page. Be honest. Say you want to only spend one hour per week – total on your FB page. That’s only 12 minutes Monday through Friday! This will help you later, when you create a Content/Posting Calendar.
#3: Join the Conversation You customers want to see the real “you” – when I say who, I may not mean you personally. Social Media makes is easy for you to share your company culture – some personal glimpses to “behind the scenes”, or upcoming events/products that you are excited about Make sure to respond to any comment on your Page – good or bad #4: Don’t be Afraid to Experiment! As you dive deeper into the never-ending pool of social media, you’ll quickly understand what works and what doesn’t.
There are at least four technologies you can use to track your editorial calendar: Pieces of paper and a file folder A paper calendar or online calendar A spreadsheet or online spreadsheet Tracking software within your publishing software Each of these tools has advantages and disadvantages. Paper, for example, works great for a small business that only needs to publish new content every week or month. Calendars work well if you have only 1-4 stories a day, or less frequency, and you’re the primary or sole author or a one person team. Spreadsheets can intimidate because they can hold so much information. It’s tempting to think you have to track every last detail in a spreadsheet when, in fact, you should track only critical information. Whatever tool you use to track your editorial calendar, the secret of success is simplicity. Your calendar will evolve and adapt. But simplicity should be a key goal when you design and change your calendar. The more complex your calendar, and what you track, the more likely you are to not use it and benefit.
The real advantage of making an editorial or content calendar is that you can create a framework that shows how much and where you’re planning to interact socially. Furthermore you can see how the content posting supports your social marketing objectives (we talked about SMART earlier). Content type: What types of content do I want to be posting? News links, blog links, photos, videos, queries, event links, Follow Fridays, etc. Goal: For each channel, what is my goal? What am I ultimately trying to accomplish by tweeting, Facebooking, etc.? Audience(s): Who am I talking to? Mostly students? Alumni and parents? All of the above? Brand messages: What messages should I keep in mind when posting? How does this channel support and convey our brand?
Are your numbers “Likes” increasing over time? You can view your FB Insights To do: Monitor brand mentions on a regular schedule (daily/weekly) using a free alerts tool like Google Alerts . While not necessarily comprehensive, this offers a regular digest of the individual instances of brand mentions in blogs, mainstream news media sites, and on large public social networks like Twitter.
Others: Social Mention - Social Mention is one of the most prominent tools on the Internet for measuring your brand’s buzz. This free do-it-yourself tool will scan blogs, social bookmarks, 100+ social networking sites, comments, images, news, video, events, microblogs and the rest of the social web. This tool is remarkably similar to any other search engine so explanations on how to use it aren’t required.
