Five Easy Places to Find Social Media Content

Do you ever find yourself staring at your computer, wracking your brain for the answer to "what the heck am I going to post on Facebook today"?

Fear not social media mangers: there are easy ways and places to find content that are right under your nose. Many of the places I look for content are easy to search and filled with oodles of content just for you!

1. Google Images: The neat thing about Google Images is that you can literally search anything and at least something will come up. Let's say you are doing social media for a lawn care company and you are trying to find a picture to encourage engagement on your page. Google "funny lawn" in images. The page literally doesn't end and there are hilarious content pictures for you to use!

Caution: If you are going to be publishing something using one of the Google images, make sure you are not breaking copy write!

2. Twitter: Twitter feeds are filled with a wealth of relevant information for your company if you know how to search for it. An easy way to find related content is to go into the search box and use a hashtag term to look for content. Let's use the example of a marketing company. A marketing company may search hashtags such as: #marketing, #SEO, #socialmedia, and #advertising. An endless Twitter feed of information will appear and I promise you will find at least one article or tip you can use for your social media.

Caution: Make sure to click the link before your re-tweet to actually read the article and make sure the link works. If bad content is present, you may upset your followers.

3. Wikipedia: Yes I know you are saying, "what is she thinking?" but seriously, it works for finding topics to search for. Let's say you run social media for a handyman company. Put "handyman" into the search bar and quickly skim through the article. Scroll down and you'll see a section of the article that gives you a whole list of "handyman jobs". Now, you can use those as search terms on other sites to find content.

Caution: Wikipedia is meant to be an "idea box" (in my opinion). It gives you a good overview of information, but many of the facts, figures, and articles listed on that site are not reliable and you want to caution yourself against giving false information to your customers.

4. Pinterest: The best thing about Pinterest is the variety of content. Not only can you find good pictures, you can also find articles on virtually any topic, websites you've never heard of, and that "perfect post" you've been waiting to find. It's easy to search for key terms and browse general categories until you find what you are looking for.

Caution: If you are re-pinning any of the material you find, make sure to click on the image and see where it goes. You don't want to direct your customers to a dead-end website or a competitor!

5. Social media sites for companies like yours: Who knows the industry better than your competitors? Similar social media sites can be a great resource. What I mainly use this for is seeing what topics they are posting about, how often they are posting, and maybe to use some of their content.

Caution: Is this content poaching? Well it can be if you steal all their content all the time,so use this one in moderation.

I hope that this gives you some ideas of where to find a variety of quality content for your various social media sites!

What resources do you use for finding content? How do you keep your ideas fresh and interactive?

~Melissa

Social Media for Businesses Part 2: Facebook for Business

I am completing a three-part series on social media platforms for businesses with one blog for Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. Welcome to Part 2!

I will be highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of using Facebook based on my own experience; I do social media marketing for almost ten different companies, so I'll be sure to take the best of the best advice to pass on to you!

I'll start with the advantages that Facebook has for businesses:

1) It's easy to use: Facebook works hard to be user friendly; easy to post, easy to see your analytics, and easy to keep track of customer engagement. They also make business pages similar in format to personal pages so it will seem extra familiar to the regular Facebook user.

2) There is a large number of active users: According to Facebook's website, they have more than a billion monthly active users and 618 million daily active users (as of December 2012). This is a huge market to tap into and you don't want to miss out on it!

3) You can schedule content directly through Facebook: Facebook allows you to schedule posts directly through your business page. It lets you schedule posts up to five months out; posts can have links, pictures, videos, and text built right into them.

4) There are analytics built in: Facebook is constantly changing and updating their internal analytics to give you the best view of your business page as possible. It's very easy to see what kind of content or post does well and which does not.

5) It gives customers multiple ways to interact with you: People that like your page can send you messages, write on your wall, write recommendations, like your posts, share your posts, and comment on your posts. This is a large part of building your brand and gives customers an option of how they want to interact with you.

No social media platform is perfect though! Here are some disadvantages of Facebook for businesses:

1) It's difficult to gain and retain "likes" when first starting: Just like with any business as it starts out, a business facebook struggles to gain "likes" when first beginning (*without the use of promoted posts). A new facebook page will struggle with engagement and interaction as not all of your "likes" will see your posts. Once you gain a larger number of followers, you should see a steady increase of approximately 2-7% new "likes" per month (at least this is my experience).

2) It takes time and hard work to do it right: Although Facebook is free, you have to take into account time and effort spent into growing your Facebook "likes". On top of that, you must learn the difference between running a personal account and a business account.

3) Facebook limits who sees your posts: Not all of your "likes" will see every post. Most of my posts see an average of 30-70% of my total "likes" (Of course some get less and some get more). If you pay attention, you'll notice that Facebook limits certain types of posts (like pictures and certain links) to even fewer of your "likes".

4) Facebook lumps third party posts together and identifies where you post from: Yes you can schedule through Facebook directly, but in addition to that, you can post from many third party applications. These are convenient but can hurt the reach on your posts. Facebook may lump your posts together, may limit who sees posts from certain applications, and also identifies where you are posting from (i.e. Hootsuite, Gremln).

Even with its ups and downs, your business must have a Facebook page. With so many users waiting for you, you must not miss out! You have to use and manage it, but it can do wonders for building your brand and serving as a communication tool for your current and potential customers.

Does your business have a Facebook account? What are your favorite and least favorite aspects?

~Melissa

"Move fast and break things. If you aren't breaking things you aren't moving fast enough."

             ~Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook

See Part 1: Twitter for Business here

Part 3 coming soon: Pinterest for Business

Social Media for Businesses Part 1: Twitter For Business

I will be doing a three-part series on social media platforms for businesses with one blog for Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest. Welcome to Part 1!

I will be highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of using Twitter based on my own experience; I do social media marketing for almost ten different companies, so I'll be sure to take the best of the best advice to pass on to you!

I'll start with the advantages that Twitter has for businesses:

1) It's easy to gain followers: In my own experience, I see an average month to month growth of  Twitter followers between +5-20% for the business Twitter accounts. It's easy to gain followers because (usually) when you follow people, they'll follow you back! 

2) Twitter doesn't block your content: Twitter will post everything that you ask it to-whether it's 2 tweets per day or 200. Other social media platforms limit who sees your content based on what they want their users to see.

3) Twitter doesn't block third party post-scheduling apps: Twitter will allow you to post from any third party application (Such as HootSuite and Gremln); it will not block content, nor will it identify where the post is coming from. 

4) It makes you think about what you are going to say: Because tweets are limited to 140 characters, you really are forced to think about what you'll say and how you'll say it best. Messages must be concise and straight to the point-you don't risk boring your followers!

5) Following a brand on Twitter increases likelihood to purchase as well as recommend a brand: According to eMarketer, 37% of respondents are more likely to purchase from a brand after following them on Twitter (this is compared to only 17% that say the same about a brand they like on Facebook). Numbers are about the same when asked if they would recommend a brand.

6) Hashtags make it easy to use Twitter like Google: When using hashtags in tweets, you are making it easier for users to find your content. They can use the search bar to look for words like "marketing" or "twitter" and Twitter will pull up every tweet that has mentioned this word via hashtag for the past forever. This is an added way that new followers can find you and discover your content quickly and easily.

Of course, no social media platform is perfect. Here are what I would call disadvantages about using Twitter for businesses:

1) The half-life of a tweet is only two to three hours: Not only do you have to provide excellent and engaging content all the time; you must be careful about when you post your tweets! After just a few hours, the odds of a user seeing a tweet are minimal. It also means you need to post quite a few times each day to get your content in front of your followers.

2) It's really hard to respond to complaints in a small amount of characters: If a customer provides a long and confusing tweet complaint, you may have to tweet back and forth several times to ask all of the questions you need to. The character limit may also make your tweets sound cold or "canned", which may upset the user further.

3) Customers expect an instant response: Because Twitter is such an instant platform (many users use it as an instant news source), customers have very high expectations of response rates. I've had a user tweet back within just a few hours that they were disappointed that I "never" got back to them. This can, however, be turned into a positive if you have a great social media manager that is on top of responding to tweets coming in.

4) There aren't any analytics built in to Twitter: Yes, there are third party programs that will create analytics for you, but you have to find which one will work for you. Other social media platforms offer analytics for managers within the platform itself for extra convenience.

5) The larger your follower number becomes, the more difficult it is to manage: This is a good problem to have-people like to hear what you have to say-but it makes responding to questions and tweets that come in extremely difficult. This can make engaging with your customers via Twitter tricky.

I believe that no matter how large or how small your business is, you should have a Twitter account! Yes it does take work to do it right, but it can be a great platform to expand the reach of your business and communicate your message with your customers.

Does your business have a Twitter account? What are the advantages and disadvantages you've run into?

See you for Part 2 and Part 3!

~Melissa

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MOpitzMarketing

“Twitter represents a collective collaboration that manifests our ability to unconsciously connect kindred voices through the experiences that move us. As such, Twitter is a human seismograph.” – Brian Solis, Principal of FutureWorks

The Difficulties of Real-Time Marketing

Of all things that could happen during a Superbowl that you could possibly be prepared for-injuries, crazy plays, time rivalry-few were ready to react to something as simple as a power outage. Oreo cookie won the fastest-and-most-innovative-response-during-the-Super-Bowl-Blackout prize according to many marketers and judging by its rate of re-tweet (over 10,000 times in the first hour).

This crazy response to such an event spurred a new marketing term: "Real-Time Marketing".  The inevitable need for constant monitoring and virtually instant response is wanted by today's population. With the ease of social media and the usually quick response to a text message, people today strive for immediate gratification for their complaint and even their compliment. 

This is an incredible challenge for marketing and public relations companies. They are now having to adapt to a 24/7 marketing model and act more like a news room than a marketing firm. Usually the lack of staffing or the inability to staff around the clock gets in the way of running this kind of marketing model. 

There have been advancements and tools made to make real-time marketing a little more manageable. Here are just a few that you can use:

• Facebook allows you to become a manager of as many pages you control. They make it easy to see notifications when you flip between profiles.
• Applications such as HootSuite, Tweet Deck, and Gremln allow you to manage multiple sites at once and even have "news feeds" right on the pages themselves.
• Mobile applications for social media platforms such as Facebook, make it easy to access and updates all of the Facebook pages that you manage right from your phone.
• Social media platforms on their own are information hotbeds, giving virtually real time information updates at the tip of your fingers! Consistent monitoring of news feeds alone will give you updates that you can work off.

There are issues that come with real-time marketing, however. If not done properly, it can lead to negativity about the company or brand that attempted real time data monitoring  If your quick response is not well thought out, has a spelling error or has a failed attempt at humor, among other things, your efforts behind real time marketing will be wasted. Another large issue that comes with social media monitoring is the lack of resources to collect data; these can be items such as a social media management data base, man power needed to gather the data, and the time it takes to sift through the overload of information that exists. 

So, my advice for real-time marketing is to do as much as you can, but in the end remember: if you don't have anything groundbreaking, crafty, and timely to say, then say nothing at all--you will most likely be better off!

Until next time

~Melissa

“It’s less about being real time and more about being predictive. You can plan ahead, to a certain extent and have content and ideas ready to go if and when you can use them.” ~Unknown Advertising Executive

How do I drive engagement on Facebook but still post relevant content?

Let's start by having you think of the business pages you interact with on a regular basis. What kind of status updates do you like? What kind of status updates do you share? What makes you want to interact with their page?

Some answers you may have come up with are funny pictures, funny status updates, cool facts, and maybe a really great sale announcement. Your answer would most likely not be, "man, I really love when businesses post about themselves all the time".

So, we have already learned something just by taking a look at our own habits! This is a frustrating point to learn, however, because we all want our Facebook business page to make our company shine above the rest. We want all current and potential customers to really care about everything in our businesses  We want them to share our status updates and get all of their friends to share it as well.

So. How do we drive engagement while pushing our company at the same time? Well, it has to do a lot with the content you put out there and how you position it to be most effective for your business. I've come up with three easy tips for posts that drive engagement and promote your business at the same time!

1) Post a funny picture that relates to your business. An example of this would be posting a picture for a sign company like this:

Then, make the caption relate back to your business!.

"Are you effectively getting your message across to your customers? Let us help you with a new sign! www.insertwebsitehere.com". 

Your caption will travel with the photo and each person that shares it because it is funny will share a sales pitch too!

2) Always ask questions in your status updates. This is a very simple and easy way to drive engagement with your customers. An example of this would be posting a statement like, "Our next First Friday event is coming up next week! Will we see you out and about for the festivities?". This kind of status lets people know about your event but also instantly engages them in the post and really invites people to communicate with you.

3) Provide fun facts and then spin them to fit your message. An effective way to get likes and shares is to use status updates with fun facts that most people will not know. To make them relate back to your business, add a simple sentence at the end that directly mentions your company or mentions a product that you sell. An example of this is, "One barrel of wine equals 20 cases, or 240 bottles. That equals approximately 1,200 glasses of Burgdorf wine!". Here we gave the customer a neat, widely unknown fact but mentioned the company name to make it a more effective post.

I use these tactics all the time on pages I manage and they are generally quite effective. Once you figure out what works, keep using the same techniques. If your customer is enjoying what you post and regularly liking or sharing statuses, it will quickly increase your visibility and your overall reach on Facebook!

What posts do you find create the most engagement with your company page? Please share!

Until next time-
~Melissa

"Already companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the horse-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone" ~The Cluetrain Manifesto

Are users taking a break from Facebook? What does that mean for my business?

With the coming of the new year, many companies are asking "are people taking a break from Facebook?". It has been a recent trend in articles and news sites all over, but this is not a very new concept. For years users have come and go from using Facebook regularly. Most return, some do not.

According to a research study by the Pew Research Center, about 61% of Facebook users have taken a Facebook "break" in the past few months. The reasons vary: New Year's resolutions, the coming of Lent, sick of politics or gossip, and just plain don't have any time. According to an article on abc.com, it breaks down as follows:

• 21% said they were too busy
• 10% said it is a waste of time
• 9% said there was too much drama, gossip, and/or negativity
• 4% left due to security or privacy concerns
• 20% quit and never turned back

So what does this mean for you and your business? Honestly, not a whole lot. You will never be able to predict when people are going to leave or why. You cannot control their friends and family and what they post. You cannot control what other businesses post either.

You can control what you post and focus on keeping the users and likes you have though! The main way to maintain regular users is to keep posts relevant, helpful, and informational, time and time again. You have to give the user value or they will not have any reason to keep on "liking" your page. Your goal is to have your page stick out above others; if a user is limiting their time on Facebook you want to make sure they are seeing as much of your content as possible!

To encourage engagement use questions, funny pictures, and useful tips to help people want to stay with your page. You of course want to push your product or service as well, but make sure you have a good balance between interesting and selling.

There is no promise that a user will stay on your page just because they love it that much, but you can always try!

'Till next time!
~Melissa

Really, Seriously, when is the Best Time to Post on Facebook?

This question is so very elusive that even Facebook itself refuses to answer it.  Google has 3,690,000 results.  Bing has 964,000,000 results.  So to make things a bit easier for you, I looked at ten of the first search results on Google and Bing when I typed in "What is the Best Time to Post on Facebook".  

I made a chart of what each person or company said and finally came up with...you got it, lots of different answers!  I focused on: best day to post, worst day to post, best time to post, and best overall best day and time to post.  I found many inconsistencies along with some similarities. 

The biggest similarity in these articles and posts was that the highest traffic time on Facebook is Wednesdays at 3 pm ET.  4/10 links listed this as the single highest traffic hour on Facebook.  The whole point of posting on Facebook is so that your fans and customers actually see your content, so use this information to your advantage!  

I found pretty high consistency that between posting in the hours of 1:00pm-4:00pm, the 3:00 hour, and between 8:00pm-7:00am.  Generally it was said that these hours yield high visibility and reach.  8:00am was a close runner-up.  Honestly, the best time to post was incredibly inconsistent between the articles and it was difficult to make a concise conclusion.

There was also a high level of inconsistency with the best and worst day to post.  I have listed them below as it was extremely confusing and didn't really give me much of an answer.  I figure you can look at the source and pick which one you want to believe!

Daniel Decker

-Best Day: Wednesday

-Worst Day: Sunday

Marketing Spot

-Best Day: Sunday

-Worst Day: Thursday

Mashable

-Best Day: N/A

-Worst Day: N/A

Black Box Social Media

-Best Day: Thursday and Friday

-Worst Day: N/A

Matt Southern

-Best Day: N/A

-Worst Day: N/A

Web Pro News

-Best Day: Saturday

-Worst Day: N/A

Entrepreneur

-Best Day: N/A

-Worst Day: Thursday

Huffington Post

-Best Day: Saturday and Sunday

-Worst Day: Wednesday

I Strategy Conference

-Best Day: Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday, Friday

-Worst Day: N/A

Media Bistro

-Best Day: N/A

-Worst Day: N/A

So, in conclusion...well, I do not really have much of one.  My advice is to look at your industry and your customer base to try to decide which days are best and worst to post.  For example, if you are a bar, you probably want to post the most Fridays and Saturdays.  Use your best judgement and experiment!

The same goes with the best time to post.  You can measure traffic all you want, but your type of traffic might happen to browse your page or see your post at odd hours or only on certain days.  Gauge your audience and evaluate your target market to get the most out of your Facebook page.  And there is no harm in experimenting!  Keep track of when you are putting up your posts and do an evaluation about a week later; how many people saw your post, liked it, commented on it, and shared it.  Keep in mind that that is not a foolproof way to evaluating your site as content has a huge effect on engagement.  

I hope I saved you time and also provided you with some answers by evaluating several blogs, posts, and articles about the topic.  Unfortunately there is no true right or wrong and the social media market is constantly changing, so it really is hard to answer this question completely.

What has and has not worked for your business?  What times and days work best for you?  Please share below!

'Till next time ~Melissa

"There is no black magic to successfully attracting customers via the web" ~Rand Fishkin, SEOMOZ

Here are the links to the blogs and websites I used for research, feel free to explore:

http://www.danieldecker.net/when-is-the-best-time-to-post-on-facebook-heres-the-answer/

http://themarketingspot.com/2011/05/my-study-whats-the-best-time-to-post-on-facebook.html

http://mashable.com/2012/05/09/best-time-to-post-on-facebook/

http://blackboxsocialmedia.com/best-time-to-post-on-facebook/

http://mattsouthern.com/2012/09/16/what-is-the-best-time-to-post-on-facebook/

http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/13492.aspx 

http://www.entrepreneur.com/blog/220166

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/28/facebook-marketing-secrets-best-time-to-post_n_1924134.html 

http://www.istrategyconference.com/blog/?category=Social-Media&title=Whens-the-Best-Time-to-Post-on-Facebook&pid=809

http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/best-time-to-post_b32507

12-12-12 Promotion Ideas

So this is a short and sweet blog, but a very fun one!  What a neat once in a life time date-why not celebrate it with neat deals and steals at your business?

These deals will obviously vary based on your business, but be creative!  I have a few ideas via WhizBang Training's Facebook page and have also thought of some of my own:

1) Sell baked goods? Price 12 donuts for $12
2) Have a celebration at 12-noon with cookies or pie
3) Raffle off 12 door prizes at 12 minutes after the hour
4) Have longer hours? Run a great sale from 12-12 for one day only!
5) Have more expensive merchandise?  How about buy one get one for $12?
6) Looking to run a longer campaign?  Kick off your 12 days of Christmas sales on that day.
7) Give the first 12 people in your door that day a gift certificate
8) Sell items on your clearance rack for an extra discount: 4/$12 or 3/$12 or 2/$12
9) Do you run a bar or liquor store? How about a make your own 12-pack for $12!

The possibilities truly are endless though, so get creative!  And once you have your idea, make sure you promote it well.  Include it in your email newsletter, post about it in advance on your social media sites, do mailers with your best customers, and advertise it in your store with posters and fliers.

What are your ideas for 12/12/12 promotions?  Please share below!

Till next time,
~Melissa

"You don't want to invent new ideas, not new rules" ~Dan Heath

Easy ways to increase the number of followers on your social media sites

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, and more.  With so many social media sites, how can you get more followers with the least amount of time put into each individual social media site? (we are all busy people I know!)

Social media is a free way to advertise your business; easy to use, but unfortunately easy to spend a lot of time on.  So this week I looked into easy ways to increase your number of followers for all avenues of social media.  If you do not have to focus on getting more followers all the time you can focus on putting out quality content, which is usually more important!

The easiest way to advertise your social media sites is through your social media sites-easy enough right?  Send out a Tweet about your Facebook event.  Create a post on Google+ that is about the article you just put up on LinkedIn.  Post about your website on your blog.  Seems simple, but you need to do it right.  An important thing to remember about social media is that many of your followers will be following you on multiple sites.  So to make their “follows” and “likes” worthwhile, make sure to mix up your content and don’t update all of your sites at once.  Remember that when you work with multiple sites, you can increase your search-ability if you change the wording and content of your post on each site.  

Another very simple way to increase the number of followers you have is to make it easy to follow you!  If you have a confusing Twitter handle, make sure to advertise what it is, same with your Facebook name.

Recognize these logos?  Of course you do and so does the rest of the world! Make them accessible and clickable for your followers.  They are free to download on the internet and instantly lets your customers know where they can find out more about you and how they can follow you.  Click here for a great screencast on inserting these cool little logos into your email signature too!  What an easy way to tell your customers (quietly) how to find you, again and again.

Finally, the last recommendation I have is to follow your followers.  If you like them on Facebook, it will show up as a notification and they will be tempted to follow you right back!  Be careful with how far you go with this though and that you agree with how their company promotes itself. People can search who a company follows on many of the social media sites (it could possibly backfire!). 

This will not be the last blog I do about social media by any means, so of course this one will not give you all the answers you are looking for!  I just wanted to outline some simple and easy ways to gain new followers without really doing all that much work.  Getting the followers is step one-using social media effectively is step two and will be on my blog soon!

-Melissa

“All one needs is a computer, a network connection, and a bright spark of initiative and creativity to join the economy.”
                ~Don Tapscott