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How To Reap The Benefits Of A Content Marketing Strategy

Content Marketing can have some incredible benefits for your business

But a lot of people still underestimate the value of Content Marketing, or indeed don’t fully understand what it is or why they should invest in bespoke content.

So let’s start by working out exactly what it is!

CONTENT MARKETING – a type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services.

But I prefer Content Marketing Institute’s definition:

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Especially the line following that definition which says “Instead of pitching your products or services, you are providing truly relevant and useful content to your prospects and customers to help them solve their issues.”

So Content Marketing is a way to talk about your products or services in a way that’s audience first and user driven. It’s less about you, and more about them – a good place to start.

What can be content?

Anything your audience can consume can be content.

  • Blog posts
  • Video & Slideshows
  • Graphics & Animations
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Ebooks & Whitepapers
  • Resources & Workbooks
  • Playlists
  • Q&A or AMAs
  • Facebook/Instagram Live
  • Branded Filters & Camera Frames

And the list goes on!

The type of content you create for your Content Marketing efforts will depend completely on your audience and objectives.

Great Content Marketing can have a multitude of benefits to your business, let’s look at some of them.

Traffic & Search Results

Everyone wants more traffic to their website, or at least more qualified traffic. When you publish or host quality content on your site, people hit your site to consume it. And you know they’re more than likely interested in your product or services because that’s what your content (even if loosely) relates to.

When you offer something of value to your audience, they’ll come to you. This is the complete opposite of traditional marketing where you go to where they are and interrupt them. If you content is strong enough and valuable enough you might not even have to pay to promote it. You can publish it, and let people come to you in their own way and their own time.

Here’s a great example – Jon Loomer’s Facebook Image Dimension Guide. In case you don’t know who Jon Loomer is he’s a Facebook Ads heavy hitter who runs online training and a couple of membership clubs for exclusive content. In fact, everything Jon does is an example of excellent Content Marketing.

I read in one of his emails a while back that this page on his site is the most visited. It comes up if you Google “Facebook Image Specs” and in creating it, he knew that anyone who visited that page was looking for information on how to optimise their creative to best display on Facebook.

Whether they were marketers, or business owners, or entrepreneurs – they all had that in common. And they were coming to him. For free!

Imagine you’re in a competitive niche; all clamoring to get to the top position in a Google search, but your content – perhaps a simple “how to” video is what people are visiting? That’s YOUR brand getting ahead. Standing out without pushing people away with a hard sell.

We’ll talk more about what you can do with this traffic in a sec.

content marketing

Brand Awareness & Recall

Word of mouth is still an incredibly powerful way to get your business noticed, and you’ve probably heard the phrase “word of mouse” said too. It’s so important to be known and remembered.

How can people use your services if they don’t know who you are?

How can they recommend you to their friends if they can’t remember your business name?

Create content that resonates with your audience and they’re more likely to remember you. And if they hadn’t heard of you before it’s an even better way to make them aware of your brand!

The idea is that it’s not only valuable enough for them, but sharable as well. Any time you can get people to share your content as a brand you’ve allowed them to represent you and vice versa. They’ve thought whatever you created was good enough for them to put their name to and pass along to their friends and colleagues.

And with Content Marketing you can do this without the rude interruption of more traditional types of advertising.

Brand Affinity & Loyalty

Something else you can achieve with Content Marketing is affinity from your audience, and loyalty from your current customers.

This isn’t just touchy-feely (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but in a crowded market you want people can choose your brand, over others and their affinity for what your brand stands for could be the deciding factor. But they can’t do this unless they know what your brand MEANS.

You content can explain your brand positioning, and win your audience over into fans and purchasers.

Tell your brand’s story and let your audience fall in love with you.

Then once you’ve earned their support you want to retain them!

Great content can remind people why they choose you and not your competitors. It can help deepen the relationship they have with your brand and make them less likely to stray.

content marketing

Audience Segmentation

Content Marketing can help you segment your audience and only show them what they want to see more of.

You can track and tag pages of your website and/or individual pieces of content, to build audience pools from your different content themes into remarketing segments.

That way when you pay to promote a new piece of content you can target the people who’ve consumed similar content. Facebook targeting allows us to differentiate traffic that’s visited certain pages of our website and not others, and also people who’ve spend a certain amount of time on a particular page so we can serve ads to people who interacted with particular content this way.

It’s the same concept ecommerce stores use when they offer you similar items to the ones in your cart. They know you like xyz product with certain attributes, it follows you’ll like other products with similar attributes.

This segmentation keeps your audience seeing the content that resonates with them, and prevents them seeing content themes that may not.

content marketing

Funnel Content

If you have a sales funnel you need to fill that funnel with content.

This content needs to be relevant to the audience AND their buyer journey.

Content Marketing can attract people to your brand and fill the top of the funnel.

And it’s especially important during the consideration phase (middle of the funnel) to make sure people choose your brand over your competition.

content marketing

Thought Leadership

Content Marketing can position you (as a personal brand) or your company as the thought leader in your niche.

Great content will ensure your fans know you’re the “go to” source for information on your product or industry and give you an edge over your competitors, just like in the Jon Loomer example.

content marketing

Business Opportunities

Checking the data from your Content Marketing efforts can point you in the direction of new business opportunities.

If you’re looking at expanding or even narrowing your offerings, the data on which content your audience consumed can help you refine your business to offer what has most resonated with your target market.

Content Marketing & Social Media – BFFs

Why am I telling you about Content Marketing?

Because Content Marketing and Social Media are BFFs. Your content can be distributed on Social Media, and content themes can be established based on your social posting.

Think about your most popular Social Media posts – what were they about? What can you learn from this to inform your content offering?

Social Media gives us the power of community for our brands, and it also allows us to target with a high level of accuracy people we want to reach beyond that community where we know our content will resonate.

So put some thought into your Content Marketing efforts and invest in some quality creators if it’s not your thing. The work of an excellent copywriter, graphic designer or videographer will elevate your content and you’ll reap the benefits.

But make sure to leave some money in the budget to ensure this content sees the light of day with the people you made it for.

Do you invest in Content Marketing?

What questions do you have about content?

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Facebook Zero | OMG! | Algorithm Armageddon

Facebook Zero, the algorithm armageddon!

If you use Social Media for promoting your business, chances are you follow a couple (if not tonnes) of Social Media related publishers, and you would no doubt have seen a huge reaction from the community about the latest announcement from Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg (below) where he states they’ll be changing the way they select posts to display to users in the newsfeed.

This update is stated to prioritise user to user interaction and focus on quality of engagement – which appears to mean time spent and meaningfulness, favouring longer, well thought out comments over tagging friends in memes or simple reactions.

Cue freakouts over Facebook page reach.

Facebook seems to be taking aim at the passiveness of users simply scrolling the newsfeed and not interacting, and publishers – including those looking to game the system with engagement bait (which Facebook announced they were cracking down on a couple of weeks back)

BUT there’s so much we don’t know!

Facebook Zero – Really?

Social Media Examiner was one of the first (naturally as probably the most well know Social Media publisher) to get vocal and ask if this was “Facebook Zero” in an 11 minute live video (below)

Would pages get any organic reach? Are we all doomed to the naughty corner? Are our Facebook pages going to be put out on the lawn with the big TVs and DVD players?

Let’s just calm down and look at what we know for a sec, which to be honest isn’t much.

If you’ve been in this world a while you know for a fact every time the newsfeed algo is tweaked people lose their minds, and each time we adjust, measure, test, refine and evaluate our accounts to try and work out a way to stay relevant and SEEN by our target audience, followers and fans – both organically and using paid distribution.

Let’s remember we all use Facebook differently!

You get the newsfeed you deserve.

I have quoted this before, a friend of mine said it to me once and it’s so true. If you hate your newsfeed – I’m sorry to say you did that to yourself. There’s so many options to unfollow people who annoy you, unfriend people you have no interest in, hit “see first”on pages and people you like, and generally reacting to things you’re actually interested in.

Facebook’s smart at figuring out what we like – but it’s not flawless. If you hate cats – stop tagging your friends in cat videos. Facebook thinks you like cats and will show you more cat content, pretty simple right? If you want to know more about the newsfeed read my post here.

You see, Facebook’s ONE JOB is to learn what you like and optimise your experience to that so it can keep you on the platform longer. Mainly to serve more ads (to make more money) but also to make sure you aren’t using the other platforms (except Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp since it owns those)

But so what, Carma? What’s this got to do with this new Facebook Zero announcement?

The curated newsfeed

I, and probably many other Social Media Marketers might not be typical users – but we know one thing, and that is that Facebook has made a pretty big assumption in the basis for this update: that we want to see more content from our friends in our newsfeeds. For me this is not the case (soz friends)

People think the newsfeed has become a crowded place for ads and page updates, and they aren’t seeing enough posts from the people they care about. I don’t find this the case, as I’d rather read a breaking story from ABC News than another “creative” engagement, pregnancy or gender reveal announcement.

Adam Barrell of The StoryLab Perth put it this way:

Facebook used to be about sharing your whole life and connecting with friends. Now more than ever Facebook is used to engage with pages and publishers. People want to explore and find new things to read and engage with.

When I want to engage with friends and family I use messenger to share photos, articles and arrange catch ups.

Wasn’t Facebook meant to make the world more open? And now Zuck is telling us we’d much prefer seeing posts from friends and family the most?

Just make a Tab/filter that users can select to just see friend posts – don’t go changing the algorithm again.

 

Good point! Bit hard to connect the world, when people wont accept a friend request from people they don’t know…always too many degrees of separation!

 

And Jon Loomer (Facebook Ads Legend from Jon Loomer Digital) described it like so:

Not everyone uses Facebook the same way. I purposefully see more brand and publisher content in my news feed than posts from friends. That’s only partly because I’m an antisocial jerk. But it’s mainly because I care most about political and sports news.

That’s the stuff I actually want to see. I don’t comment on those posts. I don’t provide “long and thoughtful replies.” Will I stop seeing that content?

If I do, that would kind of suck. That would be bad for my Facebook experience.

 

Jon posted a long and very considered post this quote was taken from, you can read the full post here.

 

So why this change?

Facebook has been trying to prompt us, as users – not publishers, to post more original content since this has been declining. Also it’s no secret the kids don’t think Facebook is cool…PLUS they’re running out of ad space.

Facebook knows it needs to tread a very fine line between showing you what you like organically and what advertisers might think you like. This is why better targeted ads with higher relevance scores perform better. As users we accept there’s ads, we just don’t wanna see ads for things we’re not interested in.

In theory this change prompts less but deeper connections to the people we’re friends with, with less page posts cluttering it up, and would help achieve Facebook’s goal of making us feel better mental health wise than passively (maybe obsessively) scrolling our newsfeeds. We’ve all had one friend say they felt happier after quitting Facebook (or Social Media more generally) so essentially it’s a retention strategy.

Will it work?

IMO? No.

For the way this update appears to work (once it’s rolled out – again we don’t really know til it happens) would be based on the fact that people want to post more, or at least the same amount of original content they do now. Your newsfeed will always be full – so if your friends aren’t posting photos, live video, links, events etc then what will make up the rest of your feed?

Page posts and ads, right?

You probably already interact with the people you want to hear from, so their posts will get upweighted, but beyond that who are we going to see posts from? Old high school acquaintances? No thanks (no offence JFSHS class of ’96)

You can leave me with my newsfeed full of tech pages, recipe videos, and Social Media publishers thanks.

But what do you think?

Will this clear up your newsfeed for more friend action? Good or bad? If you’ve got some thoughts drop a comment, I’d love to know!

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Engage Bali by Socialbakers: Part Two – The Main Event

Engage Bali Day Two

If you just want a “feel” for what Engage Bali was like I recommend you watch the video above.

In the below sections I’m summarising what I thought the main points of each speaker was, and it’s quite long, since there were so many. I have included as many links to videos and slideshows if you want to drill down into any of the speakers content. And I’ll update as more becomes available.

Strap yourself in – we’re going to Bali![/fusion_text][fusion_text]Day Two of Engage Bali started pretty much the same as the previous day, waking up in paradise and having a quick breakfast. I wish now I had’ve taken photos of the breakfast options! I’ve been to a lot of different countries around the world but never before seen a breakfast spread like this one. I was missing normal coffee though…

Day Two of Engage Bali was to be made up of 17 speakers and 4 panel discussions, followed by networking and dinner. On a humid Saturday, when your body clock is telling you you can take it easy (not saying I don’t work Saturdays – I freelance after all, which includes regular weekend work) this was going to be a long day!

I chose a seat in the second row and got prepared to get down to business! First up was Jan Rezab, founder of Socialbakers. The crowd loved him – and so did I![/fusion_text][fusion_text]

Jan Rezab – Founder, Socialbakers

Jan had a treasure trove of stats, tips and tricks for a Social Media nerd like me! Here’s my key takeaways from Jan’s wonderful presentation:

The state of Social:

Brands are growing on Social Media – but Media companies are killing it!

  • Media companies know how to create great content, but you also need to be an ad specialist to get your content seen.
  • Monitor the top 5 Media companies in your market for content trends.

Photos are still the dominant content type.

  • Even with the rise of video, it hasn’t taken over – yet.

Frequency is important:

  • Impressions – Reach = Frequency.

Make sure you stay informed about changes to the Facebook algorithm

Tips, Tricks and Facts:

Make beautiful content

Instagram has regional scale and can kill Snapchat

Video,Video, Video – but don’t measure it but the views!

  • A view is not a good metric. Measure Viewthrough rate (VTR). Organic Vs Paid video have around the same viewthrough rate.
  • Average Snap 1-2 secs. Average FB Video 3-5 secs. Unlink YouTube video no waiting for the ad to finish.
  • 85% of video is played without sound and 95% are autoplays. Not putting captions on your video is a missed opportunity.
  • Brands are beating Media at video VTR

There’s no such thing as a yearly marketing plan anymore.

  • Accept changes/new features and adjust as you go.
  • You can’t fail if you are looking after Customer Care and Engagement. People want help with their issues and problems, they want information.

Jan sees an opportunity for Twitter to become THE customer service channel.

Only 16% of questions asked by consumers on Facebook pages are public!

2016 is the year of Bots!

No-one wants new apps!

  • 65% of people did not open the app store/Google Play store in 2015. That means NO NEW APPS were downloaded.

Can we please stop using fan counts as a metric! It’s 2016 FFS!

Define your goals

Look for the big moments in your Social journey and analyse why they worked.

Watch the video of Jan’s keynote below, or you can also see the slideshare HERE.

Robert Lang – SEO, Socialbakers

Next was Robert Lang, CEO of Socialbakers. Here are my takeaways from Robert’s presentation:

Is the term “Social Media” outdated?

I think so, although I’ve been thinking about it for ages and I haven’t come up with an alternative I think covers the whole scope of what Social Media means to us.

Did you know Facebook’s 2015 revenue was $80 BILLION?

Whoa.

AND they have 60% of the market share! Measuring “time in platform” Facebook is leading the game.

Is Tinder a Social Media platform?

I don’t consider it one – but I haven’t used it so I’m open to feedback from others.

Will 2016 see the end of free Social Media?

I mean, it’s already happening…but I think we’ve got a little bit longer to go on some platforms.

Facebook judges the quality of your content every time you post or advertise.

How RELEVANT is your content to the target market? We know ds have relevancy scores, but we can assume ALL content have this same hierachy to reach the newsfeed. Content is rated by Facebook (and perhaps also Instagram) uy the first 100 impressions. Has anyone interacted with it? Clicked, reacted, commented, shared…? If not it’s not likely to be shown to any more people as your content is deemed to be of low quality.

Don’t boost bad content! EVER.

If you think you’ll get more engagement by boosting awful posts or making terrible ads – you’re incorrect. You will actually damage your pages overall relevancy score. Maybe it’s time to spring clean your history?

Connect Social Media to your business objectives

Period. Otherwise what is the point?

Focus on producing quality content and posting it at the correct times (Socialbakers can help you with that)

Be Bold and invest in things that work with your audience.

You can see the slideshare of Roberts presentation HERE

Sabeen Ahmad, Director of Digital Strategy – Publicis

Sabeen Ahmad was next. Sabeen is the Director of Digital Strategy at Publicis, and she had a lot to share. This is probably why she had to talk so fast to fit it all in!

I really enjoyed Sabeen’s presentation and meeting her afterwards! She was one of the wonderful examples of women smashing it in the digital marketing field, which is an inspiration to me personally.

Think Social, Act Global.

Sabeen took as through the AT&T campaign #catchjeremy as an example of how you can stage a stunt, with Social Media as the hub, and use it as advertising that’s global, relatable and effective.

Here are my main takeaways, but as I said there was a LOT of content covered – so please check out the slideshare which I’ll link to at the bottom of this section.

Everything is a business problem.

What is my brand trying to achieve?

The 5 Questions make an appearance again:

  • Why are you doing this?
  • Who is your audience?
  • Where are they?
  • What do they like?
  • How do you reach them?

Make a plan – use all the tools at your disposal.

  • Step into your customers life. The more you understand the better you can market.
  • Track the customer journey
  • Use influencers
  • Decide on the metrics you’ll measure
  • Create content that achieves your goals

Keep your efforts Efficient and effective.

Check out the slideshare HERE.

Daniel Morel, Chairman & Global CEO – Wunderman (retired)

Daniel Morel, retired Chairman & Global CEO of Wunderman was next up – and although his presentation wasn’t strictly about Social Media it was definitely one of my favourites! He’s a veteran of business strategy, and had some awesome insights!

Daniel’s favourite number is nine and so he made nine points in his speech.

Do you want to be RIGHT or do you want to be ELECTED?

1- Aim low and say yes to everything

2- The formula – don’t make (too many) enemies!

S = 100 – (Nb year x P)

P < 1%

S > 80%

For those of us not mathematically inclined – For every year of business you can piss off 1% of your colleagues and still work with 80% of them.

3- If you aren’t the lead dog, the view is always the same (bums of the lead dogs)

4- Out of many – one

E pluribus unum. “we must hang together, or we will assuredly hang separately.” Ben Franklin on signing the declaration of independence. Build consensus, otherwise you can’t win.

5- Don’t be a Lady Mary

This is a Downton Abbey reference that was a bit lost on me, but the meaning is business MUST be predictable.

6- Amateurs discuss strategy. Professionals study logistics.

I love this one! It’s all well and good to have a grand plan – but it has to be able to work.

7- Leadership is not about being liked

Leadership is defined by results, not attributes. People follow results.

8- Leading from the front

Leadership doesn’t kill you. Engage – give your pound of flesh.

9- Data Monster

Be aware of the amount of data, and who’s feeding the data monster.

Lars Silberbauer – Global Director of Social Media & Search, LEGO

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Everyone knows of LEGO. We all know the pleasure of creating with it, and the pain of stepping on one. Their Social Media is amazing, and a fantastic case study for marketers who are looking to entertain and delight their audience, and encourage fans to share photos and become brand advocates.

Lars Silberbauer was definitely a big drawcard for me to attend EngageBali. I wanted to know more about LEGO’s Social strategy, and the man who was behind it. You can watch the video below – his slides are really good, and well worth the watch!

LEGO, Lars explained, produce a lot of content, they’d want to- they’re the world’s most watched brand (on YouTube)! The aim of this content is to engage the creativity of people, and prompt them to share it. LEGO are a 24/7 operation who have diversified their team around the globe to make sure they are always available to their fans. Lars also explained that one of the reasons this works so well is that global brand need diversity. We are a mixed bunch, us humans – and you’ve heard the saying “takes one to know one” right? When building teams make sure you have diversity in mind. They also don’t let people loose on their Social channels without them first gaining their Social Media Drivers License.

Lars explained that having a connection to your customers was like a relationship.  LEGO wants to hold you! They aren’t here for a fling. They want to be in your life. He has an interesting definition of Social Media: “Social media is nothing…but a set of technologies that enhances our social nature” It’s all about PEOPLE.

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When people build with LEGO, they want to share their pride in their creations. Lucky LEGO, having an awesome, long standing brand people just love to love.

But what are their goals? LEGO has a two-pronged approach, Monetisation & Brand Strategy, and Lowering Cost & Minimising Risk.

Lars then took us through his $100 marketing campaign. He decided to spend $100 to prove that even as a market leader you need paid Social as part of your strategy. I won’t go into the strategy of this campaign, you can see the video if you’re interested in finding out what happened to George.

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Then he went on the explain the Kronkiwongi. What an excellent example of getting people to change the way they think of and use your product! I loved hearing about this campaign!

Parents were thinking of LEGO as a set you buy, with instructions of how to build the bricks inside the package, into the picture on the outside of the package. Because, as Lars explained,  once you’re 3 years old, your creativity levels only decrease. Our imagination gets stale, because we stop using it as much. But kids know better! LEGO asked children to build a Kronkiwongi. And they did. You have to see the video, even if it’s just for this part (it starts at 17.49) LEGO worked closely with Facebook on this campaign, and sent Kronkiwongi kits to influencers in the space. This was a very successful campaign, but at the end of the day, it’s not all about metrics, or money. It’s about PEOPLE.

Lars’ top tips on Social Media:

  • It’s about creating relationships – no one night stands!
  • There’s no trick or short cuts
  • It’s a lot of hard work that needs to be:

Timely

Relevant

Brave

Personal

  • Don’t just invest your money – invest yourself.

I’d thoroughly recommend following LEGO’s Social accounts, and seeing how they engage their fans. This was truly one of my favourite parts of the day, and indeed of the whole conference!

You can also see him appear on the Panel Discussion too.

Nina Spannari – Head of Digital, Canon (Australia)

Firstly – Nina is just like the rest of us (a LEGO fan) and presented Lars with a Canon camera made from LEGO! Marketing genius.

I really enjoyed Nina’s presentation. Another wonderful woman in the digital field, doing inspiration work for a global brand!

Whether you are aware of Canon Australia’s Social accounts, one look will show you there’s a lot of success there. They have an engaged fan base, who love the product and love to interact with the brand. But its more than that. If you are a bit of a photog, you’ll know camera brands are very important to people. If your Australian think Holden V Ford, people have a favourite and they’ll defend their choice – and I don’t think this has waned much with the rise of smartphone cameras. Nina addressed people’s constant access to photo taking technology (I’m not calling your phone’s camera a camera, it just isn’t) by saying “the best camera is the one that’s on you” Fair enough!

So since mobile technology is stealing our “quiet times” what a great strategy to position your SLR camera as a way of getting them back! Switch off, disconnect, and let your lense follow a rabbit into wonderland. Canon is your companion in this, nurturing the creative process.

They focus (lol!) on the post purchase experience, develop (another lol) love, skills and the relationship you have with your camera – and the brand! The 3 key pillars of Social Media according to Nina are:

  • Inspire
  • Enable
  • Celebrate

She then discussed some of their campaigns. The first was about content Curation.

“No one sees it like you” doubled their Instagram following in 12 months, adding around 8k each month during the campaign, eliciting an average of 9k interactions per day on Instagram alone, and 1k views on YouTube every hour (With Jan’s advice from earlier in the day it would be interesting to see the VTR for this) so I’d say that was pretty effective! If you haven’t seen it you should check out their Instagram, it’s pretty bloody good!

Nina showed us some video I have been unable to locate about Canon’s collaboration with Perth prominent photographer Jarrad Seng, and a beautiful campaign where photographers are briefed to create a scene from either a child’s imagination or a dream (I cant quite remember which)

I also had the pleasure of meeting Nina, who’s a lovely lady that was also missing “proper” coffee 🙂

See the slides here, and if the video goes up I’ll update to include that too!

Veronica McGregor – News and Social Media, NASA

Veronica McGregor is the brains behind the Social of NASA. Let’s just stop and think about what that means. Do you follow NASA on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or elsewhere? If the answer is no then you should definitely open another tab and check them out, right now! Unless amazing photos from the depths of space aren’t your thing.

NASA is obviously in a world of its own as far a content goes. No-one else has images of Jupiter’s moons, and their content is never going to be stale either, it’s always advances in their technology, or their missions so their content team is probably spoilt for choice!

There’s so much great information in this presentation, and I’m sure you’ll want to watch it for yourself, so I’m going to keep my wrap-up brief. I’m just going to tell you the two things that really stood out to me about what Veronica shared with us, and that is:

100% of NASA’s Social is Organic.

One. Hundered. Percent. Now even with what I said earlier about their unique content that’s still pretty amazing. Their Social is ALL in-house and none of it is sponsored. The sheer scale of their accounts are amazing, and to have not ever paid a dollar – well, that’s awesome.

People Power took over during the Government Shutdown

During the Government shutdown NASA was one of the departments that had to stop working. So they were unable to update their Social channels, so what happened? Their fans took over, and posted on their behalf! You know you’ve got an engaged audience when they’re willing to step up and fill the void!

You can find out more about how this happened in the video. It’s pretty amazing.

On a personal note Veronica was a lovely lady, another fantastic example of women in our field being awesome. She stood for selfies, (a LOT of them, including one with me) gave out stickers, (yep! I got one) and made herself available to everyone. I invited her to Perth and have said I’ll drive her to GinGin Observatory, (which she knew of, apparently they had helped out from time to time when they need someone in the Southern Hemisphere) if she takes up my offer.

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The you can see the slides here!

Piotr Jakubowski – Chief Marketing Ojek, GO-JEK

Piotr Was fantastic! I don’t know that much about Indonesia, but the examples of the campaigns his business was running really touched me. They were emotional, but not in a sickly sweet way. They showed what seemed to be a very real side of life in Indonesia, and  told the story of GO-JEK, a service similar to Uber.

There’s not a lot of relevant facts and figures for you to take away from this one. It more cuts to the heart of what good marketing is – and that’s real. They develop a real connection, to real people. They know their market so they aren’t afraid to be open and honest about who they are.

You can check out the slides here.

Beverly Jackson – VP, Social Media Marketing and Content Strategy, MGM Resorts International

Beverley Jackson is another fine example of females leading the way in the business of Social Media. She explained through her presentation the logistics of one of MGM’s current marketing challenges. Shifting demographics. She told us about a hotel that MGM is redeveloping, that has an older market – but the refurbishment will attract a much younger one with different interests. The challenge of keeping both groups engaged while the build is complete so they can continue to trade during the transformation is a tough one!

She explained a campaign they had done where they made a group of young Scottish lads enjoying a birthday trip, where they completely made the trip with free concert tickets, and other surprises to make the birthday a trip to remember, and gain customer advocacy for life!

There’s some amazing nuggets of wisdom in Beverly’s speech. Including that you can die from lack of entertainment, and her content mixologist recipe is pretty awesome too! But the main takeaways from her presentation are to define your goals, purpose and objective – and create your campaigns around them.

Be true to your brand, and over-communicate to your fans.

And finally – credibility silences noise.

Dennis Owen – Group Manage Social Media, Cathay Pacific

Time to get serious for a minute, do you have a Social Media Crisis Management Plan? Well, you’re going to wish you did, and probably make it an agenda item in your next marketing meeting after reading about the presentation from Dennis Owen from Cathay Pacific.

Dennis explained to us an issue that happened on board a Cathay Pacific plan. All ended well, but it doesn’t always – which is why you need your plans in place to kick in the minute a crisis starts.

He explained how Social Media has changed the game when it come to crisis management, where you used to issue a press release, or hold a press conference – now you must be social-first. The reason for this is that people involved in the crisis will most likely be publicising the event live. Your crisis or communications team might not even know about the issue until your Social Media monitoring picks it up! So you start already on the back foot.

So here’s some things to know from Dennis:

The crisis will pass – but the Social proof that it happened never will. What’s on the internet stays on the internet.

Be social-first with your responses.

Know who was first to “break” the story and try to get to them. That’s where the media will be heading – so get there first and control the narrative as best you can.

Communicate, communicate, communicate! The comms are more important than the crisis itself (from a brand point of view, obviously not to the victims…)

Have a plan in place and implement it quickly.

Find an expert to advocate. They have more credibility than your brand in a crisis. Shut down speculation, it’s the enemy!

He also had some tips for building up your Social Media Crisis Toolbox:

Check how other businesses in your industry have dealt with crises.

Make a checklist. You will be busy and distracted at the time. You need to have a list!

Don’t create a second crisis with the handling of your crisis.

Hit Social first!

Monitor and respond in real time is appropriate

Test and learn!

Unfortunately there aren’t any slides or a video of Dennis’ presentation. But it got me thinking. How many of you have a crisis management plan?

Michael Bouda – Senior Brand Manager, Jägermeister

I’m not really going to go into this one in much detail as I found the content a bit too ‘dude-bro’ for me, which is not a reflection on the campaign, more than the fact that I am so far removed from this demographic.

The one thing I will state though is that I really liked the way this brand invented it’s own influencers. It’s a tough ask, advertising alcohol in Australia (compared with many other countries, and especially in WA) and I thought the invention of the cartoon “pack” and the positioning of them as influential was quite genius if intentional, and incredibly well handled if it happened by accident.

It would be interesting to see if this sort of campaign could work for other brands, and how it might have differed had it have been a female demographic with similar content.

Tanbir Rahman – Head of Digital, Huawei Technologies

Tanbir Rahman spoke to us about launching a product, the P9 Huawei smartphone – using Social Media. He had some excellent insights and the slides are also available here.

Paul Moore – Head Content Producer, Tennis Australia

Paul Moore talked about producing content for one of the world’s biggest sporting events.

Roy Simangunsong – Country Business Head, Twitter

Roy Simangunsong talks about how companies can use Twitter, and gives examples from the local Indonesian market. See the slides here.

Wrap up…

I hope you’ve enjoyed my wrap-up of the days speakers! There was so much going on that I haven’t covered absolutely everything – I just hope I’ve done the event justice. It really was an amazing few days in an amazing setting!

If you want to get some more info leave me a comment, or better yet – stay tuned to Socialbakers and make sure you go to their next conference, whether that’s #EngageBali (I would DEFINITELY go back if they do another Bali event) or one of their others.

I also wanted to say a quick thank you to the Socialbakers team for looking after me. Sometimes events can be a bit awkward when you’re by yourself, especially in between the formal schedule! The Socialbakers team made sure I was included in everything, and they were so nice and helpful that I really felt like we’d known each other for ages!

I also met some wonderful people, not just the speakers mentioned in this epically long blog post – but regular folks slogging it out in the Social realm for various agencies and businesses in different parts of the Asian Pacific region.

My next mission is to get some feedback from some of them to add to my own, so stay tuned!

I hope to see you in Bali 2017!

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Facebook interests examined | Have you lost interest?

What on earth does Facebook know about me?

Why am I seeing these ads?

If you want to see what Facebook thinks your “interests” are you can have a look and edit them. You’ll have a good laugh at the things you apparently like!

Go to Settings > Ads > Ads based on my preferences > edit > visit ad preferences. Then they will all be neatly displayed in little boxes. You can hover and close the ones you aren’t actually interested in.

facebook interests

facebook interests

facebook interests

facebook interests

interests

 

It can be a lengthy process – but very eye-opening! This is a great experiment to do on your profile to show you why interest targeting on Facebook can be so hit and miss. You’re must better off using custom audiences based on your website traffic or email databases!

This won’t mean you’ll see fewer FB ads, but it might mean the ones you do see are relevant to you! And let’s face it, we’ve all come to terms with the fact that there’s ads on Facebook. PLUS occasionally you’ll see an ad for a flight, concert, or something that you ARE interested in and you didn’t already know about. Ok, it’s infrequent – but it does happen.

What do you think? Did you find this useful? Is it time to update your interests on Facebook, I mean it’s more than 12 years old now – and if you’ve been on it since the beginning you might have changed a bit since then!

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Unwrapping the 2016 Sensis Social Media Report

Unwrapping the 2016 Sensis Social Media Report [TL;DR]

Sensis release a Social Media report annually, and the reason Aussie Social Media stat nerds like me care is because there’s not a lot of social media reports that analyse purely Australian data. We can be a bit different down here on our island, and real data is real valuable to all Social Media players, the businesses who use it, the people employed by those businesses and the outsourced agency and freelancer folk.

Ultimately, the more you know about the audience demographics, their use, expectations…the things they care about and respond to AND the things that piss them off – the better job you will do at trying to gain attention in an increasingly crowded market.

So here’s the stuff I pulled from their 71 page report that I think will be of value so you don’t have to read the whole thing yourself!

Facebook is not dead!

sensis social media report

Australians are now spending more than half a day per week (12.5 hours) on Facebook alone, up four hours from last year.

Facebook has maintained its almost ubiquitous appeal – 95% of users. The average number of times people access Facebook has remained relatively steady at 32 times a week, but the amount of time spent on each occasion has increased from 17 to 24 minutes.

My takeaway from this: Anyone who tells you their customers “aren’t on Facebook” could be misinformed. Facebook is by no means dead, and continues its dominance of the Social Media platforms.

Social Media use is increasing!

Instagram (31%) is on a growth trend, almost doubling its reach since 2013. This platform has really captured the younger demographic, used by 58% of 18-29 year olds.

sensis social media report

Business Social Media Presence is increasing!

There’s been an upsurge in the number with a social media presence for all business sizes

31% to 48% for small to medium businesses and 56% to 79% for large businesses.

Forty eight percent of small and medium businesses have a social media presence compared with 31% last year, while 79% of large businesses do, which compares with 56% last year.

social media business graphic

Over four in 10 medium sized businesses use Twitter (43%), while this figure increases to 61% for large businesses.

Instagram is also reasonably popular among medium (28%) and large (42%) sized businesses.

YouTube (41%) has a similar penetration in large businesses.

Instagram is also now used by over a quarter of medium sized businesses (28%) but its penetration in the small business segment remains much lower (12%).

More businesses now have a social media presence than has previously been recorded. Forty eight percent of small businesses, 54% of medium businesses and 79% of large businesses are now on social media.

sensis

Why is this significant?

The businesses that were dragging their feet are realising they are being left behind and launching their Social Media channels.

Social isn’t going away. There are many businesses doing a good job of their Social and brands want this competitive edge for themselves.

sensis social media report

The other aspect of this is the longer you wait to get your business on Social Media the harder it’s going to be to find your place in the newsfeed. It’s already a much tougher environment for organic growth than it was when I started using Social Media to drive business 5+ years ago.

You use Social Media differently according to your age group!

No big surprise here.

Visual platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat are more popular for 18 to 29 year olds, and LinkedIn and Google+ for 40 to 49 year olds.

sensis 4

What does this mean for your business? It’s incredibly important to know who your customers are. You won’t get your messages out to them if you’re not using the right channels. Snapchat might be a huge growth platform right now – but if you sell to people 40+ it’s probably not for you (at least at the moment, doesn’t hurt to reserve your business name though…)

Mobile phones are king!

Smartphones are now the most popular device, overtaking laptops which have lost some appeal.

Why does this matter? Due to the varying functionality and display sizes across desktop and mobile Social Media, make sure your content and Call To Action (CTA) are “mobile-first” meaning, optimised for viewing and use on a phone. It’s important to make your images look appealing on mobile, as this will determine whether people will consume your content.

laptops

Australians own an average of three Internet-enabled devices, which underlines our strong appetite for online activity.

People are still researching businesses on Social Media!

Online blogs and reviews remain a fairly widespread influence on purchasing decisions with 60% of social media users claiming to read them before making a purchase.

sensis2

Fifty eight percent will look at up to five reviews before making a decision.

social

Social Media advertising is increasing!

Over eight in 10 of all businesses who advertise on social media have placed an ad on Facebook.

advertising

Here’s some WA stats for my local folks!

We don’t take ourselves too seriously!

wa

And we’re a bit gross…

wa toilet

 

If you want to view the full report here’s a link for you!

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What Are Hashtags and Why Should I Care?

What is a Hashtag for anyway?

A hashtag is used to group information by topic. They make searching easier and can elevate your reach on Social Media, making your content more easily found by people outside of your current followers!

Hashtags join your content (posts, tweets & grams) to a wider conversation! You could find fans, enthusiasts, influencers and more – but even better, they can find you. So the more the merrier, right? Not exactly.

Let’s look at how hashtags are used on different Social Media platforms.

Twitter

Hashtags are at home on Twitter. They belong there. Tweets without hashtags are pretty much ignored. There are some conventions you will need to keep in mind though.

Twitter is a busy place. You have 140 characters to make your point so you have to do it without any anything unnecessary – no frills! It can be tough to get your point across in such a brief manner, so it’s common for people to use Twitter to link to longer-form content. That link takes up some of your characters.

Tweets with photos perform better as they stand out in the newsfeed. But that photo is also going to eat away at your character limit too!

Mentioning people you think will like and respond to your content is a good way to get your tweets seen, but there’s even more characters used. Suddenly your message needs to fit into a smaller and smaller space. How can you let people know what your tweet is about?

Hashtags!

If your tweet refers to an industry, sector, or topic use those as a hashtag. This means people looking for information about that topic (who may have never heard of you) can still discover your tweet. If that tweet links to your blog or website – they can click through and read your content! You have gained a web visitor and potentially a new customer.

Some other things you can do with hashtags on Twitter:

  • Consider using your brand or product name – that way all your tweets are linked
  • Create unique event hashtags & promote these for people who like to ‘live tweet’
  • Be funny or convey tone

There are 3rd party tools to help you make better use of hashtags.

You can monitor a hashtag to see tweets that contain it, this can be used to keep tabs on your brand reputation, your competitors, your industry trends etc. Examples of free programs you can set up hashtag feeds are Tweetdeck & Hootsuite.

You can check for the popularity of hashtags, letting you see how likely your tweet will be found. You’ll need to find a hashtag popular enough but not saturated; try RiteTag or Hashtagify.me for this.

Chameleon’s top tips:

  1. Use an image in your tweets and 3 hashtags max. This will help extend reach without people ignoring it for looking spammy.
  2. Use third-party tools to help your understanding of hashtags and monitor those relevant to your niche

Instagram

Another place hashtags are at home is on Instagram!

Instagram has a much meatier character limit of 2200, but it’s a visual platform – so just because they are available to be used doesn’t mean you need to use them all. Your image selection matters much more than your caption, as after all that’s all it is, a caption to give context to your image.

Hashtags on Instagram have the same purpose as they do on Twitter, for the ease of search as they group posts by topic. Many Instagram users spend the majority of their time on the platform searching hashtags to see the latest and greatest in whatever they’re interested in.

So you can express yourself more freely on Instagram – plus you can use up to 30 hashtags! Again, don’t feel the need to use 30 just because you can, make them relevant to the photo and your niche. Brands will tend to post their hashtags in a comment under their caption to keep them a bit more ‘out of the way’ of users.

You can also use popular for sharing – say you’re in Perth, WA and you post a great photo of Perth, you could tag #soperth or #perthisok as they are large accounts that re-post tagged content. Getting your post re-posted (called a regram) can really raise your profile on he platform. There are plenty of accounts that share curated content and you should look into this as part of your hashtag homework.

Similar tools exist for Instagram hashtags, but there’s not as much choice as with Twitter. Hashtagify.me is good for looking up Instagram hashtags and seeing which ones have been used in conjunction with the ones you are using.

As with Twitter it makes sense to use a hashtag for your company or product. Do a search first to make sure it’s unique.

[bctt tweet=”Research & use Instagram hashtags that relate to your brand, your photo & your niche. Steer away from spammy ones like ‘instagood’ or ‘followme’ #instagram #hashtags” username=”carmalevene”]

Chameleon’s Top Tip: Research and use Instagram hashtags that relate to your brand, your photo and your niche, and steer away from the spammy ones like #instagood #followme etc.

Facebook

Facebook was slow to embrace hashtags, it was never really considered a place where you would do a lot of searching. More commonly people use Facebook’s newsfeed to connect with their friends and family – not to research brands or topics.

You can use hashtags on Facebook and they do still serve the same purpose as the other platforms, however people are not as receptive to seeing them and studies show Facebook posts with hashtags receive lower engagement from users.

If you are going to use hashtags in your digital marketing you can use them on Facebook to keep consistency. I use them from time to time but always leave a line break between the copy of the post to make them more ‘ignore-able’ to users.

Chameleon’s Top Tip: If you are going to use hashtags on Facebook, limit it to 3 max and try to put them at the end of your post, not littered throughout as this will put hashtag haters off your post altogether.

Things to remember about hashtags

You can use hashtags on Google+, Pinterest and Tumblr as well. We’re not going to go into further details on those channels in this post – but if you do want to know more about them, leave us a comment, we’d be happy to help you!

Do some research on the channels you want to use for your business, find out if they are hashtag friendly and what the individual conventions are; one tag doesn’t fit all.

Here are some hashtag facts you might like to know:

  • Most platforms don’t allow spaces in hashtags (Tumblr is an exception)
  • Hashtags can’t contain punctuation
  • Spaces must be left between hashtags
  • Hashtags can be tracked for reach using third-party software
  • There are popular hashtags like #TBT (Throwback Thursday) you can search for ones that might apply to your niche

#FAIL

An article on hashtags would be negligent if it didn’t warn you about possible issues with choosing a hashtag. There have been many bad examples!

We’re just going to leave you with probably our favourite – which involved a well-intentioned but badly thought out launch party tweet for a Susan Boyle album.

The hashtag that was chosen made it sound like an entirely different party altogether!

Susan Album Party became:

#susanalbumparty

Which (if you are a little slower on the uptake, or have a very clean mind) became:

Sus Anal Bum Party

The Venn diagram intersection of people who would attend both these parties would be interesting!

If you’re keen on reading more of these fails, there are loads! You can check some of them out in this article. It’s important to learn from other’s mistakes!

Wrapping Up

Hashtags are a great way to join in the conversation – and that’s what Social Media is about, being social! So with some quick research and a bit of care you can use hashtags to increase the reach of your content on Social Media and be found by more people looking for information about your industry.

[bctt tweet=”Hashtags are a great way to join in the conversation – and that’s what Social Media is about, being social! #hashtags #socialmedia” username=”carmalevene”]

We’d love to hear from you!

Did this article help you understand more about what hashtags do and how to use them? Leave us a comment or swing by our socials.

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Social Media: What Does it all MEAN?

So you have decided to “do” social media for your business. Great! Why? What are you hoping it will help you achieve? It’s knowing the answer to this question that will determine whether your efforts will bear fruit, and the reason so many businesses fail, or simply give up on their social media (or indeed any online or offline) marketing.

The Chameleons hear all the time about how “Facebook doesn’t work” and “Facebook advertising is a waste of money” and “Social Media can’t help my business sell our products” These statements are mostly wrong, but it all depends on what you want out of it as to how you need to go about executing your strategy.

[bctt tweet=”It can be as simple as merely knowing what you want to achieve and taking the steps to do it.”]

It’s pretty simple when you think about it, but because we all use social media profiles we are often blinded to the realities of using it from a business perspective. Let’s take something that’s been around for a bit longer as an example of what we mean, like Television for instance.

Old TV

 

If you were a brand that sold kids toys – would you make a TV ad with lots of dark, gloomy colours? Would you use formal language? Would you show those ads late at night? Of course not! Why? Because it’s not going to [marketing cliché alert] speak to the desired demographic.

It’s the same with social media. You need to understand who your target market is, how they interact online, which platforms they use and try to [another cliché alert] speak their language.

Ok, we get it – but how?

Well, we don’t think there’s one magical recipe for working this out. In the old days there were focus groups, surveys and buyer personas – and yeah, they’re still around, but what it all boils down to is finding out what your customers and potential customers want and need.

[bctt tweet=”You need to understand who your target market is, how they interact online, which platforms they use and try to speak their language.”]

Big brands spend loads of money doing this, often tracking your spending habits with fancy reward programs to give them insight into your spending behaviour. But what can you do as a small business or a brand just starting out?

Ask your customers. Network with other people in your industry who understand your specific industry challenges. Ask people who use your competitors why they chose them and not you. Use what it is that makes your business different and work this into your strategy. And when we say strategy we don’t mean write a 60 page university-style marketing document.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97vPNAUYJsc]

It can be as simple as merely knowing what you want to achieve and taking the steps to do it. Your social media success will not just happen. It needs to be built, crafted, nurtured…do we sound a bit crazy? Maybe. But we’re crazy about doing a great job at social media marketing, and that’s what you become when you promote your brand on social media, social media marketers! It’s probably one of the many hats you wear as someone with a small business!

So back to your goals; here are a couple of quick examples of social media goals your business may have and how you might go about achieving them:

Say you are a new brand, at first you may just want some likes on your Facebook page to give you a little credibility. As social media marketers we can tell you likes don’t matter – but we know that there’s a certain gravity to a page that has fans – the same way you don’t trust eating at an empty restaurant. If this is a short-term goal for your brand you will need to harness the power of your networks.

  • Ask you friends and family to help by liking and sharing your page.
  • Set up your email signature and your website with social buttons so people know that you’re a social brand.
  • Always use the social media icons utilised by your brand on all your printed materials like flyers and menus.

Facebook keyboard

 

But mostly, and you’re probably not going to like this – you’re going to have to run some like ads. Remember, just like with the TV ad example – make sure they will resonate with your desired audience. Use imagery and language they relate to at the times they are watching and you’ll receive the best return.

Say your social media goal is to use it to get more people to your website – you could:

  • Run some web click ads!
  • Post relevant content from your website as links on your social platforms
  • Start a blog to share your original content
  • Have your developer embed some tracking pixels on your website to help you measure your social traffic
  • Set up Google analytics and monitor your social media refferals

Before you do this we suggest you make sure that your site is truly reflective of your brand and has strong messaging. We all know we skim read and make very quick decisions as to whether we stay on a website for more than a few seconds. You need to make sure those seconds count or all the advertising in the world won’t help.

There’s too many different goals you may have as a business to go through them all here – but we did want to touch on one more just quickly.

[bctt tweet=”Social Media is a conversation, and a huge part of conversation is listening!”]

Social Customer Service

Whatever your short terms goals for social media are – always bear in mind the customer service opportunities social media will present you. If you haven’t yet you will at some point have a customer reach out to you on your social media platforms for help with your brands product/s (or service/s) and you need to LISTEN to them.

Social is a conversation.

And a huge part of conversation is listening – and not just to the words but also the tone. If someone reaches out to you about your brand, positive or negative they want to be heard. Obviously positive feedback is much easier to handle, but negative comments are just as important, if not more so.

Someone has taken the time to tell you that something was wrong. Whether it was with the service, the product, the expectation wasn’t met, the delivery, the colour, size, fit – could be anything, but you have the advantage because they came to you so you can fix it. You know why someone is unhappy. That’s infinitely more helpful to your business than your product just not selling, right? Because odds are if one person says it, there are others thinking it too that weren’t “brave” enough to speak out.

conversation bubbles

 

Acknowledge!

This is why you must always take the time to acknowledge their concerns and not pass them of as an isolated incident, even if you’re sure they are. Other users can be waiting to see how you respond, judging whether they too should speak out based on how you handle the situation.

Flip it!

Anyone who has run a business knows that an unhappy client can often be won over into your most loyal fan if they are listened to, acknowledged and have their issues resolved to the best of your ability. And with social media you have the opportunity to do this publicly where you can turn around the opinions of more than the one upset customer, but the others following the progress of the interaction.

Seems a bit scary. Obviously we are referring to regular types of grievances, not major meltdowns or crises, which need to be dealt with in a more cautious way we may cover in a future post.

The last type of interaction with your social media following we want to cover is the neutral post. They aren’t happy clients or disgruntled (love that word – so fun to say) customers, they just have a need for further information about your brand. Embrace them, love them, be excited about the potential of doing business with them in the future! If someone wants to know more about your offerings they want you to talk them into using your business, so don’t leave them waiting and try to share as much friendly detail as you can. They’ll appreciate the effort and you’ll at least get some social media brownie points – and at most a nice fat sale.

So to finish here’s our top tips for what it’s all about:

  • Work out what you want out of your social media presence and plan for that outcome step by step (it won’t happen overnight)
  • Use your target demographics preferences to present your brands images, profile pictures, tone etc that appeal to THEM
  • Always answer ALL your comments as quickly and helpfully as you can
  • Don’t forget it’s SOCIAL – so listen to what your market is telling you

We hope this helps you to make a plan for your social media marketing and set you up for success! As always we’d love your feedback either as comments here or on our social platforms 🙂

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Know Your Enemy

Ok, so that’s a bit of  dramatic title, we apologies for that – but we really want to stress to our readers that the more they know about the social media platforms they use for their businesses the better their efforts will work.

How can you create good posts, great content and awesome engagement if you don’t know how – or what the users (let’s call them people) are looking for?

To expand: How do you know how to promote your messages on Instagram if you don’t have an account and have never used it? How would you know what content people like, what types of interactions are commonplace, how often to post and what hashtags to use? We know there are loads of great tools out there to help us – but that doesn’t beat knowing.

PLUS you spend your precious time creating these posts – if you don’t make them count it can become a big drain!

So, where do we start?

[bctt tweet=”The Chameleon’s suggest that you have personal profiles on each of the platforms you use or intend to use for your business and suss them out!”]

Do you research and gain advice from the “big guys” like Social Media Examiner, Moz, and your favourite Thought Leaders in social so you stay up to date with trends and feature updates.

If it’s a new platform – maybe ask a millennial 😉

We’re going to start with a quick couple of things about Facebook, which will hopefully help you understand how you can improve your business page!

Facebook

1) You have a Facebook email address

You have a facebook email address which is yourname@facebook.com and it’s how messaging works.

2) Saving Posts

You can save posts to read later!

Ever seen something in your newsfeed you wanted to read but couldn’t at the time you saw it? Well you can click on the right arrow of posts that contain links (and some others) and click “Save Link” to add it to your “Saved” listing on the left hand side of your timeline. One of our chameleon’s described it in detail here.

[bctt tweet=”Did you know you can save posts on Facebook to read later?”]

3) Interest Lists

have a particular interest or hobby you like to read about? Find all the best content on that subject in the one place with Interest Lists. Create a list and then add pages or people who have relevant content! This gives you a whole new newsfeed just of those accounts you added about what you’re interested in!

A great way to stay up to date in what you like – and an awesome way to  curate content for your page.

Facebook interests

 

[bctt tweet=” Find all the best content on that subject in the one place with Facebook Interest Lists!”]

4) See & Manage your Facebook Ad Settings

Ironically you can only get to this from an ad, and when you’re looking for one it’s harder to find them – the rest of the time they seem to be everywhere!

Find out why you get targeted by advertisers on Facebook in a blog post a chameleon wrote here.

 

5) See where you are logged in to Facebook

You can find out where your Facebook account is logged in – the location, operating system and whether it’s mobile or desktop. You might be surprised where you are logged in, the first time I did this there was an old phone listed that hadn’t worked for 3 years!

Go to Security>Where Your Logged In and check for yourself.

Facebook log in

 

We recommend taking the time to familiarize yourself with your Facebook settings. This can help you become a better “user” of the platform, in turn helping you run your pages.

Facebook security settings

 

6) Graph Search

There have been many blog posts written on this subject – so we’re not going to cover it end to end in this one, but we probably will take another run at it at a later date.

Graph Search has been around for about 3 years – but you need to have your language selected as English US. This pains us as much as it might you – but it’s worth it as all updates from Facebook roll out to US users first! Graph Search means you can find all kinds of data about your friends, your page likers, and – well anything really! And they have now released this feature on mobile too.

This will be handy with your profile for finding “that post with the turkey recipe that Julie had around Christmas” or “That photo of Dad with the lawnmower” but this information can be incredibly powerful for brands.

Facebook graph search

 

Imagine you can search for which other pages are liked by people who like your page? You can! What about where they live, what they are interested in, where they go, how old they are? That too – the possibilities are endless!

Having this information can help you align your brand with other brands they love, help you post relevant and engaging content and teach you about what audiences your messages appeal to! You can use this info to determine if your online fans are the ones you were after and adjust your posting to suit if they aren’t – AND see whether your online fans are the same sort of people who love your brand in real life! Amazing, well worth leaving the “U” out of words like colour…

There’s some great article articles on Graph Search here for you – but stay tuned here too as we will definitely be going deeper into this one.

Facebook’s description

Social Media Examiner’s Blog Post

Moz Post

We hope that by better understanding the playing field you can gain insight into how your fans use social media and act more like a person than a branded self-promotion robot we often see, as no-one wants to follow those brands on social.

[bctt tweet=”Being good at social media is about being social after all!”]

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