These days a lot pre-selling happens via social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Instagram and Pinterest. Social media are the source of product and service recommendations, provide social proof and the measure of your reputation.
It is therefore important for every business large or small, to actively connect with their customers via social media channels. Unfortunately, although these social platforms are frequently lumped together as social media, each platform is like a different country – with different rules and customs, and a different language.
So to be effective in connecting to your customers, you can not post exactly the same status update on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus, or your posts or status updates will fall on deaf ears.
As one of the social media experts put it, each social media platform is its own country. For example – LinkedIn is a land of complete sentences, good punctuation, no slang, total professionalism. LinkedIn world is business-oriented, formal and proper. Business readers are pressed for time, so you’ve got to get to the meat of the post as quickly as possible. Actionable business tips are appreciated and shared the most.
Facebook on the other hand is far more casual. Similar to LinkedIn, Facebook is about connecting, yet the language used on Facebook is far more frivolous and fun. On Facebook you connect through educating or entertaining or both. The platform is also very visual, so if you want your post to be read, including an eye-caching image is a must.
In order to capture your follower’s attention and entice them to click through to read the article, you need to post a good hook. The best hooks seem to start with a question – How, Why, What and Where, or a number e.g. 5 ways to be more productive … Different language used on different social media platforms is one of the biggest reasons to avoid posting the same updates across the board. Crafting one update for Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter may save time, but it can make your social media marketing efforts fall flat.
These days a lot pre-selling happens via social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Instagram and Pinterest. Social media are the source of product and service recommendations, provide social proof and the measure of your reputation.
As one of the social media experts put it, each social media platform is its own country. Crafting one update for Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter may save time, but it can make your social media marketing efforts fall flat.
Facebook marketing is quickly gaining popularity among small businesses, however many are still struggling to master the basics.
With over a billion users worldwide and growing, Facebook is an excellent resource for small businesses to generate leads, promote their brand or product awareness, build company reputation and strengthen customer relationships.
Unfortunately many businesses, still get it wrong when it comes to branding and promoting their business on Facebook.
Yesterday morning I was giving a short talk at a local business meeting on the benefits of using Facebook to generate leads for local businesses. The question of Facebook Business Page vs Personal Profile to promote a business cropped up again.
Having created websites for some of the businesses, I am familiar with their on-line exploits. One business has/had several Facebook identities, not to cheat, but different people on different occasions had created a Facebook page for them.
Each page had slightly different page name and often different details. Well what is the harm?
There are several good reasons for not letting this happen: Continue reading
Facebook changes announced last week, significantly affect the layout and the functionality of your Business Page.
From the end of the month all visitors will land on a new, Timeline page as a default. These changes unfortunately are not optional.
Facebook will be switching all Business Pages to the new framework on 30 March 2012 and you won’t have an option to revert back to the old layout. Continue reading