Doing anything beyond the most basic communication on Facebook has always been a challenge. Quizzes, games, contests, importing information about your company, all pretty much require the use of a 3rd party application.
Up to now, finding applications was quite difficult and either rid on a Google search and reading a pile of reviews, or asking your friends for recommendations.
So a lot of really great apps slipped through the cracks.
Of ourselves you don't have to use an app. You can easily become a developer and create your own apps. Whether its simply framing a website you want to share or a more advanced application is limited only by your skill or that of your staff.
Facebook launched an application directory in 2009 but it didn't get much traffic and they shut it down in July 2011.
They said it would be better for users to search for apps and suggested to developers that it would be better for them too. Many uses turned to AppBistro, still an excellent resource for apps for pretty much everything, paid or unpaid, complete with ratings and reviews to help you find the apps you need.
It seems to me that Facebook prefers to adopt technology (like instagram) rather than create it themselves, so I was a little surprised at the release of the Facebook App Directory once again. They've taken a lot of the good ideas from AppBistro and created a mobile and web directory that sounds pretty darn cool.
Of course they've only told developers about the app just now, lots of people are scrambling to meet the guidelines to be included in the directory, which is expected to starts showing up on the web and in Facebook's mobile app in the next couple of weeks.
According to Facebook, "Well-designed apps that people enjoy will be prominently displayed. Apps that receive poor user ratings or don’t meet the quality guidelines won't be listed."
If you're an app developer you should jump on complying with the guidelines. You've got an opportunity to get priority access if you build your detail page and comply with the guidelines by May 18.
*Important
Developers, Facebook says: "You can create an app detail page in the App Center section of the Developer App. There you can upload images, provide additional details, and configure the permissions your app requires. Learn more about setting up your app.
Before creating your app detail page, read the guidelines to ensure your page does not get removed. App detail pages that are eligible for the App Center will be reviewed prior to being listed and priority will be given to those apps that submit before May 18." –Facebook
If you build a mobile app that uses Facebook login, you'll be able to market your app in the AppStore as well, so get on that detail page to be ahead of the game.
I’m not the first to say Twitter is a fantastic search engine traffic booster. A link in Twitter shared by your friends and re-tweeted by others can drive a bunch of traffic if carefully worded. But here’s the thing. Traffic doesn’t do you any good at all if when we get to the page we feel duped into following the link. In fact, it can have the opposite effect of what you were hoping for.
The following post is a rant from me (Janet) as an observer of what goes on as people attempt to monetize their social media knowledge and sometimes make bad choices.
I got a comment this morning on a fairly old blog post (2009) on my corporate site about a web site we built for a premier restaurant in southern California.
When I went to moderate it, it was clearly spam for a service unrelated to the topic so I marked it as spam, blocked the IP address, and went on with my day.
Shortly afterward I got an @reply on Twitter to my personal account linking to the comment on the post (which was now deleted).
Curious, I went to see who Amanda was and lo and behold there was no bio, no profile and of the 7 followers she had there were comments on other sites that related to those products.
Now I don’t know for sure if this is a service creating fake profiles to drive search engines to sites as advertising or a very misdirected effort as using social media to market a product. Who knows, it could be a totally innocent person. All I can say is that it hit a raw nerve and the result of that was me posting to my 5,000+ followers the following message.
Do you suppose that got the effect “Amanda” was looking for? Bottom line? Think before you spam and think before you trust somebody with your brand. Be real and you’ll get more business.
Find other blogs in the same space and add your voice in the comments section. If you’re signed up with backtype or Disqus any comments you make will be tracked and links to your comments and the blog they are on will show up on backtype’s site.
Clip interesting posts and share them in Amplify or Twitter or FriendFeed. You don’t want to share exactly the same thing to all your networks. You want to add something a little different so you are adding value for your followers. You’re trying to show you are a valuable resource in their networks with good links to appropriate on topic information they want to have. Vary which of your sites you link to so posts are exposed to different parts of your networks.
If someone links to your post from their blog or Twitter, go there and say thank you. Add value to the discussion there if you can, and remember them. Maybe you can find something in common and both write on a similar topic to keep the conversation rolling. As you develop more of these relationships it will be come easier and easier to find something to blog about because your conversations will be deeper and richer and better for everyone involved.
Link to all of these different posts and comments in social bookmarking sites like delicious, reddit, and stumbleupon and encourage your co-workers and network to do the same if they find it interesting.
Use Amplify to clip an excerpt of a site or blog you like and post it for discussion on the amplify site. You can also clip your own posts here occasionally but it’s bad form to only clip your own posts!
Use Tumblr to post images and short posts that relate to your area of interest and link them back to your site. These should have different content than the blog but generally be about the same focused topics. Do the same thing on Posterous.
Listen, listen, listen. The most important thing we can teach you here about social media is to LISTEN.
All of these are important reasons to listen, but it’s important to distinguish between listening and monitoring and a lot of companies don’t really see the difference. So here it is.
Let’s say you own a chain of retail stores that sells shoes. You get all set with some of the amazing social media monitoring tools like Radian6, Trackur or and of these, and then you put it on auto-pilot, looking at the data you gather a lot in the beginning and then, shortly afterwards it gets boring and you look at it once in a while but never do anything with it. This kind of thing happens all the time and what’s the point? Maybe you use the data for reports and measuring your success but I’m here to tell ya this is NOT listening. It’s monitoring at best and pointless data collection at worst.
So what is listening?
Listening is active and generally results in some level of action. Say you’ve set up a bunch of the monitoring tools and you start to get a flurry of posts. You’ll probably need to do a lot of fine-tuning at first. if you’re a local business you might not want to hear about shoes sold in Brazil.
It’s an ongoing part of your listening program to get it fine tuned so you can actually get a big picture of what’s going on. (This is another lesson, to be posted soon). So, for the sake of argument let’s say you’ve tuned your listening tools to get the most out of them. Now comes the fun part. You need to respond to what you’ve heard. Learn from it. Start conversations. Engage new people. Show you’re listening and you care about what people have to say.
Tactics you can use
Start listening for local news and events. How can you engage around local news and thereby make your brand more visible to your community? Keep an ear out for community charities you support or other events that show you care about your community.
Listen for topics that you are skilled in. Do you know everything there is to know about your industry? Start listening for questions you can answer and establish your authority on that topic. It doesn’t need to be about your business either. If you’re knowledgeable about bicycling and race every weekend answer those questions too. Set up a separate channel for each area of interest. Bicyclists buy shoes too.
Where are people talking about you. Suddenly there are a lot of tweets about you in a totally different state. Is it time to franchise a second store? Mail-order? Ask people.
Look for an opening. Unlike personal face to face conversations, social media conversations take place in public and it’s quite alright to dive in and add your two cents. Watch for conversations that you can join in. (When you do, don’t make a sales pitch, be helpful and friendly but NO pitch)
Watch for opportunities. You’ve been listening to your competitor nd see that there is a particular forum that they aren’t involved in yet. Take a closer look. Is this an opportunity to gain a different audience?
Include conversationalists in your own posts. So you’ve been listening to a particular influencer online for a bit and they’ve got a very engaged following. How can you engage them? Answer questions. Read their blog and the next time you write something on your blog or Facebook page that relates to something brilliant they wrote link to them. Give them credit for being smart and align yourself with them online. They’re likely to return the favor.
Do a few real time searches every day to find out what the absolute latest on a topic is. When you break the news first your network knows you’re paying attention. When you’re the first commenter on a blog post every person who reads it or comments later sees how on top of it you are (well, as ling as you say something insightful).
Nurture your network. Once you’ve collected a network of connections use a tool like Gist to watch what tehy’re talking about too. Who can you support with their own initiatives? How can you reach out to them around issues, current events or business? Is it their birhtday?
Listen to your customers. Dell set up Idea Storm as a place for customers to share their ideas as well as their complaints. The users comment on each others’ entries and vote on the best ones. Dell listens, adds their input and in many cases actually makes the consumer dream a reality. Now THAT is listening.
I'm not talking about empty vapid followers, spam bots or spammers here. I'm talking about how to get real, useful and interesting followers who add value to your network and bring other interesting people with them!
1. Survey your existing followers. Who has consistently had good information? Scan their tweets and see who they are having conversations with. Are they interesting to you too? Follow them and start a conversation.
2. Start a regular discussion or a Tweet Chat. Setting up a specific time when you'll be online and taking about a particular topic gets people used to tuning in to chat with you and creates a cloud of people talking about the same issues. People who follow the chat will follow you (if you add value). Taking the lead on a Tweet Chat session can really bring you interested and engaged followers.
3. Feature your followers. You've likely got some people following you who are smart and on top of your industry. Give them the props they deserve. Link to their blogs, re-tweet their news or just tell them how much you appreciate their input and discussions.
4. Do some searches. Find people who regularly talk about things that are interesting to you and follow them. Then find a new discussion topic and include them in it. Ask for their participation in the discussion and let them know you value their input.
5. When you read a good blog post do more than just re-tweet it. Find out if the author has a Twitter username and mention them when you tweet the article out. You might get them to follow you, but even better they may share your Tweet with their network and you'll get followers who are interested in you!
6. Clean up your act. Make sure your Twitter stream is one that you would be interested in following. If you babble on about personal data you aren't going to be interesting to people who don't know you or aren't fascinated by your daily life. Take a good long look at what you've been tweeting and what your goals are for using Twitter. Adjust accordingly.
7. Tweet with a hook. Write your tweets in such a way that people want to respond. Ask questions. Leave open ended statements that they can't help but want to complete. Add links to information that will be shared over and over to other networks.
Intel's policy on moderation is pretty open for a corporation of its size. Excerpt from the Intel Social Media Guidelines posted on their website:
Engage
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Remember this is about COMMUNITY not YOU. You should participate by all means, but to support the community not sell yourself or your services.
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As the group grows think of other ways to connect people. Meetups, tele-classes, webinars and online chat are great options.
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Periodically take the temperature of the group. Poll or ask questions.
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Listen to discussions and see if users are looking for added feature, if there are ways you can offer assistance yourself or point them to assistance off site. The goal is to become a source users rely on, not make the whole show about you.
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In the development stage of the group, or later if discussion slows down, start discussions. These should be open ended posts to stimulate discussion, not statements.
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Give the users room to add their perspective
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don't hog the conversations or always be the first one with a bit of hot news. The group will begin to rely on you and not post for fear of being overshadowed.
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Brainstorm with your key community members within and outside of the group to get new ideas flowing.
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Remember to thank people for their participation to the group. Feature people on occasion for their contributions.
Share
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When new features are added to your group's software share how to use them with the group, ask for success stories and examples
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Make connections and suggest connections between users where appropriate
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Take the time to point out new features on and how to use them for best advantage
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Create a way for users to showcase their talents. Sharing Slideshare presentations, Visual CV’s, Job listings, product demos, whatever you can to give your community a voice of their own and sense of ownership in the advancement of the community makes for a healthier more vibrant membership.
Promote
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Promote your group by sharing it with your networks and ask users to do the same
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Post the group URL on your website and related social media sites to encourage growth
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Create a badge or a widget with the most recent posts for users to put on their websites linking to the group
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Talk about the group and feature conversations (with permission) on your other networks (Twitter, Facebook etc)
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Use Google, Facebook and LinkedIn Ads to promote your group
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Whenever your do a presentation or attend a conference spread the word about your group
Several clients have had questions about finding where to switch between using Facebook as the the page and using Facebook as themselves on their Facebook business pages. This used to be a little more intuitive, but now it takes a coupld of clicks to get there. Here's how to do that.
I also get a lot of questions about the tabs at the top, just under the cover photo. Finally tabs are more visible and Facebook made them easier to make attractive too, but not all of the apps have attractive icons so you probably want to replace the default one with a nice image and a custom title. Here's how to do that too.
Do you have more "How to use Facebook" questions? Post them in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them for you in the blog, maybe even with a little video snippet like this one! That's what I do.
By the way, there are a lot more tips in the Free Facebook Timeline e-book. Go ahead, get it now!
Having too many fans can actually hurt your Facebook page's ranking. I know, sounds crazy right? If you've head me speak on social media you've heard me say that social media is not about numbers but about quality. This is particularly true on Facebook. Why? Because Facebook has a ranking system called "EdgeRank". To put it simply Facebook looks at how many friends you have for your Facebook page, how many times your friends have interacted with your posts (share, liked, commented), The algorithm runs and checks to see if there is an affinity between you and each fan.
Facebook is looking to see if you have common interests and the quality of those interests, and it does this with an algorithm. For example has this fan responded on your page before? Have you commented on something they posted? Have you exchanged posts only once or twice in two years? Are the topics you talk about on your page showing up in the fan's daily activities? Are friends of the fan interacting with it?
Flatly stated, if nobody shares, comments or likes your posts, Facebook isn't going to put it in their news feeds because you're not interesting to them. Or at least they haven't demonstrated any interest.
What does that have to do with numbers?
Facebook also looks to see how many fans you have and how many are interacting to come up with a ratio of interaction. The higher the ration there better your ranking and the more likely you will show up in people's news feeds. Low ranking? You could be the proverbial tree falling in the forest. Nobody will hear you.
So, for the sake of discussion let's say you have two Facebook pages.
Page one talks about reptile raising
Posts are about housing, feeding and caring for snakes, lizards etc. This page has 1,000 fans and 500 "interactions" per day.
Page two is about Wine
Posts are about enjoying fine wines, comparing regions, tasting wines and visiting wineries. This page has 10,000 fans and 500 "interactions" per day.
Which page would you say is the most popular?
If you guessed the wine page wrongo, back to square one you go! Those lizards are getting a 50% interaction rate while the wine page is at a lousy 5%! If you fan both pages and so do your friends you will likely see a lot more posts about snakes than Cabernet in your news feed. In fact, without a real effort to go view the wine page often it may seem like it's disappeared altogether.
What to do?
Quit focusing on getting more fans and start getting deeper engagement so your posts start showing up in people's news feeds. THEn, and only then will you grow a valuable fan base on Facebook.
Encourage interaction
Whatever your page is about, find ways to encourage people to comment and share your posts and their own posts on your page. Be polarizing. Start lively discussions.
Post pictures, videos and jokes
I know, I know, but people love this stuff. Make sure there's real content there too, but the occasional cat doing the macarena is going to get your page shared. Live with it or come up with something equally intriguing. Maybe an infographic?
Be timely
If we already read it on everybody else's page what do we need you for? Keep it fresh and be the go-to person for the latest in your field. Toss in a dose of politics or breaking local and world news to get things shared.
Good content
Bottom line figure out what your page is about and make sure you stay on track with that. Use the hints above but add your own flavor so it suits the goals of the page.
Feature users
Face it, we all love a good stroke now and then. Find out what interests your fans and talk back to them. Show off their blogs and products, help them grow their pages and they'll help you grow yours.
Search engines look for whether the keywords you use are represented in the content of the article. If they are not you can be discredited. Try to target the keywords for each post on 3-5 keywords only and tune the content to deliver a good readable message that includes those keywords. The first keyword you list should be incorporated into the title of the piece and the Twitter pitch as well. Using these keywords in a sentence is a good way to make it useful for the audience as well as search engine optimization.
You may be trying to get the site ranked for a lot of keywords but the best way to do that is by focusing specific posts on a specific set of keywords, then write another post for a different set of keywords. Too many keywords and it dilutes the focus and search engines don't know how to categorize you properly.
You need to think about keywords the way a search engine does. Each keyword is approached individually– meaning taken out of the context of the rest of the list of keywords. Then it's compared against the content, categories and other information and filed appropriately.
For a working example of how keywords work take a look at this Google tool: http://www.google.com/sktool/
Enter a specific web page and see which of the keywords you want to use for that post are actually being searched for. It might seem obvious that you want to use the ones most searched for, but that's not entirely true. What you want to find are the ones that describe your content in that post the best and the ones that people are searching for but there isn't a ton of information out there.
For example attempting to get to the top of the page with the keyword "shoes" could take years of constant posting. It's too broad. You need to get more specific and write the keywords for the way people actually search "women's shoes" is better, but still a little broad. Something like "women's walking shoes" though gets to the point and is written in a way someone would actually search for it in the search engine.
Experiment with different keywords until you get to the core of what you want to be found for. Then make sure that your messaging is consistent with your goals AND your keywords.
If you're one of my social media coaching clients you've likely heard this a few times. Feel free to skip this post or use it as a friendly reminder to engage, engage, engage! If not, read on.
There are a lot of ways to automate social media participation. Note I said "participation" and not "engagement". You can participate at some level on many social media networks without actually engaging anyone in conversation, but what's the value in that? In order to really educate/encourage/support/influence or otherwise engage someone they have to want to take action.
One of the most common goals of many social media strategies is to create evangelists for your product, your brand or your cause. To do this you need to inspire people and talk with them. You need to show you've listened to them and support them in their own efforts, You need to deliver information to a receptive mind that wants to help you spread the word because it just feels right to do so. They willingly become ambassadors because they believe in you. Rarely does that happen from a stream of broadcasted pronouncements of your greatness. You might as well go back to direct mail campaigns.
Social media is work. Just as much work as any other component of your marketing strategy. If you expect to simply build a web site, a blog or a Facebook page and instantly see a boost in traffic you're going to be very disappointed. Nothing is more embarrassing than building a Facebook page which nobody "fans". It just makes you feel like a loser. Now, if you take that same Facebook and feed it on a regular basis with content that educates your readers and creates questions in their minds for you to answer personally on the page and by direct contact, you've built something that will truly engage and encourage them to share that information with their friends on other networks.
So here's the deal. There are parts of your campaign you can automate. Automate your searches and listening tools like NutShell Mail, your statistic reporting tools like Trackur and Radian6. Then use that information you've gathered to create good useful content and decide who to reach out to. Avoid using automated broadcasting tools unless you are closely monitoring the reactions and reach out with a response almost immediately to engage that user with a personal touch.