Tag Archives: facebook

Best time to post on Facebook

When is the best time to post on Facebook?

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Understanding when the best time to post can have a huge impact on your engagement rate and consequently increase the reach of your content. A recent study by social campaign management company OfferPop looked at approximately 500,000 Facebook posts by major brands using their platform, examining the day of the week and time of the post to look for how engagement levels were affected.

They found that engagement level – calculated by the number of fans who liked, shared or commented on a post – on a Friday was 64% higher than posts added on a Monday. Continue reading →

Facebook Search Engine

Facebook launches search Engine with “Graph Search”

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Yesterday it was announced the Facebook are launching their own search engine known as “graph search” which is designed around the concept of discovery and making it easier for Facebook users to find information. This is designed to allow users to make “natural” searches of content shared by their friends for example “photos of Tom in 2000” or friends who live in Brighton. At the moment Search Graph isn’t going to be available on mobile but once it does there’s going to be one of the most powerful search moderators in history available ‘near me’.

Watch Facebook’s introduction video for an overview – It’s all a bit euphoric for my liking but you get the idea of their bigger vision.

“One way of thinking about Graph Search is less like a search engine but more like a super-powerful filter of the newsfeed of the past.”

Facebook Search Engine

Continue reading →

Using Social Media for B2B

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I just came across this interesting infographic from based on the results of a survey of more than 500 B2B marketers conducted by Eloqua. The results highlighted that 64% of UK businesses use social media as a marketing tool, with the most popular reasons being for brand awareness (83%), encouraging social sharing (56%) and gaining trust and followers (55%). Less than a third (32%) said they use social for lead generation and just 16% use social to assess market perception of their brand.

In my experience using social media for B2B can be more of a challenge and requires an effective content strategy to ensure you are able to establish thought leadership or add value to what you are saying and gain the attention of your audience.

Eloqua have created a rather sexy micro site to show the results but the main one have been summarise in the infographic below. I thought it was interesting that 43% of companies still have no strategy in place for their social media activity. Come on now!

Continue reading →

Social Round Up – Facebook Special

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So I’ve been meaning to write a weekly post on all the useful things I’ve learnt each week as I’m constantly reading blog posts and news articles on all things social and I’ve finally got round to it!

This time it seems to be pretty Facebook focused as Facebook HQ appear to be having something of a shake up and there a few important updates to be aware of. I also came across the following Social Media round up summarising global trends in social usage.

Social Media Round Up 2012

This week Insights consulting released their ‘Social media round the world’ report which highlights some great insights into how we are using social media on a global scale and what the key trends are.

To summarise This year’s main conclusions are:

  • The social media landscape has stabilised: the large sites are getting larger and the small ones are getting smaller. Consumers are only prepared to create new accounts for sites which offer unique functions (such as Pinterest and Instagram).
  • The mobile (r)evolution increases the adoption and usage intensity of social media.
  • Consumers just love to link with (a limited number of) brands.
  • 80-90% of consumers want to be involved in co-creation, open innovation and structural collaboration with brands they love. Brands are not yet sufficiently open to this.
  • Consumers are major fans of market research communities where they can collaborate with companies. After Facebook a research community is the second most preferred platform. Reason is that consumers want their feedback to have an impact; and they are convinced that research communities can have such an effect.
  • Continue reading →
Man U's TimeLine

Facebook Launch New Brand Pages

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So the day we have all been waiting for has arrived rather suddenly and without much fanfare but Facebook have finally revealed the new brand pages.

First impressions are that they are somewhat similar to the new profiles and have a huge potential for brands to get creative with a large cover photo which can be used to showcase logos, products or just amazing design.

The pages don’t officially launch until March 30, but for now if you want to you can have a play around to preview the new look and review your page before the changes take effect. They have also released new ‘Learn about Pages’ guide to help you on your way.

According to Timeline product manager Sam Lessin, ‘Timeline for profiles was designed to make Facebook a better medium for individuals to tell the stories that create their identities, and the philosophy for brands is no different.’

There are a number of immediate changes that I am immediately aware of and feel will have a significant impact on how we manage Facebook campaigns. In a nut shell the main changes are:

-       Additional of a cover page

Cover pages are fantastic in that’s they allow far more space for brands to be creative but Facebook have already outlined strict guidelines for what you can and can’t do one them.

They must not contain:

  • Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”
  • Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section
  • References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
  • Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”

We’ll just have to wait and see how  far they will go in reinforcing them.

-       Tabs have moved

Tabs are no longer down the side of the page but displayed under the cover page. You can select the change the order they appear in and also the image that is displayed rather than the generic app logo.

-       No more default landing tabs

This is a bit of a nightmare as I am a big fan of having an optimised ‘like us’ branded welcome tab and frequently use this for clients. The other thing this will impact is the running of campaigns and competitions which will typically be the default landing page whilst they are running as a way of increasing fans.

However you can still link people to this by copying the URL and you can also ‘pin’ this to the top of your page.

-       The ability to ‘Pin’ posts you want to prioritise

Pinned posts are Page posts that admins have chosen to display prominently at the top of their Page. A pinned post will always appears in the top left of your  Page’s timeline and has a  flag in its top-right corner. Once you have pinned to the top of your Page it will remain there for 7 days. After that, it’ll return to the date it was posted on the Page’s timeline.

-       Highlight Posts

In addition to pinning posts, you can also highlight posts you want to feature more prominentl. This also extends to Milestones which are key moments you’ve decided to highlight on your Page. Milestones are automatically expanded to widescreen and are visible to everyone visiting your Page.

-       Timeline functionality

I think this is a fantastic addition to the new pages as it allows you to showcase the history of your company.  See what Manchester United have done with theirs. From anywhere on your Page’s timeline, scroll to a spot and click  to post a milestone or other type of story to a particular date.

Milestone photos display at 843 pixels wide and 403 pixels tall.

-       Updated Admin features

They have also improved the admin capabilities and you can now do the following from one pace;

  • View notifications
  • Respond to messages
  • View your Page insights
  • Access your activity log to curate content on your Page
  • Access the Edit menu to make changes to your Page’s settings

It will be really interesting to see how brands start using the pages and how it effects engagement and interaction on the page. Watch this space. in the meantime, check out this great guide put together by Mashable to see how brands are making use of the new pages.

What is Online reputation management?

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The advent of the digital age has made it much easier for customers to share their opinion of a brand. With an estimated 1.6 million new blog posts every day, consumers are constantly sharing their views, impressions and experiences, both positive and negative of every conceivable product or service. Whilst this is great for consumers as you can quickly and easily access unbiased product reviews, it’s having a detrimental effect on brands who are suddenly open to attack from unhappy customers whether there is truth in their claims or not. Online Reputation Management

“The actively disengaged customer is four times more likely to post to a blog or website about their poor customer service.” Ultimately, you want to avoid creating this sort of customer. Something has happened to change them from engaged, passionate customers to disengaged, irate customers.

The challenge with social media is that you have no control over what consumers say about your services, comments or accusations can be completely unfounded but get picked up and take momentum across the internet causing damage to the brand. As a result it is vital to have a strategy in place to effectively manage negative mentions.

This is known as Online Reputation Management and refers to the practice of monitoring the online reputation of a person, brand or business, with the goal of neutralising negative mentions entirely and therefore putting their reputation in better stead to change the slant and create a positive image, this is known as reactive reputation management.

Considering the vast amount of people who deal with brands online and offline it is not possible to ensure everyone has a positive experience, however if someone does voice a negative experience online it is possible to minimise the damage most of the time. This can only be achieved by responding in a manner that will address the problem, clarify the situation and put the company in a positive light without encouraging further criticism; Good crisis management requires responding with substance behind what you are saying.

The most important thing to understand and consider are the risks and do you have processes in place that you actually use, to manage with these risks should they occur.

Common ORM proactive techniques include online promotional activity through creating new content, promotion of existing positive content, as well as deeper involvement in the social web sphere through forums, blog and other high profile social networking forums such as Twitter and Facebook.

Read more about best practice for online reputation management here.

Top free tools for community managers

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One of the biggest challenges I have faced whilst working in social media is how to maximise my outreach and measure success. Social media measurement is still a relatively grey area but as long as you are clear on what your goals are then there are a number of social media tools that can be utilised effectively to help you make the most of your campaigns.

Along the way I have come across a number of free tools that I have found hugely helpful. I have listed some of my favourites below and hope they help you too! Any additions are always welcome so if there are any others that you know of, then please feel free to comment below and I’ll add them to the list.

Finding Followers or influencers

One of the biggest challenges people face is finding people who share the same interests or are in the same area so they can start conversations and engage. For brands, this may be finding their target audience so they can better understand their needs or what they are talking about or it could be to find local people to promote an event or launch.

Twitter directories are a great way of finding relevant influencers to engage with, search for people who share the same interests or find followers in the same local area as you.

Those listed below have been the most effective for me but I’m sure there are others out there as well.

http://www.wefollow.com

http://www.twellow.com

http://justtweetit.com/#

http://nearbytweets.com/- Useful tool for finding people in the same area.

My favourites

http://export.ly/ -

Exportly is my favourite tool of the moment! It allows you to export a CVS spreadsheet of all your followers. This allows you to have a proper look at who they are, where they are from and who are the most influential. You can do this by sorting the data by number of followers. Once you know who of your followers is the most influential you can target your engagement at them in the hope of increasing your reach.

Klout- http://klout.com/

Calculates the level of influence your Twitter account has taking into account reach, followers vs followees and level of engagement
Kurrently- http://www.kurrently.com

Useful tool for searching for keywords or competitors on Twitter and Facebook.

http://twoolr.com – Gives good stats with regards to tweet times, see followers and recent interactions. Find out what times retweeted the most.

http://twileshare.com/app/share – upload docs to twitter, pdfs, ebooks, images and gives back stats.

http://twtpoll.com/ – Twitter poll. Great different way to get customer feedback. Share poll with twitter followers and Facebook friends. Can later post this onto a blog or Facebook page to gain further followers and fans.

Measurement

http://twoolr.com – Gives good stats with regards to tweet times, see followers and recent interactions. Find out what times retweeted the most.

http://twiangulate.com (gives diagram + compares 3 profiles followers) Great way to compare twitter profile followers and friends. Finds who follows who, who your most influential followers are and compares.

http://apps.asterisq.com/mentionmap/# – great visual of followers/ connected conversations via hasthtags

http://www.foller.me – Shows tweetcloud of @mentions + world map of engagement

http://twileshare.com/app/share – upload docs to twitter, pdfs, ebooks, images and gives back stats.

http://manageflitter.com/ – manage followers

http://friendorfollow.com/ – manage followers

http://twitterfeed.com/- Feed your blog/ news into Twitter