The Bulls Roar » Social Media Marketing

Ins and Outs of Facebook Pages

AnnieInfinite — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 05:25:53 +0000

Ins

1st of all BIG ANNOUNCEMENT! Now you can remove the creator of your page and this is big news because in the past if you allowed an employee or consultant to create a page for you they owned it for life! Now however you can remove them as admin and retain ownership of your branded page this also unlinks you from your branded page if that is something you want to do.
Follow the steps below:
While logged in go to the fan page you want to unlink from your personal profile.
Click “edit page” under the profile image.
If you (the creator) are the only admin, add a 2nd admin that you want to transfer the fan page to.
Refresh your page if the 2nd admin doesn’t automatically show up.
You will see a “remove admin” link under the creator’s name…simply click the link and the 2nd (or additional) admin will now have control over the fan page and you the creator will not have access to the Edit Page area.
Refresh your page.
You will be taken back to your Facebook home page since you no longer have access to the fan page you were editing.

There is some debate about branded Fan (Like) Pages – whether to combine it with your personal account or not. One of the reasons it is a good idea to combine them both is one I have mentioned before – being indexed by Search Engines. You will get more SEO from a combined account than you will from an unlinked account! Also it is easier to ‘Ignore’ a friend request by asking the person to ‘Like’ your page instead and you will get referrals from real world and FB friends when they know what you are doing and what your skills are.

Make sure you have the main information in your Info page ticked to allow it to show up under your profile image and make sure that the little box provided under your profile image includes your keywords as the search engines use both of these to index your page.

Facebook Social Plugins for Pages are a great way to optimise your branded page and get the word out there about it via your other sites and profiles use them to full effect. They can be found at: http://developers.facebook.com/plugins or
Go to your Page
Click on Edit Page
Copy the Profile ID onto a notebook page on your computer or just write them down – this is the numbers after the id= in the URL
Scroll down until you see ‘Promote Page with a Like Box’
Click on this link and follow the instructions
Copy the code and paste into an HTML box on your on your Profile or any of your sites or blogs

Set up a Welcome Page, this is becoming easier, we used to always use FBML or HTML apps for this but now there is a new app called… wait for it… Welcome Page! This app still uses html script, but it has the added functionality of tracking your Welcome page hits and is a might easier to use than the others. So give it a try.

Tagging yourself or other users or pages with the @ symbol just like on Twitter, during your posts is another way to be seen, however there is a word of caution here, please use this function with discretion and finesse. Tagging means that the post will not only appear on your wall, but the personal wall of the person or page you have tagged and if done too often can be seen as spamming. I was one of the first people to realise that this function applied to pages as well as people and when I first began to use it I was beseiged with requests from other users and IT consultants for the secret to placing my posts on other pages walls, and there it is just tagging the page in my post.

Use a small HTML box on your Wall Tab (200px wide) to feature upcoming events, launches or special announcements on your Page for maximum exposure.

Add a ‘Web Profiles app which allows you to show your other points of contact including your site, blog and other social media profiles as badges on your Wall Tab.
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Favourite other pages on Facebook to your own FB Page this acts a little like backlinks on your site, now that being said don’t go overboard, but once you do this you can go to that page and leave a comment that your page has favourited their page – once! Hopefully they will take the hint and reciprocate, if they do not you might want to unfavourite them or if they have a lot of fans leave it in place as you may find it brings you more fans just by association.

Outs

The Facebook Privacy Debate: This debate is ongoing and will continue to be as FB administrators and creators try to keep ahead of the online game. My take on this is: if you want to keep your private stuff private – don’t put it on the web at all. Choose carefully and add just enough to show your humanity without allowing your profiles anywhere to become filled with your most private photos or information. The thing is whether it’s Facebook or not the web never deletes anything properly – “What’s on the net, stays on the net.” (Annie Infinite 2010) Try looking up someone you know has been on the internet for a long time, just Google their name and you will see things from 10, 12.. years ago, information they might rather not have you know, or embarrassing things etc..HINT: this is a great way to find out more about the kind of person you might be dealing with in business or personally.

Now that any admin can remove any other admin on Branded FB Pages you need to be very careful who you allow to be an admin, you wouldn’t want to be removed from your own Fan Page!

Since the latest changes to FB Pages included modifications to the Info Tab, (I have had a lot of clients and others asking what they can do, my first recommendation is to just fill up the areas you are given with as much information as possible, not just the information that is asked for. My second recommendation is to add either Extended Information app or the HTML app as a tab to brand your page with more information or a Welcome tab (see Ins) and See this post for more about using the HTML or FBML apps: http://www.thezenbull.com/blog/index.php/facebook-for-business-are-you-missing-out/>
While not strictly speaking an Out this is required reading, do read the FB Promotion Guidelines and make sure to stay within the boundaries. If you don’t you’re out! You can get your page reinstated, but why go to all that trouble when it is easier to do the right thing by everyone, including yourself.

and you just have to read this post by Wong Ching Ya: 31 Facebook Applications to Enhance Your Facebook Page

Older TZB posts mentioning Facebook Pages:

http://www.thezenbull.com/blog/index.php/what-facebooks-new-likes-and-interests-means-for-marketers/
http://www.thezenbull.com/blog/index.php/how-to-grow-your-facebook-fans/
http://www.thezenbull.com/blog/index.php/facebook-pages-goals-fans-and-engagement/

The Zen Bull

More Meat, less potatoes!

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: engagement, Facebook, Facebook Apps, Facebook Fan Page, Social Media Marketing

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Note to Self: keywords are words used by ordinary people

AnnieInfinite — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 05:00:17 +0000

: Image by Craig Key via Flickr

I was presenting a workshop on Social Media Marketing the other day and one of the biggest AHA! moments for the group was around how using social media search options and conversation could be a powerful research tool to help refine your site keywords, descriptions and metatags.

As we used the Twitter search tool to find users talking about the search terms (keywords) of some of the group, it became apparent that we can be so entrenched in our own niche we do not see the forest for the trees.

As an example one of our workshop group has a resort in Noosa Heads and he asked to search around one of his keywords “accomodation Noosa”, now as you and I know there is only room for 140 characters in a microblogging update and no-one is going to use them up with a big word like accomodation, they will use: holiday, resort, unit even holiday unit, instead.

This brought on a passionate discussion about how useful social media is as a tool for keyword research. After all, your keywords are search terms most likely to be used by a person searching for your business in a search engine. One of the tips I tell all my website owners about researching their keywords is to go to several of their friends and ask them what words they would use to search for their business. Why? because you can be too close to the industry to know what the average person is saying about your niche or business. You may even mistake the benefits your business provides as your keywords. Big mistake!

Your keywords need to be words used in ordinary (not industry) conversation about your niche, words the average person needed your service or product would use. One of the most invaluable tools to use is: ordinary people not associated with your niche, and that is where social media can be one of the most invaluable tools to use.

Use Twitter Search put in your keywords and see who is talking about your niche (a great way to start your follower list), it is also a great way to see what words are actually being used in conversation about your niche. Go find blogs by people not in the industry and take a look at their blog tags to give you another indicator. Ask your friends on Facebook for clues about how they would search for your business and use the search tool on Facebook in the same way as you did in Twitter Search. This will give you other groups and pages as well as conversations using your keywords and more ideas on what keywords you could be using.

As you must know your keywords need regular review and so this is one area in which your testing never ends: have your site stats gone up or down with this batch of keywords, change them and test again. When you find the perfect mix and your stats rise, only change one or two at a time to see which ones are working well and then test again.

Keywords need to be reviewed at least every 3 months, much more often at first to make sure they are still relevent. Remember when changing keywords on a page to be sure they are relevent to the copy (text) on the page at all times.

The Zen Bull

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Facebook, keyword, Meta element, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, Web search engine, Website

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How to Get Yourself Banned from Facebook

AnnieInfinite — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 02:09:50 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Facebook regularly bans users for all sorts of reasons, the main ones are spamming or lying – so take care that you don’t.

I educate people via workshops, presentations, blogging and online webucation about social marketing and one thing I can be heard to say every time I talk about social media sites is this: Be authentic, be real and be seen to be a real person not just a business! Social sites are social and are meant to be about conversations and relationships – marketing has to be secondary to this.

Building and branding yourself, yes you, as a trusted expert is far more important than advertising your business in ways that will not only get you banned, but ignored and blocked by other users.

Here is a list of the ways you can get yourself banned from FB:

Don’t use your real name (or at least a name that you are known by all over the web): of course I was not born Annie Infinite however it is the name I use all over the web and it is on my business cards and I am known as Annie Infinite off and online. I had a great experience with FB over this as someone convinced me to try going back to my unused married name and I did and immediately regretted it. I told FB the story and they were kind enough to reinstate my real name of Annie Infinite for me after some checking on the web (they googled me), this kindness has endeared the FB team to me forever.

Friend too many people: yes you can have 5000 friends but please don’t try to get them all at once. Be discerning and make real friends, real connections with people just as you would in real life.

Post too many messages on your wall: this is even more important if you are marketing you can be banned for “excessive evangelism.”

Join too many groups: this can look awefully suspicious and even more so if you are posting lots of messages or links to your sites, or fan pages on the group walls.

You use the same message too many times: I know someone personally who thought they could get away with spamming via private messages they sent the same message out to their whole friend base in groups of 20 people (you are only allowed to message 20 friends at once). She was banned within 15 minutes!

Set your dog, cat or business up with a personal profile: you must be human – animals and businesses cannot have a personal profile, yes you might get away with it for a while, but you will be found and you will be banned. The FB algorithms are getting better every day..

You are too young: if Fb find out that you are under 18, either via your information, your actions or your language – banned!

Write offensive material: this is terminal almost instantly! No second chances.

Steal information off FB: again instantly terminal! pulling content via script, stealing content and reusing it elsewhere (unless you are the author), they will find you.

Spam people: with your app, your links, your business page, via poking, message etc…: basically excessive use of any of these will result in being banned.

As I always advocate, be real, be a person your marketing will come from being a trusted source of information, a real caring person, and truthful!

The Zen Bull

Advantage of Facebook marketing (va4growth.com)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Advertising, Blog, Business, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Spam

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Creating Pre-Launch Buzz

AnnieInfinite — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:41:15 +0000

: Image by nasa hq photo via Flickr

I presented a seminar on Social Media Marketing the other day and one of the questions that came up was “What’s the point of learning all this when my website isn’t even up yet?”

My answer was immediate, “Start now to create buzz, so that when your site does go up, you already have people ready and waiting to find out more.”

This created a real buzz of conversation that nearly ran us overtime. This is the inspiration for this post. How many of you know how to create buzz around something that doesn’t even exist yet? You know the concept isn’t new, movies producers have been doing it for years and we can all take some lessons from the film industry on this.

* Create trailers of your own, small videos of the kind of information, showcasing your skills, talents and personality act like movie teaser trailers – hooking a ready made audience who will eventually come to see your main show – your website and all it has to offer.

* Get a blog, Facebook Page or Group and Twitter profile up and running as soon as you can to get your intended clientele hooked on your information before your site is up and running and put Google Friend Connect on it and Disqus on your blog so that fans can become a fan base via the interlinking community aspects of these applications.

* Are you going to have a membership area on your site? This technique is just like a limited showing to test audience reviews: allow a certain number of Beta testers into your memberhsip area free of charge to test and review your site. If they love what you have to offer, their rave reviews will market your site for you.

* Most of all talk about your upcoming site via Social Media, give tidbits of upcoming information, let people know there will be a members only section, ask for volunteers to test your members area, let people see you really are an expert on your topic well before your site goes up in every way you can. Give away quality information, become a resource in your field and next thing you know your site will be too.

Follow these tips and watch your site stats jump as soon as your site is open for business. I love it when I am on Twitter and someone asks me when the site will go live, or when the membership area will be open for business, why? Because it means people are checking out the site and want to know more.. What could be better than that?

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Facebook, Google Friend Connect, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social network, Twitter, Website

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What’s Your Social Media Marketing Plan?

AnnieInfinite — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:36:20 +0000

When first starting out in Social Media Marketing our enthusiasm often gets us a little carried away, please don’t get me wrong enthusiasm is great, but as usual in life if you don’t have a map you cannot possibley know where you will end up.

Most of us are marketing to create more success for our business, and even with social media we can have a plan and a map and set goals. So now I ask you What’s Your Social Media Marketing Plan? Do you have one?

Would you like to have the steps I use to create my plan?

You would! Sure, here they are:

My first step is to go to the sites I use the most and any more targeted sites around my niche and secure my brand name on those sites, even if the profile sits idle for a while at least now you know that when you get around to using that site your brand name is there waiting to be used, not taken by someone else. The easiest way to do this is namechk.com
Define your goals and write down your definition of success around those goals. Do you want to build BUZZ? Increase brand awareness? Do you want more traffic to your site? More Subscribers? Increased knowedge about your customers? etc..
Define how you will measure your success. Measuring your success will largely be defined by your goals and definition of success; for increased traffic you will measure your site visitors, for brand awareness how often are you retweeted or mentioned by others on social sites..
Write out your ’story’. Social media is all about having conversations and the story of you and your business, write out what you want to say, how you want to be branded, what you want to be known for, what you want people to say about you and stick to it.
Focus your time on sites that are busy and having lots of conversations. To do this you must know; who your customers are and what kind of community you are getting into – will is serve your purposes?
Know your customer profile/s well enough to be able to predict what they want to hear, what they want to see, what they respond to and what they want – they will be asking “What’s in it for them?” even if there need or want is to save the earth or donate to a worthy charity.
Once you have found several appropriate communities, get to know them well, do your research into who has a big voice on that community, who is listened to and respected, how they communicate, what kind of content is responded to etc.. Become an expert on that community so that you can use it well and build your brand name through respect and adding value in the way that is expected on that community.
Prepare what you will say on your communities. Know not only your story, but how you will respond if someone challenges you, if they start a heated debate, if they plain don’t like you etc.. Once you have the worst case scenarios worked out, you will be able to rise (yes rise) to any occasion with gentle, respectful assertiveness when needed and these moments can actually work in your favour if you handle them well.
Know how social media will best be incorporated into your business or organisation. Know how much time you wish to commit to it and create a strategy around that time that creates flow. Map out your core strategy, vision, mission, time commitment both in daily time and how long to test a community before moving on, and protocols. You will also need to know who in your company or organisation will be using SMM and what they can and cannot say.

Some of the most important hints around building a Social Media presence:

* Always Add Value
* Engage and converse in genuine ways
* Listen really listen to what is being said and respond appropriately
* Answer questions with no alterior motive
* Be helpful
* Share knowledge
* Educate
* Be a regular face and contributer
* Stay honest and avoid hype and most of all avoid being a spammer

For more information on this topic download our free eBook “The Definitive Guide to SMM”

Social Media Marketing Plan (opencircle.co.za)
Content marketing with Squidoo (opencircle.co.za)
Six Types of Social Media Tools (dorai.wordpress.com)
Small Business Marketing Plan (myventurepad.com)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Brand, Business, Marketing, Marketing and Advertising, Marketing plan, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

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Social Media – Authentic Connective Marketing

AnnieInfinite — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:07:32 +0000

: Image by Yann Ropars via Flickr

Social Media seems to be the buzz word on many lips, yet are people really using social media in the ways it is meant to be used? Truth is many are and many more are not. Sites like Twitter, Facebook, My Space, Bebo and others are there for communities, groups and individuals to share their lives.

Some marketers seem to have missed the point, these sites are not a place for you to blatantly advertise your product as if you are on the shopping channel, these sites are there to build community, for people to socialise and build relationships. One of the most important things to learn about social media of marketing is that it is all about building relationships, creating and adding value to conversations and it is SOCIAL.

What it is NOT!

Social Media Marketing is not:

* a way to ‘friend’ or ‘follow’ people so that you can post links on their profile or in their group

* a way to advertise your product or service to them in direct messages unless requested

* an excuse to “SPAM” people by sending the same message to all of your ‘friends’ to market your latest and greatest ?

What it IS:

Social Media Marketing is a concept that goes way back to the days when Pops ran the General Store and new all of his customers by name, knew their needs and preferences and could recommend products to them that he knew would help them.

That is the intent at the heart of SMM -

* initiating and building genuine relationships

* adding value to real conversations (without marketing)

* establishing communities

* engaging an audience by telling stories that connect with people in real ways

* getting to know your customer well before recommending anything to them

* treating your potential customer or client like a real friend and treating your virtual and online friends and their profile/s with the same respect you would a ‘real’ friend

* recommend products or services that you know would help them in some way

Does that sound like a tall order?
Does this sound like way too much time and trouble?

Then SMM is NOT for you.

By representing ourselves in authentic ways, and practicing the almost lost art of conversation and story telling we will be representing ourselves as real people who care, not faceless organizations whose bottom line is the bottom line.

The Zen Bull

Why Social Media? (slideshare.net)
Secrets To Social Media Success (retechworld.wordpress.com)
Social Media Marketing Plan (opencircle.co.za)

© AnnieInfinite for The Bulls Roar, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social network, Twitter

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The Bulls Roar » Social Media Marketing

Ins and Outs of Facebook Pages

Note to Self: keywords are words used by ordinary people

How to Get Yourself Banned from Facebook

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