How To Engage Through Feedback on Social Media Sites

[By Sarah Faglio]

Many companies use social media to market themselves to their target audience.  Social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are used to share valuable information directly to followers.  Companies use these sites to connect with potential clients or customers and provide information directly, in an effort to keep them engaged and aware of their brands.  These platforms allow followers to provide feedback to what you share, so it is important to make sure that your company shows that you value their comments and input.

When people show interest in what you share on your social media profiles, it is necessary to acknowledge their feedback.  This effort shows that you value their opinions and are willing to help them find answers to any questions they have have that is relative to your industry or business.

Here are ways to engage followers who comment on your social media profiles, while remaining both personal and professional:

Valuable content
People who choose to follow your company on social media sites show that they are interested in what you have to say and welcome your shares.  Make sure that you share content that is valuable to your followers so they are interested in reading or viewing it.  This would include helpful information, tips, advice, sales (special offers) etc., instead of blatant advertisements or sales pitches.

Provoke conversation
It is always good to have a conversation going on anything you share with your followers.  At the conclusion of your shares, ask your followers for their opinions or what they think.

Good timing
Monitoring your social media sites is useful when responding to a comment made on one of your company's shares.  It is easy to set up e-mail notifications so that an e-mail is sent straight to your inbox once there is new activity on your profile.  Following up right away shows how much your company values opinions and works to engage followers.  It is also valuable to be e-mailed right away where there are tensions or complaints made so that you can alleviate the situation as soon as possible.

SPAM
Normally I would advise you to not delete any comments made on a company profile, whether is be good or bad.   However, in order to maintain a professional presence, you should make sure your comments are free from SPAM litter.  It is also okay to erase SPAM or attempts of other businesses to advertise on your page.

Make it personal
When responding to a comment on one of your status updates or shares, be sure to personalize your message.  By addressing people by their first names when writing a response, you are showing them that you value them specifically and appreciate their comment. 


Become an industry expert
There are many times that people comment on your statuses or page expressing an interest in your product or service, as well as have questions pertaining to your industry.  This is a great opportunity to give advice and provide them answers that they are looking for.  This will help them view you as an industry expert and not only value your feedback, but also look towards your company as a more positive and trusting place of business.

Maintaining integrity
It may be very enticing to compare your company to other competitive businesses in the industry, however I would strongly advise against this.  It is both highly unprofessional and damaging to your integrity if you bad mouth or speak negatively about another company on your public social media sites.

Handling negative comments
There may be some instances where disgruntled people use your social media as an opportunity to complain about your company or its services or products.  However, do not fight back or get angry with these comments. Instead, say that you value their opinions and then offer ways to help them or solve any issues they have.  This type of damage control shows how committed you are to your customers and that you value them and will work to make sure everyone is satisfied with your company.  Showing that you will go out of your way to make sure they are taken care of shows how much your company values their business.

Create business
Social media is gives your company the means to guide your followers directly to your website.  After expressing interest through comments, or asking questions, if it very simple to reply back with links to your website that would either help them learn more about a specific industry topic or about your company and how it could help them solve a problem or acquiesce a desire.

Social media is an excellent opportunity to engage directly with your followers, potential customers, qualified leads or valued customers.  It allows you to ask questions and gauge the opinions of your followers on a specific topic related to your company or what it sells.  This free feedback can help your company grow and customize the way it sells to be more appealing to customers.  Interacting directly with your followers through comments allows your company to show that you value their business and are there to solve industry-related issues or questions.

Facebook Timeline: How To Brand Your Company

[By Sarah Faglio]

 Since its launch in February 2004, Facebook has fundamentally changed the way we network socially and market to our target audience.  Facebook Timeline has turned into an outlet for storytelling for marketers.  As of February 2012, Facebook has more than 845 million active users.  However, Facebook is going through a new change that will affect the way your company uses the application to brand itself to valued and potential customers.  Since December 15, 2011, Timeline has replaced the traditional Facebook profile as the new way profiles are organized.


In Timeline, the photos, videos, events and posts in a profile are categorized according to the period of time in which they were uploaded or created.  In addition to a profile picture, a cover photo is a large picture along the top of your profile.  The About section is where you describe your company: its mission, overview, description as well as when it was founded and contact info.  In addition to a section for photos, you can also add other applications such as Notes, how many people have liked your page (including which of the visitor's friends like your page), your Likes, Events, Videos and Maps.  The main part of your profile is your Stories, where you share and highlight your most memorable posts, photos and life events on your timeline.  You are able to 'pin posts' or anchor the most important story to the top of your page for up to seven days.  Larger stories (bigger in size than rest of posts) such as photos, video and link stories drive engagement to those topics.  You can also highlight important stories with the star icon or hide/delete stories that aren't as engaging or relevant with the pencil icon.  Milestones photos allow you to define your key moments over time, such as reaching a certain number of fans, opening a new location, winning an award etc.

Cover Photo vs. Profile Picture
The cover photo is the large picture at the top of your company profile page.  Some examples include a popular product or menu item, creative artwork relative to your company/industry or a picture of people using your products or services.  With these endless possibilities, you can change the picture as often as you like.  Your profile picture is the thumbnail icon used throughout Facebook whenever you post a comment or update.  This should be a picture that represents your business, such as your logo.  Make sure you use appropriate picture sizes for your cover photo (851x315 pixels) and profile picture (180x180 pixels to 32x32 pixels) to prevent it from being blurry and unprofessional.

Photos and Apps
Your photos and customized apps appear at the top of your company's profile page.  Photos that you can share can be pictures of your products, people using your services, your attendance at events etc.  There are many apps on Facebook that could help your company interact and engage your followers.  Here are some FREE top applications used by businesses to enhance their Facebook fan pages.

• RSS Graffiti periodically checks the RSS/Atom feeds of relevant blogs or news sites that you specify and posts new entries or articles on your wall.
• Pagemodo Pagebuilder helps you to design your page without any design or graphic art skills.  It has many templates to choose from that allow you to add photos, embed videos, change fonts and text as well as showcase your products.
• Social RSS allows you to add your blog and RSS feeds to your page and play flash, MP3 and Silverlight files directly from the tab.
• Wildfire Interactive's Promotion app makes it easy to add giveaways, sweepstakes, coupon giveaways, special deals and contests to your company's fan page. 
• Marketplace is a virtual classified ad for Facebook where you can post free ads that appear both online and via social media sites, and are seen by about 8 million active monthly users.
• Kremsa developed a poll app, used by about 1.8 million people monthly, that allows companies to place daily or weekly polls on serious or silly subjects as another reason for a fan to visit your page.
• Networked Blogs syndicates fresh posts automatically from your company's blog onto your wall.
• Survey Monkey or Poll are interactive tools that allow you to generate public opinion of your products or services or develop new business ideas.

The new Facebook Timeline allows your company to tell its story as well as highlight important occurrences and engage your followers.  With these new adjustments taking place for all Facebook accounts on March 30th, 2012, it is important that you make sure you learn how to use this innovative change made to this popular social media platform.  Remember the key to any successful social media marketing plan is to be creative and share information that is both helpful and valuable to your followers to provoke engagement and interest in your brand.

Helpful Tips to Successfully Blog for Your Company

[By Sarah Faglio]

Blogging is essential in helping a company expand its online presence in attracting qualified leads and creating customers.  With U.S. users spending 3X more time on blogs and social media than in e-mail, companies need to adjust to where their target audience is.  Blogs that are integrated with your website is able to add to its SEO value (helping your company rank higher in search engine results), essentially driving in more traffic for users interested in your industry.

Top 10 Tips for Successful Professional Blogging

1. Integrate blog with your website. By creating your blog on the same domain as your website, you are enabling the fresh content and traffic from your blog to be attributed to your website's SEO value.  Your blog could be added to your website as a sub-domain (i.e. http://blog.website.com) or in a folder of your website (i.e. http://website.com/blog).
2. Do not focus solely on your company.  Users go to your blog to learn about the industry and information that is relevant to them.  If you just write about your company, your accomplishments and products or services then users become disinterested since it is not relevant to them.  Your content needs to be written for your target audience as a place where they can learn about your industry, not a place filled with advertising or self-promotion.
3. Publish new content frequently.  In order to keep an active blog, you need to publish updated posts at least 2-3 times a week.  Freshly updated content puts it high in search engine results when users are searching for topics similar to what you are writing about.
4. Optimize content for search.  Proper keyword placement throughout your blog helps it to rank higher on organic search results for that terms.  Placing keywords at the beginning of the title and throughout the post helps it get indexed and ranked higher by search engines.  Meta-keywords and alt-tags in pictures also attribute to your organic search traffic. 
5. Use social media.  Promoting your blog updates on your company's other social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+) alerts your followers, people interested in your company or industry.  This draws traffic to your blog and essentially increases readership and popularity of your posts.  Adding social media shares at the end of your posts make it easier for readers to share your content on their own social media accounts to spread to their followers.  Being engaged in blogging communities also helps to spread your content to interested readers.
6. Optimize for lead generation.  Intriguing blog posts are able to draw in a strong leadership, but as a business it is important to know who these visitors are.  Many of them have the potential to be qualifed leads and paying customers.  By placing links throughout the blog post to call-to-action landing pages, you are able to develop a list of qualified leads who you can nurture into customers.
7. Using blog analytics.  Traffic, referring sites and popularity of posts are the essential analytic details of your blog that help you to determine potential strengths and weaknesses.  This helps you to learn which topics are the most popular and are most interesting to your readers.  By learning what your followers enjoy reading, you know what topics to write about for future posts that would generate the most interest.  Referring sites, such as specific social media account, provide insight into how useful those sites are to the success of your blog.
8. Comment box.  Comment boxes allow readers to give feedback and voice their opinions on your blog posts.  By closing off this option, you are preventing dialog between your company and a potential customer.  This also grants readers the opportunity to ask questions, allowing you to reply with suggestions or solutions to their problems (that possibly your product or service could provide).  If there are any inappropriate responses, you are able to delete them or moderate them before they are visible on your site.
9. Post new entries in the morning.  Research shows that the best time to share new content is in the morning, since that is when blog entries are read the most often.
10. Be professional.  Avoid trash talking competition, clients etc., as well as be as professional and relevant to your industry as possible.  You want to be viewed as the subject matter expert in your industry, so you need to attain respect from your audience that comes from maintaining a professional blog.

A recent 2011 ROI study found that 69% of companies attribute their lead generation success to blogging.  Studies have shown the significant contribution that blogging makes to the successful of a company's online presence and website. However, upon maintaining a blog for your company, make sure you pay attention to these tips in order to be the most productive and successful in your blogging endeavors.

Pinterest: How To Use It For Your Business

[By Sarah Faglio]

Pinterest is a new virtual pinboard where people can create and manage theme-based image collections to share with the rest of the community.  The pinboard-styled photo sharing social website has been growing rapidly since its launch in March 2010, with 10 million U.S. monthly users in January 2012.  While Pinterest is typically used socially for people to share photos, recipes etc. that are interesting or intriguing, the site can also be used by companies to network and market themselves. 

Setting up your company page
As of now, Pinterest membership is free but invite only.  That means that you need to request an invite before you are able to set up a company page.  It is important to note that you should use the same e-mail address that you use for your company Twitter account, since you are able to connect the two upon creation of your Pinterest profile.  After requesting an invitation, it takes a few days to receive an e-mail from Pinterest allowing you to set up your account.  Once you receive the e-mail, you will get a link to click to start setting up your account.  After connecting Pinterest with your Twitter account, you are brought to a page to create your Pinterest profile.  Select a username that is unique to your company, as well as an e-mail address (same one used for your Twitter account) and password.  You are then brought to a welcome page where you are prompted to select categories that are of interest to you.  Choose the category that is best suited to your industry, which leads you to follow people who contribute to those categories.  When prompted to create boards, you can start developing topics relative to your industry.   

Editing profile to market your company
In the top right hand corner of the page, click on your username then settings.  The about section should include a description of your company, with inclusion of keywords relevant to your industry.  Upload an image of your company logo as well as your company's website.  You can also link your profile to your Facebook and Twitter accounts by turning on those options.  Also, make sure you have visibility option off so that your profile is indexed by search engines.  The drop down option of pin it button in the about tab  in the top right allows you create Pinterest buttons to share on your website to help visitors find your profile.

Editing boards
Boards are used to organize your pins (images) into categories to make it easier for the community to view what you share.  In the top right hand corner of the page, click on your username then boards. Go to edit board, then create a title, then description with keywords relative to your industry.  Choose Just Me option in who can pin and choose a category most relative to the topic. 

Adding pins
The Add+ option in the top right allows you to start adding pins in your profile.  Click Upload a Pin to choose an image from your computer or Add a Pin to choose an image from your website.  Include a description filled with keywording and choose a board (or create a new board using the drop-down option) to upload the image to.  Click the Twitter square and select Pin It.  Click Edit, add a link to a page on your website where the photo can be found (such as a relative blog article on your site) and choose a board to add it to before clicking Save Pin.  The Create Board option allows you to create a new topic or category for putting additional pins into.


Engaging the Pinterest community
You can gain exposure for your brand and interest in your profile by engaging the Pinterest community without bothering or annoying its members.  Go through what others add to their pinboards and like or comment on their photos with positive feedback and praise for sharing the useful picture.  You can also re-pin someone else's picture onto your own profile by clicking the re-pin option.  These options are available whenever you hoover over a picture with your mouse.  When others start following your pinboards, be sure to follow some of their boards too.

What to share
People in a social community want to view valuable content, not sales pitches.  They are not interested in pictures of your business or workers.  However, this is a great place to put up pictures of your products or people using your services (such as hair and beauty).  If your company is more relative to business management, such as advertising or marketing, then helpful graphs, designs or infographics/data visualizations relative to your industry are great images to share.  Be creative, if it looks interesting or holds valuable information, then share it on your Pinterest profile to others who may be intrigued.