Greatson Media – Saco, Biddeford Maine Website Design & Hosting

Facebook provides businesses with another way to interact with their customers or clients in addition to adding value.

Unfortunately, notwithstanding the potential, I often hear from Facebook Page owners that in spite of their hard work on creating their pages, they are frustrated by the fact that they have few fans, and the ones they have aren’t engaged.

Something that contributes to this problem is inadequate planning and no clear purpose for their Facebook Page. Purpose and planning aren’t the most exciting words out there, but they payoff big time. Once business owners take the time to put a plan, known as an editorial guide, in place, everything else falls into place. As a result of this, their fan base grows, and engagement begins to happen to the point where it no longer feels like work, but fun.

Here are some tips for creating an editorial guide for your Facebook Page.

Define Your Purpose

Ask yourself the following three questions to help you define the purpose of your Facebook Page:

#1: Why Have a Fan Page?

Hint: “everybody else is doing it” is not a good reason! Instead, consider what you hope to accomplish through having a Facebook Page.

#2: What Will Differentiate Your Fan Page from Your Website?

You need to think about what you can provide on your Facebook Page that will be different from what is available on your website. Think of ways that your fans can interact with you on your fan page that they can’t on your website. The more interactive your page is, the more successful it will be. Fans will have no reason to visit a static Facebook Page.

#3: Define Your “it” Factor

What is different and special about you and your employees? What do you provide that is different from your competitors? Build your fan page strategy around what makes your business unique.

Now that you’ve considered the three points above, it’s time to work on your editorial guide. Here are the things you’ll want to be sure to include:

#1: How Often Will You Post on Your Facebook Page?

Although we engage with our fans throughout the day on Social Media Examiner, we also have specific chunks of time set aside for certain types of content. For instance, in the morning, we post the latest Social Media Examiner article. In the afternoon, we post a link to content from a third-party that we know will be beneficial to our fans. Then, a few times a week, we post a question late in the afternoon. Although most of the questions pertain to social media, some are on other topics.

#2: Decide What Type of Content You’ll Post.

Knowing this ahead of time makes it easy to find great content for your fan page. At Social Media Examiner, we consistently find valuable content on about 20 different websites. It’s fine to branch out occasionally, but having a list of great sites you go to regularly for content makes it easy to find valuable content to share with your fans.

#3: Determine the Post Format.

Define ahead of time how you want you and your team to put posts together. Some pages are informal and conversational and others are more factual and informative, like a news source.

Since we have three people posting on our fan page, we always end each post with our names, so people will know who posted. This adds a friendly and personal touch to our posts.

#4: Plan Out How You’ll Respond to Your Fans’ Comments.

On the Social Media Examiner page, we have a goal of reaching out to everybody who makes a comment on our page. We want our fans to know we are listening to them and interested in their thoughts.

#5: Determine What to do About Promotional or Negative Posts.

It’s not uncommon for fans to post promotional bits of information regarding their services and products on your Facebook wall. This can make things cluttered and can hinder legitimate conversations from taking place. It’s important to determine ahead of time which types of posts you’ll allow and which ones you’ll delete. Be sure your entire team is on the same page regarding this.

One thing to keep in mind is that your editorial guide is just a guide, not something that can’t be changed. The goal of the guide is to keep things running smoothly without hindering you from going with the flow.

By Amy Porterfield (c) 2012

Website Engagement Techniques: The Caricature Effect

Marketing is all about getting noticed, getting remembered, and motivating people to action. Whether it’s a website, display ad, or video, it must first grab people’s attention, it must stop the viewer from going onto the next website, turning the magazine page, or clicking the stop button. In order to accomplish that increasingly difficult task, you must understand the Caricature Effect.

The Caricature Effect

The Caricature Effect simply stated says that what we notice is variation from the norm. Caricature artists exaggerate reality because that is how we visually distinguish one person from another. Human beings are preprogrammed to look for patterns and variations in those patterns, it’s how we recognize who people are, and it is a basic survival mechanism that helps us recognize danger and distinguish friend from foe.

By distorting an individual’s prominent facial features the caricature artist mimics the human brain’s way of remembering who’s who. Our brains are not cameras that take pictures and file them away for future reference. Our memories are malleable, they change and alter over time and experience, and as a result the things we remember best are the things that stand out, things like Bob Hope’s ski-jump nose or Albert Einstein’s wild white hair. The reason caricatures are so effective is because they emphasize the distinguishing differences that we recognize and remember. So how do we use this fundamental, hard-wired human characteristic to further marketing agendas?

What We Notice Is Variation From The Norm

Getting noticed is job-one of any marketing vehicle, so in order to get people to stop, look, and listen we need to use all the available communication elements at our disposal.

When developing a video campaign we use concepts that demand the mental processing of information by shocking, stimulating, puzzling, or tickling the funny bone of the viewer. These techniques force the audience to think, process, and decode the message, and by generating this mental activity we embed our client’s message in the audience’s consciousness. Depending on the brand and/or product, implementation can range from subtle to obvious with the trick being to make people sit-up and take notice by forcing them to think.

Pattern Recognition – The Same But Different

Human beings have evolved to watch for patterns and when an audience recognizes a familiar scenario they leap to a conclusion. It’s a way of making quick decisive decisions that can either help or hurt communication. Properly used pattern recognition can lead your audience where you want to take them, but if the pattern is too obvious or hackneyed, it can lead to viewers dismissing your message.

Continue reading “Getting Noticed on the Web” »

There is not much in contemporary business that trades on more equity than your business reputation. Stock prices fluctuate because of it, and the media boiling point is reached at disconcerting speed for either good and bad praise or hostility about businesses globally. The first step to managing your online business reputation is to be able to monitor what is being said about you, by whom, and how often. If it’s all great, it’s all good friends. Business worldwide both large and small duel daily using the double-edged, sword of Internet power. You need to know about the poison comments too, and of course, if nothing is being said about your business onlíne, well, that is a problem all in itself.

Good or Evil?

From a marketing viewpoint, we have the capacity to reach more people in remote corners of the world than ever before, leveraging the incredible reach of the Internet to connect with our blogs, videos, and shopping carts that have no geographical limitations. The other side of that coin is that we now inhabit a world where anonymous people can go for their 15 minutes of fame as ad hoc writers, video producers and critics, which can spell trouble for your company.

Google, Yahoo and other search engines give huge validity to sites like Wikipedia and RipOffReport.com in the spirit of full disclosure, especially on big business. Trouble is, fact checking ain’t what it used to be if indeed it happens at all. Loud online voices providing great buzz on your goods and services can provide a fantastic bump albeit unjustified by reality. Bully for you! The sting of acrimonious haters can cost you prospects, customers and dollars to an incredible extent also.

The Most Common Keyword in Modern Business

What do you think is the most often used keyword today in business? This isn’t a trick question or a gag. It is in fact the word, “keyword.” Think about it. There is so much guidance about SEO and onlíne marketing that revolves around how people browse the web, specifically, Google. That means controlling what keywords you use to advertise your website and be found, trying to mirror what people are browsing for and in a unique enough way to reduce competition. As a result we have long tail keywords which are phrases like “How to winterize your boat” so that when someone does eventually look for that, our page or Adwords ad is right there to be discovered.

To keep track of your online reputation, keywords are also what you use to ascertain who and what is being said about you. The easy way to do this to begin with is of course to Google your company name. You’re going to find your web sites surely, but if there is bad stuff available you’re going to see that also. If it falls on page 1 of Google returns, you have a developing situation.

Remembering to do that weekly or every few days is something that just isn’t top of mind. Here are three devices you can use to effortlessly investigate the real-time chatter.

Google Alerts

Google alerts enable you to choose keywords relative to, in this case, your business name and Google will email you instances when they come up online as indexed by the Google search engine. Go to www.google.com/alerts to set this up. Depending on the size and online reputation of your organization, you can adjust the frequency of these email alerts from daily to weekly. There are a couple of refining options. Picking type = ‘Everything’ will keep track of all of the buzz about whatever keywords you type in, comma delimited. For most small businesses, a weekly notification should be adequate.

Here are some tips for what you might want to monitor to see what your customers might find:

* Your business name, including any partitions or alternative names as applicable
* Your competition
* Various misspellings of your organization name
* Your flagship product names, part numbers and trade names
* Your key executive names– bad juju on your top people will reflect poorly on your company

Social Oomph

Google Alerts monitors the Google database. Social Oomph allows you to track tweets. You need to create a free account and then go to Monitors/Keyword Alert Emails on the left hand menu. You are allowed to set up to 50 keywords or phrases to rake the tweet-o-sphere for and email you recaps either daily or every twelve hours.

The keyword tips are the same as for Google Alerts. The cool thing about monitoring Twitter chatter is that it has a very real-time element to it. If ill will is being spread, you may have the capability to join the ongoing conversation and correct the record or counter the conversation when it is at its most toxic and influential to your business reputation.

By Karl Walinskas (c) 2011