Tag

questions about social media

Nov 01
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10 Things to Do On Your Facebook Fan Page

By Communications

So many companies, retail stores, nonprofits, restaurants and small businesses are making a colossal mistake. They’re creating Facebook profiles for their businesses — not pages.

Here’s the difference: I am a person, so I have a Facebook profile. It looks like this:

FB profile

This is the Facebook page for the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport (client).
CHO page

It’s not easy to figure this out, since Facebook changes almost daily but what you want for your business or organization is an Official Page, as seen below on the right. NOT a Community Page, which is the choice on the left.

Official FB page

Once you’ve set up your official Facebook Page, here are 10 things you can do with it, to generate “likes” or fans and build your community.

1. Add all events and post them

2. Post photos from events

3. Ask the community questions

4. Introduce topics for discussion

5. Feature key volunteers/members

6. Provide educational material

7. Link to external articles and other content of interest to the organization

8. Pass along special offers to the community when available

9. Celebrate organization “wins”

10. Inform the community about legislation and advocacy action they can take when appropriate.

Oct 28
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Moderating Blog Comments: The Discussion on Spin Sucks

By Communications

Oddly enough, I’m only posting this to drive you to another blog post on another site. I really want you to read this post: Moderating Blog Comments on Spin Sucks, the fight against destructive spin. Pay attention to the conversation unfolding in the comments themselves. It is a discussion worth your time and consideration.

The handling of blog comments – to moderate, to not moderate and all that resides between the two – has long been discussed. Many of us have different opinions on the topic. Personally, I don’t moderate, meaning, I don’t approve or delete comments before they appear — they are automatically published and if the comment is in violation of my comment policy, then I will remove it later. I’ve only had to do this once in about seven years of blogging so for me, it works.

I’m interested in this conversation though, and how Livefyre, the tool helping the conversation happen, will change the way we interact using comments on blogs.

Join the conversation — what do you think about moderating blog comments?

Oct 15
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How to Create Lists, Save Some Privacy in Facebook, in Five Easy Steps

By Social Media

I just finished speaking to a group of nonprofit leaders at a workshop. There was a point in the discussion when one of the participants became very hung up in how one makes lists and decides who sees what in your Facebook profile. I’m endeavoring to address that here, in five easy steps.

1. Log on to Facebook and look for the word “Account” in the upper lefthand corner.

Account

2. Click on Account and choose Edit Friends from the drop down menu to get to the following screen:

Jennifers

Just LOOK at all those lovely Jennifers!

4. Now that I’ve created my list of Jennifers, I can decide if each Jennifer should belong to other lists as well, for example, this Jennifer is also a friend and someone who is part of my network in St. Louis, so she should belong to both of these lists as well.

privacy

See? Privacy in Five Steps. Easy.

Sep 22
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5 Popular Blog Posts: Learning What You Like

By Social Media

Borrowing an idea from my friend Jay Baer in his great post, Content Lessons Learned From 25 Popular Blog Posts, and because this blog has not lived as long as Jay’s,  I’m reviewing the five most popular posts from Change the Conversation, below:

  1. Twitter: Why We Care What You Had for Breakfast Sometimes, when I’m incensed annoyed about something, I do my best writing. I guess you think so too because this post (with run-on sentences!) is a favorite so far. I think those of us who are active Twitter users “got” Twitter long before others and so have had to suffer the ridicule of others who don’t understand its power. It’s not about breakfast, people.
  2. Time vs. Newsweek and the Demise of the English Language called out a mistake and one of my pet peeves (peek, peak pique). Extra fun bonus: read the comments!
  3. How NOT to use LinkedIn: Three D’oh!s from a Real Life Example was another super popular post, probably because so many people in my network had experienced the same poorly-executed outreach. The result of this post has been an ongoing case study of what not to do and helped with instruction to others on the proper way to use LinkedIn and conduct oneself when engaging in social networking. (Incidentally, there was a follow-up conversation which took place and included a threat that I might not ever want to meet someone’s spouse in a dark alley. REALLY?)
  4. I watched a social media/reputation management nightmare unfolding in the local blogosphere and had several people direct me to it, suggesting it would make for excellent fodder for this blog. How could I resist that? As always, I try to be helpful here and redirect toward more productive use of social media and did so in Five Steps BHG Real Estate III Should Take Right Now. And you know what? I made a new friend from that one.
  5. Five Ways to Avoid a Social Media Spanking is another heavy-hitter and one of my personal favorites. It’s one of those posts I consider required reading for anyone representing their company on the internet. Share it with your employees and colleagues today!

Content lessons:

Like Jay, I’ve learned that numbers in headlines, or posts that include a numbered list seem to rank among the most popular. I will try to do more of these.

Twitter is a hot blog topic. People interested in learning about social media are still trying to get their arms around Twitter and posts that focus on that platform tend to do quite well.

You all seem to like it a lot when I get fired up about something or go after someone not following the “rules.” It’s good for me to channel my frustration into writing instead of oh, a pan of brownies, so when I’m annoyed I’ll stick more closely to the keyboard than the kitchen.

Do you have any favorites not listed above?