Tuesday Tips: If you do Direct Sales, Consider a Facebook Group

While the title may sound counter-intuitive to my normal posts talking about Facebook Pages and such, Facebook groups are a great way to market and insure a lot higher rate of viewing than many pages do. If you are an author or a direct sales person (like Avon, Scentsy, Jewelry in Candles, etc.) groups may be of benefit to you.

Keep in mind, I'm not saying to go solely with a group - a page will help as well, but having a group will also help spread the word and increase interaction.

Facebook Group have a distinct advantage in that members can chose to receive direct notifications about updates to the group. They may receive daily updates or updates only from specific members, such as you. You can also limit the group to where only you can create posts and your clients can respond to them.

Facebook groups are great for games and contests as well as special sales.  If you haven't considered a group, check some of them out - you might be surprised how useful they can be.

Tuesday Tips are a series of tips released on Tuesday each week regarding a hint or tip to help you manage and market your Facebook presence better.  You can find all the Tuesday Tips by clicking on the Tuesday Tips tag below.

Thursday Tutorials: Exporting Facebook Insights

Looking at Facebook statistics can be a little overwhelming and sometimes a little distracting (especially if you have people messaging you a lot). If you want to look at your statistics off of Facebook, you can easily do this with the EXPORT option found within the Insights area of your Facebook page.

To do this, simply load the page you want Insights from and click on the Insights option. At the right hand side of the Insights area is the word "Export" Click on that.

When you click on Export, this box will pop up and grey out the screen behind it.  Note: if you click anywhere but in the box to get the data, the box will disappear. Just click on export again to start over.

Figure out what you want stats for and the range of dates and the file format then click Export Data. Note, if you want information for each file type, you will have to go into Export and select a different file type and export it to see all the stats.

Once you export you'll see this pop up. It's not up for long and vanishes really quick, restoring the page to Insights.

The file will automatically download. If you use Chrome, it will appear in your downloaded files bar at the bottom of your browser.

Thursday Tutorials are a series of tutorials designed to help people who may not be as Facebook savvy as other people.  Some tutorials will be targeted towards newbies to the social media world, others will include tutorials for more advanced users.  Thursday Tutorials are written for the layman and are designed with everyone in mind.  You can find all the Thursday Tutorials by clicking on the Thursday Tutorials tag below.

Thursday Tutorials: Changing Order of Tabs on Your Facebook Page

One of the most common questions I get for clients is "Can we change the order of tabs/apps on my Facebook page?"  The answer is "Yes.  Absolutely."  

Much like last week's tutorial, Changing the Order of Sections on Your Page's Timeline, this week's tutorial shows it is pretty easy to make changes to your page yourself.

Click on the "More" Button in your Tabs area.  This should open up a drop down menu that looks similar to this:

Click on Manage Tabs.

This will open up a pop-up menu similar to last week's window, but with your tabs instead of your sidebar.

Drag and drop them into whatever order you want them to appear in, as seen below:

Click Save.  Just like last week, it will force the page to reload and you'll see the tabs reordered, just like below:

It's that easy. 

Thursday Tutorials are a series of tutorials designed to help people who may not be as Facebook savvy as other people. Some tutorials will be targeted towards newbies to the social media world, others will include tutorials for more advanced users. Thursday Tutorials are written for the layman and are designed with everyone in mind. You can find all the Thursday Tutorials by clicking on the Thursday Tutorials tag below.

Wednesday Words: Extended circles

Early last year one of the words we defined as part of the Social Media Marketing Wednesday Words was Circles.  Circles is how you arrange your connections within Google +.  You can group your connections into circles with which you then select the names of the circles you want to share your posts with.

But there's also extended circles on Google+.  Extended circles includes not only the people in your circles but the people who are in your circles' circle (aka a friend of a friend can see your post).

With Google+ you can chose for your post to only be shared with your circle or if you want people in the extended circles to be able to see your post.  When you chose to let extended circles see your post, your post could appear on their news feed instead of in just your friend's news feed.

Something to keep in mind when sharing with circles and extended circles on Google+.

Wednesday Words are a series of definitions released on Wednesday each week regarding a word found specific to Facebook's social media platform, or may be a generic word dealing with social media. These definitions are to help provide you with a better understanding of common and uncommon terms associated with Facebook and social media. You can find all the Wednesday Words by clicking on the Wednesday Words tag below.

Thursday Tutorial: Changing the Order of Sections on Your Page's Timeline

Have you ever wanted to change the layout of your page, but wasn't sure how to? Perhaps you weren't sure what you could change about your page. Today we'll talk about changing the order of the sections on the left column of your page - which is extremely simple to do.

To start, load the page you want to re-arrange the sections on. Mouse over the title of any of the sections. On the right hand side a pencil (editing) icon should appear. If you mouse over that it will say "Manage" as seen in the image below.

When you click on "Manage" the pop-up window will appear, as seen below. If you have Javascript or pop-ups turned off, you may wish to temporarily turn these on while editing the page.

From here, it is as simple as dragging the bars into whatever order you want to drag them. Note: You cannot move People or About. Those are locked in place by Facebook. but the other ones are moveable by you. Once you have them moved to where you want them, click save.

Once moved and saved, the popup will disappear and the page will automatically refresh. your changes should be visible in the refreshed window, like mine is below.

It's that easy. Check it out on your page and figure out where you want things to appear when your viewers use your page.

Enjoy!

Thursday Tutorials are a series of tutorials designed to help people who may not be as Facebook savvy as other people. Some tutorials will be targeted towards newbies to the social media world, others will include tutorials for more advanced users. Thursday Tutorials are written for the layman and are designed with everyone in mind. You can find all the Thursday Tutorials by clicking on the Thursday Tutorials tag below.

Tuesday Tips: Articles Explaining Facebook's Changes

Last week I mentioned that for this week's tips, I would provide links to articles outside of my blog which explain, in detail, what the changes mean - or at least their interpretations of them.  Normally I avoid linking to outside sites during my weekly posts unless it's for Friday Facts or Saturday Shares, but as I am uncertain on the changes and other social media experts seem pretty certain, I'll leave them to do the explaining.

The first article "5 Trends That Will Change How You Use Social Media in 2015" is from Hootsuite and talks about shopping coming to social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook as well as how changes in followship are affecting choices.  It also discusses the changes in Facebook's Privacy Policy and things related to it.

The next article is "Facebook Changes You Need to Know for 2015" on Business 2 Community.  This article provides changes to pages, including the fact Facebook no longer wants "Promotional (Sales-y) Updates/Posts" as well as getting rid of the "Like Gate".  The article also covers a new "call to action" button that will be available to pages this year.

Kim Komando's site also offers an article titled "3 big Facebook changes coming in 2015" which covers the fact (similar to above) that promotion posts won't show up in fan's feeds, the updated Facebook SEO as well as the "Like Gate" removal covered in the above article.

Finally, one of my favorite sites, Social Media Examiner, has a few articles to look at, including "New Facebook Terms: What Marketers Need to Know" and "New Facebook Terms: What Marketers Need to Know". Both of these articles are extremely insightful to the new changes coming (or already here) on Facebook.

If I see any other articles before next Tuesday, or down the road, I will use Tuesday Tips to link to them to help social media marketers read as much as they can about the upcoming changes.

If you know of any articles that may be useful, feel free to send them to me via private message on Facebook on our Facebook page or leave them as a reply in the comment section.

Tuesday Tips are a series of tips released on Tuesday each week regarding a hint or tip to help you manage and market your Facebook presence better.  You can find all the Tuesday Tips by clicking on the Tuesday Tips tag below.

Thursday Tutorials: How to Create a Milestone on Your Page

I've had this question asked, so I figured this would be the easiest way to answer it.  The question: "How do I create a milestone on my Facebook page?"

The answer is surprisingly simple, once you learn how to do it - the key to this is looking where you don't expect it to necessarily be.

When you go to create a post, you have several options at the top where you can chose to just write a status, upload a photo/video or create an offer, event,+, as seen below.

If you click on the Offer, Event,+ you will get an image like this:

Click on the Milestone option.  This pop-up will appear.

From there, you can create whatever milestone you want, whether it be the company 1-year or 5-year anniversary, hitting X-number of likes, etc.  Whatever you want to create as a milestone, you can create - within the limitations of the box.

You can also create milestones in the past by telling it when the milestone happened.  So if you missed the one year anniversary, you can date it to be the right date.

Pretty easy huh?

Thursday Tutorials are a series of tutorials designed to help people who may not be as Facebook savvy as other people.  Some tutorials will be targeted towards newbies to the social media world, others will include tutorials for more advanced users.  Thursday Tutorials are written for the layman and are designed with everyone in mind.  You can find all the Thursday Tutorials by clicking on the Thursday Tutorials tag below.

Tuesday Tips: How to Learn More About Facebook Changes

Today's post is going to be short and sweet and full of links.

I've seen many questions on pages and in groups about the changes to Facebook pages and such and how it will affect them.  There's also been a lot of questions about privacy and copyright etc. (Pro-tip, copying and pasting the Copyright statement I've seen so many people doing is pointless.  It doesn't protect you, doesn't protect your images, doesn't copyright your stuff you post to you. You agreed to Facebook's Terms of Service when you signed up for the service so that statement means absolutely nothing).

A lot of things being posted on Facebook are partial truths, based in part off of Facebook's posts, but not the literal interpretation of them.  So, for people who are looking to read and interpret on their own what Facebook is doing, I am providing the following links:

Key websites for all Facebook policies:

• Updated Facebook Terms of Service: https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms/update
• Updated Facebook Cookie Policy: https://www.facebook.com/help/cookies/update
• Updated Facebook Privacy: https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy/update
• Terms of Service and Policies: https://www.facebook.com/policies/
• Platform Policy (updated November 5, 2014): https://developers.facebook.com/policy/
• Facebook Ad Terms (updated June 4, 2014): https://www.facebook.com/ad_guidelines.php
• Page Terms (updated July 14, 2014): https://www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php
• Facebook Community Standards: https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards

As part of next week's tips, I will be providing links to articles outside of my blog which explains in detail what all of the changes mean - or at least their interpretations of them.  Normally I avoid doing this, but as I am uncertain on the changes and other social media experts seem pretty certain, I'll leave them to do the explaining.

Enjoy!

Tuesday Tips are a series of tips released on Tuesday each week regarding a hint or tip to help you manage and market your Facebook presence better.  You can find all the Tuesday Tips by clicking on the Tuesday Tips tag below.

Tuesday Tips: Planning for the New Year

Do you have a page but haven't done much with it?  Or perhaps you haven't gotten around to making a page for your business?  What about your Twitter account, Instagram, Pinterest Business account or LinkedIn Business Profile?  Once you've narrowed down the social media outlets you want to participate in, now is the perfect time to to settle down and start creating.  This will allow you to launch your band on social media platforms with the new year and see your stats from the beginning of the year.

The important thing to remember is that likes, follows, etc., start small and slowly spread.  Don't be shy about sharing a link to your social media accounts on your personal Facebook and LinkedIn walls and asking people to like and share it.  Don't be shy about inviting everyone on Facebook that you think would be interested in the page.  And don't be shy about emailing invites either.  A great way to let people know your business can be found on social media is to add it to the signature of your email as another way to connect with you.

While you can track your statistics for any time period, starting with the new year will give you an easy launch date to remember and measure the year's progress by.  It also gives you an opportunity to start with a fresh social media plan for the new year.  The new year is only a few days away.  If you can't hit the Jan. 1 deadline, target it for sometime in the month of January.  And keep in mind - plans need to be flexible and changing.

Best of luck and Happy New Year to everyone!

Tuesday Tips are a series of tips released on Tuesday each week regarding a hint or tip to help you manage and market your Facebook presence better.  You can find all the Tuesday Tips by clicking on the Tuesday Tips tag below.

Merry Christmas to All

As mentioned in yesterday's Wednesday Words, with today being Christmas Day and spending time with family (and video games), we will not have a Thursday Tutorial due to the holiday.  The same will be true for next week with New Years Day.  We hope everyone is enjoying time off, if they are fortunate enough to not be working, and having a fun and enjoyable holiday season.

Merry Christmas!

Tuesday Tips Revisited: Post Seasonal Related Topics

This is an updated reprint from last year.  Since it is this time of year and the information is still viable and useful - especially if you are new to social media, I see no harm in revisiting it.

Christmas, and the holiday season in general, is upon us.  Christmas eve is tomorrow and Christmas day follows and that is quickly followed by New Years Eve and Day.

It doesn't matter the holiday you are celebrating, be sure to engage your customers/fans with a seasonal related post.  It can be something as simple as - we'll use today as an example - "Wishing you and your family a Merry Christmas"  or "Happy Holidays" or "Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas".  The message doesn't have to be this generic, but it can be.

Or you could go a step further and create a custom graphic with the message to present to your customers.  Images are often liked and shared and creating a quick single or double image Christmas card isn't hard to do.

It's also good to engage folks with questions leading up to holidays and after holidays.  For example, on  one of the gaming pages I maintain, I have scheduled to ask "What games did you get for Christmas?" After Black Friday, we asked gamers what games they snagged.  On another of my blogs and facebook pages, I asked about what books or programs were on their Christmas wish lists.

This type of interaction shows that you aren't just about business and engages users in a different way.  If you are a creative type, you can even share custom holiday images, company holiday photos or a digital card with your followers.

That being said, we hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and you get what you were hoping for.

Tuesday Tips are a series of tips released on Tuesday each week regarding a hint or tip to help you manage and market your Facebook presence better.  You can find all the Tuesday Tips by clicking on the Tuesday Tips tag below.

Friday Facts: Tailoring Your Posts for Different Social Media Networks

The Constant Contact blog recently posted an interesting article covering the topic of how to tailor your posts for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  The article discusses the importance of each outlet's audience and what they're looking for content wise.  It also explains what type of content each network is looking for and does best with as well as reminding folks to respond to their followers.

This is a very informative piece and I recommend anyone, new or expert, participating in social media to check it out.  For more information: http://blogs.constantcontact.com/product-blogs/social-media-marketing/content-social-media/

If you have anything you would like us to share on Fridays or Mondays, please don't hesitate to contact me via Google+ or Facebook!

Saturday Stats: Facebook Page Reach Plummets to 1% - Here's What You NEED to Know

If you have a Facebook Page with more than 100 Followers, you know that over the past few months, fewer and fewer people have seen your posts.  It used to be about 5%, then 3%.  Now it's 1% or less.  And frankly, that just sucks.

As mentioned in the second article posted yesterday, a lot of it has to do with fan engagement.

However, there are other things you need to know in order to maintain your marketing presence via Facebook.

Ad Week published this article regarding how Facebook is slashing organic reach.  It has some interesting points as to why Facebook is doing this - Facebook is a company and it does need to make money, thus changing algorithms to encourage companies to pay for marketing.

Vocus, however, put together this article which tells you a lot of other things you may not know, including:

The new reality on Facebook is that 99 out of 100 Fans will never see your (unpromoted) Posts. And it may actually be worse: Facebook says that users are exposed to about 1,500 potential pieces of content per 20-minute session. 

That's a lot of information for individuals to process.

It continues to give advice as to what you should do to help your marketing on Facebook, including promoting posts.  Let's be honest here.  You know you have to spend money to make money.  Facebook has been free for quite some time, but they have to pay their employees too.  Use part of your marketing funds each month to promote important posts on Facebook to get the maximum exposure.

And check out other posts here for ways to encourage participation so more people see your posts.

Best of luck!

New Facebook Page Layout Coming Soon

If you're one of the lucky pages, you've already been converted over to the new Facebook page layout, if not, you may still have to wait a few weeks.

Personally, I like the new way pages look and you have a bit more control over things as well.

Facebook actually has a post that talks about all of this and how it is streamlined to help admins as well.

Check it out here:  https://www.facebook.com/business/news/A-Streamlined-Look-for-Pages

Wednesday Words: Circles

Todays's Wednesday Word is a word that, thus far, is only associated with Google+ (G+): Circles.

Circles is how you arrange your connections within Google +.  You can group your connections into circles with which you then select the names of the circles you want to share your posts with.

You can also put people into multiple circles.  I have circles for VIPs, close friends, family, acquaintance and industry contacts.
The interesting thing to note though is while Circles can affect your personal profile on Google +, it can also affect your business page there as well.  People can add your page to circles (which allows them to see some of what you publish), but for them to see more, you have to add them to your page's circles.

And, just like Facebook, this isn't an automatic step.  You have to do this yourself.

Keep in mind, if you want certain articles you post to your page to target certain members of your audience and not others, be sure to put them into specific circles, then select that circle for the item to be posted to.

In the coming weeks, we'll be touching on Google + and how to use it as Social Media along with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

As always, I welcome questions on any of the social media platforms and look forward to answering questions of my readers.

Wednesday Words are a series of definitions released on Wednesday each week regarding a word found specific to Facebook's social media platform, or may be a generic word dealing with social media.  These definitions are to help provide you with a better understanding of common and uncommon terms associated with Facebook and social media.   You can find all the Wednesday Words by clicking on the Wednesday Words tag below.

Wednesday Words: Avatar

Avatar, not to be confused with the movie with blue aliens, is an image used to represent yourself on a forum, Twitter, Facebook, etc.  It can be a picture of yourself, a logo you like or any number of things that represents something about you.

People new to social media are sometimes confused by the term avatar.  For Twitter and Facebook, the avatar should be your company logo - that way the Facebook/Twitter post is easily recognizable while enforcing and enhancing branding of the name and logo.

The Avatar is what people will see and associate with you when scanning through their social media - so you want it to be identifiable and recognizable.

If you are unsure what you should do for your page's Avatar or your Twitter Feed Avatar, I highly suggest looking at other, similar Twitter Feed and Facebook pages, then go from there.  If you still aren't sure, consult with others.  You'd be surprised what people will suggest that just might work.

Wednesday Words are a series of definitions released on Wednesday each week regarding a word found specific to Facebook's social media platform, or may be a generic word dealing with social media.  These definitions are to help provide you with a better understanding of common and uncommon terms associated with Facebook and social media.   You can find all the Wednesday Words by clicking on the Wednesday Words tag below.

Thursday Tutorials: How to Change From Using Facebook as Your Page to Your Profile

This tutorial is a fairly easy one, but it's something that you have to remember to do each time you post as your page and to use it to switch back to your page before you post or you'll be deleting posts you make as yourself instead of your page.

I'll be using my Social Media Marketing: Hints and Tips Page for the screenshots.

First, click on your page as if you were going to read notifications, create a post or do something else with your page.

At the very top of the screen you will see an area in the middle that says "You are posting as: NAME OF PAGE HERE - Change to Your Name Here", as seen below.

The part that says "Change to Your Name" is a hot link.  Click on it.

The page should change to something similar to the screenshot below (just with your appropriate page name and your name there).

It's that simple.

Now you can scroll down and like posts you have made on your page as yourself.  Or comment on it as yourself, or share it to your wall easier as yourself!

Note:  You have to go to your page and change it because even if you see your pages walls on your wall and you click like, it will like the post as your page name, not yours.

Sharing, commenting and liking as yourself increases engagement on your page.  Not to mention some of your friends who many not have liked your page yet may see the post and like the page or post.

To change back to posting as your page, just click on the Change to Page NAME area and it will switch back.  Easy peasy.

Encourage your page admins and managers to do the same thing.  The more individual engagement and likes, the better!

Thursday Tutorials are a series of tutorials designed to help people who may not be as Facebook savvy as other people.  Some tutorials will be targeted towards newbies to the social media world, others will include tutorials for more advanced users.  Thursday Tutorials are written for the layman and are designed with everyone in mind.  You can find all the Thursday Tutorials by clicking on the Thursday Tutorials tag below.

Wednesday Words: People Talking About This (PTAT)

Once your Facebook page exceeds a certain number of users - I believe it's 25 or 30 - and you aren't listed as a Community Page, you get to see and make use of Page Insights.  One of the statistics you will see most often is "People Talking About This" which is today's word.

You can find the "Talking About This" statistic under the name of your page - once you are past the admin area - to the right of your page avatar.  See screenshot below with the # Talking About This circled in red.

So, for this page I maintain and am sole poster of content to, I have 137 likes and 4 people talking about my page.

But what does that mean exactly?

This statistic shows the number of people actively engaging on your page by commenting, sharing, liking, etc.  It also includes people who comment on things shared from your page's wall to other walls (because they are talking about it).  It also includes people who share your page in general and encourage people to like it.

It's a good number to pay attention to if looking at the insights page becomes overwhelming.  Knowing that people are talking about your page is always a good thing.

Remember the adage: Any publicity is good publicity.

Are there any words you hear in relation to social media that you want more information about?  Or questions you have about any of the words, tips or tutorials I post?  I want to hear from you.  I'd love to be able to expand on things or answer your questions in upcoming blog posts.

Wednesday Words are a series of definitions released on Wednesday each week regarding a word found specific to Facebook's social media platform, or may be a generic word dealing with social media.  These definitions are to help provide you with a better understanding of common and uncommon terms associated with Facebook and social media.   You can find all the Wednesday Words by clicking on the Wednesday Words tag below.

Tuesday Tips: Like Content As Yourself

This might seem like a no-brainer, but it's really something I've tried to explain to owners of pages that I have helped create or maintain and it falls on deaf ears.  The advice: Like your page's content as yourself.

There is a valid reason for this and it's not just to be narcissistic.  Previously we talked about engagement and how user engagement raises the number of people who see your page's content as well as raising the rank of where your content will appear in their news feed.  Each like you give to your content - or even just liking your own page - is an important step in allowing your friends and fan page followers to see your content.

"No one wants to see the owner/admins liking their own stuff."

I've actually had a page admin tell me that before.  So let me get this right - you aren't proud enough of your page to like your own stuff?  Or perhaps you just don't want to be embarrassed that you liked your own content.  It's something you have to get over and past if you want your page to grow.  More and more people are understanding why everyone likes and share their own page's contents - even if their friends like the page.  It helps increase visibility.

"I'll let my other admin do it."

Strange how this thought seems prevalent, yet then the admin are confused when no other admin likes content.  Most admin think the other admin will do it, then it doesn't happen.  Get out of that mindset.  Like your own content and the content of other admins.

"I don't know how to change from my page to my account."

Well, if that's the case, you're in luck.  We'll be covering that this Thursday! And don't worry, it's really easy to do.

Tuesday Tips are a series of tips released on Tuesday each week regarding a hint or tip to help you manage and market your Facebook presence better.  You can find all the Tuesday Tips by clicking on the Tuesday Tips tag below.

Tuesday Tips: Schedule Posts

One of the simplest things you can do is to schedule posts for upcoming events, sales, or other topics to automatically post on your Facebook page.  It takes a little bit advanced planning, but is well worth it in the long run.

Facebook has a nice system set up for scheduling posts and a recent upgrade to the system made it even easier.  You can tell it what day and time to post the blurb, image, video, or whatever.

If you're more tech savvy, you can schedule posts using Hootsuite to post to multiple social media sites.

If you want to learn how to schedule posts, check out this week's Thursday Tutorial, which will show you how to schedule posts via Facebook - we'll do Hootsuite at a later time.

Tuesday Tips are a series of tips released on Tuesday each week regarding a hint or tip to help you manage and market your Facebook presence better.  You can find all the Tuesday Tips by clicking on the Tuesday Tips tag below.