Tuesday Tips: Less Pushing, More Engaging

Sometimes it's hard to forget that social media should be used not just to push people to buy your product, attend an event, support a cause, etc. but should also be used to interact and engage with your followers.

Many social media marketers focus more on pushing their brand with a "Hey look at this awesome deal we have going, you need to buy now" and spend less time engaging with people who leave comments (sometimes not even responding at all) or responding to questions on their page.

Don't make this mistake!

Remember that you want to engage your customers.  Ask them questions, respond to their questions.  Like their comments and comment on their comments as appropriate.  Engagement is a two-way street and if you want your fans to buy what you push, you have to engage them.  If you want them to attend events or leave positive feedback, you have to engage them.

Keep that in mind as you schedule/make posts for this week.

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: Monitor Your Social Media

Many companies make the mistake of creating social media accounts on the major networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) but then not doing more than a few minutes with it each week - thinking they've already done most of the work because they are "on social media."

If you are one of those people who think that, you couldn't be more wrong.

If you don't listen to your customers - and don't engage them - you aren't going to retain them and your social media presence is for nothing.  This is especially true if you are a new company or an established company that's new to Facebook and looking to expand your business with social media.

As your social media following grows, you will end up spending more time, possibly ending up with a person who is your social media manager who will handle all things related to social media.  But until you reach that point, you need to engage your customers.  Ask open ended questions to spur conversations, create well versed replies that are NOT canned responses, respond to people who ask questions.  Like their responses in topics.

Remember that social media retains everything you say or post.  You should constantly re-evaluate how you respond to both positive and negative comments and try new approaches from time to time.  Keep things fresh.

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.

First Friday: The Previous Month in Review

As I have finished up the first full month of this blog, I was thinking it might be nice on the first Friday of each month to do a quick article reviewing the topics from the previous month, including links to the articles, breaking it down by platform and theme as well as providing a link to read the full article.

As always, I'm glad to answer questions folks have and look forward to more questions coming my way.

Facebook - Tuesday Tips

• Jan. 7: Respond to Messages - An important tip that seems reasonable, but is often easily forgotten.  You should always respond to replies and messages sent to your private message box of your page.  It helps to engage your fans.
• Jan. 14: Engage Your Fans - Ask fans questions, respond to their questions/comments.  Engage them.  Engagement helps more people to see your posts.
• Jan. 21: Create Quality Content - Some pages focus on quantity of posts over quality.  You want your posts to be shareable, so they need to be good.  Focus on quality.
• Jan. 28: Optimize Post Times - Knowing what times to post is important for increasing the number of views your posts get.

Facebook - Wednesday Words

• Jan. 8: Facebook Place - If you have a business with an established location, there's a chance that you may have a "Facebook Place" page already created and you should claim it from Facebook.  Learn about Facebook Place in this article.
• Jan. 15:  Algorithms and Social Media - This article explains the basics of how many of your fans see your posts and how engaging users affects this.
• Jan. 22: Sharability - This article explains why making posts interesting and something people want to share is important.  TLDR version: if people don't share it, your post views won't increase.
• Jan. 28: Edge Rank - An outdated term that is no longer used by Facebook, but is still pertinent to the algorithms of vies for pages.

Facebook - Thursday Tutorials

• Dec. 19: Finding the Create Page Button on Facebook - A common question I've had from friends and clients - where is the button to create a page?  Three ways to find it in here.
• Dec. 26: Picking the Category for Your Facebook Page - A guide explaining the various categories and what they're for.
• Jan. 16: Creating a Page - This takes you through the initial process of creating a page.
• Jan. 23: Setting Your Page Cover Image - This one talks about how to set up a cover image for your page/profile.

Other Posts from January:

• Jan. 13: Important News: Name Change - An article explaining why the name of this blog changed from Facebook Marketing: Tips and Hints to Social Media Marketing: Hints and Tips.
• Jan. 17: Friday Facts: Interesting Statistics - This article links to a slideshow showing the mass immersion in various social media outlets and puts an emphasis on why marketing with Social Media is important.
• Jan. 20: Video: Why Facebook is Broken - An embedded video from a known YouTuber explaining how Facebook is broken when it comes to fans seeing pages' posts.
• Jan. 24: Friday Facts: Facebook Losing Users, Unappealing to Teens -  While this article isn't surprising by any means, it does provide more information on how things are changing within social media.

Thanks for reading!  Posts will continue to roll out this month and on-going.  Please leave any comments, questions, etc. in the comment section below!

Tuesday Tips: Engage Your Fans

On a Wednesday Words, we explained engagement from fans and how you as page admins must also be engaged with your users.

The best way to engage your users are to post things two to three times a week that encourages participation.  That can be a question for fans to answer, a video, pictures or, occasionally, a contest to get them to interact*.  

As always, respond to customer/fan questions and feedback that they post on your page.  If they take time to give you feedback, take time to acknowledge it.  

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.