Wednesday Words: TL;DR

While today's term isn't often seen on social media, it sometimes is. TL;DR is short hand for Too long; didn't read. It's often used to offer a summary of a much longer post that they realize most people won't read or just to offer a summary for those who didn't read it so they can get a gist of it.

TL;DR is often seen on forum posts either before the post begins or at the very end for someone who scrolled past the block of text to find the summary so they could respond to the post.

I've seen TL;DR on Facebook and Tumblr posts. TL;DR doesn't really apply to Twitter because it's impossible to get too long on Twitter. You might see the phrase occasionally on Blog posts when people want to offer a summary.

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: Audience selector

Today's word isn't strictly to do with Facebook Pages or Social Media Marketing, but it does have to do with social media and I think it would be a useful word to talk about and that's Audience Selector.

On your personal profile on Facebook (and Google +) you can choose who you want to share your posts with. You can set a default status for this under security and privacy options, but you also have the options to do this on each individual post.  With Facebook, for example, everyone has the same standard three options of Public, Friends Only, Only Me, but then individuals can create groups or lists that they can selectively share things to.

Keep in mind, selectively sharing things doesn't mean that stuff you want to keep private will be kept private. People can be jerks and have a tendency to share what they aren't supposed to share - so if you don't want other people to see it, the best bet is to still not post it on social media.

For many people, it's a good idea to default to Friends only. I use the Public option myself because of the various sites I post for and interactions with others. Just remember there are benefits and disadvantages to using Public option.

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: Talk With People

This advice is probably one I have a hard time with especially on brands that I help out with on Social Media because I do tend to do more talking to people than with them.

However, the advice below is pretty good advice:

“Don’t talk to people, talk with them.”
Catherine Russell, content writer
*Posted on Constant Contact Google+ Page

This goes back to advice given a few weeks ago about being authentic. Talking with people rather than to them makes you more authentic and gives your brand a voice. Remember that talking with people will also increase their engagement rates, so not only does it make the brand look good and get seen more, it creates and impact on the fanbase as well.

So do your best to talk with people. I know it's something I'm going to work on to do better.

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: Don't Overthink It, Just Do It

Most of the time, our biggest fears is failure. We make excuses as to why we don't want to jump off the cliff that is social media and often times the biggest thing I hear from people who want to delve into social media but haven't yet is that either they "don't know what I'm doing" or "I am going to break something.

My answer to those folks is a quote from a Social Media Professional:

“You’re not gonna break stuff, just get started!”
Joey C, Creator, GoodMorningGloucester.com
@Joey_C

It sounds simple because it is simple. The first thing you can do is just get started and learn as you go. Most social media managers learned from the bottom and jumping in feet first. There was no school or degree for social media. There were no classes to teach you what to do and let's be honest, social media changes so often and so fast that sometimes those classes are out of date.

So don't be scared. Just get started.

Then check this blog out for tips, hints and questions.  As always, if you have questions, I'd love to answer them. Feel free to leave them in the comments for any blog and I will either answer there or answer as a separate blog post.

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.

Wednesday Words: Tumblr

Today's word is Tumblr, which we've mentioned before when we talked about microblogging and microblogging platforms. Tumblr is a combination of a social media networking platofrm and a microblogging platform owned by Yahoo! Inc.

Tumblr allows users to post and reblog multimedia and other contents to a short-form blog. Users can easily follow other users' blogs or make blogs private.

As of March 1, 2015 Tumblr hosts more than 225.1 million blogs.

Tumblr is definitely an option for people looking to expand their social media reach, especially if they are doing short form blogging or sharing images as those are things both common to Tumblr.

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: Remember to Like Your Own Page's Posts

Whether you are the only person posting to your Facebook brand page or if you have other people posting to it, there's an important thing you and the other posters should be doing:  Like your page's posts as your page and as yourself.

Rick's Daily Tips has an awesome article on why you need to be doing this.  If you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe him.

His article, found here, explains why this works and why it's important.  Basically, friends can see things you like if they have their friend news feed ticker turned on and may be interested in something you like and click on it to read more about it.   If you're wanting your friends to see and interact with your business - especially if it's a local business - then this is the way to do it.

Remember: Like your brand's post as yourself.  Be sure to change to posting as yourself before you click like.

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: Gain More Followers

Today's tips cover ways to help you gain more followers on Twitter.  The majority of the options are free and are common sense - but I will say there is a paid option some people may not consider viable, but can be.

1.  Follow others.
Unless you're a famous personality or have connections to people with a lot of followers who recommend their followers follow you, the best way to start out is to follow other people.  Follow people/brands you have interest in or are similar to.  Follow people who are your friends or who you know visit your business or use your services.  Follow people who's posts you think are interesting.  And, follow people who your friends recommend or if you like the ones Twitter recommend, add them.

Also, if you're just starting out and someone you don't know follows you, follow them back.  Eventually your follower to following ratio will even out and if you're a brand, eventually it will exceed your following numbers.

But you have to start somewhere and that somewhere involves doing some legwork and following others first.

2.  Engage in conversation.
Don't hesitate to reply to tweets publicly.  It allows people to see you and if they like what you're posting in reply, they may follow you.  Or they may see what your other tweets are like, then follow you.  The more you get your Twitter handle out there, the better.

3.  Promote your Twitter handle everywhere.
Put it on your business cards, on your door for your business, on your promotional material and especially on your website.  Add it to your signature for email (if it is appropriate to do so).  As mentioned above, the more you get your Twitter handle out there, the better.

4.  Add the follow button to your blog/website/where you can.
This is fairly easy to do.  If you use Wordpress for your website, there are a number of different plugins that you can use to add the Follow Me button to your site.  There is also code you can manually enter, depending on what your using to create your website.

Even though it doesn't add to your followers, it is a good idea to also add Tweet links for your site, that way people can easily share content from your website - kinda like there's the sharing options below this post, including the T for Twitter.

5.  Tweet and Retweet quality, shareable content.
If someone you follow posts a Tweet that would be good to be Retweeted to your followers, retweet it.  Some ideas for retweets are:

• Someone compliments/praises your brand in an @message to you.  Retweet that message and say thanks.
• Someone #FF you.  Retweet it, then be sure to reply to them and say thanks.
• Someone posts something that is relevant to what you, or your brand, is about, retweet it.

All of these are ways not only to get new followers, but to engage and encourage others to retweet you, getting your name out there.

I can't even begin to mention the number of people I have followed simply because they've retweeted my messages.

6.  Use appropriate #hashtags.
Hashtags are a great way to get new people to see your posts, which in turn gives them a chance to retweet and/or follow you.

Use appropriate hashtags about things related to you, or your brand, or what you're posting about in order to generate accurate ledes and a userbase of followers.  

But do use common sense and don't use too many hashtags.  Just because you can use more than one doesn't necessarily mean you should.

7.  Use the promoted accounts option.
This is the paid option mentioned above and while I've hesitated using it, I'm starting to consider it more.  Twitter is, like Facebook, a free service.  But if you are using it to market your company, your restaurant or yourself, then you should invest money into it as part of your marketing budget and strategy.

Promoted accounts have posts seen by people who are not followers and give them an opportunity to be able to follow you - something they may not have seen or done if you hadn't spent money to be a promoted handle.

With those things in mind, if you're looking to get more followers, try some of these tips and see if they help.

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.

Sharing a Klout Blog Post: New Research: Topics That Get A Reaction

While I try to reserve posts that take you to other sites to be posted on Fridays and Saturdays, this article was just too good to wait till next Friday to post.

In the recent blog post made on Klout, they disclose statistics as to what topics get the most, and least, interaction via Facebook and Twitter.

The article contains several useful infographics as well as analytics and explanations as to some surprising outcomes from the research as well.

Depending on your brand/direction, this may or may not help you incorporate topics that generate interaction with your followers - but it's definitely something to consider.

Check out the blog here: http://blog.klout.com/2014/05/topics-that-get-a-reaction/