A Rant on Facebook Changes

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Lisa Karl

OK, so yesterday I spent the better part of the day creating new cover photos to use once I converted to the new Facebook Timeline. Switching to the new timeline itself isn’t hard—you just click ‘publish’—but deciding on the cover photo had me in a sweat. It got me thinking, along with this great article on how the new Facebook look betrays small businesses, about how so many social networks behave as if that’s all you do all day.

But wait. You are spending your time running your business, for crying out loud. You are ordering supplies, handling paperwork, taking orders, and dealing with customers. Most likely you have a small staff, and you are the CEO—chief executive everything. When a social media network throws changes your way, you just can’t drop everything and attend to it. Trust me, I know it’s hard enough sending out your tweets, posts, pins, and writing your blog–along with running your business.

Let’s face facts: as Jay Baer notes in the above article, Facebook has become decidedly unfriendly to small businesses. The company proudly announced the changes to business pages, trumpeting great new features. Except, unless you have staff dedicated to social media—and most small businesses don’t—the new changes weren’t terrific. They are ending up a time-consuming, stressful mess.

Take the cover photo, ugh. As I said, I spent most of yesterday working on the cover photos for Find It In Ashburn and Nova Creative Media. The one for FIIA was more time consuming, although it doesn’t look like it; after all, it’s just a couple of photos and the logo, right? Right. I had to decide on the photos, resize them, arrange them, place the logo, resize the logo, add text and decide on a background color. Then change the photos, arrangements and background color. Rinse, repeat. Deciding on what to do for NCM was a bit trickier—I don’t have a lot of photos of me blogging or posting to Facebook. So if you have a business that doesn’t lend itself to beautiful visuals, what do you do? Get even more creative.

And now, a new feature to be rolled out by Facebook: Interest lists. People will be able to develop lists of things that interest them and it will be continuously updated, creating a newspaper-like experience. So now you need to think about keywords and how to target those lists.

It will be interesting to me to see how these changes evolve and how small business owners react. The new timeline emphasizes engagement and visuals, such as photos and video. How long before small business owners decide to disengage entirely?

Please comment on how you’ve reacted to the new Facebook timeline and what it means for the future of your social media engagement.

About Lisa Karl
Lisa Karl is the president of Nova Creative Media, a social media/marketing firm in Ashburn, VA. She is also the publisher and editor of Find It In Ashburn! Connect with Lisa via Facebook (NCM), F acebook (FIIA), T witter and LinkedIn.

Before You Publish, 5 Things to Consider for Facebook Timeline

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Lisa Karl

Whether you love or hate the new Facebook Timeline for business pages, and it sounds like most of you feel passionately, please take time to learn about it before you go public with it. And take the time now, because the end of March (Facebook’s deadline for conversion) is coming quickly! Here are five points to consider:

Cover photo: Your landing tab—if you had one—is history; now you get to decide on a beautiful new ‘cover photo.’ You want it to be visually appealing and descriptive of your business. Do not use your logo or business card here! If you’re thinking about just changing your old landing tab to fit into the space, think again. Facebook wants your business page to act like a personal page, so it added some no-nos. No calls to action or really any other text, except your business name. This means you can’t splash “Like Us!” or any other kind of offer on the cover photo. The cover photo can be as large as 850×315 pixels and that’s a fairly large space, so play with an idea or two before settling on one.

Profile Picture: This is your logo or descriptive photo that looks good as a thumbnail. This is the photo that will accompany your posts.

Bigger visuals: Facebook wants you to use more photos and videos, so these posts will stand out by being larger. Make sure when you post photos they are of good quality.

Tell your story: Facebook is making it easier to tell the story of your company with Milestones. Simply click on the line in the middle of your page and select Milestone. You’ll be able to highlight the important events in your company’s history.

Instead of tabs, you’ll have apps: A tab is an app, of course, but you need to be creative in positioning, naming and adding photos to them now. There are now 12 applications, but only four of them will appear along the top of your Timeline (under your cover photo). Photos cannot be moved, but it’s your choice as to the other three you’d like to appear.

Here are some good local examples of the new look:

Catoctin Creek

Earth Day @ Loudoun

Visit Loudoun

Let me know once your new timeline goes live, I’d love to see it!

Get Ready for Timeline for Business Pages

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Lisa Karl

By now you’ve probably heard the rumors that Facebook will announce the timeline format will be available for business pages—perhaps as early as tomorrow during their marketing conference. I don’t think you need to worry about throwing together a new page as of tomorrow, as it’s likely Facebook will roll out timeline for business pages as beta, to a select group of larger companies. It is, however, time to think and plan. What to do?

Convert your personal page to the timeline format, if you haven’t already. Timeline for business pages probably won’t look exactly as timeline for personal pages, but you should go ahead and convert your personal page to get a feel for the new format.

Gather, or take, photos that tell the story of your company. The new timeline will be more visually based, and big gorgeous photos will be the first impression new visitors will have of your company. Draw them in and get that like!

Take this opportunity to think about and tell the story of your business. If you’ve read my past posts, you know that in almost all of them I urge you to tell your story. People like to connect with people, and believe it or not, are interested in finding out why you do what you do. Use the timeline to hit the high notes of your business’s progress.

Remember the newsfeed is where your fans most likely connect with you. Don’t get carried away and spend all of your time designing a gorgeous business page. The reality is once someone likes your page, they rarely go back to your page. Instead, they see what’s going on with you and your business through their newsfeed. (Think about how you use Facebook.) So keep up with regular, content-rich posts.

Bonus rumor: a new feature may expand like to include love, want and own. If true, this could be a powerful feature for businesses, as fans can mark products or services as ones the own, ones they love or ones they want. And guess what? That information will be shared with all of their friends. Powerful!

While you’re waiting for Facebook to roll out timeline for all businesses, take the opportunity to plan what you’d like yours to look like. Visit the pages that already have the new format, noting what you think works and doesn’t work. (I’ll keep you posted on who has the new format, just visit me at Nova Creative Media on Facebook.) So gear up, plan and get ready–remember that change gives us a chance to renew, grow and blossom!

What Are Your Facebook Goals?

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Lisa Karl

I was speaking to a small business owner the other day and she said, “We’re not on Facebook, although I guess we should be. I just don’t have the time and I really don’t think it will help my business.”

Small businesses are my passion—I’m a small business owner myself! I spend a lot of time speaking and interacting with business owners and am dismayed at the lack of knowledge about the power of social media, and Facebook in particular, to help businesses grow.

The number one reason small business owners get discourage is unrealistic expectations. I’ve met with several people who want me to set up or manage their Facebook page and when we discuss goals, they tell me they want to get X number of likes. One even said her goal was to have 1000 likes within one month!

Number of likes on Facebook is not a goal!

If you moved to a new city or town, you wouldn’t expect to meet 100, 500 or 1000 people in one month, much less become fast friends. Developing relationships takes time, energy and effort. It’s no different for a business Facebook page. So let’s ask the question again: what are your goals, what do you—as a business owner—expect to get out of your Facebook presence?

-Generate sales
-Brand awareness
-Provide customer service
-Let customers know about specials and promotions
-Build relationships and credibility

These goals are not exclusive to Facebook, but should be part of your overall marketing plan. In order to achieve your goals, you need to work first on the relationships/credibility factor. Let’s go back to the example of meeting new people. When you meet someone new, what makes you want to speak with them further and get to know them better? I’m willing to bet it’s not the person who talks on and on about themselves and won’t let you enter the conversation.

Follow the 60/40 rule for Facebook.

Use about 40 percent of your posts promoting yourself/your business directly and about 60 percent on what interests your fans. Use the 60 percent to share your expertise—tell your fans how to use your product in ways they hadn’t thought of, share a recipe, tell them about industry news, local events, even share a funny photo or video.

Using Facebook takes work.

It takes time to develop a vibrant Facebook community, but it’s worth it to make your business the go-to for your niche. Plan what you’d like to accomplish, write down how you’re going to accomplish your goals, and most importantly, be yourself! Check out this great article from Constant Contact on how to let your authentic self come through. You’re not Coca-Cola, some big, nameless brand, you’re Jane Doe, owner of a local business reaching out to local people, who will are, or will be, customers. Here are some good local pages—you can tell by the posts and interactions that they love what they do, and they love people, too!

Catoctin Creek Distillery
MacDowell Brew Kitchen
Great Country Farms

About Lisa Karl

Lisa Karl is the president of Nova Creative Media, a social media/marketing firm in Ashburn, VA. She is also the publisher and editor of Find It In Ashburn! Connect with Lisa via Facebook (NCM), Facebook (FIIA), Twitter and LinkedIn.

Facebook Metrics Decoded

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Lisa Karl

Facebook recently changed – improved! – the insights they provide to business pages. This means you, the business owner, get more information, enabling you to better understand what your fans like, and don’t like.

Find your insights. Pull up your page and look under your profile picture. Click on the Insights link. First is a graph, and across the top you see:

Total Likes – The number of people who like your page.
Friends of Fans – The total number of people who are friends with your friends (potential reach, as they can see their friends’ activity on the ticker).
People Talking About This – The number of unique people who ‘talk’ about your page, by either liking a post or comment, commenting, tag you, share a post, checks in, responds to an event, and on and on.
Weekly Total Reach—The number of unique people who have seen anything associated with your page (i.e. through a share, a mention, or through a ticker).

Just below the overall graph, is the Post Graph. Along that you see:

Date—Date of the post.
Post—A snippet from the post; hover your mouse over it to see a pop up of the post.
Reach—The number of unique people who saw that post.
Engaged users—The number of people who clicked on that post.
Talking About This—The same definition as above.
Virality—The percentage of the people talking about your post out of how many people saw your post.

What do you do with these numbers? When you click on Engaged Users, the column sorts your posts from the highest number of engaged users, to the lowest. You can instantly see what type of content your fans prefer—photos, video, links or updates. Very simple!

On the left side of your page, under Insights, click Reach. The first graphs give you demographics on your fans. Scroll down to see How You Reach People. The left graph show how you reached people. On the right, you’ll see Unique Users by Frequency. This tells you how many times people saw your content, either by going to your wall, seeing it in their newsfeed or a friend’s ticker. You want to be reaching multiple times with your posts. If you aren’t showing up in your fans’ newsfeeds, then change your posting – the timing, the frequency and the type. Monitor this graph to see how your adjustments are reaching fans.

Next click Likes under Insights on the left side of your page. See Where Your Likes Came From and pay attention to the spikes. If you had a high number of unlikes on a particular day, go pack to posts to see the activity. Maybe too many posts? Maybe too much video? Pay attention to spikes of likes as well, what were the posts that day? Open ended questions, a poll, a link? Go with what works!

Schedule time in every week to look over your Insights page. Then, give the people what they want!

Tell us in the comment show using Insights has helped you manage your Facebook page.

Why Your Small Business Needs to be on Facebook

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Lisa Karl

If you haven’t jumped into any social media as a small business owner, Facebook is a great place to start. As part of your business-to-consumer marketing, it’s a must.

Your customers are there. According the Facebook statistics site, there are more than 800 million active users of Facebook, and more than half (52%) of them log on every day. That is a staggering statistic! There are only about 311 million people in the United States right now, so the reach of Facebook is truly amazing. Of course, you don’t want to reach 800 or even 311 million people, you want to reach the local people who come to your business for a haircut, a meal, flowers or a dental exam. Those potential customers are on Facebook – probably right now!

Word of mouth/viral marketing. Facebook is a medium that allows for instant sharing. It’s easy for your fans to click the ‘share’ button to show their friends what special offer or interesting news you have. In addition, by simply commenting on or liking a post of yours, your fans share with their friends via their newsfeed and ticker.

Feedback. Facebook is a fantastic tool for gauging customer feedback. Do not be put off because someone might write something negative about your business/product/service. It is the perfect opportunity to show all of your customers (and potential customers) how you handle the glitches that crop up in every business. Facebook also allows you to post announcements, events, specials, etc and the ability to track what your fans like to see, attend and do.

It’s free. It’s true! Facebook is absolutely free in terms of cash outlays. Caveat (you knew this was coming, didn’t you?): Setting up, and more importantly, maintaining a Facebook presence for your business takes time. To have a good, interactive Facebook presence, truly connecting with your fans, requires more than a rote listing of specials. You need to do research on your customers and craft posts that are engaging to your fans. With the changes to Facebook, many people’s newsfeeds are set to the default “Highlighted stories first,’ which means if you don’t post often enough, your posts just won’t be seen by your fans.

So in the end, Facebook is a terrific tool for the small business owner looking to attract their local customers. If you’re looking for more information, feel free to call me here at Nova Creative media at anytime – I’d be happy to sit down with you and walk you through the Facebook experience!

Tips to Jump Start Facebook for 2012

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Lisa Karl

Both personally and professionally, this is a busy time – the race is on to get everything done by the end of the year! Here at Nova Creative Media, it’s no different, but I wanted to take this opportunity to share with you some tips to get your social media plan moving for 2012.

Facebook is a rich tool you should be actively using to reach out to, connect with and interact with your customers. Here’s how you can pump it up for 2012:

Post often. You can search the internet and come up with 100 different opinions on how often to post on Facebook (and other social media, as well). Aim for one post a day and add to it as you can. You will know when you’ve reached that break-even point when you see a trend of ‘unlikes,’ or you receive comments.
Change up your posts. Please don’t post the same thing every day, such as a lunch special or a sale item. If you do, make it one of several posts you do during the day. Start to add photos and video to your posts. If you post links or repost from others, add comments – don’t just throw it out there, add your own insight or description.
Time your posts. When are your fans on Facebook? Most likely in the late afternoon, evening and on weekends. Use a social media management tool such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck (there are others out there). This allows you to schedule posts during your busy times or when you know many of your fans are online. This leads me to…
Use Insights! Facebook offers you this information-rich area called Insights. If you just glance at it to see how many new fans you have, you’re not getting even a sliver of the picture. Insights tells you about your fans (who they are, where they live) and which posts draw the most attention (letting you know what content they like and when they are online).
Do not push Tweets to Facebook! Your Twitter audience and Facebook audiences are different and have different wants and needs in terms of information from you. Some businesses think they are saving time by posting once to multiple social media platforms, but nothing turns a Facebook user off more than seeing Tweets in their Facebook newsfeed. Just don’t do it!

Please connect with Nova Creative Media for information and advice on connecting with your customers. We wish you a happy and successful 2012!

The Top 5 Questions I’m Asked About Facebook

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Lisa Karl

“When should I post on Facebook?” The number one question I (and every other social media marketer) hears. The answer is simple, and yet, not so simple. Studies show that posts from 2pm into the evening and on the weekends generate the highest interactions. Yet, many people who are responsible for social media work Monday through Friday, 9-5 (or thereabouts), so that’s when they post.

However, you should test posting at different times during the day, and during the week, and pay careful attention to your Facebook/Google analytics. That will tell you when your fans are seeing and interacting with your posts.

“What should I post?” If at all possible, you should post photos. By far, photos generate more interactions than any other posts. After photos, it’s video, music, and links. Links, of course, end up being the most posted content, but the least interacted. This doesn’t mean you should do away with posting links; it means you shouldn’t just post a link and leave it. Make sure you offer a synopsis of what the link says and why you feel it will be interesting to your fans.

“How do I boost my interaction rate?” The best way is to ask for it –- ask your fans to comment or like something. Questions are good, but specifically ask for comments /answers to the question.

“Should I push my Twitter updates to my Facebook page?” No. Your Twitter audience and your Facebook are different, with different needs and expectations. That being said, there’s nothing wrong with have a Twitter tab on your Facebook page.

“How many times a day or week should I post on Facebook?” That depends. Don’t overwhelm your fans, if you push out posts several times throughout the day, or worse, many posts all at once, you’ll end up irritating your fans and they’ll just jump over your posts. Start at once or twice a day, then add more and carefully monitor your analytics. Once you reach the irritation threshold, your fans will unsubscribe. And while several posts sprinkled throughout the day (or evening) is good, make sure you have something to say!

Do you have questions about posting to Facebook for your business page? Ask them in the comments or email me at LKarl@novacreativemedia.com.

Latest Facebook Features, Plus a Rumor

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Lisa Karl

With social media moving at the speed of light, it can be difficult to keep up with it all. So, just in case one these fell through the cracks, here’s a round up of the latest features added/discontinued from Facebook.

Newsfeed Sort: Finally a new feature I’m 100% behind! Like many others, I wasn’t crazy about Facebook’s newest reinvention of the newsfeed. Stories were all out of order and I was seeing certain stories and not others. I still want the update from Uncle Jim, even though he doesn’t post multiple times a day, which is more likely to rise to the top of Facebook’s feed. Now you can choose how you see the posts on your newsfeed: recent or highlighted. Just click in the right corner of your newsfeed to change how you see posts. Personally, I chose recent.

Reviews & Discussions: As promised, Facebook has removed the Reviews and the Discussions tabs on pages. I personally think this is a good thing, as it encourages interaction on pages’ walls. Discussions and reviews don’t show on newsfeeds, but wall posts do. Work at developing a system to engage your followers on a regular basis.

Contextual and Auto-Sharing: These features allow users to tell the (Facebook) world what they are reading, watching and listening. The Auto-Sharing built into pages will automatically share what users are doing, but permission is asked first to allow access.

Maps: Facebook added a map to Events, a box under the event details. Very helpful, if you want to know where you’re going!

Tracking: For a through article on this subject, read this article from USA Today. Facebook admits they keep track of websites you visit outside of Facebook. (Ever wonder why you see your Facebook photo on other sites?) The use of tracking data is innocuous – so far – but patents are being applied for, and certainly, it’s easy to see the implications of one company holding so much data on users.

Rumor! See Likes: Very useful for developers and page owners, this (hopefully) soon-to-be-rolled-out feature will be part of Insights, and allow you to see the photos of those who like your page.

Nova Creative Media

social media marketing & consulting

Category Archives: Facebook