Wall art I purchased from Marafiki, our new local Fair Trade store.

This weekend I stopped in to our local dollar store. I had made some candies with my family for holiday gifts, and wanted to pick up some festive tins to put them in. When I reached the checkout, the owner was there. Just making conversation, I asked him if the store had been crazy busy over the holiday weekend. “No,” he told me. “It’s been really slow.” In fact, he was on his way to a meeting with the other small business owners in the shopping strip his store is located within, to discuss what they could do to help things pick up. “We can’t have another season like this,” he said. “I don’t know what we’re going to do.”

The look in his eyes as he spoke quietly broke my heart. Maybe it’s because I lost a business myself in this economy. (I was one of the fortunate ones in that I was able to reinvent quickly, and had people who lent a helping hand that saved us.) But this conversation really hit home for me, and I can’t get it out of my head.

Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy. And yet so often when it comes to shopping, we think of the big box store first. Now sure, it’s up to small businesses to advertise in such a way that you do think of them. But when business gets tough, advertising dollars shrink, and it can be very hard to make an impact with a small budget.

And that means small businesses need to get creative. Here are some inexpensive ways your small business might be able to increase sales:

• Partner with local youth groups and community organizations that are holding holiday babysitting fundraisers (the teens watch the kids from their community and allow the parents to go out and get holiday shopping done.) Offer to promote the event for the group, and provide coupons for all the parents that take advantage of the babysitting offer, good for that night only.
• Use Facebook. Too many small businesses neglect Facebook to their detriment. This weekend I went shopping at a new Fair Trade store that opened in my town (and bought a beautiful wall hanging for my home.) How did I know it had opened? Some of my friends and local realtors had posted about it on Facebook. I went to the store’s Facebook Page and looked through the photo albums they had of some of their products. I had my eye on that wall hanging long before the doors actually opened. And when I went into the store, I couldn’t resist. (I went home and told hubby he’d purchased an early birthday present for me!) The local Irish pub in my town posts about the nightly entertainment, fun stuff going on, etc. If you’re thinking about where to go for dinner, his little reminders at just the right time may be just the thing you need to choose his place of business.
• Teach. Offer free workshops throughout the holidays in your place of business. The dollar store owner could host a workshop on how to decorate beautiful gift packages or create holiday centerpieces using his products. A jewelry store could host a clinic on how to layer jewelry, or choose a diamond. Stationery sellers could hold a hands-on workshop on creative holiday cards. Coffee shops and restaurants can provide dessert or drink-making classes. No matter what your product line, you can teach people how to use your products. And since your customers are already in your shop, they’ll probably buy the supplies to make more at home from you.

It’s also important for people to support their local small businesses. When you’re thinking about running to your local big box store for something, ask yourself if a small business in your area offers the same product. Even if it’s a couple pennies more, by shopping at a local business, you get more personalized attention, and you help rebuild your local economy. And that’s good for everybody.

Ask yourself: What would your town be like if there were no small businesses there? Because if you don’t support your local businesses, there won’t be any. That’s a fact.

What ideas do you have to offer to local businesses in your area? What can they do to get the word out, and stay afloat? Would love to read your thoughts in the comments below.

image credit: skuggen.com

For the last several days we’ve been without power (and heat, and light…) in NJ (which was finally restored last night. Hurray!) Since we manage the social media presences for several clients (some of whom were also without power, thanks to the storm) we had to get creative with regards to posting and responding. Some of it was done through our local Starbucks and free wifi. (Yay, Starbucks!) Some was done through our smartphones.

But since we knew we wouldn’t be able to take up Starbucks’ plugs and seats for the price of a cup of joe 24 hours per day (our neighbors needed them too), we also pre-scheduled some posts using HootSuite. We wrote the posts, and then scheduled them for the times we wanted them to appear on Twitter and Facebook.

And that’s when I learned that with the new Facebook, their bias against third party apps that aren’t partners has gotten even worse. Sure, I can see every song that friends are playing via Spotify in the News Feed (Spotify is a Facebook partner). But practically NO ONE saw our posts on Facebook. Content that would normally have solicited response had we posted it directly in Facebook didn’t garner a single like or comment. And it’s exactly the same type of content that ALWAYS gets response.

The conclusion is that you simply can’t use HootSuite to post to your Facebook Page. Not if you want it to have any impact at all.

Have you found any 3rd party apps for posting that actually get seen in Facebook? Would love to read about them in the comments below.

Oh, Facebook. Why do you make it so hard for me to love you? I really tried to be patient with your new changes. Look on the bright side. Find the benefits. But you’re making it SO hard. I have to use you so differently now, and I really am not enjoying it.

This week I discovered something else that’s really bugging me. I used to be able to post about seasonal things, and be sure that my friends would see them. You know, like Halloween. But now, you’re condensing posts about topics into one big mass that I first have to find, and then click on, in order to see the content from my friends. See?

How about if you think the posts are interesting enough to include in the News Feed, you just let me scroll through them like normal, instead of forcing me to click if I’m interested in the topic? Stop trying to think for me. And stop making it harder for me to find the content from my friends.

You’re making it harder for me as both a user AND a marketer. You know, because I like to talk about the things people are talking about. It’s called being engaging. But I can’t do that if you hide those things in a lump. Please stop it.

Pretty please?

Your thoughts?

Image credit: Katie Tegtmeyer

I recently read an article that said that a study has shown that 95% of wall posts on brand Facebook Pages go unanswered. 95%! This really shocked me. After all, isn’t the point of social media to be, well, social? Why on earth would you put up a Page, try to write engaging content that your fans see, and then ignore them?

It’s like being in a relationship where you want to do all the talking, and you ignore the other party. It won’t last long.

If you want to put all the time and effort required into creating an engaging Facebook presence, realize that you are making a commitment to the people that Like your Page. You are promising to make the time investment to read what THEY have to say as well, and acknowledge that. It’s NOT all about you.

When my company manages a Facebook Page for a direct selling company, we respond to 100% of posts. Our whole goal is to get people to interact with us. It doesn’t make sense to ignore people once they do. Even if it’s just a simple “Like” on someone’s comment, you have to acknowledge the fact that someone has interacted with you. It says, “I see you and I appreciate the effort you made to engage with me.”

And what if someone complains on your Page? Then what? Do you ignore that?

No!

Even if you have a different process in place for customer service, you must still acknowledge that complaint on your Page. It says to ALL fans that you care about them, and are there to help. Even if it’s just a comment that directs people to the proper channels to share their concerns, DON’T ignore people!

A Facebook Page that ignores fan comments, or that does not allow the people that Like the Page to post, is missing the point of social media. It’s about engagement. It’s about conversation. It’s about creating a dialog that helps people feel more connected with your brand.

Don’t ignore or try to squash conversation. Embrace it. Sure it takes time, but it’s worth it.

Your thoughts?

Image Credit: Katie Tegtmeyer

As I’ve mentioned before, my company provides community management services for direct selling companies. What this means is that we manage the day to day of a company’s social media presence, from writing and posting content to responding to comments on Facebook, Twitter, etc. (to monitoring and reporting as well.) And it gives me a very up close and personal view on the way that consultants treat their companies on the company Facebook Page.

And the conclusion that I’ve come to is that some consultants feel exceptionally entitled, and think the company Facebook Page is the place to “stick it to the company” if they don’t get exactly what they want, when they want it. Which is of course damaging not just to that consultant’s own business, but to the business of every consultant in the company.

For example, I recently saw a consultant complain about difficulty with inputting an order. The Facebook Page admin directed her to the proper path to report the problem. She responded by saying that she had tried that but didn’t want to wait on hold and so came to the Page instead. And nothing the company posted in response made any difference. She just continued to complain. Repeatedly.

The problem with that approach is that the people administering the Page could do nothing about the problem. So all she did was damage the credibility of the company with her complaints. What a foolish thing to do! Plus, she was trying to jump over all the consultants who WERE using the proper channels and waiting their turn, hoping she was noisy enough that she would get taken care of first.

How amazingly inappropriate.

When you become a direct seller, you become part of a team. And that means working to build up your company, and all the people in it. You do this because you know that by building up everyone, your own business prospers. It’s how the model works. So when we see behaviors like the one I just described, it’s destructive. It breaks down the model. Which can lead to irreparable damage to the company, and by extension, your business.

Why on earth would you want to do that?

Direct sales companies, train your salesforce on the consequences of complaining on the company Page, and direct your folks to the appropriate channels. Leaders, make sure you’re providing this same training, and not tolerating even one instance of inappropriate behavior. Consultants, counter every negative you see online with a positive, and contact your friends offline about their posts if necessary.

The health and well-being of your company, and your business, is at stake.

Your thoughts?

The new Facebook layout is making it more challenging to get your posts seen in Facebook. Posts that used to get visibility in the News Feed simply aren’t making it there anymore, which means if people don’t see and interact with your post immediately, it might never be seen.

I’ve been playing with post visibility for the last week, trying different things (some of you may have noticed), and I’ve come to some preliminary conclusions that I want to share with you today.

• Click “Like” if you see this. Every time someone interacts with one of your posts, it displays again (either in the ticker or in the newsfeed.) I’ve gotten the best response to my posts by simply prefacing them with “Click “Like” if you see this.” I don’t know how many more times I can do this without annoying people, but it certainly brings the most visibility to individual posts.
• Form a collective. And this brings me to my next conclusion. Since your posts show up again every time someone does something, it makes sense that if you get a group of consultants together who all agree to “like” each other’s posts, you can all gain greater visibility.
• Post multiple times. A lot of your visibility is dependent on when your post appears. So you may want to post the same content (such as blog posts) multiple times (for example 3 times, but NOT 100 times!) throughout the day, prefaced in different ways. This appears to drive the greatest amount of traffic, even though some people may see the same post multiple times. Do note that Facebook will compress multiple listings of the same link into one story on the news feed. But as long as it shows up, so what?
• Share good content. This goes without saying, but I’m saying it anyway. People will only interact with your content if it’s valuable. So make sure it’s something that people want to read, and will choose to interact with in some way. It’s the best way to ensure visibility.

I’m sure that as I play with Facebook I’ll come up with more tips. But for now, this is what I’ve found works best.

What about you? Have you found other strategies to improve the visibility of your posts? Would love to read them in the comments below!

The new Facebook has provided its users with lots of new opportunities and challenges. I’ve written before about some of the things I like about the new layout, and I’ve also written about ways that you can customize what you see on the news feed. But with the forthcoming Timeline (profiles), along with the Facebook Open Graph sharing that is now available, privacy is a real concern.

It’s important that you take a few moments to learn about Facebook privacy settings in the new Facebook, and make the adjustments necessary to keep your information as private as you want it.

Now the first thing I’ll say is this: If you don’t want someone to know something you’ve previously posted to Facebook, delete it now. Once the Timeline becomes available, you’ll have the option to view “All Activity.” This is everything you’ve ever done on Facebook, sorted by date. From here, you can delete or change the visibility of individual items. Spend some time on this.

Another privacy issue you need to be aware of is the way 3rd party applications share your information. With the new Open Graph, sharing is taken to a whole new level. Now, when you read a book, listen to music, log a run, etc., these apps can automatically share your information on Facebook if you authorized it when setting up the application. Let me be clear…you don’t get to authorize individual posts. Rather, these post every time, after you give permission once.

Mashable has a good article that shows you some of this here, along with how to make adjustments: http://mashable.com/2011/09/28/new-facebook/

It is also a good time for you to go into your default Privacy settings on Facebook. To access them, go to the upper-right corner of your Facebook screen and choose Account > Privacy Settings.

From the Privacy Settings screen, you want to review each option.

First, decide what visibility you want for all of your posts. Since I’m in marketing, I set my posts to Public by default. I keep this in mind with all the posts I put up. You can also choose to just have your Friends see your posts, or choose “Custom” and choose specific people or lists who either see or don’t see your posts.

Next, go through each of the other options, and review each individual setting. these include:

• How You Connect: Who can look you up in the Facebook directory, Who can send you Friend Requests, Who can send you Facebook Messages, Who can post on your wall, and Who can see wall posts by others on your Profile.
• How Tags Work: Here you control who can tag you on Facebook, and whether or not you get to approve tags first. I have Profile and Tag review on, because I like to see what I’m tagged in first, before it’s public on my wall. You can also control Tags suggestions, and whether friends can check you into Facebook Places from this menu.
• Apps and Websites: From this section, you can control how apps share your information, and you can also review the permissions you’ve given to specific applications. This section also lets you determine how your information is used on websites that integrate with Facebook.
• Limit the Audience for Past Posts: This feature addresses one of the concerns I mentioned above. If you set things to public in the past, you can limit all of these by default to Friends by using this option.
• Blocked People and Apps: From here, you can block and unblock people and applications on Facebook.

One last piece to keep in mind: You can also set the visibility of individual posts. The easiest way to do this is by using the lists you’ve set up.

For each individual post, you can choose “Public,” “Friends,” “Custom,” or choose just one of your lists to see an individual post.

When you select Custom, you can get even more granular by selecting individual people or lists to see or not see individual posts.

After saving your changes, click Post like you normally do and the settings will apply to the individual post. Just be sure to double-check your settings with your next post, because sometimes they carry over unless you specify a different level of privacy for a post.

Facebook privacy should always be a real concern for each of us. People tend to post first and think later, which can bring negative consequences. It’s a good idea to always have the rule of thumb that if you wouldn’t put it on a sign in front of your house, don’t put it on Facebook. Then the rest of these settings are “nice to have” but not essential. Remember, Facebook can’t share it if you don’t post it.

How do you control your privacy on Facebook? Would love to read your thoughts in the comments below.

As we’ve been talking about this week, the new Facebook changes bring both benefits and challenges when you’re a marketer. From a user standpoint, there are some cool new features, including the ability to see all the posts from specific groups of people at a time. Sure, you have to set those lists up, but once you do, you see a much smaller subset of your friends, which means you’re less likely to miss posts from people important to you. (This is, of course, a challenge for marketers, because unless your friends on Facebook specifically put you in lists, you’re posts are less visible.)

But today, let’s talk about Facebook from a user standpoint. You are able to adjust what you see in your newsfeed in a couple of ways, which means that, with time, you can have a fairly customized view of what you see on Facebook. Here’s some of what you can do:

Using Facebook Lists

• Set up Lists – By default, Facebook has set some up for you: Close Friends, Acquaintances, Family. If you’re not familiar with Lists, this is a good place to start. Click one of these list names on the left side of your Facebook home page (you’ll see a section labeled Lists) and you can start adding friends to this list.
• Add Friends to Your Lists – To add friends, you can take Facebook’s suggestions on the right side of the screen, by clicking the Add button, and also decide who to add by clicking the Manage List button at the top of your screen. Then you can click on the names of people that you want to add to your list.
  
  
• Additional List Options – When you click the Manage List button, you get additional options. You can rename your list, add or remove friends from the list, merge the list with an existing list, and choose the types of updates you see from people on the list (for example, you might not want to see Games from the people in your list, in which case you would uncheck that.)
• Custom Lists – To create custom lists, go back to Lists on the sidebar of your Facebook home page. When you mouse over that section, you’ll see the word “More” appear next to the heading Lists. Click More, and you’ll be taken to the main Lists page. From here you’ll see a list of all the lists you’ve set up. There are a couple of things you can do from this screen.
• To create a new list, click the Create a List button on the top-right of your screen. Name your list and add people, just like we did earlier.
• Add a List to your Favorites. I find this option to be highly convenient. Any lists you’ll look at every day (such as family, customers, etc.) can be added in the top left section of your Facebook home page, under the heading Favorites. Just click the pencil icon next to any list, and choose Add to Favorites. The list will be added to the bottom of your Favorites list. Then you’ll see how many updates have been added to that list since the last time you checked. For example, in the screen shot to the right, you can see that there have been 2 updates to the Personal Friends list since the last time I checked.

Now in addition to Lists, there are additional ways to influence what appears in your News Feed.

• Mark Top Stories - If there are particular types of posts that you really like, such as motivational quotes or photos, you can tell Facebook that you want to see more of these. Simply mouse over the story that you like, and you’ll see a blue corner appear on the top-left of that particular post. Click the blue corner and Facebook will mark it as a Top Story for you.
  
• Additional Options - You have additional options when you mouse over an individual post and click the arrow that appears on the right side. From here you can Mark/Unmark something as a top story, hide the story from the news feed, or mark a story as spam (one more reason not to spam your friends with business-specific posts from your profile!) You also have the option to control which stories you see from an individual. You can choose to see All Updates, Most Updates, or Only Important updates (as determined by Facebook.) You can also choose to completely remove an individual from your news feed from this menu.
  
• Managing Stories from the Ticker – In addition to posts in your News Feed, you can also manage what shows up in the ticker. Mouse over any story, and it will expand. Mouse over the expanded story and you’ll see that little arrow again. From there you have the option to hide a story, or report it as spam.
  

So these are some of the ways you can manage what you see in Facebook. If you’ve found other options, I’d love to read about them in the comments. Tomorrow, we’ll talk a bit about privacy settings, and how they play into all of this.

How are you managing with the new Facebook home page?

There is a lot I like about the new Facebook layout. And I’m thoroughly jazzed about the forthcoming Timeline for profiles. Sure there are privacy considerations that still need to be taken into account, but if you’ve read this blog at all you know that if you wouldn’t put it on a sign in front of your house, you shouldn’t put it on Facebook. Problem solved.

However I’ve noticed a disturbing trend with serious implications for marketers. It has to do with post visibility. Some posts just aren’t getting seen. For example, I put up a post yesterday about an ice cream sundae I made (sea salted caramel apple pie sundae.) In the past, this type of post was GUARANTEED to provoke conversation and likes. An earlier post I did about a breakfast smoothie certainly did, and dessert posts usually do even better. But this later post got nothing. Nada.

Intrigued, I reached out to some of you on my Facebook Page to see if you’d been having similar experiences. You had!

Facebook says that it shows the posts it thinks are “most interesting” to us in the news feed. Everything else that is posted on Facebook goes by much faster in the ticker. We can’t TELL Facebook what we think is most interesting, except through the use of Friend Lists. Then we can see all posts from specific people in a list. (Well actually, we can tell Facebook we want to see more or less of posts from an individual, but do you think most people will go to that trouble? I don’t.)

But the challenge for marketers is summed up in a statement my sister in law made last night when we were discussing the changes. “I just don’t have time to re-do my entire Facebook.” This means that a LOT of your posts just aren’t going to be seen (if people care to add you, a marketer, to their lists at all.)

So what do we do? We can’t assume that customers are going to add us to their lists so they see all our posts, if they set up lists at all. I don’t know that there’s a perfect solution at this time, but there are a few things you can do to improve your visibility:

• Post multiple times – My dessert post wasn’t seen, but my protein shake post was. Sometimes it just takes someone seeing your post at the right moment. You may want to frame each post differently…different headings, captions, etc…but it will probably need to be posted more than once to be seen.
• Friend everyone at the party – Facebook takes into account how many of your friends like someone or something when it’s deciding whether or not to show your post. So be sure you get everyone at the party (who may all be friends with each other) to friend you on Facebook. At least you’ll have more than one person in a social circle connected to you, increasing your chances at visibility.
• Use photos – We all know Facebook is more likely to show posts that show off its new features. And since new, bigger photos is one of the new features of the Facebook layout, it appears as though photo posts have a better chance at visibility.

We’ll have to continue to explore the best ways to get our posts seen on Facebook. And if you’ve got additional ideas or tips, I’d love to hear them. One thing is clear, however. It’s getting harder to market on Facebook.

Your thoughts?

photo credit: A. Blight

This weekend, a false alarm spread like wildfire throughout Facebook. You may have seen the chain status update (all in caps) that promised that Facebook would begin charging on Monday unless you copied the status update (at which point your picture would turn blue, it said) and then you would be exempt from the charges.

There were many things that signaled that this was fake. First, it was in all caps. Facebook would never announce anything in all caps. Ever. It’s amateur.

Second, think about how Facebook has announced things in the past. Normally, users get a notification at the top of their screens when they log in. They don’t rely on users sharing status updates to get the word out.

Third, if Facebook WERE to start charging (which they have said many times they will NEVER do), do you think they would really exempt you because you copied a chain status update? Not likely.

Another chain status update that has gone around lately is the one asking people to unsubscribe from your updates. This doesn’t work. Instead, see this post from Mari Smith that explains how much activity goes into the new Ticker of your friends and beyond.

So the moral of this story is PLEASE check your facts before you post. Don’t just repost because you see a chain status update go by. This is RARELY accurate information. Here are some places you can check before reposting:

• AllFacebook – This site usually has the scoop on all things Facebook. I usually check here first.
• Snopes.com – In fact, they have a whole section dedicated to Facebook scams.
• Do a Google search – Often there is a news story or blog that addresses the issue.

Chain status updates do no one any good. PLEASE check your facts before you posts! Pass it on!