Category: Social Media Platforms

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Reviews Drive Perception

positive vs negative reviews

Positive or negative, reviews drive perception

You should monitor reviews and respond to them.

If they are positive, thank the reviewer. If they are negative address them honestly. Don’t ignore them. Customers and prospects will react based on the way you respond.

A negative review is an opportunity to turn a critic into a happy customer who will promote your business or will confirm their opinion. When it comes to prospects, your response will help them decide if they want to do business with you or not. Be positive, be constructive, honest and transparent.

reviews-drive-perception
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Facebook Fake Profiles Warning

Recently we have seen something a massive wave of Facebook fake profiles, something I had not seen, on that scale, in my 10+ years working on Facebook and social media in general and being on Facebook.

There is, as we speak, a massive wave of fake profiles being created, most of them spoofing existing profiles and targetting the connections to that profile and their connections.

I have to assume it’s either because of:

  • The upcoming elections and a massive wave of fake news and disinformation using Facebook as we have seen during the 2016 campaign
  • The holiday shopping season

They know that a vast majority of people share content without vetting the facts, they trust their friends to do research before posting or sharing, that’s how fake news, conspiracy theories and scams go viral

What can you do?  A lot:

  • Stop accepting invitations to connect from people you don’t know
  • If a profile is light on information or was created recently, pretending to be a cute guy or girl, it’s likely fake, report it and block it
  • If a friend you are already connected to asks you to connect again, it’s likely a spoofed profile, look at the number of postings and the information, do a search to see if it is a duplicate
  • If your friend’s profile has been spoofed, let him know and report the fake profile to Facebook, they are pretty good at deleting them.
  • If you are tagged in a post peddling cheap brand name goods, free airline tickets, free cars and other similar posts, report the post as spam, report the page to Facebook
  • Do a search on your name on Facebook to see if your profile has been spoofed; if it has been spoofed warn your friends and report the fake profile to Facebook

We all have to do our part to stop fake news, conspiracy theories and scams and it starts with being smart on Facebook

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Facebook Apps Privacy Check

Facebook app privacy check

Facebook app privacy check

How do you do a Facebook app privacy check? With all the bad privacy news emerging this past weekend, now is a good time to check your settings, especially which app you, wittingly or not, allow to dig into your personal information and allow to have access to your friends.

Facebook app privacy check

Photo courtesy blogtrepreneur

First, to understand what happened, let’s start from the beginning.

in 2015, a company called Cambridge Analytica, working on election campaigns was looking for extensive data to perfect their analytics model targeted at precisely influencing electoral behavior

One problem though, they did not have access to that massive amount of information

Comes in Cambridge professor Aleksandr Kogan.  He creates a Facebook app called “thisisyourdigitallife” described as a tool used by psychologists

Facebook users open the app, by the same token allow the app to collect information about them and their friends.

Now, if that was the end of the story, no big deal, Facebook allows researchers to mine the data for research and academic purpose but Aleksander Kogan then crosses the line and sells the data collected from 50 million Facebook users to Cambridge Analytica.

Cambridge Analytica then uses the massive amount of data to micro target voters for the Trump campaign

The moral of the story, be very careful as to what information you allow apps to have access on your Facebook profile.  Before you can open any app the creators are supposed to tell you what information the app will access.  Don’t just click yes and think if using the app is worth giving away that information

As we saw in this case, not all data collections are innocent and even if they are, there is no guaranty they won’t be used for nefarious purpose later on.

What now you will ask?

I bet you have given many apps access to your data, now is a good time for a privacy check and a clean up

Facebook app privacy check

 

 

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Instagram, is it for your business?

Instagram

Is Instagram really the best business marketing platform?

I have been asked a loInstagramt of questions about Instagram recently.

I am assuming a lot of the noise comes from recent changes in the Facebook interface and algorithm, the organic reach disappearing and the fact that for businesses, Facebook has become an advertising platform where businesses and brands now have to pay to play.

Milleniums have been the most vocal in promoting Instagram as the newest and best marketing platform.

So, let’s dig into the numbers.
Pew Research is a well respected institution that has been tracking social media for several years so they are a pretty reliable reference
 
-80% of Instagram users are out of the US
-of the 800 millions active users, only 160 millions are in the US
-38% of users in the US are women, 26% men
-59% of users in the US are under 30
-95% of Instagram users in the US also use Facebook
-54% also use Pinterest
-63 percent of teenagers in the US use Instagram daily
 
Instagram is also a mostly mobile and visual platform
 

In the end, there is a lot more to marketing than fades and short term trends, not that I think Instagram is either.

The best marketing platform is the platform used by your clients and prospects. Before selecting a platform, look at the demographics and ask yourself the question, are the demographics my market or the market I want to reach.

If your market is  young adults or teenagers, if your clients and prospects tend to be younger women, then definitely Instagram is a good platform for your business

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Facebook or LinkedIn? Most Used Social Media Network For Business

Facebook or LinkedIn, which network is the most used social media network for business, the debate has been going on for years and users debating the pros and cons of both platforms usually coming to the conclusion that Facebook is most used for B2C and LinkedIn for B2B but what does the data tell us?

The 2015 Social Media Marketing Industry Report,  based on data from a survey of 3,720 marketers; 61% of survey participants focus primarily on attracting consumers (B2C), and the other 39% primarily target businesses (B2B) sheds some light

Most used social media platforms

Of all platforms, it should not be surprising that Facebook is the most used social network for business overall (93% ) vs Twitter (79%) and LinkedIn (71%).

Most Used Social Media Network For BusinessThis can be explained by the sheer number of Facebook users vs Twitter and LinkedIn.  Facebook has 1.44 billion monthly active users vs LinkedIn 380 million users and Twitter 304 million (2015 with Facebook spending on average 42 minutes per day on the site vs 9.8 minutes on LinkedIn Continue reading “Facebook or LinkedIn? Most Used Social Media Network For Business”

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Brilliant Social Media Campaign Saves Library

Great success story, how the people of Troy MI used a brilliant social media campaign to save their library

Brilliant_Social_Media_Campaign_Saves_Library

The  folks of Troy, Michigan were in a bit of a financial bind. They wanted to pass a small tax to help pay to keep the library open. This, being a tax increase, brought Tea Party activists out in droves.

The Tea Party activists rallied against any increase in taxes successfully changing the conversation away from protecting the library to just talking about taxes.

The library looks as though it was certain to go under.

That’s when the people who supported the library and wanted to see it stay open had to find a strategy to bring the conversation back to the library, books and reading.  One problem though, they had little financial means to do that.  that’s when they turned to a mix of grass root and a brilliant social media campaign to turn things around and win by a landslide

Watch their social media campaign video

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Hashtags: Useful or Nuisance?

Are hashtags obsoleteWe have all seen them, use them or been annoyed by them when abused, something I call hashtag vomit.  Users who don’t understand hashtags tagging their post with so many irrelevant and annoying hashtags you just want to move on without reading the post.

It started on Twitter, Facebook unsuccessfully tried to incorporate them in posts, LinkedIn gave up on them, Instagram and Pinterest users swear by them but few actually understand their use and purpose.

By definition, A hashtag is a type of label used on social network and micro blogging platforms to make it easier for users to find messages with a specific theme or content. In short, hashtags are like keywords allowing readers to find content related to a subject and should be treated as such

Social media “gurus” have been promoting hashtags as essential to social media posts and content success, advising marketers to use hashtags as a critical  element of any high-performing social media update without educating their clients and the public about the way to effectively use them

The result has been hashtag vomit, what mainstream search engines would classify as spam.  We have seen updates and content with plethora of hashtags, some relevant most irrelevant for the sake of trying to maximize potential exposure.

The question has long been,  do hashtags actually work?

The answer is yes and no, depending on your purpose

Twitter recently released a study focused on direct response ads, which are intended to drive a specific result, like an app install or a website visit, suggesting that when these ads included a hashtag or mentioned another account, they didn’t perform well

Continue reading “Hashtags: Useful or Nuisance?”

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Politicians Idiot Guide To Twitter

idiot guide to Twitter8 years into the making, British members of parliaments were just issued an “idiot guide to Twitter” or, how to tweet without how to avoid being boring, pompous or sued.

The “idiot guide to Twitter” guide contains pearls of wisdom… or just some common sense advice to a real time communication tool like Twitter that can be extended to any social media platform.

  • Always tell the truth
  • Do not tweet while drunk
  • Only tweet when  ‘when you have something interesting or worthwhile to say’
  • Adopt a ’60-second rule’ before posting anything online, composing a message but then waiting ‘one minute before pressing the tweet button’.
  • Tweet about ‘almost anything’, including a mix constituency work, parliamentary activity and their personal life.
  • Tweet about things normal people are interested in like music, sport, films and TV. ‘But make it genuine, don’t fake an interest in your local football team or Coronation Street if that’s not your thing.’
  • It isn’t good practice to constantly retweet tweets that praise you, or even to sarcastically retweet tweets that criticise you. It is too aggrandising and pompous.’
  • Instead, favourite every tweet where someone says something nice or positive about you
  • Tweet yourself and be yourself, your team can help you, but can’t do it for you
  • Talk less than you listen
  • Tools make it easier and more effective
  • Tweets should never be deleted
  • Hashtags improve engagement, but should be used sparingly
  • Lists save you time
  • Your views aren’t your own
  • Photos and video make it more interesting

The “idiot guide to Twitter” was produced for Parliament by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations and officials stated that it had not cost any money to the tax payer

What do you think…  chime in in the comment section

 

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Retailers Are Turning to Social Media For Market Research

Social media often overlooked for market researchSocial media permeates every facets of business, from branding to marketing, sales, customer service and to often overlooked market research, product development and HR

Increasingly though, retailers and brands are turning to social media for market research.

Consumers have adopted social media in a massive way and, in spite of concerns for privacy, are sharing what they like, buy and want on platforms like Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram to name the biggest ones. Continue reading “Retailers Are Turning to Social Media For Market Research”

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FDA Cracking Down on Facebook Marketing

FDA craking down on FacebookThe FDA cracking down on Facebook marketing is a clear signal that companies have to treat Facebook the same way they would treat any other media they use in their communication with the public

In the past 6 months the FDA has issued 6 warning letters mostly for unapproved claims but when it comes to unapproved claims social media creates a unique challenge for companies in the healthcare industry at large (that includes manufacturers and distributors of supplements and other products not usually considered drugs or medical devices but could be construed as related to health) in that comments posted by third parties can also be construed as claims and the simple fact of liking a comment constitutes an endorsement of the claim by the owner of the page Continue reading “FDA Cracking Down on Facebook Marketing”

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