Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’

Our social fundraiser last year was so successful that we’re repeating it this year. Help Matrix Group raise money for DC area charities by participating in our social media campaign. We’re starting with a pot of $1,000. We’re adding $10 for every new “like” on our Facebook page and every new subscriber to our YouTube channel. Then we’ll distribute the money according to votes for the videos about each charity on our YouTube channel.

This whole campaign has been about social media and group effort. First, I polled the Matrix Group staff to see if they wanted to repeat the social media fundraiser from last year. The answer was yes. Then I asked the staff to nominate their favorite charities; I picked the top 5 charities selected by staff.

Next, we reached out to the local charities and asked them to create an informative video that makes the case for giving them money. Not surprisingly, we got amazing, authentic videos from each organization. One was created by a volunteer who did a stellar job.

Next, we came up with a way to fold in social media, increase our reach, and make the campaign fun. So we filmed a kitschy video that explains the campaign and tied the donations to getting new likes on Facebook and subscribers on YouTube. The whole campaign, including creating the video, working with the charities and putting it all together on the web was made possible by my amazing staff.

Check out our funny video on YouTube explaining the campaign and introducing the charities.

Watch the videos of the five deserving organizations on YouTube. The five organizations are Doorways for Women and Families, Food and Friends, SPCA of Northern VA, Washington Animal Rescue League and the Washington Area Bicyclist Association.

Here’s how YOU can raise money for those in need this holiday season:

• Like us on our Facebook page.
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
• Vote for your favorite charity or charities by liking their videos on our YouTube channel.
• Spread the word about the campaign to your networks on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

You’ve got until December 20 to like, subscribe, vote and share. I’d love to raise $5,000. Can you help?

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• Tags: Facebook, Google Plus, Matrix Group, YouTube

On Monday, Google opened up Google+ and allowed companies and brands to create corporate pages. Previously, only individuals could create Google+ profiles (believe me, we tried to create a corporate page and were thwarted by Google!).

If you haven’t done it already, I encourage you to create a page for your organization, company, brand or initiative by going to the Google+ Create Page.

Even if you don’t know how or what you’re going to do on this new social media platform, I think you need to be on it because:

• Google+ has 40 million subscribers and that number is growing fast. It’s nothing compared to Facebook’s 800 million subscribers, sure, but 40 million is still a big number.
• Google+ users tend to be early adopters. According to Target Marketing, in the first few months of the network’s presence, the users were mostly young men, a third of users were between 25 and 34 years old and 59 percent of all visitors were male. This will surely change over time.
• Just as there isn’t one TV network or channel that dominates anymore, chances are your organization’s target audiences are on various social networks so you probably need a presence on all the major platforms.
• Google likes to drive traffic to its web properties, like YouTube and Blogger, so having a corporate presence on Google+ will be good for search engine optimization.
• Google likes to integrate its offerings, so there will surely be really neat tools to tie together Google+ with Google Analytics, Google search, AdWords, Google Reader, Gmail, etc. For example, there’s already a way to +1 an article in Google reader. +1 is Google’s version of the Facebook “like.” I’m especially excited about Ripples, which is an interactive graphic of the public shares of any public post on Google+ to show you how a post has rippled through the network and help you discover new and interesting people to follow.

My dilemma right now is that I don’t know how the Matrix Group Google+ page will be the same and different from our presence on Facebook. If you’ve ever heard me speak or if you follow this blog closely, you know that I preach a layered approach to social media where each platform has a different purpose and content strategy. There is overlap to be sure, but it’s best to have a different strategy for each platform to encourage your target audiences to follow you in multiple ways.

As your marketing team ponders this same question of market positioning for your Google+ page, be sure to create your page early to reserve the name and have a presence for the early users who will be looking for you.

Have you created your company’s Google+ page? How will you be using it to connect with your customers, prospects or members?

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• Tags: Facebook, Google, Google Plus, social networking

So I’ve been on Google Plus for a while now. Actually, I’ve had an account for a while now, having received an invitation early, but I rarely post updates and I rarely read updates from my various circles. I’m simply struggling to integrate it into my life.

It’s not that I don’t like Google Plus. On the contrary, I like the interface, I like that it’s so easy to add people to circles and post updates to only specific circles, and I like that the interface is (for now, at least) nice and clean, not cluttered with ads.

It’s just that I’m feeling saturated. I already have my routine of posting interesting news items to Twitter, posting personal updates on Facebook, uploading my weekly video interviews to YouTube, checking into FourSquare when I go out to eat or visit a new place, and blogging once a week.

The question for me has become: what place should Google Plus occupy in my life?

I guess I could simply post the same updates to a bunch of social networks, but that doesn’t make sense to me. If I’m connected with the same people on multiple networks, they would see the same posts and that’s no fun and a waste of time.

Perhaps Google Plus will become, like Twitter, another public persona for me, whereas Facebook is the network I reserve for family, friends and close network.

Sean Parker, a co-founder of original music file-sharing service Napster and a prominent Facebook shareholder, says that, “power users have gone to Twitter or to Google+.” Could this be true? In my case, my techiest of friends and co-workers seem to be more active on Google+ these days but my network is still firmly on Facebook. And yet, Google+ is grabbing subscribers fast. GooglePlusWiki says that there are now over 20M people on the network.

After pondering this issue for a while now, here’s where what I’m thinking. Although the majority of my network is still not on Google+, I need to be on it. Because no one network will dominate and it will be hard to ignore Google+. Just as I tell clients that they need to be on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and Flickr because their audiences are on these networks, I know that I need to be on all the major networks personally. I will figure out where to find the time to post to Google+. I will repeat some posts because there is some overlap in connections but it’s not 100%. I will hope that HootSuite will soon let me post to Google+ in addition to Twitter and Facebook. And I will figure out what brainspace Google+ will occupy.

How about you? Are you on Google+? What is Google+ doing to your Facebook and Twitter updates? Are you posting different things? How are you integrating Google+ into your day?

• 5 Comments
• Tags: Facebook, Google, Google Plus, Twitter

According to a study by ShareThis, the social sharing widget that you see on many websites, Facebook accounts for 38% of sharing traffic on the web. And that’s just the percent of people who click through. If you add links shared but not clicked, the number goes up to a whopping 56%. Which means that if we (the collective “we” since there are over 700 million of us now on Facebook) want to share a link with the world, we do it through Facebook.

This totally makes sense to me. When I find something new, cool, interesting, amazing or whatever, I immediately post it to Facebook and Twitter (increasingly, Google + as well, but more on that in a future blog post).  And I rely on my network of friends, co-workers, clients and business colleagues to find out about other new, cool, interesting and amazing things.

So I got to thinking. If social sharing is an important means by which we (again, the collective “we”) learn about new sites, we can’t and shouldn’t leave this sharing to chance. Sure, most websites now have a ShareThis widget, but is this enough? I say no. I think every organization needs a social sharing strategy that includes the following:

• What you want people to share. Do you want visitors to share your home page? Individual articles? Donation pages?
• How you want people to share. Do you want visitors to send an e-mail, post to their social networks, save to their social bookmarking pages, all of the above?
• Regular review of analytics to find out what and how people are sharing links on your site. Be sure to review your usage reports, ShareThis account and other reports to find out what’s popular, how people are sharing, and learn why certaini articles or posts generate activity.
• Design and CSS guidelines that make your site shareable. For example, if you share a link on Facebook, Facebook automatically indexes the images and allows you to cycle through the images and select one to include with the link. If your organization logo is set up as a background image in your CSS or the logo is not whole, your logo can’t be included in the link.
• Calls to action to encourage sharing. While many of us will share our favorite links on our own, other won’t unless prompted, so I think it’s important to have calls to action to encourage sharing. It’s also a good idea to test calls to action on a regular basis to find out which calls to action work best.

The design and front-end team at Matrix Group has developed a set of guidelines for setting up web pages so that titles are complete and the proper images are included in links. Be sure to test the shareability of your site on a regular basis and address issues with your web design or maintenance team.

How about you?  What’s your platform of choice for sharing links?

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• Tags: Facebook, marketing, social networking

It’s been forever since Facebook changed it stream to be divided between Top New and Most Recent and many folks are still scratching their heads wondering what’s what. Here’s why you want your updates to be in your friends’ and followers’ Top News streams.

According to Facebook, “Top News shows popular stories from your favorite friends and Pages, many of which have gained lots of attention since the last time you checked.” What this really means is that Top News shows the posts from the people and company page that you interact with the most. For example, I tend to “like” and comment on the updates from my friend Eileen, the photos from my brother Alex and articles from PBS. Since I interact with these Facebook account regularly, their posts are pretty much guaranteed to be in my Top News stream, which, by the way, is the default view.

Top News also displays updates by relevance, based on an algorithm. If a post is getting a lot of comments, it will probably show up at the top of your stream, even if the original post is not the most recent in your stream.

Most Recent “shows updates from as many as 250 friends and Facebook Pages.” This is a more traditional stream because it shows all posts, in chronological order, unless you’ve hidden posts from a specific person or company. If you haven’t checked out Most Recent recently, click on it now and you’ll see posts from a bunch of people and companies you thought weren’t posting. If you start interacting with some of these accounts more, you’ll start to see them in your Top News stream.

What does this mean for marketers?

It means that it’s absolutely not enough to have fans or followers. Your company’s Facebook page can have a million followers but unless they’re liking and commenting, your posts won’t show up in their Top News, which means they’re likely not getting much attention. On the flip side, once you get followers to interact with you more regularly, your posts will show up in Top News, which will further encourage them to like and comment.

Remember, the key to Facebook success is to get your followers to interact with you regularly. I’ll blog in the future about ways to encourage interactions. And oh yeah, I’m doing a webinar next Wednesday, May 18, 11am Eastern on Social Media Marketing and Customer Engagement. Hope you can join me.

BTW, you can edit your stream options by clicking on Edit Options at the bottom of your News streams.

What do you think of Top News vs. Most Recent? Which stream do you prefer?

• 3 Comments
• Tags: Facebook, social networking

A few days ago, Facebook rolled out changes to the Facebook pages. Facebook pages are the equivalent of user profiles for companies and brands and they’re an increasingly important web presence for most organizations.

One of the most important changes is the ability of Facebook admins to interact with fans and other pages as the company or brand. Here’s what this means:

• Facebook admins can now be on Facebook as an individual OR the Facebook page or brand. If you’re admin on a Facebook page, go to your Facebook page and click on Account in the top right. The second option in the dropdown is Use Facebook as Page. If you click on this, you’ll get a list of all pages for which you’re an admin. Select one. You will now interact with others and pages on Facebook as THAT company.
• You can “like” other Facebook pages as the company, not as yourself. Pages that your Facebook page “likes” will be displayed randomly (5 of them) in the left rail of your Facebook page, with the ability to View All.
• You can comment on your own wall and other walls as the company, not as yourself. For example, Matrix Group can comment on a  client’s wall, even though it’s me, Joanna Pineda, who would be authoring the post.
• You can view a newsfeed of updates from the pages that your company likes, not your friends. For example, Matrix Group has “liked” the Facebook pages of our clients. When I’m on Facebook as the Matrix Group page, when I press Home, my stream is from other company pages, not the friends and family of Joanna Pineda.
• When I’m online as a page, Facebook recommends other pages for me to like as a company, based on the “likes” of the fans of my fan page. For example, Facebook tells me that 101 of Matrix Group Facebook fans like Starbucks and gives me the option to “like” Starbucks right from the Matrix Group fan page homepage.  Very slick.

If there are multiple admins on  your Facebook page, be sure to train them on how to switch between their profile and your fan page. And establish guidelines for when to interact with other Facebook pages and fans as themselves or the company fan page. Remember that just because you as an individual love a band, author or political party, it does NOT mean that your company or brand should like these pages as well. I love these new changes and look forward to being Matrix Group on Facebook!

• 7 Comments
• Tags: Facebook

Last year, Matrix Group decided not to send out printed holiday cards.  Instead, we sent an e-card and donated the money we would have spent on printing and mailing and donated it to several local charities.  This year, we’re doing something similar, but with a social media twist.

We’re taking the money we’re saving by not mailing printed cards to our entire list and once again donating it to charity. This year, however, we’re trying to increase the amount that we give away.  For every new Facebook fan who “likes” our fan page (the deadline is December 14), we’re adding $10 to the charity pot.

Next, we’re asking our entire network of clients, partners, vendors and supporters to tell us how to give away the money.  I polled the staff and asked for recommendations for charities they thought were worthy of a gift.  We came up with the following organizations:

• Back On Your Feet
• Capital Area Food Bank
• Doorways for Women and Families
• Goodwill of Greater Washington
• John L. Gildner Regional Institute for Children and Adolescents
• The Reading Connection
• The Washington Animal Rescue League
• WEAVE

In our Facebook page, we set up a Poll that allows fans to vote for their favorite charity from the list above. So far, we’ve gained over 100 new Facebook fans and nearly two hundred people have voted.

I like this year’s holiday campaign because we’re able to increase the amount of our donation this year, we gain new fans, and we are able to showcase effective and well managed charities in the DC area. It’s also been fun to promote this holiday campaign to our house e-mail list, on our social media pages, and to our network of friends and supporters.

Here’s how you can help:

• “Like” our Facebook fan page at http://www.facebook.com/MatrixGroup
• Vote in our poll
• Spread the word about the campaign to your network of colleagues, friends and family

We’ve got a goal of $5,000.  Help us support some terrific charities this holiday season!

P.S. In case you’re wondering, we decided to still mail printed cards to our key client contacts because we were worried about some clients and partners not receiving the e-card because of a firewall or anti-spam software. In the end, we liked the idea of clients receiving something tangible from us and the ability to sign and personalize cards.  But instead of mailing nearly 1,000 cards, we’re mailing fewer than 200 cards.

• 5 Comments
• Tags: Facebook, Matrix Group, social networking

Each week, as the main administrator for the Matrix Group Facebook fan page, I get a weekly report from Facebook that details the change in number of fans (people who have “liked” our page), as well as the number of views and interactions.

Getting lots of fans and interactions is the holy grail of Facebook marketing. The more people “like” your page, “like” your posts, click through to your offers, comment and otherwise interact with your page, the more likely they are to become loyal fans and customers.

So how do you increase likes and interactions on your Facebook page? Here are my top tips, based on the experiences of the Matrix Group marketing team.

• Give your Facebook updates an authentic voice. What most people love about Facebook is the fact that they’re reading their friends’ thoughts and comments in near real-time.  And these comments are not written in corporate-speak; they read and sound the way people talk, like they’re having a conversation with you.  Your company’s Facebook posts should probably not be too casual, but they should sound less like a press release, and more like a comment from a friend or colleague.
• Don’t just RSS your news items or blog posts. I’ve said this before but if all you’re doing is republishing headlines from your website or blog, you’re not giving people an incentive to follow you on on Facebook because the information is the same.
• Don’t automatically post your Twitter updates to your Facebook page. Why?  Because you’re probably chattier on Twitter than you are on Facebook and chatty people and companies dominate Facebook streams, so fans are more likely to right-click and press Hide.  Besides, on Twitter, all you get is 140 characters; you get more words on Facebook, why not use them?
• Make your posts stand out by adding photos and videos. You know the old saying, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”  It’s definitely true on Facebook and it’ s not surprising.  Most people scan their Facebook streams and a photo or video will catch people’s attention much more than a plain text status update.
• Ask for feedback. I’m always amazed that the simple act of soliciting feedback often results in feedback.  Funny how that works.  Heck you don’t even need to ask for serious feedback.  Ask your fans what color to paint your office walls; or ask them to comment on your holiday menu.
• Spark a debate. If you’re comfortable doing so, posting about topics that generate a little heat are great for interactions.  But always keep the language appropriate.
• Use Facebook apps to add interactive features to your Facebook page. For example, you could create a custom tab, sponsor a contest, or host a game.
• Offer exclusive benefits to your followers. Last holiday season, Snapfish offered a daily discount on its Facebook page that generated lots of interest, clicks and comments. I know because I could see the activity and I certainly checked the Snapfish Facebook page regularly for deals!
• Test, test, test. My marketing team is always playing around on our Facebook page to see what time of day is best for posting, the types of messages that generate interactions and ultimately sales, and how to wordsmith updates to generate the highest number of interactions.

Here are some good resources on Facebook marketing and interactions:

• Zimply Zesty has 7 ways to increase interactions.
• A study by Vitrue found that morning posts are more effective, users are more active at the top of the hour and weekdays are busiest.
• Smart Passive Income has some great how-to videos on how to create and customize your Facebook page.

How about you? What tactics have you used to increase interactions on your Facebook page?  Please share your stories!

• 1 Comment
• Tags: Facebook, marketing

I was researching an organization last week and visited their website, blog and social media pages. The website was nicely designed, easy to navigate, and had good information.  The blog was terrific and I quickly subscribed to the RSS feed.  When I got to the organization’s social media pages, I was sorely disappointed.  Their Twitter and Facebook pages had nothing but headlines from the blog. Clearly, all they did was take the blog RSS feed and use it to populate their social media pages.

So did I decide to “follow” the organization on Twitter and “like” them on Facebook?  Absolutely not. Since I had already subscribed to the blog RSS feed, I didn’t feel compelled to follow them on Twitter and Facebook.  Why add clutter to my social media streams with information I can already get elsewhere?

I know it’s tempting to set-up pages on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms and populate them with posts from your blog or press room.  We’re all busy and most communications and marketing departments are stretched thin.  But posting the same information across platforms isn’t doing your organization any good. Why?

• By posting headlines that meet the least common denominator across platforms (probably Twitter, with its 140 character limit), you miss out on functionality offered by the other platforms.  For example, Facebook lets you post longer updates, upload photos and videos, include links, host discussions, etc.
• You don’t give your target audiences a reason to follow or fan you across platforms.  Just imagine this.  If you post complementary but different content across platforms, your clients, prospects and supporters might just follow you on multiple platforms, giving your company an incredible voice with those individuals.
• If you’re posting headlines from your news room, you’re not offering people the authentic, personal voice we’ve come to expect on the social media pages.

Here’s what we do at Matrix Group:

• Our website showcases our products, services, clients, portfolio, news and webinars.
• This blog, which is authored by me, Joanna, the CEO, features my thoughts and commentary on social media, marketing, communications, strategy, customer service, trends and gadgets.  This blog DOES feature website launches at the bottom of each page.
• Our Twitter page showcases our work and clients, but the majority of the tweets are about industry news, trends, how-to articles, and case studies.  Twitter will tell you who we are and what we’re reading.  We’re pretty chatty on Twitter; we post updates multiple times a day.
• Our Facebook page also showcases our work and clients, but we also post photos and updates about happenings in the company, including trainings, parties, fun events, etc.  Facebook will tell you a lot about who we are as a company and our culture.  For example, our staff pumpkin carving contest was featured on our Facebook page.  We’re less chatty on Facebook, just updating a few times a week.
• Our Flickr page is home to our photo library of company events, while our Facebook page has the “best of” photos.
• Our YouTube channel is a work in progress and will soon feature short interviews with senior staff about their areas of expertise, including branding, the user experience, software development and security.

As you can see, our various pages are all designed to showcase our expertise, clients and work but the user experience on each platform has been carefully crafted to take advantage of that platform’s capabilities.  And while the website is clearly a marketing channel for the company, we’re not very sales-y on our social media pages, focusing instead on posting useful and interesting links.

How about you?  How are you creating an integrated use experience across your company’s social media pages?  What’s working for you?

• No Comments
• Tags: Blog, Content Strategy, Facebook, marketing, social networking, Twitter

I found out recently that the iPhone version of the Facebook app synchronizes with personal profiles on Facebook.  Which means (gasp!) that if a friend has your private phone numbers in his/her phone, it’s possible that those numbers are now on Facebook.  Egads!

While I love Facebook, Twitter, instant messenger, etc., I try very hard to limit the amount of personal information that I share on those networks, including and especially my address, home phone number, information about my family, etc.  But with the social networks constantly updating their terms of use and adding new functionality to their sites and apps, it’s hard to keep up with the changes and monitor the impact on our privacy.

Which is why I recommend an audit of your Facebook (and other social network) privacy settings on a regular basis. Here’s how:

• Log in to Facebook and click on Account in the top right corner of any Facebook page.
• You’ll get a dropdown of options; click on Privacy  Settings.

Facebook Privacy  Settings Landing Page

Here’s what your Facebook Privacy Settings Landing page looks like.  Note that you can share parts of your profile with Everyone, Friends of Friends and Friends Only.  I have edited my profile so that nearly everything about my profile is visible to Friends Only.  But wait, this page only shows you a fraction of the privacy settings available to you.  To view and edit all of your privacy settings, click on Customize Settings.

You’ll also notice two navigation items on the left for Recommended and Custom.  Click on Recommended and you’ll see that Facebook recommends that a great deal of your profile be available to everyone.  You can select these default settings with a click.  Me, I definitely opted for the Custom Settings.

Customize Settings Page

Here’s what the Customize Settings page looks like.  You’ll see that you can select who can see elements of your profile.  Here are my recommendations:

• If you post photos of your family, especially your children, make Posts By Me visible to Friends Only.
• Be sure to pay special attention to the Things I Share section.  This is the section where you can control what others are doing, including tagging you in photos and videos, checking you into Facebook Places, etc.  This allows you to NOT allow friends to check you into a bar or party, and stops them from tagging you in photos and videos and thereby making your photo visible to their friends.  Here’s a blog post about how someone nearly sabotaged a dinner party by checking all the guests into Facebook places.
• If your Facebook network is vast, consider creating custom lists and then specifying with each post and update which list can see your updates.  For example, I have a Family list that I use to share family photos and insider updates.
• Be sure to audit your privacy settings for existing photo albums. If you created albums before Facebook rolled out its new privacy settings, you may find that all or many of your albums are available to Everyone (I know I did!).

As for that pesky iPhone app that uploads your personal information to Facebook, unfortunately, there’s nothing you can do about that.  Facebook did recently add a warning to the app, warning users to make sure their friends are comfortable sharing their information with others.  This is a small consolation to me; I would venture to guess that most people don’t think about the privacy ramifications of their actions and apps and will blow right past this user agreement.  What to do?  This may sound dorky, but here’s what I’ve told my friends:

• Please don’t sync your iPhones with Facebook.
• Don’t try to check me into Facebook places.
• When you’re at my house, never check into Facebook Places or FourSquare so you don’t reveal my home information.
• Please don’t upload photos and videos that are unflattering to me and my friends/guests.  (When I throw Rock Band parties at my house, videos are not allowed; we DO allow photos of us band members looking cool with our instruments.)

How about you?  Have you audited your Facebook privacy settings recently?  Any revelations?  Any privacy disasters?  What are you doing, if anything, to maintain a semblance of privacy online?

• 3 Comments
• Tags: Facebook, privacy