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How to Link & Unlink a Facebook Fan Page with Twitter

Mon, 05/06/2013 - 15:13 -- by Sean Arnell

Link Facebook to TwitterSimplicity is always nice when it comes to social media, and Facebook and Twitter know that. Some of our clients would rather not deal with the process of posting content to Facebook and Twitter individually, and prefer that we link their Facebook to their Twitter pages. This way, any posts that we add to their Facebook will simultaneously show up in their Twitter feed.

So how do you link your Facebook fan page to Twitter? Simply follow these instructions:

  1. Make sure you’re logged into Facebook under your own name.
  2. Make sure you’re signed into Twitter as the page you’d like to link.
  3. Open this link: http://www.facebook.com/twitter/. You should see a list of all the pages that you manage, as well as your own.
  4. Click the “Link to Twitter” button for the page you’d like to link. Link Facebook to Twitter
  5. Authorize the app, and you’re all linked up! Authorize Twitter App

 

We recently received a request from one of our clients to unlink their Facebook from their Twitter feed. This process is even more simple.

  1. Make sure you’re logged into Facebook
  2. Use the http://www.facebook.com/twitter/ link.
  3. Find the page you’d like to unlink, and click “Unlink from Twitter”.

Arrested Development Conquers Interactive Social Media

Thu, 05/02/2013 - 13:46 -- by Sean Arnell

Arrested Development- The BluthsIf you’re a fan of the show, Arrested Development, and follow it on Twitter or Facebook, chances are that you’re well aware that the show will be returning to Netflix on May 26th. This critically-acclaimed sitcom was cancelled by Fox after a three-season run in 2006, but a large online outcry eventually brought the show back from the dead. Over the last month, both Netflix, and Arrested Development have run an aggressive social media campaign, rewarding fans for their support.

Last weekend, five posters containing signature items from past episodes were placed at random locations in New York City. Facebook followers were encouraged to locate all five of these posters for a reward. It was later revealed that the reward was a new poster, revealing something from the upcoming season on Netflix.

Arrested Development has also been listening to its Facebbok fans. It’s recently been spotlighting certain comments from Facebook fans in its timeline photos. Below is a recent Facebook comment which it dubbed, the “Best Facebook Comment Ever Received by Anyone, Ever”.

Arrested Devlopment- Best Facebook Comment

Arrested Development Season 4 PosterArrested Development is also encouraging fans to come up with the best taglie for the new season’s poster. They captioned the poster with the following:

“We’re looking for fan taglines for our brand new poster! Submit yours and it could be featured on an Official Arrested Development poster and our Facebook Cover photo! To enter, write your tagline in the comments or use the hashtag #ADtagline. You have one day to enter, so get yours in ASAP.”

Any company who utilizes social media can take a page out of Arrested Development’s book. Social media isn’t a one-way street. It’s no longer “good enough” to merely post one status a day, and ignore the feedback from your followers. Rewarding your followers by valuing their feedback is the best way to run a social media campaign.

And now, as a reward for reading this entire blog, here are the top 200 Arrested Development quotes to get you ready for the new season on May 26th. Huzzah!

What YouTube Can Do for Your Small Buisiness

Sun, 04/28/2013 - 22:11 -- by Angie Picardo

YouTube Small BusinessAfter starting mainly as an ultra addictive way to share silly cat videos and bootleg concert footage, YouTube has become a multi-purpose engine for entertainment, education and marketing. Amateur crafters can learn the ins and outs of quilting, do-it-yourself mechanics can figure out how to change their car’s oil and culinary wannabes can perfect the art of making a soufflé – all through community-posted videos from knowledge-sharing peers.

For small businesses, the video-sharing site also holds near limitless potential to become a more intimate marketing tool, with greater reach than any other advertising tools around.

While many businesses already use Facebook and Twitter to publicize themselves and connect to their communities, YouTube is still a relatively under-utilized platform for spreading awareness of products and services while also offering a more connective experience.

By creating their own YouTube channels, businesses can essentially start their own video blogs, keeping customers tuned in on the latest offerings and engaging them with the personalities that make up their favorite stores.

Brick-and-Mortar Meets the Internet

San Francisco’s Green Apple Books, one of the city’s longest standing and most beloved book stores, established its own YouTube channel four years ago, and has continued to update it with videos that showcase everything from their “Book of the Month” selections to newly hired employees.

The store even features a brilliant “smackdown” series that pits physical books (and bookstores) against the Kindle to see who reigns supreme in areas like lending books to friends, and obtaining author autographs at book signings.

A smart marketing move, the YouTube channel has helped the store maintain relevance in an age where technology is generally thought to be a threat to brick-and-mortars, especially bookstores. By embracing relevant technology rather than fighting it, Green Apple has been able to engage its target audience (existing customers and potential new ones) in a whole new way.

A Human Touch for Online Shoppers

Likewise, online sellers can put faces to businesses that might otherwise feel impersonal and anonymous by creating a YouTube series. In much the same way Facebook and Twitter have been able to breach the wall of internet separation, offering a more personal experience to shoppers, YouTube can provide an even more intimate relationship between seller and shopper, allowing consumers to get a glimpse of who they are actually supporting with their dollars.

Video journals featuring chats with an online business owner can mimic the experience of stopping into your favorite shop once a week to browse goods and chat with the friendly owners – a more personal, human touch that online shops lack.

Endless Ways to Engage

Videos give a whole new avenue for creating interest in a business. Creative entrepreneurs can take their YouTube channels beyond being glorified commercials by creating a cinematic series for customers to follow online, or can involve loyal supporters in some of their videos to further engage their audiences.

New products can be introduced over a stretch of time through a dramatic or comedic “mini-series” on YouTube – one that will draw in viewers while keeping them informed about the business. Include regular customers or local characters to make the experience even more relatable.

In a world where testimonials from the common man are becoming increasingly important in marketing (just look at the competition to get the highest Yelp ranking), broadcasting a few interviews with real-life customers may be just the kick in the pants a potential client needs to try a new shop.

Business YouTube channels can also be linked to companies’ social media pages to increase traffic and help make shopping (and marketing) a more immersive experience.

Angie Picardo is a staff writer for NerdWallet. Her mission is to help consumers stay financially savvy, and save some money with a free savings account.

4 Things You’re Doing Wrong on Social Media – and How to Fix Them

Thu, 04/11/2013 - 14:58 -- by Tim Smith

Social Media #FailDave Kerpen believes in the power of digital. “Social media is a game changer in its ability to make companies more likeable to their consumers,” says the author of the New York Times bestseller Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook (& Other Social Networks). “They can use social media to reveal themselves as more transparent, prove they are more responsive, and demonstrate how engaged they truly are with their customers.” But most companies just aren’t harnessing that immense potential. Here are four things your business may be doing wrong on social media – and how to change that now.

  1. Selling First. Companies often think about social media as “an evolution of early online media,” says Kerpen – which itself was a hangover from the broadcast era of blasting messages at customers (think online press releases) and expecting them to respond. Instead, the right metaphor is Cocktail Party 2.0, or “a return to word-of-mouth,” he says. “If you try to use social media to drive sales off the bat, it’s akin to somebody at a cocktail party opening their jacket and saying, ‘Hey, want to buy some watches?’ It’s laughable.”
  2. Measuring ROI Wrong. Of course you should measure your return on investment with social media, says Kerpen. But he says it’s often measured wrong. “The ironic reason they fail is a focus on short-term gains. You start by listening and understanding the audience, and then you can drive sales. I could notice a company on Facebook, get content from them every single day, then I might go to Google and order something and social media wouldn’t get any credit. Just because it’s not the final click doesn’t mean the ROI of social wasn’t there.”
  3. Assuming Social Media Will Fix All Your Problems. Social media is powerful, says Kerpen, but it’s not a panacea. “I’d be foolish to say social media alone can make an unlikeable company likeable. It’s one department at a time, treating customers and staff right at every turn, and that starts to effect change in a positive way.” Social can help a company’s reputation, but it’s not sufficient on its own.
  4. Ignoring Voice. Before “going big” on social media, Kerpen cautions, your company should “listen and establish what your personality should be like. Many companies haven’t thought about what their voice should be.” Is the company playful? Serious? Funny? Expert? Humble? Witty? Your day-to-day interactions on social media should have a consistent tone that reflects your brand – and keeps it real in a way that the oracular voice of television commercials or corporate press releases often does not.

Social media can’t do all the heavy lifting when it comes to building a respected, likeable brand. But it can play a powerful role in cementing your relationship with customers. “Knowing comes first, liking is next, and then trust,” says Kerpen. And with trust comes the loyalty that can sustain your business over the long term.

Social Media and Reputation

Tue, 03/19/2013 - 21:29 -- by Tim Smith

Good Vs. Bad ReputationThink you can ignore social media? Or that it’s OK not to know what comes up when you Google your name? Think again!

Like it or not, the Internet is working for you or against you, and there is no middle ground. You can imagine you have no relationship with the Internet, but that means you don’t understand it and you don’t control your relationship with it. In a world where more and more people will judge you based on what appears online, there’s no excuse for feigning ignorance or imagining it doesn’t matter. You spend so much time on your resume, or brushing your hair for interviews but you leave it to the four winds on how you look on the Internet?

Staying on top of your online reputation does take time (if you’re creating content yourself) or money (if you’re outsourcing the process to others). That’s why it’s easy to move it to the backburner. Many people think about this as something that doesn’t affect them until there’s a problem. But it’s increasingly necessary if you want to build a professional reputation. You can relinquish your influence over that reputation and your cultivation of it and just let fate take over, but it’s actively costing you something. Even if your online reputation is neutral, there’s an opportunity cost, because you may be missing out on visibility or connections that could help you.

Many professionals worry about the time commitment involved, which (if you look at celebrities who are active on social media, like Lady Gaga or Richard Branson) can be significant. But you probably don’t need to become a super user overnight. You’re probably not going to be able to keep up with Lady Gaga, but do you have to? You may want to dip your oar in 3-4x/week. But remember: it has to be consistent. The Internet can’t be your downtime; it’s your uptime that you’re using for whatever professional objective you have. That means using Twitter to share cat videos (unless you’re a professional comedian or veterinarian) isn’t going to advance your career much.

Does that mean uploading a few vacation photos onto Facebook is verboten? It’s not that you shouldn’t socialize online. They’re social tools – but they’re getting used less and less socially and more with an eye toward overall reputation. You have to assume everything spreads, and nothing you do socially should be inconsistent with your professional life. That becomes even more important as privacy concerns grow, exacerbated by the vast data we’re now sharing about our lives.

So how can you best take control of your online reputation? Whether you’re doing it yourself or outsourcing the process, creating a lot of good content is key. And, you’ll want to choose your platform wisely. How can you tell if you should be using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr? It’s very hard to tell and it requires data about your target audience.

Start with where your current and potential customers like to congregate. If you’re trying to reach men don’t go on Pinterest,” which is known for its female following. And if you’re trying to do something medical, don’t do it on Tumblr, which built its reputation among teens and 20-somethings. Overall, focus on delivering interesting material to the people who matter, in a place where they’re likely to see it.

How to Include Thumbnails When Using Hootsuite to Post to Facebook & Google+

Thu, 03/14/2013 - 17:21 -- by Sean Arnell

HootsuiteWe recently started testing out HootSuite here at Digital Firefly Marketing in order to determine if it could be effective tool for managing our social media accounts.  While that tool is a great time-saver when it comes to posting content, we did find some problems with our posts on Google+ and Facebook that were intended to include thumbnails.  It seems that rather than include a thumbnail, HootSuite merely included a shortened link to the web page for which we were hoping to have a thumbnail. 

This problem has been widely reported on the web with no real solutions available.  After some testing we were able to come up with the solution, and it’s shockingly simple.  In order to make sure you include thumbnails on Facebook and Google+ posts simply make sure that you have selected which profiles you would like to post your content to before shortening the link.  Here is a good practice to make sure you avoid this problem.

1. Open the HootSuite dashboard

2. Select all of the profiles you would like to post to before entering your link for shrinking.

3. Clink on the “Compose message” box.

4. Copy and paste the link in the “Add a link” box

5. “Shrink” your link.  The link will appear shortened in the compose message box, and a thumbnail will appear below.

6. Use the arrows to find the appropriate image for your thumbnail.

7. Send the post now, or schedule for a later time.

Although simple, this is an effective method for ensuring that you don’t forget to first select the profiles you would like to post to.  Eventually this process will become natural, and you can avoid the issue altogether.  Hopefully, you won’t ever have to deal with missing thumbnails again.

Pinterest Launches Analytics

Tue, 03/12/2013 - 23:03 -- by John Cashman

Pinterest LogoEarlier this year, Pinterest launched business accounts which allowed a business to be verified. It turns out they have started to roll out some business features as well so marketers can't start to figure out what exactly is happening for a business account on Pinterest.

In order to get the analytics you need to make sure your business is verified on Pinterest, if not you can follow these simple steps.

Once you are verified, you logon and go to the top right corner of your screen. If you get a prompt that says, switch to new look, choose that, otherwise choose Analytics and you will be taken right to the spanking new analytics page.

Pinterest Analytics

 

As you can see, there are a few different tabs across the top that you can select. The first tab,  Site Metrics, you'll have access to these metrics:

  • The daily average number of pins, and the daily average number of people who pin, from your website
  • The daily average number of times pins from your website were repinned on Pinterest, and the daily average number of people who repinned your pins
  • The daily average number of times your pins appeared on Pinterest in the main feed, in search results, or on boards
  • The daily average number of people who saw your pins on Pinterest
  • The daily average number of clicks to your website that came from Pinterest
  • The daily average number of people who visited your website from Pinterest

For the site metrics, you can choose a date range or simply choose the last 7 days, last 14 days or last 30 days. This is particularly important as you can see the effect of a particular campaign. For example you can see our Reputation Management campaign had a very good run through February. Today, is the first time we are able to see just how broad the reach was for that particular campaign.

You can also select any of the other tabs, Most Recent, Most Repinned, and Most Clicked to get metrics on your pins for a particular day. 

Overall, this is great data to have with Pinterest. What will become more useful in the next months will be API feeds into other data dashboards to see a complete marketing picture along with allowing more than one day on Most Recent, Most Repinned and Most Clicked. 

Facebook Revamps its News Feed

Thu, 03/07/2013 - 15:59 -- by John Cashman

New Facebook News Feed

One place I get my news from is the Facebook news feed. It tells me what’s going on in my circle of friends, and sometimes the world in general. Today, Facebook revealed the new Facebook News Feed User Interface (UI) which is in beta starting today and will roll out slowly over the coming weeks and months.

The big change for marketers is four – fold.

  1. Marketers will need to increase the amount of pictures you use in your posts. Facebook is purposefully using images because they make up 50% of all posts in the news feeds.
  2. Marketers will need to use more links. Links will also be more prominent to redirect people to websites.
  3. Marketers will need to think about how they reach people as Facebook is allowing people to self select what they want to see in their news feed, be it news, family updates, music news, etc.
  4. Search is taking on a bigger role in the UI as Facebook uses its data to help you find people and products that you may be interested in.

New Facebook News Feed

What was not mentioned were two very important items that we as social media marketing consultants will have to understand in short order. The first is no one has any idea how or if the actual news feed algorithm will change and what effect it will have on whether or not your post is seen by many or a few people. Our guess, is the algorithm will continue to be dictated on the things you select, like, comment on as well as what your friends like, comment on along with the time of day and the last time you logged into Facebook. What may change, if we had to hazard a guess, would be the use of photos and links could boost you up both directly if Facebook looks to promote media over text and indirectly as having a more prominent link or photo would get people to click on it.

The second item that wasn’t mentioned was advertising. Facebook has started to let people advertise within the news feed. We believe this will continue and take a more prominent role on both mobile and desktop as well as be incorporated within search. We also believe, Facebook’s bottom line will increase, as larger richer ads will have better click through rates and therefore more money to Facebook.

How to Create Awesome Facebook Ads

Sun, 03/03/2013 - 21:38 -- by John Cashman

Facebook AdsThe the number two website in the world is Facebook with one billion user worldwide. Naturally, with so much website traffic, the ads on Facebook can be a worthwhile investment for any business local or Fortune 500. One of the best ways to set up a Facebook ad campaign is to build a campaign that builds upon itself so that not only are you building audience, but you are also building awareness of your posts so more people see them and potentially click and visit your site. 

Start with the basics

The first and most important thing in building a Facebook campaign is to understand your core audience and your own business. Are you selling online and shipping in the U.S.? Are you a bricks and mortar store only selling product in a certain zip code or area? What are you selling and in what industry? Who are your core customers? Women? Young? Single? etc. Once you understand what you are selling and to whom you can start setting up a Facebook campaign.

Step 1 - Build Audience 

The first thing to do is build an audience. It doesn't matter if you have the world's greatest post if you don't have someone to see it. So the start of any Facebook campaign is to build your core audience of people who are interested in what you have to say. Facebook makes this pretty easy to do.

  1. Login to Facebook and go to your page and click create ad.
  2. Choose your Facebook page.
  3. Choose Get More Page Likes.
  4. Write your clever ad.
  5. Choose sponsored stories, friends of your audience will now see your ad.
  6. Choose your audience. This is where you are selling your services and what your audience is interested in.
  7. Name your campaign and add your campaign budget. You can bid as little as a dollar a day.
  8. Click save.

Your campaign will take about ten minutes to get approved. In the mean time you can start building your awareness of your messaging.

Step 2 - Build Awareness

Once you have a audience building campaign set up, it's also time to set up a campaign that is able to show your posts to your audience. While your posts are able to get organic views within the Facebook News Feed, it can be advantageous to have your posts viewed along the left hand side of Facebook as well. This will not only show your posts to your audience but their friends as well. Again, Facebook makes this pretty easy to do. 

  1. In Facebook Ads, click create ad.
  2. Choose your Facebook page.
  3. Choose Promote Page Posts
  4. Choose your last page post and check the box that says "Keep my ad up to date by automatically promoting my most recent post"
  5. Choose Connections - People who are connected to you and Target people who are also connected to your brand
  6. Use an existing campaign which will be a drop down box.
  7. Click Place Order

Using this step means that you should be posting to Facebook once per day. This can be done using the Facebook scheduling feature, which allows you to set a number of posts six months into the future.

You can let your Facebook ad campaign run on auto pilot, checking it every week and making some adjustments. Using this method will not only help you build your audience but also build awareness of your brand and create a large and engaged audience.

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