Most people don’t like change. And these changes caused quite an uproar amongst users, even to the point that users were fighting with each other about whether or not the changes were good. I must admit, I joined the debate.

Tickers, Timelines and Top Stories

Personally, I really like all the changes, except one…top stories. There are some pros and cons to this one.

Basically, Facebook picks which status updates/posts should be your “top stories” based on the relationship, number of people who like it, etc. and puts those at the top in the news feed. Most would argue they would rather see ALL of their friend’s updates, as well as updates from the pages they’ve liked, chronologically. That’s certainly how I feel.

What does this do to marketers who have worked so hard to grow their audiences and cultivate communities on their Facebook pages? The jury is still out, but I see some issues.

Pros and Cons

The bad thing: This means the likelihood of their audience seeing their posts will go down. In fact, I can see in the analytics where site traffic from Facebook has already started to decrease.

The good thing: Marketers who count on their business pages for website traffic and customer interaction will now have to work much harder to generate relevant, interesting, sharable content. Better content means more people will “like” it and be more likely to share that content with their friends.

Where Should We Focus?

The biggest takeaway for me in regards to the explosion of Google+ and the significant changes/updates to Facebook is the fact that regardless of social media evolution, everything always comes back to your website. Social media will continue to change and develop, as it should. Your website should also  improve on a regular basis, but IT should be your top priority…not mastering social media marketing. Your website is Base Camp. It’s a platform that YOU can control. The visitors generated from Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. should land on a website that doesn’t look like its straight out of 2004. Basically, it’s very important that your website doesn’t suck.

Make sure your website is at the top of its game. It needs to be visually appealing, have modern architecture, be search engine friendly (do the keyword research) and social media friendly, incorporating all the latest widgets and buttons that make for easy sharing. Your website should have a blog integrated within the site, not separate. It should also have analytics installed and you should be posting on the blog regularly, if not often.

Roll With The Changes

Don’t freak out when Facebook makes changes. This wasn’t the first and won’t be the last time they do. Also, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Get active on Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, YouTube, etc. and get familiar with Google+. But, most importantly…have a website that stands out amongst your competitors. Make “Base Camp” your top priority and then put the icing on the cake with an awesome social marketing campaign.

Feel free to contact me with any questions or to learn more.

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OK…admit it. One of your Facebook friends posts entirely too many times each day and you’ve made the difficult decision to either hide that person’s updates…or de-friend them completely.

Hopefully you just chose to hide them. I will confess…I have done this.

As marketers, that tells us that our “fans” and “members” don’t want to be bombarded every day with 4 or 5 posts and updates from us on Facebook. They want relevant, important and useful information that they can use and pass on to their friends…maybe once a day…depending on the size of your community. 

However, on Twitter…things are different. Twitter is a micro-blog with short, quick bursts of information. Users are accustomed to getting “tweets” from the people they’re following several times a day…if not more.

So, here’s my perspective. As a business or organization, if you link Twitter to Facebook…meaning everything you post on Twitter automatically shows up on Facebook…you could be causing people to “un-fan” your page or leave your group. Remember, your goal is for people within your communities to take your posts and share them with others.

Twitter and Facebook are two separate and very different experiences. While Facebook is a more of a personal engagement, Twitter is more business-like and wide open. You should treat them as such and limit your posts on Facebook, but increase your frequency on Twitter. I hope that makes sense.

Other social media experts (hint: there is no such thing) might disagree with me on this and that’s fine. I’m merely sharing my perspective based on experiences I’ve had developing communities for my clients.

Feel free to contact me with any questions.

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Over the past couple of days there have been some issues with the 800-Pound Gorilla…Facebook. This led me to think about what would happen if Facebook suddenly disappeared. What would online marketers do if one of the most powerful tools they had was gone? One of the things we would do is put more focus on blogging. The truth is, we should never lose focus on blogging. Don’t neglect home base. Keep it fresh regularly and blog smart.

Here are 10 quick tips for effective blogging:

1 – Decide on a stand alone domain name myblog.com, or directory of existing site: mysite.com/blog. Utilizing a sub-domain is also an option: blog.mysite.com. If at all possible, avoid hosted services that do not allow you to use your own domain name.

2 – Research keywords and develop a glossary using a keyword research tool, such as www.semrush.com, www.wordstream.com or www.link-assistant.com.

3 – Enable your automatic trackback and ping functionality.

4 – Submit your RSS feed and Blog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories and search engines.

5 – Optimize and distribute a press release announcing your blog.

6 – Research and comment on relevant industry-related blogs and blogs that are popular and get lots of traffic. Always link back, but don’t be spammy when you comment.

7 – Monitor your inbound links, traffic using analytics (Google Analytics, if possible). Also, monitor comments and mentions of your blog using Google Alerts, Technorati, Blogpulse or Trackur.

8 – Put prominent links to your profiles on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr and other social platforms in every post.

9 – Include bookmarking/sharing widgets that allow users to share content on the platform of their choice: www.addthis.com.

10- Post regularly. I’m often asked how often. Once a month is not enough. Once a week is not enough. I’ll cover this more in my next post.

To learn how we can help, CONTACT US!

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However, it’s disappointing when I hit the RT and the original tweet is too long. It pains me to have to edit, abbreviate and basically re-write the original tweet in order to re-tweet it.  Remember, you only have 140 characters.

Here’s the thing…if I have to edit or abbreviate your tweet, I’m probably not going to re-tweet it and neither will others.

So, if you condense your message, you’re much more likely to have it re-tweeted by your followers, which should increase your audience even more. In fact, you should really try to get the tweet to around 126 characters. Why not make it as easy as possible to re-tweet? 

Another thing…when you share someone else’s content, always re-tweet or us a “via @username.” Never grag the blog title and URL and post the tweet as your own. Cite the source and give credit where credit is due. It’s not your content.

Feel free to contact me with any questions.

Good luck out there!

Visit: DicksonInteractive.com

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