Tag Archive for word of mouth

Facebook is The New Google is the New YellowPages

People have been talking about this for a while now.  And I’ve seen it in action time and again. Yesterday, a Federal Holiday, our washing machine broke. The only appliance repair place that we knew of neither answered their phone nor had a place for us to leave a message.

 

So I took to Facebook to ask my trusty friends if they had any recommendations.

What better way to find a local resource than to ask your friends?  I’m way more likely to use a service that my friends endorse rather than a random one that pops up on Google.

I quickly got 2 recommendations and a second for one of them. Then I googled them and found their website at RakerAppliance.com.   (would be even easier if they were on Facebook because then Ryan and Adele could have just pointed me to their page with a little tagging).

I called and spoke with Harry’s son Reid, who asked me a few questions to be sure that the machine was in fact broken and not a case of user error, and told me he’d be out in about an hour.

Reid found the problem: I had overloaded the machine and one of my daughters socks had clogged the drainage pipe…..ooops.  He fixed it and asked how we had hear of Raker Appliances.

When I told him that I had put it on Facebook, he informed that that was the 5th time he had heard of someone referring them on the site.

Have you “searched” for recommendations on Facebook before? What were your results?

If you own a business and it’s not on Facebook….what’s stopping you?

 

Getting Started on Pinterest

I’ve been bitten by the Pinterest bug and have crafted up a storm, and eaten my weight in chocolately peanut buttery confections because of it. I’ve had a lot of people ask me about how to get started and am now even helping some clients get a page set up. Here’s my stab at a “How to set up Pinterest”

First you have to request an invite on Pinterest.com.  Once you get one in your inbox (it takes a couple of days), click on the link and create your login information; you can link your Facebook and or Twitter accounts here too.

Next, Pinterest will ask you what your interests are to get you started.  Select a few.

 

Then Pinterest will show you that they have set up several people for you to follow that they think will be of interest to you.

 

See the grey “following” boxes under each person, if you click it, you can unfollow that person.  It’s super easy.

Now Pinterest will ask you to create the boards to which you will pin the items that interest you.

 

They give you a few, but you can create your own too.  And don’t worry, this isn’t the only place you can add or delete boards.

Once you click the create button the next page will show you how to add the “Pin It” button to your toolbar.  And Pinterest is so smart, it automatically gives you the button that works best with your browser.  Just click and drag it into your toolbar!

That’s it! You are set up, and if you added your Facebook and Twitter accounts, Pinterest has autofollowed your contact list from both.  To view who you are following, click on your name in the upper right hand corner of the main screen.

 

Select “Boards” from your profile.

You can also chose to view all of your pins, not categorized by boards, see the pins you have liked, and see who has mentioned you in a pin.  This is also where you access your settings.

By clicking on boards, you’ll see all of your boards.

 

Just above your profile photo, you’ll notice that there is a follower/following count.

If you click on the following text, you’ll be taken to your list of people that you are following. And if you click on the followers, you will see that list too.

 

 

Once again, just click the grey following box and it will unfollow the person.

 

The other menu items in the upper right corner are Add+ and About. The Pin It button among other things is listed under About.  We’ll cover the Add+ item later.

 

Viewing Pins Within Pinterest

 

You can view the pins of those you follow, or branch out and view the pins of everyone on Pinterest.  The default landing page of Pinterest is to view the pins of those you follow.

The menu items in the upper middle part of the screen allow you to view other pins.

 

You can select Everything and see it all, or you can drill down to a particular interest.  You can also view videos separately, pins that have spurred discussions, and gifts.  Gifts are simply pins that have price tags included in them.  See below for info on how to add a price tag to a pin.

 

Now you’re all set up and ready to pin!

 

Start easy, and peruse the pins of the people you are following.  That page is the default landing page now that you are on Pinterest.  If you see something of interest, hover your mouse over the image.  Three buttons appear:

If you like an item, that does not show up on other people’s boards, however, the person who’s item you have liked, will receive a notification that you liked their pin.

Repinning an item is what you want to do if it’s something that you’d like to remember or revisit down the road.  Or if you’d like to share something with other people.  Once you click the repin button this box appears:

 

Fill out the description you’d like to add to your pin, or chose to leave it as is.  If you pin a product, you can add a price tag by just typing in a dollar sign and the price.  If you’d like to mention someone in your description, to call their attention to it, type @ and then their name, it will create pull down of names of people you follow.

If you check off the Facebook Button (and twitter if you’ve added that to your profile), you can share the Pin on those social networks as well.  When you click on the black arrow, a drop down menu of your boards will apear.

 

Here, you have the option of creating a new board or selecting one that already exists.  Then click create and your pin will be added to the selected board and shared with those following you.

If you’d like to pin something from another location, click the Add+ menu item in the upper right corner of the main page.  When you do this box will appear:

 

Here you can create a new board, pin a file that’s on your computer, or add a pin from an external URL.

 

If you have the Pin It button installed on your tool bar and have found something on the interwebs that you’d like to pin, click the pin it button.  This pop up will appear, allowing you to select an image:

 

Once you have selected an image, the board selection box appears

 

And once you have clicked Pin It, the success box appears, letting you know that the pin worked (because sometimes it doesn’t).

 

If ever you make an error and pin things to the wrong board, simply go to the menu in the upper right corner, select the pins or boards menu item under your name and select the pin you wish to edit.

Click the edit button and a whole host of options come up

 

From here you can move a pin from one board to another, change the URL to which the image links and edit the description of the pin.

 

One of my biggest pet peeves on Pinterest is when you click on an image that interests you only to find that the link doesn’t take you to proper URL.  Hence the need to edit the URL.  A courtesy rule in Pinterest, is to link to the Permalink of the item of interest.

 

That’s the basics of getting started.  If I left something out or you have questions, just leave a comment here and I’ll answer you!  Good luck and Happy Pinning!

 

* A special thank you to my mother, Sally Spilman, for letting me use her account set up to grab screen shots of the set up process.



13 Mind-Bending Social Media Marketing Statistics

13 Mind-Bending Social Media Marketing Statistics

reprinted from Hubspot

1. 20 percent of searches on Google each day have NEVER been searched for before. (Source)

2. There are more than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, etc.) shared each week on Facebook. (Source)

3. 43 percent of all online consumers are social media fans or followers (Source)

4. 53 percent of people on Twitter recommend companies or their products in their tweets. (Source)

5. The average American internet user watches 30 minutes of video online per day. (Source)

6. 35 hours of video footage is uploaded to YouTube every minute. (Source)

7. 56 percent of LinkedIn’s 100 million users are outside of the United States. (Source)

8. Every day, 2,300 new Wikipedia articles are created, adding to its 17 million articles, with contributions from 91,000 active contributors. (Source)

9. 1.4 million new blog posts are created every day. (Source)

10. 200 million Facebook users access the service from a mobile device. (Source)

11. There are more than 5 billion photos on Flickr. (Source)

12. 45 million people view SlideShare presentations each month. (Source)

13. $3.08 billion will be spent to advertise on social networking sites in 2011, a 55 percent increase over 2010. (Source)

What To Do When an Earthquake Strikes

Baltimore DC Earthquake Damage

Don’t bother making or receiving calls on a land line of a cell phone. Instead check Facebook or Twitter immediately. And communicate via Messenger, Chat, texts, and email.

Seriously.

Today, I was at the Maryland Zoo, sitting on a short wall, waiting for a tram, when I felt the wall shake. I thought it was a big truck or something, looked around, saw nothing that could be the cause of the shaking, and by the time I could process that there was nothing I could see that would cause the shaking, the shaking had stopped.

My phone rang, I couldn’t answer it. I couldn’t call out either. But I could receive and send emails and texts and I could check Twitter and Facebook. Thanks to technology and the interwebs, I connected with my husband and mother, who informed me that Baltimore had been struck by a 5.9 magnitude earthquake. I was then able to reach out on Facebook and Twitter to find out how all of my other friends and family faired.

I also managed to scoop up several AWESOME Foursquare badges!

 

Twitter and Facebook, kept me in the loop and up to date with everyone.  And Foursquare sucked me back in with these badges.

Everyone’s fine, us East Coasters are being heavily mocked by those on the West Coast and this photo is making the rounds on the internet, depicting the damage from the quake.

Baltimore DC Earthquake Damage

Baltimore DC Earthquake Damage

 

The takeaway from this is if you don’t have a smart phone, good luck contacting your friends and loved ones in the case of a large scale emergency situation.  And ALL HAIL SOCIAL MEDIA!!!

 

Facebook for Business 101

 

Molly White Marketing Facebook Business Page

I’m teaching a class on Facebook for Business today so I thought it might be nice to turn my slides and presentation into a blog post to turn this blog post into my class.

Included in this post will be my slides and a basic outline of the class,This post will be what I use to teach my class but what you’ll miss is my witty repartee and any knowledge nuggets attained by said repartee and any ensuing questions from what I hope to be, my very active class members!

This is an intro, so let’s start with the Facebook Basics:

  1. Log on to your personal Facebook account
  2. Type in http://www.Facebook.com/PAGES
  3. Click on the “Create Page” button

 

Now comes the fun part!  Chose the type of business your page will represent

 

For the sake of this class, I’m choosing to set up a Local Business or Place

 

 

Fill in the information completely, and check off the box of terms and agreements. Then click on the get started button.

 

Voila! You’ve got a Facebook Business Page!! Facebook has provided you a list of things to do now that you’ve got a business page.

 

 

IGNORE THEM ALL for now!!!  Before you go sharing the page, importing contacts and posting status updates, you need to fill in the blanks as completely as possible, which means you have to go behind the scenes!

Click on those tiny little words at the top of your page, just under the name of your page:edit info And thus the Content Management System or CMS of Facebook Business Pages is revealed.

 

 

Just look at all of the information you can fill out to your heart’s content!  And please, by all means, fill it ALL out!  This is the stuff that counts for SEO!!!

  • Give detailed and specific information wherever possible.
  • The boxes are different based upon the page that you have chosen to set up
  • There will always be an About section.  You will have less than 140 characters to explain your business
  • Use some of those characters to type in your businesses ENTIRE URL
  • Use keywords in the description section, providing your URL once again
  • fill out email and web address again

Now let’s look at Your Settings:

 

Your Settings determines how you post on the page and if you receive notifications via email.  As long as the top box is checked, you will always act as the page when on the page.  If you uncheck it than you can post on the page as yourself.  This can be handy if you’d like to help drive some conversation on a post.

If the second box is checked, that means you will get an email every time someone comments on a post or posts on your page.  This is incredibly helpful for page management.  If someone reaches out to your business via Facebook, a speedy response is appreciated and will help encourage more use of your business page.

 

Next on the left side of the page is Manage Permissions.

 

Manage Permissions is where you determine where non-fans land when they go to your page, what fans are allowed to post on your wall, and what shows on the page.  Here you can also keep the page unpublished while you work on creating it.  And set up a list of words to block on the page.  You can chose to prevent people from talking about your competition this way.

 

After Manage Permissions comes Profile Photo.  It’s rather self explanatory, upload a photo that represents your business.  What you should know is that your picture is allotted 180 x 540 pixels of space so you should get creative and use that space to the best of your abilities!  Keeping in mind that from the 180 x 540 pixel image, Facebook will pull a little 50 x 50 avatar of your business for use in the newsfeed.

Moving down the left side we come to the Featured setting

 

Facebook Business Pages are all about making a connection with people.  And what better way  to make a connection than to show them who’s behind the page! This is how you do it!  Don’t be shy, show yourself!

We’re going to quickly glance over Resources and Manage Admins. Both are fairly straightforward.

You can add and delete admins in the Manage Admins section.  The caveat is that you can only add people with whom you are Facebook Friends. If you’d like to not establish a friendship with someone whom you’d like to make an admin of your page, than they simply have to like the page and you can select them from the list of people who like your business.

Resources is one stop shopping for ways to promote your page.  You can:

  • upload a CSV file of up to 5,000 contacts
  • link your Facebook page to your twitter account
  • Advertise on Facebook
  • obtain code to install social plugin’s on your website
  • send an update to fans – this shows up in their Facebook inbox
  • And read some tips and tricks that Facebook has written

Now onto the meat of the back end of Facebook Pages and what makes them like a mini website!  Facebook Apps

 

Certain Facebook Apps come preloaded, they’re the tabs on the left hand column of your Facebook Business Page and include Photos, Notes, Events, Links and Video.  These auto-populate with their appropriate page updates.

If you’d like to get a little fancier you can add Discussions, which is another Facebook created app.

But the fun pages are the ones you create yourself or personalize in some way to really show off what your business is about.

To install any of these apps, scroll the down the page until you see the add to my page button under their profile picture, select the page on which you’d like the app installed, and it will appear on your page ready for you to take action!

My favorites are:

Static HTML:iframe TabsI use this app the most of all because it is like a blank canvas! It’s already programmed to fan-gate or like-gate the page so you don’t need to know FBML.

Fan-gating and like-gating, means that fans see one image while non fans see another. Uses for Fan-Gating include, contest, coupons, and other incentives.  ”Like our page and get XXX” Like our page to enter to win XXX”.

You don’t have to fan-gate with this app, but it’s nice to know that you can.  To use this app you need to have some knowledge of basic html.  The two most common ones to know are

  • how to make an image appear <img src”http://www.yourimagelinkhere.com”>
  • how to make a link work <a href=”http://www.yourlinkhere.com”>Words You want to appear in blue with an underline</a>
  • to make an image link simply combine this to form this :<a href=”http://yourlinkhere.com><img src=”http://www.yourimagelinkhere.com></a>
  • when all else fails Google it!

There is a caveat to all of this: You must host your own image! Two great FREE services for this are Photobucket and Dropbox. Now image hosting seems complicated but it’s not.

With Dropbox, you simply install dropbox on your computer, store your image in the Public file in dropbox and select to copy the public URL, then just paste that sucker into your code.

With Photobucket, you upload your image to Photobucket and select to copy the public URL, then just paste that sucker into your code!

OK back to other great apps for your page, along the same lines as Static HTML: iframe tabs is HyperArts TabPress app. Same concept, same free awesomeness!

For anyone who is looking to sell a product or service with a fixed price, I am head over heels in love with Payvment. It’s robust, free, and easy to use.  All you need is a paypal account and the time to upload images, descriptions, and shopping details.  You can even offer discounts to fans and Payvment will calculate them for you.

I’ll be honest, with these three apps you can do anything that any other app is offering.

I use Google Forms or JotForm to create contest entry forms, I add my MailChimp email widget to these apps and I create basic graphics using a free program called Inkscape.

***The most important thing to remember when designing these pages is that you only have 520 pixels of width to work with.***

Once these apps are installed on your page and you’ve customized them, you need to do 3 things.

  1. On the Apps management page select edit settings and type in the name you would like to appear on the left side of your page.

2.  Go into the Manage Permissions section and select your newly named page as the default landing tab so all the new fans see your handy work and are able to take advantage of your fan-gated offer!

3.  Select  in the upper right corner and then click on edit under the list of apps that appears under your profile picture.  Move your newly created app as close to the top of the list as you can.  Wall, Info and Photos can not be moved.

Ok that’s it, your page is now set up and you can go back to that first getting started page and do all of those things that Facebook suggests.  You’re off and running!

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Facebook is My Happy Place

facebook heart


I love Facebook, and everything it has to offer. I love it for personal use, and I love it for business use. I love the direction in which they’ve taken the social network and I’m completely obsessed with the marketing aspect of it.

I’m an oversharer and I click the refresh button on my newsfeed far too often. I take great delight in explaining the wonders of Facebook to the not yet converted, and I work diligently to bring non-believers into the fold.

It pains me to admit that my own father, a small business owner, who markets to plastic surgeons, is adamantly against joining himself.  (I’ve made some progress in that he can now be found on LinkedIn!!)

If given the chance to extol the virtues of Facebook, I light up like a Christmas Tree and begin to speak with such enthusiasm that people probably think I’m crazy.

Reading Mashable, TechCrunch, Mari Smith, The Social Media Examiner, Inside Facebook, All Facebook and the other industry blogs is almost as enjoyable an experience as reading the Twilight Series.

A Conversion Story

It was with great joy that began a conversation with a man who emphatically protested the need for his business to be on Facebook.

He was a builder and his customer base was the well to do families in Northern Baltimore County.  I asked him why he didn’t think he could find those people on Facebook.

He said Facebook was huge, and he was small.  Facebook was too broad and he was a one man show with unique, high quality, high dollar skills.  Facebook didn’t have the well to do customer he was seeking.  His business was built on referrals and word of mouth from past customers.

With each reason he gave, I got more and more excited, and after he had explained his theory, I explained to him how he could use a Facebook business page, his contacts, and Facebook Ads to target EXACTLY the customer he was looking for:

  1. Create a personal account using a new email address, and don’t give out the address.
  2. Use that account to create a business page for the business.
  3. Email your client base a link to the business page and ask them to like it. Because, he would find, his clients are on Facebook, checking in on their children and grandchildren and catching up with friends.
  4. Once the clients have liked the page, use Facebook ads to run an ad targeting the friends of the people who like the page, that live within a 10 mile radius of your zip code.

Voila!  And with that, he told me to give him a call that perhaps we could talk about getting this program going.

You see, Facebook is for EVERYONE and there’s NARY a business out there that can’t benefit from it.

 

Fabulous Facebook Page-Dapple Gray Designs

Dapple Gray Designs 1 000 Fans Celebration

I love finding small businesses that are using Facebook and other social media outlets in the best possible way.  When I come upon a business that gives me current, useful information, takes adavantage of the free tools available to build out their presence and engages their audience, it makes me smile.  Sometimes I find myself liking a page, even if I don’t ever intend to frequent the business, just because the page is so awesome.

 

And then you know what happens, I end up frequenting their business because their stuff keeps coming up in my newsfeed and I’m reminded why I liked their page. Since I liked their page, I’m probably going to like their product or service. Because that’s what good social media does!

 

I’ve decided that it would be fun to regularly highlight the businesses that I think do a great job with their social media and explain why I love them.

 

First up, Dapple Gray Designs.  Full disclosure, the owner is a friend of mine, but she is not a client.  She engages her fans, partners with businesses like her own and with blogs whose reader base is her target customer, uses the free apps available to customize her page, rewards and interacts with her fans, and keeps people updated on the most current inventory and news about the business.  The only expense for this page, is the product that she gives away.  Everything else on here is free.

Dapple Gray Designs, makes and sells adorable children’s clothes at reasonable prices.  The clothes are sold on Etsy, at boutiques, and through the Facebook page itself.  Suzi, the owner, has worked really hard to grow her fan base and market herself, almost solely through her Facebook business page.  In less than a year’s time she has accrued over 1,000 quality fans. I mention quality, because it isn’t all about the number of fans a business has, it’s about the likelihood those fans will frequent the business.

 

Dapple Gray Designs, partnered with blogs that catered to mothers who would likely purchase her designs and started offering giveaways through these blogs.  A condition of entrance, was fanning her page.

Then once people started liking the page, and buying and winning her clothes, she encouraged people to post pictures of their children wearing the clothes.  Once people did that, she would repost the pictures to ensure that all of her fans saw the cute kids in the cute clothes.

This is a great way to encourage people to interact with a page.  Who doesn’t want to brag about how cute their kids are and hear other people tell them that their kids are in fact, the adorable!?

Suzi also uses her status updates to showcase new products and announce their availability.

And since people are being encouraged to actually go to her page, not just read about Dapple Gray Designs in their newsfeed, Suzi has taken full advantage of the FREE custom tab apps that are available.  She’s using, Static HTML for Pages as a welcome landing page, Payvment as a shopping cart from within Facebook, MyEtsy which ports her etsy page to her Facebook page, and the Sweepstakes app to host a giveaway on her page.

On top of all of these tools, Suzi, very cleverly, hyped up a big promotion for when she hit 1,000 fans.  Suzi partnered with other shops and designers of handmade goods for children and hosted joint giveaways encouraging entrants to like both the Dapple Gray page and the partner page in order to enter the contest.  She used Google Forms to create entrant forms, and the notes section of the Dapple Gray Designs fan page to list the details of entry as well.

The 1,000 fans celebration contest is still running, I’ve entered to win a few things myself!  Hats off to Suzi for using all of these tools to her advantage and for doing such a successful job marketing Dapple Gray Designs.

 

Social Media Statistics in Video Format

This video was produced by Socialnomics, author, Eric Qualman using June 2011 information.

There are some powerful takeaways from this video including the information listed below.

  • If Facebook were a country it would be the world’s third largest, yet Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google, aren’t welcome in China
  • 95% of companies using social media for recruitment, use LinkedIn.
  • Lady Gaga, Justin Beiber, and Britney Spears have more twitter followers than the entire populations of Sweden, Israel, Greece, Chile, North Korea, and Australia.
  • The Ford Explorer launch on Facebook generated more traffic than a Superbowl ad
  • 69% of parents are friends with their children on social media
  • 34% of bloggers post opinions about brands and products
  • 90% of consumers trust peer recommendations, 14% trust advertisements

 

30 Social Media Statistics

Here is a list of 30 Social Media Statistics from the last several months. These were orginally posted by Jeff Esposito, and then reposted to All Facebook.

  • 5 percent of online shoppers note that social media influenced them to visit a retailer’s website (Foresee)
  • 82 percent of 18-29 year olds utilize a form of social networking (Pew)
  • 42 percent of American internet users over 18 actively use Wikipedia (Pew)
  • 40% of corporate Twitter accounts engage in some kind of customer service (Burson-Marsteller)
  • In 2011 marketers will increase their social media usage by 75 percent (Brian Solis)
  • 48 percent of consumers combine social media and search engines in their buying process (GroupM)Staff Members Dedicated to Social Media
  • 10.5 percent of CMOs say social marketing efforts are effectively integrated into their overall marketing strategy (MarketingProfs)
  • 97 percent of the top US charities utilize Facebook in their marketing efforts (UMass Dartmouth)
  • Of all social networks, YouTube has the highest Net Promoter Score with 50 percent of users saying they would recommend it to a friend (MarketingProfs)
  • ~140 Million Tweets are sent each day (Twitter)
  • 24 percent of adults have posted a review of a product they have purchased (HubSpot)
  • 41 percent of the companies report that there is no staff dedicated to social media (Useful Social Media)
  • 89 percent of companies note that social media will become a useful cog in their marketing mix moving forward (Useful Social Media)
  • 35 percent of small businesses utilize social media in their marketing mix (eMarketer)
  • Facebook expects to bring n $4.05 billion in ad revenues this year (eMarketer)
  • Facebook is the leading social network for nine out of 13 Asia-Pacific countries (Edelman)
  • One out of every six minutes spent online is on a social network (comScore)
  • 73 percent of the US internet population visits Facebook each month (comScore)
  • 62 percent of Facebook users between 35-54 years of age have liked a brand (eMarketer)
  • 64 percent of Twitter users are female (Pew)
  • 85 percent of LinkedIn users are Caucasian (Pew)
  • 47 percent of journalists will use Twitter as a source for a story (Digital Journalism Study)
  • Less than 3 percent of micro businesses utilize Twitter (Vistaprint)
  • 61.2 percent of Facebooking females list themselves as married less than a year, compared to 44.3 percent of males (AdAge)
  • The average media site integrated with Facebook has seen a 300 percent increase in referral traffic (Search Engine Land)
  • 61 percent of Facebook users who have liked a brand note that they are more likely to purchase from that brand (AllFacebook)
  • 96 percent of Americans use Facebook (Business Insider)
  • 80 percent of social media marketers are using the platforms to increase brand awareness (eMarketer)
  • Only 8 percent of US internet users utilize Twitter despit despite having a 92 percent awareness level (Edison Research)
  • 46 million Americans check their social media profiles daily (Edison Research)

Liking a Business on Facebook is a Referral

I was talking with a new client, CF Interiors, and she mentioned that almost all of her business comes from referrals, as does mine. There is no greater endorsement of a business than the recommendation of it by a trusted source. Do your job and do it well and people will talk about you; they will recommend you; they will frequent your business.

There are 600 MILLION people on Facebook, the average person has over 100 friends. That’s an incredibly powerful network. If someone were to endorse your business on Facebook, imagine how many referrals you cod get from that one person? Guess what….that’s what happens when someone likes your business on Facebook. They’re endorsing you, saying I like this business and you should too! Because that like shows up in the newsfeeds of their friends and the link to your business page is right there, ready and waiting to be clicked! The only question is…..what’s your business page going to say about you and your business?

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