Your Business Has Social Media. So What?

As businesspeople we spend most of our time working out details. Our lives are consumed by the planning and execution of stuff. “Getting things done” seems to be the reason that we get up in the morning. What we don’t do as often as we should is ask ourselves why?

This post is about the “why?” of social media

Why is it that we do the things that we do? Sometimes that question may feel ridiculous – like why do we call to check up on an old client, or why do we give talks to groups when they ask us to attend? Those things seem to require no justification, but it is worthwhile to look at the outcome that we’re hoping to gain from those activities: Was the client we met with ever likely to repurchase, or were any of the people in our talk’s audience ever likely to provide any real business benefit?

Social media is no different

Hundreds, even thousands of self-proclaimed social media experts have attempted to define what the purpose of social media is and the single best way that it should be used.

I guess that I’m a guy writing a blog post about the why of social media, so I’m no different, but my intention is to convince you that the business benefits that can be gained are as broad as you can come up with, but first you must come up with one.

Twitter for the sake of Twitter is little than a grown-up multi-player video game

Video games are fantastic for entertainment, especially when you get to interact with other people in them – some of them were the only reasons that I survived my first few semesters of University – but no one is sitting in his office playing Starcraft and calling it a business activity.

Millions of productive hours are wasted every day by businesspeople who scroll through feeds rather than doing real market research, or repin incessantly rather than review financials. As the Admin for 39 Facebook, 10 Twitter, 5 Youtube, 4 Pinterest and 3 Instagram accounts – among others – I am certainly guilty of scrolling without a cause on occasion.

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Facebook way better than Twitter, for weddings..

 

Because a Picture is worth much more than .. 140-Characters!

Weddings are a social space, no doubt. So your own social media marketing can be critical. But weddings are also a very visual space! Brides want to see first, and learn afterwards.
Which practically means that Facebook is usually a much more effective social media platform, for wedding vendors.

A Quick Case Study

This morning someone here noticed an interesting and fun story about hay seating for weedings (!) by Jayleen Deelman of Dreamgroup Productions on our Bridal Buzz feed (members blogs). They decided to share it with our brides; i.e. they tweeted the story and also posted it on our BRIDE.ca Facebook page.

Here is what it looks like on Facebook and on Twitter

Facebook vs Twitter : The Difference in Delivery

Facebook got so much more “traction”!

Of course it did.
Anyone following our FB page can

  • See a photo, right away, grabbing their attention
  • Click a link to read the full story
  • Click a link to connect with the author of the story
  • Selectively share the story with others
  • Like the story to express their approval
  • Have a conversation about the story, with comments

So, not suprisingly, within minutes, a whole bunch of people had done all of the above!

By comparison, on Twitter the visual is missing, so the story was predictably lost in the “soup” of other tweets. Even if someone noticed it, the most they could do is read it. Even if you want to share it, you have to share it with the whole world, indiscriminately. You can’t have a conversation about this story only with people who are intersted in this topic.

To be fair..

Yes, we have ten-times more FB folowers than Twitter followers. So the response is larger. But then again “why?“? Easy: because brides would much rather follow someone on Facebook than follow someone on Twitter!!

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Don’t Know What to do With Your Facebook Cover Photo? Read This.

By now I’m sure that you’ve become familiar with the new Facebook Page format that includes a timeline, app boxes and a full width Cover Photo. That huge piece of editable real estate presents a major opportunity for businesses to express themselves and to get a brand message across to readers quickly.

But what’s the best way? And what’s allowed?

Those are the major questions that brands are now facing. They know that the Cover Photos can be used in very effective ways, but aren’t sure what the best ways to do it is, or what the laws of Facebook restrict us from doing.

With our clients we’ve tested a few different uses for Cover Photos, and by far the most effective has been to simply place the face of the brand in a relatable way as prominently as possible.

Many brands use cover photos to insert calls to action that point users to Like the page or sign up for newsletters. While this can work sometimes, there are two major drawbacks:

Risk: Cheap Likes

The people who Like the page may not actually like your business. While the Like gave you the opportunity to interact that person, which is valuable, it may have substituted for any real brand awareness that may have otherwise happened.

Risk: Facebook Police

Facebook has very specific rules about what can and can’t be included in a cover photo (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/help/search/?q=cover+guidelines" target="_blank"Facebook Link). Putting any sort of promotion, special or even a call to Like the Page violates those conditions and could lead Facebook to delete your page without notice.

It’s happened, and not just to big pages. There are many examples of small local brands who have violated the Facebook rules, like cover photo content and, and had their pages permanently removed.

Think about that, all of the work that you put into your page, all of your Likes, all of your comments and recommendations would be gone.

Thousands of Pages get away with breaking the rules every day but in my opinion, leaving such a valuable asset’s very existence up to the whims of the Facebook moderators is a more risky business proposition than its worth.

So, What Should I Do?

Show your personality, have fun and be genuine. You have the opportunity to show anything you want to the world in a very prominent way so, take some time, devote some resources and put up something that you’re really proud of.

Once you’ve done that, start thinking about the next one because the best cover photos change at least once every two months.

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