by Angela Taffs | Nov 16, 2015 | Sales and Marketing
Do you rely heavily on Facebook for your marketing? If so ….
Are you aware of the perils of using Facebook?
On Monday the Facebook page for the world’s largest social media magazine, Social Media Examiner, disappeared. Yep! Gone completely without warning! This page had over 380,000 followers and is an excellent source of information but for some unknown reason it went!
The owner, Michael Steizner, posted this message on his own Facebook page.
And this message appeared on their Google+ page.
What transpired from messages posted in response was this has happened to numerous followers ranging from pages with fans of just a few hundred to one with over 3 million followers!!!
This proves that can happen to anyone at any level. I personally know of a lady who sold handbags through her Facebook page and had just over 4000 followers. Overnight her page disappeared and she lost contact with all these prospective customers. She had to start from scratch again and in the meantime her business basically stopped.
So please don’t sit back and think it will never happen to you. Hopefully, it won’t but any business should put plans in place to protect themselves should it happen to you.
Remember, something like this can happen to anyone and any business and once your page is gone, it’s gone!! You are unlikely to ever get it back.
As a business, you don’t own your fans or your page so if your page goes you lose contact with these people.
What can cause my Facebook page to disappear
There are a number of reasons why a Facebook page can disappear such as:
- An administrator deleting or un-publishing the page. Make sure you know who has access to make changes to your page and remove anyone who should not have permission anymore.
- A breach of Facebook guidelines. So many Facebook users are totally unaware of the guidelines. One of the most common breaches I see are pages running competitions and asking for likes and shares in order to enter which is a direct breach. If this gets spotted and reported you are in serious danger of your page being removed.
- Using your personal profile as a business page. Again, this is a breach of Facebook guidelines. If you haven’t already read it, have a read of the article Facebook Business Page vs Personal Page
- Technical issues. It appears this may be the case with Social Media Examiner and their page has now been restored. However, there is no guarantee that once your page has gone that it can be recovered.
The key lesson here is DO NOT put all your eggs in one basket. Do not purely rely on one social media platform for all your marketing. Always make sure you list build so that whatever happens outside of your control, you have a database of email addresses that allows you to retain contact with your prospects and fans.
What can I do to get my Facebook fans onto my mailing list?
Here are a few tips to help you get your Facebook fans onto your mailing list:
Have an opt-in form
Put an opt-in form on your website so that when you post your blog on your Facebook page and readers get taken to your site, they have the option to sign up. Put one in the sidebar and at the top or bottom of your blog posts so that people can easily subscribe to get future news and information delivered directly to their inbox.
Offer an incentive
In order to make it more attractive for people to sign up, offer them a freebie to download when they sign up. If you are in the holiday home industry this could be something such as ‘Top 10 things to look for when booking a holiday’ or ‘A guide to choosing a colour for your home’ if you are an interior designer.
Post links to your opt-in form
Make sure you have a link to your opt-in form everywhere you can. Use Facebook apps to add one to your business page and include the link at the bottom of your Facebook posts.
Ask for email addresses in groups
If you are in a group on Facebook and someone asks a question which you take the time to answer, ask them for their email address to send some further information. Send them a little extra info and let them know you will add them to your mailing list (with the option to unsubscribe) for any future news.
Ask interactive fans for their email address
When a person comments on one of your posts you now have the option to send them a message (see pic below). Use this to thank them for their comment and to invite them to join your mailing list (remember to send them the link).
So now you know the perils of using Facebook and to how to protect yourself.
I hope you have found this article useful and please share the love and pass it on to anyone else you know who has a Facebook business page.
by Angela Taffs | Aug 24, 2015 | Sales and Marketing
Don’t lose your manners when using social media
Quite often when I am using social media, whether on my own personal pages or in a group, I see people asking for recommendations. This could be someone asking for a personal trainer, a graphic designer, a virtual assistant or something else to help them personally or in their business.
If I know of someone and have used them myself, or have heard good things about them, I am all too happy to recommend them and tag them in a post. What is then lovely is when the person I recommend puts a quick thank you for the mention in a subsequent post or private message to me.
This takes them seconds to do but lets me know that they value my support.
But what about those who fail to use basic manners in thanking someone for their help? I have recommended a particular business on a few occasions recently and tagged them. They have then seen this tag, and subsequently joined in the conversation to take advantage of the mention and to try gain business for themselves. But no thank you or acknowledgement of my support was forthcoming.
Now call me picky, but I personally take this as blatant bad manners. If I was at a dinner party and I introduced someone to another person who I thought would be a good contact for them and they totally ignored me, I would feel rather insulted. And the same goes for social media. Don’t forget the social part of social media.
What actually flabbergasted me this week was a small business whose posts I have been sharing and I have recommended to a few people, actually took the time to private message, not to thank me for my support but to tell me (not ask) to share and promote a new range of products they now have. No thank you. Just a demand for more support.
Do you think I am going to help them? No, I am not. I simply take it as incredibly bad manners.
So remember that social media is about building relationships. Nurture those people who are effectively doing free marketing for you by sharing your content and tagging you in posts. A few seconds to say a simple thank you can go a long way. By having good manners you can gain yourself more future free marketing from your supporters who are likely to continue sharing your business with others.
[Tweet “Using good manners in social media can gain you free marketing”]
Just don’t miss the key tactic of good manners when your content is shared in social media
by Angela Taffs | Apr 30, 2015 | Sales and Marketing
As with any marketing, it needs to be constantly reviewed, tried and tested and I tried to do that with my newsletter. And what a mistake I made! I tried to set up an RSS feed so that blog posts went out automatically to my subscribers and it failed miserably. It was a mess.
Social media automation can do more harm than good
And it taught me a valuable lesson in trying to automate too much. This lesson reminded me of the article I wrote on ‘The pitfalls of social media automation and the damaging effect it can have on your audience.
This brings me on to another area of automation that many small businesses do. The setting up of automated responses when you follow someone on Twitter. Do you hate these? I most certainly do. It is so obvious that they are automated and are so impersonal and sometimes can border on being offensive. Take the instance of a restaurant that I visit on a regular basis. I followed them and was chatting with the owner on Twitter when suddenly I received a direct message asking me if I ever visited North Devon and if I had ever visited the restaurant!
This had such a negative impact. For a start, just a simple bit of investigation would reveal I was from North Devon. But for a regular client who spends a lot of money with that business, if I wasn’t online with the owner and could tell him what had just happened, I would have been insulted to be messaged in such a way that made my custom feel wholly insignificant.
This is also the danger when outsourcing your social media to companies who don’t know your clientèle and don’t bother to do a few checks and balances before posting. So beware of too much social media automation or using a marketing company to do everything for you. There are some organisations that do get it right and do a great job for their clients. But there are also those that send out a bog-standard message on behalf of all their clients and therefore if you follow more than one of their clients you get the same mundane message over and over again.
A refreshing moment in marketing
So it was very refreshing today that after I had tweeted about a certain subject, I received an email. The business who had read my tweet had taken the time to look at my bio, get my email address and then send me some really good and useful information. They didn’t try to sell to me but just started to build a relationship.
I replied and said thank you and then we got chatting. Yes, this personal approach takes far more time but I can guarantee you it will be far more effective in getting you loyal clients in the long term.
So beware before you think about social media automation for your business. Make sure you know what you are doing and still retain the personal touch.
Anyway, back to the drawing board for me and more manual labour!!
What are your thoughts on social media automation? Leave your comments in the box below.
by Angela Taffs | Jan 24, 2015 | Sales and Marketing
Social media automation
There are so many tools out there today that can save us time and make scheduling social media posts so much easier. But are they always effective?
I have always used Buffer on the free programme that only allowed me to schedule up to 10 posts at any one time. Last week I decided to try Hootsuite as with this software you can schedule as many posts as you like. I sat and scheduled a variety of posts for the next week. I then sat back and gave myself a pat on the back and felt more relaxed that I didn’t need to blog into Buffer every day to keep it topped up.
But what happened?
The reach on my posts dropped from 500+ to less than 50. The interactions on my posts dried up. But why?
I stopped and thought about this as it couldn’t possibly be the fault of Hootsuite. I must have done something differently.
And then it hit me.
With scheduling just a few posts at a time, I was taking more time with each and injecting a bit more of my personality into each. Scheduling up to 50 at a time made me lose my enthusiasm and I just posted the bare bones, facts and links. Quite frankly, they were boring!
So whilst using social media automation and having the ability to post weeks in advance can save a daily check, be careful that you don’t fall into the trap that I did and they all start to become over automated and somewhat mundane.
People buy people first and without your own comments and injection of personality you are in danger of turning into just another faceless site.
So be careful folks. If you are going to schedule lots of posts at once, do it when your energy levels are high and you have enough interesting comments to make. And remember that any industry news you schedule may well be out of date by the time your post appears.
I will most certainly use Hootsuite again when I am going to be away for a few days or on holiday for a week or so, but personally I am going to stick to Buffer for day to day posts where I can give something fresh to my posts each day.
Finally, please make sure that if you do automate for periods in advance that you still check in each day to your social media channels to respond to any interaction on your page. There is nothing worse than putting in all the hard work for someone to ask you a question and they then get ignored. This has happened to me when I asked a question of a business and I never got a response. I ended up unfollowing the business in question as I felt they couldn’t be bothered to get back to me and so didn’t want my custom. What a waste of their effort and time.
What works for you? What social media automation do you use? Let me know over on the Facebook page.
by Angela Taffs | Jan 8, 2015 | Running a Business
How often do you go on your social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter just to keep scrolling through so much ‘noise’ that you really don’t want to read? Do you find yourself getting irritated and spending too much time looking for something of interest to read? If yes then read on.
It may be time for a social media declutter!
You have probably heard about decluttering your home but how about decluttering your social media?
What is a social media declutter?
Basically, social media decluttering is getting rid of anything that you don’t love or find useful and is taking up valuable space in your news feed. It can be a little time-consuming to start with but once done you will have better focus and spend less time filtering through all the irrelevant content that you no longer wish to see. As a lovely lady in The Success Club put it, it really is no different than decluttering the house before Christmas or spring cleaning the wardrobe ready for summer. You just remove what no longer serves you.
How to do it.
Work through one social media channel at a time and do the following where relevant:
- Go through groups you have joined and delete any that are no longer relevant or don’t offer you any value.
- Go back through your news feed on your business pages and get rid of any items you may have posted that may no longer be relevant to the way your business is now progressing.
- Go through your connections on LinkedIn and Twitter and delete any people that are constantly posting things you are not interested in. I also get rid of Twitter accounts I am following that no longer hold an interest for you.
- If you run any groups where you have members who are constantly negative and are bringing the wrong feeling to the group, delete them. If you want to be truly professional, message them to politely let them know that you don’t feel they are a right fit for the group any more and they would be better finding another group that is better able to help them. Then hit delete.
- Finally, go through your personal page on Facebook and really think how your numerous ‘friends’ make you feel. If there are people there that drain you and you feel your energy level drop just by seeing their name, get rid of them. You don’t have room for these people in your life when you need every ounce of energy to continue to build your business. There are always people that make you feel bad about yourself so remove them from your life. You will feel so much better for it. If however, you really don’t feel up to deleting them, you can just unfollow them so they don’t show up in your feed.
So now you have completed your social media declutter, you should have gotten rid of all the rubbish that takes up your news feed and causes unnecessary distraction and frustration. More time to focus on achieving that next level of success.
