If having a survivalist for a brother has taught me anything, it’s that knowing where to find the right information (and help, if need be!) is key when starting out on a journey.
So, for those of you who have already started out on the journey of creating and publishing your first social campaign, or are planning to real soon, here is your own personal map — a list of resources that you’re sure to love: [Read more...]
At the time of this writing, Coca Cola’s Facebook Page has more than 38 million fans. Disney’s Page has nearly 32 million.
I’ll bet you’re painfully aware of gargantuan numbers like these, especially if it’s been hard to attract fans to your own Page. Remember: While Coke and Disney’s Pages offer valuable insights about how to market on Facebook, their number of fans certainly isn’t typical.
Setting a goal for a social campaign shouldn’t be focused on competition with other Facebook Pages. If you’re hoping to increase the number of people who Like your Page, seeking Disney-caliber numbers probably isn’t feasible. Having a realistic goal will lead you to success. Having an unrealistic goal will lead you to panic.
Here are the five questions small businesses and organizations should ask while planning a social campaign:
I certainly am not above the occasional typo, but you’re reading that headline correctly … Happy Fanbruary!
This year, we’re re-naming February and turning it into a celebration of social media success for small businesses and organizations.
You may be wondering what that means. The answer is simple: We’re using the month of Fanbruary to take your social media marketing to the next level. [Read more...]
New tools to help with social media marketing are popping up everywhere.
But many small businesses and nonprofits just don’t have the time to keep up and research all the options.
Don’t you wish you had someone to tell you about the tools that are proven to be really easy and useful? We get it! That’s why last week we asked our Facebook fans, “What tool(s) do you use to help with your social media marketing on Facebook, Twitter, etc.?” Now, the results are in. [Read more...]
A few weeks ago, I got a friend request on Facebook.
I recognized the name and clicked on the person’s profile to check out his information. He was pretty well-connected in his career and we had a few friends in common. I had a problem though: I had spoken with him only once on the phone — for a project I was putting together at a place I haven’t worked at for three years. I’ve never met him in real life and really know nothing about him.
I declined the request. But that’s just me. Someone else might have accepted it. Our interpretations of what’s personal, what’s professional, what we share, and who we let into our worlds have gotten fuzzy because of social media. Millennial Branding found that Generation Y is happy to blur those lines — they use Facebook as an extension of their professional life. For some people, that can cause problems when you’re sharing information about your personal life and forget that the colleague in the next cubicle is watching every social move you make.
I present Constant Contact’s social media webinars and frequently get questions from attendees on how to separate the personal from the professional in this public space. One solution is to create a personal social media policy for each of your profiles. Look at your social networks and decide: What do you use this space for? Who do you want to let in? Think about the things you talk about on each social network — do you really want your potential new friends or followers to know those details? Do you want to know theirs? Here’s my personal social media policy: [Read more...]
What a week. Just as everyone was finally settled back from their holiday time off, Google went and woke people up when it announced it’d be integrating its struggling social network, Google+, more actively into its search engine. Not surprisingly, this sent a ripple through the social media world. Suffice it to say, some folks (particularly those at Twitter) were less than pleased, and a war of words began.
But not everyone was fighting. (Phew!) Love was in the air elsewhere as more proof was revealed that social media and mobile go together, and two big players in the email space came together.
Read on to learn about these stories and more in our weekly news roundup. [Read more...]
“What should we expect for results?”
This is one of the first questions people almost always ask whenever I talk to small businesses and organizations about getting started with social media marketing.
Well, that’s a really tough question to answer. For one thing, marketing a business or organization on social media is a great case for what your mother probably said to you as a kid:
“You’ll only get out of it what you put in.”
Or in business terms, there’s no ROI if there is no investment, whether it’s an investment of time, thought, or energy.
For those who do invest in the process, success comes in all shapes in sized and is different for every business.
Here are three examples of social media marketing success, without using any fancy monitoring tools or even spending hours and hours with Facebook Insights. [Read more...]
There’s a lot of debate these days about what it means to be a “good” social media marketer.
Every expert seems to have his or her own opinion.
Does it mean tweeting or posting to Facebook a certain number of times each day? Does it mean posting a certain type of content? Does it mean you can’t pre-schedule your posts and tweets? Or does it mean having a certain number of fans or followers, or a high Klout score?
The definition of what makes a good social media marketer seems to be different for everyone. And in fact, there’s a lot of “best practice” advice available — you can find it here on this blog, in our Learning Center, and on our Social Media Quickstarter, for example.
An easier (and more amusing) question to answer may be what not to do on social media. Perhaps that’s why when I asked a few of Constant Contact’s own social media experts to name their biggest social media pet peeve, they jumped at the chance.
Are you looking to be a better social media marketer? Our advice is to stay away from the following “worst” practices: [Read more...]
