Social Media Marketing

Can Facebook Graph Search Actually Be Good?

Feb 5, 2013 By Tea Leave a Comment

Every time Facebook announces something new the debate always goes two ways – invasion of privacy or something brilliant. Same goes for the latest Facebook tool Graph Search.

As a business owner, you should be ecstatic about it as it brings a new way how your customers will find you and on the flip side how you can find you customers and followers.

What is Facebook Graph Search?

Graph Search is a new Facebook feature currently being rolled out that will allow users to search through Facebook’s content. It’s similar as Google and other search engines; however Graph Search searches only within Facebook. This means that unlike other search engines the results will be specified for each user and his or her social network on Facebook.

The search results are based on three key factors:

1- Keywords

Facebook Graph Search will scan all of the content on Facebook for keywords that match the user’s search terms. This is similar to Google, however search results will be limited to Facebook content only.

2 – Category

These are categories that pages use to self-define their business. Graph Search will scan these categories to determine search results. This is very important for Facebook business pages.

3 – Connection

Facebook will give preference to results based on who the searcher knows and who is in their larger network – friend of friends. This reflects the notion that people prefer to take recommendations from people they know. You can only imagine what this can do for your business.

So, how will all these influence search results?

Let’s say you are searching for a ‘beauty salon’ on Facebook Graph Search. The tool will scan all content for the keyword ‘beauty salon’ with particular emphasis on businesses that have words ‘beauty salon’ listed in their category. To determine results Facebook Graph Search tool will scan profiles, posts, comments, check-ins within your network. This is an important factor as it means that your search results will be limited to your connections, which includes, your physical location, shared connections, pages you liked or commented on and any other interactions with a page.

So why should you care?

If you have put two and two together, you’ve noticed that if you don’t have your keywords strategically placed on your page, or your pages don’t sit in the right category or your connections are bad – you might not come up in Graph Search results at all.

How to fix this?

Here are 7 simple steps that you need to do to prepare for the Graphs Search:

1 – Check your category

Category of your business page will have a significant weight in search results. Take time and think about how you categorised your business and weather it really describes your business accurately. Put yourself in shoes of a user who is trying to search for your business – what would they search for.

2 – “Keyword” your About section

Using your keywords in about section is not a new technique. It has been used to boost Google rankings. But if you haven’t thought about your keywords yet now it’s time to do it. Rewrite your about section and include as many keywords people might use to search for your business. Keep in mind that your content still needs to read well.

3 – “Keyword” you content

Tags will be another key element that Graph Search will use to determine results. Use your keywords in your post, tag your photos, videos and encourage your clients and customers to tag your business as much as possible.

4 – Encourage engagement

Engagement with your followers was always important for your page to have higher priority in news feeds of your fans. It will also be important for priority in search results.

Same rules apply – Create content that is relevant and engaging and you will gain better interaction.

While funny and odd things gain a lot of likes, comments and interaction, you need to think a bit more strategically about what you post. Your Facebook content will now be searchable; therefore keywords will become more important. Informative and keyword rich content will outperform content that is irrelevant, even if it has better engagement.

As a business you need to think about what value are you adding for your fans, potential clients. Make them laugh but also teach them or help them in their life in some way. Whatever content you are posting, encourage interaction. The more people interact with you and the larger is your network the better are your chances to show up in results.

With each LIKE or share you connect to whole new network of potential clients. Think about that J

5 – Location, location, location

Keep your address up to date as this determines your location. Facebook Graph Search will give priority to results that are geographically connected to the searcher, his network and your business.

You can boost your rankings simply by asking your clients to “Check-In” when visiting your business. Think of ways how you can encourage and reward them for doing it.

6 – Embrace the change

It’s not a new idea that those who embrace the change and innovations get to rip the benefits earlier. Imagine if you have not hesitated using social media marketing and expending your business online earlier – do you think you would be ahead of your competition?

Faceboook is releasing Beta version of Graph Search slowly and if you want to be one o the first ones to use it join the waiting list https://www.facebook.com/about/graphsearch

7 – Get excited, open your eyes!

As Facebook is releasing Graph Search the new developments will be coming out. Follow announcements, listen to experts and open yourself to possibilities of learning how Graph Search will work and how it can benefit your business.

To summon up – Graph Search is an amazing tool that combines the power of personalized recommendation with large scale of social media. It gives your customers (and their friends, and friends’ of friends) an amazing tool to find you. It takes the word of mouth to a whole new level. Imagine what this will do for your business.

I would love to hear what you think about the Graph Search – Share your thought in comments below. Thanks.

Feeling Frustrated? Use Social Media to Vent – Or Better Not?

Jan 18, 2013 By Tea Leave a Comment

Sometimes it feels that social media is just another platform for people to complain, grunt and be negative. While we all sometimes have a good reason for it and feel like it’s a good idea to use social media to vent and express our opinions, it’s important to note that what you write on your posts can be used as evidence in a court. Did I just lost you interest?

I urge you read this further as it might help you protect yourself against others or open your awareness about your own conduct. I promise I will not bore you with too many legal details. Agreed?

Ok, my marketer’s hat off, and my lawyer’s hat on.

Recently, Australian Federal Court made a decision that serves us as a reminder that individuals and businesses should exercise caution when making comments on social media and that same standards apply to social media as to other forms of advertising and marketing.

So what happened?

We all know Seafolly for their stunning beach wear collections. Recently they sued, a designer from White Sands Swimwear for engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct by posting number of statements on Facebook and in emails to several outlets indicating that Seafolly ripped off almost her entire line. To cut the long story short, the court found in favour of Seafolly and found that Ms Madden falsely represented that Seafolly had copied her designs and that Seafolly was not the creator of their designs. She also falsely represented that Seafolly used underhanded means to obtain photographs of the White Sands garments in order to copy them.

Although Ms Madden did not explicitly accuse Seafolly of copying, the statements made on her Facebook page and the emails to media representatives were understood by her audience to be assertions that Seafolly had engaged in unethical practices. That understanding was evidenced by the tones of the early media articles and comments on the issue.

So why should that worry you?

Even though these statements were made on Ms Madden’s personal Facebook profile and could be seen as expression of her opinions, the Court found that she was reckless in forming them. She took none of the steps that she should have taken to ascertain the truthfulness of her suspicions. Her intention of making these statements was not relevant – what counts is the understanding of audience to whom these statement were directed. Ms Madden was awarded to pay $25,000 for damages to Seafolly’s reputation, which the Court labelled as a ‘serious assault on Seafolly’s business integrity’, and also their costs of the proceeding.

Lessons learned

Social media is a valuable marketing and social tool. We have to remember that even though it appears informal, the unethical conduct can results in serious consequences for individuals and businesses, including payment of damages and legal costs and adverse media attention. Before you post anything on Facebook and other social media platforms, check your facts and check them again. Even thought the statements are instant and can be deleted, they can be retrieved and damaging for your business.

If you ever think that someone is violating your rights, refrain from resolving this matter on social media. Check the facts; engage with offending party off-line and/or engage lawyers if necessary.

Most of all, don’t post anything you would not say to that person or brand directly; and consider how you would feel if you were on the other side.

Have something to share? Use comments below

Are You Missing The Key Element Of Marketing?

Jan 8, 2013 By Tea Leave a Comment

Everyone is raving about how important is to include social media marketing in your marketing campaigns and it seems that most small businesses are starting to grasp this message. But there is another component of online marketing, which brings real measurable benefits to your business. I’m talking about email marketing.

Have you ever heard that to make money online you need to build your emailing list? You might say ‘I don’t have online business, so I don’t need this’, but am I right to say that you run various adds, promotions, sales, product launches and similar?

Email marketing is as important for online businesses as it is for any other physical store or service provider. Email marketing helps you build relationship, trust and loyalty with your subscribers. And once you gain that, you know your subscribers will buy products and services from you, not your competition.

Email marketing is also the cheapest and the most targeted form of marketing. Why?

For 2 reasons:

#1:

People who sign-up to your emailing list are already warm leads. This means they will highly likely buy from you in the future. Why? People will not give you their email address unless they think you have something valuable to them. This means that anyone who is on your list is a potential buyer and you know that because they expressed an interest in your business. You cannot get more targeted campaign than that.

This is further enhanced by possibility to collect data on how your subscribers behave, which helps you to refine your approach and messages.

A cost of running an email campaign is nothing comparing to any other form of marketing. With Aweber you can try your email marketing campaign for as low as $1.“I want to try it”

So why are so many small businesses still reluctant to use email marketing in their marketing strategy? The most common reasons are:

Reluctant to try new things
It takes too much time
It won’t work for me
It’s too complicated for me to set up
It’s too expensive

If you fall in to the first category – excuse me from being blunt – sooner or later you will be out of business. How we do business today is changing and unless you change with it, your future is not bright.

According to Aweber’s 2012 survey, “the most business owners said they spend between 1 and 3 hours a week on their campaigns.” With 77% of surveyed business owners stating that email marketing increases their profit, it is worthwhile finding that time.

Thirdly, if your clients are human, there is no reason why it won’t work for you. The question is; are you willing to give it a try to find out if email marketing works for you?

I accept that for some, technical tasks can be a bit daunting. You might not be up for learning how to set-up your email marketing campaign or you might not even know where to start.

That’s fine. I can help you with that.

“Yes, I need help with email marketing”

Programs such as Aweber really make email marketing a breeze. With auto-responding follow ups and drag-and-drop email templates sending messages is quick and easy.

I know that you can learn. So, once your email marketing technical parts are set up, I will show you exact steps how to use email marketing tools and support you until you are confident that you can do it on your own. Worth giving it a try? Get in touch.

As for the excuse that email marketing is too expensive, there are free email marketing software providers out there you can use. I personally use Aweber which is used by most online marketing gurus. Here you can Test Drive it:

Can You Have More Sales, Too?

Helping over 115,000+ businesses like yours raise profits and build customer relationships using AWeber’s opt-in email marketing software for over 10 years.

I hope I gave you enough reasons why you should try email marketing or if you are already doing it, why you need to continue. But enough of me talking, let’s have a look what other 3000 small business owners and entrepreneurs have to say:

Data and infographic by AWeber

Share your thoughts in comments below or share it with your friends. Thanks

My Top 4 Social Media Tips to Skyrocket Your Business

Nov 27, 2012 By Tea Leave a Comment

Recently, I was approached by Biz.Yourself, an awesome website, a hub for all things biz, to share my top social media tips with their readers. There are heaps of tips I could share, however I wanted to pick the ones that will make a real difference to any small business.

Here they are:

4 Top Social Media Tips to Skyrocket Your Business

One of the biggest challenges of starting a new business is how to get your word out and get customers. You can have the best business idea, the best product or service yet if you are unable to spread the word, your potential customers will not even know you exist. The chances are that you will give up on your business well before the customers will have an opportunity to get to know you.

Luckily with social media and other internet marketing tools, this task has become less daunting. If you don’t have a massive marketing budget, using social media to market your business is the way to get your word out to the masses, reach your target market and collect quality leads to turn them into customers.

While it sounds so easy, there are some ‘DOs and DON’Ts’ of social media marketing. To help you get on the right track, I prepared 4 most common mistakes people do with social media with a solution how to fix them.

#1 No Strategy

Like with anything else in business you need to think before you act. Not having a social media strategy will result in un-resourceful use of tools. This means wasting time using the wrong social media platform and not achieving any results.

How to fix this?

Think about your target market; who are your customers? Where and when do they ‘hang’; is it Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest etc? What is their behaviour? Once you getter information, create a strategy of your social media use.

#2 Too Many Social Media Accounts

I’ve seen it too many times; businesses trying to manage too many social media accounts yet they are nowhere truly present. This results in spending too much time with too little results and lots of frustration.

How to fix this?

If you’ve done your social media strategy you know where you customers are. Use one or two social media platforms regularly. This means your customers will get a chance to know you better, which will result in better relationship and a higher level of trust. And you want that because the quality of the relationship is what determines the sale.

On the other hand, using less social media platforms will free up heaps of your time that you can use to run your business to success.

#3 Ignoring Statistics

Yes, I know stats are boring. But unless you measure, analyse and test your marketing efforts, you will never know what works and what doesn’t. You might be wasting your energy and money on things that don’t work. Imagine how much more you could achieve, if you put more in to things that work. And unless you look at the stats you will never know.

How to fix this?

Make a weekly commitment in your diary to follow the stats of your social media. It’s actually rewarding when you see positive results and when you find out the formula that works for you.

#4 Not Collecting Leads

While collecting fans and followers is fun and it gets the word about your business out, the real value to your business are leads, which you can turn into customers. You need to figure out how to turn your fans and followers into customers. Otherwise, you are wasting your time.

How to fix this?

You need to get your fans/followers to subscribe to your emailing list. Once they are on your list, you have better chances to turn them into customers during your email marketing campaign.

To collect leads you will need to get an account with emailing service provider such as Aweber or Mail Chimp and then incorporate a sign-up form to social media account (where possible) or drive traffic to your website.

Connecting social media with email marketing is the key to your success online. A subscriber is a warm lead. While they might not be ready to buy from you as yet, they’ve expressed an interest in you and in what you are doing. Now is your turn to show them why they should become your customer.

Always post information that is relevant to your target market and be regular with your postings. A simple search online will give you heaps of common tips about how to use social media. These 4 tips are my top tips if you are serious about doing business with social media. If you follow them, you will have success and you will grow your client base.

How Many Social Media Accounts Do You Own?

Oct 12, 2012 By Tea Leave a Comment

With a number of new social media platforms increasing every day, it is quite common that people feel overwhelmed and they end up not using any of them. Does this sound like you?

Or perhaps you are on the other side of the extreme and you hold multiple social media accounts. How many do you actually effectively use?

Social media is not about quantity but about quality. You can have presence on as many social media platforms as they are out there, but are you truly present if you engage with your fans every here so often? Can you truly communicate your message through odd posting once a week? Is this bringing any results for your business?

Multiple social media accounts need multiple time and resources to manage them efficiently. As a business owner you know that this equals costs. You also know that marketing is all about return on investment. So unless your marketing campaign has generated more revenue than costs, your return on investment will show as loss. And we want profit, don’t we?

Rule #1

To use social media efficiently you must get a grasp that it is a marketing tool that will grow your business, not a playground to catch up with your fans (this doesn’t prevents you to have fun with it). Once you make that switch in your thinking you will notice that you will need to adjust how you use social media to achieve the growth and positive return on investment.

Rule #2

You cannot be everywhere. You must decide which social media platform is right for your business and stick to only few of them to get it right.

So how do you decide which social media is right for you?

There is no golden rule and with time you might find that you prefer one over another.

A good start is to look at the nature of your business – do you offer services/products B2B (business to business) or B2C (business to customer) and based on that determine your social media priorities.

My favourite social media platforms, in a priority order for B2C business, are:

Facebook

An obvious one, because almost everyone you know has a personal Facebook account, which makes it a great tool if you have B2C business. Facebook is the most popular, very user friendly, highly customizable and effective tool for marketing.

You Tube

People prefer watching videos over reading content. A video with compelling, relevant content to your audience is a great way to build trust, engagement and following. You Tube channels can be branded to showcase your business and if created correctly, it becomes a virtual sales person working for you 24/7, greatly increasing lead generation for your business.

Twitter

It’s amazing that 140 characters can be such influential and powerful marketing tool. It can be used for both B2C and B2B businesses for driving traffic to your website or Facebook business page by sharing content and opinions. It enables businesses to appear human, quickly and effectively enhance customer service, public relations and business development. While it’s not so good for self-promotions, it’s very useful for market research, spotting trends and connecting with media.

One thing people love doing is looking at pictures and Pinterest is a perfect answer to engaging consumers visually. (Visual aspect is so important to us that even Facebook made the new Timeline design much more visual than it was before.) Pin (post) pictures of your products/services, share them and engage by commenting on others.

LinkedIn is great for networking and keeping in touch with your network, even when they change jobs. I think every business person (employed or business owner) should have personal business profile on LinkedIn. If you are in B2B selling, then LinkedIn must be your number one priority, as this is where you will find your customers. While a recent redesign of LinkedIn’s company pages is yet to show its full repertoire of benefits it is currently more suitable for larger companies.

All these social media platforms can be used for B2B business, however in this order of priority:

LinkedIn
Twitter
You Tube
Pinterest
Facebook

Whatever social media you choose to play with, remember that like anything else in life, it takes time to create a following but the rewards are worth your work. While there are tools and ways to speed up the process, be cautious of social marketing consultants who promise you success over night. Trust your story, share and engage with your fans and you will soon see your business grow.