Facebook Announces News Feed Updates; How Your Brand and Business Can Get Ready And Not Be Left Behind

by Frederika Angus

A day after Google announced larger Cover Images for their Google+ social media platform, Facebook announced their News Feed updates. It will take some time to understand the full impact for businesses and brands on their social media marketing plan. Based on the changes Facebook is preparing to roll out, there are a few things that your business can do to be ahead of the curve and get ready now.

1. Greater control of what users see in their feeds with the use of “sub-feeds.” Now businesses have the opportunity to show up in multiple ways in front of their ideal clients. Your page will still show up under News Feed and Most Recent as it always has. When users want to view all of the pages they follow in one place, all of your content will be consolidated along side the other pages and people they follow under the Following sub-feed.

The fun update is that every picture you share will be seen with pictures from their friends in the Photos feed. This is your opportunity to make sure that all your marketing and content is not just text updates or sharing links. Include visual updates in your plan and you’ll have an opportunity for brand recognition, marketing and free advertising.

2. The news feed will be come a much cleaner, less cluttered place to be. As you can see from the picture below, images and videos become larger. According to Facebook about 50% of news feed updates are visual.

What does this mean to your business?

Now is the time to ensure that you focus on larger images of high-quality. Facebook is listening to what the advertisers/marketers and brands have requested. Larger images give you more advertising space for your promoted posts, like page campaigns, in the Photo sub-feed, and more! As you’re using your Facebook ads to target your ideal clients, the quality of your images will give an immediate impression about your brand. 

3. Cover photos will become more important with Facebook’s changes. When someone “likes” a business or brand the lower half of the cover photo appears in the News Feed and can now be seen by that person’s friends.

Did you catch that? Before these changes Facebook would only show a small thumbnail sized fan page’s profile picture. Most businesses used that to display a logo. Now your business has the opportunity for FREE marketing space with every like your page receives.

According to Facebook, “Having an engaging cover photo that tells your or your Page’s story is even more important to improve your discovery through connection stories.”

Begin thinking now about what will catch your customer’s eye? How can we use our cover image to cause my follower’s friends to click, discover and connect with our page as well?

This is not the time to throw only a logo, pure text, or a generic stock background picture of the sky. This is your opportunity to create your own business buzz, engage, be creative and really showcase your brand.

Ready to dive right ahead of the crowd? I have you covered.

Let’s create your brand a new look now with this limited time special offer!

Talk to you soon!

The Social Effect on Marketing: Lessons From the SuperBowl For Small Business Owners

by Frederika Angus

Our house is the party place for any big event. Sporting events, holidays, and every weekend during cookout season, we find ourselves gathered with family and friends and a kitchen full of food. This year’s SuperBowl was no different. Throughout the entire game, even though we were sitting in the same room, we would yell out updates from social media, pass our phones around to show the funniest pictures and Tweet and Facebook the experience we were having. Even though my team didn’t win, all we could talk about by the end of the night were the commercials, who had the best and most memorable marketing, and those brands that didn’t make a favorable impression.

There are three lessons you can take from the brands that advertised during the big game to use in your own small business.

1. Give people a way to act or a call-to-action.  Every commercial gave the viewers a way to interact with a call to action that lead them to social media. To further increase the engagement nearly every brand used a hashtag.

2. Use multi-point interaction for your own live events, conferences, magazine ads and direct mailing. Think of ways to include multiple points of interaction with your customers through contests, or polls being run on the social media platforms.

3. Brands represented with a person over a product are more memorable. Advertising focused solely on the features of their product didn’t make a splash on the social media radar. People prefer to interact with a persona over a logo or a product box. Using your picture in advertising will create a more memorable experience for you customers.

Here are a few articles for you to read about the impact of social media and the SuperBowl Ads.

Social Media Lessons From the SuperBowl Ads

Forbes contributor, Haydn Shaughnessy shares the benefit in being able to respond realtime to marketing efforts via social media. The brands which react the best and fastest will be able to out perform those with the same static message. Brands emphasized Twitter in marketing efforts with use of hashtags.

Oreo Super Bowl Spot Attracts Thousands of Instagram Followers

3-second call-to-action at the end of Oreo’s Super Bowl commercial, which debuted during the game Sunday, has increased Oreo’s Instagram following by tens of thousands.

9 Brands That Thought Fast on Social Media During the Super Bowl

The unexpected power outage caused brands to enhance the likeability of their brand through quick wit. They immediate began using social media advertising by bidding on keywords being used like power outage.

How Oreo Culture-Jacked The Super Bowl

Oreo had a team in place in a social media war room to react quickly. Being able to produce content within minutes caused their image to be retweeted, or shared, more than 14,500 times on Twitter.

What one take away do you have from the usage of social media during the Super Bowl? Share it with me below!

Talk to you soon!

Get Social Media Ready for the Holidays!

It’s crunch time as you get ready for the Holidays. It’s less than two weeks out for the greatest shopping of the year. I’ve already seen several leaked ads and consumers are putting their plans in place to navigate their way to the best deals! The energy in the air is changing and the credit cards that have been under tight lock and key are beginning to burn a hole in the pocket of even the most frugal of shoppers.

During the time between Black Friday and Cyber Monday (with Small Business Saturday in between), online businesses can meet or exceed in sales what they have been able to do all year. Everyone is in the mood to spread cheer and give gifts. It is the perfect time to celebrate your loyal clients and even expose your brand to new customers.

I bet you’ve been busy for months with your spectacular Black Friday sale. There is a lot of work that goes into preparing your bonus audios, videos and eBooks, setting up your shopping cart with coupon codes, updating your website, notifying your web host of the increase in volume and gearing up your client care staff for the increases in volume. As you are working hard with your head down, you may also be wondering how you will handle enjoying the holiday season with your family, traveling to be with friends, and successfully manage all the increased activity that your own social media profiles will see.

I’ve come up with a solution so that you can enjoy the holidays without the stress and still serve and support your customers via your social media profiles at the same. We’ve prepared not one but TWO Pre-Black Friday specials  to come along side of all your hard work and help you maintain your engagement and also promote your own Black Friday sales, bonuses and specials using social media.

If you’ve never worked with a social media content manager, this is a great opportunity to see if this will work for you on a short-term basis at a price that has NEVER been offered before and quite honestly will never be offered again.

Get access to our Pre-Black Friday specials now!

Talk to you soon!

Six Important Reasons Your Business Should Use a Facebook Fan or Like Page

by Frederika Angus

I get some really awesome questions about how to use social media as a business in the most productive and profitable way. Honestly, some lessons I’ve had to learn through trial and error. When I first started business activity on Facebook a couple years ago, I was in a direct sales organization. I’d already been on Facebook personally for years. I’d seen friends post their business links and websites in every other post to motivate people to “buy their stuff.” Although I had never actually seen any success with that method (big clue), I tried it too. That lasted about 2 days. It just didn’t feel right to me to spam my friends, family and acquaintances with my business stuff.

As I began to better understand the correct way to build a brand and be social with social media, I started a business fan page, also known as a like page. This requires people to actually like your business and want to receive updates from you. This is greatest business invention ever! You’re actually able to talk to the people that want to learn more about your products and services.

Here are 6 important reasons to use a Facebook Business Page (also known as like or fan pages) for your business activities.

1. Facebook frowns upon business activity on your personal profile timeline.

Facebook’s official stance is as follows:

Timelines are for personal, non-commercial use only. They represent individuals and must be held under an individual name. Pages are for professional or official use, and allow an organization, business, celebrity or band to maintain a presence on Facebook. You may only create Facebook Pages to represent real organizations of which you are an authorized representative.

This means if you are currently using a personal timeline to promote, and perform business activities, you are in violation of the Facebook Terms of Service, and could have your account completely shutdown.

2. Data, data, and more data

With over a decade of experience in project management, I have learned, If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it! Using a Facebook Page opens up a whole new level of reporting and statistics that personal timeline profiles do not have. Using the insights provided by Facebook, you can determine, what content your ideal customers like, how many of the people who like your page are actually seeing your content and how far your reach is beyond those that like your page. This allows you to stop guessing who your target demographic might be, where they are located and even their age!

3. Branding

Fan pages offer a great opportunity to provide a customized look with the large cover image, the ability to add and customize apps and utilize your logo, if you have one for brand recognition. Bringing the same styling to the graphics you use across your online presence is made easier with a Fan page.

4. Unlimited Fans

Personal profiles have a 5000 friend limit. Fan pages allow for a limitless amount of people. The choice here is simple. You want as many of your ideal customers to be able to interact and obtain your updates as possible.

5. Google and Search Engine Optimization(SEO)

This is one of my favorites. Did you know that Google searches Fan Pages and indexes the information? So as people are doing searches on information and keywords that relate to your business, your fan page could be included in the information! Facebook is the 2nd ranked website in the United States with Google as number one! The personal profiles do not get the same google ranking effect. Facebook Fan pages should absolutely be a part of your SEO strategy.

6. Advertising opportunities

You’re a business owner so marketing should be a big part of your business. Facebook allows for some ridiculously affordable, highly targeted marketing. Remember there are over a billion users on Facebook. While all 1 billion of them are not likely to be your ideal customer, you can certainly find a subset to market yourself to. In addition to the advertising, there is the option to promote posts to reach the fans of your page and their friends. Getting your business in front the right people has just gotten easier!

Have you had reservations about switching from using a personal profile to using a Fan page?

Let me know in the comments below if this has helped you make a well-informed and wise change!

Talk to you soon!