Last Friday night I went to a new pizza joint in my city. To use as few words as possible to describe the pizza I ate, the word “Amazing” seems appropriate enough. Naturally, now I want to tell everyone I know about this place. Facebook’s new Recommend This Place feature lets me do just that. Also, if I felt so inclined, the similarly new Facebook feature called Community Edits would allow me to even submit, or edit information regarding the pizza joint I “checked-in” to.
Facebook users love new features like these, but small businesses should even more. Here’s why:
User Opportunity
The odds are high that if users are given the opportunity to share more with their friends, they will. Thus, through these new features, information relevant to small-businesses will be more rapidly generated by users and that content will be more prevalent in Facebook newsfeeds.
Friends Trust Friends
I foresee a Facebook Recommendation becoming as powerful as word-of-mouth recommendations in the near future. Reason being; friend-to-friend advice is perceived as authentic and unforced. It’s better than any form of in-your-face advertising a business can buy.
It’s Free
For small businesses especially, advertising budgets are extremely low. Facebook is an affordable and proactive approach to creating opportunity for your small and local operation to succeed. The only cost: a little time and effort.
For a more information on these new features, check out this Inside Facebook article: http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/06/13/recommend-this-place-community-edits/
Original Article
“All PR is good PR.” I’ve heard it a million times. But does this age old saying actually ring true regarding a business’s publicity on Facebook? As it turns out, it does.
Your business’s Facebook page is essentially a website, but unlike your traditional website, the majority of the content on your page is user generated. Meaning your business’ reputation and overall brand image is vastly dependent on what others are saying. If your page’s wall commentary indicates that your business has poor service, falsified ads or a less than great product, people will take note and your overall business can potentially be negatively affected.
HOW TO DEAL WITH BAD PR
Negative feedback from users can be discouraging, but combating that negativity with productive efforts will strengthen your business. Here’s how to do it:
Stop Avoiding and Respond
- Don’t avoid the negative comments. View comments with a constructive eye and respond accordingly. Also, as it’s becoming more of a trend for people to submit questions to businesses online through social media platforms, those companies responding with answers are being rewarded as they are quickly establishing strong relationships with their customers.
Blocking
- Although contrary to what I just wrote, repetitious comments from users that are purely hateful as opposed to constructive are best dealt with through removing a user’s permission to visit your page. This action should be avoided if possible.
Say Thank you
- As much as you’ll have to grit your teeth, saying thank you to users that leave negative comments is needed. Comments—good and bad—offers your business customer insight that you can learn, grow and adapt from and there’s nothing more appropriate than saying thank you for such valuable knowledge.
HOW TO AVOID BAD PR
Avoiding bad press all together is impossible. What’s more impossible is thinking your business can control users from leaving bad comments. Nevertheless, there are some actions you can take to lessen the heat.
Facebook Settings
- Get familiar with how to use Facebook’s privacy settings options, as it is your best method of editing out unwanted comments. Set your options so that comments have to be approved by the page admin before it is published onto your business’ wall.
Widgets
- By creating a page with interactive elements, like a Twitter feed, polls and contests for your fans to enter, it’s less likely that users will post hate comments on your wall. Reason being, Facebook pages that are inviting and fun increase your chances of users responding positively on your wall.Think about it: you don’t bite the hand that gives you a free iPad ;)
Original Article
There’s been a lot to celebrate this past month. With the release of ShortStack’s new photo upload and voting widgets, our revamped user interface, and most recently, the launch of our “Surprisingly Free” plan. With all of that excitement, we don’t want Stackers to forget about the awesome Win a Free Year of ShortStack contest we are running right now on our Facebook Page.
Haven’t heard of it? We are giving away one full year of our $30/month Short Stack plan for FREE!
There are just 3 easy steps to enter - here’s how it works:
- Go to our Facebook Page and click on the “Win a Year FREE!” tab
- Upload a screenshot of your best looking ShortStack tab and fill out the entry form provided
- Tell ALL of your friend to VOTE for your tab on our Facebook Page! (Give them a link to our Vote Here tab after you see your’s published. We moderate entries to make sure they are truly ShortStack created tabs)
The ShortStack user tab with the most votes wins! The contest will run through June 20th and the winner will be announced the following day. To learn more about the rules of this contest, click here.
What are you waiting for? Get out there and enter! You’re running out of time and the field is still wide open. We’re looking forward to seeing all of your amazing ShortStack tabs!
Original Article
If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time online. I do my work online, I communicate online, I watch videos online, and my favorite: I shop online. Clothes, books, kitchen equipment—you name it—I buy it online. My latest purchase was a really adorable pair of extra thick-framed sunglasses. What website did I use to purchase my new sunnies on, you ask? Facebook.
Contrary to my personal experience, according to the Facebook Ad ROI report by Nick O’Neill (of All Facebook.com) Facebook users are not shopping yet. That claim may be true now, but all signs point positive that this will soon change. As Facebook continues to welcome business fan pages to get involved with e-commerce activity, online shopping is becoming more dynamic.
What’s more, in the ROI report mentioned, it’s noted that “the typical Facebook Shopper will visit 12 pages during their session, while with Google search results, the shopper will visit four pages.” What does this indicate?
1.) Users shopping on Facebook spend more time doing so
2.) The online environment that Facebook provides is perfect for supporting eager consumers
3.) Facebook shoppers are exposed to more product and create more buying opportunities for themselves than a normal consumer
As reported by Ben Parr of Mashable.com, the average U.S Internet user spends more time on Facebook than on Google, Yahoo, Youtube, Microsoft, Wikipedia and Amazon combined (there’s fancy charts with lots of data to prove it, too). It’s only natural that businesses start to take to advantage of the user base present on Facebook. Also, you can guarantee that Facebook will encourage such activity because ultimately it’s not just your business’ profit lines that will be rising—it’ll be theirs too.
Referenced from:
http://mashable.com/2010/02/16/facebook-nielsen-stats/
http://www.allfacebook.com/report-facebook-ads-surge-despite-lag-in-roi-2011-06
Original Article
If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time online. I do my work online, I communicate online, I watch videos online, and my favorite: I shop online. Clothes, books, kitchen equipment—you name it—I buy it online. My latest purchase was a really adorable pair of extra thick-framed sunglasses. What website did I use to purchase my new sunnies on, you ask? Facebook.
Contrary to my personal experience, according to the Facebook Ad ROI report by Nick O’Neill (of All Facebook.com) Facebook users are not shopping yet. That claim may be true now, but all signs point positive that this will soon change. As Facebook continues to welcome business fan pages to get involved with ecommerce activity, online shopping is becoming more dynamic.
What’s more, in the ROI report mentioned, it’s noted that “the typical Facebook Shopper will visit 12 pages during their session, while with Google search results, the shopper will visit four pages.” What does this indicate?
1.) Users shopping on Facebook spend more time doing so
2.) The online environment that Facebook provides is perfect for supporting eager consumers
3.) Facebook shoppers are exposed to more product and create more buying opportunities for themselves than a normal consumer
As reported by Ben Parr of Mashable.com, the average U.S Internet user spends more time on Facebook than on Google, Yahoo, Youtube, Microsoft, Wikipedia and Amazon combined (there’s fancy charts with lots of data to prove it, too). It’s only natural that businesses start to take to advantage of the user base present on Facebook. Also, you can guarantee that Facebook will encourage such activity because ultimately it’s not just your business’ profit lines that will be rising—it’ll be theirs too.
Referenced from:
http://mashable.com/2010/02/16/facebook-nielsen-stats/
http://www.allfacebook.com/report-facebook-ads-surge-despite-lag-in-roi-2011-06
Original Article
As a kid I remember playing the gam
e tag with friends on my schoolyard lawn. The point of the game is to run (to the point of extreme exhaustion) away from the person tagged to avoid being tagged. Now, cut to over ten years later, my tag reference is a great tale that depicts the contrasting definition of tag from then to now. In my younger years getting tagged meant you lost the game. Now however, in this generation, where social media dominates, getting tagged—on Facebook— means you’re #WINNNG (excuse my Charlie Sheen reference; it’s getting old I know), especially if you’re a business with a Facebook fan page.
It’s no doubt that businesses with a fan page already know the importance of engaging with users and becoming part of the Facebook community. With tagging, both can be achieved. Recently Facebook made the announcement that users can now tag fan page profiles in their photos. For businesses, this advanced function is exciting as it creates a huge opportunity for fan pages to gain more user generated content. What’s more, a deeper connection between a brand and its users is more likely to establish in addition to increased transparency.
Indeed, there is much to be gained for businesses and brands with Facebook’s latest tagging functionality. However, there is a degree of warranty to be aware of too. As a result of the new feature, fan pages are now more at risk for negative brand exposure and the degree of page content control is lessened. For bigger brands especially, persistent page monitoring is key to reduce the amount of spam they will undoubtedly be receiving. If on the other hand you want to do away with all the worry and added management, the fan page administrator can always switch the tagged photo settings off—an option listed under the page’s privacy settings tab.
Original Article
Pete Cashmore of Mashable compiled some interesting facts from a couple studies/surveys this morning in an article for CNN. All the facts are interesting and the article deserves a read.
A few of the facts deal with sex and profanity, while others deal with privacy and friending parents or bosses. The arguments for these little bits of info are interesting as well, like how 56% of people say that it is irresponsible to friend a boss but 62% say it is wrong for a manager to friend an employee. I guess some of us have cool bosses and some of us have crappy ones (cool ones being the type of boss that won’t judge you on your personal life). What do you think about friending your boss and the other facts from this article?
Head over to CNN for the full article.
Original Article
As a kid I remember playing the game tag with friends on my schoolyard lawn. The point of the game is to run (to the point of extreme exhaustion) away from the person tagged to avoid being tagged. Now, cut to over ten years later, my tag reference is a great tale that depicts the contrasting definition of tag from then to now. In my younger years getting tagged meant you lost the game. Now however, in this generation, where social media dominates, getting tagged—on Facebook— means you’re #WINNNG (excuse my Charlie Sheen reference; it’s getting old I know), especially if you’re a business with a Facebook fan page.
It’s no doubt that businesses with a fan page already know the importance of engaging with users and becoming part of the Facebook community. With tagging, both can be achieved. Recently Facebook made the announcement that users can now tag fan page profiles in their photos. For businesses, this advanced function is exciting as it creates a huge opportunity for fan pages to gain more user generated content. What’s more, a deeper connection between a brand and its users is more likely to establish in addition to increased transparency.
Indeed, there is much to be gained for businesses and brands with Facebook’s latest tagging functionality. However, there is a degree of warranty to be aware of too. As a result of the new feature, fan pages are now more at risk for negative brand exposure and the degree of page content control is lessened. For bigger brands especially, persistent page monitoring is key to reduce the amount of spam they will undoubtedly be receiving. If on the other hand you want to do away with all the worry and added management, the fan page administrator can always switch the tagged photo settings off—an option listed under the page’s privacy settings tab.
Original Article
