Social Strategy – Step In Communication

Fran Stephenson February 10, 2016 Leave a Comment

How to Report Live Events on Social Media Channels

Add the word “live” to your event and there’s automatic excitement. Every host who opens the show on Saturday Night Live, says “LIVE from New York…” and we pay attention. Television stations use “live”and “breaking news” to make us sit up and see what’s going on. In the radio years, a sure sign of something different was the voice of a very stern announcer saying “we interrupt this program to bring you…..” followed by whatever life-changing news was happening.

The same can be said for live reporting on social media. Instead of the terms “live” and “breaking news” we often see a post on social media proceeded by all caps and HAPPENING NOW, especially on FB. On Twitter, we often see the term “BREAKING” on Tweets from reporters. The early premise of Instagram was that everything was “live” unless you tagged your photo with #latergram, but many users treat the Instagram as a look book rather than a breaking news platform.

You don’t have to be mainstream media or a big personality to generate excitement during a live event. There are numerous ways to use social media to cover your clients’ events live. Here are a few ideas and the pros and cons of each.

Brand-Only Posts: This is where you curate posts for the brand channels before, during and after the event.
- Pro: It allows maximum control of the message.
- Con: Only one point of view is represented. During large or multi-venue events, it’s easy to miss part of the action.
Anonymous Contributors: Similar to traditional media, a variety of volunteers or reporters are given “assignments” and one person curates what they’re contributing into the brand channels.
- Pro: Coverage includes many elements of the event.
- Con: Someone needs to be at the controls, sorting through and posting photos, videos and other assets as you go along. There is a high margin for error.
Personality Posts: In this scenario, you are still gathering assets but they may be brand ambassadors or guest reporters with their own following.
- Pro: The personalities give weight to your event.
- Con: They can become the story.
Community Sourced Posts: Certainly you’re watching one or more hashtags, visitor posts and the @mentions column to sense the general excitement that is unfolding during the event. In this case, you can share, retweet or repost with a hat tip or thank you.
- Pro: This shows the community you are watching and open to their point-of-view during an event.
- Con: Like Forest Gump’s box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.
Channel Take-overs: Some brands create excitement around an event with a directed channel takeover by a brand ambassador or celebrity. These are heavily promoted and often part of a larger campaign.
- Pro: The intersection of the brand point of view and the celebrity’s point of view often leads to amazing results for both parties.
- Con: Same as community sourced posts, you might be surprised in a different way or do damage to your brand.
Combination: When we assist a client with covering live events on social media, we often use a combination approach.
- The Cardboard Kids Campaign for ChildSafe included brandposts, community sourced posts and a curated stream by key area bloggers into a Flipboard magazine.
- The San Antonio Cocktail Conference also featured a combination of brand posts, anonymous contributors and directed contributions using social media influencers to cover the 5 day event.
- When assisting a health care client during a one day women’s conference, brand-only posts were the focus due to the nature of the subject matter and the brand’s guidelines.

No matter how you cover your next live event, you need a plan and a moderator to make it all happen.

How do you help your clients cover live events in social media? Leave a comment.

Fran Stephenson December 10, 2015 Leave a Comment

Compare the Top 8 Social Media Networks

Don’t you wish it was easier to compare social media networks side-by-side? You know, a really cool chart to summarize what’s going on in the network, so you can answer client questions more easily or find that key statistic to drop into your presentation.

Keeping up with the news of each network is tough, even for communicators working in this area. So I created this side-by-side chart to compare the top 8 social media networks so I can answer the questions my clients ask more quickly and without duplicating my research string over and over again.

I compared Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, Periscope and Instagram and looked at 6 factors: network size, activity, devices and habits, cool facts, latest move and ownership.

Each network is so different. Sometimes it’s really hard to compare them. Size is important when you are counseling clients on using social media resources, but some networks may not report their size. The way social networks report their Activity can also be confusing, but it’s my hope that the activity metric gives an indication of what’s going on there. For the Devices and Habits category, I had been watching the switch to mobile use for my clients, but now that some of our biggest networks are on mobile only — like Snapchat and Periscope– the category had to change slightly. The Latest Move section allows me to look at the business side of the network and how these networks are changing to meet the needs of their users. Ownership is an ongoing concern for me as a media watcher. Who owns what is important and as you can see from the chart, the ownership strings are complicated. Who doesn’t love a Cool Fact to share with their clients?

Using 36 different sources, I gathered the information into this chart, which isn’t very readable here. So I’ve provided a download link below, so you can look at it more closely. Use it for your business or nonprofit, or maybe to win a trivia contest, but PLEASE, if and when you share it, please note and credit the sources of information in the accompanying citation sheet.

Social networks are growing and changing so quickly, it’s hard to keep up. Having a comparison chart helps me talk to clients about their mix of social channels. Maybe it will help you too.

What would you like to see on this chart the next time I update it?

Download the Social Media State of the Networks Comparison Chart.

Fran Stephenson December 5, 2015 2 Comments

Finding & Scheduling Social Media Content

Part 4 in the Outside Channel Manager Series

Guest post by Jennifer Hatton

Time has flown by and we are already at Part 4 of our channel management series.

Our topic today is one of my favorite things to talk about in social media – Scheduling and Finding Content. There are so many assets you can use and questions you can ask to help fill your content calendar, regardless of the type of page you manage. Let’s discuss how to balance the type of messages you are sending to create a versatile schedule.

Scheduling –Use An Editorial Calendar

Great social media managers need to work to find content – it’s not magic. Scheduling content should be intentional and part of your overall process. The first step in effective scheduling is creating and using an editorial calendar. It does not have to be extremely detailed or on a fancy spreadsheet — although those are nice. An editorial calendar is a map where you plan out what you want to say, when you want to say it and mix your content so you can reach your goals and metrics but also stay relevant and interesting to your audience. Audience identification should be part of your onboarding, which we discussed in Part 2: The Warm Handoff.

Information you need to create an editorial calendar:

Social media platforms you will be using.
Audiences – customers, employees, stakeholders, partners, etc.
Best days of the week to post
Best time of each day to post
Metrics that you will be reporting

Example:

Date	Post Time	Message	FB	TW	IG
12/01/16	8:45pm	Please join us for our upcoming seminar on “How to Find Social Media Content” <NOTE: Link to FB event>	X	X

Using an editorial calendar will save you time by allowing you to schedule content ahead of time (do you use Sprout, Hootsuite, Facebook or another content scheduler?) in batches. You can create placeholders for when you are waiting on content from your client, such as an event or news piece. The rest can be done weekly or bi-weekly by doing it at all at once. Most social media managers, especially those who are external, have to be efficient with their hours, so they can’t post multiple times a day, every day manually. Plan ahead, save time and have a better variety of content – yes please!

Content Variety

Making sure your content is focused on helping you reach your metrics is important for us and for our clients. If you fill your page with self-serving sales pitches or constant talk about services or products, you will soon have a very small and inattentive audience.

This is where scheduling comes in!

Lay out the “must have” marketing messages, then see how you can organically find and schedule other messages with a share, or by asking a question or posting an infographic – make it interesting! Next you should layer in other types of content, that can be staff focused, client appreciation, educational or even funny. People learn and absorb information differently, so look at the way you are delivering your content to make sure you aren’t doing the same thing repeatedly and missing part of your audience. Have a mix of text posts, photos, videos, links to your website, links to other (trusted) sources, shares from partner pages and memes or infographics. Variety in your content and delivery method will make your page more interesting and effective.

Finding Content

Now that you have a fabulous editorial calendar and you know what content you have and what content you need, you can go to work collecting it.

Internal Assets

First take inventory of what internal assets you have. Look at:

Website
Photos
Blog
Newsletter
Team
Flyers/Mailers/Posters
Annual Events
Speeches
Presentations by company leaders

Often there is content all around you, but it’s easy to overlook. Remember that your audience doesn’t see what you see every day, so linking them to helpful or informative pages on your website is good. Share photos of employees to show the human side of the business and especially any recognition they receive. A few of my clients have the most views and shares when an employee award is posted in social networks. They have an enormous internal audience on their social channels — it boosts morale to see their co-workers honored and promoted on the company page.

External Assets

Next, look at external assets including websites, social media accounts and newsletters from among your partners, topic authorities, sponsors, industry experts.

Interest lists are a good way to mine for content. Twitter lists take time to set up, but save a whole lot of time when you need content for your channels. Facebook lists are a little more challenging, simply because they are connected to your personal account and not your business page, but they are still helpful to flag channels to review later. There are other tools you can use including Mention and Post Planner that will search by topic and key words to help you find relevant articles or posts online.

Taking the time to schedule out your posts will not only save you time but takes your social media networks to the next level. Using a diverse content gathering strategy creates efficiencies for an outside channel manager, and increases the interest in your posts.

Jennifer Hatton manages social media channels –from the outside–for clients in healthcare, tourism, retail and the hospitality industry.

Want to learn more?

Check out Part 3: Using a Critical Eye to Assess Your Social Media

Read Part 2: The Warm Handoff Key to Managing Channels

Start with Part 1: Managing Social Media From the Outside

Want to Rock Social Media for Your Brand? Here’s How:

Our online course, Mastering Your Brand On Social Media will take your social media from beginner to brilliant. Take it at your own pace. Four sessions with 38 lessons and 17 downloadable templates, checklists and guide sheets. Get it today.

Buy the Course

Fran Stephenson November 13, 2015 Leave a Comment

Using a Critical Eye to Assess Social Media Channels

Part 3 in the Outside Channel Manager Series

You’ve just taken over managing social media channels for a client and they, of course, want you to immediately answer the question: “how are we doing?” Before you can answer that question, you should look over each social media network with a critical eye.

Look at Channel Activity

Activity on each channel is easy to see and, in most cases, relatively easy to analyze. How frequent are the posts? In the last week? In the last month? Clients who have turned to outside channel managers often have erratic posting behavior – 3 posts this week, no posts the next. That’s why they hired you—they don’t have time to manage it successfully themselves. With your critical eye, and some quick addition, you can tally up the posts for the month and see immediate gaps that can be filled.

Next, analyze your audiences’ age, gender and other key demographic information. Each network offers varying amounts of this information on their channels. For Facebook pages, look at the insights to see the breakdown of ages and genders for your page. Use Twitter analytics to see age, education, income and occupation.

Finally, you should look at your channel growth. New followers/fans versus lost followers/fans. Are you growing or shrinking? If you want to look at that for Instagram, you can try Iconosquare to see a breakdown of new and lost followers. These stats are available on Facebook and Twitter too.

Content Review

For small channels, you can do a review of postings for the current or previous month and figure out the “best” and “worst” posts. Usually the best post has the most amount of activity – shares, likes and comments – or some combination of the three. The worst post is one with little or no activity. Compare one of each of those for each network you are managing and look at why. Is it the content itself? Is it the tone of voice? Is it the time of day it was posted?

You won’t have all the answers on this immediately, but if you do this regularly, you will start to see a trend of what’s working and what’s not. And will see differences emerge between channels. Then you can move your client toward better content over time.

There are numerous tools that will evaluate content against these factors. If you’re using Sprout Social (one of my favorite tools), you can scan the Sent Messages report to easily see which posts have the most activity and then click through to see why. True Social Metrics, a deeper analytics program, has numerous tools for evaluating best and worst posts against your own content and against competitors.

What to Tell Your Client

You can use these ideas to look critically at your client’s social media channels. Repeat the process until you see trends emerge and you are able to get better results from your content tests. Sometimes it takes months to see what works on a new channel; other times, you have one great post that opens the door to a successful content stream. So when your client asks “how are we doing” you will be able to summarize past trends and growth which helps frame the future practice.

Coming next: Part 4, Scheduling and Finding Content When You’re an Outside Channel Manager

Warm Handoff Is Key to Managing Channels

Part 2 in the Outside Channel Managers Series

Guest post by Jennifer Hatton

It is rare these days to begin working with a new client who doesn’t have at least one live social media channel. Many clients have two or more channels that are “live” and because of that we have a process to make sure we get the information we need and get off to a good start. It’s called the warm handoff.

The warm handoff is a term used in tech to categorize a service or support issue for which everyone on the team knows what’s going on. A cold handoff is one in which information is missing or a ball gets dropped along the chain. We of course prefer a warm handoff when we onboard as channel managers, which means you have everything you need to get started.

Onboarding Existing Channels

Getting a verbal or written download from the previous channel manager is the first step. Learn all you can by asking them questions such as:

What is your process for posting and reviewing content?
Where do you get content that is not directly from the client? Other organizations’ Facebook pages/Twitter accounts, websites, etc.
What gets the most response from followers?
What is the least popular (but maybe necessary) content?
In your opinion, what is the tone and voice?
Is there an approved strategy?
Anything else that is important or noteworthy?

There are times when the person you are relieving is not available. When this happens, you can use the same questions, but you’ll be answering them by observing the channels directly.

State of the Channels

Now is the time to start digging into the channels and do a mid level “state of the channels” review. Go through the pages. Look at everything. A good place to start are the bios – are they complete, still relevant, using the correct hashtags, do the links work. For Facebook, take a long look at the “About” page to make sure hours, links, long and short descriptions, and the custom URL are all filled out. Double check the type of page while you are there. One surprise is often the organization forgot to claim their page name and URL. Check that too.

Secure the Channels

Security is important but we frequently see clients who get busy and forget about their channel security. Who has access to the channels? Do you need all those page managers? What email addresses are linked to Twitter and Instagram? Use a password keeper application or a document to list all the channels and log-in details.

Passwords should be different for each channel and changed whenever you change channel managers. A yearly security and password update is also recommended to keep you and your client safe. There are easy to use password applications that not only save your passwords but help you create new ones, too. One example is Last Pass (link to site) but there are several to choose from.

Check All the Images

The last step in reviewing the state of the channels is to look at images. Check for current logos, make sure sizing is correct on profile photos and that images are credited properly. Facebook cover photos should be refreshed periodically. As a new channel manager, you have the opportunity to plan ahead to switch them out at least quarterly to keep the page looking fresh and visually interesting.

To sum it up, ask lots of questions! The more you know the easier it will be to onboard as a new channel manager. What tips do you have to make sure you have a warm handoff?

In Part 1, we looked at the keys to being a successful outside channel manager.

In Part 3, we’ll look at how to review your channels with a critical eye.

Jennifer Hatton manages social media channels –from the outside–for clients in healthcare, tourism, retail and the hospitality industry.

Fran Stephenson October 29, 2015 Leave a Comment

Managing Social Media from the Outside

Sometimes an organization needs help managing social media channels. Someone to plan and post content to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other channels as well monitor conversations and lead the way when customers ask questions or need help.

In these situations, organizations might turn to outside channel managers. They might lack that skillset in their internal team. Perhaps the organization has shifted their marketing communications’ team priorities. Or they might want an outside organization to help in coaching to a new level of proficiency. An outside channel manager can look objectively at the current practice and help develop stronger social relationships, better content flow and engage audiences with a set of fresh eyes.

It doesn’t matter why the organization needs an outside channel manager. What’s really important is that you can step in and accomplish your clients’ goals as an outside counselor. So how do you do that successfully from OUTSIDE the organization? With a sound strategy, smart processes and good communication, you can manage social media channels from the outside.

Sound Strategy Is the Key

You may be taking over channel management in the “muddy middle” of a transition or after the channels have started to slip. It’s time to ask lots of questions. What were the goals and objectives for the networks? What’s working? What doesn’t seem to be hitting the mark? If there is a planning document or strategy that framed their previous practice (assuming it will be shared with you), use it to frame next steps. Set some interim goals and objectives. We had one client who had lots of great opportunities for storytelling and great content too, but their output was inconsistent and infrequent. By creating interim objectives for the level of output on each channel, we could see an immediate lift in the conversations on their Facebook and Twitter accounts.

The Right Tool for the Right Job

Finding the right tool to monitor, schedule and comment is necessary for efficient management from the outside. It’s important to match the size of the clients’ network needs and budget with a tool that will help you create efficiencies for them. And the tools change all the time! What you used for a project one year ago may not be the right choice. Make a decision on tools early, when your client has social media top of mind because in 2-3 months, they won’t be as eager to make the expenditure.

Communicating From the Outside

You have to be creative when communicating from the outside. Creating simple client touchpoints is important. One way to do that is to share wins as they happen– maybe that Twitter post got a huge number of retweets or you’ve never seen so many comments on a Facebook post or Instagram photo. Just as important is creating regular communication to report metrics and analyze the program. Depending on the size of the project and the clients’ needs, this could be weekly or monthly. A regular group email to the entire team goes a long way to keep everyone informed.

We’re Just Getting Started

There’s so much more to share about successfully managing social media channels from the outside. We’re going to break down the outside channel manager best practices over the next three weeks and look at how to onboard successfully, how to source and schedule content and how to look at the social channels with an objective eye.

We’ll start next week with “The Warm Handoff.”

What strategies do you use to manage client channels from the outside? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Fran Stephenson May 20, 2015 Leave a Comment

How To Handle Negative and Irrelevant Comments on Facebook

Our most popular post! Updated January 12, 2021

Should you ever hide Facebook posts?

When you are managing Facebook pages, it is likely you will have to answer this question. In the process of managing Facebook pages for numerous organizations, we’ve had to take action a number of times. Some comments should be ignored. Some comments deserve a response. Others should be hidden or deleted. What should you do? Here are four comment types from our channel management experience and potential actions you can take to handle on your company pages.

Comment Type Number 1: Negative

This type of comment is critical or negative but is relevant to the reputation of the organization. It may involve an unhappy customer or a comment about a policy or process of the company. For this type of comment, it’s important to do three things, verify, escalate, resolve.

First, verify that the comment comes from a real person or real organization by clicking through to the commenters’ Facebook profile. If it appears real, the next step would be to escalate to your client or internal management team to develop an answer. Finally, create and post the response. See more about actions to take in the final section.

Comment Type Number 2: Irrelevant

This type of comment is also critical of the organization but is different in that it is irrelevant to the post. This requires a more subtle answer. If you respond too quickly or with a formal statement, you might uncover a bully or troll waiting to engage. Monitoring additional comments for a few hours is the first action you should take. If you have loyal and engaged fans on that page, they might chime in and redirect the conversation.

If that doesn’t happen, hide the comment — only the commenter and their friends see it. This action is reversible, so you can change your mind if you have hidden the comment by accident.

To consider deleting the post or comment takes a little more time and thought. If it’s a “drive-by” commenter that may or may not return, we sometimes wait 48-72 hours and if no further action comes from this type of commenter, we then consider deleting it. This action cannot be undone.

Comment Type Number 3: Unreasonable

This type of comment is often rude and inflamed. It might go right up to the brink of Comment Type Number 4 below. In this scenario, we spend extra time monitoring the post and other comments on it to see the progression of the conversation. There are three different actions you can take: hide the comment, delete the post or ban the user. The strategy leading up to the actions on this type of comment are similar to that for irrelevant comments.

Comment Type Number 4: Violates Policy

Whether it’s a violation of Facebook’s terms of service or a violation of YOUR social media policy, this type of comment includes , hate speech, name-calling or swearing. It can also be a post in which another person or page tries to sell something on your page. This is unacceptable for many company pages and should be deleted. If the post or comment has gotten widespread views before it’s been deleted, it might merit an explanation about why it was removed (not as important today as it was when we first wrote this post in 2015). This will enhance the company’s engagement and integrity with fans, but if it’s disgusting or pornographic, no explanation should be necessary and deleting and banning the user makes the channel managers’ job easier as these types of posters tend to be repeat offenders.

Actions You Can Take and Why

There are four actions you can take to monitor problem comments on your page.

Respond

We recommend responding to comments that are negative, yet sincere. They reflect a real issue, from a real person and in responding, you hope to have a real dialogue with a potential customer who needs help.

Hide

We recommend hiding comments when the comment is irrelevant or unreasonable (Comment Types 2 and 3) and certainly if you need to research a person or comment and don’t want other fans to pile on. When you hide a comment, it can be reversed. The additional advantage of hiding comments is that you can reference it on the back end of Facebook if you need to show or report on the actions taken.

Delete

We recommend deleting when it’s completely irrelevant. We manage a page for tourism destination and people come onto their pages and try to post sales for windows and home improvement and lots of unrelated things. They’re not harmful, but we don’t need to keep a record of those. We also recommend deleting when it’s really horrible, hateful language. (PS – always screenshot before deleting in case you need to track “repeat offenders.”)

Ban

When a person or channel repeatedly spams the page with irrelevant comments, disgusting or violent posts, we have a three strikes policy. After three repeated comments, we ban the person from the page. We use this when someone is trying to attack the page by posting the same comment repeatedly on every post. This also keeps others from piling on to someone else’s vitriol.

Smart channel managers know that managing your Facebook community includes making judgement calls on how to respond to comments by a wide variety of fans. Next time you get a comment that is critical, irrelevant, unreasonable or is a clear violation of policy, try these ideas. Let us know how it worked by leaving a comment.

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Fran Stephenson April 29, 2015 Leave a Comment

Why You Should Wait to Post To Your Social Media Channels

We get really excited when we have timely content for our social media channels. So excited that we often shoot ourselves in the foot by trying to get it all out there at once. As communicators, we are as trained to follow the news cycle as Pavlov’s dogs were trained to respond to the sound of the bell. The problem is-there’s more than one bell. The news cycle is less defined than it was ten years ago and is no longer confined to set appointment times.

We used to try to capitalize on the morning paper, the evening news, the late news and then the monthly magazine. Now we have 24 hours and we should take advantage of that extended time to spread out our social media messaging in our channels.

So why are we trying to time the press release, the in-person event and the social media posts all at the same time? Out of sheer habit?

With a little planning, your social media channels can have more frequent messages to cover that 24-hour cycle, only in smaller chunks. This way they can carry your news in different ways over a prolonged period of time.

What are the advantages of this approach? You have multiple opportunities to engage with your community and the repetition of the messages – or at least the repetition of the theme of the messages – will likely translate into higher engagement. You might also realize better retention by your fans and followers and your message has higher potential rise above the clutter in those channels.

There is a downside to this and it’s focused on the social media channel manager. This forces social media managers to plan content frequency and channel choice, so if you’re not a good planner, it won’t work for you.

Let’s say you have an event coming up. Here’s how you might extend the life of your content by waiting to post elements of the event.

Date	Channel	What To Post
Day Before Event	FB or TW	We’re getting ready for X. Will we see you there?
Day of Event	FB TW or IG	Photo of getting ready for the event; expression of excitement for festivities.
During Event	FB TW or IG	Event coverage; frequency depends on size of event and fan base.
Later that Day OR Next Day	FB TW	More scenes from event and/or photo collection
Next 2-3 days	FB TW	Share media coverage of event; share what fans are saying/showing about event. Share what partners did during event
One Week Later	FB TW	Share video produced from event? Positive community action that happened due to your event.

Another advantage to this approach is that you will fight the time decay on your channels and most likely reach a larger cross section of your fans and followers. If your stories are spaced right and have a conversational tone, then the repetition will not be recognized as such and it will appear that you are telling the diverse elements of a bigger story.

This approach could become increasingly valuable for company page managers as Facebook continues to tweak its newsfeed toward personal pages and away from company updates. Twitter already favors repeating message themes.

So next time you have big news to share in your social channels, why not spread it out and see how it enhances engagement with your audience?

Fran Stephenson March 15, 2015 Leave a Comment

How to Find Content for Social Media

Finding content is a struggle for many of my clients. Even with a well-developed brand and strong marketing campaigns, many organizations have a tough time filling the spaces of their social media networks with content. Content is right under our noses if we know how to look for it.

“I just don’t know what to say,” is a phrase I hear repeatedly. That’s a sign that you’re overthinking the concept of content. It’s not like writing a brochure or a press release, although both are great sources of content for social networks. If it’s important enough to include in your organization’s brochure, you can bet some — or all of it — should find its way into your digital profiles too.

If the brochure provides the big picture, or the macro view of your company, then content is the micro view, or the small, up-close nuggets that bring the big picture to life.

There’s nothing more traditional and all-encompassing than the annual report. A good annual report gives a complete picture of a year in the life of an organization. It might be mailed, or shared online or both. It’s the macro view. And it’s the perfect place to start mining for those content nuggets for social media, or the micro view.

Here’s a brief example using elements from the annual report from ChildSafe, a Child Advocacy nonprofit in San Antonio, Texas. What could you pull from this annual report? Here’s a list:

Statistics about children assisted by the organization
Information about this community issue
Event photos
Volunteer recognition
Call for new volunteers
Donor recognition
Call for new donors
Ways for donors to give
Highlight programs funded by donors
Information about education and training
Efforts of community partners
Key staff and their roles
Board Members and their roles
Fundraising opportunities

Content is right under our noses if we know how to look for it. Just like the expression “can’t see the forest for the trees.” Lots of individual trees make up the forest, just like lots of pieces of content make up the story of an organization.

Fran Stephenson September 9, 2014 Leave a Comment

Facebook Reaches out to SMB with “Fit”

Small businesses are getting extra attention from Facebook these days. As the social network moves its users to a new blend of organic and paid content, Facebook users are becoming exposed to higher levels of paid advertising.

Individual users are unsure about how much advertising they want to see in the network. Businesses want to know more about using Facebook for advertising, but they have tons of questions. How does it work? How much should I spend? How do I measure success? Where do I get help?

These are all questions I get regularly from my clients; the result is that I conducted some very small experiments with Facebook ads, which you can see here and here .

The challenge for small businesses is that they already feel like they are wearing so many hats they do not feel capable of exploring or learning about one more thing.

Facebook is making an attempt to change that with its Facebook Fit program. This is a “road show” of seminars by Facebook itself. Earlier this summer, I attended a seminar in Austin that was geared to helping small businesses navigate advertising options and hear from similarly sized businesses on how they are using Facebook advertising.

The afternoon included a panel of small businesses who have successfully used Facebook advertising. The panel included the owner of a local restaurant and food truck; a local retail store with a robust e-commerce platform; a national jewelry brand; and a company with niche products for outdoors.

The method by which each of these businesses got involved in Facebook advertising ran the gamut. The restaurant owner started with a budget of 5 cents per day. Yes, cents. The national jewelry brand and the local retail store, on the other hand, had an integrated marketing budget and they slowly carved out dollars for Facebook advertising, based on their success with organic content, fan contributions and other factors.

They all seemed genuine. They all were realizing success with their marketing campaigns. They all believed in the benefits of Facebook advertising. Sure, Facebook invited them to the party and (by now) has a vested interest in their success.

As a group, though, their message was very clear.

Everyone on the business panel started out small. They tested. They learned from the tests. Then tried something new. They carved out budget for the ads. While the restaurant owner was spending $15 per month on ads, the retail store with the e-commerce platform was spending $500 a month once they integrated Facebook into their marketing campaign. It’s a smart approach.

Facebook claims that online ads have a 38% success rate, while ads on Facebook reach 89% success rate. This is not verified information, but is the benchmark they offered at the seminar.

How can you take advantage of this information so your business can begin exploring advertising on Facebook? There are a LOT of new features available to advertisers, some of which I have not yet tried, but will be testing in the coming weeks and months. Here is a rundown of some things available to small businesses.

Boosted Posts

This is where you take organic content and apply advertising dollars to it. You can target demographic and psychographic information, and the ad returns some good data when the “boost” money runs out.

Page Like Ads

Usually shows in the newsfeed, and users can rotate images seen and use same targeting as the boosted post. Also returns some good data.

Website Ad

Runs in the right-hand column and NOT in the newsfeed. Don’t have to have a Facebook page to link to it. You do have to be on Facebook to do Page Like Ads and Boosted Posts.

Conversion Measurement

This is newer than the ad types listed above, but allows you to track conversions (based on YOUR choices) after people view your ad. You set up the conversion pixel when you create the ad and it follows the visitor on the Web.

Lookalike Audience

Exactly as it sounds. You target your advertising based on page fans, website visitors or a database (see next section). Haven’t tried this yet, so I can’t offer any results.

Custom Audience

This option (in my mind) is troublesome. Here’s why. You take an existing list, like your email newsletter list, and upload it Facebook’s Power Editor feature. You can exclude current customers, target those “like” your current customers and other features. Facebook claims that it can’t actually see or reuse the lists you upload, but data security is a hot topic these days so I would have a lot of questions before I tried to use this feature.

There are many more features in the pipeline, including better mobile choices and better interface with applications.With Facebook Fit, the network is trying to be more responsive to small businesses. By their own admission, there are more than 30 million small businesses on their network, so it’s about time. They’ve even located their Small Business Division in Austin, which might mean more outreach opportunities.

I plan to test a new series of Page Like Ads and maybe even a lookalike audience and track conversions this fall. I would love to hear what you are trying on this network.

Part 4 in the Outside Channel Manager Series

Scheduling –Use An Editorial Calendar

Content Variety

Finding Content

Internal Assets

External Assets

Want to Rock Social Media for Your Brand? Here’s How:

Part 3 in the Outside Channel Manager Series

Look at Channel Activity

Content Review

What to Tell Your Client

Part 2 in the Outside Channel Managers Series

Onboarding Existing Channels

State of the Channels

Secure the Channels

Check All the Images

Sound Strategy Is the Key

The Right Tool for the Right Job

Communicating From the Outside

We’re Just Getting Started

Should you ever hide Facebook posts?

Comment Type Number 1: Negative

Comment Type Number 2: Irrelevant

Comment Type Number 3: Unreasonable

Comment Type Number 4: Violates Policy

Actions You Can Take and Why

Respond

Hide

Delete

Ban

Want to Rock Social Media for Your Brand? Here’s How:

Boosted Posts

Page Like Ads

Website Ad

Conversion Measurement

Lookalike Audience

Custom Audience

Step In Communication

Blog Topics