Social Strategy – Step In Communication

Fran Stephenson March 12, 2014 Leave a Comment

Using Cheat Sheets to Improve Social Response Time

I recently posted about companies hiding from their customers on social media. The story raises the single biggest challenge for organizations: how to meet the demands of responding to customers on social media. No matter the size of your business, you can shorten response time with a few simple cheat sheets.

Make A Standard Responses Document

When I first started working with one of my clients, they had all sorts of “standard” answers to questions which were asked over and over again, but they weren’t in a single place. Some were at the receptionist desk, some were used in H.R., others were used by an operations team. The language, the approvals, the legwork had all been done! Many of these responses could be applied to some of their social media channels BUT, these tools were not really formatted for social media networks. By creating a standard document, everyone who manages your networks can access information quickly.

Here’s a quick example I remember from a nonprofit I counseled. They got numerous calls from people offering to volunteer, but they had a lot of guidelines and training for specific jobs in this organization. Once we gathered them all, we created brief answers tailored for Facebook and Twitter AND created a dedicated web page with more detail which could be used over and over.

graphic of FAQ page on Freshbooks website

Great example of an FAQ From Freshbooks

Build an FAQ

It sounds like a big project if you do it all at once, but you can build it over time, just like the standard responses document. It might even use some of the material from a Standard Responses Document, especially if you find 2-3 questions which come up all the time. Drop your responses into a text document or in the CMS of your blog. Before too long, you’ve formed responses for questions you get over and over again. Now, publish it and save the link to point people there quickly. The screen grab to the left is an example of a great FAQ from my accounting program provider, Freshbooks which you can explore further here. Another great FAQ is from the learning platform we use at Northwest Vista College, Canvas.

Create A Link Library

What is a link library? It’s another cheat sheet to quickly pull appropriate links to which you want to point your customers. Let’s say you already know that you will point people to the main portion of your web site, but sometimes you will send them to a contact form or to that FAQ you just built. I like to drop the full link into an Excel or Google sheet and then shorten each of those links for tracking purposes. That way, you can show how much traffic you’re sending directly to your company’s channels.

Using cheat sheets allows you to spend time on the tone and voice you need to achieve in customer service without agonizing over finding the background for each answer on the fly. What do you use to save time on your customer outreach?

More ‘Pages To Watch’ Functionality on Facebook

Late last year, I shared my experience using the new Pages To Watch Function on Facebook, which was being rolled out to brand pages.

Some of its functionality has been enhanced in the last couple of weeks, so I thought it was time for an update.

New Location for Pages to Watch

The original location was above the page’s cover photo. You can still find it there, but if you go to your Insights page, then click on Overview and scroll down, you will see a larger version of the graph, with some additional features.

There are three new functions which have been added. They are useful if you are benchmarking your Facebook page against competitors or against similar organizations who aren’t direct competitors.

You can see increase in growth of fans on the pages you are watching through the Total Page Likes Column and the New Page Likes Column, which is expressed as a percentage. Green is up; red is down.
A new feature I like is the column which shows number of posts. For some of the smaller brands for which I track competition, I used to visit each of their pages individually and count how many posts they were doing per week, and then average it. This saves me a lot of time.
A new column to track Engagement gives you an idea of how you are engaging with the fans on your page against your competition. You definitely want to be Brand #1 on this graph and NOT Brand #2.

Sample Graphic for a Brand Page Using Pages To Watch

There’s no doubt that Facebook will be trying to monetize this or work the data in some way to inspire you to purchase ads. So it’s anyone’s guess whether this feature evolves to be more or less useful.

BUT, if you are working with a client who is watching their competition in other facets of their marketing campaign, this graph does give you a snapshot of what’s happening. It is not in-depth by any means and it doesn’t give you any trends, but it can certainly spark discussions around your engagement level, your content strategy and channel integration.

Have you used this new chart? If so, I’d like to hear whether it’s useful to you and what features are most helpful.

Fran Stephenson January 22, 2014 2 Comments

Resolve NOT to Set and Forget Your Social Media Channels This Year

Do you see a lot of relatively inactive pages and channels in social media? So many companies start with great enthusiasm, but before too long, they’ve abandoned their Facebook page or forgot their Twitter login or the person who set up the Instagram account has left and no one knows how to open it. A client once told me: “I just want to build it and then let it run by itself.”

The challenge is that these channels are organic and they change rapidly. To really use social media to engage customers, volunteers, fans or other key stakeholders, you have to be there – preferably with enthusiasm and a plan.

Batch Scheduling

Chances are you have other marketing programs in development, some months or even a year in advance. Consider grouping your content related to those programs in batches to minimize your time commitment. This works for thinks like changes in hours of operation, events and activities that happen regularly around the holidays and cyclical events like your Spring Clearance or an Easter sale.

Be a Dart Monitor

Set an alarm on your phone or a meeting notice on your desktop or revise the notifications on the channels where you have the most traffic and “dart” in to monitor, respond to comments and resolve issues. This only works for small pages who are NOT doing their entire customer service outreach on social media channels. By doing this 2-3 times per day, monitoring becomes part of your daily practice.

Take the Analytics Tonic

There are a LOT of analytics that come with social channels. Set aside one hour each month to review the analytics, click through all the options and within 2-3 months, you will start to see trends and patterns emerge. It might even set you on the road to measuring the progress of your social channels.

Find a New Flame

Is it time to add another voice or different thinking into your channel? This is a sure way to breathe life into a stale FB page or static Pinterest account.

By creating content in batches, monitoring by “darting” into your channels, you won’t have to worry about “setting and forgetting” your social channels again. If you also take time with analytics and new voices, you might even see your channels grow.

What tools can you share for keeping your social media efforts fresh?

Fran Stephenson January 14, 2014 Leave a Comment

Remembering How ‘Miracle On the Hudson’ Changed Breaking News

Five years ago today, I watched — along with millions of others — the news story unfold about the “Miracle on the Hudson.” Within hours, we knew what that phrase meant and learned a new name: Captain “Sully” Sullenberger.

It’s a miracle that the plane landed safely.

It’s a miracle that the Captain KNEW how to land the plane safely.

It’s a miracle that everyone walked away alive from that disaster.

These three facts alone are a good enough reason to celebrate five years later.

I will remember it for other reasons.

The reason I will remember this event is for validation. When this event happened, I was the communications director for SeaWorld San Antonio. We had embarked on an ambitious social media experiment which was not YET widely accepted. We were in the process of something crazy: launch a corporate blog, allow our employees to use Facebook and Twitter at work and take off the corporate gloves to allow certain, “highly trained” employees the ability to speak on our behalf. Like many companies in 2009, we were trying to figure out the “ifs” and “whens” of these new channels.

I showed that first photo from Twitter of the plane in the water and all the commuter boats rushing toward it, and I made huge predictions to the assembled team about how breaking news in the future will be shared on Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

Not that it was an original thought — many others were saying this, too, including Robert Scoble, Shel Israel and David Meerman Scott, among others.

I’m pretty sure only a small percentage believed me that day, but since the Miracle on the Hudson photos and story emerged from New York City in 2009, countless news stories have reached us first on social media channels, and second in traditional media channels.

Now, this story is part of my New Media curriculum in the Introduction to Mass Media class. The average age of the students is 19, so most of them don’t remember this event, much less its effect on mass media today. We take for granted that we will get breaking news on Twitter and Facebook, something we didn’t believe would happen just five years ago. But it did and we’ve got the photos to prove it.

Fran Stephenson December 15, 2013 Leave a Comment

When Should I Post on Facebook – The DIY Version

This is one of the most frequently asked questions by my clients. And one for which many seem to want a simple answer, like 2 p.m. on Wednesday.

A year ago, some social media consultants firmly stated that 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. was the ideal time to post on Facebook. Some even have specific posting rules, like this blog post which urges you to “post on the 9s” – 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.

The real answer used to be far more complicated for small organizations who are managing Facebook pages without the benefit of scheduling and analysis tools, but now you can do it yourself and, if you take some time to test and analyze, can find out which posts get the best results when your fans are online.

This is easier now with one of the enhancements on your Facebook Insights for Company Pages. If you have a Company Page with 50 or more fans, you can see a chart like the one below by going to View Insights, then click on the Posts tab.

Example 1: New Fan Page

This chart shows a new page which has just reached 50 fans. It tells you which day of the week most of its fans are online and the second part of the graph shows the times which they are online. If you hover over a day of the week, you get an additional line of information which tells you the activity for that specific day. For this little page, the times of the week when most of the fans are online are:

Monday, 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Wednesday, noon and 3-6 p.m.

Friday, 3-6 p.m.

Example 2: Established Company Page

The second chart shows a larger page with more than 1,000 fans. For this page, the most number of fans are online during these days and times:

Wednesday, 4 – 9 p.m.

Friday, 3 – 9 p.m.

Saturday, 9 a.m. – 9 p.m.

These two pages have no “optimum posting times” in common. That’s why the Insights are so valuable. So if you are a doing your social media campaigns without benefit of fancy tools, try posting during those times and see if you are getting a better reach. To really test your theory, drop the stats for each post into a spreadsheet and you might even narrow it down further. But keep in mind that optimum posting times are not set in stone. The best day of the week or time of day can change from one month to the next. So what is the best time to post on YOUR Facebook page?

Fran Stephenson November 13, 2013 2 Comments

Using the New “Pages to Watch” Function on Facebook

Are you using the new “Pages to Watch” function on FB? I just started using it this week and have added it into the box of several pages which I administer on Facebook. I’m surprised to see very little about this new function on Pages, but I did find this post which identifies some of its features.

It has been rolling out to brands selectively since July , but I only saw it appear in my pages this past week.

I am still exploring this function, but here’s what I see so far.

What I like about this function is that it’s a quick snapshot of activity by the “competition,” but only against one metric: number of fans. The second thing I like about this function is that it keeps the competition top of mind. If your measurements include regular benchmarks against the competition, this gives you a quick snapshot of who is growing fans and who is shrinking fans.

So far, though, its usefulness seems really limited.

On Pages to Watch, you don’t get anything BUT the total number of fans added or eliminated from the page. Assuming you are a smart communicator who is measuring more than just fans, it doesn’t give insight into the engagement levels of your competition.

The second problem I see is that the statistics on Pages to Watch are not integrated into any other page data, so they might be dead end data.

The third issue I have is with its clunky functionality. When adding pages into the search box, some pages which I wanted to add were blocked and others that were of no interest to my brands at all were highly ranked suggestions. It also forces you to add 5 pages, so if you only want to add three, you’re stuck. I added pages that I really don’t care to monitor just to get it up and running.

In true Facebook fashion, it’s anyone’s guess as to what Facebook intends to do with this function. So go try it on your Company Pages. I would love to hear what you find out about how it works for your brand.

Fran Stephenson October 23, 2013 3 Comments

Double Up Your Social Media Content

If your organization has gotten into a good social media routine, monitoring channels, posting content regularly and seeing results, maybe it’s time to double up on your content output.

What do I mean by doubling up? If you’ve been posting two to three times per week on your channels, try doubling your output for a specified time period to see what effect this can have on your engagement and followers.

Here are three recent examples from my client channels.

Increasing Twitter Action

A health care client went from posting 2-3 times per week on Twitter. When that schedule was adjusted to a daily posting schedule, the results were immediate. In the chart below, you can see the difference in activity from one month to the next.

Twitter	Clicks	Mentions	RTs	New Followers
Month 1	51	20	13	7
Month 2	215	39	20	50

Facebook Contest

A nonprofit client doubled their content output during a Facebook voting contest, which really changed their footprint during and after the contest. The table below shows the regular Facebook insights from that time period. The contest was held in Weeks 3-6. Notice the halo effect in week 7. If you compare week 8 with week 1, the page had a significantly higher reach overall.

Timeframe	New Likes	Talking About	Weekly Reach
Week 1	6	12	297
Week 2	2	23	580
Week 3	10	69	944
Week 4	19	65	993
Week 5	4	107	817
Week 6	59	124	13554
Week 7	37	78	14248
Week 8	7	56	1551

Double Posting on Facebook

A local brand accelerated their Facebook posting schedule to twice per day due to a large number of events during a holiday period. Prior to doubling up, their average monthly engagement was 7%. During the accelerated posting month, their engagement rate soared to 17%. They also gained fans and over the next few months, their engagement rates were 11-12%.

Think how you might double up your social media posting schedule but more importantly, see what happens to your channel and analyze the results.

Fran Stephenson December 4, 2012 Leave a Comment

What Does Your Facebook Insight Chart Say About You?

You are, of course, looking deeply at your Facebook insights to see how your fans are interacting with your organization, and analyzing what content resonates with your community. But you can make some instant observations by looking at that little chart which is nestled just above the cover photo and between the “New Likes” and “Page Tips” section.

If you are managing more than one page, this is a quick benchmark to see how your pages stack up against one another.

As a refresher, the purple circles along the bottom of the chart represents posting frequency by the page owner. The green trend line above it represents actions taken by fans. This includes liking the page, or a post on the page, sharing something from the page or commenting on the page. The blue trend line above that is what Facebook calls Reach. It’s a complicated Facebook formula but basically take your fans and multiply it by how many people they are connected with or have “friended” on Facebook and you get a sense of the magnitude.

Here are some samples from client pages I have managed with some observations I used to examine next steps with the client.

On a Roll

This organization is doing well with creating frequent posts and interacting with their fan base. Their fan base is engaged.

Hiccup

This organization may have been on a roll, but recently had some kind of hiccup with their content strategy. Go back to the date to see what suddenly changed and see if it can inform better decision-making in the future.

Abandoned

Someone gave up on this page. It happens to many organizations. Usually it means the page owner got reassigned or too busy to keep the home fires burning.

Smokin’ Hot

This organization is burning up the charts with strong content and continuous growth.

Burnout

This little chart shows how easy it is to reverse the “on a roll” trend.

Have you seen a page like one of these? Did it help you make new decisions? I use this short exercise once or twice a month to see where I need to look next for insight.

Fran Stephenson February 13, 2012 1 Comment

Confessions of a Contest Entrant

I was certain I would get a phone call last month to say that I had won the contest. Not just any contest, but the Williams-Sonoma, Real Simple Holiday Sweepstakes Extravaganza or something like that.

The prize was awesome. A $5000 gift card to shop at Williams-Sonoma. There were so many things I needed for my kitchen, I was a sure winner. (After nearly 20 years of marriage, the pots and pans are sad looking and not all our dishes match anymore. And the towels….don’t get me started!)

Enter daily to win, the online form explained. Excellent. So each morning for nearly 30 days, I would open the bookmarked form and record my entry. There was only one problem with this strategy — every time you entered, you had to fill out an entire entry form. All of it. Name, address, city, state, zip, e-mail, opt-in, submit.

Are you kidding me? That’s a lot of work, but okay, in this case, I persevered.
It was a fun diversion each morning, thinking of how I would spend the gift card. I even went so far as to go onto the Williams-Sonoma web site to look at their dishes and pots and pans.

Can you hear their digital marketing team cheering in the background?

Not all Contest Forms are Alike!

So, congratulations to the Williams-Sonoma marketing team. I was completely sucked in.

Earlier last year, I was equally sucked in to a contest sponsored by Southwest Airlines called Let ‘Em Fly and Win where each day you had one roll of the dice and if you got one of the published Yahtzee dice combos you got a bajillion frequent flyer miles.

“This is fabulous,” I thought. With our son about to go off to college, this would certainly lighten the damage of all those college trips on our pocketbook. Like the Williams-Sonoma contest, you could enter daily to win. So I did. Every day for 30 days. There was one key difference between the two contests. After you entered all your information on the form on the first day, on subsequent days, you only had to enter your email address to roll the dice.

Brilliant.

Not once did I get a combination worthy of frequent flier miles, but it certainly got me thinking about what makes a great online contest.

There’s only two things you need to have a great online contest. First, you need a great prize. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the value of a contest prize is determined by the participant. If your fans, friends or network perceive the prize to be of value, then it is. For others, it might be a gift card or an iPad. Frequent flyer miles and kitchen equipment were my motivators — I can confess without blushing that these prizes were sweet enough to motivate me.

The second component of a successful contest – keep it simple. Too many form fields or requirements will drive entries away. If the prize for the kitchen equipment was, say $500, I may not have gone through the trouble each day to fill out the form. Except I REALLY need new dishes.

The Southwest Airlines contest was far easier. And Fun. Like going to Vegas, without the smoke-filled casinos.

Great prize. Simple entry. That’s the key to a good contest.

What types of contest prizes motivate you?