Developing a Social Media Strategy
April 16, 2019 In Blog No Comment

Does your business have a social media strategy?

Social media is more than creating accounts on the ever-popular Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and then posting your pre-made advertisements or “Happy National Donut Day” graphics.

Social media should be about creating and maintaining and conversation with your audience through the appropriate social media channels.

Developing a social media strategy should be clear, succinct, and simple.

  1. Competitor Analysis

Take a peek at what your competitors are up to on social media. Visit their corporate website to gain access to social media links, then visit each of their social media channels.

  • What channels are in use?
  • What is their following?
  • What is their content strategy?
  • What are they doing well?

(If you have an existing Facebook Page, you can add competitors to the “Watch-List” that allows you to simplified statistics regarding your competitor’s performance.)

 

  1. Target Audience

As you’ve heard before, you need to understand YOUR target audience. If you think that “everyone” is your audience, you need to ask yourself these questions:

  • Who are your current customers?
  • What customer group do you want to grow?
  • What are their demographics? Psychographics? Interests?

 

  1. Goals & Objectives

Before launching a Facebook Page, or starting an Instagram account, you need to understand why your business should be using social media.

  • Increase in-house sales / online sales
  • Increase blog readership
  • Increase app downloads

Answering this question will start to guide your social media strategy, because it will point your content in the right direction.

  1. Strategy

No – sharing the exact same content, including text and image, to all of your social media channels is NOT a strategy. In fact, if you choose to engage multiple social media channels, you should be committed to creating unique content for EACH channel. Below is a chart of the character limits, optimal image size, and hashtag use for each. Simply reviewing the chart will remind social media administrators that each social media channel is unique and should be treated as such.

  Text Image Hashtags
Facebook Page 63,206 characters 940 x 788px No
Twitter 280 characters 1024 x 512px Yes
Instagram 2,200 characters 1080 x 1080 px Yes
LinkedIn Company Page 700 characters 1200 x 1200 px Yes

 

In addition, each social media channel is visited by a unique population. Pew Research has prepared some in-depth research on this topic, including the below demographic analysis:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Depending on your target audience, you may choose to enable a specific social media mix. Simply looking at the popular social media in relation to age brackets will provide a strong indication of which social media channels are most suitable.

In addition, content can be one of the most challenging aspects to social media management. The thought of posting content daily, or at minimum a few times per week can be daunting. Simply posting corporate advertisements or Happy National Day of Awareness just won’t cut it.

  • What images/visual will you use?
  • Will you be directing them to a specific website/webpage?
  • Will you engage user-generated content?
  • Do you have a theme for your content?

This is the tip of the iceberg to starting the development of a social media strategy.

What are your social media strategy questions? Share below!

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Who Owns My Facebook Page?
April 11, 2019 In Blog No Comment

Facebook Business Manager helps advertisers integrate Facebook marketing efforts across their business and with external partners. You can use this free platform to run and track your ads, manage assets such as your Pages and ad accounts, and add an agency or marketing partners to help manage your business. When you create a Business Manager, it becomes a central space to manage your business separate from your personal Facebook profile. You’ll manage your Pages and ad accounts in Business Manager, so you never have to worry about mixing business content with your personal content.

When setting up a Facebook Business Manager, it is required to include a “Primary Page.” The first Page you add to your Business Manager is your primary page. You can change your primary page as you add more Pages to your Business Manager. To learn how to change your primary page in Business Manager, click here.

With the recently integration of Facebook and Instagram, you may face new challenges. For example, under administrators on the Facebook Page, you may notice a new administrator, someone that you didn’t authorize. Not to worry, if you recently converted your Instagram account to a business account, and then connected (or tried to) to a Facebook Page, you’ll notice a new “person” who owns the page. That “person/account” was created during the conversion process. To remove this “person/account” you will need to disconnect the Facebook Page from Instagram, and Instagram from Facebook for this account.

You may notice under Business Manager that the Page says “Owned by Individual People” rather than the company name. Here’s how to fix this:

  1. In Business Manager, click “Business Settings”
  2. Under “People & Assets,” choose Pages
  3. Without changing or removing anything that currently exists within your pages, click “Add New Pages” on the right hand side, then choose “Add a Page.”
  4. It will prompt you for the URL of the page you want to own. Paste that URL in the box.
  5. Click “Add Page.”
  6. If you are the admin of the page, it will automatically add it to your owned pages.

 

For the majority of users, this will be the solution. However, for others, you may need to remove the account entirely from Business Manager (MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ADMINISTRATIVE RIGHTS BEFORE YOU REMOVE THE ACCOUNT!).

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Facebook Page Newsfeed
January 29, 2019 In Blog No Comment

If you manage a Facebook Page and part of your social strategy is daily interaction with other local or likeminded businesses, you’ll notice that something missing.

Recently across many Pages, Facebook has removed the “View Posts” button. The “View Posts” button allowed users to scroll through their Page’s Newsfeed.

Did you catch that?

This allowed Page administrators to engage and interact with other pages!

While Pages still can easily “LIKE” other Pages, through either visiting the Page, or using the button located on their Page, the “Page Newsfeed,” as many call it, has been removed.

 

Though the link has been removed, administrators can still access this information through a link:

For example, I can access through:

https://business.facebook.com/JenniferBakerCo/pages_feed/

or

https://facebook.com/JenniferBakerCo/pages_feed/

 

To continue to access the Page’s Newsfeed simply insert your Page username into the link below:

https://business.facebook.com/username/pages_feed/

https://facebook.com/username/pages_feed/

 

Enjoy!

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Social Media for Your Chamber of Commerce
December 18, 2018 In Blog No Comment

A chamber of commerce, sometimes referred to as a board of trade, is a type of business network comprised of businesses with a goal of furthering the interests of local businesses.

Chambers of commerce have an early history. The first chamber of commerce was founded in 1599 in Marseille, France, followed by Bruges, Belgium 65 years later. (Click for a full history)

The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, comprised of a network of 450+ community chambers of commerce representing 200,000+ Canadian businesses, seeks to advocate for public policies that encourage a vibrant and competitive business environment across Canada. The Ontario Chamber of Commerce is an independent, non-partisan voice for Ontario businesses, and represents 135+ local chambers of commerce and local boards of trade.

Shortly after launching my business, Jennifer Baker Consulting, I became a member of the Greater Kingston Chamber of Commerce with a goal to increase my connections and knowledge of the community. The following year I joined the board of directors, and subsequently joined the Executive Committee. In 2017, I served as Chair of the Greater Kingston Chamber of Commerce. During this time, I learned about the inner workings, opportunities and challenges that are faced by chambers of commerce, including brand management, fiscal responsibilities, membership, sponsorship, and event promotion.

With these topics in mind, coupled with my social media experience, I have launched: Chamber of Commerce & Social Media | Virtual Training!

This course has been designed as a webinar/online training, and focuses on topics that impact many chambers of commerce.

  1. Improving Your Chamber’s Online Brand:
    January 29, 10am-12pm EST
  2. Growing Your Chamber’s Social Media Following:
    February 5, 10am-12pm EST
  3. Making (MORE) Money with Your Chamber’s Social Media:
    February 12, 10am-12pm EST
  4. Using Social Media to Promote Your Chamber’s Activities:
    February 19, 10am-12pm EST
  5. Growing Your Membership Through Social Media:
    February 27, 10am-12pm EST
  6. Facebook Advertising:
    March 5, 10am-12pm EST

Click for more information, or to register.

 

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Organizing Your Facebook Presence
November 16, 2018 In Blog No Comment

Founded in 2004, Facebook boasts 1.49 billion daily active users, and 2.27 billion monthly active users. SproutSocial estimates there is approximately 60 million Facebook business Pages. With numbers like these, it is no surprise that there may be problems and challenges for Facebook users. If you have found inaccurate accounts, unofficial Pages, or old personal profiles, there is a way to organize and clean-up these accounts.

1. Convert a Facebook Profile to A Page

By converting to a Page, users can utilize more tools and share with a wider audience. You can only convert your profile to a Page once. When you convert your profile to a Page:
  • You’ll have both a profile and a Page after conversion.
  • We’ll transfer your profile picture and cover photo to the Page, and the name on your profile will become the Page’s name.
  • You can select from your friends, followers and pending friend requests and add them as your new Page’s followers. See more information in the section below.
  • You can choose which photos and videos to copy over from your profile, but keep in mind that views and other metrics remain with your profile and can’t transfer to the Page.

Click here to convert.

2. Claim Unclaimed Pages 

A Page may exist for your business even if someone from your business didn’t create it. For example, when someone checks into a place that doesn’t have a Page, an unmanaged Page is created to represent the location. If the Page is unmanaged, you’ll see Unofficial Page below its cover photo. You can request to claim the Page and become its admin, and you can merge the Page into a Page you already manage.
To claim or merge an unmanaged Page:
  1. Click Is this your business? below the Page’s cover photo.
  2. Follow the on-screen instructions.
Keep in mind that you may be asked for information to verify your relationship with the business, such as business phone number, business email or documents.
3. Rename Old Pages
You’ll need to be an admin to request a change to your Page’s name. To request a change to your Page’s name:
  1. Click About on the left side of your Page.
  2. Click Edit next to your Page’s name.
  3. Enter a new Page name and click Continue.
  4. Review your request and click Request Change.

4. Merge Converted/Unclaimed/Renamed Pages

Visit: facebook.com/pages/merge

As with many things on Facebook, patience is required. Don’t expect to complete this task last in a day, as it may take up to a month to change a business’ name.

 

Black and White Computer

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