Posts Tagged ‘social networking’

8 Ways to Increase Engagement on Facebook

Wednesday, February 27th, 2013

By Fauzia Burke

As of January 2013, Facebook has 1 billion users. 219 billion photos have been uploaded and there have been 140.3 billion friend connections. The average age of users is about 22.

Clearly Facebook is not going anywhere and although my teens hardly use it anymore, many of us visit the site daily. From a business purpose, engagement is more important than fans. You can have a 1,000 fans but if only 2 people are interacting with you very few people will see your posts on their feed. Take a look at the number of fans you have on your Facebook business page. Now note how many people are “talking about this.” Your goal should be to increase the “talking about” number.

Last year Facebook introduced EdgeRank (also known as News Feed Algorithm or why you see what you see on your news feed). It is important to understand how it works because it makes an impact on how many people see your page. Brittany Botti, Social Media Marketing Professional explained it simply: “The more your fans like, comment, share, or click through on your posts, the more often they will see your posts in their NewsFeed.”

Have you noticed you tend to see posts from the same people in your news feed? It’s probably the people you interact with most. For your business page to show up in more people’s feeds, you should improve the engagement by mixing up your posts.

Here’s a few ideas for increasing engagement:

  • According to a study by SocialCode, the best time to post on Facebook is after 7pm EST on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
  • Ask questions. Find out more about your fans
  • Post photos. It is the most popular type of post
  • Use quotes from books you love
  • Change the cover photo regularly. It’s more fun and keeps people engaged
  • Graphics from Pinterest (just make sure you give credit to the creator)
  • Post short “thoughts” or “comments” – Posts that are 5 -10 words perform best
  • I hear “Fill in the blank” gets lots of engagement. I have not tried it myself yet, but seems like fun

The most popular type of post is text only (short, funny, thoughtful ones). The least popular are updates with links. Add a link sparingly only when you need their attention and have a call to action. It’s important to be selective about the links you add as they are the least effective in promoting engagement.

If you are only on Facebook because you want to sell something, I am not sure any social networking will really work for you. Facebook allows us to know our “partners” better. Today partners are our clients, customers, and readers. It is because of them we are in business and by treating them with regard and respect, I think we’ll be in business longer. Of course, social networking is a business investment so you should totally promote your company/book/product, just mix it up. Hope this is helpful.

What have you found to be effective in encouraging engagement on Facebook?

© 2013 Fauzia Burke. All Rights Reserved.

Author Bio
Fauzia Burke is the Founder and President of FSB Associates, a digital publicity and marketing firm specializing in creating awareness for books and authors. For online publicity, book publishing and social media news, follow Fauzia on Twitter: @FauziaBurke. To talk with FSB and ask your book publicity questions, please join us on Facebook.

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Twitter Tip: How to Organize with Lists

Friday, August 5th, 2011

by Ken Ishii

It’s no secret that online social networking is an efficient way to spread news fast and far. Great news for authors. And among social networks out there, Twitter has proven itself a powerful vehicle able to drive users to both familiar and new communities with little effort.

If you don’t have one yet, you should really open a Twitter account quickly before you lose a golden username to someone too quick to the draw. Already a member? Then you’ll most likely enjoy how useful Twitter lists can be.

If you’re familiar with the ins and outs of Twitter, then you probably maintain a regular stream of tweets, amassed a robust network of like-minded users, and made a habit out of lending a hand by retweeting others. With that, you probably realized how hard it is to keep track of users that relentlessly enter your network.

Like any social gathering, you’ll always find a few folks that seem to linger in the spotlight a bit too long. Twitter being no exception, you’re bound to be surrounded by virtual soapbox speakers unless you manage your tweet listening skills. So how does one handle those overly-ambitious users that drown your Twitter fellows into oblivion? You could just stop following the post-happy users altogether, but then you’ll be burning a bridge you might need to cross when time comes to promote your work. A less antagonistic approach would be to simply avert your attention away from the noisemakers. Creating lists offers a friendly solution that won’t cause tears when users find out who stopped following them on Twitter. With Twitter lists, those chatterboxes can keep their seats at the party, but you’ll get to choose which table to join.

So let’s get started. To make your own lists, visit and log in to your Twitter account. You say you rather use Hootsuite? We do too, but we’ll get to that right after this.

After logging in, you’ll be taken to your Home screen. Right above the news stream on the left are several tabs including one labeled, “Lists.” Click it, and a drop-down menu will appear where the option, “Create a list,” can be found. Think about all the categories you’ll want to get updates from regularly and then decide how many lists you want to create. Again, it might help to imagine a party with tables of different groups.

I need to throw a bit of caution out there when creating lists. With public lists, the list name, description, and users you add to the list will be visible to everyone on Twitter. You can specify lists as private to keep them hidden from other users, but keep in mind, lists make great sharing resources that others might find helpful.

Next you’ll need to add people to your lists. Search for new or familiar Twitter users and find the drop-down menu on his or her profile to add them to a list.

You can add a user to more than one list if you wish or you can create a new list right on the spot if you think of any new categories.

Over time, users might find social media management tools such as Hootsuite necessary to organize and enhance their networking experience. If you’re one of these people, you’ll be relieved to know that you don’t have to go to the main Twitter site to put together a list. There are several ways to create a list on Hootsuite. The method I like is to simply click the “Add Stream” button in the upper left-hand corner just below the tabs.

In the window that pops up, click on the Lists tab to reveal the required entry fields. If you have multiple Twitter accounts, select the profile you want your new list assigned to. On the third line, click the “Create a new list” option and then name your list. Select whether you want to make your list public or private, click “Create Stream,” and you’re done!

If you already have a list created or subscribe to a list you want to add new users to, just click on the user’s Twitter profile picture and click on the “Add To List” button in the profile box that appears. Next, select the list you want to add the user to from the drop-down menu and, within seconds, the user’s tweets will be included in the stream of messages filtered by the list.

With lists in place, Twitter comes alive with customized channels you can surf to find whatever suits your mood. You can create lists consisting of general news outlets, industry experts, valuable followers, competitors, family members, friends, favorite stores, or find other creative uses for lists to enhance your tweeting experience. If you’re looking for pre-made lists or recommended Twitter users, you can browse a Twitter list directory to save you some legwork or even get yourself on a public list.

Don’t feel like you need lists right now? Maybe it’s time to go and follow more tweeps? You can start with our FSB home team on Twitter!

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Twitter Tools for Tweeting

Monday, April 25th, 2011

by Ken Ishii

If you made the big step into the microblogging world of Twitter, then you deserve a good pat on the back.  News of Twitter’s utility as an information speedway during international crises and the platform’s ability to ignite publicity wildfire have made headlines worldwide.  It’s quite obvious that you’ve added an incredibly versatile and powerful instrument to your PR arsenal.

So your account is set. You uploaded your favorite profile picture, crafted a sharp bio, splashed your background with eye-catching graphics, added like-minded users to your following list, and even posted fully-loaded tweets complete with searchable hashtags, user handles, and shortened urls that link to your web site or blog. Well done.

By now you might have realized that Twitter, while fascinating, is a voracious time gobbler. Rummaging through streams of countless updates from your news stable and scrambling to respond to every retweet, reply, mention, greeting, and inquiry, you might notice the day pass before you even get to your direct message inbox. Add to this the chore of finding new people to add to your community and you’ll probably begin to wonder if your toe-dip into the social media pool hasn’t suddenly pulled you in above your head.

Fortunately for us, a bevy of tools has surfaced over the past couple of years to help cut down your maintenance time so you can get down to the business of perfecting that complex craft of writing catchy 140-character-confined copy.

Hootsuite

I’m putting our favorite one first. By far, if there’s one tool that will have the biggest impact on your social media productivity, control, and insight it would be an online brand management system. While there are a few on the market, we prefer Hootsuite because of its ease of use, features, and lack of software to install on your computer.

The free version of Hootsuite offers more than enough for most users out there. Hootsuite has an interface that puts you in full control of your account. The dashboard is made up of customizable columns that can display a variety of information streams such as your home feed, lists, trends, mentions, direct messages, retweets, schedules and more without having to change pages on the screen. There’s even an analytics tool to see how people are reacting to your tweets.

This tool is highly recommended. It has a slight learning curve, but there are instructional videos and official Hootsuite help topics to guide you.

Twitter Search

While Twitter and Hootsuite both have search boxes and allow for some basic filtering, you’ll need a tool like Twitter Search to add precision to your searches. Click on the advanced search button to start targeting your search with filtering options that include words, people, places, dates, sentiment, and more.

Twittonary

With only 140 characters to convey thoughts into meaningful tweets, you’ll find users exercising some creative messaging.  The use of established acronyms and abbreviations, as a result, could come off as cryptic to the uninitiated. Twitter glossaries and dictionaries make it easy to decipher codes you run into as well as help you apply Twitter speak to your own messages.

Twellow

Finding the right people among the millions of users is no easy task. Thankfully the online world works much like the physical one. If you were looking for a doctor, plumber, or caterer in the real world, asking around on the streets probably won’t get you very far. You might, instead, look to your local Yellow Pages. Twello works the same way but for Twitter. Find users by category, area, or name just like you would with a phone book.

TweetStats

TweetStats acts like your Twitter account’s personal assistant. This Twitter statistics application will feed you information about your Twitter activity without judgement. Just the facts on the frequency of your messages by time, day, month, and year. Tweetstats can also tell you what your popular keywords are and the amount of time you spend engaging with other users.

Klout

At some point you may be interested in knowing how effective you are on Twitter. While Hootsuite and Tweetstats metrics can help you gain insight into your Twitter activity, a service like Klout will give you a Twitter assessment that will help you decide whether your social networking approach is working or not. Using a proprietary scale, Klout will compute a score based on your activity and networking that you can brag to your friends about or work on to bring up to par. Other assessment services exist, but Klout, for now, is the most widely used.

Friend or Follow

There are many reasons why your followers/following lists are important. Mainly, your concerns should be that your networks can become indicators of who you are to potential new followers and that a Twitter restriction on the number of followers in your allowance may prevent you from adding new people to your network if you let spammers in. Friend Or Follow is a useful tool that allows you to see the relationships between you and those you follow and those that follow you so that you know precisely what kind of users make up your community.

A little poking around online will lead you to a wide variety of Twitter tools and services aimed at enriching your tweeting experience. Since new products are always being added to the marketplace, it’s a good idea to ask around before spending too much time on any one application.

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