Facebook Pages: Brands and Businesses get more social

Last week Facebook HQ announced a planned role out to update and improve its Pages. The update, which will affect all users by March 10, allows admins of a Facebook Page to interact with their fans and connections in the same way as a personal profile log in.

Facebook are excited about the improvements to Pages stating that the new features ‘will help you manage communication, express yourself, and increase engagement,’ this is welcomed news for brands and companies engaged in the social sphere.
If you are eager to preview the page layout before all pages are automatically updated across the site this spring, the ability to upgrade your account lies with a few clicks of a mouse.



Facebook Pages: Business minded?

The update allows admins the option to display Facebook profiles of page owners directly onto your business Page in Facebook. This change allows potential clients and employees the opportunity to make contact to professionals on a personal level, much like LinkedIn.

This additional feature to Pages gives any Facebook user the tools to connect with those working behind the scenes of a business or brand. This champions the ‘be human’ mantra that social media mavens are constantly offloading as free advice to businesses socially active in the digital realm, but is this necessary for every brand or right for your business?

Shouldn’t a business be visible as a business within Facebook and not allow users to link to personal accounts at the click of a button? Is this too much transparency for a business oriented feature within a social network?




Facebook Pages: Likes and Dislikes
The new Facebook Page allows you to function more freely as a business; there are some new features that will undoubtedly aid your reach and engagement with current and potential clients.

LIKE. Navigation on the new Facebook Page sits to the left hand side, making content within the page even more accessible. The user is able to distinguish the location of content through simple navigation as soon as they land on the brand/business page.
LIKE. Admins of the page have the ability to ‘log in’ to Facebook as the page itself. This allows you to socially interact as your company rather than an individual. This opens up doors for engagement with potential clients and to build a network of like-minded businesses.
LIKE: ‘The Business Newsfeed’ – the newsfeed is generated for your business is in the same way as a personal log on- accessing this through Home. Your business network of ‘likes’ will also show in the news feed.



DISLIKE. Chronological order of posts has taken a step back to the importance of conversation which Facebook deems most ‘relevant’ to your followers.

Although posts that generate the most insights or promote customer engagement are valuable to your business, the importance of relevant and timely updates on a Page has been overlooked by Facebook HQ; this has sparked heated online discussion and petition around the formatting of posts in new Facebook Pages. The chronological order of things is how we manage our time, even more so within a timely news feed of posts on Facebook, without this feature posts will appear irrelevant [time = now] to the user. Without any control over the order of timely updates, posts are in danger of being left at the top of a Page with little or no relevance. Other updates could be posted further down the wall of your Page, with potential of being completely overlooked by users.

Facebook: Business-social

Overall, brands and businesses should find this update allows for an ease of network building directly from your Facebook Page. These changes show developers at Facebook HQ understand how businesses are adapting to ways of working within the social realm, reiterating the importance of how these relationships, with people and businesses alike, are built and maintained.
Changes to Facebook Pages echo the changing needs of social media based marketing, highlighting the importance of engagement with customers on social networking sites.

These changes will undoubtedly aid social media campaigns and strategies, fuelling customer engagement and business opportunities on a business network platform that exists within Facebook.

Twitter and it’s role in your SME’s online strategy

Twitter is a website which offers businesses a gateway to customers online, a social networking service which enables people to send and read messages - those 'tweets' you may have heard people chirping about. Twitter now has up to 175 million users, that's a growth rate of roughly 15 million users per month or about half a million users per day.

Time to invest. Increase your ROI by tweeting.

Using Twitter to implement your social media strategy is easy - business scope is borderless. Combine your online strategy with honest conversation and relevant chatter. Get social.

Twitter: Essential to your social media strategy

* Allows you to build and continue conversation with customers and stakeholders
* Provides a platform - direct customers towards your product/service (gain feedback too)
* Creates a hyperlocal sense to your business and online strategy
* Consumers and competitors both use Twitter
* Monitor behaviours and trends through easy accessible analytic tools.

Time to engage.

What’s happening while you are not tweeting?

Not on Twitter? Your business is being talked about. Online conversation of consumers occurs whether you are listening or not.

Twitter is a real time exchange of dialogue within a networked community. It’s all happening without you. Know what’s out there: make sure you know what’s currently being said about you.

Time spent reviewing or following brands that are using Twitter well is time well spent.

Tweets, trends and @mentions are something which on and offline businesses can no longer afford to ignore. Ignorance is bad for business.

Get started with Twitter

1)Tweet – 140 characters. Keep it social, short and sharp.
2)Retweet – regurgitate tweets that engage your followers and are relevant to your business. Echo your brand, purpose and interests. Share it with your network.
3)@mentions – tag your followers in a tweet. Direct tweets towards someone already listening. Ask questions. Manage conversation. Create Chatter.
4)#tags - create and follow trends on Twitter. #tags are meta data that connect tweets and birth trends across the Twitter platform.
5)#FF – Follow Friday. It’s nice to be liked. Build a network of like minded businesses and individuals with a digital salute.

Let’s talk shop

Twitter is a tool which is savvy and an enabler of community, embrace this and your community will embrace you. So...

* Follow - check out those that follow you, provide timely responses, participate in conversations keeping your business objectives in mind.
* Keep it social – got new stock this morning? Talk about it. Let customers know what is going on in real time.
* Keep it sweet – beware of language. Create a persona, be warm, be human.
* Build interest – promote with retweets of your followers. Invest time and effort to build a conversation.
* Plan - a content strategy will help focus your efforts on publishing content of value in a timely and relevant way.
* Location – add location data to tweets, push local business. Mobile usage of twitter means you can reach those listening for locations in real time.
* Analytics– third party tools for your twitter strategy. Keep an eye on your metrics.
* Trends - Twitter is always on, make sure you have someone to monitor conversations, competitors and trends.

Entice your followers with incentives and general conversation, get to know your market, execute searches. Dig in. Join in.


Want more?
Follow me @jessica_barlow


Useful links:
The @twitter blog
Twitter: On Track for 200 Million Users by Year End
Third party tools for you and your twitter strategy:
Hootsuite
Tweetdeck