Facebook uses an algorithm to determine which connections are most important to a user, what content should appear most frequently in their News Feed, and what socially-enabled ads they see.  It carries a lot of weight, so it’s in your best interest to get familiar with this algorithm, and adjust your social strategy accordingly.
The way to succeed and have your content appear in fan News Feeds is to consistently show high activity and engagement. For an individual consumer, this might include making frequent status updates, uploading images, or changing relationship status. For a brand, this is driven by fan-base engagement. This means your fans might not even  see your content unless you receive consistent engagement!
HOW TO PUT IT INTO ACTION
Produce content that encourages your fans to engage and interact with your brand through Facebook. This might include:

• Polls

• Surveys

• Videos

• Status Updates

Remember, the more engaged your fans are, the more likely your brand is to show up in consumers’ News Feeds, making your socially-enabled ads more frequent and effective.
FIELD FACT:
Consider these three factors when evaluating content relevance:
1. Affinity refers to the relationship between two Facebook users. Each time a user engages with you on Facebook, your affinity with that user goes up. Note that your engagement with a user doesn’t influence this—only their engagement.
2. Interaction considers what actions users have taken with your content. Each action is recorded and given more precedence based on the amount of energy required to engage (i.e. a comment shows more engagement than a click).
3. Timeliness takes into account the age of the content.  Recent content is most likely to show up in a News Feed.

By Heidi Cohen, Actionable Marketing Expert

On social media platforms not all shared content is equal. As in real life, some social shares are more effective at achieving marketing goals than others.

As marketers are continually challenged to create sufficient content, how do you maximize the effectiveness of each piece of content marketing regardless of whether it’s a Facebook update, a tweet or a blog post? As any accounting student can tell you the answer is “It depends.” [Here are some general social sharing tips.]

To extend your content marketing’s reach and life, study research from Bit.ly, Hubspot’s Dan Zarella and Buddy Media. (Understand that each firm’s research is different and isn’t entirely comparable. Taken together, however, they provide useful insights.)

Facebook

With Facebook’s usage across age groups, research shows that people view it as a personal platform.

1. Have lunch with Facebook. Bit.ly found links posted between 1:00 pm and 4:00 pm, the lunch hour across US time zones, had the highest click-throughs, peaking on Wednesdays at 3.00 pm.
2. Think me time for retail posting. Consistent with Bit.ly’s findings, roughly 90% of retail brand posts are made between 8:00 am and 7:00 pm according to Buddy Media. This makes sense since this is when marketers and consumers are working. Wednesday’s the best day for retail Facebook posts based on Buddy Media results. While Bit.ly found links posted at night didn’t attract as much attention, those people that are reached may have more time to engage. Similarly, Dan Zarella found that Saturday was the best time for sharing content, especially if you’re looking to break away from the pack.
3. Less is more for post frequency. Posting less than three times a day increases Facebook fan engagement 40%. Further, keeping posts to under five times a week increased consumer engagement over 70%, based on Buddy Media research. Similarly, Dan Zarella found that likes declined when posts increase.
4. Kiss theory applies. Keep it short and simple. Don’t make prospects think. Use dollars off versus a percentage off to double engagement according to Buddy Media.
5. Leave room in the conversation for prospects. Buddy Media found posts containing questions doubled interaction and posts containing fill-in-the-blanks increased engagement ninefold.

Twitter

1. Unlike Facebook, Twitter tends to be used for business related engagement and the research in terms of when to tweet confirms this. [Here's more research on Twitter content.]

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To paraphrase Warren Buffet, the secret to good customer relationships is the same as the secret to any good marriage: low expectations. But customer expectations today are rising more rapidly than ever before, which presents a problem–as well as an opportunity–for your business.

Technology is the culprit, driving a dramatic increase in the speed and volume of interaction. And whenever two people interact–either face to face or online–one of the most important subtexts of that interaction is trust. If we don’t trust each other, any interaction between us just won’t be very efficient. We might even have to call a lawyer or an accountant to provide security against being deceived or cheated. Trust greatly improves the speed and efficiency of interacting, so the more interacting we do, the more trust we come to expect from others. In addition, the transparency that comes with more interaction makes it more difficult to keep secrets, driving more demand for trust. Teenagers, for instance, will tell you it’s much harder to cheat on their boyfriends or girlfriends than it was before everyone was on Facebook.

Rising levels of interactivity mean that customers are coming to expect a higher standard of trust not just from the people they interact with but from the businesses they deal with, as well. They want a kind of Extreme Trust, or something that Martha Rogers and I call “trustability,” which we define as “proactive trustworthiness.” It’s no longer sufficient for a business simply to do what it says it’s going to do and charge what it says it’s going to charge. That would certainly be trustworthy–it’s not cheating or lying–but it’s not trustable.

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Have you ever left a comment on a blog?

How do you feel when the author replies?

As we’re all ushered into this age of social media, each and every one of us is looking for ways to form stronger relationships with our audience, especially with current and potential customers.

There are many ways to discuss how to cultivate and build relationships. I want to focus on blog comments—an often poorly understood and very underutilized tactic by individuals and businesses.

Why Blog Comments?

Over the last 3 years since I started blogging for my two businesses (one company does swimming pools and the other is a sales/marketing company), I’ve personally replied to over 8000 comments on my two blogs.

I don’t give you this number with any intent to brag, but rather to set the stage for a topic that is near and dear to me, and one that I see businesses and bloggers falling short on everywhere, simply because they’re missing a few of these important habits.

This article isn’t about “How to get more blog comments,” but rather how to cultivate better relationships through comments. Notwithstanding, the two do overlap, as you’ll see in the following list.

Finally, you’re going to find that some of the components of this list are nothing more than common sense. But as so many know, common sense, especially in this new culture of social media, can at times be rather uncommon, and therefore needs to be mentioned.

Here’s how to cultivate relationships with blog comments.

#1: Write in a Personal Voice

You can probably tell from just the first few paragraphs of this post that I like to write in a personal tone. And if you’re looking to truly cultivate relationships with the stuff you write, a personal feel will make a HUGE difference.

When done properly, writing in a personal tone and style will immediately help readers feel more comfortable with an author/company and this comfort level naturally lends itself to readers considering leaving their thoughts in the comments section or via email in a direct reply.

So whether you’re writing about swimming pools, insurance, equipment, services, etc.—strive for a personal voice.

#2: Invite Reader Response by Asking Questions

Studies have shown that less than 1% of readers will leave comments on a blog, but I can assure you this number would be better if writers would simply guide the reader in terms of questions at the end of posts.

No matter what your business is, the final paragraph of your blog article is the perfect spot to ask specific questions regarding the topic you’ve just discussed.

Ask readers their thoughts and whether they agree or disagree. Invite them to share further examples that would help other readers. It’s truly amazing the difference this will make if it becomes a habit with everything you write.

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BY Bill Wackermann – Fast Company

In business, irrational fears encompass everything from fear of rejection, fear of authority, and fear of criticism to fear of failure and even fear of success. Such fears keep us from being able to “just figure things out” and making the flip that can propel us in a good direction. Let me tell you a story to illustrate this point.

A good friend of mine, Tom, is one of the most talented sports agents in his business. Hard-charging, funny, and smart, Tom has a natural touch with his clients and is on the fast track toward senior management.

Unfortunately, Tom suffers from one of the business world’s most common irrational fears, a fear of public speaking.

On the surface, when you see Tom, this makes no sense. Why would he be afraid to talk in front of a crowd? He’s confident, articulate, and successful. But he is deathly afraid of standing alone in front of a crowd and speaking. The interesting thing is that he has no problem contributing as part of a panel or group. It’s only speaking solo that causes him to panic. No matter how many times he successfully speaks on a panel, no matter how many times he receives compliments and assurances on his performance, he still remains terrified to speak alone in public. It’s an irrational fear that is impacting his business goals, and he’ll never be able to find faith and reach his potential unless he can get over it.

To balance his scale, one that was tilting heavily in favor of fear, I gave Tom a positive variable for every negative fear.

Tom had three primary negative fears: (1) that people were judging him, (2) that he needed to be perfect, (3) that he would freeze and get stuck. Here’s a list of the balancing variables:

Negative fear: Everyone is judging me.
Positive variable: People are self-interested.

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When it comes to social media, marketers can’t help making mistakes. [Check out When Social Media Goes Bad.] In their rush to embrace this hot marketing format or promote their latest campaign, marketers forget everything they’ve learned about social media and ignore its rules assuming this onetime won’t matter. But it does, especially to the social media participants they’re trying to reach.

Here are ten social media mistakes marketers can’t help making because social media differs from the way they’ve always done marketing.

1. Assume social media participants are waiting for their pearls of wisdom. Understand consumers are on social media platforms to interact with family and friends, not merchants. Wanting to be part of the conversation isn’t enough to qualify. You must engage and interact with people to become part of the community. Many social media followers only want your discount.
2. Use language stripped of anything remotely sounding like a person. While social media requires a human voice, many marketers and marcom professionals are so accustomed to using corporate-speak that it spills into their social media communications.
3. Yell me, me, me.  Just focusing your social media communications on your firm, products and brands is the surest way to turn prospects off. The one exception is discounts. Take a lesson from your mother, who while she’s interested in what you’re doing, really only wants you to listen to what she has to say.

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Last week Lee Odden shared a post  on attracting the attention of influencers online.  Whether we’re talking about influencers with mass appeal, or those that have a closer and more personal relationship with their followers, each person presents an opportunity to learn and grow.

That got me thinking, when it comes to the inner workings of an organization: what makes a good influencer, and would I consider myself an influencer at TopRank Online Marketing?  In my opinion, there are some key factors that make a good influencer.

• Building a strong relationship and trust with your peers is essential in influencing their decisions.
• Having a team centric attitude towards those that you work with (no man is an island).
• Presenting an attitude that says “I’m lucky to be here” vs. “the company is lucky to have me”.

There is a certain power that comes with having influence over your peers.  A power that should not under any circumstances be abused.  After all, what is power without trust?  The bigger question to ask is: why should you want to be an influencer?  There are many benefits to being an influential member of a team including flexibility, trust, decision making power, and proof of ability just to mention a few.  I would like to dive into some of the qualities that I think make a better influencer, as well as some signs that you may already be an influencer and didn’t even know it!

4 Tips for Becoming a Better Influencer

#1 Listen More Talk Less:  Think back to your “Sales 101” training, what is one of the most important rules that salespeople must always remember?  Don’t talk yourself out of the sale.  By listening to what your customers (or in this case peers) are really saying, you can  better formulate recommendations that will have the largest impact on both their perception of you as well as the project, situation, or problem at hand.

#2 Give Before You Get:  One thing that I have found is that you cannot automatically expect that your peers will want to help you.  I enjoy seeing the organization I work for from a variety of perspectives and not just my own.  Being aware of when your peers may be struggling or need help is the perfect opportunity to offer your help.  Offering assistance on a fairly consistent basis will show that you are invested in making each person on your team successful, and are not simply looking to pull ahead of the pack. This will in turn increase your team’s willingness to help when you’re in a bind.

#3 Work Outside Your Comfort Zone: As online marketers our industry evolving at a rapid pace.  What was best practices when you go to sleep, may be vastly different than when you wake up the next morning.  There will always be tactics that you don’t know but  by charging full ahead and working on projects or platforms that are outside of your standard comfort zone you will increase your adaptability and ability to think on your feet. Adaptability and quick problem solving will increase perception that you are an innovator within the organization.

#4 Suggest Collaboration: I’m sure you’ve heard the saying: “two heads or better than one” well imagine what you could do when your whole team puts their brains together.  When we come up with ideas on our own without collaborating it’s easy to self validate concepts and consider only one point of view on the subject.  By creating an open brainstorming you will give your fellow team members an opportunity to share their opinions and feel that they have an impact on the end product, recommendation, or solution.  What you will end up with will most likely be a better version of what team members would have come up with individually.

4 Signs That You’re An Influencer & Didn’t Know It

While many of us may be working on becoming a bigger asset or a bigger influencer within our organization there are many people who are influencers, but don’t know it.  What are some signs that you may be more influential than you think?

• When your company is making new hires they ask if there is anyone you know that might be a good fit for the organization.
• You’re asked to work on projects or tasks that are outside of your job description.  Proof that you are adaptable and can work freely.
• Team members come right out and ask what you think they should do as it relates to one of their clients or customers.
• You’ve formed a meaningful and unique relationship with each member of your team, which shows that you are interested in them as an individual.

Ashley Zeckman .

Pinterest is one of the hottest social media sites, currently with more than 16 million users worldwide. It’s an image-based virtual bulletin board that incorporates social networking. Users — called Pinners — create “boards” and then virtually pin images of their choosing. These images are commonly connected to articles, videos and other online content.

People love visuals, and Pinterest provides a creative outlet to share, recommend and engage with people — and brands. According to Mashable.com, the average Pinner is a 25-44-year-old woman with a household income of $100,000 or more. The most popular pins on Pinterest are related to fashion and food.

For businesses, and especially consumer-based businesses, Pinterest offers an opportunity for promotion in a visually stimulating environment. If your business or products can be creatively displayed and can convey the personality of your brand, then Pinterest could be a good outlet for you.

The best way to get started is to develop an account. Once you’ve done that, follow these guidelines:

• Define your boards: Organize your pin boards in products and categories that define the products and services you offer. Your boards do not have to promote a specific product, they can also teach consumers about your brand.

• Pin photos from your website. Ensure you source the original link. This is one of the cardinal rules of Pinterest: If you are using images from your site, or from another site, include a link to the original source. For example, if you found an image on Google images and pinned it to one of your boards, do not link to the image on Google images, link to the website where the image was originally posted.

• Write a caption for every image you post. The most frequently repinned photos have approximately 20-word captions. This provides you editorial space to promote your product or service.

• Interact and engage. Pinterest is a social networking site, so you need to “like” “repin” or “mention” others. This is a great way to broaden your reach and engage.

As with any social medium, once you have become familiar with Pinterest, I recommend developing a strategy and outreach plan so you can engage, pin and monitor with a purpose.

Julie Arnold is PR/social media director at LOOK Marketing in Melbourne, a full-service marketing communications, event marketing and merchandising design agency. Find more at www.facebook.com/LOOKMarketing.

If you’re using social media for your business, you should be measuring it. But don’t measure just for the sake of having metrics. Instead, measure your social activities so that you can learn what’s successful, what isn’t and how you can improve.

Social media is generally measured in two ways: ongoing analytics and campaign-focused metrics. Ongoing analytics, which track activity over time, are necessary for keeping up with the overall pulse of general conversation about your brand and company. Once your brand tracking is set up, you can just let it run and check in regularly to see how everything is going.

Campaign-focused metrics, on the other hand, can help you understand the impact of targeted marketing initiatives and will vary from campaign to campaign, depending on your goals for each. An effective social media measurement program will likely include both ongoing and campaign-specific measurement.

Here are five easy steps to get started tracking your own social media campaigns:

Related: 10 Little Known Social Media Tools You Should Be Using — Now

1. Determine your goals.
Before you jump into measuring every single tweet, photo and Facebook comment posted about your brand, first think about your goals with social media. What are you trying to accomplish or gain through these channels? Which channels are most relevant to those goals?

Social media can serve a variety of purposes, from broadcasting news and information, to answering customer questions and engaging with a community. Generate a list of what you’re trying to achieve from your social media efforts.

Next, think about what you want your audience to do with your content on the social channels you’re using. Are you trying to get them to read, share, reply, click, purchase or engage?

2. Create metrics to measure your goals.
Match your goals to actual metrics and behaviors you can measure. For example, if you’re trying to measure engagement, then what is the practical form of engagement you want to track? Is it retweets or reposts? Replies or comments? Clicks? Here are a few suggestions of behaviors to measure, based on a few common social media goals:

• If you want to measure awareness, then use metrics such as volume, reach, exposure and amplification. How far is your message spreading?
• If you want to measure engagement, then look for metrics around retweets, comments, replies and participants. How many people are participating, how often are they participating and in what forms are they participating?
• If your goal is to drive traffic to your website, track URL shares, clicks and conversions. Are people moving through social media to your external site and what do they do once they’re on your site?
• If your goal is to find advocates and fans, then track contributors and influence. Who is participating and what kind of impact do they have?
• If your goal is to increase your brand’s share of voice, then track your volume relative to your closest competitors. How much of the overall conversation around your industry or product category is about your brand?

[Read More...]

Jenn Deering Davis is a co-founder of San Francisco-based Union Metrics, the company behind TweetReach, a provider of Twitter analytics.

By Jeff Bullass

Facebook is about to raise $5 billion from investors.

When you are ask for that amount of money then you need to produce some reliable evidence and facts and figures about the current state of play that are accurate.

So Facebook has recently revealed the latest statistics about its business in its S1 Filing for its upcoming IPO.

Facebook doesn’t appear to be struggling for cash as it has recently paid Instagram $1 billion to purchase its mobile photo app business and Microsoft $550 million  for 650 patents (that it recently bought off Yahoo)

In a knowledge economy that rewards innovators, patents are becoming increasingly valuable to protect your intellectual properties from potential imitators.

Facebook’s Growth not Slowing

If you have a look at this graph from its latest filing for the upcoming IPO, it seems apparent that its growth is not slowing anytime soon and with over 7 billion people on the planet it still has a lot of  headroom for future growth.

This is despite Facebook being banned in China and the English speaking countries such as the US, Australia and the UK having almost no growth.

The Facebook mission which states “To make the world more open and connected” is obviously resonating with the earth’s netizens.

Here are latest statistics revealed by Facebook.

The Facts and Figures from Facebook

What numbers surprise you on this list?