Don’t Make a Personal Business Profile on Facebook

It isn’t uncommon that you may notice that a brand has mistakenly created a personal profile page for their business. This means instead of accruing “Likes,” this page will actually be giving and receiving friend requests. The problem with this is simple: it is against Facebook Terms of Service. This may not seem like a problem, but violating their terms can have your personal page and business page kicked off of the social network. If you have accidentally created a personal profile for your business, make sure you create a business page instead and delete the personal page. You have access to great analytics and will gain “Likes” instead of having to request users. Contact PMC if you need assistance creating and managing a Facebook brand page.

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Use Google Friend Connect to Build Your Community

When you visit a blog or website, you may notice a small box in the sidebar named Google Friend Connect. This widget allows visitors who enjoy your website to become part of your online community. Those who sign up and become members may log in to your website with existing accounts on Twitter, Google, Yahoo, etc. They are then able to create their own profiles and can build relationships with each other through direct messages. Members can become socially active on your site if you allow them to post comments, rate material and share links of their own! You can also get a better feel of who is viewing your website by sending out polls to those who signed up for Google Friend Connect. Then when you want to create newsletters for them, you’ll have a better idea of their interests. Google Friend Connect is a great tool for community building. For more information, check out the Google Friend Connect overview.

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Video Messages in Google+

Google+ lets you record videos into your stream. Now you can create a video directly from your Google+ profile and decide which circles you would like to share it with! To access this tool, follow these instructions:

• Click on the box as you would if you were going to update your status.
• In the lower right hand side, there are 4 options. Click the 2nd one from the left. (It is a box with the play arrow inside of it.)
• From the dropdown menu, press “Record video.”
• Follow the prompts.

VOILA. You can now avoid YouTube all together and record a video directly into your Google+.

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Add Social Sharing Buttons to Your Blog

Do you blog? If you do, then you should already know how important having social sharing buttons are to spreading your content! These buttons allow readers to share your content and posts with just a click of the mouse. This makes spreading your content on Twitter, Facebook and even through an e-mail a simple task. If your users are forced to copy and paste and take time out of their day to respost or share YOUR content, chances are they won’t. So do yourself a favor, install social sharing widgets or plugins and watch your content spread!

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Craft Content Specifically to be Shared

Whether you are talking about Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Tumblr or any other social site your brand may be using, create content for your fans to share. We all enjoy seeing high views and comments, but shares may be overlooked. The more your content is shared, the more exposure your brand will receive. If a fan's friend happens to enjoy your content, they will share it also. Having your content shared turns those fans and followers into brand ambassadors, without them even knowing it! Create more content to be shared, and don’t be afraid to ask them to share it!

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Google+ Profile Images

On Facebook, if you click on a brand's profile image it will load all the images in that album. With Google+, if a brand uploads more than one photo to their profile pictures album, you can switch them by simply clicking. Go to a page like Pepsi or Coca Cola. They both have more than one profile picture uploaded. By clicking on their profile picture, you can cycle between the images they have already uploaded. So if you want to surprise your visitors, upload a few pictures! Get creative! Try uploading a bunch and make it like a photo flip-book.

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Learn When Your Audience is Watching

Social media from a business standpoint is all about engaging the consumer. Would you schedule a post for 3:00 am? Chances are no, simply because your target market is most likely asleep at that time. You want your posts to go up when a large portion of your following is online. There is no simple way to find out when this is. You may need to use trial and error, posting at different times during the day and comparing engagement or interactions with your posts. If you aren’t finding any solid correlation with the times, you may need to change the type of content you are posting. Find out when your viewers are typically online and use that as a basis for posting your content!

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Have a Third Party Backup Plan

When using a third party posting platform such as Hootsuite, Socialoomph or even TweetDeck, problems can arise that are out of your control. We love using these platforms for their functions and features, as it makes managing multiple social sites a breeze, but what happens when the platform is under maintenance or down? This can pose a problem in your managing ability if your posts that were scheduled, cannot be posted. Make sure you come up with a backup plan in case your platform fails. Do you write down your posts? Do you copy them to a word document? Making sure you have content ready to be posted in case of a failure is important to keeping your social sites consistent. What does your backup plan look like?

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Use Google+ Hangouts for your Business

Google+ may be lagging behind Facebook in users, but the features of Google+ make it a very good platform for community growth. You can chat with your consumers in a hangout session and +1 an article or start a conversation on your page. Google+ is great for connecting with your following! There has been a rumor that in the near future, any brand or company using a Google+ Page for business may rank higher within the Google search engine than a Facebook brand page. Whether this is true or not, Google+ makes community engagement easy and more personal with hangouts.

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