Examples of how Facebook covers can be now used more for promotion
Did you know that companies can now use marketing messages and promotions on their Facebook page cover? This gives opportunities for front cover pages to become more engaging using offers and call to actions to fit in with their social media goals.
Looking to promote an event, run a competition, poll or coupon promotion? You can now promote it through your timeline cover alongside apps like Shortstack or other social media campaign tools). Remember though, that you should check the Facebook Page guidelines.
So we decided to review some Facebook timeline covers to showcase the different ways you can enhance your company page. Please share your views and other examples with us.
Next is an engaging page. They use their timeline to showcase their latest range of clothes, with competitions and very visual showcase…
How to benchmark your LinkedIn 'marketing funnel'
For B2B companies now realising the phenomenal lead generation opportunities offered by LinkedIn, a bigger question now looms;
“How do I optimise my presence to make it efficient and effective”
LinkedIn success requires an investment of time and resources
Jan Vermeiren’s Four steps to getting more from LinkedIn reveals the intensity of activity required to harness the valuable opportunities on this business network.
Reading through his Ebook, you can see the detail and granularity required to achieve success. It becomes clear that, as you adopt these best practices, LinkedIn requires attention. You can't just dip in and out.
Like all social media, you need to devote constant and focused attention if you are going to succeed in creating value.
Recommended Guide: Smarter LinkedIn…
The Facebook Studio 2013 winners for marketing creativity in different business categories
This year, Facebook ran their 'Facebook Studio Awards' to highlight the brands who are leveraging Facebook well and executed creative marketing campaigns, without the use of paid advertising.
We thought his alert would be useful to inspire ideas for Facebook pages you manage, so we have categorised the winning pages in different business categories.
The Top award was 'Blue' for Oreo's 100th anniversary campaign - with 100 ads over 100 days, sharing news stories projected on Times Square Billboards which were crowdsourced in real-time by their Fans.
Generated over 1 million Facebook interactions in 100 days and shares. Source: Facebook
We have categorised the award-winning campaigns so you can get your 'creative…
Creating Custom Audiences, Lookalikes on Facebook, relaxed rules on cover images and nested replies
There has been (yet another) exciting new development rolled out by Facebook for advertisers recently - the Lookalike audience targeting feature. As you may have read in the many announcements, Lookalikes are a way of you targeting audiences similar to your current customer database (or existing Facebook fans). In this post I thought I'd go beyond a summary of the features and show what's involved in setting it up. Here are my experiences, do share yours!
A short guide to setting up Facebook Lookalike targeting
To access the facility you need to be using Power Editor to create your ads and manage your target audiences. Power Editor is a free Chrome plugin. It's not the most user-friendly plugin out there but without it (or a third-party app which uses the Facebook API) you won't be able to access…
Signs that you need an integrated social media strategy...
The CEO wants 'a Facebook', 'a Twitter' and 'a blog'?
The reason? Because they saw competitor becoming more active. Sound familiar?
This request is perhaps less common than it was 5 years ago, but on the whole there is still a distinct lack of social media marketing strategy with plenty of examples of under-resourced social network pages or poor customer service delivery by social media - a problem when nearly half of adults now use the web to share grievances with brands.
The key to social media success is understanding the full scope and impact of social media, defining exactly what you are looking to achieve and then creating an integrated social media strategy to maximise results. In this blog post, I review some of these issues which are covered in more detail in our Social media marketing strategy – 7 Steps to Success Guide which I…
The development of Facebook's strategy including business and revenue model
You use Facebook, but have you ever wondered about its business model and how it has evolved? In my E-business and E-commerce Management book we have reviewed the development of Facebook for over six years now. I think it's still a great case study for both students and professionals to learn from, since it shows many of the success factors needed for a new start-up, including the risks of alienating users when their privacy needs are not listened to.
It’s incredible that Facebook now has more than a billion monthly active users worldwide, yet has fewer than 5,000 employees.
In this case study which we aim to keep up-to-date between the new editions of my books, I have structured the review of Facebook strategy using some of the customer-related aspects of the Business Model Canvas.
Facebook's value proposition
In 2013, the Facebook mission is simply to 'make…
No time to Tweet is an excuse, but make sure you have a plan
Do you suffer from 'tweeters block'? Do you find yourself trawling through dozens of websites trying to find something relevant to say to your audience? If the answer to either question is 'yes', it’s time you put together a content plan!
Even if content is not a problem, the quality of your feed and consistency of your message will be so much better if you plan ahead.
Your Twitter feed may look like a series of updates, but to your audience it’s telling a story about you and your business. They can read your tips, view your articles and see what you’re up to. They can see who you’re talking to and eavesdrop on your discussions.
If a potential client sees your Twitter feed, they need to have a…
What does Facebook Home mean for Marketers?
Mark Zuckerberg finally unveiled Facebook's mobile device strategy earlier in April.
After a continuous swirl of rumours speculating the arrival of the Facebook phone from when All Things D first reported on project ‘Buffy’ back in 2011, rather than building its own smartphone, as originally anticipated, Facebook has launched Home, its new software for Android operating systems.
The app will see users’ traditional home screen and menu replaced with ‘CoverFeed’, which displays Facebook notifications, images and message.
So why the decision to create software rather than hardware?
Free to download, the app can effectively be accessed by any of the 680m mobile users who own an Android device. As Zuckerberg said himself: 'We're not building a phone, and we're not…
Check the effectiveness of your company page with the new mobile page layout
Value/Importance: [rating=3]
Recommended link: Facebook new mobile layout
Our commentary on the new Facebook mobile design
Facebook has always worked hard to optimise mobile customer experience since this is a common access mode. In this update announced on 23rd April it has updated company pages so its users can find information efficiently on their mobile devices.
It's now live and these are some of the changes we can expect to benefit from:
More prominence of most used features and information such as photos and location - relevant for multichannel retailers.
The Top page now includes our 'Likes, Call Message and Share'.
Page owners will see benefits including their important posts (offers and videos) appearing higher on their page on mobile devices and easier switching between public and admin views.
…
Where do you start when seeking to establish your social networks
While much of the social media marketing advice on Smart Insights gives advice on social media best practices for companies that are already set up on social networks, some businesses are still venturing onto social platforms for the first time. If this is relevant for you or your clients, this introductory post is for you.
Understand how and when your users use social networks
If you’re online a lot you will probably have an innate built in idea of the demographics on the different platforms. If you are new to social you will need to do a bit of research beforehand. See these top 10 sources of digital marketing statistics or this free 2013 digital media usage data from comScore for useful research into how different ages and genders use different social networks.
You also need to bear in mind how…
