Author Archives: Jonathan Pollinger

Social Media Passions [Infographic]

Click here the Infographic below if you wish to view an enlarged version.

Facebook to launch Video Ads?

It’s rumoured that Facebook are going to launch 15 second Video Ads which will automatically play in your News Feed. They will be muted by default but users will be able to turn sound on if they wish. This suggests that Facebook are very conscious that autoplay video ads with sound could irritate and turn off users but without sound will they be attractive to brands?

Facebook is under increasing pressure from investors to deliver revenues that justify its share price and the launch of Video Ads would no doubt be attractive the the many brands that currently advertise on TV and YouTube. LinkedIn are the only other social network to offer video ads although these appear on the side bar and not directly in the News Feed (Home Page). It’s worth noting that hugely popular Google Adwords don’t contain videos or even images.

Video Ads would join the large array the existing portfolio of Facebook Ad formats:

Marketplace Ads
These are the Ads that you see on the right hand sidebar of Facebook and are similar in nature to Google Adwords.

Sponsored Stories
Sponsored stories are based on the activity of Friends. For example, if one of your Fans likes a Post on your Facebook Page their name and photo can be displayed to their Friends.

Facebook Offers
Facebook Offers allow businesses to promote a special deal or discount. When users claim an offer their Friends will be notified in their News Feeds.

Promoted Posts
Regular posts can be promoted directly from a Facebook Page (or Profile). This means that Page Posts will appear in more News Feeds than they would normally. They are purchased at a pre-set price rather than a pay-per-click basis.

Promoted Page Likes
Launched in April 2013, they are setup from the Admin Panel and attract new Likes to a Facebook Page. Like Promoted posts they are purchased at a pre-set price.

What do you think of Facebook Video Ads? Would they be attractive to you as a business or would they annoy you as a user?

Social Media abbreviations

Here’s a short glossary of Social Media industry and Twitter abbreviations. Not included are the numerous conversational abbreviations also used in text messages eg ROFL. If you have any more Social Media technical and business or any Twitter terms please let me know or add them to the Comments below. Thanks!

Social Media Industry:
FB = Facebook
LI = LinkedIn
SM = Social Media
SMM = Social Media Marketing
SMO = Social Media Optimization
UGC = User Generated Content
CGM = Consumer Generated Media
F2F = Face to Face
SMPR = Social Media Press Release

Twitter:
DM = Direct Message
RT = Retweet
MT = Modified Tweet
CC = Carbon-copy
HT = Hat Tip
FF = Follow Friday
TT = Translated Tweet

LinkedIn Today updated

LinkedIn Today has been updated and now provides new ways for readers to tailor content to their requirements and interests.

Regular readers of this blog will be aware that LinkedIn has been positioning itself as a source of news and information over the past year and this latest change is in line with their strategy of becoming a serious media company.

Four tabs now appear on LinkedIn Today – Your News, Influencer Posts, All Influencers and All Channels. LinkedIn members can now select 5 channels (previously called Topics) and 5 influencers that they wish to follow. Content from the chosen channels are published on the default Your News tab with posts from your selected Influencers displayed under the Influencer Posts tab. Members can use the remaining two tabs to view All Influencers and All Channels.

This approach provides tighter customisation than previously, where an algorithm was used to display personalised content. From each new tab it’s easy to follow new Channels and Influencers with buttons placed throughout the content. You can also visit an individual channel to view all its subject matter and you can Unfollow from there too. On the right hand side a navigation menu is provided to the other Channels and your selected channels are marked with a tick.

The new LinkedIn Today is a great source of current news, insights and content that you can Like, Comment on and Share with your professional network.

Kevin Gu, an associate product manager at LinkedIn says, “By following channels you will have access to timely and relevant professional news and insights that can help you stay one step ahead and be in the know on what’s trending in your professional network.”

12 reasons why you should USE LinkedIn

So you have a profile on LinkedIn but when was the last time you logged in and made use of what is known as ‘the professionals’ network’?

Here are 12 reasons why you should use LinkedIn and will hopefully encourage you to do so:

1. Keeping in touch – Keep tabs on your ex-colleagues, clients and contacts by reading your Home Page or Weekly Update email.
2. Networking – Use LinkedIn to find suppliers and advisers who may well do business with you in return.
3. Obtaining referrals – It’s easy to pass referrals to your network and of course there’s the opportunity to receive them too.
4. Contact information – Need contact info for a new prospect or existing client? No problem. You can check their LinkedIn profile for contact information, send them a message over LinkedIn if they’re a first degree connection or an InMail if they’re out of your network.
5. Obtaining relevant news on your industry – Use LinkedIn Today – it’s like a personalised newspaper and has just been updated – and LinkedIn Groups to find out gain valuable insights and to find out what’s going on in your sector.
6. Obtaining leads – Following a simple plan on a regular basis you can obtain leads and make sales. Find out more by attending one of my LinkedIn workshops.
7. Get hired – Having a strong presence on LinkedIn increases your chances of being hired as a freelancer or being offered a new job.
8. Good platform for demonstrating your expertise – Raise awareness of you skills and expertise by providing tips in Status Updates and getting involved in discussions in Groups.
9. Researching speakers and exhibitors – Find out about speakers and exhibitors before conferences and events to help you decide who to listen to and which stands to visit.
10. Connecting with delegates after network meetings – Use LinkedIn to connect with and strengthen relationships with people you’ve met at network meetings.
11. Attracting visitors to your website – Use your Contact Info to publish links to your website. Read Optmise your LinkedIn weblinks to learn how to do this.
12. Great recruitment tool – Use LinkedIn Advanced Search to find potential candidates or advertise in the Jobs section.

If you need help on optimising your profile I can help you in a face to face or online session. Give me a call on 01242 332016 or contact me using via the Connect page.

Glos Fire Chief to the rescue

Twitter can be a great way to ‘avoid the gatekeeper’ and contact high profile people directly but can also be used by people in the public eye to contact members of their community.

Thank you to Melanie Ballentyne aka @interestedb for sharing a great anecdote of how Jon Hall, Chief Fire Office for Gloucestershire aka @GlosFireChief contacted her directly to help resolve an issue with a fire alarm.

The story started early on Bank Holiday Sunday:

Any advice for a beeping 10 year fire alarm installed by @glosfire well under its due date but beeping rather a lot..

— Melanie Ballentyne (@interestedb) May 5, 2013

On seeing the tweet Jon Hall contacted Melanie using a Direct Message (DM) to offer advice on solving the problem. When it was apparent the fire alarm was defective he arranged for its replacement. Two fire officers arrived on Monday morning and fitted two new units. A great example of leadership and fantastic customer services through Twitter.

Cracking service from @glosfire 2 new spangly smoke alarms fitted! Well done and thanks @glosfirechief for exceptional customer relations! — Melanie Ballentyne (@interestedb) May 6, 2013

The story is rounded off with Jon Hall thanking his team publicly; an example of excellent employee communications.

Big thanks to Red Watch, Cheltenham East for making sure @interestedb and her dogs can sleep safely tonight!

— Jon Hall (@GlosFireChief) May 6, 2013

If you have any examples of great customer services via Twitter please post in the Comments below.

Don’t #ff like this

In all aspects of life there are codes that set the ground rules for how people should behave. Twitter is no exception; it has its own etiquette that users are expected to follow.

Part of Twitter etiquette is Follow Friday aka #ff for #FollowFriday where every Friday users recommend other people to follow. It started on the 16 January 2008 at a time when there were no ‘Who to follow’ recommendations and Twitter users were finding their feet.

Another part of Twitter etiquette is not to spam. Whatever the communication platform it’s bad practice to bombard numerous people with a message that they haven’t requested and aren’t expecting. Twitter is very clear on this and over 50% of The Twitter Rules concern Spam and Abuse.

So it’s not good practice to misuse Follow Friday by recommending yourself. One tweet would be inappropriate but to spam multiple Twitter users with a recommendation to follow yourself is a particularly bad idea. Yet, this is an approach taken by US Project @TruckinActivism who have a very worth cause of ‘Using Social Media to Connect Truckers & the General Public to Info about Missing Children.’ On Thursday 9 May they sent over 130 (I lost count at that point) consecutive tweets using #ff to recommend themselves.

Such a shame that an well respected organisation with such a noble aim is potentially alienating users and running the risk of having its account suspended by Twitter due to possible infringement of its rules.

What do you think of this approach? Please let me know in the Comments below.

10 tips on sharing your blog posts

If you’re blogging you’ll want to attract as many readers as possible to read and engage with your content. The two best ways to achieve this are to share your content across your social network and to encourage others to do the same. Here are 10 tips to encourage sharing and increase readership:

1. Share your latest blog post – Be sure to share your latest blog post across all your social networks. If your using WordPress you can use a plugin such as Publicize to automatically share a post when it’s published.
2. Share older updates – If you’ve been blogging for a while you’ll have interesting posts that are still relevant, so make sure to recycle your old posts by sharing them.
3. Share to Pinterest – Don’t forget Pinterest which is a great network for driving traffic to your blog. Include an attractive and engaging image in your blog post before pinning it to a Pinterest board.
4. Add photos to your blog links – Spice up your posts to Facebook, Google+ and Twitter by adding photos to your blog links to make them more attractive.
5. Use mentions and tagging – If you’re referring to people and companies use mentions to draw their attention to your posts. Don’t forget that LinkedIn now has mentions and you can mention using the + symbol on Google+.
6. Include social sharing buttons –  Make it easy for readers to share your blog posts by including social share buttons as well as a Buffer share button.
7. Encourage tweeting of blog content – Use clicktotweet to encourage people to tweet quotes from your blog posts.
8. Ask people to share at end of blog posts – Here’s a simple but effective tactic: In your newsletters or at the end of blog posts ask people to share eg retweet.
9. Set up Google+ authorship – To make your blog links appear more attractive in Google Search results and to improve your ranking add Google+ Authorship to your blog.
10. Focus on what’s popular – Use socialcrawlytics to discover which articles are being shared the most from your blog AND from your competitors blogs and websites. You can then focus on this content. You can also see which social networks are being shared to the most and focus on these.

If you have any other tips on sharing blog posts please add them to the Comments below. Thank you.
 

Change your Facebook Page name (even with more than 200 Likes)

With such a great news service from the likes of Mashable and The Next Web it’s not often that I publish an exclusive but here’s a minor piece of Facebook news that it seems no-one else has picked up on.

Up until now, if you wanted to change the name of your Facebook Page and you have more than 200 Likes it could be very difficult. In fact, Facebook Help states “You can’t currently change the name of a Page with 200 or more likes.”

The good news is that you can now put in a request to Facebook via the Admin Panel and if permission is granted, you can change the name of your Page no matter how many Likes you have.

The process for changing your Facebook Page name is as follows:

1. Go to your Admin Panel
2. Select Edit Page then Update Public Info
3. In the Basic Info section go to Name about half way down the Page
4. If less than 200 Likes change Edit the name in the Name field
5. If more than 200 Likes select the Request Change link
6. Check the ‘I understand the formatting guidelines for my Page’s new name’ box
7. Select the appropriate option under ‘Your Page name currently represents’
8. Check the ‘I would still like to change my Page name. I have documentation to demonstrate this change’ box
9. Enter ‘Your Desired Page Name’
10. Enter the reason for the name change from the drop down
11. Upload appropriate documentation such as a utility bill or phone bill.

Facebook will then let you know if your request has been approved; hopefully within a few days. If you have any questions on your Facebook Page please use the Ask a Question flyout on the left.

Police use social networks in appeal for missing person

Great to see Gloucestershire Constabulary using their social networks to appeal for help in finding missing persons. The public really latch onto messages like this and help spread information about the missing person. In the case below the Facebook post has received 207 shares and the tweet 37 retweets.

Missing from Fiddlers Green Lane -81 yr old lady, suffers from dementia. Blue jumper & vest, light blue trousers, grey hair. Inc 211 today

— Glos Police (@Glos_Police) April 28, 2013

When there is news the Police can use social networks to keep the public updated:

Janet Stevens has been found safe and well in Cheltenham.

— Glos Police (@Glos_Police) April 28, 2013

In this case, the woman as not found as a direct results of social media but a spokesperson for Gloucestershire Constabulary stated, “..we do feel with appeals for information on any matter that social media is a vital way of doing this and of keeping the public informed.”