Social Media Tips

How to help reduce Twitter spam

There’s been plenty of Twitter spam around lately so to help reduce the chance of your account being hacked and used by spammers here are a couple of tips. They’ll make your account more secure and help reduce the overall amount of Twitter spam.

1. Change your Twitter password to a strong one ie it should contain a capital letter and a number. A strong password reduces the chances of a spammer being able to crack your password and access you account.
2. Review the applications you’ve authorised and revoke those you no longer need. Twitter applications can be useful - they may be tools or allow you to have easy access to a website. However, they can be hacked or malicious and provide access to your Twitter account.

To change your password and review your applications on Twitter:

• Login to www.twitter.com.
• Select Edit Settings on your Profile Page or the Head and Shoulders icon on the right of the top menu.

• Select Settings.
• From the left hand menu select Password.
• Enter Current password on the right, followed by New password and Verify password.
• Select Save changes and you’re done.

While you are in Settings you can review your apps:

• Select Apps from left hand menu.
• Your authorised apps are listed on the right.
• For those you no longer require select Revoke access and the apps will no longer be connected with your account.

It’s good practice to change your social network passwords on a regular basis to reduce the risk of your social media accounts being used by others and your personal information being stolen. Whatever you do don’t use the same password for all your social network profiles.

Do you want to learn more about Twitter for your business? Then check out my monthly Twitter Masterclasses in Cheltenham.

How to create and use Twitter lists

Twitter lists help you organise people and their tweets into groups. Lists can either be public which people can subscribe to or private which can only be viewed by the creator of the list. Viewing the timeline of a list will show you a stream of tweets from the users on that list. It’s really straightforward to add someone to a Twitter list:

1) Select the head and shoulders icon that represents the profile of the person you wish to add
2) Select the drop down menu
3) The select ‘Add or remove from lists’
4) You can then create a new list or select a tick box to add the person to one of your existing Twitter Lists

You can also create a new list from your Lists page which you can access via Lists on your Profile page. You can view tweets from any Lists on this page by selecting it. You can have up to 20 Twitter lists and a maximum number of 500 people per list.

Twitter lists can be used in a number of ways:

Segment people your following - create lists for suppliers, prospects, clients  or people that tweet about a particular subject. This helps you focus on a particular type of person and their tweets.

Group people you’re not following - you don’t have to be following someone to add them to a list. For example, if might be useful to have a list of local people but you might not want to follow them all.

Research - you don’t always need to create your own lists as often someone has done the work so you can subscribe or follow their public lists. For example, if you want to find out which businesses in Cheltenham are on Twitter you can subscribe to @glosjobs glosbiz lists.

Monitor the competition - you could create a private lists of your competitors making it easier to see keep an eye on their activity.

Engage with your clients - set up a private list of your clients making it easier to keep in touch and engage in conversation.

Pro tip: If you use Tweet Deck or Hoot Suite you can add a column containing a list making lists more accessible than they are on twitter.com.

For more help with Twitter download my 100 Twitter tips or attend one of my regular Cheltenham social media workshops.

Take advantage of new LinkedIn design

Business focussed social network LinkedIn has undergone a number of changes lately, mainly around the design which has made the look and feel more modern and clean. There is more focus on news and information and some features such as Network Statistics have been removed.

Here’s how to take advantage of the new design:

Profile
Your profile photo is more prominent - make your photo stand out by having a professionally taken head and shoulders shot. I work with and recommend Look Again.

The heading (underneath your name) has less space - review your heading and edit to make it sit on one line. Remember that it is a heading, not necessarily a job title.

The Summary section is more prominent - take this opportunity to review your Summary. Make it concise, readable and powerful. It’s an opportunity to help me learn about you.

Homepage
Newsfeed is less cluttered - now that Twitter updates are no longer displayed in LinkedIn, your activity and status updates are now more visible. So take advantage and get noticed by doing a daily status update.

Fine tune your updates - you can now filter your updates by using the All Updates drop down menu on the top right of your News Feed. Use this to reduce unwanted updates.

LinkedIn today at top of news feed - 3 stories from LinkedIn today are now published at the top of your news feed. Take the opportunity to click some headlines and learn from the articles that are personalised for you.

People you may know - on the top and bottom of the right hand column there are three people that LinkedIn suggest you might know. This makes it quick and easy to see if it’s appropriate for you to connect with them. If you want more than three then just click the ‘See more’ link to be taken to the People You May Know page.

Your LinkedIn network - although Network Statistics have been removed the number of your connections and new people in your network is now displayed on the right. You might be surprised at the number of people your network links you to. You can select this area to be taken to you Contacts Page; a handy shortcut.

To learn how you can use LinkedIn to network, raise awareness of you and your business and to find leads you might be interested in attending my monthly LinkedIn workshop in Cheltenham.

5 reasons to join Pinterest today!

Pinterest is a fast growing social network that can help a business increase sales particularly if it sells visual products such as jewellery, food, drink, shoes, clothing, paintings, designs or similar products. Read about Oreck which is increasing sales using Pinterest to raise brand awareness and encourage visitors to its website.

1) Easy to sign up - Invites are no longer needed to join Pinterest and you can sign up straight away. Sign up is quick and easy if you use your Facebook or Twitter login details.

2) Low maintenance - There is no messaging facility on Pinterest so you don’t need to check for messages. It helps to pin regularly but it’s not essential.

3) Great for encouraging visitors to your website - According to Shareaholic’s website traffic report for July, Pinterest sends more traffic to websites than Twitter or Bing.

4) Pinterest users purchase - 79% of Pinterest users more likely to buy items they’ve seen on Pinterest compared with Facebook users, according to SteelHouse’s 2012 Social Shopping Survey,

5) Increases your visibility - Having a presence on Pinterest makes it more likely you’ll show up in Google Search. It’s an additional web property related to your brand that can be indexed. In fact, Pinterest is particular good for SEO (Search engine optimisation) so it can also help your website rank higher in search results.

To learn more about how Pinterest can help your business, come along to one of my regular Pinterest workshops in Cheltenham or ask me about one to one training.

5 ways to encourage interaction on Facebook

Social media is all about interacting with your audience and on Facebook this means your fans. Your posts should be crafted in such a way that they create a reaction from your audience. On Facebook this takes the form of Liking, Commenting or best of all Sharing your posts. The more fans interact with your posts, the more likely it is that Facebook will feature your posts in your fans’ newsfeeds. This is important as it helps increase visibility of your brand.

This interaction is often called engagement by social media experts although for me this is more about creating feelings and establishing an emotional response with your fans. However, there is no doubt that interaction leads to engagement.

Without further ado here are 5 ways to increase interaction on Facebook:

1) Ask questions - It’s a simple but effective technique. Fans like answering questions and can use Comments to reply. A good tactic is to make a statement, for example offer an opinion, and then ask your fans what they think.

2) Keep your posts concise - Twitter’s success is built on the 140 character limit to posts. Very short posts on Facebook tend to create more engagement than longer ones. A recent survey from Buddy Media showed that posts of 80 characters or less had 27% higher engagement rates.

3) Use the full web address - This might seem to contradict point 2 but using a URL shortener on Facebook posts can result in up to 94% less engagement according to Kissmetrics. Fans like to know which website they are being directed to so try and use the full web address.

4) Ask people to engage - Using ‘calls to action’ and action words results in higher engagement. Action words such as Like, Comment, Share, Post, Submit and phrases such as Tell Us and Ask Us work well.

5) Post at the weekend - You might think that business content should only be posted during during the working week. Yet an infographic from Kissmetrics shows that the most sharing of posts occurs on a Saturdays.

You can learn more about interaction and engagement on Facebook at my regular workshops in Cheltenham at £87 per person. Go here for further information and booking or ask me about one to one training.

Share your updates with anyone on Google+

Unlike Facebook or Twitter where you can only to communicate to members of the respective networks, Google+ allows you to send updates to anyone with an email address. As well as posting to  individuals or Circles you can message a person at their email address.

Recipients of such emails can read the message they are sent and are also invited to join Google+. You can post to Circles and to email addresses simultaneously; for example, you could send a message to a Prospects Circle together with one or more email addresses.

You can also add people who aren’t on Google+ to Circles by adding their email addresses. When you post an email address to a Circle you’ll be asked if you want to email your update in the same way as if you’d shared directly to their email address.

For more tips on Google+ view my 100 Google+ tips or book onto an upcoming workshop in Cheltenham.

10 tips for getting more Twitter followers

A question I’m often asked is how to get more followers on Twitter. A large audience on Twitter can give you more impact for the same amount of effort. It takes the same amount of time to craft and send a tweet for 5 followers as it does to 5000. Quality is also important as you want to attract an audience that’s receptive to your tweets. Follow the following 10 tips to attract quality followers:

1. Quality content - tweets that are valued get noticed. They’ll be retweeted which will bring you more followers.
2. Key words - include key words relating to your business and sector in your tweets. This will help you show up more in search results.
3. Optimised profile - use your Bio to give people reasons to follow you. Tell people what you tweet about.
4. Twitter id on other social networks - for example, ensure your Twitter URL is listed on your Facebook Page. All fields in the About section on Facebook support hyperlinks.
5. Twitter button on your LinkedIn profile - Once added a Follow button is displayed on your LinkedIn profile. This makes it easy for visitors to your profile to follow you.
6. A reason to follow you - don’t just say ‘Follow us on Twitter’. Say follow us on Twitter for great tips, fun competitions, special offers etc - describe the benefits to your audience.
7. Mention popular accounts  - make your tweets more visible by tagging influential users in your tweets.
8. Embed tweets on your website or blog - embedded tweets can add value to your website or blog - see 4 great ideas for embedded tweets. All buttons are live so if you embed your own tweets visitors can easily select the Follow button without having to visit your profile on Twitter.
9. URL on business cards - ensure that your Twitter id is published on your business card.
10. Promoted Ads - all the above are free but if you have budget then you can pay Twitter to have your account suggested to potential followers using promoted accounts.

To learn more about using Twitter for marketing your business book yourself onto one of my Twitter Masterclasses which are run every month in Cheltenham.

5 top tips for great SEO using social media

Social media is becoming increasingly significant when it comes to search engine optimisation or SEO as it’s known. If you want 5 tips on improving the ranking of your website on search engines, particularly Google Search, read on:

1. Apply your keyword strategy to social media - use the same key words you use on your website on your social network profiles and in your posts, updates and tweets.
2. Write a blog - Write regular posts and if possible incorporate in your website.
3. Add social share buttons - encourage sharing of your content by adding social share buttons to your blog posts and website.
4. Increase your followers and fans - the larger your readership the more likely it is that your content will be shared.
5. Add links to your tweets and updates - regularly link back to your website in your posts, updates and tweets.

If you have any social media SEO tips you’d like to share please add them to the Comments below or get in touch directly.

5 ways to use Facebook apps

Following the introduction of Timeline, apps (previously called tabs) have become a really attractive feature for owners of Facebook Pages. They are now more visible and accessible with large icons - which you can customise - at the top of the Page. The apps themselves are now larger with a width of 810px. There are no ads or sidebars so no distractions meaning fans can now focus on the app content. Pro-tip: You can use Facebook Ads to link directly to your tab to increase visitors.

Below are a 5 ideas on how you can use them:

1. Sell your products - set up a shop on Facebook to sell your products. Here’s an example from the Flissitations Crafty Creations Page which uses the free Etsy Theme Shop app.
2. Encourage newsletter sign-ups - add a sign-up form for your newsletter to increase your readership - You can read more about this in a previous article and here’s the app I use on the Intranet Future Facebook Page.
3. Showcase your videos - let your fans watch your videos on Facebook. Here’s redbull.tv from the Red Bull Facebook Page.
4. Run a competition - encourage people to enter a competition. Here’s a Cheekiest Smile Photo Competition which I helped set up for the Nametags4u Facebook Page this month.
5. Ask for customer feedback - obtain feedback from your customers so you can help them. Here’s the Customer Care tab from the Domino’s Pizza UK Facebook Page.

Working with our partners we also design and produce complete Facebook Pages or individual apps - more info and prices. For help with using Facebook for marketing and customer services you can book a consultation at £70 per hour or attend one of my Facebook workshops for £87.

You can now change your Facebook Page URL and Name

Up until last month it wasn’t easy to change your username (aka Facebook Page URL) after it had been set as you had to contact Facebook. But now Page Admins can change their Page username in the Admin panel. You can only do this once though so make sure you have the username you want. Reasons for changing the username of a Page might include a spelling mistake or company/organisation name change.

For example, following the name change of Cheltenham Social Media Club to #wearesocialclub the URL for visiting the Facebook Page is now facebook.com/wearesocialclub.

To change the username of your Page go to http://facebook.com/username or Edit Page/Update Info/Username/Change username.

Furthermore, restrictions on changing the Facebook Page name - name displayed at top of Page - have now been eased and as long as you have less than 200 Likes you can amend the name as many times as you like. Again, you might want to do this following a business or organisation name change.

To change your Page Name go to Edit Page/Update Info/Name.