Tag: Social Media

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How Much Social Interaction Do You Really Need on Twitter or Facebook?

How much hands on fan interaction do you really need on your Twitter or Facebook business page? In my opinion, it depends on how large your fan base is. Here are some general guidelines to consider.

Twitter

under 100 followers – take time the first 30 days or more to follow people, sort them into lists, try to engage other writers and your followers. If you do not engage with people, your fan numbers will not grow. You may add one or two fans a month, but will in most cases your numbers will simple stay at a low level.

over 100 followers and up – your fan base with grow the more time you invest in interaction. I like five to ten tweets a day and then engagement with followers three times a week. For my own personal account I interact with followers on a daily basis, but if you don’t have the budget three days a week will still work out fine.

Facebook

under 100 followers – you will really need to buy ads to try to build your fan base. Try Facebook pay per click using sponsored stories. Be aware that you will add fans quickly, but may lose up to one third of your new fans when you stop advertising. I am not sure as to why, but this is what I have seen happen. If you do nothing, you may add only one fan a month. After you get 100 followers fans will grow at a steady rate, but only if your content is good. You don’t even need to spend a lot of time interacting with fans once you hit this level, it seems to be more a factor of the quality of your content.

over 100 followers and up – the frequency of posts as you get to this level appears to be important. One or two status updates a day appear to simply get lost in the noise that is now part of the Facebook timeline. I recommend five updates a day. I have not seen a huge increase of fans based on interacting with them, growth seems to be more a factor of memorable content versus engagement.

I invite you to check out our Twitter and Facebook page management services to see if we might be a good match for your business’ social media needs. You’ll find that we provide a number of service engagement levels at affordable prices.

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What You Can Expect From Social Media

I have had a few clients say “Facebook is not working for me, I am not making any sales from it!”  It is important to understand what Facebook is and what Facebook is not. I do not consider Facebook, at this time, a strong lead generation tool. That being said, I do recommend that every business have a Facebook Business Page and actively work to connect with client’s and prospects.

Facebook is about connections and creating web authority and a reputation. Facebook is a place for prospects and customers to interact, share information and insights, ask questions, and get to know each other on a more personal level. Now, don’t flame me just yet if you disagree, I have personally done business on Facebook, but creating sales is not the real purpose for Facebook. From my point of view there is no better tool for lead generation than Google AdWords and Facebook is not Google AdWords.

“So if Facebook is not a strong lead generating tool then why should I use it?”  You will want to use Facebook as this is where your prospects and customers are hanging out. By exposing people to your products, services, and your business culture, you can move them off Facebook and into your website where your message is more tightly focused and is about lead generation.

Consider Facebook as a snap shot, a gateway, a teaser, an introduction to your business. With the right impression on Facebook you can encourage a migration to your website where your message is more selling focused.

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HootSuite Moves To A Paid Model

If you are serious about social networking and social media then you are probably using HootSuite already. If you are not, HootSuite is our application of choice for our various writers and to house our myriad of client accounts.

HootSuite has been free for the last two years and we have enjoyed and really used the service. In fact is wasn’t until Facebook chopped Fan Page posting by third parties that we really found out just how much we depend on the application to manage our growing social media enterprise.

In the next seven days if you use HootSuite, you will be forced to choose either the free restricted use option or will have to move to the Pro paid option that is based on a pricey fee structure for team members. You get yourself free and four more team members for $15 each. Add another member and it is $30 per member up to a cap. Ouch that can get expensive for certain businesses ours included.

Social media is here to stay and our service offerings and number of clients is steadily growing with HootSuite, even the paid Pro version we can quickly and effectively do the work we need to do. I consider HootSuite and integral part of our service offerings.

Please note HootSuite will pay me a small commission if you sign up for a Pro account, but that is not my reason for writing this post.

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Top Social Media Tools for Teams

If you are doing team work on social media accounts what are the most effective tools to use? For me, I like HootSuite, but I have looked at others. This post features three services you may want to consider for your own team’s use.

HootSuite
This is by far my favorite and then one that my team of six people uses to manage clients’ social media accounts. HootSuite used to be totally free, but now has a paid option. For personal users, you can still use HootSuite free, but for business team users such as myself you will pay based on the number of team members. We will soon be paying just a little under $100 a month for access to this online service. But we have many accounts and six team members working on the same account. You can check out HootSuite now.

CoTweet
This is a nice online application that is free as well to consider if you have just one or two team members and need to load multiple Twitter accounts. It does not offer Facebook Business Page features, but great for Twitter. The interface is easy to use and does allow you to review pending updates and sent updates as well as your streams. You can check out CoTweet now. Although I do not like the interface as much as I do the one at HootSuite for small teams using Twitter only this would be adequate and totally free.

I have looked at other applications but this post is about team social media work so TweetDeck although popular is not a good fit as it does not allow team collaboration. If you have one you really like, leave the name and link in the comments.

Please note that HootSuite will pay me a small commission, but only if you sign up for a Pro account.