Tag: Social Media

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Did You Know That Share-ability Impacts Who Sees Your Facebook Updates?

Did you know that most likely only 15% of your Facebook Business Page status updates are actually seen on your fans’ walls? Scary isn’t it, to know that the time you spend in keeping your Facebook wall updated may actually have marginal impact. Why? It’s about EdgeRank and share-ability.

Just like Google has an algorithm to rack and stack websites to determine where they appear in the organic or unpaid search results, Facebook has an algorithm to determine when your updates will appear on the walls of subscribers and fans. Not everything you write will be shown, but why such a little amount and how can you get more updates to show?

A great article that explains this topic further and really digs into EdgeRank can be found at SiteProNews.

The bottom line is that the higher your EdgeRank the better your chance that others will actually see what you write and post to your Business Page’s wall. A very simplified explanation of EdgeRank is share-ability. If more people comment, like, link to, and share an update you’ve posted on your wall, the higher the EdgeRank and the more likely this update is to appear on the wall of people who have liked you or subscribe to your news feed.

One way to work to raise EdgeRank is to be specific in a status update and let the reader know what action you really want them to take upon reading your update. Do you want them to share it? Ask them to do that. Do you want them to like your update? Ask them to click like! If you are linking to a download back on your website – ask them to click in and download your paper. Be specific and make the action simple and easy to do.

Improving your EdgeRank is all about action that people take when they read your post. Make sure you are doing your part to help to raise your own EdgeRank by changing your wall post to be more share-able and actionable. EdgeRank will rise when you do so and are successful in engaging reader activity.

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HootSuite Adds Yammer to Networks List

HootSuite - Social Media ManagementHootSuite has recently added Google+ to its linkable social networks and now has just added Yammer as well.

Yammer is a business-related social network. Businesses like IBM are using Yammer for interaction between employees. With popularity growing, some are considering Yammer as a new place to network similar to LinkedIn. For now I haven’t heard many clients asking for Yammer updates but it is a social network worth taking a look at, and now especially since you can schedule updates to Yammer using HootSuite.

Yammer is free to use but does have paid models as well. You can find more out about Yammer by visiting their website. Yammer states “Whether it’s for teams to collaborate on projects, company-wide collaboration to accelerate your business, or an intranet replacement that connects your enterprise, Yammer provides  a variety of pricing plans to meet your needs.” Pricing goes from free to $5 a month and then to $15 per user per month.

As for HootSuite, I love the product and like that they are staying up-to-date in regards to which social networks to integrate with their platform. You can try HootSuite for free or move to one of their paid programs. Just click the image above to find out more about HootSuite and their pricing. If you buy their upgraded program, they’ll buy us lunch at McDonald’s.

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Is Social Media Worth the Time? How to Tell

When you are busy there is no easier and faster task you want to drop than to stop updating your social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, but is that wise? Before you drop updating social media sites, make sure you are not hurting your web presence first.

How can you tell if social media is not driving traffic and activity on your site? It all starts with analysis. If you don’t routinely watch your website statistics on Google Analytics, you should. For my site, I watch the Social Sources in the Traffic Sources button to check my referrals. If you don’t see referrals from Twitter or Facebook there, don’t stop updating those services yet until you look a bit further.

I use HootSuite for my social updates and I can run link click and follower share reports in the control panel. This gives me a  more clear view of what is happening specifically with Twitter. To check what is happening with Facebook, I login as an administrator and review my Insights report.

Based on what you see, you may decide to cut back activity to a lower level if the numbers are not measurable, but I would not stop either service altogether. Google and Bing do look for social updates and sharing activity as part of their organic rankings. If social media is taking up too much time, I would ramp back first to a comfortable level.  Specifically, I might recommend one update a day for Facebook and three updates a day for Twitter.

Should you stop social media updates all together? I would only recommend doing so if you really cannot support the activity level, you see zero link shares, and no referrals when you review a six month period. I would be very slow to stop updating your networks all together. I have found that once you lose readership, after you have actively worked to build it for quite a while, that to get back in the game again is almost like starting from scratch. It is better to slow your activity than to stop totally.

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What Social Media is NOT

My firm is actively involved in social media, not only for my own business, but as a content provider. From my experience I have found that clients typically misunderstand the purpose and have different expectations about using social media to promote their business.

Social Media is NOT:

  1. A platform for you to have every status update be a commercial about your services and products.
  2. One sided and all about you the business.
  3. Where you dominate and set the conversation.
  4. A sales lead generation platform.
  5. An after thought where you may post or update your profiles once a week or once a month.
  6. A self propelling site. Build it and they will join should not be your mantra.

Social Media IS:

  1. A great information exchange opportunity.
  2. Where you can soft-sell your services once you have established credibility.
  3. Enjoyable due to the richness of interaction with followers and fans.
  4. Can bring you business and networking opportunities.
  5. Consider it a public relations and branding tool.
  6. A marketing endeavor that should have a goal and purpose in your overall plan.
  7. Important as a part of your total online exposure.

If you are looking for well written and informative status updates and tweets for your Facebook page or Twitter account, make sure to check out our affordable service programs.