How to run a successful Facebook contest
From How to Run A Successful Facebook Contest in 15 steps @ sociallystacked.com:
It's not secret that a Facebook contest done right can increase visibility and engagement. Equally important: contests can provide valuable customer information.
More in this infograph (click on the thumbnail for large format):
Cool Facebook idea: tag yourself in this infographic
Mindjet (http://www.mindjet.com/) produces software, services and apps that improve how people work together. Kudos for their use of a pretty, Jess3 made infographic for their Facebook Page cover photo:
But they've also used it with the "tag yourself in this photo" feature:
This tactic has its limits:
- a maximum amount of 50 people can be tagged in one Facebook photo
- the size of the cover photo and shared photos have their own, specific dimensions (in this case, a part of the drawing is lost)
From Facebook Cheat Sheet: Sizes and Dimensions @ dreamgrow.com:
The Cover Photo for Facebook’s timeline's ideal dimensions are
- Width: 851px
- Height: 315px
Facebook will take the centre of the image and cut it out accordingly. You can later adjust the horizontal (landscape images) or vertical (portrait images) position of the picture.
- Width: 403px
- Height: 403px
Facebook’s Timeline for Pages: how does it affect your FB strategy?
The roll-out last week of the new Timeline for Facebook Pages call for a revived approach to how brands use Facebook.
To recap, a quick overview of the most important changes.
What's gone:
Left-side menu with Tabs
Tabs no longer appear in a left-side menu. Applications and tabs appear as “favorites” beneath cover photo as thumbnails. You select four to display.
Deal with reduced tab visibility by using fewer but better Facebook apps focusing on the 2-3 apps that can be visible ‘above the fold’ on your page.
Default landing tabs
Overcome the inability to set default landing tabs for apps (such as a splash page app) with more Facebook advertising to guide people to your Facebook apps.
What's changed:
New sizes for visuals
- Branded cover photo: 851x315 pixels
- profile pic: 125X125 pixels
- Tab apps and content: 810 pixel width
- App icons: 111×74 pixels
What's new:
Cover photo
The branded cover photo allows for maximum creativity. Rethink how you present yourself on Facebook. Be careful not to break Facebook's terms: cover photos cannot contain price or promotional information, contact info, calls to action or references to any Facebook features like ‘Like’ or ‘Share’.
Private messages from your fans
Fans and non-fans alike can send a direct, private message to the Page. This feature can be disabled.
Use private messages between brand and user to deal with any support enquiries. It could de-clutter your Timeline from support inquiries, but be careful not to frustrate your Fans by not answering their requests in time.
Pinned and starred posts
Feature priority content by using the new ‘pin’ feature that allows a post to remain at the top of your page for 7 days.
Pinned posts keep important stories at the top of the highlights feed for up to 7 days.
Page posts can also be ‘starred’. Starring makes a post go full width across the highlights feed to prominently feature the story.
Timeline
Timeline, not only adds the date but also automatically inserts geo-targeted posts for fans in that country/city. Publish the life story of your business of your through milestone events in a timeline.
According to Social@Ogilvy, the brand world will soon be divided into those who fully "adopt" Timeline, and those who simply "migrate" their old strategy and ways of working to the new feature set. Brands looking to adopt must consider and prepare for the hidden implications of Timeline - reallocation of resources, increased creative involvement, a reset of content process, the new profile of community managers and more.
Check out their most recent Slideshare presentation for a summary of the Pages changes and the hidden implications of Facebook Timeline for brands.
Google Plus for small and medium-sized companies
From Flowtown's Small Business Social Media Cheat Sheet:
Google+ is a social network operated by Google with profiles, status updates, circles, hangouts and sparks.
- Pros: easy way to interact with clients and customers. Can be integrated with other Google applications.
- Cons: Administration is difficult and some small business owners find most clients don't use Google+
How to begin:
- Google+ provides a step-by-step guide to setting up your Google+ pages with the ability to customize your page's public profile.
- Add team members, VIPs, and customers to separate Google+ circles to organize your news feeds.
- Connect your Google+ page to your website using the Google+ badge.
- Begin posting content such as status updates, videos or photos to your Google+ page.
Twitter conversations, displayed as actual conversations
The one thing that's missing from Twitter's big Fly update, is the ability to display conversations on Twitter as such. To be honest, spending time on Twitter often feels like sitting on a bus with fifty other people, who are all on their cellphones talking to fifty other people. You'll miss out half of most conversations.
Except if you use Twitter Viewer by Aaron Swartz (@aaronsw).
Example:
How to customise a Google+ Page
Ever since Google opened up the Google+ platform to business, companies (including Belgian ones) have been creating their own pages.
Here's the conversity Google+ Page, sharing useful information about how companies can use Google+ effectively:
From "Creating, Using & Promoting Google+ Pages properly" by Gabriel Vasile:
To go from your personal profile to one of your page, click on the small down arrow under your name.
Edit your page profile by adding an ‘introduction’, contact info and website. To do this simply click on the blue ‘edit profile’ button.
Your bio allows you to put in your entire service offering. Make it count. It even has a full rich text editor so you can bold, underline and italicize your text, input hyperlinks, bulleting and numbers.
Add Scrapbook Photos. To add images to create a ‘photostrip’ effect, click on the blue ‘edit profile’ button and then click ‘Add some photos here’. See how to make the photostrip effect
If you want to show geo location information in newly uploaded albums and photos, be sure to check the box under the ‘Photo’s’ tab when editing your page.
Set up a short URL or redirect of some kind that’s memorable. For example for my +Creative Web Design page, I will create www.creativewebdesign.ro/+. That will be easier for everybody to share.
By the same author:
How to integrate social into your corporate website
According to Altimeter's Jeremiah Owyang, the evolution of integrating social into your website is getting closer to maturity.
So far, he sees websites who integrate "social" do either of these:
- Social linking e.g. by using "Follow us on Facebook" buttons. Owyang: "Companies that link away, are sending away their decade of hard earned investments getting customers to come to their website."
- Social aggregation, the process of collecting content and trusted discussion from multiple social platforms, like Facebook, Twitter or blogs. Owyang sees three ways of doing so: Basic Feeds (e.g. "What people our saying about this topic", unmoderated), Curated Aggregation (e.g. pulling in Twitter feeds to show how people are reacting to this content), and Contextual Aggregation (e.g. social sign-on with Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn).
- Social publishing: publishing all the information back out. Passive Sharing (allowing people to share or "like" whenever they feel like it), Active Sharing (encouraging people to share it by making it easy for them)
- Social Context: really personalised information based on their online behaviour and preferences. Two kinds: social content (based upon their profile), and social and contextual content (based upon the people I know and trust, e.g. Amazon recommendations).
- Seamless integration where you can't tell the difference between the social web and the corporate website. Content will just assemble based on where you are.
Hear the full story in this recorded webinar:
Secrets of Engagement: Leverage Social to Unlock User Value on Your Site from Janrain on Vimeo.
Facebook’s Promotion Guidelines: your contests might get your Page deleted
You will not communicate about or administer a promotion on Facebook if:The promotion, if a sweepstakes, is open to individuals residing in Belgium, Norway, Sweden, or India;
- You cannot: Condition entry in the promotion upon a user providing content on Facebook, such as posting on a Wall of a Page, uploading a photo, or posting a status update.
- You can: Use a third party application to condition entry to the promotion upon a user providing content to the application. For example, you may administer a photo contest whereby a user uploads a photo to a third-party application to enter the contest.
- You cannot: Administer a promotion that users automatically enter by liking your Page, checking in to your Place or connecting to your Platform integration.
- You can: Require entrants to like your Page, check in to your Place or connect to your Platform integration before they provide their full entry information, such as name and contact information.
- You cannot: Notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles or Pages.
- You can: Collect an email or address through the third-party application for the promotion in order to contact the winner by email or standard mail.
- You cannot: Instruct people (in the rules or elsewhere) to sign up for a Facebook account before they enter the promotion.
- You can: Instruct users to visit the third-party application to enter the promotion (as described in Section 2.3.2.1). Since users must have a Facebook account in order to access an application on the Facebook Platform, if you give this instruction, they will be prompted to sign up for a Facebook account if they do not already have one.
How Klout measures individuals’ social reach
Klout.com is an online (and free) web tool that helps you rank people who talk about your products or services in social media. Recently, their "Klout Score" metric started including Facebook in the
score analysis. This is what that looks like for my personal accounts in terms of "true reach" (= size of my engaged audience) and the amplification potential of my messages (= likelihood that my content will be acted upon) .
Klout does not just measure influence by counting the number of friends or followers on Facebook or Twitter, but by the ability to drive action. Examples:
- Reach: followers, friends, mention %, and retweet %
- Amplication: retweets, mention count, unique messages retweeted, in/outbound message ration, Facebook likes, and Facebook comments
Someone's true network, in other words, is not made up by the sheer volume of friends or followers, but by retweeters, likers and commenters.