Is Your Social Media Effort Working?

Tracking social media success has been an elusive path. There are tools out there that you can pay hundreds of dollars for, but they often require a steep learning curve as well as a monthly financial commitment.

You can actually track social media results using free analysis tools. The key is to know what to look for and how to bring it all together so it can help you make social media decisions.

Salesforce has compiled the Social Media Analytics: The Small Business Guide to Metrics & Tools. They gathered some of the best experts in the industry and asked them how to monitor social media success. Their answers are simple and straightforward. They tell you:

Why measure website traffic alone is not enough.

How to determine engagement of your connections.

How to gauge social media success in major networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Read the guide on the Salesforce website and gain some great tools for keeping your social media on track!

4 Simple Steps to Start Using Social Media

Social media marketing has become so common place that “social media coordinator” is the newest title on the job market. Businesses today who are not using social media are seen as behind the times. At Landau Design we frequently get asked, “So how do I start using social media to grow my business?”

Here are 4 simple steps you can follow to get yourself on the social media bandwagon.

1) Commit to a schedule

Like any change in business, the first step is figure out how much time you are willing to commit to make it happen. Social media can be a huge time drain, which is why most companies avoid it. But it doesn’t have to be. Be honest about how much time you have to invest, and base your social media plan on the resources you have available. Even 20 minutes a week is better than nothing.

If you really believe you have no time, read Finding Time to Engage in Social Media to discover some untapped time slots.

2) Define your goals

Why are you engaging in social media? Some common goals are:

• You just want to see what everybody is talking about.
• It is part of your SEO strategy.
• You want to generate new business leads.
• You are trying to create more buzz around your company.
• You want to learn more about how your competitors use social media.

Before you can determine what outlets are best for your company, you first have to decide what you want in return for your participation. The following articles may assist you in determining your social media objectives:

• Are People Really Using Social Media?
• Why Do Corporations Want their Executives to Use Social Media?

3) Choose your outlets

Choosing your social media outlets can be a tricky business. You want to consider the time you have and your objectives. You should not just do what others are doing because it’s “in”. For example, many people jump on the Twitter bandwagon, but it is time consuming to develop a quality Twitter following. Would your time better be spent on a blog, which really demonstrates your knowledge?

You might want to take a social media class or hire a social media coach in order to help narrow down your choices. The following articles might help you choose the right outlets for you:

• Study: Inc 500 CEOs Aggressively Use Social Media for Business
• 10 LinkedIN Tips to Grow Your Business
• Should You Use Twitter to Promote Your Business?
• 32 Ways to Use Facebook for Business
• Should Your Small Business Have a Blog?

4) Follow through on your commitment

Just like any other marketing plan, if you don’t follow through, you won’t get results. Implement your social media plan for at least 3 months, and then gauge if it is right for you. It takes some time to see results, but if you put in the time, you will definitely see them.

Landau Design teaches social media classes to help you establish your online presence. Let Landau Design review your social media strategy to help come up with the optimum approach to grow your business.

What’s the difference between Facebook Account and Pages?

I’ve lost count of how many Landau Design customers have asked me this question in the past month. Facebook has done a fabulous job of confusing everybody, and nobody has a clear idea of the distinction between the parts of Facebook. I will attempt to explain the differences.

There are 4 ways to create a Facebook presence:

• Personal Account
• Business Account
• Fan Page
• Group

In a nutshell, Facebook Personal accounts are for individuals, while Business Accounts, Fan Pages and Groups are for businesses  or interest groups.

Facebook Personal Account

• Personal Profile: When you create a Facebook personal account, this is your individual account. You put your photo, your life history, all the things that are about you. It is against the Facebook terms of service to create a personal account with a business name. If you have done this, change the name on your account to a name. If they catch you with a business name instead of a personal name, they will shut the account down.
• Friend Requests: With a Facebook Account, you can connect to people by becoming friends. They send a friend request, you accept, or vice versa.
• Privacy Settings: With a Facebook account you can set privacy settings so only your friends on Facebook can see your information. You can also set it so some or all of your information is seen by non-friends. It’s your choice. The one thing that you cannot set to private is your profile photo. Also, the fact that you have a Facebook account will be available to anybody who searches for you.
• Newsfeed: Your newsfeed page shows posts from everybody that you are friends with as well as pages you have liked. It will also show posts from groups if you have it set to show. By default groups do not show up on your newsfeed. Your newsfeed or ordered with newest posts first.
• Wall: Your all shows all the posts you have made, whether as a status update, on a page or some other person’s wall. It will show posts to groups if the group is public. If the group is private, no mention of your posts show up on your wall.
• Admins: There are no admins on your personal Facebook account. Somebody else has to have your login to edit your account.
• Customization: While you can put up photos or videos, you cannot add functionality to your personal account.

Facebook Business Account

You can actually create a Facebook account for a business. But the Facebook terms of service are clear: “A business account is meant for a company that is not a sole-proprietorship OR a sole-proprietorship whose owner does NOT want to use Facebook to interact with friends.  If you set-up a business account you will not be allowed to set-up a personal account.”

So if you set up a Business Account, you may be prevented from ever having a personal account. The business account offers similar features to a Personal account. If you are sole proprietorship, or small company, for greatest flexibility it is best to set up a personal account, then use Fan pages or Groups to promote your business. If you are a corporation, then creating a business account for your company makes sense.

Facebook Fan Page

These are the pages people create to establish a Facebook presence for people, businesses, products, etc.

• Attached to a Facebook Account: You must already have a Facebook account in order to create a fan page. That means every fan page is attached to a specific person’s personal or business Facebook account. This is non-transferable, so if you own a company, be sure your fan page is attached to a Facebook account that is the President or other employee who isn’t likely to leave the company. One Facebook account can create multiple fan pages.
• Fans, not friends: When people click the “like” button on your page, they become a Fan of your page. They are not your friend (no offense!). Once they like your page, posts you make will show up on their newsfeed. Although they can choose to hide your posts on their newsfeed (you have no control over that).
• Privacy Settings: Unlike an account, you do not have options to show portions of your information. You either make the entire page private (admin only) or entire page public. The default is public.
• Newsfeed: The newsfeed shows the most recent posts that have been made on your page. If nothing has been posted recently, this page may be blank. The order of items on the newsfeed are those that have had the most activity, which usually means not chronological order.
• Wall: The wall shows the history of all activity on your page. It’s similar to a wall on a Facebook account.
• Admins: Unlike an account, a Facebook Fan Page can have administrators who are different than the person who created the account. In this way you can allow employees of your company to manage the page, but they will not own the page itself.
• Customization: One of the best features of a Facebook page is the ability to customize it with various tabs. Once you have 25 or more people like your page, you can also create a personal Facebook URL. For example, the Landau Design Facebook URL is http://www.facebook.com/LandauDesign.

Facebook Groups

• Attached to a Facebook account: All groups are created by somebody that has an account on Facebook. One difference from a fan page though is ownership of a group can be transferred to another person’s account.
• Members, not fans: Similar to friend requests, individuals who come upon your group can submit member requests which you can choose to grant or ignore. Group members can also send out group invitations to people they know.
• Privacy Settings: Groups can be open (anybody can join in), closed (only members can join in) or private (nobody can see anything until they are a member).
• Newsfeed or Wall: Groups only have one place that posts show up. They do not have a distinction between a newsfeed or wall, it’s one and the same. Posts are organized by those that have the most comments, instead of chronologically.
• Admins: You can have multiple admins for groups.
• Customization: There is no ability to add features to a group, but groups come with features that fan pages do not have. They have group chat as well as a group email where you can send an email to all members of the group using one email address. Groups also provide the opportunity to share documents within a group.

For a complete list of the differences between these items, visit this note created by Facebook: Difference between, Profile, Page and Group in FaceBook

Looking for help with your Facebook page? Let Landau Design review your Facebook page to show you how to make it work to grow your business.

Yahoo! Not Delicious Anymore

Mid-December Yahoo confirmed a rumor that they will be disengaging from several of their social media assets. The confirmation came just days after they laid off 4% of their staff, their 4th layoff in 3 years. They are making these changes in their networks so they can refocus on areas that harbor greater potential.

The rumors mentioned that Delicious would be shut down, but the Delicious blog says this is not the case. They are exploring options that would allow Delicious to continue outside the Yahoo umbrella.

Yahoo did confirm that it will be shutting down Yahoo! Buzz, the social bookmarking site meant to compete with StumbleUpon and Digg. Barely 3 years old, the Buzz never really took hold with the older, more-established sites remaining most popular.

Yahoo will also be shutting down AltaVista, one of the original search engines from the dawn on of the Internet. The original AltaVista development team were the innovators of spidering technology for indexing the Internet. With the entrance of Google, AltaVista quickly faded into obscurity, and it never found a way to catch up.

Other networks on the chopping blog included MyBlogLog, Yahoo Picks, Yahoo Bookmarks, Traffic APIs and alltheweb.com.

Personally I believe this is just the beginning of a consolidation/cutting back trend in the social media arena. Users are bombarded with way too many options, and capturing eyeballs has become harder than the cable-inundated TV industry. I believe in 2011-2012 we will see quite a few mergers and quiet retreats as less-popular redundant networks lose more ground trying to catch up with the majors.

Watch What You Read Online

While social media is an excellent way to share real news, it is also an easy way to create a rumor that spreads like wildfire.

Earlier this month an online troublemaker began the rumor that Charlie Sheen had died in a snowboarding accident. Fortunately his wife set the fans straight with a tweet, “the rumor about Charlie Sheen is not true. He is alive and on his way over to see his daughters. Thank u all for your concern.”

Even Facebook is not immune to falsehoods when earlier this year a rumor began that Facebook would begin charging for accounts. Users chose to protest the charges and Facebook groups sprung up with more than 700,000 followers to say they wouldn’t pay. The rumors were finally put to rest when a company spokesperson told the press, “We have no plans to charge users for Facebook’s basic services.”

Typically reliable news sources can also perpetuate social media hoaxes. Such was the case when Mike Wise, a sports reporter for the Washington Post, decided to try a social media experiment to prove a point about reporters who do not verify facts. Wise tweeted false information about about a football player, and as expected many media outlets republished it without verifying its origin. The Post suspended him for conduct, but not until after the “news” had spread through the media.

Social media brings the freedom of free speech to new levels of exposure, but of course this means we all have to be more discriminating about what we read. If you rely on your social media networks to provide your news, verify stories with multiple reliable news sources before sharing them with others.