Balance.
The two most common social media blunders are like most things in life, at opposite ends of a best practices continuum. If you blog, FB, Tweet or G+ to get your vital message out, consider a self-audit exercise. It won’t take but a few minutes.
Quickly review your past month of posts. Note the media type, frequency and maybe rank your content as fluff / personal / on-target / vital.
Now consider your communication goals via social media. You have goals, yes? Think about this for a while. Jot some first thoughts down and save this for future pondering-planning.
The most common social media blunders are To Much Information (TMI) and an Untended Social Presence. Based on your industry, your target audience and key messages, you pretty much know where you want to be in the space between these extremes of blunder.
What is the solution? Preplan and be intentional. Just because you can and have a thought doesn’t mean you should share with everyone impulsively. Consider pre-writing in draft your week’s (or day’s) content in social media that represents your key messaging to your target audience in the best media. This may differ from FB to Twitter to LinkedIn. Come back to it later, review what you’ve written and schedule the release rate. Sure there’s room for timely response to what you read, commenting etc. Just be sure you are making room for that in the strategy and not simply firing off posts willy-nilly without a plan.
Balance requires discipline, time and a budget. Your company, non-profit and you deserve that deliberate investment.
Photo: Carla Swope from InnerVisionYoga.ca. Justin Brown Photography
I get asked; “Should I invest in our FB presence or will it (Facebook) fade away soon?”
My thinking is that if FB was leaving anytime soon, innovative integration and partnerships FB related would slow down. Innovation and FB related development definitely aren’t slowing down.
F A C E B O O K S T O R E F R O N T S
What is now coined as f-commerce is evolving continually and quickly. Online stores can be set up with providers such as Payvment.com. Here are two examples.
- https://www.facebook.com/DoLifeNow?sk=app_135607783795
- https://www.facebook.com/bikerchicjewelry
F A C E B O O K R E A C H
FB is now extendable to your website via Open Graph. For a while now we’ve been integrating FB live feeds into your website pages, now we can go the other way as well. We’re jumping on this and would encourage you to consider this as well. It is new, innovative and seems to be where online interaction between the target audience and your organization is headed.
C U S T O M F A C E B O O K P A G E S
Make a great first impression with a welcome page! Here is Target Baby’s FB page. Other custom FB pages can detail your service. Here are two examples.
So, why not just have a FB page instead of a website? Good question. All the features are certainly there. Truth is, some people don’t spend time on FB. I know, hard to imagine, yes? A website anchor presence is still a very good idea.
And why is all this new functionality so brilliant and suddenly so necessary? Well, think about how and why FB works. Fundamentally it is still about a ‘friend’ or ‘like’ connection responding to something on your FB site or FB enhanced website, and their 438 friends noticing.
This interesting little project began with a taste. After enjoying the chocolate bar that we purchased in Vancouver’s Whole Foods Market I called Shadi Javadi, the owner of Deliss Chocolate Inc, we met and began I working with her on this great little WordPress project. I wanted to meet her because I thought the marketing concept was brilliant and her story fascinating!
This website enables Shadi to update the website content on her own. She is a tireless promoter who uses Facebook and Twitter well so we integrated these two social media right into the website. Every time she updates on Twitter or Facebook it appears on her website pages as a live feed. Google Search loves this inbound traffic and it will affect the website’s search engine ranking.
A simple Google Maps embed enables the retail location mashup to help potential customers find My Therapy Bar. If your local upscale, socially conscious food market is not carrying this bar, there is a Wholesale application provided for them to open an account. An interested Japanese client prompted Shadi to include a Japanese ‘about’ page with consultation and translation provided by Yuya Kato at GPE.
A recent update: Save On Foods, major food retailer in British Columbia, Canada is carrying the bar across their chain in the next few months. Congratulations Shadi!
Everyone wants to get the message out to their target audiences, effectively and online. Lately, most organizations also wants this communication to become a dialogue and possibly even a relationship of sorts! Consider this site a good model of online outreach and engagement.
Matthijs at Exit170.ca in Kelowna BC built this site. Matthijs and I collaborate on projects from time to time and this Hope based literacy project impresses me because it’s so hard working! Feel free to open the site in a new tab or window and follow along.
- HOME page. Wanna find a program? Are you a map person? A program title person? A calendar person? A upcoming events list person? Many ways to find what you’re looking for, and quickly.
What does a hard working website do? It DELIVERS within one-to-two clicks of the visitor’s arrival.
- ABOUT page. Still with me?
Good ‘about’ information - not too much text. This is more important than it sounds. Clarity and brevity are critical.
- What’s the organization behind Wanna Read? Visit the Wiki! No wasted pages of information on the website about the Fraser Cascade Literacy Initiative because that would distract from the message of WannaRead.org. Instead a good use of a 3rd Party free wiki that enables the FC-Literacy folks to interact and gives you, the website visitor a window in if you’re interested. I like the transparency of this wiki.
- Event photos at Flickr.com. Good use of an excellent photo display / sharing site that spreads the Wanna Read message to people who search on Flickr specifically as well.
- Donation link button to CanadaHelps.org. Wanna Read welcomes support but isn’t committing much room on it’s website because it is intent on communicating ‘on message’. The message is not about asking for help.
- You see how the website is designed to be a hub, not an end-all-be-all for all the information. Decide what needs to stay in-house. In WannaRead’s case they decided that the Blog should be a main menu item. Not everyone uses Twitter and Facebook so the Blog catches everyone with latest news.
Use good tools that are available. The 3rd party sites WannaRead.org uses also tells me they’re using their communication dollars wisely. I like the effective exploiting of these excellent 3rd party resources with a simple account setup with each 3rd party site and a link to it from the WannaRead.org website.
- WannaRead.org also has a Facebook presence and initiated a recent successful foray into Twitter use. I expect these will be embedded on the website when WannaRead.org is confident they effectively reach otherwise unreachable readers. Recognize that although widespread in use, not everyone, especially in the marginal literate target group, is connected via social media.
Finally, what makes this website most effective is that it truly is a representation of what actually happens on the ground in real-time. It invites engagement online but mostly it reinforces, reports on and invites you to the real work that happens in all the communities dotted on the home page map.
How hard does your organization work? How hard does your organization’s website work? Contact me if you’d like to review it and discuss it’s potential.
