Offensive Language

As a general rule, businesses should never use offensive language in their posts. Businesses shouldn’t have to put up with fans using foul language on their page either. If you feel a negative (or even positive) comment is inappropriate for your audience, remove it.

Follow up by posting rules on your page. Some businesses place posting rules in the About section of their page, in a note or on their website. Regardless of where they are posted, remind fans that offensive language and adult content is not allowed.

Hostile Fans

Though rare, you may encounter a fan that cannot be satisfied. After exhausting all other methods of dealing with the complaint or issue, the fan continues to post negative comments on your wall. Leave the initial comment and remove the remaining ones. Should the fan continue to harass you (and annoy other fans), you do have the right to ban the fan altogether. Use your best judgment and only ban when absolutely necessary.

Self-Promotion

You may check your wall for the latest fans’ comments and notice a fan promoting their own business. Your wall is not the place for fans to promote their websites, blogs or businesses. Unless they ask in advance for permission, these comments should be removed. Fans see these as spam. If you don’t remove them, fans believe you are not effectively managing your page and lose trust in you.

In most cases, removing comments is forbidden. Always try to handle negative comments in a positive manner. The three situations above happen rarely, but when they do, remove the negative posts for a clean, fan friendly page.

Never Automate

You may be busy, but your followers should never see you as too busy to compose a 140 character tweet. While it may be appealing to automate your tweets to show your latest blog and Facebook posts, your followers don’t appreciate it. A stream of endless links turns off followers quickly. Create personal tweets, even when you post links, to show followers their time is important to you.

Quit Repeating

Even with a major promotion or contest, you should never post the same message (in any form) more than three times a day. Any more and you sound like a broken record. Your followers follow you because they are interested in learning more, not reading the same message repeatedly. When you tweet, make it new.

The only time you can truly get away with repeat messages is during a countdown. For instance, a movie studio may post a tweet each hour to build hype over a movie release. 

Relationships Before Money 

Introduce yourself before you introduce your product. This applies not only to the tweets themselves, but to messages and conversations as well. Your followers want to build relationships with businesses. They will be happy to buy from you if your relationship is about more than money. When you tweet, create a balance between relationship building tweets and promotional ones. Your fans will love it. 

Don’t Create Spam

While this should be an obvious one, don’t spam your followers. Only create tweets which are relevant to your audience. Many companies make the mistake of trying to gain more followers by asking their current followers to share links in order to enter a contest. Your followers may not mind, but their followers do. Essentially, their followers feel as if they are being spammed. Your followers should only share links by choice, not as a requirement.

These four mistakes can kill even the best laid Twitter plans. Stop them today for better success tomorrow.

Social Media Incorporation

All those social share buttons you see on websites and hopefully your own site are already starting to affect your search results. Comments made through social networks which appear on your blog or site will also affect your rank. More and more users are seeking businesses which incorporate social media so they can easily share with their friends and see which sites and brands their friends like best.

The Next Generation

Search engines are now allowing users to log in and view search results ranked based upon their friends’ social activity. For instance, if you log into Google, you will see sites on Google+ ranked higher than those who aren’t. The object is to showcase the businesses your friends recommend. The more interactions and followers you have, the higher you’ll rank.

Even if a user isn’t logged in, search engines are changing algorithms to rank sites with an interactive social media presence higher than those without one. In fact, many businesses see their social media profiles rank higher than their own websites.

One major benefit of these changes to search engines is the ability to better target your audience. Friends and family often have common interests. Odds are, they’ll see recommendations in a search engine long before their friends may think to actually tell them about you. Instead of trying to appeal to everyone, you’ll be targeting your audience through the followers you already have.

Get Social Now

The sooner you start building your social media presence, the stronger your chance at ranking high. Search engines are just beginning to truly embrace social media as a ranking criteria. Start now and you’ll already have an established presence before social media becomes an absolute necessity. Wait and you’ll have miles to climb on the search engine ladder while your competition reaps the benefits of proactive social networking.

No Clutter

Unlike Facebook where posts and images often get lost, images on Pinterest are easily organized so your followers can quickly find what they want. There are no games or status updates to compete with. Even comments are automatically minimized to create a clutter free space where the images tell the story.

Get Personal

Pinterest offers a unique chance to get personal with your followers. Post images which show your business in the community. Display the latest products in use by real customers. For instance, a restaurant my post pictures of happy customers enjoying the newest menu items or a pet store might post images of cute puppies playing with toys. The idea is to truly show potential customers what they are missing out on.

Network With Others

Pinterest isn’t just about you. Look for similar or complimentary businesses. Share their images with your followers. As with other social networking sites, take the time to network. You can also share the images of your followers when applicable.

Connect With Other Networks

Connect Pinterest with Facebook and suddenly you’ll see your Pinterest activity pick up. Many Facebook users are already on Pinterest. The pictures they share and post are listed on their Facebook walls. The same holds true for anything you share or post. If you’re new to Pinterest, this is the perfect way to gain a following. As the shares start to increase, you’ll find an entirely new following looking forward to your every image.

Less To Compose

Frankly, composing politically correct, non-boring status updates can be difficult at times. Pinterest takes away the pain by simply asking you to post images. The only thing you really need to compose is a caption and responses to comments.

Humor

Finally, Pinterest allows you to show off your humorous side by posting funny, non-offensive images (related to your business when possible) along with business photos. Followers love humor and personality. Take advantage of it.

Professional Picture

Don’t post just any picture for your profile. Definitely don’t use a blank or icon type image. Use the picture section to post a picture which represents your business. Consider using your company logo, employees at work, happy customers, community events or a combination. Some businesses have custom images created to catch the attention of potential followers.

Catchy Taglines

Many social media sites have a tagline or quote section. Place your company’s tagline, motto or philosophy here. A catchy phrase here grabs a user’s attention. Just like a song, it sticks in your head. A great tagline also perfectly describes your business.

About

The length of this section varies based on the social media site you use. For instance, Facebook actually has two About sections. The first is essentially a 100 character tagline, while the second is far longer. Regardless of the length, use this section wisely. Keep details concise, professional and most important, descriptive. This is the section to tell users who you are, what you have to offer and why their lives would be better by following you.

Contact Details

Don’t alienate yourself. When asked to place contact details, do so. List email addresses, phone numbers and websites. Don’t forget to list any other social media profiles. The more details you can provide, the better. You want your followers to be able to contact you.

Call To Action

While there isn’t a section for this, you need a call to action somewhere on your profile if possible. Extremely short profiles, such as those on Twitter, may not offer enough room. Longer profiles should always have a CTA. For instance, the About section could contain a sentence stating “For the latest updates, become a follower today.” You could also prompt users to contact you by saying “We’re happy to answer any questions you may have, contact us today.”

Create a killer profile before you do anything else. Without this, even the best page may not gain the followers it deserves.

Facebook changed the news feed to provide users with the most relevant stories only. While they can change their settings, they may not realize they are even missing your posts. Odds are, they saw the group of posts, but only really noticed the first in the list. If it isn’t yours, you miss out on an opportunity to engage with a fan.

To prevent this problem, manual posting is necessary. Before we discuss why it works, let’s discuss how posts are ranked. Posts from pages only rank higher in a news feed when there is engagement between the fan and the page. This includes comments, shares, likes and even visits. If your posts aren’t being seen, the engagement levels are next to nothing.

Facebook does rank manual posts higher than those from apps. For instance, a single game’s activity is usually grouped together for all friends. This organizes a person’s news feed, but doesn’t necessarily help you. Mixing in manual posts allows you to break away from the group.

Once a fan starts to engage more, they will also see your posts from apps. Either your posts will be at the top of the group or they will be listed separate. Fans can then choose to subscribe to all your posts, ensuring they are always noticeable in their news feeds.

You don’t have to stop using apps. If you have multiple content streams to post, it is easier to use RSS feed apps to post your content automatically. However, take the time to make manual posts as well. Perhaps you could choose your most important content stream and post manually for a while. Whatever strategy you choose, mix in regular manual posts to ensure fans notice you. Get their attention and you’ll gain more fans and better overall results.

Create Valuable Reports

You are not restricted to viewing your data on Facebook. To create reports to study yourself or show to other members of your social media team, Insights allows you to export data to Excel or any other spreadsheet software. Choose whether you want to view page or post level data, select your date range and choose your file format. Please note you can only view 500 posts within a single report.

What You Can Learn

If you’re making the most of Facebook, you’re posting a combination of text, images and videos. Which of the three perform best? Since every business is different, what works best for one may not work as well for another. By using insights, you are able to see which post type receives the most interactions. More interactions means these are the posts your audience likes best. You still need variety, but put more emphasis on the post types your fans love.

Now that you know what post format works best, you need to view Insights to determine which types of updates are working best for your business. For instance, do product updates perform better than business news? Maybe your fans love interactive Q&A days best. If you want to make the most of your Facebook page, carefully review your Insights to determine the exact types of posts which fans like best.

Take full advantage of Insights. This simple to use tool provides a wealth of knowledge for any business. Download Insights at least once per month or weekly for extremely active pages. Not only can you track success, but you can vastly improve how you interact with your audience.

Stunning Design

The first thing fans will notice about your newly designed page is the cover photo. Use this to your best advantage. Show off your latest products, employees, community events or anything else related to your business. Many are using custom designed photos which are a collage of the best photos to represent the business.

Pin Important Posts

In the past, your important posts quickly dropped to the bottom of your page as you added new updates. While you can only pin one post at a time, Facebook Timeline lets you pin a post to the top of your page, just below your cover photo and apps. It will stay on top for as long as you want. This works perfectly to remind fans of important events, contests and product releases.

Since tabs no longer exist, many businesses are using a pinned post as their welcome to new fans. It advertises the latest promotions so fans can find them quickly.

Milestones

Before, your page was limited from the time you joined. Now, you can go back to the beginning of your business. List all your important milestones to help fans get to know you better. As an added benefit, fans can tag older photos (from before you created a Facebook page) which will appear on your page. This means more advertising from your fans and better interactions.

About Tagline

While the About tab was often missed by fans, it is now directly below your cover photo. While you are limited to 100 characters, it is the perfect place for a killer tagline describing your business. Once users click the link below it, they will see an extended version where you can add as much information as necessary to truly show fans who you are.

Facebook Timeline is different, but it offers more than enough benefits to make up for the sudden change.

Create Valuable Reports

You are not restricted to viewing your data on Facebook. To create reports to study yourself or show to other members of your social media team, Insights allows you to export data to Excel or any other spreadsheet software. Choose whether you want to view page or post level data, select your date range and choose your file format. Please note you can only view 500 posts within a single report.

What You Can Learn

If you’re making the most of Facebook, you’re posting a combination of text, images and videos. Which of the three perform best? Since every business is different, what works best for one may not work as well for another. By using insights, you are able to see which post type receives the most interactions. More interactions means these are the posts your audience likes best. You still need variety, but put more emphasis on the post types your fans love.

Now that you know what post format works best, you need to view Insights to determine which types of updates are working best for your business. For instance, do product updates perform better than business news? Maybe your fans love interactive Q&A days best. If you want to make the most of your Facebook page, carefully review your Insights to determine the exact types of posts which fans like best.

Take full advantage of Insights. This simple to use tool provides a wealth of knowledge for any business. Download Insights at least once per month or weekly for extremely active pages. Not only can you track success, but you can vastly improve how you interact with your audience.

Community Events

Local businesses often make the most of events. When you have a community event planned, let all your fans know. Don’t depend upon word of mouth alone. Far too many businesses place an ad on their door and expect the general public to be aware of the upcoming event. You will reach a far larger audience by posting the event on Facebook. List the time, date, price (if applicable) and any additional details. For instance, restaurants often use events to update fans on live music and karaoke nights.

More Interactions

Are you planning a big Q&A session with your fans? You may have posted about it, but you still run the risk of your posts being buried in fans’ news feeds. By scheduling an event, the date is listed in the events section on a fan’s main Facebook page. They see it at all times.

Know Who’s Attending

If you really want an idea of how many people are planning to attend your event, you must take advantage of the events feature. Fans have three options when it comes to events which appear on their Facebook home page. They can choose “Yes, I’m attending,” “No, I’m not attending” and “Maybe.” This gives you an idea of how many people might attend your event.

Build Hype

Schedule an event on Facebook and watch the excitement build. A simple post isn’t enough. Instead, post an event. Fans can easily invite their own friends and family. Each time your event is shared, all details are shared with it. Any type of event you hold should always be scheduled using the events feature. It will build more hype than a post alone and the event will be shared far more.