7 Ways to Improve Your Social Media Engagement

By Bryden McGrath
Published May 2, 2013
Is your company’s social media as stale as last month’s bread?
Would you like to get more people-to-people interaction and begin a real conversation with your audience on social media?
No matter your company’s industry or size, you can encourage these deeper connections and improve your social media engagement.
Here are some tips to help you encourage people-to-people interaction, whether you are on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Foursquare or Instagram.
Your company is only as good as your hardworking employees—so don’t be afraid to highlight them.
SEOmoz uses Facebook photo albums to highlight their employees.
The SEOmoz Facebook Page does an excellent job of this. Two examples in particular really jump out.
The “Then and Now” photo album: Employees provided photos from their youth along with recent photos of themselves. This is a great way to show fans the human side of SEOmoz. Plus, the baby pictures are adorable.
SEOmoz does a wonderful job of featuring employees, like in this “Then and Now” photo album.
The “What are Mozzers listening to?” photo album: All it took was snapping photos of employees with their headphones on and asking them what they were listening to. The result is an inside look at company culture.
The MLS team Seattle Sounders FC creates Facebook Events and invites their fans.
The MLS team Seattle Sounders FC creates Events for both their games and promotional events like player meet-and-greets.
Is your company holding an event that’s open to the public?
Then create a Facebook Event so followers can RSVP and add it to their calendars. This is a feature that is often overlooked by businesses—even many professional sports teams don’t create Facebook Events for their home games.
To get your juices flowing, here’s a short list of the types of gatherings where a Facebook Event could be perfect:
SeminarsWebinarsOpen housesCharity eventsConferences
In the example below of the 500px Facebook Page, they use Facebook to feature their fans.
For the photographers who are lucky enough to be featured, it means tremendous exposure to the Page’s almost-300,000 fans. As for everyone else, this type of post makes them feel part of a community with the possibility that they could someday be featured.
As a photo-sharing service, 500px is a natural fit to share user content on their Facebook Page.
Social media gives companies the ability to easily recognize their customers and fans.
Depending on your company’s niche, there are numerous ways to feature your customers and fans. For example, you can highlight contest winners or encourage users to submit their own photos and videos.
Get creative by using video to connect on Twitter.
You can use Twitter Vsnap to send personalized videos. Vsnap is a tool that allows you to record a video message with a maximum length of 60 seconds. Use this to send a personal video message to a follower on Twitter.
Every new follower Vsnap gains on Twitter is sent a personal video message through the service.
Making these short video messages personable is easy. Look at your target’s Twitter bio to see if something interesting jumps out and use this to craft your message. Or say thanks to someone who shared your content or became a new follower. Or answer a question someone has about your company.
Businesses have already found several creative uses for Twitter’s Vine app, which allows you to take 6-second video clips.
These short videos can be fun to watch and encourage viewers to connect with you further.
Your Vine videos don’t have to only be about your products. Here are some other uses your company might want to consider to connect with your audience:
A tour of the officeIndividual Vine videos for different teamsEncouraging customers to Vine about your business
Let people know who’s tweeting.
Have you ever noticed companies who include the initials of the person tweeting at the end of each tweet? Or companies who include the Twitter handle of the person(s) tweeting in their bio?
Both of these strategies are a great way to make a branded Twitter account feel a little more human and the interactions more personal.
Time
lets you know who is responding to their account on Twitter. The TIME Twitter account includes information on who is authoring the account’s tweets in the bio section.
Be part of the conversation.
Don’t ignore people who take the time to tweet to your company.
The Whole Foods Market Twitter account makes it a priority to respond to tweets.
Sometimes just acknowledging a tweet can make someone’s day—potentially making that person loyal to your brand for a lifetime. If you take the time to tweet, take the time to respond to complaints, compliments and questions in a timely manner.
Use humor to make your followers laugh.
Old Spice is known for their quirky marketing and branding, and it shines through on Twitter as well.
You never want to force it, but humor can be an effective way to make your company seem less robotic. And with the constant stream of information on Twitter, breaking it up with a laugh is always appreciated.
Create and share Google+ Circles your followers will find useful.
One Google+ feature that is sometimes underutilized is the ability to share Circles.
Your company can become a resource for users looking for more people to follow related to your company’s industry. After sharing the Circle on Google+, you can copy the link and share it in a blog post or on Twitter.
This is an example of a recent Circle featuring almost every speaker at SMX West.
Furthermore, this allows your company to connect with the people in the Circle you’ve created and build your audience. They may see the Circle you’ve made and decide to share it on their own profile.
Here are some examples of the type of Circles your company could create and share:
Industry leadersSpeakers at conferencesFavorite writers
Get active in the right Google+ Communities.
Google+ Pages are able to take part in Google+ Communities like any other user: Pages can create, join, moderate and participate.
Chances are there’s already a Community that fits your company’s industry. If so, join the discussion. If not, make a new Community and invite others to join.
To learn more about Google+ Communities, check out this article from Mike Delgado.
Use Google+ Hangouts.
With Google+ Hangouts, your Page can start a video chat with up to nine people. This is a great opportunity to connect with your audience.
This Google+ Hangout with chef Nigella Lawson isn’t just solid content; it’s a fantastic way to have followers interact with The New York Times Google+ Page.
This New York Times
Hangout featuring Nigella Lawson is a perfect example. It features a host—Lawson—and three home cooks who wrote in describing how they fared making Lawson’s pasta recipe and why they wanted to be included in the Hangout.
LinkedIn Company Pages can feature up to three groups on their page in an effort to have more people join the group(s).
Much like Google+ Communities, participating in LinkedIn Groups is another opportunity to join the discussion in your company’s industry and answer questions. As an added bonus, more professionals in your field will see your company.
This is a great opportunity for you to get more visibility for your company and to interact with people who may be interested in your products and services.
Your company’s Pinterest boards don’t have to be limited to just company pins. Collaborate with other users to give your account a more personal feel.
For this style challenge, Home Depot invited others to pin.
To invite other Pinterest users to pin to a specific board, go to the board and click Edit. Next to “Who can pin?” type the users’ names or their email addresses (Note: in order to invite someone, you must be following at least one of that user’s boards.) Click Save Changes.
Once the invited users accept your invitation, they’ll be able to pin to the shared board. However, you can always remove the user and remove their pins. Moreover, invited users cannot change a board’s title or description.
Pinterest is just as much a community as any other social network. So remember to make the time to interact with other users by commenting on and repinning their pins. While you’re at it, follow users’ boards that fit your company’s industry so you have a fresh stream of related content every time you login.
Use Foursquare to leave tips.
When a Foursquare user visits a location page, they’ll also see tips from other users.
If your company has a location (or multiple locations) on Foursquare, leave tips at your own locations to show users the personable side to your company. These can be simple, or perhaps even offer an inside joke.
Leaving tips at other businesses in your area provides a way to offer your authority on your industry. Best of all, Foursquare users get insightful tips and tricks.
For example, maybe you own a travel agency and leave tips on the feedback you’ve heard about particular attractions. Or maybe you own a food website and leave tips at popular restaurants.
You’ll find fun facts from the History Channel in the tips section of several landmarks.
In the above image, the History Channel provides some fun facts.
Again, you’ll be actively adding to the community.
Use Foursquare to create interesting lists.
Creating lists of places based on a general theme can help your company be seen by more people on Foursquare.
Lists are something Foursquare users appreciate because they act as a resource that’s easy to save. For instance, your company could create a list of its employees’ favorite lunch spots. Or the list could be the best places for company outings.
The Travel Channel has some food tips galore from Adam Richman.
Travel Channel has a list with the places Adam Richman has visited on the show “Man v Food Nation.” Over 8,000 users have saved it.
If you do decide to create a Foursquare list, login using the desktop version of Foursquare and make it from there. Compared to doing this on your phone, it’s much easier to find and save places to your list with more screen real estate.
Creating a hashtag and encouraging users to submit their photos is a smart way to stand out and be personable on Instagram.
The NBC News
Instagram account recently asked users to tag their winter storm photos with the hashtag #NBCNewsPics. After the weekend passed, they chose four of their favorite user-submitted photos and featured the photos as a single image. In the description, they gave credit by including each user’s Instagram username. By creating a hashtag, NBC News encouraged users to submit content AND was able to feature their favorite user-submitted photos.
Featuring user photos in this fashion on your company’s Instagram account adds to the community. It also shows that you’re on the social network to contribute more than just your own photos. There are several examples of companies doing this, including those in industries like journalism, sports and travel.
The easiest way to feature another user’s photo is through the use of third-party websites like Statigram and Webstagram. Both websites have the option to repost underneath all photos. Before reposting, don’t forget to obtain permission from the user first.
Use These Tips for More People-to-People Interaction
Use these examples to inspire your social media efforts and you’re sure to increase your social media engagement as you connect with more people in your community.
What do you think? What other strategies do you see companies using to connect with their audience on a deeper level? Leave your questions and comments below.
About the Author, Bryden McGrath
Bryden McGrath is a social media strategist at Portent, Inc. in Seattle. He also has a background in news and music journalism. Follow him on Twitter @Bryden13. Other posts by Bryden McGrath »
http://www.jretechnology.com

Website: http://jretechnology.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jretechnology

Twitter:  http://twitter.com/JRETechnology1

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/company/jre-technology?trk=hb_tab_compy_id_3077768

Google +: https://plus.google.com/113954632087683078627

Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/jretechnology

Facebook App Chat Heads: This Week in Social Media

By Cindy King
Published April 20, 2013

Welcome to our weekly edition of what’s hot in social media news.

To help you stay up to date with social media, here are some of the news items that caught our attention.

Facebook Updates iPhone App With Chat Heads and Stickers: “Now you can keep chatting even when you’re doing other stuff on Facebook, like checking your news feed. Tap Chat Heads to reply, drag them around or flick them down to close.” And you can also add stickers to your messages.

The Facebook iPhone app's new Chat Heads make it easy to follow chat conversations on the go.

LinkedIn Unveils a New Mobile Experience: The new LinkedIn phone app provides a completely revamped experience “with the general professional and everyday use case in mind.”

Discussion From Our Networking Clubs: Thousands of social media marketers and small business owners are asking questions and helping others in our free Networking Clubs. Here are a few interesting discussions worth highlighting:

Twitter Releases a Music App: The Twitter #music app is “a new service that will change the way people find music, based on Twitter. It uses Twitter activity, including tweets and engagement, to detect and surface the most popular tracks and emerging artists.”

"You can navigate to #NowPlaying to view and listen to those songs."

Twitter Trends Now in 160 New Locations: Twitter introduces Trends “in more than 160 new locations. Included in that list are a number of countries that will be getting Trends for the first time: Belgium, Greece, Kenya, Norway, Poland, Portugal and Ukraine, plus more than 130 new cities in countries that already have Trends.”

Twitter Trends are now available in many more countries.

Google+ Comments Come to Blogger: “You can bring Google+ Comments to your Blogger blog. Once you’ve enabled the feature through your Blogger Dashboard, you’ll enjoy a number of important benefits.” Will Google+ Comments expand to other platforms in the future?

To get started with Google+ Comments, just visit the Google+ tab of your Blogger Dashboard, and check Use Google+ Comments.

Here’s some interesting social media news to follow:

Facebook Launches Open Graph Mobile: Open Graph Mobile “takes Facebook’s social graphing product to the mobile platform for the first time.”

Here’s a couple of useful tools for social media marketers:

The Rollup: a free tool to help you manage your inbox by combining and managing selected subscriptions into one convenient daily digest email.

The Rollup helps you to manage your email subscriptions.

Wajam: a free tool to find out what your friends share by adding a social share section to your Google search page.

What do you think? Please share your comments below.

About the Author, Cindy King

Cindy King is the director of editorial for Social Media Examiner. She spent 25 years abroad in international business development and then built her own international business from scratch by using social business networking. Other posts by Cindy King »

http://www.jretechnology.com

5 Mobile Video Apps to Boost Online Engagement

By Meaghan Edelstein
Published April 17, 2013

Do you want to use videos to market your business?

Are you wondering if there are simple mobile apps to make this possible?

In this article I’ll review five mobile video apps and share how they can boost your online engagement.

Vine, Twitter’s mobile video app, has business and marketing professionals considering the numerous ways video apps can be used to increase engagement.

Ekaterina Walter, social innovator at Intel and author of Think Like Zuck, recently predicted that “2013 will be the year of visual marketing”. Walter based this prediction, in part, on the fact that “…visuals and video done right are highly effective in cutting through the noise.”

This prediction has already proven true with a burst of new video apps and upgrades hitting the market. And some of these offer unique opportunities for savvy marketers.

Here’s five apps you should consider.

With only 140 characters to work with, it can be a challenge to create rich content on Twitter. To date, catchy headlines, creative hashtags, promoted tweets and images have been the best methods for grabbing attention on Twitter. But with the introduction of Vine, there’s a new way to generate and share highly engaging content.

Vine is a simple and fun way to create short, beautiful, looping videos for your friends and family to see.

Vine’s six-second looping videos are easily consumed and highly shareable. And as a result, these videos naturally boost engagement. Marketers can use them in a variety of ways. You can create mini-advertisements, behind-the-scenes tours, announcements, contests and much more.

Your followers can view and share your videos directly from within Twitter. And you can encourage followers to shoot and share their own six-second videos to further increase likelihood of engagement.

Now’s the time to jump into Vine because it’s easier to capture audiences’ attention. Early adopters almost always enjoy a higher level of exposure. With Vine, you now have an opportunity to stand out among the millions of tweets posted daily.

Happy valentines #valenvine vine.co/v/brMraJq2aW3

— London Lazerson (@londonlaz) February 14, 2013

According to Facebook, the use of images and video results in the largest visual impact on their platform.

Instagram increased the ease and popularity of photo posts.

However, the use of video has lagged. This can be attributed in part to the hesitation many feel when it comes to filming, editing and sharing video.

Facebook’s recent integration with iOS 6 makes the creation and sharing of video less daunting. If you are an iPhone user, you can record and post without ever leaving your Facebook app. This makes sharing video on Facebook instantly very easy, even for novices.

Video posts on Facebook encourage engagements in the form of views, shares, likes and comments.

The key with video on Facebook is creativity and consistency rather than fancy editing. With the iOS 6 upgrade, you can give fans exclusive inside access. Record major events and breaking news, then post immediately to your timeline.

To encourage community participation, create fun video challenges, ask for honest reviews and acknowledge those who take the time to post their videos to your Page.

One of the most enticing aspects of social media for business is its ability to expose a large number of people to your brand messages in a short period of time. However, as more and more businesses use social platforms, your messages are easily diluted.

Video offers a way to stand out from the masses, draw attention and leave a longer-lasting impression.

With the mobile app Socialcam, you can create videos with no length restrictions, use an assortment of filters and post to numerous social sites including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Socialcam allows mobile users to quickly and easily upload videos to social networks and share with others via SMS or email.

Lars Schmidt, senior director of talent acquisition and innovation at NPR, shared NPR’s strategy for exposing potential new hires to what it’s really like to be an employee at their organization.

“We used Socialcam to capture and share a more realistic perspective of what it’s like to be an NPR employee.” He went on to explain how, exactly, they did this: “We would record NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts using Socialcam, then push the videos out to our various social sites.” This visual element helped NPR “show the true experience, the energy and buzz of what it’s like to work at NPR.”

The Robert Cray Band jamming at NPR's Tiny Desk Concert.

The decision to create and grow a presence on social platforms should not be taken lightly. Platforms emerge constantly and it would be virtually impossible to build and cultivate communities on all of them.

However, there are key platforms every business should seriously consider: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and at least one video-based social network. Because video platform members feel comfortable engaging with and creating video, you’ll see an uptick in interest and views of your video content.

Viddy is a video app for both iPhone and Android that creates “a simple way for anyone to capture, beautify and share amazing videos with the world”.

A simple way to share well-produced, bite-sized videos with the world.

Viddy is also its own social network with major brands like Southwest Airlines and General Electric actively engaging through posting compelling video and running contests.

With a presence on Viddy, you can post your own 15-second videos, follow other members and be followed. There’s also plenty of opportunity for daily engagement in the form of comments and likes.

One of the most appealing reasons to utilize Viddy is that it’s integrated with Open Graph, allowing all actions on Viddy to be automatically published on people’s Facebook timeline.

This creates a unique environment and allows you to grow a community where it’s easy to encourage user-generated content.

People like, follow and subscribe to businesses because of a desire to connect on a deeper level.

Once someone has initiated an interest in connecting with your business, it then becomes your responsibility to build the relationship. This can be done through various activities and correspondences, video being one of the more successful avenues.

Videolicious is an extensive app with a variety of business-focused plans. You can edit videos and photos and turn them into film, use built-in video ideas and share across multiple platforms all at once.

Make and edit professional-quality video, automatically. Just choose your shots and Videolicious does the rest.

The app even provides extensive how-to’s for creating video thank-you notes, product reviews and news reports. And, if you want to boost views and engagement even more, there’s an option to promote your video content.

With a plethora of ways to engage via a video, Videolicious has the capability to drastically increase people’s affinity for your business.

As you can see, these tools offer a variety of ways to increase engagement on your social platforms. And as more marketers adopt these video apps, you’re sure to find other ways to improve your social media marketing with videos.

What do you think of the mobile app phenomena? Are there mobile apps you’re using that have helped move the engagement needle? Tell us what you think in the comments below.

About the Author, Meaghan Edelstein

Meaghan Edelstein is the Senior Social Strategist for Tilson PR and RingCentral. She is an event producer, journalist, attorney and owner of MobileDealin’. Follow her on Twitter @megse34. Other posts by Meaghan Edelstein »

http://www.jretechnology.com

Facebook Ads and Beyond: What Marketers Need to Know

By Michael Stelzner
Published May 3, 2013

Do you use Facebook ads?

Are you wondering how paid Facebook marketing can work for your business?

To learn about Facebook EdgeRank and paid Facebook marketing, I interview Jon Loomer for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, I interview Jon Loomer, who blogs about advanced Facebook marketing at Jon Loomer.com. Jon used to do social media work for the the NBA and American Cancer Society before going out on his own in 2011.

Jon shares what efficient targeting means for marketers and the metrics involved.

You’ll learn creative ways to generate more business on a minimal budget.

Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, Stitcher or Blackberry.

Here are some of the things you’ll discover in this show:

EdgeRank and why it’s important

Jon explains how EdgeRank is the unofficial term for Facebook’s sorting algorithm.

You don’t see everything that’s published in your news feed. It depends on your affinity, your connection with specific people and pages, how you interacted with a specific content type in the past and the ‘weight’ given to posts.

The EdgeRank algorithm as described by WhatIsEdgeRank.com.

Over time, the older something is, the less likely that you’ll see it in the news feed. And in a perfect world, EdgeRank helps you see what you want to see.

You’ll discover as a marketer what you need to do to make sure your fans see your content and how EdgeRank can help you rise to the top.

Listen to the show to find out what you need to do to encourage your fans to act on your Facebook updates.

Facebook metrics marketers should pay attention to

As a marketer, it depends what your goals are on Facebook. Jon explains that he is a publisher, and when people visit his website, he makes money. So for him, the more traffic the better.

You’ll find out why Jon focuses on consumption and a stat called link clicks.

Jon explains that consumption is any type of click, whether it resulted in a story or not. It could be a comment, like or share, but it could also be a photo click, video play, link click or any other click. Remember Facebook records them all.

Facebook measures consumption and interactions.

You’ll hear an example of the post-level export lists for all reposts over a given time period. You can look at it post by post, posts that had the most consumption and quantity of clicks.

With a time decay on Facebook updates, Jon shares what you need to do to make sure you reach people in completely different time zones with your most popular links to help you reach a new audience.

Listen to the show to find out the best time to reshare a post, with time decay in mind.

Facebook targeting for marketers

Over the last few months Facebook has made it easy for you to target your updates to different audiences.

Jon explains there are two different forms of targeting. You can target your posts or you can target your ads.

You’ll hear why Jon is not a big fan of post targeting. Where Facebook targeting really comes alive is within advertising. Facebook constantly releases something new to make it incredibly powerful.

Facebook targeting comes alive within advertising.

On the Facebook advertising side, Jon reveals some of the newer things that Facebook has done with targeting.

Last year when the Custom Audiences feature was first rolled out, it allowed you to target your offline customer list with email addresses you’d collected, phone numbers or Facebook UIDs. These are people who have proven to subscribe to your content or bought something from you in the past.

Whether or not they are your fans, you can create ads that are targeted to these people.

You probably hear a lot about how you can’t sell products on Facebook, but Jon thinks there’s an example of an exception to this rule. You’ll discover what the example is and how it’s a good way to stay top of mind and drive relevant sales.

Listen to the show to hear what happens when you give Facebook your email list and why they don’t share that data with anyone.

Facebook Promoted Posts

Jon gives a quick background on why Promoted Posts are useful.

Apparently 10-16% of our fans see a given post. A Promoted Post helps you reach more of your fans who weren’t around to see your content when you first published it or who didn’t see it because they haven’t proven to care much about your content in the past.

If you’re a newbie advertiser, it’s easy to click the Promote button, which will automatically generate a campaign with 2-3 ads in it. However, if you are or want to be an advanced marketer, you’ll learn why Power Editor is the better option.

When you use a regular Promoted Post, you have minimal control over your targets. You don’t care who sees your post if it’s organic, but you’re pickier about who you are going to spend your money on.

Listen to the show to find out how to use your advertising budget more efficiently by not promoting to the people you don’t want to spend money on.

Why you should consider Power Editor

Jon explains that Facebook Power Editor is a Chrome browser plugin. If you like to split test and create many ads, this is a much easier way to do it.

Facebook Power Editor is a great plugin for split testing.

Whenever Facebook rolls out a new tool, they always go to their ads API first, which goes to third-party tools and Power Editor. The main ad interface, the sub-serve ad tool, often doesn’t get this as it’s dedicated to make it as simple as possible for the newer advertiser.

Within Power Editor, you can split test. For example, if you want to target mobile devices only, you can narrow it down to iOS devices and then make it only iPhones or only iPads. You’ll learn about the other split testing options available within Power Editor.

Facebook’s Partner Categories use data from select third parties, including Datalogix, Epsilon and Acxiom. These are three companies that have a whole lot of data on user behavior including purchases, demographics, how much money they make, whether they own a car, when they bought that car, etc. There are over 500 categories now and they are going to add to it.

Facebook's Partner Categories show you user behavior.

This data has nothing to do with the user’s behavior on Facebook. It’s their behavior on other sites and offline that counts. You can now target these people based on these categories.

You’ll hear Jon give an extreme example if you were a Ford truck dealership in Denver, Colorado.

Listen to the show to hear what you can add, which could potentially be extremely powerful.

How Facebook determines the cost

Jon says that it ultimately depends on your competition. You have 3 main options.

Cost per clickCost per 1000 impressionsOptimize cost per 1000 impressions

Within Power Editor, you have the option of either an auction basis or a fixed price. More often than not, people do it via auction.

You’ll hear Jon give an example of what a typical spend might be for different types of clients, and how your competition, and bidding by CPM versus clicks, can impact how much you pay.

Carefully manage your advertising spend.

Listen to the show to hear which ads Jon has constantly running every day.

Matt asks, “I’m considering starting a blog or a website and I’m wondering how important you think it is to have a niche topic. Especially since it has a very focused audience, does it also have a lower ceiling for success?”

You bring up a really good point. With a blog, you can target a very broad audience to try to attract more people, or you can go very deep and narrow to try to get a more engaged audience.

I strongly believe it makes sense to develop a niche. If you write about something that’s very specific, an area where you have a passion or that you want to explore, you’re going to get a much more engaged audience. They’re going to get behind you because this is something that they are very interested in.

You’ll hear two great examples from my experience with niche topics.

A niche is not a limitation; in reality, it’s actually a benefit.

Call in and leave your social media–related questions for us and we may include them in a future show.

Listen to the show to learn more and let us know how this works for you.

I want to share with you what an amazing experience Social Media Marketing World was. It was a gathering of some of the coolest people that you could ever imagine and the overwhelming response from people was: WOW!

While it’s awesome to connect with people on Twitter, a podcast or on Facebook, there’s something special about being able to meet the people you follow or interact with online. Social Media Marketing World was full of some of the most social people you could ever meet.

You’ll hear a clip from Cliff Ravenscraft, the Podcast Answer Man, of what his experience was like at the event.

So here’s the good news. If you missed Social Media Marketing World, we’re going to do it again in San Diego in 2014. You’ll hear more about it here in the coming months.

Ways to subscribe to the Social Media Marketing podcast:

What do you think? What are your thoughts on Facebook advertising? Please leave your comments below.

About the Author, Michael Stelzner

Michael Stelzner is the founder and CEO of Social Media Examiner, and author of the books Launch and Writing White Papers. He's also the host of the Social Media Marketing podcast. Other posts by Michael Stelzner »

http://www.jretechnology.com

5 Ways Marketers Can Keep Updated on Facebook Changes

By Rachel Sprung
Published May 7, 2013

Are you struggling to keep up to date with the latest Facebook changes?

Are you conducting activities that are against Facebook’s policies?

It isn’t easy to keep up with all of Facebook’s updates.

Here are 5 ways marketers can stay up to date on Facebook updates and policy changes.

Just like businesses keep their Facebook Pages updated with the latest announcements from their company, Facebook also keeps their Pages updated to inform their users about the latest changes and announcements.

In particular, Facebook for Business, Facebook for Privacy and the Facebook blog often post updates when there is a change to their guidelines.

Facebook for Business takes you step by step to create a business Page that is effective but also follows their guidelines.

Facebook for Business Page to learn how to reach the right audience.

The Facebook and Privacy Page post an update every time they revise a guideline or policy.

In addition, they post tips every week to make sure people are informed about some of the changes that they made previously. Following this Page will allow you to stay up to date when there is a new announcement and also stay informed about older policies.

Facebook and Privacy Page, how to exercise your choice to share what you want.

Here's an example of a Facebook and Privacy update.

Finally, you can find updates on the Facebook blog.

You can add the Facebook blog to your RSS feed so you receive a notification every time there is a new post. This can help you gather real-time information to make sure your presence online is always relevant.

Facebook blog where you can find out what's happening behind the scenes at Facebook.

Technology journalists jump at the news of a Facebook update. One of the best ways that we as marketers can stay updated on this topic is to follow technology journalists or even the Facebook tag on websites like TechCrunch or Mashable.

To find the tag, scroll to the bottom of an article and you will see at least one tag on the article.

To find all Facebook articles on TechCrunch, you can go here.  This will allow you to quickly and easily find all of the latest updates to Facebook in one place.

The Facebook tag on TechCrunch.

A hack to get Facebook updates as soon as they happen is to set up a Google Alert with the term “Facebook Privacy.” That will send an email right to your inbox with any articles that are written about updates to Facebook guidelines or new privacy rules. And you can be sure that there will be a ton of articles written whenever Facebook updates anything.

Once you create your Google Alert, type in “Facebook Privacy” as your search query.

You can choose what type of results you want, whether its news, blog articles, videos, discussions, books or everything. You can choose the frequency you wish to receive these updates and the number of updates you would like. Finally, you can insert your email address to let them know where you want the results delivered.

Facebook Privacy Google Alert setup.

After that is set up, you will receive emails that look like the image below. They will separate your information by the type of result, allowing you to be instantly notified when there is something important to know about Facebook.

Facebook Privacy Google Alert Preview.

AllFacebook is the unofficial Facebook blog that can be a great resource for anything new that is posted about Facebook. They consistently update their website with new information on Facebook, whether it be news about their guidelines and privacy issues or just general updates that marketers should know about.

In addition, they host an annual conference called the AllFacebook Marketing Conference in San Francisco where attendees can learn even more about marketing with Facebook.

The AllFacebook blog.

AllFacebook Marketing Conference coming in June 2013.

In addition to the blog articles you can read and conferences you can attend to learn more about Facebook updates, there are many thought leaders who can be great resources to learn everything you need to know to market on Facebook.

People like Mari Smith, Andrea Vahl and Pete Cashmore are great resources to follow on Twitter and stay updated on Facebook news.

When there is something that marketers need to know, you can be sure they will be discussing it and sharing their knowledge on the subject.

You can also read Social Media Examiner’s This Week in Social Media articles published every Saturday to stay current on the latest Facebook updates and other social media news.

Review Facebook Updates and Policy Changes Regularly

By staying up to date on any announcements and blog posts that are written on Facebook marketing, you will be able to create relevant and effective campaigns on Facebook and take advantage of all that Facebook has to offer.

With the constant changes to Facebook policies, it can be a scary task to market on Facebook. However, don’t hesitate as Facebook is a great way to generate leads for your business and show off your company or brand.

What do you think? What other ways have you stayed up to date with new Facebook policies? Leave your questions and comments in the box below.

About the Author, Rachel Sprung

Rachel Sprung is at the Brand & Buzz Coordinator in the Marketing department at HubSpot. Her responsibilities include managing marketing events including HubSpot's annual conference INBOUND. Other posts by Rachel Sprung »

http://www.jretechnology.com