Tag Archives: Social media

Pros and Cons of the Facebook’s Redesigned Like Button

You’ve probably noticed by now the new lovable little emojis popping up on your Facebook feed similar to the “like” button. It’s part of a significant redesign of Facebook’s iconic “like” button to provide users with a variety of quick empathetic responses.

Users can still use the traditional “like” button if they wish, but can also choose “love,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad,” and “angry” buttons. Simply hover the cursor over the “like” button and these options will pop-up.

If you are working on a mobile device, you have to just hold the “like” button and the options pop up.

While this offers more options for consumers and casual Facebook users, what do these mean for a business’ social media? Will these provide any benefit for the businesses, or will it actually hurt a business trying to see more engagement or comments? It’s too early to tell whether this will be overall beneficial for businesses, but below are some pros and cons of this Facebook change:

PROS

The emojis provide an easy way for audiences to engage with organizations, and it provides
a bit more emotion. As usage rates of social media on mobile devices increase, ease of use is becoming increasingly important for online consumers. Individuals may not go through the hassle of typing out a comment on a phone, but may take a few seconds to respond with an emoji that offers them a variety of ways to express themselves.
The emojis provide more ways for audiences to engage with organizations in a customizable way. Granted, the “like” button is an effective tool to express a positive reaction toward a post or show support for the idea within the post. However, there’s a lot it cannot do. The introduction of more responses allows audiences a variety of empathetic responses, which in turn can provide organizations more insight into the minds of their audiences.
The number of emojis is small enough to empower engagement while avoiding overwhelming audiences. The paradox of choice, backed by research by psychologist Barry Schwartz, argues more options can overload people and result in their choosing to not make a choice or regret the choice they did make. Other social media platforms offer so many emoji options that many people end up not choosing any of them. Having six options is enough to provide the benefits of freedom of speech and autonomy that audiences love without the drawback of reducing audiences’ decision making ability.

CONS

The emojis increase the difficulty of an already difficult aspect of social media marketing: measurement. It’s hard for marketers to know what, and how, to measure social media efforts and ROI. Introducing more variables to measure makes those decisions of how to approach analytics more challenging, and raises new questions to answer—for example, should a “love” count the same as a “like”? And is angry a good thing? Is someone showing the emotion of anger against your post, or supporting the post if it is a negative tone-as in it also makes them angry?
The emojis may actually reduce engagement. It’s great that people may use the “like” button given the added options, but at the same time people may choose to use emojis over commenting. By providing audiences the opportunity to say more with less words, audiences may in turn end up simply using less words in general and decrease the amount they provide valuable audience insight through commenting.
More options for engagement mean more data the Facebook algorithm can collect. This isn’t necessarily inherently a bad thing, but it could be a drawback if the data is used to determine how many people see your business post. While it’s not certain yet how Facebook will use that new data, it’s possible businesses whose audiences don’t utilize the emojis could see a drop in reach and engagement.

People have asked Facebook for a “dislike” button for years, and this is their response. Right now, it is new and exciting, but time will be the judge on how well this new engagement works, and more importantly, how it impacts the business side of Facebook. We do know that this will impact the field of social media marketing and the numerous organizations relying on social media for advertising, whether it will be a positive impact is left to be determined.

If the thought of trying to understand and master yet another drastic change to social media makes your head spin, don’t fret! Alpine Small Business Solutions is here for you. We can handle your social media marketing, or any other aspect of business building you would like assistance with. Just shoot us an email or call us up.

Business to Business Facebook Likes Don’t Count

NO! Say it isn’t true!!!

Yes, it is sad but true. B2B Facebook likes are not added to your business page’s like count. Facebook is set up with a complex algorithm that isn’t very business friendly. This algorithm determines many aspects of how Facebook works and what is seen by your followers.

If not getting all the likes you could isn’t depressing enough, actually only a fraction of your followers can see your status updates at any given time because of how Facebook’s algorithm works. This leaves small business owners in the hard spot of having to work hard to get every like they can and pushing consistent, quality content to get people to like and engage on their page. The more engagement you can get the more Facebook allows your content to be seen.

So should I still like their pages?

YES! Still like business pages with your business account, but also do it with your personal account. Engage with content that is relevant to you with your business account—like, share, and comment all you want, the page owner will greatly appreciate it. Just make sure you also like the page with your personal account so the business is getting credit for your like. As important as likes are in the Facebook world, engagement will take you page to a whole new level, so make sure you are posting quality content and talking with others in your field.

Is there anything I can do?

Yes! But you are going to have to pay for it or work for it. Facebook has ads and ways to promote you page to get a larger audience. There are also many organic tactics that a virtual assistant can help you set up to try to grow your page, but it is always an ongoing process. You have to work for those likes and engagement through persistence and content.

It is so unfair!

Yes, it does seem a little unfair to businesses out there trying to grow their page, but the truth is that is exactly what Facebook is trying to do as well. Facebook is like any other business, and they are trying to make money by having businesses promote their page to get followers and have their information be seen.

From small business owner to small business owner, help one another out. We all are trying to grow and get our word out there. Engage, comment, like, and share as much as you can, not only will it help the other business but it will be helping yours grow as well. Go team!

4 Cool Tools for Managing Your Twitter

Social media has become such an essential part of businesses marketing strategy these days and there is sooooo much information out there it can be a bit overwhelming. BUT, there is hope for those that get dizzy just thinking about their social media marketing and strategy…it is called a Virtual Assistant!

A Virtual Assistant can set up and manage all social media for your business. It is now possible to reach out to hundreds or even thousands in a matter of seconds all through the power of a tweet or a wall post. Maximizing interaction with potential clients and increasing sales is the idea of managing social media profiles of many businesses.

Now take a deep breathe, don’t freak out, and find peace of mind that there is hope in managing your social media and keeping your Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, etc. active daily. Just like email (which I know some feel like is an overwhelming task as well) you need to pay attention to the messages that come floating in through your social channels. Just like email you need to respond to messages and responses, interact through all the groups you are a part of, and keep a happy line of communication to ensure you control your reputation of a good person to do business with. Therefore, keeping up with all your online accounts can take up hours of your time that we know you could be working and making money during.

Shhhhh, here is a little secret….ideally, you should not spend more than 30-60 minutes replying and posting online daily on Twitter. How do you do this? Is this possible, you ask? I have found four Twitter services to make that online work more efficient and allow you time for other tasks in your already busy life.

Hootsuite

A reason people spend so much time on social media is because they have to constantly switch from screen to screen, search for important information to post, think of new ideas, etc. every day. With Hootsuite, possibly one of the most used social media tools out there, allow you to register up to five of your social media profiles to permit interacting with your Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn followers easy.

The interface on all the different accounts has unique designs to allow for less confusion and quick recognition. If you want to send a message to all your profiles, this can be done with one simple click of a button. The messages with automatically appear on the profile(s) you chose.

Another awesome advantage of using this tool for social media is the ability to schedule your posts on specific dates at specific times during the future. This is especially helpful if you won’t be able to tend to any of your social media outlets due to other obligations and commitments. Once you schedule the messages they will post even if you do not log in that day.

InboxQ

Did you know there are Twitter users who are waiting to become your followers, or possibly even clients? The problem is, they just don’t know it yet. When people ask questions about products and/or services that your business offers, InboxQ perhaps the most helpful when it comes to generating leads for your business, allows you to find them.

The application can be downloaded and installed on your browser or Hootsuite dashboard. Once installed, you enter keywords that are relevant to your business and InboxQ will then search questions asked on Twitter. There is no limit of keywords, as long as they help you receive returned questions. From that point, you answer the tweets with relevant information about what your business can offer them in answering their questions.

Commun.it

This is another social media service that allows your virtual assistant or online business manager to build more Twitter leads, which in turn will increase your sales by focusing on your list of high-value followers. Any user who mentions your business name will
appear on a special list, which will make it easier to engage with those who are truly interested and allow you to strengthen your relationships. The service also automatically populates your different followers into groups for segmentation purposes. Similar to InboxQ you can enter keywords that will then be used to discover new leads for your business. You can sign up for a free account that will allow you to engage 30 times with a single user but then requires payment.

Topsy

Along with social media you are guaranteed to have customer feedback. This will be great for possible clients of your business since most research on the Internet prior to shopping with any specific business and making any purchases. Obviously, positive feedback draws them to your business and negative with repel them. Searching for posts on Topsy and retweeting, liking and commenting on them is important.

If you receive a negative comment make sure you provide a solution and answers. If possible find a way to correct the mistake this way even if you receive a negative comment on social media the manner you resolve it will speak high volumes.

There are a myriad of selections out there that can be used from your online business managers or virtual assistant to help keep you known out there and allow for optimum social media engaging. Your time is your most precious asset and social media should not eat into your business and personal time on a daily basis. Carve out specific time, get these and other great tools and use your time wisely and receive the most value for your minute!

And as always, if this stuff makes you dizzy and you just don’t want to take the time to learn all the ins and out of Twitter, Alpine Small Business, is your one stop shop for all your social media needs. Give us a jingle or shoot over an email anytime we’re here to help.

Thank you for visiting our blog. We hope you enjoyed it. As a friendly reminder don’t forget to share this blog on your social networks and please comment, we love hearing from you!

This blog is brought to you by Alpine Small Business Solutions, Your Virtual Assistant and Online Business Manager Solution. Delegate. Grow. Prosper

5 Ways to Use LinkedIn for Business

When is the last time you sat down just to browse LinkedIn to see what people were saying? LinkedIn is often viewed or thought of as the step child on FaceBook where businesses focus limited social media efforts but can use many of the features available to answer questions regarding their business or the capabilities and qualifications present.

When companies are looking for a specific job to be done they can easily look for it by going into the questions that were asked and responses shared to see who has the most ability to complete this task and see the employees that will be working to know what certification they have in the area they need. They then have the option of contacting the business of their choice to get the best outcome possible.

There are many ways to use LinkedIn for your business but many do not know how. Here are a few ways to use the answers you find on LinkedIn for your business.

Learn what questions your prospective clients have and use this to generate content for a blog post, videos, or email content
Identify and connect with key influencers who are asking questions to help build your network
Develop yourself as a thought leader in the industry by providing helpful answers without sounding salesy
Set your company up as a resource for your clients and prospects without pushing a sale so they come to you organically
Build brand awareness and generate leads

LinkedIn answers provide a great opportunity to engage with your market during their initial research phase and begin lead nurturing and build brand awareness.

Do you want to shake things up and get the word out of what you offer and do to your connections? Check out these action steps to help those connections notice you.

Ask for Advice. The absolute best thing you can do on LinkedIn is to ask for advice. Don’t go in and promote a blog post or something specific. Instead, go in and ask for advice by asking, “What are your best social media tips?”, “Do you still make cold calls? If so, what works?” or “How do you use LinkedIn for B2B lead generation?”

Update Your Profile. This is an easy way to get on people’s radar screen. Each time you update your profile, LinkedIn lets other users know. When people see your updates, they know you’re active, vibrant and still in business. Reminding people you are still there is all they need to refresh their memory of who you are and what you do.

Add a Turner Box Around Your Profile Photo. This is a neat little way to grab people’s attention. It’s based on the fact that the human eye notices the color red more than any other color. By adding a red Turner Box around your profile photo, you can make your LinkedIn profile stand out more, which will result in more engagement.

Follow Thought-Leaders on LinkedIn Today. LinkedIn Today is a great tool that keeps you up-to-date on the latest industry happenings. Sign up and stay fresh in all the news and happenings going on in the LinkedIn world.

Use the Alumni Tool to Connect with Friends. The Alumni Tool is one of the better features on LinkedIn. Go to CONTACTS in the menu bar and drag down to your college or university. There, you’ll see your old friends and, more importantly, their jobs and their companies. These connections already know you so if they are following you they are more likely to help promote your business to their friends, for FREE!

Do not go into LinkedIn expecting great results, especially instantly. It is not like FaceBook in the manor that you go in with an idea and expect certain immediate results. It just doesn’t work that way. Go in knowing you are ready and willing to give and all information and watch how people slowly start to follow you and want to know more about what you offer.

And as always, if this stuff makes you dizzy and you just don’t want to take the time to learn all the ins and out of Linkedin, Alpine Small Business, is your one stop shop for all your social media needs. Give us a jingle or shoot over an email anytime we’re here to help.

10 Pinterest Tools for Business

I am a huge fan of Pinterest and am finding that I’m using it more and more. There are a lot of skeptics out there that think it’s just for girls, or don’t see the business value, but for you Pinterest virgins out there, I really recommend you try it out.

It’s a great tool for businesses (when used effectively) and I’m seeing more engagement, sharing and traffic back as a result.

As Pinterest has grown and become more popular unsurprisingly we have seen a rise of tools that have popped into the marketplace to help manage, measure and enhance the Pinterest experience. Without further ado, here are my favorite Pinterest tools and the reasons I love them:

1. PinAlerts

PinAlerts is a very useful Pinterest tool that allows you to find out in real time whether someone has pinned something from your website. It allows you to quickly respond and say thanks to those who are promoting your work, as well as helps increasing your followers by asking your pinners to follow some of your other boards. PinAlerts is still in its infancy (aka beta version) and they have plans for more features to arrive soon, such as the possibility to broadcast the number of your repins on your website.

2. Pinreach

Pinreach helps you understand better where you stand on Pinterest and how well you’re doing, by calculating your Pinterest “score.” Another useful feature is that you can see the daily trending members and trending pins. This is great for boosting your engagement: repins, comments and increase in followers to your boards.

3. Hootsuite

Ok, I admit this one is a slight cheat as I use Hootsuite predominantly for Twitter and Facebook but I thought it was worth a mention here particularly as they have now included Pinterest tracking to their portfolio.

4. Followers on Pinterest

Followers on Pinterest is a smartphone/tablet app that costs £0.69. It’s very similar to another one of my favourite Twitter tools, ManageFlitter. You can use it to find out who isn’t following you back, track new followers, follow and unfollow users and discover new people and boards to follow. One of the most interesting features of this app is that it allows you to keep track of everyone who has everunfollowed you!

5. Pin Search

If you use Google Chrome and Pinterest, then you may find this tool very useful. It’s a Chrome extension that allows you to Google search using any picture on Pinterest. This way you can get all the information there is on a picture as well as similar pictures. A great discovery tool for Pinterest!

6. Piqora

Piqora (formerly known as Pinfluencer) is a great tool for anyone who is serious about using Pinterest for marketing reasons. You can use it to start any promotions on Pinterest, to track your results with their analytics and manage your content (including pin scheduling). Another great feature is Pinner360, that helps you identify your most influential pinners, your brand advocates as well as who engages the most with you. A very useful tool and a must for those using Pinterest for their business.

7. Pinstamatic

Pinstamatic is a great Pinterest tool that helps you make even better boards. Regular images are just not enough anymore to stand out, and with this tool you can get that extra edge over your competition. For example, you can add quotations to your board, which has a much better chance of attracting users to it as well as fun sticky notes. Another great feature is that you can share music on your boards and your friends can play them right from there – a great tool that helps you create more diverse and more fun boards. You can also use Pinstamatic to add a map to your Pinterest board, so that whenever someone clicks on it they are directed to your location on Google Maps.

8. Pinterest Right Click

Pinterest Right Click is another browser extension, but this time for Mozilla Firefox users. Once installed, it adds a “Pin Image” option to your right-click menu, so whenever you find an image that you would like to pin, you can do it very quickly by right-clicking.

9. PinBooster

PinBooster is a great tool for those who want to advertise on Pinterest. It works simply by compensating popular pinners to endorse your business on Pinterest. They can share your photos and videos and promote your hashtags and events to their followers. It’s a useful way to grow your follower base and even get some leads out of it. And if you are a great pinner yourself and have lots of followers, you can sign up on Pinbooster and actually get paid to pin.

10. Snapito

Snapito is a tool from the Pinstamatic family that has a very simple, yet useful feature. It allows you to pin your website easily, by entering its address on their website and with the click of a button you get a screenshot of the website that you can then quickly post to your Pinterest board. Another very similar tool is a Google Chrome extension called ShotPin, which pretty much does the same thing!

So there you have it a list of my 10 favorite Pinterest tools! I can’t wait for more tools to pop up so I can try them all and do a more extensive list. Until then, Happy Pinning!

And as always, if this stuff makes you dizzy and you just don’t want to take the time to learn all the ins and out of Pinterest, Alpine Small Business, is your one stop shop for all your social media needs. Give us a jingle or shoot over an email anytime we’re here to help.

Top 5 Facebook Tools for Businesses

I was part of the social revolution before social media was even cool. I remember sitting awake on Myspace (remember Myspace?) for hours learning about people, friends and colleagues. It was captivating to have so much information at your finger tips and such a easy way to promote your passion and lifestyle.

Then over the years , Myspace went by the wayside and Facebook became a common household name. Currently Facebook has passed the 1 billion active users mark, and is said to be the largest social network in the world. Furthermore Facebook isn’t only for connecting with friends, family and co-workers, but also a powerful place for , many brands and businesses. Many small and large sized businesses have flocked to Facebook to connect with and market themselves with their target audience.

A large number of social media marketing tools have surfaced to help assist those companies with effectively managing their Facebook marketing activities to help gain the most from their time.

So, being that we love to help folks and businesses, we went out and found 5 of the top Facebook tools that are on the market for your use to help make your life easier. There’re simple tools to assist in engaging with your audience to the more complex tools for the more advanced marketing needs.

Hootsuite

A reason people spend so much time on social media is because they have to constantly switch from screen to screen, search for important information to post, think of new ideas, etc. every day. Hootsuite is a social management platform for managing multiple social accounts. It separates engagements and keywords monitored by columns known as streams.

Wildfire Interactive

Wildfire Interactive is a platform for brands to quickly create and launch Facebook marketing and promotional campaigns such as contests. Sweepstakes, group deals and competitions. Wildfire simplifies the process of Facebook promotions for your Facebook page. With their customizable templates featuring an easy drag and drop interface, you’ll have you promotion up and running in no time. It’s perfect for marketers who do not have their own development team to create campaigns from scratch.

Socialmotus

SocialMotus is a great alternative for those who want a less cluttered interface than Hootsuite, while still being able to manage multiple social accounts from one platform. With SocialMotus you’ll have everything you need to build, manage and measure your social community in one simple interface. Additional features include the ability to get Twitter followers fast, handle priority messages quickly, track conversions and stats from Twitter and Facebook post and more.

Conversocial

Conversocial focuses on helping businesses moderate and quickly respond to customer service and support messages through Facebook and Twitter. Conversocials key feature is its Priority Response Engine, similar to the SocialMotus priority messaging system. This allows priority messages containing specific keywords to be placed in a special priority inbox, making it easier to handle high volumes of customer service and support questions sent through your Facebook and Twitter channels.

Edgerank Checker

This offers straight forward and easy-to-understand analytics of your Facebook page, providing you with an EdgeRank score that ranks objects in the Facebook News Feed. Your EdgeRank score is a great indication of the effectiveness of your Facebook page. Pages with high EdgeRank Scores will be more likely to show up in the news feed, than Pages with low scores. Its pro plans also offer comparisons between your page and the overall industry reports to help provide further insight into what is working across the board.

With so many options out there to help you manage your social media outlets it is much easier to have options available for what fits your lifestyle. We are all rushed for time and need something simple but with many benefits to help our business grow. Facebook is one of several social media interactive platforms that allow our business to be known and grow. Make the best of your time with these helpful tools.

And as always, if this stuff makes you dizzy and you just don’t want to take the time to learn all the ins and out of Facebook, Alpine Small Business, is your one stop shop for all your social media needs. Give us a jingle or shoot over an email anytime we’re here to help.