Creative Concepts

According to AllFacebook—the unofficial guide to Facebook—teenage behavior on Facebook has become increasingly, and disturbingly, more antisocial.  New studies by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project report concerning effects of Facebook usage by young teenagers such as friendships ending, face to face confrontations at school, problems with parents, physical fights and bullying.  Possibly the most disturbing of all is how nine out of ten teenagers have observed cruelty on social networks, or treated others that way themselves.  Regardless of the age limit for a Facebook account, it has also been noticed that children thirteen and younger have been creating accounts with reported ages much, much older than their actual ages.  This is to get past the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and the age limit that Facebook has set in accordance with the Act…with or without their parents’ permission.

Blogs, Twitter, Facebook — social media provides so many ways to reach out to consumers and clients. How do you know what format is right for your brand or business? The first step is understanding how each of these social media platforms works.

Twitter: Twitter is a microblogging platform; you have exactly 140 characters (about the length of a text message) to convey a quick bit of information. Twitter is frequently compared to a cocktail party — there are a variety of conversations all going on at once, and you drift in and out of several at a time. Twitter can be used to direct followers to blog or Facebook posts, or to offer quick snippets of information.

How to use Twitter: Your brand needs a distinct voice to be heard in the crowd. Don’t just share links to blog posts or contests; talk about more than just your brand.

Facebook: Facebook is the online coffee shop, where friends meet to catch up and find out what’s new and cool. Facebook allows you to share multiple mediums — blog posts, photos, videos, quick snippets of information — with fans, in a format that is more detailed than Twitter’s. Keep in mind, though, that your Facebook updates show up in your fan’s feed in between updates from their actual friends; like Twitter, think of this as a conversation, not a billboard.

How to use Facebook: The best Facebook feeds are those from brands who are able to personalize their business. Successful brands have a voice — and sometimes a face — behind their Facebook updates, someone who makes the brand feel like a friend, not a company.

Blogs: A blog is old school social media at its best. Blogs allow you space to talk in detail about your brand or product, to provide consumers with in-depth information or inside scoop. But keep your blog posts relatively short — no one wants to read a dissertation-length treatise on why you’re the brand leader — and make sure you’re posting consistently. You’ll never create a following if your posting schedule is something akin to “once in a blue moon.”

How to use a blog: Keep blog posts focused and tightly edited; provide readers with enough detail to keep them engaged and informed. Make sure that your posts have a voice and a point — and, ideally, some type of narrative. People love a story, because it gives them a way to relate to you — or your brand.

No matter what platform you choose, there are a few general rules to keep in mind.

Updates — no matter what their length — should be well-written and grammatically correct. It’s ok to draft a Tweet or Facebook status update in the way you would draft a blog post; just because you’re limited to 140 characters doesn’t mean you can’t carefully edit what you’re writing.

Engaging in a social media forum means being social — take time to engage with your fans, followers and commenters. And don’t stop at responding to conversation they direct at you; engage with them on their own ground as well. The cocktail party analogy is useful here — no one likes the guy who only talks about himself. The same is true for brands.

Finally, if you’re going to use social media to reach clients and customers, make a commitment to do it right. Designate or hire someone to manage your blog and update your Twitter and Facebook feeds. In order to create a significant online presence, you need someone who can be online for a significant amount of time each day.

Engaging with consumers via social media requires a commitment of time and resources, but the return is amazing: you will create a community of fans who are loyal to and enthusiastic about your brand. And that’s absolutely worth the effort.

Photo via Twitter.

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If you’re a Facebook user, by now you’ve undoubtedly gotten used to seeing ads on the right side of your Facebook pages. Once the province of big brands (who paid tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to appear on your Facebook home page), they’ve been accessible to everyone for a year or two now, yet I’m surprised at how few brands and companies are taking advantage of this amazingly targeted advertising opportunity. You can use Facebook ads to advertise an outside website (like your own blog or site), or to promote your Facebook Page to people who could Like your page. Even if you’re not yet ready to advertise, you can use the very insightful Facebook Ads platform to understand the universe of users on Facebook who are in your target.

To get started with either demographic analysis or advertising, first go to: www.facebook.com/advertising. Once there, click on the green “Create an Ad” button on the upper right side. You’ll be taken to a screen where you choose a destination and ad type. For the purposes of this discussion, we’re going to assume you’re advertising an outside URL (like your website) and that you’re going to run Facebook Ads. (Sponsored Stories, the other ad type, are very cool, but that’s for another post.)

If all you want to do is browse Facebook demographics, you do not need to enter any creative, just skip to Section 2, Targeting. This is where you can start to learn how big Facebook’s reach could be for your exact target market. By selecting various locations, interests, ages and more you can winnow down to the precise demographic you’re interested in. At this point, you may not be ready to advertise, but wouldn’t it be great to be able to tell your boss that there are 262,000 women ages 25-50 within 50 miles of Stamford, CT who are interested in cooking? (Or wherever your business is or with whatever demographic criteria you choose.) That level of information is not available anywhere else, at least not without paying thousands of dollars for market research.

Play with this tool (for free!) and you could learn a lot about who you’re trying to attract to your Facebook page, or you could extrapolate that to the general public (assuming that 51% of Americans age 12+ have Facebook pages).

If you do want to give Facebook ads a test, it’s very easy to setup and manage on a small scale. You can test with just a few dollars, though I recommend a $500 test budget initially so that you can really give it a fair shake. And there’s no need for fancy banners or creative – it’s really something anyone can do themselves. All you need is a 25-character ad title, 135-character body copy and a small image (110×80 pixels or larger, which is a 4:3 ratio). All of that goes into Section 1 of the ad setup page (first image, above).

In Section 3 of the ad setup, you’ll be able to specify whether you want to pay for clicks or impressions; I recommend clicks, so that you’re only paying for traffic to your site. You can set a daily budget and also a cost-per-click (Facebook recommends the range of per-click cost that matches your demographic; you should generally stay within their recommended range, and you may find you want to change your criteria to lower the cost.)

Note that some days you’ll spend up to your desired budget, and other days you may not spend anything at all; that’s because Facebook’s platform is a bid driven, meaning that you may get outbid in your demographic for a period of time. When my spend starts to wane I usually just wait it out for a few days, but you can also tweak your demographics a bit, which may get the spend started again. Raising your bid will also help, of course, as it will put you farther up the ranks in the bidding system.

Are you already using Facebook ads to drive traffic to your website? We’d love to hear your experiences in the comments. Or let us know if you have questions about how understanding Facebook demographics can help your business.

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We all know that social media is the way to connect with customers, but as a business or a brand, how do you know who to turn to for help? Everyone seems to be a social media “expert” these days, but not all experts are created equal. There is an art to using social media successfully, particularly to promote a brand, but having a Twitter account does not make someone an expert. Here’s how to vet your expert or agency and get the best possible help with your social media outreach.

Be wary of any social media “expert” who isn’t already using social media, and using it well. Your consultant or agency should be able to speak, from experience, about all of the outlets that he or she is recommending your business engage with — as well as being able to recommend outlets you hadn’t thought of (after all, this person is the expert). They should also be able to explain, in simple, understandable terms, how to use these platforms, and how to choose the ones that will be of most use to you and your customers.

Ask for details on how they will use social media to grow your brand. The agency or consultant should be able to articulate goals and timelines — 500 Facebook fans in the next 30 days, for example, or 10 Foursquare check-ins per day at your brick-and-mortar location, or three blog posts per week featuring your brand or product — as well as offering strategies for achieving those goals.

Have your expert submit writing samples. Social media relies heavily on the written word; if your consultant will be updating your brand’s blog, Facebook page, or Twitter feed for you, be sure that their writing is up to your standards. You are looking for interesting, relevant, grammatically correct content. If the consultant or agency has a Facebook page or Twitter feed that they can share with you (either her personal accounts or another client’s), look those over carefully; feel free as well to ask for sample posts relevant to your brand.

Keep an eye on the conversation. Hiring a consultant to manage social media outreach for your brand doesn’t mean that you’re off the hook. Follow your brand on Facebook and Twitter; read your business’s blog. If you see something that’s not working, let the consultant know and if you see something you really like, let them know that, too. But remember: they may be the social media experts, but you’re the brand expert. Together you can create a voice for your brand and a community for your business.

Looking for examples of businesses and brands that are succeeding at social media? Some of my favorite Facebook pages are listed below including a few clients of Creative Concepts; these brands have a clear voice and an excellent sense of community, and always offer well-written, engaging status updates.

Hayden-Harnett

Road ID

Matchbook Magazine

Cherokee USA

Bigelow Tea

Ecover

You should follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

There’s nothing like a sweepstakes or contest to get people talking about your brand! When you offer a prize through Facebook, Twitter or blog, you not only increase your fan base but often times these new followers ramp up the conversation as we have seen with client Bigelow Tea on their Facebook page and client Ecover who showcased a fantastic contest called 30 under 30 which garnered hundreds of mentions on all channels.

With numerous client prize winning adventures under our belt, we at Creative Concepts, are supporting The Children’s Aid Society Recipe Contest which helps to promote one of their missions: healthy eating for kids and their families. Submissions for original and healthy recipes are being accepted on Facebook only until July 24th which is just one way The Children’s Aid Society is hoping to expand their online community to those who care about needy kids and their families in the New York metro area. Winners will receive gift certificates at some of New York City’s hottest restaurants like Four Seasons, Gramercy Tavern, PRINT, Mae Mae Cafe and Al Di La in Brooklyn. We’re also using this opportunity to tap into the powerful mom blogging community, by asking the Meal Makeover Moms to be on our panel of judges in addition to Julie Negrin, Erica Wides and Heather Carlucci-Rodriguez of PRINT. And the final fun detail: on July 29th, we’re announcing the winners at New York City’s famed Union Square Greenmarket, where local and organic fare is the name of the game.

A successful contest in today’s social media landscape not only helps draw new fans, but it also solidifies a brand’s core values so please help support The Children’s Aid Society and enter your recipe today!

You should follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Story of my life:  Oh I’ll just go on Facebook for five minutes.  An hour later: still there.  I’m frequently distracted from my homework as I creep on my friends’ pictures and profiles, and sometimes connect with old friends and family I haven’t seen with a while.  Not to mention the fact that I’m constantly lured back to Facebook by the group my AP Language and Composition class has created with our teacher for class discussion, changes in assignments and posting homework.  It’s safe to say that, as a teenager, Facebook is the largest mode of communication.  Practically everyone I know has a Facebook profile, and if they don’t, they’re out of the loop.

While I mostly use Facebook for social purposes, I’ll occasionally connect to a brand or like a page.  Because I don’t like unnecessary clutter on my newsfeed, I really only connect to the brands that I know and love outside of Facebook.   For example, Gossip Girl, and America’s Next Top Model are examples of two brands that I’ve connected to.  I am a religious Gossip Girl watcher.  No matter what is going on, even if I haven’t finished my homework, I will watch the show, and the fact that their Facebook page is so active makes it even better!!!!  For the nights when I am busy, and can’t watch the show, GG posts a link where you can watch the episode for free!  Constant updates and pictures prior to episodes make me excited to watch (not that I wasn’t already!).  Honestly, I don’t actually visit the pages of any brands on Facebook.  If an update shows up on my newsfeed, then I’ll look, but if it doesn’t, then there are probably zero chances that I’ll go look at what the brand is doing on their page.  The brands that are relatively inactive on Facebook are ones that I will probably disconnect from later on, since the connection hasn’t been worth it.

Image via Gossip Girl Facebook Page

But trust me, the brands that invest time in promoting themselves on Facebook (where probably a large majority of teenagers spend their time), win in the end.  They’re the brands I’ll stick to and support even more, just like Gossip Girl!!

What’s EdgeRank, you ask?  It’s only the single most important concept for brands looking to market themselves via Facebook.  I am going to help you understand it so you can make the most of your brand’s Facebook effort.

When you log in to Facebook as yourself, you land on your home page. That page has two viewing options – Top News and Most Recent (look in the upper right hand corner under the search box).  The default view, and the one which the vast majority of people use, is Top News.  In fact, something like 95% of people never view their news feed any other way.

So what’s “Top” News? It’s the content that Facebook has decided is the most important for you.  Not your best friend, not your colleague, and not your spouse.  Everyone on Facebook is going to see different status updates, even if they have the same friends – and how that’s determined is governed by EdgeRank.  It’s an algorithm. But please don’t stop reading, even if this next graphic scares you:

What this means is that for any status update (from an individual or from a brand – both are EdgeRank-dependent), there are three things that determine whether any given Facebook friend or Fan will see it.  For this explanation, we’re going to assume you’re posting as the brand.

You probably already know that gathering Likes and Comments on your updates is important – all three parts of EdgeRank help you understand why.

1. Affinity: How close is the user to the brand? Do they Like or Comment on the brand’s updates often? Visit their wall regularly? Share their content with others?  If so, the Affinity score will be higher.  If they rarely engage with the brand, Affinity will be low.

2. Type: What kind of update is it? Facebook seems to weight media (video and photos) more strongly than regular status updates, and updates with links more strongly than those without. And a Comment is more valuable than a Like. So don’t just post a lot of plain status updates – spice them up with links, photos and videos, when you can. Also, check out other Facebook services, like Places and Facebook Questions – they also seem to rank higher and are more frequently seen in people’s feeds.  And this is where getting people to Like or Comment on your status quickly (and a lot) helps, because an update with a lot of engagement is ranked as a higher type than an update without.

3. Time: Facebook wants you to regularly update your status. And they reward you for it. Recent content with quick initial activity will often appear in your fans’ feeds.  If your content is stale, it may never appear, even if it eventually gathers a few Likes and Comments.  But this also explains why you might only see some friend’s or brand’s updates 18 hours or a day after it’s posted – because it took that long for it to become important to you, meaning other people had to like it or comment on it before it made it into your news feed.

The bottom line for what EdgeRank means for marketers: create great Facebook content that people will interact with, as quickly as possible.  Purposefully create content that will generate comments. Update frequently. Optimize your page so people are more likely to interact with it.

If you’re authentically creating content that your fans enjoy, EdgeRank should come naturally. But it sure can’t hurt to know the details so you can gain a little bit of an edge yourself.

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The phrase “you’re doing it wrong” has long been the cause of many social media arguments.  When one of the basic principles of social marketing is to “just be yourself,”  how can you be wrong at being yourself?

While the merits of that question can be debated endlessly, we here at Creative Concepts do know one thing for sure: whatever “wrong” happens to be, it sure feels good to know we’re doing something right!

Sometimes, validation comes from metrics.  Social media can be unpredictable, so when the numbers prove that our theories (and campaigns) are bearing fruit for our clients, we feel good because they feel good.

Other times, validation comes directly from the clients themselves.  We’ve been working with some of our clients for more than 5 years, which means our methods are working for them.  And every time we sign a new client, or expand our responsibilities with an existing client, we know that we’re all moving confidently forward in a positive — and profitable — direction.

And then there’s the validation from our peers.  For example, when we read Mashable’s recent list of 10 Tips for Posting on Your Brand’s Facebook Page, we digitally high-fived ourselves because we already do each of these things for our clients. (See for yourself on their Facebook pages.)

Client love, new work and metric boosts are what keep us active and engaged, but there’s still nothing like reading a major advice column and realizing we’re already ahead of the curve.  (And we haven’t even had our coffee yet!)

Wondering what else we know?  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

If anyone can publish a blog, create a video or launch a meme, you’d think that Twitter, Facebook and YouTube would be the empires of the new, with the latest self-made stars forever in control of the cultural conversation.

And you’d be wrong.

A recent report from HP Labs confirms the exact opposite: the most popular sources of information on Twitter are actually traditional news media outlets like CNN, ESPN and (egad, a newspaper?) The New York Times.

Why?  Because people like to share information that impacts wide audiences, and because traditional media still has information-gathering resources and robust distribution platforms that “new” media can’t live without.

In other words, no matter how easy social media makes it to talk to others, people still need something to talk about.

Is that “something” your business?

It could be, if your brand is worth the buzz.  But even topical companies need more than just a social media hook to catch and hold an audience’s attention.

A tweet is gone in an instant.  A Facebook update crawls off the page and out of sight.  A YouTube video might be shared for weeks, months or years as new viewers continue to find it… but what’s driving them to it in the first place?

Periodic fame is always the cumulative result of widespread general awareness — and that includes mainstream publicity.  Is your company poised to take long-term advantage of short-term PR success?

Ask yourself:

• Is your social media team working hand-in-hand with your traditional PR and marketing teams?  (Or, even better, are they fully integrated?)
• Do you share your brand’s mainstream media mentions with your social media audiences?
• Are you trumpeting your online successes in offline media?  (Don’t forget: newspapers and magazines still write about the Internet.)
• Does your media contact list include reporters from all branches of journalism?
• Do your print ads include icons and URLs where interested customers can find you on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.?

Remember: whether it’s physical or digital, all ink is good ink, as long as it gets people talking about you.

And you can talk with us on Facebook and Twitter!

Image by Blue Mountains Library on Flickr.

You’ve probably noticed by now, or been notified, that Facebook Pages for business have changed.  As of March 10, all pages will be in the new format.  Gone are the tabs and the fan images down the left.  Instead, photos march across the top and navigation has moved left.  But beyond the cosmetic, what has changed and what does this mean for your business?

Categories and Subcategories

Once upon a time you could set a category and never change it.  Now you can, and you can add a subcategory as well.  These settings dictate what information you can fill out on your info page – for example, local businesses include addresses, brands generally do not. If you were stuck with the wrong category, change it now.  And everyone should add a subcategory.

Use Facebook As Page

This is probably the most radical change to Pages.  It used to be that if you were an admin on a page, you could only post to that page as the page, never as yourself.  Now you can do both.  Toggle the choice under Account – Use Facebook As Page, or while you’re on the Page, select to Use Facebook as [Brand] on the right side under the Admins section.  While this allows for a great deal more interaction on the page from admins, do be careful that your admins are not the only people talking on your page – and, be careful to avoid the appearance of “astroturfing” – propping up your business by using hired guns (i.e., your administrators) to say nice things about you.

Relevant Posts

Facebook used to allow three choices for viewing the wall: [Brand] + Others, Just [Brand], or Just Others.  Those choices have been simplified to Everyone or [Brand].  But beyond that, the Wall is no longer chronological.  That’s right, just like your personal News Feed (which uses Facebook’s EdgeRank to determine which posts are most relevant to you), Fan Pages are now subject to a Facebook algorithm to determine which posts to show at the top.  In fact, at this moment I’m looking at a client page that’s showing, from top down, a post from today, then a post from last week, then a post from yesterday, then another from today.  Feels kinda weird to me, but it’s what we’ve got now.  So know that your most popular posts will rise to the top and new visitors (because that’s who mainly looks directly at your wall) will see those first. It’s probably mostly a good thing, but it could also trip you up if content you think is timely or important is not Liked or Commented on, because it may get buried by more popular content.

Public Admins

An interesting new feature that I have not seen widely adopted yet is the ability to add your admins to the left side of the page as “Featured Page Owners.”  This could be really good for brands with strong personalities involved, such as brand spokespeople or beloved community managers.  It could also help avoid the astroturfing issue described above, because if it’s totally transparent who your admins are, then the fact that they’re posting on your page a lot shouldn’t be a mystery.  Use this feature with caution, though – not all of your admins should necessarily be your front-facing social media presences, lest they get asked questions or connected to personally.  There may also be some employees who don’t really want to be the public face of the brand.

Featured Likes

You’ve always had the ability to “Like” another fan page, and now you can feature five of them prominently (even in rotation with others) on the left side of your page.  This option, and Public Admins, are both enabled from the main admin menu under “Featured.”  This can be a great way to showcase partnerships, stroke a potential client/customer, or otherwise show off an affiliation with another brand.  Remember, too, that brands can only tag other pages in their posts, and you have to Like the other page in order to do so – so even if you Like a lot of pages,  you can still make some of them special with the Featured Likes rotation.

What are you doing with your redesigned Page?  Have you included cool images? How are you managing the balance between page and admins?  We’d love to hear from you in the comments?

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