Three quick tips to improve your Facebook page

Facebook is one of the most commonly used online marketing tools for business - and rightfully so!

It's also one of the most frustrating.

There are all kinds of things you can do to optimize your Facebook page so that it works for you. Today I'm going to share three really simple tips that will help make your Facebook presence better.

1) About page

How complete is your About page? Make sure that you have filled in as much as you can because Facebook is Google searchable. The more relevant your make your content and the more keywords you use, the better.

The other bonus is that you look professional. The more well rounded, descriptive and easy to find your content is, the more credible and professional you look.

2) Call-to-action

Have you seen the "Call to Action" button that Facebook has made available for pages? It's a great and SUPER simple way to give people the opportunity to engage with you.

To set it up go to your page and click on "Create Call to Action."

Then walk through the simple steps of choosing what you want your button to say and where you want it to go.

And that's it - you're done. I've set mine up as a sign up to my newsletter, but you can send it to any kind of page: a squeeze page, sales page, have them sign up for an appointment or watch a video.

There's also a handy report of how well the call-to-action is performing in your page side bar. Don't expect these numbers to be huge - there's very little information and most people aren't actually coming to your page when they see your content. But considering it takes 2 minutes to set up, there's no good reason not to do it even if it only converts occasionally.

3) Put a call-to-action in your cover image description

Putting a a call-to-action in your cover image description is another call-to-action improvement because that's ultimately what we're trying to achieve with using Facebook for our businesses - to get people to DO something.

When you upload a photo as your cover image on Facebook, don't just leave the description blank. This is an opportunity to ask people to do something. This will be effective if people click on the image to see more, if they see it come through their news feed (especially when you initially change your cover image) and if you put a call-to-action in the image (I don't have one, but it's a great thing to test out) that says, "click here to get a _____" and then leave the extra information in the photo description. Always remember to tell people what they're getting - demonstrate the value to them. 

There you have it. Three really fast and easy ways to improve your Facebook business page.

Have any other easy tips to share? Leave them in the comments!

Planning your social content: a step-by-step guide

The best way to effectively use social media for your small business is to have a plan. Since that is definitely easier to say than do, I thought today I would break down step-by-step how to come up with a simple plan.

1) Know what you're trying to achieve.

I've written about this topic quite a bit in the past, so check out some of those posts, but the simple explanation is to figure out why you're using social media - we all have different reasons beyond "make more money," which is key for most of us. 

2) Know who you're talking to.

Different audiences are on different channels and different audiences like different kinds of content. You need to know who you're talking to so they feel like what you're saying is for them. If you're too vague or general nobody will feel like you're talking to them, which defeats the purpose of what you're doing.

3) What do you want them to know.

This is SO important. This drives all of your content. What do you want people to know about you and what do you want people to know about what you do. 

4) Pick your channels

It doesn't make sense for you to be on every social channel. You don't have the time or resources for that. Start with a couple and once those are completely under control you can grow from there. 

My top three social media choices (without knowing your audience so this is flexible!) are for you to have an email newsletter, a blog and Facebook.

If however, your audience is very business-to-business, I might prioritize LinkedIn over Facebook.

If your audience is under 25, I might prioritize Instagram over Facebook.

If writing and time is hard for you, I would leave the blog until after you have Facebook and a newsletter set up.

5) Know your numbers

Knowing your numbers is so important in all aspects of business. You need to know where you're at now so you can tell if you're growing.

Set up a spreadsheet or table that lists:

- Facebook likes
- "Talking about" numbers on Facebook
- Twitter followers
- Instagram followers
and so on and so forth

Make sure that Google Analytics or some other analytics tool is set up on your website and track:

- Visits
- Unique visits
- Page views
- Referral sources

You are then going to want to track these numbers monthly to see if what you're doing is working. We want to make sure that the effort you're putting in is worth it to you - you're a busy person!

6) Start sharing your knowledge

Take 10-15 minutes and write down as many tips as you can about something.

Are you a realtor? What are great ways to get your house ready for sale?

Are you a hairdresser? How should your clients be taking care of their hair between cuts and colours?

Are you a nutritionist? What are some great ways to make healthy food on the fly?

The goal is to have a list of one or two sentence tips that you'll be able to use later on and to realize just how much content you can write in a short period of time when you have a specific topic to write about.

Do the same for a few other topics and you'll have a lot of content ready to go!

7) Don't think you need to create it all

You want to share content that's of value to your audience. There is a LOT of content that already exists that your audience will really appreciate having access to. If it backs up your key messages, the things you really want people to know, use THAT content instead of having to write your own.

Whenever you're browsing the internet or Facebook and you see an interesting article, a funny joke or a video that you really like, think about whether or not it would add value to your audience while still staying in line with your key messages. If it does, save it and you'll be able to use that content later!

8) Evaluate

You have your baseline numbers, make sure to check and see what's working, what isn't, and how you can shift and change to improve.

A plan doesn't need to be extensive to get you going on the right path. If you want more help figuring all of this out for Facebook and Twitter, we have a program called Simple Start. It's on sale right now for $39 (regular $99) while I work to update it from the old Wellman Wilson branding. The price will go up once it's been revamped so now's the time to invest!

Periscope - What is it and why should I care?

Have you hard of Periscope? It's a new app that allows you to live stream from your phone. I dug into the app this week and tested it out so I could share whether or not I think it's something you should be spending time with as well!

What is it?

In their own words:

Periscope lets you broadcast live video to the world. Going live will instantly notify your followers who can join, comment and send you hearts in real time. The more hearts you get, the higher they flutter on the screen.

In my words:

You can create live video from your phone that gets shared with your followers and promoted on Twitter. The video is one way, but people watching can send you chat comments and questions. They can also double tap on the video and hearts appear on your screen, letting you know they're enjoying what you're streaming. 

Why should you care?

There are all kinds of interesting reasons that you might want to use Periscope to create valuable content for your audience. There's no way to capture email addresses or do much with the names of who is watching - it's really about building community and relationships with off the cuff authentic content.

This isn't something that I would prioritize above regular content that are working you towards your social media goals, but if you're interested in playing around with it, I think there is potential to have fun and create some buzz, especially while the tool is still so new.

How could you use it?

There are all kinds of things you could do with this tool. You can stream a live Q&A (which I did on Monday), stream quick how tos, or share something you just stumbled across. 

Here are a few ideas of things I've seen or thought that people could do with Periscope:

- If you work in fitness, quick how tos as you're doing your own workout

- If you're at a trade show or networking event and you see something cool you think your audience would like, live stream your commentary on it

- Ask questions or let your audience ask you questions

- Live stream the backstage pass to something you're doing - how you create your podcast, how you come up with your content, how you set up for a photo shoot, etc.

The video seems to stay on Periscope with all the hearts and comments appearing in replay for about 24 hours after you broadcast and then it disappears. You can also download the video and then put it somewhere else but the comments are no longer there which, if there are a lot of pauses and answering questions from the stream might seem a little strange.

I downloaded the one I did and uploaded it to Youtube so I could share it here with you, but it's missing the comments which I think makes it a bit harder to get the feel from. I enjoyed it and think I will do a few more of these, probably at a set date and time so I can let others know I'll be doing it and encourage them to join when they get the notification.

Leave me a comment and let me know if you think the Periscope app would be helpful in your business and how you would use it! Also let me know if you'd want to see me trying out more Q&As on the platform!

How do you schedule content?

Don't get overwhelmed at the idea of posting content on social channels regularly, write it in bulk (or get someone else to do it) and then schedule it! (Here's some inspiration for finding good content to schedule too.)

How do I schedule my social content?

There are lots of different tools that can do this. I'm going to talk about scheduling straight to Facebook and two tools that will let you schedule to multiple other channels. 

Scheduling directly to Facebook

I can't help but be a bit of a pessimist when it comes to Facebook not penalizing third party apps when posting to your Facebook page. That means that I recommend that when you schedule content to Facebook, you do it right in Facebook.

The good news is that it's really simple. When you go to your Facebook page, write the post as you would if you were posting it right away. Instead of clicking post, click to the right of post and select Schedule. 

Editing or making changes is just as easy by going to the very top of your Facebook page and selecting Publishing Tools and then going in to your scheduled posts tab on the left.

Using Hootsuite for scheduling

Hootsuite is a tool that I use more for engaging and organizing my content (mostly Twitter in fact) but it has a lot of capabilities for scheduling. A free account lets you connect 3 accounts and a paid account will let you add more accounts and more users. 

Hootsuite connects to:

• Twitter
• Facebook (personal account, pages and groups)
• LinkedIn
• Google+
• Wordpress

Scheduling is easy and you can schedule the same content to multiple channels (as long as that makes sense - remember that most of the time you want to use different language and tone depending on the channel). Select the channel you want to schedule to from the dropdown on the left and select the calendar to open up the scheduling options.

There are two easy ways to find the content afterwards if you want to change anything. Either select the publisher icon on the left hand toolbar (it looks like a paper airplane)

or create a stream for scheduled content, which is my preferred way of doing it. 

Using Buffer to schedule content

The tool that I use the most for scheduling is Buffer. Like Hootsuite it has limited capability unless you have a paid account (which I have).

Buffer connects to:

• Twitter
• Facebook (personal, page or group)
• LinkedIn (personal or page)
• Google+
• Pinterest

You can schedule to multiple channels at once and easily access your scheduled content by selecting your channel on the left hand side and viewing the queue tab.

Buffer also has a plugin you can install to Chrome that makes it easy for you to schedule content as you're browsing the web. It even has an advanced schedule that lets you schedule the content to post more than once, which is handy for scheduling your own new content.

Which tool should you pick?

A lot of what you pick comes down to preference. Scheduling will take a lot of the daily pressure off of your online marketing work, so even though learning a new tool can feel like a big time commitment it will save you time in the long run - for real :) 

I find Buffer a bit easier to use because everything is bigger and there is more white space. Hootsuite has the ability to see more at once which can make it a more useful dashboard for some. I recommend you give both a try with the free version and see if you have a preference.

Leave me a comment and let me know what tool you have been using for scheduling and what you like about it. I know there are some I didn't mention too!

Tell your audience why you're worth their time

Once you've figured out why you're using online marketing, who you're talking to and what you want them to know, you have to convince people to pay attention. One thing business owners overlook when they ask people to sign up for their email newsletter, like them on Facebook or follow them on Instagram is sharing what's in it for them.

What are you giving your audience?

You need to figure out what your audience values and what you can give them.

There is too much content online for people to spend time reading things they don't care about. That means you need to really understand what your audience is looking for and give them that.

It's about them - not you. The happier you make them, the more likely they are to spend money with you down the line. You're building a relationship with your audience where they value you, your expertise and your content.

How do you know what they want?

You need to figure out the perfect blend between what you want people to know about you, what you're trying to achieve and what they want. It can be tricky to navigate this, so here are a few examples:

For me, I share content. I sell my knowledge, but I also give it away. Why give it away? People who follow me online are looking for knowledge and by giving them some for free they a) believe I know what I'm talking about, b) get a taste for what they could get by paying to work with me, and c) start to appreciate what they got for free and think of me as their go-to person.

Another example would be someone who sells cooking tools. Their audience wants to cook. What can they share with them? Tips on how to cook efficiently, recipes they can make, tips on cooking for a family or cooking for a party. They are giving them information that their audience wants while reinforcing that they sell great cooking tools that can make cooking even easier/better.

A third example would be a personal trainer. They need to convince people that they know what they're doing, share tips on things they can do now on their own, and demonstrate that they understand the demographic they want to work with. If they love to work with new moms, they need to share photos and articles about being a new mom, fitness for a new mom, understanding the difficulties of fitting fitness in as a new mom. That messaging, the articles shared and the things new moms would want to work on are very different than that of say a 45-year old man looking to get in shape.

Putting the pieces together to provide value for your audience, while not forgetting what you're trying to achieve can feel overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be. By breaking down each piece and then pulling them together, your marketing message will become clear.

If you need any help brainstorming, book one of my 45-minute coaching calls and I'll help you work through it all!