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Social Media Slice for Friday, August 17, 2018

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Negative online reviews can be positive, lost client Word documents can be found, and email lists can be more profitable than FB, all covered today.

SLICE is a M-F news digest targeted to assist Social Media Managers and Small Business Owners doing their own marketing.

MAIN SLICE

REVIEWS. Has your small biz taken a hit lately with one or more negative reviews. Warranted or not, forever they will haunt your digital presence & reputation. Do you need a pro fixer or can you DIY? Repair tips from Social Media Examiner. More...

SLICE SPECIAL OF THE DAY

EMAIL LIST. Here is some food for thought: Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. What? And unlike FB or Twitter, you own the communication. These and other social values to building an email list. More…

SLICE MOTIVATION

SLICE INGREDIENTS

WORD document blog or client proposal you were just working on. Where did it go? Not in hard drive. Not in recycle bin. Have to rewrite? Not just yet. The bright minds at Tech Republic have some suggestions for you. More…

SLICE ON THE GO

LABOR DAY GETAWAY. As a Social Media Manager, one of the perks is you can take a mini vacation when you want. And can afford it. USA Today just posted 10 Affordable Getaways— and not all in the USA. More…

(Your thoughts are ALWAYS welcome. Turn this into a conversation either here or on my Twitter account @amssvs)

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Social Media Slice for Monday, August 13, 2018

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Responding to reviews, dealing with website security, and extra FB page authorizations head up today’s news.

SLICE is a M-F news digest targeted to assist Social Media Managers and Small Business Owners doing their own marketing.

MAIN SLICE

Reviews. Small biz love them. Small biz hate them. As a Social Media Manager your job is to get your clients to peacefully coexist with both the good and bad reviews. Here is a solid Monday Morning read on “responding.” More…

SLICE SPECIAL OF THE DAY

Manage pages for clients that have large followings? Facebook is going to be asking you to go through an additional authorization process before it will allow you to post and manage your page. More…

SLICE MOTIVATION

To get you started this week:

SLICE INGREDIENTS

Security at your website “ends” with an “s” as in “https.” Tips on improving website security for your client website. More…

SLICE ON THE GO

Vegan, gluten-free meals are beginning to take off on airplane tray tables as options perceived as fresher, healthier and made with high-quality ingredients become more in demand. More…

(Your thoughts are ALWAYS welcome. Turn this into a conversation either here or on my Twitter account @amssvs)

Social Media Slice for Monday, August 6, 2018

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Customer engagement at the local level, as well as places where AI works and does not work, all covered today!

SLICE is a M-F news digest targeted to assist Social Media Managers and Small Business Owners doing their own marketing.

MAIN SLICE

Customer engagement is not just part of the sales funnel. Sometimes, it is how your SMB builds community cache. Check out how some ice cream shops share extra time to interact with customer by participating in a community festival event. More…

SLICE SPECIAL OF THE DAY

While Artificial Intelligence is all the rage, using bots to handle customer service requests at the SMB level might not be the best option for fluid customer engagement. Case in point, the Poor Cat Designs company which offers a “virtual personal shopping experience” connecting you through text, iMessage, or email with an in-store associate who will work with you to find solutions. More…

SLICE MOTIVATION

Usually I insert a clever tweet here, but today I found a good-read item from Jeff Bullas discussing Morning Success Routines That Will Transform Your Life— as suggested by successful people. More…

SLICE INGREDIENTS

Ok very cute. Mari Smith, queen of Facebook influencers, posted a blog in the form of a Facebook post.  Her topic? Desktop Publishing on your FB page to both your News Feed and page Story.

SLICE ON THE GO

AI and air travel flying together. It can “improve the speed and accuracy of truly personalized offers customers want from airlines, hotels, rental companies, etc. by ‘learning’ (what converts, sells, what routes are best, and more) from travel searches.” 5 ways. More…

(Your thoughts are ALWAYS welcome. Turn this into a conversation either here or on my Twitter account @amssvs)

6 Social Media Customer Engagement Guidelines Small Biz Should Follow

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Remember in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie when they talked about the “Pirates Code” being more like guidelines than rules? We have something similar in the Social Media world. There are some things that through trial and error we’ve learned you shouldn’t do— unless you want to drive away customers, followers, readers, etc. Not rules, but pretty good guidelines.

Posting is a big one. Don’t over post. Don’t under post. Don’t post irrelevant content. Posting content is what I do for clients, so I do have accumulated experience in this area.

To arrive at the above-mentioned findings, Sprout Social surveyed more than 1,000 Facebook, Twitter and Instagram users to determine what annoys them about brands on social and what drives them to unfollow.

Then the folks at CJG Digital Marketing sifted through the data to produce the following Infographic.

6 Social Media Behaviors to Avoid in 2017 (Infographic) - An Infographic from CJG Digital Marketing

(Embedded from CJG Digital Marketing )

Main thing to absorb is that 2.8 BILLION people use social media. If you are a small business owner or an entrepreneur THOSE are a lot of customers to be ignoring if you aren’t on line— and a lot to be ignoring if you are on social.

To repeat, the six no-no’s that Sprout Social focused on are:

  1. Posting too many promotional messages.
  2. Sharing irrelevant information
  3. Tweeting too frequently.
  4. Using jargon or slang awkwardly
  5. Staying too quiet
  6. Not replying to messages

Think about it and it makes sense. You are on social media not to scream from the rooftops about how good your service or product are. You are here to directly engage with potential customers, not to waste their time.

If you need help with consistent posting of blogs, FB posts or Twitter, feel free to contact me.

Why Use Video for a Small Business Account

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Social Media is a visual medium. Yes, we fill it with words. But pictures, graphics and videos can capture your customer’s attention and drive them to your words on Facebook and website.

Don’t believe me? This is data from “31 Must Know Video Marketing Stats” article that appeared in a recent Social Media Today posting.

Video statsI think the numbers speak for themselves. You can see the entire Infographic on the linked website page.

If you’re handling social media in-house for your small business, not only is quality writing a concern as I have stated in previous blogs, but equally of value is a serious concentration on visuals that connect with where your customer “is” or “will be” when you wish to reach out.

According to the stats, 22% of US Small Biz plan to post a video in the next 12 months. Will you be watching your competition?

( Anthony M. Scialis is an experienced print & broadcast writer who coordinates blog, Twitter & Facebook social media content to create a focused & powerful customer engagement effort which will bridge the gap between the wants of your small business to grow and the needs of your customers to be satisfied. Follow https://twitter.com/amssvs)

Your Blog Intro Paragraph, Setting the Correct Hook

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Introductory paragraphs are fishing trips ripe for disaster; launch yourself using the wrong hooks and lures, and you’ll lose all the fish before you get to the end paragraph.

reelingAn early blog of mine covered this topic and I thought it was time to repeat it for those of you small business owners who are piloting your own blog along the internet waters.

Noted social media influencer Jeff Bullas had recently outlined several literary devices to enhance the enticement and engagement levels of a blog’s first paragraph. I, in turn, shared insights on three of them, based upon my own over 30 years of experience as a print & broadcast writer.

Why not start with a question?

  • I’ve found asking a question to be among the most intriguing openings. By posing a question right away, you drive readers to start thinking; you challenge them to come up with an answer, an answer that lies beneath the waves of paragraphs to come.

Just the facts ma’am

  • On the other hand, years of writing experience have led me to accept statistics and percentages as the most difficult hook, because if done improperly you turn off readers and they swim away. (Bullas dressed this up by suggesting you attribute the facts to a person, thus making the numbers come alive).

To “quote or not to quote”

  • I’ve used quotes as teaser openers in my blogs, articles and columns many times over the years. Find something catchy that your interviewee recounted or advised that relates to your topic in such a way to set the mood, while at the same time “giving away” the sense of what story you are about to tell.

Metaphor.

  • This is an additional option I would suggest; in fact I employed it to kick off this blog. It is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.

This option, as do all the others mentioned, set the readers off into a thinking mode, anxious to read on.

And that is the goal of the first paragraph, isn’t it?

(Anthony M. Scialis is a social media strategist focusing on blogging & tweeting as a two-step customer service effort in bridging the gap between the wants of your small business to grow and the needs of your customers to be satisfied. Follow https://twitter.com/amssvs)

Be On Fleek, Or Millennials Will Dipset On Your Small Biz

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What? Each generation has its slang, from the 1920s (on the level, on the lam) to the 40s (take a powder, pass the buck) to the 60s (far out, bummed out) to the current 2010s. What is so important about a sub culture’s internal interactions is that social media NOW communicates it back out to the Small Business owner and in a 2.0 society where customers CAN and DO speak directly to retailers, you need to understand what Millennials are saying and feeling.

SarekOr as Ambassador Sarek comments in a Star Trek movie “one cannot answer easily if you don’t understand the question.”

To that end, I discovered an informative post from of all places Inc.com. John Brandon presents a Millennial mini-lexicon of value to small business owners who may be scanning social platforms looking for any mention of their company’s products or services.

  • On fleek
  • Used originally in an Instagram post about eyebrows (yes, the origin stories for these terms tend to be as weird as the terms themselves), being “on fleek” means to be on point. In a business context, it means something was well executed and is worthy of acknowledgment.

So, this is good in reference to your small biz.

  • Dipset
  • I was confused when I heard this one on social media. It means to bail on something–to leave because something is lame. You might “dipset” from a meeting if the topic is boring. If you use this one, let me know if people understand you.

So, this is not good in reference to your small biz.

There are 15 in all. Check out the article for the entire group.

According to a Pew Research Center posting in April 2016 “Millennials have surpassed Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest living generation, according to population estimates released this month by the U.S. Census Bureau. Millennials, whom we define as those ages 18-34 in 2015, now number 75.4 million, surpassing the 74.9 million Baby Boomers (ages 51-69).”

If you were thinking Millennials were just teens glued to their cell phones, stop. They are businessmen and businesswomen. They are moms and dads. And they are your customers. At least they might be if you understand them.

(Anthony M. Scialis is a social media strategist focusing on blogging & tweeting as a two-step customer service effort in bridging the gap between the wants of your small business to grow and the needs of your customers to be satisfied. Follow https://twitter.com/amssvs)