They admitted earlier this year that around 8.7% of their users might be fake accounts 'gained by means that violate our Facebook Terms.' That's an estimated 83 million accounts made up of duplicates, user misclassified or malware programs. Facebook states:

"We do not and have never permitted the purchase or sale of Facebook Likes as we only want people connecting to the Pages and brands with whom they have chosen to connect.

Beyond the need to maintain authentic relationships on Facebook, these third-party vendors often attempt to use malware or other forms of deception to generate fraudulent Likes, which is harmful to all users and the internet as a whole"

Many of these fake Likes come from countries such as Egypt, the Philippines and Indonesia. Although Facebook already has a system for detecting fake profiles, they aim to improve on it and continue to take action on suspicious Likes. It is estimated that less than 1% of Likes on any given Page will be removed, providing they have been abiding by the terms.

This has got people asking

How much a Like is worth?

There is no point in marketing to get Likes off people that don't genuinely like your brand and won't end up being a customer. It is more valuable to your company to work on getting your engagement levels up and interacting with your real fans rather than purchasing Likes to get a high scorecard. It will also mean your insights will provide you with a more accurate measurement of your fan count, demographic and location.

Check out our infographic for ways to drive genuine traffic to your Facebook Page here.

Call Woocom today on 1300 WOOCOM (+18662318072) to learn more about increasing your engagement on Facebook, and for information on building your following across Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

 

Facebook maintains that the action was consistent with the plans that were announced earlier in April, and that the Facebook email address can be used by friends not on the network who wish to contact you, however it has received an overly negative response. Users are maintaining it wasn’t made clear that Facebook would be setting the new email address as the default, and has been described as a Gmail Killer and an attempt to try and keep people on Facebook by making them reliant on yet another feature. For those with the Apple iOS 6 upgrade with Facebook integration, you might not have even noticed Facebook sneakily "updating" your iPhone address book by deleting orginal email addresses and replacing them with the Facebook version, until you realised your emails were no longer reaching their recipients and had instead been sent to their Facebook Pages.  Don’t stress though – Facebook will be rolling out a feature so you can decide which email address you want to show in your profile information!

This seems to be the final straw with a lot of users, particularly after the recent launch of promoted posts, constant adverts and the on-going question of security of personal data. Business Page owners are being encouraged to pay more and more for adverts, promoted posts and sponsored stories. What has really been highlighted as an issue with small business owners is that their paid promoted posts aren’t even aimed at getting their Page more Likes, it is to ensure more of their existing fans will see their content in the first place. As a result many have decided to take the leap and look for alternative social networks elsewhere. The favoured choice?

Google+

It appears Google+ users are no longer limited to Google employees and software engineers, and that the inevitable switch from Facebook to Google is well underway. With big celebrities and social media icons such as George Takei establishing a presence on Google+ it won’t be long before the rest follow.

There are actually a lot of advantages to using Google+ in favour of Facebook, the obvious one being that it is run by Google. This immediately helps with your SEO, as Google is one of the biggest search engines and ranks Google+ very high in search results. It is easier to search on it by specific interest than Facebook mainly because between Google and Bing, Google is the superior search engine.

Even the way you manage your online relationships is smoother with Google+. Circles are a more realistic way of managing what content gets shared with which people, and because there is no Edge Rank or similar algorithm you can actually see everything your contacts are sharing with you. More importantly because you can control and tailor your posts to a specific audience, you can control who is seeing your posts.

Google’s privacy settings are much more up font and obvious than Facebook who are renowned for having their default settings set to public. Google has a “data liberation” feature which means you are able to pack up and walk away with all your data anytime you want, as opposed to Facebook who own every piece of data you share on the website.

If you’re running a business the chances are you are already using at least one of Google’s services such a Gmail, Google maps, Google Chrome, Google docs or YouTube. Google+ is obviously integrated with all these services, and if you have a Gmail account the setup of your Google+ account is basically nonexistent.

Even the feel of the site is cleaner. It runs faster because it is not as congested, there are no friend requests – you just add people to circles you feel they fit in, and the hot topic adjustment sliders mean you can control how much or how little of a type of story you see in your news feed.

It is packed with cool features such as Hangouts – multi person webcam conversations in which you have the ability to share documents as well as host Q&A sessions and talk face to face with potential clients. You can even edit any of your posts or comments after you have posted them.

Even the advertising is better; using keyword contextual targeting, and displaying ads related to topics and interests in a user’s browser history they are more relevant (and less spammy). Google are tough on abuse and spam, and as a result you are more likely to be getting useful information and relevant content in your Google+ newsfeed than you would on other social networking sites.

When lined up next to its major competitors, Google+ is clearly a superior social media platform - unfortunately it will never be very good if no one else is using it. That being said, it was only 4 years ago that the world made the move from MySpace to Facebook and no one has looked back since!

 

Thinking about moving your business onto Google+? Call us today on +18662318072 

Social media is an instant, brief, two-way conversation with your audience, whereas Email marketing can deliver more content heavy and complex information. So should you integrate your Email and Social Media – Yes, we think you should! 

 

One of the advantages of integrating the two mediums is list growth. Your email subscribers can be enticed to join your Facebook or Twitter page and your social followers can be migrated onto your email subscriber list.
So how do you do it? Woocom Campaigner has many options to help you integrate your Email and Social media…

Include social sharing links in your email campaigns

Allow your email subscribers to Like, Tweet and Share your Email messages. This will post the message to their Wall and News Feed for all of their friends and followers to see.

Include social buttons in your email template

If you didn’t have your social media accounts set up when you started email marketing, or your template is a little dated you may want to add links to your social pages to your template. You can then ask your email subscribers to like you or follow you. If you don’t ask, you don’t get right? Offering incentives such as special content, discount code or a competition can often provide the extra motivation to get people to hit that Like button.

Post your emails, along with a status update to your Facebook / Twitter / LinkedIn accounts

Did you know that Woocom Campaigner allows you to post your emails directly to your Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages? Social sharing will post a status update and a link to the online version of your email to your followers News Feed. Your campaign reporting will also show you the number of clicks and Likes / Tweets / Shares it generated.

Include Subscribe forms on your Facebook page

Why not add a new tab with your subscribe form directly to your Facebook page? This will help encourage your Facebook fans to join your email list. Be sure to offer them something worth their time and email address. Adding a subscribe form to your page is quick and easy to do and a great way to grow your list.

Integrated marketing is becoming increasingly important in today’s over-crowded and cluttered market place. It is important to offer a consistent message over a variety of channels. Integrating social media and Email marketing will allow you to offer instant updates to stay top of mind as well as in-depth content to drive engagement, loyalty and eventually, purchase.

Woocom Campaigner has many tools to assist you in integrating your communications, driving engagement and staying top of mind. Give us a call today (+18662318072) if you’d like to find out more.

Currently Facebook shows each post you make to approximately 16% of your fans, (obviously with there being so much posted on Facebook a few of your posts are bound to get missed in amongst the sea of status updates and photos of pets) and until recently we had a choice of how much of a Page’s updates we saw by opting to follow all updates, most updates or only important updates. Facebook has now removed this option, and if you have a Facebook Page you have probably noticed it is displaying the reach percentage of each post under it. This reach can be as low as 4% of your fans depending on whether Facebook deems a post “interesting” or “boring”.

Below: A photograph posted for client Samudra, 378 Shares, 107 likes, 8 comments - and only a reach of 38%? Mass interaction yet Facebook doesn't deem this post "interesting"

As long as you have at least 400 fans you are eligible to pay to promote your post – you can bid between $5 and $20 a post to ensure it appears in the news feed of a few more of your fans labeled as a “sponsored story”. So how does Facebook decide which fans see your posts, and more importantly, what does Facebook define as “boring”?

Edge Rank

Facebook has been using an algorithm called Edge Rank for a while now, to determine which kinds of posts appear in your news feed. An edge (e) is any impression left on Facebook from wall posts to shares to liking a page. These edges are then “ranked” by measuring three separate factors:

• Affinity (u) – How well you are connected to someone (i.e. mutual friends)
• Weight (w) – What the post is worth (i.e. comments are worth more than likes)
• Decay (d) – How old the story is

∑uewede

 

If you and a friend have lots of mutual friends, and you frequently write on their wall, you will have a high affinity score with them. Facebook also grades the weight of every edge – sharing a photo or video would have more weight than sharing a link, and liking a page by searching for it would have more weight than liking a page you saw an advert for down the side of your newsfeed. In short your fans are worth more if they have actively sought out your page to like it, or have lots of friends who are fans of the page, than those who stumbled across your PPC advert.

Facebook also stops showing posts more than three days old to new people unless they are still being hugely interacted with, as they are considered “old news”. Facebook also adjusts time decay on factors such as how frequently a user logs into Facebook and how long it has been since their last log in.

As you might have guessed, your Edge Rank will be unique as each fan has a different relationship with your Page and therefore a different affinity score with it. Each user will also have different time decay depending on how frequently they use Facebook, and the types of posts they interact with the most.

Anyone who claims you can check your Edge Ranks is lying – it is impossible!

You can however measure your reach and general engagement with your fans using Facebook Insights. It is very hard to trick an algorithm into thinking you are interesting, so the best way to overcome it is to try and post more engaging content. Ultimately you want to be posting things fans will like and comment on. Don’t be afraid to ask your fans to like and share your posts! Engage with your audience by posting ‘fill the blank’ posts, polls and picture caption contests.

Don’t be disheartened if after all your best efforts your posts are still only displaying to 10% of your audience – naturally Facebook will want people to pay to promote their posts, but as with the weight of all new features, they eventually level out with regular features when they have been available for a while.

So should we be paying to promote our posts or not?
Promoted posts could be a very useful feature if you wanted to target a specific area of your fan base -for example based on location or language- but would only really be beneficial if these fans engaged with your sponsored story. In short – there is no point paying to promote a post to an additional 1000 fans if no one likes or comments on your post. In addition to this if Facebook sees people are willing to pay for their existing fans to get to see their updates, they will start to expect it. After all, they have to pay those shareholders somehow!

Now with SEO being affected directly by social media it is no longer enough just to BE on Facebook. Businesses used to traditional ‘push’ marketing are struggling to understand how to use their Facebook page’s successfully and engage with their fans. This blog outlines 10 top tips your business can use to help build your social media profile.

1. Post Photos and Videos

Photos and Videos are the best way to increase content share rate amongst fans and extend over all Facebook reach. In a study taken over 3 months of 42 large business pages across 7 consumer based industries it was found that for 80% of the pages video is the most shared media type.

Reach refers to the amount of people who received an impression of a Page post. With the introduction of the new Timeline layout there are now increased opportunities to create visual interest with images being displayed at 404px X 404px and highlighted images at 843px X 403px. This can sometimes mean small status updates can get lost amongst your wall posts, so to really get a point across use an image to draw attention to it.
Here is an example of the reach we achieved for clients Samudra after posting this infographic. 

 

2. Milestones

In Timeline events can be backdated to tell your brands story better. Milestones are events in your company’s history that are represented with an 843px X 403px image, description and location and placed on your Timeline in chronological order. Facebook is now more focused on your story, and this is a great way to tell people about the big events in the life of your company. You can add a Milestone by clicking on the line that runs down the middle of your Timeline and filling out the information box.
By making your Timeline more visually engaging people will spend time on your page reading your story. Examples of big business that have been using Milestones to better portray their story include Ford, Coca-Cola and The New York Times.

 

3. Engage with your Audience

There is no one right way to engage with your audience, as every business is different and appealing to different demographic. However there are a few different ways you can try.
A great way to engage with your audience is by asking open ended questions. Asking questions or even posting a fill-the-blank is one of the easiest ways to drive up fan interaction through comments and conversation. Fill-the-blank posts receive 9 times more comments than other types of post.
You can also create polls which give your fans a multi-choice answer to choose from – people won’t answer questions if they have to think too much about the answer!

Another idea is to post photos without captions and ask your fans to come up with their own

4. Be Personal

By responding directly to wall posts and comments you will build a personal relationship with your fans, who will be more inclined to trust you if they feel you are another person rather than just focused on pushing the next sale.
Never delete or ignore negative comments – this will do nothing to help build your reputation as an industry leader, instead take criticism as an opportunity to publically address any and all issues.
Also remember to thank and credit your fans for sharing content with you or with their own friends.

5. Featured Posts

You can now highlight what really matters by pinning it to the top of your page. By selecting a post that you want people to notice and choosing to Pin it, it will stay at the top of your page for the next 7 days.
This is a great way to promote weekly specials, new products or share exciting news you have.

  

Try and pin posts that are visually engaging as well as informative, a simple image with a call to action in it will draw more attention than a status update alone.

6. Coupons and Promotions

Drive up your fan base by offering incentives for liking your page, like discount codes or free downloads. By setting up a fan-gated app you can offer ‘fan only’ rewards. Making sure any promotions or discount codes are unique to your Facebook page is a great way of measuring the conversion rate from fan to customer.

Be careful not to post too many discounts or your fans will begin to expect them – instead reward them for being a loyal customer and sharing your content with their friends.

Studies have shown “$ off” posts receive twice the engagement of “% off” posts.

7. What to Post

When creating a post there are a few factors to bear in mind. The first thing is obviously the content of the post. Be sure to post something that YOU would find interesting and want to read, and share with your friends. Aim to have 90% of your messages on topic, but not necessarily sales orientated. Post something interesting, informative or funny, and use the other 10% of your posts to call to action.
As with anything you’re sharing – go for quality over quantity. Spamming people over Facebook with constant updates is the quickest way to loose fans (save that for your twitter feed!) That being said, it is important to stay on people’s news feeds, and with all the recent changes to Facebook it can be easy for your post to get lost in amongst the sea of other updates. It’s been shown the most successful Facebook pages post between 1 and 3 times a day.
The time of day you are posting is also important. Maximum engagement on Facebook is between 7pm and 8am (when people are not at work) so this is a good time to post anything you want going viral, or want to receive a lot of likes on. People also check their Facebook around lunch time, so this is usually the best time to post new updates and deals.

8. Encourage Tagging in Photos

Encouraging your fans to tag themselves – and friends – in your photos will increase your reach dramatically. Every time a fan tags themself in one of your photographs that story will appear in all their friend’s newsfeeds. This leaves an impression of your business with another couple hundred people, and with an added incentive, might encourage friends of friends to like your page and tag themselves as well. When a fan is tagged in a photograph you can see who it was who tagged them, which is very effective for measuring who is sharing your content. Running promotions such as “Tag yourself and a friend for your chance to win” are a great way of encouraging fans to share your content.

9. Facebook Insights

Once a page has 30 or more fans, Facebook allows you access to Facebook Insights. The admin can use these insights to track engagement on individual posts they make, as well as the demographic and location of the page’s Facebook fans.

10. Promote your Facebook

Once your page has at least 25 fans, you can set your own custom URL to your Facebook page. This URL will help people easily find you on Facebook and can be used on business stationery, receipts and in store to advertise your social presence. Encourage people to “Check-In” when visiting your business, and run paid Facebook adverts and sponsored stories. These apps include names of friends who have liked your page, which users find relevant and engaging.

This is the 850x315 image displayed across the top of the Page designed to give people a better initial viewing experience of your Page. It gives you a chance to display an image that is as unique as your business or brand, and that represents you in a more interesting and creative way than your profile picture alone. This could be a picture of a popular product, a photograph of people using a service you provide, or the freedom to get as creative as you like.

For a little inspiration when creating your Cover here are 10 of our favourite Timeline Covers!


 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you want to create your own creative Facebook Timeline check out the image below :

 

When creating your Cover please remember to follow Facebooks Page Guidelines.
Cover Images may not contain:

• Price or purchase information, such as "40% off" or "Download it at our website"
• Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page's About section
• References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
• Calls to action, such as "Get it now" or "Tell your friends"