Tag Archives: Facebook

If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to update your business Facebook page in order to get the most out of Facebook’s Graph Search that debuted the week of Jan. 14-18. What is Graph Search?  It’s a new Facebook feature that should make it easier for people to discover and learn more about your business. How does it do this?  It actually allows Facebook members to find information through their friends.

With Graph Search, people use Facebook like they would use a search engine. They can look for things like “BBQ restaurants that my friends eaten at in Austin, TX,” “hotels near the Empire State Building,” or “music my friends like.” Then the Graph Search bar returns results, which can be apps, groups, places, people, Pages, and other suggested searches. Facebook users can also search for things like nearby events, photos posted by Business Pages they like, restaurants in places where they want to travel, or online games friends play. And if your Facebook connections have talked about and interacted with your business page, then your business will show up in their friends’ results from searches about your industry or location.

Is Your Business Facebook Page Ready?

• Fill out your Page’s name, category, web address, and About section. You only want the most accurate and up-to-date info displaying on your page, especially for search purposes.
• Update your address on your location or local place Page. That way when someone is searching for a specific location, your location will show up in the results.
• Share content on your Facebook Page. Photo and video-related searches will only return photo and video results that have been shared on your Page.
• Strengthen your connections. Make sure you’re attracting the desired target audience and engaging with them so that when someone searches for a business in your area, your connections’ preferences will pop up first to their closest friends.

In case you’re curious, web searches will display Bing results and Bing ads. Facebook and Google are not BFFs! And, as of right now, there are no new ad formats available. Graph Search has a waiting list as they slowly roll out their beta version. So, don’t worry if you don’t see it available in your Facebook account yet. You can get on the waiting list on their Graph Search page.

Over one billion people like and comment on Facebook, and your business can be a part of these conversations. The idea is for people to get more relevant info with Facebook’s Social Graph. Let’s face it, Facebook is upping the game in the world of digital, word-of-mouth marketing—and if you want your business to be a part of it, you need to make sure you’re paying attention! If your target audience is on Facebook, then that’s where you need to be to make the most of it.

You know them from their ubiquitous stores in malls and shopping centers across the country – stores that reflect their status as the world’s largest video game retailer. But Grapevine, Texas-based GameStop has been leveling up its social media strategy, particularly its use of Facebook to create a formidable online gamer community and as a new path for driving sales.

The 8th Bridge research firm recently rewarded GameStop’s efforts with the top spot in a recent survey of major U.S. retailers’ use of social media.

GameStop chief marketing officer Mike Hogan and the company’s vice president of marketing Ashley Sheetz go into detail about their social media strategy in an interview with SplashCast host Renay San Miguel.

There’s a right way for businesses to build out their social media communities: by giving them great content that they want to comment on and share with others.

The wrong way involves spending hard-earned money on buying Facebook fans and Twitter followers. The Beatles were right, folks: you can’t buy yourself love. You’ll only purchase a ton of grief from your customers.

Melissa Ruggles, social media manager at Splash Media, talks to SplashCast host Renay San Miguel about the dangers of buying fans and followers, and the best way to create engaged, active social media communities that lend credibility to your business.

Watch more SplashCasts or subscribe to our YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/splashmedialp.

In the world of social media, every holiday presents a special marketing opportunity – a special theme used to push or launch a product or service, a chance to offer exclusive content, another shot at goosing the conversation between customer and company.

Okay, so Halloween isn’t an official holiday, unless you manage a Party City; then it turns into an early Christmas. But it is an unofficial celebration of pop culture and memories of our youth, along with our innate desire to be taken to the brink of fear and then pulled safely back (like riding your favorite theme-park roller coaster, or attending the latest “Paranormal Activity” movie.)

More brands are taking to social media to make those scary connections, and some are doing it better than others. Audi makes smart use of the #halloween Twitter hashtag, and the social network’s Promoted Tweets feature, to push its thermal imaging cameras in its newer models:

On Facebook, the hit AMC horror series The Walking Dead offers up a bloody bucketful of behind-the-scenes material and extra content on its FB fan page; a must-click for fans of a genre show that does the best job yet of mixing gore and terrors with solid character development. And its production and makeup geniuses have some helpful hints for those who still don’t have any costume ideas for All Hallow’s Eve:

The scariest thing I’ve seen lately via social media, however, started catching some viral buzz about a week ago. It’s the Take This Lollipop Facebook app, an extraordinarily creepy way to make a point about privacy. Giving the app access to your Facebook account presents you with a two-minute horror movie where you and your friends are the stars; your status updates, photos and other content appear on the computer screen in the basement of a sweaty-looking guy in a wife-beater T-shirt – he’s right out of Central Casting for the role of Internet Stalker. He mutters, screams and types away as he looks in on your life, digs up your address on Google Maps, and then gets into a car and drives off – presumably to meet you face to face.

Frightening to be sure, but as Joe Berkowitzaptly points out in a Fast Company article Take This Lollipop also may have unwittingly put a spotlight on the technology that enables this kind of instant interactivity, and how it might be used in more productive, business-friendly ways other than scaring people.

Have you seen any recent clever tie-ins of Halloween and social media marketing? If so, please share with us in our Comments section below, and check out some advice and best practices from the week:

There’s Always Room For Jello…Brains?

Yes, another Halloween-related marketing campaign, this one from Kraft Foods. But as reported by Karlene Lukovitz of MediaPost Marketing Daily, Kraft’s efforts aren’t so much about a simple theme tie-in as they are about the company’s clever mix of all its social media and web platforms – including mobile – and its multiple family-friendly brands.

Content Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got Worth Sharing

Marcus Taylor of SEOptimize writes at Logic + Emotion about the kinds of content that gets passed along by customers and comes up with his own grading scale for determining how shareworthy a blog post or social media status update can be.

That’s all for this week. Have a great weekend; here’s hoping your Halloween scares are all of the “it’s-only-a-movie” kind, and watch out for those trick-or-treatin’ kiddos on Monday night!