This is a short episode, adapted from an article I wrote 5 years, about the importance of engaging with positive comments on social media. It's as true today as it was the day I wrote it. So I wanted to share it with you, my podcast listeners.

​If someone goes out of their way to say something nice about you on social, and you can't be bothered to smash that like button, you should re-evaluate why you are on social in the first place!

Listen to the full episode here or wherever you stream podcasts. And scroll down for a full episode transcript.

​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.​

I wrote a version of this post 5 years ago. It’s just as true today as it was then . So I wanted to share it with you, my podcast listeners.

On Friday night — five years ago — I went to see a Grammy winning bluegrass legend wow his crowd with songs spanning his 40+ year career.

Because I’m both a bluegrass nerd and a social media nerd, I streamed one of his songs via Facebook Live.

It was late on a weekend night and it didn’t get a lot of views in real time. But over the next 36 hours or so, it was watched a few dozen times. (And now I can go back and rewatch the band anytime I want on my personal Facebook page!) But truth be told, by Sunday night, I wasn’t thinking about the video anymore than I was about the drive to and from the show.

But then Monday morning, something interesting happened — my video was “liked” by the bluegrass legend it featured. 

Now let’s be clear: I don’t think that this artist liked the post himself (although he might have). More likely it was a member of his marketing or management team.

But the notification that he had liked my video popped up, and I have to be honest — I got excited. Like, more excited than I probably should have.

I work in social media for a living. I know how this works. I know he probably has some marketing agency liking positive mentions of him online. But you know what: it still got its intended effect out of me!

Having him like my video felt like getting a high five or a quick hello from a bluegrass legend.

Does that digital high five mean that we are suddenly best friends? Of course not. 
Does it mean I can suddenly shred  on the mandolin like he can? I wish!

Am I still excited enough that it happened that I immediately wanted to tell all my friends about it? Yup.

Liking that post cost him and his team literally nothing. Yet it added to my excitement about the show and about the artist overall.

Social media serves many roles, not least of which is customer service and community relations.

Think about yourself as a movie star. When you walk down the street, people are going to recognize you. You can't stop and have lunch with every fan. You can’t even stop and take a picture with them all or you’d never get anywhere. But you can nod and smile to everyone who waves at you.

That’s what a "like" is on social media — it’s a head nod from a celebrity. It doesn’t suddenly make you best friends or ensure that they will buy your product/go see your next movie/buy your upcoming album. But it shows the fans that you are real, and that you respect them as people, not just as consumers. And it only takes as much time to create that connection as you need to give a single click of your mouse or tap on your phone.

If someone posts about you or your business online, respond. Or at the very least, smash that like button.

If they write you a review, thank them (or address any concerns as needed). But at the very least, like their post and let them know you see them and you appreciate them.

If you see a celebrity on the street, and you wave at them, you are going to tell your friends one of two stories:

“Oh my goodness, I just say this famous person on State Street. It was so cool!”

*** OR ***

“I just saw this famous person on State Street. He was kind of a jerk.”

​You’re the celebrity. Which would you prefer?

One of my favorite podcasts, Reply All, just did a whole episode trying to track down something that wasn't showing up on Google. If they had remembered that Facebook, while first and foremost is a social media channel, is also a search engine, they could have saved themselves a whole lot of time and energy.

The Facebook search bar is more powerful than you probably realize. In this episode of Step Up Your Social we'll walk through some of the power lurking right at your fingertips.

Have any search bar tricks you like that we didn’t cover? Or find any surprises utilizing any of the above? We want to hear them!
​
Drop us a line or hit us up on social using #StepUpYourSocial.

Want to listen to the recreated version of the song? Or the original one? You can hear both in Reply All episode #158 The Case of the Missing Hit. 

Or scroll down and listen to them both below. 
​

​​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

\Do you listen to Reply All? It’s an awesome podcast about living in the age of the internet. Or something like that. If you don’t listen already, you should. It’s one of my favorites for sure.

Last week, they dropped an episode called “The Case Of The Missing Hit.” In it, PJ, one of their two hosts, goes on a truly epic search — and I mean epic in its literal meaning — to find a song that was big enough to be played on the radio internationally in the 90s, but somehow had [virtually] no presence on Google.

The story starts simply enough: A man named Tyler reached out to PJ for help. He could hear this song in his head, but he   couldn’t find it on Google, even though he remembered many of the lyrics. It’s a weird concept in today’s age, where we can find virtually anything online. And yet the song was nowhere to be found… with one weird exception. Years ago, a guy who lives in Trinidad and Tobago had asked about it in an online message board, referencing several of the same lyrics that Tyler remembered. But of course, he too, was trying to track down the song.

This proved that Tyler hadn’t made it up, but it also didn’t help PJ solve the case of the missing hit.

To solve the case, PJ did what any normal person with a budget and an obsession does: he helped Tyler recreate the song in its entirety from memory. Tyler took a song he hadn’t heard in more than 20 years and he coaxed it out of a group of session musicians. PJ then took that recording and talked to… well everyone!

He spoke with numerous music critics from Rolling Stone, producers, radio show hosts from the era, even the lead singer of the Bare Naked Ladies, as the song in question had a very BNL type feel too it.

Google failed them, so PJ took his query to the world. And in the end, all this time, energy and effort amounted to… nothing. Everyone he spoke with had a great idea about how to try to solve the problem. Every great idea took PJ down another rabbit hole. And every rabbit hole ended as unceremoniously as it had started with, “sorry, I just don’t know.”

Then something the Trinidad and Tobago guy had said in his original post sparked something in PJ and he plugged a few lines of the song into Facebook’s search bar. Immediately, not only did he find the song… he found the songwriter who had written it in the first place.

So much time and energy and effort could have been avoided if PJ (or Tyler for that matter) had remembered that while Facebook is first and foremost a social media platform, like virtually every other social media platform you know and love, it’s also part-search engine.

So let’s talk about a few other things the Facebook search bar — that simple little bar right at the top of your account — can do, that you might not have realized:

First things first, type something — anything — into the bar on desktop, and you’ll be brought to a search page. From there, you have a slew of filtering options both on the top of the screen and on the lefthand side.

On the top of the screen, you can choose to only see posts, people, photos, videos, market place, pages, groups, apps, events and links. So the next time you’re trying to find a Facebook Page and you can’t quite remember what it’s called, instead of scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, try filtering instead.

On the lefthand side of the screen, you have a whole other bunch of options. You can opt to see posts from anyone, or only yourself, your friends, your groups or pages, or only content shared publicly. You can even choose a source, to see if a friend, group or page has talked about an issue you care about.

Want to see all posts? Of course you can do that. But you can also limit your search to only posts you’ve already seen. Which could come in super handy if you’re looking for something you saw, but can’t remember where.

You can limit your search to only show content tagged in certain locations or posted in a certain year — or even in a certain month of a certain year!

So yeah, right off the bat, you can see that while Facebook might not be Google, there’s more to its search then simply keywords and scrolling.

Now let’s get into some of the less obvious things you can do with Facebook search:

Once upon a time there was an easy way to see which of your friends lived in which city. Then Facebook got rid of that helpful  feature. But good news, they replaced it (they just forgot to tell anyone). Looking for friends in a particular city or state? Just type in “my friends in [wherever]” and Facebook will show you a list.

Looking for a bar, a pizza place, or a spot to get your oil changed? Type in “pizza places near me” and Facebook will show you a list, with a map. Just like Yelp, but without ever leaving Facebook.

Want to know if your friends liked the pizza place you are considering? On the top menu bar, head over to places. On the lefthand side, select “visited by friends.” You can also filter by “open now” and  price!

Want to know which events your friends are going to (or should we say so-called friends, since they’re apparently going out without you!)? Type in a keyword. On the top menu, go to events. On the lefthand side menu, go to “popular with friends.” You can also search for events based on location and date, to find things to do today, tomorrow, this week, this weekend or next week.

While their Boolean search isn’t as powerful as Google, you can employ it to some degree. If you don’t know Boolean by name you might know it in practice. Boolean search is a method of search that lets you filter or exclude terms by using all caps AND, NOT and ORs. So type   “social media” AND “Madison, WI” into Facebook (or Google) and you’ll only get content back that mentions both. Switch AND with OR and you’ll find content mentioning either. Go with NOT and you’ll find content mentioning the first term but not the second one. This can be pretty helpful when trying to narrow your search.

Now it is worth mentioning that while Facebook search is powerful, it’s far less powerful than it used to be. Google “Facebook search bar tricks” and you’ll find tons of articles telling you about a bunch of features you can use. But alas, Facebook killed a lot of them off when they did away with their Graph Search. This feature let you see which of your friends liked which pages, and which posts had been liked by a specific person. Guess it was all just a bit too invasive for a company so worried about your privacy. #LOL

But there’s still plenty you can do with the Facebook search bar.

Have any search bar tricks you like that we didn’t cover? Or find any surprises utilizing any of the above? We want to hear them!

Drop us a line at stepupyoursocial.com or hit us up on social using #StepUpYourSocial.

In the meantime, don’t get stuck like Tyler and PJ. Start appreciating the power of Facebook search today!

PS: want to hear the song PJ and Tyler recreated, as well as the original? I’ll have links to them both at stepupyoursocial.com.
​

Don’t you wish you had a magic wand you could use to see what your competitors were doing well, so that you could grow your own business accordingly?

Facebook has a free feature, available to all Facebook Brand pages, that might as well be a magic wand. Yet so few brands are taking advantage of this simple, powerful and important feature.

So let’s dig into Facebook’s “Pages To Watch.”

Afterward, we’ll cover some other helpful and free tools you should be using to keep tabs on your competitors across the internet, including mailing lists, other social channels and the almighty Google Alerts.

​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

Don’t you wish you had a magic wand you could use to see what your competitors were doing well, so that you could grow your own business accordingly? Facebook has a free feature, available to all Facebook Brand pages, that might as well be a magic wand. Yet so few brands are taking advantage of this simple, powerful and important feature. So let’s dig in to Facebook’s “Pages To Watch.” Afterwards, we’ll cover some other helpful and free tools you should be using to keep tabs on your competitors across the internet. But first up: Pages to Watch.

To access this great feature, go to your brand’s Facebook page. At the top, you will see a menu bar including the following  items: Page, Inbox, Notifications and then Insights. Click there. If you haven’t been to your insights yet, you are missing out on a ton of valuable information. We’ll do some more deep dives into Facebook Insights down the road. But for now, let’s just stick to this particular tool.

Once you’ve clicked Insights, you’ll be on the “overview” page. Scroll down to the bottom and you should see a section called “pages to watch.”

If you have never been there before, chances are Facebook has auto-populated the section with pages they think you might want to watch. If they guessed right, great. If not, simply hover over the number on the left and you can delete it from your list.

To add new pages, click the option to “add pages.”

Once you have your pages set up, you’ll see some very basic data: the name of the page, it’s total page Likes, the percent it grew from last week, how many times they posted this week and what their engagement this week has been. None of those data points are all that useful. BUT, if you click on the name of any of the pages, something interesting happens.

Facebook opens up a pop-up box and shows you that page’s top content from the past week. Top content in this case means that it had the highest combination of reach and engagement of anything that page posted this past week. And you can scroll down and see all of their content from the week, ordered by how popular it was for their audience.

Quite a feature, right?!

Bear in mind, when you follow a page, they have no way of knowing you are doing so. So if you want to know what is working for your competitors, without having to continuously go back to their page and scroll through their feed, you can just pop on over here every couple of days and easily keep tabs on them.

If you see that several of your competitors are sharing an article or a meme and it is resonating with their audiences… well don’t steal their content. But definitely do be inspired by it!

The content that is working for your competitors will probably also work for you. Follow along, learn, and create your own content accordingly.

And here’s the thing, while of course you should be watching your competitors, don’t limit yourself to them. Follow influencers in your field, relevant journalists or publications, even high value customers if you they are using brand pages.

Figure out who’s success you most want to track, and then spend a few minutes setting up your Facebook Pages to Watch. It will be an amazing tool you can use indefinitely moving forward.

While we’re on the topic of tracking your competitors, influencers, high-value customers and the like, let’s cover a few ways to do so outside of Facebook.

First of all, if the people you want to follow have public mailing lists, sign up! There’s no better way to know what they are excited about, then to see what they are sharing with the people they care about most. It probably goes without saying, but you might not want to use your company or organization’s branded email to sign up for a competitor’s email list. So use your gmail address, or create something new specifically for this purpose. While it might seem weird to be on their list, don’t forget, unless they are limiting sign-up (and this is important: don’t lie in any way to get on their list!) they know that their list is public. And chances are, if you have an   email, they’re on it! As far as influencers and relevant journalists go, you can use your branded email or not. Your call.

In episode two of this podcast, we covered the power and the importance of twitter lists. Twitter lists are a great way to follow relevant accounts. And you can use private lists to do so under-the-radar, even if your brand isn’t using Twitter as an outreach and communications tool. Go back and listen to that episode for more.

There are also plenty of third party tools out there that will track keyword mentions and send you alerts when those keywords pop up online. Some are free, most are not. But one powerful one that is free is google alerts. If you haven’t set up google alerts yet, you should do so immediately.

To do so go to google.com/alerts. Once there you can put in some relevant keywords and let google know that you want to receive email alerts whenever those words are used online. It’s important to know that google alerts don’t track content from social media platforms, so don’t expect to see Facebook or Twitter mentions on there.

But if someone mentions you or your brand in a blog post, or on their website, Google will usually catch it and send you an alert.

And here’s the thing, you can select if you want google to send you an alert as a mention happens, or to instead send you a daily or weekly digest of all mentions. For your brand, you should get those alerts as they happen. Unless people are talking about your brand numerous times a day, you want to know you’ve been mentioned as soon as possible. But if you also want to use them to track competitors, industry keywords, influencers and the like, you might not need them rolling in as they happen and you can opt to receive those alerts as part of a daily or even weekly round-up. The choice is yours.

One other cool thing you can do with google alerts is set them up for high value clients so that if that client gets an award or someone writes a story about them, you can be amongst the first to reach out and congratulate them. Alternately, you can let them know if you find something problematic that they might want to deal with

The tools are out there for you to keep tabs on the internet. The set up is relatively simple and the rewards can be immense.

So I’ll finish this episode with the same question I started it with: Don’t you wish you had a magic wand you could use to see what your competitors were doing well? Turns out, you do! You just have to take a moment and set it up.

There are 5 keywords that, when used in a post on Facebook, automatically limit your post's reach. Facebook has labeled the tactic in question as "Engagement Bait."

While Engagement Bait first started being penalized in the Facebook algorithm over a year ago, Facebook just recently began applying their penalties to video content, as well as to text.​

In this episode, we cover the what, the why and the how of Engagement Bait, as well as some tips for avoiding it.

​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

Here in Madison, there’s a music venue that used to run this really clever ongoing campaign — they would give away a free pair of tickets to an upcoming concert. To enter, all you had to do was tag the person you would bring with you in the comments if you won. Then they randomly selected one lucky responder to nab a free pair of tickets to the show.

But really, the biggest winner in this contest was the venue.

The contest cost them 2 concert tickets, but hundreds of people were identifying and promoting the shows directly to their friends. And not just any friends, but the friends they most thought would want to go to the show. So while two people got to go for free, hundreds of potential fans were being tagged by friends and notified that a show they might be excited about was right around the corner.

And not only that, the Facebook algorithm would have been going nuts seeing all of this organic engagement the venue’s page was generating. Every time someone tagged a friend, they were micro-targeting one person, but also telling Facebook that this content was hot and they should show it to lots more people. As far as the venue was concerned, this was a win/win.

And all it cost them was a pair of concert tickets!

I used to see this tactic employed on my Facebook feed all the time. You probably did too. And then one day, it just stopped.

That’s because in late 2017, Facebook labeled this type of content as “engagement bait.” And they started penalizing it in the algorithm.

Because Facebook can’t actually know your intention when you share a post, they defined engagement bait pretty broadly as simply any post that mentions one of the 5 following words:

• Like
• Vote
• Comment
• Tag
• Share

It didn’t matter the context, using one of these words simply caused Facebook to devalue your content in the algorithm. Meaning they literally showed your post to fewer people.

As a marketer, this might be annoying. As a user though, you can probably understand why they did this.

While I loved that the concert venue was giving away tickets (I even won a pair once!) the tactic of asking people to tag their friends can get get to be pretty spammy. Like this post if your an Aries doesn’t do much to create meaningful conversations or connections online.

When Facebook first announced the new rules around Engagement Bait, they only applied to the text in your post. Then they updated it to also apply to text in the comments (as lots of clever marketers would simply make their engagement request in the first comment rather than in the post itself).

And now, Facebook has finally made the final jump — they will also demote content that uses engagement bait words (like, vote comment, tag and share) within the audio of a video.

While this might seem frustrating, just remember, it is genuinely in Facebook’s interest that you enjoy the content you, and everyone else, sees in their feed. If not, you, and everyone else, will stop logging in. And then there will be no one to market too anyway!

You can still encourage engagement, you just can’t do so using 5 key words. Don’t ask people to “respond in the comments.” Just ask your question. Your users know how to respond. And don’t ask for the like — create content they will like without being prodded.

Of course you can ignore these rules all you want. But Facebook ultimately decides how many people will see your posts. So ignoring their rules means limiting your own reach. The choice is clear as far as I’m concerned.

Engagement is great! Engagement bait — not so much.

You start a new Facebook brand page. It's only natural to invite everyone you know to like the page.

The problem is, you're actually hurting your page's future growth when you invite people who like you — but don't care about your brand — to like your Facebook brand page.




​In this episode:
• We dive into the Facebook algorithm
• Talk about the difference between "good" and "bad" likes
• Cover helpful tips to grow your page with the right audience
• The importance of using a brand page for your page (as opposed to a personal account)
• And a whole lot more

​​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

If you run ads on Facebook without first building quality audiences, it's like you're standing in the street, throwing expensive flyers in the air, and hoping for the best.

Facebook offers you the opportunity to microtarget based on tons of different factors.

In this episode, we talk about the importance of microtargeting.

We will also cover the three different Facebook advertising audience types:
• Custom
• Lookalike and
• Saved

​We'll cover what they are, how to build them, and why you should be using them to run ads on Facebook.

If you enjoy this this podcast, please consider reviewing it on iTunes. Thanks for tuning in! 

​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

"Stories" are the Facebook response to Snapchat — fun, quirky bits of content that disappear after 24 hours.

Throughout the Facebook Universe — WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, people are currently sharing over a billion stories every day!

Instagram Stories alone has over 400 million daily active users — more than twice as many as Snapchat.

Stories have all kinds of fun and interesting capabilities built directly into the platform. 

In this episode of Step Up Your Social, we cover the what, the when and the how of Stories along with a bunch of tips, tricks and fun things you should try.

Listen today and let us know if you have any questions, or anything to add to the conversation around this fun topic!

​​Find other episodes of Step Up Your Social here.

Ready to become an Instagram Champion? I provide private lessons to businesses, campaigns, nonprofits, solopreneurs, bands... anyone who wants to get more out of this powerful platform.

Ever wanted to spice up your Facebook post, but didn't know how?
​
With a Facebook Note, you can add a cover photo, as well as pictures and GIFs throughout your posts.

You can also format your text with bold and italics, bullet and numbered lists, hyperlinks and much more.

So instead of just another boring picture, your post can look like this:

Once you’ve saved a few items, you can then build collections, to make it even easier to navigate your favorite material. ​

So you might have Saved Facebook folders for digital tips, family pics, funny videos, recipes, articles to read later… the options are endless!​

I’d love to hear from you about how you think you might use this feature. Share them in the comments or connect with me on Facebook or Twitter.

I always say that the only constant in social media is change. I don’t write to tell you every time any little thing changes on a social channel — if I did you’d hear from me literally dozens of times per week. But not every update is worthy of a blog post or an email. 

Recently though, a few exciting updates have rolled out that are worth sharing.

Instagram Hashtags
You can now “follow” a hashtag on Instagram, just like you would follow an account.

Once you follow a hashtag, Instagram will include top posts using it directly into your feed.​

To follow a hashtag, simply search for it on Instagram.

​Then click “follow.”

Twitter Threads
I'm very excited about this update, although it’s a bit hard to follow Twitter’s logic. They recently doubled the character length for tweets from 140-280, thus making threads, and therefore this update, much less relevant. But they're not irrelevant, so it’s still an exciting update.

If you aren’t familiar with the concept of threads, check out this blog post where I explain what they are and how they work (along with a bunch of other fun Twitter tricks and tips).

Before, when you created a tweet thread, you had to keep responding to previous tweets. Which is fine, but can be clunky. If you don't reply to the most recent tweet in your thread, they get out of order and your thread becomes hard to follow. It can take a few moments for your tweet to post, meaning you have to sit tight with your thoughts, waiting for it to catch up.

Now if you want to create a tweet thread, simply start typing your tweet. Below, next to the “tweet” button, you will see a plus. Click it and Twitter will open up another tweet for you. Keep going until you are finished and then you can send them all as a single unit.

BIG IMPROVEMENT, ​even if it's a little less relevant that it might have been a few months ago.

Facebook Stories
Facebook Stories aren’t new, but they have pretty much been getting ignored. Stories were Facebook’s response to Snapchat. They are small pieces of content — pictures, short videos or text — that disappear after 24 hours.

They have all the fun Snapchat-style filters built in, along with a lot of other fun tools. Spend a few minutes in there and you will find tons of fun toys. And they are updated regularly.

While Stories aren't new, what is new is that they are now available to Brand Pages. (Until recently, only personal pages could create Stories.)

To access Facebook Stories for a Brand Page, you can use the new Facebook Creator app. Or, open the Facebook app on your phone or tablet (currently, Stories only work via mobile), and go to your Brand Page. Underneath where you it lets you “write something,” click “create story.”

Once you have finished creating your tiny, disappearing masterpiece, add it to your Story. ​

When Facebook Live first came out, I’ll admit it — I was daunted. ​

I’m supposed to go to stream live to the world without the opportunity for a second take? Ummm, no thanks!

I had to worry about sound, lighting, my "script," distractions in the background... It was daunting.

But here’s the thing — Facebook Live is a hugely important tool in your digital toolkit. I regularly work with clients who go Live on Facebook for the first time and find that their videos reach more people that like their page! (300% reach — yes please!!!)

We know that people watch Live videos 3x longer than videos that aren’t live. And that they engage with them 10x more than regular videos!

So yeah, apprehension aside — Facebook Live videos get people watching and engaging.

Before I ever went Live on Facebook for the world to see, I came up with a hack that allowed me to ease my way into the otherwise scary world of live streaming.

And here’s the thing: It’s so simple, you’re going to laugh.

Before going Live for an audience via my brand page, I went Live via my personal page with my privacy settings adjusted to “Only me.”

This meant I could practice being on camera, see how the video looked on my computer, hear the sound, play with the awesome built-in filters, and a whole lot else, knowing that I’d be the only to see my first take.

So here’s the step-by-step breakdown.

Open up Facebook on your smartphone. Where you would say "What's on your mind, choose "Live." 

If that option isn't there, then just click into the post and then click on the camera icon below.

You will then get a list of options. Choose "Live Video."

Once you have done that, directly underneath your name, you will see a dropdown menu that has likely defaulted to either “Public” or Friends.”

Click on it and you will get a list of privacy setting options. 

Select "Only me."

Now when you go live, the only person who can see your video is you. ​

Facebook makes it easy to invite those who like your content to like your page. Check out this simple trick and start growing your page today!

Ever wonder what your partners, competitors or market leaders are doing well on Facebook? Guess what? Facebook has you covered!

You can actually set up “Pages to Watch” and then track both their weekly progress and their top posts of the week. If you haven’t already set up this functionality, fear not—it’s easy!

First go to your Facebook brand page (you might call it a business page). Then at the top menu, go to your insights.

In the left-hand menu, you will be in Overview by default. This section will give you top-line info on your page, show you analytics for your most recent five posts and, if you scroll down, allow you to watch any pages you have setup to watch.

Bear in mind that Facebook offers these free tools (and MANY others) on a tiered system. Your page must have at least 35 likes in order for you to access your insights in the first place and it must have at least 100 likes to unlock the pages to watch feature. So if you don’t see these options, fret not. You’ll get there! And when you do, you have plenty of great new tools to look forward to.

Assuming you can see “Add Pages,” type in a page and select “+Watch Page.”

Once selected, it will show up in your Pages to Watch section.

Right off the bat, you’ll see the pages total page likes, their percent change from last week, how many posts they did this week and their engagement this week.

If you click on them within your list, you’ll get a list of their most popular posts from this week.

It’s worth pointing out, none of the information you are seeing in this section is private. You could see all of this by heading to their page and looking through their posts, seeing their comments, shares and reactions and tracking their page like growth on your own. But if you have many competitors, it can be a lot of trouble to keep up with all of them.

This functionality puts every page you want to follow in one easy-to-access place and shows you their weekly growth and engagement. And Facebook will include you in the list, so you can see how your own page compares.

As far as seeing their top content of the week, while this too is nothing private or hidden, it is a good practice to see what is working well for others in your field. There won’t be any state secrets revealed, but it will help you see what is getting people excited in your field on any given week.

So set yours up, and share anything interesting or exciting you learn in the comments, or on social. Follow and chat with us on Facebook and Twitter.

Happy page-watching!

Facebook is nothing if not dynamic. Understand how part of its functionality works today, and tomorrow you’ll notice that it’s changed. A week later, it may have changed yet again.

The goal shouldn’t be to KNOW everything about how the platform works, rather to spend enough time with it that you know how to grow and adapt with it.

Recently, Facebook made a change to how it displays a brand’s response time and it added an option to send instant replies to messages you receive through your Facebook page.

Both concepts are easy, and worth taking a moment to understand.

The Change: Response Time
Until very recently, Facebook published to your page how long it takes you to respond to  messages you receive through your brand page. It might say a few minutes, an hour or a day. It also publishes your response rate.

Pro-tip: Even if you are going to respond to someone through another medium (phone, email...), respond to their initial message to let them know. For example: “Thanks for writing, I’m calling now.” It’s quick, easy, not at all awkward, and it allows you to maintain a 100% response rate on your page even when communicating through other methods.

While Facebook still publishes your response rate, they made a major shift regarding your response time. It used to be something you couldn’t edit or control (save for responding quicker to messages in the future). It was a report for your customers on the speediness of your response time. No more. Now, it is a tool that allows you to let people know how long they should expect you to take to return their message.

If you have someone working on your social media full-time, it should take you less than an hour. Or maybe even just a few minutes. Let people know that. But if it’s just you and Facebook is one of 1000 things you are managing, you can now let people know that it might take you a day to respond.

The set up is easy.

Go to your Facebook brand page. Directly below your avatar, you will notice a section that shares things like how many followers you have, how many have checked in with you and the like. The very first thing in that section will be your response rate and your response time.

To edit it, go to your page's Settings (located in top right hand corner of your page). Then click on Messaging in the left-hand menu.

From here, simply pick your (reasonable) time frame.

Pro tip: Be honest here, both for your own sake and for that of your customer. If it’s going to take you a day to respond, don’t say you will respond within an hour. Set up expectations that you can meet, and then work hard to meet them.

So that is the change Facebook made. But they also recently made a fairly substantial addition to their brand messenger.

The New Option: Instant Replies
You can now set up Instant Replies that will automatically be sent to anyone who writes to your brand through Facebook.

Let’s say you rarely check your Facebook messages, but you live in Gmail. Send an instant reply telling people that you’ll be in touch soon, but if they want a quicker response, they should email you as well. Or provide a phone number they can call. Or let them know you will be in touch, and send them to your website to shop/learn/take action in the meantime.

We can’t control how people choose to reach out to us. But with this new functionality, we have yet another tool in our toolkit to ensure happy customers and seamless customer service.

Not sure what to put in your Instant Reply? Drop me a line and let's figure it out together!

Yesterday, I wrote a blog post about the fact that I’m nearing 1000 followers on Twitter (!!!).  After writing the post, I started sharing it through social media. While posting it to Facebook, I chose to run it with three pictures. The first was the graphic I had made, proclaiming this exciting achievement. The second was a Twitter logo. The third was my own logo.

I linked the graphic (the first pic) and my logo directly to my blog post, outlining both the announcement and the free audits I was giving out to celebrate. But I also wanted a way to drive traffic straight to my Twitter page. That’s where the second pic comes in.

Let’s walk through this.

When you input a link into a Facebook post, Facebook will automatically go and scrape any pictures it can find on the page you are sharing and auto-populate them in your post. You can then run your post with all of them, some of them, or none of them. Generally speaking, you always want to leave one (or more) of these pics in place, or replace them correctly (more on this in a minute). By doing so, you ensure that a click on the picture will lead—not to an enlarged version of the picture, but—directly to the site you are linking. If your goal is link clicks, ensure that as many actions as possible deliver that result.

So let’s start at the top. Copy the link you want to share and paste it into your Facebook page. If possible, Facebook will populate one or more graphics to accompany your post.

Notice underneath the post, there will be several thumbnails, with small numbers in blue boxes in the top right corner.

By clicking the blue boxes, you can turn on and off these different pictures. Any picture with a number will show up in your post. You can also rearrange the order in which they are shown by simply dragging them into the order you prefer.

Notice the right-most box with the plus (+) in it? THAT is how you should add additional or replacement pictures to your post. Adding them in any other (and there are several) will sever the relationship between your picture and your link. Which is bad, unless that is your goal. (But if it is, why are you using a link in the post in the first place?!)

You can post up to five pictures with your post. These can be things Facebook pulls from the link, pictures you add in, or some combination therein. Unless you specify otherwise, all of those pictures, when clicked on, will lead to your original link.

But if you want each picture to lead to a different landing page, you can do that as well. And setting that up is easy.

First, choose which pics you want to be associated with the post. Then scroll over the picture (not the thumbnail) and you will notice a link icon appears.

When you click that link button, you will get a popup box:

From there, you can input any link you want. You can do that for each picture associated with your post. They each stand alone.

So check out the post I shared yesterday and try clicking around. You’ll notice that the first and third images take you to my blog post and the second image (the Twitter icon) will take you straight to my Twitter page.

Let me know if you need any help. Or share your own success stories using multiple links in a Facebook post.

Facebook runs using an amazing algorithm. It analyzes all of the information is how about you (where you live, what kinds of posts you like, where you check in and literally thousands of other pieces of information) and then it works hard to show you content that it thinks you will like.

Even when it comes to paid content, Facebook is working hard to show you things it thinks you'll like.

Before you call BS on this, think about. It makes sense for two reasons. The first is that if you are constantly seeing spam on your page, you are going to spend less time on the platform. That's bad for Facebook. The second is that Facebook genuinely wants businesses and brands using their ads to be successful. If they are successful, they’ll spend more money on Facebook ads. So Facebook will be more successful. Pretty simple formula.

But how does Facebook decide what kind of content (especially ads!) it is going to show you?

Interesting, Facebook will actually share the list of keywords they have associated with you, for the purpose of ad targeting.

Want to see your list? Click here.

Warning: some of these might seem spot on. Others might seem ridiculous. No joke, here are just a few of the words associated with my account: Tattoos (I have none), Beauty Salons (never been to one), Cosmetics (never use them), Golf (never played), Gardening (maybe one day, but not yet!). And so on.

Buzzfeed reporters, who did quite a bit of digging into this, had some particularly interesting topics emerge:

• Hans Zimmer
• Broccoli
• Cucumber
• Vegetable Oil
• Egg
• Adventure
• Try
• Panic
• Away from family
• Away from hometown
• Planking (fad)
• Nonsense
• Types of Business entity
• Dundee United F.C. *(a small Scottish soccer team)
• Gray wolf
• Mammal
• Frog
• Miracle
• Man
• birth without fear
• White
• Tins and shades
• Black culture
• System of a Down discography
• Bark (sound)
• Bee
• Vulture (animal)
• Technology late adopters
• First baseman
• Professional wrestling holds
• Gratitude
• Oriental Orthodoxy
• Crying
• Time *(under the “Travel, Places, and Events” section)
• Victory
• Meme
• Emotion
• Housemate-based Households
• Relationship status: single
• Fun
• Tunic
• Lorry driver
• Rings of Saturn
• Human
• Toilet

Toilet!?!? Maybe that's some poo reporter covering the plumbing beat. But I doubt it.

If you want to clean yours up, you can click the X next to any item you would rather not be targeted for. (Professional wrestling holds anyone?)

Quick note: you can delete all. But Facebook will just repopulate them. So you're probably better off just editing and cultivating your list so that at least when you see ads, they will be somewhat relevant to you.

Want an easy way to shut down all ads on Facebook? It's simple: Delete your account. ;)

Right, didn’t think so. In the meantime, sit back, relax and let those toilet ads come rolling in!

Share any of your absurd targeted keywords in the comments on online using the hashtag #NotMyKeywords. Be sure to tag Reverbal Communications on Facebook or Twitter. Can't wait to see what Facebook thinks you are into!

There’s so much more to Facebook than knowing how to post a picture or respond to a comment. Here are just a few of the (FREE!) things that you can do with your Facebook page:

• See what day of the week/time of the day your page is most engaged with
• Set up filters so that certain words (including profanity) can’t be posted to your page
• Block trolls (people who go online just to cause trouble) from commenting on your page
• Find out where your audience lives, broken down by country, state, even city
• Learn demographic information about your Facebook audience (age, gender, language)
• Schedule posts to run at a later date (or even an earlier one)
• Track what is going well on Facebook for your partners (and for your competitors!)
• See which websites are driving traffic to your Facebook page
• Create lookalike audiences (audiences of people similar to your current followers) and then market directly to them
• Run Facebook ads to:
  • Your email list
  • People visited one page on your website, but not another
  • People that watched a specific percentage of one of your videos
  • People in a certain location: ranging from a one-mile radius to a metro-area, or a state to the entire country
  • People based on their interests and other pages they like
  • People based on their age, gender and language spoken
• And much, much more.

I can teach you and your team to use all these tools and many more. 

I can train you on the Facebook front end, analytics, Stories, Groups, Events, Live and Facebook Ads.

I’ve worked with local, statewide and national political campaigns, nonprofits, small businesses, bands, artists, authors, journalists and many others who were ready to become Facebook Ninjas.
​ 

I also train people to become Super Twitterers, Instagram Champions and more.  
Learn more about how we might work together.

A little while back, Facebook added a new feature for brand pages: the call-to-action. It is a simple button, next to “Like” on your cover photo.

Setup is extremely simple. Go to any brand page for which you are an admin. If you have not yet set one up, you will see this:

When you click the button, you will get this pop-up:

Click where it says to “Choose a Button" and you will see this dropdown box:

These are your options. Facebook does not allow you to create your own, one of these will have to do. If you aren’t sure what to select, I’d recommend using "Contact Us" (as do they—it’s the default). You can add in a url and then when people click the call-to-action, they will be taken directly to your page.

Rather than sending people to your contact page though, I’d send them to a page that does a better job of introducing yourself. They are only one click away from your contact page (or at least they should be!) and in the meantime you are better off introducing them to your brand via your homepage (or your blog/about us/services page...) then sending them to a contact us page that puts all of the onus on them.

Once the call-to-action is setup, it is extremely easy to edit. If you are an admin and you go to the page, you will see the call-to-action button. Click on it, and rather than it taking you somewhere, it will offer you this dropdown menu:

You can edit, test or delete it, view insights or promote it (pay to let people know it exists). You can see insights for it just to the right of your cover photo.

Don’t expect to see much traffic from it. It won’t be a driver, but it will give people an option to quickly and easily from your Facebook page to your site.

Just as important, to the (even remotely) trained eye, not having it will stand out as a red flag (why isn’t this brand page using all of the resources at their disposal?).

Click “Contact Us” (or whichever option you selected) and Facebook will offer up some very basic analytics.

The whole process should take less than two minutes. So heed this call-to-action and set one up today!

Ever bump into an old friend and have them admonish you for not returning their Facebook message?

Maybe you were busy and forgot to respond. Maybe you were busy and willfully didn’t respond. Or maybe, Facebook sent their message to your spam folder and you never saw it in the first place!

Facebook has a spam folder. If you don’t know about it, you might be missing some important mail. That, and a lot of invites to events you were probably going to skip anyway.

If you get mail from a friend, or a friend-of-a-friend, it will go to your inbox. Everything else will wind up in your “other” folder.

The good news is that checking this folder is easy. After clicking “messages” in the top left of your Facebook homepage, look at the very top left of the new screen. “Inbox” will be highlighted. Right next to that is a tab titled “other.” Click it and you will see messages you never realized you got, dating all the way back to 2010.

Most of these messages will in fact be junk. But if you have been fuming for years that one of your college friends invited everyone but you to a holiday party back in 2011, you might very well wind up owing that person a mental apology for all those mean thoughts.

See anyone in your “other” folder who doesn’t belong there? Move their message to your inbox and Facebook promises that their mail will no longer be siphoned off, into the abyss of a folder you didn’t even realize existed.

Any truly great surprises awaiting you in your “other” folder? Share them in the comments or tweet them with the hashtag #SurprisesInMyOtherFolder

Whether your Facebook feed is made up mostly of your friends and family, organizations you support or businesses you like, chances are these days it’s full of lots of video. That’s not surprising. Facebook users are posting almost twice as much video to Facebook these days as as they did last year!

In any given scroll through my feed, I might see a video dealing with current events, one or two from a friend’s daily life, several of cats or dogs doing funny things… You know how it is.

But we’re busy, and can’t possibly find time to watch all of these videos while we should be working. Fortunately, Facebook’s got us covered.

Next time you see a video you know you want to watch, but just don’t have the time, simply “save it for later.” Go to the top right hand corner of the video and click on the dropdown menu (the v looking carrot).

Then simply choose “Save video.”

That’s it, your video is now in your saved folder.

But where’s my Facebook shared folder?
Go back to your home page. On the left side of the screen, you’ll see your “favorites.” It’s in there.

Once you are in your Saved folder, you can watch, share, and/or delete it.

If you run a Facebook brand page, there’s a decent chance that your page takes the same breaks as you. If you don’t work weekends, your page probably doesn’t either. That is a big mistake.

Your followers don’t stop paying attention on the weekend—if anything they are spending more time online. You can’t just walk away Friday afternoon and assume that your Social Media networks will be just as engaged on Monday morning.

Does it sound like I am telling you to never take a break again? I’m not.

Rather I’m offering you a simple way to set up all of your posts on Friday (or any other day) to run on their own until you get back. This way, the next time you take a (much deserved) break, your Facebook page doesn’t have to join you.

The solution is: scheduling.

Go ahead and write out your post, exactly as you want it to run. Then take a look at the “publish” button. Notice the small downward arrow to its right? Click it.

What you’ll see is a dropdown menu with three options: “Schedule,” “Backdate” and “Save Draft.” (More on the latter two in a moment.)

Click on schedule, and you will see a pop-up box that looks like this:

Pick the date and time that you want your post to go live (make sure you pay attention to AM vs. PM and time zone!). Then sit back and let the engagements come rolling in.

This is a VERY important point to remember. If you are a business and you are scheduling your posts for the weekend on Friday evening, you may have fans or customers (or trolls!) responding. Not every comment needs an immediate response. But if you are posting regularly throughout the weekend (through the beauty of scheduled posts), and your customers are getting ignored, they are going to notice.

There is no magic formula. But set it and forget it is never going to complete work to engage a Social Media audience. If you are posting a few times a day through scheduling, maybe check the page once or twice throughout the day. You can do it right on your phone. Depending on the size of your audience, you can also have Facebook notify you anytime you get a comment. This will help you decide which comments merit an immediate response which ones can wait until Monday morning.

One other note: it can look VERY inappropriate to be posting about a product or service if there has been an event going on that has everyone talking. If you are trying to sell shoes while everyone else is talking about a shooting or a plane crash (or the US women's soccer team winning the World Cup), you probably won’t be putting forth the image you want. Just pay attention. You can stop, edit or reschedule your posts from running at any time.

If you have any posts scheduled, at the top of your wall you’ll see a message that looks like this:

Click on “See post” and it will take you to a list of all of your scheduled posts. From there you can edit, delete or reschedule as needed.

The other two options in your dropdown menu were Backdate and Save Draft. Backdate will post something to your page anytime in the past that you want. It works just like a regular post: you write it, set it up and then instead of posting or scheduling in the future, you can backdate to the past.

Save Draft puts the post in your saved file so that you can come back and work on it—and post it—when you are ready.

If you have any questions drop me a note, ask them in the comments or hit me up on Twitter: @jlemonsk or @ReverbalC.