I just received this question and thought "Im sure other's are wondering this too".  So here you go!

Q.  I get a crazy number of friend requests on Facebook and have over 2000 friends but very little comments on my posting since it all goes by so fast. Any simple advice on how to better manage. I have 70 people waiting for a friend reply and I'm not sure I want to say yes!


Here is my response: 
A: Just from looking briefly at your page it looks like you are pre-scheduling through Hootsuite and which Facebook doesn't like. They want authentic real time communication, especially on your Facebook Profile Page. It's silly, but they set their algorithm up to make sure "real" people get priority in the news feed. 

To resolve that issue, I would suggest using Hootsuite to schedule out Twitter posts and set your phone up to engage more on Facebook in real-time.

As for the friend replies. It's really up to you. I am careful now, who I add, but it's a personal choice on how you decide who to "friend". You can always send them a message and ask them to "like" your fan page instead to connect; but that can be time consuming too. There is also a "subscribe" option where you can allow people to subscribe and only things you make as "public posts" will show up in their feed. That has slowed my number of requests down quite a bit too.

Hope that helps! 

Q: Are you paying for ads on Yelp and does it help your business? I have an estate sale business and they "filter" all my good reviews and show all the bad ones.....I have heard if you advertise with them to the tune of $300 per month, they will "fix" that......have you found it worthwhile advertising here.....as in does it bring you more clients? Customers we will always have, but wondering about clients and new sales.

Many people are finding more questions than answers when it comes to Yelp and Yelp Advertising. So much so, that you are hearing about it more often from frustrated business owners and through websites Yelp-Sucks.com

Here is what I say: 
A: There are a few things to consider: 
1) How many leads are you CURRENTLY getting from Yelp without advertising? 
2) How many reviews total do you have and how many of those are negative? 
3) If you have negative review, how negative are they? I have found that negative reviews often can help a business because  people feel challenged to "see for themselves". 
4) are you using any other ways to gain reviews? Google Places, Yahoo local, Facebook etc? 

In this case, I wouldn't worry too much about bad reviews or paying for Yelp Advertising. Chances are, for your type of work, you won't see a high enough return at $300 a month from your target market. You would be better off spending time and money on Estatesales.net, the Sacramento Bee,Penny Saver and any other local sites as well as  estate related websites which is where your target market is more likely to be spending time. 

Facebook recently added a new feature called "Interest Lists" to our Bookmarks on our home page (you know, those links on the left hand side of the page when you are reading your news feed?)

Many page admins have been putting a plea out to their fans that they MUST add their page to the Interest list in order to see any posts from that particular fan page. This is not entirely true, as I pointed out in my last blog post. 

I have seen post after post of how daunting of a task it can be for folks wanting to do the "right thing" by page admins, and individually adding pages to their interest lists. 

In testing this theory out, I found that there are 7 easy steps to creating an Interest List on Facebook. 


YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO THIS ON EACH INDIVIDUAL PAGE!! 


Step 1: Find a page that interests you and go to their page. Next to the "Like" button, you will see a settings icon, click on that and a drop down menu will appear 

Step 2: Click add to interest lists

Step 3: Click add to New List and it will take you to this page. If you click on "Pages" it will bring up all of the pages you have liked and you can then select similar pages to the one you started with and group them accordingly.

Step 4: Just click on the pages that you want in this list and a "check mark" will appear and indicate that the page has been selected. When finished click "next" at the bottom of the box. 

Step 5: You will then select a list name. I have one for clients, one for networking, one for Sacramento etc. 
During this time, you can also select the privacy settings. Making this public, people can then subscribe to your interest lists and follow it. 

Step 6: Once you have clicked "done" you will be redirected to your Interest Home Page which will list your different lists (Clients, community, business etc- much like your friends and family lists), so you can click on them and see only posts that come from the pages selected for that particular list. 

You can then access your Interest lists at any time by clicking on them in the left hand menu when you are on your home page. Be aware that they could be hidden under "More". 

Why an Interest List? 


According to Facebook: "Interest lists are an optional way to organize the content you're interested in on Facebook."
They suggest it because it's an easy way to "Simply click the list's name to see all the recent posts and activity from the Pages and people featured in the list, without overwhelming your main news feed."

Here is the latest FB message  flooding our newsfeeds and wasting some of our time (or is it?) 

FACEBOOK now requires page administrators to pay to promote their updates if we want our content to be seen by our fans. If we do not pay to promote our posts, only about 10% of the fans receive the updates on the Facebook home page feed.

To keep RECEIVING ALL POSTS FROM US you have to hover the mouse on the "Like" button near our name. In the drop-down menu select "ADD TO INTEREST LISTS". Then create an interest list (and make a name for your favorite pages). When you select that interest list you will see ALL of our posts and you won't miss anything important!" 


Yes, it is true, Facebook has changed its Algorithm (see previous blog post about that here) and it does "pay to play" if you have something worthy to promote, this notion that you MUST create and add your favorite pages to an "Interest List" in order to see ANY posts, is not all that accurate.


According to Facebook, "Interest lists are an optional way to organize the content you're interested in on Facebook." The operative word being OPTIONAL!

It also states: " When you create or subscribe to a list, you'll see the best posts from that list in your main news feed." Again, this does not guarantee that you will see ALL posts from any given page, nor will your fans see all of your fan page post by adding your page to  their interest lists! 


To boot, I have seen post after post of people saying how daunting the task is of adding "all" of their pages to an interest list- upon the demand of many page admins freaking people out that they may miss out on some life altering information if they don't do it. 


**I have found an easy solution, if in fact, you want to create and interest list. I will be posting that in my next blog. **


In the meantime, don't stress. Continue to find and provide good content and engage your fans on your fan page. Facebook is favoring posts with more engagement! 


If you want to create an interest list, I say go for it. It's much like when you put people into category lists (Friends, Family, Church, Work) and when you click on that list, you get news only from those people. I think it is worth while, especially if you don't want to miss news from your clients, community organizations or the like. 

We all know that Facebook likes to keep us on our toes by changing things up every once in awhile. 

Well, this time, they made a change that you may or may not have noticed. 

In the last two weeks, Facebook engagement has dropped for individuals anywhere by 6% to 45% depending on what individuals and brands post.  Apparently, Facebook quietly announced on Sep 20th that it had changed its EdgeRank algorithm on Sep 18th, 2012. Even those of us who pay attention to things like this, missed it. 

Why did they make this change? 
Facebook advises that the changes were made to reward content-rich brands- meaning the more engaging content the content the more News Feed exposure. 

According to Facebook: Some of the strongest factors that influence this are how engaging an individual post has been for other users who have seen it, and how engaged a user has historically been with other posts they’ve seen from that page. Feed also takes negative feedback into account, which is the number of people who have hidden a post or reported it as spam.


I personally noticed this change yesterday when I posted about my anniversary. In a matter of 12 hours, I had 168 "Likes" on my status and 55 comments. I was amazed at the "interaction" I was receiving from that post! 


But what does this mean for us as business fan page admins? 

This change means that Facebook wants us to "Pay to Play". In their words: 
Finally, if a page has a piece of content that it feels will be very engaging e.g. A good offer, a great photo, an announcement, etc. then using paid media to “boost” that post to fans in newsfeed can be an effective tool to increase engagement with fans.


So much for "Organic" reach on Facebook! 

What do we do now? 

• Keep engaging! Know your fans! Continue to post things that they "like", comment on and share! 
  
• Pay attention to your analytics and insights on your Fan Page! Under each of your posts on your Fan page, you will see "222 people saw this post". If you hover over that line, you will see how many were organic and how many were viral. You will also see how your number on this post compares to your most popular post on your Fan Page!
• You can also click on your Insights tab at the top of your fan page and take a look at all of your numbers. As long as your "Engaged Users" and "Talking About this" numbers are up, you know you doing ok. 
• Don't post too much- that will decrease your reach. Carefully pay attention and select times that your audience is "listening" and choosing to engage and post during those times. 
• Consider promoting a special offer or using Facebook Ads. Just be sure to select “People who like your page and their friends” and make a pointed “share” or “like” ask in your post to get the most from your investment.

Changes like these means, now- more than ever, you need to create a social media marketing strategy. No more- posting now and then and hoping for people to see it. We have to stay ahead of the curve to stay in front of our customers! 

Right now, we are in the thick of it. Political Debates, the advertisements, the newspapers and now, our social media news feeds. 

I have been seeing more and more pleas from my friends on Facebook about unfriending/ deleting people from their Facebook accounts because of "over the top" political rants being posted online. 

While I am a firm believer in free speech, I am also a firm believer in respect for other's feelings and opinions. I have seen so many hateful statements come across my own newsfeed that it caused me to want to write about it! 

I personally try to stay very neutral on Facebook. I have so many friends, acquaintances and even clients that I am connected with on Facebook- and just as they are all very different people, one can assume that they may also have varying political views.  

Particularly, if you are using Facebook for business, you want to stay as neutral as possible. Posting politcal rants on your Fan Page or Personal Page with customers on it, may cause a sense of disconnect for people just based on the fact that they don't agree with you politically. 

DickensonInteractive.com posted a great article back in March 2012 about this very subject and suggests: 
Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Not Post About Politics On Facebook. 

I love his #5 Reason: " There’s enough politics in the media. One of the reasons I use Facebook is to laugh, have fun and converse with my friends and family. I don’t use it to get worked up or stressed out over something I see that I disagree with. There’s enough political coverage in the mainstream media. More than enough. Keep it there and leave the politics to the pundits."

What do you think? 

A new social media marketing company has arrived in Sacramento. Introducing iSnap Social, the creator of the Social Photo Station and accompanying suite of social marketing tools. iSnap Social’s Photo Stationallows users to take a photo at a venue or event and upload it to social networks like Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter. iSnap Social provides an easy way for brands to expand their reach and influence on social media networks. “The holy grail of social media marketing is enticing your customers to market on your behalf and there’s no better way to do that than photo sharing,” says iSnap Social CEO and Co-Founder Alexander Lowe.

iSnap Social users get an easy way to take high quality photos, branded with the featured company’s graphic overlays and share them instantly. Featured brands and businesses get a unique tactic to engage customers, add fans and followers and gain insightful data. The iSnap Social cloud-based platform tracks metrics along the way, gathering usage statistics, conversions, time and demographic information. All data is viewable and exportable from the secure iSnap Social Cloud website.

The iSnap Social platform has already proved invaluable for Sacramento and nationally-based businesses alike. Customers that have successfully employed iSnap Social to aid their social media marketing campaigns include CBS Radio, Live Nation and Hyatt Resorts. Explains Doug Link, Theater Director for Imax Esquire Theater, “It is apparent with the reduction of marketing budgets and the proliferance of social media marketing, iSnap was an opportunity we could not afford to miss.”

CEO and Co-Founder Alexander Lowe conceptualized iSnap Social on a napkin in 2010. Since then iSnap Social has grown to become a global network reaching thousands of users every day in venues around the world.

About iSnap Social:

iSnap Social (www.isnapsocial.com) is the creator of the social photo station and accompanying suite of social marketing tools. iSnap Social products enable brands to create more authentic connections with customers through photo sharing. iSnap photos are liked, commented on and shared broadly across multiple social networks. By making branded photo sharing easy and fun, iSnap builds a brand’s social media presence quickly and efficiently while providing an exciting free amenity to customers.

Contacts: 

iSnap Social
Julia Mjehovich, 916-930-6804
julia@isnapsocial.com

Do you know a fabulous woman in media? Nominate them for a Gracie Award! 

GRACIE AWARDS CRITERIA:

Entry Deadline: January 7, 2013


All programming entries must be

…for women, by women or about women…

For Women: Entries that reflect subject matters of interest and concern to women, but are not necessarily about women. Entries that reflect diversity in women’s issues are encouraged.

By Women: Entries that are produced, directed, reported OR written by at least one woman. These entries are not limited to subjects on women, but meet the criteria solely in their creation by at least one woman in a key development role.

About Women: Entries that are about a specific woman or a group of women. Entries that recognize the achievements of women or portray women in a realistic and faceted manner.


Even if you created login information for the 2012 competition, you will need to create a new entrant profile, login and password for 2013. The system has been reset completely, so it may be possible for you to use your previous username and password from 2012 if they are not yet taken for 2013.


Let us know if you get nominated or chosen for a Gracie Award!! 

This story, published on BuzzFeed
came across my newsfeed on Facebook a few weeks back. I saw it a few times before I decided to click on it and watch. 

It's a powerful story about love, life, personal strength and tragedy. There are no words. Just pictures. 22 of them to be exact. By the time you reach the last picture, you feel like you know the people in the photos. You can feel their agony, their defeat, their triumph and their love.  

This is true testament to visual story telling; how pictures sometimes speak more than 1,000 words! 

 Grab some tissues and See the entire thing here

 

I keep seeing this status update creep back into my newsfeed: 
"PRIVACY NOTICE: Warning – any person and/or institution and/or Agent and/or Agency of any governmental structure including but not limited to the United States Federal Government also using or monitoring/using this website or any of its associated websites, you do NOT have my permission to utilize any of my profile information nor any of the content contained herein including, but not limited to my photos, and/or the comments made about my photos or any other “picture” art posted on my profile.
You are hereby notified that you are strictly prohibited from disclosing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or taking any other action against me with regard to this profile and the contents herein. The foregoing prohibitions also apply to your employee , agent , student or any personnel under your direction or control.

The contents of this profile are private and legally privileged and confidential information, and the violation of my personal privacy is punishable by law. UCC 1-103 1-308 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED WITHOUT PREJUDICE" 

Posting this does NOTHING For You! 

Yourr personal data is governed by Facebook’s Data Use Policy, which YOU AGREED to when you signed up for your Facebook account! Posting this on your profile does NOT supersede this agreement! 

As per this agreement, " We [Facebook] use the information we receive about you in connection with the services and features we provide to you and other users like your friends, our partners, the advertisers that purchase ads on the site, and the developers that build the games, applications, and websites you use." Read the entire thing here!

Please, please, please do your research before posting things like this on your wall! It will not only assist you in learning the truth, but it will prevent mis-information being spread like wildfire. 

How do you know if the information you are about to repost is true?  Google It; Check Snopes or Facecooks.com!