BlogHer 2012: Day One: Leveraging Facebook and Twitter

Leveraging Facebook and Twitter to Grow Your Online Media Presence presented by Diane Lang of Momofali.com @momofali, Leticia Barr of Techsavvymama.com @techsavvymama, and Nelly Yusupova of Webgrrls.com @DigitalWoman

To see more about this session on Twitter, check out this hashtag:  #BH12FBTwit

 Personality – Leveraging these platforms is all about using the social part of it.  First off, that mans NO egg avatars on Twitter!  Your followers need to be able to connecnt with you and to do that they need to see a photo of you.   What is a good avatar and bio for Twitter?  Your avatar should be a good reflection of who you are.   Use a flattering, current picture.  You have very little space in your bio to convey who you are so be sure to  use the url link there to to your website about page rather than just website home pag.  You might want to check out:  http://About.me  and utilize it as another resource for sharing more information about yourself with followers or potential followers.

Followers – Write in the way that will attract the people you’re looking for – use the keywords that fit.  Your followers will self identify. You want to create raving fans – hmmm, raving fans seems to be a BlogHer theme this year.  How do you find people and know who to follow?  Twitter parties. Hash tags.  Find your tribe.  Try out Twellow or Wefollow for suggestions.  Ask your friends who they follow.  Look at ones you already follow and see who they follow.

Facebook Fan Pages -On Facebook you  need a marketing strategy to drive people to it.  Tell them to like it and give them a reason to like it. You must have a large image and some great info to get them to like you.    How do you define your audience and who do you cater to? Link to your own stuff and others.  You need a balance and mix.  Don’t just link share.  Do you leave comments? If not, think about the lack of comments you get.

Lists – List building on Twitter is important.  Think of lists on Twitter as segments of the people you followso you can keep up and bring them out of the main stream where it’s noisy.

Brand Content – How does brand content fit in with social media?  You need to have a strategy and set goals.  Think about:  how will you integrate brands? – think of this ahead of time before making a deal with them.  Know what the brand’s goal is and partner to work together.

Twitter:  Know your goals first.  Check out some Twitter dashboards that you can use to make your use of Twitter more efficient such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite.  Use custom backgrounds on your Twitter page that goes with your branding.   Add fave brands to hashtag columns.  Use Tweetgrid for Twitter parties so you can keep up and be sure that you’re reaching out to those you want to and those who reach out to you.

As with other platforms in social media, metrics are an important factor for giving you a way to measure how you’re doing and what your audience is looking for –look for what  tweet types you send that seem to do best and how many impressions you are getting.  On Klout you can look at your most tweeted about topics as well as those of others and who you influence and those who influence you.  It will give you a sense of your type of personality on Twitter.  Just remember to take it all with a grain of salt – don’t rely on these metrics as gospel but simply as one piece of the puzzle in determining how you are coming across in social media.

Hootsuite Pro is 9.99 a month and it will give you a deep dive into your stats with  customized analytics.  It’s important to know who is reading your content.  This is gold for your one page media kit.  On Tweetreach –you can get a free custom report for a hashtag – great for twitter parties.  Hashtracking is the same idea.  Bitly has url tracking statistics so it’s better to use this than the automatic URL shortener on Twitter.  It will tell you how many click on your link and where they come from.

Facebook – You have a 5000 limit on your personal facebook profile so you need a fan page so you can continue to grow.   88% of users never return to your page to get content once they like it so you need to find a way to keep them coming back.  95% of your updates won’t be seen because of the Edgerank algorithm used to determine how many people will see the content you’ve shared on your FB page in their newsfeed.

The Edgerank algorithm is based on affinity x weight x time decay.

Affinity is:  How relevant are you to that person and that is measured by interactions such as likes, shares, and comments

Weight is how much a specific content is worth – pictures are worth more than text – a comment is worth more than a like – the more they have to do work to interact the higher the weight assigned to it.

Time decay – how new is the post –Facebook wants fresh content

So, how to best maximize the Edgerank algorithm in your favour?  You can’t really control how much others interact with you other than providing content that is so interesting to them that they are more likely to want to interact so most of your efforts should be on weight and time decay.  Use pictures and videos with your posts as much as possible and keep your content fresh.  Facebook begins by randomly showing what you’ve shared to a selection of those who have liked your page and then they

Strategies for increasing edgerank– FB randomly shows your stuff to people and then decides on affinity based on their interaction with what you post.  In order to reach YOUR audience – those who want your posts and want to interact with you, you need to find ways of encouraging that.  Here are some suggestions:   put out questions on facebook and ask “what should I write about”, ask thought provoking questions, do fill in the blank, did you know facts, polls and surveys, talk about what’s happening today/in the news and tie in what’s current to your content, add photos and videos (visual evokes emotion), ask people to do simple tasks, use a call to action (asking for likes gets a 216% higher interaction rate), run contests.

Other ideas for getting your content on Facebook in front of your followers: Post outside of business hours because many companies have FB blocked on company computers. Sunday evening is a prime time for both Twitter and Facebook– internet traffic spikes here the highest out of any other point in the week!  Figure out who your audience is and what works best for them.  If yours is mostly made up of people who don’t work outside the home, then perhaps it’s another time that’s better for you.  If yours is made up mostly of mothers of young children, it might be afternoons when the kids tend to be napping.  Be concise – 80 characters or less get 27% more engagement.  If you’re having trouble getting your content in front of your readers, you can always try some sponsored stories but this will cost you money.

It’s important to remember that your audiences in Twitter and Facebook are often made up of different people.  Yes, you will likely have some on both but often, some people prefer one platform to the other.  It’s important not to just put out the same content in both places.  You need to tailor it to each audience (and that way you also won’t be duplicating content for those who follow you in both places).  Get a feel for the different vibes of each platform and what seems to fly better on each.