Social Media Week has gained momentum over the years, spreading to cities across the world, including Barcelona, Berlin, Bogotá, London, Los Angeles, Mumbai, São Paulo, Torino and Toronto. This year’s theme Open & Connected: Principles for a Collaborative World, encourages a global discussion on the economic and cultural impact of social media.

Last year’s Social Media Week Chicago brought together leaders in the industry for the five-day event, featuring more than 250 speakers, 95 free educational and networking sessions, 40 venues, and saw 16,000 registrations. With planning for the 2013 event underway, we’re excited to see what this year will bring.

Partnering with Zócalo Group, an Omnicom company and leader in word-of-mouth, digital and social media marketing, 435 Digital is “thrilled to help position Chicago as a leader in this space and offer the local community engaging ways to get involved,” said Bob McDonald, Director of 435 Digital.

Social Media Week Chicago 2013

The 2013 event will differ slightly from last year, in response to participant requests to offer advanced discussions and more hands-on opportunities. For 2013, you can expect a condensed four-day event with a heavier focus on advanced workshop events led by social media thought leaders.

Social Media Week Chicago will touch on various topics including:

• business & brands
• arts & entertainment
• technology & innovation
• government & social policy.

Area companies, academic institutions, national brands, non-profit organizations and government agencies will all be contributing to making it a fun week of learning and networking.

“We look forward to bringing Social Media Week back to Chicago for a third year,” said Paul M. Rand, President and CEO of Zócalo Group. “We are excited to present a schedule of more targeted events that will encourage thoughtful discussion about the future and evolution of the social, digital and mobile landscape.”

Submit an Event

We’re ready to get things started, and one of the first steps is gathering great ideas for events and speakers. Beginning this week, the public is invited to submit event ideas on the Social Media Week Chicago website.

Businesses: There’s also an option for you to get involved by sponsoring networking events, sessions, content tracks, and more. Please reach out to us at chicago@socialmediaweek.org to get more information.

For up-to-the-minute updates, follow @SMWChicago on Twitter and connect on Facebook.

Check back in early August for a preliminary event schedule and be ready to register for events starting August 13th.

To learn more about Social Media Week, visit http://socialmediaweek.org/.

The post 435 Digital to Co-Host Social Media Week Chicago appeared first on 435 Digital.

Managing a business’ reputation is a delicate act during difficult times. Many brands find themselves asking the question, “Should I post something?” There’s no universal right or wrong answer to this question. Every business will need to make its own decision based on what’s best for its brand during times of crisis.

Here at 435 Digital, it’s our stance to not post our regularly scheduled content while a tragedy is unfolding. We recommend immediately shutting off any scheduled tweets, Facebook updates, etc., as it looks insensitive. It has been our experience that many people find it disrespectful when brands post promotional content while everyone is concerned with the latest news on the event.

Your brand may have nothing to do with the incident, and sometimes it is best to be respectful and keep quiet until more information is released. If you’d rather not go completely quiet on social media during a tragedy, there are some posts that we find are more acceptable than pushing out the regular promotional info you usually share.

Two universal pieces of advice:

1. Make sure your post is well thought out and written clearly. This may seem obvious.

2. Whatever you write, keep it short. People mostly want to see the latest news, not a drawn out post by a business. You never want to make it look like you are taking away attention from the current happenings. You could offer your condolences or send well wishes, but be sure to keep things brief.

Examples of helpful brands who posted during last week’s tragedy in Boston:

American Red Cross: Offered comfort for those looking for loved ones, and assured everyone that many Red Cross volunteers and workers were there helping in any way they could.

McDonald’s: Acknowledged the pain with a considerate and simple message, and let their fans know things will be quiet out of respect.

Here are some content suggestions to show respect instead of doing the typical promotion post during a tragic event:

• Offer your condolences, but keep it brief.
• Post information on ways for people to support the victims of the tragic event (ie., charitable giving opportunities, help line phone numbers for people to find their loved ones, etc.).
• Show support for the community involved.

Some thoughts on things to stay away from during a tragedy:

• Consider leaving off any hashtags. A tragic time is not an opportunity to spread a promotional message. A simple sentence showing support works best.
• If you do choose to continue your scheduled, promotional posts, be ready for backlash. Some people will be very upset that your brand is going on with business as usual.

Most importantly, it’s up to your business to make the final call on what’s appropriate during a tragedy. Chris Boudreaux has compiled an extensive listing of social media policies – a great resource for researching what needs to be covered.

Every business should have a plan ready in case a terrible situation occurs and immediate actions are needed. Share the plan with all team members so that no one makes the mistake of posting something that differs from the company’s social media guidelines.

No one wants to have to think about tragic events before they happen, but it’s crucial that your business have a plan ready to provide clear guidance in the midst of any crisis.

The post Tragedy Strikes: What’s Your Social Media Plan? appeared first on 435 Digital.

Stick with what works. There is no harm in trying a new social media platform, but make sure you have a strategy before you dive into it.

Not familiar with Instagram yet? No worries, it is still relatively new to brands and many are trying to grasp exactly what they should be doing with it. Instagram’s main draw right now is that it is completely focused on the love for visual messaging and sharing. From its early days in late 2010 with only two employees, the goal, according to co-founder Kevin Systrom, has always been to use the “power of images to connect people to what was happening in the world around them.”

Just a few years later, Instagram has been bought by Facebook and has more than 100 million monthly active users. Instagram gives brands a new and creative way to reach their consumer base. Best of all, it is easy to use no matter where you are and at any time.

So what exactly is it? Instagram is a mobile app where users share their life stories and events, using only photos with cool filters and captions. Similar to Facebook, photos are posted to a feed where followers can see what is being shared and leave comments or click on a ‘heart’ to ‘like’ the photo. Similar to Foursquare, people can tag a specific location to a photo. Similar to Twitter, users can view a feed of the most popular photos around the world from other public-sharing users or only view the photos in the feed of the people they are following.

Do you think your business should be on Instagram? Here are some things you should keep in mind.

1. Develop your creative strategy first.

Make sure you have a good idea of what you have to offer to people on Instagram. Give your followers something they can’t find anywhere else – something different from what you offer on Facebook and Twitter. Use Instagram to show off what you love about your business location and the surrounding community. Show your followers some behind-the-scenes shots to help them know and love your business. Show the pride you have in your brand. If you are a restaurant, feature your chef and show new specials before they are even introduced at the restaurant. If you are a workplace full of cubicles and 9-to-5ers, share your work environment, photos of your employees, and community outings.

This may seem strange, but if done right, it can work. Have you heard of Warby Parker? You might have if you are in the market for boutique eyeglasses. They are often applauded within the social media industry as being one of the most creative brands on Instagram. Why? They do a great job of showing off their merchandise in a completely non-salesy way, while capturing the unique culture of their employees and their community with every shot. They certainly found their strategy and are running with it.

Warby Parker Instagram

2. Use hashtags effectively.

Hashtags — love them or hate them — are important on Instagram. Hashtags are words or phrases marked with the # symbol (ex: #hashtag) and are used to enable collecting all content with that tag in one place. With public Instagram accounts, anyone searching for a hashtag used in a photo caption will be able to see that image. This is a great way to get specific photos and brand accounts a lot more attention. Like Twitter, users need to be smart with hashtags because they can be annoying. Don’t overuse them, and only use words that are actually relevant to the photo you are tagging. Some brands overuse hastags with the goal of getting more likes and followers. This is not going to get the followers they want to have and will likely attract spammy comments.

Also, become familiar with some of the popular hashtags and use those that can naturally work with the content you are sharing. Some popular hashtags on Instagram include #tbt (throw back Thursday), #photooftheday, #food and #instafood. There are also a lot of hashtags that are popular by city. For example, in Chicago, hashtags like #Chicago, #Chitecture, and #Instagram312 are popular. Our friends at Chicago Tribune capture some great engagement from their followers by using a weekly hashtag theme encouraging Chicago area users to share their photos of anything from their breakfast to the CTA by posting their pictures with the hashtag #Trib2013. At the end of the year, we will all be able to browse through an impressive album of Chicago area images that document our 2013.

Chicago Tribune Instagram

3. Decide how often you want to share.

You don’t need to post on Instagram every day. The ‘feed speed’ on Instagram is still mostly laid back. If you start posting a lot, you might over-saturate your followers’ feeds, and you don’t want to force yourself into the noise too often. Decide what you have ready to post and create a schedule to help you remember what to post when and to track what is working once you get going. If you see that your followers are starting to gravitate toward certain images, be flexible with your plan and change things to fit. Don’t forget to make engagement part of your strategy. Join the conversation, that’s what this is all about. Answer questions and thank people for being loyal.

4. Pay attention to your followers.

Take notice of who is following your brand. Follow them back, ‘heart’ their pictures if it makes sense — avoid the personal pictures unless you have a personal connection with them. Encourage your followers to share your photos and your page. This is a great way to spread your reach and attract other users. Once you get a good following, feature your fans’ photos by encouraging them to use a hashtag or tag your Instagram handle when they are posting a picture. Just be sure to give them credit for the photo. This is easy using an app like InstaRepost.

You can also reward your loyal fans with contests and promo codes based on user-generated content. There are a lot of brands catching on to this concept right now. Sony does a great job encouraging their customers and followers to post pictures using specific hashtags, and then featuring their favorites on the Sony feed. Bonobos and Free People essentially use their followers as models, encouraging them to post pictures while wearing the brand’s clothing. Starbucks customers are already used to using #starbucks to share their coffee breaks from all over the world.

Sony, Bonobos, Free People, and Starbucks on Instagram

Don’t forget to take some time regularly to search Instagram and Twitter for your brand name to find customers that may have already shared images or reviews from your business. I post photos of my food all the time when I eat out, and every once in a while a restaurant will take my shot and feature it in their feed. I think that’s cool. It shows they appreciate my business and interest in them.

Think your business is ready to start using Instagram? Take some of these tips and you should be in a good place to get going. Already finding success with Instagram? Send us your shots! We would love to see them.

The post 4 Tips to Create a Successful Instagram Strategy appeared first on 435 Digital.

Yesterday, the social network announced another new update to the news feed – your home page when logged into Facebook. This is the first big update Facebook has rolled out since Facebook Timeline launched in 2011. Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, sees the news feed as “the most personalized newspaper,” evolving with users and the way we are sharing content. The more relevant news feed gives us more information and more to do within the Facebook walls. If you are anything like me, you check Facebook a few (ok, multiple) times a day and scroll through your feed until you hit a post or two that you have already seen; then you move on to the next web page or activity in your day. Now, when you hit the end of interesting posts in one feed, you will have another feed to explore. Facebook is going to keep us engaging on the site longer.

So, what’s new?

Bigger Images
Everything is bigger, but a main focus of the new redesign will be on images, link posts, and videos – both from users and brand pages. Facebook and Instagram images, which consist of 50% of shared news feed content, will now be larger and more appealing. There will also be a separate feed showcasing only the posts that have photos.

Multiple Feeds
Speaking of separate feeds, there will now be multiple feeds available for users to toggle. Facebook users will now be able to subscribe to specific feeds: all friends, close friends, music, photos, news, games, and brand pages. For example, the music feed will show what music friends are listening to on apps like Spotify and Rdio, concert updates, news from artist pages, and album releases. There will still be a chronological main news feed – where brand page posts will still remain.

Mobile Consistency
One important aspect of this new Facebook look will be that it is even more mobile friendly. The new look was largely inspired by our increased use of different mobile devices. According to Facebook, the site has seen a large spike in mobile engagement recently with more than 680 million monthly active mobile users. This means that no matter what device you are using to pull up Facebook in a browser, the look will be consistent – similar to what we currently see when we use Facebook from a smartphone or tablet application.

Bigger, More Prominent Ads
The new redesign should open an opportunity for advertisers to serve ads similar to the rich media units they are used to on other websites. We will most likely see brands take advantage of offering big pictures and videos, a feature that hasn’t been provided to brands yet. Ads will blend in more with the content our friends are sharing, making them less annoying and more likely to encourage engagement. They will also likely cost a lot more. Everybody wins.

Want the new look? Get in line. Check out the information Facebook has shared on the new feature, and join the waiting list.

Are you going to embrace the new look? Let us know your thoughts.

The post The New Facebook News Feed: Bigger and Better appeared first on 435 Digital.

Myth: Good Content is Enough to Build a Following

The biggest misconception that we often run into is that social media should be responsible for generating an audience all on its own and that good content will have people crawling over each other to ‘Like’ your page. It’s true that content is extremely important to attracting and keeping followers, but content alone can’t bring an audience to a page that they don’t even know exists.

It’s crucial in the beginning to reach out to your employees, friends, and family to build a base following for your profiles. Their new ‘Likes’ will then show up on their newsfeeds for all of their friends to see. This is an easy way to increase your reach and for potential customers to come check out your page.

Unlocking the Facebook Admin Dashboard with Likes

One thing a lot of people don’t realize is that it takes at least 30 ‘Likes’ on your Facebook page to unlock the admin dashboard, which shows you analytics related to what’s happening on your profile. This will show you page views, help you know what content is working, and reveal the demographics of your fans. Here’s a look at some of the info you’ll find in the dashboard:

The admin dashboard will also show you information about:

• Total likes
• Friends of fans
• People talking about this
• Weekly total reach
• Each individual post and its reach
• Virality
• % male and female
• Countries and cities of the audience
• Language they speak
• Page views per day
• And more

While asking friends, family, and employees to ‘Like’ your page is an excellent starting point to build your audience, it’s just the beginning. There are many other ways that you should be supporting your online efforts with some offline marketing to build up your social media following.

Ideas to Grow Your Social Media Following Offline

Again, it’s not enough simply to have a Facebook page. You need to drive traffic to it and increase likes to be seen as trustworthy and professional. It is critical that your social media profiles are linked from your website. Beyond that, I have several ideas to share with you on how to increase your audience using offline marketing tactics:

• Placing your Facebook Page URL on your receipts with a message that encourages people to follow you there for up-to-date info on your business.
• Creating flyers that you can display on your counters or registers that includes the URLs to all of your social media profiles. Restaurants should feature this info on their menu.
• Place the logos of the social media outlets that you use on your business collateral to let people know they can find you online.
• Promote your online promotions with in-store signage. For example, ‘Like’ us on Facebook for 20% off [insert product or service here].

Overall, social media should be something that is fun to do. It is important to be active on social media even if you think your activity does not drive bottom line results. The numbers show that social media is, in some way, growing your business.

• 67% of B2C companies and 41% of B2B companies have acquired a customer from Facebook
• Companies that use Twitter average 2x more leads than those that don’t
• 45% of marketers note social media has a below average cost-per-lead compared to other channels

Go out there and have fun with your social media. It will be contagious.

The post Build Your Social Media Following Offline appeared first on 435 Digital.

As with any new feature to Facebook, Graph Search was welcomed with some love and some criticism. The reality is, this has been a long time coming and it will probably prove to be a pretty important change to the social network. There is an ocean of information within Facebook and until now the search functionality has been less than ideal. I, for one, am excited to see what this will become.

So, what is Graph Search?

Let’s break it down. First of all, Graph Search is still in beta. This means a select crowd (invite only right now, get your invite here) will be able to test the functionality and provide feedback. It also means Facebook is still building and improving the search system before they roll it out to the general public. Graph Search will show up as a bigger search bar at the top of each page when you are within Facebook and will be used as a search engine for Facebook users to find specific content inside Facebook.

What will Graph Search do for us? Or, “Why should we care?”

With Graph Search, Facebook users will be able to:

• Ask specific questions: ‘Which of my friends live in Chicago?’ or ‘Which of my friends have been to Oktoberfest in Munich?’
• Search based on interests or places: ‘Which of my friends like Homeland?’ or ‘Restaurants my friends like in New York City’ or ‘Games my friends play’
• Search based on photos or your own past actions: ‘Photos I like’ or ‘Photos of my family’
• Search based on products or services (the things your friends ‘like’): which in turn could be useful for brands and marketers

An interesting feature to note about the listings you will receive when searching, is your Facebook friends will be ranked based on your interactions. The more you ‘like’ and comment on a friends photos and status updates, the more likely they will be at the top of the listings. Similar to the News Feed now. I do think Facebook will try different ways in the coming months to gather more specific information from users to feed Graph Search as it grows, but we can expect them to remain mindful of privacy settings. You will essentially only be able to find things that you already could find if you looked around for it. It will just be a lot easier.

So, the big question is… what does this mean for Google?

My opinion is: nothing really.

The main difference between the two right now is that Google (and other search engines) search based on keywords and serve you the best possible results from throughout the web based on those keywords and the authority of those pages. Facebook’s Graph Search will take a phrase or combined phrases and serve results based on people, places and photos shared only on Facebook (most of which is not public, but within your personal connections).

The similarity between the two is the personalization behind the search result. People are more likely to click on a result that is already endorsed by a trusted friend. Google has already brought this idea to life with Google+, serving content our personal Google network has given a +1. Facebook’s goal is to do everything it can to keep users inside Facebook, but if a user’s search does not return any results within Facebook content, the Bing web search integration will still be available to provide results from the web outside of Facebook’s walled garden.

For more information on Facebook’s Graph Search – check out Facebook’s Press Release

The post New Facebook Graph Search: What You Need To Know appeared first on 435 Digital.

If you’re a brand, or if you manage social media for a brand, you’ve probably noticed a big drop off in the number of fans you reach with each individual Facebook post. While many brands were surprised to find that 100% of their Facebook posts weren’t seen by 100% their fans, most could count on their posts appearing on the pages of somewhere around 56% of their fans at any given time.

All that changed this Fall, when EdgeRank, the algorithm Facebook uses to determine what posts users see in their newsfeed, changed its formula, resulting in a 40% drop-off, on average, in the number of fans who saw a brand’s post at any given time. While brands and brand managers scrambled to figure out to how combat the drop-off in reach, Facebook found itself having to defend charges that it changed EdgeRank in order to force brands to spend money to “promote” their Facebook posts, thereby getting their status updates back in front of a higher percentage of their fans.

No matter Facebook’s motivation in changing the EdgeRank algorithm, the fact is that the current formula isn’t going away any time soon. Luckily, the formula used by EdgeRank is widely known (Weight x Affinity x Time Decay = a posts’s EdgeRank score), and there are some easy things your brand can do to push your posts’ EdgeRank scores higher. The higher your post’s EdgeRank score, the higher percentage of your fans that will see your post.

With that in mind, here are five thing your can do to increase your EdgeRank Scores:

1) Vary the type of content (weight): The first factor EdgeRank takes into account is how often an individual fan interacts with the kind of content you’ve posted. Immediately following EdgeRank’s algorithm change, it appeared that photos were valued more highly than other types of posts, but straight text posts and links have been make a surge as of late. Brands should make sure to vary the kinds of posts to determine which kinds of updates get the most traction with their fans.

2) Vary the times of posts (time decay): Another big factor in the EdgeRank algorithm is time decay: the amount of time between an update is posted and a fan of a brand logs on to see the post. The older a post is, the lower it’s EdgeRank score will be. For this reason, it’s important to experiment with posting at different times of day. Once you know the optimal time of day to post to reach the greatest amount of fans, the better chance you have of increasing your posts’ visibility.

3) Target posts to your demographic (affinity): The third factor in EdgeRank’s formula is affinity. Simply put, affinity is the number of times a fan has interacted via likes, shares, and comments, with your posts. The more often a fan engages with your brand, the more likely she is to see your posts popping up in her timeline. In order to encourage fans to engage with a post, you need to make sure your brand is pushing out content that is targeted and of interest to your fan base. Lack of interest in a brand’s content leads to lack of engagement with a brand’s posts. For example, fashion brands shouldn’t be posting content about model cars, and model car makers shouldn’t push out content on the latest line of Jimmy Choo’s. Know your fan base and give them what they want.

4) Ask for what you want: While EdgeRank has caused many brands to re-think their social media strategy, some of the old marketing axioms hold true, one of the best being the absolute necessity of calls to action. Fans are much more likely to do what you want them to do if you actually ask them to do it. If you want fans to share your content, “share this post!” or “please share!” ” should be clearly stated. Like this post if you agree . . .” is another tried and true strategy for fan engagement. You might be surprised at how effective asking for engagement can be.

5) Have fun: Above all, remember that no one is on Facebook to read an endless stream of brand postings, just like no one watches TV just for the commercials. If brands truly want to stay in their fans’ timelines, they need to be entertaining. Talk about current events, ask questions, take polls, post cartoons. Do whatever it takes to hold the attention and favor of your fans.

Just like in real life, engaging and entertaining others means not talking about yourself all day long. A good rule of thumb to follow is to post about your brand one-third of the time, post about and ask questions of your fans one-third of the time, and post about things that are of interest to both your brand and your fans one-third of the time. While this “Rule of One-Thirds” is easily modifiable to suit your brand’s needs, it’s a good touchstone to keep you on the right path.

Has EdgeRank made it harder for brands to reach their fans via Facebook? Undoubtedly. We’ll probably never return to the days when brands are able to reach 60% of their fans without paying to do so. But, as with all things social media, creativity and flexibility remain the keys to remaining relevant, visible, and worthy of engagement by brand fans.

The post Understanding EdgeRank: Five Ways To Reach More Fans on Facebook appeared first on 435 Digital.

Social media is a blessing and a curse for most business owners. Done right, social media can bolster leads, help shape your brand voice, and gain you a great deal of exposure. Done wrong, social media can be downright ineffective or even blow up into a PR nightmare, depending on the situation. While you may know how to use your own personal social media profiles to communicate with friends and family, running a social media profile for a business is a different story and may require that you take a few social media classes.

Here at 435 Digital, we see a lot of different mistakes made on social media profiles run by business owners and their staff. We’ve gathered some of the common ones here and will be running through them Jeff Foxworthy-style.

You Know You Need Social Media Classes When…

1. Your business Twitter account is packed full of your personal Foursquare check-ins – You figured out how to link the two accounts, which turned out to be a bad idea for your business account. Very few people care to get constant updates about where you like to eat when they are trying to get info about your business.

2. You often mistakenly post personal updates on your business’ Facebook page – it’s easy to do if you’re the admin and can lead to some pretty unprofessional updates. Things you rant about to your close network of friends may not be what you want potential customers seeing.

3. You have 5 posts on a random Tuesday and none again until two weeks later – nothing screams spam like posting a ton of updates all at once on the same day. Most people don’t want to hear from you much more than once a day, which is dependant on your audience size, type of business, etc. Understanding when to post and being consistent about it can really help build your following.

4. You’ve never heard of Pinterest – Pinterest drives a lot of traffic these days. If you’ve never heard of this social media platform, it’d be a great idea to seek out a social media class to learn how it can be used to benefit your business.

5. You’ve gotten into arguments with customers on your social media profiles for all to see – When people post unflattering commentary on your social media profiles, it’s easy to want to respond and defend yourself. This is usually a terrible idea and can do a lot to harm your brand identity online. Learning how to handle criticism on your social media profiles can help you diffuse these types of situations and show your customers that you believe in good customer service.

Social media shouldn’t just be something that you do because you think you should. It should be something you do because you want to reach out to customers and create a community around your business. Using the right strategy and better understanding how to navigate the various social media platforms can lead to stronger branding for your business and increase your digital marketing leads.

To wrap things up, we have a few tips for anyone interested in attending a social media class:

• Take advantage of the knowledge of the instructor and ask questions.
• Take notes! You’ll likely need to review what you learned as you develop your social media strategy.
• Network with the other attendees and learn more about how they’re using social media to grow their businesses.
• If everything seems overwhelming and beyond what you want to deal with, don’t panic. You can always hire a digital marketing agency to help you get the most from your social media efforts.

If you’re interested in scheduling a social media training session with our experts, call us today at 855-687-6397. We cater our training for everyone from small to large businesses and would be interested to hear more about what you struggle with when using social media for your business.

The post You Know You Need Social Media Classes When… appeared first on 435 Digital.

The Facebook cover photo is the largest image on your business Facebook page and is often a missed opportunity for many businesses. Before you start brainstorming what might look good in that space, you’ll want to know exactly what Facebook won’t let you post there:

• Calls to action (ex. “Call Now for a Free Consultation!”)
• Prices/Special Offers (ex. “All Sunglasses 2 for $20″)
• Mentions of the Like or Share function on Facebook (ex. “Like Us for More Info”)
• Contact info, which should be included in the About Us section (ex. “435 N. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL”)

Now that we know the ground rules, there are a lot of things that you can do to make the cover photo work for your business…

1. Think Seasonally – With the holidays coming up, you may want to consider getting festive with your cover photo. If you’re a jewelry store, for example, consider taking a picture of your products draped on garland. Having a festively-fun cover photo can help you appear more relevant and timely to your fan base.

2. Go Beyond Uploading a Basic Photo – The fun thing about cover photos is that you can be pretty creative when designing one. You’re not limited to just uploading one photo and calling it a day. Think outside of the box and design a cover photo that features several images to promote your products or services. Cover photos are 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall, so get creative!

3. Say Something About Your Business – The image at the top of this blog post is our current Facebook timeline cover photo. We opted to create an image that has a word cloud of all of the various services that we provide. It’s a nice way to promote a little more of what you do and still have something visually appealing. The cover photo is a great spot to help shape your brand and show your company’s personality.

These are just a few ideas to help you think differently about how to use your Facebook cover photo to better promote your business. Our main piece of advice is to great creative and try new things. Use this space to express your brand personality and keep your audience engaged with the page. As long as you stay within Facebook’s rules, the sky’s the limit on what you can create for this space.

The post Facebook Cover Photo Tips for Your Business appeared first on 435 Digital.

The main goal of any good social media campaign, obviously, is attract people to your brand page, not to cause them to run screaming in the other direction as fast as humanly possible. Unfortunately, that’s what many inexperienced community managers end up doing. Certain mistakes can sink any social media campaign, no matter how good the underlying concept.

Avoid these four no-nos to keep your social media campaign flying high:

Don’t Overpost Social Media Messages

While it may be tempting to flood follower’s timelines with posts and status updates singing the praises of your brand, there’s no quicker way to turn people off. In fact, in a Facebook posting study, 44% of Facebook users listed overposting as the main reason for unliking a brand.

The best rule is to post when you have something to say, not when you feel the need to say something. For most brands, this means no more than once a day, and possibly as little as 2-3 times per week. While fewer tweets and Facebook updates flies in the face of what many brand managers think they should be doing, study after study has shown that, when it comes to social media marketing, less is more.

Don’t Post Sloppy Social Content

Fewer things make a brand page look less professional than pixelated photos, extraneous links, and spelling or grammatical errors. Before you push out a post or tweet, take a moment to make sure that everything is clean, spelled correctly, and reflects the image your brand wants to convey. An additional ten seconds of proofreading goes a long way.

Don’t Refuse to Engage Social Media Followers:

It’s called social media for a reason: the conversation you have with your followers is supposed to be a two-way street. Nothing turns customers off faster than feeling ignored and under-valued by a brand.

Take a few moments each day to check your brand’s Facebook messages and wall posts, as well as Twitter direct messages and interactions, and to respond in a courteous and timely manner. Don’t make the mistake one international brand did – they ignored their customers for so long, their official Facebook page has now become a place for disgruntled customers to share war stories about bad service and shoddy merchandise.

Don’t Forget To Provide Benefit to Followers

Let’s face it: the times, they are a-changing. Facebook users’ timelines are flooded with brand posts, all vying for a customer’s attention. In order to make the cut (and stay in a customer’s timelines), brands need to offer their customers something of value. These days, that usually means one of three things: 1) Startlingly interesting content; 2) Hysterically funny content; or 3) Discounts. If you can make it work, shoot for all three. Before you post, take a moment to ask yourself what value your post is adding to a customer’s life. Will it make them smile? Teach them something they didn’t know? Get them something for less than they would normally? If not, think twice about whether you really want to hit that post/Tweet button.

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