 Facebook’s Groups are a growing way to learn and share information on specific topics and for clubs, trade associations, organizations, and even teams. You can create public and private groups for just about anything you want and, a quick search of the Internet will find that there’s probably a group or two out there already about whatever topic you can imagine.
There is a tremendous amount of value in Groups and many topics have some incredible follow-up discussions. The “wisdom of the crowd” can be quite powerful and the best part is, the information is free.
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What is it, where did it come from?
The internet is in love with the Woman Yelling At A Cat meme; the phenomenon even made its way into a few Halloween costumes. But what is the cat vs. women meme and how did it become so popular? And who are the women - and who is the cat in the meme? As with so many memes on the Internet, this came out of serendipity as the images were each already being used as memes to start with. However, once they got together it became Internet gold. I was working with someone recently on their social media campaigns and they were very stressed. They were absolutely killing it on Facebook with an engaged audience and strong return on their time investment. So what’s their issue? They weren’t on Instagram or Twitter or any other social network for that matter. And they had the Fear Of Missing Out, or FOMO.
(Insert dramatic musical effect here)  I’ve talked about social media being a conversation and that’s exactly what it is. While there are tons of people who waste tons of time studying social media, it’s basically a conversation about mutual interests. The reason so many Facebook Pages just disappear in your feed is that people don’t interact with the Page and Facebook assumes they’re basically not interested in what the Page saying.
If you’re having a conversation with your Page’s followers and they’re responding, you’ll find that social media is highly effective. I have a number of Pages that I follow on social media whose content is of big interest to me so their comments and content keeps showing-up prominently in my feed. After all, the job the social media providers like Facebook and Instagram have is to keep you interested so you see their ads so they make more money. Simple. So the more you’re engaging with things on social media, the more likely it is that they’re going to show it to you. Facebook Groups can be a powerful and free tool that can be part of a great marketing plan. But Groups can also actually help you run your business and more. Facebook has stated that they are assigning less priority to Business Pages from an organic standpoint. The simple reason they’re doing so is that there are so many Business Pages it’s impossible to assign them the priority they used to. Well, and they also want to earn your advertising dollars.   Video marketing: you’ve got the idea, you’ve got the content but how do you create great videos? It’s actually pretty easy. Depending.
I try to be very platform agnostic when it comes to making recommendations but this week that’s not going to be the case at all as everything I’m about to recommend comes from one company: Apple. I realize I just lost a lot of you here but the fact is, Apple makes fantastic video editing tools.  There’s nothing cheesy about social media. As a component of business communication it is becoming ever more important. Mastering your “voice” in the social realm can differentiate one business from another even more today than ever before.
Case in point. People love to go to social media the second there is even the least little thing wrong with their experience somewhere. If the pattern on a team member’s shirt is just a bit off, the customer is out there using all capital letter to exclaim how they’ve been permanently and irreversibly harmed and how nobody should every patronize that business again.  There is a lot of noise on social media and, in particular, Facebook. Part of the reason for that is that there are so many prospective customers on that platform that you absolutely need to be there but how do you do a good job of creating posts people will react to?
You can look to one locality in my area who is absolutely doing the greatest job I have seen with a Facebook Page and I want to highlight their incredible work. We have a little town here called Kelseyville which is a local farming town. Like many small towns there’s a Main Street dotted with restaurants, a brewery, a bar, a couple of small grocery stores and various other businesses.  There was a line in the first Ghostbusters movie where Harold Ramis’ character urged the team never to ‘cross the streams’ when they were using their ghost-capturing technology. Unfortunately a lot of people are doing the same thing with their social media and it can get ugly. While the world may not end for all of us, this can be a huge nail in the coffin for some businesses. You don't want your business to turn into a ghost, do you?
Social media is one of the most interesting things that’s ever come along. You can hit Facebook or Instagram with all sorts of things, from what you had for breakfast to your latest vacation photos to your sense of frustration with work. Ooops, there’s where the stream just got crossed.  Facebook Events can be one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal as a business owner and this list of nine tips for Facebook Events success can help you. While Facebook is ever more complicated when it comes to getting your business message out, the company still has two tools that they’re really pushing hard and thus provide a lot of opportunity for your business with these. Facebook Events are one area they want people to become accustomed to using, the other is video.
There are a lot of little “tricks” to making Facebook Events work for you and I’ve compiled this list, which I hope is helpful. Facebook is becoming the place where we all gather to share both information and misinformation. After all, how else will I find out about things like whether the dress is gold or blue or if there is a secret volcano that’s going to blow up? |
Tony BarthelTony Barthel is passionate about great marketing for small businesses Get Free Weekly Marketing TipsCategories
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