If you have experience with Facebook’s Insights, you have seen where your most recent and most popular content is listed. These content items are listed in Facebook Insights with: the post, the reach of the post, the number of engaged users, how many people were talking about this and the post’s virality.

If you click on engaged users, it gives you a breakdown of how people were engaged with your content. Perhaps they watched the video, viewed the photo, clicked on something, created their own update from your post etc. You may also see any ‘negative feedback’ your post may have received. Negative feedback is defined as “People who hid your post or gave it negative feedback in their news feed”.

When your posts show up in someone’s news feed they have the option to like it or comment on it. They also have the option to hide the story, report the story as spam or to hide all stories from your organization. If they choose one of those latter options, it is considered ‘negative feedback’.

I don’t think this is something to really lose sleep over. I do think you should review negative feedback reports as you review your Facebook Insights. Knowing which content people don’t value or hide, will just help you to refine what you are delivering. Maybe it was worded wrong. Maybe you talk about your sponsors too much. Maybe you post too many photos or videos. Perhaps you post too frequently. It could be lots of things.

Don’t let negative feedback derail your efforts too much! Just let it help guide you in your content planning for the future!

BranchOut is a free Facebook application that allows users to create a professional profile on Facebook. BranchOut claims to have more than 25 million registered users and over 400 million professional profiles. BranchOut uses the information from your Facebook friends that are using the application and makes introductions to other users that you may be interested in. Once you start to use the application, you can follow companies, build your network, endorse people, post notes/updates and post your own job board.

What makes the thought of the application challenging LinkedIn at all is that it sits atop Facebook – the most used social networking site in the world. As soon as you start using BranchOut, your profile is filled in with the information from your Facebook profile – current and past employment, education etc. Having Facebook’s personal data, the monopoly on where people are spending their time online and the ease of use – gives BranchOut some potential.

The question is will people use it and/or abandon beloved LinkedIn.

Facebook is a much more casual place than LinkedIn. To give a real-world example:

LinkedIn is like going to a professional event, conference, speaking engagement, sales meeting etc.
There is a certain way you dress, carry yourself and speak.

BranchOut is like going to bar with your friends and talking about what you do for work.
I have a lot of friends that I am not even sure I know what they do for work exactly.
Friends I have met growing up, in college and in life but I am not sure what their day-to-day duties at work are.

My money is still on LinkedIn but I see an interesting place for BranchOut. With social media, as our lives become more transparent, the lines will blur between personal and professional you. BranchOut may relate to younger users who are comfortable with Facebook and transparency in all aspects in their lives.

Are any of you using BranchOut? Do you like it? Do you think it will challenge LinkedIn?

What does your website look like on a mobile phone?

Do you know? You should since more people are accessing your website from their smartphones and tablets.

GoMo, from Google, has a tool for testing your site on mobile phones and give you suggestions to make it better. All you have to do is add your URL to the GoMoMeter and you are off.

Test your site the way your customers will use it. I loved hearing about how the King Arthur team left their office and set up in a coffee shop to test their new mobile versions of their site. Actually using your site the way your customers will, gives you more insight on layout issues or bugs you may not find with an online tester.

Want to know how much traffic your site is actually getting from mobile services? The new Google Analytics had a section just for mobile now. You can tell how much of your traffic is coming from mobile devices, compare that past traffic, see what content they are viewing, what devices they are on and a lot more. Really good information to have and to check back on regularly.

Educate yourself on how many people are viewing your site on a mobile browser and what your site looks like to them. Note any problems you find and then the fun part… find out how you are going to address them.

Since we here at SMBME are very serious about business, I thought I would share with you this little shortcut to see what from your website has been shared to Pinterest, by who and how many times.

All you need to do is type http://pinterest.com/source/ and add your URL at the end.
For an example we are going to use our friends over at The Beadin’ Path and if we type in http://pinterest.com/source/beadinpath.com to our address bar we will see all the things that have been pinned from their site by them and by other people.

With this information you can not only tell what is popular or who is pinning your photos or products but what they have to say for feedback about them too. That is some good information to have!

It was too easy and good not to share. Happy pinning.

I am sure you know by now what a RT or Retweet is on Twitter. If not, it is just when you take someone else’s tweet and you share the post with your Twitter followers with full credit to the original post-er. This is how many links, quotes and information are passed through the Twitterverse.

What you also may have seen is people MT a post. The difference here is that the person resharing the post has Modified it in someway. Usually so that it can fit in the allotted 140 characters.

Hope that helps on your Twitter journey. Happy Tweeting!

Via: Restaurant Coupons

We can already see how big brands like Martha Stewart, Whole Foods, and Better Homes and Gardens would be drawn to use the bulletin board-like tool for marketing their brands’ DIY items, recipes, and home décor ideas. But even smaller brands are utilizing the tool too; like using Pinterest to better show their personality, giving their brand more online visibility, and selling products through a new platform.

Before you jump in, know who the audience is.
As with any new tool, you should know what you’re getting yourself into first. Don’t use it just because it’s “the cool new thing” do it because that is where your customers are or because you are going to try to tap into a new customer base.

As we know, the majority of Pinterest users are 18 to 34 year old women (located in the northwest and southeast to be exact). If this is your target demographic then think about how you’d use Pinterest to engage with that audience. If that isn’t your target demographic but you’d still like to try using Pinterest for marketing; take a look at your resources and decide the best way to engage with that new audience. Would another platform be more worthy of your time?

How can it be used for marketing?
It seems like everywhere you look there are blog posts popping up about how this brand and that brand are using Pinterest to market their online business. Here’s a couple of good posts on how brands are engaging with the audience on Pinterest by holding contests, to get feedback on new products, and to promote other sectors of business.

Do your research first – what can Pinterest do in general and what can it do for your business specifically? I like this post, put together by Mashable, that gives tips and tricks to help those getting started with using Pinterest or those looking for advanced tactics. I learned lots of new things from this article!

Track it. Measure it.
This is the golden rule, right? So you’ve decided to use Pinterest as a marketing tool; PLEASE don’t forget to measure the outcome to see if your efforts are paying off.

• Are you getting referral traffic from the site? How much?
• Is that stream of traffic engaging with your site when they get here?
• Are you getting any site conversions from the Pinterest traffic?

Those are all good things to measure and reflect on. Use the information to change up what you’re doing. If you’re getting a lot of good feedback on your Pinterest page but that traffic doesn’t translate to your site, maybe you need to alter your website or create a unique landing page for your Pinterest traffic.

Are you using Pinterest as a marketing tool? Have you seen any local (Maine) brands using it uniquely? Do you think it’ll stick around? Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Flickr Photo Credit: Annie Mole

It takes a few minutes to see who is accessing your accounts. Using mypermissions you can see who has access to your:

• Facebook account
• Twitter account
• Google account
• Yahoo account
• LinkedIn account
• DropBox account
• Instagram account and
• Flickr account

Mypermissions brings you right to the places in your accounts where you can view who is accessing them and you can Edit or Remove them. You might want to take a look!

The cheese burger I had for lunch is causing me some acid, actually it’s making me wish I had some Pepto Bismol.

As a kid I never liked the taste of it, pink, slimy, and slightly minty. In fact, it reminded me of the pink candies my Nana’s not-so-secret boyfriend used to bring her. She kept them in a glass jar on her table. Whenever he would leave her home the jar would be filled with these round pink chalky candies. Perhaps it was some sort of parting kiss that us grandkids shouldn’t have known about…

Enough of me reminiscing about lovely Nana…I started this story with one goal, to tell you about my amazing experience with Pepto Bismol, masters of Pink.

About six months ago I started following Pepto Bismol on Facebook because I somehow came across their fan page. I thought it would be interesting to see what they talked about and see how they interacted with their fans. Almost immediately I was impressed with their snarky attitude and willingness to poke fun at their gas preventing, fart squashing, pink slime juice.

The first post I noticed exclaimed “We make parties better.” It had roughly 110 responses from their followers everything from the expected “I chug bottles of this stuff” to folks just chiming in and agreeing with the Pink. Every person who interacted with Pepto was acknowledged and not a single comment disregarded. I was totally impressed and soon I found myself interacting with Pepto because I wanted to be part of the fun.

One afternoon I even tagged Pepto in my status begging them to bring me a bottle after a traditional Maine Beans and Weenie dinner I had consumed the night before. They acknowledged my tag and even commented back. I felt even more connected with the brand I once overlooked as a child. What really won me over was what happened next…

One unsuspecting afternoon I opened my email and there before me was a message from my Pink pals. It said “David, we appreciate you interacting with us and we would like to thank you for your friendship, may we have your mailing address?” At first I was suspicious of it being a scam but judging by the email address it came from and other legitimate items in the email I responded in kind, with my mailing address.

Three weeks later a box arrived. Inside of this box was all things pink:

• A pink insulated lunch bag,
• a Pink LL Bean beach towel,
• a Pink LL Bean Canvas Tote Bag,
• and a handwritten note in pink from Pepto that read -
  

  “Thanks for being our friend and interacting with us.
  Enjoy this gift and stay Pink.”

I was so impressed I immediately took all the stuff laid it out on my couch and began snapping pictures for Facebook and Twitter – tagging Pepto in every post. Soon roughly 1,000 of my closest friends were seeing Pepto pink in their Facebook and Twitter Feeds.

Guess what else happened? My friends and followers began asking me about Pepto… and I began telling them about Pepto. Before I knew it I was the Benny Hinn of the acid reduction world. Pepto Bismol had made me a product evangelist for just the price of the few items listed above and for acknowledging my comments.

The next week at Shaw’s I found myself noticing Pepto advertisements, and I even bought a bottle for the upstairs bathroom just in case my acid acted up again. Being a man of larger carriage I knew that Doritos consumed tonight meant Doritos consumed tomorrow morning also. Quite unexpectedly I found myself wanting to support Pepto and wanting to tell my friends to do the same.

There are many lessons to be learned here. One of which is don’t melt sharp cheddar cheese on Cool Ranch Doritos at 11pm, or the Pink stuff will be a must by 3am. But the other lessons are a bit more fun.

• Lesson #1 is that Pepto posted fun content that made me want to interact with them.
• Lesson #2 is that Pepto acknowledged the followers who commented back and continued the conversation.
• Lesson #3 is that Pepto saw someone who was excited about their conversations and capitalized on it by making that person (me) feel even more connected to their brand. In return I made sure my friends knew that Pepto – for lack of a better term – is the shit. (Couldn’t resist).

Am I suggesting that all of us who have Facebook Business pages begin mailing stuff to our followers and fans? Can we afford that? Probably not, and we probably don’t have the budget that Pepto has either. What we do have that our friends in Pink also have is personality and the ability to make the members of our community feel special. When I feel such a connection to a brand that when I don’t check their Facebook page I feel like I may be missing out on something, guess what? They’ve done something right.

If a product that focuses on diarrhea, stomach aches, and flatulence can make me feel special – pretty sure I can do the same for the followers of the companies I represent.

I’ll drink (the pink) to that.

Cheeseburger photo credit: TheCulinaryGeek

This feature has always been available but it just moved and freaked a few of us out for a minute.

Previously if you clicked on the # Like This link it would show you the list of the people that like your page. Now if you click on that it brings you right to your Facebook Insights (weird).

New(er) way to see who likes your page

The first thing you need to do to see who likes your Facebook page is to Use the Page AS your page and not as yourself.

Now instead of looking to the left column, look right up in the blue navigation bar. those icons of people are now where you can see who has likes your page. The red notification lets you know how many people have ‘liked’ your page since you were last logged in this way and looked at who has liked your page.

By clicking that people icon you can see who has most recently liked your Facebook page. If you click on See All you can view the full list and scroll through your fans using the scroll bar on the right hand side.

There you go. Now you can see who is liking your Facebook page!

If you want to see what Facebook Pages like your Page you can read this blog or check out the accompanying video.