10 dumbest social media questions

The following is a sort of frequently asked questions I get from clients or potential clients, usually CEOs or GMs, not junior marketing. Obviously I'm not very convincing since i get to hear the same questions again and again.

1. Can we manage to sell the old stock before the end of the month? 

Most likely not. As you know, we’re not currently using social media as a selling platform, except when we have offers or promotions, but as a place to inform and engage our audience. Connecting with people and expanding our fan base will increase brand loyalty which, in the long term, will translate into revenue.

2. Why our competitor has more fans? We need at least 100,000 fans!

They usually ask me this question a week after we started working together. It takes time to create a loyal fan base and we’re still in the set-up phase as drafted in the main strategy (remember?). At the end of the set-up phase we’ll evaluate the various platforms we’re using, their growth and engagement as well as doing a comparison with competitors. A month later I usually get to hear the same question from the same person again...

3. Why don’t we buy fans, I heard they’re really cheap!?

Sure, you can buy fans, they’re very cheap. They will also have zero contribution to your page, they will NEVER EVER be your customers and they will lower your overall page engagement making your page nearly invisible. Plus, I won’t be working with you any longer.

4. Why didn't you delete that negative comment and banned that fan?

We've created a policy (remember?) which states how and when we delete comments and ban fans. We’re not a dictatorship and fans are free to leave any feedback, whether positive or negative. Thanks to feedback we can improve our services, build customer loyalty and show our ‘human’ side.

5. Why should I pay you to use Facebook, my assistant can easily do it as she’s already writing our news releases and our (outdated) website.

Of course your assistant can do it but to properly implement Facebook, for instance, she would require at least 40 hours a month, including evenings and weekends, and I’m sure she would love to get so much extra work. Your assistant though can definitely be a great addition to the team.

6. Why do we publish so many photos?

Ever heard the saying ‘an image speaks for a thousand words’? Images are more eye-catchy, generate more interest, are more likely to appear in fans’ news feeds and also are likely to be shared.

7. My assistant is very popular and on her personal profile she has more than 2000 friends, why don’t we change it into the corporate page?

NO! Facebook launched Pages for businesses and brands back in November 2007 with several advantages such as advertising options, analytics, apps and many other features. Plus, maintaining a personal account for anything other than an individual is a violation of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

8. Can you guarantee me our next promotion will go viral?

No, nobody can guarantee you that. It’s hard to say what people will/won't like and anyone that promises for your content to go viral is lying. This is a useful checklist for a highly effective online campaign.

9. Can we link Facebook with Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram so we only need to post once?

Better not. Each platform is different with different audiences. We need to cater our messages and their tones to each specific audience if we want to be listened. Let’s not be robots.

10. I heard social media I very cheap, if not free…

This is the biggest lie of all time! Social media is cost effective if compared to other activities such as TV advertising but it still does not come cheap if you want to plan and execute it the right way.

Hope nobody gets upset ;). Do you have any to share too?

For beginners: setting up a Wordpress site like a pro

Guest post by PressTheWord - Wordpress has become one of top programs used for web developers looking to build new websites.  The reason behind this is the speed and ease with which even the most basic user can setup a website.  In this video, you will be walked through step-by-step in building a website from scratch using Wordpress.

Since Wordpress is so widely utilized in web design today, many web hosts have made it as simple as possible for webmasters to initialize a Wordpress install.  The first part of the video will introduce you to Hostgator and how you can setup your own domain name and web hosting and then follow that up with a quick and simple Wordpress install.

Once you've completed the installation, you will need to learn how to setup the look of your site and then setup content for that site.  Wordpress themes are a simple and convenient way to change the overall style and functionality of Wordpress sites.  You will learn how to find new themes for your website and then learn how to quickly install and setup those themes to your new site.

After setting up your theme, you will be shown how to setup new content on your site.  Ever wonder how bloggers create those amazing posts?  You will find out how in this video.  In just a few minutes, you will have the basics to setup content like a pro.

Finally, you will learn some of the little tweaks that many Wordpress users can use to improve their site functionality and also how you can use your site to connect to other users.  You will learn the functionality of widgets, how to create a free logo for your website, and also how to link Facebook and Twitter to your web page.

Just a decade ago, you would have to spend countless hours or thousands of dollars to create the same type of website you can create with Wordpress.  This hour long video will give you all the basic you will ever need to setup your site and get your prescience on the World Wide Web.

PressTheWord is a tutorial channel in youtube that helps Wordpress beginners create mobile friendly websites like a pro, if you are in the hunt for detailed Wordpress tutorials, visit their channel at www.youtube.com/PressTheWord

The mystery behind the Nissan Oman Facebook page

The other day during a meeting I was asked how it is possible that the Nissan Oman Facebook page has nearly 6 million fans when in Oman we have a population of about 3 million people. That conversation inspired me to write this post about 'global pages'. 

The Nissan Oman page actually has about 18k fans but what you see when landing on the page is a much bigger number. You can see the following screenshot, it clearly shows 5.7 million fans.

How’s that possible? A trick? No, very simple.

At the end of last year Facebook rolled out FacebookPages for global brands which allow international brands to maintain a single fan page with additional localized sub pages for users in different countries.

All multiple pages, from the same brand, are able to merge into the one URL www.facebook.com/brandXYZ, and still keep their content.

This is great from a branding point of view, as users from all countries will see the same page name (translated into their local language), and also to keep communication more consistent. The ‘number of fans’ and ‘People Talking About This’ will show the combined total number for all countries...a bit of showing off is always good!

What sub pages admins can change is the profile photo, cover photo, about section, photos and the various tabs/apps.

Users who visit a global page are automatically directed to the version specific to their region or country, so if I’m in Oman I’ll see the Oman sub page. If I’m in the UK I see the UK sub page. This allows the social media teams in each country to post specific photos and comments which can engage only their local audiences.

So if we look at Nissan again; this is a screenshot from the Nissan Global page (which has 77 sub pages) at it has exactly the same number of fans and 'Talking about this' but status updates, as well as profile pic, cover image, about section, photos and tabs, differ from Nissan Oman and all other countries:

Mystery solved!

Facebook in Oman - Merge 104.8 Top of the Pops!

Success on Facebook is not how many fans you have; more important is their activity such as likes, comments and shares which fuel the virality and high rankings in news feeds.

Keeping your fans entertained is not easy task, especially when you have tens of thousands, if not more. It’s a bit like inviting friends over for dinner; cooking for two guests is easy while cooking for ten guests is quite a task. 

It also needs to be said that it is way easier to engage people if you sell cool gadgets rather than financial services so each industry differs a lot from another.

Having said that let’s have a look at the top 10 Facebook pages in Oman in terms of fans:

And here is again the same 10 but according per engagement. The engagement rate(%) is calculated by the average amount of likes, comments and shares per day divided by the number of fans (I don't agree much with this way of measuring engagement but it is the most commonly used, maybe i'll do a post dedicated to this).

A few differences there but clearly the table shows that a few pages are doing ok while the others seem to ignore, or not engage enough, their fans. Here, Merge 104.8 is the clear winner.

It seems the happy gang has the right content for all fans. On Facebook content is king (they say) so if you provide informative and valuable content both your fan base and engagement rate are likely to increase. It’s not rocket science and this I'm going to give is the winning formula:

planning+dedication+time+passion+some humour+cash=LOTS OF WORK!

Well done to our good friends Chris, Rummy, Neil, Sami, Sayeh (even if not there any longer) and the other Neil who does lots of great work behind the scenes.

Of course there are many other pages in Oman with higher engagement but out of the top 10 Merge 104.8 looks at everyone else from above and in the next few days i'll show you how they're doing it ;)