best practice

Social Content as Catalyst

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There is an unfortunate misconception around the role of social content in community management. Community management is just creating social content, right? That is, posting animated GIFs, memes, and weird internet in-jokes to the social media channels, correct?

NOPE.

Throwing social content out into the void will not build a community. While that joke you posted on Twitter might be hilarious, it’s all for naught if it fails to resonate with your audience. It’s not the silly GIF that really matters at the end of the day, it’s the response it elicits from your community. Building great communities requires the active engagement from your audience.

Your social content is the catalyst.

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best practice, community, cs

Reviews are for Your Customers

When building your business it’s tempting to use any and all methods to gain a leg up on the competition. It’s rough out there for new businesses, and every bit can make a difference. When establishing your business online, you may be tempted to apply this to the realm of reviews. By kicking off with a few pristine 5-star reviews from you and/or your staff, you’ve set the stage for a great public reception, right?

Don’t do that. That’s what we call, a ‘dick move’.

But why, you might ask?

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best practice, facebook

What You Need to Know About Facebook Contests

Running a Facebook Fan Page as a small business or independent business owner is a daunting task. How they operate can change at a moment’s notice, and knowing all of the rules is challenging However, there’s one big area in which many pages are falling on the wrong side of the rules (and often law): Contests, aka Promotions.

Thinking of running a contest on your fan page? Make sure you’re aware of these three major areas before making that contest post!

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best practice, twitter

Quick Tip(s): Hashtags

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Hashtags are a wonderful way to tap into larger trends, broaden the audience for a given piece of content, or add a bit of additional humor into your post. However, there is a dark side to the hashtag… Far too many become addicted to using them. They begin to cram every bit of available space with hashtags, even if they’re misleading or irrelevant to the content of the tweet. You know the sort, we’ve all seen them.

See how bloody annoying that is? Don’t be that person. (Apologies to the followers that had to see that from me)

Some quick tips to keep you from straying to the dark side of the tag…

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best practice, community

The 3 Questions to Ask When Creating Content

When you’re creating content, it’s really easy to get caught up in the ‘I need to create a TON of this’ aspect of producing frequent updates. While frequency is a great motivator, it’s important to not lose sight of why you’re producing content, and the impact it will have on your intended audience. If you follow the old adage of ‘time is money’, then why would you spend time on content that’s going to have little to no impact on your business objectives? Creating content for the sake of creating content can be a fun exercise, but if you’re looking to fulfill a business need a bit of forethought can make a substantial difference.

For every piece of content you’re creating, I’ve found that it’s useful to keep the following 3 questions in mind:

When creating content

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