website | Fred van Schie

Another work week is at it’s end. After yet another tradeshow (Magic in Las Vegas) and the Transworld Skateboarding awards in LA last Thursday night it’s time to get back on the “regular” grind on Tuesday (Monday is President’s Day). Here are some more Facebook tips that hopefully help you in the social media stratosphere.

1. Promotions guidelines
Want to do a giveaway on your Facebook page? A sweepstake? Better have a look at the promotional guidelines of Facebook. Their rules and regulations regarding promotional activities on your page are pretty crazy.
You need to run any kind of promotion or giveaway on a special created tab. And those (additional) tabs aren’t visible from a mobile device FYI. (Nice fail Facebook!)
People also can’t enter a giveaway by simply “liking your page”. And you can’t notify winners through a Facebook message or chat.
These are just a few examples. So do yourself a favor and read the promotional guidelines before your page gets (temporarily) shut down.

2. Install Facebook comments on your website
With less and less people surfing the web (on their phones) and more and more people getting their news through social media, the comments on your website become less meaningful.

I was stoked to see that Thrasher Magazine switched to Facebook only comments on their website in mid 2011. Even though the number of comments per post went down, the comments that were posted were real ones. No random hate rants and way less cuss words. Why? Because now it shows who the person behind the comment is.
Tony Vitello of Thrasher told me: “We wanted accountability with our commenting and their system makes the most sense right now. It’s not perfect, but it’s simple and relatively low maintenance.”
I’m not of a web nerd myself but ask your webguy or Google it, it won’t be difficult to install the Facebook comments on your website.

Because of the Facebook comment system the Thrasher website content gets around very quickly too. For example, if I leave a comment on, or like, a post the Thrasher website, all my personal Facebook friends see that in their newsfeed. And not that I’m such a huge influencer among my friends, but if my friends comment on something (or like it), there is a big chance that I’m interested in that content too.
This works already for comments within Facebook, but I think it’s good to get your website involved too.

3. Geo-tag if needed (fan page only)
I rarely use this but if you want you can specify which fans see your update. As a brand I think you should show your fans that you are represented all around the world.
But if you want to promote something for a specific country, in a language that you normally don’t use on your Facebook page (French, Spanish, etc), they geo-tagging might be a great tool to use. If you do this just be prepared for questions in this language. Vous parlez Francais?
People travel as well, so I could be in LA today and in Amsterdam tomorrow, so I might just be able to attend this party your distributor is throwing on the other side of the world.
How to geo-tag? Below the status box, and left of the “share” button, click on the arrow. Click on location/language and fill in who you want to reach. You can get really specific, see the screen shot below.

Note: if you’re an admin for the fan page you will always see any update (even if another admin posted it)

4. Create an event page for all your events
Whether you are throwing a house party, going on tour with your band, or have a video premiere, always create an event for it on Facebook. People are moving away from the computer and spending more time on their smartphone (iPhone) and tablet (iPad).
Once you’ve create an event all your fans can decide to “join”, “maybe” or “decline” the invite to the event. If you hit “join” or “maybe”, the event gets put in your calender of upcoming events.
Say its the night of the event, and you ended up in the area of the event. You pull out your phone, open up the Facebook app and go to the events tab. Now select the event you want to go to.

You can see all the details of the party. Click on “Get Directions” and Maps app will open (on your iPhone) with the directions to the event.
Great way to get to last minute people that weren’t sure to come out. Or even the people that were already on the way and needed last minute directions.

5. Use different wording when posting on multiple pages
More than a few brands (in skateboarding) belong to the same owner/distribution. But every brand has a different image and voice. That’s why the other brand(s) were created right? To do something different and attract a different consumer.
I understand if one person handles the social media for multiple brands, but I think it’s very important to make sure to have a different voice for each brand. You do have different logos, ads, colors and products for each brands, so why not extend that to the social media.
If you post the exact same text, photo, video, etc on various brand pages, than why did you create another brand after all? Even though a lot of people know that some brands are connected with each other, every brands has it’s own fans and consumers. So post different stuff, at different times, with different words. If you have more than one person for your social media it will be good to give each person one, or multiple, fan page(s).
I also strongly recommend to not share the posts of other brands, but rather tag the other brand (page) in your post.

Questions or comments? Drop ‘em below!
Or shoot me an email at [email protected].

Also check out “Five Facebook Tips #5” from last week.

Another Friday so that means some more Facebook tips.
Here are 5 more for this week.

1. Tag other brands and people when you can
When you tag another brand (or person), your post shows up on their wall. So if you’re fan page only has a small amount of fans it’s a great way to expose your brand to new fans. Make sure to do this right and don’t just tag to tag (spam!). Also tag them withing the sentence you’re writing, not at the end of your text by itself.
To tag another brand/person just type the “@” sign followed by the name of the brand/person you want to tag. Make sure you tag the right one since a lot of brands (and pro skateboarders) have fake pages.
Tagging is also an easy way to show the brands that you’re doing your job. Let’s say you run a skateshop and you just received new Toy Machine boards. By telling your fan base about this shipment (with a photo or link), and tagging Toy Machine, the people at Toy Machine will be thankful that you’re promoting their products. And since you are making your consumers aware of this you are gonna drive traffic (and sales!) to your store.

* Example of the Metro skateshop Facebook page tagging Venture trucks

2. Keep the text short, but not too short
Twitter only allows you 160 tokens (140 with a photo or link), which sometimes might not be enough to trigger someone to click the link or photo. I know I’d always like to type more.
I keep repeating myself (already), but less is more. My general rule with a Facebook post, when I post a photo or link, is to write maximum 2 lines of text. Try to stay away from just typing text! Get a photo or a link in your post.

3. Don’t send people to your blog in every post
Interaction happens on Facebook, like it or not. Sending people to your blog for every update you do won’t help. People don’t like to leave Facebook, so post the YouTube/Vimeo video on Facebook (and blog!), post the product (photo) on Facebook (and blog!) and ask questions and respond to them (interaction!) on Facebook. People know that they can go to your site anytime to look at product, your teamriders, contact info etc. Your website should be treated more as a homebase. People can always go back weeks or months later to find stuff on your blog. It’s easier to look stuff up than on Facebook.
Websites are becoming less important since people don’t really surf the web on their smartphone, so adapt to that. As a brand or shop you’re fine with doing 2-5 blog updates a week. But you should be posting on your Facebook page 2-5 times per 24 hours!

4. Stop posting mostly product
Don’t treat your Facebook page like a boring product page. Again, it’s less about your brand and more about the interaction. You want to create an emotional connection with your (future) consumer.
Asking your fans about their favorite pizza or plans for the weekend will get more interaction than most product posts. It also shows that you actually care about what your fans have to say. And caring is more than half the battle. Try it out and you’ll see.

5. Re-post good content
Some people might disagree with this but I think it’s totally fine to post a good video multiple times in the first 48-72 hours. Pretty much all your fans will see your updates in their newsfeed (and not on your page), so it’s only visible for a few hours, if that.
The average person has in between 200-300 friends, so their feed is filled with updates from their friends and (fan) pages they like. So if you post something in the morning and someone checks their Facebook feed in the afternoon, it’s most likely he or she won’t see your update.
You can post a video even after a few weeks, and it will still be seen by new people. The people that have already seen it might give it a like since they loved the video when they saw it the first time. This comment or like will show up on their feed so all their friends might be triggered to watch it too, and possible comment, like or even share it. The more people see your video the better right?
I was doing this with a lot of the Theotis Beasley sponsor me reviews on the Altamont Facebook page last year quite a bit, and every time I would post it I was amazed how many comments and likes it got, even after re-posting it for the third time after a few days it was posted for the first time.

Questions or comments? Drop ‘em below!
Or shoot me an email at [email protected].

Also check out “Five Facebook Tips #2” from last week.

Fred van Schie

Social Media consultant

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