Social Media Guide for the Antisocial

Twitter introduces new ‘Lead Generation Card’

Social media is fantastic in offering tools that provide a deeper connection with consumers, with Facebook campaigns allowing people to actively engage with your content through likes and the sharing of links, pictures and posts.

Twitter also offers similar features through their hashtag and re-tweet functions, that allow people to comment on your products, Twitter campaigns or company and generate conversation.

It’s also easier for companies to get their name out to the social media masses on Twitter, with the microblogging service offering a feature, Twitter cards, that makes it possible to “attach media experiences to Tweets that link to your content”.

If you add a few lines of HTML to your web pages, users who Tweet links to your content will have a ‘card’ added to the Tweet, which is visible to all of their followers.

Twitter cards can, as a result, help to drive traffic to your site, give some control on how your content is displayed with Tweets and also grow the number of people following your Twitter account through content attribution.

The social platform recently announced (May 22) that they had added a new Twitter card, the Lead Generation card, which will help companies to drive “highly qualified leads”.

“The Lead Generation Card makes it easy for users to express interest in what your brand offers. Users can easily and securely share their email address with a business without leaving Twitter or having to fill out a cumbersome form,” Twitter’s revenue product manager Mitali Pattnaik posted on the Advertising Blog.

“When someone expands your Tweet, they see a description of the offer and a call to action. Their name, @username, and email address are already pre-filled within the Card. The user simply clicks a button to send this information directly (and securely) to you.”

The Lead Generation Card is currently only available to Twitter’s managed clients, but Pattnaik notes that they have plans to launch the card globally and to small and medium-sized businesses soon.

Ways to Measure Social Media Results in your Business

Why Measure?

In order to measure the effectiveness of your social campaigns, it’s critical that you know your objective.

Ask yourself why you are considering including social media in your overall marketing campaign in the first place. How will your efforts impact your revenue and grow your business?

You’ll want to put a measurable outcome in place along with a timeframe in which to achieve the goal.

Now you can determine which social media platform aligns with your objectives.

For example, if you’re trying to reach a female audience and your business lends well to pictures and images, you might want to consider Pinterest.

If you’re a business-to-business brand marketing an upcoming conference, you’ll want to consider LinkedIn.

Quantify Your Social Media Listening

What you’re doing on social media needs to have impact. It needs to actually have revenue.

Listening is one of the most often overlooked uses of social media, yet it’s probably the most important. If you’re not listening to your customers, you’re missing the point of social media.

Create a Rating System for Your Social Engagement

Put a tiered point system in place rather than looking at how many likes you have.

This is a simple yet effective strategy to use when you’re trying to generate awareness and buzz. It’s a smart way to measure the response to your efforts on Facebook, Twitter or any other social channel you’re using.

Here’s how it works.

Say you’re launching a product or service and want to build buzz about it on Facebook. You post an update to your Page about your launch and you get a bunch of likes on it. The next day, you post a different type of update. You get some likes on it, but you also see that people are engaging more with the second update by sharing the post and commenting on it.

Likes show support and comments indicate a deeper interest but shares are most valuable because they move the update beyond your page.

At the beginning of the campaign, translate your objective to a numeric goal. Then, use a tiered point system to weight different types of engagement according to which is most valuable to you.

Here’s an example of a tiered point system for Facebook:

Likes: 1 point each

Comments: 5 points each

Shares: 10 points each

During the campaign, a quick sum of values will help you determine if your efforts on Facebook are moving you closer towards your goal or not.

You can create similar point systems on any of the social channels you use. For example, on Twitter, 5 points for a reply and 10 points for a retweet.

Add Tons of Value, Then Sell and Measure

This strategy is  based on providing great content that adds tons of value for your customers before asking for the sale.

For example, say your restaurant is rolling out a new healthy menu. Your goal is to get 300 customers into your restaurant to try the new menu over an upcoming weekend.

Since your food is visually appealing, you develop a Facebook or Instagram strategy. You post pictures of your food, create content around the importance of healthy eating and curate information on your Facebook Page about farmers’ markets in your area.

Offer this valuable content to build trust with people.

Then offer a coupon for your restaurant on your Facebook Page. The number of people who claim and redeem your coupon is a result you can quantify.

Here’s how to measure your efforts when using this strategy:

Use the tiered point system described in strategy #2 to determine if your content is moving you closer to your goal.

Use coupons that are specific to your social media campaign, thus making the return on your investment easy to track and measure.

Create unique landing pages for each of your campaigns where your customers can download or purchase what you are promoting. Since the landing page is used for one specific campaign, this will allow you to clearly see how successful your campaign is.

Promote, Products with Pinterest

First order of Business! Make sure you have a business account on Pinterest so that you can promote your products, generate sales and leads and use it for other commercial purposes without any worries!

#1: Promote Holiday Products

A great way to drive sales is to create boards where you pin holiday products. This could be Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Mother’s Day or any other day that is of significance to your audience.

You can use Pinterest to show your audience that you’ve got what they need to celebrate.

The first thing you need to do is create a board based on that holiday and label it with a board name, description and category.

After that, you can begin pinning relevant products from your website to this board. You could also upload the images directly to Pinterest, but in this case make sure the image leads to a landing page on your website where people can make a purchase.

Write a good description to let readers know how they can use your product during this holiday. You can also add the price.

Rearrange your holiday-themed boards so that they’re at the top of your profile page during the appropriate season so they stand out (and don’t forget to add a good cover image).

You could also add a board widget to your website to help promote the board.

#2: Group Products Around a Theme

Another creative way of using your Pinterest brand page is to promote your products using a theme. This could be a theme around colors, designs, materials, ingredients, locations or anything else that’s interesting and can be categorized.

After you choose a theme, create several boards based on that theme.

For example, if you choose the color theme, create several boards where you plan to pin products of different colors. Label them accordingly, with different color names and arrange them side by side, so users know that the boards collectively form a theme.

Once you have set up the boards correctly, start pinning products of that color onto that board and add a good description (make sure you mention the color here too). This is a creative way to market your business, as people can easily find products of their favorite color.

This method is also good for search engine optimization (SEO), especially when you mention the keyword (color) in the board title, board description and pin description.

#3: Highlight Your Popular Products

People like popular products. When they know that a product is selling well and everyone else is buying it, they want to get a hold of it before they miss out. This is one of the reasons why there’s the Amazon bestseller list and the option to look at the most popular products on online stores.

Once your products reach that list and are easily visible to your website visitors, they are likely to sell even better.

You can take advantage of this same idea on Pinterest too and list your most popular products.

First, create a board with a title and description to tell readers this is where they can find your most popular products. After that, pin some images of your most popular products here and add descriptions. You could also add the rank of the product.

Make sure you write everything about the product—include the price, whether the product is a limited edition and add a call to action asking users to check out the product or buy it.

Also make sure you update the board regularly. Remove products no longer available and replace them with hot new items.

#4: Generate Leads

Another way to use your Pinterest page is to generate leads. First, create some quality content (such as ebooks, white papers, reports, case studies, etc.) that is gated with an opt-in form on a landing page.

Then add a short description about the content on the landing page along with an attractive image that is also the cover image of your file. After that, pin this image onto a board where you share your premium content. Write a brief description about it with a call to action that asks people to visit your website to sign up.

This will increase your landing page traffic and will help generate more leads, which can be used to increase website and blog traffic and drive sales later.

#5: Build an Audience and Then Sell

The ultimate goal of your campaign is to generate leads and sales for your services and products. In fact, it would be nice to start generating sales as soon as you set up your brand page, but on Pinterest you want to take your time doing this.

You need to build an audience first. And after you gain followers, you can start promoting your products.

On Facebook and Twitter or other social networks where you share posts every day, you might be able to promote your products more than once daily. But on Pinterest, the best way to promote items is to create a dedicated board where you pin the products you want to sell.

Remember, you want to pin your products only once because if you do it over and over again, you’ll appear to be overpromoting yourself.

When you first pin one of your products, you want to get as many initial likes, repins and comments as possible. This will add social proof to your products, encourage users to check out the product and increase the likelihood of more direct shares in the future.

So focus on building an audience first by sharing content regularly and then pin your products to your page.

So focus on building an audience first and share your products after you have achieved this.

Use Pinterest to Promote Your Business

As you can see, there are several ways you can highlight your products on Pinterest. Have a look to see how other businesses are using their Pinterest accounts and figure out which your audience might like best. Choose the boards that will work best for you.

How many people does it take to run your Social Media Pages?

Image from: marketingsuperhero.blogspot.com 

The Manager

Though many companies still operate with just one strategist or coordinater, it is essential that the department has a manager.  A considerable number of agencies still operate with only one Social Media girl/guy who manages their blog posts, tweets and sends funny cat pictures to the office, but those employees need a manager. They need to be steered in the direction that is in line with the goals of your company, or the goals of your clients – if they are managing more than one brand. A manager is typically the guy/girl who has had previous experience as a strategist and who has a clear picture of what a good campaign looks like – as well as the tasks involved to get it done. The manager delegates those tasks to the team accordingly and is responsible for the overall output of the team.

The Strategist

Back in the early days of Social Media, the strategist used to be the only role in the department as the strategy would usually consist of doing everything. But big brands require constant focus and attention and coming up with a solid long-term (or short-term) strategy for your clients do take time. The strategist is the person who comes up with the creative idea that fuels the campaign and will work closely with the manager and the implementers in order to get the campaign live. Ideally, you’d want your strategist to have some creative and Copywriting background to ensure that your clients’ messages are being conveyed in a professional manner. Nothing says sloppy best than a typo.

The Analyst

Talking about ROI to a Social Media guru could make them feel uncomfortable because they are creative and do not want to be limited by putting a number on their creativity. However, having an analyst on board your team will turn your department into a Social Media power team. You’ll have your creative who focus on the plan and execution while the analyst sits back and watches, measures the efforts of the creatives and compiles reports. The analyst is a vital part of the team as it is with the insight gathered by them that the strategists can create better, optimised campaigns and content that are tailored to the way the social media user behaves.

The Implementer

After the strategy is conducted and the roll-out plan has been mapped, you will need someone to put everything into action, to make the content provided by the strategist live – this is where your implementers come in. Implementers ensure that the social media plan is put in action exactly as it was strategized. They are methodical and cautious with a keen eye for detail – they need to be as they will be pushing the final publish button on your clients’ Facebook pages, Twitter stream, YouTube Channel, Pinterest board etc.

The Designer

The designer in the social media department has the most pleasant job in the world, in my opinion. They are the ones creating striking Facebook cover photos, Twitter backgrounds and YouTube wallpapers to make your clients’ social media properties look hot. With the rise of dynamic content and the constant change in user behaviour on the Internet, employing a designer to focus solely on designing for social media will be of huge benefit to your department. There is nothing worse than seeing a brand’s page displaying a poor quality/cropped off image of their logo in their profile photo.

Does Brand Marketing Still Matter in the Digital Age?

Most of you know that Biznology is all about digital marketing, which is a nice hot topic to cover. And you’ll be forgiven if you think that all this focus on shiny new marketing techniques leave little room for the tried and true. But you’d be wrong. Digital marketing, in fact, is way more about marketing than about digital. Even though there are many things that are changing, the basic still stay the same. One of those basics is brand marketing. Far from becoming unimportant, brand marketing is becoming more important to more companies every day.

Digital marketers (including me) have criticized the old “brand awareness” game, where that was the only measurement we focused on to show that our marketing is any good. I’ve often tried to get companies to focus on actual direct marketing metrics and conversions, reasoning that if they buy from you then at some point they probably became aware of you.

But don’t let that focus on measurement lead you to the conclusion that brand marketing itself is unimportant. Sure, we want metrics focused on sales, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t need a strong brand. What’s really true is that band in more important than ever for the simple reason that digital marketing makes marketing important to more companies than ever.

In the old days, B2B companies had no marketing more elaborate than, “What should we put in this year’s brochure to bring to the trade show?” Small businesses had even fewer marketing decisions to make: “Half page or full page ad in the Yellow Book this year?” But digital marketing means that you can affordably reach even the smallest group, so suddenly your brand matters a great deal more than ever before.

Every business must think in terms of digital branding that reflects who they are as a company. Your newsletter, your website, your social media presence, and many other marketing tactics now make sense for any type of business, and with that, your brand matters more than ever before.

What do you stand for? How does that image start with the first digital touchpoints and carry through in every interaction with your company? Digital marketing means that you are competing with companies far and wide that you never had to worry about before. How do you differentiate when being the one down the street no longer matters?

These are big questions that every business must face in the digital age!

Email Marketing - Rookie Mistakes - Part 2

Continuing on from, Email Marketing - Rookie Mistakes - Part 1

#7 Purchasing Email Lists

By now, everyone should know better than to buy a “totally legitimate list of 30 million opt-in emails” via some sketchy piece of spam they got. That’s pretty obvious, but there are still some vendors out there selling “opt-in” lists the old-fashioned way. They collect email addresses and ask members if they’d like to “receive special offers from third parties.” Then, they sell those email addresses to other people. It’s not technically illegal, but it sure is stupid. The correct way to do it is to keep the list, and then send special offers on behalf of third parties. Be wary of any groups that just want to give you a big list of emails. They should be doing the delivery for you, so their recipients will recognize the sender, and so you won’t get reported for spam.

#8 Assuming People Know Who You Are

We’ve seen some marketers who created nice email-signup forms a long time ago, and they’re just now getting around to sending emails. Even though they responsibly acquired every recipient’s permission before sending, those recipients have most likely have forgotten in the time since they signed up. So when they get a full-blown email newsletter out of the blue, they report the sender for spamming. This happens more often than you think. A lot of email experts say that permission goes stale after only six months. If you’re not regularly contacting your list, then assume the old emails have already forgotten you. You’ll need to send them a “Remember me?” email.

#9 Assuming People Want to Hear From You

Did everyone on your list specifically give you permission to email them? If not, then you’re just assuming they want to hear from you. Big mistake. They’re going to report you as a spammer. Even if you “spent lots of time putting together that list of prospects.” Even if you “spent lots of money for this opt-in list.” Even if the list is made up of “people in your industry who have certainly heard of you.” If they didn’t specifically ask for emails from you and you put them on your email-marketing list, then you’re sending spam.

This concept seems to confuse a lot of people. They say, “But I get emails all the time from people I’ve never heard of, and I appreciate it.” Know that it’s different if someone sends one email directly to you, with a sales pitch. But when that same person crosses the line and “blasts” his sales pitch to an entire list of people, it quickly becomes spam. So don’t send email campaigns to a list of mere prospects, and don’t just compile all your sales-contact lists (some of them will just be possible prospects who’ve never even heard of you), and never, ever, ever purchase lists (even if they’re “opt-in”). If you have a list of clients and customers that know you, but they haven’t exactly opted-in for newsletters from you, then send them personal, individual email invitations asking them to join your list.

#10 Being in a Rush

The biggest mistakes happen when marketers “have to get this campaign out yesterday!” They don’t do the proper design and coding. They don’t think through the content. They don’t plan their subject lines (perhaps the most important factor in your open rate). They don’t make sure their list is clean and totally opt-in. They ask the sales team, “Hey everyone, I’m blasting out an email. Gimme all your contact lists!” What happens next? Broken emails go out to lots of people who never opted in, forgot who you are, don’t remember signing up for your emails or haven’t heard from you in years. So what do they do? They click the “This is junk” button in their email program (studies show that anywhere from 10-30 percent of recipients have done this, even to emails they requested, thinking it was the only effective way to unsubscribe from a list). Then what happens? Alerts get sent to their ISPs, who in turn blacklist the sender for spamming. So slow down, take a breath, and make sure your list is in tip-top shape before you push it out the door.

#11 Confusing Transactional Emails With Email Marketing

Got a list of customers who purchased products from your e-commerce store? They’ll expect email receipts and email-shipping notifications. Those are transactional emails, and they’re different from email marketing. For those emails, try Mandrill, a powerful product we built specifically for transactional email. Those emails should be sent from your own server, or by using our API for transactional support .

Email newsletters, coupons, and promotions are considered marketing or commercial emails. If you send marketing email to a list of people without their permission, then you’re sending unsolicited commercial email (UCE), otherwise known as spam. Understand where that line is drawn, because if you cross it, you can expect a call from the FTC for violating their CAN-SPAM law. You might also get sued. Which is to say: Don’t be a spammer.

#12 Not Having Permission

Before you can send any email-marketing material, you must have permission from every single one of your recipients. If your initial reaction to that statement was, “But what if…,” then stop what you’re doing, because you don’t have permission.

Permission means that people requested email marketing from you. Before investing your time and money in an email-marketing program, start getting permission from your customers. It’s easier than you think, and it’ll result in fewer spam complaints, better deliverability, decreased legal liability, and—most importantly—better open and click results. MailChimp automatically asks for a permission reminder in your campaigns.

When you’re creating a new list , you’ll have to include a reminder. And every time you manually add someone to your list, you’ll have to promise us that your subscribers asked to receive your newsletter.

Email Marketing - Rookie Mistakes - Part 1

#1 Ignoring Campaign Reports

Once of the benefits of email-marketing services like MailChimp is that you can measure results after every email campaign. It’s tremendously useful. That’s why we’re still amazed to see some marketers sending dozens and dozens of campaigns but never looking at their reports. They don’t notice that their open rates have slipped from 60 percent to less than 10 percent. They don’t notice that their list is steadily shrinking after every campaign. They don’t notice that key clients are using email filters that reject their emails as spam.

Check your email stats after every single campaign you send. Look for trends. Make changes to campaigns to see if you can improve your open rates, click rates, and, most importantly, conversions. What’s the best day to send your emails? What’s the best time? How can slight adjustments to your template affect sales? Remember: Always be checking.

#2 Sending With a Personal Reply-To Address

When you invite customers to your office, would you rather it be a big, professional office building, or the extra bedroom in your house? When you give someone your business card, would you rather it be printed on nice, professional paper stock, or hand-written on a sticky note?

Same goes for email marketing. Don’t send a big email campaign to your customers, and use your “@yahoo.com” or “@aol.com” home email address. You have a website, don’t you? (If not, you probably shouldn’t be sending any email campaigns at all yet.) Use your website’s domain, on which you probably already have emails accounts. 

#3 Forgetting to Test in Lots of Programs

HTML emails look different depending on which email program you use to view them. Just because it looks good in the preview window or when you send a test to yourself doesn’t mean it’ll look like that for all your recipients. You should set up a few accounts with free email services like Yahoo!, MSN, Hotmail, and Gmail. If possible, set up “home accounts,” like with AOL, Earthlink, Comcast, and Roadrunner. Test on different computers and operating systems, like Macs and PCs. If you don’t have the budget to build test computers (Who does?), just enlist a few friends or volunteers at the office. Send them tests, and ask them to tell you if the email looked weird in their programs.

#4 Writing Like a Used-Car Salesman

Since email can be so affordable, it’s often the first attempt at “real” marketing that small businesses make. Unfortunately, small businesses aren’t necessarily writing experts. Instead of thinking, “Hmm, how would XYZ company write this email?” you should stop and ask, “Hmm, what would my customers find useful in my email?” Don’t use pushy sales copy, like “BUY NOW!!!!” or “LIMITED TIME OFFER!!!” in email. It’s obnoxious. Plus, Spam filters will penalize you for using what they consider “spammy” content.

How Spam Filters Think

Spam filters look at a long list of criteria to decide whether or not an email is junk. These items are almost always on their lists of spammy criteria:

Going crazy with exclamation points!!!!!!

USING ALL CAPS BECAUSE IT’S LIKE YELLING IN AN EMAIL OMG

Coding sloppy HTML (usually from converting a Microsoft Word file to HTML)

Coloring fonts bright red or green

Using the word “test” in the subject line

Creating an HTML email that’s nothing but one big image, with little or no text

#5 Thinking “Blast” Instead of “Relationship”

We cringe when someone asks us if we can help them “blast” an email out to people. For one, the word “blast” should only be used in reference to missiles and tanks. Not permission marketing. Secondly, when people say “blast,” it usually means they think email is just a way to shoot out a bunch of emails, whether people want to hear from them or not. Email is all about getting permission from customers, sending them stuff they want to read, and listening to their feedback.

#6 Forgetting to Double Check the List Before Sending

This one mostly applies to agencies sending on behalf of their clients. We’ve seen some people send email-marketing campaigns to lists that are obviously not permission-based. If you do that, you’re breaking our terms of use—and breaking the CAN-SPAM law. Yes, you can be held liable for spam when sending on behalf of someone else. Did you build a website for a local dry cleaner? Did they ask you to handle their “e-blast” too? Ask them how they got the list, and if it’s permission based or not. If it’s a small shop, but their list is 25,000 recipients, use some common sense.

Content Marketing

The key to success is to make the connection between content marketing and social media.

#1: Attract Prospective Customers

The first question on a prospect’s mind when considering a purchase is, “What solutions are available?”

Your goal is to create awareness and make sure that your solution meets the buyers’ need when they’re ready to make a decision.

Successful businesses are communicating with prospects on social networking sites and directing them to the material the prospects need to make an informed decision. How are they doing this?

One way is to create informational articles.

Social network users are constantly sharing, curating and consuming informational content. Often, the headline or a short description of the content appears on the social network together with a link to view the content on a company website.

Businesses need to share this informational content and have it written for prospects who are in research mode, learning about the solutions that are available.

Another method is to raise awareness of your products and services through informational webinars and seminars.

Informational webinars and seminars can demonstrate your expertise while providing prospects with the information they need during the research stage of the buying cycle.

#2: Convert Prospects

The second question on a person’s mind when considering a purchase is, “Which is the right solution for me?”

Businesses that successfully convert new customers from social media create and distribute content that provides proof points to the sale. Content that assists in meeting this goal proves that your solution provides more value than the other solutions the prospect has researched.

A very effective piece of content to meet this goal is the demo video or “explainer” video.

A second piece of content that will build the type of trust that closes the sale is the case study. Case studies close sales because they prove that others have had success with your solution.

A third piece of content that can convert leads into sales are white papers. For B2B marketers, the white paper is a staple piece of content used by possible buyers to assist in the decision-making process.

#3: Keep Existing Customers

The last question on a buyer’s mind is, “Am I happy with the decision I made?”

This goal is about retention and referral. Successful businesses will use social media and content to keep customers satisfied.

One type of content that retains existing customers is support documentation.

A second content type that increases loyalty is documentation of best practices.

Businesses that create content that teaches customers how to get the most out of their product or service will increase customer satisfaction.

Another content type that increases retention of existing customers is case studies.

While the function of the case study in converting a new customer is to provide a proof point, the case study is also useful in retention because it provides guidance to the existing customer.

In Closing…

Social media and content marketing are joined at the hip.

Social networks like Twitter and Facebook are not always where a conversation begins and ends. To attract, convert and keep customers, social media and content marketing should be parts of a seamless marketing, sales and customer-service strategy.

Your current and future customers are using social media. Make sure you have well-planned content marketing and give your social media team the information they need to share the content your audience needs.

Social Media Content

Why Share Other People’s Content?

It’s all about becoming a valuable resource.  When you can dig up great articles your audience is interested in–regardless of the source–you’ll become more respected and your content will be widely shared.

And when you have some of your own content to share, people will be more likely to help spread the word.

Here’s where to find valuable content:

#1: Watch Large News Sites

Depending on your industry, you may find topical and interesting articles on large news sites such as USA Today, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. If you have a news site or magazine for your niche that provides industry news, make sure you have that bookmarked as part of your content.

#2: Watch News Aggregators

If you want to make content sourcing a little easier, use a news aggregator website or tool. Certain sites do a great job of bringing in the latest news and sorting it by industry or niche all in one place.

Stuff To Tweet has some of the most popular posts on different sites including CNN, YouTube and more. Yes, it does mention tweeting, but these articles are good for Facebook, too.

#3: Pay Attention to Popular Posts

You can also see things that are trending and popular on some of the other social media sites and share them to Facebook.

You can also see what’s trending on Twitter even if you don’t have a Twitter account. Notice that you can switch the trends by clicking the Change link and selecting a certain region to get more localized results. Are these trending topics always the best things to share on Facebook? Maybe not, but they can be relevant.

You may be better off just using Twitter Search and plug in some of your niche keywords to find some good articles to share on Facebook.

#4: Have Go-to Sources to Share

Many times you know which other Facebook Pages consistently have good content and valuable posts. They may be in your industry or they may be a complement to your business so your audience will also be interested in their content.

There are a few different ways to watch their Facebook posts. One is to like their Page as your Page and then watch your Page news feed. This makes it easy to share their posts when you see them in your news feed.

Another way to easily monitor other Pages is to create an Interest List of all of the Pages on your personal profile and periodically monitor that feed.

You can make this Interest List public so other people can follow it, or you can make it private so only you know who is on it.

When you have the Interest List on your personal profile, sharing it to your Facebook Page is not hard. Just select the Share button and then switch the selection to On your Page. Then make sure the right Page is selected and the post will be shared by your Page.

You can find public lists that other people have created by going to Facebook Add List (this is the same URL you use to create your own list). They first show you some of the lists that your friends have created or may be on and then they sort the popular lists by topic.

#5: Use Google Reader and Google Alerts

If you have several (or even several hundred) blogs you enjoy reading that provide great content, use Google Reader to access them all from one place. You can easily see the latest posts or just click on the particular blog in the left sidebar to see some of their latest posts.

Google Reader gives you a dashboard for all of your best content sources so you can see which ones have new posts rather than checking on each individual site. 

Google Alerts are another great way to monitor the web for fresh content. Google Alerts use the latest relevant Google results and send them as an aggregated set of stories to your email address.

You can use keywords related to your niche and have a set of fresh posts brought to your email inbox every day.

 If you find that your keywords aren’t bringing the right content in, you can always delete the alert.

Having your company name as an alert is also useful to watch for any new mentions of your company on the web.

#6: Look for Funny Posts

People are typically on social media to have fun and be social. Even if you’re a more serious brand, don’t forget to lighten up every once in a while with a humorous post. Humor can be difficult and you always run the risk of offending someone, so be careful.

#7: Create Your Own Images

Images are still getting a lot of engagement on Facebook. They continue to get a lot of comments, likes and shares even if they don’t have the same reach as a text post.

Images take up more space in the news feed and 0are generally more interesting than a plain text post.

But what if you don’t have many pictures to share? You can find images to illustrate a point at sites like iStockphoto or 123RF (you can’t just find images on Google and upload them to Facebook).

If you would like to find free images, you can use the Creative Commons area on Flickr or stock.xchng (make sure you read the guidelines on giving proper attribution).

You can also use Compfight to help you search for photos that you can use. You can use the Commercial hotlink to see which ones are for business use (again, make sure you read about proper attribution).

If you want to add your own text to the photo to illustrate a point or add some special effects to make the picture more interesting, use an online editing tool like PicMonkey or iPiccy.

Special quotes are popular things to share on Facebook, but you can use these tools to turn the quote into something more visual. Of course if you’re well-versed in something like Photoshop, creating an image to use is a breeze.

You may also have an occasion to take a screenshot and edit it. This technique works really well if you’re teaching something about websites or computers.

#8: Monitor Your Stats

Finally, make sure you watch what works with your audience.

Dive into your Facebook Insights and sort the posts you have by Engaged Users. The Engaged Users stats include the number of unique users who have clicked on your posts, which can include people clicking on the photo or link, liking the post, commenting or sharing your post.

Notice what types of posts your audience responds to and post more of those.

Once you get some of your favorite content creators in place, don’t forget to continue to monitor the web for new sources of great content. And make sure you work in plenty of your own original content!