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How Facebook Hashtags Can Benefit Your Business & How to Use Them

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how facebook hashtags can benefit your business

how facebook hashtags can benefit your business

The Hashtag seems to have taken over the internet since the rise of Twitter. You can use it on Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr and now Facebook. So what do hashtags on Facebook mean for businesses and how can they use them to their benefit?

Facebook have finally announced that they are rolling out clickable hashtags. Meaning users and Page updates can be part of a discussion, which is especially useful for things like events or a popular news topic.

Facebook hashtags

On their blog Facebook said that the reason for introducing hashtags was to help users find other users talking about the same things they were and take part in public conversations.

They also mentioned that they will be rolling out more features over the next few weeks and months. Including trending hashtags and deeper insights.

 

How Facebook Hashtags can Benefit my Business?

Hashtags are clickable. Meaning that users can click on a hashtag and see posts from other people who are using the same hashtag. This means that businesses will be able to use hashtags to get their posts in front of people who wouldn’t have seen it otherwise. Without the need to fork out for advertising.

People use social media to talk about things they’re interested in or their friends are interested in such as;

 

–          A concert or event they’re attending

–          A business event or networking event

–          A film they’ve just seen

–          Something they’re watching on TV

–          A news story

–          The weather – this is especially popular here in the UK where we get all excited by the odd sighting of the sun and think summer has finally arrived.

This means that businesses have got some great opportunities to get their updates and content in front of people who are interested in something they’re selling or talking about.

 

For example:

Imagine you have an ecommerce website which sells camping equipment. The summer is fast approaching (apparently) and over the next few months plenty of people will be going off on camping holidays and going to festivals and sports events.

Now imagine you want to target people who are attending the Formula 1 British Grand Prix. To tell them about some of your tents in an attempt to intrigue people who are yet to buy their tent. So you use the hashtag #britishgp in your update.

A user searches #britishgp in the search bar to see what other people are saying about it. They see your update and decide to visit your website and buy from you as a result.

The main takeaway and benefit for businesses here is that they have a great opportunity to get their posts out there in front of users who might not have seen them otherwise.

 

Six Tips for using Facebook Hashtags Effectively

Now you know why Facebook Hashtags will benefit your business, what’s the best way to use them? Here are six tips to help you use hashtags effectively. (These tips don’t just apply to Facebook, it can be applied to Twitter, Pinterest, Tumblr and Google+ etc also)

 

1. Make Sure Another Brand Aren’t Already Using It

Before you decide to claim a hashtag make sure it’s not already in use by searching for the hashtag you plan on using in the search bar.

If there are people or other brands already using that hashtag and talking about a different product, service or business, it’s probably best to think of a new hashtag as it could easily get confusing trying to monitor what people are saying about you.

 

2. Keep it short and simple

While you aren’t faced with a 140 character limit on Facebook, people don’t want to use a massively long hashtag because it can be a bit of a chore to type out and easy to forget.

 

3. Don’t Spam Hashtags

Using hashtags which have absolutely no relation to what you’re talking about will make you look spammy and will put users off you right away. Especially if you make the same mistake as fashion retailer Kenneth Cole you hijack hashtags who hijacked a tweet relating to the unrest inCairo at the beginning of 2011.

 

4. Don’t use multiple hashtags in one update

It can be tempting to try and use several hashtags in your updates to try and get as many people to see your updates as possible, however using too many hashtags will annoy people, so try to stick to two or at the very most three hashtags per update.

 

5. Consistency across all social channels

As with your branding, any hashtags you use which relate to your business, your products or services or an event you are running should be consistent across all social media platforms you’re present on. This makes it easy for people to talk about you or find about you across multiple platforms.

 

6. Promote your hashtag

If you’re using a hashtag to promote your brand, one of your products or services, or an event you’re running make sure you promote it on your website, marketing emails and social media so people know that’s the hashtag they need to use when talking about your products.

 

 

Since Facebook’s IPO in May 2012 they have been trying to make money from the social network, which meant bad news for Facebook Page owners who were forced to pay for advertising if they wanted their updates to reach 100% of the people who have ‘liked’ their page, despite those people expressing an explicit interest in the page. So the introduction of hashtags is brilliant news as Page Owners will now be able to reach more people without having to pay for it.

 

Contact Us

If your business is based in Burntwood, Lichfield, Cannock or Staffordshire and are interesting in marketing which creates opportunities to sell your products or services, get in touch with us to find out how we can help. Call us on 01543 495 752 or email us on contact@themarketingpeople.com to find if we can help you and your business.

Is Your Business Facebook Page Set Up Correctly?

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Is your business facebook page set up correctly

>Is your business facebook page set up correctly

Facebook Timeline will be implemented on all Facebook Pages by the end of the month; are you ready? Have you got it right?

A business needs to be set up on Facebook as a Facebook Business Page and not a Profile.
Personal Profiles can be ‘friended’ and are for personal use, Facebook Pages can be ‘liked’ and are for businesses.

Some businesses may have been set up incorrectly as a Profile for a number of reasons; such as Pages hadn’t been implemented when the Profile was set up, or you may have simple just created it wrong by accident.

You’ll be happy to know that you can convert your Profile to a Page, without losing your friends. Any friends associated with the Profile will be converted to ‘Likes’.

There are several advantages to taking the leap and converting your Profile into a Page, especially now that Facebook Pages have been spruced up;

    • You may be spending a fair amount of time responding to friend requests, with a page you won’t have to do this as a user can just ‘Like’ your Page and no action is required by you.

 

    • All the important information you would want a customer or potential customer to see is displayed right below your profile picture.

 

 

    • A mini-map will be shown below your cover photo which can be enlarged so people can find out exactly where you are based.

 

 

    • One of the new Page features is the ability to highlight a post, which keeps it at the top of your page for seven days. This would be useful for announcing new products, events or an offer.

 

 

    • The main new feature is a timeline, which allows you to show off the history of your business and milestones.

 

 

    • Insights are a Facebook analytics tool which allows you to see things such as; likes, reach, people talking about your business and check-ins, you cannot not view any statistics like this on a Profile.

 

 

    • Facebook have also brought in the option for users to message a page, so they can still ask you questions privately.

 

 

    • You may not know that as a Facebook Profile you are limited to 5000 friends, whereas a Facebook Page can an infinite amount of ‘Likes’.

 

At the moment Facebook Timeline for Pages is optional, however on the 30th March all Pages will switch to timeline whether you’re ready or not.

Recently we converted a Facebook Profile into a Facebook Page for Gardening Delights and redesigned their page in the process.

With the end of the month approaching fast, what better time is there to get your business set up correctly on Facebook?

 

So many questions pop up when it comes to social media, but don’t get stuck, just head over to our social blogs for all the answers you need.

If you want your Facebook Profile converting into a Page and/or want your Page redesigning before timeline comes in, call us on 01543 495752 or email us at contact@themarketingpeople.com to see how we can help you.

How to “moderate” comments on Facebook Brand Pages

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How to moderate comments on Facebook Brand Pages

Currently there is no way to moderate comments on Facebook business page’s. This means any comment posted will be visible, there is no way of keeping a comment private until you view it and approve it.

Understandably, this can make some people feel a little uneasy and unsure of whether they should create a Facebook business page incase a negative comment is posted.

This post will explain a few options you have to control comment posting.

Facebook page moderation blocklist.

Facebook page settings give you the option of creating a list of ‘blocked words’, which in theory means you could prevent any negative comments being posted on your walls if you blocked negative words like ‘bad’ or ‘awful’.

Any comments containing any of the blocked words will be flagged as spam and will not be posted to the page wall.

There is also the option the block profanities, which has two settings; medium and strong.

You can do this by;

  1.  Viewing your page and clicking on the ‘Edit page’ icon in the top right hand corner of the page.
  2. This will take you to the ‘Manage permissions’ tab where you will be able to edit your moderation blocklist and profanity blocklist as shown in the image above.

Comment moderation

As mentioned at the beginning of the post, there’s no way to hold a comment for moderation on a Facebook page but there are a couple of commenting settings you can tweak.

You could go all out and block comments entirely by removing the posting ability by unticking the ‘People can write or post content on the wall’ box

You can alter the page people land on when they go to your Facebook page.
Instead of them being taken straight to the page wall, visitors could be taken to a welcome page and then choose the page they want to visit.

These features can be accessed by:

  1. Viewing your Facebook page and clicking on ‘Edit page’ in the top right hand corner.
  2. You will then automatically be taken to the ‘Manage Permissions’ tab where you can alter the ‘Default landing tab’ and the ‘Posting ability’.

If you decide not to disable comments and you’re concerned about negative comments, there are a couple of things you can do to limit damage.

The comment can be removed by hovering over the comment and clicked the world icon and then selecting ‘delete post’.
Alternatively you could just hide the post or report it as abuse if you consider it to be abusive.

The page settings can be altered, so an email will be sent as soon as someone comments on something on the page. The comment can then be read and decision can be made over whether to keep it on the page or delete it.

This can be done by;

  1. Viewing your page and clicking on the ‘Edit page’ button.
  2. Then select ‘Your settings’ from the tab on the left hand side.
  3. When you are taken to this page you will be able to check the box saying ‘Email notifications’.

It’s a shame Facebook don’t allow full comment moderation, it would make people feel much more comfortable and happier about putting their brand out there, knowing a negative comment would never have to be seen by the public.

So many questions pop up when it comes to social media, but don’t get stuck, just head over to our social blogs for all the answers you need.

Remember you can find us on facebook, twitter and pinterest  for all our latest social media updates. Or if you feel you may need a little advice with your own social media, whether that’s getting started, or refreshing your knowledge, give us a call on 01543 495752 for a no obligation chat.