facebook

5 Creative Uses for Facebook Photo Albums

by Marian Schembari on June 2, 2011

As more businesses – small and large alike – start setting up shop on Facebook, the more the seriously creative ones stand out. Recently, I’ve seen a number of folks using photo albums to post everything from featured menu items to the year’s highlights.

I don’t care if you’re brand spanking new to the site or your well-established page has a trillion billion fans, you can always learn a thing or two from companies thinking outside of the page box and getting clever with images. Here are five things you can do right now to up the ante on your page and engage fans in a way you might never have expected…

Tag Your Products

Every day, Delish Cupcakes uploads an image of their “cupcakes of the day.” Not only are they artfully displayed with the occasional classy photo filter thrown in, but the cupcakes themselves are tagged with their incredibly cute names.

Do a Delish: If you sell something – anything – dedicate a photo album on your Facebook page to visually draw in your fans. Tag the products/menu items with their name and add a little description to give us more info and a URL if applicable. And don’t forget to “Do a Delish” by making sure to answer all questions as they come!

Highlight Your People

Hit travel website, Gadling, has an entire album dedicated to their writers. But they don’t just feature boring ole headshots. No, Gadling emphasizes how all of their bloggers love travel and have uploaded some great shots to prove it.

Do a Gadling: Whether you have employees, students or even family involved with your page, highlight those that work behind the scenes and Do a Gadling by relating the images back to your niche. For example, if you’re a winery, collect photos of your employees in a vineyard, sipping wine or crushing grapes a la Lucille Ball.

Get an Opinion, Start a Discussion

Online fashion retailer (and one of my personal favorites) ModCloth has essentially created a Facebook designer team of ModStylists who not only model outfits using ModCloth products, but display outfit tweaks side by side and ask for fan feedback.

Do a ModCloth: No matter what your niche, asking for user feedback is the best way to get fans talking. Website designer? Show us two versions of your site with slightly different background colors and ask users to vote. Author? Take a screenshot of the first sentence of your latest book written two ways and let the discussion ensue. Even if you have a preference, it’s fun for fans to get involved and you never know who might change your mind!

Create a “Best Of” Collection

Ridiculously good-looking popular HBO show True Blood compiled a short album of the best show moments of 2010, including a screenshot and link to a Sesame Street parody (True Mud), Comic-Con panel and Grammy nomination.

Do a True Blood: While it’s easy to have a press page or news section on your website, people are visual and compiling your favorite happenings from the year in an easy-to-digest format, fans can share in your success without the incessant self promotion. Use Facebook albums to highlight publications, press coverage, images of events you attended/spoke at, etc. The options are sort of limitless here, meaning you can get as personalized as you want!

Show Off Your Community

3D cinema company, RealD, does a great job crowdsourcing and pimping their tech by posting hundreds of photos of happy movie-goers in their 3D glasses. The trend has become so huge that fans upload the photos themselves, tagging RealD in the process.

Do a RealD: This may not be the newest trick in the book, but showing off customers at an event, using your products and essentially being real people (not models) looking happy as can be is the best advertising. No one uploading photos of themselves auto-magically on your page? Just ask. Author Jody Hedlund put together a great album of readers posing with her book that got started because she simply asked them to. Luckily, her readers love her enough to oblige. Plus, people love seeing photos of themselves.

Your Suggestions

Unfortunately, we don’t see enough pages using photo albums to their full creative capacity. So it’s even more important we highlight how many awesome ways there are to make your page a full multimedia experience! What tips would you suggest for businesses to liven up their Facebook photos?

A Jargon-Free Interview: Meghann Anderson of Meals & Miles

by Marian Schembari on March 16, 2011

I may or may not have a small obsession with food blogs. I love the photos, I love the stories, and I especially love the ones updated multiple times a day. I’m like a reality TV adict, except I’m praying this is slightly more socially acceptable (and perhaps healthier?).

Enter Meghann Anderson. I found her blog, Meals & Miles, through another healthy living blog I read and was immediately hooked. I love her casual style and voice. I’ve had quite the blog crush on her for some time, so when she agreed to divulge all her secrets here, I did a little happy dance.

Read on to find out her trade secrets and how she was able to grow her blog to reach thousands of readers, organize an entire conference and be featured in places like Self, Shape and Glamour magazines…

How did you get into blogging? What prompted Meals & Miles?

I started Meals & Miles in September 2008. I discovered healthy living blogs just a few months prior when I was trying to lose the few pounds I gained while working at a desk job. Those blogs had inspired me so much in my own weight loss journey, I wanted to inspire others on theirs.

How did you first start growing the blog?

I lucked out in the beginning. I was good friends with Caitlin from HealthyTippingPoint.com and Jenna from EatLiveRun.com and they were gracious enough to send the first spurts of traffic my way. From there I tried to keep those new readers interested by consistently posting three times a day, asking thought provoking questions, and being as honest and real as possible. This was before connecting blogs with Facebook was big and Twitter was so new, no one was on it. New readers came via Google or by word of mouth.

What was the biggest hurdle when first starting out?

The biggest hurdle was finding the balance of life and blogging. I had committed to three posts a day, seven days a week – that’s a lot of posts! I feared blogging would get in the way of having a social life, but I eventually figured it all out. It helped that I was single and living alone at the time.

Rapid-fire Qs

Favorite social media network and why?

Twitter. Who needs Google when you’ve got Twitter?!?!

What kinds of people do you tend to talk to online?

Runners, health enthusiasts, crazy people who are just like me.

Any cool things that have cropped up because of social media?

Too many to count! My first year of blogging I somehow got CCed on an e-mail chain of bloggers that went on to plan the Healthy Living Summit. That e-mail chain changed my life! Those girls became some of my best blog friends and we’re now currently planning our THIRD Healthy Living Summit! I’ve also had the pleasure of having my tweets retweeted by some of my favorite fitness magazines and companies and was able to raise over $4900 for Team in Training relying solely on social media!

Best Twitter tip?

My boyfriend would kill me for saying this, but don’t hold back. Tweet what’s on your mind and over analyze it later. Some of my favorite tweets are said in emotional sweeps.

Best Facebook tip?

Add your Mom as your Facebook friend. It saves daily phone calls. Don’t add your future Mother-in-law. It adds daily phone calls.

Best blogging tip?

Learn WordPress, HTML, and simple coding from the beginning. You will save yourself so much $$ in the long run.

How do you learn about social media/keep up to date?

Easy, it’s my life! 24/7 I’m connected to e-mail/ Facebook/ Twitter/ etc. I even sleep next to my smart phone. If something important happens at 3am – I’ll know about it.

Worst part about blogging?

All the behind the scenes stuff like tweaking format, backing up content, resizing photos, etc.

Favorite part about blogging?

Making new friends. Sharing my experiences with millions of people with the click of a mouse.

I’m sorry, but how much do you love the line about Facebook and adding your mom? So freaking true. Thanks so much Meghann for taking the time to answer my questions and if you guys have any questions, just leave them in the comments below!

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Great Facebook Pages and What They Teach Us

by Marian Schembari on March 8, 2011

One of the reasons I rarely talk about Facebook here is because too many businesses just slap together a page reproduction of blog content and tweets. While valuable either way, if you really want to tap into the millions on Facebook, you need to provide NEW content. Contests. A community. Tips.

Because that’s when I fall in love with Facebook. There is so much opportunity for creating an all-encompassing, unique, engaging multimedia presence. It can be an extension of your blog, providing epic content, making it your website, Twitter profile, YouTube channel and Flickr combined. Your conversations are stickier, meaning they last longer and result in more conversation than your average tweet.

Essentially, if you have a fantastic business that’s just screaming for attention, take a look at how to nail down the Facebook essentials and learn from three Facebook pages who are completely crushing it.

3 Features That Complete Your Page

Links

A Facebook page should never be your home base as the site is always changing and you end up limiting your customers to those who only have Facebook accounts. This is even more important if you’re selling products or promoting a blog. While there are apps to help accomplish both these goals, it’s still important you have a main website and link to your other social media profiles on your Facebook page. So make sure people can find what they’re looking for by making YOU easy to find and connect with.

Full Info

Hopefully you’ve realized that telling us what your business/blog is about is the first thing to complete when creating a Facebook page. But are you enticing readers? Are you telling us why we should “like” you? Do you have special features, contests, tips? And what makes you special? Tell us the story of your business to get us invested.

Welcome

Welcome pages are all the rage now and it’s SUCH an easy way to turn your page from Just Another Facebook Profile into Impressive Professional Space. The best pages have them and you can design it yourself or hire someone to do it. My favorite pages have gorgeous visuals, buttons and even videos that convince me to “like” them because of what I’ll get in return.

Check out this fabulous tutorial care of Command C on how to create a killer welcome page.

3 “Extras” to Take Your Page to the Next Level

Thing is, you can have all the information on your page completed, but unless it’s an engaging place to hang out, no one is going to join and your page will feel like an abandoned warehouse.

Check out these three great examples of Facebook pages using every tool they’ve got to grow fans and encourage community:

Bonus Content

One of my favorite blogs of all time, design*sponge, just recently started a Facebook page and it’s already landed over 13,000 fans. Why? Well, yes, the blog is hugely popular, but that’s still not enough reason to like a page. No, I’m convinced this page has become hugely successful so quickly because it’s giving readers more of what they already love.

A design*sponge classic is their “sneak peaks” – a look into someone’s fabulously designed house. They post a few of these each week and they now have a little note on each feature saying they’ve posted all the extra photos they couldn’t fit on their Facebook page. They create an album for each sneak peak where fans can get even more of the photos they love.

This tactic reminds me of DVD deleted scenes. I cut soooo much from each post and I’m sure you guys can relate. If the readers are already there and loving what you do, why not post that extra content on your Facebook page? It’s a great way to reuse content you’ve already created and give readers more of what they want. Win-win.

Quirky Contests/Games

I love how Erika Napoletano’s page is as chock full of info, random notes and snark as her blog. But, get this, IT’S NOT THE SAME. She does a little bit of self promo, a little “where she is,” a little promo of other people and a little posting of random pictures and has her fans provide a caption.

This is such a great “tactic” precisely because it doesn’t seem like a tactic. It’s just for fun. I don’t think anyone wins a prize and it’s definitely not promoting Redhead Writing. It’s just a quirky game her fans can play and it adds a little humor to everyone’s day. What’s not to love?

A Reader Community

One of the best communities I have ever seen on Facebook is care of the epic Young House Love. With over 20,000 fans you can bet your bottom dollar Sherry and John don’t have time to answer every single reader question regarding home improvement, but that doesn’t stop readers from helping each other.The YHL Facebook page is chock full of home improvement questions. Sometimes the bloggers themselves weigh in, and they’re definitely active on the page, but it just illustrates how important shared community is (you can read my interview with John and Sherry where they talk a little about said community).

What are some of your favorite Facebook pages? What are they doing right that makes you come back for more?

 

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How I Use Facebook

by Marian Schembari on February 15, 2011

For a social media consultant, I’m pretty quiet about Facebook. The only posts I’ve written about the site are highly emotional, or revolve around my using Facebook ads to land a job two years ago.

The reason I rarely write about it is mostly because I try to relate everything back to personal experiences, stories and tips I’ve picked up along the way. I still offer services for Facebook and have built quite a few pages myself, but it’s one place online where I’m strictly anti-business.

Americans my age experienced Facebook when it was just a place for registered college students to connect. It’s how I met people before actually heading to Davidson freshman year. It’s where my future roommate and I fell in roommate love before ever meeting.

When they opened up Facebook to nonstudents (and then the world), it felt like we had lost something. Like the “exclusive” community of college students who actually posted their interests and didn’t have to link to “pages” was gone.

Now it’s a marketing tool. Now I’m connected to my mom and I had to take down that dirty application off my profile. Now listing “my dog” as an interest links to nothing.

I’m not anti-Facebook. There are some fabulous companies doing incredible things. It’s a wealth of information and you can still connect with your college buddies and post photos of that-night-you-don’t-want-anyone-to-know-about-but-secretly-do-cuz-you-look-sort-of-hot.

Why there isn’t a Marian Librarian page

Because my profile is private, you’d think I’d have a page for Marian Librarian. It’s not that it isn’t in the cards, I just don’t feel like updating one more social media profile. Plus, I don’t have anything new to offer you at the moment. Right now, the majority of the information I provide is on the blog. I send out a weekly newsletter answering your social media questions, my work history is on LinkedIn and my chit chats are on Twitter. I don’t have time to deal with another profile while also monitoring my client’s online presence. A girl needs her limits.

To be honest, it’s nice having one place that’s not work related. The only people I add on Facebook are either friends I’ve met in real-life or readers who’s names I recognize and am comfortable sharing my personal information with.

As you can see, I do share blog posts and promote myself on Facebook. I don’t have an absurd amount of friends but I get a decent amount of blog traffic through the profile and I think it’s just because I’m sharing the info with “real” friends and they click out of support and/or curiosity. Since I’d be sharing the same info just on a page and inviting my friends and people who already read my blog anyway – what’s the point?

It’s such a relief logging on and not NEEDING to say anything. I can find out what my college roommate is up to or photo stalk that girl I totally wanted to be in high school. I can keep an eye on my brothers even though they’re on the other side of the world. I don’t need to impress or be useful or make sure to post every day. I can log on when I want and say what I want. It’s the bare bones of what social media is all about, really.

How do you use Facebook? And do you have any questions for me? I promise to write about it more if I have a better idea of the kind information you want!

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A Jargon-Free Interview: John & Sherry Petersik of Young House Love

by Marian Schembari on January 13, 2011

Part of creating this new interview series has meant emailing lots and lots of hotshot bloggers who generally refuse to give me the time of day. Sherry Petersik, while one of the hottest shots I know, was not that blogger. When I emailed asking for an interview I almost wet myself when she responded the day next day with a “I’d love to help!”

And so a crush was born…

I stumbled across Young House Love through that weird web of blog reading and was immediately hooked. It’s a mix between home renovation and reality TV with a dash of effing adorable baby pictures. through in Plus, the blog has voice. And mistakes. And it’s probably the most successful home improvement blog out there.

See that? A husband and wife team that don’t blog about blogging. It’s like magic.

So on Tuesday I had a lovely chat with Sherry and we talked – gasp! – social media. She told me about how they landed a print column because of the site, crowdsourcing on Facebook and the ridiculously amount of time they spend working.

Check it…

What’s your impression of social media? When you think of the term, what springs to mind?

Both John and I were in advertising and to us it’s like a buzzword. It seems like the industry uses it to teach clients about things like The Power of Twitter. “Social networking” is a term that people who know about it explain it to people who don’t know about it.

How did you both get into social media outside of the blog?

The blog came first, Twitter later. Now everyone is using it and we’re finding Facebook to be the most powerful tool. We like to say that Twitter is “acquaintances” and Facebook is “old friends.”

In last year, our numbers have flipped and now we have way more Facebook followers [Marian's note: Dudes. YHH has over 17,000 fans.] It’s more of a community because people ask each other questions. They can post pictures and discussion continues more organically on Facebook. There’s not as much conversation on Twitter, especially since the character count holds you back. We like both sites though, one is a quick and easy way to bounce information around, the other is foster community.

You’ve had a lot of cool things happen because of the blog – what’s one cool thing that’s serendipitously happened and how did it come about?

We landed a regular column in Do It Yourself magazine, simply  because someone found our blog. They out and said they liked the site and wanted to photograph our house for a series. One thing led to another and we offered to do a “John and Sherry” column and they said yes! It was very organic and we were more than happy to contribute. Since they’re incredibly flexible it’s sort of like an extension of the blog.

We even solicit questions on our Facebook page. We’ll post a question that says, “A new column will be coming out in 3 months and it’s all about kitchens, so ask us your  kitchen questions!” We’ve been doing this from day one and it’s worked great!

With all the stuff you guys have going on, how do you find time for any of this stuff?

It’s impossible! A lot of other things have to be sacrificed: We eat at home, work while we’re with family and and even work while on vacation because the internet is 24/7.. We’re always on call, but we’ve  built this with a lot of pride.

We’ve thought about hiring an intern, but can’t figure out how to make it work. It’s a double-edged sword, really. It’s amazing that so many people are asking questions, but it wouldn’t feel right to have someone answer as us. And we could never farm out the project part of our blog because that’s the fun part!

We do have to remind people on Facebook though that we can’t answer every single question. We wouldn’t be able to sustain it and couldn’t do any actual projects. We have to guard our time. But  it’s great because people communicate with each other and don’t always seek our advice.

Favorite part about blogging?

All the amazing people you get to virtually meet. The world is so small when you have a blog! Every day I get a letter or comment that literally makes me cry: Someone who just had a baby or a divorcee finally making a home her own. I’m such a sap. We  always have a hard time believing that others are being helped and when people remind us they are, it’s beyond amazing. And it’s just us sharing what we do in our house! It’s not a bible for home improvement. We’re not expert teachers. It’s sort of like reality TV in  a way. We may not air a fight on the blog, but we keep it real and share things within the range of home improvement.

Thank you SOOOO much Sherry for sharing all this wisdom with us. Follow YHH on Twitter here and don’t forget to check out the blog and oooh and ahh at baby pictures. I mean, design stuff.

 

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