Does Using a 3Rd Party Api to Publish to Facebook Decrease Engagement? Update!  Maybe Not.

Facebook claims they fixed the bug causing updates posted by 3rd party applications (like Hootsuite, Twitter, TweetDeck, etc.) to have 80% lower engagement than those posted directly on Facebook. Despite EdgeRank Checker tentatively agreeing (sort of), I’m skeptical.

We hypothesized that there were four possible reasons why this was happening:

1. Facebook penalizes 3rd party API’s EdgeRank – FIXED
2. Facebook collapses 3rd Party API updates
3. High chance of being scheduled or automated
4. Content is not optimized for Facebook

First of all, as they mention, they’re comparing apples to oranges. Impressions are a measure of who sees the content. Engagement is a measure of who interacts with the content. In addition, the actual algorithm penalizing apps is only part of the problem.

Given that:

1. to my knowledge, Facebook is still collapsing 3rd party updates,
2. the actual quality of the posts is often worse, and
3. people have the ability to hide all updates by certain apps from their feed,

I still believe 3rd party posted content will receive fewer impressions and (especially) engagement than content posted directly through Facebook and formatted accordingly.

Link to the study by EdgeRank Checker.

Facebook’s Hybrid News Feed Has Smaller Pages Swimming Upstream

Facebook released the hybrid news feed in September 2011. A subsequent month-long study found that “most Pages experienced a decrease in impressions, while larger Pages (especially those with 100k+ fans) tended to experience an increase in engagement.”

Link to the study by EdgeRank Checker.

Keep in Mind What Fans Are Expecting When They Like Your Page

• 33% of consumers say “When I want to communicate with a brand, I post on the brand’s Facebook Page.”

Source: CMO Council

• 47% of consumers say “When I connect with a brand online for a customer service or support issue, I expect answers within 24 hours.”
• 67% of consumers say “When I Like a brand on Facebook, I expect to be eligible for exclusive offers.”
• When it comes to “why I Like a brand” (what consumers said), vs. “why we think people Like brands” (what marketers said), marketers and consumers are on very different “pages” (pun intended).

Link to the study by CMO Council (PDF).

Why Fans Are Unfollowing Your Brand on Facebook & How to Stop Them

• 46% – The information was not interesting.
• 46% – The information was published too often.
• 39% – The brand is no longer of interest to me.
• 23% – The brand published information I did not appreciate.
• 14% – Information was not published often enough.

“Engagement in Facebook brands’ walls is down 22%,” said Syncapse CEO Michael Scissons. “But declining engagement has less to do with brand fatigue in general than with marketers doing a bad job and shoving boring [content] at consumers.”

“At DDB, Bernbach taught us to behave with respect for the consumer, recognizing that brands are in the hands of consumers, not marketers. Facebook is making it more relevant than ever today. Brands got blinded by the technology, forgetting about the basics of relationships in the way they interacted with consumers,” said Sebastian Genty, DDB’s planning director. “They need to learn to behave like any human being, with respect and transparency. Rhythm is key, as in any new relationship.”

Link to the Study by DDB & Oppinionway.

So What Have We Learned?

• Increase your Affinity score by consciously working to get fans engaged on an ongoing basis.
  • There’s nothing worse than being boring! Be interesting and controversial. Start a debate. Ask questions. Have people fill in the blank. Create a poll. Post trivia and quizzes.
  • Respond to Likes on posts with questions and always respond to comments to keep the conversation going.
  • Give things away and offer discounts. When you do, use the words  ”coupon” and ”$ off” (not % off). Here are 26 ideas and an app to help you out.
  • Promote your Page offline, on your website and use the Open Graph to make it easy for your fans to participate outside of Facebook.
• Improve Edge Weight by posting photos, videos and links which generally have the highest Edge Weight. This doesn’t have to be hard.
• Don’t overwhelm people.
• Keep posts at 40-80 characters or less.
• Post one to four times per week and never more twice per day.
• Optimize updates for Facebook.
  • Although using 3rd party tools can make it easier, avoid them when possible.
  • Tag other Pages and Events. When possible, use your personal profile to tag other people.
  • When posting links, choose a good picture.
  • Avoid hashtags, shortlinks and other evidence of cross-posting.

We’ll be posting a Part 3 all about the timing of posts soon. Stay tuned!

If you haven’t already looked at Facebook’s new Page Insights, look them over today. Do these studies back up what you’re seeing with your brand? Do they contradict? Let us know and be sure to Like the Big Sea Facebook Page!

All you really need to build a blog is great content, but there are definitely some tools that will help grow and engage your readership. We build a lot of blogs, and we’ve compiled our list of 5 essential tools you’ll need to build, syndicate and promote your blog content.

1. List managers.  Email and feed subscriptions are a blogger’s gold, so make sure you’ve got opportunities for people to subscribe to email, feeds, whatever.  Feeds alone won’t drive long-term, sustained traffic you need to build your ad dollars, so make sure you start an email subscription and deliver a weekly newsletter to pull out some of your archive content.  We prefer these tools:
   • CampaignMonitor.  We use CM’s CreateSend product to set up professional newsletter templates and manage email subscriptions.  We can’t say enough awesome things about the tools they’ve created for our clients to use.  If you want us to help you set up an email list and professionally designed templates, get in touch.
   • Feedburner.  Redirect your feeds through Google’s Feedburner product and set up email subscriptions as well, for inbox delivery of your RSS feeds.  Simple, free.
2. Opt-in Sign-up Forms. Now that you’ve got your lists ready, how do you get subscribers? Ask them to sign up, silly. Everywhere. Make sure you ask them in your sidebar, at the top of your posts, after they read a great article. There are a gazillion (yes, that many) plugins to help you build your lists. While we generally write custom code for these, there are plenty of easy plugins out there, like these.
   • Referrer Detector. This is especially great if your posts are syndicated or inexplicably promoted through other sites and media. You can create specific greetings for visitors from referring sites at the top of your blog, and include a link to sign up for your feed or email list.
   • Campaign Monitor Ajax Forms helps you add your email list sign up boxes anywhere on your blog – as a widget in a sidebar or through shortcode on any page.
   • Feedburner forms are super simple to paste into any text widget or the HTML tab of your editor, but if you need help, use Feedburner Anywhere to grab subscriptions.
3. Sharing Tools. Easily the most often requested “plugin” that everyone needs/wants. There are many ways to encourage syndication of your content through social networks, and thousands of plugins to support whatever you want to do. We think style is important, so we like to keep our sharing tools subtle and in-line with the design of a blog. As such, our favorite plugins are:
   • Norcross‘s great Simple Social Sharing. The easiest, most elegant way to add the like/tweet/digg/share icons to the footer of every post. No settings, no fuss, no muss. That’s it.
   • Share This. If you want options, use the free and easy Share This plugin.
4. Comments! WordPress themes all account for simple commenting systems, but to really encourage discussion and help folks interact and share content, use a plugin to assist. Plenty of discussion abounds on these plugins, so have at it. I find it’s a personal preference of the blogger I’m working with.
   • Akismet. Start here. Akismet fights spam in your comments like no other. All you need is an API key, which is free.
   • Disqus. We like Disqus because it’s feature-rich and ridiculously simple to use. Inline media embedding (hello, video!), mobile commenting and great notification systems make it worth the 2 minutes to install.
   • Facebook comments. This may be the wave of the future, or at least the very near future. You can add the ability for users to use their Facebook accounts to make comments that (might) get published to their FB profiles, thus helping to spread your good word.
5. Search Engine Optimization. You’ll never go anywhere without some Google love, so be sure your pages and posts are ready to rock.
   • Google XML Sitemap generator. Get this, use it. Submits your blog’s sitemaps to Google whenever you write a new post or add a page.
   • All In One SEO Pack is a great do-it-all SEO plugin. If your theme isn’t already loaded with SEO goodness, this plugin gives you the ability to write all of your custom titles and meta-data without doing any extra work. Or, you can fine-tune all you want using their interface.

Ok, so what’s missing? Sidebar content (widgets). Analytics. Putting together an editorial calendar. Managing syndication across your own social networks. Advertising and monetization. Image and layout managers, galleries and featured content promotion. Archive and search tools.

The list of what’s missing is longer than what’s here – which is to say that there is no one-best-path to success as a blogger. You’ll need to write, write and write more to find out what works for you, your content and your readers – but the list above is a great place to start.

What are your favorite must-have blogging tools or plugins? Do share.

What you see in your Facebook newsfeed isn’t magic; it’s controlled by a very important algorithm called EdgeRank. Facebook wants users to be engaged, so EdgeRank is a critical aspect of their business. The EdgeRank factors are:

• Affinity – How often you interact with others (be it visiting a friend’s profile or commenting on a Page’s picture).
• Edge Weight – The type of content it is. A few types are: photos, videos, status updates, place checkins, becoming friends with someone, Liking a Page, changing your profile picture, etc. Keep in mind, there are general rules, but everyone’s Edge Weight is different and Facebook has carte blanche to tweak things at will.
• Recency – The older something is, the less likely you are to see it.

Strategies for Effective Facebook Wall Posts

• Posts made between 8 PM and 7 AM receive 20% more user engagement.
• On Wednesdays, fan engagement is 8% above average.
• Posting one to two times per day produces 40% higher user engagement.
• Posting one to four times per week produces 71% higher user engagement.
• Posts with 80 characters or less receive 66% higher engagement. Very concise posts – those between one and 40 characters – generate highest engagement. Only 5% of all retail brand wall posts are less than 40 characters in length, even though these receive 86% higher fan engagement.
• Ask questions to spark dialogue – “question” posts generate comment rates double that of “non-question” posts.
• Fill in the blank posts receive 9 times more comments than other posts.
• Offer fans “$ off” and coupons. Posts containing these offer-related keywords receive the highest engagement.
• “$ off” offers receive twice the engagement of “% off” offers.
• Avoid complicated wall posts. Status-only posts receive 94% higher than average engagement

Link to the Study by Buddy Media.

DOES USING A 3RD PARTY API TO Post TO FACEBOOK DECREASE ENGAGEMENT? YES!

Source: edgerankchecker.com

Using a 3rd party API to update your Facebook Page decreases your likelihood of engagement per fan (on average) by about 80%. A Breakdown:

• HootSuite – 69% reduction
• TweetDeck – 73% reduction
• Sendible – 75% reduction
• RSS Graffiti – 81% reduction
• Twitter – 83% reduction
• Publisher – 86% reduction
• twitterfeed – 90% reduction
• dlvr.it – 91% reduction
• Social RSS – 94% reduction
• Networked Blogs – 76% reduction

Probable Causes:

1. Facebook penalizes 3rd party API’s EdgeRank
2. Facebook collapses 3rd Party API updates
3. High chance of being scheduled or automated
4. Content is not optimized for Facebook

Link to the Study by EdgeRank Tracker.

What do you think? Are you rushing to unplug linked posts? Have you noticed anything or found any cool studies we missed? Let us know and be sure to Like the Big Sea Facebook Page!

Check out Writing Effective Facebook Posts Part 2!

In addition to the great networking and ideas that come with that many minds in one place, I came away rejuvenated and validated in my practices and approach.

The first session was Social Media Hospitality, presented by Brian Simpson, Director, Digital Media Vikram Chatwal Hotels, NYC. Brian spoke realistically and frankly about why we need to stop building our audience and start trying to engage the people who are already our fans. Stop worrying about the ‘Likes’ and focus on the conversation.

The lessons that he really hammered home for me included:

• Stop talking about how awesome you are and start engaging. Start working yourself into the conversation.
• An audience will watch you fight your battles; a community will help you fight. Use social media to help you build a community, not an audience.
• Don’t respond to every single social site comment – reduce the signal to noise ratio.
• An agency can never articulate as clearly or communicate as well as a voice from inside your organization.
• A great way to monitor your social media success includes taking lots and lots of screenshots of conversations, tweets, mentions, comments, and posts.

My favorite quote of the day reminds me that the social media space is crowded and loud. Its a noisy, busy place and we need to work hard to build true relationships organically and sincerely – not be the loudest voice. From Buddha, in all his wisdom, “Don’t speak unless it improves the silence.“

There are so many places your business can be reviewed online – Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, TripAdvisor, LinkedIn – the list is long and growing. If you’re doing something right (or seriously wrong), you’re sure to have at least a few reviews out there.

People are more likely to post online reviews in extreme cases – either they’ve had a really great experience, or something went horribly wrong. A waitress was having a bad day; a hotel room smelled like smoke; a project didn’t flow the way it should have. Whatever the reason, now you’ve got a negative review out there and you can’t do anything about it.

Here are some tips to handling negative reviews so that you can turn them into positive feedback in the future.

1. Sign up for Google alerts. Now. Get alerts for you company name, your name, and if you’re brave or interested, your competitors. Start watching what’s published out there about you and your industry. You can’t address issues if you don’t know they’re happening.

2. Don’t respond in knee-jerk mode. If you happen upon a negative review, don’t respond immediately with snappy retorts. Let it settle in and find a good approach. Whatever you do, don’t tell future customers about your negative reviews and complain about their inaccuracy. Especially when you haven’t fixed the problem.

3. Look at each review as a chance to get it right. Reviews are invaluable feedback that you would never get by simply asking. Use that information to fix what’s wrong. Then, respond to negative reviews (some sites let you respond as the business owner directly to the reviews) with a detailed list of how you addressed the issue.

4. Ask for another chance. If you can identify the customer, see if he or she will give you the opportunity to resolve the issue offline, then ask them to update their review. You’ll find when you satisfy a previously unhappy customer you’ll be creating one of your strongest advocates.

5. Do nothing. We can’t always be perfect – and that’s ok. Sometimes attempts to fight back simply fuel the fire and can turn a small blip into a big problem. Just let it go – but be sure to get as many good reviews as possible to balance the opinions.

6. Get more good reviews. Encourage your customers to post reviews on the above-mentioned sites. I’ve seen tour groups give out a card at the end of the tour asking for TripAdvisor reviews; restaurants who ask for Yelp, Google or UrbanSpoon reviews after a customer finishes dining. Don’t be afraid to ask – many satisfied customers are happy to share their experience online.

7. Don’t sweat it! If the reviews are piling up, you have some work to do. Take them seriously. But if you’re finding one or two among a pile of happiness, then let it roll off your shoulders. Consider an appropriate response but don’t stew over it. Move forward and do the best you can to remedy the problems and get more good reviews.

8. Most importantly, PAY ATTENTION. Regularly check out your listings on the sites mentioned in this post and make sure you know what’s going on with your brand image; how people feel about you. As a small businesses owner, it’s your responsibility to use these bits of public information to build relationships, improve customer service and enhance your products.

Just how significant are bad reviews for the future of our businesses? They’re significant, but not for the reasons we immediately think. They make us aware of and provide us with an opportunity to fix genuine problems and turn opponents into staunch allies. Unjustly negative reviews are often exposed as petty and have little sway with intelligent consumers, and in the case of outright illegal reviews you generally have a remedial process to get them removed.

The number one rule when responding to all criticism, even the negative type, is to stay positive. Adding more negativity to the conversation by letting yourself be drawn into a fight with a customer or user will only reflect poorly on your business.  If you know you’re doing the right thing and doing it the best way you’re able, integrity always comes out on top.

I’m stressing about it.

And I hear this from my clients all the time.

I got to reading, and realized I’m not alone. Social media is just one more thing on our plates; one more tool in our belts. It’s not the make-it-or-break-it key to success that so many evangelists make it out to be. It can be a very powerful tool if you are able to use it, but there are certainly other tools.

When you’re feeling overwhelmed or just tired of being social in social media, here are a few thoughts to help you.

1. When you want to do social media but don’t have the time, use HootSuite: Seriously a life saver. Set up a free account at this web-based social media manager. Load up all of your social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, whatever) and start posting. The best feature of HootSuite? You can schedule your posts. Schedule a few status updates for your business page to post over the weekend or while you’re on vacation or even periodically throughout the week so you don’t lost interested fans. Check in once in a while to respond to comments. Set it and forget it!

2. You don’t need to be everywhere. Read this great post about why you don’t need to be on Twitter, then stick with the social media that you think really fit your market. If your customers aren’t your fans on Facebook, you probably don’t need a page. Social media isn’t right for everyone and every business, and that’s ok. It’s not absolutely necessary to succeed.

3. Give yourself a break. Too much posting is just as annoying as a page that hasn’t been updated in two months, so ease up. Let yourself take a few days away without worry. Jump back in when you’re ready and make sure you reply to comments and start conversations. Set user expectations so that they know not to expect you online all day and night, unless that’s what you want to do.

4. Watch your competitors. There are probably a few of your competitors who are doing an awesome job with social media. They’re posting all day, replying on Twitter, starting really cool conversations with industry leaders. Then, there are probably quite a few who have no social media presence at all. Which of those competitors are most successful? You’ll probably find a balance. There are many ways to stay connected to your clients and customers; social media is just another tool in your belt.

5.  Enlist help.  Find an employee who has a good handle on social media that can spend 20 minutes a day posting for your business.  Buy a cheap netbook (or maybe an iPad!) and let them go at it.  Hand over the reigns. You’ll be sharing a much more realistic and genuine view of your business than trying to half-heartedly maintain control doing it yourself.  Give your employees a voice and let them build those relationships.

Business owners wear a lot of hats, and marketing has to be one of them, but no one is expecting you to be perfect. Do what’s best for you, keeping an eye on your competitors, and you’ll be fine.

1. Fans – not friends (page not profile)

• Don’t make people ask to friend you – fan pages are public; anyone can become a fan (vendors, clients, employees).
• Fan pages status updates are indexed by Google’s real time search results – use them to post links and it helps SEO for that website.
• Be sure to grab your business name (or something close to it) so you can easily share your Facebook page address.
• Multiple profiles are actually against FB terms and you can be banned.

2.  What to post

• Stay on topic (whatever that topic might be) and be present daily.
• Save your rants and tirades for somewhere else.
• Tell your story by sharing some personal information about your business.
• Add value to your fans – share news, links and stories (use Google or Yahoo blog search to find relevant content).
• Applaud your competitors – share good work and good ideas, give credit where credit is due.
• Speak in your own voice, not in business speak.

3. When to post

• When are your visitors online?   Chances are you can tell this by looking at your website analytics.
• Daily is not too often.  Hourly is too often.  Find a balance.
• Too many status updates clogs your fans’ newsfeeds; bores them and bothers them.  Don’t be annoying!
• Go slow and steady – don’t overdo it.  It takes time to build up the residual returns.

4. Use applications to increase engagement

• At the very least, Networked Blogs should be connecting with your blog.
• Connect your LinkedIn and Twitter profiles.
• Polls, contests and sweepstakes (there’s an app for that!).
• Others on Mashable

5. Develop custom tabs specific to your business

• Use Static FBML to create a custom landing tabs for your page – add your email subscription form, links to pages on your website – anything you can do with HTML/CSS you can do on this tab.
• Use boxes to add your business information, polls and surveys.
• If your wall is nothing to write home about (lacking comments or updates), use one of these tabs as your landing tab for new visitors.
• Hire a web designer if you need help – this is a quick and easy project that helps make your profile sticky and fun.

6. Join the conversation – but don’t control it.

• Respond to comments and make comments on your fan’s profiles and pages
• Add their businesses to your fan’s  “favorites.”
• Allow natural commenting and questions to happen (Dell is a great example).
• Respond kindly and swiftly to negative comments;  don’t delete them, but use them as feedback to improve your business – show your fans that you care enough to change.

7. Offer discounts and specials to your Facebook fans.

• Give people a reason to recommend you to their friends.
• Say thank you once in awhile!
• Track this  and use the information to improve the offer.
• Offer a choice of discount (which would you prefer?).
• Solicit feedback from your fans on your business decisions (would you rather see us open a new location in North Pinellas or add two more professionals to our current location?).
• Which incentives you use depend on the type of business you are running.

8. Leverage the power of Facebook Events

• Use events only for the notable, big events you’re hosting or involved in – not your weekly or daily specials.
• Only invite fans/friends to whom the event is relevant! (Local, likely to attend or interested in your business/topic).
• Promote your events with Facebook ads.
• Decide whether or not to show the guest list (small events = no; big events = yes).
• Enable the wall if it’ll spark good discussion, not just RSVPs.
• Add links to related pages on your website or partnering businesses.
  

9. Use your Facebook URL everywhere, like a website.

• Many brands have started using it instead of their website in print and web advertising
• Creates more of a relationship than a website does
• Fresher content and more easily editable than your website
• Add to business cards and especially email signatures

10. Use Facebook ads!

• They’re cheap, targeted and you can help build your fan base very affordably.
• Run campaigns that are compelling and promote your Facebook page, a promotion or an event instead of trying to sell something
• If you build a good FBML tab with good content, you can use ads to bring people to your uploaded presentations, white papers, even your events.
• Figure that you’d spend a few hundred dollars on a Yellow Pages advertisement so be willing to test out a similar budget on Facebook
• Use the ‘social ads’ – show the connections between your page and specific users who are fans

More tips and tricks

• Remember that Facebook statuses update mobile platforms (notifications are free mobile advertising!)
• Use FB to research business prospects/partners/clients/employees
• Combine with your other social media initiatives (Twitter, blogging)
• Use Facebook to find guest bloggers and connect with others in your industry
• Use FB to syndicate other web content, links to articles and news stories

Facebook Resources

• Facebook Advertising
• AllFacebook
• Mashable
• Chris Brogan
• Social Media Examiner
• Inside Facebook
• PDF eBook from Hubspot

Enter foursquare.  Foursquare is a mobile application that combines social media with game-like mechanics, encouraging healthy competition and personal besting.   Users ‘check in’ to local establishments using their phone app as they move around town.  They are rewarded with badges as they explore new places and check in more frequently.  They find friends and share tips about the places they go.

Foursquare has only recently become popular in the Tampa Bay area, and as more and more users sign up (Foursquare is aiming to reach 1,000,000 members by Foursquare Day on April 16th), businesses can benefit by rewarding their loyalty.

As an aside, foursquare day was conceived and organized by Tampa’s own Dr. Nate Bonilla-Warford of Bright Eyes Family Vision Center. It’s been adopted and promoted all over the world – so let’s be proud and represent, Tampa!

There are a lot of simple ways to encourage users to check in at your business, but it all comes down to rewarding customer loyalty based on the data behind foursquare usage.

1. Reward your mayor.   The mayor is the person who checks in most frequently at any establishment. Offering perks like free drinks, food specials, discounts and public promotion of your support helps build that competitive spirit and encourages others to check-in more frequently.  (Example: Hyatt Regency Tampa is giving a 50% restaurant discount to their mayor.) (Don’t allow your employees to check-in and become mayor or it throws the whole game off.)
2. Offer discounts.  Encourage users to show their phones when they check-in at your business, and give them a discount for doing so.  Offer discounts for frequency of check-ins, sharing tips, and inviting their friends.
3. Promote your foursquare love! Make sure your patrons know that you encourage the use of foursquare with frequently updated marquees, tweets and Facebook status updates about their check-in behavior.   Use your in-store marquees and signage to promote the discounts and perks you offer.
4. Let foursquare know. On the iPhone and mobile web versions of foursquare, special attention is given to businesses that offer promotions or discounts for users.  Let foursquare know about your deals, and they’ll share some insights into what other businesses are experimenting with, what works and what doesn’t.
5. Get involved with foursquare day (April 16). Promote your deals and foursquare itself for the next couple weeks to help encourage people to get on board and start using foursquare.  Become a fan on Facebook and stay tuned to what your colleagues and competitors are doing (because if you’re not going to do it, someone else certainly will!).

To learn more about foursquare and how it can benefit your business:

• Building an army of hyper-local, mobile-connected advocates (AdAge)
• Foursquare shows the business potential of location based services (TechCrunch)
• Foursquare CEO:  We’ll hit 1-million members in a few weeks (WSJ)

But this year, I really really wanted to go.  I am running a web business, working on social media plans, engaging daily with new technology and testing new ideas – I really should be at one of the top interactive conferences of the year, right?  And the music – oh the music!

This year has been big for Big Sea.  Like mega-uber-big.   So it wasn’t in the cards.

Just to make myself feel better, here are a few reasons I’m not at SXSW this year.  (I’d make a list of why I should be there but it would be waaaaay too long.)

1. I opened an office!  Big Sea grew and grew beyond the scope of my back deck and home office.  I found I needed better separation of work and home life, and needed people around me too.  I’m an extrovert, after all.   Anyway, opening the office meant new computers (and of course, they can’t be anything but Mac), rent, all of the expenses I didn’t have when working from home.   Financially, it didn’t make sense to spend a few grand on the conference this year.
2. I have a 15 month old daughter. I know my husband and parents are more than capable of caring for her in my absence, but I would miss her!  Ok, this isn’t a really strong reason, but it’s a contributor.
3. We are swamped.  I had 4 new client meetings this week, am trying to push 2 HUGE development projects forward to launch April 1 and simultaneously finish 2 fairly large design projects.  In addition, I need to keep up with the numerous and ongoing needs of all of my clients. New web content or features, eblasts and ideas galore.  Not that this ever changes.  I’m always swamped, and I always feel guilty taking time away.
4. I’m afraid of flying. Nope, not true.
5. My cat needs to get her tonsils out.  Also no.
6. It might rain.  (I love rain.)

So I’m out of reasons, and the first three are pretty lame.   I should be there.

See ya next year!

You’re a small business owner, and you know that you need to use Facebook for promotion. You might even have a fan page already built.  But are you using it to its fullest potential? What are you leaving on the table, and how can you maximize the very little time in your day to get the most out of your social media marketing?

It’s important to understand  how, when, where and why using social media makes sense and what impact using them will have on your business.

Join us for lunch at Three Birds Tavern (pardon the music) on Tuesday, March 23 to learn:

• What to post and what not to post – and when
• How to make – and keep – fans
• Creative ideas for engaging your fans
• Why and why not to use Facebook ads
• How to translate fans into sales

Where:  Three Birds Tavern
When: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 at 12:00 pm
How much: $15 for paid LS1 members / $20 non-members / $25 at the door
(includes lunch, drink and tip + 45 minute workshop and discussion time)

Register in advance at LocalShops1.com »