People Behaving Badly

Monday, April 6, 2015
The photo is shot from the Great American Tower at Queen City Square.
The Enquirer/ Liz Dufour

Like it or not, we live in an era where our private and public conversations can become instant fodder for the media monsters. Our thoughts, whether consciously or unconsciously spoken, are ingested and churned out into a multitude of managed social media platforms and carried along by the viral river of instant sharing.

Two recent examples of people who “went off” in public with the cameras rolling are Cincinnati Reds Manager, Bryan Price and Nancy Gordeuk,  the Principal of TNT Academy in Lilburn, Georgia.  I would imagine that both are very familiar with the media and the repercussions that could occur if their words were to become ‘the shot heard round the internet’. Despite this awareness, their innate behavior reared its head and plunged them forward.

Reds Manager, Bryan Price erupted in a series of F-bombs as he shared his frustration with media leaks about his team.  Ms. Gordeuk  lost her cool and reverted to racist speech, “Look who’s leaving … all the black people”, after forgetting the Valedictory address and dealing with families who did not want to remain after the graduation ceremony was completed to hear the speech. In the school situation, I get the impression that the principal is inherently racist and losing her cool allowed those private thoughts to bubble up into public words and actions.  You can watch the video and judge for yourself.

No matter whether these were personality aberrations or part of Mr. Price and Ms. Gordeuk’s  regular behavior patterns, their words were captured for all to hear and make judgment upon their personal brands. Everyone should follow good reputation management principles to monitor their brand and be aware of how they will be perceived. With apps like Periscope, tweeting live streaming video and sound recording devices like Kapture, memorializing our words in bite-size segments, one just might go viral without a marketing plan. Better make sure the product is a good one or you may end up stating “the devil made me do it” on national media.

You can find more information on social media here.

Where did all the Facebook Page Fans go?

84% of your Facebook Fans Won’t See Your Page Posts

Facebook made a major move to increase revenue recently with Promoted Posts (not the same as a Facebook ad).  If you have a Facebook Page for your business, you may have noticed that your Page stats (number of new fans, reach and frequency, etc) have been edging southward.  For example, a typical Page post might have garnered a couple of hundred views on a fan base of 800 with a moderately engaged audience and above-average content several months ago.  That same Page is seeing reach numbers in the double digits (i.e. 63 views).

I just completed a Facebook Page Promoted Posts test in which I updated the same post about an upcoming C3 LinkedIn Training class as a regular post and as a Promoted post. I found a major difference in organic and viral reach with the paid post (much higher!).  In fact, the Promoted Post (a mere $5 outlay) brought in 851% more total views than the non-promoted post with identical content.  I had zero viral reach for the non-promoted post, only organic (original) Page fans, while the Promoted post had several hundred viral viewers.  (Check this out for information on the difference between organic, viral and paid reach.)  Post analytics will also point out how many of the views were paid views.  It’s interesting that my organic views (original fans) were much higher than the non-promoted organic views for the post, emphasizing the point that Facebook adjusted the Edgerank algorithm to allow more of my current fan base to see the post in their news feed as when the post was not promoted.

It’s really too bad that Page owners won’t be able to use Edgerank to drive frequency and reach with engaging content as they could prior to FB’s current quest to drive monetization.

I think this will have a huge effect on small businesses. Every business, regardless of size, will need to set aside part of their marketing budget to allocate to Facebook advertising or risk having only 16% of their user base see posts shared by the Page.

If this sounds like Farsi to you, then perhaps a Facebook Page Marketing consult should be in your future.  We are happy to get your business/organization up to speed on the recent changes to Facebook Page Marketing.  Just contact us here.

Yours in social,

Michelle Beckham-Corbin

President of C3. Creating Connections Consulting, LLC

C3 Facebook Page

www.CreatingConnectionsConsulting.com

Cincinnati Area LinkedIn Training

LinkedIn is a dynamic professional networking site and is used by over 120 million people around the world. Every professional and business or organization should have a profile on LinkedIn.  It is much more than a repository for your resume; rather, it’s a living, breathing community that can make a difference in your business or career. The benefits of being a member of LinkedIn include making professional connections; knowledge sharing with others in your industry; discovering business-building opportunities, networking and professional training events, as well as job openings and so much more!

C3, in partnership with the Warren County Career Center in Lebanon, Ohio, will be offering two different levels of LinkedIn workshops in November.  WCCC is a University System of Ohio Provider.

LinkedIn I Basics- Hands-on Lab Workshop

is for those who are new to LinkedIn or have a dormant profile and want to become active.  The course covers everything you need to know to have a stellar profile plus:

• Optimizing your Profile for Search Engines (SEO)
• Personal branding and the critical Summary Statement
• Key profile settings
• The correct way to send Introductions
• Maximizing the search function to find the information that you need
• How to successfully obtain personal recommendations
• LinkedIn Etiquette

This course will be held in our computer lab and access to a PC is included.  Remember to bring your log-in information.

• November 16^th: 1:30-3:30 p.m.
• Cost:  $99

Register here. Or call 513-932-8145.

LinkedIn II: Advanced Marketing Strategies

is an advanced class for those who have a completed LinkedIn profile and want to become proficient at leveraging all of the tools and applications that LinkedIn offers in order to build business and make strategic connections. Emphasis is on using Linkedin vs. creating a personal profile. The course also covers corporate use of LinkedIn from company profile creation to advanced search techniques for industry and business. We examine the paid membership options so you can make informed decisions about your level of membership and use of the platform.

Live demonstrations.

• November 30^th: 10:00 a.m.-Noon
• Cost: $69

Register here. Or call 513-932-8145.

Love to see you in one of the workshops!

Managing Online Communities

Community- image credit: Michelle Beckham

Connecting with people is my passion and always has been (hence the name of my company) and it always amazes me when businesses are apprehensive about connecting with their online communities.  I see this many times through the Facebook Page Marketing workshops that I teach in the Cincinnati area. Page administrators are a bit nervous to engage in conversations for fear that something may come up that they can’t handle.

A business owner in my most recent workshop asked if he should immediately delete negative comments posted to the wall of his retail company page.  My immediate answer was NO! One needs to step back and think about how they would handle the situation if the patron was at their place of business. The disgruntled customer would not be ignored or dismissed; instead, store personnel would ignite customer service 101 principles and handle the situation appropriately. This is the same thing with Facebook. A negative comment is a chance to put customer service into effect and to handle the situation publicly so that others can see how you operate.  Chances are the comment will have hit news feeds and the cloud before you can delete it anyway, and then you are left with a negative image that you will have to deal with later.

The exception to dealing with these types of comments in a professional and customer service oriented way is if the comments are clearly put out there by “trolls” . A troll is defined by Wikipedia as:

“..someone who posts inflammatory,^[2]extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response^[3] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.”

Troll comments should be deleted and the Page admin can still make some statements to the community to explain why the action was taken. Might even be a great time to set up some community Page rules and post them in the Notes Tab in order to stay static or if your budget allows, create a custom Tab where your rules will be prominently seen under your Page Profile Pic or Banner. Coca Cola does a great job of posting their “House Rules” as a custom Tab. Take a look here. C3 makes custom tabs at reasonable prices. Check our website for more information.

The goal to having an online presence should be connecting with your customers and potential customers by creating signature experiences and opportunities for needed content that only you can provide. There certainly is a lot that goes into managing a Facebook Page and its corresponding online community, but once an administrator receives training on how to  effectively market the Page and build a following, then a little advice from community managers who are rocking it out online would certainly be helpful.

I happened to stumble upon this great FREE eBook on Google+ (thanks Mike Alber for posting). It shares 60 tips from community managers across the globe that can help you to be effective with your online engagement. The eBook was created by Blaise Grimes-Viort and appeared in this blog post.  Blaise states:

“If you enjoy it, please feel free to share it with someone else you think would benefit from the pearls of Community Management wisdom found within.”

So in the spirit of sharing great work, here it is (click on image or link below):

eBook created by Blaise Grimes-Viort- photo credit: Blaise Grimes-Viort

60 Insights From Experienced Community Managers

Enjoy!

Michelle Beckham-Corbin

Social Media Strategist