Nobody can deny how information easily breezes through these days, especially with the help of social media outlets. According to statistics, more than 30 billion pieces of content are shared each month in Facebook alone. Content varies from web links, news stories, photos, posts, and more.

It’s so easy to share content with just a click of a button. Like or share it on Facebook and your friends have instant access to it. At times, what we retweet will even trend. Sharing has never been so easy. But we also need to be responsible on what we share online. Will it benefit our friends and followers? Or do we just want to simply “vent out” and express our thoughts and feelings?

Most people are not aware that there is some appropriate to what we share online, social media etiquette as I call it. Basically, we need to think before we post. Here are some questions you need to ask before posting online:

T – Is it TRUE? – Is the source reliable? Is it factual and accurate or just some hoax some people made up? What’s the use of information that isn’t true? It’s best to check the sources.

H – Is it HELPFUL? – Will the post benefit the readers? Is the information useful enough to help improve other people’s lives? The goal of information is to help people gain new or more knowledge about a topic. Make sure you post do that.

I – Is it INSPIRING? – Does the post elicit action and feelings from your readers? Some posts can help inspire people to go after something they’ve wanted to try for a long time. Meanwhile, other posts help make us feel better. They help the soul than having practical use.

N – Is it NECESSARY? – Do you really NEED to share it? Will it serve a purpose or are you creating social media clutter? It’s best to share posts that will benefit everyone. These can be news articles on natural disasters, world news, or what will generally affect everyone. If the general public needs to know it, then go on and share it.

K – Is it KIND? – Spread the kindness and goodness to everyone, even online. If it is rude and shaming others, then don’t post it. Cyber bullying is not to be taken lightly. A lot of people have become victim to it. And you don’t want to be one of the bullies. Nobody gains anything by being mean, offline or online. Kindness, on the other hand, makes you and others feel good.

Next time you want to share or post something, better ask yourself these questions. A little etiquette goes a long way, specially online.

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In this episode of Ask Ben, I will answer the question: “How Do I turn Social Media follows in to paying customers?”. There’s no secret sauce really… just plain relationship building and lots of generous effort to help people. Watch the video and find out how!

Feel free to post a question below if you want to know more! 🙂

The post How do I turn Social Media Followers into Customers? appeared first on Ben Francia.

That means more likes, comments and more likes in comments. As a brand and business, you also want to be able to market yourself as an authority in your industry. That means no-nonsense posts and down-to-business insights and articles on the latest developments. But how do you draw attention and become as relevant to your business as possible at the same time?

That’s simple. Use chat ups. Chat ups are great ways of engaging customers and at the same time raising your interaction for your Facebook page. They’re pretty simple to set up and all you’ll really need is a Hootsuite, TweetDeck or any other automated post tool to help you out in posting these attention getters.

Here’s a short list of chat ups you may want to use:

• Questions and polls – this one is a direct question that seeks to get people to answer. Make sure that the question is open ended and that people can still discuss their thoughts and opinions. Keep in mind to be thankful that they shared their time with you.
• Fill in the blanks – This one gets your users to guess which word comes next. While the main point of the chat-up is to inform, people tend to mess around with this one because it’s funny and it gives people a little look on the bright side every once in a while.
• Breaking News – By that, I mean news that can actually affect a person’s way of living. It is not just the typical news that people can choose not to care about. It has to be something that establishes urgency and a call-to-action.
• Tip of the day – When you want to tell your fans that you’re a professional at what you do, you’ll want to give them tips. They could be posted at a daily basis, but I recommend using it at least thrice or twice a week.
• Caption this – Of all the chat ups, this one was the most particularly successful one at drawing more attention and impressions too. Post pictures that resemble authenticity in the workplace and ask people to provide a textual description as to what’s going on.

This chat up gets its power from humor and if you plan to use this one, be sure that besides having enough pictures for posting, you have the sense of humor to go with it too.

Remember to use these chat-ups only as needed. You want your folks craving for these pieces of information. As much as possible, set up schedules for these so your audience have something to look forward to from you.

Let me know your thoughts, folks.

The post Facebook Chat-up Tips appeared first on Ben Francia.

It’s one thing to get your fans and followers to follow you. It’s a completely different thing to get them to stay and hang on to your every word. Let’s be honest about it. These people follow you because they think they’ll get the good stuff from you and they expect you to deliver every single time.

Seems pretty hard, but that’s the hard cold truth. The key here is to know what to post, how to post and when to post your value filled messages – just to keep them looking at your page and visiting ever so often. I’ve made a list of things you might want to do to keep your fans and followers glued on to you.

• Create a list of topics – You’ll need to come up with a list of topics that are highly-relevant to your business. This list will be your reference for blog posting and looking for content to share in the Interwebs.

Say if you’re into photography and you’re marketing yourself as one. You need to have lighting, lenses and cameras as sub topics with which you can blog and look for similar blogs about.

• Create a list of blogs – This is where you get to publish other people’s content for your fans to see. You don’t have to be the sole resource of everything that’s related to your industry (at least, not right now). You can give them the content they need and want and they’ll eventually see you as the resource person for your industry.

It’s similar to Google in that while it doesn’t always produce content of its own, people flock to it to get what they want. That’s the value behind being a resource for all Internet knowledge – a curator so to speak.

• Get an automation tool – Now, you can’t be in front of your PC or laptop all the time. You’ll eventually have to get out and meet people in the offline world. So who’s going to handle your tweets and posts while you’re gone?

Automation software, of course.

There’s a variety of tools out there, but I recommend getting any of these three:

1. TweetDeck
2. MarketMeSuite and
3. HootSuite

They’re all pretty easy to learn and they all come at an affordable price (TweetDeck has a free version.)

• Schedule posts accordingly – For Twitter, it’s best to tweet once every hour. This is so you don’t look like a spammer to the people who follow you, but tweet enough to get people to see your valuable content.

For Facebook, you’ve to set an interval of at least 3 hours before posting another valuable status update in your page. You’ve also go to make sure that your post in Facebook has a call to action that tells them to Like or comment about the said post. Such activity and frequency affects the update’s chances of appearing in multiple user streams.

• Create and schedule chat ups – Chat ups are basically just posts and tweets that ask for comments and other forms of feedback. For Facebook, they work really well to increase your posts’ chances of appearing in your fans’ news feeds.

For Twitter, it’s essentially used to nourish and intensify the relationship you’ve started with your followers. Though not as engaging as the Facebook chat-up model, this is a leeway with which you can still communicate with your audience.

• Blog frequently – Last but not least, to tell people who you are and reinforce their decision of liking and following you, you’ve got to blog about your own stuff. I’d recommend at least 1 post per day and then have it promoted in your social places.

That about wraps it up on how you can keep your fans and followers, folks. It’s a pretty simple thing to do once you’ve laid everything down on paper and on your automation software.

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