Negative Feedback on Facebook Pages

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Amanda O'Brien

I got an email today asking me what ‘negative feedback’ was on Facebook pages so I thought I would explain it here too.

Facebook Insights content If you have experience with Facebook’s Insights, you have seen where your most recent and most popular content is listed. These content items are listed in Facebook Insights with: the post, the reach of the post, the number of engaged users, how many people were talking about this and the post’s virality.

Facebook negative feedback reportIf you click on engaged users, it gives you a breakdown of how people were engaged with your content. Perhaps they watched the video, viewed the photo, clicked on something, created their own update from your post etc. You may also see any ‘negative feedback’ your post may have received. Negative feedback is defined as “People who hid your post or gave it negative feedback in their news feed”.

When your posts show up in someone’s news feed they have the option to like it or comment on it. They also have the option to hide the story, report the story as spam or to hide all stories from your organization. If they choose one of those latter options, it is considered ‘negative feedback’.

I don’t think this is something to really lose sleep over. I do think you should review negative feedback reports as you review your Facebook Insights. Knowing which content people don’t value or hide, will just help you to refine what you are delivering. Maybe it was worded wrong. Maybe you talk about your sponsors too much. Maybe you post too many photos or videos. Perhaps you post too frequently. It could be lots of things.

Don’t let negative feedback derail your efforts too much! Just let it help guide you in your content planning for the future!

Posted in Facebook, Social Media | Leave a comment

Are You Branching Out?

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Amanda O'Brien

Branchout Facebook ApplicationLinkedIn has held the title of the most popular professional social network for a long time now with little competition. Could the Facebook Application, BranchOut, be making a play for the top of the professional sector?

BranchOut is a free Facebook application that allows users to create a professional profile on Facebook. BranchOut claims to have more than 25 million registered users and over 400 million professional profiles. BranchOut uses the information from your Facebook friends that are using the application and makes introductions to other users that you may be interested in. Once you start to use the application, you can follow companies, build your network, endorse people, post notes/updates and post your own job board.

What makes the thought of the application challenging LinkedIn at all is that it sits atop Facebook – the most used social networking site in the world. As soon as you start using BranchOut, your profile is filled in with the information from your Facebook profile – current and past employment, education etc. Having Facebook’s personal data, the monopoly on where people are spending their time online and the ease of use – gives BranchOut some potential.

The question is will people use it and/or abandon beloved LinkedIn.

Facebook is a much more casual place than LinkedIn. To give a real-world example:

LinkedIn is like going to a professional event, conference, speaking engagement, sales meeting etc.
There is a certain way you dress, carry yourself and speak.

BranchOut is like going to bar with your friends and talking about what you do for work.
I have a lot of friends that I am not even sure I know what they do for work exactly.
Friends I have met growing up, in college and in life but I am not sure what their day-to-day duties at work are.

My money is still on LinkedIn but I see an interesting place for BranchOut. With social media, as our lives become more transparent, the lines will blur between personal and professional you. BranchOut may relate to younger users who are comfortable with Facebook and transparency in all aspects in their lives.

Are any of you using BranchOut? Do you like it? Do you think it will challenge LinkedIn?

Posted in Facebook, LinkedIn, Social Media | 4 Comments

Testing Your Website on Mobile Phones

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Amanda O'Brien

social media breakfast maine mobile siteLast week’s Social Media Breakfast left me with a lot of ideas and with more items on my to-do list. One thing that really struck me was from Halley Silver’s talk about their development environment at King Arthur Flour. Halley’s presentation was about how King Arthur has taken a mobile first design approach, whereas most companies design for a desktop first and then take that design and make a mobile version.

What does your website look like on a mobile phone?

Do you know? You should since more people are accessing your website from their smartphones and tablets.

GoMo, from Google, has a tool for testing your site on mobile phones and give you suggestions to make it better. All you have to do is add your URL to the GoMoMeter and you are off.

Test your site the way your customers will use it. I loved hearing about how the King Arthur team left their office and set up in a coffee shop to test their new mobile versions of their site. Actually using your site the way your customers will, gives you more insight on layout issues or bugs you may not find with an online tester.

Want to know how much traffic your site is actually getting from mobile services? The new Google Analytics had a section just for mobile now. You can tell how much of your traffic is coming from mobile devices, compare that past traffic, see what content they are viewing, what devices they are on and a lot more. Really good information to have and to check back on regularly.

Educate yourself on how many people are viewing your site on a mobile browser and what your site looks like to them. Note any problems you find and then the fun part… find out how you are going to address them.

Posted in Marketing, Recap | Leave a comment

Who Has Pinned What From Your Site

Posted on March 19, 2012 by admin

So we all know everyone is excited about Pinterest. For some industries it is a gold mine and for many of us it is a new found addiction.

Since we here at SMBME are very serious about business, I thought I would share with you this little shortcut to see what from your website has been shared to Pinterest, by who and how many times.

All you need to do is type http://pinterest.com/source/ and add your URL at the end.
For an example we are going to use our friends over at The Beadin’ Path and if we type in http://pinterest.com/source/beadinpath.com to our address bar we will see all the things that have been pinned from their site by them and by other people.

Beadin Path Pinterest Source

With this information you can not only tell what is popular or who is pinning your photos or products but what they have to say for feedback about them too. That is some good information to have!

It was too easy and good not to share. Happy pinning.

Posted in Marketing, Pinterest, Social Media Tips | Leave a comment