Include a clear call to action (CTA) at the end of all marketing messages
That’s what my mentor often says. And that goes for blog posts, podcasts, landing pages and videos.
Why use call to actions? You’ve worked hard to script and produce the video. You’ve spent even more time editing and optimizing it. And your audience was drawn to watch it.
[Read more…]
A call-to-action is a marketing term for an invitation to take a specific action. It is usually given in a straight-forward and direct manner, like “sign up now” or “buy now”.
But why do you need a call-to-action?
If you explain a concept well, wouldn’t your readers understand you and know what to do next already?
Why the need for an obvious call-to-action? [Read more…]
Facebook Etiquette For Professionals
Medical Associations and Councils around the world have very tight guidelines for professionals using Media. This is to protect medical staff and patients. But since the explosion of Facebook, professionals have jumped onto the platform without taking note of Facebook’s terms of use nor the industry’s code of ethics.
It is with these in mind that I was approached to write the article “Etiquette of Using Facebook for Medical Professionals” published by the Singapore National Heart Center.
Universal Principles The principles I shared in the article are based on fundamentals that apply to all professionals. Every industry upholds codes of ethics (whether you are a Coach, Trainer, Therapist, Teacher or Chiropractor). And every social platform has its own unwritten rules or etiquettes.
New Facebook Features Every So Often
Facebook continues to evolve and test new features. Just recently a few new features were released and I like to share a couple with you – so you can use them immediately and see some results.
Facebook Rolled Out New Event Photo Layout
If you make use of Facebook Pages to promote your business you will be happy to know that Facebook is paying more attention to the Event feature and its visual display. See image below.
The new Event Photo is 714 by 264 pixels (at the time I wrote this) and takes the top center position of an event. This gives you much more space to display a banner-like photo to promote your event. The old image was given much less exposure, measuring 180 x 185 pixels and the image was placed on the left of the event.
Thumbnail: Facebook will create a thumbnail of your event when it is shared or when this is viewed on your mobile devices (see image below).
And if you also share the event on your timeline (personal account) a thumbnail will also be shown on the Event application at the top of your profile page.
Fix For Facebook Bug To Be Rolled Out When It Is Ready Facebook announced in March 2012 that not all fans will see your posts all the time. This has generated some fierce debate in the community. While some complained (and still do), others went ahead and made the most of various cost effective Facebook advertisements.
More good news for you. Just recently Facebook admitted that a bug has caused Facebook Insights to be misreported, leading many to think that their posts reached far fewer people than they actually did. So if you are a Page owner, your total reach might have been more than what you thought.
We don’t know when the fix will be rolled out, but we do know that developers have admitted the issue are working on a fix.
Set A Solid Facebook Page Foundation
As you can see Facebook is changing all the time with new features introduced almost every week. To capitalize on these new features, it is important that you keep abreast of the changes. This is something I try to include these in my regular newsletter to you.
And it is even more important that you set up your Facebook Page correctly. Not building your Facebook Page the correct way will cost you dearly and implementing new features will not help.
I have a digital course on Facebook that helps you set up or optimize you Facebook page, what you Need to do and what you do Not want to do. I also outline how you can tap into the new Timeline Features using visuals to tell a story.
Here To Get The Facebook For Business Professionals
The course is still at an introductory fee. I am not sure how long I will keep the product at the introductory price. If you would like to a Facebook course that gives you important tips that are absolutely necessary, a course that walks you through only what you need to know (and not the frills) then get the course here before the price goes up!
Sign up now while you still remember and we’ll talk soon! By Louisa YS Chan
As promised, the free video tutorial on “How To Use ‘Free’ Facebook for Chiropractors and Massage Therapists” is now ready for you.
This was the second most requested topic from the recent survey you participated in (the most requested tutorial was on “How To Set Up Your Own Blog Site“).
As I shared in last Friday’s update, Facebok now has 1 billion active accounts generating leads for 73% of B2C businesses (that’s you).
But there are lots of traps you can fall into when promoting business on Facebook and you don’t want to get your pages shut down.
Learn how to do it the right way.
Here’s a tutorial I recorded for you. It’s the pink Facebook, it is visual-based and designed for the wellness industry.
The videos take about 15 minutes and I have broken them down into 5-minute chunks. Make sure you watch all 3 videos all the way to the end.
Click HERE and let me know how your Facebook Marketing goes.
photo credit: iconbug
Facebook Add Admin Roles With The New Admin Functions And Permissions.
Facebook just released new Admin functions allowing administrators to have different roles. This is useful if you are having different people help out with different functions for managing the brand’s business page.
The 5 new roles are
– Manager
– Content Creator
– Moderator
– Advertiser and
– Insight Analyst
What that means is that the different functions and jobs can now be performed independently by the different people with different roles and access rights.
This is particularly useful if the business outsource management of the Facebook Page to an agency. Businesses and brands can now delegate analytical and advertising work to certain people, say agencies and moderating and posting tasks to say in-house employees.
There are of course areas of overlap and that just means that these admins can cover each other’s function if necessary. The biggest takeway is that you can now control the permissions and access rights for each adminisstrator. This leads to better organisation of work as well as increase in workflow.
This table shows the rights and tasks for the different admin roles:
To set this up, you do the following:
– Go to Admin
– Click “Edit Page”
– On the left column choose “Admin Roles”
– Enter name and email of the new admin you wish to add
– Click on down arrow at the “Manager” button and a drop down list will appear
– Choose the appropriate role for this admin and Save
More information on this can be found at the Facebook Help Center here.
Try this and let me know how it goes! More Tips Here if you don’t want to miss out on our regular updates.
How To Unhide Facebook Timeline Page Hidden Posts
Have you received messages from people asking you if you have seen their posts on your Facebook Timeline Wall?
A few people contacted me and asked if I have seen their posts and I have not. I later found out that these posts have been sent to the Facebook spam folder; a little like how emails sometimes end up in spam folders.
If you are the Adminstrator of the page, you can see what else have been sent to the spam folder. On the new Facebook Timeline format it takes a little effort to find where this spam folder is.
Here’s a short 2-minute “How To” Video Tutorial on Facebook to show you where to look for missing or hidden posts on your new Facebook Timeline wall. I will also highlight options you have for managing these posts.
So grab a cup of coffee or tea, sit back and enjoy. If you find quite a number of hidden posts in that folder.
How To Look For Missing Posts On Facebook Timeline Page
The original video on YouTube here
Let me know if this is helpful and if you don’t want to miss out on regular Facebook or Marketing tips, you can sign up for our newsletters here. Or join us on our next free training here.
Facebook For Medical Professionals
Some doctors and dentists I talk to are staying away from social media for fear of transgressing the guidelines set out by the Medical Council. Some are happy using it. In the article below I highlight some effective Facebook use for the Medical Professionals.
The embedded article shows responsible and correct ways of using Facebook keeping in mind Facebook’s terms of use as well as guidelines given by the Medical Council.
Content discussed includes the following:-
– Why medical professionals should use Social Media
– View of the Medical Council
– Facebook Terms of Use
– The various Facebook Tools
– and how to use them
If you are want to connect with patients, to educate the community and to help the many e-patients who are searching the internet for information, this is one platform you can use.
There are many more things that doctors and dentist can do obviously, this is an introductory article that was meant for very busy professionals wanting to use the basics.
I hope you find this report useful and practical. If you have any questions just post them at the comments below or post them at the Louisa Chan Facebook Page and I will be responding with a video or a blog post.
For more regular helpful resources that save you time and give better productivity, feel free to join us at the Louisa Chan Business Page. And if you like, you can also get a free report on how you can Master Social Media In 5 Simple Steps Using An Hour A Week.
New Facebook Features – Facebook Video Chat
Facebook introduced another new feature as it team up with Skype. It now allows you to have video chats within Facebook with any of your Facebook friends without having to log onto another VOIP application.
I tested it briefly and while there is a little lag, I could hear the conversation clearly and I could also re size the window of the video chat.
This is a great feature for small businesses as it allows you to reach your clients and potential partners easily for a quick connect without having the both of you log onto a third party VOIP application outside of Facebook.
And your friend does not even need to have a Skype account. Now that is a big win since everyone you know seems to be on Facebook these days (apart from the 750 million people on planet earth)!
This is a free application so there is no hefty tele communication charges involved while improving work flow with your business partners and contacts.
This feature is very simple to use and lacking in features since it is still in its infancy. I believe there will be improvement soon and in the mean time, here are my findings:
So how do you initiate or activate your Facebook Video call? Here’s a 3-minute video that shows you just how you can do that.
Look for the video icon on your friend’s profile page or on his/her chat box. Clicking on that will initiate a video call. He or she will be prompted to download a small plug in to set this up for all future calls.
If you do not see the icons, you can go to www.Facebook.com/videocalling and get started there. It is pretty straightforward, you can just follow the instructions there.
If you find this post helpful, remember to leave me a comment and click the “Like” and “+1” button at the top of this post so others too can enjoy this post. Thanks!
You can also get a free report on how you can Master Social Media In 5 Simple Steps Using An Hour A Week.
What is new with the Facebook Comments?
Facebook recently introduced preview links in its comment section. These preview links are not new to Facebook; they have been around in status updates. Most people are familiar with using links to lead to blog posts or YouTube videos. Links in the comment section remained as text links until very recently.
Today as I leave a link to my YouTube video and press “enter”, I see a thumbnail image of the video player with a title and description of the video. And I can also play the YouTube video right from the comment section.
While this is not a big change, it is a very convenient and effective way of leaving comments.
1 – It is a cleaner and more effective way of leaving comments and feedback especially when you are explaining something that requires more details or a visual walk-through.
2 – Being able to play a video in the comment section saves your readers from leaving the Facebook environment and they can still read the rest of the comments that relates to the status update.
3 – These preview links with thumbnail images for your blog posts and videos are graphic. And visuals are eye-catching. They draw attention to your comment and they stand out from other comments.
All these give your link extra exposure. And if you are using your page to leave valuable comments on others status updates, this can be a lead generator bringing others to your Facebook Page or Blog Website.
Simple, just leave your links as you did before and your YouTube will play at the comment section itself. Other links will be given a thumbnail image, a title and a description. You don’t need to do anything differently!
Just a note though for your YouTube Videos, you will not be able to change the description and title as you would be able to if you were to post at the status bar. This is because the image, title and description are only displayed after you clicked and submitted your link.
These are 3 good reasons why you will want to use links in your Facebook comments. I believe these will bring you more eye-balls and may even generate you more traffic.
If you want to watch my 3-minute video which explains this new Facebook feature you can visit “New Facebook Feature – Facebook Comments with Preview” or get my Free Report on “5 Steps to Mastering Social Media in 1 Hour A Week“.
