What’s Your Facebook “Like” Strategy?

When you custom-create a message that touches your consumer, you get to choose your call to action. Your website, ads, pitches, and content, all give you an opportunity to ask something of your potential customers or clients.

More and more frequently, that call to action is this: Like us on Facebook.

But when you create anything that communicates with your audience, you can’t just consider WHAT your call to action is – more importantly, you have to consider WHY.

So let’s explore that. Why does everyone want their audience to “Like them on Facebook”? …And is it the best “call to action” for your potential customers and clients?

Since its introduction, the Like button has provided as many difficulties as it has opportunities for brands. We’ve seen a proliferation of Like buttons in marketing both offline and online, but often the call to action is completely lost or there seems to be no strategy behind the placement of this. The temptation to make the Like button centre stage because of its ease of use, and the option to tick the social media box when it’s done, can be dangerous for brands who risk missing out on the real potential.

 

Likes = Popularity

We know that the most popular brands have the most Facebook likes. Millions and millions of users have used their Facebook page to show their support of brands like Disney, and Coca-Cola.

BUT here’s the catch: These brands’ popularity came first – not the Facebook likes. If Facebook had never existed, these brands would still be popular. They’d still thrive. So basically, the “likes” represent existing brand loyalty. They show that the brand is popular, but they aren’t the reason the brand is popular.

Earning the like does not guarantee that the individual turns into a lead or becomes a customer, as it is incredibly difficult to get this traffic to return to your site.What it does mean is that the individual has opted-in and therefore is allowing you to syndicate your Facebook posts on their news feed.

 

Stop Giving Away iPads!

In fact, ‘buying’ friends could hurt you in terms of Edge Rank (Edge Rank is the algorithm, or ‘secret sauce’, that determines what appears in people’s news feeds). The point is that having 1,000 new fans who never contribute to your page — don’t like your posts, don’t ever comment and never share anything you create — drag down your overall influence in getting onto news feeds.

There needs to be a strategy!
 
Discounts for fans, rewards for sharing, and free samples are great ways many companies capitalize on their likes. BUT if you aren’t equipped to offer these things (and offer them well), maybe a better call to action is to visit your website, call for more information, or buy the product.

Don’t get me wrong; social mediais a powerful medium. Social proof and word of mouth are critical in any brand’s success and Facebook makes these things easy.

 

How Sexy is Your Photo?

Most business owners add their logo as a profile picture. 

Not bad, but why not try adding a ‘Fan of the Week’ photo instead? The idea here is that you give the community a reason to comment and share with their friends and family (And with the average Facebook user having 245 friends, the potential for new fans grows exponentially with each new share).

Remember, you don’t have to sacrifice your logo, just marry it with a fan photo.

Having a Facebook “Like” Strategy is extremely important. But… What’s next?

MSF - Pastillas Contra el Dolor Ajeno

Médicos Sin Fronteras (Medecins Sans Frontieres) es una organización humanitaria sin ánimo de lucro fundada en Francia en el año 1971 por un conjunto de médicos y periodistas que, tras ser testigos de atrocidades vividas por la población de África, decidieron romper el silencio que les obligaban a guardar.

Desde sus inicios, el trabajo de esta organización se ha realizado en contextos de guerras y violencia en los que civiles se han visto envueltos, prestando todo tipo de ayudas a los heridos y a la gente que trata de huir de tales situaciones. Otras líneas de trabajo además de las de los conflictos bélicos, son las de aquellos que sufren enfermedades poco comunes o poco conocidas, los excluidos sociales que no tienen ningún tipo de acceso a ayudas y población afectada por catástrofes naturales.

Para llevar toda esta actividad a cabo, la asociación necesita financiación, ya que de lo contrario, no podría asegurar a sus pacientes ni los medicamentos más eficaces, ni alimentos, ni cobijo. Esta financiación procede de entidades privadas en su totalidad, lo cual asegura que la labor de Médicos Sin Fronteras sea totalmente independiente de los gobiernos.

Inmersos en su propósito de hacer llegar la ayuda a esos pacientes que por no considerarse parte de un mercado rentable han sido marginados, en 2010, MSF decidió que la sociedad tenía necesariamente que formar parte de todo lo que estaban haciendo, y decidió concienciar a la sociedad en búsqueda de su movilización. Para realizar esta tarea, la organización no siguió los mismos patrones de siempre, no recurrió al mero llamamiento mediante colaboraciones monetarias; esta vez la fórmula utilizada fue mucho más sencilla, barata, y sorprendentemente efectiva: una caja de pastillas, Pastillas contra el dolor ajeno.

El objetivo que persigue esta campaña es sensibilizar a la población para que ayude a combatir una serie de enfermedades poco conocidas y que en cierta manera quedan en el olvido de todo el mundo, mientras hay una minoría, no tan pequeña, que las sufre de igual manera. La campaña va dirigida a toda la sociedad, tanto española como del resto del mundo que, al igual que se recoge en la campaña, sufra de dolor ajeno. A través de la misma se pretende conseguir dinero para el estudio de estas enfermedades, a través de la compra de una caja de pastillas de menta.

En el primer mundo, si te duele algo hay pastillas para mitigar casi cualquier dolor. Pero... ¿qué pasa si lo que te duele es el dolor ajeno, el dolor de los que no tienen pastillas para curar su sufrimiento?

¿No es genial, que nosotros que tenemos pastillas de casi todo, podamos tomarnos una para calmar el dolor de los que no tienen?

Usa tu Creatividad para Cambiar el Mundo!

5 Tips for Being Naturally Good at SEO

Your customers are looking for you. Can they find you?

When potential customers have a problem and need somewhere to go, they search for it. They head to their favorite search engine, type what they want and are presented with a list of results Google promises can help them. If you don’t appear in those results, you don’t exist. You miss out on the sale, the branding opportunity and the ability to convert that targeted searcher into a lifelong customer. And that’s the value that search engine optimization (SEO) brings to small businesses. It puts you in your customers’ line of sight and establishes you as an expert.

A lot of small businesses don’t fully understand SEO. But for your business to reach its full Web potential, SEO is something you need to consider. Because SEO matters.

It matters a lot.

As a small business, there are plenty of easy things you can do, all by yourself, to set up your site to be naturally good at SEO. Get the basics down; then worry about the more difficult components.

Where should you start?

1. Build your site for users: Putting together a full website that represents you and tells the world what you’re all about can be paralyzing. Where do you start? What do you focus on? Who do you speak to? There’s so much to consider.

Your first step is to focus on your customers. And that means focusing on usability. Build a site that is intuitive and easy for people to digest. Sticking to best SEO practices like using breadcrumb navigational elements, creating easy-to-skim content, having a simple interface, selecting the right keywords, and organizing your content into topic silos can go a long way in helping customers understand your site better.

By making your site intuitive and easy for a user to parse, you also make it easier for the search engines to index and rank.  Remember, the search engines are using algorithm to “read” your website. That means the structure and organization of your content is paramount.

2. Become a subject matter-authority: Want to naturally attract SEO magic? Work toward asserting yourself as a subject matter authority in your niche by focusing on two things:

• Becoming a source of content: Adding unique, expert content to your website is a great way to set it up as a leader in its field and to build authority. For a SMB or consultant that may mean writing tutorials about your service or product, publishing opinion or thought-leader type pieces, writing e-books or whitepapers, creating videos, guest blogging on other authority sites, and using social media to share additional content. By making your site The Source for trusted information about a topic, you become a subject matter-authority in your customers’ eyes and build your expertness.
• Building your personal brand/reputation: By establishing yourself as a content hub, you’re already well on your way to building your personal brand and reputation. But don’t just stop on your own site! Start building your presence in your local community and your niche by speaking at events, participating in webinars, and being vocal about whatever it is you stand for. The more people see you participating in your online community, the more authoritative you become.

By making yourself an authority in your niche, it allows you to naturally attract the links, likes, mentions, and shares all the SEO experts will tell you that you need.

3. Do stuff to attract links: Any SEO worth his or her salt will tell you that you need to build links in order to increase your SEO efforts. But as a small business, how do you do that? And how do you do it in a non-spammy way that you’re comfortable with?

The easier answer is that to attract links you have to do stuff. You have to give people a reason to talk about you. And on the Web, talking about you means linking to you.

4. Increase social and be social: When you’re creating cool stuff, kill two birds with one stone by making that “stuff” inherently social. Add social calls to action, incorporate social share buttons, allows for user participation, etc.

Not only will adding and encouraging social activity help your content and ideas be seen by more eyeballs, it will give off important signals to the search engines that your brand and your content are things that consumers want. The search engines are looking at social signals to help them find the meat in the vast sea of content that is being produced. Likes, shares, mentions and comments help them to do that.

5. Think about performance: One thing many business owners don’t think about is the way their site performs, both on the Web and on mobile. They create sites in Flash not understanding the underlying SEO issues or they don’t worry too much if a page (or the whole website) takes too long to load. The result of this is a bad experience, both for users and the search engines.

Google has been very clear about the importance of a quick load time and how it plays into the Google algorithm. They’ve even developed a tool to help you analyze and optimize your page speed.

If performance is something you haven’t considered or thought about in terms of your site, you want to start thinking about it. Because when it’s between you and a competitor for the top sport in the search results, the little things can end up being big things.

"the best SEO means simply creating the most positive experience you can for visitors."