Facebook takes action against misinformation

Facebook announced the launch of a program designed to curb the spread of misinformation on the platform, including false or misleading information about important issues including COVID-19, vaccination efforts, climate change and politics.

The program will expand Facebook’s fact-checking initiatives and introduce penalties against Pages and individual users who repeatedly share misinformation with their networks.

Following the launch of the program, users can expect to see a few changes within the platform.

First of all, a warning pop-up will be displayed to users who try to like or follow a Page that has repeatedly shared content flagged by Facebook’s fact-checkers. The pop-up will explain why the Page has been flagged and give users the choice to move forward with the like or follow, or cancel the action. It will also offer more insight into the fact-checking program.

Helping People Make More Informed Decisions

Though we're committed to doing everything we can to reduce the spread of false news to as close to zero as possible, we also need to make sure we take steps to address the problem when people do encounter hoaxes. To that end, we're exploring ways to give people more context about stories so they can make more informed decisions about what to read, trust and share and ways to give people access to more perspectives about the topics that they're reading.

Setting up your social media plan

Here are some quick tips for setting up your own social media plan. A social media plan is a to-do list that you follow to create and maintain a social media presence.

1: Review Your Tools In Your Tool Box

Is your site ready to be published? Does your site look great on mobile devices?

Are all your links working?

Are your #hashtags ready?

2: Define your social media image before you begin creating social media profiles on various channels, be sure your image is consistent across all platforms. The best way to do this is by creating a social media standard to be used on all sites, "consistency" matters. This will guide you through all the channels, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and others to be the same image of your brand on each site. This is your own company rules to create a cohesive presence across all social media channels to build trust with your audience.

A social media standard is your rule book for how your brand appears on social media. It should include: Description of your business or brand Logo and approved colors Post formatting style Language and writing policies

Contact information

Personal vs professional messages

and Other items you which to put in place.

3: Complete Consistent Social Media Profiles

When you chose your social platforms be sure the information in each is consistent. Here are a few helpful tips for filling out your social media profiles: Keep your name, profile picture, and logo consistent throughout all your channels. Get to know the personality of each network so your messaging is appropriate.

4: Plan a 30-60-90 day content calendar

Sketch a rough plan of what your content will look like over the next 3 months, this can always change but have a guide to follow in place. What topics will you cover by month and how will they relate to each other? Will you offer original content or repost it from other pages?

Plan on creating and changing "tweaking" your plan each month, to ensure your message is current and accurate. Next, you’re ready to create a detailed list of what you’ll publish over the next 30, 60, 90 days: Topics Headlines Formatting Publication dates for social media content

5: Assign Tasks to Your Team or To Yourself

If you’re flying solo then this is the time to schedule your time to cover the different tasks. Here are some of the assignments you need to cover: Content writing about your services, goods, products, trends and company. Artwork, Blog publishing, (pre-publishing your social media posts with software like Hootsuite or Buffer) Social listening and customer response and changing as needed.

#6. Monitoring results and your competition

Keep an eye on your posts, all interactions be sure to respond. Monitor your competition and pick up on their activity and do's and do not's.

Social Media Tip - More Images Please!!!

Be sure to include images with your posts, after all we are a visual society and we need more images.

Images will help your Tweets stand out in your followers’ streams.

It will grab the attention of your Facebook followers and stop them long enough to read and see what the image is actually about.

In the brain itself, there are hundreds of millions of neurons devoted to visual processing, so include pictures with posts.

This can be done easily with numerous sites for stock images, or photos your clients provide, but the most affective are humans.  They are real and have an identity that hold a story, which in turn many already may know them.

If you’re creating an image of your own, in order to balance the weight in your image, play around with different things such as size of items, lightness and darkness of items, warm and cool colors, texture, quantity of objects, isolation of objects, and orientation (vertical/horizontal/diagonal) of objects.

Bright colors and good lighting is also a key factor to getting the look you want for your audience. Experiment and gain experience for the future, after all the more you try new things the better you become at knowing what works for the numerous applications​.

Keep your images simple and use the space around objects to bring attention to important elements.

Clean up your Linkedin account

The next few blogs are going to give our readers tips for cleaning up your social media accounts, looking at all the platforms.  Here are some quick tips to clean up your social media accounts, you should do this quarterly, spring, summer, fall and winter.  

Linkedin

• Your tag line is important, people will see your headline first with your profile image, so make sure it’s well-written and contains quality keywords.

• Replace or update your profile photo with an current professional headshot, these can be fun but remember Linkedin is professional.  

• Work on your summary to highlight your most relevant experience and skills, this should be your resume pitch, or company pitch.

• Update responsibilities, expanded set of skills and experiences you have gained or roles your are taking on.  

• Make sure all contact information is updated so clients can get in touch.

• Personalize your profile’s URL with your business name.

• Use keywords to make sure you’re coming up in relevant searches for people looking for someone like you. Include them in your Headline, Summary and Experience sections.

• Ask clients and contacts for recommendations to share on your social sites and profile. 

• Remove people from your network who are spammers, people who constantly ask for help without returning the favor, etc.

• Have you been to any conferences, meetings or other events where you’ve met interesting contacts? Add them to your connections.

* Social Live LLC - Social Media Marketing 

Social Live LLC

1861 Mckinley Street

Ferndale, WA  98248

Grace MacDonald - President

Phone: 970-773-0379

Email: Grace@sociallivellc.com

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/SocialLiveLLC

Twitter:

@sociallivellc

BlogSpot: http://sociallivellc.blogspot.com

Pinterest:

https://www.pinterest.com/sociallivellc 

Twitter Updates You Need to Know About

Twitter has decided to switch off millions of accounts linked to SMS services. In fact, popular Twitter accounts with a million or more followers may see a drop of 8-10% in their total audience due to the ax of SMS service. 

Twitter announced the vulnerabilities linked to SMS and have since decided to purge the accounts altogether. The privacy concern is linked to a method of swapping SIM cards and even the company’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, was hacked via an SMS-connected system. 

SMS tweets are not commonly used by the majority of Twitter users, therefore the impact is expected to be minimal. However, the implications for users in developing countries may prove to be much larger as SMS service is far more prevalent in these regions

Searching for old comments of Twitter can be, well, impossible. Luckily, the platform has recognized this downfall and has implemented a listing specifically for ‘Retweets with Comments’ – on iOS at least. 

The newest listing feature no longer considers retweets with comments to be a unique tweet, which previously excluded comments from the total retweet count. Instead, listings now include two separate categories to make finding comments easier than ever before. 

Furthermore, the additional retweets added to the total tweet count may boost many users’ engagement status. If you’re an Android user, don’t worry! This listing feature is being tested on Android devices as well and should be rolled out before the end of the year. 

Inactive social media accounts can harm your online reputation

Having an inactive social media account sends the message to your customers that you are either no longer in business or just don't care about your online reputation.  

Typically, problems occur when managers of a company place their social media marketing responsibilities in the hands of their own employees, who usually have little or no experience in this type of work.  Sometimes, employees even will take it upon themselves to create accounts without asking, operating without management's permission or knowledge.  This can hurt reputation, as there is no consistency in the message or proof reading from the eyes of those in charge. 

This is further compounded when companies allow in-house employees to create and keep the pass codes to social media accounts.  If that employee quits, is let go, or walks off the job, he/she take the social media accounts with them.      

When socially active customers search your business on social media sides and come upon a page that is inactive or littered with unhappy posts from customers, they get the wrong impression of your business (and it's usually not a positive one).

Usually, this is a turn-off for customers, as many use internet reviews they find on social media sites as an aid in their decision-making process.  These customers start searching other companies immediately, meaning you have already lost the opportunity to capture them.  The old adage, "you only have one opportunity to make a first impression" rings especially true today thanks to instant exposure and easy access of information in the social media world.    

An easy way to avoid all these pitfalls is by hiring a professional third party to control your social media accounts, passwords and security settings, establishing a stronger and more secured, positive online reputation. 

Basically the same rule of thumb applies when creating new accounts for your business, as companies need to be careful not to duplicate pages.  More than one page associated to your specific business, store, brand, or product confuses and frustrates customers, making them jump through unnecessary hoops to access the information you want to provide.  Most companies with the problem of duplicate pages have many other of the social media issues outlined above, making it a sure sign that a company is disinterested in this form of marketing; this isolates their business and keeps them detached from the modern world that exists in large numbers over the internet on a daily basis.

It truly is critical for companies to have senior management or a contracted third party keeping a close eye on your social sites so you don't get into this situation.  The amount of work that is necessary to do this frequently surprises businesses, as year-round consistency is extremely difficult to achieve in addition to other responsibilities of employees.  A third party allows a company to allocate all this work to an individual at an affordable price, with a contracted guarantee that information will be sent out and posted on all platforms with uniform consistency, creativity, and attention to detail.  This protects the company's image, brand, and reputation while also further securing the pages themselves from tampering, spamming, or anything else that can send the wrong idea to customers.

Don't Stop Social Media Marketing

Here are a few tips to keeping in touch with your customers during COVID19

 

People around the world are adjusting to the new normal of the impact on their business from COVID19. We are faced with social distancing, small business owners are closing their doors and large corporations as scrambling to reposition campaigns, adjust content to essential travel, first responders, PPE and anything they come up with new creative and changing day to day.  

While others are abandoning all marketing efforts during this time.  This is a mistake you can not afford to make.  If you use a social media company to run your social media marketing, yet you can't afford them during these troubled times, reach out to them and negotiate a temporary rate until business rebounds. 

Staying connected is now more important than ever, with people and businesses working from home, or remote offices, more of the population is on social media more than ever.  Frankly the population is relying on social media to stay in touch with friends, consume the news, and be entertained.  

In fact, Facebook and Instagram have seen a 48% increase in usage due to Covid-19, with views for Instagram Live and Facebook Live doubling in one week.

If your business is open but working hard to survive right now, like many retail stores, hotels and restaurants are, you’ll be wanting to share content with the goal of getting sales from social media.  But just because people are spending more time on social media doesn’t mean it’s business-as-usual.

Your followers are spending more time online than they ever have before, so it does present you with a unique opportunity to deepen your relationship with your audience and increase brand affinity.  But you also can’t just be running business-as-usual, or you risk coming across as tone-deaf to an audience with heightened anxiety and sensitivities.  And the hardest part? It feels like our world continues to change by the day (or hour).

But remember: this is brand new territory for all marketers (including us). No one is an expert in how to market your business on social media through a global pandemic.

So while we can’t offer you tried-and-tested strategies for marketing your business through this challenging time, we can give you some guiding principles to help you think through your posts and make decisions as the crisis evolves.

Ignoring Covid-19 or pretending like everything is normal can come across as inauthentic at best, and tone deaf at worst. Let your followers know that you’re listening and acknowledge our new normal.  

Even a simple “We are in this together" and "updates on your staff and business" 

can go a long way in showing your followers that you’re listening and caring.  

Let them know you also are experiencing hardships without coming off as "crying for help".  Take the approach that you are trying to stay open, operating and keeping your staff employed.  

Celebrity & business owner Kristin Cavallari did a good job of explaining why she was promoting a sale for her jewelry brand Uncommon James, by simply stating that she has 100 employees and will do everything she can to help them keep their jobs, which means promoting her sale on Instagram.

If you’re unable to market or sell your products during COVID state that and let them know your desired return to normal operations.  Focus on sharing content that aligns with your brand values instead, along the way updating your pages on staff, products, service and the latest news.  

Turn your Instagram into a valuable resource for your audience. Focus on engagement first, instead of driving traffic, by providing extra education through videos, carousel posts, or captions – instead of constantly asking to swipe up or click the link in your bio.

Adjust your hashtags during this time and stay current with trends and changes to social media platforms.  

These are un-tested times, stay safe, social distance but stay active on your pages.