Christian Karasiewicz, Author at Christiankonline.com

Blocking on Facebook Explained

Blocking on Facebook is a skill that all Facebook users need to learn how to do.

For some reason though, when talking about blocking on Facebook, this seems to confuse a lot of users. With so many changes happening on Facebook all at once, this is understandable; however, you still need to learn how to block on Facebook. Today, we’re going to help you get over your fear of blocking on Facebook and learn how to do it right (and quickly).

Blocking on Facebook is really easy to do and it is something you can setup in just a few minutes. Let’s get started.

Why block on Facebook?

Chances are, at one point or another, you’ve received an unwanted invitation on Facebook. This could be from a user, an app, or an invite.

While you can delete the message you received, it does not get stop someone from sending you the same invitation again. It also does not give you back the time you wasted deleting that invitation.

To solve this problem, you need to use blocking on Facebook.

The block feature on Facebook let’s you setup five specific areas to block. These include:

Users
Apps
App invites
Event invites
Restricted list

How to use blocking on Facebook Continue reading Blocking on Facebook Explained

Save Google searches to save time on Google+

If you could save Google searches and improve your workflow and save time in the process, what would you do with the time you saved?

For anyone who has spent time searching for things on Google+, one of the most overlooked features is the ability to save Google searches.

Saving your Google search within Google+ makes it easy to access items you search for a lot on the site. For example, if you’re a social media strategist and you’re always searching for terms such as “Google+ marketing,” instead of having to type this search in each time, you can save it for later.

Saving a Google search in Google+ is very easy to do. You can find instructions, along with a video on how to save Google searches in Google+ below.

How to save Google searches on Google+

Continue reading Save Google searches to save time on Google+

70 time-saving social media shortcuts [Infographic]

Whether it’s figuring out how to squeeze more time out of our daily lives or how to more productive on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube. We’re always looking for a shortcut. As we share more and more of our personal lives through social media, it’s time that we created social media shortcuts to help us learn how to get more efficient in the limited amount of time that we have.

According to Experian Marketing Services, Americans spend 16 minutes of every hour online on social networks. That’s nearly 25% of every hour being spent on a social media site. While we won’t go into what users do on social media sites. that’s a lot of time to be spending checking updates from others and less time that we can be productive.

The team at Quintly put together this infographic featuring 70 social media shortcuts to help you get more done on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and YouTube. In addition to the social media shortcuts listed, they’ve also included a few easter eggs (hidden features).

While these shortcuts only work when you’re on your computer and not on your mobile device such as your smartphone or tablet, they’re very handy to learn and can help reduce the amount of time you waste from senseless clicks online.

70 time-saving social media shortcuts

Continue reading 70 time-saving social media shortcuts [Infographic]

How to report Vine comments in 4 quick steps [video]

When someone leaves an inappropriate comment on Vine, do you report Vine comments?

While social media is the #1 activity on the web and we are sharing more of our lives with others, it is important to monitor the comments that you receive and to remove them.

Why report Vine comments?

There is always going to be someone who comes along and wants to bring you down. Remember, it is your content and if someone posts something that is inappropriate, offensive, or mean, you have the ability to remove it – or better yet, report it.

Instead of just removing offensive comments by deleting them, it is much better to report Vine comments. Here are a few reasons why you would want to do this instead.

Cleans up your Vine comments – remember, your Vines are public
Users may not want to share your Vines if there are offensive comments
If your comments are overrun with inappropriate comments, users may not want to follow

How to report Vine comments
Continue reading How to report Vine comments in 4 quick steps

4 steps to leave a LinkedIn group [video]

Have you ever received the following message when you tried to join a group on LinkedIn? While the instructions are not very clear on what you need to do next, the answer is simple. It’s time to leave a LinkedIn group.

Limits on LinkedIn groups

For those of you who are not aware, there is a limit on how many LinkedIn groups you can join. It’s 50.

You can join 50 LinkedIn groups and 50 LinkedIn sub-groups.

While I’m not sure who selected 50 as the limit on LinkedIn groups, once you’ve reached this threshold, the only way you can join any more groups is to either withdraw a request to join a LinkedIn group or leave a LinkedIn group.

This is where things can get frustrating because at no point on this error page does LinkedIn tell you what that number is or even how to fix the issue.

The solution to LinkedIn groups

Having encountered this situation previously, I thought I would share instructions on how to leave a LinkedIn group so that you can spend your time joining more groups and less time looking for instructions on how to fix your issue.

4 steps to leave a LinkedIn group

Continue reading 4 steps to leave a LinkedIn group

3 ways to grow your Facebook presence with Facebook embedded posts

If you could take your Facebook presence and weave it into your blog or website to grow your Facebook presence, would you? With the launch of Facebook embedded posts, you’ll now have that opportunity.

While this doesn’t seem like anything new because Twitter, Instagram and even Vine have all offered the ability to embed posts, I think this could be a game changer for Facebook Pages.

What are Facebook embedded posts?

Facebook embedded posts are the ability to take public posts from Facebook and display this content on your blog or website.

Within Facebook embedded posts, you’ll be able to include the following:

Photos
Videos
Hashtags

As long as your post is set to public, you can now take updates from a Facebook Profile or Facebook Page and embed this content on your blog or website!

Beat the news feed with Facebook embedded posts

As I mentioned, Facebook embedded posts will be a game changer and here’s why.

Previously, nothing could be taken outside of Facebook’s walled-garden unless you took a screenshot. Everything that was shared required being logged in order to view it (in most cases), and you often had to compete against other content in the news feed just to be seen.

Factor in the fact that if you struggled with building engagement with fans, it could be frustrating at times to use Facebook to market your business.

Now assume you’re someone who has a website and you get a lot of traffic there, yet your Facebook Page doesn’t have a whole lot of engagement.

By using Facebook embedded posts, you can now leverage your blog traffic to keep your blog readers aware of things they might have missed on Facebook and beat the news feed in the process.

This in itself can help grow your Facebook presence. This is because more people are able to see your content and you don’t have to worry about not hitting their news feed. Awesome!

Improving engagement with embedded posts

Hopefully you’re as excited about Facebook embedded posts as I am. There’s one last thing though.

When you embed Facebook posts on your blog or website, there are now going to be lots of opportunities for your to build your presence and engage more with your fans and customers. This is because everything you embed from Facebook will offer deep integration. This means each embedded post from Facebook will feature the ability to share, comment, and like a post. Additionally, users can also see how many likes and comments your content has received, which presumably will sync back to Facebook.

Growing your presence using Facebook embedded posts

So how can you grow your presence using embedded posts? Besides all of the great features that Facebook embedded posts will offer, there are also going to be many different types of posts you can share that can help grow your Facebook presence.

Types of Facebook embedded posts

Hashtags

One way to grow your Facebook presence using embedded posts is with hashtags. If you’re new to hashtags, be sure to read the complete guide on using Facebook hashtags because you’re going to want to start including them within your posts.

When you include them in an embedded Facebook post on your website, they are now clickable and will bring up related content that also uses that hashtag so be sure you use them!

Follow

A second way to grow your Facebook presence using Facebook embedded posts is with the “follow” feature.

This type of embedded post is great if you’re a journalist or analyst and you post a lot of news on Facebook.

Now, you can take this content and share it around the web and it will get linked directly back to the person who posted it!

In addition, users can also follow that person. This let’s them subscribe to a user, which if you’re sharing quality content or breaking news, can help quickly grow your presence on Facebook.

Like

A third way to grow your Facebook presence using the embedded posts feature is through your Facebook Page.

This type of post offers fans the opportunity to find out about updates they may have missed because they didn’t see your update in their news feed.

I could also see Facebook embedded posts being extremely useful if you run contests on your Facebook Page. For instance, you should be able to take that contest and leverage your blog traffic to increase participation and grow your Facebook presence at the same time.

Similar to the “follow” embedded post, the “like” embedded post let’s fans and customers easily like your Facebook Page from anywhere there is are embedded posts. This means that in order to grow your Facebook presence, you’ll want to post really good content that users will want to embed on their blog or website.

Giving credit where credit is due with Facebook embedded posts

One of the features that hasn’t been covered much yet is accountability on Facebook. Previously, anyone could copy and share content on Facebook and you wouldn’t know who initially shared it. Now, with Facebook embedded posts, anyone can pick-up content and share it with their readers.

Just think – major blogs or news outlets might be embedding your Facebook posts one day on their blog or website. Imagine all of the possibilities if that happens!

How do you get Facebook embedded posts?

Right now, Facebook embedded posts are only available to five media sites. These include Huffington Post, Mashable, CNN, Bleacher Report, and People, but Facebook promises we should see this new feature soon. So stay tuned!

How to embed Facebook embedded posts

Embedding Facebook posts on your blog or website will be very easy. If a post has a globe icon next to it, this means it is public. You can then click the dropdown arrow and select embed post. This will give you a snippet of code that you can copy and paste on your blog or website. That’s really all there is to it!

Facebook embedded posts are a game changer

Yes, I said again, I think Facebook embedded posts are going to be a tremendous tool for businesses and even individuals. Imagine the potential leads that you can gain from you embedding your posts on your blog or website or better yet, other blogs or websites embedding your content!

Are you excited about embedded posts as much as I am? Do you think they will be a game changer? Leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts on Facebook embedded posts.

10 steps to better social customer service

Did you know, nearly 50% of social media users used social customer service at some point to resolve an issue.

With the growth of social media, more and more customers are deciding to skip the phones (and even email), choosing to rely more on social customer service to get help.

Why social media for customer service?

One of the benefits to using social media for customer service is the speed at which you can solve problems. Today, if a user has a question about a product and is looking for answers, they could engage with a business via Twitter most likely before they would get someone on the phone.

Besides helping resolve customer service issues and saving lots of time in the process, businesses can leverage social media not just for resolving issues, but also to help them learn more about who their most ardent customer are.

By identifying customers who are passionate about your brand via social media, businesses also now have the ability to leverage their customers to help promote and share their latest products.

The challenges of social customer service

While a lot of social media users are using social customer service to get help, what are the challenges?

For starters, 36% of consumers report having their customer service issues resolved via social media (tweet this).

This presents a big obstacle in helping improve social customer service. Fortunately, the reason why this percentage seems so low is because businesses have the wrong departments running social media.

Most businesses silo their social media – splitting it between marketing and PR. While this is great to help get the message out, chances are, those individuals won’t have the time or the resources to respond to customer service questions from social media. As a result, customer questions go unnoticed and this can become a turn-off for customers.

So what can you do to make social customer service better within your organization?

10 steps to better social customer service Continue reading 10 steps to better social customer service

How to delete Vine comments you don’t want in 3 steps

When posting comments on sites like Vine, do you ever manage and delete Vine comments?

Managing and deleting comments on social networks like Vine is important for a number of reasons. Mainly, when you delete comments on Vine, it helps to keep the comment stream clutter-free. This way your followers can easily keep up with the conversation. But don’t let that be the only reason why you should manage and delete Vine comments.

Why delete Vine comments?

While you don’t have to manage your Vine account like a hawk and delete every comment, it is important to be aware of what comments are coming in and to know how to delete them on Vine.

1. Inappropriate comments

Vine isn’t perfect. In fact, a lot of Vine users get a lot of inappropriate comments. If you’re someone who gets a lot of inappropriate comments on your Vines, you’ll most likely want to delete these comments as soon as possible.

If you have a lot of followers on Vine, this could give them an unfavorable impression of your account and in return, they might not want to share your vines because there are comments that may be inappropriate for others to see.

2. Double-posting

Another scenario where you want to go and delete Vine comments is if you accidentally double-post a comment.

While it isn’t crucial, smartphones have a way of doing crazy things sometimes so be sure to keep an eye on your Vine comments feed. This way you can keep it clutter-free.

3. Typing errors

There currently is not a way to edit comments that you leave on Vine. If you happen to make a mistake when typing on your mobile device, you can always go back and correct it by deleting your Vine comment and reposting it.

How to delete Vine comments

Continue reading How to delete Vine comments you don’t want in 3 steps

The history of the hashtag [Infographic]

Do you know the history of the hashtag?

Most people are under the impression that the hashtag originated when social media hit the scene about 5 years ago. That’s actually not entirely accurate.

While it seems that the history of the hashtag began then, it actually started much earlier – more like in the 12th century.

Since then, we’ve seen the hashtag start out as the “pound” and morph from one symbol to another, finally culminating in what we know today as the hashtag and popularized on social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram, Google+, and more recently, Facebook hashtags.

and over time, it has morphed into the hashtag.

The history of the hashtag

Continue reading The history of the hashtag [Infographic]