Facebook Reply Links Means Threaded Comments [video]

While Facebook is great at helping us connect with friends and family and businesses, as the volume of comments grows, it can make it difficult to follow the conversation.  Fortunately, they have rolled out a new feature called Facebook reply links.

Previously, anytime you commented on a Facebook status update, your comment would get posted at the bottom of the comments thread. This made it difficult to follow the conversation because you had to read through multiple conversations. With the introduction of Facebook reply links, it’s now a whole lot easier to reply to comments because you can reply to any comment and it will keep comments threaded (and organized).

Here’s an example of the old form of Facebook comments and Facebook reply links in comments.

Facebook comments without reply links

Facebook reply links in comments

 

Facebook comments with reply links

Facebook reply links in comments

So how do you get the new Facebook reply links within your comments?

How to activate Facebook reply links on your Facebook Page

Continue reading Facebook Reply Links Means Threaded Comments

YouTube Channel Art: A Complete Guide

YouTube has started rolling out a new unified design.  With the new design comes a new feature, YouTube channel art. YouTube channel art is an image that get’s displayed at the top of your YouTube channel. Here is an example of YouTube channel art.

YouTube channel art template

 

What is YouTube Channel Art?

Continue reading YouTube Channel Art: A Complete Guide

Andrea Vahl, Grandma Mary, and Social Media Examiner

Podcast interview with Andrea Vahl, community manager for Social Media ExaminerThis interview with Andrea Vahl, Community Manager for SocialMediaExaminer, is the fourth in an ongoing series of interviews with professionals who are doing amazing things with social media.  

I am very honored to have the opportunity to interview Andrea Vahl (aka Grandma Mary).  Andrea is a tremendous person and has done some amazing things around social media.

If you happen to be one of the 200,000+ email subscribers on SocialMediaExaminer, you’ll be happy to know that Andrea Vahl is the Community Manager for the site, so you’re in great hands.

I hope you enjoy this interview with Andrea Vahl, Community Manager for SocialMediaExaminer.
Continue reading Andrea Vahl, Grandma Mary, and Social Media Examiner

How to remove Facebook Close Friends (video)

How to remove Facebook close friends

Facebook close friends, it’s a feature that has been around since mid 2011, yet it’s a feature that a lot of people don’t talk too much about.  For those of you who want an easier way to view updates from a select group of friends, with the added bonus that you get notified when they post a new update, then Facebook close friends is for you.  Personally, I find “close friends” to be extremely valuable because it allows me the opportunity to easily view updates from my favorite people on both the desktop and mobile versions of Facebook – and get notified when they’ve posted new updates.  So after you’ve built up your list of close friends on Facebook, how do you remove them? If you want to remove Facebook close friends from your list, there are four ways that you can go about doing this.

Four ways to remove Facebook close friends

Yes, you read that correctly, there are four ways that you can remove Facebook close friends.

  1. On your Facebook news feed
  2. From the Facebook close friends list news feed
  3. Directly from the Facebook close friends list
  4. The Facebook close friends news feed

To help you out, I’ve created a short two-minute video that gives you an in-depth view of the four areas where you can remove Facebook close friends.  The video also shows you how to remove Facebook close friends.

How to remove Facebook close friends

Continue reading How to remove Facebook Close Friends (video)

22 Facebook keyboard shortcuts to help you work faster on Facebook

Facebook keyboard shortcuts - Pinterest
Do you waste a lot of time on Facebook just clicking around on your Facebook news feed?

Maybe you like a lot of posts in the news feed.

Or you like to comment or share a status update.

Instead of clicking on each update and sharing it, you can use Facebook keyboard shortcuts to help speed up the process.

This article is going to teach you 22 Facebook keyboard shortcuts to help save time when using Facebook.

22 Facebook keyboard shortcuts

Continue reading 22 Facebook keyboard shortcuts to help you work faster on Facebook

YouTube Channel Art Template [free download]

YouTube channel art template

YouTube recently updated the design and layout of your YouTube channel. One of the new features that was added is called YouTube channel art. As you can see from the above image, YouTube channel art is a way for you to customize your YouTube channel and make it more inviting to subscribers.  If you’re a business, YouTube channel art is a great way to market and promote your business.  If you’re not a business, you can use YouTube channel art to create a custom look for your YouTube channel and to showcase what your YouTube channel offers.  To help you out, I’ve created a downloadable YouTube channel art template (PSD) for you to use.

Download Free YouTube channel art template:

Continue reading YouTube Channel Art Template [free download]

5 Things You Must Do After Creating a Facebook Check-in Deal

5 Facebook check-in deals requirements

Now that you’ve learned how to create Facebook check-in deals, what’s next? If you’re serious about rewarding your customers and getting free marketing and advertising for your Facebook Page in the process, you have to do a little promotion to get the word out about your Facebook check-in deals.

Why promote your Facebook check-in deal?

Just because you’ve created a Facebook check-in deal and posted it on your businesses Facebook Page, doesn’t guarantee that people will flock to it. In fact, if businesses are not seeing your updates from your Facebook Page in their new feed, they definitely are not going to claim your offer because they won’t know about it.

Therefore, it is important that after creating a Facebook check-in deal, you do these five things to spread the word.

5 Things to do After Creating a Facebook Check-in Deal

Continue reading 5 Things You Must Do After Creating a Facebook Check-in Deal

Twitter Line Breaks – Break It Up

Today, Twitter announced a new feature. No, it wasn’t Twitter music (that is rumored to be coming soon). Instead, they added Twitter line breaks. 

Twitter line breaks

What are Twitter line breaks?

Twitter line breaks are a way to spread your Twitter message across a few lines. As you can see from the above photo, you can break up your tweets character by character.  If you want to, you can also break up your tweets word by word until you’ve used up all 140 characters.

While the former case is a little extreme for Twitter line breaks, it’s still useful.

Caveats to Twitter line breaks

While I see a lot of benefits to using line breaks – for example, you can now break up Follow Friday tweets to make them much easier to read. Twitter line breaks don’t work with third-party apps like HootSuite at the moment.  For people who rely on third-party apps, you’ll have to wait to get your Twitter line break on.

While Twitter line breaks have a lot of usefulness in your Twitter campaigns, I expect to see a lot of tweets like the one above. There’s nothing wrong with displaying your tweets in a vertical line, just make sure you don’t go overboard.

How can I benefit from using Twitter line breaks?

Besides a lack of third-party app support and the fact that some people might consider this more of a nuisance than a feature, Twitter line breaks are still very useful in your Twitter strategy.

Here are a few ways you can use Twitter line breaks in your tweets.

  • Promote new followers with Follow Friday and make your tweets easier to read
  • Break up important numbers in your tweets
  • If you’re a sports team, I can see lots of team chants combined with a list of Twitter handles
  • List out the features and benefits of your product
  • My personal favorite: Combine a Vine video with a tweet using line breaks for the ultimate tweet

Question: How would you apply Twitter line breaks to tweets for your business or would you? Leave a comment below. 

How to Create Facebook Check-in Deals [video]


Facebook check-in deals

If your business seems to be struggling with getting more exposure on your Facebook Page, it might be time to learn how to create Facebook check-in deals.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with check-in deals, here’s a summary of check-in deals.

What is a check-in deal?

A Facebook check-in deal is a way to incentivize customers to check-in to your business on Facebook from their mobile devices like a tablet or a smartphone. Anyone with a business (brick and mortar or online) can create a check-in deal to reward customers.

Once someone checks in to your establishment, you can reward them in one of four ways:

  • Individual deal – Offer a discount to an individual for checking in to your business.
  • Friend deal – Offer a discount when your friend brings a friend (or multiple friends) and they check-in together to your business
  • Loyalty deal – Offer a discount, freebie or dollar amount off a purchase to checking in a pre-determined number of times
  • Charity deal – Your business makes a donation to a charity when someone checks in.

But wait, I heard Facebook check-in deals were being replaced.  While InsideFacebook.com published an article back on February 29, 2012, declaring that Check-in Deals were no longer being used, I’ve checked with my sources at Facebook and check-in deals are sticking around!

How to create Facebook check-in deals

Continue reading How to Create Facebook Check-in Deals

Search Twitter Using Google For Faster Results

One of the questions I often get asked about is how do I get more followers on Twitter?  Gaining followers on Twitter is a two way street. For starters, it’s something that you have to work at.  You cannot just join Twitter and expect to get a lot of quality followers overnight.  So how do you build your network of followers on Twitter?  First off, you need to tweet good content. This means content that people will want to share.  Here’s an example. Second, you’ll need to spend some time searching Twitter for other users and topics you should follow. For this, I recommend that you search Twitter using Google.

Search Twitter using Google for faster and more accurate results

Why search Twitter using Google?

Twitter search isn’t broken. It still works. It’s just not easy to find tweets.  When you search Twitter using Google, it opens you up to a whole lot more possibilities.  Using a Google search also has a number of advantages. Continue reading Search Twitter Using Google For Faster Results