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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

How to create a survey using Google Forms [video]

When collecting feedback from customers, have you tried using Google Forms?

As a business owner, it is important to collect feedback from customers and fans when you can. This way you can learn what you’re doing right with your business and which areas your customers are interested in seeing you improve upon.

For most business owners, determining which tools to use to create a survey can be frustrating. There are a lot of choices for surveys – and most of them cost money.

As someone who has spent a number of years conducting market research, I wanted to share how you can create a survey using Google Forms – for free.

What can you use a Google Forms survey for?

Google Forms isn’t just a tool for creating just one survey. You can use Google Forms for multiple aspects of your business.

Here are a few types of surveys business owners should consider creating in Google Forms so that you can collect feedback from customers about their purchases, buying habits, or general feedback about the products that they offer.

Examples of surveys to create using Google Forms

Customer feedback survey
Testimonials for your Facebook Page, blog, or website
Customer returns information
Demographic information about your customers

Google Forms + Analytics

Unlike most survey tools, which charge you to use their product and then ask for more money to analyze the results, surveys created using Google Forms will do the analysis for you on multiple choice and radio-button questions (and for free).

Here’s an example of the analytics you get with Google Forms. It’s pretty good.

If you want to view the individual results, you can look at each response as well.

Where are the results stored when using Google forms?

The great thing about Google Forms is that when users take your survey, the information is stored within your Google account. If you have a Gmail account, you can easily access this information from anywhere with just an Internet connection.

Also, if you ever want to save your survey data, you can use Google Takeout to create a backup copy to keep on your hard drive.

Creating a survey using Google Forms Continue reading How to create a survey using Google Forms

How to embed Instagram photos and videos in 4 steps

Instagram recently rolled out the ability to embed Instagram photos and videos on your blog or website.

This is great news if you’re a heavy Instagram user because now your photos can be free of the Instagram news feed and shared where they really matter most – on your blog or website.

By using the embed feature of Instagram, this allows you the opportunity to post your photos and videos on Instagram and leverage the 130 million Instagram users and then take that content and share it on your blog or website for users who aren’t on Instagram.

What can you do with photos and videos you embed on your blog or website?

While you can embed Instagram photos and videos on your blog or website, not all of the features from Instagram carryover. Here’s a rundown on what features you have when you embed Instagram content.

Link to the Instagram profile who posted the content
See how many likes and comments content received on Instagram
Can only embed one Instagram photo or video at a time. If you want to embed three items, this requires three separate codes
No ability to comment on Instagram photos or videos – you must go to Instagram to do this
No ability to add hashtags on content you embed from Instagram – you must go to Instagram for this

Is there a difference embedding Instagram photos or videos?

Kudos to Instagram for making this process extremely easy. The process for embedding Instagram photos and videos is exactly the same – and it’s something you can do in 4 easy steps.

Keep reading for instructions and a video on how to embed Instagram photos and videos on your site.

Embed Instagram photos and videos in 4 easy steps!

Continue reading How to embed Instagram photos and videos in 4 steps

10 Facts about the Facebook hashtag

What’s so great about the Facebook hashtag? Is it the fact that you can now sort your Facebook newsfeed content a little better? Maybe it’s the discovery mode where you can learn about new businesses to like (or avoid) just by clicking a hashtag in your Facebook news feed.

With so many positive things to like about hashtags on Facebook, we’ve compiled a list of 10 facts about the Facebook hashtag.

10 Facts about the Facebook hashtag

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12 Do’s & Don’ts of Facebook for business [ebook]

Everyone knows about using Facebook to stay connected with friend and family. But what about using Facebook for business?

When you compare the two – Facebook for personal use and Facebook for business, you’ll notice that the former is very basic. You add someone as a friend, share your precious memories with them, and get people to like, comment, and share your posts.

So how does this differ from Facebook for business?

Facebook for business vs Facebook for personal use

While people using Facebook for personal use care about engaging with their friends and family, it’s not earth-shattering if a post someone makes doesn’t get a lot of engagement. It’s about the fact that you shared something and the people in your network were able to experience it too – even thought they were not necessarily there.

When you move into using Facebook for business, the game changes and you’re not concerned about just sharing content. You’re concerned with the following:

Sharing quality, business-related content
Reach
Engagement (likes, comments, shares)
Effectiveness

So what is so important about each of these items when using Facebook for business?

Sharing quality content

As I mentioned, when you share content on your personal account, you don’t necessarily care if people liked it or not. As a business using Facebook, you cannot have this same mentality.

When using Facebook for business, you have to be more selective about what you choose to share because you’re sharing it with people who are customers and who have the power to influence the buying decisions of their friends by recommending your business to them.

For instance, while you can share all of the Internet memes and unrelated content that doesn’t relate to your business on your Facebook Page, sharing this type of content can have drastic effects on your business.

Here are a few things that can happen when sharing inferior content on your Facebook Page

Lose sight of business goals, which should be:
- Raise product awareness
- Sell products
- Drive fans to your blog or website
Confuse customers who support your business
Negative word of mouth from customers

Reach

Reach is an important metric for businesses on Facebook, but it is not the primary metric.

The purpose of reach is to show you that your content is being seen. It does not mean that you’re successful with using Facebook for business though.

With reach, this just means that people are seeing your content. This is a good indicator that you’re putting out the right kind of content for your business on Facebook if you have a high reach.

Once you have reach, the next thing your business should focus on is engagement.

Engagement

Engagement means that people interacting with your content – through likes, shares, and comments. The more engagement, the more your content gets passed around, the higher your reach.

Effectiveness

One of the challenges that most businesses have with using Facebook for business is determining the effectiveness of their social media efforts.

A lot of businesses focus on the wrong indicators such as reach and posting unrelated content.

For example, anyone can post a quote or funny photo on their Facebook Page and get a high level of engagement, which will also boost their overall reach in the process.

While this seems like it is effective, it is not. It is creating a false sense of effectiveness when using Facebook for business.

What steps can you take to be effective at using Facebook for business?

Instead of focusing on posting items that will boost reach and engagement because it’s fun content (quotes, memes, etc) – this is often considered cheap content and something you want to avoid. Instead, what you want to do is post quality content – that’s related to your business that in-turn is engaging for fans and customers.

There are lots of ways to come up with content. For example, ShortStack created a cover photo that was also a game. The game was engaging and the answers were related to their business.

To help you learn the ropes of using Facebook for business, we’ve compiled a free ebook filled with helpful tips for your business.

Remember, using Facebook for business isn’t that challenging. When we focus on the end goals and stay on-course, it’s actually really easy.

Download it, read it, and send me a tweet to tell me what you liked about it.

12 Do’s & Don’ts of Facebook for business

How to delete Facebook search history [video]

A question I often get asked is “how to delete Facebook search history?”

As a Facebook user, one would expect this option to be right next to the Facebook Graph Search box (the logical place) or at least included in the account settings menu.

So why does Facebook make it so difficult to delete Facebook search history?

While we’ll never know the logic behind why Facebook makes the decisions that it does, what we can do is walk you through the necessary steps to delete your search history.

But before we do that, let’s talk about the impact of deleting Facebook search history.

Should you delete Facebook search history?

While you can delete your search history on Facebook, should you? That’s a tough one to answer. It really depends on what your reasoning is.

If your parents have access to your Facebook account, deleting your searches might be a good idea – especially if there’s something you’ve searched for that you don’t want them to find.

The same can be said if you’re someone who is in a committed relationship and you’re looking to meet someone else.

Outside of these two cases, there’s really not a need to delete Facebook search history. Deleting your search history means that if you frequently search for something, you may not get the results as quickly as you would like them.

Also, it’s not like if you delete your search history, Facebook cannot use your data. Chances are they collect your data and analyze it before you can even hit the delete Facebook search history button.

How to delete Facebook search history

Continue reading How to delete Facebook search history

5 Google Reader alternatives

Earlier this week, Google announced that they were shutting down Google Reader. While this means the end of Google Reader, there are a number of Google Reader alternatives available to help you continue to consume your favorite web content.

While I’m a little sad to see Google Reader shut down, I’ve been using a number of Google Reader alternatives for the past few months and I have to say, there’s a lot to like with them.

What’s to like about these Google Reader alternatives?

While Google Reader was a very convenient product, allowing you the opportunity to consume content from your favorite websites in one place, there’s a lot to like about the many Google Reader alternatives available. Here are just a few of the highlights.

Desktop, mobile and laptop friendly
Good integration with social media accounts
Free

5 Google Reader alternatives

Feedly

Feedly is by far the most popular one of these Google Reader alternatives. They offer a clean user interface, sync with Reeder and gReader, and will even recommend different content to you based on what you read.

Flipboard

If you’re a visual person, then Flipboard is for you. The thing I love most about Flipboard is that they let you create your own magazines. Think of it like having different magazines based on different interests.

In addition, they integrate nicely with your social media channels. This way you can read your content and see it – before you click through and if you want to, you can engage right there with it! To me, this is a huge timesaver for consuming your favorite news content on the web and on your social media channels.

Don’t forget, Flipboard also offers a quality free app for your mobile device or tablet and a great web experience too! Definitely one of my favorite Google Reader alternatives.

Newsblur

If you’re looking for an alternative to Google Reader that’s got a minimal look and feel to it, Newsblur is a good alternatives.

Just like other aggregators, Newsblur features a clean and simple interface along with apps designed for your mobile device and tablet.

If you’re deciding whether to go with Newsblur or any of these other Google Reader alternatives, I recommend trying it out. If you’re someone who prefers a more visual experience, there are other more suitable ones that I’ve listed (Feedly, Flipboard, Swaay).

Overall, Newsblur gets the job done though and you will be happy using the tool.

Pulse

One of the alternatives to Google Reader that I’ve been testing out for a good while is Pulse. What attracted me to this tool is one, LinkedIn owns it.

This means that hopefully they’ll integrate it with LinkedIn to make it easier to consume and share your favorite web content with you LinkedIn network.

Like Flipboard, Pulse is also extremely visual. In addition to allowing you to view headlines from your favorite sites, their mobile app is top-notch.

Overall, Pulse is near the top of my list of Google Reader alternatives, mainly because they’re backed by a large, successful company. But hey, look what happened to Google Reader.

Swayy

Swayy is a newcomer to Google Reader alternatives – and it’s still invitation only.

While that’s one small detractor, they make up for it. For instance, you can integrate with your favorite social networks and add your favorite web content.

Additionally, they give you analytics baed on what topics are trending. Also, they do a nice job breaking down the content that is recommended for you as seen in the above screenshot.

As I mentioned, it’s invite only, but I do have a few invitations so if you want to try this one out, send me a message.

Which of these Google Reader alternatives is right for me?

While there’s no guarantee that these Google Reader alternatives will be around forever, it’s great to know that there are lots of great options.

Once you decide on an alternative, don’t forget to add our blog to your favorite Google Reader alternative.

If I had to crown a king, I would rank them in the following order:

Feedly – feature-packed, works with lots of other services.
Flipboard – magazine-style news reader. Integrates nicely with social media accounts.
Pulse – owned by LinkedIn, visual interface, what’s not to love?
Swayy – invitation only, great trending tools to help identify content to share.
Newsblur – nice interface, lacks visuals like other readers.

Question: Which of these Google Reader alternatives do you plan to use? Let me know by leaving a comment here.

5 Easy steps for better SEO with Google Authorship

Want to stand out on Google? While it is important to write great content that is optimized for SEO so that people find it, your best bet is to use Google Authorship.

What is Google Authorship?

Google Authorship is basically a way to link your Google+ account to your blog content. In addition, it adds a photo next to your content in search results – this way it’s easy to associate a name with a face.

This is beneficial if you rank well for certain keywords for the following reasons:

Links your content you post online back to you!
People searching can quickly see who you are
Identify how many people have you in their Google+ circles (a measure of influence)
Quickly identify your content in Google search results because you have a photo next to it

Google Authorship example — Example of a blog post with Google Authorship set up.

Setting up Google Authorship is easy. We’ve outlined the steps you need to follow below.

How to setup Google Authorship Continue reading 5 Easy steps for better SEO with Google Authorship

4 steps to a better Facebook link thumbnail image

One of the things that has always frustrated me when sharing content on Facebook is controlling the Facebook link thumbnail that is generated when you post a link on your Facebook Page.

This can be particularly frustrating if you’re sharing a link to a website that has an image that is perfectly optimized for Facebook, yet Facebook doesn’t seem to find the image.

As a result, you’re left to either upload your own image like this Facebook post or deal with an image that doesn’t fit the space like the one you see below.

Previous Facebook link thumbnail images

Bad image, bad message

While you’re at Facebook’s mercy for images, ultimately, this can affect how fans see your brand.

For example, if I chose to go with the improperly sized image from above, I’m basically sending the message to my fans that I don’t care how my content looks. I just want them to read it.

Posting quality content is ideal. It is equally important when sharing content on Facebook to have rock-solid images as well. These include the Facebook link thumbnail image Facebook sees when you share a link, photos included on photo posts, etc.

If you’re stuck in this situation, you have three options.

Option 1: Go with the images Facebook finds

While option 1 is the easiest to do, it can do the most harm to your brand because of the message it sends to fans – you don’t care.

Option 2: Facebook photo post

The second option is a little better. It does mean you’ll need to create a new, larger image (we recommend 600×600 px). In this situation, you’ll end up with a large image that’s visually appealing. To include your link, simply paste your link in the status update box and post it.

I like this option, but it means you need a graphics program (or a designer) to create something for you. You’ll also be devoting more time to finding images that fit the size of the post.

Option 3: Use a custom Facebook link thumbnail image

Hopefully you’re not satisfied with the first two options because option 3 is exactly what you need.

If Facebook happens to return images that are not properly sized, instead of settling, you can upload your own now. This way you can determine what Facebook link thumbnail image gets associated with your posts.

3 steps to creating a custom Facebook link thumbnail

Continue reading 4 steps to a better Facebook link thumbnail image