Stephen Darori's Social Media Wisedom From Zion.

Stephen Darori is a Social Media Expert,Author, Publicist,Finance and Marketing Whiz , Strategist ,Journalist, Editor Prolific Blogger. Editor. You can follow Stephen Darori on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and other Social Media Platforms. Stephen Darori & Associates has led major Social Media and Digital Campaigns for wide ranging clients that have included Hilary for America, the Democratic Party ,Democratic Alliance ( South Africa), Fortune 1000 companies and Shabbat.com

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Saturday, October 29, 2016

Free Stock Photo Sites for your Social Media Images

Any social media manager or content marketer knows that one of the toughest parts of the job is finding the perfect image to accompany a post. We all know that images are one of the most important components for engagement, but unless you’re willing to pay significant costs for access to a database, trying to find great free social media imagescan be incredibly time-consuming.

To help you get rid of this headache, we’ve put together a list of 20 free stock photo sites that you can bookmark for easy reference whenever you’re having trouble getting the right picture.

Creative Commons Zero

Before sharing the list, it’s important to recognize what is meant with the different licensing and copyrights of images available. It can be hard to know if you are legally allowed to use or modify an image you find online for your personal or commercial uses, so the Creative Commons Zero license is especially valuable.

According to the Creative Commons website, the CC0 license “enables scientists, educators, artists and other creators and owners of copyright- or database-protected content to waive those interests in their works and thereby place them as completely as possible in the public domain, so that others may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright or database law.”

In other words, you are free to use that great sunset shot you found under the CC0 license for any purpose, including your next Instagram campaign. Here are the best free stock photo sites we found whose images fall under CC0.

Bonus: Download a free cheat sheet to quickly find the best image sizes for every social network and learn how you can use Hootsuite to easily add them to any post.

20 Free Sites for Awesome Social Media Images

1. Gratisography

Gratisography is one of the most interesting of the free stock photo sites due to the quirky style of photographer Ryan McGuire. All of the photos are high-resolution and royalty-free, ready for your use wherever you please. Sorted into the categories of animals, nature, objects, people, urban, and whimsical, there are new photos added weekly, which are also shared through McGuire’s Twitter and Facebook.

2. IM Free

IM Free offers not only free social media images, but is a “curated collection of free web design resources, all for commercial use.” The royalty free collections include templates, icons, button makers, along with classic free stock images organized by themes such as technology, education, nature, and many more.

3. Pixabay

Pixabay offers over 490,000 free images for both your personal and commercial use. These are great to use as social media images, because Pixabay’s collection includes not only photos, but illustrations and vector images. As all images on the site are royalty free and covered under Creative Commons CC0, they may be modified and used commercially and in printed format.

4. Picjumbo

With over 2,479,693 downloads since its 2013 launch, Picjumbo is a popular free resource for your social media images. Users can either click through the different categories of over 600 high resolution photos for free, or download a pack that includes all images as well as three Photoshop mockups, in exchange for a donation of $10 or more.

5. Unsplash

Unsplash offers ten new photos every ten days via an email subscription as well as simply on their website. All photos are licensed under Creative Commons Zero, “which means you can copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer or Unsplash.” You can navigate the site by viewing the photos in their larger versions, but when browsing I usually find it easier to switch to the grid format.

6. Morguefile

The Morguefile was created in 1996, and offers photographs available free for the use in creative projects. The website does ask that photographers or artists are credited when using their free stock images as they aren’t in the public domain. As they emphasize altering their images when using them, this is a great resource for free social media images that can be used as backgrounds for text-based images such as quotes, store hours, etc. that you want to post to Instagram or Facebook.

7. Stockvault

Stockvault hosts over 35,000 royalty-free images, graphics, and designs from photographers, designers, and students around the world. As long as you stay on the “Free Stock Photos” rather than the “Premium Stock Photos” tab, you have access to a huge library of photos to use for your content and social media purposes.

8. Negative Space

Negative Space adds new free stock images every week, and all are listed under the Creative Commons Zero license. These free images are sortable by category, copy space, position, and color. You can also follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, for updates on new image additions.

9. Lock and Stock Photos

Lock and Stock Photos was started by AJ Montpetit who firmly believes in a “sharing is caring” model and after benefiting for a long time from other free stock images sites, decided to become a producer himself. All of his beautiful photos are released under the Creative Commons Zero license, so no attribution is required (but is of course always appreciated).

10. Kaboompics

KaboomPics offers a ton of great quality royalty free stock images that are available for use by personal users as well as commercial purposes. The thousands of free images are searchable by keyword, category, tags, or can be browsed.

11. FancyCrave

FancyCrave’s easy to navigate website releases two new images from professional photographers everyday. When looking for free social media images, the extra colorful and vibrant nature of FancyCrave’s photographs are especially eye-catching for sharing and engagement purposes.

12. StockSnap

When researching resources for free social media images, I was told by more than one socially-savvy person that StockSnap was their favorite site. The free images can be sorted by date added, trending, number of views, number of downloads, as well as through keyword searches.

13. Startup Stock Photos

Startup Stock Photos has a concept that is pretty self-explanatory, with free stock images for “startups, bloggers, publishers, websites, designers, developers, creators, and everyone else.” The photos are especially great as free social media images when you are sharing links to content such as a professional blog post, where the most fitting visual is of someone on a computer or in a casual business setting.

14. Splitshire

Web designer Daniel Nanescu created Splitshire to offer a collection of stunning, easy to browse, free stock images. The images are sorted into helpful categories such as “Abstract,” “Still Life,” and “Technology,” which allows for a pleasant browsing experience. Nanescu’s photos which previously lived “on a hard drive gathering dust” are now, for good reason, being used on websites like The Huffington Post, CNN, as well as numerous books and magazine covers.

15. Life of Pix

Life of Pix is a collection of free high-resolution stock images donated to the public domain by the Leeroy Advertising Agency in Montreal. With no copyright restrictions, the beautiful photos are free for personal and commercial use. If you need free social media images of the moving variety, their sister site Life of Vids offers royalty-free videos, clips, and loops for you to use to your heart’s content.

16. Pexels

The free stock images on Pexels are curated from sites such as Gratisography, Unsplash, and Little Visuals, in the attempt to simplify the image searching process. All of the photos on the site are licensed under the Creative Commons Zero, making it easy to know that you can use any of the photos for personal or commercial use. The collection currently includes over 3,800 high-resolution free stock photos, with at least 70 new ones added each and every week.

17. Jay Mantri

Jay Mantri’s photographs are nothing short of breathtaking, and the fact that he offers them as free stock photos is extremely generous. While beautiful to scroll through in their large form, if you are needing to quickly find an image for your content or social media posting, I suggest changing to the archive view for a condensed appearance.

18. ISO Republic

ISO Republic is a fairly new site, run by English designer and photographer Tom Eversley. The site’s mission is “to provide high-quality images to be used by designers, developers, bloggers, marketers and social media teams.” The categories these free social media images are sorted into, include architecture, nature, people, textures, urban, and everyone’s favorite, “various”.

19. New Old Stock

New Old Stock provide the ultimate “Throwback Thursday” content with their hundreds of vintage photos from the public archives. The photos are fascinating and would be a compelling addition to any social media campaign. Offering hundreds of royalty free stock photos, New Old Stock’s collection showcases a wide variety of situations and subjects, perfect for a number of social media posting opportunities.

20. Free Refe

We have used a number of the free stock photos from Free Refe for our purposes, due to their clarity, quality, and diverse subject matter. Although there is an emphasis on photos showing “real life,” the images are anything but mundane. As their website states, “using great imagery helps portray emotions, increase sales, and conversions,” the free photos here are a must-bookmark resource.

The quest for perfect free social media images can seem daunting at first, but with these free resources hopefully the task has been made as painless as possible. Share your favorite sites for free stock photos with us, and let us know if we’ve missed any!

Monday, October 24, 2016

Trump, Name Now Awash in Controversy, Readies Scion as New Brand

By the time the Federal election Commission announces Hillary Clinton as the 45th President of the USA , Donald Trump will have received perhaps up to a billion dollars of paid advertising and up to $3.5 billion of unpaid advertsing.

Enter Scion. The new brand is planned for use at city and resort locations, Trump Hotels said when Scion was announced Sept. 28. The new hotels are intended to appeal “to a new and different type of guest in more locations around the globe,” Trump Hotels said. The first Scion location is scheduled to open in 2017.

The Scion flag won’t replace the Trump brand, according to Trump Hotels. It was announced more than a week before the Washington Post published a 2005 video of Trump bragging about grabbing and kissing women.

“We chose this name as a nod to the Trump family and their tremendous business successes, including Trump Hotels,” Eric Danziger, chief executive officer of Trump Hotels, said in an e-mail. “We want to acknowledge the association with Trump in a genuine way, while allowing the new lifestyle brand to stand on its own.”

Scattered evidence suggests travelers are choosing to check in elsewhere. It’s hard to measure the impact on Trump Hotels of his most inflammatory comments or the allegations of unwelcome sexual advances. The Trump Organization doesn’t disclose occupancy rates.
Bookings Fall

Bookings at Trump hotels through luxury-travel specialist Ovation Vacations tumbled 29 percent in the past six months, said Jack Ezon, president of the firm. While corporate reservations at Trump Hotels through Altour International Inc. fell 10 percent this year through Oct. 15, leisure bookings rose so much they provided a 16 percent lift overall, said Martin Rapp, senior vice president at the corporate and leisure travel agency, which has a large number of entertainment clients. After all, more than 13 million Americans voted for Trump in the primaries.

Trump Hotels is hardly the first lodging company to introduce a new brand aimed at younger customers who may be turned off by older names that can be seen as stodgy. Marriott International Inc. started Moxy, Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. has Canopy, and Starwood, acquired by Marriott last month, added the Aloft brand. The hotel operators are dealing with competition from travel alternatives such as the home-sharing company Airbnb Inc.
Jets, Towers

In fact, competition from new hotels may be a problem for Scion, said Piers Schmidt, founder of London-based consulting firm Luxury Branding. The new brand diffuses the very things that draw customers to Trump: the image of a billionaire full of brashness and bling, he said.

Trump’s “track record is build it tall, build it loud, promote it hard, fill it with people and create this kind of lifestyle -- the jets, the towers, the hotels,” Schmidt said. “There is a litany of new lifestyle brands that are chasing after the millennials.”

The Trump Organization has eight hotels in the U.S. and seven in other countries. Its U.S. properties include the Trump International Hotel Washington, D.C. -- housed in the 1899 Romanesque Revival-style Old Post Office on Pennsylvania Avenue, five blocks from the White House -- and its foreign properties include the Trump International Hotel & Tower Vancouver, which is under construction. During his run for the White House, Trump gave reporters an April tour of the then-unfinished Washington hotel, held a post-Brexit event at Trump Turnberry in Scotland, and in September returned to the D.C. property to renounce previous claims that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. -- after first boasting about his new hotel.

‘Very Valuable’

Last week in Las Vegas, where Trump went up against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in their third and final debate, Rita Solon, who volunteered for her first Republican campaign in 1980 and came from Washington, D.C., to watch the event and make fundraising calls on Trump’s behalf, said she thinks that his candidacy is hurting his businesses.

“His brand was very valuable,” said Solon, wearing a Trump-Pence pin in the lobby of the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. “The family is making a tremendous sacrifice with his brand. He’s hated and reviled.”

Trump’s new Washington hotel has been hit with graffiti and protests. “All of my friends refuse to come here,” said Peter Gebre, a resident of suburban Maryland who was dining with his wife and son at the hotel’s restaurant to celebrate his 21st wedding anniversary earlier this month. “It does have an impact.”

The Washington hotel also is offering discounts from its pre-opening minimum prices, with rooms advertised for later this month as low as $404, compared with the starting rate of $625 initially set by Trump. October is typically one of the busiest months for Washington hotels.
‘Really Disappointing’

“It’s really disappointing to see they’re charging such low prices for all they said how good they are and how they would come in and crush everybody,” said David Bernand, general manager of the Four Seasons in Georgetown. “You only harvest what you plant.”

Trump Hotels said rates fluctuate for several reasons including market conditions and the $404 rate doesn’t provide an accurate picture of the property’s success since its Sept. 12 soft opening. The opening “has been the most successful in terms of opening bookings, interest from groups and large events” in his 10 years with Trump Hotels, Mickael Damelincourt, managing director of the new Washington hotel, said in a statement.
Beverly Hills

Other hotels have been hurt by politics or their owners’ behavior. The Sultan of Brunei had a similar problem in 2014, when his swank Beverly Hills Hotel was boycotted after the kingdom implemented Islamic criminal laws that call for death by stoning for gay people. Among the events moved from the Sunset Boulevard property was the Feminist Majority Foundation’s Global Women’s Rights Awards, and Richard Branson and Ellen DeGeneres said they wouldn’t stay there.

Then, slowly and rather quietly, the elite began to return -- because they like the place. But the Beverly Hills Hotel is a one-of-a-kind trophy with a decades-long history before the Sultan of Brunei bought it in 1987. The property doesn’t bear the sultan’s name, and the controversy wasn’t followed as closely as Trump has been during his presidential campaign.

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Still, some believe that for Trump, who has been putting his name on everything from steaks to neckties and cologne for more than 30 years, any blow to his business could also be fleeting. The candidate has thrived through multiple bankruptcies, the flop of his Trump Shuttle airline and the demise -- in a swirl of litigation alleging illegal business practices, denied by Trump -- of his eponymous for-profit university.

“Six months after the election, everyone will forget it,” said Jason Awad, a venue planner in suburban Washington. “He’s very resilient.”

Even if the Trump name does suffer long-term, there’s no guarantee that Scion, which means “descendant of a notable family” -- Donald Trump’s children, Donald Jr., Ivanka and Eric, are all Trump Hotels executives -- will prove a worthy alternative. After all, it’s not the first time the name’s been used for a youth-oriented brand. With sales falling, Toyota Motor Corp.ended its use of the Scion brand two months ago.

Trump, Name Now Awash in Controversy, Readies Scion as New Brand

Monday, October 17, 2016

Social Media Style Guide for Your Business: The Essential Guide

Many people think that a writer’s best friend is the dictionary, but I respectfully disagree. The true holy grail is the style guide—and the same is true for anyone working in social media.

For new employees, a social media style guide offers the answer to almost any question imaginable. It also offers guidelines that can help speed up the on-boarding process, ensuring a smooth transition between team members. But it’s not only helpful for new hires. A thorough social media style guide can act as a cornerstone for your entire social media strategy—a foundational document that ensures there’s clarity and consistency in how your business uses social media.

In this post, we cover 10 key components of a social media style guide. Depending on your industry, brand, and business needs, you may want to focus on some sections more than others, or add in sections that we haven’t covered here. The goal is to end up with a go-to document that gets circulated around your entire organization, offering both guidance and governance.

Most importantly, update your style guide on a regular basis. An outdated document filled with misinformation won’t be useful to anyone. As your strategy changes and your audience evolves, so too should your style guide.

10 key components of a social media style guide

1. A list of active accounts and contacts

This is an easy one. Begin your style guide with a list of all your active social media accounts, and link to each one. You should also include a list of names and contact information for everyone responsible for your social media efforts. Clearly identify who has access to each account and provide an outline of their roles and responsibilities.

2. Your social media goals

Your social media style guide is a good place to remind everyone of why you’re on social media in the first place. Include the goals you’re working towards and link to your overall social media marketing plan and strategy.

3. Audience breakdown

Who are you trying to reach? How do they speak, consume content, and behave on social? Does it differ from platform to platform? Your style guide should clearly define the people you want to reach and influence on social. This will help ensure they’re the main focus of every decision you make.

4. Tone of voice

Your style guide needs to outline not just what your brand talks about on social, but howit talks. The tone of voice you use on social shouldn’t be drastically different than the voice your brand uses everywhere else, although it should be adapted to fit the more personal nature of social media.

Your customers will be expecting one-on-one interaction when they reach out to your business on social, so the tone of voice you use should be the same as they’d receive over the phone or in-person.

5. Terminology

There are a lot of words and phrases unique to your business or industry that your brand might use on social. Include a list of these and provide guidelines for how to deal with them, for example:

Proper capitalization and spelling for product or brand names
How to reference clients or customers
When to use acronyms
Words to avoid using all together

6. Publishing

This section should cover any and all guidelines for the posts published by your brand on social. While some of these may seem like small and unnecessary details, they paint a much bigger picture. Like any other channel, how your business communicates on social media is a reflection of your brand, so you want to ensure the voice being used is as consistent as it is unique.

Ownership

Should people sign off with their initials on the posts they publish? Or should every post appear to come from the brand (as opposed to an individual)?

Cross-platform publishing

Do you ever publish the same post to multiple social platforms? Or do you create specific posts for each one? If you do cross-post, provide guidelines. For example: “When publishing a post to more than one platform, ensure that you don’t use any terminology that isn’t applicable to the other platform, such as Retweet or Share. Avoid tagging people in posts that will be published on multiple platforms, since usernames don’t always align from one to the other.”

Where to source content

One of most common questions someone has when managing social media is: “what should I post?” Let people know where to find blog posts, announcements, images, videos, or GIFs that would be appropriate for your brand to share on social. If you have a shared content library where your brand stores pre-approved assets for social, link to it here.

Punctuation guidelines

Your brand may already have guidelines for written communication in place, or adhere to a format like AP Style. If so, link to these guidelines so that everyone knows how they should be crafting copy for social. Or outline the basics to ensure there’s consistency in every post and interaction your brand has on social. Include guidelines for capitalization and punctuation such as exclamation marks, all caps, and acronyms.

Hashtags

List all of the relevant hashtags your business uses on social. This includes hashtags you use for certain products or campaigns, and ones that you join in on to ramp up conversation and engagement (like daily hashtags, for example). Include style guidelines for using hashtags as well. For example, do you use all lowercase or capitalize the beginning letter of each word in a hashtag?

Emoji

Using emoji on social media is a great way to say more in fewer characters and have some fun with your social messaging. It’s also been shown to increase engagement—but only if used correctly. Outline the context for when (and how) your business should use emoji. Our guide to using emoji can help you develop those guidelines.

How to give credit

When using someone else’s image, or sharing an article they wrote or discovered, how should you give that person credit? On Twitter, you might decide to use “h/t @username” (with “h/t” meaning “hat tip”) or simply mention that user name at some point in the Tweet. On Instagram, many people use the camera emoji (“📷 : @username”) to give credit to the appropriate person. (Hootsuite makes this process really easy, by the way.)

Using links

Shortening your links on social will not only free up more room for copy in your posts, it will also give you a measurable way to track the success of your efforts on social. Should links to content for campaigns or pages use different UTM parameters? (If you don’t know what those words mean, check out this post.)

Platform-specific guidelines

Each social platform has its own features that also need to be taken into consideration. For example, does your brand Retweet other people outright or use Quote Tweets instead? What’s the average character length that a Facebook post should be?

7. Scheduling

Outline when you would schedule a post instead of publishing it in the moment. Is there a certain timeframe, or does it depend on the type of content being posted? Who is responsible for scheduling social content? Are there time zones relevant to your business that should be taken into account?

Establish the cadence that your scheduled posts should follow, as well as the number of posts that should be scheduled each day. For example: “Tweets should be scheduled no less than two hours apart, up to a maximum of 10 per day.”

8. Content calendar

Include a link to your most recent social media content calendar. (Don’t have a social media content calendar? You’re in luck. We’ve got a handy template you can download and start using.) You should also outline how often to post on each social account.

9. Image and design guidelines

The images and design assets you use on social media should be closely aligned with the visuals your business uses everywhere else. This includes your branded profile pictures and header images, as well as any content you publish such as photos, videos, or GIFs.

Include a list of optimal image sizes for each social platform you use and guidelines for the type of visual content that should be used on social.

10. Legal considerations

If your business operates within a regulated industry, your style guide needs to include notes and guidelines for staying compliant on social media. Even if you’re not in a regulated industry, there are other legal considerations that should be covered in your style guide.

Understanding image copyright is a big one, since using images in social media posts is such a widespread (and effective) tactic.

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Ways your business is wasting time on Facebook

1. Creating overly promotional content

Content creation is time-consuming, and you don’t want those hours of hard work to go to waste. If you’ve been wondering about the reason for that drastic dip in your business’s organic reach, you probably haven’t heard our calls to halt the creation of overly promotional content. Facebook has been encouraging content creators on the network to replace the straight-up promo material with stories that add value or provide more history for your business’s products and services. These kinds of posts have a higher likelihood of being seen by bigger audiences.

2. Posting Instagram pictures without context

Here’s a thought process that might sound familiar: Instagram runs on beautiful images. Images increase engagement on Facebook. Instagram is part of Facebook. So I should repost all my Instagram photos automatically on my Facebook Page, right?

Wrong. Even if it may seem like a time-saving technique to automatically post the same update to multiple networks, it might cost you reach on both networks. For starters, your brand’s Instagram profile and Facebook Page may be serving different purposes, so content from one may not fit the overall tone of messaging on the other. Your audiences on the networks may also be drastically different, so what resonates with your Instagram followers may not quite jive with your Facebook fans. If you want to reuse a photo, make sure to provide enough context for it to make a meaningful, valuable Facebook post.

3. Getting in comment wars

Even if you have a sufficient number of customer support channels, it’s not unusual for people to reach out to you on Facebook. Don’t discourage this method of communication, and don’t engage in any sort of negative exchange. If a disgruntled customer comments on your Facebook post, reply quickly and reach out to them via Messenger.

Stay away from any negative Facebook comment threads from competitor brands. It’s important to be aware of these conversations, but participating in them isn’t necessary—especially if none of the negative claims are substantiated. You risk doing more damage to your online reputation if you do get involved in a comment war with your competition, especially if this is done at the expense of your engagement with followers and fans.

4. Browsing Trending articles

Facebook’s Trending sidebar shows the top three most discussed topics in your network. You can click on the headlines to discover more detailed information—but before you do, ask yourself if this topic is relevant to your work. The Trending sidebar provides a brief summary of the important details of the story, so unless the trending news is highly relevant to your industry or your audience’s interests, you shouldn’t browse the articles associated with it. Curiosity is not a bad trait; however, if you’re spending your time on Facebook reading about Tyra Banks’ selfie, you’re wasting precious time that could instead be spent talking to your followers.

5. Always creating custom ads instead of boosting posts

Facebook allows Page owners to put small amounts of cash on an existing post in order to boost its reach. This option can be a lot faster—and a lot cheaper!—than creating original advertisement content. While this shouldn’t be the only sponsored option you explore on Facebook, boosting posts is a fast and cost-effective way to test engagement from a new target demographic or a new type of media promotion. Depending on the results these boosted posts yield, you can then decide whether it’s worth investing a bigger budget into an ad.

6. Skipping A/B tests for your Facebook ads

Another opportunity Facebook gives to businesses is running split tests on their ads to see which group performs better. This basically means sending out two slightly different versions of your ad to different target audiences, and see which one receives more engagements. Your Facebook Page admin may think they are saving time by skipping the testing stage, but in reality, this can be a huge missed opportunity.

Facebook is a standalone advertising platform, and promoted content that works well for other networks may not get you the same numbers here. There are many elements you can test with your Facebook ad, such as placement, format, and copy length. Try out different variations with each ad you create, and note the winner of that category. Not only will this save you some time, it’ll also likely increase the return on investment on your Facebook ads.

7. Taking too long to create a Facebook update

There is a lot of pressure to post updates that get likes, comments, and shares—and there are always days when your Facebook muse is absent. However, you don’t have hours to spend on composing a single update. If the inspiration just won’t come, do some productive social media browsing to find ideas. Another solution is asking your colleagues for advice: run your existing posts by knowledgeable coworkers to see what improvements can be made.

You can also take a look at posts that have performed well in the past, and repurpose this content for a new post. Try looking for content that can be updated with some new information, or a new angle. If after all these steps you’re still not satisfied with the Facebook post, maybe it’s a good day for some curated content.

8. Reposting videos from external sources

Since Facebook natively enabled video content of that type has yielded amazing engagement results. So if you’re still embedding YouTube videos on your Page, you’re doing it wrong. Auto-playing Facebook videos encourage your followers to spend more time engaging with the content, which registers with the network’s algorithm. Plus, posting Facebook videos and judging their performance can help you choose content for future video ads.

9. Not completing your About section

This is another time sinkhole, with the solution in the category of “invest more time first, spend less time later.” If you don’t include all the necessary information about your company on your Facebook Page, you risk creating confusion among those who turn to that social account for details about your business.

If you want to avoid spending time answering the same questions, provide a detailed description on the About section of your Page. This includes a brief description of your brand mission, a list of products or services you provide, a link to your official website, and a physical address, if your company has one.

10. Liking irresponsibly

Finally, just like any other Facebook user, Facebook Page managers can like other people’s posts and Pages. In a similar fashion, businesses you’ve liked on Facebook show up in a Liked sidebar on your Page, so you must execute caution when pressing the ‘Like’ button. Your online properties are valuable real estate, so you don’t want visitors of your Page to see brands you wouldn’t necessarily endorse as a business. Select a few partners or clients to like, and let your Liked sidebar highlight your partnership. Plus, liking a Page authorizes new updates to appear on your News Feed, and you don’t want to create opportunities for distraction by liking Pages with low content quality.

Another way you might be wasting time on Facebook? Page management. Hootsuite makes it easy to schedule posts, share video, and monitor conversations so you can spend time on what matters—connecting with your customers.

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

10 Books Every Social Media Manager Should Read

When I was young, my summer holiday usually kicked off with a visit to the local library to sign up for the summer reading program. Kids around the city would eagerly devour book after book, in the hopes of the ultimate prize—a new book of their choice. As an adult, the fact that I can go and just get a book whenever I please ranks right up there with the disbelief that I can also get candy whenever I want.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I only read marketing books. I’m not a dirty liar. But there are a select few resources that every social media manager needs to read.

While I could provide a list of the top 10 marketing books as recommended by Amazon, there is much more that goes into being a successful social media manager than simply “social media managing.” Don’t get me wrong, these books are there for a reason (and you’ll find some of them below), but a great social media manager needs a wide variety of skills.

Content Strategy for the Web

By Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach

This book has been making its way around the Hootsuite offices, becoming more disheveled with each handoff. Many colleagues have been tooting the horn of authors Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach approach to content strategy.

Social media is a crucial part of content marketing, so mastering the art of content strategy is something you need to know how to do. Halvorson and Rach teach you exactly how to do this, sharing their expertise and instructions on everything from completing a content audit to leading a project. If others in your company don’t think that content strategy is important, fear not—the authors shares the perfect persuasion tactics for this situation.

Purple Cow

By Seth Godin

Described as “the godfather of marketing books” by another Hootsuite employee, Purple Cow has more than just an intriguing title. Author Seth Godin aims to change the way people think about marketing.

It can be difficult for social media managers to come up with original content day in and day out, so sometimes you just need a purple cow. As Godin explains, “Purple Cow describes something phenomenal, something counterintuitive and exciting and flat out unbelievable. Every day, consumers come face to face with a lot of boring stuff—a lot of brown cows—but you can bet they won’t forget a Purple Cow.”

Delight your audience and customers after you get inspired to create your own “purple cows” with your social media content.

Contagious: Why Things Catch On

By Jonah Berger

A New York Times bestseller and named the Best Marketing Book of 2014 by the American Marketing Association, many members of the Hootsuite marketing department recommend this book. While ‘going viral’ might not be the best goal for a social media manager, getting your brand noticed on social is definitely a key objective.

Berger dives into six “contagious” qualities that impact everything from consumer products to media content. Learn how you can use these qualities to create your own shareable content.

Thinking, Fast and Slow

By Daniel Kahneman

Why do we do what we do? What drives the choices that we make? These are important things for any social media manager to think about when crafting content, and Daniel Kahneman’s work explores these ideas in-depth. A Nobel Prize winner for his work on decision-making, Kahneman is an expert in human behavior—something that any social media manager needs to understand.

Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives — How Your Friends’ Friends’ Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do

By Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler

Authors and scientists Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler explore the social networks and connections human beings have, and how these connections influence our decisions.

As a social media manager, you know that your online networks have huge power, so learning how these connections work, and how to grow them, will help inform your social strategy.

Everybody Writes

By Ann Handley

I included this irreplaceable resource in my post So You Think You Can’t Write: 8 Writing Resources for Non-Writers and it’s a definite must-read for social media managers.

Writing is a skill that all marketers need to have, and Ann Handley offers a clear and concise guide to mastering it. Handley explains that content is “everything your customer or prospect touches or interacts with—including your own online properties and web pages and the experiences they offer, but also everything on any social channel.”

If you are trying to get your audience’s attention, you’re going to need the social media content to match. This book will help you create just that.

Hug Your Haters

By Jay Baer

Social media customer service is undoubtedly an area every social media manager needs to master, and Jay Baer’s book is the perfect resource. You already know that ignoring your upset customers on social media is a poor approach, but knowing exactly how to deal with them can be a challenge. With this book, you’ll learn how to not only manage your “haters,” but turn every negative experience into a positive one that can work for you and your brand.

Likeable Social Media

By Dave Kerpen

I was crossing the border into the United States for a shopping trip recently, and the border security officer asked what I do for work. I explained that I write. When I told him “social media and content marketing” he let out a loud groan. What is it about the subject that makes some people cringe? How do you ensure that you aren’t sharing cringe-worthy content on your own channels?

Author Dave Kerpen explores how to listen to your customers so that you can deliver valuable content—and prove even the most cynical border security guards wrong.

Social IMC: Social Strategies with Bottom-Line ROI

By Randy Hlavac

Having a social media plan is all well and dandy, but do you know how your strategy actually benefits your business? Author Randy Hlavac explains “there are many books out there on the theories behind the use of social media and mobile applications in marketing—but this is not one of them.”

Instead of broad theories, Hlavac provides actionable strategies and proven tactics that can bring results. This social media how-to guide will show you how to build a strategy , with you at the helm, your brand sees profit and growth

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World

By Gary Vaynerchuk

As a social media manager, you know that one of your biggest challenges is getting your message heard. The sheer volume of content shared every second means that you need to work extremely hard to make sure you’re creating unique and valuable content. This is where Gary Vaynerchuk’s book comes in. He shows you how to adapt your content to specific channels and how to keep up with the ever-changing nature of the social media landscape.

In order to be successful in the world of social media and content marketing, you need to stay ahead of the curve. While theory can easily become outdated, the above references are great for building a solid foundation of ideas and skills.