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Social Media Balance

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on April 4, 2024

Social Media Balance

Social media balance is sometimes elusive. Yet much like everything else, social media needs to be balanced. Too much, and you’ll alienate your readers. And too little, and they’ll wonder if you’re still alive.

I’ll confine my comments to just blogging, Facebook and Twitter. Of course there are other outlets, but let’s just look at those three.

Too Much

During the 2012 Christmas season here in Boston, the oldies station began broadcasting all-day Christmas music early. How early?

So it was, if I am recalling correctly, before Veterans’ Day. Egad, it was awful. And then of course other radio stations also began their regular broadcast of holiday music. So it was very hard to get away from it all.

Now, lots of these songs are lovely. This is not me slamming religion – don’t misunderstand me. Rather, it was just … c’mon already! Because it was way too much!

It was not festive. Instead, it annoyed people (not just me!). And the same can be said of social media. If you’re a small outlet, a tiny company, a Mom and Pop operation, here’s a little secret. You don’t need to constantly tweet and update Facebook.

Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Overdo It

  • You’ll oversaturate the people you’re trying to endear, and they’ll turn off to your message.
  • And you’ll burn out.
  • Also, you’ll run out of things to say.

Not Enough

It continually amuses me when people say something like, “I have a blog.” And they’ll post their link. However, the last time they updated was 13 months ago, or more, or they’ve never updated. Or it’s a Twitter stream with three tweets, and the account is over a year old. Maybe they have a Facebook page with nearly nothing on it.

Given the number of abandoned accounts, and the number of deceased persons’ accounts on Facebook and the like, followers might be wondering. Have you gone to the great computer room in the sky?

Per my SEO pal Garit Boothe, best practices is to keep everything fresh to the tune of nothing being over 3 months old (so, posts are updated and re-released at later dates).

Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Underdo It

  • Your readers will leave you, big time. They may be loyal but today’s audiences are also pretty fickle. You’re no longer shiny and new. So they leave.
  • Google still indexes abandoned accounts, although the information is out of date. And it can sometimes end up making you look worse than not having a social media presence at all.
  • You show, essentially, that you no longer care about your subject matter. So why should anyone read what you write at all, if even you don’t believe in it?
  • The algorithms will smash your site into smithereens.

While the exact, perfect information on any algorithm is proprietary and kept secret from us hoi polloi, one thing is certain. Newness counts. No posting means you’ve got nothing new going on. And it will push your site down in rankings on Google and YouTube. Facebook also values recency. And as for Twitter? No one will be able to find your stuff.

Seeking Social Media Balance

It’s rather Zen, I suppose, to seek a balance here.

But how do you get it?

The easiest way is to consider the people who you follow where you just love their updates. They don’t seem forced or rushed, and they seem to come in, just at the right time.

Don’t think of really big wigs in social media, like George Takei, Shama Hyder Kabani, Wil Wheaton, Guy Kawasaki, or Ashton Kutcher, etc. Instead, consider your friends, colleagues, and neighbors, even if it’s people who aren’t making (or trying to make) a career out of social media.

Look at their Facebook walls and their Twitter streams and their blogs. What is it about how they handle those outlets that grabs you?

By the way, recognize that a person might be really good at one form of balance, but not at another. That’s not unexpected, as these are all rather different forms of media.

Your friend who crushes it on Twitter might be just plain awful on Facebook.

2 Reasons Why You Should Strike a Social Media Balance

  1. Posting too much at the beginning can lead directly to posting pretty much nothing later on, so spread things out over time, and you can avoid both issues simultaneously.
  2. Giving yourself a degree of posting responsibility can help you take it all more seriously. Of course you can (and probably should) be playful. But even the silliest of accounts have some form of a schedule, particularly if they’ve gotten large. They can’t just “forget” to post.

Schedule Those Suckers

  • If you’re really inspired and have a lot to say, that’s great! But unless it’s time-sensitive, use the scheduling features of programs like HootSuite. Or try Facebook’s own post scheduling feature. WordPress and Blogger both allow you to save drafts and schedule them to publish when you want them to. These functions are your friend.
  • Spreading the wealth over time will assure your readers that you’re not just some flash in the pan. It will also assure them that you’re still among the living.
  • Too many posts means that many of them will get lost in the shuffle. Too few means that they can loom large, and maybe seem more important than you think they should be. Spread the wealth, and you can avoid both problems.

One more thing about social media balance. While Tweeting, Facebooking, etc. should be mindful, it should also be kinda fun. Overdoing it means that you’re probably spending too much time online. While underdoing it probably means that it no longer interests you that much. Or, at least, what you’re posting and sending out to the universe has lost its luster.

Consider what either of those scenarios means to you. Because social media balance matters.

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… And Facebook for All — Company PagesFacebook, advertising, account settings, Profile Page Part, Home Page, Working, Facebook, Rest, Facebook versus Forums, Company Pages, offsite sharing, Facebook Page, demystifying Facebook, Facebook Video Ads, Facebook to Allow Users to Login with Less Info, Facebook video ads, Facebook Ads vs. Google, Organic Reach Decline,

… And Facebook for All — Company Pages

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on August 5, 2021

Liberty, Justice (?), … And Facebook for All – Company Pages

Company pages have become spots you put together on Facebook to support a business (not the same as a fan page).

However, like everything else on Facebook, these pages and their settings do evolve, and they’ve gotten simpler these days. Currently, the following features are available:

  • Change Background Image/Avatar
  • Edit Page
  • Promote with an Ad
  • Add to my Page’s Favorites
  • Suggest to Friends
  • Information
  • Insights
  • Friends Who Like the Page
  • People Who Like the Page
  • Favorite Pages
  • Photos
  • Links
  • Events
  • Wall
  • Info
  • Photos
  • This Week
  • Notes
  • Videos
  • Post Scheduling
  • Various Apps

Company Pages and Details: Change Background Image/Avatar

This one is rather self-explanatory. Furthermore, a good, bright background image is good, as it shows up when you share the page. In addition, you might want to change these on occasion as that generates an update.

Edit Page

Manage permissions, add an address or business hours, etc. here.

Promote with an Ad

This is fairly self-explanatory. Note that Buffer has said that Facebook ads are a mixed bag.

Add to my Page’s Favorites

So here’s where another company you can link your page to your event pages.

Suggest to Friends

Fairly self-explanatory.

Information

This is basic information such as the company’s location.

Insights

First of all, this provides basic click information, including the number of Likes and Views. In addition, you can also see information on age and gender demographics and, most importantly, when people are online.

Friends Who Like the Page

Fairly self-explanatory.

People Who Like the Page

Fairly self-explanatory, except this includes people you are not, personally, friends with.

Favorite Pages

This goes back to adding a page as a favorite. And it shows which company pages your company has favorited.

Photos

Fairly self-explanatory.

Links

Fairly self-explanatory.

Events

I’ve found adding events to be hit or miss. First of all, not everyone RSVPs, and not everyone shows up even if they’ve said yes. However, it provides more exposure and it will bring your page up to people as the event date rolls around. Because even people who are clicking “No” are still looking, at least a little bit. So use with discretion and don’t overdo this. Because not every activity is an event, and not everyone should be invited to everything. Since that’s just plain annoying.

Wall

Fairly self-explanatory. In addition, you can control who can add to your wall. However, keep in mind that if you are free and easy with this, you’ll get more posts but you might also get spam. Although if you shut this down, you end up with Posts to Page. And it’s easy to miss these!

Company Pages Info

Here you add more detailed information. Hence this includes the company’s address and its business hours.

Photos

Fairly self-explanatory. Posts with images nearly always do better than those without, so upload an image if the link you’re sharing doesn’t have one. Make sure you have permission to use the image!

Notes

Fairly self-explanatory. Hence add notes like you would on your own personal page. E. g. these are almost discussions. However, the responses are relegated to subordinate comments versus the kind of back and forth that comes from the wall or the discussions page. And this is, admittedly, a nitpicky distinction without much of a real difference. I would, though, suggest that you not use the Notes section for blogging. Instead, get a blog through WordPress (yay!) or the like and do it that way. Because the Notes section ends up a rather poor substitute for that.

Videos

Fairly self-explanatory. Hence if you’ve got videos uploaded, they can show up here. However, this is not the same as linking to a video hosted online elsewhere.

Company Pages: Post Scheduling

Fairly self-explanatory. So just post to your wall but pull down on the post button and select Schedule Post. In addition, if you’ve been looking at your Insights, you should know when people are online. And of course you want to try to post when people will see your posts.

Various Apps

Finally, go to Edit Profile and there is an option for Applications. However, these days, the only ones are Notes and Events.

Want More About Facebook?

If this article resonates with you, then check out my other articles about the largest social media platform on the planet.

Facebook Features:

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CLUMPS of SEOSEO, SEO continued, Boston SEO Meetup, CLUMPS, discontents, WebTekPro

CLUMPS of SEO

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on July 27, 2021

Welcome to the Absolute Worst Acronym, EVER: CLUMPS of SEO

Huh? CLUMPS is an ugly acronym and I apologize profusely for that. But if you want to build and promote a website and improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimization), you should think in CLUMPS.

What are CLUMPS?

I will explain.

Content

C stands for Content, and Content is King. Don’t believe me? Try looking at a site – any site – and picture it instead as a framework with lorem ipsum written all over it. Kinda silly, eh?

So, people need something to read. Or listen to. Or download. Maybe to play. Or discuss. Or purchase. And it could be any other of a number of things that they would want to do with a website. And they need it from you! So make up your mind as to what you want. Plan your content and work on it.

Brainstorm what you want to cover, and keep records of that. This helps when the rubber really meets the road and you get writer’s block.

For Instance

For example, let’s say you want to create an episode guide for the old television show, Quantum Leap. The show aired 97 episodes. If you post a new episode every single day, you run out out of content in less than three and a half months. If you instead post twice per week, that covers 48 and a half weeks – almost a full year. Good, but what do you do after that?

So there are a few options. One is to post less frequently. Another is to churn up the content and repost it. However, what you could also do is branch out.

Therefore, post about the actors’ work before and since the show aired. And cover convention appearances. Add photographs. Post or critique fan fiction. Open up the floor for discussions of the show’s philosophy.

Maybe you can find a related show to write about, and compare it to the original. It doesn’t matter. Just, recognize that your content might have a finite end to it, so you’ll need to work on extending that.

And More

Furthermore, it can also help to look around the online world. What do others say about your topic? Make a Google Alert for your topic or, better yet, make several, with variations. Follow the news and see what you can comment on. Don’t copy others’ work outright, but commenting on it, linking to it, and expanding on it are all fair game. Always, always, always link back! Speaking of links ….

Links

L stands for Links. You’ve got to get your link out there, and have it linked back to by other sites. Now is not the time to keep it to yourself.

This does not mean spamming! Rather, you need to launch a bit of a campaign. Find like-minded individuals and ask for them to link to you. Now, it’s better if you’re linked to by pages with good, large followings. How do you find these sites? One way is to do a search on the backlinks for your closest competition. Who’s linking to them? And target those sites.

And keep in mind that Google says that reciprocal linking is against their rules.

But!

Reciprocal linking is also pretty damned natural. When sites link to us, we often wish to return the favor. So, the bottom line is, trading for the sake of trading is no good. But reciprocation can just plain be a byproduct of webmasters working together.

And be patient! Rising in search results takes some time, although you can promote yourself by using paid search, if you like, by using Google AdWords. But if you don’t have a budget to buy listings, don’t worry. You can still have good external visibility. What matters is not being number one.

What does matter is getting onto somewhere in the top three search results and then working from there. Of course, the higher the better. But the difference between page 100 and page 1000 of search results is a moot one.

The U in CLUMPS is Usability

U stands for Usability. If people cannot find what they are looking for, if your site is slow and unresponsive, or you’re just missing too many vital things, people may come, but they will not stay.

Case in point. I spent some time a few years ago investigating linking certain nursing job sites to various places where backlinks would be welcome. I did research, and of course nursing schools are a prime potential source of backlinks.

However, for some colleges, finding the link to either their nursing school or their placement office was akin to searching a hay field for sewing implements. I had, more than once, to resort to searching on Google rather than inside a particular school’s own pages, in order to find what I wanted.

Sometimes, the pages were poorly named or written (e. g. placement office pages which didn’t have the word “jobs” anywhere in sight). Others had too many unrelated or poorly related or obscure keywords. E. g. referring to such an office as the painfully generic “Student Services”.

It would have been far better to make sure that these pages were dense with correct words that people would use when searching, such as jobs, placement, careers, employment or internships.

Search Issues

Other sites had what I wanted but were painfully slow (that was often a server issue). Or the web developer was so in love with flash that the site has pretty scrolling pictures but it was hard to find where I was actually supposed to be clicking.

So look over your site. Or, better yet, have others do so. And find out from them what works, and what doesn’t. It’s not an occasion for them to tear you down or give you unstinting praise. Rather, it’s an occasion for you to learn what works, and what doesn’t.

Formal Checks

And for formal investigations, try using A/B testing methodologies. A/B testing means essentially serving up one version of a site to one person, and another version to another. And then you check their click behaviors. If these are people you know, talk to them.

The difference between the “A” and the “B” versions of a page can be as small as a new color for the background or a different location for the logo versus a complete site overhaul. But it’s the smallest changes that are the easiest to process. Make small changes before you commit to larger ones.

This also goes into the idea of keywords. Keyword stuffing is, of course, a black hat strategy, and it’s the last thing you want to do. But white hat strategy isn’t just setting up a site for the benefit of search engines – it’s also setting it up for the benefit of people.

The M in CLUMPS is Metrics

M is for Metrics. If you’re going to do A/B testing, or if you care about whether anyone is visiting your site, you need to start looking at all of that. The best and easiest to use such analytical site is Google Analytics 4. Google Analytics provides all sorts of data, everything from which is the most popular page on your site to how long users are hanging around.

Like many other things, take a little time and get to know the program but also allow it to gather some data. You aren’t going to get a terribly good picture of your site in a month. You need to let this percolate for a while.

Promotions

P is for Promotions. Again, I never advocate spamming. However, I do suggest that you put your link out there via your own Twitter stream, your own Facebook account, via Reddit, etc. For this hypothetical Quantum Leap site, you might want to find like-minded tweeters using a service like Triberr. Clumps of tweeters, if you will.

You could look up science fiction, or television nostalgia, etc. and join tribes (groups of tweeters) with similar interests who would be likely to retweet your content. Use HootSuite or a Google Alert to run regular keyword searches on Twitter for various related terms. For people who are using those terms, they might have an affinity for what you’re doing.

Perhaps you can follow them, and see if they will follow you back. And if they are reading your tweets, they are seeing your links. Look for reasonable hashtags and follow them, and start using them.

Check Your Metrics

But check Google Analytics after a while, and budget your time accordingly. If most of your time and effort are going into Twitter, but you get most of your readers from Facebook, you may need to rethink your Twitter strategy. Or, you could even try dropping it for a while, and only concentrating on Facebook.

Again, this is an exercise in patience. These things do take time, particularly if you have a shoestring budget and are essentially only using free services. For not paying, you will need to, instead, invest time.

The S in CLUMPS Stands for Shiny New Stuff

S is for Shiny New Stuff. What I mean is, sites that stay the same, year in, year out, are just not that interesting. Plus, things change. Development proceeds at a far rapider pace than most of us know. Take a look at what’s out there, and see if making some changes will help.

For me, I started off creating a site completely from scratch, using HTML. I wanted to learn the language as well as possible, on my own. However, one area where I certainly needed help was in aesthetics. This went on for a couple of years as I had a site with good content, I was working on promotions and garnering linkbacks, and I was keeping it usable and was checking metrics.

I eventually moved the site to WordPress, and used their templates (the content, of course, is wholly my own). The site looks better and functions better. It also gives it a newer look. Plus WordPress fixes a lot of issues with key words. So long as your post is on point and mentions the keywords you want to tout, those key words will be in the page, and will be searchable by Google’s spiders.

CLUMPS: Takeaways

CLUMPS is still a lousy acronym. But I hope you’ll find it continues to hold true. The way to get your site out there, noticed and loved, is to make it as good a site as possible. Consider the sites you love. What they look like, how they work, what content they deliver and how they keep things fresh and interesting.

Follow the metrics for your own site but take a leaf from those other sites’ pages. Not to out and out copy, of course, but rather to be inspired. And you can make your own quantum leap to better SEO.

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Jell-O on the Wall: Social Media Perfection is FleetingSocial Media, Social Media Writing, Social Media Writing Part, Social Media Writing Part 3, Best Lengths, Hesitation Generation, screen name, Happy Holidays, Relentless Pace, Cyber Infidelity, Podcasting, Neurotic Writers, Social Media Balance, Social Media Perfection, Losing Control, Social Media Tips, Employee Passwords, Look Like Online, social media, Social Media Platforms, Promoting Writing, Social Media Marketer, EditMe Webinar, Demand for Social Media Jobs, Stumbleupon surpasses, Less Conversation, Snapchat Settles with FTC, Quickly Boost Results, Hype, Auto-Service Economy, Sharing Less, Social Media background check, formatted, Four Important Social Media Stats, Cheat Sheets, Seduction, social back, Social media background check, Collaboration, Wikileaks, Editme Webinar, Cyber Legacy, Campaign 2012, Demographics, ways, Time-saving tips, Campaign 2012, Happy Holidays, Neurotic Writers, Sharing Less,

Jell-O on the Wall: Social Media Perfection is Fleeting

Published by Janet Gershen-Siegel on July 22, 2021

Nail That Jell-O on the Wall: Social Media Perfection is Fleeting

Is social media perfection out there?

Maybe.

Every few months or so, a new study comes out which provides what are purportedly the perfect times to post on various platforms.

Or it might outline the perfect number of words or characters or images. All of this relentless pursuit of social media perfection is, of course, is for the Holy Grail of social media, the conversion.

I don’t argue with the idea. Certainly everyone wants to minimize time spent and maximize conversions which, presumably, lead to profit or fame or some other personal or corporate milestone or achievement.

What amuses me, though, is that sometimes the advice is a bit conflicting.

Social Media Today posts a lot of articles like this, and here’s an example.

Articles

So back in May of 2014, four great and interesting (certainly helpful) articles appeared on that site. Let’s look at how they stack up.

Ideal Lengths

The Ideal Length of Everything Online, Backed by Research – this rather helpful article indicated, for example, that the ideal blog post then was 1,600 words long.

This figure put it into more or less direct opposition to Yoast’s Social Media Plugin for WordPress, which, if all other conditions are ideal, starts to mark blog posts are having good SEO at 300 or more words in length.

Now, the Social Media Today article was more about engagement, so I understand that this isn’t exactly apples to apples. But regardless of how ‘ideal’ in length a post is, it’s still … something. Fortunately, these aren’t mutually exclusive conditions.

In addition, that article listed perfect tweet length as 71 – 100 characters. But now we have more character space!

Social Media Perfection on Twitter (X)

The Perfect Tweet  – speaking of perfect tweets, this article, posted four days after the first one listed above. And it spelled out that tweets with images are ideal. Again, it’s not a true contradiction, but it is a bit of an inconsistency, particularly as this article didn’t talk about tweet length at all.

Yet isn’t ideal length a part of tweeterrific perfection? It seems like it should be.

Quick Management

How to Manage Your Social Media in 34 Minutes (or Less) a Day – this article did a good job in outlining the basics. And it added a bit of a reminder to try to engage the audience, provide good content, etc.

However, they didn’t include time blogging. And perhaps they shouldn’t have. Because if you prepare a 1,600-word blog post (or even a Yoast-approved 300 word wonder), you most likely won’t write it in less than 34 minutes.

At least, you won’t be doing so if you want to (a) include images, tags, and other extras and formatting touches and (b) credit your sources properly. Furthermore, you don’t want to even inadvertently commit plagiarism. And, of course, you need to be thinking about SEO with everything that you write. Ever.

The idea of using HootSuite, Buffer, and/or Facebook’s own post scheduler is, of course, a smart one.

Marketing Campaigns

9 Fresh and Effective Ideas for Your Social Media and Content Marketing Campaigns  – this article provided some quick tips on how to change things up. And this included an idea about engaging in a debate with competitors, and another about collaborating on content with customers.

I wish I knew how to do that in 34 minutes or less.

Let’s Update That Research

Ideal post lengths change.

Social Media Perfection on Facebook

According to a 2020 article from Sprout Social, the ideal length for a Facebook post is 40 – 80 characters. And the ideal length of a Facebook ad headline is 5 words.

Hmm, maybe I should change the titles of some of these blog posts?

Twitter

For Twitter (per the same article), the ideal length is 71 – 100 characters. This makes sense as it adds space to comment when replying. But make no mistake about it—having to go under 100 characters would force you to be concise.

Instagram

Caption length should be 138 – 150 characters. Not as concise as Twitter, but you’re still not writing a Russian novel.

Interestingly enough, the article also says that the number of hashtags can be 5 – 10. There’s nothing on Facebook or Twitter hashtags, but usually in those instances, less is more.

LinkedIn

The ideal number of characters in a LinkedIn status update is supposed to be 50 – 100. So in this case, Twitter comes off as looking more like The Lord of the Rings or any other long novels you may prefer.

However, the reason for this is that usually a LinkedIn update is a caption/status and then a link. And… that’s it.

But there are posts on LinkedIn. This length does not take them into consideration.

YouTube

Per the article, there doesn’t seem to be a bit of social media perfection when it comes to the length of YouTube titles or the like. Instead, these things are evidently defined by the software itself. If the limit on video titles is 70 characters, then your ideal YouTube video title is going to be 70 characters or fewer.

Otherwise, the end gets cut off.

And as for videos, well, less is often more.

TikTok

Not even in that article! But according to Later, while you have up to 10 minutes for TikTok videos, don’t go down to the wire. But they aren’t any more precise than that. In fact, some places say 15 seconds! But then again, that was the limit originally. So, who knows?

Social Media Perfection: Takeaways

Be that as it may, we are all pressed for time these days, and it’s only going to get worse. Undoubtedly, a new study will come out soon enough with new standards and ideals and concepts that are touted as social media perfection. Will they be? Maybe, but probably not forever.

In the meantime, don’t beat yourself up if your stuff is imperfect. Hey, it happens. And you may find that your character lengths are on the bleeding edge of the next ideas of social media perfection.

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