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

How to report Vine comments

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

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

Why report Vine comments?

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

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

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

How to report Vine comments
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4 steps to leave a LinkedIn group [video]

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

Leave a LinkedIn group

Limits on LinkedIn groups

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

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

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

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

The solution to LinkedIn groups

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

4 steps to leave a LinkedIn group

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3 ways to grow your Facebook presence with Facebook embedded posts

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

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

What are Facebook embedded posts?

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

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

  • Photos
  • Videos
  • Hashtags

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

Beat the news feed with Facebook embedded posts

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

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

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

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

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

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

Improving engagement with embedded posts

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

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

Growing your presence using Facebook embedded posts

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

Types of Facebook embedded posts

Hashtags

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

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


Facebook embedded posts

Follow

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

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

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

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

Facebook embedded posts

Like

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

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

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

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

Facebook embedded posts

 

Giving credit where credit is due with Facebook embedded posts

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

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

How do you get Facebook embedded posts?

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

How to embed Facebook embedded posts

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

Facebook embedded posts

Facebook embedded posts

Facebook embedded posts are a game changer

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

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

10 steps to better social customer service

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

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

Why social media for customer service?

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

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

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

The challenges of social customer service

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

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

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

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

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

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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.

w to 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

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Social Identities with Hugh Briss [podcast]

Social Identities owner, Hugh BrissThis interview with Hugh Briss, owner of Social Identities, is the seventh in an ongoing series of interviews with professionals who are doing amazing things with social media.

I am very honored to have the opportunity to interview Hugh Briss, from Social Identities on today’s podcast.

For those of you who don’t know Hugh, he’s a graphic designer who specializes in social media – so he knows a thing or two about what images work best on your social media channels and how to optimize them so that they also look great in the news feed.

In this podcast, we talk branding, Facebook quirks, and Hugh shares a valuable tip for Facebook Page owners that can help you get your content seen more in news feed that you won’t want to miss.

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The history of the hashtag [Infographic]

Do you know the history of the hashtag?

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

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

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

and over time, it has morphed into the hashtag.

The history of the hashtag

Continue reading The history of the hashtag [Infographic]

3 Facebook Recommendations Box alternatives

Have you consider Facebook recommendations box alternatives?

While the Facebook recommendations box can be a valuable tool for businesses, it’s not perfect. It’s also not always available.

In fact, it was down for a little over a few weeks in late June. This meant that businesses who were using it on their Facebook Page had to find an alternative.

What was odd was that while it didn’t work on laptops, businesses could access the Facebook recommendations box on mobile devices and direct customers to leave a recommendation there. While this was a work-around, it meant complicating the experience for fans and customers and making it more difficult to collect feedback from them.

To me, this is an unsatisfactory solution and when a tool that businesses rely on daily to collect feedback from customers doesn’t work, it’s not something that I recommend keeping around.

Fortunately, the Facebook recommendations box did come back, but what happens when Facebook removes this feature or takes more than a few weeks to fix this valuable business tool?

As I have mentioned on numerous occasions, don’t put all of your marketing eggs in the Facebook basket and trust that they will be around forever. Just look at MySpace. Nothing lasts forever.

Based on the spottiness of Facebook, there are a number of alternatives that you can use to collect feedback from customers and fans. We’ve highlighted a few of our favorites Facebook recommendations box alternatives that you can implement to collect feedback from fans and customers.

3 Facebook Recommendations Box alternatives

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Why don’t they like me on Facebook [Infographic]

Why don't they like me on Facebook

Why don’t they like me on Facebook? That’s the age old question that gets asked when businesses first join Facebook and it’s an area that all businesses struggle with when trying to use Facebook for business.

The truth of the matter is Facebook marketing doesn’t work for every businesses.

You could have the greatest products in the world, but if someone isn’t interested in what you have to offer, you’re not going to build a relationship with that person and get them to like you on Facebook.

While the products that you offer could be a reason why customer don’t like us on Facebook, there are much more pressing issues, which we’ve highlighted below.

Why don’t they like me on Facebook?

Continue reading Why don’t they like me on Facebook [Infographic]

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.

Google Forms

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.

Google Forms - Analytics

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.

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