I read Jon Morter‘s Facebook thread about Amy’s Baking Company and have been keeping an eye since on this fine example of how not to run a business and how not to deal with reputation management on or offline!
From April 1st until May 31st last year 1800 Facebook Business pages, owned by big brands worldwide, were analysed by Buddy Media their findings are shared thanks to Bill Ross over at LinchpinSEO in the infographic below. It’s the first I have seen showing differences between a few different industries, how do these compare with the industries you are familiar with?
When Facebook call a press conference the online world is poised for their announcement and the latest was no different.
Back from touring with The Survey, in the run up to Christmas most of the last four weeks have been spent messing about on a narrowboat at Farncombe and in the vicinity of it. I missed this latest announcement by Facebook for their Graph Search Tool! There is though no doubt about it;- people are keen to know more about what the new Facebook Graph Search will offer.
It differs from the search engines we have been using in recent years and the reason for this is it searches only Facebook content … it does not provide content from the rest of the web as Google and other search engines do. There have been many post on this subject since Zuck demonstrated how the new Facebook Search Graph works a at the press conference. If you are interest in joining the waiting list for BETA for Facebook Graph Search you can!
Rather than rehash old news I’m going to share some of posts I have read which I think will be beneficial to you.
A little off topic;- I learnt this week from Shawn Abel at Interactabel Social Media that Zuck’s father has started a Facebook Page called Painless Social Media helping dentists to use Social Media for their businesses – as Shawn mentioned good name for a dentist’s page especially one who specialises in nervous clients! Dentists may LIKE to check out his page for Social Media tips he is very well connected!
Here’s something for you to try folks!
Shout out to Susann Stjernborg from Solid Publication who shared this from Jon Loomer’s blog ;- Jon says he heard it from a chap called Andrew Voirol. The viral reach of Social Media;- stories fly thick and fast around here! I had no clue this was possible and seemingly neither did many of my industry colleagues.
Feel free to add a link in the comments below to share a link to yours if you Big Up your Facebook Cover Image!
I’ve just read Path to Influence;- An industry study SMBs and Social Media it’s a very informative and hot off the press from Vocus , carried out in partnership with John Jantsch‘s Duct Tape Marketing.
The study looks at how SMBs- small and medium-sized businesses currently use social media, their concerns, challenges and how to dispel the notion that social media is free!
It appears that business owners and principles are starting to realise that the number of LIKEs and Followers that the company has on their Facebook page and Twitter account do not mean a jot if that audience is not engaged! “Hurrah for that!” I say.
These days it is in fact not helpful to Edgerank to have a Facebook page which has ooldes of people who have LIKEd the page but who rarely visit it again or even more frequently never returned to it. The numbers of pages where that happens is actually staggering!
The study found that 40% of SMBs are happier with a small a responsive engaged audience. On the other hand 27% of those who responded chose a much greater following that were quite! I’m thinking that these are the companies who haven’t yet ‘got it’ that Social Media is all about being social! Yet strangely this same group reported that they had found Social Media beneficial in their endeavours.
If you are not already au fait with Duct Tape Marketing do check them out. John Jantsch has authored three excellent books, Duct Tape Marketing , The Referral Engine and The Commitment Engine. I have been appreciating information shared by him and his team since 2009. I became a member of the Duct Tape Online University and took one of the very first courses on using Social Media for Business which was not being taught by those self proclaimed Gurus of the era, that taught businesses owners to flout Facebook’s terms and conditions.’ Clearly theirs was not a sustainable business model, offering no foundation on which to grow! They were quite a few of them mooching around in social spaces back then doing just that!
I’m thankful that my research led me to John and Duct Tape Marketing, you see using Social Media for business well involves knowing a vast amount. Being a user already before starting to use it in your business certainly helps, but most business owners are far too busy to put the time required;- even those who have the interest and the inclination don’t have the time. Be under no illusion business owners that there is a vast amount of etiquette to observe, engagement to maintain, trust to build and relationships to be formed before businesses truly see the results and ROI of their Social Media endeavours and it requires a strategy.
Facebook where size matters! You might have noticed some posts displaying photos which appear wonky or out of sinc on Facebook. Generally speaking this is because an image has been used which is not the ideal size. If you have not yet discovered the benefits of using Facebook for business you might like to check out our page where we have added a smashing infographic and video
Here is a list which may help you to display images beautifully…
Facebook Image Sizes
Cover Photo
851 x 315 pixels
Profile Picture
160 x 160 pixels
Must be uploaded sized at least 180 x 180 pixels
Distance between left boundary and profile picture
23 pixels
Distance between top boundary and profile picture
210 pixels
Profile Picture border size
5 pixels
App Preview Image
111 x 74 pixels
Distance between App preview images
8 pixels
Total length of adjustable app preview images, with gaps
349 pixels
Shared Image size on Timeline
403 x 403 pixels
Up to 960 x 720 pixels in lightbox, can be uploaded up to 2048 pixels
Status Update
63,206 characters
Link Preview
90 x 90 pixels
Both Title Tag and Meta Description can be edited by clicking on the preview text
Highlighted Post/Milestone
843 x 403 pixels
Profile Picture In Stream
50 x 50 pixels
Shared Image In Stream
398 x 298 pixels
Profile Picture on Facebook Sponsored Story Ads
32 x 32 pixels
Sponsored Story Body Copy
90 Characters
Sponsored Story Image Size
194 x 139 pixels
Album Image Preview type 1
129 x 129 pixels
Can show either 6 or 9 photos at this size
Album Image Preview type 2
398 x 264 pixels
Three 129 x 129 pixel boxes underneath
Album Image Sizing type 3
196 x 196 pixels
Two preview images
Facebook Ad Image Size
100 x 72 pixels
Facebook Ad Title Copy
25 characters
Facebook Ad Body Copy
90 characters
Shared YouTube Video Preview
130 x 73 pixels
Shared Facebook Video preview
398 x 223 pixels
You might like to check out a tool which is free to use with no sign up necessary and it enables you to make chic looking graphics easily for Facebook Cover Photos. They have a picture editor too Sharon Tannenbaum told me about it 🙂
Go Social 
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A little off topic;- I learnt this week from Shawn Abel at 
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