JSB Talks Digital Podcast #116
JSB Talks Digital is a weekly digital marketing and social media podcast hosted by author, strategist, consultant, speaker and trainer Joanne Sweeney-Burke. Each Friday Joanne shares her digital marketing and social media insights from her work as CEO of Digital Training Institute.
In this episode #116, I’m giving praise to Facebook Groups, a remarkable free tool available to marketers. But are you making the most of them? Listen to this podcast and you’ll find out.
* In social media news:
o Google Chrome turns 10 and celebrates with updates
o Buffer shares results on the impact of retweeting our own tweets
o Twitter's testing a new layout for replies, focused on improving engagement
* I interview Michelle Duffy-Rudden of HOBI about their role in testing Facebook Group subscriptions
* Shoutouts: Three under-utilised Facebook Group hacks to deliver better results
* Ask JSB
* In JSB’s column: How to leverage the power of Facebook Groups by using your authentic voice
* And find out what Facebook Group tool saved my working week
SOCIAL MEDIA NEWS
Google Chrome turns 10 and celebrates with updates
Internet browser Google Chrome celebrates its 10th birthday this month. To mark it, a number of updates were announced.
Chrome has regular updates every six weeks, but in a blog post, Ellie Powers and Chris Beckmann, Chrome Product Management Leads, say,
“our 10th birthday update is bigger than normal.”
Among the updates are:
o A new look Chrome with new icons, more rounded features and a new colour palette.
o Chrome will now more accurately fill in your passwords, addresses, and credit card numbers, so that you can fly through online checkout forms – that’s if you want it to.
o It will also auto-generate passwords for you on desktop and mobile and save them for you.
o The Omnibox - the box at the top of Chrome that combines the search bar and address bar into one - now shows you answers directly in the address bar without having to open a new tab.
It looks like these updates are trying to match the demands of the Digital Age consumer.
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Buffer shares results on the impact of retweeting our own tweets
In February 2018, Twitter updated its rules to prohibit sharing tweets that are identical or substantially similar to one another.
This prompted social media management tool Buffer to explore new ways to amplify important tweets.
Alfred Lua from Buffer decided to start retweeting his own top tweets to see if it was a good way to increase reach and engagement.
According to his Buffer Overview Report, his tweets in June received, on average, 2,356 impressions, 93 engagements, and 30 likes.
Whereas one particular tweet that he retweeted received 9,697 impressions, 203 engagement, and 94 likes after he retweeted it.
Hmmm…this is a very interesting hack. Will you try it? I’m definitely going to test it!
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Twitter's testing a new layout for replies, focused on improving engagement
Twitter is experimenting with a couple of new variations for tweet interactions.
Twitter product manager Sara Haider posted about the tests and asked for feeback from Twitter users.
Embed this tweet
hey Twitter. we've been playing with some rough features to make it feel more conversational here. presence and reply threading. still early and iterating on these ideas. thoughts? pic.twitter.com/3U3NvpHWPy
— Sara Haider (@pandemona) August 31, 2018
The main design changes are:
* Threaded replies to individual responses, making it easier to see who’s responding to what within tweet reply chains
* Colour coding for responses from the original tweet poster and yourself, highlighting key replies (purple for responses from the original tweeter, blue for you)
* Green dots on profile images within chains to indicate when a user is active and spark more real-time engagement (users would have the option to switch off)
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INTERVIEW
In this episode, I interview Michelle Duffy-Rudden, owner of Breffni Digital and co-owner of HOBI – Humans of Business Ireland, which was born out of IrishBizParty.
HOBI was recently chosen by Facebook to take part in testing the recently announced Facebook Subscription Groups. Join HOBI.
So I decided to ask Michelle, how and why HOBI was chosen and how practically Facebook Subscription Groups work.
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SHOUTOUTS
In this part of the show, I give shoutouts to brands, organisations or individuals whose work online is remarkable and worth talking about.
In this episode, I’m sharing three Facebook Group hacks to sky-rocket your marketing results. Following the Facebook Algorithm update in January 2018, we saw Facebook Page reach plummet!
Groups were revitalised with a number of new and powerful features this year which you should be leveraging to get better results for your Facebook marketing efforts.
Groups are all about community and having more personalised and relevant conversations.
1) Watch Parties
Watch Parties let you share public videos on Facebook in a group, and watch it in real time with other group members.
You can view and react to the video all at once, similar to how users can interact while watching a live broadcast.
This is useful for those of us sharing industry updates or knowledge and thus prompting a group discussion on a particular topic being illustrated in a video.
Your group members will see a post in the group that a Watch Party has started, but you can also invite people to the viewing in order to catch their attention and their interest.
2) Learning Units
If you have a Social Learning Facebook Group you can add Learning Units.
The Facebook groups social learning feature:
1. allows admins and users to track progress
2. makes it insanely easy to find posts
3. stay up on what’s going down, helping you retain members and decrease your churn rates
Having units allows you to organize content for easy reference later, enables them to “catch up” if they’ve fallen behind, and gives them a measurable way to track their progress.
Learn more about Units in Groups
3) Ask Qualifying Questions
Having the right people in your Facebook Group is so important. Many people fall into the trap of focusing on the numbers. I love the Group feature that allows you to ask pending member requests a series of qualifying questions.
In my Public Sector Marketing Pros Facebook Group, I only accept those who answer my qualifying questions. It’s a closed Group only for public sector marketing professionals. I’ve refused a number of requests for 1) failing to answer the questions or 2) not being right for the Group.
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Ask JSB
In this week’s ASK JSB, Mike wants to know if a private web forum or closed Facebook Group is best for paid members taking part in an online programme.
If you have a digital marketing or social media question, don’t forget you will have it answered on the show by using the hashtag #AskJSB on Twitter or Instagram.
You can also leave me a voicemail with your question at www.digitaltraininginstitute.ie/askjsb.
And you can also post a message on any of my social networks!
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JSB’s COLUMN
In today’s JSB’s column I’m sharing how to leverage the power of Facebook Groups by using your authentic voice.
So why would you create a Facebook Group?
o Give exclusive content to a VIP / specific group of people
o Event attendees
o Build your community
o Funnel people into your sales and marketing pipeline and keep their attention
o You want to be recognised as the expert
If you haven’t started a Facebook Group, or if you have one already, now’s a good time to reflect on these key points.
Are you clear on your objectives?
Why are you starting this group? How will it serve your business or organisational needs? Are you intending to monetise the group by selling into it or adding it as part of an offering? With everything online, the more niche you go the better the engagement.
Are you clear on your audience?
Who are you serving? Who will join and participate in this group? Is this the audience you want for your business or for an event?
Is the brand name of relevant keywords in your group name?
People often search for topics on Facebook, so this can help you be discovered
Top tips
? Share more of you in your Group than elsewhere
? Maximise all the Facebook Group features – I shared three in my shoutouts sections, but become familiar with your Group by navigating around it a few times a week
? Have a posting schedule so that you commit to speaking to and engaging your members
? Go Live in the Group and encourage interaction – maybe this will be a weekly slot?
? Setting the ground rules: When admins or moderators remove a post that violates the rules of their community, we can now notify the member with details on which group rule they broke. Admins and moderators will also be able to collaborate by adding notes in their admin activity log when they remove a post.
If you want to discuss your Facebook Group marketing strategy then get in touch. Drop me an email to joanne@digitaltraining.ie.
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Social Media Tool of the Week
The social media tool that saved my working week this week is Grytics.
Grytics is a SaaS solution for SocialMedia Analytics on Facebook groups, for Community Managers, WebMarketers and PR. It allows organisations of all size:
* to improve customer relationship through the analysis of publications on their Facebook groups
* to help gain marketing intelligence
* to engage and deliver a better service to client/fan communities
* to measure, predict, improve group performance
* to enhance community management
* to increase engagement
* to curate content
Prices start at $15 a month, but you can get a 14-day free trial. Why not try it out for yourself at https://grytics.com/.
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I love feedback!
Thank you for tuning into episode #116 of JSB Talks Digital. If you are a regular listener I would love a review!
As always, I have everything discussed on today’s show on my award-winning blog at digitaltraining.ie
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