Tag Archives: Facebook Management

October 7, 2015 · 12:42 pm

Facebook is Rolling Out Local Business Verification Badges. Here’s Why You Should Get One.

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Have you ever been on Twitter or Facebook and noticed an account with a little blue checkmark beside its name—say, the account for a celebrity, a musician, a professional athlete, or a politician?

These check marks show that the account is verified. All this means is that it’s the real deal. When you see Chris Rock on Twitter with a blue check mark beside his name, that means that it really is the Chris Rock—not a fan and not an imposter. By contrast, if you see a Chris Rock account without the checkmark, that’s probably a Chris Rock fan page—still funny, maybe, but not affiliated with the actual guy.

According to Marketing Land, Facebook has rolled out a new verification system—this time marked by gray badges, to distinguish from the blue ones. While blue is still the color for celebrities, gray is now used to verify and legitimize local businesses. The feature is being rolled out to businesses across several countries, including the United States and Great Britain.

For verified businesses, the gray checkmarks will now show up beside the business name in Facebook searches and on the account page itself. For companies looking to get verified, the process is fairly simple. All you’ll need is a couple minutes of time and a business phone number. Details are available here.

This is something we recommend local businesses do, and for a couple of reasons. One of the stated reasons from Facebook is to ensure that consumers are finding the authentic business listing. A lot of companies have duplicate pages on Facebook, perhaps created by former employees or perhaps generated through social media “check-ins.” The gray badge lets consumers know that they have found the real, official business listing.

And piggybacking off that point, verification badges provide consumer confidence. Your business has to be fairly legitimate to qualify for this—it needs a real phone number and a physical address—so opting to get verified is a sign that you’re running a real operation. It’s a sign that consumers can confidently do business with you.

For businesses not able to qualify for the gray checkmark—perhaps because they don’t have physical locations that consumers can visit—there are other ways to ensure credibility, such as using testimonials, sharing customer reviews, and showcasing thought leadership. But if you do qualify for the gray checkmark, there’s really no reason not to get one.

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January 2, 2015 · 9:44 am

Deconstructing the Perfect Facebook Post

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How would you like to know the secret formula to Facebook marketing success? To ensure that all of your posts are deliberately engineered to obtain the maximum results?

A recent Search Engine Journal piece, authored by Kevan Lee, promises something along those lines. The article is all about explaining “The Anatomy of the Perfect Facebook Post”—and in truth, it’s pretty good. It’s certainly worth reading and absorbing, especially if you’re a small business owner, doing all your own social media marketing.

We’re going to summarize the key points below, highlighting what we think is most essential and offering a couple of points of caveat and clarification. In fact, we’ll begin with this note: While there may indeed be a proper structure to ensure Facebook success, there’s also something to be said for variety. If all your posts follow the exact same recipe, then your account is going to feel a bit robotic and impersonal. The following points are all intended as best practices, then—but there can and should be some exceptions.

The Anatomy of the Perfect Post

Lee suggests that the perfect Facebook post has five basic ingredients:

  • A link.
  • Brevity—ideally 40 characters or less.
  • Publication at non-peak hours.
  • A place on a regular posting schedule.
  • Timeliness/newsworthiness.

Again, the Grammar Chic team is largely in agreement here, but we do have a few comments to offer. We’ll take the five ingredients one at a time:

  1. First, note what Lee really says about the perfect post being a link. What he says is that the perfect post actually uses Facebook’s built-in link tool; posting an image and then including link text in your photo description is not the same thing, and won’t get nearly as many clicks. And this is true enough: If you want to get maximize click-through, you need to focus on the link and on a strong call to action, without distracting attention with other elements. If social sharing and general online engagement is what you’re after, though, then images will be more helpful.
  2. Lee also shares that posts 40 characters or shorter tend to get liked and commented on the most. No big surprise there!
  3. Posting at non-peak hours, meanwhile, helps your post stand out, because the competition is a bit less heated. In particular, Lee recommends posting on weekends and after normal work hours.
  4. Lee says that an effective Facebook post is part of a consistent sharing strategy, encompassing a minimum of one post each day. Of course, we agree completely!
  5. Finally, Lee notes that compelling posts often factor in trending topics and current events, though he admits that this is optional. Certainly, it can be advantageous to leverage the popularity of a trending topic—but it’s not something you want to force.

And that’s that: The structure of the perfect Facebook post. Even with all this in mind, though, you may still be at a loss for developing actual content—and that’s where we come in. Contact Grammar Chic, Inc. today to inquire about our content development and strategy services: www.grammarchic.net, or 803-831-7444.

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