In this video we’ll talk about the facebook weekly summary, and why it’s important to promote your page, maintain it with a content plan and invite your fans to share your page and content.  The facebook weekly summary is emailed to you each week, highlighting how your page performed compared to previous weeks.

Facebook remains the most popular form of social media to promote brand awareness which I have discussed here.

Recently, Roost, a social marketing platform for individual professionals, businesses, consultants and agencies, determine what type of businesses have topped the rank in terms of increasing the impact of social campaigns, engagement & remaining active in marketing.

Summary of Roost’s findings:

• Businesses who had the most reach are small & mid-sized businesses who are involved in music, entertainment, and luxury goods.
• Small and mid-sized businesses who are in the medical and health industries are the most active.
• Companies in the music and broadcast media sectors posted the most efficient “signal-to-noise” ratios.

As analyzed by Roost, in terms of reach, medical practices were the most preplexing, it is the last in the rank in terms of reach but it is topping the activity list.

Other industries with similarly large gaps included:

• Music, number one, 26th in activity;
• Consumer electronics, number five versus 23, respectively;
• Hotel and hospitality, six versus 25;
• Commercial real estate, 25 versus seven;
• Fitness, 26 versus five; and
• Insurance, 27 and eight.

According to the latest annual survey of the blogosphere conducted by Technorati, Facebook remains the most popular form of social media and dictates what bloggers post (depending on the trending topic on Facebook) more than any other source of information.

According to this year’s survey,  60 percent of all bloggers use social media to follow the brands that they blog about.

And 14 percent of bloggers spend at least 21 hours a week on Facebook.

Facebook gives  new ways for real people to play a role in providing feedback for organizations, companies and individuals. Whether you’re a big established company, an individual with loyal fans, or simply someone with ideas and opinions, social media means new ways to create and communicate with people to reach out to them & promote brand awareness.

Nowadays, establishing an online presence requires more than just having a website. Almost all companies & businesses are using Facebook to promote their brand.For businesses, you need to set up a Facebook Page or a Group or both. Setting up your Facebook account is so easy to do & it can significantly help you in communicating & interacting with customers who have bought your product or hired your services and reach out to potential clientele.

Make sure you take advantage of the massive audience Facebook has to offer. If you’re still one of those people  who still has doubts about involving business with Facebook, know this for a fact: People are now spending 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook. If you just know how to make Facebook work for you, it can give you impressive results.

Click here to see the The 15 Best Facebook Pages You’ve Ever Seen

Social media is a valuable tool for businesses and organizations. While game-changing in many ways, they are simply the latest in the evolution of tools that allow people to easily connect with one another. Ultimately, it’s important to keep in mind that the purpose of social media is to generate interest in your product.

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Friendster, MySpace, Xanga, etc… Anyone who has internet is familiar with these sites. Some of these sites have faded (Friendster, Xanga, etc.), leaving decaying individual’s profile. Yet, the fact remains that social media is of essential importance to anyone hoping to expand their brand. So the question is “Should companies focus on one social media platform to ensure success?”

In a blink of an eye, something beyond your control might affect the way you reach your target audience, especially when you just rely everything in just one social media platform. Take for example – Facebook.

Whether you’re a fan of change or not, it’s coming quickly to the social media giant, Facebook. They basically just dropped a bombshell and instantly changed the way we communicate online with their new newsfeed, timelines, subscriptions and a myriad of other enhancements and updates. However, if you have a fan page, you might have noticed a drop off in the amount of interaction you are getting on it. Facebook said they want to make it easier for people to connect on the web. But we have yet to find out what good does the new changes bring to Facebook pages.

See, this is what we have to understand. If our brand just circles around Facebook and if it’s the only way we communicated with our clients because we haven’t diversified enough and use other platforms, these changes could have badly hurt our business. Email, Twitter, Facebook, RSS feeds, Google, SEM, SEO, phone calls, QR codes, texting and prints all need to be used in conjunction with one another to drive people to your home base, which is your self-hosted blog. That is the only thing that you control! And if Twitter goes away tomorrow and you use other mediums to communicate with your clients, you will not be badly hurt & crippled. You cannot afford to put all of your eggs in one basket.

The first step of a successful (and long term) social media plan is to spread your brand everywhere you can and the main goal is to drive people to your site and give them a ton of quality content that will keep them coming back. More than ever, it’s important that you have a web presence. Especially in a Real Estate business, since it’s is no longer a short term -transaction game, but a long term relationship building process, that would definitely be  strengthen by having a web presence. Your own website or a self hosted blog is the only thing that you have a 100% control over, so it is where your time needs to be spent first.

Here’s a pratical takeaway:  Google your personal name and your company’s name. What comes up? If you don’t see anything about yourself or your business, none of the other billions of people online will see it either and you know wha to do.

Facebook, YouTube and Google dominate in their categories. Canadians love our banks’ online banking websites, too! Meanwhile, MLS continues to dominate activity in Canada’s real estate industry.

The top 10 overall websites for traffic were: 1) Facebook (12.52 per cent of all traffic); 2) Google Canada (9.26 per cent) ; 3) Windows Live Mail (4.34 per cent); 4) YouTube (4.21 per cent); 5) MSN Canada (2.17 per cent); 6) Google (1.72 per cent); 7) Yahoo! Canada (1.30 per cent); Bing (1.27 per cent); 9) Yahoo! Mail Canada (1.16 per cent); 10) Sympatico.ca (0.96 per cent).

The top five search engines: 1) Google Canada (65.68 per cent); 2) Google (12.18 per cent); 3) Bing (9.03 per cent); 4) Ask (3.60 per cent); 5) Yahoo! Canada Search (2.79 per cent). It’s pretty clear that Google continues to dominate the Canadian search engine landscape, leaving all others in the dust. You know you’ve arrived when your brand name has become a verb.

The top five social media websites: 1) Facebook (64.52 per cent); 2) YouTube (21.72 per cent); 3) Twitter (0.98 per cent); 4) Meebo (0.79 per cent); 5) Badoo (0.78 per cent). Of the 15 other websites showing up on the Top 20 list, Google Plus is nowhere to be found. Note the complete dominance of Facebook and YouTube. Together, they account for a phenomenal 86.24 per cent of all social media website traffic in the country. Incredible!

Hitwise also ranks sites in banking, travel, real estate and entertainment.

The top five banking websites: 1) TD Canada Trust Online Banking (12.36 per cent); 2) Royal Bank of Canada Online Banking (11.30 per cent); 3) Desjardins Online Banking (8.52 per cent); 4) TD Canada Trust (7.50 per cent); 5) Royal Bank of Canada.

The top five travel websites: 1) Google Maps Canada (16.98 per cent); 2) Google Maps (4.46 per cent); 3) Take Off Eh! (3.99 per cent); 4) Expedia Canada (3.22 per cent); 5) Air Canada (2.20 per cent).

The top five real estate websites: 1) Realtor Canada – also known as MLS (25.81 per cent); 2) RE/MAX Quebec (5.31 per cent); 3) Duproprio.com (4.42 per cent); 4) ComFree.com (2.89 per cent); 5) Century 21 Canada Real Estate (2.49 per cent). Moncton-based Property Guys is in ninth place with 1.79 per cent of total visits.

The top five websites featuring entertainment personalities: 1) People Magazine (14.00 per cent); 2) TMZ.com (9.15 per cent); 3) PerezHilton.com (5.98 per cent); 4) Zimbio (5.79 per cent); 5) CelebEdge – Canada (3.51 per cent).

And finally, here are the top 10 search terms (written exactly as they are being searched for) for the week ending August 6: 1) facebook (5.42 per cent); 2) youtube (1.91 per cent); 3) facebook login (1.64 per cent); 4) kijiji (0.39 per cent); 5) www.facebook.com (0.31 per cent); 6) facebook.com (0.26 per cent); 7) plenty of fish (0.25 per cent); 8) google (0.25 per cent); 9) you tube (0.23 per cent); 10) fb (0.17 per cent).

Of all the terms searched for in Canadian cyberspace, Facebook-related searches account for five, while YouTube accounts for two – meaning that seven of the Top 10 searches only involve two websites. That’s pretty impressive, if you ask me! And again, Google Plus isn’t even on the radar.

° Brian Cormier is a writer, blogger and communications consultant. Social Media Matters appears every Friday. E-mail:brian@briancormier.com. Website: www.briancormier.com. Twitter: @BrianCormier. Facebook: facebook.com/briancormierreaders

We have to take the risk in order to take advantage of the benefits of Facebook. With the Privacy and Security settings available for us to find a comfortable balance between being social and being private, Facebook users need to somewhat accept the responsibility to secure and look out for necessary steps to protect ourselves.

Nevertheless,  Facebook has a lot of resources to guide its users and keep them updated. Here are 5 Facebook pages that everyone is recommended to “Like”

• Facebook Security

Like this Page to receive updates about how to protect your information both on and off Facebook.

• Facebook Known Issues

“Like” Facebook Known Issues if you want the most up-to-date information about bugs and other issues on the                     site.

• Facebook Marketing Solutions

This pages share news and best practices for marketing on Facebook. You will find videos, guides, interviews and                links to live training events.

• Facebook Pages

The guide provides best practices on managing a Page for advertisers and page admins. Your plays a very                              important role in your marketing, so you’d really want to stay up-to-date with all the changes.

You may also want to check out their guide on Facebook Page Marketing

• Facebook Live

Facebook Live is Facebook’s official live video streaming channel, providing a deeper look into our features,                        partners & employees. They use this page to live stream product announcements, round table discussions and                    interviews with thought leaders. When you follow this page you will be notified of upcoming events that you may              want to attend.

The reality is that Facebook membership is actually still growing. Social networking and data privacy are, in many ways, directly at odds and the solution comes down to user awareness and choice.

Here are a few ways to increase your engagement with those who are fans or who “like” your Facebook business page:

1. You’re only as good as your last update – You have to “be seen”. If you don’t update, there’s no use of keeping a fan page. Everytime you update, it appears on the news feed of the fans of your business page.

2. Keep your posts short & to-the-point – Most people have more that 500 friends on facebook and would want to scan as many updates of their friends in a certain period of time. People will gloss over long paragraphs in favor of short, to-the-point posts. Posts that were 80 characters or less received 27% more likes and comments than posts that are lengthy.

3. Ask questions – Not all status updates need to be statements. Posts that ended with a question had a 15% higher level of engagement. The same goes for posts with calls to action like “Like This”, “Leave a Comment” or “Post Your Response”.  Asking for feedback in your posts encourages users to interact with your brand and would think that the company Facebook page is indeed a place for conversation. Also, open ended questions help get a discussion going.

4. Pictures are worth a thousand words – People love visual media. Pictures and videos works for your advantage because you can display the photos and tours of your home listings plus it draws people to look at your page and give them more reason to either like or comment. In addition, videos and photos are “taggable”. So you can tag people that you think would be interested, they will be notified and their friends will see it too.

5. Create events -If you are having an open house or any sort of event with your business or organization, create a Facebook event for it. These are made with interaction in mind. People can be invited and they have the ability to RSVP. Each person who says they are attending furthers your reach. Plus, the events are shareable. Plus the events include the ability to comment, creating yet another place for discussion and engagement.

6. The day of the week and time of the day of posting also has an impact – It appears that posting outside normal business hours (early morning, after work, late night) had a 20% higher level of engagement.If you post during these times, it increases the likelihood that your posts will appear in your fan’ news feed, more exposure, more conversation.

Surprisingly, Saturday posts do not garner as much attention as weekday posts. Thursday and Friday are the best days for engagement, with an 18% lift in comments and likes on these days.

7. Don’t be one dimensional – If you’re a Real Estate Agent, you don’t have to talk about Real Estate & homes the whole time. You can talk about different topics occasionally & especially the current events. Could be occasionally funny updates or the basketball team that you want to win. It is great for getting comments. It helps to let people know that there is a real human on the other side, not just someone who’s only after the marketing of the page.

Facebook Pages are more flexible, unlike Groups, you can add Applications to enhance your Page, which is an advantage and beneficial to businesses. Pages also has a number of methods to communicate with users who “Like” the page. You can send updates to users which appear as notifications. The updates that you send can be targeted by age, gender, and location.

Businesses can also take advantage of Facebook’s analytics engine, Facebook insights. It gives you metrics such as the number of page views, unique pageviews, photo views, number of fans added per day, etc.

Almost everyone has a Facebook account, so it’s really a great way to consider and include Facebook as one of your marketing medium. Pages also have SEO benefits as they show up very high in search results for your brand or product. Facebook pages cost nothing to set up and there are no monthly fees for maintaining a page. When Facebook switched from using FBML to iframes on their fan pages, it opened up a great opportunity to businesses to promote their brand or product and give fans a more professional touch. With this new feature, you can build your own website within Facebook. You can insert videos, custom opt-in forms, pictures, audio, etc. and it’s so easy to do. With these capability, you can really engage with your potential customers and they can spread the word about your page. Which is a very effective and fun way to do your marketing.

All you need to do is to install this Facebook iFrame WordPress Plugin and you can start promoting your ad campaigns, promotions, etc. on Facebook Pages. I have found a video tutorial on YouTube showing you how to do it step by step.

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