Social Media | Web Training Wheels

How To Make Sure Your WordPress Site Looks Good on Facebook

Here’s an interesting factoid for you. Approximately once every 13 seconds* another blogger posts on an internet forum or group a variation on the following question: “Why does Facebook always show the wrong image when I post a link to my blog ?!!”

This post is a guide to what’s going on and how to make it right.

I preface it with this caveat:

Facebook is a mean ole bully and often changes the way that it operates suddenly and without warning. What works today could become obsolete tomorrow. Today, this is what works.

Get To Know The Open Graph Protocol

The Open Graph Protocol is a particular set of meta data – that is, information about your site, that goes into the code of your site. Both Facebook and Google Plus look for this meta data in order to learn about your website.

When it’s all present and correct your site looks lovely in Facebook.
When it’s not there, they make stuff up based on whatever they can grab.

Getting The Word Out With Jetpack: Sharing, Subscribers, Social Media Networks

This is a guest post from my friend and super-talented WordPress developer, Suzette Franck. I’ve mentioned the Jetpack plugin before and in this post Suzette will take you deeper into it’s social marketing features.
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Let’s face it, no matter how pretty your blog or website is, people come back for fresh, compelling, unique and informative content. While there are various services that will accomplish the same functionality, never before has posting to all the networks simultaneously been make simpler than with the magic of the plugin Jetpack. Jetpack is chock full of goodies like the Publicize, Sharing and Subscriptions features that can help the most amount of people see your unique content in your social network. Support for posting to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Yahoo, as well as share buttons for the major networks are all included in this no cost but priceless plugin.

What is Jetpack?

Jetpack (latest version is 2.0) is a free add-on suite of plugins once only available to WordPress.com users made available for your self-hosted blog. If your blog is hosted at WordPress.com, you do not need this add-on to access these features, but if you are self-hosting your blog, for example, at Media Temple, WPEngine, HostGator, Blue Host, etc. you will need to download, install, and activate this plugin to have it provide the features we will be covering, Also, you will be required to have a WordPress.com account, so that all of your subscriptions and stats can be accessed centrally right form the WordPress.com dashboard. I will walk you through the installation and configuration process and get you up and running in no time posting your unique content to your followers.

6 Simple Guidelines For Your Facebook Page

Unless you have already amassed thousands of "likes", or have money to spend on Facebook Ads, Facebook is notoriously hard to gain traction on at first. It takes time to build up "likes", and even when you have a decent…

How To Automatically Post Your Blogs To Facebook and Twitter

A common question that clients ask me is about how to automatically update their Facebook page, Twitter account or other social profiles, when they publish a new blog post.

There are many ways to do this – here are a couple of my preferred methods. Although there are some WordPress plugins available for these types of tasks, generally speaking I don’t use them. Sometimes they are tricky to configure, or perhaps just not that reliable. Plus, why add unnnecessary plugins when you can acheive the same thing just as well, if not better, another way?

Sharing on Facebook More Valuable Than On Twitter

According to research done by Eventbrite, sharing on Facebook is five times more valuable than sharing on Twitter.

Eventbrite mined all this data over the past several months, analyzing how sharing an event through social media translated into ticket sales. On average, sharing an event on Facebook translates to $2.52 of ticket sales. On Twitter? Just $0.43. Sharing through email took second place at $2.34, and even LinkedIn topped Twitter at $0.90.

The great disparity between Facebook and Twitter isn’t surprising. According to a recent poll, users of Facebook have physically met more than 88% of their friends; on Twitter, users have not physically met 48.2% of their followers.

Full story: Facebook Is Worth $2.52, Twitter Only 43 Cents: Study | Fast Company.

This reinforces my simple model of social media in which I said that Facebook is for networking with those you already know, while Twitter is better for reaching a brand new audience.

A Simple Model For Social Media

Here’s a very simple model for thinking about three main social media channels: your blog, Facebook and Twitter. I should say that this model applies in particular to solopreneurs and small businesses who are still developing their following and trying to use social media to do so. In this model the starting point is simply looking at who the audience is, since that helps determine tone, content and strategy.

The simplest version:

Your blog is for attracting a new audience, and providing value to your existing audience.

Facebook is for communicating with people you know, or at least have ‘weak ties’ with, i.e people that are already in your network.

Twitter is for actively finding and connecting with people outside of your current network.