Show support. If you have a good experience with a business, show them support by liking their Facebook page, following them on Twitter, and maybe doing a post or blog about them. As long as they aren’t your competitors, offering promotions of good businesses for your customers is appreciated. It’s a great way to build relationships with other businesses and in a in-direct way get more traffic.

Offer connections. If you have a business that you partner with and you have ways to connect your fans and followers to them, do it. This will be convenient to your consumers and again, your partnerships will only gain strength. It’s a win-win for everybody.

Keep opportunities open. If businesses approach you or you see an opportunity to partner with them to do something big, keep an open mind. I feel too many times that businesses could benefit from another business but never go for it based on pride or fear. A big example of how this has been successful is Taco Bell and Doritos. They saw an opportunity and went for it and it couldn’t have gone better.

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JD Duran

But things can get sticky if you’re not up to date in the design world or don’t have an in-house designer. How do you design a Facebook cover image? What about a Twitter background image? These details can help boost your branding make it easier to be recognized on social media. Check out these great Facebook cover photos and social media designs that’s helped these businesses. Cover photos offer a great spot with lots of visual space to show what your business is about.

So what’s the best way to design your social media platforms? It is best to upload images as a .png instead of a .jpg for better quality. It’s also better to design at 300dpi vs the standard 72dpi if possible. We’ve compiled a list of image sizes that will help you maximize your networking potential. All of these sizes are in pixels.

Here are a few dimensions to keep in mind for Facebook.
• Facebook Cover photo: 851 x 315
• Facebook Profile Picture – 180 x 180 (Although 360 x 360 would be even better)

For Twitter users, consider these size tips. Your background can determine how inviting your page is, and the recent addition of Twitter Covers give you another chance to visually express what your business is all about.
• Twitter Background – 1920 x 1200
• Twitter Cover – 1252 x 626
• Twitter Profile Picture – 128 x 128 (Again, a higher resolution would be great here)

If you have Google Plus, and I’d recommend for business that you do, there’s lots of good opportunity for branding here. They just updated the profiles for you to have a massive Google Plus Cover to help enhance your branding and generate interest.
• Google Plus Cover – 2120 x 1192 (Maximum size)
• Google Plus Profile Picture – 360 x 360

For Pinterest pages, you can upload your profile picture directly from Twitter. So once you Twitter profile picture is up, your Pinterest photo will be ready to go with the click of a button.
The technical side of social media, although maybe not as exciting as the content side, is just as important.

Social Media Graphics
• Non-Infographics – 960 x 960 (Facebook minimum is 403 x 403)
• In general, the width of an Infographic should not be more than 600 pixels and length should not exceed 1,800 pixels. This “standard” usually helps fit most websites and blogs.
• Pinterest – 600 x infinite

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JD Duran

Let’s break it down: When you post a status, those who have liked your page can comment. Often, a conversation will develop within the comments, and if multiple people are posting comments on the same post in a short amount of time, it can become confusing. Now, with reply links, each comment creates its own thread, making it simple to respond to a particular comment on a post. The threads are sorted by most active conversations, which appear as the first comment thread.

Facebook is rolling out this feature, so not everyone in the network can check this out just yet. Find out if you have the option by going to your page on Facebook, clicking Edit Page, Manage Permissions, and check “Allow replies to comments on my Page.”

Facebook has continually made changes and updates to their social media network. More often than not, these are met with grumbling users who are not willing to learn a new aspect of Facebook but these negative feelings are forgotten within weeks. Facebook’s changes quickly become the norm because their updates make sense. Their goal is to make using their site as easy and interactive as possible, which they continue to improve on.

Staying up to date with social media quirks is important for marketing today. Stay current in an advancing world.

It is true that the wait is ridiculously long (we sat down an hour and a half after putting our name on the list) and the service was less than perfect, but this is to be expected from a brand new restaurant. I knew going in that the wait time wouldn’t be short and that I didn’t have anywhere else to be that night, so it didn’t affect me. Everyone we came in contact with was very friendly, but still trying to get in the swing of things.

The menu (which includes brunch, lunch and dinner) was decently sized, with options ranging from authentic Mexican to Tex-Mex to American favorites. A large component of their menu is the sauces and salsas offered, some mild and some dangerously spicy. The guacamole is hand-whacked and offers an entirely different flavor of the dish. My party tried the enchiladas, fajitas, Latino vegetables, Mexican rice and refried beans, and all were satisfactory if not exceeding expectations.

Cobar offers a good selection of drinks, and you can order them from your table as well. Cocoh, which could almost be a separate entity, offers handmade gelato with new flavors every day (including cinnamon, peanut butter, chocolate fudge and buttered popcorn), gelato cookie sandwiches, gelato pops, cupcakes, carrot cake, turtle cheesecake, and more. The gelato seemed authentic and was tasty. The only detraction is that gelato is known for its popularity in Italy, not Mexico. The focus of the restaurant could be narrowed, but the quality of food was high.

Coba Cocina has more than 2,400 likes on Facebook but could improve their rate of posting. The page is filled with reviews, suggestions, complaints and praises from customers, which you are free to explore yourself. They have a Twitter account, but have only Tweeted once. There are certainly kinks that need to be worked out, but Coba is worth a visit—maybe when the wait time shortens—for a quality restaurant in Lexington. They are new so give them a little slack. Be sure to give them a shout on social as they find their reigns a little bit.

Posted by Katie Knecht
Phoenix Blue’s awesome intern

Plan to stick around. When you begin marketing with social media, create a reasonable plan that you can stick to. It’s important to be consistent. It’s better to post one or two things every day than to post 15 one day and none the next. Stay on consumer’s minds this way, and you’ll feel less pressure with a steady posting plan.

Vary your posts between text, photo and video to keep consumers engaged. The Fayette Mall Facebook page does a great job with this. Their posts are not repetitive and attract attention because they are different than their last posts. For example, their most recent posts include a link to Easter Bunny photo packages, a video from Auntie Anne’s pretzel rolling contest, and a promotional photo for Subway, a restaurant housed in Fayette Mall. Keep it interesting.

Hold a contest! What a great way to interact with your customers and potential customers. Phoenix Blue is hosting a March Madness contest, offering $200 for whoever best predicts NCAA basketball tournament winners. To enter, competitors must like our Facebook page, which is a great way to gain business. Contests are a fun, interactive way to connect with consumers.

There are a lot more ways to engage with consumers, but those are just a few, easy ways that pretty much everyone can do. Get out there and be social!

The other social medias is where the Fayette Mall lacks, but has lots of potential. The Fayette Mall is on Twitter @FayetteMall. They have their Facebook posts go to their Twitter so they don’t really manage it a whole lot. Their branding, which is pretty good on Facebook, is absent from Twitter. They could have campaigns where users tag the Fayette Mall Twitter handle in their tweets, expanding those who see the name. Even John Calipari has Tweeted about being at the Fayette Mall, which is a great opportunity for the mall to gain business. So there is room for growth and opportunity.

The Fayette Mall is also on Yelp and FourSquare, on which nearly 13,000 have “checked in” to the mall. The FourSquare page also shows photos taken by users, the mall’s hours, and comments from customers. However, they could expand with Instagram and Pinterest. With an Instagram account, Fayette Mall could reach another target market of users and allow more interaction with customers. Instagram pictures cross-promoted on Facebook and Twitter could be a great way to get users to engage more with their experience at the mall. It may also grow other platforms like Facebook with Instagram photos going to their Facebook page. Although the mall has a Pinterest page, they only have one board and it is rarely updated. Pinterest would be a great place to Pin new fashions offered at the mall, along with food from restaurants they house and upcoming events.

When it comes to Facebook, the Fayette Mall does a great job. It’s a fun page and one that’s worth following. Be sure to “Like” them and engage with them.

Guest Blog post by Katie Knecht

Personally, I am much more into photography than I am into taking videos. Watching a video is more of an investment and viewers can be easily distracted, where as photographs take only a second to see. But Vine has limited the length of videos to six seconds, and allowed video takers to mix and match videos in a “pre-editing” sort of way. You can take a video of your cat for two seconds, then your dog for two seconds, and then your bird for two seconds, and Vine uploads it all as one video. When taking a video within the app, the camera only records when the users’ finger is on the screen, so many short clips can be used together to create a mesmerizing effect.

Users can upload their videos to other social networks such as Facebook and, of course, Twitter. Twitter is working to bring the app to other smart phones. Less than a week after its release on January 24, Twitter raised the minimum age limit for the Vine app to 17 after pornographic images were uploaded. Apple requested the age change, which was implemented on February 5.

It will be interesting to see how Vine grows and competes with video giant YouTube and other networks such as Facebook and Instagram. With a time limit on videos and the ability to get creative with short clips, Vine could make a splash in the social media world. For businesses this could be short promotional videos, for let’s say a new Final Four contest where you could win $200 for your picks. These videos could also be short informational videos or a quick tip on something. For many businesses, it may just be a branding tool or a platform for some humor to draw in engagement.

Have you used Vine for your business?

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1. Design and Branding on Facebook

Customized tabs, branded Facebook cover arts, and a branded and clear profile picture are vital to maximizing your full potential on Facebook. Customized tabs give you visibility, attraction, and a visual tool to help your page become more interactive and appealing to consumers on Facebook. It’s a great way to build a “mini-website” within Facebook. You can create tabs to give people information while making it visually attractive. Customized cover arts and a branded profile picture will take your branding to a whole new level. I know we harp on this a lot if you read our blogs, but it matters for credibility and professionalism. Much more than that, you should care about branding. Long term, it matters!

2. Strategic Posting Plan

Having a strategic posting plan will make it or break it for you on social media. You can’t have a successful social media marketing campaign just on popularity alone. Well, unless you’re Kim K. But since most of us aren’t, having a plan matters a ton. How many times have you seen celebrities or politicians tweet or Facebook something that wasn’t strategic and it came back to bite them? It’s happened more times that we can count. How you go about posting matters, when you’re posting and what content you are posting all matters. Get a plan and stick with it.

3. Partnerships

Creating partnerships in social media can really go a long way, especially for small business. It allows you to work with other companies in cross-promotions, contests, and sponsorships. Each follower on your pages matter because they are people, not a number. And they like your page for a reason and probably have friends and family that could be potential followers too. The strategy for this will vary depending on what type of business you run, but it’s something that works well when done right. Creating partnerships with other friends and companies could double or triple the amount of people you could potentially reach otherwise. And that, my friends, can be worth a lot of money. We’ve done several contests where we involved our clients and partners that turned out great. So, don’t burn your bridges and take care of the people around you. The more friends and partnerships you make, the more value your posts will have.

If you want more information on this, don’t hesitate to contact us. Be sure to sign up for our email newsletter today for more tips on how social media can help your business.

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JD Duran