Millions of teens have abandoned Facebook since 2011 and instead are flocking to apps like Instagram. What does this mean for your business? If your target demographic market is over age 25, then you should be marketing your business on Facebook! And if you're looking to reach the 13-24 age group, it's time to take a look at Instagram.

More info: http://www.statista.com/chart/1789/facebook-s-teenager-problem/

The Pink Group has provided us with an updated cheat sheet of image sizes and dimensions for Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Vimeo, and SlideShare: http://thepinkgroup.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Social-Media-Cheat-sheet.pdf

Original Post for April, 2013:

Have you decided that it’s time to create a Facebook Page for your business? Wondering exactly how to get your Page started the right way?

Facebook continues to change and evolve, making it a moving target for people trying to find the correct steps to set up a Page. But never fear--Social Media Examiner has all the critical pieces that you need to put in place to start your Facebook Page today.

To set up your Facebook Page, just follow these steps:

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The trouble with search today is that there’s a tradeoff between reach and relevance. We have to work hard sifting through the results to find what’s really relevant to us. Or, we can poll our social and professional networks, because our friends are reliable, relevant, familiar, and trustworthy, which legitimizes the information we get from them. The promise of Facebook’s new Graph Search combines the relevance of social information filters with the reach of modern search technology.

What does Graph Search mean for small businesses? Plenty. Facebook recently posted that they are “building a completely new vertical to handle searching posts and comments.” This means that every post and every comment is searchable.

Consistent and relevant posts on Facebook Business Pages are now more important than ever. Facebook’s new Graph Search can make your business’s Facebook Page easier to find, and get you more visibility. The bottom line is this; More people need to “like” your page or check in at your venue so the people they’re connected to get exposed to your page. Here are a few tips you can do now to make your page easier to find.

The first three steps are essentially for entry-level Facebook Page admins. If you’re certain that you’re already implementing the most basic best practices, skip ahead to step four.

Visual marketing is one of the most effective ways you can give your business a voice online. According to Science Blogs, “Pictures were correctly recalled about 1.5 times as often as printed words.” Not only are images easier to recall, they also cause a more emotional response from the viewer, which in turn causes them to engage more. If you want to test this, in a practical way, try this: go on Facebook and update with text, then an hour or so later update with a picture or even better a picture with a quote. More times than not, within 10 minutes the picture will have at least two to three times the engagement the text did. 

Ever get tired of memorizing all the dimensions of the various sizes and specifications for social media profile and post photos? This infographic by Luna Metrics lists all of the sizing information for images on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest.

Another article shows how to create an integrated Cover Photo and Profile Picture on Facebook, with a downloadable Photoshop template to help you in this effort. An “integrated” masthead design is where the Cover Photo ( the big image) and the Profile Picture (the image overlaid in the lower left corner of the Cover Photo) seem of a piece, where the Profile Picture appears to be transparent:

Do you want more people to watch your videos?Have you thought of integrating your YouTube channel with your Pinterest account? When you combine the power of YouTube with Pinterest, you can boost your business and increase your subscribers. In this article,you'll learn how to add YouTube videos to Pinterest. This is a great way to leverage the power of both of these platforms. And this tactic is easy to do!

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Eating out at restaurants may just be the most social thing we do in public. The number of restaurants from multi-unit locations to independent mom and pops, or restaurant small businesses that are NOT using Social Media is surprising. Even worse, are those that have set up profiles and walked away from possibly the most economical medium available to them. If you aren’t going to stick with it, don’t do it at all.

Location, location, location; this is the oldest saying in the book. Location today is more about being found via location-based apps, geo-targeted search results and mobile marketing. If there is ONE thing you do, make sure you create listings for your restaurant(s), starting with Google Places. They are the number one search engine for a reason.

When you are ready to expand your location-based marketing claim your Foursquare profile, check out Yelp and get on that network called Facebook with over a Billion members and their product called Facebook Nearby.

Daily Special Content. What does content look like for a restaurant brand? Content is what you share with your audience. Ideas of what to share:

1. Your food and drinks
2. Where you source your ingredients
3. New menu items
4. Your restaurant’s decor (is it festive or relaxing?)
5. Daily and Seasonal Specials
6. What’s going on in the restaurant this week (live music, trivia, a meet up or a special event)
7. A simple invitation or enticement to come in and dine at your establishment today

The best part of social media for restaurants is that your customers are all ready doing a lot of this for you. It's a good bet that more Foursquare locations have been claimed by diners than have been by the restaurant themselves. Check-ins, endorsements and images are flooding the internet daily by fans of your restaurant. Once you are active on social media you will be able to merchandise the social traffic into profit. All you have to do is get started, embrace the medium and join the conversation.

Content and marketing are officially married and have arrived in a big stretch limo to “Main Street” to celebrate.  There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t hear about, talk about and discuss content marketing.  Econsultancy, in partnership with Adobe, reports the top key digital trend for 2013 will be  “. . .the year of  creating, optimizing and marketing great content, spread through social channels and consumed everywhere.”

But, what exactly are we talking about here?  Content is simply valuable, relevant and helpful information that we share. It is not a new idea. Remember when traditional media content transformed our world with television, cable, radio, newspapers and magazines? We still have that, plus we are now authors and publishers – publishing information on websites, blogs, videos, podcasts, emarketing, ebooks, books and social media.

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