Miriam Shaviv, Author at Helping Aesthetic Clinics Get Repeat Business

5 things every content marketer should learn from Facebook’s ‘Look Back’ videos

7 February 2014Miriam Shaviv

To celebrate its 10th anniversary this week, Facebook produced a free video for most users, which highlighted some of their biggest moments on the social media network since they joined.

It was a runaway success. Hundreds of millions immediately accessed their personalised video and then shared it with their friends. The internet was swamped with people getting emotional over the memories – their own, their families’, their friends’.

One bereaved father even issued a tearful video plea for Facebook to send him a personalised video for his late son, who died a couple of years ago. Facebook said it would.

Think employees on social media is a minefield? 4 reasons you should encourage it anyway

5 February 2014Miriam Shaviv

Do you trust your employees enough to let them promote your business on social media? They could be sharing your blogs on Twitter and LinkedIn, giving insights into interesting (non-confidential) parts of their job, and interacting with prospective clients – in short, building up relationships and drumming up work.

For many businesses this is a horrifying prospect. The risks are real – if you give employees permission to talk in your name, there is a chance that at some stage, someone will say something harmful publicly. Social media may be better off siphoned off to the communications department, where it can be handled safely.

8 key elements your Pharma social media strategy MUST include

3 February 2014Miriam Shaviv

strategy Talk to executives in the pharmaceutical sector about social media, and there is still a lot of fear, confusion – and disinterest. Many executives are aware that social media has been a powerful marketing tool in other sectors, but are unsure how it can be applied in their own regulated industry, and don’t know where to start.

Indeed, the top digital challenge for pharma companies in 2014, according to a recent survey by Digital Futures 2014, is “unclear strategy”. Working this out must be a top priority both for the sector as a whole and for individual companies, as no headway can be made without a well-thought-out plan of action; dabbling in social media hoping to stumble across a tactic that works is a colossal waste of time and money.

3 social media stories you can’t afford to miss this week

31 January 2014Miriam Shaviv

This week’s crucial social media news round-up:

Facebook ads much more targeted. Next month Facebook is going to start testing a new system for its ads, which will allow marketers to target people by workplace, education, job titles, a recent life event and past purchasing behaviour. It will be tested in the US and will be released more widely towards the end of Q1.
Why this matters to you: If you are trying to promote your business on Facebook, this allows you to reach the right people much more easily, making Facebook a far more effective marketing tool.
Why this matters to Facebook: It’s another step in its strategy of convincing people to pay for advertising. Will allow it to compete better with LinkedIn.
More information: Here.

11 ways to save time on your social media marketing

30 January 2014Miriam Shaviv

multi tasker No matter what size your business is, finding time for social media is hard.

If you run a small business single-handedly or with a limited team, there are many other priorities pressing on your time. If you are the head of comms or sales at a multinational – well, guess what, there are many other priorities pressing on your time, too, and you do not necessarily have the manpower either.

So how do you find those elusive hours? The first thing to realise is that not finding time is not an option. Social media is crucial to business development nowadays, and if it constantly gets pushed to the bottom of your priorities, your business is going to suffer.

Ladies, get on LinkedIn!

27 January 2014Miriam Shaviv

Open for business The good news for women on the recent Pew survey on social media use was that women dominate every single major social media channel – contrary to what you might think, they actually use social media more than men!

With one exception: LinkedIn. While 24% of male internet users say they use the site, only 19% of women do.

Is this because LinkedIn is business-oriented by definition, and thus perceived as ‘male territory’ – an extension of the workplace, which is still, at its upper echelons, often dominated by men? Or is there something about the way it’s built or used which is offputting to women? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

How to create a Facebook link-share

23 January 2014Miriam Shaviv

Yesterday, Facebook announced yet another tweak to its news feed algorithm. From now on, if you run a page promoting your business, text-only updates will be less likely to seen by your fans.

Additionally, when you share a link, priority will be given to “link share” posts.

What does that mean? This is going to be really important to get right, so let’s go through it.

One way to post a link to Facebook is simply to embed it in you status update, with no accompanying picture – and then leave it there. A typical post would look like this:

facebook post

Working without social media goals? You’re less likely to succeed

20 January 2014Miriam Shaviv

Business goals can be scary. They can stress you out because you are not successful until you have achieved them. They can impede your long-term growth, because once you’ve achieved your goals, you’re done. And they present an unfounded illusion that we have control over the future.

In fact, you would be better off if you didn’t set goals – but focused on doing the right kinds of things to grow your business, or for want of better terms your tactics or ‘system’, instead.

That, at least, is the theory put forward by Entrepreneur contributor James Clear, in a widely shared piece. It’s presented as a radical, exciting departure from conventional wisdom, but isn’t really. It’s a reflection of how too many businesses already regularly operate.

And it is also particularly a reflection of how too many businesses run their social media programmes. They blog, they tweet, they post on Facebook – but with no clear end in sight.

8 ways to get your posts seen on Facebook

20 January 2014Miriam Shaviv

like Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a string of posts from businesses confessing that they have abandoned their Facebook pages, or are at least thinking about it.

Their rationale is that, thanks to changes in the way Facebook calculates what gets into your newsfeed, so little of their content is reaching their fans that Facebook is just not worth the effort any more (unless you are willing to pay).

So should your business follow suit?

Not necessarily.

Clearly, for some businesses this is the right decision. But we would urge you not to take such a drastic step until you are absolutely sure that Facebook can no longer work for you. Facebook remains the world’s largest social network, with unparalleled access to individual consumers and with extremely detailed data about them. This is not to be given up so easily!

Why is Pinterest still ‘fringe’ when it’s ‘more popular than Twitter’?

14 January 2014Miriam Shaviv

One of the most interesting facts to come out of the much-discussed Pew Research Center study on use of social media which was released last week is the sharp spike in Pinterest’s popularity. In fact it is now so popular that more Americans say they use it than Twitter, and it only just trails behind LinkedIn!

Yet when social media is discussed online and in the ‘mainstream media’, the ‘Big 4’ social media sites are always Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Pinterest is still somehow regarded as fringe.

Why?

The benign explanation is that this is a case of ‘lies, damn lies and statistics’.

Yes, more respondents in this survey – American adults who use social media – say they use Pinterest, and that is how it was widely reported. But the fact remains that there are more than 500 million registered users of Twitter worldwide, and “only” 70 million of Pinterest.

Author: Miriam Shaviv

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