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Comments by Shell Robshaw-Bryan Subscribe 
On 5 Ways to Grow Your Business with Facebook
Great tips Pam. The examples you've used are really good too. I'll definitely be sharing this with my followers.
Sometimes Facebook can be a little 'chicken and egg', you need good quality content to entice people into liking and actively using your page but really great content takes an investment and some faith!
I think that active promotion should be secondary to good content creation which will help to grow your Facebook community. If intersting things are happening on your page people are more like to want to stick around and engage.
Great work!
On Klout Plans To Become A Social Network
I've lost a lot of respect for Klout recently as their customer service and technical support is appalling. It's going to take a lot for me to start taking them seriously as a result.
I do answer questions from time to time, but I certainly won't be going out of my way to do so until they get their act together and figure out how to answer basic support queries.
On New Online Communities Harness the Power of Secrets
Interesting article.
I use Google+ communities myself and there are a wide number of professionals who are happy to knowledge share and support each other and myself and many of my peers, will freely provide valuable consultancy advice to community members. Yes we are actively demonstrating expertise which I guess helps with reputation but mainly, we help others because we are passionate, friendly and value the communities we are a part of.
It is good to hear that this sort of community sharing is filtering through and actively being encouraged by social networks like Scrt.ly, Whisper, and PostSecret. Too often peoples personal social media accounts are carefully edited versions of their real lives which present a skewed, often idealised image that many others will find difficult to live up to. The honesty and sense of caring community offered by this new breed of social network sites is in my opinion a very welcome step.
I do however have a real problem with totally anonymous social networks (lets take 4chan as an example). I don't believe anonymity encourages honesty or a sense of community. In my experience it encourages hostility and a total lack of morality as normal boundaries are removed, and these social networks as a result, attract a very particular type of person who I personally really wouldn't want to take advice from or reveal my problems to.
I wonder why people feel the need to post anonymously about their problems? For me this shows the somewhat vacuous nature of the likes of Facebook where many people are 'friends' with people they only want to impress or prove something to; if you have 500 friends, but wouldn't share problems with them, they clearly aren't friends at all. In the race for popularity "Look how many 'friends' I have!" people have forgotten that real friendship and a real community is supporting through both good and bad. If people were able to maintain their own authenticity on social media there would be no need for anonymous social sharing sites at all.
On Social Media Management and the Myth that "Anyone Can Do It"
Thanks for your comments Mieke.
I'm uncomfortable with the 'expert' label too - I don't see how anyone can really be a true expert in an industry that is moving on and evolving all the time. I'm happy to refer to social media as a specialism however and I do agree that too much focus on social is dangerous, especially if it's not being used as a strategic marketing tool and is just being used in total isolation.
On Social Media Management and the Myth that "Anyone Can Do It"
Thanks for your comments Brett.
I recently set up a new Twitter account for myself and selected a number of social media professionals, experts & thought leaders to follow. A surprising number of these however have been endlessly Tweeting links to websites promising to teach novices all they need to know to be social media managers. I've also noticed a lot of old hat techniques being used too, like you point out, the spamming of Twitter feeds and i've also noticed lots of websites that have endless popups and prompts to try and keep you on the site and make closing the window difficult. Super annoying and a real worry, as small businesses who are often on a tight budget, will be tempted to outsource to cheap, unskilled so called 'experts.'
With such low barriers to entry i'm not sure what the answer is, educating business owners is probably the best thing we can do.
On Why You Should Be Using Listly: A Review
I've only recently discovered Listly and I love it, i've made 4 lists so far but I've not embedded any of them into my wordpress blog as yet, but intend to. Cool article!
On Facebook Survey: What Users Hate About Brands
Hi Amy, some nice findings there - it would be useful if 'posting too frequently' could be quantified.
It's always a tough one getting frequency right. With some brands i've worked with posting 4 or 5 times a day was fine and resulted in a good level of engagement and low fall-out rate. With other brands however, 1 post a day might be perceived as 'too frequent'.
I think trial and error is the key, up the frequency slowly and monitor - when you start to see a drop off, then it's time to rein things in!
On More Traffic or More Conversions? No Contest
Great article Paul! I think one of the problems is that many business owners (certainly, those i've worked with) seem to focus on traffic or social media followers/Likes instead of the thing that really matters, conversions. Of course doubling your traffic means your conversions will rise proportionally, but conversion optimisation makes so much more sense and should be done before or at least in tandem with chasing traffic/followers/likes.
On Twitter Now Costs You $5 a Month to Tweet Vowels and Announces Free 'Twttr' Service
lol very amusing :)
On Facebook: Understanding the Business Benefits
Glad to hear you liked the post Debby! Great point about the creativity needed to keep engagement levels up. I'm responsible for quite a few different Facebook business pages and continually coming up with fresh ways of engaging people can be a really tough call. It tends to mean you never switch off because you are constantly looking for inspiration and having new ideas!
The easiest way to measure ROI with Facebook is by making sure you have social tracking in place (Google Analytics can do this), when a click through results in a sale you can clearly see it. What is much harder though is when you are tracking less tangible benefits, like brand awareness it gets much more difficult. With regards to tracking and ROI however, making sure relevent goals are set up and being recorded is really useful. Again, even if a customer doesn't buy something then you can track if social media prompted them to make contact with you through your website contact page. If they choose to pick up the phone, or send you email instead though, you have no way of knowing that interaction was prompted by Facebook or similar, or at least, i've not found a reliable way of tracking that kind of interaction.
I always think it is important to make sure clients understand the bigger picture, social activity will also help them in terms of SEO, ultimately helping them appear higher in search results.
On Twitter Is for Customer Service Whether You Like It or Not
Nice article. I've written myself recently about the benefits of providing customer service via social media. I like your suggestion about posting formal Twitter 'office hours'. As people are always connected the expectation is that businesses are too! Setting a realistic expectation from the outset could be really helpful.
On Can You Recover from an Amy's Bakery Style Social Media Meltdown?
Intersting post. I think it's hugely important that any business using social media understands how to deal with negative comments in a way that won't damage their reputation. Remaining professional is critical regardless of how difficult a customer is being.