Category: How To

When you create a Facebook group community, the tone and culture of your group will be determined and created by the person who first establishes it.

It is your responsibility and that of the other moderators to preserve its spirit and direction. Here are a few suggestions from experienced administrators to help you do just that.

Related: Useful Tips To Grow Your Facebook Group

Positivity and Consistency

When people join online communities, they want to share their opinions and knowledge in a positive environment. In order to maintain a supportive, safe platform, it is essential to set clear rules about expected behaviors in the earliest stages of building the group and consistently upholding them as you move forward.

When the leader takes the guidelines seriously, the rest of the group will as well. This will help you to maintain the atmosphere you have created for your online group.

Come One, Come All

Having a large number of members all at once isn’t necessarily a good thing. Seasoned administrators know that the foundation of a group’s tone and personality is reliant upon the earliest members of the group.

You want the people who come onboard to mesh with the culture you’re trying to establish. It’s okay to vet candidates before they’re invited to join the group.

Making the Connections

You will find that the most engaging people in the group can be invaluable assets. By connecting them to other members, you continue to build a supportive culture while creating strong and lasting relationships across the entire group.

And when conflicts in discussions emerge, people remain open to sharing their opinions and will respect and hear out those who might have different points-of-view. The dialogs won’t have a chilling effect on member participation.

Create More Groups

As more people join your group, it’s likely that their interests will begin to differ and diversify. It’s a natural phenomenon that can actually benefit everybody.

When you start to see inactivity from members who were previously engaged, don’t hesitate to form more groups that focus on their specific areas of interest. In order to maintain your community, you can connect each of these offshoots to your main group and keep relationships intact while broadening horizons.

Say Hello

One of the best ways to engage new members and put them at ease is to simply introduce yourself. A warm welcome is always encouraging, and when you ask few questions, people are more likely to open up. Have other members introduce themselves as well and provide information about the group’s recent discussions and activities.

Conscientious administrators will greet this new addition privately and express their appreciation for any contributions they decide to make. This kind of warmth and personalized welcome helps nurture the member as they join in discussions and get to know the other people in the group.

Enjoy Your Own Participation

Being the leader of a group can sometimes generate a distance between you and your members. Don’t forget to occasionally shed your moderator’s hat and enjoy participating as a member. This allows others a chance to interact with you.

If you want to engage people with a more personal touch, Facebook Live is a wonderful tool. It gives you the opportunity to articulate your convictions about different subjects personally, and your audience will quickly sense your enthusiasm. This in turn energizes other members.

What Do You Think

Nothing precipitates active conversations more than an open-ended question. The inclination to get involved differs from person to person.

Some members find it easy to come up with ideas and post them. Others might need encouragement or a prompt to get started. Polls, surveys, quizzes, and contests also help the less vocal individuals participate in discussions without having to post a word.

You Owe It to the Others to Enforce Your Rules

In order to maintain the type of culture and atmosphere you want for the group, you must be prepared and unafraid to enforce the rules you established. It demonstrates your leadership and emphasizes that you take the rules seriously.

If you allow one person to cross a line, other members might start to take liberties, and you will begin losing good members of the group. The last resort for addressing bad behavior is to remove the individual from the group, but it’s not something you’d like to do too often.

We’re always looking for tips on how to cultivate a group attitude of support and respect. If you have an idea, feel free to share it with us. And don’t forget to join Digital Boom Community Facebook Group.

Now that you have created your Facebook group, it’s time to add members. Adding your friends and family is simply not enough if you mean for your Facebook group to bring in revenue for your business. There is a vast source of potential members among Facebook’s roughly 2.2 billion users. The question now is, how do you get those people to join your Facebook group?

Social media experts advise that one of the best ways to expand your group is to actively provide relevant content on your page. This increases engagement among your existing members. In return, they will spread the word on how fantastic the group is, and you get your members who are truly interested in your page and advocacy.

See Also: All you need to know about Facebook Marketplace bug

More tips from the experts

1. Use relevant tags and keywords. This helps to make your facebook group easier to find when people search for topics that you have tags on.

Social media experts recommend that you make sure that your group settings are optimized. To do this, you need to make sure you add your group topic in the group name. A good Facebook name creates a psychological and emotional response from your audience. For example, if your topic is High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT), a bad name for it is: High Intensity Interval Training Group. That name is pure and simple, boring. A good name for that group would be: “Fit & Healthy HIITHealth Buffs” or something to that effect.

Use tags that are relevant to your group or niche. Tags will help people and Facebook understand what the group is about. It is important that people understand what your group is about on the outset, otherwise they won’t really be interested in joining. It also helps to set the parameters of the group topics because admins will be able to easily provide the right information to potential group members. Taking the HIIT group example, good tags would include: health, exercise, weight loss, wellness, fitness, and other relevant keywords.

2. Advertise your facebook group to existing followers.

Link up your group to your Facebook page. There, you can post about your group and tell your existing followers or fans to join the group. You can do an information drive and send out invitations to join your group to your subscribers through their email addresses. Another easy way to invite people is to add a “Join Group”button to your Facebook page. If you have a verified page, you even the option to invite people through email in bulk.

You should also promote or advertise your group in other avenues that you already have like a newsletter, podcast, website and other social media platforms.

Examples of effective facebook group promotion:

• National Public Radio (NPR) has a group named Your Money and Your life, that discusses personal finances. The group has over 42,000 members. Being a broadcast company, NPR mentions the group on air whenever a program discusses personal finance.
• “The Weeds”, a podcast by Vox takes a bit of on air time to plug its group.
• A group run by The Times UK, which is a Brexit-themed group, has grown largely through the outfit’s efforts in promoting the group whenever they have posts on the topic. They add a link to the group in the comments section so it’s easier for potential members to find. William Park, The Times UK’s social producer even said that they also help grow the group by personally telling people about it and encourage them to join. Now that’s not a bad idea at all. Use all of your existing resources so there is no additional cost.

3. Ask you members to invite their friends

If you are personally inviting people to join the group, you might as well tell your members to do the same with their friends. If each of you could bring in just one new member, then you have already doubled your number of members.

Simply telling people to tell their friends about the group and to ask them to join is not a very reliable technique. You can run events, contests or other promotional strategy to entice your members to invite their friends. You can also post a simple infographic showing an update of the group’s growth is a great way to encourage your members to invite more. Make sure you make them feel that the growth was a team effort and it wouldn’t have happened without their support.

It is highly likely that your members have been meaning to tell people about the group but simply forgot or haven’t had the time to do it. Post a subtle reminder every so often to make them remember.

4. Join other groups that have related topics.

As a group admin you need to be knowledgeable about your group’s topic. Enhance your knowledge not just on the topic but on the types of people and interaction required for that demographic. You can do this by joining other groups. You can even reach out to other admins of related groups and ask them to think about linking with your group.

Of course, you can’t just up and say you want them to link their group to yours. Offer them something of value that is useful for them. This may include providing content to their group or creating a knowledge base. You could co-host an event or give live advice.

A Facebook group admin has said that he has been offered partnerships with other admins so that they can promote each other’s groups to their respective members. This type of promotion has been proven to boost membership numbers.

Growing a Facebook group does not require a lot of financial resources. All it takes is creativity and a healthy interpersonal relationship with members and the Facebook community as a whole.

To recap, here things to remember when growing your Facebook group:

• Improve member interaction by posting relevant content. Think going viral.
• Optimize your group with tags. Think of a fun and memorable group name that is easy to find.
• Be visible to the community.
• Make use of existing avenues. Reach out to your followers and other admins.

If you have other techniques and tips that you will help grow a Facebook group’s membership, let us in the comments! Don’t forget to join Digital Boom’s Group on Facebook

Instagram has launched a new feature that enables users to follow hashtags, which allows them to discover more posts from the interests and communities they care about, right in the feed.

Now, when you visit a hashtag page, you can tap “follow” to start to see the best posts from that hashtag in your feed. So, whether you love keeping up with nail art trends on #floralnails or watching slime videos on #oddlysatisfying, now it’s easier to discover and stay connected to your favourite interests.

How to follow Hashtags on Instagram

Check out Instagram major features introduced in 2017.

It takes one person to ruin your brand and a crisis management team to regain it!

As smartphone users jump to an estimated 2 billion in 2017, more people are expected to generate content on social media, expanding the powerful impact of such platforms on personal and commercial brands alike.

See Also: Why Middle East marketing and politics don’t mix

There are three main steps to consider when handling social media in a crisis:

Before the crisis

An organization adopting a proactive communication strategy should take the following into consideration:

• Monitoring and response frameworks.
• Identifying key online powers (people and entities).
• Checking ownership of social media platforms.
• Being clear on the resources needed in the event of a crisis.
• Training the social media team.
• Including social media in risk assessment procedures.
• Controlling IT in the organization to ensure the required information gets out in due time.

See Also: Major brands pull ads from Riham Saeed

During the crisis

The damage has been done and the organization needs to rescue the situation. As you go about handling the situation through digital channels always:

• Monitor the situation to know what people are saying about you.
• Maintain consistency in messages sent across all channels.
• Think about packaging content for every social media account.
• Involve stakeholders to guard against rumors and wrong information.
• Be quick at responding especially if you have the right answers to queries.
• Reinforce accurate, updated communication across all departments and branches.

See Also: Pizza Hut Under Fire For Mocking Palestinian Hunger Strike

After the crisis

Just because you have the crisis handled does not mean that is all. There are other issues to be attended to which include:

• Let your stakeholders know the crisis is over to restore the good name.
• The crisis management review should look at what strategies worked, which ones failed and figure out ways to improve.

The size of an organization is not a factor when a crisis occurs. Whether big or small, the organization requires an efficient digital communication strategy. This will ensure the public and other key stakeholders have all the information they need about the crisis. Withholding information that should be in the public domain is disastrous, as people will make speculations that could hurt your brand. The pressure could be too much, but if you have a great communications department, there is nothing to worry about.

If you want to have an easier time during a crisis, adhere to the before, during and after stages. If you at least foresaw a problem and planned on how to handle it, it will be much easier. This will help you regain consumers’ trust and your brand’s reputation.

You’ve probably worked with PDFs before, but did you know that not all of these documents are created equal? This is especially true when it comes to ppt to pdf converter. Some print better than others. So, what differentiates PDFs one from the others? To get a clear understanding of the differences between PDFs, let’s take a closer look at the various types that are available:

Online/internet PDF files

PDFs that live online are generally the smallest in size and the most compact. To achieve this small size, some compromises must be made. That usually means that online PDFs have lesser image data, no embedded fonts, to name a few limitations. The upside of these files is that because of their small size, they can be easily distributed and share electronically. However, when it comes to printing the file, these files are not the best option. Because they don’t typically contain fonts, the document will usually generate an error that will prevent it from being printed on a commercial press. In addition, because many PDF documents feature password protection to prevent copyright infringement, they can be viewed electronically but not printed.

Electronic PDF proofs

In industries such as advertising and publishing, PDF is the preferred format for generation of proofs to show clients. They are usually distributed by email to the clients for approval, which means they must be small enough file size to be attached to an email. In these cases, the pages are cropped to reflect the actual page size and are not necessarily to be considered print-ready documents. Limitations of electronic PDF proofs include issues with colour accuracy and the images contained within the document may be reduced in resolution on the printed version, which can lead to a compromise in detail. The key is to ensure you are using a high-quality software program that will allow you to do things like crop your PDF file online and produce proof-quality final files.

PR (Press-Ready) files

To generate a final file that is truly press ready, you’ll need to create a file that foresees the potential issues that can arise during production and compensates for them. To do this, it’s necessary to pay attention to page size, margins, bleed, and the overall number of pages contained in a document, as well as the choice of font, image resolution, and colour choice and type. To generate such a file, you’ll have to use a professional layout program. This will allow you include information such as the proper image resolution, font information, and true-to-original colour information. Press-ready files are, not surprisingly, the preferred document format for commercial printing because they result in a printed document that is virtually identical to the digital version.

If you are looking to have your documents printed on a commercial press, it’s important to know your options. Otherwise, you may be disappointed by the print job.

 

Designed for the blind and the visually impaired, the E3rafli app is an innovative program from the bounds of Vodafone Egypt.

As part of its continuing bid for inclusivity, Vodafone Egypt recently launched E3rafli – an app destined to make life a bit easier for the blind and the visually impaired in the country.

See Also: Vodafone Egypt Brings Generations Together, Unlocks 4G Power

Watch E3rafli Ad:

With this new innovative technology, those with sight issues will be able to determine colors, charge their Vodafone cards, and comprehend the value of their cards.

In the same way, the application will enable the blind and the visually impaired in Egypt check denominations of local currency as well as count their money on the go. The digital innovation will, further, empower this previously-sidelined segment of the popular to recognize digital cashiers while paying as well as read taxi meters at the end of each trip.

E3rafli is as innovative as they come. The technology works so efficiently that other companies were left wondering why no one had thought up a similar app in the past. For instance, users will only have to direct their Smartphone cameras toward any item to find out more about it.

Vodafone, a globally renowned world, set up offices in Egypt in 1998. Today, the company has made a name for itself by focusing on useful, innovative applications to improve service delivery to clients – notwithstanding their abilities or physical limitations.

With E3rafli, Vodafone will enable blind people and the visually impaired to find anything they are looking for. The development of the technology took some time, but it will be worth every single pound spent in the long run.

More particularly, this mobile app will help those with sight issues find the most convenient solutions to their daily problems. It will also go a long way in improving computing experiences and the use of Vodafone services among the visually impaired.

It’s not the first time that Vodafone Egypt introduces a solution specifically tailored for people with disabilities. Last year, the company introduced a new tariff plan designed to help the deaf communicate better on Vodafone

How to use E3rafli app?

That said, at its most basic, E3rafli is a color and object recognizer mobile app. Using it, the blind and the visually impaired will have an easier time performing their daily tasks.

It works after the user turns voice accessibility on and navigating to any of the features provided. Users should also point their phone’s camera at the object they are interested in before pressing any recognition button (placed at the bottom of the phone screen).

The innovative application will keep on running as well as recognizing selected objects until the user switches to another mode. Not surprisingly, this app will identify a wide variety of objects – including but not limited to Vodafone top up cards, cashier digital registers, and Egyptian currency. It also recognizes basic colors and can count.

At the moment, E3rafli is available in English and Arabic. It comes in both Android and IOS versions.

Overall, Vodafone has gone over and beyond with regards to enabling people with disabilities to communicate better. These efforts are commendable and ought to be copied by other companies with such a large presence in Egypt.

Download E3rafli App Through The Below Link:

Http://vf.eg/e3rafli

The InterNations Social Media Team weighs in on what it takes to engage a social community of over one million people around the world.

As the Social Media Manager for InterNations, the largest network for people who live and work abroad, Erin McBrayer is in charge of the company’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, and YouTube accounts. It is her responsibility to ensure that the content shared on each platform is interesting and relevant for InterNations’ followers and fans. As this is a fairly large job for one person, Social Media Intern, Leah Martin, provides vital support. This two-woman team works together to cross borders and bridge cultures through engaging social media posts!

See Also: 6 Tips for Managing a Global Social Media Audience

What do you do all day?

Finding content to share on different platforms is one of the most important parts of the job. This content must be interesting for our audience, relevant to the company, and must adhere to our brand standards. We also write texts and find images to post with articles, ensuring that captions and photos are as engaging as possible. As well as posting content daily, we also work on larger campaigns, such as contests and Twitter chats, and collaborate with other departments on major projects.

Another central part of our work is to monitor incoming messages across our different channels. Since the world of social media is active 24/7, we are constantly checking our notifications in order to ensure that all questions and inquiries are answered — and that there are no inappropriate comments on our pages!

How do you decide which content to post?

When we started working at InterNations, the company had already established an impressive social media presence, as well as clear brand guidelines on what type of content to post; however, because we are always hunting for fresh and exciting articles that relate to current trends and topics, there are still times when we’re unsure what to post.

In these cases, there are a few questions that need to be addressed. Firstly, which platform is this content for? Articles posted to Facebook are always expat-related in some way (such as tips for moving abroad, or tricks for learning a new language), whereas our Twitter audience is much broader, so the content can cover a wider range of topics, such as food and architecture. We then have to look at the publication or author and ensure they’re a reliable, trusted, and reasonably well-known source that present their articles in an aesthetically pleasing way with minimal ads. Thirdly, we consider the topic and whether we have recently posted similar articles as we don’t want our channels to become repetitive. Finally, we delve a little deeper into the content of the article, and check the language is not offensive, and that it is written in a way that will fully engage our audience (i.e. not too long, too short, too formal, or too colloquial).

As you can see, finding content is not a straight-forward process! It really is a team effort, and we work together to find articles and give each other feedback. Once we have agreed on the appropriateness and potential success of an article, we pop it into our content calendar and schedule it to go out across our platforms on a specific date.

How do you keep track of different social media accounts? What tools do you use?

We use a variety of tools to manage our social media accounts, the most important of which is ‘Sprout Social’ — it shows us all of our notifications, including tweets, inbox messages, comments etc. We can

then reply to followers through the tool, or forward more general inquiries to our Member Relations Team. ‘Sprout Social’ is also used for scheduling our posts that are published outside office hours. Finally, this tool is used to find certain data for our weekly reports, which track interactions across our channels. Facebook Manager and Twitter Analytics are also vital for finding the data needed for this tracking.

We also use an online tool called ‘Canva’ to design and edit images. If you’ve looked at any of our platforms, you’ve probably seen images with ‘expat tip’ or ‘chat’ topics on them. We post these on a weekly basis to encourage engagement and design them using Canva. This handy tool is also used to create promotional images when we are hosting a specific contest or campaign, or to make new header images for our Twitter account.

What is the most difficult part of your job? What are the risks?

The most difficult part of our job is dealing with so many incoming comments and messages! It’s challenging to address and answer everyone’s inquiries and questions as we don’t always have the solution for more personal issues, such as job searches or visa problems.

Reading negative comments on our content is also difficult, especially if we were really happy with the article before posting. Mistakes are also noticed easily and instantaneously in the world of social media, and people don’t hold back when criticizing online. It can be quite stressful and disheartening to see these kinds of messages on the few occasions that we do slip up!

In terms of risks, there is always the possibility that certain followers will interpret an article differently than we did. We never want to offend people, however, we do want our posts to be engaging and interesting — sometimes the articles we share contain strong opinions. The more followers we have, the more careful we have to be with what we post as there’s a higher risk of someone being offended. Balancing the risk of negative feedback against the risks that come with only posting bland or repetitive content is a challenge in itself!

In general, though, we strongly believe that having one million Facebook followers is more of an opportunity than a challenge or a risk. While there’s a risk content may be misinterpreted, it will also be read by more people, who will hopefully share it with their friends.

What advice would you give to people working with large global audiences on social media?

You need great attention to detail! It’s very important to check the content you’re posting to ensure it’s appropriate and not too provocative. Make sure you do a basic spell-check to find any silly mistakes, and — if possible — get a friend to read over your posts for those little things you might have missed — your followers will be quick to notice them!

It’s also vital to pay attention to the numbers, see what kind of content performs well, and adjust your content calendar accordingly. Get to know your audience, but keep in mind that — even if you think you understand your followers — an article might not always perform as well as you’d hoped. It’s impossible to please everyone, and that’s okay! Listen and respond to constructive criticism, be open-minded, and adapt your strategy accordingly, but never let hostility or negativity stop you from doing your job.

Egypt’s number one traffic service Bey2ollak has added “Stories” to its mobile app following Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Facebook.

Bey2ollak is the first Middle Eastern startup to adapt the Stories feature.

How to get Bey2ollak Stories?

The company rolled out the new feature to all its users in Egypt, said in a post on Facebook. Just update the Bey2ollak app and start using “Bey2ollak Stories”.

Stories have become a trend after Facebook’s war against Snapchat by cloning Stories and introducing the feature on all its platforms, including Instagram, Messenger, Whatsapp, and finally the mass launch on the core Facebook mobile app.

Bey2ollak was established in 2010, currently has almost a 1.3Million registered users in Cairo and Alexandria, that are fighting traffic jams together on a daily basis. Let’s wait and see how Egyptians will react to this move and who will follow next in the “Stories” trend.