Understanding Listen & Count Polls

Listen & Count polls allow you to set-up interactive polls and track how many times people respond with certain keywords.

Setting Up a Poll

In the Listen & Count polls area you can add new polls and edit existing ones. Polls have names, response tracking options, a poll question, start & end dates, a response option and a list of keywords that will be tracked. For each keyword you add, you can add aliases. Aliases are other words that count as responses for that same keyword.

For more details on setting up a Listen & Count Poll, read this blog post.

How Keyword Tracking Works

Responses which include the keywords you dictate are tracked and counted for your polls. On Twitter, keyword in replies to your Twitter messages are counted. SMS works similarly, as keywords mentioned in replies to your SMS number are counted. Website and mobile pages have widgets which show your polls question and allow readers to type in text responses. Responses with keywords are counted for your polls.

Date Ranges

Date ranges determine when keywords are counted. Keyword mentions and submissions outside of your set date range are not counted towards your polls. If you select "No Date Range (ongoing)", all keyword responses are counted.

Displaying Stats

Stats for each poll can be added to websites as widgets, allowing you to share results publicly. There is a Calendar Count Widget which shows results by day. There is also the Poll Count Widget which shows overall stats of your poll which can be displayed as a pie chart or column chart.

Understanding the Social Conversation Search Feature

The Social Conversation area in your Squareberry account allows you to monitor and manage social media conversation. Previously, we took a look at fully understanding the Social Media Inbox. The Inbox is your centralized location for your ongoing conversations. But what if you want to start new conversation or find new things to talk about. That's where the Search features come in.

Twitter Searches

The Search features are currently limited to Twitter. Twitter is generally much more open than other social media platforms. People's posts are public and can be seen by anyone. This allows organizations to find new individuals & leads who are talking about their industry or looking for a company just like them.

The left column of the search section features all of your current searches. Clicking on a search term will show the current search results for that term. You can add a new search term by clicking "Add a Search".

Starting a Conversation

Once your search results are shown, you can Reply to or Retweet any tweet that is shown. This allows you to start a dialogue with someone you may not know. Click "Reply" and a pop-up appears to compile your reply message. You can instantly send the message right from this same screen.

Using Quotes

Putting a multi-word search term in quotes does a search for the words in that order. For example: "miami restaurant" will look for tweets with those two words together, instead of just tweets using one or the other.

Understanding the Social Media Conversation Inbox

The Inbox in the Social Conversation Area allows you to manage ongoing conversations in various social media accounts from one centralized location. When someones comments on a Facebook post or replies to you on Twitter, it will show up here and you will be able to comment/reply instantly.

All of the people you are having conversations with are listed on the left side. Clicking a person brings up the conversation with them, showing you the full history of your conversation with that person.

Refreshing / Refresh Button

Your Social Inbox will refresh automatically throughout the day. New comments/replies you have received will show up in the Unanswered section. The total number of conversations that are "unanswered" are also displayed on the Welcome screen when you login to your account.

You can also manually refresh your Inbox at anytime by clicking the "Refresh" button.

Unanswered / Answered

Any conversation you contribute to with a comment or reply will be moved to the "Answered" section of the Inbox. You can completely remove a conversation by clicking the "Remove" link in the top right corner of that particular conversation. You can also move a conversation to 'Answered" or "Unanswered" by clicking the "Mark as" link at the top of the conversation.

Reply or Comment

You can easily and instantly write comments/replies on any social media conversation. You can also "Retweet" any message in a Twitter conversation. Click the "Comment" or "Reply" link to bring up the pop-up to compose and send your message.

Understanding Event Views

Event Views control your calendars and widgets. Calendars and Widgets allow you to push dynamic content to your website, connecting your entire web presence and showing off your events and promotions. Event Views are designed to be flexible and powerful, allowing you to control what content goes where.

On the Main Menu of your account click the "Calendars & Widgets" button at the top.

Default Event View

Every account starts with a single Event View. This is the default Event View. Every category in your account is automatically added to this view. The name can be changed and color options can be adjusted. But, this Event View can not be deleted.

Custom Event Views

You can add any number of additional event views you want. Click the "Add Event View" button at the top of the page to create a new Event View. Give your new view a name and select the colors you want to use. You will also select which categories will be included in this Event View. You can select any number of categories. You can also decide to include events, promotions or both. Lastly, you can specify active categories.

Calendars & Widgets

Once you have a new Event View created or if you are just using the default Event View, you can grab calendars and widgets. For each Event View you have there are a variety of calendar and widget options listed. Each calendar or widget has an embed code you can grab for placing the calendar or widget on a website. The calendars and widgets will use the settings you have provided for that event view, thus dictating what categories will be pulled in, etc.

Ideas for Using Your Event Views

Follow the links below for additional reading on Event Views, including ideas on how to best use Event Views and how to customize them to meet your needs.

• Single Category Views
• Specify Your Active Categories
• Widget Placement on Your Website

Understand Your Account Settings

It is important to fully understand all aspects of your Squareberry account. This week we wanted to take a quick look at the Settings area found in the Account Management drop down. These settings can alter small aspects of how your accounts works and control who gets updates/alerts.

After adjusting any setting, make sure you hit the "update" button at the bottom of the page to save the changes you have made.

Account Image

The Account Image is a square graphic that shows in various areas. Your Account Image will show up in the top left corner of your calendars and the top left corner of your events and promotions. The Account Image is usually accompanied by your account name and helps identify your calendars, events and promotions as yours.

Default Event View

Your Default Event View determines which event view is seen at www.squareberry.com/. You can select one of your existing event views that you have created in the calendar & widgets area.

Email Addresses

The "Contact Email" is used for general contact and category Snag approvals. If your categories are set to require approval before being snagged, snag requests will be sent to this address for approval.

The "Reply To Email Address" dictates the reply-to address for all emails sent from your account to followers. This includes emails sent to individuals who have subscribed to categories to get reminders in your account.

The "Email To Send Alerts To" determines the address that is emailed when there is an issue in your Squareberry account. The most common alert emails are Facebook ReAuthorizations and Social Account issues. This makes sure you are alerted when publishing is no longer working so that you can quickly restore any connections that need to be fixed. Alert emails can be disabled by selecting the checkbox for "Disable Alert Emails".

Default Category Icon

The default category icon is used for events and promotions that are in more than one category. This allows you to select a more generic icon to use when multi-category events and promotions are displayed on your calendars and widgets.

Date Format Settings

The date format is simple. It determines what format your dates are displayed in throughout your account and on your events.

Advanced Settings

These settings are set-up by default but can be altered for your account. These advanced settings dictate certain publishing times and behaviors.

The “Special Happenings Publishing Time” controls the time at which social message reminders for “All Day” “Time TDB” and “CANCELED” happenings are to be sent.

The “Account Start of Night” and “Account End of Night” determine the range of time that social messages use the word “tonight” to describe events. For example: You have an event that starts at 1 AM on Sunday, a social message sent on Saturday would say “Tonight at 1 AM” instead of “Tomorrow at 1 AM” if your “Account End of Night” is after 1 AM.

Boost Your Weekend Sales

Weekends rule for a lot of reasons. Football games. Free days. Alarm clocks are turned off. Sunday brunches. For many local businesses, weekends are the busiest time. Restaurants and bars see a huge influx on weekend nights and many retails stores are busiest on Saturdays and Sunday afternoons.

A recent article published on The Buffer Blog entitled "A scientific guide to posting tweets, Facebook posts, emails and blog posts at the best time" looked at research and statistics on social media posting to determine the best times to post.

The data that was looked at enforced the idea that the end of the work week (Thursday & Friday) is the ideal time for posting to Facebook. Twitter has strong engagement on the weekends themselves and later in the day. Click here to read the full article.

Start of Week

Some people do start planning their weekend in advance. Additionally, as the weekend gets closer there is more and more noise on social media channels. For these reasons, it can be beneficial to post one or two messages at the beginning of the week about what you have going on during the coming weekend. This can help your grab some early deciders and plant an idea in other people's head that will be reinforced by your posts closer to the weekend.

Thursday and Friday

This is the peak of Facebook engagement. People are getting bored at work and checking their News Feeds. They are checking to see what is going on during the weekend. Use these days to boost your weekend events & promotions. Post reminders throughout the day and at night to grab as many eyeballs as possible. Encourage sharing of your posts to help your events & promotions spread virally.

The Weekend Itself

The weekend is time for last minute decision makers and friendly reminders. Twitter has better engagement on the weekends, so make sure you have a solid number of tweets going out. Remind people about your events & promotions and send out messages with pictures from your events as they are taking place.

Yep, Football is Back

This past weekend, college football kicked off around the country. College students filled stadiums, cities tuned in and fans watched from their favorite local restaurant or bar. This coming weekend, the NFL will start its season across the USA. Football is officially back!

So what does this mean for local businesses? Your events and promotions can easily be centered around your local team's games as well as the big nationally aired games. Use these events and promotions to drive in larger crowds and bigger groups.

Snag Your Teams

You can snag your favorite NFL teams schedule here: http://squareberry.com/nfl

When you snag a team's schedule into your Squareberry account, it will display on your Planner. This allows you to easily plan and schedule your events and promotions to go along with the games.

You can also add publishing settings to your newly snagged category, just like you do for categories you have created. You can have the games publish as reminders to your social media accounts and display them on your web calendars and widgets. Having your team's schedule on your calendars gives your organization a more local feel and shows the local fans that you are fans too.

Promotions

Your game day promotions should be group oriented. Instead of discounts on a glass of beer, offer discounts on pitchers. Instead of buy one get one free, make it buy two get one free. You want people to come in groups to your restaurant, bar or other establishment. People like watching games in groups, so it is a natural fit.