The following is an excerpt. The complete article, available in our Facebook Marketing Bible, includes the full six steps why you shouldn’t syndicate your Page updates to Twitter and should write custom updates for each network instead.

For the busy marketer, syncing the updates from your brand’s Facebook Page with your Twitter profile can seem like an easy and convenient way to minimize the time it takes to manage both accounts. However, as we explore below, we recommend you write custom version of your content for Facebook and Twitter, as cross-posting can work against your goals instead of for them.

But first, we’ll cover how Facebook’s official Twitter application allows Facebook Page owners to automatically syndicate their posts to Twitter after installing the app on their Facebook Page.

Link Your Facebook Page To Twitter

To start syncing your Facebook updates to Twitter, simply navigate to www.facebook.com/twitter to add the application, and click the Link a Page to Twitter button.

From there, choose the Page you wish to link to Twitter and click Link to Twitter.

As the Page administrator, you can decide whether to share everything you publish on your Facebook Page with your Twitter followers, or be more selective and choose from Status Updates, Links, Photos, Notes and Events. Status updates and links work best as these types of content can be consumed via Twitter without users having to return to Facebook.

If you have multiple Pages, you can also link each of those Pages to different Twitter accounts.

Updates are posted to Twitter with a shortened URL from bit.ly.

6 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Do This

Syncing up your brand’s Twitter profile with your Facebook Page seems like a smart idea, but it’s not something that we would recommend for a number of reasons.

1. Twitter Isn’t Facebook – They’re very different social platforms with different communities, expectations and norms. You won’t get as many clicks or as many people following your calls to action unless you write for your network-specific audience.

The full version of this article, which covers all six reasons why you should write custom updates for each network instead of cross-posting, can be found in the Facebook Marketing Bible, Inside Network’s complete guide to marketing, advertising, and ecommerce on Facebook.

We know food trucks are embracing social media, but there’s more to running a food truck than marketing on Twitter and Facebook.

There are trucks all over the country that are going high-tech to launch, build and manage their businesses.

Here’s a look at how food trucks are innovating with marketing tools, productivity apps and the truck design itself.

1. Evernote: Rice Paper Scissors

Friends and street-food vendors Valerie Luu & Katie Kwan founded Rice Paper Scissor, a pop-up food cart in San Francisco. Dealing with the logistics of finding locations, planning a menu, marketing and finance means they need to stay organized, and they use notetaking app Evernote to do so.

On the Evernote blog, they write, “We snap photos of potential locations with Evernote on our iPhone — we can then review and discuss potential locations later.” The women also create shopping checklists on the app and religiously check off items and tasks to stay on top of things and within their budget.

“The cool thing about Evernote is that it’s this amazing business tool for us, but it’s also a place to store and track all sorts of ideas. We keep track of ideas for home decor, writing projects, and conversations with interesting people,” they say.

2. Square: The Meatyballs Mobile

In the world of merchant processing, Square has quickly become a rising star. Just ask the team behind one of the many food trucks that employ the credit card reader on their mobile devices. “We use Square over a traditional POS because it’s simple and we don’t need anything else,” says Angus Gorberg of The Meatyballs Mobile. “The ubiquitous nature of the smartphone means that we don’t have to train new drivers on how to use the app because it’s easy to learn.” Plus, Gorberg says the fact that there are no monthly fees or commitment guidelines and that Square has “tremendous” customer service means Meatyballs won’t be switching from Square any time soon.

As gourmet food trucks knock down the preconceived notion of “street meat,” digital tools like Square make running a mobile business much easier and more efficient, since you don’t have to waste time counting cash or getting change from the bank. “It adds a great tech element to the experience, and we would be super disappointed if we couldn’t get our balls into the mouths of the cashless,” says Gorberg.

3. Intuit GoPayment: Chi’Lantro BBQ

Korean BBQ joint Chi’Lantro went digital just in time for this year’s SXSW conference. Like Square, Intuit‘s GoPayment offers a free card reader (with no monthly fee) that works on more than 40 mobile devices. Intuit worked with the popular Austin food truck, which hit up various SXSW hotspots, offering 25-cent tacos to those who followed the truck on Twitter and paid by credit card.

Jae Kim, owner and founder of Chi’Lantro BBQ, says the promotion was a win-win and is proud that his food truck uses iPads and Androids as credit card machines, which is convenient both for the business and the customer.

4. Mobile Meteor: Frying Dutchmen

Mobile Meteor is a company that helps businesses create mobile websites. The rise of the food truck, though, has expanded their business, and now it has functionality that works with a food truck’s existing Twitter account. Food trucks, such as New York’s Frying Dutchmen, for example, send a tweet to @Mvendor with “#open” plus the truck’s address, and a pin automatically appears on a map on the business’s mobile website. Tweeting with “#closed” removes the location on the map. Truck owners can also use a web app and their smartphone’s internal GPS to update the truck map, without having to log in to Facebook or Twitter. Click here to see a Prezi that explains how Mobile Meteor works.

Since Twitter and Facebook are blocked at a lot of businesses (especially at financial firms in neighborhoods like Midtown Manhattan), Mobile Meteor provides another way for trucks to share their ever-changing locations with hungry customers — on their smartphones.

5. Paperlinks: Austin Food Carts

Another SXSW food truck and tech integration came from QR-code startup Paperlinks — apparently digital-food partnerships happen when digital natives are crammed into a food truck mecca for a week. By scanning a branded QR-code sticker for Austin Food Carts, SXSW-goers could access a list of truck locations, a Twitter feed and information about the Austin food truck scene.

Paperlinks provides QR-code marketing solutions for individuals and businesses — the company has a self-serve online platform for creating a QR-code, a QR-code scanning app (although the codes scan with any QR-code reader) and design and printing services for designer QR-codes and large-scale campaigns, like the one at SXSW. Paperlinks is in talks with other food carts in L.A. and San Francisco.

6. Make Your Own App: Schnitzel and Things

Looking to order your favorite food truck dish? There’s an app for that. In fact, some food trucks make their own app for the customer’s convenience. Digitally savvy New York food truck Schnitzel and Things has an app on which you can place your schnitzel order and find out where to pick it up, since the truck location changes daily.

Looking to make your own app? Here are some tools to help you do so.

7. Mobi Munch: Nom Nom Truck

Mobi Munch is a one-stop shop for would-be food truck entrepreneurs. They can purchase mobile food infrastructure, learn how to use social media tools, design a menu, have access to human resources tools and get tips on how to scout and reserve locations. The package has a $125,000 price tag, which is apparently a reasonable price for a food truck concept. Like we said, it’s a one-stop shop, and several prominent food trucks were built on the structure, including Nom Nom Truck, one of Los Angeles’ most popular snack mobiles.

8. Digital Menu Board: Jack in the Box

While many food trucks keep it simple and write a chalk menu each day — perhaps even changing menu items daily — one food truck has the deep pockets to finance something a bit snazzier. Fast food chain Jack in the Box has a 34′-long Munchie Mobile food truck that boasts a 47-inch digital menu board. Obviously the advantage of a digital menu board as opposed to a chalk one is that the images can change. So what does Jack’s digital display show? Spokesperson Brian Luscumb admits that it’s pretty static and lists menu items, pricing and food shots. However, if the Munchie Mobile is at an event or running a promotion — like when the truck team was giving away free tacos at a March of Dimes event — then screen can be updated to reflect the offerings.

There’s a lot of potential for digital menu boards, as a food truck can display Twitter feeds, YouTube footage, truck locations and photos of the staff and consumers — it’s a blank canvas on which food trucks can get really creative and ramp up branding efforts.

9. Tapviva: La Cocina

Tapviva’s three co-founders lived in the Bay Area when they got fed up with waiting in line for ten minutes at Starbucks. It occurred to them: Why can’t we order and pay ahead of time on our phones, pick up our coffees and go? Basically, they wanted their food to wait for them, not the other way around.

Tapviva is currently running at La Cocina, a non-profit that helps mostly low-income Latina women start food businesses. Beginning next week, the Tapviva mobile ordering solution is going live at several La Cocina-affiliated carts and kiosks in the San Francisco area. The Tapviva platform will be onboard a grilled cheese cart that’s opening in Central Park this summer — Manhattan yuppies can have their grilled cheese prepped for them without having to pause their frisbee game. Tapviva’s pre-ordering system is reminiscent of the Zingle text-message ordering service, which will also be launching on New York food trucks later this year.

What other digital integrations have you seen on tech-savvy food trucks? Let us know in the comments.

The Social-Savvy Food Truck Series is supported by the Ben and Jerry’s Scoop Truck. In New York City or San Francisco and want a free scoop? Follow @BenJerrysTruck and @BenJerrysWest for details!

Images courtesy of Flickr, Patrick Giblin, and Jack in the Box

More About: evernote, facebook, GoPayment, intuit, mobile apps, paperlinks, Social-Savvy Food Truck Series, Square, tapviva, twitter

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Facebook’s attempt to spur reengagement with its micro-sharing product could be a response to competition from Google+, which is centered around sharing to specific groups of people called Circles rather than sharing with all of one’s contacts.

At the product announcement for ad hoc group chat and video calling last week, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said that over half of Facebook population use Groups. He noted that part of the reason for decoupling group chat from Groups was that many wanted to chat with multiple friends at once, but not all users were sharing to their Groups.

The new Groups right sidebar module may be aimed at changing that. It appears to users as they’re browsing the site, similar to other modules Facebook employs to engage uses with products, such as “Discover New Games” and “Friends’ Photo Albums“.

Groups are usually accessed via small bookmarks in the dense left sidebar. By occasionally showing users larger, more prominent links to their Groups in the right sidebar, Facebook may be able to encourage users to post more often.

Since posts to Groups generate notifications for all members, reengaging one member can kickstart participation by others. The screenshot we received of the Groups module showed it highlighting a Group that hadn’t been posted to in two weeks. The sidebar module could be an effective way to awaken Groups that have fallen dormant.

The sidebar module could also remind users experimenting with Google+ that they have microsharing options within Facebook. Google+ requires that users choose a subset of friends to share each piece of content with. Facebook shares content with all of a user’s friends by default. It requires a long series of clicks to limited a status update to a specific friend list, but just one extra click to share with a Group.

If Facebook can get users more engaged with Groups, through this new sidebar module or otherwise, they may have less reason to join and become active users of Google+

[Thanks to Brittany Darwell for the tip]

Constance Aguilar is a social media strategist at Abbi Public Relations,  a Reno/Tahoe-based public relations firm that specializes in driving public engagement through a targeted mixture of expert positioning, social media and traditional public relations.

Everyone wants to be on top. On top of trends, on top of current events, on top of their game and certainly on top of everyone’s Facebook news feed. The EdgeRank algorithm that dictates the selection of status updates and postings on top of the news feed will remain mostly a mystery. But as more studies and whitepapers are released,  it becomes easier to learn how to dominate the news feed and implement steps to assure our postings are the most effective digital marking tools they can be. Here are a couple of tricks that can help you go head to head with Facebook’s funny little ways of “organizing” things.

1.  If you ask questions people want to answer, you have a better chance of getting comments. Therefore, you have a better chance of getting to the top of the news feed. Obviously asking a question is one of the most effective ways to engage your audience on Facebook. Let’s face it — people LOVE talking about themselves, love chiming in their two cents and certainly love stirring up some conversation. But you can’t expect them to do it all on their own. You’ve got to engage, and you’ve got to do it in the right manner.

Ask a question that directly relates to the customer and your product. Ask them for suggestions on new developments, give a few details on a prototype you’re testing and see if its attributes are approved by your customer. Considering a new product or venture altogether? Ask about it! You don’t have to give away the gritty details or reveal any “secrets.” Ask your audience as you would a close friend for advice. You pose a question they want to answer, they get to input their opinions, and who knows, you might just walk away with some valuable insights. Either way, you’ve built a sense of connection and trust between your business and the customer, which is one of the most important things to accomplish with social media. And bottom line? You’ve generated a response that’s going to put your little status update at the top of your fans’ news feed. Mission accomplished.

2.  Make your Facebook interactions fun! Easier said than done, right? But if you can engage your audience’s intellect and give them incentive to answer, you’re increasing your chances of top news feed rankings. If you give your customers a chance to answer trivia questions and participate in games, you’re giving them an opportunity to show off their intellectual skills. Who doesn’t love to feel smart? This form of engagement can gather tons of responses in comments and likes, which in turn increases your news feed top placement. People are brought into your company’s conversation in a fun way, and in turn you get to gather some much deserved attention, simply by asking people to show off their knowledge of what it is you do or are about. But don’t forget that a little reward is always nice, even if it’s just a comment back telling them what a special little smarty pants they are.

3.  Keep conversation going! I cannot stress this enough. Too often I’ll see fans actually engaging with a business, almost begging them to have a conversation about something, yet the business will either ignore it or brush it off with a quick, “thanks” or “great!” No, no, no! You can climb EdgeRank if you can keep a conversation going, keep the customer on your page and talking, and especially if the conversation pulls in other fans. The longer the conversation thread, the higher EdgeRank puts the post. So you can get to the top of the news feed without starting any of it. But as your parents used to tell you, “Never start it, but always finish it.”

4. Use the wall gadgets and customer offerings to increase your chances of getting customer interaction, or sharing,  which leads to you topping EdgeRank and increasing your chances of being seen by the widest audience possible. In my opinion, this option is the best way to get interaction outside of Facebook. If I’m given a poll question to answer, especially when its relevant to something I feel an emotional connection with — say something to do with a football team, human rights, peanut butter and chocolate — I’m going to be excited to answer it, share it and talk about why I answered with the option I did or why it pissed me off so much that the answer I wanted wasn’t listed. That’s the key! If you’re giving out an exclusive Facebook coupon for a one day sale, don’t you think your fans are going to share it with their friends, family and anyone they can possibly grab off the street so everyone can bask in the savings? And don’t you think you’re going to get new fans from that? Don’t you think they’re going to then go and comment with a “thank you” or “you rock” or “I really want 20% off, not 15%.” Again, the more conversation, the more sharing, the more liking that goes on, the more you’re going to land on the top of the news feed. Plus, since this is a reward/incentive deal, it also increases the chance that people are going to become recurring visitors to your page. Not a bad deal.

5.  A picture is worth a thousand likes. Incorporate relevant photos to show instead of tell. Text gets blurry and lost in the midst of all the other text.  Post images that give your business a personal touch — employees carrying out everyday tasks, allowing Facebook fans to have the first peek at a new product, anything that allows the customer to comment/like and express their affinity toward what’s in the picture. Facebook has assigned a higher ranking via EdgeRank to photos than text, so just by posting a photo, you’re already challenging that algorithm and boosting the odds that people will see your photo amidst all of the other updates. Images are great ways to get your fans excited — if they can see it, they can more easily relate to it.

Just be sure to implement these tactics with thought and care. Before posting, always remember to put yourself in the customer’s shoes — what would you want to see/read from a business such as yours and actually give a response to? If you wouldn’t care, then they probably won’t either. There’s a bigger emphasis on comments than likes, on photos than text. But they all can work to your advantage — if you first let them work to your customer’s advantage.

Image Credit: lisegagne, via iStock Photo

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1. Make requests to the Graph API and see formatted results in-line.
2. Explore the connections for each object and view field descriptions to help you understand what the response means.
3. Easily obtain an access_token with the specific permissions necessary to access the data you need to optimize your app for users. The ‘Select Permissions’ dialog allows you to select the specific user data, friends’ data or extended permissions needed. The Explorer then shows you the same permissions dialog your users will see when you request these permissions in your production app.

4. Easily switch between HTTP GET, POST and DELETE to get, create, update or delete objects.
   When POSTing to the API, you can provide a list of {name, value} pairs that you want to send as parameters to the API. For example to create a new event you can post to /me/events with the required name and start_time fields as parameters, using an access_token with the create_event extended permission.



5. Move between objects in the graph just by clicking their id in the formatted result. For example clicking on the id of the event object returned after creating an event will show you details of the event you just created.