Toronto library union decries city's 'hard line' in talks as deadline looms

Contract negotiations continue but union says management's been told to extract concessions.

Interview in the middle of calls

I got a second interview next week. :D Unfortunately, it's right in the middle of two calls I have scheduled, so the free time I have is slim (this will be on a break, not on the clock!) I've only ever worked for the company I'm currently with and never scouted for another job - I'm wondering, do recruiters/managers mind if you show up in your company uniform to conduct an interview or should I pack an outfit and change in my truck?

Carrier A-series RTU question

Have 2 A-series VAV RTUs that share common duct, both run a same time, no isolation dampers. Trying to find a way to write the speed from one to the other so they track together. Found a writable but it only works when unit in test mode. Anyone come across this problem? Anyone come up with solution? Thinking of adding dampers and running lead/lag but that is not spec.

Legalizing Uber may be Mayor John Tory's biggest test yet

Ahead of the council vote next week that could fully legalize Uber or run them out of town, council is still split on the path forward. The uncertainty could lead to a step back for the unity Tory promised at city hall.

Wentinghouse?bryant Breaker compatibility?

I have an Eaton sub BR1624L125

I know of some new Westinghouse Bryant Breakers that listed as BD1520

I would like to know if they can be used in my panel in the slotted buss?

If so are they good breakers or crap?

What should I look for in the listing on them?

Thanks

T.

How to Create the Perfect Facebook Page for Your Business: The Complete A to Z Guide

Facebook now has over 1.65 billion monthly active users. And as small business owners and brand managers, there's a very good chance you'll be able to reach and connect with your target audience through Facebook.

Great! So where should you start? And is there an easy blueprint to follow?

From creating our Facebook Business page to posting several hundred times over the past few years, we've experimented a lot with various Facebook marketing tips and have enjoyed figuring out the best way to create and manage our Facebook page here at Buffer. I'd love to share with you how the process has worked so far from start until now!

Since things continue to change regularly with Facebook and its algorithm, consider this A to Z guide as a great jumping off point for creating a Facebook business page and growing your audience. Start here, test what works for your individual business and brand, and make changes as you learn.

How to Create a Facebook Business Page in 5 Simple Steps

Step 1: Fill out your basic business info

Open the following URL to create a business page on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Once there, you'll choose one of the following six categories for your page:

1. Local business or place


2. Company, organization, or institution


3. Brand or product


4. Artist, band, or public figure


5. Entertainment


6. Cause or community

Keep in mind that you can change the category and name later on if needed.

Also, at this stage, it might be helpful to know that a physical address figures prominently in the setup of a local business or place, and the actual Facebook page will appear differently as well.

Here's the look for a local business:

Here's the look for a company or brand:

It's something to think about when choosing a category.

Following the category selection, the next setup screen will ask for a descriptive sentence or two about your page, a URL, a Facebook page URL, and a profile picture. If you've selected a local business, you'll also have the ability to select category tags to further define what your store sells.

About your page – You get 155 characters to describe your page. This description appears prominently near the top of your Facebook page on both desktop and mobile. Be as descriptive and helpful as possible.

URL – The web address for your store, company, or brand.

Facebook URL / username – You may have the option to choose a custom vanity URL for your page, i.e. facebook.com/yourbrandname.

(Facebook will ask that you reach 25 fans first before you can unlock a custom Facebook URL)

Profile picture – Upload a main profile picture/icon for your page. This photo will appear as your icon every time you comment on a post or publish in a news feed. Square dimensions are best. Facebook will force rectangular photos to be cropped to squares.

Profile pictures should be at least 180 pixels wide by 180 pixels tall. Here is a full list of the sizes that Facebook uses for your profile picture in various places around the site:

• The main profile image on your page – 160 x 160


• In a news feed – 100 x 100


• In your timeline – 86 x 86


• Next to comments – 43 x 43

The final two steps in the setup process include adding your page to your main Facebook menu (so you can access it quickly and easy each time you log in) and setting up a Facebook ad to promote your new page. These options can be skipped for now.

Step 2: Create an awesome cover image in a snap (no designer required!)

By this point, your page is live for all the world to visit. Let's see if we can make it look even snazzier.

First thing, add a cover photo. The cover photo appears across the top of your page and is a great opportunity to deliver a visual element that supports your branding, draws attention, or elicits emotion from your visitors. 

A note on ideal Facebook cover photo size and dimensions: 

Facebook cover photos appear at 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall on desktop, however, Facebook crops out some of each cover photo on mobile devices. It specifically strips out 144 pixels off the right and left sides of the image.

Therefore, Facebook cover photo dimensions are 851 x 315px, but only the center 563 x 315px portion of the picture appears on mobile.

You can certainly hire a designer to make you something fabulous, or you can go the DIY route. Many photo editing apps like Pic Monkey or BeFunky can help with creating images of just the right dimensions. If you're a Photoshop user, we've created a couple of Facebook cover photo templates that might be helpful. Canva is another super helpful tool for Facebook cover photos as it comes with several premade templates that look great right out of the box.

Here's an example of a Canva template you could choose. You can upload your own image to use as the background, and you can edit the text to say whatever you'd like. If you're looking for high-quality image options, we've compiled a list of our favorite sources for free social media images.

Once you have created your cover image, upload it to your page by clicking on the “Add a Cover” button.

If you happen to upload an image that isn't quite the exact dimensions of the Facebook cover, you'll have a chance to move and edit the image to fit the available window. When you're happy with the final look, you can click “Save Changes,” and you'll be set!

Here's a pro tip: When you upload a cover photo to your page, the photo is added as an update to your timeline. If you edit the description of the photo, you can add a message to the update. Click on the photo to open up the photo viewer, and you'll notice a link that says “Add a description.”

You can add description, tags, location, and date to your photo. Once you've finished, the update to your timeline will be changed to reflect your edits.

Step 3: Fill out your profile completely

Next, you can fill out your profile even more by adding information to your Page Info section. To access this section, click on Settings in the top menu bar on your page, then click Page Info.

Your name and category will be filled in already. Some of the most helpful bits of information to add next might be:

Start Info – You can choose when your company or product was founded, created, started, or launched. This information will appear on the history timeline to the right of your page's feed and as an update at the very bottom of your main feed.

Address – Enter this if you want people to be able to check in via Facebook when they're near your place.

Long description & Mission – Add additional details that explain your business or brand even further. This is a great way to go beyond the 155 character description that appears on the main page.

Phone number / Email address – Add additional contact information.

All of these details will appear on the About tab of your Facebook page.

Step 4: Add collaborators to your page

If you plan on sharing your Facebook marketing duties with a team, you'll want to grant access for various folks and various roles.

Here are the roles that you can choose from:

Admin – Complete and total access to everything (you are an admin by default)

Editor – Can edit the Page, send messages and post as the Page, create Facebook ads, see which admin created a post or comment, and view insights.

Moderator – Can respond to and delete comments on the Page, send messages as the Page, see which admin created a post or comment, create ads, and view insights.

Advertiser – Can see which admin created a post or comment, create ads and view insights.

Analyst – Can see which admin created a post or comment and view insights.

To add collaborators, go to your page settings and the “Page Roles” section. You can type in the name of any Facebook friend or person who has liked your page. Alternately, you can type in an email address associated with a Facebook account.

Step 5: Publish your first post

Add content to your page by publishing a post-a status update, a link, a photo, a video, an event, or a milestone. New, fresh content on your page will make it look all the more enticing once new visitors come over to check it out.

Keep in mind that visual content does exceedingly well and that Facebook is now ranking Live Video higher in people's news feeds.

Here's a telling graphic from a BuzzSumo study showing how Facebook posts with images receive 2.3x more engagement than those without photos.

And there you have it!

Your Facebook Business page is up and ready to deliver awesome content to your fans and grow into something wonderful.

Read on to learn more about growing your Facebook page and posting best-practices!

How to gain your first 100 fans to your Facebook page

The temptation might be to share your Facebook page right away with all your Facebook friends. Not so fast. Take a moment to think strategically about your plan and to seed your page with content so that it looks inviting and engaging when visitors do stop by.

Publish three to five posts before you invite anyone. 

Then try out one of these strategies to get to your first 100 fans.

Invite your Facebook friends

Facebook has a built-in feature to tell your Facebook friends about your page. Click on the Build Audience link in the top right corner of your page, and choose Invite Friends from the dropdown.

You can then pick and choose which friends you'd like to invite, and you can drill down into specific sections of friends, filtered by location, school, lists, and recent interactions.

Once invited, your friends will receive a direct message with an invitation to your page. You won't have a chance to edit the message they receive.

Invite your coworkers

One of the best sources of social media promotion for your company could very well be your coworkers. Ask everyone who works with you to like the page and-if willing-to recommend the page to any friends who might be interested.

Promote your Facebook page on your website

Facebook offers a full complement of widgets and buttons that you can add to your website to make it easy for website visitors to like your page.

One of the most ubiquitous plugins is the Facebook Page Plugin. With Page Plugin, you can easily embed and promote any Facebook page without visitors ever having to leave your website.

Promote your Facebook page in your email signature

One of the most visible places you might find to promote your page is in your inbox. Edit your email signature to include a call-to-action and link to your Facebook page.

Hold a contest

Facebook contests can be huge for gaining likes on your page. Two of the best apps for creating contests are ShortStack & Gleam which help you create custom campaigns to drive Likes to your page (or email capture or fan engagement or any number of different ideas you might have).

What to post and when to post it

In general, there are three main types of posts you're likely to publish on your Facebook feed:

• Photo/video


• Text update


• Links

As mentioned above, posts with photos garner 2.3x more engagement than posts without photos. 

Definitely make visual content a huge part of your Facebook strategy as well as your larger social media marketing plan.

As far as the frequency with which to post, Facebook's algorithm changes have made research into the topic rather difficult. The consensus seems to be to experiment as much as possible. As often as you have fresh, compelling content to share on Facebook, give it a try. Try testing post frequency in week-long intervals so that you can measure the results quickly.

With that, we recommend being consistent with your content. When your content is good, your audience will start to expect it on a regular basis. Even if you're only producing enough content to post to Facebook once per day, try to stick to that schedule.

Social media scheduling apps like Buffer help make this easy by letting you schedule posts ahead of time. You can add to a queue so that your page always has fresh content being posted automatically on schedule.

Ideal length and timing of Facebook posts are another area you might want to experiment with.

HubSpot collected a ton of research from the folks at CoSchedule and from a variety of sources, including QuickSprout, SurePayroll, The Huffington Post, Buffer, TrackMaven, Fast Company, and KISSmetrics.

Their takeaway:

 

As far as ideal length, we partnered with our friends at SumAll to place the data and insights into a fun infographic. What we found was that Facebook posts with 40 characters receive 86% more engagement than those with a higher character count. 

How to tell what's worked and what hasn't

After sharing posts, you're likely to want to know how they did. Your social media management tool would figure to have some built-in analytics that can help you better understand how your posts performed. Here's a peek at what the Buffer for Business analytics look like:

You can also gain a huge number of stats and numbers from Facebook Insights.

Once you've shared several pieces of content to your Facebook page, you'll see an Insights tab at the top of your Facebook menu, between Activity and Settings.

At the top of the Insights page, you'll see your Page Likes, Post Reach, and Engagement stats for the week, along with a comparison to the same stats from last week.

Another neat area to check is the demographic information on the people who visit and engage with your page.

Click on People from the Insights menu, and you can drill down into demographic information of your fans, the people reached by your posts, the people who engage with your post, and the check-ins you receive at your physical location.

Here's an example from Buffer's page insights about the people reached by our posts.

One of the newest features of Insights is the “Pages to Watch” section at the bottom of the page. You can add other pages that you want to monitor-a great way to grab some competitor research and take inspiration from the way that other pages market themselves.

To add a page, simply click on the Add Pages button at the top of the section.

Search for the name of the page you want to watch, then click to add it to your watch list. Once a page has been added, you can click on the name of the page from your Insights dashboard, and you'll see an overview of their best posts from the week.

Now I'd love to turn it over to you!

What Facebook page tips and advice do you have? What have you learned along the way? Is there any part of the Facebook page creation and management process you'd like to know more about?

Excited to hear from you in the comments!

Oh, and by the way: Buffer can help you drive more Facebook traffic and engagement in less time. Sign up for free and see how it works for you!

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in 2014, but we've updated it for accuracy and comprehensiveness for your reading pleasure. – Brian

The post How to Create the Perfect Facebook Page for Your Business: The Complete A to Z Guide appeared first on Social.

Question on A/C Size

Hi - we are in Houston are looking to purchase a new home (2015 construction). The house is approximately 4,200 square feet. The builder had 2 units installed - one is a 3 ton and the other a 2.5 ton. I'm concerned that is not enough for a Houston summer. Any thoughts???

Improved green bins hailed as 'new offensive' against raccoons

The expert who help design the new green bins worries what the raccoons are going to eat now.

Jobs in PA?

So I'm moving back home to the Johnstown PA area from Hampton roads and have been doing residential/commercial install for about a year. Anyone know of any jobs?





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How to Get Your Ideas to Spread with Influencer Marketing

When 50 fashion influencers on Instagram posted a picture of themselves in the same Lord & Taylor dress, it sent out signals that this dress was a must have fashion piece. The following weekend the dress was completely sold out.

This Lord & Taylor campaign is a perfect example of the power of influencer marketing.

65% of brands now run influencer campaigns and according to an infographic by The Shelf, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from other people-even if they don't know them personally-over promotional content that comes directly from brands.

We're more likely to buy a product if it's recommended by a friend than pushed at us by an advert and an eMarketer study found that advertisers who implemented an influencer marketing campaign earned $6.85 in media value on average for every $1 they spent on paid media for influencer programs.

Influencer marketing opens up endless opportunities for brands to amplify their content, connect with consumers and build relationships more organically, and more directly.

But how do you get started with influencer marketing? What makes an influencer? And how can you build relationships with influencers?

In this post, I'd love to give you the lowdown on influencer marketing and some actionable tips to help you find the best influencers for your business.

Let's dig in.

How to get ideas to spread

Success in marketing often comes down to one simple concept: getting your ideas to spread.

Traditionally, mass-media adverting is the go-to way to spread ideas. Here's how it works (in theory): you buy some ads, put those ads in front of your audience, and that's how your idea spreads. In turn, these ads drive sales and then you can buy some more ads, to reach some more people. And so on…

The problem with this approach is that we live in a time where choice is abundant and time is sparse.

Consumers are spoiled for choice when it comes to what to spend their money on and have too little time to consume content and engage with adverts. What this means is that most advertising is just ignored.

As technology advances, traditional marketing techniques have become less and less effective. This is where influencer marketing can help.

What is influencer marketing?

Consumers have always looked to fellow consumers to inform their purchasing decisions, and with the rise of social media, it's becoming easier for brands to discover and partner with influencers to get people talking about their company and products.

To help us give you the best tips and advice on influencer marketing we spoke with social media agency, SocialChain:

“Influencer marketing is a marketing style that focuses on using influential people to share a brand's message with their chosen audience,” explained SocialChain's Anna-Marie Odubote.

“Influencer marketing is beneficial to businesses because it arguably creates more meaningful engagement than traditional advertising.”

“Influencers have very trusted voices. They are real people that appear to be unbiased; a traditional advert or a post directly from a brand will often be ignored. But an endorsement from an influencer is like your friend, brother, sister or parent 'having your back' and telling you about something you need to check out. And regular social media ads are a little bit like strangers shouting random things at you – after a while you just tune them out.”

Primarily, influencers act as a mutual friend connecting your brand with your target consumers. An endorsement from an influencer has the power to drive traffic to your site, amplify your message across social media platforms, and even directly sell your product through their recommendation.

Marketing and The Diffusion of Innovation

The Diffusion of Innovation is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures.

What the Diffusion of Innovation shows is that adoption of new technologies doesn't happen simultaneously for everyone. Facebook, for example, was first adopted by college students and only now has it started to be used by the late majority and mass market.

The Diffusion of Innovation is broken down into five adopter categories:

• Innovators: These are people who want to be the first to try the innovation. These people are very interested in new ideas, very willing to take risks, and are often the first to develop new products and technologies.


• Early Adopters: These are people like to adopt new ideas and enjoy being amongst some of the first people to try new technologies and spread the word about them. Often these people are leaders and share their experiences with the people around them.


• Early Majority: These people are rarely leaders, but they do adopt new ideas before the average person. Typically they like to see that an innovation will work before they're willing to use it.


• Late Majority: These people are skeptical of change, and will only adopt an innovation after it has been tried by the majority.


• Laggards: These people are bound by tradition and very conservative. They are very skeptical of change and are the hardest group to bring on board.

Editor's note: for more on the Diffusion of Innovation and marketing, check out this great talk by Simon Sinek. 

Most marketing is traditionally aimed at the mass market (Early Majority and Late Majority in the above graphic). The problem with this approach is that it's much harder to get these people to care about your product.

Innovators and early adopters, however, care deeply about new products and technologies. For example, a tech product reviewer on YouTube will be extremely interested in using the latest smartphone technology, whereas someone in the early majority will likely only care when their old phone is outdated.

If you'd like to get your ideas to spread, reaching the innovators and early adopters within your niche can be a great way to go. This is something Apple has mastered over the years…

Influencer marketing on the grandest stage

When Apple have new products to launch, the first people they talk to are those who want to listen. The people who actively opt-in to hear Apple's message.

When Tim Cook gets up on stage at the WWDC conference, he's not talking to the mass market; he's talking to innovators and early adopters in the hope that what he says will inspire them enough to pass the information on to their audience.

These innovators and early adopters care deeply enough about Apple to give up their time and watch a whole keynote presentation purely focused on Apple products. For Apple, it makes much more sense to talk directly to influencers who care, rather than push a message out to the mass market directly.

After the WWDC conference has finished, Apple knows their message and news about their new products will reach the masses through content produced by journalists and social influencers.

When you think about marketing your business, try to think about the innovators and early adopters within your target audience: Who sincerely cares about the problem your product or services solves? Who can you speak to that will really listen?

What makes an influencer?

SocialChain describes an influencer as, “an individual that has a significant audience, who listens and makes decisions based on his/her opinions.” And influencers come in various shapes and sizes:

• Journalists


• Industry experts


• Celebrities


• Academics

Editors of highly read blogs can be influencers as can highly viewed YouTuber's like MKBHD, and influence isn't just based on follower counts and audience size.

A celebrity may have a large following purely because they're famous, or someone may have acquired hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter because they're great a curating content. But a large following doesn't necessarily dictate influence.

Measuring influence

SocialChain has developed a simple method for measuring influence across the main platforms; T-Score (Twitter) F-Score (Facebook) Y-Score (Youtube) I-Score (Instagram).

The scoring system is aimed to decipher exactly how much of the meaningful engagement you're actually paying for and how cost-effective an influencer is, as Steve Bartlett, SocialChain's founder explains on his blog.

Here's an example of the T-Score in action:

– Tom is a real YouTube influencer who we've worked with [SocialChain] on a number of influencer marketing campaigns 

– Influencer Tom's last 50 tweets have 17,600 engagements combined (replies, likes, retweets). 

– He has 210,409 followers on Twitter

– He charges £100 per tweet

17,600 (combined engagements from last 50 tweets) / 50 = 352 (Average engagement per tweet)

352 (Average engagements per tweet) / £100 (total following) = 3.52

Tom's T-score = 3.52 and you're effectively paying £1 per 3.52 engagements that Tom is generating for himself.

(This doesn't mean you'll get 3.52 engagements per £1 on your sponsored content, but it gives you a good idea of how much engagement you will hope to see per £1 spent.)

How to find influencers

The type of influencer you're looking for will depend on the goals of your campaign.

“To find influencers that fit your business, you need to have an in-depth understanding of your own brand and how you want to be perceived,” Anna-Marie Odubote explained.

“There are many influencer discovery tools online that you can use to search for influencers in certain categories and countries. If you want to find more bespoke influencers, the best way would be to manually search social media.”

Here are a couple of tools to help you discover influencers in your niche:

Followerwonk

Followerwonk is a brilliant tool from Moz. It allows you to search for keywords in Twitter user bios to find those with the most authority and largest reach.

Klear

Klear allows you to search for keywords and discover relevant influencers on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also filter users by skills and location as well as add all your selected influencers to a list.

Content + Distribution: The perfect mix

When you're looking for an influencer to partner with, the ideal influencer tends to have two key abilities:

1. The ability to create content


2. The ability to distribute content

Content

Great content is the heart and soul of any influencer marketing campaign.

Most influencers have managed to build their audience through creating their own, unique brand of content, and if you're simply asking them to share a piece of content you've created, it can feel a little inauthentic and stand out as an advert or sponsored posts.

Ideally, you're looking to partner with influencers who can create content alongside your business. Rather than only sharing content, you've already created.

Distribution

I like to look at distribution as a combination or reach (audience size) and engagement. Sometimes it can be easy to feel that someone with say 100,000 followers on Twitter or 10,000 subscribers on their email list is an influencer. But really, it doesn't matter how many people follow someone. What's important is how many people engagement with them. And how many people click the links they share.

The SocialChain scoring system mentioned above can be a great way to measure engagement various influencers receive on their content.

How to build relationships with influencers

Once you've identified your influencers, the next step is to start building relationships with them.

“If an influencer manages themselves and all of their enquires, you always need to be personable and make the influencer feel valued and unique. Although influencers are their own business, the majority aren't businesspeople. Too much corporate talk can scare them away, and it's best to arrange a face to face meeting/ Skype call as soon as you can,” said Odubote.

“Depending on the influencer's reach, [some larger influencers have management teams] you'll often speak to their management (the influencer will see the initial enquiry and forward it to their management if it's something they're interested in).”

Over to you

Thanks for reading! I'd love to continue the conversation about influencer marketing in the comments below. Have you tried any influencer marketing campaigns? Any tips on building relationships with influencers?

The post How to Get Your Ideas to Spread with Influencer Marketing appeared first on Social.

Winding insulation

Did you know overheating the winding will cause them to produce gasses in the system. Reminds me of an aop thread I read about a sales tech :-D



Any how trane\as says so



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On Branding: How a Digital Agency Goes Start-to-Finish with a Social Media Branding Strategy

Imagine having a way to control how you're presented online, a way to identify yourself or your company and differentiate yourself from others.

Sounds a bit like social media, right? Sounds a bit like branding.

The two go hand-in-hand. Branding happens on social media, and social media is an outlet for the voice of your brand. Many people have found success with personal branding and company positioning online, and agencies have come along to help people with both.

One of these agencies, Januel + Johnson, was kind enough to let us peek inside the way they run social media for their digital agency and how an emphasis on branding extends to the very root of all the content, scheduling, and engagement they provide with Buffer. Get the specifics on how J + J find success for their clients with a 360-degree brand strategy, with social media and Buffer at the heart.

None of our content looks scheduled. Yet with Buffer, it all is. That's one of the biggest things that people say all the time. In fact, I get so much high engagement that people always think that I'm online, but I'm not, which is awesome.

– C.J. Johnson, Januel + Johnson

Growing a following on the strength of branding

Many agencies begin as an extension of one's expertise: web design, SEO, advertising.

For C.J. Johnson and Ambar Januel, their unique advantage is with branding.

Branding has been a huge asset for them both at the personal level. C.J., an actor and director who lives in Los Angeles at the heart of the entertainment industry, found Buffer early on and has grown his following to 57,000 on Twitter. This follower growth brought attention and led to opportunities to share what he had learned about social media marketing and personal branding with others.

My following kept growing because I was using Buffer to schedule posts. My content is all about images. Photos. Videos. Because I'm the person that's behind the camera, I know it'll be high-quality and customized.

I saw that type of content was really kicking up some serious action and engagement. What ended up happening was people started asking me, “Hey, how are you able to get all these followers? How are you able to do this systematically?”

Everybody I talked to, I would say, “I use Buffer.” I would give them tips. I eventually was able to turn that into what I have now, which is Januel and Johnson, J + J, a premium branding agency. We specialize in branding period. That's from the creative aspect of it, the social media, the publicity, everything.

“None of our content looks scheduled”

Branding is the most significant selling point for Januel + Johnson, and a huge part of this branding effort is the social media presence. C.J. and his team want their clients to have great success on social. For Januel + Johnson, this all starts with the content.

Their emphasis is on visual content. They prioritize custom images for their clients, and they have the in-house production team to pull off some beautiful shots (C.J. leads a majority of the photoshoots for the team).

Their visual strategy includes a few go-to elements:

• Custom images


• Emoji


• Gifs

This is the formula that worked for C.J. as he grew his following, and it's been working for clients, too.

The overall effect of this specialized, visual content is that it's impossible to tell what's been scheduled and what hasn't.

The secret, of course, is that a majority of it is scheduled, within the Buffer dashboard. Januel + Johnson ensure that every social media update is unique and special, be it with a custom image, an emoji, or a GIF. And the result is a Twitter feed that looks completely in-the-moment.

One of our strongest assets is that we provide clients with the information to figure out how to schedule posts efficiently and how to get the best results. One of our biggest tips is to customize the content to fit whatever that particular client is into and what networks they're on. And Buffer is a key part of it. I believe I manage 32 accounts in Buffer - at one point it was 50. I've used Buffer in every sort of way you can think of.

Before I started my own agency, I was working for a digital arts company, and I was managing 100 accounts there. We'd do two to three posts per day, per account, per channel. It was LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+. Not only did those accounts see growth, but they always had consistent engagement. I think that that had a lot to do with the fact that I used two rules when it comes to content:

Be informative, be entertaining.

In any situation, there's always a call to action. Even if it isn't a specific, “Hey, have you checked this out?” or “Hey, visit us here,” I always have a link at the end of the post. That helps a lot. And I don't do link shortening. I leave the link as-is. That's just for branding purposes.

From the beginning we would do a mix of photos, emoji, and GIFs. We would have customized videos, customized photos, including a call to action link, including the emojis and including the GIFs. We'd shake it up. Nothing looks ordinary. None of our content looks scheduled. It all is. That's one of the biggest things that people say all the time. In fact, I get so much high engagement that people always think that I'm online, but I'm not, which is awesome.

When it comes to social media content, the more unique you are with posts and the more consistent you are, the better results you get.

Looking for big results? Give it three months

Social media, with its real-time nature, tends to lend itself to an expectation of quick results.

Of course, this can't always be the case (and rarely is), which is why a long-term social media strategy and a consistent brand on social are so key.

Januel + Johnson have found that three months tends to be the sweet spot for a strategy to take hold and for results to start coming in. They believe these first 90 days to be so key that they make this period a requirement for any new clients that they take on.

Our goal is to empower people in general. Entrepreneurs and creatives. That's our number one goal.

Typically what we do is we have a three-month period. I like to call it a trial period even though it never is officially a trial. It's basically a three-month minimum to work with us. Typically within those three months I see gangbuster results.

I think maybe it's because the first month is that trial transitional phase.

The second month you're building the system.

The third month you're seeing out-of-control engagement.

I can tell you this, when the content is really, really good and it's scheduled out to perfection, and everybody is doing the role of what they need to do to succeed, obviously, the results are awesome. Typically, when they're not consistent about posting, or the content is not very good - looks like spam, looks redundant - then it's just a mixed bag of results.

Week-in-the-life: A social media scheduling workflow

An emphasis on quality content raises a key question: How much time does it take to make and schedule all these awesome tweets and posts?

The content that Januel + Johnson creates includes:

• Custom photos


• Videos


• Emoji


• GIFs


• Evergreen content


• Events

Plus a good mix of scheduled updates …

J+J founders @AmbarJanuel & @cjjohnsonjr on the opening night of @artistdecoded #art gallery. #LA #adventureswithjj pic.twitter.com/5WkvVUTrQQ

- J+J (@JanuelJohnson) April 4, 2016

… and real-time engagement.

#Villanova!!! WOW.BlogThis!

Deck above a roof with no slope

I have a deck built atop a roof and need help on sloping, I'm using gorilla decking but it won't drain, I have no idea how I can slope it properly

Can anyone help?