Monthly Archives: September 2014

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7 Ways to stop arguing with your other half

Successful relationships require a lot of work. As I’m writing this, I’m certainly not in the middle of a perfect relationship myself. The advice in this article is as much for me as for anyone willing to read it. I’d love some feedback from you – please feel free to comment or to add some of your own advice. This is by no means a comprehensive solution to a smooth relationship.

1. LISTEN

The most important action in any relationship is to listen. When your partner speaks, you need to really hear what he/she is saying and try to see the situation through his/her eyes. Put yourself on pause in order to really do this well. Focus on the moment and take in as much information as you can. Listen and ask questions until you feel you can see what your partner means.

2. TREAT PEOPLE THE WAY THEY WANT TO BE TREATED

The old adage of “do unto others as you would have done unto you” is really not applicable in relationships. Which means it really is not applicable at all, because we’re always in some kind of relationship with someone. Point is, we are all different and we cannot treat people the way we want to be treated. We have to care enough to learn more about the people around us and treat them the way they want to be treated.

3. PATIENCE IS A VIRTUE

It may sound trite, but patience in relationships is very important. We are all human and we make mistakes. No matter how bright you are, or how spiritual you are, we all have bad days – there is nothing wrong with this. Part of working towards a successful relationship is allowing your partner to make mistakes, and being willing to work with them on their personal growth. A relationship is a journey between two people that has no real end and is pretty much always a work in progress.

4. BE REAL

Sometimes we find that it is very common to act different with friends and loved ones than you do alone or in public. However, part of being true to ourselves is to do our best to make these versions of ourselves as consistent as possible. Just be the real you as much as possible. Find common ground with your partner that is mutually interesting. Pretending to listen and be interested is definitely not being true to yourself, and very much harmful to your relationship. Just be honest.

5. ADMIT WHEN YOU ARE WRONG

This is a difficult one. It takes a lot of courage to admit when you are wrong. Tell your partner when you recognise that you said or did something hurtful.
“I see that when I said that, it could have caused pain in you.  I am very sorry for doing that.  I am working on how I word things and making sure that I am respectful of you and your feelings.”

6. GRATITUDE

Frequently thank your partner when you see them doing things for you. A little gratitude will go a long way, and of course encourage your partner to invest more in the relationship – because it is clear that you appreciate him/her and what he/she does for you. Everybody loves being appreciated.

7. OBSERVE

Just observe your partner – sometimes it is easier to see how your partner is feeling, rather than asking them. Sometimes people are not able to communicate their feelings, and this may lead to misunderstandings and unhappiness. Don’t just ignore a potentially negative situation and hope that it will go away. Sometimes it is easier to pretend that we don’t notice our partner is unhappy because we’re not feeling good ourselves, or we are busy or just plain lazy. Rather jump in and help your partner instead of asking if they need help.

Always remember, and I’m sure I’ve said this already – your ultimate goal is to be happy with your partner. To make your partner happy and to be happy. Conflict can always be resolved – it is not necessary to be stubborn, or always “win” an argument. Holding out for a win may actually mean that you’ve lost. A little bit of humble and a whole lot of love and acceptance goes a long way. I dedicate this article to my husband, Zac Dreyer.

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Facebook is demolishing like-gating – how does this impact you (if at all?)

Facebook has made some recent changes (what’s new) but the most important change was buried right at the bottom of the announcement:

You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page. It remains acceptable to incentivize people to login to your app, checkin at a place or enter a promotion on your app’s Page.

 

An example of a like-gate on a facebook page tab

An example of a like-gate on a facebook page tab

What does this mean in practice? Well, in the past fan pages used to build apps with a like-gate (or click like to reveal) in order to motivate the public to become page fans before they could get access to more information, such as competition details, promotion details, giveaways and more. This would ensure that only page fans would be able to access this information and of course benefit from it. This was a common fan-building tactic, but has increasingly been losing popularity as page admins sought ways to rather engage with existing fans more effectively than continually attract new fans.

Several years ago, Facebook used to have a feature where an entire page could be like-gated, so page fans could only see page posts once they liked the page. This was also discontinued (thankfully).

How does this impact you? Obviously going forward as from Nov 5, 2014, you will no longer be able to use the like-gate feature on your page tabs. For marketers, this is a fairly important factor to take into consideration. We always found like-gates an effective way to build relevant page fans, because we would encourage our clients to offer relevant (to the brand) incentives to motivate the like-gate clicks. That means the public who became fans ultimately clicked because they were interested in what the brand had to offer, and would by default, also be interested in what the brand had to say via newsfeeds on the page.

Unfortunately, marketers like ourselves are in the minority on facebook. There has been pages who would blatantly use the like-gate to just build “any” fans, offering prizes not relevant to the brand at all, such as iPads, holidays, etc. The page fans that results from these kind of incentives really only clicked on the like-gate to stand a chance to win, not really because they wanted to engage with the page newsfeed posts.

This brings us to why facebook decided to take this step, and we get this straight from facebook:

To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.

Facebook tells us that the average user would see 1,500 stories in a given day. Facebook’s algorithms bring that number down to a much more manageable 300. In order for Facebook to be a desirable place for users, the best and most relevant content needs to be surfaced.

Facebook uses many signals to determine what users see. But like-gating confuses those signals. Does a user really want to see content from that brand? You can see from what I said above why this is not always clear. Users may have clicked on a like-gate because of an attractive incentive, and not because of a need/want to engage with the brand. This might mean in practice that the user is now “forced” to engage with content via personal newsfeed that is not relevant or interesting to the user. This might harm the user experience. A negative user experience results in a user spending less time on facebook, which ultimately negatively impacts paying advertisers on facebook. The implied reason here is fairly obvious – advertisers need users to be online in order to target them.

In the famous words of Douglas Adams: Don’t Panic! Yes, it is still important to increase page likes. There are definitely a lot of ways to effectively build page fans, and more specifically page fans who WANT to engage with your brand. The end of like-gating is actually a very positive move. Marketers and page admins will just have to get more creative with their methods. This should also mean an overall improvement on page post quality on facebook. And you can still use third-party apps to collect data such as email addresses from page fans – which means building a database for emailing promotions and newsletters.

Speak to us at Creative Touch – Be Sociable about your company’s social media requirements, and more specifically how we can assist with your facebook page strategy.