Facebook’s F8 Announcements – Too Much Information!

September 23, 2011 Filed under: Internet Marketing,Social Media Marketing — Tags: , —

As always when major news happens in the online marketing arena, I’ve spent a fair amount of time today digesting the announcements Facebook made at its F8 Developer conference yesterday (see Facebook’s page on the event).  While I’ve never been much of a Facebook fan to begin with (I’m just not exhibitionist by nature), the new features seem over-the-top… even for people who do like to share.  How much do we really want to know about hundreds of other people, after all?  And how much more time do people really have to waste on daily trivia and minutiae?  I think it’s time to call TMI.

If you haven’t seen or read about the new Facebook updates, these were the key news highlights:

Timeline. The redesigned Facebook Profile includes a “Timeline” allowing users to go back as far as their birth date and fill in with pictures and important events, essentially creating & sharing their entire autobiographical photo history.

New Apps. With a new developer capability called Open Graph, Facebook apps will now allow users to share with their friends whatever they’re doing – automatically.  You’ll be notifying your friends about what you’re reading, what music you’re listening to, what you’re watching, and whatever else developers can think of for you to share.  The news of your activity will appear in a new Ticker stream. Then your friends can copy you or share the experience with a single click.

Facebook Partners. To illustrate what you can do with the new Open Graph apps, Facebook announced partnerships with a bunch of media and entertainment companies (see Why Netflix, Spotify and Others are Friending Facebook).   All of them referenced examples of how you can share and consume news & entertainment — without ever leaving  Facebook.

So, does this make you want to jump in and add, not just your recent photos like before, but your entire life history in pictures for the world to see?  Does it make you hungry to know everything that all your Facebook friends are reading, watching and listening to?  Does it tempt you to leave behind the onerous task of browsing all your favorite news & entertainment websites, so you can consume their content from inside Facebook?

Hmmm.  Not me.  Doesn’t make me want to jump aboard.  Maybe I’m a luddite or a hermit or just anti-social.  But what I’ve read elsewhere about the Facebook updates shows I’m not alone.  Here are some reactions from others that I happen to agree with.

New York Times.  Facebook as Tastemaker.  Can Facebook become the primary channel for web users to determine where and how they spend their time & money?  Perhaps, but some think such big goals will eventually be their undoing, just as Microsoft and AOL stumbled by overreaching.

Biznology. The New Facebook: I Get it and I Don’t.  Facebook’s focus has now turned from acquiring new users (who doesn’t use it at this point?) to expanding what users do on the site.  But who can (or wants to) absorb and learn all these new things?  Not me, says author Frank Reed.

Mashable. Is Facebook Trying to Kill Privacy?  Good question, as the new features encourage users to put their entire life online.  If you don’t want your friends knowing or sharing all this information about you, Facebook provides inline privacy controls so you can manage how much you want shared (though given their acquired social habits, many users won’t bother).  But even if you don’t mind sharing your details with friends, you should still be concerned that Facebook will own all the data – and has yet to reveal how they’ll share and act upon that knowledge.

ReadWriteWeb. Reactions to Facebook’s F8 Keynote. Want to know what the audience thought at the F8 event?  This infographic will at least tell you how they tweeted about it.

GigaOm. Media Companies Revisit Their AOL Days with Facebook.  Among the news from Facebook’s F8 Conference yesterday was the partnerships with media companies such as The Washington Post, The Guardian newspaper, The Daily from News Corp. and Yahoo News that will allow users to consume their news from within Facebook.  Many news commentators are calling this approach a “walled garden” (e.g. users get everything they need inside FB and will never venture out), comparing it to the early days of the Internet when AOL offered users a single portal to make it easier to navigate the scary new online world.  But is anyone really still scared to explore the Web on their own?

What about you?  Do you like what Facebook announced at F8?  What have you read about the announcements that makes the new features sound enticing?  I’m open to being converted, after all.

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Ten Tips to Keep From Burning Out on Social Media

March 22, 2011 Filed under: Social Media Marketing — Tags: , , —

Social media is great for forming online relationships, for sharing information with people who share your interests, for keeping your finger on the pulse of your industry or community, and probably for lots of other things too.  Gotta love it!  If you plug in every day, you can be sure to stay connected and to have your say in what’s going on.  But how do you keep from getting addicted?  And how do you keep from burning out on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Quora, and all the other social media channels?  Here are 10 tips to help you stay fresh and avoid burnout.  They work for me, at least, and help keep me freshly excited about blogging, tweeting, Facebook posting, bookmark sharing, etc. each day.  What works for you?

social media comic

Comic from Geek and Poke

1. Look for opportunities to add value. It’s tempting to just jump on board and start chatting on Facebook or Twitter because everyone’s doing it.  But think first about why you’re doing it and then stick to your goals.  Are you looking to stay connected to friends and family?  Great, then share your personal news and pictures and see what others have to say about theirs.  If you’re looking to use it for business, however, stay focused on how you can add value to the customers and prospects you want to reach.  Use tools like search.twitter.com to find out where the conversations are happening about your company or your industry.  Find bloggers who write about topics your customers care about.   Follow closely what fans are saying on your Facebook page or pages of your competitors.  Use all these sources to understand what your customer base cares about and who is talking about it.  Then look for opportunities where you can add value.  Offer free advice, help someone with a problem, refer people to helpful information online — in general, demonstrate what you know and how you can be of service.  Social media is not the place to promote yourself, and if you do you’ll burn out fast.  But if you seek to help and add value, you’ll find it easier to go the distance.

2. Focus on 2-way relationships. Social media is not a 1-way communication vehicle for blasting out your promotional messages to the world, or even to your niche market or friends.  It’s a 2-way conversation with people who choose to connect with you.  So, welcome and respond to people who follow you.  Comment on their posts.  Link out to other websites and share what you’ve found.  Engage with your friends, family, business partners, customers, and other people you want to  hear from. Listen more than you speak and respond to what moves you.  If you only speak and don’t listen, you’ll end up as lonely as the blowhard at a cocktail party who wonders why the room has cleared out when he’s finally finished talking about himself.

3. Expand and prune your circle of contacts to keep them relevant. I think of my social media connections as a living, breathing garden of connections.  Just like you prune your garden so that some plants thrive in one season, others in another season, so too you can prune your social media connections.  I find that when someone dominates my stream too much, I tuck them away and hide them for a while so I can let others shine & be heard from. Hootsuite is a great tool for doing this, as you can juggle between different lists and decide which list you’ll pay attention to (or not) at different times.  It also pays to plant new seeds, look for new people to follow, add more color and variety to the people you hear from each day.  If you particularly like someone’s tweets or posts, find who they follow, and follow them as well.  If you’re hearing repetition among the bloggers you follow, branch out and get new ideas from bloggers in other fields.

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Facebook Updates Your Company Page

February 11, 2011 Filed under: Social Media Marketing — Tags: , —

Big changes are afoot at Facebook, which has just updated its Facebook Pages.  This is good news for small business, as they appear to be making a clearer distinction between personal profiles and company/organization pages, and making Facebook Pages easier to work with, edit, and track, all of which help to support the needs of small businesses.  Here’s a quick overview of their changes (and here’s Facebook’s overview of the changes):

  • Choose your identity. Since Facebook started as a person-to-person exchange, and only later added Facebook Pages for organizations, there has often been confusion between personal and company identities.  Now they’ve made a clear distinction.  You still need a personal account to setup a company page, but you can now operate as either the personal or company identity – and you can change between them within one account (see pink arrow).  In the picture above, I have entered posts on my company page (Sound Web Solutions) as both Sound Web Solutions and as Cynthia Lavoie (see red arrows).  And when I comment on other pages, I can do so as either identity, using the “use Facebook as…” chooser (pink arrow).

NOTE: To switch between identities, you’ll need to go into your company page Settings and uncheck the box next to “Always comment and post on your page as PAGE NAME even when using Facebook as YOUR NAME”.

  • Showcase photos. Photos have long been a favorite thing for Facebook users to share, but they’ve never been particularly prominent on the standard design of a company page.  Now they are (see blue arrow).  Take advantage and dress your page up with some personalized photos – of your employees, your place of business, or whatever.
  • Feature other pages. If you go into the “Edit Page” mode (purple arrow), you’ll see Featured Pages which allows you set the other pages that you like. Make sure to feature your friends’ pages, business partner pages and clients.  You can also feature the human owners of other pages.
  • New Left Navigation. Facebook has moved the navigation tabs from the top to the left of the page (see gold arrow).  To move the left navigation around, just click edit and then drag and drop. To add some variety and interest, you can add Notes, YouTube, Event and your blog to the default list of tabs Facebook provides.
  • Interact with other pages. You can see activity from the pages you like in your News feed.  You can also highlight other Pages you are connected with as well as the people who are managing your Page.
  • Get notifications when fans interact with your page or posts.

It’s exciting, to be sure, and it’s bound to make Facebook an even more popular channel for small businesses to market themselves.  However, let me add a note of warning.  As these updates show, Facebook is known to change things around often, without warning.  They also own all the content on your pages, and do not add significantly to the ranking or authority of your website.  With that said, it’s hard to ignore the fact that they have more than 500 million active users.  My suggestion: update your Facebook Page to these latest changes.  If you don’t, Facebook will authomatically update you March 1st anyway.

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Facebook For Business: Learn From the Pioneers

November 30, 2009 Filed under: Social Media Marketing — Tags: , , , —

Doesn’t it seem to you like Social Media Marketing – especially Facebook — has just exploded on the business scene recently? It sure does to me.  A dizzying number of “free Webinars” are suddenly available offering tips and tricks.  Numerous requests arrive in email asking me to “Fan” new pages.  And clients and business associates are buzzing with excitement and curiosity about how to get involved.

My excitement for Facebook is around its role as community-builder. Every organization has a community of some kind – customers, partners, members, donors — and here’s a tool ideally suited to staying in regular touch with them in a non-intrusive, natural way. The big question you may be asking yourself is “how can I make it work for my business?”  One answer is to learn from some of the early pioneers and try some of the approaches that have worked for them.

Here are some Facebook pages  that have impressed me with their innovative and engaging efforts to serve their community and build a loyal following. This is not an exhaustive list of all they do on Facebook, but gives a sampling of creative ideas.

Akron-Canton Airport, a small regional airport. What they’re doing on Facebook:
  • Share information on sales & discounts from participating airlines
  • Run contests periodically – and use their Facebook page for contest submissions
  • Integrate with other marketing tactics. They post their contest drawing on YouTube, with a link back to Facebook, then invite Facebook fans to view it.

BlackHillsBlack Hills and South Dakota, tourism sites.  What they’re doing on Facebook:

  • Communicate activities, events, conventions in the area – for both residents and visitors
  • Encourage discussions so like-minded groups can connect.  They host discussions on hiking, fly-fishing, mountain biking, favorite tourist destinations, etc.
  • Share photos and videos, so fans can view tourist highlights and share their favorite pictures

Pandora, Internet radio. What they’re doing on Facebook:

  • Invite questions and problems, turning their Discussion page into a technical support forum and Q&A resource

Volkswagon, car manufacturer. What they’re doing on Facebook:

  • Invite fan interaction and story-telling about favorite Volkwagon models. Reinforces great brand loyalty.

Step2Step2,  Children’s large toys.  What they’re doing on Facebook:

  • Test out new product ideas and invite early feedback and suggestions from fans
  • Informal surveys and market research

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What IS Social Media Marketing?

November 15, 2009 Filed under: Social Media Marketing — Tags: , , , , , , , , —
Organizations Using Some Form of Social Media Marketing. Source: Marketing Sherpa 2009

Organizations Using Some Form of Social Media Marketing. Source: Marketing Sherpa 2009

The Buzz is On!   Nearly 80% of organizations, according to a 2009 Marketing Sherpa report, are using some form of social media marketing to reach their audience (see chart).   According to Lloyd Salmons, first chairman of the Internet Advertising Bureau social media council “Social media isn’t just about big networks like Facebook and MySpace, it’s about brands having conversations.”[1] What does this mean for your company, and how can you get started in the Social Media sphere?

Here is a brief primer on the different forms of Social Media, ideas for how your business can benefit from active engagement, and some suggestions for how to get started.  Ask us for our Social Media Marketing Starter Kit if you think you’re ready to get underway or want to know more about what it would take to get started.

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