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September 29, 2011

Facebook Timeline

FB Timeline As Facebook continues to roll out new features and functionality, it’s important to be aware of what these changes are and how they may affect your use. While many people have been buzzing about the Facebook Timeline, it is scheduled to roll out over the next several weeks. For those who can’t wait, this article walks you through the 8 steps to activate the Facebook Timeline right now.

So, what is Timeline? Facebook is making sharing even easier by automatically sharing what you’re doing on Facebook-connected apps. Instead of having to “Like” something to share it, you’ll just need to click “Add to Timeline” on any website or app, and that app will have permission to share your activity with your Facebook friends.

For example, you may be listening to a great tune on Pandora; by simply clicking a button, you can let everyone in your network know which artist and song. Facebook calls this auto-sharing “Gestures.”

Caution: if you allow Facebook to access these apps automatically, you may be surprised when unwanted information is exposed.

As Pete Cashmore (Mashable) summed it up:

So right now I can see that someone I know professionally read “Scarlett Johansson Nude Photos” and a male colleague, who will remain anonymous, recently read the following:

“Conan O’Brien Stares At Nicole Scherzinger’s Cleavage”
“Heather Morris On Breast Implants”
“Perrey Reeves Shows Off Bikini Body (PHOTO)”

Yikes, probably not the type of articles that some would care to willingly share.

There appear to be some useful strategies to the personal Timeline. As you reconnect with lost friends, you can quickly fill in the missing pieces chronologically. While it’s not a complete biography, it does add some slick interaction.

Timeline may be a positive addition for brands. In fact, the brand benefits of Timeline could be huge, and will let companies tell a more engaging and authentic story.

As always, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming weeks. I imagine there’ll be some initial resistance before widespread acceptance. Any thoughts?

August 10, 2011

Small businesses and social media

Marketing tools These days, small business owners have a lot of marketing options to consider. There are a number of traditional marketing platforms including newspaper ads, print ads, billboards, direct mail, and TV commercials. Then combine these with a slew of digital and social media marketing options such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogging, a custom mobile application development, Groupon, Places, foursquare, Yelp, PPC advertising, and mobile marketing to smart phones. Now you’ve got an extremely large pool of potential marketing combinations and strategies for small businesses to exploit.

The number of options and evolving technologies can be overwhelming for small businesses. Staying current with various platforms can be a challenge in itself. The amount of time required to simply manage and maintain a handful of online accounts can be daunting. In fact, a recent survey by Hiscox revealed that many small businesses were not using social media channels to promote their products and services. Only 12% of businesses considered social media promotion a necessity, 14% indicated they don’t know enough about it, and nearly 50% of respondents weren’t using social media at all.

Over 40% surveyed said that word-of-mouth was the main way they got business. This is an interesting statistic – as social media is essentially a word-of-mouth advertising vehicle. While offline forms of word-of-mouth remain critical for all brands, and certainly for small, local businesses, social media also plays a valuable role by giving customers a louder voice for their recommendations and helping to amplify that voice beyond their immediate circle of friends, family and colleagues.

So how can a small business focus on what they do best while at the same time take advantage of social media marketing? Easy – you don’t have to go it alone. There are marketing specialists to help sift through all of the social media options and develop a custom marketing strategy that fits your business model and budget. For the same reason you wouldn’t attempt to fill a cavity in your child’s tooth, there’s no need to take on tasks which exceed your limits.

Small businesses need to open their minds and be creative. Innovation is paving new opportunities for businesses to market themselves and secure customers. Integrated marketing campaigns can yield meaningful results. Whatever your objectives are, social media can be a powerful communication tool to help spread your message.

waveSpawn provides a full range of customized marketing solutions for small businesses. Please contact us to discuss your specific goals.

April 20, 2011

Respecting privacy with social media

Online privacy Facebook and social media are great outlets for people to vent with friends. People go online to complain about the weather (especially here in Western New York), sports teams, a bad day, boredom, etc… but what are the rules of the discussion? Are there any topics that are off limits – politics, religion, or personal matters?

A doctor from Rhode Island just found out the hard way that patient privacy is definitely not a topic that should be shared publicly through social media. “Dr. Alexandra Thran, 48, was fired from the hospital last year and reprimanded by the state medical board last week. The hospital took away her privileges to work in the emergency room for posting information online about a trauma patient.” While Dr Thran’s post did not actually include the patient’s name, apparently enough facts were included for others in the community to properly identify the individual.

While this may seem obvious to some, to others discussing their daily grind is a normal routine. There can be a lot of gray area for appropriate content. There comes a time when common sense should prevail. If you are not sure about something you are about to post, you probably shouldn’t be clicking submit. I’ve often thought about launching the social media hall of shame – to showcase social media bloopers and blunders. They are everyday occurrences. Just a few years ago the biggest concern was clicking “reply all” to an email. Now a simple post or tweet has trumped the old school email.

There is a lot to be learned from this Rhode Island case. I’m sure much of the healthcare industry is taking note and working to implement training programs and education for appropriate use of social media. With liability concerns, health privacy issues (HIPAA), and reputation there is a lot at stake for health facilities. It’ll be interesting to see how other healthcare institutions react to this occurrence.

November 15, 2010

Facebook announces email and social inbox

Facebook announces email There’s been a lot of speculation regarding Facebook’s “secretive email” platform. Internally this has been dubbed the “Gmail killer”. At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco today, Facebook held a press conference to clarifiy this rumor.

“It’s true people are able to have an @facebook.com email addresses” announced Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. However, he later added “This is not an email killer.” The new developments at Facebook included three items:

Social inbox – filtering techniques to show the messages that you want to see
Single conversation history – which includes a complete historical thread of user conversations
Seamless integration – a means of aggregating a variety of communication including email, text, IM, etc.

According to Facebook engineer, Andrew Bosworth (or Boz) “The system is definitely not email.” It is not intended to act like email or replace your email accounts. He summarized that this is Facebook’s way of using individual social graphs to filter and improve communication. By having categories of friends, it’s possible to be notified by those people that are closest or most important.

This announcement seemed to be met with confusion and doubt. Do we really need to keep a complete communication log with friends? Don’t we have enough data coming at us each day as it is? Most emails are deleted for a reason – they’ve already been read or answered. If it needs to be stored, it’s got a specific title and date to reference. I’m not sure people want to comb through a thread to find the snippet of useful data. It’ll be interesting to test these features out to see how effective they are.

November 2, 2010

Ok, you’ve signed up for social media now what?

A little while ago, we discussed the implications of signing up for social media platforms only to neglect them. Is this due to the fact that most people simply don’t know what to say or how to say it? With the array of options available today – particularly for small businesses, it’s more important than ever that they understand and leverage these tools. I thought this article by Jeffrey Gitomer was very timely and relevant: What should I tweet, what should I post, how should I link?

In the article, Gitomer points out that “Most people don’t know what to say on, what to do on, or what to do with social media. And it’s a club with more than 700 million members.” He goes on to outline some helpful suggestions including:

Stop thinking of it as social media, and begin thinking of it as BUSINESS social media.
What will help your customers produce more, profit more, understand what’s brand new in the market, improve morale, improve attitude, and/or improve their life. Then write about it, tweet about it, and post on Facebook about it.
Why not create daily/weekly/monthly value messages that your customers would find so interesting and informative that they would save them, print them, put them into action, and forward them to others?
All business social media is interconnected. You have to do ALL of them consistently to gain effective results. And you have to do all of them well if you expect to monetize your efforts.

I think Gitomer provides a very rational approach to utilizing social media. While consistency, messaging, and value proposition are all important, there is also a strategy in connecting with the appropriate audience. You could have the best tweets, comments, and suggestions to offer, but if nobody is listening, how effective are they?

As a precursor to this article is the topic how to network with the appropriate business audience using social media. For many people this is fundamentally more critical than the messages being sent. The first step is determining which social media platforms are right for your business or personal use. Select the combination of outlets which you can maintain. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. While some of these tools are easy to integrate with services such as Twitterfeed, the proper time should be taken to set these communication channels up properly.

Next is identifying and connecting with your unique business audience. Don’t just stalk and link to prospects with whom you are trying to close business opportunities. Connect with people who share similar interests or view points. Connect with partners and customers who can also share experiences. Connect with and/or follow competitors. What better way to monitor intelligence and stay competitive.

In closing, don’t use social media as simply a vehicle to announce your specials or flavor of the day. People see right through that and will lose interest quickly. Be genuine, and as Gitomer stated in his article, add value and be consistent.

May 26, 2010

Facebook aims to simplify privacy settings

Facebook announced it will simplify their privacy settings for users. After feeling the pressure from large groups of protestors, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said “We needed to simplify controls… We want people to be able to share information in the way that they want.”

The newly configured privacy page is intended to be a central dashboard for adjusting all content and privacy settings. There are streamlined capabilities to monitor and adjust global settings. In the past, settings for new applications would not adhere to the preset options. In other words, a user would need to realize that they need to go back to the settings page each time an application was added or information was modified, etc.

Having default settings should be sufficient for the majority of users. Advanced settings will still be available for those looking for total control over their shared data. “We’ve focused on three things: a single control for your content, more powerful controls for your basic information and an easy control to turn off all applications,” said Zuckerberg.

While heightened privacy control is good news for many avid users, Facebook is battling an interesting dilemma. Their prime revenue source is from content driven, targeted advertising. By restricting access to 3^rd parties, they may be directly limiting their ad revenue growth potential. This will be curious to see how Facebook is able to work around this hurdle. Are they able to compromise personal information in any way? Can they arrange a deal where personal information is exposed to high paying media research agencies?

March 26, 2010

Social media confirms that many companies have nothing to say

Social media confirms many companies have nothing to say Have you ever noticed how many business-related social media accounts have little, if any, postings or messages? You know the ones… they hastily ran out and setup a corporate Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and blog account without a plan or clue as to what they were doing. Somewhere along the way they strayed from logic. It’s as if they’re proclaiming “hey we’re not only slackers, but we’re cutting edge slackers.”

These companies should consider buying a full page ad in a magazine, forgetting about it, and then letting the publisher print the issue with just their logo on the page and maybe a line that says “too lazy for anything more”. That’ll be a consistent branding message that integrates well with their social media campaign. After all, a holistic approach is good. It’s actually taking a page out of the Seinfeld series “it’s a show about nothing”. Instead, it’s a company that is shouting “we have nothing to say”.

The simple point here is neglected social media accounts can be detrimental to a company’s brand. You wouldn’t create a website with no content, would you? Social media should not be treated any different. Many companies seem to underestimate the value and scope of social media – assigning minimal resources to manage them. Companies that engage in social media need to map out their long-term strategy and approach. Moreover, they need to delegate responsibilities of monitoring and maintaining social media account activity. This shouldn’t be dumped into the hands of an intern or temp. This should be taken serious by someone that understands the platforms and knows how to interact with customers and prospects.

The good news is that there are companies to help guide businesses through the process of engaging in social media. As a starting point, waveSpawn has assembled a comprehensive white paper entitled Understanding social media ROI.

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March 1, 2010

Maximizing Social Media ROI

There’s no denying the magnitude and increasing impact that social media is having upon the business world. Marketing professionals in every industry are reevaluating their business plans and strategies to incorporate this growing phenomenon – which is clearly here to stay. Sometimes this means including a Technorati claim token: G3J8CMQZPY79.

Social media ROI is arguably the hottest topics in the social media eco-system as it relates to marketing. Social networking is changing the way businesses and individuals connect. Online communities create an immediate forum for solicited and unsolicited customer feedback, commentary, suggestions, referrals, and yes even slander. These consumer messages can be powerful and detrimental at the same time. Organizations should give careful consideration to the variety of vehicles and response options available when implementing a social media program.

Each social media initiative takes time, planning, and attention. Perhaps the biggest mistake organizations make is thinking that these accounts can function on autopilot. A blog is created, a Facebook account is activated, Twitter is turned on… and then nobody adds content or monitors these sites. They fail to execute a plan or strategy. In my opinion, neglecting social media accounts is worse than not being involved at all. It’s a direct reflection of a business’s lack of follow-through.

What constitutes effective social media marketing? More importantly, how can marketers accurately measure the results of past social marketing campaigns and how can they predict future results? waveSpawn has compiled a white paper which presents a framework for businesses to better understand and measure the ROI of social media. It outlines the key dimensions of marketing metrics which are critical to determining the success of each social media campaign. It will also help marketers to learn from social media, react to what consumers are saying, and help influence future results.

Download the entire white paper here.

February 25, 2010

Facebook, what about the tree of trust?

Now that both Google and Bing have access to Facebook status updates, should you be concerned about the privacy of your posts? Of course you should… you need to control how the information you share is being rebroadcast or accessed by others. You probably don’t want to see your private information randomly appearing in a stranger’s search results.

Remember the therapy scene in Old School, where the marriage counselor says: “This is a safe place, a place where we can feel free sharing our feelings… a nest in a tree of trust and understanding… we can say anything.” Then after the information is exposed (on major search engines, in your case), your reaction is going to be similar to Will Ferrell’s: “What? I thought we were in the trust tree, in the nest. Are we not?”

While it’s an interesting concept (indexing status updates on Facebook), it’s contradictory to the purpose of a closed circuit social network. Since Google currently only has access to the public Facebook Pages – which are vehicles for marketing rather than personal content, it doesn’t appear pose an immediate personal threat. Bing on the other hand, does have full access to this personal data, since Microsoft has an investment in Facebook and provides the site’s search functionality.

Fortunately there are methods to restrict search engine access to certain information. It’s highly recommended to take some time and review your Facebook > Account > Account Settings and Privacy Settings. There are many options to restrict all of your information including photos, posts, comments, etc to only friends. Take full control of your social media usage. Understand your options and use settings that you are comfortable with.

What are your thoughts on search engines displaying status updates? Is this a positive trend?

February 19, 2010

Microsoft Office 2010 integrates social media

Microsoft has announced the availability of their Outlook Social Connector for LinkedIn. This is the first step in a long-term commitment from Microsoft to aggregate social media content into their widely used business email platform.

What we think users will appreciate is that the Outlook Social Connector doesn’t add another professional or social network into the mix. The Outlook Social Connector does offer busy people, who are already a part of one or several networks, convenience – not confusion.

Another release of this Outlook “extension” is scheduled for this spring and will contain Outlook integrations with Facebook, the leading social website, and MySpace. Google Buzz which was announced just last week is heading in the same direction. The race is on to see who can aggregate the most useful and relevant data into a convenient format within an email interface.

While it’s clear that aggregated information from disparate systems is beneficial, is your email inbox the best place for this?