Brush up on your Facebook etiquette!
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Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’
A Social Faux Pas and Some New Tech News
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009This post first ran as a column in the Macon Telegraph on 12/16/2009.
A Mistake That Could Cost You Business
Businesses and other organizations on Facebook should have a business page set-up instead of a personal page. If you are found out or exposed to Facebook administration, you could be banned from Facebook in any form, like …forever. Besides, who wants to send out a negative vibe to potential customers because your messages are sent to individuals’ personal email boxes? People hate that. If your company (or nonprofit) sends messages as a legitimate business page user on Facebook, they are disseminated in the less-intrusive News Feed where they’re supposed to be.
Tech News to Ponder
More magazine and newspapers are creating their own apps for mobile phone use and getting cozier with e-readers (slated to begin running apps of their own soon). These new entertainments will create a surge in the drought-ridden print revenue stream.
Google is nearly ready to launch Goggle Wave, an amazingly versatile platform that will make collaboration from any part of the universe possible in real time. In the Microsoft labs, techies are testing a kind of Wikapedia for Everyman — not just the rich, famous or infamous. This makes pop artist Andy Warhol’s “Everyone in the future will enjoy 15 minutes of fame” idea a real possibility. Of course, they’ll be new privacy issues to deal with.
The Growing Inbound vs. Outbound Revolution
Marketing continues its rapid transition from “push” to “pull” with ad messages that bypass traditional delivery (print and broadcast considered by many to be intrusive and interruptive) to advertising that people look for on their own online — through reviews and comments on social networks, demonstrations on websites, viral videos and other entertaining online platforms. How many people would vote to have advertising messages on their cell phones? Even email marketing is now considered intrusive and interruptive to recipients (it’s called spam). “Getting found” by potential customers is what it’s all about in today’s inbound online world, and the first companies who come to terms with this revolutionary idea – painful as it may be — will be the most successful at day’s end. This takes the “agency” out of the term “ad agency,” as marketing firms will no longer serve as agents of media.
Common Mistakes Businesses Make Online
Tuesday, October 13th, 2009It won’t instigate a lawsuit. It won’t change the world order. But there are a couple of things you should clearly avoid as a business using social media sites. Why? Because you might irritate someone…and that person could be a client or a potential client/customer with whom you are trying to build a relationship. And it makes both you and your business look bad.
On Facebook: Don’t set up a group page or a personal page if you’re a business; instead, set up a fan page. On a fan page (there are three kinds of these), you can create status updates to announce events that will then appear in your fans’ news feeds. You can’t do this with a group page. If you are using a group page, your news and invitations will show up in your friends’ personal Facebook inboxes. That is spamming…and people hate it. They might even un-friend you if you do it frequently. Another good reason for your business to use a fan page instead of a group page: you can target your updates demographically, and attach links, photos or video clips.
On Twitter: “Hey you! Thanks for following me! Read all about my newest invention on www.inventionimsodarnproud.com!” Don’t send new followers automatic direct mail (DM).
If you use Twitter, you’ve received generic messages just like that that seem inauthentic and canned. People hate these because there’s nothing substantial behind them. And because social networking is all about genuinely engaging with others, it’s simply not a meaningful message. Besides, you will eventually get blocked, unfollowed, or reported to the Spam Police.
Also, don’t send random @messages unless you’re replying or responding to someone you know.
On Linkedin: Don’t ask for recommendations from people you don’t know very well, especially high profile professionals. Recommendations on Linkedin are taken seriously and it takes time to think through and key one in. It’s difficult to refuse someone with a request of this nature, so people will often write a recommendation anyway. But they could easily view this request as opportunistic on your part. So don’t ask in the first place, unless you’ve really worked with someone, or otherwise know the person well.
On any social networking site: Don’t spam. Anyone. Ever. If you do, you will be dubbed an irritant that people online will eventually begin to avoid like the swine flu.
New Media Marketing
Thursday, September 24th, 2009Why Being Online is So Important
By this time, the social media/blogging naysayers should be sufficiently humbled enough to admit that a business’s online presence in several forms is absolutely essential. That’s because the new marketing model involves engaging your target audience online through social media networking, offering blog posts that provide empowering information related to your specific industry, and building a supportive community around your business. You can only do these things online, and a content-rich, website optimized to the max with keywords and phrases strategically placed is the key to success in all this.
Remember these things before you take your business online:
1. Having a fully-optimized, content-rich website is the number one thing you need because it will be the hub of all your subsequent online activity. Your target audience should be able to find you online easily and quickly.
2. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace are only a few of the vast number of tools under the category: Social Media Networks. Many other categories exist in the online universe.
3. You need a social media marketing plan, just like you need a traditional marketing plan because there are thousands upon thousands of social media options
4. Although most social media networks and tools are free, you should know that it takes time, talent and resources – things you shouldn’t fail to calculate
5. Never, ever spam your online audience with direct sales messages. That’s not the way it works, and you will be run out of NewMedia Town if you do.
6. Word-of-Mouth advertising online (and off-line for that matter) is the most powerful and the most credible marketing around. That’s why social media engagement is so important.
7. The object is to build a social media ecosystem that will boost business. Use well-chosen networks to do this.
8. Use bookmarking sites/aggregators (that’s another social media category) to make your online life easier to track and participate in. (Digg, FriendFeed, WetPaint, and De.locio.us are just some of these)
9. There exist many productivity tools online at no cost that you can use to help your business’s daily operations. Google offers many of these. (Google Docs, Google Wave, Google Reader, etc.
10. If your business relies heavily on your blog, you may want to exercise the options that free blog platforms like WordPress and Blogger offer to give your blog a custom URL (web address) instead of using their subdomain as in [Yourblogname].Blogspot.com
5 Ways to Get Your Boss to Try Social Media Marketing
Friday, June 19th, 2009Sure, everyone in the various departments of your company understands the need to connect warmly with customers/clients and potentials, but if your company’s executive leaders don’t understand the power that social media marketing offers, you could all be sailing on the Titanic. Rest assured your competitors aren’t passing up many opportunities to cozy up to their targets… and yours. But if the boss says “no!” because he views social media as a frivolity and time waster (if he isn’t familiar with it, he may be threatened by it), here are some tips to bring him/her around:
1. Offer to stage introductory social media sessions for interested employees and try hard to get the boss to attend. At these sessions, introduce some of the more popular social media platforms: for starters, LinkedIn, Facebook and the ubiquitous Twitter, and conduct a help session for set-up. Do this right before work or right after, so you won’t be viewed as an opportunist – one who is only seeking sanction for his own interests. Once your colleagues are relatively versed in setting up and using their personal accounts, you have laid the groundwork to communicate the need for social media in business.
2. Point out that most companies and federal/ state governmental agencies are already engaged heavily in social media. Show online that the United States Air Force has presence that is monitored by a 9-member Social Media Department.
3. Remind your boss that social media is not going away anytime soon. Because it involves engagement/relationships with customers/clients in a friendly way instead of the standard sales pitch – because it’s an authentic conversation that, over time, can translate to credibility, support, appreciation and understanding, it has great power and potential to grow. Social media tools may change forms, but it’s definitely here for the long term. Coupled with traditional sales and advertising efforts, it’s bound to make a bottom line difference.
4. Point out that your competitors are gaining ground every hour your company delays in getting onboard with social media marketing.
5. E-mail your boss this post, and attach a social media marketing success story or two, preferably examples of success within your industry.
