Category Archives: Facebook

a vacation from social can be good for you

My family and I went on a vacation last week.  Not the tropical, I’m just going to lay on the beach and sip terribly fruity drinks I hate just because of the fact that I’m on a beach type of vacation… but rather the we’re going back home to the Midwest for a wedding and want to see old friends and family type of vacation.  Both have their pluses and minuses.

I shut myself completely out of social media for 5 days.   Well, almost completely.

I checked my own personal feeds a few times, and maybe posted 1 or 2 updates.  But, I did not look at the business accounts that I manage….once.  Seriously.  My fabulous team was covering for me and making sure nothing hit the fan.  It was not easy for me. I am so programmed to click on the brand pages I manage before even looking at my personal feeds – sometimes I don’t even look at my own for a day or two at a time.  I am so deep into the business accounts that they have become my own; in a way.  If you manage business accounts from the client side or an agency side, either one, you know what I’m talking about.

This was the first time in a year that I took more than 1 day off at a time.  So, not looking at social media as “work” for 5 days was ground breaking for me.  It was weird.  I was so curious.  I wanted to know.  But, I realized I didn’t HAVE to know.  I forced myself to stay away and it was…healthy.  When social media is your job, it is a much different beast than people using it for personal reasons.  I wasn’t going to look at my email for 5 days, so, why would I look at the Facebook page?

People who mow lawns for their job aren’t going to sneak in a few quick yards while on vacation.

In the time that I was away from the social business world, Mashable kindly posted around 100 articles of “social media news.”  I typically read several different online social news sources to keep up on what’s new, updates, changes, and beyond.  But, I usually check Mashable first.  Just because.  Not necessarily because it is the best.  Personally I think they blow stories out of proportion most of the time to qualify it as news, but that’s just me.  I still read it.

Why am I telling you this?

100ish social media articles.  Pile that on top of the many emails waiting for me in my inbox and you have an exploded head.  Keeping up with all that is constantly changing, growing, improving, sucking, disappearing, coming back, and working with social media is impossible.  Even if you sit and read articles ALL day you would still miss something.  You can take snippets of all of the “big” news and at least be aware, but to completely be on top of absolutely everything new in the social online world is just silly.  When I got back I skimmed a few of the articles, took away some key headlines and basically chalked up the time from June 6 – 11, 2012 as the week that I had no idea what was going on in social media.

And it feels good.

I like to stay on top of as much of it as I can, so, if I am unaware of something down the road I will just blame these 5 days and hope this “news” dropped while I was on a break.  That might work, right?

Now I am back at it.  But to those of you who also live in social media for your job – make sure to give yourself some breaks, even if just for a few days.  After the 2nd or 3rd day it gets easier.  Do it.  You’ll keep your sanity and want to dive back in that much more when you return.

Facebook phone? Trying not to suck?

Facebook phone? Trying not to suck?

I saw this article on TechCrunch and just thought it was funny.  Facebook is talking about developing a smartphone, for the 3rd time.  I know people love to make fun of ideas like this, but Google made a phone, and a laptop.  Why can’t Facebook?  They can.  And they probably will.  And I think it will probably be pretty sweet.  But that’s just me.

engagement vs fan count, the Facebook brand page dilemma

For the last few years, brands have had the opportunity to showcase themselves on Facebook by way of a page.  The businesses with any amount of foresight jumped aboard, some waited a bit but eventually joined the party, and amazingly enough – there are still some companies that haven’t yet made the social leap.  The brands that have been in the Facebook game for more than two years have seen several different versions of business pages and should be seasoned veterans by now.

Everyone had to start over to some extent when Timeline hit the scene a few months ago, on February 29.  And when I say start over I am referring to the new layout and aesthetics, the new functionality like highlighting and pinning posts, the admin panel, and the ability for brand pages to respond to fans through private messages.  However, the original ole’ concepts and theories remain strong, based on your brand’s Facebook strategy.

There has been the argument that timeline hopes to cause fans to spend more time on the actual brand page, thus, increasing engagement.  But, this original thought has proved to not necessarily be the case.  In many brands’ experiences it has actually been the opposite.  On the flip side, there has been data showing that it has in fact increased page engagement.  So, who the hell knows?  Let’s give it some more time…especially if Mashable is going to put these two conflicting articles out only a month apart.

Anyway, what’s the big dilemma?  If you manage a brand page you know what I’m talking about.  It’s the age old (not really very old at all) argument of engagement with fans versus the number of fans that you have.  What’s the right way to go?

The correct answer: both.  Totally depends on your business, what your strategy is, and why you are doing it.  Maybe you want to build the crap out of your fan base right now so that you can roll out a huge engagement plan in 6 months.  Being completely honest, growing a large fan base organically is hard.  Great content definitely helps, but sometimes you need a boost.  And, like Major League Baseball over the last twenty years, if everyone’s doing it you kind of have to play along, too, if you want to stay in the competition.  That was a steroids joke.  It’s really not that different.  It’s all cheating.  The difference, buying Facebook fans is legal and is now to some extent the norm.  Steroids land you in an empty house hanging out with Jose Canseco.

There was a bomb dropped on Facebook a few weeks ago when General Motors announced they’re pulling $10 Million of Facebook advertising due to ineffectiveness.  That’s a perfect example of Facebook paid products being part of an overall strategy for an end goal as it affects their business.  They weren’t seeing results in that end goal from the Facebook ads; people buying more cars.  They knew what they were doing and didn’t see it working.  Pull the plug.

Some brands get bashed for spending a lot of money on fans, but you know what?  If they’re spending a lot of money then they probably know what they are doing, or at least their agency does.  They more than likely have an “after we buy all the fans” plan.  If they don’t and really are just buying fans strictly for a big number, well, then, that is just kind of silly.  That is not technically a strategy.  That is just doing it to look good.  But you know what else?  Even just looking good with a huge number could be considered a strategy.  Brand awareness.

I am personally not a huge fan of ruthlessly acquiring fans, as I think the actual number should not be the goal.  A big number is great, but it doesn’t matter if those fans don’t engage with your content and connect with your brand.  That is the whole point of being on Facebook, to connect people with your brand, socially; humanizing your brand by way of completely new kinds of interactions and content.  There are brands on Facebook that literally don’t spend any money and have a very solid fan base with very engaging fans.  More power to them.

It should all stem from content, first and foremost.

Using paid acquisition Facebook products to gain new fans is fine and can be part of a very successful social strategy and/or campaign, but it shouldn’t be the strategy.  Disclaimer: unless you fall into the category I mention above and truly are out to just be #1.

To sum it up, engagement is huge and should really be the end goal, and fan acquisition can play a vital role in following through with part of a social strategy or campaign.  So, both sides of the argument can be the correct answer – it depends on your business, and what you are doing with your presence on Facebook (voice, content, strategy and beyond).

Everyone has a different social strategy, and everyone has an argument.  That’s the fun – at this point there really isn’t a “right” or “wrong” answer, only right and wrong ways to go about doing it.   But even those could be argued.  Ah, this is a blast.

****Note: I wrote this in about 15 minutes.  I write what comes to mind and hit “post.”  This could be WAY longer if I wanted to get into TAT scores, engagement rates (depending on which analytics tool you are using), all the other non-acquisition-driving Facebook paid products that are now available, and probably a slew of other things that would be relevant to what I wrote about above.  But, I am tired and don’t want to dive that deep today.  My kid got me up at 5:15 AM.  Done.

shut up about Facebook failing. please.

The Facebook IPO is this week.  Big whoop.  We all know that.  This is not about that.  There have already been thousands of millions of hundreds of trillions of blogs and articles written about it.

Facebook is supposed to be valued at around 100 Instagrams.  

Anyway, what I am sick of, are all of the articles and blogs about how Facebook could fail.  Ya think?  It’s a multi-billion dollar company.  Of course it could fail.  Any business has a chance to fail.

What annoys me is that all of the chatter about Facebook failing was pretty quiet up until IPO week.  Some people could say I sound like an idiot because obviously that’s the week that this subject matter would come to light.  I understand that.  But why all the crushing negativity?  This is one of the most innovative companies in the world with some of the brightest people on the planet working for it.  If Facebook runs into problems with some facet of their business, they will adapt and continue cruising.  It’s Facebook.

The company did release their 35 reasons that they could end up in the toilet as part of their SEC filing.  Every company filing for an IPO has to do that.  They were honest and many on the countdown are pretty obvious.  My opinion is that people are blowing these way out proportion in order to make a big story.  The biggest and most successful tech company in history is going public this week, the media (professional and social) definitely wants to try to bring Facebook down.  Oh, they put a list together for us?  Perfect!

Facebook will be fine.

Their biggest risk right now might be the fact that they haven’t found a way to make money on mobile platforms due to the lack of ads.  At least that’s what they’re telling us.  Do you really think Facebook can’t figure it out?  If it’s not from ads they’ll come up with something else.  They probably already have something else.  Whatever it is will probably piss a lot of people off, but that’s what Facebook does.  They come out with innovative new things, like Timeline, piss off a ton of people who complain about their use of a free product, but then those people continue to use the platform.  Of course they do.  It’s Facebook.

And that’s my rant.

Facebook is going public and is worth a ton of money.  They will continue to adapt and be successful.  They’ll continue to acquire new companies.  They are not AOL.  Or Groupon.  Please shut up about Facebook failing.

Thanks.

some social brands doing it well, in my opinion

Social media as we know it is still very young.  And by “as we know it,” I am referring to the daily connections with our favorite brands, companies and organizations.  Personal use of the socialsphere is also still pretty young, hovering around a decade or so if you are looking at Friendster and Myspace.  And if there was anything “social” before 2002, I’m sorry, I missed it.  Social media as it now sits, has taken over our online worlds.  Sure you can still find out if your younger cousin Toby got his wisdom teeth out, but you can also communicate directly with your favorite beer, sports team, or celebrity.

You might not always get a response, which is unfortunate, but you can feel like you are part of their daily operations or lives.  And, believe it or not there is a human behind the brand’s voice.  (I know from first hand experience as I am one of those humans.)  Hopefully the company or brand you follow knows how to use that voice to their advantage and to connect with fans.  Even the ones that sound like a robot still have a human somewhere in the process, as hard as that  may be to believe.

But I digress.

I follow a ton of brands across the social web.  I want to point out some of my favorites (keeping this list to Facebook and Twitter).  In my mind, these brands are doing a great job of being human, reaching their fans, keeping the content interesting and fresh, and making you want more.  Here’s my current short list, in no particular order….

 

Skittles

  • (Facebook) Hilarious, ridiculous one-liners that you read and immediately just say “WTF?”  But then you laugh, sometimes out loud.  Their voice is consistent and doesn’t waiver much if at all.  Very witty and entertaining.  I love that the vast majority of their content has nothing to do with their product, proving the point that just selling, promoting, and marketing by way of social media is not a winning strategy.  Being interesting wins. (facebook.com/skittles)

 

ESPN

  • (Twitter) An extremely human voice that sounds like your friend you are watching the game with, smashing beers with.  It’s a very witty line-up of tweets that work sports into the heart of the content.  They don’t stray away from their lifeblood, but they do find a way to make that straightforward content interesting, different.  It doesn’t just sound like news. (twtter.com/espn)

 

Keystone Light

  • (Facebook) Keith Stone and his always smoothness has taken to Facebook and it’s fantastic.  This lower budget and/or college beer definitely knows who they are targeting and they do it well.  Their posts are geared towards dude who like to drink a ton of beer.  They’re witty, in the same voice as their TV commercials and on brand.  I love when brands know what they are and go for it. (facebook.com/keystonelight)

 

Foursquare

  • (Facebook) This one is interesting because it is another prominent social platform, with a presence on another prominent social platform.  That in itself isn’t that odd, but to do it well is another thing.  Foursquare doesn’t really go for humor but they talk about their new pins, locations, tips, specials, new partnerships and what not.  It’s interesting.  Lucky for them their business is interesting, so the content follows suit.  They do talk about themselves a lot but it doesn’t come off annoying.  At least not to me. (facebook.com/foursquare)

 

Red Bull

  • (Twitter) Not only is this one of the coolest brands around right now, and they have one of the best overall marketing campaigns in the country, but they are very human on Twitter.  They aren’t necessarily funny or overly interesting, but they are human.  Go look at their Twitter feed – they respond to pretty much everybody who tweets at them.  Not a big deal for a smaller company, but this is impressive for a brand presence like Red Bull who has over 600K followers on Twitter.  (twitter.com/redbull)

 

Cheerios

  • (Facebook) First and foremost, I’ve loved Cheerios since I have been alive.  My son loves Cheerios.  So, with a biased approach I loved this brand already.  But, their Facebook presence isn’t half bad.  They use fans’ photos as part of their cover image which immediately brings the brand to a human level, they have interesting tips for healthy living and speak directly to people like me that just plain love Cheerios.  (facebook.com/cheerios)

 

The Today Show

  • (Facebook) Making news reach beyond news is a strength of social media.  While this concept isn’t earth shattering, I think the Today Show does a good job with their Facebook timeline.  The stories we see every morning become interactive discussions, and they pull in trending topics from Twitter as newsworthy discussions on air.   I know that many other news entities do the same thing.  Fine.  This is my list.  (facebook.com/today)

 

Lowe’s

  • (Twitter) Doing a house project and need help?  Lowe’s on Twitter is there for you.  They even lead their profile description with “Got a complaint, compliment, or question?  Let us know!”  This is customer service done right using a social tool that is so perfect for it.  There responses are very human, and helpful.  A great way to connect with customers. (twitter.com/lowes)

 

Creative Recreation

  • (Facebook) I’ve been rockin’ a pair of hybrid boat shoes from CR for the last 8 years.  Yeah, they definitely don’t look like new, but I still love them.  This is a cool brand that has grown a ton in the last decade and has a cool social presence to go with it.  Good content is the key to any good social channel, and their vivid imagery, sweet products, and conversational posts seem to connect well with their fans.  (facebook.com/creativerecreation)

managing brand social media is a lot more than responding to tweets

Quite often I am asked what it’s like to be on Facebook all day.  Or Twitter.  Or whatever else social platform you want to enter in here ________________.  Anyway, I usually just laugh and say something like, “it’s work.”  The truth is, managing social media for a successful business is a beast of a job nowadays, especially if you are doing it right and growing, expanding, innovating…and staying on top of the community.  The funny thing is, to a person that really knows very little about social media, I am just playing on a website that their 14 year old kid sits on for hours a day with that smart phone they shouldn’t have yet.

In reality, managing a social presence across many different platforms and channels for a business, is like running a business in itself.  You need customers (fans and followers) and you need to provide a product or service (great content).   In return you get paid (engagement).  If you are really lucky you turn that into profit (actual revenue by web traffic to your site or sales direct from the platform).  Simple equation, right?

What a lot of people don’t understand is that it is MUCH more than just monitoring Facebook and Twitter.  If that was the case, then social manager jobs in big cities wouldn’t ask for 3-5 years experience managing a social presence for a business and brand(s).  At this point, not much beyond 5 years can really be required, since such a large number of businesses hadn’t even adopted social media yet in 2007.  Well, most of the platforms that we all know and love didn’t even exist yet.  We still don’t have “experts” in social media yet.  We are close, but not quite there yet.  Yet!

Believe it or not, but a lot of thought goes into individual posts, social campaigns, and content.  The most important is the latter.  Without great content you won’t have engagement.  Without engagement…why are you on social media?  Just to sit there and be a brand?  If you think you need a Facebook page or Twitter handle just to have one, because that’s what businesses do now, then you’re missing the point.  You need a plan.  You need goals.

This might seem like I’m complaining about people thinking that managing social media is easy or elementary, as I manage social media for a brand.  However, I am more so just defending other social media managers, and hoping to educate people a little bit more about what it is that we do.

I will expand on this sooner than later, as I’d love to pick some of my favorites from around the socialsphere from brands I like, campaigns that were awesome, etc.  Look for it.

LeBron. The digital brand

Today LeBron James hired an ad agency to help him better connect with fans and take advantage of the ever-evolving world of social media.  This is a good thing, considering his brand page is already violating a key guideline of the Facebook cover image.  Yep, right across the middle in huge font sits “lebronjames.com.”  Just check out the Facebook page guidelines, Section III, B, ii – right there, boom: “Covers may not include contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your Page’s “About” section.”  With over 10 Million fans, one might want to check on that.

Sports.

Back to the point of this blog.  LeBron the brand.

Today he signed with creative ad agency, SapientNitro, to take care of his digital presence.

In my opinion, this is genius.  He, or at least his management company, understands that he is in fact a living, breathing brand.  They also understand the power of his online presence and social engagement.   He is perhaps the most recognizable athlete in the world.  He genuinely wants to connect with his fans, and he wants to be innovative in the way those connections happen.

I’m very interested to see what comes from this partnership, and I am expecting a lot of awesomeness.

I’ve always looked at LeBron as one of the smarter business athletes and this just reinforces that notion.

Facebook + Instagram = a good thing?

Facetagram.  Maybe?  Maybe not.  OK, definitely not.

Yesterday Facebook announced its acquisition of wildly popular photo sharing app, Instagram.   Oh, yeah, for a cool fee of $1 billion dollars.  You know what’s really cool?  A trillion dollars.  I’m sure Sean Parker called Marky Mark right after seeing the news just to tell him that.

The over-valued money paid for the acquisition is not my topic of discussion here.  Was it way too much?  Yes.  Does it make Facebook look desperate to clean house of a company that was owning the cool factor of photo?  Yes.  Anyway, that’s a conversation for another day.

There has already been about one blog or story for each dollar going into the deal on this topic.  I am absolutely adding fuel to the fire.  And, many of these articles are centered on the fear that Facebook will destroy Instagram as we know it.

People need to just chill the F out.

There is a common and pretty popular belief in society today that maintains that anytime a bigger company buys a smaller company, that horrible things are going to happen to the smaller company’s product.  It won’t ever be the same.  Everything will change for the worse.  Pigs will fly.  The Black Plague will return.  I have no more reason to live.

People all over Twitter yesterday were freaking out about this very subject and promoting the deletion of accounts, and the overreactions are simply embarrassing and hilarious at the same time.  People, these are both free-to-use social networks and applications that allow us to interact with each other in ways like never before, and to connect with brands, businesses, and celebrities on new levels.  The fact that you, an individual user, are acting like this is going to affect your way of life is just ridiculous.  You think Facebook or Instagram cares?  And if you are calling Instagram a “sell-out,” just stop.  They are a business.  When Facebook wants to buy you for $1 Billion and you aren’t worth that much, you sell.  Boom.

I am on the opposite side of the fence.  I think this merging will be a good thing.  Facebook is one of, if not the most innovative and forward-thinking companies in the world.  Do you really think they want to ruin Instagram? No.

I know that I personally would find it pretty sweet to be able to tag my Facebook friends in Instagram photos or import multiple Instagrams at once in Facebook, instead of one at a time.  The integration should do GOOD things for both sides.  I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with, and how they can use both sides to create an even more awesome product.

One question I do have: will Facebook then stop allowing pinning from Instagram to Pinterest?  They currently don’t allow pinning from Facebook.  That could be interesting.

People freaked out in the same manner when Timeline was launched.  My message is the same now as it was then, if you don’t like it, delete your account.  It’s free for you to use.  Don’t complain like you’re some investor that didn’t get a chance to approve the change.

Just go back to 2003 and don’t worry about any of this.  Easy, right?

Google+ is still one of my favorites

I jumped on the Google+ bandwagon right away when in launched in the summer of 2011.  I was skeptical at first, mainly because Facebook was the boss (and currently still is).  I couldn’t understand how or why Google would want to dive into this arena with a completely new social platform.  And then I remembered…

They’re Google.  They are doing it because they can.

I’ve been impressed with Google’s commitment to their social network.  It seems like they are constantly updating the actual website, mobile and tablet apps, integrating +1 buttons all over the web, and now even adding a G+ button on their patented, well known search engine homepage.  The latter point was pretty recent and really showed the world how much they are in this to win it.  My G+ connections are right there on my gmail homepage and accessible for chat and/or a hangout (Google+’s group video chat).  It’s all integrated and ever-growing.

And Android?  Google+ is going to be taking full advantage of the alternative to iPhones.  New users to the Android interface will be asked if they want to create a Google+ account right off then bat when setting up their phone.

The prediction right now is that Google+ will have 400 million users by the end of 2012.  That would be half of all current Facebook users in only a year and a half.  Wow.  Took them over seven years to get here.

I’ve said from the get-go that this is going to be huge, and many of my friends and colleagues still think I’m crazy and refuse to get involved.  Google has so much power behind it, the two biggest search engines (Google and YouTube) – they control a HUGE chunk of the web.

I’ve felt since last year that Google has been releasing just bits and pieces of Google+ in order to keep us interested, and it will just continue to grow and innovate, chipping away at Facebook.  I’m not staying it will overtake Facebook, but it will be right there.  And, the audiences are very different right now, so they aren’t really to be used the same way.  Google+ is not for event promotions, contests, and sales ploys, like Facebook.  It’s a more techy audience that is into the innovation and change, and happy and refreshed to be connecting with folks outside of Facebook.  The engagement and interaction between businesses and fans is very honest and open.  The G+ folks are pretty into social media.  They had to be to dive into a new, unknown platform, right?!

I’ve been a big fan from the start and I still am.  I love it for personal use and I love it for business use.  Getting in circles is the way to grow your follower base quickly, just another little thing that makes Google+ different and cool.

Looking forward to see where it will be at the turn of the new year.

Facebook timeline for businesses – i’m a big fan

It has now been a week since Facebook launched timeline for business pages.  Many of us have played around with timeline for our personal profiles for a few months now and have been anxiously awaiting the business version.  Or at least I was anxiously awaiting timeline for businesses.  The former news feed wall style was starting to look and feel like sooo 2010.  I have been reading about what might be available for pages for a while now, but some of what was out there has proven to just be guessing.  Whereas some folks thought the cover image could basically be used as a massive, beautiful display ad for your company…it couldn’t actually be further from the truth.

Facebook has put their fist down regarding what can and cannot be done to your cover image, which is the 851 x 315 pixel image that lives at the top of any page (that has converted to timeline).  They came out with their set of guidelines and ruined some of the creative fun.  I definitely cannot blame them, though.  If companies could use the cover image as a huge banner ad, for free no less, it would kill Facebook’s lifeblood – paid advertising.  So basically you cannot sell or advertise anything on your business’s cover image with a call to action, a price, or a promotion.  And, the image you choose to put up there definitely cannot be someone else’s image.  Use good judgement.

In other words, the rules and regulations will force companies to get even more creative to make good use of the awesome space up top.  I am really looking forward to seeing what companies do with this over the next couple of months.  A shameless little plug of my own, I’ve done a few different things thus far with Keystone’s cover image.  I’ve used it to broadcast the snow totals for the day and I’ve also played around with collage-style art showcasing the resort as a whole.  I have many other ideas but I will be keeping those to myself for now ;) …the fun has really just begun.

A huge goal for companies will be to get fans to actually go spend more time on their page.  Pre-timeline, the way the vast majority of fans got their company fix was just in their own news feed, but they didn’t go back to the business page since that initial “like.”  Now, with all of the new beautification, layouts and possibilities for creativity, companies will be looking to engage in different ways.  One great way to do this is to add cool events from the past to the timeline with images and stories.  Check out what the US Army did – it’s amazing.  Keep it interesting. “Highlight” the best photo or video of the week and “pin” the most important or interesting message to the top of the wall for up to seven days.  Use the new tools and advance the way you use Facebook as a business!

The platform is changing and businesses will have to adapt.  The companies that grow with Facebook and look to take advantage of timeline will be the winners in the social marketing stratosphere.  And by winning I am talking about engagement, interactions and connections with the community.  Anyone can spend a ton of money and buy new fans (which also inflates the “people talking about” stats) with acquisition campaigns, but not anyone can actually do a superior job connecting with fans once you have them, and continuously giving them awesome content.  There is nothing wrong with running ads to acquire fans – that’s the game and that’s just how it works now, but you have to be able to engage with those humans.  If you acquire them and post just to post, or don’t respond and interact, you will just as easily lose those fans.  (And I am fully aware there are ads and campaigns that are solely for the purpose of engagement and not fan acquisition, which is awesome).

Timeline comes with some sweet new functionality for business pages and I’m personally stoked about it.  I’m in head first and can’t wait to see what they come up with next.  Change is good.  And with social media, change is one of the only things that’s consistent.

I’m a Facebook timeline fan.