THE NEXT 5,000 DAYS OF THE WEB - TED PARTNER SERIES

MASTERING FACEBOOK MODERATION

As simple as people find the Facebook interface and as powerful as its feature set, it’s amazing how many brands only seem to recognize a portion of the platforms potential.  Though we freely admit that messing it up can be easy to do. Knowing what is best practice it seems is always easier than consistently delivering it.  With that in mind, here are some of the lessons learned along the way.

Post Frequency - Be aware of what content you would like users to see from your brand and how frequently you are posting.  Remember, your fans may be passionate about your brand, but that might not mean they want their Facebook News Feed flooded with updates at the top of every hour. Keep in mind that a user’s News Feed is live and real time information.

Posts are also more effective during the week when people are typically checking Facebook (in the morning, just before or after lunch and in the evening). Create a schedule just like you would for any media.  Note that Post frequency can also vary depending on the industry your brand is a part of. For example, a news brand may post more frequently than a restaurant. The users are expecting more posts from a news organization than their restaurant.

Post Type  - Make effective use of multimedia and dynamic wall posts and apps for heightened engagement. Not only do multi-media posts present engaging content, they also provide key viral discovery components. That’s where the Facebook “share” function comes into play, which is automatically included on every wall post using the Facebook “links” app. Utilizing Facebook’s video, audio and image posts allows users to share with friends via news feeds and notifications, which helps spread the word and keeps them coming back for repeat visits.

URLs  - URLs should be short and easy to type. Making them that way increases the chance that a visitor will click on them. However, public URL shorteners don't include your brand in the URL, and some services like bit.ly allow the general public to see your brand's traffic!

URL shorteners are Internet tools used to shorten longer URL links. These shorteners are typically used to accommodate character space and are more aesthetically pleasing. Another way brands utilize these shorteners is use it to track the analytics of a link. These shorteners allow users to view how many times the link has been clicked and redirected, and where the link is being shared. Several online services offer to shorten your URL for free but do not give the links or pages credibility.

Building an Audience - Driving traffic to your page is key to building your audience. Facebook ads can amp up the amount of visitors you have to your page increasing the likelihood they will connect with your page. Promoting Facebook exclusive offers is another way to attract users to your page.

If applicable, cross-promote with other associated official fan pages to give credibility to your page. For example, if you have an official company page and have offerings in other pages, make sure you link them to main page for user reference and vice-versa. That way, users who are connected to one page have the opportunity to see the other pages and connect with it too.

Page Information - Fill out your page information as completely as possible within the Info tab and the blurb box underneath the profile image. This helps your page surface when users conduct a Facebook search for your company.  Focus the brand’s social presence. Too many separate company pages can lead to over-fragmentation, which can be confusing for users trying to find accurate information.

Engagement - Updates should ideally be posted when most people are checking their Facebook accounts. Vitrue research shows that posts are more effective during the week when people are typically checking Facebook (first thing in the morning, just before or after lunch and in the evening).

Brands should aim to post updates 2-3 times a day to keep content fresh on their wall. A brand who posts infrequently will have stale content which will not encourage users to return to a page. A brand who posts too much may annoy their audience, which may result in their social connections opting out of your company’s updates.

Posts should solicit as much engagement and participation as possible. The best ways to engage your audience are by asking questions in your updates, posting relevant content that the audience will comment on and share. Fan comments are more desirable than “likes” because they require more of a time investment from the user. Also when a fan comments, it gets broadcasted to their friends through their news feeds.  Remember, users are on your page to interact with your brand, so try to respond to user comments and wall posts in a timely fashion. They will appreciate the attention and might tell their friends about the experience.

Moderate fan posts and comments for obscenity and spam as it relates to your company’s social media policy. Moderation allows for a safe environment for all ages. However, some brands are more accepting of certain language based on their brand personality.

It's also best to use a branded URL shortener to give your links credibility and assurance that the link will redirect to a relevant page. Another benefit of using certain branded URL shorteners is that they protect against making your links analytics public. For example, if you add a "+" to the end of any bit.ly link, you can make the analytics public.

Since social media is a more informal landscape than traditional media, the brand communication should be more personal too. Balance promotional offers with conversation.

Remember - The space is intended to allow for two-way communication -- don’t simply use social media as a push medium for promotions.  The entire exercise is intended to be participatory.

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Need some help getting started?  Maybe you’d like Goodbuzz to moderate your social platforms?  How can we help you?  E-mail Andrew Giles or join the discussion on Facebook.

More than 10m people each day become a “fan” of a brand on Facebook.

When first faced with the prospect of marketing on social networks, many people ask a reasonable question: how many people want to be friends with a brand? The answer – surprisingly, perhaps – is: millions do, on a daily basis.

More than 10m people each day become a “fan” of a brand on Facebook. The world’s largest social network – with well in excess of 400m members globally – plays host to more than 1.4m branded fan pages on Facebook. BrandZ Top 100 brands such as Coca-Cola and Starbucks, along with other smaller brands outside the Top 100 such as Adidas (brand value or BV of $3.3bn in the latest MBO list), have each “befriended” millions of people.

“A lot of our best brand builders are also some of the best companies using social media,” says Joanna Seddon, chief executive of Millward Brown Optimor, which compiles the BrandZ ranking. “A lot of the leadership in social media is really centred in the top 100 brands.”

Social media has matured rapidly in recent years. Sites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter offer scale and reach to rival Google – still the most dominant single site for online advertising – and many television channels. The best advertisers use social media alongside these traditional channels for a combination of brand-building, direct sales, customer service and PR. The worst simply ignore them, blissful only until they realise the complaints and accusations that disgruntled customers are telling other would-be consumers.

“Social media have given consumers a voice to respond, as well as hundreds of channels through which to do so,” says Debbie Klein, joint chief executive of Engine, a UK-based agency group. “These websites have fundamentally transformed marketing from a monologue to a dialogue. Brands cannot hide.”

Eurostar, for instance, faced criticism last December for ignoring Twitter messages – which, unlike most Facebook posts, are usually made public for anyone to read – from angry customers trapped on trains between Paris and London. Eurostar had failed to grab its brand name on Twitter, and its main presence on the site – named “little_break” to tie into a wider marketing campaign – was still showing special offers rather than information on the disrupted service for some hours after the problems began.

In the fast-paced, “real-time” environment of Twitter, just a few hours is long enough for such criticism to spread widely, be chewed over by its denizens and, if it reaches a certain volume, be picked up and amplified further by the mainstream media. Kevin Smith, a film director, caused a similar Twitter storm when he complained to more than 1m followers that Southwest Airlines threw him off a flight for being overweight. Southwest later made two public apologies on its blog.

But for every Eurostar or Southwest, there is a success story that proves social media need not be just for moaning and crisis management. Dell, another Top 100 brand, claims to have generated several million dollars in sales from Twitter alone, where it regularly posts special offers on its computers.

Facebook likes to point to the example of Adidas, the sportswear maker which has more than 2.7m fans on its Adidas Originals page. Each fan is estimated to be worth around $100 a year in footwear, making its fan page a community worth more than $200m with which it can communicate directly all year around, for only the cost of maintaining the page. Becoming a fan of a brand on Facebook means agreeing to allow a company to send messages into that user’s main “news feed” – the part of the site in which Facebookers spend around two thirds of their time.

The new forms of social media are also generating new creative possibilities for brands. Ahead of the launch of its new Fiesta, Ford (BV up 19 per cent this year to $7bn, just short of the cut for making the Top 100) gave 100 “internet celebrities” the latest model and gave them freedom to document their experience online. Millions of YouTube viewings later, they had sold 10,000 cars in six days and had ready-made content for the TV ad officially launching the car.

Last year, Burger King’s “Whopper Sacrifice” offered a free hamburger to anybody who deleted 10 of their Facebook friends. Each sacrificial victim was sent a message explaining what had happened, and so the message spread (at least, until Facebook made Burger King tone down its application after more than 200,000 such sacrifices were made).

But although social media can be used to achieve high impact with much lower investment than traditional media, seasoned observers note that many ostensibly “viral” campaigns have had more than a little nudge along the way.

“The beauty of social media is that they are accessible across a large range of budgets,” says Jason Klein, co-president of LBi in New York, a digital agency. “[As for Facebook] pages with hundreds of thousands of people, some [companies or products] have brand equity to attract that but a lot, I would assume, have been driven up with some form of media buy … Facebook has been shrewd about building a platform that makes it very difficult to grow groups organically.”

Facebook’s “engagement ads” are one way for companies to buy traffic for their fan pages. Twitter has recently introduced advertising in its search results, in the form of “promoted tweets”, which have seen Starbucks’ messages appear when people search for “coffee”.

But Mr Klein warns against using follower counts or group size as a measure of success in social media. “People don’t know what they want to get back so they have to hang their hat on the number of posts, friends or comments. We have tried hard to educate our clients that even though these aren’t the exact metrics to know something is successful, to focus just on the numbers takes your eye off the ball a bit. Would I rather have thousands of people believe in my brand than hundreds of thousands signing up because they got a free key chain?”

Navigating the constantly evolving world of social media will claim more casualties yet.

Simon Clift, until recently the chief marketing officer at Unilever, has warned of a “lost generation” of marketers who do not understand the social web, either because they are too old, or too young to learn from their children.

“There is no question that social media of all the challenges in media is the hardest one,” Mr Clift says. “You have to listen rather than impose, which is difficult for all marketers.”

Meanwhile, in another sign of the times, Facebook has made its own debut in the BrandZ rankings. With a BV of $5.5bn, it is not yet in the Top 100, but slips in as 20th in the Technology Top 20.

PROACTIVE PR 2.0

By definition, Public Relations (whether online or off) can either be practiced proactively or reactively.  Most companies however seem to choose the later. Being proactive means listening to your constituents (both current and prospective).  It means looking for opportunities to demonstrate honest relevance and goodwill.  When Children’s Gifts were stolen from a local Hospital Christmas Toy Fund in Toronto, MATTEL stepped in donated more toys then were taken (ensuring that the children received the “hottest” toys of the season.  Not only were MATTEL portrayed as Hero’s (rightfully so), but they also created more buzz and demand for their “hottest” toys of the season (with national coverage). 

be proactive

What’s happening and being adopted at a local level, especially related to civil liberties, will likely be extended nationally and backed by legislation.  To this end, when upscale bakery and sandwich shop chain Panera Bread realized that more and more cities were demanding (all) restaurants post health information, they assumed state and federal regulations were likely to follow.  So instead of waiting, the chain is getting a ton of free press and positive publicity for being the “first” national (fast-casual) restaurant chain in the US to address this immediately across all locations. What’s clear is that adopting customer-friendly policies, even when you're not required to, can make you a hero in the eyes of your customers.  Read more about Panera Bread in the Chicago Sun-Times article.

Face your demons

Things happen sometimes that are entirely out of our control. We’re human.  Don't let a controversial issue distract you, your organization or fellow employees.  Sometimes it's best to get ahead of unnecessary drama by talking about it, by apologizing and moving on, or by using a little humor to laugh it off.  After Vice President Joe Biden was overhead cursing while introducing the President at the health care bill's signing, the press and blogosphere made an issue of it. But rather than release some hollow apology, the White House turned the gaffe into a T-shirt.  For $25 USD, supporters of the bill can buy a "Health Reform is a BFD" T-shirt (but due to high demand, they're asking everyone to allow 6-8 weeks for delivery). ;)

 The goal is to try and turn what initially might seem a negative into a positive and stay ahead of controversy by killing it with a little humour. More on BarackObama.com 


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TOP 100 SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING BLOGGERS

1. Mashable

2. ignite social media

3. Problogger

4. ReadWriteWeb

5. MediaShift

6. Danny Brown

7. aimClear Blog

8. Seth Godin’s Blog

9. Social Media Today

10. Social Business

11. Ogilvy PR 360 Digital Influence Blog

12. HubSpot Internet Marketing Blog

13. Inside Facebook

14. ChrisBrogan.com

15. Small Business Search Marketing

16. digiday:DAILY

17. Dealer Refresh

18. Threeminds

19. MackCollier.com

20. Daily Blog Tips

21. Josh’s Unconventional Marketing Blog

22. Journalistics

23. MattFlies

24. Winning the Web

25. PR 2.0

26. Social Media Explorer

27. Convince & Convert

28. Marketing Pilgrim

29. Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang

30. CisionBlog

31. Conversation Marketing

32. Max Gladwell

33. PRBreakfastClub

34. The Social

35. The Profitable Podcast

36. Marketing Profs Daily Fix

37. Six Pixels of Seperation

38. A Shel of My Former Self

39. The Marketing Technology Blog

40. Personal Branding Blog

41. How to Change the World

42. .edu Guru

43. Peter Shankman

44. Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits can use Social Media

45. Sociable Blog

46. Being Peter Kim

47. The Altimeter by Charlene Li

48. SocialMouths

49. Conversation Agent

50. Old Media, New Tricks

51. davefleet.com

52. Altitude Branding

53. PR Squared

54. Scobleizer

55. Regular Geek

56. Creativity_Unbound

57. Logic + Emotion

58. FreshNetworks Blog

59. Lip-Sticking

60. SheGeeks

61. Internet Marketing with Matt Bacak

62. Buzz Marketing for Technology

63. PRSarahEvans

64. The Buzz Bin

65. The Marketing Eggspert

66. PR Communications

67. Successful Blog

68. Anil Dash’s Blog

69. Jacob Morgan

70. ChaseSagum.com

71. Twitterati

72. Global Neighbourhoods

73. bub.blicio.us

74. SearchFuel

75. Find and Convert

76. Social Media Optimization

77. Inside the Marketers Studio

78. The Social Path

79. The Social Media Marketing Blog

80. brentcsutoras

81. PR 2.0 Strategies

82. A. Fine Blog

83. Twittercism

84. Valley PR Blog

85. What’s Next Blog

86. MediaFuturist

87. The Proactive Report

88. Culture Buzz

89. Groundswell

90. Spark Minute

91. Marketing Nirvana

92. Capture the Conversation

93. One Degree

94. A Relationship Economy

95. Fast Wonder

96. Social Media Vision

97. ConverStations

98. Open Forum Blog

99. TwiTip

100. DygiScape

This list is from Cision Blog but quite comprehensive.

Nestle weighs in on Greenpeace Controversy - Facebook

By Erik Sass

Let this be a lesson for every big company that uses social media: it's better not to behave like a petulant teenager when things don't go your way. That said, we can sympathize with Nestle's hissy fit.

Like any company with a marketing organization worthy of the name, Nestle's has a social media presence including, of course, a Facebook page. Meanwhile, like any global corporation, Nestle's also does things that attract criticism from environmental activists. Taken together, these two facts virtually guarantee a collision resulting in negative publicity somewhere down the line.

That's what happened when Greenpeace took Nestle to task for allegedly contributing to the plight of Indonesian orangutans -- an endangered species whose rain forest habitat is threatened by the encroachment of farmland used to produce palm oil for Nestle's, among other buyers. Greenpeace has a Web site devoted to this cause, hosting a mini-documentary and a fairly gross video ad in which an office worker opens a Kit Kat only to find an orangutan finger (Greenpeace is not known for subtlety). Naturally, Greenpeace also posted the ad on YouTube.

Nestle's first -- and possibly worst -- social media mistake was going after the YouTube ad. The same day that the video was posted -- March 17 -- the company forced YouTube to remove the ad, for reasons that still aren't clear (as mentioned it's kind of gross, but nowhere near as gross as some other stuff on the video-sharing site). Regardless of the reason, the attempt to censor the video was not a smart move, as it generated way more negative publicity than if they'd just left it alone, while the video was still available at other locations like Vimeo and the Greenpeace site itself.

This bullying in turn precipitated a flood of negative comments targeting Nestle's on Twitter and Facebook, including the company's own Facebook page. Some of the critics were "strangers," but some of them were people who were actually Nestle's Facebook "fans" -- whom the company had presumably worked hard to recruit and lovingly cultivated with so much social media savvy.

When its Facebook fans became critical of the brand, however, Nestle turned into an angry adolescent, exchanging insults with critics and "de-friending" them, as if this would somehow stem the tide of negative PR. This ludicrous, petty behavior was the worst possible response, failing to insulate the company from criticism while stoking the negative PR storm: I mean, social networks thrive on this kind of stuff (OMG, drama! Tell everyone!).

Eventually cooler heads prevailed and Nestle's reversed itself, issuing an apology and agreeing to stop using the offending palm oil, but it was too late: its behavior on Facebook was touted as uncool, and Nestle's will be lucky if those de-friended peeps, like, ever talk to it again? But it's an interesting case study in how a social media presence -- which many big companies treat as a humdrum necessity, almost an afterthought -- can suddenly take center stage (and not in a good way).

Understanding Twitter's Promoted Tweets

Twitter ranks as one of the most popular tools on the Internet.  Over the years, they've resisted introducing a traditional Web advertising model because they wanted to optimize for value before profit.  The resulting open exchange of information created opportunities for individuals, organizations, and businesses alike. Twitter saw value in this exchange and wanted to “amplify it in a meaningful and relevant manner”.

Those altruistic days are apparently over.  Twitter recently unveiled a service called “Promoted Tweets”.  To paraphrase, “the point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Twitter, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA”.   We digress.  So, Twitter finally has an approach to monetization that amplifies existing value, while also generating profit.   

Promoted Tweets

According to Biz Stone, it's “non-traditional, it's easy, and it makes a ton of sense for Twitter”.   So what are Promoted Tweets?  Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets those businesses and organizations want to “highlight” to a wider group of users.

What will users see? Much like Google, you will start to see Tweets promoted by partner advertisers called out at the top of Twitter search results pages.   Twitter strongly believes that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you (and promises to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users - and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don't resonate.) 

 Promoted Tweets will also be clearly labeled as “promoted" when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect it’s intended that they will first exist as regular Tweet and thus will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow them. Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and ‘favoriting’.  However, only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.

Since all Promoted Tweets are organic Tweets, there is apparently not a single “ad" in Promoted Tweets platform that isn't already an organic part of Twitter. This is distinct from both traditional search advertising and more recent social advertising.  Like any other Tweet, the connection between you and a Promoted Tweet in real-time provides a powerful means of delivering information relevant to you at the moment.

There is one big difference between a Promoted Tweet and a regular Tweet. Promoted Tweets must meet a higher bar—they must resonate with users. That means if users don't interact with a Promoted Tweet to allow us to know that the Promoted Tweet is resonating with them, such as replying to it, favoriting it, or Retweeting it, the Promoted Tweet will disappear.

One small step for Tweet’s.  One Giant leap for Twitter. ;)

SOCIAL MEDIA IN 2012 - TRENDS + PREDICTIONS

Note:  These predictions are by Freddie Laker, Director of Digital Strategy at SapientNitro.


SOCIAL MEDIA IN 2012 - Ultimately, share of voice, point of view and community influence will be more important than brand ownership — and marketers will need to get over it if they want to stay relevant in 2012.

1. Privacy expectations will (have to) change

There will be a cultural shift, whereby people will begin to find it increasingly more acceptable to expose more and more of their personal details on different forms of social media. Sharing your likes, dislikes, opinions, photos, videos and other forms of personal information will be the norm and people will become more accepting of personalized experiences, both corporate and personal, that are reacting to this dearth of personal information.

2. Complete decentralization of social networks

The concept of a friend network will be a portable experience. You’ll find most digital experiences will be able to leverage the power of your social networks in a way that leverages your readily available personal information and the relationships you’ve established. We’re already seeing the beginnings of this with Facebook Connect and Google’s FriendConnect.

3. Our interaction with search engines will be different

Real-time information in Google search, e.g. from Twitter, blog results and user reviews, will be more prominent. Google’s Social Search will change the way we interact with search engines by pushing relevant content from our personal networks to the front of search results, making them more personalized. The importance of digital-influencer marketing will increase significantly.

4. Rise of the content aggregators

The amount of content online is growing at an exponential rate, and most online users have at least three online profiles from social networks to micro-blogging to social news sites. Our ability to manage this influx is challenging, and content aggregators will be the new demi-gods, bringing method to madness (and make a killing). Filtering and managing content will be big business for those who can get it right and provide easy-to-use services.

5. Social media augmented reality

Openly accessible information from the social-media space will be used to enhance everyday experiences. For example: the contacts book in your phone links to Facebook and Twitter to show real-time updates on what the contact is doing before you put in the call, real-time reviews from friends and associates will appear in GPS-based mapping services as a standard feature, and socially enabled CRM will change the way companies manage business relationships forever.

6. Influencer marketing will be redefined

As social media continues to permeate more and more aspects of not only the way we interact with digital media but also other channels such as digital outdoor, commerce or online TV, we will see the significance of influencer marketing grow dramatically. As a basic example, the inclusion of Twitter in Google search results or Google’s soon-to-be-released Social Search will permeate search results with content that will not be managed by Google’s infamous PageRank but by social influence and relevance to your social network. Discovering people that can help you to reach your desired consumer will become exponentially more effective and important.

7. Ratings everywhere

In today’s world, having a commerce site that doesn’t have user ratings could actually prove to be a detriment to sales. In the near future, brands and businesses will more frequently place user ratings and accept open feedback on their actual websites. User ratings will become so common that marketers should expect to find them woven into most digital experiences.

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Note: There is also a complete Slideshare narrated presentation available.

See the full article at AdvertisingAge

Additional source: http://takemetoyourleader.com/2010/04/01/social-media-2012-presentation/

The Cult of “ME” - Narcissism and Social Media

Freud and others believed a reasonable amount of healthy narcissism allowed an individual's perception of his needs to be balanced in relation to others.  Marked by the rise of celebrity culture, the destruction of tradition, the devaluation of ordinary skills and families in our modern society - advertisers today know that consumers (i.e. “YOU”) obsessively focus on “the realization of the self".  

This cult of “me” is ironically fueled by "personalization." Web 2.0 personalizes culture so that it reflects ourselves rather than the world around us. Blogs personalize media content so that all we read are our own thoughts. Online stores personalize our preferences, thus feeding back to us our own taste.  Google personalizes searches so that all we see are advertisements for products and services we already use.  Whether Yahoo’s "It's y!ou", to “mySAP” to the “iPad” to T-Mobile’s “myTouch’s - 100% you," --it seems like you’re getting "you-ed" everywhere today. 

The shear irony therefore in multiple advertisers attempting to target millions of people with messages about their individuality, makes you realize just how uninspired we all must be.   Society itself seems to have used up its store of constructive ideas.  Moreover, we seem to have lost both the capacity and the will to
confront the difficulties that threaten to overwhelm us.  Today we are commentators and pedestrians in a state of somnambulism – seemingly oblivious to the fact that we have become both politically and intellectually bankrupt.

Isn’t it time we rediscovered our sense of civic obligation?  

SOCIAL MEDIA ADOPTION - YOU CAN’T GET A LITTLE BIT PREGNANT

We get the same question over and over again from clients and prospects alike.  "What if we get involved in Social Media and people say bad things about us?"  For those brands or companies not yet engaging with customers using social media tools, this is a worst-case scenario.

Your customers are already talking about you. So why not get involved in the conversation? People are increasingly using social media websites and tools to vent their anger about products or receiving poor service, according to a survey.  Anyone upset enough to go to your Facebook page for example and tell you what they don't like is upset enough to tell their friends and followers in your absence.   Staying off social media doesn't stop the problem; it merely removes the discomfort of having to deal with it. Being on social media at least gives you the chance to respond. Social Media will therefore impact your business and decision making whether you like it or not.

As to how about engaging with your constituents and building credibility – we offer the following.  Always act with integrity and don’t try and be something you’re not. Integrity is about being consistent and living up to the brand promise.  Where companies typically get in trouble is when they pretend to be something they're not.   Also, admit your mistakes - you’re only human like the rest of us, so if you make a mistake, admit it quickly and take any/all steps necessary to correct the situation.  Then move on. 

Still not sold?  Find out more about how Social Media Affects Buying Behavior.