Brand and Capture

How to Slow the Flow of Facebook Marketing Spam

It wasn't a problem when I had 100 friends on Facebook, people I really knew from High School, College or Work. I rarely got spammy e-mails from those folks, because very few were marketers. Now, it's a different story. I'm an active inbound marketer trying to expand my reach in social media, not to practice spam myself, but to post valuable content and links that will ultimately attract folks to our blog and website. I've grown my Facebook friend base by over 500% in recent months, but now I'm paying the price. Literally hundreds of exciting new offers and events (that I couldn't care less about) come barreling into my inbox every night. Time for some action on my part.

I went to my personal Facebook page, then > Account > Account Settings  and clicked on the Notifications tab. Revelation! My default settings had me welcoming e-mails for all kinds of things I really don't want. I proceeded to uncheck nearly everything except items that I should know about, for example if someone posts on my Wall or tags me in a post or anything else that could be a problem if I ignore it. All the other stuff is gone. No more Event Invitations, no more "Like" invites, no more great offers via e-mail. You still see this stuff when you login to Facebook, but it's easier to ignore and dispose of than it is in your InBox.

Why am I being so anti-social? Well, look folks, I really am interested in what you have to say on your wall and via your posts. I do check those out when I have time. Do I want to hear from you every day via e-mail? What do you think? I did a similar thing with Twitter. Now I automatically route ALL of my direct messages (DM's) to the spam folder of my e-mail client. Sorry gang, but that's what it's come to. I'll see you out on the social networks, but if you're trying to reach me via Facebook and Twitter e-mail notifications, there's nobody home.

Photo Credit: Tidewater Muse

3 Tips for Building Your Brand on Facebook

No matter what demographic you want to target, Facebook is the place to build your brand. Already adopted as a basic lifestyle necessity by consumers in the lucrative under 30 demographic, Facebook is growing in popularity among fans 34 to 45 years old, the fastest growing Facebook population group. The increasing popularity of Facebook, which appears to be gradually replacing phone and written contact as the mainstay of U.S. personal communication, provides incredible opportunities and a few challenges to successfully building a business brand.

Follow these tips to tweak your Facebook content and optimize the Facebook presence of your business brand:

• Optimize thumbnail pictures. When Facebook creates thumbnails from your profile photo, it crops information during the process, creating a 12 pixel border of unused space around the image. Any information or graphic contained within this automatic border is lost during thumbnail creation. Instead of the 200 pixel width Facebook specs indicate are available for your profile picture, only 176 pixels are actually usable. Factor this into the creation of your profile picture so you don't lose critical information when thumbnails are created. Also remember that Facebook thumbnails have rounded corners and are square. Even though profile photos don't limit the length of pictures, when Facebook creates thumbnails, that extra length will be cropped away to fit the square template. Allowing for Facebook's automatic cropping will ensure that tumbnails created for your site contain your brand's essential information and graphics.
• Take advantage of FBML boxes. Facebook's new Public Profiles allow businesses to create separate default landing pages for fans and non-fans (not yet "liking" your page). Different content can be created to target different users. Creating separate content for fans and non-fans allows you to offer exclusive content or promotions to fans while encouraging non-fans to sign up so they too can receive exclusive material. Become a Fan incentives can be displayed in FBML boxes on non-fan pages to encourage fan registration. Here is an example from our Kuno Creative Facebook Page.
• Make use of vanity URLs. Brands with Facebook pages that boast a minimum 100 fans are eligible for vanity URLs. Vanity URLs allow you to put your brand name in your Facebook URL, making your site easy for fans to remember and find. To set up a Facebook vanity url, go to http://www.facebook.com/username and follow the instructions.

Are you building your brand on Facebook and Twitter? We can help!

Facebook: The Stealth Weapon in Your Inbound Marketing Toolbox

If your company isn't already using Facebook as an inbound marketing tool, why not? Close to logging its 500 millionth active user account, Facebook is a marketing stealth giant whose power is just beginning to be understood and unleashed. Used properly, Facebook can become the most powerful tool in your inbound marketing toolbox.

The Social Media Marketing Killer App

One in every four Internet users already has a Facebook account and visits it at least once a month. A huge percentage of Facebook fans are much more frequent users, often spending several hours a day updating and posting to their Facebook page, visiting and commenting on their friends' pages and making new connections. When most people think of Facebook users, they think of high school and college students, consumers in their mid-teens to late-20s. Perhaps surprisingly, the fastest growing Facebook demographic is adults over 34 who now comprise 28% of Facebook users. Adding a Facebook campaign to your social media marketing strategy gives your company access to that enormous buying pool. Cheap and fast, Facebook is breaking down social-commercial barriers and creating a truly integrated lifestyle.

Facebook's Impact on Inbound Marketing

The social context in which Facebook was developed and has matured breaks down traditional barriers between buyers and sellers. On Facebook, everyone's a friend. By the very nature of its highly social setting, Facebook advances the starting point for building customer relations months ahead of more traditional marketing efforts. Facebook marketing capitalizes on the casual, friendly initial set point that underscores all Facebook relationships. Once you're "in," you instantly reap the benefits of friendship. Facebook promotes instant access, instant gratification, instant loyalty. All you have to do is catch the imagination of fans with funky graphics or a silly YouTube video. On Facebook, the initial reluctance to try new products disappears. Everything is about sharing the coolest, hippest new thing, creating the next gotta' have it trend, now accelerated to hyperspeed with OpenGraph. Creative campaigns via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube can launch your product or service, drive traffic and leads to your website, and build brand awareness like no other media today.

With little technology investment businesses can jump into instant relationships with customers, skipping the arduous, expensive steps traditionally used to build relationships and introduce products. But Facebook doesn't work alone. You have to participate (you and your entire army of social marketers). Like we said, why aren't you on Facebook?

What are your Facebook killer app stories?

We have some great ideas.

Photo Credit: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

The Future is Bright for Social Media Marketing

At its outset, many characterized social media marketing as frivolous and the latest certain to be short-lived web trend. But like radio, television and the Internet, all in their early days also considered upstarts with questionable staying power, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have proven their effectiveness to build brands, attract customers, drive sales and develop business-customer relationships. In our increasingly computer-driven world, social media marketing is not merely here to stay but the fastest, brightest path to the future.

Many progressive business owners today are dabbling in social media marketing. They may experiment with a short-term Twitter campaign to build excitement prior to a new product launch. Or they may launch a Facebook fan page to target a new demographic for an established product. The real benefits of social media marketing, however, are not in its occasional use for individual campaigns but in total immersion that integrates social media campaign strategies with every aspect of your company's overall marketing plan.

The long-term benefits of an effective broad-scope social media marketing campaign can't be measured in days or weeks. Time and a little expert massaging are needed to derive maximum and continuing benefit from social media marketing. Certainly, short-term benefits can be measured by metrics that track website traffic, blog sharing, Twitter followers, Facebook fans, Delicious bookmarks, Digg links, referrals and links. Google spiders now crawl social networking sites like Twitter for inclusion in page ranking scores, providing additional data. But the real value derived from these analytic results is in their use to tweak social media marketing campaigns to improve their effectiveness.

The true test of social media marketing performance is its long-term impact on sales, profits, customer retention and customer satisfaction -- benefits that may build slowly and can only be effectively measured over time. Of course, compared to traditional print, television and radio advertising, social media marketing results occur at light speed. The relative speed of social media marketing allows business owners to aim, refine and benefit from their marketing dollars faster and more effectively than ever before.

Photo Credit: NASA

What is your social media marketing strategy? We can help.

The VERDICT on Social Media in Business

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury

We've heard from the Defense and the Prosecution on the case before you, social media in business. Now YOU are both judge and jury. It's up to you to decide. You can review the case FOR and the case AGAINST before casting your vote. Results are instantaneous and will accumulate for the next month. After you cast your ballot, please tell us why in the comments area below. We'll talk about the case once the votes are in. We thank you for your public service.

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The Case AGAINST Social Media in Business

Hear ye, hear ye, the Court of Public Opinion is now in session. Yesterday we heard the case FOR social media in business. Today, the nay-sayers have the floor. Tomorrow, the verdict.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury

Why should you turn your backs on all of this social media hype with no substance?

Anything You (or They) Say Can and Will Be Used Against You...

One slip of the tongue by you, your employees, your friends or relatives is part of the permanent public record. There is no retraction, and there are many hungry wolves waiting to grab your words and turn them against you. There are many notable cases of companies getting slammed by the public for inadvertant, ill-timed opinions, jokes or videos released to the social networks. Publish at your own peril! Disgruntled employees or competitors can disparage you all they want and bring your sales or public relations to their knees, and you have no recourse but to spend time and money monitoring social media and defending yourself. Are you listed on Yelp or other public review sites? Watch the sales drop off as soon as one negative review pops up. What can you do about it? Never make a mistake. Better yet, close up shop. It's easier that way.

Any Fool Can Publish a Blog

Remember the good old days when news came from journalists? Most of those folks had to get a degree, double check their facts and get reviewed by editors. Now it's a free-for-all of bloggers, most of whom have no credentials and plenty of unfounded opinions. Turn one of these folks against you, and you will have the wrath of thousands of like-minded citizens harassing you from every direction. Now suddenly everyone's an expert on your industry and happy to provide a review of you and your company. Everyone has their favorite channel to go hear the propaganda they like, so there goes fair-and-balanced information. Who can you believe these days?

Now You Have 20 New Ways to Receive Spam

Remember the good old days of Viagra and Cialis spam? Now everyone's a stay-at-home business with at least 4-5 great opportunities to make your life whole again. I wish I had time to attend all 4,000 webinar invitations I receive each week. Amazing how many experts can pop up in a couple of years while education is on the decline. Oh, and don't forget, every time you make one of those new fuzzy friends on Twitter or Facebook, you get a cool new e-mail thanking you and inviting you to a great new webinar. And then you get 10 more, and so on...

There Are No Secrets

OK, maybe we went overboard with the secrecy thing during the Cold War (anybody remember that?), but now? I'm sure all the evil doers have fired their spy networks. There's no need anymore, it's all on Twitter and Facebook and your personal blog. I'm guessing the guys in Langley spend more time and money checking out social media than they do on just about anything else these days. And for business folks like you and me? Same deal. If you think anything's proprietary anymore, think again.

Tomorrow - THE VERDICT (you decide).

In case you missed it - The Defense has their say FOR social media.

What say you about the issues with social media?

Photo Credit: 

 

How Social is Your Social Media?

Let's see... Website. Check. Twitter account. Check. Facebook Page. Check. LinkedIn Profile. Check. Now I can sit back and watch the waves of new leads from social networks come in and buy my stuff, right? Not quite. You see there's social, and then there's social. Here's how some well known brands get it right and others that just don't get it.

Kubota - Grade F

I'm going to pick on Kubota because I live in the country and I love tractors. I own a Kubota tractor. I would love to jump on their website and/or social media sites to chat it up with other owners and support people, maybe even the CEO and find out what's going on at Kubota. I think a social network for tractor operators would be cool and popular. Well, forget about it. There's not a trace of anything interactive on their website (kubota.com). No blog, no social media links, nada. In fact it looks like their site is about 10 years old and hasn't been touched since 2000, except for maybe a product update or two and a news release here and there. Kubota is missing a huge opportunity to connect with owners like me, build a community, and increase sales directly from potential buyers online. Maybe they have something in the works, but come on guys. The clock is ticking.

J. P. Morgan Chase - Grade D

Yes, I'm a customer of J. P. Morgan Chase, so I have searched for a social media presence for the same reasons as Kubota. OK, there's a Facebook Page that says "Our goal is to make this Community Page the best collection of shared knowledge on this topic." What topic? There are only six "likes" and no sign of any updates by the company. In fact there are quite a few negative comments in the Related Posts area and no one from Chase commenting in return. There are no links from the main website, which helps to explain the lack of interest.  There is a Chase Community Giving (Facebook) Page with over 1.9 million likes, so that's impressive, but again, no link from the corporate home page and no updates since January 2010. It's now the end of April. There has been quite a bit of negative reaction to the Community Giving campaign, and again, a company has missed the opportunity to answer the negative publicity and reinforce its brand reputation via social media.

Nissan USA - Grade C

Sticking with companies who have a bunch of my money, let's look at Nissan. Now Nissan has a nice Facebook page with over 42,000 likes. Cool graphics and lots of recent updates. They engage commenters regularly and really show off their products with lots of photos and videos. Having said that, there's almost no mention of it on the corporate website. It's as if Nissan management is skeptical of social media and ashamed to link to it from their home page. Strange social media marketing strategy. You would think that engaging all ages in all places would be the way to go, especially with all of the negative publicity for automotive companies. Weird.

Starbucks - Grade A

Starbucks gets it. They're everywhere in social media and they brag about it. With nearly 7 million Facebook likes and 850,000+ followers on Twitter, these guys are all over it. They interact constantly from the C-Suite down to the lowliest of Baristas. They create great content on a regular schedule and run all kinds of popular promotions. They even have their own social network called My Starbucks Idea. Brilliant. You could argue that social media was made for Starbucks, but the truth is, anyone could have the same success with a good strategy and a commitment to using social media the right way.

What's the right way? That's up to you, but brands that commit to social media and make it part of their culture are running away with the prize money. Many are exploring it, trying to figure out what to do and say. Meanwhile, early adopters are building a loyal following and making a killing at the same time.

How is your company embracing and profiting from social media?

 

Go On a Social Media Safari!

Please keep your hands and feet inside the 'Rover. We'll be seeing some of the best known residents of the Internhetti Plain today, so keep your cameras ready for these social media denizens.

Tweetah

This predator has a serious need for speed. Clocked at over 100 tweets per day, with bursts of 140 characters, the Tweetah overwhelms its prey with raw speed, volume and stealth. Tweetahs are loners with few real friends but many admirers. Occasionally they get together just to size each other up or maybe race. Profiles and updates are short and to the point. Typically they're doing many things at once. Don't blink, or you're likely to miss one of these fine natural sports cars.

Fabion

Fabions live in packs, or "prides". They live, love, hunt and share photos together. They are rarely seen by themselves. The female Fabion dominates, while the male is often seen napping. Fabions get personal with their profiles, but don't get too close, they covet their privacy like no other social media species. Often playful, sometimes wistful, the Fabion is a creature of community, but don't let their looks deceive you. Get a little too close to the family, and you'll be sorry, very sorry.

Lhino

The Lhino is all business. You rarely see one smile or do something silly. They're loners like the Tweetah, but much slower. With an in-depth profile and plenty of time to prove a point, Lhino's aren't worried about predators. They're happy to sit back, ask and answer a few questions. They're looking for opportunities but are willing to wait for a good one. Lhino's have been around the block, and they're willing to offer lots of sage advice. You don't see many photos of these guys. They certainly don't upload them. And videos? Please. They don't make friends easily, but when they do, the friendships last. Are Lhino's dangerous? Only if your profile is fake or you bother them with too much self-promotion. Send one of these guys an unsolicited e-mail at your own peril!

Youbra

The Youbra is the flashiest creature on the Plain. There's no mistaking their style and high profile. It's all about impact with a Youbra. You typically only see one for about 90 seconds, but when you do, you're likely to tell all of your friends about it. Youbras are most popular with younger visitors to the Park due to their prominent stripes and likeness to conventional (small) horses. Occasionally a Youbra will catch the attention of adults, however, especially when they do something silly, like stupid human tricks.

We hope you've enjoyed your safari. Maybe you can identify some of your own wild animal traits among the citizens of the social media plain.

Why Baby Boomers Love Social Media

Boomers are all over social media, especially Facebook, according to a recent report. Wondering why these old farts (like me) are updating their profiles, tweeting, and otherwise hanging out in social space? Actually, it's in our upbringing and collective life experience. We love social media because it reminds us of who we are.

If you watched Tom Brokaw's special "Boomers!" last night, and you aren't a baby boomer, you got a glimpse of what makes us boomers tick. We were born after WWII and the Korean War, and most of us grew up in the 'burbs built during the post-war 50's. We were hooked on TV dinners and TV shows like Laugh-In and the Monkeys. We were influenced by space exploration and devastating events like the JFK and MLK assassinations. We entered puberty under the heavy shadow of Vietnam and the Cold War. Many of us became rebellious and many more experimented in everything including sex and drugs and rock-and-roll. We turned to each other for support and we banned together like no other generation before or since. As we grew up we became obsessed with material things and we bought it all on revolving credit, even though our parents warned us that someday (i.e. now) it would all come crashing down on us. 

So now where are we boomers, and why are we into social media, tools that were designed for kids?

1. We love to experiment. Remember?
2. We lost touch with each other along the way, and we yearn to get back to that age of discovery and togetherness.
3. We need each other more than ever since the dream has turned into a massive recession.
4. Most of us have turned into empty nesters, so we actually have time for things other than kids and work. Not enough time to go visit each other much, but plenty to hook up on FB.
5. Lots of us have been displaced from those jobs we depended on for so long, and now we need help finding new ways to make money.
6. We never lost that urge to be playful and have fun. It was just buried under a ton of responsibilities.

 Hey all you boomers out there, how do you use social media and what works for you (or doesn't)?

5 Reasons Google Buzz Might Fizzle

Google Buzz has certainly been the talk du jour in social media circles. My sense is that once the buzz about Buzz subsides, Google's foray into social media might be yet another unsuccessful attempt at toppling Facebook and, to a lesser extent, Twitter. Here's why:  

1. End User Investment - Facebook is about connecting everyone. Think of the millions of Facebook users - the pictures they have uploaded, the people they have friended, and the updates they have broadcast. Users are unbelievably invested in the Facebook community. The last thing I think they want to do is upload yet another profile picture to Google Buzz. Remember Yahoo 360? 
2. Corporate Investment - Large organizations have embraced Facebook and Twitter as cornerstones of their social media and inbound marketing campaigns. They are unlikely to shift expertise and resources to an unproven social media platform, even if Google is behind it. 
3. Privacy - Google made some grave missteps around privacy in its initial Buzz roll-out. This certainly left a bad taste in the mouths of early adopters which led to, well, some serious negative buzz. 
4. Google Everywhere - From search, to email, to digital books, to phones, to energy, is Google spreading itself too thin to compete with Facebook, especially given Facebook's huge head start?
5. Facebook Becomes the Internet - Project Titan, Facebook's effort at more robust messaging functionality, is certainly aimed at tackling Gmail. Further, RockMelt, described as a Facebook-focused web browser, could put your friends, Farmville, and your News Feed directly on your desktop. Even more ambitiously, since RockMelt is backed by Marc Andreessen, it might transform web browsing as we now know it. 

With the tremendous user investment in Facebook, Google might be wise to continue to evolve the thing it does best - search. 

What do you think will happen? Are you a Buzz user? How has Buzz changed the way you use Facebook or Twitter, if at all?  

pic: dullhunk