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A Guide for Facebook Etiquette: The Awkward Unfriending

10/17/2012 by

Do you remember the good old days? Do you remember the friendships you had before the juggernaut of social media? Come on, it wasn’t that long go, a different decade, sure, but the same millennium. Facebook only launched in February, 2004. Pre-Facebook, if a friend annoyed you with their endless chatter, gossip and updates (Oh my… God, can you believe Jane and Tom are dating?) you simply didn’t pick up the phone when they called.

No biggie, right? However, if so-and-so stole your teal with chrome custom Kitchen-Aid, that was something else; if you found out they stole your super-secret lemon-bar recipe and shared it with everyone on Saturday night when you weren’t there, well, you unfriended them for life. Dignity, grace and etiquette were out the window. You ignored them, talked trash about them and banished them from your circle of friends.

Things are different now.

Champagne to All My Real Friends, Real Pain to all My Sham Friends

With so much friending, liking and posting, chances are your Facebook portfolio has swollen to epic proportions. The friends are not really friends, but more like self-perpetuating weeds; Eventually, you’ll need to do some gardening. In the end, you never know who is going to turn out to be a hacker. While Facebook has privacy guidelines and safeguards, a lot of your personal information is still accessible. When you visit Lifelock on Facebook, you can learn more about identify theft and how it applies to your social-media account.

With This Many Facebook Friends, Someone is Bound to get Hurt

In the Facebook universe, being unfriended is like being slapped across the face, Victorian style, with a pair of gloves. Honestly, it might sting a bit if you’re the one being unfriended, aka slapped, but the person doing it isn’t even getting their hands dirty. They’re clicking a button on a computer. If you have 2.1 million friends on Facebook, is unfriending someone or being unfriended really the end of the world? With this many friends, someone is bound to get cyber-slapped once in a while.

Restrictions and Hiding Friends

While your Facebook sham friends are easy to erase, what about those peripheral people in your life? What do you do about your boss, who’s not really a friend, or that nice woman who cuts your hair but also wants to be BFFs?

There are a couple of options:

A.) You can friend these people, then hide their posts from your news feed.

B.) You can hide your post from these friends by putting them on a restricted list, in which they will only see your public info.

Choice B is better. These people are part of your public sector (not your private), so access to public information seems fair. Of course, there’s a third choice, and that’s to consider what you would do if you were still living in a world before social media. Chances are you’re not going to friend a boss who just denied you a raise.

Finally, if you’re feeling guilty about unfriending someone you have been close to for 20 years, just remember they stole your Kitchen-Aid and probably still have it.

Pete Phelps Pete writes about the entertainment scene on the West Coast. As an LA native, he’s equally frustrated with and thrilled by the growth he sees in LA.

Filed Under: Contributors, Facebook, Featured, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

War of the Words: How to be a WOW Blogger

10/15/2012 by

When radio was young, Orson Welles held the world in frightened captivity when he narrated an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ fictional tale, The War of the Worlds. Since the first hour of the radio program was structured as a series of news reports, many tuning in to the broadcast heard frantic, panicked descriptions of an alien attack on our planet, and, trusting what they heard coming through the box, believed it to be true.

But that was 1938. Surely, that could never happen today, right? Well, probably not to that degree. But the power of words, once they are transmitted, is still undeniable.

Nowadays, with technologies that have gone beyond the one-way messaging of radio and TV, such as texting and Internet communications like emailing, social media, chat rooms, forums, and blogging, we are sending and receiving information to such a degree that our ideas can make an instantaneous impact. At the same time, however, our choice of words is more important than ever, and our message needs to stand out among the seemingly endless stream of sound bites we are bombarded with each day.

The most impactful leaders of our generation utilize the latest avenues of mass communication and social media to impart their ideas and share their knowledge. But what a leader says, and how she says it, is critical to her success. Words are indeed powerful, but their strength is intrinsically linked to the way they are communicated.

Blogging is an ideal format for a WOW leader to convey her message to a broad spectrum of followers. As a leadership journal of sorts, a blog provides a venue through which ideas can be shared, opinions can be voiced, problems can be discussed, and solutions can be offered.

So, how do you make your business blog a success? How do you turn your WOW ideas into a WOW leadership blog?

1. Keep it short. Whatever you say, say it fast. You are competing for the attention of busy, information-overloaded professionals. (Admittedly, keeping my blogs short, succinct, and to the point, is one of my greatest challenges.)

2. Make it relevant. Know your target audience. With a leadership blog, keep your topics related to the challenges faced by those in the business arena. Don’t stray off topic with irrelevant posts and offhanded observations.

3. Find your voice. Be confident in your own opinions, and then use your voice in a consistent and truthful manner. Remember that your words do have power, and can be helpful, thought-provoking, and inspirational to the right group of individuals. Through an open, honest exchange of thoughts, you can lead as well as learn, reinforcing your own leadership abilities and honing the skills that make you successful.

4. Stay positive. Although there may be times when your topic refers to negative subject matter, don’t always be the bearer of bad news. Keep your tone positive in nature with a solutions-based approach to realistic problems.

5. Think big. Unless Donald Trump is writing a blog, readership is anything but guaranteed. Once you start blogging, your following will likely be relatively small. But a great leader keeps her goals focused on continuous growth and steady progress. She is always thinking big, aiming towards expanding her viewer profile and reaching more potential leaders.

Blogging can be an invaluable tool for up-and-coming or established leaders. A blogger’s message may not have the effect that Orson Welles’ broadcast had on the public nearly 75 years ago, but through the latest technologies, the power of words can be just as impactful.

Sheri Staak has served in many Vice Presidential roles at both large privately held and publicly traded global companies. She’s a corporate powerhouse and has been the recipient of numerous sales awards and recognitions. In addition to her key position in a highly aggressive, extremely competitive industry, Sheri is a regular contributor to a travel newsletter, lending her expertise by writing articles that provide tips and advice for business travelers. She also shares her wisdom and business perspectives with regular postings at her leadership-focused blog, The Staak Report.

Filed Under: Contributors, Featured, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Facebook Timeline is Everywhere and People are Mad!

01/30/2012 by

The Facebook timeline has been rolling out since November to the general public. Until recently people have been given the option of it they want to upgrade their profile.  If they did upgrade and didn’t like it, they could return it to the old style within 7 days.  Facebook has announced that there will be no more of these shenanigans and that everyone will be upgraded automatically to the new timeline profile.

Like most updates this has Facebook users up in arms. Many people don’t like the new timeline. They find it confusing and difficult to find things. They like the original layout which just lists activity. In response many people are saying they will leave Facebook for Google+ or just turn off social networks all together.

Lets be real. Maybe a couple people will actually leave Facebook, but most people will not. Facebook knows that they can make these changes, completely ignore feedback, and people will continue to use the network. It has become too ingrained in our online and social culture. Where Facebook will make changes is when it starts to hit their bottom line, ie. affecting businesses.

Of course many of the changes they have made over the past year have greatly affected business on Facebook for the negative but individually they were so small that we couldn’t make a fuss over it. One change that did raise everyone heckles was when FB was deciding what posts should appear on your pages timeline. It resulted in a huge outcry from the business community and prevented the change from ever making it out of the trial phase.

So despite the new roll out, people will yell and complain. You will likely see posts in all caps complaining about how horrible it all it.  You will likely hear that you can revert back to the old style (which you can’t), there will be scams that supposedly let you revert your profile (don’t click those links), or apps created claiming the same thing (they are bogus). Like it or don’t like it, the timeline is here to stay.

 

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

YOUR SEO SUCKS: A Guide to Effective Optimization

12/21/2011 by

You need to form a comprehensive strategy if you hope to see any real return on investment with your SEO efforts. Everyone has their own methods for success, and they may achieve it to varying degrees; you have to find the method that works best for you. That being said, there are certainly universal tactics and a clear battle plan you can draw up using basic SEO strategy.

Branding

Your brand is the personality that defines your product. It is the flagship indicator of culture. There are more than a half billion brands in the world and they are all vying for attention. How does yours stack up? Few people are aware that branding is the real purpose of content-focused SEO.

Let’s take Groupon for example. As a nascent company, Groupon hired on a number of talented comedians from the Second City, an improv group as famous as Oprah and infamous as the bloody gang battles fought in many a Chicago hotel. The culture of Groupon is steeped in that talent pool and flows through their every email, notification, and web page. When people see the cat with the gold chain around its neck, they know it is Groupon.

Developing that kind of brand takes time and effort, but what do you do once the brand is cultivated? Send it out!

Groupon approaches their target market across multiple platforms.

Mobile – The Groupon application for smartphones and tablets used to just send you an email about what deals were available that day, but the company announced Groupon Now, a hyperlocal deal finder targeted at users on the go. By keeping the name and essentially launching an offshoot to their already successful service, Groupon carries over many customers who are familiar with the brand and attracts new ones who have heard good things.  This model fits their company very well, but it may not work for yours. Nevertheless, developing a mobile strategy is key in finding success in a world where the computer means less and mobile Internet is growing exponentially.

Email – As mentioned above, the Groupon emails have become the calling card for the company. Evocative and provocative, the emails use humor to connect with their consumer base and do so on a daily basis; it is as much a part of their brand as their logo, color scheme and rugged low deals. Other culture sites like Thrillist attempt to use humor in their daily emails, though they take on a decidedly “edgier” tack in order to differentiate themselves.

Social – When targeting a demographic of young professionals, maxing out social media potential is key. Again, the brand must come through and for Groupon it does.

WHAT NOT TO DO

When Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, announced that Netflix would be separating its DVD by mail service, the service that made the company famous into a separate entity called Quikster, the Internet went into a riotous frenzy. This is a big no-no. Not only was it a bad business decision, but it segmented the brand’s base, forcing them to choose between Netflix and “Quikster”. Users who wanted both would need two separate accounts for what used to be included under one umbrella. It was a costly mistake for Netflix; they lost nearly one million customers after the announcement and subsequent price hike.

Your brand is going to be the first thing about your company that people see and you literally have seconds to pull prospective customers in. Using SEO and digital PR to amplify that brand and its messages is going to be paramount to achieving success in the digital present and future.

Filed Under: Blogging, Contributors Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Top 3 Online Tools You Need to Track Your Social Media Growth

06/21/2011 by
Tracking your Social Media

Do you know how to track your social media?

Social media is becoming increasingly important as a way for businesses to connect with buyers, prospects, and the market. As social media grows, it will become critical for businesses to brand themselves and build relationships as part of the sales and marketing process. Social media marketing can be a great way for brands to start conversations with their users, but it can also be a time suck. It’s very important for businesses to understand what it is that they want to track and how social media fits into their overall business strategy.

Facebook Insight

Facebook Insights is an excellent free analytics tool built right into Facebook that allows you to track trends among your fans and see how they are interacting with your page. Insights is split into two main sections: users and interactions.

Users give you lots of basic demographic information about your fans, as well as show top referrers to your page.

Interactions can be a real goldmine, offering deep analytics into the updates you’ve made to your page and how users have interacted with it.

You can see which content has been most popular and which tanked, which helps understand what fans like to see on your page. Site owners with Like buttons on their sites can use Insights to see how many people saw the button, clicked on it, and how they got to the page.

Social Mention

Social Mention is a real-time search engine for social media. It’s a great tool for tracking buzz about your firm, product, or launch through Twitter, Facebook, forums, blogs, and other social media sites. A widget shows statistics over time like number of retweets, unique authors, as well as twists like the relative passion of the sentiment about your brand. Social media stats are broken down by content type, so you can see where the most attention is coming from. You can also sign up for emails to alert you whenever a keyword comes up in social content.

Bit.ly

Not only is bit.ly the world’s most popular url shortening tool, it is also an excellent way to use analytics to track link clicks and user behavior. This kind of information would usually not be available if the link were to a social site or to one on which you didn’t have access to the analytics software. However, creating a bit.ly account gives you access to its full-fledged analytics suite, showing top referrers, historical data, and more. You can use their shortening service without having an account, but then you’d be missing out on all that analytical goodness.

 

Social media tracking is important. This list is only to get you thinking about how your business uses social media and how you can begin to track all those tweets and blog mentions. It’s important to analyze the data once you’ve gotten it. If social media isn’t directly helping your bottom line, it may be time to re-think your strategy. Above all, use your analytics to better engage and interact with your audience.

Ashyia Hill is a social media advocate at the small business credit cards comparison website, CreditDonkey.  Do you have any social media analytics tools that have helped you grow your business? Let us know in the comments!

Filed Under: Guest Bloggers, SM3 Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Haphazard can be a hazard

12/20/2010 by
Shakespeare on the computer saying "To Blog or not to Blog"

The big question is: embrace social media or not? It is better to abstain then to do it badly. But conversations are happening regardless of your participation. Do you want to know what is being said?

Last week I wrote about being overly excited and over committing to your social media campaign. The flip side to that coin is the lack-luster approach.  A lot of people realize they need to have their business presence in social media.  However, they are not really interested in doing it. So what happens is they set up their accounts, make a couple of posts and then hop on every few weeks to post something new.

The problem with this is there is no engagement, no strategy, no consistency.  For all intents and purposes it would be better to not have the profile at all.

Hazards of Haphazard

  • Your customers try to talk to you but no one is there to listen.
  • You receive negative feedback, and are not aware of it.
  • You look unprofessional because you did not put any effort into your profile.
  • There is misinformation on the wall or profile.
  • Your page is being used as a posting board for spam.
  • You look like you just don’t care.

It can be worse to only do your social media halfway then to not do it at all.  As the movie The Social Network proposes, the Internet is written in ink.  Meaning anything that is said, whether you say it or someone says it about you, is out there permanently.  Now think about that in terms of your neglected social media account.  What if someone is questioning your business practices, or saying bad things about you?  You want the opportunity to respond.

I don’t want to scare you away from social media.  It is not like you are going to get lambasted as soon as you create an account. But we can all learn from Tiger Woods.

Tiger Woods chose to keep quiet when it came to the car accident that revealed his affair.  People were commenting online in every possible venue. People were clamoring for him to respond. When he didn’t his audience responded for him….and that was not a good thing.  The responses and explanations that his audience came up with were worse than nearly any response he could have made.

Tiger gave us an example of how ignoring social media can be damaging.  Of course what he also showed us is that there is a conversation happening, even if you are not a part of it.

Ultimately you need to embrace social media and you need to do it with sincerity and honesty.  Interact, and meet your audience. Don’t let the conversations happen without you.

Filed Under: SM3 Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Gift of Gab: Women’s Advantage in Social Media

12/16/2010 by

Lauren MacEwen being social at a partyWomen have the business advantage in social media. We continue to be the majority of social media users. As a driving force behind a lot of the overall internet usage, women are commanding a powerful influence in shopping, B2B, social media, blogging and content driven sites.   But women are not just the consumers of retail, information and social activity, we are also the drivers.

Socially women are taught to communicate. We are taught to express our feelings and thoughts and spread information along to other interested parties. Community interactions teach us the art of gossip and gab. We are known as the purveyors of information, and we are often a vast and varied  storehouse of information.

Another school of thought argues that women are neurologically better communicators. According to The Female Brain women can process 13,000 more communication events than men and have 11% more brain cells in the planum temporale, which has to do with processing language.

“[F]rom a young age, women are conditioned to nurture, communicate, and express their feelings through words; all necessary qualities of a social medialite. Our male counterparts, no matter how accomplished or web savvy, have to work infinitely harder to master the art of casually dishing information and “gossiping” about industry hot topics.”

According to PsychTests, women are more comfortable sharing their thoughts and more willing to discuss issues and take others opinions into consideration. Also, women are better listeners and empathizers and are more skilled at handling “touchy-feely” conversations.  But does this mean that women are better at social media?

Whether or not you believe that women have a neurological or social advantage, many schools of thought support the idea that women are better communicators than men.  Communication is a skill, and like any skill it can be honed and developed.  This skill is culturally, and possibly neurologically, supported for women. For men, however, the cultural idea of masculinity as the “strong and silent” type is working in direct opposition to developing this ability.

The nature of social media is social. It is about community, communication, conversation and sharing information. The way in which women use the internet supports a social media advantage.  Though men and women both use the internet for research, the way women conduct their research is  is different. “Women tend to treat information gathering online as a more textured and interactive process – one that includes gathering and exchanging information through support groups and personal email exchanges.”

The business of being social is in interaction and the dissemination of information.

Through our skills in communication and our own user trends, women are becoming a force to be reckoned with in social media. “Women are enthusiastic online communicators.” Social media provides a platform where our natural or socially developed communication skills give us a business edge.

The joke in my house is that if you want to know what is going on ask me, not my husband. In fact, my husband often says how much he dislikes gossip and would rather abstain from a conversation than participate in what he feels is gossipy. Me, on the other hand, I am a collector of information. I collect gossip, news, sociological theory, tech developments, and maintain a repository of generally random information.

I often use this information in my business communication to deepen relationships.  Just like friendships, business relationships are not limited to the topic at hand. The gift of gab can be more than a friendly conversation starter, it can now be an entire business model

Some Facts:

Reposted from a guest post written by Lauren MacEwen for Dr. Shannon Reese

Filed Under: SM3, TEQ Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Evolution of Engagement

12/07/2010 by

Today I received a comment on a post I wrote about MySpacefrom a guy named Spencer Kline.  I appreciated his positive feedback and responded to his comment.  I then noticed that he started following me on Twitter.  Since I had just interacted with him, I recognized who he was. I followed him back and tweeted about his comment.

Later that day I got a trackback to my post about MySpace.  An interesting post was referenced that linked to me. The post was called MySpace’s Future.

Since they were nice enough to link me in their post, I thought I would comment on it. So I did.  Though this was a new blog for me, I did not spend the time to explore it just then.  I didn’t even look at the URL. Blame it on being sick, being busy with projects, being lazy, who knows.

A little while later I got an email that someone responded to my comment.  Lo and behold it was Spencer Kline.  So I realized that he was likely the author of the blog.  I hopped back over to the site and dug in a little deeper.  Not only is he the author, it is his blog! Which if I had bothered to look at the URL I would have immediately realized, www.spencerkline.com. But, lazy, sick, busy..blah blah.

Once I FINALLY made the connection, it was a wonderful AHA moment.  What a wonderful circle of connection. He read my post. Commented. I commented back. He followed me. I followed him. He linked me. I commented. He commented back. I link him!

All of this happened within the span of a few hours. It is perfect!

Filed Under: SM3 Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Facebook Not-Mail: Part 5 The opposite of preferred is Spam?

11/20/2010 by

Cartoon with a man saying "You should check your email more often, I fired you three weeks ago."

There is one glaring issue with the new Facebook email – spam.  There is no spam folder, only an “other” folder. Though we might tend to think this is the same thing, it isn’t. The “other” folder is really meant to filter emails that do not belong in your preferred email box, like bills, newsletters, and annoying friends who only send you forwards with inspirational quotes, etc.  The preferred box is supposed to be for people you really want to hear from. However the opposite of preferred is not spam.

The first part of your email address is your vanity URL.  So if you are www.facebook.com/lauren.macewen  then lauren.macewen@facebook.com will be your email address. These URL’s are crawlable by spam bots which means that any spam bot will easily be able to figure out your email address.

Any spam emails will automatically be put into the “other” box. So, now are you at risk of missing those emails that aren’t spam but aren’t preferred?

Filed Under: Facebook Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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