The big change: Facebook Sponsored Stories will now appear in user’s newsfeeds. Facebook says this won’t be nearly as intrusive to their 800+ million members as it sounds. The ads will be marked as “sponsored”, they will be strictly regulated so that users will see no more than 1 ad in their newsfeed per day, and they will only contain content about friends or pages with which the user is already connected. This gives your ad better odds of being seen by those who would be interested in your business – the types of people you want to like your business page.

Also, Facebook users can’t opt out of sponsored stories, everyone’s getting them. They can, however, delete individual ads from their newsfeed, but that’s less likely to happen because the ads only show information about friends or pages they already interact with on Facebook.

Why this is so great for marketers: It allows you to get your content front and center on people’s newsfeeds, mixed in with all the organic content generated by people’s friends and page likes. Also, the ‘sponsored’ tag on the lower right hand side of the ad is unlikely to be noticed until after the user has processed the ad. If it’s even noticed at all. It’s a pretty small tag, as you can see from the screenshot below.

Another potential benefit for marketers is that this is another way to target Facebook’s 800m+ users, half of which return to the site daily. With sponsored ads appearing in newsfeeds and the right sidebar, as well as traditional Facebook ads, the amount of potential daily impressions for ads will skyrocket. This could go one of two ways for advertisers, 1. Ad prices will decrease because of increased supply, or 2. Ad prices could increase because the addition of sponsored stories could increase demand for Facebook ads. Time will tell which one ends up being true.

Either way, there’s bound to be the usual protests surrounding any change on Facebook, but we have a feeling that will die down pretty quick. Personally, I don’t mind seeing relevant ads on Facebook, and I don’t think it will make a big difference whether they appear on the right sidebar, or within my newsfeed. Highly targeted ads are nice because they inform me of deals or pages I might not have known about otherwise. However, Facebook will need to be careful about maintaining a good ad to organic content ratio. Sponsored ads would quickly get annoying if they began overtaking the newsfeed. I know I can’t be the only one that would think that way.

Dealing with Hackers and Spammers

Having a WordPress site is loads of fun. Being able to create content, make your own edits and upload images and documents without having to contact your web designer is an absolute delight. However, dealing with hackers and spammers is not that great. Granted hackers and spammers do attack non-WordPress sites, but they seem to be targeting these more frequently. There are of course ways to protect yourself.

How do you know if your site has been hacked? If you notice weird spammy words in your website content, in your Google search result or if you’re site redirects to a strange url, then you’ve been hacked. If you’re not 100% sure, try Sucuri SiteCheck. It will scan your site for malware, blacklisting and out-of-date software for free.

How did this happen? Hackers either managed to figure out your FTP password or they used a vulnerability in either the WordPress core files or a plugin.

Here are a few things you can do to prevent this from happening:

1. When creating FTP passwords use a generated word that cannot be pronounced, uses a few symbols and a mixture of upper and lowercase letters. Of course these passwords will be more difficult to remember, but using a tool like 1Password or LastPassword can help.
2. Make sure to upgrade your WordPress site every time a new version comes out. These updates usually include fixes to vulnerabilities and are very important.
3. Make sure you upgrade your plugins as well for the same reason. If you have lots of plugins and aren’t using them all, don’t just deactivate them, delete them.

If your site has been hacked, then you’ll need to clean up the files. I normally delete the WordPress core files (everything but the wp-config.php and wp-content folder) and re-install everything. I also do a manual scan of the theme files to make sure that hackers haven’t messed anything up. If this feels a bit intimidating, you might want to contact Sucurri Security. For a small fee they can clean up infected sites and you can also hire them to scan your site and keep an eye on it annually.

If you’ve been blacklisted by Google or spammy words appear in Google search results, you’ll need to log into your Google webmaster tool and submit your site for reconsideration once it’s clean.

Although spammers are less harmful, they are equally as annoying. If you’re site is new and you haven’t publicized your email address, you might want to install the email address encoder plugin. This plugin will simply scramble your email address making it harder for harvesters to grab it. If on the other hand your email is already out there, then I’m afraid that once it’s on a spam list, there’s not much you can do.

Spam comments can also be detrimental with more and more evidence pointing to the fact that these are not simply generated by robots but actual people. The first thing to do is to install Akismet which will do it’s best to trap spam comments. But Akismet alone is insufficient.

Be warned against comments that seem harmless. They might praise your work or congratulate you on your blog and let you know that they are bookmarking it right now. These types of comments are simply tests to see if you will accept them or not. Once you’ve approved them, then they’ll attack your blog much more fiercely.

Finally, one of the most effective ways to reduce spam is simply to close comments after a few weeks. Most readers leave comments on newer posts. Closing off comments automatically after a few weeks is very simple. Log into your WordPress admin, go to settings > Discussion and check the box that says “Automatically close comments on articles older than __ days” and enter the number of days you want to use.

I just did this myself recently and the influx of spam comments has been reduced dramatically.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our blog posts this past year, oh faithful reader. Stay tuned in 2012 as we help you navigate the never-ending changes and happenings in social media and internet marketing.

Now get out there and celebrate, it’s New Year’s Eve!

As usual, NORAD is doing a great job of tracking Santa’s efforts as he does his last minute preparations for the big day. You can follow NORAD on their website,  Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

If you’re doing some last minute shopping but still want to track Santa’s progress, there’s an app for that. Organize your holiday shopping list and follow Santa with the Santa Claus Tracker, or use the Santa Tracker 2011 to track Santa, read  his blogs, text him, or show your kids if they’re on the nice list. You can even track Santa’s progress through NORAD using Google Maps.

Want to read about the history of Santa? Check out his Wikipedia page.

The good news is, Santa seems to have tightened up his security since last year’s Wikileaks fiasco when his naughty list went public.

If you’re not sure your letter to Santa made it to the North pole, post it to Santa’s wall on his Facebook page and read other people’s wish lists.

Happy holidays to everyone that followed us this year. Now go eat, drink and be merry these next few days, we’re going to be doing the same!

Free

Like most social media tools, creating a YouTube channel is free. All you need is a gmail account and you can create a channel and start uploading videos.

Advertising

If you feel Google Adwords and Facebook Ads are getting too expensive for your budget, or you’d like to broaden your advertising reach, YouTube offers paid advertising and is generally less expensive than both Google and Facebook. With YouTube, there’s two types of advertising, 1. Within YouTube search, you can bid on the keywords you feel users would enter into the search bar to find your video. When users search these keywords, a thumbnail and description of your video appears in the results. 2. Promoted Videos run on the right hand side of a YouTube page (similar to paid advertising with Google), and can be set up through Google Adwords.

SEO

Google owns YouTube, they’re bound to put an emphasis on video in the organic search results if an applicable video is available online. Try a search yourself, there’s a good chance you’ll find relevant videos in your results. To take full advantage of the SEO benefits of video, remember to tag your videos with relevant keywords and terms you think people would use to find your video online.

Viral

Make a video funny or creative enough to catch the eye of the online world (no pressure!), and it could go viral; resulting in your video being seen by thousands of people. The exposure for your brand is priceless.

Demonstrate Expertise

Informational videos about your industry, or videos showcasing why you offer your customers a superior product, are a great way to showcase your knowledge online. Giving away great tips online gives potential clients a teaser of how good you are at what you do, and can translate into them contacting you for more information.

Humanize Your Business

The stuffy, corporate business model is out. People want to get to know the people behind a brand, and a great way to do that is through video. If you’re camera shy, find someone within your company that isn’t. Or, if you’re a one person show, you can post a powerpoint or slideshow video and narrate it as you go.  And, don’t be afraid to show off your personality!

Measure your effectiveness

One of the challenges of marketing offline is the difficulty in measuring the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns.  If you put up a billboard downtown, it’s difficult to tell how many customers you acquired because of it. With YouTube, you have access to Insight reporting which quantifies views, demographics, popularity, and the community surrounding your YouTube presence.

Website traffic

The end goal of social media is driving traffic back to your website and to convert fans of your online content into customers and clients. When you’re active on YouTube and posting videos, commenting and rating others’ videos, sharing, etc, you generate interest in your channel. If you’ve included links to your website in your channel and the description sections of your videos, you can drive traffic to your website and increase your chances of making a sale.

Need help setting up a YouTube Channel for your business? We’re great at it! Contact us for more information.

What Is Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing according to Wikipedia is  ‘the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a “crowd”), through an open call.’  Interestingly, Wikipedia itself is a great example of crowdsourcing online- all of the content is input and administered by people like you and me across the globe who have insights and knowledge they want to share.  But, I digress.

The proliferation of the Internet and social media brings the ability to tap into the collective knowledge more easily, and this has been the catalyst that has really amped crowdsourcing’s viability from a small business perspective over the last five years.

Two Approaches to Crowdsourcing

There are two approaches to online crowdsourcing for business.

1.       Formal Crowdsourcing – this is organised, structured crowdsourcing where service providers are connected with potential projects and opportunities through a facilitator like Vancouver’s Hire the World. Similar to outsourcing, crowdsourcing takes the activity of farming out specific tasks or requirements and taps into the online population for both the fulfillment and, in more and more cases, the feedback on decision making.

E-Lance has long been in the business of facilitating the outsourcing of work online.  If you need a logo for example and have limited resources it is a great place to start to find the right design for you.  Over the years however, online outsourcing has evolved to encompass the crowd as participators throughout the fulfillment process.

2.       Informal Crowdsourcing – this is something that you might have done without even realising or thinking much about it.  Have you ever asked a question on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn and received answers?  More than likely you have.  Congratulations, you just crowdsourced.

Let me give you an example of informal crowdsourcing.  Our website recently had some issues.  We found out about it as a result of a post on our Facebook page from a follower who had been trying to access one of our blog posts but, try as he might, he couldn’t get the post to load.  We tried to recreate the issue internally but couldn’t so we put the word out on Facebook and immediately our “crowd” went into action.  Within about 10 minutes, thanks to feedback from followers, we were able to isolate the problem to MAC users (one follower on Twitter even suggested that there was an issue with some specific code on our site) and to quickly and easily rectify the issue at no cost and with little effort.  We were able to fix the problem in a matter of minutes and get the website up and running again, all thanks to crowdsourcing and the Out-Smarts crowd

Which crowdsourcing approach you take will depend on the challenges you are facing and the task at hand.  Crowdsourcing can be used for everything, from something as simple as getting directions to the best Italian coffee house in Gastown for an important meeting, to researching your market, getting feedback from clients, learning about new technologies,  getting design, admin or other  work done, to asking your clients for feedback on your products and services.  The only limitation might be your imagination.

The Risks of Crowdsourcing

With crowdsourcing, the possibilities are endless but, as with every approach, there are risks that should be taken into account.  In order to identify these, I crowdsourced by asking a question on Quora and LinkedIn (you can click to read the responses).  Luca Hammer on Quora (thanks Luca!) pointed out that you shouldn’t use crowdsourcing for sensitive tasks, should be able to define the task appropriately so that response meets your expectations and that you don’t always know who you are working with and whether they are trust worthy.  To this I would add that you should always verify for yourself any information and feedback that you get when using crowdsourcing as a research tool and always do some due diligence to protect yourself from the risks when tapping into the collective.

The Internet connects billions of people worldwide, each individual  has skills or knowledge but in isolation their knowledge can only impact their direct circles.  With enhanced communication capabilities and social hubs that connect people, being able to source the collective to get work done, to make decisions and to be more productive becomes possible through crowdsourcing.

Mistake #1: Thinking fans frequently visit your business page

Most people only ever visit your fan page once, and after that they interact with your page via their newsfeed. Some highly interactive and engaging business pages see frequent repeat visitors, but the majority of fans interact with your page by liking and commenting on postings that appear in their newsfeeds. In order to drive more traffic to your fan page it is important to recognize this fact and post in such a way that entices fans to return to your page. For example, “we’ve posted new photos albums to our page”, or “we post daily tips every weekday, scroll down our page for lots of great advice”.

Mistake #2: Believing fans see every post published to your business page’s wall

Many pages owners think that every fan of their page is seeing everything they post. This is far from true. The easiest way to think about how fans see your postings is to think about how you see content on your personal Facebook profile. What appears in your newsfeed is only a fraction of your friend’s activity, it is the information that Facebook has deemed important enough for you to see based, in part, on who you interact with most on Facebook. It is possible to change your newsfeed settings so that you see everything that has recently been posted, but fewer than 10-20% of Facebook users modify these settings.

How can you change how many fans see your postings? Engage your audience! Each time a fan comments on one of your postings it shows up on their Facebook page and in their friend’s newsfeeds. Also, the more a fan likes, comments and interacts with your page, the more often your postings show up in their newsfeed.

Mistake #3: Ignoring fan comments

A successful business page involves conversations between you and your fans. If you never respond to fan comments, they won’t continue commenting for long. No one wants to talk to a brick wall (pun intended!). The more you respond to fans, the more they will comment and interact with your page. On a similar note, respond to negative comments instead of deleting them from your wall. Social media is about being transparent, and deleting negative comments is the opposite of the image you want to portray. Instead, respond promptly to negative comments and address the person’s concerns in a timely, friendly manner. Often times, even negative comments can be an opportunity for you to shine by showing you care about your customers and their opinions, and that you respond to comments and concerns quickly.

Mistake #4: Posting content all about you, and way too often

You don’t want to hog your fan’s newsfeeds with 4 or 5 posts all in row, this is a surefire way to get them to unlike your page. Instead, aim to post content 1-2 times a day, and spread your posts out a bit throughout the day. We highly recommend the 80/20 rule – 80% of the time, post interesting content from your industry and 20% of the time, post promotional content about your brand or company. The goal is to draw fans to your page and position yourself as the go-to-resource for the newest and greatest information in your industry. If you do this correctly, fans will naturally be interested in finding out more about your company – without your having to be overly promotional or salesy.

Mistake #5: Not taking advantage of the many features available to business pages

There are many customization features available to Facebook pages, why wouldn’t you take advantage of them? Start by claiming your vanity url if you have over 25 fans. This will make it easier for fans to find your page, and increase your visibility in search results. Next, create custom tabs on your Facebook page, including a custom welcome page, and set your welcome tab as the default landing tab for non-fans. Finally, link your various social media accounts to your Facebook page, including your blog, YouTube, and autoposting your Facebook updates to your Twitter account.

Mistake #6: Not budgeting for Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads are a great way to gain fans and awareness of your page – these ads are highly targeted and their precision is virtually unrivaled. Best of all, you set the budget! Spend as little as $1 a day or as much as you’re comfortable with, and you only pay when people click on your ad. Facebook Ads can send people either to your Facebook page or to your external website and are an integral part of building awareness of your business.

Mistake #7: Running illegal Facebook competitions and contests

Most Facebook page admins are unaware of Facebook’s rules and regulations surrounding contests and promotions, but it’s important to know the details before you inadvertently get your Facebook page deleted for running an illegal contest. In our blog post on Facebook contests, we cut through the legalese and explain the rules and regulations in a straightforward way so you know exactly how to run a contest that follows Facebook’s guidelines.

If you avoid making these 7 mistakes with your Facebook page you will be well on your way to creating an engaging and popular business page. If you need assistance with your business page, contact us and we’d be happy to help.

Diaspora is an interesting concept. Still in beta, it purports to allow you to “share what you want, with whom you want”; you choose exactly who you share your photos and what-not with, and you retain ownership of your stuff. You can sign up for an invite on their website.

If you are a Twitter fan, you should check out Trensdmap which gives you real time local Twitter trends so you can get the scoop on what is happening in your Twitterverse.

CoverItLive is another social media add-on tool. This one is aimed at bloggers – CoverItLive is a tool that allows you to broadcast live commentary to your followers.

Ghostery calls itself a “window into the invisible web” – tags, web bugs, pixels and beacons that are included on your web pages in order to get an idea of your online behavior. It tracks the trackers and gives you a roll-call of the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity.

SocialBakers is an online tool providing social media statistics across countries, brands, articles, Twitter and so on. Very handy for internet marketing types.

Empire Avenue is another interesting website, this one lets you grow your social capital (whatever that means). It is actually a social game that lets you buy and sell shares of people online and websites.

And strictly for fun, if you are looking for some new ideas, why not swap some on The Idea Swap – keep swapping until you get an idea you like!

Hiring an expert in social media can be a great solution to these problems because it enables you to cut to the chase without having to worry about the steep learning curve social media can entail. It also increases the likelihood of your organisation achieving its social media goals more quickly, but only if you choose the right organisation or individual to work with.  Beware, if your chosen partner in this area turns out to be inept, you could end up throwing money down the drain, or worse, damaging your online reputation.

Here are ten tips that will help you determine how to hire the right social media help.

1. Do a little research up front.  Google the person or company to see whether the results are related to social media.
2. Find them on LinkedIn; check their referrals, experience and how long they have been doing social media related work.  If they don’t have a LinkedIn presence then maybe they are simply social media power users, and not social media for business experts.
3. Facebook and Twitter – check out their feeds – do they add value? Are they social media related? Avoid companies that have generic posts or worse, simply spout famous quotes.  Also on Twitter, consider their follower counts, and remember that quality is always better than quantity when it comes to those.
4. How long have they been doing social media? – social media is a relatively new principle but generally if someone has been doing this less than a year then they are still wet behind the ears.  Best to work with an organisation that has been doing social media for upwards of 2 years (we’ve been doing it for 5!).
5. Do they ask the right questions?  I am often asked which questions to ask a social media expert from a hiring perspective (and I will get to those momentarily) but more importantly, you can determine whether a social media expert knows his or her stuff by the questions she asks you.  If she asks how many followers you want but doesn’t ask about your target audience, or about your business, then that should be a red flag.  Social media is not simply about being on Twitter or Facebook.  It is about using these tools strategically to build your business given your audience, marketplace, goals and resources, and a good social media strategist will take these into account.
6. Do they have a business background?   Social media should be a component of your overall marketing and business strategy, and should complement your missions and goals.  As such, a good social media expert should have a strong back ground in business systems whether it be through their education or experience.  Working with someone with no business background that has many followers can be a mistake.
7. A good question to ask a social media expert is how do they monitor and measure social media success.  If they are flummoxed and don’t have a good answer then avoid them.  If their answer includes mentions, interactions, web traffic analysis, community, insights and your goals then they are more likely to be on the right track.
8. Ask them why you should use social media.  If they answer that everyone is doing it then turn tail and run.  However if they ask if your competitors, clients and prospects are online, and if you want to attract the next generation of customers, then move on to number 9.
9. Social media professionals often get asked about the ROI of social media. Again, if an expert has no answer to this then they probably won’t be the right partner for you.   It is much easier to track the ROI of a social media campaign than it is to track the effectiveness of some tradition marketing approaches such as billboard and newspaper ads.  A good SM person will know this and will point out that your ROI will be dependent on what you want to achieve using these tools.  They might give examples of projects they have worked on and how ROI was measured.
10. Ask yourself if this is an individual or organisation that you can work closely with.  When considering outsourcing your social media effort, it is extremely important that you chose a partner that you can work well with.  Your social media will be a team effort and will likely involve lots of back and forth when maintaining your online presence, so work with someone you like and trust.

As with any partnership decision, often the best place to start when looking for a social media expert to work with is to ask people in your own business network who they work with, and whether they would recommend them.  Unfortunately, there are a a lot of cowboys and snake oil salesmen claiming to be social media gurus right now, but if you follow the guidance outlined above you will be more likely to identify the right social media partner for you.  Or you could just contact Out-Smarts, we do come highly recommended!

If you’re a registered nonprofit and you’re not using Google’s Grants program, you might want to get on board. I’ve got lots to say about the benefits of this program, but let’s start with these two very appealing benefits:

Free Google Ads worth up to $10,000 per month.

A designated “nonprofit” channel on YouTube, also free.

For a long time, these benefits have been available to U.S.-based charities but not up here in Canada. That’s changed, and Canadian nonprofits are eligible too.

If this is enough to convince you, and you’re ready to go apply right this instant, I won’t stop you – here’s the link to the application form. But if you want more details first, read on.

Let’s start with the free advertising. Google sells the text-based ads that appear alongside their search results (brand name: AdWords) via an auction-like system: you select the keywords you want to advertise on (e.g. if you’re Covenant House Vancouver, you might want to show up on search results pages for searches like “homeless youth”, “homelessness Vancouver”, “at-risk youth Vancouver”, and so on), and you tell Google how much you’re willing to pay per click – perhaps 5 cents, maybe a dollar, maybe more. The more you’re willing to spend, the more likely it is that your ad will appear at (or near) the top of the ads, and on the first page of search results.

There’s an art to choosing the right keywords, of course, and Google has some tools to help you here. You’ll benefit greatly from taking a trial-and-error approach, and by crafting the text of your ad very carefully to be a) relevant to the search results on which it appears and b) enticing enough to attract traffic.

In any case, the premise of the Google Grants program (more details here) is that they will allow you to bid up to $1.00 per click, and they won’t charge you a penny – and you can “spend” up to $10,000 a month for your free ads. It’s a great deal, with no financial risk to you that I can see. (If you know of any, please leave them in the comments.)

OK, on to benefit #2: your own branded “channel” page on YouTube. YouTube (which is owned by Google) has their own nonprofit program aimed at helping charitable organizations improve their reach & support online activism and fundraising. The primary benefits of their program are:

Your own “channel” page (like this one from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives), which can be branded to coordinate with your other online communications channels.

The option to drive fundraising through a Google Checkout “Donate” button (this isn’t for everyone, as you may have your own online donation software you want to use to ensure that your contacts are kept in one place);

You’ll be included on YouTube’s nonprofit channels and nonprofit videos pages

And perhaps most interestingly, they provide you with the option to add a call-to-action overlay on your videos, to drive traffic to your online campaigns.

If you’re using YouTube at all, this is well worth pursing. Full details on the YouTube Nonprofit Program are available here. And you can apply with the same Google for Nonprofits account you use for AdWords.

And if you’re not using YouTube yet, here’s a great post from Socialbrite on why you should be.

There’s more, too – Google Earth for nonprofits, Google Apps for nonprofits… the list goes on.

Here’s that application form once again. Highly recommended.