Social Networking
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, January 18th, 2012
A lot has changed the five or so years that Out-Smarts has been focused on social media marketing. For a start, most people now know what Facebook is, many are even using it for more than “being social”. Studies show that 60% of all Canadians are using social media and 44% of small to medium sized business decision makers use social media, but are businesses using it the right way to build their online presence strategically? In many cases, they’re not. Here are the top 10 mistakes that companies make when using social media.
1. Not taking social media seriously
There’s over 800 million people using Facebook, and over 200 million Twitter users - not to mention, a similar number of folks on LinkedIn, and yet many businesses still dismiss social media as a flash in the pan. Your business has the potential to take advantage of this massive online hub; ignoring it is a huge folly. You don’t have to start with a presence of your own if you’re not comfortable. Using social media to listen to, and learn from, others in your industry can be a valuable research method, and it is also a great way to get a feel for how social media is used in your sector.
2. Ignore it and hope it will go away
Back in the early nineties when I sold Internet technologies, lots of companies weren’t convinced that the Internet would take off, so they ignored it and hoped it would go away. Many were left scrambling at the last minute to catch up online and some didn’t survive. A hundred or so years ago many naysayers dismissed the phone. The same story is now replaying with regard to social media. Don’t stick your corporate head in the sand – social media isn’t going away and the sooner you accept that, the less risk to your business.
3. It’s only for small business
I’ve read a few articles recently that write off social media off as a tool that’s only useful for small to medium sized businesses. Many large, established businesses use this as an excuse because they have done things the traditional way for so long that they know no other way. However, pioneers like Whole Foods, Southwest Airlines and Ford are proving that social media can be a driving force for larger organisations too, if it’s done right.
4. The Intern can do it
Many organisations get a young intern to maintain their social networks because this person has hundreds of Twitter followers, or is on Facebook all the time. However, just because you are familiar with using these tools socially doesn’t mean you know how to use them for business. I am not saying an intern can’t do it, but you should make sure that they understand your goals, mission, audience, brand and such first, so that they can represent you appropriately online.
5. Failing to consider company strategy
Point 4 leads me nicely to point 5 – not approaching social media from a strategic perspective. Only 8% of companies surveyed in a recent Forrester report are using social media in ways that tie in with their corporate objectives. Again, companies often embark on using social media for the sake of using it rather than using it from a strategic perspective. Before your company sets out on the social media path you should ask – who is your target audience, what is your message, which tools are right for your business given your brand and mission, and how can you use social media to augment your everyday activities. If you do that, your social media efforts are more likely to amount to something.
6. It’s all about you
In the old business world, marketing was all about corporations; all activities centered around the product and service, and not the consumer. Every message had to be vetted – which took time and meant the the company was in control. Many organisations take this approach to social media, and then wonder why they are spending lots of resources but have few results and little return to show for it. They aren’t succeeding because they need to re-engineer their approach. These days, it is not about you, but rather, it’s about your audience and every social touchpoint should reflect that. To be effective in social media you need to focus on your target audience, be able to move faster, and to communicate in the moment before content gets outdated.
7. Blatant selling
This is the biggest faux pas you can make with social media. Never use social media to blatantly sell. It is okay to promote your offering, but in your face selling is off putting. Here at Out-Smarts, we use the 80-20 rule – 80% of our posts are aimed at adding value, and only 20% are promotional.
8. Failing to set goals and objectives
As with any other business function, you should set goals and objectives before you start rather than haphazardly setting up your social shop (as it were). What is it that you hope to achieve? You may want to build community with your target audience, extend your reach to new communities, use social media as a conduit to extend the reach of your content, drive traffic to your website, etc. Whatever your goals are, you should document them, quantify them and make sure that they are achievable.
9. Failure to measure success
Many companies have no idea whether their social media presence is benefiting them or not, nor are they able to respond to what is being said about them online. Once you’ve determined your goals, you should put in place tools that allow you to measure your success and to listen effectively. These might include free tools – for example; for web traffic analysis you can use Google Analytics, to measure your Facebook following use Insights, for Twitter use counters or paid tools like Radian6 that allow you to monitor and measure engagement.
10. Failing to take a holistic business approach.
Up until recently, many businesses have looked on social media as a stand alone approach rather than considering it as a way to complement and augment their entire marketing strategy. 2012 is going to be the year when the penny drops and companies realise that the best social media projects are those that complement their real world activities.
Written by Corrie Scott, September 02nd, 2011
The following is a blog post written by Christine Rondeau of Bluelime Media. With her permission, we’ve reprinted it on our blog. If you’d like to see the original, click here.
Almost every week, I’m asked questions on the merit of social media. People are curious about why one would need to use facebook or twitter. My usual response is that social media works, but it only works if you make it work for you.
Of course it takes time and effort and you will need to moderate your social media accounts. Could you hire someone to do that for you? Sure, but you could also hire someone to look after your kids and raise them. Is that what you want?
In order to clearly explain what I mean by “making it work for you” I thought I would share what my process is and how I make it work for me.
Fortunately, I started early. I’ve been blogging since 2004, so blogging is part of my social media strategy. This strategy is no more than a word though. I don’t have a blogging schedule and I’m not very discipline. I write blog posts when I have something to say but I always write on topic.
If you choose to start a blog, think about what you want to blog about. Check out other blogs and see what they are doing. Would you be simply repeating what others are already saying? Do you feel like you have something important to add? Will you be gaining clients or positioning yourself as a market leader if you do?
More importantly think about your love or writing. If you dislike writing, blogging may not be for you.
I think I joined LinkedIn as early as 2002. LinkedIn was quiet for a long time but recently gained a lot of traction and criticism. I was happy enough with LinkedIn, I never paid attention to it and connected with people I knew when requested, but about 8 months ago, I started receiving many more requests from total strangers. For some reason LinkedIn became more about how many connections one has than who your connections are. I examined my LinkedIn profile and decided that it really wasn’t serving, so simply killed it. Since then, no more requests to connect with strangers.
Since then created I’ve created an about.me profile and posted my resume on Zerply. Why? They were both free and fun to put together. If either one of them follows in LinkedIn’s footsteps and becomes a nuisance, I’ll just delete them.
I joined Facebook 3 years ago (I think). You can look for me if you want but I won’t friend you, sorry. I only use facebook for family and yoga. I use it as a tool to keep informed of upcoming yoga events and look at my sister’s picture. That’s it. I don’t have a fan page and I’ve never ‘Liked’ a page. I personally am not a fan of facebook, because I find it too cluttered and messy. Some folks love it and it works for them, great, but it’s just not for me.
I was a bit late to join twitter and took a while to get it, but twitter is by far my favourite social media tool. I like it because it works for me.
Again, like facebook, I’m very particular about who I follow. 99% of the people I follow are either WordPress developers or work in the web industry. I keep the number of people I follow to about 200 and unfollow anyone who posts too many drunken tweets, sexist ones or only talks about hockey.
Because most of the people I follow are WordPress devs, I tweet a lot about WordPress and use it when I have questions. Just yesterday, I had issues with github. I tweeted my dismay and sure enough, a few minutes later, I had answers to my problem. How brilliant is that?
Sure I could have done the same on facebook, Google + or LinkedIn, but twitter is the medium I prefer.
I don’t think that there’s a definite guide on how to use social media. We all have different needs, different likes and dislikes. If you are curious about social media, I would encourage you to just sign up and open account. Any of them will do. Just try it out. Accounts can always be closed if they are not for you.
There are many dos and don’t when it comes to social media. I won’t go into all of the details here as I am no social media expert. If you’re interested in reading more about Social Media and learning a few tips and tricks, I would recommend that you subscribe to Boxcar Marketing’s Newsletter: Underwire. It’s very well written always packed full of interesting tidbits.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, August 05th, 2011
LinkedIn recently overtook MySpace as the second largest social network. With over 100m users worldwide, LinkedIn is not only one
of the most popular networks but also one of the oldest (launched in 2003), and it is by far the most used network in the business community.
These days, if you are a professional and you’re not on LinkedIn you risk being perceived as old fashioned, out of touch, or worse, lazy. If you have been procrastinating about using LinkedIn for business and are not sure where to start, this blog post is for you.
LinkedIn 101
LinkedIn is a social network that centers around your career and your connections. You post your resume, in as much or as little detail as you feel comfortable with, and start connecting with people you work with, or have worked with in the past. You also connect with people you went to school with, or people you know through your existing business connections.
Why use LinkedIn?
People use LinkedIn for a multitude of reasons. Your goals and usage will depend on your career, your ambitions, your role and, ultimately, your business goals.
If you don’t have any other social media presence, and you’ve avoided it like the plague, then LinkedIn is the place you should start. Given that, with the current economic times, no job is a job for life; building a LinkedIn presence can help you stay current – just in case. Not only that, LinkedIn can also save you a lot of time and effort in your current role. Those are just a couple of reasons why LinkedIn is a must for business people. Here are ten more reasons why every business person should be on LinkedIn:
1. LinkedIn for Research – LinkedIn’s questions and answers is great place to crowd source. If you are working on a project and need to do some research, why not consider asking the LinkedIn community. People are often keen to show their knowledge, and you will find that if you word your question correctly you will get valuable feedback, links and information that will save you time.
2. Looking for work? Find out if the person who is hiring, or prominent people from the company that you want to do business with, are in your extended network and ask for a connection from the person you have in common. It’s always easier to get an interview or a first meeting if you are referred by someone trusted. Also if you are on the job market, make sure that you post your resume to LinkedIn and update it as your experience grows. LinkedIn is often the first place recruiters look when considering hiring someone.
3. Share an Update – Use your status updates on LinkedIn wisely. You can use them to inform your networks of what you do, or what you are looking to do. For example, if you are conducting a strategy session with a client, tell your network that – many of them might not know that you provide this service. Or you can entrench yourself as an expert in your field by posting valuable links to articles or news pertinent to your field that will educate or add value for your connections.
4. Company Profiles – LinkedIn isn’t just for individuals, businesses can have profiles too, and yours should. Doing so will help build your organization’s web presence, will allow interested parties to learn more about your business, give you valuable referrals and will improve your web ranking. Make sure that employees know about your page and link to it, and that your services are prominently displayed.
5. Save Time and Maintain Relationships – In the old days people had a rolodex and had to lift a phone on a regular basis in order to keep in touch with their connections, and only managed to keep in touch with the main ones because it took so much time. These days you can use tools like LinkedIn to stay at the forefront of people’s minds (even those on the periphery of your network). I am not saying that you shouldn’t lift a phone – you should, but by using LinkedIn you can more easily keep in touch with more people and augment your relationships.
6. Build Your Network – Not only is it important to keep in touch with people but it is also important in business to connect with new people. When you do so, follow up with a LinkedIn connect request and take advantage of your in person networking in the virtual world too. Get in the habit of doing this and your LinkedIn network will quickly grow. Connect with people you meet, work with, people you connect with online and use this as a way to stay in touch with your connections as in point five above.
7. Reach the Powers that Be – LinkedIn is the social network used most by top level executives so it can be a really valuable tool in connecting you with decision makers. This is especially powerful for strategic selling.
9. Hiring – with over 100m potential candidates online, have you thought of using LinkedIn to facilitate in your hiring process? People use LinkedIn for recruitment and for finding jobs and, given the professional nature of the tool, it can help you find just the right person for the job. You can easily set this up – it costs about $195 for a 30 day job posting.
10. Advertise – LinkedIn recently started allowing members to advertise on its network in a highly targeted way. You can advertise to specific people by company, geography, title, gender and age. You only pay for click throughs (each time someone clicks on the ad) and the cost is quite affordable (minimum $10 per day), but one downside is that you are limited by characters in the text.
If LinkedIn is on your to-do list please remember that we provide LinkedIn set up, maintenance, education and coaching services. Contact us and let us know how we can assist.
Please connect with us on LinkedIn at Out-Smarts or with Mhairi.
Related articles:
http://www.out-smarts.com/2010/01/21/using-social-media-for-recruitment-part-1-linkedin/
http://www.out-smarts.com/2009/04/17/is-your-company-on-linkedin/
http://www.out-smarts.com/2008/10/27/the-out-smarts-podcast-11-linkedin-with-rob-duncan/
Written by Corrie Scott, July 13th, 2011
It’s been a couple weeks since giant Google launched their latest effort in social, Google+. The search giant has had a couple false starts 
in their attempt to go social with both Google Wave and Google Buzz failing to catch users’ attention. However, from the buzz around the web, Google+ might just have the potential to rival the leader of social, Facebook.
What is Google+?
In short, Google+ is Google’s latest attempt at a social network. The official Google blog stated that,
“Today, the connections between people increasingly happen online. Yet the subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools. In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it.”
To facilitate ease of sharing, Google is integrating many of their current features and products into Google+ in the form of Circles, Sparks, Hangouts, and Mobile. They’ve also included a ‘Stream’, analogous to Facebook’s newsfeed or the Twitter stream – something social savvy users will find familiar. The constantly updating stream will aggregate updates and postings from all your friends in one place.
Circles
Circles are similar to Facebook lists, but easier and more intuitive. The premise behind circles is that people don’t want to share everything with everyone. For example, you most likely share different things with your friends than you do with you family, and you probably want to keep your weekend escapades separate from the information you share with your work contacts. You can easily do this by separating your contacts into different circles, such as ‘friends’, ‘family’, ‘work’ or a customized circle. To do this, simply click on a contact and drag them into the appropriate circle where they will only see the information you want them to see.
Sparks
Sparks brings content to you automatically based on whatever ‘sparks’ your interest. Maybe you’re interested in cycling, dogs, cooking, or you’re a car enthusiast – sparks collects interesting content from across the internet and brings it right to you, on a separate page for each topic. It’s easy get started with Sparks, you type a topic of interest, such as ‘social media’ into the search box and, if you like the content that appears, you can click ‘Add Interest’ and social media will be added to your Sparks.
If you later decide you don’t want to follow a certain topic, it’s easy to delete it from your Sparks – simply hover over the topic you wish to delete and click the X.
Hangouts
This is basically video chat, with an added twist of being able to have a multi-person video chat. You can choose which friends, or even entire circles, you wish to video chat with, and anyone in the Hangout can invite their own contacts to join as well.
Mobile
Huddle
If you remember group messaging from the days of msn messenger, you’ll quickly understand the Huddle feature. Instead of having multiple similar conversations, you can instead start a Huddle where everyone can chat together. This feature could be incredibly useful for trying to make plans to get any group of people to meet all at one place at one time.
Instant Upload
Photos taken on your mobile phone will be automatically added, with your permission, to a private photo album in the Google cloud. This way, you can share them straight from Google+, without the hassle of traditionally uploading them. Many users fear only having a copy of their photos in the cloud, which is why it’s easy to backup your online images to your home computer using Google Takeout.
Location
You can easily add your location to every post you make in Google+. Or not, the choice is up to you.
Privacy
Social networks, most notably Facebook, have been notorious for their privacy issues. Google has tackled users’ privacy concerns by making it easy to customize your Google+ profile’s visibility. Your name and photo (if you upload one) are the only things that are public on your profile, everything else can be customized to private. Or, you can assign different levels of profile visibility to different circles. Furthermore, the names of your circles won’t be disclosed, not even to the people that are in them. So, feel free to put someone in the acquaintance circle without worrying about insulting them!
As with Facebook, you can block people you don’t want to interact with, and choose whether or not your profile is indexed by search engines.
How to join Google+
Currently Google+ is in Beta testing stage and can only be accessed through invitation from a current Google+ user. If you have a friend already on Google+, ask them to invite you! Or, you can sign-up here with your Google ID and be notified when Google is allowing more users access to the testing stage.
If, once you’re a Google+ member, you decide it isn’t for you; you can downgrade your account by following the steps in this guide. Deleting just your Google+ account will leave your other Google accounts unaffected, or you have the option to delete your entire Google Account and all associated services.
Have you tried Google+? What do you think of it? Let us know below in the comments section.
Written by Corrie Scott, June 16th, 2011
Twitter is rolling out some new features on their site. If you don’t yet see the following changes, you will soon!
The biggest changes are to the ‘following’ link, under the profile tab. Now, instead of seeing a list of everyone a person is following, you will see their Twitter stream as they see it. The exception is that you will not be able to see the tweets of people they follow that have protected their tweets. This is what users will see when they click the “following” link on Out-Smarts’ Twitter page.
To see the old following list, click on the ‘people’ tab as shown in the above image. This will enable you to see all of the people that person is following in the old format. From the people tab you can also see a list of people you are both following by clicking the ‘you both follow’ link.
You can also access the old following list by clicking ‘view all’ beside the ‘following’ heading on the lower right hand panel.
Finally, Twitter has introduced a new ‘shuffle’ feature. When you have clicked to see who a person is following, and are viewing their Twitter stream as they see it, you’ll find the shuffle button in the upper right corner of your screen.
Hovering over this button tells you that you can ‘jump to someone you follow’. This option takes you to the Twitter account of someone you both follow, and shows you their Twitter stream.
What do you think of these new features?
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, May 30th, 2011
Quora, the crowdsourced question and answers community has been getting a lot of publicity lately. Purported to be more than just another questions and answers site, Quora is aimed at going beyond a simple forum for questions and answers (like Yahoo Answers) to being more of a brain trust where individuals’ knowledge on a topic is collected and made available to members of the community.
Founded in 2008 by former Facebook executives, the latest social community for business seems destined for big things. Since its inception, Quora has grown steadily and in the last year, user counts have doubled - although according to this compete.com graph, the number of visits is still erratic. Quora doesn’t make user counts available but there are an estimated 200,000 – 500,000 users - according to this Tech Crunch article.
On its website, Quora describes itself as:
” a continually improving collection of questions and answers created, edited, and organized by everyone who uses it. The most important thing is to have each question page become the best possible resource for someone who wants to know about the question.”
It is easy and free to join Quora, simply 
sign up, enter a few details about yourself and you are off to the races.
Once there you can search questions (put the term you want to search for in the add question box but don’t click enter or you will end up asking a question) and review all related answers, find and connect with others in your community and share your content in other networks.
I’ve always found LinkedIn answers a useful tool for researching blog posts so I thought I would test drive Quora and at the same time do little crowdsourced research for this blog post by asking the question:
How has using Quora benefited you? 
It has been several days now and so far there are no answers. Now, this could be because I don’t have many contacts yet, because its not a stimulating enough question or because people haven’t yet decided on the benefits of using Quora. One neat feature of Quora is that it finds and suggests “related questions” that might be of interest. The one answer to the question “What are the benefits of using Quora?” has the short and sweet answer :
You get to read the answers to questions like the following: Quora: Frequently Asked Questions for New Users, Getting Started on Quora: How does the Quora search box work?
In browsing through Quora, I couldn’t fail to notice that it has some very influential users. One question about social media startups had answers from industry pioneers like Robert Scoble: with answers that were both in depth and insightful (and a good read for anyone launching a web startup). Another Quora user, Marc Bodnick lists new and interesting Quora users they have discovered every week and whilst many of these users seem to be centred in the tech community, I was also able to to find questions about such diverse topics as the Vancouver Canucks Stanley Cup chances (go Canucks!), best Croatian Islands and Scotland’s independence.
Some of the downsides to Quora seem to be question regulations, reviews and user administration. Personally, I came across a lot of comments about voting up a question but couldn’t work out how to vote up a great answer far less vote down the crappy ones.
In the longterm, the value of Quora will depend on the quality of both the user base and the answers people provide as well the ease of use and ability to connect with your community. For now, Quora will stay on my radar (join me there!) but I won’t need a daily fix for the foreseeable future.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, May 11th, 2011
Social Media widget adoption is one of the fastest growing trends online right now. According to Website Magazine adoption rates have increased by 80% in the last year. What are widgets you might well ask? Well, they are not inexplicable little items found at the hardware store that you might think they are, they are those icons your see on websites, the ones that let you click to do something. And they should be an important component of your social network growth strategy.
Web widgets are “small applications that can be installed and executed within a web page by an end user”, they can vary in complexity according to the application that is launched when you click.
Web Buttons
Not to be confused with web buttons or badges (like this Twitter one) which are simple icons on the website that you click to take you to another page, web widgets do something more complex by launching java or flash applicati
ons.
Social Media Widgets
Social media widgets for networks like Twitter and Facebook shown here are among the most widely used. If a company has a presence in these forums, then it is absolutely essential that you showcase and link to that presence on your website. Doing so allows cross community pollination allowing website visitors to find and follow you on your networks too.
To create basic button widgets, simply upload an image to your server and use your CMS interface to create a hyperlink to profile then cut and paste the code into your website.
Creating a custom widget for your site can be just as easy as long as you don’t need a highly specific application (for that you should talk to a developer). If it is a social media widget you are looking for then most of the major networks provide web widgets that you can customize and cut and paste to snip the code onto your site. Sometimes called social plugins, these allow visitors to your website to click and interact in some way with your social media pages.
Facebook allows you to create widgets to tell things to your fans, to get people to like your page and more. To create these go to your Facebook page and click on marketing and take it from there or begin by exploring Facebook Developers. For Twitter’s equivalent, their resources section is the place to go to build Twitter widgets for your website.
Social Media Plugins
Other widgets come in the form of plugins you can add to your website. WordPress offers a plethora of plugins that you can adapt and add to your website allowing visitors to interact with your social networks. If you are using WordPress, either ask your developer to add these or you can easily do so yourself by clicking on plugins on the left hand side panel and then on add new to search for the widgets you want.
Social media and web widget adoption is growing quickly because of the benefits these little bundles of internet joy provide. If you want to build your community online then they are one of the best ways to facilitate doing so.
Related articles:
http://www.out-smarts.com/2010/05/17/how-to-get-more-people-to-like-your-facebook-page/
http://www.out-smarts.com/2009/04/02/add-social-media-icons-to-your-sidebar-without-using-widgets/
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, April 13th, 2011
I recently noticed that my pal, who shall remain nameless, had disappeared from Facebook. Her profile was gone and I missed catching up on her news and photos. When I emailed and asked her why she had gone AWOL, she said she was taking a break because of phishing, spam and she went on to rant a little about Facebook (but I won`t share that here) and the fact that she doesn’t trust the network enough to post photos or any personal information there.
It is understandable that she feels this way – she ‘s not the only one. There has been a rash of attacks on Facebook recently: everything from unwanted Facebook wall posts (like the OMG Roller Coaster Accident! one currently making it’s rounds) and surveys (like the win an iPad Facebook survey scam). When this happens to you and someone hijacks your wall, you might feel violated and you will probably think twice about the content you share online (which is not necessarily a bad thing) but there are some precautions you can take that can help prevent this from happening.
Facebook Privacy Tips
Here are some tips to consider that, if done right, will help make your Facebook content more secure and to limit the likelihood of attacks like this happening to you again.
1. Be very careful which third party applications you add. When you add a third party application to your Facebook profile, whether it be a game or a widget linking to an external site you give the company behind that site access to your general information on Facebook which includes everything from user names to user IDs.
From the Facebook blog:
Connecting with an Application or Website. When you connect with an application or website it will have access to General Information about you. The term General Information includes your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, user IDs, connections, and any content shared using the Everyone privacy setting. We may also make information about the location of your computer or access device and your age available to applications and websites in order to help them implement appropriate security measures and control the distribution of age-appropriate content. If the application or website wants to access any other data, it will have to ask for your permission.
So be very picky about which games you add and if possible, review the privacy policies of the third parties you are adding.
To review and delete any shady applications or ones you haven`t used in ages, go to your privacy settings then click on applications and websites. At the top you will see a list of your apps, click to edit and see the complete list and x to delete as you see fit. You can also turn off all applications on the apps and websites main menu.
2. Never click on a link to a website, video or image that seems suspicious, even if it comes from someone you trust. If someone posts something on your page that seems iffy, delete it immediately you notice it so as to avoid your followers clicking too.
3. Use your privacy settings to control who sees your content and which content you make available. Never show your actual date of birth on your public profile: click to edit your profile and make sure that “don`t show my birthday in my profile” is checked. Read this for more information on Facebook privacy controls.
4. 
Protect your images - did you know that unless you change your privacy settings, the images at the top of your Facebook page may be viewed by anyone. This is the setting that Facebook actually recommends but if you are concerned about this and you want to keep your images private you can change access settings. Again, you use privacy settings to make your content available to: friends only, friends of friends etc. You can do this for all of your Facebook content as well as photos you might be tagged in - it’s highly recommended.
5. Change your password regularly, and especially after an attack, to limit the likelihood of it happening again.
6. Status Updates and Links - always take some time to consider what you are posting or linking to and, given your privacy settings, if you really want this information to be made available to your authorized audience. Be very, very careful about your posts and updates if your settings are set to reach everyone and think twice about posting about vacations until you return.
7. Be selective about who you follow and like. If you are concerned about privacy, you should be very selective about who you add to your connections and which pages you follow. Only add people or like pages that you know or trust.
8. Be wary of surveys that appear when you are about to login to Facebook or when using it (other than Facebook’s own newly minted questions app). If a survey takes you to an external website, always verify the domain URL of the site to see that it corresponds. For example, the recent Facebook survey scam took those who clicked to URL unrelated to Facebook. To be on the safe side, just don’t participate in surveys like this as a rule.
The good news is that Facebook is cracking down on third party applications but the proliferation of Facebook means that it is only going to become a growing target for the fraudsters out there. For more tips on preventing Facebook spam, read this Mashable article.
Related posts:
Concerned About Facebook Privacy?
11 Ways To Stay Safe on Twitter
Written by Jan, March 04th, 2011
Today and over the next few weeks we will be taking a close look at social media for non profits: we will even share some of our “Social Media Strategy Smarts” specific to this sector with a view to helping you understand how using social media can benefit your organization and help it grow.
Keep It Simple and Achievable
The Out-Smarts mantra for our non profit clients has been “Keep It Simple and Achievable”. Adding social media tools to the strategy of non-profit business is essential in our networked world and tools such as Facebook, email, blogs and twitter are not only cost effective they also encourage a two-way conversation between people and organizations that can effectively increase the momentum and reach of a non-profit - but it has to be manageable given your time and resources.
Good Planning Makes for Good Fortune:
Non profits that focus first on developing a clear strategy are best positioned to succeed with an Social Media program. The first step is to develop a strategy that authentically reflects the organizations strategic goals and vision – whether the aim is to increase fund raising opportunities, engage volunteers or educate the public.
Here are some questions to explore to jump start your Non Profit Social Media strategy:
1. What do you want to accomplish with social media?
i.e. Do you plan to use Social Media to:
- Listen and Learn?
- Build Relationships and Issues Awareness?
- Improve Reputation?
- Generate Conversations?
- Drive Visitors to a website or blog?
- Taking Action or Fundraising?
- All of the above or other?
2. Identify and Research your Audience:
- Who must you reach to meet your objectives?
- What do you want to say to your key audience? (and what will they say back!)
- Which social media tools does your key audience currently use?
- Is there research required to better understand the online social behavior of your target audience?
3. Integrate your Social Media with existing marketing – harmonize with your online approach with off-line message:
- How does your social media support other components of your communications and fund raising strategy?
- Is your website Social Media ready?
4. Change can be hard – Social Media means added transparency for your Organization
To move forward with your strategy you will need to face these common fears and concerns:
- Loss of control over your message
- Dealing with negative comments on-line
- Perception of wasted of time and resources
- Suffering from information overload already, this will cause more
- Not being successful, fear of failure
5. Pick Your Tools and Your Leader
- What tools to support your objectives?
- What tools suit your audience?
- What tools do you have the capacity to implement?
- Who will be responsible for over sight?
6. Get Started
- Do you need any outside expertise?
- Who will implement your organization’s social media strategy?
- Do you have a Social Media Policy to provide posting guidelines
- Determine how much time you can you allocate to your strategy?
If your Non Profit can answer most of these questions it is clearly ready to step out onto the Social Media stage with your message. Remember keep it simple and achievable. Treat your first steps as experimental. Go easy and record your successes and challenges to share with others.
Written by Corrie Scott, December 23rd, 2010
A business page is the business equivalent to a personal profile, and has a few advantages over the alternative of setting up a Facebook group for your company, although both have their strong points. Our previous post, Facebook for Business: Groups or Pages discusses the merits of both options, and you can always have both a group and a page for your company. However, between the two options, a Facebook page is probably the best way for a business to have a presence on Facebook.
A good analogy for pages vs. groups is to think of a Facebook page as a separate entity that is your business, whereas a Facebook group more closely resembles a club for your business. In other words, pages focus more on a business, whereas groups focus more on a shared interest in that business. With a page, updates and notices are seen as coming from the page itself, the names of the administrators are not listed, and your personal Facebook profile is not linked to the page which allows you to maintain personal privacy. With a group, you can control who joins your group, administrators are listed, your personal profile is linked to the page, updates come directly from you, and there is a 5000 member limit (no such limit exists for pages).
There are also a number of other features that are exclusive to Facebook pages. One key difference is that, unlike groups, a page is indexed by external search engines and shows up very high in Google search results. Pages also have the ability to add an application, which allows you to customize your page, show more content, and adopt a cohesive online presence. You can either use Static FBML to create your own customized tabs, or browse the Facebook Application Directory for a complete list of all the Facebook applications that can be added to pages. For the above reasons, a page not only appears more professional but also allows for much greater flexibility and room to grow as your customer base expands.
How to Create A Facebook Page:
Creating a Facebook business page is a simple process, just click here and choose whether you are a local business, brand, product, or organization, or an artist, band, or public figure. It is obvious which user type should pick the last category; however, it can be harder to pick between the first two. You should select local business if you strictly sell your product or services locally, and plan to continue this way in the future. For all other businesses, you should select brand, product, or organization. Also, if you chose local business, the template for the page is set up as if you are a brick and mortar business, whereas the brand, product, or organization choice gives you less restrictive info tab options for inputting your information. Choose carefully because once you have selected a category, you cannot change it without deleting your page and starting from scratch!
Once you have chosen your category, name your page, i.e. the name of your business, accept the terms, and click Create Official Page. Done! Again, name your business carefully. You cannot change it once youve created your page.
Now, fill out your new business page with all of your business information, in the same way that you would a personal profile. Finally, once youve completely filled in your profile, promote your new Facebook page and begin to grow your following. There are a number of ways to do this including, providing great content, targeting advertisements towards your target customers, and using Facebook suggestions to suggest your page to people who may be interested.
Remember to install Facebook Insights so you can track and measure your success using important metrics such as the number of fans added/lost per day, total fans, number of reviews, page views, unique views, photo views, video and audio plays, as well as total interactions. Also, dont forget to add your location details, hours of operation, and phone number to the information section so customers can find you offline as well, and remember to regularly update your page with new content to keep your customers engaged.
If you would like more information on Facebook pages, or need help creating one for your business, Out-Smarts Marketing can help – we provide social networking training and consulting services to help you use social media tools effectively. Contact us now to find out more.
