New Facebook Buttons!
Mark, give us a Care-Button!
We “like” things on Facebook like there is no tomorrow. But
let’s be honest: Even primates are more versatile in expressing themselves.
It’s time for new buttons! Here’s a little mind game and some creative suggestions.
“We don’t just like things, we do more than that!” was the
outcry of more than 20’000 groups on Facebook. But nobody is listening. For
many years millions of users declare “All they want us to do is to like things,
we want to dislike!”.
Even the scientific community is angered about Facebook’s
bloody-mindedness when it comes to introducing new buttons. Felix Stalder
(Professor for Digital Culture and Network Theories at Zurich University of
Arts) recently warned us about the pre-formatting of our internet
communication: “Facebook is guiding us
in a direction which is beneficial only for them and refrains of introducing a
Dislike-Button for fear of negative comments”. But this is no secret, Facebook
even admits it openly: “Positive comments fit better in our philosophy than
negative statements”. Facebook is
worried about their cozy virtual world because their users mostly log in to
feel good and Facebook doesn’t want to provide a stage for cranks and
sourpusses.
Grooming Talk: We are like monkeys
Fact is: Even monkeys have a bigger repertoire than the
virtual human when it comes to social graces. Gorillas, chimpanzees and Barbary
apes love to sit in groups, ruffle each other’s fur and delouse one another.
Basically they are like us, at least when it comes to social interaction. It’s
all about the exchange of niceties and social commitments. Obviously humans don’t sit together in small
groups and fondle each other anymore (even if it is a nice thought), our
evolution pursues a different, more economical way. This is why we invented the
language, more specifically small-talk. Mostly senseless babble, like delousing
without lice, but not entirely pointless: It binds us together.
Then came the internet and brought us many new “friends”,
130 each Facebook user has in average. It would require a lot of time and
nerves to send emails to all of them or to place nice comments on all of their
walls: we all were in desperate need for something new and the solution was the
“Like”-Button!
What fondling is to monkeys, the click on the Like-Button is to
us. Each one of us already “liked” 80 things in average, that’s a staggering 66’800’000’000
Likes till date! This shows that we are living in the age of a real “Like-Inflation”.
We like irrelevant stuff like childhood pis of colleagues of friends or “funny”
status updates like “I think I have another beer” and so on. And there exactly is the problem: Thumbs up, thumbs up! Facebook doesn’t give us a possibility to
express sorrow, dismay, preferences or sympathy. There is nothing in between an
elaborate comment and a simple “thumbs up”.
The Like-Statement is not just for what you like anymore and this can
cause confusion.
Suggestions for a new Button-Culture on Facebook
I have to admit, I “like” a lot of things – 334 till date.
But I actually don’t feel embarrassed about my generosity – not at last because
this button has a very limited significance nowadays. A boost in importance of
the Like-Button would really make sense, don’t you think? How about a “Love-Button”,
constrained to a limited amount of let’s say, 10 per year? Or a “Care-Button”
to supplement our digital communication vocabulary?
The question remains – Would the users be satisfied with a
couple more feel-good-buttons or would they want more? Anyway, the system will
protect itself as it know to be the case: tomatoes won’t be thrown on Facebook
anytime soon.
(this post is based on a Tagesanzeiger article by Roman Hirsbrunner, CEO of Maxomedia)
Implement your Social Media Strategy – Part 2
In Part 1 we explained how to use different Social Media
Channels to your advantage and about the difficulties in measuring a direct
ROI.
So let’s go a step further now….
How do you measure influence?
Find below some common parameters we use to establish which
bloggers and/or networkers we should focus on:
Traffic: Unique
visitors, page views and RSS subscribers
Inbound Links: Primarily
contextual links from well-ranked sites and blogs
Reader Engagement: Time
spent on blogs & sites, number of comments
Recommendations: Re-Tweets,
Bookmarking, Tagging and Sharing of Content
Connections: Followers & mutual connections across multiple social sites
Track Record: Age
of Domain, number of Blog postings, length of engagement
Referred Traffic: Analytic s tell which sites send most traffic
Conversion Rate: This
shows the rate of conversion for each referring site.
Social Media Request for Proposal
Let’s now learn a bit about how information is shared
between the Social Media Consultant and the Client.
Client Information
Checklist
- Organization’s Background -
Immediate & Future Business Objectives
- Key Performance Indicators - Key Concerns
- Social Media Expectations -
Social Media Project Brief
- Project Outlines & Schedule - Service Level Agreements
- Measurement Metrics
Social Media Consultant’s Credentials Checklist
- Ownership Structure -
Proprietary Tools
- Years of Experience -
Number of Employees
- Single Point of Contact -
Campaigns executed
- Vendors employed - Social Media Communication Tools
What you should ask your Social Media Consultant prior to initiating a partnership?
1. What is your Social Media Strategy?
2. Deliverables of the Campaign
3. What is your approach to Social Media Risk Management?
4. How do you incorporate existing applications, websites,
microsites and newsletter programs into you overall Social Media Strategy?
5. How do you insure compliance with client legal
requirements?
6. Please describe your approach to integrating across
client marketing, customer service and corporate communications departments
7. How do you blend Social Media with Traditional Media?
Well, does sound a little complicated, I agree. So let’s
make it a bit easier:
In a Nutshell
- Social Media Marketing is a extremely effective way to
reach your customers at a very low cost.
- Social Media enable a customer to be a marketer for your
brand.
- Social Media are measurable and provide targeted
advertisement to your consumer.
- Social Media allow you to listen to what is being said
about your brand in real-time
- Social Media allows you through Online Reputation Management
to track impressions and to react extremely fast to your clients’ wishes
- Social Media are a very crucial extension of business as
they allow sharing of knowledge and insights, development of integrated
business processes and enable distributed business teams to work closely
together to complete predefined tasks.
What you can’t forget!
- Social Media are real-time; your content has to be always
up-to-date and interesting
- Social Media are meant to engage and interact with your
users and at no point should the company try to control their behavior
- Social Media should be expendable to converge with other
media so that its keeps up with technological advancements.
Implement your Social Media Strategy – Part 1
Use Social Media to your Advantage
Earlier on we talked about the SIDA principle and developingkiller Social Media Strategies. Now we take it a step further and actually
implement said tactics. There are quite a few things you should keep in mind
while doing so.
After you've learned all the techniques and have established
your profile in various websites, it’s time to broadcast yourself in the best
possible way and reach out to a large audience.
Techniques to extract the maximum out of Social Media
Don’t advertise on your own
Always make sure that you are not the only one in a specific
group. Look for other players (even competitors are ok) from the same
background or category – This makes it much easier for you to get yourself out
there and for other users to hear about you. Post article on platforms like EzineArticles
or Alltop and make people talk about you.
Use budURL
Apart from shortening you URL, this tool keeps a complete
track of your visitors on social networks, emails, print marketing materials,
presentations, etc. It gives you a realistic idea of the total traffic and
shows you which approach is working an which is not.
Don’t just collect followers – Build relationships
Just posting information is not enough and doesn’t do much
for you or your brand. You need to find a way to encourage visitors to involve
themselves, participate and spread the news. Talk to your visitors, ask them
about their opinions and take them seriously, ask for feedbacks and you will
realize what effect your posting has on your brand.
Blog effectively
Do not restrict your information to just your blog and strive
to reach out to a bigger audience. Use sites like ping.fm and track your
statistics via budURL as well. There are many other options: pingvine.com for
example enables your blogs RSS feed to automatically update ping.fm, resulting
in less work for you.
Measuring the Immeasurable
The most challenging task for Social Media Strategists is to
convince Businesses on their ROI from Social Media Campaigns. Most of the activities of Social Media have at first a
non-financial impact such as:
- Website Visitors
-
Impressions
- Customer Complaints
-
Positive Press
- YouTube views
-
Re-Tweets
- Positive Word-Of-Mouth
-
Facebook Friends, Followers and/or Fans
- Social Mentions
-
Comments on Blog and Articles
- Delivered E-Mails
-
Brand Recognition
It is necessary to recognize these activities as part of an
indirect Return on Investment and plug these activities by charting baseline
metrics before the launch of your campaign.
The frequency, yield and reach will showcase the ROI through
increased sales, transactions, enquiries, leads generation and so on.
Wanna know more? Check out Part 2 of this posting or visit our website.
The Ultimate Twitter-Etiquette Guide
Twitter Do’s and Don’ts
Aaaah, Twitter! How else would we know what the Dalai
Lama really thinks or what Richard Branson had for dinner or if Rashida Jones
apologized to John Travolta for asking him to come out of the cupboard. Even
Barack Obama is tweeting again and thereby joining the crowd of more than 100
million persons, companies and organizations who use the world’s most famous Microblogging
service.
The whole Twitter-Etiquette in just five points! This
sounds great, don’t you think?
1. The Twitter Self-Presentation
Your Twitter Account is your digital business card. The
possibilities for your electronic self-presentation concentrate on 3 things:
Your Photo
Recommendable is a pic that shows you clearly and ideally
gives a hint of your personality. Don’t try, come hell or high water, to be
funny or original and don’t change your pic too often as this might give the
impression that you are too ambitious or trying too hard. And I personally
would refrain from wearing sunglasses... the eyes are the mirror of the soul,
right?
Your Bio
Use your real name; there are already too many anonymous weirdoes
online. In case your name is already taken because your are really famous or
your name is John Smith, adjoin a short and unique addition. The old Greek proverb
“keep it simple, stupid” is also has validity for the characterization of your
persona.
Your Background
There is nothing to say against the classic Twitter background
but if you want to stand apart try and customize your own! It just takes a few
minutes and tutorials can be found all over the web. Or you could have a look here
2. Twitter-Courtesy
Social obligations always result out of the individual
circumstances and the contiguousness to your acquaintance and the sum of
these two quasi results in a Courtesy-Quotient - The new forms of interactive
involvement on social networks of the virtual society have by far the lowest
courtesy-quotient. This is also valid for Twitter and at the same time is a
blessing and a course. For you this basically means that if somebody you don’t know
contacts you about something you’re not even remotely interested in, you don’t have
to answer him/her/it….. cool, isn’t it?
3. Twitter-Arithmetic
Never before it was so easy to precisely calculate the social rank of a person as now in the age of Twitter. After joining, just for a millisecond, we are all the same. After that, every individual will be valued by the conjunction of the following variables (Warning mate, don’t take this too serious):
Tweets (t) = the number of your own micro-messages with
maximum 140 characters
Following (f) = the number of Twitter-Users who you are
following
Followers (F) = the number of Twitter-Users who are
following You
Only
t and f can be directly influenced
This
results in the following formula
t
<< F ==> prominent
t ≥ f ≈ F ==> in the Media or PR-Business
t >> f >> F ==> thirsty for glory or just plain narcissistic
t ≥ f ≈ F ==> in the Media or PR-Business
t >> f >> F ==> thirsty for glory or just plain narcissistic
4. The Twitter-Psychology
Well, it’s a known fact that we live in difficult times
and many people out there feel already valorized if they receive a virtual
fondle. But to brag about the number of followers on Twitter is equally pathetic and awkward as to swank about your eBay-feedback-score
or at least as measly as to crawl the search engines on how to tweet to get
more followers… The best method to get more followers is still: GET A LIVE,
PLEASE!
Twitter is, similar to Amazon’s “you might also like…”,
giving you suggestions. Only on Twitter they are (mostly) not about products
but about people. But never ever forget: Twitter is – despite of the hype –
just a machine. So please don’t fall in despair if you mostly find profiles on the
„Similar to you“-Page that you are absolutely not interest in or even fill you
with a slight sense of disgust. But here’s a quick advice guys: If this keeps
happening you probably should change something – On Twitter and in Real Life.
5. The Twitter-Taboos
Let’s face it: 140 Characters are enough for every
banality. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to take part in the
dumb-game. Tweet regularly, but no trash! And if you really feel the need to
tweet trivialities, the at least do it in a witty way.
Be careful - Tweeting is no traditional small talk; the
rules are a bit different. Even some “celebrities” had to learn this the hard
way, here’s a short list, just for fun:
Russell
Brand made the awful mistake of tweeting a photo of his
ex-wife Katy Perry - with no makeup on. Yikes! He said it was an innocent
mistake and that he never intended to publish to his Twitter account - followed
by millions. Was this the real reason why the marriage failed?
Charlie
Sheen made the ultimate Twitter mistake of direct messaging
his mobile number to Justin Bieber - only for it to end up on his timeline. It
was no surprise that Charlie's phone was ringing off the hook for days
afterwards.
Piers Morgan: Remember
the famous gagging order that prevented anyone from saying which 'high profile
footballer' was having an affair? Well Piers Morgan ignored that rule, and
revealed the man in question was Ryan Giggs. Oops! But we all knew anyway,
didn't we?
Despite Sarah
Palin’s frequent use of Twitter to fire off missives, Palin isn't as tech
savvy as you think — or so she says. After she “favorited “ a photo tweeted
by Ann Coulter that showed a church sign calling President Obama a
"Taliban Muslim," Palin blamed it on the Blackberry. "I've never
purposefully 'favorited' any tweet," Palin said afterward. "I had to
go back to my BlackBerry to even see if such a function was possible. I was
travelling to Alaska that day ... it was an obvious accidental
'favoriting.'" Anyone want to refudiate this?
Basically it is pretty simple: What doesn’t belong in
public doesn’t belong on Twitter - Keep in mind that while the technologies are
relatively new, the reactions to breaches in etiquette are still pretty much
old-school.
Well, that concludes the 5 points of our twitter etiquette.
Liked it? Tweet it! Didn’t like it? Tweet it as well!
Social Media Strategies
Basic Steps of Implementing a Social Media Action Plan
The SIDA Principle
Earlier, we explained what kind of Social Media Channels there are out there. In this posting you will get a whole bunch of information
about how to use them and how to implement a social Media Action Plan.
The Implementation of your Social Media Action Plan
basically follows the SIDA (Study – Identify – Define- Assess) Rule:
STUDY
Learn as much as you can about new media! There is no way
around it; you absolutely have to understand what you are dealing with. There
is tons of content on the web, thousands of books and if you are ready to
invest a little money, attend a workshop or a webinar.
IDENTIFY
- Check out who you’re up against and identify your
competitions weaknesses, in what area they’re not yet (fully) present, what
niches you can fit in and so on.
- Identify the business needs of your different departments –
PR, Marketing, Sales etc.
- Make a record of targets you want to tackle with your
campaign.
DEFINE
- Define what would be the best Social Media Tools for your individual
Business needs.
- Make a SMART plan (Set Measurable And Realistic Targets).
- If you choose not to implement the campaign by yourself,
work on a favorable Service Level Agreement with your Social Media partner.
ASSESS
- Measure the number of generated leads, amount of traffic
and increase in sales (or interested customers) regularly
- Evaluate your strategy in regular intervals and adapt or
update it if necessary.
Sounds not too hard, doesn’t it? But don’t underestimate the
complexity – Never forget that you are dealing with people and not just with
numbers or some virtual abstractum.
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