Socialmedialand

How To Stop Facebook From Publishing Recent Activity To The News Feed

Katie — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:53:36 +0000

This article is EXTREMELY helpful. When the privacy settings changed a month ago I selected the option to keep mine the same, and since I had previously set my privacy settings to block some stories from the news feed I made the mistake of simply assuming those settings remained in tact. I only realized it a few days ago when my friend complained to me about not having those settings available anymore. I was shocked and super annoyed…until this article.

Posted via web from Katie Van Domelen’s Posterous

My Social Media Resolutions for 2010

Katie — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 21:03:50 +0000

I'd rather not speculate about next year – a lot of people have been doing that already. I'm going to take a cue from a few of my favorite bloggers and simply share what I plan to do for next year:

In general:

Focus on people - The last year or so seems to have been the era of explaining to businesses why social media is so important. And while I think we still need to make that clear (see number one) I think that it's time to shift focus. We, as social marketers, need to explain to customers why connecting with our brand via social channels is beneficial to them. We passed the early adoption phase long ago (where brands in social media were automatically kind of "cool" or "hip"), and now we're rapidly moving out of the status quo phase (where every brand is almost expected to have a social presence of some sort). I think we're coming around to the post-social phase where consumers have been so inundated with blogs and Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that they're going to need a solid reason to want to connect with your brand. And I doubt that random videos and pictures are going to be enough anymore.
Integrate - flowing from the last thought, I think it's time brands focus on how social media can support and work with their service offering. Rather than having social media as a marketing element, it needs to become part of the product or service itself so that the value of being connected with the brand online supplements and enforces the value of being a customer. Social media marketers need to shift their skills into becoming consumer experience experts rather than advertising experts. *note: I'm not saying that some of the most successful brands haven't already done this – I'm just suggesting that it's going to quickly become that only viable way for brands to use social media effectively.

For me personally:

Communicate better - I need to make the connection between social media and my clients' business more clear. I know in my own mind why something I recommended made sense or would fit into their business but now more than ever that connection needs to be underscored.
Educate and be educated - In 2010 I hope to get some training to help me advance beyond my current capabilities and do my job better. That includes presentation skills, some basic web design and html concepts (for use on Facebook pages, blogs, etc), and maybe some refreshers on other business/marketing disciplines so I can work on the integration I talked about above. At the same time I want to share the things I've already learned with others so they can do their jobs better. Karma.
Converse - The last few months I've definitely slacked off on commenting, blogging and sharing links on Twitter/Google Reader. I've been in the background reading without participating. I want to get back into that discussion. More Karma.

So that's my plan. What's yours? Leave a comment and let me know, or link back to your own post on 2010 plans!

Posted via email from Katie Van Domelen’s Posterous

Is This The End of The Golden Age of Facebook Pages?

Katie — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:04:29 +0000

Or just an evolution?

Either way I think the most recent change in Facebook’s homepage News Feed is going to force marketers to rethink the way they use Facebook.

As I explained earlier, Facebook developed an algorithm to display only the most “interesting” posts from your friends and fan pages in your news feed, presumably based on your previous “likes” and comments. Although this is the default view for most users, you can click to view the live stream, which shows everything. But unless you remember to do that, you’re going to see the filtered version.

Now that some time has passed, I want to revisit the topic and look at some of the fallout.

The major problem I see from a brand standpoint is that the new algorithm makes it almost impossible for a brand page to get featured on a user’s news feed. Since each news feed is tailored to the individual user, it doesn’t matter if you’re the most popular brand ever and used to get hundreds of comments on each post, you won’t get featured in a news feed unless that one user interacts with you regularly. I don’t know about you, but even for the brands I love I only “like” or comment on their updates once in a blue moon, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still want to see the information.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that it’s completely based on the history of activity. For example, I recently became a fan of Southwest Airlines (which is btw, a VERY popular brand in case you haven’t heard.) They’re running a promotion for fans to win a free flight, and as a loyal Southwest customer I was surprised to find out I wasn’t already a fan – I’d love to get updates from them since I use their service frequently. Anyways, flash forward a day or two and I checked their page to see how the contest was going – and realized I’d missed several updates from them. I checked my news feed (filtered) – not there. I checked my live feed (unfiltered) – and there they were, all my missed updates.

Not sure if you caught the significance of that. I had just become a fan. Facebook didn’t even give them a trial run in my main news feed to try to elicit some interaction – they went straight to the land of lost updates.

This is a huge barrier for most brands. If that’s the treatment that a popular brand, with a strong social footprint like Southwest, gets what about that new page you just helped your client build? How are you going to get any attention?

The only answer I can see is, by paying for it. Remember when Facebook came up with that targeting feature to send ads just to fans? Well, it may be the only way you can reach them now (yes you can send “updates” but those go into a subsection of the inbox and can be lost just like your published statuses.) And I think there will be more [paid] options coming for “increasing” visibility with your own fans. I’m a fan of Pink Ribbon (for Breast Cancer research) and they are somehow able to put messaging into my “notifications” bar. They’re also able to send me email messages to my inbox. I don’t know how they do it but I’m thinking they may be part of a trial run for new offerings (because who’s going to get mad at spam from a charity?) I hope I’m wrong about that last part, because both of those options are much more disruptive to me than simply seeing the updates in my news feed.

Personally, I’m bummed because it cuts down on that viral, discovery based aspect of Facebook. If one of my friends comments on a Fan page – I won’t see that unless the friend who said it is someone I interact with frequently. It’s creating a black hole of updates. As a user myself, it’s infinitely carving away at the amount of content I see. It gives me a whittled down list of updates, and since that’s all I see, it’s all I interact with. Then as I fail to comment on every single one of those posts, it will filter out some of the people on the smaller list, and so and so on. For myself I’ll choose the live feed option to counteract the issue, but unless everyone else remembers to do that as well I think the value of Facebook is going to be ultimately decreased.

What do you think? Anyone out there have some ideas for ways to gain back visibility for pages beyond paying for it? Leave a comment! Maybe together we can brainstorm a way around this roadblock…

New in Facebook: Targeting Status Updates

Katie — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:18:13 +0000

Anyone else noticed this? You can click the icon next to "share" on your Facebook fan page's publisher (it looks like little blue people) and it will bring up a dialogue box where you can target your update to a specific location (country) or language. Must be in response to large global brands, but I'd like to see that function get even more refined (dare I say, as robust as the advertising platform is?) It would open up some cool targeting possibilities for messaging and content.

Posted via email from Katie Van Domelen’s Posterous

Is automated cross-posting on social properties really that effective?

Katie — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:15:34 +0000

I was just reading a pretty sweet article on NASA's Social Media Policy and, though it wasn't THE main point, this caught my eye:

Give each channel its own unique content, and cross promote the best of each channel. The best pictures and videos, should always make it into your blog, Facebook page and Twitter stream.

Recently, I've been working on setting up social media properties for clients, and that includes figuring out the "tubes" (as I call them) that bring content from one place to another, automatically. While this saves me time, I'm starting to doubt how efficient it really is versus just doing it all by hand. The point above has me thinking, do I even want all the content from one site to be 100% replicated on another? And what about special cases? Sometimes you want to write a blog post that goes nowhere but the blog…then you have to go turn off all your automation which really defeats the purpose. Using posterous solves that problem for me personally, but what about for my brands?

In a related note, would you be interested in seeing a post from me on the tools I use to automate syndication, and how I set them up? Maybe together we can find a better way. Or maybe I'm just a dreamer. Either way, leave me a comment and let me know.

Posted via email from Katie Van Domelen’s Posterous

Publish (and interact) or perish

Katie — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:20:31 +0000

Until recently, the best way for a brand to get free impressions on Facebook was to publish from their fan page. Anything they updated would show up in their fans’ news feeds and potentially be passed on to their friends.

Things have changed. The new News Feed shows top stories to a user based on their behavior. In that view they’ll see updates from the friends they talk to most. The same goes for brands. The only way for a brand to get featured in a user’s News Feed is if that user visits the page often, comments on the page, likes the page’s status updates, etc - or if a bunch of their friends do those things.

This puts a lot more emphasis on interactions on pages rather than just publishing. In truth this shift was a long time coming. Facebook provides a post quality score based on the number and type of interactions the page’s posts get. It seems Facebook has been looking for a way to encourage pages to publish more engaging content for its users.

For marketers this piles on some pressure to come up with that engaging content – questions, polls, videos – things people will want to interact with. This implies a deep understanding of what your target actually wants. And essentially, it marks the end of the “at-least-get-your-page-and-write-weekly-updates” era of Facebook Fan Page strategy. Now a brand’s minimum Facebook strategy has to include a pretty robust content plan.

We’ve been search engine optimizing for some time now – it’s time to start Facebook feed optimizing as well. (Thanks to Inside Facebook for that great turn of phrase)

Posted via email from Katie Van Domelen’s Posterous

So what if YouTube is the second largest search engine?

Katie — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:54:55 +0000

YouTube is the second largest search engine. That's old news. But recently I've seen that stat bounced around more and more often at conferences, in blogs, and, frankly, all over the place.

So what?

No one (that I know of – feel free to correct me) has addressed the real meaning behind that. Yes, it means people are looking for videos and that online videos are popular. But what are they searching for?

I've started playing with this idea of intention – that it's not enough to say "Facebook is the most popular social network so you need to be there." You have to supply context. What are people doing on Facebook? What is their intention, why are they there? Then the ultimate question becomes; can your brand develop a message or strategy that fits within those intentions?

If people are on YouTube to find interesting, quirky videos – do you have an interesting or quirky product/service? Will your video content be searched for, will your advertising fit in with people's mindset while on YouTube? If so, yes it matters to you that YouTube is the second largest search engine. If not….well maybe you need to rethink what that stat means to you.

P.S: speaking of keyboard cat…here's a pretty good one:

Posted via email from Katie Van Domelen’s Posterous

Social Monitoring: Facebook + Bing + Looking Glass = ??

Katie — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:54:20 +0000

Ok, maybe I just read the blog posts in my RSS in the wrong order but I think there might be something to this.

First, I read about Microsoft’s new program, “Looking Glass” that’s a social media monitoring tool currently in closed beta. I’ve heard about this before, but today Jay Baer wrote an interesting article on how it will affect the marketplace of social monitoring tools. Cool.

Second, I read on Inside Facebook about Facebook making a deal with Microsoft’s Bing on indexing public status updates. [If you go the security settings on your account, you can select the "everyone" option. Right now - if you do that - your status updates show up on Facebook search. Now's the time to double check your settings.] Apparently Facebook is also looking into providing this information to Google – but the deal on the table today is with Bing.

In the past, Facebook updates have been off-limits to us social monitors. The only way to look for them was to search on Facebook and even then you mainly just saw what you’re own friends and networks were saying (ineffective) so most Facebook “monitoring” really occurs on the brands own pages and groups. In recent months, Radian6 (and I’m assuming a few other tools, I just happen to prefer R6) has introduced functionality to pull in mentions that occur on discussion boards located in public groups – cool but still pretty limiting.

After Facebook added the search function on its own site where you could search “Posts by Everyone” I started thinking it was only a matter of time before these public updates were accessible by monitoring tools. So in my mind, this deal with Bing is related to Microsoft’s development of Looking Glass. Getting in on the ground floor of publically indexing Facebook updates would make it easy for them to integrate those results into Looking Glass. That would give them an advantage out of the gate. I’m sure it wouldn’t last long, other tools would have to pick up the capability pretty quickly – and as first movers they’re already ingrained in a lot of corporations and agencies, but…could shake things up a bit.

Posted via email from Katie Van Domelen’s Posterous

UPDATE: Google’s adding Twitter to it’s search database (Mashable)- Bing no longer has the upper hand there. However…still no solid news on Facebook and Google so Bing may still be a front runner on that side.

Changes to the Facebook News Feed – What it Means for Users and Brands

Katie — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:31:52 +0000

Facebook is redesigning it's news feed in an attempt to increase relevance and become a central web portal for users. Highlights:

Top Stories Feature: Facebook is developing an algorithm to display the most interesting posts from your friends, presumably based on previous "likes" and comments. You will still be able to access the full stream (as it is now) by clicking "recent stories."
Several story types that were lost in the recent news feed update will come back including: friend acceptances, relationships, event RSVPs (good news for brands on that one) and group memberships.
Speaking of Groups – they've gotten an overhaul as well. They'll begin to look a lot more like pages and activity that your friends do in groups that you're a part of will be displayed in your feed. Group admins still can't push updates to the whole group so if you need that kind of reach, a page is still your best bet.
For pages: virtual gifts and friends who fan a page will also show up in the news feed
Birthdays will move back up above the fold (which is nice for us forgetful types)

Major take away for brands: The right hand column will be less cluttered (giving the homepage ad a potentially larger impact) and they'll have more opportunities to get into the news feed stream with event RSVPs, virtual gifts, and new fans.

What's next? Facebook recently bought FriendFeed so there's hope that they'll be able to incorporate some of the things that FriendFeed did (and I guess, still does) do well that Facebook hasn't yet mastered. This includes things like sharing automatically imported items faster (from personal experience – blog posts take anywhere from 3-5 hours to show up) and more fine-tuned filtering system.

I'd think that the general user won't notice these changes too much which is good because it will cut back on those annoying "I hate the new layout and all forms of change" groups that take over your new feed for the first few weeks making it impossible to tell if you like it or not. For myself, I think these all represent steps in the right direction – at this point the only way Facebook can sustain continued growth is to give users better tools to organize the information overload that's happening there. The only thing I would suggest is more communication from Facebook. They know how to advertise brands using engagement ads – they need to do the same for their own network. Put out some video content on how to use the advanced filtering options (including lists and now the new top stories feed) so people can use it to their advantage and ultimately have a better experience on the network.

Posted via email from Katie Van Domelen’s Posterous

Social Media Time Management

Katie — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:43:58 +0000

Amber Naslund did a session at the Blog World Expo, and while I wasn't fortunate enough to see it in person she did post her slides online. Planning out corporate infrastructure around social media is something I've been dabbling in when writing strategies for clients. I found a few of the slides in the middle of this presentation to be especially useful so I attached them here. I like how she shows the progression from mainly listening to responding, creating and engaging and the breakdown of how many resources you'll need at each stage. She's committed to exploring the meat of her talk on her blog over the next few posts which you can see here: http://altitudebranding.com/2009/10/social-media-time-management/ and you can check out the full slide show here:

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Katie Van Domelen’s Posterous