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From the archives: On Facebook

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Recently, I’ve become a real fan of Facebook. But while I embrace the possibilities for customers and brands, I haven’t always liked the actions of the company. Walk with me a while down memory lane and my thoughts about Facebook.

Thumbs Up Facebook (7/13/2009)
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood (7/7/2009)
My Facebook page experiment (6/17/2009)
The great Facebook URL grab (6/16/2009)
Facebook. The gateway drug to social media (6/4/2009)
What does Facebook want to be when it grows up (11/1/2007)
Ways to grow your business? Piss off the moms? Not. (9/26/2007)

Social media karma

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It’s time to make a few deposits in the social media karma bank.

The past few weeks, I have been consumed with Blog with Integrity, my book proposal and getting ready for my vacation to Africa next month. In the process, a number of interesting projects and initiatives from my marketing, PR and social media friends have piled up in my “must blog about that” pile.

Former Bostonian Aaron Strout was kind enough to ask me to be a guest on his podcast, along with Brian Morrissey of AdWeek and Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester, to talk about Facebook Connect. Take a listen. Enteprise web and community managers, you should definitely check out Aaron’s company Powered. They are doing some neat things with enterprise level communities and Facebook Connect.

In my role as an SNCR Fellow, I was privileged to conduct a social media workshop for Goodwill Industries International at their summer national learning conference in Grand Rapids Michigan. The students were great, and really invested in figuring out how to make social media work for their communities. I was already impressed with what the Goodwills were doing with social media, and am looking forward to even greater things in the future.

If you have old clothes and other goods, please consider making the effort to donate them to Goodwill. Your donation doesn’t just fund charitable programs, it funds programs devoted to putting people to work. In these economic times, that literally doubles your money.

My SNCR colleagues Don Bulmer of SAP and Vanessa DiMauro of Leader Networks are conducting a research study called  The New Symbiosis of Professional Networks. They are interested in the the use of social networks as a tool in the enterprise and part of the decision making process. Please check out the website for more information and if you fit the profile, please consider taking the survey.

Janey Bishoff and the team at Bishoff Communications are helping Boston ad exec Jeff Freedman’s non-profit Small Army for  a Cause raise funds for cancer research in memory of Jeff’s late partner Mike Connell. They are holding a fundraising event on September 17th called Be Bold Be Bald!

Participants will wear bald caps on the 17th to raise funds and awareness of a major challenge faced by cancer patients, losing their hair. More information at beboldbebald.org

Chris Brogan’s book Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust, co-authored with Julien Smith, went on sale at Amazon today to a very positive reception. Congratulations Chris! I promise to read it when things slow down.

Finally the SXSW Panel Picker went live today. Once I sort out all the various panels from friends and colleagues, I’ll let you know. Right now, I’m cross-eyed trying to figure it all out from the tweets. If enough panels from people I know make the cut, I might even make the effort to go this year.

File it under crazy S*&^: Fan Pages for PR Firms! Mom Blogs’ PR Boycott?

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Should public relations firms have Facebook Fan Pages? What’s the point really?  Do PR firms really have fans, and if they do, should they? Isn’t PR about promoting the client’s interests?

That’s the gist of a conversation thread on Twitter over the past few days. Good friend Geoff Livingston (@GeoffLiving) thinks it is silly for PR firms to have Facebook Fan Pages, in part I imagine (and I don’t want to put words in his mouth, this is my impression of his comments) because it smacks too much of “personal branding,” a concept we both loathe.

I agree, and yet I don’t. Or more accurately, I don’t mind that PR firms are setting up Facebook Fan Pages, as long as they don’t go overboard and start spamming my Facebook Wall with self-serving promotional bullshit.

Facebook Fan Pages are becoming a useful element for a company’s marketing plan, and agencies/consultants need to gain experience with the form. Even if they have clients with Pages, they still need a place to experiment. Client sites are generally not good places for messing around with beta stuff.

So, I’m okay with PR agency fan pages. Happy to “fan” you if asked. As long as you don’t take yourself too seriously and think I want your autograph or something. Because, seriously, I don’t even ask real famous people for autographs.

Fame. Fans. One more brief point about the term fan before I move on to the ridiculous idea of mom blogs “boycotting PR.”

I like the term Fan Page. Not simply because the number of fans shows how popular a brand or company is. I like it because it highlights how the brand should be thinking of its customers. Not simply as consumers. Fans are engaged consumers. They don’t just buy a product, they love the product.

And the brand should love them back. Not take them for granted. Add value beyond the simple transaction. That’s what a Fan Page should be about.

Most are not, or at least I hope, not yet.

Facebook has more than 200 million users.

The brands that get it? That understand that the Fan Page isn’t just a billboard for product announcements? That truly make the effort to engage with the customers?

They are going to have lots and lots of fans.

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“But he hasn’t got anything on,” a little child said.

– Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes

Today, mom blog site Mom Dot proposed that mom blogs should boycott PR and marketing offers for a week in August. The rationale has something to do with marketing firms taking advantage of mom bloggers by sending them free products. I think. Or maybe it was that mom bloggers are burnt out from the burden of doing product reviews. Something like that. I think.

Seriously, I am not trying to be mean. I really cannot figure out the reason for the boycott.  If product reviews are too much work, don’t do them. Or do fewer. If you aren’t getting joy from something, stop. If the value isn’t there, don’t do it.

But a PR boycott? As CNET pointed out, this misses the point by more than a country mile.

The FTC is reviewing its guidelines on endorsements and testimonials. Without a doubt, blogs (and other new media) will be included.

This has caused a great deal of buzz around the issue of free products and other blogger compensation, particularly in the parent blogosphere. Latest media outlets, and by no means the last, to cover the story: ABC and the New York Times.

The issue isn’t the reviews. Or the free products. The issue is disclosure.

It’s about ethics. And integrity.

If you are a blogger, it’s about disclosing your relationships with companies that have provided you with free products or compensation so your readers can properly evaluate your recommendations.

If you are a company representative, it’s about reaching out to bloggers with respect. If you are hiring someone to write a document for you, you can read it before publication. Sending a product for review? Absolutely not. Don’t even ask. If you do, you are either scum or a nØØb.

So, I have another suggestion. Instead of polarizing boycotts, teeth gnashing and wailing, let’s all pledge to Blog with Integrity.

All this really requires is that you publish a clear review and ethics policy on your blog. It doesn’t matter what the policy is — your readers will decide that issue. What matters is that you clearly disclose.

This will help you, marketers who want to reach out appropriately and your readers. And, I’m guessing, the FTC will like it too.

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In other news, Michael Jackson is still dead.

Thumbs up, Facebook

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I’m really liking Facebook these days. It’s far from the be all and end all of social media strategy, and the company often makes stupid policy decisions, like banning breast feeding photos while allowing hate speech, but it has made some very smart moves of late that truly make it a necessary part of your social media strategy.

Let’s start with Facebook Connect. If a company has developed or is planning to develop a rich media site with authentication, it should definitely consider using Facebook Connect. This eliminates the need to develop your own authentication and makes it far easier to tap into the 200-million-plus Facebook user base. Once logged in, your site users can then easily share the content on your site with their friends on Facebook.

Next, there’s the latest addition to the tool set, the Facebook Fan Box.

The Fan Box makes is easy to add Facebook Fan Page content to your existing website. This will be very valuable to transactional websites — those that don’t have many interactive or relationship oriented features on the site —  but who have made a commitment to developing a strong Facebook Fan Page.

The key to making the Fan Box a successful addition to your site, of course, is to actively engage your customers on Facebook. That means more than company announcements and the occasional poll.

That’s where Insights, the analytics provided by Facebook about your page, will be so useful, especially when combined with your web analytics. This data tells you what works, and what doesn’t, on your Fan Page. Combine it with your web analytics, user data and if you have a blog, blog analytics,  and you can get a good picture of your customer’s engagement with your brand.

Additional Resources

– My recent posts about Facebook and community:

– An excellent guide to creating Facebook Fan Pages from The Advance Guard

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The Society for New Communications Research announces call for entries for annual awards.