A few years ago, a colleague of mine was given a tremendous responsibility to oversee the social media department at a prestigious well known NYC-based public relations firm. Less than a year later, she was sent packing up her desk, a casualty of a company that jumped into that shiny toy syndrome that people call social media.

As more companies jump into social media, they, too, hear that “social media departments don’t execute” which results in the failure of a social media department that was never meant to be. I’ll be exploring some of those reasons below.

Goal Setting

You could be the biggest and most well-paid social media consultant out there, but if you don’t know what the specific goals are for the client project, you should never sign an agreement with the prospective company. A recent statement of work I encountered read just like this:

• Manage and grow the our following on Twitter
• Manage and grow our fan base on Facebook
• Manage and grow our fan base on LinkedIn
• Possibly manage the presence on other platforms

The social media consultant could follow every single one of these directives to an absolute tee, doing everything they were asked and even going above and beyond to build bridges with prospective customers via direct relationships, phone calls, and face to face interaction. But the bigger question goes to the client: why do you want someone to manage your social media presence? What are you trying to get out of it? If your client has to hesitate and cannot answer this question in a few sentences, and worse, doesn’t even give you a reply at all, any social media promotion you engage in will ultimately fail. As hired help, it won’t be your fault, but if you’re trying your best to understand the goals without any feedback from your client, it will hurt.

For your sake, consultants, don’t even bother with that relationship. It won’t end well even if there are “no hard feelings,” especially if you’ve made the effort to understand the goals of the engagement.

One thing that needs to be defined from the beginning is the target audience. As a client, you must be able to give your consultant information about your target audience via an audience profile that can be found with survey tools and market research. Keep in mind that this audience profile may be broadened through exposure to social media, giving you as a business even greater reach than thought possible.

However, clients, no, it is not the consultant’s responsibility to determine your goals and it’s highly offensive to suggest that “we hired you to tell us!” A new employee or consultant, especially someone who is new to the company culture, would not possibly be able to know your company goals, your mission statement, and your objectives from the offset. It’s your job to guide them, to give them the insights needed to truly shine in their role. And a list of “here’s what you should do” which is motivated by the latest and greatest social networks just isn’t enough. That’s why we call it shiny toy syndrome.

Do you truly want to succeed? Before you even consider a social media engagement and hiring an employee to take on this engagement, you need to set SMART goals. Any job descriptions and statements of work do not have a place without an itemized list of desired outcomes that benefit the company line.

What are SMART goals? To those unfamiliar with the phrase, these are goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. Perhaps it would make sense to see a 10% increase in sales over a 6 month period or an increase of 5,000 visitors to your website for the month. For your social initiatives, a brand new Twitter account may aim to seek 50 qualified followers by the end of November versus 50,000 followers with no end in sight.

Let’s talk about qualified followers for a moment. Anyone can buy Twitter followers and artificially inflate the numbers on your account, thereby making your social media consultant look like a true social media rockstar, but once the money is invested, in all likelihood, how many people will actually buy your product or use your service? None. Similarly, you would never want to buy Facebook fans; Facebook employs an algorithm known as EdgeRank which makes your content prominent if and only if people actually engage with it. If you’re buying followers and they’re not interested, that content won’t show up in their news feeds or in the feeds of people who truly do have an interest in your product. You’ve just wasted your money and gained nothing but short term satisfaction that the numbers are up — but are they sustainable?

No, if you want to be successful in social media, you need to understand from the get-go that it’s a relationship building process which takes time. You’ll see growth and followers, but will you really see growth and followers at an exponential rate? Realistically? It’s 2011.

The Early Bird Gets the Worm

That brings me to my next point: if you joined the party late, you’re not going to be as popular as the people who already have established presences on social networks. It’s the sad truth of a saturated marketplace. Those who joined the social media party in 2007 are thriving; those who join in 2011 often find themselves at a complete loss. When finding new companies to follow for a client of mine, I was shocked at how many companies whose social profiles were featured so prominently on their websites weren’t engaged at all, seemingly because they have given up social media engagement because their efforts (almost totally of a broadcast nature in the examples I’d seen) were being made almost entirely in vain.

If you’re aiming to join the social media space with the primary goal that you’re going to make a real difference on Twitter and Facebook, I have news for you: you’re going to be working very very hard. Millions of businesses have done the same exact thing before you, and consumers (and even businesses you’re trying to attract the attention of) are savvy enough that they’re less trusting from the get-go, which is why you have to work hard not to just get their attention but to keep them attuned to your news and updates.

Relationship building is harder and a longer process in an already established community. You’re lucky to be there when it’s just being started; everyone is still trying to find their way and everyone helps each other. When you come 3-5 years after it’s already well known simply because everyone else is doing it, do you really think it will be a walk in the park? You and 4 (40? 400?) million other people are trying to do the same exact thing. It comes across as self-serving, even if you’re sharing valuable content. That’s why you need to put forth a tremendous amount of effort.

Social media alone doesn’t cut it anymore. In fact, it’s been predicted for years now that social media marketing will merge into public relations or some other marketing discipline. Are you really just a “social media expert,” and if so, are you prepared?

Social Media Marketing Coexists with Other Integrated Marketing Programs

While I get pitches all the time to offer “social media services” to clients, I rarely, if ever, exclusively offer social media marketing. Social media is here to stay, but it’s not something you can do in isolation of other marketing initiatives. I’ve been offering services in the full realm of digital marketing, from SEO to PPC to video marketing to blogger outreach to action plans to public relations, and of course, social media. But social media alone should never be treated as a standalone marketing method; it must coexist with other marketing strategies. An integrated digital marketing approach is the best way to see success online for any business.

If you’re just hired to handle social media, have no fear! The best client-contractor relationship is one where the consultant is fully aware of every single marketing initiative and is able to weigh in on these campaigns while they’re happening, ensuring that your responsibilities for outreach go in tandem with these other marketing tactics. That means that as a social media consultant, you should know if Facebook PPC is in play. You should know what SEO phrases are being targeted. You should know if your client is running a deal on a daily deals site. You should get a heads up about an infographic that your graphic design team is launching, and you should know the specific date of launch so that you can collaborate and ensure it reaches the social media audience as well.

And if you’re not being made abreast of these developments in your company? It comes down to them not valuing social media… and them not valuing you.

But don’t worry! They’re also setting themselves up for failure. You’re just going to be coming along for the ride.

I have news for you, social media experts: if social media alone is what you’re selling, I hope you start getting other skills under your belt.

[ Why Most Social Media Departments Fail is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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With social media now a mainstream activity — after all, nearly 700 million users are on Facebook, 300 million users are on Twitter, 61.4% of global internet users are managing online profiles, and millions of other users are engaging online across thousands of social platforms — it’s imperative that a business have a functional social media plan. Indeed, social media is useful in at least six parts of your company’s functions: sales, marketing & public relations, customer service, research & development, human resources, and executives & management. All in all, it sounds really lovely. Businesses pounce on the opportunity to integrate social media plans in their regular activities, but in many cases, they fall short.

If You Don’t Execute, You’re a Failure

As of late, I realize that social media interaction is merely a false front for a lot of companies to show that they care. Consumerist recently highlighted findings that showed that companies are hiring social media folks (both internally and externally) to listen in social channels for complaints, reply to the consumer feigning concern, and drop the matter entirely. The idea is that if you can get unhappy customers to STFU (at least in the public realm), you’ve done your job because the customer likely is now going to stop campaigning for attention publicly and your company looks like they’ve been proactive.

About 2 years ago, I connected socially with a corporate communications employee at a large telecommunications company. I expressed my dismay at a number of service offerings in the hope that it would be conveyed to the appropriate people and that things would change. Over a year later, I discovered that some improvements were to be announced — this was communicated to me via a third party forum. When asking for official comment, these employees appeared to be completely out of the loop to the point that my contact had to check with his superiors to ensure he was conveying the correct information. Recently, I had issues with the same company and independently emailed another rep I became friendly with, and he apologized profusely for the issues I encountered. That was it. Little did he know that part of the issue at that point was a software error, which I learned about a month later when I called their technical support line for assistance. In this situation, I think that my earlier related complaint should have been at least followed up upon with a “why did this happen? Let’s figure it out.” The apologies and the appearance of “I’m listening!” with no follow-through started uncovering an unfortunate truth among many publicly traded/Fortune 500/large companies (and even in smaller companies as well): corporate communications/customer service folks in the social media realm seem to be merely puppets appearing to care about the customers. I’m still an advocate for this company, but I’m starting to see through it as this company’s involvement is hardly an isolated incident.

Large companies seem to fail at social media in many ways. An earlier case I highlighted featured another big brand who wanted to seize the day in social, but did it without the recognition that there’s a person on the other end. When messaging the company for assistance one day, the reply I received at that time was blasé — it appeared that the person on the other line forgot about the whole idea that this is a person-to-person interaction.

Customer Service Needs to Change

If social is going to work, it needs to work with a true understanding that real time participation requires a complete shift of thinking in the human realm of expectation, both in terms of response time and in terms of the how of engagement. Formal and canned responses and fake replies showing you “care” (when you don’t and are just doing it for a paycheck) are part of the thinking of the days of yore. Those who do this will fail — if not now, soon enough — and will lose to the compassionate competition who truly show that they are human.

Customer Service is Flawed

The reason for the failure in social amongst these companies is that people are jumping into it with the the mindset of the traditional days of formal communications. Back then (and it’s still pervasive today), customer service was driven by canned replies powered by pre-written scripts and lots and lots of macros. Macros are still helpful, don’t get me wrong, but it’s time that those macros start showing some emotion while still giving the customer exactly what they want. Customer service as a whole needs to be changed entirely with a nod to the emotional approach of social media.

Customer service is flawed for another reason. A company often hires a customer service arm with the goals of addressing customer complaints and seeking customer satisfaction. As a company grows, customer service — the first lines of user support — become less and less powerful. Whereas within small companies, a support representative can go above and beyond to ensure customer satisfaction, employees at larger companies don’t have that leisure. In the example of the telecommunications company, the representatives I spoke to were both “powerful” people by title but were actually completely ineffective in actually adequately addressing user concerns. They exist because the company needs to employ them to communicate to customers like you and me, but they don’t have enough clout to make significant changes that will satisfy the customer. Perhaps they’re trying and being stonewalled internally; large companies have bureaucratic setups that often do. Perhaps they’re so disheartened from on the internal red tape that they’ve given up and won’t pursue the matter further. Customer service as a whole also needs to be changed entirely so that companies give their first responders access to internal resources to truly effectuate change.

Large Businesses Have a Challenge

I have often said how much easier it is for large companies to adopt and implement social media, especially with an established following. They have the budgets to make social media become a reality relatively quickly. Yet their big challenge is that these large companies still maintain customer service departments with old school thinking. For a company’s social media program to be truly successful, the internal departments need to fully align with the public and social face of the company. This includes making customer service more responsive, more emotional, and more productive, ensuring that the customer gets what he wants when it’s within reason and not making excuses in the name of laziness because there will be too many hoops to jump through. Better yet, those hoops need to cease to exist and these employees need some freedom to make things better for customers. Today is the day when people will blog about whether they had a good experience with you or a miserable one, and you can actually proactively steer that conversation in a positive light. Most importantly, everyone needs to be on the same page and everyone needs to exhibit this culture internally for it to be a true success. It’s not impossible if you realize that one well known company has been doing it for years.

Putting the Human Back in Customer Relations

Ever see a reply to a customer service response that addresses your issue but seems monotonous, boring, and straightforward? Is that the type of interaction you’re looking for, or are you like me, someone who craves some human in what is truly a “social” interaction? I know I’m not alone in the thought that throughout the customer service discipline, we need to get emotional again. It makes us slightly more vulnerable than we’re used to with hardened and firm replies, which is actually a good thing because it puts us on the same level as our customers: the level of the human.

My Philosophy

As many of you know, I am the community manager for domain name registrar Namecheap. We have a great system set up internally so that whenever there is a concern addressed via social media and I need to escalate the issue, I have every single online employee at my disposal. Since our hours are 24/7/365, and since emergencies can arise at any time, I always have access to someone should there be an issue and can reply to the customer immediately with a solution. I’m lucky in that we’re not the biggest company, but this is the mindset that companies need to adopt to be truly successful.

I often feel like Craig Newmark who, despite his tremendous success, calls himself a “customer service rep” — and that’s actually his role. He’s this guy who founded one of the most successful websites in the world but decided to take a backseat providing excellent customer service to the customers. As much as customer service is often manned by the little guys, the people they interface with are the people who tell their friends about you, which translates to more and more people supporting you — or doing just the opposite. Some of my favorite social media consulting projects are those where I can improve upon a company’s customer service program and make them truly successful — it’s worked really well so far.

As companies get more excited about social, it’s important for companies not just to hire new social media marketing talent but to optimize their internal departments for a truly social experience. It’s especially important for companies to afford the first response the luxuries to actually do things right by the customer, letting them go out of their way to create customers for life, possibly by giving them incentives and especially affording them freedom to be creative and excited about their role in customer support. A company’s long term survival will be dependent upon it. After all, in the days of social, it’s only a matter of time for a company with an amazing customer-centric culture to seize the day and become the next best thing.

[ The Success of Customer Service is Dependent Upon True Social Engagement is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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When the Cluetrain Manifesto was published in 1999, it signaled a paradigm shift: markets are conversations. Today, the online space and affordability of web hosting and domain names has helped create billions of conversations about your brand, your industry, and critical key players in your space.

It’s up to you to capitalize this and leverage it effectively.

I asked a big brand on Twitter for help and they gave me a canned response. I miss the days when social media was more personalized.

A big US brand with over 100,000 Twitter followers has run into the problem that I tweeted about above. To this well-known retailer, social media has become just one channel of many where they need to offer customer service without any care in the world for the people they’re engaging with. This thinking unfortunately minimizes the potential of true and far reaching social media strategy, creating the ability to truly connect with people and build bonds with constituents that can help them evangelize your brand and create passionate advocates.

Given my observations, both in the “canned response” department and the company’s engagement with other customers and prospects, they’ve got it all wrong. Much of their tweets are just them asking people to follow them, coupled with the must-include initials that apparently are required of their social media policy. But the tweets are so disjointed and it’s evident that their approach is lacking cohesion which actually makes them look unprofessional. Again, this is a big brand. The background of their site indicates that their Twitter presence alone is being manned by 5 employees (more seem to be active on their Twitter account, so their background may need to be updated), but they’re lost about how to really reply at all.

There are perhaps a half a dozen active employees representing this company on the Twitter account in question, and with only about 5 tweets per day, none of them really get it.

What’s your social media policy? What are your goals of social media?

Most would argue that social media is about building true relationships, which comes on top of these other marketing goals which result in sales and conversions:

• Brand awareness: People should know you exist so that they can help promote you. In this case, you need to give them reason to promote your brand. In very rare occasions does this company make the compelling argument to promote the brand. There is the occasional deal and contest, but I would find it hard to believe that people are really interested in this company’s involvement and may have followed the Twitter account as a contest entry requirement.
• Links: Links are the currency of the web. The more high quality links you get, the more trusted you are as an online resource that people can depend upon. Social media through promotions, viral content, blogging, and other methods can help drive relevant links back to your website, which in turn helps your site become more findable via search engines. If you’re selling a product, unless it’s proprietary to your own store and offered nowhere else online, chances are you have a lot of competition, so those links can significantly improve your online visibility.
• Website traffic: With links often comes traffic through the methods outlined earlier. Of course, shared links on social networks also drive traffic. Highly relevant and interesting links shared on social sites can help bring a lot of people interested in your services and products directly to you.
• Thought leadership: More for practitioners in the service industry, being a voice of your own industry can help you establish yourself as the go-to person when it comes to knowing what’s happening in your space. They end up looking up to you for tips and to steer them in the right direction. They might even come to you for partnerships, press opportunities, and client work.

Social media has its benefits, including increased awareness and affinity toward the brand. A recent study by Eloqua confirms that those who actually engage with brands on social media services are more likely to have a higher Net Promoter Score, an indicator of how likely they are to recommend the company, than the average customer. And I think that’s true for most brands on social media.

Except those who don’t get it. When looking at this company’s social media profile, they felt compelled to respond to the most nonsensical of replies, reinforcing their approach to use social media as a customer service tool without regard for the customer (or frankly the particular question). And yet, with a brand as big as this one, they only tweeted 5 times per day? Really? On the other hand, when I had a product question about a Kodak Zi6 a few months ago, I took it to my Twitter feed and a Best Buy based in Danvers, MA came to my aid, offering troubleshooting advice and tips! Now that’s one memorable way to create a great user experience. (I don’t live anywhere near Danvers, MA, but I’ll always remember this.)

Social media is about real engagement and truly connecting with people. In fact, this is why there’s such a strong argument toward some of the newer tools and technologies, including Social CRM, a customer relationship management methodology that integrates social behavior to get a clearer picture of who each individual person is. This is where we’re going. Social media is just the beginning. As this field grows, we’ll see a greater need to clearly understand each and every person who we interface with online.

Social media has grown in popularity with thousands — maybe millions — of individuals claiming their utmost expertise and selling services, even if they possess no real skill. Still, it’s been over a decade and yet even some big companies aren’t catching on. The Cluetrain Manifesto alluded to something that some companies still don’t understand: we’re no longer communicating in a traditional sense. It’s a two way conversation and this way of communicating is not going away. If anything, we’re now able to build real relationships with people who can truly make a difference. Even if you are a very large brand, there are still ways to engage your followers and show them you care. (Asking them to follow you for a DM in every other tweet isn’t the way to successfully achieve that goal!). Thankfully, there are some companies and individuals who can help steer the way.

A brand — big or small — needs to still make the effort to put the customer first. If you are going to use social media, use it right, because even if you’re big and successful, that bitter taste you leave in someone else’s mouth will disappoint, and with social media, that disappointment can spread far and easily. After all, the people you upset might have a better social media footprint than you do.

Social media. It’s not that easy.

[ Connection: Social Media’s Special Gift is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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This isn’t a real post about social media strategy, but it’s an important issue that follows from our social media behavior online. I’m sharing this because I think that despite the controversial nature, it is a significant discussion, especially since I suspect that many of you might have thought differently about this topic 5 years ago.

A friend of mine from high school disappeared two months ago. He left behind a wife and two young children. He eventually resurfaced and was said to be in good physical health. I personally do not know the details, but those periods in the interim were really stressful for all parties involved.

A member of my religious community disappeared. He was an older man, a father and grandfather, perhaps a brother too. He had a large family who cared deeply about him. I started writing this shortly after he was reported missing but before his whereabouts were discovered. Eleven days later, he was found dead in his car.

Over 700,000 individuals in the United States alone are reported missing each year. More than 2,300 people a reported missing each day.

These terrifying statistics make me wonder if it’s time to change given that our privacy is starting to diminish. Perhaps we should broadcast our whereabouts everywhere we go.

After having read the immensely resourceful book, The Facebook Effect, I’m starting to understand how our world is changing thanks to social networks. Facebook, originally intended to be a closed social network for college students to only connect with students in their schools, has changed and made us live our lives in the complete wide open. Sure, for every change there’s some backlash, but let’s consider the chronology:

• Facebook launches in 2004 to a very select number of schools, and due to demand, increases its presence on other college campuses. You couldn’t join Facebook unless you had a college email address on a particular school’s domain, much to their prospective advertisers’ chagrin. (They couldn’t get their own personal accounts to check out what the appeal was.) This gave the social network a true exclusive feel and made people long for access.
• In September 2006, after Facebook had nearly 10 million members, the News Feed was announced, which the team had been working on for almost a year. Nearly 10% of Facebook’s membership protested by joining other groups demanding that Facebook shut down the News Feed. Facebook responded by apologizing and giving its users more privacy controls to manage the concerns of students who thought this approach was too invasive.
• Three weeks later, Facebook opened its doors to everyone, knocking down its exclusivity, broadening its reach, and letting outsiders get access to information that was only available to students. For most, it was a welcome change and new friendships and connections were made.
• Facebook revisited its policies in 2009 and set its privacy controls to “everyone.” People threatened to leave the service, but not many actually did enough to make a significant dent in the membership numbers on the site. Facebook, for most, was a permanent fixture in the lives of its users.

It was a slow evolution, but social networks have made more people willing to expose themselves to the world wide open. In fact, despite Facebook’s own privacy violations, it still was ranked in 2009 by consumers as one of the most trusted brands of all time. Today, primarily thanks to Facebook and other online community services, we live a more public lifestyle, marrying our personal and professional selves (whether or not we want to) in our online presences.

Is it only a matter of time until we do something ridiculously life saving but also incredibly invasive — like implant GPS tracking devices — so that we can never truly disappear? With this slow social shift into the public realm, which to a very small fraction of us (right now) is now normal, it won’t take very long for the entire world to adjust to the new digital openness.

We now check in voluntarily to places like Foursquare and Gowalla, where we broadcast what we’re doing and where we’re eating. Ironically, this is something that takes a bit of effort on our part, yet nearly 4 million of us share our whereabouts across location-based social networks. There are social media sites like Blippy that broadcast what we’ve bought and which establishments we patronized with our credit and debit cards.

Five years ago, I probably would think that this discussion in its entirety was ludicrous. Who in their right mind would want a permanent tracking device implanted where law enforcement or the government could know where we are at all times? Now, I think that this is one of the most important things in the world. After watching not one but two people I am somewhat associated with (either in the first or second degree) disappear and wondering about the pain their families were suffering while they waited for good (or bad) news, I suspect that families of the missing would want more than ever to have someone find them and bring them back before it’s too late. I’m a mother now as well, and I fear for my loved ones. I’d want to know that they are safe.

But who would own this? Should it be governmental or should it be managed by a private company? How much information is too much? Should implantation be standardized?

Personally, if we ever did such a thing, I might be inclined to volunteer myself under the following conditions:

• This system should be managed by a government entity or private company in association with law enforcement. That way, when a missing persons report comes in, law enforcement can check against a database and only access information with certain identifying parameters, such as a first name/last name and social security number (which is required for identification and access purposes).
• This system should not cache all of a user’s whereabouts, but only the last 24-48 hours. Those wanting to maintain high standards of privacy would be relieved to know that only the last 24-48 hours of the host’s movements and locations would be saved and everything else would be wiped without further question. Naturally, I’m sure everyone in his/her lifetime has likely been to places they didn’t want to be caught at, so this should definitely alleviate any major concerns. This data can never be subpoenaed or accessed for a court case; it can only be accessed in the case of dire emergency such as a missing persons report.
• Sensitive information requires high level clearance. Given the obvious information you can gather off of such a system, only people with extremely high levels of security clearance should be able to access this information. It should be logged and red flagged to prevent abuse, and each incident should be tied into a missing persons report. Without any matching report, any employee accessing this data should be terminated.
• Implantation should be random and the device should not be trackable. If someone I know with this implanted transponder were to be kidnapped and the kidnappers were aware that the device was on her person, they’d probably spend their first few moments cutting out the device and making sure she was not findable. (Ever watch CTU? It’s not far-fetched.) Instead, these should be high tech devices that are not trackable and they can be implanted just about anywhere, be it in his toe or behind her ear. They should be small and impossible to detect.
• Access should only be revealed to law enforcement. If Jeannie thought that her husband Arnold was cheating on her, she might abuse this kind of access, get a location on Arnold, and blow his mistress’s brains out. This is serious access and serious business. If a call is made, law enforcement will follow up on the call and not reveal the whereabouts of the sought-after individual to any party until someone actually follows up. Repeat attempts to report false missing persons reports will result in possible arrest for filing a false report.

In extreme circumstances, the bottom line is that this privacy invasive RFID/GPS device can save your life. Perhaps you might worry for your own personal space now, but what would you say if you were stranded on a ski trail in extreme weather where no one could find you? What would you say if you were a parent and you feared that your child may have run away? What would you say if you were in a near-death situation where you only wished someone you knew would want to come and find you? (If you’re not ready now, reread this post in 5 years.)

Based on what has recently happened to people who are close to me, I would never want to go through something like that and put my family or friends through the hardship. I might not have agreed to this just a few years ago, but today, thanks to the social media evolution we’ve seen in the past few years, I live in the world wide open, and so do many of you. What would you do? What terms would you agree to if you wanted to let your loved ones know that you’re accessible and hopefully safe? The comments are yours.

Photos by Shutterstock.

[ Invasive or Indispensable: The Case of Permanent GPS is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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Because a Flickr photo and tweet I posted eventually was responded to, I debated posting this altogether. However, the lack of follow-through was unsettling enough that I am publishing this post.

The first week of September was difficult for American cable network TLC. There was a hostage situation at the parent company, Discovery Communications, on the first of the month. The three hostages are fortunately safe, and business resumed as usual for Discovery Communications staffers.

Around that time, though, I noticed that TLC was promoting Foursquare as Facebook within their TV programs. On multiple occasions, I noticed an overlay during their episodes that encouraged users to follow them on Foursquare with a link to a Facebook.com address.

I posted to Flickr and tried my best to bring it to their attention. And I waited.

Five days later, their Twitter account remained silent. I elected instead to go to their Facebook account with the hopes that perhaps my luck would be better there. I was wrong.

First, their default landing tab featured an inactive promotion (which has since been pulled after I wrote yet another tweet that pointed to a Flickr screenshot of the ended promotion). I would not have been surprised if it had been inactive for quite some time.

What about their Facebook wall? Surely representatives responding on behalf of TLC/Discovery will respond — minimally, they’d clean up spam. No?

Beats me. (Again, Facebook was eventually cleaned up.) For what it’s worth, it was over a holiday weekend, but I occasionally see similar messages submitted during business hours that remain visible.

By this point, it was evident that it was going to be difficult to reach a representative on behalf of a company about an issue that actually has some legitimacy. There’s a clear error in their promotion and they aren’t acknowledging the issue. In fact, during the time I sought them out, it became evident that the TLC Twitter account was wholly automated, with tweets promoting their new season premieres.

So I went to their website in search of some way to contact someone. I couldn’t find a contact form. I even tried accessing their press page, only to be told that I’d have to request an account to get access to legitimate contact addresses. At that point, I gave up and powered up WordPress.

TLC made many missteps when it came to their social media marketing efforts. Most importantly, it seems like their engagement plan of action is totally haphazard and that they’re participating in shiny toy syndrome. Fortunately, it’s time for everyone else to get some takeaways from their misfires. Heck, perhaps TLC will come by and ramp up their social media efforts. It’s so desperately needed.

Social Media is Social

First and foremost, let’s lay down some ground rules. Social media came to being recently mostly because individuals from all over the world realized that they can congregate online — for free — to talk about things that they’re passionate about. As domain names and web hosting got cheaper and cheaper, it was easy for individuals to build communities that they loved and that would help like-minded folks meet each other.

Before long, social networks became hugely successful, and savvy marketers realized that they could create accounts on these networks to promote themselves. Whether they’re big or small, it’s almost an equal opportunity for every business or brand to get involved in the social media space (as a note, many small businesses are doing this better than TLC right now!).

In the last few years, as social media has grown in popularity, so too has the desire for more and more companies to get involved. However, many of those companies are still gripping onto the traditional roles of an earlier era. Today, we’re in a many-to-many relationship. It’s not a one-to-many relationship. You need to do a lot more than broadcast to succeed.

It’s not just media. It’s social media. You need to be prepared to converse with (and not just speak to) your constituents. If you’re not ready, don’t put your social media presence front and center on your website. Better yet, start watching how other people are doing it and start listening to what’s actually happening in the space.

Don’t Automate

Following the previous point, automation is a pretty big sin in the world of social media. Plus, quite frankly, it’s offensive. If I see you on social media channels, it’s because I want to speak to you, not a shadow of something you stored to your account six days ago and queued up for the weekend. You can’t automate social media, and while it’s very compelling to do so, if you’re a big brand, we can tell.

I’m not saying you should never automate. However, who really just builds up a Twitter or Facebook and lets it churn out content on a daily basis without any oversight or manual interaction? If you’re a company like TLC, that means people will tweet at you and you won’t reply. That means someone could post the worst pornographic image you’ve ever seen on your company’s Facebook wall and you wouldn’t know about it until you’re in the office the next day, at which point you open it up and get fired when your boss, who just so happened to have been walking behind you, sees that NSFW content. That means something catastrophic may occur and you won’t know until days later because you did your social media duty for the week. That’s not how social media works.

As I said earlier, “Remember, engagement is key.” TLC might be lucky that they’re a big brand and already have an audience, but some of those individuals in their audience do know when to spot a company that doesn’t get it. Here’s to you, TLC.

Proofread

It’s not advisable for any student to hand in a paper to his teacher without having proofread the document for any egregious mistakes, grammatical or conceptual. It’s not advisable for a company to promote a video campaign with a video that shows a typo in the company’s URL. It’s not advisable for me to publish this post without rereading and seeing if there’s anything I need to edit. Every time I publish a post, I proofread it at least a dozen times.

Review everything before it goes live, especially if your target audience is thousands or millions of people. I’m not sure how many people or departments saw that TLC Foursquare/Facebook overlay before it was “sent to our TV screens” (quote out of the Jack Bauer playbook), but I’d imagine that at least a few eyeballs merely glossed over it.

Don’t just gloss. Pay attention. Social media is pretty public facing and therefore should be considered serious business if you want to be taken seriously. Review everything carefully and be diligent about your involvement. If you’re not interested, it becomes clear to us that you don’t care about us and just think of the social media space as “just another space to leverage.” The word “leverage” here is not a positive term and should be considered synonymous with “exploit” and “manipulate.” If you care, your efforts will be obvious. Otherwise, you’re just insulting your followers.

Admit When You’re Wrong

One of the goals of social media is to put the human back into business. Instead of being defensive, admit that you messed up. Say you’re sorry. Trust me, people will forgive you if you’re wrong and admit to your blunder rather than cover it up.

After I had written most of this post (but right before I published it), TLC replied to me defending their stance with the Foursqaure/Facebook promotion. I was told that the “mistake” about the Foursquare-Facebook promotion was legitimate, since they were polling users on Facebook to find places where Foursquare badges can be given — yes, read that again. I’m not convinced. Wall posts get pushed down pretty darn quickly, which would mean by the time you discovered that overlay on TV, you’d go to the Facebook page and wonder what the heck Foursquare was. In fact, the screenshot above with all the spam shows that that Foursquare status update was nowhere to be found.

Perhaps they DID have a landing page that I never saw (though I don’t believe they did), but the overlay also said “Follow TLC on Foursquare” (not shown above) and Facebook isn’t Foursquare any way you churn it. Plus, when I saw it, that landing page — if it existed — was long gone.

I may be totally insensitive here, but TLC did screw this up, and when I replied explaining this the rationale I had behind what seemed to be an illogical promotion, I was met with silence. It’s been over a week now and I figured now’s as good a time as any to publish this post.

It’s a Daily Job

I wrote most of this article over Labor Day. It’s my holiday just as much as it is the holiday down there in the Discovery Communications headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland. Xobni recently released a report showing that we check our email all the time. The report surveyed over 2,200 adults and found that many are dedicated to their work.

I don’t know if TLC is dedicated at all to their social media efforts. I do see many other companies doing this right, though.

When it comes to social media, you need to be responsive. Queuing up messages is fine if you mix that with other engagement, especially when their concerns necessitate a response. Tuning into what your customers are saying or simply monitoring the channels (especially when not doing so can harm your brand) is required of you. Otherwise, why are you here?

I’m totally sympathetic to what happened at TLC’s headquarters, especially since the office was apparently closed after the situation, but you don’t have to be physically present in the office to be practicing social media. (And if your office is really closed, perhaps saying happy birthday to a follower and ignoring more pressing matters during that time isn’t advisable.) Unfortunately, this is a huge change in culture for many people — it’s not a 9-5 task anymore.

My specific concern is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but PR firestorms can break out if you don’t reply quickly. (Remember Motrin Moms?) In this day and age, you need to be monitoring your brand all the time especially if you have some sort of social media presence.

Make it Easy for Fans to Connect

If you have a Twitter page, monitor when people tweet about you and ask for more information where necessary. If you have a Facebook page and someone asks an important question, respond to the individual, even if to say “I’ll look into it. Thanks for your support!” The bottom line is that you should let your customers know that you’re listening. It shows them that you care. That’s a big paradigm shift and companies are still confused about doing that right.

When all else fails, nobody should try to hunt for a contact number or email address that they still haven’t found after 20 minutes. Make it easy. Install a CAPTCHA if you’re worried that you’ll get more email than you can handle. Sometimes the emails being sent to your attention are actually important.

Don’t Let Emergencies Derail Your Efforts

It was very unfortunate to hear what happened at the Discovery Communications headquarters earlier this month. However, this should not be a reason to stop, drop, and disappear.

In the IT world, it’s always great to have a disaster recovery plan in place. For most business with physical locations, it’s important to have an evacuation plan in place. In the social media world, it’s also imperative to have an emergency preparedness plan in place. In the event of emergencies, someone should be designated to run the public relations and oversee all inbound and outbound communications.

While a legitimate emergency might cause business closures in single or multiple office locations, the rest of the world is still awake and some might be demanding of your attention. While my specific concern might be minor in the grand scheme of things, the lesson here is major: if something is going wrong, it’s better to communicate effectively than not at all.

At the end of the day, TLC is making a respectable effort, and while so many companies are doing a better job than TLC, TLC isn’t doing that bad a job either. However, they do need to improve and be on top of their game if they are to be taken seriously.

The biggest thing social media did for many companies was make them approachable again. It’s what human businesses do. Thankfully, there are hundreds — maybe thousands — of companies that are getting it right, but there are still companies that need to play catch-up. It’s not too late.

[ What You Can Learn About Social Media Marketing from TLC is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Like this post? Get my Internet Marketing newsletter, buy my book, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, and subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

Last year, Chris Brogan coined the phrase “the audacity of free” to refer to the entitlement his “friends” feel they have about getting free entry into conferences that he and his team spend months to organize. Somehow, individuals forget along the way that costs accrue when considering the venue, food, exhibit hall, and the staff required on hand to run the event smoothly. At the end of the day, contrary to seemingly popular belief, the hosts aren’t the only ones pocketing the money.

Yet with social media, there’s a perception that it’s easy to score freebies. After all, we become easily connected and six degrees of separation is slowly becoming three degrees.

Social media has introduced incentives to the online space, encouraging others to connect with your business. It shouldn’t be that way, but that’s the way it is. You want something from someone, so you need to compel them to engage or they’d have no reason to. In fact, in a test a colleague of mine ran with sponsored advertisements, the incentive-based campaign was much more successful than the original information-only campaign. But many individuals take this concept too far, expecting a freebie at every turn. And unfortunately, social media is at fault for breeding this mentality and causing it to spread.

Let Me Pick Your Brain for a Bit

Those of us who eat, sleep, breathe, and even bleed social media often get asked out to “free lunches” so that a “friend” can pick our brains and ultimately use this free advice to get some material gain out of it. And Chris is right: while seen as a kind gesture by the giver, it’s exploitative. After all, hourly consulting fees are typically much more costly than a “free lunch” plus the travel time it took to meet up.

It’s shocking, almost appalling, to see the reactions of individuals who are asked respectfully to pay consulting rates for these “free” brainstorming sessions, whether over a meal or on the phone. I’m not sure where we’ve gone wrong here, but something needs to change. Time is money, and inquiries are usually made to those possessing a certain level of expertise that only is available to those who have had years of training, which is also time and money (and even debt for some!). That lunch and the information provided therein will often benefit your bottom line. Making a payment for that should really not be so difficult. However, while haggling is expected in the economy of today, trying to get everything for free is downright unethical, nor is it fair to the person who poured their heart and soul into the advice that you’ll merely milk from them without any reservation.

There’s a Lot of Value Here Already

I won’t deny it: I want Techipedia to be packed with value, to show you what I know and how I can help you. A few high profile folks have even called my readers lucky for getting great content without any up front monetary commitment. (If you want great beginner social media content behind a pay wall, check out Exploring Social Media, a project I am working on with Jason Falls and some other great minds.) This comes despite people asking for more under the assumption that I “must” be making money on this site and therefore owe my readers more. (Do you see any banner ads anywhere?)

I’ve spent seventeen years in the social space. That’s a long time and before most of you probably even owned a computer that was connected to the Internet. I’ve been working in consulting for a little less, but it’s my job. It’s what I do (among other projects). And my fees pay the rent, keep me connected to the Internet so that I can serve my clients, and cover other expenses such as staff and business expenses. All of this doesn’t come for free for me either.

Books Take Time to Write

Last week, a Twitter user asked a really blunt but surprising question about how to download my book (legally) for free. It was nice to request a legal copy, but there isn’t any. My book is less than $20 on Amazon, which makes for a great deal and covers years of practice and training. The investment could benefit your business by a lot more than $20 in financial gain.

Books aren’t a breeze to write and anyone who is an author might tell you that book writing is some of the hardest and busiest work they’ll ever do. It took me nearly 1000 hours that could have been spent on other clients. Did anyone know that authors make perhaps a dollar off the sale of every book? As much as I’ve wanted to be an author since the age of 5, I understood why my mother tried dissuading me at that tender and impressionable age: most authors simply don’t make enough money. Surprisingly, some individuals who have yet to build any type of relationship with an author still expect to get a break. Whether or not it’s my choice — and in book publishing, there are other parties involved beyond just the writer — it’s just the wrong question to ask.

Last week, when the Twitter user asked the question about the free downloadable copy, I gave her a straightforward unemotional-and-without-thought “there is none” answer, which is typical of the types of responses I provide on Twitter (I’m only wordy in blog posts ). Consequently, I got chewed out both on Twitter and following that on her own blog, telling me that I should have responded nicely and recommended the library. Somehow, people think it’s okay to ask an inappropriate question and get a more-than-grateful response.

Life won’t always hand you breaks. Those of us who are successful in our space usually have worked really hard to get here. Social media should not continue to give off the mindset that it’s easier to get things for free. Sadly, it absolutely has.

I’ll Respect My Time. Will You?

Lisa Barone made a really good point last month when she said that her productivity went up as a result of respecting her time. While her specific circumstances were different, the premise is the same. Most of us are busy, and lately, the extent of the “busy”-ness for me is about helping a business’s bottom line. I’d like to help others but feel the need to repeat my stance against giving people who do not know me and who do not even really warm up to me the benefit of a free ride while still charging customers who have been with me for years. And time is too finite to give everyone free advice. I wish the world worked that way, because I love to help businesses. After all, that’s why Techipedia continues to provide really great informational content almost weekly. It’s why I respond to every comment on my posts. It’s why I reply to every email often within minutes. At the end of the day, though, we ALL have families to feed.

Expertise Comes at a Price

I’m sure I’m speaking for all social media consultants (and other Internet Marketing strategists) out there when I say that social media advice has come at the cost of learning through trial and error for us, and the more and more times we’re asked to give out freebies, the more numb we get to the request. I really hope this post drives the point home that freebies, even a $50 lunch, don’t really benefit anyone but the receiver. (Most of us would be eating lunch anyway!)

Not Everything is Free

I always am fascinated myself by looking at people doing dirty jobs — that guy cleaning the bathroom in Madison Square Garden definitely isn’t a happy camper — and realizing that the only thing that governs people toward these tasks is financial benefit. Almost everything everyone does in the business world, be it a regular transaction, tourism, or travel, has some financial element to it. Money makes the world go round. Chris puts it really nicely when he says, “But free is a choice, and it’s not your buyers who decide this, no matter what we like to think in social media kumbaya-ville. Free is beautiful, and costs are part of life.”

There are exceptions to the rule, of course, and there always will be. But setting up the expectation and making demands for freebies puts unnecessary stress on the giver, and that’s just not the correct way to build a real relationship.

Now it’s Your Turn

How have you handled the requests for freebies? Do you have any system that has worked? Failed? Sound off in the comments.

Photos provided by Shutterstock.

[ The Audacity of Free: The Products and Services Edition is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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Over the past two years or so, social media’s increased popularity has really done something for those assuming that it’s all a “get rich quick” opportunity. The widespread adoption of social media has caused for hordes of “experts” to suddenly come into town assuming that they can totally own this niche. These new “Internet Marketers” take Twitter by storm, using automated Twitter tools in abundance that give them the true appearance of expertise. They are no-name people who all of the sudden have 22,000 followers while following 23,000, but that doesn’t matter because a newbie trying to market his business sees this 5 digit number and gets excited about the opportunities to reach so many people so quickly.

It’s a Utopian mindset but one that clueless business owners step into after following an “expert” and hiring him for services. Many unsuspecting business owners blindly spot the riches of social media based on the appearance of numbers (even though those are usually deceiving). They think, “This guy must be great; he has 30,000 Twitter followers! What’s better than that?”

It’s unfortunately a situation I’ve been picking up more and more on as I see users building their entire social media marketing empire on the basis of automation.

A few months ago, a big named blogger called out another “expert” for writing an eBook that included a blog post from this blogger without attribution and completely verbatim. The thought process likely was that he wouldn’t get caught. Someone, though, recognized the content and reported it to the original blogger who rallied his audience and successfully had this original blogger amend his document. Where was the eBook author during all of this? I wanted to know since I never heard of the guy. Who was he, I wondered, and was he credible? So I hopped on Twitter for a sneak into his daily activities. Despite the fact that he had over 50,000 Twitter followers, his entire feed was a broadcast. There was no engagement and his ratio of followers to following was close to one-to-one. It’s kind of hard to have a relationship with 50,000 people, is it not? A 1:1 ratio at that level brings up a few red flags, but most notably, automation, especially with regards to automatic reciprocation of every single incoming follower.

But that was a few months ago, and I’m naive enough to think that others won’t be so silly in their online engagement activities. Meanwhile, I’ve been working on building out a social media strategic plan for a really interesting company. Their social media efforts were spearheaded by a guy who looks like a nice dude, but after studying his personal Twitter feed, it was almost the same kind of thing: the process was almost wholly automated. Effort was placed into collecting articles and scheduling them over time to give off the appearance of a “fresh” and “relevant” Twitter feed, but engagement was kept at a true minimum. Essentially, the actual user’s Twitter account became a broadcast medium but not a conversational one.

Sadly, that same strategy was passed onto the client’s Twitter feed as well; with the exception of a single @ in a full month (that was a response to a question), the entire Twitter account was fully automated. He must have spent an hour or two collecting posts to schedule throughout the month, adding no real value to the client’s stream, thereby capturing no leads and empowering customers. Plus, one of his automated tweets even advocated auto-following users, which some very keen customers noted and caused him to remove that tweet and apologize for endorsing the tactic!

So when I finally got access to the client’s Twitter account to begin promoting their services, I didn’t know what I’d find but expected the process to be a tad easier. However, following their home Twitter feed was really difficult. I was reading tweets from a sea of twitterfeeds, which if you’re unaware, are totally automated posts that come from processing RSS feeds. It seemed that none of the accounts this Twitter account was following were actually manned by people — and there were hundreds! Twitterfeeds are hardly the kind of thing a real human would ever want to read, especially one that wants to embark in social media marketing. It’s a great tool, but it’s not one you’d exclusively want to dedicate your Twitter efforts to. And it doesn’t help for marketing — at least not the social kind. If I wanted to shout it out, I’d buy a billboard over the Strip in Las Vegas. Preferably one that was visible from the top floors of the Mirage, Treasure Island, the Palazzo, and heck, while I’m at it, the Bellagio. Why not?

We should hang a banner ad in the middle of the sky

A similar tactic was mirrored on the client’s Facebook account; there was no user interaction, just a bunch of messages that were cross-posted from Twitter to Facebook that were scheduled in advance. There were fans on the Facebook page, but what is keeping them there? A great product — nothing more, nothing less.

Yet there’s so much more that can be done online, and it doesn’t involve only using tools. Tools make your life easier, they’re really a small fraction of the process of social media marketing. Having a solid social media strategy and realizing that social media marketing involves dealing with people is critically important. Here are some rules of thumb to consider when considering a social media marketing strategy:

Engagement is Everything

I can’t stress it enough: social media marketing is a social activity! People are flocking to sites like Twitter and Facebook and other communities because they are online communities where they can learn from and hang out with their peers. The success of a social media marketing campaign strongly revolves around engagement. Broadcasting works better as a billboard.

What kind of engagement can you do? That’s not as difficult as it seems: find people talking about you and respond to them. Find people talking about your competitors and tell them about your own opportunities (use your best judgment though). Find people talking about your industry and chime in! Add value by finding blog posts or articles of interest to your followers and make sure to credit the author of the article, especially if he’s on Twitter! (e.g. “Just found this great post on green and orange widgets by @tamar”).

Numbers Do Not Dictate Influence

There are some people who will automatically follow everyone who follows them on Twitter. As a result, they have incredibly huge following numbers even though their followers may have also used automatic methods to get new followers. It’s actually more common than you think. I’ve been autofollowed by many people simply because I’ve tweeted about Internet Marketing and Social Media Marketing, and I’ve seen my peers accumulate followers for doing the same thing. The funny thing is that some of my peers will auto-follow these folks back, making the entire process automatic.

When I first signed onto Twitter in 2006, I used to manually review every single incoming email notifying me of new Twitter followers just to see if there was a synergy between our accounts. Am I interested in what the other person has to add? If so, I followed them. With the number of followers that come and go, and due to Twitter’s widespread adoption, it’s now a bit difficult to manually review the dozens of followers I get on a daily basis. I now employ lists as a way to follow people in my own defined categories (though it still has a shortcoming; the process is still manual!). This method may or may not work for you; my point of illustration is simply to explain that the process of following (both on Twitter and on lists) for me is a completely manual one, and it may be advisable for your own account integrity to avoid following everyone just because they’ve elected to follow you. Are you genuinely interested in everything the 15,000 people you’re following have to say? Will you even pay attention to your home feed? These are questions you need to seriously consider before you automate.

Tools like Klout can really help you find the influencers among those who are merely twitterfeeding it up the wazoo. If their number is low (I’d say a Klout of 35 or less counts for low/no influence among social media experts, though this can be debatable), even if they have 302,402 followers, they’re not influential. If you’re hiring a social media marketing practitioner for your business, look at their Klout. If it’s low, they aren’t exerting enough influence on their own accounts to be influential enough on your account. Even though some of us are busy helping clients, we should still find time to nurture our own account and grow it organically.

Automation is Okay… in Limited Quantities

Sometimes it’s okay to share content you love. I have close friends and colleagues who share sponsored posts from major blogs among the other posts they share from these large online publications. They do it because they generally love ALL the articles — and so what if there’s an infrequent article that thanks the blogs’ supporters?

Running through automated tools is fine, but it’s not something you should be doing regularly. There’s only so much genuity that comes out of automating your Twitter account. And it also proves that there are thousands (millions?) of blind Twitter users who think it’s a numbers game.

Remember, engagement is key. Respond to the people who are around you. If you want to stand on a podium and start shouting through a megaphone, by all means, do it. Just don’t do it on Twitter if you want a return on your investment. Twitter is a community and you’re a member of the congregation. You need to respect your peers and treat them as they deserve to be treated.

Thanks to social media’s widespread adoption and thanks to a really open API for platforms such as Twitter, it’s inevitable that people will take advantage of the latest and greatest of Twitter tools — and then some — to eliminate the need for manual labor while still charging an arm and a leg for services. Don’t fall victim to this trap, and make sure to evaluate the people you’d be hiring to ensure that they are real people and not set-it-and-forget-it bots. By taking a more automatic route, you’re missing an opportunity to capture the attention of some people who really can matter for your business, so don’t forget to be human too. It’s that easy.

Photos by Shutterstock.

[ No, You Can’t Automate Social Media! is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

Like this post? Get my Internet Marketing newsletter, buy my book, The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, and subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.

Unless you’ve gone to a college in the last 10-15 years (and only when the book existed), you may not even know where the name Facebook came from. (In case you want to know, here’s a hint.) Facebook, originally known as thefacebook.com, was a service that connected college students to their classmates and to friends in other universities. The concept was based off a tangible book that incoming freshmen were given each year so that they can meet their classmates. Because of its original simple use (communication!) and its restricted access, people had no need to use any other names on the Mark Zuckerberg-created social network. You could find me by searching for my name (my maiden name, at least). You could find any college student who elected to join by using their first name and last name. They weren’t trying to be silly and they had no reason to self-promote. It was a closed service with almost instant and immediate trust.

It’s how social networks are intended to be used.

I’ve briefly touched upon a huge pet peeve of mine in my social media etiquette handbook, saying that you should use your real name and not represent anyone (or anything) else. If you do so on Facebook, your account will likely be terminated especially if Facebook receives reports of misrepresentation. Case in point: in 2006, Facebook removed the only Facebook friend I had who wasn’t a real person. That person was St. Augustine of Hippo, who has been dead for nearly 1500 years. Since Facebook wants you to use your real name and to be yourself, I totally understand and respected their decision to remove the account.

By removing this account, and I’d imagine dozens of others, Facebook set an example, but four years later, name abuse is running rampant on the service. Since Facebook’s user base is so big, and since their staff is clearly too small, they are unable to police this infraction as effectively as they used to. It’s a shame since some of us “purists” (if you will) are bothered by the lack of respect these individuals give to Facebook’s rules themselves, and most importantly, their peers.

Here’s my request of these individuals: Use your real name. Only your name. Don’t be ridiculous and start adding qualifiers (like Seo unless it’s part of your name). Facebook is a great tool for marketing your business, but only if you use it correctly. Sorry, there are eleventy billion SEOs on Facebook. There are probably many web consultants. These terms do not belong in your first name or last name. If you want to promote your business services in some capacity, use a Facebook Fan page.

Because it is still unclear to a large (unfortunately) percentage of people how to use Facebook, I’ve taken the liberty to explain what the different Facebook profile options are that are available to you. Don’t need this? Pass it onto the people who do. Maybe they sent you a Facebook friend request and you were too uncomfortable accepting it because of the strange associations implied when a person said he’s a pizzeria.

Profile Page: This is simple stuff, guys. You create a brand new account on Facebook. You enter in your birthday (yes, your birthday. The one on your birth certificate). You tell people about the schools you’ve attended, the degrees you’ve earned, the interests you may have. That’s for you, the person reading this. You shouldn’t create it for your dog or your 3 month old son (as much as I want to for my own child, I assume that in 13 years or so, if Facebook is still around, he’ll want to create his own account with a real birthday). This account is for you. If you already have an account, don’t create another one. This is a personal profile for a reason.

Just a guy's personal profile on Facebook

Facebook makes the bold claim that they have 400 million accounts, which is a great number to a potential advertiser or business looking to jump on the bandwagon. Truth be told, that may even be why Facebook has stopped canning abusive accounts. However, that number simply isn’t accurate because most Facebook users don’t follow the rules. Still, it puts Facebook ahead of MySpace.

Official Fan Page: Are you the owner of Gary’s Ice Cream on Main Street? Do you represent Sylvester’s Soccer Shop down the block? Excellent. You’re authorized to create a Facebook Page. This is a page you can use that is publicly available (for the world to see and find via search engines) to help your customers find you. It’s the greatest thing for you as a business owner; you need not go out and start befriending people to let them know you exist — once you create the page, just tell your customers about it, and the word of mouth will spread.

A regularly updated Fan Page brings greater awareness

Community Page: What if you love something but you have no direct affiliation with the product/service, can’t find the official page, and worse, discover the page doesn’t even exist? Community Pages are the most annoying thing Facebook has given us, but I see their point. In an effort to make Facebook data more public, Community Pages let people share ideas, thoughts, and their interests in a fully open forum. Sadly enough, most people don’t know that their content is public; a wonderful example is seen below. Did anyone know that this was going to be made public? Of course not.

I wonder how many of these folks know that their info is viewable by the entire world.

Groups: Facebook Groups still exist, but I wouldn’t encourage using them unless you’re looking to maintain a fully closed and private community in the confines of the service. Normally, Groups exist to let people congregate around a common interest. Maybe you went to the same summer camp in 1992 and want to share photos with your old camp mates. If that summer camp doesn’t exist anymore, a Facebook Group may make sense. (And if it does still exist, a Facebook Page may make sense.) There’s a lot of overlap between Facebook Groups and Fan Pages, but Facebook Groups is very limited in terms of functionality (Facebook has had Groups since the beginning of time).

I had a good reason to base this on a summer camp example.

There you have it: personal profiles versus Fan Pages versus Community Pages versus Facebook Groups. And perhaps, now you know a little more of how each “community” on Facebook is intended to be used. Heck, most of you get it. But in the last few days, I’ve run into:

• One of my favorite new restaurants using a regular Facebook profile, which I only learned about because it showed up in the box of 6 friends on one of my friend’s profiles. Restaurants aren’t things I feel comfortable being friends with. They’re things I Like. On principle, I just cannot add this restaurant as a friend. It’s just awkward.
• A religious institution using a personal profile which uses default privacy to broadcast information about its offerings. Too bad it’s not public; nobody can actually see these updates unless they actually are your friends.
• A local photographer who not only has a Facebook account which totally is named after her business, but she also watermarks every single photograph she uploads to her Facebook album. It’s overkill.
• Contributions on a Facebook event wall that come from a social media aficionado whose name clearly isn’t on his (her?) birth certificate. Even social media “purists” aren’t really that pure.

Okay, yeah, perhaps these minor details aren’t the end of the world for some people, but when I’m friends with real people with real names, having a friend who looks like the odd one out just seems wrong and exploitative. (Yes, exploitative: “Facebook hasn’t stopped me yet so I’m going to sell my services as overtly as possible in my username. Maybe a friend of a friend will need me one day.”) Yet, over the past few months, I’ve been befriended by some “www dot domain dot com” types and refused on principle, but I realized that so many of my friends who do not even know them are accepting the requests blindly simply because there are other mutual friends, not because they agree with this tactic. Hold your moral ground!

What Facebook needs is a way to convert profiles — full fledged ones that include “religious affiliations,” “marital status,” and the like — to Fan Pages. People who have already established a fan base on their personal profiles don’t want to start anew. But in the absence of that, for now at least, it’s advisable to change your name where you can or just create that Fan Page. You wouldn’t want the months or years of work you’ve invested to disappear into thin air one day because your account got terminated due to abuse of policies.

[ Dear Facebook Friends, You’re Doing it Wrong is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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Just last year, I became a mother for the first time. My son just turned one (time flies, doesn’t it?) and after being a full time mom and performing various social media marketing tasks throughout, I’ve learned that there are many parallels that can be taken from parenthood that also apply to social media marketing. Let’s take a look at the similarities.

You Need to Do it All the Time

True social media marketing — that is, connecting with your customers and prospects — is a consistent and regular task. One-off campaigns can help drive viral success, but social media is not a “set it and forget it” type of initiative. You need to consistently work at building relationships and not let them be. And you need to be consistently monitoring the space. Silence can hurt you. If you’re not following the conversation regularly, your customers might just flock to your competitors instead.

Similarly, as much as it might feel compelling to neglect your child to perhaps play in the virtual space or to do anything else for that matter, you can’t take lengthy breaks from your kid. Parenthood is a full time job for either the parent or a caretaker. You can’t just give birth to a baby and forget her either. She needs your attention just like your audience does.

You Don’t Get a Vacation

In the online space, there will always be some sort of mention online that is applicable to you in some way. Maybe it’s on Twitter. Maybe it’s on a forum. Maybe it’s on Tip’d. The Internet never sleeps and neither should your online initiatives. As someone who is required to monitor your brand, there will never be a day when all is quiet. It’s kind of why I don’t really take vacations.

Once you’re a parent, there’s no going turning back. As Tony Hung once told me, you can’t put your kid back where he came from. You don’t exactly get a vacation from your kid. Once you’re a parent, you can’t distance yourself from that role. And if you do go on a real vacation, when you get back from that trip, you’ll need to tend to your child yet again and most likely address issues that arose when you were gone.

It’s Going to Be Difficult at First

When you first give birth to a child, you’re in for a challenge. I must have heard the standard “so, are you getting sleep yet?” question a hundred times. (Thankfully, now I am.) For the first few months, a new parent has to worry about the constant waking and sleeping that interrupts your day, regular feedings (and what to do when the baby doesn’t eat), buying new clothes every 2 weeks, doing laundry 3 times more often than you’re used to, the frequent crying, the regular diaper changes — and that’s just about your child. Think about the dynamics that will change with your work environment (maternity/paternity leave, perhaps) and even with your existing partners or family members. Things are changing and they’re changing permanently.

If this is your first time diving in the social media waters, it’s going to be difficult to make a splash. You’ll be creating that Twitter account for the first time, and you’ll have to grow followers. Your Facebook Fan page will have 0 fans. That’s not really convincing social proof. Then, when you’re joining a community for the first time, you’ll need to study the users and slowly build relationships with them. They won’t be easily trusting — after all, you’re probably there to market — so it may be especially difficult getting people on board with your marketing initiatives.

But as you establish yourself, and as your child grows up, it gets easier. No doubt, it will be hard at first. Just keep on trudging and you’ll start seeing breakthroughs.

The Relationship Grows Stronger Each Day

When you meet your customers and prospects online, you’re usually doing so because of some connection with them. There’s some common ground. That’s only the beginning. As you consistently interact with them, offering value and reason to continue following you, that relationship — and even the brand awareness — grows stronger. This is especially true of other social networks, especially ones where you were originally untrusted. MrBabyMan, Digg’s top user, was an unknown once. Through hard work and dedication, Andy has proven himself and people look up to him. Today, he has an incredibly huge following.

Some mothers give birth and don’t immediately form a bond with their child. Others do. I was one of those parents who was in denial during my pregnancy but fell in love immediately following his birth. Yet, it’s incredible to see how that bond grows stronger each and every day as he begins to understand his surroundings and as I realize how lucky I am.

You Need to Nurture It

A newborn is unable to care for itself. It can’t be fed, it can’t clean up after itself, and it definitely won’t like you if you don’t burp it. A regular daily regimen often entails the caretaker role of feeding the child, changing the diapers, burping the baby, changing the clothes, bathing the baby, teaching the baby new things, taking the baby to the doctor or outdoors, putting him down for a nap — the list goes on and on. It’s hard work. And you, as the parent, are responsible for these tasks.

Many companies that have not embraced social media marketing often do so because of the fear of an uncontrolled message. That’s why social media marketers reassure these companies that they may not be able to change what’s being said (nor may they necessarily like it), but they can nurture the perception that people have of companies (see letter N). Yes, you’ll have to work at it, but you can do it.

Sometimes There Will Be Bumps

Sometimes there will be parts of the job that just aren’t fun. Your child may get sick, he doesn’t like his green beans, he might be very unhappy when he’s teething, or he might have a rough patch and revert to a previous sleeping pattern that isn’t ideal. As a parent, your job is just to stick with it. It’s not the best scenario, but hopefully, it’s only temporary.

Similarly, your social media marketing initiatives might sound great until someone goes out and ruins it for you. Perhaps you’ve prepared really well for what you thought would be a great viral video campaign, only to find out that the audience does not care in the slightest. As a social media marketer, you might be ill-prepared for these unpleasant experiences. Still, though, you trudge through it. It isn’t going to be a walk in the park; everything is a learning experience. Life gets better.

Conclusion

Parenthood for me has been an incredible journey, one that I realize now I appreciate wholeheartedly. On the other hand, I’ve been doing the online thing for more than fifteen years. Sometimes it’s tough and requires more attention of me, but it is also incredibly rewarding. The daily gains are substantial.

None of this is easy, but social media marketing isn’t supposed to be. Neither is parenthood. Working at it, though, is extremely powerful, both for the relationships you build online and the ones you grow offline.

Update 6/8/10: Natalie Bourre posted the toddler version of this post with more great parallels!

Photos (with the exception of the first one) provided by Shutterstock.

[ 6 Things Parenthood Taught Me About Social Media Marketing is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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I started this letter before f8, so for the record, it’s not about anything new. However, it even holds more water as a result. While Facebook is introducing new developments, they are losing sight of the old issues that are mostly “broken” or that have not yet been addressed. As such, this letter serves the purpose of reminding Facebook that they should focus on current affairs — especially for businesses — before launching new initiatives.

Dear Facebook,

I’ve been your buddy since you were open to a handful of select universities and were called thefacebook.com. In fact, you can validate that by cross checking my user ID, 102991, which should indicate that I’ve been around for a real long time (since February 2004, to be more precise). And though I signed up when I was a recent college graduate, I’ve been an addict for quite awhile and even was impressed by the early app offerings, consistently applauding many of your developments. So you see, my complaints to you are that of someone who has been with you through and through. I like you, Facebook, I do. You’re kind of fun. Usually.

I have to tell you, then, that I wasn’t a huge fan of you opening your doors up to everyone. Yup, it’s true. I was a Facebook purist in its former form and I liked having access to select group of exclusive folks knowing that these were trusted people and that only certain groups of individuals were allowed to have access. It felt good to be exclusive. I, like other “students” at the time, always thought Facebook wouldn’t “sell out” and become an open platform.

But Facebook, you did open your doors to the world, and we all got used to it. Facebook’s goal to be the social network of choice for all was a lofty one, but I gotta hand it to you, Facebook — it was a big deal, and let’s be honest here, it made lots of sense. I can’t blame you for wanting to be accessible to everyone everywhere. After a good amount of time, in fact, I was trying to convince my entire family to sign up. My grandfather, one of Facebook’s holdouts, even created his first account (finally!) after my convincing appearance on The Agenda on TVO in February 2010.

Facebook announced Facebook Pages, too, for businesses to have a real presence. And here’s where the real problem starts. By then, Facebook, you were so big that you didn’t have the staff to accommodate the requests and inquiries — some which are quite legitimate and require personalized attention — that resulted as a consequence of being more open to businesses. With the initiative for Facebook to be open and to empower businesses to host pages that celebrate their business, offering deals and giving the community the ability to converse directly with the business or entity these pages represent, you forgot about accountability.

Where Did My Facebook Page Go?

I’ve heard about dozens of businesses who created Facebook Pages, pouring their hearts and souls and development hours into crafting content and attracting new fans, only to find out that their account disappears without a trace. Some ask me directly for help; I’m not Facebook and I do not have any answers.

Neither does Facebook, apparently.

When these individuals ask Facebook why their Facebook Page was deleted, they are met with silence. Sure, you have staffers to respond to the requests, but it seems that you refuse to. Your standard messaging goes to the effect of “Unfortunately, we are unable to respond to every [concern] individually, but we are reading them.” I get that, but this isn’t just a casual encounter anymore. With Facebook being the social destination of choice, these pages are businesses’ lifelines. Facebook, you’re cutting them where it hurts and you don’t even care to respond to these panic-stricken individuals who have to pour in hours of work, money, and time again to make things right.

It’s sad, really.

It would be sadder if someone built a brand new Facebook Page only to find out that Facebook canned it a second time. That would be really unfortunate. Maybe instead, Facebook, you can respond to the original concern so that the businesses learn from their mistakes.

Personally, I worry that our memories are being lost in digital oblivion, never to be easily recalled or referenced by us — especially with the threat to the long-term viability of our accounts.

Wait, that’s it?

If this was the only problem related to Facebook, I guess this post really wouldn’t have a place. After all, it’s a similar issue to Robert Scoble’s when Facebook disabled his account two years ago. Many individuals have had their accounts cancelled for violations of the Terms of Service.

Or maybe there weren’t TOS violations at all. Who knows. A lot of people don’t seem to be breaking any rules but see their accounts and Pages gone.

Except there’s more.

Permanent Administrators

Here’s another situation I recently encountered. Through a digital agency and with full approval from a client, I was tasked with building up the client’s Facebook presence. Consequently, I was the original creator of the Fan Page. Well, if you know about how it works with agencies, you know that this stuff is campaign-based, and when the campaign ends, you really don’t belong as the page admin anymore. If you’re not involved with the client any further, why should you still have access to the page and all the data? So, after several months, the client asked me to remove myself as an admin.

The thing is, and I wish I knew this earlier, you can’t. The Page creator — the original Page administrator — cannot remove himself. At all. So I emailed Facebook, only to receive a generic acknowledgment saying that I might not receive a response. Well, great. With Facebook’s track record, I knew that, and I kind of respect that given the volume of junk reports they likely get that are answered in Facebook’s help documents. But yet, to this day, Facebook has done nothing about it — which would make sense from your perspective, Facebook, because you’ve covered yourself via your help documents. However, you need to start seeing it from others’ shoes.

I’ve no hard feelings against the client and therefore they’re lucky that I’m the admin of the page as I won’t do anything hurtful now that I have no client relationship with them. But let’s just say that the main admin of a big brand’s page or other type of page leaves the company on bad terms and defaces or even removes the Facebook Page. Now what? Whose fault was it? We have no resources available to us to remove the main person as the administrator. This can translate to very horrible things down the road.

You see where I’m getting with this.

Engaging on the Pages Themselves

Let’s take another issue that more people can relate to. I’m the admin of a few Facebook Pages. Sometimes I want to respond to these pages on behalf of the business that powers that Facebook Page. Sometimes I want to respond as me, myself, and I, Tamar Weinberg, Facebook ID 102991. But if I’m the admin of a page, I can’t respond as me. I can only respond as the business/entity powering that Facebook Page. Why, Facebook, can’t you give me the option to represent myself?

And now that I’m an admin of that client page, well, what if I wanted to engage on the actual page on behalf of myself? I can’t! I HAVE to respond on behalf of the company, even though I’m not at all affiliated with the company anymore.

I’ve seen similar issues with news outlets, especially those with postings that are authored by multiple writers. If you’re the admin of the Facebook Page but want to comment on a posted article, you can only do so as the Page owner, not as an actual participant in the conversation. Essentially, the communication appears to be coming from an official capacity.

I have a colleague who maintains two Facebook accounts — one where he can respond on behalf of the business represented on the Facebook Page and one where he can be himself (transparently, of course). Oh wait, is that against your Terms of Service? You don’t really give business owners a choice. No wonder you have 400 million members. I wonder how many of those are actually unique users.

Removing Fans

Here’s another interesting issue. The only way to remove a fan on Facebook is to click “Fans” and then find the user to remove him/her. Let’s just say you were tasked with doing this on a Facebook page that has hundreds of thousands of fans. Yes, you’d have to manually go through the list, hitting Next, Next, Next, and Next again until you find it … 30 years later.

Seriously, Facebook? You can’t give us a search box?

Contests? What?

Okay, maybe there’s a reason for this, but I never found out, and to this day most of us really have no idea. Just a few months ago, you removed the ability for businesses to easily run contests on Facebook pages. The stipulations that surround contest hosting on Facebook at this present time actually benefit big brands and not small companies who are looking to build their presence on the network. Apparently, Page owners have to ask permission but only if they are spending a lot of money on Facebook Ads.

Sure, Facebook, we get it. You have your reasons for doing this, and they’re probably financially driven, but why not be honest about why you shut so many people out? Why not work with small businesses and those affected most by this policy change to find something that would work better for them that does not complicate the process or require a substantial financial investment? Believe it or not, even with my minimal reach, I’ve been asked about Facebook contests from businesses of all sizes dozens of times. People want to do it right without fear of being punished and losing their hard-earned Facebook Page.

Why did you have to change your terms to kill the potential for businesses to use promotions to shine on Facebook? Most people explicitly join Facebook because they want exclusives, deals, and freebies. Way to take much of that away.

If this decision was financially motivated, perhaps you should have just charged money for the ability for a business to create a Fan Page versus forcing them to spend money on ads before contest permission is granted. Maybe then it would have solved the issue about the permanent administrators. Only people truly financially invested in their companies would actually pay to create Facebook Pages, after all.

Are you Listening, Facebook?

Where, Facebook, can we request these legitimate improvements, and more importantly, will you really listen? I know I’ve made several requests of numerous individual staffers before, but apparently I’m a nobody whose requests deserve not a single listen, despite the fact that I’m not speaking for myself. Facebook needs to improve upon itself instead of innovating with uselessness.

Maybe it’s time to be attentive to these concerns and not shut them out. After all, this time, they’re not complaining about news feeds. Facebook, when you open to everyone, you need to have ears and listen to everyone. Sometimes the concerns are actually legitimate. From what we’ve gathered, the people behind these support forms are junior staff who don’t pass on requests to senior staff, and that’s why nothing gets done.

Facebook, it might actually be a good idea sometimes to listen to your users. When you’re a platform for businesses, having a mutually beneficial relationship could even be a good idea. So, Facebook, when are you going to have a Business Center that regularly communicates with owners of small businesses or larger businesses who don’t place ad buys on your network? I’m aware of your larger-scale relationships with businesses with deep pockets, but not every business is there yet or feels comfortable in the social space. Perhaps creating and fostering relationships can help make it better for everyone involved. Being responsive, though, is a critical first step.

Facebook, I (we) ask that you start valuing business entities and not ignore those who might not be in a financial position to invest with you (yet!). They might not be the lifeblood of your site, but they’re definitely driving more users to the network, which we hope actually helps your bottom line.

Readers, Now it’s Your Turn

What other flaws have you found in the way Facebook handles its relationship with businesses? Readers, the comments are yours.

[ An Open Letter to Facebook is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]

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