Why I’m not complaining and I'm happy for social channels to have my data.

So here we are, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica debacle, feeling data-defiled and as though we dropped the informational soap in social media prison, poised to delete our Facebook accounts. Honestly, get over it.

Facebook has done nothing you didn’t sign up for. The media are loving it and Zuckerburg is apologising left, right and centre in a year he was hoping to crack on and fix the unwieldy behemoth that his baby has become – it’s news. Giving our data away to Facebook and Facebook apps is something you and I signed up for. Did you not read the small print? Don’t worry, no one does.

We live in the information age. Arguably, with the possible exception of the industrial revolution, one of the most exciting times for the 'civilised' world. Facebook is an unavoidable part of the connectivity of the western world. It has over 2.13 billion monthly active users and Mr. Zuckerburg is worth about £50 billion. In the UK the highest number of users is 25 to 34-year-olds, with (in this age range alone) 5.2 million lasses and 5.5 million blokes using Facebook in any given month.

We’re addicted: posting; messaging; liking etc. boosts our social capital and decreases loneliness and isolation. Sure, we have those friends who are part of some digital underclass that aren’t on Facebook, but they don’t get invited to parties (events) and (let’s face it) we think they’re a bit weird unless they work as undercover cops or they’re in a religious cult that thinks “technology is evil” (which is also weird).

There’s a deep connection between Facebook and the reward centre of the human brain. It fuels our narcissistic streak (to whatever level) by giving us social affirmation, but it also keeps us in touch with friends, family, and colleagues. It lets us promote our causes, fight injustice, coordinate disaster efforts, reach our customers, remember birthdays, rekindle old friendships, share ideas, and connect with those who live far away. It’s also free and let’s face it - is the last thing we see at night and the first thing in the morning.

So here’s the thing. What about giving away our data in exchange for free connectivity? As someone who writes ad strategy, executes a metric f**k-tonne of social ads and has built numerous apps, this is a good thing. We are, essentially, the product. Get over it, that’s always how it has been. It’s the payoff and we sign up for it. How is this a revelation? Our data is what keeps Facebook free. People like myself use the information you give Facebook to create targeted advertising, and that’s the key word here, TARGETED. If you get random ads for things you’re not interested in that’s some marketing bod doing an awful job, not Facebook’s fault.

If someone exploits that data - they’re to blame, not Facebook. It’s the user who chooses to use Facebook Login to let all kind of sites use their data – LOADS of big companies from Apple to Android use this. Again, via the permissions we gave through agreeing to the terms and conditions we probably didn’t read.

Giving our data away is powerful. It makes information semantic so that it comes to us when (or before) we need it. It offers me deals on walking boots from Millets because there’s a sale on and they know I’ll be interested. It guides me to the information I’m interested in and chooses related videos for me to watch and local gigs I care about. It fuels my hobbies. It shows me other related communities and asks me if I’m interested. It brings me news I’m passionate about. It broadens my mind. It opens my horizons to new products and services. I want that. That’s a good thing, and important for the development of search and online marketing - if it works for business we'll fund it.

So don’t delete your Facebook profile. That’s just a knee-jerk reaction to the media and taking a pair of scissors to your nose. Sure, be pissed off with those who exploit our data against the rules, but our data helps us get what we need, without looking for it, and that’s something I want to be a part of. Facebook is free and useful. It's also learned from this and it'll evolve. Let’s blame the right people and get over it.

Crack on.

Obligatory Prediction for Digital Marketing in 2017

For the past 10 years I’ve blogged a prediction about the year to come. Mostly I’ve been right, if sometimes a little too optimistic, so this year I’m gonna calm the hell down and go with what I know f’sure:

Video, especially streaming, is going to be bigger than hip-hop. Get on board or get left behind. Even Twitter released an update this week that’ll let us broadcast live video from its iOS and Android app (presumably powered by Periscope) and have you seen Houseparty (because Generation Z’s on it like Donkey Kong)?

If you’re not streaming Q&As, live events, interviews or product demos then you’re not part of the conversation. Start thinking about this and how you can use it, now. The only obstacles are time (make it), knowledge (that’s what how-to’s on YouTube are for – go crack a book or phone a friend), resources (invest) and budget (find it). Trust me, in 2017 your competition’ll be streaming the b’jesus out of everything, so don’t get left behind.

Fake news is the buzzword right now, and the big boys will have to be seen to be doing something about (I hear ABC and Associated are getting involved) and if the likes of Snopes, FactCheck.org and Politifact start selling their data to Facebook then hopefully it’s pretty much all over for the spammers – though at lot of these stories have their roots in the likes of 4chan and Reddit. Is this censorship? Probably. Did the Russians fix the US election by creating bogus news articles? No idea, but it’s more than possible. The solutions aren't rocket science - hiring human editors, algorithmic checking of reliable sources for citation and crowdsourcing accuracy. Expect this to get a mention in parlement and congrass and it not to go away any time soon.

There’s a chargeable product for the newspapers here, if they’re quick. A paragraph of flavour then a pay wall to read content that's guaranteed-accurate. They’re going to have to do something, with a further growing trend away from both print and online banner advertising.

Everyone’s going to need to at least be seen to address fake news, and social channels (not just Facebook) are going to have to start taking more responsibility for what’s published (instead of concentrating on banning pictures of breast feeding mums) to pacify the users (their source of marketing data, in most cases).

Facebook is still gonna be the daddy. With the development of feature rich messaging bots, with more practical and useful applications, expect to see an easy WYSIWHG creator inherent to the platform soon. Streaming is, obviously, gonna be even bigger.

Social media advertising is growing at 20% a year and the Facebook ad platform is going to get the bulk of any business’s ad spend – with it stealing a massive $1 billion out of print advertising budgets for U.S. newspapers in 2016. It’s comfortably estimated that Google and Facebook will take more than 70% of all money spent on display advertising online in the UK by 2020. Watch out for more video advertising, obviously, and more targeting and ad varients rolled out over the next 12 months.

Other channels, like Snapchat and Instagram, will still be big for the audiences they attract, and will probably still continue to pirate features off each other and from other channels. Something original will come along, championed by an initially niche audience, but god knows if it'll last longer than a month, what it’ll be, or if it’ll be suitable for business – remember Ello and Pokemon Go? The big boys will probably steal the best functionality out of any new channel and make it obsolete fairly sharpish - we may even see the odd legal case tackling such things.

VR is going to hit the mainstream and hopefully garner more acceptance. I’m a big exponent of VR and run a PSVR rig myself at home. I’ve been active in virtual worlds for over 10 years. Augmented is probably where it’s at, however, and we can expect some heavy investment in this area over the next 12 months. Layering digital over the real world has a billion possibilities; it just needs to sell its value to the public at large. A virtual reality version of Google Earth is now available for free on the HTC Vive, and it’s a thing of beauty, but the general user doesn’t yet have access to the kit (mainly due to price point). When it moves to Android we'll see some serious traction.

The AR market will hopefully hit an inflection point in 2017, expect to see more Smartphone integration as standard,  and we’ll see more and more uses of VR for event and stunt marketing. Expect to be handed a headset in the street to demonstrate an idea or product, any day now.

Twitter is (and it pains me to say this) becoming less important. Sure, it’s brilliant for news and publishing, but compared to Facebook it’s not where people are going to be spending their marketing dollars. People are losing confidence in the platform and, unless they pull something unique and of value out of their wazoo soon, the audience and the advertisers are going to be a lot more wary in 2017. I’m already starting to think it has less strategic value for some of my clients, which is a shame as I’m a big fan myself.

We can probably pretty much forget about Google+, unless it’s for SEO support.

In recruiting for social managers and agency employees, the polymaths and generalists will start to get some credit. People are going to be looking for younger brand evangelists and those who can generate passionate content, over those with long-term experience in other sectors.

Every year, for the past six years, I’ve said that companies will start to see the genuine return on investment of social media. Honestly, so few have. So, I think social media ROI will still elude many companies and those companies will get further and further behind – sad but true.

So that’s it. I’m keeping it fairly realistic this year. Obviously there’s a lot of other factors going on in 2017, like Trump and Brexit, but they’re probably best left for another time…

All the best for the year to come, here’s wishing you and yours a very social holidays. J

How Old is That Facebook Business Page?

So I just figured this out - in a rush of Holmes logic - and though I'd share. This is going to be my shortest blog post, ever.

Sometimes, for whatever reason, you may need to know the age or your, or another persons, Facebook Page. It could be estimating growth off a similar brand, completing some documentation for the folks in PR, whatever. It's not as easy as just going to your first post, alas - if you try and scroll through all those posts you're likely to lag y'self to bits.

Instead, go to Photos, go to Profile pictures, go to the first image (down at the bottom), click on it and disco - there's a date just under the Page name (top right).

Unless the Page owner has deleted their first image (which is damn unlikely) it'll give you a reasonably accurate date of when the Page was first created.

If anyone ever finds this useful I'll be amazed, but there it is. If anyone else has any ideas for a quicker or more accurate way of doing this please gimme a shout in the comments ;)

How Can we Use EdgeRank to Get Our Facebook Posts Seen?

EdgeRank is the algorithm that Facebook uses to decide whether or not posts from friends or business pages appear in our news feed. If you want to be seen by the average user it’s important to know how this works and what Facebook considers worthy content. This isn't as grey-hat as it sounds, it's just about producing good stuff.

EdgeRank takes several factors into consideration. They are:

Time

How recently was the content posted?

How long did the user spend on content published by this page previously?

Weight

What type of content is being posted. Different types of content have greater or lesser chances of being seen. Facebook looks at this akin to the amount of effort we put into a post. A standard simple comment has very little EdgeRank. A link has a bit more. An image or videos are far more likely to be seen.

Affinity

Has the user engaged with content from our brand before? Have they liked posts, shared articles, clicked through on links, and commented? Did the brand comment back or like their comment? All these factors add affinity.

With this in mind there are things we can do to boost our EdgeRank, however, they do require effort. Creativity is what’s going to differentiate your content. The effort that Facebook wants us to put in to guarantee our content is of good quality and relevance. Let’s take each of the above factors separately to show how, collectively, they can make a difference:

Timing is Important

Posting at prime times, when our audience is there to respond and see our content is critical. Think about when your audience is online. Will they be checking their mobile devices on the tube on the way to work? Will they be sitting back after dinner, around 6:15 and mulling over their feed? Will they take a look over their lunchtime coffee? Naturally every brand is different, but we commonly see an increase of 15 to 20 percent engagement at weekends. Insider knowledge of your brand and audience play a big part here – some testing may be necessary.

timing is important

People need to engage for longer so we have to post content that takes a while to digest. In short, well-written and engaging content is king. The inclusion of animated gifs or embedded video could be a bonus to add ‘stickiness’, but whatever it is it better be awesome. The longer people are engaged the greater it raises the chances of your posts being seen in the future. Strong opinion pieces. Well researched studies. Useful and helpful how-to’s. Whatever it is, it better be good.

Think Content Type

Post images. You’ll probably want to drive traffic via links, but posting good, amusing or entertaining, original images will give it a boost so that when you do post a link you’ve raised affinity (by people seeing them and liking them) and it will help to compensate. There’s plenty of good image banks out there if you can’t capture something new, give CompFight a look. It’s good to think of alternative ways to use images like using them to support quotes if it fits the brand. Behind-the-scenes imagery has the added benefit of allowing you to tag people which gives further exposure to peoples friends and peers. Get creative - try some of these.

If you have video available to you make sure, with Facebooks auto-play feature in mobile, that it’s going to grab people in the first six seconds. Can you repurpose slide presentations? Can you commission industry explainers? Can you showcase your HQ or cover charity events?

Build a Relationship

If you are posting links be sure to change the title, body text and image to offer a more enticing click-through opportunity.

building a 'special' relationship between interface and human

Small competitions and sweepstakes can gather great traction. When doing so it’s important to allow space for organic spread (so, run them over a week or more) to give people a chance to engage and to see posts their friends have engaged with. Pinning them the top of the Page for a week will also allow new visitors to engage more easily and will increase sign-up, as well as saying “Hey, we run competitions.”

Ask for opinions and invite commentary. Get your audience to share their own images and encourage engagement. Simple posts offering tips, then asking the audience if they have any further suggestions, can work well.

Boosting posts (by paying for them) to make sure the audience sees them, at least once or twice a month, can offer an added push.

Keeping an eye on our Pages Insights will show us the type of content our audience responds best too, and so what we can publish in the future that will get strong results.

There are a few other things to consider:

Pay for it

It’s also possible to pay-to-be-seen. Simple boosted posts are an excellent way to gather affinity by getting them under people’s noses. I’ve had single posts, boosted for only ten pounds, reach over 56,000 targeted people. This is a great one to combine with like and share competitions or simple give-aways. Consider the expenditure like a highly targeted branding exercise. Don’t forget, if people like a boosted post their friends and followers will be told they’ve done so by Facebook.

Use no Applications

Facebook doesn’t like content posted from applications, which includes the likes of external publishing tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, Sprout Social or whatever. This is to stop the Poker apps and Candy Crush clones of old from spamming our streams. Content must be scheduled via the Facebook platform, or posted immediately. Even auto-posting from other social channels, like Twitter, is a wasted effort. Yes, it’ll post, but experience has shown us that the chances of it being seen are drastically reduced.

In summing up. Good content posted at the right time with good imagery. Accept no substitute, because Facebook doesn’t and no ones going to see Jack or shit if you don't put some effort in - that's just how it is.

Why is Facebook Organic Reach Dying off?

In case you’ve not noticed Facebook seems to have bottlenecked organic traffic of late, to our precious Business Pages. Rumours are rife that Facebook wants our ad money so it’s stopping our possible customers from getting to see what we’re putting out there. This is actually pretty unjust and the facts are a lot less sinister, but just as troubling for those of us relying on our customers finding our content through the platform. It’s a simple case of numbers and algorithms.

doesn't seem fair - but appearances can be deceptive

There isn’t space for everything in our newsfeeds, so Facebook uses an algorithm called EdgeRank to try to calculate what we want to see most. This mostly works, though does make for a bit of an insular experience that, long term, rather stifles what we see and who we see it from. Ever noticed how some friends disappear out of your feed if you don’t keep chatting to them? The same is true when it comes to people engaging with brands, and unless you’re publishing something pretty kick-ass or got a dedicated niche following than that’s invariably the case. The important basics are like this:

Time: Was it posted recently? The fresher the better.

Weight: Different things have a higher ‘value’, so the likes of ‘images’ and ‘video’ seem to rank better than just links or simple comments. It seems the more effort you put in, the better the content ranks.

Affinity: What’s the relationship between the ‘edge’ and the user? Has the user commented on, liked, shared, or whatever, things from the brand page before? The more the better and different actions have different values. Probably.

The problem is simple. If people don’t interact then they don’t get to see your content further down the line. Interest drops, and it’s hard to rekindle once it’s gone.

try something different

Obviously this makes the likes of Facebook promoted posts more valuable. If you post good strong content, asking poignant questions or with details of small sweepstakes or competitions, this can rekindle a flagging follower-ship. If you do, remember consistency is key and you’re going to need to commit to your Page to get the community active again. It won’t do it by itself and you’ll need to get them sharing and liking again by giving them creative, humorous, and edgy content suitable for doing so. Something for your followers to get their teeth into.

In many ways I approve of this, at least for now. It encourages good quality content and creativity. It does raise the question, however, of how long Facebook can support using this system? In many ways this is leading to the stagnation of the platform if we just see content from the same people, and may even lead to it’s eventual downfall.

Regardless, for now this is just how it is. Let’s work it the best we can.

One decent solar flare and we’re all out of a job anyway.

Setting Standards: A few Possible Ways to use Facebook Hashtags?

So Facebook now has hashtags.

I like them. No really, I do. They're great for passive outreach and sharing. They're awesome for research - you just follow the tag to riff on a topic. I am, however, starting to feel #spammed by the way some people are using them.

#rug #persianrugs #tiestheroomtogether

Sceptically, I do wonder what Facebook has further up their sleeve. They never do a damn thing without a financial reason, and rumours of them working on 'a reader' (thought I've been told it's not the RSS kind, and not a Google Reader replacement) have me curious as to how hashtags might fit into the equation for topical monitoring.

It's fair to say that uptake is slow amongst the average users, especially on personal accounts where security settings seem to make this all somewhat moot, but a lot of Facebook Page admins have charged into this with a degree of relish worthy of Heinz. So much so, many posts look ridiculous and there's a real chance of them alienating their community. I thought I'd throw my tuppence-worth in, for the record.

Don't use Them for Every Word

Stop it. Just, stop it. I've seen posts where almost every word had a hashtag in front of it, making the whole sentence just tags. It looks bloody stupid and your audience know they are being marketed to and that you no longer give a shit what your actually saying, just so long as someone sees it. It's not funny, or ironic, it's just bad practice. Bad Page admin, go to your box.

Keep Them Simple

It's not a game. You want to capitalize on others using your hashtag, so keep it as simple as possible.

Say your a crafts author like the good lady wife - tags like #jewellery (you might even want to try #jewelry), #steampunk, #crafts (maybe), or something like #beading or #cooking are going to be tags other people are going to use as well - and so the outreach on them (and chance of them being seen by genuinely interested parties) is going to be better. This isn't Twitter, so hashtags shouldn't have more than 2 words in them. Something like #steampunk is great, and #steampunkcooking might have it's place (if others are also using it), but #steampunkcookingonanengineblock is very likely a hanging offence.

#beer #carlsburg #couplesdatinginalex

There's one possible exception to this. Getting everyone to remember one tag (like #ourevent2013, or whatever) is sometimes easier. I you're trying to get people to submit photographs from an event, for example, using one tag across Google Plus, Twitter, Instagram, and now on Facebook, will always be the right way to go.

Cap at 3 or 4 of Value

Once again, don't spam your audience. Personally I've found 3 hashtags just about right, especially if you're still object tagging, location tagging, and all the other tactics. There's nothing written in stone here, but if you do any more it starts looking really obvious. If necessary add them at the end of what you're saying, though personally I don't mind them being part of the sentence so long as it looks natural. Also, bear in mind that hashtags don't act as links through the mobile interface so this can get shoddy pretty quickly on smartphones if it's tagged to bits but not linking anywhere - I'm reliably told this will, however, be coming on line in the next few days.

Find What's Appropriate

Take a look at what's popular by taking a look at a hashtag you think might work, and see what others are using as well (around the same subject). Right now topics and communities are still finding out what works and experimenting. You can poke around a stream and get to the content of a topic by using the URL structure like https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/bacon, where #bacon is the hashtag for the stream you want to look at. If you search on a hashtag through search (just type in #wordofyourchoice) you now also get a list of similar tags that other people are using, which I presume they'll be rolling out more functionality on soon. Do a bit of research to get the most bang-for-your-buck, and for gods sake think about it properly and what it's look like on the Page (no one wants another #susanalbumparty).

Don't be Flighty

If you have a core topic, try and stick with one core tag (the most appropriate that fits what you do) based on that topic. Play with the others, great, but tags are generating 'communities' around topics, and other admins (I've found) are sharing my tagged content more when I mention core topics (because they are using these tags to source topical content for their pages). If you're a digital artist and have a Page about your work, be sure to always use #digitalart (or whatever your peers are using) no matter what else you're doing. Rocket science it ain't. I fully anticipate different communities developing their own crowdsourced hashtags of choice as people become more confident with their use.

#harmless  #campwaconda  #ohmygodwereallgonnadie

So there you go. Facebook hashtags are still in their infancy, and we don't know where Facebook is going to go with this - or how they'll cleverly monetize it. It would be great if we could set some standards and best practices that are good for our communities and outreach instead of just using these for spam. When, after all, does spam ever work?

The Pros, Cons, and Alternatives to Buying Friends, Fans, and Followers

There are services out there who will sell you YouTube 'views', 'likes' and 'subscribes', Vimeo plays, Tumblr likes, Facebook follows and 'likes', Twitter followers, Instagram followers, even SoundCloud plays, in fact pretty much anything you need to boost the ranks of your social channels if numbers are all you care about.

Whether I think this is right or not - I often have to explain the benefits and the downfalls of this for clients because, put simply, most of them ask. Most people see these services and think "Why shouldn't I throw fifty quid at this to get the ball rolling and get the Pages hopping - can you do this for us Nik?" Let's assume community growth is part of the strategy, here's the impartial answer I give them:

The Pros

Having a healthy number of followers boosts credibility, meaning others are (psychologically) more likely to sign-up and join the community, watch the video, eat the Soylent Green, whatever, because they believe it is of value because of the perception of worth indicated by the 'likes', 'plays', 'friends', 'followers', etc.

It's probably cheaper than social ads.

The Cons

Most of these services are compleatly untargeted and/or fake accounts, even if they claim to be otherwise. As a consequence people don't care about the Page or account they are following, and their interaction stops here. If you could get blood out of a stone Mount Everest would be covered in black pudding factories, it's not, and it's the same thing trying to squeeze interaction out of bought friends, fans, and followers.

Friends might not be as reliable as you think...

There is an ongoing drop off to followers and subscribers that will continue indefinitely. A percentage of these accounts are real people, and eventually these real people will realize you are clogging up their stream with news and stuff they don't care about (probably because your chatting away in a different language or not about Justin Bieber). Eventually they will unsubscribe, and user numbers will start to fall almost immediately - this is especially true with Twitter where many of these are opt-in-bulk-follow-back arrangements.

Channels, notably Facebook, are cracking down on this. Back in August they announced a new automated system to weed out fake accounts and followers, and said they'd penalise numbers accordingly. There's not much point paying for followers if they are going to be removed automatically. If they take this further and penalise EdgeRank, for example, you're in a world of pain. Technically it's against most sites terms and conditions, so you also run the risk for getting your whole profile wiped - which I doubt makes for shits and giggles.

The Alternatives

So I'm going to look at this simply. How would I spend that £50 (or less) to get better results?

• Targeted Facebook social ads (or Promoted Posts if you've got something good to say). At least this 50 quids worth of targeted accounts will care about what you do and you might actually get some shares or sales out of it. How about some LinkedIn ads to target companies that need your services? If you need a bit more money signed of for this, how about creating your own and ploughing anything you make on blogs AdSence back into your social marketing? If you go for tight local targeting that £50 will be much better spent.
• Contests, sweepstakes, giveaways. I've always liked WildFire apps for this, they keep everything under correct terms and conditions and they're cheap as chips.
• Fan-specific (you gotta be a 'liker') coupons and discounts (see WildFire apps again)
• A reveal page. If they don't click 'like', they don't get the good stuff. Here's a simple how to.
• Do some outreach. Here's a trick I use for Hootsuite to find Twitter peeps. The rest is chatting in groups on LinkedIn and being happy to answer some questions on the likes of at Quora, Yahoo Answers, and commenting on blogs and Tumblr etc. It'll cost you nothing but time.
• Posting awesome content - take some time to create some white-paper quality stuff, and to spread it around creatively. With a bit more time build an Editorial Calendar and some user personas, and get your colleagues in sync to produce some serious stuff that people will actually want to read.
• Using viral apps like Questions and Offers. It's all there in Facebook's interface, ready to rock.
• Asking f/f/f's to tell their buddies (which is free, but you gottta give them a reason to do so).
• Embed video everywhere. Videos on YouTube are great for long tail search, but embedding Facebook vids in your blog content is a greater reason for people to click-through to your community.
• Check your literature and website. Are your social channels EVERYWHERE? Have people got the URL and links in front of them so that they can easily find your Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter, G+, Flickr, whatever?

I could add a lot more alternatives, but I'm starting to bore myself. Weighing up the pros and cons seems to have obvious results. Personal biased aside, that's a lot you can do with just a tiny bit more effort that will be a lot more effective than paying for numbers. There's no substitute for effort, and that's where you should place your £50. If you don't want the hassle yourself, imagine that money is going towards an hours work and to someones wages within your company, it's often a lot easier to justify to the powers-that-be.

Making Your Facebook Page Work for Mobile

There's plenty of mobile social platforms out there that lend themselves naturally to mobile marketing. Those with downloadable apps. and easy access like Tumblr, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter (obviously) etc. There's also some that are less obvious and just as important - i.e. the grand daddy of them all, Facebook. Nearly 40% of Facebook users use the platform by mobile. That's nearly half of your audience. So how do we optimize our messaging to be visible to our friends, fans, and followers through Facebook mobile? It's actually quite elementary.

"It's that bloody Lestrade, still pestering me for a recommendation on LinkedIn..."

If we want to make our followers lives that little bit easier and make sure we get our words across there's a few simple things to think about and some experimentation to be done to optimize your Page (or personal) posts for Facebook.

One issue is Truncation, where your character limit is cut by the option to 'read more' instead of the whole message being displayed. Sometimes truncation is unavoidable, but with a bit of experimentation you can slip in a line return or the end of a sentence and prioritise your important message in the first part of your post. You're going to have say the crux of what you want to say in around 100 characters, which works perfect on the iPhone. A bit of testing with Android etc. can pay off and help you get this right. If you can finish a sentence prior to truncation (or on a leading cliff-hanger if that's your thing) it's a neat little trick.

Variety, as they say, is the spice of life. On mobile devices, links (which we want to get 'liked' for those valuable social signals) are much smaller that other posts and can sometimes open erratically within the application. We need to think about using images (which are large and eye-catching in the mobile stream) and video (which plays direct in the official Facebook apps.) as well. Mobile users can also see and answer Facebook Questions, an often unused and poorly explored tactic. Instead of links or just status updates, how about testing a few images with shortened (and measurable) customised links in the text to see what click-through rates you get? - "Find out more here >> bit.ly/squidgybum" etc. Mix and match - though really you should be doing this anyway to promote organic EdgeRank growth and give your audience some variety.

Mobile Social Ads are a great way into the mobile app. Mobile ads account for 23% of Facebook's ad revenue, that's around £200,000,000 a year. Rumours of push targeted deals and a new app for March abound, with Bloomberg talking abut Facebook location based software hitting the market any day. Current display options, all part of the News Feed, are the usual Sponsored Stories and Promoted Posts. There's also Offers (putting discounts and promotions in the News Feed) and Mobile App-Install ads (the links to the likes to of games that are in my face and bugging me right now) but these require some dev skills and an app to support. You can do all the usual trageting by interest and demographics. There's a nice intro to Facebook mobile ads over at InsideFacebook.

Be a Place, but before you do considering the pitfalls as well as the benefits. The benefits of allowing mobile users to 'check in' and speard the good word are obvious, and it means you can also take advantage of (the much underused) Deals (which, incedentally, rank high in the new Graph Search) - Loyalty deals for repeat visitors, Friend deals to get (up to 8) folks to check in at the same time, Charity deals, etc. Places, however, are not that simple. You need to be aware that Places also disables some functionality that you get with a standard Page, but you can claim a Place if it already exists and merge it with you Page if needs be and that gives you more control (this is probably a longer post at another time, it's all bit of a mess to be honest). To add a new Place just head to touch.facebook.com, click 'check-in', give it a description, then click 'add'. Disco.

Cover images lay out differently on an iPad, an iPhone, on Android, in the browser, etc. Think about how it's going to look when people visit your Page. A bit of testing is essential, but many people will never see you any other way and this has to be taken into consideration. A scruffy experience reflects directly on your brand.

Anyway, as marketeers and community managers it's time for us to think about mobile. For some it's the elephant in the room, but we need to begin to think about how our audience are accessing our messaging and to react accordingly. It's only going to get MORE important, especially with Facebook.

If anyone else has any tips for making your Page work for Facebook Mobile, I'd love to hear them! Please let me know in the comments below :)

Oh, and quick thanks to my good mate Jamie Grind, for knocking up the Holmes image above for me ;)

How to Stop Facebook Making that Bloody Annoying Noise

It started a few weeks ago and it's been driving me mental. It took me ages to track down what it was. Facebook has started testing a new feature called "Being Really Annoying". Normally reserved for platform or algorithm updates, Facebook now offers an extra level of irritation with an intermittent auditory assault every time someone engages with one of our posts.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!

To me, and anyone else who works in community management, this sounds like machine gun fire.

This isn't rolling out for everyone just yet. Gee, I guess I'm just lucky. When it comes your way, trust me, you'll be wanting to disable it ASAP. Thankfully that's not difficult to do:

Go to 'Account Settings > Notifications'.

Click 'View' on the tab that says 'On Facebook'...

...then unclick the box that says 'Play sound when each new notification is received', press 'Save Changes', and relax.

NB: It might not go off at first, if (like me) you have multiple tabs or accounts open. You will need to do this for any alts. if you have any (I know I do, for old legacy billing with certain clients).

Targeting Companies With LinkedIn and Facebook Social Data

Social data is used for advertising on some of big social platforms. Who we are, what we do, what we like, what we eat, where we shop, our favourite music, where we work, what charities we support, where we went on holiday, whether we have pets, etc. is all up for grabs when people want to hawk their wares to us online.

Put the coffee down and buy my shit.

For me, I say bring it on, advertising is a damn sight less annoying when it's properly targeted. I love the idea of the data I need finding me, and this is a step on the road to the semantic web. This is contextual advertising at it's finest. All marketing and advertising should be strategic, and I've worked with clients who've come to me with very specific ideas on who they want to target, for branding purposes and for click-through generation. When B2B companies come to us and want to target a specific company social is not an immediately obvious choice, but actually both LinkedIn and Facebook make it surprisingly easy (if the budget is up to it).

Why a specific company? If you make brass widgets there's only so many companies who need to be supplied with brass widgets.  If your product is part of a larger process or product, or you have a finite market you need to reach, a list of the companies who need your product is a great place to start (the rest's down to good copy, being cheaper, or having some whizzy USP the potential customer can't live without). Even if your a small business like a sandwich shop, imagine being able to target all the local businesses around you and put your lunch time special under their hungry noses.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a damn site more than just a job site, and claims a hefty 187,000,000 (1.87 x 10^2) users, many of them decision makers and people with purchase power, in 200+ countries. When you're creating your ad, at stage 2, just scroll down to 'Company' and start to typing the company name. It's all pretty obvious. In this case I picked the BBC, which has 11,905 LinkedIn members.

Facebook
Facebook is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is... When you're creating an ad (under 'See Advanced Options', 'Get More Likes', or 'Promoted Page Posts') go to 'Choose Your Audience' then scroll down and open the 'See Advanced Targeting Options' link, then go down again to the bit that says 'Workplaces'. Start typing a business name and (if it's in Facebook's database) it'll give you option to select it in the dropdown. As you can see there's 14,520 people, who live in the United Kingdom, that work at BBC. Obviously you can keep adding other companies if needed.

With both channels there's even more needle-sharp targeting you can add to this like groups they belong to, their job title (in LinkedIn), marital status (Facebook), their interests, whatever.

Imagine then using these ads to actually give the targeted company employees something industry specific like a well researched white paper or branded online tool? Get creative. Give them something that might make their job easier, and just watch those click-through rates go up. Perhaps you could try targeting companies with these ads for a couple of weeks before getting your sales reps to give them a call? An ad's an ad, it's the creative (and strategic) thinking around it that'll get you somewhere.

Get creative. Know your audience.

Remember, the ability to target a company like this is great - indeed so are any of the many other targeting options - but you need to think why your going to be doing this and make sure it's not working in isolation from the rest of your campaign. If you don't stand out or you're not offering them a reason to care then they won't give a damn. Make sure your text will grab their attention and that it relates directly to the target audience. Have a relevant and compelling call-to-action. Optimise those small images to fill the space and make sure they're easy to read. Create different ad versions, combo's of image, title, description, and test what's best for click-through. All the usual methods and standards apply, if not more so - as you're directly under the nose of your target market.

If you find a cool use for this, let me know :)

A Note on Facebook Updates

That wasted 10 minutes in Photoshop, but it has made me feel marginally better.

I'm seeing a lot of negativity in status's of friends and relatives. I gotta say, I can't believe Facebook totally alienated their user-base on the same day Google Plus opened it's doors to everyone. Not a strategy I'd have recommended... :-S

Facebook and You

I found this somewhere a while ago, and it nicely sums up the motivation of channels I was recently trying to capture in my Social Media Evolution post over at Conversify. A picture paints a 1000 words and all that. Let's try and remember this after F8 shall we.

It's free. Deal with it.

Have You Claimed Your FB Fan Page URL?

Just about everyone (and their dog) has claimed a vanity URL’s for their Facebook presence.

Last month, FB allowed users to grab custom URL’s for their own profile pages. For instance, you can find me on Facebook at Facebook.com/nikhewitt and the good lady wife at Facebook.com/sparklyjem. Cool.

FB URL's used to be a right old hodge-podge and this is much better for branding, business cards, and generally professionalises your presence. Seriously, if you've been living under a stone and haven’t yet grabbed your custom URL, head to Facebook.com/Username and get to it, stat!.

Now, if you’re an admin for a Fan Page, you can grab custom URL’s for those too. Head to Facebook.com/Username as before and follow the "set a username for your pages" link, as per Facebook.com/doyoukasasa for one of our clients, etc. Here you can check no ones run off with your brand name already and grab those keyword friendly URL's. I thought this was a given, but, turns out a lot of folks don't know about the Fan Page bit. Only one small caviet, to make sure you're serious I guess, is the group MUST have over 100 members. Don't miss out on this, theres only 1 chance to grab the name your after.

Go do this, now :-)