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When Customers Attack

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Dealers are continuously struggling to keep customers happy. Most dealers want their customers to be happy as a happy customer can lead to more sales through word-of-mouth and referrals. CSI scores in both sales and service are essential in many ways to dealerships and can cause a multitude of problems if they’re not up to par.

Sometimes dealers are unfairly treated by customers for minor things, however.

I came across this video on YouTube quite by accident and was absolutely astounded.

I wasn’t searching for that particular dealership nor was I searching their brand or even searching their area. I’m about as far away geographically from the dealership as you could get so I can’t even blame geographical relevance. In fact, I had very broad search terms. This video still showed up on Page 4 of a Google search.

The video’s description makes this even more astounding:

“The dealership provides free Wi-Fi internet access to it’s customers, while waiting for their vehicle to be serviced. One problem: It doesn’t work.
Watch me walk around nearly the entire dealership, only to get a signal enough to grab a few bits of data, and crap out. There was a point I got a good signal, but it never returned.
It’s very hard to see, but you can see that the signal meters remain red pretty much the whole time, until the media player shut itself off. At that point, I gave up. My car was about done anyhow. This is the ONLY part of Ron Bouchard’s that is not good. Sorry Ron. 🙁
EPIC FAIL Internet.”

Seriously?

This YouTuber knows the power of the internet. He’s uploaded over 1,500 videos and has amassed over 2.5 million views. He’s in a dealership that he even agrees on video deserves its 5-star rating and states in the video description that this is the only part of the dealership that is not good yet he feels compelled to make a video complaining about the lack of free wi-fi despite it being advertised in the service waiting area. It’s obvious that he didn’t “mean” any harm but this dealership now shows up ranking high for search terms like “car dealer” and “fail”. In the comments, he follows up TWO YEARS LATER, stating that the wi-fi still didn’t work.

Reputation management begins with knowing what’s being said about you.

This is completely unfair to the dealership but it’s a perfect example to illustrate the importance of perfection in your customer’s dealership experience as well as the importance of monitoring what people are saying about you online.

What would you have done had this video been made about your dealership?

Facebook Likes: Don’t Get Scammed

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One of the easiest metrics dealers use to judge the success of their Facebook page is how many people like it. It’s also the most irrelevant.

I’ve said this many times and I’ll keep repeating it:

You’re better off having 1,000 fans to your page that can actually do business with you than 10,000 fans that will never spend a cent.

How do you expect to get ROI from your social media efforts if all your social media fans/followers are in Thailand? (Unless, of course, you have a booming export business to Thailand) The answer is, you won’t.

Also, many companies are delivering “fake” fans anyways through shady methods. This article by AllFacebook.com illustrates some of the methods these companies use.

Having a lot of Facebook fans that you bought is meaningless and a waste of money. Companies that prey on dealers with a service that increases “likes” to your Facebook page with random people are scam artists. It’s a waste of money and either these companies don’t realize that (which means they are incompetent and shouldn’t be in the social media business) or they do realize that (which means they are intentionally selling a service that has no value).

Dealers, please don’t fall into the trap of equating quantity with success. If you build your fan base organically with customers in your market, your social media marketing efforts will bear fruit.

If you “buy” fans, you’re actually sabotaging your own Facebook page and social media marketing efforts and you’ll only accomplish one thing:

Do you want to make money or be able to say “mine is bigger than yours”? You decide.

(P.S. There’s a great conversation over in the DealerRefresh forums talking about this.)

(P.S.S. Yes, I love the gorilla graphic.)

Facebook Promoted Posts

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Facebook’s Edgerank algorithm—the formula used to determine the order content appears in a given newsfeed based on which content is deemed most relevant to that user—may make the Facebook experience more seamless for casual browsers, but it’s a challenge for businesses that harness the social media platform as part of a marketing strategy. After all, thanks to Edgerank, each post on Facebook only makes it onto the newsfeed of about 12-17% of its fans. The fans that do see it are more likely to be those that have already chosen to visit your page, or that regularly interact with your posts. Edgerank’s feedback-loop effect makes it harder than ever to reach and engage consumers that don’t self-select your business’s content.

To counter those daunting odds, Facebook recently introduced a new service allowing business pages with greater than 400 “likes” to pay a fee to promote individual posts. This new feature allows a page owner to select a single post, which could be a status update, photo, video, question, or offer, and pay a premium to increase the reach for that post beyond the circle of fans that are already engaged with your content. Not only that, but promoted posts are supposedly more likely to be seen in the newsfeeds of friends of fans, too.

Promoted posts have a one-time, pre-set budget that remains in place for the life of the post. While setting up a promoted post, you will be asked to choose a budget from a suite of options that includes the post’s estimated reach at each payment level. The promotion can be suspended or stopped at any time regardless of whether your maximum budget has been used. Promoted posts do have some targeting capabilities, including geographical location and language, but these can only be applied to posts that are less than three days old.

Sounds Great—but Do They Work?

I set out to test the promoted posts feature on my blog’s fan page (which has 613 fans) to see how it performed versus a normal, “organic” post. I’d recently created a page on my blog that consists of a dedicated list of available educational events and conferences for automotive dealers. I shared this blog page via a status update on May 23rd, prior to the launch of Promoted Posts. The post performed as expected, reaching roughly 13% of my page’s fans with a marginal viral reach (a measure of how many impressions came from non-fans who encountered the post because a fan of the page shared or interacted with the post).

Keep in mind that my Facebook page isn’t particularly active, nor do I put too much effort into engaging my fans, which limits the reach of posts. I mainly use the page to post blog articles, so I don’t expect high engagement, but these statistics are in line with the average reach reported by others.

On June 2, I decided to test out the new Promoted Posts feature. Upon creating the new post, the only option presented to me was to pay $5 to reach an estimated 300 people.
The post I promoted was essentially the same as the previous one – a status update which included an external link to the same page on my blog. I did no other social media promotion at all for this post and let it run for the full three days.

Here were the results:

As you can see, the post exceeded the estimated paid reach (with 324 rather than 300 paid impressions), and it also reached 1200% more non-fans (13 vs. 164) via viral sharing, substantially increasing exposure to my fans’ social networks. Organic displays also increased by almost double (70 vs. 132). The promoted post didn’t increase engagement but, the post itself wasn’t really designed to encourage engagement. I also didn’t see a noticeable difference in traffic to the external page on my blog, with the average number of daily visitors to that specific page remaining roughly the same.

Two interesting side notes: First, Facebook defines paid results as “the number of people who saw your page post in an Ad or Sponsored Story.” But when signing up for the service, Facebook never mentioned that my promoted post could potentially be displayed via an Ad (on the right of the newsfeed) versus as a Sponsored Story (within the newsfeed itself). In my estimation, Ads constitute weaker exposure than Sponsored Stories, but I have to assume that at least some of the paid exposure for my promoted post came via Ads.

Second, as mentioned previously, I was initially only given the option to reach 300 people for $5. However, when I looked into promoting another post following my initial trial, I was given a second option to reach 700 people for $10, as well. This tells me that Facebook underestimated the results they could deliver.

Are Promoted Posts for You?

As in any form of advertisement, you must have clearly defined goals before spending any money. Here are some questions you should ask yourself before making a decision one way or another regarding promoted posts.

1. How large is your page’s fan base? Keep in mind that the larger your fan base, the more potential reach each promoted post will have, which will result in a higher upfront cost.

2. Are these actual customers, or are they a random assortment of individuals who were collected in an effort to grow the number of fans at all costs? I consider fans to be relevant if they are potential or existing customers who could realistically do business with you—whether that’s via sales, service, or parts—and whose social networks will, in all likelihood, include more relevant people. In the case of dealerships, for example, it does you no good to increase exposure to people outside your PMA, vendors, or anyone else who doesn’t have the ability to spend money with you. Note, however, that the geo-targeting option does allow you to more efficiently reach relevant fans.

3. What is your goal for promoting a particular post? Is it to increase engagement? Increase exposure for an offer or event? Share important information with your fans? Lead people to an external website or conversion page?

In my opinion, promoting a post just for the sake of promoting it is ill-advised. If you have clear goals in mind, you should be able to accurately track whether your money was spent wisely. Did you actually increase engagement, and was that engagement by new people rather than those who already regularly engage with you? Did more people take advantage of your offer? Did you receive more traffic (via Facebook) to the external link you included in your post?

If you’ve built your fan page organically via your website, in-store signage, or via inclusion in other marketing channels, I could see a promoted post helping to jumpstart your page by potentially increasing your fans via increased exposure to THEIR networks. Keep in mind that the majority of the people you will be reaching already like your page so, in my opinion, the greatest potential of Facebook Promoted Posts is in its ability to extend your exposure beyond your fans and into their social networks.

That being said, a well-thought-out promoted post with clearly defined goals has the potential to increase reach and revenues—all at a relatively low cost.

[Article originally published in the June 2012 issue of the 3 Birds Marketing e-newsletter]

Social Media Safety Part 2: Photos

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In my previous article, I covered the dangers of foursquare. While there are probably still many people who don’t use foursquare, this article’s topic is one that most social media users use: photos. We all take pictures and post them to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. Many people are posting them simply to share with close family and friends while many more (including your kids) are posting them to a larger social network that, many times, doesn’t include people they know.

First and foremost, if you’re posting pictures online, beware of the content of the photo for many reasons. There are so many perils involved including:

  • Potential issues with current or future employers
  • Photos of your children can create a virtual menu for pedophiles.
  • Photos of your “stuff” can attract criminals and make you a target.
  • Photos of “where you are” also tell people “where you are not”
  • Photos of you also create opportunities for crimes; especially against women.
  • Photos can also aid in identity theft.

Wow, you may be saying. You may also be questioning the veracity of some of my claims. Forgetting the fact that most people don’t use privacy controls on social networks to their full capabilities, there’s one thing many people do not know.

Most people who are posting photos to social networks are using their cell phones to take those pictures and post them to their social networks. It’s easy, convenient, most cell phone cameras rival those of dedicated cameras, and many cell phones integrate with social media networks.

Another feature most cell phones have is GPS functionality including many non-smart phones.

Why is that important?

When you take a picture from a cell phone that has GPS capabilities, the GPS data for the location the picture was taken is encoded into the file for the picture itself. Yes, it’s there and easily accessible for those who know how.

What does that mean?

It means that not only are you sharing the content of the photos but also the location the photos were taken at. By sharing photos taken at your home, you are also giving out the EXACT LOCATION of your house down to the exact GPS coordinates. You know those photos of your cool stuff? Yeah, not only do criminals know WHAT you have, they know WHERE it is. Those photos of your children in your house? Yes, you just provided your children’s location as well. Belong to a dating site? That profile picture you uploaded could be contributing where you live along with all the other facts you posted about yourself.

Photos shared online create an even higher degree of danger than checking in to foursquare. The more public the social network, the greater the risk you take.

Luckily, most camera manufacturers have included the ability to turn off GPS services for the camera functionality. Learn how to turn this feature off. By turning this feature off, you remove GPS data from your pictures and make them a little safer to post.

You should still be judicious in what you are sharing but at least you’re not sharing your location anymore.

Related articles:

“Web Photos That Reveal Secrets, Like Where You Live” by Kate Murphy, NY Times [LINK]

“Get iPhone GPS and Geolocation Data” by Manish Patel [LINK]

“Manage Location Data in the Pictures You Take” by Jerry Hildenbrand, Android Central [LINK]

“Facebook Users Beware: GPS Data In Photos Can Reveal Where You Live” by Armand G [LINK]

Social Media Safety Part 1: Foursquare

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With the ever growing number of social media services and users, it’s more important than ever for you to be aware of and take steps to protect you and your family’s safety. Many people don’t know the information they put out into the digital universe. If they did, they might be shocked. With stories popping up all the time about how bad people use this information to take advantage of good people, its more important than ever to understand the risks inherent in social media use and how to avoid them. This series is certainly NOT comprehensive. There are way too many social media services out there but, in general, if you know these facts and follow my advice, you’ll be much safer when using social media.

Let’s start with foursquare.

Do not check-in at home. For the love of God, people. You do not need to hand out a map to the world of where you live. Your real friends will already know. Luckily, foursquare realized the inherent risks of home “check-ins” and instituted changes to their system last September to help with this. They created a location category titled “home”. This is what it does:

  • “Only the person who created the ‘home’ and their friends can see the address on the venue page.
  • Similarly, on the venue page, only those same people can see the map pin. Everyone else will see a map randomly centered somewhere near the address, with the zoom pulled out a bit.
  • And don’t worry about the link getting sent around, or if you share it on Facebook or Twitter. The same rules apply!”

This was a good start but consider this. One of the criteria of the above changes is that it is centered around the person who created the home venue, not the actual person living there. So, even if you do not use foursquare, the possibility exists that your friends may have created, and checked into, your home on foursquare which would then mean that everyone they are friends with (and only those people ) on foursquare can see it and that’s assuming it was actually changed into the category “home”. If it has NOT been changed to that category, everyone can see it… and I do mean everyone.

Even if you do not use foursquare, you should check to see if your house is listed. If so, you can create an account and notify foursquare that the venue is your home. Once processed, it will only appear to your foursquare friends. If you don’t have any, nobody else will see it.

People that know me know that I am a very active social media user. I have over 2,000 friends on Facebook, many of whom I don’t actually know in real-life, and approximately the same amount of people following me on Twitter. On foursquare, however, I only have 83, every one of which I know. Remember, foursquare documents where you are and when you are there – or are NOT there.

This same rule applies to your children’s school, day care or any other place you frequent on a regular basis, including your place of employment. While it’s all nice and fun to promote your company, if it’s a place you work locally and visit regularly, all you’re doing is establishing a time-record that someone could use for nefarious purposes. If you’re checking in to your child’s school or day care, you could be jeopardizing their safety.

Another general rule if you’re going to check-in to a business (especially for females) is to check-in WHEN YOU LEAVE, not when you arrive. You never know who’s watching, and waiting, for the right person to check-in. While maybe only your friends can see your check-in in a foursquare stream, ANYONE AT THE VENUE, can see your check-in. In other words, say there is a particularly unsavory character at a bar. If you pull up the venue on foursquare, it will show you not only how many other people are “checked-in” but WHO THEY ARE.

Do you travel? Same perils. Except in this case, all you’re doing is telling everyone that your FAMILY is home alone.

Don’t forget that you are also given the option of sharing those check-ins via Twitter and Facebook, which can increase the danger exponentially.

I hope this helped you understand a little better the perils of foursquare and how you can use it better, or not at all.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this series coming soon.

Related articles:

“Please Rob Me” by Dan Fletcher, Time magazine

“Foursquare’s Stalker Problem” by Lisa Riordan Seville, The Daily Beast

“Girls Around Me App Confirms That Foursquare is a Terrible Idea for Women” by Amy Tennery, The Jane Dough

“4 Ways Foursquare Can Make You A Victim Of Dangerous Crimes” by Millionaire Hoy, Yahoo! Voices

Tip: Why (and How) You Should Buy Facebook Stock

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[UPDATE 5/22/12: According to this article by AllFacebook.com, Facebook has reversed course and decided not to issue paper stock certificates so this whole article just became a fantasy.]

First, a disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor in any way, shape or form. What I AM is an entrepreneur so take this advice from that standpoint. There is never a guarantee of future value but this is why I think it’s a good investment.. if bought in a certain way.

Today, Facebook held its IPO to much media attention, speculation and became the largest IPO ever in the history of IPOs. There is a ton of advice saying that the opening cost is overpriced, to wait, etc. and that its a bad initial investment. I disagree but only from the perspective, and using the method, I describe below.

When a popular company has an IPO, they can choose whether or not to allow investors to obtain a physical stock certificate or not. Most companies do not and, if they do, its for a limited time. Facebook chose to allow investors to request and obtain physical stock certificates.

facebook-stock-cert.top

I’ve been selling things on eBay for over 14 years and I’m always on the lookout for things to sell and make a profit so I thought about this and did some research.

When Apple had its IPO in 1982, shares cost $22 each. They also offered the option to buy a physical certificate. Without any consideration for the current market value of that share, the actual certificate itself has a market value of almost $600 on eBay. Say you bought 100 shares and asked for individual certificates. The certificates ALONE would make your initial investment of $25/share ($2500 after adding a few dollars for the certificate) worth $60,000. If you actually retained ownership of the stock itself, without consideration for any stock splits or anything else, the shares themselves would be worth $53,259 (value as of May 18 at 12:00pm PST). You can retain ownership of a stock and sell the actual certificate so your initial investment with physical shares is suddenly ~$113,259. Yes, it took 30 years to make this but it’s still a VERY healthy return on your investment.

Let’s say you really don’t want to retain ownership of the shares as an investment. You buy the shares and order the physical certificates. Wait a couple months to receive the certificates, then sell the shares. Let’s say the shares have tanked and they are only worth $10 each at that point. You’ve recouped $1000 of your initial $2500 investment so you’ve lost $1500 BUT you still have 100 stock certificates which are, at this moment, worth $60,000. So your $1000 investment netted you $59,000. Best case, the share price is up and you can make a profit on the initial investment and, again, still have the actual certificates, in this case, for no investment.

People like collectibles and owning a piece of history. If you’re going to buy the stock anyways, pony up the extra couple of bucks a share (Make sure to get individual shares on each certificate rather than multiple shares on one certificate to maximize the potential future sale as people are buying the certificates themselves. There is no difference in value between a certificate that is for 1 share or 100 shares.) and have the extra potential return.

Other examples:

My guess is that a certificate purchased on (or near) the actual IPO date would be worth more to a collector in the future (as in the Apple stock certificate example). I also believe that the initial stock shares will be signed by Mark Zuckerberg based on similar past IPO certificates.

Of course there’s never any guarantee that the certificate will be worth anything in the future and this is certainly a long term investment whether you keep the shares AND the certificates or just the certificates. Whichever you decide to do, there’s more POTENTIAL in having the certificates then in not having them. In addition, due to the high demand for the stock itself, I don’t believe Facebook will be offering paper certificates for very long so you could have a narrow window to take advantage of this.

Most stock certificates won’t sell like this, of course. The examples I use are exceptions but I believe Facebook will fall into this category. If an old AOL floppy disc (that were everywhere “back in the day” and that they mailed to everyone once a week, it seemed) can sell for almost $10,000 on eBay… well, you get my point.

Either way, in my opinion, it’s kind of cool to own a piece of history.

Coffee Is For Closers: A Social Media Success Story

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For many small businesses, social media is a daunting, unwieldy task with results that are typically discouraging. Many businesses either don’t see the point in doing it or they try it and quit after not seeing any interaction. How many Facebook pages have you seen abandoned after a short life-span? You go to their page and the last post was 6 months ago. In my career, I’ve seen many.

Recently, an independent coffee shop in New Hampshire came to my attention through social media. I live in Southern California and have never even stepped foot in the state of New Hampshire so a local independent coffee shop would have never been on my radar much less caused me to start paying attention to it.

A&E Roastery is a small, independent coffee shop located in Amherst, NH. I became aware of them through a social media contest they started on their Facebook page celebrating their 10th anniversary. A&E Roastery bought in to social media. You can see that they began using Facebook as a business in January 2010. They have a corporate Twitter account, a foursquare account and a blog that is regularly updated with fresh and relevant content.

The contest was brought to my attention by someone in my social media network (and industry) who is a regular customer of theirs.

The genesis of the contest was the shop’s involvement in a local baseball league consisting of 8-9 year olds. A&E Roastery and their local PR firm collaborated on ideas with which to gain exposure for the shop in conjunction with their sponsorship. The contest was simple. Customers participated in and gathered votes to be proclaimed the MVP of the shop and win free coffee for the rest of 2012.

My involvement started only as one of supporting a friend in his quest to win this contest at a business he obviously frequents and loves. Over the next 9 days, it slowly started dawning on me that A&E had accomplished what not many small businesses (or large businesses for that matter) have been able to do… engage with their fans. You see, it’s easy to GAIN fans. Many people judge social media success by quantity. The more fans or followers I have, the better job I’m doing when, in fact, a more accurate measurement of social media success is engagement. How do the fans you have, regardless of the quantity, engage with you?

A mutual friend suggested I write a blog post about this contest. My initial reaction was skeptical. To be blunt, I didn’t believe there was much there to write about.

As I began digging in and really looking, I found amazing statistics and results from a contest that is still ongoing.

These statistics begin on May 7, the date the contest started.

  • From January 2010 to January 2012, A&E had accumulated approximately 500 fans (approximately 20/month). Over the next 3 months (Feb-April), they added 107 for an average of about 35 per month. In the month of May alone, they’ve added 219 fans for an average of 14 per day.
  • On May 6th, A&E Roastery was averaging 5 new likes per week with 30 people talking about them according to Facebook Insights. Within 6 days of beginning the contest, they’ve increased their likes per week by 5,100% and the number of people talking about them has increased 660%.
  • Since the contest’s inception, the company itself has contributed 28 posts which accumulated 99 likes and 169 comments.*
  • Since the contest’s inception, the company’s fans have posted on their wall a whopping 100 posts with a total of 271 likes and 134 comments.*

In 9 days, A&E Roastery’s Facebook page has seen 128 posts that have generated 370 likes and 303 comments.*

To put this into perspective, I looked at the Facebook page of the Penske Automotive Group. For those who don’t know, the Penske Automotive Group is the second largest publicly traded automotive retailer in the United States as measured by total revenue. As of January 18, 2012, (they) owned and operated 166 franchises in the United States and 169 internationally encompassing 42 brands. They are a Fortune 500 company with 15,000 employees. [Wikipedia]

Over the same period of time, Penske posted to their Facebook wall 6 times which generated 98 likes and 76 comments. Penske’s Facebook page has almost 16,000 fans.

A&E Roastery had more than triple the engagement with 15,000 fewer fans.

A&E has hit the equivalent of a social media grand-slam home run with this contest. The passion their customers have for them is evident in not only the engagement their contest is seeing but in the exposure it is generating for them.

I spoke with Emeran, the shop’s owner, about her thoughts and goals for this contest. She felt the key to the contest’s success to this point is the social media saavy customers she has that have contributed to generating the buzz. The question she’s looking to answer is one that’s all too familiar to social media professionals and business owners – “How does that translate to growth in business?”. She went on to say that “the challenge is to assess what our new network looks like now and how to target those new people and translate that into revenue growth on both the retail and wholesale areas.” She felt it would be interesting to see not only if it did but by how much even though she shared that she knew this would be a difficult task to accomplish. Some of her new fans being from outside her local market is actually one that works in her favor as, in addition to the operation of this local shop, she has a thriving wholesale business selling the coffee beans they roast themselves. A&E currently has quite a few local businesses that serve her beans to their customers and she certainly isn’t opposed to expanding her wholesale business to other areas of the country.

The initial round of voting for the MVP nominees is scheduled to be reduced to 9 at the end of this week with a new round of voting on the remaining contestants beginning. The contest itself is scheduled to end a the end of this month.

To all my fellow automotive coffee enthusiasts, you might want to give A&E Roastery coffee a try. In the age of Starbucks, not many independent coffee shops can generate the loyalty and following from their customers that A&E has managed to do.

There’s probably a good reason for that.

*Statistics complied through May 16, 2012 at 8:30am PST.

Facebooks Potential New Feature Could Kill Your Newsfeed

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Facebook has always been experimenting with ways to generate revenue. It’s mostly been focused on businesses through Facebook Ads and Sponsored Stories but now it’s contemplating a revenue stream generated through users.

TechCrunch reported last night that Facebook has began testing a feature it calls “Highlight”. The basic functionality of this feature is that a user can pay a one-time fee to have a single post shared with more of their friends. Facebook’s algorithm is designed to identify and deliver what they believe is the content most interesting to any individual. According to the TechCrunch article, only about 12% of any given person’s friends see any given post. (People that utilize EdgeRank to maximize the potential that their posts are seen probably have a slightly higher average.)

facebook-highlight-status-updates1

In my opinion, there are only a few legitimate uses for for this feature by an individual that wouldn’t annoy the heck out of their friends: “I’m moving”, “having a baby”, “someone died”, “help me raise money for a good cause” etc. would all be legitimate reasons, in my eyes. However, I don’t see too many people actually paying for increased exposure to other legitimate types of status updates even if it were available. (“Legitimate” in my eyes being a valid, non-spammy type of status update.)

More than likely, the people willing to pay for increased exposure for their posts would be people selling something.. whether that’s recruiting for a multi-level marketing “opportunity”, advertising their business or services, and, in the case of the automotive industry, delivering the many different ways of saying “come buy a car from me (or my dealership)”.

With many car dealers still stubbornly clinging to Facebook profiles versus Facebook pages, I think it’s just going to be way too tempting for them to pay the small fee to make sure more of their “friends” see their sale ad, highlighted vehicle, or “come buy a car” message. It will also be tempting for individual vendors to ply their wares on your Facebook newsfeed paying a couple of bucks for increased exposure to all the car dealerships they’ve friended.

The potential for people to newsfeed spam is way too high, in my opinion. I put up with an “occasional” plug from my Facebook friends. I mean, everyone needs to earn a living and rule #1 in sales is to make sure everyone you know is aware of what you sell. There’s nothing more frustrating than being a Toyota salesperson and having someone you know buy a Toyota from somewhere (or someone) else. That being said, I do have a line that a person can cross when the volume of those types of posts by them gets annoying to me.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Facebook choosing who they think I want to see posts from. I would personally like to be able to control that option but, for the most part, it accomplishes its goal. I also think I’m probably in the group of people that actually tells Facebook who and what I want to see by hiding people, creating lists, knowing (and using) my privacy settings, etc. as the more you do this, the more accurate Facebook’s algorithm can be in delivering relevant content. It’s unclear whether “Highlight” would circumvent these settings (ie. delivering messages from people I’ve hidden or normally wouldn’t see status updates from just because they’ve paid for that increased exposure).

Bottom line is that if your newsfeed becomes littered with individual advertising-type posts rather than being filled with relevant content from people you want to interact with, people will either start hiding or unfriending more people or they’ll use Facebook less.

According to TechCrunch, the feature is currently being tested in New Zealand.

Talking to Yourself

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Social media is, by nature, a digital conversation. When you share something – whether it’s a status update, a quote, an article or a video – it’s meant for others to see and engage with.

If your friends or fans on Facebook have hidden you, its because you’re doing something wrong. Maybe you’re posting too much. Maybe the content you are posting is irrelevant or uninteresting to your audience. Maybe you’re content is offensive.

There are many reasons why people choose to “hide” a person rather than simply unfriend them. I would say the main one is that they don’t want to hurt your feelings (in the case of a person) or, perhaps, offend someone at a business by not showing support by “liking” their business.

Facebook doesn’t tell you who has hidden you so you really don’t know if what you’re posting is being seen by others or not unless they engage with your content in some way. Having low engagement on Facebook doesn’t necessarily mean nobody is seeing your posts. It may just mean that nobody cares or is interested in your content. (Caveat: If you have a PAGE, you can see how many times your content appeared in your fans newsfeeds. A very good reason for businesses to have pages versus profiles.)

On the opposite end of the spectrum, a Facebook user who never engages with their network is sending them the same message – I don’t care.

If you go to a party, and everyone ignores you but you continue to talk, you are just talking to yourself.

Not everyone is at the same party. Most Facebook users are at a party that has, on average, 150 people in attendance. Others are at a party of thousands. The “host” (Facebook) tries to determine which people have the best chance at interaction  and attempts to encourage conversation (newsfeed filtering) but its not perfect. You can’t talk to everyone at the party regardless of whether the party you are at has 150 or 5,000 people in attendance.

Follow real life etiquette in a social network. Talk about common interests. Be yourself. Share your life. Share who you are.

Engage your audience.

Don’t automate your Facebook content. Don’t become a quote factory. Don’t be a broken record of sales pitches.

You don’t go to a party, run around the room and only share quotes nor do you go up to each person and tell them you’re having a sale this weekend or that they should buy whatever you’re selling.

If you do, you’ll end up talking to yourself.

To Be Continued

How to: Spam People on Facebook

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Social media is all about engagement. The option to “friend” someone or “like” a business’ page exists to enhance the user’s experience and present to them only what they have chosen to see and engage with. If you choose not to engage with someone, you simply don’t accept their friend request. YOU choose which business’ Facebook page you are interested in having information delivered to you.

Imagine if Facebook were completely open. “Friends” didn’t exist. You saw every status update from every person on Facebook and every business. Facebook would cease to exist except maybe as a search engine. There would be too much noise. Facebook even recognizes this by filtering status updates for you and providing you with the option to create lists of people so that you can not only tailor who sees any particular piece of content but so you can easily filter out status updates and content into subgroups of your friends.

Then came Facebook groups. Initially, I thought this was a splendid idea. The ability to create an open or private group of individuals who share like interests and who can interact with each other without having to “friend” any group member. It offered a convenient way of sharing via a group Facebook e-mail address and, at the time, it was one of the only noise-reduction alternatives on Facebook.

Facebook groups has now become a convenient way to spam people in your social network against their permission. The ability to add people to groups without their consent has become not only a nuisance but, I believe, has actually decreased the value and allure of groups. I cringe whenever people add me to a Facebook group because 1) it irritates me that people can be presumptuous enough to choose what I’m interested in seeing and 2) because Facebook in their infinite wisdom chose to make the default notifications via e-mail on.

I belong to several Facebook groups. The groups I belong to are through my choice and consist of people and content I am interested in. I can’t belong to every group in existence, nor do I want to. Imagine if businesses could choose whether you liked their page or not. There would be many businesses who would just add everyone on Facebook and leave it up to each person to unlike it.

To compound matters, there are some people who will not only add me to a group, but after I LEAVE the group, will RE-ADD me.

It’s presumptuous and arrogant to take it upon yourself to decide for others where their interests lie. By doing this, you make yourself no different than the person who decided everyone you know could benefit from Viagra.

… and there’s a word for people who do that: spammer.

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