Storytailer

STORYTAILER LLC
CHAPEL HILL

Social Media Safety Part 2: Photos

By

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]

Pre-Conference Twitter Advice for Vendors

By

I’ve had the privilege of handling social media for nine major automotive industry conferences in the last few years. (the 1st and 2nd DrivingSales Executive Summits, the 8th-11th Digital Dealer Conference & Expositions, and the 1st and 2nd Innovative Dealer Summits). In that time, I’ve also tried to include exhibitors and sponsors in the conference’s social media campaigns both for their benefit and for the conference’s.

I routinely asked them for Twitter accounts and created lists of those accounts for people following the conference Twitter account (like this one) whether they provided it for me or not (lots of searching Twitter, sadly). We left spots on speaking applications asking for their information and we had the sales team ask. If I had to guess, only about 15% actually provided this information and even less actually used social media to reach out and engage with attendees.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of “pre-conference” promotion (by the conference) and an essential piece of that was done via social media. Attendees would start getting excited and I would see Twitter conversations start ramping up via the conference hashtag. What I wouldn’t see is vendors participating in those conversations. No matter how hard and how many times I would advise a vendor that they should, they just wouldn’t do it. So for the few months leading up to the conference, there would be plenty of conference-related chatter (“Are you going?” “I’m excited” “Let’s get together”, etc) but virtually no vendor engagement. Amusingly enough, I have even had dealership attendees on Twitter publicly noticing and inquiring about the lack of vendors.

About a week before the conference…. it hits. Like someone hit a “Go” button somewhere. Vendors galore. All over Twitter. It was great that they would finally start participating but the problem was that there was no engagement and they were late to the party. A typical vendor’s tweet would read something like “We have your magic solution! Come visit us at booth #1234” or “We’re giving away an iPad2! Come to booth #1234 to enter”. By this point, they are entering (and creating) noise. The dealers and managers attending see this. They know that there is virtually no value in those tweets. They’ve received the countless pre-conference e-mails from vendors promoting something or other all with the same basic call-to-action of “come to our booth”.

On the flip side of this, I see vendors who DO engage with attendees. I see the vendors that engage attendees successfully setting up demo appointments and building interest and rapport with attendees. On the conference side, I always tried to increase their exposure (and the conference’s) by re-tweeting those vendors and encouraging people to interact with them. I rewarded exhibitors and sponsors for contributing to, and participating in, the conversation. What I didn’t retweet was blatant sales-only type tweets.

Fact: The 11th Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition hashtag saw 9,100 tweets from over 1,400 unique people with a combined reach of almost 100,000 people that generated over 9 million impressions…. and this was only from people that tweeted with the hashtag!

Why a vendor would want to skip out of being included in this is beyond me. I think they don’t understand social media 101 – the whole point of social media is not only to engage with your primary audience, it’s also to reach THEIR social network. The only other reason I can think of that they’re not doing this is that they can’t be bothered or see no value in it.

Vendors need to realize that conference attendees paying attention to the conference hashtag don’t want to see your 140 character sales pitch a week before the conference while, at the same time, they are receiving all the direct mail pieces and e-mail marketing campaigns that are hitting their real (and virtual) in-boxes. You become noise. Spam.

They are willing and want to engage with you but you must start this engagement MONTHS before the conference and it must be REAL engagement.You want to get a dealer’s attention pre-conference? Start talking to them pre-conference, not selling to them.

Sell to them at your booth, not on Twitter.

Fantasy Guru’s Social Media Fail

By

guru2

My brother is a fantasy sports freak. He especially gets into football. Every Sunday, you can find him firmly planted in front of my TV watching my Sunday Ticket subscription with his laptop in his lap cycling through his many teams refreshing his fantasy football scores. You’d think he was in the stadium sometimes as he yells (or cheers) at the television. He’s also hyper-competitive.

We play in one league together and, at any point in time, he knows, off the top of his head, all the league’s statistics. Who’s in first place..Who has the most points..Playoff scenarios..etc. He’s made 74 roster changes whereas the rest of a 12 team-league has made a combined average of 11 moves (and that’s with my above-average 37 moves included). I stopped checking Yahoo for my scores and info. I just ask him now.

He’s been a fan of, and subscriber to, a premium fantasy football website named FantasyGuru.com run by John Hansen who has been affiliated with major companies and personalities including hosting a radio show, SiriusXM Fantasy Sports Radio with FoxSports.com’s Adam Caplan which was so popular that it became a seven-day-a-week program during the NFL season which included senior writers Matt Camp and Joe Dolan. He’s participated in celebrity drafts including Ashton Kutcher, has published on ESPN.com, and has appeared on television in projects with NFL.com, NFL Network, DirecTV, ComCast SportsNet, and even a cameo on an episode of FX’s The League.

This week my brother is particularly passionate as he’s playing his big brother (me) in our league’s playoffs. He uses the advice and statistics from this website to help him analyze players, waiver wire pickups, and to assist him in choosing his lineup each week.

He’s not a social media person. That being said, he does have a Twitter account. It has only 1 follower (me) and he’s tweeted only 4 times. The ONLY reason he has a Twitter account is to watch the tweets of @Fantasy_Guru to get up-to-the-minute injury reports and news.

So, in this weeks projections, one player – Donald Brown of the Indianapolis Colts – was projected to do well on a combined list of running backs and wide receivers. Long story short, the player hardly played at all and ended up with low points.

Because of his passion and the desire to win against his big brother and advance to our league’s championship, he tweets this out to the Fantasy Guru twitter account:

rafe

Keep in mind that this guy (@Fantasy_Guru) has over 25,000 followers. He gets mentioned and/or tweeted to continuously. My brother is square in the middle of his demographic – hyper-competitive people passionate about fantasy football. It’s hard to believe that his analysis isn’t challenged or critiqued by other people via Twitter. The guy isn’t always right but I don’t think anyone really believes he has a crystal ball.

For whatever reason, he took exception to this particular tweet and sent this direct message in response:

guru

My brother only followed him and has only 1 follower. @Fantasy_Guru has 25,009 followers and follows only 266 and (obviously) doesn’t follow my brother. I understand that. He follows sportswriters, teams and players to get information which he then passes along to his subscribers/followers and he does it very well.

First, seeing as this person runs a BUSINESS in which he charges ~$30 per year, you’d think he’d be more careful alienating and lashing out at people. Notice that he chose to direct message my brother rather than reply publicly. This was particularly frustrating to my brother since he couldn’t respond to the message since @Fantasy_Guru doesn’t follow him. That’s certainly not a way to treat paying customers and a poor choice on his part. My guess is he chose to direct message because by replying like that publicly would make him look bad.

Little did he realize that my brother has been a subscriber of his for 11 years and has referred many people to also subscribe to his service. While $330 in income may not mean anything to John Hansen, it is definitely a luxury to my brother. The amount of money doesn’t excuse abusing your customers.

It took him about 10 seconds to destroy a loyal customer. Not a smart business decision.

Now my brother follows nobody.

Social media is a powerful medium. No matter what size your business is, customer service matters. Do you think Southwest Airlines or Ford would ever think about responding to a customer this way?? Imagine this DM coming from Southwest: “You set up a Twitter account just to complain? Go fly another airline.” Not going to happen. Any employee who did that would be fired instantly. Ask Scott Monty or Christi McNeill.

As the old saying goes, “A happy customer tells 10 friends, an unhappy one tells everybody.”

Now thousands of people will know that he apparently doesn’t value his subscribers.

[UPDATE: Apparently Matt Camp read my article. His response was to make fun of a math mistake (which I’ve since edited). I guess he values his audience just as much as John Hansen does.

[UPDATE 2: I guess John Hansen got annoyed with my tweets as he’s decided to block me. Can’t take the heat?]

Buffer: What It Is and Why You Want It

By

When I went to BlogWorld LA, I met up with a friend of mine, James Stayton. As I’m walking around googly-eyed at the likes of Chris Brogan, Jason Falls, etc., he jumps when he sees this one guy with a “Buffer” shirt on. We go over and James starts telling this guy how much he loves Buffer and about how much he likes the new features, etc. I had never heard of Buffer so I asked the guy (who turned out to be a co-founder, Leo Wid) to show me how it worked. I signed up (as it’s free) and told him I’d check it out. At the time, the Facebook posting was still in beta, (he let me in on the very tail of that) but now, I believe, it’s live for anyone who signs up.

So, what is Buffer?

Buffer is an easy service that allows you to share information without overwhelming your networks (the networks in this article I’m referring to are Twitter and Facebook). How it does this is that they use an algorithm that determines what the best times of the day (ie. most trafficked and used) are and it schedules them for those times automatically. It also “buffers” your posts so that you aren’t sending a ton out at once and overwhelming your followers/friends. It will determine how many you should be posting and automatically schedule them for when they are most likely to be read or clicked through and it will space them out in time for you also. There is also a “Post Now” button if you don’t want to send it later.

I’ve been (and I am) a Hootsuite Pro user for a long time. I love Hootsuite but it is a pain to schedule tweets with any kind of strategy involved. I still use Hootsuite but now I use Buffer as a compliment to it so that I can share great content without having to even THINK about when I should tweet or post something and how much is too much, etc.

…and one of my FAVORITE parts of Buffer is that it allows me to use my custom URL shortener automatically! You just plug in your shortener information (in this case, I use bit.ly for my shortener –  arni.es) and it automatically uses YOUR shortener for any websites you add to your buffer. Hootsuite charges $50 per month if you want this feature!

Anyways, I don’t get this excited about a new service (God knows there are plenty of them popping up all the time.) but this one has me pumped. I’ve been using it now for a couple of weeks and I love it.

A dealership (or any business) could use this to pre-load a week’s worth of content very easily then sit back and sell some cars!

Check it out , sign up and send your first tweet by clicking HERE!

Can Your Dealership Be Too Social?

By

I hope dealerships realize that a social media presence is necessary these days. Hopefully, there is someone at your dealership handling this. More likely than not, this task has been assigned to someone which this is NOT their primary responsibility.

That being said, is there a thing as being “too social”?

There are many social networks out there and new ones popping up everyday. In a perfect world, dealers would have a dedicated person that could keep up with and manage them all by posting new content (preferably original) via blogs and all the social networks with their listening ears on. Most dealers, however, don’t have the budget for this type of person. It’s hard enough for ME to keep up with them all much less to ask a dealer to.

Would it be better if a dealer picked a few and concentrated on being really good at those instead of spreading themselves so thin that they aren’t managing or maintaining an active presence on them all? It’s not enough just to have a Facebook page or G+ page or Twitter account, you have to engage and keep fresh content on it.. nurture it.

Right now we have Facebook, Twitter, G+, Google Places, LinkedIn, YouTube, … and the list goes on. Now Microsoft is about to enter the game with Microsoft Socl.. yet another social network to maintain. Right now, there are 205 websites listed on Wikipedia as “social networking sites” (Yes, I counted them). You can’t effectively manage all of them (and most of them wouldn’t apply either) but you do still have to figure in managing your online reputation through sites like Yelp, DealerRater, etc as well as the location-based services out there like Foursquare.. Oh, and don’t forget about blogging!

It’s exhausting to think about, isn’t it? I promise it’s just as exhausting to actually do.

My advice: If you don’t have (or can’t afford, or don’t want to afford) a person that can actually manage this full-time, pick a few sites mixing up social, reputation management, location-based and a blog… and be good at them.

David vs. Goliath – The Grant Cardone Saga Continues

By

Throughout the day yesterday, via Twitter, e-mail and YouTube, Grant and I have been discussing why I believe his contest is bad and why he shouldn’t be teaching dealers inappropriate social media tactics. I think I explained myself clearly in my previous blog post and, in the interest of not writing a book here, I’m going to share the conversations, some select tweets, and his YouTube video which is without a doubt in response to our discussions.

[Note: These e-mails are unedited.]
From Grant to me:
Arnold, 

The
biggest thing I have spent my career on is inspiring sales people to do MORE not
do less. If a sales person is going to fail let them fail by doing too
much and then making adjustments to do too much a
better way.   

Your
suggestions about the program being wrong suggest to take action is incorrect
and causes people to be ‘careful’ rather than
to take action.  

The
world is filled with noise…..the only way people can break out is to take
action and lots of it.  You are going to love the 10X rule because it is about taking
action in massive amounts.  

George
Patton said, “a marginal plan executed ferociously is better than a well
thought out plan never executed.”

Encourage
people to make mistakes by taking more action not by labeling actions wrong,
incorrect, against the rules – There is enough of this
encouragement already.

Neither
you nor me or experts on social media….no one yet knows what actually works.
 Lets agree to disagree and both discover what does
work by experimenting…

 All
my love….

My reply to Grant:

So, in your opinion, violating Facebook’s Terms of Service as
well as the laws of the State of California (which have both civil and criminal
penalties) is ok?

 Even if we disregard the whole “spamming everyone” part of my
argument, you can’t seriously be saying its ok for dealers to break rules and
laws because taking “more action” is better than less?

The people that are participating in your contest are ALREADY
YOUR FANS, Grant. By making them spam their friends, you do not accomplish
increasing your exposure to new people. It’s great to have promotions and
contest. Get people involved and engaging with you, just don’t make them do it
at their friends’ expense and makes sure you’re doing it legally and in
compliance with the rules and laws that govern them.

His reply to me:

Dude,

 I am not ‘making’ anyone do anything and I am not
encouraging spamming.

I put together a contest to encourage people to learn while
they play.

Most of the people out there don’t even know how to start a
FB page… 

We have had over 20 people create video for the first time.
People are having fun with this thing and today now learning new ways to fine-target their message to clients so it is
not perceived negatively

Be a lover man, not a hater

Be an inspirer not a stopper.

Be an encouragement and supporter for action and
activity- 

Still love you…

My reply to Grant:

You have to take responsibility as a public figure and role
model for dealers, Grant. People look up to you and will follow your lead. I
hold you to a higher level of accountability to what you put out into the world
than I do the average dealer.

I’m not alone in my thoughts. Many people share my opinion on
your contest. I think the video part of your contest is great. You ARE making
them post on FB and Twitter about your contest. If they don’t they can’t win so
if they want to participate, they have to do it.

The fact that they don’t know, or have, proper social media
skills only makes it worse. You’re teaching them the wrong way to do things,
not the right way.

I still love you too. You’re still them man. You don’t know how
many people have messaged me kudos for standing up to you and saying most
people would be afraid to. I just tell them that you can handle it and,
hopefully, respect my opinion.

My job involves teaching dealers how to do it right. Your reach
and exposure certainly outweighs mine but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t advise
people not to follow your example. That would be neglecting my job, and
responsibility, in bringing proper digital marketing techniques into their
dealerships.

His reply to me:

Right on bro=  but there is a difference between
standing up and making someone else wrong…

at this point it seems like you are more interested in making me wrong
….

Based on what you are suggesting the  social media campaign
I used to help NADA get the Brownback Amendment passed which protected auto dealerships from losing their finance depts. would have
violated the law.  I slammed that thing every way possible from FB, TWeets, Youtube to direct emails into unwanted and completely
disconnected fields…

Where did you get that great signature…

My reply to Grant:

No, your Brownback Amendment activity was a “rally” so to speak.
It was a call to action and information for dealers. YOU were doing the
“spamming” if people considered it that, which I didn’t.

This is a contest. The state of California has laws regarding
contests, it does not have laws about social media. FACEBOOK, on the other hand,
has rules about having contests on their website, which your contest does not
comply with.

I’m not interested in making you wrong. I KNOW you are. This is
not an opinion. I provided links to the laws and Facebook policies in my blog.
Feel free to read them for yourself.

Yes, you inspired my putting my signature image in my e-mails.
It was always my signature though. I didn’t make mine look like yours. You’ve
inspired me to do a lot of things. You’ve inspired me to be better at what I do
and helped me do that because I made a commitment to listen and learn.

I’m trying to HELP you understand that it’s important that you
teach the RIGHT way to do social media. Between you and I, we both know that
you’re great at teaching closing techniques to salespeople and motivating them.
We also both know that you’ve never sold a car via the internet and, in fact,
I’ve helped you with social media in the past.

I AM recognized as a thought-leader and expert in the field of
social media. That’s why I’m enlisted to do all of the social media for most of
the major auto conferences. They certainly don’t ask me to do it because I
don’t know how.

I know you’re a busy guy and probably don’t have time to go back
and forth with me. Ive always had your back and you know that. Ive contacted
you when your account was hacked. Ive shown you a lot of things. Just know that
I believe you needed to hear this and, hopefully, you’ll realize your mistake
and take action to change it.

Don’t make this a right vs. wrong thing. Don’t worry about
saving face. Just fix the problem.

As we tweeted back and forth today, a friend of mine, stated via Twitter that he was backing off because it was pissing his friends off. Here’s the conversation:


To even suggest to Stan that he shouldn’t be friends with someone (which he implies) who is advising him that he is going to alienate his friends by continuing his actions is not only irresponsible but it’s absolutely self-centered. I know for a fact that I am not the only one giving Stan this advice.
Why does Grant want to encourage Stan not to take my advice? The answer is simple:
He wants people promoting him no matter what the cost is to them!
Now we get to the YouTube part. [Note: This is my favorite.]

While he doesn’t mention me by name, it’s real tough for me to believe that this video wasn’t created in response to my calling him out and trying to make him realize that he is NOT helping his dealers. He is hurting them. Obviously, he doesn’t care. He’s more interested in self-promotion than on the social media success of his dealer audience.
Let’s examine some of his comments:
“..you’re learning what the difference between spam is and a good coordinated program.”
Yeah we’re learning that what YOU’RE doing is spamming. What you’re NOT showing us is a “good, coordinated program”. Running a contest via a software program called Contest Burner that is designed to spam people (for only $147). If you read their website, it describes Grant’s contest EXACTLY. It’s all about the following:
  • Flooding your site with massive traffic
  • Creating an army of back-links from all over the net
  • building a monstrous, responsive list
  • explode your revenue
Funny how there’s not ONE MENTION on that incredibly long home page telling you about RESPONSIBLE social media or that the program is designed to engage your fans and retain them. Of course not, it’s not designed to be responsible. This is what it accomplishes.
“With Contest Burner, your visitors will “happily” spread the word about your site all over the web. They’ll get engaged with your message… and become raving fans!

In fact, they’ll tell everyone about how great you (or your product) is and they’ll recruit people (influence them) to visit your site!”
Bravo, Grant. You’ve enlisted all of your fans to tell everyone they know how great you are while, at the same time, annoying the hell out of them.
Now let’s examine his logic and reasoning to his fans on his YouTube video:
  • You shouldn’t listen to their friends and colleagues but “push through the criticism”.
  • Social media is no different than him “knocking on a door”
  • “if you stop because people are asking you to stop, you’re done.”
  • If you’re creative, it’s not spam
  • Social media is no different than knocking on a door, making a phone call, or sending out a piece of mail, it’s just electronic.
  1. I don’t need to listen to my friends and colleagues. You’re the only thing that matters. Got it.
  2. It’s not like “knocking on doors”, it’s like knocking on your FRIEND’S DOORS. I’m sure your friends would appreciate you harassing them.
  3. Uh… when did “No” stop meaning “No”?
  4. Even if it’s creative, it’s still spam.
  5. You can be spam whether you’re knocking on a door, making a phone call, sending mail, sending e-mail or being on social media. In fact, there are laws regarding the use of 4 of the 5 of these and, I suspect, there will eventually be laws regarding the use of social media.
I’m sorry but anyone that tells me to annoy my friends and family, despite their requests to stop, and to “push through” anyways, is not doing me any favors.
The ONLY person winning from this contest is Grant Cardone. 
If you’re friends, family, and business connections are only worth $500 to you… well.. that says a lot.
[As I finished this post, I got another e-mail from Grant]

Dude  

All you have done is make
wrong – there is no direction, no guidance, and no teaching.

there have been no efforts to
do so either….

its been a constant
commercial of what I am doing wrong….then i expect you got some cowards
patting you on the back and got all inspired..
 but you didn’t help guide or inform anyone of what to do only encourage
them not to do!

My friends don’t do that with
me.  Teachers and mentors that I learn from encourage me to use my
strengths and

and never suggest that I do
less but offer advice how I can be more effective…

Go back and look at your
tweets and see how policeman like they are.  I am taking my time to tell
you this because I like you and would like you to be
supportive of me and what I am doing….

A better way to do this is by
example —– why don’t you get involved in the program and show them how to do
it or do you just monday morning quarterback?

My response to Grant:

Do you honestly believe that you are helping dealers learn anything
about social media?

His answer:

I
got a 100 from my brother with a message on it for you…

I responded with one word: nice
To be fair, he did respond with the following (despite the fact that I absolutely took the last e-mail seriously):

Just
loving you baby…  I have given you too much attention today…

but
it has been fun! Have a monster year and best to you..

I have nothing to gain by criticizing Grant’s contest except putting an end to the continuous stream of Grant-spam that I’ve been getting. He, on the other hand, has everything to gain by encouraging the continued participation of his contestants.
I absolutely feel like David and he is Goliath. Am I trying to “topple” him? No. Am I trying to get his attention and make him realize what he’s doing is wrong? Yes. 
The scariest part is.. maybe he already realizes it.

Oh, and Grant, if you want me to show you how to “do it right”, I’d be happy to.
Onto my commercial: Very soon, I may have a ton of Grant Cardone material available for bid on eBay including some signed photos, books and tons of audio material. 
Just kidding.. maybe.





Contact Me