So I’m browsing Facebook this morning and I see a little ad in my news feed that catches my eye:
A little ad for the BC Public Service IT department. Just thought I’d click… in this day and age, a cushy job with the government is never a bad idea. Not that I’m looking for a new job, but you know how it is…
So I click through.
Bummer. Best to keep an eye on your server status.
Yeah, saw them again tonight. Some crazy guy in my building forgot he was cooking and when he realized he was on the verge of burning down the entire building, decided to close the doors, stay inside and hope the smoke would somehow go away and no one would notice.
Meanwhile, his alarm is ringing, the building alarms are going and I’m sending big-man to check out what’s going on while bundling up mini-man in a blanket (who had been asleep for 2 hours or so at this point) and scooping him up for a little walk in the fresh fall air.
Thank God it wasn’t raining tonight!
Anyway, the fire is out. The smoke is being blown out of the building. Hopefully crazy man is being treated to a nice room with a soft wall panelling and we were all allowed back in within about half an hour. Interesting night, though.
Today I was out grabbing a few groceries after work with my two year old. Across the street from the grocery store we visit is the local fire hall. Now as we were leaving the grocery store I heard the fire trucks making some noise – they seemed to be testing stuff. Garage doors were opening and closing, sirens were popping on and off… so this, of course, was all very attractive to a two year old boy.
So we stood watching from across the street for a little bit, hoping the trucks would make an appearance, but it turned out they weren’t going anywhere. But then there was a bunch of firefighters standing in one of the garage doorways (I think there are 4 of them in a row – the garage doors, not the firefighters)… anyway, I asked mini-man if he wanted to go and say hello. Of course he was excited and skipped and pranced down to the crosswalk while urging me to run to speed up the process.
I’m not sure if it’s just my local firefighters or emergency personnel everywhere, but the members of North Vancouver City Fire Department are some of the nicest guys anywhere. They were all super friendly and encouraging; they even suggested we go in one of the trucks and look around, which we did. The guy who showed us into the truck headed off somewhere saying he’d be back in a minute, and mini-man, being two, decided it wasn’t quite as cool as he’d thought it would be (new and strange environment and all) so we exited about as quickly as we’d entered.
As we were walking down the street I heard a whistle and turned around to see him running down the street with a little red fire helmet (or do you call it a hat?!) for mini-man… that was SO nice of him! Mini-man was super excited and very cute saying “Thank you so much!”
Now I know these guys have much better things to do than entertain me and my kid, but I’m grateful for that. It shows how caring they really are. So next time they’re hauling my husband out from behind our building after he falls off the balcony, or the next time they’re hacking up my balcony with an axe because my husband lit it on fire with a cigarette butt (yeah, both have happened in recent years), I’ll remember what a treat we had this one day. Thanks.
Photo: pusgums on flickr
I keep thinking lately I might be seen quite differently than I perceive myself. I consider myself an optimist. In general, that is. Since some time in my early 20′s when I really sensed ovewhelmingly that things would always work out well for me… I used to joke around that I had my own private angels in heaven watching over me. Any time I’d get into any kind of freaky situation, financial or otherwise, right at the last second something will happen to fix everything and I live happily ever after.
When it comes to my work, on the other hand, I think I might be seen as more pessimistic than I am. A co-worker and I were discussing this just yesterday and we both seem to suffer from the same thing:
In any situation I tend to immediately see how something can be improved – be it and idea, a thing or a process, a program, a design or copy or what have you – and don’t stop to celebrate everything that’s right about.
Maybe it’s just a bad habit, or maybe it’s just the way I’m wired, but either way, I think I sometimes bring people down. It’s not inherantly a bad trait I don’t think; rather, I think it comes from my analytical mind. See, I’m a problem solver. I love improving things, making things more efficient, more effective, easier, quicker, better… and in order to do that, I need to look at how things could be better.
I think I really need to stop and verbalize all the ways something is great rather than skipping right over that part and diving in to improvements. It might improve the way others perceive me.
Yesterday I was asked to have some artwork created for some signs. I responded that I was happy to do so and would need some specs in order to determine the right creative. This is what I received today:
A scanned PDF file of three pieces of cardboard. Awesome.
I figured it would be a good idea to get the conversation started on Facebook in order to generate ideas to fuel my reviews for the Urban Shore blog. So now I’ve created an Urban Shore: North Vancouver City Living Facebook group. It might prove to get more of a community feel to it there – discussion boards and posted items I’m sure will be a benefit.
I’m not sure if it’s just a God-given trait of all mankind or if it’s the artist in me, but I constantly feel the need to create something. I have this overwhelming yearning to create something of value to the people around me; something that will enhance the lives of others.
Whether it’s writing, singing or playing music, writing or sharing intimate conversation with people, the drive to create seems to be rooted in this longing to contribute to the betterment of mankind.
I am on the edge of creating something new right now – a new hyper-local website/blog about urban living in the City of North Vancouver – and mostly the mid to lower Lonsdale area. This is my neighbourhood and I think it’s the best place to live anywhere. I really just want to find a way that all of us who live here and love it can share ideas about the best places to shop, eat, play… all those places that make this community unique.
And so now, urbanshore.ca is live. Welcome. Sit down and stay a while. Tell me what you think are the best places to enjoy this vibrant place. Share it with me.
This weekend has me filled with a renewed excitement about my faith, my church, my life and my ability to relax in the middle of the craziness. Tomorrow marks the launch of a ten week series on Life In the Kingdom that will include Sunday sermons, a book study and weekly small groups. I’m hopeful this shift of focus will help put my faith right back in the centre of my life where it belongs and that I’ll gain valuable insight and inspiration to live it out every day no matter what my environment or circumstance.
Today is a day of preparation for the upcoming 10 weeks. It’s a day of prayer and fasting and I also have the privilege of being a part of the worship team that will be leading our congregation tomorrow, so today we get to rehearse, which is just a big bonus for me. This morning’s biggest challenge was getting up and not pounding a giant mug of coffee with cream and sugar – probably my biggest vise. Instead I’ve opted to get through the day drinking herbal tea. I was surprised how relaxed I was about it… I’m usually just mean when I don’t have my coffee, but I guess God’s in the house 
It seems the last few months have seen me get busier and busier as I delve into some areas of exploration in my life. It’s good to take a step back and spend some time focused on what really matters. I’m grateful for the opportunity.
Sometimes I’m ashamed to be in the field of marketing. This video makes me throw up a little in my mouth. I love some of what the Canadian Dairy Farmers are doing – I LOVED their Canadian Cheese Rolling Event concept, but this is just shameful.
Judging by the crowd of people sitting on the floor in the “How to Market Your Blog, Business & Brand on Facebook” session at BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2008, people want to know how to promote their business or company on Facebook.
Facebook is one of the world’s fastest growing social networking sites and facilitates some of the easiest, most comprehensive sharing strategies within any single online community. Here are some stats from the Facebook Wikipedia Page:
According to comScore, Facebook is the leading social networking site based on monthly unique visitors, having overtaken main competitor MySpace in April 2008.[69] ComScore reports that Facebook attracted 132.1 million unique visitors in June 2008, compared to MySpace, which attracted 117.6 million.[70]
According to Alexa, the website’s ranking among all websites increased from 60th to 7th in terms of worldwide traffic, from September 2006 to September 2007, and is currently 5th.[71] Quantcast ranks the website 15th in US in terms of traffic,[72] and Compete.com ranks it 14th in US.[73] The website is the most popular for uploading photos, with 14 million uploaded daily.
Blogs, businesses and brands all want to get seen by those users. Today’s session from Shama Hyder on Facebook Fortunes (even if, as she admitted, the term came from Mari Smith) attracted a crowd. And Shama’s advice was good IF (and this if is HUGE) you ARE your company. If you and your company, business, brand etc. are one and the same, i.e. you are a public figure, artist, internet rockstar, performer, realtor, author or you own your own business that you never want to sell (along with its identity), everything Shama said is golden. Do it. Follow her advice.
***If, however, you are an employee of a company that you do not own and may not be a part of forever, I don’t recommend you do it.***
Companies can use Facebook as a complement to their online and offline marketing efforts in a number of ways. I’m going to outline some of the ways I use Facebook to facilitate sharing of information about my company by our most loyal of followers as well as how to use the built-in marketing tools Facebook provides. These methods have made Facebook my company’s #1 referring website since we launched the redesigned grousemountain.com last December.
A little disclosure so you understand the bigger picture for me: 50% of my traffic comes via search engines and 36% comes direct. Referring sites in total make up only 13% on average, so these numbers matter, but they’re not everything. Facebook is not referring the bulk of my traffic, but Grouse Mountain is an established business with a membership component so the majority of our customers already know where to find us. We have huge brand recognition within our industry. For smaller, newer or lesser-known companies, I think the interaction you can create with Facebook can be very valuable, and that goes beyond just click-through-rate.
Facebook tools that I’ll discuss include groups, fan pages, event listings, targeted social ads and share widgets. This is going to be a bit long, so please bear with me. Other tools that I’m less familiar with and will not discuss include marketplace listings, polls, applications and beacons.
Before I launch into what you need to know, I’ll start by saying join Facebook. Join as a human being. Upload a photo of yourself, put in a little information, go find your friends and family members and connect with them. It’s fun and you’ll like it. Now that I’ve said that, reconsider before friending everyone you’ve ever heard of or met for business purposes. Again, I’m saying this as an employee of a company. It’s not that I don’t want to connect with some of my business contacts, but I don’t want to share my personal life with everyone I know and I DO want somewhere to share my personal life with my friends. Not only that, but my friends don’t really care what I’m up to at work though most of them understand I will occasionally spam them with the latest thing I’m working on. They understand, though… they’re my friends. My real friends. Well, most of them are.
Facebook Groups are mini communities centred around a specific topic. When you build a group, your personal profile is listed as the creator. This is where people will be able to see who you are and, if you’ve left your profile open at all, a little about you (more on profiles at the end). I think the best use of groups is for something that’s ongoing (best not to build a group for a one-time event – there are event listings for that) but maybe not your entire corporate identity.
Groups are great for specific promotions, products and shared experiences. One of the ways I have used Facebook Groups is with our Build Your Own Park project, where we decided to engage our terrain park riders to tell us what features they wanted to see in the park and how they thought it should be set up. For more ideas, just Google “innovative Facebook groups”.
Facebook Groups allow users to share without hesitation. They can blast it out to everyone on their friends list with one click. This is the fastest way to share info if the info is worthy of sharing. Groups include photos, posted items, discussion boards and walls; each item can be removed as the administrator sees fit or set to ‘admin only’, which means users can’t post items (that’s a strategic decision you need to make depending on your goals). They aren’t customizable with applications (yet) but allow for multiple editors and you can message all members direct to their inbox. The only downside here that I know of, is that groups are limited to 5000 members (that I didn’t know – heard it from Shama Hyder; my groups have been more niche than that so I’ve never reached the threshold).
Fan Pages are ideal for many companies, celebrity personalities or specific products or product lines. Two very important things to note with regards to fan pages:
1) People cannot share fan pages to their entire list of friends
Promoting a fan page is harder than a group – you need to put more effort into getting the word out. The only sharing mechanism is for posting to profile (where the item shows up under someone’s posted items) or sending to a friend as a message (it arrives at the friend’s inbox, but can only be sent to 10 friends at one time). And, while your friends will get a note in their news feed when you become a fan of any particular Fan Page, this sharing limitation makes Facebook Fan Pages much harder to grow.
2) Fan Pages include a mandatory ‘Reviews’ application
With the Reviews application, people are free to review your product and the reviews cannot be taken off a fan page. If no one reviews it, great, no reviews. If they do and they didn’t like your product, tough. You can, however, set the reviews to only show based on a person’s friends i.e. if I visit the page I see only reviews written by my friends but even when that option is exercised, I can always click ‘see all’ and get the rest if I want them.
Fan pages don’t limit membership and include discussion boards, a wall, posted items, photos, videos and many applications can now be added to fan pages, which makes them way more customizable. Also, if you’re a blogger or internet rockstar, or you have a corporate blog, you can use the Notes application to import each entry as a note so each time you post to your blog, your fan page gets updated. This is not an option with a group.
One of the benefits to larger companies that may have multiple administrators (or employee turnover, for that matter) is that when the administrator posts anything on the page it posts it from “Fan Page Name” instead of from your personal profile. If you have multiple people administering a page the fans can’t tell who did which part. This can be good or bad and I’ll leave it to you to weigh the pros and cons for your company. One point to note: If you comment on a note in your own Fan Page, the comment WILL show up from your personal profile. So when you write the note, it’s the corporate identity and when you write a comment on that note, it will show up as your own.
You can message all fans, but it goes in an area called ‘updates’ within the message centre (click on your inbox and you’ll see a tab for updates) rather than the actual message inbox, so it really comes in as a ‘marketing’ type message. That isn’t all bad, though, because most people only become a fan of companies and people they really want to hear from and, as many have said before me, people don’t want to be friends with companies anyway. When a new update is sent, the user gets a notification and link on their home page when they log in.
Event listings are exactly what they sound like. Use Facebook Event Listings to create and share event information surrounding a single date (I’m not a fan of using these for multi-day events because they don’t show up as “upcoming” once the start date passes). Events can be structured in such a way so you can show the invitation list, see how many people have been invited and who they are, how many people haven’t responded, how many people have RSVP’d yes and how many declines you get. People can share events to their entire list of friends or post to their own profile.
An example of an event listing on Facebook is The TechSet Presents: Poolside in Vegas though in this case they chose to show only ‘yes’ responses and ‘maybes’ (sometimes it’s better not to show how many people declined – again, a strategic decision). Events use photos, videos, posted items and walls and all of these items can also be removed or set to ‘admin only’. You can also set events to private, public, invite only or open so anyone can invite anyone else. Lots of options here.
Note: You can post an event as an individual or as a business with a Fan Page. If you post it from the Events link on your home page you will be considered the host. If you post it from within a Fan Page, the company/identity name will be the host.
Facebook has made placing ads so simple, anyone could do it. Now, it’s not appropriate for everyone, but most B2C companies can find value here. In fact, after this, I’ll probably devote an entire blog entry to targeted Facebook social ads. Very cool stuff.
Facebook ads are the small ads that appear on the right hand side of a person’s profile pages (see sample, right). With the new Facebook design, users are now served up two ads on almost every page they visit (except their home/news-feed page). Those ads are served up based on carefully selected targeting options; often they’re so well targeted I love getting them because they’re entirely relevant to me! With Facebook social ads you get a tiny headline (25 characters), a tiny photo (110 x 80px), and a very small space for copy (~135 characters with spaces). These need to be written with the precision and skill of text search ads, but Facebook gives you all the metrics to see which ones are more effective so you can switch out the less effective ones (though it doesn’t do it automatically like Google does).
You can target by geographic region, gender, age, marital status, education level, sexual orientation, workplace and keyword. Most of these are self-explanatory; workplace and keyword are very interesting. While I’ve never targeted ads based on workplace, this has huge implications for HR professionals and B2B companies. Many large organizations have Facebook networks devoted to their employees; these are part of the targeting criteria. For instance, you could target employees of Intel, Microsoft, Google, Buzzlogic, or any number of other organizations – there are hundreds to choose from.
Keyword targeting, however, is where you can fine tune after you get past all that demographic info. You can target people by any keyword they may have put in their profile, be it a favourite band, movie, sport, religion, book, interest, activity or cause. Anything anyone may have included in their profile is game. Furthermore, you can also add social actions to your ads: You can choose to have your ad served up, whenever possible, with a photo of a friend who is a fan.
Example: My Grouse Mountain ad is getting served up to Bob and Bob is friends with Joe. Joe is a fan of Grouse Mountain’s Fan Page. Because of that, Bob gets that ad with Joe’s photo and a note saying “Joe is a fan of Grouse Mountain”. That makes it all that much more relevant because now when Bob sees it he thinks “hey, Joe is a fan, let me check it out…” See how that works?
You can buy Facebook Social Ads on a CPC or CPM basis and even my most targeted campaigns have worked out to roughly $0.30/CPM or around the same per click. You set your daily maximum and your time parameters and start the campaign. I could also get into the whole strategy aroud where your ads are linking, but I won’t. I’ll just say I think in most cases I think it’s better to send the ad clicks to your website rather than your Facebook page, group or whatever.
Finally, Facebook has a widget that’s easily added into any web page that allows a person to send the page to their profile as a posted item. I am going to start this section by saying I can’t find the share code on Facebook anymore… it seems they aren’t promoting this as an option any longer, however, it still works (probably because many have used it when it was promoted). They also, incidentally have a bookmark for this too. This code (pardon me if it’s messy – I’m not a coder), embedded in your page, will allow your customers to post the page to their profile:
And it will look and work like this:
HTML .fb_share_link {PADDING-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 20px; BACKGROUND: url(http://static.ak.facebook.com/images/share/facebook_share_icon.gif?57:26981) no-repeat left top; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0px; PADDING-TOP: 2px; HEIGHT: 16px}
Share on Facebook
Note: It can be a little trickier with a blog entry because the URL inside the code must be the exact code of the page you want to share, so presumably that’s the post permalink. You will need to either know exactly what that permalink is ahead of time to put it in there, or go back and edit it once the permalink is generated.
You can control the privacy level on just about every item of your profile – your contact info, your ‘about’ info, your employment info, education info, interests, photo albums, videos etc. based on who you want to see what. As a corporate person who has a private life, I highly recommend you consider who can see what. Any portion of your profile that you leave open to everyone, or your network, or friends of friends can, well, be seen by those groups of people. You can pick and choose who can see what and I highly recommend you take some time to get to understand these privacy settings. I can’t begin to explain them all here. If business networking is important to you, leave a limited profile available to everyone and use the messaging feature to communicate. You don’t have to be friends with someone to message them back and forth, but if you’re not friends it’s harder to keep track of them – there isn’t a non-friends contact list option. Once you’ve set up whatever you want public (either entirely public to the world or public to your network/geographic location), set the rest to ‘friends only’. Then, when someone tags you in a photo at the bar or doing something you’d rather your business contacts didn’t see, there’s no fear. You can choose to have some stuff available to ‘friends of friends’ in case you want old friends to find you – education info for instance. You can choose to put your home address and telephone number on your profile and make it visible only to your friends or even to selected people. Again, so many options here so go and have a solid look through the privacy section – you’ll find it at the top right of every page you see.
With that, I’ll leave you to digest the above info. If anyone has any additional feedback, ideas, comments, or just wants to tell me they think I’m plain wrong, feel free to leave a comment. Alternatively, if you’d like me to go into further depth with any of the above topics, let me know and I’ll do that too. I’d love to hear from others who are using Facebook as well; I’m one of the crazy fans who leaves it open all day so I can see what’s going on there. At the same time, please don’t be offended if I don’t accept your friend request. As I said, I use Facebook almost exclusively for personal relationships, so if you’d like to connect professionally, please follow me @seeking_balance on Twitter (I’ll more than likely follow you back), connect with me on LinkedIn, or find my friendfeed and connect with me that way.