Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Ford Social: The Automotive Idea that Needs to Take Off

Ford Social


Some ideas in social media work (for a little while) because they catch a break and resonate with the target audience even if the idea itself was a bad one. These types of concepts include Foursquare apps that try to stalk attractive women (lifespan: 1 week), video chatting sites that connect random people (chances of seeing a penis: 1 in 4 and rising), and anything that depended on the Twitter API to make it work.


Then, there are ideas that haven’t taken off yet but that are absolutely brilliant. Ford Social is one of those ideas. If there’s any industry that is made to be shared through social media, it’s automotive. Our cars are part of our personality, our circumstances, and our life events. They are, for many of us, an integral part of our daily lives. We often spend more time in them than with our families. We even spend some time surfing social media while in them (though we shouldn’t do that if we’re driving).


Social media and automotive were made for each other. It’s for this reason that it’s perplexing that Ford Social isn’t huge by now. Launched in 2010, this site does everything that a community should do. It’s design is crisp. It has stories, images, and videos, much of which comes from the users themselves. It’s hip in appearance and intuitive in its interface. The only thing it lacks is a ton of engagement. Some stories get no comments at all. Most fail to get double-digit retweets or Facebook shares.


This site should be killing it.


Perhaps it’s just a lack of promotions. A visit to Ford.com shows that the only mentions on the homepage are as part of a 10-link drop down menu and a link at the bottom – #34 our of 36.


It could be a problem with their SEO. An article from four days ago titled “2013 Fusion Race Car Makes its Debut this Weekend” should rank well for the term “2013 Fusion Race Car” but doesn’t appear until page 4 on the search, and even then it’s the Ford Social homepage that appears, not the article itself.


For a number of reasons, the site isn’t getting the traffic it needs to generate the social sharing that it should be getting. If more people went to the site, it would get those social signals. Unfortunately, they’re not.


I know I would personally love to help with the initiative. It needs more attention.









via Soshable | Social Media Blog http://soshable.com/ford-social-the-automotive-idea-that-needs-to-take-off/

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Turn Social Media into a Brand Ambassador Factory

Factory


It isn’t what you’re saying on social media that has the biggest effect on your business. It’s what others are saying about you that makes the true impact.


I’ve used those words in various forms since 2008. It’s become a cliche in my own mind because I have to say it so often; many businesses we talk to haven’t gained that understanding by the time we have our consultation even today in 2013. It’s not their fault. The social media marketing industry is challenged with laziness in many ways. Building brand ambassadors is hard work so many “gurus” prefer to stick with what they can do easily, namely posting random things and pushing for likes, retweets, +1s, repins, and other components of social media promotions that are useful but that aren’t as important as they lead their clients to believe.


There are three truths that need to be understood about social media marketing:



  • It’s a communication tool more than it’s a broadcasting tool.

  • Getting others to talk about your business in a positive manner is the most powerful thing that can happen to influence your business through social media.

  • It isn’t as hard as most think but it takes more effort than most are willing to allocate.


The easy road is to post interesting or entertaining images, text, video, or links. The more fulfilling road is to play outside of your own profiles, to make your social profiles a conduit rather than a hub, and to do the things that encourage the customers or clients who love your products, services, or ways of doing business to advocate for you online.


It’s about building ambassadors, and as inhumane as this may sound, you should be building a brand ambassador factory. Sounds creepy. Almost makes it seem like an allusion to Soylent Green. Thankfully, we don’t have to turn our customers into feed in order to make this work. We simply have to make them happy and give them the opportunities and prompting to tell the world that they love you.


The processes to do this differ from business to business. There are too many moving parts from one industry to another and from one store to another within the same industry to be able to post a roadmap or guide that would do justice to the topic, but over the next week I will be posting articles that give some general concepts to help you develop your own plan. The best way to stay on top of this (there will be much more written on this specific topic) and other social media marketing concepts is to subscribe to Soshable by Email.


More to come on this important topic very soon…









via Soshable | Social Media Blog http://soshable.com/turn-social-media-into-a-brand-ambassador-factory/

Friday, February 22, 2013

Your Facebook Page Insights are Inaccurate

Facebook Insights


If you run a Facebook page, you may or may not have noticed big changes in the numbers between August and December, 2012. For those who do not run many ads, the numbers were lower than expected. For those who run ads often, the numbers were likely higher than expected. This discrepancy led many to believe that Facebook was going to a “pay to play” model and despite reassurances by Facebook that this wasn’t true, the numbers told a different story.


Facebook discovered “a few weeks ago” that the insights reporting feature for pages was getting bad data. They were not counting views from the upgraded Android and iOS apps due to streamlining, while desktop views on sponsored posts were getting counted twice. They finally admitted to it today. The fix will be in place on Monday.


This is a minor bug that has caused major headaches to marketers. Those who are heavy on ads were seeing more impressions than they expected. If the results from these ads were poor, it’s hard to justify paying to present something to thousands of people if only a handful reacted. Conversely, those who use Facebook more organically or use the ads sparingly were made to believe that their efforts weren’t working. People adjusted strategies. Company owners and marketers complained. It was a mess.


While it looks like that (hopefully) going forward the right data will be displayed, it’s still a black eye for a company that is trying to position itself as a useful advertising platform. Google analytics have been around forever and haven’t seen the same level of bugs that Facebook insights have seen in a much shorter period. This is bad as Google Adwords budgets are the very dollars that Facebook is targeting. They want a chunk and they’re not doing a good job at proving that they’re worth it.


Perhaps most importantly, why are we finding out about this so late? If the data is inaccurate and being used by advertisers to measure success and failure, they should have divulged it the moment they discovered the problem. Instead, they kept it hidden until they fixed it. That’s not a good move for a public company that relies on user and advertiser trust.


What else is broken that we aren’t being told about yet?









via Soshable | Social Media Blog http://soshable.com/your-facebook-page-insights-are-inaccurate/

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Facebook’s 20 Percent Text Rule is Getting Harder to Avoid

20 Percent Text Rule


Facebook has been trying to crack down on text within images for some time. They made a big deal out of it when they first rolled out Timeline but it was still possible to get by without getting noticed. Today, it’s a lot harder.


While I’ve never been able to fully make sense of the rule, it’s their site so we have to play their game. The way the rule works is that text in an image cannot cover more than 20% of the total space or you won’t be able to run ads on it. You might be able to run it for a little while but they eventually catch it.


They continue to push the letter of the law further. If you have too much text in your cover photo, all of your ads get rejected automatically. They’ve now started including thumbnail images from links in the rule. The post above was rejected for this reason. The sad part is that there were other images on the page that I would have preferred to use, but Facebook didn’t register them as a thumbnail option.


Be aware of the rule if you’re running sponsored posts on Facebook. This isn’t the type of rule that you’d ever want to try to break. Even with a direct line to a high level Facebook employee, it still took a couple of days to get a client unblocked who had been breaking the rule before we took over the account. I couldn’t image how it is for those who have to try to plea with them if they didn’t have a connection.


It might not make much sense, but again I’ll stress – their site, their rules.









via Soshable | Social Media Blog http://soshable.com/facebooks-20-percent-text-rule-is-getting-harder-to-avoid/

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Give People a Reason to Follow Your Social Media While at the Store

Carnival Stuffed Animals


Social media icons and signs that say “Like us on Facebook” or “Follow us on Twitter” aren’t nearly as common in brick and mortar stores today as they were a couple of years ago. Many companies who tried to make it work (or are still trying) found that the presence of signs didn’t do much to improve their following.


Today, it can be different. Many people use their mobile devices to stay active on social media, much more than they did a couple of years ago, but even with this the old school follow/like signs still won’t work. They can, but not if you don’t give them a reason. Thankfully, this is one of the easiest and most efficient ways to increase your following. To do it, you have to make it worth their while.


One car dealership I’ve worked with has found strong success by using the concept in their service department. They’ve gone so far as to give three reasons for people to follow them on Facebook (they aren’t as hip on Twitter yet but I’m trying to get them interested). There’s a sign at the pay counter that says, “Get a 5% discount just for liking our Facebook page.”


In the “small print” under the offer, they write, “We post 4 or 5 times a week and we won’t annoy you with bad jokes or links to our blog. Instead, we post Facebook-only service specials and only the best of the best cars for sale from time to time.”


It works like a charm. Their numbers are constantly rising. Then, the take it a step further with the third incentive in even smaller print below the second line. “If you like us already and still want the 5% discount, just post that you’re here and that you ‘like getting my service done at [dealership name] because _______.”


Signage is the least used effective way to get fans, followers, engagement, and endorsements. These are people who are already doing business with you and if they like the way they’re treated, you should encourage them to let their friends know. It doesn’t have to be a discount. It does have to include a reason. I know one non-dealer that has stuffed animals, the small ones you see at the carnival, stacked on the wall with a sign that says, “Get your kid (or yourself) a stuffed elephant or moose by becoming our Facebook fan.”


Be creative. Be fun. Make a promise about how your social media profile brings value to your followers and then deliver on that promise by making your pages and profiles awesome.


People won’t like or follow you without a reason.









via Soshable | Social Media Blog http://soshable.com/give-people-a-reason-to-follow-your-on-social-media-while-at-the-store/

Monday, February 18, 2013

How to Delete a Retweet – cc @BurgerKing

Burger King Retweets


Burger King’s Twitter account was hacked today. Their profile picture was changed to the McDonald’s logo, their name was changed to “McDonalds”, and their description said that McDonald’s had purchased the hamburger giant due to the failure of the Whopper hamburger.


The company is back in control of their Twitter account now and they’ve deleted the Tweets by those who controlled their account during the hacking, but the retweets remain. I can only assume that they don’t realize that they can remove these or else they would have done so already.


To Burger King (and anyone else who wants to remove a retweet from their feed), there’s no delete button like there is on regular Tweets, but if you click on the “Retweeted” status in the Tweet itself, it will undo the retweet. That’s it.


How to Delete a Retweet


Good luck, BK, and make sure to use a better password.









via Soshable | Social Media Blog http://soshable.com/how-to-delete-a-retweet-cc-burgerking/

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Empire Avenue is the Most Important Social Media “Game” that You’re Not Playing

EmpireAvenue


I always get a little blown away any time I meet a social media “guru” or “specialist” who isn’t using Empire Avenue. Granted, I wasn’t impressed the first time I gave it a shot in 2011, but since rejoining the site in May of 2012 I’ve learned that it may be the most invaluable tool in the world of social media promotions.


The problem is that it’s a “game” and as a result, many social media people dismiss it. Who has time for fun and games when there’s Facebook posts to promote or blog posts to write? Once you get passed the gaming aspect of the service, you realize that it’s much deeper and more useful than that.


The community component of the service is strong. Yes, there are influencers like Chris Pirillo and Chris Voss on it, but it’s in the active user base of mid- to high-level social media experts that the real juice comes into play. The connections that are possible for active users (I won’t call them players because the game component of it is just too miniscule and almost a distraction) are of a higher quality than just about any site.


It isn’t just the community, though. There are plenty of places to meet influencers and people who work in social media. The tangible benefit is in the missions. Through missions, users are able to get assistance from high-quality social media users without having to coax or (gulp) buy engagement for clients.


Missions are actions that are paid for through Eaves, the currency on Empire Avenue. They have a wide range of possible uses from “read and comment on my blog post” to “retweet me”. Before you jump at me with an organic social media engagement tirade, keep in mind that the quality of the users fulfilling the missions is the highest possible. Yes, there are spammers on the site, but the bulk of the active users are great people with strong Klout scores and an abundance of active followers. These aren’t bots. The game is too hard for bots, making it a nice way to weed out the spammers.


That’s the key. It isn’t easy. You can’t just sign up for the site and get 30 people with high Klout scores to suddenly retweet you. It takes time. It takes activity. It takes playing the social stock market game component of the service and building up the currency to pay for the missions. This factor alone is enough to keep the spammers at bay.


Get on and get rolling immediately. Ford, Dell, Nokia – they all use the service. There’s an investment of time, but it’s worth it once you get to the point that you can start directing quality social engagements to help fulfill your goals through missions. There are easier methods, of course, but those normally end up giving you a lot of bulk numbers that bring nothing of value. On Empire Avenue, the value is in the people.









via Soshable | Social Media Blog http://soshable.com/empire-avenue-is-the-most-important-social-media-game-that-youre-not-playing/