Collision of Blogs, Tweets, & Social Networks

How can you get the most out of your CMS plus stay on top of the opportunities to engage prospects on social networks? Well one tool I really recommend — Hootsuite — is busily combining all the major social networks on one dashboard, plus blogging on WordPress.com.  This collision creates a mashup that points to where we’re headed in the next five years, I think.  If you’re still asking, “is social media a business tool,” you’re missing the train. And our CMS of choice, WordPress, has added even more great Content Management features in version 3.0, due out in a couple of wees, so we’ll take a look at those.

Social Media Tip: Now, use Google to find out what people are chatting about in your city. Go there and type in “location *portland” (substitute your city). On the left choose “Discussions”, then “past week.” Note that you can also choose “blogs.” You can also choose further search refinements at left.

Click here to see what I found.

A Social Suite to the Max

Hootsuite is taking the word “suite” seriously.  In the last few months they’ve added up and coming social network FourSquare, the ability to reach Fan Pages on Facebook (standard Facebook was already built in), LinkedIN, plus greatly extended the networks you can reach by adding Ping.FM, itself a network aggregator that reaches another 30 or so second tier media sites.  They’ve created an iPhone application.  They’ve beefed up team collaboration features — great for corporate MarCom departments.  Kudos to Hootsuite.

From one dashboard, I can now handle all the essential social media tasks — and automate a number of them.  In order to stay on top of all of this for our clients, I am attending “Hootsuite University” — several hours of training and testing on using Hootsuite, and best practices at the major social networks.

Above, you see the tool to add a Social Network in HootSuite, with Ping.fm showing.  TIP:  Ping.fm is a stealth tool that extends your reach greatly via 30 networks, mobile messaging, chat, and a growing number of 3rd party applications. It seems like a lot to come up on, but with our help you can set it all up once, automate 80% of the work, and greatly increase visibility for your strategic Marketing Communication.

WordPress 3.0 adds Great CMS Features

Here are some top new features to be thinking about using in the forthcoming update of WordPress to version 3.0:

• Control of Menus: Called “Menu Management” in WP 3.0, this new feature gives you a simple drag and drop interface to add links to categories, posts, external sites… plus package “custom menus” as sidebar widgets where your theme allows.  Wow — Kudos to the WordPress core team.  Note that WebFadds builds custom themes for CMS solutions with 13 widget-ready areas, and these menus could be available in any of them.
  Above – the new Menu Manager in WordPress 3.0 is powerful, but easy to use.
• Custom Post Types:  Right now you may only choose between a post and a page, but in WordPress 3.0, you can define your own post types and select attributes.  Think Directory.  For example, you could set-up a business directory, a set of photo galleries or portfolio pages, a set for case studies, etc.  Then you can assign special tags and categories just for this post type.  Then, modify your theme design so the user interface helps your visitors navigate through your new sections.
• Multiple Customized Blogs: We have been using customized categories to set up more than one blog for larger clients.  This works ok because each category has its own RSS feed in WordPress, and its index page may be styled uniquely.  But now, the WordPress team has combined “WordPress MU” (Multi-user), formerly a separate project and download, into the core WordPress program.  So, you may now host a collection of separate blogs, each with their own custom theme, from one hosting plan and WordPress administration area.  This should be great for universities, companies with satellite offices, news organizations — any group with the need for “departments” with their own identity.

Determine Your Facebook Page’s Value [APPS]

Social media management company Vitrue has released a free tool called the Social Page Evaluator, designed to help marketers get a better understanding of a Facebook Page’s value.

Just submit a Facebook Page URL and the app will come up with a valuation based on factors like number of fans, number of posts per day, number of interactions and so forth.

It’s a cool — if not completely scientific — way to gauge the potential value of your Facebook Page to advertisers. The formula used by the Social Page Evaluator is related to the formula that Vitrue released last month to estimate the relative value of Facebook Fans to big brands.

The tool is adjustable and interactive. For instance, the base rate of Earned Media Value (or CPM in more traditional terms) is $5, but this can be adjusted to a higher or lower value depending on the brand in question.

Likewise, there is a “Fan-tasize” section that lets you manipulate other features like number of posts per day, engagement level and Fan count to see how that affects the valuation.

You can also compare a Facebook Page with up to three other brands at a time and view a Page’s value history. In addition to the valuation data, there is also a list of best practices for getting the most out of your Facebook Page.

So how accurate is this tool? It’s difficult to determine, as it is based on a formula that, while derived from a study of large brands, is obviously not going to be applicable to all companies. Still, it’s a fun, easy way to get an idea of the factors that impact a Facebook Page valuation. It’s also a good stepping stone for marketers to start thinking about the potential advertising power of a Facebook Page.

How Twitter Can Boost Your Network Marketing Business

What can Twitter do for you ?

With all the social networking sites out there now, it’s easy to feel a bit jaded. Whether or not Twitter seems like another fad to you, I suggest that you take advantage of its features to give your business a boost.

Here’s how Twitter helps multi-level marketers:

1.  Market your products – Many online businesses use Twitter to showcase new products and services. Since you’re limited to 140 characters, you don’t need to hire a writer to talk about your product. Simply develop a catchy teaser that will encourage the reader to go to your website or contact details.

2.  Build a loyal customer base – Twitter opens you to whole new markets since there are groups for almost any interest and topic under the sun. Follow these conversations and share your expertise. Keep in mind that there will be “Twitterers” who are not active participants of any other social networking site or forum. Think of it as your new mailing list, only with out the hassles of sending out individual emails or licking stamps.

3.  Create ties with your upline – Since almost everyone is on Twitter, you can use your account to keep in touch with your upline contacts. This means getting feedback, asking advice and discovering great ideas at easily and immediately.

4.  Strengthen your downline. The application’s features allow you to send quick notes of encouragement and updates to your team wherever you or they are. Questions and ideas can be discussed online, whether you are at home or on the road. All you need to do is create a short post and the ball starts rolling.

The beauty of Twitter is that it’s free and easy to set up. Depending on how deeply involved you want to be, regular marketing on this site shouldn’t take more than an hour. Be sure to add a link to your Twitter page on your email signature, blog and contact page of other network sites of which you are a member.

HootSuite launches WordPress Integration

Chop your WordPress blogging time in half

A new year means new features! First up? They’ve  added support for WordPress blogs. As with Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, you can schedule and cross-post content to multiple WordPress accounts. There is also a Home Feed for blogs you are following, as well as the ability to reblog posts you think are noteworthy. WordPress is the first blog platform officially supported by HootSuite, and they are very excited about the addition of this brand new feature. Initial support is for blogs hosted on WordPress.com, but support for self-hosted WordPress blogs is on the horizon.

Trending Topics Demystified

Have you ever asked yourself, “Why is that topic trending?!” Well, they now offer explanations for why particular topics trend.  iPhone app users have already been enjoying this feature; now web users can check it out too. From now on, you can demystify the trending topics with the simple click of a button. (Move your cursor into the Search field to see the trending topics, and then hit the question mark.)

Link & Media Previews

They also have added the ability to preview URLs, so you can easily see what media is being shared. Preview your URLs, as well as most popular shortened URLs, including image-sharing sites like twitpic and ow.ly, YouTube videos, and more. The media preview feature has the added benefit of making your web surfing experience safer, by allowing you to see what you’re clicking on before you do so.

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Auto-load more tweets

By popular request, they have also eliminated the need to click “More” to view more tweets. HootSuite now automatically loads more tweets when you scroll down to the base of a column. This works for any column, from your DM inbox to your Facebook home feed.

Check out the apps and plug-in directory

Take HootSuite to the next level with value-packed applications and plug-ins. Options for iPhone, Firefox, Chrome, Prism, Fluid and more. http://hootsuite.com/apps

HootSuite continues to evolve as a social media dashboard, and they promise to continue innovating with exciting new features.

Facebook Groups: How to be Successful

Facebook is one of the most powerful social networking services currently available. Its interface and framework allow a person to spread news virally as quick as any social bookmarking service.  Facebook Groups, communities of friends with similar interests, are also becoming extremely popular. But, why create a Facebook Group??? Well, Organizations and bloggers should create Facebook Groups to further promote brand presence, share news/events with their community and stimulate relevant discussion all in one spot. A prime example of an organization leveraging Facebook Groups is Contiki  – through their group they share brochures, the trip/video of the week, contests, and polls to their 37,000+ members.

Tips to Grow a Successful Facebook Group:

• The Right Configuration: Make sure you select a title, category and description that is relevant to your brand because this will entice people to join your group. I also suggest that you be as transparent as possible and offer information such as contact information, website, phone number and location. This allows group members to associate the group to an actual person rather than any old computer generated content.

   

  To offer a real community appeal, enable the ability for anyone to post discussions, wall posts, pictures and videos. Initially you should make the group public which allows anyone to join and invite people to the group; remember you do have the ability to remove members if needed.

• Leverage existing Facebook Friends: It’s important to attract a strong base of members to your Facebook group, so invite existing friends that may find your group valuable and who could become evangelists for your group. This is where the viral part comes into play: your friends’ friends will notice that they joined a new group which will spark interest from them to check it out as well.
• Use your email contacts: Don’t forget about your friends outside of Facebook because Facebook Groups provides the ability to import and send group invitations to your contacts from Outlook, Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail.
• Press Releases/Blog Posts are other methods which you can use to invite new members to your Facebook Group. Personally, I created a call to action and placed it above the fold which reminds my readers to join my group.
• Keep the Content Fresh: Update your group’s Recent News, photos, videos, events and links regularly so that members have a reason to return. Another simple tactic is deploying a welcome message which greets new members and enforces the ‘human factor’ of the group.
• Create relationships with new members: If you have a group which is open to the general public then you will notice people who are not your ‘friends’ join your group. These are the types of people are there to get a feel for the quality of the group therefore make it a habit to personally address them.

Tracking Your Group’s Success

Here are some metrics and tactics you can use to measure the success of your Facebook Group:

• The number of members you have in your group.
• New members who join per day/week/month.
• Ratio of new members to people who left the group.
• Ratio of members who are your Facebook friends vs. not.
• Engagement: Activity on Wall Posts and Discussion Boards.
• Members who also accepted invitations to join your events.
• Links posted in your group back to your blog/website should have parameters appended to them so that they can be segmented in your analytics separately.

Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups: What’s the Difference?

Should I create a group or launch a Page?” It’s the eternal question that gets asked as often as, “What is Twitter?” Ever since Facebook launched their Pages product as part of their larger advertising strategy (along with the ill-fated Beacon) in November 2007, there has been confusion over which to use. Because Groups and Pages have an overlapping feature set, even senior social media marketing consultants are sometimes stumped as to what to tell their clients. And Facebook continues to make changes to how Pages function, complicating the matter even further.

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What is a Page on Facebook?

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In their own words, “Facebook created Pages when we noticed that people were trying to connect with brands and famous artists in ways that didn’t quite work on Facebook…Not only can you connect with your favorite artists and businesses, but now you also can show your friends what you care about and recommend by adding Pages to your personal profile.”

 

So, when you become a fan of a brand, a band, a movie, or a person, that information is posted on your wall, and your friends might see it too. You can see which Pages your friends are fans of via the “Info” tab on their profile.

To create a fan page, one simply has to go to facebook.com/pages/create.php and create a new page.

Of course, a single fan doesn’t make a fan page very valuable.

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Value of Fan Pages

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Facebook Pages can be thought of in much the same way as normal profiles on the site – brand or celebrity Pages have the ability to have friends, they can add pictures, and they have walls that fans can post on. Pages communicate by “updates” which show on the update tab or a person’s wall if they’re a fan and have allowed the page to show updates. Pages can have applications as well.

 

Pages have two walls, one of what the Page owner writes, and one just for fans to write their own messages. Like a normal Facebook profile, Pages have tabs that uncover more information.

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What’s a Group?

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Groups are a bit different than Pages. I administer an alumni group on Facebook. To create a group you go to facebook.com/groups/create.php and then fill in information about the type of group, and decide if it is open to a particular network (such as a University network) or all of Facebook. You can set join permissions on groups so that they are either open to anyone, closed (where users must get administrator approval to join) or secret (invite only). Groups have administrators that manage the group, approve applicants or invite others to join. Administrators can also appoint “officers” who are nominally in charge – however, being an officer doesn’t mean the person has the ability to administer the group.

Because of these privacy settings, Facebook’s groups are analogous to clubs in the offline world. Administrators can invite members to join via Facebook mail and email, and public groups can be found via Facebook search.

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Pages vs. Groups: How to know which to use

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There are a number of factors you need to consider when choosing which is right for your project, a Page or a group.

 

Personal vs. Corporate:

Due to their security features, and size limitations (only groups under 5,000 members can send email blasts), Facebook Groups are set up for more personal interaction. Groups are also directly connected to the people who administer them, meaning that activities that go on there could reflect on you personally. Pages, on the other hand, don’t list the names of administrators, and are thought of as a person, almost like a corporate entity is considered a ‘person’ under the law.

Facebook considers groups to be an extension of your personal actions. When you post something as a group administrator, it appears to be coming from you and is attached to your personal profile. Alternately, Pages can create content that comes from the Page itself, so that content doesn’t have to be linked to you personally.

Update: Also one key difference is that Pages are indexed by external search engines such as Google, just like a public profile while Groups are not.

Email vs. Updates:

As long as a group is under 5,000 members, group admins can send messages to the group members that will appear in their inboxes. Page admins can send updates to fans through the Page, and these updates will appear in the “Updates” section of fans’ inboxes. There is no limit on how many fans you may send an update to, or how many total fans a Page can have.

User Control:

Groups offer far more control over who gets to participate. Permissions settings make it possible for group admins to restrict access to a group, so that new members have to be approved. Access to a Page, however, can only be restricted by certain ages and locations. Again, this makes groups more like a private club.

Applications

Pages can host applications, so a Page can essentially be more personalized and show more content. Groups can’t do this.

Moderation

Neither Groups nor Pages have great moderation features. They can both be a little granular as to how things get posted, who can post, and what kind of media can be posted, but that’s about it.

If someone posts spam on your Group or your Page, you have to remove it manually, and you can also remove specific members.

Ability to create events

Both Groups and Pages allow you to create related Events, which show up under the users’ Request (and later in the upcoming events page on the sidebar of their dashboard if they’ve RSVPed). Neither have any added functionality beyond the generally available Facebook Events application.

Advertise

Ads can be purchased to promote either groups or Pages, but Pages can benefit from social ads that publicize the fan connection between a Page and a specific user.

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The bottom line

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Groups are great for organizing on a personal level and for smaller scale interaction around a cause. Pages are better for brands, businesses, bands, movies, or celebrities who want to interact with their fans or customers without having them connected to a personal account, and have a need to exceed Facebook’s 5,000 friend cap.

 

Update Twitter & Facebook Fan Pages Automatically via RSS

You’re cranking out some solid blog posts for your company. And you’ve just convinced the boss to let you set up a Twitter account and a Facebook fan page, too. But the boss is worried it’ll take up too much time, and she asks: “Can you automatically update Twitter and Facebook with our new blog posts?” Yes, you can. Here’s how to do it reliably and for free.

This method will allow you to link out of Facebook’s walled garden and get maximum traffic for your publishing efforts.

Step 1: Getting RSS Updates Automatically Posted to Twitter

Twitterfeed is a handy, free website & application that will “feed your blog to Twitter.”

1. Go to Twitterfeed. Sign up for an account. Verify and login.
2. Click “Create New Feed” button

3. Click “Connect your feed to your Twitter account” button. Enter your (company) username and password on Twitter’s site and click “Allow.”
4. Enter in a name for your blog’s feed, and enter the RSS feed URL.
5. Click on “Advanced Settings” and you can choose the hourly update frequency, URL shorteners, titles, suffixes, etc.

 

It might take a couple of hours to get working. Once going, it’s fairly reliable unless Twitter goes down or has API issues. Check the stream every few days to make sure all is well.

Step 2: Getting Twitter Updates (’tweets’) Automatically Posted to a FB Fan Page

Once you have your content automatically posted to Twitter, via Twitterfeed, you can then have it automatically piped to your Facebook fan page with a free (donation supported) application called “Selective Twitter Status.” Whenever you tweet with the hashtag #fb – (example: “666 Signs You’re NOT a Social Media Expert – http://bit.ly/poser #fb“) – Selective Twitter Status will selectively grab that tweet and post it onto your FB fan page. Here’s how to hook it up:

1. Go to “Selective Twitter Status” when you’re logged into FB.
2. Enter your (company) Twitter username and “allow” the pop-up permission to post updates.
3. Click on the “Your Fan Pages” tab and enter the (company) Twitter name next to the page you want updated. Click “save changes.”

4. Open up another browser tab and log back in to Twitterfeed.
5. On the main Feed Dashboard, click the oval “Edit Feed” button.
6. In the box marked “Post Suffix,” enter #fb.
   

   This tells Twitterfeed to put these characters at the end of each tweet, so that FB’s Selective Twitter Status will “selectively” post this new content to your FB fan page. This way you are free to chat with people and tweet random things, but only the actual blog posts marked with #fb will be rebroadcast on Facebook.

(Note #1: Facebook has a new built-in application that will allow you to update your Twitter feed from your FB page, which can be handy for some people. Check it out. But personally I don’t want to log into Facebook everyday and tinker around with the clunky interface and endless distractions – I want fully-automatic updates.)

(Note #2: Facebook has a popular, built-in application called “Notes” – that will easily import your blog content and/or pictures onto your fan page – and keep people stuck in Facebook’s walled garden. But as a marketer, I want to drive people out of Facebook and onto my clients’ pages – and I want to post external links.)

What If I Don’t Want the #FB Tag to Show Up On My Tweets?

The Selective Twitter Status app requires that you put the tag #FB on all tweets you want to show up on your Facebook Fan Page. This can look a little ugly, and it can slightly discourage people from sharing or retweeting the content. Here’s how I get around having a visible #FB tag on all my blog post tweets:

1. Make two Twitter accounts. Have your “main” one with the preferred username and nice background, and a secondary “dummy” account with a random username. (The purpose of the “dummy” account is just to update Facebook – it doesn’t matter who follows it.)
2. Make two Twitterfeed accounts. Have the first Twitterfeed account update your main account, and under “advanced settings” make sure it does not add any prefixes to the tweets for a nice, clean look. Have the second Twitterfeed account pipe your RSS feed to the “dummy” Twitter account and make sure the “#fb” prefix is added to every tweet.
3. Go into Facebook, click the “Application” option in the extreme bottom left bar of the screen – and find Selective Twitter Status or just click this link.
4. Set up the Selective Twitter Status application so that the dummy account, with all of the posts marked #fb by Twitterfeed, gets piped into the fan page of your choice.

Hooray! Now you’re pimpin’ the power of Web 2.0 – and you have one Twitterfeed account feeding beautiful links to your main Twitter account, and a secondary Twitterfeed account feeding #fb-tagged RSS updates to your dummy Twitter account… which all gets imported straight to your Facebook fan page – free of tags and noise!

If this sounds a little complex, it is, but for me it works well. I get an RSS feed turned into clean, clickable links that are broadcast out on Twitter and FB automagically. If you have a monthly budget, you might want to investigate Involver – which claims to offer premium features for FB page fan management

Ten Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know

I have read how many are concerned about their account being hacked, how a friend tagged them in the photo and they want a way to avoid it, as well as a number of other complications related to their privacy on Facebook.  One individual contacted me to let me know that they would be removing me as a friend from Facebook because they wanted to make a shift away from my Facebook use – going to just mostly family stuff.

Perhaps they were tired of receiving my status updates or perhaps they didn’t want me to view photos from there personal life. Whatever the reason for ending our Facebook friendship, I figured that many people would benefit from a thorough overview on how to protect your privacy on Facebook. Below is a step by step process for protecting your privacy.

1. Use Your Friend Lists

I can’t tell you how many people are not aware of their friend lists. For those not aware of what friend lists are, Facebook describes them as a feature which allows “you to create private groupings of friends based on your personal preferences. For example, you can create a Friend List for your friends that meet for weekly book club meetings. You can create Friend Lists for all of your organizational needs, allowing you to quickly view friends by type and send messages to your lists.”

There are a few very important things to remember about friend lists:

• You can add each friend to more than one friend group
• Friend groups should be used like “tags” as used elsewhere around the web
• Friend Lists can have specific privacy policies applied to them

I’ll touch on each of the things listed above in more detail later. A typical setup for groups would be “Friends”, “Family”, and “Professional”. These three groups can then be used to apply different privacy policies. For example, you may want your friends to see photos from the party you were at last night, but you don’t want your family or professional contacts to see those photos.

Using friend lists is also extremely useful for organizing your friends if you have a lot of them. For instance I have about 20 friend lists and I categorize people by city (New York, San Francisco, D.C., Tel Aviv, etc), where I met them (conferences, past co-workers, through this blog), and my relationship with them (professional, family, social, etc).

You can configure your friend lists by visiting the friends area of your Facebook.

2. Remove Yourself From Facebook Search Results

My friend is a teacher and one of the first things she asked me when she joined Facebook is how she could make sure her students couldn’t see that she was on the site. Understandably my friend doesn’t want her middle school students to know what she’s up to in her personal life. There are numerous reasons that individuals don’t want their information to show up in search results on Facebook, and it’s simple to turn off your public visibility.

How to Remove Yourself From Facebook Search Results
Now that you’ve decided that you would like to remove yourself from Facebook’s search results, here’s how to do it:

1. Visit your search privacy settings page
2. Under “Search Visibility” select “Only Friends” (Remember, doing so will remove you from Facebook search results, so make sure you want to be removed totally. Otherwise, you can select another group, such as “My Networks and Friends” which I believe is the default.)
3. Click “Save Changes”

By default, Facebook makes your presence visible to the network you are in. Frequently, people aren’t aware of their visibility, so this is one of the first settings that users wish to modify. By selecting “Customize” from the search visibility drop down you can make your settings even more granular.

3. Remove Yourself From Google

Facebook gets A TON of traffic from displaying user profiles in search engines. Not all of your profile is displayed though. Currently the information displayed in the search profile is limited to: your profile picture, a list of your friends, a link to add you as a friend, a link to send you a message, and a list of up to approximately 20 fan pages that you are a member of.

For some people, being displayed in the search engines is a great way to let people get in contact with you, especially if you don’t have an existing website. Facebook also tends to rank high in the search results, so if you want to be easy to find, making your search profile can be a great idea. Many people don’t want any of their information to be public though.

By visiting the same search privacy settings page listed in the previous step, you can control the visibility of your public search listing which is visible to Google and other search engines. You can turn off your public search listing by simply unchecking the box next to the phrase “Create a public search listing for me and submit it for search engine indexing” as pictured in the image below.

4. Avoid the Infamous Photo/Video Tag Mistake

This is the classic Facebook problem. You let loose for a few hours one night (or day) and photos (or videos) of the moment are suddenly posted for all to view, not just your close friends who shared the moment with you. The result can be devastating. Some have been fired from work after incriminating photos/videos were posted for the boss to see. For others, randomly tagged photos/videos have ended relationships.

At the least, a tagged photo/video can result in personal embarrassment. So how do you prevent the infamous tagged photo or video from showing up in all of your friends news feeds? It’s pretty simple. First visit your profile privacy page and modify the setting next to “Photos Tagged of You”. Select the option which says “Customize…” and a box like the one pictured below will pop up.

Select the option “Only Me” and then “None of My Networks” if you would like to keep all tagged photos private. If you’d like to make tagged photos visible to certain users you can choose to add them in the box under the “Some Friends” option. In the box that displays after you select “Some Friends” you can type either individual friends or friend lists.

5. Protect Your Albums

Just because you’ve uploaded photos doesn’t mean that you’ve accurately tagged every photo correctly. This setting is more of a reminder than anything else. Frequently people will turn of their tagged photo visibility to certain friend lists yet keep their photo albums public to the world. If you are trying to make all your photos invisible you must do so on an album by album basis.

There is a specific Photos Privacy page from which you can manually configure the visibility of each album (as pictured below). This is an extremely useful configuration option and I highly recommend that you take advantage of it. This way you can store your photos indefinitely on Facebook yet ensure that the only people that can view your photos are the ones who you really want to see them.

 

6. Prevent Stories From Showing Up in Your Friends’ News Feeds

Oh, did you really just break up with your girlfriend? I’m sorry to hear that. I’m sure all of your friends and business contacts are also sorry to hear that. I can’t tell you how many awkward relationship status changes I’ve seen. The most regular one I’ve seen recently is when an attractive female ends their relationship and numerous guys hop on the opportunity to console her.

I’ve also seen the end of marriages, as well as weekly relationship status changes as individuals try to determine where their relationship stands with their significant other. My personal policy is to not display a relationship status, but many like to make a public statement out of their relationship. For those individuals, it can be a smart move to hedge against future disasters.

There are a number of ways to control how your relationship status is displayed. The first thing that most people should do is uncheck the box next to “Remove Relationship Status” in the News Feed and Wall Privacy page. In the rare instance that a relationship does uncomfortably end, you can avoid making things more uncomfortable by avoiding a friend notification about it.

Second, your relationship status falls within your “Basic Information” section of your profile. You can control who can see your basic information next to the “Basic Information” setting on the Profile Privacy page. Keep in mind that other relevant profile information like your gender, birth date, networks, and other settings are visible within your basic information section.

Making your basic information completely invisible to friends probably isn’t a good idea, but removing the news feed stories about relationship changes most likely is.

7. Protect Against Published Application Stories

This one is a little more tricky to manage but I’ll explain the issue at hand. Frequently when you add an application, a news feed item is immediately published to your profile. One way to get instantly embarrassed is to visit the “Have Sex!” application (found here). This application has no purpose besides telling your friends that you are interested in having sex with them. Without taking any action, the application will post a news feed story to your profile which says the equivalent of “Nick just published to the world that he is having sex!”

This is surely something that none of your professional contacts if any of your contacts are interested in seeing (honestly I’m a bit confused about that application, but that’s a different story). That’s why it’s important to monitor what takes place after you install an application on Facebook. Once you install an application you should visit your profile to ensure that no embarrassing notification has been posted to your profile.

More often then not, nothing will be posted but there are many applications on the platform unfortunately that publish stories without you knowing it. There are two ways to avoid having this happen: don’t visit applications or scan your profile every time that you do. Ultimately you shouldn’t be concerned about applications that you’ve built a trusted relationship with but any new applications could potentially post embarrassing notifications.

8. Make Your Contact Information Private

Many use Facebook for professional and personal use and it can frequently become overwhelming. That’s why I’ve taken the time to outline these ten privacy protection steps. One of the first things I did when I started approving friend requests from people that I hadn’t built a strong relationship with, was make my contact information visible only to close contacts.

The contact information is my personal email and phone number. It’s a simple thing to set but many people forget to do it. Frequently people we don’t know end up contacting us and we have no idea how they got our contact information. Your contact privacy can be edited right from your profile. If you have chosen to enter this information, you should see a “Contact Information” area under the “Info” tab in your profile.

If it displays, you simply click “Edit” and then a screen like the one pictured below will show up.

For each contact item that you have in your profile you should set custom privacy settings (as pictured below) so that contacts that you aren’t close to don’t have access to your phone number and/or email. It’s a small change but it can save you the hassle of being pestered by people you don’t know well. Also, protecting your privacy is generally a good practice to get in the habit of doing.

As a side note, this is a great area to take advantage of friend lists. By getting in the habit of grouping your friends, you can ensure that you are navigating Facebook safely through privacy settings that are attached to your friend lists.

9. Avoid Embarrassing Wall Posts

Just because you use Facebook for business doesn’t mean your friends do. That’s why once in a while a friend of yours will come post something embarrassing or not necessarily “work friendly” and it can end up having adverse effects. That’s why Facebook has provided you with the ability to customize your wall postings visibility. You can also control which friends can post on your wall. There are two places you can control these things.

Adjust Wall Posting Visibility

Within your profile page you can control who can view wall postings made by your friends. To do so, click on the “Settings” icon on the wall in your profile page. Next, find the box pictured in the image above and adjust the setting which says “Who can see posts made by friends?” I’d suggest using a strategy similar to the one outlined in the previous step regarding contact information.

Control Who Can Post to Your Wall
In addition to controlling who can view wall postings published by your friends, you also want to control which friends can post on your wall. Not everybody needs to do this, but occasionally you simply want to prevent some people from posting on your page. If you visit the Profile Privacy settings page, there is a section labeled “Wall Posts”.

From this area you can completely disable your friends’ ability to post on your wall. You can also select specific friend lists that can post on your wall. Personally, I don’t really care who can post on my wall but I can understand the need to control who can see those wall postings. If you want to limit who can post wall posts on your profile, this is where you can do it.

10. Keep Your Friendships Private

While it’s fun to show off that you have hundreds or thousands of friends on Facebook, some of your friends don’t want to live public lives. That’s why it’s often a good policy to turn off your friends’ visibility to others. I’ve had a number of individuals visit my profile and then selectively pick off friends that are relevant to them for marketing purposes, or other reasons.

Whatever the reason they are doing it, just know that they are … it’s part of what makes Facebook so addictive: the voyeuristic nature. Also, your friends are frequently visible to the public through search engines and exposing this information can ultimately present a security risk. To modify the visibility of your friends, visit the Profile Privacy page.

Navigate down to the setting which says “Friends” and then modify the setting to whatever is right for you.

Conclusion

These are just ten ways that you can protect your privacy on Facebook. While there are a few other small things to keep in mind, these ten settings are most important. Keep in mind that while you may have turned off the visibility of many profile sections, there is no way to prevent all photos or videos from being visible if friends of yours make the images visible.

The best way to prevent embarrassing items from showing up on Facebook in the future is to not make bad judgements in your personal life. We’re all human though and being completely paranoid about every choice you make is probably not the best way to live your life. Be aware of what privacy settings are available and be conscious of what your friends may be publishing about you.

While you may not want to configure all of the privacy settings outlined, simply knowing how to do so is a great step in the right direction. By following the 10 settings listed above you are well on your way to an embarrassment free future on Facebook!

Social Media used by Restaurants

Various trades and industries are using social media for marketing, creating brand awareness, reputation monitoring  and consumer engagement. The restaurant industry is no different. By definition restaurants are very social offline, but what about online?  This got me thinking about how restaurants can utilize social media platforms for marketing, brand monitoring and beyond.

Chances are that if you are a restaurant, especially a well known, recognized one, people are talking about you online. Make no mistake that there is chatter happening. The question is what type of chatter is it? Good, bad or in between, and how do you plan on dealing with it?

Note: Although this post is about how restaurants can use social media, the tactics and strategies I outline can be used for any industry.

Look and listen first: who is talking about you and what is being said?

Talk is happening everywhere, forums, blogs, comments, review sites, Twitter and so forth. Starting with the basics, Google Alerts should be setup to track any keyword/brand mentions.

The next step is monitoring Twitter. Twitter is the real time watering hole for all types of chatter. It is often the first place that a rant or rave will be mentioned, and from there it can quickly go viral in no time. Once something starts to spread on Twitter, it’s often hard to do the right damage control. It’s imperative that Twitter is monitored heavily and should be priority number one for brand monitoring.

Automation is key, let the tools do the work.  Set it and forget it.

Search Twitter for your brand’s relevant keywords and set up RSS feeds to track them in Google Reader. You should also utilize Tweet Beep, a free service that will automatically email you hourly updates when a specific keyword or URL is mentioned on Twitter. This is a tool I heavily rely on for brand monitoring, it works extremely well and allows me to bypass going to Twitter’s website to search.

Conversations are everywhere, that’s where BackType fits into the mix. BackType is a free service that indexes  millions of conversations from blogs, social networks and other social media platforms. You can search the BackType website or set up email alerts, it’s not real time but it’s close enough.

These are at the very least the minimum  amount of tools you should be using. There are plenty of other tools out there, but they all pretty much do the same thing.

Additional platforms and services to be monitoring:

The services I mentioned above cover most of the social media landscape, but not everything. It’s also a good idea from time to time to scan the services mentioned below. The last three on the list monitor pretty much the same social media platforms. They are popular, their user interfaces are different, and they are definitely worth a  notable mention.

• Search engines,  the main one being Google
• Google Blog Search
• Technorati advanced search
• WordPress.com search
• Micro-blogging applications such as Posterous & Tumblr search
• FriendFeed advanced search
• Delicious search
• SocialMention.com
• Social Media Firehose (Yahoo Pipes)
• Spy.appspot.com

Now that you have  looked and listened, it’s time to learn:

So what about all this Twitter chatter?

People who are talking about you on Twitter or any social media network are mainly two things, existing customers or potential customers. Follow back everyone who talks about your brand in a positive manner. After all, these are brand evangelists, it’s word of mouth marketing, and it’s not costing you a dime. Reciprocation shows that you as a brand have taken interest in your customer. Be responsive to this and when applicable engage them in a conversation, or at the very least send them a quick thank you note. You should also identify and develop relationships with  your loyal brand endorsers because these people are essentially an extension of your online marketing dept.  In addition to engaging these people, reward them with a gift card to your restaurant. Tokens of appreciation go far and are always remembered. If you think they are talking now, just wait until that gift card arrives in the mail. The positive stuff is pretty much a no brainer, but always remember  social media is all about the conversations, unfiltered at that. Responding to negative chatter is equally important as well, use these social media tools wisely to handle crisis situations, and avoid a PR nightmare. In the online environment, word spreads at an alarming high frequency, and once it does,  there will be very little that you can do no matter how much you try to correct the situation.

Twitter for the most part is a customer service tool as I outlined in the previous paragraph, but it can also be used for marketing.

• Announce the new menu or drink specials of the day
• Promote a happy-hour event or special restaurant event
• Start a promotion called Twitter Tuesday (or tweet ups)
• Solicit ideas for new menu items or specials of the day on Twitter.
• Offer a special prize for people who follow you on Twitter by a specific time and date, to be entered to win a free bottle of wine or gift certificate.

Brand your restaurant’s menu and marketing material with your Twitter account url. Take it a step further and have your Twitter url printed on customer receipts.  If you are a QSR (Quick service restaurant) brand your social profiles at your POP (Point of Purchase).

Start a company blog:

A blog can be used for the same things as Twitter, only in much greater detail. Twitter has limitations where as a blog has none. Pictures and videos are just two examples. Use your restaurant blog to showcase customer testimonials, pictures from a specific event, menu items, food & drink recipes, employee bios and over all anything and everything that relates to your restaurant.  The possibilities are endless on what you can use your blog for. A suggestion I give to clients in the industry is to start a weekly “Ask the expert” series on your blog.  If my restaurant was a Sushi restaurant, I would encourage my customers to ask a Sushi related question and let our star Sushi chef answer them on the blog. The other purpose of a company blog is to generate new content, content that will get indexed in search engines and give potential new customers a way to find you on the web. Every blog post is a gateway into your website, so be sure to optimize your content with the correct keyword branding, post titles, tags and so on. Encourage your patrons to subscribe to your RSS feed and to share your blog’s content. Install ShareThis so that your patrons have an easy way of distributing your blog content.

Reviews, Reviews, Reviews!

Chances are your restaurant is already on review sites like Urbanspoon and Yelp. If it’s not, be sure to encourage your customers to post a fair review. Ask your brand endorsers on Twitter to leave a review, as well as customers in your restaurant. Remember nowadays everyone is a food critic. These online review sites are a big source of customer information and they are global reaching. There will be negative reviews, not everyone can be pleased, no matter the caliber of service you provide. If there is a negative review left, try to reach out to that customer and correct the situation if possible. The goal with a negative review or reviews is to get them buried on page 10. The only thing you can do for this is to provide good service atmosphere and food in the hopes of getting good reviews in front of it. Your brand endorsers will always leave a great review, encourage all of them to visit these sites and post a review as often as possible.

Food is visual, visual, visual!

Your restaurant should have a YouTube channel and photo sharing channel, ideally on a site like Flickr. These social media platforms have two important things, search, and passionate communities. You can use video to showcase restaurant events, provide a visual of your existing menu or new menu items.  Do a biweekly show on some of the menu items you serve in the restaurant. Showcase your kitchen talent and break open the kitchen doors.  The possibilities are endless, use your imagination. These videos can be embedded on your blog and shared throughout the social media landscape.  The same goes for photos. Take pictures of your guests, let them share their experiences with images on your blog. Take pictures of your menu items, signature drinks, kitchen staff, and everything that represents your restaurant.

Embrace and prepare for mobile, it’s here and it’s not going anywhere:

With the advent of the iPhone and the  mobile digital revolution, it’s essential that you pay attention to this. Starting with your website, make sure its optimized for mobile devices. We talked about review sites earlier, well guess what, they have iPhone applications, and they are very popular at that. That’s why it’s essential that your restaurant be on these sites.  The bigger picture depending on the type of restaurant you operate would be to develop an iPhone application, one where people can easily view your menu options, contact information, and more specifically to place orders. Just look at  how much success Pizza Hut is having with their newly released iPhone application, with over 100,000 downloads in the first month. The bottom line is embrace mobile every which way possible.

Get as much data as possible from your customers:

Online this mainly refers to email addresses. Your website should be collecting people’s email addresses. Encourage your existing customers and potential customers to sign up to be notified about any upcoming events at the restaurant. Send out a monthly newsletter informing customers about what’s happening at the restaurant, new menu items, special events, new store openings and so forth. Reward people for subscribing to the newsletter with a gift card or free glass of wine when they come in. Include quality information in your newsletter such as the recipe ingredients of an upcoming or existing menu item, maybe accompany that with a link to an  online video or photographs of the dish. I have only touched upon the surface here, but I’m sure you get the picture by now.

Restaurants have an advantage over a lot of other industries that use social media. Why you may ask? Social media is about story telling and visuals. Food is very visual, both physically and emotionally. Food evokes conversations, experiences, memories, and stories that people share. This is what social media is all about.

Some Brands Have Good Ideas For Social Media. Do You?

Not all big brands are using social media tools to the potential they could be. For this reason, it really sticks out when they do. There are plenty of small businesses you can learn a lot about ways to use social media from, but it is the big brands that have the truly wide reach. These are the ones that are easier to find, just because they’re brands that you know.

Take Pizza Hut for example. The company seems to appear in the social media news circles fairly often. One time it was for posting a job opening for a Twittering position.  Another time it was for using Twitter as a tool to drive its efforts to help feed the hungry.

Look at Ford.  They utilize all kinds of different social media channels. They go where the people are, and they interact with them in different ways. They keep it at a human level. They look for trends and try to determine what people want. They use Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Scribd, Delicious, etc.

Mattel is the latest big brand to make headlines with social media efforts. The company just announced a new e-commerce site with social shopping features.

You probably interact in some capacity with big brands on a daily basis, whether that is something as simple as getting a Coke out of the vending machine or running around the neighborhood in your Nikes. Find products you use. Find products you like and are interested in. Then see how they are using social media (if they are). This way you are placing yourself directly in the role of the customer, and you can evaluate exactly what you are getting out of their social media experience.

Since you can look at this from the customer’s perspective, you can use that to determine strategies that you feel work, and those that you feel don’t. It’s not a bad way to find concepts you can apply to your own business or at least some that you can test.