Eureka. I might have finally “gotten” it. I may now understand why people think its OK to buy Facebook fans. These same people have been buying direct mail and email lists throughout their marketing career and they equate buying Facebook fans to buying email lists.

I thought we were “done” with the organic relationship vs. the purchased relationship. But I guess not. If I may tell you a story: about a month ago, I received an email encouraging me to sign up for Private Jet partnership. You know, those gigs where you basically timeshare a private jet. Now, what’s wrong with this picture? First of all, the email is a pathetic attempt. At first, I thought it might be a slick email scam akin to sending someone in Africa $1,000 on the promise that I will get $10,000 back. The email isn’t personalized, and whoever wrote it didn’t even TRY to make it look or sound professional. There’s absolutely NO “benefit” “promise” and even the call to action is weak. I mean, its so disappointing, you’d think that a high-dollar pitch like this could be a little more craftier.  After fits of laughter, I erased the email, but I didn’t opt-out. I just wanted to see if it was a fluke. Guess what – it wasn’t! Jets.com STILL wants me to come fly with them. I WOULD like to fly with them, but I left my American Express Black Card in a previous life. So I finally opted out.

But here’s the thing: When I DO start buying time on private jets, it won’t be with these guys. I’m not impressed with the way they run their marketing program, and I fear that it may trickle over to the maintainence department. So, by buying this list of unqualified email addresses, they’ve actually lost what they considered a lead and done damage to their brand, and they don’t even know it.

Buying Facebook fans is like that, only worse. Because at least when you buy a random email list, you KNOW you don’t know those people. On Facebook, you can kid yourself into think these people are genuinely interested in your product.

So let me say this: If you are a social media “expert” promising thousands of Facebook fans in weeks, then STOP IT. Just stop it. You’re damaging YOUR reputation, your CLIENT’S reputation and the reputation of reputable social media professionals. Misleading your client into thinking that these thousands of people are “leads” is just..icky. Smarmy. These “Fans” are no more potential clients of theirs than I am of Jets.com

If you’re a business who is knowingly buying Facebook fans, then you’re misleading yourself into believing that a fan=sale. Fans who are organic, who truly appreciate your product and service can equal more sales. High numbers of random  Facebook “fans”  who don’t know your business is a tactic about as effective as dropping a marketing piece out a hot air balloon. If you advertise on Facebook to get more fans, then be prepared for higher fan numbers and low engagement especially if there isn’t a strong brand and content strategy. If advertising brings them to your Facebook business page, its up to you to turn then into advocates, and that’s a tough challenge. Not impossible, just not as easy as you likely think.

But here’s what makes buying Facebook fans worse than buying an email list. Social media is about genuine connections, not sales pitches. When you see those stats about how valuable a Facebook fan is, or how much more they spend, notice that the real value is customer engagement. Engagement happens through conversations, not sales pitches. Period. End of story.

So if you’re building a Facebook Page or starting to put some thought into finally giving your Facebook page life, please remember that buying fans is a waste of money and probably a threat to your brand. Organic relationships have value, even when there are fewer of them.  There are no short cuts to organic relationships. So save your money and your reputation and go organic.

What do you think? Are buying Facebook fans worse?

Like all Twitter users, I originally used Twitter.com for managing my account. Quickly realizing that there had to be a better way I started playing with Twitter aggregation and organizers. Originally, I was passionate about Tweetdeck, which I still think is a pretty great tool, it just ins’t the one I use now.

Hootsuite History

Really, when you think about it, its amazing I changed at all. At first I was reluctant to have a web-based platform (as opposed to a software platform), this is largly a matter of personal preference and has more to do with how I organize my time than anything else. But the person who introduced me to Hootsuite continued to prod and encourage me.

At this point (Summer 2009), Hootsuite was really pretty rudimentary, you could have multiple streams for search terms and you could create lists (which Twitter later allowed you to do) and manage multiple accounts from one location.  I liked the way it was organized and grew to appreciate the web-based model.

Hootsuite was still in full-swinging freemium mode at this point; it was like the ’60′s: free love, lots of features being added, without consequences. Features  like integration with GoogleAnalytics, ability to post to other social networks such as Facebook Pages and LinkedIn quickly became a requirement. It seemed that Hootsuite was really moving after the social media professional. They kept adding features like the ability to have team members on your multiple accounts.I also like that their Iphone App (also available on Droid+BB) also lets me manage my multiple accounts on the go.

Understandably, last fall, Hootsuite went to a paid model. At this point, it became like an engagement. I thought I’d stay with the pay model, after all, I could still change my mind at any time.

I haven’t regretted it all. If Hootsuite continues to invest in its offerings, I see no reason to use anyone else.

Here’s what the paid model offers that makes me love it and keep paying for it:

Facebook Page + Google Analytics Integration:

GA-Tweet Integration Page

The good: Seeing the overlay of tweets with these two analytic pieces is priceless. Yes, GA is free. Yes, Facebook Insights are free. But it’s the overlay that I find valuable. I like being able to see my results fairly quickly. I use other tools to gauge the best time to send tweets to my audience, but that’s a moving target. This gives me the best insight into how my tweets and Facebook page postings effect my website’s traffic.  Data and graphs can be printed…but…

The bad: I still wish they had of exporting this data. Without the ability to export the combined information, it remains largely qualitative and hard to track trends. Sure, its rewarding and exciting to see, but it really doesn’t allow me to play with the data the way I would like. Also, to track your clicks in Hootsuite, you must use the “owly” shortener.  This isn’t a huge deal within Hootesuite, but if you want to track clicks with say your shares from your blog page there is no way to do that right now. Perhaps that will be a feature in the future?

Teams:

Raising a social media account usually takes a village. Well, OK, maybe “village” is a bit strong, but having more than one person on an account is practical and advisable, especially when you are integrating multiple departments and stakeholders.

The good: Like Co-Tweet, you can create assignments for team members, this might include assigning a particular person to respond to a tweet, or just creating an assignment to tweet about a topic. Very helpful in staying organized. As a manager of several accounts, having the ability to communicate with my clients in this way is important. I find this feature to be very intuitive as well; easier than Co-Tweet in my opinion.  Along these lines, there is also the ability to email a tweet to someone; this is handy for private link sharing or calling attention to a tweet that you may or may not need to respond to.  Its a much better option than DM (Direct Message) which has basically become a spam-for-all.

The bad: While Hootsuite itself is very affordable, the cost of adding users is really comparatively expensive ($15/user/month) and this scales up. In otherwords, if you are an agency with multiple team members, you’re 6-10 team members cost you $30/month/user. This is hardly a huge expense for a business, but is the most costly element of using Hootsuite.

Influencial Identification

The good: Hootsuite not only makes Klout score easy to see in a user’s profile, but it also lists your most recent influencial community members and helps you target who is engaging with you and how frequently. This information can also be exported, which is great when you are trying to build engagement.

The bad: The list of influencers mentioning you is ongoing and can’t be drilled down by date. This makes it a little harder to see the effects of a particular campaign. Although if you are tracking this data regularly and you have a baseline, then you will be able to glean the information with just a little spreadsheet love.

Hootsuite Streams+Tabs

Streams:

The good: Hootsuite allows up to 10 streams a tab, while I find this limitation irritating, the truth is that the human brain probably can’t process even that many streams and I know most screens can’t. There are many things you can do with the streams including keyword tracking and sentiment. You can create streams for Twitter lists too. The stream options are endless, making the 10 stream/tab limitation maddening.

The bad: Twitter lists through Hootsuite are not the easiest to manage. If you don’t have a stream for your list, you can’t add them to the list from Hootsuite. Also, did I mention that 10 stream/tab limitation? Did I? Huh?

Overall, Hootsuite remains my tool of choice. I find it intuitive, manageable and practical.  If you think you’d like to try out the Pro Version of Hootsuite, please consider using my affiliate link: http://hootsuite.com/p_1045 it doesn’t cost you more and I appreciate your support. I chose to become an affiliate because its a tool that I genuinely stand behind. I think you’ll appreciate it as well. If you don’t, its a month-month, you can cancel.

I’d love to hear from Hootsuite users and nonusers about what dashboard tool you use and why?

So! You got yourself a Facebook page – great start!

When was the last time you tried to find your business’s Facebook page? Employing some best practices will make it easier for your potential fans to find you..JUST when they need you.

1) Info Box on Left Handside of the Page: There is a lot of opportunity in that little box. In this space, use keywords. Yes, its important to send a customer or brand-centric message here, but without keywords, your page will be harder to find. Be brief. Be smart. Be FOUND.

2) Vanity URL: Once you reach 25 fans, you can create a semi-custom URL/web address. This makes it easier for you to share, your fans to remember and potential fans to find you.

3) Utilize your blog or WordPress site to create dynamic content easily: With RSS feeds and the interactivity of WordPress blogs, you can update your fans with regular, engaging content (which inevitably include keywords). Imagine, photos updated regularly, or have your blog comments appear on custom tab! Even reviews from customers can appear on your Facebook page! The possibilities are endless.

4) Change your landing page from your “Wall”: By default, both fans and potential fans will arrive on your Wall – the space where you and your fans interact – UNLESS you change the default.  The Wall is intimidating and unwelcoming if your a new fan – let your fans warm up to you and start coming to your wall based on postings or activity of interest, rather than hitting them with it right away.  Custom Landing Pages are the way to go here, but even without a custom landing page, if you have added a custom tab for photos, video or any other interactive feature, make that your landing page. Even a Discussions Page is better, if its an active, welcoming place. Remember – the goal of Facebook is interaction, so you’ll also see that fans can post photos, videos and links. As a company, you may be reluctant to provide your fans with this engagement choice, but honestly, you have very little to lose. You can remove posts if it comes to that, but I encourage businesses to allow their fans some freedom of expression.

5) Facebook Events are your friend: When you have special opportunities for your fans, besides posting in your “status” be sure to use the events option. It lets fans add them directly to their calendars and even lets them see others who might attend. Further, you can allow other to invite THEIR friends, making your offer more interactive and viral.

What’s the difference between a Facebook Page and a your website and why should you have both?

To begin with, I believe that most website’s (content providers like magazines not withstanding) are best considered as “pre-customer” centric. That isn’t to say that you can’t service your customer at your website, its simply to say that your website should be considered the first handshake and introduction to a potential customer and client. 

On the other hand, a Facebook Page should be current-customer centric. This should be the place where your brand’s identity and voice shine..as do the voices of your most engaged and passionate customers and clients. Its true that simply becoming a fan of a page isn’t the most acute measure of passion, but if those people are engaging, actually taking action, then they are passionate. Facebook Pages give you the opportunity to increase that passion.

PS - here’s a piece I did about the difference between Facebook pages and groups, in case you are still asking yourself the difference.

Retail outlets, restaurants, politicians and content providers (magazines, radio stations, etc.) should all have active and interesting Facebook Fan Pages.  But the list doesn’t stop there, if your clients/customers are scattered around the world and the country – you should have a Facebook Fan page.

Your likely to find that Facebook Fan pages in and of themselves aren’t the best representation of your brand. The “Wall” which is the default landing page is boring and it does nothing to encourage fan growth and it certainly isn’t a reflection of your brand. BUT! There is a solution. You can customize your Facebook landing page to do many things, all of which are consistent with your brand and allow your fans to engage.

Standard Facebook Wall

For example. Would you rather have your fans see this:

or this:

Customized Landing Page

By customizing your landing page, you have a better  “welcome” to your guests and a branding opportunity.  Notice how this page encourages people to “like” the page before diving into the engagement section. In this way, you increase fan growth and know who your fans are and reduce the number of “lurkers” to your page. You can also modify this entry page to include an email form and add benefits to “Fan Page” members to further increase engagement and communication.

You can take the idea of branded “welcome” Fan Page by designing one that creates opportunity for engagement and event pulls contents from your WordPress website. This is perhaps the most exciting element – imagine being able to control some of your Facebook content through the very easy interface of WordPress! For small businesses without programming staff on hand, this is a dream come true!

In this example, we have a page with “sharing” built right in as well as content (the pictures, which are on

Content on Facebook Welcome Page pulled from WordPress. Brand consistency and "Share" options

a carousel), and the What, When/Where being pulled right from the already developed website.

While the opportunities for this type of welcome page are endless, I wouldn’t tackle this without an engagement strategy and some thought to how you can really use your Facebook page to ENGAGE people once they become fans.  This might be through contests, conversation, even brain storming with your Fans on future products. Engagement is the key on Facebook or any other social media platform.

If you’ve done something similar to this for your Facebook Fan Page, please share with us your experience and how you took this idea to the next step and used it to engage fans.

If your looking to do something like this and don’t know where to start, drop me a note, I can help you define what a page like this should do for you and how to engage your fans on Facebook!

PS – if you’d like to see these pages yourself, here are the links:

Example #1 – Brand consistent Facebook Welcome Page Template

Example #2 – Facebook Welcome Page with WordPress Integration and Sharing

Now that Facebook CEO has recapitulated his “Transparency is the default” stance on the world’s largest social media site (with more members than there are US residents), will the discussion about privacy die down?

Unfortunately, probably not. All social media sites will now be scrutinized with the same lense that Facebook was. Twitter who just launched its new in-house advertising team is likely to see this discussion resurface as advertisers demand more insight from Twitter as well. Start watching for your Twitter profile to change.

The Facebook changes were a triumph of the free market, after weeks of pressure, Facebook finally realized that its advertisers (who are its paying customers) wouldn’t be happy if users (who pay nothing) left in droves. But this is an important turning point in the evolution of social media and indeed the internet. Whose responsibility is it to protect user privacy? Do we agree with Zuckerberg that they backbone of the internet and in particular, is transparency and openness or are we not quite there yet? Most importantly, do we  think this is something the government should be involved in or would we prefer to continue to use our collective (and much faster) power as users? Or should social media companies adopt their own set of ethics by which all users who choose to participate can readily read?  Ethics being a “do no evil”-type mantra, a philosophy by which the company agrees to abide, not because its forced to via the law, but because they think its the right thing to do for everyone involved. An ethics agreement should look significantly different from the User Agreement most people skim when agreeing to use a social media site, an application or even software.

Further, the space between what is ethical and what is legal in this country continues to occupy a gray sinkhole in our collective imaginations. Advertisers will continue to push the envelope for more personalized, relevant ads. Arguably, there is even a benefit to users for relevant ads. But by drafting an ethical behavior models and practices, social media shows the its users that it isn’t afraid to be transparent about its motives.  Instead of the government getting involved with creating complicated, loophole-ridden legislation, social media companies who are proactive will head off government intervention that has almost never benefited delivery systems of advertising.

Perhaps this idea is Utopian, but not too long ago, the idea of Facebook was too. Maybe Zuckerberg has a point, maybe transparency should be more prevalent, but in return, maybe social media could follow the lead of “Do no evil” Google and change the face of corporate America and in fact, ensuring trust and therefore a more open community for both users, companies and advertisers.

What do you think the next step for social media should be? Should the government be stepping in? Should the free market continue its swift justice? Should social media companies adopt an ethics code?

More commentary on social media privacy from Mashable’s CEO Cashmore

Through out my career I have been fascinated with marketing techniques that allowed the customer and the brand to engage on a a deeper level: a way for them to speak to one another, more importantly: Listen. This is why I have been so passionate about sponsorship and events.

Today, however, doing events and sponsorship without communicating it to your most avid customers is really missing an opportunity. That’s what got me interested in using my blog and twitter and facebook as promotion tools. That’s what social media does for you: blogging, twitter, facebook, maybe even flicker and youtube. These are all tools in your marketing arsenal. And best of all: they are free!

But, predictably, “free” comes at a cost. In the case of social media, that cost is TIME.  Blogging and twittering and facebooking. Who has the time for it? Yet, the only way to really realize a benefit is to be consistent and develop relationships.

Outsourcing this can be a tricky proposition. Some big companies have outsourced their social media programs to interns and had to hire far more expensive PR firms to squash the problems the uninitiated intern caused with inappropriate messaging. Blogging requires a marketing mind as well as a business mind. Plus, you want content to be engaging and interesting.

It doesn’t have to be that way though, you CAN hire professional writing talent with a professional marketing background: Me. I’m launching a test program for small businesses: I’ll be the voice behind your blog. I’ll start and grow your twitter presence and maintain the twitter relationships. I’ll promote your events and we’ll develop a voice for your company.  Email me today for more information. Unfortunately, I am only able to take a small group of initial clients, so that I can focus my energies and hone my processes.

If you are a small business owner, this is a no-lose proposition!