The law of Facebook Fan Page status updates

We have a winner! Microsite: reach, functionality, less confusing

After a week of serious discussion, soul-searching, and near-marital discord (my husband is an interactive producer and has strong feelings about these things ), I’m reasonably sold on the idea of a microsite to host “the promotion”.*

My vision for doing it “all-Facebook” was something like IKEA’s “Showroom” promotion, where the first user to tag themselves in photos of new IKEA furniture won the piece they’d tagged.

There were a number of reasons Facebook wasn’t the right place, user experience and functionality-wise, to host the promotion:

• I imagined a user receiving an email with a link to the promotion. Wouldn’t they have a better (read: less confusing) experience clicking through to a site who’s clear visual design leads them through the upload and share process? Being dumped on a Facebook fan page, even on a nicely laid out static FBML tab politely explaining the process of uploading and tagging a photo, depended on the user taking the time to read the instructions. We know where that goes.




• Experimenting with fan-uploaded photos, I couldn’t get them to congregate in one promotion-specific “album”, which gets even more complicated when there is video and text-based content thrown in. I fantasized Facebook would be a tidy destination in which to keep all this fan content wrangled, but there was no way to see it all easily.

That was enough push me away from Facebook as a home for this promotion. We’ll still leverage the Facebook news feed to viralize the goings-on of the microsite, but will end up with an aggregated destination that’s easy to use and peruse.

Thanks to all the good peoples (and there have been more since this tweet) who commented & tweeted about this…your input helped me make a (hopefully) non-disastrous tactical decision.

*Without going into the weeds (my current favourite office-speak expression), the promotion consists of people being asked to share an inspiring photo, video, or story about their personal philanthropy, and sharing that story among their friends. Each donation of inspiration will yield, if all this works out, a matching monetary donation to our non-profit.

Should you run a User-Generated Content (UGC) promotion on Facebook or a dedicated microsite?

Here’s the deal. In support of an upcoming campaign, we’re considering a UGC promotion. I’m torn whether it should be conducted entirely within Facebook, or if we should build a microsite to host it.

The market is local (Winnipeg), so broad reach is less important than participant’s social influence on each other.

Desired outcomes include brand awareness, engagement, and viral sharing. The lurkers—people who don’t contribute content, but passively receive it through sharing—are almost as important as the participants.

Facebook seems like fish in a barrel (easier to reach because they’re right there), whereas a microsite seems like fish in the ocean (more of them who travel farther).

What do you think? Is it a better idea to run a UGC promotion inside of Facebook, using the built-in network & functionality there, or would you build a destination to aggregate submissions & let people share from there? Please comment below whether you favour Facebook or a  microsite, why, and if I’m overlooking anything.

Social Objects: branded content, understanding & brandvocacy

In preparation for my new job as United Way of Winnipeg‘s Interactive & Social Media Engagement Manager, I’ve been reading a few of the current SoMe classics, including Brian Solis’ Engage!

I’ve heard Brian reference “social objects” on his blog, and I’d already come to the conclusion that brands will be better understood in the social world by creating and spreading content of their own, as opposed to just listening and participating in existing conversations.

As part of my engagement strategy I’m going to produce simple videos that convey just how important and life-changing the programs United Way supports are to the people who use them. There are a thousand amazing stories out there, and I believe that if people just heard them, they’d be moved to donate—whether for intellectual or emotional reasons.

These stories, in social media marketing terms, are “social objects”—ideas around which people who care can congregate, comment, and share to their networks.

Here’s my conception of a social object creating “brandvocates”—fans advocating your organization’s work:

1] Content is published to the social web. 2] It sparks conversation, creating a perception of the brand in people’s minds. 3] People share the content & their newfound understanding of the brand that produced it.

And here’s a more structured version of Brian’s idea, showing the journey from content to conversation, to enhanced brand perception and brandvocacy:

Perhaps Brian will drop by and tell me if I’ve got the concept down!

Branding is out of our hands, PR becomes the new content nexus

BP’s brand disaster is as large and ill-contained as its oil disaster. The popularity of @BPGlobalPR, a guerilla attack on BP’s lame brand disaster mitigation PR, shines a light on the death of brand in the age of social media.

“Branding” is a strategy to differentiate your product/org. To set it apart through look, experience, and “serendipitous” appearances in news (earned media) and awareness (advertising) streams.

What does “branding” mean when people disregard messaging? It means your product/org is judged based on its actions and public opinion thereof. Client-facing communications—marketing communications, PR, and brand interactions like special events—now need to centre on giving people something good to talk about.

• Offering quality interactions (a great product, a great time, great customer service)
• Inviting people to participate (cool projects that spark the imagination while repaying the community)
• Communicating the successes of the brand (allowing brandvocates to tell their stories)

PR is now being thought of as a strategic content creation and dissemination tool. Shaping the brand through word-of-finger.

A social media crisis of faith

Facebook. I used to love you, but I had to kill you.

Whether there’s a Facebook exodus come May 31 or not, I have really sobered up to the whole MySpace/Friendster/’it was the style at the time’ social network fad issue. I didn’t believe in it until now. I mean, I knew intellectually that once upon a time MySpace got cool and then uncool, but was sure that could never happen to Facebook. They have half a billion users, for pity’s sake. Like 1/16th of the earth. What could happen to bugger that up?

Facebook’s recent PR shitstorm has largely played out among the digerati, and my sense is that the Average User will continue tending their Farmville real estate come the end of May, oblivious to arcane issues of private data and opt-outs and personalization. That may come to pass, but my faith has been badly shaken.

Like a spooked investor, I see the danger of putting all your eggs in one basket. Building a large Facebook following—instead of a more robust social strategy—could be an unfortunate resource sinkhole, should the bubble burst and the massive social network hustle itself right out of business.

Let’s be proactive and pretend, for a minute, that Facebook is on its last legs as a home for brands.

What’s a marketer to do? Here are some ideas for staying afloat in an uncertain social future.

Diversify your assets

If your core contribution is viral content, spread it out. Use Facebook to point fans to content and foster discussion there, but use YouTube and your own blog/site to host the original stuff. If you’ve just been riding the wave so far and not really developing your own content to share, get busy.

Make real friends & find out where else they hang out

You should already be doing this, but be sure to engage your active Facebook commenters to the point where you feel you really know each other. Google ‘em and follow them on Twitter or on their own blogs. Make the relationship bigger than Facebook, which will help make it deeper anyway. Should a new network arise to take FB’s place, these will be the people you’ll refriend.

Host an IRL event pronto

Get your social scene out and mingling for real as soon as possible. If you’re a non-profit, stage a volunteer event. If you’re a small business, invite people over for a (insert product here) tasting or a workshop. Move the virtual to real life now. This capitalizes on the work you’ve done so far. The point of meeting these people online was to take them to the next level of interaction with your business anyway.

Insource the connections you’ve made

Got an email newsletter, a mailing list, an inhouse CRM strategy? Migrate your new bffs to your own platform. Bring them into the fold. Throw them a discount if you can, and try to attach them to your brand’s inner circle. If you’ve got your own communication strategy running parallel, now would be a good time to solidify subscribers drawn from your FB fans. Invite them personally.

Non-profits and the mobile web

I’ve always liked Salvation Army’s advertising. It’s stark, a bit shocking, makes you uncomfortable. It’s about poverty.

Fundraising advertising needs to conjure up a pretty powerful scenario to be effective. Something like:

What if you were out getting a bagel at lunch, walked under a bridge and someone lived there? There you are, talking on your iPhone, strolling through somebody’s bedroom. Confronted by your own comparative wealth. You’d probably feel moved to make a “donation” right there.

During a fundraising campaign, advertising tries to recreate that feeling. Salvation Army is trying to bring you into that moment, and remind you there’s a way to help.

The potential donor must then sustain that generous urge until they can get themselves to an envelope, or a hotline, or dig out their credit card and start typin’. A lot to ask of a piece of advertising.

Fortunately, communications has undergone a tremendous upgrade in the past two years. Through mobile devices and the location-based services they make available, donors can now be hit in the gut and the wallet at the same time. “For this new generation of donors, pop culture, public discourse, social media, and charity all run through the same router“. There’s finally a convergence of need, attention, and the ability to give.

Generation X and the Millennials don’t want to go through the trouble of entering a 16-digit credit card number to make a $25 donation.

Melissa Brown, associate director of research at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University

This became crystal clear when $1 000 000/day was raised through texting in the week after the Haiti earthquake.

Charitable giving is a dopamine bonanza, and the speed with which mobile can deliver the hit makes it extra rewarding. We give because it feels great, but we need instant gratification.

Mobile usage in Canada is at least 22 million (2008), or about 65% of the population, with no doubt increases in the years since and to come. This represents a huge opportunity for non-profits to have a conversation with donors at the right time and in the right place. When need strikes, the solution can be presented quickly—a win win for everyone.

Ideas for transforming giving with the mobile web:

• Mobile reporting from disaster areas on Twitter. Include a text-to-give number for immediate relief & relay the results.
• Foursquare check-ins at volunteer or fundraising events. Connect with a sponsor who will donate 25¢ for every check-in.
• iPhone App-guided tours of your work with simple examples of the benefit a $5 donation can make, and the ability to make that donation. Seeing the connection between good work and a few dollars in the flesh can be very compelling.
• Requests for donation of Twitter and Facebook status with text-to-give info when need is great.

Early adoption of the mobile web can get attention for your cause if it’s creative and picked up by the social media marketing community. More than that, it provides a better experience for donors who want to engage with your org. Have a mobile site created that streamlines an informative donation process for them. Attention is so scarce that anything less is a roadblock to giving.