Patrick Barbanes

Facebook’s new Offers is sneaky.

Facebook introduced another version of it’s own online coupon-deal thing. It’s first version was called Deals. The newest is called Offers. And it’s pretty sneaky. Here’s how it works.

An update will show up in your newsfeed. It will say something like “[Your Friend's name here] has claimed an offer”, and it will show your Friend’s picture with a small line item about the deal – say, $99 condo rental!” It won’t have much detail, see the screenshot here.

I don’t know about you, but MY first impression was that a) my friend “claiming” the offer really meant that my friend BOUGHT the offer, and b) that she wanted to share it out to let others know about it.

But neither of those was true. She neither bought it, nor explicitly said, “This deal is so good I want to share it with my friends, so let me click a Share button!”

No, what happened to her was what happened to me: she saw the same sort of message in her timeline – that one of her friends had “claimed” an offer. She clicked on the “claim offer” in order to learn more, and guess what happened? A message went out to HER friends that SHE had claimed the offer. I saw the message about her and I clicked to learn more about the offer. But instead of learning more, an update went out to MY friends that I had claimed the offer. When I’d really done no such thing, I just wanted to learn about the offer. And in fact, when you click, you don’t learn more. You get a pop-up box telling you that an email has been sent to you with details of the offer.

Sheesh!

This is like one of those viral scam video links where there’s really no video at all, but just by the link being clicked on by you, it sends out an update to all your friends that you watched a video. The social proof that you clicked the link is there, and some of your friends will click the link, too. And that all happens BEFORE you even learned what it was you were clicking on.

That’s about as under-handed as it gets.

Sure, somewhere in the depths of facebook’s settings, there’s a way to turn these Offers off – or even keep the Offers on, but turn off the sharing part (that you “claimed” an offer, when all you did was click to get more information about it). But here’s facebook again forcing users to go figure out a way to turn something off instead of just being upfront about what’s going to happen, and offering an opt-in. Something that would say, Yes, I want more information about this Offer, and yes, I want to share that with my friends.

It’s facebook’s world, and we live in it.

The Top 5 Biggest Wastes Of Time In Facebook Timeline for Pages

Social media can be a time-suck. But there are different kinds of time spent in social media: a good kind, and a bad kind.

One kind is the good kind: creating good content, and engaging with people. You know, being social. So among other things that includes spending time on Twitter actually initiating some conversations based on something you’ve seen in your tweet-stream, as well as creating good blog posts that will deepen an existing reader relationship or engender comments, and sharing stories on Facebook.

The other kind is, obviously, the bad kind. That includes obsessing over your twitter profile background (there was a time when providing custom twitter profile backgrounds was a huge business!) or mastering the use of a feature of these incredibly feature-rich social sites that you’re never really going to actually use anyway.

Facebook, of course, can be a huge time-suck. For good reasons (it’s fun!) and for bad (it keeps changing!). The change to the Timeline format is a great example of the bad, because it’s filled with features that professionals are urging you to spend time on in order to fully take advantage of this new “canvas” upon which you can “tell your brand story.”

So to save you some time, here’s my list of the five biggest wastes of time in Facebook’s Timeline. Yes, they can be advantageous. But no, depending on your business and your strategy, they might not be worth the time it takes to even learn about them.

1. The Cover Photo.
Frankly, this is definitely an area where I think the whole “Timeline thing” is overrated. I don’t recommend spending much time on designing or picking the absolute best cover photo, as I’ve read many guides to Facebook do. You’ve got more important things to do – like run a business! The stats are that only a small percent of people ever re-visit your Page at all after Liking it. That means that only a small percentage of your fans ever see your cover photo more than once. OK, first impressions count, sure, so it’s important to have an appropriate cover photo for when people do arrive there. But that’s like telling a man to keep his zipper up on his pants while he’s out in public – it’s pretty obvious. I wouldn’t tell him to spend hours designing a perfect zipper. Make sure it zips up, and he’s good to go. Same thing with the Cover photo. Don’t obsess over it, unless you think yours can create and maintain some amazing “buzz” about it that will drive flocks of new visitors to your Page.

2. Backdating.
When blogging, depending on your blogging platform, you could usually go in and change the date that you published a blog post. You could actually write and publish a blog post today, but change the date to make it look like you had published it yesterday, or even last year. Now you can do that with your facebook status updates, too. I’m going in search of a use for this, but a few come to mind quickly: instead of making people think that the picture of my amazing dessert at the restaurant represented the dinner I had TODAY, I can change the date to make it look like I had that awesome dessert last month. Or I can post a happy birthday update to someone, belatedly, but then backdate the post so it looks like I really said happy birthday on their actual birthday. I hate being late with that kind of stuff.

3. Milestones.
Somewhat similar to backdating, milestones are events (or actions or “stories”) that you can backdate into your Timeline, and which show up as huge banners across your Timeline. So a brand can fill in it’s company history – true, or in the case of Captain Morgan’s Rum’s Timeline, partly fictional. This allows ardent fans to scan through a Timeline and learn amazing facts about the brand, such as the introduction of it’s first solar water panel heating system for it’s corporate offices, or the demotion of one it’s vice presidents to branch manager. Milestones can be thought of as those pretty boring lists of corporate, well…milestones…that many corporations put in their annual reports. And we all know how people love to read annual reports. So unless you’ve got staff sitting around with nothing to do, I don’t really recommend spending much time going back in time to flesh out your brand history on Timeline.

(On a side note, this blog post was inspired by the now-ongoing (May, 2012) 30-day Really Simple Blog Challenge. Learn more about it by opening the really simple blog challenge facebook tab – it will open in a new window – right now, then coming back to finish reading this post!)

4. Pinning Posts.
The ability to “pin” a post to the top of your Timeline activity has gotten a lot of publicity, mostly favorable. The problem is, those few people who DO come to your Timeline (see #1), will look at your activity and see an old-dated post (it can stay pinned up top for as long as a week) and get the impression that you’re not really all that active. So whatever great impression you made with your incredibly amazing cover photo (see #1 again) could get ruined by a pinned post. Be honest, MOST people are not going to notice that little “pin” icon on the post or understand that it means there could be more recent activity beneath that post. Sure, there can be advantages to pinning certain posts, but for the most part, a waste of time.

5. Ability to message with fans.
Previously, the only interaction a brand page could have with someone who Liked the page (a fan) was by posting an update and hoping the fans saw it, liked it, commented on it, shared it, or otherwise engaged with it. But along with the mostly-visual changes of Timeline came an operational one: now a brand page can actually go one-on-one with fans. The fan has to initiate the interaction, but this is a dramatic change. But how can you encourage private messages between a Fan and you/your Brand? (What if you just ASKED for messages?) Now, it’s not just you posting and your fans reading, commenting or liking – which is one kind of relationship. It’s actual one-to-one dialogue, which is a whole deeper level of relationship. Imagine the possibilities! Some of the suggestions I’ve read have been to ask fans who are leaving negative messages on your Timeline – let’s say they’ve had a bad customer service experience with you – to please message you privately so you can deal with their problem more intimately and make them feel more important. That could work, but now your customer service reps who are busy fielding angry tweets are also having to read and respond to angry facebook messages, which are harder to ignore than angry facebook posts. Because, really, if I post a complaint on your wall and never see a response, I’ll just shake my head and sigh at your lack of engagement. But if I leave you a private message and I get no response, now you’ve really pissed me off even more.

So there you have it.

Again, there are and will be positive uses for these things, but currently I see way too much attention being paid to them. My advice? Stay away from them, and continue to focus on posting engaging content that will reach into your fan’s newsfeeds and be shared by them with their friends to get you new fans; reach out and engage on OTHER pages, to be seen as one of the people who doesn’t just broadcast but also goes out and responds (kind of like commenting on other people’s blogs); and create useful custom tabs that you can drive visitors to through direct linking and advertising.

So those are my Top 5 most important changes in Facebook Timeline for Pages. What do YOU think? Do you see other changes that would fit in that list?

Start Annoying Yourself

As a child, you probably annoyed your parents when you began to test the boundaries of what was allowed, how far you could go, what you could get away with. Adults do the same thing. The Occupy movements are testing boundaries. While the movements have various goals, I see a great deal of protesting for the sake of protesting, to test the rules of free speech and free assembly – even if there’s nothing particularly specific behind the assembly or the speech. They’ll form a crowd and cause a ruckus in a train station where you just might be trying to catch the 5:45 to get home, or they’ll make it difficult for you to get into your office building in the morning to do your job. It’s pretty annoying. A videographer that I know sees one of his foremost roles as that of boundary tester: he’ll begin videotaping in a situation you might not really expect, like in the security line at an airport. It’s legal, and he knows it, even though the authorities often don’t know it themselves. The photographer is creating a crisis and often a confrontation – Hey, you can’t videotape here! I’ve seen footage, and you can hear the annoyance of people in line behind him who are perhaps late for their flight. Needless to say, it’s more than annoying to the authorities. But in each case, whether it’s a child testing the limits of parental authority, a group of citizens testing their country’s constitution, or a videographer testing the right to take pictures, there are two significant effects. First, they put the legality of the rules to the test: do the authorities know the limits, and how do they enforce them? Second, they show other people that the limits they may have expected – you can’t videotape here! you can’t assemble here! – were not limits at all. As a child, the limits to how far you could go naturally seemed narrow. Until you tested them and realized that in many cases, the limits weren’t there at all – they were in your childish mind. You annoyed your parents, but were discovering yourself. There’s great value in being annoying. Unless you’re testing your own boundaries, you’ll never know where your limits are – and chances are, they don’t even exist.

Uncertainty Is Liberating

When I’m doing social media training sessions, I often get asked things like, What will the next big thing be? Will Google+ take over Facebook? Will Bing take over Google? Questions like that. Now, I recently got into the stock market, and part of my education is to read stock sites and blogs and watch CNBC. And for any given stock or industry, there are usually three expert opinions. One expert says BUY that stock…NOW!!! Another expert says SELL that dog…now!!! And the third expert says the stock market is rigged, what are you doing trying to invest in the market, anyway! I thought the experts would help me. And they did. They reminded me that nobody really knows what’s going to happen tomorrow. The stock market, the roll of the dice at a craps table, heads or tails, should you take this job or that job, social media’s next big thing….Nobody knows. That’s actually very liberating. With some fundamental knowledge under your belt, you realize that you’re as smart as the experts. You can’t let what might or might not happen paralyze you. Let the uncertainty liberate you. Take an educated guess and move forward. You have to get in the game.

Be A Revolutionary

I came across this old post of mine from July, 2008. I like it enough to repost it again now, without asking you to click again to go find it. So here it is:

Be A Revolutionary

As I write this, the date is July 4th, 2008. My wife and daughter are still asleep as I type, but they’ll be up soon for the barbecue and the fireworks later tonight. Because here in the United States, July 4th is Independence Day. American independence was declared after the Revolutionary War. Here’s what I think: YOU should be a revolutionary and declare YOUR independence (if you haven’t already).

In a world of much mediocrity and “same-ness”, you must dare to stand out. Declare who you are.

If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.

Just by doing so, you’ll be declaring your particular, personal “brand.” Even if you don’t do it online or use any of my strategies or those of other personal branding strategists, you must do it.

Brand YOU. Not your company. Not your boss. YOU.

Yes, just by actually taking a position, taking a stand, stating your opinion – even when it’s contrary to most of the opinions around you…in fact especially when it’s contrary to most of the opinions around you, you’ll be a revolutionary. And that’s a good thing.

Easier said than done? Let me know.

I Didn’t Learn Anything At WordCamp Miami

This past Saturday (3/10/11), about 350 people descended on the University of Miami campus for WordCamp Miami, a conference dedicated to…WordPress! I was one of those people. The goal of the conference is to bring some live education about WordPress to your area.

More importantly, though, there were some cool people there. And I didn’t even get a chance to meet everybody. Not all 350-ish, and not even all the presenters, some of whom flew in from Montreal and other parts of the world.

For example…

Michael Chacon, who did a presentation about “Theme Development For Beginners,” is like a walking php file. The guy exudes and breathes code, AND he can make it clear to others. During Michael’s presentation I tweeted out, “Hey this guy is gooooood…” A friend of mine sent me a private message (a Twitter DM) back, saying “You must be shitting me!” – LOL – because I think that person thought Michael’s presentation was going to be much more basic. Now, to be fair, you have to have some pretty good experience with WordPress and/or with that crazy coding thing called php to actually understand “theme development” (it’s NOT for people who are not generally programmers and are just new to WordPress blogging). But if you’re on the more advanced level, if you’re familiar with php, and want to learn the ins-and-outs of WordPress’s BACK-END and perhaps learn to develop your own themes, then Michael would be my go-to guy. Look him up and put him to work for you!

With Michael Chacon

I bumped into Vanessa Montes and Dan Churchill. Vanessa I know pretty well, and Dan I’ve met a few times at other geek-inclined networking events and presentations. Very cool people, both.

Vanessa Montes is a networker extraordinaire, and a very fun-loving and positive person. Want to meet more people?…Meet Vanessa first, and you’ll find yourself in all kinds of circles you might not otherwise travel in. She’s hooked me into more people than an MC Hammer dancemob!

With Vanessa Montes

Dan Churchill runs an internet business development and online ad campaign management company, but he gives off the vibe of a Buddhist monk – soft-spoken, even-keeled. Haven’t worked with him yet, but I’m hoping to, just so some of his good nature rubs off on me.

With Dan Churchill (r.)

Carlos Miller is known around the world for his courageous blogging, photography and videography in the face of all kinds of obstacles – not your usual obstacles such as poor lighting or bad angles, but obstacles that come wearing a badge – policemen, sheriffs, and all manner of security officers who try to prevent public photography. Carlos’s award-winning website, Photography Is Not A Crime, is worth checking out, and following Carlos on Facebook is – though you’d never know it from his crime-fighting superhero blog – actually really fun. From his travel adventures to his quests in his kitchen for the perfect hot spice, you’ll dig Carlos, I’m sure.

At one point, he was sitting next to a woman, when I took the photograph below. I wasn’t sure who she was. Until she introduced herself. But not with her name, she introduced herself with her Twitter account name! “Hi, I’m Dayngr!” she said. And they say geeks don’t have a sense of humor… Her blog uses the “Blogger” platform, so I assume she was at WordCamp to learn how to move it over to WordPress. I could be wrong. But I’d been hoping to meet Dayngr…er…Trish…at the event, and here she was right in front of me! She’s a Community Manager with the the premier social media monitoring service, Radian6. I want to get on a first-name basis with her, but now I’m just not sure which name.

Dayngr and Carlos Miller

Now, that’s mostly people I already knew (except for Michael).

One of the best things about going to conferences, of course, is for the new connections you’ll make.
Two of the coolest I met for the first time were Jhonatan Castaneda and Sabrina Gomez. Jhonatan and Sabrina are from Cresco Media. Jhonatan was a presenter at the conference, presenting “Reaching Multi-Cultural Audiences With Your Blog.” You know I stayed in that one. It followed right after “Monetizing Your Blog” in the same room, and it was kind of expected – and sad, in my opinion – that half the people who showed up to learn how to “monetize” their blog boogied out of the room when the monetizing was over as fast as you could say “PPC”. Unfortunate, too, because those who left missed Jhonatan’s cool style and very-well-informed presentation, which brought a perspective you don’t get too much ’round these parts. And he likes Presidente beer. That’s a plus in my book.

With Jhonatan Castaneda

I didn’t get a chance to talk with his teammate, Sabrina Gomez, until the after-party. But once she got talking, she had all of us that were in a little drinking circle captivated by her experience using Twitter: how she got on it, how she uses it to make connections and make conversations. I think I teared up a little. I’m extremely glad about meeting Jhonatan and Sabrina, and I’m sure we’ll be connecting more!

Sabrina Gomez (l.) of Cresco Media

In that drinking circle also were Andrew Heller, Jacqueline Jimenez and Richard Solari. We had such an uplifting conversation – and it wasn’t just the apple martinis talking!

This is just a slight few of the great interactions I had and people I met at WordCamp.

So, yes I found out about some great tools to optimize my site by Toni Gemayal, and got schooled well about Responsive Web Design.

But what I really learned is that South Florida holds and attracts some of the coolest social media and tech folks. (If you’re from Montreal, I’m guess that drinking mojitos in South Beach in March is pretty darned attractive!)

Yet I already knew that. So I didn’t learn anything at WordCamp Miami.

And I can’t wait to go next year, and not learn some more!

3 Different Twitter Mistakes

Almost everyone who has a Twitter account has probably sent out a tweet or two that they regret. Either it was a mistake, or they were drunk, or they mis-spoke, or even invented words.

Three recent examples of tweet-errors (twerrors?) run the gamut from light-hearted mistake to unbelievably ugly.

It’s worth taking a look at not just the errant tweets themselves, but how the user handled the mistake.

NO BIG DEAL: BLUSHING RED
Some Twitter faux pas (what’s the plural: faux’s pas?) can be laughed off, like this one from the Red Cross. There’s no question that the Red Cross brand could suffer if tweets about questionable behavior in their organization were to surface, but this was pretty harmless. Nice to see them deal upfront with this slight mistake, and do it with a sense of humor.
http://bit.ly/redcrosshaha

INAPPROPRIATE: PUTTING FOOT (SHOE) IN MOUTH
A classic example of tweeting-before-thinking came from a high-end brand. Pretty offensive and in very bad taste, but a quick apology and some real remorse seemed to come after. Still, it revealed an opportunistic, insensitive marketeer, trying to capitalize on something much more important than diamonds on the soles of her shoes.
Kenneth Cole

INEXCUSABLE:
This is just mind-blowing. No apology or deletion of a tweet can suffice here: a journalist joking about a woman’s sexual assault.
Nir Rosen

What Twitter mistakes have you made or seen, and how egregious have they been?http:

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Groupon Apologizes – But Here’s What They Should Have Said.

Four days ago, I wrote about my reaction to Groupon’s Super Bowl ads. In addition to my small voice, there was a wave of negative reaction to the ads.

Groupon’s first reaction was to offer an explanation. The “explanation” was pretty hollow, and generated almost as much negative reaction as the ads themselves.

And now, finally, Groupon has apologized.

But the apology is rather anemic. So below is what Groupon Founder and CEO, Andrew Mason, wrote on the company’s blog, and below that is what he should have written:

Here’s what Mr. Mason should have written:

Five days have passed since the Super Bowl, and one thing is clear – our ads offended a lot of people.

I can see now that the ads are offensive. In the giddy excitement of our phenomenal growth and with the heady prospect of a Super Bowl commercial before us, we as a company and I as it’s CEO clearly lost some of our critical faculties, and pushed forward with an advertising strategy that was misguided, and which under normal circumstances we most likely would never have considered.

Maybe you can understand that and forgive us our trespasses. The ads were offensive, and I should have realized that, regardless of the position we as a company were in. I appreciate all your input; you helped set me straight, and I’m a better person for it.

I am pulling the ads (a few may run again tomorrow – pulling ads immediately is sometimes impossible). I waited five days after the airing of the offensive ads and after much immediate outpouring of negative reaction to them – and I realize that I have waited too long. I waited because I was afraid. Afraid of making a mis-step, of making a rash decision. And because I was feeling defensive. That is not my style – as I am normally a man of action. But rash action is what got Groupon into this position of having offended people, and so I hesitated before taking another quick action, even though it would have made things right.

Maybe you can understand that, too, and forgive me for taking so long to pull the ads. I am sorry for taking so long.

I have severed any ties between Groupon and the advertising agency we employed to develop the ads, Crispin, Porter + Bogusky. I wish them only the best, but believe that we should entrust our company’s advertising to another firm. Whoever we select to work with, you can trust that we will work with them to produce ads that will entertain without offending.

To each of the three charities we used for the insensitive commercials – Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace, and the Tibetan Fund – we have donated the cost of the Super Bowl commercial, three million dollars. That’s a total of nine million dollars donated from Groupon, not you or Groupon’s customers. It’s the fair thing to do, and we intend to do more. We’ll continue our matching donations campaign. And we’ll create commercials and projects that bring awareness to those causes in a respectful way.

Finally, I recognize that we all have diverse opinions – about what’s funny, about what’s important, about what’s insensitive. Diversity in all its forms – diversity of opinion, of perspective, of world-view – strengthens and improves an organization. It is worth considering whether our organization – and in particular decisions to run such things as our Super Bowl commercials – could be improved with more diverse input, input such as you have provided over the past few days.

To that end, we are committed to looking inward, at the lack of sexual, racial and perhaps even cultural diversity of our Senior Management team (currently made of up eight white males) and our Board of Directors (seven males). These are incredibly strong teams. But maybe they could be made even stronger, and we will be seeking input on ways to do that.

We certainly aren’t trying to be the kind of company that builds its brand on creating controversy – we think the quality of our product is a much stronger message.

Thanks for your help,

Andrew

Why It’s Not About The Numbers

Government affairs can be tedious and boring sometimes – like watching CSPAN when you’re in the mood for “Three’s Company.” (What, that show’s not still on?)

But in a fascinating article (Twitter Diplomacy: U.S. Diplomacy Embracing Twitter Amid Global Crises) about how the United States government, and specifically the Department of State, is embracing, using, and proselytizing about social media, we learn that:

The State Department is tightening its embrace of Twitter and other social media as crises grip the Middle East and Haiti, with officials finding new voice, cheek and influence in the era of digital diplomacy.

Even as it struggles to contain damage caused by WikiLeaks’ release of classified internal documents, the department is reaching out across the Internet. It’s bypassing traditional news outlets to connect directly and in real time with overseas audiences in the throes of unrest and upheaval. (emphasis mine)

All well and good. President Obama’s White House is no stranger to social media, so it makes sense that his Cabinet gets acquainted with it.

But what stuck out for me was the part about department spokesman, P.J. Crowley:

In recent days, department spokesman P.J. Crowley has tweeted to knock down rumors, amplify U.S. policy positions, appeal for calm and urge reforms in Haiti, Tunisia and Lebanon.

Well before he addressed the State Department press corps on the return to Haiti of former dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier and the possible return of ousted President Jean-Betrand Aristide, Crowley took to Twitter to pronounce the U.S. position

But is anybody listening?

It turns out that department spokesman P.J. Crowley’s Twitter account – @PJCrowley had – at the time of the article – only 9,717 followers. That’s twice as many as me, but from a global perspective, that’s chump change. Heck, parody accounts of oil companies have been known to get over 150,000 followers!

But it’s not always about the numbers, and this is a great case in point.

Crowley’s reach – he has 9,717 followers – may not rival that of celebrities, sport stars or even other government officials. But those tracking his pronouncements include virtually all the journalists, pundits and analysts who deal with U.S. foreign policy, as well as ordinary citizens and foreign ministers of other countries.

Clearly, it’s not how many you know, it’s WHO you know: who is really desiring to hear and engage with you, to act on some of the information or conversations you may have.

And it’s not just the number of followers you have or don’t have that matters:

The audience for (Crowley’s) micro-blog posts also expands exponentially when his followers pass along his messages to their followers, particularly when those messages deal with pressing issues of the day.

“The number of retweets he gets relative to the size of his following is very impressive and shows that he has near-mastered the medium,” said Alec Ross, Clinton’s senior adviser for innovation and State Department “uber-Tweeter,” who has nearly 320,000 Twitter followers. “It connects him to an audience of influencers in 100-plus countries.”

Ah, yes, RE-tweets. So in this case, he’s not only followed by people who look to him for information, but who also deem his information valuable enough to pass on!

“What we are looking for is retweets, which tells us what we are saying is getting noticed and passed along to others,” Crowley told the AP. “That means we are expanding our reach.”

This is eye-opening for many reasons. Think about it. The State Department (headed by Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State). Looking for retweets. That’s mind-blowing to me!

So before you go on the hunt or even go to some twitter-store to automatically buy “Followers” off a virtual shelf, remember P.J. Crowley.

And understand why it’s not always just about the numbers.

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