Instead, Facebook hopes to build the same sort of success with businesses that they have had with people’s personal pages. They want to be the one place where people go to look for, learn about, and engage with businesses. To accomplish this goal they need to encourage businesses to join Facebook, and that is why they created the Fan Page.

Facebook doesn’t even call them Fan Pages anymore. Instead, they are simply called Pages. Your page lets you build a presence on Facebook, engage with your audience, spread your message, connect with Facebook users on your website, and encourage conversations. Custom tabs can be created to feature coupons, promote specials, share videos, and set up events. It’s a full palette of features, and it’s just for businesses, brands, and non-profit agencies.

The dangerous side of your business presence comes in the way customers perceive your presence. When they are connecting with your business, they may think they are connecting with you. If they have a bad experience with one of your representatives, they may take their complaints to your Facebook Page because they expect this to be the online equivalent of asking to speak to the owner.

To add another complication, what if the person they are complaining about also happens to be one of your Facebook page administrators? That complaint could be deleted and you wouldn’t know about it unless there was an even bigger backlash because of it. Large businesses have marketing, public relations, or customer care groups to handle these situations. But for smaller businesses, there are only two courses I see to this situation. You either need to be your own Facebook Page administrator, or you need to bring in help from outside. This is where the social marketing experts come in.

Social marketing experts can set up your page for you, develop guidelines for Facebook engagement, monitor your presence, promote your brand, and provide a direct channel of communication to the top when there is a problem that needs your attention. This service isn’t free, but in the context of a marketing budget, you should be able to identify a level of service that suits any business.

How is Facebook going to make money with Pages? Nobody knows at this point, but you can be certain that once businesses are engaging with their customers on Facebook, they will not want to stop. In the future, a Facebook Page will likely come with a price tag. But for now, the time is right to add your business to the mix and start connecting with your customers.

Share this post/Save for reference

I switched over to the laptop and checked GoDaddy for viralworthy.com and it was available. I grabbed it. I mean, why not? If I could easily post the stuff that I think is really worthy of attention, I become a filter for others. If people happen to like the way I filter, maybe they’ll pay attention to my website.

A few weeks ago I had stumbled upon a site called waxinandmilkin.com that was very simple, just great pictures and comments. It was elegant, simple, and engaging. I liked their taste. I liked it so much that I poked into their source code and saw they used a site called Tumblr to create their blog. I made a mental note–must do something with Tumblr.

You see where this is going, right? In less than 1 hour, http://viralworthy.com went live. I plugged in a few quick favorite videos, a quote about advertising, and set up my Twitter, Gmail, Disqus, and Facebook feeds. I downloaded the Tumblr iPhone app, scheduled a few posts for later release, and I’m rolling. Easy Peasy. Too easy.

The experience has left me with a number of unanswerable questions that can be distilled to this: When creating a web destination is so easy, does it diminish value or enhance value of the web community? I’m glad it’s easy. But I’m also glad that I don’t make my living designing web pages anymore. Both web design and programming have become a commodity. And when the bar is lowered, the noise floor rises exponentially. It becomes increasingly more difficult to find the quality among the rubbish.

The more the bar is lowered, the more filtering we need. The best filters will always be people that you trust and respect. Brands who engage in social media should take notice. The more noise in your channel, the more people will tune you out. Understand what your social media priorities are and keep them in focus. Be dynamic, be personal, but don’t make noise for its own sake. We have enough of that already, thank you.

Share this post/Save for reference

With Facebook, massively multiplayer online games, Twitter and Skype, chat remains a popular means of communication, though it’s usually referred to as “texting” now. If you’re new to text messaging, you might be confused by some of the acronyms you encounter. Here’s a glossary that will get you started on the right foot.

AAMOF – As A Matter Of Fact
AFAIK – As Far As I Know
AFK – Away From Keyboard
ASAP – As Soon As Possible
BBL – Be Back Later
BRB – Be Right Back
BTW – By The Way
CU – see you
CUL8R – see you Later
EZ – Easy
F2F – Face to Face
FAQ – Frequently Asked Questions
FWIW – For What It’s Worth
FYI – For Your Information
GG – Good Game
GTG – Got To Go
HAND – Have A Nice Day
HTH – Hope That Helps
IAC – In Any Case
IIRC – If I Remember Correctly
J/K – Just Kidding
IMHO – In My Humble Opinion
IMNSHO – In My Not-So-Humble Opinion
IMO – In My Opinion
IOW – In Other Words
IRL – In Real Life
LOL – Laughing Out Loud
NRN – No Reply Necessary
OMG – Oh My God
OTOH – On The Other Hand
ROFL – Rolling On the Floor Laughing
ROFLMAO – Rolling On the Floor Laughing My Ass Off
THX – Thanks
TIA – Thanks In Advance
TTYL8R – Talk To You Later
WTF – What The F**k

Share this post/Save for reference

Do you believe computers can change the world? In 1992 I fell into a debate with my then-girlfriend about computer technology and online communities. To her, computers were a waste of time, a distraction from things that really mattered. She was a writer. She wrote with pen and pad. I was a computer junkie, desktop publisher, and online forum moderator. I wrote too, but my writing was conversational and with people I only knew through my screen and keyboard.

She resigned her side of the debate when I spoke passionately about how the online world could change society, education, nationalism, and everything. I argued that in the computer world, people were not judged by age, gender, economic status, accent, or country of origin. You were valued based on what you said and how you said it. That was before online video, photographic avatars, and social media sites that share your birthday and “which sex in the city character you are most like”.

Slowly I watched my revolution take place, while at the same time, I watched my utopian dreams shattered by spam, porn, gambling, big media, and online shopping. The old networks are gone, replaced by the internet, which has expanded into an unimaginably brilliant universe where the best and the worst of everything co-exists. Still, I never forgot my dream.

How we spend our time online is up to us. We can watch reruns of “The Family Guy” or we can attend lectures at Harvard or Stanford from anywhere in the world. We can shop until we drop, or we can invest in people’s future through micro-financing sites like Kiva.org. Ultimate, how we spend our time defines us.

I recently decided to use some of my time differently. I created a social networking site built around the simple idea of kindness. The site brings together people and humanitarian organizations in a new way. My reasoning is that there is strength in numbers and a community of kind people can impact the world meaningfully beneficent ways.

Are you activating social change through social media? How are you making a difference? Tell me at KindLike.Us

Share this post/Save for reference

Have you ever come across a conversation like this, either on line or in person?

Person 1: I’d like to know what people think about the color Red. Red is used frequently, but is it the best color? Can Red be improved? Let’s talk about it.

Person 2: Red is a nice color.

Person 1: We’ve already established that. Why don’t you say something new about Red?

Person 2: I like Red. I also like other colors that are in the Red family, especially the family of Autumn colors.

Person 1: There’s no such thing as “Autumn colors” You can see every color in Autumn.

Person 3: Green. It’s far more attractive and soothing than Red.

Person 1: You don’t know what you’re talking about. There are many greens that are far more jarring than Red.

Person 3: I’m talking about the soothing Greens.

Person 1: You said Green. Not Some Greens. Now you are changing your position.

Person 3: I meant the more soothing Greens.

Person 1: Yet that’s not what you said. Besides, I started this out asking about Red. You haven’t said anything constructive about Red. You really don’t know how to have a constructive conversation.

Person 3: You are an idiot. I’m out of here.

Person 1: You are only giving up because you cannot support a healthy debate. It seems like I’m the only person who understands Red.

Person 4: If you think nobody else understands Red, why did you ask for other opinions?

Person 1: I didn’t say that nobody else understands Red. You are putting words in my mouth.

Person 4: This IS idiotic. I’m leaving too.

Person 1: Person 2, we haven’t heard from you lately. We were having a good conversation. What else do you think about Red?

Person 1: Red is a decent color, but we could make it better if we could work together to identify its weakness and make them stronger.

Person 1: It seems like nobody really cares about Red as much as I do.

As a community moderator, you will occasionally come across someone in a forum who appears at first to be a valuable contributor but serves to alienate many other readers and participants. The above conversation is a contrived example of what sometimes happens within online communities, but it’s not a far stretch. If you are in the role of being the community moderator, it’s your job to deal with the conflicts and issues these people create. But how?

There is no right answer. Each situation is going to be different because the dynamics of the community and those involved in the conflicts will create a unique set of issues. Some communities welcome a benevolent monarch who looks out for the community’s well being. Others prefer anarchy and react strongly to any show of rank that places one above the others. Yet in every case, the goal is the same. Reduce the conflict without creating a larger one by your actions as moderator.

Online communities generally react strongly to unilateral decisions by the moderators. To keep peace within the community you need to be fair to a fault. You need to consider all options, and give advance warning of your intended action to get buy-in from a majority of the community. If you do not get buy-in, it’s probably the wrong action.

Always treat your community with respect and it will flourish.

Share this post/Save for reference

Today I tried an interesting experiment. I googled “social media expert”. I wanted to see who would take Google’s #1 spot.

It wasn’t Chris Brogan, whom I would have guessed. Today’s top dog is Giovanni Gallucci. I had never heard of Giovanni, and unless you’re from Texas, it’s probable that you never have heard of him either. Giovanni lives in Dallas and over the last couple years he has made an impressive effort to position himself as a social media maven. I can’t knock that. It’s what anyone who wants to create an independent career in social media should be doing. If you look at his efforts, there is much to learn. Giovanni shows what it takes to gain traction as a social media professional.

To the established social media pros, the A-list, Giovanni Gallucci appears to represent everything that they warn people against. Self-proclaimed rock stars, experts, and ninjas do not present the perfect picture of credibility. There are plenty of articles about what to look for in your social media expert and what to watch out for, and it seems that they all caution us about guys who look very much like Gallucci. He calls himself an expert and a ninja. He alludes to press coverage but doesn’t show examples. He lists clients but doesn’t offer specifics on what he did for them. These points that do not stand up to suspicious scrutiny, and I recommend changing those aspects of his website, but I would not write the man off because his approach is more aggressive. His formula is working. He is the #1 social media expert in Google’s eyes.

How did Giovanni Gallucci steal the top spot from the likes of social media A-listers like Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, and Peter Shankman? He did it with focused SEO. Giovanni decided to optimize for “social media expert”, so that is the title given to his website. Within the content, you’ll find social media mentioned numerous times, along with words like “ninja”, “buzz” and “marketing”. The man understands on-site SEO and he has used it masterfully. He also has massive offsite SEO through profiles on more than twenty social networks, content on sites like SlideShare, YouTube, and Flickr, and an active presence on Twitter and other sites. He presents a focused and consistent picture of himself, and knows what he wants people to remember about him. This is personal branding at its finest. Gallucci seems like a smart, hard working, likable guy and I expect that he will continue to work his way toward a position on the social media A-list.

Where is the lesson in this experiment? First, no matter how strong your presence is online and offline, the top spot in any search engine can still be won by someone who is fully committed to that task. Chris Brogan used to occupy Google’s number one position. Chris still has the single most recognizable name in social media marketing, but it looks like Giovanni is in the race and hungry for victory.

Second, there is no such thing as an overnight success. It takes time and effort to not only learn the trade, but to market your skills and create a reputation. Giovanni can work five times harder than everyone else, and it will still take time to grow reputation and wide recognition. But it may take less time to achieve a high level of success because there are examples to follow and an industry that is hot for expertise.

And the last lesson I take from this experiment is that even though the experts say “don’t call yourself an expert, rock star, or ninja”, perhaps doing those things is precisely what you should do because a) they’re not doing it, and b) they’re talking about it. They promote awareness of the terms and refuse to apply the same terms to themselves, creating an opportunity for somebody else. Kudos to Giovanni Gallucci for recognizing the power of calling himself a Social Media Expert.

I noticed that “social media ninja” is still up for grabs. We’ll talk later. I have some work to do.

Tim Piazza is the lead architect of social media and interactive marketing at Keller Crescent Advertising, Indiana’s largest independently owned advertising agency. You can read Tim’s blog at http://www.bzzmatters.com, follow Tim on Twitter @TimPiazza and learn more about Keller Crescent Advertising at http://www.kellercrescentadvertising.com

Share this post/Save for reference

There are now 183 million domain names registered around the world, a 17% increase over last year, but it is very likely that the web you experience is getting smaller and the reason is simple. The pace of internet growth has far out-scaled human proportions. It’s so big that without the familiarity of a consistent place, the internet would be overwhelming. Our natural response is to cull from the internet and make our individual experiences familiar and manageable. We find the places that we like, the sources that we trust, the communities that we feel affinity with, and we stick to those. This explains the fundamental reason for the success of Facebook and other social media sites.

Facebook is like an internet unto itself, but with a limited set of things you can do, and with a limited number of people you share the experience with. If the internet is worldwide, Facebook is your local coffee shop. You recognize people, you meet your friends there, you get introduced to their friends. You know what’s on the menu, and you have your favorite place to sit. While initially it feels like just another website, in a short time your friends find you and your experience becomes familiar, comfortable, personal, and participatory.

The Facebook experience can be so consuming that some web users have little time for anything else, and this is how the web gets smaller. As we cull, we limit ourselves to the familiar, where we read, watch, and participate. As our participation increases, we limit our experience of the larger web. The busier we get with our interests, the less time we have to introduce new ones. Social sites like Facebook make our experience feel complete, but manageable. This is their attraction, but potentially, also their Achilles Heel.

What would happen if your local coffee shop suddenly became immensely popular? It might become overcrowded and you wouldn’t be able to find a seat, or they could expand to accommodate their new customers. In either case, you experience would be disruptive, less accommodating, and more impersonal. This can also happen in the social web. You might realize one day that the Facebook network has grown so big that you no longer feel like it’s personal anymore. It has become like the web–and out-scaled its earlier human proportions. What then?

I believe the answer lies in micro-social communities, smaller, more focused, Facebook-like communities that connect people through some common interest, such as the community they live in, or a shared hobby or belief. Micro-social communities have the benefits of a social site, but are self-regulating in scale because of their narrow focus. By participating in a micro-social community that focuses on the place where you live, you can create connections that enhance your community experience as well as your online experience. Micro-social communities may still grow too big for comfort, it’s less likely because they are not trying to be all things to all people.

There are not many micro-social communities yet, but you can expect to see an explosion of them over the next few years as web applications for building social communities evolve. On the internet, the Next Big Thing is creating smaller, richer, more relevant experiences that connect you with your community, making the web increasingly personal.

What are your favorite micro-social communities? Tell me about them!

Tim Piazza is the lead architect of social media and interactive marketing at Keller Crescent Advertising, Indiana’s largest independently owned advertising agency. You can read Tim’s blog at http://www.bzzmatters.com, follow Tim on Twitter @TimPiazza and learn more about Keller Crescent Advertising at http://www.kellercrescentadvertising.com

Share this post/Save for reference

Today I gave Skimmer a quick run-through. Skimmer is the social media consolidator conceived by Fallon Worldwide, the Minneapolis-based advertising agency. As a creative shop Fallon has done some nice work in print, television, and on the internet. Creating software is an interesting new direction and was worth giving the application some time and consideration.

Skimmer is really cool because it puts all of these social media sites in one place on your computer. It’s like a two-way RSS feed between your computer and your favorite social media sites, as long as your favorite sites are Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, Flickr, and YouTube. I don’t doubt that they’ll expand the program to incorporate more social media sites if the application proves to be worthy of further investment.

Skimmer works well enough as a single platform to reach these different sites, but what I think is both truly clever and deeply concerning is that Fallon gets to track each user’s involvement on social media sites, including which ones and how much they interact with each. Marketers make money by understanding the behavior of large groups of people. The price you pay for this free application is that an advertising agency gets to scan your online behavior. Should we trust them?

I’m not especially concerned about Skimmer because it’s one thing to create an application and entirely another for the program to gain enough momentum that a significant population uses it. Many people will install Skimmer because it’s free but chances are it won’t be the one application you always leave running in the background. For those who do, they’ll enjoy an intimate relationship with the folks at Fallon.

Share this post/Save for reference

The article is about two websites, flickr.com and radar.net. Both are picture sharing services with a difference. The point of the story is that Radar released an iPhone application that also supports flickr and the relationship between these seeming competitors is symbiotic because they are as different in intent as  Twitter is to Facebook.

Along comes Philip Kaplan.  Phil posts the comment “I prefer Mobog for sharing cameraphone pics. It appears to have a bigger and more engaged community than Radar, so more people will see and comment on.”

Then he posts a link to mobog.com followed by the disclaimer “I founded Mobog and this comment is spam (tho everything in it is true) ”

Thirty minutes later, he comments on his own post: “Now I feel bad for leaving this comment. It’s kin of mean. Sigh. I would delete it if I could.”

Philip Kaplan followed my advice to the letter. He shared a comment on a big media story about competitors products, expressing how his preferred product differs. He didn’t hide behind an alias. He disclosed his vested interest. He even preempted criticism with a quick apology. Yet the way he went about it still stinks. And he’ll probably get away with it.

Philip Kaplan is not only a shill for his  start-up, he’s also the founder of AdBrite, F–kedCompany, and several other web-oriented businesses, he’s been featured in Forbes and Rolling Stone. He’s the sort of dot.com entrepreneur that many people wish for themselves to become. Kaplan also has a reputation for openly using black-hat techniques for raising his own rankings in search engines. Kaplan knew what he was doing was wrong, and every word–including the apology–was engineered to get more notice for his 2008 start-up.

So where did I go wrong in my previous advice? I don’t think I did, and I still stand by it. But it was incomplete. I didn’t account for people like Philip Kaplan who will openly game the system because he knows that it will irk people, but not land him in jail. Phil doesn’t care about brand reputation. He knows that most internet brands are disposable. A brand has no value until it gains mass, so if mobog.com never sprouts, Kaplan will just toss it away and move onto his next big idea.

For those readers who are brand custodians, a real brand that has value, I would like to suggest  a social media version of the Hippocratic Oath. “Above all, show respect”. Respect the author, respect the conversation, and respect the audience. If you do that, it will be difficult to make enemies in the social media community. You can still share brand insights and points of differentiation. Just do it with respect.

Share this post/Save for reference

There are ways that you can address this problem, but first you need to chill. Let your emotions wane so that you can address the issue with a clear head. Evaluate your position in the community. How long have you been a member? Are you a recent arrival, or have you been engaged in conversation for years? How about the other member? These distinctions matter and dictate the best course of action.

It’s never a good idea to take up the challenge. You will get sucked into a battle that you cannot win because it will polarize and alienate most members of the community regardless of who’s right. Don’t even acknowledge that a gauntlet has been thrown.

If you are a recent arrival, the best thing you can do is to let it go. You’re better off not responding at all than to engage the other party and risk an ugly scene. Some people tend to impose their hostility on communities where they feel they have nothing at stake. If you allow yourself to sucked into a flamewar with one of these individuals, you will lose credibility. The other member might have a reputation for being a hothead or a bigot but also a respected authority in good standing with the community. If you’re new, you wouldn’t know that. As the custodian of a brand, you have much more at risk than the other person. That’s why it’s best to let it go.

Assume you are a member in good standing with the community and the other member is new, that might also be a good time to sit back. Other senior members in the community will most likely come to your aid and interject themselves into the situation. You  might even appeal to one or two in private, asking them if they might intercede on your behalf. While this won’t work when you’ve newly joined a community, it’s a very effective way for established members to preserve the peace.

If you are both long time members of the community, then it’s likely that someone made a mistake. One of you said something and it came across much harsher than either of you intended. Your best action is a direct and graceful admittance that somehow you got off on the wrong foot and to offer an apology–regardless of whether you believe the other person was wrong or right. Again, you have more at risk, and a willingness to be diplomatic will improve your standing among the general community.

Conflict is a part of online conversation. At one time or another, it happens to everyone. But gentle humor, attention toward the community as a group, and diplomacy can guide you through any conflict without damage to your reputation or to your brand.

Share this post/Save for reference