Apple may launch iPhone 5 on August 7.
The Social Business Owner’s Biggest Fear: Hacking.
Every business owner with a social media presence has the same fear: being hacked. In the age of Anonymous, the currently thriving hacker group, those fears become very real as we watch some of the largest companies go down in the hands of equally skilled hackers. @BurgerKing was hacked yesterday, seemingly by the group Anonymous, and it was a long terrible road for this giant fast food company. The Twitter account remained opened and hacked for about one hour until it was able to be shut down and re-started, only when it was re-started the hacker’s Tweets were still there.
Here’s the hacking timeline:
“It has come to our attention that the Twitter account of the BURGER KING® brand has been hacked. We have worked directly with administrators to suspend the account until we are able to re-establish our legitimate site and authentic postings. We apologize to our fans and followers who have been receiving erroneous tweets about other members of our industry and additional inappropriate topics”
While this incident can be scary to all of us independent business owners, keep in mind this usually happens mostly to corporate giants, and if this does happen to you I’m sure someone will have your back.
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Established by Jordan benShea, SkyView Projects is a boutique marketing firm based in Santa Barbara, Ca. We believe your strength is your story, we share your story through innovative marketing initiatives. The SkyView Projects team provides comprehensive marketing solutions with clients near and far. Learn more at SkyViewProjects.com.
How is Facebook’s EdgeRank Impacting Your Updates?
So there you are on a Monday morning scheduling out your posts for the week on your social media calendar thinking everything is looking good, you go to check your stats and CRASH! You see your updates are getting very poor responses, what gives? Facebook’s new EdgeRank update, here is a great article from Brian Solis on what you need to know:
What Your Business Needs to Know About Facebook’s EdgeRank
Facebook recently introduced the ability for brands to increase reach for important posts and updates, but that reach comes at a cost. The prices varies depending on how many fans you have in your community. This new feature coincided with changes to the company’s Edgerank algorithm, which is how Facebook automagically filters posts in and out of your stream. Similar to how Google’s PageRank sorts results to better match your search intention, Facebook uses Edgerank to ensure that engagement is optimized and spam is minimized.
Following these events, many marketers and business executives have claimed a sharp decrease in unpaid post reach. Naturally, accusations of greed and corruption were hurled at Facebook as marketers believed that Facebook’s sole motive for this update was to force brands into a paid position to guarantee reach.
The controversy hit new heights when billionaire Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban launched an offensive charging Facebook with a shakedown and thus threatening to move all of his community efforts to other social networks.
“FB is blowing it!” Cuban howled in a Tweet. He continued with a warning Facebook, one that he’s pursuing, “This is the first step. The Mavs are considering moving to Tumblr or the new Myspace as [sic] primary site.” He shared a telling screenshot in his Tweet of the Mavericks’s Facebook page showing a cost of $3,000 to reach one million of the team’s 2.3 million fans. If you do the math however, you’ll see the potential PPM of that equation is more than reasonable at $0.003 per person. Unfortunately, many experts missed this point.
The pile on continued though. We Are Social, a social media agency, and Socialbakers, developing of social network monitoring and tracking tools for analysis published findings that showed the average, organic post reach had dropped by 40% following the update to EdgeRank.
So, is overall organic post reach down?
Yes.
Is overall spam down as a result?
Yes.
Did Facebook purposefully change its EdgeRank algorithm to reduce reach and sell more ads?
Hardly.
If everyone reacted in similar fashion to Mark Cuban, not only would the business lose, fans lose as well. This is something I examined at length following GM’s famous pullout of its Facebook advertising budget earlier in 2012.
EdgeRank Explained
It’s important to understand how EdgeRank works before passing judgment or sparking fruitless debates. Whether you’re leading a paid, earned, or owned strategy, making informed decisions about goals and proper metrics starts with knowing the real challenges and opportunities.
In all honesty, Facebook should do a better job helping businesses understand not only EdgeRank, but how to better leverage the network as a whole in ways that are more meaningful for businesses and the community at large. But, we have to start somewhere.
In a post entitled, “News Feed, Engagement, and Promoted Posts: How They Work,” Facebook Ad Engineer Philip Zigoris aimed to bust myths while educating marketers. It tells the story of engagement and optimization:
Monitoring what types of posts are getting good responses is key, and always has been. UsePage Insights to determine what types of content – videos, posts, questions, etc. – are getting good engagement versus what types aren’t. Take a look at our Page Publishing Guide for posting best practices, and make sure to use our Page post targeting features so that you reach the audiences most likely to respond to your messages. And for posts that you see are getting a lot of responses, you can promote them to extend your reach to more news feeds.
What are the underlying EdgeRank factors that define whether or not someone sees a post in the news feed?
1) Facebook looks at whether or not you’ve previously interacted with an author’s posts or whether or not your friends are engaging around those posts.
2) If content is or isn’t engaged by your social graph and the network at large affects what you see and what you don’t see.
3) EdgeRank also examines whether or not your have interacted with similar types of posts in the past, i.e. photos, videos, polls, etc.
4) If content or page hosts have received complaints by other users, chances are that you will not see it.
Social Media Optimization is the New SEO
Engagement is the key to amplifying reach.
The debate unfortunately masks a much more important and productive discussion. Businesses confuse Facebook as a utility or service that’s there to help broadcast messages much in the same way businesses pay wire services to distribute press releases or brands buy advertisements on TV or radio to reach as many people as possible. Facebook is a social network to help people communicate, share, and discover. With over one billion people calling Facebook one of their digital homes, a social economy is a natural byproduct. Therefore, businesses must learn that relationships are earned and earned again and communities are built upon a foundation of mutual value, entertainment, and empowerment.
A like isn’t an opt in or subscription for marketing spam. It is an expression not a representation of a captive audience. Regardless of your community size, people are not idly waiting for your marketing messages. The reality is that only a small fraction of your overall community will see your posts. People may have Like’d you, but they’re also following friends, family, other brands and important organizations and events. With everyone publishing content, you’re competing for attention in real-time. Instead, consider competing for attention with the right content at the right-time.
Approach EdgeRank with a philosophy of contributing relevance to merit resonance. You can increase reach by optimizing posts, whether paid or organic, through social media optimization (SMO). If engagement drives reach, then design content to not just be consumable, but also shareable. Likes, comments, shares, tags, et al, spark a social effect and extend the life and volume of your updates. Simply publishing or paying for each without considering shareability or SMO is done so in vain.
This is true for any social network.
Whether you pay to play or you invest in organic engagement, the intention behind each strategy must be the same. Be relevant. Make it count. By striving for relevance, you will increase probability for resonance, which will over time contribute to your EdgeRank significance (RRS).
Originally published at AT&T’s Networking Exchange. Learn more about Brian Solis here.
How will this information change the way you do updates? How will it change your social media strategy?
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post by Jordan benShea
Established by Jordan benShea, SkyView Projects is a boutique marketing firm based in Santa Barbara, Ca. We believe your strength is your story, we share your story through innovative marketing initiatives. The SkyView Projects team provides comprehensive marketing solutions with clients near and far. Learn more at SkyViewProjects.com.
Barack Obama has just announced via Twitter appreciation for his re-election… on Twitter… not on the radio, not in the newspaper, not on live TV… on Twitter, through social media. Are you on social media? If not, why?
Photo from Mashable.
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post by Jordan benShea
Established by Jordan benShea, SkyView Projects is a boutique marketing firm based in Santa Barbara, Ca. We believe your strength is your story, we share your story through innovative marketing initiatives. The SkyView Projects team provides comprehensive marketing solutions with clients near and far. Learn more at SkyViewProjects.com.
Facebook Stories
I am sure you have read them before just as I have, the numerous articles on how social media is just a time suck, a platform that is degrading our communication between each other, just teenagers talking to each other or companies try to sell you something, and on and on. But what isn’t being mentioned in these articles is the vast good social media is doing across the world.
What you are not reading is how social media is allowing the spread of authentic and real and true stories in ways that were never before possible. I am consistently on the lookout for how we can utilize social media for social good, how we can take this powerful communications platform which creates interactions across the globe at lightening speed and share a story that would otherwise go untold.
Many times clients ask me where to start when we meet to discuss their marketing needs, and consistently my response is the same, “tell me your story.” I believe the strength of every business and every non-profit is the story. Because above all else your story tells your “why,” why you do what you do, and the why is what people buy, what people get behind, what makes people believe.
The below link came across my Facebook stream and I found myself intrigued with the following post:
Facebook has created a page, website and videos of people from around the globe using Facebook in extraordinary ways. Now to me this is worth my time, this speaks to the power of stories. Does it help the Facebook brand? Absolutely. But is it a powerful example of how we can utilize this communication platform for good? It most certainly is:
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post by Jordan benShea
Established by Jordan benShea, SkyView Projects is a boutique marketing firm based in Santa Barbara, Ca. We believe your strength is your story, we share your story through innovative marketing initiatives. The SkyView Projects team provides comprehensive marketing solutions with clients near and far. Learn more at SkyViewProjects.com.
The iPhone brand
Whether or not you have an Apple device we can pretty much all agree that Apple is innovative when it comes to their marketing efforts. So it may not be a surprise that the upcoming iPhone 5 is creating such buzz across all blogs and social media platforms… except, they have done NO marketing around it, at all. There has not been a single comment, single social media post, there has been NO WORD at all from Apple about this upcoming product. However, over the last 30 days alone there have been almost 620,000 tweets. That is just on Twitter. That does not include the coverage on Facebook, news outlets, or any of blogs.
What other brand do you know that creates such a buzz about one of their products without a single mention from the company? I have been racking my brain to think of even one other example and have yet to come up with one, and why is this? Why is it that everyone (including myself) cares so much about this upcoming product? Is it because it is pretty? Well, that’s true is it a good looking piece of equipment, but that alone doesn’t create this buzz. Is it because it a cell phone that has such good reception? Not particularly, when the iPhone 4 came out it was plagued with reception issues. Is it because the camera is to good? That could very well be part of it, we know that Annie Leibovitz calls it the “snap shot camera of today.” Is it the apps that you can download? This does have great appeal, with the average number just two years ago being 40 apps per iPhone. So is it really any one of these things? I would say it is all of these things in a neat clean and easy to use package. The fact that this single device can not only allow you to video conference with a touch of the screen better then Skype with your mom or boyfriend. It can also take photos that blow people’s mind and hold all your music, while allowing you to be more productive in your professional life through the numerous apps and email.
I am someone who has been a big believer in BlackBerry since the beginning and I remember when I got my first one and all the sudden my productivity at work shot thru the roof. Suddenly I could check all my emails and answer them before I even got into the office. I could take an extra hour at the gym or a walk on the beach and be in the office and plowing through work well before I was even previously done sorting my email.
But we are in a different time now, things move faster and faster. Social media has us answering and conversing with lightening speed. We need a device that allows us to share the photos of family vacations while managing our email and tweeting and posting Facebook updates. For many people the iPhone is that device and Apple has done a BRILLIANT job at marketing themselves, and their products so you know WHY they make what they make. Because in every thing they do they think differently. And above all else, that is what people buy into, that is what people want and that is what people depend on them for, to create products that represent thinking differently.
Are you already searching for iPhone 5 release dates? I will fully admit I have been since March!
Below is an article about the social media buzz around the iPhone 5 that I thought would be pertinent for this topic:
By: Jason Boies
Rumors continue to swirl over Apple’s much-anticipated iPhone 5. Industry pundits are increasingly certain we’ll see the long awaited phone by year’s end and that the device will be a huge leap forward from its previous 4S model.
Sustained Buzz
Limiting our scope to Twitter only, we see references to the still officially unannounced device have hit over 619,000 mentions over just the past 30 days. The buzz has been relatively sustained with references to the device hitting a 30-day low of only 9,846 mentions on July 1.
A pair of tweets on July 16 from two much-followed accounts regarding a rumor of an August 7 launch provided the first solid conversation peek.
Apple may launch iPhone 5 on August 7.
Alas, those were but rumors, meant merely to stoke the flames of anticipation and drive the populace mad with mobile desire. The effects didn’t last, however, and conversation dipped again for several days before rising almost Batman-like on July 23. As social media users dared to trust again, this even bigger and more sustained spike was now being driven by yet another rumored launch date apparently set for September 21.
Sentiment
In the past, we’ve seen just how passionate iPhone users are with regards to their favorite mobile device, many were apoplectic about the arrival of Instagram on rival Android even. “Team iPhone” is a very dedicated fan base, to be sure.
Despite that strong brand loyalty, by using Radian6 automated sentiment we see that of the 27,500 posts with clear sentiment attached, positive tweets only slightly outnumber the naysayers.
The source of most of the negative sentiment is the new charger port. The new device is, apparently, set to drop the wide dock connector in favor of a smaller one, and the Apple faithful have weighed in on this change in droves.
Sorry: Your old Apple chargers won’t work on the iPhone 5huff.to/MzBXT6
Well on the plus side, Apple is changing the dock for the iPhone 5, so all the chargers and plugs we have right now will be worthless
Heard the. iPhone 5 will not work with anything made under it so no iPhone 4 or 4s chargers , docks, ect think it’s pretty dumb
Another reason why I hate Apple is the next iPhone5 will have a redesigned connector port so all docks & chargers will NOT work#Fail
Those concerns aside, the iPhone 5 remains a heavily-anticipated release. Instances of the word “excited” and/or “Can’t wait” account for almost 16,000 total mentions within the profile.
Can’t wait to cop this iPhone 5. I’m gassed
Can’t wait for the iPhone 5 to come out, getting impatient now
The more I see about the iPhone5 the more excited I’m getting
Team iPhone is Global
While the United States accounts for the largest portion of iPhone Twitter conversation (60%) , Team iPhone appears to have chapters across the globe. Sorting mentions by region, we find Japan, the UK, Indonesia, Canada, and Thailand among the top conversation hot spots.
The iPhone 5: A Lesson in Social Media Filtering
It could be argued that your product has not truly entered the public conscience until its name is used by spammers and other online no-goodniks in an effort to collect your clicks. Apple can rest assured that the iPhone 5 has truly arrived. As I began sorting through my results, I found the need to filter out several phrases using the DOES NOT CONTAIN field in the Radian6 topic profile set up that specifically referenced the iPhone 5 (e.g. “iPhone 5 is sooo sexy”, “iPhone 5 is so sick looking”) Eliminating these spambots brought my topic profile volume down considerably, showcasing the need to pay strict attention to what you’re including AND excluding from your social media monitoring efforts.
Are you excited for the iPhone 5? Or do you feel it’s already over hyped? Tell us about in the comments.And for more Radian6 coverage of items making news and other trending topics, be sure to bookmark our “Trending Topics” post tag!
Photo of iPhone by superstrikertwo
Tags: Apple, filtering, iphone 5, mobile, Social Media Monitoring
About the author Jason Boies is a Community Engagement Specialist at Salesforce Radian6. He’s an avid reader, comics fan and film buff. Focusing on current events and healthcare, Jason can be found on Twitter at @JasonBoies where he tweets about health, tech, breaking news and pop culture.
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post by Jordan benShea
Established by Jordan benShea, SkyView Projects is a boutique marketing firm based in Santa Barbara, Ca. We believe your strength is your story, we share your story through innovative marketing initiatives. The SkyView Projects team provides comprehensive marketing solutions with clients near and far. Learn more at SkyViewProjects.com.
Who doesn’t love an infographic?
How do you measure your social media ROI?
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post by Jordan benShea
Established by Jordan benShea, SkyView Projects is a boutique marketing firm based in Santa Barbara, Ca and aims to help brands maximize their potential through strategic direction and utilization of innovative marketing initiatives. SkyView Projects specializes in social media and brand development and has clients near and far. Learn more at SkyViewProjects.com.
What is the ripple effect of social media on friends and family?
While some people are finding themselves still having to defend social media, what has been clear from the beginning of marketing is the impact that a personal referral has on a purchase. A girlfriend raving about her new pair of wedges she got from Zappos and how they overnighted so she could wear them on an upcoming date, is an immediate endorsement.
First you have the human touch to the brand, this isn’t a commercial on TV, this is a personal story that is being shared with you by a personal friend.
Second, this is not an endorsement she is being asked to give, she is simply sharing a story about the brand that she feels compelled to spread.
Third, and possibly the most important, this is a trust source, she is your girlfriend, someone you have already vetted to be in your inner group. She is a trusted source providing you with a personal story and therefore an complete endorsement of this brand experience.
When people ask me why social media is important for their brand, time and time again my response is the same; if you have people that love your brand, give them the opportunity to share that love. The example above shows how a trusted source is cultivating the brand’s development and very possibly a purchase. Social media allows you to do this through multiple channels, from sharing a post on Facebook, to a Twitter status update, to posting an image through Pinterest.
How are you seeing brand development cultivated through social media?
Below is a piece from eMarketer with recent stats on the ripple effect of social media on friends and family. If you are more of a quantitative person then qualitative, here is another way to help justify the power of social media:
The Ripple Effect of Following a Brand on Social Media
JULY 10, 2012
Nearly one-fifth of US internet users would buy a brand if a friend followed that company on social media
Consumers are influenced by what brands their friends and family follow on social media.
A study from Ipsos OTX and Ipsos Global @dvisor asked internet users worldwide about their presumed action when they saw that a friend “liked” or followed a certain brand on a social network such as Facebook or Twitter. In March 2012, 22% of internet users worldwide said they would buy such a brand. But in the US, that number dropped a bit, to 18% of all US internet users.
While that is a relatively small percentage, younger consumers were more likely to buy because of a “like.” Ipsos found that 23% of US internet users under the age of 35 said they would buy a brand because of a friend’s social endorsement, and nearly as many internet users between the ages 35 and 49 would do so. Females and males were about even by this metric, at 18% vs. 17%.
As social media gives average consumers a larger reach, the impact of “liking” a brand is growing and becoming more significant for companies. Many companies must cater to their fans on social media as a way to cultivate brand advocates who can support and recommend the brand, and its products and services.
A May 2012 study from internet advertising network Burst Media about web users’ preferences and habits found many reasons why US internet users really followed brands on social media. Keeping up with the latest content was the most popular reason, cited by 43.5% of moms, 44.4% of other women and 30.7% of males.
As consumers continue to interact with brands on social media, and as social media’s influence grows, a “like” or follow can influence the purchase decisions of fellow networkers, even if the reason a brand garnered that “like” wasn’t necessarily to provide an outright endorsement.
See the full coverage here.
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post by Jordan benShea
Established by Jordan benShea, SkyView Projects is a boutique marketing firm based in Santa Barbara, Ca and aims to help brands maximize their potential through strategic direction and utilization of innovative marketing initiatives. SkyView Projects specializes in social media and brand development and has clients near and far. Learn more at SkyViewProjects.com.
Social Media Cheat Sheets
We love social media, but it can sometimes be tricky to find your way around so check out these 12 helpful check sheets from Mashable:
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post by Jordan benShea
Established by Jordan benShea, SkyView Projects is a boutique marketing firm based in Santa Barbara, Ca and aims to help brands maximize their potential through strategic direction and utilization of innovative marketing initiatives. SkyView Projects specializes in social media and brand development and has clients near and far. Learn more at SkyViewProjects.com.
What do your teeth & Facebook have in common?
I have found that many clients who are in structured professional industries (real estate, chiropractic, dentistry etc.) have packaged products that they use for their marketing efforts. The benefit to these packages is the instant content and a relatively professional appearance, but the downside is so much greater. Utilizing a packaged product may provide you with an overall professional experience but it will look just that, packaged. Your readers will not feel the personal touch with your brand, the human touch. Your search engine optimization will decrease because many times the websites have the same content for multiple business and Google outsmarts these techniques.
One of the main selling points I hear from these companies selling packaged products are how easy it is for the client, and that is true, but there are also so many other options out there. With the platforms and integration available today clients are able to have as much or as little control as they like while keeping and at the same time encouraging the human touch with their brand.
The below article is one that recently came out on PRWeb about a new packaged service to help dentists with social media. Now here is where I get even more adamant about the human touch with your brand. Relationships, and especially relationships built through social media are human relationships, these are people talking to people, not packages talking to people. It seems to me if there was one areas you would your brand to have the human touch it would be in building your relationships, don’t you think?
See the article below and let me know what you think:
A recent survey of practicing dentists by TheWelathyDentist.com gives the breakdown of how many dentists use Facebook for dental marketing, and the ways they use that site to promote their practices.
Curious about how dentists are using Facebook in their dental practice marketing campaigns? In a recent survey conducted by dental marketing resource TheWealthyDentist.com (TWD), two thirds (67%) of the dentists who responded said they have a Facebook page for their practice, while only one third reported that they do not. Most of the dentists using Facebook pages practice in suburban locations.
The high percentage of dental practices on Facebook is not necessarily surprising, since the site has become a household word —- it has close to 160 million monthly visitors and is second only to Google in total web traffic. Also, since the survey was conducted on the TWD website, it included only dentists who already spend time online.
What’s more interesting for dentists to note is how their colleagues are using their Facebook pages. According to the survey, close to 90 percent of the practices that have a Facebook page use it for basic “business card” information – address, phone number, doctor names and services provided, etc.
When it comes to using the pages for dental advertising, the numbers are much lower. Only 50 percent of the dentists reported using their practice’s Facebook page to offer discounts or specials. And only 35 percent use their pages to network with their dentistry peers.
“This means half of the dentists on Facebook are not maximizing their pages when it comes to marketing their practice,” says Jim Du Molin, editor of TheWealthyDentist.com and founder of dental marketing innovator Internet Dental Alliance, Inc. (IDA). “And about half of the dentists who aren’t yet on Facebook aren’t sure how to use it to promote their practice. That leaves a lot of room for improvement!”
In summary, the majority of dentists surveyed have either taken the first steps of setting up their Facebook business page, or are willing to do so if they could easily ascertain what to do and how to do it. But most have not yet actively and strategically incorporated Facebook into their marketing plans.
“Most dentists know that social media is here to stay,” adds Du Molin. “Most of the dentists who are already on Facebook still need better ways to convert leads. Dentists who aren’t there yet need easier ways to get their pages built. And none of them have any extra time! They all just need a simple way to integrate Facebook with their current marketing plans.”
About TheWealthyDentist.com
Jim Du Molin, Editor in Chief of TheWealthyDentist.com, has been helping dentists improve their dental practice management, marketing and profits since 1985. He helps dentists improve their business skills and manage their practices more effectively. As founder of sister company Internet Dental Alliance, Inc. (IDA), Jim helps dentists attract more new patients that fit with their clinical skills to maximize cash flow.
IDA is North America’s largest provider of websites for dentists and online dental marketing plans. Its New Patient Marketing Machine™ packages include dental directory listings, and customizable dental websites with automatic Facebook page integration and interactive mobile applications.
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post by Jordan benShea
Established by Jordan benShea, SkyView Projects is a boutique marketing firm based in Santa Barbara, Ca and aims to help brands maximize their potential through strategic direction and utilization of innovative marketing initiatives. SkyView Projects specializes in social media and brand development and has clients near and far. Learn more at SkyViewProjects.com.
Renegades Write the Rules & We Can’t Wait to Follow
If you are not new to this blog you know that I am a BIG fan of Digital Royalty and Amy Jo Martin not only for the innovative ways they tackle social media, but for their consistent brand image and engagement. So to no surprise when Amy said she was writing a book I was thrilled! The book comes out Oct 2nd, and you can pre-order your copy like I just did on Amazon. In the mean time enjoy the book dedication she announced to her parents today and take a look at the Tumblr site she set up to learn more, enjoy!
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post by Jordan benShea
Established by Jordan benShea, SkyView Projects is a boutique marketing firm based in Santa Barbara, Ca and aims to help brands maximize their potential through strategic direction and utilization of innovative marketing initiatives. SkyView Projects specializes in social media and brand development and has clients near and far. Learn more at SkyViewProjects.com.
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