Facebook | Marketing Muse

It’s a Violation To Run a Contest on Facebook

June 4th, 2010

Earlier this week the good and noble Chuck Gose posted a link on Twitter to an article about things that many businesses do that are in violation of Facebook’s policy. The big one that jumped out at me is that Facebook prohibits running any contest where the method for entering is to take some action on Facebook.

I can’t count the number of contests I’ve seen where you enter by leaving a comment on a business’s Facebook page. It turns out that’s verboten. Uploading a photo to Facebook? That’s a no-no, too. If you read the rules strictly, even telling people to enter a contest by becoming your Fan (or clicking the Like button to use the new Facebook vernacular) is grounds for having your account deactivated.

Are these rules enforced?

No. Not based on what I see happening on Facebook. There are so many active accounts that it would be a monumental task to try to police all the “illegal” contests that are running, but the rules are officially on the books. So Facebook could drop the hammer any time without notice.

The good news is you can still promote a contest on Facebook as long as the action of entering the contest doesn’t occur on Facebook. So we’re running a contest right now where you leave a comment on our blog and you get a chance to win a free copy of Delivering Happiness by Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh. We had been considering allowing people to enter by leaving a comment on our Facebook wall, as well, but decided to comply with Facebook’s stated policy on contests.

So Facebook is useless for contests?

What we can do while still obeying the letter of Facebook’s policy is talk about the contest on our wall. We can invite visitors to click a link to our blog and leave comments over here. That let’s us still leverage our Facebook network and avoid the risk of offending the powers-that-be.

And of course our friends, clients, and business partners can talk about the contest on Facebook, too.

Clay Mabbitt

social media, web

facebook, social media

2 Comments

Silver Square helps you make your site a LEAD GENERATING MACHINE

Raquel Richardson

business smarts, social media

education, facebook, marketing, relationship building, social networks, tips

no comments

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Clay Mabbitt

news, social media, web

facebook, social media

no comments

Raquel Richardson

marketing, social media

branding, facebook, local business, marketing, prospecting, social media

no comments

Update Your Profile Picture Across Multiple Websites All At Once

February 19th, 2010

I visited a social network this morning that I haven’t been to in almost three months. I wasn’t surprised to see that it still had an old picture of me on my profile. I thought I had updated my picture on all my social media networks a while ago, but this wasn’t a network that I go to a lot. It did get me curious, though, so I checked some of my other profiles. It turns out I only thought I updated all my online avatars with that new photo. More than half still had my old photo up.

Wouldn’t it be nice if I could update my photo in one place and have it updated everywhere? I think so, and the folks at Gravatar agree. They’ve created a central repository where you can upload photos of yourself.

Then any social network or other website that uses Gravatar doesn’t need to ask you to upload a photo. They can look at the email address you used to sign up and pull the image straight from Gravatar. So when you update your Gravatar photo, it automatically updates your photo on every site that uses Gravatar. Makes life a lot easier.

Who uses Gravatar?

I’d love to tell you that Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIN all use the Gravatar protocol. They don’t. If you want to update your photo on these sites, you have to go to each one individually and upload an image.

Most of the action that Gravatar gets is on blogs like this one. That’s right. If you create a Gravatar account (it’s free) and leave a comment on this post, your picture will show up right next to your comment. It will also show up on comments you leave on thousands (if not tens of thousands) of other blogs.

What if you leave a comment and you don’t have a Gravatar? Nothing breaks. You’ll just have a non-descript gray icon that looks vaguely like a human being. I find that when I’m reading a blog post with a long list of comments, the ones with a unique image next to them tend to catch my eye.

Why doesn’t every site use Gravatar?

My first guess is that they want to allow you to be unique on their site. You might put a casual photo of yourself on Facebook and a more professional photo of yourself on LinkedIN. I prefer to have one photo that works in a professional or casual context, but maybe I’m in the minority.

Clay Mabbitt

social media, web

blogging, facebook, linkedin, social media, social networks, twitter

4 Comments

The Pope has spoken, and he says you should blog

January 24th, 2010

You probably think that headline is a joke, but it’s far from it. Mashable reported that Pope Benedict XVI has shared that the cultural shifts have come and it’s time to reach out in the social media world. The Pope himself has launch social media efforts and wants others to follow. Here is an expert from his original message:

“The spread of multimedia communications and its rich “menu of options” might make us think it sufficient simply to be present on the Web, or to see it only as a space to be filled. Yet priests can rightly be expected to be present in the world of digital communications as faithful witnesses to the Gospel, exercising their proper role as leaders of communities which increasingly express themselves with the different “voices” provided by the digital marketplace. Priests are thus challenged to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audiovisual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, websites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization and catechesis.”

Social media is defintely here to stay. It can be a perfect outlet for your message, with one of the key phrases of the Pope’s message being: “exercising their proper role as leaders of communities.” Use these wonderful outlets to see how you can speak to and engage your community. If you want more on this topic, I’ve listed a few other posts as reference:

Do you need a Facebook fan page or a group?
How to get more readers to your blog
The facts and stats of the social media revolution – a must watch video
The networking benefits of Twitter
How to use Flickr in your business
Using LinkedIn for business

Raquel Richardson

marketing, social media

blogging, facebook, flickr, ideas, social media, social networks, tips, twitter, video, youtube

2 Comments

How do I get people to read my blog?

December 7th, 2009

We recently released a post about the significant traffic builder a blog can be, and, in our December newsletter (sent only to newsletter subscribers) we talked about creating the right kind of content for your audience. This begged the question from a few of you: How do I get people to read my blog?

First, let me step back and say kudos to you for starting your blog. Keep it up! Now to get those readers… below are some tips for getting your work out and about. Give some a try and let me know how they work for you. I always like to hear real-world success stories! (or, the opposite of those stories; we all can learn from those!)

Make it a habit to update your status on Facebook and LinkedIn and wherever else you’re posting status updates to mention your blog. You can talk about that you’re writing your blog, put a link to the latest post, mention the headline and link to the rest, etc. Just keep it out there in front of people so they KNOW one actually exists.
Use Twitter to push your posts out on a daily basis. If you’ve been blogging for an extra long time, like us, then you have mounds of content you can push out on a regular basis. Use the archives! History has proven it’s relevance time and time again; don’t think because it’s older than a week it’s not good information to share.
Mention your blog on your business cards. Learn to bridge the gap between the real and virtual world and talk about your work when you’re talking to someone at networking events, grocery store lines, at your kid’s actvities. If it’s helpful, it won’t seem out of place. Figure out how to work it in.
Comment on other blogs (read: those blogs with lots of followers) and link to your post/blog as relevance to your comment. This is a proven tactic to get like-minded readers following you.
Get a little crafty on LinkedIn and join groups that want to know your info. Post your blog there and comment on other group posts. Share, share, share.
Be like us and post your blog front and center to your homepage. Visitor’s are sure to see your most recent posts and possibly keep coming back for more.

Get rolling on a few of these, be consistent and keep adding relevant and valuable content to your blog. You’re sure to get the readers you’re looking for.

Raquel Richardson

marketing

ask, blogging, facebook, ideas

2 Comments

Facebook Fan Pages Are Better Than Groups

November 18th, 2009

As Facebook’s popularity continues to grow (128+ million unique visitors in October 2009) it is worth your time to consider how you can represent your business on this social network. Facebook offers you two options: fan pages and groups. I sort of tipped my hand with the title of this post. I think fan pages are better in almost every case. Certainly I believe they are better when you are creating a home on Facebook for your business. But let’s start with the one area where groups shine before we move on.

Groups

Groups give you one important feature that a fan page doesn’t: a velvet rope. Just like a fancy night club, you get to decide who is allowed in. While fan pages allow you to set restrictions on the location or age of people who can become a fan, a group gives you total control. You can accept or reject everyone that asks to join. This makes it ideal for reunions, clubs, or other closed groups you are communicating with through Facebook.

If you have a business (or even a typical not-for-profit) you aren’t looking to exclude anyone who wants to support you, though.

Fan Pages

This is where fan pages come in. You create a page that operates in a very similar fashion to your personal Facebook page, but it is for your business instead of you.

Just like your personal page, when you have at least 100 25 fans/friends you can get a shorter, more attractive URL. Isn’t facebook.com/graybox easier to remember than facebook.com/pages/Fishers-IN/Silver-Square/3847892…
Your fan page content is visible to someone before they become a fan. That means you have a chance to make a good impression on a total stranger, but it also means search engines can index your page.
With a fan page you can add custom Facebook applications, so a simple example might be adding a tab that shows the RSS feed from your blog.
The insights section of your fan page lets you see demographic information about your fans like gender, age, and geographic location.

Have you seen any other advantages of fan pages? Or do you think I’m overlooking some benefits of groups? I’d love to hear other people’s experiences in the comments.

Clay Mabbitt

social media

branding, facebook, social media

9 Comments

3 Easy Ways to Add Readers to Your Blog

September 20th, 2009

This isn’t going to be rocket science, but it will be easy peasy. It will be so easy you’re possibly already doing it, but not realizing it’s a marketing activity that helps you build readership to your blog/site. I’m going to use the three most popular mediums I know this blog’s audience uses, but you can just about mix and match any medium to push content out and about.

Tweet It. Yes, get yourself a Twitter account if you don’t just yet, but it’s a great way to gather readers and build followers of your content and company. Use a service like Bitly to shorten your links and track how many people are visiting that link. I recently showed a client how one Tweet sent 121 people to his website; he had no idea you could track links like that. Be sure to send people to the link you’re talking about, though, not a homepage unless that information lives there or there is another reason people cannot get to that information, like a membership subscription.
Status Updates (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook). If you’re working on a blog post, tell people about it and link to your blog. Maybe they didn’t even know you had a blog! Maybe the new topic you share is just the thing someone has been trying to learn more about. We often release how-tos on our blog (Thanks, Clay) and the Facebook icon for sharing links was just the information someone needed. You never know who you may reach.
Roundup. In your email newsletter (yes, you need to have one at least quarterly if not monthly), add links to your most popular blogs in a blog roundup. If you’re not sure what this is about, check out our newsletter. We often use this roundup feature to remind our newsletter readers of our blog and share our most clicked-on topics.

Raquel Richardson

branding, business smarts, marketing, social media, web

branding, email, facebook, ideas, linkedin, newsletter, social media, tips, twitter

no comments

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