The Social Path

Amazing content isn't always created or curated. It's also discovered.

2013-01-11T17:42:04-06:00

Most people seem to think that great online content is generated by two kinds of people: creators and curators.

Creators are the artists, entrepreneurs, humorists, essayists, musicians and podcasters who live to make new things. Curators use their time and talents to sift through all these creations to find the pieces truly worth sharing amid the Web’s mountains of mediocrity.

These two roles account for the vast majority of popular Web fodder, but there’s a third form of creativity that’s often overlooked when it comes to making great digital content: discovery.

The idea that “everything is on the Internet” is a myth, and a widespread one at that. Every day, cultural archaeologists are uncovering amazing finds from the “real” world and digitizing them for future generations. This week, I even got to enjoy the feeling of being one of those people.

In December, I ran across the photo at the top of this post when it was shared by a friend on Facebook. The photo had a strong emotional impact on me, and, surprised I had never seen it, I immediately wanted to know the details.

When I went to Google, I found something truly odd on Google: almost nothing. The photo had been shared many times, but no one seemed to know the story behind the shot, other than the name of the photographer and the newspaper where it was originally published.

When I get an itch to find something, I can’t stop until I’ve found it. I emailed the newspaper’s editors, who were very helpful but admitted they couldn’t remember when the photo was taken or where it might be found in their microfilm archives.

I kept digging in my (limited) spare time over the coming weeks and, thanks to a blessed research librarian and several other generous souls, I tracked down all the details and even the photographer himself.

If you’re interested, you can read the whole story over at Poynter.org, where my writeup was posted earlier this week. The reactions have been fantastic, and I have to admit it’s been one of the more rewarding personal projects I’ve tackled in a while.

But why is it rewarding? I didn’t create the photo, and I’m not the first to share it online. However, the story behind it was something that hadn’t been told. There’s a singular joy in realizing that you’ve actually added to the digital sum of human knowledge.

The lesson I’m trying to share isn’t that you need to go take on obsessive reporting projects. It’s more important that you simply think of discovery as a key part of your approach to digital content and social media.

We can’t all create the next great or hilarious thing, and few of us have the time to be curators of the global information fire hose. But any of us can shut down the browser, get out in the world and explore. Sometimes the things most worth finding can’t be Googled. Yet.

David Griner is the VP/Director of Digital Content for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Three reasons LinkedIn should stop showing who viewed your profile.

2012-10-30T11:29:11-05:00

LinkedIn has always been a bit of an outlier in the social networking world, which is often to its advantage. But oddly enough, the site that bills itself as the professional’s social media hub lacks one basic component of professionalism: discretion.

Specifically, I’m talking about the ability to see who has viewed your profile, a feature that is now being automatically pushed to your inbox in the form of occasional email alerts.

This has always been an odd feature, one you won’t find on almost any other reputable network. For years, I assumed the increasingly vocal push for online privacy would motivate LinkedIn to drop the feature, but instead the site has increased the visibility of your profile viewers, making it harder to avoid seeing (and obsessing over) who has browsed your info.

To be clear, yes, you can disable this feature — somewhat. In your profile settings, you can choose to “Select what others see when you've viewed their profile.” There are three options, one of which is complete anonymity. Certain privacy settings also prevent you from seeing recent viewers if you are not publicly viewable yourself.

However, I have not found a setting to turn off the email notifications you receive about people viewing your profile. LinkedIn offers many email subscription options, but none is specific to updates about your profile views.

You may be wondering why I wouldn’t want to know who has viewed my profile. It’s interesting info, and it’s their fault for not setting their privacy better, right?

I realize I’m likely in a tiny minority of users who don’t like this feature. Our chief strategist told me today it’s his favorite LinkedIn feature, one that motivates him to log in almost daily.

I admit it can be fun to play the guessing game of who was checking out your profile, but I still don’t like it. Here are my beefs with this feature and why I think it should be dropped from LinkedIn:

1. It’s a waste of time that plays solely to our curiosity.

You don’t gain some sort of insight into the social strategic landscape of corporate America by seeing who viewed your profile. It’s simply not information you can put to good use.

At best, you’ve learned about a potential customer, client or employer. But if they don’t take the extra effort to reach out to you, guess what? They don’t want to.

Obviously you’ll be tempted to contact the person or their company, but you shouldn’t. Responding to a profile view on LinkedIn is creepy, awkward and unprofessional.

Instead, you’ll spend minutes, hours — maybe even days — thinking about why certain people were looking at your profile. You’d be better off simply not knowing it had ever happened.

2. It creates false expectations.

“Hey man, any idea why one of your coworkers was looking at my profile?” I’ve gotten that question several times over the years, and my response is always the same: “No.”

When LinkedIn shows you your recent profile viewers, it creates an often false expectation that this person is interested in learning more about you. Hey, maybe they are, but to my point earlier, it’s best to wait until they act on it.

Was the HR manager from a major company looking at your profile as a prelude to a job offer? Maybe. But he or she might also have been browsing job titles and descriptions to help flesh out the posting for a job similar to yours. Heck, they could have clicked on the wrong person.

In this case, the only possible value to seeing this kind of viewer is if it inspires you to keep your job information and successes up to date. And LinkedIn has plenty of other ways to remind you about that.

3. As a lucrative centerpiece of LinkedIn, it could inspire similar features.

Listen, I want LinkedIn to be profitable, but is this really the route to take? “Who’s Viewed My Profile” is now the No. 1 feature on LinkedIn’s upgrade chart, meaning the site obviously knows users are willing to pay to see more about the people seeing them.

I worry that the success of this feature will guide LinkedIn’s future development, making it more about rubbernecking than networking. Even worse, it lends believability to all those “see who viewed your Facebook profile” scams — and could eventually even convince Facebook to create the feature for real. (Facebook has firmly promised this will not happen, but never say never when stock prices are on the line.)

So what’s your take? Are you obsessed or annoyed with seeing who has viewed your LinkedIn profile? If you’re a fan, what do you like most about it? Let us know in the comments.

David Griner is the VP/Director of Digital Content for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Photo credit: Howard Owens on Flickr.

How to cure your iPhone's Facebook infection.

2012-10-05T12:07:35-05:00

The recent iOS6 update for iPhones has sparked its fair share of consternation from users, but most of the discussion has been about the new Apple Maps as an underwhelming replacement for Google Maps.

Personally, I've been far more annoyed with how the Facebook app has "integrated" into my daily tasks, like sending emails to coworkers or checking my calendar. Emails to longtime colleagues suddenly default to Facebook.com email addresses, and tons of random, unsolicited Facebook events are popping up in my phone calendar, making it hard to find the "real" meetings I'm supposed to be in.

If you've faced similar frustrations, I wanted to share a few quick steps to fixing the problem. These likely seem obvious to some of you, but hey, if it helps a few of you avoid the annoyance, I've done my part.

Step 1: Upgrading and syncing

If you've already upgraded your device to iOS6, you likely noticed that the process triggered a prompt asking if you wanted Facebook to have access to some of your built-in apps, like Contacts and Calendar. It's an all-or-nothing consent, but as I'll explain below, you can opt out of certain portions after accepting the change.

To be clear, the Facebook integration is a nice feature overall. I like being able to share photos directly from my photo gallery without having to pull up the Facebook app, for example. But that's not to say every aspect is worth having.

Step 2: Consider evicting Facebook from your Contacts

For me, the biggest annoyance with the marriage of Facebook into my iPhone has been the way my longtime contacts are now listed by their "Facebook email address." Recently, Facebook replaced your preferred email address with a facebook.com account, and few users bothered to change it back.

That means that when I try to email a colleague or friend, my iPhone suddenly defaults to Facebook.com addresses rather than their work or personal account. I don't mind having their Facebook.com emails on hand, but I'll likely never use it as a first pick for contacting someone.

To turn off Facebook contact integration, go into your iPhone's Settings, then select Facebook and unselect Contacts.

I continued to have a few lingering issues with recipient emails defaulting to Facebook.com addresses, but this is easily remedied on a case-by-case basis by selecting the blue arrow to the right of a contact's email address (when it pops up as the default) and clicking "Remove From Recents."

Step 3: Want to cut Facebook events from your Calendar?

I'm not big on Facebook events. I attend, at best, one each month or two. So having Facebook events dumped into my iPhone Calendar (especially events I haven't RSVP'd to), was an annoyance.

To be fair, I've never liked the iPhone's daily Calendar interface, which gives you only the tiniest window in which to scroll through the day's upcoming meetings. But having Facebook events cluttered in there just made it worse.

Luckily, it's just as easy to remove them by deselecting "Calendar" in the Settings > Facebook tab of your iPhone.

Step 4: Don't let your friends (and Siri) prank you

One more subtle issue to be aware of is that iPhones with the voice-activated Siri interface — the 4S and 5, specifically — have a default setting that allows you to use Siri while your phone is locked. With the new Facebook integration, that means friends can pick up your locked phone and post to Facebook for you. That could get ugly, so I'd strongly recommend going into Settings > General > Passcode Lock and deselecting Siri as an app that can be accessed while the phone is locked.

(Hat tip for the Siri advice to cnet, which has a nice overall writeup on the Facebook integration.)

Hopefully this helps a few of you unclutter your newly upgraded phone. What about you? Do you have any tips on ways to make the daily experience of iOS6 a bit smoother or more efficient? We'd love to hear them in the comments.

David Griner is the VP/Director of Digital Content for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Photo credit: Andres Rueda on Flickr.

How Facebook comments can make you more attractive.

2012-09-12T18:03:24-05:00

I don't need Facebook to tell me that my longtime friend Jenny, shown above, is gorgeous and fascinating. But apparently it doesn't hurt.

A new study from the University of Missouri has found that positive comments posted on your Facebook profile photo can act as "social cues" that make you seem more attractive "physically, socially, and professionally" to those viewing the photo.

Here's how the university summarized the findings:

Facebook users whose profile photos include social cues, additional information about the user, and many positive comments on their profile photos are viewed much more socially and physically attractive than users who have fewer social cues and negative comments on their profile photos.

In other words, people think you're hotter when they see other people calling you hot. But it also helps if the photo shows you doing something that's specific to your personality and passions.

This study sparked a lot of debate today in the halls of Luckie, where we wondered what exactly these findings say about us. Are our opinions so easily persuaded that we can't even decide how we feel about someone's appearance unless someone tells us how to feel?

Personally, I take a more optimistic approach. I think this shows that we judge people not just on their looks, but also on their character. When you see positive comments from friends on someone's photo, it shows that their friends truly care about them. Yes, it's an endorsement, but it's the best kind of endorsement, the kind that's made from the heart with no expectation of anything in return.

Here's more information from the University of Missouri on how the study was performed and what it means for Facebook users who want to give a strong first impression online:

For the study, (doctoral student Seoyeon) Hong showed different Facebook profile pictures of the same person to more than a hundred college students. Each picture varied in social cues and the quality of comments. Profile photos with social cues are photos of the profile user that include additional information about who they are and what they do. For example, a photo with a social cue of an athlete would be a picture of that person playing sports. Likewise, a social cue for a musician may be a photo of that person playing an instrument. Hong and Wise found that people with Facebook profile photos that include social cues were perceived to be more physically and socially attractive than people with profile photos that were plain headshots.

“These findings show how important it is to present yourself strategically on Facebook,” Hong said. “If you want to be perceived positively by people who view your profile page, including friends and potential employers, it is important to include profile pictures with positive social cues. No matter what the profile owner does to tailor their Facebook page, comments left on their page from other users should be monitored as well. Positive comments are very helpful, but negative remarks can be very damaging, even if they are silly or sarcastic."

Just for fun, I've attached a few more profile photos below from friends who volunteered to have their socially endorsed headshots shared with the public. (Do you find them more interesting simply because I'm telling you they are?)

So what do you think? Will this research change the way you approach your profile photo in the future? Do you really even care what people think about you based on a photo?

David Griner is the VP/Director of Digital Content for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Five ways to ensure your Facebook page survives staff transitions.

2012-08-16T16:31:14-05:00

How secure is your business's Facebook page? No, I don’t mean secure from password hackers or spammers. I mean how secure is the future of your page from staff fluctuations and the inevitable revolving door of administrators?

Case in point: This week, we’ve been helping one of our clients salvage a Facebook page that essentially seemed to vanish into thin air. It’s one of several they manage nationwide, and while the exact details are still unclear, it appears to have disappeared shortly after the exit of an employee who was its only administrator.

I can’t tell you much more, but I can tell you this: You don’t want to lose access to your Facebook page. It’s not like being locked out of your house. It's like coming home to find your house has been relocated to the bottom of the ocean.

In this case, Facebook has proven quite helpful, but the experience has gotten us thinking about some safeguards that businesses can put in place to help ensure a smooth transition through almost any internal shifts and shenanigans:

1. Make the most of Facebook’s admin roles

One key reason brands don't have more Facebook admins is because for many years, admins wielded absolute power. That meant that adding admins meant entrusting each one with mighty powers to create or delete content, not to mention removing other admins.

But just a few months back, Facebook launched a much-needed new feature for brand pages: tiered access for admins. This means you no longer have to give the analytics guy all the keys to the content kingdom just so he can pull some monthly numbers.

The options for admin roles are currently:

Manager: Can manage admin roles, send messages and create posts as the Page, create ads and view insights.
Content Creator: Can edit the Page, send messages and create posts as the Page, create ads and view insights.
Moderator: Can respond to and delete comments on the Page, send messages as the Page, create ads, and view insights
Advertiser: Can create ads and view insights.
Insights Analyst: Can view insights.

Depending on the size of your organization, this level of variety can be incredibly helpful for securing your page — not just from malicious sabotage, but also (and more likely) from accidental posting or edits.

2. Add your admins now, because Facebook won’t do it later

“For legal reasons, we don't have the capability to add admins to Pages from our end.” Thus spoke Facebook when we first inquired about our client's missing page. So even though the page still existed somewhere in Facebook’s vault of data, we couldn’t reassign it to another admin from the company or our agency.

That’s bad. Real bad. The only remaining solution is to create a new page and work with Facebook to have your original fans migrated over. I’m just thankful that Facebook’s willing to do this much, but it obviously hinges on you having a relationship with some Facebook folks. We do, but not everyone is so lucky.

The moral is to make sure your Facebook admin bench is as deep as possible without exposing you to unnecessary risk. While the ideal team varies based on your company’s structure, it’s generally wise to ensure that each director-level leader in marketing, PR or digital strategy at least has some admin role on all brand pages.

On the other hand, high-level supervisors need to be respectful of the ground rules that come with admin privilege. That means no lurking over the page and acting as the divine hammer of comment deletion. Let your community management teams do their jobs and run the day-to-day page administration.

Oh, and if you do become an admin, resist the urge click Like when your brand posts on Facebook. In our field, that’s a facepalm-worthy faux pas.

3. Use third-party page management tools

Sometimes having too many Facebook admins can be a bigger problem than having too few. Even with the new admin permission levels, it can become frustrating to maintain a core team and update responsibilities as staffers come and go.

That’s one of the reasons I like third-party software suites that help you manage multiple accounts for a brand. There are a lot of benefits to such a tool: It’s convenient, it saves you the time of logging in and out of multiple channels, etc.

But one of the most overlooked benefits is that many social media management tools allow you to have a relatively large social media team without having to give everyone direct admin access or passwords.

For example, we use Social Engage, a paid tool previously known as CoTweet Enterprise. One reason it’s a good fit for clients with customer service call centers is that they can have several team members responding to customers on Facebook and Twitter without any of those employees actually becoming admins or learning any passwords other than their Social Engage log-in. Also, security settings within the software let you limit the impact any one user can have on other users or the brand as a whole.

Again, it’s important to have a Facebook admin team that’s large enough to ensure you’ll be able to manage any transition, but tools like these can also help you avoid going too far in the opposite direction and having too many cooks in the Facebook kitchen.

4. Audit your admins monthly or quarterly

Unless you’re running your business solo, it’s worth scheduling an occasional audit of who all has admin permission on your Facebook pages. Here at Luckie, we manage dozens of client pages, and despite our relatively low turnover rate (our average employee tenure is seven years) I still check our pages monthly to ensure that the admin team is up to date for each.

Obviously, it’s also wise to remove admins or change account passwords when an employee has left the company. The best course of action is to work with your IT department to incorporate social media access review into their official procedures for exiting employees. That way you’ll have an added safeguard to help raise any warning flags when someone is moving on.

5. Ask your fans for their emails.

Let’s talk worst-case scenario: You lose access to your Facebook page and, for whatever reason, Facebook isn’t able to help you migrate fans from the original page to a new one.

Heck, let’s go one better/worse: Facebook shuts down for good and takes all your fans with it. Over night — if you’ve gone all in on Facebook, at least — your social channel of choice, your digital community dwindles to zero.

What would you do? Panic, obviously. But then what?

Such a nightmare scenario is just one of many reasons to be gathering your fans’ email addresses now. If you can contact them directly, you can reach them in any dire circumstance. And barring disaster, you’ll also have a nicely segmented email database that can be supplemented with their preferences for product info, discounts, or whatever other news you might want to share.

Of course you can’t just post a Facebook status that says: “Hey everybody, what’s your email address? Let us know in the comments!”

Instead, simply make email acquisition a key component of your promotions and giveaways, on Facebook or anywhere else. You’re probably already requiring email addresses in your promotions, but are you thinking ahead about how they could be used and writing your opt-in messages accordingly?

This seems obvious, but the reality for many brands is that it’s quite difficult and time-consuming to gather an email database that even comes close to the size of their Facebook audiences. One promotion isn’t going to cut it. Nor two.

Different fans have different motivations for sharing their contact information. For some, it’s about entering to win. For others, it’s about getting early access to discounts and new releases. You’ll need to experiment with a variety of these approaches if you want to get an email database that’s even somewhat representative of your Facebook fan base.

Hopefully these tips will help you not only avoid potential disaster but also ensure your pages are structured in the best possible way for the future. Unfortunately, no amount of preparation can make your page invincible — or immortal — but if you plan for the worst, every other potential roadblock will feel like a speed bump by comparison.

David Griner is the VP/Director of Digital Content for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Photo credit: Matthew High on Flickr.

Why we've launched #ALNewsJobs and how you can help.

2012-06-13T12:13:07-05:00

One of the two best decisions I ever made was going into newspaper journalism. The other was leaving it.

Being trained as a reporter and editor taught me invaluable professional skills, including the ability to look at any situation objectively and analytically. I also ended up marrying the incredibly smart police reporter who sat next to me, which was quite a bonus.

But when I lost my job as a newspaper city editor in 2005, I found myself at a difficult crossroad — one that eventually led me here, to a new career that proved even more exciting and rewarding.

This week, hundreds of other seasoned journalists in Alabama found themselves in the painful situation of being without a job. Advance Publications, owner of three major Alabama daily newspapers and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, cut an estimated 600 jobs, 400 of them in Alabama. Some may be re-hired as the papers restructure to focus on digital, but many will find themselves without work and without a lot of clear options.

I’m not the only ex-journalist here at Luckie, so our team decided to do what we could to help. We’ve launched a project called #ALNewsJobs, a grassroots effort to find and share good job openings for all those affected by this week’s layoffs.

You can help by following @ALNewsJobs on Twitter and Liking ALNewsJobs on Facebook. Of course, you can help even more by sharing great job openings that could be a good fit for the diverse array of talented writers, editors, designers, photographers and others now available for hire.

This project has already gotten great support within the community, and we hope to see that grow. Helping one person find a job is a monumental task these days. Helping 400 people is all the more daunting.

But it can be done. Not by one small group alone, but by a community that earnestly cares about neighbors, colleagues and friends. A community that’s willing to repay those who’ve kept us informed and connected, with few perks beyond the pride of a byline.

This is a painful moment for Alabama. But this state is home to the best storytellers in the nation, and that’s not going to change. What is going to change is the woefully narrow perception many companies have of journalists and their value.

Hiring a journalist isn’t an act of charity. It’s an investment that will pay off for your organization with greater productivity, innovative problem-solving and outstanding professional ethics.

Now let’s go find some good jobs for some great people.

David Griner is the VP/Director of Digital Content for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Should you pull your advertising from Facebook?

2012-05-16T10:50:23-05:00

General Motors is pulling $10 million in Facebook advertising, but does that mean you should follow suit? Is this one of those defining “abandon ship!” moments?

Before I answer, let me first propose that we’re asking the wrong question. It’s not about “Should I stop advertising on Facebook?” The real question is, “Should I be advertising on Facebook in the first place?”

Here at Luckie & Company, we’ve generated literally billions of ad impressions for clients on Facebook, typically at a miniscule cost compared to other media options. And what we’ve consistently seen is that Facebook ads are incredibly effective — with a few caveats. Namely, your brand has to be committed to both Facebook and creative flexibility.

General Motors is citing poor sales-related ad performance as the reason to pull its money from Facebook, and I’m sure that’s true. But those of us who deal with Facebook ad campaigns every day quickly found ourselves wondering if GM was really trying hard enough.

By audience size alone, it’s clear that General Motors has struggled to keep up with its peers, especially at the global level. Let’s look at some numbers for comparison

Automakers | Facebook Likes

BMW: 9,914,313

Hyundai Worldwide: 2,430,572

Honda: 2,057,104

Kia Worldwide: 1,925,231

Ford: 1,502,385

Volkswagen USA: 1,169,401

Toyota USA: 935,990

Volvo: 415,784

General Motors: 378,491

Chrysler: 298,765

Fiat: 289,134

Renault: 239,127

Auto Sub-Brands | Facebook Likes

Mercedes-Benz (Daimler): 7,319,676

Audi USA (Volkswagen): 5,215,038

Mini (BMW): 2,969,017

Chevrolet (GM): 1,215,242

Cadillac (GM): 1,167,853

GMC (GM): 660,359

Land Rover (Tata): 386,392

Buick (GM): 411,908

Smart (Daimler): 283,079

Acura (Honda): 173,020

What these comparisons show us is that GM has been a respectable player in the Facebook marketing space, but clearly not a leader. The automaker admitted as much when it fired its social media ad agency in December (read more here), after which the agency complained that GM never understood the value of social media as place to build brand instead of just racking up sales.

So let’s get back to the real question: Should YOU pull your ads from Facebook? Or maybe kill that big campaign you had in the works?

Probably not.

Facebook ads remain tremendously effective (compared to the alternatives) at driving awareness and audience growth within Facebook. True, Facebook is saturating a bit, making it tougher for brands in lots of ways. More businesses are competing for limited ad space, and consumers are becoming jaded by the tedious and unexciting ads they see stripped down the side of each page.

Looking at the numbers

I had our agency's Facebook ad guru, Keith Browder, crunch some comparison numbers to see if Facebook is really losing its punch as an ad forum. Here’s what he found:

Comparing a Facebook campaign we’re running now to a similar one we ran this time last year, we’ve seen the click-through rate (CTR) rise from .04% in 2011 to .07% in 2012. Those numbers might sound low, but with the staggering number of ad impressions Facebook generates, it’s really not bad at all.

And while this case study sounds like good news for Facebook, it probably says more about our agency's ability to tweak creative and improve our targeting to yield better results.

Things are a bit less rosy on two other fronts: cost per Like and cost per thousand impressions (CPM). There, we saw the cost of new Likes rise from $1.30 each in 2011 to a number that hovers between $1.48 (for Sponsored Stories) and $2.75 for display ad units.

The nice thing about Facebook is that we can, at any time, adjust the current campaign to bring our costs down and increase our effectiveness. That’s a time-consuming process that requires experience and expertise, but it’s the only way to ensure your Facebook campaigns are consistently effective.

Apples, Oranges, Google and Facebook

Many pundits are using GM’s exit from Facebook as a reason to compare Facebook ads side-by-side with Google’s ad options. But any social media savvy marketer know that this is a real apples-and-oranges debate.

Google has a myriad of ad options ranging from search and mobile to YouTube pre-rolls and Google+ Circle targeting. Facebook, on the other hand, has Facebook ads, which have notoriously (and intentionally) few bells and whistles. Facebook has never wanted to be seen as primarily an ad platform, though Wall Street investors are sure to disagree once the stock goes public.

So in summary, if Facebook is important to your business, by all means keep advertising on Facebook. But keep some of these tips in mind:

• Facebook ads can’t be your only growth strategy. Ensure that your business’ page is being promoted on your products, in stores, on traditional ads or anywhere else you can reach your audience. And sure, try some Google search ads and see how they perform as a driver to Facebook, not just your home page.

• Be flexible. If your Facebook ads aren’t working, try something else. Change your targeting. Change your creative. Kill the ads that aren’t working and enhance the ones that are. Are you wasting money on audience-growth ads that hit existing fans? Are your thumbnail images cluttered and confusing? Are your headlines saying anything worth acting on? Be hard on yourself and set aside the time to treat your campaigns with professional diligence and creativity.

• Keep people within Facebook. The best ad units offered by Facebook are those that generate Likes, not click-throughs. So focus on Sponsored Stories, Like ads and display ads that explain the benefits of becoming a fan. It’s worth experimenting with Facebook advertising as a driver to your website, but I doubt you’ll find it to be the best option. Instead, focus on building and engaging your audience, then producing content that fans the flames.

And remember, no ad medium is ineffective by nature. Dismissing an entire outlet, whether it’s Facebook or radio or rich media, is just a cop-out. Think about what you’re trying to accomplish, then find the right tools for the job. From this perspective, the recent ad flap may say more about General Motors than it does about Facebook.

David Griner is the VP/Director of Digital Content for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Photo credit: H Aoki on Flickr.

Before you "pin" or "highlight" on Facebook Timeline, ask yourself these questions.

2012-05-10T12:48:16-05:00

The integration of Facebook Timeline brought a slew of new goodies that may not have come across your radar yet.

One of these tools is the ability to “Pin to Top” of the page or “Highlight” a post within a page, but the bigger question, more than just the simple mechanics of clicking a pencil or star, is how to decide which content deserves this gold standard of your fans' of attention.

When considering what to do with certain media or posts, it’s important to think about the original purpose for which the content was created as well as the audience that it was created for. You wouldn’t want a work safety video highlighted on your page, but an ad campaign that showcased a new product line would be a perfect fit. And you wouldn’t pin a policy or frequently asked questions to the top of your page every week; that content can be better placed on the About page.

Ask yourselves these questions before deciding to “Pin to Top” or “Highlight”:

Is it quality content?

You ultimately want your content speaking the language of those you want to talk to. Make sure it addresses them easily and succinctly. Also, that content needs to be delivered as simply as possible and easy to understand. It must speak directly to your readers, otherwise, why would they read anything more from you? Livestrong, an organization that serves people affected by cancer, does a great job of putting vital information in the forefront.

Is it relevant to my overall branding strategy?

Every company and entity should have a tone and a voice, especially online. It is important to know and understand what this is before you pin something to the top of a page for a week. It can be as simple as going back and thumbing through Web copy, previously published blogs, or memos to better understand how to cultivate content that is appropriate to Highlight on a page.

Is it promoting conversation and/or conversion?

Content that asks questions about your industry or product can be a great avenue for fan conversion into sales. For instance, the above Starbucks poll is not only a fun conversation starter, but a great way to learn more about your audience. Thought-provoking questions take time and have to be cultivated. The result is often something that is noteworthy to everyone even remotely interested in your company or product, which leads us to…

Is it timely?

The whole idea of Facebook Timeline is that it forces you to think of Facebook as something that chronicles every stage of your life — personal, brand, company, etc. With that in mind, you have to think of your content as having a life cycle as well. If it’s old, whether in theme or context, cut it out and get a fresh take that allows for the evolving of your brand as well as your customers or clients. Also, keep in mind what triggers an action from your audience. Help them solve a problem and you'll have a customer for life.

Bells and whistles are great, but what you do with them is what matters on Facebook. Eventually and undoubtedly, there will be a whole new selection of ways to publish content to your page. Remember, it will never be a one-size-fits-all approach. Take time to think about how best to utilize the content you have regularly and keep up with what works with your audience through analytics.

Catie Farrell is a Social Media Planner at Luckie & Company. She can be reached by email or follow @caetee on Twitter.

Image via trp0 on Flickr.

Job seekers, stop writing about yourself and start writing about your industry.

2012-05-09T15:39:31-05:00

“I am passionate about social media.” I’ve seen this line in dozens of cover letters, resumes and LinkedIn profiles that I’ve reviewed in recent weeks as we try to fill an opening for a social media planner.

But often, I find myself doubting that the candidates really mean it.

Why? Because when I take the time to read their blogs, their Twitter feeds and their Pinterest boards, I find musings on everything BUT social media. They talk about their opinions of movies, celebrities, politics, fashion, sports and music. They talk about what they’re buying, watching, hoping, eating, drinking and regretting.

But what they don’t write about is the industry they claim to be “passionate” about joining. And that leaves me with the impression that these candidates are looking for a paycheck, not a career.

This isn’t unique to social media marketing. I’d wager that hiring managers in all manner of industries are witnessing something similar — a seeming indifference among candidates who quarantine their professional lives in the sterility of LinkedIn, then go off and write about anything and everything but their career of choice.

Part of the problem is college. Of course freshmen and sophomores don’t want to be writing about their future work. They want to explore their new freedom as adults, meet interesting people and share their experiences. In other words, they want to have fun. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But once you’re preparing to launch your career, it’s time to start thinking of how potential employers are going to view you through the lens of your social media presence. This isn’t just about removing evidence of your more embarrassing escapades; it’s also about showing that you are someone with a curious mind and a capable intellect.

College grads aren’t the only ones at fault, though. Often, the same thing happens to a candidate looking to switch jobs or recover from a layoff. Maybe you haven’t been blogging about your field because you never felt it was necessary. Well, now it is.

Whether you’re a recent grad or a mid-career job hunter, here are a few tips that might help you get on the right track:

Start a new blog dedicated to your professional niche. There’s no reason to stop writing a personal blog, but creating a second site can help you focus on professional content without confusing your friends.
Use Google Alerts, Twitter searches and blog subscriptions to stay on top of your industry, then write about your findings. Most employers don’t have time to truly stay abreast of their fields, so it’s easy for you to come off looking more informed than they are.
Respond to thought leaders in your industry via Twitter and blog comments. It’s not about kissing up to them, it’s about showing that you have an opinion and a backbone.
Create original content. Why just retweet and reference other bloggers when you could be out creating your own case studies? Writing about someone else’s opinion shows you’re paying attention, but writing about your own discoveries shows that you’re earning your keep.
Look for opportunities to put your writing in front of new audiences. Sites like The Next Great Generation create fantastic forums for emerging talent.
Stay true to yourself. Don’t try to be so corporate that you drain the life out of your own digital persona. Write about your hopes. Write about your dreams. Write about your favorite nude archery goddess-birth opera at Burning Man. Just be sure that the content you’re creating online represents both facets of your life: the personal and the professional.

On second thought, maybe keep those Burning Man stories to yourself. Some things are best left locked behind heavy-duty Facebook privacy settings. At least until you’re hired.

David Griner is the VP/Director of Digital Content for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Photo credit: Chelsea Phillips on Flickr.

Google+ looks and works better than ever. Will that be enough?

2012-04-16T12:35:05-05:00

Search behemoth Google continues to struggle in its quest to dominate the realm of social networking. But with fresh coat of paint and a couple of new bells and whistles, Google+ is now once again poised to rival Facebook.

As you can see in the video below, the new Google+ redesign is all about images. The sharing stream now features larger photos and video. There's also a sleek customizable ribbon on the left side of the page that allows for customization. You can now drag icons like "Circles" and "Photos" and arrange them as you like.

The new look also has been incorporated into Gmail and Google Reader in an effort to boost Google+ functionality.

The redesign is attractive but the jury is still out on whether these aesthetic changes can lure faithful Facebook fans. While Google+ boasts an impressive-on-paper 170 million users, there are still plenty of questions about mainstream adoption. Comscore data recently showed U.S. users spending 3.3 minutes on Google+ each month compared to 7.5 hours on Facebook.

Google's new visual upgrade for the network is definitely a step in the right direction, but what do you think? Will it be enough to finally start luring users to spend considerable amounts of time on Google+?

Edward Bowser is Community Manager at Luckie & Company. You can contact him by email or follow him on Twitter.