What is the Facebook PMD Program?

Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer program helps developers create products that make social marketing easier and more effective.  With proven expertise in the social mechanics and technical possibilities of the Facebook platform, PMDs are experienced developers who have built numerous Facebook integrations and offer solutions ranging across page tools, ads tools, custom integrations, and insights tools.

PMDs are qualified by Facebook under four possible categories:

• Pages – Post scheduling and targeting, moderation, permissioning, and other tools to manage Facebook Pages.
• Ads – Advanced ad creation, campaign management, and reporting capabilities.
• Apps – Services and platforms for building socially enabled integrations – customized or self service.
• Insights – Page and post analysis, benchmarking, KPI tracking, and other tools for measuring performance across Facebook objects.

What does it mean for LiveWorld clients?

LiveWorld provides a combination of technology and human services to scale your social media programs through moderation, insight and community programming. Our clients use these solutions for marketing, support and insight. As a Facebook PMD, LiveWorld has increased access to Facebook employees, training, and events,  elevating the level of solutions we can offer our clients as we help them with new and existing Facebook initiatives. LiveWorld offers a series of applications, toolsets, and platforms designed to stimulate more conversation and relationships among and with a brand’s customers, and/or aggregate conversations, curate user input, and distribute it appropriately across brand projects and the corporate organization. In particular, our Content Review System (CRS) platform integrated with Facebook via the API, enables large scale delivery of human review and management of user content for

• Brand protection with Content Moderation.
• Actionable insight, based on tagging of the user content combined with qualitative tone/insight reports.
• Customer engagement and support with Brand Interaction Moderation and Community Engagement service.

Companies are dealing with the need for scale, brand protection, and customer engagement as they manage increasing volumes of user content on an increasing number of Facebook Pages. The LiveWorld technology platform, coupled with our human review, management, and insight, solves those issues, encouraging our clients to do more with Facebook.  Brand managers can use our combination of technology and human review (Tech-Powered Human Touch) to improve their customer engagement programs, and to ensure consistency of response across social channels.

Interested? Call us at 1-800-301-9507!

1)    It applies only to user-initiated Posts; it does not apply to Comments users make in response to a brand Post. Comments cannot be pre-moderated.

2)    Brands already have the option to completely disallow user Posts; but no way exists to disallow Comments (except for certain pharma brands).

How it works

Assuming you allow your fans to initiate Posts on your Page, when they do so, the post doesn’t publish on your Timeline. Instead, it appears in your Activity Log on the Admin Panel. From there, you can make the post visible once you’ve reviewed it.

How to enable it

In your Facebook Admin Panel, go to Manage > Edit Page > Manage Permissions. You’ll find a check-box labeled, “Only show Posts by [Brand Name] and friend activity on your Page until reviewed by an Admin.”

Where to find posts

The Posts from fans show up in the Activity Log (Admin Panel > Manage > Use Activity Log). Once you designate them for visibility, they’re published immediately. Note that, although the LiveWorld moderation tool collects these fan posts, allowing moderators to approve or remove them, the Activity Log workflow is currently the only way to make the posts visible on the page (until the tool is integrated via the API).

When to use it

Generally, LiveWorld considers it a best practice to allow users to make posts on your Page. It’s friendly, it indicates your interest in what they have to say, and it doesn’t imply that you want to hear from them only when you ask for responses from them. In most cases, we’d also recommend that you avoid pre-moderation. That’s because people find it annoying when their posts don’t show up immediately. In social situations among friends, it would be unthinkable to delay a friend’s contribution until it was reviewed by someone first.

However, in some cases, it may be wise for a brand to consider pre-moderating posts:

• Highly regulated industries: If your brand has to comply with specific rules, and certain kinds of content might jeopardize your standing with governing agencies, you’re already carefully moderating your comments. Because a Post has more prominence on your board than a Comment, compliance considerations may make it wiser for your brand to pre-moderate. However, you need to make sure you check the queue often so as not to irritate people with the delay. Outline your policy in your user guidelines, noting the reason for it.
• Crisis situations: If your brand is facing a very large volume of user complaint or ire because of a company policy or issue, or if you’re frankly just under attack, it may make sense to pre-moderate Posts for a while. Be sure you’re responding to users on the issues they’re bringing forward, however. And keep in mind that you’re still likely to be deluged with Comments, especially if Posts aren’t appearing — and pre-moderation could even throw more fuel on the fire.
• Sensitive topics: If your brand or product deals with very sensitive topics, or if you frequently have to deal with users who make fun of or denigrate your product or company, it may be wise to pre-moderate Posts, understanding you’ll still need to watch Comments.
• Spam: If you’re dealing with a big spam episode, go ahead and pre-moderate for a while until you get it under control.

How it works

Brands now have the option to install a Message button on their Facebook Pages. A key characteristic of the function is that brands cannot initiate the contact with individual fans; it must be initiated by the fan. The feature does offer a welcome opportunity to deal with customer support issues out of the public eye. However, LiveWorld believes brands should fully consider the benefits and challenges before implementing the new button.

How to enable it

In your Facebook Admin Panel, go to Manage > Edit Page > Manage Permissions. You’ll find a check-box to show the Message button; that’s all it takes.

Where to find messages

The messages from fans show up on the right of your Admin Panel. If the message has multiple responses, you’ll see only a snippet of the last conversation here; click the username to see all the messages in the thread between fan and brand.

Actions available for messages

Besides responding to the fan, you can take these actions:

• Archive: Removes from view, places into and Archive folder, where it can be recovered.
• Delete: Deletes the message; it’s no longer recoverable.
• Report as Spam: Reports user to Facebook, moving the message from queue to Other folder, with admin option to recover later.
• Report Conversation: Reports to Facebook; does not remove from queue. Note that it provides no options for selecting reasons why admin is reporting the message.
• Mark As Unread: Changes the status of read messages to unread.

Drawbacks worth considering

Think about these issues before deciding to implement the feature:

• Remember, only the fan can initiate contact; you can’t reach out first to solve problems.
• Only the last message displays on your Admin Panel; if you have a lot of volume, issues will be hard to locate among potentially hundreds of posts.
• Facebook provides no way to organize or tag messages for searching through them later.
• Moderators can’t mark where they left off in a queue or give messages a status.
• With considerable volume, it’s a confusing workflow. Messages could be in numerous folders with no indicators that they exist.
• At this time, no reporting or analytics exist for this feature.
• API is provided; we’re looking into how to connect to an internal CRM system to track and manage these messages. (Updated 3.16.12 from our original statement that no API exists.)

What we’d like to see changed

This private messaging concept is a good one for lots of reasons: It’s another channel for communication; it affords privacy for situations where that’s appropriate; and users appreciate the ability to contact a brand directly. If we were able to request changes to this feature so that all brands could benefit from it, here are some we’d like to see:

• Ability set a status designation for each message.
• Sorting, searching, and organizing mechanisms.
• Reporting on number of messages received, responses sent, current message status.
• API accessibility, to allow integration into other tools more suitable for managing and tracking messages. (Update: 3/14/12 – We’ve been told an API is available, and we’re looking into it.)
• Ability for brands to initiate contact with an individual, providing that the fan has left a message in a comment or on the Wall. (That way, brands can’t spam fans, but can reach someone who has issues but doesn’t know about the private messaging option.)

Did you catch the first Facebook Marketing Conference? If not, they are playing recaps. Crunched for time and just want to know what is changing? We got ya covered!

So what does Facebook want us to know?

Facebook continues to emphasize their migration from Ads to Stories. “Stories are more powerful than Ads, and a Brand Page is where the brand creates stories that fans then share and create mini-stories on top of.” To forward this mission, they released a host of product changes and enhancements:

• Enable brands to deploy richer, more engaging story telling
• Deploy new advertising venues that will enable brands to reach more fans and non-fans while enabling Facebook to increase their monetization of the service.

Red Bull's Facebook Page

What changes?

Most importantly, Facebook launched Timeline for brands. In addition, they enhanced the admin controls, permissions levels (not yet released), and enhanced Page Apps. They also introduced a new content type called Offers and Timeline content type called Milestones. Brands can also turn on private messages with their fans (fan initiated).

The other major announcement is a suite of tools and offers that will allow brand to select premium distribution options for their content. These distribution options can increase fan visibility of your post from 16% to 50-75%.

Want to know more?

We put together a quick guide to the announcements and recommendations on how your brand can best take advantage of these changes. Take a look!

You

• You live and breathe Social Media.
• You knew Pinterest was cool LAST year.
• You have the rare gift that allows you to explain Social Media to Executives.
• You can create SM&C strategies in your sleep.
• You have a technical streak and can do HTML and even know the Jive platform.
• You might have even worked on a branded community (internal even better)!
• You are the most interesting candidate in the world!

LiveWorld

We are the company that people really want to work for. We do cool things with great clients and a team that is both incredibly smart and genuinely great to work with. We are a company that values your brain and encourages you to learn and grow. We look for a diverse group of interesting people that have much to offer to the company as well as our clients. We have fun. No really. We do. No kidding.

Ok, so you are intrigued…  now what?

1. Learn more about the job here:  full job description
2. Not for you, but you know someone?  Share this!
3. Want to apply?  Email us a cover letter and resume to cpm@liveworld.com.

LiveWorld offices are in San Jose, but we will consider remote for the right person. The position is open until it’s filled. We’re looking for the right person — not just someone to fill a job opening — but we want to hire sooner rather than later.

Go ahead- you know you want to…  ;-)

I have to give it to knockknockstuff.com for coming up with this fantastically fun and very true assessment of Social Media faux pas. I think it is great in a world of increasingly online interactions to have some ground rules. This citation is aimed at the average user of SM, but I think the learnings can be applied to brands as well.

It isn’t all about you.

How boring is it when you find yourself at a social event and you get stuck talking to the egomaniac that spends hours talking about himself. The egomaniac doesn’t need an audience, he needs a mirror! Individuals and Brands that do the same thing will bore their audiences too! Balance your content to be a mix of posts about you, fun posts (that are not about you) and posts about your industry (not directly about you).

Know when to stay neutral.

The citation also points out the obvious subjects to avoid, but are there other things? What discussions do you join and which don’t you? What does that say about the brand? Is that what you want it to say? It is very important to determine the tone and personality of your brand before you begin posting and to look at each new post through that lens.

Know when is too much.

Whether it is with the number of posts or the language you use, Brands should avoid outstaying their welcome. One of the biggest comments I hear from Facebook Fans about the Brands they follow is either they don’t post at all or they post too much. Experimenting can be a good way to find out what that the right number of posts is for your brand. Facebook has new measures that show you interaction rates and even the number of fans you are losing with too many posts. Don’t guess.

Be interesting.

Show us more of your brand than we get going to your website. Help us have fun. Give us something to like you for. Invite us to give you our thoughts. Even better, do it all!

Don’t make me give you a citation!

For those of you who haven’t started using social media yet, perhaps you feel quite pressured. If your company is late to the party, you may sense that you’d better hurry up and get it done. But I’m here to say maybe you should slow down. This isn’t something that gets done. You’ll need to walk before you run.

Why do it?

Are you sure what you’re looking to get out of it? Maybe your management has directed that you start a Facebook page or buy a community platform for your site; but that’s not a good enough start. Has anyone specified the purpose, other than keeping up with the competition?

You may be looking to spread the word about your company, but starting up a social venue isn’t the same as traditional marketing. You’re not going to send out a press release, set up a few interviews, and suddenly get a crowd who comes around and sticks around. Nor is it the same as advertising, although ads can certainly help with a kick-start.

If you want to encourage customer loyalty, you may be on the right track. But keep in mind that if whatever crowd you attract to “like” you via traditional means is only a number. If those people don’t actually continue to interact with you on a regular basis — especially in the case of Facebook — you really might as well not have started it up the venue in the first place. Frankly, you’re wasting your money.

Maybe you’re hoping to learn more about how people use your product — what they want and need. Good. Who will be stimulating the conversation so that you actually learn what people think? Remember that people who come into an un-hosted, empty room tend to stand around the edges looking at their phones or watches. It takes someone to start things off, facilitate the conversation, ask the questions. How will you track what you learn and what will you then do to distribute that information out to your organization? And most importantly, how will you make it worthwhile for the people who gave you these ideas? Won’t they be expecting to hear what you did with them?

Maybe you’re hoping to save money on customer support calls. So you plan to have a presence on Twitter and on Facebook instead of setting up your own customer support venue. That’s a great idea if your constituency is hanging out in those places. Keep in mind, though, that on Twitter, people expect a response within an hour or two. Is your customer support staff available during non-business hours? Are they used to communicating with people in the public view? Especially frustrated people who want help right now and if they don’t get it, plan to tell all of their followers about your failures to help. Are all your escalations plans in good shape? (Especially for after-hours?)

How about increasing sales via promotions, coupons, and even direct sales? That’s definitely worked well for some companies. Are you able to track sales that result from these efforts? Are you prepared for possible volume spikes? Is customer support at the ready for any snafus?

Have you lined up the resources?

If you don’t have social media expertise in your company, are you willing to hire it? You’ll need people with experience — and that includes strategists, hands-on community managers, social engagement specialists, and moderation. But you’re also going to need champions and specialists on numerous cross-functional teams: customer support, marketing, legal/compliance — and maybe IT and product marketing. Can you line up all those folks and get their commitment?

If you can’t round up them up and agree on a strategy that they all support, you may fail. It turns out that 56% of Twitter brand followers hope to get customer support. If you don’t have the connection with customer support solidly in place before you start, or if your engagement specialists give different answers than customer support would give, you’re presenting a fractured face to your customers. And you may cause a lot of internal friction with customer support and legal, among others.

What’s this party about?

I don’t care if it’s a party, a meeting, or a funeral. If people are getting together, it’s social. And that means someone needs to be the host or facilitator or DJ or chair. Each gathering also carries its own set of social expectations. A picnic is not a formal dinner; a beer-bust is not a wake (well, maybe sometimes it is). You’ve probably spent a lot of money on your brand, and you can run down a list of its attributes. Whatever those are, you have to figure out a way to reflect them in your social efforts. Is someone doing that? Are you clear about what the social culture is going to feel like to people who get involved with it?

Who’s hosting the party?

If you’re in social media, you need to be talking to people — and you need to acknowledge them when they talk to you. So who will do the talking? And how will you make it clear to people that you also want to hear from them? That’s good manners, for one thing. But also good sense: Facebook, in particular, is always modifying their algorithm, but basically, if your users don’t continuously reaffirm their interest in you, they stop seeing your posts.

So this is isn’t just a project or a campaign; this is a long-term relationship you’re entering into. People need to get something out of it and you need to keep them interested. Who’s going to be keeping them entertained and aware of your interest in them? If you’re just planning on posting one special after another, you may be better off sending out an email newsletter; it’s much cheaper and probably more effective for your purposes.

What’s your company culture?

And while you’re thinking about how to personify your brand attributes, how’s your company culture? I ask, because if things feel very protectively shut-down in your company’s own internal communication and connection with the rest of the world, you’re heading for problems as you get involved with social media. People sniff out fake really quickly. When they ask questions and get no answers or pat answers, it falls flat and they call it out. Can your company take the heat of criticism and negative comments?

Because stuff will happen. All the best companies are going to run into social media crises of varying levels as they get closely involved with customers. What these companies do is to anticipate crises, prepare for them, and respond to them as directly, quickly, and honestly as they can. If regulations prohibit you from talking about certain topics, say so; people understand that.

Our experience is that trouble invariably starts up after-hours or on the weekends. Can your company rise to the occasion? If your usual escalation contacts are unreachable, what’s your plan?

How will social media work with everything else you’re doing?

Is your community or Twitter feed or Facebook Page going to exist completely separately from everything else you’re doing to market yourselves? That’s going to make it much less effective. Ideally, your company’s so committed to your social media plan that you’re including it in all your promotional efforts, your support plans, your public relations calendar, and your packaging. Naturally, this could require significant alteration of existing policy, process, and internal communication. Is your company ready to change or even reorganize?

Can you stay on one foot, ready to pivot?

At some point, you’ve no doubt planned a party that never clicked. Or maybe you planned to have a quiet gathering that spontaneously turned into a wonderfully crowded celebration when your relatives brought some plus-ones and a volley ball net. The truth about social media is that you’re never sure how well your plans will go over. You need to be flexible and open to change when the people get there. You try things and see what people think of them. If you’re not getting the response you envisioned, you tweak your approach and keep at it. It’s a daily process of watching and listening closely to how people react (or don’t) to what you lay out for them. So don’t feel pressured to get social media done. This is a new way of life — the kind of change that takes considerable commitment and preparation. Take it a step at a time.

We’re looking for someone with lots and lots of social media experience, savvy, and passion. We want an extensive business and marketing background, coupled with the ability to initiate, develop, manage, measure, and analyze social programs for our Fortune 100 clients. Plus, you need to be able to recruit, train, oversee, and provide ongoing direction for a growing social media team of experienced Community Programming Managers and Engagement Specialists.

LiveWorld has a long and rich history of developing online communities. Some of us have been at this for over 25 years, and even the newest members of our community teams generally come with 5 or more years of experience. For this job, we’re looking for 8-10 years of relevant experience, as well as clear evidence of successful personal and professional social engagement. Ideally, this position would be located in the San Francisco Bay Area, but New York would be good too. Ultimately, what you bring to us is more important than the location, as long as travel isn’t a problem. If you fit the bill otherwise, we can discuss location.

What else is important? You must be an exceptionally strong and confident presenter, a clear-headed strategist, and a good writer. An engaging personality goes without saying

If you’re interested, here’s our link to the job. Then email your cover letter and resume to DirectorCP@liveworld.com.

Social commerce is offline or online shopping facilitated by or otherwise involved with social media. For centuries people have liked to shop with friends — or at least share their shopping intent, experience, or results with friends. Social commerce is the application of social media to that dynamic. Our experience has demonstrated that social media can drive substantial increase in transactions. We see 4 levels of social commerce hierarchy:

1) A simple post to coordinate or notify about a shopping experience. Examples include a simple tweet, Facebook status post, Foursquare location check-in, or even text messaging.

2) Product reviews. Though not always truly social in the sense of user-to-user dialogue, the intent to share is there, and sometimes a social thread develops. Examples include Amazon product reviews and Yelp.

3) A conversation. Message forums go here, along with sustained Wall post series, and other such venues, in which a real dialogue occurs related to shopping — before, during, or after the fact. Examples include travel forums, travel booking sites, or topical forums on retailer web sites, such as scrapbooking and cooking.

4) A society of relationships built on the fusion of social media and commerce together. Here, complex people-to-people relationships develop among shoppers, sellers, or both. The community, associated relationships, and in turn, the associated commerce experiences (online or offline) all become a core dynamic of the participants. Example: eBay (a LiveWorld client).

Like most aspects of social media, social commerce is less about the features, and less about the direct integration with something else — in this case, transactions. From a simple post on Facebook, to an entire multibillion-dollar social commerce society (eBay), it’s more about the underlying people-to-people dynamic.

New Timeline for user profiles now; similar features to follow for Pages

Facebook has completely revamped the profile page for individual users with the launch of Timeline. The new product features a visually compelling, scrapbook-like layout of your entire history on Facebook, from photos you’ve uploaded and friends you’ve added to the places you’ve checked into and the status updates you’ve shared.

You can also fill in Timeline with earlier moments from your (pre-Facebook) life, so expect to see a surge of baby pics and bad-hairstyle shots from your friends!

Facebook applications are getting prominent treatment in Timeline, too, making it easy to share actions around your media and lifestyle interests, such as meals you’ve cooked or music you’ve listened to. In a screenshot from my timeline below, the “News” section displays articles I’ve read in new Facebook social readers from The Guardian and Washington Post (more on the opportunities with rich applications below).

Pages, the brand companion to user profiles, isn’t undergoing a similar makeover just yet. But if past history is any indication, expect Facebook to launch a Timeline-style layout equivalent for Pages later this year. The most memorable status updates from brands, high-impact photos and videos, prominent conversation threads with and among fans, and activity around branded applications will mesh together in a single place, encouraging users to share and interact with more content from the page.

To get a visual sense of what these new-and-improved Pages might look like for brands, check out these Mashable mockups.

Open Graph expansion

Facebook is expanding its Open Graph in a big way. And if you’re a brand marketer, that’s very good news!

As mentioned above, new applications built on top of the Open Graph will integrate directly into users’ timelines, driving and brand awareness and affinity. Here’s how Spotify (one of several Facebook partners that launched a new app at f8) looks inside Timeline:

Also, applications will no longer be limited to a pre-defined set of Facebook objects and the verb “like.” Instead, Open Graph applications can incorporate any action verb and any object. Here are some potential action/object combinations:

• [Read] a [book]
• [Watch] a [show]/[movie]
• [Cook] a [meal]
• [Visit] a [city]/[store location]
• [Test drive] a [car]
• [Play] a [sport]/[game]
• [Want] a [piece of clothing]/[gadget]

This new ecosystem offers plenty of advertising opportunities, too. Brands can target users who have taken the specific actions or interacted with the specific objects built into applications. Hulu, say, could buy Facebook Sponsored Stories aimed at users who have [watched] a television show, while NBC could target fans who have watched a particular [show], such as Saturday Night Live.

Or a retailer like Best Buy could build an app that allows users to create and display a holiday wishlist in their timeline, and then advertise to those who [want] certain items.

Ticker + updated News Feed

Just before f8, Facebook also launched both Ticker and a refreshed News Feed. Ticker, as shown in the screenshot above, is a real-time firehose of all the activities taken by your Facebook friends, including the status updates they publish, photos they share and tag, and comments they make and like.

New posts from brand pages and actions taken on applications (“David is listening to Town Called Malice by Studio 99 on Spotify”) appear in Ticker as well, meaning additional content discovery and sharing from fans and brand advocates.

With the News Feed, the main layout now combines both “Top Stories” and “Recent Stories.”

“Top Stories” appear first for most users, and surface the most relevant and interesting posts to users since their last Facebook login; “Recent Stories” then feature updates from friends and pages in reverse chronological order (similar to Ticker).

But while the look and feel of News Feed have changed, creating compelling status updates essentially follows the same recipe. Posts still have to be interesting enough for fans to share, like, and comment on in the first place, so they can tap into the EdgeRank algorithm that powers “Top Stories.”  The timing of posts remains critical, too, especially since new status updates will pop into the News Feed and Ticker for fans almost immediately.

—

Ultimately, these new changes are all about encouraging users to share more of their identity, interests, and life moments inside Facebook.  And with continued publishing/engagement on Pages and the creation of interactive Open Graph applications, amplified by advertising, brands can tap into and benefit from this powered-up social sharing.