For short, the act is called the Canadian Anti-Spam Act. Fitting to its complexity, the act is made up of a title that is literally over 50 words long.

On March 27, David Canton (business lawyer and trademark agent at Harrison Pensa) and I hopped on a webinar call to discuss this new act and how it will impact businesses ability to market when fully instituted nation-wide (which could be as early as this year).

You can watch this full, 59 minute value-jammed video here.

Because of the mass volume of questions asked during the call, David and I weren’t able to get to all the questions.

David was kind enough to spend some extra time after the call answering some of these questions. Enjoy, and share this important information with your colleagues.

Editor’s note: Below you will see reference to a “2 year rule” repeatedly. What this new 2 year rule essentially means is that an entity (ie. your business) can’t send commercial communications to a customer after 2 years has past since the last purchase, without the customer purchasing another product/service or approving receiving the correspondence (ie. opt-ing in again).

Let’s begin:

Attendee: Is this new law in effect? If not, when do you think it will be?

David: The law is not yet in effect.  We are still waiting for some regulations to be finalized.  It is not known when it will be in effect, but expectations are late 2013.

Attendee: Can you contact people as a result of info they provided on a raffle ballot or a survey?

David: That would not amount to consent unless there was an explicit, clear statement to that effect when the address was provided.

Attendee: Do opt-ins apply for “life”, unless they opt-out at a later date? Or does the two year term apply to opt-ins?

David: Opt-ins have no automatic expiry date.  The two year concept applies only to certain implied consents.

Attendee: Are there any exceptions for educational institutions? eg. Universities.

David: The Act focuses on the commercial nature of the message, not the nature of the person or entity sending it.

Attendee: I work for a non-profit that sells training programs and learning products.  When someone buys or attends training, is there an implied permission that we can contact them about future related trainings?

David: The Act refers to the nature of the activity rather than the nature of the organization.  So if someone buys training, it is considered an “existing business relationship” for the purposes of implied consent, and the 2 year rule applies.  If they attend but have not purchased it, it is not considered an “existing business relationship”.  If the training is free, it may be that it is not of a “commercial character”, and thus not considered spam.  But what is and is not included in “commercial activity” is not clear at this point, and may be broader than one might think.

Attendee: Will the 2 years be retroactive from the law taking effect? Or only moving forward?

David: The various 2 year implied consent rules relate to when the activity triggering the start of the 2 year rule happens.  So for that purpose the date the Act comes into force is not relevant, and such activities occurring before the Act comes into force would apply.

Attendee: What about member associations and member lists.  As a member association, is the association responsible for communication from one member to another, or is the sender accountable?

David: The person responsible is the person sending the message (or the person on whose behalf the message is sent).  So if members email each other, the association is not responsible under the Act.

Attendee: Is “liking” or “following” someone on Facebook and Twitter a form of consent?

David: The Act’s application to social media is not totally clear.  Any messages that are received by whomever is following you ought not to be caught by the Act.  But a direct message sent from one user to another does seem to fall into the definitions.  Since consent has to be for an explicit purpose, it is unlikely that “liking” or “following” someone would suffice as consent.

Attendee: Just got a monthly report email from my MP.  Would this fall into the definition of a spam email?

David: It would probably not be considered to be commercial activity, and thus not considered spam.

Attendee: How are RSS feeds handled under this Act?  Most require a sign-up to receive them.

David: RSS feeds are not caught.  An RSS feed is just a way to follow what someone publishes.  The “sender” has no control over who receives it, and it would not be a message “…sent to an electronic address…”

Attendee: You say to get compliant consents now.  Given the uncertainty of how the law will be implemented, would it not be appropriate to wait until the regulations are published and then get the consents during the ‘grace period’ before the regulations are enforced?

David: Yes.  In the meantime, you can sort out the nature of your messages, how you got the email addresses in the first place, and how you will record consents.

—

There you have it. You can tell this was a hot call. Unfortunately the act still leaves some to be imagined. At the least, those that pay attention now and educate themselves will be better prepared for a future of more restrictive regulations around spam and commercial correspondence.

Andrew Schiestel is the Chief of WOW! at tbk Creative, a national award winning web design & social media marketing agency based in Toronto and London Canada.

The post Email Marketing and the Law – Your Questions Answered appeared first on tbk Creative.

Are you a small, medium or large business that regularly distributes e-mail marketing campaigns? If you’re not aware of the new law (short for “Canadian Anti-Spam Act”), that will soon come into effect, it could cost you!

tbk Creative’s Andrew Schiestel (Chief of WOW!), recently hosted an informative webinar entitled “E-mail Marketing and the Law: Tips to Succeed in a Tougher Legal Landscape”, with guest expert, David Canton (business lawyer and trade-mark agent at Harrison Pensa LLP). David broke down the legal jargon attached to this upcoming Canadian privacy law and together they clarified how it could change the way your business communicates digitally.

Below, the live event can be heard in a recap video that includes a unique Q&A session. For those listening to the call for the first time, you will learn:

1. An overview of the Canadian Anti-Spam Act and how it affects you

2. How to run an email marketing campaign the safe way

3. The best way to have consumers provide you permission to communicate/market to them

4. What happens if your company doesn’t comply

5. What you can do now to prepare

Watch “E-mail Marketing and the Law: Tips to Succeed in a Tougher Legal Landscape” here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Do you have further questions concerning this hot topic in the making? Ask below! 

Regan Canie is the Social Media Maverick at tbk Creative, a national award winning web design and social media marketing agency based in Toronto and London Canada.

The post E-mail Marketing & The Law: Tips to Succeed in a Tougher Legal Landscape appeared first on tbk Creative.

My goal is to fix it in this article with an unorthodox approach.

But fix it I will.

If you were to interview most very successful people, they wake up early. Very early.

Let’s take Lorne Girard for instance, the CEO of St. Thomas based vinyl windows manufacturer, North Star Windows & Doors.

For 20 years, the man has woken up at 3:45am consistently and is at his office with coffee and newspaper in hand by 5:45am.

He’s a very humble man, a true 5-star leader, but don’t let him understate the influence this rigorous discipline has had on North Star’s growth and success over the years.

The manufacturer has grown from 10 staff to 280 over three decades, and is now Ontario’s largest vinyl windows manufacturer and producer of 5% of all Canadian manufactured windows in Canada.

How does he do it? It likely started with discipline and is now stoned in as a habit.

If you’re engaged in this article, you’re waking up early likely isn’t a habit so telling you how Lorne does it is probably as effective as an apple asking a banana out on a date.

So I’ll give you the quick, sure-fire way to wake up 2 hours earlier than you do now.

1. Find a friend (perhaps a work colleague or business partner) that you can be accountable to and share with them your plight;

2. Tell them this (in no uncertain terms): “If I don’t wake up by [X] time, I will give you one hundred dollars.”

3. If you roll in cash, then up that amount to the amount that will make you squirm and feel deep inner remorse to hand over the fresh notes.

4. If you do this right before bed, then text your Accountability Partner simply, “[Insert time] or [$penalty].” Do this every night (take weekends off if you desire). Do it until you don’t need your Accountability Partner anymore and it’s ingrained in your way of living.

Do this once, and you’ll feel the difference. There’s something deeply gratifying about experiencing a victory at the start of each day.

My personal story:

I had a self-admitted sleeping problem. I used to wake up at 7am. 7am is early to most, but I wanted to wake up earlier. 7am was okay because I started work at 8am, but I was missing out on being able to read and write more.

I did exactly what I transcribed above. Melissa McInerney (the Queen of Creation at tbk Creative) was my selected Accountability Partner.

I’ve been doing this exercise for 4 months now, choosing each day to wake up at 4:30 or 5:00am. Only twice have I dropped the ball ($200 penalty).

Considering the hundreds of hours I gain now each year as a result, the $200 get-up-late penalties is worth the toll.

Some additional tips to leave you with:

1. Don’t give the money to charity. If you do, you might start to feel good about the difference you’re making. That’s not the point here.

2. Don’t lie. To yourself or your Accountability Partner.

3. After you wake up late, don’t weasel or justify your way out of it. This counts as lying.

4. You’ll want to quit. Don’t do it. The goal needs to be turning this courageous new action into a habit. Trust me, it gets easier over time.

Good luck with your voyage. I wish you much renewed energy and time on your hands.

Andrew Schiestel is the Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a national award winning web design & social media marketing agency based in Toronto & London Ontario. Andrew can be followed on Twitter here.

The post How to Wake Up 2 Hours Earlier Than You Do Now appeared first on tbk Creative.

Roma Moulding is one of the world’s largest picture framing companies (having 4 North American offices and selling products in 8 countries through a dealer network of 6000 independent companies).

If you’ve ever been to Roma Moulding’s head office in Woodbridge, Ontario (near Toronto), you’ll immediately recognize and see something remarkable about the company.

Their team is a large collective group of people focused on providing an incredible, enlivened work and customer experience where everyone operates with passion and from pre-defined values.

One day when talking with Tony, I said to him, “Tony, it seems like you’re creating the Zappos of Canada.” Tony replied, “Andrew, that’s a fair assessment, but do you want to know what I’m really out to create?” I said, “What?”

What he said next, rocked my world, “I want to create the happiest company in Canada and I want to show other company’s how to do the same.”

I have a feeling you’ll hear more about Tony Gareri and Roma Moulding in the future.

Enjoy and get inspired:

Click here to view the embedded video.

On this call,  you’ll learn things like:

- How Roma Moulding turned double digit losses into double digit growth in one year,
– 3 secrets to creating a happy, more successful workplace,
– One sure way to eliminate gossip from the workplace,
– 3 things that no one can ever copy about your company.

These are one of those calls you want your boss to listen to and is meaningful to share.

Andrew Schiestel is the Chief of WOW! at tbk Creative, a national award winning, web design & social media marketing agency based in Toronto & London, Ontario. Andrew is active on Twitter and can be followed here.

The post 3 Secrets to Creating Canada’s Happiest Company and Exploding in Growth While Doing It appeared first on tbk Creative.

There are a lot of considerations before making the jump.

The first is ensuring your Facebook promotional contest (like any marketing promotion) is compliant with provincial/state and federal legislation (consult with a lawyer for this).

The second and what this article pertains to is how you can run a Facebook promotional contest that is 100% in compliance with Facebook’s Page Guidelines.

I will say this: Facebook is very particular with how brands use their environment to run promotional contests.

Here’s why I think this is:

If a brand is running a Facebook promotion that’s not compliant with that brand’s own territorial legislation, Facebook wants zero (0%) liability.

Let’s think of it from Facebook’s perspective: If a brand was running an illegal promotion on Facebook without Facebook providing some “rules of play,” it could be argued that Facebook is helping facilitate this illegal action and could potentially become the target of law suits.

Furthermore, and to Facebook’s defence, how can the company manage the behaviour and liability risks of over 1 million companies using its platform from over 100 countries all with their own individual (and sometimes complex) territorial gaming laws?

Therefore, Facebook has created general guidelines that pertain to how a brand must use Facebook if it is to run a promotional contest. For full details to these terms, you can access them by going to section “iii.E.” of Facebook’s Page Guidelines found here.

In total, there are 6 guidelines to follow.

In the information to follow, I will go through all 6 page guidelines and dissect it for you. The goal is that you’re left with a clearer understanding and a new level of confidence in running compliant Facebook promotions.

Let’s dive right in:

Guideline 1 of 6

“iii.E.i.    Promotions on Facebook must be administered within Apps on Facebook.com, either on a Canvas Page or a Page App.”

This is probably the biggest restriction to brands running compliant Facebook promotions/contests.

This rule basically means that if you are running a campaign where you give out a prize based on activity on your Facebook Timeline or Photo Album, you’re not in compliance with Facebook Page Guidelines.

In basic terms, what you have to do is obtain a third party promotional application or website hosted outside of Facebook and create a facebook app by iframing in that content.

To obtain promotional apps, contact an agency specializing in Facebook marketing or research and find other third party app vendors.

tbk Creative specializes in this area of marketing but there are of other options on the internet.

I will give you some examples of brands that use Facebook marketing apps that sit on a “Canvas Page” and are in compliance with this section.

You can see a Facebook promotion running on a Facebook subpage for Brescia University College:

You can see another app for Crabby Joe’s here:

Guideline 2 of 6

“iii.E.ii.    Promotions on Facebook must include the following:

a.    A complete release of Facebook by each entrant or participant.

b.    Acknowledgment that the promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.

c.    Disclosure that the participant is providing information to [disclose recipient(s) of information] and not to Facebook.”

This can be an easy section to comply with. Every Facebook promotion (or any marketing promotional contest for that matter – in or outside Facebook) should have a set of participation rules. Within those User Rules, you can fulfill on Facebook’s three requests above.

See the screen shot below of a portion of Libro Financial Group’s rules:

Guideline 3 of 6

“iii.E.iii.    You must not condition registration or entry upon the user taking any action using any Facebook features or functionality other than liking a Page, checking in to a Place, or connecting to your app. For example, you must not condition registration or entry upon the user liking a Wall post, or commenting or uploading a photo on a Wall.”

This rule gets back to the importance of having your promotion run on a Canvas Page and iFramed into your Facebook page (like the screen shots above in iii.E.i.). The most popular violation I’ve seen brands make to this rule is when they make a post and say something like, “Post your comments below and we’ll randomly select one winner for a [insert prize].”

If you’re reviewing these rules for the first time, this section can still be a little perplexing.

I’ll re-write this term in a different way but maintain its intent:

You can’t force someone into “liking a Wall post” or “commenting or uploading a photo on a Wall” as the “condition” to “registration” into your contest.

Again, to properly cause entries into a content, you must turn to 3rd party software that is packaged as a Facebook application and have it iFramed into your Facebook page (see section iii.E.i. above).

Guideline 4 of 6

“iii.E.iv.    You must not use Facebook features or functionality as a promotion’s registration or entry mechanism. For example, the act of liking a Page or checking in to a Place cannot automatically register or enter a promotion participant.”

Again, the point here is that users can’t “automatically” be entered in your promotional contest upon “Liking” your page or by using other Facebook features.

Said another way, you must require them to do at least do one action after they Like your page and this action also must be within a Facebook app sitting on Facebook’s Canvas.

For example, if you were running a photo or video contest like Western Fair is below (using one of tbk Creative’s social gaming software), you could have people Like the page to access the app (a term called “fan gating”), but they must still submit their info before being part of your promotion.

See Western Fair running a great Facebook voting contest using tbk Creative’s Contest King. You can see where within this Facebook app, there’s a spot to have the user submit their information to officially enter:

Guideline 5 of 6

“iii.E.v.    You must not use Facebook features or functionality, such as the Like button, as a voting mechanism for a promotion.”

This rule, again, takes the focus off Facebook’s Timeline and Photo Album and back on a subpage with a promotions software.

You see, within any good voting software is pre-loaded an ability for users to vote (while not using Facebook’s Like button).

See Western Fair using Contest King for a different contest. You can see how the contest has its own voting module that is not a “Facebook feature”:

Guideline 6 of 6!

“iii.Evi.    You must not notify winners through Facebook, such as through Facebook messages, chat, or posts on profiles (timelines) or Pages.”

This one is both self explanatory a bit ambiguous.

What’s self-explanatory is when someone wins, you must not use Facebook’s tools to notify them. How you notify them is through a different means such as email, phone, or mail (most apps have one or two ways for the brand to acquire information).

To notify people, you must ensure you’re collecting their personal information. See the two different ways to capture users’ information:

a) When they allow your app, you can acquire their email address from Facebook:

b) When they enter your contest you can manually request it:

Here’s where it gets ambiguous: If you announce a winner’s name on your Timeline, does that count as “notifying” them? If you’ve already contacted them through email, then my opinion is that making an announcement on Timeline is not notifying them. With that said, I’ve never seen Facebook’s official stance on this item so I’ll leave it up to you to decide where your comfort level is.

At the least, you’ll be fine if you use an app that acquires your participant’s email addresses (like the two examples above) and you can contact the winner’s through those means provided.

I hope this article fulfilled on the promise of covering the 6 main terms behind compliant Facebook promotions. I did my best laying out for you the major DO’s and DONT’s. If you have any questions, post them below.

Andrew Schiestel is the Chief of WOW! at tbk Creative, a national award winning, web design & social media marketing agency based in Toronto & London, Ontario. Andrew is active on Twitter and can be followed here.

The post Understanding the 6 Guidelines to Running Compliant Facebook Promotions appeared first on tbk Creative.

It was reported by Twitter Inc. that leading up to the Olympics, more tweets were sent out each day regarding the Olympics than the entire 2008 Beijing Games.

At a Canadian level, our athletes took to social media like never before.

Between July 27 (Day 1) and August 1 (Day 5), our athletes tweeted out a whopping 4,564 tweets and as of Day 5 at the games, they’ve collected over 225,000 Facebook fans and over 390,000 Twitter followers.

You can see a lengthier report on how our Canadian athletes use social media in the infograph below.

Feel free to share proudly. Go Canada!

Andrew Schiestel is a Sr. Partner & Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a national award winning, web design & social media marketing agency based in London, Ontario.

The post How Canadian Athletes Use Social Media [Infograph] appeared first on tbk Creative.

In a recent tbk Creative corporate page study of 31,854 fans across 10 brands (brands ranging in size from under $1 million upwards to $65 million), we observed that when the brands posted photos (vs. Text, Link, or Video based), they reached 31% more users.

In this article, I’m going answer the question:

Why do Photos reach more people than the other common post types?

Then I will share with you 4 major scenarios when you will have to make a critical decision with how to use photo(s) on Facebook.

This is an important article to publish because you will see after reading it how brands of all sizes are all across the map.

If you’re a Community Manager / Social Media Manager, this is an article you don’t want to miss.

Let’s start with why Photos are gaining more user Reach.

First, an understanding of what Reach is:

According to Facebook, “Reach is the number of unique people who see your post.”

Note: Reach is slightly distinct from impressions, which is the number of times a group sees your advertisement (they could see it more than once).

You can find how much Reach your posts are gaining by going to your Corporate Facebook Page, go to the Admin Panel (at the top), Click Insights, and on the Overview tab, scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’ll have a list of your page post data which includes the Reach data.

Some have said, “Facebook is driving photos to be more popular on the News Feed.” If you’ve logged into your personal Facebook page recently, you’ll notice it’s true that photos are obviously reaching News Feeds more.

However, the statement above, isn’t entirely correct.

Facebook isn’t driving photos to be more popular on the News Feed.

Users are.

What Facebook has learned (and this is validated in your statistics when looking at metrics like Engagement and Talking About This), when a brand posts a picture, more users take action upon it.

Think of your own Facebook behavior – what are you more likely to click on, a photo or a video (which takes a few minutes of commitment) or a text (which which isn’t clickable), or a link (which is driving you to a new website)?

For most of you, you’ll answer photo.

It’s the perfect blend of sensory stimulation, with low time and mental commitment, with security (you stay on Facebook).

More users will click the photo (to make it bigger), and from there they have the options to: Like it, comment on it, or Share it (on their Wall or a friend’s).

And from Facebook’s perspective, taking action upon posts is key.

When users are taking action upon content in their News Feed, that means users are on Facebook longer, visit more pages, and create dialogue with other users.

When this happens – advertising dollars go up.

So yes, photos reach more people on Facebook and I believe for no other reason than: More people are taking action upon it, which triggers the posts to turn into stories which reach more of their friends. Your fans seeing these posts combined with your fans’ friends, is what gets represented in the Reach metric.

Optimizing Your Photo Use

Now let’s dig into the 4 scenarios that you will have to think carefully about with your Photo use:

1. Cover Photos

The Cover Photo is the big, new area of your Timeline where you can post a picture that best represents your brand. The critical thing to be thinking are this:

Know the Rules.

Along with the launch of Facebook Timeline on February 29, 2012 date, Facebook released a new set of rules for the Cover Photo, detailed here.

According to Facebook’s Guidelines, here’s what you need to know:

i. price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it on socialmusic.com”;

ii. contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your Page’s “About” section;

iii. references to Facebook features or actions, such as “Like” or “Share” or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features; or

iv. calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends.”

Without getting into too much detail and theory about why Facebook has made Cover Photo creation so prohibitive to brands who obviously want to use Facebook for marketing, I’ll share this:

At fMC in New York City back on February 29, 2012, Facebook explained that the focus of the new Timeline will be more about creating a better user experience vs. brand pages being a heavy advertising experience.

They are focused on user experience and challenging brands to create higher quality content that users can relate, engage, and take action upon.

Now that you know the major restrictions, here are the three different types of Cover Photos I’ve found:

A) Quick & Easy

This takes no design work. It’s when you upload a photo that you feel best represents your brand. See King’s University College’s Cover Photo:

Or Canadian Cancer Society here:

As a piece of collateral that doesn’t take much time or money, it works for them.

B) The Branded Experience

This takes more creative time and design work. This is when you create a custom image and you can use this opportunity to deliver some brand promises or unique value propositions.

See Tepperman’s Cover Photo here:

Or Siskinds The Law Firm here:

C) The Promotion Cover Photo

This is where you use the Cover Photo to inform / send a message about an upcoming event or other item you want Facebook users to know about, but you do so in a way that doesn’t violate Facebook’s Page Guidelines.

See Red Deer Regional Health Foundation here:

In Red Deer Cover Photo, you can see we’ve made it clear there are great prizes for this year’s lottery, and there is even a bold Facebook tab below the Timeline titled Prizes, but we don’t invite people to click on it (this Cover Photo isn’t a call to action and therefore, compliant with Facebook’s Page Guidelines).

A second example of this is Fertility Ontario here:

The purpose of this Cover Photo is to inform people of Fertility Ontario’s upcoming Fertility webinar, but we don’t provide a URL in the photo in which they can register because that would also be a violation of Facebook’s Page Guidelines.

2. Sizing of Photos

When ramping up your Facebook content strategy and integrating photos into the mix, you need to begin critically thinking about Photo sizes.

You can see a tbk Creative post where we didn’t optimize this approach:

You can see that the photo we upload was too wide (it’s original purpose of this image was to be a Cover Photo). The width being too wide caused the photo to not fully fit inside the image room in the Timeline. This is not an optimized post but isn’t horrible because if a user clicks on the photo they can see the photo in its entirely. However, if you’re committed to delivering the highest performance experience for your community and Facebook users, then this is a point worth noting.

As an aside, it’s a humbling and slightly embarrassing experience to share with you something that I believe, in hindsight, that I could have done a better way. The truth is, each day the web and social media matures and although I’ll never be perfect at it, one thing that has allowed tbk Creative to become so advanced in this area of marketing is that our team debates, questions, and challenges everything. And I think it’s this commitment to excellence that allows us to gain this type of knowledge so fast and be able to share these best practices back to you.

Let’s look at two brands that have created photos with the Timeline image space in mind.

In the photo below, you can see how Goodlife Fitness created a photo so that the entire quote can be read from the Timeline or News Feed:

In the next photo below, you can see how at Fertility Ontario, we’ve also sized the photo as so the entire message about their upcoming webinar can get across to the reader:

As a valuable side note, if you recall earlier in this article, Fertility Ontario used a wider image for their Cover Photo to promote the same upcoming webinar. That’s what’s key here – We actually re-created the image size to optimize it as a Timeline post.

Before we move on to the next section, I want to share one more tip with re-sizing posts. There may be time you don’t have the resources or time to re-size your post perfectly (you’d have to get into the design file to make these changes). There is a little obscure new Facebook feature that exists called Reposition Photo. This feature, when used, will let you move your photo around so it fits better than not inside the image area. It’s not always a perfect solution, but may help you in some occasions:

3. A Little Secret With Big Results When Posting Links

As part of your editorial calendar, you will regularly create posts that provide links (back to your website, other webpages, etc.).

Here is a standard example of how a link shows up when you post it on your Facebook Timeline:

Most companies do it this way.

Here’s a little secret: Provide the link you require, but post an image at the same time. This is a good practice on the appropriate posts, because of what we’ve learned about Photos – they get 31% more reach than any other type of post.

In this first photo, you can see tbk Creative posting a link to a new website we’ve created for Sports & Fitness Insurance Canada Inc.:

By providing a photo along with the link, we’ve made it a more visually appealing post and predictably will have gained higher Reach, Engagement, and Talking About This, as a result.

In this second photo, you can see Fertility Ontario posting a registration link for one of its upcoming educational webinars:

An interesting point about this photo: You see how in this photo we’ve now included the URL for Fertility Ontario, whereas, in its Cover Photo promoting the same event we did not. Again, the latter would be a violation of Facebook’s Page Guidelines, whereas, the former is not.

4. Optimizing Your Profile Picture

Your profile picture is the image area that appears in the bottom left hand corner of your Cover Photo (but not part of the Cover Photo itself).

I’ve seen brands do one of four things with their Profile Pictures:

A) Upload only their logo.

See Western University’s use of the Profile Pic as a good example:

B) Upload info on their company or a different image, but not their logo. See BC Children’s Hospital Foundation profile picture:

C) Upload the emblem side of your logo, but not the company name. See St. Joseph’s Health Care Foundation here:

And see Fertility Ontario here:

D) The last version is when you get your logo and additional information inside your profile pic (location, brand statement, value proposition, etc.).

See how Tepperman’s included the four cities that they have retail centres:

I believe A, C, and D have differing degrees of merit, but option B is never a good idea (not having your brand associated with the Profile Pic).

Here’s why: You Profile Picture is the image that gets associated to your post when it lands on users’ News Feeds.

From a branding perspective, if you’re going to spend the time reaching thousands of people with each post, you want to make sure your logo being displayed is consistent with your branding guidelines.

This will have users associate your brand with your posts, faster and more consistently.

Note: This point has similar personal branding implications too.

When we are managing our social channels for personal branding interests, I believe you will get the most long-term branding impact by changing your Profile Picture as infrequently as possible (I’ve used almost exclusively the same photo for the last 2+ years across Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In):

The purpose of this article today was to give you thorough and explicit guidance on how to manage photo curation on Facebook. Implementing these tips should give you a thorough Facebook front for your brand with all your visual touch points and provide you with the background strategic knowledge to maintain this strengthened new effort.

Andrew Schiestel is a Sr. Partner & Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a national award winning, web design & social media marketing agency based in London, Ontario. The company’s social media work has been featured in media publications coast to coast including CBC, CTV, Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, Huffington Post, London Free Press, Yahoo! News, Metro, the Canadian Press, and more.

The company instigates and accelerates consumer action around their clients, digitally.

The post 99% Of What You Need To Know About Photos in Facebook appeared first on tbk Creative.

Back on March 14, I wrote the article, The Future State of The Static Welcome Page. In it I made a prediction we’d see 50% less users land on Welcome Pages.

The purpose of the article today will be to shed more light on this topic and give you specific ideas on what role Facebook tabs can play in the future of your Facebook marketing strategy.

First, let’s understand the 53% drop in Facebook tab engagement better.

The Mashable article points to three reasons that ascertain the cause for the Tab drop:

1) According to a Facebook employee, Brands can now “Pin” posts that may make Timeline content more influential. Sure, but I doubt that caused much of the 53% drop. I don’t think we can pump that much ‘air’ into the new Pinning feature (although useful).

To understand what pinning is, see example of Libro Financial Group pinning a post below:

2) According to PageLever Founder, Jeff Widman, Facebook tabs are less visible (I disagree with this assertion. With bigger boxes that are more centered with pictures, I’d presume they are more visible). See Siskinds LLP’s Facebook tabs below to understand the new tab layout:

3) Last, according to Widman, brands can’t use the tab as a default page (where visitors who aren’t fans are first taken when they land on the page). I’d agree fully with Jeff’s last assertion as the most influential of the three.

Where the article falls short is it leaves the reader with a doomsdays experience around Facebook Tabs.

This couldn’t be further from the truth and I’m worried that if brands only read the Mashable article, they will be missing out on a bigger opportunity to use Facebook Tabs to drive measurable economic value for their brands.

To understand how this can be so, let’s start with a quick history lesson and then work into what you can be doing right now.

The Past

You may recall (or had one), brands used to be able to create Welcome Pages that were set to default as the first page a Facebook user would land on when visiting the brand’s Facebook page.

Quick Welcome Pages 101: The purpose of a Welcome Page was one thing – To cause users to become fans.

You’d do this through the following creative/copy:

1) Good design,

2) Create an arrow pointing up to the Like button,

3) Tell users “Why” they should join (key benefits),

4) And if you’re really committed to increasing your fan acquisition %, you’d offer them something after they’ve “Liked” (called “fan gating”). This could be such things as a free e-book, small gift card at your company, or contest/promotion to participate in.

See YoYo’s Yogurt Cafe for an example of an older Welcome page creative:

Now it’s not entirely accurate to state you can’t have Welcome pages anymore.

You still can. You just can’t set them as a default landing page. But they do have their own individual URLs (although longer and cumbersome) so you could still run ads or email marketing to drive people to the page. Furthermore, developers can still do any customization work to the tabs (fan gating, e-book offering, run contests, etc.).

See Richard Ivey School of Business’ Facebook Page to see an example of the longer URL’s that Facebook provides Tabs as a default:

With all that said, maybe a more prudent social media research question to ask is:

Is there a 53% drop in brands creating Facebook Welcome Pages?

In my experience working with brands who invest in social media marketing regularly, very few brands are building standard Welcome Pages anymore.

The Future of Facebook Tabs

Ok – now that we know Welcome Pages don’t drive the same utility they once did, I want to help you think more critically about what role Facebook Tabs (including apps) can play in the future of your Facebook marketing strategy.

I think there’s an incredible role they play – and an incredible opportunity that most brands are missing right now, and may just not understand.

I think the future of good Facebook tabs is technology and apps that do the following (all three at once, ideally):

The Future of Facebook Tabs #1: Acquire Fans’ Information

Why have just a fan when you can have a fan + email address?

Your Timeline can’t do this.

Here’s how to use a Facebook Tab to do this: Install a Facebook Tab that collects user information in exchange for giving away something of value.

Here are three main types of items you can give-away:

a) One big prize -This is typically a Sweepstakes Contest. See Barking Frog’s current one below:

b) Premium Content -This is content that leverages your knowledge/expertise and adds value to your fans. See tbk Creative’s e-book giveaway:

Side Note: To download this e-book for free, go here.

c) Many small giveaways -This is when you giveaway a small prize (ie. $5 or $10 gift cards) for each fan who provides you their info. See how Crystal Clear Bags’ does it here:

Executing a Facebook tab that gives away any of the above can do some of the following:

a) Give you new fans (when they click “Like” to use the Tab) and at a higher rate than without a Facebook Tab,

b) Give you new leads (when they provide you their info),

c) Give you new customers (when they use their gift cards),

The Future of Facebook Tabs #2: Facebook Tabs That Cause Your Page To Be Shared

Your Timeline or Facebook apps can do this.

If you want to use a Facebook Tab, you need to find a Facebook app that can act as a content that gives away incentives based on social sharing. tbk Creative built a Facebook app called Contest King™ that facilitates this task. See Contest King™ in action with Western Fair’s video contest for their upcoming talent search show, Rise 2 Fame:

If you want to use your Timeline to produce content that gets shared, you need to create content that’s unborified. See Goodlife’s new series of unborified images that they output that’s picking up good, viral sharing amongst their community:

The Future of Facebook Tabs #3: Facebook Tabs That Cause Your Fans To Come Back

I’d say brands causing fans to come back is one of the most misunderstood and least thought about areas of Facebook marketing.

The key to causing fans to come back to your Facebook page is this:

Reward them for coming back.

Your Facebook Timeline can’t do this (it’s against Facebook’s Page Guidelines).

tbk Creative has invested considerable resources since 2010 building apps that do this well. We call these types of apps: Social Marketing Games™.

A good example of how this can happen is an app we built called Trivia King™.

It’s a Facebook tab that lets the brand ask its community a trivia question each Monday. Fans who answer the question correctly are put into a draw for a prize on Friday (ie. a $50 gift card). Fans that answer incorrectly, can refer friends to the page for more guesses. All the while, the brand collects emails on almost every fan that uses the app (97% capture rate).

You can see the app in live mode being used by Brescia University College below. 

Most remarkably, in a beta testing scenario of Trivia King™ (12 prizes given away over 12 days), it had 73% of fans return to the page more than once to play and the app was successful at capturing 97% of the users’ email addresses.

Trivia King™ is a good example of a Facebook Tab that collects fan data, encourages fans to come back, educates the community on the brands’ promises or products/services, and mobilizes fans to share the app with their friends.

Facebook Timeline can’t facilitate all 4 of these items at once (and can’t cause the two former items at all).

To Summarize

I hope this article explains better why Facebook Tab engagement has dropped since the inception of Timeline, and in a paradoxical way how there’s a better opportunity than ever to increase the success of your Facebook marketing with the use of Facebook Tabs.

I think as next steps, it’s prudent for you to look at your brand and offerings and ask yourself to what degree does your brand want to invest to gain more fans, leads, and engagement.

Once you prioritize these strategic goals, you can then plan, invest, and take action accordingly.

If you have any questions, or contributions, post them below and we’ll happily engage.

Andrew Schiestel is a Sr. Partner & Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a national award winning, web design & social media marketing agency based in London, Ontario. The company’s social media work has been featured in media publications coast to coast including CBC, CTV, Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, Huffington Post, London Free Press, Yahoo! News, Metro, the Canadian Press, and more. The company instigates and accelerates consumer action around their clients, digitally.

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Last night, my friend Rod Gallagher (Financial Security Advisor at Freedom 55 Financial), and I were chatting about human & business performance – the limitations and opportunities that affect people on a day to day basis.

Rod told me two human performance stories that one of his mentors recently shared with him.

Fleas

Let’s start with fleas, a jar, and saran wrap:

Put a bundle of fleas in a jar, and they’ll jump out.

Now put a bundle of fleas in a jar, and put saran wrap on top of the jar.

For a short while, you’ll watch them jump to the top, hit their tiny heads on the seram wrap and fall back down. They’ll continue to do this until at one point, they begin to stop jumping so high.

When this happens, take the saran wrap off, and watch what happens.

Not one flea will ever jump out.

The fleas are capable of jumping out. They just don’t believe it’s possible to.

Elephants

Now, let’s talk about elephants.

In Africa, what elephant keepers do to keep elephants in a stable spot is when the elephant is a baby, they tie a rope to its neck and peg the rope into the ground.

The rope is too sturdy and strong for the baby elephant to break loose.

When the elephant grows up and becomes its mighty self, the elephant keepers can use the same rope/pegging tool.

Just like we can squeeze an empty pop can easily, the elephant’s strength could comfortably break free from the rope.

But they don’t break free.

Sadly, they don’t even try to.

Human beings operate the same way. And since they do, they operate their organizations consistent with this contained belief system.

Like many of us, as children, adults around us put saran wrap on top of the jar we were playing in. To be fair to our parents, this was needed to a certain extent. It stopped us from being hit by a car or burning ourselves on a hot stove.

Where we’re deceiving ourselves, is we’re adults now. The saran wrap got removed a while ago.

The moral? Sometimes the key to massive operational growth isn’t in honing your team’s skills better, but in knowing you can jump out of the jar at any time.

Versus growing consistent with what’s expected, why not grow consistent with what’s possible?

Andrew Schiestel is a Sr. Partner & Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a national award winning, London Ontario based web design & social media marketing agency. The company instigates and accelerates consumer action around brands, digitally.

The post What You Have In Common With Fleas & Elephants appeared first on tbk Creative.

Around this time, Facebook began revealing more information about its News Feed algorithm, EdgeRank, and began providing more analytical data to brands’ Community Managers (through Facebook Insights). Such newer data includes Reach, Engagement, Talking About This, Negative Feedback, etc.

Last week, I decided to begin digging deeper into the numbers to be able to provide insight into what will make us all better Social Media Managers.

Here’s what I did and what I discovered.

I looked at 10 random tbk Creative clients who all have a Corporate Facebook Page. When I say random, it is partially so. To be specific I took the first 10 that came to the top of my head. This happened to represent the following:

Fans – 31,854 fans across the 10 pages.
Posts – Exactly 100 posts reviewed (10 posts per page).
Date – The 100 posts were the last 10 posts by each brand pre May 17, 2012.
Location – 8 brands are based in Ontario; 1 brand in Alberta; 1 brand in Texas.
Type – 2 brands are not-for-profit; The balance is for-profit.
Industries – Wide range of industries from legal to financial to hospitality to charity to retail.
Size – Companies ranged relatively wide in revenue size from a few of less than $1,000,000 and several >$20,000,000.
Frequency – No brands posted more than 2 times per day during the date range reviewed.

Here’s the key data findings:

Avg. post reached 47.9% of Facebook users (Reach divided by Fans).

There are 4 main types of posts: Text post, Link post, Album/Picture post, Video post (either Facebook or YouTube link). Here are the rankings for Reach:

i) Text posts at 48.4%,

ii) Link posts at 51.9%,

iii) Album/Picture posts at 62.8%,

iv) Video posts at 44.9%.

Out of the 10 brands (and 100 posts), the Album/Picture post was the top post in terms of Reach on 7 of the 10 pages.

The highest Reached post noted was 226.1% (that brands average Reach was 95.9%).

The lowest Reached post noted was 8.2% (that brands average Reach was 13.4%).

There is a new option that lets Facebook users hide posts from their News Feed. Brands can now track the number of users who do this through a new Facebook Insight called “negative feedback” (found under Facebook Insights -> Overview -> Engaged Users). The average brand had 0.37% of users hide their posts (1 in about 270 users) with each post.

The metric, Engaged Users, is the number of users that click on a brand’s post. Of those users the brands reached, the average post had 8.2% engaged (the top brand achieved 22.8% Engaged Users).

The metric, Talking About This, is the number of users who comment, share, or like a brand’s post. Of those users the brands reached, the average post had 1.0% Talking About This (the top brand achieved 2.1% Talking About This).

Here’s what to make of the numbers:

1. On Feb. 29, 2012, at the fMC conference in New York City, Facebook announced that on average brand pages are reaching 16% of their fans. Based on the findings above, this doesn’t seem to be accurate or implemented yet. After reviewing 100 posts across 10 brand pages, representing 31,854 fans, the average Reach was 47.9%. I will point out the one minute flaw with the Reach metric that bears mentioning but has a very small chance of denouncing this point. According to Facebook Insights, Reach measures Facebook “users” and therefore, we must make the assumption this can include fans and non-fans (because when fans comment on a post, it can commonly reach their friends’ News Feed – which gets represented in the new Virality metric). So although, Facebook announced 16% fan Reach, and we’re observing 47.9% user Reach, I’m still going to assume Facebook pages are reaching dramatically higher fans than previously reported by the company at fMC on Feb. 29.

2. There is clearly an incentive Facebook.com is providing to posts that are Album/Picture based (62.9% Reach – which is 22% higher than the second most Reached post – Link posts). As Social Media Managers, if we want to reach more people with our posts, posting Pictures is undoubtedly the way to go.

3. The sample size was too low to add firm credence to this point (only 3 posts of the 100 applied), but it’s important to note the lowest observed type of post for Reach was Video posts at 44.9%. If this result is similar across a larger sample, I think we should acknowledge this fact but not be too fast to cancel our video marketing campaigns and look at the bigger picture of our efforts. Video can have other vertical benefits that photo or text can’t achieve. It’s just that if you’re striving for elevating your Facebook Reach, video may not be the best type of post to publish.

I invite you to use this data as a bar to measure your own results against. If you want to test your own numbers, here’s what you can do: Take one post (I’d let it be at least 4 days old to give it time to mature) and you can measure everything that I measured in this article by looking at the posts’ a) Reach, b) Engaged Users, c) Talking About This, d) Negative Feedback. Keep in mind that when I calculated the % for b, c & d, I divided the respective numbers into its Reach, not fans. I did this because if you are producing high quality content that is gaining high Engagement/Talking About This scores, your percentages will come back low if your Reach happens to be low.

If you go by Reach, you can compare apples to apples. With this algorithm you can answer questions like, “What % of my posts that reach Facebook users get interacted with, liked, clicked on, etc.? What types of posts attain highest Reach, Engagement, lowest negative feedback, etc.”

I hope you find this data and exercise useful. Feel free to ask any questions below. 

Andrew Schiestel is a Sr. Partner & Chief of WOW! Projects at tbk Creative, a national award winning, London Ontario based web design & social media marketing agency. The company instigates and accelerates consumer action around brands, digitally.

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