Have A Social Summer: Tips For Facebook

Sarah Goodall | Sep 05, 2011 | Comments: 0

Okay – the summer may be coming to a close in most European countries but I’m still going to write-up my “SAP Social Summer Series”.  Every week throughout July and August I hosted webinars for employees wishing to learn more about social media and networking techniques.  Here I’ll summarise the Facebook session.  Most people know Facebook pretty well so I won’t dwell on this post for too long.

I’ve noticed that many countries in Europe still consider Facebook a tool for personal networking with families and friends.  In the US it seems much more acceptable to use Facebook for B2B marketing.  I suspect in the next couple of years Europe will follow suit.

The Impact Of Google+

Everyone has their own thoughts and opinions on Google+.  I found a couple of good resources online outlining the key differences.  Correct me if I’m wrong but I understand the following:

• On Google+ it’s possible to receive someones updates without sharing your own.  Facebook is mutual connectivity
• Custom publishing is made easier using the Google Circles approach so you can publish certain posts to certain ‘circles’ of friends
• Google+ is open to Google search engine (not surprisingly) whereas Facebook is pretty closed to search engines.

Facebook Privacy:

Check your settings in Facebook regularly.  They have a nasty habit of changing things without telling you they’ve done so and it often catches people unprepared.  If you really want to lock it down set everything to “Friends Only” otherwise just make sure you check regularly

Customise Your Account:

This is where you do all your housework – update your ID, email, passwords, payments, link it to your mobile so you can SMS your posts and you can change your language.  Try English Pirate for fun – I challenge you to last it out for 24 hours.  I lasted 10 minutes.

Uploading Content:

It’s worth noting that anything you publish to Facebook becomes the property of Facebook and therefore difficult to share outside of your network.  This includes photos and videos.  This is why many folks use tools like Flickr for photos and YouTube to host videos – then they share the links in Facebook

Facebook Places:

Facebook Places is a great little app if you’re out and about.  Use Facebook on your mobile to locate places near to where you are and then you can “check-in”.  Retail organisations such as Starbucks use this a lot to issue discount coupons or special offers.

Etiquette:

There aren’t any written rules to Facebook but it’s probably best that you consider some of the following points:

• Don’t over publish – people don’t like their Facebook stream to be spammed by several updates at a time
• Don’t tag friends in “Un-glam” photos
• Be mindful of tonality - you may be angry when you’re punching your post into the keyboard but take two seconds to think how this may impact your personal brand
• Invite people you know

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Author: Sarah Goodall

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Top 10 social networking tips for enterprise – part one

You may be forgiven for thinking that social networking is all about orchestrating riots and stalking celebrities. However, the truth is that social media is a business tool that no enterprise can afford to ignore. But how can you implement a social networking strategy that actually works? IT Pro has been asking those in the know…

If your customers are spread around the globe, this affects not only what language you communicate with them in, but also what time, and the content and tone.

1. Be human

Kate Craig-Wood, managing director of Memset, has found that having a ‘face’ on your business account is really important, abiding by the old sales adage of people buy from people.

“It might sound a little odd coming from a technologist who is a firm believer in the future of the cloud IaaS market as an automated, interoperable commodity market place much like the electrical power grid is today” she explains “but we are not there yet and even then there will always be people and values behind companies”.

Craig-Wood also advises against the PR department approach to social media business. “Too often you see blog posts and Twitter accounts that are clearly generated by a PR department, or done generically from a company,” she warns. “I think they are missing that important objective of presenting a personable face”.

2. Globalise it and scale it

Any investment of resources into social media has to have longevity. To set up a Facebook or Twitter account without a long term plan would be folly.

To turn this from theory to reality, enterprises need to ensure social media presence is managed in a unified way by creating and maintaining one that is scalable, whether your company needs a global presence now or in the future.

Luca Benini, European managing director at Buddy Media, explains the business reasoning and advises to look at location first. “If your customers are spread around the globe, this affects not only what language you communicate with them in, but also what time, and the content and tone,” he says.

Then there’s the small matter of analytics as your presence on social media grows. “It has to be tied to all enterprise social media channels on a global scale including applications” Benini warns, adding “so you can use historical benchmarks and adjust your activity accordingly. You have to work with key stakeholders within the business to determine appropriate KPIs, for large enterprises.”

This also means making sure the KPIs apply to the performance of social media in every country and to every audience. What’s more, businesses have to make sure the internal processes to manage this are also scalable.

3. Let community conservations drive your SEO

Adam Mertz, senior product marketing manager at Jive Software reckons that it’s far better to create your own social community than simply rely on the likes of Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn to do it for you.

“It’s more effective as you have 100 per cent control over the look, experience, SEO benefit, and most importantly the data behind the interactions” Mertz insists, adding “the best way to approach your community strategy is to tightly integrate it with both your Facebook and wider social web strategy.”

Indeed, any decent community provider should be able to expose your community conversations within Facebook as an app living alongside your Wall. “This exposes people on your fan page to your community, and in addition, when people post on the community app there’s a double bonus” Mertz explains.

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