Social Media | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Welcome, MarketWatch Readers

Andrea Coombes, the assistant personal finance editor at MarketWatch, contacted me last week through my blog for an article she was writing about use of Facebook for personal vs. professional networking, issues for employees and possible concerns for employers. We had a great discussion; it was good talking with someone who had spent some time in Facebook herself, and wasn’t just writing about some unfamiliar phenomenon.

Andrea wrote two articles that appeared online today: the first, On a need-to-know-everything basis, is a balanced review of pros and cons of the top three networking sites for professionals: Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace. The sidebar has six Tips for staying safe in social networking sites.

Here are a few of the posts on my blog that deal with topics I discussed with Andrea. I said employers developing social media policies should ask their employees to make their geographic network primary, and their company affiliation secondary. I said it is myopic (a little medical lingo there) for companies to block Facebook access at work. (In Andrea’s article, Charlene Li agrees.) And we also talked extensively about Facebook’s limited profile, and how that can be used to provide less personal information to professional colleagues than you share with family and friends. With various levels of “friends” on the way, it will soon become easier to distinguish between people with whom your bare your soul and those with whom you chat about “Da Bears.”

My Facebook Business page has all of my Facebook-related posts gathered in one place. If you like what you see here, you can subscribe to my RSS feed, get updates by email, Friend me in Facebook, or follow me in Twitter to get notification when I write something new.

Technorati: Facebook, Marketwatch, Andrea Coombes, personal, professional, MySpace, LinkedIn

Welcome Associations Now Readers

Late last month I got a nice note from Lisa Junker, editor of Associations Now, the magazine of the American Society of Association Executives & The Center for Association Leadership. She said…

We’re putting together a special supplement to our magazine on social media, and when I came across your 12-step social media program post, I thought it could be a great match for our supplement (and our audience), if you’d be interested in allowing me to reprint the post.

What I’d like to do is reprint your post, edited somewhat for space, on the back page of our social media supplement. I think the humor and common-sense ideas you share in this particular post would be a great way to encourage our readers who haven’t dipped their toes in the social-media pool yet to do so. I would send the edited version to you for approval before publication, of course.

In case you’re not familiar with ASAE & The Center, we’re a membership organization representing 22,000 association executives and professionals—individuals who work for associations ranging from the largest and best-known, like AARP and NRA, to the less-well-known, like the American Industrial Hygiene Association. Associations Now is our flagship publication, and this supplement will be mailed to all ASAE & The Center members along with our November issue.

I was honored, of course, and was delighted to have Lisa edit and improve my post. It’s flattering to have someone say they think your writing is worth the paper they want to print it on. And everyone needs an editor. Especially when you have a blog that gives you unlimited space to keep going, and going, and going…

I understand Associations Now is starting to hit the mailboxes, so I wanted to share a few links with any of Lisa’s readers who are interested in further exploring social media. Here’s the full version of my 12-Step Social Media Program. I also would recommend the Facebook Business page. Check out It’s All Free to explore how you can get involved with social media without support from your IT department and without paying a penny. Everything you see here on this blog is absolutely free: I haven’t spent a penny for it.

If you like what you see here, you can subscribe to my RSS feed, get updates by email, Friend me in Facebook, or follow me in Twitter to get notification when I write something new.

I would appreciate any comments or ideas, and look forward to having you join the social media conversation.

Technorati: ASAE, Associations Now, Lisa Junker, social networking, association executives

3 Facebook Flyers Advantages vs. Google AdWords

With Google netting over $1 billion in profits per quarter, obviously the Google AdWords program that provides ads contextualized to search terms is highly effective for marketers. In a previous post I discussed how the Facebook Flyers program may give Google a run for some of that money.

It’s not that I see AdWords spending declining, but as marketers move their advertising away from TV and into web-based vehicles, I see Facebook having potential to capture a nice chunk of that growth. Google’s program, being based on search, means people are looking for something in particular and are inclined to click some link to go to some other web site. As Alec Saunders says, there is more likely to be an intent to buy, which may “bias advertisers in favor of Google Adwords.”

I think they should be biased in favor of Google Adwords. It’s obviously a great business that’s already working. In Facebook, people are focused on their networking, not looking for someplace else to go.

But Facebook Flyers do have at least three significant advantages that could lead to them being successful in grabbing a nice share of online advertising revenue.

First, Facebook has no external incentives for Click Fraud.

With Google’s Adsense program, by contrast, people who have Google ads on their site have a financial incentive to participate in click-fraud rings.

For example, if Arnold runs up clicks on the Google ads on Bob’s site, and Bob clicks on Google ads on Carl’s site, and Carl clicks on Arnold’s Google ads, the only losers are the advertisers. Arnold, Bob, Carl and Google all share the proceeds from the extra clicks. Google claims to be cracking down on click fraud to protect the viability of its pay-per-click model, but its partner sites have powerful incentives to pile on extra clicks.

With Facebook Flyers, the people on whose profiles the ads appear don’t share in the revenue. Facebook is the only beneficiary of the clicks, so no one else has any incentive for click fraud. And if Facebook employees run up the clicks, it will only hurt the long-term viability of the Flyers program.

Google has to pay the site owners to have its ads included. Facebook owns the site where lots of people are spending lots of time. Some people say companies are factoring click fraud into the price of their Adwords bids. Probably so. But even if the click-through rate is low, if the clicks are more likely to be real, this gives Facebook a major advantage.

Second, Facebook has a huge amount of demographic data about its users.

It’s great for Google to bring up ads related to a keyword search, when someone is out looking for a particular product. But in Facebook, particularly as its keyword targeting becomes more sophisticated, it should be possible in some cases to serve ads to people before they know they want something. That’s what Amazon does with its book recommendations. I don’t know whether my wedding video flyers targeted to engaged women in my local community will work or not (I probably need to raise my per-click bid above $.10), but if my ad shows up before the brides-to-be think to use Google to search for video and photography services, Facebook might beat Google to the Altar.

Third, less competition for Facebook Flyers may mean lower per-click rates than what you find with Google.

Everyone is using Google, so they are bidding up the price on keywords. The Facebook Flyers program is newer, so you may have a better chance of getting clicks at a lower price, at least until it becomes widely perceived that this is a worthwhile advertising platform. So there is an early adopter advantage here.

And if no one clicks your ads, you’re not out anything.

On the other hand, the Facebook Flyers are limited to one per page, so the inventory to sell may not be as big, which may drive up the price you need to pay to have your flyer seen. The engaged women I’m seeing as potential customers may also be college students, and a company offering used textbooks online may be bidding to have its flyers displayed to the same people.

And of course, Facebook has its Flyers Basic program, on which you pay for display instead of paying per click. If Facebook has a choice of getting a guaranteed $0.002 for each flyer it serves, as opposed to $.10 per click, it may make sense to bias toward the guaranteed revenue. The break-even for Facebook in the PPC program, at $.10 per click, is a 2 percent click-through. (So yeah, I definitely need to raise my bid.)

I’ll keep you posted on what I learn, and will appreciate hearing any examples of Facebook Flyers success you have.

Technorati: Facebook, Facebook Flyers, Google, Adwords, Adsense, PPC, marketing, advertising, click fraud

LinkedIn: Social Networking without the Social

I’m on LinkedIn, and I think it’s a good site for what it does, but I agree with Nick O’Neill at AllFacebook that Facebook‘s moves into professional networking will put a lot of pressure on LinkedIn. His characterization of LinkedIn as a piece of charred bread and as sedentary waterfowl may be overstating it, but Facebook’s threat to overwhelm LinkedIn is real.

Nick’s post was spurred by the launch of the “Networking” choice being listed among the “Looking for” choices in Facebook’s Relationships tab.

(As an aside, maybe it’s because I’m listed as married that the “Random Play” and “Whatever I can get” options aren’t available. If so, I think that’s a great part of the implementation of the Relationships feature enhancement. But why is “Dating” still a choice?)

As Nick points out, Facebook still needs to finish a few steps in making its professional networking features fully functional. Having a way to distinguish family vs. personal vs. professional “friends” and to adjust the level of access they have to your profile will be important. And if Facebook enables us to search not just within our work and geographic networks, but among friends of friends, it will have essentially replicated the key functionality of LinkedIn.

At that point, to build on Nick’s metaphors, LinkedIn may be a Thanksgiving turkey, stuffed with toasty breadcrumbs. He puts it well when he says “LinkedIn has limited messaging features and is essentially a public extension of my Outlook contact list.”

I see LinkedIn as more than that: It’s also a place to publish your professional resume, to possibly have it validated through recommendations from others, and potentially to recruit employees. But even in an economy in which people are expected to have a dozen jobs by age 38, it’s not a site most will visit with any real frequency. Certainly nothing like we do with Facebook.

I go to LinkedIn only when I get a connection request from someone I know. I’m glad to connect in that way, and it doesn’t take long to confirm.

I check Facebook, by contrast, at least twice a day: before I leave for work and in the evening. Because I have Facebook Mobile, I get a text message when someone friends me or sends me a message, so I check in response to those, too…or else just reply through my cell phone.

Just as eBay is “the” place to sell goods by auction on the web because it has the critical mass of sellers and buyers, I believe Facebook will become the all-purpose networking site, both personal and professional. I’m not going to get rid of my LinkedIn profile. It may be useful to me someday, and it doesn’t take much effort to maintain it. But it’s social networking without the social, which will make it difficult to compete with Facebook.

LinkedIn has 14 million total users, which is roughly the number Facebook has added in the last three months. And more than half of Facebook’s 48 million users are going there daily.
Maybe Nick wasn’t overstating Facebook’s threat to LinkedIn. What do you think?
Technorati: LinkedIn, Facebook, Social Networking, Social Networks, professional, networking