Social Media Sonar Blog» Social Media

Can Your Facebook Presence Be Hijacked?

Sean Nelson — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 12:43:54 +0000

Do you have a Places or Community page for your business? If so you may be at risk of your information being hijacked.

A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were looking for a place to eat on Lake Lanier, a lake just North of Atlanta. I went to Google and searched eventually clicking on a Facebook page link for Pelican Pete’s (PP’s). I went to their page to find out more information on PP’s and in the process discovered a potential flaw or potential issue to businesses relying on Places and Community pages on Facebook.

As you can see in the video below I had the ability to go into the PP’s page and edit the basic information including Tags, Address, Phone Number, and URL. Why is this an issue?

For starters let’s look at a hypothetical situation that is reasonable. Let’s suppose that I make money by using Google AdSense to display relevant ads on pages. With the ability to go into certain Facebook pages and customize the URL, I can set up a number of money making pages in Facebook by hijacking ignored Facebook Places pages and placing links to my pages with AdSense running on it.

In the case of PP’s, I simply would create a website called LakeLanierToDos.com. Under the domain I could then create a page called /pelicanpetes and place the relevant information about PP, but in the sidebar include Google Ads for other Lake Lanier businesses. Something like this:

Now imagine if you did that across 1,000 sites how much revenue you might generate by hijacking ignored Facebook places pages. Watch the Video.

Think its just the little guys who could be hijacked? Here is a Facebook Places page for a local Starbucks in Alpharetta, GA that I was able to go in and edit their info.

So what can you do to avoid your Facebook presence being hijacked:

Create a Company, Brand, or Product page that you have 100% control of. Avoid Community and Places accounts.
Claim you Place. If you look below the photo in the left bar on the Places Page you will see a text link that asks “Is this your business?”. Click on the link and claim your business. From what I have seen verifying the business doesn’t prevent the ability of someone else editing your info and URL.
Merge the Places Page with Your Company, Brand, Product, etc. page. This appears to be a good idea that has disappeared for the time being. Facebook may be changing the process and planning on reinstating the process once completed. Last info I saw (on 8/2/11) was that Facebook was not responding to questions sent on this topic. Google+ anyone?
Create a Company, Brand, Product page, then claim your Places page and delete it. If you can’t merge the Places page then kill it.

I’d like to think that Facebook would see this post and correct the issue. But in the real world Facebook likely knows about the issue, has decided it doesn’t really care or that it isn’t a big enough issue, and has no plans to address it. Social networks move at their own speed, based on their own priorities, and I’ve yet to see one that really cares what their users think. They may exist to help the rest of us be social, but they themselves really are more interested in figuring out how to make money rather than having a conversation with you or me.

Social Media Sonar provides the following four resources for FREE… 1. The Blog, 2. The Online Marketing/Social Media Blueprint, 3. Conversion Rate Optimization Guide, 4. Resource Center. If these help you implement your own online marketing program, great. We love helping people. If you decide you need some help, great. We love new clients. Contact Us if we can help you.

Two Cool Website Tools

Sean Nelson — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 17:03:33 +0000

I learned web design the old fashioned way by diving in with my eyes closed and never really knowing where I, or the site, would wind up. My first site in 1998 was built with NetObjects Fusion, a wysiwyg editor. Over the years I went from version 3 to version 11, avoiding learning to write code, since most of the sites I was designing were for my own businesses. Eventually I ditched NOF and began to focus on using WordPress and templates, learning as much code as I needed to tweak things.

I still do not like writing CSS from scratch and choosing color schemes gives me a headache. But two tools that I’ve discovered have made things much simpler, and if you are someone who likes to DIY then you should love them as well. Here they are:

1. LeanDesigns claims to be the first visual web design tool built specifically for web developer. Not sure about that but I would describe them as a web creation tool that allows you to create a site using drag and drop functionality and then instantly export the html and css that makes up your design. Its fast and simple to create a layout, making it also a perfect tool to create wire frames. Here’s a graphic of a design I created in about 15 minutes.

One of the features I like is that you can apply a 960 grid guide behind your design making it easy to create a visually appealing design. Then once you’ve completed your design you can export the html and css code.

The design to the left is actually a layout for a page in a WordPress Template site that I’m working on. The header and footer are supplied by the template and I use my design and the code to customize the body section.

LeanDesigns has a How It Works page that walks you through the creation process with a set of screenshots.

They offer a free trial version that allows you to create and save one design. The Pro version allows you to create and save unlimited designs for only $9 a month.

My Verdict: A low cost tool that can be an advantage in your tool set.

2. Color Scheme Designer allows you to create custom palettes for websites and more. The interface is simple and allows you to quickly create a color scheme that works together.

I met with a client earlier today to discuss redesigning their website and color scheme (the current scheme was red and royal blue). The first step was to redesign their logo with the new colors, the only caveat being that one of the colors had to be red. I took the red color and put it into the tool and it generated the following color palette.

There are six different choice for choosing color combinations:

1. Mono
2. Complement
3. Triad
4. Tetrad
5. Analogic
6. Accented Analogic

You can adjust the saturation/brightness, contrast, and see a full color list with color swatches and hexagon codes. They even have a tool to see a light or dark page example allowing you to see how the colors might interact on an actual page.

Using the palette generated I was able to quickly put together a logo in the new colors to show my client. Here is the logo design (company name changed because the client is not ready to make the actual logo public):

Without the color scheme designer I’m not sure I would have chosen to mix red, blue, and green together.

My Verdict: An absolute must have if you do anything that requires color selection.

There are thousands of tools out there and they may be some that are better, but so far these two do exactly what I want them to do. They are perfect tools to add to your DIY tool kit.

YouTube Infographic

Sean Nelson — Tue, 31 May 2011 16:54:03 +0000

Last week I finally took the leap and created my first official infographic, my Twitter Infographic. Today I’m back with number two, a You Tube version.

As I’ve created my first two I’ve also started paying more attention to other ones that I find. I stumbled on to a couple of blogs related to the subject that, if like me you’re into it, you should enjoy: the first is Cool Infographics by Randy Krum which has a wide assortment of graphics. OMGeureka has infographics that tend to relate to online topics. And finally Submit Infographics which not only has a collection of work but lets you submit your creations as well.

Here’s my second foray that was inspired after reading Jeff Bullas’s 50 Awesome YouTube Facts and Figures. I didn’t use all of the facts Jeff wrote about, but enough to want to give credit to him for his post.

If you like the YouTube Infographic please consider retweeting it and sharing with others.

When to Tweet?

Sean Nelson — Mon, 30 May 2011 20:38:05 +0000

Every day it seems like there is a new social media related application released. While I tend to try out a number of the applications that I encounter, the reality is that few of them do enough or specifically what it is that I am looking for.

I look for apps that:

Simplify Workflows
Save Time
Expand Functionality
Better Clarify Information or Data

Some of the tools I encounter are one trick ponies, others have more than one of these features. Either way the the apps I choose to use have to make sense from a business perspective.

A recent tool that I discovered is When to Tweet, created by Niklas Agevik and Stefan Alund. Whentotweet analyzes when your followers are active and gives you a personalized recommendation on what the best time of day for you to tweet is. Its a simple but powerful concept …Your tweets are most likely to be seen and responded to when your followers are most active.

It only addresses one of the four criteria listed above but better understanding when to tweet can help drive more traffic, engagement, conversions, etc.

I ran a report on @seanenelson, my Twitter account, and it showed the following graph:

The times listed are in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) so you will need to adjust the data to your time zone. You can do so at http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com. Here in Georgia I subtract 4 hours while in Daylight Savings Time and when we switch to Standard Time in October I would subtract 5 hours.

Looking at the chart right now I see that the best time for me to tweet is around 12:30 PM (adjusted from GMT to EST), but I also see that I have a window from 10 AM to 2:30 PM.

The current Free tool analyzes your first 500 followers and 200 tweets of each follower to determine the best times for you to tweet.

A Pro version, not yet available, is expected to analyze up to 1,000 tweets from up to 1 million followers. The current projected cost for a Pro report is set at $20. Not a bad one time or even annual cost to determine when you should be tweeting. My only request is that the Pro report return times based on the time zone the recipient lives.

You can sign up at the site to receive an email when the Pro Version is available.

My Verdict: A interesting tool worth checking out.

Putting the Social Web to Work

Sean Nelson — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:53:02 +0000

Going into this weeks Super Bowl both Green Bay and Pittsburgh will have game plans. Those plans will likely evolve throughout the game but before the first snap there was a plan.

Most successful businesses have an overall business plan that likely includes an individual marketing plan. It makes sense, right. So why, when I talk to people about social media, do I find many that have no social media plan?

You need to have a social media strategy in place with goals and objectives. This plan needs to be incorporated into a marketing plan, which is then part of your overall business plan. Without these, how do you know what actions you should be taking?

Before we go any further lets make sure that we understand the landscape. What most people call Social Media is really the Social Web. The Social Web is made up of Social Networking and Social Media.

Social Networking: Sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter where a primary emphasis is on building networks of people ideally made up of your target prospects.
Social Media: Sites such as You Tube, Blogs, and Flickr where the primary emphasis is on sharing content. These sites provide space to host and disseminate your content.

The interesting thing is that there is a cross over on social networking and social media sites. You can share content on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. You can also build communities on You Tube, Blogs, and Flickr.

One of the key differences between Traditional Advertising & Marketing, and the Social Web is how you interact with your prospects or communities.

In most forms of traditional advertising you are sending out a message that is one sided. You hope that those who respond do so based on your call to action. You can drive responses but typically this requires sending the recipient to a location where they have the opportunity to respond.

In the Social Web, the response is in the medium itself. When you post content your communities or prospects can respond through the medium. This allows you the ability to engage in a two way conversation. It allows the communities to engage within itself.

You have the opportunity to communicate and engage in a number of ways. You can start conversations, build credibility through the content you share, build trust, educate, inform, and even entertain to share value. In addition Google is indexing a lot of the content you share which helps you be found by those who may not yet be a part of your community.

Regardless of the type of product or service you offer, someone out there is looking to be engaged and educated about it in order to make a more informed purchase decision.

When you build your communities make sure that you do so with purpose. While it’s great to say you have a LinkedIn network of 5,000 people or 10,000 Twitter followers, the value will be dependent upon the number of potential prospects that are in your networks.

At Social Media Sonar we are what you would call open networkers. If someone feels that we are worth connecting to we will generally accept the connections request, friend them back, or follow them them back. You never know where that next opportunity might come from. When we initiate a connection, though, we do so only if its a potential resource, partner or prospect.

Many people use social networks for personal and business reasons. The goal as an individual is likely to be to share and learn from others, and have a social space to interact. As a business the end goal should be to simply monetize your efforts.

That doesn’t mean that you should focus exclusively on selling. But rather, you should seek to share content and value that is desired by the community of your prospects so that if they ever have a need for your services they know you, like you, and trust you.

It’s not an overnight strategy. You need to take the time to properly ingrain yourself into the community and understand that over time your results will be dependent upon how the community views the value of what you share.

Combined with traditional advertising & marketing, the Social Web forms and effective means to engage self built communities on an ongoing basis to drive sales from conversations rather than sales pitches.

What do you think?

Social Media Allows David to Out-Market Goliath

Sean Nelson — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 20:28:24 +0000

Ten years ago LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook did not exist. Twenty years ago hardly anyone had a personal computer. Thirty years ago Cable Television was just starting to come into it’s own. Forty years ago you had 5 channels or less on TV dependent upon how well the tin foil on the rabbit ears worked. What you know today will change tomorrow.

Most of our client’s are small to mid-size companies that cannot match up against their larger competitors in terms of money, labor, and resources. To out-market the competition they have to out-smart them.

In a recent article Malcome Gladwell discusses how David’s can improve their chance of beating Goliaths. Normally David is successful less than 30%. But, when David understands that he cannot compete on Goliath’s terms (think normal industry practices) and chooses an unconventional strategy, the success percentage more than doubles.

Recently someone asked what it is that Social Media Sonar does. Our answer was that we help David out market Goliath using traditional advertising, marketing, and social media.

We still believe that traditional means of marketing including direct mail, radio and television ads, and even newspaper ads have their place. Social media, though, allows us to cost effectively build a community of people, communicate one to one or en masse, engage in conversations, generate leads, and drive revenue.

It is understanding how it all works together in a comprehensive strategy that makes it work. You can choose to use traditional advertising and marketing, social media, or both.

LinkedIn Labs Tests Out New Tools

Sean Nelson — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 16:22:46 +0000

This is likely my last post of the year and being that Christmas is only hours away I’m going to share a little LinkedIn gift with you. Many people are not aware that LinkedIn has a site where they feature internal projects. These not-ready for prime time tools may or may not be relevant but they are interesting.

Once a month LinkedIn celebrates “In Day” where LinkedIn employees are encouraged to research, experiment, and create concepts outside of there normal routine. Adam Nash explained the concept in a post on the LinkedIn blog, “This concept began with an impromptu hackday held over the 2007 holiday break and has now grown to a company-wide event (including an American Idol style panel of judges). Teams are given just five minutes to demo their hack in front of the entire company, and judges get just two minutes to ask questions.”

These are a few of the tools that are highlighted in our Resource Center on the LinkedIn Tools page. Be sure to check out that page to see what other tools are available.

LinkedIn Labs

Instant Search

A sample application to search LinkedIn, built over the new Linkedin Javascript APIs.

My Perspective: Nice search results page. The same results were shown as if searched on LinkedIn, but without the clutter results were displayed in 3 columns by 5 rows. Results include profile photo, tile/tagline, and location. The negative was that there was no navigation to view more than the first 15 results. This will never be a stand alone tool but is likely a way to test out new concepts for LinkedIn’s People Search.

NewIn

This application shows new members joining LinkedIn from around the world. (requires Google Earth)

My Perspective: An interesting tool but more of a potential time waster than profit maker. Still every now and then you need to take a step back.

Resume Builder

Build, save & share beautifully formatted resumes based on your LinkedIn profile.

My Perspective: Should be ready for a call up. This tools does a good job of crafting a nice, clean resume. 11 templates provide the ability to change the look and feel of your resume. I would like them to add a export to .doc or .pages file for further editing. The formatting that you use on your online profile summary doesn’t necessarily translate …spacing, characters, etc.

ChromIn

Integrate LinkedIn directly into Google Chrome. Easy access to your LinkedIn updates, anytime.

My Perspective: Not a bad tool. Easy to add to Chrome and simple to post a status update. Shows updates from others using the tool. Not bad if I happen to be using Chrome and have a sudden thought that I need to share. Otherwise I’m using Hootsuite fed into my status update.

Signal

Signal is aimed at making it easy for all professionals to glean the most relevant insights from the never-ending stream of status updates and news.

My Perspective: Ready for the “Show”. Signal helps you filter through status updates by degrees of connection, by company, industry, time posted, location, school, topics etc. A great way to make sense of status updates. Great research tool. Really cannot think of any negatives.

Infinity

A beautiful visualization of your professional network, built using the LinkedIn Javascript APIs.

My Perspective: This is like the really attractive person you date but realize after 5 minutes that there’s not much beyond the looks. Still nice to look at and fun to mess around with. Great Apple stile visuals. And I like that if you hover over a profile photo you get their latest status update. Click on the photo and get a brief summary of the person

Don’t fall in love too fast with any of these beta tools as some may only live for a few weeks. But in true American Idol spirit some will rise to the top and potentially make it to the big time as a fully supported tool on LinkedIn. For now just play with them to see if they have any impact on your business or your LinkedIn experience.

Post Blog to Multiple LinkedIn Groups at the Same Time

Sean Nelson — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 20:11:45 +0000

One of the things I like about social media is that as a developing medium it sometimes takes a little creativity to accomplish what you might want. Recently we had a client that engaged us to help drive traffic to their internal jobs postings. One of the first places I thought of posting these opportunities was in the jobs board in LinkedIn groups.

We did a search on industry groups and selected twenty to join. These twenty groups have over 300,000 members. The only thing left to do was to post each job opportunity in each group.

We started with 20 jobs to post and doing simple math meant that posting 20 jobs in 20 groups would require 400 posts to groups to complete . Thats a lot of time that really was not in the budget. Surely there had to be an easier way.

In simpler LinkedIn Times:
When I first started writing my blog I used LinkedIn groups to share my posts, growing my blog from 2,200 visits a month to a high of 50,000. Each time I wrote a post I would then post it in the 50 groups I belonged to. It was a tedious but effective tactic.

Earlier this year LinkedIn made some changes and suddenly you were able to post to the News board of all of your groups with a single post. Unfortunately that functionality disappeared when LinkedIn removed the News boards in groups. Fortunately through trial and error I have been able to find a way to posy one blog post in all of your groups with a single posting.

When 20 x 20 equals 1
So getting back to our client that needed to post their job opportunity in LinkedIn groups, here are the steps we took. The same steps you can use to syndicate your content to all of your groups at once.

Step 1: Create a New Blog
If you already have a blog then you can skip this step. Our client did not have a blog for their job posts and we did not have time to wait for their web developers to implement one so we created a WordPress hosted blog.

Step 2: Add a Share Widget to Your Blog

If we were hosting the blog on our client’s servers we would have access to upload the widget of our choice. With WordPress hosting our blog we were limited to the widgets loaded, so we needed an alternative way to add the Share functionality.

One of the widget options is the Text Widget which allows you to add coding to it to add functionality. We then did a search on Share Content and found the Add to Any site. We created an Add to Any account and then downloaded the Share code for WordPress.com.

Step 3: Add a Text Widget to your Blog Sidebar
We next went to the Widget Administrative panel in the backend of our blog and added a Text Widget to the Sidebar and pasted the WordPress.com Share Code from the Add to Any site. With our Share Widget added to our Sidebar we were ready to share our job blog posts.

Step 4: Go to your Post page and click on the Share button
Now that we had our blog in place, the jobs loaded as posts, and our share widget added we were ready to begin syndicating our content. We went to the homepage of our blog and clicked on the Title Link of the first job we wanted to share. On the post page we then clicked on our Share widget which then opened a page listing the networks available to choose to share to.

From here we’ll use video to show you how easy it is.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHhvgDAmyGs

(If the video does not work click on the following link to view the video in YoutTube: Syndicate Blog Content to LinkedIn Groups)

Hopefully the video helped show how easy it is to use this technique. We had an extra step for our client since the blog posts needed to be put onto the jobs board. Our only option unfortunately was to go into each group and move the posts to the Jobs board by flagging the discussion as a jobs post. Even with having to manually add to the jobs board we were still able to add 6 posts per hour. We estimate that using this technique saved us 6 to 8 hours on this task.

Remember that you want to make sure that the posts you add to LinkedIn groups

1. Are relevant to the group added; and

2. Share value and not simply a sales message.

Good Luck!

Can You Track Social Media ROI?

Sean Nelson — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 16:41:34 +0000

“Can you track social media ROI?” is a simple yes or no question. Unfortunately the answer isn’t so Black and White. And, it seems the more people think about it the more mis-construed things become.

One problem with tracking social media ROI is that people often start with a flawed definition. If the words engagement, traffic, bounce rate, retweets, comments, Diggs, Stumble’s, etc are included in your definition you are already off track.

I’m not saying that you should not track or measure these items. Some of these measurements may be defined as key performance indicators and indicate whether or not you are on the right path. They just don’t belong in the ROI equation.

Defining Investment

ROI = Return on INVESTMENT. So lets look at the definition of “investment”.

in·vest·ment : Property or another possession acquired for future financial return or benefit.

You’ll notice that in the definition I have underlined the words “financial return or benefit”. If you’re into social media for “social reasons” then you are spending time, not investing.

As a business person you only spend (waste) or invest dollars (time is money), which will result in more or less dollars being returned to you. Dollars out vs. dollars in.

ROI Formula

ROI = (Gain from Investment – Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment

The components of the ROI formula are all dollar based. Suppose at the end of the day I made $10 by investing $7, I would have an ROI of 42.8%. It doesn’t matter whether I had 100 visitors to my website or 1,000. Traffic has nothing to do determining ROI. Now if I paid $1 to drive the 100 site visitors then that would factor into ROI as a component of cost.

Cost of Investment

If you’re looking to track the cost of your social media initiatives it should not be that difficult. If you are paying someone else to do the work for you then whatever you pay them is your cost.

If you are doing it yourself then you need to calculate the value of your time (opportunity cost). While you can guesstimate these numbers the more accurate they are the better your decision making capability will be.

Gain From Investment

Tracking social media related sales is a difficult and in some cases impossible task. You will never be able to directly attribute every sale that resulted from social media initiatives back to social media. So what?

If you ran a television or radio ad could you track every sale that they generated? No. So what do you do? You track what you can and move on.

Its easy to add a specific url, drive people to a landing page page, or use coupon/promotional codes to track sales. The same techniques that have been used in online marketing and email marketing will work.

Where most people get bogged down is worrying about the value of social mentions, retweets, comments etc. If you’re tracking ROI then these are currently irrelevant because from an ROI perspective their value is $0 until they translate into a sale.

I’m not saying that these social engagement metrics are worthless, in fact they could be extremely valuable. They just are not part of our ROI conversation

Wrap Up

When I look at a new campaign my initial focus isn’t on ROI. I’m more concerned with are our communities growing, is traffic increasing, are more people engaging with the brand, are we starting to generate leads, and are we driving revenue. These are the stepping stones to driving ROI.

Positive trends here do not guarantee a positive ROI but based on experience they are key indicators of whether or not we are moving in the right direction.

So, “Can you track social media ROI?” The answer is a little more black and white if you start with the right definition?

What’s the Point of Social Media?

Sean Nelson — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 13:04:56 +0000

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself that question? How did you answer it? What if we ask someone else? Are they likely to give the same answer or a different one?

We’re also likely to give a different answer than people at the top social sites would give. So lets look at the point of several sites.

LinkedIn: To help professionals network and deepen the relationships they already have or are just developing.
Facebook: It’s changed in scope from its origins but Facebook allows us to engage with our friends and families on a more personal level sharing experiences, video, photo’s, etc.
Twitter: Twitter lets us stream micro thoughts to others and see what others are thinking or up to.
You Tube: Allows you to post to share experiences, entertainment, outrage, etc with others.

**Scot Allen’s response does a better job of describing the above tools. It’s worth the read.)

When you read through these descriptions there is a huge component missing if you are a business person. At no point in the descriptions does it say that any of these top sites were created to help you sell some product.

Billboards were created to sell products. Commercials are produced to sell product. Print Ads, radio ads, etc ……… So we have a set of tools that were not created to sell products and a set that were developed to sell products. What’s the problem?

Well for one people have started tuning out the channels designed to pitch them on a product or service. Second, everyone is so gaga over social media that there is simply too much buzz to do nothing. So what are you going to do?

Quit using the same tactics in social media that you used in advertising: This is a channel that doesn’t want to be sold to …directly. Indirect means of selling can actually work very well.
Quit expecting results overnight: This doesn’t mean that you can forget about ROI or other useful measurement, it just means you have to have some patience. If I want to send 1 million emails I buy an email list. If I want to reach 1,000,000 people in social media I need to build up my communities over a long period of time.
Understand what it is you have to offer someone who chooses to connect, follow, or friend you. If I am a consumer in your target market and I choose to follow you what’s in it for me? Why should I engage or stick around? Here a hint … it needs to be at least one of these – interesting, exciting relevant (per Michael Yoder) , or valuable.

I used to list 5 or 10 things whenever I wrote a post like this, and I could list a lot more of things to do and not do. But, this is social networking so the giving and receiving should be equal or at least constantly changing like a see-saw.

So I’ve started the conversation with these three. Its up to you to keep the conversation going by adding your thoughts and ideas as comments.