Archive for the ‘Rants’ Category

5 Common Forms of Facebook Spam

Posted on: August 29th, 2011 by Geoff Livingston 10 Comments

SPAM
Image by Christian Barmala

One of the issues a mature social network brings with it is spam. And though Facebook has rebooted its privacy settings for sharing, it is still largely an opt-out network that creates tons of spam.

The spamification of Facebook extends beyond professional solicitations to unwanted emails created by friends who want you to participate in their activities. While this is well-intended, it just shows that Facebook with its many features has also created many ways to spam your buddies. Here are five common forms of Facebook spam:

1) Group Additions

There’s nothing worse than getting added to a busy Facebook Group, and suddenly having dozens — even hundreds — of emails land in your in box. Worse, Facebook does not allow you to control notifications before getting added to a group. So you can only stop the spam after the fact. Ugh.

2) Event Invites

Yup, a marketer’s favorite, one that most of us are guilty of. But this feature has become meaningless to many power users because they receive so many unwanted event invites. Why bother?

3) Tagged with… Spam!

From professional photographers with watermarked images to marketers highlighting their wares, getting tagged with spam happens all the time. Of course, one man’s garbage is another’s treasure. If at all possible, when doing this, make sure the tagged post/picture/video includes them or is clearly of interest. You can avoid this kind of spam by barring people from tagging you via privacy settings.

4) Places

Oh, the mobile Places feature is going away… Only to be integrated across the entire network regardless of access method. Which means more Places spam. Beware of commenting or worse getting tagged by friends at a Place without having your privacy settings changed to avoid the deluge of email.

5) Friend Invites

These are just annoying. Businesses, obvious pornographers, anonymous handles, whatever. Regardless of motive, it’s downright obnoxious. And if you are conservative about your friending on Facebook, general friend requests from extended network members can be just as annoying. Friends aren’t what they used to be. Unless you say no ;)

What forms of Facebook spam do you find most, ahem, endearing? Applications? Notes? Learn more about Facebook’s Privacy Settings here.

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5 Challenges for Google+ Business

Posted on: August 8th, 2011 by Geoff Livingston 8 Comments

google plus
Image by Sean MacEntee

Chatter about Google+ for business is abound, but other than the SEO benefits, arguments for a pro offering have not been compelling. In reality, there is no formal business offering yet. While Google+ is at or close to 30 million members, they are distributed globally, and are largely technologists or social media wonks. At this early stage, consumer businesses, nonprofits and non technology B2B plays have little to gain from Google+ other than SEO (can you say Squidoo II?).

Moving forward, Google+ needs to provide a substantive growth curve and a robust business offering to effectively complete. Here are five challenges facing Google+ for businesses:

1) Beyond SEO

It’s great that bloggers and corporate content producers can yield strong search results using Google+. It makes a compelling case to integrate +1 technology and sharing within content marketing initiatives. But beyond SEO, most of the business chatter about Google+ is, well, bloggers talking about setting up personal profiles. Businesses need more than that. They need paths towards tangible outcomes and ROI.

Until Google+ launches its business solution, there really is nothing for businesses and nonprofits to do other than to experiment with the existing personal features. The one exception is technology companies marketing to early adopters. Having your social media team get active on Google+ as individuals makes total sense. Dell is an early leader in this sense.

2) Geeky Is Great, But…

It’s nice that the social media and technology communities are enthused about Google+. For many, it makes life easier and more public than Facebook. But the non-indoctrinated “normal” person isn’t using Google+ yet.

Until wider stakeholder groups adapt Google+, most companies and nonprofits will find themselves marketing to the virtual wilderness. Instead, they should wait for core stakeholder groups to come to and stay on Google+ for a sustained period of months. When that happens, businesses and nonprofits should set up serious outposts.

3) Facebook Isn’t Giving Up

Zuck

Ironically, the most followed person on Google+ is Marc Zuckerberg. Strange as that may seem, it is emblematic of Facebook’s staying power.

Facebook’s continuing evolution sacrifices individual privacy to serve the larger business community. And make no bones about it, Facebook definitely offers the business community quite a lot. The offering rages from free community pages and social ads to customized contests and promotions and deeply integrated applications.

The most important part of Facebook’s offering is its widespread, global consumer appeal. The social network has more than two times as many active bodies in one place than LinkedIn, Twitter and the fledgling Google+ combined.

Facebook has yet to respond to the Circles challenge to its user interface. It would be surprising if the network that likes to opt in social technology challenges ignores Google+’s innovation. It’s very early in this competition. Really, the thing that Google+ can always beat Facebook on is privacy and an insistence on open commentary.

4) Twitter and LinkedIn Have Mature Offerings

Both of these second tier networks have more than 100 million active users, and are very mature with loyal communities. Twitter has finally figured out its business model with its new advertising package that retains 80 percent of customers. LinkedIn is an extremely strong B2B-only play with robust Groups, strong HR offerings, and increasingly well-used business profile pages. Google+ needs to determine where it fits in comparison with these two growing proven offerings.

5) No Proof of Concept

This one really isn’t fair given that the professional offering has yet to launch, but there’s no proof that Google+ will be a good play for businesses. Any company or nonprofit that participates in the initial offering will be an early adopter, experimenting with the medium. Most companies don’t feel so publish about testing a new medium with their precious dollars. Instead, they prefer to wait until the medium is proven. And that won’t happen until the end of the year.

Conclusion

Google+ is likely to succeed so stay tuned, but hold onto your wallet until 2012. There is still a lot of hype and uncertainty when it comes to Google+ for business. The exceptions to the rule are those marketing to the early adopter community and content marketers who can benefit from an uptick in SEO courtesy of Google+.

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Books, Brochures and Business Cards

Posted on: June 16th, 2011 by Geoff Livingston 24 Comments

Soleil says, "The Fifth Estate, huh?"

Welcome to the Fifth Estate is dedicated to Soleil Maya Livingston, pictured above.

After you publish a book, you don’t need a brochure. You walk in with the book, and give it to them. If your book does really well, you don’t even need to hand them a business card. They already know who you are. Instant name recognition and credibility are two primary benefits of writing a great book. Unfortunately, these by-products of disseminating (hopefully) noteworthy ideas have become the primary purpose behind many marketing voices’ books.

Back before publishers sold their souls to Mephistopheles (and marketers), books used to get published because they were unique, offering completely new views, or different ideas and approaches to older topics. That was the whole reason to publish; to bring new ideas to the table.

As a teenage boy and a college student, there was great joy reading new fiction or nonfiction with fantastic ideas. Today, it is disturbing to see the rewards of publishing are surpassing the original reasons to embark on the endeavor.

The benefits for authors included the accolades, new book contracts, and yes, credibility and perhaps business. To this day, these are the primary benefits for authors. Writing books doesn’t pay enough to cover the mortgage.

Marketers have awoken to the image value that writing a book brings. And publishers love the fact that marketers pimp their books so well! Unfortunately, most publishers are no longer printing original business thought anymore. Instead, they are publishing 200 page brochures and business cards.

Perhaps what is worse is the way many of today’s authors go out and shamelessly pimp their book like it is the second coming of that carpenter guy. Instead of showing how their ideas can help people or the industry as a whole, they turn their books into self promotion vehicles.

There is one fellow author who literally uses any casual mention on social profiles to name drop the title of his book. It is one of the most shameless behaviors of book pimpery yet (right after the above baby photo). But it’s not surprising.

That’s a travesty. Seriously. It’s a damn shame that within the marketing and social media industry publishing a book is a coveted trophy for buzz.

The saturation point may be coming, too. People are growing weary of receiving the shameless arm wrenches and the self posturing. God forbid if you contest any ideas in said books. The egos involved can’t handle people feeling differently.

Business books need to be better than a platform; they need to spark their readers and make them better at their jobs. Unfortunately, it seems most authors or publishers don’t view it that way. Perhaps Seth Godin’s book title was right, “All Marketers Are Liars.” Will they say that about all marketing authors, too?

Special thanks to Rich Becker for suggesting this topic.

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