Posts Tagged ‘Facebook’

The MyMic Facebook application lets you post audio updates to your Facebook profile or onto your friend’s Wall. You can post up to five seconds for free and there are paid options to post longer messages.

I ran into the application’s creator, LeaAnna Hernandez (@MyMicApp on Twitter), during a #LATISM Twitter chat. I had asked the Twittersphere if there were any Latino/Latina startup techies out there and LeaAnna “raised her hand.”

The application caught my eye because:

1. It is super easy to use. There’s a tutorial at the end of this post just in case you have questions.
   
2. Your friends don’t have to install anything to listen to your messages.
   
3. My Facebook friends started asking about it once I posted my first message. I love attention.
   

I also liked the recent press release where LeaAnna says,

“Sometimes we don’t want to be on camera. Maybe we’re having a bad hair day or the lighting isn’t the most flattering. With MyMic, none of that matters. Users, musicians, celebrities can easily record updates in their pajamas and no one would know the difference”.

I caught up with LeaAnna for an interview

JPL: Why did you select audio?

LH: I come from the radio industry…specializing in advertising. So i wanted to build an app that could marry radio with social. Businesses run commercials on radio stations. So I built the app for businesses to be able to run “social commercials” on Facebook.

JPL: I think I saw some stats that only one in a thousand YouTube users actually records and uploads a video. What do you think that ratio will look like for audio?

LH: I think that there are a lot of people that are camera shy and don’t want to be on camera. It literally is a production, having to get the right angle from the camera…nice lighting….good backdrop maybe.

With audio, it’s much easier and faster so I am inclined to think that it would be better but it’s still so new that only time will tell.

JPL: I tested the application and was able to post to my profile and to a friend’s Wall. Is there a way to post MyMic messages to the Facebook pages that I administer?

LH: In 2 weeks we are adding the feature to post recordings on Fan pages. I “like” your thinking.

JPL: Do you see businesses using MyMic the same way they use radio? Will they even start off using the same on air commercials?

LH: I think some brands will initially use their same radio ads. But others will get more creative.
For example, one advertiser I know is looking to create a promotion where they ask their friends to come up with a new slogan for the brand and record with MyMic. (This is another reason why the post on fan page functionality is important ). And they have an incentive attached to the promotion.

How does MyMic work?

MyMic is extremely easy to use. All you have to do is:

1) Go to the MyMic Application page on Facebook.

2) Click on the “Start Recording” button.

3) The little Adobe Flash Player Settings alert box will appear. Click on “Allow” to give the application permission to access your microphone.

4) Now you’re ready to record. To post a five second audio message for free, just click on the little red record button and leave your message.

5) Click on the “Publish” button and you’ll have the option to set a post Title and add a Message.

6) Decide if you want to post to your Facebook Profile by clicking on the “Save and Publish” button or post on a friend’s Wall by clicking on the “Send To A Friend” button.

Once you click on the “Save and Publish” button, you’ll get the “Post To Your Wall” dialog box.

From the “Post to Your Wall” dialog box you can decide who can see this post. You can choose to make it visible to Everyone, Friends and Networks, Friends of Friends, Friends Only, or Customize things.

Your Facebook friends can now listen to your recording without having to install any kind of application.

If you’d like to send the audio message to specific friend, you can select the “Send to a Friend” option when you publish. When you do this, you’ll be able to search and click to select the message recipient. This will post the message to their Wall. (The application does not allow you to post private messages at this time.)

I like the way the application allows you to filter then select friends. As you type in letters, the little picture list below filters your friends. This is especially useful for people who have a ton of friends.

At this time, you’re only allowed to post to the Wall of one friend and there’s no option for tagging other people.

Final Thoughts

I like the simplicity of the MyMic app and already have a lot of ideas on how to use it for Facebook promotions. I think this will be a nice utility for companies, Facebook page admins, and heavy duty content creators. It will be interesting to see if removing the “bad hair day” factor, as it exists with video, will encourage “regular” Facebook users to take on a new medium. As LeaAnna says, “only time will tell.”

Ok, it’s time to test out MyMic Application then report back here to leave your feedback. Will MyMic catch on? Was it easy to use? Did your Facebook friends like it and ask about it? Come on back and share with the other readers!

I love sharing information, including technology trends, social media How To’s, breaking and local business news, and information on advocacy groups. On Twitter, I’ll share 5-10 items per day, sometimes in a rapid fire method. On Facebook I’ll “Like” or “Share” several posts a day. Multiply these activities by the number of Twitter and Facebook users and you have an unprecedented amount of sharing and re-sharing.

So why limit the scope of your message? Let it run wild!

Here are five tips to help you set your message free.

Give Your Email Legs

Ok, so you spent two weeks working with a team to create the perfect email message. Maybe you’re about to launch a new product, announce a new conference, drive donors to your non-profit site, or share your latest video creation.

There are three important items to add to your email deployment checklist:

1. Do you have an online version of your email with a link to that page on the email? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve received a juicy email that I want to share with the world and struggled or have been unable to find the online version. If I don’t have a link, I can can’t share it with my online network. What a missed opportunity.
   
   If you do have an online version, please think clearly before deciding to host that content on the email management tool’s site. Do you want to drive content to Constant Contact’s site or to your site, for example?
2. Do you have a Twitter or Facebook share feature on your email? This makes sharing one step easier. With the click of a button, your message can flow to two of the most supercharged sharing sites in the world.
3. Is it easy to forward the email to a friend? Some email messages have nifty “Forward to a Friend” features that make it easy to share content. I rarely use this feature but there are some people who like it, especially if it is from an authority site like a news agency or major publication. If the email is breaking news or highly relevant to your personal or business contacts then this could help your message take off.

This Kodak email has an online version and ways for users to subscribe to Facebook and Twitter. The email could be enhanced with actual tweet buttons that automatically format the Twitter and Facebook messages, so posting is only one click away.

Let’s look at this from a numbers perspective. If you send out your email message to your permission-based list of 10,000 contacts and you don’t add any sharing features, then your message is limited to the number of recipients plus the number of times your email is forwarded to other contacts. Let’s be generous and say that 100 of the emails were forwarded to contacts. That’s a reach of 10,100.

If you add a link to your online content and have a Facebook and Twitter share then the numbers shift. Your initial contacts receive the message and can then re-post the message to their followers via Twitter or Friends on Facebook. If I tweet about an item, the message is instantly available to over 8,400 followers! That’s almost double the reach from ONE contact. Factor in retweets and other people sharing and the reach can get to 100,000 very quickly.

From your Website to the World

1. Add a Tweet button and Facebook Share and/or Like feature to your Web pages and blog posts. Yes, this is the same tip as for your email messaging but it’s important to give your site/blog readers a way to share content with their networks Clear a path.
2. Do you have a compelling image on your web page or blog post? A good photo or graphic will catch a persons attention and make it more share worthy. On Facebook, the image will show up as a thumbnail picture. Your Facebook friends will be much more likely to Like the post and to re-share it.
   
   Note: if you don’t select a photo to go with your page/post and someone “Facebooks it” then they will either get a selection of random image options (icons from your sidebar or unrelated content) or they won’t have any option.

(Link to The Spice Spoon blog.)

Review

We just reviewed how to clear a path for your important messages. If your message is clear, relevant, and timely then these tips can help your message spread like wildfire.

Do you have any other design tips to help your messages spread?

Photo Credit: Vestman on Flickr – License

Google recently closed off Facebook’s access to import Gmail contacts. Google felt that if Facebook was able to import its Gmail contacts that Google should be able to import from Facebook. Since that wasn’t going to happen, Google pulled the plug on its Facebook integration.

To counter this Google move, Facebook added instructions to its site on how to do a workaround.

This is what I did:

1. Noticed the “Find More Friends” section on my Facebook profile

2. Clicked on the “Find Friends” button.

3. Facebook brings up a mini window which churns then redirects me to a “Find Your Friends” page which has instructions on how to download my Gmail contacts then re-upload them to be processed. SNEAKY!

This is the Find Your Friends page view:

It will be interesting to see if Facebook experiences a dip in new users after the Google move despite Facebooks workaround. What do you think, will it have an effect on Facebook numbers?

Photo credit: Ludovico Cera on Flickr – license

Facebook has a myriad ways to receive notifications but not from your own Facebook Page.

In order to get notifications you have to do a workaround and “Like” your own Page post. After doing this for a while, this can get old for your regular Facebook profile friends.

Enter NutshellMail, an site that allows you to manage portions of your social network via email. My favorite feature – NutshellMail allows you to receive Facebook page notifications!

When I first heard about NutshellMail back in 2009, I didn’t get it. Why would people want to manage their social network activities via email? In fact, I chatted with Mark Schmulen (one of the co-founders) over brunch about the application for half and hour and still didn’t get it. I get it now and it’s a great patch for the missing Facebook Page notification feature.

Key NutshellMail Features

Easy to set up accounts
You can configure Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Myspace accounts. On Facebook you can pick your profile and any of your Pages.

Easy to schedule
You can schedule up to three notifications per day. This isn’t the same as regular Facebook profile notifications that can be sent as they happen but it’s the next best thing. If you really need to see the latest updates, you can click on the “Get Latest Notifications” button on the notification email and it will send you the latest and greatest information.

Nice looking emails
After doing email marketing for over 7 years, it drives me crazy when companies send out emails that look like poo on key devices. NutshellMail is made for email so I’m glad they took the time to make things render properly on different clients.

Review

I’m still playing with NutshellMail and learning how to configure all of the notification options but it’s solved a major problem for me. Until Facebook rolls out a way to receive notifications from Facebook pages without a hack, I’ll keep using NutshellMail.

Do you have an other way of managing your Facebook pages, I’d love to hear about it.

I was pleased to finally receive the “Suggestions For You” feature since I’ve been hearing about it all week. My initial impressions were:

1. Dang, I thought I was following some of those people already
2. Um, I recently unfollowed some of those folks
3. I don’t engage much with some of the referral sources
4. There are a lot of celebrities on this list
5. These are real people, not feeds

Let’s look at these impressions individually and I’ll share some suggestions that will help Twitter’s suggestion algorithm.

1) Already following these people

No really, I thought I was already following some of the people that showed up. Is it possible people have been getting “disconnected” over the past few days? I saw the same reaction from others in my Twitter timeline. If Twitter “caught” the oversight then they did something right.

2) I recently unfollowed some of the suggested users

It happens. We unfollow people for one reason or another. Maybe they don’t engage with you, they say something that irks you, or you’re tired of following a particular celebrity. Many of the people who I had already followed and unfollowed were celebrities. I’ve already been to the show, I don’t need to go back.

Algorithm Improvement: De-prioritize accounts that one has already followed and unfollowed and especially those that have been blocked.

3) Don’t engage much with “Followed By” followers

Each Suggested User has several bits of information associated with her account – Name, Twitter handle, location, bio, and Followed By. All suggested users have two or more accounts in the “Followed By” field and I assume these are my main “connections” to the suggested user. But many of the people that appeared in the “Followed By” field where people who I don’t engage with on a consistent basis.

Algorithm Improvement: Follow Klout’s lead and make suggestions based on key connectors. Klout analyzes a user’s statistical influence and also lists users that are influential. These influencers should be the top “connectors” used in the Suggested User formula.

4) Lots of celebrities

This is where the asymmetrical nature of Twitter is a drawback to making equitable connections on the social graph. By asymmetrical, I mean that one can follow an account but the account doesn’t need to follow back. In contrast, Facebook requires people to follow each other to be “Friends” so that relationship is symmetrical. Extremely asymmetrical “nodes” in a network cause a warping in the fabric of the graph. If a celebrity (that doesn’t follow me or only a few others) suggests another celebrity that they follow then that’s a low probability match.

Algorithm Improvement:Turn down the volume on celebrity suggestions. These accounts will be easy to spot by the ratio of followers to people being followed.

5) These are real people

Every person on the Who to Follow list appear to be engaged Twitter users, not just piped in “feeds” from other social networking tools. Twitter got this right.

I follow 7,740 people on Twitter and am followed by 8,157 accounts and have new followers every day. I don’t use auto-followback tools so I have to manually go through my email messages and “vet” followers. Unless the account is extremely relevant to my interests, I don’t follow feed accounts. (This also means I’m way behind in reviewing new followers.) By filtering out feed-only accounts, this tremendously increases the chances of my following them. Good job Twitter.

Review

Twitter still has some work to do on making the Suggestions more relevant. I made suggestions but also gave Twitter kudos on some things it is doing right. This is much better than the old Suggested Users celebfest hyper-monetization list it had before.

What do you think? Did you see any other obvious algorithm improvements? What was your overall impression of the Suggestions For You feature?

Related Post:
TechCrunch – Twitter’s Social Graph Is About To Get Pumped Up. “Who To Follow” Is Social Steroids

It’s safe to say that there is no one formula for presenting social media to your company. The approaches will differ based on your position in the company, the company’s culture, formal presentation processes, probably on the size of your company, and the receptiveness of the industry to social media. But if you believe, as I do, that social media is here to stay and that your business can benefit from tapping into the social revolution, then you should find some helpful tips here for making your big pitch.

I’ll start by sharing my personal experience pitching social media to my previous boss then share responses from across different social networking channels. Just so you know, I think my presentation barely made it to first base. The tips I mention below include “corrections” for things I left out of my presentation. Those bits of extra wisdom plus crowdsourced responses should help your presentation go much further than mine and hopefully you’ll knock a homer.

I hope you’ll stick around and add your experiences and feedback in the Comments section below.

The Pitch
It was 2008 and I was pitching social media to the company’s CEO.

It was lonely standing up there in the conference room. It was just the CEO, me, and the glow of the projector displaying my Power Point presentation. But I knew that folding social media into the fiber of the company was the right path. I presented the benefits and massive opportunities of social media, examples of other companies doing amazing things with it, and showed him Tony Hsieh’s (Zappos CEO) Twitter stream to help him visualize what top-down involvement looked like.

Presentation Tips
My personal tips for pitching social media to a boss are:

1. Get help from other colleagues. Two or more people pitching a new project is much more convincing than one lone voice. I chose to present on my own after getting lukewarm feedback from potential allies.
2. Schedule a time for the pitch. This conveys the message that you have something serious and important to discuss and it avoids interruptions.
3. Create a formal presentation. I suggest a Power Point or a written proposal. This will give you a clear framework and keep you on track in case your nerves set in. I used Guy Kawasaki’s “10/20/30″ Power Point presentation guidelines to select the presentation structure.
4. Primarily, answer the question “What problems will social media solve?” This was the first question I was asked and my answer was a bit shaky. My presentation had focused on the benefits and opportunities, not as much on problem-solving. The CEO and I ended up coming up with potential problem-busting uses during the meeting.
5. Present the benefits of using social media from different company perspectives. If you are a marketing person, your inclination may be to only focus on the marketing opportunities. Don’t stop there. You can approach social media from an HR, customer service, IT, and sales perspectives as well. During the meeting, we discussed using social media as part of the Web site process improvement cycle.
6. Recommend a concrete plan of action. Ask for resources (time, people, and money) to accomplish an objective and get a commitment. Make sure you recommend a SMART objective – one that is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based.

As a result of the pitch, I was given time to do some “experimenting” with social media. This was less of a commitment than I had hoped for, but was resolved to make the most out of the opportunity. This would require patience since I had already been very active on Twitter and knew what could be accomplished. A year and a half later I designed and help implement a blogging infrastructure and all product managers are now blogging and sharing great content with customers and the Blogosphere.

Other “Pitch” Stories and Approaches

As I closed up the blogging project, I wondered how other people fared making a similar social media pitch. I jumped on my social networks and asked them. I went to Twitter, Facebook, Aardvark, and LinkedIn and posted the question:

Note: This was the question posted to LinkedIn. The Twitter version was much shorter as was the Aardvark version. I blogged about using LinkedIn and Aardvark for doing in depth Internet research earlier this month (includes a video demonstration).


Crowdsourced Responses

There were many different approaches to pitching social media. Here are some of the responses:

Present a binder containing examples of all the things that are being said about the company, industry, products – even about your boss – on social media. Also include some LI Q&A, tweets, blogs etc. by employees, key customers, competitors.

This can be a real eye-opener that brings home the lesson that the train has left the station, and though you can’t control the chatter, you can be influencing the discussion – but only if you get in there and play.

Some great examples to include are situations where a customer was upset or misinformed about something, and got satisfaction through a social media response.

-Rob Duncan, www.robduncan.com, via LinkedIn

Developing a tracking system for social media is imperative for measuring the efforts put in by your social media manager and ROI. While it may not always be concrete numbers, there is something to be said for sentiment, reach, and passion for a company.

- JNR from San Diego

I have never had to pitch my boss on social media, but I have had to pitch social media to very stubborn and old fashioned people before.

I really like Rob’s suggestion of showing examples of where people have talked about your company. When ever I have done that for potential clients, they are very impressed. It helps them to see the vision of what social media is.

I posted a link below of a great video by Socialnomics that I’ve found to be pretty effective. It displays a bunch of impressive statistics on how social media is here to stay.

-Chad Mustard, Owner Blue Helm Communications, www.bluehelm.com, via LinkedIn

A couple [of] suggestions based on my 4+ years experience pitching blogs/SM to clients.

1. I’ve had much more success sitting with decision makers, one or two at a time, in front of a computer, actually showing them what can be done on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. I agree with others here that showing mentions of your company are powerful – even more powerful if you show them these mentions in real time on one of the monitoring sites. For people who aren’t engaged in SM on a regular basis, it all sounds strange and highly theoretical when discussed in a meeting. You have to make it real.
2. Be crystal clear about your SM objectives. If you’re not sure what purpose SM serves in your organization, discussing engagement tactics and even strategy are premature. SM can support many organizational goals – branding, thought leadership, SEO, customer loyalty, lead generation, etc. The top people may not understand SM, but they understand more leads, happier customers, more prominent brands. I think it’s much better to internally position SM as a tool to support initiatives rather than an initiative in itself.

-Brad Shorr, Director of Content Marketing, Straight North, www.straightnorth.com, via LinkedIn

…In order to “sell” my boss on social media it was pretty easy conceptually, just drive traffic from these social media activities to our website. Actually delivering on the results is the hardest part.

…

It’s just getting past that first hump that is the hardest part when you’re relatively unknown in the SM world. Getting the first visitors are always the hardest, but it is something that can provide exponential gains with growth.

…

So the best way to start out is to set some obtainable goals, go ahead with your plan, measure the results and control the expectations with your boss.

-Chris Rizzo, from a Michigan data center, Online Tech, via LinkedIn.

Present the rationale backwards. Start with the benefit of social networking (interaction with brand, profit generation, lead generation, etc.) and leave the execution to the end. Most people can get bogged down in explaining how social networking works which can be a heavy learning curve for some non-tech savvy people.

-Ed M., Hoboken, NJ, via Aardvark

I’ve presented twitter as a valuable primer for research by searching for tags, organizing the results into columns, and highlight key phrases in peoples’ posts. This enabled my boss to see it as both qualitative and quantitative, but also synthesized into something that seemed meaningful, just by providing simple headings like “many women feel guilty when taking time for themselves” with supporting tweets below. Make it look substantial, but highly organized. Avoid the overwhelming clutter appearance of social media. That’s what they’re afraid of.

-Michael Kiser Innovation/Interactive consultant in Chicago, via Aardvark

Review

We’ve seen my approach to pitching social media, some of my tips, and several other approaches. If you’re about to make a big pitch to your boss, department, or to a potential client, I hope these approaches and techniques help you in your endeavor.

I’d also like to send a big THANK YOU to everyone who responded to my question and shared and contributed to the research for this post.

Have you pitched social media to an executive? As always, I would be honored to hear your stories via the Comments.