Tag: integration

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Drugmaker Merck challenges Facebook after ‘losing’ page

The German drug maker Merck KGaA has begun legal action against Facebook after discovering what its lawyer described as the “the apparent takeover of its Facebook page”.

The webpage is being used by the German firm’s US rival Merck & Co.

Merck KGaA said that the social network “is an important marketing device [and] the page is of great value”, adding that since its competitor was benefiting from the move “time is of the essence.”

This kind of happening has been in the making for a long time and again demonstrate Facebook’s disregards for due process and communication, something fairly typical of social media platforms in general.  Somehow, the basic social media rules do not seem to apply to social media companies.

As social media becomes increasingly important to communicate with and engage a company’s constituencies, social media companies will need to be more responsive and accountable, and if they want to attract more advertisers, they will have to implement systems to communicate with their own constituencies, something their customers learned a long time ago.

This event though, illustrates and reinforces the need to understand that an organization should not build their online presence and strategy around the social networks, but around something they have actual control and ownership over, their website and develop their website into an interactive platform.  They then should use social media to drive traffic to their website, something Facebook has been steadily trying to curtail.

This legal action from a major companies could benefit us all by making Facebook more accountable

Read the full article

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Is Facebook killing corporate websites?

Several recent studies point out to a decrease in traffic to traditional corporate websites and an increase in traffic to Facebook.

Does that mean that web users are turning their back on traditional websites or that they are spending more time on Facebook and are more likely to visit the corporate Facebook page rather than the corporate website?

It is worth noting that if the trend is very noticeable with traditional brand focused static websites, the trend reverses when it comes to transactional websites.

Read the article

 

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REI: Going Local on social media

REI’s Digital Engagement Manager, Jordan Williams, discussed how they utilize social media sites for each REI store to develop a better local connection with their customers.

A must see for retailers and any company that ventures into social media

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Social Media 001: Page or Profile? That is the question

As more organizations get on the social media bandwagon, it becomes more and more obvious that there is some serious confusion as to what type of page they should use for their online presence.

Whether on LinkedIn or Facebook (Google has only allowed a few organization to test the Google + business accounts and is seriously enforcing their policy of not allowing businesses and organizations using personal accounts), users are confused, misinformed or uninformed about the differences between profiles and pages.

Few users read the TOSs and who can blame them, pages after pages of boring legal mumbo jumbo that would put to sleep a toddler on a sugar high.

Not knowing the differences can have costly repercussions.

Before going public, LinkedIn was notorious for enforcing its TOS, especially when it comes to organizations using personal profiles.  Facebook was enforcing as well, but with the vastly higher number of users, enforcement was spottier.

One can expect that enforcement will become stricter again in the future as the companies start focusing again on quality versus quantity.

What is the big deal? You might ask.

The big deal is choosing the wrong format can be costly in many ways.  Imagine logging on to your page only to find out that your account has been suspended and there is nowhere to turn to have it restored.  Imagine having to do the work all over again, rebuild your network of followers, your content, earning comments and ratings.

What figure can you put on rebuilding your social media presence?  What is the cost in term of time wasted, lost goodwill, lost followers?

The rule:

Generally speaking (most social media platforms use the same basic principle)

  • A “profile” is a “personal profile”, a live individual, not an organization, not a company.
  • A “page” in the Facebook lingo is for an organization, company, brand.  Public personalities, artists, athletes… when using the account for business purpose should use the “page” versus “profile” for one good reason, they are usually doing it to promote their brand. LinkedIn has its own version of the “page”

Using the wrong format will also limit what you can do.

Due to their original design, pages and profiles have different built in tools and using a profile for a business entity can seriously limit your reach in term of communication, exposure, engagement, measurement and visibility and that’s the subject of an upcoming post.

 

 

 

 

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Social media step by step

Over the past couple of years, I have delivered quite a few social media workshops and received a lot of very good feedback and follow up requests.

To answer some of the questions, I posted a few of my presentations slides on Slideshare. the slides, though,informative, lack the detailed explanations I give during the workshops.I needed another way to get the information out and my new blog gives me the tool I need to do just that.

I am unveiling next week a series of features that will take users from 101 to advanced, step by step.

  • LinkedIn Monday will take users step by step from I juts opened a LinkedIn account… now what do I do?
  • Facebook Tuesday will guide users who just opened an account or are considering it, step by step through the process and coach them through the “Do’s and Don’t  of Facebook
  • Facebook Business Wednesday will help business users make the most out of their page
  • Social Media Thursday will deal with other platforms such as geolocation, social bookmarking, blogging, You Tube, strategy…

I look forward to your feedback and interactions.

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The changing internet

A March 2010 to March 2011 study from Silicon Alley Insider shows that the way people spend their time on the internet is rapidly changing and if you are not paying attention, your brand could become a victim.

The study shows a rapid increase (69%) in time spent on Facebook and a steady decrease (9%) in time spent on traditional websites shrunk by 9%

Social media has dramatically changed the way users look and think about the web, how they spend their time on the web and what they expect from the web

Does that mean  you should abandon your website?  No, but you should seriously think about how you use it and how you drive traffic to it.

If the trend persists, SEO will become less important and will progressively be replaced by social media.

Another recent study (May 2011) by Comscore looks at how users spend their time on social media sites like Facebook.  By the way, Facebook accounts for 90% of the time spent on all social media sites

  • 27% of their time is spent “consuming and interacting” on the newsfeed/wall
  • 21% on the profile section
  • 17% on the photo section

Interacting has become a big part of the web experience, experience delivered through social media sites.  What that means is if a brand or organization wants to keep their website relevant, they have to promote interaction.

How do you promote interaction on a website?  With a blog section, with comments and by integrating your site with social media platforms.

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