Facebook: Requesting vs. Suggesting

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Jeremy Smith

Recently, this blog has been asking people on our Facebook page to participate in different polls we do through the Facebook Questions section. I had made the decision at the beginning to send the question to all of my own personal Facebook friends in the hopes that I would be able to get more people to participate on the page and hopefully get more people to Like the page. The questions were not personal, simply asking about basic opinions on youth ministry, if they use certain social media networks, or seasonal questions that fit the holiday.

Unfortunately, I ran into a problem. One of my friends from college decided that he did not like being asked to answer this question. He kindly asked me to stop sending him requests because he felt like I was simply trying to run a research project on him. I happily obliged, but was puzzled. For the previous five months, I had be posting between one and three articles a day through my own personal account from this blog that would have shown up on his feed, approximately 300 articles in all. Yet five questions over a month and half was too much. Do not get me wrong, requesting my friends shows a notification that I am asking for something, whereas when I post a blog article, it simply shows up on their feed. So there is a difference in the delivery, but I was curious why he was so disgruntled over it. So why the complaint now?

The answer came quickly: Do not mix up the idea that sharing links that someone can ignore and asking for interaction directly with Facebook Questions is the same thing. They are completely different.

Short Term Success Does Not Mean Long Term Success

My goal to share questions from the Facebook page was a short-term tactic that was designed to increase the reach and interactions of my page with people and also improve the number of Likes so that I would not have to do this too much longer. Short-term, the posts did increase dramatically, though after just the third week it did begin to drop. The problem that came was two-fold: My Likes did not increase at all and people were beginning to gain a negative perception of the page and ultimately the brand. You may increase the reach of your Facebook page quickly, but too much in a short time (and that term too much is very subjective) can lead to a long-term lose of fans and views and even a negative connotation to what you have to offer. When coming up with the strategy of how you plan to use social media to promote what you have say, share, or sell, do so wisely and think about how you would react if someone did what you are going to do to yourself.

You might be asking why I am bringing this up, who cares if we offer suggestions or request their opinion. The difference is that ignoring a suggestion is guilt-free whereas ignoring my request brings about a little irritation that I may be bugging them and even a brief moment of them evaluating if it is worth being a fan of my Facebook Page. Combining guilt, irritation, and a reevaluation of committing to your page once in a while (a month or more) is one thing, but as I found out the hard way, even a question a week becomes spam in many peoples’ eyes.

Would you be annoyed at the frequency of requests or shared links you are putting out there?

Blogging makes you a better marketer because it teaches you humility in your writing.

- Seth Godin

Links of the Week

Posted on November 17, 2011 by Jeremy Smith

Is 22 Tweets-Per-Day the Optimum?
What is more interesting than that is what happens when we the graph average number of followers of users at various TPD levels. As you can see by the graph below, a sweet spot emerges. Users who tweet between 10 and 50 times per day have more followers on average than those that tweet more or less frequently. The “peak” of the curve below is at about 22 tweets per day.

Survey: Most Use Social Media To Keep In Touch, Not To Follow Celebrities Or Find Dates
Hands down, the most common reason for using social media was “Staying in touch with current friends” as 91% of respondents agreed it was a ‘minor to major’ reason they embraced social media. Following closely behind were the reasons “staying in touch with family” and “connecting with old friends you’f lost touch with” with 87% agreement and 86% agreement respectively.

Sexting Teens Twice as Likely to Be Depressed [STUDY]
High school students who sext — the term for texting sexually suggestive or explicit messages or photos — are more likely to be depressed, a new study reveals.

Mobile Gaming Rises Rapidly Among Kids and Teens via Culture Blog
Mobile gaming more than quadruples in two years

The 5 Skills of a Leader
Most people understand the importance of leadership; they are surrounded by both good and bad examples. What they often struggle most with, however, is how to “do” leadership. Where does a leader start? What is the first step?

Too Much Social Media?

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Jeremy Smith

We did a guest post over at Churchm.ag you should check out. Here is a link to the full post and below is a snippet:

With the release of Google+ Pages for businesses, many people are starting to question if this is a good enough investment to spend the time developing, interacting with viewers, and making a strong enough presence in this new social media opportunity.

In fact, this has sparked a discussion on if there are too many social media options.

With options like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Youtube, and so many others, where do businesses, bloggers, non-profit organizations, and Churches market themselves?

The Factors

There are so many different factors that go into if someone should begin doing social media. Here are three big factors that need to be weighed

Audience
As with any organization that is looking to thrive, let alone profit, you need to know your audience. What is your target consumer? Small town Mennonite Churches with only three people under the age of twenty will see marketing differently than a daily blogger or a youth group. Yet, not only should you know if they would interact with you online, but you need to do a little research on what social networks they actually are on. This research may simple be that for four months you invest equal time in all networks and quit using the ones that are unsuccessful.

Who is your audience and what social media networks do they already use?

Time
Marketing takes so much time to come up with a plan, develop, and interact with customers. At the same time, you cannot just advertise and expect to be successful at it. Effective marketing online takes more time following up with people than the initial tweet or status update.

Do you have that time to invest in any or all social media outlets?

Cost
Many people do not have experience or the know how to invest in all of these different social media outlets. Thus they will look to others to run the social media face of their organization. Even if a youth group has a volunteer run the Facebook page, you will likely meet with them at Starbucks for a cup of coffee once a month or so. Big companies, like Compassion International, have their own marketing division with two or three people solely designated to one or more social media networks.

How much money are you willing to put into it?

Make a Custom Facebook Landing Page – Part 1

Posted on October 28, 2011 by Jeremy Smith

We did a guest post over at Churchm.ag you should check out. Here is a link to the full post and below is a snippet:

Christian organizations seem to have not invested in the power of the social network to show the products, services, or community that could be shared with people that might have an interest in what you do. With these changes in Facebook, users now have more marketing power than before to share a brand or network to people.

The basics of a Facebook page are the Wall, Photos, Events, and Questions. They are the staple of Facebook that can be seen in an individual’s page as well, but we want to set Pages apart from a typical user. We want to add functionality to our Facebook page that creates excitement and an increase in interaction with viewers. The solution is custom pages and more specifically landing pages, a customized first page new viewers get to see. This allows us to put our best foot forward and give a great first impression.

From FBML to iFrames

When custom pages were first introduces, Facebook made up its own language to allow your custom pages to interact with data from viewers. Yet, their are many limitations with this model as well as having to learn and keep up two different ways of maintaining pages with Tabs and Canvases. The new solution is iFrames, a very common website concept. An iFrame is an inline frame, an HTML structure that allows another HTML document to be inserted into an HTML page. Google uses iFrames for their image searches when you initially view the image on the original page after you leave Google’s search results.

This means that the content of your application is located in an HTML document that is NOT hosted on Facebook’s servers and so you can develop the full page on your own web servers first and then put it on the Facebook page. This also means that Facebook has had to create an API (application programming interface) so that developers can continue to interact with user data. In fact, the API gives much more flexibility and power to developers. We will look at that API in part two.

Links of the Week

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Jeremy Smith

What’s the Most Popular Channel on YouTube?
40% of YouTube’s audience clicked over in July to watch music videos, more than any other category. Vevo accounted for 38% of YouTube’s entire monthly viewers, easily the most-watched channel within the video-sharing site, and second-place Warner Music accounted for 20% of all viewers in July.

Americans and Their Cell Phones
Mobile phones have become a near-ubiquitous tool for information seeking and communicating–83% of American adults own some kind of cell phone–and these devices have an impact on many aspects of their owners’ daily lives.

Marketing to kids gets more savvy with new technologies
Are toy marketers such as Ganz, food marketers such as McDonald’s and kid-coddling apparel retailers such as 77kids by American Eagle too eager to target kids?

Gen Y Ranks Their Favorite Fast Food Chains
Gen Y consumers (ages 16-24) are a crucial spending force in the fast food industry, with nearly 20% of “Millennials” purchasing from a QSR almost every other day, according to L.E.K.’s new report. The top three: Chick-fil-A, Dunkin’ Donuts, and McDonald’s.

Living together too much commitment for today’s couples
A growing number of young American adults are engaging in what’s called “stayover relationships,” in which they spend three or more nights together each week while still having the option of going to their own homes, a new study shows.

Short Term Success Does Not Mean Long Term Success

Perfect Time To Network

The Factors