Facebook launched new Fan Page profiles last week with tons of great new features. But don’t worry, Fan Page profiles now look and function the same as a personal profile, so you already know how to navigate through them.

The new layout and features allow a Fan Page to look and feel more like a personal profile on Facebook, and relationships can be formed with fans.

Take a look at Maize Valley Farm Market & Winery’s Fan Page which has already switched over to the new Fan Page profile. The admins of this page can now interact with fans as Maize Valley, not the admins’ personal profiles.

According to an email that Facebook sent to Fan Page admins, the new profile offers the following:

• Notifications when fans interact with your page or posts
• A place to showcase photos along the top of your page
• A news feed for your page
• The ability to “Like” and post on other pages as your page. For example, Maize Valley can post information about a new wine or musical entertainment at the winery on fan profiles.
• I also read that you can now change your business category without having to redo your page…

These are all great updates, but there was one that jumped out at me (and it took a moment for my brain to process it). That’s right, admins can post on other pages as the Fan Page, making Facebook more interactive for businesses than ever before. Posting as your brand will be much more effective at gaining visibility than posting from admin profiles.

Just make sure that whatever your brand posts is appropriate and you stand behind it 100%. It might be a good time to brush up your online reputation management skills! Social media is all about just that – being social. These features open up new doors for businesses on Facebook.

What do you think of Facebook’s new Fan Page profiles? How will it impact your business’s activities on Facebook? Personally, I will be more apt to suggest Facebook Fan Pages to clients now that they can interact more with fans. The new features allow businesses to develop relationships with fans, whereas it was one-sided communication previously.

Many Fan Page admins are being asked if they want to preview the new profile now, though it will become mandatory for all Fan Pages in March.

If you are a business owner who is just now dipping your toe into the social media waters, branding your company has never been cheaper. Social media is a powerful tool when it comes to branding – even replacing some paid advertising budgets with some companies. If used correctly, social media allows word of mouth to spread via the Internet, and gets the consumer to do your work for you. Social media creates the natural desire that most people have to give advice or show off insider knowledge.

Although you should always use caution when creating a social media campaign, these tools can empower consumers to build up your brand. Social media is all about “you” – not logos or extensive copy. You can gradually build up your fan base naturally by enabling consumers to begin telling their friends and family about your business. Some examples of this include: Sharing your content, “liking” your content, reading it, emailing it, etc.

An interesting article recently came across my Twitter feed: How to Use Social Media to Build Your Brand. The author cites Lisa Barone, co-founder and chief branding officer of Outspoken Media:

“Brands that have the best success use social media to form relationships with people. It’s about helping people by answering their questions or jumping into a conversation. Once they know you, they’ll subscribe to your blog or newsletter. Once they make that step, it’s a lot easier to market to them — and they’re a lot more open to being marketed to.”

When participating on different social networks, be sure to create a consistent voice, but try not to be too corporate or formal – people connect with other people. The article describes how to leverage your branding with a blog, how to take the first steps in social media, and how to share your brand message efficiently. Each objective can be reached by publishing content that is valuable enough to like or share.

There has never been a better time to start branding your business with social media. There are minimal costs involved and you are able to engage consumers in a new way – so I say, get a move on today!

It’s time to face an important fact – Twitter isn’t a fad. If grandmothers are tweeting about fist pumping and Ke$ha, it is official that the adoption laggards have been infected by Twitter.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

But, as more people embrace Twitter, more bad Twitter habits are forming. I know there are responsible Tweeters out there, but be cautious. Even the SEO aware Tweeters can fall into a Twitter #FAIL trap.

So, Tweeps, think before you Tweet and avoid the following 10 Twitter fails that lurk around every corner:

1. Auto Replying to EVERYTHING
   You may think that auto-replying to follows is a great marketing idea, but let me topple that house of cards right now – it isn’t. It is a spam tactic that annoys more than it enlightens, no matter how inspiring you think your company’s e-book about parliamentary procedure is.
2. Being Obscure About Yourself and Your Company
   Saying that you analyze analysis and engage in social media enhancements and optimizations that guide company values through various mediums… doesn’t mean anything. Be concise about what your company is. And, for the love of Twitter, make sense.
3. Inside Jokes or Obscure References
   If a tweet is going to make your frat house buddies from college high-five and crush beer cans on their heads, don’t Tweet it. It’s okay to have a personality and a sense of humor, but you should always provide value to 99.9% of your followers.
4. Mentioning a Great Resource… Without Linking to It
   Awesome! You’re fulfilling your Twitter dream and you’re talking about great resources your followers would love. The only catch is that you need to make sure you LINK to it. And if the link is broken, you’re just insulting the Twitter gods. Make sure to check every link that you post to ensure that it is working.
5. Not Branding Your Twitter
   Do your Twitter profile a favor and brand it. Make it different from all of the other profiles out there by putting your company’s logo (and some tasteful graphic designs) in the background. It will improve the theme of your profile and make YOU more memorable. Everyone is using the blue twitter background with the tree branch. It’s old news.
6. Posting 10+ Messages in a Row
   Twitter is a social networking tool. Part of being social is acting like a human being. So, don’t post more than 10 times in a row (or 5 if you can swing it). It’ll make your company (or yourself) look like a spam-tastic robot that doesn’t deserve any attention from followers.
7. Following More than 1,000 People in an Hour
   Deciding to follow someone on Twitter should be an informed decision – not something that is done en masse. That’s why following a small country’s population on Twitter overnight seems fake. Take your time and learn who you are following! You will be one of their Tweeps and will be receiving daily updates. So don’t follow @LovingTheRecession if you don’t mean it.
   7.5 Cleanse Your Twitter List
   On that note, you should also make sure to clean out the list of people you follow as often as you can. Sometimes the purges are necessary, even if they seem cruel. It might have sounded great to follow @DeepakChopra back when you thought you should be enlightened. But, apparently he does nothing but tweet 42 times a day instead of offering tidbits of wisdom. A clean list is a non-frustrating list.
8. Posting Too Many Tweets about Your Hangover and/or Cat
   Sometimes it’s funny to complain about how your Russian neighbor listens to some awful techno music at 3a. However, most of the time it’s just obnoxious and unnecessary. Keep the random, pointless tweets to a minimum.
9. Conducting Business Networking and Swearing at the Same Time
   Even if it’s not necessarily at your business connections, using inappropriate language will make your colleagues and connections not take you seriously. If you have to stop and think about whether or not it’s offensive – just don’t tweet it!
10. Over-Abbreviating
    Rule of thumb: If you type out 50 characters without a single vowel, something is wrong. Abbreviate when necessary, but know that the majority of the Internet is behind on 1337 speak. The fact that you probably don’t know what that means only proves the point.

So the moral of the story, Tweeps, is use common sense. Twitter is a public forum and whatever you put online will be taken seriously. Even if it’s less than 140 characters.

Last week, Facebook rolled out its very own location-based service, Facebook Places.  In Palo Alto, California, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had a few words to say on the launch of this new service:

“This is going to be a really fun and interesting summer,” said Zuckerberg at the start of the evening. “We’ve got a lot of new products coming out.” The first of these new products — Places — is a smartphone-based service that takes on much of the functionality provided by existing services such as Foursquare and Yelp.

In other words – Foursquare, you’d better be ready for a battle of epic social proportions.

As with other location-based applications, Facebook Places is designed with a few simple goals in mind:

1. Help people share where they are, socially.

2. Let people see who is nearby.

3. Let people discover new places through their friends’ profiles.

Foursquare, Yelp!, and Gowalla have been consistently picking up steam, and it only makes sense that social giant Facebook would get in on the action. We know that people like these services – but the real question is, how quickly is Facebook going to decimate the competition?

With more than 500 million users already on Facebook, Places has a massive potential following. Although not every user will adopt Places, in a few weeks, as the brave begin to check-in to their favorite theaters and restaurants, there’s a (better than) good chance that a massive domino effect will start rippling throughout Facebook.

What do competitors need to stay afloat?

It’s simple, really – offer value above and beyond what Facebook can offer right now with extra features.

Gowalla may stay ahead of the curve, since its GPS “game” is a scavenger hunt. As people check-in to different places, they receive souvenirs. It isn’t simply a social check-in service, rather a program that people use to compete against each other using their smartphones and gas money.

Yelp!, and its already large database of user reviews, might be able to keep up momentum as well. The user following is already strong, and the focus on reviews is key. The addition of check-ins is relatively new to Yelp!, so knowing the location of friends is already a non-priority for these users.

The location-based giant that’s in Facebook’s sights is Foursquare, which has been the leader in location-based services. But that may not last for long. Foursquare has the least amount of differentiation from Facebook Places since goals and features are essentially the same. You check-in to different locations, share this information with your friends, and collect badges for different types of check-ins and achievements.

Although Foursquare plans to beef up its program with additional features, tips, to-dos and specials, the company should still be wary. Unless Facebook Places proves to be a clumsy, clunky program… Foursquare has some serious competition to worry about.

Facebook has given us some novel meanings for words such as “friend” and “poke”.  It is now attempting to give new meaning to the word “like” by creating a Like button that will tie internet content on a single networking platform – Facebook’s. 

Some Facebook users may not have yet noticed the subtle movement in the Like attribute, which was launched in April.  For a while, users have been able to give their virtual thumbs-up on their friends’ pictures, status updates and other content by clicking the like button.  In the past, users could “Become a fan” of a variety of pages hosted on Facebook.  The new Like button merges both the “Become a fan” and your typical “like” options by giving website administrators the option of placing a branded Like button on their individual content pages.  Currently, there are a variety of tools that you can add to a content page to allow users to “share this” on Facebook.  In contrast, the new Like button allows users to do both of the above:  Share content he/she found interesting on the internet with his/her Facebook friends.  And, automatically “become a fan” of the website containing the content.

As of now, all it takes is one line of code to place Facebook’s Like button on any web page.  Once the button is clicked, the page, plus a link, will be shared on the user’s Facebook page and news feed.  The Like button also shows on the original page how many users have “liked” that page so far.  

In the first week it was announced, more than 50,000 websites signed on to use the new Like button.  Beyond the ability to “like”, Facebook is trying out Open Graph as a way for websites to integrate the tools of Facebook, such as photos, notes, links, and more.  Facebook’s team has collaborated with several digital content companies including review site Yelp and music service Pandora in this endeavor.

The mobile app Foursquare is also jumping on the Like button bandwagon.  Foursquare allows users to “check in” when they spend time at any of their favorite spots.  When Facebook users visit a location (restaurant, library, mall, etc) and “check in” through Foursquare, they now have the ability to click on a Like button to instantly share a link to that location on their Facebook page and news feed.

At the annual f8 Developer Conference, Facebook presented its new tools as groundbreaking ideas with the purpose of breaking barriers between content sites and promote user collaboration on one platform.  However, other social media networks like Digg.com already have similar tools.  While the Like feature and Open Graph may not be completely new ideas, they will definitely spark a change in the way that content companies interact with members of established web communities, such as Facebook’s users.

Using social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to promote your brand and its corresponding site is a great idea – it provides a variety of ways to spread awareness and it is an effective marketing tool for your business. However, you should tread lightly when using Facebook to spread the good word online.

In a recent Coca-Cola Facebook campaign, what started out as a clever and entertaining way to be interactive with Facebook users ended in a lot of negative word of mouth and the potential fall of the marketing agency Coca-Cola used. The social media marketing plan’s goal was to promote Dr. Pepper on Facebook through the use of some clever programming. A program was designed to override the Facebook status box of an opted in user with entertaining, embarrassing quotes that were randomly chosen.

It went smoothly until an inappropriate quote (“What’s wrong with peeing in the shower?”) appeared on a 14-year-old girl’s profile page. The reference was to adult material that did not belong on an account associated with Facebook or Dr. Pepper… let alone the account of a 14-year-old child.

When the girl’s mother saw the status update in her account, she contacted Coca-Cola. “MrsRickman” (the mother’s username) submitted a complaint to the company … and as a response Coca Cola offered her free theater tickets and a hotel stay as an apology. Offended, MrsRickman took her complaint to a UK mom’s website. She received 1300 replies and caused quite a stir for Coca-Cola – so much so, that the marketing agency they used (Lean Mean Fighting Machine) is facing hard times ahead because of it.

According to New Media Age, Coca-Cola claims, ““We were unaware of the meaning of this line when the promotion was approved and have launched an investigation into why it was included. We take full responsibility and will be reviewing our promotional procedures.”

“We have stopped all our ongoing work with Lean Mean Fighting Machine and are reviewing our relationship with the agency. We will take all steps necessary to ensure this does not happen again.”

What you should take away from Coca-Cola’s debacle is this – it is good to become involved with your company’s profile page by updating it with media, statuses, and interacting with users. However, one needs to be diligent in protecting their company’s reputation and brand while employing social media marketing tactics. Any inappropriate status or media that’s posted for an adult audience could easily wind up being seen by minors… and then snowballing into a situation that will cause your company harm, no matter how many people are searching for your business because of the incident.

Read about some of the benefits of social media marketing.

Now that social networking is an important part of running a business, privacy is fast becoming a big issue for users.  Privacy advocates and social media experts took on this issue at the Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy (CFP) held for 4 days at San Jose State University.

The social media bill of rights was on the agenda during the conference and they brought up many concerning issues such as how websites should handle private consumer data, security of data and honesty.

A first draft of the bill was created and you can read it below. You can also get more information or vote on the social networking bill by visiting the website.

“We the users expect social network sites to provide us the following rights in their Terms of Service, Privacy Policies, and implementations of their system”:

1. Honesty: Honor your privacy policy and terms of service.

2. Clarity: Ensure that policies and terms of service are easy to understand.

3. Freedom of speech: Don’t censor without a clear policy and justification.

4. Empowerment: Support privacy-enhancing and assistive technologies.

5. Security: Treat my data as securely as your own, and notify me if it is compromised.

6. Data minimization: Minimize the information I am required to provide and share with others.

7. Control: Let me control my data, and don’t share it with others unless I agree first.

8. Predictability: Don’t change who or what sees my data without my consent.

9. Right to know: Show me how you are using my data and allow me to see who and what has access to it.

10. Right to self-define: Let me create more than one identity and use pseudonyms. Do not link them without my permission.

11. Right to appeal: Allow me to appeal disciplinary actions.

12. Right to leave: Allow me to delete my account, and take my data with me.”

Now that you have read the Social Media Bill of Rights above – how you will vote?

As many in the Twitter community know, the social micro-blogging site announced plans yesterday for a new ‘Find Friends’ feature. It will allow users to easily find their Facebook friends and LinkedIn connections on Twitter. Users will be able to instantly follow their friends on Twitter and add them to a list without having to exhaustively search for them. Exciting, isn’t it? Well, it was until Facebook decided to block it! It has been discovered that Facebook intentionally blocked the feature and is in a similar battle with another site called Power.com.

Power.com is a site that aggregates the social networks of users into one spot making it easier to manage multiple profiles and friends. However, Facebook considers this a copyright violation (according to their terms of service) and is suing Power.com for hacking. Twitter is attempting to do the same thing with this new search feature, so the question is: will Facebook sue Twitter?

In my opinion, if Facebook wants to remain a favorite among social network users it needs to unblock this new Twitter feature. Otherwise, Facebook runs the risk of losing more users like it has in recent months due to the debate over user privacy. I think that Facebook is overstepping its boundaries on this one…I mean it is my information after all and if I want that to be given to Twitter, it should be my choice.

Social media is being integrated more and more into search engine results. Everyone is making deals with Twitter to pull real time updates into the search results, including Yahoo! . But another important, possibly more useful piece of social media will be appearing in Google search engine results: Facebook pages.

The Facebook pages are separate sections available for businesses, celebrities, and organizations. The big news here is the ability to have status updates pulled into the real time search results. Facebook’s status updates allow for full links (no shortening required) and much larger updates than Twitter allows. So if you’re business has overlooked Facebook as a viable strategy for social media, it may be time to take a closer look.

You can read more about Google adding Facebook into real time search results at Search Engine Land.

Our web marketing team is very busy this month educating our community on the benefits of web marketing, mainly social media! On February 10th,  we presented on social media marketing for your business to the Jackson Belden Chamber of Commerce. It was a great turnout (despite the weather) and we met a lot of great people!

This morning, Corey presented with Kristie VanAuken, Sr. VP Marketing & Communications at CAK on Advanced Social Media.

According to Corey, it was a great mix of Canton Stark County CVB members that were interested in learning more about how to market their business with social media.

Check out TKG’s upcoming web marketing speaking engagements:

Society of Marketing Professional Services
February 18, 2010
Topic: Social Media
Panelists: Corey Hammond, BrandMuscle Inc, and Constructive Communication
(this event is by invite only)

TKG Breakfast Bootcamp
February 18, 2010
Topic: Email Marketing Techniques
Speaker: Dana Phillips
(registration is free)

Green Chamber of Commerce Business Lunch Forum
February 23, 2010
Topic: Social Media
Speakers: Jennifer Geh & Corey Hammond
(chamber members: $15; non-chamber members: $25)

For a list of all upcoming speaking engagements, check out TKG’s Press Room.