social media marketing

In April of 2010, we released the 2010 Asia Travel Engagement Report. The 65 page white paper looked at social media adoption rates and patterns in the Asia travel industry. As part of that analysis, we examined the various pitfalls that await brands in social media. The article below is taken from the Report. In this excerpt, we take a look at page jacking and issues related to maintaining control of your Facebook Fan Page.

Page jacking was another major issue we found in our research. Page jacking occurs when third parties employ your Fan Page or profile as a means of promoting their message to your followers. This practice is the social networking equivalent of spam and an unfortunate reality of the virtual landscape. The bright spot here is that this is easy to detect and police against, at least in its most common form, that is, the page spammer.

If you go to Facebook and you run a search for “Thai Airways,” you get a search results page like you see in the screenshot immediately below. Which one of the multiple Fan Pages listed there is the official Thai Airways Fan Page? Is there one? Is there more than one?

This situation highlights one of the most common problems facing brands in social media today: Avoiding brand confusion and keeping control of your brand. Though this problem is in no way unique to Facebook, let’s look at the situation facing Thai Airways as an example.

Open Source CMS Resources

U.S. federal guidelines concerning the disclosure of endorsements or incentives will set a new standard for online advertisers. The revised guidelines are intended to address hidden endorsements and incentives in a variety of new media, including blogs and word of mouth media. The rules are broad enough to affect activity on forums, Twitter and social networks.

(The various statements of fact made in this article concerning the guidelines come from the text of the FTC Guidelines: see, “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising,” 16 C.F.R. Part 255. A hyperlink to a download of the full text of the rules can be found at the end of this article.)

The guidelines, promulgated by the United States’ Federal Trade Commission, go into effect on December 1, 2009 and and are intended to regulate endorsements by consumers, experts, organizations, and celebrities, as well as requiring the disclosure of “material connections” between advertisers and endorsers.

One of the most common -- indeed perhaps the most common question we’re asked during client consultations is: “What’s the difference between Facebook Profiles, Groups and Fan Pages? Why would I want one and not the other?” The questions go right to the heart of one of the most confusing aspects of Facebook.

The issue is made all the more confusing by the visual similarity of these items and by the fact that Profiles, Groups and Fan Pages have common aspects and features. The good news is that there are unique attributes and advantages to each and it is easy to understand once you grasp the purpose behind their creation.

Let’s start by looking at their commonalities: All three types of Facebook pages provide the same basic functions, that is, the ability to post messages and various media that are viewable to others who chose to join or follow that particular page. Beyond those basics, however, these items diverge.

Twitter is one of the most popular expressions of the social media boom. Though a very limited "micro-blogging" format -- where speakers are limited to messages that are no more than 140 characters in length -- it has become extremely popular, particularly with early adopters and people who spend a great deal of time online. As someone interested in marketing, I find Twitter to be a way to tap into the buzz from social-minded, technologically-friendly Internet users. Gauging that buzz can be a challenge.

In the course of preparing this year's Open Source CMS Market Share Report, I've spent a fair amount of time researching Twitter as a means of judging buzz and popularity. As a result of that I have bookmarked quite a few tools that I found useful. In this post I share what I've found -- perhaps it will save you some time.

There are 23 tools here, organized topically as follows:

• Primary Sources - slicing the message data directly from Twitter
• Geo-Tracking - tools to find Tweets by location
• Real Time Monitoring - step up and grab the information firehose
• Re-Tweeting Activity - find out who is republishing what
• Trending Topics & URLs - what's hot now and in the recent past
• User Influence - identify the most influential users and their posts