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By Robert Gibson in Featured

It depends on what you are trying to achieve with your site, but for many sites, the answer is increasingly ‘YES’.

Social media (mainly Facebook and Twitter for the purposes of this article) have become increasingly pervasive. Recently I read that one minute of every eight spent on the Internet, is spent on Facebook. If the purpose of a web site is to communicate, then identifying where other people are – is a good start.

A ‘No-Brainer’ for Charities

Charities web site Justgiving tells us that 15% of all people donating via the Justgiving site come via Facebook. Clearly, then, for a charity it should be a ‘no-brainer’ to set up a Facebook page and work on integrating it: both your web site and your Facebook presence should benefit from it. However, one shouldn’t underestimate the work involved in maintaining one’s presence. From my experience, with Tanzania Development Trust, I know that for a voluntary organization, resources can be an issue, particularly if it takes a while to build momentum. Can volunteers maintain the consistency and enthusiasm required to optimize a social media presence?

A ‘Must’ for Band, Gigs and Events

We have all heard stories of teenagers informing the world via Facebook of a planned party, with disastrous results! But it points to a truth: no sensible music event, festival or gig would dream of setting up without a Facebook presence. Bands and performers use social media to build a fan base and keep it informed of their plans and movements. It is fair to say that in these cases, social media leads the way, with the web site complementing its more ‘buzzy’, up-to-the-minute feel.

By William Galkin in Featured

social networksObservers of Internet trends often pronounce that privacy is a fiction and that it is futile to try to reclaim it. Whether that perspective is correct or not does not matter when faced with a Complaint issued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The Facebook Complaint and Consent Order recently issued by the FTC provides valuable lessons for how to stay out of the FTC’s crosshairs. Internet attorneys, businesses, consultants and advisors should study what the FTC views as deceptive in order to make necessary adjustments to business plans and operations.

In the U.S., there is no federal law that requires a website to have a privacy policy. However, California requires any website that collects personally identifiable information from California residents to have a privacy policy. Therefore, in practice, based upon the California law, most websites would be required to have a privacy policy. As far as the FTC is concerned (which operates on the federal level), there is no absolute requirement to have a privacy policy, but if a website does have a privacy policy, failure to comply with the policy will be considered a deceptive practice in violation of the FTC Act. As will be explored below, the FTC is not shy at splitting hairs, in search of deceptive practice claims.

Below is a discussion of some of the more significant and relevant claims of deceptive practices alleged by the FTC Complaint. It should be noted that in the FTC Consent, Facebook denied all allegations.

1. Facebook privacy pages offered options to restrict profile information to “Only Friend” or “Friends of Friends”. However, even when such options were selected, Facebook often still provided profile information to an application that a Friend was using on their Facebook page. Such information included a user’s birthday, hometown, activities, interests, status updates, marital status, education (e.g., schools attended), place of employment, photos, and videos. Even though Facebook allowed users to restrict this access through other pages, Facebook nevertheless represented, according to the FTC, either expressly or by implication, that access could be limited to “Friends” or “Friends of Friends” on the Profile Privacy Page, and did not indicate that further actions would be required to restrict access to applications of friends.

LESSON: As seen by the above claim, a disconnect between the Privacy Policy and the technical personnel implementing strategies can result in a claim by the FTC for deceptive practices. Furthermore, statements in a Privacy Policy must be vetted to verify that they do not claim, or appear to claim, a higher level of privacy than is actually provided.

2. In November, 2009, Facebook changed its privacy policy to designate certain user information as “publicly available” which change applied retroactively to information provided by users prior to the change. For instance, many users selected privacy settings to (i) restrict profile information from applications used by a Friend, (ii) restrict their Friends List, and (iii) restrict access to profile pictures and pages from users using the “search” function . To implement the privacy changes, Facebook required each user to click through a multi-page notice, known as the “Privacy Wizard.” According to the FTC, the Privacy Wizard did not disclose adequately that users no longer could restrict access to the newly-designated publicly available information via their profile privacy settings or that their existing choices to restrict access to such information via these settings would be overridden.

The FTC alleged that the Privacy Wizard, either explicitly or by implication, indicated that users would have “more control” over their privacy settings, above the prior settings. Which the FTC claimed was not the case. Facebook did not adequately explain that the new changes overrode prior settings as to name, profile picture, gender, friend list, pages, or networks. The FTC claimed that Facebook’s failure to adequately disclose these facts, in light of the representations made, constituted a deceptive act or practice.

LESSON: Changes made retroactively to prior privacy settings without informed consent, amounts to an unfair act or practice. The FTC requires that (i) material changes to a Privacy Policy be conspicuously disclosed, (ii) users affirmatively opt-in to material changes that affect personally identifiable information previously collected, and (iii) material changes to Privacy Policies be explained clearly and truthfully. As a note, the simplest way to obtain affirmative consent is the next time a user comes to the website, he or she is directed to an explanatory process and given the option to consent to the new changes.

3. The FTC Complaint states numerous examples of statements from Facebook that even though non-identifiable information is shared with advertisers so that they can provide advertisements targeted to the particular user, personally-identifying information is never provided to an advertiser without prior consent of the user. However, the FTC noted that if ads were clicked, then Facebook would provide to the advertiser a unique ID that Facebook assigns to each user. Apparently, advertisers could use the ID to identify the person. Then they could match criteria that they had selected for serving ads to that person. (e.g., if the ad targeted 23-year-old men who were “Interested In” men and “liked” a prescription drug, the advertiser could ascribe these traits to a specific user), plus the date, time and ad visited. Over time additional traits could be identified.

LESSON: This Claim is the easiest to understand and comply with. Personally identifiable information can only be disclosed as set forth in a Privacy Policy or in a manner otherwise consented to by the user.

BOTTOM LINE: Privacy Policies must be carefully drafted, and be clear and accurate. Management and technical personnel should review and confirm the contents of the Privacy Policy. Privacy Policies should be regularly reviewed to verify that procedural or technical changes are reflected in the Privacy Policy. Material changes to a Privacy Policy that affect previously collected personal user information require affirmative consent from the users. As a result of the FTC Consent, Facebook is now subject to detailed scrutiny and reporting for the next 20 years. It’s important to keep up with changing Internet laws.

William Galkin, Esq. is an Internet lawyer who has dedicated his legal practice to representing Internet, website, e-commerce, computer technology and new media businesses in the U.S. and around the world. To learn more about agreements needed by websites go to http://www.galkinlaw.com/services.

By Caitlin Rambo in Featured

social networksHow much time do you spend online?

According to a time use survey compiled by ComScore Media Metric, the average American spends 33.9 hours on the Internet every week. Depending on age and other demographics, this number can double! And for those lucky individuals whose occupations rely primarily on computers: the Internet commands their lives and they are never not connected.

Computers have drastically changed the technological landscape. The Internet has facilitated efficiency in a number of offline processes. We use the web to communicate with our family, friends and business acquaintances in real-time chats. Books and other multimedia are available for online viewing and instant download. We can even shop for gifts online – often offered at a deeper discount than in brick-and-mortar stores! The Internet has revolutionized the way that we live, as we now spend one-sixth of our lives in the digital world.

Exhibit 1: 100 Most-Visited Websites by category, according to Google Ad Planner

Where are We Actually Spending Our Time Online?

Google has compiled a list of the 100 most-visited websites in the United States. (Being the modest company that they are, Google has chosen to omit their website and statistics from the study.) These 100 websites are sorted into six categories: social networking, search engines, shopping, entertainment, business and software.

By Leo J. Vidal in Featured

facebook-logoWith over 800 million users worldwide, everyone knows that Facebook is now the hottest social networking internet site to use for online marketing. Many businesses have already taken steps to capitalize on this massive marketing opportunity. But do you know about the problems with Facebook that you should REALLY be concerned about?

Before devoting too much of your marketing budget or even your leisure time to Facebook, you should understand the items on this list of the Top Ten Things About Facebook That Make People Mad.

Facebook, as a website, really doesn’t offer that much if you think about it. I mean, if you’re not into Farmville or Mafia Wars, what does it do? Well, it does allow you to have your private information shared with complete strangers — or even people you know. Do we really want that? Even the navigation is difficult.

Facebook doesn’t support the Open Web, because to access everything you must be a member and logged in. They claim to own all of your data, then do not make it openly accessible to others.

Facebook makes it almost impossible to actually delete your account, so all of your data will remain online even after you deactivate your account.

Facebook is not technically competent when it comes to protecting your data, or else they just don’t care enough to really try. There have been major glitches such as public access of private profiles.

Facebook is tricking their users into giving advertisers information about themselves. They do this by not disclosing how Facebook applications make all of your data accessible not just to Facebook itself but also to developers, who may not even have privacy standards.

Facebook seems to have declared war on privacy protections. Facebook wants to know everything about you, own that data, and then make it available to everybody else on Facebook, including advertisers. They have a stated policy that all data should be available to everybody (your data, that is).

Your supposedly private data is shared with applications, and the developers who write them. Think about it: all your data is shared with applications that you install unknowingly. This make it potentially available to almost anyone.

Facebook has bullied (by suing) people who have had the fortitude to tell the truth about how Facebook shares private data. They don’t want their members to know how much data is really being made available to advertisers, developers and others. So, it appears they do believe in a right to privacy, at least when it comes to their own shenanigans.

Facebook’s CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior. He has been accused of various things in the past but I won’t repeat them here. (That’s what Google is for, right?) Perhaps where there is smoke there is also fire. There are plenty of past indicators of ethical issues surrounding all of Facebook’s operations and dealings with members. Caveat emptor.

Facebook’s Terms Of Service are completely one-sided. They state that not only do they own your data, but if you don’t keep it accurate, they can deactivate your account. This is because they need all the data to be current to be useful to advertisers. So we are all working hard to make more advertising revenue for Facebook! It’s almost like we are Facebook slaves.

Conclusion

I guess I’ve decided that if they terminate my account: so what? I think I can learn to live without Facebook. How about you?

If you want to stay on Facebook, my recommendation is you understand how your data will be used, and be careful about what you post as content or in your profile.

You can get the help you need in navigating the treacherous waters of Facebook marketing. Go Right Now to “How to Make a Facebook FanPage” at http://fanpage.inflorida.biz and fill out our newsletter signup form. Leo J. Vidal, JD, MA, CPA is a marketing expert with over 30 years of experience in helping business owners and professionals become more successful.

By Ashley Ray in Featured

facebook-logoThe recent Facebook changes are game changing. For most this is scary; for us (and hopefully for you, too) it’s exciting! Facebook has managed to make our everyday activities even more social and has created a way for us to share our lives via a virtual scrapbook. This tool lets you feature all your old and new Facebook memories with integrated ways to express yourself through different “lifestyle apps.” Luckily for you, we read every article, and we watched the entire 1-hour, 40-minute f8 presentation, so we are here to condense the information for you as much as possible.

Here are the Facebook changes you should know about:

Only a few things are really going away; it’s the experience and interface that are changing. Here are the latest and greatest new features of Facebook:

The Facebook Timeline — “The story of your life”

The Timeline is the central change in the Facebook revamp. It is your new Facebook profile, completely reorganized with a different way to display your profile picture — a giant picture of you (your cover photo) at the top and a smaller picture (your profile picture) layered at the bottom right of the cover picture. The way the new timeline is set up allows you to keep all of those past memories, updates and posts in an organized manner through a timeline. You can scroll to any time period via the timeline on the side of your “cover photo.” In the f8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg talked about your old profile being what you would tell someone you met within the first 5 minutes: where you work, where you went to school, where you live, etc. This is all condensed and placed below your profile picture now.

By Donna Anderson in Featured

facebook-logoIf you’re still evaluating the merits of putting a Facebook Share button on your site, it’s time to get off the fence. And make sure you come down on the right side. Oh, and while you’re at it, you might as well just start tearing the whole fence down.

Right this minute there are more than 5 billion people who are using mobile devices. There are 2 billion, at any one time, communicating on the Internet. And Facebook alone has a membership of more than 750 million users. No man is an island, and no blog can survive without connections.

Sometime within the next few days Facebook is going to introduce Frictionless Sharing. Maybe it’s already happened in your neck of the woods. If not, fear not. It’s on the way. But the big question isn’t when. The big question is, will you be ready?

Frictionless sharing is going to be powerful. When a visitor comes to your blog or website, if they’ve enabled access, Facebook will automatically post your content on that user’s wall. No more clicking the Like button. No more copying and pasting links. He visits your site and it shows up on his wall.

Sound a little far-fetched? Only if you haven’t been paying attention. Start reading some of the tech blogs. Sound a little scary? Like maybe Big Brother is watching over your shoulder? Maybe so. But in a good way. If you use it to your advantage. Don’t think people will go for it? Think again.

By Janette Speyer in Featured

facebook-logoIn this day and age, technology is constantly evolving. Everyday we are inundated with new features, new interfaces and improved designs that can sometimes make our head spin. Facebook is not exempt from this either and has undergone a lot of major transformations over the past several years. Just recently, Facebook has made some major modifications to its features, and whether you’re a fan or not, they are here to stay.

Combined News Feed Layout

One feature that Facebook has changed is its news feed layout. Before, you had two feeds: your “Top News” and “Most Recent News,” depending on its relevance to your interests. Also, if you only checked Facebook occasionally, you wouldn’t see anything about activities that happened a week ago. Now, the most interesting stories will always be displayed at the top and you won’t have to worry about missing anything important.

Additionally, prior to this change, you had to scroll down quite a bit just to see what people posted the day before. If your business heavily relies on social media, then this may have been a little labor intensive. But now with the combined news feed, your news stories are more customizable and will save you time in the long run.

Ability to Subscribe to News

By Wolf Krammell in Featured

facebook-logoFacebook ads are one of the most popular and inexpensive ways to promote a small business online. According to research from BIA/Kelsey LCM, 48 percent of SMBs (small and medium businesses) are using Facebook for advertising or promoting their business. Forty percent said they have a Facebook page just for their business.

1. Know Your Goals and Plan Around Them

The first step is understanding what you want accomplish. Some goals could include looking to build awareness of your company or brand, and driving traffic to your web site. Promoting a specific event or generating sales are other common goals.

To build awareness and grow your fan base (getting people to “Like” your page), there are standard marketplace ads. The ads point to your Facebook Page and allow users to “like” your page, using the Like link right in the ad. You also could try a “Page Like” sponsored story, where the ad shows friends who have liked your Page.

You can even target people who are friends with people who already “like” your Page, which creates a social context, that makes people much more likely to remember the ad’s content.

When you want to promote a particular post from your page, such as a special offer or important news, you can also use “Page Post” sponsored stories to convert your post into a News Feed item.

Sponsored Stories is one of Facebook’s newest marketing tools which promotes word-of-mouth recommendations about your business that are happening in the News Feed. You can sponsor stories about people checking in to your business or “liking” your Page.

Measure success by social media metrics. Click-through rate (CTR) is an important metric to track, but since the average CTR for Facebook ads is only about 0.05%, which is half the industry standard of 0.1%, set goals instead to increase comments, Likes, impressions and active users. Facebook has hundreds of reports you can use to analyze results – make use of them for maximum results.

2. Targeting with Your Ads

When placing your Facebook ad, the form makes it very easy to select the demographic profile of your target audience. It has the added feature of targeting very specific audiences. Here, less is more.

Better results are achieved by having less very targeted people, rather than having large numbers of people who are not interested. Gaining smaller but very specific target audiences, even at the risk of reducing the size of your audience, can be more effective.

Let’s say you want to promote an event at your business. It would be more effective to target people who are already fans of your page, who may be more likely to respond to a a local offer. Besides targeting people by location, you may want to also use names of popular local
businesses, colleges and clubs in the ad manager to find the people that don’t put their city and zip code in their profiles.

3. Choose Text and Images That Grab Attention

When designing your ad, you have up to 135 characters, but some of the most effective ads don’t use the whole character limit. Use small and concise ads that speaks directly to the audience you will reach. Special offers or unique features that differentiate you from the
competition, are also effective. Facebook suggests using your company name in the ad title or somewhere in the body of the ad. A simple line can be the biggest draw. It can be in the form of asking a question or making a bold or odd statement. Remember to include something that encourages users to click on your ad and explains to the user exactly what you expect them to do when they reach your landing
page.

An image that will draw a person’s attention to your ad is recommended. Logos in this case, may not be the best way to go. Since the photos are small, use something unusual or a face shot of people. Smiling women tend to generate a high click rate. Experts recommend trying natural photos with colors that contrast with the blue color scheme of Facebook, such as red, yellow and orange.

4. Use and Measure Multiple Ads

Create multiple versions of your ad and test them to see which ad gets the best response. Once an ad has been created, you have the option to “Create a Similar Ad”, via the Facebook interface, and put in a new picture or text.

Experts recommend creating four different ads for the same campaign. Run each ad for a day or two and then check your ad statistics on Facebook to see which did best. You can then create a new ad that is similar to your ad that performed the best, with a few minor changes to see if it improves the ad’s performance. Since these ads rotate constantly, keep changing the ads so that your specific target audience doesn’t get disinterested.

Also, take top-performing ads and create new ad groups with related ad copy and pictures. This will lower your costs because your ad group has a higher CTR (Click Through Rate).

Facebook has hundreds of reports available, and it is wise to make use of them.

5. Be Ready To Get the Most Out of Your Traffic

Keep your Facebook Wall fresh and updated. Stale content, like the last Wall update was weeks or months ago, will make people lose interest. Give them a reward for visiting so they keep coming back.

Most people don’t click through to your Facebook page; they click ‘like’ right in the ad. Have fresh status updates or special offers or events available that follow up on the content in your ads, and get people to keep coming back.

The click you get is not the end result, it’s the beginning of presenting your campaign to your audience. When someone likes your page, you now have their consent to talk and update them over and over. Boundless opportunities can result by keeping them interested with
fresh content, special offers, coupons and events, on an ongoing basis.

Pump Up Your Website is a leader in the field of search, social media and email marketing. We’re also very good at web design, Internet development and ecommerce. We use tools like WordPress Blogs, Facebook and Twitter to make your business successful. Visit us at
http://pumpupyourwebsite.com or follow us at http://twitter.com/#!/pumpup . Receive a Free eBook – “Online Marketing Insider Secrets Revealed”.

By John Casey in Featured

socialmediaLet Uniqueness, Users and Usefulness PR Your Online Campaigns

“Let’s hire an intern or recent college grad to do our social media!”

For small and medium sized businesses this seems like a smart and cost-effective idea, mainly because many believe that social media is a necessary evil that the younger crowd “gets.” But, this plan goes in the wrong direction since social media is rapidly becoming the number one PR tool for businesses, and as such, requires a smart and effective PR strategy that focuses on the uniqueness, users and usefulness of the company.

The Case of “Love Simple”

Let’s take a look at the story of a small film whose own use of the three “U’s” translates successfully to a small/mid-sized business. “Love Simple,” a small, low budget film appeared at several festivals, received a nice review in the industry trade Variety, and then after rejections by film distributors to pick-up the film, it was about to run out of gas, until a social media campaign stepped in!

Unique

By Enzo F. Cesario in Featured

facebookpgPeople long have loved to find new and innovative uses for the most innocuous technologies and advances. In the late 19th century, “moving pictures” were a nickel-arcade novelty. Today films such as Avatar are made on budgets comparable to military-grade hardware investments. Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone could barely call from one room to another; now the average iPhone has more uses and computing power than all the computers used in World War II combined.

This trend is repeating itself with the rise of social media network marketing practices. What started as socialization programs only slightly more complex than the average e-mail client has grown into one of the newest and most promising marketing niches in the entire world. Taking advantage of this means familiarizing oneself with a few surprisingly simple concepts that have unusually far-reaching implications. In particular, marketers are finding that the “Like” and “Share” features on Facebook have become the newest and best tool in the online marketing arsenal.

We “Like” It

The “Like” function is a pretty simple one – people click “Like” for things that interest them. On the surface, this seems almost irrelevant, but thinking so ignores the way Facebook operates. Taking advantage of the “Like” function is actually the key to getting good marketing opportunities out of Facebook.

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