The Social Path

What I learned from my social media hiatus. | Guest post by Javacia Harris Bowser

Today, we're excited to be joined by Javacia Harris Bowser, a blogger and founder of the Birmingham, Ala., women's writing group See Jane Write. Javacia shares the lessons she learned from taking a three-week break from social media.

Each January my pastor encourages all his parishioners to fast something for 21 days in an effort to grow closer to God. Many church leaders totally abstain from food for three weeks, while some members fast certain types of food (such as sugary treats) or give up something like television. I decided to give up social media.

I wrote and scheduled “See You Later” posts for my two blogs and alerted Facebook friends and Twitter followers that I was taking a social media sabbatical. I also gave up Foursquare (at the risk of losing all my hard-earned mayorships) and Pinterest. This fast also meant I wasn’t allowed to read any of my favorite blogs either, as that is honestly how I spend much of my free time.

When I started the fast a part of me wondered if I would reach the end of the 21 days and realize that I no longer wanted social media in my life. I admit that when I announced my hiatus I felt this strange sense of relief. For three weeks I wouldn’t have to worry about updating my blogs or feel compelled to check Twitter every hour to make sure I wasn’t missing a link to some life-changing article.

But that feeling quickly dissipated. Social media makes everyday life better. Seriously. Foursquare turns a dreaded visit to the grocery store into an exciting game as I battle local residents to be crowned as mayor of the places I frequent around town. I’m an English teacher and, therefore, spend hours grading very bad essays, but those moments aren’t as torturous when I can take occasional breaks to browse my favorite blogs. And while some people “veg out” after a long day at work by flipping through channels, I’m not much of a TV person and I would much rather relax by clicking through beautiful photographs on Pinterest.

Coincidentally, despite my hiatus I found myself talking about social media more than ever during my fast. While teaching Fahrenheit 451 to my students we spent most days discussing the pervasiveness of technology and the role social networking sites play in their lives. When the electricity went out in my apartment one evening my husband and I found ourselves having a conversation by candlelight about Twitter. (How romantic!) And speaking of Twitter, when storms hit the Birmingham area before dawn one Monday morning I felt lost without being able to track tornadoes through my favorite meteorologist’s tweets. The thought never crossed my mind to just turn on the television. (I told you I’m not a TV person.)

I did realize, however, that I need to make some changes regarding my social media behavior. First, I need to rekindle my love for blogging. That sense of relief I felt at the beginning of my fast was triggered because somewhere along the way blogging has stopped being fun. I need to fix that. I don’t want blogging to feel like a job, especially since I’m not getting paid to do it.

Second, I need to stop letting social media make me a bad friend. When I wrote about my return to social media on my blogs I decided to craft the post as a love letter because I realized that I’m just like the girl who ditches her friends for the new man in her life. I’m always so busy trying to update my blogs and read all the interesting articles being posted on Twitter that I don’t make time to have real conversations with my friends. And I use Facebook as a crutch. I figure, "I know that this friend is pregnant and that friend got a new job because I checked their status updates. No need to call them; I’m all caught up, right?" Wrong.

And finally, I have to make time for myself, to read books that have nothing to do with becoming a better blogger and, yes, perhaps even watch television. There has to be some reason so many people are into that thing.

Javacia Harris Bowser is founding editor of GeorgiaMae.com and she also blogs for The Writeous Babe Project. She can be reached via email or follow @writeousbabe on Twitter.

Photo credit: Leo Reynolds on Flickr

Top digital trends to watch in 2012.

Without a doubt, 2011 was defined by the ever-evolving digital landscape. With all the advances we saw last year, what's in store for 2012?

My colleague Chris Zobel, Luckie & Company's Director of Digital Strategy, runs down the top trends of 2012, all of which revolve around data and content. This year, tailoring content to consumers will be key, and savvy marketers are already heading in that direction. 

Digital Trends to Watch in 2012

View more presentations from Luckie & Company

To read more insights from Chris, follow him on Twitter and check out his updates on LuckieReThinkTank.com.

Edward Bowser is Community Manager at Luckie & Company. You can contact him by email or follow him on Twitter.

Photo credit: Matthew Petroff via Flickr

Could your employer confiscate your LinkedIn account if you left?

You might have heard the legal wrangling over a company that wants control of an ex-employee’s Twitter feed, but here’s a story that will really motivate you to beef up your passwords.

A company called Sawabeh Information Services is claiming it should own LinkedIn accounts used by at least two former employees. According to TechDirt, Sawabeh argues that these LinkedIn profiles are akin to rolodexes that were developed on company time.

The firm has already confiscated the account used by former partner Dr. Linda Eagle (who had apparently let other coworkers manage her account, which meant her password was easy for the company to access), but LinkedIn denied Sawabeh’s attempts to take over the account of another ex-employee.

While this debate is part of a far more complex legal battle over trade secrets and corporate backstabbing, it could end up setting an ominous precedent if Sawabeh is given control of employee LinkedIn profiles just because they were used for work.

As tech lawyer Venkat Balasubramani notes, though, there’s also the issue of LinkedIn’s terms of service, which restrict personal account access to the person who created the profile. That means Sawabeh could win in court but find the LinkedIn account closed for TOS violations.

For now, best to keep those passwords to yourself, talk to your HR manager for clarity on your company's policies and just generally avoid working for places that treat business in the information age like a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos.

David Griner is the Director of Digital Content for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

Photo credit: TOKY Branding and Design on Flickr.

Three ways Facebook can lighten the load on admins.

Facebook has improved business pages and the administrator experience by leaps and bounds in the past year. We can now tag fans when replying in the comment section, have a separate notification application for each page, and easily access our pages from the newsfeed. Not to mention the improvements in analytics data and graphics which is another post altogether (that we covered here). 

But there are still some glaring and simple changes that Facebook could make to improve the administrator experience. 

Geo-Targeting Regions

When geo-targeting a Facebook ad, you set the ad to appear to an audience within a radius of a certain city or state - or multiples of both. When setting up a geo-targeted Facebook update, you have to individually add each city that falls in your chosen footprint. That can be a lot of work, especially if you'd like to target a region that spreads across multiple states (like the Gulf Coast, for example). I can't imagine a situation in which it wouldn't be helpful to target a post by a radius rather than selecting each possible city individually.

Custom Art and Descriptions for Linking to Tabs

At Luckie & Company, our Designers and Interactive Department work hard to build some seriously amazing Facebook applications. However, when linking to any tab within Facebook, the only art option is the page's profile picture and the page's description. At least when linking to websites off of Facebook you can edit the title and text and, at the very least, remove images from the link. But these are static when linking to a Facebook tab. It's strange that Facebook wouldn't provide this option seeing as they prefer to keep users on the site. 

Direct Messages from the Brand Rather Than Personal Account

In the last year Facebook added the option to "login" to Facebook as a business page, which is great. But this addition didn't come with the option to send message to users from the page. If I contact a fan privately, I have to reach out to them through my own personal account. I don't know about you, but with all the spam and viruses that get passed through Facebook, I'm hesitant to open any links or messages from unknown individuals. Not to mention, as an administrator, I prefer to represent the brand and not provide my personal profile or information to fans.

These are minor complaints compared to the changes and progress Facebook has made over the past year in improving the administrator experience. Still, I'd like to see these suggestions added to the list of improvements made in the next iteration of Facebook business pages.

What are some issues you face as a business page administrator or changes you'd like to see made?

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

Photo credit: akunamatata on Flickr

Watch the Luckie Christmas Story and help a child enjoy the holidays.

At Luckie & Company, we love telling stories, especially if that story helps those in need.

This holiday season, we wanted to come up with a simple and creative way to engage people and donate money to charity. So, “A Luckie Christmas Story” was born — the tale of young Santa, a scruffy-faced, rotund kid teased by his classmates until a special gift changed his life. 
Each time the video is viewed, Luckie will donate $1 to Toys for Tots (up to $5,000).

Click here to view the story and share it with friends and family. The more the link is shared and viewed, the more we can help brighten a child’s Christmas. Please spread the word, because you never know when a simple gift in the hands of a child could end up changing the world.

Kayla Cille Terry is a Digital Content intern at Luckie & Company. You can contact her by email or follow her on Twitter.

Photo credit: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery on Flickr

Six changes that could complete Google+ Pages.

Google+ Pages finally launched with bang, or at least a small pop and fizzle. The company waited a baffling long time to launch their professional pages - so long that it seems much of the general public has lost interest. Nevertheless, it's Google and over time a G+ pages will become an important tool in search and customer relations, especially for storefront businesses as these pages become business listings.

The business pages have a lot of great qualities, one of them being that signature Google cleanliness. That's a welcome change from Facebook's increasing messiness. However, for the amount of time Google took in developing the professional pages after the initial launch, we still see a number of glaringly omissions that need to be added before Google+ becomes a viable competitor.

No Custom URLs

There is really not much explanation needed here. It should seem obvious  for the folks at Google to have vanity URLs available to pages. Maybe not all pages, but at least go the route of Facebook and provide custom URLs to pages once they establish a certain number of followers. It's difficult to link to a random set of numbers and letters. I can't imagine we'll have to wait too long before these become available.

Direct Connect

Direct Connect is a tool where typing +business name into your search bar will prompt the business's Google+ page to appear as the top search result in the drop-down menu, bolded and bigger than all other listings, and links directly to the Google+ page. It would be pretty handy if it weren't so elusive.

Direct Connect is attained when Google's algorithms decide the page has earned it. Followers are obviously a big factor and Google suggests that adding a link on your Plus page, as well as adding a piece of code to your website, will help Google recognize and verify your page.

However, who knows how long that could take or what the criteria are - Google never tells you. Why there isn't a verification request form is a bit baffling. The option to request verification from our Google Ad representative would be helpful too. Either way, it's a neat feature that is far too exclusive. If they expect this search habit to catch on they are going to have to make it more attainable.

Auto-Circle

Here's a new term I hope becomes commonplace in our industry - auto-circle. The circles are a great feature, and it's the feature that sets Plus apart from their social competitors. Circles are simple and required, keeping our Google+ profiles tidy and making it easy to direct certain content at the ideal audience. However, for large brands who want to follow and engage with their fans, keeping up and organizing followers into all appropriate circles is going to be difficult.

A company may want to organize each of their followers by age, location, and sex; that's a lot to keep up with if you have fans pouring in. Ideally, if we created these circles, when a brand gained new followers Google+ would have an algorithm to "auto-circle" them into the appropriate categories. That way the brand has an exhaustive list when it wants to target a specific audience within their followers. This may sound like a pipe dream but if you're gonna dream, dream big right?

No Contests or Promotions Allowed

According to the Google+ Content Policy, a brand cannot administer a contest, giveaway, promotion, etc. through Google+. However, you may link to a contest hosted elsewhere, like say ... Facebook. An odd move on Google's part to encourage brands to drive traffic away from their platform and onto the competitor's.

Search

Not that I'm impressed with most social media platform searches but ... this is Google. That's sort of their thing. After creating the Luckie & Company page, I tried finding it through the search bar and turned up results for all our employees but no trace of the new, official Luckie & Company page. I realize the page had no followers at that point but it was the day Pages launched, no one really had any followers at that point. How are we to build an audience if the audience can't find us?

Not to mention, the search offered no organization to sort out people and pages or search by some demographic; it was just one big lump of useless results. I have to say this was the most shocking discovery, Facebook is beating Google at their own game.

Multiple Admins

No man is an island, and neither are companies. Currently, Google+ Pages are only allowed one administrator - the person who created the page. Unless Google wants people running around creating fake personal accounts in order to avoid giving out their personal email address to all their coworkers, they better rectify this. Fast. 

Facebook pages were certainly no gem when they were launched years ago and are a constant work in progress. So Google should certainly get some time to figure this all out. However, this is Google's fourth attempt at social platform and they hoping in pretty late in the game. At this point, it should be apparent what is and is not necessary to survive. Although, I guess if that were the case we'd all still be Buzzing.

In your experience with the new Google+ Pages, what are the changes or additions you would make?

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

Photo credit: amala_tc on Flickr.

Three ways to improve your customer service on Twitter.

We talk a lot about creating great content for our social media accounts, with the goal of engaging fans and encouraging conversation. But sometimes we forget that the best thing about social media is that our fans are already talking — to us and to each other. We can't wait for people to strike up conversations, but we can't get so caught up in pushing out our own content that we forget to join the discussions our fans initiate.

Here are a few tips to stay in tune with your fans.

Make the Most of Search Terms

Set up search terms or columns in a third-party application like TweetDeck or CoTweet. Be sure to include your brand name, products, etc., to capture as many mentions of your brand online as possible. Just because your brand Twitter account isn't tagged or directly tweeted, that doesn't make the conversation any less important. Some of the most productive conversations I've had with customers over Twitter have been with those flattered by the effort we put in to find and contact them, before they contacted us.

Be Sure to Use Push Notifications

Push notifications via Twitter smartphone apps are nice for your personal accounts but mandatory for your business accounts. It's important to know as soon as possible when a consumer is discussing your brand, good or bad. Social media is all about immediate results, and waiting even a few days to thank a consumer for a compliment (or react to a criticism) can tarnish your customer service image.

Avoid Canned Responses

Consumers are on Twitter to talk, so talk we shall! The best way to manage customer relations on Twitter is to use a personal voice. You're not asking consumers to press a number to classify their concerns, so don't give them a canned response. Social media allows us to give our brands and companies a personality. Loosening up seems to be one of the most difficult parts of social media management for some but the effort goes a long way. It bolsters customer loyalty and appreciation the same way it bolsters a friendship.

Sure, this all seems easy enough but with the sheer volume of conversation happening on Twitter at any given time, it's a lot to keep up with. For years brands have provided a 1-800 hotline for customers to call but social media has flipped the script - now it's time for us to find and reach out to our customers. People are out there talking about your brand, whether or not you chose to seek them out and respond is your choice. But given the choice to take control of your own image or let consumers run wild, which one would you chose?

How has your organization used Twitter for customer service? We'd love to hear about your experiences in the comments.

Photo courtesy robpurdie on Flickr.

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

Google's new transparency feature gives you more control over targeted ads.

If you've ever wondered why you get certain personalized ads in your Gmail or search results — or if you're simply annoyed by them — then you'll be incredibly happy with Google's latest addition to its advertising.

The recently announced "transparent" approach to ads offers a "why these ads" button out to the side of any ad featured in your Gmail. Click it to find out why Google felt a specific ad would be beneficial to you. Not interested? Visit the Ads Preference Manager to opt out and refine what type of ads you'd like to see.

Not interested in targeted advertising whatsoever? Select "Opt out" in the Ads Preference Manager to remove specified advertising. Of course, this does not remove advertising from Google, it just makes it less personal and theoretically more private.

I've never been bothered by targeted advertising in my Google mail or search, but I understand that some people feel violated. I respect and appreciate Google for making these changes and improving the user experience and relationship with the company. 

Check out Google's official video on the new ad interactions below and let us know what you think. Are you going to jump at the opportunity to customize or opt out of ads, or are you happy with Google analysis of your ad preferences?

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.

Photo credit: M.V. Jantzen on Flickr.

We're looking for an intern. Know anybody?

We've got a lot of exciting digital projects in the works here at Luckie, and truth be told, we could use a few more hands. We've decided to add a fall Digital Content Intern position for November and December. It's a great opportunity for anyone looking to break into digital marketing.

So if you or someone you know is passionate about writing, highly knowledgeable of social media and obsessed with attention to detail, then be sure to check out our new job posting for the Digital Content Internship. It's a (modestly) paid gig based at Luckie's headquarters in Birmingham, Ala., and it's a great place to learn about the intersection of marketing and emerging tech.

Also, free doughnuts on Fridays.

UPDATE: This position has been filled. Thanks to everyone who considered us.

David Griner is the Director of Digital Content for Luckie and Company and contributing editor for Adweek’s blog, AdFreak.com. You can reach him by e-mail or on Twitter.

New Facebook insights provide more depth in understanding your audience.

As Facebook prepares to launch its new format for user profiles, and presumably new business page formats, the social network has taken the opportunity to streamline and improve its business platform, as well. These updates include an impressive new approach to analytics, with more data and more infographics built into Facebook Insights.

There are a lot of improved tools in the mix, but today we want to take a look at the new Facebook metrics and what they mean for marketers.

Top Line Analytics

(Click image for full-sized version)

Pictured above are the topline statistics provided in the new Facebook analytics home screen. We are used to seeing Total Likes, however the rest are new.

• Friends of Fans represents the total audience your page could theoretically reach if you successfully engaged each fan into sharing your content. It's a massive number, one you're almost guaranteed to never approach, but it's useful to know the maximum potential audience now that Facebook's new "ticker" provides constant updates on your friends' behavior, including Liking a brand page or commenting on a page's post.
• People Talking About This Page is a broad category that includes any "story" created by a fan. Liking the page, Liking or commenting a status, answering a question; tagging a photo, video, or status update with the page — each counts as an example of someone "talking about" your page. This metric is a nice and much-needed improvement over the older Facebook "engagement" number, which essentially only accounted for post Likes and comments.
• Weekly Total Reach is the last of the new key stats. It represents the number of individuals who viewed any content created by or about your page — including ads and sponsored stories — over the past week. The number includes friends of fans, meaning it could easily be larger than your total audience.

These numbers are just the tip of the iceberg in the new Facebook Insights, but they're a good starting point for marketers to see how the new metrics measure the full, three-dimensional impact of your content on Facebook and not just direct interactions with your fans.

On one hand, these new numbers can help show that you're not engaging your audience enough. On the other, it can show that you're actually having a larger marketing impact than you might have imagined.

Between these numbers and the more detailed metrics provided elsewhere in the analytics, page managers now have better tools than ever to gauge the effect of their content and fine-tune their audience communication for maximum effectiveness. 

As if these analytics weren't enough to motivate you to produce great, engaging content, Facebook now displays the "People Talking About This Page" metric publicly. It's listed under your total number of Likes, meaning that Facebook users can now see how interesting your page truly is before committing to a relationship.

Understanding Reach

Diving deeper into "Total Reach," Facebook provides a chart breaking out how each user was reached. Organic refers to individuals who saw your content through their newsfeed, ticker, or on your actual page, so that mostly includes fans. Paid is obviously the number of individuals who viewed an ad or sponsored story for your page. And finally, Viral represents the number of times a story about your page was viewed by a friend of a fan. Keep in mind, these numbers can be skewed because someone could be a fan, and view stories about your page in all three ways and each would count separately.

However, a chart is provided that shows how many times users were exposed to any content from your Facebook page over a given time period. You'll see in the above chart that around 400,000 people were exposed to 1 piece of content from this page over a 1 week time period and only 200,000 were exposed to 2 pieces of content, and so on.

Daily breakdown

(Click image for full-sized version)

In addition to the top-line metrics, using the chart above you can see how each of these numbers changed on any given day, as a result of the content published on that day. The purple dots grow, shrink, or disappear based on the total number of posts by the page on a given day. We've had some of this information provided before but the new chart gives a much clearer view of daily activity and how your fans react to posts.

New Likes Traffic

While Facebook has provided internal and external traffic reports with analytics for years, it has been clunky to say the least. They've now provided a sleek infographic to show how new fans were driven to page. You can dig deeper into these statistics by downloading the insights.

Talking About This

(Side note: For the amount of effort Facebook obviously put in to improving their analytics, I cannot be the only one disappointed in the lack of effort put into naming these products. OK, back to the show...)

"How People Are Talking About Your Page" represents the total number of stories created by individual users. You can see the total number of stories created over the time period by selecting one of the options from the drop-down menu. That way you can dive into more detail on what each "story" concerns.

Breaking down the new products really only scratches the surface of the mountains of data Facebook provides in their updated insights. However, I think these updates will change the way we utilize our pages and connect with our fans. I can already see opportunities to target updates that were better received by different age groups, or tweak how we chose to share images through the pages. 

Take a look around the new analytics yourself. How do you think it will improve your communication and strategy, if at all?

Kammie Avant is a social media planner for Luckie & Company. You can contact her by e-mail or follow @KammieAvant on Twitter.