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10 Reasons NOT to Delete Your Facebook Account
The following is a guest post from Natan Gesher and was first posted on his blog Lines Writing Lines and is reprinted with permission of the author. The views expressed are entirely his own.
If you’re in the habit of following these things, you’ve by no doubt now read Dan Yoder’s 10 Reasons to Delete Your Facebook Account. I’ve seen it posted in six or seven places in just the past few hours. Unfortunately, it makes less and less sense every time I skim it. For the following reasons and for many others, I am not planning to delete my Facebook account:
Keeping in touch with Facebook
10. I moved from America to Israel in 2004, leaving behind my entire family and almost every friend I’d ever known. Though I didn’t get a Facebook account until 2005, I’ve been using it daily for the past five years to stay in touch with friends and relatives. Facebook makes it extremely inexpensive and highly efficient to get out important news about myself and to find out important news about other people with whom I never was very close. At the same time, it has never replaced traditional means of communication like telephone calls; nor should it.
Business networking with Facebook
9. LinkedIn is there and it does a fine job, but work is only one part of my life and there’s no chance for a prospective employer or client to get to know me by my LinkedIn page. I add my coworkers as Facebook friends and I’ll do the same for my clients. If they don’t accept me, I don’t mind at all, but I think they’ll want to get a better understanding of who I am and what I like, to the extent that information on Facebook supplements my real personality.
Photo sharing on Facebook
8. I understand that Facebook is now the world’s biggest photo-sharing site. There are others, like Flickr and Picasa, that have lots of features and are more professional, and more serious solutions like installing Gallery on your own domain. But for ease of tagging, getting photos to lots and lots of people – but not to random strangers – and sheer simplicity, sharing photos with Facebook makes perfect sense.
Connecting with new friends on Facebook
7. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been out and met someone or a few people, but only gotten first names. In the old days, meeting someone and speaking for a few minutes meant that I’d either have to ask for a telephone number to continue the conversation, with might seem a little too forward (and I don’t enjoy talking on the telephone very much) or attempting to follow up through a friend-of-a-friend, which could be cumbersome (I’ve never been comfortable meeting someone and then asking for an email address). It’s now extremely handy to use Facebook to connect with a new contact, even given just a first name and a mutual friend. This might be to continue a discussion about some interesting issue, to finish tagging a photo, to pass along information about a job or an apartment or just to stay in touch in the future. It’s clean, it’s easy and it works.
Using Facebook ads
6. Recently, while looking for an apartment in Tel Aviv, I used Facebook ads to get the word out and drive people to read my message that I was willing to pay a NIS 3500 finder’s fee for information leading to me renting an apartment. A very large percentage of the site’s traffic was generated by these Facebook ads, leading to several actionable tips. My somewhat creative use of Facebook ads was profiled in an article in TheMarker, the business section of Haaretz, but in fact I believe that I was using Facebook’s advertising platform in exactly the way it was designed and for exactly its purpose. Gone are the days when ad campaigns cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars just to plan and start. I set $10 daily limits for my ads and didn’t have any knowledge of the system beyond what’s available in Facebook’s own FAQs. It’s so easy to use Facebook ads, I could almost train my dog to use them.
Facebook’s privacy settings
5. Complaints about how Facebook sets up its privacy settings are a dime a dozen, but I challenge anyone to come up with another comparable web service that gives its users more powerful, granular control over their information than Facebook does. You can choose exactly who gets to see every little thing you do on Facebook or set global settings and just stick with them. True, they change their privacy options all the time and true, it gets pretty confusing, but it’s getting confusing because it’s getting more detailed and more complex, which is a good thing. And the bottom line is that no information is available about you that you don’t put on Facebook in the first place: if you want to have a profile with just your first name, last initial and favorite television shows, you can do that. This isn’t to say that privacy isn’t a big concern. It is, but it’s also crazy to complain that Facebook is spreading your information every which way if you don’t use Facebook’s own options to control who sees your information.
Remembering people’s details with Facebook
4. Whenever someone I know travels, I always ask for a postcard to add to my collection. “But what’s your address?” they always ask. And I always say: “It’s on my Facebook page.” When I meet someone who asks for my phone number, I could recite the ten digits or write them down, but it’s a hell of a lot easier just to give my Facebook username – which, conveniently, is the same as my first name. When someone wants to know my birthday to wish me a happy birthday – it’s there, and it even reminds my friends and family on Facebook when my birthday is approaching. I have a Birthdays calendar in iCal too, so I can see when important birthdays are coming… but there are hundreds more birthdays in my Facebook account.
Everyone is on Facebook
3. As often happens, Farhad Manjoo said it best: “There is no longer any good reason to avoid Facebook… it is now so widely trafficked that it’s fast becoming a routine aid to social interaction, like e-mail and antiperspirant [and mobile phones]… Facebook is now at that same point – whether or not you intend it, you’re saying something by staying away.” What does it say to me when I meet someone who doesn’t have Facebook? Something like: I don’t want to stay in touch with you. Or perhaps: Please leave me alone. Or even: Community is not important to me. These are perfectly valid sentiments, but if you do want to stay in touch, if you don’t want to be left alone, if communitydoes matter to you, then you’ll find a way to use the tool that’s expected of you.
Facebook gets better all the time
2. I’m actually ambivalent about Facebook’s progress and I include this one even though, while I think it’s true that Facebook does get better all the time, it also gets worse. I miss the days when Facebook was mainly about networks (and then groups) and I think becoming a “fan” of a “page” is lame, which is why I’ve never done it. I think most Facebook applications like the Farmville thing and the Mafia Wars thing are complete crap, which is why I’ve never used them (and why I’ve blocked them from spamming me). At the same time, Facebook’s integration with the wider web is very cool and opens up a lot of interesting possibilities – who knows, maybe one day Facebook will be the next Google, the first stop for people who want to find something on the internet. And where else on the internet do people join a site with their real names (first and last) and real pictures, one account per person? Facebook could be the long sought source for online micropayments, one-click identity verification without credit cards, etc, etc.
It’s a pain in the ass to quit Facebook
1. This is in response to Dan Yoder’s point three: “Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account.” It seems circular to me that it’s hard to close your Facebook account would be an argument for why you should close your Facebook account, but I understand that many people see it that way. Just ask yourself: is it really worth it? Facebook is entertaining, useful, efficient, free, generally a good idea to use and possibly will be even more essential in the future. If you don’t like making your information public, limit the amount of information you share. You don’t even have to give a real last name to use Facebook; you don’t have to use your normal email address; you don’t have to join your company’s network or accept your boss’s friend request. Is it really worth canceling your account for the vaguest and lamest reasons? Nope. Do yourself and everyone around you a favor and keep the damn account open.
MLB.com CEO on the REAL future of television
Media and communication have undergone major changes in the past few years. Print is dying and even the old “bunny ears” analog television has officially died – thanks to the introduction of digital TV. But this is more about a platform than content. People are still reading newspapers and magazines — but online, requiring more frequent content and search engine optimization techniques to get found. People still watch television — but now the signal is digital and it might be TiVoed, OnDemand, on their iPad, iPod, iTunes, computer, or other portable device — and thus necessitating a change in advertising.
Traditional publishers, like the BBC and Major League Baseball, have understood this and embraced content portability. The BBC has their innovative iPlayer and the MLB has embraced it with mlb.com.
Bob Bowman recently spoke to Business Insider about the future of television.
One of the most important piece of advise that Bob Bowman gives is also what I have been advising clients: “Rather than fight it, accept it.” (7:30) This is the future. You don’t have to like it (I don’t always), but this is the way things are going and you can either choose to be a part of it, have a say and influence at times, or you will not remain relevant.
(By the way, as I write this post, I’m watching the NBC Nightly News – the day after it aired, from their podcast, on my laptop, and not my television. Not even in the same country that the show aired. This is the future of television).
10 Reasons why your intern shouldn’t be doing your social media marketing
YouTube is five years old. Facebook is six years old. The under-30 crowd grew up with technology and are “Digital Natives.” I 
first had a computer when I was six years old and those just out of college probably had a computer in their house from the day they were born and were on Facebook in high school. The natural facility with today’s technology is one of the great advantages that Generation Y and the Millenials bring to the workplace.
Far too often, though, because of that generation gap and technological divide, the older management-level (including older marketing teams) are inclined to ignore what is – to them – new and difficult technology and leave their social media and online marketing activities to an intern or recent college graduate. This is a common but serious mistake that companies are beginning to make.
10. Social Media is the New Communication Channel. Facebook has over 400 million active users worldwide. We do research on Wikipedia and post our photos to Flickr. YouTube is the new MTV and CNN is one of the most popular accounts on Twitter. We read the news online, through RSS and blogs and not on paper. This is not going away. First there were smoke signals, then the newspaper, radio, and television and the Web. Today is the digital age with social networks, mobile, iPads, etc.
9. The Internet is here to stay. Don’t listen to Prince, who recently said that “The internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else.” iTunes and its successors will be here. Prince won’t be if he chooses to ignore it.
8. Not Just Working 9-5. Dolly Parton may have just worked 9-5 but your social media efforts shouldn’t. Social Media isn’t a temporary, 20 hr. a week type of deal. It’s a 24-7/365 job. I will frequently log into clients’ social media accounts on Saturday night and throughout the weekend to see if there’s a conversation that needs immediate response or update with the latest news. In a breaking news cycle, you might need to be talking to the public online in the middle of the night. Recently, during a breaking news event, I was responding to the news for a client until midnight. An intern wouldn’t do that.
7. Who are your cheerleaders – Who are your brand’s biggest fans? Odds are it’s not a summer intern who is just working for you for a few months, doesn’t truly know your company inside and out, and has no plans to stay on. Your cheerleader might be the 45-year-old working for your firm for the past decade who goes to every company picnic. It might also be the 29-year-old, with a few years of experience and both a technical facility and research knowledge. They identify with your brand. Not your intern who is looking for the next best thing.
6. Accountability – Your intern is gone after August. You can’t really fire your intern – who won’t be around anyway. Things do happen. People do say inappropriate things online. While this can be prevented with a social media policy, your staff are accountable – they want to keep their job. Your intern? Not so much.
5. Crossing Silos – Social media integrates many different functions. Marketing, customer service, public relations, Human Resources, and more. Can your intern handle these multiple functions or will they be taken seriously by more senior staff members in another department? Depending on your organization, you need someone handling your social media channels that can work with other departments and cross-teams.
4. Long-term momentum – It takes time to build a brand online. You can’t just start and stop. HubSpot has reported that it takes at least 50 blog posts before you start seeing leads from your blog. It takes time to build a community. But come September and your intern’s outta there! You have to build relationships, slowly but effectively and 3 months just isn’t enough! If you are going to take it seriously – which you must – you need to invest in it long-term!
3. It’s more than just status updating – A huge misconception about social media marketing and community management is that all you do is update your status on Facebook and send out a few tweets. If you think that, well, better start getting trained in social media marketing management now. Social media marketing is a part of a holistic approach to strategic marketing. Do you really want them interacting with top-tier journalists? Just because you know how to change your status update or create a Facebook page doesn’t make you a marketer any more than being able to read a newspaper makes you a journalist or kick a ball makes you a football player.
2. Business and Communications – Social media marketing is a part of a holistic approach to strategic marketing. Does your intern know your marketing plan. Do you want them writing it for you? Social media is a marketing function. To do it right, you should know business and marketing. Does that mean you necessarily need a business degree or MBA? Not anymore than anyone else in your firm, but a couple of years of experience in your industry and business knowledge will help place your digital marketing efforts in the appropriate business functions.
1. This is your brand – Are you going to leave your brand management, its public presentation, and how people look at you to someone whose name you don’t even know? If that’s how you think of your brand than expect others to view it the same way. If you don’t value your brand, no one else will.
So what can your intern do? Perhaps they can analyze a bit of what you are doing. They can write and assist and research and help. You might be able to learn from them – but don’t leave your core asset – your brand – and your future growth areas just to an inexperienced intern.
Interns picture licensed under Creative Commons http://www.flickr.com/photos/yodelanecdotal/662775832/
Social media silo picture CC 2.0 http://www.flickr.com/photos/7855449@N02/4712815871/
The Future of Search is Social
Watch out Google, Facebook and the Social Graph are the future. Just when you thought you were finally getting it, with SEO and realizing that your customers find you online, comes a new concept – first introduced in 2004 or 2005: social search.
Optimizing and engaging on social networks are one important way to help potential customers or stakeholders find your brand.
From Wikipedia:
Social search or a social search engine is a type of web search method that determines the relevance of search results by considering the interactions or contributions of users. When applied to web search this user-based approach to relevance is in contrast to established algorithmic or machine-based approaches where relevance is determined by analyzing the text of each document or the link structure of the documents
Social search means that you will see more relevant search results. Based on traditional word of mouth marketing — you trust your friend and neighbors’ recommendations more than a random stranger – social search merely brings this old concept to your extended network. As we communicate with our neighbors, friends, and even our spouses online instead of over the telephone or fence post, social search is merely an extension of real life moving online.
According to Wikipedia, some of the benefits of social search are:
- Increased relevance because each result has been selected by users.
- Leverage a network of trusted individuals by providing an indication of whether they thought a particular result was good or bad.
- The introduction of ‘human judgement’ suggests that each web page has been viewed and endorsed by one or more people, and they have concluded it is relevant and worthy of being shared with others using human techniques that go beyond the computer’s current ability to analyze a web page.
- Web pages are considered to be relevant from the reader’s perspective, rather than the author who desires their content to be viewed, or the web master as they create links.
- More current results. Because a social search engine is constantly getting feedback it is potentially able to display results that are more current or in context with changing information.
Tropicana Las Vegas Hotel Uses Social Media to Drive Customers and Increase Customer Satisfaction
How does one Las Vegas hotel use review sites like Yelp to gain customers and encourage return customers? Simple: Good customer service and responding to every post, including negative reviews. The Tropicana Las Vegas’s willingness to engage negative reviews and see them as opportunity for improvement is one important key of this Los Vegas hotel’s success in online marketing.
The following is a guest post from Nicole Marshall, Guest Experience Specialist at the Tropicana Las Vegas. Check out their pages on Twitter and Facebook, as well.
Tropicana Las Vegas is changing everything! We have been under new ownership since July 2009 and since then we have been making great strides to change our entire culture, both physical and service related. Social Media plays a very important role in this; as the customer of today is far more technically savvy then that of 10 or even 5 years ago. It used to be if you had a great experience, you would tell your friends and maybe a local newspaper. Now a days you can Tweet, Blog, Facebook or Yelp right from the hotel room or restaurant table. There is no lag time and you reach a much greater audience then your immediate friends. It used to be one person could tell up to 5 people, who tell 5 more and so on. Now, one person can reach 100 people who then tell 150 more and it balloons from there. For Tropicana Las Vegas, this is a great way to get the word out about our transformation.
Having a company website is crucial, but today, you need a larger online footprint to be able to go reach your customers. Facebook is a great avenue for chatter as well as a marketing tool.. The wonderful thing about Facebook and other social media avenues is that you can successfully manage a page or site with very little technical training. If you can point and click, you are in! In order to create a site or page that is engaging and savvy, it does help to have a marketing and customer service related background. After all, if something is boring, you are going to lose interest fast! Everything needs to be done keeping the target audience in mind.
What sets the Tropicana Las Vegas apart is our commitment to excellence and our customer focus. Our Facebook site, for example, is more than just a place for fans to post their comments and share pictures. We post a minimum of three times a week to ensure we are always staying on the minds of our friends without over saturating them. We also answer every post. By doing so, we’ve created raving fans! In addition, we share many of the comments with our team members to ensure it happens again! We also personally assist with reservations. In other words, we treat you like family and not revenue. The response and support from our fans is overwhelming on Facebook. There is nowhere else in the city that you are going to receive such personal and professional “online” service from a real person. We do this not only through Facebook, but through several other “virtual” outlets as well, like Trip Advisor and Yelp.
With the good, there will always be the bad. With a generation of technically savvy customers, if they want to say something negative, they will find an outlet. We welcome this feedback. After all, if we have no idea something is broke, how can we fix it? However, be assured that once you tell us it is broke, we will not only fix it but also invite you back as a “VIP” to prove it to you!
The best suggestion for a company starting to dabble in social media is start small and ensure that you never make a promise you, or your company, cannot deliver on. You have to stay flexible yet consistent, empathetic yet company focused. And remember to have fun with it.
Cultural Gap?
In case you needed more proof of how different people use different technology…
Marketing lessons from the water department
What can you learn about marketing from the water company? I recently posted an interview with Alan Heymann, the Director of 
Public Affairs of the Washington, DC Water and Sewer Authority, about how the water company, DC Water and Sewer, uses social and online media to help their customers and embrace today’s communication channels.
But what can we learn from him? What can we learn about marketing from a public utility? It turns out … a lot!
- Alan’s 21 year old sister-in-law doesn’t e-mail. E-mail has been around for over 30 years and is quickly becoming passe. Don’t rely on e-mail.
- Even if you are glued to your inbox (nothing wrong with that!), understand that not everyone is. Different people use different channels of communications. You need to be where your customers are — even if it’s not where you would naturally be.
- Don’t expect your customers to call your help line. Some people won’t pick up the phone to report a broken hydrant, but they will take a picture of it with their cell phone and post it on Twitter. If you’re not listening, you would never know about the broken pipe until it was much too late — now you know about it much earlier. If I can’t contact you online, I’m not choosing your service without a seriously compelling reason.
- Their staff are active social media users — with 15% of the population on Twitter, and millions online, particularly Digital Natives, this is just a regular part of how people communicate. This is mainstream, not for the geek. Even Ashton Kutcher is on Twitter. If your staff is not naturally comfortable with technology, consider replacing or adding to your staff. Digital Natives are now entering the workforce in huge numbers, and this could be anything from the newly minted college graduate to the 30-year-old with a few years of work experience and a graduate degree. If you’re not a Digital Native, become a Digital Immigrant – get comfortable with tech.
- Social media is not a silo – It is holistic. It requires strategy. Social media efforts are done as part of an overall branding, media relations, and marketing message. The IT department also doesn’t operate in a silo and there is talented development staff with business acumen.
- Social media isn’t just marketing. It’s also customer service, sales, business development, and product management. These are all valuable investments — by the way, customer service can serve marketing — happier customers won’t be speaking poorly about your brand.
- Digital marketing is done at the highest level. The person behind @dcwater is not some intern, but their Director of Public Affairs – who understands technology but also knows his field, with a law degree from George Washington University and a journalism degree from Northwestern. It’s managed at the highest level, representing its significant importance.
If the water department gets it, and you don’t, you are behind the times. Public utilities are generally the most conservative of industries — and yet, they understand that social media and online communications is simply how people communicate today.
You might not like paying your water bill, but at least learn from the water company!
(Water picture under CC from Zen Photo)
When the water company gets it, you know social has gone mainstream…
If anyone in your company is telling you that social media marketing is just for technology companies, or techno wizzes or high tech, and not appropriate for B2B, don’t just tell them that they are behind the times — show them an example of the most “drab” of industries that have embraced today’s social environment: The Washington, DC Water and Sewer Department.
Social is today’s culture — it’s how we interact. Many 20 and 30 somethings are going to take a picture of a pothole and post it on Twitter instead of calling and reporting it. They might not call customer service about a bad product experience — but they will tweet about it! They also won’t write you a letter when they had an enjoyable experience, but they might share a picture on Flickr or talk about their experience on Facebook or LinkedIn. It’s not optional. It’s how people communicate today.
One organization that gets it is the DC Water and Sewer Authority – recently rebranded as “DC Water.” Now, if anyone was not supposed to “get it” it’s the water company, particularly in a city that has had decades of urban problems and a bad reputation (trust me, I grew up hearing about DC as a Washington native), but has been making significant improvements in the last several years.
When I first saw this rebranding I was shocked and amazed. I decided to interview Alan Heymann, DC Water’s Director of Public Affairs, who was extremely responsive — one of the cardinal rules in social media — and thoughtful.
Worth noting that Alan Heymann, who is in charge of social media efforts is the Director of Public Affairs, holds a journalism degree from Northwestern, and a law degree from George Washington University. They aren’t leaving their social media efforts to some unpaid intern, but recognizing its strategic importance as an integral part of their overall communications strategy.
Continue reading “When the water company gets it, you know social has gone mainstream…”
Do Brands Matter in a Recession?
People aren’t loyal to old brands — they want products and services that will make their life better – and it doesn’t matter if it’s 100 years old or 100 days old.