Matt Astifan

The much anticipated Timeline for Facebook Pages launched today. I’ve been watching the Facebook Conference, reading blog posts and hearing people’s opinions all morning and afternoon. Although a lot of people are upset there is no more default landing tabs anymore, I think once you learn about all the new features you’ll be excited about the changes. 

Here is a list of almost all the new feature announced today. If I missed any you feel was important please leave a comment below the post. 

New Facebook Timeline Features:

• Cover Photo: Facebook recommending to change and customize this often. Example was Verizon photo contest featuring a new users photos on the Cover photo every day. Local businesses could post a picture of their store front to make it easier for customers to find or recognize the location. The ideal cover photo size is 851x315 pixels (min 399 pixels wide).
  
  
• Cover Photo Guidelines: 
  • No price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”
  • No contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section
  • No references to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features
  • No calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”

• Profile Picture: Facebook recommends a logo for page and not to change it often. The new dimension is 180x180, the image sizes down as an icon to 32x32 so make sure your profile picture sizes down properly. I noticed that if it’s not the right size it’s becomes a little blurry. 
  
  
• New Landing Page Settings: You can no longer make your landing pages the default landing tab for new visitors. However, you can run ads to these pages and direct them to the page. The new custom page width for Facebook Pages is 810 pixels, more room to work with - which is great! (more on this below)
  
  
• Icon Images For Tabs On Your Timeline: You can add calls to action on your tab icons. The new dimension for the icon is 111x74 pixels.
  
  
• Placement Of About Section: This is the text which goes under your profile picture. You can use this space to describe your company, products or place a call to action. It will display the first 157 of 200 total allowed characters.
  
  
• Pinned Posts: You can now Pin a post at the top of your page for 7 days. Facebook recommends you Pin one important post each week and continue to post updates daily.  
  
  • Pin a Post to maximize reach and engagement above the fold
  • Pin a Photo album to feature fan of the week
  • Pin a Question to do market research
  • Pin a Video to get more views throughout the week
  • Pin a Event to promote an upcoming workshop or seminar
  • Pin a Offer to get more fans to take advantage of your deal 
     
• Millstones & Backdated Posts: You can now create the “story” of your business using Timeline by highlight important moments that define your business or organization. You can add or change dates, and highlight posts. 
  
  
• The New “Offer” Update: My favorite new feature. You can now create a deal/coupon as a status update. It’s rolling out over the next few weeks. When a user accept the deal it creates a news story in their Timeline and their friends see it which will create a viral effect.

• Private Messages Page Admins: You can send and receive private message to page admins. Why hasn’t this been around longer?
  
  
• 5 New Role-Based Admin Settings: There wasn’t a mention of exactly what these features will be, just that they’re coming in the next few weeks (eg, post only, view insights only ect). Again, why hasn’t this been around longer? 
  
  
• Highlighted Friend Activity: When you visit a fan page you will see who you know that also likes the page, and their past activity on the page. Previously this was a sub-tab, now the feature is front and centre on the Timeline.
  
  
• Activity Log: View all your past page posts, hide/remove or change dates of posts.
  
  
• Admin Panel: Find all the communication on the page from one easy to use panel. The panel includes Notifications, Private Messages, New Likes, Insights and Page Tips. 

Major improvements to Facebook Insights: Pure awesomeness. We now have many more useful metrics to work with. Here is what each of them means:

• Total Likes: How many people Like your page.
   
• Friends of Fans: All the people you could reach when your fans talk about you. This number represents friends of your fans and your fans combined. 
   
• People Talking About This: A public metric of people who have talked about your page in the past 7 days. This is an important metric because when people talk about your business or organization it helps you reach their friends. 
  
  People Talking About This includes:
  
  • Liking your page
  • Posting on your pages wall
  • Liking/commenting/sharing one of your pages posts
  • Answering a question you posted
  • Responding to one of your event
  • Mentioning your page
  • Photo tagging your page
  • Checking in at your place
  • Recommending your business

• Weekly Total Reach: Shows the number of unique people who have seen any content associated with your page in the last 7 days. Including any Ads or Sponsored Stories pointing to your page. There are three types of Reach - Organic Reach, Paid Reach and Viral Reach. Note: when you view “Total Reach” it counts total unique Reach, Reach measures the number of people reached. 
  
  
• Engaged Users: The number of people that click on a link you share, Like a post, comment, share, watch a video and even clicking on people’s names on comments or viewing the number of Likes/Shares the post got would also count as engagement.
  
  
• Virality: The amount of unique people who have spread a story from your page post represented by a percentage of the unique people who have seen it. This helps you identify patterns and visually compare the virality of different types of posts. Additionally, the Demographics section now allows you to see the gender and age group of the people who spread your posts the most allowing you to know who to focus on if you’re trying to spread your message further.
  
  
• Frequency: How many times people saw any content from your page.

Note: Facebook Ads now reports “Reach” (total number of unique people reached) instead of “Impressions” (total number of views)

Other cool feature announced today:

• Ads on Mobile: You can now get your ads to show up on mobile and they will now show up inside Newsfeed’s. There are 425 million monthly mobile users. This is a great feature. 
• RFD technology: Stores your entire Facebook experience on a chip you can take with you, good for conferences and in-person engagement. Where to get one was not mentioned. 

My thoughts on the changes…

The Cover Photo restrictions reminds me of Seth Godin’s “Permission Marketing” principles. I kind of agree with this change as it helps to control the environment on Facebook. Who wants Ads and specials pushes in their face on Facebook all day?

Facebook is a public company now and clearly focusing on driving more ads revenue. They seem to be moving away from allowing businesses to capture fan data to keeping the entire experience on Facebook, which might be good. If they keep the entire checkout on Facebook the conversions will skyrocket. I’m sure in the future customers will be able to make one click purchases using Facebook Credits. It’s coming.

Facebook Landing Page strategies will change for all those who were using the default landing tabs (myself included) and require much more focus on engagement. The bright side is that Facebook has given us better Insights to better engage and understand our customers. 

My only concern is that focusing on Engagement, Reach and People Talking About This is great for large business… Not small business owners. For a large business you can make a big impact with branding and in turn effect your bottom line profits. It doesn’t make sense for small business to focus on branding. Small businesses need better utilize direct response marketing. They need to know if they spend x$ or x time they get x$ in return. This is where features like Offers is great! And the new wider Facebook Landing tabs will be great for increasing conversions through Paid Ads. I’m happy about it.

A major downside to losing default landing tabs is that it closes the viral loop when someone Likes your page and a news story shows up on their Timeline, their friends see it, click, and land on the default Landing Tab. A solution for this is something which I have already started implemented on my Facebook landing pages. A viral “Share” Button which prompts users to share the page for a specific benefits after they have subscribed or opted-into my clients database (which is the main call to action). It’s a 3 step process and here is an example.

How to activate Timeline for your Facebook Page. Go to your Fan Page and you will see an “Active Timeline” notification at the top of the page. Click on that and you will get into preview mode and you can begin editing your page. All pages will be published to Timeline on March 30th, 2012. 

Did I miss any features? Enjoy this post? Leave a comment.

How To Remove A Virus From Your Twitter Account And Stop Twitter Spam!

Here is a video I made to show you how to quickly remove Twitter spam if your account is compromised. If you get Direct Message spam just shoot a link back to this video to help your follower remove the virus from their account.

In an effort to make Twitter’s timeline useful again I’m trying a 500 person follow limit. I’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time and finally did it. Does anyone else find there is just too much gibberish on Twitter? It was looking like a self promoting link farm when I looked at it yesterday afternoon…… I may have unfollowed some friends by accident, if I did don’t take offense just lmk, I still love you. 

Why I unfollowed 1200 people

• Twitter’s timeline wasn’t useful to me anymore. When I first started Twitter I loved checking the timeline because I would learn something new every time. These days it’s just a bunch of links, hashtags and pointless paper.li updates.

• There was too much noise on the timeline so I avoided looking at it. I found my use of Twitter has changed over the past year from engaging people to waiting for people to engage me. I want to do more of the engaging and learning about the people I follow. 

• I want to build meaningful relationships (business or personal) with more people. Following 1700 people really wasn’t helping to build quality relationships.

How I chose who to unfollow

I was interested by my self observation with the decision making process. I had a hard time deciding who to follow and who to unfollow. My overall mission was to get the highest quality Twitter timeline with only 500 follows.

• Does the user have a clear picture of themselves? I unfollowed almost every logo, dogs and cartoon drawing. If I didn’t recognize the avatar I knew it was because that person has never caught my attention or engaged me anyways… Lesson here, your avatar is important. Make sure it’s a clear picture of your face and don’t change it often or you will be hard to remember. 

• Does the bio say something interesting about who they are and what they do? I once had Owen Clark ask me why I deleted my Twitter bio (this was about 6 months ago). I told him I was checking to see if curiosity would generate more clicks to my website (eg, if people want to know more about me they have to click my web url). Turned out traffic to my blog via Twitter stayed the same, which was interesting. However I’d say it’s better to have the bio and the traffic. I read a lot of bio’s while deciding who to follow/unfollow. 

• Follower ration. If a user was following 2000 or more people I knew it was unlikely they would see much of me… However I was more interested in what they were tweeting about. After all, the goal here is to get the optimal timeline. I found most people who followed 2000 people and had half as many followers tended to be the ones sharing a bunch of self promotional tweets. Coincidence, I dunno. 

How I unfollowed 1200 peeps

First thing I did was created a Twitter List of all the people I wanted to make sure I didn’t accidentally unfollow. Sometimes when using unfollow tools you may accidentally unfollow friends, so I recommend creating a list of your favorite peeps first. Later, you can come back to check it and make sure you didn’t unfollow any friends. 

The first tool I used was TheTwitCleaner.com this tool was able to give me recommendations of who to unfollow based on their activity. You get categories such as: do they only share links, do they post identical tweets, are they victims of app spam ect. This was a good first start but only eliminated about 100 users. 

The main tool I used for unfollowing was ManageTwitter.com with this tool you can unfollow all those who are not following you, those who talk too much and those who talk too little. I’ve created this video below to show you how to use it more effectively. 

[coming soon]

I was able to use TheTwitCleaner and ManageTwitter to clean up more then half my timeline. Once I was down to about 700 I went on to Twitter.com and started manually unfollowing. What I found really handy was the Klout browser plugin (for Chrome and Firefox) which allowed me to view users Klout scores from Twitter.com. I looked for those with low -20 and high 50+ Klout scores. 

What Klout scores tell me

1. The user has a good follower ration
2. The user is a regular Twitter user
3. The user is engaged and engages
4. The user is probably retweeted often (shares good content)
5. 50+ the user engages with influential people 
6. -20 the user is new to Twitter but doing a good job
7. -10 they aren’t really using Twitter

(these are all guesstimates)  

I won’t get too much into Klout but I do recommend using the plugin and looking at scores with a grain of salt. It’s not everything but it’s helpful to see. 

Who am I following and why

You can view the list of 500 people I followed

I kept these people for a number of reasons

• I know them personally and like them
• They share unique content on Twitter which is not on their blog or Facebook
• They share links I’m interested in (eg, tech/marketing/business related)
• They tweet about topics I’m interested in
• They don’t promote themselves all day long
• They are not Paper.li, #FF and Foursquare addicts 
• We have had recent conversations together 

In conclusion.

I know a lot of people are wondering why I don’t just use a dashboard like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck and manage Twitter Lists. I never got used to using a dashboard and prefer using Twitter.com

Abby from @ArtsVancouver suggest bookmarking a Twitter List page on my browser. I think this is a brilliant idea and will probably do this next.

I have a feeling the 500 follow limit will make Twitters timeline interesting again. I have lost about 25 followers so far, I am sure I will lose more as I continue tweeting and people notice I’m not following them. However I consider this and decided if people are only following me because I’m following them they probably don’t care much about me anyways ;)

This may very well be one of the best social media campaigns I’ve seen come out of a large corporation. What makes it great is the tiny personalized interactions (which I talk a lot about in my presentation “Secrets Of A Social Media Campaign”).

When you make ONE person a huge fan of your company they forever help spread the word about every other great thing you do. Take advice from this video then next time you plan a social media campaign. 

Now valued at over a billion dollars, Dropbox is another lean tech startup success story. However the company didn’t have an easy start. If you use the product you know it’s not easy explaining the product to someone, or get them to download it to their computer. 

The video above was made by Dropbox founder and CEO Drew Houston. The video is simple, however what made the video so successful was the tiny humorous details. Pay close attention to the file names, IM chat, pictures and email addresses for a good laugh.

This is the video knows as the MVP, “Minimum Viable Product” that helps Dropbox get to where it is today. Simple, yet effective. 

Alright here we go, I hope you’re ready for this.

Angry Bird Stats (Nov 2011)

• More than 500 million people have download Angry birds.
• Worldwide people have played 200,000 years of Angry Birds?
• 300,000 million minutes each day is spent playing Angry Birds.
• People have played over 266 BILLION levels. 
• 400 billion birds have been launched.
• and 44 billion Stars have been collected.

That’s crazy! And here is what Rovio CEO Niklas Hed has to say about the game:

(this interview is a few months old, but it gives you a great insight into the success of Angry Birds)

And… here are my stats haha

So what does all this mean? Haha I have no idea. Only that Nintendo better watch out ;)

Check out these video’s by Gary Vaynerchuk: (Playlist - All 4 video’s are pre-loaded in player ,aprx 1 hour)

Part 1: The people in the middle are in trouble

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1pLRSKETaU

Part 2: Customer acquisition and retention

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKNwSczt4S4

Part 3: Media mix matters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxmkQiG82z8

Part 4: How marketing people are ruining social media

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YueBpTH6oao

David Heinemeier Hansson from 37 Signals talks about “A secret to making money online”. Very funny, informative and entertaining talk. Biggest insight for me was right at the end: work less/get more done. It’s so true… If you only gave yourself 3-5 hours to get everything done you’d be so much more productive. How you design your life today will stick even after you’ve “made it” and rich. 

For nearly two years I’ve helped organize an Internet marketing group called Internet Masterminds Group in Vancouver BC with my friends Franco Peta and Bernie Glemas. The group meets every Monday night at 7pm to discuss Internet marketing related topics. We’re now the largest Internet marketing group in the city and I believe we’re the most active Meetup in Vancouver. I’m proud to say that at each meeting we’re getting about 10% of the members to turn out (of course not always the same people but we have many regulars). A few months ago we started charging $5 at the door to use those funds to help grow the group. Since we implemented the fee we’re getting higher turn-outs then ever before (which may or may not relate to the $5 fee). So far we’ve used the funds to buy more chairs, throw a free BBQ for our members, get a logo for the group designed and we have a few more ideas in the works ;)

Starting your own Meetup Group? Here are some lessons learned:

1. Have consistent meetings, for example, every Monday. Or the Last Tuesday of every month ect. This way if someone misses a meeting or wants to tell a friend about it they already know when the next meeting is and can prepare to be there well in advance. 
    
2. Try to use the same location every time. If you can’t secure a consistent location at least find a location where you have a controlled environment, eg, not a noisy bar or restaurant. A good place to look is a local shared office space or a company that services the entrepreneurial market and has a large meeting room they could donate. ING Direct in Vancouver is one example of a company that has been offering its room for the Vancouver Meetup community. 
    
3. Choose a topic of the month. I find this gets more return visitors and a true “mastermind” of people interested in sharing/learning about the topic. Examples of some of our monthly topics for Internet Masterminds have been Video Marketing, Daily Deals, SEO/PPC, Social Media, Outsourcing, Affiliate Marketing and Information Marketing. 
    
4. Allow everyone to introduce themselves for 1 or 2 minutes. Here is the format I ask everyone to use “what’s your name, how do you help people, and how can others help you.” If there are more than 40 people in the room we’ll give everyone only 30 seconds and use a timer. Although I’ve had MANY people suggest this was a waste of time, I believe it’s the reason so many connections are made in our group. It lets members hear what everyone in the room does so you know who to approach at the end of the meeting. 
    
5. Don’t let guest presenters hard-sell their products or services. I used to be very strict about pitches, and set a “no pitching law” for all presenters. However, I found it a bit tougher to get presenters for the group. I also found attendees rushing presenters at the end of the presentations asking where they could get more info. Now I suggest a soft pitch (and recommend it) but make sure the presenter doesn’t think it’s a seminar and prepare forms and sales agents to “sign you up at the back of the room”. On a personal note, I look for speakers with long-term business concepts and valuable business products and services for the group.
    
6. Make sure every Meetup has a good description. The format I’ve been using is 1) a catchy headline which includes the presenters name 2) one paragraph about the talk 3) five specific bullet points that attendees will learn, 4) one paragraph about the speaker. I strongly suggest this formula exactly, I’ve tested other concepts and this is by far the best, no more and no less.

Here are 3 description examples of Meetups that filled up very quickly:

“How To Make A Fortune With Information Products, with Frederic Patenaude”

http://www.meetup.com/Internet-Masterminds/events/25137801/

“How to Build a PR Plan for Your Business & Why You Need One, with Monica Morong”

http://www.meetup.com/Internet-Masterminds/events/22668642/

“How To Multiply Your Social Media Buzz with Matt Astifan, Web Friendly”

http://www.meetup.com/Internet-Masterminds/events/16949186/ 

Meetup headlines are important: I once scheduled a high profile speaker for Internet Masterminds and noticed the meetup wasn’t getting many RSVP’s. I got a little nervous that we would have a small audience for the speaker so I asked if I could change the title of the presentation. As soon as I did the RSVP’s skyrocketed and we had a full house! Lesson learned, get good at naming your Meetups and don’t be afraid of re-naming the presentation as long as it doesn’t change the context of the presentation (however, ask your presenter first)

  7. Prepare an introduction for your guest speakers. Unfortunately I fail at this all the time… I usually say a few nice words about the speaker and then ask if they could introduce themselves. Of course this isn’t the best way of doing it. It’s always better to have someone else introduce you. It’s an area I’m working on and I highly recommend you prepare an introduction for your speakers.

So why take the time to organize a Meetup Group? I’ve had a lot of people think I make a lot of money from Internet Masterminds. I’ve even had some people think Internet Masterminds was my business. Although my company offers education on Internet marketing the Internet Masterminds Group and my company Web Friendly are two separate projects. At Web Friendly I organize paid workshops that range from 4 week programs to one day or one weekend seminars. At Internet Masterminds Group we invite entrepreneurs and companies to share 60 minutes about a specific topic related to Internet Marketing they are passionate about. These speakers are not paid, but they understand the value of giving back to the community and sharing their lessons learned.

Here is why I love organizing Internet Masterminds:

1) Friends, almost ALL the friends I hang out with regularly these days I met at Internet Masterminds. These are people that I hang out with even when we’re not talking business or marketing. I believe many of the Internet Mastermind members would say the same.

2) Referrals, I have a spreadsheet where I track all my clients and where they came from. If they’re a referral I track where the referral came from. When I look at it I realize more than half my referrals come from someone I met from the Internet Masterminds Meetup. 

Internet Masterminds Group meets every Monday night at 7pm at 1633 West 2nd. Meetups are $5 and donations are always reinvested back into the group. You don’t have to be an Internet marketing expert to attend, but you do have to be willing to learn ;) 

If you’re interested, here is a link to join the group www.internetmasterminds.ca

Got other tips for starting a Meetup? I’d love to hear them, leave one in the comments below.

Matt Astifan Goes Public 

Yesterday I decided to go public…on the “stock market” and also made my personal profile on Facebook public!

Why?  I decided to trust Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook’s long term strategy: “making the web open and social”

Here is how it happened:

I was searching Facebook for an old friend and when I found him I noticed that he had his entire profile set to “Private” with the exception of Facebook Questions. I wondered why… so I looked into it and realized you cannot make Questions private! 

This got me thinking… Why did Facebook create a new feature that cannot be set to private while all the other featured have an option of private or public? I came to the conclusion that Facebook has been making many strategic moves over the years to get users to make their profiles public.

Sooo… I gave a little more trust to Zuck and made my profile public. After my first “public” post I had over 30 comments which included two “non-Facebook-friends” which also resulted in 4 new Facebook Fans… Interesting hey!

Here is the one rule you need to follow if you decide to do this: Don’t share anything 

PRIVATE online! (you shouldn’t be doing this anyways)

What are your thoughts on Facebook Privacy? Are you locked down or completely public?

Would you agree that when companies think about social media marketing the first thing that comes to mind is to go directly to the customer for promotions to drive sales?

The truth is social media offers many more level of networking opportunities that are often forgotten and much more powerful. 

I believe that limiting your networking to B2C would be like buying a Swiss knife only to use the corkscrew in it, so here is a reminder of the various ways you can use social media.

B2C: Get the permission to connect

I find that the term “permission marketing” (coined by Seth Godin) perfectly describes what B2C social media marketing should be about. 

If you get the privilege to be connected to a network of customers, your priority should be to give them what they are looking for: only share information you know your network will be excited to hear about or, even better, give away freebies (it can be products won through contests or free expert advice). 

The key is to remember that, as a business, you will always be a temporary guest in their network and should always behave as such.

B2B: To build a professional network

B2B can actually be even more powerful than B2C, especially for small and medium-sized growing businesses. 

By focusing on growing your professional network first you can build strategic relationships with other businesses that would allow you to connect with full databases of new potential customers at once.

C2C: For branding

Consumer to Consumer networking can make the difference between an online campaign going viral and a total flop. Do not forget to also connect with other individuals not as a business but as another individual with common interests. 

C2C networking helps with personal brand building. It gives you the opportunity to connect with people reflective of who you are, allows you to share your passion and hobbies, and gives you the chance to showcase your knowledge and expertise in the advice you give to your connections.

Networking as an individual also helps you identify and connect with individuals who are highly influential in their own network and community and can spread the word about you, your business and its latest offers more efficiently than traditional advertising. 

Remember that branding is about how customers actually perceive your brand, not about how you perceive yourself (or your business). 

B2E: recruiting and internal corporate communications

It has become common practice in the world of HR to network on social media such as LinkedIn and even Facebook in order to find potential new employees or get more information about an applicant. 

Posting new job positions on social media also accelerates referrals by making the forwarding of the news easier. Social media can also be used to communicate with current employees when sharing good news or to give credit to hard working and successful employees. 

It should be obvious that one should avoid sharing negative news or criticizing an employee publicly.

E2E: Community building and corporate culture

Even though having your own intranet with a company-exclusive social media platform is ideal, not all businesses can afford it or make the most of it.

Creating closed private groups on social media and encouraging employees to employee connections can help creating a sense of community as well as establishing a corporate culture by facilitating social interactions within your company.

The use of social media can also facilitate professional communications across departments and help with the brainstorming of ideas.

There are no limits to what social networking can do for businesses as long as privacy is respected and the boundaries between professional life and private life are clearly established. 

At which level have you seen social media effect your business the most?

Let’s get real, who hasn’t been annoyed from an automated telemarketer machine?
 
I find it shocking that some companies still believe that using automated direct marketing tools is a good idea. Sure it’s easy to get an ROI when the cost is so low.. but really.. is that all you got? Isn’t direct marketing all about personalization? It should be obvious that potential customers will only get annoyed (or even angry) when engaged in such an effortless manner.
 
If something is not acceptable with traditional marketing tools, then why do people think it is acceptable with social media?
 
The essence of social media marketing lies in the word «social» which is defined as interactions between human beings. Automation, on the other hand, is about using devices in place of human being.
 
Isn’t automated social media marketing a contradiction in itself?
 
So why are more and more businesses using software to update their profile content? People are always scared of “wasting time” on social media and automation seems to be the perfect “quick fix” to this problem. The truth is businesses using automation might feel like they are saving time, but they are in fact still wasting time (and money) because once customers realise the account isn’t responsive to comments or feedback the trust gets broken.

…and your account starts talking to itself.
 
So here is a 2 step solution:

1 - Do not fall in the trap of automation to try to save time but instead learn to be more efficient in your use of social media for marketing. You can plan ahead for updates and write blog posts in advance, as long as you also dedicate some of your time saved to listening to and interacting with the people in your social network.

2 - You can talk about the same topic on Twitter and Facebook, but do not post your Tweets directly on your Facebook updates: people can easily tell when a Facebook update is written in «Twitter language». I’ve had many people tell me they hate seeing the two networks collide.

Just remember: Social media marketing is as much, if not more, about listening to and interacting with others as it is about creating engaging content. And, who knows, you might get highly valuable market intelligence from following the conversations on your networks.

Here is a great talk by Tom Conrad of Pandora about how the site became the most popular online radio station.

“After nearly two decades in the trenches of Pets.com, Apple Computer, and the You Don’t Know Jack game series at Berkeley Systems, Tom Conrad (Pandora CTO) shares his acquired wisdom on succeeding in the consumer internet space. He discusses agility, crisp decision making, and focus, and peppers his lessons with numerous entertaining anecdotes of dot-com days and corporate progress.”

In this video Tom walks through 3 of the key lessons he learned through his career. For a man who’s never founded a company, he’s treated his leadership roles in the companies he’s worked for as an entrepreneur.

I was inspired by this talk a few months ago while biking the sea wall around Stanley Park. You can find this talk in MP3 format at ecorner.stanford.edu 

Enjoy!

Having a profile for your business on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Meetup, ByzHub, etc. is great, but it is not enough. Truth is without friends, fans, and followers you would only be talking to yourself. So how can you convince people who might not know about your business to visit your pages and follow you on social media? One easy and proven way to get “ears” that will listen to your business news is to create social media contests. The good news for your budget is that a social media contest does not need to provide expensive prizes to the winners to be popular, the fun can be as much in participating as it is in winning if you are creative. Think fun, think bold and think sexy; it has worked for these businesses and it will work for you!

1.     Pepsi Refresh Project: FREE

This is a great example of harnessing the will of people to feel good by doing good and talking about it. It also shows that people don’t always participate in social media contests for selfish reasons.

What it is: Pepsi created an interactive blog where people and organizations can share about their charitable project ideas and compete to win as much support from blog visitors as possible. The people or organizations with the most votes within their budget category would then get a grant from Pepsi (between $5000 and $250,000) to make their project come to life.

Smart move: You cannot just like the actual “Pepsi Refresh Project” on Facebook, you have to like “Pepsi” in order to get news about the charitable activities of Pepsi and interact with the grant winners.

They also make it easy for people to connect as a voter via Facebook and for voters to share who they voted for via the Social Media. Who wouldn’t want to share their support for charitable activities?

Could do better: The design of the Pepsi Facebook Page. With a Budget like Pepsi you would think they would find a way to personalize their page.

2.     American Apparel’s best bottom: SEXY

They are the perfect example of how creating a sexy contest can really get the word to spread out fast about the contest and about the brand.

What it is: In order to promote their new line of underwear American Apparel decided to launch a global call to find the best bottom in the world. People (men and women) were asked to submit a picture of their behind (wearing panties) and the general public was asked to vote on the pictures on their website. The winner would get to be the “face” behind their new campaign with a free trip to LA and a professional photoshoot. That’s what I call crowd-sourcing!

Smart move: Before officially launching the campaign they already started the buzz by sending press releases to key online and offline fashion magazines and to influential bloggers.

Could do better: They mentioned and promoted their contest on Facebook and Twitter but could have been further by asking people to post pictures directly to their Facebook page and Twitter weekly about the highest rating bottom of the week with a direct link. This would have made this contest a real social media contest.

3.     Rogue Kitchen & Wetbar’ contest for the best contest idea: FUN

Ok, this might not be the most fun social media contest of the year, but you gotta give this Vancouver-based company kudos for crowd-sourcing to the extreme.

What it is: This local Vancouver restaurant and bar is using the power of Twitter to not only get more followers but also to get ideas for their next social media campaign. The idea is simple: Twitter users have 14 days to tweet them their best contest ideas for a chance to win a $100 gift card.

Smart move: Just doing it.

Could do better: It would be even more fun if they could help their followers get inspiration by sharing their favourite contests by other companies. They could also mention what kind of contest they were thinking about (serious, fun, crazy, etc.).

4.     Mary Kay “Your Way to Beautiful” makeover contest: Sexy

That’s a contest that does a great job at being consistent with the brand image and even improving it. This contest is also great because it goes beyond creating virtual social media connections into getting contestants to actually connect with local Mary Kay consultants in Vancouver.

What it is: The first step for all contestants is to meet with a Mary Kay consultant for their first free colour (makeup) makeover. The consultant, or friends, will take pictures before and after the makeover and upload it on the Mary Kay website. All contestants are encouraged to send their friends from Facebook and Twitter to vote for them on the page and to post their pictures on the social media too. The winners get dream vacations to sunny destinations.

Smart move: No purchases are necessary but meeting a Mary Kay consultant is. All Mary Kay consultants were out on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. to talk about the contest.

Could do better: What about allowing people to also post the pictures on the Facebook page? It would also be great to partner with another brand for the prizes in order to save money.

5.     Celebrate Parks Video Contest: Free

An example of how a smart partnership can allow a business to offer winners a prize that is literally priceless.

What it is: Contestants are asked to create a short video about one of Canada’s National Parks to show the world why this park is amazing. The videos will be posted on YouTube and people will get to vote on them. The winners not only get physical prizes such as an adventure trip and mountain sports equipments by partner companies, but the best video will also be screened at the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival!

Smart move: Getting the interest of young professional documentary film makers by offering them the chance to have their work showcased at a world-class festival.

Could be better: I did not hear much about it in the local news and blogs. This contest could benefit from some publicity.

6.     An idea worth exploring: FUN

Contests are even more fun in real life! Consider using Meetup to promote a real life contest or fundraising event and using contests/fundraising events to promote your Meetup group.

What it is: It’s even harder to get real “friends” than virtual “friends”, but Meetup is here to help connecting your online network to the real world. But how to incite people from your Meetup group to actually come to the event your are organizing and promoting?

Smart move: Give your Meetup group members the chance to win prizes when they come, or by giving them the chance to help a charity by coming. When it comes to the contest, be creative, it could be a contest of the best tie (or hat for girls) or the best business card, or prize tickets hidden in helium-filled balloons that contestants need to pop…the more fun, the more buzz you will get about your Meetup, your company (and the one of your partners) and your brand.

Could be better: To make the social media contest even more social, network and partner with other businesses to be able to provide a greater choice of prizes or auction items. If your company is a B2B, then consider offering prizes that are relevant to the businesses coming to the event. What about the chance to win a free consulting session, one month with a business coach or a social media marketing course? In the same way, those would make great auction items to raise funds for the charity of your choice.

Got a better idea? Leave it in the comments below and you can win 1 of 3 prizes!

1) A seat in my next Social Media Workshop (October 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th) $500 value

2) Custom iVatar By 2QCreations and Steven Lin $150 value

3) $25 Amazon Gift Card

Contest closes October 4th! Winners are selected by best idea voted by ME :)

Social Media Course in Vancouver

I just put together this snazzy little video using the Googles Search Stories application. The entire process took about 15 minutes. Not bad hey?

Oh, and of course, don’t forget to tell your friends about my social media workshop :)

Let me know what you think of this video. If you decide to create one for yourself feel free to leave a link in the comments.

The first time I heard the word Entrepreneur. Yep, I actually remember it. It came to me tonight as somewhat of a flashback, when I really haven’t thought about it for years.

It was 1998 and I was in Grade 8 sitting in CAPP class (Career and Personal Planning). We were in a small class of less than 20, and I was the class clown. The teacher was at the front of the room explaining the day’s assignment. Each of us would be given a career roll and we would have to assemble the steps it would take to achieve the goal. Before folding up the titles and placing them in a hat (actually I think it was my hat because I wasn’t allowed to wear it in class) the teacher explained each of the careers. Nearing the end she got to Entrepreneur (I specifically remember her making a big deal out of it). She wrote the word on the board and asked the class if anyone knew what it meant? The class giggled (haha “manure”) and one girl put her hand up “a business man”. “No no” the teach said, “it’s not limited to men, more and more woman are becoming business owners these days” she went on.. As the class clown I wanted so badly to put up my hand and say “someone who poo’s a lot (hahahha)”. It just wasn’t creative enough.

Now here was the neat twist for the person who got the Entrepreneur roll. You got to choose to do whatever you wanted. You could just make up your career path. EASY. I want that one! The teacher went on to say that a percentage of the class (I forget the percentage but I recall it was high) would go on to become Entrepreneurs. She separated the class to show us the number of people who would go on to become Entrepreneurs, “most of them men, but many woman” she mentioned relating back to some statistics she found.

So finally she puts all these career paths into the hat and asks us to come up one at a time to draw out of the hat (kind of an ironic way of deciding your career path). I open mine, Entrepreneur, Entrepreneur.. Doctor. DOCTOR! Well hey, Doctors are successful people, right? So I research this Doctor Career. Shit. That’s a lot of school to go through.. Did I mention I wasn’t a big fan of school? But hey, lots of money for the average doctor. I didn’t have much fun mapping out this career. The girl sitting next to me ended up getting Entrepreneur. She created a cool little story where she gets to run her own business and bla bla bla (when she gets sick she’ll need me).

So that’s it.

That must have been the day I decided I was going to follow my dreams. I ended up following the path of film and theatre for the next 10 or so years and am still very passionate about the art of storytelling. How that evolved and connects to my vision of Internet Marketing is for a later post.

Do you remember the first time you learned what an Entrepreneur was? Do you love/hate your career path right now? What memory can you recall that may have set you on the path you’re on now. Tell me about it in the comments below or shoot me an email, I’d love to know.

Twitter Marketing PDF

This PDF is a compilation of tips for utilizing the Twitter site for marketing. Included is an abundance of third-party tools which can also be utilized for spreading your message, increasing your visibility and measuring your success. The links are meant to be researched and up to you to find the appropriate fit for your marketing strategy. If you have any questions feel free to email me matt@webfriendly.ca or find me on twitter @MattsMedia.

I hope this document will be helpful for you, if there is something that should be added please let me know in the comments below.

Cheers,
Matt Astifan

Vancouver Social Media Training

Visit www.webfriendly.ca to learn more about upcoming workshops and events.

Keeping it Simple

When I think about Simple business models I think of Apple, Dell, FedEx or Starbucks. Simple business makes me think Modern business. Is there any coincident that the same businesses we see utilizing Social Media are the same ones with these Simple business models? I believe when you stay up to date with your technology you’re bound to stay up to date with your business model.

It’s a lot easier to start a business today not only because the start-up cost is much lower thanks to technology, but entrepreneurs are learning the concept of keeping it Simple. A smart start-up without any founding isn’t going to start by focusing on dominating an entire market; they’re a lot more likely to succeed finding a niche to focus on and grow slowly. The dynamics of creating a product which suits everyone takes a lot more management; meaning a lot more time, talent, people and money.

Make it simple and keep it simple, grow slowly but always be growing.

Cascaad on the iPhone

Cascaad is the social filter that helps you find information you didn’t know you were looking for. What’s most interesting about the service is that it doesn’t take into account how much @replies, retweets or clicks a story has gathered, it has its own unique set of algorithms which takes on the challenge of making it a more personalized service.

Cascaad starts by using your Twitter and Facebook profile to determine your interests. Then it sifts through all the noise within your friends updates to find what’s most likely going to interest you. It reminds me a little of Facebook’s “Most Popular” news feeds feature, only with more metrics (apparently millions).

I believe Cascaad or a similar algorithm would be VERY valuable to Twitter TODAY. I’m very interested to see how popular the browser edition of this service will get.

How to get Cascaad:

Download the free Cascaad app, sign in with your Twitter and Facebook accounts, then you’ll get a pop telling you it’s analyzing millions of algorithms to discover the most relevant stories to you (not sure I believe that one). The progress bar seems to stop at 31%, and I assume as you click on and “thumbs up” more stories the progress bar will rise.. Let me know how far your progress bar gets.

The app is still new and I’m very much looking forward to seeing more features unfold.

If you’ve used Cascaad let me know what you think of it in the comments below.