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7 Strategies I’m Pitching for Businesses to use Facebook Places

Posted on September 13, 2010 by jessestay

Facebook Places is the latest and greatest service offered by Facebook that has many Brands raging around how to build a strategy. Never has the advertiser or brand had so many options as they do now on Facebook to target demographic, interested parties, that you can now actually track whether they’ve been to your physical location! My good friend, Jolie O’Dell of Mashable, wrote a great post on the American Express Open Forum last week on “How SMBs Can Start Using Facebook Places Now”. Granted, the brands I’m used to working with lately are much larger entities and far from SMB, but I think the strategies I suggest in the large corporate Brand environments can still apply in a Small Business setting. In addition to what Jolie recommended (which are great tips), here are some of the ways I’m suggesting businesses deploy Facebook Places. Also note that these strategies only work if your customers (or visitors or users) actually have a place to meet and congregate in real life. Perhaps you could create these real life places for them as part of your strategy.

Claiming the Place – Why This is Important

Jolie Touched on this – she said that as a business you can claim a “Place” and turn it into a real “Page” (or “Fan Page”) on Facebook that you can manage, add pictures, moderate, and more as soon as you’ve proven you are the owner of the actual location. This is powerful, and you want to be sure you’re doing this if you want to be aware of what’s happening online at your locations.

Here’s why it’s powerful. Let’s say you have an event at a particular store – let’s say it’s a grand opening. Or let’s say you’re a band and you’re performing at a particular arena. Now you can have a physical location you can brand in preparation for your event. Let’s say your store is a restaurant and you have a menu you want to be sure only your Facebook customers are aware of. You can post that on the Facebook Page, since you claimed it, and only those that check in on Facebook can know about it. Or perhaps you own a venue and you want to pitch events to frequent visitors. Anyone visiting your Page currently can see what’s coming up and what they can look towards in order to come back again at the right time.

I’m not going to cover this now, but I have a hunch that you’ll even be able to advertise with this data in the future, so it’s to your benefit to try to own these venues that people are checking into on Facebook. (What happens when Facebook enables Push notifications on the iPhone in the future for Venue owners? Just a thought.)

Deals, Deals, Deals! (and Events)

Here’s where a little API knowledge is helpful, and why you’re going to want to read my next book that comes out in a few months. (hint, hint) Right now you can make a simple call to https://graph.facebook.com/[place page id]/checkins, appending an access token you get from Facebook to identify your application and you can have all the people that have checked into your place. With a little code, all you have to do is add a tab to your Facebook Page, query that URL above to get the list of people that have Checked in, and if the current user visiting the tab is in that list you can offer them a special deal, only for people that have checked in on Facebook.

This has several benefits. First, for each person that checks in on Facebook their friends see that checkin and have the opportunity to click through and like your Page (you did claim the Page, right?) and learn about your Page. Hopefully you have a welcome Tab (which I talk about below) to welcome those people.

Second, it gives people motivation to visit your location. You could set up a deal that offers a discount at the store only if they’ve previously checked in on Facebook Places, or perhaps they have to check in more than one time. You could almost turn this into a loyalty rewards system of some sort.

Or what if you’re managing an event? Let’s say you’re a band and want to promote your latest CD. You could offer a sneak preview of streamed songs only to your most loyal and devoted fans who have checked in at one of your concerts and have liked the Page (I would require both, as once they like the Page you can then promote future events and sales).

Tracking

One thing I really like about Places is that for each Place users check into you have a running tally of everyone that attended that event or visited that store or location that felt the need to check in on Facebook. I can now go through that list and get a running total of how many people are checking in on Facebook and what they’re saying during their visits. Let’s say I run Best Buy’s Social Media campaign. I could now have a running view of what type of experience all the visitors of my stores are having as they check in (assuming they want to share that experience). We could maybe even feature some of those on our main corporate website using Graph API. You can browse this manually or use the Facebook Graph API to tally it automatically for you (with very little effort).

SMS – Yes, Facebook Has This, Too

One little used feature on Facebook Pages is something I think that has a very powerful effect. I use this every time I speak. Did you know that if you send the text message “like stay” to 32665 (FBOOK on your mobile phone) you’ll get regular updates sent to your cell phone of every post I publish on http://facebook.com/stay? Try it. 🙂 Not only that, but you have now liked my Facebook Page, and even if you turn off the mobile phone updates you’ll get them in your Facebook News Feed.

Since you claimed your Checkin location as a Page, you can now do this for your Page as well. I think every retail store in the world should have a sign that says, “Send ‘like suchandsuch’ to 42665 (FBOOK) on your mobile phone for updates and deals!” This gives you a distribution channel right to the actual hands of every customer of yours that takes advantage of this, bringing more engagement and more participation by your customers. This is a very powerful tool you should be taking advantage of.

Or, what if you’re a band? Take a moment during your concert to ask your fans to do that, right then, then have everyone hold up their cell phones showing that they did, swaying back and forth as you begin the next song. Then, send out a message to your fans during the concert offering a special deal on the CD for the concert that only those that checked in at the concert can take advantage of. See what I mean? You’ve just acquired an audience of thousands that have come out to see you in person, all at once.

The Welcome and Other Custom Tabs

The Welcome Tab is powerful. Check out my article over on Techipedia on how to set this up in a simple manner. Since you claimed your Place as a Page, you can now add these to your Place. You should use these to welcome new customers visiting the Page (keep in mind that most people checking in probably haven’t liked the Page yet, so you want to be sure to give them a welcome message and get their e-mail or promote a deal or something similar that encourages them to like the Page). You can create tabs for specials you offer. Remember what I said above about offering special deals to people that checkin at your locations?

Most Frequent Customers

One custom tab you can offer is one that the Social Media development firm, Context Optional, created that creates a “Leaderboard” on your Page of the top checkins for your location. I think there is value in knowing the most frequent customers of a location. You could offer a contest, giving a deal to the 10 most frequent customers of your location, for instance. This is a great way to find out who your most loyal fans and customers are and reward them as such, creating competition with others to also do the same. If you need a similar tab contact me and we can talk about getting this added to your SocialToo account as well.

FourSquare

This post is about Facebook Places, but I did want to briefly mention FourSquare. Gowalla also has similar strategies you can employ. There is one strategy with these that I think brands should employ, and will target a younger audience (Facebook’s average age is 38 right now – FourSquare’s and Gowalla’s should be much younger). That is the process of creating an account on FourSquare for your brand and encouraging your customers to follow it. Then, post “Tips” for your place – this can be a deal, or additional info, or whatever you like. Then, when people who are following your brand on Foursquare check in nearby your locations, they’ll get these tips and hopefully feel motivated to come by and take advantage of what you have to offer.

I’ve only mentioned a few strategies here – there are so many more you can take advantage of! Knowing the location of your customers and knowing, especially when they’re checking into your location is a powerful concept and gives you so many opportunities to virally grow your brand online. I strongly suggest you take a look at how Facebook Places can benefit your brand – this is perhaps Facebook’s most powerful tool ever to enable brands to engage and convert sales from customers.

Want to learn more cool stuff like this? There are just 3 more days until the 50% off deal is over for Facebook Success Summit registration (after that it’s full price). I’ll be one of the presenters and will be covering stuff just like this. I get 50% of all sales through this site (I don’t get paid otherwise), so please register now!

Apple is Creating a "Social Network" the Right Way

Posted on September 2, 2010 by jessestay

Today Apple did one of the most powerful things they have done since the launch of the iPod. Notice that I didn’t say “revolutionary”. There’s nothing new about it. Note that I didn’t say “innovative”. There’s nothing unique about it. Today Apple launched, quite simply, a “Social Network for Music”. What’s so powerful is that they’re not really trying to create a social network at all. Apple realizes the Social Graph is just a complement to something bigger. Instead, Apple focused on one of the biggest strengths they have – their music, and made it social. I think this is powerful, and here’s why:

I think Dave Winer got it right earlier today – this is only the beginning for Apple. You see, the secret to a successful anything on the web (not just “social”) is to focus on what you do best, and revolve around that. Google’s strength was search. Microsoft’s strength was the consumer OS that could be installed on almost any affordable PC, and has since become Exchange and Outlook and Enterprise apps. Oracle’s strength is the database. Facebook’s is the Social Graph. No one does these things better than these guys, and it has been their focus that has made them big. The moment they lose that focus is the moment they start to fizzle.

That’s why I question when I hear people saying “we’re creating another Social Network.” Or, “so and so is competing against Facebook” (even though I did say earlier today this is a threat to Facebook – I’ll explain that in a second). The minute I hear that I immediately tune out. The age of “Social Networks” is gone. Social has become ubiquitous, or at least it should be with all the tools available to us now. It’s time to focus on your core, and Apple has done that brilliantly with this new Ping launch. They will sell boat-loads of music from this because now rather than trying to find new music through search, people are going to be finding new music through the things their friends are interested in, an even more powerful factor in the purchasing process. That’s just the start.

As Dave Winer implied, this social experience will eventually expand across every service Apple operates. Apple is only building the Social Graph right now. You’ll build your list of friends to learn of their music, even import your Facebook friends in the process to help port that Social Graph over to Apple, and you’ll start to build conversations and spend time in iTunes in multiple environments. It won’t be long before you see Apple bringing your friends into the entire iTunes experience, showing Apps as well as music, along with, right next to Albums you want to purchase, other friends that have liked or purchased those Albums. Soon Apple will let you take those friends into Mobile Me to share photos with each other. They’ll let you take those friends into your contact lists on your iPhone. They’ll build it into the camera app on the iPhone and iPod devices. You’ll be able to see what your friends are watching on your AppleTV and you’ll be able to pull that entire experience into the operating system – both OS X and iOS. All of these elements will go into the Ping experience, and I bet that eventually branches out into the browser. Keep in mind these aren’t just anonymous friends – these are real-life connections. My Mom uses iTunes. I bet many of your Grandparents use iTunes. This is perhaps bigger than Facebook (According to Wired, iTunes in just 2005 had over 200 million users – anyone have a more recent number?).

Now, for the pinnacle event – the equivalent of Facebook’s F8: the Platform. You can count on it. Eventually Apple will integrate these connections into the SDK and you’ll now be able to bring over your Ping friends to the applications you use and the games you play. I think it’s no accident the ability to play against friends in the SDK was mentioned in today’s announcement. Now Ping’s Social Graph becomes a standard, something all apps will be fighting for, and they’ve all of the sudden hit the caliber of Facebook Platform. They’ll be able to port those connections to the web, and now Apple has just as powerful a search and recommendation algorithm as both Facebook, and perhaps more than Google currently.

Today’s move was inevitable, but genius on the part of Apple. I’m glad they didn’t try to build an entire Social Network out of the box. Start small, and gradually bring your users along for the ride as you expand that experience. I think perhaps that’s where Google went wrong – where’s my news feed in Picasa? Where can I see what things my friends are searching for and have opted me to see? How do I port my Facebook Social Graph over to those experiences? Google’s focusing too broadly – I think they realize that. I hope they don’t rush to a large social network, but rather start slowly and gradually bring it all together.

I’ve talked about building on your core – your core is key. Apple, quite literally, showed its core today as it stayed focused on one of the things they do best right now – Music. Everything else is just a complement, and that is totally evident in Ping. I think Apple just confirmed what we all knew up to this point – “Social” is now just a commodity.

How the Little Guy Can Get Published – an Autobiography

Posted on September 1, 2010 by jessestay

As I just wrote, we live in an era where having a voice is much easier than it used to be. Getting published is actually quite simple if you’re willing to work for it. In fact, I’m living proof. Just 3 years ago I was working a 9-5 job as my sole source of income as a programmer for a major health company, doing nothing but that. I was a nobody. No one knew me. In very short time I was approached by my 3 publishers, amassed thousands of readers on this blog, and many more on Twitter and Facebook, and built a reputation for myself. I truly believe this is something anyone can do. Here’s what I did (this is still tough to write, as I still don’t believe I’m anywhere near my potential – to me, I’m still a nobody):

I Started a Blog

I actually did this a long time before I wrote my first book with HappyAbout. I was trying to build an open source pseudo blogging/CMS platform, which actually powered this blog at one point. In a sense, the goal was to eventually create a social network, something we tried to do at a previous job I was at and never completed. This was before Facebook or Twitter or even Digg or anything like it. In a sense, it was the next dimension of a GeoCities, or FreeServers.com (where I worked on the founding team doing Support in 1999).

I noticed a few friends blogging at the time to share tricks they had used to fix coding problems, or ways they got their various computer problems working. I knew I had done a few things that I needed to write down for memory and others to benefit, so I started using the blog to share these things. Soon that turned into me just sharing thoughts to what was mostly a non-existent audience, but I didn’t care – I was doing it for myself mostly.

Then I really started subscribing to other bloggers, especially around Utah and elsewhere. I think Google Reader probably played a big role in this. I subscribed to Phil Windley, and Janet Meiners (NewspaperGrl), Jason Alba, Phil Burns, Thom Allen, and others. Utah actually had a bustling tech blogging scene back then (many of those I mention are still active bloggers and great blogs to follow). As these guys blogged, it inspired me to join their conversation and post my own thoughts on the topics they were writing about. I’d link to theirs, and others’ articles, and my links would appear in their trackbacks and they would notice.

I began to make a name for myself by just sharing what I knew, and writing about it. There is no better way to share knowledge and show others you have that knowledge than through a blog. This blog eventually grew and grew as I did this, eventually getting recognition by sites like TechMeme, featured on TechCrunch, mentions on Mashable, and many others (I keep a log of coverage for my record at http://www.delicious.com/jessestay/coverage). I say this not to brag, but to show you that by simply posting a blog, and sharing your knowledge, while at the same time truly participating in the conversation in the blogosphere (aka “the memes”), you’ll grow your blog as well and quickly gain a voice.

Now when I write, people listen – in some ways, it doesn’t matter if I have a publisher, and that gets more and more possible the more my audience grows.

I Became a Pioneer

It wasn’t until the launch of Facebook Platform at the very first F8 that I really started making a name for myself. I decided at that point my idea for a Social Network wasn’t needed any more because now I could just build niche ideas on top of Facebook. Facebook grew, and grew, and grew, and I was with them from day one, building apps for their platform. I saw this niche, and I saw the value in it, so I took it and ran. I became an expert in that niche and made it mine. Not just that, but I stuck to it. (Interesting note – I’ve actually been building on Facebook Platform longer than many Facebook employees have.) That eventually branched out and I took on Social Media and APIs in general, and now I’m even embracing much of the world of Marketing as we know it (even though I’m technically just a Developer by trade). I learned everything I could about this stuff, and actually applied it, creating application after application both on my own and for others to prove myself in this area. It was partly from this that SocialToo was born.

In many ways I was inventing an industry. I was with many others, but because I took it on early I was still one of the few “pioneers”. Becoming a Pioneer is so important. If everyone else is doing it, and you’re not the first, you’re not going to be recognized. You’ve got to pick a skill, perhaps find a new movement of many, and jump on that one. Even if you are one of many, if you’re one of the many firsts, you can now be taken seriously. I suggest taking it even further and finding a niche amongst those firsts (mine was the brand of “Social Media Developer” rather than just “Social Media Expert”) and embracing that.

How do you pick the right niche to be a “pioneer”? I think more than anything it has to feel right to you – make sure you have a clear vision of the future of that industry. For me I saw a new, social world where social was tightly integrated into every piece of the web. I saw a Building Block Web, where social pieces were tightly coupled together in an experience the user wasn’t even aware the social elements existed. I saw the power of bringing power to developers. I also followed bloggers, like Paul Allen and Robert Scoble, who really caught onto this vision (although I admit I met Scoble later in the game). Note that this niche also solved some of my own needs, which also contributed to my desire to learn more about it, and I discovered along the way how powerful this stuff actually was. Vision is key.

You’ve got to figure this out yourself, and perhaps that’s the hardest part. If I were you I’d be looking in the mobile space, and at what companies like Kynetx are doing, though. (and at a minimum, more than anything, consider and understand the concepts and visions these companies have) Read my article on the Future with no login button for my own personal vision, but you have to come up with your own.

I Promoted the Need, and Networked Like Crazy

Once I had discovered a need and tried to establish my skills surrounding that need, I began blogging about it. I realized this was a new market, and one that had the potential to be very powerful. It was one with very few blog posts on the topic, yet. I began to write posts making it known that I knew Facebook, and in particular Facebook development. I was actually at one point the number one search result on Google for “Facebook Developer” because of this. That wasn’t on accident.

I became one of the only people on LinkedIn with “Facebook Developer” in my title, and soon I began getting calls asking for help in this emerging industry. I made it easy for people to find me by publishing my e-mail address and even my phone number on my blog and working to make it as easy as possible for people to contact me on LinkedIn.

More than anything though, it was this blog that made a name for myself. Well, this, and following other bloggers through Google Reader at the time. I started to learn of local “Blogger Dinners” here in the Salt Lake City area where local bloggers were getting together to just meet and network. I decided to attend one or two, and it was there I met who would soon become my co-author on my first book, Jason Alba. Jason had previously written, “I’m on LinkedIn–Now What???” and I had followed him on his blog. I can’t remember exactly how (I think it was a Seth Godin talk, ironically), but he had heard I was the local “Facebook guy”, and was looking to do a book similar to his first on Facebook.

He had already established a relationship with his publisher through his first book, and approached me, asking me to help him with his second book, giving me half of his royalties in the process. We went forward with the book. At that point because I had established a reputation, and was already a published author, that lead to O’Reilly contacting me (through my good friend, Joseph Scott), and now I’m writing my third book with Wiley in a Dummies series.

Networking is so critical – it is truly who you know that matters. It has been through Social Media and networking that I met Jason and that lead to my first book. It was through meeting a need of Guy Kawasaki’s and Chris Pirillo’s that lead to creating the first script on SocialToo and I feel I can now call them good friends. It was through answering a FriendFeed post that I met Robert Scoble and I can now call him a good friend. That meeting lead to me meeting my great friend Louis Gray. We’re all normal people, and it’s social media that makes us normal. It’s through this technology – Twitter, Facebook, and especially blogs, that we’re able to connect with people we were never able to meet before. Embrace that!

I Believed in Myself!

More than anything, I think it was when I realized I could actually do this stuff, that I started to do it. There is something to be said for the law of attraction – be it faith, God-driven, or Universal laws, it’s real. When you truly believe you can accomplish something, it will happen. I grew up not believing this. I grew up thinking I’d never write a book. I grew up thinking I’d never start my own business. I grew up thinking I was a nobody.

It wasn’t until I caught a glimpse that this was possible that I started to think I was truly capable of anything. And it was when that happened that I started seeing incredible success as a result, and I’m still seeing that to this day. Anyone can accomplish what I’ve done – I’m the little guy. I’m a nobody, but I can be anybody I want to.

I hope this blog post doesn’t come off as a “I’m better than you” story to anyone – it was intended to be the exact opposite. You see, Social Media and the web as we know it today makes it possible for any of us to gain a voice. The Book Publisher, the Sports Conference, the Music Label, or even the VC or major Tech Blog are all much less relevant than they used to be. Your potential is greater than it ever has been, and while you can still use these tools as launching platforms, you get to own the process along the way. Anyone can do this, and I think we need to break away from “the man” at least a little bit to have full flexibility in doing so. This is why you see Seth Godin leaving his publishers. This is why you see BYU leaving its Conference. This is why you see many musicians leaving their labels.

The little guy is much more relevant than he used to be. Social Media is about empowering and bringing a voice to the individual. Embrace that. Accept it. You too can have a voice.

Now You Can Check in on Twitter Through Facebook Places

Posted on August 30, 2010 by jessestay

This post is syndicated from the SocialToo Blog – please check it out! I think this feature’s pretty cool:

Recently Facebook launched the ability for users to checkin to any place with their mobile phone, sharing with their Facebook friends where they are and what they’re doing, but what about their Twitter friends? Services like FourSquare and Gowalla offer the ability for users to share their checkins to Twitter as well as Facebook (or just leave them on Gowalla or Foursquare). Facebook, with the exception of Pages, has seemed reluctant to include Twitter syncing for Facebook status updates. That is where SocialToo comes in. Starting today, you can now sync your Facebook checkins automatically from Facebook to Twitter using SocialToo.

The feature is completely free for anyone on Twitter and Facebook. To enable the feature, just log in to SocialToo through your Twitter account, click “Settings”, and click “Associate a Facebook Account”. Once you have both a Twitter and Facebook account linked in SocialToo, go back to the “Inbox” tab, and check the box next to “Facebook to Twitter” in the upper-right. You can now check the boxes next to the things you want to share, including, “Autopost Places” to automatically post checkins from Facebook. Once checked, any new checkin you post on Facebook will now go to Twitter.

In addition to checkins, you can also automatically post links and status updates. Any checkin with a note attached will show the note as the text of the Tweet and a link back to the checkin on Facebook. To exclude the checkin from Twitter, just add a “-” after a space at the end of your note and it won’t go to Twitter. The same goes for status updates and links that you post to Facebook. We are also considering the potential for an opt-in “+” in the future (let us know in the comments if this is interesting to you).

Hopefully some of you find this feature useful. We think it’s a powerful way to let others know, now on both Twitter and Facebook, where you are and what you’re doing, and has the potential to generate some interesting conversation. Let us know how you plan to use it!

More about SocialToo:

SocialToo provides features to complement the experience people, businesses, and brands, have on the social networks they participate on. We’re a utility providing tools to help automate the process of managing a brand image, while at the same time enabling users to clean up spammy messaging, track followers and friends, and manage those friends and followers in the process. Here are some of the features we provide:

Auto Follow – follow back the people that follow you or your brand, providing potential discovery and networking opportunities, opening up communication channels, and giving those that follow you a sense of belonging in your community
- Auto Follow is a one-time $10 fee.

Automatic DM and Stream filtering – do you get spammy DMs on Twitter? We’ll delete them automatically for you. Set up simple filters with keywords in DMs you don’t want to receive, then set rules, such as “unfollow”, “delete”, or “ignore” to get rid of them. Turn off Twitter’s DM e-mails and turn on ours, and we’ll also respect your rules with the DM e-mails we send, meaning if you say “ignore”, we won’t send you the DMs that match your rules. In addition, you can filter out people that say certain things in your stream, or that Tweet from specific (and some times spammy) applications.
- DM filtering is free up to 4 filters. Stream and Application filtering comes with the monthly SocialToo Premium plan. The monthly SocialToo Premium plan is $29.95/mo, and includes every feature we offer, including support for unlimited Twitter accounts (and all features for each). There is a 7-day free trial.

Bulk Unfollow – need to start over on Twitter? Unfollow all the people you’ve ever followed at once. Set a whitelist under “Friends” and you can exclude specific people as you do so.
- Bulk Unfollow on Twitter is a one-time $35 fee.

SocialToo Stats – one of our most popular features, you get a daily e-mail with all the people that followed you and stopped following you the previous day on Twitter. We try to organize them by the Tweets we detected at the time of the unfollow or follow. We also provide additional information about each person and the ability to unfollow or follow them straight from the e-mail. In addition, for our monthly Premium users we provide an organized interface, showing a timeline of all your new follows and unfollows in a graph, your number of Tweets, and if you click through to any day it will show you the new followers and unfollowers for that day at any point we’ve tracked, along with your Tweets for that day.
- The daily stats e-mail is a one-time $20 fee. The monthly SocialToo Premium plan is $29.95/mo, and includes every feature we offer, including support for unlimited Twitter accounts (and all features for each). There is a 7-day free trial.

SocialToo Surveys – a “Social” way of posting quick polls to your friends on Twitter and Facebook. Create a quick poll, and share it with your friends on multiple networks. Your friends can take the poll, share it with their friends, comment on it, or create their own!

Come Learn the Secrets to Facebook Integration at Facebook Success Summit 2010

Posted on August 30, 2010 by jessestay

FBML’s dead. I’m saying it right here (and yes, I wrote the book). Facebook recently announced that they are moving away from FBML and more towards iFrame-based applications and Social Plugins for integration on your website and internal Facebook.com hosted applications. Does this mean the Static FBML app is going away? What will you be able to do in order to customize your Facebook presence both on and off Facebook with these newly announced changes?

On October 26 from 2:30pm to 3:30pm Pacific I’m going to be speaking at Mike Stelzner and Social Media Examiner‘s Facebook Success Summit. The Summit is packed with superstars in the Facebook world such as InsideFacebook’s Justin Smith, Mari Smith, “the Pied Piper of Facebook”, ProBlogger‘s Darren Rowse, Brian Solis, author of “Engage”, Paul Dunay and others including major Brand managers for brands like Intel, Cisco, and Xbox (too bad we’re not on a panel – would be a good discussion). All the speakers have real world experience making people very successful using Facebook as a major tool in their arsenal.

My topic is going to be “From Fishers to Farmers – Bringing Your Brand to Your Customers Using Social Technologies”. I’ll be covering all the tools you need to both “Fish where the fish are”, and then bring those customers back to your brand by building “Your Farm” on your own turf. We’ll discuss Social Plugins, custom tabs, and maybe even geek out a little with some new and interesting stuff you can do on your own website and on Facebook itself to integrate actual technology to empower you as a marketer.

I’m excited to present in October – judging on previous events by Social Media Examiner this will likely prove to be one of the highlights in Social Media-related conferences for you to attend. I hope you can add this to your calendar and at a minimum come see me talk about some of the most important things you can do as a marketer, spoken by a true Geek who understands this stuff. Check with the company you work for – it’s all virtual so there aren’t any travel or hotel costs to worry about. It’s very worth your company’s time and money to send you to this.

You can sign up here, or on the link on the right of this blog. I do get a commission on anybody who signs up through this site (I’m not getting paid for the conference), so please use these links and send others through here if you can. Can’t wait to see you there!

Here’s a great video by Michael Stelzner, founder of the Conference, introducing the Conference:

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=13939197&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=B4CC27&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

Facebook Kills Connect, Makes App Creation Easier, Simpler

Posted on August 20, 2010 by jessestay

As I’ve been writing Facebook Application Development for Dummies (now available on Amazon for pre-order!), there has been one thing I have been noticing: Despite all the new focus on Facebook’s Graph API, Facebook has still had a lot of conflicting focus on their old, more complicated, Connect APIs, making it a fun thing to try and explain in a Dummies book. That confusion was evident especially in the application creation screens, where Facebook had page after page of options to fill out that they were no longer focusing on, “Widgets” to configure (which Facebook doesn’t even link to any more), and odd terminology that just doesn’t make sense any more. Add to that the fact that, just announced, Facebook is killing the FBML versions of apps in favor of the iframe (and FBML itself in favor of Social Plugins), a lot of stuff just didn’t make sense in their app creation process any more.

Some time recently it appears Facebook finally fixed that. Now Facebook has just 5 categories to fill out when creating your application or Facebook-integrated website, and there are no confusing terms such as “Connect”, or “Widgets”, or “Canvas”. Facebook is focusing on 5 things: “About”, “Website”, “Facebook Integration”, “Mobile”, and “Advanced”. I think from the titles of the sections these things are obvious, and it also shows that Facebook is putting an increased focus on external use of their applications on websites and mobile and less on Facebook itself. We also see this with the removal of custom tabs on personal profiles (they will still be available for your business Page, have no fear!). In addition, Facebook has removed the long Application key, and is now putting focus on just the Application ID and Application Secret – this is a move they have been pushing towards since the launch of Graph API at their F8 developers conference earlier in the year.

screen-shot-2010-08-20-at-12-14-13-pm-e1282331035556-7945872 — The new Facebook Application Screen is simpler and easier than the old

In addition, Facebook has added 3 experimental new features you can turn on, to focus more on their new OAuth 2.0 authentication process. One of my biggest frustrations in trying to document all of this in my book has been the lack of consistency. Getting graph API to handle authentication on a Facebook.com-hosted app in the past has been a horrendous experience, pretty much forcing developers back to the old way of authorization. Now it should be easier for developers to fully focus on the new Graph API methods, both in and out of Facebook. It is completely clear that Graph API is the future, and Social Plugins are replacing FBML (unfortunately for my second book).

screen-shot-2010-08-20-at-12-14-35-pm-e1282331174922-3452016 — Facebook also added 3 new features, making OAuth 2.0 easier to manage on Canvas pages.

While frustrating as I try to adapt my book, these changes are welcome, and should make creation and configuration of apps much easier for developers in the future. Especially with the future removal of the need to configure FBML or iFrame, along with Profile tabs, setting up an application should be a piece of cake for both novices and experienced developers alike. I’m sure it also makes the support process for Facebook a lot easier as well.

I hope other app platforms can take Facebook’s lead on their API. Out of all of them, Facebook’s new focus is dirt simple and easy for the most novice of programmers to learn.

Are you working on a Facebook app? How does this affect your development on Facebook platform?

Facebook Questions as a Strategy – Answering Questions for Your Brand

Posted on August 18, 2010 by jessestay

: Image via Wikipedia

In the last few weeks Facebook has been slowly rolling out a feature that, while not exactly new in concept, I think gives businesses and brands another opportunity to think strategy surrounding their Facebook efforts. The feature is Facebook Questions. The feature is pretty much a re-release of Facebook Polls (see my previous article on InsideFacebook.com in 2008 where I discussed this as a business tool), with even greater viral potential. In fact, it makes even more sense today than ever, with the increased focus on Facebook Pages, something Facebook has chosen to focus on with the new Questions feature.

Facebook Questions, in many ways is like my SocialToo Surveys, with a pure Facebook focus (on SocialToo we have Twitter and Facebook integration, with more Social Networks coming soon), and the ability to completely take the poll out of the question (no pun intended). Facebook Questions focus on one question that the user can ask to his or her friends, and those friends can answer anything they want to (something you can do in SocialToo’s comments for each SocialToo Survey). The difference is that on Facebook you can vote up or down each answer, and the most popular answers get pitted at the top in a more prominent position. This puts it at more of a competing stance with Yahoo Answers, or Quora, or Aardvark.

With each Facebook Question, the person asking can also add a poll, allowing other Facebook users to answer a set of pre-defined answers, allowing the person asking to see what the most popular of his or her own answers might be. All this while allowing users to also add their own answers and vote those up or down. I admit, it’s a pretty cool implementation, and something I’ve long wanted to do with SocialToo Surveys (and hopefully we will).

Here’s where you should get involved with your brand though. With each Question, the person asking can assign “Topics” to the Question. Each “Topic” is essentially just a Facebook Page somewhere. It can be any Facebook Page, and doesn’t even have to be one the person asking has even liked or administers. Assigning a Question to a Topic ensures that the Question has the potential of appearing in the list of Questions on the side of other users’ News Stream who have “liked” the Pages listed in the Question. So, in essence, you have the potential for a targeted, free, Facebook Ad if the Question is pitted right (albeit with much fewer customized options for targeting).

Businesses and brands ought to be taking advantage of this. Ask interesting questions to engage your audience, and tag Pages you think have people that might be interested in that question and your brand. Keep in mind though that Facebook currently has no way to moderate (or delete) the answers to the Questions you ask, so be prepared if a Question happens to turn against you. You can create Facebook Questions as an individual user, or as a Facebook Page.

In addition to asking and essentially tagging specific audiences with your Questions, there is another great strategy surrounding answers that you can utilize. I actually saw this with Facebook’s own “Facebook Pages” Page on Facebook. A user asked a question about Facebook Pages, and “Facebook Pages” answered the question for that user. I’m sure this brought more attention to that Facebook Page, and the user was even more satisfied as a result. Not only that, but future users will be able to see the “official” answer from Facebook on the issue. In a way, this also makes Facebook Questions a competitor to GetSatisfaction, as it can be a great Support Channel for your brand.

I wanted to know how Facebook did this, so I asked my own Question on Facebook. Damien Basille quickly answered with the following: “You must be an admin of the Facebook Page you want to answer as. Then, next to the Publish Answer blue button it will say “as [First name Last name] (change)”. Click on the (change) link and you will be able to answer as any of your FB Pages that you change to.”

So, with a simple click of the “change” link I’m now posting as my own Facebook Page, answering Questions all around Facebook about my brand. I think that’s pretty useful!

If you’re a brand, you should be carefully looking at Facebook Questions and figuring out a good way to integrate this great tool into your current Facebook Strategy. We can only hope that we’re given even more flexibility in the future to access these questions via an API. Hopefully a search API is provided, and we’ll start to see tools allowing brands and others to easily search and find people asking relevant Questions on Facebook.

If you’re not yet seeing the “Ask a Question” link in your status update box at the top of your news stream, have no fear – it will be there soon, as Facebook slowly rolls out this feature. This is something all brands should be looking at right now.

You can learn more about Facebook Questions at http://facebook.com/questions.

Facebook-hosted "Pages" are No Longer Necessary – Here’s Why

Posted on August 5, 2010 by jessestay

Social Media Examiner shared some advice I gave on their Facebook Page recently regarding the warning about Facebook “boxes” being removed from Facebook Pages in the next week. The reminder was met with a lot of concern from subscribers, who had grown attached to the ability to customize the look and feel of their Facebook Pages through the Static FBML app on Facebook and the ability to add custom “boxes” to the Wall of their Page. The other concern is that Facebook will also be switching to the smaller, 520px Tab format, reducing the amount of surface area for a custom tab to add personalization to a Facebook Page. I argue all this concern is moot however – there is something better Page owners can be doing that they aren’t, and that is moving their Pages over to their own websites and managing the interface there instead of on Facebook.com, and I think that’s the direction Facebook wants Page owners to go.

At Facebook’s sold out F8 developer conference this year this focus seemed evident. Facebook launched a series of new “Social Plugins”, and a protocol (called Open Graph Protocol) enabling any website to essentially become a “Facebook Page”. Right off, website owners could simply put a “like button” Social Plugin on their website by copying and pasting an iframe tag from Facebook’s developer site, and immediately, with some added meta tags added to the section of their HTML, they could have all the functionality of a Facebook Page right on their own website.

Facebook had a great demo at the conference, which Jolie O’Dell (from Mashable) pointed me to (see her article about it here), where they basically took all the content from Lady Gaga’s Page and converted it to its own, customized website with its own look and feel that you could easily change themes. Facebook-me.com, which appears to still be there, enabled customized themes to be applied to profiles, perhaps similar to MySpace in a way, but in a way that website owners themselves could host those themes on their own servers. All this could be done through simple Graph API calls and some customization on your own server. See their demo they gave me here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix0OY6_6y_8

For instance, if you query http://graph.facebook.com/stay/feed in your browser, immediately you’ll be presented with a parseable feed taken straight from my Facebook Page of all the posts put there. Re-format that in any way you like and you have your own customized Facebook Page. No login necessary.

It can be even better though. Rather than letting Facebook host the data, you can handle most of it on your own through Social Plugins. For instance, let’s look at what happens if I want to make StayNAlive.com its own Facebook Page (in fact I’ll do it right here so you can try it out when I’m finished). I simply go to http://developers.facebook.com and click on the big green “Add Facebook to my Site” button, then click on the Social Plugins link. Select the “Like Button” social plugin, and enter http://staynalive.local in the URL box. Click the “Get Code” button, and you’ll be given code that looks like this:

http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fstaynalive.com&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=80

Now, if I put that at the top of the website, a like button appears, and my website is now a Facebook Page. Go ahead and click “like” and you’ll see what I mean. Now you’re subscribed to my “Page”, you’ll get all the posts I send to your news feed, and best of all, any links to the “Page” go back to my actual website, and not Facebook.com.

Becoming an Admin

To get all the benefits of turning your website into a Page and having the full flexibility of customization, you’ll need to make a couple updates to the section of your site’s HTML. These meta tags follow a standard called “Open Graph Protocol”, and by following it, Facebook will know how to represent your site inside Facebook. There are different tags that can specify the title of your site, a main image for your site, and more, but the most important tag you need to add to your site’s section is a meta tag that looks like this:

This specific meta tag identifies the user, 683545112 (which happens to be my Facebook ID), as the admin for your website on Facebook. To get your Facebook ID, the best way I use is to go to your profile, click on your profile image, and look at the number after “id=” in the URL. That’s your Facebook ID. You can also specify multiple Facebook IDs in the content attribute of the meta tag by separating them by commas.

Once you specify this, next to your like button that you just installed you’ll see a “Admin Page” link next to the like button that, by clicking on the link, will take you to what looks like a regular Facebook Page on Facebook. It’s from there you can post updates to your fans and have them see it in their news feed. Also, once you’re identified as an admin, any link to the Facebook Page in your own Feed will link back to that admin interface on Facebook.com. (not to the website itself, which is what all other users will see)

For other meta tag identifiers you can use, view the source of this website and look in the section – look for the “og:” meta tags. You can also read more about it in the developer documentation here.

The Feed

By using this method, you get all the benefits of any normal Facebook Page on Facebook.com. You just have to install the proper Facebook Social Plugins to get what you want. For instance, if you want your visitors to see a feed of all items you’ve posted to the feed, install the “Like Box” social plugin, and enter the ID of the Facebook Page you just set up. (to get the ID, go to the “Admin Page” link next to your like button, and it’s the long number in the URL) Look over on the right of this website to see an example of the Like Box feed.

As mentioned above, you can also post items to your feed. Click “Edit Page” on your admin Page, and you can set up an RSS feed to import notes into your feed. I can also post videos, pictures, or anything else, just as I would a normal Facebook Page hosted on Facebook.com.

Importing Your Blog Posts

You’ll notice the “Like Box” on the right that has all the posts from this blog on it. That’s because I’m importing the RSS for this blog and now ever time a new post goes out all the people that have “Liked” StayNAlive.com via the link above will get all the posts I submit via this blog. This can be a great alternative to allowing users to subscribe via RSS.

So there you have it – any need to customize a Facebook.com-hosted Page is now moot. We don’t need them any more. I see no reason for hosting on Facebook itself if you need full customization. In fact, all links your visitors see in Facebook will now point back to your own website and not Facebook.com. When the user likes your website it will now appear in their interests and link back to your website. That can be good for SEO. Search results will link back to your website, and hints will show up for all your visitors’ friends, pointing them back to your website.

This, IMO is the ideal way to set up a Facebook Page now. The Facebook Page hosted on Facebook.com is not the future. Your website is the future, and Facebook has made it completely possible for you to own this experience.

Are there any reasons you can think of not to use this method? What other tips do you have? I’d like to hear them in the comments and I’ll update this post as it makes sense.

Facebook Kills Custom Publishers – Kills 15,000 of My Users Too

Posted on July 12, 2010 by jessestay

What’s a lot for one site may be miniscule for another. Recently, Facebook announced they were removing the ability for developers to write custom Publisher boxes “due to low usage” of the feature on the site. The feature, which enabled any application to customize the publishing experience for users, was a little-known, and little-advertised feature known to produce a good amount of traffic for applications. It was a successful feature though, and perhaps “best-kept secret” for many developers writing for Facebook Platform. Shortly after it launched I remember a few developers writing about how just a few tweaks to the custom Publisher and adapting the experience to each user provided tremendous conversion in application adds for users. I was sold.

On SocialToo, one significant tool we provided was the ability to, using the custom Publisher (which is still working now, until Facebook turns it off), allow Facebook users to publish to any Twitter profile, and any Page they administer, just with a few checkboxes attached to the Publisher box at the top of Facebook. This way users with a preference towards Facebook (which, despite the popularity of Twitter in the blogging world, is very popular amongst marketers) could easily publish to their multiple accounts on a selective basis straight from their Facebook profile.

This was a huge success for me on SocialToo – so much that despite the majority of our features being Twitter-focused, this one small feature was bringing in a significant amount of conversions for me. Users would authorize the SocialToo app, get the publishing feature, and at the same time learn about the other tools we provided for Twitter and elsewhere on SocialToo, purchasing our premium features straight from Facebook. 20% of my traffic came from Facebook as a result. Near 15,000 of my 70,000+ users were using the application.

Yet, according to Facebook’s response on a developer forum post, they seem to be looking at mostly usage of the Publisher, not net-effect towards conversion (which is why developers were using the publisher – it was an advertising tool for their apps). According to Facebook:

“We understand that the publisher feature was successfully used by some developers and enjoyed by users. While it’s never easy to have a feature removed, we made this decision only after carefully reviewing the feature’s usage over time. For the sake of transparency, here are some basic usage stats that illustrate the approximate daily usage:
– 47 applications with more than 1000 stream publishes
– 10 applications with more than 10K stream publishes
– 0 applications with more than 100K stream publishes”

Usage of the publisher, number of publishes, etc. is an important factor, but Facebook still seems to be neglecting what those 10,000+ stream publishes per day were producing for those developers in terms of monetary value and overall conversions. For my application, it was priceless.

I’m disappointed that Facebook is killing this feature. I’m disappointed that they did it with such short notice and without it being on the roadmap they revealed at the end of 2009. Yes, the numbers, according to Facebook, are small, but with only one document tucked away on the developers wiki devoted towards the subject can you blame it for being such a non-used feature? From my own experience, the conversions alone it produced, and the utility it provided were enough to make it well worth the integration, and I promoted it to all my clients.

If usage was so low, it certainly wasn’t because it wasn’t useful or valuable. It was because Facebook didn’t promote it or show the usefulness well enough. Perhaps the API for it was too complicated – I don’t know. I do know this is one of the many Facebook Platform features that have gone away that will be sorely missed.

I think one thing with Facebook Platform we can now be sure of is that while Facebook continues to increase usefulness of their platform on the web, their own website’s platform on apps.facebook.com is slowly being removed, piece by piece. If this is the case I really wish they would put that on their roadmap. As for the custom Publisher – this developer is drastically effected by its removal.