social – Stay N Alive

Category: social

Growth Hacking: How to Target Ads to the Followers of a Public ("Follow") Profile on Facebook

Posted on by jessestay

I shared earlier on this blog the benefit of using a personal, “Public Profile” on Facebook over a Fan Page on Facebook to personalize the experience and grow your network. I encourage each of my clients to, when they have the choice, choose the public profile over the Fan Page for personalities in the company for the reasons I shared earlier. It personalizes the company better, and I think the opportunities to grow organically are stronger.

There has always been one downside though – you can’t advertise to the followers of public profiles. It turns out there is actually a way to finally advertise to the followers of a traditional profile on Facebook with a “follow” button. It involves just a little Graph API knowledge (see my book to learn!), use of Graph Explorer, and a Facebook Page for your brand that you can use to create the ad. Here’s how you do it – let me know if I can help your company or brand do the same!:

Using Graph API to Get the User’s Followers

The trick involves just a little Graph API (the Facebook developer platform used to get data out of Facebook). To start, open up Graph Explorer from the developers.facebook.com “Tools” section.

Give your user the “user_subscriptions” permission by clicking on the “Get Access Token” button and checking the box under “User Data Permissions”.

Now, type in the following path next to the “GET” drop-down:

jessestay/subscribers?fields=id&limit=5000

You can replace “jessestay” with the id of any public user. The limit=5000 lets you traverse through the more subscribers at a time. Hit “Submit”, and a bunch of data will be returned.

Now is the part you need to figure out, and where a little programming knowledge might help (I may upload this as a tool on SocialToo.com at some point if it makes sense). Each page has only 5,000 subscribers listed, but there is a “next” link at the bottom that takes you to the next 5,000 subscribers. Your job is to traverse through this list, follow all the “next” links until there are no more, and extract a list of facebook ids in a text file (csv or txt). You can do this either manually or through an automated script that you create

This script took me about 15 minutes to write on my own, so it’s not too difficult a task if you have a little programming knowledge. Of course, this is also a service I provide to my clients so let me know if I can help! Once you have this file, you’re ready for the next step!

Uploading the Followers to Ad Manager

Now that you have your file, you need to upload it to Ad Manager as a “custom audience”. This used to only be available to Facebook’s Power Editor, but it’s now a native piece of the Facebook Ad management experience.

Start by going to http://facebook.com/ads/manage and make sure the account you’re using is selected (for those that might manage multiple accounts like me). On the left is a link that says “Audiences”. Click on that.

Now, click on “Create Audience”. A dialog box will appear – select “Data File” from the dialog box.

Now name your audience whatever you like, and choose the file you just created in the above section. If it’s a text file that has a Facebook ID on each line of the file it should work. Also, make sure you select “advanced options” and “user ids” so it recognizes your ids as Facebook ids and doesn’t try to read them as email addresses. Click “Create Audience”, and now your custom audience should be created! Pretty quickly you’ll start seeing the number of potential people you can target show up next to the audience stats on this page.


Creating Your Ad

Now that you’ve created your custom audience out of the user’s subscribers, you just need to create an ad that targets this custom audience. This is where you’ll need an existing Facebook Page for your brand (Not the user themselves – to me Facebook Pages are for brands. Facebook Profiles are for users!) if you want to do a promoted post. If you don’t want to use another Facebook Page you can just do a right-nav ad that targets a URL and that will work too.

Start by creating a promoted post using Ad Manager, or on the Page itself (don’t use the “boost” option!). You can make this visible or invisible to your fans – it’s up to you. Include a link if you like, just text, or whatever you want. Maybe even put the image of that user in the post so it’s recognizable to the fans of that user. Another option is to have your Facebook Fan Page share a post of that user, and then you can promote that!

Then in your targeting options, select the custom audience you just created. You can further refine the audience if you like, should the post be needed to target a specific subgroup of that audience (allowing for much stronger micro-targeting and perhaps even better results for less cost). Set all your bidding options, submit the ad, and now you have an ad targeting all the followers of a specific user on Facebook!

The great thing about this is you don’t have to limit it to subscriptions – it works with any data your user has access to. You can access your friends, your friends’ friends. You can target the attendees of an event you’re going to. Or members of a group you participate in. You also don’t need to limit it to your own user if you’re targeting just followers. Because public profiles are public, you can target the followers of any user that has their profile marked as public!

Just a side-note: I did notice a bug in Facebook’s Graph API that doesn’t return all of the subscribers. I think it excludes subscribers that are subscribing to you through Facebook lists. It will return most though, which makes an ad campaign totally worth it!

So when you think you have to use a Fan Page because you can’t advertise on a public profile, think again! You indeed can target subscribers of public profiles on Facebook, making the use of a public profile even more powerful, and something every brand should consider!

Let me help your brand! These little “Growth Hacks” are the core of our business, and how we excel against other marketers and firms in this space. If you want to get an advantage against your competition that other marketers can’t touch, send an email to jesse@staynalive.com!

Oh, and like what you see here? Did it help your marketing strategy? Please consider sending donations to paypal@staynalive.com (Paypal), or send me Bitcoin!:

Address: 19AdCAbjshRuEFhx4py1Ny7i48s1d6RFi


The Perfect Use of Custom Audiences Through Facebook Ads

Posted on by jessestay

Custom Audiences are a terrific way to build Facebook ads that convert and bring strong traffic back to a site. The way they work is this:

  • You have an email list
  • You import that email list into Facebook’s Power Editor
  • Facebook matches those emails with Facebook users that also use those emails
  • You target ads to that email list or exclude the people in that email list from your targeted ad campaigns
I’ve been encouraging my clients for awhile now to look inside their existing user databases and find ways to segment users to better target ads back towards those existing users to get new sales. One way to do that is to look at users that have not completed a full transaction, and remind them to do so through a simple non-intrusive Facebook ad. The potential for the completed sale goes up significantly when brands do this.
I saw this in action today as I went through the process of adding flower bulbs to my Shopping Cart at Brecks.com, but not completing the purchase. Within minutes, I was seeing ads on Facebook reminding me that I had not completed my purchase, and even offering a further discount to get me back.
Having worked at a few e-commerce companies in the past (my college minor was e-business), I can attest that it’s difficult to get customers all the way through the sales process. Previously there were few ways, without outright spamming them and driving them further away, to get those customers that never completed their purchase.
Now, with custom audiences on Facebook businesses can remind the user very quickly after-the-fact, when they’re still in purchasing mode, further increasing the likelihood of the sale. This, to me, is the perfect use of custom audiences on Facebook. Well done Brecks!
Wanna learn more about Facebook ads? I just finished a course you can take to learn about my own secrets to success with Facebook ads. I promise you’ll learn something new in this course. If not, let me know and I’ll refund your money, 100% – go get the course here!

Your Constantly Evolving, Constantly Changing Social Media Plan

Posted on by jessestay

When I was younger things were simpler. TV, Print News, and when the internet, even websites would remain pretty static. My, how things have changed! In a world of “Generation Me”, with Millenials being raised on the internet and using technology and social media for most of their lives, marketing, and technology is so much different! As a marketer, your audience expects change, and they expect it fast.

It’s for this reason that social networks evolve so quickly. I remember numerous companies rising up on the backbone of Facebook, only to find out Facebook’s rules for their platform changing and completely going out of business as a result. I learned this the hard way with my service, SocialToo, which, based wholely on the premise of a user’s social graph on Twitter alone, and the ability to auto-follow, was quickly overrun by changes in Twitter’s API policies which rendered my business model obsolete.

Am I bitter? Maybe a little, but the fact is I’ve learned my lesson. In this ever-changing world of social media, marketers and business owners need to be willing to adapt very quickly, and look to the future, expecting these technologies to change fast, and the rules that go with them. What works today will likely not work tomorrow.

Facebook is already making this evident in their changes in News Feed policy, suggesting they will begin punishing “memes” and “calls-to-action” in posts on Facebook Pages. In the past, this is what performed best because it produced the greatest engagement, and in fact still does! Marketers are looking towards a sore wake-up call if they are not preparing for these changes.

In every presentation I make, even in my recent course on Facebook Ads (you can download it here!), I always tell people not to believe me. Always test, test, test. What works for me may not work for you, and most of all, Facebook is in a state of constant flux and change due to the ever-changing attention spans of its users. Marketers need to study these early, and study them often, and continually test the strategies they employ on social networks or their social strategies will not work.

The strategies and techniques I share in my courses and consulting and speaking work – I’ve tested them, and they have produced results for me. But a Social Media Marketer needs to be on their toes. What works for me may not work for them. A good Social Strategy needs to be constantly evolving, constantly changing, and forever in flux. There should be no end in technique and growth of that technique. That is where you will see your greatest success – constant change.

How to Optimize Your Facebook Ads for Event Conversions on Eventbrite

Posted on by jessestay

In preparation for my upcoming webinar on Facebook ads, I felt I would be a hypocrite if I did not use some of the strategies I’m teaching in the webinar on my own event for the webinar. In searching Google, I couldn’t find any good solution listed, but I did figure out a way to optimize your Facebook ad campaigns for when people buy, or sign up for your events on Eventbrite. That means Facebook will do its best to only charge you for your Facebook ads when people purchase your event!

The secret is simple. At the end of the Eventbrite event registration process, there is a confirmation page each attendee is taken to. You can actually edit this page, and it takes HTML. So all you need to do is get your Facebook conversion pixel in there and you’re good to go. Here are the steps:

First, get your Facebook conversion pixel

To start off, go to your Facebook Ads Manager. I’m not going to go into fine detail on how to do that – you can go buy my book, I’m on Facebook–Now What??? (the 2nd Edition) to learn how to set up a Facebook ad. Or register for my webinar that takes place in 3 weeks and I’ll even show you some really valuable techniques, just like this one, that will take your ads to the next level! (if you’re reading this after the webinar, you can also purchase downloads at that link)

In Facebook Ads Manager, on the left side column, there is a link that says “Conversion Tracking”. Click on that.

This is the page where you set up your conversion pixel. In the upper-right, you’ll see a big green button that says “Create Conversion Pixel”. Click on that.
A popover will appear, asking you to name your conversion pixel, and select a type. I called my “Eventbrite Ticket Sales”. You can name this whatever you want though. I also choose the “Checkouts” option, since I’m tracking sales. This is just to allow you to categorize different types of conversion pixels you might use. Here’s what mine looks like:
On the following screen/popover you’ll now be given code you can copy and paste into your Eventbrite page. This is what mine looks like:
Do NOT follow the instructions on this page. Instead, all you want for Eventbrite is the piece between the and the tag. In the above example, I would just copy the text, (the image tag) and nothing else. The reason for this is Eventbrite strips out all JavaScript from the code you put on their page, but they do support image tags! The image tag will be all you need. Click “Close”, and your conversion pixel will be set up. You’ll note that right now it says “Unverified” – this means no one has hit a page with your conversion pixel on it. That’s okay. Now we need to add this code to Eventbrite.
Add your conversion pixel code to your Eventbrite Event

To add the code you just created (again, just the image tag!), go to the “Manage” section of your event. This will take you to the Event Dashboard. On the left side of the Event Dashboard, you’re going to want to click the “Order Confirmation” link. You’ll be taken to a page that looks like this:
On this page, scroll down to the text area at the bottom that says “Message to be displayed on confirmation webpage:” (below “Customize order confirmation webpage”). This is the area you want to add your code. Below any confirmation message you add, copy, and paste the conversion pixel image tag you copied above. It will look like this when you’re done:
Now, click “Save”, but there’s one more thing you need to do. You want your conversion pixel to be verified. Once saved, click on the link, “View your current order confirmation page” below the final text area where you entered your conversion pixel code. This will take you to what looks like the order confirmation page. Don’t worry – your conversion pixel is invisible, so you won’t actually see it on this page, but you did want this page to load at least once!
Now that you’ve loaded your page, go back to your Facebook Ads Manager, look at the “Conversion Tracking” page again, and next to your conversion tracking link you just set up, it will now have a big, green “active” next to it if all worked well! This means your conversion pixel now works, and will load every time someone buys one of your event options!
So now you just need to add the conversion pixel to your Facebook ad.
Set up your Facebook Ad with your conversion pixel

In the Facebook Ad you created, at the bottom, you can set optimization options. You should have the option to “optimize for conversion”. Select this, and a drop-down will appear with your new conversion pixel listed in it. Select that conversion pixel. Now, Facebook will do its best to make what you pay only occur when an actual conversion occurs! This means real sales, for a fraction of what you’re paying in Facebook ads. That should be how every one of your Facebook ad campaigns runs.
Want to focus more of your ad campaigns on conversions? I’ve got a webinar coming up where I’ll share how to build audiences on your Facebook Pages that you can optimize for conversions. My techniques aren’t well known in the industry, so you’ll be learning very unique strategies, just like this one, that can help take your Facebook ad campaigns to the next level! You don’t want to miss this – go sign up here!

Are YOU a Social Asset to Your Company? Are Your Employees?

Posted on by jessestay

One of the things I talk about in Google+ Marketing For Dummies is the importance of getting your employees and brand loyalists involved in social media. This is something I’m seeing has more and more importance with the emergence of Google Authorship and the affect a public profile on Facebook has for individuals. The truth is, our culture is evolving from a culture of brands to a culture of people. The focus is no longer on your brand.

For that reason, I think it’s more and more important that you get your employees, or if you’re an employee, yourself, involved more and more in social media. In the future (and to some extent, now!), your job is going to depend on this!

Let’s take Google Authorship as an example. For one organization I worked with, we implemented Google+ profiles for high ranking officials/executives of the organization, and tied those profiles, using Google Authorship, back to content they had written on the organization’s website. With no content whatsoever on the profile, and solely the link to that individual’s profile, the organization saw a 300% increase in traffic on the individual articles written by those individuals on the company’s website. Imagine what it would have been like with MORE followers and MORE content on those profiles! You can see why I talked about making your website more about people, with content written by actual people in your organization in my books.

Just yesterday, SEO experts started complaining that Google was no longer providing keyword data back to websites for identifying the keywords people are searching for when they visit your website. Google is making it clear that it’s not about keywords any more. It’s about people, and real, genuine content. Your employees and the people behind your brand are a critical part of your SEO strategy now. You see the same with Facebook as they try to penalize “memes” and other brand-focused spam in the News Feed.

Google Authorship is just one strategy though. If you follow me on Facebook, you know I don’t have a Facebook Page for just me. I have Facebook Pages for my books and other brands, but not myself. Instead, I use what’s called a “Public Profile”, and allow people to “follow” me there. I actually do this on purpose. There, of course, are disadvantages to not having a Facebook Page for myself – I can’t advertise as easily (I can do a Promoted URL or Promoted Post back to my personal profile, however). There are no Insights/Analytics for personal profiles.

However, the advantage using a Public Profile is it focuses on me as an individual. It allows me to show the person behind my brand. When people follow me they know they’re following a real individual. I can comment much easier on others’ posts. In addition, I show up in Facebook’s suggestion algorithms as a person, which in my opinion favors more highly than Facebook Pages do. All of this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Here’s one example of why all that’s valuable: Yesterday Mark Zuckerberg changed his profile cover image on Facebook to an old graphic of all the relationships that exist around the world on Facebook which their data team put together back in 2010. Within minutes, he saw tens of thousands of likes on the cover image and I was seeing half my friends share it. I was familiar with this graphic because it hangs on the wall in my office – awhile back I blew it up and printed it out so I could show it off (If Facebook provided a way to purchase these they would sell off-the-charts!).

I commented on Mark Zuckerberg’s cover image stating that I had this hanging on my wall. All of the sudden that evening I started seeing friend requests from people trying to friend me, and new followers coming in like crazy! Within 12 hours I gained more than 1,000 new followers on my profile. It turns out Mark Zuckerberg liked my comment along with a few other of my friends that worked at Facebook, and that alone was enough to highlight the comment as the top comment on his cover image. Organically, 1,000 new followers in 12 hours is pretty good, and now I have the chance to build a personal relationship with every single one of those followers! Seriously, if you want to get some quick followers go reply on my comment that’s already highlighted there (only one reply right now!).

So as you can see, it wasn’t my brand, but my personal profile that provided the value. I couldn’t have accomplished that with a brand page, or bland brand website. You (the person, not the brand), and your employees need to be doing the same.

Next time you think about your presence on social media, stop thinking about Facebook Pages and Google+ Pages, and start looking at ways you can engage your employees and yourself as people on social channels. Make them “social embassadors” for your brand, and you should see ten times the success you are seeing with just one marketer and one team in your company focused on just the brand.

In these days, EVERYONE is a marketer! You need to be training your employees to be social assets for your company. If you’re an employee, your social presence, and even more than that, value (number of followers, etc), will be a defining factor of whether you, or the guy being interviewed next to you gets the job. It’s time to start learning to build audiences through social media, and build your own value for the companies you work for.

For companies and business owners interested, I provide a “Social Embassador” training curriculum as part of my “Everyone a Marketer” program. You can learn more about it here. Talk to me (jesse@staynalive.com) if you’re interested in training your own employees as social assets! I am also doing a webinar in 3 weeks that you and your employees can learn how to grow your brand through Facebook ads. Go here to purchase your tickets and learn more!

In the Collaborative Economy, Are Local Classifieds in Trouble?

Posted on by jessestay

I’m a big fan of my friend Jeremiah Owyang’s principle of “The Collaborative Economy.” The principle is thus (yet very hard to explain unless you actually experience it): the trend in social media, up to this point, has been the sharing of virtual content, goods, and services through close friends and family on social networks like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. The Collaborative Economy is a new phase of this principle, where instead of only sharing online, close friends, family, and some times strangers are now using online tools to find ways to share in real life. The idea, when applied to commerce is that instead of businesses being the source of the transaction from them to their customers, they will instead become the facilitator of the transaction between customer and other customers. The future of social media will be services like Uber, AirBNB, and others that grasp this concept and enable real life social transactions to occur in physical form, from customer to customer and not from big business to customer.

This is why I fear for local classifieds markets. Having worked for 2 media companies so far (and at one being responsible for developing new online classified experiences), I know how important classifieds are to the revenue of local news media. Classifieds are at the core of revenue for most news media outlets, outside display advertising, and as sites like Craigslist have taken over these markets you are seeing some of that result on revenue for local news around the world. It affects these markets so much that you see when local classifieds sites like Salt Lake City’s KSL Classifieds overtake Craigslist, it develops a sort of monopoly on the market in terms of classifieds revenue that goes to these news orgs within the local market.

A key element to good Classifieds is getting local auto dealers to sign on. On top of that, real estate is another big factor for revenue in modern classifieds sites. To get an idea of where that revenue comes from, just go down any classified site like Craigslist or KSL Classifieds and look at which ads they charge you money for. You’ll see the biggest are auto and real estate. There are other similar categories though.

This is where the trouble begins. Right now we know (Deseret News, KSL Classifieds’ own sister site declared the end of cars!) that automobile sales are in decline in favor of services such as Uber (for getting around town with a driver) or ZipCar (for getting around on your own) or RelayRides (for longer-term car rentals) that embrace the Collaborative economy. On the real estate front, you’re seeing more and more people embrace the collaborative economy in favor of renting through services such as AirBNB. All of this is so much so that businesses like Ford are reconsidering their sales strategy to provide similar type rental services of their cars as they recognize the recent decline in sales.

In fact, my friend Jeremiah Owyang, who is advising many of these businesses already, is seeing such great demand in this market that he recently quit his job at Altimeter in favor of advising these businesses full time on their collaborative strategy. This should have all classifieds departments in news organizations, as well as Craigslist and the like paying attention – their revenue stream from autos, real estate, and similar transactions is in trouble!

My hope is that local classifieds, Craigslist, Ebay, and other similar sites begin to recognize this. Person-to-person transactions are in, and business-to-person transactions are on the way out. Services such as the person-to-person trade service Yerdle (founded by a former Walmart exec Andy Ruben, btw), really get this. They’re finding ways to build business models without the businesses at the top of the model, focusing on platform the B2B relationship. They’re developing new business models unfamiliar to traditional e-commerce sites, and ways to get in the middle of those C2C (Customer-to-Customer) transactions. Local classifieds will need to take this same approach in the future to survive as their business partners stop selling, and start taking this same approach (essentially making those partners competitors!).

I mentioned before that local news orgs are competitors with Facebook and other social networks and they don’t realize it yet. Local news has the potential for a very strong, tight-knit community of individuals passionate about their community and growing that community. They are in the business of sharing, and getting people to share. When it comes to classifieds, this applies there as well – the future of classifieds is, and should be the collaborative economy, and facilitating transactions from customer to customer, not from the business to the customer. As long as the revenue comes from the latter, classifieds websites are going to suffer in the future, and those that get this will be the winners.

Ok.com – The Perfect Movie Resource for Parents (Read This for a Free Kindle Fire!)

Posted on by jessestay

My friends at Ok.com have given me a Kindle Fire to give away to one of my readers in the Staymates community on Facebook. All you need to do is join Ok.com, share this article with your friends, and join the Staymates Facebook group. I’ll take it from there! See below for details…

As a parent it is impossible for me to stay on top of what’s ok, and what’s not ok for my children to watch when it comes to movies. I love movies – they teach creativity and culture and history and get my mind thinking in ways it is not used to. However, some of these movies, while great for me may not be good for my 13 year old. And what may be good for my 13 year old may not be good for my 8 year old. That’s where Ok.com comes in – it’s a resource for families to know, and contribute to what ages are most appropriate for each film you watch. It’s a crowd-sourced age-engine (yes, I invented that term) for your family.

The site is extremely simple. Visiting the site at first, you can see the most popular movies at the time, and what the average age appropriateness for that movie is. Immediately you can start making decisions on the movies you want to go see as a family, or which ones you might just want to save for that date with a loved one later in the week.

You can contribute yourself as well. To get started, just click the sign in or join buttons, and log in with your Facebook profile (they also support a native login, but I think the experience is better through Facebook). Click on the movie you want to rate, and select the age range for what you think is appropriate. It also gives you the ability to add your own review, and see the reviews of your Facebook friends if you’ve attached a Facebook account.

In the upper-right, there is a “recommendations” button that will give suggestions based on the movies your friends have rated favorably. This is a great place to, at a glance, find out which movies will be best for you and your family.

I’ve found that, at a glance Ok.com is a terrific resource for when I want to know which of my kids can watch a movie. At the same time, there are times I want to know if I really should be watching it as well – if it’s rated for adults, I can quickly check the reviews and see if it meets my own standards for movie watching or not. If you have a family like me, or just want to make sure the movies you watch are living up to your own standards, this site is the best site out there for an all-in-one rating on the movies you watch. Go check it out now!

One more thing: Ok.com has offered a Kindle Fire for me to give away to one lucky reader! Between now and this Saturday at 11:59pm MDT, just follow these steps to be entered:

  • Join Ok.com
  • Share this post (the URL to this blog post must be in your post!) on Facebook or Twitter or Google+
  • Request to join my StayMates Facebook Group at http://facebook.com/groups/staymates – I’ll approve each request as soon as I’m available!
I’ll do a post asking for everyone to post their Ok.com profile IDs and the URL for the post they shared in the StayMates Facebook group shortly – once you’ve completed the tasks you’re entered for the prize! Feel free to use the image above as you share online!

Disclosure: I am receiving no compensation for this post – just free stuff for my readers! I did work for the owners of Ok.com for a brief time, but currently have no relationship with the company. I’m doing this just to help them out and because I think it’s a really cool product!

Studio C – A Refreshingly Funny Alternative to SNL (Plus, Win a Free Roku Box!!!)

Posted on by jessestay

Hey guys – read through this entire post, and see down below to find out how you can win a free Roku HD box! Expect many more giveaways in the future on this blog!

As a long time SNL fan, as well as other sketch comedies like “Kids in the Hall”, I have to admit, the options for good comedy are slim these days. SNL, quite frankly, has gone downhill. It definitely caters to adults, shuns family-friendly humor, and in my own humble opinion, it just isn’t as funny as the Saturday Night Live I grew up with. That’s why when I was recently introduced (originally by my 13-year old daughter) to a little college-produced series called Studio C I grew excited again. Studio C is finally a family-friendly sketch comedy you can all gather around, watch, share, and enjoy no matter what the age.

Produced by BYUtv, a college-run TV station near me in the 3rd City to get Google Fiber, Provo, Utah, it definitely shows its Utah roots, but in such a good way. The shows are very funny, whether you’re from Utah or anywhere in the world, and they seem to take care that their audience is not just Utah, or BYU students, or the Mormon-devout audience that typically follows things out of BYU. They make their message funny for all. I’m sharing this here because I truly think this is something all of you will enjoy!

The skits performed on the show remind me a lot of the old “Kids in the Hall” series (“I’ll pinch his head!”) that ended in 1996 — A bunch of college-age kids, having fun, doing silly things only college kids would think of. If you’re a fan of the infamous Devin Graham’s Youtube videos (he too came out of BYU), these guys are just like the fun-loving kids from those videos, focused solely on comedy. It’s the type of joy and fun that Provo, Utah exudes!

One of my favorite skits, which the team at Studio C shared with me, is one of Shawn Bradley, formerly Center for the 76ers basketball team (and even before that Center for BYU’s basketball team). The 7 foot 6 inch man participates in a regular skit they share on Studio C called “Shoulder Angel”, a skit where a man dressed as an angel helps people with their moral decisions in life. The only problem is the angel has to find a way up onto the shoulder of the person facing the moral dilemma. In this episode, you can only imagine climbing onto the shoudler of a 7 foot 6 inch man! You be the judge – watch below:

http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/PHM01zr1MuU&source=uds

Studio C is widely available no matter what your viewing preference. They sent me a Roku box to watch it on – it’s available via the BYUtv app on Roku if you have one, and the experience was great! You can also watch and schedule episodes on BYUtv’s own website, or you can subscribe to the Studio C-specific Youtube Channel and watch the episodes one-by-one, as well as most cable and satellite networks on the BYUtv channel.

Whatever your preference for watching, go check it out now, and schedule it with your family! I’ve found this very well could become a replacement for my regular Saturday humor. It truly is something you can sit down with the family and get a good laugh from!

Want your own Roku HD box to watch Studio C on? They gave me one to give away to my readers and fans. To get entered to win the Roku box, just do 2 things:

  1. Share http://www.byutv.org/show/c68c4e4f-6322-4a23-8b8e-a5be75b70635/studio-c?CID=51242#studioc with your Facebook friends, then 
  2. Go over and join my StayMates group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/staymates/ and let me know in the comments of my post for this there that you entered. 

I’ll verify everyone who enters and add you to the pool! Next Monday, July 1 I’ll pick a winner!

Now go watch Studio C and let me know what you think in the comments!

With New API, Twitter Attempts to Kill Autofollow Apps

Posted on by jessestay

Just this last week Twitter retired their long-lived 1.0 API for developers. This API was the first “versioned” release, a breath of fresh air in many ways for developers that were tired of API updates breaking their code. On June 11th, Twitter forced all devs to upgrade to their 1.1 API however, breaking many developers’ apps in the process (mine included). What hasn’t been said yet is that autofollow apps (apps that automatically follow people that follow you) seem to be out of luck with this new update, and no word yet from Twitter.

The problem with 1.1 lies in a new set of rate limits. Developers are allowed to make a certain number of calls per API method, meaning each method can only be called a certain number of times within a given time frame. This, I’m sure, is freeing up all kinds of resources and money on Twitter’s servers.

However, for apps relying on regular updates to a person’s social graph (their followers or friends), this reeks havoc on those apps. The rate limit currently for just getting the ids of a single user is 15 API calls per 15 minutes. Here’s the problem: you have to make a single API call for every 5,000 friends or followers that user has. Twitter’s API requires apps to “page” through a user’s friends and followers 5,000 at a time. This is great if a user has under 75,000 friends, but once you make that API call over 15 times to get a user’s friends, you’re stuck waiting another 15 minutes to get the rest of their friends. Now imagine if that user or brand has over 100,000 friends or followers! Or what about over 1 million! It’s impossible for an app that is trying to evaluate a person’s social graph to always know a person’s followers or friends in that rate limit, rendering apps like auto-follow, or even simple social graph analytics, impossible.

When you think about it, this might make sense per Twitter’s current business model. For users and brands with over 75,000 followers, I’m willing to bet Twitter would love to have them as customers. Many of those can afford an account rep that can take care of custom requests. In addition, Twitter now has their own analytics to track a user’s social graph growth over time. So maybe Twitter is discouraging these types of apps. I’m fine with that as long as they are open about it.

If this is the direction Twitter is going, I have to say I’m used to it. To be honest I haven’t been putting much effort into my own service that has focused on the social graph of Twitter users, SocialToo, because of it. In many ways it has just become another “hole” filler in Twitter’s API history. As a developer though, this is certainly discouraging, and even further driving me away from Twitter’s developer platform.

I hope I’m wrong. I’ve asked in the Twitter developer forums with no answer yet. Is there another solution I’m missing? Let me know in the comments and I’ll do another post showing how to do it.

Announcing the 2nd Edition of I’m On Facebook–Now What??? (Plus a Free Webinar by Me!)

Posted on by jessestay

I’m proud to announce the launch of my newest book, the 2nd Edition of I’m on Facebook–Now What??? along with a big launch event on Thursday, June 27th that is completely free! Jason Alba, my original co-author of my first book, I’m on Facebook–Now What??? and I brought in a new co-author, Rachel Melia to help us with this edition, and we’re re-targeting it towards marketers this time! Completely up-to-date, this edition will show marketers everything I know, Rachel knows, and Jason knows to build the best Facebook marketing strategy to your business. And we’re kicking it off with a big launch webinar where we’re going to dump all our knowledge about Facebook into a full 1 and a half hours (and you’ll win free stuff in the process)!

This book has been a long work-in-progress. We wanted to get it in perfect shape for you, and I think in just the easy-to-read 160 pages you’ll get a jam-packed reading session with all sorts of tips on your Facebook marketing strategy you never thought of before. I need your help though.

We’re going to kick this off with a big, hour and a half webinar on Thursday, June 27th. I’m really excited for my topic, which I’ve never shared publicly before – I guarantee your ad strategy will improve 100-fold with the tips I’ll share in the 30 minutes I have! In addition, you’ll have 2 jam-packed sessions from Jason and Rachel on Facebook Marketing as well as managing professional relationships on Facebook. This is actually the first webinar I’ve played a part in organizing so if it goes well maybe I’ll do more! I want you to sign up for the webinar, in order to celebrate the event with us. Go do it now!

When you sign up you’ll be entered and automatically be in the running for 3 signed copies (that’s the autograph of all 3 of us!) of I’m on Facebook–Now What??? 2nd Edition. I’ll also throw in 3 signed copies (the description only says 1, but I’m throwing in 2 more) of my latest For Dummies Book, Google+ Marketing For Dummies. Who knows – maybe we’ll throw in a few other things if the turnout is good enough!

So with this post I ask 3 things from you and you’ll have the opportunity to win some pretty cool stuff!:

I’m really excited for this book launch. I hope this book provides you the value and knowledge I’ve gained in the years I’ve been working with Facebook as a platform, both as a developer, and as a marketer. Please participate in this launch celebration with me, and share it with all your friends, lists, and groups! I hope to see you in the webinar on Thursday!