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Do You “Like” The New Facebook Changes? Fan Pages, Movies, and More

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Facebook is once again making lots of changes, but in this case we at Garvey Communication believe “change is good.”  The biggest change is happening today when all Facebook Fan Pages will switch from the current page layout to a new layout that is similar to a personal profile page.  Although some fan pages have already switched over voluntarily, all pages will be automatically changed by Facebook on March 10.

Garvey Communication Fan Page Featuring New Layout

Garvey Communication Fan Page Featuring New Layout

What we like about the fan page changes:

  • The fan page can now post to other fan pages. It can also “like” posts as the fan page (versus the admin from a personal profile).
  • The fan page admin now receives an email alert when someone comments or likes a post on their fan page.
  • A newsfeed for your fan page is now available.
  • The ability to view new “likers” of your page is now in the notifications section.

The article 8 New Facebook Page Changes: What You Need to Know from the Social Media Examiner goes into great detail about the changes and includes many screen shots and instructions to help you make the necessary changes to your fan page.

The second big change is the way the “like” button on Facebook functions. This article, Facebook Like Button Gains Better Sharing Functionality, from Hubspot explains that now when users “like” something it will be shared on their wall and will appear in their friends newsfeed.

The last and most recent change is that Warner Bros. has announced the ability to rent and watch movies on Facebook. The first movie available is The Dark Knight.  I personally like watching movies on Netflix, but maybe this “experiment” will catch on.

That’s it for this week, if you have suggestions for future Social Media News posts, want to ask questions or share thoughts, please feel free to email me. Thanks! – Laura

P.S. This Facebook Infograph includes some interesting statistics about Facebook usage in the United States and is worth a look.  :)

The future in social media is sharing experiences-Brian Solis Video Interview

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Brian Solis is described on his website as being “globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media.” He is Founder and President of Future Works, an award-winning digital and social media agency in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. We at Garvey Communication love to hear what he has to say about social media and where the industry is headed so we wanted to share the wealth and post this video interview.

If you liked what you saw and want more watch this video of Brian talking about “social currency.”

If you have suggestions for future Social Media News posts, want to ask questions or share thoughts, please feel free to email me. Thanks! – Laura

Pajama Project Breaks Record

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L-R: Anthony Cignoli, president of A.L. Cignoli; Fr. Brennan, co-director at St. Francis Chapel; Don Anderson, owner of the Cruise Store; Aida Claudio, volunteer at St. Francis Chapel; and Mary Fallon, media director at Garvey Communication Associates Inc.

L-R: Anthony Cignoli, president of A.L. Cignoli; Fr. Brennan, co-director at St. Francis Chapel; Don Anderson, owner of the Cruise Store; Aida Claudio, volunteer at St. Francis Chapel; and Mary Fallon, media director at Garvey Communication Associates Inc.

The Pajama Project collected over 645 sets of pajamas this year, breaking the old record!

The pajamas will benefit homeless children and families at the Gray House and Friends of the Homeless.

Thank you to everyone who helped out and donated this past holiday season.

For more information about the collection please visit the St. Francis Facebook page.

3 Perspectives On How Social Today’s PR Graduates Must Be – Part 2

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Views from The Student, The Pro and The Professor

Last week we discussed the “must have” social media skills a graduating senior needs to impress PR employers.  This week’s Social Media News, is part 2 of our 3 part series, and addresses how those graduates will use social media to find a PR job. GCAI tapped three people for their perspectives.

The Student: @stjackman
Stephanie Jackman, Intern at GCAI, completing a BA in Communication this year from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY
The Pro : @MFallon
Mary Fallon,  Media Director at GCAI and Isenberg School of Management at UMASS Amherst graduate, Google AdWords Certified, PRSA member for 4 years, has led seminars on SEO and SMO PR at UMASS Amherst
The Professor: @FvrythingPR
Dr. Daradirek Ekachai,  Associate Professor in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI

2) How can graduating college students use social media to find PR jobs?

The Student:
With graduation only months away, Twitter is one of the first resources I turn to when searching for career opportunities. Following Twitter handles geared towards entry-level job postings is easy to do, yet incredibly beneficial to my job search. By following thought leaders in the social media and PR industry I can engage in conversations, form relationships and show future employers I’m savvy in multiple social media platforms.

LinkedIn is another tool graduating seniors can use to enhance their job search. I’ve used LinkedIn to network with professors, find internship openings and participate in discussion forums. I think of LinkedIn as a virtual resume where each user has the ability to list past work experiences.

The Pro:
Students can use various social media platforms (including Facebook and Twitter) to follow companies they would like to work for and connect with people who work there. They can also post their resume on LinkedIn or upload a video version to YouTube. Overall, it’s important to show employers you have experience with social media, which means students should accurately complete their profiles and stay active on the platforms they are utilizing.

The Professor:
To me, it’s not so much how students can use social media to find PR jobs, but how they can use social media to get a PR job!

The obvious social media platform related to careers is LinkedIn, so that means that students must create and maintain a professional profile on LinkedIn. They can start growing their contacts and build their own network, start networking, and creating meaningful content to show future employers that they are capable and serious about their professional future.

Students also can use Twitter to follow professionals in their field, job sites, and companies that they want to work for.  It’s widely known that job recruiters search for job candidates, using social networking sites, and research candidates before the interviews. Students need to know how to use social media wisely, differentiate themselves from other job candidates in order to be a top contender in the job market.

3 Perspectives On How “Social” Today’s PR Graduates Must Be-Part 1

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Views from The Student, The Pro and The Professor

Obviously, Social Media has transformed Public Relations. Yet, are the PR factories (colleges and universities) cranking out graduates that are prepared to work in, or maybe even lead, this changed industry?  This week’s Social Media News is the first in a three part series that will answer that probing question.  GCAI tapped three people for their perspectives.

The Student: @stjackman
Stephanie Jackman, Intern at GCAI, completing a BA in Communication this year from Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY

The Pro : @MFallon
Mary Fallon,  Media Director at GCAI and Isenberg School of Management at UMASS Amherst graduate, Google AdWords Certified, PRSA member for 4 years, has led seminars on SEO and SMO PR at UMASS Amherst

The Professor: @FvrythingPR
Dr. Daradirek Ekachai,  Associate Professor in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI

1) What are the “must have” social media skills a graduating college student needs to standout to PR employers?

The Student:
Being savvy in the realm of social media is no longer an added bonus, but a job requirement for entry-level PR candidates. The skill that will showcase graduating seniors’ expertise in social media is their ability to be engaging on these various platforms.  Mastering the writing technique it takes to be successful on each social media platform is key. Students must be able to use their writing skills to not only write an eye-catching press release, but an engaging tweet and Facebook post.

The Pro:
My top three are: writing ability, responsiveness, and curiosity. Whether a PR professional is writing a 400 word press release or a 140 character tweet, both grammar and writing come into play. When working in the social media world everything is in “real time” and students need to be able to analyze and respond to issues as they arise. Lastly, a willingness to learn is vital.  Students who are curious about social media and are constantly researching new platforms and methods will be the most successful.

The Professor:
Students should not only possess social media skills, but they also should know how to use them strategically, personally and professionally. They need to understand the sociology and psychology of social communication through social networks and know how to apply them in social media tools. They should keep abreast in current and ever-changing new media trends and be informed of latest research reports.

I also believe that they need to practice social media (Facebook and Twitter, mostly) regularly (everyday preferably!). Social media should be second nature to them and they need to know how to create content, engage and maintain their social relationships with their friends and followers.

How Many People View Your Facebook Posts? Confused By Community Pages? Social Media News Explains

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Do you love the information that Facebook Insights gives you as a fan page administrator?  Now you can now see per post impressions and the feedback for each individual post according to this Biz Report article.  But what counts as an impression? According to the Facebook Help Center “the impression number is the raw number of impressions that have been shown to users. These impressions can come from a user’s news feed, a visit to the Page, or through an Open Graph social plugin.”  Seems a little vague to me…please let me know if you have found a more thorough explanation.  Overall, I like the new and improved Insights because you can see the posts that led to engagement and the ones that didn’t.  With the new information you can work to eliminate the later.

While Facebook has enhanced their Insights, their community pages still need some work.  AdvertisingAge reports that there are millions of unclaimed pages on Facebook right now and recommends that businesses claim their community page before Facebook changes again. So what’s the problem? Well, once you claim your community page it may converge with your original fan page which can result in lost content and formatting changes.  Not good! If you have any experience with this we’d like to hear your story.

If you have suggestions for future Social Media News articles, want to ask questions or share thoughts, please feel free to email me. Thanks! – Laura

Social Media Monitoring-The Game Changer, The Gap, and The Goods

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As a part of our continuing efforts to evaluate Social Media Monitoring and Measurement platforms, the GCAI team attended Monitoring Social Media Boston hosted by Influence People. There were lots of interesting presenters from both the US and the UK so we really got a good idea of what is happening on both sides of the pond in the world of social media monitoring.  As presenters highlighted, and we have discovered in our own research, there are literally hundreds of platforms available right now. We have tested, or are in the process of testing, the following: BrandsEye, HootSuite, Socialware Sync, Viralheat, and Sprout Social, just to name a few.  We have found however that with such a wide variety of prices there is, of course, a wide variety functionality as well.

Since there are so many different platforms currently available the competition is starting to heat up and some smaller companies have started being bought out by larger ones.  For example, Scout Labs recently became part of Lithuim Technologies and I would guess there are a few other mergers in the works as well. Another potential game changer that was discussed at the conference: Google enters the social media monitoring space with a free tool similar to Google analytics.  This will knock out all of the entry level tools when it happens.

The gap we have discovered, and which was supported by comments by two presenters in response to our questions, is that there does not appear to be a mid-level social media monitoring tool.  The platforms currently start at entry level – just above Hoot Suite (free) and then quickly jump to the Radian 6 level at $600/month per client. Certainly, with Google Alerts and other free services you get what you pay for and with the entry level paid platforms you get slightly more than that.  Radian 6 costs a lot, yields an incredible amount of useful information, but our clients are not at the point where they can digest and use it yet.

This is just some of what we took away from Social Media Monitoring Boston, an additional perspective on the conference is offered at this blog post. The goods that we took away, and are sharing with you, are the many PowerPoint presentations that Influence People posted.

Please feel free to email me any questions or thoughts. –Laura

P.S. If you want to see our thoughts on some of the different platforms we have tested check out my last blog post.

Moving Beyond Alerts – Social media monitoring and measurement

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GCAI Social Media News: Moving Beyond Alerts – Social media monitoring and measurement.

Like PR agencies around the country, we have moved beyond the social media management x 3 platforms approach.  Basically that means we listen with one, engage with another, and achieve with perhaps a third.  Management of the social media platforms for multiple clients has been quite labor intensive using this approach (for those who want to know we have approximately 30 plus platforms under management current and that number is expanding rapidly).

For years (okay months – but that’s like years in social media development), we have used Hoot Suite for engagement (and management-lite) for multiple client presences on social media, Trackur and then BrandsEye for monitoring (backed up by Google Alerts and Social Mention), and Socialware sync for archiving.  Our goal: do it all through one platform. Here is our review of what we have found to date:

HootSuite (free)
Exporting. Allows us to post and reply on Twitter and Facebook for multiple clients.  Convenient because everything is in one place.

Trackur (free)
Listening. Tested it for about a month, but didn’t keep it.  Could be described as a “poor man’s version of BrandsEye.”  It missed a lot of content that it should have picked up.

BrandsEye (Fee)
Listening. Allows for multiple search terms. Ability to mark each found item as relevant or irrelevant. A robust analytics package is available, but for a steep one-time price.

Socialware Sync (Free 2 year trial)
Archiving. Pulls in all Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn mentions.  Also allows for searching within the archive.  Only negative so far is that when it exports the data it is an .XML file which is not easy to read and is not presentable to clients.

Sprout Social (Fee)
Listening and exporting. We are testing this platform out with a free trial and so far we like the dashboard and the analytics it gives. We’ve had issues with some of the monitoring features and not much help from their customer service.

Social Volt (Fee)
Listening, exporting, and archiving. Recently had a live demo which looked promising.  It has not gone live yet and appears to be out of our price range.

In Research Lab Currently:

Mutual Mind (Fee)
Listening and exporting. Live demo is set up for later this week.  We’ll let you know how it goes.

Beevolve (Fee)
Social Media Monitoring and Insights platform. No data yet, but the company called us after we attended Monitoring Social Media Boston and expect to research this platform next.

Questions?  Feel free to email me. – Laura

This Week's Social Media Bark: Facebook Reaches 500 Million Members, Investor or Collector, and Watch What You Tweet

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Just wanted to let all of you know that we’re looking for people involved in Social Media to help us out with our anti-bullying effort. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact me at agauthier@askmydog.com

Facebook Reaches 500 Million Members: Facebook has announced that they now have 500 million members. This means that one in thirteen people on the planet now use Facebook. Check out this video from BBC. Read more

This Week’s Social Media Bark: Summer Heat, Facebook’s New Traffic Record, and Microsoft Adds Facebook To Your Outlook

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Summer Heat: Okay, so Al Gore told us to expect global warming…but he didn’t say we’d live in HELL all summer long! I hope you are finding ways to stay cool.

Mary says the results are in on Gregg and John’s “Potty Mouth Over Strategy” video in last week’s update (camera woman Steph Jackman was in on this too): 10 views as of yesterday! Since they feel it was a HUGE success, apparently they are at work on another one. Steph, for our neighbors’ sake, please stop them from filming in the men’s room!

And in other news, here’s my Social Media “Bark” for this week…

– Amanda G

P.S. – If any of you have any questions, or something specific you’d like me to discuss in these updates, please let me know! I can be reached by email at agauthier@askmydog.com, on Twitter at @GarveyComm, or on Facebook on the @Garvey Communication Associates Inc. Page!

Facebook’s New Traffic Record: According to comScore, Facebook had over 141 million unique visitors last month. In June of 2009, there were 77 million. Facebook just keeps growing! If you have any thoughts on if/when the growth may end, we’d love to hear it.

Microsoft Adds Facebook To Your Outlook: You can now read status updates, look at photos, and review wall posts in real time right in Microsoft Outlook. At this time, you are not able to comment or “Like” anything but you can sync your Outlook contacts with your Friends on Facebook. (Note: this is only in Outlook 2010 – so please let John know that GCAI needs to upgrade!).

YouTube Requires Linking Username With Google Account: If you created your YouTube channel before May of 2009, you now need to link your YouTube username with a Google account. Some of you may have already noticed this if you logged into YouTube recently. More information can be found here.