All posts by Pierre

featured, How To, Social networking, Tutorials

Facebook page creations – some learnings

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I’ve been working on the Facebook page of one of the UK office client. They already have a strong social media presence (through their twitter account) but would like to create a real community. And Facebook page are helpful for that 🙂 I’d like to share a few learning from about the creation of a Facebook page.

The reasons

First of all, if you still ask yourself why a facebook page and the difference with a facebook group : http://mashable.com/2009/05/27/facebook-page-vs-group/

And if you ask why it’s great for a client to have a facebook page :

– SEO – the facebook page rapidely sits at the top of the Google results

– Community – you gather people with all their info under your mouse

– Statistics – you’ve got amazing statistics about your followers from the page. But really amazing (cities, tastes, connections, preferences, etc, etc)

– Plus it’s free …

Page creation

If you’re reluctant to create a Facebook page with your own facebook profile, you can create a client facebook profile. Careful : you’ll have to dig in the profile privacy settings to withdraw the profile from the facebook search, otherwise it might create confusion with the facebook page.

Facebook pages always have the same structure : A wall, an info tab, an image profile, boxes tab and notes. The first step : put an image on the page, a name, and some basic background info

Bring some content inside

You can publish images, synchronize the notes with any rss feed (a blog RSS feed is perfect :), write additional notes, share videos, launch conversations and invite people to be part of your new page.

Personnalization

All facebook page are very lookalike … yet there is some personnalization possibilites. My favourites ones :

1/ create a personnalized page (with some basic HTML)

2/ change the homepage of the facebook page

3/ add more information on the facebook page (add rss boxes with your twitter feeds, friendfeed feed, etc, etc)

4/ add more info to the basic standard facebook page info

And for those who know how to deal with flash : embed a flash animation.

The tools to help you : http://mashable.com/2009/05/13/facebook-brand-apps/

Publicize the page

Talk about your page, add it to your social media profile, indicate it on your client website, and ask to embed a fanbox facebook page.

More info about the fanbox facebook page : http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Fan_Box

Create a community

Creating and communicating about the page was the technical part. Now is the community management part – dedicate resource to invite people to become fans, and give them reasons to become fans.

Deliver exclusive news, allow them to discuss with VIP spokespeople, create challenges, contests, etc …

Tool to help you create a facebook contest : http://www.wildfireapp.com/

To conclude, some useful advices how to run a great facebook page : http://mashable.com/2009/03/30/successful-facebook-fan-page/

http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/03/facebook-page-strategy/

http://searchengineland.com/how-to-quickly-customize-your-facebook-page-to-attract-more-fans-29216

Anyone has experience to share ?

featured

Forresters social technographics profile on your website with 2009 data

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I know that Forrester is one of the challenger of our beloved client Gartner, but their Social Technographics tool is pretty relevant and brings some fresh data when talking about Social Media. And it’s especially relevant when you want to target a specific audience.

It just introduced five categories in the population to classify audience on social media : the creators, the critics, the collectors, the joiners, the spectators, and the inactives.

For more details, this short presentation should give you further details : http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/ladder.html

They released last year a widget to play with and to display the results of the social technographics depending on gender, age and country. It was pretty useful and for this year, they updated the widget with the new data. Some fun figures to play with 🙂

Source : http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/profile_tool.html

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The slow death of press release ? “Less than Half of PR People Deem Press Releases ‘Useful’”

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This is a stat I’ve found at Steve Rubel’s home, but it’s a very interesting one.

Nearly half (45%) don’t see releases as relevant as they once were because of the growth of social media and the ability to target reporters and editors in more personalized, direct ways. At the same time nearly one-fourth each blame the waning interest in the press releases on the demand for a more trustworthy and/or engaging information source (23%) and the decline of the newspaper and magazine industry (24%)

As for me, I think that writing blanket content on a very formal way is dead for many years now. This death is the definitely the sign that our job is transforming very rapidely – we push less content, and create more conversation …

And you ? Do you think that the Press Release is slowly dying ?

http://www.marketingcharts.com/print/less-than-half-of-pr-people-deem-press-releases-useful-10954

featured, trends

Six Social Media Trends for 2010 (plus one)

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The latest Harvard Business blog published a new article featuring 6 social media trend for next year. As it is the Harvard Business blog, it’s always worth to mention in a conversation, just for the pleasure of using the “Harvard Business” keywords 🙂

1. Social media begins to look less social
2. Corporations look to scale
3. Social business becomes serious play
4. Your company will have a social media policy (and it might actually be enforced)
5. Mobile becomes a social media lifeline
6. Sharing no longer means e-mail

Surprisingly, there is no mention of the buzzword of this end of year – Real time web –
Does it mean that the Harvard Business blog consider we already are in the real time web, or is it just a fading buzzword ?
As for me, I would have add an additionnal observation – the split between the web of content (creation of articles, original stories, opinion) and the web of links (bookmarks, RT, quotes, etc) is ever more important … a trend to take in account.

And what would be your social media trend for 2010 ?

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/11/six_social_media_trends.html

Chart for Social Media Blog Post by dherman76.
blog news, featured

Double check your avatar

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To be sure that your avatar correctly display on the Disruptionblog, you’ll have to first subscribe to Gravatar. This is a system used by wordpress in common with other blog plateform that automatically associate an image with an email address. And from now on, everytime you’ll comment with the email address you indicated to Gravatar.com, the website that are Gravatar-optimised (and there is always more everyday) will display your beautiful avatar.

And it also include this very website (the Disruption blog) as well as the Hypertext blog. Just take a few seconds to make your comments and your posts more personnal 🙂

http://www.gravatar.com/

The video explains it :

And should you have issues with this system, feel free to contact me 🙂

featured, Tools, Training Courses, Tutorials, video

Tutorial – Top 7 screencasting tips

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“A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration.” (Source : wikipedia)

… And it’s incredibly useful to share information,tutorials and to make trainings. I assume some of you already did screencasts, but just in case here are the few tips I can share. All you need is a computer, a microphone, a few additionnal softwares and a plan of what you’d like to say.

Software (all of them are free tools).

I personnaly recommend and use Camstudio : http://camstudio.org/

Camstudio is a pretty old software with a crappy interface, but it’s free and it just works. It also record your voice during the presentation.

Other software you might like to check out : http://www.jingproject.com/

Top 7 screencasting Tips and tricks

  • Prepare what you’ll say. Make a plan with catchy titles, as for a traditionnal presentation.
  • Double check the software, the internet connection.
  • Avoid noisy background, make a sound test.
  • Make short sequences that follow the plan
  • Anticipate the transitions in your plan
  • Make a final recap when finishing your video to highlight the important things to remind.
  • Do not lose time to restart a sequence – it’s about sharing knowledge, not imitating famous movie director.

Final editing

If you need to make transitions with titles, Windows Movie Maker will be absolutely perfect for that (OK, it’s not great, but it works, and it’s free on our machines ^_^). Just drag and drop your sequences and make sur to insert titles. And then upload (Idex, Opex, the web …), share and publicize your video !

Should you have done screencast in the past, feel free to share your best practices and recommendations !

screencast

blogs, How To, Tools, video

Beginner’s guide to posting on wordpress

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We just had a request to draft a few bullets about how to write on a wordpress plateform. Probably nothing new for the people coming in here, but do not hesitate to share it with your colleagues if they have a questions about how to post on the disruption blog, Hypertext or other local blogs running on WordPress.

Bonus
I’ve added a couple of basic recommandations on writing on blogs. Very very basic. But might reassure people lost with the idea of writing on a blog for the first time.
General considerations

  • Keep it short and snappy
  • Find catchy headline and title
  • Do not hesitate to insert subtitles
  • Find funny / relevant pictures and visuals (worth a thousand word)
  • Links, links and links as much as possible
  • Quote your sources and link to them
Reading

A new social media monitoring tool just launched

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Anybody ever heard of Peashoot ?
It seems very campaign oriented, to track objectives of online targets. A bit like a bit.ly (which allow to track your links on twitter) on steroids for several social media plateform. One more social media monitoring tool, but this one teases my curiosity.
It has been launched today. And it’s not free. I get a coupon for 20% off the first payment if anybody is interested.
But if anybody has feedback to share, (especially our talented and expert friend of Context Analytics) could be interesting.
Coupon : 888PEA
http://peashootapp.com
http://peashootapp.com/public/images/home/browser_windows.png