One Simple Request to Brands on Facebook and Twitter

You know the stupidest thing a brand or business can possibly tell  consumers? "Find Us On Facebook." Honestly--have they ever used Facebook? Do they know how shitty Facebook's search functionality is? It's basically the worst search ever...wait, unless you count Twitter, which is truly the worst search ever. So guess what? When brands say "Follow us on Twitter" they're leading customers down an equally futile rabbit hole.

Here's the thing--just the same way you can easily direct people to your website, it's every bit as easy to send them directly to your Facebook Page or Twitter account. All you need is 25 fans on Facebook to claim a custom url. Honestly--hit up 25 friends to like your page before shelling out thousands on print, TV or radio campaigns that include the idiotic directive "Find us on Facebook." Then, if you're running a print campaign, turn the url into a QR code and you're set. People will actually be able to find you on Facebook.

Ditto for Twitter, except you don't even need 25 fans--if it's a radio or TV spot, just say "follow us on Twitter at [your Twitter name]. Seriously, it's that easy. As is the QR code thing for print ads.

You're welcome.

Time for a War on The Term "Mommy Blog"?

I was practically screaming YES! when I read this WSJ article "Time for a War on 'Mommy'" in which Taffy Brodesser-Akner poses a question I really want to know the answer to: "Why are we grown women calling each other Mommy?"

Why are we?

Why are we (mainstream media, PR agencies---and, of course, the bloggers themselves) referring to a collective of smart women as "mommy bloggers" to begin with? Why are the women being called mommy bloggers not upset about it? There's plenty of talk about compensating mommy bloggers; how about talking about why women are marganalizing themselves by accepting the moniker "mommy blogger" to begin with?

When I read about the courageous stuff Katie Allison Granju is doing to bring to light the issues surrounding the tragic death of her son, it made me sad and, frankly, a bit sick, to have the title of the article be "A Mommy Blogger Seeks Justice for Her Son." Really? This woman is a best-selling author, successful blogger and who knows what else, blogging about the death of her teenaged son--and the best way to describe her is still "mommy blogger"?

My kids call me Mommy. Hell, my husband calls me Cupcake. Doesn't mean the rest of the world is allowed to call me either of those things. And would I really expect to be taken seriously, especially in a business context, if the world knew me as Cupcake?

Another Association Blogger Outreach Fail...Shocker

Examples like these are so misguided and ridiculous that they honestly make me embarassed to be part of the association world. In case you don't want to click that link, the example to which I'm referring is a letter sent by the Director, Industry Communications for the National Potato Council. Except you would have no way of knowing that it's a letter from said director because it opens with "Dear Mommy Blogger" and ends with her name followed by "Mom to [kid's name], age 3, and [other kid's name], 10 months" and a Yahoo email address. The only nod to the fact that she's communicating on behalf of the organization is this statement "(and for full disclosure [I] work for our nation’s potato farmers, so I am slightly biased but would feel the same even if I didn’t work for them)."

This is a trade association attempting to build grassroots support for a proposed USDA rule that would limit the serving of potatoes in US schools. This is how they're representing their members. By pissing off the legion of "mommy bloggers" (GOD I hate that term) by insulting their intelligence, being deceptive about something as simple as disclosing their employer, and just generally doing a crappy job of blogger outreach.

Here's the thing: this stuff matters. If you're going to do blogger outreach, at a bare minimum, please do the following:

1. Be professional. Who are you and who do you work for? This is information bloggers--just like reporters--deserve to know. Don't try to play cute or sugar coat it--just be honest.
2. Don't phone it in. "Dear Mommy Blogger"? Please. The whole reason to do blogger outreach is because you are reaching out to people you believe are influential and who can help spread the word about your cause. "People" as in individuals, with names. How about addressing them by name, rather than with the equivalent of "To whom it may concern"? If you don't, you may as well not bother sending anything at all.
3. Don't use association-speak. Just because you, as an association professional, know you work for your members doesn't mean those outside the association world even know what an association is. So they have no idea that when you say "I work for our nation's potato farmers" it actually means "I work for the National Potato Council." Use your full name, title, and affiliation.
4. Think twice. Blogger outreach--especially mom blogger outreach--is not necessarily a fit for every industry, despite what PR agencies may have you believe. Remember the corn sugar fiasco? You may be passionate about your industry, but moms are passionate about their kids. Some mom bloggers are very outspoken--witness the "The National Potato Council Wants Kids to be Fat and Assumes that Moms are Stupid" headline. Mom blogger territory is not for the faint of heart. If your industry is even moderately controversial, you might want to think twice about approaching moms for support, because if they disagree with your position, look out. And chances are if what you're doing is campaigning to change a negative perception of an issue (like high fructose corn sugar or nutritional value of starch), there's a decent chance mom bloggers won't be eager to help you spread the word about your position. And even if they do, if they receive a bunch of flack about it from other mom bloggers--like, again, the corn sugar thing--they may be sorry they did.

AMC Theaters and Loyalty: A Study in What Not to Do

If you know me you know I'm an obsessive movie-goer. Each of the past three years I've kept track of the movies I've seen in the theater; in 2010 my tally was 57 movies. Almost all of those movies I saw with at least one other member of my family, and some all four of us saw together. Even with some free movie tickets courtesy of my Discover card rewards, seeing 57 movies in the theater costs a LOT. Especially when you have to eat and/or drink something while you watch a movie, which I do--I shudder to think how much I spent on concessions alone.

Which brings me to today's post. Yesterday Patrick and I went to see The Lincoln Lawyer. Our theater choices are pretty much either Regal Cinemas or AMC Theaters. I prefer Regal because their loyalty program is much better than AMC's--as is their food--but recently it's just turned out that the times movies play at AMC work better for us, so we've been on a jag of visiting AMC Theaters (Rio, to be exact). In fact, I'm the Foursquare mayor of AMC Rio. Even though I had 3 coupons for free tickets, courtesy of their rewards program, I couldn't use them because they're not valid for new releases. Also, I hate lines so I don't use the box office if I don't have to and use the ticket kiosk.

So we go to buy our tickets from the kiosk--which I could do in my sleep since I do it so frequently--but when the swipe your rewards card step comes, instead of it accepting my card like usual, there's a message that the old program has been discontinued so I can't use my rewards card. WTF? There's no way to convert your old card to the new program? Well, no....because the new program is pay-to-play and costs $12 per year.

Rather than spiral further into this rant, let me just list what AMC Theaters is doing wrong in this situation:

1. Send existing loyalty card members an email saying that they'll be automatically enrolled in the new program with the first year for free--but then don't actually enroll them and let their existing card expire. On March 1 I received an email from AMC that said the following: "You will be automatically enrolled in AMC Stubs and, even better, we'll get you started by waiving your first year's $12 annual membership fee. When it's time to renew, you'll have the option to use your rewards toward your renewal fee. We'll be sending you your exclusive AMC Stubs membership cards soon." Um, where is that card? I spent $40 yesterday and got credit for none of that because my old card had expired and I have not received a new card.
2. Make it impossible for current members to sign up for new program. You want people to cough up $12 for your rewards program that basically is the same as Regal's free program? Well, how about for starters when people swipe their existing reward card at the kiosk, give them the option of purchasing the new membership on the spot. As mad as I was about the new program and not being able to use my existing reward card, I probably would have just paid the $12 at the point of sale. But that wasn't an option.
3. Don't have any information about your new rewards program on your website and, instead, continue to post information about the old, now extinct, program instead. You're discontinuing a LOYALTY program. How about giving your LOYAL customers--those who might actually spend $12 a year on your new program--any information at all about signing up? And, incidentally, telling me to go wait in line at the box office to talk to the clueless theater manager to sign up is not an option--I don't want to wait in line, and the people in line behind me waiting to buy tickets to the show that starts in three minutes don't want to stand there while I rant.
4. Have an "exclusive" group for loyal fans who you use to get free market research...and that's it. I'm a member of AMC Insiders and regularly receive invitations to participate in very detailed surveys that are, essentially, focus groups. The likes of which people are usually compensated for participating in--I know because I've both been a participant and a facilitator of focus groups. Instead of compensation you're entered in a drawing of some sort...yawn. How about comping Insiders the $12 for the loyalty program?

Maybe I take the concept of loyalty too seriously and am off-base with these suggestions, but I have to say--as a person who is both involved in social media/community management AND a customer who is able and willing to spend money going to the theater at least once a week, call me arrogant but I think I'm in a pretty good position to judge AMC Theaters' loyalty program. And I give it my lowest movie rating: SUCKS.

There's a Big Difference Between Women "Ruling" and "Shopping"

(Update: I had originally titled this post "Note to Women: Shopping is Not Power" but once I saw it published I did a double-take and thought it made it seem like I was faulting women for the stuff I'm talking about in this post. So I changed it, because that was not my intention at all.)

When I first saw the TechCrunch article Why Women Rule the Internet, I sighed and gritted my teeth because I know very well that, despite periodic attempts by the media and/or tech bloggers to prove otherwise, women do not, in fact, rule much in the world--the Internet included. I only had to read as far as the second paragraph to find this statement

Especially when it comes to social and shopping, women rule the Internet.

Ok, seriously, this just makes me sad. I'm obsessed with a few things in life: social media, going to the movies and, weirdly, because I'm not a numbers person at all, money issues. Back when all my time wasn't taken up working full time and blogging, I used to obsessively read books about the spending habits of Americans and the horrible debt we put ourselves in. The most compelling and depressing were books about women and money--books like Ann Crittenden's "The Price of Motherhood" and Leslie Bennetts' "The Feminine Mistake." And as an unofficial expert in spending and debt issues--not to mention a former stay-home mom who went through a divorce--I'm here to tell you that it makes me sad and kind of sick to read how much money women are spending online and how eager marketers are to encourage them to spend more.

Too many women--moms in particular, and moms are marketer's favorite women to target to spend more--already lag behind men when it comes to earning money in the first place. They don't negotiate effectively when it comes to salary. They earn less than men do. In fields like PR and social media marketing, to name just two. They are few and far between in leading tech start-ups and top news media jobs, not to mention nonprofits.

And that's just earnings in a bigger picture that is largely out of their control. Spending, an area they can ostensibly control, is equally depressing.  They are increasingly finding themselves in debt. And more of it. And, in a time when this country is still reeling from the effects of the subprime mortgage nightmare, women are harder hit in that regard as well because they were 32 percent more likely than men to have received subprime loans and 41 percent more likely than men to have received higher-cost subprime loans, regardless of income, according to my personal goddess Elizabeth Warren.

So forgive me if I don't feel particularly gleeful or optimistic about the concept of Internet companies hiring more women so they can more effectively target women to spend money online. Because odds are that these women will be hired at lower levels and/or paid less than their male counterparts anyway, and, frankly, because women already are doing a good enough job of victimizing themselves when it comes to spending--they don't need help sabotaging themselves.

Importing Member Emails into Facebook--Just Because You Can, Should You?

I just read on Facebook that they have created two ways to allow admins of Pages with fewer than 5,000 "likers" to use email contacts to "build" their Pages. You can either upload a contact file into Facebook or import email contacts who are already on Facebook then suggest your Page to them.

Facebook adds the following caveat to their directions for these "Page building" tactics (emphasis mine):

*Note: We will not store your password after we import your friends' information. We may use the email addresses you upload through this importer to help you connect with friends, including using this information to generate Suggestions for you and your contacts on Facebook. If you don't want us to store this information, visit this page.

Will they also be selling these people's information like they do everyone elses? Of course.

So while this may sound like a tempting way to quickly amass a Page with a bunch of "likers" directly imported from your database, I personally wouldn't touch this with a 20 foot pole. I know that I'd be pissed if any association I was a member of imported any information about me into Facebook--or any public site, for that matter.

Silos and SEO and Spam

This post about blog comment spam and the consequences of keeping your social media people and marketing people in silos was so good I had to share it. It's like the perfect storm of what not to do, why SEO stuff like blog comment spamming and social media don't mix, and why it's especially important not to do stupid stuff like this if you're in the business of providing social media or PR-related services. Seriously--do yourself a favor and click through and read the post--it's too good for me to summarize.

What can we learn at Cision's expense?

1. Thinking about using "advocates" or "ambassadors" for your brand? Make sure blog comment spamming isn't on their menu of things they'll do to promote your brand. Granted, Cision apparently wasn't using actual advocates--that was just the language they were using to disguise the sleazy SEO practices they were paying good money for. But to a regular person--not someone who knows enough to do the IP search stuff that Adam Singer did--seeing a blog comment signed  "Meri A is an advocate for Cision" just makes them think "ew" and "why is Cision so stupid that they're allowing advocates to spam blog posts?" Blog comment spam is spam and nobody likes it. Period.
2. There is no "right balance" between SEO best practices and authentic social media. SEO is about gaming people. There is nothing authentic about it. "Authenticity" and "Optimization" are at odds with each other, and there's no way around that. Nothing "murky" about it. Part of my job is managing my org's blog, and every day I'm amazed at the blog comment spam that gets past the spam filter. Companies seriously pay for that shit?
3. Even if social media and marketing are in different silos internally, to outsiders they are one and the same. See how this worked in Adam's case? He tweeted about Cision's spam comment, which got him an answer from the social media manager. Who, as evidenced by her response to him, knew nothing about the SEO practices the company is employing--SEO practices that include commenting on blogs. I feel for her because, being a social media manager myself, I know how it is to know what's a good idea and what's not but not to be in control over someone else's bad idea because PR or marketing sits in a different silo. PR and marketing and social media are all converging in reality, yet the three remain three separate disciplines and squares on the org chart. Situations like this one and the daily examples of PR/marketing/social media gaffes companies are making are a testament to that, and sadly all we can do now is wait for organizational culture to catch up.

Shiny New Things

I'm not going to lie: being benched for a week due to surgery wasn't too shabby. I wasn't in too much pain, just woozy, so I was able to accomplish something I've been meaning to do for years: watch Dexter. The entire first season and half of the second, to be exact. Suffice it to say I'm obsessed with the show now.

But sitting around doing nothing isn't my specialty, and I admit it's been hard to sit on the sidelines and miss two things I really wish I wasn't missing: SXSW and ASAE's Great Ideas conference. Granted, I would have had to pick one or the other either way, and to be honest I don't have any real desire to go to Austin other than to socialize...so I guess missing Great Ideas was the greater loss. I wasn't planning on going anyway, but somehow being stuck at home while also missing it makes missing it even worse.

But all is not lost; thanks to the trusty interwebs I've learned about several shiny new things this past week, despite being not at either conference:

• Wish Flash worked on your iPad or iPhone? There's now an app for that: iSwifter.
• Google is going to be launching a new social network called Circles. The great thing about it is supposed to be the way it allows you to share information the way you do in real life: e.g. some stuff for work, some stuff personal, etc. I personally will believe it's the next great thing/Facebook killer when I see it, after being totally underwhelmed by both Buzz and Wave.
• Foursquare got a supposedly great new upgrade, which includes stuff like recommendations and deals. While I wasn't super-impressed, I admit it kind of reinvigorated my interest in Foursquare. I still think it's kind of a bum deal for users--I've spent more time than I like to admit checking in on Foursquare and still have exactly zero free or even discount things to show for it after a year and a half using it pretty faithfully.

Well, time to squeeze in a few more episodes of Dexter before I head back to work tomorrow....

Social Media and Work/Life Balance, Redux

I had to have minor surgery last Friday and, subsequently, am trying my best to be "off the grid" this week while I recover. I'm off work for the week and have been sufficiently out of it that I actually have been (mostly) off the computer, including (again, mostly) Facebook and Twitter. And I have to admit--it has been nice. Actually, better than nice. It's honestly making me wonder whether a career involving social media is a good idea for someone who wants a balanced life.

I've blogged before about why I think community management/social media jobs make work/life balance incredibly hard. (I've also blogged before about how there's a huge blur between the terms "social media" and "community management" and pointed to Rachel Happe's post on why they're not the same thing, yet I still struggle with how to refer to either when writing about this stuff.) On the surface, it seems these careers would be well-suited to someone who wants work/life balance, right--I mean, ostensibly, at least, you can do these job from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection, right? And it is true--you can do a lot of the job from home or basically anywhere your iPhone can get a signal.

But there's so much more to just the job part of a social media or community management job...there's the constant flow of staying up-to-date with the latest that's going on in social media world. Facebook's changes. Conferences. Twitter chats. Blog posts--writing and reading them. Keeping up with Twitter--since I don't like Google Reader I rely largely on links to blog posts that people tweet--admittedly not a great strategy, but then again, neither is having to keep up with dozens of blog feeds. And that's just my own personal/professional development end of things--that doesn't even count the same amount of effort on each of those things for my actual job--the blog I manage, Facebook page, Twitter, communities I manage, etc. I'm a good multi-tasker, thank god, but there are only so many hours in a day...and stopping basically all of these activities and just being still has made me realize how tiring and time-consuming it is to keep up with the constant flow of information necessary to sustain a career related to social media.

Let's face it--having a job that requires you to spend hours and hours and hours on a computer means those hours can't be spent doing stuff like, say, NOT staring at a computer. Reading books. Exercising. Spending time with family and friends--and actually being present, not there in person but constantly checking Twitter or email. It's already been reported that Facebook is increasingly a cause of divorce--but what about social media use/addiction in general as a cause of divorce? Or, if not divorce (yet), certainly family strife--e.g. upsetting the balance that being an active part of a family requires? We've all seen movies and read books in which one of the major plot points was the father or, more rarely, mother who was such a workaholic that it caused the kids to grow up scarred or ruined the marriage or some other terrible fate. So what about new "flexible" careers like blogging or community management--careers that allow you to maybe work from home, but that also require an extreme number of hours of para-work (I think I just invented that word, btw)--e.g. the stuff that's not a direct part of the job but actually is, such as networking, traveling, reading, and all the rest of it.

Am I just crazy from the after-effects of general anesthesia, or do you think that it is actually harder to maintain work/life balance in new social media-related jobs than traditional jobs?

Fix for Facebook Chronological Posts on Page Issue

Yes, I'm sufficiently nerdy that the way Facebook has messed up the way posts are displayed on a Page's wall since the new Page design launched is driving me crazy. Luckily I'm not unique in this nerdiness; plenty of other Page admins are upset about it, too--so upset, in fact, that almost 11,000 have joined the Facebook-based movement to get things changed back to the way they were.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about here, the gist of it is that Facebook recently did its signature move of fixing something that wasn't broke to begin with: the way posts are displayed on a Page's newsfeed. It used to be that posts were displayed chronologically, so if you had your Page set up to display "everyone's" posts--as opposed to just your company's own posts--they appeared in reverse chronological order, with the most current at the top of the page. But Facebook decided that, even though the whole point of having a Page is encouraging "fans" to interact with the Page and with each other, they'd make it so the company's posts always appear at the top, and posts by others appear somewhere down the wall...in other words, where most people aren't likely to even see them.

It's stupid and crazy and annoying and hopefully something that Facebook will reconsider and change, but who knows when/if that will happen.

But luckily for us, there is an easy interim way around it: if you want to see wall posts in chronological order, just access Pages via your mobile device. On the iPhone, the wall posts display chronologically through both the Facebook app and the mobile browser view; on the iPad, they only display chronologically through the app. I would imagine the same is true for other phones/devices, but am not positive--if any of you have a Droid, Blackberry or other device, could you do me a favor and leave a comment about whether the same is true for those devices?

UPDATE: Forget this bootleg fix; apparently complaints from users hit critical mass because Facebook has fixed this issue for real now. Page admins can choose whether posts are ordered by Top Posts or Most Recent. Thanks Facebook!