1. Your Profile Picture Is Of A Cat
Or a picture of a small accessory dog. Let’s face it, using a picture of anything but yourself is sketchy at best. People who know you probably already know that you are completely obsessed with your cat or tiny dog and obviously need Ceasar Millan’s help. The question is why make your first impression to people you just meet and friend as a crazy cat person. You chose to be on Facebook and have your life posted to the web and found by people so put your best foot forward and save the obsession for one of A&E’s new series like Hoarders or Obsessed.

2. You Invite Me To Play Games, Fan Pages Or Become Part Of A “Cause” All The Time
If the only time I hear from you on Facebook is to be invited to some pointless time suck of an action you want me to take part in then we will have to part ways.  Don’t get me wrong I use Facebook for fun as much as everyone else but if I don’t know you well and don’t know anything about your Page, the new Game you found or some random Cause you chose to invite everyone to why would I want to be a part of it? You are spamming us, please stop it.

3. You Overshare
You ever talk to that guy in your office who, when you ask him how his day is going he goes into some personal story that is just all kinds of TMI (too much information). Don’t be that guy. You can easily overshare on Facebook just like you can on Twitter or in the example above. You don’t want to know what everyone is doing at every second on their timeline, it  would clog up all the other things that are happening with your other friends, not good. If you overshare I might not remove you as a friend though, I will just ignore your life-stream, this means you don’t exist anymore to me on Facebook unless you IM me or Message me. you can thank FB team for that one.

4. You Only Post Pictures Of Food To Your Profile
Everyone needs to eat and everyone likes to eat good food. The presentation of food can get very creative at times, I know I have been impressed before with many restaurants and their presentations (especially desserts). Consistently posting pictures of food to your profile makes me feel like you need an intervention of some kind. I get you like food and a once in a while picture of food can be tolerable but know when to say when. If we wanted to join a food blog or the cooking channel we probably would have. Know your audience, not everyone wants or needs to see what you are eating all of the time.

5. I Don’t Know You
This one is pretty simple. We might have become friends a long time ago, don’t know you, never talked to you before, you don’t say anything interesting, you never share anything of value, I mean heck…I don’t know you. I have become very selective of people I allow to be my friend on Facebook. If I don’t know you either through business dealings, through my personal life or through a friend of a friend then 99% of the time I am not going to connect with you. I mean really why else would we be friends anyway?

What Is Choice Paralysis?
Is it possible to have too many choices? Most people would say no, the more choices the better; but it’s not true. Give someone too many choices and they are very likely to choose nothing. Think about it for one second, there has probably been countless times in your life where you were indecisive because of too much choice, God knows I have. I am now seeing this happen on countless websites with their social media sharing features.

Examples of Choice Paralysis
Imagine you find this amazing video that you have to share your friends across one of your social networks. You hit the share function on the site, usually below the video, and the image below pops up:

SHARING OVERLOAD. With so many choices people get intimidated, overwhelmed and it then becomes to much of a hassle to share so they abandon their efforts (and your site). Why have so many choices when we all know that there is an 80/20 rule with social media. 80% of what everyone does when sharing content happens on less then 20% of the sites out there. By finding the top 2 or 3 most commonly used share buttons and focusing on those you will cut down on abandonment by 85% or more.

Think of McDonald’s and why that franchise became so successful. No matter where people went they found a familiar and consistent place to eat and they knew what they were getting when they went there. Same thing goes with social media. People are used to one or two sites they frequent and that’s it. Too many choices equals no choice. Too many sites make the error by trying to cater to everyone and every possible choice out there and in the process they end up catering to no one.

YouTube is even guilty of over-sharing. Although they give you a few more share buttons than they should to choose from as you see below, they put the most used buttons in the front so people don’t get too overwhelmed. I mean who uses Myspace anymore…I mean really? 

Best Practice
This part is simple, less is more. Choose the 2 or 3 most commonly used share buttons on your site and that’s it (usually facebook, twitter and email). It’s a proven fact that when you give people too much choice they don’t choose at all. Stay laser focused on this best practice and other consumer experience best practices and you will end up winning in the long run.

You can track referrals from Facebook or Twitter in Google Analytics, but what if you want to track specific links within your social media profiles to measure their effectiveness? For example, what if I want to see how many people visit pamorama.net by clicking on my Twitter profile link? This tutorial will teach you the simple steps you need to take — and this method can be used in conjunction with any of your social profiles: Facebook, LinkedIn, or the legion of others.

1: Create a trackable link

Head over to Google’s URL Builder to create a URL that can be tracked separately in Google Analytics. Fill in the spaces as indicated in this screenshot with information about your social media profile:

2: Shorten your trackable link

Google’s URL Builder will create a very long URL, so it’s a good idea to shorten it with one of the many available online shorteners. For the example below, I used bit.ly, but any of them will do the trick:

3: Add your shortened trackable link to your social media profile

You’ve created a trackable link and shortened it — now you need to add it to the the social media profiles you want to track.

4: Track your URL in Google Analytics beginning the next day

Since you used Google’s URL Builder, the link will be tracked automatically in Google Analytics each time someone clicks on on it. You’ll be able to see your referrals by going toGoogle Analytics -> Traffic Sources -> Campaigns. Google Analytics takes about a day to begin reporting the referrals.

First seen on thecustomercollective.com March 23, 2010 by Pam Dyer

What are the most effective twitter posts you can send to your followers? It’s a good question right? Everyone is still trying to measure social media efforts and its impact on their specific businesses. How do we know when we tweet that we are sending the most effective message to our followers? What are we using to measure this with? So after over a year of testing I have some answers to these questions that continue to prove themselves correct time and time again.

The # 1 Most Effective Tweet
The most effective tweet you can send is a twitpic.com or tweetphoto.com link. The click through rate (CTR) is five to ten times greater then any other link you can post to your followers. Sharing your life through photos with your followers creates more of a connection due to the voyeur in all of us. We want to see what you are talking about. It’s as close to real time as it gets, just like facebook life-stream updates tweet photos are addicting. It’s the same reason US Weekly is so popular. A company wanting to leverage this high CTR could build their own Tweet photo sharing location so that said company does not lose the value of the tweet by driving it to somewhere other then their own site.

The # 2 Most Effective Tweet
The next best type of post is one with an actually link to the site you are trying to drive people. Some might think the link shortening services such as bit.ly or tinyurl.com would be best to save room; not always true. By using the link shorteners you are not allowing your followers insight as to where you are driving them. Not only do you followers not know where your sending them but you get absolutely no SEO value due to the link not having your domain in it anymore. A good solution here would be for companies to build their own custom link shorteners, this would address both issues quite nicely.

Of course the next best choice is using bit.ly,  tinyurl.com or ow.ly tags to shorten your links. Not only does it give you the ability to track how many clicks are happening (instant gratification) it also gives you the ability to fit more verbiage into your tweet. Obviously explaining where your link is going to drive your followers is crucial to earn their trust so be as descriptive as possible. This is also your chance to get back that SEO value but mentioning the URL to your site (example: “Watch this on youtube.com).

Street Creds Tweet
The last tweet you can give your followers is a regular update with no links in it at all. In some cases this could be an epic tweet where your followers re-tweet your comment like crazy. Most of the time these tweets are just funny little quirky things you might come up with that are wicked clever (yeah I am from the East Coast). FML is a common topic along with trending topics you can then re-tweet with your own two cents to spice it up.

Over Tweet = Bad Times
Twitter etiquette is one of the most commonly miss-understood and abused problems we face in the constant chatter that is going on. Obviously the worst thing you can do is give everyone an update on everything you are doing at every moment of your day (Example: “brushing my teeth.” “I am hungry.”) don’t be that guy or girl. Engage in communication with your followers back and fourth, Twitter is not a one way communication ticker (although some use it as that). Most of all have fun and be social.

A lot of people still haven’t figured out Facebook Fan Pages yet. They go ahead and make these Fan Pages and expect them to grow by themselves. The thing that most people miss in the equation is that, this is social marketing which means there has to be engagement on both fronts. A Facebook Fan Page needs to be strategically planned out in advance in order to make it work. Here are a few things you can do to make your fan page grow organically and when I say organically it means you aren’t paying to market your fan page.

Feature A Fan – Contest
This is one of the strongest methods of growing your fan base. You originally start off with any fan page by inviting mostly your own friends. Now that some of your friends are fans to this page, how do you get their friends to want to fan the page? You get the fans you already have to become little ambassadors to your page by having a virtual contests. When you “Feature A Fan” you are acknowledging them as the winner by calling them out as a “featured fan” in the post of the day which goes out to all of the other fans. 

This might seem trivial to you but the users can’t get enough.You eventually will get people “liking” the posts, commenting on the posts enough for their friends to take notice and come check out what that page is all about. They then get involved in the conversation that is happening on your page and become fans themselves. Everyone wants to be a featured fan so they keep trying to win whatever contest you are having by posting their answers, commenting and “liking” posts. All of this social interaction eventually leads to more and more people fanning your page. A company that does this well is Crackle a company I just happen to work for ; )

Giveaways
Of course another aspect to a contest is obviously SWAG (stuff worth actually getting). If you have something to give away like a t-shirt, hats, beer mugs, PlayStation 3′s. People love free things, even if its the most mundane objects you would be surprised at what people will do for free SWAG. The better the item the more people who will become a fan of your fan page and participate in the conversation. These users are not nearly as valuable to the conversation because you are incentivising them with a tangible object. As soon as its gone they stop interacting. You need to continue to have these giveaways every month so you don’t lose their interest.

Whats The Best Solution?
Using a combination of both ”Feature A Fan” and product giveaways will net you the most users in the shortest amount of time. Both users act completely different so you need to cater to both in different ways. As long as you have two different approaches planned out to these very different fan bases then you should see your fan page start to grow exponentially.

Adding Twitter Into The Mix
You can also leverage your twitter following to your advantage by using twitter as an extension to your contests. You can extend your reach and push users back to your fan page with twitter or you can hold a completely separate contest via twitter and grow your following base there. In this case we know that twitter users act completely different then Facebook users do so you need to figure out what best works for you and what you’re trying to build and accomplish.

In 2009 we saw exponential growth of social media. According to Nielsen Online, Twitter alone grew 1,382% year-over-year in February, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US for the month. Meanwhile, Facebook continued to outpace MySpace. So what could social media look like in 2010? In 2010, social media will get even more popular, more mobile, and more exclusive — at least, that’s my guess. What are the near-term trends we could see as soon as next year? In no particular order:

1. Social media begins to look less social
With groups, lists and niche networks becoming more popular, networks could begin to feel more “exclusive.” Not everyone can fit on someone’s newly created Twitter list and as networks begin to fill with noise, it’s likely that user behavior such as “hiding” the hyperactive updaters that appear in your Facebook news feed may become more common. Perhaps it’s not actually less social, but it might seem that way as we all come to terms with getting value out of our networks — while filtering out the clutter.

2. Corporations look to scale
There are relatively few big companies that have scaled social initiatives beyond one-off marketing or communications initiatives. Best Buy’s Twelpforce leverages hundreds of employees who provide customer support on Twitter. The employees are managed through a custom built system that keeps track of who participates. This is a sign of things to come over the next year as more companies look to uncover cost savings or serve customers more effectively through leveraging social technology.

3. Social business becomes serious play
Relatively new networks such as Foursquare are touted for the focus on making networked activity local and mobile. However, it also has a game-like quality to it which brings out the competitor in the user. Participants are incentivized and rewarded through higher participation levels. And push technology is there to remind you that your friends are one step away from stealing your coveted “mayorship.” As businesses look to incentivize activity within their internal or external networks, they may include carrots that encourage a bit of friendly competition.

4. Your company will have a social media policy (they might enforced it)
If the company you work for doesn’t already have a social media policy in place with specific rules of engagement across multiple networks, it just might in the next year. From how to conduct yourself as an employee to what’s considered competition, it’s likely that you’ll see something formalized about how the company views social media and your participation in it.

5. Mobile becomes a social media lifeline
With approximately 70 percent of organizations banning social networks and, simultaneously, sales of smartphones on the rise, it’s likely that employees will seek to feed their social media addictions on their mobile devices. What used to be cigarette breaks could turn into “social media breaks” as long as there is a clear signal and IT isn’t looking. As a result, we may see more and/or better mobile versions of our favorite social drug of choice.

6. Sharing no longer means e-mail
The New York Times iPhone application recently added sharing functionality which allows a user to easily broadcast an article across networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Many websites already support this functionality, but it’s likely that we will see an increase in user behavior as it becomes more mainstream for people to share with networks what they used to do with e-mail lists. And content providers will be all too happy to help them distribute any way they choose. These are a few emerging trends that come to my mind — I’m interested to hear what you think as well, so please weigh in with your own thoughts. Where do you see social media going next?

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

What Does Apples to Apples mean?
Simply put “apples to apples” in this case means you are taking multiple creative that look exactly the same in every way, shape and form except one single variable and testing them against each other. This one single variable is the most important part of the testing methodology and could lead to 25-50% improvement in your marketing campaigns (see below).

Control Creative
So as you can see above all your creative remain the same except for that one variable. In this case the background square highlighting the silhouette of the girl changes and everything else stays the same. Although this seems like a simple example, the testing method is simple by nature. As you can see below one creative is the clear winner with an increase click through rate (CTR) of one hundred and thirty percent, not bad for your first test.

 
Statistically Relevant Sample Size
The sample size is the number of impressions you run against your creative. Different creative sizes have different statistical relevant thresholds. Here are the thresholds:

425×600 – 500,000 – 750,000 impressions
300×250 – 750,000 to 1 MM impressions
160×600 – 800,000 – 1 MM impressions
120×600 – 900,000 – 1.1 MM impressions
728×90 – 1 MM – 1.2 MM impressions
468×60 – 1 MM – 1.5 MM impressions

In this case you need to test all of your creative at the same volume of impressions. For example: If you have four different creatives measuring 300×250 in size you would run the control creative at 55% while running the other three at 15% till you reach the statistically relevant number above. The reason you keep the control running at a higher level of 55% is to maintain a successful campaign while you test. Just because your testing doesn’t mean you should sacrifice the already proven success of your control, you might end up finding out the control beats all of your tests in the end anyway (this happens quite often actually). If you can’t afford the amount of impressions it takes to run a 4 creative test then just reduce the amount of test creative you run at one time. This will allow you to garner results at a faster rate which will turn into dollars before you know it.

Call To Action
You need to test your call to action just as much as you test different layouts, background colors and button colors. Think about what you want your customer to do:
“Watch Now”
“Buy Now”
“Register Now”
You need to have your call to action very clear and concise so that the customer doesn’t have a chance to forget what you want them to do. Don’t forget when your testing your call to action, you can’t be testing anything else at the same time. You need to isolate one variable at a time or you will never know if it was that change that made the difference.

Landing Page
When you’re creative testing you should send all of your users to the same landing page which is consistent with your creative’s look and feel. Consistency in your messaging along with the same look and feel can increase your conversions up to 35%. Again don’t forget, you can only isolate one variable at a time. If you test landing pages at the same time you are testing creative you will never know if it was truly your creative that made people perform the action you are asking them to perform or was it the landing page? That’s why isolating this one variable at a time method works so well, you know what you changed and you know if that one thing made a difference.

I hope this simple “Apples to Apples” creative testing explanation helps you and your marketing efforts in the future. feel free to post any questions and happy testing.

So let’s say you have a video online and you want to promote it. You already know your audience lives on Facebook somewhere, but you’re not sure how to reach them and you surely don’t have a ton of money to market this thing. Well, here are 8 ways to effectively promote your video on Facebook for little to no cost, with just the friends you have on Facebook.

1. Event Pages
If you’re on Facebook I’m sure you have received an event reminder to go to a party, bar crawl, or meeting of some kind. Well, you can use these pages to promote your video, as well. Say you’re going to launch a video in a month - first, you set up your event page, and make sure it’s very well done because you’re going to be sending it out to all of your friends (you don’t want to seem like a spammer to your friends so don’t mass message them too often or this won’t work). Next you send your event invite and then follow up with 5 or 10 friends a day to get them on board with the event. Eventually, you will have 30 – 40 people saying they want to be reminded when your video is live. Once the initial users are signed up for the event you can start a simple Facebook ads account and spend as little as $5 a day to promote your event page (although fan pages work better to promote and have people become fans of). $100 later and you have over 300 people wanting to be reminded about your video, not a bad turnout thus far.

2. Fan Pages
Fan pages are the more advanced form of the Events Page. Fan Pages allow you to build a very social community around your video with much less commitment. To say you’re going to an event is much harder for a person to do then it is to push the little Become A Fan button. Because Facebook makes it so easy to become a fan you will find that you will get 10 times the amount of fans than you would find saying yes to your event. You can use your Fan Page to power your Events Page by advertising Become A Fan through Facebook ads and you will garner more fans. So now that you have more fans you start to promote your event on your fan page. The people who start saying yes to your event and who are already fans of your video (even if it’s not yet released) creates a super qualified person who really wants to watch your video, increasing your event page to over 500 within a week (around $200 – $300 spent thus far).

3. Your Friends As Admins
Adding one or two of your friends as admins to your page now increases your reach by 2 or 3 times. Let’s say you have 300 friends and your friend Jack has 500 friends and you add Jack as an admin. You not only have scaled your reach directly to 800 people, but just think of the compounding effect. Jack might have 500 friends, but lets just say 5 of Jacks friends become fans of that page and they each have 500 friends as well. The way Facebook works (you probably already know this) is if those five friends become fans of your page, Facebook tells their friends they became fans, which again compounds on itself. Your chosen admins can make your fan page grow epically, thus creating a built in audience for your video and event page (and you’re still at a total cost of $300).

4. Posting To Other Fan Page Walls
Many self-proclaimed purists won’t like this step, but I’ve found it very effective. Find pages that are very similar to yours (similar type of content) and post your fan page link to their wall. Don’t forget to say something that has some relevance to the wall you are posting on otherwise it doesn’t look authentic enough for it not to be ignored or removed. If you do this a few times to some high fanned pages you can easily pick up another 100 – 200 fans in a few days with minimal effort (also free).

5. Post To Your Friends Walls
Find a few people you know pretty well that have a lot of friends and post the link to your fan page on their wall and mention something relevant in the text field of your post. People will naturally be curious and click to check it out even if they don’t know you or your project, and of course the commitment level is so low they most likely will fan the page if it looks well put together. This might sound like your spamming your friends with these posts, but this is your baby we’re talking about here, they should and will be glad to have a post from you on their wall to help you out. You can easily garner another 100 fans this way in one day, and for free.

6. Smart And Engaging Updates
So now that you have over a 1,000 fans and growing (the compounding effect) to your fan page, you need to chill out on the posts. Only post once a day (twice at most and only if it warrants it). The more you post, the more people will ignore you or un-fan your fan page. Also when you post, make sure it’s not only about your project, post things from around the web that you find interesting (but they have to be really good). You can plan out two posts a week about your project but I would keep it to two max because there’s only so much people will take of the same thing over and over again. You want to ask questions a lot, questions elicit responses and engagement. Once you have trained your fans that your posts are worth reading, and not only worth reading but deserving of a response, they won’t hesitate to take action on your post to go see your video.

7. Holding A Simple Contest On Your Fan Page
You can even hold a contest on your fan page for the price of a t-shirt. Not only do people respond well to contests, they live for them. A small gift of some kind mixed with some fan pics posting to the wall for a contest will put engagement through the roof and get people coming back day after day.

8. “Feature A Fan” strategy
Let’s say you have a contest for the entire month before your video is out. Fans post pictures to the wall everyday to be eligible for the contest prize, which is a nice t-shirt at the end of the month to the winner. Everyday pick one fan who submitted a picture and feature them on your one daily post. This is by far one of the most effective methods of getting your users engaged on the site. On a fan page I was involved in, we saw user interactions grow by 500% over the month we ran the Feature A Fan strategy. Everyone likes to have a little fame and that’s their day to brag to their friends that they made the Featured Friend List on “Video X’s” Fan page.

So to summarize, if you have a video along with a very tight budget there are still some great ways to leverage Facebook in order to make a very meaningful impact on how many people get to see and know about your video for free. One last thing I would like to stress; don’t forget about your fans. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen is people abandoning their fan pages once their video has launched leaving your fans in limbo. Your fans are like a plant, if you don’t feed them with new posts they wither and die. Your fans will be there when your video launches, and they will still be there when it’s been out for a year. Keep that mini-community up to date so when your next video/project is coming out you aren’t scrambling to complete the 8 steps again. Good Luck!

Getting In Touch With People From Your Past
Seeing I have been in the online social space since 2003 I am used to communicating with people from my past and present. People from my childhood getting in touch with me to say hi and to see how I am doing along with people from my present wanting to know more about me. I am completely fine with that but in some circles I am in the minority. So recently some people I know, people who don’t operate in the online social sphere have been complaining to me and this is what they had to say, “This person from when I was a kid is trying to get in touch with me over Facebook, WTF do they want? Don’t they know if I wanted to get back in touch with them I would have by now?” Now this wasn’t just from one or two people, this was from at least 20 or more who I have heard discuss this very topic.

I was kind of surprised by what these people had to say, especially seeing they are the ones who signed themselves up for these social networks in the first place. These are the same people who held out till the last second to get a Myspace account and are now having to switch to Facebook because we all know that Facebook killed the Myspace star. With the migration to Facebook you are no longer anonymous. People can’t just make up some weird name of phrase and have that as your alter ego shielding you in the shadow of anonymity. So the once a upon-a-time Myspacer’s who had a hard time entering the social profile world to begin with due to their over active paranoia on personal info on the web are now struggling hard with the idea of not only being on the web but also being “themselves” on the web. Even if you are not online and you stayed away from the social networks your information is still online. Companies like Intelius, PeopleFinders and ZabaSearh have and openly distribute your personal information online for years.

Understanding the flow of information on the web is crucial to having this data work for you and not against you. Setting up these social networks allows you to control the information that is out in the world. Would you rather have someone find a record through intelius on you (which shows your former addresses, people related to you, their ages etc) or would you like them to see and find you on Facebook first? In most cases the Facebook profile is the one you want them to see. You crafted it, put the right pictures into it and filled out the information on it hence you are controling that message. Much like a proactive PR firm would do, you are telling the story before someone else gets the chance too. Not only that but most use Facebook now as a people search function and only when they can’t find who they are looking for they turn to google and other services to find you (Forty/Love – Facebook is killing it).

So yes, these free social networks, the ones where you can stay in communication with all the people you want to talk to in your life, all in one place now comes with a price, the price of being yourself online for the whole world to find. Funny thing is your information was always online even if you weren’t; might as well control the message.

Celebrities like 

Journalists and the institutions they write for are finding Facebook to be an important resource in conducting the reporting that they do. Reporters and media companies are using Facebook to engage with their audience, connect with sources and build their brands.

Finding Leads on Facebook

In April 2008, Ivan Oransky, who at the time was the managing editor, online, of Scientific American, joined Facebook. Shortly after setting up his new Facebook account, he accepted a friend invite from bioethicist Glenn McGee, the founder of the Alden March Bioethics Institute, who had once worked with Oransky at “The Scientist” magazine as a columnist.

“Then I noticed a bunch of things about his profile page: A curious status line about having the worst month ever. A job that seemed to end abruptly. Lots of references to lawyers,” wrote Oransky later in a blog post on ScientificAmerican.com.

Oransky assigned a couple of Scientific American reporters to chase down McGee and see what was up. The publication eventually ran three stories about McGee’s departure from the Alden March institute that he founded and led. For Oransky and his team at Scientific American, Facebook was useful in this case as a lead generation tool.

Finding Sources on Facebook

Facebook also gives reporters a means to connect to communities to which they might not otherwise have access.

“Journalists should be using Facebook as a tool to unearth timely conversations around their topic or local community,” said J.D. Lasica, founder and editorial director of Socialmedia.biz and a former editor at the Sacramento Bee, in an email interview.

He said many reporters have begun using their Facebook friends to help hone questions for interview subjects, to discover sources for articles who they didn’t know existed, or to learn about issues or events that turn into full-blown stories.

In fact, Peter Shankman’s Help a Reporter Out (HARO) service that connects journalists to sources and is one of the most useful source finding tools in a reporter’s arsenal, was actually launched as a Facebook group in November 2007. The group allowed him to secure an initial base of members to whom he could push out queries. Reporters would email him with what they needed, and he would send messages to the group, Shankman said in an email interview.

Because Facebook group emails were capped at 1,200 at the time, Shankman was forced to launchHelpAReporter.com, in order to grow the service. HARO sources now top more than 100,000.

Shankman still uses a HARO Facebook fan page to post completed articles from those who used his service. “It’s a good addition to helping the overall growth of the brand,” he said.

Timely topics can also bring together Facebook members on a fan page or group.

Paul Bradshaw, course director of the MA Online Journalism at Birmingham City University’s (UK) School of Media, said in an email interview that his best experience in using Facebook for gathering sources was when Twitter stopped offering text message service in the UK.

“I started a Facebook group around the issue and through discussions on the group wall and forums, discovered very useful information about the companies setting up replacement services,” he said. “It also meant I could quickly find people who had used those services.”

Reaching Audiences on Facebook

During the 2009 presidential inauguration CNN.com ran a live streaming video player next to real-time status Facebook updates. The event attracted millions of viewers to CNN and Facebook and at peak, 8,500 status updates were being posted every minute. In June, Facebook opened that technology to anyone via their new Live Stream Box service. Users sign in with Facebook Connect and status updates appear in the Live Stream Box, their profiles and on their friends’ activity streams.

Facebook fan pages are also being used by enterprising media companies to grow awareness of their brands and connect with readers. On November 5th, 2008, the day after Barack Obama became President-Elect of the United States, The New York Times ran an ad campaign on Facebook asking fans what Obama should do first as president. The newspaper’s fan page led with a call-to-action image asking fans to join the discussion. It also offered a free virtual gift of its newspaper with the headline “Obama Wins.”

The goals of the campaign were to grow the newspaper’s number of Facebook fans, raise awareness of the NYTimes.com as an interactive news center, and to engage the Facebook community in a conversation about the election outcome, according to an internal New York Times memo from President Scott Heeken-Canedy that was posted by the Nieman Journalism Lab.

It worked; the campaign’s brand message reached 68.3 million people, the number of fans on the newspaper’s fan page more than tripled in 24 hours, more than 34,000 comments were shared, and more than 400,000 virtual gifts were given, the memo said.

Community is a Two-Way Street

Building a community among social networks doesn’t happen overnight. Bradshaw said he sees parachute social networking, in which journalists descend on a group related to a particular event (such as the Virginia Tech shootings), but to which the journalist had no previous relation. He recommends combining activity on Facebook with activity elsewhere online, such as people’s blogs.

“Don’t’ be a parasite,” he said. “Do see this as a long-term investment in your community — contribute.”

Working a beat takes time. It’s no different as a user on a social networking site.

“It’s all about karma. The community won’t share with you unless you’ve shared (your experiences, your thoughts, your passions) with them. Don’t just be a journalist. Be human,” Lasica said.

Dealing with Ethics Issues

Recently, news organizations have been creating or expanding their ethics policies to include use of social networking tools.

“It’s best for everyone in an organization to be on the same page,” said Jane E. Kirtley, Professor of Media Ethics and Law and director of the Silha Center at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, in an email interview.

As a lawyer and media ethicist, she said she supports the concept of policies, if only because a good policy will help to make clear what the rules actually are to everyone involved. Kirtley pointed out that the biggest issues newsrooms should consider when making a social media ethics policy or having their journalists on Facebook are whether to use a single Facebook page for both professional and personal purposes, who to friend, and what kind of material to put in one’s profile.

She said that whether news organizations should have social media usage policies for their journalists is a very controversial issue. And so are the policies themselves.

Lasica, for example, believes that the Wall Street Journal’s policy on online activities is misguided when it states: “Sharing your personal opinions, as well as expressing partisan political views, whether on Dow Jones sites or on the larger Web, could open us to criticism that we have biases and could make a reporter ineligible to cover topics in the future for Dow Jones.”

“This backward-looking embrace of the notion that reporters are blank slates is part of the reason newspapers are losing readership and relevance in the digital age,” he said.

Oransky, on the other hand, warned that joining a Facebook group can be seen as advocacy. He said he would not join a Facebook group with a particular science or medical agenda. “I think that’s dangerous,” he said.

He’d like to see a Facebook app for media credentials. So if journalists join a Facebook group or fan page, they can be designated as a member of the media. It would be similar to a reporter attending a news conference with a press badge

The Journal also counsels its reporters not to “discuss articles that haven’t been published, meetings you’ve attended or plan to attend with staff or sources, or interviews that you’ve conducted,” which Lasica thinks is misguided.

“Facebook and Twitter are wonderful tools for creating transparency around the black art of newsgathering,” he said. One of the things that newsroom managers don’t understand is that the public doesn’t see journalists as human beings, according to Lasica. “Social networks help reconnect reporters and editors with people in their communities by letting the public know that, yes, we do have personal lives, likes, dislikes, opinions, weekend adventures and so on.”

Kirtley thinks transparency is certainly desirable, in theory, but urged caution about revealing too much about the newsgathering process.

“Think carefully before expressing opinions about news subjects or sources. (‘I knew the guy was lying through his teeth.’) And make sure that you are keeping any promises of confidentiality that you have made, regardless of what platform you are using,” she said.

The Importance of Getting the Facts

In an online social sphere, where it can be unclear whether the profile online is truly that person, identity is key. This goes both ways — journalists should be upfront that they are members of the media and they must make sure the sources they use from social media sites are who they say they are.

Kirtley said ethicists urge journalists to be crystal clear about who they are — their real name, and real affiliation — and the fact that they are gathering news for publication. “They shouldn’t assume that the people they are dealing with recognize this, especially if the source is a young person or someone not accustomed to dealing with the media,” she added.

Identity isn’t the only thing that should be confirmed. Fact-checking information from social networking sites is critical.

“Verify, verify, verify. Facebook is a great source for story ideas, but no news story should be solely-sourced through social media,” Kirtley said. “Seek corroboration. And if at all possible, interview the person either by phone or face-to-face. It is so easy to lie on the Internet, and to misrepresent oneself. No journalist wants to spread falsehoods or be taken in by a hoax.”

According to Kirtley, “Most news organizations realize how valuable social networking can be, both as a newsgathering tool and as a way to promote the news organization’s ‘brand.’ The trick is to accommodate the competing interests without stifling the exchange of ideas. It’s not an easy task.”

on Twitter.Martha Stewart and Bill Gates might find Facebook high maintenance, but the world’s largest social networking site can be invaluable to journalists. Facebook gives reporters a means to connect with communities involved with stories, find sources, and generate leads. For media companies, Facebook is a way to build community and reach a larger audience.