Author: WWPR

On March 30th, every Facebook page was converted to the timeline layout. Is your brand and/or organization prepared? Here are the five most exciting changes to take advantage of to make sure your page gains distinction right off the bat.

1. Friend interaction with brand pages
Facebook has always shown you which of your friends “like” a brand or organization’s page, but now they’ve gone one step further in customizing the page content. Now featured prominently on your timeline is your friends’ discussion of the brand, so you can see involvement from your connections.
On the right hand side of a page timeline users now see likes as well as interactions. Facebook knows that out of The Office’s 10 million likes and 64,000 people talking about the show, users care most about their friends and what they think. And that information should come first to my line of sight. So any viral buzz you generate can live longer than in previous formats.

2. Location-focus
Facebook is an online community meant to enhance existing communities. Facebook had already embraced the check-in feature so that users can share with their friends where they’ve been. Timeline combines the foundation ideas of Foursquare and Yelp, so now users can check in to several places but now also recommend a place and/or page to friends.

People who wish to share their thoughts more than just pressing the like button can register their comments in a page’s recommendation box. The National Restaurant Association receives recommendations on their page, showing user-generated information as well alongside the associations’ provided content.

So instead of people’s comments peppering your feed, they exist in a one-stop shop on your timeline for people that are most interested in seeing feedback on your brand or organization.

3. Cover photo
With the profile picture taking a backseat, this is a way for brands or organizations to really make a statement with a visual. The cover photo is an image splash, a visual the eye can’t avoid when visiting a timeline. It reminds me of CD cover art, the iconic image that was then associated with that particular album of music. For organizations, it is safe to assume that your logo or brand image should remain the profile picture, and then your cover photo is an additional visual to highlight what you do.

The cover photo shouldn’t be an advertisement (Facebook’s guidelines spell that out in detail), but rather a convincing, enticing tease to draw users to scroll down for more. For the page of an environmental advocacy group, it’s where they could provide a recent image of an important restoration initiative. For the page of a community service group like Habitat for Humanity, you could showcase the latest service project. The dynamic and changing nature of this cover photo is up to the organization, but to continue to get page visits, it should change frequently. The best ones I’ve seen so far are ones from interesting angles and views, as if viewing their page is like going behind-the-scenes of an organization or brand. That distinguishes the page from visiting a typical corporate web site.
4. Make milestones

The company I work for launched August 2, 2011. To make that mark on our page timeline, Facebook has created milestones. For people’s individual pages, milestones are the typical variety: the day you were born, the day you joined Facebook, the day you graduated college, your wedding day, etc. For brand or organization pages, these milestones are similar lifetime developments. When the company expands to a different city, it should be documented on the timeline. When a new product line is launched, its photo should be featured as a monumental event. When a company goes public, that is definitely a date worth special attention on the timeline. Companies have growth and movements in their life cycle also, and fans should get to be a part of that history and information.

5. Extending the permanence of a post
Ever obsess over the exact right moment to post something so that more people see it present in their newsfeed before it enters the loading black hole? You can now pin or highlight a post you make to Facebook, in order to ensure that more of your fans see it. By clicking “pin to top” in the drop down menu to the right-hand side of the post, you can pin that post to the top for seven days. Another option is to highlight a post, making it larger and more encompassing in its position on your timeline. But beware, you can’t overdo it by pinning AND highlighting, so choose your promotion choice wisely.

Looking ahead, it will be exciting to see what pages do with these new features, and how the overall transition goes. For awhile, lots of brands and organizations will need to set aside time to assemble their timeline, like an online scrapbook, but then moving forward they will be prepared to maximize content and document it to the best format for timeline. So far, it seems like the brands and organizations have found some cool ways to adjust to the design changes, and I’m excited to see more innovation as the full transition gets underway.

Nationally the campaign of keeping dollars local has been picking up steam – great for the nonprofits behind them and great for the local businesses that benefit from the patronage.  There is hard work that goes into these messages and campaigns and I am fascinated by it all as a PR practitioner as well as a local consumer.  This Saturday DC is uniting for one hour to form a “Cash Mob” led by former WWPR board member Stacey Price.

She is asking locals to arm themselves with $20 to make a large combined economic impact on one lucky local business owner.  I will be curious to see what PR the “chosen” location does before the event and what customer service tactics they conduct post-event to turn the short-term stunt into long-term impact.  Hopefully they will also raise some revenue during that hour as well!  I think campaigns like this are key to the future of the America economy- it’s all about “Main Street”.

What is a Cash Mob?

According to Price, “Think flash mob but more social and less artsy. First started by Buffalo, New York, blogger Chris Smith last August, cash mobs are a nationwide community-based phenomenon, primarily organized through social media, in which groups of people gather on an appointed date and time to “mob,” or support, a local business. Participants must agree to spend at least $20 at the chosen location, and in turn the business must be locally-owned and supportive of the community.”

The organization is positioning this campaign as the anti-Groupon which from a messaging standpoint don’t agree with, and think small business owners can maximize Groupon if they had a plan in place before setting the coupon level and thresholds.
“Not only are we offering the business some additional daily revenue by creating a mob we are giving businesses that may or may not have a marketing budget the easiest promotion and media opportunity that they can find,” says Price. “And unlike other efforts to attract consumers to local business, this one does not have a discount attached.”
Does your small business or clients have a Groupon strategic plan – here are five tips.

How do you participate?

1. RSVP on Facebook to get the location.
The location is not announced until 9:30 a.m. the morning of the MOB.

2. Arrive with $20 in hand to spend fully on one or more items.
3. Spread the word to your friends, colleagues and family – use your own social media to be a brand ambassador if you believe in the campaign

Learn more about Think Local First DC and how they will select the Cash Mob business on their blog here.

Communications manifest themselves in different forms. No smoke signals or the telegraph anymore but email is still a prevalent part of our lives. In addition over the past few years content has found other ways to seep into our lives. As PR and communication professionals we are on the forefront of the communication revolution. Internally our colleagues look to us to be the “fortune tellers” for which new communication tools are trending and if and how to participate.

How did you discover the new tools? I wanted to share my experience about how I discovered tools many that I use.

Linkedin: I heard about Linkedin from a colleague and this was the first social network that I joined on Dec 18^th 2003.

Twitter: In 2007(March 15th actually) , I was a Product Manager for Network Solutions Web Site Builder and during my research I came across a podcast from SXSW (first time I heard of the South by South West conference too) where they were talking about Twitter. At that time all I saw was people checking in from airports and I was not doing much travelling then. After leaving it aside for 6 months I became active on Twitter again.

Facebook: The mainstream media covered Facebook extensively but I could not sign up as I was not a student. Later one of my cousins sent me a invite and by that time Facebook had opened to all and now has over 850 Million.

Fast forward to today and I really cannot accurately recollect how I hear about new social networks , my guess is these sources.

• Mainstream media: I read a lot of newspapers
• Someone  starts adding me to their network and I get an email – examples are amplify, schemer
• Word of Mouth from friends and colleagues. Groupon and Pinterest
• Content curators/aggregators : I look for emails from sites like Summify, curate.me., paper.li , Xydo that give a digest of news every day in my inbox and if a large number of my networks share a article or link it grabs my attention.
• My Twitter or Facebook stream : Google Plus and Empire Avenue
• Search Engine  Results : Yelp, Spoke etc when searching for a business

If you are a professional trying to help a client with their campaign or promotion this could be a useful list for you. What other “ear to the ground” methods can you add to this list?

I will be speaking at the WWPR event on March 20^th. Please register here  http://events.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=zynwdtdab&oeidk=a07e5oeu8u3fbb5174e.