Facebook Open Graph Explained

You may heard the buzz around Open Graph and wonder what it's all about. You may have even read the Wikipedia entry for Open Graph but still don't know what it is. I'll do my best to explain it in a moment, but don't worry if you don't understand what it is. The more important questions are why you need it and how to use it, which we will also get into.

The Jargon

Open Graph is a type of Microdata (RDFa to be exact), which most notably has been implemented by Facebook. Microdata are basically special tags in web page code that can contribute to a "sematic web." Open Graph was designed to "socially graph" web pages, but it also can do things like provide Facebook-like functionality on sites and apps outside of Facebook.com.

Why It's Important

Since the dawn of the Internet, websites have primarily used HTML to display web pages in browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome. But HTML is formatting language, it tells the browser you have titles, paragraphs, images, but the browser and your computer have no idea what those titles, paragraphs and images are talking about.

You could be viewing a web page about a new Lexus but your computer doesn't know it's a page about a car. Open Graph and other Microdata technologies give meaning to webpages that other computers can understand.

Now with Open Graph, Facebook can put a web page into context, understand how to categorize it and how does the information relate to other entities: what kind of information is it, what is it talking about, who authored it, who else would Like it?

Now think about Facebook, the biggest social network in the world. If they know what a web page is about, they can show it to people who are interested in the same topics. If you have a website about football, wouldn't you rather Facebook show your articles to people who are sports fanatics instead of people who are knitting fanatics? Ah-ha!

Because of the famous "Like," Facebook knows what people are interested in, and with Open Graph, they can match web content to people's interests. Now you're beginning to see the power of Open Graph.

Open Graph goes beyond matching content to interests. It can identify how people relate to content. A video may have dozens of contributors, producers, actors, directors and more. Facebook can connect a video with everyone involved.

Think about someone who writes Kindle books, creates videos, and produces articles all over the web on several different sites. Open Graph can attach authors to their content no matter where it's hosted or shared, and connect that content to the author's fans.

Open Graph has detailed tags to help describe and catalog different types of content, video, audio and text, down to the individual roles of people collaborating on the piece of content. Where the content was produced and where people reside geographically. Most large and popular sites have been using Open Graphic for years now.

Why you need to use Open Graph:

Here's a summary of why you should integrate your site with Open Graph:

• Ensures your content shows up correctly in Facebook.


• It can help your content reach more people.


• Provides a personalized experience for visitors by recommending articles based on interest and showing which articles have been Like'd by friends.


• Can help you reach your target audience and demographic much more effectively.

Ever post an article from your website on Facebook, and the wrong image was posted?

This is an incredibly frustrating problem, especially when you use a posting service (like me) and you find the last dozen articles were posted with the wrong image or wrong description. This usually happens when the wrong tags are used, but sometimes it can be something else. I'll explain later how to avoid these problems.

The problem is without the right Open Graph tags, Facebook is left to guess what the information on the page is about, and they usually get it wrong.

With the proper tags, Facebook will understand what your content is, how it's organized and how it should be displayed within Facebook.

There are endless possibilities if search engines and computers can truly understand your site's content. There are rumors that Facebook will begin allowing people to add widgets from their favorite sites on their Timelines, and that this will only be possible with sites having Open Graph tags.

Google, Bing and Yahoo have teamed up to support a different set of Microdata published at schema.org. I have a hunch that very soon if Google is unsure what your site is about because you're not using rich snippets, they'll push it down in the search results in favor of sites that they understand and trust. Quote from Google:

Because we're always working to expand our functionality and improve the relevance and presentation of our search results, schema.org contains many new snippet types that Google may use in future applications.

You may not care about search results and get your traffic from other sources, but it doesn't end here. In the quote above "future applications" could mean a lot. Google and Facebook are continually working on ways to expand their reach and profits: new marketplaces, payment processing, messaging, advertising and more. In the future, without Microdata, your overall Internet presence could suffer.

And it even gets more intriguing: Google clearly states in Webmaster Central that it already recognizes Facebook Share coding for videos.

How to Implement Open Graph on Your Site

If you use WordPress it's easy. There are plugins in the WordPress repository that will insert the Open Graph tags automatically into your site's HTML markup. Here's an example of what some of these tags look like:



The official Facebook WordPress plugin is one place to start. WordPress SEO by Yoast is good. Jetpack from WordPress has gotten better this past year at implementing Open Graph tags. All these are free to use.

The three plugins I mentioned auto-populate the tags. But there are other plugins that let you manually add tags beyond the basics like title, description, image, author, etc. This type of implementation would be handy for video or music producers.

If you don't use WordPress then you'll have to manually add the HTML tags to your header either by using a web page editor or having your developer insert them for you. If you don't understand what I just said, consult with any web developer. A number of you reading this might be using Joomla or Drupal, which may have Open Graph plugins available like WordPress does.

Dealing with Open Graph Problems

If you use a plugin to add Open Graph tags to your site, it doesn't guarantee you won't have display problems when your articles are posted on Facebook. Here are a couple common Facebook posting problems and how to fix them.

Too small of an image

Your article needs to have an image at least 200 x 200 pixels or Facebook won't use it. Instead, they'll find a different image on your site big enough and use that, which can result in some lame looking Facebook posts that result in low click-throughs.

I've had problems with images that were either 200 pixels wide or tall. I assume whatever tool I used to measure my image wasn't accurate or my image was really 199.5 pixels on one side and I didn't know it. To be safe, make sure your images are much more than 200 pixels on any side.

Wrong description

Earlier I said if you don't have Open Graph tags to tell Facebook what your web page is about, it will guess and usually it's wrong. But sometimes a WordPress plugin will tag the wrong description, which will foul up your post when you share it on Facebook.

In my experience, this usually happens because of a plugin conflict or there are WordPress short codes in the content. If you can't fix the plugin conflict or depend on short codes, use the Excerpt field in the post editor in WordPress. Either copy the first few lines of your article into the Excerpt box, or write a custom description. Most Facebook Open Graph plugins will use the Excerpt for the description.

If you don't see the Excerpt field below the post editor, click Screen Options at the top left of the admin panel and check Excerpt. It should appear below the main post edit box.

Get to know the Facebook Debugger

If you're having problems with the way your posts are displayed in Facebook, and you have no idea what the problem is, try using the Facebook Open Graph Debugger:

https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

Enter the URL of the page you're having problems with and the debugger will identify any issues.

In the example above, the debugger tells me I have one image too small and it will chose the second image in my post instead.

If there is nothing wrong with your page the Response Code will show 200.

This tool can help identify problems in your Open Graph tags, which you may be able to fix yourself. If you have consistent problems with your tags you may need to try a different plugin or ask a developer to look at your site.

The Future of Open Graph and Microdata

We may be at the very earliest stages of an exciting new frontier with the semantic web. At some point it will become mainstream to have Open Graph and Microdata tags on web sites.

Those who embrace these technologies will have a head start on where the web is going. The rest will be scratching their heads wondering what just happened.

This was just an overview of Open Graph, if you have any questions about your website, please get in touch with me here or on Twitter.

Quick Social Media Cover Image Sizes

There is no shortage of services and independent designers who will create cover photos for your social accounts. They'll likely come up with something creative based on your input and feedback, and provide the correct sizes you need. All at a fair price.

But what if you just want something simple that will get your profiles done quickly so you can move on to more important activities?

This is often the case for me. I like to get new Pages up quickly so I can start posting content and growing the followers. I needed a table I could glance at and know what images I need and what their sizes should be. A barebones list of images and dimensions that can be used to guide cropping and resizing. I can always upgrade the cover photos later if I want. Plus I think it’s a good idea anyway to change cover images from time to time to keep the Page fresh.

So I came up with a social media profile and cover image size table below, which quickly gives me exactly what I need.

Profile images, or “avatars” as some social sites call them, are usually square. In the table I didn't specify maximum sizes for Facebook and Google+ profiles because I’m not sure what they are. I couldn't find anything in their support pages. Being curious, I uploaded some very large image files to each social network. No problem! Of course, I was asked to crop the images since they were so big, and then they were reduced further when saved.

The following image size information was compiled by reading the specs on each social network's support pages and reviewing advice posted by graphic designers. The dimensions are up to date at the time this article was posted. For best results use the largest sizes listed if you can. All image dimensions are in pixels, with width first followed by height.

Social Network	Profile Min	Profile Max	Cover Image Min	Cover Image Max	Background Image
Facebook	180 x 180	n/a	851 x 315
Twitter	240 x 240	500 x 500	520 x 260	1252 x 626	1600 x 900
Google+	250 x 250	n/a	480 x 270	2120 x 1192	1920 x 1080
LinkedIn	200 x 200	500 x 500	640 x 220
YouTube	200 x 200	1600 x 1600			2560 x 1440
Pinterest	165 x 165	600 x 600
Gravatar	80 x 80	420 x 420
Tumblr	64 x 64	n/a
Foursquare	128 x 128	100KB	860 x 130 (brand pages)

 

I like to use this table by looking up the social media accounts I need cover images for, and then start with the largest.

For example, according to the table the YouTube background is the largest image. But let’s say I just need to create cover images for a new Google+ Page and a Facebook Page. Since Google+ it’s the biggest of the two I need that's where I start. And because I started with the biggest image I need, I may be able to use the same cover and crop and resize it down to Facebook size. It’s all about being efficient.

However, some of you may want to use an image template instead that shows where the profile image and other content is placed over the cover image. That way the content can be accounted for and designed around.

The content can also be creatively merged into the design if you want, such as this classic example from the Ford Motor Company's Facebook Page:



Note how the profile image of the Mustang emblem on the car's grill was incorporated into the overall cover image design. If this is something you want to design into your images it’s helpful to have templates that show where other content is positioned on top of the cover image.

Here are some diagrams with downloadable Photoshop templates: http://www.siliconbeachtraining.co.uk/blog/social-media-cover-photo-templates/ This is one of the more up to date references I found.

The social networks seemingly frequent changing of cover sizes has been a source of frustration by many social media users (especially the ones who paid for custom designs). You get your YouTube channel or Facebook Page looking slick and then they go and change the sizes on you. And if you don’t update your Pages look outdated.

However, it seems like these sizes are stable now and may be around for a while. The trend over the years had been larger cover images, but how much bigger can they get? That’s why I think these sizes might be stable. But Facebook is the wildcard since their cover images are relatively small. Given they are the biggest and with the other networks chasing them, hopefully they won’t feel the need to make any "improvements" for a while. One can hope.

A Daily Plan For Social Media Growth

When I first starting using social media I wanted someone to give me a checklist, something I could complete every morning and not have to think about the rest of the day. I like routine and when I have a daily regiment I find I make daily progress. But after searching online for some time, I never found a social media daily plan or checklist from the experts. So I came up with my own checklist, and in the following article I take you through it step-by-step.

It may not be the best plan, or best plan for you, but it’s a starting point. Many business owners and online marketers use social media because that’s what you’re supposed to do these days, and lack a real plan they can stick to day-in, day-out to reach their goals.

This article is designed to give you a plan, one you can execute every day to reach your goals, even if you have a busy schedule.

It’s a flexible daily plan that you can (and should) tweak to meet your own business needs and goals, and is intended to be one part of your overall social media strategy. I hope you find it useful.

A Daily Plan For Social Media Growth http://t.co/gpE5MaYlmi @techiediy One of the greatest posts I have come across.

— Lance Wyllie (@LanceWyllie) August 22, 2013

Contents

1. Introduction and Goals


2. Going Big


3. The Plan


4. Phase I


5. Seeding Your Accounts


6. Groups, Pages and Automation


7. Phase II


8. Weekly Tasks


9. Tools


10. Phase III

YOUR GOALS

Without goals, you won’t be able to measure success and know if what you’re doing is worth the effort. You may not know why you are performing certain activities and become inconsistent. The following are a few basic examples, but you could certainly come up with many others:

• Networking, growing personal networks


• Serve customers and gather feedback


• Establish yourself as an expert or thought-leader in your niche


• Capture leads


• Drive traffic to your website, products

The daily plan detailed in this article is focused on growing your social networks, so that your social media accounts serve as a platform to reach any of the example goals, or those goals that have yet to be inspired. The larger your network, the easier it will be to network, get traffic, leads, and establish yourself as an expert.

For the remainder of this post, the main objective will be to grow your networks as quickly as possible with the least amount of effort, so that at any time you may pivot to any campaign or new goal that develops.

YOUR MODELS

I recommend having a second objective that will help you tweak your social media plan. Identify someone, a person or company, who is successful in your niche and is currently at a level in their business that you want to reach. If possible find more than one. These will serve as models to emulate.

Study your models. Determine how big their social networks are. Using tools like Quantcast and Alexa you can gauge how much traffic they are driving to their sites. Take note at what they are posting and see what gets the most Likes, Retweets and Google +1’s.

With some deep research, you may even be able to estimate how much money they’re earning online. Use this information to come up with targets for you to reach.
Your second objective should be to reach your target in X number of months. As your social media plan is in motion, you can adjust your activities as needed to meet the goal.

Next we go BIG...

HOW BIG?

Your first milestone in your social media journey should be to reach the level of someone who is already having success in your niche. However, your work doesn't have to end there. It’s the philosophy of this author that bigger is better when it comes to your own social networks.

You may hear a very different type of advice from the social media “gurus," who preach building quality networks by screening friends and followers. In my experience, the amount time it takes to “qualify” people I allow in my network does not justify the payoff. That’s just me.

There are many advantages to having social networking accounts with large followings. People (and advertisers) are attracted to big numbers. Even with so-called “low quality” networks (if there is such a thing), with large networks you’ll have more traffic, more joint-venture opportunities, and you’ll find it takes less effort to grow your followers and fans. Your networks will become real assets you can leverage.

The truth is that there is no right answer here, and until you find the answer for yourself, just grow. As you grow and measure your success, your goals will become clear and your strategy will become refined.

THE BIG FOUR

In our social media daily plan, we’re going to focus on the big four social-networking sites: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

There are two more sites you should have a presence on and use for traffic: YouTube and Pinterest.

YouTube is an extremely powerful tool for connecting with your audience and driving traffic. It’s not a part of our daily plan because it takes time to produce quality video content. However, I suggest you create video content and include a video marketing strategy as part of your overall social media plan.

I mention Pinterest because the site can deliver lots of traffic depending on your niche. It’s worth testing with your visual content to see if it can help meet your traffic and business goals.

THE BIG PICTURE

As mentioned earlier, the daily action plan is meant to be a portion of your overall social media strategy. The plan includes activities that will easily fit your schedule every day. I recommend allocating a few hours a week or more in addition to the daily plan for maximum results. It’s important to have consistent time each week to create content, perform research, measure results and other tasks.

Now, onto the Plan...

THE PLAN

The goal of this social media daily plan is to give you a set of activities that can realistically be performed every day to grow your following on the big four social networks.

These activities can be done in about 20 minutes a day on average. Some days they may take longer, perhaps 30 minutes, and on other days you might get through them in only 15 minutes.

It’s up to you if you want to complete tasks in the plan every day of the week, or Monday through Friday. I recommend at least committing to Monday through Friday, but for the fastest results, more is better.

No matter how busy you are, you should have 20 minutes in your day to zip through these tasks.

Think you don’t have 20 minutes? Time how long you spend reading emails in the morning. I was shocked to find that I was spending about 45 minutes every morning! And when looking closely at my inbox, I found that 70% to 80% of messages were unimportant. Most were offers, news, a few jokes, things that didn’t really necessitate my immediate attention. Since that analysis, I’ve changed my daily email habits. If you’re in the same boat, see if cutting the time in half in the morning gives you and extra 20 minutes.

There are also recommended weekly tasks that you may perform on one of your “off” days, or you may replace one of the days in your daily schedule. I recommend the former.

I encourage you to go beyond this plan, the more you do, the faster you’ll grow. Use this plan as a base minimum in your overall strategy. In other words, if your strategy is to do one hour of social media activities per day, there will be some days your schedule may not allow you to spend an hour, on these days you can fall back on this plan.

The Plan has two phases and an optional third phase:

Phase 1: Preparation and set up. During this phase, you’ll some light research and set up your social networking accounts, or clean up your existing accounts in preparation for the next phase. You will also “seed” your accounts with some base followers. We’ll also throw some automation tricks into the mix to maximize your time for other tasks.

Phase 2: Execution. After the set up phase, you’re ready to put the daily plan into action.

Phase 3 (optional): Maintenance. When you have reached your goals for growth, you may want to reduce your phase two activities and enter a maintenance mode that is less intense and allows time for new tasks. This phase is optional; you may continue with phase two activities as long as you like.

CONTENT

Based on models you’ve identified in your marketplace, you should have an idea of what type of posts gets the most Likes, Retweets and Google +1’s in your marketplace.

A mistake you may see others make is direct selling on most or all social media updates. While that strategy can work, it destroys your credibility and reputation. This strategy is usually used by people who don’t care about reputation and create lots of fake personas to make it work.

Social media is all about building relationships, not business transactions. People just don’t like to be sold to. Any attempt to sell directly on social media may harm your online presence. In a live situation, a customer would think of excuses and come up with a polite “no” to a sales pitch. But on social media it’s all too easy for customers to turn you off, all they have to do is to click the “unfollow” button, and you’re gone.

I like this example my friend came up with. Social media is much like dating. If a guy walks into a bar with the intention leaving with a new committed relationship, he’s going to walk out empty-handed. In dating, since the two parties don’t know each other very well, there’s a series of progressive steps that builds rapport before there’s any talk of commitment.

It’s the same in social media and sales in general. You need to woo and nurture and to gain respect. Keep this in mind as you decide on what to share with your network.

Be helpful and add value to your followers. Don’t share links only from your website. If you are an expert in your niche, then you probably pay close attention to industry news. Share new and helpful information you discover from other sites.

Humor is also very effective. These tasks don't always have to be serious, and you can have a lot of fun with your ‘work’ if you like. In every industry, every market, no matter what it is, there is a humorous side or a joke to be made. Even posting a funny picture that has nothing to do with your niche can go a long way to help you grow your following!

Sourcing Content

When it’s time to for my daily tasks I already have lots of great stuff lined up and ready to share. It’s all in my inbox. Subscribe to sites that have great content and let the news come to you. Set up Google Alerts on your target niche keywords and have them send to your email or your RSS reader.

Note: In the Automation section of this chapter, you’ll learn that you can automate some of this type of sharing to maximize your time for other tasks. However, it’s a good idea to monitor the news for things you can comment on in your sharing.

Share everything you touch. Not just your articles and videos, often your comments on one social site can be shared on other sites. When you update your LinkedIn status, share it on Twitter. When you leave a comment on a blog or on a YouTube video, share the article or video on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Twitter. Wherever you leave your mark, share, share, share!

TIP: Use the free Twylah ‘Power Tweet’ to share any place you visit online to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and others. To get the Power Tweet button, first sign up for Twylah (free), then search for the Power Tweet bookmarklet instructions.

Indirect Updates

Indirect updates can help build engagement but more importantly can help you get lots of Likes and +1’s. Indirect updates are posts that don’t necessary have anything to do with your niche. They can be humorous images, jokes, inspirational quotes. These get shared like crazy on Facebook and Google+ you should include it in your strategy.

Be on the lookout as you browse through the web or when people share interesting and humorous images or articles. If you see something funny, intriguing shocking, make a note to use it for your daily tasks. Look for content to share on Imgur and Reddit, these sites have an endless supply of hilarious pictures and stories.

Next: Phase I

PHASE 1: PREPERATION AND SET UP

RESEARCH

Phase 1 starts by identifying people you want to model and emulate in your niche. Take notes on topics and posts your models are sharing that are getting the most votes (Likes, Retweets, +1s) on each of the social networks.

Take a close look at tags they are using. These may be good keywords you’ll want to use in on your social account. See if the keywords in tags are being used in post titles and on their profiles. Take note of keywords that appear repeatedly, you may want to use these later in your own profile and posts.

To get the most from you keywords, you can run keywords you’ve discovered through the Google’s keyword tool: https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool. This tool will give you some sense of traffic volume these keywords receive. If they are getting lots of traffic, keep them. Ones that are not getting much traffic many not be worth using.

You can also use the tool to find new keywords that people are already searching for.

This keyword exercise is not an exact science but should give you a little insight into which keywords to focus on.

PROFILES

After your research, you may want to write out your bio ahead of time so you don’t have to come up with one on the fly as you fill in your profiles. Get your wording right and include some of your target keywords if you can. If you use Word or some other text editor, you can simply cut-and-paste your bio into each profile.

The next step is signing up on the big four social networking sites and completely filling in your profile. I assume many reading this already have accounts on these networks, if this is your case, you’ll need to go through your profile to make sure it’s complete.

Note: I recommend having multiple Twitter accounts. Have at least one Twitter account for each of your websites, and one account for your own public persona.

Having complete and professional profiles is a critical; you will be judged by your profiles.

Here are some tips to having optimized and effective profiles:

• Profile Picture - Add a clear picture of yourself, preferably a head shot. It doesn’t have to be a professional shot, but realize that you’ll be instantly judged by your picture.


• Professional Headline/Description - Try to include your targeted keywords in your title and summary. Don’t force your keywords, make sure your headlines and description look natural.
  
  
  
  • On Facebook, you may use the Employers fields for your headline. This appears at the top of your profile and anywhere when people hover over your name.
  
  
  • On LinkedIn, this appears similar to the description you have indicated in your Current Position and appears below your name.
  
  
  • On Twitter, this is your Bio and appears next to your profile picture.
  
  
  • On Google+, this is your Introduction and appears on your profile and in Google Search results.
  
  
  
  


• Links - Each of the big four social networks allows you to have links on your profile. Use them! Link to your primary websites, Facebook and Google+ Pages and your social media profiles.


• On Facebook, be sure to include the http:// on your links to make them clickable.

Next: Seeding Your Accounts

SEEDING YOUR ACCOUNTS

One of the problems with social media is that it can be tough to get followers when you’re just starting out. When you have a low number of followers, circles, connections, Likes, etc., it tells people (perhaps unfairly), two things about you:

• you’re not popular; and


• I’m not going to grow my own network much by connecting you.

These are more reasons to grow your followers as much as you possibly can: a large following is a form of “social proof” to people who don’t know you. Another important reason is that your following becomes an asset that people will want a piece of, and one you can leverage.

It’s much, much easier to grow your social accounts when you have 1,000 connections compared to 10. But how do you make the leap from 10 to 1,000? Here are some ninja tools and tricks that will get you there quickly:

Import Your Contacts

Once you've cleaned your profiles, start seeding your social accounts using your email contacts. Add your Skype, MSN, Yahoo and Gmail contacts to each of your social network accounts.

Note: To add new contacts to Google+, you must add them to your Gmail contacts first. Then you can circle people in your Gmail contact list.
TIP: Import your Facebook friends into Yahoo Mail. If you don’t have a Yahoo Mail account sign up for one for free, it’s worth having for this tip. Then add your Yahoo contacts again to Twitter, Google+ (via Gmail) and LinkedIn. You’re sure to add a few extra contacts to each of these social networks.

OpenNetworker

This site can literally help you add thousands of connections on LinkedIn. Everyone who I’ve introduced to this site has added one to two thousand new connections in just a week or two! Sign up for a free account and then download the available lists of contacts. These are people who want to network and want to be added to your social accounts. Import these email addresses into each of your social networking accounts.

Note: On Facebook, identify yourself as an OpenNetworker, otherwise you may get complains and Facebook may restrict or even ban your account.

OpenNetworker has an optional paid subscription for $50 USD a year that allows you to add your contact information to the download lists (free accounts can only download the lists). For only $50 I feel it’s worth the cost as you’ll get friend new requests every week. One person I referred to this site added about 4,000 connections on LinkedIn alone in just a few months.

Free or paid, you may sign up here: OpenNetworker

Twiends

UPDATE: Tweinds has undergone a number of major changes during August 2013. They removed the auto-follow back feature, which was in response to a change in the Twitter TOS. At this time, they also do not give free seeds, including if you have a PAID SUBSCRIPTION. It's hard to fault them for removing the auto-follow feature, but the timing was terrible for taking away free seeds. Not giving free seeds to VIP's (paid subscribers) also lessens the value of subscriptions.

I'm leaving this part of the article unabridged in case Twiends brings back free seeds. You can still use Twiends to gain followers, but without auto-follow and free seeds it will be slower. If you are interested in learning about an advanced tool I use to grow my followers, please get in touch with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ or Facebook.

Twiends is a free online service for Twitter that allows you to earn credits called “seeds” that you can exchange for followers. It gives people an incentive to follow regardless of your follower ratio.

So you follow people, build up your seeds, and other people follow to earn seeds from you. If it doesn't make sense, just take it from me, it works extremely well in growing followers fast!

After signing up, I recommend you head over to the setting's page and adjust them to be more conservative. This will help minimize unfollows from people who are just out to get seeds and not really interested with connecting with you on Twitter.

This last setting is critical in my view. When you’re getting follows on seeds you’ve built up, you should auto-follow those people back. You automatically earn more seeds since most people on Twiends offer them too.

The process of growing your Twitter accounts can be automated by buying seeds. They have some paid packages for buying seeds. You can walk away, and your account will grow automatically until you run out of seeds!

Now, if you shop similar services, Twiends can seem expensive. You can buy followers, which is another option for much cheaper than this. However, there are risks when you do that, you can get a lot unfollows and inactive accounts following you. Furthermore, it’s against Twitter’s terms of services to outright buy followers.

There are also a number of sites like Twiends that sell seeds cheaper. One is YouLikeHits.com which I’ve used before and is not bad. I've found Twiends to give me the best-quality followers. Also, they have some features I like and return seeds automatically if you've spent them on bad accounts.

Personally, I’ve had great results buying seeds from Twiends and even the smallest package can deliver 2,000 to 3,000 new followers if you have auto-follow turned on.

Facebook Page Likes and Google+ Page +1s

After a few days have passed since importing your contacts into Facebook and Google+, you may start soliciting Likes and +1s. You may want to wait a little longer than a few days to do this step and give your contacts more time to respond to your friend requests.

Once you've gone through these steps you should have a good base network to start with.

Next up: Groups, Pages and Automation...

GROUPS

Facebook and LinkedIn groups are a powerful way to get more connects, engage with your target audience and even get traffic directly to your website from posting in groups.

Find and join LinkedIn and Facebook groups in your niche. Join as many as you can, there’s no commitment or expectation after joining a group. As a member, these groups will be available to you for posting.

There is a limit on LinkedIn to 50 groups you can belong to simultaneously, but that should be enough for most people. On Facebook, the limit is 300.
I also suggest you start your own groups you control. Invite all your connections and friends to join your groups.

TIP: On your own groups, you can add an RSS from your site, so that your articles will post automatically to the LinkedIn group. Not only will your posts show in the group page for members to see, but your posts will also show up in the daily digest that gets emailed directly to members. It’s free email traffic, which is some of the most targeted traffic you can have. This is a very powerful LinkedIn feature that you should take full advantage of.

FACEBOOK PAGES AND GOOGLE+ PAGES

Both Facebook and Google+ give you the option of using each of the networks as your Page. This means when you Like or +1 something, it shows as coming from your Page instead of your personal account.

This is important in growing your Page Likes and +1. As you’ll see in the daily tasks, you will Like and +1 posts and comments as your Page to create interest for your Page.

To use each network as your Page, visit your Page and select the option under Edit Page on Facebook, and on Google+, use the ‘Switch to this page’ button.

Using Facebook and Google+ as your Page, browse through other people’s Pages in your niche and begin Liking, circling and +1ing them. This may get you some Likes and +1s and will send updates to your newsfeeds for easy discussion monitoring later.

AUTOMATION

To maximize your 20 minutes a day schedule, you can leverage some automation techniques to perform some sharing activates for you.

Use free online services such as Dlvr.it or Twitterfeed to auto post to your Twitter and Linked accounts and your Facebook Page from your RSS feed. Use Hootsuite to do the same for your Google+ Page.

Use these services for status update posts to LinkenIn, Twitter and your Facebook Page.

Here’s basically how auto-posting with these services works:

1. Copy an RSS feed from your site.


2. Add these feeds to an RSS auto-poster, like Twitterfeed.


3. Add your social accounts and setup Twitterfeed to post new items on your behalf.

How to use these services is beyond the scope of this article, but there are plenty of free and paid tutorials available to help you get started. Here are few auto-posting tips:

Your own website or blog is great for auto-posting. As soon as you publish a new article it will appear on the big four social sites. You can also set up auto-posted updates on your comments if your site has an RSS feed for them (like WordPress).

Find sites in your niche that produce quality content and use a few of these for auto-posting (more on this in the Content section).

Twitter followers can tolerate lots of updates; Facebook fan usually can’t. You can set up a feed to post as frequently as every 30 minutes for Twitter and you’re sure to get more followers every day. If you did the same with Facebook, you’d likely lose followers. LinkedIn is somewhere in between.
In other words, this strategy is great for Twitter but be careful with Facebook. Set up feeds to post at different frequencies for each social network (which can be set up on both services I mentioned).

When it comes to automation, this is just the tip of the iceberg. As you get comfortable with the technology, you can explore other automation tools and opportunities. Some of the 20-minute-a-day tasks can also be automated but only with paid tools. This is also an option.

If you spend about 20 minutes a day, this phase may take a week or less. This is the heavy lifting of the plan, from here on its easy street.

Next: Phase II...

PHASE 2: DAILY TASKS

The following daily tasks are some of the most effective social media activities you can do in a short timeframe. Of course, you can modify the tasks to fit your needs. Either way, take this opportunity to use a checklist that will provide daily direction and focus.

If you want to outsource your daily social media activities, this gives you a solid task list you can easily assign to a staff member.

Missing from these tasks is direct posting updates to your Facebook Page, Twitter and LinkenIn accounts. That’s because I recommend Dlvr.it, Twitterfeed or any other RSS posting service for these tasks. If you don’t want to use an RSS service for auto-posting, you may add posting updates to your daily plan.

Tasks to grow your audience:

1. Respond to any new comments on your website, LinkenIn posts, Facebook and Google+ Pages, Twitter retweets and mentions. Thank everyone and Like, +1, the original comment, and retweet Twitter mentions and retweets with a ‘thank you. ‘


2. Respond to all open friend requests, connection invitations, follow back new followers and circle everyone who has circled you since the previous day.


3. Sign in to Twiends and then sign out for each of your Twitter accounts. You’ll get 10 bonus seeds and if you have auto-follow turned on, that could mean 10 to 20 followers for each of your accounts every day you do this task.


4. Make at least one new post, or one new comment, in at least one LinkedIn and one Facebook Group.
   
   
   
   1. Tweet your posts using the built-in Tweet button (LinkedIn).
   
   
   2. Like and +1 the entire discussion for more exposure (LinkedIn).
   
   
   3. Like other people’s comments and post a response.
   
   
   
   


5. In Facebook, switch to using Facebook as your Page (see FACEBOOK PAGES AND GOOGLE+ PAGES). Like at least one comment on 20 to 30 Pages in your niche. (This sounds like a lot but it will only take a couple minutes.)


6. Make at least one new post each on your Google+ personal stream and your Google+ Page (the latter can be automated with RSS and Hootsuite).


7. Switch to using Google+ as your Page, then circle 20 to 30 (or any number you’re comfortable with). Find people in your niche to circle who have a strong following.


8. Make an indirect update (e.g., a funny or inspirational picture) to your Facebook and Google+ Page.

If you have time remaining…

9. Using Facebook as a Page, leave a few new comments or respond to someone else’s comment on other Pages.


10. Circle new people on Google+ using your personal page.


11. Answer one question in LinkedIn Answers.

When should you perform these tasks? There have been studies that show the best times to post for maximum views and engagement is the following (US Eastern Times):

1. 7 AM


2. 5 PM


3. 11 PM

It’s for this reason that I like to do my daily tasks first thing in the morning, and on some days, I repeat the tasks in the evening before I shut down my computer. Evenings are good because people are home from work and school.

Of course, this may vary depending on your own networks and where most of them live, when they like to be online, etc. A great tool to use is Crowdbooster, which will analyze your posts and your network, and recommend posting times for maximum effectiveness.

Next: Weekly Tasks...

Phase II: Weekly Tasks

In addition to your daily activities, you need one day each week for tasks that are not needed every day and for a little housekeeping.

Getting More Facebook Page Likes and Google+ Page +1s

To grow your Facebook Page Likes and Google+ Page +1s, there are several online groups and forums you can join that offer ‘Like swaps’: you Like my Page and I’ll Like yours. On LinkedIn, there are numerous groups you may join and add your Facebook Page, Google+ Page and Twitter links. If you are using OpenNetworker (see Seeding Your Accounts), chances are that you’ll be invited to many of these groups.

Join a few of these groups and add your links if your daily Facebook Page and Google+ Page growth is slow.

You may also invite new friends added to your accounts during the week to Like and +1 your Pages.

Housekeeping

You need to purge people who are no longer following you on Twitter and Google+. If your number of followers is disproportionally lower than the number of people you follow, that could send a red flag to potential followers. Twitter will also limit how many people you can add per day. If people see you follow a lot of people but few people are following in return, they are going to wonder why people are not following you back and may assume you’re a spammer or just very unpopular.

To maintain a balance you need to purge some of the people you follow who are not following you back. You also should give people a few days to follow you back. On Twitter, three days is enough, on Google you might go an entire week before you uncircle someone.

Here are a few free tools that will help you keep your accounts balanced:

Twitter: JustUnfollow.com (limited to 50 unfollows per day) or ManageFitter.com (limited to 100 unfollows per day)

Google+: Uncircle Uncirclers+ Chrome extension (doesn’t work for Google+ Pages –must do manually)

Unfollow starting with the people you’ve followed the longest, and limit your unfollowing to just portion of your unfollowers. That way, you’re giving the people you’ve followed recently a chance to follow you back. Make sense? This is hard to articliate, but when you start using these tools, I’m sure it will make much more sense.

Also on Twitter, if you don’t follow people back in a timely manner, they’ll think you’re not interested and quickly unfollow you. So it’s important to stay on top of new followers.

Keep in mind there are paid tools to help manage your social accounts. Tools that auto-follow and auto-unfollow are great because your Twitter accounts can grow so fast that they can be hard to manually keep current.

Note: Automated unfollowing is against Twitter’s terms of service, so use tools that have this feature at your own risk.

Next: Tools....

Phase II: Tools

There are numerous tools, both paid and free, that can help manage your social media activities. These tools range on the low end from making scheduled posts, to helping discover new people to follow, to higher-end products that can nearly automation you’re entire social media strategy.

I recommend you perform your daily tasks manually at least for a few weeks so you can properly judge how these tools work and what they actually do. The worst thing you can do is buy a tool based on hype then discover that there are free tools that do the same things.

One tool I strongly suggest you start using right now is your phone. By using social media apps on your smartphone, you can perform many of your daily tasks whenever you have idle time, such as waiting in line at the bank or at the doctor’s office. This is a great way to turn downtime into highly productive social engagement.

As you’re out running errands, you can stay following back new followers, accept friend requests, respond to comments, and even take interesting pictures for indirect updates. This will free up your time reserved for your daily tasks and allow you to devote more time for heavy lifting activities, which have more pay off.

Install the official apps for Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Twitter. All are free. In addition, install the official Pinterest app and any other apps that help you share content.

Tracking

You’ll need to keep track of your activities to evaluate their effectiveness. This information can be used to make any necessary adjustments to your tasks or schedule.

In the beginning, your goal may be to grow your networks. There are certain tasks that take longer than others, it’s important to know how much are these tasks contributing to your growth. This may be hard to gauge, if you suspect an activity is inefficient, give a break for a week and see if your growth rate is affected.

If your goal is to drive traffic to a website, get leads or make sales, those metrics may be easier to measure. Google Analytics can tell you how much traffic is coming from each of the social networks. You can also create campaigns in Google Analytics to measure leads and sales or use click-tracking software.
Facebook and Google have analytics to show Page engagement and which posts are getting the most views.
For Twitter, pay attention to what type of posts are being Retweeted and Favorited.

If you are auto-posting with Dlvr.it (see Automation) you’ll get free analytics that will report how many clicks each of your post received. This is extremely valuable information that can steer you in making posts that bring maximum results. Twitterfeed also offers some free stats, but they are not as robust as Dlvr.it.
Take note of patterns in what type of content your networks are responding to. Use this data to give them more of what they like.

Add your social accounts to Klout. Klout will analyze your social activity and calculate a “social credit score," and indicator of your reach and engagement. Klout can also be used to grow your networks. You can give people ‘K’s, which are Klout votes in categories of expertise. Use your Ks to reach out to people who have large followings to get their attention and follow you. If you have solid social accounts (optimized profiles, balanced following), you have a good chance of getting a followed by a social media leader when you hand out Ks.

The previously mentioned Crowdbooster can provide you with the best times to post to reach those already in your networks. Recommendations are based on analytics of your posting, not on surveys or studies. It’s based on hard data you can take action on.

Next up: Phase III...

PHASE 3: MAINTENANCE

This is an optional phase. If you’re comfortable with your daily social pace, then there’s no reason to change what you’re doing. I encourage you to keep it up!

However, if you’ve been pushing yourself to reach a level of growth, and you’ve reached your objective, then you may want to reduce the intensity. Adjust your daily tasks to focus only on the activities that use the least amount of time and provide continued engagement and some growth.

Beyond the Plan

The intention of this article was to provide you with a foundational plan to follow and execute every day. I continuously come across people using social media but not getting anywhere, because they don’t know where they are going. By now I hope you know exactly where you’re headed.

Of course, you can be much more aggressive with your social media activities than what was proposed in this article.



For example, you can grow your Twitter account faster by following 100-200 new people a day, same with Google+. This was not recommended in the daily plan because it causes two problems with new and smaller accounts:

• When people see a disproportionate amount of followers compared to followed, they assume that you are not popular or a spammer, and thus many will not want to follow you back.


• Twitter will restrict your account from following new people when your ratio of followed to followers reaches about 10%. (The ratio is not published, but in my experience, it seems to be about 10%.)

Once you reach enough followers, say 1,000, you can start to get more aggressive in growing your following. Keep in mind that you have to manage your ratio and use tools such as JustUnfollow.com or ManageFitter.com to purge non-followers each week (or every day if necessary).

As mentioned earlier, there are a number of paid services and very sophisticated tools that can accelerate your growth and automate your activity. This might be the next level in your business, or outsourcing your tasks to VAs.

Add more social posting to your plan. Post your article images to Pinterest if you haven’t already started. Create YouTube videos. Experiment with StumbleUpon, Reddit. These are all social sites that have brought in a ton of traffic for my sites.

You now have a plan, and in executing these tasks everyday you’ll gain an intimate knowledge of social media and your audience. Soon you’ll know exactly what you need to do next to achieve greater goals for your business using social media.

Bad Advice

The Internet is an extraordinary resource. Any subject you want to know about or understand is right at your fingertips. We can rely on the miracle that is the Internet for all of our informational needs.

Or can we?

More and more I’m seeing bad advice given to others in forums and in online groups. And thanks to social media, which makes it so easy to have public conversations, the problem is getting worse.

Here are some recent examples:

From a popular Facebook group: “Just download pictures from Google Images and you’ll be fine.” -A response to someone asking where they can legally get free images for their site. This is terrible advice that could get you into legal trouble with image owners.

From “A-list” blogs: “Never use pop-ups on your site…” –I’ve seen this one stressed by several “expert” bloggers. Though annoying to some (I don’t care for them either), pop-ups can increase conversions. To say “never” is awful advice that could cost you sales. Pop-ups should at least be tested if you’re thinking of using them.

Posted on LinkedIn: “WordPress is bad for business…” –I’m not going to get into this one, that’s just a big bowl of wrong right there.

Needless to say, you should not trust information you find on the Internet. “Well, duh!” you might be saying. But judging by the amount of bogus “interesting facts” forwarded to my inbox, and poor advice perpetuated by Facebook Likes, I really don’t think people have a clue that the “helpful” information they are passing around is, in reality, garbage.

So what to do about this problem? Here are a couple tips:

1. Question all online content, unless it’s from a trusted source that consistently provides accurate information. How to know if info is accurate to begin with? Read the next tip.


2. If you want to verify something as fact, you can crosscheck the info with other sources, or if it’s how to do something, you can test to see if it works.

It might seem like a pain having to crosscheck or test information. And it can be. But here’s what makes it worthwhile: by taking time to double-check a fact or see if a tip really works, you’ll discover the truth.

Armed with truthful information, now YOU become a trusted source. An expert.

You are the expert others will rely on for trusted information. And who do people do business with? Those they Know, Like and TRUST.

We’re heading into an era where online presence, that’s websites and people, are measured by trust. Online trust is behind the whole “content curation” trend. Google even has a “TrustRank” they assign to websites.

Without trust, it’s going to be hard to be successful online. And as time goes on, it’s just going to get tougher to make it online without that trust. By simply protecting yourself from bad information, you can become an expert and start building that foundation of trust that’s going to be critical for success in tomorrow’s online world.

Klout New Changes Show Strong Facebook Leanings

Klout begins roll out of new rating methods and it is being welcomed by many.

Today, Klout has started to roll out some of the new changes to their site along with new methods for calculating your influence. And that is exactly what Klout is all about. The changes are being done to better determine what your "real world influence" actually is and they are doing this by expanding the things they are looking at. That will initially result in some changes to your existing Klout score with many people seeing an increase in their number. And with anything like this, there will be those who see a decrease in their number. Those things just happen.

They have made changes which they are talking about on the Klout Blog with the most important changes of all being increased accuracy. With that change, they are providing more details about what they are collecting without really letting you know how they do any calculations to arrive at scores. Of note, Facebook is the first item in the blog describing the changes. If you have looked at your Klout score in the past, Twitter has been the first item being displayed on your score. More on that a little later.

Many prominent sources are giving positive reviews of the changes. Forbes is calling this a change we can believe in. This from Anthony Wing Kosner who has been critical of Klout's scoring system. In making the changes, they have expanded the number of variables they are looking at from 100 to 400. And with that, they are placing more emphasis on Facebook and LinkedIn items which were not part of the calculations. As an example, your LinkedIn job title will enter into the number they are assigning. That is to encourage you to link your LinkedIn account to Klout.

All of these changes should make everyone feel like they are looking at their social influence and not put you on the defensive. And with these changes, it is hoped that Klout can move further into the mainstream which they have been struggling to do. And part of that is the emphasis on Facebook and LinkedIn.


If you have looked at the site over the past few months, you will have noticed that they are pushing people to connect to Facebook and to "Invite" all your Facebook friends. They are adding to that by offering VIP access if you sign up 10 Facebook friends. In some respects it seems to show that they are trying to grow Facebook connections in advance of the complete roll out of the changes. With the emphasis on Facebook, it does appear to make sense, but at the same time appears to be putting a lot focus on that connection.

Given the huge growth of Facebook, it offers huge potential to Klout to add people to their rolls. Once they have your connection to Facebook, there is nothing to stop them from adding to your wall as so many others currently do. Some people are reporting multiple Klout requests on their Facebook page, but when they go to Klout they are not seeing anything. These are really requests from people for you to join Klout. Not exactly what you want to see in Facebook.

With any change comes controversy and it is starting because of the focus on Facebook. There are growing concerns about the information Klout is pulling from Facebook and putting into Klout. People who do not have a Klout account have found that some of their information from Facebook is showing up in Klout. This is starting to sound like earlier days with Facebook where there were privacy issues being reported. If Klout is not careful, they may get caught up in that as well.

With the changes, you can expect Klout to continue to encourage you to connect to all your accounts so that Klout can harvest information to determine Klout score. Just be aware that you will be exposing information you may not want out there.

Facebook Drops Off Top 25 Best Places To Work

From 7th in 2011 to no longer being in the top 25 is a surprise.

In the past few years, Facebook has been in the news almost nonstop from things such as privacy issues to their IPO. And since the IPO, they have been in the news because of the downward trending of their stock prices. It seems that because of the value going down, all those people in the company who were expecting big paydays are now not going to be getting them. Last year, Facebook was the place to work. This year, Facebook is not even showing up it the top 25 list of best places to work.

The list is created annually and being reported by CNet for 2012. It does contain a variety of companies in the list and only 12 of the top 25 are technology related companies. LinkedIn and Rackspace are in the top 25, but Facebook is no where to be found. And that is a radical turn around for them given their rapid rise in the past few years.

How quickly they fall from popularity. One of the reasons for the change may be departures of executives to move to other technology companies. That creates an uncertain work environment for employees. Since this survey is supposed to identify the best companies who balance work and personal life, it makes you ask where did Facebook go wrong? And how did they do it so quickly?

This is one of many lists which are put out showing the best places to work in the US and it will be interesting to see what some of the other Best Places to work lists come out with for ranking Facebook in the Best Places To Work.

Facebook Popularity Declines As Google+ is More Liked

Has Facebook hit its peak here in the US?

It seems that the recent news regarding Facebook is that it is not "liked" as much as Google+. And that is the result from a American Consumer Satisfaction Index survey which has released their results today. And those results are creating quite a stir because of the improvement of Google+ and the decline of Facebook. It may well be that Facebook has become way too saturated here in the US with just about everyone having a Facebook page. And those pages are not as well received as they once were because of the recent changes for Timeline and the increasing of advertising.

It seems that everyone one has a Facebook page and that includes your parents and more than likely your grandparents, depending on your age. As a result, Facebook has tried to become all things to all people. And that is just not possible to achieve. In the survey results from ACSI show rankings for those in the Social Media area with some very startling results. This is based on questions to gauge user satisfaction with the various social media sites. The biggest one is just how far down the chart Facebook has moved to the bottom for those who were measured in the most recent results. As an example, MySpace is no longer being measured. So Facebook came in at the bottom at 61 which is 5 points lower than the score a year ago. Seems there is a trend playing out here for user satisfaction.

Above Facebook is LinkedtIn at 63. At the top of the scale is Google+ and Wikipedia, both at 78 points to represent the user satisfaction levels. Given that Google+ has not been out yet a year, they have grabbed people's attention for their interface and the survey shows that. When Google+ came out, there was a lot of discussion about how they were going to do. And when the growth was not there, some wrote them off. But, Google wanted Google+ to be something different and it does not want to be like Facebook. Which this does prove out.

Facebook has had problems for the past few years with privacy, or the lack thereof. They seemed to be in the news because they were revealing too much information about people when they should not have. Then there were the changes to the interface, most notably Timeline. Users have not been as happy as they should and this recent survey results show that to be the case. I have been observing that the number of posts that I am seeing from people has dramatically dropped of. This could be because everyone is tightening things down that much more or they are just not adding wall posts like they used to.

And competition from the likes of Pinterest at 69 does not help. It seems that more folks are posting pictures over there than at Facebook. Pinterest has a clean interface along with Google+. Facebook has cluttered up the interface with advertising trying to increase revenue and the screens are not as nice as they once were. Google+ has continued the Google idea of clean and uncluttered screens. As long as Facebook continues to add things to the screens, they will continue to remain at the bottom.

Another item in the survey which Facebook took a hit for and Google+ got points is the mobile interface. Facebook continues to struggle with their mobile interface and if they cannot get that corrected, Google+ will continue to be the beneficiary in the user satisfaction surveys. For now, Google+ seems to be doing all the right things.

Facebook has challenges ahead of them here in the US and around the world. Recent information has Facebook seeing declines in users in the US (1.1%) and in a number of other countries. With this kind of news, they may see more of that as people look to other interests because of the user satisfaction survey.

And then there is the price of their stock........

Does Instagram Purchase Help Facebook's Bottom Line?

Instagram has not made any money when Facebook bought them, so how will it add to profits?

 
With the purchase of a large and growing following of Instagram, it makes one wonder what the strategy is for Facebook. Given that Facebook is very close to going public with their IPO, what are they considering to do with Instagram so that it can add to the bottom line of the company? Up until this point, Instagram has not made any money and the reported numbers continue to grow. While it may be difficult to believe some of the user numbers being reported by Facebook and Instagram, it is obvious they are big. Instagram reported their new Android app had 5 million downloads in the first 6 days making them ever more successful. And yet they have no revenue they can report on.

There seems to be a history of past purchases by companies who have invested large amounts of cash to acquire a photo sharing site. You can think of Google and the purchase of Picasa back in 2004. There is Yahoo and their purchase of Flickr back in 2005. Neither of these can be considered as purchases which added significantly to the bottom line. But, these are web based solutions and that is where the difference lies. Instagram is a mobile app which has deep roots in smart phone usage. The web based interface offers one very little information as to its real value.

And that may be the primary reason for Facebook to buy Instagram. Facebook already has a large following of people who post pictures on their Facebook page. But the mobile aspect of activities has been lacking and this may be exactly what they need. Instagram already has hooks into Facebook, so the purchase is not going to change anything immediately. But again, we have to go back to the question of whether Instagram is going to help the bottom line?

The best answer I can give is not exactly. It is not going to have a direct link between monetizing the product and adding revenue to Facebook. What this will do for them is deal with some of the Facebook limitations which other social media sites have been very good at. As an example, Pinterest has gained a lot of interest as a new social networking site through the use of pictures. These shared pictures has moved Pinterest up in prominence and is currently being ranked as the 3rd most popular social networking site in the US. Only Facebook and Twitter rank higher.

This may be one of the primary reasons for Facebook to buy the company to fill in some of the areas where they are lacking or less than successful with what they are currently doing. The whole idea of using pictures as a medium of communications has taken off and looks like it will do nothing but continue to grow. While Instagram is more of a photo sharing site, moving it to Facebook to use its features making it similar to what Pinterest is doing would not be that difficult.

There are a number of possible things Facebook can do with Intagram as the medium moves more from text based to images being posted. It would seem the old adage of "a picture is worth a thousand words" may really apply to the true value that Instagram brings to Facebook.

Will Instagram Remain Independent Or Within The Walled Garden?

With the $1 Billion purchase, will it remain free or be caged?

The really big news this week is the purchase of Instagram by Facebook for what could be considered a huge premium. That is because the revenue being posted by the company is non-existent and brings back memories of when Google purchased YouTube. But that was a long time ago and much has changed in this Web World that we all belong to. The numbers for Instagram have been what one would consider to be off the charts. With the launch of their Android app, they achieved 5 million downloads in 6 days, which is big numbers. All from company which has no profits to show.

Instagram is enjoying the biggest week in its existence. The company, already riding high on its iOS success, launched its Android app and captured 1 million downloads in its first day and unless you live under a rock, you will know that yesterday, Facebook came in and bought the company for a cool $1 billion.

Will Instragam Remain Independent As Microsoft Did With Skype?

This is the big question. Facebook does not have a history of purchasing companies and then leaving them alone. They do the exact opposite and integrate all the functionality and features inside their walled garden. This requires you to be a "guest" of Facebook and log on to gain access. This is the more likely situation which we can expect to see on the purchase. In the Blog post from Mark Zuckerberg, there are no guarantees being made with what the future may hold for the extremely popular service.

For years, we've focused on building the best experience for sharing photos with your friends and family. Now, we'll be able to work even more closely with the Instagram team to also offer the best experiences for sharing beautiful mobile photos with people based on your interests.

Facebook has spent a lot of time and effort for sharing photos and with the Instagram team, they are going to be offering even better experiences by further integrating those features into Facebook. Instagram as it stands today may not go away, but Facebook is going to get the lion's share of the quality improvements. There is nothing in the blog which clearly states that Instagram has a long term future or not. If other sites start leveraging Instagram for their use, Facebook is going to be quick to stop that from happening. And with that, Instagram as we now it today may go away.

This large purchase of a company is a strange one as Facebook is on the verge of their IPO in the next few weeks and since there is no revenue for Instagram, Facebook will not get immediate benefits from the purchase. As a result, this has caused some to question whether there is a Tech Bubble here and the future implications are that is is one. The picture industry is still recovering with the bankruptcy of Kodak and they were a long established company. Instagram is a very young company which is still exceeding expenses over revenues and it does not look like that will be changing in the immediate future.

Given that YouTube has been a heavy use with computers and tablets, Instagram is a completely different model. Its best usage is with a smart phone and there in it is much different than YouTube and make the comparisons far different. Assuming that Instagram remains as highly popular as it currently is, the bigger question is what is Facebook going to do with it remains as an unknown. Given that the primary focus of Instagram is for mobile devices, it could be one area which Facebook wants to improve their processes on. Time will tell as to exactly what Facebook has in store for this most recent acquisition.

Given past history with Facebook and their walled garden mind set, it is more than likely Instagram for the future will be included inside of Facebook. What do you think?

Girls Around Me - Why Is Everyone So Surprised?

With the revelation of the "Girls Around Me" app and the open API for Foursquare, it seems that many are up in arms about what has been shown by iFree as a "stalking" of women. While there may be safety concerns which are legitimate ones being raised, the bigger issue here is one of privacy on the web. Or to put it another what, the lack of concern about providing details about an individual or their activities. The privacy concerns of a few are raising major concerns about personal information, such as when Facebook lets personal details leak out. While I agree that we need to be very concerned about what can be found about us as individuals on the web, I am part of a minority. Most are not concerned about the information that they put up and provides information about them. It seems that a large group of people is very surprised by what they are seeing by the "Girls Around Me" app.

If you are putting your personal movements on the web, why are you surprised someone is reporting on it?

While iFree has defended their app, it has been shutdown by Foursquare for a violation of their policies. While this very specific situation may be correct to be stopped, there is a much bigger issue at hand which most just seem to ignore in their daily lives. That is the willingness to provide details on the web that they would not make public to the world around them. Facebook has been a tremendous example of how willing people are to reveal information about themselves to friends as to what they are doing. If they "Friend" a lot of people, then everyone knows what they are doing and where they are going. Much of this is public as most do not take the time to truly lock down their Facebook accounts the way that they should.



Then you add in the Foursquare app that so many are willing to "check in" to show where they are at and you have the opportunity for others to gather information. This is exactly what iFree has done. They have aggregated information from Foursquare and Facebook to show who you are and where you are at. While their app focused on the female population, this kind of aggregation could be done on just about anyone. It just takes some coding and effort to make this happen.

Do you think that the government is not doing the same thing?

You bet they are. There is nothing to stop them from using readily available information such as Foursquare and Facebook to gather information about you and where you are. It is becoming all to easy for that to happen and the population at large is more than willing to add information about their daily activities to feed the web. Facebook information has been talked about for years and the most recent issue is employers asking for Facebook passwords in interviews or on the job. But the bigger problem is that everyone is more than willing to reveal almost anything about themselves on the web.

The big attraction on Foursquare is to get badges and so many participate in it. There is also twitter will you get play by play information from so many. You combine the two and you have too much information. Many have tied the two together which creates a dangerous combination. They have set things up so that when they check in, it Tweets about where they currently are. Tweets are generally available and so if someone wanted to track you, it would become very easy. You would not need an app to do that, only "follow" the person who checks in and tweets about it. Jealous partners would know exactly where you are at.

Even worse are those who might be stalking as talked about earlier. It is getting much easier for those activities. Then there is the aspect of someone burglarizing your home while you are out because you tell everyone where you are at. Even if you do not use Foursquare, but put information on Facebook while you are on vacation, you are setting yourself up to get hit. There is just too much information available online.

The concept of "Big Brother" watching you was a concern 30 or 40 years ago, but of late has become a non-issue until something happens such as this. The problem is that few people really change their day to day activities and continue on as normal.

We should not be surprised if we see more of these kinds of things being reported.

Facebook Password Issue - Asking The Right Question?

There is a lot of talk about asking for Facebook passwords, but there is a bigger question to be asked of the employer.

 
There have been a lot of stories lately about employers or potential employers asking for a persons Facebook password so they can log on to that persons account. This has been tied to getting hired or even keeping your job so that the company can essentially "break in" to Facebook and see what you written and what you are doing. We have had Facebook weighing in on the situation along with the US Congress looking at possible legislation to stop this activity which is going on. And it is continuing. Here is the question that I believe should be asked when you are asked for your Facebook password.

What is the company policy on sharing passwords?

There are very few companies that do not have a password sharing policy. And in a lot of cases, it is grounds for termination, if not outright termination. So why is a company asking an employee or a potential employee to violate a company policy regarding passwords. They can sugar coat the request all they want, but the reality is they are trying to get you to violate a company policy. Do they really understand what they are doing to undermine the company policies they have worked long and hard to create for the purpose of protecting the company?

If a manager comes to you a month later after you have given them your Facebook password and wants your password to log on to a system, are you going to give it to them. With this action by companies, there is an increased possibility people will turn over the password because the company has shown the company policy isn't really all that critical to the company. It is critical that companies understand the impact of placing continued employment or possible employment on violating a company policy. As a condition of employment, requiring me to give up a password reduces the value of using passwords in a company.

The security of any and all passwords should be held in the highest regard.

There are lots of reports of these kinds of things going on. In some cases, people refuse to give up their Facebook password such as Kimberly Hester a teachers aid in Cassopolis, Michigan who refused. As a result, she was fired from her job. Yet, if she had given up a password to a school system, she probably would be fired as well. This particular one is being talked about, but there are far too many beyond this one being reported and is becoming a very dangerous trend.

All of this is probably going to continue in other methods. Such as asking the person to friend the company so the company can then look around. Others may ask the employee or potential employee to log on to their account and then give the keyboard to the employer or their representative. In this later situation, what is the company policy about logging on to your computer and then giving the keyboard to someone else to go through and look at your computer? If the company would object to that activity in their own systems, then why is it they are asking you to let the company do something they would object to you doing as an employee? That is the real issue.

Why are companies asking employees or potential employees to do something that I can presume is against company policy?

Facebook Timeline for Pages –What You Need to Know

The new Timeline layout is coming to your Facebook business Page whether you like it or not. Now the Facebook Timeline is mandatory for Pages. As of March 31th, 2012, ALL Facebook Pages will switch over to the new layout. If you haven't updated your Facebook Page and don't know what to do, then you should take a few minutes to watch the overview videos below.

To help you prepare for the changes, we have a number of materials that will help you with the transition. We have a video overview, broken into three parts below, that will explain the Timeline for Pages, how to use it, and some of the features of the new layout.

Then we have seven new training videos to walk you through how to update your Page and use some of the new features. We also have a 17 page PDF (and ePub) guide if you'd rather read about the changes than watch the videos. The links for these materials are at the bottom of this page.

The first video segment opens with Facebook's incredible reach and then explains the new Timeline layout, the cover image and restrictions, and how the new profile image works.



 

TEAR DOWN THE WALL! The infamous Wall has been replaced by the Activity Feed. This video explains how the About section, App display, highlight feed, navigation and the new Activity Feed all work.



 

Pinning. This last video in the series demonstrates pinning posts, the friend feed, Milestones, shared stories, messaging and more.



 

The list of seven Facebook Timeline for Pages how-to videos can be found on the following page, along with the downloadable companion guide:

Facebook Timeline for Pages