Facebook Timeline for Brands: Overview & Five Suggestions

As the March 30^th deadline approaches for businesses to update their Facebook brand pages to the new Facebook Timeline, marketers are busy trying to figure out how to best utilize the new layout of their profile pages to advance their social media marketing campaigns. I’ve already helped two organizations in the conceptual redesign of their profile pages and I thought I’d write a blog post to list some of the take-aways from our brainstorming sessions. Hopefully these suggestions can alleviate some of the pain points for businesses that are distressed over this transition.

1. The Cover Photo:

The Timeline based Facebook profile features a landscape oriented cover photo (suggested size is 851 x 315 pixels). For businesses, the cover photo provides an opportunity to express the tone and mood of their brand and their timeline profile page. While businesses can customize the cover photo to their liking, Facebook has prohibited specific promotional tactics such as calls to action for their customers (e.g. you can't ask followers to "like" or to click on certain tabs).

Brand managers should use the cover photo as a dynamic space to set first impressions for their products and services, and facilitate the right tone for an opening conversation with their future customer.

Example: I really like how Nissan has incorporated a really simple but powerful branding message “Our Most Innovative Year”. It gets people wanting to come back for the "reveal".

2. Milestones on the Timeline:

Since the Facebook Timeline changes the default profile page from a list of the most recent updates to a complete summary of an organization’s growth or its brand’s evolution, businesses should include events and achievements that symbolize various chapters in their development. This is especially important for what Facebook terms “Legacy Brands”, i.e. those brands that have decades of historical data that can be featured on the timeline.

In formulating the motif for a timeline, businesses should attempt to engage users through interactive rich media. The timeline should feature more than just status updates, and include photos, videos and location information where relevant.

If done right, the timeline should improve the stickiness for the profile page by allowing current and potential followers to scroll easily through the high points of a business – eventually creating more brand affinity.

Example: Check out Subway’s Timeline starting in the 1960s with the first use of the name ‘Subway’. 

3. Custom Tabs

Facebook’s older interface for business pages featured default landing pages that were invariably used for marketing campaigns and sales promotions. As a major change for many brands, the new Facebook Timeline will no longer allow directing visitors to custom landing tabs.

That being said, businesses can now select which of their tabs (icons) are displayed under the cover photo. These tabs provide the opportunity for businesses to feature the strongest aspects of their Facebook presence – whether it is stories or pictures from their customers, other content pages, or business-specific apps.

Brand managers should customize this space rather than accepting the default order of the tabs/icons along with the default fill images for these tabs. Positioning the tabs and using custom images should be considered to improve the look and feel of the timeline.

Example: Custom app images such as those created by Fanta offer a rich visual interface for the timeline.

4. Pinned Posts

To improve the visibility of selected content, brand page administrators can “pin” a post to the top of their Timeline. Pinned posts can remain at the top of a timeline for up to seven days. They can offer a useful means to broadcast critical information to followers as well as a mechanism to direct fans to contests and other promotions.

Example: Check out Starbucks’ pinned post publicizing its “Global Month of Service”.

5. Highlighted Posts

In addition to pinned posts described above, brands also have the opportunity to highlight important posts from their timeline. Clicking the star at the top right side of the post will increase the size of the post and make it span the width of the timeline, rather than just one column. This will garner more attention and make it very hard for followers to miss. Along with pinned posts, this feature allows brands to position their marketing and social campaigns front & center... literally :-)

Example: Oxfam USA uses a highlighted timeline post featuring a video that introduces the charity to its Facebook page visitors:

Hopefully this quick introduction to the Facebook Timeline for businesses will help you with your own transition to the new profile layout. While change is always painful, it is also inevitable, and there are benefits to be gained through new features and functions that weren’t available earlier. Some businesses have already started reporting improvements in their brand page engagement.

Have you already made the change-over? What are your thoughts? Please let me know in the comments section below, or fire me a tweet with your feedback on this article.

App Review: Trello for Project Management

Ever feel the need for a project management tool that would help you manage other project management tools you’re currently using? I know the feeling all too well.

Whether it’s a software development project where you’re allocating tasks, managing revisions, tracking milestones & deliverables, or a collaborative publication project where you’re using wikis, emails, and to-do-lists, things get messy sometimes, and you might feel like reverting back to ad-hoc administration. Do I see heads nodding – yes? :-)

Enter… Trello : A productivity app that allows you to seamlessly combine project management functions like task workflows, checklists, work assignments and revisions, with collaboration  features such as memos, announcements, comments and votes. Additionally, the app also supports embedding a variety of online content from multimedia to data feeds in case your project needs to use it.

The overarching software metaphor for Trello is that of a bulletin board. You start with a blank board and create lists using different cards on the board. Each list consists of related cards and each card has a task or a message on it. People can be assigned to a card if needed (e.g. assigning tasks to employees or asking a question from a person). The bulletin board and cards metaphor is linked nicely to affordances like flipping a card, attaching messaging, posting notes, assigning people (through drag-and-drop), hence making the app very intuitive and easy to learn.

Overall, you can use the bulletin board to communicate messages, post information, organize tasks and track progress in one centralized location.

Trello is promoting itself as a horizontal app suitable for a variety of projects in different industry settings, and the homepage lists a few different use cases for its potential application.

In my case, Trello would be potentially useful for collaborative research with multiple researchers working in different but related areas through various stages of conceptualization, investigation, analysis, and dissemination. It would certainly be an interesting experience!

Here’s a quick 5-minute  video (errr... 7 minutes actually) explaining the features of Trello.
Take a look, and let me know what you think.

Some Twitter Tips to Get you Started

Over the past three months, I’ve started using Twitter a little more regularly than I used to. It’s grown on me and I’ve figured out the use-cases that fit my objectives as an academic. While upping the frequency of my tweets, I’ve also developed some familiarity with the conventions and terminology used on twitter.

In this post, I’m summarizing these conventions and terminology. Hopefully, you’ll find some of these tips useful.

What is Twitter?:

As a user, you will probably ascribe specific characteristics to Twitter based on what you use it for. Here are a couple of ways I think of Twitter:

• Twitter is a social networking platform that provides a microblogging service to its users. It allows users to post status updates called “Tweets” that are limited to 140 characters (including spaces and special characters).
  
  
• While many people would compare its functionality to that of a chat client, Twitter offers an open forum for many-to-many conversations.
  
  
• In addition to public messages, Twitter facilitates private communication among members (through direct messages)

·         For passive users, Twitter is a great monitoring tool to observe conversations among groups and posts regarding specific subjects.

Twitter Interface Basics:

Although Twitter can be used directly through its website interface (www.twitter.com), many people prefer using different clients to Twitter.com. My own favorite is TweetDeck (www.TweetDeck.com) which I use to monitor others tweets as well as to send my own updates.

• Your Twitter “Activity Stream” consists of you own tweets as well as tweets from others who you “Follow”. By following a user on twitter, you are adding that user’s tweets in chronological order to your timeline or activity stream. Following others is useful if you’re interested in the content and updates provided by them, and it’s also a recommended practice to foster reciprocity.
  
  
• It is also important to remember that tweets are public by default unless you restrict messages to specific recipients by including their usernames at the beginning of the tweets.

Essential Tweet Conventions:

Once you start tweeting beyond the basic / simple babble, you’ll start to realize the need for using direct reference to people, websites, and themes. These items constitute the three types of references you can include in your tweets:

• You can provide links to websites: While you can include the full URL of websites (http://...), you should get into the habit of shortening the URL. There are various URL shortening services available. My favorite is bit.ly (http://bit.ly).
  
  
• You can refer to other people of Twitter through a “Mention” by prepending the “@” symbol to their usernames. These mentions typically get reported to the person through an email or an alert within their activity stream.
  
  
• You can highlight specific keywords in your tweets by using the right “Hashtags”. A hashtag is a keyword with a “#” symbol prefixed to it. By utilizing relevant hashtags in your tweets, you can increase the searchability of your tweets by others. The key is to figure out hashtags that are used by others who talk about similar topics and utilize them within your own tweets if and where possible.

In addition to writing your own tweets, from time to time, you might feel the need to “Retweet” someone. By repeating a tweet from another user, you are amplifying their message and distributing it to your own followers. Again, this is a recommended practice to reinforce ties on your social network.  Remember that retweeting someone will make the original tweet appear in the activity stream of those who follow you on Twitter.

• You can retweet a message by clicking on the retweet symbol underneath that message. This is referred to as an automatic retweet.
  
  
• You can also retweet a person by copying the text of that tweet and prepending “RT @username” to identify that it’s a retweet from a specific username. This is referred to as a manual retweet.

Using Twitter as a Monitoring Tool:

• You can optimize your use of Twitter by creating “Lists” of different people you follow. For example, I have a list for my work-colleagues, and multiple lists that include professionals who talk about specific topics and subjects. This feature provides me with the capability to demarcate different social circles and communities of interest that I participate in. In the online Twitter interface, you can click use the drop-down menu underneath a person’s profile description to add them to a list (as shown below).
  
  If you use a client such as TweetDeck, you can display activity streams for your lists in different columns (I find this very useful for monitoring tweets).

• If you wish you use Twitter as a monitoring tool, you can save your searches and access them with greater ease at any time. Through the online Twitter interface, you can perform a keyword search using the search bar on the top of the screen, and click on the “Save this search” button.

This will make this search accessible to you through the “Searches” tab in your Twitter interface. Remember that the search results constitute an activity stream that will be updated as more relevant tweets keep getting posted.

• You can also mark tweets as “Favorites”. This is pretty similar to bookmarking important resources online. By creating your own list of favorites, you are really creating a catalog of tweets that you might want to come back to. The original tweeters receive a notification when you favorite one of their tweets.

Optimizing your Personal Interactions through Tweets:

You’ll probably get familiar with many customs and conventions of tweeting through your use of twitter, but here are a couple of tips to help you use the proper abbreviations and accepted vernacular.

• Use “via” to mention someone who pointed out something on Twitter. For example: “Here is a really great website http://shortURL via @username”
  
  
• Use “MT” to indicate a “modified retweet” when you are selectively quoting from a previous tweet. For example: “MT @informatician …”. While it is acceptable to use MT, it is good practice to ensure that you’re not changing the overall message.
  
  
•  Use a mention at the beginning of a tweet to direct that tweet to a specific person. For example: “@username hello how’s it going?” Referred to as conversational tweets, these messages will only be seen by accounts that follow BOTH your account AND the account you mentioned at beginning of tweet. Remember that if a mention is used elsewhere in your tweet, that tweet will be visible to all your followers.
  
  
• A variant of a conversational tweet is when you want to direct a tweet primarily to a specific person but also want your followers to see it. In such a case, you can prepend a period “.” before the mention. For example “. @username check this out: …”
  
  
• Use “cc” followed by a mention “@username” at the end of a tweet to get the attention of a specific person for whom that tweet may be relevant.
  
  
• While the above tips may be handy for interacting with others through Twitter, remember that you shouldn’t needlessly mention people in your tweets as this is considered a form of spam.

I think that’s about it in terms of a quick and light introduction to the use of Twitter. Like I said, you’ll probably figure out a lot more stuff on your own as you start using Twitter. These are just some tips that I hope you’ll find useful in getting started. Let me know what you think.

Happy Tweeting, and feel free to follow me on Twitter (@Informatician). I’ll certainly reciprocate.

Innovative Online Retail: A Review of Ztail's eBay Resale Offering

“Global Recession” happens to be the most daunting of words these days, and online e-commerce sales are taking a hit as a result of the current economic crisis, but perhaps it’s true that With Crisis Comes Opportunity. The online business model of Ztail may indeed be emblematic of such an opportunity, and on the outset, my preliminary review of the site’s offering indicates that it may be a promising venture.

Ztail’s new online offering is built around an upstream trusted network of online vendors (listed here) who have partnered with the website to sell their products, and the site uses eBay as its downstream channel for resale. Essentially, Ztail provides a simple limited insurance policy that guarantees that customers will be able to resell the items they purchase through Ztail’s business partners at a substantial price through eBay within a certain time period after their purchase.

Buyers can visit the Ztail online catalog (an aggregation from various partner merchants) where they can browse products, and for each item, the buyer will be presented with the item’s normal price from the merchant, as well as its Ztail price (difference between the sale price from the merchant and the guaranteed resale price). When a buyer purchases an item through Ztail’s catalog, the site will guarantee that a within a certain time period after the purchase date, Ztail will be able to resell the item on eBay for a certain amount. For example, for the item shown in the picture below (item details available here), Ztail is guaranteeing that a $300 MP3 music system through Cambridge Soundworks will sell for at least $135 on eBay (within a year of the purchase date).

What I really like about the service is it’s automated workflow. Once buyers completes the purchase transaction, Ztail emails them a link that they can click whenever they’re ready to re-sell the item. The link is also accessible through the buyer’s online Ztail account. The resale workflow uses the eBay auction wizard to post the buyer’s item on eBay, and all auction settings are configured behind the scenes to maximize the buyer’s return. Other than entering your eBay and Paypal information, it’s a hands-off process!

It can get even better if your auction price ends up being higher than the guaranteed resale price, in which case, you get to keep the extra money. You also need not worry if the auction ends with a final selling price below the Ztail’s guarantee, as Ztail will refund the residual.

So what do you think?

I personally think the idea has great potential for products that require frequent upgrades or things that you might not need to keep forever. The one year time limit is a major restriction though, but I suspect this will be increased as the service gains more traction, and Ztail builds a critical mass of buyers and sellers.

From the buyer’s perspective, the service sounds appealing because it gives them some confidence in the product and offers them an alternative down the road if they don’t like the product, or want an upgrade. Also, the hands-off approach to the resale process through eBay is a plus - I personally never get around selling unwanted items on eBay because of time constraints.

Also, only time will tell whether there is a particular category of products that this service is more suited to… high priced products? fashion accessories? technology products with a short life-cycle?Only time will tell if the service proves to be viable, at which point, I wonder whether we’ll see Ztail’s offerings being integrated with major online storefronts – i.e. rather than having to purchase through Ztail’s catalog, we’d be able to purchase directly from the online retailer and choose Ztail as an additional option. How will that business model work? Further food for thought…

My Speedtile Shared Bookmarks

I often get asked by my students about my favorite search engines, my favorite help sites, my favorite e-commerce information pages etc. - so, I thought this might be an opportunity to share my bookmarks with not only my students – but the world at large.

In searching for a good bookmarking service, I came across Speedtile.net – a visual bookmarking service which is just freaking awesome! and with its firefox plugin, all I need to do is right click the web page I want to bookmark, and its done (as long as I’m logged into my speedtile account). For those who haven’t used Speedtile before, I really encourage you to give it a try. You can organize your bookmarks in different categories (structured as tabs on the website) and decide which specific ones you’d like to share by simply dragging and dropping the snapshots into the shared tab.In your profile, you can also select a label which will be used to personalize the URL for your shared bookmarks. In my case, I created two accounts – one to share my search engine and help sites bookmarks, and the other to share my ecommerce bookmarks.

The respective URLs are as follows:

• http://www.speedtile.net/informatician


• http://www.speedtile.net/ecommerce

The other good thing about speedtile is their fast and easy sign-up/registration process. I can’t remember the last time I gave out information only relevant to the service I’m signing up for. The registration form only asks for an email address and a password ! yeap… that’s it – check it out for yourself.

So check out speedtile, and check out my shared bookmarks at the URLs above. Let me know if I missed anything big from these bookmarks. I suspect I’ll be updating these on a regular basis.

CanPages brings Street View to Canada - Move over Google!

Like many other people I know, I’ve been waiting anxiously for Google Street View to be launched in Canada. It seems that Google has had some difficulty in complying with the federal privacy legislation in Canada, and that’s the primary reason why the service hasn’t made it here just yet.





The main issue here is the high-resolution personal images and other identifiable information (e.g. car license plates) that have sometimes accompanied Google’s street view in the other countries where it was launched previously (including U.S., U.K. and France). Collecting personal images without the explicit consent of the people in those images is a prohibited practice under Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

So while Google is getting ready to start filming Canadian cities, Canadians have another alternative to check out. We now have our own Street View equivalent in some cities - thanks to the partnership between the British Columbia-based yellow pages directory service provider CanPages.ca, and San Francisco-based MapJack.

By my own initial assessment, the street view service offered by CanPages is a strong contender for Google Street View. In fact, I’ve seen features in Canpages.ca that I haven’t seen in Google Street View – e.g. high resolution full screen mode, pedestrian pathway views, image configuration, and did I mention pedestrian pathway views. The virtual 360 degree panning works pretty well too.

The service has been launched in Vancouver and some other parts of British Columbia, perhaps rightly so, given the timeline for the Winter Olympics in 2010. I suspect the service will be a hit with the tourists!

To check out the various features myself, I decided to virtual walk the part of the city that I’m most familiar with from my last visit to Vancouver. Since the CanPages.ca service is primarily a yellow pages service, I had to supply a business name or a landmark to get started, and I searched for the Sheraton Wall Centre Hotel in Vancouver where I’ve stayed previously. Once the listing was displayed, I clicked on the Street View option and panned 180 degrees to get to the front view of the hotel building (see screenshot below).

Notice the various visual aids such as zoom, pan, and full-screen options, as well as the inline blue dots where more views of the street are available. Also, a small cartoon figure (let's call him virtual voyager) appears on the street map for orientation and reference (pretty cool!).

Here’s a screenshot of the full-screen view (size reduced for posting here of course). It truly allows users to immerse themselves into the cityscape.

In terms of its business model, the new Street View offering is aligned with CanPages’ yellow pages service, as it provides advertisers – especially local businesses an innovative means of reaching the website's visitors. Specifically, when a user clicks on a storefront in Street View, he/she will get to see a local profile of the business, and possibly other relevant links to video advertisements, website URL, and general information such as hours of operation or restaurant menus in the case of food service locations.

Overall, I think it’s a sound business offering as it comprises enough originality to spark end-user interest and also presents long-term functional value to the consumer.

Free Google Mobile Phone Services

I recently offered a graduate seminar course on Mobile Commerce at the University of Ottawa, and it was pretty surprising to see how many mobile end-users still don’t use third party applications and services that exist outside the realm of their service provider’s portfolio. This end-user behavior is highly representative of the Canadian mobile services landscape where our industry structure is highly vertical and the service structure is highly integrated. In Canada, the operators exercise a lot of control over the entire mobile value chain. Companies like Rogers, Telus, and Bell provide services including voice, messaging, internet, and email functions as prepackaged bundles. The customers have little choice in selecting the specific modules that they might be more interested in. Furthermore, the mobile portals on handhelds are usually preconfigured to link to the service provider’s solutions, and do not offer other choices – even free service choices. Many students in my class hadn’t even heard of the following google services that are offered for free (barring the operator’s data transmission charages):


Google 411 (1-800-GOOG-411) Website Link

Google’s voice local search service for local businesses uses speech recognition technology to allow users to query for and connect to businesses. Users can search for businesses by name or category (which is a definite plus in comparison with the traditional 411 service offered by operators). The service then generates a list of businesses that match the user’s query, and allows the users to select an entry from the list. Following the selection, the user can either directly get connected to the business or ask for a text message to be sent with the relevant business details. For users with internet access and google maps, the service also accepts the “map it” voice command to show a map of the business neighborhood.

So not only is the service free to use, but it has advanced features not available through the directory assistance service offered by many operators. For Canadian users, until we get something like TellMe.com, this is the next best thing – store 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) in your contact list and start using it !



Google SMS (46645) Website Link

This is Google’s fast information response service (SMS number 46645), and it lets users send quick queries to Google via SMS and get back responses. Rather than using your data quota in accessing different search engines or websites, the service allows users to quickly get back the information they’re looking for. The service supports specific types of queries such as weather reports, movies, stock quotes, directions, and local businesses by name or category. See this page for examples of queries. To get started, you can try some queries on the online emulator provided here and get familiar with the results. Again, it's not just a free service, but something that’s much easier to use in comparison to its alternatives (e.g. browsing the internet on your handheld to get the information) – store 46645 in your contact list and start using it for SMS queries.

Do you know of any other useful free mobile phone services? If so, leave your comment below, or send me a note.

Book Review - Enterprise 2.0 by Niall Cook (2008)

Recently I had the opportunity to write a book review on Academici for a new book titled "Enterprise 2.0". I thought I just as well post the review here too. The original review appears here: http://www.academici.com/blog.aspx?bid=5676

CITATION

Cook, N. (2008). Enterprise 2.0: How Social Software Will Change the Future of Work. Hampshire, England: Gower Publishing Limited.

DETAILS

Author: Niall Cook
Title: Enterprise 2.0: How Social Software Will Change the Future of Work
Publisher: Gower Publishing
Publication Date: 2008
ISBN: 978-0566088001
Price: (US) $89.95

LINKS

• Link to Book Page on Amazon
• Link to Book Page by Author

REVIEW

Constructive applications of social software within a business context have garnered a lot of recent interest from practitioners as well as the research community. After an influential foray on the Internet, Web 2.0 technologies are being touted by many to bring significant benefits to organizations through their ability to facilitate agile collaboration and efficient information sharing across business functional areas.

Niall Cook’s Enterprise 2.0 is an opportunely timed book that provides a managerial overview of Web 2.0 technologies for businesses. At a time when organizations are starting to get serious about their Web 2.0 technology investments, Enterprise 2.0 can prove to be a useful and practical primer for getting a grasp on Web 2.0 technologies for the workplace. As social software applications such as blogs, wikis, social networking, collaborative tagging, social bookmarking and microblogging start to move beyond the pilot stages of implementation in many organizations, executives, managers, process owners, as well as technologists will need to know how to effectively implement and institutionalize these applications within the organization.

Recent industry trends also show that organizations that have been experimenting with social software technologies will most likely be looking at deploying them in the form of an integrated solution comprising of a multitude of tools and applications. This shift in the market from individual technologies to integrated solutions, accompanied with the aspiration for enterprise-wide deployment will require qualified strategy formulation, careful planning, and capable project execution. Enterprise 2.0 delves into sufficient details about each of these aspects of deployment and use of social enterprise software within the organization.

The discussion throughout the book is tied together with the 4 Cs framework (Communication, Cooperation, Collaboration, Connection) which the author initially introduces as a classification scheme for social software. Progressing through the book, it becomes clear though, that the 4Cs framework is not only a valuable analysis framework for conceptually making sense of the types of social software applications and their uses, but also for performing an assessment of the organization’s technology requirements and translating them into functional specifications. The examples and use cases provided with the 4Cs framework foster a better understanding of the potential gains and improvements that can be achieved through enterprise social software. The book’s managerial style narration and its references to various real world case studies make it easy for the discerning executive to comprehend the business case for investing in key social software tools and applications.

After helping the reader gain a sense of the business case for enterprise social software, the author moves on to suggesting a methodology for implementation and institutionalization of these technologies. Significant emphasis is placed on the adoption of technologies and overcoming resistance from staff. Toward this, the author aligns himself with the notion of accentuating user value over network value – i.e. drawing attention to the benefits of social software applications to individual users before talking about their benefits to the business. This can prove to be especially useful in getting the passive or less active users on board with the program. Beyond advice, the author proposes specific tactics to encourage user participation and speedier organization wide adoption by offering guidelines that can be adapted for different social and political cultures.

The last part of the book is dedicated to a review of the literature on enterprise social software. As an invaluable resource for the academic readers, this section provides a current review of terms and definitions related to the subject, as well as a summary of the conceptual treatise of enterprise social software found in seminal works.

To conclude this review, as organizations embark on projects to implement comprehensive enterprise software solutions that integrate multiple technologies into unified platforms, they need to rely on guidelines and recommendations from prior research, practitioner experiences, expert opinions, and lessons learned by others in their projects. Enterprise 2.0 provides a useful synthesis of these resources in the form of a discourse that will appeal to both the industry and the academic communities.