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Upcoming Facebook changes: 7 things brands need to know

Dave Neelsen — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:13:56 +0000

Facebook recently announced a series of changes to its platform, and the roadmap has a substantial impact on how brands approach building a Facebook presence. While changes to Facebook’s platform are nothing new, this is the first time the company has announced a series of 19 changes that will be implemented over the coming months.

Be sure to understand the implications of these changes before pitching your next Facebook project.

1. Email is now a supported channel
Facebook has long hidden user emails, but soon Facebook will provide developers access to a user’s verified email address. For brands that are serious about engaging in an ongoing dialogue with their fans, email becomes a powerful communication method. Email will allow brands to better reconnect with users who have interacted with them on Facebook. This becomes important given that…

2. Status updates are no longer guaranteed
Previously users’ streams included everything their friends and pages (including brand pages) published. Now the news feed has returned to a default view showing select highlights that Facebook’s algorithm thinks are most relevant to the user, which may or may not contain your brand’s message. There’s still a live feed view, but it’s no longer default, so only brand posts that fans interact with will appear in most users’ streams.

3. Other communication channels are consolidating
Many brands rely on application-to-user and user-to-user notifications to reconnect with users, and this communication channel is disappearing. That means in order to remarket to users to let them know about new product launches, sales, events, or promotions, you’ll need to acquire users’ email addresses or send popular posts (per above).

Source: iMedia Connection. Click here for full post.

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Non-Profits ‘Outblog’ Private Sector

Dave Neelsen — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 02:26:15 +0000

The largest charitable organizations in the US far outpace the business world and academia in both their use of and familiarity with social media and their measurement of online buzz, according to a study by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research, which found that 89% of non-profits used some form of social media in 2008.

The study, which included interviews with 76 executives at America’s largest charities as defined by Forbes, compares organizational adoption of social media tools – including blogs, podcasts, message boards, social networking, video blogging and wikis – in 2007 and 2008.

For key findings, check out this link …

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YouTube’s New Feature for Nonprofits – A Game-Changer!

Dave Neelsen — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:06:31 +0000

A few months ago YouTube announced that organizations that are in the YouTube Nonprofit Program would be able to use the overlay advertising feature to create donation links. They call the feature “Call To Action” and said that in their first test of this, Charity:Water raised $10,000 in one day.

Later after requests to enhance the features, they added a feature to allow for outside links in the annotations features that allow non-profits to link videos to their websites.
Unprecedented! The annotations feature has been availableto all YouTube video makers and allows for the user to put an overlay box on any part of any video. However, YouTube has only allowed links to other YouTube videos or YouTube channel pages. Until now — but only for non-profits. Fantastic! Check out this video for more.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hiDCNM1G50&feature=player_embedded#]

Make no mistake, this is a game-changer. If you still aren’t sure what all of this means, it means that nonprofit YouTube videos can have buttons built into the videos that say DONATE NOW or SIGN THE PETITION and these buttons will work—they will link to any site you point them to. You can even go back to all your old videos that are on YouTube and make your logo into a clickable link, add annotations to donate with a link, and otherwise make your video into a center of engagement. This is now, by far, the most important reason to be in the YouTube Nonprofit Program.

People who watch videos on YouTube are very likely to do one thing when they are done…watch another video on YouTube. Not any more. With this new feature, YouTube can become a center for creating effective calls to action and engagement. Major props to the entire YouTube team—you rock!

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