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As a social media consultant I spend a lot of time advising businesses on how to get maximum benefit from Facebook – and it really is, or should be, a key part of your marketing strategy.   To do this I have to stay on top of the deluge of changes that Facebook issue every week, and just occasionally I need to warn people of the unintended consequences of Facebook’s actions.   This week has provided a vivid example of that.

Back in April when Timeline was being rolled out Facebook gave everyone an email address – mine is martyn.stead@facebook.com.   So what?  Not many people chose to use Facebook as an email platform so even if they were aware of this they ignored it.

This week, without notification, Facebook decided to replace the individual email addresses of all 900 Million users with their facebook.com address.    That means that if someone checks your personal profile to contact you via email, the email will be intercepted and turned into a Facebook message.   Personally, if I want to send someone a Facebook message I will use the message function – if I wanted a private email exchange I would not use Facebook messages for it.

Reaction from users has been almost unanimously horrified – this story from the BBC News website is typical: BBC News.   Sophos have reacted by saying that this change raises serious security issues: Sophos

So, how do you reclaim your personal email?   The process is simple, just follow these steps:

Firstly, on your personal profile, click on Update Info below and to the right of your cover photo:

Next, locate the Contact Info box:

You will note that it shows my facebook.com email address

Click on Edit and it shows your email addresses:

You will see that the facebook.com email address has an open circle to the right of it, whereas my other email addresses have a line through the circle.  This means that the facebook.com address shows on Timeline, the others are hidden.

On the pull-down arrows next to the circle, select “Hidden from Timeline” next to the facebook.com address

and then against the email address you want to show publicly, select “Shown on Timeline”:

Click “Save Changes” and you’re done.

If an outside agency intercepted your private email in what is called in hacking circles a “Man In The Middle” attack it would be viewed as criminal behaviour.  Let’s be generous to Facebook and say that this move comes from arrogance rather than malign intent – but now that they are a public company they have institutional investors to worry about, and it’s unlikely that those investors will be too happy with Mark Zuckerberg over this bad publicity.   Maybe they will learn a lesson from here on?

This post was first published on The Social Media Bureau blog

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Since the launch of Google + in the summer, there has been a lot of debate about whether it’s really a “Facebook-killer” or yet another Google attempt to get into social media that is doomed to fade away.

I came across this interesting blog from Social Media Examiner that I’d like to share: Why Google+ Will Become a Powerhouse

What do you think?

New dawn or damp squib?

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In my last blog here I talked about the anti-social (and ridiculous) nature of using an automated system like Truetwit to validate whether Twitter followers were human.   That may have given the impression that I’m totally against automation tools, but not a bit of it.

As with all such things, it’s not the tool, it’s the use you make of it. Just as some people have a digital SLR camera and never take it off the automatic settings, you’ll only get the best out of a tool if you use it with intelligence.

One tool I’ve been very impressed with recently is Twitcleaner, a far better way of weeding out those problem tweeps who clutter your timeline with nonsense than asking tem to take eye-tests.

When you are following a lot of people you end up hardly ever looking at your Twitter timeline, focusing only on @Mentions, lists, hashtags and Direct Messages – and that means that quality control inevitably suffers. Looking for a good way to prune my 13,000 plus followers so that I could concentrate on quality rather than quantity, I turned to Twitcleaner.

Sign on to Twitcleaner with your twitter username and it will run a report on the people you’re following, analysing their behaviour into refreshingly honest categories (I particularly liked “Trying to sell you crap” and “Self-obsessed”) so that you can spot which ones are dodgy, whether because they are Bots, boring or those idiots who post nothing but links. You can unfollow up to 500 people a day from the report, and (provided you use the old grey matter judiciously) your timeline will soon get much clearer again.

What’s more, it will also analyse your own tweeting style and suggest where improvements could be made.

Yes, it gets a definite 10 out of 10 from me.

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An increasing number of people on Twitter seem to be using services like Truetwit in the belief that this will stop them being inundated with spam.  But is this anti-spam or anti-social?

Try to follow one of these users and you will get an automatic message back requiring you to visit a website and take  an eye-test masquerading as a security mechanism just to prove you’re human and not a robot.   If you manage to pass, you can then follow that user.  Superficially, that sounds sensible – but is it?

Why would anyone want to stop a person – or indeed a robot – from following them?

After all, it’s not your followers that fill your timeline with rubbish, it’s the people you follow; and Truetwit won’t help you there.   What’s the worst that could happen if a robot follows you?   Your tweets end up on their timeline.  So what?

The real filter that’s necessary is one to prevent you from following spammers, and the best way of doing that is to use the grey matter between your ears.   I’ll follow you if you look interesting, but keep bombarding me with get-rich-quick schemes or gushing tweets about “Awesome Software” and you’ll be unfollowed before you can blink.   (After many years in the IT industry, I am firmly of the opinion that software is binary, it only comes in two kinds – stuff that works and stuff that doesn’t.  None of it is awesome.  I digress).

When involved in any kind of communication, and Twitter is just one such medium, it’s important every now and again to check for interference – is the message that was received the same as the message you transmitted?

Use a validation mechanism like Truetwit and I guess you’re transmitting “I want to protect my Twitter feed from spam, so please validate that you’re human and then we can be friends”.   Unfortunately, what I receive is “I am so important and influential that you will have to jump through hoops to get the benefit of my wise words”.

Maybe that wouldn’t be quite so bad (although still arrogant) if there was any logic in using Truetwit – but there really isn’t.  It doesn’t stop you being spammed, only your intelligence and discretion can stop that.

So, to save me having to send tweets to all you Truetwit users, take note:  Follow me if you wish, but I will not take a badly designed eye-test to follow you back.   If you really want to use some form of filter, at least make it human – such as this from @ProfDimond that I received yesterday:

“Thanks for following me If I haven’t followed you back, just send me an @-reply to say hi… it helps weed out the spammers & bots.”

Hallelujah!

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In my last blog post I talked about the challenge of building a community of engaged users who would contribute to and support the relaunch of the Woking News and Mail. Called in to help with the relaunch, I had just under 5 weeks to get a buzz going on Twitter and Facebook, build a following and get them to contribute articles for the paper. Launch date was set in stone – Thursday May 12th.

So how did it go?

When I got involved on 10th April there was a twitter account (@WokingNewsmail) with 52 followers and a Facebook Fan Page with just 4 Likes.

Using Twellow and Twittergrader to find the top local tweeps, and with copious use of Advanced Twitter Search we arrived at 1,000 Twitter followers the day before the paper hit the streets – and by Saturday 14th May we were on 1,111 Twitter followers and 156 Facebook Likes.

More importantly, we were inundated with news articles, photos and features and the paper was greeted with enthusiasm by the people of Woking who had been deprived of their community newspaper for 2 months. Feedback on both platforms was unanimously good – except for those who complained that they couldn’t get a copy of the paper because demand was so high that it sold out.

Having got the ship safely down the slipway and cracked a metaphorical bottle of champagne, my Social Media work with the paper is now over, and the editorial team will be picking up the reins and making sure that the readers, advertisers and contributors all continue to feel fully engaged. For myself, I’ll be writing my column on Social Media – named T’witter by my wife – and wishing the paper every success as it moves forward and changes from a monthly to a fortnightly and eventually a weekly fixture in the newsagents of Woking.

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Can Social Media help turn a struggling local newspaper into a shining community success?

The conventional wisdom about Social Media is that it is a slow process and takes a long time to build an engaged audience with whom you can have meaningful interactions; you can’t just buy followers “off the shelf”, whatever some of the more fanciful tweets you see on Twitter every day might claim. The prospect of trying to build a community from scratch which will itself contribute hugely to the content of a newspaper in less than five weeks is, you might think, ludicrous. And yet……

The Woking News and Mail was founded in 1894 and, like so many of its peers, went through a number of ownership changes over the years before coming to rest with the Guardian Media Group who decided a few weeks ago that it was no longer viable, closing it down in March 2011.

There had been an eleventh hour campaign among readers to try to save the paper, but to no avail.

One small group of people, however, were determined not to let the paper die and the title was bought from the Guardian Media Group. Under the leadership of Managing Director Jon Davies, Editor Hilary Gavin and Head of Publishing Bruce Hazelton, a Social Media campaign has been launched on Twitter and Facebook with the aim of encouraging the would-be citizen journalists of Woking to contribute stories to the new News and Mail. The first edition of the revitalised paper will hit the streets on May 12th this year – with only a minor break in circulation since the death of the old News and Mail.

Can the News and Mail be the exception to the rule of slowly gathering a community of followers? Can Woking support its own local version of the Huffington Post?

Please get involved with the action – leave comments below, follow us on Twitter or come along and Like our Facebook Page

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Marks and Spencer have launched their new spring ad campaign which features Jamie Redknapp and friends getting soaked by sprinklers, and ending with the strapline “Utterly Repellent Menswear”. (See here).

It’s a brave thing to do, but is it wise?

M&S will no doubt hope to catch the imagination of the public rather in the way that Marmite did with their campaigns over the last two years – but there are key differences. The advertisements for Marmite were humorous, unlike the M&S one, and they never suggested that their product was bad, only that it divided opinion into people who loved it and people who hated it. Indeed, so successful was this campaign that it has entered common language; “It’s a Marmite sort of thing” meaning something that polarises opinion. I last heard it used by someone who said that Margaret Thatcher was like Marmite.

Compare with Gerald Ratner who famously destroyed his company with a throwaway remark which ironically featured Marks and Spencer when he said that the earrings he sold were “cheaper than an M&S prawn sandwich but probably wouldn’t last as long” . Like Marmite, he also entered everyday language. As Wikipedia puts it Today, Ratner’s speech is still famous in the corporate world as an example of the value of branding and image over quality. Such gaffes are now sometimes called “Doing a Ratner”

My problem with the M&S ad campaign is that using a risky strapline like “Utterly Repellent Rainwear” might well work, but to link it to all their Menswear range is incredibly dangerous – if I was thinking of buying a raincoat I might well like the ad, but if I’m looking to buy shirts, a tie or a suit, do I really want the word “Repellent” to come to mind?

So what do you think? Have M&S hit the target, or have they shot themselves in the foot?

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A guest post from Jim Massey:

I made a comment on one of Martyn’s earlier Blogs about Social Media becoming the new “Town Square”  and he has given me this opportunity to explain a bit more about what led me to feel this way, the implications for Martyn’s clients, and more importantly for those of you who aren’t yet!

I’m a great fan of Naomi Klein‘s books, one of the themes that she has developed from “No Logo” through “Shock Doctrine” is the privatisation of public spaces, where instead of having open or common places to meet, we now have shopping malls and coffee shops which are branded and controlled. These do not offer places to meet, socialise, discuss freely or become engaged in social and volunteer activity. (try putting up posters or having a meeting in a Shopping Mall without prior permission and vetting of the cause). I also think in the UK that local government spending cuts are reducing the availability and standard of community centres and a predominantly secular society has moved away from a lot of faith based activities.

Membership of local groups and associations is declining, from the Boy Scouts to Golf clubs, (though there is an increase in centrally organised bodies, where you can log in and register for a cause rather than physically join. e.g. I give donations to MSF rather than get actively involved locally). This decline in social cohesion and group activity has been going on for many years and has been blamed on television, computer games, home computing/internet etc. I even found a reference back to the beginning of the 19^th century where people were concerned that the mass availability of printed novels meant the youth of that period were too busy staying inside reading books rather than going out and getting involved in things like defeating Napoleon!

So what does this all mean? Social cohesion is just as common place today as it has been in the past, it is just changing its nature as technology has enabled us to interact and do business in different ways, railways, penny post, telegraphs, telephones, radio, television, internet and now social media. The game has changed, social media has become where we meet, where we exchange ideas, where we discuss things, where we bind as communities, where we do business…. its bigger than just “word of mouth”.

So if you are not there, in the new town square, involved in these communities then you are missing out completely; if you are there but don’t fit in, you could be actively damaging your image, which is worse; and if you are new in town and don’t have a friendly guide to help you, you could get lost very easily.

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Continuing the theme of my last few blogs, here’s a great example of a company that’s using social media to delight their customers.

I was having lunch with one of Guildford’s top social media and NLP people, Nicky Kriel, yesterday and she mentioned this video of how KLM came up with an innovative use of social media. That’s right, KLM – not a high-tech startup but the world’s oldest airline still in operation. With forward-thinking like this, they’re likely to be around for an awful long time to come.