Facebook Deprecates FBML, Moves to iFrames – What it Means to Admins

14 Mar fb iframes

Social media is a fluid industry, and no company tests our ability to go with the flow more than Facebook. Last week they officially began the process of deprecating the FBML app.

What the hell does that mean? Good question.

FBML is the app that most of us were using to create custom tabs. It was Facebook’s propriety language, that was actually a sub-language to HTML. There were some basic calls in FBML that we could leverage to make these tabs more interesting. Possibly the most popular of which, was the fan-gate. This allowed you to create a welcome tab which gave non-fans one view, while fans saw another.

By deprecating the FBML app, Facebook is slowly making it a relic by disabling existing call options. Starting, of course, with the fan gate. So, IF YOU HAVE A PAGE THAT HAS AN FBML TAB THAT USES FAN GATING, IT NO LONGER WORKS.

So, what am I supposed to do now? Another good question. Continue reading →

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How to Update your Business’ Wikipedia Entries

23 Feb wikipedia-logo

I get this question a lot at work.  We often see inaccuracies  or outdated content and want to correct the text to ensure our brand is reflected in the best light. Unfortunately, it just ain’t that simple. Wikipedia is a community run and operated site, and the members of that community take their work VERY seriously. It’s part of what makes Wikipedia such an amazing resource.

I think a lot of brands don’t realize how important following Wikipedia’s guidelines are. It’s not just a “click edit”, make change, *bam* you’re done process.

I’ve been scouring the web, pinging friends and pulling from personal experience and put together some suggestions for you.  I’d also be ever so grateful if anyone else has more light to shed on this: Continue reading →

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Facebook Updates Fan Pages (Again) – New Features Explained

10 Feb

Facebook is changing up fan pages (again…again). As a brand admin this can be a daunting time. And you might be thinking to yourself, “NOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.”  Fret not, dear friend. We’ll get used to this update, just as we have we all the udpates before it. Remember when your tabs got narrower? And your logos got bigger? and your Boxes got the boot? We’ve stayed strong, resilient, and have even grown stronger.

I will say this update seems pretty significant, not only on the superficial front, but also in the back end functionality. I’ll be interested to see how/if there are any pitfalls.

Here are the main changes:

  1. Photos featured as they are on personal pages. So your latest pics appear above your wall. This is a painless update.
  2. Page navigation located on left hand sidebar. Again, this is something that already happens on personal pages, so your fans should be used to the behavior. Semi-painless.
  3. Show popular posts from fans, in addition to page posts. This means that your page will surface the more active posts from fans, and feature them alongside your page updates. This is a chance that you can choose to use or not. If you’re like me and manage pages that only feature official updates on the top level, it may be an easy way to begin featuring fan posts, avoiding the more spam-like content.  Potentially painful change, but also potentially very pleasing.
  4. Interact as a page, outside of your page.  Ok, this is one that I’m scared and excited for.  Have you ever wanted to leave a comment on a parnter’s page, as an official representative of your company. Yeah, me too. It’s a great way to begin interacting with the community in an official capacity. I can also see this backfiring in the same way we all did when Twitter first started becoming popular. Who didn’t post something you meant to publish on your personal account, accidentally as a company once or twice? oh, um, me neither.  Kinda painful.
  5. Updated notification preferences.  This is supposed to let you choose how you interact on your page as well as your email preferences. So if you want to emerge as an individual community manager – give transparency to folks as to who is responding to their questions, you can do that now as an admin. Could be great for community managers.  Painless.

If you’ve seen other stories detailing the updates go ahead and drop them into the comments below. I’m always happy to hear from other page admins who have tips and tricks to make engaging with our communities via FB more effective.

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Post It Comic: An Ok Match Made in Heaven (Match.com Acquired OKCupid)

2 Feb ok match

So, *just* yesterday I was reading an article from OK!Cupid about why internet denizens should never pay for online dating.  Strangely, this morning, that very free dating site was acquired by premium dating site, Match.com

So? Which is it? Should I pay to meet Mr. right, or shouldn’t I? Well, OKCupid says it will continue to be free…but now that Match is signing paychecks, they don’t think paying for dating sites is that bad either. Also, that particular blog post has been taken down off the OK blog.

Regardless of how you like to get your dates, hopefully this acquisition will only mean great things for lovers on the interwebz.

And, without further ado, I give you the latest Post It Comic:


 

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So, What’s the Difference Between a Community Manager and a Social Media Manager

24 Jan

First off, Happy Community Manager Day to all my community managing peeps out there.

‘Twas this festive day that made me want to explain the differences between our two roles, at least how I see them. I thought it unjust to take the well wishes of my peers, as I’m not technically a community manager, although I do handle many of the community management functions for NVIDIA’s corporate presences.

So, what IS the difference?

Well, a community manager is the person who interfaces directly with the community. He/She acts as a  liason between the company and the folks they’re trying to reach on a daily basis. You’ll often find them managing platforms from Forums to Facebook. They’ll run promotions online and in person, and help generate content to share with the community.

A social media manager is the person who sets the strategies and direction for the company’s social media program. They stay on top of the latest technologies and best practices, offer training to internal stakeholders, and help manage/guide measurement and reporting.They may also participate on the community side, but likely more at the company level.

Again, this is just my definition. As of yet, no one has set in stone the end all be all description so take this with a grain of salt. In fact, here are some grains of reference salt:

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