Natasha Judd | Digital Marketing & Social Media Management

Over the last week, I’ve noticed something new on Facebook. At the top of my profile and news feed, next to status, photo, link and video, I’ve now got the option to share a question. Interesting. There used to be applications on Facebook that allowed you to poll your friends, but they seem to have fallen by the wayside in the great profile clean-ups of recent years. This is Facebook’s own version. I thought I’d try it out.

Picking a topic I knew was dear to the hearts of a number of my Facebook friends, I set up my question: What is your favourite type of cupcake? I added a couple of options, Red Velvet, Lemon, Chocolate, etc, knowing that if my friends wanted to choose something else, they could just add that option to the poll. The finished question was added to my profile and the news feed, and I also had the option of asking specific friends to give their view.

This morning, there were 13 votes on the poll. Interestingly, only six of them came from people I know (their pictures are behind the blue rectangles in the image above). The rest of the votes seemingly came from their friends, and perhaps their friend’s friends as the question spread virally across Facebook. There were also two comments, one from someone I know, one from someone who must be a friend of someone else.

Business and community pages are able to use this new feature too (for how, check out this section of Facebook’s FAQs). If you look down the wall of the London Charity Softball League, for example, they’ve asked people to speculate on who will win this year. I’m not a fan of the league myself, but I noticed that my friends on Facebook were answering their questions, so I added my vote too.

It strikes me that there’s real potential in this questions tool for organisations to engage with their fans, getting feedback on their products and crowdsourcing ideas for promotions or products. The viral nature of questions also may increase the visibility of a page amongst like-minded individuals – after all friends of fans may be interested in looking into the organisation who originally asked the question.

It’s going to be interesting to watch how this feature is used over the coming weeks and months. For now, it seems that if I want to keep my friends happy, I’m better off baking chocolate cupcakes.

Posted in The Cupcake Conversation, The Online Conversation | Tagged cupcakes, facebook, fanpages, research, social media | Leave a comment

Running a competition on Facebook

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Natasha

Over the past couple of days, around my cupcake baking adventures, I’ve been reading up on running competitions on Facebook. This new interest was prompted by a single sentence in a blog post by Leyl Master Black called Top 5 Facebook Marketing Mistakes Small Businesses Make. Leyl’s post is useful reading in general, but what caught my attention was under the section on Violating Facebook’s Terms:

What are the most common violations? Some build a community on a personal page instead of a proper Facebook Page. Others fail to abide by Facebook’s rules around running contests. Read more.

So what are Facebook’s rules around running contests? I’ve promoted contests on Facebook in the past, but haven’t run one. I’ve also entered competitions on Facebook in the past – liking pages, leaving comments – but haven’t won one.

The official Facebook promotion guidelines seem to be located somewhere in the help section of their site, but I have to admit, it was much faster to find them through Google. There’s quite a lot in there, but basically the main rule is: don’t use any of Facebook’s features to run a competition on Facebook. It’s okay to limit competition entry to fans of a certain page, but you can’t ask them to enter by commenting on your wall, uploading a photo to your page, giving a thumbs up to a particular status update or anything like that. You also can’t pick a random fan to win a prize, or contact the winners via Facebook’s messaging service.

To run a competition on Facebook, it seems, you need to need to use a third party application – something that hasn’t been created by Facebook – to collect entries and the entrant’s personal data. There are applications which have been created to run competitions for you (a list can be found on the Social Media Examiner blog post on this subject). Alternatively, you could commission an agency to create a bespoke competition application which can live on one of the tabs of your page.

When people can upload photos and videos and add comments so easily on Facebook, it does seem fairly frustrating that they can’t use those features to enter your organisation’s competition. However, Facebook’s just a platform, and I guess legally they may need to distance themselves from how marketers use it. And of course, you don’t need to run your competition on Facebook at all. You could use your page or even a Facebook advertising campaign to link through to a competition that you’re running on your own site or elsewhere on the web, as long as you don’t violate any other aspect of Facebook’s terms of use.

As I look down my Facebook news feed, I’m constantly being asked to comment or like something to win the next great prize – holidays, iPads and so on - so it seems that a lot of organisations aren’t yet aware of these regulations. However, as the rules from Facebook say “we may remove any materials relating to the promotion or disable your Page, application or account if we determine in our sole discretion that you violate any of our policies”, it does seem that they are running a risk.

Competition entry form image courtesy of www.freepixels.com.

Note: The Facebook promotion guidelines were updated slightly on May 11, 2011. See this Social Speak Blog post for analysis of the most recent changes.

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged competitions, facebook, online marketing, social media | 1 Comment

Vanilla cupcake fail

Posted on April 2, 2011 by Natasha

Tomorrow is my first Mother’s Day as a mum – a role I’ve come to have a whole new respect for over the past four months. As an early present (and reward for surviving so many sleepless nights), I picked up a copy of Hummingbird Bakery’s new book, Cake Days, when we were out this morning.

After drooling over the glossy pictures all the way home, I decided that tonight was time for cupcake practice. I’m going to a friend’s baby shower next week, and I envisioned myself turning up with a batch of perfect Hummingbird-style cupcakes, some with pink frosting, some with blue.

Vanilla cupcake fail All I can say is that I’m glad that baby shower isn’t tomorrow. As you can see from the picture here, the cupcakes were an epic fail. To start with, there seemed to be too much sponge mixture for my 12 cupcake tin. The recipe said to fill two-thirds of each cupcake case, but I had more mixture than that, so I just kept going. Result after baking: top heavy and uneven cupcakes. Realisation after looking at the book again: that it said the recipe was enough for 12-16 cupcakes. Okay, user error. I won’t make that mistake twice.

However, I’m a little lost as to what went wrong with the frosting. I must admit, that I was a little distracted by Baby at the time, but I’m pretty sure I followed the recipe. I blitzed the sugar-butter-milk combo for about eight minutes or so, before trying to spread it onto the cupcakes.

As you can see, I didn’t manage the trademark Hummingbird frosting swirl. In fact, I didn’t even manage to keep the frosting on the top of the cupcake. It was so runny that it dripped down the side of the cakes, through the cooling rack and ended up all over my kitchen.

I’m hoping someone out there in cyberspace can help me. What’s the cure for runny frosting? Is it more icing sugar? Beating it more? Or less? Also, how much food colouring should I put in to make the icing a decent pink. I think I put about six drops of Silver Spoon pink food colouring, and all I got was this light peach.

I’m sure these cupcakes will taste okay, and as one of my university lecturers used to say, ‘content is king’ (though he was talking about websites rather than baked goods). However, I’d really like to be able to take some nicer looking versions along to the baby shower next week, so any advice would be gratefully received.

Here’s wishing all mums and mums-to-be a very happy UK Mother’s Day. Hope you’re well spoiled by your family tomorrow!

Posted in The Cupcake Conversation | Tagged cake days, cupcakes | 8 Comments

Deleting social media channels

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Natasha

Earlier this week, I Googled myself. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done that, and I was surprised to see how the various social media channels I’ve created over the last five years had crept up the results list. Channels that I set up to promote my newly published novel back in 2007. Channels that I originally used to create groups for various organisations that I’ve worked or volunteered for. Channels that I no longer update; the ones where I’ve been ignoring the ‘new comment’ and ‘new friend request’ emails. There they all were on Google, looking abandoned and unloved.

In the world of social media, having an abandoned or unloved channel is often worse than having no channel at all. The content quickly goes out of date. Followers drift away or become frustrated when they get no response. Given that I didn’t want to start updating them all again – I’m sticking to this blog, and my main profiles on Facebook and Twitter for now – I decided they had to go.

Try to delete a social media profile, and you get a lot of ‘Are you sure?’ screens and the occasional begging email. They’ll ask if they’ve offended you, tout their privacy settings, try and convince you that you’ll be really missing out if you hit that final delete button. However, I’ve been strong. My accounts on Bebo and MySpace are scheduled for deletion. I’m no longer in their target audience – if I ever was. That extra twitter profile I set up for a #4change chat, the one that ranked higher in Google than my official profile, that’s gone too.

I probably should have done this years ago. It would’ve definitely be easier to do so. Wait to delete a channel that you’re no longer using, and the ‘last updated in 2007′ messages aren’t your only problem. I’d registered with email addresses I no longer had access to and ones that no longer existed. I’d forgotten my passwords. Twitter had temporarily suspended my account settings. In short, it was way more difficult than it needed to be.

The lesson here: delete your social media profiles as soon as you’re sure you’re done with them. They’re probably not helping you or your organisation by being inactive, so let your friends or followers know if you’ve gone somewhere new, and then shut them down. I’ve Googled myself again today, and some of the old profiles are still there, but I’m hoping they’ll disappear over the next week or two.

In the meantime, I’ll be trying to update this blog more frequently with my thoughts on all things online. Feel free to leave a comment if you’ve got any questions or want to share your own experience about trying to delete a social media channel.

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged bebo, closing down, google, myspace, social media, twitter | Leave a comment

Starting a new social media channel

Posted on July 27, 2010 by Natasha

I’ve recently started a new job, and along with the new colleagues to get to know, the new computer systems and the new tea rules, I’ve also got the opportunity to start up a new social network. It occurs to me that this is a rare privilege. Too often, it’ll be a matter of taking over a Twitter profile or Facebook fan page that someone else has started. Or, even if you have set something up yourself, once a year or two has passed, it’s all too easy to get into the habit of doing what you’ve always done: interacting with your fans or followers in a certain way, writing the same sort of posts, and so on.

The fresh start has allowed me to consider the challenges of social media with fresh eyes, to plan and prepare before I begin. In doing so, I’ve jotted down some questions which may be helpful to others in a similar situation – whether they’re starting a new channel or reviewing something established.

1. What do you want to say (and perhaps, do you have anything to say)?

While I don’t believe in scripting every tweet or having every blog update scheduled and approved months in advance, it can be worth having some sort of content plan. What are the themes you’ll be covering on your channel? Is it for your entire life (if you’re a person) or your entire organisation (if you’re setting up the channel on behalf of one of those), or for a particular interest or project? In the early days, it may help to plan out what kind of updates you’ll want to post and how regularly, and put these dates into a calendar as reminders.

2. Who is your audience?

Once you’ve decided what you want to say, it’s worth working out who (if anyone) wants to hear it. It’s all well and good tweeting your thoughts about what you had for breakfast into the internet void on a personal account, but if you’re doing this as a job, there are likely to be things like targets or KPIs for user interaction (and if there aren’t it might be worth nominating some – see point 5 below). So, who do you want to reach? Are they end-users of your product or service, or other organisations in your field? How old are they? How computer literate? How often do they get online – and when they do, what sites do they go to first?

3. How can you reach them?

One thing I’ve learnt over the past ten years is that, in most cases, it’s far easier to go where your audience are than to get them to come to you. So, thinking about the previous question, how do your audience behave online? Are they on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr? Are they asking questions on Yahoo! Answers? Do they belong to a particular online community? Sometimes it may be easy enough to set up your own profile in these spaces to interact with other users, but in other cases, you may need to get permission from a community moderator or website owner before you make your first post.

If you’re still keen to set up a blog or community on your own website – and there are lots of good reasons to do so – then it’s still worth doing research into how best to reach your audience. Do you see your potential audience members commenting on other blogs? If so, it’s worth noting what sort of posts they feel motivated to comment on, the regularity of the postings, etc. And of course, it’s worth remembering that for a lot of people the internet is still all about email, so building up a list and sending monthly updates remains a perfectly valid way of spreading a message and driving traffic to your website.

4. Who’s going to do the updates?

People say social media is great because it’s free. Technically, in many cases, this is true. However, it doesn’t account for the huge amount of staff time that needs to be spent to set up and maintain a channel. Social media is about conversation. If you go quiet, you’ll be ignored. So, who’s going to do your updates? And who’s going to do your updates when that person is on leave? And who’ll be the person who can provide sign-off on anything controversial or out of the ordinary? Because that’s another side-effect of having a conversation – you’re never 100% sure about what that other person might say.

5. What does success look like?

For some, the opportunity to broadcast a message will be enough. For others, the end goal will be the online conversation itself. There definitely is some reward in being part of a community, in being generous and interacting with your fans and followers, learning from their updates as you shape your own, passing on their messages, leaving comments on their blogs, following them back.

However, for most, there will be some form of measurable action that you want your friends or followers to undertake. This may be visiting your website, signing an online petition, volunteering or donating to your cause, registering for an event or a myriad other options. It is this conversion from conversation to action that, for me, indicates real social media success. It’s what can be monitored as you go along and, through regularly reviewing the answers to the earlier questions, what you can aim to improve.

There’s a real excitement in new beginnings, but what I guess I’m realising anew is that it doesn’t have to end there. I’m looking forward to seeing how this project grows.

Image courtesy of Matt Hamm. Used under Creative Commons licence.

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged audience, setting up, social media | Leave a comment

What’s wrong with face-to-face?

Posted on October 14, 2009 by Natasha

So, YouthNet’s launched a new report today: a study by Professor Michael Hulme into how young people communicate, interact and seek information online. It’s a really interesting read, encompassing the results of quantitative online research undertaken with 994 young people by The Futures Company, quotes from young people, and comments on the implications for website design and development. It’s also too much to cover in one blog entry. So I can only encourage you to go and read it yourself, blog about yourself, discuss the findings and debate the conclusions.

75% of the young people surveyed said that ‘they couldn’t live without the internet’. That’s probabaly an exaggeration, but I don’t find it surprising. I’d say the same thing. Then again, I spend at least eight hours a week-day in front of a computer, I studied multimedia, and I work for an online charity. I’m going away for a week in the country at the end of the month, and the fact that I’ve been told that there’s no internet or mobile access is already weighing heavily on my mind. Being such an online advocate, I’m often asked ‘what’s wrong with face-to-face?’

After all, the very nature of online communication is that it’s mediated by a machine such as a computer or hand-held device. With the lack of body-language and eye contact, and the possibilities for deception, it’s possible to see the internet as cold, impersonal and isolating. However, what that assumption ignores is the way young people live what Professor Hulme calls ‘hybrid lives’ – their onlines and their offlines are blurred. Their friends on Facebook may or may not be friends from school or work; status updates on Twitter may become conversation starters in the classroom. 80% of young people surveyed said they use social networking sites to talk to friends or family they see a lot; 22% said that they use them to communicate with someone they don’t know.

So, while it’s impossible to generalise the experience of every young person, it seems that for many these online tools aren’t replacing face-to-face communication methods – they’re complimenting them. As Professor Hulme says, “The more we can communicate, the more we will, and do, communicate.” What’s changing is the amount of communication tools available, and people’s ability to choose a communication tool which is appropriate for a particular situation: broadcasting their thoughts in blogs or vlogs, updating a selected group of friends on Facebook, texting or calling an individual, or having a face-to-face conversation.

I don’t have a problem with face-to-face conversation. In fact, it’s often quite useful. I do have more of a problem with the assumption that it’s absolutely-always-without-a-doubt the best form of communication. The internet can be a great way to make first contact with communities of interest, for example. After all, it’s easy to search online for groups of fellow social media geeks – in my case – than try and spot them during my morning commute. Once contact is made, a mix of face-to-face and online interactions often result. The internet also allows us to reach out beyond the restrictions of geographic proximity. And, as the report goes on to say, the internet can also be a great way to source information about issues young people may feel less comfortable talking about face-to-face, with websites like TheSite.org allowing young people to access trustworthy advice on a range of topics.

While it’s important to realise that there are issues or dangers around communicating on the internet – the possibilities of online bullying, the possibilities of abuse and so on – it’s also important to realise that, in many cases, these are either reflected or replaced by alternative issues or dangers when communication occurs offline. Moreover, just as I was taught not to give out my name on the phone by my cautious parents, today young people have learned similar lessons about the internet. 77% of the young people surveyed agreed that: ‘On the internet you can never know if someone is who they say they are.’

The past century has seen huge developments in the way we communicate: from telephone calls, through radio and television broadcasts, to the development of mobile phones, faxes and the internet. While it’s not my place to predict what will come next, it seems obvious that there’s a lot more communication to do, and for each new generation, there’ll be more and more new communication tools as the years progress.

Today, 86% of the young people surveyed loved how new technology helps them communicate with people. Let’s keep creating technology, creating websites and online services, that will help us communicate with people. Face-to-face, hands-to-keyboard, in the twittersphere and in the blog comments below, let’s ensure this conversation continues.

First published on the YouthNet blog

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged communication, online life, social media | Leave a comment

Reflections on the #moonwalk

Posted on July 1, 2009 by Natasha

Last Friday, after work, a group of us from YouthNet walked down to Liverpool Street station for a twitter-organised moonwalk in memory of Michael Jackson. Given the instantaneous nature of the Internet, I’m almost too late to blog about the event itself. All over the web, you can read about how a tweeted idea became an exercise in mass participation, involving the police and Network Rail, announcements over the loud speakers at the station, and thousands of people bobbing up and down to Jackson classics. There are plenty of photos on Flickr, videos on YouTube, and a twitter stream using the #moonwalk hashtag where you can see how it all came together.

However, what’s more interesting, from my point of view, is the questions it raises for charity marketers, campaigners, press people and others who spread the word about a cause. It’s too easy for social media campaigns to fail – despite the best planning and the most inspiring causes – because they just don’t catch on. For all that we may believe that re-tweeting a message about one of our causes doesn’t take much effort, I’m beginning to wonder if it actually does. People have to be logged into Twitter to see the message in the first place, they have to pick it out of all the other tweets they’re receiving, they have to understand it, engage with it, and choose to pass it on. And that’s only one social networking tool.

It’s also easy to be impressed that the event went from concept to implementation in one day. And while the moonwalk wasn’t actually held in Liverpool Street Station in the end, and while there wasn’t actually room for much moonwalking in such a large crowd, the fact that it happened at all is testament to the power of social media to turn buzz into action. As charities, do we have the ability to be this spontaneous? If the mood of the public was to turn in the direction of our cause on a particular day, would we be able and ready to react? And, would it be appropriate for us to do so?

Finally, when you’re pressed up against people, it’s easy to overhear their conversations. A woman behind me was asked why she was there. “I’m actually more a fan of Twitter than Michael Jackson”, she said. And while, like many children of the 80s, I did bop around my room to Billie Jean, the same applied to me. What we had then was a crowd of people who used Twitter or who know people who used Twitter or read reports of people who used Twitter. While there were some real fans, I’d guess that a significant amount of people had come along to see what was happening and be part of it. If we were going to organise a charity event via social media, would that matter? Raising awareness is a goal in itself sometimes, but if some people are ‘there for the sake of being there’, is that enough?

Would be great to hear your thoughts.

First published on the YouthNet blog

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged charity, flashmob, social media, twitter | Leave a comment

Who will organise the data?

Posted on May 11, 2009 by Natasha

Earlier this afternoon, I attempted to clean out my inbox. I didn’t get very far. Old newsletters could be deleted easily; so could old invitations to events, sales emails, and spam. However, I found myself distracted by an emailed link to this half-forgotten YouTube video, entitled The Machine is Us/ing Us.

The video is from 2007, and of course, the internet has moved on over the past two years. However, I was struck by the continued relevance of a question which appears three minutes and one second into the animation: ‘Who will organise all this data?’ And the answers, ‘We will… You will.’

Last week, I was invited to get involved in a Twitter chat about using social media for social change (using the ‘#4Change’ hash tag). While I’ve been using Twitter since mid-2008, this was the first time I’ve participated in an organised, on-Twitter event – and another opportunity to reflect on this ‘who will organise all this data?’ question.

Earlier in the year, I went to Twestival, and in a crowded, dark and noisy warehouse in London, I commented to a fellow attendee that it was so much easier to find people on the internet. Back then, in the distant days of February, I was talking about finding them via Google or perhaps through using the Technorati blog index. I meant by searching for people or organisations based on the words they’d used on their websites or other online content. I still do that.

But, increasingly, Twitter itself is becoming one of my major communication tools. It’s often where I hear breaking news – both on the world stage and in the lives of my contacts. It’s where I can ask questions, get advice. However, with millions of people now twittering, and even with only 200 of those people on my personal follow list, it’s often a case of too many people speaking at once. To make sense of it all, I’ve found that I need start categorising my contacts, using tools like TweetDeck. There’s my ‘all friends’ list; then there’s those I talk to on a day-to-day basis. There’s another column for direct messages, one where I can monitor updates relevant to work, and so on. Often it’s just as important to say, ‘What can I ignore, what’s not important for me to know right now?’

The #4Change hash tag is another way of organising/filtering information – a way of bringing together information on a particular topic: in this case, information how people worldwide are using social media for social change. However, it’s not just the # that makes things happen. It’s also us. It’s Tom Dawkins from Ashoka, who had the idea, defined the hash tag, recruited regional organisers. It was setting a time when people worldwide could join in (even if this was between 10pm and midnight here in the UK!) It was sending @ messages to particular contacts, in the hope that it would make the tweet about the chat stand out amongst all the other tweets they received – and the excitement of, later in the day, seeing some of those people join in the discussion.

Twitter is another social media tool. It might be the next Facebook, it might never really catch on. That’s not important. What seems increasingly important though is how we individually make sense of the data we receive, how we filter this information, what we chose to trust and why. As representatives of charities and other not-for-profit organisations, we also may need to consider how we can reach out through this barrage of information to raise awareness and support for our cause. It’s something that I’m sure will continue to be discussed in future #4Change chats.

For now though, it’s back to my email sorting. Who will organise all this data? Much as I sometimes wish I could give others the responsibility of adding ‘okay to delete’ tags to my inbox, that’s just not practical. So, who will organise all this data?

In this case, I will.

Eventually.

First published on the YouthNet blog

Posted in The Online Conversation | Tagged online life, twitter | Leave a comment

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