Consumers and marketers have vastly different perceptions of and expectations about Facebook likes, which presents a problem for marketers who are slow to move, but an opportunity for those who pounce on it.
That’s based on a survey of more than 1,300 consumers and 132 senior marketers, conducted by Lithium and the Chief Marketing Officer Council.
The top three reasons why marketers believe consumers like their Facebook pages were:
Most people have yet to publish their timelines, since the feature only became available across the site last Thursday and Facebook has a seven-day grace periodfor people to choose what to put on the advanced profile before it publishes for the entire world to see.
I wonder whether the grace period effectively extends the testing of this advanced profile, since Facebook can respond to feedback from the less-technologically inclined types who have just begun to tinker with the timeline over the past week. Even techie types continue to find things that might resemble bugs as much as features.
Facebook’s sponsored stories advertisements will start appearing in the news feed beginning next month.
These promotions that refrain users’ engagement with a brand until recently appeared only in modules specifically designated for advertisements.
This fall, Facebook started moving sponsored stories through the ticker, and so far, labeling appears to have prevented people from confusing the promotions with activities generated by friends.
We’re all learning about how best to use timelineright now, so it’s probably a good thing that brand pages haven’t migrated to this new layout yet.
While we do know that Facebook is working on upgrading brand pages, no dates have been given for anything new and it’s unknown what the changes will be. Most likely individual users’ experiences with timeline will dictate whether the social network will extend the format to pages.
Meanwhile, timeline profiles have other implications for brands on Facebook.
Whitney Parker is vice president for user experience at Brazen Careerist, where she co-hosts a bootcamp on how to create and implement a social media strategy.
It’s no secret that jobs in social media are becoming more prevalent in nearly every industry nationwide and even globally. A quick search on Indeed returns nearly 30,000 openings in the United States alone.
But what might not be obvious is what, exactly, young professionals should do to position themselves for these emerging roles. And no, it’s not enough just to have a Facebook Page.
Before timeline went live, it was actually possible to undo an upgrade to this advanced profile: Uninstalling the Developer application from your Facebook account would remove the timeline. But now all of this has changed.
A spokesperson for Facebook explained in an email to us:
Once you click “Get Timeline,” you will have seven days to review everything that appears on your timeline before anyone else can see it.
If you choose, you can publish your timeline right away. If you decide to wait, your timeline will go live automatically after seven days. Your timeline will replace your profile.
By now we’ve all become waryof posts like this one on Facebook: “Costco is currently giving away $100.00 gift cards to all Facebook users!’
Alas, as of this writing, a bogus Costco gift card scam was live on Facebook.
We have no doubt that the social network’s immune system will detect the web address that the latest posts include and add the URLs to the security databases.
Just when you think Facebook has blocked every possible link to a particular scam meme, it returns with another web address. Southwest Airlines isn’t giving away 973 pairs of free tickets on the social network, and by now most people have learned that promises to that effect only lead to malware and spam.
Google+ may be less than a year old, but New York Times bestselling author Chris Brogan is ready to crown it a game changer. His latest book, which will publish next week, is called Google+ for Business: How Google’s Social Network Changes Everything.
“Everything?,” we asked Brogan. He assured us, rather indignantly, that he hasn’t made a mistake with his book’s title.
Google+ has an obvious advantage in search results, presents unique opportunities for brands and is backed by deep pockets, he argues. And all of these factors make it a social media platform that will stick around in a big way.
After months of slow, gradual rollout, Facebook Timeline is now available to all users.
The Timeline is a radical redesign of Facebook‘s user profile pages, introduced at Facebook’s F8 conference in September. Instead of merely listing your interests and personal info, the Timeline shows a detailed overview of your life on Facebook, with the ability to check out what you’ve been out to at a particular point in time.
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