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How to untag yourself from Facebook posts and pictures posted by others

It used to be when someone said “Facebook” – people instantly thought of “status updates”. Or that trademark blue color. Or funny pictures from your friends.

But these days, the latest news headlines have a lot of folks instead thinking words like “invasive” and “no privacy”.

I’ve said it before but I’ll repeat it here. The only way to truly remain private on Facebook…is to not be on it at all. That’s not just true of Facebook, that’s true of all things Internet. You just never know where your photo might one day show up, so if you don’t want it everywhere – don’t post it ANYwhere.

Okay, fine. But what to do when someone posts a photo of you on Facebook? And – what if they tag you? Even worse, what if it’s a horrible photo that you never want any of your friends, parents and prospective employers (trust me, they ARE looking) to see on your profile?

Because, it’s a law of nature that every time you do something stupid, somebody’s going to take a picture of it. And social media makes it possible for that picture to be in the hands of millions in hours…

But you can do something about it! (That is, after you yell at your tag-happy buddy.) You can untag yourself and then you can even set your profile to be ‘untaggable’ from then on. Here’s how:

1.   Once you are logged into Facebook, click on your Profile page.
2.   Once there, look at your profile photo. Just beneath it will be a link called “View Photos of Me” Click on it.
3.   Locate the ‘offending photo” and click on it.
4.   In the caption under the photo you’ll see your name and just to the right of it, the phrase “remove tag”. Click on that and presto! No more photo tag.

To turn off tagging from your profile and prevent anyone from ever tagging you again:

1.   Go back to your profile page.
2.   Click on the top right “Account” link.
3.   A pull down menu will appear. Locate the “Privacy Settings” on this list and click on it.
4.   Then click on “Applications and Websites”
5.   Now, to the right of the “What your friends can share about you” option, is a “Edit Settings” button. Click on that.
6.   Find the checkbox next to the “Photos and videos of me” and UNcheck it.
7.   Save Changes.

When you complete all these steps, your friends will never be able to tag those horrible photos of you again. Then again, neither will your high school buddies be able to tag you when they scan in that great old team photo from the yearbook.

What do you think? Are people who turn off tagging smart and savvy about their privacy? Or are they vain killjoys who need to loosen up? Which camp do you fall into?

Photo Credit

Filed Under: Facebook, Featured, Posts, Social Media How-To, Social Media Strategy | Social Media Marketing Plan for Business | Social Media Marketing Training at DonCrowther.com Tagged With: Facebook, photos, pictures, tagging, video

6 huge social media mistakes businesses make

The promise of ‘free’ advertising and easy PR draws business owners, both big and small, to the social marketing arena.

They think that all they need is to establish a Twitter account or set up a Facebook and LinkedIn page and it’s off to the races. They’ll just get going, get posting, and figure it out as they go. If they don’t know what they’re doing quite yet, who cares, right? Any social networking is good social networking, right?

Wrong!

There are common social media misconceptions that can actually hurt your online relationships with your customers. Here are just a few to watch out for:

Hi…now BUY!
I’ll start with the most obvious. It’s not okay to push your products the second you get online. It’s just not. You need to take the time to make a connection with your readers and your prospects. If you’re lucky and you do it right, soon you will be calling them “clients and customers.”
No Turning Back Now
If you want to profit from being online and in front of your customers 24/7…you need to deal with the added demands. If a customer tweets you a concern or leaves a question on your FB page, you can’t ignore it and just focus upon the raving fan posts. You have to deal with the good and the bad.
Cohesion , cohesion, cohesion
Scattershot marketing efforts won’t work. And they will turn off most customers. You have to be consistent and you have to have a plan.
Big Fat Arrows Towards the Shopping Cart
In the midst of your conversations, remember that, if you want to make any money from this, you need to let them know that they can actually buy from you. Always make it clear how they can do so.
Know Thyself
If you hear negative feedback, it’s not okay to simply shut them out, block them or move on. Find the right tone to deal with detractors and always make sure you look within to figure out if maybe – just maybe – what they’re saying about you might have a hint of truth to it.
Extend Your Brand Online
Don’t Replace It Going online doesn’t mean reinventing your brand. You.com should still be YOU.

What mistakes have you made in social media? What else should we warn people about? Let us know by posting a comment below.

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Filed Under: Business, Featured, Internet Marketing Strategies | Internet Marketing Training & Tips | Solutions for Internet Marketing at DonCrowther.com, Posts, Social Media How-To, Social Media Strategy | Social Media Marketing Plan for Business | Social Media Marketing Training at DonCrowther.com Tagged With: business, mistakes, Social Media Strategy | Social Media Marketing Plan for Business | Social Media Marketing Training at DonCrowther.com

How To Stay Focused In A Social Media World

You already know time is money. Wasting time online doing things that distract you from your core business is tantamount to throwing money away. But human nature takes over sometimes and you find your mind wandering, and your mouse surfing, when you should be working.

And it’s especially bad in the world of social media. Social media loves to grab us with something interesting (and hey, it’s even worse because your friend recommended it, so you’re even more likely to click), then suck us into an abyss from which we won’t exit for hours…

Guilty, as charged!

Enter Google Chrome’s simple yet ingenious plugin “Stay Focusd”. Cutesy spelling aside, this might be one of the most seriously powerful — and simple — tools you’ll use all year.

StayFocusd is the digital version of blinders.

It quite literally blocks any site you think might distract you from getting your work done. Once you install StayFocusd, the functionality is fairly simple. You set your preferences by choosing the sites you find particularly distracting (YouTube, ESPN, Hulu and the like) and the length of time you’re ‘allowed’ yourself to stay on that site every day.

Once you hit that time limit — its game over. You’re quite literally locked out of that site until the following day. If you find your time limit too draconian, you can go in and alter it. But only once 24 hours passes.

Basically, StayFocusd really means business when it comes to keeping you focused on your business.

What do you think about ‘accountability’ tools like StayFocusd? Would you ever use something like this? Or do you think it’s a crutch for business owners who just need to get a lot better at time management? Leave us a comment below and let us know!

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Filed Under: Featured, Life, Posts, Social Media How-To, Social Media Strategy | Social Media Marketing Plan for Business | Social Media Marketing Training at DonCrowther.com Tagged With: focus, google chrome, productivity, stayfocusd

Understanding Chinese Social Media

How much do you know about China and the state of social media there? Let’s put it this way, if you think that North Americans dominate social media, you’re wrong.

The first thing you need to know about Chinese Social Media is that it is big. As in, big big! Think one billion registered users big.

Not only are these billion Chinese folks online a lot, they’re on social media a lot. Studies reveal that roughly 92% of them use some form of Chinese social media. What kind of social media?

Well, it’s sure not Twitter! Did you know that the Chinese government actually blocks Twitter from its citizens? So you could have the world’s most savvy, popular Twitter campaign and still never reach 400 million of your potential customers. (The same goes for Facebook, btw. The Powers That Be over there aren’t big fans of Zuckerburg’s little blue powerhouse and have blocked it too. That said, their alternative to FB is called QQ and it is incredibly popular. It’s currently got one billion registered accounts and 500 million monthly active users!)

So what elso do they use? Some of the top Chinese social media sites include douban.com and t.sina.com.cn (You can find a bigger list and more info here.) And they’re not just using one network. The average Chinese Social Mediaphile has 2.78 different accounts. And a full 50% of them actually have their own blogs! That’s 200 million plus blogs in China alone!

Starting to realize how net-savvy and available these potential customers are?

But, people in China, even though there are a lot of them, don’t have any money, so it’s impossible to actually do business with them right?

Yet another misconception dashed to pieces by the facts. Let’s take just one company, Tencent, the creators of QQ.com, instant messaging, a multi-media networking service called Qzone, and a number of SMS games. Before I mention this, remember that Facebook is now “on their way to profitability” and that Twitter is believed to have made enough money to do better than breakeven in 2009.

Tencent, on the other hand, which trades on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, so is required to make regular, authoritative reports, just announced that they made $264 million in after-tax profits.

And did I mention that those profits were just from the first quarter of 2010? And that only 13% of their revenue came from advertising (the primary source for US social networking profits)?

Yes, there’s money to be made in Chinese social media, you just have to think Chinese, learn their market, and build content that Chinese surfers want to view.

By the way – I’m saying that you should definitely pay attention to Chinese social media. But it doesn’t end there. You should keep your SEO eye on them as well. China’s leading search engine “Baidu” has a 75% market share in China and it’s growing by leaps and bounds every single year. Oh and don’t neglect that mobile marketing thing either. Why? Because mobile is HOT in China. 233 million use mobile devices when they go online.

Finally, you need to know that when Chinese citizens want to travel (and 50 million of them do, each year) a full 70% of them use the internet to research their trip. Wouldn’t it be great if even a tiny percentage of that 50 million found YOU and your company?

What are you doing to capitalize on the huge Chinese social media marketplace? Share your thoughts by writing a comment below.

Filed Under: Business, Featured, Internet Marketing Strategies | Internet Marketing Training & Tips | Solutions for Internet Marketing at DonCrowther.com, Posts, Social Media How-To, Social Media Strategy | Social Media Marketing Plan for Business | Social Media Marketing Training at DonCrowther.com Tagged With: Baidu, China, QQ.com, Social Media Strategy | Social Media Marketing Plan for Business | Social Media Marketing Training at DonCrowther.com

5 Ways To Get Tons of Traffic To Old Blog Posts

Blogs are a great way to show off fresh content. They attract Google spiders and readers alike with their hot-off-the-press posts. But what happens to a blog post when it’s lukewarm-off-the-press, or even a few weeks “cold?” Should you just leave it there in the archives to rot? Or are there ways to drive tons of traffic to old blog posts?

By employing just a few small tricks, you can get your blog readers to stay on your site a little longer. They can dig a little deeper and get more familiar with your brand, recommend your old posts to their friends. Basically, you can get them reading more, more, more of you, you, you!

Facelift a Post: Look back at your old posts. Could any of them be re-run with just a little “refreshing up”? Drag a very old post out, dust off the cobwebs, add an introduction that makes it timely. Add images. Kill any language that ages it and then – voila. You have a brand new post.
Easter Egg Hunt: One great trick is to run an ‘Easter egg hunt’ themed contest. Quiz your readers on something they can only answer by reading your archives – and then reward those who do so with a free drawing. It could be something as simple as a $10 Starbucks card – but your readers will love the fun exercise and they’ll read a lot of your content in the meantime.
Clip Show: Another way to revive old posts is to model your blog after an old sitcom formula. Do a “clip show!” Create a post that is comprised of excerpts of past posts. It can be all the most popular posts or the posts that were the most controversial or the posts that you personally loved the most. Doesn’t matter what the category is, just link back to those old posts.
Related Posts: You know when you’re shopping for clothes online and underneath that photo of those snow boots is a “related item” link. Usually it’s something like a photo of the wooly socks that would go just great with those new boots? Do that with your blog posts. If you post something this week about how to make the most of a winter holiday, link to last year’s post on how to make the most of a summer holiday. There are WordPress plugins that make creating this “Related Posts” area a snap.
Email it out: Finally – don’t just rely on new people to show up on your site and have the wherewithal (or the time!) to dig through your blog archives. Instead, blast your email list a compilation of your blog post links from time to time. Catch up the new readers with old content they may benefit from – and which they may have missed.

There are more ways, but these will provide a solid foundation. Use these five tips to reinvigorate your archives and re-excite your readers.

What other ways have you used to get more traffic to old blog posts? Share them with us by leaving a comment below.

Photo credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hamed/ / CC BY 2.0

Can corporate videos go viral?

Want to go viral?

We know that videos can go viral that are about dance

and they work if you can sing like an angel

Or if your little brother keeps biting you:

But can it work for company videos?

Let me break it to you – it probably can’t if you just create a promotional commercial.

But it can, if you get creative, and can create something viral worthy. It probably won’t get 100 million plus views, but you can still get tons!

You could blend an iPad:

You could put an alarm on your Microsoft software:

yes, I know that wasn’t a Microsoft video, but it should have been!

Skittles is going to hit soon with some of theirs:

Here’s a Craftsman shot that’s got a great chance at scoring viral:

to join the success of this one:

and don’t forget this one:

So, why do these, clearly corporate videos go viral?

1. They’re cool

2. They’re unexpected

3. They’re not just purely promoting the brand, they’re promoting cool and unexpected.

So, what cool, unexpected thing can you put onto film that will build your company, brand, or image?

Know of other great viral corporate videos? Disagree with our conclusion? Share your thoughts by posting a comment below.

Filed Under: Business, Online Marketing Strategies | Online Marketing Solutions | Tips & Training for Online Marketing at DonCrowther.com, Posts, Social Media How-To, Social Media Strategy | Social Media Marketing Plan for Business | Social Media Marketing Training at DonCrowther.com, YouTube Tagged With: blendtec, craftsman, viral videos, YouTube

In the world of social media – women now rule even more!

In October 2009, in a post called In the World of Social Media, Women Rule, Brian Solis
reported that there are more women than men on most social media sites.

It’s been 6 months since then – what does the male/female ratio look like now?

To find out the answer, I recreated Brian’s data, using Google’s Ad Manager as he did, to compare apples to apples, and found that…

Women now dominate social media even more than they did 6 months ago!

And the shift is significant!

Here’s the raw data:

The Percentage Of Women On Most Social Media Sites Has Increased Significantly Over The Last 6 Months

10/2009 10/2009 4/2010 4/2010 Unique

Site Men % Women % Men % Women % Visitors (Mil's)

Facebook 43% 57% 40% 60% 1.1 Billion

MySpace 36 64 34 66 210 Million

Twitter 43 57 40 60 150

Flickr 45 55 45 55 110

YouTube 50 50 50 50 82

hi5 46 54 43 57 50

Ning 41 59 36 64 37

Tagged 36 64 36 64 28

digg 64 36 57 43 25

Yelp 43 57 40 60 23

Classmates 36 64 34 66 19

Docstoc 41 59 38 62 16

Bebo 32 68 34 66 15

ustream 34 66 48 52 13

Del.icio.us 48 52 45 55 8.2

friendfeed 45 55 43 57 3.8

foursquare 43 57 3.5

I find it interesting that:

In almost every case, the percentage of women visiting each site increased over the last 6 months.
This raises the question: are women being drawn to these sites even more heavily than they were before, OR are men not finding what they want on these sites and frequenting them less often?
Note: this data comes from people actually visiting the sites, as measured by Google. So, the numbers probably can’t be explained as sploggers using women’s names and risque pictures in their profiles. This data should be fairly clean.
The sites where the percentage of visitors either increased or remained flat were ustream, YouTube, Flickr and Bebo. Could it be that men are more attracted to watching video and viewing pictures online than women, so these sites are better filling their needs?
And no, I’m clueless about the Bebo shift.
I included the unique visitors (as measured by Google as estimated cookies) to show the differences in impact across the sites.

What can marketers learn from this data?

The impact of women is rapidly growing in social media. Why, we can only guess (and I’d love to hear your guesses in the comments below.) If you market to women or have a product where women are the decision makers/gatekeepers, you need to have an active, participatory presence in social media.
How you interact on social media is also vital. Women are more active on a daily basis; actively publish, post to and read blogs, and are more likely to make purchase decisions based on blogs and social media recommendations (source: blogher study.) They also tend to be more interactive, and less likely to respond to “brochure-ware” sites and non-interactive social media placeholders.
If you market to men, you may want to consider revising your approach to better meet the needs of your audience. Video should definitely play a role.

What else can we learn from this data? How do you explain this shift? What will you do differently as a result? Let us know by posting a comment below.

Filed Under: Business, Posts, Social Media How-To, Social Media Strategy | Social Media Marketing Plan for Business | Social Media Marketing Training at DonCrowther.com Tagged With: Marketing, men, Social Media Strategy | Social Media Marketing Plan for Business | Social Media Marketing Training at DonCrowther.com, study, women

Customer Service Through Social Media

Any student of social media has heard of the debates and the successes several companies have enjoyed by opening up their customer service department to respond to customer gripes via social media.

And, they’ve heard of the failures.

In the end, the verdict is coming down that yes, you should be having a customer service presence on social media. But as you do so, remember that social media, though it has significant advantages (especially in light of telling the world that you actually DO customer service,) it is far from the ideal, complete solution.

Case in point. I just spent 3 hours dealing with the team at Norton (Symantec: SYMC) trying to figure out how to allow my computers to actually see each other on the network. Of course, as a mini-geek, I’ve already tried all the standard stuff, so by the time I contact tech support, it’s because it’s a serious issue.

(Norton could learn from frequent reference to Don’s Law #14: “Anything that requires directions is an insufficiently developed technology.”)

Ann, my fearless customer support professional, after 2.5 hours, actually pulled it off and everything worked! Then we turned to my minor second issue.

This time Ann really blew it. Instead of actually doing what I asked her to do 3 times, and looking at the logs, where the error statement was clearly listed, Ann decided to blow away the backup set that had taken me two weeks to create and start a new one. So now, instead of having a problem fixed, I have to wait another 2 weeks to arrive where I started from, and I’m almost certain to have to contact them again to resolve the problem once it recurs. What’s worse, she did it all without asking my permission.

As you can imagine, our little chat quickly twisted from delight to let’s just say, less than thrilled.

I was testing her to see what would happen, and Norton actually got it. Out of the blue in the middle of my online chat, my phone rang, with her supervisor wanting to talk instead of handle the issue through chat. And while he didn’t do what he should have done (read: give me something free,) he did quickly and effectively defuse the situation.

As I reflected upon that, I saw the wisdom in what he did, and I agree with his tactics.

Key learning – social media and online tools work great for certain things, but when emotions get high, get on the phone and get it resolved!

Remember that as you set up your company’s social media-based customer service functions!

How has social media customer service worked for you? What do you find to be best practices? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

Filed Under: Business, Marketing, Posts, Social Media How-To, Social Media Strategy | Social Media Marketing Plan for Business | Social Media Marketing Training at DonCrowther.com Tagged With: customer service, help desk, norton, service, Social Media Strategy | Social Media Marketing Plan for Business | Social Media Marketing Training at DonCrowther.com, symantec

Free social media tracking!

There are many companies that track your brand, company and name through social media, but most of them are quite costly. However there’s one site that gives you a pretty good indication of how you’re doing, and it comes at my favorite price: free!

It’s called socialmention.com

SocialMention.com allows you to search on anything,a brand name, a company name, your name, or your site, and see social mentions of it from 80+ social media properties including Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Digg, Google, etc.

In response to that search you get a linked summary of the search, and 4 other measurements:

Strength: the likelihood that your brand or topic is being discussed in social media. It does this by calculating the total number of mentions of your searched terms within the last 24 hours divided by the total possible mentions.
Sentiment: the ratio of mentions that are generally positive to those that are generally negative. They remove neutral statements from the equation.
Passion: measures the likelihood that people who are talking about your term are doing so repeatedly. So, if many of your users talk about your term several times, your score will be higher than if they only mention your term once.
Reach: the number of unique authors that mention your search term divided by the total number of mentions.

Here’s an example search on Tiger Woods. At the moment, he’s got pretty good strength at 24% and amazing reach at 25%. However his sentiment is 3:1, so he’s getting only 3 positive comments for every negative one. He does have good passion at 34%. Unfortunately, when you look at passion in relation to sentiment, it’s likely that passion could be significantly negative. (Wish there was some kind of cross tab option here – positive passion, negative passion and netural passion would be nice!)

By scrolling down, you can see the numbers of people used to calculate the sentiment factor, top keywords associated with your term in the last 24 hours (valuable!), top users, top hashtags used in posts referencing your term, and the sites where your term is mentioned. You can also download these numbers in CSV format from the right side of the page.

Remember that, though you can see how many total mentions there are in the center column, the left column only reflects the past 24 hours. So, these numbers will vary widely, depending on what the public is saying about you on any given day. This variability is both good and bad – good because you get the ability to quickly read swings in perception. Bad, because you do not have the option to request them from a different/longer time period.

You also have the option, from the links at the top, to focus into certain types of media.

How to use socialmention.com

I recommend that you:

Sign up for daily alerts on your term, enabling you to track changes from day to day. (See the alert button at the bottom of the page.)
Track your site and your blog separately
Add it to your firefox search dropdown box, so it’s easy to access at any time (Again, it’s at the bottom of the page – Install Search Plugin)
Track yourself, your competition, your category, and your brands
Install and use the realtime buzz widget on your your blog or site. (Currently on the homepage.)

Conclusion: cool tool, right price, certainly gives you an indication of where you are without buying reports from the more high-priced services.

I recommend it!

What do you use to track your social media online? Do you find socialmention.com helpful? What else would you like to see? Tell us about it by posting a comment below.

Filed Under: Business, Posts, Social Media How-To, Social Media Strategy | Social Media Marketing Plan for Business | Social Media Marketing Training at DonCrowther.com Tagged With: free, free social media tracking, Social Media Strategy | Social Media Marketing Plan for Business | Social Media Marketing Training at DonCrowther.com, social networking, tracking

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