Social Media

More Stupid Facebook Tricks

Published February 13, 2011 | By admin

Facebook seems determined to thwart any commercial activity on its so-called “social networking” platform. Once again they have set up a process designed on its face to supposedly “improve” the user experience … without giving the user any notification or choice in the matter. The following was posted by my friend, James Roswell Quinn, on his Facebook wall today:

FACEBOOK CHANGES

Have you noticed that you are only seeing updates in your newsfeed from the same people lately? Have you also noticed that when you post things like status messages, photos and links, the same circle of people are commenting and everyone else seems to be ignoring you?

Don’t worry, everyone still loves you and nobody has intentionally blocked you. The problem is that a large chunk of your friend/fan list can’t see anything you post and here’s why:

The “New Facebook” has a newsfeed setting that by default is automatically set to show ONLY posts from people who you’ve recently interacted with or interacted the most with (which would be limited to the couple of weeks just before people started switching to the new profile). So in other words, for both business and personal pages, unless your friends/fans commented on one of your posts within those few weeks or vice versa – you are now invisible to them and they are invisible to you!!

HERE’S THE FIX: Scroll down to the bottom of the newsfeed on the homepage and click on “Edit Options”, click on “Show Posts From” and change the setting to “All Of Your Friends and Pages” Note: This is the fix for personal pages but I am unsure of whether or not the business pages are set up the same way.

Simply posting an update about it won’t do any good because lots of your friends/fans already can’t see your posts by default. You’ll either have to send out a message to everyone on your list (which I’m not even sure business pages can do and is a rather tedious method) or post an event explaining the situation like this one and invite your entire fan base and/or friend list. You can also tweet about it hoping that most of your fellow facebookers are also on twitter.

Shame on facebook for altering the default setting and not telling people and business pages about it! Just think about how many companies posted Christmas sales and discounts without having any idea that their customers couldn’t see the updates.

I couldn’t agree more. By all means offer us this as an option. But don’t whip it on everyone without even notifying us. Facebook has to wrap its head around the idea that it is “our” Facebook too. We have a right to know what they are doing to our pages. I expect some geek there thought this was a tremendous way to make content more “relevant” but in essence it’s another form of censorship. What Facebook really needs is someone on their Board of Directors who acts as an Ombudsman for the end user. A council of elected peers, like CafePress had at one time, would be a great start. Someone to say “Sounds great on paper, but in the real world …” … in the real world this would have been great if it was opt-in. Making it opt out is yet another insult added to the many injuries Facebook has inflicted on its own users recently.

One-Way Corporate Communications

Published February 9, 2011 | By admin

In the many different roles I have played in my career, one of the great frustrations I have encountered is the corporate top-down mentality and their reliance on “broadcasting” in a singular direction: top-down, one way. You ever get the feeling that most big companies really don’t give a darn what consumers think?

In consulting positions I have held, I notice that the corporate clients tend to design their systems quite deliberately to block incoming feedback from employees, customers and stakeholders. The rationale is that they don’t want to spend a lot of time or money on frivolous complaints. Yet those same companies often spend millions of dollars holding “focus groups” to get feedback so they can better understand their client’s needs. The feedback through the focus group process is invariably skewed, especially where it comes to employee feedback. Employees simply do not feel comfortable giving honest feedback, especially when they know it won’t be what management wants to hear. Customers who are paid for feedback suffer from a kind of “Stockholm Syndrome” where they tend to identify with their momentary captors, can can sometimes provide the feedback the company wants to hear.

At one web company I once consulted for, they actually set up a reporting system that was set up to block access to the very people they were soliciting input from. The reporting system had been designed by the designer of the system with little outside direction. Nobody had thought to check the system to ensure it was accessible to the target audience. On the sales floor, everyone was complaining about the system, yet management was convinced everyone found it highly useful. After all, there weren’t many complaints! Talking to the staff, I realized that there was a strong corp-culture message: “Don’t criticize the system to management.” Management seemed shocked when I reported how universally reviled the system had become, but management was so invested in that system that they continued status-quo despite its obvious and easily-repaired shortcomings.

Our fear of negative feedback is one of the single-largest roadblocks to success in our culture. I have seen tremendous efforts made at every level to avoid the dreaded “critique”. Yet blunt, honest criticism can be incredibly valuable. How can you know where you can improve your services or products if you go out of your way to avoid any critical input?

My advice to large or small companies … shave a few grand out of your focus group budget and hire a manager to oversee and analyze incoming emails from your key audiences. Set up an anonymous relay for your employees so they can provide honest feedback without fear of retribution from management (in their own department or others). Ideally, find an independent consultant who doesn’t have a stake in your decision-making process. I provide screening and analysis to small and medium-sized companies and training services to larger companies to integrate feedback management as part of an over-all usability and marketing strategy. Contact me for an initial consultation.

Welcome Back to BrandiJasmine.com

Published August 10, 2010 | By admin

Once upon a time, BrandJasmine.com was my art gallery page. Jasmine’s Gallery has now moved to www.bjasmine.com. This page is still in progress, but here I plan to focus more on web design, media relations, and social media management, among other things. I’m still setting up at the moment so please bear with me for the moment. If you would like to be notified when this site is fully up and running, please subscribe to the RSS Feed, follow me on Twitter or friend me on Facebook.