Random Facebook picture tagging is Spam.

I was recently tagged in a picture of a local businesses logo.  The business was preparing for an opening night so they posted a logo and tagged it with peoples names. The reason that people do this because when you are tagged in a photo it is posted to your news-feed, wall, my friends news feed and can even appear as one of the pics that appears in your personal photo strip. So basically, people are using your personal facebook page (and the existing relationship) as a means to get free advertising for their business.

This is by definition Spam

Wikipedia: Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages

I believe, that when businesses engage in this form of spam they are under the mis-guided intention that they are actually engaging with their target audience. Although there is actually an engagement that takes places it is not a very nice once and not one that will leave a positive taste in peoples mouth. So it is not really and engagement but rather an irritation.

Further, in addition to this being outright spam, it is also violates the Facebook terms and conditions:

You can tag a photo only with the express consent of the user on whose behalf you are doing the tagging, and must only tag images when the tag accurately labels what is depicted in the image.

There have been instances when business have have been wiped from Facebook for violating terms and conditions such as this… so why would you bother to professionally present your business with this tactic?

Facebook photo tagging as a means of promoting a commercial venture is a cheap and nasty tactic that is void of any creative thought.

I recall reading a blog post a while back the story went something like this:

NAB bank posted a blatant advertisement in a non-commercial forum. The next day, people from the forum went into NAB branches holding placards that promoted their own businesses. Of course, NAB staff freaked out and called security to remove the people from advertising in their branches.  The point here, is that if you want to control the advertising that takes place on your physical premises or electronic assest then don’t take it upon yourself to advertise your own business via mediums that are not yours.

This is why Facebook has an option to advertise. You can start advertising with a small budget like $10.00 – you can target your message to your audience and prevent from pissing people off.

You do actually have the option of preventing people from tagging you in photos (Go to <<account << privacy settings << customise settings). Personally, I like the fact that my family and friends can connect with me via a photo upload – I just get frustrated when people help themselves to my personal electronic assets for advertising purposes.

Review: Sunshine Coast, Naturally Refreshing

My 2 cents

The images are clear, lots of happy people, makes me feel like this would be a fun place to visit especially if I was married with kids (which I’m not)

•    Sunny Coast Hinterland totally missed out, very minimal exposure. If you don’t include the hot air-balloon shots- which is more of an advertisement for hot air balloons rather than the hinterland then I reckon the Hinterland received about 10 seconds all up.

•    There is a shot of a boy on a stand-up-paddle which is very political considering the latest permit debacle (if you consume as much local news as I do then you might not know about it – http://bit.ly/bJ8hAt ). We include the sport in our regional branding but we don’t allow the people, credited for bring SUP to the coast to have a permit for business. This makes me feel, um… a bit uncomfortable actually.

•    There is so much effort put into trying to educate people about safe swimming areas, it seems weird that we would then show a picture of people swimming in areas that are usually patrolled beaches.

•    I liked the music, thank god we didn’t get a cheesy backing track (I know some of you will beg to differ) It would have been nice if the artist was credited so I could hear more! I would love to find out if the artist was from the Sunshine Coast. It would be great to know if we supported local artists in the making of this clip.

•    The official press release states that the clip portrays “the genuine warmth of the locals inviting you in to enjoy in their beautiful part of the world…” um… not sure where the locals were – just looked like a bunch of tourist families hanging out the beach.

•    I don’t know much about the Sunshine Coast Creative Alliance but I doubt much of their vision got a look in. I thought it was a missed opportunity to not have included more of the cultural and culinary beauties of the coast.

•    I was waiting for the generic bustling nightlife shot, but it did not come, which is good as that would have just been misleading.

•    It also struck me as odd that everybody in the clip what your standard average white Aussie. I can only assume that this clip was not made to appeal any other market.

•    If this clip is targeted to white Australians then the product launch timing seems clumsy. I am told that Christmas Accommodation around Noosa is already booked out.  Maybe a launch in winter, when half the population of Australia is fantasying about being warm on the beach, would have been beneficial for conversions.

•    The other day I read that Youi Car Insurance did all the live footage for about 2 dozen TV ads in something like 6 days (not totally sure what the stats was).  Eighteen months for this little naturally refreshing beauty does seem like quite a long time.

Overall, the visuals were nice and clear & some of the shots were really well done.

I don’t think this clip managed to capture the essence of the coast, other than the beach, and when it comes to branding or positioning it is certainly not naturally refreshing, just the same old same old but with a new camera and a new tune.

Looks like some others out there my agree: Here is the poll results from Finda:

Facebook Introduces Deals!

Major Announcement from Facebook Today!

Not so long ago, Facebook released ‘places’ and now today they have released ‘deals’ that will work in conjunction with the Facebook ‘places’ platform.

Business owners can offer ‘deals’ to customers based upon whether they are regulars or whether they check-in with friends – or even just offer something free to customers that ‘check-in’. Once you have checked in you would show your mobile screen to staff to receive the free offer.

As Gary Vaynerchuk so eloquently summarised “Mobile is the battlefield and Facebook has dropped a bomb today”.

• individual deals – discounts & free stuff
• friend deals – require tagging a number of friends to share savings.
• loyalty – loyalty deals require multiple check-ins
• charity deals – the business will donate money to a charity when you ‘check-in’

Here are some examples of how businesses in the US are utilising ‘deals’

• 24 Hour Fitness: Donating $1 to Kaboom to support children’s health for everyone who checks in to its fitness clubs.
• Alamo Drafthouse Cinema: Hosting a free screening for whichever of their movie theaters gets the most check-ins, as well as giving free souvenir Facebook Places pint glasses just for showing that you’ve claimed the deal.
• American Eagle Outfitters: Offering 20 percent off.
• Chipotle: Giving its Facebook guests two entrees for the price of one.
• Gap: Giving blue jeans to the first 10,000 customers to claim their deal.
• Golden State Warriors: Inviting those who check in to an exclusive event with a basketball player on the NBA team from Oakland, Calif.
• Harrah’s: Offering a complimentary nightclub admission, buffet or other gift to people who stop by any of its 10 Las Vegas resorts.
• H&M: Offering 20 percent off.
• JCPenney: Giving $10 off any $50 purchase.
• Lululemon: Sharing the gift of yoga by giving guests a pass to a local yoga studio.
• Macy’s: Offering 20 percent off select merchandise.
• McDonald’s: Giving $1 per customer to the Ronald McDonald House Charities.

This is massive news for all of the location based apps like – Foursquare & Gowalla! It is also massive for all location based businesses.

Nobody knows how Facebook location services will impact the other platforms like Foursquare & Gowalla. I read somewhere that there were around 60,000 Foursquare users in Australia compared to Facebook which currently has 8,259,520 Australian accounts With such a small group of users I predict Facebook Deals/Places is sure to kill Foursquare in Australia.

Facebook deals are now live in the US and will be available in Australia soon.

Get ready business owners! If you need a creative online marketing strategy for your business you can enquire here

The Social Network: A Movie About Making Money

I recently watched The Social Network movie aka the Facebook movie, produced by Aaron Sorkin &  directed by David Fincher. This movie is about the inception of Facebook & the struggles that the young founders encountered  with the fast growth of business, claims to ownership & intellectual property.

But does this movie have anything to so with phenomena of digital Social Media? Not really.

This film is not about the way that social media has globally revolutionised community & collaboration. This film is about business, intellectual property & monetisation. This film is about making money.

It does make some reference to other social media platforms like MySpace &  Blogging but beyond that the film is about the battle of acquiring funding for business development & the fight to prevent loss of revenue to third-party claims. Ironically, the film constantly reinforces that Mark Zuckerberg was not interested in the money – but yet the film chooses to focus upon the monetisation and the dollar value of the company.

The fact that this movie focuses on money and business is reflective of the current marketing trends in social media.

The Web is flooded with apparently breaking news about the ‘latest’ ‘secrets’ of social media and how to make money from Facebook & Twitter. The search term ‘make money on twitter’ returns 417,000,000 results from Google

• 9,740,000 of these results relate to MLM
• 6,700,000 of these results relate to ‘work from home’
• 80,100,000 of these results are about ‘secret’ (ooerr) money making techniques.

… you would think that we would all be rich by now.

I don’t disagree with leveraging (what a horrible word!) social media platforms for marketing (after all I do work in this industry), but I do believe that it is ‘society’ and ‘people’ that are at the centre of the social media world – not business.

I also believe that having a Facebook Page & Twitter profile does not make your business social. It is the participation & connection that defines the social element of a business. The big challenge for business owners is not how to set up a Facebook page, build databases (aka people) and learn how to use new programs. The challenge is developing a creative strategy that is engaging & authentic.

The proliferation of online socialising  is fueled by our inescapable need to be accepted & connected, whilst the act of trying to monetise social media stems from an innate desire for profit, power & control. We are yet to fully understand how these opposing desires will mesh.

In some respects these archetypal desires are represented in the movie with Mark Zuckerberg longing for acceptance & connection and the other characters representing profit, power & control. I have no idea whether this abstract metaphor was intended by Aron Sorkin & David Fincher…

So enjoy the film for entertainment, but don’t let it take your eyes off the realities of social media.

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SEO Sunshine Coast

Search Engine Optimisation Service Sunshine Coast

SEO is an acronym for “Search Engine Optimisation”. In simple terms, the practice of SEO is to make ‘on-page’ & ‘off page’ changes to your website so that the website appears higher in Google Rankings for relevant search terms and keywords.

Generally speaking, SEO services include improving the websites navigation, content, and link popularity of your website.

Four or so years ago there were only a handful of SEO agencies on the Sunshine Coast, these days there are numerous SEO agencies. Some agencies specialise in SEO whilst other companies offer SEO as a ‘tag-on’ service to their main service, which is usually web design/development.

A tip on how to decipher an experienced SEO agency from a ‘lets tag it on agency’ is to ask them

“What is the primary way of assessing a websites SEO strength”.

If they answer – “Google’s Page Rank Tool!”

Then it is highly likely that you are speaking with an SEO novice & you may want to continue shopping around.

The good new is that many local keywords (i.e. a local keyword is your keyword + your targeted location; such as seo sunshine coast) have lowish competition so a novice SEO maybe all that you need.

Peregian Accounting Service

I just came back from a great meeting with Geoff Wallis from Peregian Accounting Services Adaptive Accounting – based in Peregain Square.

I knew I was on a good thing when I opened the door & heard Led Zeppelin – how refreshing! Besides the music, when it came to talking about my business Geoff was so helpful and knowledgeable.  I am actually relieved that I have found an an expert accountant who is affordable, accessible and also a really nice person. Already I can see that my time spent with Geoff will result in positive changes to my business.

His business card sums it up “Not All Accountants Are the Same”

Two coffees and three friends later I am learning that he is appreciated for his honesty, intelligence by many other locals too.

2 thumbs up from me!