Not for profit thoughts on the new Facebook Pages
Image: smemon87 (Flickr)
We just enabled the new look Facebook pages for Alzheimer's Society and have been playing around with it this morning. I like the new design but there are some issues for charities that are going to have to be overcome. Let’s look at the good and the bad.
The good
1. Post everywhere as the brand
You can post as your Page on other Pages and profiles which means you can now do outreach using your Page and drive engagement by traveling to the mountain instead of waiting for it to come to you. If you have more than one related Page you could also cross-post and cross-promote which will be very useful for organisations that have separate Pages for events or local areas.
2. Notifications for your Page
Once you’ve clicked ‘use Facebook as Page’ you’ll be able to see notifications where people have interacted with you. This will be especially important to monitor now as you can post away from your own wall and this will be the only way of monitoring those external communications.
The bad
1. The photo carousel at the top
Carousel is, unfortunately, the right word. Unlike user profiles, the order of these photos is randomized every time you reload the page. This means you can't do any clever branding with it or use it for any kind of promotion. Bad for us page owners but good for Facebook who will see more advertising revenue as a result.
2. No more chronological posts
At the moment posts on a Page's wall are now ranked using a similar algorithm to the newsfeed. This means that the most recent post by you or a user may not appear at the top. This could lead to a situation where an old post languished at the top of the wall (making your page look stale) or a post promoting something important was pushed out the way for something else.
It's worth noting that you can see a chronological ordering of posts in the 'admin view' option but this won't display for users.
3. Your website's gone
The old page design showed your web address in the info box under the Page's picture. Now the info box has been relegated to a tab only accessible by the left-hand menu. I don't suspect that the URL in it's old place ever drove too much traffic to our website but it'll be driving even less to it now.
The round up
Facebook has a well established history of not rolling back design changes so these are undoubtedly here to stay. I think the design looks a lot fresher but it could definitely do with a few tweaks to make it even more useful for organisations and brands to get their message out there.
Doritos & Guitar Hero’s ‘Alan’ – The best ad of 2009
In 2009 there was one ad that dominated the awards and impressed consumers and critics alike. It was, of course, the behemoth of Compare The Meerkat that rightly deserved all of its praise for a fantastic campaign that was funny, engaging and, most importantly, put a new spin on the uninspired dirge of comparison site ads that we'd been forced to endure for years on end.
However, as good as VCCP's offering was, my ad of the year is actually a fairly low-profile but totally brilliant ad for a Doritos / Guitar Hero tie-in. It follows the life of a wannabe rockstar called Alan from birth to .. well, you'll have to see for yourself.
And yes it is 4 minutes long but it's the best 4 minutes you'll ever spend watching an advert.
So why is this my ad of 2009? Well, for me that's simple; it's because I watch it for my own amusement. I don't passively consume this ad, I actively seek it out and show it to other people. Undoubtedly it hasn't become the viral hit it was meant to be but in the more-art-than-science world of the viral video I'm not sure too much blame can be leveled at the AMV BBDO team that came up with it.
It also doesn't shy away from having fun with the brands. The stage dive into the Dorito's box is a genius bit of product placement and the overriding message that Alan is a bit of a loser but even losers can rock out on Guitar Hero plays up to the public perception that the game is just for people that weren't good enough to learn a real instrument.
It's fun, it's funny and the chorus still hasn't left my head since I first saw the ad in October last year.
So come on everybody, sing with me: "Alan you are a guitar hero! Trapped in the body of a rock n roll zero!"
2009: The 3 ads I hated that everyone else loved
As a preface I'd like to point out that I'm not saying that these ads were bad campaigns. They weren't. In fact, they were all phenomenally successful. But I still hate them.
3. The Skoda Cake Car
Oh my god it's a car made of cake!
Yeah, it's a car made of cake. And that's all it is.
Since PR companies discovered that 'stunt advertising' got column inches and TV coverage (ushered into the mainstream by the media's blanket coverage of the Bravia Bouncing Balls ad) we've been increasing presented with more and more ludicrously extravagant set pieces intended to wow consumers into submission.
Sony's ad was brilliant because it said that colours weren't static; that they were alive. Colours exploded and tumbled, jostled and jumped. It looked exciting and it made a clear link between the Bravia experience and the jaw-dropping spectacle you'd just witnessed.
And that is why the Skoda ad is so disappointing. Yes it's kind of cool that they managed to construct a car out of Victoria sponge but what does it actually say about the vehicle? Soft and squishy? Bad for something that can do 70 mph. Put together by some TV extras that couldn't book panto in Croydon? Well that's build quality for you.
It's just event advertising for the sake of it with nothing to say and for that reason it's going on the list.
2. Cadbury's Eyebrows
The brief: Create an ad that is more memorable and inexplicably brilliant than a gorilla drumming along to Phil Collins.
The pitch: Er .. there are these kids .. and their eyebrows wiggle .. .. .. in time to music!
If this was the best idea they came up with I want to know what they rejected. I'm not saying they should have milked the gorilla for another campaign but I did expect something a bit more well thought out than some sub-standard 'wacky' YouTube video. The fact that it seems to have been so successful amazes and depresses me in equal measure.
1. The T-mobile flashmob
By the time big business cottons on to anything remotely underground it, by definition, immediately fails to market it to the people that might be interested because the ads usually resemble something akin to your granddad dressing up as Ali G to tell you about the benefits of sexual health check ups in the style of an Eton educated grime MC.
Remember flashmobs? They were pretty cool in 2006. Well, unless it took T-mobile 3 years to co-ordinate a couple of hundred people dancing to one of the decade's worst mega-mixes I'd say that they missed the boat on this one.
At least the ad has a point: sharing is fun. Yes, sharing things on the net is fun. Watching things sent to you is fun. But not when you've already seen it and not when you already saw it nearly 5 years ago.
"Hey everyone! Look! Have you seen this wicked BADGER BADGER MUSHROOM MUSHROOM video?!"
Honourable mention (NSFW)
I don't think this was really anyone's favourite advert and, to be honest, it's not even from 2009 but I do like what Brooker has to say about it.
Top 5 tips for protecting your data online (and getting an imaginary pet dog)
5. Use your imagination
Image: R Philipson (Flickr)
Lots of sites are still using bad security questions and it's an easy way to get your account swiped. Common questions like 'what is the name of your pet?' and 'what is your mother's maiden name?' are actually pretty easy to get the answers to. Friends with your mum on a social network or like to tweet about your cat? Yeah, you're busted.
The way to get around this is simply to use your imagination. I always pick the 'what is the name of your pet?' question because I don't actually have a pet but I do have an imaginary dog. Only I know his name and since he's not real he never appears in photos on Facebook or does something cute I need share on Twitter. He is my imaginary password recovery dog and you shouldn't wait until Christmas to get one.
4. Use KeePass and go crazy with the long passwords
If you don't have an imagination or you do and your imaginary dog is called "password" you can use the program KeePass to securely hold a list of passwords and even generate random ones for you. KeePass has one master password which allows you to copy and paste your other passwords into your browser. This way you only need to remember one password so you can make the others as complicated and as unhackable as you want.
3. Don't let your online accounts go solo
Where possible, always link a secondary email address to an account. Gmail lets you do it and it's a great idea. Even if your password gets compromised it can be possible to get your account back this way. And since another password secured account is safer than a security question you're better off having it this way. Just don't have the same password for your primary and secondary email addresses.
2. The password is dead! Long live the passphrase!
A password (emphasis on 'word') can be brute forced especially if your password is a word in the dictionary. Far more difficult to get at are passwords that are strings of words put together - passphrases. A string of random words is tricky to remember but if you pick a sentence it's much easier to recall. "ThisIsMyExcellentWorkPassword" with some numbers and punctuation in it is actually a pretty good password.
1. Hack yourself
My recent article, 'How I hacked my own life', showed that there is a staggering array of information available about you on the internet. I found pretty much everything I needed in order to give someone a good shot at cracking open some of my online events.
Only by actively trying to hack your accounts can you really be sure how it easy it is to get into them and only by looking through your public social media presences can you know what information you've divulged that might be used to crack open your online world.
Next week I lay into the 3 most irritating ads of 2009. Subscribe via RSS to make sure that you don't miss out.
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About
Tom Hubbard-Green is the E-marketing and Social Media Manager at Alzheimer's Society and a freelance technology journalist.
His articles have been published in a variety of magazines and industry publications including Figaro Digital, Org Zine, O2 Venue magazine and The City magazine.
The views expressed on this blog are his own. Obviously.
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Why Radiohead need to nail digital distribution
This article was published in February 2011 on ORG Zine.
Image: PaKKiTo (Flickr)
Yesterday Radiohead announced that they were releasing their new album, 'The King of Limbs', on digital download on Saturday 19 February. Moving away from the pay-what-you-want pricing model of 'In Rainbows' they are offering their new album for £6 as well as £30 for a print copy with assorted goodies.
I really applaud what Radiohead are doing here. In the age of free access to millions of tracks, both illegally and increasingly legitimate, they know that the price for digital content had to be low. They also know that their fanbase is sufficiently rabid to swallow £30 for special artwork to help fill the band's coffers.
The problem, however, comes with their method of distribution. When it comes to handling thousands of payments and downloads on Saturday morning they might find they're without sufficient server capacity to handle it as happened with their release of 'In Rainbows' and the digital release of Saul Williams' last album.
The problem is that their website will not be the only place the download will be available on Saturday. Within seconds of the first downloads the album will be up on BitTorrent and people will be faced with the choice of a crippled official download server or a super speedy and, let us not forget, free BitTorrent download. Of course some will wait and pay but more will flock to torrent the album and that means lost revenue.
Perhaps I am not giving the band's digital team enough credit and they will nail the distribution by temporarily renting extra capacity at a data centre or even using BitTorrent itself to ease the pressure on servers; a method used to great success to distribute massive Linux ISOs.
That said I look forward to seeing how it all turns out on Saturday morning and, of course, listening to the tracks but I wouldn't be at all surprised to find fans grabbing the torrent that’s quicker and easier to get hold of when it comes to crunch time.