Sarah Gets Social

[sarahgetssocial]

This Is Why You Don't Do Stupid Stuff to The Oatmeal

This post could also have been titled "This is why you don't use poor outreach techniques with a highly successful and beloved business."

For those of you who don't regularly snort drinks out of your nose while reading Matthew Inman's wonderful, weird, wildly creative comics on The Oatmeal: One, you're missing out. Two, The Oatmeal has a devoted following (and over 3 million Facebook likes).

So, it was really dumb for a person who represents, or at least claims to represent, some business called Digital Mavericks to cold-text Inman after somehow getting Inman's cell number.

There are a multitude of ways to contact most companies or business people today that are far less intrusive than a text to a personal cell phone. How about you try reaching out on Twitter first? (Oh wait, the Digital Mavericks don't have a Twitter account.) Or Facebook? (Digital Mavericks says they're the "world’s premiere social media monetization and digital marketing agency" on their profile page that has 13 likes as of this writing.)

The Oatmeal posted this screenshot on Facebook of the beginning of the cold-text convo:

The full conversation can be found by clicking here. (Good) marketers, prepare to cringe and laugh.

Because I'm a curious person and when I hear of people doing dumb stuff, I look for them on social media to see if they've done other dumb stuff, I found Digital Mavericks on Facebook after looking for them on Twitter. Their Facebook page has gotten all of its engagement within the last hour after The Oatmeal posted that screenshot.

Some other fans of The Oatmeal also found Digital Mavericks.

I should also mention that the Digital Mavericks website is awful. It's trying to look all sleek and cool, but it's not. Others felt the same and posted comments that are a bit more descriptive and uh, colorful, than mine on the Digital Mavericks Facebook page.

  Then, Digital Mavericks started deleting comments. Because everyone knows if you delete a comment on the Internet, it's like your giant, stupid moment never happened. Just ask Gerry Hamilton of ESPN (@HamiltonESPN) who sent a tweet about football recruiting and accidentally pasted in a link to porn. People don't forget unexpected porn that quickly, Gerry.

All I can say is, Digital Mavericks, prepare yourselves for the long haul. And maybe pick up a good old-fashioned marketing book or two to read in the time between various damage control efforts.

[sarahgetssocial]

A Terrible Promoted Tweet

Setting up an ad on social media is easy.* Sometimes too easy. Here's an example of a brand wasting money on Twitter ads:

I see that in my feed and I just have so many questions.

Who are you? Are you trying to sell me something? If so, what are you trying to sell? Do you even know about proper capitalization or punctuation?

Because this is just so bad and I'm curious about how other brands are using social media advertising, I went ahead and clicked through to Injinji's Twitter profile. It turns out that they sell performance toesocks. As a runner, I think that's kinda cool.

The brand also has a solid number of Twitter followers and what seems like pretty good engagement, so I'm left with just one question: Who thought this promoted tweet was the best they could do?

*Setting up an ad on social media is the easy part. Coming up with the right message, good creative, and proper targeting is the hard part that I can help you figure out.

[sarahgetssocial]

Facebook's New Tools for Publishers

Do you have a Facebook fan page? Congrats, you're a publisher.

Now it's time to learn about new tools that Facebook has bestowed upon you. 

Interest Targeting

Post End Date

Smart Publishing (This one's only currently available to a limited number of media organizations. Sorry if you're not one of the cool kids yet; I'm not either so I'm not going to write about that tool today.)

A word of advice before you go to post and curse Facebook because you don't see Interest Targeting or Post End Date available: You need to go to your Page's Settings first and turn on Targeting and Privacy for Posts.

Another word of advice: So far, I haven't seen these new tools available in the Edit Post function so be sure you plan your targeting and end date BEFORE you hit publish or schedule.

Moving on. Here's more about the fun stuff.

Interest Targeting - Facebook says, "To help you reach precisely the right people, we now offer the ability to target posts to a subset of the people that like your Page." 

I love this. Through Interest Targeting, your stories are more likely to be in the News Feeds of people who care about your subject.

Interest Targeting's not going to get you the same reach as a targeted ad, but at least the people who aren't above watching network TV will be the ones who see your latest Scandal recap. Or, the cat lovers will see that "most adorable video ever" of the kitten learning to walk and the dog lovers will be more likely to miss having that ball of fluff in their News Feed.

Here's an example of a post by Jon Loomer Digital that was targeted to me because I like his page and Social Media Examiner and Facebook for Business.

Post End Date - This one's pretty self-explanatory, but Facebook does give a description.

Post End Date allows Page admins to specify a day and time to stop showing a post in News Feed. This tool prevents people from seeing out-of-date posts in News Feed, but posts will continue to appear on your Page. For instance, a publisher can use this to remove yesterday’s weather report from News Feed.

Wouldn't this have been nice to have live by Election Day? As a Floridian, seeing Facebook posts in my News Feed about Charlie Crist's request to extend voting hours in Broward County was a bit sad the morning after he lost the election. I can only imagine Charlie's own News Feed...Talk about kicking a man when he's down. 

Here's one tip about Post End Date - It's located in the same drop-down as Targeting options.

Facebook's priority is making sure users enjoy their News Feed experience (so they keep coming back, duh) and these tools can help brands and business owners support that goal.