Why Soccer Dominates Facebook Status Updates

While the U.S. accounts for about a quarter of Facebook’s 800 million users, American sports teams and athletes had a smaller showing on the list of the top status update themes this year.
Only one of the top ten teams mentioned in status updates is from the U.S., the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team. The rest were soccer teams.
And only three of the top ten athletes are from the U.S., basketball’s Michael Jordan plus Kobe Bryant wrestler John Cena.
While I recognize how popular soccer is across the world, it still caught me a bit off guard to see this since all I hear about, both on ESPN and on my news feed, is the NFL’s Tim Tebow and the NBA.
I don’t fully understand why soccer is so huge in other parts of the world, but I don’t think that’s really the point here.
The more important thing to take from this is how easy it can bne to lose sight of just how global Facebook is, which these findings should help put in perspective.
Does this data also suggest that that soccer fans are more passionate about their favorite sport than others? Readers, what do you think? While we’re at it, after the Lakers, Jordan, Bryant and Cena, which U.S. teams and athletes ought to rank in the top status update themes for the year?

Top 10 Sports Teams

FC Barcelona
Real Madrid C.F.
Manchester United
Los Angeles Lakers
Chelsea Football Club
Liverpool FC
A.C. Milan
Arsenal
Galatasaray
Fenerbahçe

Top 10 Athletes

Leo Messi
Cristiano Ronaldo
John Cena
Ricardo Kaka
David Beckham
Michael Jordan
Sachin Tendulkar
Andres Iniesta
Kobe Bryant
Cesc Fàbregas
Guest writer Jeff Weiner is president and chief executive officer of ESBL Sports Management, where he coaches 15 NFL athletes on how to best utilize social media.

Facebook Advertisements Increase Politicians’ Likes 800%

Interaction between lawmakers in Congress and constituents has grown 300 percent through the use of Facebook ads.
That’s based on data from legislative e-communications firm iConstituent. The Washington, D.C., based firm works  with more than 90 lawmakers on Capitol Hill and other elected officials in executing their Facebook advertising, which is aimed at the people they serve in their congressional districts.
Among the Facebook study’s other findings with respect to congressional offices and Facebook ads:

• 900 percent-plus increase in average number of people liking an elected official’s page after Facebook ads, and
• 10 times return on investment as compared to a traditional, glossy paper mailer for one tenth of the price.

These statistics show that lawnmakers are using social media to do a better job representing their constituents . Like Andrew Foxwell, iConstituent’s manager of new media and marketing, told us:

With more than 800 million Facebook users and 42 percent of adults on the social networking site, it’s a critical tool for lawmakers, companies, really any major brand, to engage with key audiences.  Especially since many lawmakers are in the nation’s Capital a majority of the time when Congress is in session.

Paul Bell, director of new media for Congresswoman Karen Bass, a Democrat from California, told us earlier this year that Facebook ads play a key role in growing Facebook followers.  He added that the ads can also incite action on behalf of a particular bill and allow his office to engage with a broader cross-section of constituents.
What do you think of congressional offices’ use of Facebook ads to reach constituents?

 

Facebook Won’t Go To Congress’ Teen Privacy Briefing

Facebook has turned down an invitation to appear at a December 14 congressional briefing on teen privacy, where the company were asked to discuss the company’s recent settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.
The move by the social network is a head scratcher, since Facebook’s own Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg already discussed the FTC settlement in a blog post on the social network.
At the time, Zuckerberg said that Facebook is committed to giving its users “complete control” over what they share and with whom.
The company also agreed to 20 years’ of privacy audits, personnel appointments and the addition of new privacy features to the site, some of which had already been in place.
The offer to appear at the Capitol Hill briefing was extended by Representative Joe Barton (R-TX) and Representative Edward Markey (D-MA), co-chairs of the Congressional Privacy Caucus.
While Congressman Markey issued a brief statement the day that Facebook’s agreement with the FTC was finalized, applauding the move, the caucus co-chairs have frequently criticized the company in the past for not going far enough in protecting consumers’ privacy.
Perhaps Facebook didn’t see any value participating in the briefing when the issue with the FTC had been settled. It’s likely the litany of alleged privacy violations made by the government would only be re-hashed.
The congressional chairmen were quick to express their disappointment today. In a letter (reproduced beneath this post), Reps. Barton and Markey said:

Given Facebook’s widespread use by children and teenagers, as well as its recent settlement with the FTC over privacy violations, we felt that it was important for Facebook to participate in this briefing.

Facebook explained its decision in a statement:

Facebook is committed to continuing to offer easily accessible tools so people can control how they share information and with whom, In fact, over the last 18 months alone, we announced more than 20 new tools and resources designed to give people more control over their Facebook experience, many of which were described in a recent blog post by our founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. We communicate regularly with lawmakers about these issues and look forward continuing that productive dialogue.

The briefing will go on as scheduled on December 14.  According to Chairman Markey’s web site, the hearing will discuss the “Do Not Track Kids Act of 2011,” legislation which would update the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 and establishes new protections for the personal information of children and teens.
Apparently, Facebook is communicating with the committee about updating this legislation independently of the hearing occurring on December 14.

Facebook Page Administrators Get Improved Menu

Facebook has eliminated an extra click for administrators of multiple pages who wish to navigate the site using one of their aliases.
Those who administer more than one page now see them all listed in the same pulldown menu in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen.
Previously, the pull-down said “use Facebook as page,” and selecting that would bring up a pop-up window for admins to choose among the pages they run.
The new pull-down seems like an improvement, so we hope that Facebook keeps it around. What do you think, readers?

How Hyper-Targeted Facebook Ads Boost Your Strategy

Hyper-targeting means sending highly targeted messages to very specific groups of people.
The opponent doesn’t even see the arrows coming because if they and their advisers are not in the specific group, they never even see the message!
With Facebook advertising, you can display your hyper-targeted message only to those you are trying to reach.
In a recent campaign, a mayoral campaign strategist created over 30 different hyper-targeted ads to successfully unseat an incumbent who never even saw any of these promotions.
They targeted opera lovers, outdoors men, police men, union employees, firefighters, school teachers, native Americans, city workers and more, each with a specific ad speaking to their specific interest.
Some of the ads were even written in languages other than English. When users clicked on the ads, they were taken to a specific web page addressing their hyper-targeted concerns, and these pages made thecase for why the visitor may wish to unseat the incumbent too.
Hyper-targeting is power. Facebook advertising lets you target users by age, sex, language, location, workplace, education,interests, and more. The campaign targeted 18-year-old first time voters, as well as 19-, 20-, and 21-year-old voters, in four different, each with a message to their exact age.
Of course, the opposition alsoran Facebook ads. They ran the same basic Facebook ads to everyone equally. The opposition’s adswere displayed constantly during the election, but they did not speak to the hearts and minds of theindividual voters because they were not hyper-targeted.
Guess who won?
The election was extremely close, but the better funded and reasonably well liked incumbent wasactually unseated. He probably doesn’t even know how or why it happened.
This mayoral seat manages a budget of over 150 million dollars. The election was decided by less than 500 votes.
The challenger purchased over 1.2 million hyper-targeted Facebook impressions. One of the ads was so successful at reaching the intended target that the clickthrough rate was over 25 percent. This on aplatform where a CTR of .05 percent is frequently considered successful!
The advertising cost of all these impressions? The advertising cost to deliver hyper-targeted messages to all of these potential voters? Less than $3,000.

Secure.me To Add Avira Security To Facebook Offering

Online reputation-management company Secure.me is teaming up with  security experts Avira to offer Facebook users a bundle of online security, personal data protection, and privacy protection services.
The combined offering will be available in 2012, and Avira will distribute it in the United States and Canada. The two companies have worked together on projects for the European market.
Avira’s IT security solutions will join features offered by Secure.me such as the ability to:

• Monitor questionable content: Secure.me uses language-recognition technology to discover critical topics or posts on users’ Facebook profiles, or in their friend networks.
• Monitor all activity: Secure.me displays all messages and comments that its users have posted on their own or their friends’ profiles, as well as providing an overview of likes, new friends, events, and check-ins.
• Monitor users’ personal profiles: Secure.me enables users to see all comments and interactions from friends and apps that appear in their profiles.
• Find photos: Secure.me uses biometric face recognition to find photos of users or their children, even when they are not tagged.
• Control privacy settings: Secure.me analyzes sensitive personal information in users’ profiles and recommends steps they should take to optimize their privacy.
• Scan links: Secure.me informs users of any unsafe links on their profiles or friend networks, including viruses and malware.

Secure.me founder Christian Sigl said:

We share one vision with Avira: We believe that personal data and privacy protection is the essential next step in the evolution of IT security. Whereas in the past, cyber crime mostly posed a risk to material values such as hardware, software, data, and documents, it now affects people more directly — namely their privacy and their identity. Secure.me is the blueprint of your Internet life. It helps users own this blueprint and take control over their personal data and privacy. It also allows parents to protect their children on Facebook. By combining Avira’s high-quality IT security solutions with our privacy-protection products for social media, we can offer state-of-the-art security to all Internet users — you could call it IT Security 2.

You Don’t Have To Like Me On Facebook Anymore

Consumer brands have been very reliant on the like button as part of the sharing experience on Facebook, but soon they might become less so.
A whopping 51 percent of consumers said they are more likely to buy a product after liking the brand on Facebook, according to a new study by marketing firm Constant Contact and research company, Chadwick Martin Bailey.
The study also revealed that 56 percent of consumers said they are more likely to recommend a brand to a friend after becoming a fan of it on Facebook.
Yet, marketers are finding that when customers are given just the one option of  liking a product, activity or brand, they aren’t as eager to share it. Consumers are becoming so inundated with that like button, that marketers are beginning to wonder if people even paying attention to it anymore?
What if consumers don’t necessarily like something? What if they just read something, or want something, instead? Facebook sharing has been limited to that four-letter expression until now.
Changes to the open graph will allow Facebook developers the ability to create a significantly richer experience for users as well as a more engaging experience between companies and consumers.
These updates will also help smart marketers to get even more creative with their customer engagement strategy.
Today, marketers and developers can get as creative as they want with these tools and engage consumers on a more personalized level.
The open graph has been expanded to let the developer create a custom action verb to replace “like.”

 
This customization is starting to populate the Internet, and as more developers catch on, it will become a contest to find who can come up with the best marketing buzzwords and create the most unique and creative hook for customers.
I’m noticing that too few companies have started personalizing their share buttons, but hopefully that’s changing.
We’re now embarking on the holiday season, and as consumers begin to browse their favorite shopping sites in higher volume, I imagine big retail brands will incorporate the new possibilities into their websites.
Shoppers will start seeing a variety of social sharing icons, from “on my Christmas list” to “gotta have it.”
The possibilities for creating personal messages and experiences for your customers have skyrocketed with this update.
It’ll be interesting to see what buttons we start seeing out there, and what action words will draw the most consumer engagement.