The edits came back from Ridan yesterday morning and I’ve turned them around over night. I also don’t “get” Facebook.
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No more pestering I added a link to quarter share for podiobooks tried to do the same for ridan but its code or HTML came back in Chinese so I just included http://www.r for people to look at shared it with a bunch of my friends and they in turn will share with a few thousand more. Your right most of of ignore advertising but friends pay attention to what you personally recommend and I rarely recommend authors. I have 500 contacts who probably have never heard anything about the Quarter Share that was of course after I shared the info yesterday and it spreads from there. from construction workers to professors at Stanford.
I’ve seen your new page for Golden Age of the Solar Clipper and i hit the Like button. Now at the http://solarclipper.com you might want to add a button to go to the Facebook page just a suggestion.
This is how LIKES work for me say you hit the like button to a particular page it saves it to your likes in your profile. When that page has an update “Attention Crew” or specials like in a bar or restaurant its an update say they have 10000 followers they all get the update.
You have new work out for us to buy $$$$ we all get the update
SAR
You’ve been waiting on the Full Share edits for some time now – hopefully, having done this will un-block some of the log-jam you’ve had.
I’ve got some thoughts on facebook, but I haven’t finished listening to the whole podcast, so I’m going to hold off mentioning them for now.
Facebook…. a wise man once told me that the true and right use of social media by authors isn’t to promote. It’s to relate. Hold a conversation. It would be thanks to him that I use social media in undumb ways.
I tried a fan page, and I don’t like them. It’s very one-way communication. Now I have a profile page (just like my personal one, but with privacy settings wide open). Some of my core fans gather there (as friends, rather than likes), and it’s fun. Easy, often silly, mostly about them and not about me. About me, the person, or the quirky-person part about being an author. I don’t think it’s all that far off from how you use twitter – just a different medium that I find works better for me. (I never could connect a tweet hours later to whatever previous tweet it was responding to, and yeah, I know I was probably using twitter wrong).
The thing is, people who really love your work will find you wherever in the online universe you choose to be. You already have two great ways for that to happen (site & twitter). In my experience at least, more just fragmented my brain unnecessarily.
If you want to try something different with your current FB pages, there’s something called FBML that lets you almost entirely customize a fan page (http://mashable.com/2010/02/22/build-facebook-landing-page/). I’m not that cool, I prefer my basic profile with it’s little mini-chat threads. Then again, I do most of my reader interaction via email, so I’m clearly one of those authors stuck in the dark ages :).
@Deb, I think that’s the issue. The fan pages are too “broadcast” .. I have my profile page and that works for me (when I remember to log in) but the fan pages just seem pointless. If I could get rid of some of the spam – maybe only half of it – email would be more useful. In the last hour I’ve had 140 new messages, only four of which were non-spam. Maybe I should just retire the email account and open a new one. 🙂
That works, or use filters – either the exclusion kind, or try gmail’s new Priority Inbox (smart filter that you can teach to ID the stuff you actually want to see – I’m finding that very helpful now that I get “important” emails from strangers, aka readers). http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=186531
And yeah, the whole “broadcast” thing is why I deep-sixed my fan pages. Yelling in multiple channels is soul-killing.
Nate regarding the facebook Like functionality. I think the best way is to think of it as something of passive marketing.
My understanding is that they have an algorithm similar to amazon “also bought” lists. I see on my facebook page things that have been liked by people I know. So in theory a friend of mine who would enjoy your books but I haven’t had a conversation on the subject with will see that I (and several other friends) all like it so he is more likely to pop over to take a look.
I may be mistaken but this is how I believe it works. I’ll ask the FB goddess here when bump into her at the water cooler.
Odd. I don’t see those on my page.
I occasionally see something like “Fred liked Mary’s Page” when it happens as an update, but then it scrolls off.
With a regular update of over 200 every time I look, there’s a lot of stuff I *never* see even if it’s posted.
If it’s any consolation, I don’t get Facebook either …. *I think all those stupid games have given me a bad taste about it*
I see the fan pages as advertising for my “friends” for my interests-i.e. free advertising for the authors and artists I’m a fan of and want to support, but I can see the lack of enthusiasm for using FB for info dissemination.
That’s the idea, Steve .. or at least the one that I keep hearing about, but I can’t for the life of me see how it works.
I may need to do some research.
I don’t know what users use the Like buttons for – except for testosterone level measurements, but Facebook uses them for profiling the users.
I think part of the issue might be limitations on our ability to process and keep track of different sources of information – facebook, twitter, myspace, a dozen instant messengers, e-mail, feed readers, forums, etc. While multiple streams coming from one source all get parsed similarly, there’s a certain amount of work needed to switch parsers when moving to a different source/type. I tend to agree with you – the Facebook interface is very poor, I feel.
Facebook for businesses is not about closing the sale. I see the sales process as a multi step procedure. The first step is getting someone’s attention. An advertising motto can be “where the eyes are…the advertising follows”. Coke, Pepsi, Budweiser, etc. do their best to make sure that anywhere people are, their logo is in front of them. You can’t buy a 6 pack of pepsi on their Facebook Page. Its not always about selling but making sure that the people who might like your product are aware of its existence.
Look at it as steps like:
1. Brand awareness
2. Relationship building
3. Product or service awareness
4. Sale
5. Support
Brand awareness can be done in multiple ways. Having a lemonade stand in the desert means that no matter how good your product is, you only have a limited number of people who even know about it. Facebook gives you the ability to be in front of something like 500 million people and growing.
In your particular instance, I can see connecting your blog to automatically post its content to your facebook page, thereby limiting the amount of time spent, yet doubling your productivity by putting your ideas or status in more than one place (this can be automated with Twitter as well). Your site is now on WordPress (very smart move), so your ability to automate tasks has greatly increased.
Facebook is a horrible platform for closing a sale, yet is an incredible platform for both brand awareness and relationship building. Facebook allows a large degree of customization to your page using a Facebook app (FBML is going away). Its like having a mini-website on Facebook.
Your podcast today was brought to my attention by one of your raving fans, who also introduced me to Ishmael. By making your stories more accessible, you now let anyone share your stories with a simple click, rather than trying to get your raving fans to spread the word even more than they do already. The lower the amount of effort it is to share a thought, the faster it can get passed around.
I am happy to explain further if you have an interest in this.
Toff – thanks for your insights, but this is the same stuff I studied in undergrad marketing in the 90s. The automation of social media is anathema to my practice so it’s not likely to happen.
understood. What about an iPhone or iPad app (Ship’s Tablet) that allows someone to play a cargo trading game similar to Ishmael and Pip on the Lois? I’m not thinking about it in terms of income, but as a marketing device. It’s interactive, fun, and gets attention. I recently saw a free app for the movie “suckerpunch” for the iPad that was used as a marketing tool for the movie. I tend to come up with many ideas, so simply take the ones that fit your own personality 🙂
I also have a few methods to help reduce both email spam and wordpress comment spam, if those are an issue as well. Both myself and my business partner have enjoyed all of your podcasts and so far, the only contribution we have made to you is the purchase of a single signed copy of your first book. By my reckoning, you now have some in-house credit built up with my own company and I would be happy to share my own knowledge and labour as potential compensation for your wonderful stories.
I tried FB… twice. And I still don’t get it. 😉