Let me start by saying that traditionally I'm not one for bad-mouthing a book or its author. His or her opinion on what is relevant enough to include in their writing, and what is not may and will almost always conflict with what I believe. I'm ok with that. However, just as important as reviewing which books I think my readers would be interested in, is informing them of books I believe they should avoid. This makes sense, right? Today's book review is one that I believe all Internet Marketers should avoid.

Facebook Marketing: Leverage Social Media to Grow Your Business by Steven Holzner was not at all what I had expected it to be. For starters, the material and screen shots were outdated - understandably there is little that the author could have done to prevent this - and the entire book seemed like a general rehash of Facebook's navigation menus... pretty lame if you ask me.

I purchased this book expecting to read things like "how to build a bigger, better company brand with Facebook", "getting started with Facebook ads and advanced targeting" and "tips for building a more relevant fan-base". These topics are not only timely, but very important in today's Facebook marketing initiatives. Instead, there were no such chapters. I forced myself to sift through 288 paperback pages of nothing but the very basics of Facebook - notice I didn't say "Marketing" either.

In my opinion, this book is better suited to be a manual for someone who doesn't know how to create a basic Facebook profile. There is very little marketing information or strategy in this book, and I would only recommend it to someone who has a very hard time with computers and needs a manual for absolute beginners. If this is not you, then pass on buying this book. In fact, I believe that just by signing up for a Facebook account and clicking around will not only be a cheaper alternative to reading this book, but one that will be more interesting and effective.

Exactly one month ago, I created the "Karl Ribas Consulting" Facebook Fan-Page as a way to connect with my industry followers and friends outside the confines of my personal Facebook profile - you can actually read more about this here. In any event, I thought today would be a great day to recap my experience thus far, and share with you the little bit that I’ve learned.

My experience with managing my own Facebook Fan-Page has been absolutely great. I’ve managed to build up a following of 200+ very supportive fans, and have been able to contribute at least once every day. The best part about this whole experience, however, is that I am no longer annoying my audiences with content that isn’t meant for them. Before my fan-page, I found that I was annoying personal friends with posts pertaining to work, as well as annoying work friends with updates pertaining to my personal life. This new arrangement works so much better for me, and the people I connect with.

Moving forward, another perk to having a Facebook Fan-Page is that I can actually get to know my industry followers a bit better. Facebook provides Fan-Page owners with what is called "Facebook Insights" - a series of analytics and graphs that highlight useful details pertaining to one’s fans, and how they interact with the information that is being published. With this information, I can see the number of fans that I have, the age and sex of my fans, how my fans have grown over time, the number of interactions my page has encountered over time, and a multitude of other general stats that are specific to my page and fans.

How does knowing these kinds things help me, exactly? Well, on the surface this information doesn’t tell me a whole lot. However, if I put my marketing cap on and dig a little deeper, I can find a few tid-bits of information that will help me to better manage my page. For example, one thing I noticed when reviewing these stats is that I get a much better response from fans when I post questions or highly opinionated statements. Therefore, if my goal is to create interactions and engage my fans with conversation, which it is, then I should post more questions and opinions as opposed to facts, tips, or links to articles. It makes sense really.

In closing, the following are a few snap-shots taken over the weekend which highlight some of the data that I am given access too. Enjoy.

Labels: karl-ribas-consulting, social-marketing

Hootsuite, for those that may not be familiar with it, is a free, kickass social networking web application that provides social media users with a way to send updates to their Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ping.FM and WordPress accounts with just one publish. However, while publishing to multiple social channels is certainly a wonderful perk, in my opinion, it is not what makes this application amazing. What makes Hootsuite so amazing is the suite of secondary tools that accompany one's free account - tools that make managing multiple social media channels across multiple client campaigns very easy to do.

What are some of these tools? Some of my favorite features include the ability to create personalized Twitter and Facebook streams for monitoring updates (created using columns like TweetDeck), the ability to create and then schedule tweets to be published in the future, the ability to track click-data and see how people are interacting with your messaging, and the ability to auto-publish using RSS feeds. For a complete list of other tools and features, I encourage you to visit the Hootsuite site.

I am proud user of Hootsuite, and have been for nearly a year now. Hootsuite is a platform that I highly recommend using if you're a person using Twitter or Facebook for marketing purposes - as a way to engage customers or build a bigger, better brand for yourself or your company. I personally use Hootsuite multiple times each and every day (including weekends) as an easy way to manage and maintain control over my personal social marketing initiatives, as well as those of my clients. Using Hootsuite will make your social marketing life so much easier.

With that being, as is the case with any tool, program, or application, there is always room for improvements; there is always something that can be tweaked or added that will greatly improve the overall user-experience. The following are 6 ideas and suggestions that I'd like to offer to the @Hootsuite team, as I believe these would make fine additions to an already superb product.

1. Automatic Private Message to New Followers
I would love the ability to send an automatic direct message (private message) to each new Twitter follower I receive. This feature would come in handy as I could create and automatically send semi-personalized messages to my new followers - something like "thanks for following me" or "I'm an Internet marketer and post on these topics". I could also use this option to engage them with direct marketing messaging. Currently, I have to enlist the services of a platform called SocialOomph to do this, but would much rather keep all my activity under one roof... the Hootsuite roof.

2. Allow for more than 10 RSS/Atom Feeds
Hootsuite has this amazing feature that allows users to link RSS feeds to their account and create custom messaging so that when an RSS feed is updated a tweet or update is automatically generated and published to selected social networks. This is a great tool for syndicating a company blog and/or an industry news site directly into one's twitter or Facebook stream.

However, the problem that I have with this feature is that Hootsuite limits users to only 10 feeds. Obviously, having an unlimited number of feeds is probably out of the question, but I strongly feel that 10 feeds is too limiting, especially when considering that their platform was built to help social marketers manage multiple campaigns at the same time. I would love to see Hootsuite extend this limit to something like 20 or 30 feeds per account. Currently, I am using TwitterFeed to manage my overflow of RSS messaging, but, as I previously said, I'd much rather keep such activity under one roof.

3. Provide a Post After or Post-fix Option for RSS/Atom Feeds
When customizing RSS syndication for your account, Hootsuite allows users to enter a 20 character prefix that will be added to each of their auto tweets/updates. What I'd like to see provided is an option that will allow users the ability to also add a 20 character post-fix to each tweet/update. This option is currently available with TwitterFeed, and I love using it. I use this feature to better customize my auto-messaging by appending a "call to action" or a closing statement to each of my RSS updates.

4. Create a Full Version iPhone App
Yes, Hootsuite has a downloadable iPhone app and yes it is extremely cool. The app syncs directly with the main web application, and provides users with the ability to manage their Hootsuite account via an iPhone. However, the problem that I have with the Hootsuite iPhone app and one I'd like to see addressed is that it is very limiting in that it only works with Twitter, and none of the other social networking channels the main platform works with. I'd gladly pay for a full version iPhone app - one that allowed me to access all my tabs and publish to multiple social networks - and I'm fairly certain many others would as well.

5. Side-ways Keyboard compatibility with iPhone
This would seem like a no-brainer, but for whatever reason Hootsuite doesn't utilize the iPhone's side-ways keyboard compatibility - where if the phone is turned on its side the keyboard and message area also turn and become wider. This feature would make it easier for fat-thumbed individuals, like myself, to enter updates.

6. Spreadsheet Upload for Future Tweets
One of the coolest features, if not the coolest, that Hootsuite offers is the ability to create tweets / updates and schedule them to be posted at any day and time in the future. This is great tool for say small businesses that wish to participate on social media channels like Twitter and Facebook, but are very limited in the amount of time they can allocate to doing so. Small business can create their Twitter and Facebook messaging when time allows, and schedule them to be posted during those times that aren't convenient to do so.

One addition to this great tool that I'd personally like to see made available is the ability to create and upload future tweets/updates via a spreadsheet. I currently use a spreadsheet now to manage my messaging (as I imagine most people do when planning social marketing campaigns using Twitter and Facebook), and it would be amazing if users had the option to simply upload their excel file directly to Hootsuite. This would eliminate having to copy and paste each update separately, which would make me and other users extremely happy.

What do you think? If you're a current Hootsuite user, which ideas and features do you have or want to see implemented?

Labels: social-marketing, tools