Facebook announced on November 4 new guidelines for how administrators of groups and pages can promote competitions and/or sweepstakes.

For alot of smaller to medium sized businesses this will have a huge impact on how they are already interacting with customers through Facebook. I won’t go into the finer points of the new changes, but here are a few of the points that really stick out and that you MUST take note of.

1. You will need written authorization from a Facebook account manager BEFORE you administer the promotion

2. All promotions must be on a 3rd party Facebook platform (more on this later)

3. And under Section 4 of the new lengthy rules, a prohibition that I already see alot of my friends infringeing on :

4.2 In the rules of the promotion, or otherwise, you will not condition entry to the promotion upon taking any action on Facebook, for example, updating a status, posting on a profile or Page, or uploading a photo.

This rules out the company that has established their Facebook presence as the main place to meetup with their fans and offer incentives and comps. So what kind of competitions does this rule out:

- Upload a photo to Facebook as entry to a competition

- Get your friends to join your fan page or refer others in exchange for the chance of winning a prize

- Add a comment to a fan page or group as entry to a competition

If you are running any kind of competition like this on Facebook, you’ll need to cease and desist or face the suspension of your group or fan page. The only workaround is to work with a 3rd party platform (such as Wildfire, which would be pricey for a fan page with less than 500 fans) or by creating your own Facebook application to run the promotion through.

I suggest you read the full guidelines as specified by Facebook and err on the side of caution.

This just serves as a subtle reminder to not to put all your eggs in one basket. As Facebook fan pages have increased in popularity, so have their uses gone beyond the imagination of even Facebook. This recent move allows them to indemnify themselves of any wrong doing you may cause via your sweepstake.

You are still allowed to promote on Facebook any competition you are running outside of Facebook, say on Twitter or your own blog.

For more information and to hear how others weigh in, see:

Official Facebook Promotion Guidelines

Thinking of running a promotion on Facebook? Think again?

Facebook Marketers Beware – New Promotion Guidelines Released

How is this going to affect how you use Facebook for business?

CLARIFICATION :

This rule change mainly affects people creating a contest BASED ON the Facebook platform or which directly asks people/fans/friends to do something on Facebook in order to win. So, if you ask your blog readers to upload photos on your Facebook Fan Page in order to be in to win, this would be a no-no unless you had prior written consent from your Facebook account manager (getting an account manager is another story and not really an option for most small-medium sized business I deal with unless you have a minimum 10,000 USD budget to spend on Facebook).

If you create a competition on your website, blog, Ning that is irrelevant of Facebook – but you link to it from Facebook, that is fine. Just do not mention Facebook in the promotion on your site or else this could be in infringement of the rules. For example if you placed a post on your blog that said, “Refer your friends to my site using Twitter, email or Facebook” – mentioning Facebook is an infringement.

Hope that clears up some of the questions I have received today.

I had never opted-in to a Twitter ad service…that is until Sponsored Tweets. I read up on it, cause hey, I figured if I’m gonna tweet as much as I do, wouldn’t it be great if I got paid for it? The key feature that led me to sign up is the fact that the final copy that will be tweeted is ALWAYS written directly by you the person whose account it is tweeted from.

Here is a quick overview of how the system works:

1. Login at Sponsored Tweets using your Twitter login details and fill in a short survey. This helps them figure out what demographic you most speak to when you tweet. It also helps them find ads that are authentic as possible to your voice. In my experience this has worked – I’ve tweeted ads about social media (international) and a kitchen makeover contest (geared at Canadian mothers).  Once you’ve signed up -  sit back and wait to hear from Sponsored Tweets.

2. You get a DM from Sponsored Tweets saying that you have 3 days to review an opportunity in your account.

3. You login in with your Twitter details to the site and check out the service/product you would be tweeting about, how much it pays, and the link you would be using and where it would take your followers should they click. If anything about the product, service, sales page or squeeze page is not your style, you do not have to accept the job, if it is – move onto step 4.

4. Here’s your chance to play admaker – having looked through the information, you now get to write your own compelling tweet. That’s right, you write it. The only rules are that you include the link supplied along with a method of disclosing that it is in fact an ad. This can be hashtagging the tweet #ad, adding “sponsored by” or “brought to you by” to the tweet – there are alist of disclosing methods supplied and it is up to you to chose the one you are most comfortable with. So there is no fooling your followers, I like that.

5. You submit your tweet to Sponsored Tweets for a final check, they then tweet it out for you. Their are opportunities to have your tweet go out up to 3 times (and make more money) if the first tweet was very successful – but they do not hijack your account and send out spam willy nilly. In fact once they send out the first tweet, they DM you to let you know.

If you have any questions about how it has worked for me so far, don’t hesitate to leave me a message. Have you tried Sponsored Tweets? What has been your experience?

If you do sign up though my referal link, make sure to email me at ghada at realsocialgirl dot com and let me know or leave a message here.

Happy Tweeting!

Take the video clip from New Zealand cop show Police 10/7 (equivalent to the US show COPS) where a Kiwi Poilceman uses a bit of humor to lighten the mood.

The now famous line ” It will be thermo-nuclear – always blow on the pie. Safer communities together,” has been seen well over 150,000 times.  The last part of the quote is the New Zealand Police slogan.

View the video below and pass it on if you (unlike the young thief) can see the humor. You may have to watch it a few times to get your head around the Kiwi accent.

With the recent change of Facebook’s News Feed and the reintroduction of the Live Feed, seems alot of people are even asking what the heck am I even doing on Facebook. Take a deep breath, calm down and sort out your feeds, setup groups to help you better visualize all your friends and their updates and then read this.  According to a recent study outlined at Mashable,

Facebook provides the most loyal visitors, with 20% of those that originate from the social network in turn visiting the site they landed upon four or more times in a week. Among other social media sites, Digg traffic produced loyal users 16% of the time, while Twitter traffic was only good for 11% loyalty.

If even a fraction of your time on Facebook is for business, then you need to have a presence there. If you still need convincing, here are another 5 reasons you should add Facebook to your Social Media mix.

1. You can easily import your blog posts to your feed using Networked Blogs to auto-publish (or choose when you want to publish). With your published blog feeds your friends are then given the option to be taken directly to your website to read the full article, the usual “like” feature, to share it on their profile, tweet out the post or even follow your blog through networkedblogs – what better way to build up your readership.

2. Minimal ads in compared to other social networks like Bebo, MySpace and even LinkedIn, your browsing experience is much more lightweight, nuf said.

3. Great tool for storing and sharing photos. With no specific limit on albums, why not load them up, tag people in them and share them on your profile. Though no album limit, there is a limit of 60 photos per album.

4.Following on from the last point, tagging is a great networking feature of Facebook. You can tag notes, photos and now with the @feature, you can mention people in your status updates that will provide a link to their profile.  Tagging is a brilliant way to see who is connected to your connections – closing the gap on the six degrees of separation (or 2 in NZ). Isn’t it true that if someone is a friend of a friend or fan of something you may well be interested as well?

5. Lastly, the Fan Page is an excellent business tool for funneling people to your business site and promoting your expertise – whether it be to promote a product, service or coaching based business. I have a Fan Page for #RSG Twitter Parties and Social Media and Business Advocacy for women, be sure to join up if you haven’t already just by clicking the “become a fan” button on the widget in the sidebar. Use Facebook Fan pages to generate ideas, get feedback and good ole enthusiasm about your brand on one of the fastest growing social networks out there. There are various ways to set your fan page apart, think back to that added value service you can create within your fan page that screams uniqueness – registries, regular tips, advice – the list is endless.

With these newest changes to Facebook, do you find yourself on it less?

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The Matchmaking Flight, a world’s first, is set to take off in 3 weeks. North Americans will be flying on a special party flight on Air New Zealand from LAX and arriving in Auckland where they will be greeted by Single Kiwis. As part of my role of making sure the online community keeps in contact leading up to the trip and beyond, I have created a beginner’s guide to Twitter for travelers. The target audience is Twitter noobs…the added tips are to help plan and enjoy your travels using Twitter.

Is this course for me?

If you have never touched Twitter or tried to but didn’t understand it, this course is for you. Their is added information about how people who travel can use Twitter. Even if you are not a traveler, you can still use the travel related tips to help you in your local search for business, colleagues, Twitter friends.

The course is set up so that you will receive 5 short emails over 5 days. I’ve had rave reviews about a basic Twitter course that I did in the same format months ago. It allows complete newbies to absorb information in bite size chunks and not get overwhelmed by all that Twitter has to offer.You receive one course a day that should take you no longer than 10-15 minutes to go through. You get action steps for each day while building your Twitter following. By the end of the course you will be well on your way to really getting the hang of Twitter.

Travel related information includes:

- performing local Twitter searches

- How to find out what’s going on where you are

- How to find travel experts

- How to find other travellers

This mini course is free. All you have to do is sign up with your name and email below to receive the course. Once you have entered your name and email, you will need to click on a link in an email from ghada at realsocialgirl dot com in order to confirm your subscription. Enjoy!

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First Kanye West stormed the MTV VMA awards while Female Video artist of the year Taylor Swift was accepting her award. He thought it was his place to announce that Beyonce had in fact the best video of the year. Whaaaat?
If you haven’t yet seen the record breaking video, you can see it below. The outbusrt spawned parodies, Facebook quizzes, mashups and a flood of not so nice comments to Mr West on the interwebs.

The second occasion happened during a Philadelphia Phillies baseball game when a big time Phillies fan caught a foul ball and gave it right away to his 3 year old daughter to have a squizz…she proceeded to throw it back onto the field. Devastating for Dad, but he still managed to give the little girl a big hug. Can you say warm fuzzy?

This is where MTV and Major League Baseball (MLB) differed with how they dealt with these equally appealing moments caught on Video.

MTV who face it, could have received a lot of backlash for their inability to control Kanye on stage created a video with embed code to be shared around the web. The video has now broken MTV.com records, according to Mashable.com 2.7 million unique visitors hit MTV.com on Sunday – it’s highest VMA performance ever

5.5 million unique visitors hit MTV.com on Monday – the second best day in the site’s history

There were a total of 17.9 million video streams watched on the site Monday, the second highest stream total in the site’s history.

Meanwhile MLB decided to copyright any incidents on YouTube of the amazing catch and warm fuzzy hug moment. Instead opting for viewers to catch the clip only on their official website – stunting the possibility of the video going viral and leaving their fans to wonder why they just won’t get with the program – businesses need to get with social media. There is a level of protecting your brand that needs to be enforced to get your message out, then there is just not getting with the program. Your marketing needs a social media mix.

Ironic how a negative moment became a good thing for one company (MTV), while a funny and touching moment became a negative for another company (MLB).

How can you capture the market through your brand’s presence on the web – negative or positive?

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