braddyg.com

Recently I did a little review of what I learned from social media in 2009. As part of that review, I spent a bit of time looking over notable tweets from others that I had saved from various points in the year. I found lots of useful information (even some I’d forgotten already), but one tweet really stuck out in my mind.

It was posted by fellow email marketing guy and former co-worker DJ Waldow from the Mail Post Email Insiders Summit in early December. The comment came from a panelist discussing some email no-nos:

I couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment – I almost immediately discount a marketing email that includes my name in the subject or greeting. But the comment holds a deeper lesson for all marketers that may not be so obvious.

Build relationships

As a marketer, you probably know that gaining your audience’s trust is paramount. But you’ll have a hard time gaining trust through gimmicks like faux personalization. Including information relevant to the recipient is a good idea, but it takes more than a name to really build a relationship with your client base. With the rise in popularity of Facebook and other sites that allow people to connect on a more personal level, consumers are already barraged by people masquerading as friends. Sometimes it’s a random acquaintance who wants to connect on Facebook; others it’s a blog commenter who’s trying to drive traffic to their affiliate site. Social media users, in particular, are hyper-sensitive to anyone in the digital world who claims to be their “friend.”

Very few brands have managed to gain the almost unbridled trust of the consumer – Apple is a great example of one that has. However, it takes much more than a few personalized emails to attain that level of brand loyalty. Apple and companies like it have been able to create and maintain a culture that mirrors their consumers’ interests and values, thus driving market share and creating brand evangelists.

Become a thought leader

So what can you do to gain your audience’s trust? Instead of working to establish yourself as the consumer’s friend, position your brand as an authority in your space. Generate useful, relevant content through social media and marketing channels. Don’t use social media just to sing your own praises; give consumers information they can use even if they don’t need your product or service right now. That way, you can assure you’ll be on their mind whenever they are in the market for a provider.

In addition, this will open the door for communication with consumers. Information sharing should never be a one-way street, so be sure to monitor and respond to comments and feedback. Letting consumers know that you value their opinions and genuinely want to help will instill confidence in your brand and reap great rewards in the long run.

According to the latest posts on the Facebook blog, the privacy changes founder Mark Zuckerberg announced last week will start taking effect today. Upon login, every Facebook user will be required to check out the new privacy settings and adjust their own accordingly, although no one I’ve spoken with has yet received this prompt.

As a result of these changes, Facebook claims, users will be able to set privacy levels for each piece of content they share with the site. At the time of writing, the regional networks do still appear to be around, and the post gives no definite timeline for their removal.

Hidden way down near the bottom of the lengthy post, though, Facebook asserts that a “limited set of basic information” will be made publicly available to everyone regardless of privacy settings. This information includes name, gender, city, profile picture, networks, pages, and full friends list. Yes, that’s right, Facebook has taken away your ability to make any of this information private. Which begs the question: are they really trying to help you control your privacy?

UPDATE: After waiting with baited breath, I finally got the Privacy notice in my own account. I clicked Next, and…

I’d really like to adjust my privacy settings, Facebook. Why won’t you let me?

Earlier today on the Google blog, the search engine giant announced some new content will begin appearing in search results, including public content from social networking sites like Twitter and FriendFeed. The announcement promises “a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web,” and was followed by a post from Facebook announcing that they are working with Google to make public content from their users available in search results as well.

In about half an hour, the Facebook post has already generated over 250 comments weighing in both for and against the move. This should come as little surprise to most, as users are notoriously averse to change, especially when it comes to privacy. But is there really anything to worry about?

At first glance, this seems like an odd partnership for Facebook, who just last week announced they were removing regional networks and beefing up privacy controls. After a closer look, though, the move starts to make more sense.

Facebook plans to implement stricter privacy controls, allowing users to micromanage their content’s availability piece by piece. This means that users will have more control than ever over which content will be made available to other users of Facebook. When you factor in the current model -that anyone, regardless of school or business affiliation can sign up for an account – you realize that any content marked as public on Facebook is already viewable by essentially anyone who cares to do so.

While this may be the case, adding Facebook posts to Google search results certainly broadens the reach a bit, for better or for worse.  One no longer needs to know anything about a person’s identity to stumble across their content on Facebook.

Even with the enhanced privacy controls, it appears that the days of Facebook as a (semi-)private social network may be numbered. Many users are barely aware of the existence of these privacy controls, and even fewer actually use them to any measurable degree. It’s a pretty good bet that Facebook is counting on this fact, allowing them to publicize tons of user-generated content and generate additional traffic – and more importantly, revenue – to their site.

What does this mean for Facebook users? If you’re a business or organization that wants a new avenue to get your content in front of the public, this is a great step. But if you’re an individual who uses Facebook to maintain your personal, social, and family networks, you’ll want to start paying attention to those privacy settings very soon.

In an “open letter” to Facebook users posted last night, Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg took a moment to toot his own horn, noting that Facebook now has 350 million users. He then outlined some upcoming changes designed to improve privacy settings within the social networking tool, namely the demise of regional networks. According to Zuckerberg, these networks have become too large and don’t allow for the kind of privacy controls Facebook wants to provide its users. This change, he says, is part of the updated privacy controls promised back in June.

In addition, he says that Facebook will soon allow users to specify privacy levels for each piece of content – presumably every status update, photo, link, profile detail – the user shares with the site.

All in all, the removal of regional networks was almost inevitable. After all, why should someone who happens to reside in the same metro area have special privileges to your content? Yes, Facebook has been providing privacy controls that let you hide content from even your networks for a while now, but there was no breakdown for which of your networks could or couldn’t see those pictures from that crazy holiday party – so if you shared them with your work network, you were also sharing them with everyone in your regional network as well.

This change will probably make it a bit harder for you to locate people you actually do know (or met at a bar and want to silently stalk), but hopefully will pave the way for much more user-friendly and flexible privacy controls.

myKite, the popular Brightkite client for BlackBerry, was just updated to version 1.5 today, according to Chris Hallgren via Twitter (@myKiteapp).

myKite users will notice that not much has changed aesthetically – the same simple, yet useful interface greets you on login – but the new version does address unspecified bugs with viewing posts. In addition, conversation view has been introduced for direct messages.

Thus far, I’ve seen a slight UI issue in the direct messages view, but there have already been 2 versions released today due to minor UI errors. If you don’t like bugs and want to make sure every annoyance is fixed, it might be a good idea to hold off a few days until the hardcore myKiters have gotten their hands all over the app. If you’re one of those hardcores and want to help make sure this version is tip-top, you can download it at http://mykite.mobi/download.

Rarely using Brightkite from the web in favor of myKite on my BlackBerry Storm, I thought that the recent problems connecting and locating myself were on my end. Today, though, after extended periods of denied access and even a fresh install of myKite, I decided to go to Brightkite’s site and was greeted with this:

Included on the page is a link to the Brightkite blog, which states that the outage is part of the preparations for the upcoming Brightkite 2.0 update. Also found on the blog are some vague details about improvements to Placesnapping and helping Brightkite find you faster and more accurately.

So, what says the blogosphere? Anyone else missing their Brightkite? Is anticipation for version 2.0 building up to a fever pitch?

If you ask a hundred people why they use social media networks, or even what got them into social media, you’d probably get a hundred different answers. Some SM celebrities like LisaNova enjoy the attention and boundless audience available at their fingertips. Others, like Zappos CEO Tony, use their networks as a valuable business tool to foster a relationship with current and potential customers. Still others use social media to disseminate useful tips and tricks on everything from the latest tech toys to top-rated recipes.

And then there are the rest of us. Those who use SM for business purposes or to find useful information once in a while, but generally don’t glean any actual value from it – at least according to many SM evangelists out there. As far as I’m concerned, though, it’s this type of user who often finds true value from their networks. This type of user typically uses their networks either as a way to connect with those they already know or to make new connections they might never have had outside this medium. They may not gain value in the form of reputation or business or profit; their value comes through enhancing their interpersonal relationships.

Let’s take me, for example. I’ve been involved in social media for years. In fact, when I joined my first network no one had ever heard of “social media.” My network was simply a way to keep in touch with those friends of mine who moved away after high school without running up exorbitant phone bills, as well as making some new friends along the way. For me, the “value add” was the ability to share my thoughts and ideas with those friends and anyone else who might be interested across the network. It gave me a window out of my small-town world and insight into interaction with people from diverse backgrounds. This insight  eventually proved to be invaluable to me professionally (but that’s a topic for another blog). The most important factor for me – then and now – is people.

I’ll admit, with the meteoric rise of Twitter, Plurk, Facebook, et al., my networking habits have evolved. I’ve made an effort to “brand” myself across the networks, to make myself easy to identify on multiple popular sites. For me, though, it’s more of a personal branding than a business one. I want people to easily be able to find and connect with me in the hopes that we can exchange thoughts, ideas, maybe even a Thai recipe or two. The free exchange of ideas and information are what “they” told us the internet was all about – now social media and web 2.0 are showing us all what that really means. And everyone, from home users to notable SM’ers to business networkers, would do well to remember that relationships are at the root of it all.

*Merriam Webster defines sociality as “the tendency to associate in or form social groups”