Reid Rosefelt Marketing

12/06/2013

Okay, this is it! This may be my last post on this page about why I'm not posting on this page!

I used to give lectures teaching people how to use Facebook. I stopped doing that and recently I even stopped posting to my page. Here's why.

11/13/2013

I'm not sure if I'm going to be writing any more on this page, although I will keep it up for awhile.

I want to thank all of you for your support. I hope some of the things I put up on this page were interesting and useful.

If you'd like to keep up with what I'm doing in the future, click the button above to sign up for my blog. I only write about two or three times a month, so I assure you I will not be spamming you. : )

My current post is very similar to things I have already published here, but if you'd like to read it, it's at reidrosefelt dot com.

11/12/2013

I have alluded to the idea that all the work you put into creating content for Facebook doesn’t do anything for you beyond what it does within Facebook, whereas other networks, like Google+, can help you achieve concrete objectives, like better results in a Google search. Now let me be more specific.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that that some Google search results have pictures in them, which makes them stand out. This is called “Google Authorship,” and you are eligible for it just by setting up a profile in Google+. It may or may not be the easiest thing to do that--it took me awhile--but you don’t even have to be active in Google+ to get authorship.

But if do engage with Google+, Google will reward you and give you better results. An indicator of that is that if you look at any posts with Google Authorship, you’ll see how many Google+ circles the particular Author is in,. Take a look at the picture below (I put it in a separate post). Google indexed a blog post I did twice: once when it appeared on my blog and once when it appeared as a guest post in Ted Hope’s blog. Note that my post turns up above the one on “Truly Free Film,” even though “Truly Free Film” has many times more readers than my blog. Also, my listing stands out more than the TFF one because of my Google Authorship picture.

There are other benefits to Authorship, but my point is clear. What could be more important than getting more people to your blog or website? Very, very, very little time spent on Google+ will make this happen. I think it's worth your consideration.

11/12/2013

11/11/2013

Recently I attempted to place an ad on Facebook for a class I was giving at the New York Foundation for the Arts, but it refused to accept my copy. .

When I took out the words “Pinterest” and “Google+” Facebook accepted the ad. I tried again, with just “Pinterest.” Denied. Then with just “Google+” Denied again.

Perhaps this was just a one-time occurrence. Some of the ad approvals on Facebook are done by human beings, not computers, and this might have been the attitude of one person. There’s no way for me to prove that it’s a general policy.

But it happened.

11/10/2013

How does the experience that you and I share on a Facebook fan page differ from what happens on my blog?

In both cases there is a hierarchy. It begins with what I create and then you, my “fans” (????), can only like, comment, or share. If I choose, I can interact with you. Or I can choose to ignore you. My blog is exactly the same except that you can respond to many social media networks, as well as Facebook.

In other situations on Facebook, I play the role of the “fan.” I follow a brilliant guy with the wonderful nom du plume Hugh Briss. I always find what he has to say invaluable and he is very funny too. I have contacted him directly in the past and he was very kind and helpful. On the other hand, on a few occasions I have posted comments that he didn’t like and he’s snapped at me. So Hugh Briss’s page is no longer a safe place for me to comment. I only read him. There are a few blogs I follow that are like this.

On Google+, I am a member of several “Communities.” Instead of connecting with my Friends, as I do on Facebook, on Google+ I meet strangers who are interested in the same things I am. There we all can post as much as we want. When I am looking for an answer to a question, I have thousands of people who can help me, not just one. and help each other out with questions. These communities have moderators, but you don’t have to declare yourself their their fans in order to join: I had never heard of Scott Kleinberg or Jeremy Brown, who manage the Social Media Community I belong to, but I feel like they are friends now. The same goes for Sheri Candler and her “Independent Film Marketing Community.” Now she is one of the most consistently helpful people to my work.

In fairness, it is very hard for people to give up the habits they have made on Facebook and truly embrace something new. On most Google+ communities, the Moderator dominates the conversation.

But still, there is no question that I have found a wonderful home on Google+ . The best way I can describe the experience is that it’s similar to when I got my first Mac after I’d worked with PC’s for so long. My first response was “How did I put up with that all these years?.” The second was a never-ending process of discovering new things I love, like Easter eggs. And when I returned to Microsoft (Facebook), I found myself getting even more annoyed than I was before.

11/09/2013

In case you haven’t seen any of my recent posts, I’ve decided to shut down this page. This is the latest in a series where I explain why.

Facebook is like a roach motel. You put things into it--words, pictures, videos, links--but they don’t come out.

Facebook is like Crystal M**h for the entire world. Facebook makes Walter White look like a piker. He never figured out how to distribute his addictive blue crystal in phones.

Facebook is like the NSA. All your content, every word you write in a status, every like, every comment, every share, is sliced, diced, pureed, put in slides and examined by electron microscopes, looking for atomic particles of money-producing matter.

Facebook is also the biggest archive in the history of the universe. It takes all the content that people put into it, and houses it forever in its 200,000 servers. These huge warehouses in Oregon, Virginia, North Carolina, and Lulea, Sweden, are like the end of “Citizen Kane.” The only difference is their vast size, which makes it a lot harder to find the sled, something that might come in handy in northern Sweden. I am particularly fascinated with this particular Facebook data center on the edge of the Arctic Circle as I sometimes wonder if the Man of Steel is the caretaker.

Thousands of the smartest people alive get up every day and try to figure out how to squeeze additional billions out the data you have so blithely handed to them on a plate. Eventually they come up with delightful notions like adding videos of beheadings and making the networking service more pedophile-friendly.

They rarely tell anybody about the changes they make. Most are discovered by bloggers who study Facebook as if it was the Talmud written in Mercury, and pass on their discoveries to the armies of compulsive Facebook nerds, ninjas, and noodniks. Sometimes there are announcements that are so vague that they get a lot of press about how indecipherable they are. Sometimes they do something grand with tremendous hoopla, like redoing the analytics. (I'm sorry Mark, you're never going to be Steve Jobs, just like graph search will never be the iPad.)

Let me be clear: all this stuff is just dandy with me.

The thing that made my head explode was when I read their description of how I could use the word “Facebook.” Certain things are not allowed. For example, you can’t use a term like “Facebookify,” “Facebookicize” or “FacebookLeanOverTheTablePullDownYourPantsAndThinkofEngland.”

This was the last straw.

11/08/2013

The simplest reason why I’m closing this page is that I have never really liked Facebook very much. I have mainly been interested in Facebook as a means for filmmakers and artists to sell their work.

When I explored Facebook as a marketer, I was overwhelmed by what a gift it was to filmmakers. One day, while having a coffee with Ted Hope, I told him about my discoveries. He asked me to write something for his blog, and that’s how this enterprise began.

Ironically, right as I was getting started, in September of 2012, Facebook changed the rules. Instead of being free, it went into a paid model. It took awhile for me to accept that it was never going to be the same. It wasn’t fair for us to expect them to go on forever offering an amazing service that costs them hundreds of millions to provide. Also, Wall Street was screaming and they had to listen.

While my disappointment with Facebook grew, I was exploring Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, Tumblr, and many other smaller networks. And I liked what I saw.

This page has been getting very sour. I am writing too many posts criticizing Facebook. In my opinion, this is a pretty pathetic thing to use Facebook for. It is tedious for you and not a nice way for me to thank Facebook for this soapbox they have given me. Time to move on.

I am tired of explaining why I love a social network because it has advantages over Facebook. These posts are going to be my swan song to all that.

From now on, I just want to love a social media network because I love it.

11/08/2013

Square images used to be ideal for Facebook, which was nice because they worked well in the other social media platforms too. However, Facebook recently switched to a wide screen format, 400 pixels x 209 pixels.

I need tall images for Pinterest--not skinny horizontal strips. And, as I often do text graphics, it isn’t an ideal shape. I’m tired of making one image for Pinterest and another for Facebook. In fact I stopped doing it some time ago.

As I’ve said, I’m getting great results from my images on Pinterest. Facebook will only show them to 29 people here, so what’s the point?

Images are what I do well. Images are the secret to my social media success. I'm not doing images for Facebook anymore.

There is also something called the 20% rule for total text, which you may know about. It only matters if you pay to have your posts seen, so it's a non-issue for me. But again it represents another limitation on the visual.

For me, Facebook is always changing the rules, usually in ways that are an impediment to my work.

11/06/2013

If you are a marketer, you know that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) may be the most important way to get your product in front of the public. It's better to be listed on top of the first page rather than on page ten. If your SEO isn't good enough, then you have to pay for ads to put it up there. Billions of dollars have been spent on SEO consultants for this reason.

f you spend five hours a day for ten years on Facebook it will have minimal impact on your SEO. What's put up on Facebook stays on Facebook. If you spend a few hours a week on Pinterest and Google+ for three months it can have a monumental impact on your SEO.

For example, Oreos have one of the most famous. admired, and incredibly expensive Facebook campaigns ever, but the Oreo page comes up on page 5 in Google Search.

On the other hand, I have many Pinterest boards that are #1 on Google Search.

As I have a website I'm planning, I'd rather take time from Facebook and put it into more activities on Pinterest and Google+.so that people will find it. Why not be #1 on Google search? For free.

More later.

11/05/2013

Hello everybody,

Here is today's Reason #2 for why I'm shutting down this page.

Every social media expert and every survey agrees thatSocial media engagement is always improved by pictures. It's no surprise that's what people have always responded to for me on this page. I have put quite a few images up that have gotten 1000-2000 likes, comments or shares on my various pages. This is all before September 2012, when Facebook stopped showing them.

Images are what I am good at and it is at the heart of all the teaching I do.

If I put an image on this page, Facebook will only show it to 30 or less people. Same for a link...

A status update like this with no picture or link goes out to around 130 of you. As you know from my previous post, many of you in the 130 don't actually exist.

Interestingly I often do better with the 30 than the 130, because people respond to the images and the links.

On the other hand I can take an image and put it up on Pinterest where it will be seen by hundreds of thousands of people. As it is always on Pinterest, this image will endlessly be seen by millions of people.

Of course, if Pinterest is still around after I am no longer alive, my images will continue to be seen by many millions.

In the more likely scenario that PInterest eventually bites the dust, by that time my best images will have migrated to other sites as they do today. People who use Pinterest also use Tumblr (which has the archive feature)

You cannot believe how many graphics I have like this. And I'm getting better at this every day.

Many of the most popular images I have ever put up on Pinterest were also put up on Facebook, where I paid $3 to $5 to have them seen by a few hundred people over a period of a few days.

11/04/2013

If you haven't heard, I'm shutting down this page and will post a reason why every day.

Number One: I currently have 1251 likes for this page. I would estimate that 300+ of them are phonies. I checked out the profile of every person who liked this page and many of them are from Morocco and Algeria and other countries where this page is blocked and they can't see it.

How do I get them when they can't see my page? They link directly from my ads. It's the only way. I am not alone in saying this. Jon Loomer, the number one Facebook advertising expert ever, has written about this at length on his blog. Not lately he hasn't. : ) But he did write about it.

These "fans" of mine don't speak English. They don't post, or if they do it is gibberish. If they have a picture it often comes from a stock photo house, with beautiful women being particularly popular. They are often people with 3000 or more likes for other brands. I believe these 300+ fans of my page are either computer programs or they are people working in some sweatshop in Tangier for pennies a like.

As these fans don't exist, they each have a tremendous amount of friends who also don't exist.

Facebook gives you complete control over who is in your personal Facebook profile, but no control over who is in your Fan Page. You cannot get rid of these pages. Facebook has a mechanism where you can post a complaint, but nothing ever happens.

Why do I care? Because Facebook makes me pay to reach these people and their friends every time I advertise. And if I don't advertise almost nobody sees my posts. If I do advertise I get more fakes.

This is a "problem" that Facebook could fix in an instant by giving us the ability to delete them.