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Check Your Facebook Account Security Settings for New Features

February 5, 2011 By 1 Comment
FB Account Page | The Bella Buzz Podcast

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In a down and dirty presentation on this episode of The Bella Buzz podcast, Desiree and Joe discuss the recent change to the Facebook Account settings.

FB Account Page | The Bella Buzz PodcastFrom the menu Account > Account Settings > Account Security, Facebook is rolling out the option to select “Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible”.

In the Fall of 2010 a white hat hacking tool known as Firesheep brought to light the concerns about using unencrypted wifi connections in public places.  Coffee shops, hotels, airports are known for the ease of getting internet access, but also providing opportunities for private information to be intercepted. Anyone using the Firesheep plugin in an open wifi area could simply and easily capture your Facebook account.  With this browser plugin, posts could be made on your wall or your friends wall, any privacy settings that you made could be altered. Literally anything you do on Facebook could be hijacked. This is not simply a Facebook issue, it is any web site where you are providing personal information in an unsecure setting.  Most banks and e-commerce sites have long ago used SSL certificates to set up secure browsing sessions, but with the rapid growth of social networking, these services have lagged behind. Facebook officially responded to the issue with a massive development overhaul, which is finally being rolled out across the entire network.

Within the same portion of your Account Settings, you are able to see all of the recent activity on this account, including any devices which have logged into the account as well.  It would be a good random exercise to view this history to make sure that there is no access to the account from unfamiliar machines.

If you are looking to keep up with good information about all of the features, business models, and activity in the Facebook universe, subscribe to InsideFacebook.com to stay informed. Let us know in the comments, have you changed your Facebook Settings?

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Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

Filed Under: Facebook

The Social Network: Business Lessons and The American Dream

October 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment
the-social-network-poster | The Bella Buzz.com

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On this episode of The Bella Buzz Podcast, Desiree and Joe explore the social media space through the lens of pop culture, and the recently released movie The Social Network.

The movie is the semi-factual account of the creation of Facebook. We are presented with Mark Zuckerberg’s tale from his days as a student at Harvard and his motivation for making a name for himself as a coder on campus through the launch of the site. Throughout the narrative we are also presented with the depositions from two lawsuits that the company and Zuckerberg had to endure.

We really don’t need to go into the details of the script on this podcast, full details can be found on it’s IMDB page.  However, there were some lessons that we were able to glean from our viewing.

The lessons were mostly along the lines of maintaining a singular focus on achieving your objectives.  It’s hard to know when you “have a marlin” but when you do recognize it, do everything in your power to land it.  Never go off looking to get the little fish.  There is something that is very exciting in the entrepreneurial spirit that many of the startups around the country demonstrate on a daily basis.  This film depicts it very well.

Where once there was an American dream to earn a living, put a roof over our heads and provide for the future, today’s depiction of the American dream is to build something that changes the world.  Facebook has obviously had a tremendous impact, globally, on the way in which we connect, communicate and establish relationships.

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Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

Filed Under: Facebook, Social Media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Interview: How Medifast is Using Social Media to Help People Get Healthy

August 19, 2009 By 3 Comments

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This week The Bella Buzz gang of Desiree Scales from Bella Web Design and Joe Magennis of Fluid Media welcome special guest Brian Gleason, Public Relations Manager from Medifast. They discuss actual applications of social media marketing including Brian's perspective on how his company went about the practice of developing a vibrant social community.

Brian shares that the company had originally built a closed environment as an online community only for existing customers, but as they went about analyzing the impact of the word of mouth and peer to peer support that took place, they realized that they needed to evolve into more social networking platforms.

The most prominent networks for Medifast are a Facebook Fan Page, a YouTube channel, and Twitter for interaction. This works very well with their Take Shape for Life Health Coaches who use these tools to motivate their clients as well as get the word out to potential clients by simply offering advice and encouragement.

Note the story at around the 7:00 minute mark when Brian shares a real life case study of how he was able to direct a potential customer to the Facebook page and the entire community took over to convince the shopper of the product benefits.  They turned the shopper into a customer … exactly the results everyone is looking for in their own social media plan!

Brian recommends all companies monitor what is happening on Twitter by keeping the Twitter Search web site open on his desktop all day long and listening for references to the company, customer successes and any other potential opportunity to connect and communicate.

Medifast consciously took the "slow and steady" approach to developing their social community through organic discovery.  The intention was to learn from the process in order to refine the strategy and to ensure the best execution. They use it as a community building effort much more so than a promotional platform.

One key element of this approach is the buy-in from the corporate executives, including Mike McDevitt CEO of Medifast, who was instrumental in getting Brian in touch with Desiree to talk about social media. (Mike and Desiree literally ran into each other while running at the annual 2009 TSFL convention in Phoenix a month ago!) This allowed for some time to roll-out the effort without having to justify through indiscriminate metrics.

Watch for the development of Health Coaches using social media tools as a key part of counseling their client base. Medifast is looking to provide guidance to the Coaches so that they can help their clients participate in "life-streaming" as a way to stay motivated and share their successes.

Brian's final bit of parting advice to business owners is that they should listen and learn as much as possible by immersing themselves in social media personally before diving right in representing the company.  The mistakes can be made there first as a learning experience. 

Thanks to Brian for joining us, and for more information about Medifast visit the web site www.choosemedifast.com or connect via any of the social networks linked above. 

Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

Filed Under: Facebook, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Twitter

The All-Powerful Share Button in Social Media

June 10, 2009 By Leave a Comment

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Desiree Scales, CEO of Bella Web Design smoothly segues into our Bella Buzz podcast topic this week, using the Share button for distributing content. With co-host Joe Magennis, principal of Fluid Media in Atlanta, we chat about the mutually beneficial practice of sharing, re-tweeting and forwarding content on the web.

The greatest reward for content producers is to create something that readers, viewers or listeners find compelling enough to pass along to their social networks. As the momentum builds for the content, it continues to get shared with others on the strength of the message or entertainment value that it brings… the content becomes Viral. 

It is an unrealistic expectation to intentionally design content to become viral or share-worthy.  A small business owner should never embark on the process of creating content hoping that it will become the next "Chocolate Rain" video which has received over 38 million views!  Content should be developed strictly with the intention of communicating a message to a target audience.  If that audience deems the content to be worthy of sharing with others, they will pass it along in order to provide some value to the next recipient.

The share functionality has actually been with us on the internet well before the tools of Web 2.0.  The simple act of forwarding an email was the first level of sharing that we encountered.  Now that we are in the social era of internet services we have Re-Tweets on Twitter, we have numerous Share plugins for blog posts such as Share This used on both bellawebdesign.com and befluid.com and we even could consider a Trackback or a Link as a form of sharing content from someone else's blog.

Think about it for a second. How valuable is it to you as a content producer to have your audience share your content within their own circle of influence? Since we are much more likely to trust the content passed along from someone we know, we are much more likely to consume it.  If you employ the old shampoo commercial axiom of "tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends", your message will be transmitted far beyond your own social graph and will start to carry serious significance in your niche.

As with all things social these days, we are also living in a very collaborative environment. A good practice is to contribute to the distribution of other people's content by using the share button yourself.  Re-tweeting, Stumbling or Digging an article, linking to a blog post in Facebook or on your own blog will not go unnoticed and might lead to a reciprocal sharing of your content. 

Don't forget to use the reporting functions from URL shorteners such as Bit.LY or the dashboard within Share This to determine if you are producing the right kind of content. Witnessing small share numbers might indicate that you need to refine your content so that it communicates more meaningful information to your audience. You can also use the Hootsuite service to review the success of your campaign ROI, shared items is another measure of effectiveness.

We are interested in finding out from you what you would like us to share, we would love to see in the comments any topics or ideas that we can address in the podcast.  Thanks for Listening!

Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

Filed Under: Facebook, Social Marketing, Social Media, Twitter, Video, Web 2.0 Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

How Do you Really Calculate Social Media ROI?

May 20, 2009 By Leave a Comment

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Our conversation on The Bella Buzz podcast today is a very important one for business owners, marketing managers, or anyone who is interested in determining how to measure the Return on Investment (ROI) that can be achieved via social media strategies.

Hosts Desiree Scales and Joe Magennis break down the numerous ways of evaluating the success of online marketing efforts. However, there is no accepted standard that has been developed to capture and measure the time invested in participation versus the return that has been gained.

Google Analytics is a good place to start to ensure that you are tracking and analyzing the traffic that is on your site. You can see a clear picture of the traffic coming from the various social networks that you are participating in. We are in a paradigm shift as far as what reliable metrics should be evaluated regarding social media marketing.

Social media analysis at this stage might be closer to evaluating a branding campaign. Brand exposure can be measured in terms of the number of impressions that are generated with an determined value assigned to that exposure, such as you see with a sponsorship investment.  There is no exact correlation between the the number of people who see the Philips brand on the Arena in Atlanta and the number of units sold in a market, but there is obviously a long term benefit that the brand gains by being associated with that sponsorship.

Desiree had a conversation with a client Casual Image about establishing a blog and social media campaign.  They decided outdoor design would be the topic for those who love to barbeque and enjoy their time on their patio. The topics included in the blog will sometimes actually point his community to other web sites and online sources of content, so won't be captured by his Analytics reports, however it will most certainly generate additional followers because of the value his content provides.

One metric that does work in the social space is comments, so getting a community to start commenting on your blog, or YouTube video channel, or Facebook status comments will give you a good view of how much brand exposure you are getting and could be used as a measure of success.

A real life case study that shows the results of a social media effort, which has garnered significant ROI whether it is exactly measurable or not, can be seen by the ability of @ComcastCares to push the negative corporate imagery off of the first page of Google.  A great discussion on this topic can be found at Blog Talk Radio.

Starbucks has implemented an online & offline effort that drives traffic to their Twitter page using posters. Here is a link to the article relating the campaign.

The way to justify the implementation of these campaigns will be to present anecdotal evidence from companies that have seen real results in the past, and to agree on a few metrics that can be used to measure progress such as blog comments and video views. Once these results are demonstrated over a period of time, the business rationale will be established.

How would you assign a value to a Twitter follower or a Facebook fan?  Is that something that can be included in an ROI calculation?

Theme music for The Bella Buzz is Fallen by Digital Chemistry, available for download at the Podsafe Music Network.

You can subscribe to The Bella Buzz directly from ITunes by following this link, and we would be happy to receive listener feedback and ratings at The ITunes Store.

Filed Under: Blogging, Facebook, Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , , , , , , ,