A visual guide to Facebook Timeline

You may have noticed that on Friday, all Facebook brand/business pages were forced into the new page layout, with new features. This infographic is a good overview of what the changes mean.
 

Simple tweaks to make your Facebook page better

Want to get more likes on your Facebook page? Start by implementing these basic strategies from Natalie Sisson on usnews.com, like creating a custom landing page (just ask people to like you) and offering fans a benefit for joining.

Women’s Health gets real

How’s this for community-building and UGC? Women’s Health has put together a gallery of their editors’ worst back-to-school fashion photos on their Facebook page. (I believe you have to be logged in to see the page.) It’s super cute, super friendly and reaches out to readers – who have reached back, posting some of their own fashion faux pas.

This is what social media is for – not just for sending out links. Connect with readers on a personal level and they’ll become your most loyal supporters.

What are some other magazines you’ve found doing great (read: appropriate) things on Facebook?

How magazines can use Facebook

I never used to be a fan of Facebook groups or fan pages, at least not for any useful purpose—they were so buried in the interface and there was no way to interact with members (and remind them of your presence) except by sending them messages, which in my opinion is far too in-your-face to do more than once a month or so without annoying people. But Facebook has made some recent changes that make fan pages more like personal pages. Most notably, your magazine page can now make status updates, and those updates will show up in your fans’ news feed.

A great example of a magazine making use of this is (of course) Wired:

They have 14,913 fans as of now (maybe we can push them to 15,000), and every time they make a status update it gets tons of comments from these fans, who instantly see them in their news feeds. Facebook has (finally!) become a place to actually interact with your brands’ fans and give them updates as part of their regular stream of events.

Is your magazine using Facebook successfully? Share your tips.

Protect your brand online

There’s now a ton of social media sites to sign up for, more than anyone can ever use. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still create an account. Who’s to say which site will be the next Facebook or Twitter? And when that time arrives, don’t you want to own your brand?

I just came across a site (thanks to the Bivings Report) that will check your chosen username across various sites (I counted 68 today, but they’re adding more) such as Flickr, Friendfeed, even eBay, and tell you if it’s available. It’s a good thing to check with both your own name (if you’re interested in owning it across the Internet) and your magazine’s name. If you haven’t done so already, sign up for as many of the popular sites as you can using the name of your magazine, even if you don’t plan to use it right away or perhaps ever – if you don’t do it now, it might be unavailable when you do want it. And above all, keep a list of the sites, usernames and passwords somewhere in the office where the next person to take an interest in such things can find it, if you ever leave.

Otherwise, when the next big site hits the mainstream, you may end up joining it as CanMag12345.

Too much social media, not enough time

Social media is going mainstream, and everyone wants a piece of it. But now that there are so many services available, it’s not just a matter of adding communities to people’s lives – they have enough to keep up with, says Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times. Which means there are two options: replace people’s existing tools with your own (which can be pretty difficult), or create tools that don’t require major shifts in behaviour.

It’s an important thing to think about if you’re considering adding social media or communities to your site. You’re not just competing with your traditional competing magazines’ sites – you’re competing with Facebook. So before you put in any major investment of time or money, think hard about what you can offer that no one else can. If it were you being asked to join this potential community, would it be worth your time?

Should you be using Twitter?

Twitter is a utility that allows you to send and receive short messages through a list of “followers” (you can “follow” people and they can follow you) – sort of like Facebook’s status updates. It’s often called “microblogging” – a type of blogging, but much less wordy, as posts are limited to 140 characters. There’s debate over whether Twitter has become mainstream – here’s an article from TechCrunch (April 29) about Twitter’s actual numbers, and an article from compete.com (May 15) about Twitter’s traffic. (According to Ivor Tossell at the Globe, the real proof that Twitter is mainstream is that Stephen Harper is now doing it.) And if you’re interested in getting started, check out this DoshDosh article on using Twitter for marketing purposes.

Call me behind the times – I tend not to be an early adopter, mostly since blocks of time playing on my laptop are few and far between – but I only just signed up for a Twitter account. I’ll let you know how it goes.

But the question here is, should your magazine/web-editor-in-official-capacity be “tweeting”? It probably depends on your audience, but it’s worth considering. Here’s an article (passed on by Corinna at Dream Job TK) about why book publishers should be using Twitter – and I think it’s relevant to any brand.

Twitter is great at driving attention. The end.

For a minimal investment of time, you can ping a heap of people. Why wouldn’t a book publisher want to do that? Truth is, most already do. Email newsletters blast-out to book readers from all over. Publishers’ feeds and podcasts do the same. Twitter is yet another great way to keep people engaged. The difference? It is two-way, but it is two-way with a twist — Twitter scales (at least on the user side it does :)).

She goes on to give some pointers to book publishers on using Twitter.

As for current users, here are some magazines I found on Twitter:

• Ms.
• Maclean’s 
• Boston
• BC Business
• Wired
• This 

(Tell me what Canadian mags I missed in the comments.)

Do you use Twitter? Is it a fad, or here to stay?

Why are Facebook and Twitter so popular?

If you’re interested in the growth of social networking sites and their popularity, you’ll want to check out this article by Clive Thompson from the New York Times Magazine (thanks to Techdirt for the link and an introduction). The article gives a bit of insight into Facebook’s history and growth and moves on to discuss a concept called “ambient awareness”: 

Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.

It’s a worthwhile read – share your thoughts in the comments.

Why you don’t need to be innovative

There are new tools and new ideas springing up practically daily on the web, and it really is a full-time job (and more) to keep up with them all. But unless you’re the web editor for Wired, don’t worry about it – you really don’t need to be that cutting edge. Why? Because your readers probably aren’t, either.

What you do need to do, however, is embrace trends when they hit critical mass. The moment your not-so-up-to-date cousin/uncle/grandmother joined Facebook was a good sign your magazine should have had a presence there, too, or at least buttons on your site to help people publish links.

It should be part of your web editor’s job to be on the lookout for new tools that are approaching widespread usage – just make sure they have time in their schedule to do so.

What you can learn from Facebook: Personalize your site

I had a birthday recently and was struck yet again by how well (and yet simply) Facebook does birthdays.

You can, of course, choose to hide your birthday, in which case none of this applies. But for those of us who keep our birthday on our profile, there’s a lot of attention to be had. Not only does Facebook itself wish you a happy birthday, but since friends’ upcoming birthdays show up on everyone’s main news feed, you typically end up with a lot of birthday wishes, often from people who wouldn’t call, send a card or even remember your birthday otherwise.

On the one hand, it’s close to meaningless – it doesn’t take much for people to write a quick note. But on the other hand, it’s a reminder of the power of social networking tools. I know that the people who wished me a happy birthday were reminded by Facebook; even so, it was nice to get all those birthday wishes.

The lesson? A little personalization (and some minor programming) can go a long way to make your readers feel like part of your community. It’s worth thinking about how you can make your site’s tools interact in a more personal way with your audience.