How to Tell When Your Social Media Vendor is Talking Bunk
At Social Media Explorer, Jason Falls writes about how to spot when a social media vendor is talking bunk (actually he used a different word). Read the post here. Falls also is writing a book on the subject as well.
Meanwhile, some signs to watch out for, he says, are:
- It only takes them 15 seconds to mention Twitter.
- They talk continually about “conversation” “listening” and “engagement” but never define what those are or what it means for your company to practice them.
- They fumble around when you ask them how social media can drive revenue.
- They only produce case studies everyone knows and can’t cite local or small-business case studies readily.
- Their references don’t include businesses they’ve activated a social media strategy or tactic for.
- They talk of “building community” but focus the conversation on social networking software rather than communications strategies that will foster community among your customers.
How to Optimize Social Plug-ins on Facebook
Facebook’s developer blog shares some best practices on improving the performance of social plugins for websites that use XFBML. It looks at custom channelUrl and asynchronous loading which, the blog post promises, "will improve load times and reduce other issues such as double-counting of referral traffic from Facebook."
