patrick salyer

How Facebook’s New Features Will Affect Digital Marketers (via Mashable)

With Facebook’s major changes set to roll out this week, little thought has been given to answering how Timeline and the revamped Open Graph will affect our interaction with rest of the web, and how websites stand to benefit. I believe that weaving Facebook even deeper into websites is going to yield a positive experience for consumers and sites alike. Here’s why.

Contextual Sharing

One of the notable features of the enhanced Open Graph is contextual sharing. For users, the benefit is obvious — it enables much more than just “liking” a piece of content. Now, a user can share that he or she “read” Catching Fire or that he or she “listened to” Nirvana. “Liking” an article, video or photo has thus far limited users, forcing them to show tacit approval (within the context of one-click reactions) for something that they may not necessarily find desirable.

With contextual sharing, users will no longer be boxed-in by expressing one emotional reaction. For marketers, this offers major benefits for on-site engagement and syndication.

Auto-Sharing

One of the other share features that Facebook unveiled is “frictionless sharing,” which allows sites to share any content a user reads or interacts with directly to his Facebook Ticker. It’s important to point out that the user must authorize the site to turn on this sharing functionality much in the same way that sites have already needed to allow users to explicitly authenticate. However, by enabling sharing and placing objects on a user’s Timeline, Facebook is undertaking an enormous and important process: documenting web activity.

While some end-users may cringe at the thought of their entire digital lives being “Facebooked,” this approach to broadcasting web activity appeals to its younger, most active user-base — a group that seems to care about “show and tell” even more than it does about privacy. Teens and young adults grew up with Facebook, and the transition from one- or two-click sharing to no-click sharing won’t be as uncomfortable.

The Business Upside: Data and Traffic

Getting users to interact with Facebook’s updated features for websites is an advantage in itself, but there are other, more concrete ways the revamped Facebook features will help businesses. As the user experience becomes more personal and engaging, Facebook’s functionality on websites will ultimately provide those sites with an even deeper look into whom their visitors are. This marriage of social data and on-site activity can be applied for a number of ROI-driven activities, such as hyper-specific ad targeting, content and product recommendations, and driving inventory decisions.

Just as importantly, the frictionless sharing features could be a huge boon for sites as measured by the oldest and most valuable metric on the Internet: referral traffic. By allowing auto-sharing for nearly any activity on a site, users will be able to push even more content to the News Feed, Ticker and Timeline, generating more exposure and click backs to sites.

Discovery: Now a Two-Way Street

For years, the web was about search — that is, people using search engines to find specific things online. Now, the web is shifting toward discovery — users are increasingly letting content find them via social networks. This trend actually started a few years ago with a number of sites seeing social networks drive more referral traffic than search engines. With Facebook’s new features, I think we’ll see this trend turn into a basic tenet of web optimization, as sites will soon be able to learn so much more about their users and offer targeted, shareable content that brings in more referral traffic.

Today, businesses spend millions of dollars optimizing for Google searches, trying to get found. But as social becomes a larger traffic driver, and as Facebook and other social networks continue to enable content discovery, those businesses will need to offer interactive, sharable content in order to stay relevant. Those businesses that understand how Facebook is enabling bilateral relationships between sites and users will get found, gain traffic and increase on-site engagement. Those businesses relying on search — and ignoring Facebook’s bold innovations — may soon stop getting found at all.

time management - a simple philosophy

Back in high school I developed a philosophy about how I spent my time, and I actually still find it relevant today.  This became a super important topic for me, because I was involved in a number of activities, each trying to pull me in one direction or another.  Of course, academics placed a huge demand on my time.  This could have easily taken all of my time then.  Then, there were sports.  Not just one sports, but 2.  Plus, basketball didn’t just include my high school coach, but my club coach.  And each coach wanted you to spend a certain amount of time training, etc.  Also, there was the extracurriculars like academic decathlon.  There was the volunteer work.  There was also church.  And, you can’t forget your friends that want and expect you to be hanging out all the time.  

Each one of these activities - academics, sports, volunteer, extra-curriculars, church, friends, etc - were requesting and demanding an increased amount of time.  This was difficult for me as I didn’t want to disappoint any individual and I wanted to excel at everything.  In short, I really wanted the ability to do it all.  Thinking back, I actually became frustrated with the leaders of some of these activities for asking so much of my time.

In time, I began putting it all into perspective.  I began realizing that it was the job of the people that ran these various activities to demand as much as possible out of me.  In fact, I should likely be thanking them for demanding so much, as this instilled a pursuit of excellence.  I suddenly realized it was my job to set out with a worldview, an ultimate set of goals, that would guide how I would spend my time. These goals would help me make the decisions on how I spent my time each day. As long as I was making decisions consciously, with those goals in mind, than I shouldn’t be overly concerned with not meeting the expectations of the various projects that I’m involved with.

Since High School, I still find that general concept to ring true.  As I moved into college, and now working life, I find the demands as great as ever, and the need to put those demands into a perspective of what I’m trying to accomplish.

Passion for the job

A friend has recently been considering switching jobs.  Something that is weighing into the decision is a concern that the potential opportunity, while better from a day to day lifestyle, may not be the ideal job he is passionate about.

It’s got me thinking quite a bit.  In general, I think today we all have a luxury (it’s a good thing) to worry about finding work you are passionate about and work that would be considered prestigious and successful.  This is a new thing.  Back for my grandparents and previous generations, work meant feeding their family.  Work decisions really weren’t decisions at all.  I would venture to guess that work, in most cases, was as simple as figuring out whatever you could get paid for.  Since education wasn’t so readily available, this probably meant doing whatever your parents did. Even today, there are hundreds of millions of people in developing countries without the luxury of any type of job choice.

It goes without saying the opportunity to find work you are passionate about, an opportunity awarded with increased education and the modern economy, is a good thing.  But, as we are one of the first generations to worry about finding work we are passionate about, I believe that we are going to squirm a bit in our pursuit of this.  No one tells you exactly how to accomplish this, but I believe many in my generation in the US feel the need to have it in their work.  Until the world comes up with an instruction manual, I think it may be worth keeping in mind that it’s a luxury to be able to find successful work, that we are passionate about.  Although, when making job decisions, without the manual to help us figure it out it sure doesn’t feel that way.

Emotional Labor: Quite possibly the most under-rated professional tool today

I’m currently in the process of reading Seth Godin’s “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable”.  One of the more thought provoking concepts that Seth addresses is the concept called Emotional Labor.  Emotional Labor includes the interactions between individuals, including co-workers, clients, superiors, etc.  Emotional Labor can involve connecting with others, flashing a smile, taking initiative, showing charisma, solving a problem.

It’s important that emotional labor isn’t a concept that takes physical skills.  What it does take is a ton of effort.  It’s very tiring for almost everyone. 

Because it takes so much effort, and it’s not a hard skill (especially things like connecting with others, charisma, asking questions, smiling), nearly everyone I know just forgets it altogether.  It’s easy to think it doesn’t help perform day to day aspects of a job, and because it’s tiring, pass on it altogether. 

But emotional labor is a real low-hanging fruit.  I believe that very few individuals - either at home or work - are really mastering this skill.  As Seth points out, as it becomes almost impossible to produce a cheaper widget in the era of Wal-Mart & Amazon, emotional labor may be the only way to differentiate. 

How does one improve in this area?  I’d suggest to begin to think about those in your own life that do a good job at this and think about what they are doing.  You should have 1 or 2 folks, past or present, that you can think of.  I can think of a friend in college that I’d get lunch with once in a while.  He brought so much energy into those conversations, so much engagement.  Always asking questions, smiling, eye contact, not checking the phone.  We grew closer because his approach to our conversations required interaction, intimacy, and intellectuality.  I left those conversations feeling filled with life, recharged.  I’ve got another friend who, when he shows up, brings so much charisma into a room it comes to life.  There is an energy he brings with his positive attitude, jokes, overall energy.

In both these examples, there is a good amount of intention - questions, attitude, facial expressions, presence.  My guess is it’s not easy to bring that much energy into conversations or charisma into a room, but they’ve realized it’s worth the effort for them.  And it’s under their control.

These are things I’m going to begin thinking more about in my own personal and professional life.  Especially how can I encourage those I manage to bring emotional labor into our client relationships to create a competitive advantage.

free market is a scary thing

As everyone probably knows by now, there are some serious issues with our financial system right now.  It seems to me that a series of investment firms took some big risks on loans that wouldn’t get paid back because they are too risky.  Even further, a series of home owners bought homes they couldn’t afford and took these loans.  Now, the market is correcting itself, and some fear is settling in, and we are all paying for it.

Let me give a quick overview of the week.  Monday, the S&P 500 dropped about 4%.  It stayed steady for Tues, so I thought the worst was over.  Than on Wed., it dropped another 5%.  Geez.  Things weren’t good.  I started reconsidering my investment strategy, for good reason.  The fed stepped in, agreeing to pour in billions of tax payer dollars and on Thursday the market rose again.

If the fed stood by, and let the market continue to fall, the truth of the matter is the investment firms & defaulted mortgage holders wouldn’t have been the only ones that would have suffered.  It would have been all the money I have in stocks.  So, I am relieved they did it.  But, should we be taking steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again?  The problem with that is that it means regulation, and regulation will probably hurt the economy and lead to lower returns.

The free market is a scary thing.  It’s great in that I can get great returns on my investments when all is going well.  But when things sour, I can pay for others mistakes.

It will be interesting to see if we will be entering a new phase in the market, when it is more regulated.  And, it will be interesting to see if we can have our cake and eat it too.  I hope so.