Luckily for you, Facebook is rolling out a new functionality called Parent-Child. It allows you easily claim, administrate, and manage places pages and check-in deals for brands with more than five locations.

There are a few huge benefits to Parent-Child:

• Locations Tab: As seen on pages like Sanrio and Starbucks, Facebook will list all of your retail locations under a single tab. This allows visitors and admins to easily find place pages for indivdual locations.

• Manage Deals: You can now push a single check-in deal to every location through the parent page. It makes it a snap to roll out an all-encompassing campaign to every location. You also keep the ability to create individual deals at single locations.

• Assign Admins: A longstanding debate has been whether to create individual Facebook pages for every location, or to operate a single brand page. Now you can operate from a single brand page, but allow your local store managers to run their own Place page.

• Consistent Branding: As you claim your child places pages, you are able to create uniform descriptions and meta data. You may also push a single profile image to every place page. This keeps your place pages consistent with the parent page.

To read up on all of the main features, and to learn how to get Parent-Child implemented on your Facebook community, check out our Facebook Parent-Child slideshare document below:

Update: We’ve had several folks reach out to us who were interested in setting up these features for their page. Truth be told, Facebook doesn’t want these features to roll out to all page owners at this time. Your best course of action is to contact an agency with preferred advertiser status and work with them (ie. Room 214).

After many long, heated conversations, they decided that the best thing to do would be to tag all marketing materials and websites with the phrases “Find us on Facebook” and “Follow us on Twitter”. That’ll do the trick…right?

Most of us now know that the answer is no, that will not do the trick. Yet lately, I’m seeing more and more examples of brands begging for fans and followers, and then doing nothing with them.

Before you look at your huge social following, pat yourself on the back and start thinking about which leather sofa will look best in that corner office upstairs, let me just throw a few things out there:

• Fans are not king. Engaged fans are.

• Everywhere they go, consumers are surrounded by “Like” and “Follow” buttons, and clicking them has become almost second nature. It is your responsibility to turn those fans into brand advocates.

• 100 fans who are talking about your brand are far more valuable than 10,000 who are not.

• Consumers are used to seeing companies who give out incentives for becoming a fan. When’s the last time you rewarded your current fans for being so loyal? That oughta get ‘em talking…

• The only thing worse than negative comments and complaints from fans & followers is an empty response from the brand.

The short answer? Fans & followers are worth as much or as little as you like. Let this serve as a friendly reminder of a few key Social Media best practices.

Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not enough. Having social media accounts is certainly a great (and quite necessary) start, but if you don’t use them to interact with your current and potential customers, there’s really no point.

Luckily, I’ve picked 3 simple and free social media tools to get you pointed in the right direction:

• OnlyWire: Have a few social media accounts, lots to say and little time? Check out OnlyWire. This tool enables you to post content across multiple social networks at the same time, with the push of a button. The service includes all of the top social and professional networks, and the free version allows for 300 submissions per month. Say goodbye to multiple log-ins and hello to your customers.

• Roost: Use Facebook and Twitter, but not always sure what to post or when? Give your content a boost with Roost. Their free Campaign Creator connects to your profiles, lets you schedule single posts or entire campaigns, and analyzes their reach to suggest areas for improvement. This tool can also apply a fancy algorithm to your Facebook data, spitting out a score that determines whether or not your audience will drive business to your location. It’ll even tell you the geographic spread of your fans.

• Timely: Under the impression that the more times you hop on Twitter and drop your knowledge the better? Timely begs to differ…according to this tool, it’s not about the number of times you tweet, it’s about which times you tweet (however, please don’t forget that first and foremost it’s about the content). Timely will analyze your last 199 tweets, figure out the best time slots, and auto-schedule your posts based on the data. Now you can start dropping that knowledge when it’s most likely to be picked up.

With new social media monitoring tools (many of them free) popping up almost by the day, there should be no excuse for neglecting your networks. Start engaging with your current and potential customers and you might be surprised by the increase in online conversations surrounding your brand.

Don’t worry – it’s not a throwback to the days when your friends would send you a link to a photo you stared at, only to be freaked out and thrown out of your seat when a screaming zombie appeared. That’s old school. In an age where over 800 million people are active on Facebook, Take This Lollipop taps into collective fears about privacy and personal information in social networking on a much deeper level.

After clicking on the link from your feed, you are directed to a landing page where you can launch the app. The Facebook Connect logo appears, making it clear that the app will use your login and profile information if you provide access to it. There is also message reassuring you that none of your information will be stored, and nothing will be posted without your approval.

If you’re a fan of horror movies, you’ll get a familiar feeling as you are taken down a dark hallway where faint light emanates from a room. Distorted sounds and a broken soundtrack immediately create an unnerving atmosphere. As the camera enters the room, you see a malnourished and disheveled man at a desk.

His scarred face, damaged fingernails and aggressive look gives you the idea that he is clearly disturbed. Maybe you’re not yet scared, and when you see that he is on Facebook, you may feel a sense that this is probably going to be lame. That feeling of false security quickly fades as you see the profile he’s logging onto: it’s yours.

Feelings of dread overcome you and your attention is immediately gripped as you see him hovering over your profile, your posts, your photos and posts from your friends, and there’s nothing you can do about it. As he further trolls your profile, he grows unstable and desperate, unable to decide what to do next. Soon, he knows, and is back to typing: he’s looking up your address on Google maps. For a moment, he is eerily calm as he creepily caresses his screen. If you’re not disturbed yet, you will be: his head turns slowly toward you, revealing a delivish grin on his face.

Next, he appears in his car, driving furiously to your location. Cut scenes show him gripping his steering wheel in anger, at times even screaming and looking very dangerous. He finally arrives at his destination, and as he is shown exiting his car, the final scene shows the camera panning over to reveal your profile photo on his dashboard. Creepy. The app concludes and you are taken to a final screen. The ride is over.

After a few moments and once your heart is beating back to normal, you breathe a sigh of relief: it’s all just a trick, and you’re safe. There is no creepy cyberstalker on his way to pay you a visit. Most importantly, no one’s hacked your Facebook account, and all of the stuff you never wanted the world to see is still private. Or is it? Just kidding — it really is, I promise.

At the time of this writing, over 350,000 users have Liked Take This Lollipop, and Google News locates over 40 articles written about the website. Though who was behind it was a mystery at first, it was later determined to be the work of Los Angeles-based director and experienced digital marketer Jason Zada, the brain behind the highly successful “Elf Yourself” interactive campaign for Office Max.

Though Zada said in an interview with the New York Times that he is not promoting any product or brand, and he simply created Take This Lollipop to entertain and thrill, he has managed to capture the attention of hundreds of thousands of people. If nothing else, by letting his work speak for itself, he has found an intelligent way to further market himself and enhance his reputation as an interactive and experiential marketing expert.

Why it’s smart

• Uses Facebook Connect integration for quick and easy login
• Draws from a user’s Facebook profile and photos to create a compelling and personalized experience
• No brand or product associated, leaving participants curious about its origin and motivations of the creator
• Perfectly timed to release close to Halloween

Why it’s effective

• Taps into collective and individual fears about privacy and information on social networks
• Makes people feel vulnerable: it’s disturbing to see someone looking at our Facebook profile, one of the most personal digital properties anyone can have
• Emotional impression haunts the viewer long after the interactive experience is over
• The cinematography and production value is high, and Bill Oberst delivers a chilling performance as the cyberstalker

Facebook Privacy Settings and Previewing Your Profile

Have you tried the app? If so, I bet you’re feeling like now would be a great time to double-check your privacy settings, even if the cyberstalker in Take This Lollipop was shown as somehow having your password. If you haven’t looked them over in a while, the interface may be unfamiliar because it has recently changed.

In the new Privacy Settings area, you can select the audience that you want your posts to be visible to by default. You can make all of your new posts public, visible only to friends, or even keep certain lists of people from seeing them by selecting the custom option.

Also, from this area you can control how people find and connect with you, whether you want to enable others to tag you, and what applications and websites have access to your profile. For each item in each of the sections, you have extensive control over what you share publicly or with friends, and the level of access you wish to provide to apps, websites and features within Facebook.

You can also control what information from your profile is visible to the public and your friends. To do so, go to your profile page and click on the “Edit Profile” button in the top-right corner under the “Home” link. In the drop-down menus next to each item, you can select who can see that detail of information.

Once you’ve fine-tuned your privacy settings, you can preview your profile to see how it looks to others. On your profile page, simply click on the “View As” button next to the “Edit Profile” button.

You can type in the name of a friend or acquaintance you’re connected with, and see a preview of how your profile appears to them.

You an also click on the “public” link on the preview page to see how it looks to anyone who’s not on your friends list.

Though your profile is all set, you’re still not finished: you still have photos to secure. To control privacy settings for pictures, go to your Photos section and click on the button under the right corner of the thumbnail for a photo album. In the drop-down menu, select the audience you want to share its photos with.

Going through your privacy settings periodically is always a good idea. However, this only keeps people who aren’t on your friends list from seeing your personal information and content you wish to keep private. If someone has found a way to hack into your profile, everything will be available for view. Keeping passwords secure, electronic devices like phones and iPods safe, and logging out of Facebook on public computers is the best way to keep creepy guys in dark rooms from getting access to your account.

Have you taken the lollipop? Post your reaction in the comments – we want to know what you have to say.

What we’d like to focus on is a point made by Tech Crunch. In their haste to split these two entities, the folks at Netflix neglected to acquire the social network properties before their big launch. TechCrunch highlights the user who owns the @Qwikster handle on Twitter, who is currently trying to sell this handle to Netflix.

After a look into the top social networking sites, it seems that they have not created an official page on Facebook or YouTube. There are however 7 unofficial fan-created Qwikster pages, all aggregating negative comments about this change.

So why is this oversight so bad? Why is it important to lock these online real estates down before you launch a new brand, company etc?

Control

Because Netflix did not secure these, they are not in control of what their critics and customers say about them. Had they obtained official accounts prior to the announcement, they could give customers and their company an official forum to comment and respond. The messages are out there, and it seems they are doing very little to respond or explain, which is not going to endear them to their customers.

Random Squatters

They now have to deal with people who are holding onto these properties, and will potentially have to pay them in order to acquire (some speculate in the six figure arena). People can get mighty greedy when they have the whip-hand over a corporation. This cost could have been avoided had they handled this in advance, or gotten a similar handle i.e. @QwiksterOfficial. In addition to the cost, they could have avoided a very public discussion about what kind of deal this yoo-hoo was after.

Confusion for Customers

Not having official outlets for your customers to comment, complain or ask legitimate questions can be very confusing. If they comment on an unofficial forum and never get a response, they may feel negatively about your brand.

Embarrassment

Netflix is a revolutionary company; nothing that they have done can change their impact on the digital-media landscape. However, it’s kind of embarrassing that an Internet-oriented company did not think of this in advance. It seems they don’t really even have a cohesive branded presence on YouTube as Netflix.

Four Easy Steps to Avoid This

1. Determine which social networking sites are the best fits for your company. It is usually smart to incorporate more incase you need them, or at least protect them.
2. Research what is already out there, if there is someone who already owns your brand name, what variation could you use across all of the social networks (i.e. if @MyersCorporation is taken, consider @MyersCorporationOfficial), consistency is key.
3. Grab them! (it will probably take less than an hour)
4. Figure out how you are going to consistently leverage these accounts, so that they become synonymous with your official brand.

My last post was about how Facebook could improve its advertising platform, so with this post I wanted to help you identify and understand a few “hidden” vital metrics in your Facebook advertising. Assume in this post that you are running ads that are encouraging Facebook users to Like your brand page.

While the new Campaign Dashboard is useful from a budget perspective, it doesn’t show any actual campaign performance metrics. From the dashboard, let’s go ahead and click the “Full Report” button, which is a quick way to see lifetime campaign performance metrics. You’re probably all too familiar with this button as it is the fastest way to see performance data. Check out what this Full Report pulls:

Ok, there’s everything you need, right? Spend, Clicks, CTR, Actions, Action rate, CPC … Let’s take a step back for a second and define what an Action is:

So Actions are Likes, assuming you aren’t advertising an event or an app. Hence its importance from an ROI perspective. But Actions don’t tell the entire story my friends.

This is Where it Gets Good

From this Full Report, click “Generate Another Report” at the top and create another Advertising Performance report using whatever segmenting you want. Notice what this report pulls that was absent from the previous Full Report:

What’s this I see? uCTR? Conversions? Unique impressions and clicks? Cost per Conversion? These additional metrics could be useful, no? The unique metrics give you the actual number of people who saw or clicked your ad, compared to the generic Clicks/Impressions metrics which don’t account for the same person seeing or clicking an ad multiple times. Unique does.  As for this fancy new Conversion metric, take a look:

And there you have it. Conversions are Actions, except they take into account someone who might click on your ad, come back (within 28 days) and then Like your page. Seems to me like this is important, especially considering that this is how conversions work for Google AdWords and most other pay-per-click platforms.

It’s up to you to determine whether Actions or Conversions are more accurate for coming up with a cost-per-fan number for your Facebook advertising campaign. For my money, I’d go with Conversions. After all, the ad they clicked on eventually caused them to come back at some point and Like your page, right?

Thoughts?

You don’t even really need to spend that much to see real ROI. We’ve helped several clients with smaller budgets see big increases in their fan bases from effective Facebook ads. Speaking of ROI, Facebook’s reporting gives you the ability to see exactly how many users clicked “Like” on your ad, allowing you to determine a cost-per-fan number.

Facebook advertising has already come a long way. A lot of processes that were once manual have since been automated. Targeting continues to get better and more relevant. Competition is still low compared to other PPC platforms. That being said, the Facebook ads platform still has a long way to go. If you’re expecting the polish and UI of a Google AdWords, you’ll be in for somewhat of  a rude awakening with Facebook advertising. If I were working on the Facebook ad platform, I’d take a look at the following five ways Facebook could improve its ad platform.

Prominently show actions and action rate across all dashboards & improve dashboards in general

This is pretty much a no-brainer. In order to see actions and action rates, you have to click a few times from the main dashboard to a specific ad. You can’t see campaign or account level action/action rate data. This information needs to be prominently displayed across your Facebook ad dashboards.

Further, the dashboard (even the brand spanking new iteration of it) needs work. You need to be able to see all your ads and their performance in one place. You need to be able to see your different campaign targeting, all in one place. And you certainly need to see your account, campaign, and ad action/action rate metrics easily. In one place.

Allow for real A/B split testing

If you want to properly A/B test ad variations (with the exact same targeting and bid) in a Facebook advertising campaign, you’re going to run into problems. 99% of the time what will end up happening is whichever ad you create first will suck up the vast majority of the traffic. You can’t create two ads at the same time (think AdWords Editor) to alleviate this. To compensate, you can increase the bid for the B variation to show more, but then your CPC will go up as well, defeating the purpose of said A/B testing in the first place.

You can also create another campaign with the same targeting settings and bids, but then best of luck to you trying to compare performance between the two. That’s where the whole action/action rate metrics bit comes in to play. Facebook at the very least needs to let us upload ads paused, and then make them go live at the same time. Or just serve up ads equally, which would be ideal.

Improve consistency regarding ad creative approval

Stop allowing ads that clearly break your guidelines (especially in regards to words in ALL CAPS) and occasionally disallowing ads that adhere to them. Often times re-submitting the same ad a few minutes later will get it approved. No one knows what is going on. Regardless, I think we all can agree this whole process needs to get tightened up.

Case in point: the advertising guidelines specifically state “Ads cannot include excessive capitalization (such as “FREE”) or incorrect capitalization (such as capitalizing the first letter of every word in a sentence).”

Interesting, since it took me literally 8 seconds to find and screenshot this Madden ad from my Facebook account, which is clearly not adhering to said capitalization rules. (PS – Go COLTS).

Associate credit cards with ad accounts instead of individual users

The MCC within Google AdWords is something you take for granted after a while, especially when you’re helping your clients deal with all sorts of billing issues and adjustments. From the MCC you can dive into any clients account and adjust billing settings. It’s that simple.

Compare that process to Facebook. For whatever reason, only one credit card can be associated with one user, instead of each account that has ads running. Why is this bad? Well, when you want to create a new ads account, you’re either going to have to get your client to create the ads account with their personal Facebook account and give you access or break Facebook’s TOS and create a fake account to tie a credit card to. Neither of which is a good option. Since we like to generally avoid angering our Facebook overlords, we go with option #1. Most clients don’t have an issue with this, and you can always do it for them, it’s just a silly workaround for an issue that needs to get fixed.

Offer certification

I’ll be the first to admit – getting Google AdWords certified was a pain in the _____. But here’s what it did – it made me learn things about the platform I didn’t know about before, even after months and months of experience. It also gave Room 214 credibility to potential clients. Facebook could certainly use a program like this. They could even extend it out to other components of their platform (think: Applications, Pages, TOS, etc). With the amount of money brands are already spending in Facebook, it makes sense to roll out a certification program for agencies and individuals to show their competence. Facebook would also make a pretty penny off it. I think I just helped Facebook realize their $50 billion valuation in one fell swoop.

As it stands, Facebook advertising works. Really well. If you have the budget, you WILL bring in the likes to your page. It’s that simple. While it can be frustrating at times dealing with the current iteration of the Facebook  ad platform, it goes without saying that Facebook will continue to update it and hopefully address some of these issues I’ve outlined above.

If you have any questions about Facebook ads, feel free to leave a comment below or fill out our contact form. We’re happy to help!

Yesterday, Facebook continued to make their platform more business friendly with the announcement of a new feature, “Tell Your Fans”. Within the Marketing tab of the Page Manager (to get here, simply click “Edit Page” below a page’s profile picture), page administrators can now use existing email contacts to build their Facebook following two different ways. The first option is to upload a file that contains an existing email list. The second option is to input your existing email address and allow Facebook to import your contacts.

Once either of these actions is completed, Facebook will take the following steps to invite your email contacts to join your page:

1. If an email address is linked with a Facebook account that is not already associated with your Page, Facebook will send the account a recommendation to “Like” your page. These recommendations are comparable to existing Recommended Pages modules that appear on the right side of users home screens.

2. If an email address is not linked with a Facebook account, an email is sent suggesting that they join Facebook in order to “like” your page.

While this feature will be sure to add another spark to the privacy debate already swirling around Facebook, it ultimately allows Page administrators to market directly to those already associated with their brand–for FREE.

Where did it come from?

This is not the first time this technology has been used for social media marketing. Thriving B2B companies like FlowTown and Rapleaf have been offering similar consumer information services for years. Both allow marketers to import an email list and identify demographics of the audience in addition to what social media accounts the emails are associated with. You can then email all members of the list that are already on Facebook and invite them to join your page.

“Tell Your Fans” is notably different in a couple key ways. First, Facebook differentiates between those who are already associated with your page and those who aren’t. While the accuracy and effectiveness of this feature is currently in question, in a perfect world it will make sure you do not unnecessarily reach out to existing members of your community. Second, and most important, “Tell Your Fans” lets you recommend your page within Facebook. This makes your page one click away as opposed to making users manually find your page. One would think this convenience will increase the number of the people who take the time to “like” your page.

Working out the Kinks

As the feature was just launched on Wednesday, there appear to be serious issues surrounding its effectiveness and functionality. After analyzing the tool, Inside Facebook has found that any Google email address prompts the error, “Everyone on this list is already associated with your page.” Other initial complaints from page administrators include email notifications are not being received, friend requests are being sent from members of the imported contact lists, and emails are being sent from an “unknown sender”. As they have in the past, I suspect Facebook will value this feedback and resolve these flaws in a timely manner.

Capture the Conversation

Have you tried the “Tell Your Fans” tool? How much value do you think it holds for social media marketers? Comment below and join the conversation.

When I checked in to Room 214, I was not listed in the “Person/People Here Now” area at the top of our new Room 214 Places listing. However, a few of my colleagues did show up here:

Turns out, some users’ default privacy settings allows this information to be displayed by default, while some others (like myself) do not. If you go to your privacy settings (Account > Privacy Settings > Customize settings), you can see what your privacy settings are for Facebook Places. The difference between showing up in the “People Here Now” area or not depends on that one little “Include me in ‘People Here Now’ after I check in” checkbox. Personally, I don’t have any issue with having my friends being allowed to see where I am checked in, but the kicker here is the “and people checked in nearby” bit after that. Essentially, if you have this checkbox enabled, anyone on Facebook (all 500 million+ users) who is checked in nearby can see where you are and when exactly you are there. That is definitely something you will want to consider when thinking about your Facebook privacy.

On top of that issue, the other big thing we immediately noticed was the ability to check in your friends for them. With or without their permission. The screenshot below is an example of exactly what I’m talking about – I had nothing to do with that particular check-in that Wendy posted. This can be particularly troublesome if you’re wanting to stay off the grid and not let people know exactly where you are at any given time. I mean, think of how pissed Batman would be if Robin was always checking in for him all over Gotham City.

That being said, you have the option to disable this feature. Go to your privacy settings and scroll down to the “Things others share” section and then disable  “Friends can check me in to Places”. Pretty simple.

These new options in your privacy settings will have a huge impact on your privacy. Make sure you set them appropriately to your own comfort level. Facebook Places is going to be huge and will definitely not be going away any time soon. There is no doubt in my mind that many, many users are going to be furious with Facebook Places if the uproar over past privacy concerns is any indication. Facebook users even go crazy over minor cosmetic changes to the News Feed.

Facebook places, powered by Bing Maps (Microsoft is looking smarter and smarter for this search partnership) has a real opportunity to compete with Google Places as the go-to for local business listings and information. Oh yeah, Foursquare? Best of luck to ya.

Just make sure that you are smart with your own privacy settings with Facebook Places.

What I found most interesting about the new feature was its endlessness.  If you do “Like” a Recommended Page you are not sent to its landing page, but stay on your home News Feed.  Within seconds, the “liked” page fades away and is replaced by a new band, movie, brand, etc. that you’ve loved for years.  If you get tired of “liking” every pick Facebook throws at you, you also have the option of removing a recommendation.  In which case, a new winner pops right up.

I find this perpetual perfectness of picks to be addicting, and I don’t think I’m the only one. This is great news for page managers of any kind.

Before this change, Pages were only able to recruit new ”people who ‘like’ this” through person-to-person interaction.  You had two options:

1. invite your friends to a page you “liked”
2. notice a page your friend “liked”–either on your News Feed or on their  personal profile.

If you didn’t have a friend who had already “liked” the page, you would not be able to “like” it yourself unless you searched for it.

By adding Recommended Pages, “likes” are now generated through what could be called public-to-person interaction.  The pages recommended to you are not only things your friends “like”, but also pages specific to your current likes and interests. These pages are decided by the actions and overall behavior of Facebook’s 400 million users. Recommended Pages are in-your-face, accurate, and seemingly infinite.

What does this mean for businesses, bands, and celebrities?  It means an influx of “likes” from a demographic most suited to liking your product, music, or career.  It means customers and fans more likely to be influential brand advocates. Most importantly, it means constant, incredibly-targeted marketing that doesn’t cost you a dime.

How much of an effect do you think Recommended Pages will have?  Do you find them intriguing or annoying?