I was researching for a company that had made the mistake of creating a personal profile on Facebook using the company name. In other words it was a person with the first and last name comprised of the two words in the company name. This is a common error businesses make when first getting into social media. It’s perfectly acceptable to do on Twitter.  But when Facebook finds this account they will take it down and the company will have to start over from scratch. That part I already knew but while searching for the particular TOS that discussed it I ran across this little tid bit.

From Facebooks terms of service:

“You will not transfer your account (including any page or application you administer) to anyone without first getting our written permission.”

So if you have a consultant create a page for your company, according to the TOS they are not allowed to give the page over to you with out Facebooks written permission? Facebooks has to give permission for you to own your company page? Yep, that’s how I read it.

“profile” vs. “Page”
Your profile is the account you create under your own name. It is also against FB Terms of Service to create a profile under any fake name or to have multiple profiles. Your “profile” can, however, be an administrator of multiple “pages” on facebook. A “profile” is a person, a “page” can be a company or a public figure.

Businesses need to be cautious of who is setting up their companies Facebook page. The company owner needs to create a “profile” with his or her own real name. While signed into that account create a “page”. Don’t worry, your friends and family will not be bothered by posts you put on the “page” and followers of your “page” will not be able to see your personal posts on your “profile”.

As long as you create the page you are the ultimate administrator. Once you create the account you can add employees or consultants if you want them to help with the page. Any admin posting on the “page” will show up as “Company Name” posting and not under their own names.

Facebook is useful but don’t rely on FB for all of your marketing. Ultimately you don’t own your company page, FB does.

Recently at an Orange County twEATup I overheard a question from Norman Nayler to Ted Nguyen: “So how did you get a stogy organization like the OCTA to embrace Social Media?” Answer: “I just did it”

For readers not in the Orange County area, OCTA stands for the Orange County Transit Authority. You wouldn’t expect the transit authority to be leaders in Social Media but with Ted’s leadership they are. Ted has brought the OCTA into blogging, twitter, facebook, tweetups and more.  The OCTA even won the top award for new media from the California Association of Public Information Officers (CAPIO).

if  Ted had waited for permission, OCTA’s social media efforts would still be waiting for committee approval. Ted didn’t wait, he just did it. Ted is OCTA’s doer. Are you your companies doer? If you are you looking around wondering why your company is not embracing Social Media then you probably are.

Being the doer, the person who gets things done without waiting for approval, does have it’s risks. You may be stepping on toes or even put your job at risk. But without the doers, the future will be stuck waiting for committee approval.

Recently I was researching  a topic in social media. As a result I had several twitter followers put me in touch with their favorite sources on twitter. Naturally I followed the people they recommended and the people doing the recommendations. From one of them I got the dreaded auto DM. I supose I should be glad that I only got one considering I probably followed 10-15 people that night.

My reaction: I find it disturbing that someone helping me with Social Media Best Practices Q earlier today has sent me an auto DM.

Auto DM’er (Sent via DM so name withheld):  Touche! But, the auto DM saves me a ton of time. We single moms have to save time as much as we can:-)

Saves you time? Seriously? Auto DM’ers are filling up my DM inbox and email inbox with messages that say “thanks for the follow. Please buy my crap” or “Thanks for the follow. here is where you can find more crap I’m involved with” If you actually think I might be interested in something you are involved with then tell me, personally.

Picture this scenario; you attend a function in your city and meet many people. A few days later you recieve a hand written note from Jane Smith. It says that it was a pleasure meeting you and invits you to drop by her office any time.  Jane thinks they might have some things at her office you might be interested in or business she can help you with.

Jane was nice enough to take time and send a hand written note and she might have something of interest to you. So, you decide to stop in for a bit, but you enter the wrong door. Jane is not there. Instead there a scanner auto scanning  a stack of business cards that Jane has collected at community events. A machine is printing out what looks like personal hand written notes just like the one you received.

Now how do you feel about Jane. For me, I don’t care what she has in her store or how much she can help me in business. She is pretending to be personal but she is fake and she has waisted my time.

A DM has some similarities to a personal note. I open it before I open the rest of the mail. A DM hits my email box and when I get a DM I assume it’s because someone would like a private response and it is probably something more important than an @reply.  It used to work that way before auto dm’s started filling up my email.

For a while 9/10 messages in my DM box were auto DM’s. That’s when I started unfollowing or blocking auto DM’ers. I simply couldn’t find the real messages in all the “thanks for the follow, please buy my crap” auto DM’s.  How does wasting my time = saves you time? It’s an unnecessary and unwanted message in my inbox. If you are fake and want to waist my time in favor of “saving” your time, then you are a spammer and you are not worth my attention.