Thank you, Facebook!

Ok...so you have a wide variety of Social Media sites in your portfolio. You update your Facebook status at least once a day, you tweet periodically and you even made a Yelp page for your business. Now what? How do you measure it's effect on your revenue? Let's focus on Facebook specifically. There has to be some report you can reference to measure traffic to your site, number of fans and the level of response, right? For some time, there has been an "insights" report built into fan pages. It's easy to miss and not well publicized. This tool is located on the left hand side of the fan page and provides helpful statistics for the level of activity on the fan page. While this tool is useful, it is not always up to date and the level of detail isn't great. Welcome the WEEKLY FACEBOOK REPORT! Thank you, Facebook for finally providing a report we can all use and one we all receive. This report is emailed to all of the admins on the account. This report includes the following info:

+103 Fans this week (200 total Fans)
12 Wall Posts, Comments, and Likes this week ( 10 last week)
212 Visits to your page this week (150 Visits last week)

What a great tool! We all want to know how our hard work is paying off and this short and sweet weekly report is just what we needed.

Enjoy!

Social Media and the 2010 Winter Olympics

Photo courtesy of www.Mashable.com.

Let's think back to the Olympic games of years past, shall we? Were you updating your Facebook status with feelings of pride or disdain during the events? Were you tweeting every emotion during the Opening or Closing ceremonies? Were you posting pictures of favorite athletes at key moments in their fight for the Gold? You probably weren't. You most likely gathered around the TV with a few friends or you picked up the (GASP!!) telephone to share your opinions on the events.

While chatting on the phone is arguably more personal than posting on a "wall", the message definitely lacks some va-va-voom! This type of interpersonal communication is viewed as booooooring to a generation that was raised on smart phones and laptops. Wouldn't it be more fun to post pictures, videos, comments, and polls for our friends to respond to? Wouldn't it be great to post a daily log of your days spent at the Olympic Games complete with pictures and video? One such entertaining Blog caught my eye during the Games this year. I welcome you to check out Erin Elton's Blog, which illustrates one Olympic-themed wardrobe malfunction and great photos of the Blogger at the events. Social Media allows users to fully engage readers in their experiences, while allowing readers to share these posts with their communities.


Photo courtesy of Erin Elton

This use of multimedia communication was also widely used by athletes and sponsors of the 2010 Winter Olympics to keep viewers intrigued. Thousands of Facebook profiles appeared for numerous athletes and sponsors, urging Facebook users to join the various fan bases.

While Social Media was a widely used tool in the Olympic experience this year, was it used to it's full potential? According to Mashable, it was not. Mashable suggests that Olympic organizations lacked in the Community Building arena. They failed to engage the followers they did have and the major organizations of the Olympics failed to create a central site that fans could visit to share information and experiences.

The use of Social Media during the 2010 Winter Olympics is a great example of the incredible changes in technology in recent years. So, if you are a Facebook addict (and I know you are), a constant Tweeter or a Blogaholic, you are in luck! Social Media welcomes you, your endless updates and your business!