You’d think people would be mature enough to enter something relevant… but, not so much. The top answers were “My Dad is Dead” and “A new Kodak Community Manager who doesn’t leave the Poll options wide open”.

At least to give Kodak some credit, they didn’t take down the poll after these unfortanate answers were added — but, conversley, they didn’t actually even comment on it. I guess to them, it was better to ignore it, than get involved. Afterall, it would probably just call out the stupidity.

Social media lets anyone do almost anything — think twice before leaving the polling open for anyone to add anything. Personally, I like to offer 4-5 choices, and then “other (share in comments)”. This makes it much more manageable, where you can reply to a particular person’s concerns/comments, as well as, delete things that are beyond out of line.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cIbDxus9q4

Dubbed as a “two-day, non-profit personal blogging and social media conference” it caught my interest, along with seminar titles including “Your Blog is Boring and Your Photos Suck” and “Awesome-Izing Your Podcast: Secrets from Radio.”

Going into it, I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve been to other marketing events through BCAIM and IIMA, and they tend to be extremely polished with really established speakers. Northern Voice, on the other hand, wasn’t as much — but thats what made it interesting.

Starting with the keynote, April Smith spoke from her first hand experience of the infamous Vancouver East side, and shared her unique story from struggling on the street to being behind a blog documenting the community she lives. It showed the power that social media can have, and how it can help share stories that may never reach the masses.

From there, came the breakout sessions — everyone could pick between 3-4 sessions, depending on their interests. I chose a panel on Social Media and how its impacting the news, followed by a discussion on online defamation, by the team at Vancouver Sun. Both were enlightening just how news organizations are having to change their perspective on how they communicate news. While the underlining method (telling a story) hasn’t changed, the new mediums have had a substantial impact on the speed and style of news.

Later that day, I took in a session on “How to blog funny” with Mike Vardy, which was an entertaining presentation around actual tips/ideas to make content more compelling. As you can read, I have learned nothing. After that, was a presentation around building strong communities online with blogs.

Day 1 ended with wine, followed by an after party at Academic – nice venue, just couldn’t stay too long.

The second day in, a Saturday, was a bit harder to get started. Aside from having to wake up on a Saturday, I had to figure out a different bus route to get out to UBC (I hate transit). But, I still managed to make it on time. Day 2 kicked off with Chris Wilson reminiscing about the good old days of the internet, along with interesting observations about where we’ve come in the past 20 years.

Following that, was more breakout sessions — starting it off was a pannel about creating online movements with no budget. It chronicled the recent election, and grass roots campaigns including “Harper Chooses Donuts Over The Planet”. It showed that even with no money, you can still compel people to take action. Following that, was a bit more technical presentation on how to write an ebook from an actual teacher, Cyri Jones… BCIT represent. (Interesting, as I’ve seen first hand how much text books cost, and how little of it actually gets used. After that, was a presentation titled “Stop Apologizing for Your Online Life,” all about breaking the stigma of ‘online’ life, versus ‘offline’ life. (wait, theres an offline?)

Finally, after two long days, the conference ended with a presentation by Tod Maffin who explained the process of “Awesome-Izing Your Podcast.” While Im fairly sure ‘Awesome-izing’ isn’t a word, he pointed out things people take for granted in any sort of video/audiocast — timing, music and tone. All of which, can take a podcast from just being another presentation, to being something more. This presentation dived deeper than any other, in my opinion, and was a great way to end the conference.

All in all, Northern Voice was a really well done — but long — two days. Seeing as it was a whopping $90 to go (probably the cheapest convention I’ve been to), I’d definitely buy tickets next year. Not to mention, I had the chance to meet a bunch of interesting people really passionate about online.

After Northern Voice, I’ve been inspired to blog a bit more, and get more active on Twitter…. two things that I’ve been half-assing for quite some time now.

While I’m sure the email itself may be useful for those who genuinely forget the password, could they at least wait a minute before sending it? Without even giving me the chance to enter my password a second time, and to try again to get in, the email is already in my inbox. Trigger happy?

I’m sure I’m not the only one whose mistyped my password at least once, so why not give me some breathing room. Say, if I enter it three times incorrectly, send the email. Or, if I don’t get in within five minutes, send me an email. But not instantly — its just another email to delete out of my inbox.

Below is an example of the email I’m talking about — The underlining concept of the email itself is great, but the instant execution is flawed at best.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=InzDjH1-9Ns

My first reaction is that as brands achieve stardom (and enjoy millions and millions of fans) Facebook gives them a break and kills ads from showing up. This helps reduce any distraction from the main brand, and eliminates the possibility of competitive ads from appearing.

Now, this seems pretty fair to me – after all, Starbucks, for example, has invested heavily in building a Facebook presence — which in turn, helps build the overall user experience for Facebook. On the flip side of the coin, this decision would also cost Facebook money, in missed revenue opportunities (after all, they’re missing out on serving ads to any of the 20+ million fans who visit Starbucks’ page, for example)

Now the question is — and I couldn’t find anything on this — what is the threshold for ads to disappear?

Starbucks and Pepsi with 20.5 and 3.5 million fans, respectively, have no right hand side advertisements appearing. While Photoshop, with 1.9 million fans, does.

After observing this, it makes me wonder if its based off a pre-set threshold of fans (reach the magic number, and the ads disappear), brand advertising spend levels (assuming Pepsi and Starbucks buys ads on Facebook), or something else all together?

And, is it something that lesser brands (say with less than 1 million fans) could pay for the privilege of — can I offer to pay $XX,XXX+ for an ‘add free’ environment for my brand?

Sounds like a smart idea — but rather than sharing a live video stream, he posted status updates… again and again, and again and then some more, non stop.

Now, this could go either way — either be incredibly annoying, or insanley brilliant. Annoying, well, because they took over their fan’s news feed. Brilliant, because for every ‘like’ or comment one of their fans would post, means ANOTHER group of friends would be exposed to CoCo and his show.

My first impression was that people would unlike the page en mass. When I first noticed it, they had 1,523,043 fans… by the end of the episode, they dropped to 1,522,047 — a loss of just under a thousand?

I’m guessing they lost a bunch more, but for every unlike, they probably picked up 5 more likes, simply because of the viral aspect of Facebook.

And on top of that, I suspect CoCo will pick up some additional exposure somewhere on broadcast news and blogs.

The only real question I  had at the end of it, is why didn’t this trip some sort of Facebook alert, to freeze his account after the 50th post, all a minute apart? (I counted 96 in total…)

All in all — I’d rank this one as a clever use of Facebook. Though, I don’t think every brand could pull it off.

When the USA had their presidential election, there was a much more active outreach through social media. In Canada, much like Canadian politics… we’re boring! Everything’s been safe — almost too safe, for such an innovative medium, but I digress.

What has caught my attention, isn’t WHAT the parties are posting, but HOW. In particular, how the NDP is dealing with a bilingual country. Rather than targeting users based off their language (which is dead easy to do…), they post everything twice, within minutes of each other: Once in English, and once in French.

Why? Who knows…

Here’s my advice. Work under the assumption, that whoever “Likes” you on Facebook, is viewing Facebook in their preferred language. With that, target them accordingly… here’s how:

1. Below the status update box, select the ‘Everything’ drop down.
2. From here, a popover window will appear — simply start typing in the language you’re speaking in, and hit ‘Okay’. You’ll have to do this twice, to target those speaking English, and those speaking French — but it will leave the page much less cluttered, and not double message the fan base (ultimately reducing ‘unlikes’).
   

And while we’re at it… the political campaigns can take it one step further…

• Go Beyond French and English: With Facebook, you can target any language, so why be restricted by just French and English? Open it up to even more languages, using the same steps as above.
• Add Some Branding: The party leaders all have their own Facebook Fan pages, but none of them have any party branding on their profile picture — sure, they have branding on the Party pages, but not their own. This is a missed opportunity in terms of further tying themselves in with their party.
• Add in a Welcome Page: Give me a reason to ‘Like’ the page (and make it clear, via a giant arrow on where to click), along with links to your YouTube, Twitter, Email and Website.
• Thank Me for Liking You: Provide an exclusive ‘welcome’ video to whoever likes the page. Its fairly simply to do, and will help guide the fan on what they can do to help the campaign further.
• Integrate an Email Capture Form: Try to collect an email address at every turn — this gives you another way to reach out and share your messaging with supporters. Don’t just rely on Facebook, look for engagement on every medium.
• Make it a Conversation: Most of the post are simply “telling”  us things… how about asking us something once in a while?  (eg: what’s our take on healthcare)

Below is one of the more interesting email campaigns I’ve received from Chapters as of late. The main reason why this campaign caught my attention, is because it almost has a sub-conscious message to readers on who to vote for (or not to vote for). The most prominent book listed, is called “Harperland” with the description “An examination of the dangerous growth of executive power, including spear campaigns and control of the media that have resulted in Harper and his team redefining the office and undermining democracy.”

Following that, are two books listed under the headline “Political Satire”, then finally a few “More Political Reads.” In seeing this email, I instantly wondered if it was a simple coincidence, or if Chapters trying to say something more? After all, the subject line was “… books that will help to inform your vote.”

You would think, that leading in which such a negative slant towards one party leader, may offend some of their customers. I wonder what type of conversion rate this email got. Sure, its quite relevant to current events in terms of the election, but did it go too far for their customer base?

Rather than names and text, they actually used the faces of my contacts in the email. So now, I have this piece, that is telling me who changed their titles in 2010, and gives me one-click access to their profile. Aside from being visually interesting, they really tap into personalization on this one.

From a technical perspective, its not that hard to do… All it really is, is a bunch of dynamic variables sucking in a particular contact’s pre-sized picture. Eg: Have the past 46 contacts appear in an 8×6 grid — simply put in their picture, and a link to their profile, and you’re set.