The Top 3 Facebook Sins

For someone who‘s obsessed with social media and especially Facebook, I’ve seen my fair share of terrible Facebook pages and social media blunders. Now, just for the record, I’ve seen small, medium and big businesses flourish on Facebook and in the end get a nice return on their efforts, but in my mind there are just some things that companies need to stop doing on Facebook NOW!

1) Not Responding

A huge social media pet peeve of mine is when companies set up Facebook pages and then just let the page sit. Yes, they may go post a promotional or sales-oriented post once a week, but that’s it. They completely ignore all the friend comments and questions.

Companies need to look at Facebook as a customer service tool and not just a marketing tool. You can’t just set up a customer service phone line and then not answer it! If you have a Facebook page, you need to respond to all comments and questions. Otherwise, you run the risk of creating a feeling of bad will among your current friends, a large portion of whom are likely your customers.

2) Lack of Creativity

Another Facebook sin that can cause your company to lose friends is setting up a Facebook page and then posting the exact same thing every week. If I visit your page and see that you have put no effort into your posts and that it looks scheduled and impersonal, I’m turned off and most others are too. And for those who’ve already friended your page, they are probably much more likely to hide or unlike the page to get away from the monotonous Facebook posts.

3) Messaging Too Much

Everyone out there who has a Facebook group and thought they were in the clear as far as committing Facebook sins is not! There are plenty of sins you can commit within groups. In fact, I recently took myself out of a local Facebook group because of one in particular.

Facebook groups give you the ability to message everyone in the group, which can be a very powerful tool, but use it sparingly! Just because you can message everyone everyday doesn’t mean you should. In fact, if you do, your numbers will most likely drop, like the group I had joined.

There are lots of little etiquette rules when working on Facebook, but these three jump out to me daily, so please, if you’re on Facebook, don’t commit these Facebook sins! If you follow the correct etiquette, you’re bound to find success on Facebook.

February Social Media Star: Scott Wise

Social media is a powerful tool for business that’s transforming how restaurants market to their customers and increase foot traffic on a daily basis. Scott Wise, president and CEO of A Pots & Pans Production, which manages seven restaurants in Indiana, has increased event attendance by 400% with the use of Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and email blasts in just a year!

Scott, who is known for his entertaining personality on Twitter, jumped on the social media bandwagon long before it was the cool thing to do, starting with MySpace and email blasts. He’s a big proponent of Foursquare, and has run some pretty outrageous promotions, attracting a lot of attention. One of our favorites was renting a boat to set next to one of his restaurant locations, tagging the location as “boat” on Foursquare and then inviting people to come get their boat badge! Some other favorites include a contest inviting people to post a picture of themselves sticking their tongues to a pole like the movie “A Christmas Story” and also inviting them to jump into Indy’s White River Canal and get a photo.

Read more from Scott to find out how one businessman who truly gets social media has used these tools successfully.

What is your job/company/profession/title?

President/CEO, A Pots & Pans Production – the management company that runs our three concepts (7 restaurants):  Scotty’s Brewhouse, Scotty’s Lakehouse and Thr3e Wise Men Brewing Co.

My job:  the details – making sure every food item, drink item, atmosphere and marketing promotion has my approval. I work on the marketing campaigns. And, I’m the Director of “Motivation, Morale, Inspiration & Company Growth”

What was the first social media technology you used?

Don’t laugh…  MySpace. Back when MySpace was Facebook and Facebook was only for college kids.I’ve also been using emarketing blasts the longest – probably eight years or more. We have collected about 33,000 email addresses and still hold contests with our staff to get the most comment cards filled out by guests, but they are only valid with an email address that allows us to enter them into our database. We send weekly campaigns.

What is your favorite social media tool?

I think it is a combination of Facebook and Twitter. Twitter is great for quick conversations and I can take care of problems, comments and questions a guest has and usually influence an immediate purchase or take care of a complaint on the spot. I think to use social media properly, you must use all the big three to fully reach your clientele: Twitter, Facebook and emarketing blasts. (I think blogs and YouTube videos are great to incorporate too.)

How have you used social media for your business/company and how has it benefited?

We have seen increases of 400% in event attendance with the use of Twitter and Facebook over just using email blasts in the past year. Foursquare is the easiest to use. It doesn’t have as much flexibility and we would love to do more with it, but it is a great form of the modern day customer loyalty card on your phone and without a key fab or card you must carry.

How much time would you say you spend a day engaging social media?

A lot. 25-30% of my day. Thank god for TweetDeck’s Tweet Scheduler. I often schedule 90% of my tweets the day before or from 6-7am.

How do you incorporate it into your day so it’s not a time waster?

See above. I try to take about five minutes every hour to see if I need to comment on any questions from guests and then move to my next task.

Is there a social media tool/technique that you think is underutilized that you would like people to know about?

I think that Google Alerts or any Twitter Alert service are both underutilized. Many people don’t take time to look up your handle and may have a bad experience they post on any one of a 1000 social networks. It is your job to scour the web and find them so you can respond. We like to know when we make mistakes:  we like to fix them, educate our staff and make our customers happy. We can usually turn the worst customer experience into our most raving fan.

Where can people find you online and via social media?

Twitter: @brewhouse

Facebook: Facebook.com/ScottyBrewhouse

Foursquare: Foursquare.com/brewhouse

Website: scottysbrewhouse.com

Website: scottyslakehouse.com

Website: thr3ewisemen.com

Search Engine Round-up: Subterfuge, Spam & Swings

So we’re only half way through the second month of the year, and already things are heating up in the search engine battle between Bing and Google.

Firstly, Danny Sullivan broke the story that Google was accusing Bing of copying their search results.

For a full, detailed explanation I suggest you read the story here at Search Engine Land, but the basics are this – Google became suspicious that Bing was copying when the top results for some searches were the same even for misspellings and unusual search terms. So they sprang a trap…(!)

Yes, like something out of a Robert Ludlum novel*, Google manipulated their results for nonsense words such as ‘mbzrxpgjys’ and ‘hiybbprqag’, so that a particular honey pot page would show at the top of the search results. When these exact same pages showed up #1 on Bing too, Google had their confirmation.

(*If instead of writing books about kick-ass spies who look like Matt Damon, Ludlum actually wrote about the rather more dull topic of search engine positioning. Which seems unlikely, frankly.)

Once the story broke, Bing explained their side. Yes, the results were the same, they admitted, but because they were watching their users who have the IE toolbar turned on, and that influences the results people see. They were not copying Google.

Instead Bing turned the tables on Google, claiming the whole thing was an attempt to throw up a smokescreen* to avoid the fact that their search results are plagued with spam.

(*See? That’s totally something Jason Bourne would do.)

Which brings us to the second part of this month’s search engine news – Google’s latest attempt to find a way to block spam, particularly from content farms, such as those of Demand Media.

The plan is for a Chrome plugin which will allow users to block certain sites, while sending Google data about those sites so that they can analyze them and use that information to adjust the rankings accordingly.

Will it work? I’m skeptical. The amount of spam out there is tremendous, dwarfing the number of users who will a) use Chrome, b) also have the extension installed and c) use it regularly. However, I couldn’t be happier that at least Google is trying to do something about this mess.

Finally, the latest search engine stats were just released for January and show a 2% point swing from Google to Bing. A blip or a trend? What do you think?

Facebook Gives Pages a Major Upgrade

First off, thank you Facebook!!! These changes have been a long time coming and I think those of us who admin a Facebook page can all collectively say yea! For those of you who haven’t seen the new changes yet, let me give you a quick overview and why I think this is good news for us all.

1) You can participate on Facebook as your page AND as yourself.
This is big in helping businesses promote their pages. It was always tricky before because you couldn’t comment on a page you administered as yourself. It would only show up as the page. Now you can choose to comment as yourself OR the page (just be sure to uncheck the first box under Edit Page/Your Settings). And even better, you can now go to other people’s pages and profiles and comment as the page. This is great because it will give your page more exposure. But it does mean it will take more time. Now, in addition to updating your page, you’re going to have to make time to comment on a couple pages a day (ideally – and if you don’t have time to do that, give us a shout )

2) You can “like” other pages.

Before you could “like” a page as yourself, now your page can “like” a page . This is good. It increases the  number of likes your page can receive, and by liking other pages you’ll increase the chance those pages will like you. Also, the more pages that like you, the more other pages will see that (see No. 3) and promote your page virally.

3) Your page now has its own newsfeed.

What??? Yep, that’s right. When you go to your page and click on “Use Facebook as INSERT PAGE NAME/INSERT YOUR NAME” you choose how you will appear on Facebook: as yourself or as a page. Then once you’re acting as the page, click on Home and you’ll see in your newsfeed posts from all the other pages you “like”. This will help you decide what to go comment on and should help give your page more visibility to the other pages who “like” it. (I know, kind of confusing )

4) You can edit more features of your page.

Now you can change the category if you happened to pick the wrong thing when you set up the page or if your company has evolved into something else. You can also change which other pages you “feature” on your main page that you like (see No. 2). Unfortunately, though, you still cannot change your page’s name or username.

5) You can get emails when someone comments or posts to your page. Yea!!!

This helps a lot if you’re not on Facebook like we are multiple times a day every day. Now you can be alerted when someone’s commented or posted so you know to go there and respond to them. Check it out under Edit Page/Your Settings.

Effectively, Facebook has made Pages into People if you ask me. But it’s all good. Any other features of the new pages you like/don’t like? Weigh in!!

Social Media Week: The Future of Social Media

Lyn: “Where We’re Headed”

This is always one of my favorite topics, as in the world of social media this is an ever-changing ever-evolving target. Certainly the two trends that emerged in 2010 that I think/hope will gain popularity in 2011 are location based tools and social buying.

Location

Foursquare, Gowalla, SCVNGR, Yelp and the like are all tools that allow you to “check in” wherever you are via your smartphone. I think it’s an amazingly powerful marketing tool for businesses who want you to come to their location. You can offer deals to people for checking in, encouraging them to promote your business to their friends, follow them on Twitter so you capture them forever and help drive traffic to your location during slow periods. One of the best tools I’ve ever seen for driving traffic. I think as soon as the discount shoppers realize that they can cash in on special deals just by checking in, more businesses will offer deals and off it will take…

Social Buying

Do I need to say anymore than Google offered 6 billion to buy Groupon? That speaks volumes. However, despite that some people think this is just a trend that will die away. Do I think so? I think if this industry can keep focused on the one deal a day concept and not overload us with all kinds of different deals that dilute the offers and confuse, they’ve got a good deal going J! However, if it becomes overwhelming and cumbersome, they’re dead in the water. We’ll see…

Bailey - “It’s All About Mobile”

I hate to admit this, but my brain doesn’t work well when it comes to predictions. My hesitation in disclosing this is due to the fact that people who predict what will be next are usually the ones who create some of the most amazing technologies, companies or products. My brain wants to take concepts that are popular now and perfect them, so that’s how I’ll approach the future of social media.

It’s all about the mobile! I read recently that soon more smart phones will be bought than laptops and that made my jaw drop. Although I am surprised by this, it does make sense, as we do so much on our mobile device. We’re telling our friends where we are, making payments, playing games and downloading every app imaginable all on our mobile devices.

Mobile platforms are growing so popular that the new Apple Operating System will be app based, making our iMac or Macbooks look like our phones. My point here is that there’s so much room for growth in this mobile world, and that is our future.

All companies having a mobile website or mobile app, companies expanding their marketing campaigns to include using mobile games and all retail stores taking mobile payments is where the future is. I personally can’t wait to see what all is in store for mobile and how it affects social media!

Social Media Week: The Underused, LinkedIn and Social Bookmarking

Simon: “There’s a Reason They’re Underused”

LinkedIn

Pretty much everyone I know has signed up for LinkedIn, but very few of them are actually present on there day to day. And that’s the problem with LinkedIn – if you’re not actively looking for a job, which thankfully I haven’t been, there isn’t a whole lot to do except expand your network and talk about yourself. It’s just too much for me.

Every group I joined (in the early days, at least) was ‘spammy’, filled with people promoting themselves or their companies. Most of the updates I would care about I’ve already seen on Twitter or Facebook, and I just don’t need another social network to follow. I’m more than happy to write recommendations for those I feel deserve it, and I love getting them (here, if you’re interested J) – but it’s not the kind of network I feel needs my constant attention. I suspect many others feel similarly.

Social Bookmarking

I think the news last week that Reddit has hit the billion pageviews in a month mark  shows that many, many people DO use social bookmarking, yet it’s undeniable that it’s not as popular as some other social networks.

My thinking is there’s a couple of reasons for this: Firstly, not everyone needs it! It’s not like people are stuck for something to read/watch on the Internet most of the time; in fact it’s the reverse – we worry that we’re already wasting too much time there. So Reddit/Digg/StumbleUpon/etc can be used to just “drop in on” on those few occasions when you want something different. They don’t have to be used daily by everyone.

Secondly, there’s the problem with spam or gaming the system. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen a boring press release being promoted on these kinds of sites. There was also a minor scandal recently when some conservatives were claimed to have been ‘burying’ stories on Digg, which they felt had a liberal bias. I think this kind of thing is probably fairly common, from both sides, and probably puts off many users from participating.

I think that social bookmarking will always have some kind of role, but, for me at least, it’s always going to be in the second tier of the social web.

Laura: “Two Powerful Tools”

LinkedIn and social bookmarking are two social media tools that can definitely be underused. Social bookmarking has helped tremendously in increasing the number of click-throughs to our blog and our clients’ blogs. If you’re writing blogs, please start using social booking marking sites to promote them. It doesn’t take long, and it will definitely pay off in the end.

LinkedIn is a tool that some folks are addicted to and some just ignore. It’s a wonderful way to network, and although it’s not as big as Facebook, its over 65 million users are active. Additionally, all 500 of the Fortune 500 companies are represented on LinkedIn. Take some time to discover all the benefits of this tool, as you may be really missing out on some lucrative connections.

Lyn: “Thumbs Up Social Bookmarking, Thumbs Down LinkedIn”

I’ve never been a big fan of LinkedIn as a business tool. I think it has some value on a personal level for networking and interacting with potential clients or colleagues, as well as hiring, but to me, Facebook, blogging, Twitter, YouTube and more are a much better way to spend your time. It never hurts to have a profile and accept connection requests, as well as make sure your company has a profile that’s complete, but that’s as far as I ever recommend taking LinkedIn.

Now, social bookmarking on the other hand is a hugely undervalued tool. This includes sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Delicious, where people rank and share articles and links that they like. While the average population doesn’t use these, influencers do, and if you can get your articles and blog posts and videos posted to these sites, you’ll see a huge influx of traffic that you wouldn’t have had otherwise. I highly recommend you start stumbling and digging especially if you host a company blog.

Social Media Week: The Kings of Social Media, Facebook & Twitter

Simon: “Yay Twitter, Nay Facebook”

Facebook

I went through a phase of loving Facebook, initially. Living in a different country (continent even!) from where I went to high school, I had lost contact with most of my friends from then, and Facebook was a great way to get back in touch. That’s also why I use it less frequently now, though. Kind of like a high school reunion, it’s nice to see old faces and learn what everyone has been doing since, but after that I don’t have much to say to most of them. In fact I think I have “friends” on there that I haven’t even contacted since they added me as a friend. And vice versa. It is good for sharing photos with family back home, and I have a lot of fun trash-talking about soccer, especially during the World Cup, but overall, my interest in Facebook has largely waned.

Twitter

Like everyone, I couldn’t see the point of Twitter – “who cares what you ate for breakfast?” being the clichéd put down – but once I began using it, I found that I love it. I have a great network of friends that share useful tips, make me laugh, recommend books or TV shows and generally make my days more interesting.

Twitter, unlike Facebook, has actually led me to be more social in the real world. I joined a Twitter Fantasy Football league, and that’s always a fun time when we meet up. I’ve found it great for impromptu lunches if I’m free and looking for company. I even introduced a couple to each other via Twitter, and they’re now getting married this year.

If Twitter went away tomorrow, well, I’d survive – but I’d really miss it.

Laura: “Staying in Touch & Help When You Need It”

For all you spring chickens in high school and college out there who think Facebook has always been around, it hasn’t. I actually made it through all four of my college years without Facebook! On the upside, there are no photos on Facebook of my 21st birthday.

I was introduced to Facebook by my baby sister, who was in college when it came out. I had to make the tough decision of abandoning Friendster and adopting Facebook. Good choice! My sister had friended some kids we knew when we lived in Seattle, Wash., over 15 years ago, and I knew from that moment this was going to be a very cool site. Since then, I’ve watched as my high school classmates slowly joined. First it was just 10 and now it’s over 300, which is almost our entire class.

Facebook and Twitter have actually changed my life! I am TERRIBLE at keeping in touch with old friends. I blame it on my army brat roots, but it may just be laziness, so Facebook has helped me keep those bonds strong with very little effort. I love Twitter for its real time search results. When I’m having trouble with Facebook, I just Twitter search “Facebook down” and see if anyone else is having trouble at that very moment. So helpful! To sum it all up, I love Facebook and Twitter!

Lyn: “My Darlings”

Oh, these are my darlings of social media. Every time I get in a conversation with someone new, my husband always jokes that somehow either Facebook or Twitter works its way into the conversation. I have no idea why .

I got on Facebook after an employee at my PR firm shared with me her experience in college on Facebook. I even remember when Facebook opened up so you no longer had to have a college email address to participate. My first friend? A longtime friend from elementary and high school who now lives in London. I thought it was so cool to see all her pictures of London and vacationing in the South of France right in my own living room and reconnect with her so many years later. She even worked in PR for the BBC, so it was also a great professional connection.

Now, Twitter. I decided to learn Twitter after engaging a group of local bloggers on behalf of a client. They talked a lot about Twitter and how great it was. This was probably 2008. I’d talked about Twitter in social media presentations as an up-and-coming media tool but I always focused on how it was a minute by minute account of your day (which it was then). In fact, Disney was one of the first to use it as a marketing tool to have one of their characters from the show Greeks post his character’s daily activities.

It took me a while to get the hang of it and understand I didn’t have to go back and read everyone’s tweets that I’d missed while I was off! Now, I consider Twitter a critical marketing tool for business and an amazing way to learn information, interact with influencers and stay in front of lots of people.

Love you, Facebook and Twitter…

Melissa: “A Forum for Debate”

I have learned so much from the kings of social media, Facebook and Twitter. I love the fact that you can engage in a discussion or debate about something and get so many different views from people you’ve never met, but yet have a common bond.

I also find myself often becoming engaged in a topic that normally wouldn’t be of interest, but it will peak my interest just by following the discussion/post/comments.

Social Media Week: YouTube and Viral Videos

Lyn Mettler: “A Powerful Social Media Tool”

I love YouTube for business for a lot of reasons. The first of course is the fact that it’s the second most popular site for search behind Google. That’s a lot of people searching and you want to grab them if they’re typing in something related to your business.

How do you do that? Get up a channel and some video. Sure, it’s fine to put whatever video you’ve got laying around up there: commercials, promo videos, etc. But what will work much better is something informative and entertaining designed in “YouTube style”. What do I mean by this? It shouldn’t be overly polished, as people will take it as being overtly promotional and turn off.

Instead, have fun. Think about how you can turn one of your business’s key services or products upside down. Remember the blender that can blend anything? Take a look at some of the sillier videos we’ve done for some of our clients:

• What Not to Do During a Video Conference
• Scary Pruning
• Whatever You Call Them

If you just can’t come up with something genuinely funny or crazy, take an educational approach. We do a lot of videos for our client the Charleston Parks Conservancy that are simply helpful tips on gardening. The most popular one is about pruning Sago Palms (almost 7000 views)! Of course, it does help that their executive director has a great personality that translates well to video, but that’s not why the Sago Palms video is getting a lot of views. It’s because people are searching for Sago Palms, looking for information.

And don’t forget that YouTube is a social network. That means you need to pay attention to developing friends, commenting on others’ videos, increasing your subscribers and letting all those people know when you have a new video up.

Happy tubing!!

Laura Angermeier: “YouTube for All Facets of Life”

Pretty much everyone has watched a YouTube video by now, including both my grandmas and my 4 year old. It’s surprising to think that the site started in 2005 and has already become such a huge part of our daily lives. At my house, we use the site for all kinds of reasons, from learning about the latest stats on a new phone from CNET to watching a Dora the Explorer clip in order to make it the extra 15 minutes until bedtime.

Some folks use it just to pass around cute videos of puppies and kittens, but there are some serious rewards to be reaped from YouTube if you do it right! Major companies such as Coca-Cola and Ford Motor Company are on YouTube, reaching out to customers daily. People are watching 2 billion YouTube videos a day, so it’s smart to start your profile and get your message out loud and clear. Oh, and if you were wondering who has the top viewed YouTube video of all time, it’s Justin Bieber, with over 456 million views. WOW!

Holly: “Tips for YouTube Videos”

Social Media Week: The Beginnings, MySpace and Blogging

To start off Social Media Week, we thought we’d start where social media began. Following is insight and commentary from several of the staff at Step Ahead. You’ll find different topics each day of Social Media Week with our ever so fascinating two cents .

Bailey Surrett: MySpace and Metal Bands!

I joined MySpace in 2003 and the main reason was because all my friends were on it. I’ll say that the majority of my high school friends were in bands (metal bands) so this was the up-and-coming method of reaching out to their fans. All bands had a MySpace page, especially indy bands doing everything on their own.

MTV found my friends in Glass Casket and Between the Buried and Me through MySpace to use some of their songs for shows. I first heard of Colbie Caillat through her MySpace page. It was also a great avenue for me to keep in touch with my musician friends while they were touring.

I’ll be honest and say that I haven’t been on MySpace at all in the last 2 years unless it’s to check new layouts for a social media blog I’m writing or to see a video update from one of the bands who haven’t moved over to Facebook (shame on them). To be even more honest, by the time this blog is posted, I’ll have probably deleted my account.

http://www.myspace.com/ebaileysurrett

Holly Fisher: The Power of the Blog

In doing some research on this post about how blogging has evolved, I discovered the very first blog, Links.net, was created in 1994. That was the year I graduated from high school, started college and had my first e-mail address.

Hard to believe blogs have been on the scene 17 years. Also, hard to believe I graduated from high school 17 years ago, but we’ll save that for another blog post. What’s truly interesting is that the basic premise of blogs has remained the same: sharing stories, opinions and information.

Initially called “weblogs,” blogs turned anyone with a computer into a writer and a publisher. They may not be professional writers (or even very good writers) but they suddenly had a platform to share their passions – sports, travel, parenting or politics. Platforms like Blogger and WordPress made it simple for anyone with the tiniest bit of tech knowledge to set up a blog and call themselves a “blogger.”

A few years ago, women stormed the blogging world to create a nation of influential, diaper-wielding Mommy Bloggers.  Also coming on strong are business blogs. Companies discovered having a corporate blog was a way to tell the inside story of their brand and connect with consumers.

While most people tend to blog as a hobby, others have made quite a successful living at blogging by selling ads on their blogs or turning their blog into a book deal.

Regardless of whether you blog for yourself or for your company, take these basic tenets to heart:

• Keep it short and sweet. With some 100 million blogs in the world, people don’t have a lot of time to read your 4,000-word post.
• Have a personality. And, yes, this applies to corporate blogs. This is where a business can really connect with customers by giving them an insider’s view.
• Be consistent in your posting. You don’t have to post twice a day but you do need to keep your blog updated. One or two posts a week should be your minimum. You can’t attract a following if you never have fresh content.
• Promote your blog via social media. Posting links to your blog on Facebook, Twitter or social bookmarking sites is an excellent way to drive traffic and readership.

Laura Angermeier: Blogging Advocate, MySpace Dissenter
I was never a big MySpace person and only got on one night when I was super bored. I was never a fan of the layout and always thought it could have been done better. Then came Facebook. I think I actually still have a MySpace profile, but I haven’t checked it in over 3 years, so if you messaged me, sorry about the delayed response .

Blogs are wonderful social media tool! I haven’t written very many, but love reading them. There’s an opinion about everything, and I tend to lean toward the celebrity/fashion-oriented blogs, as they’re just fun! I encourage every business owner who has something to say about their business to start blogging. It’s a great way to talk with customers and potential customers on a more conversational level. Plus it’s fun!

Lyn Mettler: Creepy MySpace and the Beginning of “Social” Media

I remember the first time I heard of MySpace. It was on some news program like 60 Minutes and it talked about what a phenomenon it was becoming and how many people used it to communicate. I was fascinated. I eventually got on MySpace to see what it was all about, but totally got freaked out with the come-on type requests I was getting! So I never did much with it. But yea for MySpace, it started the whole field of “social” media, where you don’t just take information from the web but give it back as well.

Back when we started Step Ahead, Facebook was just in its beginnings, MySpace was much more popular and blogs and podcasts were all the rage. But it’s funny, no term had been coined yet for these types of media. People threw around Web 2.0 and social media, but as funny as it seems, Web 2.0 was the more popular of the two. We had a hard time naming the company because a standard phrase for what we were working with had not even been coined. Ah, seems so long ago, when really it was only 4 or so years ago – a lifetime in social media.

Social Media News of the Week: Jan 31- Feb 4

The week started out with a few main topics of social media conversation: Mark Zuckerberg and Jessie Eisenberg on SNL, the Taco Bell meat scandal and the protests in Egypt.

Saturday Night Live opened the show with “The Social Network” star Jessie Eisenberg talking to SNL cast member Andy Sandberg about how they’ve each perfected their Mark Zuckerberg impersonation. In what looks like a total surprise to Jessie, the real Mark comes out and the 3 “bergs” go back in forth in awkward small talk.

On a more important note, Taco Bell was slammed with a lawsuit alleging their taco meat was not made entirely of meat. To me this is a “duh” moment. Don’t most people in America know Taco Bell is not the place to eat when you want grade A beef? Rather where you go when you’ve had too much to drink J? Taco Bell is firing back using social media, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, to plead their case. Lucky for them, there’s been a lot of other things going on this week helping their story to get swept under the rug.

The protests in Egypt have been at the forefront of everyone’s mind with most people just genuinely concerned for the Egyptian people. While most of us are worried about the outcome of these protests, Kenneth Cole saw this as an opportunity to promote their new spring line on Twitter. Check out the tweet that stirred up a lot of trouble for the fashion giant! My person opinion is that is prime example #1 to not have an intern handle your social media!

On a lighter note, Foursquare released University badges for all colleges nation-wide so you can tell everyone just how much of a book worm you really are! The big game is this weekend and everyone is talking about which $3 million 30-second spot will be the best commercial. There’s speculation that there will be an Angry Birds spot with the opportunity for viewers to download a whole new level to the game! You’ll also be able to check-in to the 1^st national check-in spot: Super Bowl Sunday. This is a “try-out” for Foursquare and they’ll also be testing redemption codes for certain badges. I’m hoping this works well for the location-based application.

On a side note: I have to admit that I’m very pleased  to see that Oregon Trail is coming to Facebook. Brings back great memories of my childhood!