For my first review on the site here, I have decided to indulge in one of my pet peeves. Today, I’ll be reviewing The DEMA Show’s Facebook presence.
I love the DEMA Show, don’t get me wrong, I really wish I could attend this year. This is not intended as malice or ill-will, just an example that we can all learn more from, since I see the DEMA Show as a learning experience.
The DEMA Show
- Here’s my pet peeve: this is a Profile, not a Page. On Facebook, Pages are for businesses and organizations. Profiles are for individual people. According to Facebook‘s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, “You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an advertiser).” DEMA’s updates are advertisements because they’re promoting the DEMA Show, which is a commercial event. So technically, Facebook could suspend DEMA’s account, which would be bad.
- This is a question, not necessarily a problem, but why did they pick “officialdemashowsite” as their vanity username? Usability experts have suggested for years going with the shortest, easiest to remember URL’s as possible so people remember them when they get home to their computer. I see that “dema” is taken, but “demashow” isn’t. “Officialdemashowsite” is both long and misleading, since some people may think that this is now the official DEMA show site and they should ignore the regular homepage.
- Why is this party private? If you want people to know about what you’re talking about, let them see what you’re talking about. Because this is a Profile and not a Page, I have no access to see what DEMA is talking about unless I become their friend. I don’t mind doing that, but it makes the process slow (they have to approve me).
So what is the DEMA Show doing right on Facebook? I’m not sure yet, I haven’t been approved as a friend. As soon as they approve me, I’ll be able to share what the DEMA Show is doing correctly.
Reputation Management
This article is partially written as an experiment and an example of online reputation management. If managed correctly, you can know what people are saying about you as well as picking up business by paying attention to consumers out there. I know if I had mentioned Zillow in this blog post (my day job is in the real estate industry), David Gibbons would be by here within a few minutes to respond in the comments. I’ll show you how to do this soon.
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{ 6 comments }
Bravo Nick! I couldnt agree more. The bosses at dema are asleep at the wheel and the shows are slowly dying with less and less attendance as each and every year go by. They would do good to listen to your sage words.
On another and much more positive note. What you are growing here is amazing! Im http://www.k2scuba.com, how can we support you.
Tevis
818 982 2652
http://www.k2scuba.com/blog
I’m about to leave on a brief vacation, but I will definitely be in touch when I return. Thanks for your kind words. I personally don want DEMA to die, but hopefully we can all give them the little nudge they need.
In regards to #1… it's probably because of the improvement made on "pages" as well as changes to the SRR over past year. Back then, creating a personal profile for your business was much more personal than having a FB "Page" (considering there was not much of "functions" to apply on the Pages). In current version of FB "Pages" are much more interactive than previous version. A lot of people did so to separate "business" and "personal"…
As of today, Facebook allows business to create a personal profile. But it is more likely for that "commercial use" line to be in the next release of SRR to reduce spam and protect privacy.
It's also fairly recent that FB "Pages" got an upgrade, and it is not too long ago that a lot of businesses moved out of FB "Groups" and "Friends" to the "Page" and sent out FB messages to be their fan. Having that in mind, it could take a long time to move anywhere from 100 members or friends to 10,000 to the Fan Page. (and many group messages later.)
I also noticed, from my experiences of helping others to create a fan page, that not so many people knew how to create FB "Pages." It may be a cool post to do to explain Pros and Cons of having FB "Page," how to effectively move people from members or friends to fans, and basic of how to manage Fan page in relation to the marketing.
I completely agree that both the creation of and transition to pages hasn’t been the easiest, but as the proclaimed organization teaching the SCUBA diving industry how to market, I personally feel they should at least try to be on the leading edge of these tools. Just my thought, but a good starting point would be to at least create a page, but I haven’t been able to find one yet.
Hey there Nick, it's David G from Zillow,
I hope DEMA let's you in but regardless and more importantly, I hope they read this advice
Thanks to blogs and social networks, it's now simple to listen to what your customers are saying about your brand / company or event. Those folks that take the time to write up their thoughts (positive or negative) about you are your most passionate customers – make it easy for them to engage with you online!
Thanks for coming out David! I love the simplicity that online tools allow for communications. Sadly, a full day (plus) later, still not even a "hello" from DEMA. I'll be sure to make an example of you again
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