Why Facebook Is Deleting Drag Queen Profile Pages

Trannyshack founder and drag queen Heklina woke up this morning to discover her Facebook profile page had been completely erased from existence. She’d heard of this happening to other queens in her community last week. Then Facebook sent her a personal message last Thursday that asked her to revert to her birth name, as well.

She says she tried to comply with that request by keeping her drag name and then adding her last name, Grygelko. However, adding her last name as a compromise didn’t seem to be enough for the social network giant. Her entire profile is now gone. And she says she has no way of reaching out to her other drag queen friends because she doesn’t even know what their birth names are.

“I’ve had this name for 20 years now,” she says. “I walk down the street and people say ‘Hi Heklina.’ People know me by my drag name.” She says asking her to revert to her birth name is akin to not acknowledging her as a person.

When asked just how many drag queens this may have affected, Heklina says every single drag queen she knows has been asked to revert to a name Facebook believes is more suitable. Well-known drag queens such as Sister Roma from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Peaches Christ and Pollo Del Mar are only able to be found on their fan pages at the moment.

“As part of our overall standards, we ask that people who use Facebook provide their real name on their profile,” stated an email from a Facebook spokesperson. The real-names policy has been in place for a while, but it’s not entirely clear why drag queens have been suddenly targeted en masse. Heklina was told by Facebook reps that it was just an algorithm that discovered the drag queens and started asking them to change their names.

Facebook’s real names policy page states, “We require everyone to provide their real names, so you always know who you’re connecting with. This helps keep our community safe.” This is problematic for the drag community. Heklina says queens often don’t want their family or others to find them by their real names in order to protect themselves from bigotry and harm.

“This is like in the 1950’s when drag queens would perform at the club and then had to quickly change into their boy clothes after to keep from getting harassed,” she says.

Scott Wiener, LGBT advocate and member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors for District 8, which covers the heavily gay populated Castro/Upper Market neighborhoods, addressed the issue in an open Facebook post this morning:

Preventing drag queens from using the names that actually define who they are also puts a number of people in the untenable position of having to choose between telling the world that they’re drag queens and abandoning Facebook for their drag personas. While many drag queens are “out” about who they are, not all drag queens have that luxury. Plenty of discrimination, hate, and violence toward the LGBT community still exists in many parts of the world, and various people have drag personas that they feel the need to keep separate from the rest of their lives. People who disclose their non-drag identity – and who, conversely, announce to the world that they are drag queens – should do so because they want to, not because Facebook is forcing them to do so in order to continue using their profiles.

Facebook’s answer to this so far is, “If people want to use an alternative name on Facebook, they have several different options available to them, including providing an alias under their name on their profile, or creating a Page specifically for that alternative persona.”

However, asking people to use a fan Page or providing an alias is not a good enough solution to  Wiener. “You can’t send or receive messages on a Page or get invitations,” he points out. Wiener also says this doesn’t do a good job of recognizing drag queens as people. He plans on meeting with Facebook representatives this afternoon to talk this out.

Heklina also plans to meet with Facebook this afternoon. She posted about a planned protest at Facebook headquarters before her profile was deleted this morning. She believes this may be why her profile was taken down completely.

“All I know is I posted about the protest and then my profile and other people’s profiles were deleted and so was the Page,” she says. The Page, at least, appears to be up again.

The drag queen community has also launched a social media campaign, using the hashtag #mynameis on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to rally others and draw attention to the issue.

Heklina and about 100 other queens plan to carry through with the protest at Facebook headquarters tomorrow morning if representatives can’t address the naming issues with the drag queen community this afternoon. “It just seems like they are very tone deaf about this one issue. You’re not recognizing me and it’s infuriating,” says Heklina.

The drag queen community and those who support them plan to meet up at Facebook headquarters at 11 a.m. tomorrow.

Update: The protest at Facebook HQ has been postponed. Organizers within the community wrote on the Facebook events page for the protest that they are delaying the protest now that Facebook has agreed to meet with representatives from communities affected by their “real name” policy. Organizers are now asking those interested to come to the Harvey Milk Club’s meeting tomorrow at 8pm in the Women’s Building in San Francisco for an open discussion on the Facebook “real names” issue.

source : http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/15/why-facebook-is-deleting-drag-queen-profile-pages

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Six New Social Media Tools to Improve Your Social Marketing ROI

How can your business improve its social marketing and ROI?  We often share social media strategies to improve your business’s social network effectiveness.  In today’s blog post, however, we will share some new social media marketing tools which can make it easier to connect with fans and followers while also improving your return on investment with your social strategies.

On-the-Go Analytics

Does your business use Google custom urls and Google Analytics to track the performance of links posted across your social networks?  While it is important to analyze your data and understand the how, when and why as it relates to your social content driving traffic to your website and blog, up until now it has not been mobily-convenient for iPhone users.  The good news is that Google just released a Google Analytics mobile app for iOS.

Mobile Ad Manager

Would you like the convenience of managing your Facebook ads on your favorite mobile device?  Well, the social network recently announced that you now have this option as you will be able to access the Facebook Ads Manager from your iOS or Android app as well as from the mobile site.  Not all features will be available but you will be able to perform important basic functions.

Twitter’s On Board

Have you been using your Facebook for business insights data to help improve your social marketing results?  Have you often wished you had the same type of tool and data for your Twitter for business strategy?  Well, Twitter organic Tweet analytics are now available if you sign up for a Twitter advertising account (*Presently, it looks like you only have to create the ad account and not start a campaign).

Truer Targeting

Want to increase your social media ROI when it comes to your social advertising campaigns?  There are many cool social marketing tools to help your business create better advertising targeting and to see your conversion numbers rise.  Social Media Today recently profiled GoChime – a company that offers social advertising tools which tie into your email lists.

Music Matters

Has your business ever wanted to add background music to a video before posting and sharing that video with your social community?  As we have shared many times before, every social media for business strategy should include creative video content and adding music can give an extra layer of virality to thos videos.  Make sure to check out AudioBlocks.com where you can find royalty-free music, sound effects and loops to give your videos

Look No Further

Are you looking for a cool tool to create custom share links for your favorite social networks?  Give ShareLinkGenerator.com a look as it is your one-stop shop for creating custom share links.  According to their website, “You can create Facebook share links, Twitter “tweet this” links, Google Plus share links, LinkedIn share links, and Pinterest “pin this” links that work anywhere — even in emails.”

source: http://www.socialface.com.au/six-new-social-media-tools-improve-social-marketing-roi/

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What & Why People Share On Social Media - Infographic

Read original article source: http://www.business2community.com/infographics/people-share-social-media-infographic-0975231

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How Social Media Evolved as a Sales Channel

Over the past few years, major retailers have capitalized on the popularity of social media to increase brand awareness.  Inevitably, these retailers began to also treat their social media pages as direct sales channels in what has become known as social selling.

Of course, the major players of retail have the resources to devote entire infantries to managing the multitude of social networks now available, but small to mid-sized retailers can match the success of their larger counterparts with some simple best practices, even if they lack the labor force to forge a Twitter Team.

The evolution of social media as a sales channel has become the norm, and retailers need to stay in front of their customers by continuously engaging at their level.  Social media efforts will not only build brand awareness, but will facilitate that sense of community and engage shoppers, resulting with higher retention and increased sales, which is the ultimate goal.

Direct Sales

By 2015, about half of all web transactions will occur through social media, which translates to an estimated $30 billion in sales, according to projections by the marketing firm Vocus.  Yet, the same analysis says that of the 40 million business-related fan pages on Facebook, only 17% have the capacity to sell directly through this popular social media channel.

For smaller retailers, having to manually update Facebook on a regular basis let alone multiple social media accounts can take hours and thus discourage them from ever delving into the social selling realm.  But many of today’s  retail management systems and  ecommerce platforms now include integrations to major social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, making it possible for small to mid-sized retailers to upload product images, descriptions and relevant links to multiple social media channels with just a few mouse clicks.  Selling directly through social media may not surpass the volumes sold through more traditional channels such as a brick and mortar stores or E-Commerce sites, but it can certainly influence purchasing decisions in those other venues through a process called channel-hopping.

Indirect Sales

A social sale will not always end on Facebook or Twitter, but a sale can frequently start there.  A link to a product on a social media site will often plant a seed in the mind of the consumer.  From there, they may turn to an E-Commerce site to conduct more research and ultimately finalize the purchase in a brick and mortar location.  In such a scenario, when the consumer “hops” from channel to channel before finalizing the purchase, does any single channel deserve full credit for the sale?  A recent study of cross-channel shopping habits revealed that consumers will complete about 60% of the traditional sales process before reaching out to a sales representative, no matter what the price point.  In other words, customers are often shopping without the retailer being aware of it.  Much of that shopping takes place right on a retailer’s social media page.

Social SEO

Social media links now factor into the algorithm used by Google to rank its organic search results, according to an article published by Entrepreneur.  Sharing links on highly ranked social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, can actually help boost the search rating of an individual E-Commerce site.  Retailers that publish relevant blogs on their E-Commerce sites have a considerable advantage when it comes to SEO.  By blogging and adding fresh content regularly, retailers can exponentially increase the number of indexed pages that are “crawled” by the major search engines.

Extend the CRM

Savvy retailers not only use their social media pages as sales funnels, but also as tools to manage customer relationships.  In that way, social media channels also serve as valuable extensions to CRM functions.  Through social networks, retailers can post news about upcoming discounts, sales events and other promotions, but also provide direct customer service.  While the major retailers can afford to dedicate teams of employees to field these inquiries, smaller retailers can utilize something as simple as an email notification to manage communications through social networks.

Speak, but Also Listen

Much of social media focuses on talking, but rarely stresses the value of listening.  A retailer’s social user base can often provide valuable insights into emerging trends, since they will likely represent part of their market.  A survey conducted by Deloitte revealed that 65% of executives who responded use social media to understand shifts in their market.

For read original article source:  http://multichannelmerchant.com/marketing/social-media-evolved-sales-channel-21072014/

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Useful Tips For Social Media Marketing

You cannot have a business now without a social media site. The best sites lay claim to millions of users, with new ones joining daily. In this article, you’ll find some in-depth advice that will help you utilize the full power of social media.

Make a plan before you go forth in social media marketing. Figure out who will manage the pages, what type of layout you want, and how much time you would like to invest into it. Like other marketing campaign, create a timeline to accomplish any goals. Although you may deviate from your original strategy, it is always best to have a plan.

Frequently update your social networking site. Staying updated will keep your content fresh, so people think that they are reading something new and exciting. Make an effort to provide updates several times per week.

 TIP! Create a blog and try and keep the content you add relevant. Post all sales or promotions to the blog as they occur.

Social Media

A social media storefront that is easy to use is one way you can effectively use social media marketing. Additionally to your website, you can make a Fecebook store that will be accessible from any posts you make. There are some users who frequent Facebook. Giving these users an easy option to purchase your items, without having to leave Facebook, can work to your benefit. In this, you can get sales from customers that would rather stay on Facebook than leave it for your dedicated eCommerce website.

Reach out for help from professionals when it comes to establishing your social media presence. This market is large and many designers and consultants can create a website and social media strategy that works for you. They can be expensive though, so you may have to spend a considerable amount of money if you choose this path.

 TIP! If you are going to use Twitter as a business tool, then you need to stay closely connected to your audience. Give people who retweet your content a thumbs-up, and quickly respond to questions people ask.

Gain exposure by promoting your business through games on Facebook. Design a unique game that is related to your company’s products and services. Some cleverly constructed marketing games on Facebook have gone viral. It’s worth the cost to pay a professional design team to create the app, and market it on social media!

Make use of Twitter related tools, like Twellow. When you use these tools, you can hone in on a target audience. Twitter, like Facebook, takes care of its advertisers, so you can find a lot of help by simply using the tools the site provides. You can then build a list of individuals you need to be following, in hopes that they soon start following you as well.

When marketing with social media, it is important for you to make sure your ads will be in a spot on the page where they will be seen often. Unless your ad is placed in a prime location, it may be absolutely worthless.

TIP! Interact with your followers on social media as often as you can! When it is appropriate and relevant, leave comments on a customer’s blog or Facebook page. Do not interfere in a personal discussion; you should contact someone only if they are talking about an issue related to your products or industry.

Be patient when you are networking on a social media site. People need to trust you before they will buy from you. Take it slow and focus on one customer at a time. You will soon see many customers.

Social Media

Prior to posting any content that represents your business on a social media marketing site, be sure to carefully review it all. Given that social media can be viral in nature, unfortunate information can travel fast. You will get a lot of publicity this way, but it might not be good press.

TIP! Before you begin social media marketing, research the different options for advertising available on the social networking sites. Don’t waste your time.

If you gain an additional follower on Twitter, make sure that you reciprocate this action. Many of your followers expect this. It shows respect and lets you connect with customers better. As a courtesy, follow your followers and even welcome them with a tweet. If you do this, you will create a stronger relationship with others.

Proofread any content you’re going to post onto your Facebook profile or tweet on Twitter. It is important to make your page look professional. It is okay to use certain abbreviations on Twitter, but use them with care. You want your content to be clear and concise.

Useful Information

TIP! After creating an account with Yahoo!, browse Yahoo! Answers. This online community provides users with a forum to ask questions on any topic that can be answered by other users.

If your social media marketing takes you to any public forums, it’s essential that you stay in good standing with other forum users. You do not want to be pushy and use hard sell tactics when you are posting. Instead, provide your potential customers with honest and useful information. Good relationships will encourage people to find out more about your business, so always try to post useful information.

Write headlines that are catchy. The headline will be the first part of the post that people see. In some cases, it can be the only part that is visible until the user actually clicks on the article. Your headline should arouse the reader’s curiosity so that people will feel compelled to click on your post and find out what you have to say. Whether or not your headlines are compelling can easily dictate whether your content will generate traffic, or simply get looked over.

Anybody can succeed with social media marketing. Whether you’ve just become a business owner or you’re new to your site, social media is a great tool to have. Now, you are aware on how to effectively use social media. By implementing this advice, you should see results very soon.

 TIP! Be patient. Putting together a perfect social media marketing plan involves effort.

For original source: http://goo.gl/bGTxZN

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Facebook vs. LinkedIn: Know which is better for B2B marketing?

Do you ever wonder which social network is best for B2B marketing?

Me too, so I did some audience research and found some surprising results. 

Here's how you can do it too.

Even with all of the analytics available, it's tough for a marketer to know the best platform for a new campaign. I mean, sure, you can look at your historical stats - clicks, conversions, and even ROI - but it feels like there are just too many variables to make an accurate prediction.

And without having some idea of your chance of success, it can often feel like you're just 'winging' it. And that's not how we, the modern marketers, want to feel!

So when preparing to launch a new campaign, what's a data-driven marketer to do?
Analytics again, I'm afraid

Well for those who have mastered the basics of analytics there is something you can do in advance to predict your campaign outcome.

It requires an easy-to-obtain figure which, with a very simple calculation, can take you from being a quivering wreck to a (wo)man with a plan. And to top it off, it can also tell you which platform is better for your B2B campaign.

Audience size

What I'm talking about here is the ad audience size. That is, the number of people who could possibly see your ad on your platform of choice.  And by audience, I don't mean the spray-and-pray affinity groups that you get from display networks, but the micro-targeted B2B markets you can reach through social media.

See, all of the data LinkedIn and Facebook collect on you to provide you a great networking experience is available to advertisers, for free. 

Using each network's self-service ad tools you can see this data and research the size of your potential ad audience before you launch your campaign. Then you will know just how many people you are likely to reach - and you also have the added benefit of being able to compare the reach of the two ad networks.

And once you know your audience size and mix in a few guesstimates, you will be able to estimate your campaign performance and know whether LinkedIn or Facebook is the better platform for your B2B campaign.

 

Self-service tools

Before we go into the detail of audience research, we need to briefly cover the self-service ad tools for LinkedIn and Facebook.

If you're unfamiliar with these then I recommend you go through the excellent tutorials that the sites themselves provide. 

For LinkedIn, it's fairly straightforward but for Facebook I highly recommend that you use the more complicated, but far better Power Editor.

Why is that? Well, Facebook tends to release new functionality through its API first, then Power Editor second, and finally to the consumer ad tool. 

So, even if you're not a programmer, you can still get in ahead of the masses with the Power Editor.

OK, so once you have a handle on the tools, what next?
 

Step-by-step audience sizing

Create LinkedIn Ads

First, you need to create an ad.  Let's start with LinkedIn.

Don't worry about the creative for the moment, we just need the 'new ad' form up on the browser.

Why are we doing this? Well once you start creating an ad, LinkedIn kindly lets you see how big your target audience is before you ever start the campaign.

I'm sure they do this to encourage you to find a big audience so you buy more ad space, but you can also use it to not buy ads when the audience is too small. 

I mean, what is the point of putting together great creative for people Singapore who can translate Japanese if there are only 27 of them on LinkedIn?

For this campaign, I'm targeting people in Singapore who work in Software, Internet, or IT Services - a healthy audience of 110,674.

Create Facebook ad

Next, you need to create a similar audience on Facebook.

As you know, Facebook and LinkedIn have very different purposes - so the data they have - and the parameters available to build an audience -  are very different. 

For my example, we want to target people in the IT industry. Great - Facebook has 'industry' as an audience targeting parameter. And you can even select 'IT and technical'.

Hmm, it seems that Facebook's does not have a lot of industry data on its users. So when we try to target the IT industry in Singapore, Facebook only finds 13,200 people, or about 10% of what LinkedIn has.

But don't let this get your down. This is where your creativity as a marketer becomes important.

With a little research, we find that a much more useful parameter for Facebook audience building is Interests. So what are people who work in IT interested in?  How about 'Computer Programming'?

Now the audience is quite a bit bigger.  Great stuff.  But maybe those are a bunch of script-kiddies - and who wants to market to them? 

OK, let's put another useful Facebook parameter on: Education Level: College Graduate.

Compare the two

Wow that's getting very close to our LinkedIn audience. Add English language and we're almost equal - there's 112,000 in Facebook and 110,674 on LinkedIn.

So great - we now have virtually the same sized audience on LinkedIn as on Facebook!

But hold on, weren't we supposed to see some differences between the platform?

The real differences

Well, I used this example to make the analytics easier to compare, but this also provides evidence that the platforms have reasonably consistent audience measurements.

That is, if we start with the notion that people in Singapore who work in IT/Internet/Software on LinkedIn will also be on Facebook with an interest in computer programming - then we would expect the audience sizes to be similar. And indeed they are. They are also reasonably close to the official government figure for how many Singaporeans work in IT (82,800).

 

For other countries, however, this is not at all true:

Country	LinkedIn (Software/Internet/IT)	Facebook (Computer Programming Interest & Degree)	LinkedIn Audience / Facebook
Singapore	110,674	112,000	99%
HK	35,503	40,000	89%
UK	750,509	920,000	82%
India	3,132,051	4,200,000	75%
USA	4,316,127	5,800,000	74%
Vietnam	41,329	146,000	28%
Malaysia	86,218	920,000	9%
Thailand	35,247	400,000	9%
Indonesia	107,052	1,220,000	9%
Philippines	130,853	2,200,000	6%

And this was I found very surprising. It seems that the participation rate on social networks is very different from country to country, so you should be very careful not to assume that your campaign will perform the same in one as another.

So although LinkedIn and Facebook have reasonably similar audience size in some countries, for others Facebook rocks all over LinkedIn.

Who knows, for your market it might be the reverse - but at least now you know how to find out!

The analytics

So after you do this exercise, you at least know where your audience is. Now let's find out more useful information using estimates.

The Estimates

First estimate the following for both platforms

    CPM: Cost per 1,000 Impressions
    Click Through Rate: Clicks / Impressions
    Conversion Rate: Conversions or Goals / Clicks

 CPM

    LinkedIn: I typically set it at $2
    Facebook: I use their optimized CPM and get around $3

Click Through Rates

    LinkedIn: 1 / 1,000
    Facebook: 1.5 / 1,000

Conversion Rates

    LinkedIn: 15 / 100
    Facebook: 12 / 100

The Calculations
Then, do the following calculations:

•     Total Conversions: Audience * CTR * Conversion
•     Total Cost: Audience / (CPM*1000)
•     Cost Per Acquisition: Total Cost / Total Conversions

For my campaign, I get

LinkedIn

•     Total Conversions: 110,674* .001 *.15 = 16
•     Total Cost: 110,674/ (2*1000) = $55.33
•     Cost Per Acquisition: $55.33 / 16 = $3.46

Facebook

•     Total Conversions: 112,000 .0015* .12 = 20
•     Total Cost: 112,000/ (3*1000) = $37.33
•     Cost Per Acquisition: $37.33 / 20 = $1.87

So, Facebook gives me more possible conversions at a lower cost for this audience. Nice!

It looks like Facebook may be the better place to spend my time and marketing dollars - at least until I recallibrate the model with real data after running the campaign.

So What?

So, if you want to predict the future success of your campaigns and know what platform you should focus your B2B efforts on, then it makes sense for you to find out your audience size on each platform before you do anything else.

The self-service ad tools on both LinkedIn and Facebook make doing this easy, all you have to do is add some creativity to make sure your target audiences are likely to be similar.

Then just do a bit of analytics and you're on your way to predicting the future outcome.

And you should note that, as I've shown, the platform audiences vary widely depending on what country you are marketing into. So, doing audience research can also help you be more knowledgeable about your target markets and make you a more data-driven marketer.

 For Original Source Article Click Here

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