As long as you have a phone number attached to your Facebook account (which I’m wary of for personal accounts, but fine with for business accounts), a text message with the word “opt” sent to 32665 will provide a temporary password that expires in 20 minutes and is good for only one login. If you frequent busy wifi networks (airports, libraries, universities, etc), you’ll definitely want to utilize this feature. Keeping passwords safe on unsecured networks is paramount to protecting your social identity.

Since I mostly deal with my personal page on Facebook, I’m most excited about the other feature that Facebook has released, but this has great implications for your clients’ accounts as well. If you visit your Account Settings page, under Account Security, you can view all the places you are currently logged into Facebook. Then, you can remotely log off. This may be one of the simplest features Facebook could add, but, in my opinion, one of the most useful. Think about the potential impact: had to respond to an urgent Facebook message and left yourself logged in at the Apple Store? Hop online and log off, from anywhere. Phone gets stolen? Don’t let some stranger facebooking your friends (or worse, fans) add to the burden of a missing phone. Simply sign on from anywhere and log off from that session.

So how does this affect your client’s business? If both features are utilized properly, you can save your clients a great deal of stress and take these preventative steps to assist with online reputation management. A hacked account can lead to countless problems: spam messages sent to all fans, incorrect/offensive content posted, deactivated account and more. It doesn’t take much to unlike a business, and nothing will entice users to do that more quickly than a hacker posting something bad.

The content in and of itself isn’t the main problem though. When somebody hacks your account, you lose your customers’ trust, threaten their online security and show weakness in your own. Facebookers want to feel safe and protected on Facebook. If your client’s account shows security weaknesses, unliking that account will help users feel safer with what they click in their newsfeed. At the same time, offensive and irrelevant content posted by a third-party (maybe a hacker, maybe the guy who found your client’s phone and thought an offensive joke would make for a good update) will clutter your fans’ newsfeeds. It’s easy to unlike a page or hide the clutter from your newsfeed that you don’t like or find offensive/irrelevant and, therefore, silencing that business. Even if the user doesn’t unlike or hide your client’s business from their newsfeed, they won’t likely be trusting anything posted on that page for a while. Especially if a spammer posts a bad link, users will be very wary about clicking on a shortened URL anytime soon after.

So what can you do for your client, or how can you direct them to protect their Facebook accounts? If you’re going on vacation, you’d make sure you’d locked all your doors and windows and that you didn’t have a spare key lying somewhere a burglar could find it. If you’re halfway to the airport and didn’t remember if you closed the garage door or not, you’d call a neighbor to have them check. Your client’s Facebook page should be treated with the same preventative measures as your home, especially now that Facebook has made it tremendously easier. Remembering to log out and then utilizing the new features from Facebook can be immensely beneficial.

First, always log off when you’re done with Facebook. It may be a pain to log in again and again, but it’s significantly easier than redoing all your Social Media efforts after a hacker has deactivated your account.

Second, utilize the temporary password if you aren’t in the most secure of locations. If you aren’t 100% sure that the network you’re on is secure, and that all users on that network are trustworthy, be safe, not sorry, and text Facebook for a temporary password. Storing the number in your phone can make this a very quick step to protect yourself.

Finally, if you aren’t sure if you logged off from a certain location, hop on Facebook and check. Its quick to find out if you’re logged in somewhere and log out remotely. When I checked this feature for the first time, I found that I was still logged in on four different devices, when I should have only been logged in to two. You might be surprised where and how often you or your clients forget to log out of their accounts.

Facebook has even created an option where you can receive e-mails if a new device (computer, mobile) logs into your account. This would give you time to respond immediately if an unauthorized device logged into your account. If you travel a lot, this isn’t a bad idea. The e-mails may be annoying at times – if you often log in from different devices – but much less annoying than apologizing to your fans for spam links filling their newsfeed.

Online reputation management can really make or break a business. While there is a lot that goes into maintaining a good reputation online, your time is better spent taking every precautionary measure you can and using your time to focus on improving. If you’re spending your time dealing with hacked accounts, you’ll spend your time fighting a bad reputation instead of spending time building a good reputation.

Do you think the new Facebook tools are going to be helpful? How else do you keep your Facebook accounts safe as part of your ORM?

Post Script: As I finished writing this post, Microsoft and Facebook have announced an Instant Personalization partnership. If you visit Bing in same browser window as Facebook, you’ll get an option to “accept” using Facebook data in your search. Major props to Facebook on opt-in rather than opt-out, though, and I’m only speculating, this was probably Microsoft’s idea, not Zuck’s. Either way, let me be the first to say, this will NOT kill SEO. It may, however, deepen the marriage between Social Media and SEO, which I think is a great thing.

This week marked another interesting milestone for Facebook. For the first time, they were included in the 2010 American Customer Survey Index E-Business Report. Facebook scored 64 out of 100. The reasons for this score, according to ForeSee Results CEO Larry Freed, are “privacy concerns, frequent changes to the website, and commercialization and advertising.”  To be fair to Facebook, I think that a lot of these concerns are unwarranted. Facebook is a business, so commercialization and advertising are inevitable. As Facebook grows, so are changes to the website. Truthfully, today’s Facebook is a much better format than it was in 2004, especially considering how much more content is on each profile, though every change to the user interface rallies thousands of users rejecting the changes.  I think the problem most people have boils down to the fact that Facebook today isn’t Facebook circa 2004, and for a lot of people, not the Facebook they signed up for initially.

When I signed up, I was able to post anything I wanted for my friends old and new to see, but most importantly, I could do so (seemingly) without consequence. Great hook for college kids, right? Then, employers started checking Facebook profiles: strike 1. Facebook later became open to high school students: BIG strike two, and in my opinion, the first time Facebook did something “uncool”. Eventually, Facebook became open to anybody and everybody, including mothers and grandmothers everywhere: strike 3; I’m out. But not really – I can’t leave Facebook. Professionally and socially, Facebook provides a service I can’t find anywhere else online, so I’m stuck with a measly profile and a handful of appropriate pictures.  Facebook has become a chore, not enjoyment.

I’ll admit that I’m skeptical of Facebook’s third-party applications (and privacy settings and open graph and Facebook for websites and…), so I’m not getting the full Facebook experience. But like I said earlier, that’s not the Facebook I signed up for. A lot of my peers share this sentiment and that score of 64 shows that it’s likely more than just my peers.  But, since there isn’t an alternative, we stay, unhappily, on Facebook. Scott Stratten of UnMarketing just wrote a great post about customer loyalty and how a company shouldn’t ignore loyal customers. Facebook has 500 million (unwillingly) loyal customers.  I think if a worthy alternative pops up on the web (here’s looking at you, Diaspora), Facebook would see how disloyal its users are when a mass exodus occurs. They can ask MySpace about that. Remember MySpace? They were a big deal in 2004…

Satisfaction isn’t low all over the web though. Google, Bing, and Yahoo received 80, 77 and 76 respectively in ForeSee Results survey. I think this shows customers still trust search. To most people, search hasn’t changed that drastically. From a search marketing perspective I can attest that search changes daily, sometimes so fast I work with my running shoes on. People love social media – I know I sure do – and it can offer a whole lot, but, at the end of the day, Search is an institution. There’s been great competition that has truly benefited users as search results are more fine-tuned for location, search history, etc. It will be a long time before Social Media can give me better, unbiased results for an inquiry than Search, and with Facebook’s current customer satisfaction, I don’t think they’ll be the powerhouse to take down Search.

Do you think Facebook will change the future of Search? Sound off in comments.

In the past five years, give or take, product placement has gone from carbonation to technology. We’ve had the Apple logo shoved down our throats so much so that every time I eat a granny smith, I think about how much I spent on my iMac – no regrets of course,  just high tech advertising at its best.

Before digital media, the sponsorship heavy hitters included Coca Cola, Budweiser and car dealerships. When Brad Pitt drinks it, we drink it. Now that search engines, subscription and social networking sites have become “products” in themselves, we are seeing more and more of their presence in commercials, feature films and on our favorite TV shows.  So, just how far away are we from hearing the words, “this broadcast is brought to you by Twitter?”

Living rooms across the country were astonished by this year’s Google ad during the Superbowl. Does Google.com really need a commercial to grow its profit margin? “How much did that air time cost?” an eager Saints fan asked me. I have a good guess, but I bet Ancestry.com could tell you, considering they’re running Sunday ads on NBC during “Who Do You Think You Are.”

And let’s take the recent blockbuster graphic novel turned movie, Kick Ass. If any film could’ve snuck in a subliminal Pepsi can, Doritos or pizza, targeted at teenagers, it was this one. On the contrary – in this day in age, it was comic books, iPhones and MySpace.com. MySpace you ask? Yes – that blast from the past networking site is the communication device used to call the title character into fighting crime. Okay, a little behind the times in my opinion but perfect if they are trying to drive traffic back to  their site, right?

Is this an example of product placement? Absolutely. Free advertising? That still remains a mystery. Corporate sponsorship deals are very hush, hush – especially in the film industry. So, whether consumers will be rushing to their computers to join MySpace.com (again) or buy a set of nun chucks after seeing Kick Ass – that remains to be seen.

Move aside Pepsi and Starbucks – I’ll be drinking the iPhone and Facebook from now on!

Online is the present and the future of our advertising world. Connecting and being in-the-know, creating campaigns based around mobile, internet, SEO, etc. is a step many agencies shy away from. However, RMM is a forerunner in new ideas and innovation and that is why I was drawn to apply here.

I began my job at Red McCombs Media the week after July 4th. Having never worked in an agency setting, I am learning all new dynamics and methodologies that go along with the “agency life”. Specifically, interactive is a whole new bean, so-to-speak. I mean, I’ve had black beans and Ranch Style, but interactive is like chickpeas… It’s new, it’s fast, it’s EVER-CHANGING, and can be mashed to make an entirely different kind of food (hummus…yummmm). Everyday. Scratch that. Every MINUTE, the online and mobile realm revolutionizes. Transformation and flexibility is the name of the game.

Have you noticed that we are all copycats on the internet? I think the key to being successful for your clients is becoming the WOLF, the pack leader. Not a sheep who blindly follows, but a wolf who seeks out, knows what he wants, and creates his own destiny.

Facebook is king. Twitter, TripAdvisor, LinkedIn, and YouTube were all “firsts” of their kind (meaning most popular and first to have success in their chosen area). These are the wolves and the owners of social media. All other sites MIMIC the success of these core trendsetters. What does this have to do with agencies? We have to play the game and belly up to the bar. Unfortunately, a successful wolf attracts a huge pack, and these sites have become cluttered in a way that makes me wonder if advertisers benefit by solely investing their dollars in them… bold statement… but hear me out.

Look at twitter, for example. How awesome would this site be if say, AT&T had developed it? If AT&T had created this site, they would OWN it. Advertising for their services, phones, etc. They could encourage consumers to text in on their AT&T phone and have judges who awarded the #1 text of the day. That person could win some sort of prize from AT&T. Agencies have an overwhelming and challenging duty to create these ideas that directly benefit and hit the values of their client. We have such an exciting and creative challenge to get the word out in any way imaginable. We do not want to limit our abilities to simply putting advertising out. Why not create it from within?

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that all campaign strategies benefit by 360-degree marketing. Creating a site like the one above is just the first step, so next is getting the word out. As I said, playing the game of social media is pretty much a must for advertisers now-a-days. (I mean my mom and all her BFFs are on Facebook… it’s not just a college thing anymore.) The key element of social media is HUMANIZING your product, your company, your whatever. Because, we as humans want to speak out. We are opinionated, and we like being able to face-lessly vent. We like being able to hear, say, the new guy at ChipandDipCompanyA spout off about what’s really in the way-too-yellow nacho cheese at state fairs. We like the inside scoop, and we want to hear it from a TRUSTWORTHY source. It all boils down to that simple word; trust. Social media holds us as advertisers, businesses, and people accountable. As we’ve seen time and again, many advertisers have suffered like ChipandDipCompanyA will. Accountability in every sense of the word has become a core focus for consumers. They want to make sure you are being honest with them and others.

Honesty, creativity, and creating a campaign focused on the core desire of the advertiser are some of the keys, I believe, that create a successful social media campaign. Visibility and transparency, connecting with consumers, humanizing your company in a new way simplify your brand name. They put a face, a voice, a website to your company.

I hope you enjoyed my article! I look forward to writing again for RMM. Look out for more of my posts!