The words “Facebook” and “Twitter” have been banned from being used on French television, Social Times reports.   The use of the social networking sites’ names on TV leads the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA) to believe that smaller social networking sites and start ups have very little chance of competing with the networking giants.   The CSA, which is very similar to the FCC, asks that advertisers be more generic when directing consumers to their sites.

“Find us on social networking websites” is more appropriate than the “Follow us on Twitter” or “Find us on Facebook” taglines, according to CSA spokeswoman Christine Kelly.   She adds, “If we allow Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it’s opening a Pandora’s box…other social networks will complain to us saying, ‘Why not us?’”

France apparently has a soft spot for Friendster, Bebo, and Myspace, which remain unaffected by the ban.   This makes me wonder about the last time the words “Check out my Bebo!” were uttered by anyone at all.

While the CSA certainly is correct in pointing out that Facebook and Twitter are at the top of the social networking pyramid, they fail to recognize that many companies use these platforms as a primary means of interaction with customers.

In today’s conventional advertising model, a TV ad refers to the company’s social network, which in turn refers back to the company’s website for purchases to be made.   Businesses are intentionally choosing the top two networks because they have the largest target audience. I personally think that the top social networks increase the bonds with customers much more than TV ads will.   Consumers in France, upon hearing “Find us on social networks” on TV will still probably check Twitter and Facebook first, as they are so widely established and universally accepted.

The CSA insists that the ruling was not an attempt to regulate the adoption of English words via France’s Toubon laws, either.

Some related data from Nielsen shows that consumers around the world spent 82% more time on social networks in December 2009 than in the previous year.   The average time per person in the same study for the month of December 2009 was four hours for France:

So is this decree really about fair competition, or is it a modern example of unnecessary micro-regulation?   It will be interesting to see if any petitions from Facebook, Twitter, and/or the people of France will help remove the ban in the near future. While I am not a citizen of France, I find the CSA’s decision to increase regulation on TV advertising to be redundant.   More and more individuals choose to remain on the computer rather than watch television as it is, so why is it necessary to create more red tape for the creators of ads for this form of declining media? I’d like to see what Twitter-reliant (read: obsessed) CNN would try to do in that country.

The inclusion of Facebook, Twitter, and other social network names in commercials is not intended to be advertising for these sites.   At its extreme, saying “Find us on Facebook” is a challenge directed at potential customers to try and remember the name of the brand the next time you are on a computer. Time will tell whether or not such a ban may upset more people than it benefits.   Laissez-faire will have to wait, for now.

The ulterior motives of the seemingly harmless social network sharing buttons which now appear on thousands of top websites.

Cookies, and not the edible kind, are now being placed on a user’s computer after visiting websites containing a Facebook Like button or any other social network sharing button, such as the Tweet button. Primary intent of these buttons is meant to allow users to share interests and other favored items with friends through their social network’s news feed. Evidently, this is not the only purpose they serve.

Even if a web page visitor doesn’t actively click on the button, personal information and browsing history can be linked to the user and their personal profile, provided they have logged into their social networking page within the last month.

It is estimated that Facebook buttons now appear on one-third of the top visited websites, with Google buttons following close behind. Google buttons are used similarly to social networking buttons and can be found on approximately one-fourth of these sites. The use of the “Tweet” button for Twitter is also on the rise, currently seen on one-fifth of top pages.

According to creators of the Facebook button, information gained from user activity tracking is used only to create powerful, highly targeted advertising on the site. They claim that personal data is made anonymous and the data cannot be tracked back to specific users. However, the data collected remains in the system for three months, much longer than Google’s two week info-retainment period.

If you are concerned for your social networking confidentiality, Kashmir Hill of Forbes suggests you “log out of these sites after you’re done checking your email, tweeting, poking or what have you.” But most Facebook users may find the privacy risk is preferable to frequent logins.

According to a new report by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project people ages 50 and older are joining social networks at an ever increasing rate.

In fact, social networking has just about doubled over this past year, swelling from 22 percent in 2009 to 42 percent in 2010.  comScore, a digital measurement company, found similar results: 27.4 million people age 55+ used social networking in last month, up from 16 million one year ago.

Why is this happening? Well I’m sure you can guess. Older adults want to connect with friends and relatives. But to me, that’s the easy part of the answer. The other half of the answer is in how new technology is not just being created — but designed.

The doubling of any population is unarguably a dramatic increase. Any time you see a change this substantial there must be multiple elements at play. Older adults aren’t just joining social networks because their friends and relatives are there. They’re joining because they are able to figure it out on their own.

Let me clarify. What we’re seeing is a massive cultural shift towards technology — in part because of good design. We have a tendency to stereotype older adults as at best not tech savvy, and at worst Luddites.

As tools become easier to use and better design is incorporated into computer hardware, software and websites the intimidating or hard-to-use “tech” part of technology dissolves away. Older adults no longer need to rely on a grandchild or neighbor to help them. Now, if they can read the screen they can pretty much do anything. I would argue that the problem never was that most older adults were not tech savvy, but that they just didn’t have the patience to deal with something that wasn’t designed intuitively.

Better design isn’t just for those who are not techy. Better design is for everybody. Better design makes things that are complex usable. I’ll go even further. Creating something that is not designed well is inexcusable. There isn’t a single man-made object on this world that can’t be improved with good design from a paint can with a built in roller tray to a superbly designed and well organized website.

Recently I was interviewed by Gienna Shaw of HealthLeaders Media about the groundbreaking surgery we helped Sherman Hospital simulcast on Twitter and Facebook. We’re positng the comlete article here.

Healthcare and Social Media: The Benefits Win Out

I gave a speech last night on social media to the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau (CCTB — ChooseChicago.com) that went very well.  As is normal at these things, some people decided to hold on to their questions until after the speech was over so they could ask me directly and privately.  I like spending that time with people since they don’t fear telling you what they really think.

While I did field many good questions, I also listened to many people describe their pleasant experiences using the various forms of social media to promote their companies.  But despite there being many different tools in the social media arsenal, quite a few people said they focused everything on Twitter — as in, Twitter was the ONLY social media tool they used.  I was surprised by this (some admitted that Twitter was all they knew and liked), but even more surprised that even with their great results, they were still only interested in using Twitter.  From Twittered view, I’m sure the results were indeed impressive.  But I could only imagine how much more impressive their results would be if they added more tools to their bag.

Now, I understand what Twitter is and how to use it to promote your business.  But come on, it just isn’t the bees knees in social marketing.  It’s one tiny piece of the puzzle with some really powerful benefits.  So if your social marketing efforts are based around Twitter alone, you are missing out on some big things.

You see, focusing all your effort on Twitter is a lot like focusing all your media dollars on the Yellow Pages.  Sure, you could have some success.  But the point is that your marketing will not have the best reach.  Twitter is good.  It’s cool.  People know about it and those who use it are pretty loyal.  But while its growth is amazing, it’s still not a major tool to reach the masses.  To do that, you must use other social media tools — just like to reach a broader audience traditionally, you need to add print, radio, outdoor, etc. to your Yellow Pages buy.

We have a proven program that uses various tools including blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Bebo, etc. to generate advocates for our clients and build relationships with them.  But to build relationships, you must first generate the advocates.  After all, how does someone find you on Twitter — only through Twitter?  Although possible, most people get connected from others, or they see from websites, blogs, forwarded eblasts and ads that you have a Twitter account and then they connect to you that way.

So rather than just focus on Twitter, you really should also utilize Facebook, blogs and posts to stories (with links back to your sites) to generate people to your sites and then get them signed up for Twitter or whatever else you’re doing.

Once they’re signed up, send them eblasts that link to your blogs.  That’s where the real selling occurs — NOT Twitter.  Twitter’s role is to help customers connect with you INSTANTLY so that you could give them answers to questions, solutions to problems, ideas on something that just came up, etc.  It’s like a great customer service tool and yes, it does add to future sales because you’ve just kept a customer happy.

But to generate any significant future sales from new customers, Twitter is only part of the solution — blogs and eblasts are the main ones, along with all the other social sites you can handle.

So have fun with Twitter and learn how it can help you.  Just don’t do it at the expense of other social media tools or you could find yourself De-Twitterpated in no time.

That’s right. Social media can’t close a sale. Not directly anyway. Let’s clear up what it’s real purpose is: social media’s value is that it assists consumers with purchasing decisions or post-sale communication. It’s not a closer and it cannot make a sale on its own. It needs to work in concert with other tools like your website, print media, outdoor, radio, TV and your customer service representatives or salespeople. In many cases it may be the first stage of your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) process. Call it CRM 2.0 if you like. And while many social media networks have been around for years, companies are just now at the point where they are realizing they can’t ignore them any longer.

Since many of us here at Demi & Cooper and DC Interactive have been involved with the Internet for some time, we recognize this pattern of early market adoption. For example, I’ve been using the Internet since before there was a graphical user interface and everything was done from a UNIX command prompt (which, of course, makes me sound old). When a new technology debuts there is often skepticism by some, even though they realize there probably is some value in it. Funny as it may seem, there were those who did not think television would ever take off. And it wasn’t that long ago that some people needed to be convinced that their company needed a website. Often those who are skeptical make up their minds about the technology before learning about it. We’ve heard lots of things, such as:

“Isn’t social media for teenagers and John Stossel?”
“Social networking is a soft sell.”
“My product wouldn’t be a good fit for social media.”
“Our customers aren’t savvy enough to be on Facebook.”

While it’s true that social media skews younger, it’s not as young as you may think.

And one of the benefits of using social media as part of your advertising and marketing portfolio is not necessarily the people who use those networks. Any time your company is mentioned on any social media platform it gets indexed by search engines and that page floats to the top. And now you have a powerful assistant to whatever sales tools you already have in place.

Coleman-Parkes Research, who was interviewed by the ECT News Network, is about to come out with a report that has some really interesting findings. It puts hard numbers to things which we have already suspected:

• Over 75 percent of companies surveyed think that their company may be mentioned or talked about in social media by others at some point in the future.
• 9 out of 10 companies understand that the next crop of employees will bring social media into the workplace.
• Almost 60 percent of companies surveyed aren’t prepared to handle social media, admitting that integrating those technologies aren’t on their agenda at the moment.
• Only 18 percent of respondents have any kind of strategy in place to integrate these technologies within the company for employees.
• However, 52 percent of respondents agree that companies who fail to embrace social media technologies for business purposes will be left behind.
• 60 percent agree that social media is the next major step in growing collaboration between employees.

Social media can not be ignored. It’s here to stay.

Even one of the largest, slowest moving bureaucracies in our government — one which had become famous for lack of communication — is going to be launching their own social network. The FBI, CIA and the 14 other agencies that make up the United States Intelligence Community are going to be launching A-Space, which is quite basically a social network for spies. It will allow for better collaboration between employees in all of their disparate agencies.

Social media is going to involve your company in the future, whether you control it or not.

Managing social media isn’t an easy task because of the very nature of what it is. There are so many decentralized, independent mediums that it takes an inordinate amount of time to supervise and create meaningful content for all of them. And it only takes one customer and a few minutes to post a comment which is then seen by many.

How we can help: social media tool development, content creation, rapid response comment monitoring all with easy-to-understand trackable results.

It seems daunting, but we’re here to make it easy. You can leverage our experience in healthcare, banking, homebuilding and hospitality markets to develop social media tools, effective content and outreach programs as well as rapid response comment monitoring for your organization. All of our programs are custom tailored to your business and industry. We do a lot of research into your company and specific market to make sure your company’s appearance is presented as effectively as possible. And you’re always kept in the loop. We provide detailed status reports with trackable results showing all the places we’ve created a presence for your company, social bookmarks, social media comment management and more.

Have any questions? Just ask.