Dale Fisher * St. Louis, MO

On Sep. 30, 2012, new FCC requirements went into effect that required closed captioning for online video if it was first broadcast on television. As the web manager for the local PBS affiliate, I’ve had to learn a lot about closed captioning in a short amount of time.

I’m lucky enough to be provided captions for most video but occasionally a technical issue may arise and I’ll have no captioning file to work with. Here’s a trick you can use if you find yourself with a video file and no captions. Upload the video to YouTube (and you can even keep it set to private so no one else can view it) and they will create a caption file for you using voice recognition technology (check back as it might take a few hours before it shows up). The captions will have many errors but you can correct those using YouTube’s editing feature, but most importantly the time stamps will be created for you. This is a lot easier than creating a caption file from scratch.

You can then download the caption file and repurpose it using another caption software. There are a few freeware editors available like Jubiler for Mac or Subtitle Edit for PC.

Some time ago I was having a Twitter back and forth with Drew McManus of the Adaptistration web empire about the lack of public email and website statistics for arts and/or non-profits. It’s really hard to find comparison information for common metrics like open rates, click-throughs, unsubscribes, cart abandonment rate, etc.

One resource I like to visit often is Mail Chimp’s Research page. It offers email marketing statistics segmented by industry. Unfortunately beyond that there is not much detail. I would expect an email with a sales pitch might offer lower response rates than a simple informational email. Giveaways or offers could have different response rates than those without special offers. Besides my own benchmarking, it’s been hard to find more specific information.

Do you have a favorite resource for email marketing statistics? If so, please share in the comments.

I’ve launched a smartphone app a couple of times in my recent work history. It’s usually driven by leadership who thinks you need one. And they all have the same type of phone so they want that kind of app. In my humble opinion, you don’t need it.

In general, creating and launching a native smartphone app is too expensive for the number of users who will ever download it. Then when you see how few people interact with it on a regular basis, it’s even more depressing. Instead of developing a native app for one smartphone, I’d recommend you do the one thing that improves the user experience for all smartphone visitors: develop a mobile and/or tablet version of your website.

I recognize there could be some exceptions. Maybe you don’t have budget issues and can afford to develop apps that cover all the major smartphones. Maybe you can offer a specific functionality through the app that makes it worth owning and using on a regular basis. Maybe you have a critical mass of enough regular website visitors that even a fraction of those justify the expense.

But since I work mostly in the non-profit sector with limited budgets, my guess is you don’t really need it. Go mobile first and worry about the apps later.

If you manage a Facebook Page for your organization/company and often post links back to your website, then the Facebook Debugger (formerly called the URL Linter) should be your best friend. Why? Because it allows you to see what information Facebook will pull from any URL that you might post to your Fan Page. Whether you have set exact Open Graph tags or rely on the default Meta tags, the Debugger will show you what it can “scrape” from your URL.

But here is why I really find the Debugger to be a most valuable tool. Have you ever tried to post a URL and noticed Facebook is caching an old image or text (it will often retain content from the last time you posted the URL)? You can fix this by entering your URL into the Debugger and it will pull the latest version of your page. Then you can post the URL and access the updated content:

What do you use to help manage your Facebook Fan pages? Tell me about it in the comments.

Since the big update to Facebook in mid-September, I’ve noticed a decrease in impressions when using any kind of third-party app to post updates to Fan pages. It seems using third-party applications like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck to post updates to your Facebook Fan pages could mean less of your Fans will view the post. This also seems to be a problem with some Facebook applications that post RSS feeds automatically to a Fan page.

For example, I use the Facebook app RSS Graffiti to automatically send to new blog posts to a Fan page.
These blog posts used to generate 4000-5000 impressions per post. They now average 800-1000. I also recently needed to send out a few scheduled updates to Facebook using HootSuite and experienced similar results. A similar post I had sent out manually the previous day had better results.

From this article it appears Facebook is aware of the issue: http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/facebook-penalizes-third-party-apps/

The fact that this is still an issue over a month later is surprising. But until it’s resolved, I’d recommend posting your updates to Facebook Fan pages manually when possible.

I understand why an organization would link their Facebook Fan page with their Twitter account to share updates. Time and staff are limited. It’s easier to update once and let the auto-posting magic take over. In my humble opinion, this is not a best practice. I think Facebook and Twitter are two different beasts and should be treated as such. Here’s a few reasons why:

1. It’s obvious you didn’t write for this platform so you look kind of lazy: Posts sent from Twitter to Facebook have usernames (@someone) and hashtags (#something) that are useless and mean nothing to Facebook. Facebook posts are usually too long for Twitter, so they end up with that “fb.me” link back to the Facebook page. If you want visitors to take a certain action (say visit your website), why make them go to Facebook in between? You’ll lose some percentage along the way.

2. You are losing impressions if you post from Twitter to Facebook: I’ve been seeing this in my Wall stream lately: “See XX more posts from Twitter.” That means I have to take an action (click) to view these posts. If the last few Tweets sent to my Facebook News stream before this one are not so engaging, I may not click that link at all. The post you carefully crafted for Twitter may not be viewed by many of your Facebook Fans simply because it came from Twitter.

You are also likely losing impressions by not updating manually because of EdgeRank (the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine what to show in News feeds). You’ll get a lower EdgeRank score when using third-party applications to post to Facebook (more on EdgeRank here and here).

3. Facebook to Twitter often leaves out important info: One organization I’m a big fan of recently posted on Facebook to “view the Note below” for info on a new feature on their website. But after it was auto-posted to Twitter, there was no link included back to the Note on Facebook. After they created the Note, it was automatically posted to their Facebook Wall. In a separate status update they instructed to look “below” to read the Note. But only the second update made it to Twitter and there was no “below” to read (except other people’s Tweets). Important note: most people read your Facebook status updates on their News feed and not your Fan page (check your Facebook Insights to see the difference between your Impressions versus Wall visits), so if you refer to something “below” it might not make much sense even on Facebook.

4. You lose the power of tagging: One great way to both get the word out about your page and be a good social media neighbor is to tag other people & organizations in your Twitter and Facebook updates. Since they use different formats, posting from one to the other is not compatible for tagging. On Facebook, all those Twitter “@” tags don’t work and look kind of silly. On Twitter, the tagged name may not display the way you may have preferred and will often use up more of your 140 characters than needed. When auto-posting, you can’t create these important links to other Twitter accounts that share info and help grow your followers.

5. You might accidentally do this:

Sounds pretty tasty up until the “Flash Fried Baby!” There is a good chance the next word was “Spinach” but we can’t be sure unless we click-through. I’m guessing no one wants to accidentally send out a message like this to their followers and fans. And they certainly don’t want a local newspaper writing about it on their blog: Why Restaurants Shouldn’t Cross-Post From Facebook to Twitter by Robin Wheeler @ RFT

Do you have a different opinion on linking Twitter and Facebook? Are there other good points I didn’t mention? Let me know about it in the comments.