Yesterday, Facebook was at it again. Talking about privacy settings.
There was a lot of buzz and I wanted to catch some of it promote Hailey Hacks Privacy Settings. I wanted to find a way to use the buzz to drive some more hits to the video.
My majorest stumbling block was that I am here in Niagara-on-the-Lake helping to run a crossplatform training lab. We were just hitting the most intense part of the program as the Facebook privacy news hit so it was hard to find time to work the social media.
I came up with an alternate plan: email my community and ask them to help by using status updates, tweets and comments to the Facebook blog video which was in the newsfeed to draw people’s attention to the video.
I sent out an email asking people to come up with funny status updates etc that said why they were sticking with Hailey’s suggested privacy settings instead of following the ones that Facebook is now suggesting.
I have many good and supportive friends. Here are some of the resulting tweets and updates.
I love that my community came through for me, but when I looked at the initiative I’d started, I realized it felt way too much like advertising.
Meanwhile, Illia responded to my call for support by sending me a bunch of images of funny and embarrassing things people have said on Facebook. If you set up your account the way Facebook is now suggesting all these kinds of gaffs won’t be visible just within Facebook’s walled community (where at least they disappear fairly quickly off the front page) but will be findable through Google. Not that’s entertainment!
So I quickly (well not so quickly, it took me till about midnight last night to do it), I crafted a blog post that included those images. It ended with
Do yourself a favour, keep your life off Google. Set your privacy settings the way Hailey suggests in the video below and when the transition tool comes out? Stick to your old settings!
Followed by an embed of Hailey Hacks Facebook Settings:
The results? A spike in views. But not thousands of people by any means and complete failure to achieve viral.
Conclusion: more work -- a lot more work -- is required to get the view count up. It’s important from here on in to get the word out beyond my own community. I need advocates with big communities of their own, communities who include parents of tweens and people who teach them.
I’ve got my work cut out for me.
