By Ingrid Lunden @IngridLunden

Lesson for social networking startups: Don’t mess around with your early adopters. Tiny Post, the 500 Startups company that lets users post photos with short messages attached to them (like a visual Twitter), has been called out by one of its users for putting bots on the network to follow legitimate people on the site. To its immense credit, the minute we alerted the company to this, co-founder Dick Brouwer admitted that he was doing this, to test user engagement, and said he would take down the bots immediately.

Recommended: Twitter for Business on Slideshare

The bots were first picked up by David Lee, founder of iOS and social web app developer GP Apps, who wrote about it on his own blog. There he notes that he’d signed up for Tiny Post 10 months ago but never had much use for it. But quite recently, he’d started to pick up followers out of the blue. He’d noticed some similarities in the profiles — examples below — and started to get suspicious.

He then crossposted his findings to Hacker News. That HN post has been picking up a lot of response — including others noting the same problem with bot followers, others coming to Tiny Post’s defense, and others describing how annoying bots creep into sites without the involvement to the sites themselves (a story in its own right. Hi, Twitter.)

So we did the natural thing journalists do: we reached out to Tiny Post for a response. Dick Brouwer, juggling two newborns (one being an actual human; the other being Tiny Post), tells us this:

“Oh dear, this is not what I intended to happen. Yes, we have been testing with 20 users to figure out what likes/follows can do to user engagement. It was intended as an effort to learn how important these social dynamics are to Tiny Post and what makes some users very sticky, and others not. It was never my intention to come off as shady or spammy (I’m never a fan when that happens to me as a user). I’ll email Dave right away.

Clearly this wasn’t the right way to learn more about our users; I just suspended all engagement.”

So: bye-bye bots — for this time, at least.

Tiny Post, which debuted at Tiny Reviews, rebranded itself at the end of August, when it added some new features, including placing text on to pictures, to take advantage of the fact that it was picking up a lot of people using the site to create memes — which, unlike bots, are one of the funner side-effects of the social media revolution.

For more social media help, visit our BAM marketing page.

The post ‘Visual Twitter’ Site Tiny Post Uses Bots To Test User Engagement, Gets Called Out appeared first on Think, The Blytheco Blog.

At last week’s SHRM Conference here in Atlanta, I was shocked to learn how many attendees had not embraced social media as a means of expanding their personal network, learning from their communities, and taking advantage of workplace management opportunities.

From our booth we passed out our amazing  (if we do say so ourselves) Twitter 101 piece, which included the “Top Ten People to Follow in Social HR,” and while a few passers-by were delighted with the info, some pulled away from the printed handout like it was a snake.  Some looked at me scornfully and said things like “I seriously doubt I need to follow ANYONE on Twitter,” or “I don’t tweet” – much in the dismissive-yet-astonished way one might say “I would NEVER sleep on the streets!”

Clearly tons of people in HR ARE using Twitter. I saw thousands of tweets on my feed alone last week detailing SHRM sessions, offers, and, yes, late-night parties.

So what’s with the attitude? People still think that Twitter is about “what I had for breakfast” (toast with peanut butter – thanks for asking) – the perception among the uninitiated is the information on Twitter is superficial drivel, perhaps useful for attracting legions of teenage fans.

Well, that perception is dead wrong. Like any tool, the value of Twitter is in how it is used. Businesses are using Twitter and other social media platforms to create a new kind of mutually beneficial relationship with their customers, resulting in improved transparency, better service, and greater personalization of the consumer experience.  In the words of Doug Ulman, President and CEO of Livestrong: “Social media is worth celebrating because it gives us all a voice.”

What’s your company’s experience with social media? Changing your world or not so much? Let us know in our 2012 Social Business Benchmarking Survey. It’s a 4-minute survey about your social experience. All takers receive a free report on the results so you can keep up with what your peers in business are doing, AND will be entered into a drawing for a Kindle Fire to be held the week of July 23.

The post The Value in Using Twitter appeared first on Think, The Blytheco Blog.

While many of you surely have noticed, Facebook is planning on officially releasing it’s newest edition of Fan Pages on March 30th.  What’s that you say?  Facebook is ALWAYS changing?  While this may be accurate, luckily, this newest update is combining something old with something new.  The results turn out to be something that closely resembles Facebook’s recent timeline change.

Facebook has done a few things to make its Fan pages more aesthetically appealing.  Here is just a quick overview of what you can expect in the latest update:

Cover Photos

Now you can add cover photos to your fan page.  If you’ve already updated your personal FB page to the new timeline, you already know what I’m talking about – if not, a cover photo is simply a landscaped photo that covers the entire width of your profile page, but only remains at the top.  For a preview, check out our FB page here.

What’s great about this is that it lets whatever image you want, to be the highlight of your page. Your profile picture still represents your page to other parts of Facebook, such as the News Feed. Other items are highlighted based on place and time and can easily be searched.  One might say that the new FB pages resemble more of a [tumblr] blog than an actual social networking profile.

Now, you can make what’s most important to you, most important to your fans.

Photos, likes, and apps, are now at the top of your page.  By default, your page’s photos will show up first but you have the option of changing the order in your account settings.

Star, Hide, or Pin

You can also hover over a specific post with your mouse in order to change its dimensions (to make it more profound?) or to make the post a “top story” by using the pencil icon.  You can also hide or delete posts in their entirety while using the same panel.

Improved Admin Panel

Keep track of ALL OF THE activity on your Page from one admin panel. Respond when people write on your Page timeline, and view your latest insights.Visit your activity log to review all your posts and activity.

Private Messaging Added!

Now people can contact you privately using ‘messages’ via your page. Notifications about new messages will appear right in your admin panel.

Let us know what you think about the new Fan pages in our comment section.

Follow us on Twitter @BlythecoLLC

The post Facebook Pages are Changing Soon – Are you up-to-date!? appeared first on Think, The Blytheco Blog.

Recently, a study performed by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, compared overall consumer Facebook engagement versus simple likes.

One of the most interesting articles I’ve read on this subject is from Ad Age Digital, Matthew Creamer writes Even Sexy Brands Struggle with Low Engagement on Facebook. He sums up the study nicely by basically stating that unless you are a super brand you can expect about a .45% engagement level.

So what do you have to do to get people to engage with you on Facebook? Well, there needs to be something compelling in order for your page to get the attention you want. Contests, quizzes, and games seem to work best at getting people’s attention.  But it really becomes a numbers game if you think that at best you are only going to get is about a .45% level of engagement. And remember, people have to be genuinely interested in your brand and at times it can be difficult create that interest.

If you have 5000 people who like you on Facebook, you may get 200-300 people to engage with you on a regular basis.  The big question for many small-to-midsized companies that comes out of learning this statistic is: – Is the time and effort involved in getting 200-300 people to engage with you on Facebook worth it?

We think so. You can reduce your time and effort by using apps designed to help you streamline your engagements and contests. Facebook is just one of many ways to spread your message. It has been reported that 42% of companies have acquired a customer through social media engagement, like Twitter. That is just a statistic that can’t be ignored.

For more information on how facebook and twitter can be used for your business check out our Social Media Guide.

The post Facebook Engagement – Can you get people to MORE THAN like you? appeared first on Think, The Blytheco Blog.