Let’s make a collective list of all the things we’d like to add or change to our social networking sites! Together, we can act as one big focus group for the likes of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and others. Are you ready?
I’ll start with my wish list, and you can add to it.
- I’d like to be able to select a date and have the ability to view the posts from a given time period. Right now, we have to keep clicking “older posts” or something similar. Are they kidding? What if we’re sick in bed for a week and don’t have time to check the social scene? (Apparently, Facebook is launching this. Yay!)
- I want to be able to organize my LinkedIn page without restrictions. No, I don’t expect to have control over ad placements, but I would like to pretty up and customize my own content. I wouldn’t change their basic formats, but wouldn’t it be cool to display our creativity and uniqueness?
- How about some creative developers coming up with an app that allows us to access ALL our sites in one format? Not just the sites they choose, but the ones we want?
- Why must social media sites restrict us to a specific number of posts a day? As long as we’re not spamming, why should they care? If we post too much, our followers can choose to unfollow or de-friend us. Isn’t that the free market way?
- I want to be able to organize my Twitter followers in any way I choose. Maybe I’ll try it alphabetically first. Or maybe I’ll segment my list like I do in Tweetdeck—by keyword. How cumbersome is it now to keep scrolling down to see our earlier followers? Once you get into the thousands, forget it!
OK, I’ll pause here. YOUR turn. Go for it! Let’s tell them what we want.
Tags: Content, custom content, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Marketing, posts, Social Media, Social networking, Twitter
Responding to your above #3: “How about some creative developers coming up with an app that allows us to access ALL our sites in one format? Not just the sites they choose, but the ones we want?”
I am new to the Social Media Marketing Scene (I know, I know….Better late than never though!) and after securing accounts on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook for the B2B company I work for, I mentioned to my co-worker about how nice it would be to have an App that would allow us to access all of our social media accounts from one interface! (This was literally like 2 weeks ago).
I think this would be a huge success for those who manage the social media marketing within their company, would save lot’s of time….and time is money!
Plus I like the idea of allowing users to partially “customize” their landing pages. Would allow us to seamlessly transfer our corporate image to our social media sites as we do with other marketing materials.
Thanks,
Jake
There are already solutions to many of these problems. Hootsuite.com is a dashboard in the cloud that will allow you to see and do much of what you are asking for. As for custom applications for branding there are several applications that will allow you to create a custom landing tab on Facebook and you can customize your Twitter and YouTube accounts rather easily for free. If you want a Landing Tab that does not include advertising from 3rd parties and is free of the providers branding elements you will need to use a premium service for that. They are relatively inexpensive and well worth the investment. Hope this helped.
Hi, James. I’ve tried many of these platforms, but haven’t found one that connects all of my accounts. I checked into Hootsuite and although it shows a Google+ icon on its landing page, it appears that it is not included as a selection in the dashboard. Can you access Google+ in yours?
Sorry it took so long to get back to you. Hootsuite announced Google+ integration last November. It is only available to Enterprise clients at this time. I think the holdup is with Google+. Everyone should have access to that feature soon.
Thanks, James. I noticed that most of the platforms don’t have Google+ yet. Good to know it’s coming.
Welcome to the “Social Media Marketing Scene,” Jake! Now, you can join the rest of the addicts!
I like your comment, “[It] would allow us to seamlessly transfer our corporate image to our social media sites as we do with other marketing materials.” Seems like a “duh” to me! What are they waiting for?
Hope you’ll continue to visit MarketingProfs. Thanks for the comment.
Hi thanks Love your article facebook will have to make some changes, i cannot weight to see
Care to share what you’d like Facebook to change, Mark?
I could not agree more with #2. I have forever been waiting to unleash my creativity on LinkedIn. With everyone’s pages looking the same there is no way to distinguish yourself from the crowd! Personally, I would have thought those clever people working at LinkedIn would have caught onto that by now… Maybe 2012 would be a good oppertunity for some change!
However, one thing that I do not agree with is #4. Especially on Twitter I have about 10 people who I follow who jam up my feed on a daily basis with posts every other second! Granted, I did follow them, so I obviously want to hear what they have to say… but I also want to be able to hear the other people I follow too. I wish that Twitter would come up with a filter like Facebook does, where you can adjust how much content is being pushed through on your feed from individual people. Or perhaps like you said, and sorting your list by who you want to recieve the most content from.
I am really excited to see what the Social Media Scene has to offer us for 2012!
Thanks for this insightful post
Alyssa
Thanks, Alyssa! I can see what you mean about #4. However, if we can have even greater control, we could filter what we receive, just as you point out. Wouldn’t that be great? There are always going to be people we don’t want to offend by unfollowing, but we don’t find their content valuable.
Sometimes “simple” works better than complex. Facebook gained the lead over MySpace because they made it easy to use and control. I am not sure that giving people the ability to “gussy up” Linkedin is way to go. We may start seeing pages like MySpace which in many cases are impossible to read or understand. If they did provide a customization feature I would suggest they charge a premium, which would make this available to more serious people.
I understand your point, Harry. Having uniformity helps us find the information we seek. However, I do think allowing for a bit of reorganization wouldn’t hurt if the categories and frames remain the same. Heck, all I wanted to do was to rearrange my LinkedIn information using both columns so people wouldn’t have to scroll down so much.
Thanks for the comment!
I’ve still be protesting FB timeline. I wish we had the option of not updating it to the Timeline.
Great wish list you provided!
Thanks, Amy! I know the timeline looks very different. I adopted it when it was first launched and I had trouble finding my friends’ posts. Even though I like the ability to check older content, I’d still like to customize my page layout.
*been
[...] Your Social Media Wish List for 2012 [...]
I dislike when a person adds me on twitter… I add them back… Only to find soon after they unfollowed me. It’s difficult to keep track of who that person was that deleted me. Maybe there is a to keep track of this that I don’t know?!
Thanks for your comment. As they say, “There’s an app for that!” Try: http://who.unfollowed.me/
Hope you’re not freezing your tootsies off in Winnipeg. (I’m a Canuck.)